Sermon for Third Easter

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on April 19, 2015
Scripture text: Luke 24:36-49

One of the guilty pleasures I’ve been indulging in these post-Lenten days is I’ve been binge-watching Arrow on Netflix. It’s a TV show based on the old DC comic book character Green Arrow. In the story, Oliver Queen is this billionaire playboy (echoing, in that, several other famous comic book characters) who gets shipwrecked on an island near China. He spends five years there, being chased by villains, captured, tortured, escaping, before finally being found and brought home.

The whole world thought he was dead and the series begins with his return to his family and his city. Of course, being not-dead-when-everyone-thinks-you-are is a pretty common trope in comic books. In fact, in the TV series as I’ve seen so far, Oliver has been joined by at least three other characters who likewise are believed dead and yet are discovered to be alive.

That’s comic book reality and there are other fictional genres that jump on the dead-but-not-really bandwagon as well (I’ve used the trope myself in some of my own fiction writing.) But the real world doesn’t really work that way. Occasionally, there will be a news report of some missing person being found years or sometime even decades after they were presumed gone forever.

But those events are exceedingly rare (hence newsworthy). More often, the story is more like that of a man who went missing in Davis just before I moved away. Several of his relatives who were acquaintances of mine, would post to Facebook periodically over the weeks and months that followed: Have you heard anything? Have you seen anything? They would ask everyone they knew. And then, some hikers found his remains in the woods some two miles from his home.

Unfortunately, in the real world, when one is thought dead, they usually are. And that’s in those cases that are somewhat ambiguous: a runaway, an abductee, a missing person, etc. There is no ambiguity facing the disciples on Good Friday. People don’t come back from crucifixion. You can’t fake your way out of that. Jesus is dead. There is no question in their minds about that.

So imagine then their confusion when reports start coming in that people have seen him alive. That’s impossible. That delusion. Desperate words from despondent people. People so overcome with grief they’ll believe and say anything.

“I have seen the Lord.” says Mary Magdalene. As sexist as it is to say, and given the time in history this would not have been uncommon, she was probably dismissed as little more than just another hysterical woman.

But she’s not and, as if to show up the narrow-mindedness of the disciples, Jesus shows up in person. He comes into the locked upper room and surprises everybody. Today we have as our Gospel lesson Luke’s version of that famous encounter. It differs slightly from the one we heard last week from John, but some things are the same.

John points out that Jesus shows off his injuries as a matter of course to the assembled disciples. Luke gives us some insight into why he did that: the disciples do not believe it’s him. They think they’re seeing a ghost. They think Jesus has become something undead (as the phrase is typically used in our pop culture), some manner of monster come back from the dead.

But he is not and he has to do a number of things to prove this to the disciples. Not only does he show the wounds and allow them to touch him, he even eats some food. All things that ghostly monsters are not supposed to be able to do.

We pick on Thomas for not believing the reports of Jesus’ resurrection when he is told, but the truth is, none of them got it. Not a single one. And it’s hard to blame them. What Jesus has done is impossible by everything that we know about how reality works. People do not rise from the dead. It just isn’t done. As another character in another favorite bit of pop culture says “This is the really real world. They’re ain’t no coming back.” [Warning: There is profanity and violence in the linked YouTube video]

Except that’s why we’re here. We’re here because those disciples took what Jesus told them and ran with it. “Look,” Jesus says, “you’ve heard my words. You know the Scriptures of old and you’ve seen how I have brought all of it to fulfillment. Now go! Go and tell others.” And they did, beginning in Jerusalem and across the Middle East. They went to Europe and Africa and Asia and eventually, as the generations of history passed, to America. And we are the inheritors of their legacy.

Two thousand years removed from the events of that upper room, we could be very much like the disciples at first: convinced that all this is impossible. But we don’t. We believe and we believe because they believed. We hope because they hoped. We trust God because they did. And all those things have been passed down to us across the span of time by faithful Christians who likewise believed because they did.

Faith is a funny thing. It asks us to place our trust in realities we cannot see, in truths we cannot prove, in events that should be impossible. Many would say that’s nonsense. But I don’t. You don’t and a hundred generations of believers across history don’t either. And perhaps most importantly, neither does God himself. This is what was meant to be. A plan of salvation brought to fulfillment through impossible events.

And that was intentional. Because if it was something provable, if it could be verified without any doubt or question, where would the faith be? Where would the trust be? God wants us to place our hope, our trust, and our faith in him, not in some verifiable fact.

All too often that’s what we try to do. We anchor our faith in the tangible, the provable, the verifiable. We cling to buildings or institutions, to traditions and cultural tropes. But these things change, these things are vulnerable to the passage of time.

Five hundred years ago, people thought the world flat and only 6000 years old. That’s been proven wrong and we’re still dealing with the fallout of that. Church buildings and institutions are dying out across our country. The Church (Big “C”), the body of believers, is doing just fine, but that doesn’t stop the propagandists and pundits from fear-mongering off of a supposed “war on Christianity.” Far too many confuse patriotism and civil religion for Christianity and as our nation transforms, calls grow increasingly louder for a vigorous and sometimes violent defense of our “Christian nation” that practices very little of what Jesus taught (and never has).

Where is our faith? Is it in the things of this world or is it anchored on the God who promised, the Christ who fulfilled, and the Holy Spirit who passed it on through the words and deeds of those gathered in that upper room and their inheritors? God’s promises may have no proof, but they are also unwavering in the face of time. Jesus’ work may have been impossible, but it is finished. The Holy Spirit should have failed miserably in the face of times far darker than our own, and yet the faith has still come to us. All these impossible things and yet it’s still happened. Nothing stops true faith. Nothing can destroy it. Time erodes the things of humankind. But God’s word, and the promises contained within, last forever. In which will we place our trust? Amen.

Sermon for the funeral of Millie Gross

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on April 18, 2015
Scripture texts: Isaiah 43:1-3, John 19:28-42, 20:1-18

It is never easy to know what to say in a moment like this. It’s not always easy to know what to feel. There is a certain shock to all this. It’s too quick. It’s not what we expected. It’s not the way we thought life would play out.

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

I know those thoughts have been rattling around in my head and I’m only Millie’s pastor. I am not her child or husband or grandchild. I am somewhat detached, so if I am feeling confusion and anger and sorrow and fear at her passing, how much more must those who knew and loved her best be feeling.

On Good Friday morning, I got a phone call from Kathy. She asked if I could come over to the house and visit, share some Scripture, bring sacrament, because (in her words) “It just didn’t feel like Easter.” You were right. It didn’t. It still doesn’t.

Millie’s supposed to be at home when Ken walks in the door. She’s supposed to be sitting...right about there in our sanctuary on Sunday morning. She’s supposed to be in Bible Study and with her daughters and grandchildren and a whole lot of other things. She was supposed to get better. But she didn’t and so here we are trying to make sense of things.

“It doesn’t feel like Easter.” Maybe that’s because, in one sense, it isn’t Easter yet. We are still on Good Friday. We are still standing at the foot of the cross looking up and wondering how such a terrible thing could happen. That’s where we are.

Of course, for us, it is not a cross, but a casket. But the wonderment is still the same. The emotions are still the same. How could this terrible thing have happened? What does this mean? What will we do now?

I took Kathy up on her invitation. I came over, sat with Millie, and read to her and all those present that afternoon, the very passage of Scripture you just heard from the Gospel of John: Good Friday and Easter. It is the central story of our faith, the cross and the resurrection, and I am convinced that it wasn’t just because of the calendar that I was drawn to read that text that afternoon. No, I think the Holy Spirit compelled me to that text because it holds the answers to all our questions this day.

Three things are said over the course of those verses. Three lines of dialogue that speak most poignantly to us right now. The first are Jesus’ last words from the cross in John’s account: “It is finished.” What is finished? What has been accomplished?

Well, it’s the whole plan of salvation, drafted by God before history. The plan that brought a promise to Abraham, that he would be the father of a Chosen people and from him and his offspring would come a blessing for all the world. A plan that guided those chosen people to a chosen land and a chosen destiny, with kings and judges and prophets to keep things on course. And then, when the time was right, the plan also brought a Messiah: God incarnate, born of the virgin, into the world. Jesus himself.

Jesus came to take on the greatest foe the human race has ever faced: Death itself, the power and the price of sin. To do that, he took upon himself the sins of the whole world and went willingly to a horrific death on a cross. He did what he came to do. His words from the cross are words of triumph. It’s done. It’s accomplished. It is finished.

But for whom? The answer to that is the second bit of dialogue and for those of you here present who heard my Easter Sunday sermon, you already know where I’m going with this. It’s one word, just one amazing word: “Mary.” Jesus comes to one of his most devoted and calls her by name.

I called it a wondrously intimate moment and it is that. Here is God incarnate, the God who created the universe, the God who went to the cross and died, now come to one he loves and calls her by name. It’s hard to imagine that and yet it is so.

And who is it that he calls? Not just Mary, but Millie also and you and me and all of us. Isaiah gives testimony to that. “I have called you by name. You are mine.” God lays his claim upon us in the waters of baptism and he did so for Millie. She was brought to a font like this and God placed his mark upon her. She is his, and nothing will snatch her from his hand. Not even what we see before us now.

All this is because Christ has won. He done it. He has died. He has risen again. And Mary gives witness to this. “I have seen the Lord.” That’s our third line, our third bit of dialogue. And I believe that if Millie could speak to us now across the veil, she would tell us the same thing. She has seen the Lord because she is with him. All his promises to her have been fulfilled.

This is our word of hope on this day. This grand plan of God’s to call each of his by name, to claim us as his own, it has all come to pass for her. But one day, for each one of us, it will come to pass as well. And on that day, it won’t just be the Lord we see (although that certainly holds much excitement), but also all those who have gone before us and have received the fullness of his promises.

The story of Easter is not the story of an end, but the story of a new beginning. The cross, the casket before us, this is not where the story ends. There is an empty tomb beyond from which our God will call us by name.

“It doesn’t feel like Easter.” Well, for us, we’re not there yet. But we will be. Christ has seen to that. As an old black preacher once said, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a coming.” We stand before the cross, but the empty tomb awaits. Millie has received hers, but so too shall we. Amen.

Sermon for Contemporary Worship (Second Easter)

Preached at St. John's Lutheran Church, New Freedom on April 12, 2015
Scripture text: Matthew 28:16-20

The Christian faith is a two-sided thing, like a coin. The first side is “God’s story.” It is the story of the Holy Scriptures, the tale of God’s interaction with humankind. It begins at Creation, continues to the Fall, the Flood, and the Tower. It moves to Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, the patriarchs and the promise that God made them that their family would be the origin of a blessing for all the world. It moves then to the Exodus, to David and the line of kings, to the prophets that sought to keep the people in line with God’s intent.

Beyond that, it moves to Jesus, his birth, his life, his teachings, his miracles, his death, and his resurrection. Then, its the story of the apostles, of Paul and his letters, John and his vision, all seeking to communicate, spread, and refine the faith as they understood it. All of it a story of the love between God and his people and lengths and the efforts that God has taken on to save us from ourselves and our sin. It is the story of the promise that God will take care of us, no matter what.

It is the story that is taught by the Church, that is proclaimed in Word and Sacrament, that is pondered upon in Bible Studies and prayed over in worship. It’s what brings us here to this place once each week to worship, to sing, and to pray.

The flip side of the faith is “our story.” Having heard the width and breadth of what God has done for us and for all of the human race, a question remains: “Now what?”

That’s a question each one of us is called to answer, to wrestle with, to struggle with. Each of us will find the specifics of its answer to be different, but one thing we will share in common. Our lives are to be lives of service and proclamation. We are called to be disciples and apostles of our God and our ultimate goal is to tell the world about our Jesus.

All too often, the people of the Church have made the mistake of presuming the faith is only one side or the other of this coin. We have all seen (or perhaps even been) Christians for whom their religious obligations are that single hour each week and nothing more. They come, they hear a nice message, they hear about how much God loves them, and they go home until next week. What they heard or experience may trigger good feelings or some other positive emotion, but in the end has little bearing on much of anything in their lives.

And then there are those Christians (and perhaps we’ve been these as well) who seem to think that God has really very little part, if any, in their salvation. They work to point of emotional and physical exhaustion to prove their moral and ethical purity to themselves and others. They seek to earn what they believe God will only give if they deserve it. They fret and fuss over the most minute of details, worry that the slightest deviation from the path will damn them to hell forever.

Neither of these responses is authentic to the faith we profess. Christianity is neither idle and empty spirituality, nor is it slavish legalism and tyrannical moralism. It is instead God’s work and our response.

The famous last sentences of Matthew’s Gospel account are proof of this. Here is, in some ways, the whole of that two-sided reality playing out. Easter has just happened. Christ is risen and he has come to the disciples. There are, among their number, questions, doubts, curiosity, confusion, and a lot of uncertainty. They are asking that question. “What now?”

Jesus gives them an answer. “Go!” Go into the whole world. Make disciples. Baptize them. Teach them. Tell them what you have discovered about me. Tell them what you’ve experienced. Tell them who I am and what I’ve done. Tell them in words and in deeds. Be my witnesses. Testify to the truth about me and tell everyone.

This is no small task. The world for those handful of disciples was a vast and terrifying place. It was the world of tyrannical Rome and its enemies and the alien lands beyond them. These were not diplomats nor even traders and merchants. These were not the type of men who would journey to distant lands as a matter of course. They were the sort of folks who would live their whole lives and die maybe five miles from where they were born. What Jesus tells them is terrifying.

So he reminds them once more of the promise. “I am with you always.” God’s story, our response. Remember the story and live the response.

As it was for them, so it is for us. Christ’s call to make disciples has been passed to us. And the world isn’t really all that much smaller. Sure, technology has made far-away lands easier to reach and easier to understand, but has not necessarily made them any less scary. And we have one drawback the disciples did not: we are spoiled. We are the last remnant of several generations where our society was largely Christian, where the Church was at least respected if not honored. And we’re not quite so sure of what to do with a secular world that is increasingly indifferent or in some rare cases hostile to us and our God.

But none of that changes our task. And none of that changes what Jesus said to encourage those first apostles. “I am with you always.” The world is going to do what it does. History has an ebb and flow to it and this is hardly the first nor will it be the last time when times are unfavorable for our message of hope. But none of that really changes anything.

God’s work and our response. That is the Christian life. God has done great things, he has brought us all to salvation through Christ. Now we are called to go and tell, to spread the good news of this story to all the world. God is with us and I don’t think there’s anything out there that’s really bigger than him. We have nothing to fear and a job to do. “Now what?” is our question. Christ has given us the answer: “Go and make disciples.” Amen.

Sermon for Low Sunday (Second Easter)

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on April 12, 2015
Scripture text: John 20:19-31

It’s likely not a surprise to anyone here that I don’t always conform to people’s preconceptions of what a Christian pastor should be. I’m not typically one to “tow the party line” as it were in pretty much anything. I’m a questioner. I’m that guy in every classroom who sends up his hand at the end of the lesson with a question to challenge, to clarify, or to understand.

As a result, I’ve come to hold some rather heterodoxical views. I am not a Creationist, for instance. I was taught Creationism in my Sunday School classes, but I was also a student of science. I’ve mentioned before that I was into dinosaurs before that was a thing. I liked astronomy and what I had learned from science told me the world and the universe simply could not be created in six 24-hour periods roughly 6000 years ago. That didn’t and still doesn’t make sense to me.

However, none of the science that I’ve studied has led me to the conclusion that God is not real. In fact, quite the contrary. The wonder of this universe, its infinite vastness, has convinced me all the more of the truth of a divine creator. “Something caused all this,” a character in a movie I like once mused, “but what caused the cause.” Indeed.

As a youth, I played Dungeons and Dragons, I read sci-fi and fantasy literature, listened to rock-n-roll music. I was told by church leaders that any one of those things would turn me into a devil worshiper. But again, the evidence didn’t add up to that conclusion. My friends were not devil worshipers and I felt no inclination towards that after my own experiences. I questioned their conclusions and kept on doing what I liked to do and enjoying the things I enjoyed. In the end, once again, none of those hobbies or interests led me to the conclusion that God is not real.

Believing the things that I do and holding the opinions that I have is not always easy. Many believers to the right of me cannot believe that I can hold to the doctrines and dogma that I hold to and still claim to be “Christian.” While folks to my left politically are often baffled that I can be so scientifically inclined and yet not see religion and faith as a mere superstitious fairy-tale. But, in truth, I think I’m in good company. Because there is one of the Twelve who, I believe, thinks like I do and he too is often poorly understood. His name is Thomas.

The “Doubter” he’s always been called. It’s such an insulting nickname and the poor man has had it for thousands of years. But is he really what history has claimed him to be? (Well, there I go again. Questioning the conventional wisdom.) Why don’t we look at the evidence?

Thomas appears in all the Gospel accounts, although in the synoptics, he’s only named as one of the Twelve. He has no dialogue, no speaking parts, in the story. He’s just there, along with many of the Twelve who are likewise simply in the background.

In John’s Gospel however, Thomas rises to prominence. In fact, you can argue that Thomas takes the #3 slot in the Twelve, having the most interaction with Jesus after Peter and John. And in nearly every instance, Thomas is asking a question.

Oh, so he’s that guy too. The one raising his hand at the end of class looking for clarity, for understanding, wanting to know more. He doesn’t question because he’s a skeptic. He doesn’t question because he doesn’t believe. He questions because he doesn’t understand, but he wants to. He questions because he’s curious and wants to know more.

The one story where he doesn’t question bears the truth of this out: The story of Lazarus. Jesus’ best friend Lazarus has fallen ill, but Jesus delays going to him. When Jesus finally does make the decision to journey to Bethany (ostensibly to raise Lazarus from the dead), the disciples are frightened. Going towards Jerusalem, towards the home base of their enemies among the religious leaders, is not a prospect they relish. Thomas however speaks up. “Let us go so that we may die with him.” One line, one sentence. But what a sentence. We can’t let Jesus go into this alone. We can’t abandon him now. We have to go. We have to follow. And the other disciples listen and follow through on Thomas’ challenge.

Does that sound like someone who is disloyal to Jesus? Does it sound like someone who doubts him?

Then we come to our Gospel lesson, the famous story for which Thomas has gained his infamous nickname. We hold him to account for questioning the reports of Jesus’ resurrection. Funny how we never hold the other disciples feet to the fire on that. They’ve all already heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus is alive. And where are they that evening? Locked in a dark room hiding away from the world.

Christ is risen and nearly the whole lot of them is cowering in terror. Except for Thomas who, for whatever reason, is not there. Maybe they sent him out for pizza or something. But he doesn’t appear to be afraid. But his courage is admittedly not matched by his belief. When he is again told that Jesus is alive, he questions.

A leopard cannot change its spots and ever-curious Thomas wants to know more. He wants to see. He wants to feel. He wants what the other ten have already received, a face-to-face with Jesus. The wonder of it is that Jesus obliges him, one week later. Jesus shows up, holds out his hands for Thomas to see the wounds. He then commends those who will believe without seeing, but he does not scold Thomas for his questions.

To me, Thomas is really the role-model of the ideal believer. There is a certain honesty in him. He doesn’t get all this God stuff and he’s not afraid to admit it. He asks questions. He wonders. He tries to understand and, like so many of us, he doesn’t always get it. But he keeps at it. His dedication is unquestioned. His loyalty solid. He may not always understand, but he always trusts in God and hopes in his Christ. We could do a lot worse in emulating his example.

Too often in these days, we confuse doubt with disloyalty. We presume questions are weakness and that if we seek too far or too deeply into these mysteries we will fall away from belief. Thomas is proof that is not true. Doubt is not our enemy. Doubt is our motivation to keep at it. To dive into the Scriptures, to ask questions of God, to find the understanding that we lack, but that we crave. And the stories of Thomas show that such endeavors are not in vain. Christ comes to him and gives him what he seeks. We too can find our answers. Doubt is the road we walk, whether we like to admit it or not, but at the end is the God we seek, the God we want to know, the God who loves us. Amen.

Sermon for the Resurrection of Our Lord (Easter Sunday 2015)

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on April 5, 2015
Scripture: John 20:1-18

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

One of my favorite photographs of all time is the famous “pale blue dot” photo taken by NASA in 1990. NASA launched the Voyager space probe in 1977 and used it to study the planets Jupiter and Saturn within our Solar System. By 1990, its mission was long over, but NASA sent one final instruction to it as it travelled out near the very boundary of our Solar System. They told it to turn around and face the direction it had come and then snap a photograph of the planet Earth.

The end result is a largely blank picture with one tiny little blue dot near the right side. That tiny dot is our home, photographed from almost 4 billion miles away. It’s so small it barely registers on the photograph; you can hardly see it. And yet nearly all of the human experience has taken place on that tiny insignificant little speck in that photo.

It is hard even for those of us with an enthusiasm for astronomy to fully grasp just how massive our universe truly is. At the Green Bank Observatory not too far from where I used to live in WV, there is a scale model of our solar system. A sign marks where the sun is, then a few feet down the road is another for Mercury, and so forth for the other planets. Pluto is roughly a mile away from the sun under this scale and according to the tour guides on site (I’ve been there many times) the next closest star, if it were part of this model, would be in Hong Kong.

And that’s just the local neighborhood, astronomically speaking. Our galaxy, if we were to try to traverse from our home to the other side and if we had left when the dinosaurs were first walking this planet, we would still not be at our destination. And our galaxy is one of thousands in the Virgo Supercluster of galaxies of which we are a part. And there are thousands of such superclusters of galaxies throughout the universe.


In the midst of all that, we humans do not even measure. We are such a tiny part of all that universe that we may as well not exist at all. It is so huge and we are such a miniscule part of it that we can scarcely even imagine it. And yet that is the universe our God has created. When he spoke at the dawn of time, that is what came into being. Why did he make it so big? I don’t know. Maybe because he could and that, in and of itself, is saying something.

And yet on this Easter morning, we contrast that magnificence and that wonder of what God has done in creation with this intimate scene outside the tomb of Jesus Christ. The same God that created all that exists is now incarnate in the form of this man Jesus. The same God who did all that comes up behind one of his most devoted disciples and calls her by name: Mary.

And that too is a moment of wonder and magnificence. The same God who was so big as to create a universe so massive we humans can barely comprehend it knows each of us by name. By rights, we should not matter. By rights, we do not register as being an even remotely important piece of this machine of creation. And yet God knows us by name.

You know, I’d be impressed if the President knew me on a first name basis. Or some celebrity. Anyone important. I mean, who am I? I barely register as somebody on this insignificant planet, let alone in the whole universe. And yet God knows my name. He knows yours. We matter to him.

We shouldn’t. We should be nothing. No more worthy of attention than the dust mites crawling through the carpet at our feet. And yet, not only do we matter, we are precious to this God we worship. So precious that he put this whole plan into place so that we could be with him.

The plan began from the moment of creation. God knew he had to do something about sin or we would be forever parted from one another. So he came to an insignificant man named Abram and gave to him a promise: a promise of land, of offspring, and most importantly of a blessing that would come from him for all people. From that insignificant man, now named Abraham, came a people, a people chosen to show the world a new way of life. And they often strayed from the plan God had for them, so he brought to them prophets who would try to get them back on track.

And then, when the time was right, God came to them himself. He became incarnate, he became human, and was born of a human mother, a descendant of Abraham. He was named Jesus, or Yeshua in his native tongue: “God will save” is what it means. He grew up, taught the people the way of God, showed them how much they matter to the creator of the universe with signs and miracles. But they didn’t understand. He wasn’t what they wanted. He didn’t deal with the petty concerns of insignificant human politics. So they killed him.

Our ultimate act of revolt and rebellion against our Creator. We nailed him to a tree and watched him die. But God knows us very well. He knew it was going to end that way. He knew we’d do that. We’d like to pretend in this day and age that we’d be different, but no. We’re still too caught up in ourselves. If Jesus had come in this day and age, we’d murder him just the same. That’s what we humans do. It’s what happens when you think you’re the big shot in a universe where we really barely register.

God knew we’d do it, so it became part of the plan. Taking upon himself all of our sins, our mistakes, our outright rebellion, he took those to the grave with him and left them there. And on the third day, he came forth once more from it, alive, resurrected. And his first action is to come upon Mary and say her name.

It was the moment God was waiting for through all of history. To come to one that he loved and call her to him by name. All the division of sin and death that has kept him apart from us was gone in that moment. Everything that he did, he did for her and for you and for me. Everything that he did was so that he could be with us.

Astonishing really, when you think about it. We should not even register on a cosmic scale are the greatest desire of the heart of the one who created that cosmos. We are the recipient of the greatest love story in the universe. The God that created all things doing everything in his power to be reunited with his one true love: us. That’s really what all this is about: the covenants, the manger, the cross, the tomb, and the moment when God and humanity come together at last. Just as it was for Mary on that first Easter morning, so it will be for each one of us. There will come a day when he will call us by our name and we will be his at last. Amen.

Sermon for Maundy Thursday

Preached at Christ United Methodist Church, Yorkana, PA on April 2, 2015
Scriptures: Leviticus 19:18, Luke 10:25-37

How did I get so lucky? When we sat down together to plan out our Lenten series on the Most Famous Verses of the Bible, we doled out the verses, the locations, and all that with me drawing “Love your neighbor.” I could not be more fortunate. Why? Because I had an immediate go-to commentary on that verse written by what all Christian theologians would say is the preeminent expert on all things in the Scripture: Jesus Christ himself.

Jesus talks about this verse a lot in his teachings. He calls it the second greatest commandment, second after “Love God.” It’s interesting that this commandment does not appear among the Ten. Of course, since Jesus says upon this and the first “hang all the Law and the Prophets,” you could argue rightly that this commandment along with its companion is the Ten. Not “a part of.” Is.

That’s the teaching of Jesus that Matthew records. Luke, for his part, records another episode where Jesus talks about the second greatest commandment. We know this account very well, as it leads to one of the most famous parables in all the Gospels: The Good Samaritan.

One of the things I love most about the Gospel of Luke is how he inserts these little editorial comments here and there throughout the text. And his recording of Jesus telling this parable, he has one and I think it is vitally important to fully understanding this story. Jesus has an encounter with a student of the law who queries him about eternal life. When Jesus throws the question back at him, this diligent student repeats the first and second most important commandments: Love God and love neighbor. Right answer. He’s got it.

But then, Luke’s little editorial comment comes in. “Wanting to justify himself” Luke tells us, the man inquires further about “who is my neighbor?” Jesus responds with the famous story that we all know and love.

“Wanting to justify himself.” That tells us everything we need to know about what this guy’s motives are. He’s not interested in learning who his neighbors are. What he is interested in is learning who is NOT his neighbor. You see, while we can’t get inside his head completely, we know there’s somebody. Somebody he wants sanction to not love. Somebody he wants permission to hate. We don’t know who. Maybe its his boss or the folks who live down the street who party in the wee hours or maybe it’s his daughter’s boyfriend. Who knows? Maybe it’s the Samaritans and that’s why Jesus picks one as his counter-example. But there’s somebody. There’s always somebody.

As is true for him, so it is for us. There’s always somebody for us. And like this lawyer, we too are looking for sanction to not love. We too are looking for permission to hate. And we, like he is, are desperate to “justify ourselves,” to find some loophole, some exception in Christ’s command that will let us do that.

Jesus doesn’t give this lawyer the out he’s looking for. Neither does he give us ours. Whether we like it or not, there are no loopholes in this commandment. There are no caveats, no conditions, no exceptions. We are to love our neighbor. Period.

But despite that, we have found ways to pretend otherwise.

I always find it interesting how everyone loves this parable. I doubt very highly that the people who heard it the first time thought much of it. In fact, I’d wager people were really offended by it. People were really angry about it. The lawyer, to his credit, is not one of them, but everyone else I bet was ready to start gathering up stones. “We’re gonna have ourselves a lynchin.”

Yeah, we’ve all heard about how hated the Samaritans were back in the day. But we hear that statement with all the intellectual detachment that reading about people who lived thousands of years before we were born brings. Now if Jesus were right here in this church, and he was telling this story, it’d probably be quite different.

It might be the parable of the Good Ghetto Thug. Or the parable of the Good Homosexual. Or perhaps the Good Atheist. Or the Good Muslim. The Good Illegal Immigrant. Take your pick. There’s plenty of options.

But that’s not even really the offensive part. No, the offensive part comes by what’s in between the lines of this story. What it implies. You know that person that you hate. Those people who disgust you. Yeah, them? When they show love and mercy to their neighbor, they are better people that we are.

That atheist? When he lives with love for others, he’s a better Christian than you.
That gay man? When he lives with compassion and care for others, he’s a better Christian than me.
That Muslim? When he gives of his own for the sake of someone else, he’s a better Christian that we are.

Why? Because they obey what Christ has commanded. They are loving their neighbor. They’re doing the Father’s will. Are we?

I wonder sometimes.

I’ve had several friends over the years who have waited tables in restaurants. Without exception, everyone of them has said they hated working Sundays. Why? Because the Church crowd, those folks that come to eat after worship, would stiff them on their tips worse than anyone else. You know Jesus said to spread the Gospel, to make disciples of all nations and all peoples. Good luck harvesting that mission field. Good luck convincing those folks how much God loves them when we’ve made it clear that we don’t.

There’s all this hubbub in the news about this law in Indiana that got passed and how it gives legal sanction for discrimination against homosexuals. Let’s not mince words. We all know that’s what it’s about. It’s all dressed up as some effort at “defending religion.” You know Jesus said to spread the Gospel, to make disciples of all nations and all peoples. Good luck harvesting that mission field. Good luck convincing the members of the gay community how much God loves them when we’ve made it so abundantly clear that we don’t.

Phil Robertson, of the Duck Dynasty bunch, was invited to a prayer breakfast a few weeks ago. During it, he gave an example about atheism that included lurid amounts of violence, rape, and murder. Giving a window into the contents of his mind and how he thinks about those people. You know Jesus said to spread the Gospel, to make disciples of all nations and all peoples. Good luck harvesting that mission field. Good luck convincing those who don’t believe of how much God loves them when we’ve made it so blatantly and frighteningly obvious  that we don’t.

Those are just three examples of where we’re still doing what this lawyer tries to do. Looking for the loophole. Looking for the exception. Looking for the caveat that lets us go on hating this group or that person. Looking to justify ourselves.

This is not about our opinions on homosexuality. This is not about what we think of atheism or other religions. This is not about our moral superiority towards people we regard as “sinners.” None of that matters. What matters is what Jesus has told us to do: Love our neighbor.

You know, I’m really not looking forward to that conversation with God. The one I know I’m going to have when I’m standing before his throne and he pulls out this list. What list is that? It’s the list of people that never got to know him because I got in the way. Because I couldn’t get over myself enough to do what God wanted me to do. Because I was more interested in hate than I was in serving him. I pray that list is small.

Love God. Love neighbor. It shouldn’t be this hard. It’s just four words. But, boy, do we stink at it. We go out of our way to do the opposite. Always looking for a reason to find out whether that other person “deserves” our love. More often than not, they don’t, but again that’s not what matters. We don’t deserve God’s love and yet what do we have?

You see, there’s our model. God loves without condition or exception. He overlooks our sins for the sake of Christ. Do we deserve God’s love? Absolutely not, but we have it anyway. And what a love it is.

You know another way in which I got lucky tonight is that I got to preach “love your neighbor” on Maundy Thursday. The “night in which he was betrayed” and all that goes with it. Do you remember what Jesus said as he passed the bread and the wine around that room on that night? “Love as I have loved you.” Jesus was well aware of what his love for us was going to do to him over the following 24 hours. Tomorrow, on Good Friday, we will gather to remember those very moments and the horrific events that Christ entered into willingly for the sake of those that he loved.

Jesus loved his neighbors so much he died for them. Died for us, because we are his neighbor. He died for the gays and the Muslims and the atheists and the immigrants and the ghetto kids and our daughters’ boyfriends and everyone else we don’t like. But they’re his neighbor too and they are ours. Amen.

Sermon for Palm Sunday

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on March 29, 2015
Scripture: Mark 11:1-11

I’ve often talked about Palm Sunday as being one of the greatest moments of mistaken identity in history. Jesus, after his long journey (both geographically and narratively) to Jerusalem, has finally arrived. He’s here! His reputation as a teacher, a worker of miracles, as fulfillment of prophecy, has preceded him. Everyone is excited. The king has come at last!

A king like David. A king like the people had of old. An unbeatable warlord. A just judge. He’s their King Arthur. He’s a figure of legendry come back to life. He’s everything they’ve wanted, everything they’ve needed for generations and he’s come at last.

But, of course, that’s not who Jesus really is. They wanted a worldly ruler, a liberator who would free them from the power of Caesar and his legions. What they got was something quite different.

There’s a part of me that finds this all quite funny. They got it so wrong. Of course, Jesus is a king, but the king of a heavenly kingdom. Of course, Jesus is precisely what they need, but in a way no one really understood. In fairness to those crowds waving palm branches and singing Hosanna that day, most of them weren’t with him for his teachings. They didn’t hear the talk of “loving your neighbor” and “blessing your enemies.” They didn’t see the miracles performed on those society would have regarded as unworthy of such an honor. They didn’t hear the call to follow even to the cross. They witnessed none of that. They simply did not know who he was.

They’d heard the stories, and many of those were likely mistold or misunderstood by their tellers, and they filled in the blanks with their own desires.

Jesus was doomed to disappoint.

In fact, I would argue that he would have disappointed those crowds no matter what he did on that first Palm Sunday. Sure, we all know he passed by the Antonia Fortress to go on to the temple. We all know he did nothing to the Roman garrison, to the soldiers and their commanders. We know he did nothing to Pilate in his palace. He left all that alone, left it all in place. But what if Jesus hadn’t? What if he had come and became the king they wanted him to be?

Of course, for the long-term fate of the whole human race, that would have been an unmitigated disaster. No cross. No empty tomb. No sacrifice, once for all, for our sins. No salvation. But setting aside all that for a moment, if Jesus had strayed from that course, would the people have been satisfied?

I doubt it.

Alright, Jesus becomes a worldly king. He kicks out the Romans. He becomes the reincarnation of David, just like the crowds want. Now what? Well, he rules. Will he rule justly? Will he rule kindly? Will his every decision be met with universal support? What happens if the land does not prosper? What happens if he doesn’t do what I want him to do?

Ooh! There’s a sticking point. What does happen if King Jesus doesn’t do what some person or persons want? What if he rules against the Pharisees? What if he does something that upsets the Sadducees? What if he tells off the rich? What if he doesn’t give the merchants the tax break they want?

Sooner or later, someone is going to get mad at King Jesus. Someone, sooner or later, is going to do whatever they can to get him out of power. Why? Wasn’t this what they wanted on that Palm Sunday? No, it’s not really what they wanted. They thought they wanted a king to get rid of the Romans. They shouted hosanna to someone they thought would do that, but that’s not what they really wanted. What they really wanted was someone who would do exactly what they said.

They didn’t want a king like David. They wanted a king like Herod, a puppet on strings, dancing to their tune. And how do I know that? Because that’s what we all want deep down. When the serpent came to Eve in the garden, he tempted her with one thing and it was all he needed. “Eat and you will be like God.” You will be in charge.

That’s still the worst of all temptations: to run the show, to get the whole world to dance to our tune. That’s still what we want. Atheists declare they’ll abolish all religions so everyone will dance to their tune. The Religious Right seek to destroy religious freedom so everyone will play the game by their rules. ISIS murders everyone different than they are so everyone will be too afraid to be anything but just like them. All over the world you see it. Everybody wanting to rule the world.

And along comes Jesus, along comes the Son of God. He can either dive into that muck, be a king as the world has, and alienate people because he doesn’t follow their line of thinking. Or he can stay above it all and do what he came to do. Either way, he’s going to disappoint. Either way, they’re going to kill him.

Friends, this world is broken. It is broken by sin and the idea that somehow we’re going to fix all of this by our own ingenuity and strength is wrongheaded and misguided. It won’t work. Yes, we can solve symptoms of our fallen reality. We can fix the corruption in our government (for a time). We can help the poor and downtrodden (for a while). But it won’t be long before someone with what they think is a better idea comes along, and there’s a debate or a fight, and the whole thing falls apart all over again. That work is never done because we can never truly fix what’s really wrong with our world.

But Jesus can. And that’s the choice before him on that dusty road heading into Jerusalem. Do what the people want and be the king they think they desire, play by the world’s rules and yeah, he could fix things for a little while. But soon the madness would return and everything would fall apart. Nothing would last because nothing would be fixed. Sin would remain.

Far better then to fix the real problem. Far better then to die for the sake of all those broken people waving those palm branches and complaining about the noise, each one convinced in their own minds they’ve got the best plan for saving the world. They don’t. God does. One that will not disappoint. One that will not fall apart with the passing of the years. One instead that is eternal and universal. One that will fix the real problem of the world. One that will destroy sin and death forever.

But to do that requires a cross, not a throne. Amen.

Sermon for Contemporary Worship (Fifth Lent)

Preached at St. John's Lutheran, New Freedom, PA on March 22, 2015
Scripture: Matthew 25:31-46

Theologians of all stripes have analyzed, studied, read about, written about, the Christian faith from its inception until now. There are a lot of ways one can dissect the Church, a lot of ways we can look at things. Is the Church an institution of the world or the body of Christ incarnate in its members? Is the Church Methodist, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, and all other denominations and dogmas, or is it something beyond it? Or this really a both/and thing, not an either/or thing?

These questions have been debated endlessly. For most of us, none of it really matters. But there is a question that does and it may be the most important division and distinction in Christianity. Are we a religion of glory or a religion of the cross?

It seems our inclination is to be a religion of glory. And, of course, God is glorious. God is transcendent. God is joy and blessing and all that. He’s powerful enough to craft this whole universe from nothing. So it fits.

And we like positive things. We like happiness and success. We like contentment and peace. We like health and wellness. Stability and calm. And a god that delivers these things, a god that promises these things, well, that’s a god we can get behind. A god we can believe in.

And therein lies the problem. Yes, that’s an appealing image of God. And turn on any of those TV preachers, odds are good that’s the God they’re talking about. One that blesses and enriches abundantly, that’s all about joy and success and pleasure. Many of us have been taken in by that and that may be the God many of us worship.

But that is not the God of Christianity or at least it’s not supposed to be.

You see, there’s a problem with a religion of glory. It’s nice and it’s convenient to associate God with the positives of life. God is present when there is success and wellness and prosperity. But that also predisposes us to believe that God is absent when there is failure, sickness, and poverty. A religion of glory has no place for the ugly parts of life and neither does its god.

So what happens to us when life goes south? Why did I get cancer? Why did my business fail? Why was my child killed in a car accident? A religion of glory has only one answer for this. God has abandoned you. You weren’t good enough for him.

You didn’t believe enough. You didn’t pray enough. You weren’t devoted enough. If the charlatans in the pulpits don’t say this outright, we tell it to ourselves. It’s all our fault. God must hate us.

But that’s not the God of Christianity. That’s not the God who created this whole universe. That’s not the God who sent his son into this world. That’s not the God revealed in the Holy Scriptures, in the waters of baptism, and in the breaking of bread.

You want to know where to find this God, the real God? Well, he tells us where. He tells us that he’ll be found in the last places we expect. He tells us that he is present among the poor. He is present among the sick, the injured, the dying. He says he is present in the midst of the hungry and thirsty. He is among the imprisoned and the forgotten.

You want to find the real God? Look to the place of suffering, to the place of failure, to the place of pain and poverty. That’s where he says he’ll be found.

I have to wonder what the charlatans say about Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats. I’m sure they’d say it’s a great and wondrous thing to care for others, which it is. But that’s the easy answer and a long way from the real meat of this text. But they, like us so often, don’t want to go where this story takes us.

We don’t want to come to terms with what it means for Jesus to be God incarnate. For him to be born of a human mother, just like we were. That’s messy and ugly and dirty and painful. We want Jesus to walk on air, not stub his toe on a rock. We want Jesus to be above it all, not down in the muck and the mire like we are. We don’t want to think about the Son of God having a stomach ache because he ate a bit of bad meat or having to go to the bathroom or stinking because he’s overdue for a bath. That’s too real for us.

And it’s certainly too real for us to think about Jesus being spat upon, laughed at, abandoned, and ultimately murdered on a cross. But guess what? That is real and that is what happened to him. And all of that reality, from toe stubbing to death, is our reality. You want to know what the incarnation means? It means God is one of us. It means he gets it when our lives fall apart. He understands when things get ugly and painful. He’s been there.

He’s been to the cross just like we have.

Faith is not escapism. It is not fantasy. It is reality. And just as life has its moments of wonder and its moments of pain, faith is there in the midst of all of it. Where is God in our lives? Everywhere, even and especially in the moments of ugliness. Where is God not in our lives? Nowhere. He’s a part of all of it.

Want to grow closer to him? Don’t race off to places of triumph and success. Instead, dive into the ugliness, the messiness, and the pain of the world. He didn’t hide away from the truth of life in this world. Nor should we. Because God is found in the least likely places. Amen.

Sermon for Fifth Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on March 22, 2015
Scripture: Numbers 20:1-13, John 3:1-8

-World Water Day-

Science teaches us that there are numerous criteria necessary for life to form. Climate, atmosphere, gravity, radiation, etc. But probably more than any of these other things, the things that astronomers say define the “Goldilocks zone” of a planetary system, what you need is water.

Without water, there is no life.

There are no exceptions. From the tiniest microbe to the tallest tree, from the whale to the mouse, the snakes I spoke about last week, and, of course, ourselves, none of us can survive without water. It is a vital component of our physiology. The biological machine that is our bodies will not function without it.

It can take two weeks or more for a human being to starve to death from lack of food. Go without water and you will likely expire in less than 48 hours.

None of this is a mystery to us. We’ve understood this long before we even knew what science was. Instinct taught us these things about ourselves. It is a fundamental truth of the human existence. Water means life. Lack of water means death.

The ancient Israelites in the wilderness were, as I said last week, wandering there to learn what it means to be God’s chosen people. But there were some things they didn’t have to learn because they knew them already. They knew, for instance, that they would not survive in that harsh environment without water. Thus we have the story of our First Lesson today where God provides that vital necessity by commanding Moses to strike the stone and bring forth water from the rock.

Once again, God proves faithful. He shows once again how the people can depend on him for their every need. This story, in many ways, echoes the one we had last week from the book of Numbers where God gave the people relief from the plague of venomous serpents. Once again, God came through for them.

God brought them from death to life. From the venom of serpents to healing. From dying of thirst to water for all. This is what he does. Death to life.

God has many tools at his disposal. Miracles such as these are certainly flashy and provide a nice counter-illustration to the dire circumstances the ancient Israelites so often found themselves in while wandering the Sinai. But that’s far from the only tool God has to see his goal of bringing his people from death to life. He has many others.

Of course, as Christians, we recognize that Jesus is by far the most potent of these tools. God’s only son came into this world to bring us all from death to life. Again this week, we find ourselves, in a sense, listening in on the conversation between Jesus and the Pharisee Nicodemus, the conversation John recorded in the third chapter of his Gospel. To this teacher of Israel, Jesus outlines his purpose, his mission. And it should come as no surprise that his purpose is to bring us from death to life and it should also be no surprise that he tries to explain this by an illustration pointing to two requirements for human life: air (wind) and water.

From suffocation to breath. From dying of thirst to water for all. From death to life.

We are disciples of Jesus. We follow in his footsteps and in his teachings. God sent him to bring us, all of us, from the death of sin to life eternal. That was Jesus’ job, his purpose, his goal. But we too have a job, outlined in the words of the covenants both old and new. And that job is this: just as Jesus has taken care of us for the next world, so it falls to us to take care of one another in this one.

You see, you and I, we’re tools in God’s arsenal too. We too can be a part of bringing life out of death for people throughout the world around us. And as time goes on and history plays out in the way that it will, we are going to find that water is going to be a big part of that job.

A few years ago, in one of his adventures, the fictional spy James Bond was in South America, in Bolivia, fighting against the evil Quantum organization. Their nefarious plan was to steal all the water in that country. Not a terribly glamorous dilemma for the super-spy and critics of the movie made sure to point that out. But that somewhat goofy bit of pop culture might prove to be somewhat prophetic. Historians have long argued that human wars of the past generations were over gold, our wars in the current generation are over oil, but the wars of the next generations will be over water.

And why is that? Because we’re running out of it.

Between overconsumption, pollution, and drastic shifts in weather and climate, sources of potable water are becoming more scarce worldwide. And this is no longer just a problem in the wildernesses of Third World with the people that live on the margins. It’s in our backyards. California, part of our own nation, is suffering a drought of Biblical proportions right now. Public officials have announced that they have only a single year of water reserves left. One of the most populous and wealthy states in our union is running out of water.

How many bottles of water do we drink in a week? A frightening number of them are being bottled in California. That industry has not slowed in the slightest in the midst of their historic drought. Is this convenience worth it?

Fracking is considered a godsend for the energy industry. We have a way to finally get to those sources of oil and gas that have so long been unreachable. Well, that’s all well and good until people can set their well water on fire. You can’t drink fracking chemicals. You can’t water crops with them. Are those fossil fuels really worth it?

We are facing some hard questions. As Christians we are called to bring people from death to life as our Savior has. But how many of our habits and behaviors do the opposite and hasten the lives of others and ourselves towards death? We cannot live without water. So what are we going to do about all this? What decisions are we going to make about our lives and lifestyle? The answers to those questions aren’t easy. But we do need to think about it and, for the sake of those we are called to care for, we need to give an answer. Amen.

Sermon for Contemporary Worship (Fourth Lent)

Preached at St. John's Lutheran, New Freedom, PA on
Scripture: Matthew 25:14-30

I have rather eclectic tastes when it comes to music. I like a lot of church music: hymns, praise songs, some Christian rock. I like Classical and some jazz. I like a lot of secular music: pop, rock; even more obscure genres like Goth, alternative, and Indie rock. The easiest answer to the question “what music do I like?” is to say “I like what I like.” There’s no one trend or theme that weaves through it all. It’s all over the map.

One of my favorite bands over the years is Genesis. I liked them during their gritty prog rock beginnings in the 70s and I liked their more commercial material in the 80s and 90s. They broke up about 10 or so years ago (retired really) and I remember hearing a radio interview with the band not long after they announced that. It was a fun interview; the band members talking about a lot of cool memories, stuff they did, how some of their songs came about. But then the interviewer moved to the inevitable question “What are you guys going to do now?”

Phil Collins answered. He said, “You know, we’re all still friends. We’ll probably get together. Play some music. Maybe even write some new material. But we’re done with recording and touring together.”

I remember being kind of angry over that answer. They’re going to write new material together. They’re going to make some new Genesis songs, but they’re not going to record them. They’re not going to share them with the world. They’re not going to let their fans hear that music. That seemed really unfair to me. How can you have such a wonderful gift for music and not want to share it with the wider world?

You know, when you really think about it, you could ask that question of a lot of people. How can you have such a wonderful gift and not want to share it with the wider world? There are a lot of different answers to that question. Some people are afraid to share. Some people are selfish. Some people are convinced they have no gift. Some people believe they’re not good enough when compared to someone else. Some people just plain don’t believe in themselves, even when others do believe in them.

Which brings us to tonight’s Gospel lesson. Jesus tells a parable about a wealthy master who entrusts his property to his servants while he goes off on a journey. He gives to each one “according to his ability.” To one, five talents of money. To another, two, and to a third, one. The first takes what he’s been given and doubles his money. The second does likewise. The third, however, digs a hole and hides the money in a field and does nothing with it.

Why does he do this? Well, that long list of answers I just gave about why people don’t share their gifts and talents in our world applies here just as well.

• Maybe he’s selfish? Well, the story doesn’t say that, but it’s an easy guess.
• Maybe he’s afraid? This, the story does say. The servant admits as much when he’s called to account.
• Maybe he thinks he doesn’t have a gift? He was only given one talent, but that’s still a pretty substantial amount of money. It’s somewhere between $30,000 and $120,000 in modern terms, depending on how you measure it. Hardly pocket change.
• Maybe he thinks he’s not good enough when compared to others? He does have less than his companions, but he still has between $30k and $120k, depending on how you measure it. Again, not pocket change.
• Maybe he doesn’t believe in himself? Well, the master did entrust him with a value between $30k and $120k. It’s pretty clear that the master does believe in him, even if the servant himself does not.

The simple fact of the matter is that this servant really has no excuse for his behavior. None of these reasons stand up to scrutiny. None of these reasons have any validity. The servant fails and fails miserably.

He fails because he completely misunderstands his master.

The servant complains because he says the master is “a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed.” But the story does not bear that out. If anything, the master that we see is a very generous and trusting individual. He gives over his property to others and responds with kindness when they prove faithful. Even the third servant is, as I’ve pointed out already, given a hefty sum to take care of. The master believes in him. The master trusts him. If not, then the third servant would never have received anything at all.

We spend a lot of time in churches like this one talking about faith. We talk about what God has promised. We talk a lot about what God has done. We talk about his word and we celebrate his sacraments and all this is intended to invigorate our faith in him and his promises. That’s good, but relationships are not a one-way street. And in our relationship with God that we each have, there is not just our faith in him and what he’s done, there is also his faith in us and what we can do.

All too often we are hesitant to share what we’ve been given. And what have we been given? Well, each one of us has something. Perhaps it is a wondrous talent for the arts. Perhaps it is a skill that we’re really good at. Perhaps it is knowledge or wisdom or particular way of looking at the world. Perhaps we have great wealth. The possibilities are as diverse as there are people in the world. We didn’t come by that thing by accident or chance. It was given to us by our master, by our God. It has been entrusted to us to be used for his purposes.

Key word: entrusted. Trust is the core of that. God trusts us. God wants us to use what he’s given us for the betterment of his kingdom. For the aid of his people. That’s why he gave us that gift. That’s why we have it.

We hem and haw about what to do with what we have. And like the third servant, none of our excuses really stand up to scrutiny. Our God is kind and loving and generous and trusting. He shows us the truth of all that in Jesus, who went to the cross for our sakes.

He gives everything to us, even his very life. He’s the one who created the whole universe, who can count even the number of the hairs upon our heads. He is fully aware of our potential, even if we are not. It is no accident that we have come by the gifts we have. They are meant to be shared. They are meant to be used. They are intended for God’s glory, to tell others about him and his love, to bring them into that relationship with him as well.

And none of that will happen if we stick them in a proverbial hole and never ever share them with the wider world. God believes in you. Trust him. Amen.

Sermon for Fourth Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on March 15, 2015
Scripture: Numbers 21:4-9

“Snakes! Why did it have to be snakes?”

Okay, yes, I just quoted Indiana Jones at the beginning of a sermon. He doesn’t like snakes much. I do. I’ve always had a fascination with reptiles of all kinds. I was the kid who was into dinosaurs before that was a thing.

One of my favorite daddy-daughter moments centers on a reptile, a snake in fact. A couple summers ago, Em and I went hiking out at Spring Valley park. As we turned a bend in the trail, there in the middle of the trail was this huge 6-foot long black rat snake sunning itself. It wasn’t very happy to see us. It hissed at us and rattled its tail against the leaves, trying to pretend it was a species it wasn’t. Emily was delighted; she’d just done a report on that very animal in school and now she was getting to see it very up close.

Yes, this is that very snake. I snapped a photo of him before he slithered off.

I love snakes. I love reptiles. But there are a lot of people that don’t. A lot people that are creeped out by them. And, in truth, I get where that comes from. Reptiles are a more primitive order of life form. Their minds are not as developed as we mammals. A dog, a horse, even a rat, and certainly a human, has a mind that’s developed to feel emotion and to use that emotion to evaluate a situation. Are we afraid? Angry? Do we feel affection? Love? How do we respond because of that feeling?

Reptiles, snakes, have no such emotions. The things they encounter fall into one of three categories. They are either food, a threat, or nothing at all. A reptile will eat you if it thinks it can. A reptile may flee from you or perhaps even attack you. Or, perhaps the best option of all, a reptile will ignore you because you simply do not matter to it at all.

And because snakes, like reptiles, respond to us humans with either hostility or apathetic neglect, we don’t have many warm feelings about them. We fear them because they can be dangerous. Many have very potent venoms or muscular strength far in excess of our own.

And that’s a lesson the people of Israel learned rather dramatically in our first lesson today. In one sense, there is a bit of black comedy in this story. No matter how bad your situation is, there is always a  way it can get worse. The people are grumbling and it’s hard to blame them in some ways. They’re out in the wilderness, where it’s hot and dry and probably pretty boring. But then the snakes show up and things go south right quick.

Now the author of Numbers claims the serpents arrive as God’s response to the complaining. I’m not sure I put a lot of stock in that, given what we see God do later in the story. One thing is clear. God is fully aware of the complaints. He’s been hearing them for decades. Manna tastes terrible. The wilderness is hot. We were better off in Egypt. And so on and so forth. It never stops. The people are frustrated. It’s taking them 40 years to travel a distance, by the crow flies, of 100 miles. Even the roundabout way they go only triples that distance. I can do 300 miles in a day in my car but even back then that’s maybe a journey of two weeks tops.

So, again, there is a certain logic to their complaints. This is hard living and it may have seemed at the time that there was no purpose to it. But there was a purpose. There was a reason. Because here in the wilderness is where the Chosen people are learning what it means to be the Chosen people.

And the most important lesson of all in that process is learning to trust God’s mercy. And it starts from the very beginning. Oh, no, Pharoah’s army is nearly upon us. Well, here’s the sea parting to let you escape. We’re starving to death. Well, here’s manna and quail to eat. The snakes! The snake are killing us. Look upon the serpent of bronze and live.

Time and time again, the people run into some trouble and God comes through for them. In spite of their complaints. The people spend most of their time in the wilderness mad at God. And sometimes he gets mad back. But that anger never stops God from showing his mercy, never stops God from teaching the people that they can depend on him. Never stops him from saving them from the dangers of their environment or from their own poor decisions.

When Nicodemus and Jesus are meeting by night in our Gospel lesson, Jesus runs into some frustrations of his own in trying to teach his student. When his initial words don’t work, Jesus turns to something that Nicodemus would understand. He is, after all, a “teacher of Israel.” He knows these Old Testament stories of the people in the wilderness. He’s an inheritor of all the people learned in their wilderness school. So when Jesus tells him that his purpose in coming is to be like the serpent of bronze in the wilderness, Nicodemus finally gets it.

Because it’s all about trusting God’s mercy.

That’s why Jesus came. To be that mercy. To show that mercy at work in the world. Nicodemus talks about the signs that Jesus has done. That’s what brought him to meet with Jesus in the first place. Well, what are those signs? The blind seeing, the lame walking, the sick restored, the demonic cast out. All powerful acts of mercy. Jesus tells Nicodemus and, in turn, us that this is just the beginning. Soon the Son of Man will be lifted up as the serpent of bronze once was, so that all the world can learn what the Chosen ones once did.

That we can depend on God to save us. That even in our complaints and disobedience and even in the midst of God’s anger at that, his mercy trumps all. God will forgive. God will save for the sake of Jesus, his son. That’s what this is all about.

God’s going to take care of us. It’s really that simple. That’s why the promises were given to Abraham. It’s what his descendants learned in the wilderness first hand. And it’s why Jesus came. Death, life, doesn’t matter. God will be there for us. Always. Amen.

Sermon for Contemporary Worship (Third Lent)

Preached at St. John's Lutheran, New Freedom, PA on March 8, 2015
Scripture: Matthew 22:1-14

Years ago, in my ever present nerdy habits, I tried to expand my repertoire of  fantasy reading by trying out Terry Goodkind’s famous Sword of Truth series. I only got through the first novel, Wizard’s First Rule, which I thought was pretty terrible. But there was one moment in that otherwise forgettable book that stood out to me.

The hero, Richard Cypher, has a lengthy strategy session with his allies on how to defeat the evil tyrant Draken Ral. At one point in the midst of this conversation, Richard is astonished when his mentor, the wizard Zeddicus, reveals that Ral believes his actions to be for the greater good. "How can someone so evil even think that what he is doing is good?" Richard asks.

Zeddicus laughs in reply. "Most of the greatest evils in the history of the world have been done by those who believed what they were doing was good."

That idea has stuck with me. It applies to the real world as much as it does any fictional universe. Within their own minds, all the great villains of history believed what they were doing was right. Even they did not wake up each morning thinking, "You know, I think I'll be evil today." They all believed in something, a vision of a world they believed was better, even if only for themselves. Hitler, Stalin, Caligula, even and perhaps especially ISIS and their ilk. All believe or believed that what they were doing was good and a better world would emerge as a result.

Scary, huh? It gets worse. Because there’s also those who start out good but lose their way somewhere along the line. What’s that famous line from the Batman movies? “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” Well, that does happen. The French Revolution comes to mind. Life under Louis XVI was pretty brutal, so it’s hard not to sympathize with the goals of Robespierre and the other revolutionaries. At least at first, but it wasn’t long before they lost their way and became as brutal and vicious (perhaps even more so) than the tyrant they deposed.

When I preached this text back in October, I critiqued a Christian commentator who offered up a solution to the problem of ISIS. He suggested we wipe out every Muslim in the whole world. Hitler killed 12 million people in his death camps and we regard the Holocaust as one of the worst atrocities of human history. There are one billion Muslims worldwide and this guy’s solution is the Holocaust 200 times over to deal with the “problem of Islam.”

The great evils in the history of the world have been done by those who believed what they were doing was good.

All this has been in my mind as I read our Gospel lesson this Sunday. This is an odd parable to say the least. It starts out somewhat conventionally. King gives out an invitation to his wedding banquet, the ones invited refuse to participate, so he invites another less worthy but more receptive group to arrive. This fits Jesus’ frequent theme of opening the kingdom more broadly than people expect. It also fits his theme of thumbing his nose at the “good religious folk” of his day (and ours to some degree).

But then it all goes strange. The king comes into the banquet hall and find one of these new guests dressed in his street clothes, not in his celebratory wedding garment. Seeing this, he throws this newly invited guest out on his rear, to join the other invitees who had previous refused to come.

Why this ending? It certainly makes this parable different from the others, but what is this last part meant to tell us? There's where I keep coming back to those today and throughout history who start out with noble goals but lose their way at some point. I keep thinking that this parable is a warning, to us.

The Old Testament is replete with examples of the ways the people failed to uphold God's will, even before Jesus came along. Prophets came to call them back, and were often ignored or even persecuted. They lost their way. And now Jesus has come and part of his purposes is to expand the Chosen people to include so many others, people that had previously been excluded. But as he expands the Chosen to the least and the lost, he reminds them that they too can fail. They too can lose their way.

That's who the disrespectful guest is. And he is being disrespectful. 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 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 are in some way different from us? How often have we let our zeal for good turn us into monsters? How often have we lost our way? The king’s invitation to his feast is a gift beyond price. And yet, how often do we cheapen it?

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.

That is how God defines good. Our human impulses drive us to hate, to retaliation, to the destruction of evil, and yet the story of God’s salvation is a story of the redemption of evil. That is what it means to truly be “good.”

Christ died and rose again for the sake of all people, you, me, and for all the villains of the world, including the monsters in ISIS. This is our story. This is our calling. 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 destruction. 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 Third Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on March 8, 2015
Scripture text: John 2:13-22

What makes God angry?

Now that is a question, isn’t it? A scary question really. Who wants to think about what infuriates the one who created the whole universe, who wove into existence the stars and galaxies? Compared to which we are little more than dust. We’re nothing. We’re tiny, insignificant, in the grand scheme of the universe in which we live. God could sneeze and wipe out a million worlds just like this one. That’s all it would take. Barely any effort at all.

If it’s any consolation, God himself is not too keen on anger. He doesn’t like it. In many ways, he battles against it, always looking for an out for his rage; a reason not to act on his fury. Luther called God’s wrath his “alien work,” because it is so contrary to his loving nature. God doesn’t want to get angry. He doesn’t like it anymore than we do.

But he does, from time to time, get angry. It does happen.

Our Gospel lesson today is probably the most famous story of God’s anger. Jesus comes to Jerusalem and goes to the temple for worship. It is Passover and many devout and observant Jews have come to this place to offer up sacrifice to God.

Of course, it didn’t take long for some charlatan to figure out there was money to be made on this devotion. A few bribes to the priests to make them friendly and they got a good racket going. Of course, many observant Jews knew the law, they knew their faith. They knew the criteria for a proper temple sacrifice and they would bring with them an appropriate animal for that purpose. But then the priest would declare their animal unfit for some reason and there was little debate to be had. After all, the priest would be performing the rites and they had final say. But, there’s a solution. My friend over here has perfectly qualified animals for sacrifice at bargain basement prices. Ditch the unworthy offering you brought with you (which would likely be offered up to the next sap who came along), buy one off the market, and everything’s cool.

That was the scene that Jesus came upon in the temple that day. The chaos of a market and not just any market, a corrupt and crooked one that exploited people’s sincere faith for profit. Didn’t have the money to buy a “proper” sacrifice? Well, too bad. Pay up or go home.

You want to know what gets God angry? Well, this definitely qualifies. Jesus blows his stack. He makes a whip and attacks the merchants. He goes to the tables of the moneychangers (another scam that preyed upon the Jews who came from foreign lands) and overturns their tables. He’s a one-man riot and, in his fury, he drives these thieves and con men from the temple.

But what’s behind the anger? It’s easy to see the villainy here. Economic exploitation is an everyday thing even now. Employers stiffing their workers their well-earned pay. Grifters calling up lonely and elderly people with some new scam to defraud them of their money. People pay for their whole working lives into pensions that they think will be there when they retire, only to find their money vanish when a company needs cash for a golden severance package for their CEO or a governor needs cover for their financial mismanagement of state funds. Happens all the time. I wonder what percentage of the news stories each night are about someone taking money from someone else through illicit and unethical means. Probably at least half, if not more.

But is that what really ticks God off? Well, yes and no. This scam has created a barrier between the people and God. They can’t get to him without going through this wall of greed. You have to pay to play. You want to tick God off? Put something in between him and the people he loves. Do something to stand in the way of his grace.

Money has often been that barrier. It was no accident that Luther got angry over the sale of indulgences in the Middle Ages. It was another variation on this “pay to play” scheme and when Luther realized the church had reduced to faith to “pay up so God will love you,” he attacked with all the fury and zeal that Jesus himself shows in this story.

But even today, money stands as a barrier between God and his people. If you’re wondering where your next meal is coming from...If you’re worried about whether you’ll have a roof over your head tonight or not, you’re not going to be all that concerned about God. You’ve got other things on your mind. Other worries. Other concerns.

This may be the reason the Bible speaks so much about poverty and why we, as God’s followers, are commended to do all we can to aid those inflicted by it. We’re here to tear those barriers down, just as Christ himself did.

God doesn’t want anything between him and the people he loves. Not money. Not illness. Not fear. Not greed. Not failure. Not hate. Not anything. I said at the beginning of this sermon that we are but dust in the cosmic order. And that’s true in terms of the cold scientific reality of this vast universe. But it’s also false when you consider the immense and unlimited love of the one who created that universe. We aren’t dust to God. We are EVERYTHING to him.

There are not words to describe how badly he wants to be with us. No language of humankind has the means to describe this desire. God had to demonstrate this hungering passionate unyielding love to us by the sending of his son into this world. God demonstrated this hungering passionate unyielding love to us by that son going to the cross to die for our sins. God demonstrated this hungering passionate unyielding love to us by rising from the dead on the third day. All that was because of love. All that was to show us how badly he wants to be with us.

What makes God angry? When his love is thwarted by the evils of this world. That’s what ticks him off. Who can blame him? We know what that’s like. How aggravated to we get when we are denied time with our spouse or children? How hard is it when we are parted from them? It’s the same for God, only more so, for his love is so much greater than ours. It has no limits, no boundaries, and its sole focus is you and I and the whole human race. God will do anything to be with us, even die on a cross. Amen.