Delmo Dorite Writes

So Long, and Thanks For all the Fish, Douglas Adams

2010-11-29T18:29:00.000-08:00

Well, I started Delmo Dorite Writes a little over five years ago whilst I was still working at Hinton Center, doing Spiritual Formation and Continuing Education, etc. Since then, I've been a parish pastor (Friedens ELCA, Gibsonville, NC) and the Assistant to the Bishop (Southeastern Synod, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Atlanta, GA.) Through it all, being Delmo Dorite has helped keep me sane, and I have enjoyed it tremendously. But it's time for a change.

This is my last post here, BUT! the work goes on in a new format. The Rev'd Dr. John Fairless and I ("Two Bubbas and a Bible, Inc.") have long collaborated on projects and now we have a new one. It's called The Lectionary Lab. (You can access it at www.lectionarylab.blogspot.com)

It's a combination of textual comments, one-liners, illustrations and short sermons designed to help the parish pastor get started on the weekly task of preaching the Word. Brought to you by two working pastors who've been doing just that week after week, for a collective 50 years or so. I hope you'll check it out and let us know what you think. (It could also be a good Bible Study and devotional for anyone, preacher or not.)

Peace,

delmo

Nov. 14, 2010

2010-11-13T07:12:00.000-08:00

Installation Sermon for Sally Fran Ross
Preached Nov. 14, 2010 at Luther's Chapel, Pulaski, Miss.

Texts: Malachi 4:1-2a; Psalm 98; 2 Thess. 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

It was during Lent, 25 years ago. I was the pastor of a very old Lutheran church north of Charlotte. North Carolina.

On the wall of the apse, above the altar, there was a stained glass window in the shape of a cross lit by light bulbs.

One Wednesday afternoon I was putzing around the altar getting things ready for mid-week service when I noticed that one of the bulbs had gone out.

I resolved to change it, but, as often happens with me, I got distracted and forgot about it until the middle of the pre-service Fellowship Meal.

I excused myself and went into the church and then upstairs and opened a little door in the hall, got down on my knees to change the bulb. This is when I saw Seth.

Seth wasn't a bad kid; he was just six, and mischievous, he got into things.

This night Seth had gone into the church alone and he was pulling the big, heavy pulpit chair over to the front of the altar.

The altar was set for Communion, with a plate full of wafers, a stack of trays and a cup of wine already set out under a shear, white veil.

In a moment I realized what Seth was doing; he wanted to get a look at that table, and I visualized him pulling everything down on his head and falling out of the chair, etc. etc.

So, without thinking I barked out; "Seth, get down from there, you're going to hurt yourself!"

I will never forget the look of pure terror that washed over Seth's face as he jerked his head up and looked into the face of Jesus staring down at him from above the Altar.

He started crying and yelling "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" and ran out of the room.

I left what I was doing and followed Seth out of the Church, across the parking lot into the Fellowship Hall, where he was weeping into his grandmother's large and welcoming lap.

Grandma, Grandma, Grandma; Jesus yelled at me. I want to go home NOW!

Most of the time, I find church to be a pleasant and happy place. A place where, like Seth, I feel safe and welcome and at home.

But every once in a while, church can become a frightening, indeed a scary place, a place I would just as soon not be.

Like today while I was reading that Gospel lesson.

That's pretty scary stuff. All that talk about war and destruction and earthquakes and famines and pestilence and terror and persecution.

Well, it scares me to death; and I'm like Seth; I'm ready to go screaming out of the room, looking for my Grandma's lap.

Before we go too far down this scary road, I think it important that we read this text carefully.

What Jesus is getting at here is something we all know both from history and personal experience: the world is indeed a scary and dangerous place; full of danger, trouble and heartache.

Jesus point throughout this text is to remind us where to look for our salvation, for grace, for hope, for love; when trouble inevitably comes.

We are not to look to big buildings and institutions, we are not to look to governments (nations and kingdoms) we are not to look to kings and governors and multinational corporations.

All these things will fail you; indeed will turn against you.

When trouble comes, the one thing you can count on is God.

The one group of people you can rely on is the community of Christ, the gathered people of God, the Church.

We are here today to talk about and celebrate and cement the basic connection that exists between what it means to be THE CHURCH and what it means to be A PASTOR

The two belong together: a church needs a pastor, and a pastor needs a church.

It's hard to have one without the other. To put it bluntly, being a Pastor is not a personal identity.

Being called to preach implies being called to preach to PEOPLE.

Nobody is called to preach to the trees or the woods or to themselves, People are called of God to preach to the church and to the world.

We have been called to preach and pastor because the world is a dangerous and difficult place, and people struggle with life and need both comfort and guidance.

Prof. Marty Saarinan told the following story to every Senior class at LTSS, Columbia, SC

Marty graduated from Seminary back in the early 1950s and went to his first call in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Pretty remote and rugged; then and now.

Not too long after Pastor Marty got there he learned of an elderly couple who lived way back in the woods and who seldom got to church anymore and he resolved to go visit them.

He was advised to borrow a jeep, which he did, and he drove the paved road and then the dirt road, and then two ruts, and then a creek bed, and then he parked the Jeep and climbed up a hill and through the wild bushes and found a cabin with a tiny wisp of smoke wafting into the sky from the chimney.

Pastor Marty walked onto the porch and knocked on the door and waited and waited and knocked again and waited and then he heard a noise and the door opened and a little old man stared at Marty for a long time and then he recognized the collar and turned around and shouted to his wife in her rocker: "Anna, God has not forgotten us!"

In our hectic, secular, modern world, in the midst of wars and natural disaster and economic uncertainty and the other more mundane trials and tribulations of ordinary life; it is hard for most of us to cling to an awareness of God's love and concern and presence.

The purpose of the Church and the purpose of the pastor, the purpose to which you, Sally Fran, have been called and are now set apart, is to be a constant reminder to the world of God's love.

In a few moments, Pastor Ross will stand before me and you all need to imagine yourselves standing beside her because what we are about is a wedding of sorts.

I will ask her questions and she will make promises to preach and teach and serve and then

I will ask questions of the congregation, the people of God assembled, and ya'll will promise to treat her as God's gift to you that she is and to work with her in serving a needy world with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

And then I will pronounce you united as Pastor and congregation.

And, as I usually say to couples during a wedding sermon, if you (all) will remember the promises you make here to each other, and do your best to fulfill those promises with honesty and integrity and Christian charity,

God will be able to bless your union, will fill your life together with joy and faith and loving service to each other and the world.

Amen and amen.

PENTECOST 21 - Oct. 17, 2010

2010-10-16T18:25:00.000-07:00

Texts: 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8

A friend of mine sent me this in an email a few weeks ago:

Sign seen posted in the cafeteria of a Florida hospital:
NOTICE: Due to the current budget cutbacks,
the light at the end of the tunnel will be turned off
until further notice.

Today's Scripture lessons remind us to hang on to our faith, even when the light of God's love grows dim or even seems to have gone out.

August 5th of this year was an ordinary day in the life of 33 miners in Chile.

They got up early as usual, packed a lunch as usual, drove or rode to work as usual,
some kissed their wives and children goodbye that day; others left house with slammed doors and angry words; most of their mornings were somewhere in between.
Like I said; an ordinary day.

Then, sometime that day, everything changed.

Something happened, the mine collapsed, the 33 were trapped. For days they were presumed dead; then discovered alive; but how much hope was there? They were so deeply buried.

We have all been watching the news, paying attention to the story, know about their open space in the darkness, the small hole drilled to send them light and food,
the family members up top, keeping vigil, praying and hoping the drilling, drilling, drilling to find a way to get them out alive.

And this week, justice was done, hope was rewarded, the persistence of the miners,
and the families and the drillers paid off; the men were rescued, all is well.

I remind you of that story because it goes to the heart of the Biblical message for today.

The text from Jeremiah reminds us that God has promised that "the days are surely coming" when God's justice will fill the earth.

In 2 Timothy, the old Elder reminds the young preacher to "be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable," or as the old King James put it, "in season and out of season."

And our Gospel lesson is a story about not giving up in the face of difficult times.

This is a story about continuing to pray and trust God, even when you're getting no results; even when it feels like and looks like the windows of heaven are shut up tight and God either cannot or will not hear your plea.

Actually, preaching on this text is pretty easy. For once, Jesus told us what the parable meant before he told the story. Verse 1: "Jesus told the disciples a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart."

The story uses courtrooms and bad judges and poor widows to teach us lessons about life and God and our need to pray without ceasing.

A judge in Israel was a powerful, powerful figure.

Biblical Scholar Raymond Bailey says,

In Israel, the judge was the final arbiter. There was no jury, no court of appeal. . . . . . The judge in the parable is a law unto himself, who has no sense of accountability to persons or God. He shirked his duty by not bothering to even hear the case . . . . . The widow throughout the Bible . . . . was a vulnerable victim . . . a symbol of helplessness.(The Lectionary Commentary, The Gospels, Eerdman's Press p. 429)

Jesus has set up for us a scene in which a poor, helpless person has nowhere else to turn but to the judge. And the judge appears not to care about her,
appears to be unwilling to help.

She has no money to bribe him,no power to coerce him, no important relatives to influence him; what is she to do?

Well; she has two choices:

1) she can quit, give up, crawl away in despair and frustration.

Or 2) she can continue to beat upon his door, accost him in the streets, stand in his yard with a sign demanding justice, tell his neighbors and friends about his unwillingness to help; in short she can refuse to go away.

And it worked: verse 5 " . . .because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming."
In other words, he gives her what she wants so she'll go away.

As I said, this story isn't really about courtrooms and judges and poor widows; it's about persistence in prayer and faithfulness in living.

God does not "grant us justice," to get rid of us, or because we disturb the divine repose, or to avoid embarrassment. God is not like the unfair judge in that way.

Jesus' point is that God works on a different time schedule than most of us and it is easy for us to get discouraged if the "days that are coming," that Jeremiah talked about seem never to come.

We do our best to live a good life, giving to God and neighbor generously, praying and attending worship and paying attention to our religious duties.

We are faithful to our wives or husbands or significant other; our family members can rely on us to be there for them in time of need; we raise our children with gentleness, discipline and generosity; we pursue our work with both diligence and honesty;

and yet, and yet; sometimes things fall apart; sometimes the roof caves in, sometimes the light goes out; sometimes we find ourselves trapped in the darkness of our souls, with no sign of hope; with no glimmer of grace; with not even a whisper of love.

And when that happens; how do we hang on? How do we keep faith through the dark night of the soul?

How do we keep on praying when things keep getting worse instead of better?

How do we find the will to get up and go out each day trusting God to see us through when nothing we do seems to work?

How do we keep from having "itching ears," looking here and there and everywhere for solutions to our problems;

or, if not solutions, then others to blame for our difficulties?

What does it take for us to stay the course in difficult and perilous times?

Archbishop Desmond Tutu recently retired from public life. When I read of his retirement in the paper, I was reminded of an incident I heard retold by South African Methodist Bishop Peter Storey.

It was the early 1960's. Tutu was the General Secretary of the South Africa Council of Churches, Storey Was the President. Tutu is Black, Storey is White. They were working together to end Apartheid.

The government and many others were unhappy with them. Someone came to Tutu by night and said, "You have to stop, you have to back down. They will stop you, they will beat you, they will kill you."

Desmond Tutu smiled a little smile and said, "Come now, death isn't the worst thing that can happen to a Christian. I've got a resurrection Jesus, don't you?"

And that is indeed why we can and do persist in our faith and our prayers and our actions, even in the face of circumstances which oppose and seek to defeat us.

We have a resurrection Jesus. We know that no matter how many Good Fridays we face and live though, no matter the number of crosses we are given to carry, no matter how many times things grow difficult and dangerous,

We have a resurrection Jesus; Easter morning has come for Christ and will come for us.

Amen, Come Lord Jesus.

GOT FAITH? Pentecost 19, Oct 3, 2010

2010-10-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

(A sermon preached at Faith Lutheran Church, Bristol, TN.)

Luke 17:5-10

In her autobiography, Broadway actress Helen Hayes tells about her first attempt to cook a Thanksgiving Turkey.

Before bringing it out of the kitchen to the Dining Room table, Hayes announced to her husband and son:

Now, you know this is the first turkey I've ever cooked. If it isn't any good, I don't want anybody to say a word. We'll just get up from the table WITHOUT COMMENT, and go to a restaurant to eat.

She then went back to the kitchen to get the tray. When she came into the dining room with the turkey; she found her husband and her son seated at the table with their coats, hats and gloves on; ready to go out to eat. They did not have much faith in Miss Hayes' ability to cook a turkey.

In our Gospel lesson for today the disciples are also suffering from a lack of faith, or so it seems.

After all, Jesus says to them, "If you had even the faith of a mustard seed. . . " and the seed of a mustard plant is very tiny indeed, like the head of a pin, really.

The message seems to be that the disciples just don't have enough faith. I don't think this is what Jesus meant. I think Jesus meant the disciples have all the faith they need. What they don't have is an understanding of what it means to have faith.

Let me explain. In verse 1-4, right before our text starts; Jesus has said to the disciples that they should forgive a sinner who repents. Then he says, And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says I repent, you must forgive.

No wonder the disciples cry out "INCREASE OUR FAITH!" How can Jesus expect any normal human being to forgive somebody for treating them badly that many times?

When I was a little kid, when I got caught being bad, I always said, with my head hung down and twisting my feet, about to cry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

One time; my mother whacked me real good on the bottom and said, I know you're sorry. You're always sorry. What I want to know now is WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO STOP DOING IT?

Somebody sins against me, treats me badly, sticks it to me, seven times in a row and seven times in a row they say they're sorry and Jesus expects me to forgive the jerk every time? Really! I think I'm with Mama on this one. Enough's enough. I want to know when it's gonna stop!

And yet; Jesus says forgive. So the disciples cry out, "INCREASE OUR FAITH! WE CAN'T DO THIS." The gap between what Jesus asks us to do and our ability to do it is enormous.

And that is just the point of this lesson. We are thinking of faith as something human, something that we do, some especially intense sort of believing, or some really focused positive thinking that results in good things happening for us and ours.

We think of faith from the human point of view and Jesus thinks of faith from God's side of things. It only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to uproot a mulberry tree and plant it in the ocean because: IT'S NOT THE FAITH THAT DOES IT; IT'S GOD!

The disciples are worried about their ability to forgive as much as Jesus demands. So they ask for an increase in faith so that they will be able to perform this superhuman feat of humility and generosity and compassion. And Jesus tells them they don't need a bigger faith. With the God of Israel just a little bit of faith is plenty because God does the work.

The disciples are fretting about the quality of their performance as disciples and followers of Jesus. They are worried about how Spiritual and Faithful and Religious they will appear to their LORD and not incidentally, to their community.

But Jesus carefully reminds them that in the life of faith it is not the believer who performs the act of power or receives the praise for it. Both the act and the credit belong to GOD.

This is the point of Jesus' parable about the master and the slave.To most of us, this story sounds pretty harsh. All that talk about not thanking the slave for a job well done, and not allowing the slave who has been working hard in the fields all day to eat until after the Master has been served; well, it just sounds wrong to us.

There is an important movie coming into the theatres right now. It's called WAITING FOR SUPERMAN. It is not a comedy or a drama; though it has elements of each. It is a documentary about the failure of America's public schools to educate our children.

In one sequence it shows that of the top 30 developed countries, school children from the US measure between 25th and 30th on every measure of ability in every subject but one; we finish #1 in confidence! We have taught our children to think highly of themselves in spite of any evidence to the contrary.

NT Scholar Charles Cousar says a similar thing has happened to us spiritually.

This story (granted in a sneaky way) reminds us of our place and shows how easy it is to exchange roles. God is God; we are God's creatures - no more, no less. But subtly the order can get reversed, as Adam and Eve discovered. Dominion over the earth is a heady challenge! Why stop there? The serpent asks, you will be like God!

We begin to think of Jesus as the one who washes feet, forgives sins, hears prayers, supplies needs. Jesus gives, we receive. Pretty soon we come to expect it. (Texts for Preaching, A Lectionary Commentary Based on the NRSV - Year C, WJK, p544)

Jesus point here is to remind us of the proper relationship between God and a person of Faith. If we perform our acts of love and service to God out of a desire to earn praise on earth in this life or a secure spot in heaven in the next; we are missing the point; not only of this parable but also of the life of faith.

There is nothing we can do to earn God's love. God's love has been ours since before we were born; it washes over us each day, unbidden and unearned. It fills our lives, melts our hearts, softens our eyes, tenderizes our spirits and turns us away from our preoccupation with ourselves to a fascination with loving and caring for Christ by loving and caring for those whom God has placed in our midst for us to love.

With this story, Jesus reminds us that the true KINGDOM AND POWER AND GLORY do indeed belong to God and to God alone, And any wishful thinking on our part that if we had more faith we could do more things for God misses the point entirely.

The reality is: We have all the faith we need to do great things for God. Or, to be more biblically and theologically correct; we have all the faith we need to allow God to do great things in, with and through us. Faith the size of a mustard seed is all that is necessary for God to put God's power to work in our lives and in our world.

Our calling today is to humbly ask God to increase, not our faith, but rather our willingness to be used by God, in any way God chooses.

Our calling today is to use what little faith we have to stay at the table; hat, coat and gloves off and put away; waiting patiently to dig in to whatever God has in store for us.

Amen and amen.

Pentecost 18, September 26, 2010

2010-09-25T07:08:00.000-07:00

PENTECOST 18
Text: Luke 16:19-31
(A sermon preached at the Installation of David Hood as transition pastor at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Nashville, TN.)

I started my career as a pastor in three little churches in rural NC.

Wood-frame buildings on isolated dirt roads, a few dozen farmers and shop-owners and their children and grand-children who drove out on Sundays from the cities to visit the folks and go to church.

One weekday noon I went into a church member's place of business for lunch: Alvis Brigg's Bar-B-Q.

As I walked in, a Briggs grandchild, a boy about 4 years old, spotted me.

He stood up in the booth where he was sitting and yelled out, "Hello . . . " and then he was silent, because he couldn't remember where he knew me from.

He tried a couple more times, "HELLO . . . " then silence and meditation, "HELLO . . ." again, and more thoughtful silence.

By this time everyone in the room was quiet and looking back and forth between the boy and me.

Finally his face brightened and he shouted, HELLO CHURCH!

We are here today to talk about and celebrate and cement that basic connection between what it means to be PASTOR and what it means to be CHURCH and how the two are uniquely and inseparably entwined.

Particularly for us ELCA Lutherans, to be a minister of the Gospel, a pastor, requires a connection with a congregation.

While in many traditions, once you're ordained you are always a pastor no matter what you do for a living, this is not so for us. When people finish seminary, they are not ordained until a congregation calls them to be their pastor. If you want to be a Seminary teacher, or a Hospital chaplain, or a counselor, our church, the ELCA, requires that you first serve three years as a Parish Pastor, and after that, if you are not serving in a congregation, you must apply every year to the Bishop and Synod Council to maintain your status as a pastor, showing cause why you need to be ordained to do what you are doing.

In our church, to be a pastor is, by definition, connected to serving a community of God's people gathered around Word and Sacrament.To put it bluntly, being a Pastor is not a private, personal identity. It is a communal, relational, cooperative venture; rooted in the call and gift of God.

Many times I hear about such and such a pastor as being GIFTED. He has so many gifts for ministry; she is a gifted speaker, or musician, or counselor; he has the gift of leadership, etc. and I applaud and revel in their giftedness. So many people have so many gifts that I don't have and that I envy.

Singing, for instance. Not only do I wish I could sing; other people wish I could sing too. Being creative with Liturgy. Wow, I wish I could do that. I'm a setting One, Two or Three, pick three hymns kind of pastor. I don't have the gift of being creative with liturgy.

But it's important to remember why we pastors have been given our gifts for ministry.We have received these gifts not for ourselves, not for our own enjoyment and not so that we can be praised and lauded for having these gifts.

We have received these gifts for the benefit of the church, for serving God by serving the world, for preaching and teaching, for spreading the Good News of Christ to the world.

The difficulty of this task is revealed to us in our reading from Luke's Gospel, in the very last line, where Jesus tells the rich man in Hell, "If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even someone rises from the dead."

Well someone did rise from the dead, and many are still quite unconvinced, and we, the pastors and the people of the church, still find ourselves talking to people so enamored of their stuff that they are unable to hear the word of truth.

The first part of our text, verses 19 through 26, is a familiar middle eastern folk tale.

In the modern world, we recycle jokes and urban legends. Names, professions, locations change but the point is always the same. In Jesus' world they recycled these folk stories, and when a good story teller started to tell one, everyone settled in to see how well he told it, what clever riffs he used. Here in Nashville, we might think of a singer making an old standard song her own by singing it in a unique way. Creativity grew out of the art of adapting the story, not in creating a totally new one. So as Jesus began the story, everyone knew where he was going, they just weren't sure how he was going to get there.

The rich man/poor man reversal in the afterlife was a familiar moralistic tale; often used to shame the rich into being more generous to the poor. So when the rich man sees Lazarus in the "bosom of Abraham," and cries out for mercy, everyone is ready for the discussion of the finality of Hell, the great chasm that has been established and can't be crossed, etc.

What they are not prepared for is the next part, New Testament Scholar NT Wright says,

"In the usual story, when someone asks permission to send a message back to the people who are still alive on earth, the permission is granted. Here, it isn't; and the sharp ending of the story points beyond itself to all sorts of questions. . . " (Luke for Everyone, p.200)

Jesus' story was aimed at some familiar targets: those who think that being rich is a reward from God and proof of their goodness and those who think that poverty is largely deserved and either divine punishment for evil or just desserts for those who seem able to work but aren't very successful at it.

These words are also aimed by Luke at the early church, the first tellers of the Good News of Jesus, to remind them of the difficulty of their task. The people of Israel had had Moses and the Prophets, revealed words from God, for a thousand years and many were still sinful and in need of repentance. Just adding the Resurrection of Jesus to the story didn't make it easier for people to accept, believe and live out; indeed, for most people it made it harder.

Our calling as a community of faith is to take the old, old familiar story of God and sin and rescue and rebellion and death and resurrection; a story that has been told so often that many no longer listen, or if they listen, they think they know what it means and how it's going to turn out.

We are called to take that story and like Jesus, tell it in new ways, with surprising endings.We are called to tell that story to this generation, to people in the 21st century.

We are called to aim the story at the spiritual needs of people living now, in this time of richness and poorness, in this age of technology and social networking and the collective national attention span of a gnat.

We are called to bring the great truths of Moses and the prophets to people on this side of the grave, so that they will hear the call to repent, to turn, to change, to bring their lives into alignment with God's will and God's way.

And David, your calling in this place, and for this time, is to lead these people in discovering their voice in telling that story.

It is your calling to help Holy Trinity find the unique and God-given talent they have for making God's love known in this community NOW.

David, you are called here to lead this congregation in realizing who they are and what they have to say and do in the world, so that when people see them coming, they will shout with their hearts if not with their lips, "Hello CHURCH!"

Amen and Amen.

September 19

2010-09-19T05:28:00.000-07:00

I am really late posting. it's been quite a week, from Atlanta, to Memphis to Jackson, Mississippi to Mobile, Alabama to Middle and then East Tennessee, 2000 miles, 9 churches in 8 days. And wrote two sermons along the way, whew!

Pentecost 17, Sept. 19, 2010
Resurrection Lutheran Church, Ooltewah, TN

Text: Luke 16:1-13

Almost fifteen years ago, when I was pastor at Holy Trinity in Nashville, Ellenita Zimmerman was the Director of Christian Education. She was over 70 and soon to retire.

Ellenita had a Master's degree in Bible and Education; she had been a missionary in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan; she had been on staff at Holy Trinity as DCE and Organist/Choir director for almost 30 years.

One night Ellenita and I were meeting with the Worship and Christian Education teams to plan a month's worth of coordinated worship services and Christian Education classes when this lesson came up as one of the Gospel lessons for the month.

I read it out loud and glanced around the group for ideas and nobody said anything; they just looked a little stunned. Finally Ellenita said,

Why don't we just skip it? I never did understand that story anyway.

Well, I kind of agree with Ellenita, though I'm not sure her son, a NT professor at the Lutheran Seminary in Hong Kong, would let her get away with skipping it!

It is a hard story to understand, isn't it? Or, to say it more honestly; it's a story we all understand; it's the way the world works and we all know it. It's what Jesus says about the story that's hard to take.

Look at the uproar about Derek Jeter of the Yankees. For those of you who don't follow baseball,
Jeter plays for New York and they are in a tight pennant race with Tampa Bay.

During a game this week, Jeter was at bat, the pitcher threw the ball, it bounced off Jeter's bat, and he started shaking his left arm and screwed up his face in pain, and grabbed his elbow and the umpire decided the ball had hit Jeter and awarded him first base.

Now, nobody but the home plate umpire thought Jeter had been hit, and after the game, when he was asked, Jeter admitted it, confessed that he had pulled a fast one on the umpire.

And, the newspapers and sports talk shows on TV and Radio had a field day, arguing if Jeter was a cheater or just smart ballplayer. (Yankee fan/Yankee hater?, how and when you learned to play baseball, etc? great argument.)

It seems to me that Jeter and the unjust office manager have a lot in common; both of them pulled a fast one, and the man in charge rewarded them for it.
The gospel lesson is a strange story. A business owner finds out that his office manager is guilty of mismanagement. He calls in the manager and says "You've got two weeks to get ready for an audit. Now get out of here."

The manager knows he's in deep trouble. Too proud to beg; too weak to work; what to do? What to do?

Suddenly, he has an idea. He calls in some of the company's biggest customers. "Have I got a deal for you?" he says. The plan is simple. He cuts their bills in half, destroys the paper trail and writes new invoices.

Now when the audit happens, no one can prove that he cheated and all the richest man in town will owe him a favor. His future is secure.

Of course, when the owner looks at the doctored books he knows what has happened but there is nothing he can do about it. He knows he has been conned.

And here's the surprise. He says to the man: I have to admit it, you were pretty smart. You got me. Now get out of here.

As I said, up to this point the story makes perfect sense to us; maybe even more so in these years after the Wall Street crash involving loan schemes that nobody understood, financial sleight of hand that caught everybody off guard.

What doesn't make sense to us is the fact that Jesus seems to join the owner in praising the manager for his dishonesty.

But a careful reading of the text shows that Jesus is NOT praising the man for being dishonest.

Rather, he is pointing to the man as an example of someone with single-minded devotion to a cause, which in this case, happens to be himself.

Jesus point here turns out to be pretty simple. Here, he says, is someone who knows how to give his entire heart mind and soul to the service of his god.

Hey, Jesus says, what if we, the citizens of the Kingdom of God, were to give such single-minded and complete devotion to the cause of the one and only true God!

Martin Luther, in the Small Catechism, says: that to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God.

This story of the unjust steward confronts us with some serious questions we have to ask ourselves, the first one being WHAT REALLY IS MY GOD?

Is it my #1 concern in life to preach good News to the poor? To heal the sick? To give sight to the Blind?

How much of my valuable time do I spend each week in prayer and Bible Study? In visiting the sick and lonely?

How much of my time and money is given pursuing help and justice for the poor of the world?

These are the question Jesus is asking us in his story of the con-man office manager.

He's smart and devoted to serving his god; are we smart and devoted in serving ours?

We have this day talked a lot about Peace, the need for peace, God's desire for peace, our call to be peacemakers.

Building peace in this world begins on a small scale, not on a large one. It begins with each and every one of us resolving to give our complete and total selves to the service of the God of peace.

NT Scholar and Preaching professor Fred Craddock says:

The life of a disciple is one of faithful attention to the frequent and familiar tasks of each day, however small and insignificant they may seem.

The one faithful in today's nickels and dimes is the one to be trusted with the big account, but it is easy to be indifferent toward small obligations while quite sincerely believing oneself fully trustworthy in major matters.

The realism of these sayings is simply that life consists of a series of seemingly small opportunities.

Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake.

More likely the week will present no more than chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for a county commissioner, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor's cat.
[LUKE Interpretation Commentaries pp. 191-192]

Our call to peacemaking is the call to a single-minded devotion to the Cause of Christ, who is, most of all, the Prince of Peace.

Our Call to Peacemaking is a call to making peace in all that we do, to making all that we do work toward the goal of a more peaceful and peace-filled world.

Our Call to Peacemaking is a call to see each person in this world as a precious child of God whom God has called us to make peace with in his name.

Amen and amen.

For Sept. 12/Pentecost 16

2010-09-11T04:32:00.000-07:00

(A sermon preached at Peace Lutheran Church, Memphis TN)

PENTECOST 16
Luke 15:1-10

"Is God a grown-up or a parent?" That's the question Kathleen Chesto's five year old asked her one day.

Writing in the Catholic Digest, Chesto admits her own confusion, "I'm not sure what you mean. What's the difference between a grown-up and a parent?"

"Well," she said, "Grown-ups love you when you're good and parents love you anyway."

It's a good question, isn't it? Is God a grown-up or a parent?

Does God love only when you're good? Or does God love you anyway?

What is the nature of God's love? Is it really complete and total and unconditional? Really?

And, if that's the nature of God's love; what does that mean for us?

Do we have to love everybody too? Or, are there some people we're allowed to dislike because we're pretty certain God doesn't like them either?

In Luke's Gospel the Pharisees and Scribes are shown as grown-ups, as people who have spent a lot of time figuring out all the dos and don'ts of life; of good and bad behavior.

And they are real unhappy when Jesus acts more like a parent than a grown-up. Even though he knows that the people he is partying with are not acceptable and nice and "good" people; well, he's going to party with them anyway.

They can't stand it. They thought he was one of them, they thought he was on their side.

They thought because he knew so much Bible and because he talked so much about giving your all for the Kingdom and because he was so obviously such a good man,

Why, he must be a Pharisee or a Scribe or someone acceptable to Pharisees and Scribes and, . .
well, they just could not figure his behavior out.

What was he doing, eating with THOSE people?

Doesn't he know WHO they are, where they've been and what they've been doing?

The Pharisees and Scribes had decided that the people Jesus was hanging out with were Bad people who violated the rules of Good behavior and should be avoided and shunned and in general treated badly; both by God and by us good people.

Therefore, when they saw Jesus eating and drinking and partying with these "tax collectors and sinners," they were appalled and disgusted and decided that Jesus could possibly be the Good Person they had presumed him to be.

Jesus responded to their distress not with argument or protest, but by telling them stories; stories about who's in and who's out; who's hot and who's not; and how God treats those the world has decided are OUT.

These stories have two "God figures," people who, according to Jesus, act the way God would act.

One is a shepherd, the other is a woman. These are interesting choices for Jesus to make because Pharisees and Scribes considered both shepherds and women OUT.

Shepherds were nomads. They slept, bathed, ate and lived outdoors. Because of this they were unable to keep most of the Purity laws that were so important to the Pharisees.

And women were a problem for Pharisees, who preferred to neither see them nor speak to them any more than was absolutely necessary.

These stories each have the same two points:

FIRST: Just as a shepherd values his lost sheep enough to spare no effort in looking for it, just so, God values all people enough to spare no effort in looking for us. God values us the way the woman values her piece of money and God will ransack the universe getting us back the way the woman ransacked her house hunting that coin.

These are incarnational stories; stories about God coming into the world to seek out and save God's lost creation. Jesus is the Shepherd looking high and low for those not in the fold; Jesus is the woman sweeping through the house, turning over chairs and pulling out couch cushions, looking high and low for a valuable possession.

SECOND: In telling about the parties given by the Shepherd and the woman; Jesus is pointedly chastising the Pharisees and Scribes for their hard-heartedness in grouching about Jesus spending time with the so-called "sinners."

Look, Jesus says, God is real happy these people are interested in Spiritual Things. These people are thinking about God and their life and about what it means to be a good person.

This is cause for Celebration.

One of my Mother's childhood preachers in the Virginia Mountains said, "Instead of being happy they came in for a bath, those old sourpusses sat around complaining about the smell."

It seems clear that for Jesus, God is a parent, not a Grown-up. That is; God does not just love us when we're good, God loves us anyway.

The question for us today is do we know that God loves us anyway?

Dr. William McElvaney was president of the St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City. One day he was driving to the airport to pick up a person who was giving a speech at the Seminary. To get there he had to drive across the Paseo Bridge over the Missouri River.

About a half mile from the bridge he got stuck in traffic. Nothing moved. After about fifteen minutes, traffic moved again. There was no indication of why traffic had stopped, no road work, no accident, nothing.

The next morning Dr. McElvaney read in his morning paper about a depressed man who stopped his car on the bridge, got out and crawled over the rail and got ready to jump. People saw him and called the police.

Officers leaned over the rail and talked to him, trying to get him to come back to safety. Meanwhile another officer fitted himself with a harness and a long rope. He secured the rope and crawled over the rail, inching toward the man.

Just when he got close enough to reach out and touch him, the man jumped off the bridge.

And the patrolman jumped after him, wrapping his arms and legs around him in a tight embrace.

They fell together until the rope was tight, and they swung above the river.

Up above, on the bridge, people could hear the policeman yelling in the ear of the jumper,

"If you go, I go! Because I'm going to hold onto you until hell freezes over!"
(Dr. Tex Sample, The Spectacle of Worship in a Wired World p. 117-118)

What is the gospel for us today?

Is God a Grown-up or a parent? Does God love us only when we're good, or does God loves us anyway, all the time, until Hell freezes over?

God has clearly been revealed in the life death and resurrection of Jesus as a loving parent who will never stop loving us, ever.

Christ left the safety of Heaven and leapt into the world to seek and save us.

Christ has grabbed onto our soul and has promised to hold onto us until the fires of Hell burn out,

"I am with you always," Jesus said.

And Christ calls us to bring others into the grip of God's love, a love that takes any of us, anyway we are.

AMEN AND AMEN.

2010-09-02T20:10:00.000-07:00

I'm not preaching this week, so instead of a sermon I am giving here some reflections on the Gospel text, Luke 14:25-33.

The text opens with Jesus speaking to a large crowd who had begun following him, hoping to see him perform a miracle. Here we see Jesus turning on the crowd to explain to them that this is serious business, not a carnival side show. Anyone unwilling to pay a high price in terms of commitment and sacrifice should turn back.

He uses three examples to make his point: family, business and the military.

Family: We are shook up by these words about hating father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister. Much of the church has staked out a large "family values" corner for the church. Many people in the pew will be waiting for, hoping for us to say something like, "Well, obviously, Jesus didn't mean this. He was just trying to get our attention."

Don't go there too fast. There is absolutely no indication in the text that Jesus meant anything other than what he said.

Though I am so not a language scholar, I spent some serious time looking for loopholes in the Greek text. And I found little help. The word used here is MISEO, which according to my Greek/English dictionary means hate, despise, disregard, be indifferent to.

The best I can conclude is that Jesus didn't command us to bear an emotional animosity toward our relatives; no more than when he commands us to "love one another," is he asking us to work up affection for people we don't like.

Jesus words here have to do with actions rather than feelings, priorities rather than emotions.

In this case, disregard and be indifferent to; not hate or despise.

Jesus knew the hold family has on us, all of us. It has first place in the average person's affections and behavior, first call on our loyalty, duty and commitment.

His point is that when the choice is between obedience to family or obedience to God, we must be willing to "disregard" or "be indifferent to," family and obey God.

This is not an easy call. Sorting out the "higher call," from the call to the others we love is a part of the cost of discipleship. Following God's call in our lives, while staying connected to those we love, who sometimes do not share or understand or appreciate our sense of call, is one of the prices to be paid.

And, here's another hard part, the rewards of obedience are neither immediate nor even this worldly. It is impossible to say to those around you, "Just wait, you'll see, following Jesus will pay in the end." For the end comes, in this world, just like it does to everyone else, with suffering and death.

That's where the business and military images come in; building a building and waging a war.

In both cases a lot of energy and money are expended before any rewards become evident. If you quit before it's over, you would have been better off not starting.

Here Jesus warns us, "This won't be easy and it won't be rewarding except in the sense of devoting yourself fully to God's will and God's way. Don't start if you don't intend to finish."

In his book Jesus in the Church's Gospels, Philadelphia Lutheran Seminary professor John Reumann writes:

In the cathedral church at Haderslev, Denmark, near the main entrance, in the south aisle, hangs an unusual painting. Seen from one angle, as you move down the aisle, it portrays the crucifixion. Move a bit and view it again, and this "perspective painting." Framed within its ornamental pilasters, has become a portrayal of the resurrection. The position and condition of Jesus have changed. The colors shift from somber blacks and grays to a more brilliant array. Even the audience changes; at least the figures in the resurrection scene are no longer bowed down in grief; they look upward in joy and awe.
The painter's trick perspective may strike art connoisseurs as just a step removed from those pictures of Jesus where his eyes follow the viewer across the room. But whatever the verdict on the technique, this Danish artist has captured a profound point in the New Testament's picture of Jesus Christ; cross and resurrection belong together.
(Fortress Press, 1968, p. 110)

This text calls us to avoid accepting, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's words, "cheap grace," for if we remove the cross from Christianity we have nothing worthy of the name left.

The resurrection does come, the empty tomb does come; but not before Good Friday; not for Christ, and not for us.

Pentecost 14/Lectionary 22

2010-08-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

PENTECOST 14/LECTIONARY 22
August 29, 2010
Proverbs 25:6-7, Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16; Luke 14:1, 7-14

(A sermon preached at Crowell's Chapel Lutheran Church, Shelbyville, TN.)

The College Football season begins this week (MTSU vs. MN. - UT vs. UT-M)
I thought I'd start the sermon with a football story.

Shug Jordan was the long time coach at Auburn. He to asked a former player to scout a High School game.

One player said:, I'd love to help, but what kind of player are you looking for?

Coach: Mike, you know when you go to a game, there's always that fella that gets knocked down and stays down?

Mike: We don't want that fella, do we coach?

Coach: Naw, we don't want that fella. And Mike, you know there's that fella that gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up and then gets knocked down and stays down?

Mike: We don't want that fella either, do we coach?

Coach: No, we don't want that fella either Mike. Then there's that fella that always gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up and gets knocked down and gets up . . .

Mike: that's the Fella we want, ain't it coach?

Coach: No, we don't want that fella neither.

Mike: Well then coach, who do we want?

Coach: Mike we want the fella who's been knocking everybody down!

Today's Gospel lesson is about the question, "Which fellas do we want?"

At one level it's about what fellas do we want at our table, in our home, as our friends, on our social calendar.

On another level it's about what fellas does God want us to want, not only in our personal lives but also in our lives of faith.

Put another way, it's about who is included in God's love and therefore should be included in our love and in our community of faith.

First, let's look at verses 7-11:

When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. ‘When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, “Give this person your place”, and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, “Friend, move up higher”; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.’

This echoes our reading from Proverbs 25:

Do not put yourself forward in the king’s presence
or stand in the place of the great;
for it is better to be told, ‘Come up here’,
than to be put lower in the presence of a noble.

In the book of Luke, in particular in chapters 13 through 15, Jesus turns our assumptions about God and goodness upside down and inside out.

Over and over again, Jesus proclaims that most of us are totally mistaken about who's in and who's out; who's acceptable and who's expendable; who's good and who's bad; who's a saint and who's a sinner, who's saved and who's damned.

Jesus teaches that what it means to be a "Child of God," has nothing to do with our pedigree and everything to do with God's gracious propensity for love.

Over and over again Jesus teaches us this; we are servants, not masters; we are to wash one another's feet; we are to take the last place, not the first; we are to see in the least and most despised the real face of Jesus our Lord, our Christ, and on and on.

It is only when we recognize that ALL places at GOD's table are places of honor that we become willing to accept and enjoy whatever place God has chosen as the right place for us.

We are all God's chosen people, serving God in the place where God has placed us.

If we sit around wishing we were someone else, doing something else, in some other place; we can miss the joy of being who we are, doing what we're doing, where we are.

In verses 12-14 we move on to Jesus Second Parable; this one aimed at the Host of the dinner:

He said also to the one who had invited him, ‘When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.’

The importance of this story is not so much whom we are to have to our homes for dinner; though it wouldn't hurt most of us to invite some folks from outside our comfort zones once in a while.

Jesus is really addressing the issue of who is to be welcomed into the presence of God, the issue of who is to be considered acceptable in the church. Remember the person who wrote Luke also wrote Acts and it's all one book.

And in Acts we have the problem of whether or not the Gentiles, the unclean, can be in the church. Remember Peter's dream and his argument with Paul, etc.

This is a part of that larger story.

In Leviticus 21:17-20 it spells out the fact that those who "have a blemish" are not to "draw near" to God. No one who is "blind, or lame, or has a limb too long, or a hunchback or a dwarf, or an itching disease or scabs."

When Jesus is portrayed saying, "When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind," it is intended as a direct argument against the text from Leviticus.

The message is: this is a totally different community than you thought it was, and the standards for admission are completely the opposite of what you thought they were.

The question for us today is simple: Are we ready to follow Jesus' lead?

Are we ready to be humble servants and are we ready to be radically inclusive in admitting people to God's Church and to God's table?

These two sayings of Jesus are held together by the fact that all of us here are both HOSTS and GUESTS at the banquet of the LORD.

We are all of us the poor, the lame, the blind, the undeserving strangers and sinners whom God has invited in.

And we are also all of us the Hosts at this banquet; given the duty of inviting and welcoming the other strangers in the world to come to the feast.

Next weekend I'll be back here in Middle Tennessee as the Chaplain for a youth event, a Happening, at Trinity in Tullahoma. In preparation for this event, I looked over some notes and found this from a teen-ager's talk at a Happening 15 years ago.

Laura Pomeroy is now a Physician, but then she was a High Schooler in Birmingham, AL.

She told the other kids that she believed that, "The greatest joy any Christian will ever receive will be when we all sit together at God's great Messianic banquet and someone looks across the table at us and smiles and says, "Thank you for inviting me." AMEN AND AMEN.

PENTECOST 13/LECTIONARY 21

2010-08-18T11:00:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Reformation Lutheran Church, Greeneville, TN.

Pentecost 13/Lectionary 21
Luke 13:10-17

Ravi Zacharias tells this story:

On his way to work every day, a man walked past a clockmaker’s store. Without fail, he would stop and reset his watch from the clock in the window, then proceed on to the factory.

The clockmaker observed this scene morning after morning. One day he stepped outside and asked the man what he did and why he set his watch every morning.

The man replied, “I’m the watchman at the factory, and it's part of my job to blow the 4:00 o’clock whistle for the end of the day. My watch is slow so I re-set it every morning.

The clockmaker laughed and said, “You won’t believe this. That clock in the window is fast, so I re-set it every afternoon by the factory whistle. Heaven only knows what time it really is.” (retold from The Real Face of Atheism,
BakerBooks, 2004, p. 52)

That story is about the search for a true, reliable standard by which to measure time. And about the problems that result when that standard is simply what others are doing.

Our Gospel lesson is about the search for a true and reliable standard by which to measure morality. And about the problems that result when the standard is anything other than love and compassion.

Jesus is at worship on the Sabbath day.

There is a woman present who has suffered for almost twenty years from a crippling disease.

Jesus responds to her illness with love and compassion; he reaches out and heals her.

And immediately, the leader of the synagogue attacks Jesus for having the wrong standard for moral behavior, for coloring outside the lines, for not following the exact letter of the law.

Jesus responds by pointing out that even the strictest interpretation of the Law, the most reliable eternal timepiece, allows people to untie their cows and horses and mules and lead them to water on the Sabbath in order to prevent unnecessary cruelty.

Jesus then asks the rhetorical question:

“Is not a woman’s unloosing from the suffering of disease as important as the unloosing of an animal from its thirst?

We will lose the point of this story FOR US if we dwelltoo long on the subject of Sabbath observance; that battle has already been won or lost, depending on your point of view.

Very few of us here would really hesitate to do anything on Sunday that we would do any other day of the week.

About the only thing that Jesus could have done in this situation that would have shocked us would have been to NOT heal the woman because it was the Sabbath.

For us to get the point FOR US: TODAY, in Greeneville, TN, in 2010, we must think outside the box and consider ways in which our understanding of religious rules and regulations could block us from showing genuine, heartfelt compassion to those in need.

HMMM. GEEE. I can’t think of any right off the top of my head.

Which is precisely the problem.

No one of us considers our self to be a cruel and unjust person.

Nobody here thinks that our way of being Christian gets in the way of being kind, caring and compassionate.

I'm sure the leader of the synagogue surely thought of himself as a kind man; and so did his neighbors. After all, they made him their leader.

He’s just a local working man, a fisherman or cobbler or farmer or tentmaker, who has taken on the volunteer leadership role. He’s doing his best to interpret and enforce the rules as he knows them.

He says,
There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, but not on the Sabbath Day.

I’m sure he never imagined that one day, 2000 years later, he would be held up in sermons to millions of people as an example of religious hypocrisy.

He would surely protest; But, But, I’m an unpaid leader of a tiny congregation. I spend countless hours aiding the poor and the widows and the sick in our community. All I was trying to do was keep order, make sure everybody followed the rules, after all, that’s my job.

Ken Callahan is a Church Consultant and a prolific writer of books on Church Management. In his book Dynamic Worship, he says;

Across the years I have frequently asked congregations what one thing they like best about their church.

Again and again the answer is: “We’re so friendly”

Virtually all congregations believe themselves to be a friendly group of people. (This is because) the only people who are not at that church are the people who did not find it friendly. They are somewhere else, somewhere that feels friendly to them.

What applies to friendliness also applies to the rest of our faith life; what it looks like to us may not be what it looks like to others; to someone looking in from the outside.

We may think we are friendly and caring and compassionate people, while other eyes may be the ones who see us more clearly as we are.

This is why we need Jesus to look at us and speak to us about ourselves.

Just as Jesus broke into the pat little world of first century Palestinian Judaism with a new set of eyes and a fresh voice; we need to let Jesus look US over and tell us what he sees.

We need to hear and heed the call of Christ to break out of our old comfortable way of seeing things and doing things; we need to look at the world with the fresh eyes of Jesus, we need to look at the world as a place filled with opportunities to bend the rules in the name of love.

We need to follow Jesus to the Cross, and there at the Cross, we need to take the risk of doing new things for an old reason, THE LOVE OF GOD.

In his book How Sweet the Sound, Billy Graham's long time songleader George Beverly Shea tells this story about one of Graham's classmates at Wheaton College:

Mr. Frizen, called Bert by his friends, was a talented and popular singer on campus, involved with several singing groups . . . .

He went on to serve in the military during World War II and was involved in the famous Battle of the Bulge . . . .

Bert was wounded during one of the attacks and lay on the battlefield, slipping in and out of consciousness.

At one point, with his eyes closed, he started singing his mother's favorite hymn as best he could, "Jesus Whispers Peace."

When he opened his eyes, he saw a German soldier standing over him with a drawn bayonet.

Bert understood enough German to know that the soldier was saying to him, "Sing it again; sing it again."

Bert continued; "There is a Name to me most dear, like sweetest music to my ear/And when my heart is troubled, filled with fear/Jesus whispers peace."
Soon he felt himself being gently lifted up in the arms of the enemy soldier, who carried him to a rock ledge nearby where the American medics found him a short time later, taking him to safety.

In the midst of war, one German soldier broke the rules in the name of love, in the name of compassion, in the name of Jesus.

Our challenge today is to set our spiritual clock by the unchanging rhythm of God’s love.

God calls us to look deep within and to find the courage and the faith to break the rules in the name of love, in the name of the love of God which is ours in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen and amen.

Installation Sermon on John 21:15-17

2010-08-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

If you preach the Lectionary, this won't help you much, or any, but if you are a pastor, or have a pastor, or are thinking of becoming a pastor, it's worth reading.

Installation: Christ the King ELCA, Cumming, GA
August 15, 2010, 4:00 PM

Text: John 21:15-17

Pastor John Ortberg tells this story in a recent book,

A man is being tailgated by a woman in a hurry. He comes to an intersection, and when the light turns yellow, he hits the brakes.

The woman behind him goes ballistic. She honks her horn at him; she yells her frustration in no uncertain terms; she rants and gestures.

While she is in mid-rant, someone taps on her window. She looks up and sees a policeman.

He invites her out of her car and takes her to the station where she is searched and fingerprinted and put in a cell.

After a couple of hours, she is released, and the arresting officer gives her personal effects, saying "I'm very sorry for the mistake, ma'am. I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, using bad gestures and bad language.

I noticed the WHAT WOULD JESUS DO bumper sticker, the CHOOSE LIFE license plate holder, the FOLLOW ME TO SUNDAY SCHOOL window sign, the fish emblem on your trunk, and I naturally assumed you had stolen the car. (When the Game is Over, It all Goes Back in the Box, 2007, p. 115)

Today we have gathered to install Seyward Ask as one of the pastors at CTK, Cumming. To take on such a public position is to commit to live in a particular way in relationship to both this congregation and the world. And people are watching and people are judging.

There are probably as many opinions and ideas about how a pastor is "supposed to behave," and what a pastor "represents' in the church in the world as there are people in this room.

The word pastor comes from Latin and French and basically means "one who tends to sheep," or as we would say, a "Shepherd."

The shepherd was a powerful symbol in Israel. For much of their history they were a nomadic people dependent upon their sheep for their livelihood.

The King was often referred to as the SHEPHERD of Israel, harkening back to King David, a shepherd boy in his youth, who is the king by whom all kings are measured.

The ancient kings of Israel were different from the kings of the nations around them. The other kings were held up to be Gods on earth, divine beings in human form. The kings of Israel were not believed to be divine; they were known to be ordinary human beings who represented God on earth and ruled in God's name.The idea was that God had placed the responsibility for the nation in their hands. The kingdom was not theirs to do with as they pleased. The kingdom was God's and they were to take care of it and God's people in God's name and with God's help.

And even great King David failed to do it right all the time. Between David and Jesus there were many years and many kings, and all the kings of Israel failed in one way or another. None of them lived up to the image of the Good, the True, the Real Shepherd of Israel, especially not the Emperor in Rome or his puppet King Herod.

Elsewhere in John's Gospel, especially in Chapter 10, the writer makes much of the idea that Jesus is the Good Shepherd of Israel, the one to whom God has given the responsibility for taking care of God's beloved people.

Now, in this last chapter of John, here is Jesus, after the resurrection but before the Ascension, handing off this "pastoral" duty. Jesus asks Peter, "Do you love me?" Jesus poses this question not once but three times. The number is not by accident. Jesus is rewinding the clock, turning back time. Peter denied Jesus three times on the night he was betrayed. Now, in the early morning light, three times he swears he loves Jesus. And each time, Jesus calls on him to take care of his “sheep.” Twice his says "feed them," once he says "tend them;"

I don't often insert dictionary definitions into sermons, but this one is just too interesting. In Webster's Seventh New Collegiate, (Yes, I know it's old, it was a HS graduation gift almost 40 years ago!) the etymology line of the word pastor jumped out at me. Etymology is the history of the word, what language it came from; the definition is what it means now. The Etymological root of pastor is tied to the past participle of an old French word that means "to feed." That is; the shepherd, the pastor, is the one who feeds the flock.

Now, unlike most people these days, I grew up on a farm and Seyward, I want to tell you something important; feeding and tending sheep isn’t all that exciting or spectacular; it is repetitive and boring and tedious and normal, and oh so necessary.

To change analogies, washing dishes and cooking meals and doing laundry and mowing grass and cleaning house and changing diapers and paying bills and driving kids to school and going to work and drawing a check and sitting up all night when somebody’s sick are nowhere near as interesting as being in love and going on dates but is much more like being married.

Just so, being a pastor; tending God's sheep, feeding God's flock, taking care of the Body of Christ, seeing to the needs of God's one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church is seldom exciting or spectacular. It is much more often ordinary and mundane, a matter of planning programs and going to meetings and visiting hospitals and talking to kids and listening to parents and, and, and . . . .

And, sometime after the new wears off, every pastor worth a ----darn begins to chaff at all this ordinariness and to wonder if this is really what God had in mind; both in starting the church and in calling your truly to the ministry.

When those moments come to me, as they still do, I am comforted to remember a story told to every Senior class at Lutheran Southern Seminary by Professor Marty Saarinen.

Pastor Marty graduated from Seminary back in the early 1950s and went to his first call in the UP of Michigan. Pretty remote and rugged now, much less then. Not too long after Pastor Marty got there he learned of an elderly couple who lived way back in the woods and who seldom got to church anymore and he resolved to go visit them.

He was advised to borrow a jeep, which he did, and he drove the paved road and then the dirt road, and then two ruts, and then a creek bed, and then he parked the jeep and climbed up a hill and through the wild bushes and found a cabin with a tiny wisp of smoke wafting into the sky from the chimney.

Pastor Marty walked onto the porch and knocked on the door and waited and waited and knocked again and waited and then he heard a noise and the door opened and a little old man stared at him for a long time and then he spotted the pastor's collar and turned around and shouted to a woman sitting in front of the fire in a rocker,

"Hallelujah, God has not forgotten us."

Seyward, God has called you to be a pastor of this particular flock. And that calling is primarily one of tending and feeding God's people in such a way that they will know that God has not forgotten them nor the world in which they live.

Amen and amen.

And now for something totally (well somewhat) different

2010-08-06T14:14:00.000-07:00

I'm not preaching this week. I wrote this for the Synod blog. It might get a prime a pump or two. Delmo

Thursday, August 5, 2010
INTERSTATE THEOLOGY, OR SOMETHING LIKE IT

As an Assistant to the Bishop I spend a lot of time on the road. Although my personal preference is the "scenic route," the pressures of time and distance dictate that I spend most of that time on the large network of interstates that crisscross our synod. Sometime during a marathon seven city, four state, 1500 mile road trip, I began thinking about the church and how it works. It was an alternative to saying things a man in a minister's collar shouldn't think, much less say.

One thing that I spent a long time thinking about was the "two lanes, three types of driver," problem. It is my opinion that there are three broad categories of interstate drivers: 1) Go as fast as you can, 2) go 5-10 miles over the speed limit, 3) speed limit or below. This is fine when there are three or more lanes. Slow to the right, fast to the left; everybody else in the middle. Traffic flows, people find their spot, things work. Now; put those three styles of driving on two lanes and let traffic get a little heavy, and; oh my! The really fast people are trying to share the left lane with the moderately fast people and getting frustrated; a "go the speed limit" driver thinks the right lane is for people going slower than the speed limit and moves left, or a "5-10 over" is trying to drive in the right lane to get out of the way of the "real speeders," and gets frustrated by the slowness of the "go the speed limit" people, and so it goes.

I will not identify my driving type, but I started thinking about how sometimes the church is like that; we have people with a lot of different "spiritual speeds," and we try to force them into two lanes, or worse, one lane. We try to make everyone think alike or grow spiritually in the same way and at the same speed and then we leaders tend to get frustrated when our envisioned "mighty army of God," marching forward with precision and purpose turns out to be a bit of a motley crew; a ragtag army at best.

Just as it is is sometimes difficult for us to accept other people's driving styles, (an editorial page quip in the Seattle Times noted, "Why is it that everyone who drives slower than me is an idiot and everyone who drives faster is a maniac?") it is also often hard for us to accept the spiritual, theological style of others. When people aren't at the same place we are, too many of us are way too quick to point fingers and call names. It is important for us to do all we can to give each other room to move within the faith, within the church.

The key to that is not only accepting others, but also accepting the fact that God is in charge and we are not. Too much effort on our part to control the outcome of today's theological battles is akin to the person who tries too hard to get the other drivers to drive the "right way." It's not going to happen. What one must do is drive as carefully and as politely as one can and trust things to unfold safely. The same is true for the church. We must all move through our church life as faithfully and as politely as we can, trusting that God is in control and others are doing their best to be faithful as well

PENTECOST 10, LECTIONARY 18, AUGUST 1, 2010

2010-07-30T07:14:00.000-07:00

Pentecost 10, Lectionary 18,

TEXTS: Luke 12:13-21

"Who is the Rich Man?"

My father liked the story of the pastor who had one particular church member who was, how can I say it?, a less than "model" Christian.

After a while, the pastor began to put pointed remarks in his sermons, aimed directly at this particular man's faults and failures.

And every Sunday the man would come out of the church with a big smile on his face and he shake the pastor's hand and say, "Boy, Reverend, you sure told'em this morning."

And the pastor grew more and more frustrated until one Sunday in the dead of winter when there was a huge snow storm and only he and the man showed up for church. At first the pastor thought of canceling service but then he realized, "Hey, this morning he'll have to know who I'm talking about."

And so he unloaded, with both barrels, all the accumulated points he had been making about this particular sinner's sins, shortcomings and all-around general sorriness.

And the man came out the door; shook his hand with a big grin and said, "Boy, you sure told'em this morning Preacher. Too bad they weren't here to hear it!"

It is a problem, a spiritual disease, a theological fallacy we all fall victim to on occasion; the failure to recognize ourselves in the mirror of God's Word

For example, our Gospel lesson this morning.

How many of us thought that the words aimed at the rich man were aimed at us?

How many of us think of ourselves as rich?

Not I, and not many of you either, I'm sure. It's hard to think of ourselves as rich in this country right now.

I got my quarterly pension statement this week; I've lost money again, It's still not back to where it was two years ago; and that retirement date is within sight for me now. And I'm making a lot less money than I was two years ago too

Some years ago Economist Robert Heilbroner came up with a little mental exercise to help us see what life is like for one and a half billion people in the world; one and a half BILLION, that's a 1,500 million of God's beloved children living in what the World Bank calls "extreme poverty."

1 - Take all the furniture out of your home, except one table and a couple of chairs. Use a blanket and pads for a bed.

2 - Take away all of clothing except each person's oldest dress, pants, shirt, blouse, and coat. Only one pair of shoes per person.

3 -- Empty the pantry, the refrigerator and the freezer of all food except for a small bag of flour, some sugar and salt, and a few potatoes, some onions and some dried beans.

4 - Dismantle the bathroom, shut off the running water, and remove all the electrical wiring in your house.

5 - Take away the house itself and move the family into the tool shed.

6 - Move out of your neighborhood into a ghetto of makeshift buildings and mud streets.

7 - Cancel all subscriptions to newspapers and magazines and get rid of all your books. This is no great loss, since none of you can read anyway.

8 - Get rid of TVs, cell phones, computers and all other electronic gizmos. Leave one radio for the entire community.

9 - Move the nearest hospital or clinic to a day's walk away. Replace the doctor with a midwife.

10 - Throw away all your bankbooks, stock certificates, pension plans, and insurance policies. Your family has $10 of cash hidden in a coffee can.

11 -Give yourselves a few acres to grow crops on which you earn $500 a year. Pay a third of that in rent and 10% to loan sharks.

12 - Lop 25 years off your life expectancy.
(Robert Heilbroner, The Great Ascent, Chapter 2, numbers updated for inflation by me)

Let's be quiet and think about this for a minute. One and a half BILLION people in the world live like that.

All of us in this room and most of us in this country are the rich people in the world, and it is as rich people that we must listen to Jesus today.

As the text begins, Jesus is out and about, teaching and preaching. Someone in the crowd calls out and asks him to settle a family dispute about inheritance.

Well, actually, he doesn't ask him; he tells Jesus what he wants him to do and what he wants him to say.

"Hey Jesus, Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me!"
He wants to use Jesus to give religious credibility to his own greediness.

Jesus refuses to be drawn into this family matter and instead warns the man and the crowd (and us), against the dangers of desire, the menace of materialism:

"One's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions."

Then Jesus tells the story of the Rich Man who just keeps on getting richer.

He already has barns, and his barns are already full, and now he has all this other grain. What is he to do with it? He has more than most people, more than he needs. What to do?

Well, he decides to build more barns. He decides to stake his future on the accumulation of more stuff. By tearing down his old barns and cashing in his CDs, he refinances and builds new and bigger barns and now he is set!

NT Professor Wm. Barclay says: For the rich man, it's all about me. Listen to the pronouns in vs. 17-19. (Read) I, I, my, I, I, my, I, my, I, my. The Greek for I is ego. Ego, ego, my, ego, ego, my, ego, my, ego, my. (The Daily Study Bible)

The Rich man thinks he's got it made, then God comes to him and says,

‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’

The old comedian Jack Benny established a character who was famously tight and cheap. He had a routine where he is held up by a robber demanding, "Your money or your life."

Benny stands there, arms folded, fingers drumming his cheek, for several seconds.

The robber demands, "I said your money or your life; well?

Benny puts his arms out in exasperation, "I'm thinking, I'm thinking."

Sometimes we are like that. We seem caught between the demands of our money or our life, our eternal life.

Jesus repeatedly told us you can't serve both; but one can serve God through the use of one's money.

Everything we have, right down to the last breath we take, God has given to us. And God's judgment of us will have little to do with what we have and everything to do with what we have done with it.

God has given us what we have, not for ourselves, but for the benefit of the community and for hospitality to strangers.

This is true, whether we are talking about our personal, individual goods, or the goods we hold in common as a congregation, as the church.

In his parable, Jesus reminds us that we shall all die someday; it is not a question of if, only of when and how.

And at the inevitable moment of our death, all of our accumulated possessions will be worthless to us.

As Billy Graham once said, "I have never seen a hearse with a U-Haul behind it."

As a matter of fact, our possessions could be worse than worthless to us.

If the care and maintenance of our stuff has diverted us from the care and maintenance of our souls, the very things we cherish in this life will have been that which has ruined us for eternity.

As Jesus said, "So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."

God has made us a part of the rich people of this world. God has placed in our hands all that we are and all that we have.

And the question for us today is essentially the same one the robber posed to Jack Benny:

"Your money or your life." Your eternal life, your soul life, your life with God.

Another way to put it is this: Will you serve God by serving the poor, or will you serve yourself?

Amen and amen.

July 25, Pentecost 9, Lectionary 17

2010-07-24T13:33:00.000-07:00

July 25, 2010, Pentecost 9, Lectionary 17

(A sermon preached at Our Saviour Lutheran Church, Johnson City, TN)

Luke 11:1-13

True story. Heard it on the Paul Harvey radio show a few years ago.

Three year old goes with his mother to the grocery store. As they started in the door, Mom says to son, “Now, you’re not going to get any chocolate chip cookies, so don’t even ask."

She puts him in the child’s seat and off they go up and down the aisles. He's doing just fine until they get to the cookie session. When he saw the familiar packages, he says, “Mom, can I have some chocolate chip cookies?

I told you not to even ask.
YOU’RE NOT GETTING ANY!

They continue up and down the aisles, but, like always, they backtrack looking for a few things and wind up in the cookie aisle again.

Mom, can I have some Chocolate Chip cookies?
I TOLD YOU, YOU CAN’T HAVE ANY!
NOW SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET.

Finally, they arrive at the checkout. Junior is an experienced shopper. He knows this is his last chance. He stands up in the seat and shouts.
IN THE NAME OF JESUS!
MAY I HAVE SOME CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES?

Everyone in the checkout area stares, then laughs, then applauds. And then, while Mom watches with mouth agape, 23 shoppers go and buy her little boy his Chocolate Chip cookies, 23 boxes of them.

What was it Jesus said, “Ask and it will be given?”

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus is talking with his followers about prayer.

First he teaches them what we call the LORD’S PRAYER.

Then he tells them a weird story about bothering your neighbors in the middle of the night.

He finishes up by urging them to keep at it with prayer; to search, to knock, to ask!

As the story begins, Jesus has been praying while the disciples wait for him. When he has finished, they ask him to teach them to pray.

They have noticed that John the Baptist has taught his disciples to pray, and they want Jesus to get with the program and to teach them this secret knowledge as well. And so he does. But the prayer he taught them is probably not exactly what they had in mind.

Of course, it is impossible for us to get inside their heads and know for sure, but they probably wanted to learn the secrets to POWERFUL prayer, the kind of prayer that changes things, fixes things, gets you things you want, like Chocolate Chip Cookies.

But instead of getting a prayer that changes things OUT THERE, in the external world which they hoped to control with God’s help;

Jesus teaches them a prayer that changes things IN HERE, inside our hearts and minds and souls.

Martin Luther once said that to be a SINNER is to be BENT, to be CROOKED, to be TWISTED in upon ourselves.

The root of sinfulness begins in selfishness; in looking at the world as a place to get MY needs met, MY life straightened out, MY career, MY enjoyment, MY fulfillment, MY future, MY happiness.

But the prayer Jesus teaches us to pray is not MY prayer, it is OUR prayer, directed to OUR father, and it is not a prayer aimed at getting what I want.

Instead, it is designed to turn us away from our wants toward what GOD wants.

It is in praying this prayer that we become the people God made us to be, wants us to be in Jesus Christ.

The Lord’s Prayer is a powerful prayer, and it’s power lies in its ability to mold us into a Christlike shape.

As we pray and meditate upon this prayer throughout our lives, we discover that it constantly pulls us away from our focus upon ourselves and then bends us in a new direction; in the direction of loving God and serving others.

Having taught his disciples a basic prayer, Jesus drives home its lesson with the story about the grouchy neighbor and the noisy friend.

Remember; a parable does not operate on a one-to-one, this represents that, basis.

The neighbor is not God and beating on doors in the middle of the night is not prayer.

Jesus’ point is to be persistent in prayer; you’re not afraid of your friends, don’t be afraid of God. Ask for what you want.

Remember, Jesus didn’t say anything about going to a stranger in the middle of the night to ask for food.

He said to go to a neighbor, a friend, someone with whom you have a relationship; someone you know and who knows you!

The point of prayer is to talk with God, to be in relationship with God, to move your heart and mind and soul into cooperation with God in loving and serving the world.

The Rev. Leslie Weatherhead was a famous British Methodist preacher of about 50 years ago. He used to tell the story of his neighbor’s children, Tommy and Suzy.

They lived in the English countryside, and Tommy loved to trap rabbits. Suzy was very unhappy about this and every day begged her big brother to stop being so cruel to the rabbits, but Tommy laughed her off and continued to run proudly into the kitchen with his trapped and skinned rabbits held high.

One night, their mother heard Suzy praying:Dear God, please stop Tommy from trapping rabbits. Please don’t let them get trapped. They can’t They Won’t! Amen.

Mom was a little worried about this prayer. She was afraid her little girl would be disappointed when God didn’t stop Tommy’s traps from working. She was afraid of her daughter losing faith because of unanswered prayer. She said to Suzy,How can you be so sure that God won’t let the rabbits be trapped?

Suzy replied, MOTHER, I AM SURE FOR MANY REASONS.GOD IS GOOD, GOD IS KIND, GOD LOVES RABBITS AS MUCH AS I DO. BUT MAINLY I AM SURE BECAUSE TODAY I TOOK THE HATCHET AND CHOPPED UP TOMMY’S TRAPS!

Jesus’ teaching on prayer is that we should pray so often, and so regularly, and so persistently that we become as familiar with God as we are our neighbors and friends.

And it is within that relationship and familiarity that God changes our lives, unbends us from selfishness and evil and turns us in the direction of love and goodness.

And as a result of having our lives changed by God, we find ourselves empowered to change the world.

We embrace Christ as the way of salvation for ourselves and discover that we have become a part of the way of salvation for those around us.

AMEN

Pentecost 7, July 11, 2020

2010-07-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

PENTECOST SEVEN July 11, 2010
(A sermon preached at Christus Victor Lutheran Church Ocean Springs, Mississippi)
Luke 10:25-37

A few years ago I heard Pastor Jack Hayford of the Church of the Way in Van Nuys CA tell a story about his grandson Kyle. At the time Kyle was 9 years old.

Kyle had recently lost a baby tooth. In the Hayford household, the tooth fairy pays a dollar per tooth.

That night, when the Tooth Fairy reached under Kyle’s pillow to recover the tooth and leave a dollar, he found not the tooth but a note from Kyle. The note read:

Dear Tooth Fairy,
I am holding my tooth for ransom.
The fee will be $20. I am doing this for three reasons:
1) I have had this tooth longer than any other and I am very fond of it.
2) It is bigger than the other teeth.
3) It has silver in it.
Signed Kyle

In the morning Kyle found underneath his pillow, not a $20 bill, but this note:

Dear Kyle, Enjoy your tooth. Signed, The Tooth Fairy.

I thought of this story when I read verse 29 in our Gospel Lesson, "but wanting to justify himself, he (the lawyer) . . ."

Since my son is beginning his first year at UNC law School in about a month, I'll go easier on the lawyer than I usually do when this text comes up and admit that self-justification is not a technique unique to lawyers, we all do it, don't we?

We twist and turn and reason and opine and try to find a way to make what we want to be the truth look for all the world like the truth. We seek, over and over again, with each other and with God, to justify ourselves.

We treat the almighty like some Supreme Tooth Fairy in the sky and then we attempt to convince this Supreme Tooth Fairy that we deserve whatever good treatment we are asking for.

And the Gospel is none of it works and none of it is necessary. God loves us just the way we are. God also loves us too much to let us stay that way. And God wants to use each of us as Divine agents of Holy Love, reaching out to the world with open hands and generous spirits. That is the Gospel; which does not include either service area limitations or a negotiation of terms.

In our Gospel the lawyer asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?"

What he wanted to know was, "What are the legal and ethical limits on my charity? Who does God expect me to help when I see them in trouble?"

But Jesus turns the lawyer's question upside down with the story of the Good Samaritan.

Instead of who am I required to help? Jesus answers with a story that says, "God's help and love for you will come from unexpected, and often unwelcome, sources."

I think we all get the fact that Jesus' first Century Jewish listeners would have expected the Priest and the Levite, (or the Pastor and the Deacon in modern church terms), to help the man in the ditch and were disappointed when they didn't.

What I am afraid we often don't grasp is what a shock it was for the rescuer to turn out to be a Samaritan. This story has made the word Samaritan into symbol of selfless generosity and care for the stranger. We have Samaritan hospitals, and if you travel the roads as much as I do, you will often see stickers on RV's proclaiming the driver to be a member of "The Good Sam Club," pledged to help other travelers on their journeys.

But to Jesus' listeners, a Samaritan was none of these things. He was a hated enemy, an apostate, a heretic, a foul worshiper of the wrong God, an unclean person. When Jesus introduces him to the story you should think "Snidely Whiplash," with long mustache, top hat and cape, the stereotypical villain whom the crowd boos and hisses when he comes on stage. That's how they felt about Samaritans. And this hated, evil, despised person is the hero of Jesus' story.

Instead of telling the Lawyer whom he had to help, Jesus shook things up by telling him that his true neighbor, the one who would help him, could be the person he least expected it from.

When the lawyer asked Jesus who his neighbor was, he was trying to define, to negotiate, the limits of his own love toward others.

Jesus turned this backwards by establishing a love ethic that has no limits, and that does not play by our rules of who's in and who's out.

This story goes beyond our relationships with each other, beyond who we are to help and from whom we can expect help. It moves past all that into our relationship with God.

The man in the ditch had acted foolishly by traveling alone on a dangerous road. He did not deserve help.

If he could have chosen his helper, he would have chosen either the priest or the Levite, people who had a duty to help him.

But no, he was helped by a Samaritan, who helped him willingly, freely, graciously, lovingly, without judgment or any expectation of pay back.

We, you and I, we are the person in the ditch, and God is the Good Samaritan.

About 20 years ago the New York Times ran a story about a man who went to Times Square with two $60 tickets for the play "The Real Thing."

His wife was sick and he couldn't go so he stood outside the box office trying to give them away to people in line to buy tickets. No takers.

After a warm cup of coffee and some meditation, he came back, offered them for $100 apiece and sold them immediately.

We are like that with God. Deep down, most of us don't want God's hand-out of love, we don't want God's generous offer. We want to deserve it, we want to earn it, but the truth is, we can't. We really can't. We are the one in the ditch. We are the wounded and foolish one, the one helpless and in need of help and healing.

The question, "Who is my neighbor?" is really the second question the Lawyer posed in this lesson. The first was, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

Jesus responded by pointing him to the Scriptures and the man gave the right answer, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind soul and strength; and your neighbor as yourself."

And Jesus said, "That's right, you got it."

And right here is where the lawyer fell in the ditch.

See, he didn't blink an eye at the monumental idea of devoting his entire existence to loving God. Isn't that what "all your heart, soul, strength and mind," implies; total and complete commitment.

If you give all that over to God, there isn't much room left for TV or baseball of gardening or dating or whatever. But, apparently, the lawyer was okay with that demand. My all; for God!

It's the neighbor business that bothers the lawyer. Perhaps this is because it is easier to get caught not loving your neighbor than it is to get caught not loving God.

It's pretty obvious to everyone if you fail to feed the hungry or clothe the naked; but who's going to notice if you don't pray or read your Bible enough?

The man is guilty of the companion sins of pride and ingratitude. He believes he is capable of pleasing God through his own actions and he is therefore not grateful to God for God's love and grace.

He does not admit either his own need or God's action to save, and so he has the audacity to raise the question, "About whom am I required to care?"

The Gospel is; if you get part one: God has loved me so much and so freely that all I can do is love him in return,

Then part two: the way to show my love to God is to love everybody else the way God has loved me; comes naturally. So, what is the answer to the question:

"What must I do to inherit eternal life?"

Simple: Swallow your pride and realize: God has already given eternal life to you.

Our calling today is to live in that love, to reach out to others with that love, to be that love in the world for the sake of Jesus the Christ who gave himself for us.

Amen and amen.

Pentecost 5, June 27, 2010

2010-06-24T15:21:00.000-07:00

A Sermon preached at Messiah Korean Lutheran Church, Norcross, GA (Greater Atlanta)
Pentecost 5
June 27, 2010

Text: Luke 9:51-62

This week people from all over the world have traveled to South Africa for the World Cup. In a few weeks, my wife and I will fly from Atlanta to Seattle to spend a week with our son who works for Microsoft, a distance of over 2000 miles. This long distance traveling seems very natural and ordinary to most of us in this room, but it was not always so.

New Testament Professor Tom Wright says that "in most of the world for most of human history, most people didn't travel at all. . . .they stayed in their local neighborhood all their lives." (Luke for Everyone, p. 117)

The main exception to this staying on home was going "on pilgrimage," taking a religious trip to a special site; a temple or a shrine. Indeed, in English the word for special days of observance is HOLIDAY, which was originally HOLY DAY.

In the British Isles, what we in the United States call "taking a vacation," is referred to as "going on holiday." For the Jewish people of Jesus' time, going on pilgrimage usually meant going to Jerusalem, to the Temple, like Jesus' family did when he was a twelve year old boy. (Luke 2:41-51)

In our Gospel Lesson for today, Jesus sets out on a pilgrimage;
he goes "on holy-day" in the true sense of the term;
he sets out on a mission from God and for God,
he goes to a holy place to do a holy thing.

In verses 51 and 53 of chapter 9, Luke says that Jesus "set his face for Jerusalem."

This phrase means something like, "he was determined to go and would not let anything stop him."

Luke wrote both the Gospel of Luke and the book of the Acts of the Apostles.
In Luke we see in Jesus the fact that obedience to God the Father's call on his life required him to travel to Jerusalem.
In Acts, we read about Paul and Barnabas and Silas and John Mark many others for whom the life of the Christian is a journey of following Jesus along the way of the cross.

In my work for the synod I do a lot of traveling. We're a large Synod, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Blue Ridge Mountains, from the Mississippi River to the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the hardest things to do is to pack right for the trip. What clothes do I need? What stuff, what things do I need? What ministry resources and workbooks for various workshops and what extension cords and phone chargers and computer attachments and other electronics and then there's the prescription medicines and the other medicines, and, well, it gets very complex and confusing.
What should I take? What should I leave behind?

Lucky for me I'm a bad dresser and only have to worry about one pair of shoes.

Today's Gospel lesson was written to teach the first Christians what it meant to be on their journey with Jesus, about how to prepare for the trip, about what to take and what to leave behind, it's a lesson in spiritual packing.

The story the Bible tells us is pretty simple, it's like a scene out of a movie or a musical play.

Imagine Jesus striding down the road, with a crowd on either side of him and the disciples following behind him, music playing in the background.

As he walks along, people come out of the crowd and he has conversation with them about what it means to be on the Way to the Holy City.

In this story, there are four encounters and several lessons about what to take and what not to take on this journey.

Part 1) The first encounter involves the village of the Samaritans, (verses 52 through 56). Jesus sent messengers to the village to let them know he was coming and the people sent back word asking him not to stop in their village, they didn't want him there.

We don't really know why not except that the Bible says it was, "because his face was set toward Jerusalem." Does that mean they were opposed to the ministry and message of Jesus? Or does it mean that since they were Samaritans they were already hated by the leaders in Jerusalem and didn't want any more trouble? We don't know.

What we do know is that two of Jesus' disciples, James and John, got angry and wanted to call down destruction from heaven, wanted to ask God to destroy this little village the way God destroyed Sodom in the time of Abraham and Lot.
And Jesus said no, leave them alone.

What can we learn about "spiritual packing" from this part of the story?

Any where we go; God has been there before us. Any where we go, God is there with us. Any where we go; God will still be there when we leave.

Just as messengers went in front of Jesus on his journey, anywhere we go with the Gospel, God has already been working.

Sometimes the people are ready, sometimes they are not.

Sometimes they receive us with open arms; sometimes they turn their backs.

But that is not our concern, we neither condemn nor punish those who aren't ready; nor do we take credit when we and the Gospel are received.

As the saying goes, "it's not about us, it's about God."

So, this part of the story teaches us that when we pack for the journey with Jesus, we leave out our egos, our pride, our anger and judgment of others.

We put in our pack humility and love, gentleness and kindness and a deep awareness that God is with us, all the way, all the time, and what happens is in holy hands and is NOT ours to control.

Part 2) In the last part of the story, people come out of the crowd to talk with Jesus as he walks along past the village. All the encounters have to do with excuses, or reasons, people think they don't have time to follow Jesus.
Verse 57 - A man says "I'll follow you anywhere."

Verse 58 - Jesus responds by warning him it's a life without a permanent home.

Verse 59 - Jesus invites a man to follow, but the man says he has to bury his father first. It's important to know his father is very much alive. What he means is, "Let me fulfill all my family obligations, then I'll follow you."

Verse 60 - Jesus tells him "Let the dead bury the dead." That is, "If you're going to follow the Kingdom of God, you have to let go of that duty in order to take up a new duty, the duty to proclaim the Good News."

Verse 61 - a person says, "Let me first go home and say good bye."

And in Verse 62 - Jesus says those words about looking back while plowing. A more modern, urban analogy is, "Don't try to drive around I- 285 while looking in the rear-view mirror; you'll have a wreck!"

In these three encounters, Jesus is calling us to leave behind one set of obligations and duties in order to take on a different set.

He asks us, no calls us, to unpack and leave behind Nationalism and Racism and social propriety in order to embrace a Kingdom that includes all people of all races and colors and languages from all over the world.

He invites us to leave behind selfish and narrow and localized devotion in order to put in our pack a sense of love and duty for the salvation of the entire world, not just our little corner of it.

When Jesus set his face to Jerusalem, he turned his back on Nazareth, on the land around the Sea of Galilee, on his life as a carpenter and small town teacher and preacher.

When Jesus set his face for Jerusalem, he knew he was going to his death, he knew he was, from that very moment, walking to the cross.

And he invites us to go with him. He invites us, calls us to follow him to Jerusalem, to the Cross. He invites us to unpack all the small but heavy and burdensome things that keep us from loving God and each other completely and fully and passionately.

Jesus invites us to drop the burdens that weigh us down, to throw aside the cares and concerns that hold us back, to cast away the judgments and hatreds that turn us away from God and toward the world.

Jesus invites us to empty our hands of all that so that we can take up our cross and gladly follow him.

When we have empty hands, we can reach out to others.

When we remove the hate from our hearts, we have room for love.

When we take the judgment out of our eyes, we then see others as God sees them, as precious children in need of love and forgiveness.

The way of the cross is not easy, but it is the way we have been called to follow.

Can you hear Christ calling you now? Saying in the still quiet of your heart; "Drop everything that is holding you back and follow, follow me to Jerusalem, follow me to Love."

Amen and amen.

For June 20, 2010 - Revised Common Lectionary Texts

2010-06-19T13:16:00.000-07:00

I'm at AFFIRM, the SE Synod of the ELCA's summer time youth event so I'm not preaching tomorrow. But, for those late Saturday grazers for preaching texts and options, I have published here a sermon sent to me by my friend, The Rev. Dr. Mark Scott, ELCA Foundation Representative in South Carolina and weekly pulpit supply at Mount Pleasant ELCA.

Gas or Charcoal?

A sermon preached for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost on Luke 8:26-39
At Mt. Pleasant Lutheran Church
Saluda, SC
Mark Scott, Preacher

Since today is Father’s day, I thought I would begin with the burning question for fathers: Gas or Charcoal? A few years ago, my mother in law gave us money for Christmas to purchase a gas grill. We dutifully went to Sears and found one we liked, but when we realized how complicated it was to put together, we went back and paid them to assemble it for us.

That should have given us a clue about grilling. Having always been satisfied with charcoal, we thought that the experience of gas would be even better. For us, it wasn’t.

We kept running out of propane in the middle of the canister. Being absent-minded, I would often leave the grill running far longer than it needed to run. And, after about three years of staying outside, the gas grill corroded so badly that it could no longer be used. In the end, what the grill needed was a one way trip to the junk yard.

To solve the problem, we bought a small charcoal grill on sale for $17. It has corroded some too, but has lasted well for more than five years now.

The problem with charcoal though is getting it lighted. I have been using the fast lighting stuff, but it is so expensive. So we were very pleased a couple years ago, when we were visiting friends and discovered a new invention for lighting charcoal. (By the way, this is a rather longwinded explanation of the Gospel lesson.)

This invention is simply a pipe with a handle. You place the charcoal in the top of the pipe. In the bottom, you light newspapers. For about fifteen minutes, it appears that nothing is happening except that smoke is coming out of the top of the pipe. However, when you empty the contents after the fifteen minutes has passed, you have hot smoldering coals and you are almost ready to put your meat on the grill.

To me, the difference between gas grills and charcoal is the explanation to the Gospel lesson for this day. Jesus is again in a Gentile region. We know this because the swineherds are living there. Jews were forbidden by dietary laws from eating pork, so these people really don’t know a lot about the background of Jesus.

In other words, when it comes to the Holy Spirit, they are more likely to light up slowly. The “gas grill” people are paying attention though but as the story begins, they are somewhere else. Jesus leaves the boat on the Sea of Galilee and a naked demon-possessed man confronted him.

As the story progresses the fire of the Spirit slowly begins to light in the region, but the story indicates that the fire is often more smoldering than burning. Curiously, the demons inside the man recognize Jesus and offer him respect but they do not succumb immediately. The move into the swine. The economic catastrophe ensues as the swineherds lose their livelihood and the people of the village ask Jesus to leave. The only ember remaining is the man freed from demon-possession who goes around testifying to the mighty acts of God in Jesus.

When you think about it, this is an amazing story. But it is also a story of real life. Last week, the State newspaper carried an article about the governor’s race and religion. On the Democratic side, a Catholic has been nominated for the first time in South Carolina history. I suppose that for some Christians that is bad enough.

However, Nikki Haley is a real enigma. As far as many Christians are concerned, she is in about the same position of the demoniac. She grew up a Sikh. Her Indian name is difficult to pronounce. But now she says she is a Methodist. Unfortunately, it is still unclear how much she still espouses the Sikh religious experience.

But the problem of South Carolina politics is exactly the problem Jesus addresses in this Gospel lesson. By healing the demoniac man, Jesus shows that he is the Messiah for ALL people. Unfortunately, we often would prefer the gas grill instant answer type religious experience to the slow burn of the charcoal.

But notice that the charcoal produces a deeper, more intense and long-lasting heat. And essentially, when Jesus heals the man, he produces a slow burning and intense faith within him. To me, the most interesting thing that happens in this story must be what happens afterward. The man becomes a Gentile disciple. All the text tells us is that he proclaims the mighty works of God.

My guess however is that he becomes charcoal starter. His faith is so bright and intense that others come to believe even though Jesus is no longer in the region. And, while this story seems far removed from our world today, the intensity of the experience is really quite close to the experience we still need as disciples. While some might decry the multi-religious nature of the governor’s race, I think this provides us an opportunity to embrace the message all of us share.

In reality, both candidates will be explaining themselves during the coming weeks and months. But we should also be explaining ourselves as well—as disciples. This man who lives in the cemetery at the start of the lesson provides an image of living in faith for us at the end.

And, like my charcoal, we should be long-burning with the fire of the Gospel message in our lives and hearts. You have a mission to serve in this place. You are the ones our Lord has called to a life-long commitment to discipleship. And as God’s people your witness and power is a vital ingredient in shaping the lives of others around you no matter what background they come from.

Still, while corrosion is possible, it is most regrettable. As St. Paul notes we are not the beneficiaries of a spirit of timidity. Instead, our Lord calls us like the man in the story to live in the message each day as we testify to the mighty works that God has used to shape our lives.

Going and Comingstories and sermons

2010-06-16T07:59:00.001-07:00

Someone asked me about sermon ideas and stories for farewell sermons and "HI, I'm your new pastor" sermons, so I looked over the last few years for what I had said on those occasions and here are some things. The first bit of material is a collection of stories from a beginning sermon that rtried to set the tone of: What is the church? What sort of church life do I envision?

The last piece is a farewell Sermon I preached a little over two years ago.

I hope this helps any of ya'll who read this and are currently in transition.

I am a big fan of Church Signs. Oak Forest Methodist Church in Hayesville, NC had a message up for a week that said,

IF YOU CAN’T BE KIND, AT LEAST BE VAGUE.

Sounds like good advice to me.

Across the street from Tennessee State University in Nashville there is a Church which has the longest Church name I’ve ever seen on a sign.
I pulled in the parking lot to copy it down:

The House of the Lord,
Which is the Church of the Living God,
The Pillar and Ground of the Truth,
Without Controversy, Incorporated.

Without controversy. Whoever heard of a church without controversy?

Today’s Scripture lessons are all about controversy.

This section of Jeremiah has a heading in the American Bible Society’s Version that says “Jeremiah’s life threatened.”

And that’s exactly what is going on here. He is the lamb led to the slaughter, the tree destroyed with its fruits, Jeremiah is the one they want to cut off from the living.

From the OT, through the NT, through most of Church History,
the Community of faith has often been caught up
in dispute and disagreement about
what it means to be a true believer.

In light of religion’s history of fighting, instead of the Nashville church’s claim to be “Without Controversy,” perhaps a church sign I saw in Atlanta is more to the point. It read:

FREE FOR ALL BAPTIST CHURCH

Now I know they meant their name to convey a religious truth,
that the Grace, Love and Forgiveness of God are “free for all.”

But, when I saw the sign, all I could think of is how we call a small riot, a bar fight, a baseball fracas, any kind of wild, no rules confrontation,
a “free for all.” And every time I drove by that church, I imagined 65-year-old deacons in their Sunday suits, wrestling and throwing Bibles at each other.

The truth is, the people of God have always been, and probably always will be, a contentious lot, given to fussing with each other about all sorts of things, some of which matter and most of which don’t

GK Chesterton is one of my favorite writers. He wrote and was famous in England from about 1900 into the 1930's. He wrote mystery stories and religious biographies and books of theology, etc. etc.

He was a very eccentric man, over 6 feet, 350 pounds plus, wearing a cape and a black broad brimmed hat everywhere he went.

One time he was on a radio talk show. They had a panel of important people talking about religion and literature. The moderator asked this question:

If you were on a desert island, what one book would you want to have?

George Bernard Shaw said the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
The President of the Baptist Union said Pilgrim’s Progress
The Moderator of the Methodist Church said The Bible
The Anglican Bishop of London said, The Book of Common Prayer
Chesterton pursed his lips and said nothing. The Moderator prompted him: Mr. Chesterton, what book on a desert island?
Chesterton: I believe Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding

I believe that in today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus has provided us with the key to Practical Soul-Building and to Practical Church Building

Farewell Sermon
Text: John 14:15-21

Title: Are We Done?

Many of you know that before I came to Friedens, I worked at a Methodist Retreat Center in the NC mountains. You might not know that for two of the four years I was there I also pastored a tiny house church in Highlands, NC called the Church of the Holy Family.

Holy Family worshipped in a house, in a two car garage which had been nicely fixed up as a Chapel. There was a pulpit and an Altar and a piano and three rows of folding chairs. It was a tight space. Nong sat with his family in the back row. Nong was 4 years old; he had been adopted from Thailand. During the service, Nong usually sat in the floor and played with his dinosaurs.

And every Sunday, after Communion, when everyone stood up for the Post-Communion Blessing, in that brief of moment of silence before the Pastor speaks, Nong would loudly ask his mother, “Are we done?”

It’s a good question for us here, today. Are we done? And the answer, in good, Lutheran, waffling, dialectical, tradition is; well, yes . . . and no?

This “are we done?” question was on the minds of Jesus’ disciples in our Gospel lesson. This text is a part of Jesus’ long sermon/conversation in the Upper Room after the Last Supper. It starts right after Judas leaves to go to the temple to betray Jesus and continues for four chapters.

And, the bottom line is that the disciples are trying to figure out, “Are we done?” “Is it all over?” “What happens next?” “What about us?”

And Jesus is trying to give them a “Yes . . . and No” answer, which they really aren’t buying.

The “Yes” part of the answer is that he is indeed leaving, it is indeed over. He tries to get them to understand what the next three days will be about for Him: death, hell, resurrection, time spent with the disciples, then Ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit;

but, frankly, it’s all just too weird and confusing and frightening, and they don’t really get it.

“Where are you going?” “No, we can’t come if we don’t know the way?” “”Why don’t you speak plainly?” they ask him. “Why does he mean by that?” they ask each other. No, they really don’t get it. Why is he leaving, now, so soon? Is it really over? And Jesus’ answer is Yes . . . and No.

Yes, in that the way it’s been for the last few years is over. This close, intimate, personal relationship between me and all of you is over, Jesus says, and it can never be repeated. My time on earth is done.

But, NO, in that the community of love we started together is not over. And will never be over. It has begun in us and will continue in you all forever. Because, when I leave, I will send into your midst the Holy Spirit, the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, to hold you together and to lead you forward.

So, NO, it isn’t over. We aren’t done. In reality, we’ve only just now gotten started.

And the mark of this ongoing Jesus Movement/Christ Community is LOVE. Which is simple to say and hard to do.

I know I’ve said this here before, but my favorite line from GK Chesterfield bears repeating:

In one place in the Bible, Jesus commands us to love our neighbors. In another place he tells us to love our enemies. This is because, generally speaking, they are the same people.

Love is hard, particularly the sort of love Jesus is talking about here, AGAPE, self-giving, sacrificial love which seeks nothing for itself but instead seeks only to aid and help the other. Again, love is hard, especially when we are invited by Jesus to love people we don’t really like.

And of course, this is not the only place Jesus calls upon us to love each other in this way.

The text says, “If you love me, you WILL keep my commandments.”

And what are Jesus’ commandments? Well didn’t he say they were all about loving God and each other?

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind; and the second is like unto it – you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

In another place he says:

Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.

Over in the 21st chapter of John, after his death and resurrection, Jesus has a dialog with Peter on the beach:

Peter, do you love me? Feed my lambs.
Peter, do you love me, Tend my sheep.
Peter, do you love me? Feed my sheep.

So it is clear that Jesus wants us to love one another. The problem is, loving each other is very hard business. Loving people you like is difficult enough; how can Jesus’ order us, command us to love even those we don’t like?

What are we to do? How do we begin to love others in the way Our Lord loved us?
There are two hints to the how of this in our Gospel lesson.

The first is buried within verse 15, the first line of our text:

If you love me, you WILL keep my commandments.

It is a part of our basic human nature that we hear these words as LAW, as a RULE, as a COMMAND to be OBEYED, as a WORK to be ACHIEVED.

Our ears hear Jesus saying something he didn’t say. We hear:

If you want to prove to the world and to God that you love me, then you will have to show it by loving one another.

That’s what we hear; but that’s not what Jesus said.

Jesus gave us a word of GOSPEL, not LAW;
a word of PROMISE, not JUDGMENT.

Listen:

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

If you are an apple tree, you will bear apples.

If you are a child of God, you will act like one.

If you are connected to the Christ, you will bear the Christian fruit of love.

Jesus’ point is that the capacity to love people is not something we develop or achieve; it is rather the gift of God received in our relationship of love with the Christ.

“If you love me you will keep my commandments,” is a gospel promise that being in relationship with the living Lord is a life-changing, transforming experience.

As Christ begins to live more and more within us, as we open our lives more and more to Christ’s leading, we find ourselves more and more able to treat others in a loving and respectful manner.

The loving relationship we have with Christ begins to spill over into loving relationships with those around us.

And, Jesus implies, though I am leaving, the love community we have created will continue to live and grow into the future.

The Second Key is found in verse 16:

And I will ask the Father, and he will send you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of Truth . . .”

This advocate, this counselor, this Spirit of Truth; is in us, with us at all times. The Holy Spirit is available to nurture us; to lead and guide us in loving others as Christ has loved us.

Jesus says, “Yes, we’re done with me being with you. But I will not leave you orphaned, alone, unloved and uncared for. No, you’re not done with the life of loving one another with the love of God. I will send the Spirit to carry you along the rest of the way.”

Jesus comes to us today to assure us that in the midst of life’s surprising twists and turns and comings and goings; he will never be done with loving us.

Our calling today is to respond to that promise and that love by loving one another.

Are we done? Yes, if you mean are we done in our relationship of Pastor and congregation? That ends Wednesday night.

Are we done? No, if you mean are we done loving one another in the spirit and presence of the risen Christ. We will never be done with that, for Christ will never be done with us, not in a million years.

Amen and amen.

Spirituaal renewal Weekend.

2010-05-31T13:20:00.000-07:00

Memorial Day Weekend I was the preacher/spiritual director for a Renewal weekend at Good Shepherd Episcopal church in Hayesville NC. I preached Friday night, led a three hour retreat on Saturday morning and preached on Sunday. I based my work on Acts 2:42 and called it "Simply Church." I have posted the Sermons from Friday and Sunday and the teaching notes from Saturday morning in order so that you can, if you wish, read from Friday through Sunday. The song leader wwas Fran McKendree, of the 70's folk-rock group Mckendree Spring. Look him up; he's doing some amazing stuff with worship music. Delmer

Apostles' Teaching

2010-05-31T13:05:00.000-07:00

Friday Night: "Devoted to the Apostles' Teaching"

Texts: Acts 2:36-47

I used to work at Hinton Center, traveling around the country consulting with churches and ministries; from Seattle and Southern California in the West to New York and Florida in the East and most points in between.

Much of the time I worked at Hinton my son Joseph was in Hayesville High School where he played on the basketball team.

As much as possible I planned my travels around being home for his games. Not all, but most.

Then, during his senior year things got complicated as they made a run through the playoffs to the state championship.

I did the best I could but the weather intruded and game schedules were changed and I was in a bit of a mess.

Go to Indianapolis to a meeting with our major donor or go to regionals? I rearranged trips and rebooked flights and made all the games, but I was worn out and fretted - too much strain and anxiety and long drives and red-eye flights and sleeping in airports and really bad food, etc, etc.

So it happened that in the midst of all this I found myself in the Charlotte airport awaiting a delayed flight to Asheville so I could then drive home at 2 AM across Chunky Gal in the fog,

YES, I was having myself a little pity party. I just sat in a corner and moped and complained to God - WHY ME, O LORD, WHY ME!

When I finally got on that little commuter plane, I crammed myself into the little seat and found myself sitting next to a well-dressed young man - who was slightly inebriated and smelt of alcohol - and he wanted to talk!

GOOD LORD, I MOANED, NOT NOW!

Since I am constitutionally and professionally incapable of lying, when he asked me what I did, I told him.

When people discover that you are a clergyperson - 2 or 3 predictable things can happen.

Some ask you the unanswerable questions they have been thinking about since junior high catechism class.

Others clam up and ignore you - either out of fear or distaste,

And a few start a free counseling/confessional session. This was a confessional session.

When he heard I was a Lutheran Pastor, he visibly sobered up and said, "I'm Episcopalian myself; basically the same thing isn't it? So you're a priest?" I nodded. Then he launched into this story,

Three years ago, I was a physical therapist in Dalton, GA.

I was engaged to be married to a young woman. The future looked good.

One night my girlfriend went to the grocery store after work - about 10 PM.

She never came home.

A man who had been out of prison for 3 weeks abducted her in the parking lot - he brutalized her, then he murdered her and left her body in the woods.

I was in Hagerstown Maryland on business this morning.

I got a cell call from the man who would have been my father-in-law.

He told me they sentenced my her killer to death today.

For three years I thought this day would bring closure and healing to me.

But, I just feel empty inside.

If that man had not done what he did, I would be going home to my wife, probably my child, tonight.

Instead, I'm going home to an empty apartment and a goldfish.

Dr. Chilton, those young pastors you work with - tell them to be gentle with the people in the church.

Most of them are carrying a world of hurt - a load of pain and confusion they never prepared for or expected.

Be gentle with them; help them get on with life, for God's sake.

And then our plane landed and I hugged him there on the tarmac and we went our separate ways.

As I drove home through the mountains, I found myself singing an old Methodist Hymn,

When the storms of life are raging, stand by me. (2x)
When the world is tossing me, like a ship upon the sea,
Thou who rulest wind and water,
Stand by me. (Charles Albert Tindley, 1906, United Methodist Hymnal, #512)

Ever since I sat on that plane listening to that young man, a question has haunted me:

How can one build a life that will stand in the storm?

My teaching and preaching for this Spiritual Renewal Weekend are an attempt to answer that question from a Gospel perspective.

We will look at it from the personal point-of-view: answering the biblical question:
"Brothers and Sisters, what should we do?" verse 37.

We will also look at it from a congregational point of view, answering the question: What is the church called to do and be in the world?

Last Sunday was Pentecost, a celebration of the birth of the church, of the coming upon the church of tongues of fire and mighty winds driving the huddled and hidden disciples out of their cramped upper room into God's wide open but crowded streets.

Out in those streets, Peter was given of God a sermon to preach, a sermon that summarized the Gospela sermon that shouted to the rooftops that the same Jesus whom they had crucified was indeed God's promised savior, and that He was risen from the dead and that he was sitting at God's right hand and that the Holy Spirit promised by Joel had just come upon all of them and that it was the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and the God of Noah and Moses and King David and the God of all the prophets who was calling THEM, EACH OF THEM, ALL OF THEM to repentance and new life and then the people said,

Brothers and Sisters, what should we do?

This is where our Scripture lesson begins:

Those who believed were baptized and those who were baptized received the gift of the Holy Spirit
and . . . . then what?

Those who believed and were baptized naturally gathered together. But for what purpose, to what end? Why church?

Through the years there have been a variety of answers to that question of Why Church?

And many of those answers seem to stray far from what God had in mind.

The church was created by God for a two simple purposes:

1) To be a community in which Christians are strengthened in their faith, and

2) To be a servant community; a body of people who work together to heal the world in God's name and with God's help and under God's direction.

Verse 42 summarizes this very well: They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

As you know, I do a lot of church consulting. Frequently a church council or committee will say "what we need to do is"

Is could be, "start a contemporary service."
Or "Open a homeless shelter."
Or "have a better youth group."
Or "go knock on doors inviting people to church."
Or any of a number of other good ideas,

And I always ask WHY? TO WHAT END? FOR WHAT PURPOSE? WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACCOMPLISH? WILL IT STRENGTHEN THE FAITH OF THE MEMBERS OR HELP YOU LOVE AND SERVE THE WORLD? If not, don't do it.

It is when we lose sight of our true purpose as the Body of Christ in the world that we begin to go off on congregational tangents, chasing after something to do that will make us feel important and relevant and Godly, but on our terms, not God's.

Our Call is the same as the call to the church at Pentecost;We are called to repent and be baptized.
As individuals and as a church.

This is the point at which my good Baptist friends can point an accusing finger and say, "See, see, that baptizing babies stuff has got it all out of order. It says repent and be baptized. How can a baby repent?"

And we have to concede that they have a point, if this were a one and done deal, but for us, repenting and baptismal living are a lifelong experience.

We do not divide the world into the saved and the unsaved, or into saints and sinners.

As Alexander Solzhenitsyn said, "The line between good and evil runs right down the middle of every human heart."

We find ourselves each day in need of repentance, in need of looking deeply into the mirror of God's word and recognizing our all too frequent failure to be the people God made us capable of being.

And when that hard, stern, unflinching glare of the Law has driven us to our knees, then we need to hear the word of Grace that comes to us in our baptism.

It is when we realize that we are no more deserving of God's Love than the thief who died on the Cross with Christ, then we can hear the words Jesus spoke to him as spoken to us, "This day you will be with me in paradise."

We who cross ourselves do it not in memory of the fact that Christ died on the cross, we cross ourselves in memory of the fact that he died there for us, for you and for me.

We cross ourselves, and in so doing we trace the cross the minister, the priest, the pastor marked on our forehead with the words, "Delmer Lowell Chilton, child of God, you are marked with the cross of Christ forever."

To repent and be baptized is the meaning of our lives, everyday of our lives, living each day "out of the cradle, endlessly rocking," between saint and sinner, faith and doubt, hope and despair.

No one can walk this walk alone. Everybody needs somebody, a lot of somebodies, in order to make it through life with one's soul somewhat intact.

Which is, of course, where the church comes in.

The Church is that place, those people, that community whose only purpose in the world is helping people live from the cradle to the grave as people of faith.

We have no other reason for being.

The Lutheran Augsburg Confession defines the church as "where the word is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered."

The 39 Articles of Religion of the Anglican tradition says the same thing in almost the same words. "a congregation . . . where the pure word of God is preached and, the sacraments be duly ministered."

Word: Holy Bible read and preached and taught and studied and sung.

Word: Holy Bible, struggled over, wrestled with, not just alone, but in a community of other readers and strugglers and wrestlers.

When Acts 2:42 says, "they devoted themselves to the Apostle's teaching . . ." it is not referring to a slavish devotion to a wooden orthodoxy.

NO. It means they were hungry to know more, they were committed to gathering in community to seek out God's will and way for their lives.

They were disciples who came together to learn from one another what it meant to be a follower of the Way, the way of Jesus Christ.

Some years ago, I was pastor of a church in Nashville. A big mega-church put out a bumper sticker that said, THE BIBLE SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT, THAT SETTLES IT.

The Jewish Synagogue down the street made one that said, THE BIBLE SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT. CAN WE TALK?

That's the spirit I'm talking about; the spirit of trusting in God's ongoing voice in the community of the faithful, calling us ever back to the Word and forward in the Spirit, convicting us of our sin
and washing away our guilt, showing us the malnutrition of the soul to be had in material things and feeding us at the altar on God's own flesh and blood.

We are called this day, as individuals and as a community of faith, to devote ourselves anew to the Apostles' teaching., to bow down before God and ask, "What should we do?"

We are called repent, to turn, to go in a new direction, the direction of following Christ to the Cross with our whole hearts and our entire spirits.

We are called this day to our baptism, to remember that though we be sinners, we are healed, forgiven, redeemed, beloved, sinners who are also baptized children of the Living God.

And we are also called this day to remember that above all else, beyond all else, this place, this community, this church, this Good Shepherd is to be a place where people find a help in their wounded walk through life.

A place where people like my young friend on the plane can find comfort in their sorrow, a place where weary souls can find rest, a place where people burdened by guilt and remorse
can find relief, a place where grateful people can shout out their joy, a place where confused people can ask their questions,

Are you ready to commit yourself to doing whatever is necessary to make sure Good Shepherd is such a place? Are you ready to take a good hard look at your life and repent and return to your baptism? Are you ready to devote yourself to the Apostles' teaching?

Amen and amen.

Of Prayer and Fellowship

2010-05-31T12:49:00.000-07:00

Saturday Morning:
Acts 2: 36-47
OF PRAYER AND COMMUNITY

Some years ago I preached on this text at the congregation I served for almost ten years in Nashville, TN.

After service, at the coffee hour, one of the parishioners, a very active church person and someone I counted as a friend came over to me and said,

I'm really disturbed by that lesson from Acts that you read. That's sounds like Communism. I don't believe in Communism. I can't believe there's Communism in the Bible. Is that one of those new translations or something?

I don't know exactly what I said except that we continued to talk about it and struggle with it together. She stayed in the church and later served as the Lutheran equivalent of Senior Warden.

As I think back on the encounter by the coffee pot, I'm not sure whether that story is about Lutheran ignorance of the Bible or about America's intense distrust of Communism or about America's equally intense idealization of individualism.

I suspect it's about a little bit of all three.

We in America have become more and more individualistic and concerned only about ourselves and at the same time less and less concerned about others and the public welfare. Two quick Illustrations to make my point:

1) Bp. Gordy - Memorial Day Meditation : commuter plane from South Bend to Chicago; Man in exit row, "I don't know about you, but if anything happens, I 'm outta here. The Hell with everybody else."

2) Texas textbook controversy: Social Studies text: A good candidate for public office is one who "takes responsibility for the common good." School Board Member - "That Common good idea just leads to Communism. We need to let the individual be free."

Now, we should not be surprised that such thinking bleeds over into the realm of church, religion, spirituality.

It seems to me that many people who say that they are "spiritual but not religious," or "I like Jesus but not the church," are exhibiting a serious degree of this intense individualism.

Not, even though I am an Assistant to the Bishop, I have to admit that I like Jesus better than I like the church sometimes, but that's not really the point.

To be Christian requires that we be in and of the church, whether we like it or not.

What good is it to commit yourself to high-minded goals like the love of all humanity if you can't be bothered to do the hard work of struggling to get along with the ordinary, ornery, sinful human beings who share the pew with you on Sundays?

That's like saying I believe in the sanctity of marriage but I can't be bothered with the hard work and compromise and emotional turmoil of being in relationship with an actual human being.

It is the very nature of Christianity that it is a communal experience and knows nothing of individual spirituality or salvation.

This is shown to us by the language of the texts we examine in various ways today.

First the one I just read: Acts 2:36-47 (reread and comment).

They, all, every one of you. "promise is to you and your children and to all who are far off.

Verse 44 KEY - together - all things in common

Verse 46 - together

Important - plural you - English has no proper plural YOU and until teachers talk us out of it, we all try to invent one: Ya'll, youse guys, you'ns, others? One I don't get is "All ya'll," seems a bit redundant. Anyway, the yous in this acts text are "ya'll" (read with ya'lls")

This also is important in the text we will read later, the Lord's prayer, Matthew's version in chapter 6, beginning with verse 5.

Jesus instructions about prayer are plural instructions, about praying in community, and even when we pray in private, should pray communally, thus the Lord's Prayer, notice:

Our Father; United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon, in his book on the Lord's Prayer notes:

"In this prayer we are taught to pray, not as individuals, but as the church. The "our" reminds us that we cannot pray without friends. The habits that the prayer forms can be acquired only through friendship with others that makes possible our friendship with God." (Lord Teach Us, The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life, p. 25)

The fact that this model prayer is about life and love in community is further revealed to us by the fact that it calls upon us to do something that can only be done in Community, to forgive and be forgiven.

There is occasional discussion about the language: sins, trespasses, debts; all of which is not as important as the fact that none of it can happen in isolation: forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

GK Chesterton said, In one place Jesus tells us to love our enemies; in another place he admonishes us to love our neighbors; this is because, generally speaking, they are the same people.

C.S. Lewis said many times that he didn't much like going to church. In particular he didn't like hymns, and most of his fellow church members were not people he would have naturally been friends with.

But being in church with them and praying with and for them made him love them even if he did not naturally like them. Receiving care from them when he was in trouble and learning to care about their troubles that were very different than his led him to a deeper understanding of who he was and how much Christ loved all of us. (In "God in the Dock," Essay 4, p. 61)

Ultimately, the church is a school for the soul, a laboratory where we learn to genuinely practice the virtues that the Gospel calls us to.

The word translated FELLOWSHIP in our text is KOINONIA in the Greek, which can also be translated COMMUNION.

Not the communion like the bread and wine of the Eucharist but the Communion like when we talk about the Anglican Communion, or sing about the "mystic, sweet, communion" we have with Jesus.

What the newly baptized devoted themselves to was not "Hail fellow well met, fellowship of like minded people who share a keen interest in a similar sort of spirituality.

Their devotion was to a new community that was called together by the Holy Spirit and was held together by the bond they shared in Christ.

amen

Breaking of the Bread

2010-05-31T12:46:00.000-07:00

SUNDAY, MAY 30, 2010
Holy Trinity Sunday
"The Breaking of the Bread"

The English writer GK Chesterton was a famously eccentric man, full of wisdom and silliness in almost equal measure.

He wrote wonderful mystery novels, and magazine articles and books about Christianity.

He also weighed over 300 pounds and wandered about London in the early 20th century wearing a cape and a broad brimmed hat and carrying a cane.

He once sent a telegram to his wife that said, "I am at Trafalgar Square. Where am I supposed to be?"

Someone once asked him the old party question; "If you were stranded on a deserted island for a year, what one book would you want with you?" expecting, I'm sure, some variation on KJV, Shakespeare, BCP, etc.

Chesterton said, "If I were stranded on a deserted island I think I should like to have a Guide to Practical Shipbuilding." (P. Yancey, Soul Survivor, p.45)

The preaching and teaching for this Spiritual Renewal Weekend have focused on being a guide to practical church building, an encouragement toward being the sort of community that recognizes as its primary purpose the care and feeding of souls.

To that end we have focused on a theme of being "Simply Church," building on the words of ACTS 2:42 "They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers."

Friday night we dealt with devotion to Apostles' teaching as a life time commitment to living in and struggling with God's word in community, yesterday at Hinton Center we talked about and prayed about the interplay of prayer and community and how you really can't have one without another.

This morning we will address what the breaking of the bread means for us, both as an image of Communion and as a call to love and serve the world.

Pray with me please: Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine, Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood. Amen (United Methodist Hymnal, p.10)

Those words come from the standard United Methodist Eucharistic prayer.

The Presbyterians say it this way: "As this bread is Christ's body for us, send us out to be the body of Christ in the world." (Book of Common Worship, various places)

This morning we will explore the relationship between calling this bread on this table the Body of Christ

and calling these people gathered in this room (that would be us, you and me) the Body of Christ;

and the fact that the Body of Christ was broken on the cross for us,

and the Body of Christ is broken on the table for us,

and we, the Body of Christ,

are then called to be broken and sent out in service to the world.

We begin with the Bible, with our reading from Romans, particularly the first two verses:

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand. . ."

THIS GRACE IN WHICH WE STAND

This is the golden thread, the recurring theme, he constant refrain that runs through the entire Bible from Genesis to Revelation.

God has chosen us, all of us, to be God's beloved people.

God, in an act of creation like the creation of the world itself, spoke this relationship of Grace and Love into being.

God said, "I WILL be your God, and you WILL be my people." And it was so.

Have you seen the billboards with cute little quotes signed God? I saw the funniest one I've ever seen somewhere in TN. "Don't make me come down there!" - God

I don't know who pays for those ads or who writes them, but I realized that on this one they have missed the point.

The ad echoes the parent who threatens punishment if the kids don't straighten up and fly right.

It implies that when God comes "down here," it's going to get ugly.

The fact is, our inability to live up to our end of the divine covenant of Grace has already prompted God to come "down here," and in the long run, that was a good thing. Not so good for Jesus, but good for us.

The life, death and resurrection of Jesus happened because God refused to give up on us.

The Christ event created a new covenant of Grace, for a new agreement of love, a New Testament signed in the blood of the Cross, as Paul says in Romans:Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand."

From the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples

and threw them out to witness in the streets,

and three thousand repented and were baptized,

God's people have been bound together in communities known as churches.

And from the very beginning two things were very clear:

1) The church does not create itself; Rather the church is created by God the Holy Spirit which, in Luther's words in the Small Catechism: "calls, gathers, enlightens and empowers" us for ministry, and 2) When they gathered, they "broke bread."

It is when we come to the table that a lot of images erupt and compete for space in awareness.

Jesus holding up bread and proclaiming "this is my body," and then feeding it to his disciples.

Paul referring to the church, the covenant community as "the body of Christ."

Jesus' body broken and bleeding on the cross for us, for the world.

Jesus saying that when we feed the hungry and clothe the naked, when we do these things for the least of these, we have done it for him.

When we roll all that up together in our hearts and mull it over in our minds, we come out knowing that the breaking of the bread is more than a fellowship meal shared amongst like-minded religious folk who like each other.

It's also more than a weekly reminder of our individual and personal salvation and relationship of love and forgiveness with God in Christ.

Eucharist, Communion, the breaking of the bread, is when everything about our faith and life comes together and comes alive.

It is when we receive into ourselves the bread and wine that are most aware of God's Grace in Christ.

It is when we receive the sacrifice and love Jesus poured out on the cross for us.

It is when we receive the sweet healing of the Holy Spirit poured out for us at Pentecost.

It is when that same spirits pulls together into a communion community as the body of Christ.

So that when we rise from this table as the body of Christ in the world,the Spirit then sends us out from the breaking of the bread to be broken in service to the world.

Let us pray: Pour out your Holy Spirit on us gathered here, and on these gifts of bread and wine. Make them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood.

Amen and amen

Easter 7; May 16, 2010

2010-05-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

EASTER 7, May 16, 2010

Texts: Acts 16:6-10; Revelation 22:12-17, 20; John 17:20-26

A sermon preached at Christ Lutheran Church, Nashville TN.

"Simon Says" is one of my favorite kids' games. It's a very simple game.
One person is Simon and everyone else lines up and Simon calls out instructions and the kids try to obey them:

Simons says - take three giant steps;
Simons says - hop on one foot;
Simon says - scratch your nose.

Now here's the fun part; you can only do those things preceded by the words Simon says. If the leader says "pat your tummy" without first saying "Simon says," and you pat your tummy, you're out! Last one standing wins.

In our first lesson, Paul and Barnabas play "Simon Says" with God. It would take a little while to explain the geography, but the short form is Paul and Barnabas kept running into closed doors when they tried to go North to preach. God kept saying, "You're out. I didn't say Simon Says!"

Why did Paul and Barnabas keep going the wrong way before they went the right way? Why did they keep bumping into closed doors before they found one that was open?

If we're honest, all of us will admit that we struggle and get confused in our efforts to understand the will of God. I imagine God gets a little flustered while trying to get through to us.

My old friend Tom Ridenhour, Jr. said to me one time, "Sure Moses saw the burning bush, but how many other signs did Moses miss before God got frustrated and set the woods on fire?"

Tom was kidding, but he had a point; the world is full of the signs of God's grace and will and we all too often miss them.

An important question for us today is WHY IS IT SO HARD FOR US TO HEAR GOD'S VOICE IN OUR LIVES?

What is it on the human side that blocks our channels of communication with God?

One problem is that we live very compartmentalized lives.

Parts of our lives are kept artificially separate from other parts; this is work; this is family; this is play; this is church.

If we only listen for God in that small section of our lives that we call Church or Religion or Spirituality; we're going to miss most of what God has to tell us.

Moses was herding sheep when he stumbled upon the Burning Bush. Not praying; working; attending to the family business.

The prophet Amos was tending sheep and trimming sycamore trees when God got hold of him and wouldn't let him go.

Jesus' disciples were called away from the midst of plying their trades. Leave your nets, close up the tax shop, put down that hammer; follow me.

Martha in her kitchen and the Woman at the well received a word of insight into their lives whilst going about their normal, hum-drum, daily chores.

God is no less active in the commonalities of our lives.

But, we must be looking, we must be listening. In Jesus' memorable phrase, we must "have eyes to see and ears to hear." We must pay attention to our lives in order to hear the voice of God within it.

The book of Hebrews begins with one of my favorite lines in the Bible, "in many and various ways God spoke . . ."

The United Church of Christ has picked up on this theme in recent years with their slogan; GOD IS STILL SPEAKING.

What they say is true, God is still speaking, in many and various ways, calling all of us into love and community.

Perhaps our biggest problem in communicating with God is not that we can't hear God; it's that what we hear displeases us.

Mark Twain once said that he had noticed that many people were upset about the parts of the Bible they didn't understand.

Twain said, "As for me, I am more disturbed by the parts I DO understand."
I get that.

Drop everything and follow me, turn the other cheek, sell all and give to the poor, love your enemies, love your neighbor, turn your backs on your family for the sake of the kingdom of God, these things disturb me. I had rather that Jesus had never said them.

But since I am convinced that he did say them, I must confess I have all too often dealt with these uncomfortable callings by pretending not to understand.

This is a technique perfected as a teenager.

One arrives home from school. There is a note on the table spelling out chores to be done. (I'm old, this is old school. These days the parent would text the list of chores, but you get the idea.)

One is unhappy; one had plans, important plans; which mostly consisted of lying around watching TV and talking on the phone to my friends. (Though I'm old, teenagers haven't changed much in 40 years.) What to do?

Well the answer was to do little, or as little as possible and then plead ignorance when Mama got home?

I didn't know if you meant weed the flower garden or the vegetable garden.

I couldn't find the gas can for the lawn-mower.

I didn't know how much detergent to use and I was afraid of messing up the clothes.

Mother was not amused. And I am fairly certain she was not fooled.

And I am fairly certain that God is neither fooled nor amused by our equally inept protestations of ignorance about what we have been called to do in the world.

It is only because we are loathe to obey that we pretend not to hear or to understand. It was only when Paul stopped trying to do things his own way; to follow his own desire to go North and preach in Asia, that God's way into Macedonia became clear and open to him.

A few years ago, Unitarian Minister Robert Fulghum had a best seller called "Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten."

His point was both simple and profound. It is in Kindergarten that we learn the basic principles of being a civil human being in a group. The groups we are in and the problems they face grow ever more complex, but the principles of civility never change.

In much the same way, we don't need special signs from God to know God's will and God's way for us in the world; it is both simple and profound.

As a Church, a community of Christ, we are called to "preach the word and administer the sacraments;" that is, to teach and live the reality of God's love in Christ with as many people as possible. That's it.

In the words of Jesus himself; "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself."

That is it. That is our calling. And whatever we have to do to make that happen, that is God's will for our lives.

It is really not that hard to understand.
But it is, very, often, very hard to do.

Amen and amen.

Easter 4, April 25, 2010

2010-04-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

THE FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER April 25, 2010
A sermon preached at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Knoxville, TN
Text: John 10:22-30

In my little backyard converted shed office, I have a couple thousand books arranged on a variety of yard sale bookcases.
As I wrote this sermon, my coffee cup rested on a shelf that contains what I call my "Jesus books." In recent years, there have been a huge number of books written and debate hashed out about who Jesus was, or if he really was.I own over 30 of these books, and that's just a small part of all that's out there. They have titles like:

"Will the Real Jesus Please Stand up?"
"The Misunderstood Jew,"
"Who Was Jesus?"
"Lord or Legend?"
"Looking for Jesus,"
"The Real Jesus,"
"What Jesus Meant,"
and my favorite title: "Cynic Sage or Son of God?"

For over 2000 years the world and the church have wrestled with the question of the true identity of the wandering preacher from Galilee.The whole of Chapter 10 in John deals with this. Who does he say he is? Does his walk match his talk? Is he for real? Are the signs to be believed?

In verse 24 the people ask Jesus - Are you the Messiah? Are you the one sent from God? Jesus' answer points to actions as keys to identity, the idea that behavior reveals character.

He asks them, Do I act and talk like a Messiah, like a true king of Israel? Are the things I say and do for the benefit of the people?Do I honor God with the way I live my life?"

In the first part of chapter 10, Jesus has talked about being the Shepherd of the sheep, about how the sheep hear the true shepherd's voice and follow, about the willingness of the shepherd to lay down his life for the sheep. In verses 7 through 11 Jesus contrasts this with bad shepherds; "all who came before me are thieves and bandits." He then says that he is "the good shepherd."

In today's lesson, in verse 27, he again picks up the protective and caring shepherd theme. It may be helpful to us to think not in terms of good and bad, but rather in terms of true versus false; or real versus pretend; or fake versus genuine; or perhaps faithless versus faithful.

What Jesus lays claim to here in this text is to being not a false, not a pretend, not a fake, not a faithless shepherd of Israel; but rather to being a true, a real, a genuine, a faithful shepherd of God's sheep.

The shepherd was a powerful symbol in Israel. For much of their history they were a nomadic people dependent upon their sheep for their livelihood. Because of this, sheep and shepherd imagery was very important. The King was often referred to as the SHEPHERD of Israel, alluding back to King David, the traditional author of the 23rd Psalm. David, a shepherd boy in his youth, is the king by whom all kings are measured.

The ancient kings of Israel were different from the kings of the nations around them. The other kings were held up to be Gods on earth, divine beings in human form. The kings of Israel were not believed to be divine; they were known to be ordinary human beings who represented God on earth and ruled in God's name.

The idea was that God had placed the responsibility for the nation in their hands.The kingdom was not theirs to do with as they pleased. The kingdom was God's and they were to take care of it and God's people in God's name and with God's help. And even great King David failed to do it right all the time.

Between David and Jesus there were many years and many kings, and all the kings of Israel failed in one way or another. None of them lived up to the image of the Good, the True, the Real Shepherd of Israel, especially not the Emperor in Rome or his puppet King Herod. So the people asked; "Are you the Messiah?" "Are you the true Shepherd of the Sheep?""Are you the Saviour of Israel?" And Jesus answered them, "Yes, I am all that, and more."

In verse 25 he says, "I have told you, and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father's name testify to me." Jesus goes on to make it plain, just as they had requested. The sheep hear my voice, they know their true Shepherd and follow and respond to him.

This is for me the difficult part of this lesson. Just hearing the voice is not enough. Many people hear, but don't respond, don't answer, don't follow, don't recognize the voice of Jesus. Those of us gathered here in Church on Sunday morning have, in one way or another heard and recognized the voice of God, the voice of our savior and friend; in the voice of the Bible; in the voice of the Church.

Some of us are more sure than others, some of us hear it more clearly and distinctly than others, but all of us have heard it. That is why we are here. But we are left to wonder about those who aren't here, who have heard the word but haven't heard the Voice. Rather than wonder about why they haven't heard in the past, our calling today is to be the voice of the gospel in the world by the way we live our lives.

Pastor John Ortberg tells this story in a recent book,

A man is being tailgated by a woman in a hurry. He comes to an intersection, and when the light turns yellow, he hits the brakes. The woman behind him goes ballistic. She honks her horn at him; she yells her frustration in no uncertain terms; she rants and gestures.

While she is in mid-rant, someone taps on her window. She looks up and sees a policeman. He invites her out of her car and takes her to the station where she is searched and fingerprinted and put in a cell. After a couple of hours, she is released, and the arresting officer gives her her personal effects, saying

"I'm very sorry for the mistake, ma'am. I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, using bad gestures and bad language. I noticed the WHAT WOULD JESUS DO bumper sticker, the CHOOSE LIFE license plate holder, the FOLLOW ME TO SUNDAY SCHOOL window sign, the fish emblem on your trunk, and I naturally assumed you had stolen the car. (When the Game is Over, It all Goes Back in the Box, 2007, p. 115)

The way we live our lives sends a message to the world. When Martin Luther said that the church is a "priesthood of believers," he didn't mean we were all pastors, he meant that we all carry Christ into the world in our words and actions.

In the modern world, we, the church, all of us in the church, are the shepherds, and the hurting, lonely, lost people of the world are God's scattered sheep. Our calling is to go out to them with the Voice of the Shepherd, calling them home to safety, calling them home to love.

We are the Voice of Christ in the world. What people know of God's law, they learn from us. What people know of God's forgiveness, they receive from us. What people know of God's love, they feel from us. The Voice of Christ calls each of us out into the world today.

Will you answer? Will you follow? Will you go out there and love the world in the name of Christ? Amen and amen.

2010-04-01T11:29:00.000-07:00

MAUNDY THURSDAY APRIL 1, 2010
John 13: 1-17; 31b-35

In April of 1995 (I think) THE LUTHERAN magazine ran an article called "Is it I?" It was about Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting, "The Last Supper."

Now, while I found Pr. Schuessler's "Art Analysis" fairly interesting, I was very distracted by the fact that none of the people in the illustration of the painting seemed to be where he said they were.

What he was saying about people didn't match up with the people he claimed to be talking about.

Having had some small experience with publishing, I thought I knew what had happened, and my idea was confirmed when the text said that Judas had the money purse in his right hand while the picture showed it in his left hand.

Either Pastor Schuessler doesn't know his right from his left, or THE LUTHERAN printed the picture backwards.

I'm putting my money on THE LUTHERAN printing the picture backwards.

After I got over being first annoyed and then amused I realized that there was a deeper meaning here. (I'm sorry, I can't help it, I'm a preacher; there's always a deeper meaning!)

When I thought about it, I realized that getting it backwards is what most of us do, most of the time.

In our Gospel lesson, after he has washed his followers' feet, Jesus says to them, "Do you know what I have done to you?" And if they were honest, they would have said no. They got it backwards, and way too often, we get it backwards, too.

Today is called Maundy Thursday. The name comes from the command, the mandate, the mandatum in Latin, that Jesus gave his followers that they should Love One Another.

Though many people think of this night as the time when we celebrate the first Last Supper; in reality this night is set apart to remind us that Jesus' final words and deeds with his beloved friends were words and deeds of love, and Jesus' final command to his followers was a command to remember him with words and deeds of love of their own.

When Jesus wrapped a towel around his waist and bowed down before his students; he not only humbled himself; in their eyes, he humiliated himself.

According to New Testament Scholar Robert Kysar, "Jesus' act is a radical departure from custom, since not even servants were required to wash the feet of their master." (Augsburg Commentary on John, p. 208)

Most often, footwashing was done by students for their teacher; as a sign of humility and respect and obedience. In washing his disciples' feet, Jesus turned this backwards. His humiliating act of servanthood was a powerful sign of the radical, upside-down, inside-out nature of the new Kingdom of God Jesus brought into the world.

Jesus looked at his disciples and said, "You call me teacher, and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another's feet." (verse 13-14)

Does Jesus really, literally, mean that? Does he want us to go around washing one another's feet in church on a regular basis?

Well, that's the way some folks with whom I grew up take it; 'course they also handle snakes and drink poison; so maybe they're not a very good example.

In this action and by these words Jesus has called us, commanded us, to be a servant people. A people who gird up their loins and get to work tending to a hurting and needy world.

He says: "I give you this commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." (verses 34-35)

But we get it backwards, don't we. Instead of seeking ways to serve others, we complain about the service others render to us. Instead of looking for ways to love others, we read magazine articles about "How to GET the love you really deserve." Instead of thinking about how we can help others improve their lives, we plot and plan for how we can get ahead.

Have you ever thought about what those words mean; "get ahead?" They mean me in front of everyone else. They mean me first, They mean; I'll tend to me and mine and devil take the hindmost.

Yes, we get it backwards. No matter how much we try, we get it backwards. "This master and servant, love one another, serve the world" stuff that Jesus talks about so much is really difficult.

It is because it is difficult that we get it backwards, and because it is difficult and we get it backwards, Jesus not only told us to love one another, He showed us how.

He showed us how when he washed the disciples' feet. He showed us how when he fed his friends at table. He showed us how when he blessed the thief who died with him. He showed us how when he forgave those who killed him. He showed us how when he died upon the cross, "for us and for our salvation."

We get it backwards and we can only get it right when we die to ourselves and let the life of Christ rise up within us, following him on the way of service, the way of Love, the way of the cross.

Amen and amen.

Mid-week service, Holy Week,

2010-03-30T21:20:00.000-07:00

WEDNESDAY OF HOLY WEEK March 31, 2010
First UMC, Hayesville, NC

Sermon Texts: Luke 11: 1-4; Luke 23:34
Title: On Forgiveness

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ!

Pray with me please: "May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight oh my rock and my Redeemer."

In Luke's Gospel, Jesus' students ask him to teach them to pray, and half of the lesson is about forgiveness;

Forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone indebted to us.

On the cross, Jesus lives out what he taught, praying for those who killed him, and for us; Father, forgive them;

Forgiveness is at the very heart of the Christian gospel,

and it is quite possibly the most difficult thing we are asked to do for our LORD because

it is the thing that most goes against our natural inclinations.

Clara Nun, a SS teacher in OK City told a story in LEADERSHIP Magazine.

She asked a boy in her class "Billy what must we do to be forgiven."

Billy thought about it a minute, "Well, first we have to sin."

Billy is right. Without sin, there would be no need for forgiveness.

And that is the way God originally designed the world, according to the creation stories in the book of Genesis.

Perfect world, perfect people with perfect lives.

And for perfect people to be truly perfect, God had to take a chance and give us free will.

Without the ability to choose our behavior, we would all be robots and we wouldn't like that and neither would God.

And, as we all know, with that free will came the opportunity to choose badly; which Adam and Eve both did, and with that act of choosing badly Sin came into the world.

St. Augustine called it Original Sin and talked about it in ways that were very close to saying that sinfulness is genetic, that we're biologically born that way.

I don't think we have to go that far to observe and admit that the world is full of sin and that all of us, in one way or another, participate in it.

A friend of mine says that Original Sin is the only Christian Doctrine that can be proven empirically;

he says, "I have four children and six grandchildren, I know what original sin is."

If we're honest most of us will admit that this is true, not only about our children and grandchildren but about us.

We all know how far, in Paul's words, "we fall short of the glory of God."

Martin Luther, in his Large Catechism, was unintentionally funny and cranky on this point.

He wrote, almost 500 years ago, "We still stumble daily and sin because we live in the world among people who sorely vex us and give us occasion for impatience, anger, vengeance, etc."

I served as a small 3-point parish near Burlington, NC over 30 years ago. One night I took Miss Sallie Spoon, to hear her great granddaughter sing at a Revival Meeting.

The little girl sang beautifully; then the evangelist preached a fiery sermon about sin, yelling and haranguing the crowd. On the way home, Miss Sallie said to me, "I know I sin. What I want to know is what to do about it."

That is the question, isn't it? We know, in our heart of hearts, that we, all of us sin.

And even more, we feel guilty for how our sins harm others and we feel resentment for the way the sins of others hurt us.

And, as Miss Sallie said, "What can we do about it?"

How can we stop messing up our lives and the lives of our neighbors; with bad behavior and hurt feelings, with deeply buried guilt and long-held resentments?

Well, Jesus says FORGIVENESS is the only way.

God's forgiveness of us, and our forgiveness of one another, which are deeply, inseparably, tied together; these are the only things which will rescue us from ourselves.

But we hesitate over this forgiveness business, don't we? Those of us who recite the Creed and the Lord's Prayer in our worship every week say we believe in it;

I believe in the HS, the holy catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins. . .

Forgive us our sins, debts, trespasses, . . .as we forgive those who sin, trespass against us, our debtors.

We say it, but oh, so often, it is so hard to live out.

One day on the Duke campus, a person I know ran across a seminary professor who shall remain nameless. He was a good man, but a bit stodgy and old fashioned.

They stood together on the steps of a classroom building and looked out at the Duke undergraduates celebrating a basketball victory.

They were "drunk and disorderly," and in various states of undress and publicly affectionate behavior.

The professor looked at them and said to my friend, "Well, I have come to accept the idea that Jesus died for me, but I have a hard time believing that he died for these people."

Sometimes, way too many of us are way too much that way.

We have accepted the idea that Christ died for us, and if we're not careful, we'll begin to believe we deserved it.

"Of course he forgave me," we think, "I'm really sorry for what I did.

And really, it wasn't all that bad, just a little sin. Nothing like THOSE people and THOSE things THEY did."

And it is when we begin to think that we have earned God's love, that we deserve God's Grace and forgiveness, and that the things we do aren't so bad, but those other people, they are really bad and sinful and undeserving,

It's when we begin to think like that that we begin to withhold forgiveness of others.

In Jesus' prayer, it is not by accident that he ties God's forgiveness of us with our forgiveness of one another. You cannot have one without the other.

The only way we can dig down deep enough to genuinely, completely, totally, unreservedly, with no ifs ands or buts, forgive someone else,

is if we realize how very much undeserved love and grace and forgiveness we ourselves have received, from God and from one another.

As long as we believe that we are in some way better than anyone, anyone else on this planet and that we, therefore, have in some way earned God's love, we will be incapable of true confession and forgiveness.

Holy Week is about finding that place within us that knows our failure and our need.

Holy Week is about following Christ to the Cross with our hearts in our throats, realizing that his suffering and death are the result of our sin, our fault, our evil ways and deeds.

Holy Week is about dying to our pride so that we can live in Christ.

It is in Christ that we know ourselves undeserving yet fully loved.

It is in Christ that we discover our true self, fully loved and fully loving others.

It is in Christ that we find the strength to confess our faults to others,

It is in Christ that we find the love to truly, completely forgive one another.

One of my favorite writers, GK Chesterton, once observed,

In one place, Jesus commands us to love our neighbors.
In another place, he orders us to love our enemies.
This is because, generally speaking, they are the same people.

I invite you now to stand and turn and face your neighbors across the aisle as we confess to and forgive one another, as Jesus taught us when he taught us to pray, and as he showed us when he forgave his killers from the cross:

Join me in the prayers printed in your bulletin.

RIGHT SIDE: I confess to God Almighty, before the whole company of heaven, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned by my own fault in thought, word, and deed. I pray God Almighty to have mercy on me, forgive me all my sins, and bring me to everlasting life.

LEFT SIDE: Almighty and merciful God grant you healing, pardon, and forgiveness of all your sins. Amen.

(A short period of silence is kept)

LEFT SIDE: I confess to God Almighty, before the whole company of heaven, and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned by my own fault in thought, word and deed. I pray God Almighty to have mercy on me, forgive me all my sins, and bring me to everlasting life.

RIGHT SIDE: Almighty and merciful God grant you healing, pardon, and forgiveness of all your sins. Amen.

Palm Sunday

2010-03-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

I'm not preaching this week. (Why? Nobody asked me.) So I didn't write a Palm Sunday sermon. I have a group of pastor/preacher friends with whom I share sermons. One of them, an old Duke Div. School classmate, sent me this one I thought you might find either interesting or helpful or both. The author/preacher is the Rev. Dr. Warren Casiday, Pastor of St. John's Reformed United Church of Christ in Kannapolis, NC. By the way, I edited it a bit for length ( Those Reformed; less Liturgy, more preaching, but I left in his manuscript short-hand.)

To The Edge Of Night

Luke 19.28-40
H. Warren Casiday
March 28, 2010

It’s not quite Easter yet, but it will be here very soon. Just 7 days away.And what a joyful day that will be for us – as we celebrate Jesus’ resurrection.

But we have a problem in moving from today – Palm Sunday to Easter.

We must walk through a graveyard in the dark of night that is called Good Friday.

That walk takes us from a Joyful Celebration To The Edge Of Night to total darkness to the light of the Resurrection.

We simply cannot get from PS to E w/o going through GF.

There are many churches who never observe the major event of Holy Week.
They do not have Maundy Thursday Communion Services. They never have GF services.

They rush from PS to E – neatly avoiding the unpleasantness of the week – so they can get to the trumpet sounds of E morning.

In some ways, it is easy to understand this desire to skip the events of HW.

J on the cross means death – and we don’t like to confront death. But J risen from the grave is life!

A sanctuary stripped bare for GF is can be very bleak and even depressing.

A sanctuary with Lilies and an E cross covered with flowers is uplifting & encouraging.

Why not skip through HW as if you were tiptoeing through the tulips, OR walking softly beside the graveyard at night so you don’t disturb the dead.

It is understandable.

Yet, when you read the Bible, rather than rushing through HW, to get through it quickly,the B slows down and walks very slowly through that week.

What we had just as soon get through quickly, the B takes very slowly.

In fact, in Matthew alone, nearly 30% of the book is devoted to HW.

PS is such a powerful story and so memorable that it is the 3rd best known story
after the birth narrative of J and the crucifixion/resurrection narrative in the B.

We know the story. We’ve heard it year after year. We can almost tell it verbatim.

PS is a story that leaves us spellbound with its wonder and beauty.

The borrowed Donkey. Our Lord. The Crowds. The waving of the Palm Branches. The cloaks on the ground.

The cheers and cries of the crowd:“Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!”

And your mind comes alive with that scene – as if you had actually been there.

What a wonderful story.

But it is more than just a story.

That is the story that sets in motions the events that lead to J becoming our salvation. J shows up ready – and willing – to be our Savior / the Messiah.

What does PS mean to us today? I can think of three things.

Palm Sunday Means A Time Of:

1. CELEBRATION.

How can PS not be a time of celebration! It is a parade for J – welcoming him to Jerusalem – especially as the Messiah.

There were three groups of people who mingled together along the road that PS.
A. The disciples of J
Who had put their cloaks on the borrowed donkey
Who had followed J into Jerusalem.
Who were leading the cheers for J.

B. The Jews in town to celebrate the Passover – who came out to see J.

C. The Jewish leaders – who were there to keep an eye on J

The palms that were waved and laid on the ground for the donkey carrying J to walk over.

Palms had become a symbol of Israel’s nationalism and hopes.

And now their hopes were being focused on J.

The cloaks were spread on the ground and the donkey walked over them; welcoming a new king and acknowledging his power over them.

In a real sense, the spreading of their cloaks on the ground was their Red Carpet for J.

The “Hosannas” that were shouted out were a Hebrew word that meant: Save us now!
Or as they would have understood it: Save us now from our political enemies.

“Blessed is the King of Israel” OR “Welcome to the Kingdom of our father David.”

These were greetings called out to who they assumed was to be their national liberator.

The response of the Disciples and much of the crowd was: J is the Messiah

The response of the Jewish leadership was: There ain’t no way!

But... The crowds – And the Disciples – had misunderstood J’s purpose on PS

They were looking for the conquering king to set them free from Rome.

Instead, they got J riding on a donkey – a symbol of a servant king – a humble king.

Not everyone was thrilled by the celebration – the PS parade.

The Pharisees certainly weren’t happy about the attention J was getting.

While it is not recorded here, the Roman soldiers couldn’t have been happy either.

In fact, they probably went on heightened alert for a revolution led by J.

But... The celebration ended. And the parade stopped.

The people realized that J had committed an unpardonable sin – in their way of thinking – by not being the kind of Messiah they were expecting.

Not only was PS a time of Celebration – a wonderful parade in J’s honor – it was a time of:

2. CONFRONTATION.

We are told in the B – in the stories before PS – that the Pharisees just didn’t like J.

In fact, they were plotting to find a way to get rid of him. They wanted him dead.

Now there are probably all types of reasons for this:

Jealousy – Envy – Pride – Arrogance

But it is very likely that the primary reason was their concern that J would upset their apple cart w/ Rome.

The Jews had a tenuous truce-like relationship with Rome.

With Rome’s permission, they were able to continue their worship of Jehovah.

This was a privilege Rome rarely granted to a conquered people. You must worship our gods.

But the Jews had been allowed to worship their G.

In their thinking, if J kept stirring things up, that freedom could be taken away from them. And they certainly didn’t want that.

So J rode the donkey into Jerusalem and the crowds praised him and celebrated his arrival.

And as they shouted out their praises to G for J, the Pharisees confronted J:

“Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

Our as we might put it: “For G’s sake, man – and ours – be quiet!”

And J replied: “If they (the crowds) keep quiet, these stones will cry out.”

IE: Somebody has to praise G for J

Isn’t it ironic that even today there are times when people confront J – especially when they find out J is not who they think he is.

Not only was PS a time of Celebration – and Confrontation – it was a time of:

3. COMMITMENT.

The B simply slows down considerably during HW. Even Mark – the fastest paced Gospel – slows down for HW.

In fact, much of the Gospels’ writings are about the events of HW.

Many of the stories and parables that we love and have heard so many times were told by J during HW.

And, in one way or another, many of them dealt with the theme of our Commitment to G.

The parable of The Two Sons

One said he would work in the vineyard – but he didn’t. The other said he wouldn’t work in the vineyard – but he did. It is a story of obedience and commitment.

J told the parable of the Tenants who beat up and killed people so they wouldn’t have to give up what rightfully belonged to the Owner.

And the Pharisees understood that J was talking to them about their commitment to G.

J told the parable of the Wedding Banquet where everyone who had committed to come to the banquet backed out of their commitment. They even killed some of the ones who had been sent to invite them.

And the king brought in people from outside the wedding invitation list. Again, it is a story about commitment.

The story about Caesar’s coin – Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and give to G what is G’s.

The Great Commandment to Love G with all your heart and soul and mind and to love your neighbor as yourself.

The parables of the 10 Virgins and their lamps / The Talents that were used and hidden / The Sheep & Goats

The story about J’s being anointed with oil.

The story about the Vine and the Branches.

All these parables & stories are in one way or another about a person’s commitment to G

In the midst of HW, J calls us to be committed to him.

There is a strong belief among many Xns that J got himself crucified because he refused to be the kind of Messiah the people expected him to be.

They wanted a revolutionary, didn’t they? someone who would come in and free the Jews from Roman occupation. someone who could be a great king like David.

They just didn’t understand the type of Messiah J was saying he was.

The belief is that it was just a case of mistaken identity. J was just not who they thought he was – therefore, he was crucified.

But I believe that the truth of the matter is even more basic than that.

The crowds went from welcoming J on PS to yelling for his death because they knew –
just as we know – exactly who Jesus was.

Before HW is up, ALL of the people there would be united in their ultimate rejection of J.

And it wasn’t just the Jews that were united in their actions against J. It was also the Romans.

It wasn’t just the religious leaders united against J. It was also the ‘common people’ of J’s day.

It wasn’t just Judas – whom we can write off as corrupt and evil. But it was all of J’s Disciples.

Peter – the Faithful Disciple – one of the inner circle of Disc – would deny him three times.

It was all the others Disciples – who fled and hid out of fear for their own lives.

It seemed as if everyone was united in their rejection and abandonment of J.

But J had a different reason for appearing in Jerusalem.

He didn’t come to set up a rival kingdom to Rome.

He came to be crowned with thorns.To be enthroned of a cross. To bring peace between G and humanity.

J came to be our Savior

PS confronts you and me with one more thing.

It says: There Is A Decision WE Must Make.

Today, on PS, as we pause at the doorway of HW, we see the scenes of Celebration and Confrontation and the call for Commitment.

We look through the dark edge of night to the cross. And we can see the entire story of the suffering and pain and death of J.

As we gaze upon our LORD– his arms spread wide in forgiving love –

We must decide: will we accept that Love, will we live in that Love, will we share that Love?

Amen and amen.

Lent 5, March 21, 2010

2010-03-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

Lent 5, March 21, 2010
TEXTS: Isaiah 43:16-21, Philippians 3:4-14, John 12: 1-8

(A sermon preached at the Installation of the Rev. Phil Harkey as pastor of Holy Trinity Lutheran church, Elberton, GA)

In an odd sort of way, today is a day of mixed emotions, of conflictual feelings.

It is the Fifth Sunday in Lent and we are nearing the end of Jesus' journey to the Cross.

As the world emerges from the dark and cold of winter into the light and warmth of spring, our religious tradition calls us deeper into the darkness and gloom of Jesus' suffering and death.

Deepening this feeling of dissonance is the fact that we have gathered here to celebrate the new thing God is doing in Elberton by bringing Pr. Harkey and Holy Trinity Church together in mission and ministry.

Sadness and celebration; darkness and light; the cold of winter and the warmth of spring, the death of Christ and the birth of new hope, all mixed up together in one day.

Just like in our Gospel Lesson.

Here we find Jesus at a meal celebrating the raising of Lazarus, a feast in honor of the fact that Lazarus has been returned from the dead.

Into the midst of this party, Mary comes and anoints Jesus' feet with perfume and wipes them with her hair; an act that symbolically prepares him for death and burial, an act which also upsets everyone present.

It is a complicated story. Let's look at it carefully.

This story is in the beginning of chapter 12 in John. In chapter 11 Jesus is out preaching and teaching when he gets word that Lazarus, his dear friend, is ill. Later he learns that he has died.

The rest of chapter 11 is about how Jesus delayed in going to Lazarus and about how Martha fussed at Jesus for not coming sooner and how when Jesus saw Mary and all the others weeping, he started weeping too, and finally, Jesus went to the tomb and cried out, "Lazarus, come out."

And Lazarus came out, bound up like a Mummy in a bad horror movie; stumbling and smelly but alive.

Chapter 12 opens with the story of a dinner that took place a few weeks later to celebrate Lazarus' amazing return from the dead. Make no mistake about it; this was a party, a fiesta, a banquet.

Where I come from we would have had a pig-picking, a fish-fry, a keg party with fireworks. Pastor Harkey, you're from Charleston, right? We're talking a Low Country shrimp boil. Out on the deck, beach music playing, couples dancing the shag, little kids running around under the boardwalk chasing fireflies, old people sitting in corners talking and watching young people;

And into the midst of this joyous frivolity Mary comes with a gallon of perfume, expensive stuff, worth thirty or forty thousand dollars. And she plops down in front of Jesus and pours this rich and costly perfume all over his feet and then wipes his feet with her hair.

And the music stops, and the dancers freeze and and the old people hush talking and the children stand with their fingers in their mouths and stare while Jesus smiles and lifts Mary up and thanks her for her generosity and her love.

There are a couple of reasons for the stunned reaction on the part of the group, one that is spoken of in the text and one that is not.

1) In the text, Judas says that which everyone else is thinking, "My God, woman, what are you doing? You could have sold that and given the money to the poor."

Jesus reply here is very important. Many times people have used his words, "the poor you always have with you," as an excuse for not helping the poor.

That is definitely NOT what Jesus meant.

Jesus meant that Mary understands his immediate present and near future better than any of them.

She bought the perfume, the nard, for a specific purpose; to anoint his body when he died, and she more than anyone else, knows that Jesus is soon to die.

Her anointing his body at this time shows that she recognizes that by coming to Jerusalem and raising her brother from the dead, he has angered the people who run things and they intend to kill him.

She knows, even if the others don't, that by coming here to this place, at this time, and working this miracle, he has sealed his fate, he has signed his own execution order.

In giving Lazarus life he has assured his own death.

Mary pours out both her gratitude and her grief when she pours the perfume on Jesus' feet.

And when Jesus reminds them that they always have the poor with them, he is reminding them, and us, of our ongoing call and duty to serve the needs of what he calls elsewhere "the least of these my brothers and sisters."

Indeed what he says elsewhere is that when we serve "the least of these," we are personally and directly serving Christ. Rather than being the end of our duty to the poor, this moment with Mary at his feet is really the beginning of a higher call and a wider duty for all of us.

2) The second reason people reacted with shock and dismay is not spoken of in this text, but is easily understood.

Jesus was a single man and a rabbi; "decent women," and "decent rabbis" just didn't touch each other like that. But in her gratitude and her sorrow, Mary had thrown caution to the wind and gave vent to her deepest and most honest feelings about Jesus, her savior and her Lord.

This text calls us to do the same.

It calls us to a deep, deep grief for the death of Jesus; a profound and abiding sorrow for our faults and failures, our evil deeds and iniquitous acts; in a word, our sins, that put him on the cross to bleed and die to save us from ourselves.

It also calls us to a full and rich and sober joy and gratitude for the new life that Christ won for us there.

Martin Luther called it a "sacred exchange," a "divine trade."

On the cross Jesus took on our sins and gave us his holiness.

Upon the cross Jesus died our death and gave us his life.

There on that tree, Jesus accepted our fate and gave us his future.

And in response we are called to weep for our sins and his death and then to pour out our lives in service of Christ through service to the poor and needy of this world.

And Pastor Harkey, it is your particular call, in this place and in this time, to lead these people in doing just that.

In the midst of all the list of things a pastor does; of teaching and preaching and giving the sacraments and visiting the sick and the healthy and involvement in community affairs and bringing new people into the church; underneath all that,

your true call is simply this; lead these people in knowing that Christ has died for them and that in response they are called to die with Christ, pouring out their lives to serve the poor and needy of the world.

Amen and amen.

Lent 4, March 14, 2010

2010-03-12T15:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I've been on a Continuing Education trip to a retreat center near Austin Texas and I'm not preaching Sunday, so I haven't written a sermon this week, which feels very strange. I would like to suggest you go to the menu on the right of this page and click on 2007 and then click on March and then go to the sermon for Lent 4 on this text. It was tolearably good, I think.

New one next week,

peace,

Delmo

Lent Three, march 7, 2010

2010-03-04T16:20:00.001-08:00

Lent Three March 7, 2010
(A sermon preached at Trinity Lutheran Church, Tullahoma, TN)
Text: Luke 13:1-9

Seminary professor Haddon Robinson tells the story of a young woman who talked to her pastor about her sin of pride.

She says, "Pastor, every Sunday I come to church and look around and think to myself that I am the prettiest girl in the church. I try to stop but I just can't. Am I horribly sinful?" Pastor looked at her and said, "No dear not sinful; just horribly mistaken."(1)

In today's Gospel lesson, some folks come to Jesus to talk not about their own sins, but the sins of others. And Jesus tells them that they, like the young woman, are horribly mistaken.

It's important to remember that Chapter 12 of Luke ends with several judgment stories in which Jesus warns his hearers to watch out for signs of the last days.

So it is natural that they should wonder, "Hey Jesus, did you hear about how Pilate marched into the Temple and killed those pilgrims from Galilee because he thought they were rioting? Why did God let that happen? Was it because those people were sinful and were being punished?"

We all understand this question. All pastors have gone to visit the hospital after someone has had a heart attack or a terrible auto accident or a diagnosis of cancer and the question comes, "What did I do to deserve this?"

Just this week my mother called me with what she calls "a preacher question." She has a pastor, but since he's a part-time, retired interim, she doesn't want to bother him, so she calls me, assuming I have more free time.

She said, "Help me know what to tell Roger Culler's grandsons. He was 61, died this week. They're 6 and 9 and want to know why God killed Grandpa. What do I tell them?"

My son, who is a very smart recent college graduate, told me over dinner this week that God was punishing him for going off his Lenten discipline. He had given up fast food for Lent but had dinner in a Burger King on the way to a ball game and got food poisoning. I really couldn't tell if he was serious or not, but told him his worst sin in this case was blaming God for fast food.

In the wake of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, some TV preachers decided they had to figure out what sins the Haitians and Chileans had committed that caused God to punish them.

And to all of this Jesus says, "You are horribly mistaken." Or as verses 3 and 5 put it, 'No, I tell you; but . . ."

Those "buts" are probably the most important words in this text. They signal a turn. A turn away from worrying about the sins and fate of others, and a turn to thinking about our sins and our own fate in life.

UNLESS YOU REPENT, YOU WILL ALL LIKEWISE PERISH!

Jesus turned the crowd away from a discussion of other people's sins and turned it to a focus on their own need for change and repentance.

The theme of our text and the theme of Lent is "turning to and fro with God; turning from fear to faith, from sin to grace, from the world to God.

And focusing on the sin or saintliness of others distracts us from paying attention to our own journey with God.

In the early Twentieth Century, The Times of London, a newspaper read all over England, indeed all over the world; invited famous writers to answer the question: What is wrong with the world?

In response, they got many long essays spelling out both the problems and also, as a bonus, the writer's assessment as to who was to blame.

God, the Devil, the Church, the Communists, the Fascists, White people, Black people, Asians, Hispanics, the Jews, the Germans, the Italians, the Chinese, the Moslems, and the Americans.

It was women, men, the Older Generation and These Young People Today.

GK Chesterton, who wrote the father Brown Mysteries and books on Christianity and published many magazines on culture and politics, wrote:

Dear Sirs,
I AM.
Sincerely,
GK Chesterton (2)

Jesus call to us today is to turn from blaming God, or the world, or others, for what's wrong with the world.

Christ invites us to turn to look at ourselves instead, and then to turn and look to God for help and salvation.

That is really what the word we translate into English as REPENT means; it means to turn, to turn from one way of thinking to another, to turn from going one direction in life to going in a new and different direction.

Luther said that the life of the Christian is a life of daily repentance, a life of constant turning from the world to God and then turning back again from God to go into the world.

The result of this turning is the fruit we bear, the acts of love and kindness to others that our lives produce.

Jesus' parable of the fig tree reminds us that a life of turning to God and then back into the world will produce fruitful lives of generosity and love.

The reprieve given to the unfruitful tree reminds us that God is a God of grace and forbearance and steadfast love, a God of the second chance.

And we all sometimes need this reminder, because all of us are sometimes "horribly mistaken" about the sins of others and the sins of ourselves.

We have an unfortunate tendency to believe our sins are easily forgiven, but those of others, well, "…not so much."

In his series of novels about the small town of Harmony, Indiana, Phillip Gulley's Quaker preacher often reminds his parishioners that, "every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." (3)

Though we Lutherans remember Luther's words about being "saint and sinner at the same time;" we often act as though our saintliness is better than that of others and our sinfulness is not as bad.

We act as though, if it were only our sins that mattered, then Jesus would not have had to die on the cross; just a good, stern talking to would have taken care of it. It was the sins of others that caused Christ to die.

But we are "horribly mistaken." Jesus says to us, "No, I tell you"

Lent is the time to repent of our own sins, not the sins of others.

Lent is a time to plow up the ground, prepare the soil, heap fertilizer onto our souls; seek the Lord's will and way and trust in the Lord's love and forgiveness, love and forgiveness of us and of others.

Lent is also a time to turn from our time with God and to go back into the world bearing fruit, spreading that love and forgiveness to others.

Victor Daley was an Australian poet who died of tuberculosis in 1905.

During his last days he called to his bedside the Nuns who had nursed him.

When he thanked them for their kindness to him, the head nurse, speaking for the others, said, "Don't thank us. Thank the Grace of God."

He looked around the room and smiled and said, "But, aren't you the grace of God!"
(4)

AMEN and AMEN.

1 - "Let My People Laugh," p. 68; Christianity Today, 2009

2 - cited in Phillip Yancey's "Soul Survivor," p. 58; Zondervan, 2001

3 - "A Change of Heart" p. 129; HarperSanFrancisco, 2005

4 - Heard in a preaching student's chapel sermon at Duke over 30 years ago

Epiphany 2, Feb. 28, 2010

2010-02-26T07:29:00.000-08:00

The Second Sunday in Lent
Texts: Luke 13:31-35

My Grandma Hubbard used to get eggs from the Hodges who lived down the dirt road about a mile. When I was about 5 or 6, Grandma and I would walk down there on a cool summer’s evening.

We would sit on the porch and talk and drink lemonade; sometimes I could persuade Mrs. Hodges to play the little pump organ in the living room by agreeing to pump the pedals for her. (Her legs hurt.)

Eventually we would go with Mr. Hodges out past the hen-house to the spring-house, where he kept his eggs (and the family’s milk and butter) in little wire cages submerged in a concrete tank feed by a mountain spring.

We put the eggs in little pails padded with dishcloths and walked home for supper, probably bacon and eggs with biscuit, ‘cause grandma wasn’t particular about exactly when she had breakfast.

She only put a few in my basket, because I was famous for not ever making it home without breaking all the eggs in my pail.

One day we came out of the spring-house and an awful fuss arose in the chicken yard.

There was a raising of dust, and a flurry of feathers and a scattering of hens and chickens, and much screeching and squawking, and then, just as suddenly, things calmed down and an old gray hen emerged with a large black snake in her mouth.

I thought of that day again when I read today’s Gospel lesson. The first thing that leapt out at me was Jesus’ barnyard imagery;

Herod, the king, the worldly power portrayed as a fox in the chicken yard, with Messiah, the Christ, portrayed as a Bold Female, risking all to protect her chicks. It’s an interesting play of images.

As our Gospel lesson begins, Jesus is told that he should be afraid, he should watch out, that the evil King Herod is out to get him.

Jesus appears to be unafraid, of either Herod or dying. It would be appropriate for Jesus to be scared, but Jesus shows no fear, instead he taunts Herod, saying, come and get me, or better yet, I’ll come to you.

No true prophet can die outside Jerusalem.

At the mention of Jerusalem, Jesus’ tone changes.

He cries over the people, laments their misguided rejection of God’s messengers of truth and love.

And then comes this most startling image: God, Christ, as a Mother Hen protecting her children from the evil fox in their midst.

Jerusalem is Israel and Israel is us, all of us, all of humanity.

The truth is that God has loved us, all of us,
from the very beginning,
from the time of creation,
from the time of Noah and the flood,
from the time of Abram and Sari and the Promise, from the time of Moses and Miriam and the Exodus, from the time of Deborah
and the other judges of Israel
and the kings and queens
and prophets and psalmists,
God has loved the world
and sent us signs and wonders
and messages of that love.

And all too often, we have failed to understand or respond to that love.

All too often, we have turned God’s Word of love into a life of hate, we have turned God’s call to repentance into pointing fingers and a call to arms.

The sly fox of the world has turned us away from that which is good and eternal and has pulled us in the direction of those things which satisfy now but do not linger and live with us for an eternity with God.

If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the sadness in Jesus’ voice here.

If you’ve ever watched someone waste their life away on drugs or booze or bad relationships or chasing after material possessions or honors or notoriety or celebrity, or something.

Something undefined but just around the corner that will, they hope, make them whole and complete and healed, but which is never there; then you know the pain Jesus feels.

For you cannot save them, you cannot make them change, you cannot make anyone give up the things that are ruining them.

All you can do is open your arms, you cannot make anyone walk into them. (Repeat)

And, it is the most vulnerable posture in the world, arms spread, chest exposed.

Or, to continue Jesus’ Mother Hen imagery, Wings spread, Breast exposed.
It is interesting that this turns out to be the way Jesus died in Jerusalem, Wings spread, Breast exposed.

Jesus was able to face down and laugh at Herod the fox because he had faith in the God of Promise, the God who promises and follows through, Jesus had faith in the God who promised Abram and Sarai that they would have a Son and that they would be the parents of a people who filled the earth.

Jesus was able to go to the cross because he believed the Psalmists when he said,

The LORD is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear? The LORD is the stronghold of my life - of whom shall I be afraid?

In the middle of the night, when the fox is loose in the henhouse of our lives, we grow fearful and we wonder: where is God, will God come?

And Jesus is the promise that YES! God comes.

She boldly comes across the chickenyard - clucking and screeching, Wings spread, Breast Exposed!

She comes, to rescue, protect, save her children.

Yes, God comes, that is the promise Jesus made and that is the promise Jesus kept upon the cross,

where he sheltered us from the devil’s wrath and saved us from ourselves so that we might live forever in God’s love.

Amen and Amen.

Lent 1, Feb. 21, 2010

2010-02-19T07:43:00.000-08:00

LENT I
February 21, 2010
Text: Luke 4:1-13

(A sermon preached at Christ Lutheran Church, Prattville, AL.)

Several years ago someone gave me a tee-shirt that I absolutely loved. I wore it so much I wore it out.

Just the other day, I was dusting the furniture and found its remnants in the rag box. It read:

“To do is to be” – PLATO
“To be is to do” – DESCARTES
“Dobedobedo” - SINATRA

What we do, how be behave, what we believe; is a large part of how others define us.

Pastor, teacher, housewife, student, musician, funny, quiet, aggressive, talkative, etc.

And how we define ourselves has a major effect on how we behave.

It is, at times, a chicken and the egg question.

Which came first? Am I a Pastor because I do pastoral things; or do I do pastoral things because I am a Pastor?

The biblical position is that we act out of our identity; that who we believe ourselves to be is the determining factor in what we choose to do.

Have you ever noticed that when someone behaves in an outrageous or improper or, most often, horribly RUDE manner, the first thing people say is: “Well, just who do you think you are?”

That is the right question. Who we think we are shapes our behavior.

And the Bible shows us that Satan knew this. That is why he challenged Jesus on the point of identity in today’s Gospel lesson.

The key to understanding the story of the temptations lies in the THREE little words: IF YOU ARE.

In the last verse of Chapter Three, verse 22, following Jesus’ baptism, a voice comes from heaven and says,

“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

And here just a few days later, the devil says, “If you are the Son of God.”

Satan presents Jesus with the opportunity to define what it means to be the Son of God;

He is given the opportunity to win popularity by turning stones into bread,
feeding the masses and feeding his ego at the same time,

He is given the opportunity to achieve great power by worshipping the devil and turning his back on trusting God to provide.

He is given the opportunity to achieve great fame by throwing himself off the temple and showing himself to be God’s Chosen One by letting the angels catch him.

These temptations invite Jesus to imitate the Emperors in Rome who secured power by giving the people free food and free entertainment, winning their favor with bread and gladiators.

The temptations with which Jesus was faced are the very ones we, you and I, fall victim to on a regular, I would almost say, a daily basis.

In little subtle ways we seek popularity or power or possessions as a way of hedging our bets against the uncertainty of the world.

After all, we live in an age in which terrorists strap on bombs and blow up innocent people, stock markets plunge and housing prices fall, where wars rage and tornados strike and earthquakes break open the very ground beneath our feet.

A little control over our own lives and a bit of money securely invested, what’s wrong with that?

It comes down to a matter of faith, of trust, of belief and confidence in the promises of God to love and care for us throughout life’s trials and temptations.

The problem is: the things the Devil wanted Jesus to do as the Son of God are selfish, and self-serving and ultimately self-glorifying.

And Jesus rejected them because being centered on self is inconsistent with being the Christ, the Beloved, the Son of God, the one sent to save others.

It was during the forty days in the wilderness that Jesus struggled with what it meant to be the Son of God.

When he became clear about that identity, he came out of the wilderness, and began to preach the Kingdom of God and to perform mighty acts of healing and exorcism.

In the forty days in the wilderness, Jesus found out who he was and came forth ready to behave in accord with his identity.

When Jesus knew who he was, the question of what he was to do was already answered.

To be the Christ, the Son of God, laid out for him a path to follow, a way of being in the world that led to certain things to do.

Preaching. Healing. Confronting Evil.

Throughout these forty days of Lent we are called to contemplate the life of Jesus, his path of service and obedience to God, his living out his identity as the Son of God.

As we do that, we must ask ourselves some identity questions, personally and congregationally.

Who am I? Who am I, really? And what is God calling me to do?

Who are we? Who are we, really? And what is God calling us to do?

Not too long ago I turned on the TV to watch a ballgame and caught the tail end of an old episode of LAW AND ORDER.

Two lawyers, one white, one black, were sitting in a book lined office, having a drink and discussing the just ended case.

The Black lawyer said, “I used to think I was a lawyer who happened to be Black. Now I feel more like a Black man who happens to be a lawyer.”

It is a question of identity that will shape his life and work.

Who am I? Am I a lawyer, or doctor, or policeman, or office manager, or teacher, or truck-driver or nurse, or retiree who happens to be a Christian?

Or am I a Christian; who happens to be a lawyer or doctor or policeman, etc.

It is an important question, and the answer will shape your life.

Likewise, as a congregation, as a community, we struggle with identity questions.

Who are we, really? Are we a gathering of like-minded people, a little ELCA Lutheran enclave in Prattville?

If so, then the things we do should be designed to take care of ourselves.

Or are we a people whom God has called together to be the Body of Christ, as Luther says in the Small Catechism: Called, gathered, empowered and sent?

Called to be a Christian, gathered around Word and Sacrament, Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Sent into the world to spread the Love of God.

If that is who we are (and I believe it is) then the things we do will be designed to care for others.

Jesus spent forty days in the Wilderness struggling with the question of identity, struggling to discover what it meant to be the Son of God.

Throughout the forty days of Lent, we are called to do the same.

We must ask ourselves,

If we are the beloved children of God, what is God calling us to do?

Christ Church, Prattville; just WHO do you think you are?

Amen and amen.

To my readers

2010-02-15T20:38:00.000-08:00

The title "To My Readers," seems a bit pretentious to me, especially since I am generally surprised to find out I have readers!

I preached Epiphany 4 and 5 at the Episcopal Church here in Hayesville and the second week someone asked why I had not posted the previous week's sermon.

So, tonight, I have caught up by posting Epiphany 4 and Transfiguaration and a little serio-comic piece I did on Shrove Tuesday and Mardi Gras.

Thing is, I'm not smart enough to do them in correct chronological order, but you all are smart enough to figure it out.

I really would like to know who's reading this and if it is something I should keep doing. So, please email me at delmer.chilton@gmail.com and let me know you're reading and whether you'd like me to continue writing.

thanks,

delmer

Epiphany Four

2010-02-15T20:36:00.000-08:00

Epiphany Four, January 31, 2010
Luke 4:21-30

My friend Sam Dixon died in the Earthquake in Haiti. He was a UMC minister who was the Director of the UM Relief agency UMCOR.

At his Memorial Service in Raleigh last week, a Methodist lay preacher used an illustration that really struck me.

He said that he and the Rev. Dixon had attended a workshop on Church Growth and that the presenter had talked about the familiar paintings of Jesus Knocking at the Door

We've all seen them in homes and in churches; Jesus knocking at the door of a 18th century cottage.

Most of us, most of the time, have seen that painting as symbolic of Jesus knocking at the door of our hearts, seeking to come in.

At this workshop, the Presenter, Professor Ken Callahan from Candler School of Theology, had suggested that while that was true, there was also another way to think about that painting.

"Perhaps", he said, "Jesus is knocking at the door of our lives, inviting us to come out of our private concerns and to get ourselves involved in the world's needs and hurts and pains."

GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR
RELEASE TO THE CAPTIVES
RECOVERY OF SIGHT TO THE BLIND
THE OPPRESSED GO FREE
THE YEAR OF THE LORD'S FAVOR

As we heard in last week's Gospel lesson; that is Jesus' self-identified job description.
It is our job description too.

To understand what happened in today's Gospel Lesson, we have to go back to the middle of chapter three and recall what has been going on in Jesus' life.

Jesus had responded to the call of John by getting baptized,
the Holy Spirit came upon him,
he is declared the Beloved Son of God.
Then the Spirit leads him into the Wilderness,
where he resists the Devil’s temptations to fame and power,
then, still full of the Spirit,
he returns to Galilee and begins preaching and healing.

Then he comes to Nazareth, his hometown, and goes to the Synagogue and reads the text from Isaiah about being the Lord’s anointed, and then, our scripture begins.

Jesus says - Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Many commentators believe that this is not all that he said, but rather it is a synopsis of what he said; a summary of the short homily, or talk, or teaching Jesus gave in the synagogue that day.

At first people were pretty impressed. Verse 22 says, “All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” They are simply impressed, and not a little surprised.

Like the old men in Mount Airy will tell you about going to school with Andy Griffith, “Shoot, I knew him when he was a snot-nosed kid. We went to school together over there on Rockford Street. He warn’t nothing special. A little prissy to tell you the truth, always singing and acting and playing that trombone and such.”

It is in verses 23-27 that he makes them mad. Again, this is a shortened version of the discussion. Apparently they were pleased with his preaching, but they had heard that he had done miracles and healings elsewhere and they wanted him to do some for them.

And Jesus refused, Why? Because all they wanted was a show, an exhibition.
They weren’t interested in people being healed, they wanted to be entertained,
Jesus was having none of it.

And so, we can read between the lines and hear them saying things like, Who do you think you are? What’s the matter, you too good for us now? You gone off to the city and now you’re too big to do miracles for us?

This is where a nasty line from Mark’s version of the story comes into play, instead of Son of Joseph, Mark has them call him “Mary’s boy.” That’s another way of saying, "We haven't forgotten about the questions about who your Daddy is." Small towns are all alike in some things.

Jesus responds with two Hebrew Bible stories of healing. Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath
and Elisha and Namaan. What’s important here is that both the widow of Zarephath and Namaan were gentiles, foreigners, aliens.

Jesus points out that there were many widows and lepers in Israel, but God chose to use Elijah and Elisha to heal the outsiders, and God has chosen Jesus to bring God’s love to everybody, not just the Children of Israel.

This made them really mad. So mad that they ran him out of town and tried to kill him, but he mysteriously got away

Now, here’s the question for us today.

Are we like the people of Nazareth, pleased with Jesus as long as what he says sounds good to us, but turning our backs on him when he says things we don’t like?

Now, most of us would never come right out and say we disagree with Jesus, so we basically use wiggle room to avoid it.

Whenever we hear something we don’t like coming out of Jesus’ mouth, we blame it on somebody other than Jesus: the professors, the liberals, the over-educated preachers, the bleeding hearts, the conservatives,the fundamentalists.

Anything but admitting that Jesus said it, and I’m supposed to deal with it. For example, I’ll admit it; I’m a little hard-hearted about poor people and homeless people. My heart sneers; get a job, go to work, get busy. If you’re poor, it’s your own fault.

Despite a UNC and Duke education and years of prayer and Bible study and living with a Social Worker for 35 years, somewhere in a place I don’t visit very often, deep in my soul,
I still feel that way.

And yet Jesus said The Holy Spirit had anointed him to preach Good News to the poor.

He told the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give it to the poor.

There is the great judgment parable in which Jesus said, “If you did unto one of the least of these, the cold, the hungry, the naked, the poor, you did it unto me.”

And many more things about the poor and my, our obligation to them.

We have to deal with that.

Do we sort of ignore it or do we get mad about it, and turn our backs on Jesus, like the people of Nazareth?

Or do we swallow our pride and obey our master?

Have we stopped listening to Jesus?

He says many things about loving the stranger and the foreigner, about turning the other cheek, about living a life of prayer, about selling what we have and giving it to the poor, about the Kingdom of God being inside us, etc. etc.

Here’s the question, do we take Jesus seriously?

Or are we giving him the yada, yada treatment, nodding and smiling, but not really listening, putting him off and putting him on?

I hope not. I really hope not. But listening to Jesus is hard. Many things he says challenge us; challenge our ideas and our prejudices and our actions.

But Jesus also invites us, invites us to think about things in a new way, to think about others in a new way, to act toward others in a new way.

Jesus invites us to join him in living in the world by the rules of the Kingdom of God, not the rules of earthly success and happiness.

Jesus invites us to join him in blessing the world with God’s grace and acts of healing and love.

Jesus invites us to join him in going out to all lands and all peoples with the great Good News that the Kingdom of God has come and we are all invited to be a part of it.

So, Jesus invites us to walk the way of the cross; are you coming?

Amen and amen.

Transfiguration

2010-02-15T20:33:00.000-08:00

TEXTS: Exodus 34:29-35,
II Corinthians 3:12-4:2
Luke 9:28-36

TITLE: The Hidden-ness of the Holy

Almost every Saturday afternoon, I listen to the opera on the Public Radio Station.

Don’t look so surprised. I like opera; not as much as I like Lynard Skynard or ZZ Topp, but I like opera.

Well, actually I don’t like opera, but I do like the idea of liking opera; deep down inside I fell like an educated person SHOULD like opera, and sooo;

On Saturday afternoon’s I listen to opera; kind of on the same theory as your mother had when she kept feeding you liver and asparagus,

hoping that one day you would come in and when she said, “What would you like for dinner?,” you would say, “How about some yummy liver and asparagus?”

Not gonna happen, but hope springs eternal in the human breast.

Anyway, I listen to opera in the vague hope that someday I’ll like it and can then count myself as a genuinely educated and cultured person.

Every once in a while, I find myself liking a piece, nodding along and getting into it and thinking, “Gee, I beginning to like this opera stuff.”

But then I realized that the opera pieces I liked were the ones they used as soundtracks for Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd cartoons, and I was back to square one;

I still didn’t like opera; I was just engaging in nostalgia about my childhood.

It seems to me that many people are seeking after Spiritual Enlightenment in much the same way that I have been seeking Musical Enlightenment; it’s something they’ve heard about, many of the better people have had these experiences, so they believe they ought to have them too.

So, they go seeking after the next new thing; the latest prayer techniques and the different churches and the praise bands and labyrinth walks and Alpha Bible Study and the Men’s drum-beating Sweat Lodge, and I don’t know what all.

Whatever they’re looking for, it isn’t where they are, it must be over the hill or around the next corner.

Some of this can be traced to biblical stories like today’s scripture lessons, which tell us about extra-ordinary spiritual events.

In our First Lesson, Moses goes up on the mountain and meets God in cloud and devouring fire.

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus goes up the mountain with Peter, James and John; and while there is TRANSFIGURED, whatever that means.

And in our Second Lesson, Paul refers to Moses and the veil.

Somehow, some people are always looking for something more, something electric and kinetic and spine tingling to happen to them religiously.

Which is okay, those things do happen, sometimes, to some people.

What is not okay is when one believes that such experiences are what religion in general and Christianity in particular are all about.

What is not okay is when people think that unless one has had such an experience, one has not really encountered the HOLY.

The truth of the matter is that religion is NOT about seeking after the extraordinary, not about the quest for the next new spiritual high, not about looking for an experiential fix of the Holy to carry one through another drab and ordinary week.

NO! Religion is about seeing, and feeling and hearing and respecting the Holy in, with and under the ordinary-ness of our daily lives.

To be religious is not a matter of being otherworldly;

to be religious is to be uniquely grounded in this world, seeing the very stuff of life as the very stuff of God.

Where are we to find the Holy?

On Mountaintops and in Sweat Lodges?

Where are we to look for God’s presence in our lives?

Well, you don’t have to go to the mountaintop; it’s all around you, all the time. We know this. It’s shown to us in our sacraments.

The water in the font, the water in which we baptize.
It’s ordinary water. It’s the same water that goes into the drinking fountain, the same water that flushes the toilet.
It’s just water.

What makes it holy? The use makes it holy. We use it to baptize a child, we speak the promise of Christ, and in with that water we bring a new child into Covenant with God and into Community with us.

Look at this wafer. It’s just a little whole-wheat flour and water. We buy them by the thousands. It’s not very good to eat; if you’re not careful, it will stick to the roof of your mouth.

And this, its just wine, grapes fermented and bottled and sold at the liquor store along with Budweiser Beer and Jack Daniel's Whiskey.

It’s good wine, good with dinner, but it’s nothing special or extraordinary, not until we make Eucharist out of it.

What makes it holy? What turns this ordinary stuff into the Body and Blood of Christ? Not me, not Pastors Scott and Mark.
I don’t have magical powers, and neither do they.

It’s us; us and God together; God promising and acting and our believing and celebrating which reveals the Holy within the ordinary.

That’s what happened to Jesus up on that mountain.

Jesus was a man, just like every other man; smarter, holier than most perhaps, but still very much a fully human person.
Even though the disciples called him Rabbi, Christ even, they still saw him as a man. And then this thing happened. And then they knew; Peter James and John knew; that here was the Divine, the Holy, in human form.

And we too are ordinary people, doing ordinary things. We too, as a church, as a community of faith, as the Body of Christ in the world, we too carry in, with and under our human-ness, the brightness of the Holy-ness of God.

We don’t have to go looking for it; we don’t have to struggle after extraordinary spiritual experiences. God is here with us in all that we do.

Our calling is to pay attention; to listen, look, feel and know that God is here, in this place, and in all our places:

at home, at work, at church, at school. God is present with us in the world, all we have to do is lift the veil and look for the Holy with the eyes of the heart.

AMEN AND AMEN.

Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras

2010-02-15T20:31:00.000-08:00

Shrove Tuesday/Mardi Gras Meditation
Text: Romans 7: 14-25
Title: Shriven or Fat?

OPENING:
When I was a kid growing up in Mount Airy, NC; I had absolutely no knowledge or experience of the church year. We had a Christmas play on the Sunday night before Christmas and Easter just kind of showed up one Sunday with no preliminaries and had more to do with Sunrise Service at the Moravian Cemetery and the Easter Egg Hunt during Sunday School and my sisters and mother having new dresses than anything else. We were not a liturgical people.

My favorite place to shop when I was a kid was the Robby's Army/Navy Surplus store on Main Street. Most Fridays I went to town with Mama when she went to "get her hair fixed," and went to Robby's to look at manly men stuff and to occasionally buy a knife or a shirt or something.

Across the street from Robby's was Trinity Episcopal Church; a tiny stone building that seated maybe 50 people and had a Fellowship Hall downstairs. Every year I was fascinated to see the sign go up in their yard advertising "Shrove Tuesday Pancake Dinner and Ash Wednesday Service" Two different days; one sign.

Nobody I knew could tell me what that was all about; not parents or teachers or even my preacher. The best anyone could do was my Baptist Deacon Grandaddy who said, "I reckon it's the way them 'Piskipalians has a revival and a fellowship dinner." Close enough, I'd say, for an opinion formed out of almost complete ignorance of the subject; a technique I have inherited and exploited with children over the years.

At about the same time, I became acquainted with the New Orleans tradition of Mardi Gras, mostly through my devout Aunt Ethel; who gave me Evangelical Tracts and Paperback books for Birthday and Christmas presents until she died when I was forty. (She was still hoping I would turn my back on my obvious crypto-Catholicism and accept Jesus.)

It was in a somewhat lurid paperback description of the soul-saving work of the Rev. Bob Harrington, known to his admirers as the "Chaplain of Bourbon Street." The only religious effect it had on me was making me consider going into the Baptist Ministry just so I could attend New Orleans Baptist Seminary.

It was only in Seminary that I began to connect the dots between Shrove Tuesday and Mardi Gras. Here's this from The Oxford Encyclopedia of Christianity.

On the eve of Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, the season of fasting, people first went to confession, to be "shriven," hence Shrove Tuesday, and then ate pancakes, to use up the ingredients forbidden during Lent. This turned into a longer period of pre-Lent celebration, known as Carnival or Mardi Gras. P. 468

Although I admit to having a little fun with this, I don't think it far-fetched of me to see the two different ways of observing this day as being more than a cultural difference between the repressed and dour English and Northern Europeans on the one hand and the more "party-hearty" attitude of the French and the other Mediterranean peoples on the other.

We all find it difficult to figure out how seriously to take sin; our own and that of others. We know we're not as good as we could be; or maybe should be.

But also, most of us are unwilling to admit being as bad as some other people think we are; or conversely, as bad as we think some other people are.

No matter how we have failed our own ethical and moral standards, we are all of us more than willing to look around and say, "Well, Lord, at least I'm not as bad as that person. At least I didn't do THAT!"

And so, we come up to Lent with two attitudes:

One is represented by being Shriven. We look at Lent as a time to grow spiritually, to pray, and read and draw closer to God. We see this time before Lent as a time of solemn contemplation and sober reflection; well represented by eating damp and tepid pancakes and half-cooked sausage on a paper plate that folds up and spills syrup on the Fellowship Hall table as you sit uncomfortably in your folding chair and sip bad coffee from a Styrofoam Cup.

The other is represented by getting FAT. By the wonderful phrase "Let the good times Roll!"
We have to go through this Lenten time of restriction and restraint, so we'd best get the partying out of our system before it starts.

To tell you the truth, I'm not exactly sure which of these represents Saint and which Sinner in Luther's famous simul Justus et Peccator; saint and sinner at the same time.

What I am really clear about is that each of us is just that; saint and sinner at the same time,
each of us struggles with it; each of us seeks the good, and all too often fails; fails to see it in others or to achieve it in ourselves.

And the gospel is; God loves us anyway, yes indeed, God loves us anyway;
Ye that do truly and earnestly repent of your sins, LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!

Amen and amen.

Epiphany 5 - Feb. 7, 2010

2010-02-06T15:11:00.000-08:00

The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
February 7, 2010

A Sermon Preached at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Hayesville, NC

It was during Lent, 25 years ago. I was the pastor of a very old Lutheran church in north of Charlotte. North Carolina.

On the wall of the apse, above the altar, there was a stained glass window in the shape of a cross lit by light bulbs.

One Wednesday afternoon I was putzing around the altar getting things ready for mid-week service when I noticed that one of the bulbs had gone out.

I resolved to change it, but, as often happens with me, I got distracted and forgot about it until the middle of the pre-service Fellowship Meal.

I excused myself and went into the church and then upstairs and opened a little door in the hall like the door Alice went through in Wonderland, got down on my knees to change the bulb. This is when I saw Seth.

Seth wasn't a bad kid; he was just six, and mischievous, he got into things.

This night Seth had gone into the church alone and he was pulling the big, heavy pulpit chair over to the front of the altar.

The altar was set for Communion, in country Lutheran fashion; with a plate full of wafers, a stack of trays and a cup of wine already set out under a sheer, white veil.

In a moment I realized what Seth was doing; he wanted to get a look at that table, and I visualized him pulling everything down on his head and falling out of the chair, etc. etc.

So, without thinking I barked out; "Seth, get down from there, you're going to hurt yourself!"

I will never forget the look of sheer terror that washed over Seth's face as he jerked his head up and looked into the face of Jesus staring down at him from above the Altar.

He started crying and yelling "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" and ran out of the room.

I left what I was doing and followed Seth out of the Church, across the parking lot into the Fellowship Hall, where he was weeping into his grandmother's large and welcoming lap.

Grandma, Grandma, Grandma; Jesus yelled at me. I want to go home NOW!

Isaiah said, Woe is me!. . I am LOST, for I am a man of unclean lips! . . .

And Peter, falling at Jesus' knees, says, Go away from me LORD, for I am a sinful man.

IT IS A FEARFUL THING TO FALL INTO THE HANDS OF THE LIVING GOD.
So says the writer of the book of Hebrews. A fearful thing. Be careful.

Coming to church would be easy if we could think of it as the weekly meeting of the religiously inclined.

A musically augmented study group to examine the latest findings of the theologians and scholars of antiquity.

Or perhaps a ritual dinner to keep alive the memory of a departed and influential leader and hero.

BUT NO. That is not what we do here. To gather here is to take the risk of falling into the hands of the Living God.

Make no mistake about it; the love of the living God can blow your life to bits, can turn your world upside down, can turn you inside out; can send you screaming into the arms of your Grandma, GET ME OUT OF HERE NOW!

This may be why we often tiptoe around in God's presence, why we turn our churches into carpeted living rooms, our pews into padded sofas.

We are fearful that if we talk too loudly we might wake up this Living God, so we form our worship into a comfortable thing, a friendly thing, a reassuring thing.

It's only church, it's only Sunday, it's only Jesus, meek and mild; nothing to worry about.

Isaiah knew better, and in our better moments, so do we. We know that to really stand in the presence of the Living God is to be brought to your knees.

Woe is me, I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips . . .

Here in this room, facing this Altar, and this Cross, singing a hymn, praying the liturgy; our defenses begin to crumble.

Our pretensions melt away and we realize that we ARE, right now and right here; in the presence of the Living God,

And that it is both a wonderful and a fearful thing.

Standing here, face to face with God, with one who is so good, so just, so holy, we like Peter fall to our knees and cry out:

Go away from me, LORD, for I am sinful. .

It is not any particular sin that brings us to our knees, no long forgotten indiscretion or well hidden peccadillo. It is not our sins and faults and failures that slay us.

It is rather the sudden awareness of the great and unbridgeable distance between who we are and who God is.

UMC bishop Will Willimon says that there are two ways to be terrified of God.
1 - You can be afraid of God because you believe God is cruel and harsh and you must not slip up for fear of punishment; or 2 - God is so wonderfully loving that you deeply regret all the ways you have betrayed that love.

As we gaze into the face of God, we see our reflection in God's eyes. We see every moment of our lives, every secret thought, all the good little things we have done for bad little reasons, all the pain and hurt and sorrow we have endured in ourselves and produced in others. Face to face with God, we see every second of our lives tick, tick, tick away.

And in that moment, we cannot stand to stand there in front of God. It is too much; it is too brutally honest and holy. We seek to flee back into the comfortable façade of normality. We cry out to God;

Depart from me, leave me; Grandma, I want to go home, NOW!

But God refuses to leave us or let us go. God looks at us with tender eyes; god examines us with what the writer of Ephesians calls "the eyes of the heart,"
God casts upon us a look of mercy and release.

The Living God is no cold mirror of judgment. NO, the Living God is the Lord of love. God touched the unclean lips of Isaiah and turned him into a great prophet.

Isaiah was wrong, he was not lost; when he met God in the temple, he had just that moment been found.

Jesus called Peter to be a disciple, to be a catcher of people. Jesus refuses to leave this self-proclaimed sinful man.

Jesus forgives this sinful man.

Jesus even forgives this sinful man when he denies Jesus three times.

Why? Because when the Living God gets hold of you, you are not going to get loose.

We are called today into the presence of the living God. It is truly a fearful thing to be called into that presence; to be summoned into a meeting with your Creator.

It is a fearful thing; but it is not a bad thing. Indeed it may be the best thing that ever happens to any of us.

Standing there, face to face with Good, we will discover how very much we are loved, how very precious we are to God, and what a very important job God has for us to do.

For we, like Isaiah, are called to go into the world bearing in our lives and on our lips the message of the Living God's unending love.

And we, like Peter, are called upon to become catchers of people, snaring them from the depths of despair and bringing them into God's fearful, yet wonderful, presence.

And the only question is, will we, like Isaiah, say,

Here I am Lord, SEND ME!

Amen and amen.

Epiphany 3, January 24, 2010

2010-01-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

EPIPHANY THREE
January 24, 2010

(A sermon preached at Christ Lutheran Church, Cullman, AL)

One thing that my home state of North Carolina and your state of Alabama have in common is colorful politicians and funny stories about them.

Thad Eure was secretary of State in NC for over 50 years. He called himself "the oldest rat in the democratic barn."

He used to tell a story about a man running for governor who was politicking and speechifying at a huge outdoor rally down east of Raleigh.

They were serving a big dinner of pork barbecue and fried chicken with all the necessary accoutrements.

As the candidate made his way through the serving line, he received on piece of chicken, a little bitty, scrawny, no-account piece; a wing or a back or something.

He smiled his politician's smile and asked the serving woman for another piece.

Without looking up she said, "One per person."

He smiled again and looked around to make sure everyone saw how nice he was being and said,

"Yes, but it's an awfully small piece and I'm a right big man. Could I please have another piece?"

Again she said, "One per person."

At this point the candidate got a little huffy and said,
"Hey, look. Do you know who I am?"

She said. "NO, but I know who I am. I'm the chicken lady, and I said one per person!"

Today's Gospel lesson is about knowing who you are.

More particularly, it's about Jesus knowing who he is and what he is called to do.

And it is also about our knowing who we are and what God has called us to do.

Our identity as a Christian people flows out of Jesus' identity as the Christ of God, and what we are called to do flows out of what Jesus was called to do.

As we look at this story, it is important to place it in its proper context.

The outline of the story in Luke goes like this:

John the Baptist is Preaching and Baptizing.

Lots of people are coming to get baptized

One of these people is Jesus.

After Jesus gets baptized:

- the Spirit descends on him like a dove
and he is declared to be:
THE BELOVED SON OF GOD.

- the Spirit leads him into the wilderness:
WHERE HE IS TEMPTED BY THE DEVIL.

- THEN our text begins -
"filled with the power of the Spirit:"
HE TEACHES AROUND GALILEE

- he goes to the synagogue (HIS HABIT)
and reads and preaches/teaches about
THE SPIRIT ANOINTING HIM FOR MINISTRY

Now, immediately after this, following the section we read, his friends and neighbors get very upset by his sermon and run him out of town; really, they meant of kill him, but he got away.

What are we to make of this strange story?

How can we begin to understand what this means for us here today.

There are two things I want to focus on here:
one is identity and the other is activity.

We'll take them in turn.

First: is the business of the Spirit and Identity.

As I retold the last half of chapter 3 and the beginning of chapter 4 in Luke, I purposely emphasized the role of the Holy Spirit.

What Jesus was about in life was rooted in the leading of the Spirit, the power of the Spirit and the comfort of the Spirit.

All too often we in church act as though what happens in the life of the church is up to us.

We take a bow in God's direction and say a prayer or two for guidance, but we go about the church's business relying on our own ideas and interests and abilities.

We forget that even Jesus was dependent upon the Spirit; who are we to think or act as though we can go it alone, get by without it?

In the Bible, FORTY is a number that symbolizes a long time, usually a long time of testing and waiting and getting clear spiritually.

Think about the children of Israel being in the wilderness for 40 years, the rain fell on Noah's ark for 40 days and nights, etc. etc.

When the bible says Jesus was in the wilderness 40 days, it means he spent a great deal of time in prayer and study and spiritual discipline, seeking to know exactly what it was that God was calling him to be and do.

Biblical Scholar and Anglican bishop Tom Wright points out that what we sometimes call an "inspired" performance (that is "full of the Spirit") is usually the result of long years of practice and preparation.

A great musician, a fine actor, a superb athlete; none of them appears on the world's stage without the blood, sweat and tears of long years of dedicated work to get ready.

Jesus had spent the time in prayer and study to be prepared the moment God called upon him to come forth as the Lord's anointed. When the Spirit came upon him, he was ready to receive it.

We are called to do no less. We are called to be prepared, to be ready, to be open to the Spirit.

And the only way to do that is to take seriously our call to study the Bible and to pray and to seek God's will in and with the community of the faithful.

It is not by accident that it was Jesus' habit and custom to go to the synagogue.

He didn't go there because they were "the friendliest church in town," (they most certainly were not.)

He didn't go there because his Mama and his brothers and sisters and his cousins were there (though they were.)

Jesus went there to pray, to hear God's word read and explained, to discuss God's word with others, and to prepare for those times when God called upon him to do something extraordinary.

And, when that moment came, Jesus was ready.

I said there were two things: The first has to do with preparing for and receiving the leading off the Spirit.

The second is to examine the nature of the task Jesus was called upon to perform.

A pastor friend of mine likes unusual church signs. He especially likes the ones that are unintentionally funny.

He called me up recently and told me he had seen a sign on a church that said in big letters GOD CARES FOR YOU.

Underneath in small letters, it said, Sundays, 10 AM Only.

My friend said, "Since God only cares for me at 10 AM on Sunday, will you care for me the rest of the time?"

The things that Jesus is called to say and do as the Lord's Anointed shout out to the world: GOD CARES FOR YOU!

Good News to the Poor, Release to the Captives, Recovery of sight to the Blind, Freedom for the Oppressed.

As the followers of the Christ, we too are called to care, not just on Sundays but all the time. We are called to find ways to love the world in the name of Christ.

We are called as individuals, as family members, as students and teachers, as butchers and bakers and candle-stick makers; and we are called as the church, as a community of faith.

We are called to find ways to do these very things Jesus talks about in the Bible. To do any less is to back away from our calling to take up the cross and follow Jesus.

When I was a kid, Yogi Berra of the Yankees was my favorite baseball player.

When I got older, I grew even fonder of him as I read in the sports pages some of what were called "Yogisms," things he said that did, and didn't, make sense.

That restaurant's so crowded nobody goes there anymore.

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Anybody who is popular is bound to be disliked.

This is my all time favorite:

If you don't know where you're going, you might end up someplace else.

It is very clear that Jesus knows who he is and where he is going.

He is the Lord's anointed called into the world to save the world.

The question today is: Do we know who we are and what we are called to do?

Amen.

January 17, 2010 - Epiphany 2, Lectionary 2

2010-01-15T14:15:00.000-08:00

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 17, 2010

A sermon preached at Cross of Life Lutheran Church, Roswell, GA, the sunday before new pastor arrives.

Some years ago I heard a story about an Italian trying to start a vineyard up Northeast of here a ways, on the other side of Sewanee.

The County Commissioners were a bunch of good Southern Christians, and at that time that county was dry, like most of the rest of rural Georgia, and the Commissioners were none too keen on granting a permit for such a business.

The man from Italy was very confused by their attitude. Most of all, he could not understand how making wine could be considered un-Christian.

"After all," he said, "did not Our Lord turn water into wine at the wedding of Cana in Galilee?"

Wall, that remark sure got'em stirred up. Every good southern evangelical was very clear on the reality that though Jesus may have turned the water into what they CALLED wine, it was not wine as we know it; it was grape juice, unfermented,, non-alcoholic; the recipe for which was lost from Biblical times until the 1800's; when a dentist and Methodist communion steward named Welch rediscovered it.

(That's mostly true; Welch's grape juice was originally created as non-alcoholic communion wine. The whole jams and jellies thing came later.)

Anyway, the Italian Catholic vintner stood there in amazement as the folks argued among themselves until the chair used his gavel and called for order and said,

"Well, I have researched this thing and I have to say there was no such thing as unfermented grape juice in bible times. They didn't have the technology for it. Jesus really did turn the water into wine. . . .

And I've always been a little disappointed in our Lord for that!"

The story of turning water into wine at a wedding is very well known, and it has been used for a number of purposes.

It is cited in the Lutheran wedding service for example; as a way, I suppose, of saying that Jesus endorses marriage;

or perhaps that Jesus endorses drinking a bit and partying after a wedding.

Along those lines, I've heard it cited on both sides of the drink/don't drink argument.

See, it's not like a healing, or a Transfiguration, or a raising from the dead, or a feeding of the 5000, or even a stilling of the storm or a walking on the water.

It doesn't come with any easily discernible, easily preachable, easily applicable meaning.

It's just this extraordinary thing Jesus did.

It makes one feel more like saying, "Party on, Dude," than "Amen Brother!"

So, knowing that John included this story in his gospel for a reason, we must ask the question -
What are we expected to learn from this story?

If the fact that Jesus could turn water into wine is not the real point, then what is?

John is a writer whose work is full of symbolism.

Unlike the other Gospel writers; Matthew, Mark and Luke; he makes no pretence that his is a straight forward, historical narrative of the life and ministry of Jesus.

John's intent is to reveal to us SPIRITUAL TRUTH through the use of human stories.

Reading John is something like watching the TV show LOST.

Things are always different than they seem and this means it's generally a bit tricky to figure out what John is getting at.

A prevailing theme throughout John's Gospel is the dawning of a New AGE.

To John, the coming of Jesus as the Messiah has changed the world from what it used to be into something totally new and different.

This is why John prefers to use the word SIGNS instead of the word MIRACLES.

These things that Jesus did, like turning water into wine, were signs to the faithful that the new age of God's dealing with the world had come.

So - what Jesus did was not about an obedient son reluctantly doing what his mother asked;

nor was it about Jesus making sure the Host of the wedding was not embarrassed by the wine running out,

nor was it about making sure those attending the party were able to keep drinking.

What is really Significant in this story is that the water was special water.

It was water that had been set aside for the Jewish purification rites.
It was there for the people to wash up in.

This washing was not about being sanitary or comfortable.

This washing was a religious ceremony; it was a ritual cleansing in order to go before the LORD during the wedding feat.

IN this SIGN - Jesus takes the OLD - the ritual bath water;

and turns it into the NEW - fresh wine.

It is important to realize that Jesus DID NOT take the BAD and turn it into the GOOD!

He did not take the USELESS and turn it into the USEFUL.

He took good things from the past and transformed, changed them, into other good things for the future.

A good question for us today is "what does this text say to us?" today, in Roswell, GA, in the year 2010.

What is our water that Jesus has come to turn into wine?

You all are in the midst of an important transition, from one pastoral ministry to another.

As always in a time of transition; you have experienced a great deal of excitement, upheaval and yes, some anxiety and stress.

It is important for us in times of transition, upheaval and change to remember that God in Christ is actively involved in turning our old water into new wine.

The New Age brought by Jesus the Christ is an ongoing age of transformation and growth.

We are not the people we once were;

nor are we the people we will someday become.

We are in a state of fluidity; we are water being changed into wine.

Now, we have choices, as individuals and as a community of faith.

We can face the future's changes with fear and resistance;

or, we can embrace them with faith and excitement.

Either way, change is going to happen, the New Age is upon us, the water is beginning to change, and God is smack dab in the middle of it.

My late father-in-law was a story-telling Baptist deacon.

He used to tell the story of the old country preacher pulled over for dangerous and uncontrolled driving on a curvy mountain road.

Preacher - "Sorry Officer, I was a bit distracted. I was thinking about my sermon for the funeral I'm going to preach up in Blairsville this evening.

Officer - "Hmm, what's that bottle there on the seat?"

Preacher -"Uh, that's just some Holy Water I use for Blessings and Baptisms and Healings and such."

Officer - "HMM - let me see that."

He uncorks the lid and smells the "holy water."

Officer - "That's not water, Reverent. That's WINE!"

Preacher - "PRAISE THE LORD! He done done it agin!"

As you move forward into God's future for your church,

Let that be your cry of faith,

"GOD has done it again! And this time, God did it in us!

Amen and amen.

Dec. 13, 2009

2009-12-11T14:36:00.000-08:00

(A sermon preached at the dedication of Hope Lutheran Church, Ellijay, GA
This sermon is NOT on the lectionary texts, but on the text the congregation chose for the dedication of their new building. I think the Advent connection is the notion that Godd is always doing a New Thing, building, commencing newness.)

Matthew 7: 24-29
Built on a Rock

In the mail a couple of weeks ago I got an invitation to Mid-year Commencement ceremonies at Mars Hill College in Asheville, NC.

My nephew's girlfriend will graduate there on Friday night.

Then she will marry my nephew on Saturday.
That's a whole lot of "commencing" for one weekend.

Commencement is, of course, a strange word for what feels to most people like an ending.

After all to “commence” is to start, to begin, to get going; not to finish.

So why is it that people “finish” college by “commencing?”

Could it be that to finish one thing is to begin another?
To finish one’s education is to begin one’s career.
To finish one’s courtship is to begin one’s marriage.
To finish a meal is to begin . . . the dishes.

(The trouble with preaching is that sometimes metaphors break down all over the place; but you get the idea.)

We have gathered here this afternoon to celebrate the finishing of one thing and the beginning of another.

You have finished the building. Let everyone say YAAA!

You don’t have to move AGAIN! Let everyone say WAHOO!

Yes you’ve finished the building and stopped moving around town, but are you through, finished, with building the church?

Have you completed construction, or has it just begun?

Is this church ready to sit back and relax and enjoy its retirement?

Or is it time to commence another kind of building?

The truth is; building the church is never ending work.

This is because the church is more organic and alive than it is static and still.

What do I mean by that?

Although the faith we proclaim,
the God we serve,
the Jesus we love; never changes;

the people who come in and out of this place
and who serve this place
and who will be served by this place do change.

The people personally change,
and the people who make up the church,
the demographic of the church changes,
people come, people go,
people move in and then sometimes move on.

The church is always in the process of re-inventing itself, of creating disciples out of people who have been attracted by the teachings of Jesus.

The Church is always in the process of developing new things, new ideas, new directions.

Now, sometimes these new things don't go over very well, do they?

Have you ever heard the jokes about how many Lutherans it takes to change a light bulb?

FIRST JOKE: How many Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb?
CHANGE! WHAT DO MEAN CHANGE?

SECOND JOKE: How many Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb? One hundred. One to change the bulb, Ninety-nine to talk about how good and faithful the old bulb was and how much they're going to miss it.
.
You get the idea. New is necessary; it's just not always real popular.

But doing something new is a part of what it means to build the church.

We have to continually be growing, changing, adapting in order to build the church.

We are never finished, we are always commencing.

Our Gospel lesson reminds us that just building anywhere will not do.

The church must be built on a solid rock, not on shifting sand.

Often times it seems to many of us that a lot of the changes the church has gone through have been built on the shifting sands of what is popular, or hip, or the latest new thing.

As Jesus points out, things built on such a volatile and unstable foundation will soon fall.

On the other hand, a church built on the solid rock of Christ and the Scriptures and two thousand years of Christian Tradition will stand and survive in the midst of the world's continually evolving tastes, whims and fanaticisms.

We have this day marked out and blessed those things that God has provided to assist us in building the church and keeping it true.

The Baptismal Font, where we are washed and cleansed and set on our feet and to which we return for forgiveness and renewal on a regular basis.

Martin Luther said that at times of distress and peril, of despair and disappointment,
of challenge and opportunity, we must pat ourselves on the forehead and remind ourselves that
"We have been baptized,"

that we have been forgiven, we have been filled with the Holy Spirit, we have been sent out into the world to share the love of God in Christ. Our Baptism is the cornerstone of our faith and our church

The Pulpit, where God’s word is read and proclaimed to us.
This is where Christ is made present in our hearing and in our hearts and lives, where the preacher is given both the freedom and the responsibility to Preach Christ and Him Crucified.

The pulpit also symbolizes for us our educational ministries, our Sunday School and catechism classes and our adult Bible studies.

It reminds us also of the Proclamation of the Word in song by congregation and choir, actions that build up our faith and build up our community.

The Altar, the Table, where Christ is made present in the Bread and the Wine, where his life is poured out for and into our lives, where we receive nourishment for the journey.

How can anyone stay away from this table if you know what is offered to you here?

Christ himself: God from God, light from light, true God from true God, broken and shed FOR YOU, freely given FOR YOU, here for the taking FOR YOU.

What we have done here today is set apart this place and these furnishings as tools of God, as Means of Grace, by which God will build his church on the Rock of faith in Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen and amen.

Advent II, Dec. 6

2009-12-03T10:23:00.000-08:00

One of the interesting things about this job is that I preach in a different place almost every week. Some people in a similar posotion use "stock" sermons. I chose to write a new one every week, but I can't let a good story go too soon. Those of you who read here frequently will recognize the Morgan Wooten story from a couple of weeks ago. Part of the fun of writing sermons is finding ways to invite the congregation into the conversation with the text. I think this story has proven to be a good invite.

(A sermon preached at St. Stephen's Lutheran Church, Decatur, GA)

Text: Malachi 3: 1-4, Luke 3:1-6

Morgan Wooten was a basketball coach. He coached at DeMatha High School in the DC area. His teams won 1274 games while losing only 192 times. He was considered by everyone who knew him to be one of the great ones. Well, everyone except his grandson.

Wooten is one of only three High School coaches in the Basketball Hall of Fame.
At his induction, he told a story about his grandson's first day of school.

The teacher asked Nick: what's your favorite sport?

He replied: Baseball.

The teacher knew who Nick's grandfather was. She was surprised. She said: Not basketball?

Nick said: Nope. I don't know anybody who knows anything about basketball.

The teacher was even more surprised: but Nick, a lot of people think your Grandfather Wooten knows a lot about basketball.

Nick snorted and laughed; OH NO. HE DOESN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BASKETBALL. I GO TO ALL HIS GAMES AND HE NEVER GETS TO PLAY.

it comes to seeing God's presence in the world, many of us are like Nick and his Grandfather Wooten.

Though we may still believe in God, we find it difficult to take God into consideration in our daily decision making.

We go along, bowing in the general direction of the altar, as it were; saying the right things with our lips, making the correct gestures at the appropriate times;

but all the while acting in our real lives as if God did not exist, living our lives no differently from our unbelieving neighbors.

Advent is a time to be reminded that God does exist,
that God is very much involved in the affairs of the world,
that God does care what we do and how we do it,
that God is coming to clean us up and put us back on the right track.

In our First Lesson, Malachi says;

Who can endure the day of his coming?
And who can stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner's fire,
And like fuller's soap.

Well, I don't know much about refiner's fire, but I do know about a version of Fuller's soap. I grew up on a farm in NC, and we raised tobacco, and tobacco is indeed a very dirty crop.

When it is harvested green from the fields, your hands and clothes are covered with what we called "tobacco gum." It is sticky and black and resiny, like thick molasses or tar on your hands and clothes.

When we came to the house at the end of the day, we washed up at a table in the backyard, with pans full of hot soapy water and a bar of gritty, pungent soap.

Its name was LAVA. It felt like it had grains of sand it in as we scrubbed our hands and arms to remove the thick accumulation of filth we had acquired. It was like washing with liquid sandpaper.

As one commentator said of Fuller's soap, "It was known for its power, not its subtlety; it was not a gentle soap." (Stephen Break Reid p. 511, The Lectionary Commentary, Eerdman's, 2001)

The text from Malachi reminds us that we must get ourselves cleaned up and ready
for the Day of the Lord.

It is a reminder that while we are festive and happy that Christmas is coming, Christ came into the world for a serious reason and with a serious agenda.

The world was dirty and needed cleaning up.
People had sinned and needed forgiveness.
The world was broken and needed fixing.

What was true then is true now.
We are dirty and need cleaning,
we have sinned and need forgiveness,
we are broken and need fixing.

It is not an easy problem, and there is no easy button.

It is a hard and difficult problem which requires a hard and difficult solution.

Our Gospel lesson for today centers on John the Baptist’s call to repentance.

Repentance begins in the recognition of personal involvement in and responsibility for the Evil that surrounds us.

John’s call to repentance is a call for us to look at ourselves and to see in ourselves and our attitudes and our actions the things that lead to evil in the world.

John’s call to repentance is a call to look at our way of being in the world and in relationship to one another and to repent of those things which cause harm to ourselves and others.

John’s call is a call to confession and repentance.All too often, we make it as far as confession, and then stop.

Confession is the admission that there are indeed things we do in life that are wrong. We confess that, and go no further.

One day in Nashville I went to the YMCA to pick up my son.
As I approached the entrance, a very angry mother barged out the door
followed by a girl about 4 and a boy about 7.

The boy was saying, I told you I was sorry.
And the mother turned and said, hissing between her teeth,
Sorry doesn’t get it anymore.
I want you to stop doing it!

True repentance combines confession, I’m sorry, with what the old prayer books referred to as amendment of life.

The Greek word translated here repentance is not really a religious or theological word. It is metanoia, which is an ordinary, everyday word in Greek.

It simply means to turn around and go the other way;
to stop going one direction and to start going in the opposite direction.

This is more a matter of the mind and heart and will than it is of our outward actions. Metanoia refers to changing one's mind, which in turn changes one's actions.

Here's a simple example: suppose you went out the parking lot here onto Covington Highway. To go to Lithonia and Conyers and Covington, you would turn Left.

Now what if when you went out of the parking lot you turned Right and went toward Atlanta.

I'm guessing that about the time you cross I-285 you would recognize your mistake and realize you were going the wrong way.

Now wouldn't it be silly if you said. "Oh my, I'm going the wrong way. Covington is directly the other way. Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it, I'm only human, I'm so sorry I'm going the wrong way. "

It would be ridiculous for you to cry and weep and confess; while all the while still going the wrong way.

Metanoia; repentance is the two-part action of realizing you are going the wrong way, and acting to turn around and go the right way. In this case, turning the car around and going the other way, East toward Covington.

The Gospel, the Good News, is rooted in this simple act of repentance, because we can only stop going the wrong way if we have shown to us the right way.

The Gospel comes to turn us around,
to show us the way,
to warn us off the danger in the path we are taking,
and to provide for us a route to safety.

One of my very earliest memories is of a bright summer day on the farm.
I was playing in the backyard, under the apple trees.
My Daddy was mowing hay in a field next to the house.
Mama called to me from the back-porch.
She sent me into the field with a quart jar full of ice and water for Daddy.

As I started out across the field, Daddy stopped the tractor and got off and started yelling at me.

Delmer, Delmer. STOP! GO BACK, GO AROUND! STOP!

Now, even as a 4 year old, I knew that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, so Daddy’s instructions made no sense to me.

But I stopped and thought about it a minute. Though I could see no reason to stop and go back and go around, it was my Daddy telling me this, so I backed up and followed his instructions.

When I got to the tractor, I discovered that he had run over a Yellow Jacket’s nest in the ground and had stirred them up. The angry swarm lay directly in the path I was following.

So it is with us.

We may not be able to see the destruction that lies upon the path we have chosen,
but we have a loving God; a caring Savior; who is calling us to turn from the path of self-deception.

The Gospel is that Jesus came into the world to open for us the way to God;
to unblock the path and to call us to follow Jesus on the way.

For us to turn from the way we have been going, we have to see that we are being called to turn from danger to security, from evil to good, from wrong to right,
from our way to God’s way.

The way is being prepared, the opportunity is here. John’s call is ringing in our ears. REPENT, REPENT! Turn Back! Go the Other Way!

John’s call to REPENT is a call to look to our lives and change direction, so that when Christ comes in the flesh, we will be ready to receive our salvation.

Amen and Amen

Nov. 15, 2009; Pentecost 24, Lectionary 33

2009-11-12T10:55:00.000-08:00

PENTECOST 24/LECTIONARY 33
November 15, 2009

A sermon preached at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Knoxville, TN

Texts: Daniel 12:1-3; Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25; Psalm 16; Mark 13:1-8

Morgan Wooten was a basketball coach. He coached at DeMatha High School in the DC area. His teams won 1274 games while losing only 192 times. He was considered by everyone who knew him to be one of the great ones. Well, everyone except his grandson.

Wooten is one of only three High School coaches in the Basketball Hall of Fame. At his induction, he told a story about his grandson's first day of school.

The teacher asked Nick: what's your favorite sport?

He replied: Baseball.

The teacher knew who Nick's grandfather was. She was surprised. She said: Not basketball?

Nick said: Nope. I don't know anybody who knows anything about basketball.

The teacher was even more surprised: but Nick, a lot of people think your Grandfather Wooten knows a lot about basketball.

Nick snorted and laughed; OH NO. HE DOESN'T KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT BASKETBALL. I GO TO ALL HIS GAMES AND HE NEVER GETS TO PLAY.

SOMETIMES WE ARE LIKE Nick. Because we see the game of life going on and have a hard time seeing the hand of God anywhere in it, we think:

God knows nothing about it,

or, God cares nothing about it,

or, God can't do anything about it, because, after all,

We never see God get in the game.

The Bible readings today talk about the art of having faith in a world gone mad,
of seeing God's hand in the wild whirlwind of life around us.

Each is an example of APOCALYPTIC LITERATURE. Though many use these types of writings to try to make predictions about the future and to frighten people in the present, that is not what these Bible readings are about.

They are intended to bring us reassurance of God's love when we go through hard times and God seems to be very far away.

Daniel was written at a time when the Hebrew people and the Jewish faith were in a tough spot.

They were in exile, they were oppressed, they were persecuted.

Daniel was written to give hope to a people who had lost all hope; to give faith to those who were losing touch with God.

Chapter 13 of Mark's Gospel was written about thirty years after the death of Jesus, to the early Christians, a community of faith that was also in a tough spot,

They were a people who were fearful and hesitant about the future. These words were written to give them hope and faith in the God of the future.

Hebrews was written to the Jewish Christian Community in Rome. They were struggling with the Romans on the one hand and their Jewish brothers and sisters on the other. They needed a word of hope in a time of distress.

Each of these communities was like Morgan Wooten's grandson. They saw the activity in front of them, but they couldn't see the hand of the one running the show; and so they were afraid, they were anxious, they were losing hope.

I love old 50s' television, and everyone once in a long while, on TVLand or something like that, you can get lucky and see an old skit with Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks.

It's called the 2000 year old man. Reiner plays a TV reporter and Brooks plays, well, a 2000 year old man.

Newsman: Well did you worship God in your village?

Old Man: No, at first we worshipped this guy in our village named Phil.

Newsman: You worshipped a guy named Phil? Why?

Old Man: well, he was bigger than us, and faster than us, and he was mean, and he could hurt you; break your arm or leg right in two; so we worshipped Phil.

Newsman: I see. Did you have any prayers in this religion?

Old Man: Yeah. Want to hear one? PLEASE PHIL NO! PLEASE PHIL NO!

Newsman: Okay. When did you stop worshipping Phil?

Old Man: Well One day we were having a religious festival.
Phil was chasing us and we were praying. (PLEASE PHIL NO! PLEASE PHIL NO!)
and suddenly a thunderstorm came up and a bolt of lightning struck and killed Phil.
We all gathered around and stared at Phil awhile and then we realized:
THERE'S SOMETHING BIGGER THAN PHIL.

That is the ultimate message of Apocalyptic literature; There's something bigger than Phil, there's something bigger than the bad stuff that happens in our lives.

And that something bigger is God.

That something bigger is Grace.

That something bigger is Love.

That something bigger is Faith in God's tomorrow overcoming our yesterdays and todays.

That something bigger is the faith that God is indeed very much in the game.
God is involved in all our pain and sorrow, our suffering and disappointment.

God is bigger, much bigger than all those things that frighten and haunt us.

Almost every church sings the Hymn Now Thank We All Our God around Thanksgiving. You know it, it goes like this:

Now thank we all our God, with hearts and souls and voices,
Who wondrous things has done, in whom this world rejoices.
Who, from our mothers' arms, has blest us on our way,
With countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

As you sing that this year, reflect upon this: Pastor Martin Rinkhart wrote that hymn in the early 1600's, in the midst of the Thirty Years War. 6000 - 8000 people in his village and territory died in an epidemic, including the other two clergymen, for weeks at a time he buried as many as fifty people a day, including his own wife and children.

Either Rinkhart was heartless and a bit crazy, or he was in touch with a deep, deep spiritual truth about a God whose promises are ever sure and whose love never fails.

If Rinkhardt was right, if our Bible readings are telling us the truth that in the midst of this world's trouble and sorrow, pain and disappointment; we can hold fast to the assurance of God's concern and involvement in our lives; what are we to do, how are we called to live our lives?

There's a fascinating line in our Hebrews lesson, verse 24: "And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds,"

Usually, I would say almost always, the word provoke is used in a negative sense; as in "Honest Officer, I didn't aim to hit him, but he, he PROVOKED me!" but here it is used positively, as encouragment, as stirring up, as prodding and pushing and being active in love.

We are called into a world full of scared, lonely, hurting people, and we are called to provoke one another into acts of love, into works of mercy, into commitments to compassion, into doing the right thing for all the right reasons.

Jesus showed us the way to live in the light. Jesus' entire life, death and resurrection were about a divine provocation to love.

The Cross is the place it all comes together.
There Christ suffered so that we might be healed,
There Christ wept, so that we might have joy in the morning,
There Christ was punished, so that we would be forgiven,
There Christ was lost and forsaken, so that we could be found by God,
There Christ died, that we might live.

And there we are called to go out; to go out into the world
with the message of God's love and hope.

Amen and amen.

Lectionary 32/ Pentecost 23

2009-11-05T12:09:00.000-08:00

A sermon preached at Martin Luther Evangelical Lutheran church, Mobile alabama on the Occasion of their 87th Anniversary.

PENTECOST 23
November 8, 2009

Texts: I Kings 17:8-16, Mark 12:38-44

Today, we have read Bible lessons about two widows, both of whom were poor, and both of whom were generous with what they had.

The Gospel lesson, the story we know as the widow’s mite, was a little tough on Pastors and other official church folk.

-Beware of scribes, who like to walk around in long robes Well, I wear them during service, but I don’t walk around in them, much.

-and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, Okay, I do like it when people in grocery stores and restaurants call me Father or Reverend or Padre and treat me a little extra nice.

And to have the best seats in the synagogue - well, I don’t know if it’s the best, but it is bigger and it is different.

And places of honor at banquets - What can I say, I obviously like to eat!

They devour widow’s houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers, Okay, I’m clean on these two, I’ve never tricked a widow out of her house, and I’m famous for short prayers, not long ones, so perhaps I’ve escaped the “greater condemnation” by a narrow margin.

Whenever we hear a bible story, one of the most important things we can ask ourselves is, "With whom do I identify, who in this story feels like me?"

Of course, none of us would like to think we’re like the scribes, making a big, loud public display of our religion; in particular, none of us wants to look like a hypocrite.

And we all want to believe that we’re like the widow, doing all we can with what little we have.

Most of us, most of the time, hear the Widow’s Mite story and think it means something like this:

"See, it’s not HOW MUCH you give that matters, it’s the spirit with which you give that counts. A little bit is just as important as a lot."

That is true, as far as it goes.

But most of us miss an important point here, Jesus did not say that the widow gave all she could afford; Jesus said she gave all she had.

Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. Far all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.

Truth be told, most of us, myself included, most of the time, give out of our abundance.

We give what we think we can afford to give without seriously affecting our standard of living.

What Jesus points to in the widow is another thing entirely; her total commitment of everything she has, all her resources, “all she had to live on” to the Kingdom of God.

At root, this story is not so much about giving and generosity as it is about TRUST IN GOD.

That is why the Hebrew story of Elijah and the Widow of Zarephath is read with the story of the Widow’s Mite in the appointed readings for today.

These two stories are not only about widows, they are about putting your complete trust in God.

The Widow of Zarephath also gave all she had. She shared with the Prophet of the LORD the last of her food in a time of famine.

Yet, when she did, she discovered she had enough, enough at least to keep going, day by day; the jar of meal and the jug of oil having in them each day enough for that day’s needs.

This is the way God operates. This is the way God provides for God’s people.
Remember the manna from Heaven, the bread upon the ground provided to the Israelites
as they went from Egypt to the Promised Land?

If they took more than they needed for the day, the extra would rot before the next morning. It was a lesson in trusting God to provide each day’s needs.

What Jesus notices and comments upon with the Widow is not the size of her gift, but the fact that she gave her all, trusting that God would provide for the next day.

This is the Biblical Principle of God’s economy; this is the way God always works.

God’s promise is not: If you return to me a tithe, I will make you rich.

God’s promise is: If you commit to me your all, I will provide for your needs.

The history of Martin Luther Evangelical Lutheran Church teaches us that this is true.

When Mrs. Mayme Dixon and her aunt, Mrs. Theresa Pratt, began a Sunday School in the Laundry Workers Hall on Adam Street, teaching on Sunday afternoons in 1922, the odds were stacked against them.

They were women, they were black, they were Lutheran in the south. They had nothing going for them; except the fact that God had called them to the work and promised to provide for them as they pursued it.

Over the years, the Sunday School became a Church and a Church School and a ministry served by many pastors. We especially remember the long and fruitful ministries of Pastors Routte and Carstensen and Branch and Bradley-Love and all the faithful laypeople who served and worshipped and lead this church with them.

And at no time did this church have anything other than the call of God to serve and the promise of God to provide.

And the church has served and God has provided.

The Bible stories about the widow's and their generosity, our own remembrance of Martin Luther Church's history of giving while trusting God are not so much about finances as they are about the relationship of trust we are called upon to have with God.

And, we must admit, this is hard for us, we like to hedge our bets, hold a little something back, play it safe.

A couple of years ago, a college student went into a camera store to have a picture enlarged.

It was a framed 8x10 of the young man and his girlfriend. When the clerk took the picture out of the frame, he read the writing on the back:

My dearest Tommy, I love you with all my heart. I love you more and more each day. I will love you forever and ever. I am yours for all eternity. With all my love, Diane

PS - If we ever break up, I want this picture back!

Today God call us toward making a complete and total commitment of ourselves to Christ and the Kingdom of God.

We are called upon to make all that we are and all that we have available to the work of spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ into all the World.

And the Gospel, the Good News, for us today is that we can make that leap, that commitment, with full confidence in God’s promise to provide our every need, now and forever more.

Amen and amen

Pentecost 19/ Lectionary 28

2009-10-06T18:11:00.000-07:00

PENTECOST 19,
Oct. 11, 2009
Christ Lutheran Church, Fairfield Glade, TN.
Text: Mark 10: 17-31

When I was a graduate student at Duke University, I had the opportunity to be pastor of three little country Methodist churches.

It was a relatively easy gig. I lived in the parsonage and preached on Sundays and handled weddings and funerals and emergencies. I spent most of my time thirty-five miles away in the Duke Divinity School library.

There was one thing I sometimes had to do that I wasn't crazy about. All the Baptist churches in the county had fall and spring revival meetings.

To help work up a crowd they invited the choirs of the neighborhood to come one night and do the "special singing." When my choir went somewhere to sing I felt obliged to go along to lend them support.

One night I slipped into the back row of a small country church a few minutes late. After my choir had sung, I tried to catch up on my Church History assigned reading. I had the history textbook hidden in a big leather zip-up bible case and I hoped everyone would think I was deep into the Word.

The preacher was a traveling evangelist and he put on quite an exhibition; shouting and hollering and stomping his feet and breaking into song and denouncing sins, some of which I had never heard of.

After a while I gave up reading and watched the show; both his theatrics and the crowd's reactions. One little boy in particular caught my eye.

While his grandmother tried to pay attention,
he kicked the pew in front of him, he laid down,
he slid off the pew into the floor,
he drew in the back of the hymnal with that stubby little pencil you can usually find in a pew rack,
he loudly chewed gum and he sucked on a mint,
he played with Grandma's car-keys,
and he asked if it was time to go,
oh, about every two minutes.

Finally, as the Preacher launched into a fire-breathing altar call,
with the congregation standing, every head bowed, every eye closed,

I saw him stand on tip-toe and the pew and whisper loudly into Grandma's ear, ARE YOU SURE THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO GEET TO HEAVEN?

This is the question that, in one way or another, all of us get around to asking eventually.

The man in our Gospel lesson asked, "What must I do to inherit Eternal Life?"

When Jesus tells the disciples that rich people are going to have a hard time getting in, they ask, "Well, who can be saved then?'

"What must I do to be saved?" says one.
"How can I get right with God?" says another.

There are secular, non-religious versions of the question: "What is the meaning of life?" "How can I be fulfilled?" "What does success look like for me?" to me, it's all a part of the same question.

In our Gospel lesson, a man came up and knelt in front of Jesus. We have traditionally referred to him as the "Rich Young Ruler." This is a composite name from three Gospel writers. Matthew calls him "young," Luke calls him a "ruler," and all three say he's "rich."

The man came asking a question to which he thought he already knew the answer. He's like the wicked witch in Snow White talking to the mirror. "Mirror, Mirror, on the wall, who's the fairest of them all."

The rich Young ruler believes he is, and comes to Jesus for affirmation, not information.

He wants Jesus to give him a benediction, a good word. He wants the JESUS OF NAZERETH, PROPHET AND TEACHER, seal of approval on his life. And much to his surprise he doesn't get it; not in the way he had expected.

You see, he had rested his claim on the Kingdom of God on the Twin Pillars of righteousness and riches.

Obey the Ten Commandments and enjoy worldly success.
And worldly success is an outward and visible sign of God's inward and visible blessing.

So the young man believed. And honestly, so did everyone else in that time and place.

That very debate was part of what the book of Job was about.

Do we love God because we're blessed with material things; or are we blessed with material things because we love God?

If we're not blessed, does that mean we're bad?

And if we're clearly good, and we have nothing, does that mean God's not fair?

The people in Jesus' world, including his disciples, believed that morality and material blessing went hand in hand. If you were good, God would bless you with riches and comforts in this world.

So, when Jesus said to the young man, "You lack one thing, go and sell all and give it to the poor. . ."

it wasn't just the giving up of his money and stuff that bumfuzzled him; the rich young ruler's whole world view, his entire way of looking at how the world works, has been turned upside down and inside out.

Remember the little boy at the revival meeting.

After church I was standing in the parking lot talking to my choir members when she came marching him out the door; hat squarely on her head, suitcase-size pocketbook on her arm, holding him by the neck with one hand and swatting at this behind with the other.

He danced ahead of her with that pelvis-forward, swat-avoiding, Michael Jackson moon walk we've all seen. He yelled back at her, "What you hittin' me for? I ain't done nothing."

The rich young ruler hasn't done anything either, and that's just the point. Though he has lived a fastidiously moral life, ("All these I have kept from my youth"), he had never learned that there is more to the moral life, to life in the Kingdom of God, than being good and safe and not wrong.

He had never learned to go the extra mile, to take a risk, to boldly go where he has never gone before.

Jesus looked upon him with love and spoke to him out of that love when he said to him, "You lack one thing."

Because Jesus then tells him to get rid of his wealth and give it to the poor, we can become confused about what Jesus sees as missing in his life.

The man doesn't lack generosity,
he doesn't lack compassion for others,
he doesn't lack doesn't lack morality;
he doesn't lack an awareness of call of God on the Jews to hospitality to the stranger.

This man lacks faith.

He lacks a willingness to trust God both now and into the future.

He lacks a confident and joyous reliance upon the love and generosity of God.

He is relying upon his goodness and his goods to get him through this life and into the next, and Jesus says, "Friend, that's just not good enough."

Why is it hard for a rich person to get into heaven, harder than for a camel to get through the eye of a needle?

Because when you're rich, it's really hard to realize how much you need God and other people.

Being rich is not evil; it is just exceptionally dangerous to your spiritual health.
The question for us today is this: what are we depending on in our relationship with God?

Are we depending on our rightness, our ability to discern and know the right answer to spiritual and religious questions?

Are we depending on our righteousness, on our goodness, on our obedience to the
Ten Commandments?

What is it that keeps us trusting ourselves and not fully trusting God?

What is the one thing that we lack, the one thing that keeps us from totally and completely committing ourselves to God's will and God's way.

What keeps us from doing wild and wonderful right things in the name of the Living Christ?

The Good News is that Jesus has come to transform the impossible into the possible.

Jesus has come to release us from our bondage of serving our selves and our things.

Jesus has come to take us by the scruff of the neck and to drag us kicking and screaming through the eye of that needle, into the center of God's love.

Amen and amen.

Lectionary 27, Pentecost 18

2009-10-01T16:56:00.000-07:00

Oct. 4, 2009
Sermon preached at the re-dedication of the building at Cross of Life Lutheran Church, Roswell, Ga.

Text: Hebrews 1:1-4, 5:5-12
Title: But, We Do See Jesus

"As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus . . ."

Almost every Saturday afternoon, I listen to the opera on the Public Radio station.

Now Fred, don't look so surprised. I like opera. Not as much as I like Lynard Skynard or ZZ Topp, but I like Opera.

Well, okay, I don't. Not really, but I like the IDEA of liking opera.

Deep down inside, I feel like I OUGHT to like opera, that a well educated person SHOULD like opera, and so. . .

On Saturday afternoon's I listen to opera.

This is kind of like the theory my wife used in trying to feed our two teen-aged sons liver and broccoli.

She thought if she put it in front of them often enough eventually they would walk in the house one day and say, "Gee Mom, what's for supper? I could sure go for some liver and broccoli right about now."

Not gonna happen. No Way. No how. But, you know; hope springs eternal in the human breast and all that.

Anyway, I listen to opera in the vague hope that someday, somehow, I'll start to like it and can then count myself as a genuinely educated and cultured person.

Every once in a great while I find myself kind of liking a piece, nodding my head and humming along and I think,

Gee, I'm starting to like this opera stuff after all.

But then I realize that the opera pieces I like are the ones they used as soundtracks for the Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd cartoons I watched as a child and I'm back to square one. It's not music appreciation; it's just nostalgia for my childhood.

I'm still listening, and I'm still hoping, but I'm 55. I don't think this plan is working.

As it is, we do not see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus . . .

Many people in our world today are seeking Spiritual Enlightenment. In recent public opinion polls, more people are willing to claim being "spiritual," than are willing to say that they are "religious."

People go looking for "spirituality," the way I have gone looking for "culture and sophistication," and with about the same level of success.

People explore the latest prayer techniques and different churches and praise bands and labyrinth walks and Alpha bible Studies and the Wild Women of the Bible Weekends and Seeking Your Inner Child Men's Drum Circle Sweat Lodge and I don't know what all.

And whatever it is they think they're looking for, if it isn't where they are, well, it must it over the hill or around the corner or in the next place they look or the next.

As it is, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus . . .

The author of the book of Hebrews is, in this text, dealing with the fact that while the biblical witness is that God is in charge of the world; when we look around us, it is difficult to see the evidence that God, or God's angels (them), are actually in charge of much of anything.

As one of my unbelieving college professors put it, "If God is really in charge, he, she or it is doing a lousy job."

War, drugs, disease, natural disaster, economic collapse, starvation; need I go on? Does this look like "everything in subjection. . ." to God?

And let's be honest with one another today. The church, the place those of us gathered here have traditionally looked for hope and meaning is in a confusing place right now.

Not just our ELCA with its debates over sexuality and biblical interpretation and theological thinking; but other denominational families as well.

It is a time of change and uncertainty and discomfort.

It is a time when people are searching for what a prayer in the Lutheran Funeral Service calls a "Sure and certain hope."

That little word "yet," is vital to understanding not only this text, but also the promise of the Gospel to us at times like these.

As it is,we do no yet see . . .

As much as we yearn for and look for and yes, do battle for, certainty and security, the Bible constantly reminds us of what Luther referred to as the "Hidden-ness of God."

It is sometimes referred to as the "already-but-not-yet" Kingdom of God.

As we look around the world for God, God is often difficult to see, difficult to pin down.

And sometimes, just when we think we have the holy in our hands, it slips away as we realize we were mistaken; as I was when I thought I liked opera but it turned out to be cartoons I liked.

The author of Hebrews reminds us that we are to look to Jesus to see what God is doing in the world.

We are to look particularly at the fact that Jesus gave up his place at the right hand of God to become human like us. Who for a little while became lower than the angels, the text says.

And that as a result of this coming into humanity with us, Jesus suffered and died and "tasted death for everyone."

NO, we do not yet see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus.

We are here today re-dedicating a church facility. My younger brother is an architect. He has taught me to always remember the mantra, "form follows function."

That is to say, How you shape a building should be dependent on what you want to do in that building.

That which is true of buildings is true of church communities. How we shape ourselves depends on what we believe our purpose in the world to be.

It is my simple contention today that our purpose as a community is to remind the world to look to Christ and the Cross in the midst of the "not-yet" of our lives, and it is the purpose of this building to help us do that.

A few years ago, the Barna Research Group did a poll asking this simple question: What are the most important words you've ever heard? That's it. What are the three most important words you've ever heard?

Family feud style, #1 answer didn't surprise anyone: I love you.

#2 didn't surprise anyone either: I forgive you.

But # 3 dropped a few jaws; Dinner's ready, come eat.

That is the Gospel we proclaim, that is the function of this building and its form tells the tale.

The cross that looms over everything reminds us all of how much God loves us, that "by the grace of God Jesus tasted death for everyone."

The font in the middle of the aisle reminds us of God's forgiveness and our forgiveness of others each time we enter this room, it calls us back to the waters of our baptism and propels us into the world with a hope grounded in the knowledge that we have been freed from the bondage to our faults and failures, that we have been loosed from our to go confidently into the future.

And here, front and center is the altar. Here we, and the whole world, are invited to come forward to receive the sacrament of the table. My wife is an Episcopalian. When I get to go to church with her I love it when I'm kneeling at the altar and the pastor gives me the bread and says,

This is the body of Christ, the bread of heaven. Take it in remembrance that Christ died for you, and feed on him in your heart with thanksgiving.

At the altar we shout out to the world, Dinner's ready, come eat.

In this place, we offer Jesus to the world. We say to everyone, "We know the world does not yet reveal that God is in charge, but here, I this place, you can see Jesus; on the cross, in the water, at the table; God cries out to us; I love you, I forgive you; dinner's ready, come eat."

Amen and amen.

Pentecost 16

2009-09-16T22:11:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Faith Lutheran Church, Cleveland, GA

TEXTS: Jeremiah 11:18-20, Psalm 54, James 3:13-4:3; 7-8a, Mark 9:30-37

I am a big fan of church signs. Traveling as much as I do, I see a lot of them.

Across from Tennessee State University there is a congregation that has the longest name I've ever seen on a church sign:

The House of the Lord,
Which is the Church of the Living God,
The Pillar and Ground of the Truth,
Without controversy, Incorporated.

Without controversy. Whoever heard of a church without controversy?

In light of religion's history of infighting, instead of the Nashville church's claim to be "without controversy," perhaps a church sign I saw in Decatur Georgia is more to the point. This church said it was:

FREE FOR ALL BAPTIST CHURCH

When I saw that sign I burst out laughing. I imagined 60-ish deacons in their Sunday suits engaged in an ecclesiastical version of a bar riot, a baseball fracas, a hockey fight; throwing down their Bibles and wrestling each other to the floor in front of the altar.

The truth of the matter is, the people of God have always been and probably always will be a contentious lot, given to fussing with each other about all sorts of things, some of which matter and most of which don't.

In today's Gospel lesson, Jesus catches his disciples arguing about one of those things that don't matter, not in the family of God, the body of Christ anyway.

They have been fussing and fighting over which one is the greatest.

It is particularly ironic and disappointing that they are arguing about this right after Jesus has told them that as the Messiah he will have to suffer and die for the world, and that as his followers they will need to deny self and take up a cross as well.

He presents them with a model of complete helplessness and weakness and they respond by contending for positions of power and influence. In other words, they don't get it.

In his commentary on Mark, N.T. Wright, NT Scholar and Anglican Bishop, points out that not all Jews of the time believed that God would send a Messiah and among those who did believe a messiah was coming; no one believed that the Messiah would have to suffer, much less to die.

Most believed that THE ONE would come in power and might and strength. They believed the Messiah would come as a military leader, smiting the Romans and their evil, pagan allies, conquering the world in the name of Truth, Justice and YHWH.

So Jesus disciples just didn't get it when Jesus said in verse 31,

The son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.

If they heard his words, they certainly didn't get his meaning. They had figured out he was the Messiah, so they were trying to sort out their positions of importance in the new administration.

Jesus overhears their arguing and calls them on it, asking them "what were you talking about?" And the text says they were silent. They couldn't answer him.

Could it be that in trying to formulate an answer to that question, it began to dawn on them how wrong they were; how far they had strayed from the path Jesus had called them to follow?

I imagine Jesus taking a deep breath, sighing and with a somewhat forced smile, saying, "Come here ya'll, sit down, let's talk. Let me see if I can find a better way to explain this to you."

He then says, "whoever wants to be first, must be last.

If you've read your Bible, you've seen this before, it's a pattern that flows throughout Jesus' teaching and preaching:

Elsewhere he says:

The first shall be last

If you want to save your life, you must lose it

The least of these my brethren

Brother, come up higher

Go out into the hedges and byways and compel them to come in

The rich man's offering and the widow's mite

The rich Pharisee's prayer and the poor man's lament

Lazarus and the rich man in the bosom of Abraham and the fires of Hell

It's called "the great reversal." Throughout his ministry Jesus turned the world's expectations and standards upside down and inside out. He proclaimed that a new and different set of standards would operate in the Kingdom he had been sent to proclaim.

Then, Jesus did a monumentally important thing for the history of the church,
There, on the spot, he invented the children's sermon, complete with an actual child as the object in the object lesson.

Jesus and the disciples were in the ground floor room of a house, it had open windows and doorways, and a crowd had gathered to listen to him teach his disciples. Jesus reached into the crowd and pulled a child, probably a toddler, into the room. Then he said,

Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me, but the one who sent me.

With these words, Jesus proclaims his ultimate grand reversal. To us, a small child is primarily a symbol of innocence. We value children and protect children and care for them and are horrified by stories like the one about the man and wife in California who kidnapped that young girl years ago and kept her hidden in the back yard.

But in the ancient world, children were symbols of powerlessness. Outside of normal parental affection, children were, almost literally, nothing. Lutheran pastor Peter Marty, in the Lectionary Commentary says that "in the Greco-Roman world a father could punish, sell, pawn off or even kill his own child."

It is interesting to note that the Greek words for child and servant have the same root and that Jesus used both of these images; child and servant, as symbols of who the Messiah is and who we, the followers of Jesus, are called to be in the world. Children and servants, powerless and defenseless ones, that's us.

Our modern world, gives highest honor and respect to those with power and authority and importance.

People in our world seek positions of strength from which they can control and manage others.

And the call of the Gospel to us today is the same as it was to those to whom Jesus spoke personally:

It may be that way in the world, but it must not be that way among you my followers.

It is not possible for the church to be the church and also be, as the sign said, "without controversy."

On the other hand, just because we have controversy, it is not necessary that we be a "free for all" either.

Through his teaching about the great reversal, the call to child-like-ness, to servant-hood, to powerlessness and humility, most of all though his own humiliation and death on the cross, Jesus has shown us the way forward though our disagreements and controversies.

Rather than aspiring to power and influence and control within the world and within the community of the faithful; our calling is seek to be servants of one another, actively loving each other in the name of the one who first loved us.

And this is love as a verb of action, not a verb of feeling.

To love one another as servants of one another is to make efforts to be kind and generous and open-minded and long-suffering not only when we like each other a lot; but perhaps most especially when we are at odds with one another, when we don't like each other much at all.

In a continuation of the "great reversal" theme, Paul points out in Romans 5,

. . .Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed rarely will anyone die for a righteous person -- though for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. . . .for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to god through the death of his Son. . "

Jesus told us the way forward, then Jesus showed us the way forward by surrendering all his power and going to the cross. Our call is to follow him in that way in our lives.. In our lives in our families, in our lives in the world, and in our lives in the church. It's that simple. And that difficult.

Remember Calvin and Hobbes, the little boy and his talking stuffed tiger?

One day Calvin said, "I feel bad that I called Susie names and hurt her feelings. I'm sorry I did it."

Hobbes replies, "Maybe you should apologize to her."

Calvin shrugs and ducks his head, "I keep hoping there's a less obvious solution."

We Christians seem to keep hoping that there is a less obvious solution to our problems and disagreements than Jesus' command that we should, well, act like Christians to one another.

Being humble and kind and forgiving and generous and all those things we learned in Sunday School and all too often forget when we grow up.

There is no other way for Christians. There is only the way of the Cross.

Our calling today is to lose our lives into the life of Christ,
To lose our wills into the will of God,
To give ourselves up totally and completely to the one who gave himself for us upon the cross.

Amen and amen.

September 6

2009-09-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

I'm not preaching in a congregation this weekend. I'm the "Spiritual Director" for a "Lutheran Happening" weekend in Nashville. Me and 100 teen-agers. Oh boy! Anyway, i'm giving talks, etc, but not preaching. Here are a few ideas about food from a sermon by my friend Warren Casiday, a UCC pastor in Kannaplois NC.

H. Warren Casiday
September 6, 2009

According to Andy Rooney, the 2 best selling books are: Cookbooks & Diet Books
Cookbooks tell you how to prepare the food.
Diet Books tell you how not to eat any of it.

An old man went to the same diner every day for lunch.
He always ordered the soup du jour.

One day the manager asked him how he liked his meal.
The old man said: It was good, but you could give a little more bread.
Two slices of bread really isn’t enough.”

The next day the manager asked the waitress to give him four slices of bread.
Manager: “How was your meal, sir?”
“It was good, but you could give a little more bread.”

The next day the manager had the waitress to give him eight slices of bread.
Manager: “How was your meal today, sir?”
He said: “It was good, but you could give a little more bread.”

The next day the manager had the waitress to give him a whole loaf – 16 slices
Manager: “How was your meal, sir?”
Man: “It was good, but you still could give just a little more bread.”

Frustrated, the manager went to the bakery, and ordered a 6’ long loaf of bread.

When the old man came in the next day, the manager & waitress cut the loaf in half, buttered it and put it next to his bowl of soup.

The old man sat down, ate his soup, and both halves of the 6’ long loaf of bread
“Now he will be satisfied,” thought the manager.

Manager: “How was your meal TODAY, sir?”
The old man replied: “It was good as usual.
But I see you are back to serving only two slices of bread!”

One of my favorite comic strips was Kudzu – written by late Doug Marlette

In one strip, Rev. Will B. Dunn, the pastor, is reading the Lord’s Prayer in worship
“Give us this day our daily ... low-fat, low-cholesterol, salt-free bread ...”

In the last frame, he is muttering to himself: “I hate these modern translations.”

It is very likely you will go to the store this week to buy bread.
And there will be a large variety of Breads for you to choose from.

This past week, I counted over 50 types & brands of Bread in a smaller grocery store

That didn’t include the Breads in the coolers that don’t have preservatives in them
or the ones you have to bake yourself.

In case you haven’t guessed, my topic this morning is food – Specifically Bread

We rarely think about Bread.
We jump into cars – drive to store – buy our Bread – go home – eat it

The only time we think about Bread is when the store doesn’t have our brand and
we are forced to choose another brand

Br is so easy for us to get Bread

Yet in some countries, Bread can be difficult to get
And whether they get Bread or not can mean the difference between Life and Death.

One reason we laughed at the opening joke is that we love our food so much
we are obsessed with it.

We eat when we are hungry,are feeling down, are feeling happy, the clock says noon.

We eat to, Be sociable, Forget certain events, Feel Comforted.

Ever notice how many snacks and desserts are called Comfort Food

And of course, we eat to survive.

I really do believe that in some ways, we are obsessed with food.

Pentecost 13/ Lectionary 22

2009-08-27T12:55:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at Peace Lutheran Church, Spring Hill, TN
August 30, 2009
Pentecost 13
Text: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

True Story - you can't make stuff like this up. Charlotte, NC. Man bought a box of very expensive cigars. He protected his investment by taking out an insurance policy on the cigars. He insured them against; "decay, spoilage, theft and FIRE."

In the next few weeks he proceeded to smoke all of the cigars in the box.

THEN - he filed a claim with his insurance company, stating that the cigars were lost in a series of small - - -fires.

Of course, the insurance company rejected the claim, which ended up in civil court.
Even though the man admitted smoking the cigars, he won the case because, . . ."the company declared the cigars insurable property, and did insure them against fire, and the Company failed to specify what sort of fire was excluded, therefore the claim is legitimate." The man collected $15,000.

As he was leaving the courthouse, the man was arrested and charged with 24 counts of arson.

After all, he had confessed to setting ". . . the series of small fires . ." which had
caused his loss of property. He was convicted and sentenced to 24 months in jail and was fined $24,000.

Ever since God handed Moses the Ten Commandments on top of the mountain, we human beings have had a long standing debate concerning the letter and the spirit of the law. Both our text and my little cigar story point out the danger of following the letter of the LAW as a way of violating its intent.

As we think about the Gospel lesson, it is important for us to remember that Jesus was a Jew, an observant Jew, a Jew who treasured the Law of God. Jesus took the Pharisees to task for following the letter of the law while ignoring its spirit.

We Christians tend to forget that the Law was given to the children of Israel as a gift, not a burden. Thomas Cahill, in his wonderful book The Gifts of the Jews, reminds us of that fact;
. . . in the prescriptions of Jewish Law we cannot but note a presumption that all people, even slaves, are human and that all human lives are sacred.

This was something new, something unheard of in the ancient world, something that had not been seen in other religions or other codes of law. Jewish Law was a gift to the Jews and to the world; a gift to remind us that our lives are sacred and so are the lives of everyone else.

The problem that Jesus confronts in this text is that the Pharisees chose to obey the rules without remembering the relationships that lie beneath the rules.

If we are honest, we will admit that this is sometimes true of us as well.

We make religious rules that are intended to help us live together as Godly people.
Then, over time, we forget that the rules are there to help us, not to hurt us, in our relationships with each other in the community of Christ.

It's been a while since I was over at the Car Collectors Museum in Nashville. There used to be a 1918 Dodge Touring Car on display there. Its little placard told an interesting story.

In 1918, the father of Albert Hillyard bought this car for $785. In 1921, Albert and his brother got into an argument over who got to drive the car into town on Saturday Night. Their father drove the car into the garage and shut the door. There the car remained until found 38 years later, covered with dirt and chicken manure, with only 1800 miles on the Odometer."

I've thought about Mr. Hillyard and his Dodge touring Car many times over the years. He attempted to heal the breach between his children by making a rule when what was needed was reconciliation.

Papa Hillyard said, Okay, neither one of you gets too drive it!

but I'm willing to bet that the boys just went on to argue about something else, and then about something else, and then about something else. The car wasn't the problem. The problem was the jealousy and strife that lived in that family and in those brother's hearts.

So it is with all of us. Since our problem lies within our hearts the healing must also start there.

Jesus calls us to understand that it's not about the rules; it's about the relationships; the relationship between us and God; and the relationships between us and each other.

That's why Jesus says that, the things that come out are what defile.
And later for it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.

Along these lines, St. Augustine said that, there is a hole in our hearts that only God can fill and also that our hearts are restless O Lord, until they rest in thee.

No amount of rules and regulations and guidelines can change our hearts. Only Gad can do that. Only God's Spirit can move us that way. Only the Cross of Christ; the broken body and spilt blood of Jesus can break our hearts enough that we will let the love of God in to change and reshape us.

Believe it or not, my first real job besides working on the farm with my family was as a daycare worker. I worked at the Community School for People Under Six in
Chapel Hill NC. Besides supervising the playground and changing diapers and serving lunch I had the great pleasure of watching Sesame Street every afternoon from four to five o'clock. Seriously, it was a great pleasure; I really liked it.

One night recently I saw a documentary on the making of Sesame Street.
Someone asked the producer about the reaction of the child actors to working with the Muppets, who are, after all, puppets with a human being crouched on the floor holding them up with one arm.

The producer said the kids don't pay any attention to the humans; they just talk to the Muppets. In fact, he said, there was one child who saw BIG BIRD take off his top half and an actor step out.

The child stared and then yelled to his mother: MOM, MOM, do you think Big Bird knows he has a man inside?

The goal of the Law is to remind us that we have a human being inside, in our hearts, in our souls, in our center of being; in that part of us that makes us something other than a thinking animal.

It is also to remind us that other people have that hidden humanity, that heart, soul, mind; that center that belongs to God, as well.

Our calling is to remember that broken center in our dealings with each other.

It is our calling to remember that we are called to transcend the rules in the name of love.

It is our calling to remember that not only did Jesus die for us, but Jesus died for everybody so that we could all be reconciled to God and to one another.

It is our calling to spread this gracious Good News throughout the world, beginning with our own hearts.

Amen and amen.

lectionary 20, Pentecost 11

2009-08-12T10:10:00.000-07:00

It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But among you there are some who do not believe. (John 6:63b-64)

Again this week I have no place to preach but I have a couple of "anecdotes?" "illustrations?" "whatevers?" Here goes.

In her preface to the American edition of "Eats, Shoots and Leaves," (a surprisingly funny book about punctuation) Lynne Truss writes:

By far the oddest and most demoralizing response to my book, however, took place at a bookshop event in Piccadilly. It is a story that, if nothing else, proves the truth of that depressing adage about taking a horse to water. I was signing copies of my book when a rather bedraggled woman came up and said, despairingly, "Oh, I'd love to learn about punctuation." Spotting a sure thing (you know how it is), I said with a little laugh, "Then this is the book for you, madam!" I believe my pen actually hovered above the dedication page, as I waited for her to tell me her name.

"No, I mean it," she insisted -- as if I had disagreed with her. "I really would love to know how to do it. I mean, I did learn it at school, but I've forgotten it now, and it's awful. I put all my commas in the wrong place, and as for the apostrophe . . .!" I nodded, still smiling. This all seemed familiar enough. "So, shall I sign it to anyone in particular?" I said. "And I'm a teacher," she went on. "And I'm quite ashamed really, not knowing about grammar and all that; so I'd love to know about punctuation, but the trouble is, there's just nowhere you can turn, is there?"

This was quite unsettling. She shrugged, defeated, and I hoped she would go away. I said again that the book really did explain many basic things about punctuation; she said again that the basic things of punctuation were exactly what nobody was ever prepared to explain to an adult person. . . .

. . .Throughout the encounter, I kept smiling at her and nodding at the book, but she never took the hint. In the end, thank goodness, she slid away, leaving me to put my coat over my head and scream.
(Eats, Shoots and Leaves Lynne Truss, Gotham Books, 2003, pp. xxi-xxii)

About 15 years ago my family moved to Nashville. We lived in a three room apartment on a hill above a strip mall with a grocery store. Friday night was family night and we went to the grocery to pick out items for home made pizza and desert. This was pre-Blockbuster and the grocery store had a video section where the boys and I picked out the evening's entertainment.

One night I noticed the World War I epic "All quiet on the Western Front," shelved among the WESTERNS. I helpfully took it off the shelf and carried it up to the bored teen-ager at the counter and said, "It's an understandable mistake, but this movie isn't a western. It's about WWI and should be shelved among the dramas." And the kid took it from me and said, "Thank you very much," and placed it under the counter.

The next Friday night, and the next, and the next, this little scenario played itself out. After the third time I gave up thinking anything would change. I continued to do it for the somewhat perverse pleasure of it and as an experiment to see if anything ever would change. After 15 months we bought a house and changed grocery stores. And All Quiet on the Western Front was still nestled among the John Wayne and Clint Eastwood movies.

Biblical lost and foundness

2009-08-05T14:25:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, I haven't posted in a while. this is because I haven't preached in a couple of weeks, nor will I for a couple more weeks. So I am posting this article I wrote for the synod e-news, apropos of nothing exactly and everything in general.

"Biblical Lost and Foundness"

Back in March I lost my Bible. Well not really a Bible; a New Testament with Psalms. Black, about the size of a Reader's Digest magazine, held together with clear shipping tape on the pages and Duck tape on the spine, it has gone everywhere with me since 1993. Hospital rooms and Confirmation Camp; airplane rides and hotel rooms; Oxford University for Summer School of Theology and Moody's Funeral Home for my daddy's funeral; where I was it was there with me.

And then it was gone. Disappeared, vanished into thin air, or so it seemed. I had been on a two-day road trip in East Tennessee: great food from the ladies at Salem in Parrotsville as I met with the area Holston Heritage clergy, a visit to an ailing retired pastor and his wife, a meeting with Good Shepherd, Morristown and then a meeting with the council at Christ, Fairfield Glade, and then a drive through the night to home.

The next morning I sat in my home office and reached in my briefcase to get it to look up Sunday's lessons and IT WASN'T THERE. A massive hunt ensued. Dumped out the briefcase, turned out my suit coat pockets, searched the trunk and under the seats of the car. Nothing. Called all the places I'd been. I asked them to look around for it. Good Shepherd, Morristown had located my pocket edition ELW (which I could have easily lived without) but no Bible. The search reminded me of the shepherd and search for the Lost Sheep or, more exactly, the housewife searching for the Lost Coin. (Luke 15:3-10)

I did all I could. Finally I gave it up. It's not like I didn't have other Bibles, I have a whole shelf full of them. (Eighteen to be exact; I just counted.) But there was something personal about this Bible. Over the years it had become a physical symbol, almost a sacrament, of my faith life and personal struggles, and now it was gone.

I moved on as they say. I bought another small Bible to fit in my briefcase and my pocket. It's a little thicker because it has the Old Testament, but there are other reasons why it's just not the same. It's new, it's unmarked, it's a stranger; not an enemy but not yet a friend.

This experience has helped me be more sympathetic with people who resist change in the church. I confess I have often been identified as the agent of change is some congregations, "and not in a good way," as my son would say. People have resisted, some have gotten angry. They have grown attached to the old ways as I had grown attached to my old Bible. People don't adjust overnight, it takes time.

But we do change, don't we? We do adjust. We learn to cope with new realities. Because we understand that within the new wrappings is the old Gospel; just as a new and unfamiliar Bible contained the same precious words that were in my old one.

And once I had learned that lesson, God gave me my old Bible back. Donna Hoglund from Christ Church in Fairfield Glade was straightening up the library there and found it on a shelf. Someone had found it on the table where I left it and had shelved it with the other Bibles. She emailed me and then mailed it to me, and it's back in my briefcase. Thank you, Donna. And thank you, God, for old gifts in new and exciting wrappings.

Pentecost 7, Lectionary 16; July 19, 2009

2009-07-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

PENTECOST 7, LECTIONARY 16

(This one is not exactly old and not exactly new. it's half one old one, a dash of another old one and about 40 % new.)

A sermon preached at St. James Lutheran Church, Greeneville, Tennessee.

TEXTS: Mark 6:30-34, 53 -56

TITLE: He Had Compassion

I used to love watching the TV Show Evening Shade.
It starred Burt Reynolds as a small town football coach in Arkansas.

One night the coach's two small children were leaning out the upstairs window, looking at the stars.

Little boy: I'm glad I've got you guys. It sure would be lonely without you.

Little girl: Remember Sunday School.

Boy: Remember Sunday School? What do you mean by that? Oh, yeah. You mean how God is always here so we're never alone.

Girl: Yeah, that's what I mean.

Boy: Well, I know that's right, but sometimes I just need somebody with some skin on 'em.

I think most of us know how he feels. The world can be a difficult and dangerous and lonely place.

And as comforting as it is to believe in a God in Heaven who loves us and cares about us and has a plan for our lives; sometimes you just need somebody to talk to who will talk back.

That's why the people flocked to Jesus. Sure there were those who had heard about his miracles and just wanted to see a good show.

And there were those who were there just because everybody else was there. Friday Night football in Hayesville. Listen to women talk about church and teen-agers talk about who's dating whom.

One night the Methodist preacher told me where to sit. He said, "This is the section for the real fans. The other people are just here because everybody else in town is here."

So there were the thrill seekers and the crowd seekers, but there were also the God seekers, those who had heard about Jesus; had heard about his words and his actions and had come to catch a glimpse of the Holy.

Now, Jesus and the apostles had been really busy and really needed a break. So Jesus said, "Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while."

They were going on retreat, on vacation, on holiday.

But it was not to be. By the time they got where they were going, a crowd had gathered.

Jesus looked at them and weighed his own and his companions' weariness against something he saw in the faces turned up at him, in the eyes of the crowd.

What was it that swayed Jesus to give up the plan to rest? I think he looked at them and saw their hunger.

Not a hunger for food, but a hunger for companionship, a hunger for community, a hunger for love, a hunger for God.

Verse 34 says, "he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd."

Compassion literally means "to feel with."

Jesus felt compassion for them because he had felt what they were feeling.

After Jesus’ Baptism, the Spirit drove him into the Wilderness to be tempted by the Devil.

There he learned what it feels like to be abandoned, deserted, alone in the universe.

He also learned what one does and does not need in a time like that.

One of his temptations was to feed the world by turning stone into bread.

There in the wilderness, Jesus realized that fixing every human hurt was not to be his mission.

People didn't need a Superman jumping to their rescue.

People needed to know that God was in the world with them, not off in heaven above and beyond them.

People needed to know that God cared, and that God wanted them to care, and to act with caring as well.

So, there in the desert, Jesus came to a momentous decision; he would purposely withhold his power, restrain himself.

Throughout his ministry opportunities for healings came to Jesus, but he didn’t go looking for them. Every time he worked a miracle it happened because of those three little words:

HE HAD COMPASSION

It’s interesting to me how many people don’t believe that, don’t believe that God is love, that God is forgiving and kind and merciful.

Too many people in the world believe that God is anxious to send us all to Hell, that God has plans to send Holy Warriors to Earth in to wipe out the evil doers in a grand final battle.

And if you don’t think a lot of people believe that, check out the popularity of the Left Behind series of novels.

That HE HAD COMPASSION, is the most important thing we can say about Jesus, and about God.

In the midst of a world in which everyone is afraid of their own shadows, and, if they believe in God at all they believe God to be either remote and uncaring, or cruel and vindictive; we in the church have been called to witness to the fact that HE HAD COMPASSION.

Brothers and Sisters, we live today in a world full of fear and war. We are afraid of rising gas prices, we are afraid of failing health care systems, we are afraid of immigration and disease and forest fires and drought and drugs, and, and, and . . .

It has been a long time since I have seen this country, and indeed the world, so depressed and sad and frightened and on edge about the future.

And into this bog of sadness and sorrow, we the church are called to imitate our Lord and find ways to break into the cycle of fear and violence with words and acts of hope and assurance, words and acts of compassion and healing.

Now, that is a mighty tall order isn’t it? What can one little church do? What can one little Christian do? In the face of all this hurt and pain, who am I?

Those must have been the sorts of questions a little Albanian nun asked herself over 50 years ago when she found herself in Calcutta, one of the worst and most hopeless places in the world.

And what she decided to do was to do what Jesus did in our story, she had compassion on the ones right in front of her. She dealt with the need she was given and did what she could.

She began to pick up the dying beggars off the streets of Calcutta and to give them a decent place to die. That was it.

She washed their wounds and their bottoms, she cleaned their sheets and their latrines.

She fed them, and bathed them and turned them on their pallets when no one else would touch them.

She had compassion, one dying person at a time.

We are called to have compassion, to preach compassion, to teach compassion, to live compassion.

We are called to break whatever rules and taboos and cultural barriers necessary to let the world know

God is not harsh,

God is not out to get them,

God is not punishing them for their sins,

God is Love,

God is steadfast, everlasting, never-ending love.

God is reaching out into the midst of our fear of death with an offer of life, of life eternal.

HE HAD COMPASSION.

He had compassion then, and he has compassion now.

Open up your hearts.

Let God love you.

Open up your arms.

And show God’s love to the world.

AMEN AND AMEN

PENTECOST 6 / LECTIONARY 15 /JULY 12, 2009

2009-07-07T19:47:00.000-07:00

Pentecost 6, Lectionary 15
July 12, 2009
A sermon preached at the installation of the Rev. Janet Volk as pastor of Our Savior Lutheran Church, Gatlinburg, TN

Texts: Amos 7: 7-15; Ephesians 1: 3-14; Mark 6:14-29

When I became an Assistant to the bishop, I realized that a lot of my preaching would be on ceremonial occasions; installations, dedications, anniversaries, etc.

I also realized that it would be possible, and easy, to write a really good generic sermon for each of those occasions; an installation sermon, a dedication sermon, etc.

But I perversely decided that I would not do that. I was determined to write a new sermon each week as I had been doing for over thirty years. I decided that whatever the occasion, if I was preaching on Sunday morning, I would preach on the appointed texts.

After reading the lessons for today, I almost changed my mind, for this week at least.

Pastor Volk; at first glance the lesson to be learned from Amos is: try to avoid getting run out of town, and the lesson from the Gospel is: try not to lose your head.

As I read these lessons a line from Mark's Gospel leapt out at me:

Verse 20: "When he (Herod) heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him."

That line reminded me of the installation service, where I ask the congregation if they will receive Pastor Volk as a "steward of the mysteries of God."

Perplexity and stewards of mysteries. It doesn't sound like normal Lutheran language does it.

We are the champions of Systematic Theology, of organizing our thoughts on the faith in clear statements that people can memorize and know.

Look in the back of the Evangelical Lutheran Worship book; there we have Theology for Children, the Small Catechism.

Look at this. This is Theology for Adults; this is the book of Lutheran Confessions, called the Book of Concord.

Seriously, if you want to be perplexed and mystified, just plunge into that one night over a hot cup of tea. Strong tea, I would suggest.

Now a lot of people get impatient with discussions of religion that plunge into mystery, that are somewhat perplexing and confusing.

We all hanker for things to be simple. I used to joke about writing a book called "Christianity for Dummies," until I saw one in a store. It was selling very well.

We want that "old time religion," which the songs says, was "good enough for Paul and Silas, so it's good enough for me."

Well, there was nothing simple about the "old time religion" of Paul. A serious look at the complex ideas and reasoning in our lesson from Ephesians will show us that.

(Read bits and pieces of Ephesians with quizzically raised eyebrows)

Part of the calling of the pastor is to risk inviting congregations out of their comfort zones,

to dare to share with them the whole counsel of God,

to ask them to grow up beyond a childish Sunday School Faith into a mature adult Faith.

Like Amos in our first lesson, Pastor Volk has been called by God to preach to God's people.

And like King Jeroboam, sometimes the things God calls her to say will not be to our liking.

And like King Jeroboam and his priest Amaziah, we might be tempted to claim the church as our place, not God's place, and claim the right to tell the preacher what to say.

For that is what happened to Amos. He spoke the truth and nobody wanted to hear it. So the priest told Amos to go way, and then, in verse 13 said this, "never again prophecy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is the temple of the kingdom."

We all have to be careful on this point. This is God's house, this is God's sanctuary, this is God's temple, this is God's church. It's not your church, it's not Pastor Volk's church, it's not my church, it's not Bishop Gordy's Church, it's not the ELCA's church; it is God's Church.

In a few minutes I'm going to ask Pastor Volk if she will promise to preach and teach according to the scriptures and the Lutheran Confessions. You, people of God, are to hold her to that promise and to question her when you're not sure she's doing that.

But you are also to remember it is not her calling to tickle your ears with pleasant things you want to hear; it is her calling to rightly divide the word of truth and challenge you to grow in your faith and godly actions.

Which leads us to John the Baptist losing his head?

The reason John was in jail is mentioned in the text, but it's like trying to follow the story line of a soap opera. It can get a little confusing. So let me break it down for you.

King Herod here is not the same King Herod who was around when Jesus was born. That was his Daddy, Herod the Great. This is Herod Antipas.

He was, by all accounts, not much of a man or a ruler. And this royal family's bedding and marrying habits were unconventional and messy to say the least. It really was a soap opera.

Herod Antipas had married his brother's wife. This wouldn't have been so bad, except that his brother was still living and Herod forced him to divorce Herodias so he could marry her.

And the daughter who does the dancing? Jewish historian Josephus tells us her name was Salome. She was the Herod's niece and his wife's daughter and she ended up marrying his brother, her uncle. Sounds like a bad redneck joke, doesn't it.

Into the midst of this comes John the Baptist. He surveys the whole mess and calls Herod out on issues of morality and leadership. He points out to Herod where he has failed to be a good leader to the people, both politically and in his personal life.

Herod's reaction is interesting. He has John arrested and put in jail; but protects him from his wife's revenge. She is really mad and wants John dead; but Herod is a little afraid of him.

What if he is Elijah? What if Herod does need to repent? What if God is displeased with the way Herod is leading his life?

Herod is a perplexed seeker, a dabbler in the mysteries of God. He believes just enough to keep him awake at night but not enough to change his way of living.

All too often, we are like Herod. We keep holy things in the basement of our lives; we're not willing to throw them out, but we're not really sure what to do with them. We live our lives without paying a lot of attention to the holy, to the call of God on our lives because we are perplexed as to how taking that stuff seriously might challenge us to be different than we are.

And truth be told, most of us are happy with the way we are and don't want to change; because if we really wanted to, we would.

It is Pastor Volk's calling among us to so proclaim to us the good news of Jesus Christ that we are inspired to bring our holy things up out of the basement and place them in the center of our living space.

It is her calling to speak to us the wonderful love of God in Jesus the Christ that we will repent and turn and seek to follow God's way with our entire body, mind and spirit.

It is her calling to show us in word and deed what it means to live a life centered on the Kingdom of God and not the Kingdom of self.

And it is our calling to support her in her efforts; to pray for her, to listen to her, to talk with her, to work with her, to the end that God's church, God's temple, God's sanctuary may show to all of Gatlinburg God's unending love in Christ.

Amen and amen.

PENTECOST 5, LECTIONARY 14, JULY 5, 2009

2009-07-02T14:35:00.000-07:00

PENTECOST 5 (LECTIONARY 14)
July 5, 2009

A Sermon preached at the Installation of the Rev. Sandy Niiler as transition pastor at Christ Lutheran Church, Cullman, AL.

TEXTS: Ezekiel 2:1-5, II Cor. 12:2-10, Mark 6:1-13

TITLE: When is a Loss a Win?

My younger son is an athlete. He played a lot of ball on a lot of teams in the last 20 years. T-Ball and baseball, soccer and football. And basketball; lots and lots of basketball.

He played on some good teams and some bad teams. He played on a High School State Champion and for a team that won only four games. Sometimes he was an All-Star; just as often he was all bench.

I learned my most important lesson as a "sports Dad" when Joseph was still playing coach pitch baseball. They weren't a very good team, losing a lot more often than they won.

They were seven years old, and most of them had the attention span of a gnat. They spent more time jostling and picking on each other than paying attention to what was happening on the field.

After the game was over, as they lined up to shake hands with the other team, I would hear the boys ask the coach, "Did we win? Did we win?"

If the coach said YES they would cheer, if the coach said NO they would kick the ground. And after that they would ask, "What's for snack?"

As a society, as adults, we are obsessed with winning and losing, with success and failure, with bottom lines and final scores. Our attitude was summed up years ago by football Coach Vince Lombardi when he said, "Winning isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing!"

This is Alabama. You know what I'm talking about. Football coaches had better be the best and win the most or they're history. In North Carolina, it's all about basketball but it's the same way; win big or be gone!

As a nation, we have returned to the days of the gladiators, except in a more humane form; we don't kill the losers on American Idol and a host of other competitive "reality shows."

Sometimes, in this age of Political Correctness, we try to deal with this problem by eliminating the concept of competition and the rating of performance.

A few years ago the KUDZU comic strip had a cartoon on church league Softball.
The Rev., pastor of Bypass Baptist, tells his teen-age protégé, "I hate playing the Unitarians. They want to change the rules."

"Which ones, Rev."

"Well, for example, instead of three strikes and you're out they want to make it three strikes and you're special!"

When my older son was in Cub Scouts, he participated in the Pine Box Derby.
At the contest they crowned one champion. The district director told the boys,
"Don't forget, you're all winners."

On the way home David looked at me and said, "If we're all winners why don't we all get to go to the state contest? And why didn't we all get a big trophy instead of this stupid ribbon?" Good questions. Kids know the difference between winning and losing. They just don't think it's the end of the world like we adults do.

We can't deal with the issues of winning or losing, success or failure, by pretending it doesn't matter or by redefining the rules so that nobody loses.

We can only deal with winning and losing by putting success and failure into perspective and redefining the after the fact importance of our wins and losses.

We must learn to discern WHEN A LOSS IS A WIN.

Each of the lessons we read from the Bible deals with someone in the midst of a losing situation. We encounter these people at a time of very real and painful failure in their lives.

And their losses, their failures, go beyond competition and games.
Their failures are failures at life, failures at their vocation, failures in health, and failures in faith.

EZEKIEL: the prophet to whom no one would listen.

PAUL THE APOSTLE: the healer who could not heal himself.

JESUS: Hometown Miracle Man who could work no miracles at home.

Each of them learned a valuable lesson from their failure.

Each of them learned how to know WHEN A LOSS IS A WIN.

EZEKIEL - Ezekiel's story begins like all good prophet stories:
- the people are acting like total pagans
- they have turned their backs on God and Godly ways
- God decides to send a prophet to straighten them out
- Chapter 1 - Ezekiel has a vision
- Chapter 2 - God begins to speak to Ezekiel
Vs. 1 and 2 - Listen up, I want to talk to you
Vs. 3 and 4 - my people are rebellious, I want you to tell them

SO FAR SO GOOD, AND SO NORMAL. This is how it works with God and
prophets and the people of Israel in the Bible.

- then, in verse 5 - God says a strange thing: "Whether you succeed or not, win or lose, is not the issue. The important thing is that they hear the truth; that they know that "there has been a prophet among them."

As it happens, the people didn't listen, and God sent them into exile, and the people rewarded Ezekiel for this preaching by treating him very shabbily.
By all external measures, Ezekiel failed and failed miserably. But Ezekiel's loss was a win; because he a faithful to the truth. When Ezekiel was finished, the people knew there had been a prophet among them.

PAUL - Nobody knows what Paul's "thorn in the flesh was," but that is not important. What really matters is that Paul prayed very hard and very long and very faithfully for this thorn to be removed and it wasn't.

Paul lost the struggle for victory over a physical problem, and this loss created for him a spiritual problem, a crisis of faith.

This failure to pray himself out of this physical problem led him to question his faith. It was an experience that could have shattered his trust in God, but instead it humbled him and strengthened his faith in God. Paul's thorn in the flesh was a LOSS THAT TURNED INTO A WIN.

The paradoxical nature of Christianity is that:
- faith does not remove obstacles; it sustains us as we climb them,
- faith does not protect us from pain; it teaches us to live with it,
- faith does not eliminate Death; it teaches us not to fear it.

A LOSS IS A WIN if our faith is deepened and our ability to survive adversity is strengthened and we learn to trust more completely in the grace and love of God.

JESUS - The story of Jesus returning home to preach occurs early in his ministry.
Up until now, Jesus' version of Brother Love's Traveling Salvation show and Tent Revival had been a roaring success.

Immediately before this he had raised Jairus' daughter from the dead and healed the woman with the flow of blood.

The first five chapters of Mark are filled with healing stories and reports of huge crowds of people coming to hear Jesus preach.

So, he takes it on home to Nazareth; and falls flat on his face.

Verse 3 - They didn't just not like him; they "took offense at him."

Verse 5 - and somehow, their resentment resulted in his inability to perform
miracles and other healings.

Verse 6 - contains one of the most human portraits of Jesus in the Gospels;
"He was amazed at their unbelief." Jesus just couldn't believe their lack
of belief. He was stunned, left with his mouth hanging open.

Jesus learned a hard lesson; that there was a limit to his power; it was limited by the people's unwillingness to receive it.

Thirty-two years ago I served my first year as a pastor in a tiny Methodist Church in the North Carolina countryside. I was not very successful. My supervising Pastor, Dr. Nick Grant, told me, "Son, you can't minister to people who don't want to be ministered to."

That day in Nazareth, Jesus had a LOSS THAT WAS A WIN. From it he learned the limits to his power.

He learned you can control what you say, you cannot control what people hear.
He learned you can control what you do, you cannot control how people respond.
He learned you can control how you show your love,
you cannot control how people receive it.

Pastor Niiler, as you assume your duties here today, please remember that like Ezekiel, you have been called here to speak the truth. When you do that, it is a win.

Pastor Niiler, please remember that like Paul, you have been called here to do your best and to let God do the rest.

Pastor Niiler, please remember that even Jesus had his bad days, and you will too, and that you are called here to love these people, not to fix them.

And people of God, it is your calling to learn from your recent past about the limits of human ability to control the way things turn out. Your call today is face the future with confidence, trusting God to lead you through. AMEN AND AMEN

Pentecost 4, Lectionary 13, june 28, 2009

2009-06-26T15:59:00.000-07:00

A sermon preached at the installation of Pastor Marie Hatcher as transition pastor at Christ Lutheran Church, Nashville, TN

PENTECOST 4 JUNE 28, 2009
LESSONS: Lamentations 3:22-33, Ps. 30, II Corinthians8: 7-15, Mark 5:21-43

Of Faith and Fear

For a few years National Geographic carried a regular feature called Zip Code USA,
in which they focus on the place and people within a particular Zip Code.

In June of 2006, it was 27030, my home town, Mt. Airy, NC.
The article focused mainly on the Bunker twins, Eng and Chang "Siamese" twins, made famous by PT Barnum. When they retired, they settled in Mt. Airy and raised families.

As an aside the article mentioned the local custom of radio obituaries.

Now, for years I have told a story about the "Moody's Obituary Column of the Air,"

The story I have told has to do with eating breakfast at my Grandparents' house.
We all lived on the same farm, in houses about a quarter of a mile apart.
I spent one or two nights a week at my grandparents' house, which was good because instead of cereal I got bacon and biscuits for breakfast, but which was bad because I had to sit very still and eat very quietly so that Grandpa could listen to the "Moody Obituary Column of the Air."

It always began with eerie organ music, then a deep, deep voice said,
WILLARD JONES, OF ROUTE 3 LOWGAP, PASSED AWAY LAST EVENING AT NORTHERN SURRY HOSPITAL. HE WAS 72. A LONG-TIME EMPLOYEE OF BALLARD MILLS, MR. JONES WAS A HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL REFEREE, A RURITAN, AND A MEMBER OF GOODE CREEK CHURCH OF CHRIST. SERVICES WILL BE AT THE CHURCH, TUESDAY AT 1 PM, ELDER EZEKIEL PUTNAM PRESIDING.

And so it went through 5 or 6 names.
Now, over time, I developed the notion that the voice on the radio was the voice of God. Who else would know all that stuff about all those people?

And I further decided that the purpose of the obituaries was to warn the rest of us to straighten up and fly right.

After all, didn't Jesus say that he would come like a thief in the night, and weren't these death stories the first thing we heard in the morning?

So I ate my breakfast in trembling silence, and went out into my day trying to be as circumspect as possible.

One day, my Daddy dropped me off at Elmer Timmons' barber shop to get a haircut while he went to town on business. I liked Elmer's. It was a small concrete building in the corner of his yard. He had lots of Boys Life Magazines and Superman comic books, and always gave us suckers.

I also liked Elmer because his name was a lot like mine. I went in and called out "Hey Elmer!" and Elmer replied, "Hey Delmer!"

There was someone in the chair, so I started reading, when suddenly, my blood ran cold, my heart almost stopped, I couldn't breath, because God had spoken, not three feet away from me, and God said,

SAY ELMER, COULD YOU TAKE A LITTLE MORE OFF THE EARS, AND LEAVE A BIT MORE FOR ME TO COMB OVER, THAT BALD SPOT SEEMS TO BE GETTING BIGGER.

And I did what any reasonable, impressionable, imaginative, fundamentalist 6 year old would have done. I ran to the bathroom, turned out the light, locked the door and hid under the sink. (It took quite a bit of gentle coaxing and promises of candy to get me out of that bathroom, where Elmer did the best he could to explain the concept of radio announcer to me)

In our Gospel lesson, I was struck by the words FEAR and FAITH.

After the woman with the flow of blood touched Jesus and he stopped and asked who touched him etc, it says she "came in fear and trembling, fell down before him and told him the whole truth. He (Jesus) said to her, "Daughter, your faith has made you well."

In the wrap-around story of Jairus' daughter, at this point , the text says, "some people came from the leader's house to say, "Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?" But Jesus says to the man, "Do not fear, only believe (have faith)."

As demonstrated by the story of the obituaries, when I was a child I had a lot of faith, I also had a lot of fear. My faith was faith in the reality of God, not any sort of trust in the goodness or compassion of God. And my fear was rooted in a fear of the power of that real but vengeful God I had conjured up from Sunday School and Fundamentalist preaching and comic books and horror movies and God knows what else.

As I have grown older, faith and fear have remained in dynamic tension in my life. Just as my faith has matured and become more sophisticated, my fears have grown less generalized and more realistic.

But they are still there as they are for all of us. All of us fear things: terrorism, avian flu, economic collapse, earthquake, fire and flood, to name a few.

And the last few years have shown us that our fears are realistic and founded in reality, not fantasy as were mine. And the question is, as we face these realistic fears, where do we place our faith, our assurance and hope for the future? In money and its accumulation and clout? In armies and governments and secret agents?

The scriptures call us to trust in God, a thing much easier said than done.
Lamentations reminds us "that the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, (God's) mercies never come to an end." and then goes on to talk about those times when one feels abandoned by God, a realistic look at faith in the face of fear.

The Psalm repeats this theme, as in "then you hid your face, and I was filled with fear" but also cries out, "O Lord, My God, I will give you thanks forever." And our lesson from 2 Corinthians reminds us not to hoard our money in time of other's need, but to share our resources with the needy, trusting in God to provide for us through them in our time of need. Generosity is an act of faith overcoming fear.

Christ Lutheran Church is in the midst of its own uncertain times.
A long pastorate has come to an end. As we all know, there was some disagreement and lack of peace and harmony in the last year or so. The question is: are you going to face the future with FEAR or FAITH?

Are you going to reach out to one another the way the woman in the story reached out to Jesus for comfort and healing? Remember; the church, we, you and I, are the body of Christ, and we have God's spirit and healing power flowing through us. ARE WE GOING TO FACE THE FUTURE WITH FEAR OR FAITH?

Today we install Pastor Hatcher as your transition Pastor, it will be a major part of her calling to lead you forward in facing your fears with faith; faith in God and faith in each other as God's People, Christ's Church, Christ's BODY in the world. A body that is called this day both to be healed and to be a healer in the world.

Christ Church, I ask you: ARE YOU GOING INTO GOD'S FUTURE WITH FEAR OR FAITH?
amen and amen.

Pentecost 2/Lectionary 11, June 14, 2009

2009-06-12T05:59:00.000-07:00

Pentecost 2/ Lectionary 11 June 14, 2009
Text: Mark 4:26-34
(A sermon preached at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Nashville, TN on the occasion of the Installation of Transition Pastor Gretchen Person and the Dedication of the Dahlinger Fellowship Hall.)

Today's Gospel lesson is the sort of text you might expect an old farm boy like me to really get into. Plowing ground, planting seeds, watching 'em grow, Good stuff, right?

Well, truth is, I wasn't much of a farmer; just never really had any interest in it.

I mean, I could do the work and did it well. It just didn't excite me; I really didn't care very much one way or the other.

Frankly, I found the whole business - well, boring. It took too long; it was too unpredictable; too uncontrollable; too frustrating.

Plow the ground, put in the fertilizer, plant the seed, chop out the weeds, and wait, and wait and wait, and pray and pray and pray.

Pray for rain; pray it doesn't hail, pray for the rain to stop, pray for it to warm up, pray for it to cool off.

While you're praying, you need to be spraying; spray for bugs, spray for weeds; praying and spraying for weeks on end.

And, after all that; it's out of the farmer's hands anyway.

No matter how hard you try, sometimes it doesn't work.

Most of the time; it's too hot or too cold or too wet or too dry or prices are too high or too low.

If it's a good year, everybody has a good year and there's an oversupply of the crop and prices are too low.

If it's a bad year; everybody has a bad year and supply is down and prices are high, but you don't have anything to sell.

In the end, there was too much luck involved for me to be a farmer. I wasn't a very good farmer because I didn't have the right disposition

I'm not patient enough. I'm not comfortable with the fact that success ultimately lay in the hands of fate, or the weather, or God; depending on how you looked at it.

So, you can see, this text from Mark about farming really bothers and challenges me.

If the Kingdom of God really is like farming, like sowing seed and being patient;

or like the text from Ezekiel about planting sprigs and waiting for trees to grow;

well, I'm probably in trouble. Reading this text reminds me that the same things that made me a lousy farmer also work against me as a pastor and a Christian.

I worry too much and I want to be in control and I don't trust God enough. There, I said it and I feel better for it.

There is a difficult lesson her for those of us who have a hard time letting go and letting things take their natural, God-given course.

Jesus says to us that we are to plant the seed and let God worry about the growth.

Jesus says we are not responsible for making the church grow.

We are not responsible for making sure everybody "gets saved."

We are not responsible for making the Kingdom of God a smashing success.

Our job, our responsibility is planting the seed and reaping the harvest.

GOD IS RESPONSIBLE FOR GROWTH!

Faith is often defined as trust, and in this case, faith is trusting that the things we do for God will turn out right, in God's way, in God's time.

Faith is keeping on with the work of the Gospel and trusting that in God's own time the crop will grow, even if we never live to see it.

Faith is, in part, letting go of our control over the results.

We live in a world in which people afraid of losing control; or more correctly, of letting someone or something else control their fate.

We have been taught that in order to succeed one must have a goal - after all, as Yogi Berra said, if you don't know where you're going, you might end up somewhere else.

We have been taught that in order to succeed one must have a plan - a well-defined outcome and strategies for achieving it.

I hesitate to point out that most of the folks who taught us these things were the business leaders and financial geniuses who got us into our current economic mess.

Jesus teaches us that the Kingdom of God; the work of Grace and Mercy and Compassion and peace with Justice in the world; works with a totally different outline.

These parables remind us that we are called to do the work; indeed we are called to do the work to the best of our ability; but they also remind us that the ultimate purpose and outcome of this work is not in our hands but in God's. Which is, I assure you, a reality that is both frustrating and reassuring.

It is frustrating to those of us who don't like to wait, who like to be in charge and in control of our own fate and destiny, who like to see progress being made, who like to be able to measure and calibrate and control.

But it is also reassuring and liberating to know that in God's eyes success is not judged by the size of the harvest but by the faithfulness in sowing seeds.

These are reassuring and liberating words for Pr. Person today.

As she is installed as your transition Pastor, she is assured that she is not personally and perpetually responsible for the success and future of this church. She has a defined role to play for a limited amount of time. She has seeds to sow here, a sprig to plant. Hers is to do that faithfully; how it turns out is up to God.

These are reassuring and liberating words for the congregation, both individually and collectively. You are assured that your calling is to be a faithful, honest active member of the parish, sowing seeds of love and grace in world. Yours is to do that faithfully; how it turns out is up to God.

Some 15 years ago those of us who were Holy Trinity Lutheran Church on West End Avenue entered into a discernment process to discover what God's will for us as a community might be.

We studied and prayed and talked and studied and prayed some more. We sought to discern what our mission was and then we tried to figure out what we needed to do to best fulfill that mission. Selling, moving, building seemed to us what we were called to do.

Today, with the dedication of the Fellowship Hall, we complete one part of that vision, but it would be unwise to judge success or failure at this juncture.

We came out here and planted seeds in this field, a cedar sprig on a mountain top. What it can or will be has not yet been revealed, but of one thing we can be assured, God has not finished the work God began in us.

There's a favorite story in my family about my Grandfather, Reid Chilton, who was just absolutely crazy about playing baseball. He lived with his uncle, a Primitive Baptist preacher who didn't hold with the foolishness of ball playing. One day he knew Grandpa had a baseball game, so he put him to working sowing field peas in the cornfield, where they would grow up using the cornstalks as a stake.

Grandpa knew he didn't have time to plant that whole bucket of peas and ride his mule over to Mount Airy for the ball game. Suddenly, he came upon a burned out stump in the middle of the field. He quickly looked around, saw no one was looking, dumped that whole bucket of peas in the stump and covered them with dirt.

He ran out of the field, showed the good reverend his empty bucket and rode off to play ball. Things were fine until a few weeks later when Uncle Arrington was cultivating the field and came upon a stump over-flowing with pea vines!

I see Holy Trinity like that stump just before the eruption of growth; the seeds have been planted, the ground has been cultivated, the fertilizer has been put in. You have done and continue to do your work. Our calling today is to keep working and to trust that God is still working
in and through us to grow the Kingdom.

Amen and Amen.

Pentecost, 2009

2009-05-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

PENTECOST SUNDAY, May 31, 2009

A sermon preached at St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Andrews, NC on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of Pr. George Simmons’ ordination.

Text: Acts 2:1-21

A few years ago, USA Today ran a story about the Connie T. Maxwell Home in Greenwood SC in its Life section.

The article told about how the Baptists of the state had started the home as an orphanage and as times changed had adapted to serving children in any sort of need.

They had an interview with the director, a cheerful but harried woman, who told heart-breaking stories of the children’s lives before they were brought to Connie T. Maxwell.

The reporter asked how she, and the other staff, cope with such constant stress and pain in others.

The director smiled and said that you had to keep a sense of humor and perspective. She showed the writer a file in her desk where she kept an anonymous collection of cute, poignant or funny things the children had said.

The director said, “Whenever I get over-whelmed, I just open this drawer and read a few of these and I feel better.”

USA Today printed several of the things the kids said. My favorite is this, from a 9 year old boy:

Germs, germs germs, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That’s all I ever hear about around here and I ain’t never seen either one of them.

That young boy sums up a problem that Jesus addresses in our Gospel Lesson, or at least in the section of the Gospel of John in which our little 2 verse Gospel Lesson is found.

It is Maundy Thursday and Jesus is in the midst of trying to explain everything to his disciples before he leaves. I’m not so sure they’re getting it, and neither is Jesus.

He realizes that when he’s gone, they’ll be like the little boy, hearing and talking about Jesus without ever seeing him. So Jesus promises an answer, a solution to this Never Seeing Jesus problem. THE HOLY SPIRIT.

In our text he calls it the COUNSELOR and THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH, but it’s the Holy Spirit he’s talking about.

I think probably the disciples heard that and looked at each other quizzically and nodded like they understood when they really didn’t and then promptly forgot what he said.

We are all familiar with this; it’s what we all do when our husband or wife or boss or teacher or other significant other tells us things we don’t understand and don’t care enough about to ask for clarification.

So, they kind of forgot about it, and then the crucifixion and the resurrection and the hiding out and then the resurrection appearances of Jesus’ popping in and out of their lives for a few weeks happened and then the ascension, with Jesus’ floating off into heaven happened, and in midst of all that, who could remember a little uncomprehended promise about a Counselor; I mean, really?

So, here they were minding their own insignificant little Messianic Christian storefront cult business, singing hymns and praying and still hiding out from the Authorities when whoosh, Jesus’ promise comes gloriously true.

Noise, wind, fire, voices shouting, movement, out of control religious excitement; of one thing we can be absolutely certain; the first church was definitely NOT Lutheran!

The church was born in answer to the problem of talking about Jesus without being able to see him. Germs, germs, germs, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That’s all I hear about around here and I ain’t never seen either one of them.

Though I understand what that young man was talking about, I would beg to differ.
He saw Jesus every day in the very existence of that home, built and supported by the Church. He saw Jesus every day in the people who bathed, fed, disciplined, taught and loved him.

The church is the place and the people where Jesus is not just talked about but is shown to the world. It is not by accident that the New Testament constantly refers to the church as THE BODY OF CHRIST.

Too often we think of the church in personal terms, in terms of what am I getting out of it, of how am I being fed, of how are my needs being met, etc.

To think that is to mis-understand the nature of the church.

The Church is mentioned in the third article of the Creed, the part devoted to the Holy Spirit. That is because the church is a work of the Holy Spirit in the world.

Luther’s explanation of this part of the creed says that the church is:

“called, gathered, enlightened, made holy and sent”

The Holy Spirit is active in the church calling the world to God. We each of us have been called here by the spirit, we have been gathered together not just for convenience sake

(not because talking to a lot of people at once is more efficient than talking one on one or because we need more voices to make the hymns sound better, or the more people we have the better we can pay the pastor)

No, we are gathered because it is the nature of human beings to need each other, to need to learn with and from each other, to learn to support and care for each other.

It is in the midst of the gathered community that we become truly HOLY, not perfect, not ideal, not without problem or moral struggles and flaws, but HOLY, devoted to God and aware of God’s presence in us and in others and in the world.

And it is as we have been gathered and enlightened and made holy that we realize that we have not been made those things for ourselves and for our own benefit and for our own personal growth, but for the world.

We realize that we have been gathered so that we might be sent, sent into a world that needs love, that needs care, that needs compassion, that needs to see Jesus in the midst of the toxic germs of modern life.

In his book RED LETTER CHRISTIANS, Tony Campolo tells of sitting down to dinner in a restaurant in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Seated next to the front window, he looked up from his plate to discover three little boys with their faces pressed against the window, staring at his plate full of food.

The waiter came by and pulled down the shade, “Don’t let them bother you, enjoy your meal.” (Campolo, RED LETTER CHRISTIANS, P. 24)

There is a world just outside these walls that is starving for what God has to offer them. And the question is: are we going to pull the shade? Or are we going to get up and go deal with them?

We have been called, gathered, enlightened, made holy and SENT, sent into the world to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the lonely and down hearted, to be available to people in need wherever we might find them.

Now, one might ask, what does this have to do with the 40th anniversary of Pr. George Simmons’ ordination to the Gospel Ministry?

And my answer is that Pr. Simmons is a living example of what I’m talking about.

I don’t need to give you a list of the things George is involved in in the community. Just name it, he’s in it. Everybody in town knows George, and more importantly they know George is good, they know George is compassionate and they know George is there representing Jesus and the Church.

Over 40 years ago George answered the call to ministry. He gathered with others also called at Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary where they were more or less enlightened and made holy. And from there he was sent. Sent out to congregations in Richfield and Greensboro and Rocky Mount and Andrews NC.

Sent out to preach the word with tongues of fire, sent out to show the love of God to all comers, sent out to enlighten and make holy those whom the Holy Spirit has called and gathered together. Sent to lift up the shade on the world’s need, sent to lead us out to serve the world.

George on behalf of the ELCA, the North Carolina Synod, Saint Andrews Church and my personal family, let me say thank you, good and faithful servant, thank you.

Amen and amen.

Easter 7, May 24, 2009

2009-05-21T07:31:00.000-07:00

I wrote this one three years ago. I can't really improve upon it. I preached it at the Lutheran Church of the Holy Family in Highlands, NC in 2006. I'll preach it at the Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity in Elberton GA this week.

Easter 7, May 28, 2006
Texts: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; I John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19
Secular Context: Memorial Day weekend

“they do not belong to the world. . . .As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”

For most of us, Memorial Day is simply the excuse for the first long weekend of the summer; a chance to take a little trip, to get a head start on being in a summertime sort of mood. Go to the beach or the lake, grill out and chill out.

A few years ago, a writer in the Nashville paper complained that churches don’t celebrate Memorial Day anymore, by which he meant, I presume, the playing of patriotic music, etc. A pastor wrote back saying that the Church has a higher agenda than a secular holiday, that the church is obligated to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ above all else.

I found myself agreeing with each of them. As the son of a man who served and suffered in Europe in WWII and as the nephew of a man who died in the Pacific at the age of 19 fighting the Japanese, I too lament our turning a “Holy-Day” intended to show respect for their sacrifice into an excuse for a long week end.

On the other hand, the preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ can not take second place to any other agenda in the life of the church. And, I kept thinking about Jesus’ words in our Gospel lesson, about not being of the world, but being sent to the world.

How can we talk about this subject in the church without either dishonoring the dead or glorifying war?

True story. Small Southern town. Town Council asked a young
architect and landscape artist to crate a Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial out of a narrow vacant lot downtown.

He landscaped the lot into a grassy knoll with winding walkways, flower beds and park benches. He created a “triptych” monument, moderately sized, out of local granite. On the two side panels were listed the locals who had served and died in Vietnam. In the center he designed an etching of one weary soldier carrying a wounded buddy on his shoulders. It was cruciform without being a cross. It was meant to evoke service and sacrifice and “no greater love”.

The Town Council approved and applauded everything but the etching. They didn’t like it. It was “defeatist”, and “negative”; not “upbeat” and “positive”. So that got a stone cutter at the quarry to etch in the scene of raising the flay at Iwo Jima instead. They even painted the Red, White and Blue on the Flag.

Wrong symbol from the wrong war, but that didn’t matter to them. American honor was all that mattered.

That story can serve as a parable of our ambiguous attitudes toward war. On the one hand, we lament the loss of life, we honestly mourn those of our families and communities who died, we carry a deep sorrow for their pain and suffering. We mean it. We are not hypocrites.

But, on the other hand, we sometimes get carried away with our pride in America’s military might, with its “win-loss” record if you will. By replacing the cruciform symbol of service, sacrifice and suffering with one of victory and triumph, the town council said to the Vietnam Veterans,

We want to remember that you served and that some of you died. We just don’t want to remember that you, we, lost and that we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

As Christians, we must always shy away from the glorification of war. War is mean, nasty and ugly. It is the result of the failure of humanity to settle issues of economics and ethnic tensions peacefully. War is the eruption of our inherent sinfulness on a national and global scale. War occurs when Pride and Materialism and Greed and Hatred of the Other overcome the Divine call to peace with justice. For Christians, War comes when we forget that we are not of this world, but are sent into this world by the Prince of Peace, to spread the Gospel of Peace.

Memorial Day is an opportunity to prayerfully remember those who have suffered and died because of the world’s inability to live love and justice on an international scale.

One of my childhood pastor’s explained Original Sin this way:

Original Sin means that there is something in us that just can’t wait to mess up a good thing.

The longer I live, the more right he seems. At the beginning of the 20th Century, much was written about how the World was on the cusp of its greatest Golden Age. Science, Technology, Learning were leaping ahead at a record pace. The end of war and disease and poverty were practically in sight, or so it was thought.

A look back at the last 100 years shows a much different picture. We have seen 2 world wars, the rise of totalitarian governments, the use of weapons of mass destruction, new diseases and behaviour related health problems. We are trying to destroy the earth and sea and all that is in them. What happened? Well we did. We, the human race. We, all of us. Original Sin erupted and continues to erupt in our persistent proclivity for messing up a good thing.

What we do on Memorial Day is weep for those who lost their innocence and perhaps their lives in the service of their country.

My Daddy lived until he was 80. Until he went to the hospital a week or so before he died, he lived in the house he was born in.

The only time he spent any real time away from there was when he was in Europe in WWII. He never told us much about it. Until the last year of his life, and then in bits and pieces. Buddies who were there and then blown up, little French and German children stepping on mines or begging for food. As I sat at that kitchen table, listening to him talk, coffee cup in one hand and cigarette in the other, I began to understand his years of staring into the distance, the emotional distance, the stoic devotion to duty.

And as he began to weep, his 80 year old shoulders going up and down, as he cried for someone named Willie from Oklahoma, I cried for Willie and Daddy and millions of others, American and English and French, Korean and Vietnamese and Iraqi and Afghan and all those caught up in the senselessness and pain.

On Memorial Day, we remember and weep and commit ourselves anew to going into the world with the light and love of Christ.

Amen and amen.

Peace,

Delmo