Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on Feb 24, 2019
Preaching text: Luke 6:27-38

I want to begin today with a bit of trivia. This year, Easter is one of the latest dates it can appear. As a result, we have an exceptionally long season after Epiphany. Rarely do we ever see the fifth or sixth sunday after Epiphany, let alone the seventh which is today. For a preacher like me, that’s great. I don’t think, even after almost 20 years of ministry, I’ve ever preached this Sunday or these texts. This is all new and fresh. Unfortunately, that also means you’re unlikely to have heard a sermon (at least not recently) on these Biblical passages either.

And that’s a real shame, because they’re good texts. Important texts. Texts we probably need to hear more often. Like today, for instance, “love you enemies.” Think about that for a second. Is there any message that is more counter-cultural than that? Really? Love those who hate and despise us? Those who seek us harm? Is there anything Jesus asks of us that’s more difficult?

Well, it certainly would be, if any of us actually had enemies.

That was the observation one of the ELCA pastors on the Facebook group made this week in regards to this text. Who here really has an enemy? Someone who is truly out to get us, who truly despises us and wants us to fail. We might have rivals at work. We might have people we’ve encountered who dislike us or don’t agree with us. But to really hate us? To invest that much emotional energy into our downfall? Those are rare indeed. I can think of maybe two people in my life that qualify and I’ve neither seen nor encountered either one in almost 30 years.

Now, of course, we’re told there are all kinds of enemies out there. People who want to destroy us. Be afraid of the terrorists! They will destroy everything you hold dear. And I’m sure they’d like to try. Truth is, thought, despite some rather high profile successes on their part, the likelihood of being hurt or dying in a terrorist attack is still somewhere around being eaten by a shark, struck by lightning, and winning the MegaJackpot, all on the same day. So are they really our “enemy” if they never have any impact on our life? Despite what the propagandists say.

There are all sorts of phantom enemies out there according to people who benefit from our distrusting or disliking certain groups of people. It’s easier to punish or persecute the immigrant, the poor, the person of different race, the person of different gender or sexuality, if we believe they hate us and want to destroy us. Our heads are filled with all sorts of nonsense about the threat they pose. But think about it for a moment. Do we really think those people honestly hate us? That they really want to destroy us? Or are they just trying to do what we all do? Live life, make a decent wage, have a family, and a measure of happiness along the way.

None of this is to say that the world doesn’t have its dangers. There absolutely are things out there that are threatening. But, in my experience, apathy is far more dangerous than hate. The “active shooter” that comes at us isn’t going to shoot us because he hates us; he’s going to shoot us because we’re standing there. We mean no more to him than that. We’re in his way. We’re an easy target. The CEO that eliminates our job has done so to maximize “shareholder value.” We’re just a statistic to him, a number without meaning. He doesn’t care.

Many of the problems of the world can be laid at the feet of apathy. They happen because people do not care.

So what are we to do with Jesus’ command to love our enemies, a happenstance which seems so rare in our lives to be pointless? Well, we would do well to listen to what else he tells us in this passage. Give to those who beg, lend to those who cannot pay you back, show mercy, do not judge, do unto others as you would have them do to you.

Or, in other words, start caring.

If apathy is the problem, then we care and love and forgive and show mercy. If the world does not care, then we will. That is the mark of a true Christian. That’s what makes us different from them. That is what Jesus calls us to do.

A few final observations, I would like to leave you with. First is the phrase that should never escape the lips of a Christian. Three words: “Not my problem.” Those are words of apathy. We are called to love and the problem of our neighbor is not just theirs alone. It is ours as well and by solving it together, we build community and fellowship with one another. People are not going to embrace Christianity because we got the best words and our rituals are better than their rituals or whatever nonsense we’ve come to believe. People are going to embrace our faith, because they come to believe Jesus cares because we do. And that means that we’ve got to stick our neck out for others and be there for them in times of need.

Second observation, while we may not have enemies now, if we start caring about people and we start living into that care and love, we will make them. There will always be those who will tell us the people we care about don’t deserve it and they will get angry when we rock the boat. Ignore them. It is not their approval we seek. We are following what God has asked of us. That’s what matters. And if these get go angry and so hateful to seek us harm, well, Jesus has told us how to respond to that as well.

Third and final observation, all of this is nothing more than Jesus asking us to do as he did. Who are we? Why do we matter? It’s not because of what we’ve done. It’s not because we are somehow more special than other people. We’re not any more moral or ethical or righteous than anyone else. No, we matter because God loves us. He cares. And we are a problem that he embraces willingly. Jesus came to solve the problem, our sin and our love of death. He stuck his neck out for us and there were plenty of people who wanted to do him harm for it. They succeeded and nailed him to a cross. That didn't stop him. What mattered was us, saving us, helping us, loving us. God cared about you and me and he asks us to do likewise with those we encounter every day. That’s how the kingdom gets spread. It’s how the world is changed. One hurting soul at a time. Go and care. Go and love. Amen.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Read at Grace and Canadochly on Feb 17, 2019 (Pastor out sick)
Preaching text: Luke 6:17-26

“Where do you see God in all of this?”

The question caught me a little off-guard. I suppose it shouldn’t have. The hospital chaplain who asked it of me knew what I did for a living. He knew I am a pastor. He also knew the history; that this was my sixth visit to the hospital in three years. We’d just been talking about the rollercoaster that is my life.

I began to answer with the obvious. I saw God in the good. I saw him in the support and prayers I received from all of you, my parishioners. I saw him in the well-wishes of friends. I saw him in the love of family. I saw him in the skill and science of the doctors and nurses and the power of the medicines they were using to heal my body. I saw God through my colleagues, who visited and brought with them Word and Sacrament from God himself.

But then I diverged. I also began to see God in the pain and loneliness. I saw him in the sleepless nights, the nausea, and other symptoms too disgusting to mention. I saw him in the bad too, because I wondered what was God trying to teach me here. I know I’m not the only one who struggles with these diseases. I’m far from the only person with diabetes. Far from the only person with severe gastrointestinal illnesses. Far from the only one with depression and anxiety. What was I to learn? Empathy perhaps? Strength? Perseverance? Compassion? All things that would make me a better pastor and a better person. All things that would make me better suited to serve my God and his people.

God was in all of it. There was none of it where his grace was not touching me and sustaining me.

I was thinking about this when I was reading Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, which is our Gospel lesson today. Luke does something very different than the more traditional version of this text that we’re familiar with; the one from Matthew’s Gospel. Luke shows Jesus not just offering blessings, but also woes. Blessings to the hungry, the poor, the mourning, and the hated. But also woe to the rich, the satisfied, the exuberant, and the well-regarded.

What’s this about? It makes Jesus sound like he doesn’t want us to be successful or happy. I don’t think that’s it. Nor do I think it is merely limited to most common interpretation we place on this text. After all, we’ve all met or encountered someone in life who was rich or self-satisfied and was absolutely insufferable for it. None of us would mind a little divine reversal on those types. Likewise, we’ve all met or encountered someone who was poor and downtrodden and our heart didn’t break for them. Would be nice to see some reversal for them too. No, I think it’s more than that too.

I think Jesus is talking about the whole of the human condition.

We all receive some degree of success in life. The question is how. We reach the top of the mountain and look back at all we’ve been through and we see hard work, perseverance, and a little luck (or maybe a lot). The question we never ask of ourselves is “Who did we hurt on the way up? Who did we harm? Who did we run roughshod over to get here?”

Our inclination would be to say “no one.” Most of us of good heart and nature would be appalled to learn we hurt someone to get where we are. But appalled or not, odds are good we did cause harm, even if we never meant it.

Recent events in Virginia have brought racism to the fore once again. Most of us sit back contented that we never wore blackface or did anything quite that offensive, telling ourselves that we’re not racist. And that may be true. But there’s another truth that lurks under the surface. We white folk are living in a world that was built for us and it is often quite comfortable, but it was built by those in past generations who WERE racist and used their vile beliefs to shape the world in particular ways. We today benefit from their guilt and we often don’t even know it.

How much is that T-shirt at Wal-Mart? How much for that iPhone? Expensive or not, these things often do not cost what they are supposed to. And why is that? Perhaps because some poor soul in the Third World was paid starvation wages to make that for you. How much farther have we all come because we’ve never had to pay the REAL cost of what we own?

How much pollution have we put into the atmosphere? Or the water? Or the earth? And how much hurt did that cause? Was it the herbicide we sprayed on our weeds that caused the neighbor kid to get sick? Was it the cloud of noxious smoke that belched out of our car that tipped that man just enough to trigger his cancer or COPD? These questions don’t have answers, but you have to wonder.

Sin is inescapable.

Try as we might to live upright and moral lives, it doesn’t take long for us to realize that life really forces us to run roughshod over others, often without even realizing it. We hurt and we harm and we benefit from the hurt and harm inflicted by others. What can we, those of good heart, do about this? Very little. Save to remember that when we are rich, satisfied, happy, and well-regarded, woe to us for what we’ve done to get that way.

And then there’s when the shoe is on the other foot. When the sin we experience is not what we’ve done or who we’ve hurt, but instead what is done to us or how others have hurt us. That too is inescapable. When the one who was run roughshod over in the climb to the top was us.

We always talk about how life is hard. We know that lesson well. Sickness, injury, financial ruin, family troubles, divorce, loss. We’ve all been there. And what can we do about it? Very little. Save to remember that when we are poor, hungry, sad, and hated that we are blessed.

So where is God in all of this? He’s in all of it. He is in the blessings and the woes. He sees our sin, whether we intend harm or not, and it doesn’t make him happy. He sees the sin inflicted upon us and that doesn’t make him happy either. But he’s there, with us through it all. He’s in the good and the bad, and unlike us, who can do very little to change the sinful circumstances of our broken world, he intends to do something about it.

He sent Jesus. He who came to destroy sin forever. And through his life, death, and resurrection, he did just that. Thus God blesses us in the bad and forgives the bad we’ve done, again sometimes without even knowing it, to receive the good we have. And life goes on, blessings and woes, until Christ comes again to bring his kingdom in its fullness.

We are given a hard task, to live in the inbetween days. We know that sin is conquered, but the fullness of that gift has not yet come. Life is a rollercoaster of blessings and woes. The good and the bad, and we endure it all. But God is there, in the midst of all of it. No matter what we’ve done or what’s been done to us, he stands by our side through thick and thin, walking with us to that bright future that was promised through his Son. Amen.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

Preached at Canadochly on Feb 10, 2019 (Pastor sick. Read by congregation)
Preaching text: Luke 5:1-11, Isaiah 6:1-13

Most, if not all of us, are pretty familiar with the story of Jesus calling the first disciples. Jesus comes down to the seashore, sees some fishermen, says ‘follow me,’ and they drop everything and follow him. That’s how the story typically goes, very barebones and simple.

Luke’s Gospel tells a slightly different version of that familiar tale, which we have as our Gospel lesson today. He fills in some details that the other Gospel authors either didn’t know or chose to omit. In Luke’s version, we hear his encounter with the fisherman occurs in the midst of a moment of teaching, where the crowd so presses in on Jesus that he has to commandeer one of the fishing boats to give himself some breathing room. He then also performs a miracle by grant those same fisherman a miraculous catch of fish.

In this version of the story, it is easy to imagine why the fishermen decide to leave everything and follow Jesus. First, they’ve had to listen in on his teaching. While they are not the target of Jesus’ teaching efforts here (He’s focused on the crowds), they can’t help but overhear what he’s saying. Did they perhaps hear something that intrigued or fascinated them? We don’t know for sure, but it’s a safe guess. There’s also what happens after Jesus is done teaching.

Jesus tells them to go out into the deeper water and lower their nets again. Peter protests, claiming that they didn’t have any success earlier in those spots, so this would likely be a waste of time, but he relents. Peter and his partners know their trade. Their comments to Jesus are not uninformed. They have no reason to believe they will catch anything now when they had no luck all night long. Must to their astonishment, they catch more fish than ever seen before in their lives.

Surely, those two experiences would be more than enough for anyone to want to follow Jesus, but Luke tells us that’s not actually what happens. Peter freaks out. He panics and tells Jesus to go away, to leave, because Peter says he is “a sinful man.” Why such a reaction? One would think, given his line of work, that such a massive haul of fish would be cause for immense celebration. Here is enough to support his family for a month or longer perhaps. But no, Peter responds in abject terror.

The reason why is simple. He reacts the way everyone reacts when in the presence of God. Think about the Old Testament stories: Moses, Abraham, Isaiah, Jeremiah. Any of these guys. When God comes to them, they freak out. They panic. They are terrified. It’s the only reaction they can have. Because when we are confronted with the perfection of the Divine, our own inadequacies take center stage. We realize how pitiful we really are, how flawed, our sinful, in comparison to that which is truly perfect. We recognize our unworthiness and instinctively become threatened by that which is so much more than we are.

Take our first lesson today as example. Isaiah is in the temple and God comes into his midst with his angels. He does what Peter does and panics. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips!” God has come into my midst and I am toast.

It’s usually at this point that the real miracle happens. For Isaiah. For Peter. For pretty much everyone who meets God like this. And also for us. God or Jesus or an angel speaks in a kindly voice and says “Do not be afraid.” Those words, regarded by many, to be the most important words in all of Scripture. Because they are the beginning of grace.

Do not fear. God has not come to you to destroy or to punish or to erase or any other thing you might fear. He has come instead to invite you into his service, to make you a part of his great plan. You, me, Peter, Isaiah, Moses, Mary, whoever. As flawed and imperfect as we are, he has come to us to make us his. “Do not be afraid, for now on, you will be catching people.”

There’s a bit of bumper sticker theology that I’ve come to like: God does not call the qualified, he qualifies the called. And that’s true. I think about my own story. Why am I up here? I’ve always been a person who’s far more comfortable with books and machines than with people. Painfully shy when I was a child and a good portion of adulthood to boot. I didn’t really date until after I graduated from college. And yet here I am now in one of the most intense people-oriented professions you can have. All because God once said to me, “Go and become a pastor of my church.”

Almost 18 years I’ve done this now. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. I suppose God knew something I didn’t. Funny that.

Did Peter have similar thoughts? I imagine he did. I’m just a fisherman, a salt-of-the-earth works-with-his-hands sort of guy. I’m no scholar, no great educated man. Just Simon Peter the fisherman. And yet, when Jesus called him, he became so much more. A leader, an evangelist, a paragon of the faith.

Each one of us has a calling. God may have given it to you or me in so grand a manner as he did Peter or Isaiah, but he calls us to his service nonetheless. He calls us in the waters of baptism. He calls us in the wine and bread of communion. And he does not call based on who you are. He calls based on who you could be. Who he knows you can be, because he knows you better than you know yourself. Peter, James, John, and Andrew, all of them were men of greatness and potential, but only Jesus knew it. So are you and me and God sees that in us in ways we cannot.

I know I get up here all the time and I talk about how we, as the church and as followers of Jesus, are to change the world, to give the world vision of God’s kingdom. It’s a tall order and I know it. Scares the daylights out of me often times too. It’s too much. Too big. But then I remember what God has said to me, through his Word and his sacraments, through the experiences of my life, through his call. “Do not be afraid. From now on, you will be catching people.” So it is with all of us. Amen.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

Preached at Canadochly and Grace on February 3, 2019
Preaching text: Luke 4:21-30

In West Virginia synod where I grew up and also served my first call, there is a program to help out pastors who want to take time off for illness or vacation. It trains interested lay people in how to lead worship and preach, since there are not very many retired clergy to fill those roles as there are here in LSS. I was one of those people prior to entering seminary to become a pastor myself and I would often supply at congregations in my home town of Charleston. That included my own home congregation at St. Paul.

Now I don’t think it’s any secret to anyone that I’m a fairly opinionated person. I feel very passionately about many different things. My home congregation was a very troubled place for many years, with frequent infighting among members, hostility towards the bishop and their own pastors. I was tired of it. I loved my home church; it was also one of the things I was very passionate about. Like we often do, I wanted it to last forever. So when I was given an opportunity to preach there, I wanted to show them a different way. The way of the Gospel. The way of loving one another as Jesus taught us.

I got up in that pulpit and I preached what I thought was a great sermon. I called the congregation to repentance, to embrace love and tolerance instead of hate and discord. Of course, I was a novice preacher at that point, so whatever I intended may not have been what came across. But in the end, I don’t think it mattered. At the end of the service, I was swarmed with praise from the membership. But it wasn’t about what I preached. It was all about how wonderful it was that their little boy was all grown up now.

I could have read the phone book and probably gotten the same response.

I always remember that moment when I read this text from Luke’s Gospel. Jesus, just like I did, had come home. His home synagogue. His home village. He gets up in the pulpit (or whatever equivalent 1st century synagogues have) and reads Isaiah 61 and then preaches a one line sermon: “Today, this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Now, as I pointed out last week, that passage from Isaiah can be very troubling, even threatening. Prisoners set free? The poor given justice? A reversal of the social order. But that seems to have gone over the heads of the congregation that day. All that seemed to matter to them was that their little boy was all grown up and reading scripture and preaching in his home town. I remember when he was yay-high and look at him now. Sniff. We’re all so proud!

Jesus could have read the phone book and probably gotten the same response.

Jesus, however, is never one to leave well enough alone. He provokes the synagogue crowd and gives them a picture of exactly what he means in this scripture reading. The benefits of God’s grace will no longer be simply for the descendants of Israel alone, but also to people like the Widow of Zarephath or Naaman the Syrian. Grace will spread. God’s love will be for “those people” too.

Now technically, God’s love was already there for those people. That’s why those two miracles from the Old Testament happened. And the Old Covenant is very clear. Abraham is being blessed so that he and his can be a blessing for the whole world. That’s what being the Chosen people was all about. It’s not some sort of elitist privilege. It was a means and a mechanism by which God could bless everyone.

But that’s not often what we want to hear. We want to believe that God loves us and us alone. Our people. Our kind of people. The sin of the synagogue in Nazareth is hardly unique to them. It’s our sin, our belief that God should and does belong only to us, his special ones. His Church. His new chosen nation. His new chosen people. He’s ours and ours alone.

When Jesus challenges this, the people of the synagogue go from effusive to hostile in the blink of an eye. They aren’t even willing to wait for Golgotha; they try to kill him that very day. Jesus evades them and continues his ministry, but this is hardly the last time Jesus offends by reminding everyone that God’s love is a love that embraces the outsider.

And what about us? If anything, modern society has broadened the list of “those people.” Whether by sexual orientation or race or religion or economic status or political allegiance or whatever, our list of outsiders is long indeed. Are they welcome here in God’s house? Do we see ourselves, those grafted onto the chosen people of the Old Covenant, as being here to bless them? To be a blessing for them? Are we even comfortable with those questions? I’m not.

The promise of Christ was always a universal promise. He was indeed here to bring good news and justice and liberty. Freedom from sin and death and it was to be for ALL people. It was for you and for me and for all of those outside these walls who are looking for meaning, purpose, and acceptance of who and what they are. Human society has never been good about that. The church, for its part, is meant to buck that trend. Because here, no matter who or what you are, you are loved. You are precious. You are worth dying for. Because that’s what Jesus did for you.

The kingdom of God has not yet come in its fullness. But we are to model it for the world. Each one of us questions at times our worthiness. There are times when we wonder if we are “those people” or would be if others knew the whole story. It doesn’t matter. God loves you. God accepts you. God died and rose again for you. As the door has been opened for you, will you in turn open it for others? That’s what Jesus asks each of us. That’s what this whole episode in Nazareth was about.

Because the Spirit of the Lord is upon us. And it calls us to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Amen and amen.