Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on August 24. 2014
Scripture Text: Matthew 16:13-20

I was born in the early 70s, but I have to admit I don’t remember a whole lot about that decade. After all, I spent most of those years in diapers, but I do remember the TV. I remember disco dance contests. I remember old reruns of Star Trek (explains a lot about me). I remember cartoons and other children’s programing: Battle of the Planets, Shogun Warriors, and, of particular interest, Thunderbirds.

Thunderbirds was always a bit of an odd TV program: puppets and miniature models. It was made in the 60s and was in syndication by the time I watched in the 70s. I wouldn’t have remembered all that much about it except that it had a bit of a revival about 10 years or so ago. The now-defunct cable network TechTV used to show Thunderbirds reruns every afternoon, right about the time I would wrap up my duties at my church in Davis. So I come home and prep my dinner for the evening while watching the adventures of International Rescue.




The premise was rather simple: every episode, something would go wrong. A fire on an oil platform, an airliner with no landing gear, a rocket in orbit out of control, and the heroes would jump in their super-specialized vehicles called Thunderbirds and go rescue whoever was in distress. It was action-packed, thrilling, and didn’t pull its punches much; as I said, it was made in an era long before we became so paranoid about our children. Long before TV shows where a thousand rounds of ammunition could go off, but nobody got shot, and long before parents were arrested for allowing their kids to play in public parks unattended.

It was fun and exciting and it remained so even when I watched it again as an adult. But what does all this have to do with today’s Gospel text?

Well, there are a lot of different ways I could preach on “The Confession of Peter.” I could have a joke about how no one “gets” Jesus, so much so that they confuse him with reincarnated Old Testament prophets or his dead cousin. I could talk about the foundation of the Church, whether it is built upon the faith of Peter or upon his person (one of the central debates between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism). I could talk about the context of the story, that this is all taking place in a city known for its pagan temples and shrines, which is what prompts Jesus to ask his question about his identity in the first place. But there is another piece of this story that it seems is often overlooked. It is found in the tail end of what Jesus says to Peter after his confession: “The gates of Hell will not stand against it.”

There’s a nice defiant tone to Jesus’ words. “Go ahead, Satan. Make my day.” It’s a bit like a medieval lord taunting those who would dare besiege his castle. “Do your worst. Just try to batter these walls down.” But that’s actually misreading what Jesus is saying. Think about it for a second. You don’t attack with a gate. It’s not a weapon. You don’t use a gate to besiege an enemy. The gate is what you attack. It’s what you seek to knock down when you are the one doing the besieging.

We’ve got it backwards. The Church isn’t the valiant defiant castle fending off all attackers; it’s the marauding army, taking its war to the very doorstep of Satan himself. The Church isn’t to be defended against the gates of hell; That doesn’t make any sense. The Church has instead been ordered to knock those gates down. To go on the offensive against the powers of evil.

But how is that done, Pastor? It’s not like we can get up from our pews and storm into the spiritual places. No, that’s actually Jesus’ job. He’s the one that does that. That’s the reason behind that throw-away line the Creeds about Jesus “descending into hell.” It would probably be better to translate that from the original languages as “storming into hell.” He’s marching in to set free those he finds imprisoned there. He’s going to rescue them, to set them free, and to bring them back out.

It’s a rescue mission. God swooping in to save the day.

We have our part to play in that too. Hell isn’t just the domicile of the Devil and his minions; There’s hell here on Earth too. It’s all the manifestations of sin, death, and suffering here in this world.

• A refugee family fleeing ISIS knows the power of hell, because it comes at them as beheadings and persecution and tyranny.
• The African-American community in Ferguson and elsewhere knows what hell is, because it comes to them in the form of racism, police brutality, and the all-too-frequent apathy of the rest of us.
• The people of West Africa know what hell is, because it comes in the form of a disease called Ebola.

There are countless other examples that have been thrust into our faces of late: the ice-bucket challenge revealing the hell that is ALS, the death of Robin Williams revealing the hell that is depression, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine. There are so many.

Hell here on Earth has many names; We call it disease, bigotry, injustice, tyranny, discrimination, poverty, hunger, guilt, war, mental illness, natural disaster, you name it. These things are like demons who do the devil’s work here on Earth, sapping people of their strength, their hope, and placing them in bondage. What are we going to do about it?

Jesus calls us to go in and rescue those in bondage to these nightmares. Jesus calls us, his Church, to do something about the evils of this world here and now. Calls us to do as he does, marching on the gates of hell to rescue those inside. We do that with mercy, compassion, love. We give of our time, our energy, our resources, our presence, and our very lives. We do that by giving food to the hungry, voice to the voiceless, peace to those torn by war, aid to those oppressed by disease, welcome to those cast out, and so forth. It is not an easy thing that Jesus asks of his Church. It’s dangerous, but it’s worth it. Lives are at stake here.

Jesus asks no less of us than he has done himself. He knew the dangers of coming into this world to rescue us from our hells. And yes, I do mean “us,” because we’ve been there too. Each of us has had our own battle with the devil, a battle that is probably on-going. Each of our hells is different, but no less powerful. Evil is insidious and determined, and for that reason, Jesus came to each of us, in water and word and bread and wine, revealing his love and mercy. He came and rescued us.

He came to you and to me. He came to the leper and the lame. He came to the outcast and the tax collector, and to each of them and to us, he brought healing and liberation. But he set free those the devil didn’t want set free and there was retaliation. Retaliation that got him nailed to a cross and killed for all to see. If the devil only knew...that’s what gave Jesus his opening to take the fight to his very doorstep.

That’s what this is all about. It’s a rescue mission. To save you and me and everyone. To save those who have gone before and those yet unborn. Spreading the faith is about giving people back the hope that life’s trials has stolen from them. It’s about showing them there’s another way. That was Jesus’ whole purpose and it now passes to us, his Church.

The gates of hell cannot stand against us. It’s time to get to work. Amen.

Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on August 10, 2014
Sermon text: Matthew 14:22-33

It was one of those epic match-ups from history. Two rivals, bitterly opposed, facing off against one another. Japan vs. the United States in WWII. It was Ali vs. Foreman in boxing. Douglas vs. Lincoln in their great debates. Hunt vs. Lauda in Formula One racing. Only instead of all those various genres, it was theology, the setting was the early 5th century. However, to historians and religious scholars, the combatants were just as legendary as all those other examples.

In one corner, you had Pelagius. An Irish ascetic (we might have called him a monk if any monastic orders existed at this early date), Pelagius taught that man was free with regards to sin. In all things, one can chose either sin or obedience to God, and in the end, one could earn their salvation through the deliberate choice to do good.

In the other corner was Augustine, bishop of Hippo, a city in North Africa. Augustine was a scoundrel and reprobate in his early years, but had converted to Christianity and had become widely revered as a scholar of the church. He argued that all of creation is tainted by sin, that we are born into it, and cannot escape it, therefore it is only by divine intervention in the form of God’s grace that we can achieve any goodness at all. Salvation is given freely, without merit or cost, by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross.

This was a battle for the heart of Christianity. Which was it? Was salvation given or earned? The great scholars of the church, including the pope at that time, gathered and debated at council. A decision was made. Pelagius was wrong. Augustine was right. No human being could be good enough to earn salvation; no one was that righteous, that obedient. If we could, there would be no need for Christ, no need for Jesus to come to earth at all.

Pelagius was condemned as a heretic and he was exiled. He died in anonymity, largely forgotten except for the condemnations we still have of him in church doctrine today. Augustine is still regarded today as one of the foundational theologians of the Church. Among his disciples, removed by a few hundred years, was a German monk named Martin Luther.

That would seem to be the end of it, right? A great battle, a great debate, but one with a clear winner and a clear loser. But Pelagius’ teachings carry with them a certain appeal. They’re simple. Basic. Easy to understand. If I’m just good enough, God will like me. God will save me. If I just do enough...

Pelagius has never quite gone away, not really. His teachings pop up in every generation. The whole reason for Luther’s reformation was that the Church of his day had largely forgotten (intentionally, as it turned out) Augustine in order to separate the great masses of Christian disciples from their money. The indulgence practice was not far removed from Pelagius. If I just pay enough, God will save me.

And it’s still with us today. I remember during my teenage years and my flirtation with evangelicalism. How often was I told the more souls you win for Christ the more gems you’ll have in your crown in heaven? How often did I hear echos of long-dead Pelagius? Each time I and others were told about how hard we had to work to earn God’s favor. It’s still around. We Americans in particular like his take on things. After all, we’re the people of pull-yourself- up-by-your-bootstraps and “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” Everything else in life worth having must be earned, why not salvation?

For those of us so inclined to heed Pelagius’ voice, we might do well to see the lesson in today’s Gospel. On the surface, this would seem a somewhat amusing miracle story. Jesus walks on water out to the disciples and when Peter sees him coming, he asks to join him. But after a few steps, he becomes frightened and down into the drink he goes. LOL. Typical Peter. Ain’t that funny?

Keep something in mind however. For a time, Peter actually does it. He does the impossible. He walks on water, just like Jesus. But it doesn’t last and down he goes. I think there’s a metaphor here in this strange little story. You see the Gospels aren’t just history or biography. They’re rhetoric. They’re literature, and the authors intend us (the readers) to see ourselves in the disciples, Peter perhaps most of all.

And that’s what I see here. Peter is us, trying his best. He truly does mean well. He is a good man with a good heart, and no more foolish than any of us would be in his circumstances. And for a moment, he does something amazing. Just like us, in brief moments, scattered throughout our lives, we can do the miraculous. We can achieve the greatest of good. Wonders of righteousness.

But it never lasts. We get distracted. We grow fearful. We decide our vices are a lot more fun. And the moment that happens, we are again like Peter and we sink beneath the waves.

Pelagius was wrong. Yes, we can do great and wondrous things. We can be righteous, but only in the briefest of moments and that’s the problem. It’s not enough. We can’t make it across the water to Jesus, just like Peter couldn’t. We’re never good enough. Never righteous enough. Never sinless enough. Even at our best, it’s simply not enough.

But there is hope, because Augustine was right. Where we fail, Christ succeeds. That was why he came, to do what we could not do. He could be sinless. He could be righteous all the time. And when we sink into the depths of sin, it is Jesus who fishes us out. He reaches down with nail-scarred hands and takes hold of us. And he does not let go.

Jesus was never going to let Peter drown. Yes, Peter failed...again, but he is friend and follower of Jesus and Jesus is going to do whatever he can to save him. And so it is with us. Jesus came to earth for us, for you and for me. He went to the cross for us. He rose again from the tomb for us. Because there wasn’t going to be any other way that it would work. Certainly not anything we could do. We’d go five steps and be sucking water before you could blink. But the moment that happens, Jesus is there. He grabs hold and pulls us from death to life. Amen.

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on August 3, 2014
Scripture text: Matthew 14:13-21

Scott Gustafson, in his book Behind Good and Evil, argues that the origin of moral codes and systems was a way for civilized societies to determine the answer to a simple question: Who gets food and who does not? You see, in pre-civilized times and in many tribal societies even today, food is shared. When there is abundance, all benefit, and when there is scarcity, all suffer. But one of the major elements of a civilized society is the transformation of food into a commodity where distribution was controlled by the leadership of said society. This leadership would then distribute food to those they felt worthy of it and the people who were worthy of it were often defined by the whimsy of those leaders. As civilization evolved, legal and moral codes replaced the king’s capriciousness, but the ultimate purpose remained the same: they define who is worthy of food and who is not.

Even today, this still proves largely true. The worth of human beings like you and I is under constant scrutiny by government, business, religion, and even other everyday people. And time and again, we divide people into two camps: those of worth and those without. Those with worth are deserving of life, prosperity, health, safety, freedom, and all other virtues of our society. Those without deserve only scorn, suffering, rejection, poverty, starvation, and death. We like to pretend that this isn’t true. We like to pretend that we don’t behave this way, but we do and the results of these thoughts and behaviors are all around us.

The mission trip that I led last Sunday is a prime example of this very dynamic at play. I took a small group of people from both Canadochly and St. John’s, New Freedom down to my hometown of Charleston, West Virginia. I took them into the mountains of Appalachia. I took them into a place where the people who live there are frequently and often unapologetically regarded as unworthy of life by the outside world.

Our first stop on Saturday was the Exhibition Coal Mine in Beckley, WV. I had done this tour before, when I was roughly the same age as many of the mission trip participants, and I knew the history. Our tour guide knew that history as well and was bluntly and gratefully honest about it. He told how the animals that pulled the coal carts in and out of the mine were more valuable than the people who worked the mines. He said how dog-eat-dog it was down there, where your coal, your food, your water, and pretty much anything might be stolen by your fellow miners. This was largely because of how pathetic the wages were. Twenty cents per one ton of coal, giving a miner around $2 a day in wages. Two dollars that was often not paid in the legal tender of the land, but in scrip that could only be spent at the painfully overpriced company store, keeping you in debt the whole of your life. All this on top of the extreme dangers you faced day in and day out.

We’d like to think we’ve evolved somewhat since those days and we have somewhat. The company store is gone. Wages have improved dramatically. But one need only read a short list of mine disasters of recent times: Upper Big Branch, 29 dead. Sago, 12 dead. Ferrell, 5 dead. And, of course, Buffalo Creek, 125 dead. Nearly all of them caused by the deliberate neglect of government and business officials who looked the other way regarding safety violations. And that’s just WV, let alone all other states. Human life is cheap.

Last Sunday, we prepped over 700 meals for people who are the inheritors of that legacy of disregard for human life. People who have lived in systemic poverty for generations, scraping together what they can to survive.

And as much as I wish I could say this was all unique, that it’s something that only happens in the mountains and towns and cities of my home state. But it isn’t. Downtown York, even right here in our little communities of East Prospect, Wrightsville, Hallam, Craley, there is hunger, there is poverty, and that’s true everywhere in the United States. In the wealthiest country the world has ever seen, this is a travesty.

All the more so because it is by design, not accident. Wal-Mart could add a single penny to the price of its wares and it could pay every single one of its 1.4 million workers a living wage. That’s all. Reduce our defense budget by a single day’s expenditures and we could feed every single hungry person in the world for a year. that’s all it would take. But we choose not to, because there are those who are worthy and those who are not. We would hem and haw about how difficult it would be, or whether those people deserve it or not, or how unfair it would be that they didn’t work for it, or some other excuse. All the while, 35,000 people worldwide die daily for lack of food. Human life is cheap, even to us.

The only morality that matters to Jesus is a simple one. He said all the law and prophets hung upon two commandments: Love God, and love your neighbor as yourself. He showed that in action on that day at the deserted place, where a crowd had gathered and remained well into the late hours of the day, all there to hear him speak. As tummies began to grumble, he took bread and fish, gave thanks, broke them, and then gave them for all to eat. There was no application process. No demand to prove one’s worthiness to receive their subsidy of food. No proof of income required. No drug test to pass. No proof of citizenship required. All received regardless and all ate. And all ate in abundance, 5000 and then some.

There is a reason that visions of the kingdom are often that of a feast where fine food and drink is given in abundance. Old Testament, New Testament, you name it. All come to the feast: rich, poor, black, white, gay, straight, young, old, men, women, liberal, conservative, hero, villain, all people come. The distinctions we make between ourselves and others do not matter one whit, distinctions that kill people every day because we claim their lack is what they deserve.

Deserve has nothing to do with it. Compassion is what truly matters. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Upon these hang all the law and the prophets. This was not a morality that divided, but united. One that gave worth to all, with no distinctions.

Because that’s who Jesus is. It’s what he does in his life. His teaching, his miracles, there are no distinctions. And when he went to the cross, it was not for just some people, those he felt deserved it for some arbitrary or capricious reason. No, the Scriptures tell us plainly that he went for everyone, there to die for the sins of the whole world and to give life back to all. ALL! It is the most powerful word in all of Scripture. One we desperately need to take more seriously. ALL. Not some. Not the deserving. Not the worthy. ALL. Jesus loved all. Jesus died for all. Jesus rose again for all.

For us humans, life is cheap. But to God, it is the most valuable thing in the world. Every life, yours, mine, and everyone else, is worth dying for. Amen.

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on July 20, 2014
Scripture text: Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Dandelions. The bane of every lawn. Weeds that are nigh on impossible to eradicate. You can’t get rid of these blasted things. Like the mythical hydra, you tear them up and before you know it, there’s three more growing in its place. No matter what you do, it seems, they keep coming back.

But did you know, they’re edible? The leaves on the dandelion are good in salad. I had a friend once who was able to ferment the flowers into a passable wine. Maybe not the best vintage, but certainly drinkable. And, of course, there are the children. Many a wish has been made by a small child blowing on a dandelion gone to seed. And what sight is more precious than a child rushing up to you with a bouquet of dandelions in hand, saying “Here, grandma, I picked these flowers for you!”

Maybe these weeds aren’t so bad after all. Maybe what we don’t know everything about them that we thought we knew.

The weeds Jesus refers to in his parable are called “tares,” and according to my research a “tare” is a weedy ryegrass from the genus lolium. They’re probably not as pretty or as useful as dandelions, but Jesus still counsels against their destruction in his story. Once again, Jesus offers us an agricultural parable that makes little sense. Weeds choke out the good plants. They threaten the harvest by denying the grain the water and nutrients they need to thrive. Would it not be wiser to eradicate them?

Except it’s not always obvious which is weed and which is wheat; particularly in the early stages of growth, they may look the same. Which is precisely Jesus’ point: We don’t always know which is bad and which is good. We don’t always know what is good and what is evil.

According to the Eden story, humanity fell into sin when we defiantly ate of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. This act gave us the knowledge to understand right and wrong on our own, and we have been making that judgment call ever since. Problem is, while we stole that knowledge from God, we did not also steal away his wisdom and his compassion as well. And as a result, our judgments of good and evil have been twisted and perverse ever since.

And one need only look at three of the biggest news stories of the past week to see that. Here in America, we are always concerned about the children. We have safety recalls because this product or that product might be harmful to kids. I put together a bedframe this week and with the instructions was this slip of paper that said “Beware! These parts may provide a choking hazard to children.” We have endless debates about video games, movies, sex ed in our schools, because we are divided on when it is appropriate to expose our children to adult themes and realities. And we have amassed armed posses with guns to threaten children coming across our borders.

Wait, what? One of these things isn’t like the others. But it’s true. We have armed militias in Texas and Arizona and other border states, pointing guns at innocent children, who are trying to flee tyranny, oppression, and violence in their home countries. A great American president once said to his opposite in the Cold War, “Tear down this wall” so that freedom and security could spread more broadly. His successors in our government today now demand we build another wall to deny that freedom to those who would seek it. We think we know, but we aren’t even remotely consistent on what is good and right. Are we helping children or not? Are we giving liberty to people hungry for it or not?

In Ukraine, there is an on-going battle between pro-Russia separatists and government forces. One side (and it really doesn’t matter which) this week, spotted a blip on their radar. It must be an enemy plane. Orders were given. A button was pushed. A missile was launched and 295 innocent people aboard a civilian airliner died. We think we know, but we can’t even tell the difference between a military target and a innocent civilians.

Tensions between Israel and Palestine have turned violence once more. This week, amidst all the other reports of conflict and chaos, came the heartbreaking report from several correspondents. Outside their hotel where these reporters were staying were four Palestinian boys, innocently playing on the beach. Then the shelling began, deliberately targeting that beach and those boys. Despite pleas and calls by the reporters for the Israelis to stop their attack, the explosions continued and all four children were killed. We think we know what is good and what is evil.

This past week alone shows that we know NOTHING. We know nothing when we threaten children with deportation back to starvation and death. We know nothing when we murder innocents who wander too close to a pointless conflict about who gets control of a government. We know nothing when we deliberately target children for destruction. And we know nothing when we give silent or even overt support to others who do these things.

We simply do not judge good and evil rightly. Good for us is nearly always “my side,” and we will turn a conveniently blind eye to any and all evils done by the “good guys.” There is no objective standard of good in human thinking, not really. It’s always whatever-benefits-me-and-mine-most, and evidence that contradicts our mythmaking about ourselves is either ignored or disputed. We know nothing, deliberately so.

But we love to pretend otherwise. That’s why Jesus warns us about ourselves in this parable. He knows us well. He knows that despite our biases and blindness, we will all madly rush to  destroy what we believe to be evil, and as a result, we would destroy good as well. It’s the story of history: burn the heretic, enslave those different from us, and justify those murders with lies and rumors, because the truth proves too inconvenient or uncomfortable. We, the Church, should have stood against this from the start, but we have been among those most eager for bloodshed. We, the good righteous religious people, are sadly often the quickest to judge and to seek the destruction of others.

It was, after all, the good righteous religious people who thought they knew the difference between good and evil on one Passover sometime during the reign of the Roman emperor Tiberius. They shouted out to the governor of the land to crucify a troublemaker and interloper. He’s evil. He deserves death. He’s told the truth that we didn’t want to hear. He helped people we didn’t want helped. He loved and welcomed people we demanded to be cast out. Kill him.The governor complied with their demands and ordered that God incarnate be nailed to a tree to die. In our desperate rush to destroy evil, we brought death upon the one thing in all creation that was truly good. But he let us do it.

He let us do it because that was the plan. God’s way is to redeem evil, not destroy it. And while we danced and celebrated how good and righteous we are in destroying this evil, Christ showed us once more what good truly is. “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

Not hate. Not violence. Not retribution. Love. Mercy. Kindness. Forgiveness. These are the marks of true goodness. “They know not what they do.” He says. No, we don’t, do we?  We know nothing.

That is why God takes such judgments out of our hands. On the last day, it will not be us who stand in judgment over good and evil, for we clearly can’t tell the difference. No, God will pronounce his judgment. And what he will see is not our blunders and our stupidity. He will not see our cruelty and our viciousness, our bigotry and blindness. What he will see is his son, on a cross, pleading for our forgiveness, showing his willingness to die for our sake. He will see the love he has for us, a love willing to pay the ultimate price for a people so blind and corrupt that they can’t even tell good from evil. Because of that love and that love alone, God will open the gates of eternal life to us. Because of Jesus’ love for us, our evil will be redeemed.

It’s a far better plan than we would have come up with. Our way would have led to death for all of us, good, evil, innocent, guilty, it wouldn’t matter. God’s way leads to life for you, for me, and for all. He believes, in spite of all of our flaws and failures, that there is something worthwhile in our species. He loves us. That’s why he died for us. And out of the ultimate evil came the ultimate good. Amen.

Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on July 13, 2014
Scripture texts: Isaiah 55: 8-11, Matthew 13:1-23

I remember my first job: flipping burgers at McDonalds. It was the summer of my freshman year of college and somehow I managed to dodge the whole “work during the summer in high school” bit, but either way, I was home from Tech, bored, and broke. So I got a job.

Now it’s a good twenty four years later and I still remember precisely how to make a McDonalds hamburger. Toasted bun, burger patty, one squirt each of ketchup and mustard, one pickle (two if they were small), and a dab of those nasty reconstituted onions. I remember that because we were trained to put those precise portions on each and every burger. I remember that because I then proceeded to make thousands of them over the course of my stint as a McDonalds employee.

Those directions were so precise because, at the heart of it all, that was how McDonalds made their money. If you put too much on each burger, it would increase the overhead and cut into the company’s profits. Most every business is that way: lower costs (in the case of McD it was portion control) in order to maximize gain. That’s capitalism, folks.

We, of course, live in a capitalist society. It is the heart of our economic system and, as a result, we have a tendency to think about a lot of things in life in capitalist terms. Cost-to-profit ratio. Is it worth my time, energy, and money to do this thing or to support this cause? Is it wasteful? Is my money, resources, or time going to best and most efficient use in this thing?

Americans don’t like to lose. And while that’s true in a competitive sense, we also don’t like to lose money. We don’t like to lose time. We don’t like to lose energy. We want the most bang for our buck. If we’re willing to put in, we want to get the most out of it as possible. That’s capitalist thinking, and there are places where that’s a good thing. Businesses in our society do not survive if they are not mindful of how much they are spending versus how much they are making. Too little profit or not enough will sink them. A family must be mindful how much income versus expenses is going, lest they end up in over their heads financially.

But there are also places where it doesn’t work as well. Politicians, for instance, often rail against government waste, although it’s interesting to note their distaste is often rather selective. A Republican will complain loudly about waste in the social safety system, while ignoring waste in the defense budget. A Democrat might do the opposite. So their outrage often proves rather politically convenient and more than a bit hypocritical.

But another place where it doesn’t work very well is the church. Yes, churches in the United States are run, after a fashion, like businesses. We have budgets, allocations. We receive income in the form of donations and we have programs that we support through those dollars. And we are trying to make a profit, but it is not one of dollars and cents. Our purpose is to serve God and neighbor, to spread the Gospel, to help those in need, and often times those purposes are rather intangible. You cannot account for them as a line item on a budget sheet. But that hasn’t stopped us from trying, often to our detriment and to the detriment of those very purposes.

Our first lesson is from the 55th chapter of Isaiah’s prophecy and it sums up nicely the core of the problem here. “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” God declares. “My ways are not like your ways.” God has a different measure of cost, profit, success, failure, risk, pretty much everything and to try to understand him in human terms often brings us up short.

Which is a big part of the reason why Jesus’ parable of the sower, our Gospel lesson today, makes no sense. A sower goes out to seed and he just throws that stuff everywhere. He throws it on the rocks, and in the path, and to the birds, and a small handful lands where its supposed to, but the rest is just wasted. Wouldn’t it make more sense if the sower actually aimed for the good soil? Wouldn’t it make more sense he spend all his time and resources on that instead of just throwing it out there haphazardly?

Well, yes, if we were trying to understand Jesus’ point from a human perspective. But there’s a problem. Yes, a farmer can tell by studying whether soil is good or bad. But can you tell by looking that a person’s heart is good or bad? Can you tell by a short conversation with them if your proclamation of the Gospel is going to sink in? No? Well, there’s our problem.

And because we have this problem, we tend to do one of two things. The first is that we hoard the seed, waiting for that moment when we think we’ll find the person or person on which we can have the maximum impact. The end result is that we now have churches for whom the word “evangelism” has become scary or even dirty. Churches that do not proclaim because, for various reasons, it is seen as a waste of time. It’s not profitable enough. More human thinking.

In Philadelphia when I was in seminary, there was a pastor (his name was Simmons, I believe) who on the day he began his call, he pledged to knock on the door of every home within one mile of the church in order to invite that family to come to worship. And he did that. It took him ten years to accomplish that goal. Ten years of bicycling around that neighborhood, knocking on doors. He got something like 1% of those households to come to worship.

Ten years of work for just 1%? Talk about inefficient. Talk about a waste of time. Right? Well, within 1 mile of that church there were something like 10,000 homes. Do the math. 1% of 10,000 is 100 families that joined the church. A church the size of ours, with maybe 20 to 30 families to start with. Doesn’t seem like such a waste of time now.

The other thing we do is that we target only the people who are like us. Same race, same age, same economic status, and so forth. We presume, perhaps without entirely thinking about it, that these people are the good soil or at the very least the only good soil we can reach.

There is an old anecdote told in the church. One Sunday in the 1960s, church was filled to the brim. It was a good Sunday. So much so that a young hippy that wandered in couldn’t find a place to sit. So, doing what hippies are known to do, he plopped himself down right in the aisle.

What a scandal! This young person with weird clothes and long hair with sense of decorum, sitting down right the middle of the room. There are chairs and pews for that, you know, and if there isn’t any room, then just go elsewhere.

Well, the murmurs went on through the worship service until one of the ushers, an elderly gentleman in his 80s walked down the aisle and somewhat gingerly sat down right next to the young hippy and worshiped with him. The pastor got into the pulpit and immediately discarded his sermon notes, saying “It wouldn’t matter what I would preach right now, because there is no Gospel I could declare greater than what you just witnessed in the aisle of our church.”

Good soil isn’t always where we think it is. And sometimes it takes what we might consider wasteful effort to plant within it. But that’s by design. God wants us to scatter the seed everywhere. He’s the one who knows where the good soil is, not us. And he’s not telling, because it is about him not us. He wants us to realize that what sends out comes back to him.

And it’s not numbers. It’s not money or wealth or success as we humans might define it. It’s lives changed. It’s sin forgiven. It’s death undone. You can’t measure those things. And it’s not just their lives that benefit from God’s deliberate silence on where to find that good soil, it’s ours too. We gain immensely when we step outside our comfort zones, when we dare risk to spread the seed of the Gospel as far and as wide as possible. We grow tenfold, hundredfold in ourselves and in our faith. And as the seed sprouts in ourselves and in others, what grows is the Kingdom of God. Amen.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on July 6, 2014 (Adapted from a sermon preached July 6, 2008)
Scripture texts: Matthew 11:16-30

It was one of those landmark moments in my life, a moment I’m going to remember forever. It was probably 1984 or so, I was 11 or 12 years old. Was just starting to get interested in girls and we were in NYC, my first time there. Among the various sites my family and I had decided to see that day was the World Trade Center, long before the horror of 9/11. And as is often the case with any major tourist attraction in any large city, we had to wait in line for the elevator that would shoot us up 110 stories to the observation floor. So my family and I are standing in line and I checking out this girl about my age, maybe a little older, standing in line with her family behind us. Blonde, kinda cute. And as I’m watching, she turns to say something to her folks and rattles off something in German.

I was a little taken aback, since I presumed falsely that she was American. But then I looked around at all the other people in line with us. There were several Asians, Japanese I think, chattering away with excitement. Several folks who looked like they were from Africa. Plenty of white folks in line too, and while they looked like my folks and I, dressed like us, it was anyone’s guess if they were Americans or, like the German girl, from somewhere else. It really opened my eyes. For the first time, this WV boy got a glimpse, even if a small one, of the wider world in which we live.

When Sarah and I went to NYC for our honeymoon, we had that experience again standing in line at the Empire State Building. We likewise had it again with Emily last year over this very weekend when we were again in NYC. There’s something wondrous and magical about those moments that broaden our perspectives and open our eyes to the wonder that is the world and the universe in which we live. What we once knew explodes into something far more grand and far more wondrous that we ever imagined before. The world is more than we know.

It is this very truth that I think that Jesus often tries to teach us. That our perceptions of what is and what is not are much more limited than we care to admit. There is much more to the world that we know. That there is more to people than we know. And perhaps, most importantly, there is more to God than we know.

Our Gospel lesson is almost a lament from Jesus’ lips about how close minded we can be. He begins with comments about the resistance John the Baptist received, “For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’” And what did John teach that brought such insults? Charity to others, justice to the oppressed and downtrodden.

And then Jesus speaks of the resistance he’s received, “the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” Again, what brought this on, teachings about compassion, mercy. But both men were guilty because they dared to say that such virtues were not the sole property of the “good people.” They dared to teach and to act and to live as if the outcasts and the unwanted deserved such honor and respect as well. Hard not to hear that phrase, “friend of tax collectors and sinners,” and not remember back two chapters to Jesus’ dinner party with the future writer of this Gospel story. He’s still paying the price for his boldness on that day, and for what?

Because he tried to show that people are not always what they seem and neither is God. Unfortunately, we usually don’t want to listen.

And sadly, that’s no less true today. For all of our advanced science and technology, for all of our vaunted public and private education systems here in 21st century America, there is also an almost surprising reverence for stupidity in our society. Ignorance is lauded, but if you’ve got learning, you’re some sort of snob. You’re uppity. It’s a bad thing to be smart. Bad thing to be educated.

The famed science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov once said “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”

He’s right and that’s scary. An astounding number of people really do believe that ignorance is a virtue. They don’t need to learn anything further. They got it all figured out. They know that people who look like them are good people and people who don’t are bad people. They know that if you set foot in the city, you going to be mugged and raped and murdered by gangs of criminals. They know that if you set foot in the country, you’re going to be abducted, raped, and murdered by inbred savages with crooked teeth. They know that all Muslims are terrorists and all gays are child molesters. They know that immigrants are only here to take their jobs. They know that the President was born in Kenya and that vaccines cause autism. They know a whole lot of things that are, for lack of a more delicate way to put it, bullcrap.

As bad as that sort of ignorance is, all the more so because of how commonplace it’s become, too often we do the exact same thing with the teachings of our faith. If I may dare risk meddling further, on this weekend in particular, how many good Christian folk in this country have blurred the line between nation and faith so much that they can no longer remember that God’s kingdom is NOT in fact the United States of America? How many have forgotten that God loves the people of France or Nigeria or Belgium or Argentina or anywhere else just as much as he does us? How many remember that to be Christian is not to be about flags and fireworks, but to be about service and sacrifice to ALL humankind, even the parts we don’t like?

When we forget those simple truths, we often fall into the same traps as those folks from the 1st century who stood against Jesus for daring to try to teach them otherwise. How dare he eat with tax collectors! We know what those people are really like! How dare he say God is love! No, he’s the lawgiver and if we just follow the rules, we’re okay. How dare he call us sinners! We’re the good people, the sinners are over there. How dare he tell me that all that I’ve done to be good counts for nothing because salvation is a free gift given through Christ! How dare he, indeed.

Jesus seeks to open our minds to those simple truths of our faith, and yet so often we resist. We don’t want to learn. We don’t want to be challenged. We don’t want to see the wonder that is the wider world, and a greater God than we ever imagined.

We’re afraid. We’re afraid of being wrong. We’re afraid of having to change our lives and our lifestyles to reflect these new truths. But the teachings of Christ are not to be feared. Listen to his words, some of the most famous and beloved in all of Scripture. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

His burden is easy and light because his teachings point to things we can cling to in time of need. Life, as we have already discovered, is going to throw everything it can at us. Our stories have many moments of doubt and crisis. How do we navigate beyond them? We remember. We remember the truths that Jesus has taught us. We remember why he came to this world. We remember why he died and why he rose again. We remember the promises. Lo, I am with you always… Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ… Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He has risen…Be strong and courageous, for I the Lord you God is with you wherever you go. What am I doing? Quoting Scriptures from all over the Bible. Scriptures that have supported me, held me up in times of crisis. Scriptures that have been given to me, taught to me, taught to all of you. This is the benefit of learning at Christ’s feet. Tools to support us, the means to see the light in the midst of darkness.

How do we learn these things? The answer to that is simple. You learn them from preaching. You learn them in the wine and the bread and the water of our sacraments. You learn them through Bible studies, Sunday School, and other educational opportunities provided through the church. You learn them in private devotion and prayer. You also learn them by experience, by being open to the wider world. The Spirit uses whatever it can to teach us. And what he teaches points to those simple truths we hold dear. Never forget them.

God loves us. Christ lived, died, and rose again for us. They will never forsake us. This is the yoke that makes life bearable. Amen.

Sermon for the Festival of St. Peter and Paul

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on June 30, 2014
Scripture texts: Acts 9:1-22, Various others linked in text below.

Well, the excitement is building. George Lucas has sold the rights to Star Wars to Disney and now the “Mouse House” has put into production three new Star Wars films. One of the cool things about these new films is that old cast is back, playing elder versions of these iconic characters. Long time fans of the franchise will get to see Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and (of course) the dashing Han Solo on-screen once again in a brand new adventure.

Han Solo is probably the most popular character in the Star Wars franchise. He’s the scoundrel, the not-so-nice guy that really has a heart of gold. When he’s first introduced, he’s kind of villainous, shady, not sure you can trust him. Unpredictable, cocky, full of himself. You know, like pretty much every other scoundrel character in pop culture. It’s Tony Stark in the Marvel superhero movies. It’s Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones. It’s Walter White from Breaking Bad. (Come to think of it, these guys are all really popular too.) They’re folks that do the right thing, but seem on the outside pretty shady. Or they’re folks that want to do good, but are too much prisoner to their vices. Or they’re folks that are doing the wrong things for the right reasons. Or perhaps some combination of all three. But we love them regardless.

The Bible, for its part, has a lot of scoundrels in its pages too. Before our Bible study wrapped up for the summer, we were reading about the adventures of Abraham in the book of Genesis. Patriarch, father of many nations, recipient of God’s holy covenant. All around good guy, right? Well, there was that episode in Egypt where he was worried about how pretty his wife was and what the Pharaoh might try to do to claim her from him, so Abraham pretended that she was his sister and then sent her off to be a part of the Pharaoh’s harem. To be one of his slave women. Yeah, nice guy that Abraham.

King David. Greatest king of Israel’s history. So great that the Bible can’t shut up about him. Even the Gospels talk about this guy constantly. Must be a fantastic fellow to have all those accolades. Except for the time when he looked down from his balcony and peeped in on a bathing woman, decided he had to have her. So he invited her to his chambers, raped her, got her pregnant, and then arranged to have her husband murdered to cover it all up. Great guy.

Moses was a murderer. Jonah was a coward. I could find plenty more throughout the pages of holy scripture. But if you were compiling a top ten list of the “Biggest scoundrels of the Bible,” you’d probably pick the celebrities of this feast day to be part of your list: Peter and Paul.

To continue the Star Wars metaphor, Peter is the Jar-Jar Binks of the twelve disciples. He means well, got a good heart, but, boy, is he inept. Always opening his mouth to offer the least helpful suggestions possible. Always making bold and outlandish claims he knows he’d not going to live up to. But there are two moments in his life where he goes from simply bumbling to borderline sinister. Scoundrel-like, even.

The first is, of course, on the night when Jesus was betrayed. As some stories tell it, Peter begins the night rather chivalrous. When Jesus is arrested, Peter rushes to his defense, drawing his sword and attacking the first interloper he can get to, one of the slaves of the high priest. But after Jesus talks him down from this violent approach, Peter’s valor seems to vanish. He follows behind the mob to the court of the high priest. There, as we all know, he denies his Jesus three times before the dawn arrives.

He’s not done. Some years later, during the infancy of the Church, Peter is called upon by the leaders of the Church to become the “apostle to the Gentiles.” But when an opportunity arises for Christians of both Gentile and Jewish stock to come together in fellowship and harmony, Peter balks and hides away with only the Jewish Christians. He wants nothing to do with “those people.”

In that episode, he’s called out for his racist behavior by none other than Paul, the rogue of today’s remembrances. Peter may have been made the “official” apostle to the Gentiles, but it’s been Paul that’s been doing the boots-on-the-ground work to bring the wider world to Christ. But he too has a few dark episodes in his past.

When the deacon Stephen was called before the tribunal for preaching Christ, Paul was there. He watched as the angry mob stoned the first martyr to death (or so the Scriptures claim. Some scholars believe that Paul probably wasn’t as much a bystander in that episode as the text implies, but more an active participant.) Some time after that, he received orders to hunt down Christians in the city of Damascus, a mission during which he had a rather profound encounter that changed his whole life.

Like Peter, Paul wasn’t quite done with being a scoundrel after his conversion. You read through his letters, which make up the bulk of the New Testament and get a good sense of the man: arrogant, full of himself, has issues with women and sexuality in general. He’s still a scoundrel, but now also an apostle for Jesus Christ.

But therein lies the beauty of all these stories. These people, these heroes of Scripture, are truly human beings. In every way that word means. They have immense courage, strength in adversity, boldness in their convictions, trust in their God, but they likewise have, at the exact same time, fear, anxiety, prejudice, vices, vulnerabilities, anger, doubt, and every other negative quality that we humans have struggled with since day one. They are paragons of the faith not because they are perfect or that they are better than us. In a lot of ways, these people are a lot worse than us, doing and saying things from time to time that we would consider appalling or perhaps even unforgivable. No, they are paragons of the faith because God has chosen to make use of them anyway.

All those negative qualities, God looks past. They don’t matter. He saw in Peter and Paul something he could make incredible use of, in spite of their many flaws, in spite of the fact that they were scoundrels. And he came to each of them in their own way to call them to his service and to make use of them to transform this world. And transform it they did. They, in many ways, built the Church in which we live today. Their words continue to guide us on what it means to be a Christian, to be a follower of Christ. They are long dead, but their presence is felt here in this place even now.

But God’s work in this world did not end with them. Even now, he calls to his people, to each one who names him Lord, to do their part in continuing that work. To each one of us, he calls and says you have a part to play. And we may respond with a whole host of excuses as why we’re unworthy of such tasks. To our excuses, I suspect God laughs. He sent Jesus to live, die, and rise again to forgive our sins and our flaws. He called countless scoundrels to his service. Between those two things, our reasons for not heeding his call seem rather moot.

In a thousand years, there may be preachers that tell our stories of faith. And they will say it wasn’t because we were better than others that made us heroes. They will say we were far from perfect. But what made us what we are is that God believed in us enough to entrust us with his plan, even though we too are scoundrels. Amen.