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.

Loving God for God's Own Sake

Theology for Ministry Conference

Fair Hills Resort, Detroit Lakes, MN

September 20, 2016

Luke 16:19-31

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Persons pondering this parable have noticed that the rich man starts showing signs of being human only after he is dead.

In life, the rich man dwells aloof in regal splendor, described here with such an economy of words.   Dressed-to-the-nines, it’s as if the rich man has taken up residence at the Old Country Buffet, each and every day.

In life, so it seems, the rich man has no awareness of the beggar who is always there, lying at his gate, a man so famished that he even craved crumbs from the sweepings in the rich man’s dining room.

It is no surprise that the rich man likely had no direct dealings with the beggar who certainly must have been unclean--both hygienically and religiously--his only companions the feral mutts that roamed the neighborhood. 

One of the wondrous things that wealth can purchase, after all, is distance from beggars and other assorted riff raff….protection from their blank stares, their plaintive hands, their distasteful odor.

Only in death, does the rich man notice the beggar, lolling in the embrace of Father Abraham….and even more surprisingly only in death do we learn that the rich man actually did know the beggar’s name after all:  Lazarus, which means “God helps.”

But there is more. 

Only in death, does the rich man display concern for anyone other than himself.   He remembers the survivors listed in his funeral bulletin, the five siblings he had left behind him.  The rich man expresses urgent concern—not once, but twice—that they avoid the woeful fate that has befallen him.

How ironic, that the rich man starts evidencing signs of his shared humanity with others, only after his heart has taken its final beat. 

Perhaps this is simply an instance of what Benjamin Franklin described when he said:  Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.[1]

Is that what’s going on here in this parable—was the rich man simply “old too soon”—no, actually, “dead too soon and wise too late?” 

Maybe—or maybe not!

Look with me more closely at this parable.  

Yes, the rich man, tormented in Hades, does finally notice and name Lazarus—but to what end?     The rich man, far from acknowledging Lazarus as his equal, perhaps even his better, still regards Lazarus as someone beneath him….a lackey, an errand boy, whom the rich man requests Father Abraham to send forth—three times, no less!—to do the rich man’s bidding.

Even in death, the rich man still doesn’t truly recognize, doesn’t genuinely acknowledge Lazarus as a fellow child of Abraham.

And yes, the rich man, in his dire straits does finally remember his siblings who are still in their earthly pilgrimage—but what does he think they need the most?

By asking Abraham to dispatch Lazarus back from the grave into the world to “warn” his surviving siblings, lest they “come into this place of torment”—the only conclusion I can draw is that the rich man wants to have Lazarus return from his grave to scare the hell out of them before it’s too late.  

It’s as if the rich man envisions Lazarus, perhaps clad in heavy clanking chains, like the ghost of Jacob Marley in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol—a spook from the other side, sent to frighten the rich man’s siblings into doing the right thing before they, too, go down to the grave. 

In other words, for the rich man in Hades, the only thing that seems to count is raw, naked, self-interest.   Salvation is about saving one’s own skin at any cost.

And in this regard the rich man is still light years away from the Kingdom of God.   Father Abraham is correct:  there is indeed a chasma mega—a mega-chasm between Hades and the Kingdom of God.

Perhaps you have heard the old story about Saint Teresa [of Avila who] once dreamed she saw a woman running, carrying a flaming torch in one hand, and a pail of water in the other.   When Teresa asked the woman where she was going, she answered, “I am going to quench the fires of hell and burn down the mansions of heaven so that people will love God for God’s own sake, not because they fear punishment or seek reward.”[2]

This kernel of truth in St Teresa’s vision shines through in the final verse of our parable, where Father Abraham seeks to redirect the rich man’s too-late concern for his siblings:   “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

In other words:   the five surviving siblings of the rich man don’t need to experience an apparition from the other side of death.    They already have something far better—indeed they have always had safely within their grasp—all that they need to live the life God always imagined for them, in this world and in the world to come.   In short:  they have God’s own precious Word, right in their laps.

My dear friends, the conclusion of this parable draws us to what we most need to hear:    God has zero, absolutely zero interest in scaring anyone through the Pearly Gates.    What God does care about—passionately!--is drawing us, wheedling and wooing us into the only life worth living, in the Word that God graciously lavishes upon all who have ears to hear.

“They have Moses and the prophets,” as Father Abraham puts it.    Which is to say:  they have more than enough.

The five siblings have God’s own Word, right before their eyes, in their ears.

They’ve heard about God’s amazing, gracious creation of the earth, all its inhabitants and everything that exists.

They have the astounding saga of God’s liberation of his treasured people Israel.

They have been regaled by the tales of how God continually provided for his chosen people, with manna from heaven, water from the rock, a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night, leading, always leading Israel from slavery into freedom, from the gloomy hall of death into the glorious sunshine of the Promised Land, “the clothes on [their backs] not worn out, and the sandals on [their] feet not worn out…”  (Deut. 29:5)

The rich man’s five siblings already have “Moses and the prophets,” God’s cascading promises, opening up that wide, broad place where peace and justice dwell, where the lion lies down with the lamb, where they’ll never be abandoned in their beggarliness.

The rich man’s sole survivors already have all the juicy stuff, plopped down right in their laps.   

They’ve gotten the message straight from God:

 Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

   I have called you by name, you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

   and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire—did you catch that?—when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

   and the flame shall not consume you.  (Isaiah 43)

The rich man was indeed “dead too soon and wise too late,” because here he had always had all he ever needed, with Lazarus at the gate and “Moses and the prophets” right under his nose, always beckoning, enticing him into God’s own abundant, unending life.

There’s no magic formula here.  God has made it plain as the nose on your face:

 Is not this the fast that I choose:

   to loose the bonds of injustice,

   to undo the thongs of the yoke,

to let the oppressed go free,

   and to break every yoke?

 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

   and bring the homeless poor into your house;

when you see the naked, to cover them,

   and not to hide yourself from your own kin?

Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,

   and your healing shall spring up quickly;

your vindicator shall go before you,

   the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.

Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;

   you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.”   (Isaiah 58:6-9a)

The five surviving siblings of the rich man already had anything their hearts could desire.   They had “Moses and the prophets…”

….and in fact, you and I have even more:  because we have the rest of the story, the Gospels and the epistles and everything else….

And just to leave no stone unturned, this Word has taken on flesh and bone and lived among us.  We have Someone—Jesus!--who did in fact die, descend to the dead and then return from the grave, not to scare the bejeebers out of us but always, always, always to meet us with the sweetest of greetings:  “Shalom!  Peace be with you!   Now and forever.”

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

---

[1] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/benjaminfr132004.html

[2] Quoted by Alyce M. McKenzie, Matthew, Westminster John Knox, 2002, p. 41.

Living, Breathing, Moving Images of God

Sverdrup Lutheran Church, Underwood, MN

September 11, 2016--God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday

Exodus 32:7-14

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

What makes a story so compelling that you just have to see how it ends?

Ask any author that question—and the answer will certainly be:   tension.  

Tension is what drives every good story…

....and tension simply overflows here in this story in Exodus chapter 32!

First there’s the tension that sets up the whole thing. 

Moses and God have been in a long, long conversation on the top of Mount Sinai—such an extended exchange that it seems like it’s never going to end…

….and this prolonged absence of Moses their leader…causes the children of Israel, who are encamped at the base of Mt Sinai, to grow restless and to start begging Aaron (who was second-in-command to Moses, his brother)….they start begging Aaron to cook up an alternative leadership structure for them to put their trust in.

So Aaron collects all sorts of gold jewelry from the Israelites, melts it all down and produces a golden calf for the people to worship and follow….even though that flew right in the face of the First of God’s Ten Commandments that had already been handed down from Mt Sinai:  “You shall have no other gods before me.”

This initial tension is immediately compounded when God catches wind of what’s happening.   

To say that God is not pleased with the children of Israel is an under-statement.    God is livid, so angry with his fickle people--whom he had just rescued from slavery in Egypt!—God is so ticked-off with them that he wants to let his fierce wrath “burn hot against them and…consume them.”    

God’s first inclination is to wipe out these brazen rebels and start all over again with Moses:  “Of you [Moses] I will make a great nation.”

Talk about dramatic tension!  Talk about turning up the heat!

But then Moses responds to God by doing something quite unthinkable:   Moses dares to disagree with the Almighty One!   

This introduces a whole new layer of tension to the story.  

Instead of accepting God’s offer—to start all over again with Moses and his descendants (which would have been a pretty sweet deal for Moses!)—instead, Moses risks getting sideways with God even though God has every right to punish his wayward people.

Here’s how Eugene Peterson, in his wonderful paraphrase of our text puts it:

Moses tried to calm his God down. He said, “Why, God, would you lose your temper with your people? Why, you brought them out of Egypt in a tremendous demonstration of power and strength. Why let the Egyptians say, ‘He had it in for them—he brought them out so he could kill them in the mountains, wipe them right off the face of the Earth.’ Stop your anger. Think twice about bringing evil against your people! Think of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you gave your word, telling them ‘I will give you many children, as many as the stars in the sky, and I’ll give this land to your children as their land forever.’”

The upshot of the amazing argument that Moses lays out is that “the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”

What’s going on here?   How can we make sense of this astonishing turn of events?

Let me suggest that both God and the people of God had one thing in common here:  They both, in their own ways, momentarily forgot the kind of God that God truly is.

The children of Israel, deprived too long of connection and communication with God, reverted to the superstitious notion that their God must be like every other god—a deity who can be depicted or “imaged” using lifeless, inert material taken from the earth itself---whether with carved wood, hewn stone or precious metals.  The children of Israel momentarily forgot who God was and imagined that God could be depicted as cold, unfeeling, impassive like a golden calf crafted from their melted-down jewelry….which is to say:  a god they could carry around and have at their beck and call.

What the children of Israel temporarily forgot was that they had a living God on their hands—a God of fierce passionate love, a God who is always connected and responsive to his creatures, a God who exhibits a whole range of emotions, a God who is anything but lifeless, impassive or inert.

And what God seems to have forgotten temporarily is that he’s more than a god of justice and consequences, more than all the garden variety “god’ll get you for that” kinds of gods that people continually approach with fear and trembling.

Moses reminded God—literally, in the heat of the moment--that God had already made a tremendous investment in this fickle people, God’s dear chosen ones.   God didn’t want to rescue his people from slavery in Egypt only to burn them to a crisp in the wilderness, thus making God the laughing stock of those wicked slave-masters in Egypt.  

Moses reminded God that his wrath is really the flip side of his love—God’s passionate, jealous love for his chosen people.  Moses reminded God of all the gracious promises he had uttered not just to this present generation but to all their ancient ancestors--to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob….promises God had sworn to keep if it would be the last thing God would ever do.

Moses, in this astonishing argument that he lays out before almighty God, persuades God to remember the commitments God had already made to his precious people—past, present and future.   Moses caused God to remember that although he could never be properly “imaged” or represented by inert matter, God had placed his image within the human creatures he had so graciously fashioned.  

God who is anything but aloof and impassive had chosen from the dawn of time to be represented on earth by living, breathing moving images of God…..persons like you and me through whom God stoops down to do God’s work on this good earth.

And there (in case you were wondering)—there is the surprising connection between this wild, wild story from Exodus 32 and what you and I are about here, today, on this God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday.

For today and every day you and I represent….we bear the image of the one true God who is anything but impassive or aloof or far removed from his whole creation.  

To put it another way:  God chooses to do nothing without us.

“God chooses to do nothing without us.”

Please hear that clearly, friends.   I’m not saying that God can’t do anything without us.   I’m saying that God chooses to do nothing without us.

This is God’s modus operandi, God’s M.O.   God imagines, speaks and acts always with us, the whole human family and the splendid creation that is our home, clearly in view

God is always finagling new ways to climb into human skin, in Jesus, and now in the community that bears the name of the Risen Jesus, for the sake of “getting at the world,” saving, restoring, renewing, transforming, making you and me and all things new.

God labors over, God aches for this whole groaning creation, this whole struggling human family….and the main way God gets at us, is through us—our voices, our hearts, our feet, our hands.

Simply put:  this morning God is going to do some painting, some cleaning, some picking up of trash, some packing of school kits and baby-care kits, some cheering up and encouraging of first-responders and nursing home residents…

God’s going to do all that, even though the paint spots will be on our skin, the blisters will be on our fingers, the sweat will be on our brows, and the satisfying warmth will be felt by our hearts.

As God’s chosen, named, claimed walking images on earth….we have the unbelievable calling to roll up our sleeves and care for our Creator’s beloved ones….our fellow human beings, all the other creatures on our planet, and this good earth itself.  

We are the ways, the vehicles, the means whereby our God continues to till and keep and tend the whole creation.

In fact, this is what we were created for….and in Jesus Christ it is what we were re-created for:   trusting God, loving our neighbors and caring for the earth.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

Living, Breathing, Moving Images of God

Sverdrup Lutheran Church, Underwood, MN

September 11, 2016--God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday

Exodus 32:7-14

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

What makes a story so compelling that you just have to see how it ends?

Ask any author that question—and the answer will certainly be:   tension.  

Tension is what drives every good story…

....and tension simply overflows here in this story in Exodus chapter 32!

First there’s the tension that sets up the whole thing. 

Moses and God have been in a long, long conversation on the top of Mount Sinai—such an extended exchange that it seems like it’s never going to end…

….and this prolonged absence of Moses their leader…causes the children of Israel, who are encamped at the base of Mt Sinai, to grow restless and to start begging Aaron (who was second-in-command to Moses, his brother)….they start begging Aaron to cook up an alternative leadership structure for them to put their trust in.

So Aaron collects all sorts of gold jewelry from the Israelites, melts it all down and produces a golden calf for the people to worship and follow….even though that flew right in the face of the First of God’s Ten Commandments that had already been handed down from Mt Sinai:  “You shall have no other gods before me.”

This initial tension is immediately compounded when God catches wind of what’s happening.   

To say that God is not pleased with the children of Israel is an under-statement.    God is livid, so angry with his fickle people--whom he had just rescued from slavery in Egypt!—God is so ticked-off with them that he wants to let his fierce wrath “burn hot against them and…consume them.”    

God’s first inclination is to wipe out these brazen rebels and start all over again with Moses:  “Of you [Moses] I will make a great nation.”

Talk about dramatic tension!  Talk about turning up the heat!

But then Moses responds to God by doing something quite unthinkable:   Moses dares to disagree with the Almighty One!   

This introduces a whole new layer of tension to the story.  

Instead of accepting God’s offer—to start all over again with Moses and his descendants (which would have been a pretty sweet deal for Moses!)—instead, Moses risks getting sideways with God even though God has every right to punish his wayward people.

Here’s how Eugene Peterson, in his wonderful paraphrase of our text puts it:

Moses tried to calm his God down. He said, “Why, God, would you lose your temper with your people? Why, you brought them out of Egypt in a tremendous demonstration of power and strength. Why let the Egyptians say, ‘He had it in for them—he brought them out so he could kill them in the mountains, wipe them right off the face of the Earth.’ Stop your anger. Think twice about bringing evil against your people! Think of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants to whom you gave your word, telling them ‘I will give you many children, as many as the stars in the sky, and I’ll give this land to your children as their land forever.’”

The upshot of the amazing argument that Moses lays out is that “the Lord changed his mind about the disaster that he planned to bring on his people.”

What’s going on here?   How can we make sense of this astonishing turn of events?

Let me suggest that both God and the people of God had one thing in common here:  They both, in their own ways, momentarily forgot the kind of God that God truly is.

The children of Israel, deprived too long of connection and communication with God, reverted to the superstitious notion that their God must be like every other god—a deity who can be depicted or “imaged” using lifeless, inert material taken from the earth itself---whether with carved wood, hewn stone or precious metals.  The children of Israel momentarily forgot who God was and imagined that God could be depicted as cold, unfeeling, impassive like a golden calf crafted from their melted-down jewelry….which is to say:  a god they could carry around and have at their beck and call.

What the children of Israel temporarily forgot was that they had a living God on their hands—a God of fierce passionate love, a God who is always connected and responsive to his creatures, a God who exhibits a whole range of emotions, a God who is anything but lifeless, impassive or inert.

And what God seems to have forgotten temporarily is that he’s more than a god of justice and consequences, more than all the garden variety “god’ll get you for that” kinds of gods that people continually approach with fear and trembling.

Moses reminded God—literally, in the heat of the moment--that God had already made a tremendous investment in this fickle people, God’s dear chosen ones.   God didn’t want to rescue his people from slavery in Egypt only to burn them to a crisp in the wilderness, thus making God the laughing stock of those wicked slave-masters in Egypt.  

Moses reminded God that his wrath is really the flip side of his love—God’s passionate, jealous love for his chosen people.  Moses reminded God of all the gracious promises he had uttered not just to this present generation but to all their ancient ancestors--to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob….promises God had sworn to keep if it would be the last thing God would ever do.

Moses, in this astonishing argument that he lays out before almighty God, persuades God to remember the commitments God had already made to his precious people—past, present and future.   Moses caused God to remember that although he could never be properly “imaged” or represented by inert matter, God had placed his image within the human creatures he had so graciously fashioned.  

God who is anything but aloof and impassive had chosen from the dawn of time to be represented on earth by living, breathing moving images of God…..persons like you and me through whom God stoops down to do God’s work on this good earth.

And there (in case you were wondering)—there is the surprising connection between this wild, wild story from Exodus 32 and what you and I are about here, today, on this God’s Work, Our Hands Sunday.

For today and every day you and I represent….we bear the image of the one true God who is anything but impassive or aloof or far removed from his whole creation.  

To put it another way:  God chooses to do nothing without us.

“God chooses to do nothing without us.”

Please hear that clearly, friends.   I’m not saying that God can’t do anything without us.   I’m saying that God chooses to do nothing without us.

This is God’s modus operandi, God’s M.O.   God imagines, speaks and acts always with us, the whole human family and the splendid creation that is our home, clearly in view

God is always finagling new ways to climb into human skin, in Jesus, and now in the community that bears the name of the Risen Jesus, for the sake of “getting at the world,” saving, restoring, renewing, transforming, making you and me and all things new.

God labors over, God aches for this whole groaning creation, this whole struggling human family….and the main way God gets at us, is through us—our voices, our hearts, our feet, our hands.

Simply put:  this morning God is going to do some painting, some cleaning, some picking up of trash, some packing of school kits and baby-care kits, some cheering up and encouraging of first-responders and nursing home residents…

God’s going to do all that, even though the paint spots will be on our skin, the blisters will be on our fingers, the sweat will be on our brows, and the satisfying warmth will be felt by our hearts.

As God’s chosen, named, claimed walking images on earth….we have the unbelievable calling to roll up our sleeves and care for our Creator’s beloved ones….our fellow human beings, all the other creatures on our planet, and this good earth itself.  

We are the ways, the vehicles, the means whereby our God continues to till and keep and tend the whole creation.

In fact, this is what we were created for….and in Jesus Christ it is what we were re-created for:   trusting God, loving our neighbors and caring for the earth.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.