Sermon for Gaudete Sunday (3rd Advent)

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on December 14, 2014
Preaching text: Isaiah 61:1-11

It was an act of desperation. A young woman in Florida filled up her shopping cart with food and tried to slip out of the store without paying. She was not successful. The store staff caught her and called the police. What a frightening moment that must have been for her, a woman of color, poor and impoverished. Now a criminal in a society where far too many are perfectly okay with the most extreme of punishments for the most minor of crimes for people who look like her.

The officer arrives on the scene. She assesses the situation, knows the law, knows the crime that has been committed here. She listens to the woman’s pleas. “My children are hungry.” she says through her tears. “I wish I could tell you I’d never do this again, but I can’t. My children are hungry.”

What happens next is a moment of pure grace.

Rather than put this young mother in cuffs, dragging her off to the station, leaving her children to whatever fate our government deems, this officer pulls out her own debit card, goes into the store and buys a week’s worth of groceries for the woman. She then loads these groceries into her patrol car and then drives the mom and the groceries back to her home.

The law was clear. This young mother was a criminal. She deserved punishment, a fine, imprisonment, something. But that’s not what she got. Mercy, compassion, kindness are what she received instead.

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;

My friends, this is what it looks like.

I needed to hear this story. It may surprise you to learn that for us much as I enjoy excruciating the evils in our world today, there does come a moment when Nietzsche's statement proves true even for me. “Stare too long into the Abyss and it begins to stare back.” There’s been so much evil in our world and in our lives of late. So much darkness from Ebola to death of dear friends to police abuse to torture to the difficulties here of so many of our members: cancer, a child born much too early to be safe, old age, and all the rest.

And yet this is 3rd Advent, the Sunday of “pink.” Gaudete, the Sunday of Rejoicing. Gaudete in Domino semper. Rejoice in the Lord always. That’s hard to do when we are weighed down by sins both within and without, the darkness of our own souls and the darkness of the world in which we live.

But despite all that, there is reason to rejoice. Because there is light in the midst of darkness, there is grace in the midst of sin. And while evil has its moment, it will not last. For the year of the Lord’s favor is upon us and the day of vengeance for our God will bring comfort to all who mourn.

This passage from the 61st chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy is notable because it was with these very words that Jesus began his public ministry. In Luke chapter 4, we see him stand up in the synagogue of his home town and proclaim that this prophecy has come to pass in him. This is the world he brings. This is the kingdom of God made manifest. And while we may not yet see it in its fullness, it does appear in tiny little miraculous moments like a cop buying groceries for a desperate mother. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot overcome it.

God wins. I often jokingly say that the book of Revelation, an intimidating mystery to many, can be summed up quite simply with those two words: God wins. In truth, you can sum up the whole of the Scriptures that way. You can sum up the whole of life that way. God wins. Not evil. Not sin. Not death. Not disease. Not poverty. Not tyranny. Not fear. Not hate. Not pain. God wins!

And if there is anything in this world to rejoice over it is that.

It was around this time of year in 1998 when my sister, myself, and my friend Kevin (who just became a father for the first time this week. Truly, another moment of divine grace.) went to NYC to see a Broadway show. We saw Les Miserables and it would not be an understatement that seeing that show changed my life. I was already in seminary by that point but in the story of that show, I realized what sort of pastor I wanted to be.

Les Mis is full of these moments of grace. It’s saturated with them. From ValJean being forgiven by the Bishop in the beginning of the story to his later sparing Javert at the barricade, there is hardly a moment where we don’t see God’s kingdom emerging through the darkness of the events of the story. But of all the moments, my favorite is at the end. ValJean lies on his death bed and he is visited by his daughter and her husband. As he slips from this world to the next, the whole cast of the musical, most of whom are dead by this point in the story, steps out onto the stage and sings him home to his Savior. They’re all there, no matter what terrible fate befell them in this world. No matter what evil came upon them. They’re all there. God wins.


This is our faith. We trust in God’s ultimate victory. In spite of all the darkness of this world, we cling to the hope of his salvation. Christ saves the world. That’s why he came. That’s why he was born. It’s why he lived. It’s why he died and it’s why he rose again. Evil does not have the last word. God does and his word is victory. His word is salvation. His word is mercy and love and compassion and grace.

His kingdom is coming! Rejoice! Again, I say rejoice. Amen.

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Advent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on December 7, 2014
Scripture Text: Mark 1:1-8, Luke 3:10-14

I’ve shared some of my history with you all before. I’ve spoken about that time in my teenage years when I dabbled in other forms of Christianity, specifically the hand-waving rock-n-roll variants of Evangelicalism that were popular in the 80s and 90s and remain so today. I’m often rather harsh in my critique of that kind of Christianity because I had a very bad experience and I often remain bitter about that. But it’s not just my bad feelings. Every form of our faith, every religion born out of the teachings of Jesus, has its flaws. Even our own.

I’ve spoken before about what I consider to be the big flaw of Evangelicalism and it’s in its very name: the emphasis, to the exclusion of all else, on evangelism and conversion. Everything and I do mean everything in that variant of Christianity is tied to that.

I remember in quite a number of sermons (although not quite in this specific language) that the only thing that really mattered was how many souls I won for Christ. How many people I could convince to “give their heart to Jesus.” They kept score. Every soul won for Christ was a “jewel in my crown in heaven.” I heard that language a lot. I started to wonder, “Is it like Sheetz coffee, if I win 9, do I get the 10th one free?”

I joke about it, but there is a serious problem here. Why was it always about me? How many souls I won? What was my score on that tally? How many people did I talk to about Jesus today? How many jewels were in my crown? I started to question, dangerous in any circumstance. Why is all this emphasis on conversion more about how many points I score with God than about how great salvation is for them? Why am I never told that I do this to help others? Why is it always about helping me?

Christianity became for me a self-improvement program, one I wasn’t very good at. It was all about how much work I did. I’ve got news for us all however. Evangelicalism is not the only form of Christianity that is guilty of this sort of thinking. Whether it’s the penance of traditional Roman Catholicism or the ever present idea that we have to be good for God to love us, we are all guilty of turning our faith inward. We make it all about me. My soul. My salvation. God is here to serve me.

That is not what we find when we read the Scriptures. Time and again, we discover it is not about us, it’s about them. They, the people out there, are the ones that really matter.

We see this in the story of John the Baptist, whose introduction to our Advent journey begins today. Mark tells us John’s purpose: He “comes to prepare the way” for the coming of the Messiah. He does this by proclaiming a “baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Mark is typically brief, so we don’t get a lot of detail about what these things mean. For that, we must turn to the other Gospels, where we see a much broader view of John’s ministry. Luke, in particular, gives us an idea of what “preparing” looks like.

And it’s pretty much boilerplate Old Testament moral teaching: Take care of the poor, treat people with dignity, be honest, be compassionate on the less fortunate. Nothing new in John’s teaching. But note who it is that these things are done for. You do these things to help others and to prepare the way of the coming Messiah. Note who’s missing in that equation.

It’s not about us. It’s about them.

All of Scripture supports this idea. The Hebrews were the Chosen people not because they were more special or better in some way than all others. They were Chosen to be God’s messengers to the world. The morality of God’s law was not to save anybody, but to demonstrate a better way of life to the nations and tribes that the Hebrews encountered. The Hebrews were a priestly people for the sake of the world. And we, as the Church, are now called to be a part of that process. We exist not for ourselves, but for them. We are here to make them ready for God.

We always forget that part. Sin turns us inward. Helping others is hard, but helping ourselves is easy, so our egos always default to that position. “Thou shalt not” do the bad things is a whole lot easier than “Thou shalt” do the good things. “Hating evil” is easier than “loving good.” But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here to serve God and we do that by doing what he tells us to do: serve others.

Last Sunday, I spoke at some length about how screwed up our world and our society really is. And the events of this past week have done much to reinforce that. It feels as though evil is winning, both within and without. To me this is a wake-up call, fitting perhaps for this season of Advent, a season whose clarion call is “keep awake!” The Church is being called to action for a world that needs us now more than ever. The darkness is growing, but we can show them the light.

The light that we have received. The light we’ve been given freely. The funny thing about all this emphasis on self that we so often fall into is that it’s all wasted effort. Jesus came to take care of all that. He lived, died, and then rose again so we wouldn’t have to worry about how many jewels are in our crown in heaven. We don’t have to worry about that because we’re going to be in heaven. We’re going to be with God. We’re going to have salvation given to us. Jesus calls out from the cross what are probably the second most important words in the Bible (after “Fear not”), “it is finished,” or more accurately “it is accomplished.” That’s Jesus telling us from the cross as he dies for our sake “Don’t sweat this. I got it. You’re cool now.”

That’s our freedom. We don’t have to worry about ourselves; God took care of that in Christ. All of us in here are good; We’re covered. All our energy and effort can go towards making this world a better place. For the sake of them, the people out there who are in need of all sorts of things: food, freedom, dignity, humanity. Prepare ye the way of the Lord. That’s what it means. That’s what we’re called to do. Amen.

Sermon for the First Sunday of Advent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on November 30, 2014
Scripture Reading: Isaiah 64:1-9, Mark 13:24-37

Pastor's Note: I was very encouraged by the conversations that emerged from this sermon. I have endeavored to extensively note and source my assertions in this sermon regarding the events in Ferguson, MO. For those interested in learning more about the racial issues in our nation that we whites are so often oblivious to, I would recommend clicking those links.

This has been a tough week. A hard week.

Luther talks about God’s law as an “unblemished mirror.” Its reflection reveals our true selves without the distortion of ego and self-delusion. This week has been an unblemished mirror for both me personally and for us as a nation. It’s not a pretty picture.

Sarah finally talked me into watching Fireproof with her on Tuesday night. Some of you may be familiar with that movie. It’s a story about a marriage in trouble and it’s meant to be used as a tool by couples to improve their relationship. I’ve been avoiding it because I have some real issues with its star. Kirk Cameron is, well, one of my least favorite people in the world, up there with Pat Robertson and Richard Dawkins. But regardless, we did watch it and it showed me that while my marriage to Sarah may not be even close to as bad as the one presented in the film, there’s a lot I could do differently. A lot I could do better to be a good husband to the wife I love.

That’s not an easy truth for a husband to admit.

And then there’s Black Friday. All the talk this year was about how Black Friday is now beginning on Thursday. That retail workers are being forced to work on Thanksgiving. That stores and businesses are being forced to open on a holiday that many families regard as sacred. I wonder what that says about us as a society. The relentless encroachment of Christmas is truly swallowing up every other holiday near it, all because businesses are desperate to make more and more and more money. The irony of losing our national day of giving thanks for all that we have to the unyielding demand that we obtain more is pretty vulgar quite honestly.

Not an easy truth for us to admit.

And then there’s Ferguson. I don’t know what to think about all that. I know that the grand jury was presented the evidence and they have concluded that the shooting of Michael Brown back in August was not a criminal act. But I also know that we as a nation have not been honest with ourselves about our shameful legacy of racism and discrimination. I know that black men die by homicide more than just about any other cause, whether by cops or each other. I know that our prisons are filled to overflowing with people of color because judges and juries are statistically proven to be more lenient to whites for the same crimes. I know that black people are predominantly poor, hungry, and unemployed and not by choice, despite the lies we tell ourselves to make us feel better. Their anger is real and while they may not always act on it in very productive or helpful ways, it is, I believe, quite justified.

Not an easy truth for us white folks to confront.

The Biblical tradition of prophecy is not prognostication. It is not fortune telling or predictive of the future. It is TRUTH TELLING and then as now it is to reveal the truths we do not want to admit about ourselves. We all live with this self-delusion that our lives are pretty darn good. And in many ways, they are. But how did they get that way? We’d like to believe it is by virtue, but is that really true? Or did we get ahead by privilege, luck, or by cheating? Are we overlooking something about ourselves, our environment, and our whole reality because it’s convenient and not overlooking it tells us truths we rather not face? Are we blindly and deliberately ignoring the festering cancer of sin in ourselves and in society?

Absolutely we are. Until it explodes in our face like it has this week.

We need, all of us, a genuine Come-to-Jesus moment. And when Isaiah calls out for God to “tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at (his) presence— as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make (his) name known to (his) adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at (his) presence,” that is precisely what he is asking for. He is asking God to quite literally come down and scare the hell out of us, because there is far too much hell in each one of us and we inflict it on those around us whether we care to admit it or not.

I said in my newsletter article about Christmas is not the nicey-nice holiday that we like to make it out to be. It is God’s answer to evil, God’s declaration of war on sin. Part of that process is for us to recognize that there is evil within us, that we are truly sinners. That we have failed as individuals and as a society to be the people God has called us to be. The hungry continue to go without bread. Too many of our honored veterans still sleep under bridges in the cold. We still do far too many things to wound and reject people because their skin color is different from our own. We consume voraciously the resources of our world in a desperate race to have the most toys when we die. WE do these things. WE are guilty.

Every one of us guilty. You. Me. If we haven’t done these things directly, then we have benefited from those who have. Our inaction and apathy in the face of these evils is just as damming.

Jesus calls us in our Gospel lesson to “keep awake.” To be awake is to be aware and to be aware is to be honest. When the moment comes when we must stand before God and give account of our lives, we will not be able to justify ourselves. There will be no excuses, no explanations. “Those people deserved what happened” will not fly. “I was too busy” will be ignored. “I didn’t know” isn’t good enough. The evidence against us will be overwhelming. All we can do in the face of it is confess. The only thing we can say is “I failed,” because we have.

The unblemished mirror of God’s law shows no other truth but that one.

The only recourse, the only chance we have, is mercy. The same mercy we failed to show to others. But God is not us. As Isaiah says elsewhere in his prophecy, “his ways are not our ways.” Good thing too, because when he looks down at the width and the breadth of our lives, it will not be the evidence against us that he sees. It will be his son, stretched out on a cross, instead.

“Not them. Take me instead.” How many cheezy movies have we seen that cliche play out, that trope? Where the hero asks that their loved one be spared and themselves punished instead. That’s what Jesus does for us. “Not them. Me. Yes, they deserve it, but take me anyway.” That’s what the cross is about. That’s what it means. It means we don’t get what we deserve. It means our sins, as numerous and as vicious as they are, are not held against us. We get mercy when we don’t deserve it. Out of love, Christ stands in our stead and wins us a pardon by his sacrifice on the cross.

That’s not the ending we deserve. Not by a long shot. But it is the one we get. And the only way we get it is through Christ. Not by ignoring the evil within ourselves. Not by pretending it isn’t there. And certainly not by pretending that our sins are somehow justifiable or permissible because someone else out there is worse than us. No, none of these things can save us. We are guilty. Period. Our only hope is pardon, forgiveness, mercy. And because of Christ, that’s precisely what we receive. Amen.

Sermon for Christ the King Sunday

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on November 23, 2014
Scripture text: Matthew 25:31-46

Patee posted a cartoon on Facebook back in September on my page. It showed an exasperated preacher slumped over his pulpit, proclaiming “The title of my sermon is I spent all week on a sermon and I got nothing.” It’s a bit how I and pretty much every other pastor I’ve talked with over the past week has felt about this Gospel text. “What are you going to do with it?” “How are you going to preach it?” “Where’s the good news in this text?”

Questions. Lots of questions. Troubling questions. Questions with difficult answers. In my opinion, texts that do this to us are, in many ways, the best passages on which to preach. The old cliche about a good sermon “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable” applies best to these passages of Scripture. If come away from a story like the Sheep and the Goats without being unsettled, you probably read it wrong.

This teaching of Jesus is the very last one in Matthew’s Gospel. What follows in Chapter 26 and beyond is the Passion narrative, Christ’s journey to the cross and the empty tomb. That’s not likely coincidental. Matthew and the other authors of Scripture write their stories of Jesus with a very deliberate intent and agenda; They want us to understand what was important to Jesus. If this is the last one in Matthew’s Gospel, if this is the final lesson, then what does it have to say to us about what matters to Jesus?

The more I think about it, the more I am convinced this is part two of a teaching Jesus gave earlier in his Gospel narrative. Jesus boldly proclaims after the confession of Peter that any who wish to become his disciples must (we all know this phrase) “take up their cross and follow him.” Well, Jesus is now about to take up his cross, but it is not our fate to actually literally join him on Golgotha. So how then do we take up our cross and follow? That’s the question this story was told to answer.

You want to serve God? Here’s how. You go into the midst of the least, the lost, the broken, the abandoned, the rejected, and the hated. You serve them. You want to serve me? You’ll find me there with them. Among them. I am them.

Jesus says “I’m going to the cross to take care of you. To erase your sins and give you back the life you were meant to have. Now it’s your turn. I’ve taken care of you. Go! Take care of them.”

It is not erroneous to say that this is a fundamental piece to being a disciple, to being a Christian. In fact, I’d argue that this is more important than just about everything else. The Christian life is Christ comes, lives, dies, and then rises again for us. We believe and trust in that and then we serve others in Christ’s name. Notice what’s missing in that formulation? Church membership? Nice, but not that important. Coming to worship every Sunday? Nice, but not that important. Having the right theology or understanding of Scripture? Nice, but not that important. Having a solid moral and ethical character? Nice,but not that important. All these things are trumped by service.

And that’s a lot more troubling to us than we care to admit. Going to church is easy. Hammering out your doctrine and dogma is easy. Marking off your checklist of “thou shalt nots” is easy. Getting down in the muck and the mire with people, that’s hard. And we are full of excuses as to why we won’t do it.

They don’t deserve it. They’re horrible people. The poor are lazy. People on food stamps are thieves who take more than their fair share. Gays are deviants and perverts. Blacks are criminals. Latinos are illegal immigrants. Young people are spoiled. Women are dumb. Turn on the news or read a political website and you’ll see and hear excuse after excuse of why “those people” are the scum of the Earth and deserve nothing but scorn, disdain, and hatred. And we listen to this vile rhetoric because it tells us we don’t have to do what Jesus told us to do.

This isn’t anything new. The naked were unclean. The prisoners deserved it. If you had leprosy, you were forsaken by God. Today’s poor and different were yesterday’s tax collectors and Samaritans. Which is why Jesus makes his argument in such stark and harsh terms. Ignore “those people” at your peril, because if you turn your back on them, it’s like you’re turning your back on me.

I cannot overstate how important this is. I mentioned last week that the Gospel of Matthew was written largely to give a wayward church its identity back. To tell early Christians who they were and this passage drives that home. Who are you? Who am I?

We are the people who take care of the world because Christ has taken care of us.

That’s who we are. That’s why Christ has called us to be his own. That’s what we do.

This is Christ the King Sunday, the day of the church calendar that marks the end of the church year cycle. It is here to remind us that we are not the king, we are his servants. We serve the king by serving his people. We do what we’ve been told to do, as good servants should. The king has taken care of us. The king has saved us. The king has died for us and risen again on the third day. Now he calls us to live our lives in that same pattern. To take up our cross and serve others. Amen.

Sermon for the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on November 16, 2014
Scripture text: Matthew 25:14-30

Last weekend, I spent most of my time at a continuing education event in Harrisburg. Christian singer Michael Card, whose music I’ve admired for many years, was doing a seminar on the Gospel of Matthew. He proposes that the Gospel of Matthew is a Gospel written to a community of Jewish Christians who have seen Jerusalem burn, who have seen the Romans pillage and destroy their country, and who also been kicked out of the synagogue because the religious leaders of the day have determined that Christianity is a heresy and those who believe in Jesus can no longer belong to the Jewish community. These are people who have had everything that defined their identity destroyed or taken away from them and do not know who they are anymore. Matthew, in writing his Gospel, is trying to give them their identity back.




It’s an intriguing idea and also I believe rather germane for our times. Consider for a moment the church in the modern world. We’re having a hard time figuring out who we are because we now live in a pluralistic and secular society that is not centered on church. The 20th century spoiled us. For a time, this was the center of American social life. If you wanted to be somebody in American society, you were a church member. Not anymore. There are other options. You have the Mosque, the synagogue, the business world, the academic world. You have clubs, fraternal societies, sports, and other social venues. You have atheism and agnosticism. New Age and Neo-paganism. You have “spiritual, but not religious.” And we don’t quite know what to do about all that. The fastest growing religious group in America is “no religion at all.” All the things that we have used to define ourselves are slowly but surely being taken away and we do not know who we are anymore.

I saw that very dynamic playing out in that conference. The conference was held in at one of these hand-waving rock-music-playing non-denominational churches up in Harrisburg. Think LCBC or Living Word; only there instead of here. I’m in the midst of all these people who go to those kind of churches. And I also know that we here in mainline churches spend a whole lot of energy envious of those churches. They have energy. They have fire. They have success. They have money and members. And we wish we could be like them and have all that too.

Michael Card gets up there and he’s teaching on Matthew. And the background material he’s providing is all boilerplate modern Biblical scholarship. It is what I learned in seminary. It is what I teach you here at Canadochly. It is the foundation from which I draw out the ideas that I present in my sermons. None of it is new to me. I’ve heard it all before and I’ve taught it to you. Your other pastors, my predecessors, had the same training and they taught it to you. And those Evangelicals are eating this stuff up like it was manna from heaven. They are astonished by this information. They were starving for this teaching that you and I take for granted.

As much as we envy them, they envy us. Who’d have thought?

But this is what happens when you do not know who you are. You forget what you have. And you can only see what you do not have. And envy begins to creep in. We want what they have, those people over there. They, in turn, want what we have. That’s a symptom of an identity crisis. The grass is always greener and all that. This sort of blindness however is dangerous.

And that brings me back to Matthew and specifically to the teaching of Jesus that he records as our Gospel lesson today: the parable of the talents.

The verse that jumped out at me is actually at the conclusion of the text, verse 29. For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

It hadn’t occurred to me before, but there’s a certain illogical element that statement. He’s summarizing this story about these three servants who are entrusted with various quantities of talents, which is a very large sum of money in the ancient world. From those who have nothing... But none of these servants have nothing. Even the least has at least one talent. Depending on how you measure it, that’s either $30,000 dollars in today’s money by currency conversion or ten years wages for a common laborer, which if you do the math, is around $166,000 at the current minimum wage. That is a long way from nothing. So Jesus’ words don’t make sense unless he’s not talking about reality. He’s talking about perception.

Did that servant think he had nothing because he did not have five talents? Or two? Was he unable to value what he already had because someone else had more? Is that why he was afraid to use that resource? Is that why he hid it and did not spent it or invest it?

People who do not know who they are are blind to what they have. And this servant is blind to what he’s been given. He has as much money as most of us make in a year or two or three or even four in his hands and he thinks he has nothing. How many of our churches are like this servant? Paralyzed with fear and blind to what they’ve been given.

How many don’t try because they are afraid to fail? How many sit and do nothing because they don’t look like the big megachurch down the road? How many lament what once was and cannot and will not see the gift of what they are now?

One of the oddities of this parable, aside from Jesus’ summary, is the missing servant. The one who tries and does fail. I’ve long argued that he’s not there because such a thing does not exist in God. Failure, to quote NASA, is not an option. It doesn’t happen. Oh, it might look like it happens. Churches die. Communities dissolve. But is this failure?

Come on, we’re Christians. We mark as God’s ultimate victory his son hanging on a cross drowning in his own blood. We celebrate what the world would call the ultimate failure and yet that’s our triumph and God’s glory made manifest. Things aren’t always what they appear to be in our worldview.

We don’t remember who we are because we do not remember whose we are and in whose hands our fate is entrusted. We do not remember that our identity is not in a building or in membership numbers or a fat nest egg or in memories of better times. A church with no building, no money, and only five stalwart souls that live, eat, sleep, and breathe the faith in everything they do is not failure. They have Christ. They have Jesus. That’s not nothing. That’s everything. It is gift beyond price; wealth beyond value. It is who we are. It is who we are called to be. Everything else is irrelevant. Amen.

Sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on November 9, 2014
Scripture text: Amos 5:18-24

“Why do you want the day of the Lord?”

I’ve always found it funny this rather large contingent of the Church is just starving for the end
of the world. They want the end times. They want Jesus to come back tomorrow so badly it’s pretty much all they talk about. Go into any Christian bookstore and there are volume after volume of books on how Jesus is going to show up again next week.

I am not one of these types of Christian. I’ll be honest. I like it here. I like my life. I like the things I have in this world: my wife, my daughter, my friends, my Church, my toys, my family, happiness, love, joy. Even some of the bad things have their upsides. You saw me in grief last week over the death of my friend Dan. In the days since, as I’ve worked through all that, I’ve come out of it with a renewed sense of purpose. That’s a good thing. I like this life. I like this world. I am not eager to see it end.

Some might say that makes me a bad Christian; that I am not in any hurry to meet our Lord at his coming. Maybe it does, but I’m also in some good company. Amos, the Old Testament prophet who wrote our first lesson, doesn’t seem so eager either. In a lot of ways his words could be summed up in the old cliché “Be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.”

You really want the end of the world? You really want the day of the Lord? Are you sure about that?

I am. I am sure that I don’t want it. We’re not ready for it and if it comes upon us now, it will not be what we think it is. “Be careful what you wish for...”

There are a lot of stories in the Bible where that phrase applies. You see, far too often, we humans want to rewrite God’s plan in accord with our human impulses, our human desires, our human prejudices. There’s that famous story in the Gospels where James and John come up to Jesus. “Hey, Jesus, make us to sit at your right hand and your left in your glory.” They ask him. What are they thinking? Oh, this is the Messiah. This is the son of God. This is the King of the Jews. If we’re #2 and #3 in his kingdom, then we’ll be top dogs. We’ll have wine, women, and songs, power and glory and riches and all those good things that come from being best buds with the king.

But God’s idea of glory is not the human idea of glory. Christ’s glory comes not on a throne, but on a cross. The one at his left and his right in his moment of triumph? Two thieves, dying on crosses next to him. “Be careful what you wish for...”

We think, far too often, that the end times will play out like this. Christ will return and he will cast into hell everyone we don’t like. He will damn all those horrible sinners: the lazy, the sexually deviant, those who didn’t vote for the right people, those who don’t believe the right things, all those who aren’t us. And he’ll whisk all of us good people into heaven, where there’ll be wine, women, songs, power, glory, and riches, and all those good things that come from being best buds with the king. The good people will get what they deserve and the bad people will get what they deserve.

 Is that really how it’s going to be?

God’s idea of glory is not the human idea of glory. Neither is his definition of sin, or of good and bad. We are in for a rude surprise if we think this is going to be about the things we did right and others did wrong. When we stand before his throne, we will not be praised for how hard we worked, or for sleeping with the right people, or for electing the right candidates for office, or for how many church services we attended, or for how solid our doctrine and dogma were.

No, he will ask us: One in five children in your country, the richest in the world, go hungry. What did you do about it? The elderly in your nation, the richest in the world, often must choose between food or medicine. What did you do about it? Ebola ravages through my children in Africa. What did you do about it? Far too many of your veterans, whom you claim to honor, sleep under bridges at night. What did you do about it? There are the sick and the hungry and the desperate and the hurting and the lost and the despairing. What did you do for them?

If this is to be about what we deserve, we are, for lack of a more delicate way of putting it, screwed. Be careful of what you wish for...

This is the point Amos is making. Despite all our delusions and selective memory, we are truly not doing what God has called us to do. We are not letting “justice roll down like waters,” because there is a lot still very wrong in our world, a lot that we can fix, but we choose not to. Hunger and poverty and disease and injustice are NOT invincible. There is food enough to feed the world if we only shared it. There are more than enough resources for all the people of the world to have a decent living if we only shared it. We can defeat any disease but we have to commit to it. We can end injustice, but we have to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves.

But we don’t do these things or we don’t do them enough. We are far too content with the status quo, far too content with leaving well enough alone. God is not. And do we truly want him to hold us and the rest of the world accountable for all the things he has called us to do that we have not done?

God’s idea of glory is not the human idea of glory. God’s definition of sin is not the human definition of sin. Compared to his standard, we simply do not measure up.

But here’s the thing. When the Day of the Lord comes, when the day of judgment is upon us, it is not we who will be held to that standard. It is Christ who will be. The son, perfectly obedient to the Father, even unto death and the grave, who will stand in our stead. In the end, we will not get what we deserve. We will get what he deserved.

And we’ve seen what that is. On the third day, Christ rose again from the grave. His reward, our reward, is resurrection from the dead and life eternal. We don’t deserve that. We deserve just about anything BUT that. But that’s what we get. That’s grace. That’s mercy. That’s God’s gift, and it is a gift, something given without merit.

When I realize that, when I realize how much I receive that I truly do not deserve, I’m dumbfounded. I’m dumbfounded. I’m astonished and I’m also motivated. I’ve been given far more than I deserve. I’ve got more than I need, God’s abundance is overflowing. It’s freeing. It’s liberating. And then I look to the world at all those still in bondage to the evils of this world and I ask myself “What am I going to do about that?” God’s given so much. I can share. You can share. And from his mercy to us, justice can roll down like waters upon them and we can take a few steps to set the world right. Not enough, but a start. Amen.

Sermon for the Festival of All-Saints

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on Sunday, November 2, 2014
Scripture text: Revelation 7:9-17

This week has been a roller coaster ride. Highs and lows. Rising and falling. Back and forth. And I stand before you on this All Saints Day with a bit of metaphorical motion sickness. Stop the world! I want to get off.

I saw my friend Greg this week. Greg is one of my closest and dearest friends. We met when I was in seminary. He and his wife Keli were very much my support network through those four years of school. We played games together, computer games, board games, card games, and more than a few sessions of D&D. We would spend vacations together; many a Labor Day weekend spent together at a G3 event (Great Geek Get-together). Lots of good memories.

Greg and Keli moved to Charlotte, NC about ten years or so ago. But thankfully, Keli is from the Ephrata area, so one or both of them is around a few times a year visiting the parents/in-laws. That was the case this week. I saw my friend and poured out my soul to him. All the wonders and great things that are happening in my life since I moved here to York county. Greg commented later that he saw me the most contented and happy that I’ve been in all the years we’ve known one another. It felt good to hear that.

I wasn’t home an hour from my dinner-and-drinks outing with him on Wednesday when I got the phone call. Kathy calling me to tell me her mother was in the hospital, diagnosed with a brain tumor. One of our beloved members here at Canadochly, a person everyone in this room knows, loves, and respects. That just came out of nowhere...for all of us. And Millie’s family with all that they’ve gone through over the years. Sitting in that hospital room with everyone was...well, I don’t know what word I want to use here. It was emotional. It was scary. So much was uncertain and still is.

Then just yesterday, as I was sitting at my computer watching football scores come in from the Penn State and Virginia Tech games, I glanced over to Facebook to hear the news that my friend Dan had died suddenly the night before. I met Dan on the anime-con circuit during the 90s; we worked several of those conventions together. We hadn’t seen each other in several years, but we kept in touch. I was just teasing him about being at another sci-fi convention, not more than a month ago, in my home state of WV. I’ve known him for almost 20 years and now he’s gone, just like that. He was my age, maybe a little older. Far too young.

(Dan's on the left here, in the white shirt.)

Highs and lows. Rising and falling. Back and forth. Stop the world! I want to get off.

We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Life, it seems, is full of these chaotic lurchings from one extreme to another. From joy to sorrow. From contentment to pain. And back again. You never know from one minute to the next what the world is going to throw at you.

The ancient traditions of this day, traditions that truly stretch back to even before the founding of the Church and Christianity, mark this as a time of remembrance of the dead. But the Christian name of this day, this festival, is the Day of All-Saints and by that name includes implicitly also the living. Thus it is not just death that we speak of on this day, but also life and all the ways in which the two intermingle with one another.

And they do intermingle. One of the things I’ve come to learn over the course of my years is how illogical life often is. We exist in the midst of paradoxes and contradictions, contrasts and opposites. Life and death together. Joy and sorrow together. Good and bad together. Saint and sinner together. A robe washed white in blood and a Lamb that stands as our shepherd. Logically, none of these make sense. But truth is nearly always stranger than fiction and life is truth. So life really doesn’t make sense. Our experience of life is the experience of these opposites, these contradictions.

When John of Patmos learns the origins of the great crowd of witnesses before the throne of God at the end of time, he is told they are those who have endured “the Great Ordeal.” My friends, the “Great Ordeal” is life itself. Highs and lows. Rising and falling. Back and forth. Stop the world! I want to get off.

We are living through the Great Ordeal, each and every day of our lives, enduring its uncertainty, its chaos, its contradictions, its joys and sorrows, its life and death. It’s being human in this broken and fallen world. It’s the cross that we bear day in and day out.

But there is also a promise. God’s promise to the world and to everyone in it. A promise of salvation. The promise that where there is a cross, there is also an empty tomb. Life, death, and also resurrection.

This is what we celebrate this day. This is what we remember. That we who endure the Great Ordeal have also received a promise, the promise of a robe washed white in the blood of the Lamb, the promise of a shepherd upon the throne, the promise of a time where there are no more tears and no more pain. A promise of salvation that belongs to our God, a gift given through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. A promise that this is not all that there is. There is so much more than this life of contradictions and chaos.

I spent part of my sermon today talking about my nerd hobbies and a couple of my nerd friends. (I know, big surprise). But what may really surprise you is that all-time favorite film is not some nerdy sci-fi spectacle, but the 1959 William Wyler epic Ben-Hur. There’s a scene in that movie where Ben-Hur’s sister and mother, after years of torment, are now condemned to live as outcasts because they are lepers. Esther, another character, is trying to persuade them to leave that valley of death and pain and go find Jesus and to hear his words and to maybe receive healing from him. Esther says to the mother and daughter as they hesitate to leave. “The world is more than we know.”

The world is more than we know. Beyond all our experience, beyond our pain, our fears, and our sorrows, he is there. His mercy, his love, his compassion, and his promise await us. Stop the world? There is no need. There is a lot more to life than this world. Amen.

Sermon for All Hallows Eve

Preached at St. John's Lutheran Church, New Freedom, PA on October 26, 2014
Scripture texts: Ezekiel 37:1-19, John 19:16-30, Revelation 21:1-6

Fear. Terror. Horror. Death. Decay. Destruction. These are the themes of Halloween as we have come to understand them. It is a day of monsters and fright. A day of the spooky and macabre, the grim and the sorrowful.

It is good that we are here.

It is good because our society as it has evolved is of many minds about these festivities. Many Christians reject this holiday and its ghoulish traditions as signs of the demonic and the devilish. They believe the devil stalks the Earth on this night more than any other and to name him is to give him power. But that’s not how it works. If you fear a thing, THAT is when you give it power. To name it and claim it, you instead gain power over it.

As much as the Church struggles with how to understand Halloween, so too does our larger society. Halloween is, in many ways, society’s nervous laugh at the darker truths of reality. Nervous because, like much of the church, it fears those darker truths. It refuses to name death and decay, disease and misery, fearing that naming them will draw their attention towards us. But that is not how it works. In fearing them, we give them power. Power they neither merit nor deserve.

Tonight, we are gathered here to name those darker truths, to lay hold of them, and to gain mastery over them. We are here tonight to turn that nervous laughter to confident mirth. We are here to celebrate the core truth of this day that is often forgotten and ignored.

We are here to remember that death has no power over us. That death has been defeated.

That is what all this is about. What it is really about. All our modern Halloween traditions had their origins in the ancient church’s understanding of truth. They would gather on the night of the ancient pagan festivals of autumn and declare to death itself “You have no power here.”

The costumes we wear? The ancients wore likewise, saying to death “You think you’re scary. Let me show you what scary really is.” The grim imagery and frightening themes? Hah, the ancients used these to laugh at death, to make mockery of it, as do we.

We do not fear you, death. We can do scary better than you.

I remember another ancient truth. One I was told once and it has stuck with me throughout my life. The opposite of death is not life; the opposite of death is birth. Our lives hold to a pattern. Birth to death and then, in our faith, we trust and believe in a third step: rebirth or, as we Christians call it, resurrection.

Birth to death to resurrection. Our worship tonight follows that pattern. The Scriptures themselves follow that pattern. Our lives follow that pattern.

We begin with birth. We are born into a broken and fallen world, a world of pain and sorrow, sin and despair. A world that beats us down and does its best to drive out hope and joy from our lives. Oh, Lord, let these dry bones dance! Ezekiel’s vision becomes our prayer. Restore us. Give us back, O Lord, what the world has taken from us.

That prayer has not gone unheard. God has given his answer. God has given himself as answer, born of a virgin, incarnate as Jesus. He came into this world of brokenness and despair and he lived as we live. Learned and saw first hand the troubles and torments of life here on Earth. And, at the end, he gave God’s answer to this fallen world by dying upon a cross and rising again on the third day. “It is finished!” Christ declared from that cross and with those words, death saw its power vanish.

It’s all over but the crying.

John’s vision in Revelation reveals that to us. Because of Christ and his cross, because of Christ and his empty tomb, there will come a day when death will be no more. The powers of evil that we mock this day will see their final defeat. The dragon and the beast, all the monsters of this world both real and metaphorical, will see their end come at last: disease, sorrow, pain, hunger, poverty, war, bigotry, hate, and death all swept away in the glorious rebirth of the world.

Birth to death to resurrection. The cycle will come to its fulfillment through Christ.

Birth to death to resurrection. Death and evil cannot stop it. It is already won. It is finished.

We know this. We trust this. We believe this.

And thus, tonight we gather. We gather pretending to be werewolves and zombies. We gather pretending to be Pokemon and Ninja Turtles. We gather pretending to be fantastical creatures or popular icons of culture and we gather in the midst of darkness and blood because we know these things have no power. We name them and declare the truth about them. They are impotent. Powerless. They bear no threat. They are nothing compared to what Christ has done on his cross.

So let us laugh and have fun on this and every Halloween. Death is powerless. Evil has been defeated. Let us make mockery of their futile attempts to frighten us and drive us to despair. God has answered our deepest prayer. Our dry bones dance. Life is ours through the cross and empty tomb. Amen.

Sermon for Reformation Sunday 2014

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on October 26, 2014
Scripture Text: None

(The following is a play-acted paraphrase of the life and times of Martin Luther)

In nomine Patris, et Filli, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen.

Those words, spoken at the beginning of every Mass, would come to define my life. My name is Martin Luther. I was born in what is now Germany in the year 1483. I was the son of a coal miner who sought a better life for his son than he had. So, when I came of age, I began schooling to become a lawyer.

God, it seems, had other plans.

One day, when out walking, a sudden thunderstorm came upon me. I was caught out in the open as lightning and thunder roared around me. I was nearly struck several times and in my fright and terror, I called out to St. Anne to deliver me from the storm. I bargained with her and told her that if I survived this, I would pledge my life to the church.

Well, obviously I survived, and made good my word. I entered the Augustinian Order, a monastic order dedicated to the ideals and teachings of St. Augustine. I took my vows and was later ordained as a priest in the Roman Catholic church. All this much to the chagrin of my father.

In nomine Patris, et Filli, et Spiritus Sancti. Those words had become my life. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It was an interesting time to be alive and to be a part of the church. The whole world was in the midst of radical and profound change. Muslim Turks had stormed into Europe with their conquest of the last vestiges of the old Byzantine Empire. The efforts of Christian kings and Princes like Vlad Tepes notwithstanding, they were now at the very borders of Germany, threatening us all. But with the Turks came not just the threat of invasion, but also the opening of trade with parts of the world Christian Europe had long forgotten; China, India, and Persia were now open to us again. Christopher Columbus sought a trade passage to these lands that did not require the Muslim middle-man and had inadvertently stumbled a whole new continent.

The world had become far bigger than we had ever realized. But Guttenburg’s invention of the printing press had also made it a lot smaller. Now the secrets of far-away places and knowledge long forgotten was suddenly available to any who could read. Art, science, and learning were flourishing in what your historians would later call the Renaissance.

And in the midst of all of it was the church that I served. It too was undergoing its own growing pains, its transformation, its changes, its Renaissance. It was time. It was overdue. For far too long, the Holy See had been occupied by the basest of men, corrupt scions of powerful Italian families: Borgia, Della Rovere, Medici, and the like. They were the most powerful men in the world and with that power came a loss of vision. They ruled as worldly kings, not as the Vicar of Christ. They served themselves, not God, and not his people.

But, at the time, I was ignorant of all this. That was largely by design. In the Church of those days, the Scriptures were held aloft, held in such high esteem that were considered beyond the grasp of all but the most learned of the Church. A lowly monk such as I had never read the Bible and, like so many others, I remained largely oblivious to what went on behind the walls of the Vatican.

I was a nobody in Germany, doing his best to save his soul. My superiors believed me fit for further schooling, so they recommended me to the university in Saxony. There I was to learn and to teach the Scriptures to new generations of priests and servants of the Church.

And it was there that I began to learn what God was really about. Now I was being called to join that learned elite, those tiny handful who had actually delved into the Scriptures. That did not quite work out the way my betters had hoped. You see, once I began to read God’s Holy Word, I quickly discovered that I had been taught in the Church all my life was very different than what God had revealed in the Bible.

It is easy to swindle and con those who do not know better. And that is what the Church was in those days, one big con game with the people as the marks and the rubes. The latest scam was the Papal Indulgence. Pay money for the building of St. Peter’s basilica in Rome and God will forgive your sins. Forgiveness as a fund-raising strategy.

That is not what I read in the Scriptures. I read that God’s forgiveness comes through grace and mercy, through the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. There was no need for these pious works that Rome taught were necessary. No need for indulgences, no need for relics, no need for penance, and dozens of other practices that were commonplace in my day. I was convinced at the time that this was all the result of simple error, that the leaders and scholars of the Church had simply forgotten what the Scriptures had taught.

So, like any good scholar, I called the Church to debate and discussion. I wrote out 95 points of contention, 95 Theses, if you will. And on All-Hallows Eve 1517, I posted these to the door of the University Church in Wittenberg.

I set off a firestorm. With the printing press, those Theses and many of my other writings began to spread across the whole of Christendom. And corrupt Cardinals, Bishops, and the Pope himself suddenly realize their little scam was up. I made myself quite a threat without even realizing it.

Thus, I was faced with a choice. I could recant my writings, recant my teachings, and live out my days in peace and quiet, leaving the Church to do as it had done for generations, lying to the people and bilking them of their money and energy on pointless piety and blasphemous practices. Or I could hold fast to the truths that I saw in God’s Holy Word. “For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.”

I held fast. At Worms, I stood before Cardinals and inquisitors who demanded my compliance with the corrupted practice of the Church and I refused. “Unless I am convinced by Scripture and plain reason - I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other - my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand. God help me. Amen.”

I had condemned myself in the eyes of the Church. But I was not without allies, I had the support of Dukes and Electors in Germany, who had no great fondness for an Italian Pope nor to a petulant Emperor who supported him. As I left Worms, I was kidnapped by my allies and hidden away.

With the Pope and his minions unable to kill me, unable to silence me, the fire that I began erupted all the more across Europe. Oh, they tried. They knew the stakes. But this was still Medieval Europe, this was still feudalism. With the threat of the Turk at our very doorstep, the Emperor could not afford to offend my ducal allies, whose knights and armies would support his war effort. Eventually, he backed down, defied the Pope himself (admittedly reluctantly), and I found my freedom again.

The rest is, as they say, history. There would be no going back after that. Slowly and admittedly not universally, the corrupt and deceptive practices of the Church began to be rolled back. No more indulgences. Relics lost their importance. Priests became Pastors and began to marry and have families. Monasteries and convents were emptied. The Scriptures were translated into the common languages and people began to read for themselves what God had taught his people. Others emerged in other lands to demand change and reformation to the Church: Cramner in England, Calvin in France, Zwingli in Switzerland.

The split was irrevocable and inevitable. Time and again, these Protestants as we came to be called sundered our relationship to Rome and became independent churches. And to its credit, Rome too began to eliminate its own corruption. Wiser popes ascended the throne of St. Peter as the years went on. The corruption of the old ways began to fade into history.

But human beings are what they are. And as I look across five centuries to you who live out the legacy of what I’ve done, I bring with me a warning. The errors and corruption of the Church are never as far away as we’d like them to be. We can all so easily fall into the same traps that twisted God’s Holy Church into what it was in my day. Reformation is not a one time thing, but is something we must all strive toward. We must be ever vigilant, steeped in God’s Holy Word, to prevent evil from rising again while cloaked in churchly garb. That task is yours and I commend it to you.

In nomine...

In the name of...

Amen.

Sermon for the 19th Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on October 19, 2014
Scripture text: Matthew 22:15-22

I will confess much fear and trepidation as I was preparing my sermon for this week. I wasn’t looking forward to this and with good reason. Our gospel text today makes it almost unavoidable. I guess I have no choice. I going to have to dive into that minefield known as politics.

I think most of you by now have figured my political allegiance out and if you hadn’t, I told you all outright last week that I’m a liberal. I also know that I’m not alone in that, that there are some of you here who share in that inclination. Others of you do not and lie more on the conservative side of things. This is, of course, the fundamental problem of politics. The reason it is considered so impolite a topic in conversation. It’s divisive. Ideally, it’s supposed to be a battle of ideas, but far too often it becomes a battle of personalities. One person against another.

And I think it is for that reason that Jesus generally doesn’t get involved in political discussions. Despite modern perceptions by certain individuals and groups that Christianity is the sole possession of (and banner bearer for) one particular political philosophy in this country, Jesus says very little about the matter of politics. He’s a uniter, not a divider, in general. He’s come to save the world, all of it.

But even back then, as now, people are often wanting to draw him into the debates of the age. The Pharisees approach Jesus with a question, a somewhat pragmatic question rather than a theological one. “Is it lawful to pay taxes or not?”

The question itself seems somewhat straight-forward, but there’s a lot of context here to unpack. First off, these are Jewish scholars asking a Jewish rabbi his opinion about taxes. Now let us remember that this conversation is taking place in Jerusalem, in ancient Palestine. In 50 or so BC, Julius Caesar’s on-again off-again rival Pompey marched the Roman legions into Jerusalem and declared Palestine a province of the Roman Empire. Conquered territory.

Now, some 80 or so years later, as a province of the Empire, the people are expected to pay their fair share to support the infrastructure of the Empire: the roads, the salaries of public employees, the aqueducts, the public housing, all these existed in that era in the Roman Empire and all were paid for by tax revenue. Oh, I missed one. The army, they were paid for by taxes as well. The same army who kept the Jews and all the other residents of Palestine on their best behavior. The same army who lined the roads of Palestine with the crucified bodies of those who weren’t all that well behaved.

The coins that Jews paid into those tax coffers were then used to support the occupation and oppression of their own people. “Is is lawful to pay taxes?” Suddenly, it’s not so simple a question anymore. To not pay is to invite retribution for what was obviously a seditious act. But to pay is to directly support the brutality and tyranny that people were being subjected to each and every day by the Romans. No easy answer to that question, is there?

That, of course, is the point. These Pharisees are not asking this in good faith. They’re trying to trap Jesus. If he answers the question “yes,” they can accuse him of being a traitor to his people. If he answers “no,” the Herodians (who are also hanging around in this conversation) will go running to the Romans and accuse Jesus of sedition and inciting rebellion.

As clever as they think they are, the Pharisees have not fooled Jesus one bit. He turns their question on its head. He asks for a coin and, when he holds it aloft, he asks them whose image is on the coin used in the tax. Imago is the word in Latin, Icon in Greek, and Tzelem in Hebrew. His word choice is deliberate, casting the minds of these good Jewish religious scholars back to a passage in Genesis: “So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”

Whose image is on the coin, whose imago? Caesar, the Emperor. Well then, whose imago is on Caesar? Imago Dei, the image of God.

Jesus’s answer to the question about taxes, taxes paid to a hated empire made up of hated people, is to remind his questioners that those people they hate are crafted in the image of the same God they were.

This is what Jesus does, time and time again. We love to draw lines. We love to divide ourselves from others. We love to stand over and against other people. We want to believe ourselves their betters, that we’re superior. We’re superior in morals or money or character or virtue or race or politics or whatever. We draw a line and declare ourselves good, and put those people that we do not like on the other side of it. And we may be justified in our dislike, the Jews of ancient Palestine had many good reasons to dislike and distrust the Romans. Sometimes our hate is not so easily justified. It may be based on prejudice and presumption, on misinformation and ignorance. But three things are always true.

The first is that we always declare ourselves good. We’re the righteous ones. We’re the virtuous ones. The second is that the other is always declared bad. They’re the sinners, whether those sins are real or imagined is largely irrelevant.

And then the third thing happens. We’ve drawn our line, declared each side good and evil respectively, and then Jesus comes along. We always expect that he’ll stand with us, but every time without exception he steps across the line and stands with those we despise.

It’s what he’s doing in this story. The Pharisees hate the Romans, they hate what the Romans do with their tax moneys. But Jesus reminds them the Romans are God’s children too and that he stands with them. When Jesus does that, he does two things. One, he pleads with us on our side of the line to cross over to him. Come, come and see these despised people as I do, as God does. Precious and loved as children of God, fashioned in his image.

The second thing he does is he shows us our hate for what it really is. We think ourselves righteous. We think ourselves superior, but, by standing on the opposite side from us, Jesus reveals that our hate and self-righteousness makes us just as lost as those we are so quick to damn for their sins. Whatever sins we believe them guilty are quickly overshadowed by our hate and disdain and we become as guilty as they.

Good and evil, virtue and sin, righteous and unclean, these distinctions are we often define them are irrelevant to God. There isn’t one of us that isn’t guilty of something. We’re all sinners. We’re all lost. Which is why Jesus came to begin with. He’s not here just to save us or people like us. He’s not here to save the good people, because there are none. He’s here to save the sinner, the lost, the wounded, the desperate, and the depraved. He’s here to save everybody.

The Pharisees don’t see that and far too often neither do we. Hate blinds us to truth. We draw our lines and grow contented in our own self-justification. But then there’s Jesus, calling to us, pleading with us: Cross over. See the world as it truly is. See it as I see it. Cross over and replace hate with love and death with life. Amen.

Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on Oct 12, 2014
Scripture text: Matthew 22:1-14

I’m going to be honest. I have some fairly deep reservations about our nation’s response to the terror group ISIS. I fear us getting bogged down in a quagmire we just now (in the last few years) have managed to escape. I’m not convinced ISIS is anything more than a regional threat, and I’m particularly concerned about us rushing in to stop a group of terrorists that is so deliberately and provocatively vicious. I feel we are being played. We’re doing precisely what they want us to do.

But I will also concede that I am not a policy wonk. I am no expert in foreign policy nor military strategy. I do not have access to all the intelligence that the people in our government do. I am, for better or worse, a theologian and in that capacity there is something about this that I can address. Something far more troubling that the official decision of our government. And that is the way the people, ordinary folk like you and I, are often responding to this issue.

There’s something almost cartoonish about ISIS. They are evil for evil’s own sake, something we really don’t see outside of fiction and pop culture. Oh, propaganda would have us think otherwise; it would have us believe all our enemies are nothing more more than monsters. But real life is never that simple. But ISIS is a propagandist’s dream. They are doing everything they can to shock and infuriate us, being as mindlessly cruel and vicious as possible, and we are buying up what they are selling wholesale.

On a recent episode of his show, Bill Maher had noted atheist Sam Harris and actor Ben Affleck on to discuss the various goings-on in politics of late. The discussion turned to ISIS and Harris and Maher both were very quick to say that ISIS is not an anomaly, that all Muslims are like that. Affleck rightly called them out over it, saying that they were doing the same thing that racists do when justifying their bigotry. “Some black men are criminals, therefore they all are.”

This debate has been discussed and written about rather extensively on the liberal websites that I frequent. And in astounds me how many people are agreeing with Maher and Harris. All Muslims are evil. We have a Muslim problem and we need to do something about it. These are my fellow liberals (hippies, in one sense) that are saying this. You know, hey, let’s all hold hands as one big human family and sing Kumbaya together. Those sort of people.

But as troubling as that is, even they haven’t gone as far as we Christians. No, a Christian author wrote this week also in a popular Christian magazine that the answer to the problem of ISIS and the problem of Islam is genocide. Kill. Them. All. The article was yanked in less than 24 hours, but that’s irrelevant. Someone said it. One of us Christians proposed it. Hitler killed 12 million people in his camps between the Jews, Gypsies, the disabled, and his political enemies. There are about 1.2 billion Muslims in the world and a Christian author proposed we commit the Holocaust 100 times over to answer the problem of ISIS.

I wish I could say he’s an anomaly, just one crazy author whose opinion doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. But he’s not alone. We’ve been hearing stuff like this from all sorts of supposedly good-Christian folks for weeks now.

(Anyone else having trouble telling these two apart anymore?)

It’s scary. Nietzsche once famously wrote that we should be cautious when we seek to hunt down monsters, for when we stare too long into the Abyss it starts to stare back at us. ISIS beheads a few dozen people and our answer to that is to propose the slaughter of 1/7 the world’s population. Who are the monsters now?

We are Christians. We should know better.

It is perhaps not coincidental that we have this Gospel text today. This is one of the more complicated parables Jesus tells for us to understand because it requires us to look into cultural realities that are alien to us. But its message, once we understand those realities, is powerfully appropriate for what is happening to us in these frightening times.

A king gives a banquet in celebration of his son’s wedding. He, as royalty is wont to do, invites the high and mighty, the nobles, the landed gentry, the wealthy merchants, the Bill Gates, the Pope, and the Queen of England of his day. They all make excuses. They cannot come. The king, annoyed, moves to plan B. Invite the masses, the plain and ordinary folk. Let them come.

Now, in the ancient world, if you attended such a wedding banquet, it was considered very poor taste to upstage the bride and groom. So your host would provide you with a wedding gown, a robe that somewhat plain so that you would not appear to be dressed more ornately or more fabulously than the happy couple. As the masses come in, they receive their gowns, put them on, and go into the feast. All except this one, who when the king sees him so flagrantly disrespect his son and his new bride, has him cast out of the feast into the darkness.

Jesus is telling this parable (along with the two we’ve had over the past two weeks) during his final week of life. He’s in Jerusalem and the cross casts a big shadow over his dealings during this time. He’s drawing a line in the sand with the Pharisees and his other opponents. They are the ones who should be most receptive to his message. They are the ones who claim and boast of their closeness to God. Yet like the nobles and rich in the parable, they reject the king and his invitation. But when the doors are opened to the common folk, to us, there are those among us who treat this gift with the same scorn and contempt as the guest who refused to wear his banquet gown.

How many of us Christians, in our fear and in our anger and in our hatred, have taken the gown given us in our baptism, washed white in the blood of Jesus Christ himself, and have sought to soil it anew with the blood of innocent people who happen to pray differently than we do? Christ died for everyone. He seeks to save everyone. He loves everyone. Whether they know it or not is beside the point. We DO know it. The king’s invitation to his feast is a gift beyond price. Why do we cheapen it so?

This parable is a warning...to us. When the king invites us to his banquet, it is a gift that we have not earned nor deserved. We are brought to this font, washed clean in the waters of baptism, and we called by those waters and those words to be something different than what we were before. We are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ and to live by his command and example. To care for those in trouble. To welcome the stranger. To embrace the outcast. To love even our enemies.

We cannot allow ourselves to forget that when the fears of this world encroach upon us. We are called to struggle against the barbarian within us, not embrace him. To reject hate, not celebrate it. To hold to faith and not give in to fear.

Christ died and rose again for the sake of all people, you, me, all the Muslims of the world, including the monsters in ISIS. While the realities of this fallen world may force us to use violence to answer the threat of terrorists like ISIS, we cannot allow that violence and our fear to turn us into monsters as well. We are Christians. We are the baptized. We are those called to be something different. Called to trust. Called to believe. Called to love. To not be darkness like all the rest, but to be light in the midst of darkness. To wear our wedding gown proudly at the Lamb’s high feast and to show the world there is a better way than hate and anger. That is who we are meant to be. That is who we are called to be. That is what it means to be Christian. Amen.

Sermon for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on Oct 5, 2014
Scripture text: Exodus 20:1-21

The Ten Commandments. Probably one of the most discussed and argued portions of Scripture in the whole of the Bible. The Law, or at least the most elementary portion of it, upon which the morality and legality of Judeo-Christian society has been built, or so we’ve come to believe. Of course, therein lies our problem. For all the countless times this passage has been addressed, upheld, discussed, argued over, and picked apart by scholars, there is a massive amount of misinformation about it. What the commandments mean and what purpose they serve.

One of the more common ways conversations about the Commandments occur in these times (and for about the last 50 years or so) are debates about their place in the public sphere. Oh, if only we just had the Ten Commandments posted in our schools and in our courthouses and in our government buildings, then society would be so much better. People would be more polite, there would be less crime. It would be wonderful. Besides, they’re the basis of our legal code and should be honored as such.

I’m going to break down each of those arguments in turn. First off, the unending barrage of advertisement-based 24-hour news media has created the perception that life in these United States is as bad as it’s ever been. The facts, the statistics, do NOT bear that out. Crime is lower. Health care is better. Lifespans are longer. Poverty is lower. Things are far better now than when those Commandments were posted in all those places people are demanding they be returned to. Back then, crime was worse (but people didn’t talk about it), people died of diseases that no longer even exist, poverty was rampant (and like crime, kept invisible), and let’s not forget that discrimination and bigotry against those who were different was not only commonplace, it was sanctioned by the government and its laws. We are NOT going back to that.

And then there’s the idea that the Ten Commandments are the sole source of our legal code. Let’s just dispense with this nonsense right from the start. The religious commandments that deal with our relationship with God are utterly and rightly ignored in a nation that has built itself upon the separation of church and state. The rest, the ethical code of how we deal with other people, is common sense and found duplicated in nearly every legal code of every society ever. If you look at the carvings upon our Supreme Court building in Washington, you don’t see Moses up there alone. You see him joined by great lawgivers from all across the span of history.

I spoke last Sunday about how people are avoiding the church because they know we lie. Here’s another example. We lie about the commandments. Christians who want the Ten Commandments plastered up every 10 feet in the public realm are not truly interested in the historical basis of our legal system. Nor are they really interested in making society better. They want them displayed and read and followed because they believe the commandments are a means to an end.

And what end? For those Christians who see God as Santa Claus, the Commandments are how you prove your devotion. How you get God to notice you so he’ll shower you with that winning lottery ticket, that beautiful spouse, those genius children, and that yacht at the pier. And for those who constantly hammer the world about getting saved, the Commandments are how that happens. Obey and you will see heaven. Oh, they might say otherwise. They might say it’s about Jesus, but why then do they talk so little about him? Why is always talk of rules and regulations? Of personal purity and piety instead of faith?

They lie and they lie to themselves as much as anyone. They don’t know any better and, often times, neither do we. We’ve been bombarded with misinformation about the law of God practically from the day we were born. We’ve never realized that this isn’t how it all works. We’ve never been taught what the commandments are truly about. And so we fall into error. I may point the finger at other Christians and other churches, but we are often just as guilty as they of these same misunderstandings.

God gave the commandments to the people not as a practical way of life, but as an ideal to be striven towards. And as an ideal, they are impossible to truly obey. And none of us have. Sure, I haven’t killed anyone, but boy after getting cut off three times while driving on Thursday, I sure was ready to do so. Thou shalt not bear false witness. I’d lose track of the number of white lies I say each week and I’m a terrible liar. I try not to do it because I get caught so easily. Thou shalt not bear adultery. That woman at the swimming pool in the string bikini is seriously hot...and also not my wife. And that’s not even getting into the sheer number of times I put other things ahead of God and I’m a preacher.

That’s a short general example of the ways I don’t live up to these commandments. I’m sure each of you could give a similar list, and that’s not even getting into the real scary skeletons-in-the-closet stuff.  If the law is how we’re getting to heaven, then we’re just plain screwed. If the law is how our success in life is determined, no wonder none of us are sipping tea with Bill Gates this afternoon.

But that’s not how it works. That’s not what these commandments are for. They are here to reveal our failure, to remind us that we are not God, and that we cannot be like him. We cannot achieve his standard. And therefore, we must then rely not on his law, but on his mercy.

St. Paul considered this to be one of the greatest of his personal revelations about God when he became a Christian. As he says in our second lesson, he was as good as people get when it comes to obedience to the commandments. He was well on his way to earning that Golden Ticket into heaven when he realized that’s not how it truly works. God has a better way and that way is Christ.

Jesus came. Jesus died. Jesus rose again. It is finished. I used that cadence last Sunday to describe the process of salvation and I’m using it again today. I’ll probably use again in the future, because that IS how it works. It’s about Jesus. Period. It’s not about the rules. It’s not about our piety or our purity or our desperate need to remake the world into what we think it should be. It’s about Jesus Christ, his cross, his sacrifice, and his mercy.

That’s what the Church needs to be about. That’s what we need to be about. Trusting it, absorbing it, teaching it, believing it, proclaiming it, living it. Mercy, love, kindness, forgiveness, sacrifice. It’s all about Christ.

All God wants of us is to trust in that reality. He’s taken care of it, all of it, through Jesus. Obedience to the law is nice. It’ll help you get along with people better, but it’s not going to make you rich and it’s not going to save your soul. Jesus does that. Jesus did that. For everyone of us. It’s done. It is finished. Amen.

Sermon for the 16th Sunday After Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on September 28, 2014 (God's Work, Our Hands Sunday)
Scripture text: Matthew 21:23-32

As I’m sure many of you are aware, there is a great crisis in the Church. More and more young people, what is referred to as the Millennial Generation, are having less and less to do with the life of the Church. So everyone’s panicking, recognizing that if we don’t do something about this, there won’t be a church in a generation (or more specifically, there won’t be “my church” in a generation.)

I read one of many many articles on this topic this week, although this one was a bit different. This one was actually written by a young person, by a Millennial. Wow, you’d think that’d be the first thing these church scholars would do, talk to actual people, but then panic and logic don’t often go hand-in-hand.

One of the things that I came away with from this article is that one of the biggest problems in the Church today is that we are not honest, with ourselves and with the world around us. We say we are about God. We say we are about Jesus. We say we are about the things that truly matter. But we’re not. We’re not.

God has given us an immense gift in the form of his story, his Scriptures. The tale of his relationship with this world as revealed to the ancient Hebrews and through Christ himself. We call it the Bible and most every Christian claims that they believe the Bible. Except when we don’t. Except when the Bible tells us something we don’t want to hear. When the Bible tells us something that contradicts our long held opinions about life, people, politics, economics, or pretty much anything. And then we quietly discard the teachings of our faith and go on and do whatever the heck we were going to do anyway. We quietly ignore what Jesus said and go on believing whatever we want instead.

This is not a new thing. Our Gospel lesson from Matthew deals with the very same sort of dynamic. God comes to the people in the form of Jesus and tells them all about the truth of who God is and the Pharisees keep on doing the same things they’ve always done while the tax collectors and prostitutes listen. If we read this story and don’t realize it’s about us and we’re the Pharisees of today, then we’re not reading it right. Like them, we make the faith to be about what WE WANT, not what GOD WANTS.

And what is it that we want? Well, the modern American church generally manifests one of two ways. The first way is that we spend all of our energy on heaven. It’s all about getting to heaven. Everything and I do mean everything the church does is focused on making sure that every single person has that Golden Ticket to get past the pearly gates. So much so that they try to convert everybody all the time.

Side note: Please don't ever do this to your restaurant servers.

When I was a teenager, I dabbled in this sort of Christianity. I got real tired of hearing at every worship service how I needed to be saved. I went up for the altar call three weeks ago and you’re still telling me I need to accept Jesus into my heart. Did it not take last time? Was my baptism not good enough and it needs to be done again?

I already am a Christian. When are you going to stop telling me I need to become one? When are you going to do something to nurture me in that faith instead of demanding that I convert just one more time.

This sort of church doesn’t take God at his word. Jesus came. Jesus died. Jesus rose again. It’s done. He said from the cross “It is finished!” and it's like no one believed him. He took care of it all, our sins forgiven, our lives redeemed, our salvation secured, and no one seems to realize it. We got to do it all over again and again and again. Substituting our fear instead of faith in God’s promise.

That’s one kind of church. There’s another and it’s the exact opposite on the spectrum. Instead of worrying about the hereafter, they worry about the here and now. Trust in God and he will shower you with blessings. Just believe hard enough and you’ll be happy and rich and beautiful and popular.

This sort of church turns God into a means to an end. It’s about not him, it’s about what I can get him to give me. I want a Ferrari. If I’m a good little Christian and go to church every Sunday and tithe my 10% and obey all the rules, God’ll give me one. God as cosmic Santa Claus, doling out gifts to all the good little Christian boys and girls.

These two versions of Christianity, which are both exceedingly popular in these days, do have one thing in common. It’s all about us. It’s all about me. It’s all about you. It’s what WE WANT instead of what GOD WANTS.

That hypocrisy does not go unnoticed by the people who are outside the four walls of our churches. We wonder why they run for the hills? They know we lie. We lie to them and we lie to ourselves. We say we believe the Bible and we don’t.

We waste our time on things that God really doesn’t care about. Homosexuality, marriage, abortion, procreation, abstinence. Dear God, why is so much of it about sex? The Scriptures don’t even talk that much about sex. A verse here and there, scattered amidst stories and teachings that are often far more important.

Or in some cases not. Try this on for size. There are seven verses that talk about the gays, scattered across three books of the Bible. The rules on how to build the Ark of the Covenant took 12 verses, over 50% more, and I don’t see hundreds of Christian organizations and thousands of churches worried about ark building. We make it all about us and we want to be important. Not what God does. Our opinions, our desires, trump his and that should not be.

Do you want to know what God thinks is important? Page after page. Verse after verse. He tells his people “Go and take care of others.” Jesus himself, in his first sermon, declared his mission to be thus.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Over the whole of the Bible there are over 2,000 such verses. Take care of others. Feed the hungry. Clothe the naked. Give voice to the voiceless. Visit the imprisoned. Care for the sick. Give shelter to the homeless. Protect the weak. Over two thousand times God tells us this is what he wants.

The prostitutes and the tax collectors realized that and the Pharisees didn’t. When are we?

Do we want to see the church grow again? Do we want to see Christianity thrive in these times? The solution is easy. Excise the phrase “Not my problem” from our vocabulary. People homeless in our streets. Not my problem. The Bible says it is. The elderly go without medicine because they can’t afford it. Not my problem. The Bible says it is. People being abused and discriminated against? People without enough food to eat? People being wrongfully imprisoned? Not my problem? Oh, yes it is. We are called to do something about it.

In Genesis, in the story of Cain and Abel, Cain murders his brother in a fit of jealousy and rage. God comes calling, says to Cain “Where is your brother?” Cain responds with a question. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” God doesn’t answer his question in that story. Instead, he spends the rest of the Bible, page after page, verse after verse, telling us the answer is a resounding “Yes.” We ARE our brothers’ keepers.

And we are free to be that because of Jesus. As I said, he came. He died. He rose again. It is finished. He took care of the whole sin thing. He took care of the whole salvation thing. That’s covered. It’s done. You’ve got your Golden TIcket into heaven and if you don’t have it on you, it’s waiting at the gate for you. We don’t need to worry about that. We’re free. Jesus took care of us.

And he took care of us so that we can turn around and start taking care of others. It’s what the Church is supposed to be. It’s what we’ve forgotten or refused to learn. If we want others to join us in these pews, young, old, or whatever, then we need to stop lying, start believing, and start serving. Amen.