Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran on May 29, 2016
Scripture Texts: 1 Kings 8:41-43, Luke 7:1-10

Pastor's note: I'm including in the midst of this sermon a screen capture from a friend's Facebook page as example of the sort of fear and hatred we are dealing with in our society as a whole. Be forewarned that the language within said picture is extremely harsh and profane, but I've included it uncensored (except for the name of the guilty party) to give emphasis to just how poisonous things are becoming. We who are in Christ have our work cut out for us if we are to steer society closer to Christ's Pentecost vision.

Pentecost was just the beginning.

I said as much when I preached on that day. That singular moment was simply a start. The grand list of nations from which those first recipients of the Holy Spirit hailed was a hint at greater things to come. But they were all Jews, all descendants of the original Chosen people who had crossed the sea with Moses in the lead. But there were hints even then that what God was doing was not limited to one people or one tribe or one ethnicity.

Among the list of often-unpronounceable names Acts 2 offers up, there is a small aside about the Roman guests present: “both Jews and proselytes.” What are “proselytes?” They are Gentiles who have converted to Judaism. Not born into the covenant of Abraham, but have embraced it none the less. Another hint of things to come.

But there are further hints. Jesus himself for instance. Matthew begins his Gospel with Christ’s genealogy, making the point to name three women in the list (in addition to Mary, his mother): Tamar, Ruth, and “the wife of Uriah” (aka Bathsheba). Two of these are foreigners drawn into the great story of God’s plan: Ruth is a Moabite and Bathsheba is a Hittite. Even in his lineage, Jesus hints that the plan is greater than we realize.

And then there’s Jesus’ life itself, his welcoming nature, his openness to anyone who comes to him to learn and for help. Today’s Gospel lesson is one such example, the story of the centurion with the sick servant. Jesus is approached by Jewish elders who speak on the centurion’s behalf. Ever willing to help, Jesus goes, but is intercepted along the way by some friends of the Roman soldier. They explain to Jesus that he need not come into the house of a Gentile (a faux pas for any good Jew), but merely speak a word of command to heal the ailing servant. I don’t think Jesus would have cared much for the social nicety that prevents from entering this house, but he is astonished at the Roman’s faith. Just say a word, sight unseen, and my servant will be well. That, my friends, is faith and from someone outside God’s covenant.

Time and time again, we see these hints that God has something big planned for our world. Even in the Old Testament. Solomon dedicates his temple in our first lesson today from 1 Kings. He includes in his invocation that this is meant to be a place of prayer for ALL people; not merely those of the old covenant, but also foreigners who come to praise and pray to God.

So what does this all mean for us?

First off, we’re a part of this story too. In fact, we are only here because of God’s expansive welcome to all people. Last time I checked, I have no Jewish ancestors. I could be wrong, but as far as I can tell I am as Gentile as they come. And yet here I am, a part of God’s great covenant, grafted into his plan for the universe. I’d imagine the rest of you could tell similar stories. Gentiles all, and yet welcomed into God’s family through the spirit of Pentecost.

We should never forget that. God’s big on remembering where we come from. He instructed his Chosen to always remember the story of their wanderings: Never forget where you came from, where you started, and what God has done for you out of his goodness. The same applies to us. Remember who we are and where we came from and what God has done for us to bring us into his family.

With that said, I come to my second point. If God has welcomed us, he welcomes others. Which is why bigotry in any form is so antithetical to the Christian life. We are living in trying times, with great anxiety and fear in our midst. Our society has decided to scapegoat its problems on a variety of outsiders and outcasts: trans people, immigrants, Muslims, you name it. And that’s in addition to old imagined villains who’ve come back from past generations, largely dead (or at least underground) prejudices that have found new life in these ugly times: blacks, women, and Jews.

From the cesspool of Facebook. Welcome to 21st Century America.

This is a dangerous road to be on. People will die. Families will be destroyed. As the Church, we can’t let that happen. This poisonous hate is not what God wants. He wants a kingdom where all are welcome, all are accepted, because all are loved.

Brennan Manning, whose teachings I go back to time and time again, talks about God as being a passionate suitor, so inflamed with love for us that he’ll do anything to be with us. Think about that metaphor for a moment. Think about how you felt when you first fell for your spouse. About how you couldn’t be without them. About how you wanted to spend every minute in their presence. What God feels for you is even greater than that. It’s how badly he wants to be with you. As Brother Manning so eloquently put it, God wants us so badly that he’d rather die than be without us.

Well worth the full 45 minute watch, by the way.

That is his whole plan. That’s what this is all about. From Abraham to Christ to today, it’s always been about God finding a way to be with his beloved, to be with you and me.

And that passion isn’t just for us. It’s for everyone. Everyone who has ever drawn breath on this rock or ever will. It doesn’t matter what color their skin is, or how much money they make, or what language they speak, or who they spend their life with, or even if they know who he is or whether he exists or not.

Whatever our personal predilections are, at some point in our spiritual journey as disciples of Jesus, we have to come to terms with the fact that God loves atheists, Muslims, gays, trans people, blacks, immigrants, young, old, rich, poor, blacks, Jews, and everyone else with same fire as he does us. God loves all the people that we may dislike or even hate with the same passionate desire as he does you and me. Jesus went to the cross for all of us. He died there for all of us. He rose again from the grave for all of us. And as I said a couple weeks ago, all means ALL. That was the plan all along. God’s passionate love affair with all his people, a desperate hunger to find a way to bring us all together in one family. He loves each of us with such fervor that words fail to describe it. Each one of us and all of us. Amen.

Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on May 22, 2016
Scripture text: None

My favorite teaching on the Trinity is a simple one, just a single sentence. “If you understand the Trinity, you are probably a heretic.”

The Trinity. God-in-Three. Three-in-one. One-in-three. How does it work? I have no clue. Do I understand it? Not even remotely. I’ve said before that is one of those things in life where the answer “I don’t know” is acceptable.

But therein lies the rub. How often is that true? How often can you get away with the answer “I don’t know” in life? When you were a kid, and your mom asked where your shoes were, you knew if you answered “I don’t know” you were going to get THAT look. If you answered a question in school “I don’t know,” well that would have been one of those wonderful red Xs on your paper. Tell your boss “I don’t know” and see how well that goes. We’re not allowed to not know things in this life.

So we make up stuff, offering up our best educated guesses and (if that fails) whatever comes to mind. But even our best most well-meaning answers to these deep mysteries are themselves deeply flawed. Hence why most every explanation of the Trinity ever presented probably falls into the trap of being one heresy or another. “I don’t know” is, in fact, the correct answer to the question of the Trinity precisely because this is a metaphysical mystery that is beyond human comprehension. Like a lot of things about God. He’s so much greater than us. There’s so much about Him that we will simply never know.

And that just doesn’t sit well with us. God is so much beyond us, and we’d really like to KNOW that he’s not going to squash us like a bug. We’d really like to KNOW what he wants out of us in life. We’d really like to KNOW what he’s going to do next. We’d really like to KNOW how all this works. And in our desperate need to KNOW these things, we can fall into the most dangerous heresy of all: the heresy of certainty.

I KNOW what God wants. I KNOW what God thinks. I KNOW how God does things. We’ve got it all figured out and we never question. We never doubt. We never wonder, because we’ve got all the answers.

But we also know precisely where that sort of thinking about God has led us.

God wills it! That battle cry of the Crusader as he marched across the land, weapon in hand, to slay the unbeliever. Men, women, children, didn’t matter. God wanted them dead. We KNEW it was what God wanted.

They killed Christ! God wants revenge. So we stuffed the Jews into camps and into gas chambers and into ovens. Men, women, children, didn’t matter. God wanted them dead. We KNEW it was what God wanted.

From CNN

Their lifestyle is an abomination. So we chained Matthew Shepard to the back of a truck and dragged him for miles. Didn’t matter. God wanted him dead. We KNEW it was what God wanted.

From Pinterest. Where Matthew Shepard's body was found.

Christians did these things and many other things like them (and also turned a blind eye to those who did them.) And we did them because we were convinced we KNEW what God wanted. And how convenient it was that God wanted precisely what we, in our baser and more vicious selves, wanted too. The heresy of certainty is dangerous. It gets people killed. It destroys lives. All so we don’t have to feel uncomfortable not knowing everything about God.

But here’s the thing. Certainty is not faith. Christians who fall into certainty are not faithful. They are not devout. They are deluded. They have made an idol of their own knowledge and often elevate their baser impulses to divine mandate. I hate “those people” so I will think that God hates them too. I want to live a life of debauchery and excess so I will think that God wants that for me too. I want power and domination over others so God won’t mind if I seize power in his name. I want to be rich, so God will surely bless me with wealth and if I steal or cheat to get it, well, that’s okay, because that’s what God wants.

Faith questions. Faith wonders. Faith doubts. Faith may not find all the answers, but when knowledge fails, faith continues. Certainty never questions or wonders or doubts. And when knowledge fails, certainty makes stuff up. And that’s what makes it so dangerous, because what we make up is invariably what justifies our worst qualities.

But God does not call us to certainty. He calls us to faith, to radically trust in him no matter how awkward or uncomfortable it may be. We don’t know what God will do. We don’t know how God works. We don’t know the mind of God. We don’t know a lot of these mysteries. But we do know what he’s told us in Jesus Christ. We’ve been told that God loves us. That he wants to save us. That he has prepared a place in eternity for us. That he wants us to treat others with kindness, compassion, and respect. We’ve been told all these things, passed down second, third, fourth, fiftieth-hand from people we’ve never met who died centuries before we were born. There’s no certainty in any of that. And that’s okay, because it’s not about certainty. It’s about faith and trust and belief.

Do I know that God exists? Nope. But I believe he does. Do I know that God loves me? No, but I believe he does. Do I know that God will save me? No, but I believe he will. Do you see the difference? Knowledge is limited. We know none of these things anymore than we know how the Trinity works. But it doesn’t matter. God calls us to trust him. He says that he created us, that he loves us, that he wishes to spend eternity with us. We have heard that he sent Jesus to this Earth to make that happen, to show us that love. None of us have ever met Jesus face-to-face. None of us were there (jokes about our age aside). But we believe it. We trust in it, because that’s what faith is.

We don’t have all the answers. But God does and he has promised to take care of us. Hold to that promise. It is greater than all doubt and all certainty. Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost Sunday

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on May 15, 2016
Scripture text: Acts 2:1-21

Earlier this week, I stumbled onto an article on the Internet about why people like me (i.e. nerds) are so keen on tearing into each other. Star Wars fans are better than Star Trek. Call of Duty player are better than Battlefield. And don’t get us started on women in gaming. It’s often an ugly little world I live in and like the author of this article, I sometimes wonder why.

But I do know why and so did the author.

He told a story of when he transferred into a new school in 4th Grade, which is an awkward experience for anyone at that age. It was made more awkward in that the first person who befriended him was the class nerd, a kid named Scott. Scott went out of his way to be a good friend this new kid, but he couldn’t hide the fact that he was a nerd of the highest calibre. The author, named Drew, was terrified that this would ruin his social chances, so one day he put together a sign-up sheet for the “Scott Haters Club” and passed it around to all the popular kids. Many signed up. Many agreed to step up their torment of Scott. And suddenly Drew was part of the “in-crowd.” And then Scott found out who was behind it all, and how it was his friend who’d thrown him under the bus for the sake of a 4th grade popularity contest.

Reading that hurt. It hurt because I’ve been Scott and I’ve had people do that sort of thing to me. But it also hurt because, if I’d been given the chance, I’d have been Drew in a heartbeat, ready, willing, and even eager to throw just about anybody under the bus for the chance that someone might like me.

Not quite visible here: The sense of utter social desperation.

But the saddest part of the story is that all this isn’t some anomaly of behavior that we can laugh off as part of the immaturity of growing up. We still do it as adults, a lot.

For some strange reason, no matter how much success or popularity one has in life, it seems we humans all have a raging inferiority complex, one that we can only deal with by finding someone else to tear down. I talk a lot in my sermon about “those people;” I use those exact words precisely because you really can fill in the blank there with a myriad of possibilities. What’s the latest group? Oh, yeah, transgendered people wanting to use the toilet in peace in the bathroom that corresponds to their self-understood gender. But to hear their detractors, the end of the world is nigh if we allow this.

But if it’s not them, it’s someone else. If it’s not them, it’s the gays wanting to get married. If it’s not them, it’s the Muslims wanting to worship in peace. Or the immigrants who want a better life for themselves and their families. Or black people. Or rednecks. Or limousine liberals. Or the old. Or the young. The poor, the rich. Hipsters. Fans of the Eagles (band or sports team). Players of this video game or that TV show. And so on and so forth. It gets exhausting to try to list them all because we keep making up new ones. New people we can tear down just to feel better about ourselves.

Our whole society is rampant with this plague. It almost goes without saying that there numerous political candidates and proposals out there who’s popularity is based entirely on how much we can hurt “those people.” To hear our leaders talk, it seems that every problem in our society can simply be solved by finding the right people to pin the metaphorical “kick me” sign on.

And this is a country that claims openly and loudly to be a nation based on Christian principles. Our law is from Judeo-Christian tradition. Our Founding Fathers were Bible-believing Church-going men of highest character. None of that is true historically, but it is a tale we tell ourselves that we want to believe is true. But if that’s the story we want to say about who we are, then maybe we should, at least, try to act like that IS who we are. And a society that is Christian does not look like Trump’s “yuge” wall. It looks like Pentecost.

From Patheos.org. Nerds might notice a certain addition to the scene.

The Holy Spirit comes down upon the Apostles gathered in Jerusalem and what does it do? Immediately, everyone is speaking in different languages so that the news of the Gospel can be understood by as wide a variety of people possible, a small sample of which you just heard in the reading of the story. The Spirit comes and it doesn’t strengthen divisions between people, it breaks them down. Peter makes this very clear when he gets up to preach from the prophet Joel. The prophet says rightly that God will pour out his spirit upon ALL flesh, not just the ones like us.

And this story in Acts is just the beginning. God doesn’t stop there. It goes from this crowd of Diaspora Jews to Ethiopian eunuch. And from there to the Roman Cornelius. And from their to Paul’s journeys across the known world. Take a map of the ancient world and look at all the cities to where Paul wrote his letters: Corinth, Rome, Ephesus, Thessalonika, and so forth. There’s one here, here, here, and here. They’re all over the place.

From thebiblejourney.org

The Gospel goes out to everyone and everywhere.

We talk a lot in church about how God loves everyone. It’s a nice sentiment, but do we really understand what that means? What it looks like? Pentecost is what it looks like. God putting proof that what he did in Christ’s earthly ministry was not merely for a select few, but for everyone. And this was the plan all along. As I’ve often said, God’s promise to Abraham was to make of him a “blessing for all the families of the world.”

All means all. But probably the most radical part of this isn’t that “those people” are intended to be part of God’s all-encompassing kingdom. It’s that we are too. I began this sermon talking about how it seems each of us has this horrible inferiority complex and it is out of it that we continually seek to tear down those who are different from us. We don’t believe in ourselves. We don’t see our own worthiness, so we constantly feel we have to prove ourselves over and against someone else. “I may be terrible, but at least I’m not THEM” is the secret we all tell ourselves.

But the truth is we’re not terrible. We are loved. We are precious to the one who created all things, so much so that he set in motion this entire millennia spanning plan to see us saved. God does love everybody and that includes YOU. You don’t have to prove anything to him. You don’t have to do anything to earn his love. It’s there. It always has been and it always will be. Nothing will change it. Nothing will stop it. It’s yours and it always will be.

The choice is before us. We can keep on doing as our human nature asks, tearing down others so we can lie to ourselves about how great we are. Or we go with God’s plan, recognizing that we and others are precious in his sight. And in doing that, we can spend our energies in building each other up and erasing the lines between us. Pentecost is both our calling and our goal. A world...no, a kingdom...without divisions where all are welcome, all are valued, and all are loved. Amen.

Weekly Devotional - A Brief Discussion of Biblical Cosmology

I was on vacation last week (taking my own advice), so no devotional. This week, I've decided to something a little different. Rather than something inspirational, I think I'd rather do something of an education piece on an element of Christian theology that is not well understood. We think we know how this all works, but what the Scriptures say and what people believe are often miles apart. So, I'm going to dive into the nature of the Christian universe (i.e. our "cosmology.")

Heaven
Scripture Reference: Revelation 21:1-5

The Bible names heaven as God's place of residence. It is his "mailing address," the place where he rules on high over all of creation.

Here's the thing though. Nowhere in Scripture does it say that heaven is our ultimate destination upon death. Mortals certainly visit from time to time via visions (2 Cor 12:2, the whole book of Revelation), but no one moves in permanently. The souls that John witnesses in his vision in Revelation are only temporary residents (see Sheol below), as the ultimate goal of God's plan is their resurrection on the "new earth" spoken of in the passage I reference above.

So, when you die, you only go to heaven temporarily. Call it a visitor pass. Your real destination is the resurrection on the last day and your life eternal in the new creation. You don't get to move in as God's next door neighbor in Heaven. In fact, Revelation posits that God moves in next to you on the new Earth.

Sheol & Hell
Scripture Reference: Psalm 6:5, Revelation 20:10

The Old Testament refers to a place called Sheol, the place of the dead. In ancient Hebrew thought, the idea of an afterlife was somewhat more limited than in Christian thought. What we have instead is Sheol, where the dead go after departing their mortal life. Essentially a place of storage for their souls. The Old Testament makes clear that these dead have no consciousness or functionality. They simply are. The above Psalm reference is one of many where the Psalmist claim that the dead can do nothing to praise or worship God.

This is contradicted however by John's vision in Revelation where the dead are active participants in the worship of God and are in eager expectation for the promised resurrection.

What Sheol is not, however, is hell. In fact, the word "hell" is one we borrow from Norse mythology. The Bible also uses the word Hades in similar fashion, another borrowing out of Greek mythology. However, both words in their original use refer mostly to a place of storage for the dead, not a place of torment or torture. So even, hell is not hell in it original Norse or Greek meaning.

So where do we get this idea that Hell is a place of eternal torture? Well, part of Hades in Greek mythology is Tartarus, the place of punishment, where the unworthy dead are put through all sorts of horrific torments (see Sisyphus for example). Likewise, Hel in Norse mythology is often seen as the place of the failed or evil dead (as opposed to Valhalla where the "good" dead go.) John Milton, in Paradise Lost, is likely to have drawn on both of these mythologies in crafting his images of Hell for his poetry. Likewise, Dante ran with many of these tropes as well for his Inferno. Imaginative and evocative, certainly, but not Biblical.

What we do get in the Bible is "Gehenna," the garbage pit outside Jerusalem where all the city's trash was burned. When Jesus refers to "hell" in his teachings (e.g. Matthew 5:29), he's using the word Gehenna there. It's a nice metaphor that Revelation concurs with. The devil and his angels are cast into a "lake of fire" to receive their torment and suffering for their evil deeds, as are those mortals judged unworthy of the "Book of Life." (Revelation 20:15)

So here's the real question. Does Hell exist prior to God's final judgment? Where does Satan "live?" Where do demons come from? The Bible is not entirely clear about that. Legion fears being cast back to the "Abyss" (Luke 8:31). Is that Hell or yet another piece of the cosmological puzzle? I don't know.

The elephant in the room...
Scripture Reference: Luke 16:19-31

Jesus tells a parable, the Rich Man and Lazarus, that seems to contradict some of what I've said above. A couple things to note. First off, Jesus is not telling this story to inform people about the nature of Heaven and Hell; he is using it to express his frustration at the unbelief and cruelty of many people he's encountering in his ministry. Secondly, the text does not use the terms "heaven" or "hell" (i.e. Gehenna) here, but rather instead the "bosom of Abraham" and "Hades" (again, think Sheol.)

But Sheol is shown as a place of torment here. I suppose it's possible or even likely that Jesus is merely running with the popular understanding of the afterlife in his day to make his point. As I said, the parable is not about heaven and hell. It's about Lazarus' mistreatment and the failure of those who neglected him to repent of their cruelty, even though one has "risen from the dead." Presuming it is some manner of descriptive of the nature of the universe is a misuse of the text.

Conclusion.
It is not uncommon in the evolution of our faith for us to borrow bits and pieces of other forms of spirituality to give us language to describe the indescribable. The Bible itself does this, as do we who have lived into its legacy as Christian believers. Dante, Milton, and countless others have written about what they think these indescribable things are like, but none of them have a complete picture.

Simply put, our understanding of these greater mysteries is rather flawed and limited. We may not go to Heaven when we die believing; we may go to Sheol instead and spend some time there before God calls us back to life on last day.  Is Hell where the demonic powers live in the present time or is it the place of punishment God will create on the last day for those who have defied him? There is no certainty here because we are talking about things we humans do not fully understand. It is not so black and white as we've led ourselves to believe where the good go to Heaven and the bad into Hell. We certainly use such language (I have myself) to simplify what is ultimately a complex idea, but we must not assume our knowledge is complete and inerrant.

What we do know is this. God has promises us life eternal through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. We refer to Easter and Christ's resurrection as a "first," that what he has gone through we will do likewise one day as well. Resurrection is God's promise. The new heaven and new earth are God's promise, a place where death is no more and suffering has come to an end. In the end, that's what really matters.

Sermon for Seventh Easter (Ascension)

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on May 9, 2016
Scripture: Acts 1:1-11

This past Friday, midway through my Stay-cation week, Sarah, Emily, and I headed out to Reading for the graduation ceremony of Reading Area Community College. Emily’s biological father, Kerry, was graduating with an Associates in Accounting and we were there to celebrate with him. So there we were, in the hustle and bustle of a whole slew of excited people ready to embark on the next chapter of their lives and all that goes with it. Celebration, yes, but also trepidation. Oh my God, now what?

Back in 1999, the band Semisonic released their one and only hit song: Closing Time. Written by the band’s singer about the experience of becoming a father, the song speaks to that reality with the odd metaphor of people in a bar looking for hook ups.

Closing time
Time for you to go out to the places you will be from.
Closing time
This room won't be open 'til your brothers or you sisters come.
So gather up your jackets, and move it to the exits
I hope you have found a friend.
Closing time.
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.

That last line has always stuck with me ever since I first heard the song over 16 years ago now. Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. So it is with every child born into the world, for both themselves and their parents. So it was with the graduates on Friday. So it will be for our graduates here (looking at you Anna, Peeps, and Nate.) And so it was for the disciples on the mount of the Ascension.

There’s always a shock when that moment of transition comes. Oh my God, now what? I have to face the world. What I was, the world I lived in before, no longer exists. I can’t go back. Things have changed. We may respond to that change with disbelief or surprise, but it has come regardless of our feelings. And so it was with those disciples. They’ve had a lot of moments like this lately. They didn’t see the crucifixion coming. Jesus told them, but they didn’t believe him until it happened. They didn’t see the resurrection coming. Jesus told them, but they didn’t believe him even after it happened. Now the moment of ascension has come and they didn’t believe this would happen either. And yet it has. Time for the Church to grow up and face this new reality.

Of course, that’s precisely what happens in those moments. You have to grow up. You have to face the future. The old beginning is gone and now you are in the new.

And that is not an easy thing to face.

A prime example of that is our election this year. “Make America Great Again” is fundamentally a call back to a mythical past where everything was better, an effort to return to an old beginning that is now lost to time. The others in the race are not so different.
Although not an overt part of her platform, it is clear that part of Hillary’s appeal is the popularity of her husband’s time as president. Let’s go back to that. Or Jeb when he was in the race; same thing. Let’s go back to when my brother or father was President. But we can’t do that. And no matter how grandiose the promises, whoever next occupies the White House will face new challenges and new opportunities that are not from the past, but from our future. We have to grow up, whether we like it or not.

And as much as we might tease those who stare up into the sky at Jesus as he floats away, we are not so different now in the Church. All too often we’re trying to go back to the past, back to some halcyon time when pews were full and no one worried about the budget. You know the biggest sin of that mindset is how we want to go back to a time when we can be lazy. When we don’t have to do anything to make the Church work. People just come to us and we don’t have to do anything except show up on Sunday morning, hear an inspiring message, and go home again.

That was never what the Church was meant to be. And if we’re expecting that to come about again, I think God is going to disappoint us. Those apostles on the mount of Ascension did not fall into a time of quiet rest and leisure. No, they went from there to Pentecost, when God both literally and figuratively set them on fire for the Gospel. A fire that compelled them to GO, out there into the world. They had to grow up and do what God had called them to do and be who God had called them to be.

You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.

Back to that song again. But this is where we are now. We are so like those on the mount of Ascension. The world has changed and it’s not going back to what it was before. We are a Church that struggles with empty pews and small budgets. And we are a Church in a world increasingly filled with hate, mistrust, prejudice, and fear. We are a Church in a world filled with people hungry for the Gospel and for a decent meal. We are a Church in a world filled with people without homes, the sick without medicine, children without parents, and the poor without help. We are a Church in a world lost in the midst of its new beginning.

In many ways, this new reality is nothing new at all. These things have always been true, whether we remember them as such or not. Christ came into a world that didn’t look so different, filled with hungry and desperate people, all filled with fear and trepidation. He went to a cross and rose again for a world so plagued. And he calls us to take his promise of grace, mercy, and peace into this generation.

That’s the new reality. We cannot stay on the mountaintop and expect God to spoon-feed us religion. Our religion is out there, in a broken world that needs us.

Time to grow up, my friends. Time to grow up and get to work. Amen.

Sermon for Sixth Easter

Preached at Friedensaal Lutheran Church in Seven Valleys, PA on May 1, 2016
Scripture text: Acts 16:9-15

The book of Acts is rich and bountiful resource for the Church today. At the two congregations I serve (Canadochly as parish pastor and SJNF as youth pastor), I did a preaching series this past Lent on Acts, looking at the parallels between the Church in its infancy and the Church of the 21st century. Surprising number of lessons we can take away from that.

But then, that’s the book of Acts in general and today’s first lesson is no exception. It reads, much like most of the later part of Acts like an adventure story. Paul receives a vision that compels him to head across the sea to Macedonia. Luke, the narrator of the story, is excited by this, because this is the part of Paul’s story where he is directly involved, so he slips seamlessly into a first person narrative. (i.e. “This is what we did...”) The benefit of that for us is that it draws us into the story as well; we become a part of the adventure and are metaphorically along for the ride.

Paul, Luke, and their companions arrive in the city of Philippi, named for the famous father of Alexander the Great, the ancient and revered king of Macedonia who once nearly conquered the whole known world. It is a typical Greek city of the time, full of life, full of hustle and bustle. It is a pagan city, a crossroads for the world, a place where people of all languages, cultures, and religions intermingle and mix. Now in the Greek world not all religions are equal in the eyes of the people. The Greek and Roman pantheon of deities has first place in the people’s mind: Zeus, Hermes, Apollo, and the like. Their shrines are no doubt scattered about the city. All the rest, the Zoroastrians, the mystery cultists, and the Christians and Jews, are given a place by the river outside of town.

It is to this place that our heroes go, expecting to make contact with the diaspora Jews who live in the city or perhaps sympathetic or curious pagans who might consider learning a bit more about this Jesus character. They hit the jackpot by finding one of the most unique and unusual characters in the New Testament: a woman named Lydia.

Luke is fairly thorough in describing this woman. Her name Lydia implies her place of origin, the region in modern day Turkey also called Lydia. This is reinforced by the city of her birth: Thyatira which is located in that region. Nothing unusual so far, except that she is rather far from home. That’s unusual in those days. People did not typically travel far from home, particularly women.
Luke adds that she is a “dealer in purple cloth,” which explains a great deal.

Purple dye was extremely expensive in ancient times, which is why it was associated so strongly with royalty. Kings and queens were the only ones, it was said, who could afford it. If this woman makes her living selling cloth so dyed, she must be wealthy indeed.

But wait a minute. This is a woman in the 1st century who runs her own business and has become extravagantly wealthy doing it. That’s a rarity in this day and age with only 15% of Fortune 500 companies run by women. In the first century, it was utterly unheard of.

And then there’s her faith. Luke describes her as “a worshiper of God.” That’s code for a non-pagan Gentile who is curious about Judaism, also known as a proselyte. She is not a Jew by birth, but is drawn to the God of Abraham for some reason.

Lydia is a very unique individual. She’s breaking all sorts of rules and taboos. She’s a woman in business. One who’s rejected the pagan beliefs of her own people to convert to the foreign faith of these Jewish people. She is rich beyond measure.

In short, she’s weird. She doesn’t fit in anywhere. An oddball. An outcast. A renegade.

This whole adventure started because Paul received a vision from God, a vision of a man calling him to come to Macedonia, to begin his European mission. Why do you suppose God did that?

Now that’s a question, isn’t it? Could it be perhaps that God wanted Paul to meet this woman? Could it be that God wanted his apostle to discover her? There are a lot of reasons for this. Hey, let’s be honest. The church back then wasn’t exactly rich. Like today, they needed money and a wealthy benefactor would go a long way to help that. She could subsidize Paul’s missionary journeys. She could be a real big help.

That’s all true, but I suspect there’s another lesson here. Let’s continue being honest. The church doesn’t do weird very well. Church people like things normal and ordinary. Weird turns us off. Weird makes us suspicious. We’d rather weird stayed away.

I served a church in West Virginia for 11 years before moving here to York county. My predecessor in WV told this story about a time after he had started his new church here in PA. The two churches were about 3 hours apart so some of the folks in WV decided to go visit him. Now the three that decided to go were a school teacher, a police officer, and the local funeral director. All fine upstanding folk in town, but they were all three motorcycle enthusiasts.

One Sunday morning, these three got up early, hopped on their bikes, and rode up to PA to visit Pastor Paul. They walked in dressed like bikers, helmets, leathers, chaps, you name it. The ushers panicked and rushed over to the Pastor. “Pastor, Pastor, what are we going to do? We’ve got some Hell’s Angels in worship today!”

A school teacher, a cop, and an undertaker. About as ordinary as you get, but because they were dressed for motorcycle riding, they had become weird. And this church in Western PA couldn’t handle it.

Can we?

The truth is God loves weird. He loves the oddballs and the outcasts.

Look at Jesus. He calls a tax collector to be a disciple. He calls a woman during an era of patriarchy to be the first to proclaim “Christ is risen.” He calls a monstrous persecutor of the Church to be its greatest apostle. God does amazing things with the weirdest people, Lydia among them.

We are told, time and again, that God sees people in different ways than we do. He saw Paul’s potential, Mary’s heart, and the opportunities Lydia offered.  Each had their part to play in God’s plan and it didn’t matter that they were weird or strange. What does that say to us?

Could it be that guy with tattoos is going to be the best thing to happen to our church? Could it be that gay couple becomes the most loyal and devoted members? Or that Arab fellow? Or that Spanish speaking immigrant? Maybe so. Who knows? God does, but we have to open to what he wants to show us. Embrace the weird and it just might surprise you. Just like it did Paul and Luke on their trip to Philippi. Amen.