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.