God-With-Us In All the Bad Stuff

Wild Rice Lutheran Parish

Aspelund Lutheran Church, Flom, MN

November 27, 2016/Advent 1

Daniel 6:6-27 (Narrative Lectionary)

The famous American theologian Wood Allen once said:  “I’m not afraid to die.  I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

True to form Mr. Allen (who is not a bona fide Lutheran theologian!) gives voice to some of our deepest anxieties.    He articulates our heartfelt desire to keep the awful, awful stuff always at arm’s length.

The only problem is that it never works out that way.  Bad stuff—both the bad stuff we bring upon ourselves and the bad stuff that just shows up—bad stuff has an uncanny way of finding us and  messing up our lives.

And as if that weren’t bad enough, God just lets it to happen.   Rather than wrapping us up in a cocoon of 100% guaranteed safety, happiness and good health, God allows the bad stuff to penetrate our lives.  

Surely God could prevent that.   Certainly God could shield us, God could inoculate us with a super vaccine that would ward off all the bad stuff…

…But God seems to have no interest in doing that.

So, as we see here in this long scripture reading, God’s faithful servant Daniel finds himself tossed into a den of famished lions—the entrance sealed like a tomb.

And how does such a thing happen?   

Daniel, after all, was a really, really good man!  

Exiled from his homeland in Judah, Daniel’s character and abilities were noticed and lifted up by those who held him and his people captive in Babylonia.

So Daniel—a foreigner in the Babylonian court—became the right hand man to King Darius.   

But when good things happen to someone, others become envious.  Some of Babylonia’s politicians thought that positions of leadership should be reserved for Babylonians not Jews.  Native-born persons, not exiles, should be in charge.

So these-green-with-envy fellows hatched a devious plotted against Daniel, concocting a way to trap him in his faithfulness to the God of his ancestors.   The conspirators lured King Darius into signing a decree that for a whole month no one in the land would be permitted to pray to anyone but to him, Darius the King.

When Daniel, man of integrity that he was…when Daniel was spotted breaking the King’s decree--praying three times a day, his face set toward his holy city Jerusalem--both Daniel and Darius were caught in a trap from which they could not extricate themselves.

So Daniel was served up as cat-food, tossed to the lions…and the God to whom Daniel faithfully prayed just let it happen.

The entrance to the lion’s den was popped open, Daniel was plunked down among the famished beasts, and the escape hatch was sealed up—lest some second century B.C. Delta Force “special ops” rescuers try to spring Daniel from this pit of death.

This sort of thing happens a lot in the Bible.  It’s a deeply disturbing pattern that we see, time and again.   

Even in this same Book of Daniel, it happened three chapters earlier when three other Jewish exiles were caught red-handed, being faithful to God of Israel.   Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, for the high crime of worshiping only the one true God, were hogtied and tossed like kindling right into the middle of the fiery furnace--an inferno so hot that even those executioners who dragged them to the furnace were scorched to death.

That sort of thing happens all the time in the Bible:  whether it’s the Israelites forced into slavery in Egypt….or whether it’s the prophets of God who were persecuted and murdered for speaking the truth….or whether it’s God’s chosen people being conquered by foreign tyrants and hauled off into exile….bad stuff just keeps happening to God’s precious ones….

….and God just keeps letting it happen, time and again.

If that were the end of the matter, the Bible would read more like the screenplay for a horror film than a holy book—not the kind of literature we’d want to read, especially to our children…

But fortunately all the awful, awful stuff that happens is never the end of the matter in the Bible.

For as surely as God allows evil to enter our lives, God makes sure that we’re never alone.  God insists on coming along, accompanying God’s people wherever they go—even if it’s right into the fiery furnace, down into the lions’ den, or overwhelmed by the agony of exile.

So, no sooner are the three young men in Daniel chapter three—Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—thrown into the fiery furnace…but suddenly we behold a fourth figure with them—smack dab in the middle of the consuming flames!

And no sooner had King Darius arrived at the mouth of the den after his sleepless night of despair….than he heard the sweet voice of Daniel, declaring that he had not been alone among the ravenous beasts:  “O king, live forever!  My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths so that they would not hurt me…” (v. 22)    

And that same wonderful, healing, hope-restoring, saving pattern also plays itself out—again and again—down through the pages of the scriptures:   God permits evil into the lives of his people, but only (it seems!) so that God can be there with them, “in the same soup,”--accompanying, rescuing and saving them.

Which brings us, my friends, to the way this beloved old Sunday School story of Daniel in the lions’ den intersects with us, today, on this First Sunday in Advent!

For truth be told, you and I do not live shielded, inoculated, cocooned lives of health, happiness, safety and unfailing trust in God.   The bad stuff catches up with us, time and again—and God just lets it happen…..but only because God is never distant, never aloof from what we’re experiencing.

Quite the contrary:   God permits sin, sickness, despair and death to mark our days…..but only so that God can be there with us, rescuing and restoring us every step of the way:  forgiving sin, healing sickness, beating back despair, defeating death.

So, on this First Sunday in Advent, the whole church traditionally prays this great prayer:   “Stir up your power, O Lord, and come.   Protect us by your strength and save us from the threatening dangers of our sins, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.”

Because we sin, because sickness comes upon us, because death catches up to us….we never outgrow our need to cry out:  “Stir up your power, O Lord, and come….”

And thank goodness, God never wearies of replying to our prayer:  “Surely, I am coming soon.”  (Rev. 22:20)

In a world where sin, death and the power of the devil never leave us….thank goodness, God also never leaves us.   The watchword of Advent and the Christmas soon to come is this:  Immanuel, God-with-us, through the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus, son of Mary and son of God.

That’s the fullest, widest, deepest pattern that shines through the Bible…..not just that bad stuff finds us, but that God in Christ finds us, pitching his tent among us, now and forever, making you and me and all things new.

A foretaste of that new creation peeks through at the end of our reading from the Book of Daniel:     Daniel is drawn up from the tomb of the lion’s den, his false accusers are prevented from doing further harm, and miracle of miracles the pagan king Darius becomes an evangelist—a proclaimer of the Good News: “to all peoples and nations of every language throughout the whole world:  ‘…I make a decree that in all my royal dominion people should tremble and fear before the God of Daniel:  For he is the living God, enduring forever.  His kingdom shall never be destroyed, and his dominion has no end.  He delivers and rescues, he works signs and wonders in heaven and on earth….’”

Let us pray:  Gracious God, you have promised to be with us in all the trials and troubles of life.   As you rescued your servant Daniel, as you resurrected your beloved Son Jesus, so also draw us up out of every pit we find ourselves in.   As you make us and all things new in Jesus Christ, shape us into the flesh-and-blood proof that you have always been and will always be Immanuel, God-with-us.   Make us bold like King Darius to witness to your unfailing love, free us like Daniel to worship you without fear, and fashion us to be the living images of your forgiving grace and your liberating truth. In Jesus’ name.  Amen.”

The Worst Thing Will Never Be the Last Thing

Christ Lutheran Church on Capitol Hill, St Paul

November 6, 2016

All Saints Sunday/Baptism of Micah Aaron Haddorff

Ephesians 1:15-18; Luke 6:20-31

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

A little boy came home from Sunday School, where he and his classmates had just learned about the creation stories in Genesis--and he was just bursting with questions.

“Mommy,” he asked.   “Is it true that we are created from dust and when we die we return to dust?”

“Yes,” his mom replied, cautiously, “Why do you ask?”

“Well you gotta come upstairs real quick and look under my bed—‘cuz I’m pretty sure someone’s either coming or going!!”

A story like that just might cause us take a fresh look at all the dust bunnies around our homes!

And while we’re at it we might a fresh look at some other things, too….like…this baptismal font.

For just as certainly as we come from dust and return to dust…we also--we whose bodies are at least 70% water—we also come from the water and return to the water of our baptism into Christ.

We could even say that someone’s either coming or going, right here at Christ Lutheran, whenever the water of baptism is poured out as it shall be today for little Micah…

…and whenever we dip our fingers in the water and retrace the mark on our brows, we do so as people who are always “coming and going” not just from the dust of this good earth, but from the waters of our submersion with the Crucified and Risen Christ.

Baptism after all, at its core, is a dying and a rising, as St Paul says:   “We have been buried with [Christ] by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”  (Romans 6:4)   

Martin Luther, playing off St Paul, declared that Baptism “signifies that the old person in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily sorrow for sin and through repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”  (Small Catechism, ELW p. 1165)

Which is to say:  when we baptize someone or even just whenever we remember our baptism, someone is always coming and going, dying and rising again.  

Oh sure, we take all kinds of pictures and try to freeze the moment of baptism in our memories….but Baptism resists all such efforts to encase it in the past.

Baptism is never a static thing.  It is always our daily starting point--our ongoing life, our perpetual returning to baptism, our daily dying and rising with Christ.  

So I love how you folks at Christ Lutheran always position the baptismal font right here, located smack dab in the center of your worship-space.

For truly, this font and everything that happens here, marks our whole life of faith, hope and love in Jesus Christ.  This font is “front and center,” precisely because it is our rescue-place, our GPS locator, the command center where we receive our marching orders in God’s mission.   Someone’s always coming or going here… 

All our crookedness is straightened out here, all our waywardness made right here, all our thin and fragile hope revived here, all our pathway through life illuminated here!

The font is where it all begins, where—truly--all the saints whom we remember on this All Saints Sunday…the font is where we’ve all been birthed, into Christ Jesus.

So please, my dear friends, if anyone ever asks you if you’ve been born again….please don’t skip a beat, but answer clearly:  “Yes, yes, yes, I’ve been born again and again and again….and again.”

For we are always turning and returning to our starting point.  Our baptism is never stuck in the past.  What baptism launches us into is a whole unfolding life of beholding how our God is turning us, and turning our whole world around.

Jesus proclaims that good news in this bracing “steel-cut oatmeal” Gospel lesson.  What an astonishing Great Reversal is described here in Luke 6, set in motion by blessings and woes that Jesus utters, to upend the world and call into question all the cherished assumptions we live by.

Truly, this perpetual coming and going, this death-and resurrection way of life in Christ—it turns everything upside down.

What does this new Kingdom a’ coming, this “glorious and gentle rule of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord”—what does it look like? 

Surprise!  It looks like losers (losers, about whom we’ve heard so much during this agonizing presidential campaign!)…the Kingdom looks like losers trading places with winners.  For in Jesus’ topsy-turvy Kingdom everything and everyone gets re-valued.   

Down-and-outers, those with growling stomachs, the forsaken and the reviled….those who’re dismissed as “losers” are lifted up….granted seats of honor at the Royal Table—switching places with those we usually regard as “winners”—all the wealthy, self-satisfied, happy, popular ones.  

Jesus’ blessings-and-woes here in Luke 6 point us ahead to Jesus’ own Great Reversal, the Cross where Jesus surely looked like the world’s biggest loser, and the Empty Tomb where God made it crystal clear that all bets are off, and that absolutely nothing in this world is as it appears to be.

What Jesus talks about here, as it finds a home in our hearts, as it animates the choices we make, the path that we take….as all that happens, Jesus’ way with us will be the end of us—the end of the us we were all born with, the ancient Eve and the old Adam who resides deep in our bones—this old you, this old me, will not survive our walk with Jesus.

Loving enemies, treating haters kindly, embracing those whose lips drip with curses, praying for those who make life miserable, turning the other cheek, cheerfully parting with the shirts off our backs….all those ways of being and acting in the world will certainly be the death of us, the death of that old you, that ancient “me, myself and I” who temporarily resides within us. 

Jesus is forever opening up a new way of life that evicts our tired, old, sinful selves….so as to make room for the new creature, the new person whom Lord Jesus is forever calling forth.

That’s what happens here in this refreshing, restoring water of baptism.   That and that alone transforms us from sinners to saints.

Here, precisely here, in our baptism into Christ, God right-sizes our hearts, and right-wises our ways of thinking and believing and acting…granting us a hope that will never disappoint us, an inheritance that can never be taken from us, an indelible cross-shaped seal on our foreheads that cannot be erased. 

And here’s the best news of all:  our baptismal dying and rising with Christ, our resurrection here at the font means that the worst thing that happens to us will never be the last thing that happens to us!

Let me say that again:  resurrection means that the worst thing that happens to us will never be the last thing that happens to us!

And if all this sounds like just one more election year whopper…one final “liar, liar, pants on fire” campaign promise….please don’t  just take my word on it.

Listen rather, as our lesson from Ephesians puts it…listen rather for the quiet but compelling, convicting voice of the Holy Spirit, who alone makes us wise and lets us understand what it means to know God.  

On our own, all of this talk about the Great Reversal, can seem like a walk in the fog.  

But even in the fog, we never travel alone. The Spirit hounds us, finds us, turns us in our waywardness….so that light will flood our hearts and…we will understand the hope that was given to us when God chose us, in Christ Jesus the crucified and resurrected one, whose coming and going, whose own unending life becomes forever ours in the liberating water and Word of Baptism. 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

The Worst Thing Will Never Be the Last Thing

Christ Lutheran Church on Capitol Hill, St Paul

November 6, 2016

All Saints Sunday/Baptism of Micah Aaron Haddorff

Ephesians 1:15-18; Luke 6:20-31

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

A little boy came home from Sunday School, where he and his classmates had just learned about the creation stories in Genesis--and he was just bursting with questions.

“Mommy,” he asked.   “Is it true that we are created from dust and when we die we return to dust?”

“Yes,” his mom replied, cautiously, “Why do you ask?”

“Well you gotta come upstairs real quick and look under my bed—‘cuz I’m pretty sure someone’s either coming or going!!”

A story like that just might cause us take a fresh look at all the dust bunnies around our homes!

And while we’re at it we might a fresh look at some other things, too….like…this baptismal font.

For just as certainly as we come from dust and return to dust…we also--we whose bodies are at least 70% water—we also come from the water and return to the water of our baptism into Christ.

We could even say that someone’s either coming or going, right here at Christ Lutheran, whenever the water of baptism is poured out as it shall be today for little Micah…

…and whenever we dip our fingers in the water and retrace the mark on our brows, we do so as people who are always “coming and going” not just from the dust of this good earth, but from the waters of our submersion with the Crucified and Risen Christ.

Baptism after all, at its core, is a dying and a rising, as St Paul says:   “We have been buried with [Christ] by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”  (Romans 6:4)   

Martin Luther, playing off St Paul, declared that Baptism “signifies that the old person in us with all sins and evil desires is to be drowned and die through daily sorrow for sin and through repentance, and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.”  (Small Catechism, ELW p. 1165)

Which is to say:  when we baptize someone or even just whenever we remember our baptism, someone is always coming and going, dying and rising again.  

Oh sure, we take all kinds of pictures and try to freeze the moment of baptism in our memories….but Baptism resists all such efforts to encase it in the past.

Baptism is never a static thing.  It is always our daily starting point--our ongoing life, our perpetual returning to baptism, our daily dying and rising with Christ.  

So I love how you folks at Christ Lutheran always position the baptismal font right here, located smack dab in the center of your worship-space.

For truly, this font and everything that happens here, marks our whole life of faith, hope and love in Jesus Christ.  This font is “front and center,” precisely because it is our rescue-place, our GPS locator, the command center where we receive our marching orders in God’s mission.   Someone’s always coming or going here… 

All our crookedness is straightened out here, all our waywardness made right here, all our thin and fragile hope revived here, all our pathway through life illuminated here!

The font is where it all begins, where—truly--all the saints whom we remember on this All Saints Sunday…the font is where we’ve all been birthed, into Christ Jesus.

So please, my dear friends, if anyone ever asks you if you’ve been born again….please don’t skip a beat, but answer clearly:  “Yes, yes, yes, I’ve been born again and again and again….and again.”

For we are always turning and returning to our starting point.  Our baptism is never stuck in the past.  What baptism launches us into is a whole unfolding life of beholding how our God is turning us, and turning our whole world around.

Jesus proclaims that good news in this bracing “steel-cut oatmeal” Gospel lesson.  What an astonishing Great Reversal is described here in Luke 6, set in motion by blessings and woes that Jesus utters, to upend the world and call into question all the cherished assumptions we live by.

Truly, this perpetual coming and going, this death-and resurrection way of life in Christ—it turns everything upside down.

What does this new Kingdom a’ coming, this “glorious and gentle rule of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord”—what does it look like? 

Surprise!  It looks like losers (losers, about whom we’ve heard so much during this agonizing presidential campaign!)…the Kingdom looks like losers trading places with winners.  For in Jesus’ topsy-turvy Kingdom everything and everyone gets re-valued.   

Down-and-outers, those with growling stomachs, the forsaken and the reviled….those who’re dismissed as “losers” are lifted up….granted seats of honor at the Royal Table—switching places with those we usually regard as “winners”—all the wealthy, self-satisfied, happy, popular ones.  

Jesus’ blessings-and-woes here in Luke 6 point us ahead to Jesus’ own Great Reversal, the Cross where Jesus surely looked like the world’s biggest loser, and the Empty Tomb where God made it crystal clear that all bets are off, and that absolutely nothing in this world is as it appears to be.

What Jesus talks about here, as it finds a home in our hearts, as it animates the choices we make, the path that we take….as all that happens, Jesus’ way with us will be the end of us—the end of the us we were all born with, the ancient Eve and the old Adam who resides deep in our bones—this old you, this old me, will not survive our walk with Jesus.

Loving enemies, treating haters kindly, embracing those whose lips drip with curses, praying for those who make life miserable, turning the other cheek, cheerfully parting with the shirts off our backs….all those ways of being and acting in the world will certainly be the death of us, the death of that old you, that ancient “me, myself and I” who temporarily resides within us. 

Jesus is forever opening up a new way of life that evicts our tired, old, sinful selves….so as to make room for the new creature, the new person whom Lord Jesus is forever calling forth.

That’s what happens here in this refreshing, restoring water of baptism.   That and that alone transforms us from sinners to saints.

Here, precisely here, in our baptism into Christ, God right-sizes our hearts, and right-wises our ways of thinking and believing and acting…granting us a hope that will never disappoint us, an inheritance that can never be taken from us, an indelible cross-shaped seal on our foreheads that cannot be erased. 

And here’s the best news of all:  our baptismal dying and rising with Christ, our resurrection here at the font means that the worst thing that happens to us will never be the last thing that happens to us!

Let me say that again:  resurrection means that the worst thing that happens to us will never be the last thing that happens to us!

And if all this sounds like just one more election year whopper…one final “liar, liar, pants on fire” campaign promise….please don’t  just take my word on it.

Listen rather, as our lesson from Ephesians puts it…listen rather for the quiet but compelling, convicting voice of the Holy Spirit, who alone makes us wise and lets us understand what it means to know God.  

On our own, all of this talk about the Great Reversal, can seem like a walk in the fog.  

But even in the fog, we never travel alone. The Spirit hounds us, finds us, turns us in our waywardness….so that light will flood our hearts and…we will understand the hope that was given to us when God chose us, in Christ Jesus the crucified and resurrected one, whose coming and going, whose own unending life becomes forever ours in the liberating water and Word of Baptism. 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.