"A Savior for Rough and Dark Times" - Pentecost 9A

Saint Matthew 14:22-33

In case you haven’t heard one week from tomorrow there is going to be a total eclipse of the sun. 

This is important because, according to NPR correspondent David Baron “it's been 38 years since one last touched the continental United States and 99 years since one last crossed the breadth of the nation. On August 21st the moon's shadow will race from Oregon to South Carolina.”
 
Amtrak planned a special train to Carbondale where Southern Illinois University is going to open up it’s football stadium to any who would like to watch it from there.
 
My partner and I plan on loading the dog into the car bright and early and heading off to Marion, Illinois where (Don’t tell anybody now!) we figure the crowds will be thinner and I have already prevailed upon a local funeral home for a space in their parking lot.
 
Don’t worry though. If you can’t get away for this one Baron tells us: 

Over the next 35 years, five total solar eclipses will visit the continental United States, and three of them will be especially grand. April 8, 2024, the moon's shadow heads north from Texas to Maine. In 2045, on August 12, the path cuts from California to Florida. 1

Make note of those dates and make your travel and hotel reservations early!

A solar eclipse is one of those natural phenomena that our non- scientific ancients tried to explain through myth and lore. Some thought it was the sun god and the moon god fighting for supremacy. Others though a dragon was devouring it or that dogs were trying to steal it.
 
Even as late as 1869 eclipses were frightening events.

"During the total obscuration of the sun, a silence like death rested all over our city," a correspondent for the Chicago Tribune reported. The temperature reportedly dropped more than 40 degrees. A startled drove of cows feeding near the reservoir took off running toward the city, not stopping until the absent star finally reappeared. "Dogs were seen to gaze in wonder at the terrible appearance of the sky, and remain during the total obscuration in an attitude of alarm and wonderment," the Tribune reporter's dispatch continued. As the light returned, the shaken canines "expressed the joy they felt in a way that only dogs can." 2

We know better now but it is still seen as something we have no control over and seek to understand. 
 It is as explainable as a thunderstorm. (Just ask Tom Skilling! Or not, if you don’t have all day!)  However, to first century sailors thunderstorms at sea brought a terror that was almost (pardon the pun!) unfathomable.

So once again we are called to consider the disciples encounter with a terrible storm, in a small boat, in the middle of the night.
 
This is another one of those texts that you have heard so often that you may be, once again, “ho humming” to yourself “Oh yeah, this. I know this text.”  But let’s dive in anyway and I promise to stop with the puns.
 
We know about the storms and we know that for some people they are terrifying and frightening.
 
While my family used to gather on the front porch to watch the storm our tenants would beat a hasty retreat to the southwest corner of the basement in heavy weather.  While they were doing push-ups off the ceiling at every streak of lightening, crack of thunder, and heavy gust of wind, my family was cheering every boom and passing each other towels to wipe off wind driven water.
 
A storm in the middle of the city can be approached in different ways but a storm in the middle of a lake is another matter.
 
Once, a very long time ago before I discovered five star hotels with poolside gin and tonic service, I went camping in the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota.
 
We were out in the middle of a lake in aluminum canoes when a classic,  Midwest thunderstorm suddenly came up. I remembering paddling like crazy and promising God everything I was, and had, and ever would be, if I just arrived back at shore without becoming toast.
 
Remember, the disciples boat was a great deal like my canoe that had no sophisticated equipment - no radar, no sonar, no running lights, not even a horn or a lantern. They were out in the dark with the winds and waves against them and their strength beginning to fail.
 
It is at this moment that Jesus comes and they misidentify him as a ghost. It is, men and women, a perfectly reasonable response.
 
Remember, we’ve been around this story for so many years that we take it for granted that it is Jesus.
But, how would they know? They had never seen Jesus, or anybody else for that matter, walking on water so they jump to what I think is a perfectly rational conclusion.  It must be a ghost.  Casper of the sea!
 
And what did Jesus say to contradict their impression? He didn’t speak to the storm and still it, he speaks to them.   “Jesus was quick to comfort them. ‘Courage, it’s me. Don’t be afraid.’” 3
 
If I would have been in the boat that would have been enough but not Peter. He is now at his irrational best! He wants to walk on water too. 
 
United Methodist pastor, Michael A. Turner, explains Peter’s behaviour to us.  We think that being a disciple of somebody is just to know what they know.  But in Jesus’ day:

A disciple wanted to do what the his teacher did. A disciple wanted to talk like his teacher talked. A disciple wanted to walk like his teacher walked. A disciple wanted to devote his life to being just like his rabbi.

So Peter is just being a good disciple when he asks to walk on water with Jesus. He wants to do what his rabbi is doing. 4

But he can’t.  He can only take a few steps on his own before fear, gravity, and physics take over and he begins to sink.
 
It is then that Jesus does something really spectacular. If you think walking on water was amazing what he does next is incredible.
 
What I am about to tell you comes not from years of studying scripture or theology. It does not come from years of preaching or teaching. It comes from my college Red Cross water safety certification classes in order to be a life-guard.
 
Those classes were made up of people on the swim team and when we went out to practice saving someone we played rough. We made it as difficult as we could for him or her to stop our flailing and drag him or her to the deck. 

The reason? Because we wanted to simulate a real drowning where the victim might have been so afraid that they took leave of their senses and fought back.
 
That is why I have always hated those Sunday School pictures of a “drip-dry Jesus” walking on the water. Wind and waves all about and not a hair out of place. And then, him merely reaching out a hand or even just a pinky finger and plucking Peter from his plight.
 
I hate those pictures because, from real life, here is what I think happened.
 
I think Jesus had to dive in after Peter.  I think he had to grab him and turn him around before he could get him to the surface. I think when both of their heads popped above the water both were soaking wet with water in their eyes.  I think Jesus didn’t say calmly, “why did you doubt?” but sputtered it out with the words “What got into you?” running through his mind.
 
And that is the most important thing for all of us to take away from this story. 
 
As Bishop William H. Willimon has written:  

Sometimes we think of faith as a matter of calm, serene rumination and thoughtful consideration that ends in, “I believe.” But this story suggests that sometimes faith is what comes to you in the middle of a storm, in the dark when Jesus ... says, “It’s me. Come.” 5

The problem with being a guest preacher on a morning like this is that I don’t know where your storms are. I have no idea where or if the sun has stopped shining in your life.  With my people I knew and I am sure that, after 17 years Pastor Lauritsen does too, but of this I am sure:

If by chance you find yourself not sitting here in the serenity of our church but in the middle of a “storm,” going down for the third time, like Peter, full of doubt and in danger of perishing, darkness all around you, then I say that is a great place to be met by Jesus.  In the storm, in the dark he will come to you. 6

Even when our nation seems divided and any civility we once had seems to be being ripped from its moorings. Even when the thundering voices of hate attempt to separate us one from another.  Even when evil seems to be running rampant and our stomachs turn as if we were seasick. Even in these storms, Jesus will come to us, too. 7
 
Jesus comes to us in the middle of the storm, dives into the water after us, climbs into the boat with us, and joins our story to his.
 
It is then, right then, that we will hear him speak saying those saving words to us: “Courage, it’s me. Don’t be afraid.”
 
Thanks for listening to him and for the last couple of Sundays putting up with me to me.

__________

1.    Baron, David. "You Owe It To Yourself to Experience a Total Eclipse." Lecture, TedxMileHigh, Denver, Colorado, August 9, 2017.

 2.  Ritter, Geoffrey. "Look Up: A Dark Sky Over Illinois." Marion Republican (Marion, Illinois), August 8, 2017. August 8 , 2017. Accessed August 13, 2017. http://www.dailyrepublicannews.com/news/20170808/look-up-a-dark-sky-over-illinois.

3.  St. Matthew 14:27.  (MSG) (MSG=The Message)
 
4.  Turner, The Rev'd Michael A. "Just Like Jesus." Sermon. In Pulpit Resource. Vol. 36. Series 3. (Inner Grove Heights, Minnesota: Logos Publication, 2008.) 25-28.

5.  Willimon, The Rt. Rev'd Dr. William. "In Deep Water with Jesus." Sermon. In Pulpit Resource. Vol. 45. Series 3. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon Press, 2017. 21-23.)

6,  ibid.

7.  Sermon was preached the day after the violence that occurred because of a White Supremacist march in Williamsburg, West Virginia.

Sermon preached at Saints Peter & Paul Lutheran Church

Riverside, Illinois

13 August 2017

"Compassion" - Pentecost 9A

Saint Matthew 14:13-21

A long, long time ago I heard a sermon preached by Dr. Wayne Weissenbuehler, former Bishop of the Rocky Mountain Synod, in which he asserted that the word “compassion” was the most beautiful word in the English language.  It is indeed, but it is also a word that has almost disappeared from our national lexicon.

On a local level you may see it. 

In churches that provide meals for the homeless, PADS shelters,  and folks from places like the Chicago Night Ministries and many others who provide food and medical care to adults and young people who live on the streets.

We can find “compassion” in the occasional “human interest story” that gets three minutes on the news but otherwise we don’t see much from politicians and pundits on “shouting shows” that permeate cable news and talk radio.

Politicians may have become the least compassionate people in our country and, like it or not, they set the tone for our debates.

Like the California representative who was quoted as saying: “As a matter of fact, I have said over and over again, I think he's the most deplorable person I've ever met in my life." 1

Statements like that may shore up the base but probably will win very few voters over to her cause.
Or, this stunning piece of business from the other side when a spokesman for a new immigration policy said: “the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of American liberty lighting the world. The poem that you’re referring to, that was added later, is not actually a part of the original Statue of Liberty.” 2

The poem of course is: 

Give me your tired, your poor,
 Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
 The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
 Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
 I lift my lamp beside the golden door. 3

While it may have been a later addition the poem is what the statue stands for: Liberty’s welcome to all.  Her torch is the national porch light not just for a selected few but for all who left their native lands, their homes, their families and friends, to make a new life here.


To label them as “bad hombres” shows little compassion for the speaker’s grand-parents and great-grandparents or for ours.  And it flies in the face of today’s gospel.

Here we find a tired and sad Jesus who has just heard about the death of his cousin John the Baptist.  He is doing what all of us would be doing at that moment - wanting to get away and perhaps pray or shed a tear.  He is seeking solace in solitude.

And there is the crowd!

You probably know this story better than I do.  You hear it every year because it is in all of the Gospels. You were probably thinking as I read it: “That old saw? I know where this story is going because I’ve been there countless times before.”

But bring it into our times and it has real meaning.

Understand that the disciples are becoming afraid.  The place was deserted. The crowds were enormous. Huge! The biggest crowd ever. They were also becoming the hungriest crowd since the Children of Israel in the wilderness. There had never been a crowd bigger or more hungry than they.  It was a huge, hungry crowd.

And the disciples come to a perfectly rational conclusion: “If these people are going to eat they better go home before it gets dark.”

To which “Jesus replied, ‘They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.’” 4

“‘What!’ they exclaimed. ‘We have exactly five small loaves of bread and two fish!’” 5

The disciples are operating out of a sense of limited resources and so are we when we say there are only so many jobs, there is only so much money, there is only so much food, or energy, or anything to go around.

But listen. If you told the roughly 76 million people living in the United States in 1900 that there would be 282 million  of us in 2000 they would be asking the same questions including one extra: “what are we going to do with all the horse manure?”

We know what Jesus does next but we also know what he does not do.

Nowhere does either Jesus or his disciples’ question who the five thousand people were or might be. Nowhere does either Jesus or his disciples eliminate, segregate, or exclude. Jesus doesn’t ask the disciples to sort the five thousand by socioeconomic status or by test scores or by academic degrees achieved or by strength of their individual faith—or by any faith, for that matter—or by culture or by ethnicity or by gender or by age. 

When Jesus was asked to feed people, he showed an unimaginable love and charge... He said, “Feed ’em! Feed ’em all! Every one of them.” Friends, where in this world do we ever see it done quite like that? 6

Only when compassion reigns!

Only when we realize that welcoming the stranger into our midst is a sign of what God has done for us.

Only when we realize that being compassionate is what God wills for us to be doing all of the time for all humanity.

Only when we recognize that our compassion is only our meagre human attempt to show some of the compassion that Jesus has shown toward us.

It seems to me that Matthew told this story and this story survived down through the ages to not only show the wonder working power of Jesus but to show how much God can do when we trust God with what we have.

That will mean we will have to stop seeing our resources as limited and begin to see God’s as unlimited. 

It will mean we will have to stop asking who is who when we share of our abundance.

It will may mean that, in the beginning, if only a few of us start to practice compassion it will spread to more and more people as they discover that it is not only Christ’s way but, because it is, it is the way of life.

Most of us know only a part of Emma Lazarus’ poem “The New Colossus” carved on the base of the Statue of Liberty.

It is the part that Irving Berlin set to music but here is how that poem begins: 

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
 With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
 Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
 A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
 Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
 Mother of Exiles.
 From her beacon-hand
 Glows world-wide welcome...” 7

Then come the words we know “give me your tired, your poor.”

 May these words shine forth from Christ’s churches and the lives of Christ’s people until the word “compassion” once again glows from our hands in world-wide welcome.

 Thanks for listening.

___________________

1.  Greenwood, Max. "Maxine Waters: Trump is the most deplorable person I've ever Met." The Hill. August 4, 2017. Accessed August 5, 2017. http://thehill.com/homenews/house/345307-maxine-waters-trump-is-the-most-deplorable-person-ive-ever-met.

2.  "Read the full transcript of Wednesday’s press briefing." BostonGlobe.com, August 3, 2017. Accessed August 5, 2017. https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/08/02/read-full-transcript-wednesday-press-briefing/jP2IHQrMiF1RA6UE1zOhGJ/story.html.

3.  Reilly, Katie. "'Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor': The Story Behind the Statue of Liberty’s Famous Immigration Poem." Time.com. January 28, 2017. Accessed August 5, 2017. http://time.com/4652666/statue-of-liberty-give-me-your-tired-poor/.

4.  Matthew 14:16. In The Holy Bible: New International Version. (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009.)

5.  Matthew 14:17. In The Living Bible. (Salem, NH: Ayer Co., 1986.)

6.  Eldred, Mark. "God In My Pocket." A Fourth Church Sermon, The Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago, Chicago, July 26, 2016.

7.  Reilly, Katie, loc. cit.

Sermon preached at the Lutheran Church of Saints Peter and Paul

Riverside, Illinois

6 August 2017

"Biblical Intrigue" - Pentecost 8A

Genesis 29:15-28 and Saint Matthew 13:31-33 &  44-52

Two of the few remaining adults in our Nation’s Capital are Mark Shields and David L. Brooks who have been appearing every Friday for years on the PBS Newshour.  Brooks has also become the default conscious and ethicist for an increasingly secular society.

Two Fridays ago they said this about one of our current national leaders:

MARK SHIELDS: Everybody, I can honestly say, with rare exception, who has been associated with this administration and this president has been diminished by it.  Their reputation has been tarnished. They’re smaller people as a result of it. And that’s tragic.
 DAVID BROOKS:  He’s like an anti-mentor. He takes everybody around him and he makes them worse.1

I don’t know how to tell you this ... (And I can’t begin to thank your pastor enough for taking a well-deserved rest and leaving it to me to do so) ... but Isaac is kind of an “anti-mentor.”  Where ever he goes, whomever life he touches there is confusion and trouble. He seems to have this knack of bringing out the worst in people.

There are people who you can drop into any situation and they will make it better.  And there are people who can make any situation they are in worse.

From before he was born Jacob was making life difficult for his older brother Esau.  Their mother, Rebekkah, said “it seemed as though children were fighting each other inside her!” 2

Then, as you know, Jacob, who was womb wrestling for first born status cheated his brother out of his birthright for a bowel of lentil soup.

He fooled his father, made his brother furious, and with the help of his mother had to hightail it out of town.

Which brings us to today’s story that seems like it might have emerged from the plot line of “The Young and the Restless.”

Jacob finds himself traversing through the territory of a man named Laben who just happened to be his cousin on his sister’s side. 

Even though they would have been second-cousins Jacob falls in love with one of Leben’s daughters. He had two - the older one’s name was Leah and the younger one’s name was Rachel.

We probably should send the children out of the room for this part because scripture tells us in a paraphrase: “Leah had lovely eyes, but Rachel was shapely, and in every way a beauty.”3

We have now discovered that Jacob is a body man rather then a face guy and we already know how he feels about birth order so he falls in love with Rachel.

Commentator Gerhard vonRad writes: “Even though one cannot speak expressly of a ‘bought marriage’ in Israel, still it was a common notion that daughters were a possession, an item of property that could be transferred from one owner to another without further ado.”4

Wouldn’t you know a male pastor is preaching this text!

Your pastor could preach far better than I could because she knows all about what it is like to live in a male dominated culture. 

Pastor Bouman grew up in the Missouri Synod where the though of a having a female pastor is still an anathema. And, before we get to smug, the L.C.A. and A.L.C. didn’t ordain their first women pastors until the fall of 1970. 

“Today, on average, a woman earns 79 cents for every dollar a man earns, and women’s median annual earnings are $10,800 less than men’s.”5

The wonderful women here gathered could cite countless examples in their lives when they have felt like second class citizens but remember, if you choose to do so to me at coffee hour, I am on your side!

The good news in this Old Testament Patriarchal story is that Jacob offers seven years labour for Rachel.  It is an unbelievably high price and Leban accepts.

Time passes, the wedding day finally arrives Jacob finally gets what is coming to him both literally and figuratively.

After the wedding banquet Leban switches daughters on Jacob.

Look, I have no idea how this happened!

Commentators have broken their pencils and drained ink wells dry trying to explain this one away.

Bad eyesight, Heavy vales, Dark rooms, too much drink have all been offered as excuses as to why Jacob doesn’t know who he slept with until the next morning.

I’m staying with my original thesis: “He takes every situation around him and makes it worse.”

I can imagine the scene the next morning when the alarm clock went off.

Jacob saying to the person next to him: “Your eyes are almost as beautiful as your sister’s. Have you been losing weight? You just don’t seem yourself this morning.
Hey wait!  Your not!  Your not Rachel! Your Leah!”

When he confronts their father the old man gives him the needle: “We don’t do it that way in our country,” said Laban. “We don’t marry off the younger daughter before the older.”

Then he makes him a deal. “Enjoy your week of honeymoon, and then we’ll give you the other one also. But it will cost you another seven years of work.”6

I am sure every woman in this place is upset about these two brides being offered by their father in a two for one deal.  And, to the men who are wondering how good a deal that really was that Jacob ended up with not one but two wives, I suggest you keep that thought to yourself.

What are we to make of such a story?

First, if anybody lectures you about biblical family values I suggest we all remember this story of Jacob from Genesis.  And remind them of all of it ... every single sentence!

Second, even those who scheme and make every situation worse and diminish every person they meet, are not outside of God’s care.

Finally, and most important, if we can think of a scoundrel like Jacob playing a central role in God’s plan there has to be role for us. No matter who we are or what we have been God still has a plan for us. All we have to do is listen and even in the midst of our self-created chaos God will show us what that is.

In due time we will know.

That is God’s promise to Jacob. That is God’s promise to us.

Thanks for listening.

__________

1. Brooks, David L., and  Shields, Mark, writers. "Shields and Brooks." On The Newshour. PBS. July 21, 2017.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-brooks-spicer-stepping-gop-health-care-bill-fumble/

2. Genesis 25:22. (TLB) (TLB=The Living Bible)

3. Genesis 29:17. (TLB)

4. von Rad, Gerhard. Genesis: A Commentary. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminister Press, 1961.), p. 285.

5. Sheth, Sonam, and Gould, Syke. "5 charts show how much more men make than women." Business Insider, March 8, 2017.

6. Genesis 29:26-27. (MSG) (MSG=The Message)

"God's Lifeboat Ladder" Pentecost 7A

Genesis 28:10-19

Saint Matthew 13:24-30; & 36-43

My partner grew up on a farm in the far Northwest corner of Iowa and one of his memories from childhood was “walking beans.”

I grew up on the far northwest side of Chicago - not far from here - and had no idea what he was talking about.

“How do you walk a bean?” I asked.  “Do you put a little collar on them and then place the on the ground to see where they go? Do they romp? Can you tell them to sit and stay and when you say ‘Here, Bean, Bean, Bean’ do they rush to you?”

He looked at me like I was being an idiot. (Which I was!)

Lowell patiently explained to me that before the age of really sophisticated farm equipment - (So sophisticated, in fact, that the first time I climbed into his brother’s combine his only words to me were: “Just don’t touch anything!”) - weeds in the bean fields had to be removed by hand.

So his parents would have him and his siblings go out and help them “walk beans.”

Remembering that these were not green beans, or any of the kind of beans we are used to at the grocery store, but rather soy beans, I asked him “How did you know the difference?” To which he replied “practice.”

I was still a little stupefied.

Which is why I completely understand the listener’s reaction to Jesus’ parable and his explanation to them.

If you sent us, you and I, Chicagoans, out into a soybean field who knows what we’d do.  We’d have no idea what to look for? We would have no idea what was a weed and what was a soybean?  So Jesus has the master say to his listeners what Lowell’s brother said to me when I was sitting in his combine: “Don’t touch anything!”  Jesus adds, “God will sort everything out in the fullness of time.”

The parable is not about weeds and weeds it is about us.

It is almost human nature to try and sort things out for God.  It is a constant temptation for us to try and figure out who is doing the will of God and who is not. 

It is a constant struggle not to give into the notion that we can figure out who will be welcomed into God’s kingdom and who will not.  We think we know who is a weed and who is a wheat in this life and Jesus plainly tells us we don’t.

We are like city folk in a soybean field who, in our inability to tell a plant from a weed would probably leave nothing behind but a barren landscape.

And we certainly would have pulled up guys like Jacob and thrown him into the compost bin of history.

Your pastor was so right last week when she labeled him as “something of a heel, someone who is not very admirable, someone who does questionable things for their own benefit.”  1 (Jacob could have had any job he wanted in Washington!)

To our eyes he would have been a weed. 

When we pick up his story today he is on the run from his brother Esau from whom he has just embezzled the family inheritance. 

The first act of this tawdry take ends with words: “So Esau hated Jacob because of what he had done to him. He said to himself, “‘My father will soon be gone, and then I will kill Jacob.’” 2

Jacob is on the lam. And if we were God we would probably say: “Serves you right.  All the troubles in your life you have brought on yourself so that’s it! Good riddance.”

Much to our surprise, and Jacob’s, God comes to him when he is tired, worn out and using a rock instead of a My Pillow.

The Pastor for Youth Ministry where I worship regularly, The Rev’d Rocky Suplinger, wrote is a devotional this week:

It occurs to me that perhaps the Lord is present in that place not simply in spite of Jacob's ignorance but because of it. Had Jacob been looking for a holy truck stop, I wonder if he would have wandered to some other locale. Maybe there would be a big mountain in view. Maybe a babbling brook the shores of which would be suitable for meditating. Instead, Jacob just needs a place to rest himself. He's not thinking of holiness, or even of God, as he beds down with his rock pillow. And that is how God finds him. Because Jacob wasn't looking.

God comes to us. That is the good news. We may be seekers, yes, but our seeking after God will never come close in ardor or insight to the seeking after us that God is doing all the time, in the least likely of places.3

And I would add in the least likely of ways with the strangest of signs. 

Today it is a ladder.  The inspiration of the hymn, “We are Climbing Jacob’s Ladder.”  Did you know that there is such a thing as a Jacob’s ladder?

I was badgering the guys in the bible study I participate in at Fourth for an application for this sermon and a Navy veteran told me that the classic rope ladder that we have all seen in movies and perhaps in person is called a Jacob’s ladder because it has to be lowered down to you.  You can only toss it so high. It has to be lowered from above.

Upon further research I also found that “today, Jacobs ladders are mostly used to board lifeboats [and] life rafts."

You could probably finish this sermon without my help.

 God doesn’t care if you are a weed or a wheat.

 God doesn’t care if you are a saint or a scoundrel.

 God doesn’t care if you are on the lam or following the Lamb.

God will find you even when you are not looking and offer you a way into God’s lifeboat of love, grace, and mercy.

Ponder that this week and then come back next week to find out if Jacob accepts God’s offer. Come back and find out whether Jacob is a soy bean or a bean head. Come back and find out whether he grabs hold of the ladder of God’s grace or continues to try and do everything his way.

Come back to this place we call holy and find out whether Jacob accepts God’s offer or not.

 Here’s a hint: The answer is both “yes” and “no.”

 Thanks for listening.

___________

1.  Erin Bouman, “Take Hold.” Sermon preached at Irving Park Lutheran Church in Chicago, Illinois on Sunday, July 16, 2017.

2.  Genesis 27:41a. (TLB)   (TLB=The Living Bible)

3. Rocky Supinger, Fourth Church Devotions. July 18, 2017. Accessed July 18, 2017. http://www.fourthchurch.org/devotions/2017/071817.html.

"Its Not Easy Being Weedy" - Pentecost 6A

Saint Matthew 13:24–30 & 36–43

You can always tell when you have returned from a vacation in an isolated cabin on a lake in northern Wisconsin when you wake up your first morning home thinking your partner is doing the dishes only to realize it is the neighbor next door.

When some one yells at you on the short trip to the grocery store. And, when you run into an unbelievably surly woman, yelling at everybody in site at the rent-a-car place as you try to simply return your vehicle.
  
Let me take her side for a moment. She had brought her own car in for service at one of the dealers along the corridor between Larmie and Irving.  My personal car is from one of places and when it was under warranty and had to be taken there it was one of the most frustrating experiences I had ever encountered.  It seemed impossible for them to do even the simplest of repairs in less than a day.

No doubt it is for this reason that Enterprise® located an office right in the heart of Frustrationville.
Most people suffer their indignity stoically, if not in silence, as they take the paperwork over for a free rental and go on their way.  But not this woman. 

She is one of those people who believe the world revolves around them.  She expected to be waited on the second she stepped in the door and she made her frustrations known with language that would make a sailor blush.  She was embarrassingly rude to the clerk making sure that her loud and obnoxious comments were heard by all in the office. 

She was slowly drawing a large target on her back for your pastor this morning who does not suffer fools, nor the foolish, gladly.

When she was asked for an emergency contact number - some one to call if she got into an accident she replied: “I have no one.  I don’t have a single friend in the entire world.” I mouthed to the other patiently waiting souls, “Does anybody wonder why?” 

I got a laugh from the crowd.  This, as you know, only egged me on to zero in on something else I noticed.

Hanging around this foul mouthed woman’s neck was a crucifix, gleaming in the morning sun. Never one to leave well enough alone, I asked her, “That cross around your neck.  Does it mean anything to you?” 

It was like setting off a nuclear reaction.  The woman’s face reddened not with embarrassment but rather fury.  I only wished that she had been hooked up to a blood-pressure monitor because we surely could have achieved record high levels.  She was going into melt-down mode and the explosion came with: “Yes, I believe in God and if you don’t want to see God you’ll get out of my face.” 

I figured I had pushed this far enough and left her to stew but not without a honk of the horn, a smile, and a wave, after we had quickly been taken care of, and she was still dealing with the paper-work of renting a car.

Here is the question that today’s parable asks of us this morning: Was she a weed masquerading as a  piece of wheat or was she really, really, wheat who had been pushed to her limits by the one thing we all dread – the thought of car repair?

And, upon further reflection, what about me?  Was I being a weed by making fun of her disposition or was a being a tall strand of wheat by reminding her that if you are wearing a cross it is best to remember that you are representing the faith even if that cross to you is but a lucky charm?

What confused the disciples and confuses us is that sometimes we never know.  But what I do know is that it is easier to be a weed than it is wheat.

It is far easier to point out the faults in other people hoping that our own will not be noticed.  It is far easier to point out a problem than to solve it. It is far easier to tear some thing down than to help something grow. 

Being weedy is pretty easy.  All you have to do is not cooperate.  All you have to do is complain.  All you have to do make trouble.

And we think we know what we should do with the troublemakers and complainers in our lives.  We should get rid of them.  Rip them up and cast them out. 

And, listen to me very carefully now, men and women, sometimes that is the only thing we can do.  If there is someone who is continually dragging you down.  If there is someone in your life who is emotionally or physically abusive.  If there is someone in your life with whom every conversation leads to a confrontation.  If there is someone like that  – and here is the key – they won’t take ownership for their part of the problem – then the best thing, the only thing to do, for your own emotional and even physical well-being is to get them out of your life before they are able to choke off any life that is left in you. 

But, Jesus warns us, we don’t get to cast them out of the kingdom of God.  Sometimes we may have to remind them that forty years of church attendance that is not translated into kindness is waste of time and energy.  Sometimes a cross is more than a piece of jewelry, it is a symbol of the extent to which God will go to love us.

The Rev’d Shannon J.  Kerschner, the very fine Senior Pastor at Fourth Church put it this way: “The holy presence refuses to let us define who God loves and does not love, who God claims and does not claim, where God can and cannot act.”1

God will sort out who are the weeds and who are the wheat in the fullness of time. Our job, our only job, is to make sure that we don’t give into the easy temptation to become “weedy.” It is far easier to be a weed than it is to be a stalk of wheat.

In Hayward, Wisconsin, where Lowell and I were last Sunday, there is, as there has been for a long time an Ice Cream shop attached to West’s Dairy.

It is packed during the summer.  One time, as we walked by, there was a line out the door.  Lowell and I went back late on a Sunday night (8 o’clock by Hayward standards) got waited on immediately, met the stores, owner, bought and had him sign his book, appropriately titled, Scoop.

The author, Jeff Miller, a great guy who has since passed away at the all too young age of 56, was a high powered lawyer for an international firm.  His partner, Dean Cooper, was an Englishman who also was blessed with a job that allowed him to enjoy the finer things in life. 

In a moment of disenchantment with their jobs, along with building a cabin on Teal Lake, they also bought West’s Dairy and a then run-down but now beautiful Bed and Breakfast at the center of town. 
Anybody who has ever undertaken one remodeling job, let alone three at the same time, knows that it can be as maddening as taking your car in for repairs.  There are delays, excuses, and unreturned phone calls.

Jeff was enduring all of this, and then some, as he remodeled the dairy and Ice Cream Store.  In the mean time, not four blocks away Dean was having another kind of experience. 

It was so unique that it merited a phone call to Jeff for him to come and see.

There were workmen all over the house as Dean would point out in amazement, working.

“I’ve never seen anything like it.  No cigarette breaks, no tea breaks.  They’ve been working like this all day.” he told Jeff with wonder and excitement in his voice. 

Jeff reflected: “Our history with builders had been one of constant grumbling and complaints about conditions.” What he was seeing was incredible! 

When Dean introduced Jeff to one of the workers he wiped off his sweaty had, spoke just long enough to exchange a few pleasantries, and ran, not walked but ran, to help another worker. 

But that was only the beginning.  The two partners walked to the back of the house and “one of the roofers lost his footing and smashed his hand against the roof.  ‘Oh, darn it!’ he yelled.

“Did he say darn it?” [Jeff] asked as if [his] mother had been [the one] removing shingles from the roof.

“‘They don’t swear,” Dean whispered as though it were a closely guarded secret.  ‘They all go to some big church outside of town,’” and their boss came out of the Mennonite tradition where your faith was shown by the deeds you did and the words your carefully chose rather than the jewelry around your neck.   

“‘Do you know what this means?’ Dean asked.  ‘We aren’t going to be ripped off.’”

It means more than that. 

It means that, unlike the woman at the rental agency, these workers to paraphrase the wisdom literature allowed their righteousness shine through their kindness.  And  these righteous shown like the sun in the kingdom of the Father.

In one paraphrase, Jesus asks: “Are you listening to this? Really listening?”

I leave it up to you to decide who was listening – the impatient woman wearing the golden cross at the Enterprise office or the roofer with the throbbing thumb. 

And then we can all ponder in our spare time this story of weeds and wheat and who we would rather be like.

It’s easy being weedy but the righteous get to shine as the sun in their Father’s Kingdom.  And that, at least to me, sounds like a far, far better thing.

Thanks for listening.

_______

1. Shannon J.  Kershner.  Sermons from Fourth Church.  June 22, 2014.

2. Jeff Miller, Scoop: Notes from a Small Ice Cream Shop.  ( St.  Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2014).  p.  135–137.

"Loyality & Division" - Pentecost 2A

Trinity Lutheran Church
Des Plaines, Illinois

Jeremiah 20:7-13
Saint Matthew 10:27-39

I would be willing to wager a considerable sum of money that when you woke up this morning, had your breakfast, put down the paper, turned off the television and got all dolled up to drop by  you were not hoping to hear a sermon about divisions.

 Trust me, as a guest preacher.  I wasn’t ready to preach one.

 Guest preachers are supposed to come in say nice things about Jesus, have a little coffee, chat up the crowd a bit, and go home.  We are not supposed to talk about such a divisive issue as divisions.  And we are certainly not to do so in the midst of our divided culture.

 I need not go into a lengthy list of these divisions.  Just a mere mention of them should do the trick.  Democrat/Republican.  Rich/Poor. Male/female.  Black/white.  Gay/straight.  All of these, and a thousand other things can tare communities, families, and even individual psyches apart.

 It is not only that we are war with each other but it seems sometimes that we are divided from ourselves.  Our conversations become snarky and we, as human beings, become diminished.

 So, we pick up today’s gospel and cringe.  Lo and behold, Jesus, is talking about divisions.  Our divisions.  That’s one of the problems there is with Jesus - sometimes he stops teaching and gets to meddling.

 We may feel a little like crying out the words of Jeremiah: “You pushed me into this God, and I let you do it.” 1

 Out of a sense of guilt, obligation, or just plain habit, God, you got me up and out of bed and I came to church and, here I am, stuck with some preacher I don’t even know who is going to talk about divisions.

 Lordy, what was it I heard  in the Gospel? 

 I hear Jesus saying: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” 2

 Sadly, that is what the first Christians experienced.

 In the first century the household, functioned as the foundational unit of the state. It was how life was ordered.  Marriages were arranged.  The father was the unquestioned head and the rest of the family was to be subservient.  It was a top down chain of command system.

 Jesus life and ministry changed all that.  He spoke with people who would have never been welcomed into Greco-Roman households and (Worse than that!)  he treated them all the same.  Women were welcomed into his circle not as inferiors but as equals.  Societies outcasts - tax-collectors, sinners, schemers and frauds were welcomed.  Children were welcomed into his family as were all who were ever looked down upon by society.

 Christianity crossed a lot of Greco-Roman cultural lines and sometimes this line-crossing caused divisions.

 In a world where marriages were arranged like corporate mergers children were bringing home partners whom they said they “fell in love with.”  Women were talking to men who were not their husbands.  Children were being treated as persons and not property.

 Things were changing and Jesus knew that some people would not be happy about it.  We all know that some people will resist change no matter what.

 During the month of June I am proud to say that the church to which I belong is bolding flying the Gay Pride flag above it’s main entrance for all the shoppers on Michigan Avenue to see. 
 Flying that flag was the topic of much debate.

 What pushed the flag flying across the finish line was the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Atlanta.  That made it a time to declare which side we really were on.  The side of unity or the side of division that leads to violence. 

 But violence as Jesus’ said is most often not on a mass scale.

 Consider this painful post by a “Christian Blogger” named Kim Higginbotham, who announced on her son’s wedding day that he was dead to her.  That sounds a bit more like the dialogue from a old time gangster movie than what a mother would say about her son in 2017 but she not only thought it she wrote about it.

   What made the post so anachronistic is that her only problem with the young man was that he was marrying another young man.

Using today’s text as a pretext she writes: (And I am not making this up!)

Someone may ask, “Why would anyone break ties with her own child?” The answer is, “loyalty to Jesus.” Being a disciple of Jesus demands our relationship to him be greater than our relationship to our own family, even our own children. I pray that you never have to make such a sacrifice, but I also pray that you love the Lord enough to choose Him over your children.3

In some ways this is Jesus’ prediction come true - a young man being abandoned by his parents because of his beliefs or actions. As another blogger wrote:  

When people are brainwashed into thinking certain sins are unacceptable, it can tear apart families for no good reason. For all we know, Higginbotham’s son would love to have a relationship with his parents. But his mother, despite everything she says she misses about him, won’t reciprocate because she fears it’ll upset her God.4


I think what may upset God more is when we participate in this cynical, demeaning, vitriolic discourse. Being full of critical judgements of one another is not how God wants us to live. But that is the way more and more of us are choosing to live our lives.

As David L. Brooks said a couple of weeks ago on The News Hour:

"In 1970, people were asked, would you mind it if your son or daughter married someone of the opposing party? And 5 percent would mind.

Now 40 percent (say they would) mind, because people think your political affiliation is a sign of your worth, your values, your philosophy, your culture, your lifestyle. It’s everything. All of a sudden, we have been reduced to politics and we have made politics into the ultimate source of our souls." 5

Politics is not the source of our souls and neither is our religion if it divides us from one another. 

Christ doesn’t want that mother to be divided from her son in his name. He wants her to pick up the phone and call him and tell him she loves him no matter what. 

 Christ doesn’t want us to define ourselves by what political party we belong to but rather be united by our baptismal belonging to him. 

 My pastor, The Rev’d Shannon Kershner, said: “In these days of heightened polarization, we are inclined to see the message of the gospel through our already determined political lens, rather than viewing our politics and policies through our gospel lens.”6

 Do you see what a difference that can make? 

If we saw life through our gospel lens things would seem different. Our divisions would be transcended when we began to see each other as the beloved children - sons and daughters of God - that Christ says we are.

 And how might this work?  Let me tell you in a story that I have been saving up for awhile.

For several years the fifth grade boys basketball team from St. John the Apostle Catholic School had girls on it.  (It’s a small school in New Jersey that didn’t have enough boys to fill out a roster so they used girls.)
  
For most of last season it went unchallenged until their final two games when it looked like they would make the play-offs.  It was only then that some parents got involved.

Out to spoil their children’s good times some parents on opposing teams cried foul. This was a boys league, no girls allowed.  The team was faced with a momentous decision: Drop the girls or forfeit the season. The team’s decision was unanimous, courageous and inspiring.

“It’s your decision to play the game without the two young ladies on the team, or do you want to stay as a team as you have all year?” asked parent Matthew Dohn. “Show of hands for play as a team?”

 Eleven hands shot up in unison. No one raised a hand when asked the alternative.

 Assistant coach Keisha Martel, who is also the mom of one of the girls, Kayla Martel, reminded the team of the consequences. They had been told that playing the girls in any game would mean the rest of the season would be forfeited.

 “But if the girls play, this will be the end of your season. You won’t play in the playoffs,” she warned.

 “It doesn’t matter,” one boy replied and others echoed, before the team began to chant, “Unity!”

 In the crowd, supporters cheered along. Several parents began to cry.7

 I think those young men and women had the message of the Gospel down better than anyone, don’t you? 

 In a society where rules are rules and anybody who disobeys the rules must be ostracized - Christ does not unify. 

In a society that views politics as the number one priority Christ cannot lead. 

In a society where even one’s orientation can become a topic of discussion, descension and even division between family members Christ’s love cannot prevail.

 But on a basketball court in New Jersey young men and women can teach us all there is to know about seeing the world through the gospel lens and what they saw was unity and not division.

 They were united as a team that played side by side with each other and on the same side as their Lord and ours, Jesus Christ.

 Wouldn't it be great if every member of every church committed themselves to do the same?

 Thanks for listening.

__________

1.   Jeremiah 20:7.  (MSG) (MSG=The Message)

2.   Saint Matthew 10:34-36.  (NRSV) (NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version)

3.   Kim Higginbotham, “Giving Your Child to the Devil.”  teachinghelp.org. May 6, 2017.  http://www.teachinghelp.org/giving-your-child-to-the-devil/#more-2617

4.   Hemet Mehta, “Christian Mother Mourns Loss of Son She Abandoned for Being Gay (On His Wedding Day).”  Friendly Athiest. pathos.com.  May 15, 2017.  http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/05/15/christian-mother-mourns-loss-of-son-she-abandoned-for-being-gay-on-his-wedding-day/

5.   Mark Shields & David Brooks, "Shields and Brooks" The Newshour  ( June 16, 2017).
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/shields-brooks-trumps-response-russia-probe-scalise-shooting

6.  Shannon J. Kershner, “Politics and the Pulpit.” Sermons from Fourth Church. February 5, 2017. http://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2017/020517.html

7.  Andrew Joseph, "5th grade coed basketball team chooses to forfeit season instead of kicking girls off the team," USA Today (New York), February 12, 2017, February 12, 2017, accessed June 24 , 2017, http://ftw.usatoday.com/2017/02/5th-grade-coed-basketball-cyo-st-johns-new-jersey-forfeit-girls.