Sermon for Reformation Sunday

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on October 27, 2013
Scripture text: Romans 3:19-28, John 8:31-36

It’s long been noted by historians that the Church appears to be on a 500-year cycle. Every 500 years something monumental happens in the life of the Church, a schism, a rift, a paradigm shift. Forgotten teachings rediscovered, a moment of reformation. Resistance to change. Turmoil and uncertainty.

Four years from now, we will mark the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther nailing the 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenburg church. Five hundred years since the last great tumult of the Church. You can guess what that means. We are due for another.

Oh my, are we ever. The Church is sick. The signs of that are all around us. Membership is dropping across the board. The fastest growing religious group in our nation is the “nones,” that is they answer what religion they follow with the word “none.” The simple and ugly truth is that the Church has no place in many people’s lives. It has no place because religion does not do anything for them. Faith is meaningless to them. Why then should they participate in its institution?

And that is not a defect in them. We could stand here and deride those people for their foolishness, but that would only feed the problem not solve it. You see they find nothing here of value because so often there is nothing in our churches of value to people. That’s not their problem. That’s ours.

We’ve lost our way. That’s the simple truth of it.

It’s not hard to see when you open your eyes to the world around us. Look at what passes for Christianity in this day and age. In this corner, you have the Prosperity Gospel, those who teach that faith is a means to worldly success and riches. Just believe hard enough and just pray hard enough and God will shower you with all your hearts’ desires. Ok, God, I liked that picture on Facebook. Where’s my blessing? I prayed six times today. I want my Ferrari.

In the opposite corner you have the legalists. The Bible says...don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t dance, don’t have sex (or if you do, don’t enjoy it). Hate the gays, hate the liberals, love war, save the babies, but screw the freeloaders. Do all this or God’s going to come get you like a cosmic boogeyman. A great torrent of hatred and fear.

That’s what the church has become in this day and age. But here’s the funny thing. There ain’t done of that in the Bible. There ain’t none of that in the teachings of Jesus. And if it isn’t in the Scriptures, then where is it coming from?

The answer to that is simple. It’s coming from us. It’s coming from human beings. You want to know what the sickness of today’s church is? I’ll tell you. It’s quite simple. It’s all about us. Our desires. Our wants. Our opinions. Our hopes. Our prejudices. Our bigotry. Our anger. Our fears. Our behaviors. Our actions. Me. Me. Me. Me.

There ain’t no room for Jesus here anymore. Oh, except for one rather insidious way. We’ve turned him into a rubber stamp of sorts. The Prosperity Gospel is just greed. But we’ve stamped Jesus all over it and that makes it ok. Fundamentalism is just bigotry and hate, but we’ve stamped Jesus all over it and that makes it okay. This is fun. This is easy. Take anything wrong with the world today and do that. The sex abuse scandal of the Roman church. Well, we just stamped Jesus all over it and that makes it okay.

The funny thing is, none of this is new. It’s the same crap we’ve been doing for thousands of years. The Crusades were just murder, but we stamped Jesus all over them and that made them okay. The Inquisition was torture, but hey, we stamped Jesus all over it and that made it okay. Slavery was the brutal exploitation of human beings, but again, we stamped Jesus all over it and everything was okay.

We keep turning Jesus into an excuse, a rationale, a justification for things that he would have no part of. We think sin stops being sin just so long as we stamp Jesus all over it. It doesn’t. Sin remains sin no matter what pious justifications we invent to excuse it all away. You can’t lie to God, but boy do we love lying to ourselves.

And if that’s what we’re doing, lying to ourselves it’s not faith, my friends, because faith is based on truth. What it is instead is idolatry and the idol we worship is us.

In the 5th Century, during the first of those great turmoils, the church had become infected with the idolatry of me. It took the form of a heresy known as Pelagianism, which taught that salvation is all about what we can do for ourselves. My efforts, my works, my charity, that’s what saves me. St. Augustine turned to the Scriptures and found what it really says. Turns out, it’s all about what Jesus did.

When Martin Luther pounded those theses to the door of the church, the church had become infected again with the idolatry of me. The Pope cared only for temporal power. It was all about him and he got the whole world to go along with him by the wonderful power of that Jesus-rubber-stamp. Give me money for my mistresses, because Jesus said so. Feed my ambitions, because Jesus wants you to. Well, Martin Luther read what Jesus said in the Scriptures and he didn’t find any of that in there.

A lot of people are going to be real disappointed to find out what’s really in that book they claim to follow, but never read. Greed? Greed is condemned in the Bible. It’s teachings are clear that what we are given we are given to use for others. Hate? There is no hated in what Jesus teaches. Yes, sin is condemned, but not the sinner. Sinners are forgiven and even welcomed by Christ. There are countless examples of that. Salvation? It comes through the grace of God and by nothing else. It’s his call who is to be saved. It’s not up to you or me. Not our own. All the devotion, piety, and following the rules mean nothing when it comes to that.

And it’s not up to us concerning the salvation of others. For all we know, God could say “Hey, you know those people over there. They’re okay. Let’s let them into heaven too.” If “those people” are made up of people we think don’t deserve it, too bad. It’s not your call. It’s not my call. It’s God’s call. His choice and his alone.

If faith is about you, you’re doing it wrong. If it’s about Jesus, the real Jesus that you find in God’s holy word and not the rubber-stamp-Jesus that just tells you everything about you is okay, then you’re on the right track. That’s where the Church needs to be. We need to find the real Jesus again. The Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus who comes to us in Word, bread, wine, and water. The Jesus who loved the whole world (and everyone in it) enough to die on a cross for its sake and then rose again on the third day. The Jesus who calls his disciples, us, to proclaim his truth in word and deed to all the world. The Jesus who calls us to service and not to judgment. The Jesus who challenges all of us to be more than we are now.

We are the Church, my friends. This moment is ours and the new Reformation must begin with us and with all our fellow Christians. That title has to mean something again. It has to mean that people see who Jesus truly is through us. They see his love through us. They see his sacrifice through us. It’s got to stop being about us, because when it is that’s all the world sees. We can’t get in the way anymore. The world can’t afford that and neither can we. Amen.

Sermon for Halloween Youth Event

Preached at St. John Lutheran Church, New Freedom on October 20, 2013
Scripture text: John 1:1-5

There is something wondrous about what we are doing tonight. Something unexpected. Something out of the ordinary. Tonight, we are being honest.

One does not typically think of the church as a place to celebrate Halloween. Many would argue that this is not the place to discuss such grim topics. But a church that only talks about things as sweetness and light is also a church that runs the risk of being dangerously out of touch. We live in a world of darkness, a world full of monsters. Perhaps we should start acting like it.

Oh, when I say “monsters,” I don’t mean zombies or vampires or Freddie or any of those other creations of human imagination and folklore. I mean real monsters. Monsters like hunger and poverty. Monsters like tyranny and injustice. Monsters like cancer and disease, like war and heartbreak. Monsters like sin and death.

Those monsters are real and they’re all around us. They’re in our lives and in the lives of the people in our communities. Their threat is ever present, a constant shadow hanging over us.

So when I say that tonight we as a church are being honest, what I mean is that we are not hiding from these unpleasant truths. We’re openly admitting that these things are real and that they have an impact on our lives and the lives of others. We are talking about darkness because that’s the world we live in. A world of death.

So tonight is Ash Wednesday redux. “Dust you are and to dust you shall return...” Tonight is Good Friday. “And when he had said this, he breathed his last.” And also All-Saints Day, from which Halloween comes, we remember those who have died before us. Tonight is all about the monster of death, but not merely him alone. It is also about something else, another truth; the truth that there is something greater than death.

In many ways, the ghost and goblins of Halloween are fanciful metaphors of death. What makes them terrifying to us is their power to kill and to destroy. But while we acknowledge death’s power to destroy, we must also acknowledge that we are followers of a God who has overcome death and the grave. Christ Jesus who has died and risen again, who has made death his footstool.

There is an old literary saying. We tell fairy tales and ghost stories and the like not to tell us that monsters are real. We already know that. We tell those stories to remind us that monsters can be beaten. Tonight, we are telling the story of Christ for precisely that reason. The monster of death can be beaten. He has been beaten. The light of Christ shines out in the darkness and death did not overcome it.

This is our hope, my friends. This is the hope of the world around us. Light in the midst of darkness. Light in the midst of light is nothing. It’s washed out, unnoticeable. But a flame in the darkness can be seen by all. That is Jesus, shining out for the whole world to see and telling us that so long as he is with us, the monsters cannot harm us. Amen.

Sermon for the Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost

It is our tradition at Canadochly that the Sunday closest to the Festival of St. Luke (Oct 18) is dedicated to healing. That tradition informs much of this sermon.

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on October 20, 2013
Scripture text: Psalm 121

I want to show you all something. Recently, there were a number of news articles about Voyager 1, the deep space probe NASA launched way back in 1977. Voyager had reached a milestone in human history as the first and so far only human-made object to leave the solar system and enter into deep space. It is now roughly 93 billion miles (with a b) away from Earth.

Twenty years ago, long before it ever reached the edge of our solar system, NASA sent a command to Voyager’s on-board computer. They ordered it to turn itself around and snap a picture of the planet Earth. This is that picture, one of the most famous photographs in astronomy. It is called the “Pale Blue Dot.”

Can you see planet Earth upon it from where you’re sitting? I’m going to guess no. It’s right here, a tiny speck on this piece of paper. That tiny speck contains the whole of human existence. The whole of your life and every life has taken place on that near-invisible dot.

Hard to imagine, isn’t it? But it’s true.

We human beings have a tendency to think of ourselves as the center of the universe. That we are the top of the heap, masters of our fate, lords over all that we survey. We are in control of our lives. Mighty, limitless, unstoppable. We can do anything.

But none of those self-perceptions can change the simple fact that in the grand scheme of the universe, we barely show up at all. We are tiny, finite, weak, and forgettable.

If only all the times in our lives where we are reminded of that truth were as painless as this bit of astronomical trivia...

Unfortunately, they are not. More often, we are reminded of our true limitations in ways that are deeply painful and damaging to us.

A corporation goes under, perhaps by mismanagement, perhaps by the whimsies of the marketplace. Jobs are lost. Our job, and there’s nothing we could have done to stop it. There was no controlling that fate.

Politicians misbehave. They are spiteful, angry, ready and willing to stick it to their opponents in the other party. As recent events have shown, some are even willing to bring our government to a screeching halt rather to talk to one another and work out their differences. How many were furloughed? How many others did that impact? And what were we to do about all that? Did we have any control at all, any say in what happened over these past two weeks?

And then, perhaps most germane to our purposes today, is the question of sickness. Who here seeks to fall ill? But who of us can stop it from coming? None of us want to be injured in an accident, but it’s called an accident because we couldn’t see it coming. There was no stopping it, no avoiding it. It just happened. It’s beyond our control.

This is what life is like for millions of people, struggling with circumstances bigger than they are, more powerful than they are, and (in some cases) deadlier than anything they’ve ever faced before. And who are we to face down the power of death in whatever form it may take? We who are less than a tiny speck in a vast universe. Where can we turn?

Our psalm for today has the answer to that question. I lift up my eyes to the hills. From whence is my help to come? My help comes from the LORD, the maker of heaven and earth.

When we are faced with something far bigger than us, we can turn to one who is far bigger than it. The one who made a universe so vast that even our home planet is no more than a tiny dot on this photograph.

Now why on Earth would God bother? After all, he’s got a whole vast universe to run and compared to it we’re nothing. But that’s the funny thing. He does bother. In the vast scheme of the reality we live in we would seem to be nothing, except to God. Time and again, he has fixed his gaze upon our tiny little world and into our tiny little lives. We are precious to him. We matter to him.

Why else would he incarnate to live among us as Jesus? Why else would he deign to talk with us and teach us? Why else would he heal us of our infirmities? And why else would he die upon a cross and then rise again for us? The creator of all that is deeply invested in your life and mine.

So when our lives take an ill turn, when disease or some other misfortune strikes, God notices. It pains him to see us suffer. So he sends his spirit in our lives, to strengthen us against the trials we face and to remind us that he is the one that calls the shots in this universe. He is the one with power over life and death, and because of Jesus what he has chosen for you and for me is life.

There will always be things bigger than us. Disease, misfortune, heartache, calamity, the folly of the so-called powers-that-be. But there is one bigger than all of it, one who loves you more than words can say. My fate and yours is in his hands. Whatever we face in this moment or in the future may loom large before us, but they are nothing to the Creator of Heaven and Earth. Amen.

Sermon for the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on Sunday, October 13, 2013
Scripture: Luke 17:11-19

It was a dark night. Cold and wet after raining for days. The line huddled outside the soup kitchen shivered as they waited their turn, hoping to get inside out of the weather and get a warm meal in their hungry bellies.

The director of the kitchen came outside, with his keys in hand. A great cry of protest went up as he began to lock the door. “I’m sorry,” he responded. “There is no more food. We have none left for you.”

Across the street, the old shopkeeper was also closing up, looking out his window at the scene outside the soup kitchen. Ten remained out in the rain as the doors were locked. Ten that would have to go without. He turned and called out behind him. “Martha, how much do we have in the refrigerator? How much in the pantry?” Without waiting for the answer, he stepped outside into the rain and called out to the ten men across the street. “Come over here. Come inside. We will take care of you.”

Martha and the shopkeeper scrambled together a quick meal. Whatever they could find, leftovers, old cans of soup and Chef Boyardee from the cupboard. They prepared all they had and set it before those ten men who’d been left out in the cold. And the ten ate.

“You can stay inside the shop.” said the shopkeeper as they finished their meal. “No sense you going back out there in the rain.” And so they did. As each marked out their place on the floor to rest and wait, the shopkeeper sat down with them. To each, he asked the same question, “who are you and how did your life come to be this way?”

Most told him roughly the same story. They had been people of some means, middle-class, one was even a rich man at one point, all before some misfortune befell them. One went bankrupt from medical costs. Another lost his job to lay-offs. Still another was injured in a car accident and now could not work. Yet another, a veteran wounded in war. All lamented the lives they’d left behind, lives of success and happiness. Most spoke of families, of having respect in their communities, of memberships in churches and civic clubs. All lost when the economy went south or some other misfortune came upon them. All decent men, down on their luck.

But there was one that was silent. The shopkeeper chose not to push with him and left him in his solitude. As time went on, the rain stopped and the ten went on their way. The next day, the shopkeeper opened his business and life, for him at least, returned to normal.

Some weeks later, on a sunny afternoon, a customer came into the store. He was clean, well-dressed in a fine suit. The shopkeeper came out from behind the counter to ask this gentlemen what he could do for him and was astonished to recognize him as he got closer. It was the silent one from that stormy night.

“I wanted to come back to thank you again for what you did that night.” said the man. “You asked me my name and my story that night, but I said nothing. I said nothing because I knew I wasn’t like the others. I was a thief and a criminal. I was no decent person with a streak of bad luck like those others. But you didn’t care. You fed me just like them. You entrusted your shop to us for those few hours when you didn’t have to get involved. You did that for no other reason than your own kindness. Why?”

“It was the right thing to do.” answered the shopkeeper.

“I thought you might say that.” replied the man. “I wanted to show you that my fortunes have changed and I’ve gotten my life back. But not like it was. I’ve cast off my old ways and I want to make a difference for others like me. I thought you might want to help.”

The shopkeeper nodded and the two began to talk about the future.

---

I wrote this paraphrase of the story of the ten lepers as I was sitting in my office looking out over the rain and thinking about those out in it. Those modern day lepers we call the homeless. I remember, when I was in seminary in Philadelphia, how we seminary students would fastidiously avoid them whenever we’d go across the street to the Wawa. I remember my encounters with them outside Port Authority in NYC and the Metro stations in DC, where I, like most everyone else, pretended they weren’t there.

Human beings don’t change much. There’s always some group of people in society that we just wish weren’t there. As twisted as our society has become over these past dozen years or so, our list has become almost endless: gays, Muslims, liberals, and immigrants have joined with perennial favorites like the homeless, people of color, Jews, sex workers, you name it. It wasn’t so different in Jesus’ day: Gentiles, lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, and Samaritans were all on that short list of people the good folk of the day wanted to just wish out of existence.

I talked last week rather stridently about how all those labels which are so important to us DO NOT matter to Jesus at all. Ten people in need come before him. Ten receive healing from their disease. Yes, only this one Samaritan comes back in gratitude, but the gift that Christ gives he gives to all of them.

That simple fact in this story cannot be overstated. Jesus does not take away from the others for their failure to come back to him. He gives as much to them as to this one. He is not in the business of punishing those who do not show some standard of proper gratitude or devotion. Grace is meant for everyone, no exceptions.

This may be a bit presumptions of me, but I look out over this congregation and see in each of us here that one who came back. Like him, we’ve been given a great gift from Jesus through our baptism. We have been claimed as one of Christ’s own, nurtured at his table, educated from his Word. We’ve heard the story time and again of how we went to the cross for us and for all. And we are here each week (and hopefully also in the rest of our lives) to show our gratitude in some small way to the one who has done so much for us.

That is all great and good, but our presence here does not make us better than those who are not. What we’ve been given, so have they. Maybe they haven’t realized it. Maybe they have and it just hasn’t taken hold yet. But no matter. The nine were given healing just as the one was. That’s who Jesus is, constantly showering this whole world with his love and mercy, giving with no expectation of return.

He gives because it’s the right thing to do. Perhaps we can do the same. Amen.

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on October 6, 2013

Scripture text: 2 Timothy 1:1-14

I found myself in something of a bind this week during my sermon preparation. There were so many things that I wanted to talk about, so many things weighing on my heart and my mind this week, that I just couldn’t figure out what direction to go in. There’s the government shutdown and I wanted to address that in some way. There’s the baptism today and I wanted to celebrate that in my sermon in some form. There are also the Scripture readings assigned by our lectionary and I wanted to be faithful to the traditions of the church on this day.

There was too much, it seemed, to talk about. But then I read again our second lesson, Paul’s letter to St. Timothy and something jumped out at me that hadn’t before...

For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

In those two verses was the answer to my dilemma.

It all begins here, at the waters of baptism. Here is the “gift of God that is within” each of us. A gift that will be granted to little Ember is just a few short minutes. Here is where God claims as fully as one of his own. Here, he puts the mark of the cross upon us and says “You are mine. Now and forever.”

Think for a moment about what that really means. Christ came into the world as one of us, a human being named Jesus. He came. Was born. He lived. He taught. He healed. He inaugurated a kingdom of God to which he invited all. It didn’t matter. It was open to Pharisees and scribes, lepers, tax collectors, and prostitutes. The good and the bad of all of us. And then he sealed the deal by going to the cross and there dying to take away the sin of the whole world. All of it, from you and from me and from everyone. He rose again to give us life eternal.

In this moment, we are given a sacrament that tells us beyond doubt that we are a part of that kingdom, that God has welcomed us into his arms, and called us his beloved child. He has taken away the power of all that threatens us and set us free to live like Christ did: without fear, without hatred, but instead with courage and love.

We are a new creation and we are called to live as that new creation. As I’ve said before, we cannot go on living like nothing has happened to us. We are baptized and that certainly means that something big has happened to each one of us.

But what does that mean? What does it mean to live in that new creation? Part of it you heard just last week in the questions asked around this font.

• Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?
• Do you renounce the forces of this world that rebel against God?
• Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you away from God?

You’ll be asked those questions again in just a few minutes. Today, as last week, I expect to hear an affirmative answer from all of us. But it’s one thing to say it in here. It’s another thing entirely to live it out there.

That’s when it gets hard. Out there in a world full of difficult people. People we don’t like. People who frustrate and annoy us. People with whom we disagree. But what Paul says to Timothy he says also to us. We are given a spirit of power and love and self-discipline, not one of cowardice or hatred.

Which brings me to current events. We’re all watching the stand-off in Washington, wondering which side will finally blink and get the government running again. Tensions are high. Passions are running amok. People are angry. I get that. But we cannot forget that in the midst of such times that we are Christians first. That the most important piece of who we are is that we are disciples of Jesus Christ and we are that before we are Democrats, Republicans, or even Americans.

But that does get forgotten. Last Sunday, an individual walked out of this sanctuary because I dared state that President Obama was a human being instead of some sort of demonic monster. I’ve seen horrifically vulgar and offensive posts directed at people in Washington from members of this congregation on Facebook this week. And then there’s me. One of my friends posted (again on Facebook) that what we should do is give our leaders in Washington the middle finger and throw the bums out, and I commented that I agreed with him. I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have agreed with that, because that wasn’t Christian of me.

Look, I’m not asking anyone to change their vote. I’m not asking anyone to switch sides or to agree with my politics. But I am asking for us to remember that John Boehner and Barack Obama and Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi and all the rest of those folks in the midst of this crisis are also people for whom Jesus Christ went to the cross and died. Most of them, at one point in their life, were brought to a font like this one and were marked with Christ’s seal and made our brothers and sisters in him. And for those who haven’t come here, there is nothing our Lord desires more than to see that happen.

We are asked at this font to renounce evil and perhaps the best place to start is within ourselves. Our own failure, mine, yours, to see Christ in others. To see his heart and his desire for his children. He loves them as he loves us.

We are called to reflect that same love. Jesus makes no bones about this. His teachings are very clear. Do unto others... Love your neighbor as yourself. Love your enemies and pray for them. What you do to the least of these you do to me. It’s not always easy.

But regardless of whether it’s a politician in Washington or a misbehaving celebrity or a neighbor who plays their music too loud or someone across this sanctuary with whom you disagree, I say to you what Paul says to all of us. “You are given a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.” It’s time we acted like it.

We are made a new creation by our baptism into Christ Jesus. This moment isn’t a one time thing. We are meant to remember each day of our lives what these waters mean, who Christ wants us to be, and how we wishes us to treat one another. Today, as we celebrate with Ember and her family this sacrament, let us take Paul’s words to heart and rekindle in ourselves that same spirit that is being given to her, not a spirit of fear and anger, but one of love and compassion for ALL humankind, even the parts of it we don't like. Amen.