Sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter (Part Two of the Stuck Series)

Preached on April 28, 2019 at Grace and Canadochly
Preaching Text: Doubting Thomas

Every year, on the Sunday after Easter, I enter this pulpit and give a vigorous defense of why Thomas is unfairly maligned as the doubter. One of the defenses I often raise is that he asks nothing of Jesus that the other disciples did not receive themselves and, to be honest, they wouldn’t have believed without seeing those things either.

Last Sunday, I contrasted life in the in-between time of Sunday morning before the tomb and the time after the resurrection has come. I said the women were stuck in the grief, the sorrow, and the fear of that pre-dawn time when all they’d believed and hoped for had come to naught.

But then, a miracle. An empty tomb. Angels proclaiming resurrection. Joy, relief, life instead of death. The best good news the women could have imagined. They run back to the disciples with this tremendous news and receive what can only be described as a rather chilly reception. An idle tale, Luke calls it. They do not believe.

And that brings us to the events of Easter evening. Word has come to them of a resurrected Jesus. They have heard the best news any of them could have imagined and what are they doing? They are hiding, living in fear of marching soldiers and vengeful religious authorities. The doors are locked. They sit paranoid that someone will come knocking, looking for the followers of the one crucified on Friday.

While talked about the women being stuck in their emotions as they marched dutifully to the tomb that morning, it quickly becomes clear they are far from alone. Even after the wondrous news of Christ risen, the disciples are still stuck. So Jesus comes into their midst, shows them his hands and his side. They rejoice to see Jesus. And that fixes everything (or at least it does for everyone but Thomas).

Or does it?

Fast forward to a week later. The disciples have heard the report of the women. The disciples have seen Jesus alive with their own eyes. The disciples have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit. They have everything they need to go out and change lives and the change the world and where are they? They are hiding, living in fear of marching soldiers and vengeful religious authorities. The doors are locked. They sit paranoid that someone will come knocking, looking for the followers of the one crucified a week ago Friday.

They’re still stuck.

But they are not alone. While I talked about the women being stuck in their emotions as they marched dutifully to the tomb, and I’ve talked about the disciples being stuck in their emotions as they cower in the upper room, there is another group often stuck just as they were. And that’s the modern day church. It’s us. We too are stuck with word of a tumultuous world where churches burn and people are slaughtered as they gather for worship. We too are stuck with images of empty churches that were once full and balance sheets full of red. We too are stuck in the grief, the sorrow, and the fear of having all we believed and hoped for and loved has seemingly come to naught.

So what gets us unstuck? Any of us? The women, the disciples, or ourselves?

Jesus certainly does all that he can. He returns again the following week to appear before the frightened disciples. He offers his hands and side once more, not merely just to Thomas, but all of them. The scriptures do not say explicitly, but it’s likely the women were there as well, seeing yet again the miracle. Jesus doing what he can for all of them to get them unstuck.

But what about us? Well, Jesus has not left us orphaned. He promised the Holy Spirit and we have that. It comes to us in the waters of baptism. It comes to us in the spoken word of Scripture and sermon. It comes to us in the bread and wine of communion. It comes to us in the love of friends and family. It comes in the beauty of the world. It’s all around us all the time. The question before us, are we looking for it?

It’s far too easy to let the terrors of this world and this life blind us to the Spirit’s presence among us. Far too easy to see only water in baptism, hear only words in the Bible, taste only bread and wine in communion. Despite there being so much more to all of these than that. Fear is our great enemy. More dangerous by far than doubt ever could be. Doubt wants to believe but cannot. Fear stops even that desire for belief.

And we see the results of fear all around us. Not just in declining churches, but in a declining world. All that frightens and unsettles us is the result of people caving into fear. I may get into trouble for saying this, but the terrorists on 9/11 succeeded beyond their wildest dreams all those years ago. They turned neighbors into threats, foreigners into enemies, and made us forget who we are as citizens of this great nation. We forgot our aspirations, our ideals, our goals and all the work we’d done towards them is now in danger of being undone.

So too the church. Fear has made us forget our aspirations, our ideals, our goals. It’s made us forget Jesus, his love, his mercy, his sacrifice on the cross for all the world. It’s made us not able to see the work of the Holy Spirit all around us. We are stuck in that upper room yet again. But Christ continues to come to us. He comes in more ways than we can imagine. He is always with us. His salvation can never be taken from us. He will always love us. Why do we fear? Open your eyes. Open your heart and you will see him. Amen.

Sermon for Easter Sunday (Part One of the Stuck Series)

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on April 21, 2019
Preaching text: Luke's Easter

Like many of you, no doubt, I spent my Monday glued to the TV watching the horrible events playing out in Paris, France. Notre Dame, that icon of the French people, that wondrous place of worship, was being consumed in fire. It almost seemed apocalyptic, this great church which had stood for almost a thousand years was slowly being destroyed before our eyes.

Thankfully, it wasn’t quite that bad and the brave men and women who fought that blaze managed to put it out before the church was totally destroyed. Most of the priceless works of art and relics of the church that were stored there were rescued before the fire got too bad. The Rose Windows were saved in the nick of time. The great bells as well. All was not lost.

But when we were in the moment, none of that was certain. As we watched and waited, we wondered what would become of this great church. Would it survive or would it die?

That uncomfortable in-between feeling is precisely what the women were feeling that early Sunday morning so long ago. They had witnessed what they thought was impossible. The Messiah, God’s anointed, had been hung on a cross and made to die. Jesus had been crucified. Yes, there were those statements that he’d made about rising again from the dead, but after seeing what they’d seen, that couldn’t be true. The brutality, the viciousness of that death, no, he was gone.

We too know what that feeling is like, not just because we watched Notre Dame burn last Monday, but because we see it before us each and every time we come in these doors. We remember the days when these pews were filled, these walls echoes the sounds of laughing children, when the coffers were full, and all was right in the world. But then, what we thought was impossible began to happen. The Church began to die. And now, we see empty pews, silence instead of laughter because there are no more children (or very few), the coffers are empty, and nothing seems right in the world. And it’s not just here. It’s pretty much everywhere.

I talked before about how we’re in the midst of a society-wide existential crisis. We’ve lost our way. Suicides are at their peak. Drug overdoses as well. People don’t know what to do with themselves. We are stuck in those pre-dawn hours, thinking the world has come to an end, just as it had for those women.

But that’s what makes Easter so important.

If the women thought the crucifixion impossible, they were in for quite the surprise. A stone rolled away and a tomb empty. What? What has happened? A man in white declares both teasingly and boldly, “Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He is not here. He has risen.”

Impossible. That which is dead remains dead. We know this. It is inevitable, unavoidable, inescapable. Or is it?

Christ is risen. Is it really true? He is not here. The angel says what has happened. Can it really be? Can life come from death again?

Easter confronts us with that very question. Can life come from this again? Can life come from this world in chaos and turmoil? Can there be resurrection from what we experience in this world and this life?

And God answers with an empty tomb and an angel proclaiming “He is risen.”

This is the great challenge of our times, not so different than it was for those women and those disciples. An idle tale, Luke says it seemed to the Eleven. As we despair of our modern times, is the resurrection an idle tale to us? Easy for it to become so in the midst of the darkness and uncertainty of these times, but are we letting all that blind and deafen us to the truth that we have embraced since time immemorial? We are Christians. We came to this faith because we believe that God did resurrect Jesus, that life does come from death, that every cross leads to an empty tomb.

Paul reminds us in Romans, in a verse that we quote in each and every funeral in the Lutheran church, that “if we have been united in a death like his, we shall certainly be united in a resurrection like his.” Does this really change that? Or do God’s promises stand inviolate? Unwavering? Eternal?

My friends, we must not lose faith now. This world’s evil and uncertainty seem unstoppable, but we remember a God that brings life from death, forgiveness from sin, and salvation from Christ’s sacrifice. The world DOES NOT change that. Let us not be the women before they reach the tomb. Let us not be the disciples who dismiss their tale so quickly. Let us be them after they come to the tomb, empty of death, but full of hope. Let us be amazed at what God can do, for nothing with him is impossible. Not even this. Life from death. An empty tomb after a cross. Christ is risen. Alleluia. Amen.

Sermon for Good Friday

Preached at Christ United Methodist, Yorkana, PA on April 19, 2019
Preaching Text: Jonah

When I spoke about Abraham at the beginning of this series, I mentioned one of the remarkable things about Abraham’s faith was that he went into this knowing nothing about the God he was coming to follow and worship. There was no organized religion to which he was converting; no doctrines, no dogmas, no Bible to read, not even a name for this god he’d met and decided to place his trust into. All of that would come later.

This highlights a truth in our faith that we don’t always like to talk about. We don’t know everything about God. We like to pretend we do and we often will derive some self-confidence from that arrogant presumption, but there are many things about the deity we worship that are still unknown to us.

And that has been true for a long time. God’s revelation of himself to us has come piecemeal over the generations. But humans are impatient and while waiting for this revelation, we’ve been fond of filling in the blanks ourselves. Usually by assuming that God is just like us, liking what we like and hating what we hate.

Even the Bible itself is guilty of this. There’s a meme that I see floating around Facebook periodically. It says “The Bible is clear. Moabites are evil. They are not to be allowed among God’s people. But then comes a story about Ruth, a Moabite woman who marries a Hebrew and becomes grandmother to a king.”

“The Bible is clear. The people of the city of Uz are evil. Then along comes a story about Job, a man of Uz who is the most righteous and blameless of all men.”

It goes on like this with a few other examples, showing us that our guesses about what God approves or disapproves of are not always right, even in the Scriptures. Jonah is another story of this sort.

Let me give you some historical background. One of ancient Israel’s most vile enemies was the Assyrian Empire. These people were bad. Vicious conquerors who worshiped a series of cruel gods that demanded human sacrifice, often infants. The Assyrians were responsible for the conquest and destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel and were a serious threat to the Southern Kingdom of Judea. These were not nice people. The capital of their empire was the city of Nineveh, one of the largest cities in the world at that time.

And so God comes to Jonah and says “Go to Nineveh and call the people of Assyria to repentance for their evil deeds.”

To which Jonah says, with good reason, “I don’t think so.” So he hops on a boat and heads to the exact opposite side of the world; to the city of Tarshish in modern day Spain.

Most of us know the next part of the story well. The ship is swamped by storms. Realizing God is trying to scare him into turning around, Jonah instead offers to commit suicide to spare the crew, so he jumps into the water and is promptly swallowed by a large sea creature.

But that doesn’t kill him. Three days later this whale barfs him up on the sea shore and Jonah discovers he’s been planted firmly in Assyrian territory. Realizing that God doesn’t take no for an answer, Jonah goes to Nineveh and proclaims his message of repentance.

And much to Jonah’s horror, the people of Nineveh listen and obey. They call a fast. They sit in sackcloth and ashes and ask God for forgiveness for their evil ways. And God does what God always does when people he loves ask him for forgiveness. He forgives them and calls off whatever calamity was their due.

This ticks Jonah off to no end and this is where our lesson tonight begins. God proceeds to explain to Jonah his reasons for doing all this. “These people are my children,” God essentially says. “I love them. Should I not care just because you hate them?”

That may be a far harder for us to swallow than Jonah was for the whale. We like to hate and we like to believe that God hates what we do. Oh, we won’t admit that, but let’s be honest. Whether it’s Samaritans, black people, tax collectors, gays, Moabites, Muslims, Assyrians, or whoever, we want God to hate them just as much as we do.

But God continues to surprise us with stories like this one. His love is far greater than we always imagine it to be. And that brings us to the events we usually we remember on this day. Jesus dying upon a cross. His body broken in agony. He’s there willingly. He’s there for you, for me, and (while we say it, we don’t always want to believe it) he’s also there for everyone else too. Even as the nails are being driven into his flesh, he says of his executioners, “Father, forgive them.”

More than anything else that we are taught about who God is, this is the most important lesson. This is the sort of love that God has for his world, for his creation, for his people, ALL OF THEM. Yes, we screw up, we make mistakes, we sin. And so does everyone else. But just as that sin does not separate us from his love, neither does their sin separate them from it either. Even a people as brutal and savage as the Assyrians were beloved of God.

If we take away nothing else from our lives of faith and devotion to God, let it be this. God loves us. He loves you. He loves me. He loves everyone. He sent Jesus for all of us. And Jesus died for all of us. And nothing you do, nothing that you are, nothing that you say, can change that. Neither does nothing your worst enemy does, nothing that they are, nothing that they say, changes that either. We’re all sinners and we’re all unworthy of that great love, but we have it anyway, because that’s who God really is. He is love. He always has been and always will be, even if we don’t know it or want it to be true. Again, what we believe about God or know about God does change him one whit. He will always be love. Amen.

Sermon for Palm Sunday

Preached on April 14, 2019 at Grace and Canadochly
Preaching text:

I think everyone here knows that I am a colossal nerd and I’m into games, anime, movies, music, and all sorts of interests. Now it may surprise you that one hobby I’m not super big into is comic books. Most of what I know about superheroes comes from watching TV and movie adaptations of their stories, rather than the comics themselves. But that’s certainly helped me gain a decent chunk of knowledge about Superman and Spiderman and the X-men and all sorts of these costumed heroes as they battle villains and save the day.

One of Superman’s more popular villains is a guy by the name of Bizarro. Now, his origins vary from source to source, but one thing remains the same. While he has all of Superman’s powers, in every other way, he is Superman’s opposite. Where Superman is good, Bizarro is evil. Where Superman is good-looking, Bizarro is ugly. Where Superman is intelligent, Bizarro is stupid. Because of this character, there is a phrase that I sometimes hear both in geek circles and political discussions. They talk about “Bizarro World” where everything is opposite what it should be. Up is down. Black is white. Good is evil. Etc.

And that’s why I bring this up on this Palm Sunday. Today is our entry into God’s Bizarro World, where everything is opposite what we think it should be. Up is down. Black is white. Good is evil. Death is life.

Now, on one level we shouldn’t be too surprised this is happening in the life of Jesus. Aside from his warnings and predictions about his Passion, we’ve also had his talk about the great reversals that come with his kingdom. The rich become poor. The poor become rich. The hungry are filled and those who are filled become hungry. The sighted become blind and the blind receive their sight. You know...Bizarro World. Everything becomes its opposite.

This is a consistent theme throughout Jesus’ teachings and now is the moment when we see that begin to happen. It happens to Jesus and the first moment is in the Triumphal Entry. There’s always a certain irony in this moment and we who read this story often don’t pause long enough to notice it. Again, as I said a few weeks ago, familiarity breeds contempt. We know this story so well that miss some of its nuances. We never ask why the crowd is cheering Jesus.

Now, we might think the answer to that question is obvious. He’s the son of God. He’s the Messiah. He’s the one come to save the world. Even Luke I feel falls prey to a bit of this hype when he records that Jesus says “Even the very stones would cry out” if the crowds were silent. I’m not so sure. The crowd doesn’t really know all those things that we know about Jesus’ identity. They know he’s a miracle worker. They know they’re under Roman occupation. They know Jesus might just be the one to overthrow the hated Romans. And that I believe is why they celebrate.

But this is Bizarro World and Jesus does no such thing. His glory will not come by having him crowned a king by a jubilant mob. That would make for quite the story. Jesus becoming like Superman, charging at the Romans, and kicking butt and taking names and then making himself king as the hero of the day. But that’s normal world thinking. That’s a normal world story. This is Bizarro World and that’s not this story.

If not now and under these circumstances, then where and when will Jesus’ glory come? Again, Bizarro World thinking, glory comes when he is lowest. When he is broken. When he is nailed to a cross to die the horrible gut-wrenching death of slaves and traitors. That is Jesus’ finest moment. That is when his glory comes. That is when he wins. That is when he is truly king.

Up is down. Black is white. And defeat is victory. Death means life.

This is, of course, what Paul is talking about in Philippians. The famous Christ hymn, which stands as our second lesson each and every Palm Sunday, is all this Bizarro World dynamic in Jesus’ life and what it means for us. The Christ, the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, empties himself of all that glory and power and honor and might and becomes a human being. He goes from highest to lowest as he’s born in a stable. And then, as if that were not enough, he goes to the cross to die the most shameful of deaths, dying in worst way we humans can imagine.

But this is not the end. This is not defeat. This is victory. This is triumph. This is salvation. As Paul says, rightly, this is the moment when Jesus’ name is elevated above all names, for it is by this act of abject humiliation and defeat that he wins for all humanity salvation from sin and death. By death, he wins life, life eternal for all he loves.

This is how salvation works. It makes no sense to us if we think of it in normal world terms. Death isn’t life. Defeat isn’t victory. But it is here.

We heard some weeks ago when we heard Isaiah 55 that God’s ways are not our ways and his thoughts are not our thoughts. Normal world thinking is not God’s way. Bizarro World thinking is. How else can that which is mortal become immortal? How else can that which is sinful become holy? How else can we be saved than by the death and resurrection of God himself in the form of Jesus? There is no other way. This is how salvation works.

This is how God saves us. Not with parades and jubilation. Not with conquest and strength. But with pain, death, and humiliation. Only by becoming the lowest of the low can God lift up all of humanity to the heights he wishes to bring us. And that’s what Jesus does. And that’s how his name is the name that above all others. The name by which we are saved. Amen.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Lent (Latere)

Preached at Canadochly and Grace on March 31, 2019
Preaching text: Prodigal Son parable.

Our Gospel lesson today is one of the most familiar, most beloved of all Scripture texts. It’s one of the first stories we can remember from Sunday School and one we revisit frequently throughout our lives. We all know it. We all love it. It’s the Prodigal Son.

There is an old saying, “familiarity breeds contempt.” On one level with this story, that’s clearly not true, since this is a beloved parable of Jesus. But I do believe that on another level, it is. There is a way in which our familiarity and fondness for this text can make us miss a lot of its nuance and detail and full message. We, in a sense, take this text for granted. We know what it means, so we don’t need to study it closely or further.

For instance, it’s title and name. “The Prodigal Son.” Who here knows what the word ‘prodigal’ means?

I didn’t for the longest time and I’d imagine most of us don’t. Because the only place we ever use that word is in reference to this story. For the longest time, I thought it was a fancy old-fashioned word for “runaway” or “absent” or some such. After all, the son does leave his family behind, so it fit.

Others have contended it means “bad” or “betraying” or something like that. Also apt, since the son is hardly a bastion of moral behavior. But none of these are correct.

When I say we don’t use the word “prodigal” in modern language, that’s not entirely true. There is another very closely related word that we do use that gives us a hint at its true meaning. That word is the adjective “prodigious.” Most of us, I think, know what this word means. It’s something big, overwhelming, extravagant. That’s a very prodigious boulder.

Prodigal, it turns out, means extravagant, excessive, over-the-top, shamelessly so. And this, of course, describes the son well. He has the audacity to go to his living father and ask for his inheritance, something he would normally only receive after his Dad had died. In a very real sense, he’s saying to his father, “drop dead and give me what is mine.” He then takes this money and spends it all on extravagant over-the-top hedonistic living. He throws money around like a billionaire on a bender.

However, if that’s the true meaning of the word prodigal, then there is another character in the story to whom it applies. And that’s the father. He too is prodigal. He too is extravagant and excessive and over-the-top and shamelessly so. His son comes to him and says the most horrible thing, and rather than tell his offspring to go pound sand (like he should have), he gives in. He divides his property and gives this obnoxious little brat what he wants.

And then it gets better. The son figures out what a jerk he’s been and decides to come home. He creates this prepared speech about how he rightly deserves nothing and wishes to be treated as a slave and so forth and he heads off. And in the distance, the father sees him and he runs to meet him.

Now, we know from the context of the story that this father is reasonably affluent. He has enough money for slaves and still enough that after he divides his property in half for this ungrateful son of his, he still has a very good living. Thus, one can expect a certain aristocratic aire to this man. He would be dressed in fine robes. Now the sorts of robes a man of his stature would wear would be somewhat similar to the alb I wear on Sunday morning. A lot more decorative, but approximately the same cut and length and style.

Now, some of you may have noticed that I tend to trip on this thing at least once every Sunday I wear it. To run in something like this is nigh on impossible. So in order to run to his son, Dad has to hike up his robes. Only then can he dash out to meet his boy. Now, unlike me who’s wearing a nice pair of slacks underneath, Dad would not have had anything on underneath. So imagine a dignified elite man of affluence yanking up his robe and running with his bare legs (and perhaps much more) showing for all the world to see.

How shameless. How extravagant. How over-the-top this behavior is. It’s undignified. It’s crass. It’s improper. But Dad doesn’t care, because that’s his boy come home and he’s going to get to him as fast as he can.

And this dad’s prodigal nature keeps going. As the son starts into his prepared speech, Dad will have none of it. Bring out the best robe. Place the signet ring of our house upon his finger. Kill the fatted calf and prepare a feast. All over-the-top. All extravagant. All excessive. And all for a son who has done anything but deserve them.

That, of course, is the point.

Jesus is using this story to tell us who God is. All the time, because of our sin, we tell God to drop dead. We turn our back on him. We walk away. Time and again we do this throughout our lives. And despite the fact that he should tell us to go pound sand, he lets us do it. And when we come back to ourselves and realize our mistakes and fault, what does God do? He throws his arms around us in a massive bear hug, puts the robe and the ring upon us, and throws a feast for us. Because the beloved has come home and that’s all that matters.

We worship a prodigal God that loves us so intensely that nothing else matters. Nothing but his love for us. Not propriety. Not dignity. Not the rules. Not what he’s supposed to do with us. Nothing else but love.

And the proof of that is in Christ himself. God incarnate as this man here on Earth does the most prodigal thing ever. He loves us enough to die the most terrible shameful death for us. The death given slaves and traitors: Crucifixion. It’s an excessive death, extravagant in its suffering, and utterly shameful. But none of that matters. All that matters is a fallen humanity that God loves beyond words and that he will pay any price to see us redeemed.

This is our Prodigal God. Who loves you and me and everyone without limit. And this is what he’s done for us. Amen.

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent

Preached at Canadochly and Grace on March 24, 2019
Preaching text: Isaiah 55

Sometime in the 1970s, the West Virginia Council of Churches began a program to establish Sunday morning chapel services in each of the WV State Parks. By 2001, only one remained active, Blackwater Falls, which just so happened to be the park in the town of Davis, WV, where I was called as pastor of the Lutheran Church there. So part of my duties as pastor at St. John’s Lutheran was to conduct the chapel service at the nearby park every Sunday.

I had received a simple liturgy to use and largely decided to keep it as it was. No sense reinventing the wheel. It was prayers and scripture, sermon and blessing. Nothing terribly fancy, but what made it stand out in my mind then and now is its responsive reading. Rather than choose one of the Psalms or a traditional litany prayer of the church, the responsive reading was Isaiah 55.

Thus every week at Blackwater Falls, we heard of how God’s ways and our ways are not the same and that God’s word will fulfill its purpose just as the rain waters the earth. Wonderful poetry, but also a powerful message for troubling times.

Well, Isaiah 55 appears today as our first lesson and the impact of its words are no less powerful eighteen years after I first used them in that chapel service.

Back in 2001, the circumstances of the time were 9/11, the war on terror, and an overarching sense of fear. Today, it’s economic uncertainty, the rise of hate groups, and again an overarching sense of fear. We look out over the width and breadth of our lives and what do we see? What do we feel? One philosopher has said that what afflicts us in these modern days is a sense of “existential angst.” We feel have no purpose, no meaning. The institutions that helped give us that: businesses that employed us, churches that encouraged us, a government that supported us, are all seemingly fading away. And many people feel lost.

So much so that we are truly seeing the results of that. Violence in our schools, our churches, and our businesses, carried out by “lone gunmen.” A massive spike in suicides. A massive spike in overdose deaths. It feels like we’re self-destructing.

And trying, perhaps desperately, to be heard above all the din and clamour of our days is the voice of God. A voice that says “Be calm, my children. My ways are not your ways. What is success to me is not how the world would measure it. What is security to me is not how the world would measure it. What is meaning and purpose to me is not how the world would define those things. My ways are not your ways.”

We spend all our energy chasing after things that do not matter, or as Isaiah would say, stuff that is “not bread” and things which “do not satisfy.” Isn’t that what we discover in life? We chase after wealth and power and safety and yet these things always remain elusive. We see those who have them in abundance and yet, do we really want to live like them? No matter how much wealth they have, it’s not enough. No matter how much power, it’s not enough. They always feel their safety is an illusion. They live in fear and hunger for more, not contentment and peace.

My thoughts are not your thoughts. My ways are not your ways. God says to us.

We look out over the pews of our congregations and see emptiness. We see grey hair and wrinkled faces and so few of the young. We look at numbers of people and numbers of contributions and fear and worry creep into our hearts. But that’s not what God sees. God sees a faithful people, people who pray, people who work to better the lives of others, people who remain stalwart in spite of the difficulties of the world.

That is also what I see when I look out over the lot of you. I see people who reach out to those in need, myself included when my illnesses get the better of me. I see people who care about their neighbors. I see people who take the words of Scripture and the commandments of Christ seriously and live them out in their lives. I see children of God living out their callings in the world and doing what God would have us do. I see a people redeemed and living in hope.

We focus too much on how the world defines success and prosperity and we forget to see how God defines those things. His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts.

The world has always gone through cycles of chaos and order, violence and peace. Any cursory view of our history reveals that. We should not be surprised at the upheaval of our times. Our parents went through similar, as did theirs, as will our children and grandchildren in years yet to be. It is the way of things in this sinful and broken world. Focusing too much on the negative and the unpleasant runs the risk that Nietzsche warned us about: Stare too long into the abyss and it stares back.

Instead, look to the good. Look to God and you’ll find him at work. You’ll find him in your lives, in your own work, your compassion, your prayers, your hopes. You’ll find him in the face of strangers grateful for welcome and aid. You’ll find him in the face of friends whom you support and care for. Nothing that has happened in our times or any other time has stopped God from fulfilling his promises to us. His covenant is everlasting, a steadfast sure love not just for David, but for all of us.

Nothing that has happened in our times or any other time has stopped God from loving you. Christ is still risen. The tomb is still empty. Your salvation is still yours and it always will be. God will not forsake us, no matter whether the times be favorable or unfavorable.

Why then do we fear? His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. They are higher, more lasting, and will not fail. The promise is sure, my friends. His promise to you. His promise to the church. His promise to the world. They remain and always will. Do not fear. Do not let the world get you down. Live to the good and strive to see the world as God does. Amen.

Sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent/St. Patrick's Day

Preached at Grace and Canadochly on March 17, 2019
Preaching text:

I want to do something a little different today, but something I think is appropriate. I spoke last week at great length about the dangers of taking the quick and easy way to spread the faith of Christianity, a path that the Church has often taken, is still tempted to take, and has led to the death and suffering of countless millions of people. It is our great sin and one we should not be eager to repeat if we truly wish to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ.

What I want to do today is tell the story of a man who got it right. A man whose commemorative festival just so happens to fall on today: Saint Patrick. Now most of us know little about the man other than his association with Ireland and the celebration of Irish heritage that usually involves raucous behavior and copious amounts of green beer. We Lutherans don’t really acknowledge him much at all, given that he’s a saint of the Catholic tradition who is not one of the original apostles or evangelists. That’s unfortunate, because he stands as a true paragon of the faith and man who should be a role-model to all of us, regardless of whether we are Catholic or Protestant.

Patrick was born in Roman Britain sometime in the late 4th-early 5th century. He was not born Irish, but a Briton, ancestors to the modern Welsh people. He was born into a Christian family but did not take religion seriously in his young life. Around age 16, the Irish came calling.

The Irish of this time were a violent savage marauding people similar to the later Vikings. They attacked Roman Britain frequently and. In one of their raids, they took young Patrick prisoner and hauled him back to Ireland as a slave. Patrick was commanded to tend sheep for his captor.

It was a brutal life. Cold, starving, and under frequent threat of punishment or even death, Patrick endured for six long years. Somewhere in the midst of that time, he gained some knowledge of the Irish religion, a druidic pagan faith that venerated a number of hero gods and goddesses and also had a healthy (and rather superstitious) respect for nature. But despite this, what truly deepened in him was his Christianity, believing God was giving him the strength to endure his captivity.

After those six years, he managed to escape and flee back to Britain. Thankful for his freedom, he entered the priesthood and was extensively trained. He then made the remarkable choice, in part influenced by a famous bishop of the time, to return to Ireland as a missionary.

Patrick was not initially welcomed by the Irish, but he persisted. Using his knowledge of their beliefs, he found ways to proclaim Christ that the Irish could understand. You honor courage and self-sacrifice? Let me tell you of Jesus, who faced down death itself for those he loved. You respect the natural world? Let me show you how God, the creator, is in every leaf and blade of grass. People responded to his respect and honor of their pagan ways and began to convert to Patrick’s somewhat unique interpretation of Christianity. As time went on, the vast majority of the island became Christian.

Patrick could have shown up with an army. He could have told the Irish chiefs “Convert or die.” He could have had his vengeance upon the people who enslaved him. He did none of these things, but instead forgave his captors and used their own pagan beliefs and superstitions to communicate the Gospel. The end result was the only bloodless conversion of a nation of people in Christian history.

Which is kind of sad when you think about it. There should have been far more than that.

After Patrick’s death, a whole slew of legends sprang up around him, as if he’d become one of the Irish hero gods himself. We’ve all heard how he chased the snakes out of Ireland. That’s not true, since there have never been snakes in Ireland. The story of him using the clover to describe the Trinity is also legendary, but is consistent with Patrick’s approach to religion and evangelism. He used what they knew to tell them of God.

So what’s the takeaway for us? As much as we might be loath to admit it, we are increasingly living in non-Christian times. The people we encounter on the streets and at our workplaces and schools have almost no knowledge of Jesus. And a good bit of what they do know is distorted by the work of charlatans and grifters who’ve corrupted the name of Christ for their own selfish ends. They are the modern pagans, not all that different than the Irish of Patrick’s day.

How can we reach them? We can talk to them of grace and love, but it often seems as though we speak a different language entirely than what they know. We must find their language, their legends, their beliefs, and work from there, as Patrick did. They know sports. They know pop culture. They know music. All of which we can use to show them Jesus.

That’s part of the reason you hear me pepper my sermons with pop culture references. I’m trying to speak the language of these times. I’m a great admirer of Patrick and I want to follow Jesus the way he did as best I can.

Again, we are confronted with a choice. How do we show Christ to the people we encounter? Do we honor, respect, and love them? Or are we standoffish, antagonistic, and arrogant in the superiority of our beliefs? Christians have done both these approaches over the generations. And while I wish I could say the latter doesn’t work, it has in the past, but I doubt Jesus would much approve. His way is love, service, and sacrifice. It is honor and respect, welcome and acceptance. Patrick knew this. He lived it. And so can we. Amen.