Sermon for First Advent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on November 27, 2016
Scripture text: Romans 13:11-14

Advent has begun. This season of preparation for the Nativity of Our Lord always has something of a peculiar character. We mark our time of readiness for Jesus’ first coming by looking towards his second. That gives Advent not merely a spirit of looking to the past, but also to the present and to the future. What is our world now and how does Jesus need to come into its midst in this time?

Well, we know what our world is now. It’s an ugly place, filled with violence, anger, and hatred. There are wars across the world with ISIS and Syria. People dying for no reason other than being caught in the crossfire between fanatics and tyrants. Civil strife here at home. We’ve had a contentious election that has made the divisions in our society all the more real. People are marching in the streets in protest. Others are seeing the victory of their side as sanction to brutalize, bully,  and threaten.

In the midst of all this, I think it is fair to say that one of the things that is being lost is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is being silenced, lost in the din.

But make no mistake. Christians and Christianity are doing just fine. In fact, they may be doing the best they’ve done in a long time. Our evangelical brothers and sisters were key in the ascension of the new President and they enjoying the fact that they’re going to be on top. The problem is it’s the people who are ascendant, not the message. No, the message of Jesus, who he is, what he came for, that’s still silent.

Instead of “love your neighbor,” it’s hate the different. Instead of welcome the stranger, it’s “build a wall.” Instead of “turn the other cheek” and “Father, forgive,” it’s let’s get them! The truth that God loves all is hard to see. The fact that Christ died and rose again for the sake of all people is invisible. The Kingdom of God, which should be ever marching forward, appears to be taking a few steps back.

“You know what time it is. How it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” St. Paul wrote those words with the expectation that Jesus’ second coming could happen any minute. He was obviously wrong about that, but it’s still important for the Church to have a sense of urgency. History has shown, time and again, that evil does not sleep. It lurks and waits and makes ready for the time when it can come forth again. That’s true of the evil within our hearts and it is certainly true of the evil in our societies.

We live in evil times. The question, which I’ve been asking for several weeks now, is what are we going to do about it? What does it mean for us to “wake up” in this generation?

Well, let’s be blunt. We’re a tiny little church on a forgotten intersection in a largely forgotten part of York County, PA. We’ve spent the past two years burying many of most beloved and esteemed members. We just had a congregational meeting that was quite a bit of a downer. No compensation increase to our staff and we cut our giving to charity because we’re running out of money. By many benchmarks, we’re a dying church.

Going off to sleep might seem awfully tempting right now. Just let fate run its course. Keep the doors open long enough to bury me and that’ll be that. A lot of churches in this country have chosen such a course. We could join them.

Now I’m not convinced that’s the truth. I’m not convinced we’re done yet. St. Paul tells us that now is the time to wake from sleep and I believe he’s right. The message of Jesus is being silenced under the volume of hate and fear. No, we cannot let that be. The Kingdom must march forward once more and we, Canadochly, can do our part. We’ve been doing our part. We cannot give up now, no matter what the writing on the wall says.

Even if we are dying, there is something to be said for not going quietly into the night. If we are fated to end, then let us make such an end that people remember us. That people miss us once we’re gone. Not all churches are called to be successful, but all churches are called to be faithful. Like Luther planting his tree when he knew the world would end tomorrow, let us do what we’re called to do, regardless of our circumstances. Show the world the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Be Jesus for the sake of the people around us. Let them see what God is really about through us.

One of my favorites movies is an often-forgotten gem from the late 90s called “The Man in the Iron Mask.” Based on the Alexandre Dumas story of the famous Musketeers, it has quite a stellar cast (Jeremy Irons, Gabriel Byrne, Leo DiCaprio, etc.) At the end of the movie, the Musketeers have broken into the Bastille prison to rescue the Man in the Iron Mask. They get trapped by the evil king and his soldiers.

Realizing their fate, they decide rather than surrender that they will go out as they’ve lived and they charge into the muskets of the soldiers.

That could be us. If we hold to what we believe and if we hold to what we’ve been called to do and be, that could be us. Go out doing what we’ve been doing for almost 300 years. Being the church. Caring for the poor. Welcoming the stranger. Spreading the Gospel in word and deed.

Now is the time to wake from sleep, my friends. You might be surprised what happens when you wake up. In the movie, the soldiers are so stunned and awed by the Musketeers’ bravery that they foul up their own shots and all the muskets miss. The heroes survive, the soldiers surrender to them, and turn over the evil king to them for justice. I don’t know what God will do, but I do know that when the Church has stood faithful in the past, that’s when it’s thrived the most. Sometimes, when things look the bleakest is when God is about to do something amazing.

After all, wasn’t that what happened on Golgotha? Christ dying on a cross sure looked like a defeat. Sure looked like the end. It wasn’t.

So what’s to be our fate? Do we go off quietly or do we go out with a bang? Or are we really going out at all? Really only one way to find out. Time to wake up. Amen.

Sermon for Christ the King

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran on November 20, 2016
Scripture text: Jeremiah 23:1-6

The lectionary can be a great tool for us preachers. It provides us properly thematic texts from the Scriptures at appropriate times around the year, It gives us a direction and a guide on where the Holy Spirit might be taking us in any given week. It can be remarkable how well these selections can line up with world or local or personal events and that’s probably not coincidence, since God kinda does have a hand in all this.

There are times though when, at least for this preacher, when the lectionary annoys me. I feel like I’m being led to repeat myself. I spoke about the election in my sermon last Sunday. I spoke of how we should not get caught up in the hype, that the coming changing of the guard in the White House is neither the “bestest thing ever,” nor is it “the end of the world as we know it,” and that we as Christians should simply keep on keeping on at what we’ve been called to do in the world.

I thought it was a good sermon. Reasonably respectful and fair-minded about people’s feelings about what has happened on both sides. And then comes this week and what do I get out of the lectionary...

“Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!”

Too easy and, as I’ve learned in 15 years of preaching, often too dangerous. The inclination, of course, to let my liberal Christian flag fly proudly and point my finger at the President-elect and go “HA!” Like Darth Vader in his TIE fighter, “I have you now. You...you evil shepherd, you.”

But to do that would be dishonest to these times and to this text. This text isn’t just about political leaders, of our time or any other. Human society, then as now, is intertwined and interconnected. Religious, social, political circles all overlap with one another, and a problem in one likely has its origins in another.

So this text condemns all leaders who fail to uphold the common good. It condemns politicians who, in an effort to save a few bucks, would poison an entire city with lead water. Or those who would disenfranchise thousands because of their skin color or lack of economic resources. Or those who’ve ignored time and again the fact that the prosperity of these last few years has largely confined itself to those who already have plenty.

It condemns business CEOs who save a few bucks by cutting safety and letting workers die or be injured on the job. It condemns CEOs who, in order to get a new yacht, will send a factory overseas and lay off hundreds. It condemns journalists who would print lies people want to hear over the truth they need to. And it condemns preachers who use their sacred pulpit for their own enrichment or for the purpose of gaining worldly power.

You want to know why Trump won. It’s because of these folks, these shepherds of our national flock. One of the great ironies of our time is that the people who voted for him and the people who now protest him in the streets are angry about many of the same things. Leaders who care only for themselves, who turn a blind eye to the evils in our midst, and do nothing but enrich themselves at our expense.

So what does this have to do with us as Christians?

Again, another easy preaching trap I could turn to right now is to point to our Gospel lesson, say something like “Jesus is the only one who can save us, so to heck with the world and its so-called leaders,” and end there. But that sort of pie-in-the-sky preaching, where everything is solved by heaven, is trite and empty. It’s also dishonest to our Lutheran tradition.

Here we are in the midst of this 500 year celebration of the Lutheran church, so here also is a reminder (a refresher perhaps) about one Luther’s key theological tenets: the Two Kingdoms. God rules not just in heaven (the Kingdom of the Right-hand) but also here on earth (the Kingdom of the Left-hand). His will, which in the Kingdom of the Left is intended to be carried by our leaders, is order and the common welfare. The hungry should be fed. The poor cared for. Justice should be even-handed and fair. Prosperity should be shared so all may benefit.

Imagine if we did that, or perhaps held our leaders to account when they fail to do that?

Yes, one day we, like the repentant thief on the cross, will receive our salvation and be welcomed with joy into the Kingdom of the Right. Never question that. It’s a done deal. But until that day, we’re living in this world and God gives us a job to do. It is our duty and calling to spread the Kingdom of the Left as far and wide as possible. Here again, we come back to what I said last week. Do what we are called to do for others. Care, respect, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, love.

The reason we are in this mess (and we’d be in this mess regardless of who won two Tuesdays ago) is because we have failed to spread that kingdom. People have no respect. No compassion. No empathy for one another. Well, how are they going to have that if we don’t show them? This world beats all of us down at times and it is so easy to give in the anger, hate, and fear. Many have done so. We see them on the news every night. Not just the protesters or the angry mobs at Trump’s rallies. But the criminals in the ghetto and in the statehouses. People broken by the world.

That’s our mission field, my friends. It’s the people terrified of what President Trump might do to them marching on the streets of our cities. It’s the people terrified of what a President Hillary would have done in our heartland and Rust Belt. And all those who think the only way to survive in this world is to only look out for #1, laws, morals, and ethics be damned. We can show them a better way than the path of fear and rage. We can show them the Kingdom of God, perhaps not in its fullness, but at least in part. We can make this world better for them.

And maybe, just maybe, by doing so, we can finally get some decent shepherds for our flock. Amen.

Sermon for the 26th Sunday after Pentecost

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on November 13, 2016
Scripture texts: Malachi 4:1-2, 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13, Luke 21:5-19

Eight years ago, as all of you I’m sure can recall, we had an election. One for the history books. The first African-American President, Barack Obama, was voted into office. This was cause for great exaltation on one side of the political aisle. Jubilation at this sea change in our society. Racism was done. It was over. It was a time of hope and change. Everything was going to be different now.

Good times. 

Image from Wikipedia

On the other side, things weren't quite so happy. There was suspicion, fear, trepidation. He’s coming for our guns. He going to make our lives harder. He’s a usurper, not even born in America. The end of the world is at hand. The anti-Christ has come. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Everything was going to be different now.

Well, here we are eight years later and American society is neither a Star Trek-like utopia where everything is perfect and wonderful where no one has any problems, nor it is “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.” All of our excessive jubilation or fear and trembling at the prospect of an Obama presidency at its start seems wildly misplaced now. It was, now that we have hindsight to see it, a pretty ordinary presidential term. Some people benefited and some more than others. Others were hurt and again some more than others. There were a few exceptional moments, but the idea that it was going to be some sort of massive transformation of our society (for better or worse) seems silly now.

What will we say four or eight years from now when now-President-elect Donald Trump finishes his run?

It is easy to buy into the hype, either as the winners or the losers. Part of our political process is to create hype for the chosen candidates. Trump, the brilliant salesman that he is, was exceptional at this. Secretary Clinton, not so much, hence why (in part at least) we have the outcome that we do. But all eyes now turn to the future. What happens next?

I don’t know the answer to that. What I do have are the words of Scripture that (probably not coincidentally) come out of the lectionary today. Words fitting for recent events. Words of Jesus warning us not to get too caught up in hype and hyperbole as the disciples do upon witnessing the grandeur of the temple. Words of the prophet Malachi warning us about evil among us and how it will not stand the Day of the Lord. Words of Paul to the church of Thessolonika exhorting them to keep doing what they’re supposed to be doing.

There was a part of me that almost wanted to skip the sermon entirely because these three texts speak so perfectly to these times. The simple truth of the matter is that, for whatever else we might want to believe of him for good or ill, President-elect Trump is still a human being. He is not a god. He is not an ubermensch. He is not a superhero. He is, like all of us, a mix of brilliant gifts and massive flaws. He is not a demon. He is not our savior.

He is not Satan nor Jesus incarnate. He’s just a man. Satan is Satan. And Jesus is Jesus. And as Christians, it is the real Jesus that we follow and the real Satan that we oppose.

And how do we do that? We follow Paul’s counsel here. We keep doing what we’re supposed to be doing. Loving our neighbor. Caring for people in need. Feeding the hungry. Speaking up for the voiceless. As I said of Obama’s tenure, there are people who benefit from the work of our government and there are those who suffer. That will be true of Trump as well. People who will thrive in his Presidency and those who will suffer. That’s the way of things.

And our job as followers of Christ is to proclaim the Gospel and one of the best and most powerful ways to do that is stand there and catch those who fall through the cracks of society. The poor, the different, people of color, the gay, immigrants, refugees, all those the world would rather forget. But not Jesus, our TRUE Savior. He won’t forget them and he wants us to not forget them as well.

Make no mistake my friends. There are going to be a lot of folks falling through those cracks in the years to come. Even if Trump does his utmost to make good on his victory speech promise to be a President for all Americans and becomes a model President, there are still those who supported him because they WANT to hurt people. They are still out there. I hope and pray they are a very small percentage of our population, but they do exist. And they are going to want satisfaction for their hate and anger. And they’ve already begun their work.

Kids bullied in school for being.Latino. Swastikas graffitied in a dorm room. Black people hung in effigy. Welcome to the future.

A small sample of what's been happening out there. We can pray it never gets any worse than a few obscene marks on buildings, but I'm not holding my breath.

Image from The Federalist

The question before us is what are we going to do about it. The tribunal that Jesus speaks of in his Gospel may take the form of you and I standing in the gap between a mob of haters and a gay man. Or we may be called to be the Samaritan to an Arab or Black man lying on the street bleeding after being attacked. It chills me to think such things can happen here, but there are those hungry for such things. What are we going to do about it?

Standing in that gap is not going to make us popular. It will make us enemies and it will not feel good. But fear not. Our enemies are nothing to the God we serve. NEVER forget that as we seek to do the good in the world in which we live, whatever form it takes.

Friday night, I was off to Washington DC to see one of my favorite musical groups, the Pet Shop Boys. I was juggling a few thoughts in my head as I was heading down there. The Boys have a very loyal following among the gay community and are themselves gay, and I was thinking how welcome will they and many of their fans be in this country in the future (The band members are British by nationality.)

"It's a Sin" is one of their more challenging songs on the issue of being gay in this world

I was also wondering if there would be protests or even riots by those frightened by a Trump presidency. All the while I’m listening to my wife’s curious mix of Broadway showtunes that’s she’s playing while we’re driving down: Jersey Boys + Les Miserables.

Now Les Mis is my favorite musical of all time and I’ve used it numerous times as a sermon illustration. It occurred to me that’s fitting today. It takes place in a revolutionary time in 19th century France. There’s a rebellion, an effort to overthrow a corrupt and tyrannical government in the midst of the story. People trying to change things. People wanting things to be different. It fails utterly.
Nothing changes. The nightmarish reality of France at the end of the story is the same as at the beginning.

But that’s not really what the story’s about. The story’s really about the revolutionary act that occurs within one man, Jean ValJean, to go from being thief and scoundrel to a man of God. For him to do as Paul has called us to do, to not cease in doing good. And in the end, he is welcomed into the arms of his Savior not because he’s made this transformation, but because that’s what God does. ValJean realizes this. God is love. God is mercy. God is forgiveness. And ValJean realizes God offers all these things to him long before he’s changed his life. He changes because of those things, not because that’s how he gets them.

You and I, my friends, are ValJean for this time and this generation. The world’s going to do what it’s going to do, for better or worse. You and I, we have work to do. Caring for people. Loving them in our Savior’s name. Doing for them what others can’t or won’t do. Showing the world that there is a throne greater than the chair in the Oval Office. There’s a heavenly throne upon which sits the one who will truly save the world. Correction, one who HAS saved the world through the cross and empty tomb. That’s not hype. That’s not hyperbole. That’s not showmanship or politics. That’s truth. Go and tell. Go and show. Do as you are called. Amen.

Sermon for All Saints Sunday

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on November 6, 2016

I spent weeks confident in how I was going to preach last Sunday’s Reformation sermon. I knew precisely what approach I was taking, what I was going to say, what my point was. This week, for All Saints, not so much…

It took me a while to figure out how to approach what we’ve been facing over these past two years. We have buried, in our little intimate church community, nine souls in those 24 months. Of course, the number doesn’t even remotely tell the whole story, because these people were our friends, our parents, our spouses, our children. People that we loved dearly and still do.

In some ways, for me, this journey through the valley of death began even earlier. It was three All Saints Days ago that I stood up in this pulpit and talked about my friend Dan Taraschke, who died very suddenly and unexpectedly at age 43 in his sleep just a few days before I was to preach. Dan was such a larger-than-life character, so full of joy and passion at life. He brightened every room he walked into, filling it with his gregarious and friendly personality. I talked about all that and when I was done, I sat down in this throne here behind me and broke down.

Still miss him. Dan on the left here.

I remember very clearly what happened next. What a wonderful moment of grace, one that many of you here witnessed. Amy came up and gave me a tissue. Mike came up and put his hand on my shoulder. Simple gestures, but they meant the world.

There is a certain ironic juxtaposition in knowing that one of those who comforted me that day is also our most recent death in his community. But thinking about that got me wondering. Why do we mourn? Why do we grieve? Why does this hurt so damn much?

Maybe those are silly questions. We never ask them, perhaps because we know the answers so innately that we needn’t bother. But I think, for our purposes today, it may help to tease out those answers. To say openly that truth behind the tears.

We grieve because we’ve lost something. Something amazing. Something unique. Something special. And while we Christians hold to a truth that this loss is only temporary, we still have lost. We have lost the gift of who they were. We have lost the gift of their life.

You know, when we talk about the “gift of life,” we usually talk about it in terms of self. I am alive today and that is a gift. And it is. But that’s not the only way to think about it, because our lives are also gifts to each other. You being here and being in my life is a gift to me. My being here and in your life is a gift to you. And that gift has an impact.

Would I be as joyful if I hadn’t received the occasional wink from Suzie or that beautiful beaming smile of Vale’s? Would I be as courageous if I hadn’t seen how Freddie faced his work and his illness? Would my love of working with children and youth be as strong if I hadn’t known Amy? Would I be as compassionate towards others if I hadn’t known Mike? No, I wouldn’t. These and so many others made a difference, in both great and small ways, in who I am today. They were a gift.

And if I were to ask any one of you here today to stand up and tell us what those people meant to you, you’d say much the same. Or to ask who mattered in the course of your life, you’d offer a long list of parents, grandparents, teachers, friends, siblings, spouses, children, co-workers, and other souls who’ve crossed your path and, in some way, perhaps great or small, made a difference in who you are today.

When I left my call in Davis, I wrote little personal good-byes to each of the members there. And I remember writing to the now-late Dick Wolfe, who I admire beyond words, “I want to be you when I grow up.” That’s kind of how this is. We learn from each other. We remake ourselves in the likeness of those who’ve mattered to us. I said a few weeks ago how we come here to this church, in part, to learn how to be better people. We don’t just learn that from what I say in these sermons, but from one another and the way we witness how we carry out our lives. We matter. We influence. We love and care for one another.

That is the gift of life and when we lose it, it hurts. And there’s just no way around that.
But there is hope.

I want to conclude today with two thoughts, thoughts I hope will encourage and inspire you in the midst of the darkness in which we’ve unavoidably dwelt today. The first is to remember what a gift you are. God put you here for a reason and while you may not always realize it or be aware of it, you matter to countless others. You are precious to them. They love you and they will miss you when you are gone. You have had an immense impact already on so many lives. People are who they are today because of you.

So many of us never realize our importance. But our lives are so much richer for having known one another. I thank you and I thank God that you are here, for me and for each other and for all those others throughout our lives for whom we’ve made a difference.

The second thought is to remember again what we’ve been promised. Last week, we tried to show the Luther movie and technical difficulties snared us up. We’re going to try again this week (it works. I’ve tested it.) But I want to illustrate this thought with a scene we’ll see in that movie, my favorite scene in the film, in fact.

A young boy in Luther’s village commits suicide. The Church being what it was back then claimed such a death was damning, that the boy could not be saved. Luther will have none of it. He defies the Church, digs the grave himself in holy ground, and argues openly how wrong the Church is because that boy belonged to Christ. He was HIS and always would be.

My friends, those that we love belong to Christ. They are HIS. They were his in life and they are his in death. And you and I are his and always will be, in life and in death. And because this is true, because we have been adopted by God through the cross and empty tomb, a truth testified to by the waters of baptism and the bread and wine of Eucharist, a truth testified to by the Word of God from the Scriptures and from countless sermons, we will one day be reunited with those that mattered to us in life. Those that we’ve loved and lost. This is Christ’s promise to all of us. Revelation shows us a vision of that multitude, unable to be accounted there are so many: You and I among them.

That’s God’s dream, his plan, and you and yours are a part of it. You are loved and you are precious to the one who is mightier than death. Yes, it still hurts that they are gone, but they will not be gone forever. God has seen to that. Amen.

Reformation Sermons

Pastor's Note: There are two, very similar, sermons here in this single blog post. That's because I re-purposed and amended my Sunday sermon for use at the South York Conference meeting where I also preached. I figured I'd post both today, since they are targeted at different audiences (one a typical Sunday morning, the other a group of pastors) and show a bit of the art of sermoncraft. How does one tailor a message for a particular audience? And so forth.

Sermon #1
Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on October 30, 2016

Normally, on this Sunday, you get me all dressed up in some costume, pretending to be some major figure from Reformation times, like Luther or Pope Leo (I haven’t tried Katie yet. Anyone know a good cross-dresser that can make me look good in that role?) I’m not doing that this time, obviously.

You see, I’m in the process of raising a 13 year old daughter, who has reached the point in her academic life where she is asking the question “Why do we have to learn all this stuff? What good is it going to do me?” In truth, that’s a good question. Why is the Reformation important? What do the events of 499 years ago matter to folks living in 2016 America?

So, that’s my focus today. To answer that very question.

I stumbled upon an article on the internet about two or three weeks ago titled “Why Conservative Evangelical Christianity Is The Worst Evil Ever Manifested Upon The Earth.” The title is a bit extreme, a lot of hyperbole there, but it got my attention. Turns out, I simply could have read that article as my sermon today, because it articulated precisely why the Reformation matters here and now.

You see, many of us have come to believe, thanks to certain already-named segments of the Church, that God’s love is conditional and that everything is dependent upon what you DO. Christ died on a cross and rose again, BUT have you accepted him in your heart? God wants to bless you, BUT have you prayed enough? God loves you, BUT do you deserve it? Have you been good enough? Jesus saves, BUT you’ve got to do your part.

All too often, we make “God’s love, power, blessings, and desires...only as effectual as our human capacity to respond correctly.” We make God powerless to anything without our action or consent, leaving us in the driver’s seat and nothing could be more terrifying.

I spoke last week about how not-perfect we all are. None of us measures up even to our own standards of ethical or moral behavior all the time, let alone the standard set by God. We fail. We fall short. It’s what we do. We’re human. We make mistakes. We have vices. We stumble and fall.

But the false teachings of parts of the Church hold all that against us. If you fail, you die. If you screw up, damnation calls. There will be consequences. Penalties assessed. And as a result, we often twist our lives into desperate effort to avoid all sin or to make amends for sins already committed, hoping that (again) by our efforts, we might convince God to let us in on all that love, blessing, and salvation. We make it all about us.

Part of the reason I think the title of the article is a bit extreme is because this is not a new problem. It’s been going on for thousands of years and the errors of modern churches are simply the current manifestation of ancient heresies.

Fifteen hundred years ago, when the Church was still basically a toddler, a man named Pelagius began teaching that one had to earn salvation by doing good works. He was condemned as a heretic and his teaching regarded as erroneous and dangerous. One of the people key in that condemnation was a Bishop named Augustine.

Fast-forward a thousand years and you have a member of the monastic order dedicated to Augustine who discovers that the Church has fallen into the Pelagian trap again. Now you have to kiss relics, buy indulgences, pay the Hail Mary 500 times a day, obey the Pope, and do all this other stuff in order for God to love you. Same crap, different day. So this plucky little German monk decided to do something about it. His name was Martin Luther and the Reformation began.

Fast forward again five hundred years and here we are again. We’re still doing it. Still falling into the same trap of believing God’s love is conditional upon our response and action. No no no no!!!! If you believe that, stop it! Stop putting yourself through a hell of your own making. Stop believing that God feels and thinks about you the way you do.

God loves you. Period. End of story. Done. And because he loves you, he send Jesus to live, die on a cross, and rise again on the third day FOR YOU. Because Jesus has done this, you are saved. Period. End of story. Done deal. And God’s promise to save you is unbreakable. There is nothing you can do or fail to do that will change it. YOU ARE HIS and always will be.

That is what the Reformation was about. The rediscovery of that simple truth. God’s love is NOT conditional. It doesn’t matter how many Sinner’s prayers you pray, or don’t. It doesn’t matter how many altar calls you accept or don’t. It doesn’t matter what your personal theology is, if you even have one. It doesn’t matter how many good works you do. It doesn’t matter who you vote for in the upcoming election. It doesn’t matter your understanding or lack thereof of the Bible. None of what you do or think or say matters in regards to God’s love and offer of salvation. He loves you and he always will. He’s saved you and that will not be taken from you.

Charlatans in the church HATE this truth, because it means they can’t control you. They can’t make do what they want with the threat of hellfire and brimstone. God ain’t gonna cooperate with their agendas, so they lie. My friends, we’ve been lied to for a very long time. We’ve been told God is capricious, not steadfast. God is hateful, not loving. God is punitive, not embracing. And soul after soul throughout the years has been brutalized by these lies, perhaps yours.

 Don’t believe it anymore. Believe instead the truth. God loves you and always will. He loves you when you’re bad and good. He loves you when you obey and when you disobey. He loves you when you’re perfect (those rare moments) and when you sin. He loves you so much that he’d rather die than be without you. That’s what the cross means. It’s a sign of how much God truly loves you, how far he’d go to just be with you.

That’s what Luther found again when he opened up the Scriptures and discovered God was not who he’d been taught. He discovered he’d been lied to. I ask you to rediscover what he did: the truth of a loving God who will not ever stop loving you no matter what. God that died for you and rose again to give you eternity. You’re his and always will be. Period. End of story. Amen.

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Sermon #2
Preached at the South York Conference Meeting on November 1, 2016

Normally, on Reformation Sunday, you’ll get me all dressed up in some costume, pretending to be some major figure from Reformation times, like Luther or Pope Leo, much to the amusement and delight of the folks here at Canadochly. I haven’t tried Katie yet, I’ll admit, and my friend Chao (who’s a champion cross-dresser) might be able to help me with that.

I did something different this year however. You see, I’m in the process of raising a 13 year old daughter, who has reached the point in her academic life where she is asking the question “Why do we have to learn all this stuff? What good is it going to do me?” In truth, that’s a good question. Why is the Reformation important? What do the events of 499 years ago matter to folks living in 2016 America?

So, that was my focus on Sunday. To answer that very question. And it seems fitting to revisit it yet again today for this august crowd.

I stumbled upon an article on the internet about two or three weeks ago titled “Why Conservative Evangelical Christianity Is The Worst Evil Ever Manifested Upon The Earth.” I don’t like that title, but it got my attention. Turns out, I simply could have read that article as my sermon, because it articulated precisely why the Reformation matters here and now.

You see, many have come to believe, thanks to certain already-named segments of the Church, that God’s love is conditional and that everything is dependent upon what you DO. There’s always a “but.” Christ died on a cross and rose again, BUT have you accepted him in your heart? God wants to bless you, BUT have you prayed enough? God loves you, BUT do you deserve it? Have you been good enough? Jesus saves, BUT you’ve got to do your part.

All too often, we make “God’s love, power, blessings, and desires...only as effectual as our human capacity to respond correctly.” We make God powerless to anything without our action or consent, leaving us in the driver’s seat and nothing could be more terrifying.

In my sermon on the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, I spoke about how none of us measures up even to our own standards of ethical or moral behavior, let alone the standard set by God. We fail. We fall short. It’s what we do. We’re human. We make mistakes. We have vices. We stumble and fall.

But the false teachings of parts of the Church hold all that against us. If you fail, you die. If you screw up, damnation calls. There will be consequences. Penalties assessed. And as a result, we often twist our lives into desperate effort to avoid all sin or to make amends for sins already committed, hoping that (again) by our efforts, we might convince God to let us in on all that love, blessing, and salvation. We make it all about us. The very core definition of sin to begin with. We make salvation sinful.

I don’t like the title of the article from which I got many of these thoughts. Not only is it ignorant of human history and vast numbers of atrocities we’ve committed against one another over the generations, but it’s also ignorant of Church history. This is, as we clergy know, not a new problem. It spans from Pelagius and his heresies in the 5th century to the relics, indulgences, and pieties of the Roman church in Luther’s day and on to today. Now, it’s the Sinner’s Prayer, altar calls, the Christian Entertainment complex, the 700 Club, the Prosperity Gospel, hating on abortion and gay marriage, and treating a certain political entity of our country as if “GOP” really does stand for “God’s own party.” Same crap, different day.

So what are we, as the clergy of Christ’s Holy Church, going to do about it?

About ten years ago, I remember when Jim Martin, the Methodist pastor who preached my installation here at Canadochly, was just starting in Davis, WV. Like me, serving on a mountaintop in WV where the only true church, regardless of what denominational name was on the sign outside, was a Pelagian one. He was very frustrated with this, and I remember consoling him over this by telling him, “Just preach the Gospel. Many of them have never heard it before.”

That counsel echoes across the years to today and to here. Words I need to take to heart myself, a reminder perhaps that we all need from time to time. Preach the Gospel.

Preach that...

• God loves us. Period. End of story. Done. 
• Because he loves us, he send Jesus to live, die on a cross, and rise again on the third day FOR US. FOR YOU. Because Jesus has done this, we are saved. Period. End of story. Done deal.
• And God’s promise to save us is unbreakable. There is nothing we can do or fail to do that will change it. WE ARE HIS and always will be.

You see, that is what the Reformation was about. The rediscovery of that simple truth. God’s love is NOT conditional. What we do or don’t do doesn’t matter in the end. It’s what God did that counts.

The very first thing any of us learns walking into one of these buildings as a small child is that God loves us. Jesus loves me, this I know...Even now,  how ever many decades later, we can still sing that children’s song. But as we grow older, we think it’s TOO simple, and we (clergy and laity alike) have to gum up the works.

And we gum it up with lies about how our response or action or behavior or our piety matters. But God does love us and he always will. He’s saved us and that will not be taken from us. Sin is forgiven. Our failures forgotten. All that matters is God’s love and the demonstration thereof on the cross.

It’s a sign of how much God truly loves you, how far he’d go to just be with you. As the late Brennan Manning was fond of saying in his writings and preaching, God would rather die than be without us.

That’s what Luther found again when he opened up the Scriptures and discovered God was not who he’d been taught. He discovered he’d been lied to. As inheritors of Luther’s discovery and clergy of God’s church, it falls to us to remind everyone of this. In every generation, we face a tidal wave of lies about God and his love. The only answer is the truth. One that will set us and everyone free. Amen.