Skit and Sermon for Summer Worship - August

Preached at St. John Lutheran Church on August 14, 2016
Scripture text: 1 John 4:7-21

Pastor's note: As the others, this service and sermon is also derived from the Youth Sunday materials from Cross The Sky ministries.

It is also my last official function as youth pastor of St. John Lutheran Church in New Freedom. My time with them has come to its end and I look forward to new ventures. I give thanks to God for these past three years and the service I was able to render at this congregation.

Skit - Frozen People.

A group of people stand in a group. Each one holds a sign that ID’s them as “geek,” “bully,” “homeless,” etc.

Geek: (holding phone) Man, where is that Pokemon? I know it’s around here somewhere.

Bully: (mockingly) Dude, really? What a nerd. Get out of here. You make me sick.

Geek walks away dejected and the stranger approaches the geek.

Stranger: (To Geek) Hello.

Geek, still dejected and depressed, doesn’t notice at first.

Stranger: Hello

Geek: (sadly) Oh, hi.

Stranger: What are you doing?

Geek: Oh, I was just looking for Pokemon on my phone, but…

Stranger: (interrupting) That’s cool.

Geek: (disbelieving) Really?

Stranger: Yeah, and that’s a cool shirt too.

Geek: (disbelieving) This old thing? Everyone makes fun of me for the way I dress.

Stranger: They shouldn’t. You’re a good guy.

Congregation/other cast: YOU CAN’T DO THAT. HE’S A GEEK.

Stranger: So? He’s my friend.

Geek and Stranger walk off stage together.

Homeless: (approaching bully) You got some change? Anything? I’m hungry.

Bully: (disgusted) Yuck. Look at you. You haven’t showered in days. You smell awful. Get away from me!

Homeless walks away dejected and the stranger returns, approaching the homeless.

Stranger: (To homeless) Hello.

Homeless, still dejected and depressed, doesn’t notice at first.

Stranger: Hello

Homeless: (sadly) Oh, hi.

Stranger: How are you doing?

Homeless: Not good. I’m hungry. I need something to eat.

Stranger fishes in his pocket for some money.

Stranger: (offering money) Here.

Homeless: (disbelieving) Really?

Stranger: Yeah, take it.

Homeless: You don’t think I’m going to take it for booze or drugs or something else?

Stranger: No, I trust you.

Congregation/other cast: YOU CAN’T DO THAT. HE’S HOMELESS.

Stranger: So? He’s my friend.

Homeless and Stranger walk off stage together.

Bully stands alone. He paces about impatiently, then sits down dejected.

Bully: I hate being alone.

The stranger approaches.

Stranger: Hey. You okay?

Bully: Not really. I’m all alone.

Stranger: You weren’t exactly nice to those other folk.

Bully: Why should I be? No one’s ever nice to me.

Stranger: I can be. You want to hang out?

Bully: (disbelieving) Really?

Stranger: Yeah, you want to get a snack or something?

Bully: You don’t think I’m a terrible person?

Stranger: No, I think you need a friend.

Congregation/other cast: YOU CAN’T DO THAT. HE’S A JERK.

Stranger: So? He’s my friend. (Bully and Stranger walk off stage together.)

Fin

Sermon

I find myself in an interesting place as I begin to speak tonight. Tonight’s worship service is my last official duty as the youth pastor of this church. As many of you know, my position has been eliminated due to budget issues, so this is my swan song. It is also conducted barely 24 hours after I have returned from a week at the ELCA’s national church assembly in New Orleans, so I am filled with all sorts of thoughts and reflections about what happened to me there. And so here we are, at the intersection of these two moments in my life, wondering what does it all mean?

Of course, that’s the question that is always before us. It’s why we come to church in the first place. It’s why we’re here tonight. Our lives are what they are. We come here to this place to make sense of them and to find a way forward. We come to prayer, the reading of Scripture, the sharing of Sacrament, to hear God’s take on our lives. What does he think about what we’re dealing with? What we’re doing? What does he want us to do now? What does it all mean?

The questions are complex, but their answers are not. Because it seems no what the specifics of our questions on this or any other night, we keep coming back to the same answer. It’s about love. It’s always about love.

How do I relate to people who are different from me? People like the geek or the homeless guy or the bully in our skit tonight? Love them.

How do I respond to people in my life who are ugly in spirit or alien in thought? Love them.

How do I something about the problems of our society? Or our world? You start by loving people.

How do I deal with racism or sexism or Islamophobia or homophobia in someone else? Show them the way of love. How do I deal with it within myself? Start loving those people you used to hate.

But you can’t do that, the world will want to tell you. They don’t deserve it. It’s not proper. Go and love them anyway.

But what if they laugh at me? What if people reject me? It’s a dangerous thing to love the wrong sort of folk. It can get you in trouble. Just look at Jesus. Loving the wrong sort got him nailed to a cross.

Yeah, it did. Love is dangerous. Jesus did it anyway. He knew what would happen. In fact, he counted on it. Because he loves us so much that he would do anything to be with us, even die on a cross.

(To each person) He did that for you. That’s how much he loves you.

Jesus dies because God would rather die than be without us. Now THAT’S love.

And that love is the root and the foundation of all that we do. Growing up, I was that nerd in the skit. I got picked on and tormented by bullies. On my own, I’m not going to love people like that. I can’t do it. But, because of Christ, I can and I will.

Jesus doesn’t care what the world thinks of you. Jesus doesn’t really care even what you think of you. He just loves you and he calls you to love others.  That’s where all our questions lead. It’s where we are in this moment no matter what experiences have brought us to this place tonight. We are loved by a God who gives everything to claim us as his own and we are sent to show that love to a world that needs it. It really is that simple. Amen.

Summer Worship at St. John for July

Preached at St. John Lutheran Church on July 10, 2016
Scripture reading: John 1:1-5, 20:1-18

Pastor's Note: As last month, this sermon/worship liturgy comes out of Cross The Sky Ministry's Youth Sunday materials.

This Little Light... Skit

Three Christians stand in a line with lit candles.
The Accuser approaches

Accuser: How can you stand there and pray to God after all the things you’ve done? You’re a failure. You’re sick and twisted. Think of the skeletons in your closet. Think of all the times you’ve lied. Hated others. Cheated people. Lusted after what you could not have. Think on all that and tell me again that you believe!

First Christian puts out their light.

Accuser: How can you stand there and pray to God after all the things you’ve seen? 9/11. Orlando. Floods in West Virginia. Wildfires in California. Police shooting black people. People shooting police. Terrorism across the world. War. Violence. Disease. People all over dying for stupid reasons. And yet what does God do about it? Nothing. Think on all that and tell me again that you believe!

Second Christian puts out their light.

Third Christian begins singing “This Little Light of Mine”

Accuser: No, wait, stop that...Don’t do that.

Third Christian encourages congregation to join in.

Accuser: You can’t...no...(He’s drowned out and cowers.)

As song continues, the third Christian relights the second one’s candle and they join in the song.

As song continues, the second Christian relights the first one’s candle and they join in the song.

Accuser: No....arrrgh! (He runs away.)

Song concludes.

-----

Darkness. Despair. Hopelessness. Fear. Anxiety. Sorrow. These are the most potent weapons of the enemy. All designed to make us think one of three things: God does not exist, God has no power to change things, or God does not care.

As the Accuser makes his claims in our skit, you can almost see how this works. He throws our sins and our failures at us and what happens? We become convinced that we are unlovable, that our sins are unforgivable. Self-loathing sets in. Even God, if he’s out there, cannot redeem us and even if he can, why would he? Despair poisons our minds and our hearts.

That self-loathing can spread. How often do we begin to play this little game with ourselves and our neighbors; the game where we try to make everyone look worse than us? I may be a sinner, but at least I’m not one of THOSE people over there. I may have made my mistakes, but at least I’m not like THAT guy. We think that if we highlight other people’s failures and vices, God will somehow ignore our own. Do you realize what’s happened when we do that? Who is the Accuser now? Doing Satan’s work for him, yeah, that’s a winning strategy.

But that’s not Evil’s only strategy. He takes things from the personal to the general. Let’s talk about the world and how screwed up it is. A place where children can and are mowed down by madmen with assault weapons. Where wedding celebrations are bombed by drones and suicidal maniacs. Where the earth itself rains death and destruction down on us with earthquakes and fires and floods. Where tiny microbes can fell even the mightiest of us. Where is God in the midst of that?

I don’t know. None of us do and that unanswered question haunts each of us, adding more fuel to the devil’s fire.

It is not easy to be a believer. Easier by far to believe the world is chaos, that evil holds sway, but that is not who we are. To be Christian requires a certain fortitude, for faith calls us to both defiance and patience in the face of the evils of this world. Because what we do believe is even though things are pretty screwed up now, they won’t always be that way. There will come a day when all will be put right. Evil does not have the last word.

The Scriptures testify to this truth. John’s Gospel tells us that the darkness cannot overcome the light. And we see that most fully in the greatest story of our faith, that Easter morning when the stone rolled away. Here is all the answers to Satan’s accusations.

Think God doesn’t care about you? Look to how he treats Mary, a sinner like us, calling her by name with love and affection in his voice.

Think God has no power? Look, the stone is rolled back. He is alive who once was dead. If he can do that, what can’t he do?

Yes, the world is a mess and so too are we. But it will not always be so. God’s work is not done. He’s not finished with us yet. Creation is ongoing. It hasn’t stopped. You and I, we are a long way from what God intends, but he’s still molding and crafting us, forgiving our faults and growing our faith. That takes time. God’s plan was never going to happen overnight. It’s been going on for the world since the beginning of human history; why would it be any different for us?

And as that plan works itself out, the world continues to grown in the midst of its own chaos. We are called to stand firm in the midst of it all. Yes, tragedy and atrocity continue, but we are promised a new heaven and a new earth through Christ’s death and resurrection. They’re not here yet, but they’re coming. In the meantime, we stand firm against a crazy world and say with boldness, “I still believe.”

That is our light, a light that others can and will see. When we stand stalwart in the face of the world’s insanity and our own failings, others will take notice. You cannot miss a candle in the darkness. Be that candle. Trust that despite the way things are with yourself and the world that they will not always be so. God is still at work. Trust in that and your faith will be a guide to others. Be the light. Amen.

Weekly Devotional for June 26

Scripture texts: Romans 7:14-25 (Appointed for June 30), 1 Corinthians 13

Friedrich Nietzsche once famously wrote that “Those who stare too long into the Abyss may find the Abyss staring back at them.” The saying means that those who dwell too long on the negative things of life can find that negativity haunting them in ways they never expected. I know precisely how this feels as the world has continued to drag my spirit down with its constant barrage of setbacks and terrible news.

I spoke about this in my sermon on Sunday; about feeling tired and burned out by all the bad news in the world and in my life. I am trying to find the hope in the midst of it all, because it is there. There are signs galore that God is at work even in the midst of disaster.

Sometimes however the biggest struggle is when I realize the “Abyss” isn’t just out there in the world; it’s in here, inside me. When my own mistakes and failures come back to haunt me. There are two examples of that in my life, one in my family and another amidst my work at Canadochly. In both cases, I’ve been called on the carpet for errors and mistakes I’ve made, which is never a good feeling. But what am I to do here? I am human and I am prone to err as anyone. The things of which I stand accused are things of which I’m guilty. There’s no escape here. No pleading innocence. I’ve genuinely screwed up. And that can be a heavy burden to bear.

Where is the hope to be found within? Where is God at work within?

St. Paul wrote at length about these very questions in the text from Romans that’s appointed for this week. (It’s definitely one of those Holy Spirit moments that as I’m sitting here, dining on ashes, that this text would be one of those appointed for the Daily Lectionary.) Like me, Paul seeks to do good. Paul wants to be a benefit to the world, to other people, and to the Church. But like all of us, he stumbles from time to time.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

How many of us could say the same thing about ourselves? We all carry the burden of who we are and what we are. We can all fall into traps of our own creation, traps formed by our idiosyncrasies, our anxieties, our vices, our ignorance, our pride, and a whole host of other realities about ourselves. Satan has a frighteningly easy job when it comes to making us fail; we do a very good job of it on our own without any help at all.

This is, as Paul writes accurately, the reality of sin. What wretched people are we! Seemingly forever trapped between good and evil, torn by these two halves of ourselves that work against one another. But Paul also recognizes that what we are is not always what we will be and he gives thanks to God for the work that God does within each of us to bring us out of death (sin) into life (righteousness.)

There was a time when I loathed using 1 Corinthians 13 as a wedding text, but I’ve come a full 180 degrees on that. The reason is because of what that text really means and it ties in quite nicely with what Paul is talking about here in Romans. “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face-to-face.” It is a text about transformation. It’s about who we are is not who we will be. And how does that transformation come about? It comes through God’s love for us.

So here again, I find myself drawn to the truth of that saying from Brennan Manning that I’ve quoted so often of late. “God loves us as we are, not as we should be, because none of us are as we should be.” How true indeed. God loves us in our sin and in our righteousness. God loves us when we do good and when we do evil. God loves us when we succeed and when we fail.

The hardest thing for many of us to do is to forgive ourselves our faults. But a huge part of the Christian life is to see people as God does and to love them (in as much as we are able) as he does. That includes OURSELVES as much as anyone and everyone else.

My friends, can we love ourselves as we are loved? Can we forgive ourselves as we are forgiven? These are not always easy things to do. In fact, they can be among the hardest things we are called to do as Christians.

God loves you. God loves me. And because of that love, he’s not finished with us yet. He still at work in the midst of our lives, blessing our successes and forgiving our failures, drawing us every closer to that moment when we will no longer “see in a mirror dimly.” We’re an imperfect product that God continues to refine and mold and transform. But he will never stop working on us, because we are his precious ones. We are his beloved. He loves us. To him, we’re worth every effort. Amen.

Weekly Devotional for June 6, 2016

Scripture reading: Luke 8:40-56 (Daily lectionary text appointed for June 8), Genesis 18:9-14

Sometimes, it's hard not to laugh.

We laugh at things unexpected. That's essentially the essence of comedy. The joke never quite has the punch line you expect. People are never quite as grandiose as they appear. A person cannot be truly that foolish, can they? Someone fell over in the middle of the sidewalk. Didn't see that coming. Ha ha!

As some of the above examples imply, laughter can have an element of cruelty to it. The thing unexpected is someone's misfortune. An otherwise intelligent person says something stupid. An otherwise graceful person takes a tumble. Someone says something so outlandish that our only response is to laugh at them.

Which brings us to our Scripture readings this week. Two stories of miracles. Two stories of laughter. We are likely familiar with both. God announced to Abraham and Sarah that they will have a son in their old age. While biologically men are capable of fathering children at any point, it is common knowledge that the reproductive organs of women shut down after a certain age. While modern science has made that age later and later, this is not a modern story. It's ridiculous on its face. There is no way for Sarah to have children, so she laughs.

Jesus encounters the dead daughter of Jairus and declares boldly that she is merely sleeping. The crowd can see the evidence before them: the ashen skin, the lack of breath, the cold skin. The girl is quite dead. Who is this idiot who thinks this is what sleep looks like? So they laugh.

It's hard to blame them. What God proposes in both these stories is nonsense on its face. Dead is dead. Barren is barren (or menopausal, as the case may be.) These things cannot be changed. There is no cure for them, no reversal. To suggest otherwise is utter foolishness.

But as God says to Abraham, "Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?" Or as Jesus himself says at another point, "With God, all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26)

We make many bold and seemingly impossible claims as Christians. We claim that Jesus rose from the dead after being crucified. We claim that people have miraculously recovered numerous times in Biblical stories of incurable ailments. We say God parted the sea to let his people escape slavery. We claim Jesus walked on top of water and made enough food to feed thousands of people from one meager packed lunch. And perhaps most impossible of all, we claim that God loves us so much that he came down to earth as a mortal and then died to claim us as his own. It's enough to make one ROFL (I presume most folks are Internet savvy enough to know what that acronym means.)

But it's all true. For with God, all things are possible. Salvation is ours through the impossible love of a God beyond our comprehension. These ancient stories stand as evidence to that which we can barely believe. If God can and does do such things, what might he do with me?

Indeed.

Skit and Sermon for Summer Worship - June 5, 2016

Performed and Preached at St. John Lutheran Church, New Freedom on June 5, 2016
Scripture text: Romans 8:12-17, 31-39

Pastor's Note: We are using a wonderful resource from Cross The Sky Music for our Summer Worship services at SJNF. The plot of the skit comes from their Youth Sunday release, so I take no credit for that storyline, but I include it here to give context to the sermon that follows.

Image from History.com

Danny The Kid

A skit for four+ parts (Bad Image, Danny the Kid, and at least two townspeople).

Scene
Townsfolk are milling about an Old West town making small talk. “How nice is the weather,” “It’s such a pretty day,” “I heard that Old Joe picked up some new stock the other day,” and so forth.

Enter “Bad Image,” the villain. He’s a nasty bit of pure negativity.

Bad Image: Who cares about any of that? It’s too hot. Why can’t the sun just go away? You people disgust me. I can’t take all this anymore.

He draws his gun (finger and thumb gesture) and corrals the townsfolk, taking them hostage.

Bad Image: Let me tell you how it really is. God doesn’t care about any of you. You’re nothing. You’re worthless. You sin. You disobey. You think this sunny day is about you? Hah! Your lives don’t matter squat to anyone, let alone God.

The townsfolk become depressed, looking down at their feet. Bad Image makes to tie them up.

Bad Image: Here, hold this.

Bad Image hands the rope to a townsfolk, who does as he’s told without looking up. Bad Image then steps back to gloat over his work.

Bad Image: Look at you. How pathetic. You’re holding yourselves prisoner. Ha!

A loud noise from behind Bad Image. Maybe the “Good, Bad, and the Ugly” music riff and then Danny the Kid enters, carrying a Bible.

Townsfolk: Oooh, it’s Danny the Kid. He’ll save us.

Bad Image: Enough. There’s no hope for you.

Danny the Kid and Bad Image stare each other down.

Bad Image: Danny the Kid, this town ain’t big enough for the both of us.

Danny the Kid: You got that right. Let my people go.

Bad Image: Oh, no. It won’t be that easy for you.

Bad Image opens fire with his “gun” (make bang bang noises). Danny the Kid uses his Bible to block the shots. Bad Image fires six times and misses all six. He keeps shooting in futility after the sixth shot (make click sounds for the empty gun.)

Danny the Kid opens up the Bible and reads Romans 5:8.

Danny the Kid: But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him.

Danny then slams the Bible shut with a loud noise, like a gunshot. Bad Image staggers as if shot.

Bad Image: (stuttering) You...got...me. (Falls over)

Danny unties the townsfolk.

Danny: You’re free. Bad Image can’t hurt you anymore. God loves you. Go with God.

Cheers and end scene.

Sermon


So good and justice win the day. This bit of fun that you just saw is a depiction of what goes on inside our hearts and our heads pretty much every day. We humans are constantly torn between who we are and who we wish we were.

There’s always that voice, that bad guy inside us, who wants to hurl those ugly truths at us. We’re not worthy. God doesn’t really love us. We’re sinners. We’re inadequate. We’re failures. Listen to him too long and you're liable to put yourself in prison just like the townsfolk did. Bad Image, the villain in the skit, didn’t have to do much to kidnap the townspeople. All he had to do was remind them of their inadequacies and then they made it easy for him.

Just like we do.

There’s just one problem. This isn’t the whole story. There’s another voice that needs be heard in this inner trial: Christ’s voice. And what is it that he says?

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. Abide in my love.

And if Christ’s words are not enough, there are his actions. Going to the cross, being nailed to the tree, all for you and for me.

Martin Luther himself says of this. “So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: "I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also!”

That’s the voice that really matters in the end. Not that we’re worthy or unworthy. That we’ve done right or that we’ve sinned. The last word is God’s. He loves us. He wants to be with us. He sent Christ to save us. Christ went to the cross and rose again on the third day to claim us as his own. End of story. He’s won. We’ve won. It’s over. It is finished.

Do you truly believe that God loves you as you are and not as you should be? Do you know that’s the truth? That this is what it’s all about? The whole story is God’s desperate passionate attempt to claim you, his beloved, for himself. You mean more to him than words can say. Human language, human thought, is inadequate to describe the level of God’s love for his people. Sin does not matter. It’s forgiven. Failure does not matter. It’s forgotten. All that matters is you and God loves you. Period.

For I am convinced that...nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Amen.

Weekly Devotional - A Brief Discussion of Biblical Cosmology

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

Heaven
Scripture Reference: Revelation 21:1-5

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Return of the Weekly Devotional

Scripture: Mark 1:35-39

Pastor's Note: The last devotional I did was on Holy Week. Knowing the intensity surrounding the celebration of our Lord's Resurrection, I figured that would suffice for two weeks: both Holy Week and the week of Easter. 

Then life happened.

The week following Low Sunday was a trip out of town. The week after that was wedding preparations. The week following that was funeral preparations. The week after that brings us to today. Hopefully, we're back on track.


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Pastor: I don't take a day off. The devil doesn't take a day off, so why should I?
Wise Parishioner: You need a better role model.

This old Internet meme highlights something we Pastors are often guilty of: refusing to take time for self-care. I'm feeling it right now, as my comments above point out; that sense of weariness as the weight of the world takes its toll.

But we bring it on ourselves, forgetting that we're no good to anyone exhausted and careworn. As the joke above points out, we need a better role model to follow and there is no better one than Christ himself. Jesus often took time out of his ministry to retreat from the world. He went off to the mountain to pray, to recharge, and to rest. And he does this A LOT. Two or three occasions in each of the Gospel accounts, the Mark text I reference above being just one of them.

from Pinterest

Now, as a pastor, I can call out myself and my colleagues for our failures in this regard. But let's be honest. We are hardly the only profession who is guilty of this failure.

Some months ago, I remember driving with the radio playing and an advertisement for a new business phone system came on. It was touting all these features, including "no matter where you are, you're never away from the office" or something to that effect.

What a nightmare. People would actually want that?

The sad truth is yes. For many, that's become something of an ideal. Never getting away. Becoming the ultimate paragons of productivity. We take work home with us in order to keep up with it. It goes with us on vacation. No matter where we are, we're never away from the office. We fill up our schedules with busyness and activity and do not take time to recharge. We see leisure and rest as evils, a sin of idleness or frivolity.

And we suffer for it. After all, as is true with people like me, we are no good to anyone exhausted and careworn and that's exactly what we're becoming.

Jesus often got in trouble for breaking the rules of the Sabbath, but he only ever broke them in common sense ways (i.e. helping people in need). He was fastidious in keeping those laws in the way they were truly meant to be kept: The Sabbath is the gift of rest, so take a break. His mountain excursions were his Sabbath and he kept to the habit, knowing he needed that time with his Father to renew his strength for the work ahead.

Go and do likewise. As spring and summer come upon us, don't let work become an all-consuming idol that devours your life. Remember the Sabbath and what it is for. Take a break to recharge and renew and become yourself again.

Weekly Devotional for Holy Week & Easter

Scripture reading: John 19:17-24, 28-30

I had two jokes cross my Facebook wall in the last week or so. The first, showing up on St. Patrick’s Day, was a picture of a group of people in a bar, drinking away. The caption read “If Americans have a drink called the ‘Irish Car Bomb,’ do the Irish have a drink called the ‘American School Shooting?’” The second was a New Yorker-style cartoon showing a man and a pastor together on the front step of a church on Easter Sunday. The caption read “I hate to say it, Pastor, but I think you’re getting stale. Every time I come here, you preach on the Resurrection.”

The first is, of course, a bit of black humor which may be all the more fitting this week with what we see on the news. The terrorist attack in Brussels dominates the national news, alongside the local news here in Pennsylvania of a retired police officer who murdered two Turnpike workers. The common perception is that we live in ugly times and they are getting worse. That’s probably not entirely inaccurate. With Donald Trump doing his best “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” imitation and his more rabid followers doing their best to obey by sucker-punching protesters, it seems we’ve reached a very dark place in our election cycle. Add to that the seemingly constant screech of warnings from scientists about climate change and we’re all starting to ask why we’re all in this handbasket and where are we going?

In a lot of ways, there should be nothing surprising by all this. We live in a broken world, marred by sin and death. All the nightmarish images we see on the news each night are merely a reflection of that reality. To put it metaphorically, we all live on Good Friday, seemingly stuck in the shadow of the cross. Our only perception is that of death and suffering. The temptation to despair is strong in these times.

But a dose of perspective is in order. As ugly as things seem to be becoming, we have been here before. That is perhaps why the first joke, however grim, gave me a chuckle. There was a time, not so long ago, when terrorist violence in Northern Ireland was a seemingly everyday occurrence (much as mass shootings have become here). And while there is still much tension there even today, they have largely moved beyond the ugliness of random violence. The cycle of history has moved. That’s the way of things. Today’s crisis is tomorrow’s memory. Tomorrow’s crisis…well, we’ll deal with it when it gets here.

But perspective isn’t just this sort of recognition that the world has always been screwed up, it’s also knowing that the cross we witness is a precursor to something grand and glorious. The story of Christ does not end on Good Friday any more than our fates are bound to this present reality. There is something more that awaits us. To quote the old saying, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a coming!”

Which brings me to the second joke. Yeah, it’s funny that a guy who probably only shows up once a year on Easter gets to hear the same sort of sermon over and over again. But that’s what we should all be hearing not just on Easter, but every week. It’s all about the Resurrection. Christ is risen! Death does not have the last word. The Kingdom of God comes. Easter is real. It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a coming!

That is our hope and our destiny. The cycles of history will turn as they will. Today’s crisis will fade and tomorrow’s will emerge. But one day, perhaps soon, the promise of the cross and empty tomb will come to fulfillment. Christ’s words from the cross will echo across the ages. “It is finished!” And the world will be set right at last. Life will triumph over death. This is God’s promise to the whole of creation. It is not here yet. That is abundantly clear. But it is coming. It is on the horizon. And therein lies our hope.

Christ is risen. And one day, so too shall we.

Sermon for Palm Sunday

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran and at St. John Lutheran, New Freedom on March 20, 2016
Scripture readings: Acts 15:4-14, Mark 7:1-8

We’ve come to the end of our Lenten series on the book of Acts. As Jesus makes his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, we conclude our look at the church of the 1st century. We’ve seen how the first apostles did it, turned this movement led by a small handful into the juggernaut it’s become in the 21st century.

Having read all these stories over the past six weeks, we might be inclined to believe that the apostles always kept their focus on what matters most. They were given a job by Christ at his Ascension, to go and be witnesses to the kingdom of God, to make other disciples and to spread the good word of what God has done. And they did that, all without letting petty things like culture, race, and personal opinion get in the way of their mission.

Except that’s not quite how it happened.

The Church is made up of human beings and there’s no escaping that we humans make mistakes. We are creatures of both impulse and thoughtfulness, of both virtue and vice, of both ego and selflessness. We get it right sometimes and sometimes we get it wrong.

The early church was no different and so I think it helpful for us to not merely look at what they did right, but also some of the traps they fell into. We’ve already seen hints of some of this in our previous discussions. Peter went to Cornelius only after a vision from God convinced him that a Roman could be a true disciple, and even after that he had at least a few occasions of treating Gentile Christians as second-class. His failings however hint at the biggest controversy, the biggest distraction, of the early Church, which is going to be our focus today.

The Church began on Pentecost and while that famous story highlights how far and wide the first Christians came from around the world with its often-hard-to-pronounce list of nations (I've lost count of the number of times I've heard about the people of the nation of "Cappuccino.") But it also makes clear that those first recipients were all Diaspora Jews. Gentile Christians would only come later with the missionary work of Philip, Peter, and, most prolifically, Paul. But all of that raised a question in the minds of early Christians. Must one become Jewish before becoming Christian?

This debate is at the heart of the Acts text for today. Paul and Barnabas are standing up for the Gentiles, arguing that there is no need for such extra burdens, but it’s Peter who makes the most powerful argument for them. His words are some that we should heed today. “why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.”

Saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus. Peter drives home the point that there is only one thing that truly matters. Jesus lived, died, and rose again for the sake of the whole world and all of its people. We cannot lose sight of that for the sake of distractions that we humans keep throwing up as of first importance.

That is, of course, what Jesus is complaining about in our Gospel lesson. The tendency of the Pharisees to embrace "human tradition" over what got wants. They love their distractions. As do we. All over the place and all the time. We love distraction. It is easily the greatest idolatry of the Church today.

We really like our institutional distractions. These are rapidly moving to the forefront as we face the present crisis in the American church. My denomination is struggling with money. My congregation doesn’t have enough members to sustain itself. My church might close. Not to put too fine a point on it, but it’s not “your” church. It’s not “mine.” It’s God’s church and there was never a guarantee that these things would last forever. The church in which Peter, Paul, James, and the others are having their debate in Acts; do you think it still exists? Is that building still standing? No to both questions. It’s long gone, but the True Church remains and always will.

The church is not a building. It is not an institution. It is the Bride of Christ, the collected whole of all believers together. That will last forever. Its local manifestations will change with the tides of history. We cannot let sentimentality blind us to this reality.

I’ve spoken at some length already in this preaching series about our moral distractions, so I’m not going to beat this dead horse much more. But our insistence that others match our often arbitrary and random moral standards is a huge barrier for many of those we might otherwise reach for Christ. We cannot let our self-righteousness blind us to the truth that God loves everyone for who they are and not who they are supposed to be.

Our third distraction is a theological one, or to put it more simply, it’s our addiction to being right. I’ve spoken about this somewhat too, believing that our manifestation of the church is just somehow better than any other (and certainly better than whatever those lousy heathens and atheists believe.) But none of us really know for certain the whole of this God stuff. Just as God comes to us where we are, we come to God as we are, each of us in a different place, with different experiences, and different understandings. How can we say our personal experience is more real or more legit than someone else’s?

And yet we do it. We do it because we want to feel better about what we believe. And yet rightness is not what saves us. Listen again to the words of Peter. It is grace that saves us. We cannot let our own fragile egos blind us to this truth.

Our human proclivities can lead us and the church into so many traps. And the course of history over the last 2000 years shows us how often we failed to avoid them. Thousands, if not millions, have died for these failures and so many more are alienated from us, making our mission all the harder. But therein lies the rub. It’s why we like our distractions. They’re easy. To stand in judgment or arrogance or to cling to nostalgia and memory is easy. To go forth in honesty and humility to change the world one person at a time, to give of ourselves, to sacrifice our safety and resources to serve our God and his people, that’s hard.

Christianity is not for the weak or the timid. We are here to change the world and that is no small task. But I’ve said it before and it is no exaggeration, the world needs us. We look around and we see a broken reality. People hurting, dying, starving, betrayed, exploited. Who will go to them and who go for them? God calls each of us to do as his son did, to give all for the sake of those he loves. As God’s son did for us, we are to do for others. And let not your fears, your ego, or anything else distract you from that mission. Amen.

Devotional for Fifth Lent

Scripture text: John 12:1-11

This week, we have the evangelist John's take on a familiar story; the anointing of Jesus by Mary. The synoptic Gospels frame this story differently, showing in their version the woman as a stranger and one of ill repute at that. But John tells the story differently, with his anointer being Mary, the sister of Lazarus whom Jesus has just recently raised from the dead.

In fact, the only thing the two versions of the story have in common is that a woman washes Jesus' feet. That makes it difficult to reconcile the two versions as being two interpretations of a single event, as folks are wont to do with stories like this. The synoptic story is about hospitality and forgiveness, contrasting the woman's lavish behavior to Simon's stinginess as well as the woman's gratitude for grace to Simon's self-righteousness. John's story is about so much more.

John implies at the start that the anointing is an act of gratitude; Jesus has resurrected Mary's brother, Lazarus, and now she responds with this over-the-top anointing. Judas objects, doing his best impression of a modern day "concern troll." Jesus refutes his point in one of the most misunderstood retorts about the poor in the Scriptures. The story then concludes with the ominous warning that Lazarus is in the cross-hairs of the religious officials along with Jesus.

There's too much to unpack here in one short devotional. So I want to focus on two contrasting elements of the story, Mary and Judas.

Judas' words are largely ignored because of what we know of who he is. He's a thief and a betrayer, so the logic of his statements here is dismissed out of hand. Yet what he says is imminently practical, even if his motives are flawed. This act of anointing is wasteful. It is over the top. It is nonsensical. He may be a "concern troll," as I say above, but his concern is a valid one.

In the church today, whether we realize it or not, we often play the part of Judas here. Trying to be pragmatic, reasonable, and logical, we disdain and avoid the sort of extravagance or risk-taking that Mary embraces. But much like Judas, our concern masks an uglier motive; in our case, it's fear. Fear that we will fail. Fear that we will run out. Fear of what others may think or say.

But neither Mary nor Jesus cares for these things. All that matters is this lavish outpouring of affection, love, and thanksgiving. Jesus is the one who brings life from death. He's done it with Lazarus. He will do it again with all of us via the empty tomb of Easter.

What Mary has done here is a model for us to follow. Jesus himself echoes this event when he kneels down before the disciples on Maundy Thursday to wash their feet, another act of inappropriate extravagance, there highlighted as a model of service to the people God loves.

In many ways, what Jesus says about the poor here reveals an opportunity. If it is life-from-death that Jesus brings and if we are to reveal that truth by what we do and who we are, then the ever-present poor provide us infinite chances to show the world who Christ is. And we do that not with stinginess or reasonableness, but with over-the-top extravagance. These are people that God loves, people for whom Christ died and rose again, people for whom grace upon grace has been given. How can we not shower them (and all others Christ loves) with the same extravagant love that Mary shows Jesus? It's our calling. It's who we are. It's who Jesus wants us to be. Go and do likewise.

Sermon for Fifth Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran and St. John Lutheran on March 14, 2016
Scripture texts: Acts 17:22-34, Matthew 15:11-20

I’ve said before there seems to be a cycle to Church history. Every 500 years or so, the Church undergoes a transformative moment. A large part of the reason I’m doing this preaching series is because I believe that we are in just such a moment now. The world’s largest Christian nation is undergoing massive change and transition. The American church isn’t quite certain what to do with itself.

But this isn’t the first time the Church has gone through this sort of transition and transformation. That’s the benefit of studying history. It’s the benefit of looking at the book of Acts and the stories of the church in circumstances very much like today. But there are also lessons to be learned from the first of these great transformative moments; from the era of Augustine and Patricius in the 5th century.

Patricius, or Patrick as he’s more widely known, has a holiday that we will celebrate in just a few short days. We know his name. We know he has something to do with Irish history. But for most of us, that’s the extent of our knowledge. The rest of it is lost in shamrocks, leprechauns, and green beer.

From the National Catholic Reporter

But Patrick stands out as a great paragon of our faith. In a time when evangelism was often accompanied with violence, either because the Church used the power of the Roman Empire to enforce its will or because the intended recipients of the faith had a fondness for murdering missionaries, Patrick managed a feat unheard of in those times: the bloodless conversion of an entire nation. Those people were the Irish and that made it even more amazing. The Irish of that era were made up of vicious warmongers and slavers. A modern equivalent would be for one Christian missionary to go to ISIS and then convert the whole lot of them without a single drop of blood being spilled.

How’d he pull it off?

He took a lesson from St. Paul, most likely the very text we have as our Acts lesson today. Paul has come to Athens, then as now the capital of the Greek world. As was his wont, he seeks out a place of prayer in the city, which is the Aeropagus.

Now the Greeks of this era had a very pragmatic approach to religion. They are a polytheistic people, believing in many gods. Those of us who have studied mythology (or watched Disney’s Hercules) know their names: Zeus, Athena, Ares, and the like.

But this is also several hundred years after Alexander the Great had nearly conquered the world in the name of Greece, so they’ve now become a very cosmopolitan culture. They’ve encountered many other peoples with many other religious understandings. As such, they have begun to incorporate or at least acknowledge the gods of other peoples. In the Aeropagus were not merely the shrines dedicated to their own gods, but also to the gods of Egypt and Persia and other lands the Greeks had encountered. And, to make sure they didn’t miss any, they put up an altar to “the unknown god.”
Paul sees his chance and begins to talk to the crowd about the god they claim is unknown, but is known to him. He speaks to them of Jesus Christ.

What is remarkable about this encounter to me is how respectful of the Greeks Paul proves to be. He introduces them to Jesus on their terms. And that, I believe, is the lesson Patrick takes with him to Ireland 400 years later. When he introduces the Irish to Jesus, he does so on their terms.
It works and it has created for us one of the most wondrous expressions of our faith that we have. Orthodox, devout, and yet beautifully unique, Irish Christianity still inspires people today with their symbols and stories. The Celtic cross, the legend of the shamrock as a symbol of the Trinity, the Breastplate prayer, and Irish hymnody like “Be Thou My Vision” continue to inspire and encourage people’s faith today.

But none of that would have happened if Patrick had made the mistake of which we Christians are so often guilty. When we refuse to accept that Christianity and belief in Christ can appear in very different ways than our own and be just as right, proper, and orthodox.

You see, I spoke last week about how different has become dangerous for many of us. And that’s not all that new to the human experience. For far too often, we have seen being Christian as “being like us.” Again, as I said before, diversity is not our strength and large part of the reason for that is that we demand conformity in nearly everything. Not simply belief.

We’ve come up with all sorts of excuses and rationales in our minds for why those seeking God need to abandon nearly their entire identity in order to meet him. Gays must become straight. People who read Harry Potter must burn their books. People who love rock-n-roll must give it up. Foreigners must speak English. Give up all that you are that is of the devil. These might seem extreme examples, but I’ve seen them all in the church and they are more common than we’d like to admit.

Paul makes no such demands of the Greeks, nor Patrick of the Irish. Perhaps because they both understood Jesus’ lesson in our Gospel that what matters is not what goes into a person, but what comes forth from the heart.

I remember when I was a teenager being shocked one Sunday that one of our Vietnamese refugees that I spoke of a few weeks ago came to worship in a Megadeth T-shirt. I was beside myself with indignity. Doesn’t he know how inappropriate that is, to walk into the house of God with this grotesque character leering off of his chest? I would certainly never wear a t-shirt to worship and even if I had, it would have been of a nice wholesome Christian group like Petra.

Such a pleasant image.

I didn’t get it. This man had already given up so much and here I was, immature in my own faith, demanding that he surrender more to make me feel better about myself. And yet, nothing that he was wearing or listening to had changed the fact that he was there, in worship, singing praise to God.
Of all people, I should have known better, having listened to people tell me my hobbies were of the devil for so long. What went in did not matter. What came out was praise to God and that was all that mattered.

And all this was before I knew that most of the members of Megadeth are devout Christians themselves. One is (presumably) an ordained LCMS pastor. Wrap your brain around that for a minute. The members of one of the most successful heavy metal bands in the world are Christian. Talk about how different we can be one another.

People are who they are and God comes to each one of us where we are. Respecting that truth goes a long way to winning people for God. Yes, God loves you as you are and not as you should be (as Brennan Manning so eloquently puts it) Perhaps more accurate for our purposes today is to say that God loves you as you are and not as I think you should be.

Paul won over the Greeks by respecting who they were. Patrick won the Irish by respecting who they were. Neither man worried about what they thought of these “others,” but cared only for God thought of them. And what did God think? Well, he sent Jesus to die and rise again for them. It was enough for them. Perhaps it should be enough for us. Amen.

Sermon for Fourth Lent (Lataere Sunday)

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran and St. John Lutheran, New Freedom on March 7, 2016
Scripture texts: Acts 10:23-36, 44-48, Matthew 9:9-13

I’ve mentioned a few times in my sermons that among my various geek and nerd activities are attending conventions. Most folks I suspect are not all that familiar with this not-so-little corner of fandom, where thousands of people will gather at a convention center for a weekend. Star Trek kinda started it all back in the 70s with their fan conventions, but since then there are fan conventions for comic books, Star Wars, Doctor Who, My Little Pony, and lord knows what else.

Image from the Columbus Dispatch

About 8 or 9 years ago, before we were married, Sarah and I decided to take a vacation together to Origins, which is one of the larger tabletop gaming conventions. It’s held in Columbus, OH each year around July 4 weekend. Emily tagged along and we had a really good time together, playing games, seeing the people in costumes, buying some new games in the dealer's room, and so forth. There’s no lack of things to do at one of these events. And then on Sunday morning, we went to church together, not at a local congregation, but at the chapel service held at the convention itself.

Wait, what? There was Sunday morning worship scheduled as a part of a giant gaming convention? As a matter of fact, yes. And there were probably about 50 to 60 people there, not all that different from a typical Sunday morning at most congregations around the country. And that’s what it felt like too. Just another Sunday morning, worshiping our Lord, albeit in the most unlikely of settings.

One of the things I’ve always appreciated about geekdom is how diverse it is. People of all stripes become fans: men, women, young, old, black, white, gay, straight, Christian, and all other religions as well. Despite the stereotypes, it’s often really hard to pin down precisely what a “typical” geek is.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the church. If you ask any one of us what a “typical Christian” is like, and odds are good you’ll end up describing someone almost exactly like you. Diversity has not been a strong suit in the church. You have white churches and black churches. Straight churches and gay churches. Often times, churches for older people and churches for younger people. And rarely do they intersect or even interact with one another.

Sociologists have noted that human beings often unconsciously gather in homogeneous groups. In other words, like attracts like. But I fear we’ve taken that a bit too far. There’s a reason people say that Sunday morning is the most segregated time in American society. It does not reflect the wider world. And there are a lot of dangers in that.

Last Sunday, in my children’s sermon, I told the old story about the pastor who disguises himself as a homeless person on the front step of his church. Ask yourself why no one in that church invited him inside? You might come up with a lot of different answers, but they pretty much all boil down to one thing. He was different. And especially in recent years, in our country, different has become dangerous.

But is it really?

Jesus doesn’t seem to think so. In fact, you can pretty quickly lose count of the times in the Gospel stories when Jesus encounters people who are not mainstream Jewish folk and yet he still shows them some manner of grace and compassion. Countless lepers and those dealing with disabilities, who were considered taboo by the good law-abiding Pharisees and other community leaders. Roman centurions, Gentiles and Samaritans, and, of course, Matthew the tax collector in our Gospel lesson today; to Jesus, they’re all just people in need of his message, in need of his salvation.

Unfortunately, we haven’t gotten the memo.

We’re in good company there, however. For all of the wonderful things Peter accomplishes in the first years of the church, this proves to be one of his blind spots. The book of Acts dedicates an entire chapter (chapter 10) to Peter’s somewhat forceful education in this regard. And again, it involves a Roman, here a centurion named Cornelius. Here is one hungry to learn of Jesus and yet Peter would likely have rejected this dirty Roman out of hand had God not sent a powerful vision to Peter in a dream.

Peter, to his credit, learns his lesson (at least for a time. Paul calls him out later when he reverts to his old ways. Can’t say Peter isn’t human.) But about us? Are we going to limit our outreach and evangelism to those simply like us in race, economic status, political opinion, and the like? Or is the Church going to see the world as it is, a great mix of different individuals all hungry for what we have to offer?

The truth is, while we may not realize it, we need one another. We need people who are different. A big part of the reason different has become dangerous in these times is that we are having a very hard time seeing the humanity of those others. We base our opinions on biased news reports, prejudices, and often extremely limited contact. We blame whole groups for the actions of a few individuals. And yet, when they try to tell us the truth, try to show us their humanity, we do not listen. We lecture, we frown, we look down on them, and tell them that their life experiences aren’t real because we know better.

It’s astounding how often this happens, even among the most well-intentioned. On Facebook, there is an ELCA clergy support group where Pastors like myself can go and ask questions, request prayer, and mingle among the like minded in cyberspace. But there’s a problem, the same problem I’ve been talking about for most of this sermon: the group is almost entirely white. And when a person of color chimes in about their life experience, about the racism they receive in both society and in the church, there’s invariably retaliation by the majority telling said person they don’t know what they’re talking about. That their experiences aren’t real, that they’re being too sensitive. Yeah, like we white folk know precisely what it means to be black or Latino or whatever.

You’d think we pastors would know better, but nope. Even there, we refuse to listen. Christ shakes his head and weeps. We are all his children and we refuse to see it.

Not all black people are criminals. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Not all immigrants are rapists. Not all young people are lazy and privileged. And if some of them were here now, in our midst, telling their stories, we might realize that. They’d stand up and tell us what it means to be them. How life really is for them, not as we presume it to be. Were we to listen, were we to open our ears, our minds, and our hearts to them, we might start to truly see them as human. Made in the image of God and beloved of him. We might finally take off our blinders and see the world and its people as Jesus does.

This is what Christ has called us to do. This is who we are supposed to be as the Church. The ball is in our court. What are we going to do with it? Amen.

Weekly Devotional for Fourth Lent

Scripture text: Luke 15:11-32

There is that old story about a pastor who preaches the same sermon several weeks in a row. When he’s confronted about his apparent lack of creativity by his congregation, he replies “Given your behavior, it seems obvious that you haven’t gotten the message yet.”

A mite judgmental there, but that old story does highlight a simple truth about rhetoric. Repetition drives home a point. Keep repeating and people will start to listen.

So, I once again find myself ranting against the word “deserve,” since I think the parable of the Prodigal Son is precisely the text Jesus uses to damn that moralistic approach to life. And given that I’m preaching this text on Good Friday, you’ll likely hear some of these points again when I post that sermon in the weeks to come.

We all know the story. Younger son comes up to dad. “Drop dead, Dad, and give me what I deserve as your heir.” Dad, despite his better judgment, does just that. Son goes off to a faraway land and “all manner of pleasures and diversions were indulged.” Things go south pretty quickly after that and the son soon finds himself starving while tending to the pigs on some farm, a long way from the party scene he’d once enjoyed.

Here’s the thing. If this was a story about what people deserve, this is where the story would end. What goes around has come around. The son’s mistreatment of his father has come back to bite him and he’s received justice for his cruelty to his family. Jesus would stop talking and the moral lesson would be painfully clear. Your sin will be your undoing, so don’t sin. Don’t be like this son.

But that’s not the story Jesus tells. It keeps going. The son conjures up a plan to return to his father and beg to be a slave in the household where he grew up. To his credit, the son recognizes the enormity of his error and knows he deserves nothing, but yet hopes for a small pittance of grace from dear old Dad.

But a small pittance is not what he receives. When his father spots him, Dad runs out and scoops him up in a massive bear hug and showers him with tears and kisses. You can almost hear Dad blubbering about how overjoyed he is that his son has come home. Immediately, a great celebration is thrown together. The son is restored to his usual place in the household. All is forgiven.

The son receives far more than he could ever hope or dream. He deserves nothing, yet receives everything.

And that is grace. That is God’s approach to humanity. That’s how he sees us. Yes, we are fallen. Yes, we are sinful. Yes, we are broken. All those things are true and make us deserving of nothing. And yet, we receive everything. God’s love trumps all else; what we’ve done and what we are do not matter. Just all that the son has done wrong in the story does not matter to the father who loves him.

And yet, all too often we are the older brother in the story, who rejects his younger sibling out of hand. To him, all that his kid brother has done DOES matter. He doesn't deserve forgiveness. And he's right, the younger brother does not. But deserve has nothing to do with it. Grace does. His father pleads with him to see things has he does. Don’t you get it? Nothing else matters except our love for one another. NOTHING matters except love and the grace and forgiveness that follow from that love.

How often does God plead with us to see our brothers and sisters the way he sees them? How often does he call us to love our neighbor, to forgive our enemies, and to discard this blasphemy of deserving? Are we listening?

Grace is all that matters. Period.

Devotional for Third Lent

Scripture reading: Luke 13:1-9

One of the persistent failures of the human condition is our presumption that we are the center of the universe. Believing that "things have never been as bad as this" or that "those sins that I abhor in others are the worst of all sins" reveal a certain arrogance in us. We are not seeing things rightly or truthfully when we think this way.

In many ways, this is the mindset that Jesus is calling out in the Gospel text from this past Sunday. He's given two tragic examples of the current events of his day, a tower collapse and an attack by Herod's thugs on some Galilean worshipers in the temple. The human impulse is to claim that victims of these tragedies are somehow deserving of their fate. (If you've been keeping up with my Sunday sermon series this Lent, you know how much I just "love" that word.)

Jesus not only refutes this but he does so in a way that should make us all a bit uncomfortable. No, their sins weren't any worse than yours, so if they deserved to die for what they've done, SO DO YOU.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that I'm talking about this Luke text the day after I received Michael Card's latest email newsletter. In it, he included a reflection that tells a similar truth, speaking about these current times.

There are two major misunderstandings, it seems to me, that might tempt us to lose hope right now. The first is the failure to realize that world has already been lost. It is no less "lost" at the moment than it has ever been, and no less crazy. Even a casual flipping thru any history book will confirm this.

Again, the presumption of our own self-importance blinds us to this truth. We are lost and we are rightly deserving of damnation. But Michael doesn't end there.

The second misunderstand that leads us to lose hope is that there is no one who has the power to make things right. To a lost world Jesus says "I am the way." To a world that has departed from the truth, Jesus says, "I am the Truth." And to a world that is on a collision course with death, Jesus says, "I am the Life."

Immediately after telling the crowds the uncomfortable truth about our sin, Jesus tells a wonderful parable about a patient gardener. "Give it another chance. Give it another year. Give it time." Give it grace.

Grace is the infinite number of second chances that God gives to us out of his love for us. And that is our hope. All may seem lost, but God is in control here. Not us. And we are not lost because it is he who finds us. We are not lost because he loves us. We are not lost because our patient gardener is giving us another chance and will always give us another chance. That's grace, and in grace we find hope, for ourselves and for our lost world.

Sermon for Third Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran and St. John Lutheran on Feb 28, 2016
Scripture texts: Isaiah 55:1-9, Acts 5:12-16, Luke 5:12-15

There is a new group in York County, a new social service organization. A number of folks from various churches noticed a certain lack of services on the far eastern side of the county. So they got together and made some plans, started a few small programs like providing backpacks to needy children in the school system. Group began to grow, began to help in other ways, giving children a good Christmas, feeding the hungry, getting books into the hands of school children, all in coordination with other community and church organizations. We know them as River’s Edge Community Services. Canadochly is a charter member of this group and we are making a difference in our community.

Last Sunday, I was pretty negative about my now-closed home congregation in WV. But it wasn’t all bad. In fact, there was one great shining light that I remember very fondly during my time as a member there. Over the course of about 10 years during 1980s, we helped resettle about 20 refugees from Southeast Asia, some families, some individuals. You may remember from your history that Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and the like were not exactly happy places to be in the 60s and 70s. A lot of turmoil, a lot of violence. We gave those people a chance at a new life away from all that. Many of them have gone on to very successful and happy lives in the years and decades since.

He may not stand out as among the best of men who’ve occupied the White House in recent decades, but you can’t help but admire Jimmy Carter’s dedication in the years since to helping people in need. The man is in his 90s, been cancer in recent times, and he’s still out there building homes for Habitat. I’d like to have his energy at age 90, but more than that I’d like to have his dedication to helping others. We all probably could use that.

Imagine for a moment if these sorts of stories were the image of the church the world around us had of us. I mean that’s the way it’s supposed to be. Jesus told us quite clearly “Love your neighbor as yourself” was among the greatest of commandments. This is part of our mission. Part of our purpose. WHAT HAPPENED?

Obviously, from these examples, you can tell that there are those still out there who get it. But far too often the picture of the church that people receive is one of intolerance, of bigotry, and of self-righteous hypocrisy. It’s a place of closed doors and closed minds, where people are only welcome if they’re the right “kind” of people and aid to those in need comes only to those who “deserve” it. (There’s that word again.)

We’ve gotten really good at playing this game with ourselves. We’re full of euphemisms that cover up our disdain for others, but we’re not really fooling anyone except ourselves.

• “Family” means “Christian only.” 
• “Traditional” means “male dominated” and/or “heterosexual”
• “Lazy” means “black.” 
• “Security” means “no Muslims or immigrants.”

Keep them out. Keep them away. Where “them” are people we’ve declared villain through an always arbitrary and often inconsistent standard.

The classic Christian rock band Petra had something to say about this 30 years ago in their song “Rose Colored Stained Glass Windows.”

Another sleepy Sunday, safe within the walls
Outside a dying world in desperation calls
But no one hears the cries or knows what they're about
The doors are locked within or is it from without 

Looking through rose colored stained glass windows
Never allowing the world to come in
Seeing no evil and feeling no pain
Making the light as it come from within, so dim, so dim

It’s not a new problem. And we wonder why churches are dying?

Contrast that to the story we have of Christ in Luke chapter 5. Jesus encounters a leper upon the side of the road. An outcast, blamed by many in society for his own illness. “Surely God is punishing him for his sins,” they would say. He “deserves” this!

I love the way he approaches Jesus. “Lord, if you choose, make me clean.” What a delightful opening for Jesus, allowing him to reveal the heart of God. “I do choose.” he replies. “Be made clean.”

“I do choose.” It is a choice and God’s choice is always love and mercy. ALWAYS.

The early church understood that, which is why you have this wonderful scene at Solomon’s Portico in Acts. People of all stripes come to the church and they’re not turned away. They receive what they need. Deserve never enters into the conversation. There’s no “terms and conditions” that they need to meet. No arbitrary standard of moral uprightness. “All who thirst, come to the waters. You, who have no money, come buy and eat.” Come, be healed, be fed, receive what you need.

But, Pastor, our resources are limited and the problems out there so big. Yes, but we have more than we think we do and those problems are not as large as we think. We can solve a lot of things plaguing our society, but we have to choose to do it. I read a statistic once, and I’m not entirely sure it’s accurate, but it is plausible. We could take the money our government spends on defense for just one week and we could use that to buy three square meals a day for every person on this planet for a year. The cost of our war in Iraq could have ended hunger worldwide for the next 30 years. It’s all a matter of choice.

But, Pastor, some of those people really are evil. They’re really mean harm and they really will rip you off. Sure, but that’s on their heads. And if you want a life without risk, Christianity is not the religion for you. We scatter the seed far and wide and sometimes the most fertile ground is found in the most vile of people.

I was reading an article about the rather colorfully named General Butt Naked, whose real name is Joshua Milton Blahyi. He was military commander in Liberia’s Civil War during the early 1990s and responsible for numerous atrocities including the use of child soldiers, murder, and even cannibalism. Don’t get much worse than this guy, but a Christian priest pleaded with him to change his ways at the end of that war and Mr. Blahyi has since gone on to not only convert to Christianity, but is now a pastor. Part of his ministry is to make restitution to the victims of his crimes. You never know what grace and forgiveness can do.

Jesus went to the cross and died for you and for me, making the ultimate statement as to what a person’s life is worth. God died and rose again for you, me, every person in this room, and every person on this planet, living, dead, or yet unborn. Are we truly going to deliberately stand in the way of that because people don’t meet our standards of moral or ethical perfection? What nonsense!

Christ chose to help, regardless of any criteria. Even when he had expectations and they weren’t met, such as when only one of the ten lepers returned to him, his grace was not withdrawn. That’s our guide. That’s our model. It’s who we are called to be in the world. It’s who we once were. It’s who we need to be again. Amen.