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.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Easter 7, May 24, 2009
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
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
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Building Dedication, non-Lectionary texts
The Three pastors mentioned in the middle of this sermon are Middle Tennessee Lutheran pastors who served their respective churches 30 to 40 years.
Building Dedication, Christ Lutheran, Clarksville, TN
Sunday Afternoon, May 17, 2009
Texts: I Chronicles 29:10, 14-16; Psalm 84; Hebrews 11:13-16; Luke 9:57-58
Title: COMMENCEMENT
My younger son graduated from college yesterday morning. Got an honors degree in English and a minimum wage job writing for a weekly paper. Graduated yesterday, starts work tomorrow; probably sleeping off the celebration today. It’s all good.
His graduation marks a milestone, a red-letter date, in our family. For his mother and me it feels a bit like crossing the finish line of a marathon that started twenty-six years ago when his older brother was born.
But of course, it’s not really over, is it? About a year ago I was talking, complaining really, to my mother about something one of my supposedly bright and mature sons had done and then called me about.
I whined, “Don’t they ever grow up?” And my eighty year old Mama said, “You’re talking to me aren’t you.”
Anyway, I went to commencement yesterday at Brevard College. 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 your journey with Jesus?
Have you completed the race, the marathon of discipleship?
Is this church ready to sit back and relax and enjoy its retirement?
I don’t think so. Like my son, I think I’ll give you a night to celebrate and a day to sleep it off, then it’s time to get up, get going and get to work in the Vineyard of the Lord.
Our Gospel lesson for this service begins with the words “On the road.”
The New Revised Standard Version says, “As they were going along the road,” which shows that they were not stopped on the road, they were moving down the road.
This chapter 9 is the beginning of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. For the next 9 chapters Jesus is on the road, on a journey, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the cross.
One thing is for certain; no one can accuse Jesus of false advertizing. When someone said, “I’ll follow you anywhere,”
Jesus was blunt in pointing out that this would not be an easy trip. To follow him was to be a journey into homelessness and discomfort.
Immediately after our text, two others come to Jesus with similar excitement, but also with excuses.
They say, “I’ll follow you anywhere, but first let me, bury my father, say good-bye.”
Jesus is somewhat ruthless in telling them to let the dead bury the dead, to leave home behind, get on the bus or get out of the way, it’s time to finish that old life, it’s time to commence the new life.
WE are on a journey with Jesus. Sometimes it is a physical journey, a relocation journey.
I went to my 30th High School reunion a, um, few years ago. And I got the award for having moved the most, for having lived the most places.
That had to do with the nomadic nature of pastoral ministry. Though some people like Richard Smith at Trinity, Tullahoma or Paul Frank at St. Timothy’s, Hendersonville or Eric Pearson at St. Andrews, Franklin are blessed with spending many years in one place, most of us in the pastorate find ourselves journeying for Jesus.
But just because you don’t move around a lot doesn’t mean you are not on spiritual pilgrimage.
My father died in the house he was born in and lived on and worked on that same plot of ground for 80 years and I never knew anyone whose mind and heart were more active in seeking out new things and new directions.
We, all of us, are on a journey with Jesus. We are going from the old Adam to the New Creature in Christ; from who we were to whom God is calling us to be.
We have this day marked out and blessed those things God has provided to assist us and move us along on this journey.
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.
As Martin Luther said, “We are born again each morning,” when we remind ourselves we have been baptized, 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.
The Pulpit, where God’s word is read and proclaimed to us. 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 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?
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 do here today is dedicate this place to be a stopping place, a hospice, an inn, a shrine, for people on a journey with Jesus.
A place to catch your breath, to wash your soul, to take some nourishment, to reflect with fellow travelers about where you’ve been and where you’re going, a place to hear about what comes next down the road, to receive encouragement to keep going or permission to stop and rest a while.
We are on this journey because the Bible teaches us this world is not our true home. We all came from God and we spend our lives on a journey back to where we came from.
The French Priest and Scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it like this:
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Our human experience is one of pilgrimage, of journey. Sometimes the journey is physical, often it is mental, always it is spiritual.
The church is the community of those on a journey with Jesus, those who are “called, gathered, enlightened and made holy” as the Small Catechism puts it.
We are called out of the world into the church. It is in the Church Community that we are gathered and enlightened and made holy so that we may be sent back into the world to do God’s work in God’s name.
You have been called and gathered and enlightened and made somewhat holy. Are you ready to commence? Ready to be sent out in God’s name? Let the church say Amen.
Building Dedication, Christ Lutheran, Clarksville, TN
Sunday Afternoon, May 17, 2009
Texts: I Chronicles 29:10, 14-16; Psalm 84; Hebrews 11:13-16; Luke 9:57-58
Title: COMMENCEMENT
My younger son graduated from college yesterday morning. Got an honors degree in English and a minimum wage job writing for a weekly paper. Graduated yesterday, starts work tomorrow; probably sleeping off the celebration today. It’s all good.
His graduation marks a milestone, a red-letter date, in our family. For his mother and me it feels a bit like crossing the finish line of a marathon that started twenty-six years ago when his older brother was born.
But of course, it’s not really over, is it? About a year ago I was talking, complaining really, to my mother about something one of my supposedly bright and mature sons had done and then called me about.
I whined, “Don’t they ever grow up?” And my eighty year old Mama said, “You’re talking to me aren’t you.”
Anyway, I went to commencement yesterday at Brevard College. 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 your journey with Jesus?
Have you completed the race, the marathon of discipleship?
Is this church ready to sit back and relax and enjoy its retirement?
I don’t think so. Like my son, I think I’ll give you a night to celebrate and a day to sleep it off, then it’s time to get up, get going and get to work in the Vineyard of the Lord.
Our Gospel lesson for this service begins with the words “On the road.”
The New Revised Standard Version says, “As they were going along the road,” which shows that they were not stopped on the road, they were moving down the road.
This chapter 9 is the beginning of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. For the next 9 chapters Jesus is on the road, on a journey, on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the cross.
One thing is for certain; no one can accuse Jesus of false advertizing. When someone said, “I’ll follow you anywhere,”
Jesus was blunt in pointing out that this would not be an easy trip. To follow him was to be a journey into homelessness and discomfort.
Immediately after our text, two others come to Jesus with similar excitement, but also with excuses.
They say, “I’ll follow you anywhere, but first let me, bury my father, say good-bye.”
Jesus is somewhat ruthless in telling them to let the dead bury the dead, to leave home behind, get on the bus or get out of the way, it’s time to finish that old life, it’s time to commence the new life.
WE are on a journey with Jesus. Sometimes it is a physical journey, a relocation journey.
I went to my 30th High School reunion a, um, few years ago. And I got the award for having moved the most, for having lived the most places.
That had to do with the nomadic nature of pastoral ministry. Though some people like Richard Smith at Trinity, Tullahoma or Paul Frank at St. Timothy’s, Hendersonville or Eric Pearson at St. Andrews, Franklin are blessed with spending many years in one place, most of us in the pastorate find ourselves journeying for Jesus.
But just because you don’t move around a lot doesn’t mean you are not on spiritual pilgrimage.
My father died in the house he was born in and lived on and worked on that same plot of ground for 80 years and I never knew anyone whose mind and heart were more active in seeking out new things and new directions.
We, all of us, are on a journey with Jesus. We are going from the old Adam to the New Creature in Christ; from who we were to whom God is calling us to be.
We have this day marked out and blessed those things God has provided to assist us and move us along on this journey.
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.
As Martin Luther said, “We are born again each morning,” when we remind ourselves we have been baptized, 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.
The Pulpit, where God’s word is read and proclaimed to us. 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 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?
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 do here today is dedicate this place to be a stopping place, a hospice, an inn, a shrine, for people on a journey with Jesus.
A place to catch your breath, to wash your soul, to take some nourishment, to reflect with fellow travelers about where you’ve been and where you’re going, a place to hear about what comes next down the road, to receive encouragement to keep going or permission to stop and rest a while.
We are on this journey because the Bible teaches us this world is not our true home. We all came from God and we spend our lives on a journey back to where we came from.
The French Priest and Scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin put it like this:
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.
Our human experience is one of pilgrimage, of journey. Sometimes the journey is physical, often it is mental, always it is spiritual.
The church is the community of those on a journey with Jesus, those who are “called, gathered, enlightened and made holy” as the Small Catechism puts it.
We are called out of the world into the church. It is in the Church Community that we are gathered and enlightened and made holy so that we may be sent back into the world to do God’s work in God’s name.
You have been called and gathered and enlightened and made somewhat holy. Are you ready to commence? Ready to be sent out in God’s name? Let the church say Amen.
Friday, May 01, 2009
May 3, 2009, Easter 4, The Good Shepherd
The Fourth Sunday of Easter
May 3, 2009
Texts: Psalm 23, John 10:11-18
“The Shepherd of the Sheep”
Will Rogers said that the only thing he knew about politics was what he read in the papers.
I find myself with an even greater handicap, the only thing I know about Sheep and Shepherds I read in a Bible Commentary.
I know more about mules than I want to know. We had two when I was growing up and we used them in raising tobacco.
I know a lot about cows. We had one that we milked by hand, and my uncle had a dairy next door.
I even know a considerable amount about hogs having helped my wife’s father with his for several years.
But again, I don’t know anything about Sheep and Shepherds, except what I read in the Commentaries.
Now here’s an interesting thing that occurred to me this week.
Bible commentaries are written by Biblical scholars,
who learned what they know from an older generation of Biblical Scholars, who learned from an even older generation of Biblical Scholars, so . . .
I began to wonder how far back you have to go until you find
a Biblical Scholar who actually, really, personally, experientially
knew anything about Sheep and Shepherds.
These reflections lead me to two very comforting conclusions:
1) Most preachers don’t know any more about Sheep or Shepherds than I do.
2) The text isn’t about Sheep and Shepherds anyway.
The shepherd was a very powerful image in Israel.
For much of their history, they were a nomadic people dependent upon their sheep. Because of this, sheep imagery was very important,
The King of Israel was often referred to as the Shepherd of Israel, harkening all the way back to King David, the traditional author of Psalm 23, who is The King by whom all kings were measured, and who began life as a shepherd boy.
The ancient kings of Israel were seen to be different from the kings of the nations around them, in that they were seen not as divine themselves, but as human beings who represented God on earth and ruled in his name.
The idea was that God had placed the responsibility for the nation in their hands. The kingdom was not theirs, it was God’s and they were to take care of God’s kingdom in God’s name and with God’s help.
A story that North Carolina’s Lutheran Bishop, Leonard Bolick, likes to tell is illustrative here.
A pastor organized a Holy Land Tour. While in Israel, he was the chaplain and tour guide. One day the group made a bus trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.
Along the way the Pastor told the group how they would see many sheep and shepherds and to think about how Jesus was the Good Shepherd and how shepherds always went in front of the sheep leading them; he never went behind, beating or pushing or shoving them.
Along the way, the bus had to stop in the road for a herd of sheep to pass. The good reverend was shocked to see a man with a stick beating and cajoling and pushing and shoving the sheep along. He got off the bus and confronted the man,
“Look here, everything I’ve read says the shepherd leads the sheep with love, doesn’t come from behind beating and pushing.”
“That’s true,” the man said, “but I’m not a shepherd, I’m a butcher.”
A true king, a true leader of Israel, was a shepherd, not a butcher. The kings and priests and prophets of Israel were given the responsibility for taking care of GOD’S Flock.
And, as the Historical parts of the Hebrew Scriptures tell us, they often failed at this task; there were many bad kings, lousy priests and false prophets.
When Jesus compares himself to a shepherd, it’s not really a farm image; it’s more a religious and political one.
The important TRUTH he is speaking is that whereas the previous leaders had been poor or incomplete or unfaithful leaders, or, to use the language of the text: “hired hands” who “leave the sheep and run away,”
Jesus lays claim to being “the good shepherd,” who “lays down his life for the sheep.”
In other words, Jesus is saying, “In the past, God gave the responsibility for the people of God over to the Kings of the country and the Priests of the Temple and the Prophets of Israel, but now God has given over that responsibility to me, Jesus of Nazareth.”
And the sheep know the true shepherd, they know my voice, Jesus says.
During the Palestinian uprising of the late 1980s, a village near Bethlehem refused to pay its taxes, maintaining to do so would be to finance the Israeli war machine that was oppressing them. In response, the Israeli commander confiscated all the farm animals in the village, confining them in a large, barbed-wire pasture.
A woman came to the commander to ask for her sheep back. She said that since her husband was dead, they were her only livelihood and she had several children to provide for. The commander shrugged and pointed at the pasture and said, not kindly, that to fulfill her request would be impossible, he had no way of knowing which sheep were hers.
She bargained, “If I can find my sheep, can I have them?” and the commander agreed. The gate was opened and the woman went into the pasture with her small son. Out of his pocket he took a small reed flute and began to play it; all over the field, heads began to top up. Soon, the young boy and his mother walked down the road, still playing the flute, followed by 25 happy sheep.
We are Christians, the people of God, because God’s voice has gotten through the static of our hectic, noisy, modern lives.
We are Christians because the “still, small voice,” of God has slipped in underneath the busyness of our existence and tugged at the apron strings of our hearts, getting our attention and moving our souls.
Christianity is not so much a matter of believing certain things as it is of hearing that voice and trusting it with your life.
Throughout my years in the ministry, I have had some people speak some very kind words to me about my preaching, and I have no false modesty, I appreciate the praise.
But I always hoped and prayed that people realized that the voice they heard was not my voice, it was the voice of the shepherd speaking through me.
It’s the same voice that speaks through the Scriptures and through the liturgy and through the hymnody and through the Choir Anthems.
It is the voice of deep crying out to deep, of Christ’s spirit seeking out our spirits and calling us to come into the presence of the lover of our souls.
The hearing of the Shepherd’s voice is the difficult part of this. Just hearing the voice is not enough. Only 25 sheep out of the hundreds in the pasture lifted their heads and followed when the young man played his flute.
Those of us who gather here on Sunday mornings have in one way or another heard and recognized the voice of our Master, our Saviour, our Lord.
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.
And, to various degrees, we have all put ourselves into the hands of that Shepherd; we have trusted Him with our souls and our lives. We feel secure in the promise that we will not be “snatched away,” by the wolf.
The one question that remains is what are we to do about that voice here and now, in this time and in this place.
In order to follow the voice of the Shepherd, we are to follow him and do what he did. Not just Pastors, but all of us. That is the true meaning of Luther’s idea of the “priesthood of believers.”
We, the church, are the shepherds, and the hurting, lonely, lost people of the world are God’s scattered sheep. And we are called to go out to them with the Voice of the Shepherd, calling them home, calling them home to God, 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 hear from us; what people know of God’s love, they experience from us.
Too often, we fail to appreciate how important we are, each and every one of us, to God’s work in the world. We fail to realize that Christ our shepherd has placed us in a position to shepherd others and will carry us through.
Gladys Aylward, missionary to China, shy, quiet woman working in an orphanage in the 1930’s. When the Japanese invaded, she was forced to flee, but she would not leave without her flock, a hundred children. With only one assistant, she led them out walking over the mountains to Free China.
Gladys grappled with despair many times in her journey, and after one cold sleepless night, she cried and wept and said, over and over, “I can’t do it, we won’t make it.”
A 13-year-old girl reminded Gladys of their much-loved Bible story of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.
Aylward, threw up her hands and wailed, “But I’m not Moses!”
And the girl replied, “Of course not, but God is still God!”
God is still God for us as well.
What is the Voice of Christ calling you to do today?
Will you answer? Will you follow?
Amen and amen.
May 3, 2009
Texts: Psalm 23, John 10:11-18
“The Shepherd of the Sheep”
Will Rogers said that the only thing he knew about politics was what he read in the papers.
I find myself with an even greater handicap, the only thing I know about Sheep and Shepherds I read in a Bible Commentary.
I know more about mules than I want to know. We had two when I was growing up and we used them in raising tobacco.
I know a lot about cows. We had one that we milked by hand, and my uncle had a dairy next door.
I even know a considerable amount about hogs having helped my wife’s father with his for several years.
But again, I don’t know anything about Sheep and Shepherds, except what I read in the Commentaries.
Now here’s an interesting thing that occurred to me this week.
Bible commentaries are written by Biblical scholars,
who learned what they know from an older generation of Biblical Scholars, who learned from an even older generation of Biblical Scholars, so . . .
I began to wonder how far back you have to go until you find
a Biblical Scholar who actually, really, personally, experientially
knew anything about Sheep and Shepherds.
These reflections lead me to two very comforting conclusions:
1) Most preachers don’t know any more about Sheep or Shepherds than I do.
2) The text isn’t about Sheep and Shepherds anyway.
The shepherd was a very powerful image in Israel.
For much of their history, they were a nomadic people dependent upon their sheep. Because of this, sheep imagery was very important,
The King of Israel was often referred to as the Shepherd of Israel, harkening all the way back to King David, the traditional author of Psalm 23, who is The King by whom all kings were measured, and who began life as a shepherd boy.
The ancient kings of Israel were seen to be different from the kings of the nations around them, in that they were seen not as divine themselves, but as human beings who represented God on earth and ruled in his name.
The idea was that God had placed the responsibility for the nation in their hands. The kingdom was not theirs, it was God’s and they were to take care of God’s kingdom in God’s name and with God’s help.
A story that North Carolina’s Lutheran Bishop, Leonard Bolick, likes to tell is illustrative here.
A pastor organized a Holy Land Tour. While in Israel, he was the chaplain and tour guide. One day the group made a bus trip from Jerusalem to Bethlehem.
Along the way the Pastor told the group how they would see many sheep and shepherds and to think about how Jesus was the Good Shepherd and how shepherds always went in front of the sheep leading them; he never went behind, beating or pushing or shoving them.
Along the way, the bus had to stop in the road for a herd of sheep to pass. The good reverend was shocked to see a man with a stick beating and cajoling and pushing and shoving the sheep along. He got off the bus and confronted the man,
“Look here, everything I’ve read says the shepherd leads the sheep with love, doesn’t come from behind beating and pushing.”
“That’s true,” the man said, “but I’m not a shepherd, I’m a butcher.”
A true king, a true leader of Israel, was a shepherd, not a butcher. The kings and priests and prophets of Israel were given the responsibility for taking care of GOD’S Flock.
And, as the Historical parts of the Hebrew Scriptures tell us, they often failed at this task; there were many bad kings, lousy priests and false prophets.
When Jesus compares himself to a shepherd, it’s not really a farm image; it’s more a religious and political one.
The important TRUTH he is speaking is that whereas the previous leaders had been poor or incomplete or unfaithful leaders, or, to use the language of the text: “hired hands” who “leave the sheep and run away,”
Jesus lays claim to being “the good shepherd,” who “lays down his life for the sheep.”
In other words, Jesus is saying, “In the past, God gave the responsibility for the people of God over to the Kings of the country and the Priests of the Temple and the Prophets of Israel, but now God has given over that responsibility to me, Jesus of Nazareth.”
And the sheep know the true shepherd, they know my voice, Jesus says.
During the Palestinian uprising of the late 1980s, a village near Bethlehem refused to pay its taxes, maintaining to do so would be to finance the Israeli war machine that was oppressing them. In response, the Israeli commander confiscated all the farm animals in the village, confining them in a large, barbed-wire pasture.
A woman came to the commander to ask for her sheep back. She said that since her husband was dead, they were her only livelihood and she had several children to provide for. The commander shrugged and pointed at the pasture and said, not kindly, that to fulfill her request would be impossible, he had no way of knowing which sheep were hers.
She bargained, “If I can find my sheep, can I have them?” and the commander agreed. The gate was opened and the woman went into the pasture with her small son. Out of his pocket he took a small reed flute and began to play it; all over the field, heads began to top up. Soon, the young boy and his mother walked down the road, still playing the flute, followed by 25 happy sheep.
We are Christians, the people of God, because God’s voice has gotten through the static of our hectic, noisy, modern lives.
We are Christians because the “still, small voice,” of God has slipped in underneath the busyness of our existence and tugged at the apron strings of our hearts, getting our attention and moving our souls.
Christianity is not so much a matter of believing certain things as it is of hearing that voice and trusting it with your life.
Throughout my years in the ministry, I have had some people speak some very kind words to me about my preaching, and I have no false modesty, I appreciate the praise.
But I always hoped and prayed that people realized that the voice they heard was not my voice, it was the voice of the shepherd speaking through me.
It’s the same voice that speaks through the Scriptures and through the liturgy and through the hymnody and through the Choir Anthems.
It is the voice of deep crying out to deep, of Christ’s spirit seeking out our spirits and calling us to come into the presence of the lover of our souls.
The hearing of the Shepherd’s voice is the difficult part of this. Just hearing the voice is not enough. Only 25 sheep out of the hundreds in the pasture lifted their heads and followed when the young man played his flute.
Those of us who gather here on Sunday mornings have in one way or another heard and recognized the voice of our Master, our Saviour, our Lord.
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.
And, to various degrees, we have all put ourselves into the hands of that Shepherd; we have trusted Him with our souls and our lives. We feel secure in the promise that we will not be “snatched away,” by the wolf.
The one question that remains is what are we to do about that voice here and now, in this time and in this place.
In order to follow the voice of the Shepherd, we are to follow him and do what he did. Not just Pastors, but all of us. That is the true meaning of Luther’s idea of the “priesthood of believers.”
We, the church, are the shepherds, and the hurting, lonely, lost people of the world are God’s scattered sheep. And we are called to go out to them with the Voice of the Shepherd, calling them home, calling them home to God, 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 hear from us; what people know of God’s love, they experience from us.
Too often, we fail to appreciate how important we are, each and every one of us, to God’s work in the world. We fail to realize that Christ our shepherd has placed us in a position to shepherd others and will carry us through.
Gladys Aylward, missionary to China, shy, quiet woman working in an orphanage in the 1930’s. When the Japanese invaded, she was forced to flee, but she would not leave without her flock, a hundred children. With only one assistant, she led them out walking over the mountains to Free China.
Gladys grappled with despair many times in her journey, and after one cold sleepless night, she cried and wept and said, over and over, “I can’t do it, we won’t make it.”
A 13-year-old girl reminded Gladys of their much-loved Bible story of Moses and the Israelites crossing the Red Sea.
Aylward, threw up her hands and wailed, “But I’m not Moses!”
And the girl replied, “Of course not, but God is still God!”
God is still God for us as well.
What is the Voice of Christ calling you to do today?
Will you answer? Will you follow?
Amen and amen.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Third Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2009
A Sermon preached at Faith Lutheran Church at Tellico Village, Tennessee
The Third Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2009
Text: Luke 24:36-48
The Rev. Ravi Zacharias grew up in India. His family were long time Anglicans, what we call Episcopalians in this country. After High School his family moved to Canada where he went to college. His first career was a hotel chef; he later went to Bible College and became an evangelist.
In one of his books he tells of how much he liked the book The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Bunyan was a tinker in England in the 1600’s. He was also a street preacher. He spent a lot of time in jail because he was a street preacher in a time in England when it was illegal to preach anything but official Church of England doctrine in official Church of England pulpits.
During one of his stints in jail, John Bunyan sat down to write a story an allegory, about a man named Christian’s journey through life. This barely educated working man ended up writing one of the classics of western literature.
Pr. Zacharias had long been fond of Bunyan’s book and when he spent a year on sabbatical studying at Cambridge University, one of the first things he did was take a short bus ride out to the town of Bedford where Bunyan lived. The town of Bedford had done Bunyan proud. There was a life-size statue in the middle of town and a large, elaborate museum dedicated to Bunyan life and work.
Zacharias had a wonderful day exploring the museum, ending with buying presents for family and friends in the gift shop. By the check-out counter there was a large display of various editions of The Pilgrim’s Progress. Zacharias chatted for a while with the woman behind the counter. Yes, she was from Bedford. Yes the museum was quite nice and drew a lot of visitors to the town. Yes, she had volunteered at the gift shop for many years.
Then the pastor asked, “What is your favorite part of the book?” She looked at the books and then looked back at Ravi, “Oh, I’ve never read it. It’s quite old, don’t you know, and quite peculiar.”
Zacharias was stunned. How could it be that the woman working at the Bunyan museum had never read the one book Bunyan was famous for, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
And, being a preacher, Zacharias also thought, “Is that how we are in the church? We’re here. We’re doing our duty. We bow in the direction of Christianity. But have we failed to pay attention to the story? Do we know why we’re here? And do we know what God has called us to do?”
British Bishop and New Testament Scholar Tom Wright say:
“People often ask me, ‘What after all is the point of Jesus dying and rising again? It’s no doubt very nice for him to be alive again, but what does it have to do with the rest of us?’ ”
What indeed? What is the point of the story of Jesus and why are we here?
Are we here because it’s the tradition in which we were raised? Because church is a part of the civic fabric of our lives and we would feel a little lost without it. Why, exactly have we formed this new community called a church and set apart this space in which to get together and sing strange songs while hearing short speeches and eating a meal that isn’t actually a meal, more like a snack, really.
What is it all about? Why are we here? Is it because we’re all from somewhere else and are a little lonely for a taste, a touch of home, and a Lutheran Church is a part of home? Is that it?
Three verses in our Gospel lesson are there specifically to tell us why we’re here.
Verse 46: and he said to them, “Thus it is written, the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,
Verse 47: and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem,
Verse 48: you are witnesses of these things.
Three short verses; in English, a mere 50 words; yet they contain our reason for being and our call to action.
First of all: IT IS WRITTEN. Luke wants the early church, and us, to know that what happened to Jesus was not a random act of ugliness; another in a long series of cruelties and indignities that powerful and corrupt people have foisted upon the weak, the innocent and the good.
Jesus life, suffering, death and resurrection were a part of God’s long term plan to deal with the very human problems of sin, evil, hatred, discord, and death.
Bishop Wright points out that the basic human condition is that the history of the world is one long litany of bad things people as individuals and as communities and as nations have done to each other.
And all our attempts to bring an end to these bad things flounder on our very human sense of righteousness. Just look at what happened at the United Nations on Monday. The President of Iran accusing Israel of Racism and delegates of other countries walking out and the United States boycotting the whole thing. It is a scene played out all over the world
Wright says,
“Each one claims that they have the right to the moral high ground and must be allowed redress, revenge, satisfaction.”
The only way forward is the way of the Christ, the way of the cross. Jesus came and lived among us and showed us that the one who had the most right, the best claim, to revenge, to redress, to satisfaction chose to go another way. God, in Christ, turned away from revenge and embraced justice; turned away from our death and through his own death gave us life.
Verse 47 – REPENTANCE AND FORGIVESNESS OF SIN MUST BE PROCLAIMED TO ALL NATIONS
This is the world’s only hope, our only way out of the continual cycle of offense and revenge, of insult and retaliation, of wrong piled upon wrong in a deadly version of the children’s game “King of the Hill.”
The only way to bring an end to the nations’ battling is through living out the Gospel call for repentance and forgiveness.
Very often, we read this is a private and individual way. If I, DELMER, repent of MY sins, then God will forgive ME, DELMER, of MY sins. That’s one way to hear it, but not the only or the best way.
What about; WE must ALL repent of OUR wrongful ways, OUR destructive paths, OUR vengeful hearts.
WE are ALL called to turn from ways that lead to death, and WE are ALL called to turn to and follow ways that lead to NEWNESS of LIFE.
And WE are ALL encouraged (?), no commanded, to forgive the sins of OTHERS, to seek reconciliation instead of revenge, to look for life in the valley of the shadow of death.
And what are we doing here?
That’s in VERSE 48: YOU ARE WITNESSES OF THESE THINGS
We are here to be reminded of the story, to continually turn from death to life, to receive forgiveness and learn how to give forgiveness, to support one another in our witnessing in the world, to gather strength from the meal and the community, and to organize our efforts.
As Luther puts it in the Small Catechism, “We are called, gathered, empowered and sent,” by the Holy Spirit into the streets with the message of God’s amazing Grace.
Today, as we set apart this place as the worship space for a community dedicated to the message of new life, we are aware that this place is primarily a Funeral Home.
Some might find that ironic, I find it fitting and more than a little inspirational. The Bible itself reminds us that “in the midst of death we are in life,” and what better place to week after week witness to God’s power over all the things in this world that threaten us with death.
Christ is Risen,
Christ is Risen Indeed, Alleluia.
And we are his witnesses!
Amen and man.
Ravi Zacharias in “Jesus Among Other Gods” pp. 75-76
Tom Wright: “Luke for Everyone” pp. 300-301
The Third Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2009
Text: Luke 24:36-48
The Rev. Ravi Zacharias grew up in India. His family were long time Anglicans, what we call Episcopalians in this country. After High School his family moved to Canada where he went to college. His first career was a hotel chef; he later went to Bible College and became an evangelist.
In one of his books he tells of how much he liked the book The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan. Bunyan was a tinker in England in the 1600’s. He was also a street preacher. He spent a lot of time in jail because he was a street preacher in a time in England when it was illegal to preach anything but official Church of England doctrine in official Church of England pulpits.
During one of his stints in jail, John Bunyan sat down to write a story an allegory, about a man named Christian’s journey through life. This barely educated working man ended up writing one of the classics of western literature.
Pr. Zacharias had long been fond of Bunyan’s book and when he spent a year on sabbatical studying at Cambridge University, one of the first things he did was take a short bus ride out to the town of Bedford where Bunyan lived. The town of Bedford had done Bunyan proud. There was a life-size statue in the middle of town and a large, elaborate museum dedicated to Bunyan life and work.
Zacharias had a wonderful day exploring the museum, ending with buying presents for family and friends in the gift shop. By the check-out counter there was a large display of various editions of The Pilgrim’s Progress. Zacharias chatted for a while with the woman behind the counter. Yes, she was from Bedford. Yes the museum was quite nice and drew a lot of visitors to the town. Yes, she had volunteered at the gift shop for many years.
Then the pastor asked, “What is your favorite part of the book?” She looked at the books and then looked back at Ravi, “Oh, I’ve never read it. It’s quite old, don’t you know, and quite peculiar.”
Zacharias was stunned. How could it be that the woman working at the Bunyan museum had never read the one book Bunyan was famous for, The Pilgrim’s Progress.
And, being a preacher, Zacharias also thought, “Is that how we are in the church? We’re here. We’re doing our duty. We bow in the direction of Christianity. But have we failed to pay attention to the story? Do we know why we’re here? And do we know what God has called us to do?”
British Bishop and New Testament Scholar Tom Wright say:
“People often ask me, ‘What after all is the point of Jesus dying and rising again? It’s no doubt very nice for him to be alive again, but what does it have to do with the rest of us?’ ”
What indeed? What is the point of the story of Jesus and why are we here?
Are we here because it’s the tradition in which we were raised? Because church is a part of the civic fabric of our lives and we would feel a little lost without it. Why, exactly have we formed this new community called a church and set apart this space in which to get together and sing strange songs while hearing short speeches and eating a meal that isn’t actually a meal, more like a snack, really.
What is it all about? Why are we here? Is it because we’re all from somewhere else and are a little lonely for a taste, a touch of home, and a Lutheran Church is a part of home? Is that it?
Three verses in our Gospel lesson are there specifically to tell us why we’re here.
Verse 46: and he said to them, “Thus it is written, the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day,
Verse 47: and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem,
Verse 48: you are witnesses of these things.
Three short verses; in English, a mere 50 words; yet they contain our reason for being and our call to action.
First of all: IT IS WRITTEN. Luke wants the early church, and us, to know that what happened to Jesus was not a random act of ugliness; another in a long series of cruelties and indignities that powerful and corrupt people have foisted upon the weak, the innocent and the good.
Jesus life, suffering, death and resurrection were a part of God’s long term plan to deal with the very human problems of sin, evil, hatred, discord, and death.
Bishop Wright points out that the basic human condition is that the history of the world is one long litany of bad things people as individuals and as communities and as nations have done to each other.
And all our attempts to bring an end to these bad things flounder on our very human sense of righteousness. Just look at what happened at the United Nations on Monday. The President of Iran accusing Israel of Racism and delegates of other countries walking out and the United States boycotting the whole thing. It is a scene played out all over the world
Wright says,
“Each one claims that they have the right to the moral high ground and must be allowed redress, revenge, satisfaction.”
The only way forward is the way of the Christ, the way of the cross. Jesus came and lived among us and showed us that the one who had the most right, the best claim, to revenge, to redress, to satisfaction chose to go another way. God, in Christ, turned away from revenge and embraced justice; turned away from our death and through his own death gave us life.
Verse 47 – REPENTANCE AND FORGIVESNESS OF SIN MUST BE PROCLAIMED TO ALL NATIONS
This is the world’s only hope, our only way out of the continual cycle of offense and revenge, of insult and retaliation, of wrong piled upon wrong in a deadly version of the children’s game “King of the Hill.”
The only way to bring an end to the nations’ battling is through living out the Gospel call for repentance and forgiveness.
Very often, we read this is a private and individual way. If I, DELMER, repent of MY sins, then God will forgive ME, DELMER, of MY sins. That’s one way to hear it, but not the only or the best way.
What about; WE must ALL repent of OUR wrongful ways, OUR destructive paths, OUR vengeful hearts.
WE are ALL called to turn from ways that lead to death, and WE are ALL called to turn to and follow ways that lead to NEWNESS of LIFE.
And WE are ALL encouraged (?), no commanded, to forgive the sins of OTHERS, to seek reconciliation instead of revenge, to look for life in the valley of the shadow of death.
And what are we doing here?
That’s in VERSE 48: YOU ARE WITNESSES OF THESE THINGS
We are here to be reminded of the story, to continually turn from death to life, to receive forgiveness and learn how to give forgiveness, to support one another in our witnessing in the world, to gather strength from the meal and the community, and to organize our efforts.
As Luther puts it in the Small Catechism, “We are called, gathered, empowered and sent,” by the Holy Spirit into the streets with the message of God’s amazing Grace.
Today, as we set apart this place as the worship space for a community dedicated to the message of new life, we are aware that this place is primarily a Funeral Home.
Some might find that ironic, I find it fitting and more than a little inspirational. The Bible itself reminds us that “in the midst of death we are in life,” and what better place to week after week witness to God’s power over all the things in this world that threaten us with death.
Christ is Risen,
Christ is Risen Indeed, Alleluia.
And we are his witnesses!
Amen and man.
Ravi Zacharias in “Jesus Among Other Gods” pp. 75-76
Tom Wright: “Luke for Everyone” pp. 300-301
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Easter II - NRCL Gospel for April 19, 2009
A sermon preached at the South Dakota Synod Pastor's Conference on April 14 and at St. John's Lutheran Church, Atlanta, Georgia, April 19
The Second Sunday of Easter
Text: John 20:19-31
I was driving back to the church after a hospital visit one wintry afternoon about 30 years ago.
The sun was shining bright and directly into my eyes. I turned left at a lonely country intersection and BAM!
My little Datsun was slammed into by a large delivery truck doing 60 miles an hour.
He hit me right behind the back door and the car spun round and round like a top,
then WHAM! I stopped, wedged into the ditch on the side of the road.
Every window in the car was broken, the steering wheel was broken, the seat was broken.
My head was in the backseat, passenger side and my feet were under the steering wheel and I couldn’t breathe.
I literally COULD NOT BREATHE. That truck knocked the wind out of me.
The wreck was witnessed by one of my parishioners, Kitty Hightower. She ran to my car and leaned in the broken window. “Pastor, Pastor, are you all right?”
Well no, I wasn’t all right. I couldn’t breathe. There was no air in my lungs and I didn’t seem to be able to get any in there.
I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t even move; I just stared at her with my mouth open.
Kitty started crying, and then started screaming to the men rushing over from the country store, “He’s dead, He’s dead. Oh my God, the Pastor’s dead!”
Which is, I assure you, a peculiar thing to have screamed in your ear when you are indeed very much alive.
After what seemed like an eternity I was able to get a bit of air into my lungs and was able to lift a hand and touch Kitty on the shoulder;
which, in retrospect, was not the best thing to do, seeing as how she thought I was dead and all.
When I touched her on the shoulder, she jerked her head up and looked at me with real terror in her eyes.
Finally, I squeezed out the words, “It’s alright Kitty, I’m not dead.”
It was an odd thing to find myself in that position; the one who had been hurt comforting the onlooker.
But that is the position in which we find Jesus in our Gospel
lesson; the one who was hurt bringing solace to the witnesses.
On the Evening of that first Easter, the disciples were meeting in a room, probably the same room in which they had held their Passover.
They had the door shut, bolted, locked.
They were frightened.
They could not get their bearings.
They could not breathe.
They had given up everything to follow Jesus, and this is not how they expected things to turn out.
Just a week ago, on Palm Sunday, they had entered the city with such gigantically high hope, and now this.
This, this, disaster.
This, this, craziness.
This, this, car crash of an ending.
Indeed, they had the wind knocked out of them.
And on that first Easter evening, Jesus the Christ came to the disciples in that locked and airless room and breathed new life into them.
At one time or another all of us are like the disciples were on that first Easter evening.
We too have had the wind knocked out of us.
Some of us gathered here have lost loved ones unexpectedly,
some of us are struggling with the diagnosis of a long-term illness in the family,
some of us have had job losses,
some of us have lost economic security,
some of us have failed to get that promotion (or that call)
we had hoped for,
our children haven’t worked out the way we hoped,
our marriages are hurting.
All of us have had the wind knocked out of us, sometime; probably sometime lately.
Believe you me, in times like those, the big picture fades away and all your energy is centered on surviving, on breathing, on taking one more precious breathe,
and anything other than present personal experience becomes difficult to believe in or focus on.
Writing in Christianity Today, Tim Stafford talks about an object lesson Pastor Stephen Bilynski uses with his confirmation class.
He comes to the very first class with a jar full of jelly beans and asks the class to guess how many are in the jar. He writes all their estimates on the board.
Then he asks the boys and girls to name their favorite songs and he lists those on the board.
Finally the class counts the beans to see who was closest to right. Then Pastor Steve points to the list of songs and asks, “And which one of these is closest to being right?”
And of course the students protest that there is no right answer; that a person’s favorite song is purely a matter of taste and circumstance; purely personal preference. (Which would, I suppose, explain my predilection for Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale.”)
At this point, Pr. Steve comes to the point of the entire exercise: “When you decide what to believe about God, is that more like guessing the number of beans, or more like choosing your favorite song”
In the article, Pastor Steve says he has done this numerous times over the last 20 years, and always, always, the answer, from teen-agers and from adults, is the same:
“Choosing what to believe about God is like choosing one’s favorite song.”
In modern America, we have transferred faith from the realm of fact to the world of feelings; what my friend Tom Ridenhour, Jr. calls the triumph of Schliermacher.
And the problem with that is, we seldom feel like believing.
Or more accurately, those personal experiences that would convince us to believe in God are few and far between, practically non-existent; and those things that would cause us to disbelieve, that knock the wind out of us, are much louder, persistent and frequent.
This is why what Jesus did in that room with those disciples is so important to us. Jesus reminded them where he came from “Just as the Father sent me,” and then he reminded them where they were going, “So I send you!”
Then he filled them with the Holy Spirit the way God the Creator filled the lungs of Adam and Eve with the very air we breathe, the wind that gives us life.
Lastly, he reminded them what their calling was, what they were being sent out filled with the Holy Spirit to do “Forgive sins.”
All this says to us that whether God loves us or not is NOT dependent on whether we’re feeling the love or not.
It is dependent upon God’s choice to love us; a choice God made and will never undo.
Whether God is involved in our lives is not dependent upon whether or not our grand plans and schemes for ourselves or for God are working out or not;
God’s involvement in our lives is again God’s choice, a choice Gad has already made and will not unmake.
All the disciples, Thomas and the others, had an advantage we do not and will not have; they got to see the Risen Lord.
But we have an advantage they did not; we have seen the fact that the Church and the Gospel are still going strong 2000 years later; again, not because of us, but because of God.
Amen and amen.
The Second Sunday of Easter
Text: John 20:19-31
I was driving back to the church after a hospital visit one wintry afternoon about 30 years ago.
The sun was shining bright and directly into my eyes. I turned left at a lonely country intersection and BAM!
My little Datsun was slammed into by a large delivery truck doing 60 miles an hour.
He hit me right behind the back door and the car spun round and round like a top,
then WHAM! I stopped, wedged into the ditch on the side of the road.
Every window in the car was broken, the steering wheel was broken, the seat was broken.
My head was in the backseat, passenger side and my feet were under the steering wheel and I couldn’t breathe.
I literally COULD NOT BREATHE. That truck knocked the wind out of me.
The wreck was witnessed by one of my parishioners, Kitty Hightower. She ran to my car and leaned in the broken window. “Pastor, Pastor, are you all right?”
Well no, I wasn’t all right. I couldn’t breathe. There was no air in my lungs and I didn’t seem to be able to get any in there.
I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t even move; I just stared at her with my mouth open.
Kitty started crying, and then started screaming to the men rushing over from the country store, “He’s dead, He’s dead. Oh my God, the Pastor’s dead!”
Which is, I assure you, a peculiar thing to have screamed in your ear when you are indeed very much alive.
After what seemed like an eternity I was able to get a bit of air into my lungs and was able to lift a hand and touch Kitty on the shoulder;
which, in retrospect, was not the best thing to do, seeing as how she thought I was dead and all.
When I touched her on the shoulder, she jerked her head up and looked at me with real terror in her eyes.
Finally, I squeezed out the words, “It’s alright Kitty, I’m not dead.”
It was an odd thing to find myself in that position; the one who had been hurt comforting the onlooker.
But that is the position in which we find Jesus in our Gospel
lesson; the one who was hurt bringing solace to the witnesses.
On the Evening of that first Easter, the disciples were meeting in a room, probably the same room in which they had held their Passover.
They had the door shut, bolted, locked.
They were frightened.
They could not get their bearings.
They could not breathe.
They had given up everything to follow Jesus, and this is not how they expected things to turn out.
Just a week ago, on Palm Sunday, they had entered the city with such gigantically high hope, and now this.
This, this, disaster.
This, this, craziness.
This, this, car crash of an ending.
Indeed, they had the wind knocked out of them.
And on that first Easter evening, Jesus the Christ came to the disciples in that locked and airless room and breathed new life into them.
At one time or another all of us are like the disciples were on that first Easter evening.
We too have had the wind knocked out of us.
Some of us gathered here have lost loved ones unexpectedly,
some of us are struggling with the diagnosis of a long-term illness in the family,
some of us have had job losses,
some of us have lost economic security,
some of us have failed to get that promotion (or that call)
we had hoped for,
our children haven’t worked out the way we hoped,
our marriages are hurting.
All of us have had the wind knocked out of us, sometime; probably sometime lately.
Believe you me, in times like those, the big picture fades away and all your energy is centered on surviving, on breathing, on taking one more precious breathe,
and anything other than present personal experience becomes difficult to believe in or focus on.
Writing in Christianity Today, Tim Stafford talks about an object lesson Pastor Stephen Bilynski uses with his confirmation class.
He comes to the very first class with a jar full of jelly beans and asks the class to guess how many are in the jar. He writes all their estimates on the board.
Then he asks the boys and girls to name their favorite songs and he lists those on the board.
Finally the class counts the beans to see who was closest to right. Then Pastor Steve points to the list of songs and asks, “And which one of these is closest to being right?”
And of course the students protest that there is no right answer; that a person’s favorite song is purely a matter of taste and circumstance; purely personal preference. (Which would, I suppose, explain my predilection for Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale.”)
At this point, Pr. Steve comes to the point of the entire exercise: “When you decide what to believe about God, is that more like guessing the number of beans, or more like choosing your favorite song”
In the article, Pastor Steve says he has done this numerous times over the last 20 years, and always, always, the answer, from teen-agers and from adults, is the same:
“Choosing what to believe about God is like choosing one’s favorite song.”
In modern America, we have transferred faith from the realm of fact to the world of feelings; what my friend Tom Ridenhour, Jr. calls the triumph of Schliermacher.
And the problem with that is, we seldom feel like believing.
Or more accurately, those personal experiences that would convince us to believe in God are few and far between, practically non-existent; and those things that would cause us to disbelieve, that knock the wind out of us, are much louder, persistent and frequent.
This is why what Jesus did in that room with those disciples is so important to us. Jesus reminded them where he came from “Just as the Father sent me,” and then he reminded them where they were going, “So I send you!”
Then he filled them with the Holy Spirit the way God the Creator filled the lungs of Adam and Eve with the very air we breathe, the wind that gives us life.
Lastly, he reminded them what their calling was, what they were being sent out filled with the Holy Spirit to do “Forgive sins.”
All this says to us that whether God loves us or not is NOT dependent on whether we’re feeling the love or not.
It is dependent upon God’s choice to love us; a choice God made and will never undo.
Whether God is involved in our lives is not dependent upon whether or not our grand plans and schemes for ourselves or for God are working out or not;
God’s involvement in our lives is again God’s choice, a choice Gad has already made and will not unmake.
All the disciples, Thomas and the others, had an advantage we do not and will not have; they got to see the Risen Lord.
But we have an advantage they did not; we have seen the fact that the Church and the Gospel are still going strong 2000 years later; again, not because of us, but because of God.
Amen and amen.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
EASTER: Mark 16:1-8
THE SUNDAY OF THE RESURRECTION
April 12, 2009
Text: Mark 16:1-8
“Oh, I have heard that story before” the old Nigerian man said after missionary Charles Kraft told him about the death and resurrection of Jesus. “It happened to my nephew, just last year.”
Kraft was puzzled until he learned that the people of the old man’s village thought that being unconscious was the same thing as being dead.
Because the story of a man dying and coming back to life was old and very common news to him, the Gospel didn’t sound like Good News to the old man.
You know what? I’m afraid the Easter Story is old news to us too; and because of that we sometimes forget what really GOOD NEWS it is.
Most of us in this room today have heard the story of Jesus’ last week on earth so many times and in so many ways that we have ceased to be “alarmed” or “terrorized,” or “amazed” or “afraid.”
We are just bored. Like the old man, we just shrug and say, “I have heard that story before.”
It’s not that we don’t believe it. If we didn’t believe it, most of us wouldn’t be here today. It’s just that the story no longer moves us; it no longer seems to have the power to change our lives.
While we still profess belief in the final resurrection of the body in the last days; as the years go by it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out what the Death and Resurrection of Jesus 2000 years ago has to do with us, here, in Cullman, Alabama, in the year 2009.
So, on Easter, we celebrate the coming of Spring. We dress up in new clothes and decorate eggs and eat chocolate bunnies; which are symbols of natural fertility and life, but not of a supernatural victory over death. We do these things because we’re just not really sure what to make of this resurrection business.
Now, when Mr. Kraft heard the old man say he had heard the story before, he did a brilliant thing.
Instead of arguing with the man, or trying to explain to him the difference between being unconscious and being dead; Mr. Kraft asked the man a question;“Okay, if that’s not Good News; what would be Good News to you? What would be the BEST news you could hear?
The man thought for a few minutes, then said, “If I knew there was a power greater than the spirits that trouble me?”
That really is the Good News. That God is a power greater than the spirits that trouble all of us.
There are a lot of problems in the world today. There is war, and hunger and poverty, and the economy, and racial hatred, and drugs, and the environment.
And there are personal problems that are often a result of those larger problems. Loved ones sick with incurable diseases, family discord, loss of jobs, personal poverty, broken friendships and strained work relationships.
There are many powers in our world and in our lives that trouble us. And the Good News of Jesus Christ is not just about one man coming back from the dead. It is that but it is oh so much more than that.
It is a story that shouts out to us that there is a power that is greater than the spirits that trouble us. And that power is the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead.
The power of Easter is shown the life of the Church, the Risen Body of Christ in the World.
The power of the Resurrection is in the changed lives of the believers. The power of the empty tomb is this: the Truth that Jesus taught continues to be taught, the Unconditional Love that Jesus lived out continues to be lived out and shown, sins are forgiven, spirits are healed, Relationships are restored; all in Christ’s name and all by Christ’s power.
The witness of the women at the tomb, the witness of the apostles who spread the word around the Middle East, the witness of the early Church Fathers, the witness of the monks who clung to the faith throughout the middle ages, the witness of saints and martyrs and ordinary folk for 2000 years is that Christ does live on and is the best possible news because the Love and Forgiveness and Compassion of God are the power that is greater than the spirits that trouble us.
The witness of the ages is that the Empty Tomb is the power of God to give us new life and new hope for overcoming the spirits that trouble us and hold us back.
French writer Henri Barbusse wrote a memoir of his experiences in WWI. He writes of one day when his regiment had attacked the German lines and were driven back under a barrage of heavy gunfire.
Collapsing into the momentary safety of a muddy trench, Barbusse found himself up to his knees in mud, pressed against the trench wall while German machine guns laid down heavy fire just inches above his head.
He looked to his left and saw a man horribly wounded, his face disfigured, obviously dying. The wounded man reached over and grabbed a companion by his side and pulled him close to his face and began to speak, really to shout loudly, loud enough for Barbusse to hear. The wounded man said,
DOMINIC, YOU HAVE BEEN A GOOD FRIEND TO ME. YOU DO NOT KNOW THAT I KNOW THAT YOU ARE A CRIMINAL, THAT YOU JOINED THE ARMY TO ESCAPE THE POLICE.
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU DID, I DO NOT CARE. AS I SAID, YOU HAVE BEEN A GOOD FRIEND TO ME. WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, THE POLICE WILL ARREST YOU AND SEND YOU TO JAIL TO PAY FOR YOUR CRIMES. THEY KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. THEY ARE JUST WAITING TO SEE IF YOU MAKE IT OUT ALIVE.
NOW IS YOUR CHANCE. GIVE ME YOUR DOG-TAGS. GIVE ME YOUR WALLET WITH YOUR PAPERS. I’LL GIVE YOU MINE. WHEN I DIE, YOUR CRIMES WILL DIE WITH ME. YOU WILL HAVE A NEW LIFE.
And so, with tears running down his face, Dominic exchanged identities with his friend and then held his friend in his arms as he died. He left that ditch, that “tomb,” a new man with a new life.
That is the promise of Easter for us. That is the power of the Resurrection in our lives. The Gospel is true. Sins are forgiven. Lives are changed. Love is more powerful than hate. Life is stronger than death. God can and does overcome the spirits that trouble us.
Christ is risen,
CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED!
April 12, 2009
Text: Mark 16:1-8
“Oh, I have heard that story before” the old Nigerian man said after missionary Charles Kraft told him about the death and resurrection of Jesus. “It happened to my nephew, just last year.”
Kraft was puzzled until he learned that the people of the old man’s village thought that being unconscious was the same thing as being dead.
Because the story of a man dying and coming back to life was old and very common news to him, the Gospel didn’t sound like Good News to the old man.
You know what? I’m afraid the Easter Story is old news to us too; and because of that we sometimes forget what really GOOD NEWS it is.
Most of us in this room today have heard the story of Jesus’ last week on earth so many times and in so many ways that we have ceased to be “alarmed” or “terrorized,” or “amazed” or “afraid.”
We are just bored. Like the old man, we just shrug and say, “I have heard that story before.”
It’s not that we don’t believe it. If we didn’t believe it, most of us wouldn’t be here today. It’s just that the story no longer moves us; it no longer seems to have the power to change our lives.
While we still profess belief in the final resurrection of the body in the last days; as the years go by it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out what the Death and Resurrection of Jesus 2000 years ago has to do with us, here, in Cullman, Alabama, in the year 2009.
So, on Easter, we celebrate the coming of Spring. We dress up in new clothes and decorate eggs and eat chocolate bunnies; which are symbols of natural fertility and life, but not of a supernatural victory over death. We do these things because we’re just not really sure what to make of this resurrection business.
Now, when Mr. Kraft heard the old man say he had heard the story before, he did a brilliant thing.
Instead of arguing with the man, or trying to explain to him the difference between being unconscious and being dead; Mr. Kraft asked the man a question;“Okay, if that’s not Good News; what would be Good News to you? What would be the BEST news you could hear?
The man thought for a few minutes, then said, “If I knew there was a power greater than the spirits that trouble me?”
That really is the Good News. That God is a power greater than the spirits that trouble all of us.
There are a lot of problems in the world today. There is war, and hunger and poverty, and the economy, and racial hatred, and drugs, and the environment.
And there are personal problems that are often a result of those larger problems. Loved ones sick with incurable diseases, family discord, loss of jobs, personal poverty, broken friendships and strained work relationships.
There are many powers in our world and in our lives that trouble us. And the Good News of Jesus Christ is not just about one man coming back from the dead. It is that but it is oh so much more than that.
It is a story that shouts out to us that there is a power that is greater than the spirits that trouble us. And that power is the power of God that raised Jesus from the dead.
The power of Easter is shown the life of the Church, the Risen Body of Christ in the World.
The power of the Resurrection is in the changed lives of the believers. The power of the empty tomb is this: the Truth that Jesus taught continues to be taught, the Unconditional Love that Jesus lived out continues to be lived out and shown, sins are forgiven, spirits are healed, Relationships are restored; all in Christ’s name and all by Christ’s power.
The witness of the women at the tomb, the witness of the apostles who spread the word around the Middle East, the witness of the early Church Fathers, the witness of the monks who clung to the faith throughout the middle ages, the witness of saints and martyrs and ordinary folk for 2000 years is that Christ does live on and is the best possible news because the Love and Forgiveness and Compassion of God are the power that is greater than the spirits that trouble us.
The witness of the ages is that the Empty Tomb is the power of God to give us new life and new hope for overcoming the spirits that trouble us and hold us back.
French writer Henri Barbusse wrote a memoir of his experiences in WWI. He writes of one day when his regiment had attacked the German lines and were driven back under a barrage of heavy gunfire.
Collapsing into the momentary safety of a muddy trench, Barbusse found himself up to his knees in mud, pressed against the trench wall while German machine guns laid down heavy fire just inches above his head.
He looked to his left and saw a man horribly wounded, his face disfigured, obviously dying. The wounded man reached over and grabbed a companion by his side and pulled him close to his face and began to speak, really to shout loudly, loud enough for Barbusse to hear. The wounded man said,
DOMINIC, YOU HAVE BEEN A GOOD FRIEND TO ME. YOU DO NOT KNOW THAT I KNOW THAT YOU ARE A CRIMINAL, THAT YOU JOINED THE ARMY TO ESCAPE THE POLICE.
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOU DID, I DO NOT CARE. AS I SAID, YOU HAVE BEEN A GOOD FRIEND TO ME. WHEN THE WAR IS OVER, THE POLICE WILL ARREST YOU AND SEND YOU TO JAIL TO PAY FOR YOUR CRIMES. THEY KNOW WHERE YOU ARE. THEY ARE JUST WAITING TO SEE IF YOU MAKE IT OUT ALIVE.
NOW IS YOUR CHANCE. GIVE ME YOUR DOG-TAGS. GIVE ME YOUR WALLET WITH YOUR PAPERS. I’LL GIVE YOU MINE. WHEN I DIE, YOUR CRIMES WILL DIE WITH ME. YOU WILL HAVE A NEW LIFE.
And so, with tears running down his face, Dominic exchanged identities with his friend and then held his friend in his arms as he died. He left that ditch, that “tomb,” a new man with a new life.
That is the promise of Easter for us. That is the power of the Resurrection in our lives. The Gospel is true. Sins are forgiven. Lives are changed. Love is more powerful than hate. Life is stronger than death. God can and does overcome the spirits that trouble us.
Christ is risen,
CHRIST IS RISEN INDEED!
Thursday, March 12, 2009
The Third Sunday in Lent
The Third Sunday in Lent March 8, 2009
A sermon preached at Faith Lutheran Church, Lebanon, TN.
Title: The Ten Commandments.
GK Chesterton is one of my favorite writers. He lived and wrote in England in the early 1900’s, dying in 1936. In the early days of radio, he was on a BBC talk show.
There was a group of people on that day and the host asked the old question, “If you were stranded on a desert island, what one book would you want with you?”
GB Shaw said, “The complete works of Shakespeare.”
The Scientist said, “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin.
Bishop of London said, “The Book of Common Prayer.”
The President of the Baptist Union said, “KJV Bible.”
And Chesterton said, “Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.”
Our First Lesson today is the Exodus version of the Ten Commandments.
Lutherans aren’t real fond of the Ten Commandments, are we?
I guess it’s that whole Law/Gospel thing we learned in Catechism.
When people try to tell us that this or that behaviour that we personally enjoy is sinful, we say, “Oh that’s legalism, I’m a Lutheran. We’re Gospel people, we’re Good News people, we’re Grace people. We don’t go for all that Law stuff.” Which is all true, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough.
For the Ten Commandments are like “Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding,” in that they are not esoteric, philosophical, speculative discussions of ethical possibilities.
They are practical guidelines for practical people on how to get along with each other in the very real world of human relationships.
Samuel Wells, now the Dean of the Duke Chapel and minister to Duke University, writes of something that happened 20 years ago in Romania.
The Iron curtain was falling all over Europe, Communism was collapsing, on Christmas day of 1989, Romania’s President was arrested, tried and executed.
The country was in turmoil. No one seemed to be in charge. Reporters flooded the country, looking for someone who could speak English.
Finally they found someone, and in one sentence she summed up not only Romania’s predicament, but the human condition: “We have freedom,” she said, “but we don’t know what to do with it.” (Christian Century, March 15, 2000)
A similar thing happened in Germany after the Reformation started. Turned loose from the rules and regulations of the Catholic Church, many people thought the Gospel meant that they were free to do as they pleased because God’s Grace was free.
Martin Luther himself was sent out to visit the churches all around Wittenberg and wrote the Small Catechism, which begins with the Ten Commandments, as a response.
He wrote in the introduction to the Small Catechism,“Alas, what wretchedness I beheld. We have perfected the fine art of abusing liberty.”
The Bible tells us that this was the situation of the Hebrew people when God gave the Ten Commandments.
They had just been liberated from Slavery in Egypt, they had been handed a great gift of freedom, and they didn’t know what to do with it. They too were perfecting the fine art of abusing liberty.
The word we often translate from Hebrew into English as LAW is Torah. Better translations would be something like Instruction or Guidance or Teaching.
The Hebrew people themselves never considered the LAW to be onerous or a burden; rather they saw it as a GIFT; a gift flowing out of God’s love and concern for the people who needed to learn how to live with their new freedom.
We too struggle with issues of what to do with our spiritual freedom, our religious liberty; and how to treat God’s law in light of God’s Grace and forgiveness.
Many of us give ourselves lots of slack in regards to the Ten Commandments, believing ourselves to stack up pretty well. Which is, I think, to miss several important points.
The Ten Commandments aren’t rules that God has laid down as a test to see if we’re good enough to get into heaven, Rather, they are God’s guide to practical life building.
As such they work on several levels.
First, they are an outline for living together as ethical human beings.
Secondly, they are a “mirror for the soul,” as Luther put it, helping us see ourselves as sinners in need of God’s grace.
Thirdly, they are a picture of what Christians should strive to be like. It is perfection we will not reach, but that is no excuse for not trying.
I was looking them over and trying to figure out which ones I had not broken; at least not in the STRICTEST, most LITERAL sense.
No other Gods - Nope. No Baal or Fertility Cult worship going on in the Chilton household.
No graven image - Nope. No bowing down to a man-made object that's not a God.
Not taking the Lord's Name in Vain - Nope. Well, I do have a barn-yard vocabulary but I draw the line at G-- D---.
Remember Sabbath Day - Nope. Always go to church on Sunday, seldom work.
Honor parents - Nope. Birthday cards, weekly phone calls, Christmas gifts. Done.
You shall not kill - Nope. Never even been in a fight since 7th grade.
You shall not steal - Nope. Unless you count sneaking fries off my wife’s plate when she's not looking.
You shall not bear false witness - Nope. Like Daddy said, always tell the truth. That way you don't have to remember what you said.
You shall not covet, neighbor’s house, wife, slaves of his ox or his ass - Nope. Good on all of them.
Looks like I'm in the clear. Based on this record, I didn't need Jesus to die for me. I've got the being good thing covered.
On the other hand, if Other Gods means things which get more of my attention and loyalty than THE GOD, then I'm probably guilty.
And if Graven Images implies earthly things to which I have devoted a great deal of time and energy and which are the most important things in my home, well . . .
Suppose taking the Lord's name in vain means using religion for less than holy reasons, oops!
And the Sabbath could be about creating enough silence and space in my life to allow God to seep in and nurture and lead and refresh me. Oh my!
Honoring father and mother may have something to say about how I deal with those who have taken on the responsibility for leadership; have I been responsive and cooperative? Dang!
Well, I really haven't killed anyone; but I haven't prevented or protested a lot of the violence which goes on in my name, funded by my dollars.
Adultery? Well there is that Lust in the Heart thing.
You shall not steal? What was it Augustine said, anything you have more than you need is stolen from the poor. Ouch!
False Witness? I do not lie, but I can "spin" like a whirling dervish.
Okay, I still haven't coveted anybody's donkey and nobody can say that I did!
In our Lesson from Romans, Paul reminds us that no one is saved by the Law.
Elsewhere in that book, he also reminds us that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
A look at our lives in the light of the Ten Commandments reminds us of that truth, and calls us to faith, faith in God’s Grace that was shown to us and to all the world on the cross of Christ.
I invite you today to examine your hearts and your lives and, in the spirit of Lent, to repent and return to the LORD.
Amen and amen.
A sermon preached at Faith Lutheran Church, Lebanon, TN.
Title: The Ten Commandments.
GK Chesterton is one of my favorite writers. He lived and wrote in England in the early 1900’s, dying in 1936. In the early days of radio, he was on a BBC talk show.
There was a group of people on that day and the host asked the old question, “If you were stranded on a desert island, what one book would you want with you?”
GB Shaw said, “The complete works of Shakespeare.”
The Scientist said, “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin.
Bishop of London said, “The Book of Common Prayer.”
The President of the Baptist Union said, “KJV Bible.”
And Chesterton said, “Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding.”
Our First Lesson today is the Exodus version of the Ten Commandments.
Lutherans aren’t real fond of the Ten Commandments, are we?
I guess it’s that whole Law/Gospel thing we learned in Catechism.
When people try to tell us that this or that behaviour that we personally enjoy is sinful, we say, “Oh that’s legalism, I’m a Lutheran. We’re Gospel people, we’re Good News people, we’re Grace people. We don’t go for all that Law stuff.” Which is all true, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go far enough.
For the Ten Commandments are like “Thomas’ Guide to Practical Shipbuilding,” in that they are not esoteric, philosophical, speculative discussions of ethical possibilities.
They are practical guidelines for practical people on how to get along with each other in the very real world of human relationships.
Samuel Wells, now the Dean of the Duke Chapel and minister to Duke University, writes of something that happened 20 years ago in Romania.
The Iron curtain was falling all over Europe, Communism was collapsing, on Christmas day of 1989, Romania’s President was arrested, tried and executed.
The country was in turmoil. No one seemed to be in charge. Reporters flooded the country, looking for someone who could speak English.
Finally they found someone, and in one sentence she summed up not only Romania’s predicament, but the human condition: “We have freedom,” she said, “but we don’t know what to do with it.” (Christian Century, March 15, 2000)
A similar thing happened in Germany after the Reformation started. Turned loose from the rules and regulations of the Catholic Church, many people thought the Gospel meant that they were free to do as they pleased because God’s Grace was free.
Martin Luther himself was sent out to visit the churches all around Wittenberg and wrote the Small Catechism, which begins with the Ten Commandments, as a response.
He wrote in the introduction to the Small Catechism,“Alas, what wretchedness I beheld. We have perfected the fine art of abusing liberty.”
The Bible tells us that this was the situation of the Hebrew people when God gave the Ten Commandments.
They had just been liberated from Slavery in Egypt, they had been handed a great gift of freedom, and they didn’t know what to do with it. They too were perfecting the fine art of abusing liberty.
The word we often translate from Hebrew into English as LAW is Torah. Better translations would be something like Instruction or Guidance or Teaching.
The Hebrew people themselves never considered the LAW to be onerous or a burden; rather they saw it as a GIFT; a gift flowing out of God’s love and concern for the people who needed to learn how to live with their new freedom.
We too struggle with issues of what to do with our spiritual freedom, our religious liberty; and how to treat God’s law in light of God’s Grace and forgiveness.
Many of us give ourselves lots of slack in regards to the Ten Commandments, believing ourselves to stack up pretty well. Which is, I think, to miss several important points.
The Ten Commandments aren’t rules that God has laid down as a test to see if we’re good enough to get into heaven, Rather, they are God’s guide to practical life building.
As such they work on several levels.
First, they are an outline for living together as ethical human beings.
Secondly, they are a “mirror for the soul,” as Luther put it, helping us see ourselves as sinners in need of God’s grace.
Thirdly, they are a picture of what Christians should strive to be like. It is perfection we will not reach, but that is no excuse for not trying.
I was looking them over and trying to figure out which ones I had not broken; at least not in the STRICTEST, most LITERAL sense.
No other Gods - Nope. No Baal or Fertility Cult worship going on in the Chilton household.
No graven image - Nope. No bowing down to a man-made object that's not a God.
Not taking the Lord's Name in Vain - Nope. Well, I do have a barn-yard vocabulary but I draw the line at G-- D---.
Remember Sabbath Day - Nope. Always go to church on Sunday, seldom work.
Honor parents - Nope. Birthday cards, weekly phone calls, Christmas gifts. Done.
You shall not kill - Nope. Never even been in a fight since 7th grade.
You shall not steal - Nope. Unless you count sneaking fries off my wife’s plate when she's not looking.
You shall not bear false witness - Nope. Like Daddy said, always tell the truth. That way you don't have to remember what you said.
You shall not covet, neighbor’s house, wife, slaves of his ox or his ass - Nope. Good on all of them.
Looks like I'm in the clear. Based on this record, I didn't need Jesus to die for me. I've got the being good thing covered.
On the other hand, if Other Gods means things which get more of my attention and loyalty than THE GOD, then I'm probably guilty.
And if Graven Images implies earthly things to which I have devoted a great deal of time and energy and which are the most important things in my home, well . . .
Suppose taking the Lord's name in vain means using religion for less than holy reasons, oops!
And the Sabbath could be about creating enough silence and space in my life to allow God to seep in and nurture and lead and refresh me. Oh my!
Honoring father and mother may have something to say about how I deal with those who have taken on the responsibility for leadership; have I been responsive and cooperative? Dang!
Well, I really haven't killed anyone; but I haven't prevented or protested a lot of the violence which goes on in my name, funded by my dollars.
Adultery? Well there is that Lust in the Heart thing.
You shall not steal? What was it Augustine said, anything you have more than you need is stolen from the poor. Ouch!
False Witness? I do not lie, but I can "spin" like a whirling dervish.
Okay, I still haven't coveted anybody's donkey and nobody can say that I did!
In our Lesson from Romans, Paul reminds us that no one is saved by the Law.
Elsewhere in that book, he also reminds us that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”
A look at our lives in the light of the Ten Commandments reminds us of that truth, and calls us to faith, faith in God’s Grace that was shown to us and to all the world on the cross of Christ.
I invite you today to examine your hearts and your lives and, in the spirit of Lent, to repent and return to the LORD.
Amen and amen.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
March 8, 2009, Second Sunday in Lent
LENT II March 8, 2009
A sermon preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Morristown, TN
Text: Mark 8:31-38
In an old Reader’s Digest at the doctor’s office, I ran across this little story. A woman writes:
When my sister-in-law Ginny cooks she likes to substitute ingredients for those in the recipe.
One time I gave her the recipe for a chicken-and-walnut dish that her husband, my brother, likes, and she served it one night when I was over.
In place of walnuts, she used raw peanuts. And for chicken, she substituted beef. In fact, every major ingredient had been replaced.
“This is terrible!” my brother said after one bite. Ginny glared across the table at me and said, “Don’t blame me! It’s your sister’s recipe!”
In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus tries to explain to his disciples what it means for him to be the Messiah and for them to be his followers.
But Peter doesn’t like it. He wants to change the recipe, the formula, the instructions.
All this suffering and dying business doesn’t fit his understanding of what a Messiah is, and it REALLY doesn’t fit his understanding of what he wants to do with his life in God’s service and Jesus’ footsteps.
Starting our Gospel lesson with verse 31 is odd. It’s beginning in the middle of the story.
It’s like walking into a party just as everyone gets deadly silent and a woman screams at her husband That’s what you think! and stomps off upstairs and locks herself in the bedroom.
You’re left looking around at everyone asking, “What? What was that about?”
In order to understand this text, you really have to know what went before.
Just a few verses earlier, Jesus asked his disciples: Who do people say that I am?
And the disciples offered up John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the Prophets.
Then Jesus asked, Who do you say that I am?
Peter answers for them all when he says, You are the Christ, the Messiah!
This is where we come in; Jesus is explaining what it means for him to be the Christ, the Messiah.
The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes and be killed . . .
Jesus went on to talk about being raised after three days, but Peter quit listening at the part about being killed.
Peter’s brain screamed NOOOO! NOT Jesus, NOT the Messiah, NOT the Christ.
That’s not the way the story goes; that’s not right; that’s not the formula for success, we’ve got to change that!
So Peter grabs Jesus and takes him aside for a little private conversation.
Actually the Bible says Peter rebuked him; that’s a strong word.
It means he fussed at Jesus for not being Holy enough, for not staying up there on the pedestal where Peter and the rest had put him and wanted him.
When Jesus yells Get behind me Satan, I don’t think Mark means to imply that Jesus is yelling at Peter.
Mark means Jesus is yelling at Satan. This business of avoiding the cross is a real and terrifying and lifelong temptation for Jesus. This was Jesus’ lifelong spiritual battle.
In Luke’s version of this story, he says that Satan left Jesus alone until a more opportune time. Well this is it.
The good time to get under Jesus skin with the temptation to power and privilege
Here Jesus is; surrounded by an adoring crowd that has begun to call him the Son of God, the Christ, the Messiah.
He has struggled to maintain his humility by referring to himself as the Son of Man and by talking about suffering and rejection and death.
But Peter, his main man, tries to talk him out of it.
Jesus recognizes the voice of Satan when he hears it.
This is a moment of genuine temptation which must be resisted firmly:
GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN!
This battle continues all the way to the cross.
Remember in the Garden of Gethsemane, how Jesus prays and drops of blood form on his brow and he cries out, NOT my will, but THINE be done?
That’s the moment Jesus finally puts Satan away, the moment he completely replaces his own will and desires with the will and desires of God the Father.
After pushing Satan away, Jesus gathers the whole crowd together to teach them, and us, what it means to be Disciples of Christ, followers of Jesus.
One thing’s for sure; no one can accuse Jesus of false advertizing,
of luring followers with hip music and entertaining video displays and cool, helpful sermonettes on
THREE TIPS FOR A HAPPY MARRIAGE or Ten Biblical Investment Strategies.
Jesus lays it out straight and unmistakable: IF ANY WANT TO BECOME MY FOLLOWERS, LET THEM DENY THEMSELVES, TAKE UP THEIR CROSS AND FOLLOW ME.
Now, many of us, when we hear that recipe for being a Christian; that set of instructions for building a Christian life, we rebel.
Not like Peter, with a straight out rebuke and argument with Jesus.
That, I think, would be more honorable than what we do.
No, we’re more like “Ginny,” changing the recipe.
Well, he couldn’t have meant for us to deny ourselves, not really. That’s just, well, that’s just un-American.
We’re supposed to have the things we want because God loves us and will bless us.
He must of meant that we should read the Bible carefully for all those wonderful promises about how we can be happier and richer and a more well-rounded and well-liked person.
And take up a cross? Surely not! Surely, he didn’t mean that we show give away our heard-earned money, that we should actually suffer for the good of others.
Probably he meant that we should give a percentage of what we have, like the Lutherans, say 2 or 3 %. That’s probably what he meant. He was just exaggerating to get his point across, like my old PE teacher.
And follow him? Gee, I don’t think so. After all, Jesus ended up dead. I think he meant we should admire him, and worship him, and expect good things from him, especially when we’re in trouble; but follow him? I don’t know.
Yes, the change the recipe and then wonder why the Christian life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. GK Chesterton said that Christianity has NOT been tried and found wanting; Christianity has been tried and found difficult and then abandoned by most.
Brothers and sisters in Christ; Jesus meant what he said.
On March 20, 2000 PEOPLE magazine ran a story about Bennett Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Center, Texas. One day the pastor’s wife was praying and asking God “Why is my life so empty?”
Soon thereafter she and her husband began taking the state classes to be foster parents, and soon the idea spread throughout the church.
Bennett Chapel is a tiny church, made up of working class people making a living as loggers or down at the chicken plant or at the hardwood flooring company.
They didn’t have much to start with. But they decided to use what they had to make a difference in the lives of hurt, abused and unwanted children.
As of the year 2000, 17 families in the church had become foster parents to 43 children in just two years.
As I think about that story, I am always struck by two things:
1) These were just ordinary people, with ordinary incomes and ordinary lives who basically did not need another child around to feed and clothe and worry about.
Yet, in response to the tug of God’s will, they laid aside their own wants and needs for the sake of another.
2) A quote from the Social worker echoed the Scripture lesson:
Social worker: They don’t view themselves as a blessing for the child. They view the child as their blessing.
Jesus: For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the Gospel will save it.
Our calling today is to lose our lives into the life of Christ,to lose our wills in the will of God to give ourselves up totally and completely to the one who gave himself up for us upon the cross.
Amen and amen.
A sermon preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Morristown, TN
Text: Mark 8:31-38
In an old Reader’s Digest at the doctor’s office, I ran across this little story. A woman writes:
When my sister-in-law Ginny cooks she likes to substitute ingredients for those in the recipe.
One time I gave her the recipe for a chicken-and-walnut dish that her husband, my brother, likes, and she served it one night when I was over.
In place of walnuts, she used raw peanuts. And for chicken, she substituted beef. In fact, every major ingredient had been replaced.
“This is terrible!” my brother said after one bite. Ginny glared across the table at me and said, “Don’t blame me! It’s your sister’s recipe!”
In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus tries to explain to his disciples what it means for him to be the Messiah and for them to be his followers.
But Peter doesn’t like it. He wants to change the recipe, the formula, the instructions.
All this suffering and dying business doesn’t fit his understanding of what a Messiah is, and it REALLY doesn’t fit his understanding of what he wants to do with his life in God’s service and Jesus’ footsteps.
Starting our Gospel lesson with verse 31 is odd. It’s beginning in the middle of the story.
It’s like walking into a party just as everyone gets deadly silent and a woman screams at her husband That’s what you think! and stomps off upstairs and locks herself in the bedroom.
You’re left looking around at everyone asking, “What? What was that about?”
In order to understand this text, you really have to know what went before.
Just a few verses earlier, Jesus asked his disciples: Who do people say that I am?
And the disciples offered up John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the Prophets.
Then Jesus asked, Who do you say that I am?
Peter answers for them all when he says, You are the Christ, the Messiah!
This is where we come in; Jesus is explaining what it means for him to be the Christ, the Messiah.
The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the scribes and be killed . . .
Jesus went on to talk about being raised after three days, but Peter quit listening at the part about being killed.
Peter’s brain screamed NOOOO! NOT Jesus, NOT the Messiah, NOT the Christ.
That’s not the way the story goes; that’s not right; that’s not the formula for success, we’ve got to change that!
So Peter grabs Jesus and takes him aside for a little private conversation.
Actually the Bible says Peter rebuked him; that’s a strong word.
It means he fussed at Jesus for not being Holy enough, for not staying up there on the pedestal where Peter and the rest had put him and wanted him.
When Jesus yells Get behind me Satan, I don’t think Mark means to imply that Jesus is yelling at Peter.
Mark means Jesus is yelling at Satan. This business of avoiding the cross is a real and terrifying and lifelong temptation for Jesus. This was Jesus’ lifelong spiritual battle.
In Luke’s version of this story, he says that Satan left Jesus alone until a more opportune time. Well this is it.
The good time to get under Jesus skin with the temptation to power and privilege
Here Jesus is; surrounded by an adoring crowd that has begun to call him the Son of God, the Christ, the Messiah.
He has struggled to maintain his humility by referring to himself as the Son of Man and by talking about suffering and rejection and death.
But Peter, his main man, tries to talk him out of it.
Jesus recognizes the voice of Satan when he hears it.
This is a moment of genuine temptation which must be resisted firmly:
GET THEE BEHIND ME SATAN!
This battle continues all the way to the cross.
Remember in the Garden of Gethsemane, how Jesus prays and drops of blood form on his brow and he cries out, NOT my will, but THINE be done?
That’s the moment Jesus finally puts Satan away, the moment he completely replaces his own will and desires with the will and desires of God the Father.
After pushing Satan away, Jesus gathers the whole crowd together to teach them, and us, what it means to be Disciples of Christ, followers of Jesus.
One thing’s for sure; no one can accuse Jesus of false advertizing,
of luring followers with hip music and entertaining video displays and cool, helpful sermonettes on
THREE TIPS FOR A HAPPY MARRIAGE or Ten Biblical Investment Strategies.
Jesus lays it out straight and unmistakable: IF ANY WANT TO BECOME MY FOLLOWERS, LET THEM DENY THEMSELVES, TAKE UP THEIR CROSS AND FOLLOW ME.
Now, many of us, when we hear that recipe for being a Christian; that set of instructions for building a Christian life, we rebel.
Not like Peter, with a straight out rebuke and argument with Jesus.
That, I think, would be more honorable than what we do.
No, we’re more like “Ginny,” changing the recipe.
Well, he couldn’t have meant for us to deny ourselves, not really. That’s just, well, that’s just un-American.
We’re supposed to have the things we want because God loves us and will bless us.
He must of meant that we should read the Bible carefully for all those wonderful promises about how we can be happier and richer and a more well-rounded and well-liked person.
And take up a cross? Surely not! Surely, he didn’t mean that we show give away our heard-earned money, that we should actually suffer for the good of others.
Probably he meant that we should give a percentage of what we have, like the Lutherans, say 2 or 3 %. That’s probably what he meant. He was just exaggerating to get his point across, like my old PE teacher.
And follow him? Gee, I don’t think so. After all, Jesus ended up dead. I think he meant we should admire him, and worship him, and expect good things from him, especially when we’re in trouble; but follow him? I don’t know.
Yes, the change the recipe and then wonder why the Christian life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. GK Chesterton said that Christianity has NOT been tried and found wanting; Christianity has been tried and found difficult and then abandoned by most.
Brothers and sisters in Christ; Jesus meant what he said.
On March 20, 2000 PEOPLE magazine ran a story about Bennett Chapel Missionary Baptist Church in Center, Texas. One day the pastor’s wife was praying and asking God “Why is my life so empty?”
Soon thereafter she and her husband began taking the state classes to be foster parents, and soon the idea spread throughout the church.
Bennett Chapel is a tiny church, made up of working class people making a living as loggers or down at the chicken plant or at the hardwood flooring company.
They didn’t have much to start with. But they decided to use what they had to make a difference in the lives of hurt, abused and unwanted children.
As of the year 2000, 17 families in the church had become foster parents to 43 children in just two years.
As I think about that story, I am always struck by two things:
1) These were just ordinary people, with ordinary incomes and ordinary lives who basically did not need another child around to feed and clothe and worry about.
Yet, in response to the tug of God’s will, they laid aside their own wants and needs for the sake of another.
2) A quote from the Social worker echoed the Scripture lesson:
Social worker: They don’t view themselves as a blessing for the child. They view the child as their blessing.
Jesus: For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the Gospel will save it.
Our calling today is to lose our lives into the life of Christ,to lose our wills in the will of God to give ourselves up totally and completely to the one who gave himself up for us upon the cross.
Amen and amen.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
For February 1, 2009
February 1, 2009
A Sermon preached at the Installation of Dr. Kent Lewis as Licensed Lay Minister at Christ Lutheran Church, Shelbyville, TN.
Texts: Deuteronomy 18: 15-20, I Corinthians 8:1-13, Mark 1:21-28
Title: As One Having Authority
As a preacher and theologian with excellent academic credentials, I always get my sermon material from the best and most prestigious sources; in this case my fuzzy memory of seeing former President Jimmy Carter on the David Letterman show about 15 years ago.
As I recall, President Carter told a story of going to Japan to deliver a speech. He does not speak Japanese, so he had an interpreter. President Carter told what he considered a somewhat lame little joke. The translator translated and everyone laughed uproariously. Carter was surprised and pleased.
Afterwards, at the reception, he told a friend, a Baptist missionary who spoke Japanese, that he was not expecting the crowd to really understand the joke. The friend told Carter they didn't, the interpreter didn't even try, he just said, "President Carter has told a very funny story. Everyone should laugh."
In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus begins his ministry by teaching in the Synagogue, and his teaching was met by astonishment. Their surprise was not at what he taught, but the authority with which he taught it. "For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."
The scribes taught like translators, interpreters. Instead of saying "This is what God says," the scribes said, "This is what God means and this is how you should respond!"
We have gathered here this afternoon to install Dr. Kent Lewis into a position of authority in the community of faith. His title in this service and in the records of the Synod and the ELCA is Licensed Lay Minister, but within this church and this community, he functions as your Pastor, empowered by the Bishop to Baptize and Celebrate Holy Communion, to Marry and Bury, to Preach and Teach the Word of God in your midst.
He is called here, not as an interpreter, a translator, a scribe. He is called into your midst, "as one having authority."
And, he is called into your midst to lead this congregation in its calling to live out the Gospel in the world, which is an increasingly anti-Gospel place.
Each of our lessons deals with issues of a community of faith living faithfully in a world that is full of evil influences.
The entire book of Deuteronomy is presented to us as Moses' farewell sermon to the Israelites before they cross over Jordan into the Promised Land. It deals with two issues.
1) Moses is not being permitted to go into the Promised Land. Who will tell us about God when Moses is with us no more? Moses shares with them the promise that God will provide a prophet. "Your God will raise up for you a prophet like me, from among your own people.",
2) In words that are very harsh to modern ears, about not listening to false prophets, and about false prophets dying; the text calls the Israelites to separation. It is important to note that the Israelites were going among the Canaanites who practiced divinisation and child-sacrifice. The concern was about giving in to the spirit of the age.
The Lesson from I Corinthians about "food offered to idols" is another cultural stumbling block.. It seems to have nothing to do with us. The important thing for us today is to recognize that just as the Christians in Corinth lived in a culture that had values very different from those of the Christian Community, so do we. And in the midst of that culture, we look for a "word from the Lord, " to help us steer a Christian course, as individuals and as a community.
Our Gospel lesson from Mark draws these concerns about the world and about authoritative teaching together. We've already talked about how the people were astonished that Jesus taught with authority. The text goes on to show Jesus acting with authority to confront evil, even in the household of faith.
I am fascinated by the line, "there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit." I'm just wondering, was he a first time visitor, or was he on the church council?
Too often in the church, we identify the evil as out there and the good as in here.
The great Russian novelist and ardent Orthodox Christian Alexander Solzhenitzen said something to the effect that, "the line between good and evil does not go between countries or empires or religions or political systems. The line between good and evil goes right down the middle of every human heart."
Dr. Kent Lewis has been appointed by the Bishop and called by the congregation to speak as one with authority to the good and evil in the church, in the world, in each of our hearts.
He brings to that task a wealth of learning, experience and wisdom. Time as a parish priest, years of counseling, work on staff at Trinity Lutheran in Tullahoma, an earned Doctorate in Ministry from Vanderbilt. All these things add weight to his "authority."
But the core of his authority comes from this, the Word of God and his commitment to proclaim that Word to this church and in this community.
And Dr. Lewis be warned, folk often resist the Word, just as did the man with the unclean spirit. At times each and every one of us would rather not hear it.
An old friend of mine, Pr. Glenn Zorb, was pastor of Haven Lutheran Church in Salisbury, NC. He once preached a sermon series called, "Things I wish Jesus had never said."
Like the man with the unclean spirit, we sometimes wish the holy would leave us alone to live lives of selfishness, materialism and devotion to the pleasures of the flesh.
But, as the demons in our story recognized; Jesus, the Living Word of God, has come to us on a Mission of destruction, with an agenda of anarchy.
The Word comes to tear down the walls of separation that keep us apart.
The Word comes to break the chains that keep us in bondage to badness.
The Word comes to wipe out the diseases of the soul that keep us from knowing God's love and from loving one another.
Yes, the Living Word which is the Christ comes to destroy, but he came to destroy in order to rebuild, reconstruct, recreate, remake us in the image of Christ.
Dr. Lewis is called into this community with the authority to proclaim and serve that all powerful Living Word of God. This Community is called to Hear the Word and to Live the Word and to Spread the Word in the World.
I ask you today, Dr. Lewis, are you ready to take this authority? And I ask you today, Christ Lutheran Church, are you ready to respond?
Amen and amen
A Sermon preached at the Installation of Dr. Kent Lewis as Licensed Lay Minister at Christ Lutheran Church, Shelbyville, TN.
Texts: Deuteronomy 18: 15-20, I Corinthians 8:1-13, Mark 1:21-28
Title: As One Having Authority
As a preacher and theologian with excellent academic credentials, I always get my sermon material from the best and most prestigious sources; in this case my fuzzy memory of seeing former President Jimmy Carter on the David Letterman show about 15 years ago.
As I recall, President Carter told a story of going to Japan to deliver a speech. He does not speak Japanese, so he had an interpreter. President Carter told what he considered a somewhat lame little joke. The translator translated and everyone laughed uproariously. Carter was surprised and pleased.
Afterwards, at the reception, he told a friend, a Baptist missionary who spoke Japanese, that he was not expecting the crowd to really understand the joke. The friend told Carter they didn't, the interpreter didn't even try, he just said, "President Carter has told a very funny story. Everyone should laugh."
In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus begins his ministry by teaching in the Synagogue, and his teaching was met by astonishment. Their surprise was not at what he taught, but the authority with which he taught it. "For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes."
The scribes taught like translators, interpreters. Instead of saying "This is what God says," the scribes said, "This is what God means and this is how you should respond!"
We have gathered here this afternoon to install Dr. Kent Lewis into a position of authority in the community of faith. His title in this service and in the records of the Synod and the ELCA is Licensed Lay Minister, but within this church and this community, he functions as your Pastor, empowered by the Bishop to Baptize and Celebrate Holy Communion, to Marry and Bury, to Preach and Teach the Word of God in your midst.
He is called here, not as an interpreter, a translator, a scribe. He is called into your midst, "as one having authority."
And, he is called into your midst to lead this congregation in its calling to live out the Gospel in the world, which is an increasingly anti-Gospel place.
Each of our lessons deals with issues of a community of faith living faithfully in a world that is full of evil influences.
The entire book of Deuteronomy is presented to us as Moses' farewell sermon to the Israelites before they cross over Jordan into the Promised Land. It deals with two issues.
1) Moses is not being permitted to go into the Promised Land. Who will tell us about God when Moses is with us no more? Moses shares with them the promise that God will provide a prophet. "Your God will raise up for you a prophet like me, from among your own people.",
2) In words that are very harsh to modern ears, about not listening to false prophets, and about false prophets dying; the text calls the Israelites to separation. It is important to note that the Israelites were going among the Canaanites who practiced divinisation and child-sacrifice. The concern was about giving in to the spirit of the age.
The Lesson from I Corinthians about "food offered to idols" is another cultural stumbling block.. It seems to have nothing to do with us. The important thing for us today is to recognize that just as the Christians in Corinth lived in a culture that had values very different from those of the Christian Community, so do we. And in the midst of that culture, we look for a "word from the Lord, " to help us steer a Christian course, as individuals and as a community.
Our Gospel lesson from Mark draws these concerns about the world and about authoritative teaching together. We've already talked about how the people were astonished that Jesus taught with authority. The text goes on to show Jesus acting with authority to confront evil, even in the household of faith.
I am fascinated by the line, "there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit." I'm just wondering, was he a first time visitor, or was he on the church council?
Too often in the church, we identify the evil as out there and the good as in here.
The great Russian novelist and ardent Orthodox Christian Alexander Solzhenitzen said something to the effect that, "the line between good and evil does not go between countries or empires or religions or political systems. The line between good and evil goes right down the middle of every human heart."
Dr. Kent Lewis has been appointed by the Bishop and called by the congregation to speak as one with authority to the good and evil in the church, in the world, in each of our hearts.
He brings to that task a wealth of learning, experience and wisdom. Time as a parish priest, years of counseling, work on staff at Trinity Lutheran in Tullahoma, an earned Doctorate in Ministry from Vanderbilt. All these things add weight to his "authority."
But the core of his authority comes from this, the Word of God and his commitment to proclaim that Word to this church and in this community.
And Dr. Lewis be warned, folk often resist the Word, just as did the man with the unclean spirit. At times each and every one of us would rather not hear it.
An old friend of mine, Pr. Glenn Zorb, was pastor of Haven Lutheran Church in Salisbury, NC. He once preached a sermon series called, "Things I wish Jesus had never said."
Like the man with the unclean spirit, we sometimes wish the holy would leave us alone to live lives of selfishness, materialism and devotion to the pleasures of the flesh.
But, as the demons in our story recognized; Jesus, the Living Word of God, has come to us on a Mission of destruction, with an agenda of anarchy.
The Word comes to tear down the walls of separation that keep us apart.
The Word comes to break the chains that keep us in bondage to badness.
The Word comes to wipe out the diseases of the soul that keep us from knowing God's love and from loving one another.
Yes, the Living Word which is the Christ comes to destroy, but he came to destroy in order to rebuild, reconstruct, recreate, remake us in the image of Christ.
Dr. Lewis is called into this community with the authority to proclaim and serve that all powerful Living Word of God. This Community is called to Hear the Word and to Live the Word and to Spread the Word in the World.
I ask you today, Dr. Lewis, are you ready to take this authority? And I ask you today, Christ Lutheran Church, are you ready to respond?
Amen and amen
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Christmas I
A sermon preached at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Hayesville, NC
Dec. 28, 2008
The First Sunday after Christmas
Title: And the Word Became Flesh
A few years ago, before my Daddy died, I went to see him and my Mama in the old farm house out in the country from Mount Airy NC.
As I headed out the old two-lane road to the farm, I started to notice that every farm had what I grew up calling a “pole light.”I played a game with myself, trying to see if I could find a place in that 8 mile stretch where I was out of sight of one of those lights.
It couldn’t be done. All the way out into the country, a new yard light would appear up ahead before the last one was out of sight in my rear-view mirror.
So, I changed games. I decided to count the houses that didn’t have a pole light. Again, it couldn’t be done. Every house, every shed, every trailer and barn was awash In the purplish florescent glow of pole lights.Every one, that is, except Daddy’s. There was that big old farm house, sitting forlorn and silent and DARK in the middle of a field, not a speck of light visible except a night light near the kitchen window.
As I pulled into the driveway, I laughed quietly to myself, “leave it to Daddy to be the only person for miles around too cheap to have a light in the yard.
I got out of the car and gathered my things, and being too cheap and too careless to own a flashlight, I stumbled through the dark toward the back door, I fell over the lawn-mower and raked my shins over the well-house and bloodied my nose by walking directly into the corner of the house.
Finally, I stumbled into the house and Daddy called out from the bedroom, “Well, you’re here then are you? Cut that light out in there. It’s burning ‘lectricity.”
Some time the next day I pointed out to Daddy that his was the only house on the road without a yard light and, as politely as I could, I asked him why the ...... , why he didn’t have one,
He looked at me, rubbed his nose, took a deep drag on his cigarette and said,
Well Son, I was born in this house almost 80 years ago, in this very room. I’ve lived here my whole life. I know where everything out there is, so I don’t see as how I need a light.
In that moment I realized that pointing out to Daddy that other people might need a light to get around in his backyard was unlikely to be a persuasive argument, I let it go and forgot about it.Until this week, when I was reading today’s Gospel lesson, especially these words,
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it,
and my recent experience of stumbling about in the dark came rushing back to me.There is one way in which my Daddy and God Almighty were alike; they had both been wandering around their respective back yards for along time, they knew everything that’s there and they didn’t need a light.
But unlike Daddy, God has taken account of the visitors and strangers stumbling around in the world’s darkness and God has provided a light to show us the way.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.Jesus Christ, the light of the world, has come to show us the way.
Our Gospel lesson begins with the words, “In the beginning . . . “ this is a deliberate echo of the first words of the Bible, of Genesis, of the time of creation. Remember? “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” John connects Jesus to that creative moment, when light first shined in the dark chaos of the world.In the time of the exodus, when the Children of Israel escaped The Pharaoh in Egypt and headed for the Promised Land, they wandered in the desert and were guided by “Pillar of Cloud by day and a Pillar of fire by night.” More light.
Light is an image, a metaphor, we use all the time almost without thinking:
When someone gives us new information that helps us to understand something, we say they have “shed new light” on the subject.”
What is the cartoon symbol for a good idea? A light bulb.
We usually refer to a very good plan as a “bright idea.”
We say an intelligent person is “very bright.”
We refer to an indistinct time after the end of the Roman Empire as the Dark Ages and we call the time when Education and Learning began to expand as “The Enlightenment.”
All these references play off one essential idea: ignorance and the darkness of sin and suffering go together; while education and intelligence and learning will throw off that darkness and bring healing and wellness.It’s a wonderful idea.
There’s just one problem with it. It isn’t necessarily so.
While it is true that education and can and does improve life, it is also true that simply an increase in learning is not enough to change the human heart.
Our current economic crisis was created by some of the smartest people in the country, people whose good sense and prudence and concern for others was overcome by their willingness to do whatever it took to make money.
The simple truth of the matter is that a simple increase in knowledge will not change the human heart.
That is why Christ came. That is why Christ still comes.
We need a light that learning and intelligence and technology cannot provide.
We need to learn the lessons of love and caring and compassion and sacrifice.
These are lessons that can only be taught by example, most especially the example of a Living God who has come into our midst to show us the way.
And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
God becoming flesh and living among us shows us that God was not willing to let us wander about the universe in the dark. And God knew that the light we needed had to be more than words on a page and instructions from a pulpit.
The light we needed had to be “fleshed out,” and this fleshing out began in the birth and life, and yes the death and resurrection of Jesus.
And, this “fleshing-out” continues in the life of the church.
The church IS the body of Christ,
we don’t represent the body of Christ,
we don’t stand for the body of Christ,
it’s not an image, or metaphor or simile.
WE are not a symbolic idea, we are a fleshly reality.
We are called to embody our faith and love for God in our efforts to live lives of love with one another.
And, life in the body of Christ is less than perfect, it is difficult.
It requires work, hard work, to iron out our differences and to accept one another’s flaws and shortcomings - to forgive and trust and love and go forward together.
The Word became flesh and lived among us,
And the word remains flesh and lives among us still.
It is our calling, our duty and delight, to embody, to flesh out, God’s love in the world.
In a country church in a small village an altar boy accidentally dropped the cruet of wine. Glass and wine splattered everywhere. The Priest slapped the boy on the cheek and shouted at him, “Get out of here and never come back!” That young boy grew up to become Tito, the cruel communist dictator of Yugoslavia.
In the cathedral of a large city, an altar boy serving the Bishop at Mass dropped the cruet of wine. Glass and wine splattered everywhere. The Bishop leaned over and patted the boy on the cheek and whispered in his ear, “It’s okay.” That young boy grew up to be Archbishop Fulton Sheen, well-known preacher of grace, love and Christian unity.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us.
Words have power, lives have influence.
We are called to live the WORD into being; The WORD of God, The WORD of Grace, The Word of love.
Amen and amen.
Dec. 28, 2008
The First Sunday after Christmas
Title: And the Word Became Flesh
A few years ago, before my Daddy died, I went to see him and my Mama in the old farm house out in the country from Mount Airy NC.
As I headed out the old two-lane road to the farm, I started to notice that every farm had what I grew up calling a “pole light.”I played a game with myself, trying to see if I could find a place in that 8 mile stretch where I was out of sight of one of those lights.
It couldn’t be done. All the way out into the country, a new yard light would appear up ahead before the last one was out of sight in my rear-view mirror.
So, I changed games. I decided to count the houses that didn’t have a pole light. Again, it couldn’t be done. Every house, every shed, every trailer and barn was awash In the purplish florescent glow of pole lights.Every one, that is, except Daddy’s. There was that big old farm house, sitting forlorn and silent and DARK in the middle of a field, not a speck of light visible except a night light near the kitchen window.
As I pulled into the driveway, I laughed quietly to myself, “leave it to Daddy to be the only person for miles around too cheap to have a light in the yard.
I got out of the car and gathered my things, and being too cheap and too careless to own a flashlight, I stumbled through the dark toward the back door, I fell over the lawn-mower and raked my shins over the well-house and bloodied my nose by walking directly into the corner of the house.
Finally, I stumbled into the house and Daddy called out from the bedroom, “Well, you’re here then are you? Cut that light out in there. It’s burning ‘lectricity.”
Some time the next day I pointed out to Daddy that his was the only house on the road without a yard light and, as politely as I could, I asked him why the ...... , why he didn’t have one,
He looked at me, rubbed his nose, took a deep drag on his cigarette and said,
Well Son, I was born in this house almost 80 years ago, in this very room. I’ve lived here my whole life. I know where everything out there is, so I don’t see as how I need a light.
In that moment I realized that pointing out to Daddy that other people might need a light to get around in his backyard was unlikely to be a persuasive argument, I let it go and forgot about it.Until this week, when I was reading today’s Gospel lesson, especially these words,
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it,
and my recent experience of stumbling about in the dark came rushing back to me.There is one way in which my Daddy and God Almighty were alike; they had both been wandering around their respective back yards for along time, they knew everything that’s there and they didn’t need a light.
But unlike Daddy, God has taken account of the visitors and strangers stumbling around in the world’s darkness and God has provided a light to show us the way.
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.Jesus Christ, the light of the world, has come to show us the way.
Our Gospel lesson begins with the words, “In the beginning . . . “ this is a deliberate echo of the first words of the Bible, of Genesis, of the time of creation. Remember? “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” John connects Jesus to that creative moment, when light first shined in the dark chaos of the world.In the time of the exodus, when the Children of Israel escaped The Pharaoh in Egypt and headed for the Promised Land, they wandered in the desert and were guided by “Pillar of Cloud by day and a Pillar of fire by night.” More light.
Light is an image, a metaphor, we use all the time almost without thinking:
When someone gives us new information that helps us to understand something, we say they have “shed new light” on the subject.”
What is the cartoon symbol for a good idea? A light bulb.
We usually refer to a very good plan as a “bright idea.”
We say an intelligent person is “very bright.”
We refer to an indistinct time after the end of the Roman Empire as the Dark Ages and we call the time when Education and Learning began to expand as “The Enlightenment.”
All these references play off one essential idea: ignorance and the darkness of sin and suffering go together; while education and intelligence and learning will throw off that darkness and bring healing and wellness.It’s a wonderful idea.
There’s just one problem with it. It isn’t necessarily so.
While it is true that education and can and does improve life, it is also true that simply an increase in learning is not enough to change the human heart.
Our current economic crisis was created by some of the smartest people in the country, people whose good sense and prudence and concern for others was overcome by their willingness to do whatever it took to make money.
The simple truth of the matter is that a simple increase in knowledge will not change the human heart.
That is why Christ came. That is why Christ still comes.
We need a light that learning and intelligence and technology cannot provide.
We need to learn the lessons of love and caring and compassion and sacrifice.
These are lessons that can only be taught by example, most especially the example of a Living God who has come into our midst to show us the way.
And the word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
God becoming flesh and living among us shows us that God was not willing to let us wander about the universe in the dark. And God knew that the light we needed had to be more than words on a page and instructions from a pulpit.
The light we needed had to be “fleshed out,” and this fleshing out began in the birth and life, and yes the death and resurrection of Jesus.
And, this “fleshing-out” continues in the life of the church.
The church IS the body of Christ,
we don’t represent the body of Christ,
we don’t stand for the body of Christ,
it’s not an image, or metaphor or simile.
WE are not a symbolic idea, we are a fleshly reality.
We are called to embody our faith and love for God in our efforts to live lives of love with one another.
And, life in the body of Christ is less than perfect, it is difficult.
It requires work, hard work, to iron out our differences and to accept one another’s flaws and shortcomings - to forgive and trust and love and go forward together.
The Word became flesh and lived among us,
And the word remains flesh and lives among us still.
It is our calling, our duty and delight, to embody, to flesh out, God’s love in the world.
In a country church in a small village an altar boy accidentally dropped the cruet of wine. Glass and wine splattered everywhere. The Priest slapped the boy on the cheek and shouted at him, “Get out of here and never come back!” That young boy grew up to become Tito, the cruel communist dictator of Yugoslavia.
In the cathedral of a large city, an altar boy serving the Bishop at Mass dropped the cruet of wine. Glass and wine splattered everywhere. The Bishop leaned over and patted the boy on the cheek and whispered in his ear, “It’s okay.” That young boy grew up to be Archbishop Fulton Sheen, well-known preacher of grace, love and Christian unity.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us.
Words have power, lives have influence.
We are called to live the WORD into being; The WORD of God, The WORD of Grace, The Word of love.
Amen and amen.
Friday, December 12, 2008
re: not posting for now
Dear regular readers,
I have been posting almost every week for the last couple of years. That was kind of easy when I was preaching every week. The rhythm of the Bishop's office is different. I preached almost every Sunday from May through the middle of Nov. Then Thanksgiving, Advent and Christmas showed up and the invitations dried up, which is fine. I will begin posting again in January when my preaching "dance card" begins to fill up again.
peace,
delmo
I have been posting almost every week for the last couple of years. That was kind of easy when I was preaching every week. The rhythm of the Bishop's office is different. I preached almost every Sunday from May through the middle of Nov. Then Thanksgiving, Advent and Christmas showed up and the invitations dried up, which is fine. I will begin posting again in January when my preaching "dance card" begins to fill up again.
peace,
delmo
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Nov. 16, 2008
Nov. 16, 2008
A sermon preached at All Saints Lutheran Church, Lilburn, GA
Text: Matthew 25: 14-30
Title: Of Fear and Faith
I grew up in rural North Carolina as part of a large extended family. Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles and cousins, all on neighboring farms; all in each other’s lives: “all up in each other’s business,” as my friend Larry would say.
My Aunt Mildred lived with Grandparents and took care of them long after others had married and moved out. Sometime in her forty’s, her parents died and she married her longtime sweetheart, Uncle Andy. And they too built a house, “over the river and through the woods,” from the rest of us.
Everyone has gotten older, many have died, the younger generation has moved away. It got down to Mama in one house, Aunt Mildred in another a half mile away, and my brother Tony coming out from town every day to check on them.
A few years ago, Tony got Aunt Mildred a Lazy-Boy Recliner that would push itself up into a standing position to make it easier for her.
One day when he went to visit her she said:
Tony, I’m having a lot of trouble getting out of my chair lately.
Tony said, Let me have a look at the motor.
She said, That won’t do no good. I never plug it in.
Tony, Well, whyever not?
Mildred; Well, what if the power went out whilst I was alaying back in it. I’d be stuck up there like a knot on a log. I wouldn’t never be able to get out of it.
Today’s Gospel Lesson is the parable of the Talents. Let me tell you upfront; this story is not about money and investment strategies.
This story is about our God-given abilities and how FEAR and LACK of FAITH keep us from using them.
Aunt Mildred had a lot of real and quite reasonable fear in her life. Her husband had died, she was in her eighties, she had health problems, she lived alone on a farm.
She also had a lot of gifts for dealing with that fear. The problem is her fear kept her from using her gifts to deal with her situation.
In the story that Jesus told, the third servant, the one who received only one talent, took his talent and buried it in the yard. Why?
Well, he says “I was afraid,” and that is most certainly true. He also calls the master “harsh and cruel,” which probably isn’t true. What most certainly isn’t true is that GOD is like the master in the story. God is most definitely not “Harsh and Cruel.”
And, to tell you the truth, all that “harsh and cruel” stuff is beside the point. It’s not his master that the third servant is afraid of; it’s failure.
He is afraid of fouling up, making a mess, being a disappointment, making a mess of things.
My son is a college Basketball player. He says that the worst thing that can happen to a team is in their head, not in their hands. He says that when a team starts trying to avoid losing rather than playing to win, they are in real trouble.
The Third Servant is playing NOT TO LOSE; rather than taking chances, trying to win.
This story has much to teach us in our current economic crisis. It’s not a good time to be extravagant; but it is also not a good time to give in to fear. If this country is to pull out of this downward spiral, we must work together and dare to take risks on each other. We can bury neither our heads nor our abilities in the sand.
Here at All Saints Lutheran Church, you have challenges before you as well. Your pastor leaving was something of a surprise to everyone. The next year or so will be about taking a good look at yourselves to see who you are and what direction God is calling you to go.
Though it is a frightening time; it will do you no good to shy away from speaking truth to each other. You need to fearlessly and faithfully take an inventory of your mission and ministry so that you can discover once again your many talents and use them to grow God’s Kingdom.
A story from the life of Martin Luther may be helpful here.
After Luther got into trouble with the Pope, he was invited?, no, summoned, to the city of Worms to defend himself against charges of heresy.
There he stood, in front of the most powerful man in Europe, the Holy Roman Emperor. And though he was admittedly quite afraid, he refused to back down and left the City of Worms.
Though the Emperor had granted Luther a “safe conduct,” pass, his friends feared for his safety; they didn’t trust either Pope or Emperor.
So, his friends had Luther kidnapped and taken to the castle of Wartburg. Luther went around disguised as Squire George, while stories were circulated that he was dead.
While Luther was in hiding, his fellow teacher and reformer Phillip Melanchthon was in charge of things back at Wittenberg.
Phillip was as quiet and retiring and hesitant as Luther was loud and aggressive and assertive.
Phillip always fretted over doing the right thing and doing things right.
The Church was Reforming, Protesting, Changing. Things were totally and completely unsettled.
Many were recommending rash action and rapid change. Others wanted things to stay the same. Still others wanted a gradual change in Church and Society.
Phillip just couldn’t decide what to do. He couldn’t make up his mind, so he wrote Luther.
He laid out his options, in a professorial set of pros and cons in columns and tables.
He said to Luther, If I do this, this could go wrong. If I do that, that could go wrong, etc. etc.
I just can’t decide; I don’t know what to do.
Luther wrote back, somewhat impatiently,
Look Phillip, you’re right. It is hard to know what the right thing to do is. Anything you do WILL have some sin in it.
Therefore, SIN BOLDLY! but, trust the GRACE of GOD more boldly still!
(And you thought he was talking about beer, didn’t you!?)
Luther’s advice to Phillip is the answer for the Servant with one talent and the answer for us as we face uncertain times.
Sure, we’re afraid.
Sure, we’re uncertain.
Sure, we might mess up,
Sure, we might do the wrong thing.
All of that’s true and possible.
But Jesus calls us to leave our fear behind and give ourselves over totally to trust and faith in God. We too are called to SIN BOLDLY, to act, to act now, and to also trust that God will take care of us.
Henry R. Rust writes of a visit to a tiny Christian congregation in a village in Kenya. They met in the open air beneath a thatched roof.
When it came time for the offering, a round flat basket was passed up and down the rows of benches as people put in coins and small bills.
The basket came to a young woman with two small children. She looked at the basket for a long time.
Then she took the basket and placed on the dirt floor in front of her.
Taking off her sandals, she picked up her children, held one on each hip, and stepped into the offering basket; standing with head bowed praying for several minutes.
Then she stepped out of the basket and passed it on.
The basket has come to us. What will we put in it? Will we let our fear and anxiety hold us back?
Or, will we take off our protection in the presence of the Holy and step boldly into the center of God’s will and way; giving to God the one thing God really wants, our complete and total devotion?
Amen and amen.
A sermon preached at All Saints Lutheran Church, Lilburn, GA
Text: Matthew 25: 14-30
Title: Of Fear and Faith
I grew up in rural North Carolina as part of a large extended family. Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles and cousins, all on neighboring farms; all in each other’s lives: “all up in each other’s business,” as my friend Larry would say.
My Aunt Mildred lived with Grandparents and took care of them long after others had married and moved out. Sometime in her forty’s, her parents died and she married her longtime sweetheart, Uncle Andy. And they too built a house, “over the river and through the woods,” from the rest of us.
Everyone has gotten older, many have died, the younger generation has moved away. It got down to Mama in one house, Aunt Mildred in another a half mile away, and my brother Tony coming out from town every day to check on them.
A few years ago, Tony got Aunt Mildred a Lazy-Boy Recliner that would push itself up into a standing position to make it easier for her.
One day when he went to visit her she said:
Tony, I’m having a lot of trouble getting out of my chair lately.
Tony said, Let me have a look at the motor.
She said, That won’t do no good. I never plug it in.
Tony, Well, whyever not?
Mildred; Well, what if the power went out whilst I was alaying back in it. I’d be stuck up there like a knot on a log. I wouldn’t never be able to get out of it.
Today’s Gospel Lesson is the parable of the Talents. Let me tell you upfront; this story is not about money and investment strategies.
This story is about our God-given abilities and how FEAR and LACK of FAITH keep us from using them.
Aunt Mildred had a lot of real and quite reasonable fear in her life. Her husband had died, she was in her eighties, she had health problems, she lived alone on a farm.
She also had a lot of gifts for dealing with that fear. The problem is her fear kept her from using her gifts to deal with her situation.
In the story that Jesus told, the third servant, the one who received only one talent, took his talent and buried it in the yard. Why?
Well, he says “I was afraid,” and that is most certainly true. He also calls the master “harsh and cruel,” which probably isn’t true. What most certainly isn’t true is that GOD is like the master in the story. God is most definitely not “Harsh and Cruel.”
And, to tell you the truth, all that “harsh and cruel” stuff is beside the point. It’s not his master that the third servant is afraid of; it’s failure.
He is afraid of fouling up, making a mess, being a disappointment, making a mess of things.
My son is a college Basketball player. He says that the worst thing that can happen to a team is in their head, not in their hands. He says that when a team starts trying to avoid losing rather than playing to win, they are in real trouble.
The Third Servant is playing NOT TO LOSE; rather than taking chances, trying to win.
This story has much to teach us in our current economic crisis. It’s not a good time to be extravagant; but it is also not a good time to give in to fear. If this country is to pull out of this downward spiral, we must work together and dare to take risks on each other. We can bury neither our heads nor our abilities in the sand.
Here at All Saints Lutheran Church, you have challenges before you as well. Your pastor leaving was something of a surprise to everyone. The next year or so will be about taking a good look at yourselves to see who you are and what direction God is calling you to go.
Though it is a frightening time; it will do you no good to shy away from speaking truth to each other. You need to fearlessly and faithfully take an inventory of your mission and ministry so that you can discover once again your many talents and use them to grow God’s Kingdom.
A story from the life of Martin Luther may be helpful here.
After Luther got into trouble with the Pope, he was invited?, no, summoned, to the city of Worms to defend himself against charges of heresy.
There he stood, in front of the most powerful man in Europe, the Holy Roman Emperor. And though he was admittedly quite afraid, he refused to back down and left the City of Worms.
Though the Emperor had granted Luther a “safe conduct,” pass, his friends feared for his safety; they didn’t trust either Pope or Emperor.
So, his friends had Luther kidnapped and taken to the castle of Wartburg. Luther went around disguised as Squire George, while stories were circulated that he was dead.
While Luther was in hiding, his fellow teacher and reformer Phillip Melanchthon was in charge of things back at Wittenberg.
Phillip was as quiet and retiring and hesitant as Luther was loud and aggressive and assertive.
Phillip always fretted over doing the right thing and doing things right.
The Church was Reforming, Protesting, Changing. Things were totally and completely unsettled.
Many were recommending rash action and rapid change. Others wanted things to stay the same. Still others wanted a gradual change in Church and Society.
Phillip just couldn’t decide what to do. He couldn’t make up his mind, so he wrote Luther.
He laid out his options, in a professorial set of pros and cons in columns and tables.
He said to Luther, If I do this, this could go wrong. If I do that, that could go wrong, etc. etc.
I just can’t decide; I don’t know what to do.
Luther wrote back, somewhat impatiently,
Look Phillip, you’re right. It is hard to know what the right thing to do is. Anything you do WILL have some sin in it.
Therefore, SIN BOLDLY! but, trust the GRACE of GOD more boldly still!
(And you thought he was talking about beer, didn’t you!?)
Luther’s advice to Phillip is the answer for the Servant with one talent and the answer for us as we face uncertain times.
Sure, we’re afraid.
Sure, we’re uncertain.
Sure, we might mess up,
Sure, we might do the wrong thing.
All of that’s true and possible.
But Jesus calls us to leave our fear behind and give ourselves over totally to trust and faith in God. We too are called to SIN BOLDLY, to act, to act now, and to also trust that God will take care of us.
Henry R. Rust writes of a visit to a tiny Christian congregation in a village in Kenya. They met in the open air beneath a thatched roof.
When it came time for the offering, a round flat basket was passed up and down the rows of benches as people put in coins and small bills.
The basket came to a young woman with two small children. She looked at the basket for a long time.
Then she took the basket and placed on the dirt floor in front of her.
Taking off her sandals, she picked up her children, held one on each hip, and stepped into the offering basket; standing with head bowed praying for several minutes.
Then she stepped out of the basket and passed it on.
The basket has come to us. What will we put in it? Will we let our fear and anxiety hold us back?
Or, will we take off our protection in the presence of the Holy and step boldly into the center of God’s will and way; giving to God the one thing God really wants, our complete and total devotion?
Amen and amen.
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Nov. 9, 2008
A sermon preached for Consecration Sunday at St. Mark’s Lutheran, Huntsville, Alabama
November 9, 2008
Texts: Amos 5:18-24, I Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13
Title: Good News, Bad News
Listen again to the words of the Prophet Amos:
Alas for you who desire the day of the LORD!
Why do you want the day of the LORD?
It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
and was bitten by a snake.
These verses remind me of a Good News/Bad News joke. Not any particular Good News/Bad News joke, just that kind of joke.
As a matter of fact, I spent a great deal of time in sermon preparation looking for just the right Good News/Bad News joke to start the sermon.
The Good News is: I found one. The Bad News is: it isn’t very funny. The really Good News is I decided not to tell it.
A few weeks ago I was browsing in a bookstore and I ran across two books I had never seen before.
One is The Optimist’s Guide to History
The other is The Pessimist’s Guide to History.
While I was checking out, the clerk looked over her glasses at me and said,
“I’ve sold a lot of these books, but nobody’s ever bought them both at the same time.”
I said, “Well, I guess most people are either optimists or pessimists, but I’m just a preacher looking for sermon ideas.”
And the Good News is: I found one.
The books are organized in chronological order, beginning with Creation, or the Big Bang, depending on your point of view; and progressing to the present.
The Optimist’s Guide points out the positive events in history;
while the Pessimist’s Guide lists all the horrors that have ever happened.
As I read through these two books, I noticed two interesting things:
1) The Pessimist’s Guide is much longer than the Optimist’s Guide; (360 versus 260 pages)I don’t know what that means, I just noticed it.
2) There are many things in each book which I, personally, would have put in the other book.Some things the authors counted as Bad, I saw as Good, and vice versa.
It would appear that whether something is Good News or Bad News is a tricky question.
It depends not only on whether or not you’re an Optimist or a Pessimist;
but also where you’re standing when you look at it.
This week’s election is an example: America has elected Barack Obama as its first African-American President. Is that Good News or Bad News or both?
How you answer that question depends of where you’re standing, what political party you belong to, what positions you take on the great political problems of our day.
Each of our Scripture Lessons makes reference to an idea that is referred to by several different names:
The Day of the Lord,
The Coming of the LORD,
The Second Coming,
And the question is: “Is the coming of the LORD Good News or Bad News?”
In Amos, The Day of the Lord is pretty much Bad News all around, for everybody.
This idea, that the Day of the LORD would be a bad day, was quite a shock to his hearers.
They weren’t prepared for this word of Judgement and didn’t accept it.
The people Amos was preaching to thought themselves to be pretty good people.
They went to temple, did the required sacrifices, lived by the Ten Commandments;
except when it was inconvenient or seemed a little extreme or something, or got in the way of a good business deal or a good time.
In other words, they were a lot like us.
And they knew themselves to be God’s Chosen People, so the Day of the LORD would be Good News, right?
It would be a Good Day when God would give all those Godless other people who aren’t like us, a good licking for being, well, not like us.
So they were unprepared for Amos to tell them that their assumption of their own goodness was a dangerous thing.
It’s as if someone ran away from a lion and was met by a bear, or ran away from the lion and the bear into the safety of the house, then put his hand on the wall and was bitten by a snake.
Bad News becomes Good News becomes Bad News again.
First Thessalonians sees The Coming of the LORD as Good News for those who are dead and those who are still alive. This is what we’re talking about in the Creed when we profess the belief that Christ will “come again to judge the living and the dead.”
And in that judgement there is implied Bad News for those who are “not in Christ.”
And in the Gospel Lesson, the coming of the Bridegroom is Good News for the Bridesmaids who were prepared, who had oil in their lamps; and equally Bad News for those who were unprepared, not ready, who had no oil.
Since we know that the Church is the bride of Christ, it’s easy to figure out who the Bridegroom is in this story. What’s not easy to figure out is who we are.
We can’t take this story literally, securing our future fate by stocking up on lamp oil, like a bunch of Survivalists filling their basements with nonperishable food and machine guns.
What is the oil? What must we do to be counted amongst those who are prepared when the bridegroom cometh?
This is a place where a Lutheran preacher has to tread lightly. Our theology, quite rightly I think, is extremely cautious about telling anybody that there is anything they HAVE to do to be saved.
Justification by GRACE through Faith. Justification by GRACE through FAITH. It’s our mantra and it’s a good one because it’s true.
BUT, too often Lutherans have failed to recognize that there is more to being a Christian than being justified, than being declared righteous, Okay with God, by God.
Sometimes in bending over backwards to avoid legalism we have fallen over backwards into licence and amorality.
We seem to have adopted Oscar Wilde’s position that, “God likes to Forgive, I like to Sin; it’s a nice arrangement.”
We have learned well the truth that “God loves you just the way you are.”
We have ignored the equally important truth that, “God loves you too much to let you stay that way.”
So, again, what puts oil in your lamp? What must one do to be ready when Jesus comes again to judge the living and the dead?
The key is responding to God’s mercy and generosity with mercy and generosity of our own.
The Christian life burns brightly when one comes to the recognition of how much God has done for us; and one becomes so grateful that generosity begins to burst forth in one’s life.
The oil in our lamp is the oil of loving action in response to God’s loving act of sending Jesus the Christ into our lives to save us, and to fill our lives with hope, joy and purpose.
Today, Consecration Sunday, is not simply about financial pledges put in an offering plate, today is about joyfully responding to the Goodness of God by placing our hearts, our souls, our very lives into God’s hands and into God’s service.
The Bad News is all around us. Wars and rumors of wars. Economic struggles and job loss. Sickness and death. Poverty and hunger. The list goes on and on.
The Good News is: God has done something about those problems and needs. God sent Jesus into the world to show us God’s love and to show us God’s way. And God has called a people to deal with those problems, those needs, those Bad News things that surround us. God has called us, we are that people, we are the Good News to a hurting world.
We are called to commit ourselves to keeping our lamps burning with the love of God, reaching out to the world with love on our lips, hope in our hearts, and help in our hands.
Amen. Come Lord Jesus!.
November 9, 2008
Texts: Amos 5:18-24, I Thessalonians 4:13-18, Matthew 25:1-13
Title: Good News, Bad News
Listen again to the words of the Prophet Amos:
Alas for you who desire the day of the LORD!
Why do you want the day of the LORD?
It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
and was bitten by a snake.
These verses remind me of a Good News/Bad News joke. Not any particular Good News/Bad News joke, just that kind of joke.
As a matter of fact, I spent a great deal of time in sermon preparation looking for just the right Good News/Bad News joke to start the sermon.
The Good News is: I found one. The Bad News is: it isn’t very funny. The really Good News is I decided not to tell it.
A few weeks ago I was browsing in a bookstore and I ran across two books I had never seen before.
One is The Optimist’s Guide to History
The other is The Pessimist’s Guide to History.
While I was checking out, the clerk looked over her glasses at me and said,
“I’ve sold a lot of these books, but nobody’s ever bought them both at the same time.”
I said, “Well, I guess most people are either optimists or pessimists, but I’m just a preacher looking for sermon ideas.”
And the Good News is: I found one.
The books are organized in chronological order, beginning with Creation, or the Big Bang, depending on your point of view; and progressing to the present.
The Optimist’s Guide points out the positive events in history;
while the Pessimist’s Guide lists all the horrors that have ever happened.
As I read through these two books, I noticed two interesting things:
1) The Pessimist’s Guide is much longer than the Optimist’s Guide; (360 versus 260 pages)I don’t know what that means, I just noticed it.
2) There are many things in each book which I, personally, would have put in the other book.Some things the authors counted as Bad, I saw as Good, and vice versa.
It would appear that whether something is Good News or Bad News is a tricky question.
It depends not only on whether or not you’re an Optimist or a Pessimist;
but also where you’re standing when you look at it.
This week’s election is an example: America has elected Barack Obama as its first African-American President. Is that Good News or Bad News or both?
How you answer that question depends of where you’re standing, what political party you belong to, what positions you take on the great political problems of our day.
Each of our Scripture Lessons makes reference to an idea that is referred to by several different names:
The Day of the Lord,
The Coming of the LORD,
The Second Coming,
And the question is: “Is the coming of the LORD Good News or Bad News?”
In Amos, The Day of the Lord is pretty much Bad News all around, for everybody.
This idea, that the Day of the LORD would be a bad day, was quite a shock to his hearers.
They weren’t prepared for this word of Judgement and didn’t accept it.
The people Amos was preaching to thought themselves to be pretty good people.
They went to temple, did the required sacrifices, lived by the Ten Commandments;
except when it was inconvenient or seemed a little extreme or something, or got in the way of a good business deal or a good time.
In other words, they were a lot like us.
And they knew themselves to be God’s Chosen People, so the Day of the LORD would be Good News, right?
It would be a Good Day when God would give all those Godless other people who aren’t like us, a good licking for being, well, not like us.
So they were unprepared for Amos to tell them that their assumption of their own goodness was a dangerous thing.
It’s as if someone ran away from a lion and was met by a bear, or ran away from the lion and the bear into the safety of the house, then put his hand on the wall and was bitten by a snake.
Bad News becomes Good News becomes Bad News again.
First Thessalonians sees The Coming of the LORD as Good News for those who are dead and those who are still alive. This is what we’re talking about in the Creed when we profess the belief that Christ will “come again to judge the living and the dead.”
And in that judgement there is implied Bad News for those who are “not in Christ.”
And in the Gospel Lesson, the coming of the Bridegroom is Good News for the Bridesmaids who were prepared, who had oil in their lamps; and equally Bad News for those who were unprepared, not ready, who had no oil.
Since we know that the Church is the bride of Christ, it’s easy to figure out who the Bridegroom is in this story. What’s not easy to figure out is who we are.
We can’t take this story literally, securing our future fate by stocking up on lamp oil, like a bunch of Survivalists filling their basements with nonperishable food and machine guns.
What is the oil? What must we do to be counted amongst those who are prepared when the bridegroom cometh?
This is a place where a Lutheran preacher has to tread lightly. Our theology, quite rightly I think, is extremely cautious about telling anybody that there is anything they HAVE to do to be saved.
Justification by GRACE through Faith. Justification by GRACE through FAITH. It’s our mantra and it’s a good one because it’s true.
BUT, too often Lutherans have failed to recognize that there is more to being a Christian than being justified, than being declared righteous, Okay with God, by God.
Sometimes in bending over backwards to avoid legalism we have fallen over backwards into licence and amorality.
We seem to have adopted Oscar Wilde’s position that, “God likes to Forgive, I like to Sin; it’s a nice arrangement.”
We have learned well the truth that “God loves you just the way you are.”
We have ignored the equally important truth that, “God loves you too much to let you stay that way.”
So, again, what puts oil in your lamp? What must one do to be ready when Jesus comes again to judge the living and the dead?
The key is responding to God’s mercy and generosity with mercy and generosity of our own.
The Christian life burns brightly when one comes to the recognition of how much God has done for us; and one becomes so grateful that generosity begins to burst forth in one’s life.
The oil in our lamp is the oil of loving action in response to God’s loving act of sending Jesus the Christ into our lives to save us, and to fill our lives with hope, joy and purpose.
Today, Consecration Sunday, is not simply about financial pledges put in an offering plate, today is about joyfully responding to the Goodness of God by placing our hearts, our souls, our very lives into God’s hands and into God’s service.
The Bad News is all around us. Wars and rumors of wars. Economic struggles and job loss. Sickness and death. Poverty and hunger. The list goes on and on.
The Good News is: God has done something about those problems and needs. God sent Jesus into the world to show us God’s love and to show us God’s way. And God has called a people to deal with those problems, those needs, those Bad News things that surround us. God has called us, we are that people, we are the Good News to a hurting world.
We are called to commit ourselves to keeping our lamps burning with the love of God, reaching out to the world with love on our lips, hope in our hearts, and help in our hands.
Amen. Come Lord Jesus!.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)