"No Trivial Matter" - Lent 4 2018

The Fourth Sunday of Lent
Martin Luther Lutheran Church

Numbers 21:4-9
Saint John 3:14-21

Long ages ago a priest friend of mine warned: “Never listen to a homily that begins with the question ‘Why is Father wearing green today?’” The green he was wearing could be red, or blue, or purple, or white and refers, of course, to the colors of the liturgical season on stoles worn by pastors and priests.  These are the last thing, Father Wilk maintained, people had on their mind when they came to church. 

They were thinking about other things: their health, the kids, their job, the car, countless other matters and the last thing that they cared about was the color of the pastor’s vestments.

That being said, I am going to ignore Father Wilk’s excellent advice and ask the question that is probably running through the peripheries of your mind this morning.  It is just a guess but I am guessing that many of you are wondering: “Why is our guest preacher wearing his academic robes for worship? 

Did somebody tell him that this  was a commencement rather than communion? Is he confused?”

I might be confused but when your very fine pastor told me that we were going to be using The Common Service Book as a part of your 100th Anniversary Celebration I decided to not only blow decades of dust off my old copy of that tome, and brush off my Old English “if it be thy pleasure,” but also dress like most Lutheran Pastors did for the better portion of the 20th Century.

It should be pointed out that while I am in period costume some of you are not.

People who went anywhere special in 1918 always dressed up.  Look at any of the old pictures you see of that time period. The women are in dresses and the men are in suits and ties.  It was the appropriate outfit for everything from church, to the opera, to going downtown, even going to a baseball game.

Imagine putting on your best “bib and tucker” and heading off Wrigley Field or Comiskey Park. While people would surely look at you strangely on the bus and “L” you would be assured of getting a lot of on- camera air-time as you sat with the less sartorially splendid multitudes in the stands.

But, believe this or not, academic robes have a point within the context of this sermon because of one small, seemingly insignificant event that happened within the context of the Reformation.

While Luther was in exile at the Wartburg Castle back in Wittenberg an academic back-bencher was coming to the forefront of the rebellion. His name was Andreaus von Karlstadt and he instituted radical reforms that continue to this day. 

He spoke the liturgy in German; invited the laity to receive both the bread and the wine; and on Christmas Eve of 1522 abandoned the traditional priestly vestments in favor of his academic robes.

Think with me for a second how someone whose name is barely known affected the worship that most of us grew up with. 

Bring out a the black Common Service Book and we can picture what the worship looked like and it had Karlstadt’s name written all over it.  Show us a red Service Book and Hymnal and we’ll be able to picture the church of that day.  A green Lutheran Book of Worship, disliked intensely by the black and red book loyalists, will bring about pictures of a changing church. And a cranberry (Not red but cranberry, I was told!) is painting a picture of a new, inclusive church.

I shall never forget the Sunday that the new pastor of the church to which I belonged wore an alb to lead worship.

The tenant who lived upstairs of me was sure that we were abandoning our Reformation roots and headed right back to Rome.  There was no question about it. With his chanting, and vestments, and sacramental ideas our new pastor was a papist. 

Many people paid less attention to what he said than what he wore.  That he visited the sick and homebound faithfully was less of a concern than which way he faced to celebrate communion.  They spent most of their time complaining about the little things he was doing wrong rather than the many big things he was doing right. 

Every time we do that we are giving into the tyranny of the trivial and today’s Gospel snaps us away from all that and forces us to consider the one thing that really matters.

It was something that mattered so much to Nichodemus that he arranged a middle-of-the-night meeting with Jesus to talk about it.

He staggered from his bed and went out into the really deep darkness to ask Jesus some pressing questions about life and how to grow closer to God. 

That’s what it is all about, isn’t it? That’s why you got out of bed even after losing an hour of sleep and dropped by this morning.  You don’t care what I’m wearing, you don’t care what your neighbor is wearing.  Judging from this vantage point, some of you don’t even care what you’re wearing.  You want to know what Nicodemus wanted to know: “How can I get closer to God?”

And Jesus replies in Eugene Peterson’s marvelous paraphrase, The Message:

Unless a person submits to this original creation—the ‘wind-hovering-over-the-water’ creation, the invisible moving the visible, a baptism into a new life—[creation] it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom.1

So that’s it! All we have to do is submit?  Well, that’s half of it.

Like the Children of Israel surrounded by snakes we have to submit to God and remind ourselves that on our own we have made a mess of things.  Theologically it is called sin and sin bites. 

Sin kills if we let it but, in Christ, God has offered us a way out.  All we have to do is look up. All we have to do is to look to him.  All we have to do is remember that, like the snakes in the wilderness, our sins don’t disappear but their scars can be healed.

We will still, ever, and always carry the scars of all the things we have done and left undone. We will still, ever, and always remember that we have sinned against Thee (Not just the God thee, but the thees sitting next to us and around us) by thought word and deed.  All these snakes will be around us but we don’t have to wallow in our sins and let them devour us, we can look up and live.

But not just us.  The whole world.

Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,[that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.2

As Dr. William H. Willimon, former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University and United Methodist Bishop, wrote:

Nothing we know of Jesus from John’s Gospel or any other suggests that he settles down with us, the faithful few. God loved the world.

Christ looks at every corner of the earth and slams down his fist upon it and says, “Mine.”3

It is not so much a matter of our trying to get close to God but the realization that God is close to us.  This irrational love that God seems to have is not just for us but for the whole world.

Presbyterians in preaching robes, Lutherans in their modest albs, Popes in their pageantry, Anglicans with their smells and bells, and the faithful across the street from us at St. Cornelius.  It is easy to believe that God loves them!

The hard stuff is believing that God also seems to have an irrational love for mullahs in their mosques and Jews at the wailing wall.  God seems to have an irrational love for Buddists and Bahi’s and even those who have no time for God at all.

God also seems to have an irrational love for national leaders who covet their neighbor’s wives and world leaders who covet their neighbor’s rockets.

God seems to want all of them - - all of us - - to be saved not just from our sins but from ourselves. 

God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.4

Christ didn’t come to save just you and me Christ came to save the entire world whom, for some inexplicable reason, God loves.

That is not trivial matter.  That is no trivial love.  But, then again, no matter how we are dressed, God is not a trivial God.

Thanks for listening.
________________

1.  St. John 3:5-6. In Eugene Peterson’s The Message. (S.l.: Navpress Publishing Group, 2013.)

2.  St. John 3:14-15. In NIV Study Bible: New International Version. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012.

3.  Willimon, William H. "Loving the World with Jesus." Pulpit Resource, Year B, 46, no. 1 (February & March 2018): 30-32.

4. St. John 3: 16-18.  The Message.

“Transfiguration’s Intense Labor of Love” - Transfiguration 2018

The Transfiguration of Our Lord - 2018
Acacia Park Lutheran Church

Saint Mark 9:2-8

I was talking with a retired pastor friend of mine who also, on occasions, functions as a supply preacher for his denomination and he told me that it was not something he was comfortable doing because he didn’t know where the people were in their faith journeys.

This surprised me because he is not a glass-half-empty character but rather one of the kindest, gentlest, pastors I know.  He has that wonderful ability to establish deep rapport with almost everybody he meets and was a wonderful pastor to his very large congregation for over twenty years.
 
That being said, he just felt an inability to speak to the people’s real needs as a guest preacher.

The good news for you is that I love this. I love being able to come in, meet a fine new bunch of people, have some coffee, and most of all try not to do too much damage.  I also love exploring church buildings  looking at their architecture and finding interesting spots that make the place unique. (Even if those places are snow covered!)

My guess is that we should not have any problem relating to one another thanks to today’s Gospel for all of us have had mountaintop moments in our lives.  I’m willing to lose you for a few seconds here while you remember your own.

Perhaps it was the day you got married or the moment you realized that you had fallen in love.  Perhaps it was when you had scored that new job you had always longed for or were awarded that degree you had worked so hard to earn. Perhaps it was when you heard the doctor say about you or a loved one: “Your free of that disease. You’re going to be okay.”  Perhaps it is just that moment when you come in the door and your dog greets you as if you had been away on a long vacation and all you had been doing is taking out the trash.

We’ve all had a mountaintop moments and that is why I think Jesus has just as much to show us this day as he did for Peter, James, and John on their outward bound experience.


You all know that mountains are the traditional locations where God is revealed but they also can be frightening places.  Think about Moses on the mountain receiving the Ten Commandments amid the fire and smoke of Mount Sinai.  Think about today’s first reading where Elisha watches Elijah being taken up in a “chariot of fire.” 

Strange things happen when God is present and few things are more strange than what we have before us today.  It has been tempered by time and our yearly exposure but it is a strange story full of twists, turns, and hidden meanings.  That is as it should be when the kingdom of God arrives in full force.
 
Nobody quite knows why Jesus decided to go up the mountain or why he chose who he chose for the journey we only know that he suggests this excursion and they, perhaps with nothing better to do, go along.

We know what happens next.  Our translation only tells us that he was “transfigured” but others say “Suddenly his face began to shine with glory”1 ... “His appearance changed from the inside out, right before their eyes.”2

The light wasn’t shining on Jesus it appeared to be coming from Jesus.

And his clothes. “(H)is clothes became dazzling white, such as no one[on one[on earth could bleach them.”3

The Rev’d Sue Eaves, Rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia pointed out something I had never noticed before. 

In the years before modern washers and dryers and uneatable Tide Pods, clean laundry was a sign of respectability that was a result of lots of hard work. She remembered her mother in England literally boiling the dirt out of clothing, lifting it steaming from the tub, running it through a mangle, and then hanging it in the sunshine until it was “dazzling white.” Dazzling clothes she said were the result of “an intense labor of love, and that was what Jesus was all about.”

That is what Moses and Elijah were all about too. Their lives proclaimed God’s intense labor of love for God’s people.

Labor requires movement. 

You and I know this from the last few days.  I spent an enormous amount of time looking out the front window and thinking about having to shovel snow. I had an good excuse --- I was writing this sermon! Still the only way to remove that snow was to shovel it. 

And so it was with Jesus. While chatting with the leaders of yore might have been exciting and enlightening still there was work to do. An intense labor of love was calling.

Peter didn’t hear that call and preachers have been giving him a beating for years over it.  We blame him for wanting to start a building program but he doesn’t do so to save the moment but to protect the moment.

Peter was aware of the history of his people and that history was one of a wandering tribe who when they wanted shelter from the storms or safety from the enemy pitched tents.  In a moment of insecurity --- which was certainly what the first Transfiguration was for Peter --- he wanted safety. 

In the midst of that deep desire there is an interruption. It is no less than the voice of God shattering Peter’s dreams of security and reminding him that an intense labor of love was calling.  “This is my beloved Son. Listen to him.” booms the voice that we think probably sounded like Morgan Freeman’s and the disciples are wakened from their dreams.  For what Jesus says is, in essence, “Let’s go!”

Dr. Karoline Lewis, professor of Preaching at Luther Seminary in Saint Pail writes: 

But we try to stay where we are. That’s the safe option, after all. Same. Staid. Solid.  Especially when we see what we have known, on which we have relied, in whom we’ve believed all crumbling before our very eyes. Whether these disintegrating edifices are  our denominations, our democracy -- or our relationships, our communities, our country -- too often our only options in response appears to be pop up tents, quick fixes, provincial vision statements, or nearsighted adaptations --- none of which actually trust in a future that God holds.

This leads to another overlooked truth of the Transfiguration -- that what we’ve seen so far is nothing compared to what’s in store. The Transfiguration is no mere demonstration of God’s glory, but that which insists God’s glory will persist in the midst of and in spite of all that would point to the contrary.5

We all know of these experiences too.  Time when only an intense labor of love will do.

They come when we flip on the television news, or open up a newspaper, or even check our phones and the news feed gives us more challenges, more stress, more unhappiness. 

They come when we fall out of love  and perhaps things have gotten so bad that the divorce paper are signed. They come when your boss tells you that your services are no longer needed. They come when you received your first “F”. They come when the doctor appears at the door with a grim look on her or his face. They come when, instead of greeting you at the door, you find your dog with its head in the trash can.

Jesus leads his disciples down into the valley, into labors of love, to show that nothing less that God is present in all these places too.

Dr. John M. Buchanan, Pastor Emeritus of Fourth Presbyterian, wrote once:

We do our believing in those moments of clarity when God gives us experiences of sharp truth. We do most of our living on faith, on the path, in the fog, remembering the clear picture we were given, anticipating another one but, in the meantime, walking on in trust.6

The good news for today is that we have been to the mountaintop with Jesus and the even better news is that is not where Jesus wishes to stay. 

He is with us on our mountaintops to be sure but he is even more present with us in the valleys.   He is with us as we gather in place around his table but he is also with us at our desks, at our kitchen tables, in hospital rooms, and all the dark places in which we find ourselves.

Christ is with us as we assume our roles as partners with him in the all the intense labors of love that this world may toss our way.

That is what unites you and me this day. You, me, and even my preacher friend trying to relate. That is where all of us are. 

We spend our lives - all of us - alternating between mountaintop highs and valley lows.  Yet, we all are wrapped up in God’s labor of love - love for neighbor, for each other, love for the world because we know that Christ loved us to the point where he was willing to become involved in this messy business of living.

We give thanks that the words of the hymn are true.

 For Christ goes with us all the way,
 Today, tomorrow everyday,
 His love is never ending.
 Christ the living, to us giving,
 Life forever.
 Keeps us God’s and fails us never.

Thanks for listening.

____________

1.  St. Mark 9:2. (TLB) (TLB=The Living Bible)

2.  St. Mark 9:2. (MSG) (MSG=The Message)

3.  St. Mark 9:3. (NRSV) (NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version)

4.  Eves, Susan. "A Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday." Asermonforeverysunday.com. February 11, 2018. Accessed February 9, 2018. http://asermonforeverysunday.com/sermons/b12-2-transfiguration-sunday-year-b/

5.  Lewis, Karoline. ""It's Good To Be Here"." Dear Working Preacher. February 5, 2018. Accessed February 9, 2018. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5057

6.  Lauermann, Connie. "One Magnificent Church." The Chicago Tribune Magazine, January 10, 1988.

"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.