The Man for Others

Advent 1, Year    B

Isaiah 64:1-9

December 3, 2023 at Trinity Lutheran Church, Moorhead MN

                              

From our First Lesson for today we hear again these words:

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…!”

O that you would travel from heaven to earth,  Great God, and pay us a healing, helping visit!   “Come down here—why don’t you?—and clean things up!”

Y’know—I bet we could get into that—couldn’t we?

“Please come down to us, Lord,”  I actually sometimes pray, under my breath.   “Please come down from heaven and take care of all the things that are awry here on earth.”

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…!”  

…come down to—not just anywhere—but back to that crossroads of this world where God first uttered ancient promises to his chosen people.   Split the heavens above and descend upon today’s Middle East—where terror, revenge, hatred and discontent seethe in the streets….especially nowadays in Israel and Gaza.

If you just came down from heaven, dear God, you could really straighten out that and other troubled parts of your world!

Tear open the heavens and come down, O God, to the tens of thousands of victims of natural disasters like earthquakes and floods plus human-caused disasters like climate change and wars.

Tear open the heavens and descend to us, O God—and please, please, please, with seemingly no accurate chart or sure compass to guide our way.    Tear open the heavens, O God, and visit us right here, right now, and set all things aright!

Tear open the heavens and come down, O God, to our own little corner of this world.   Come down to a local hospital ICU where a loved one clings to life.   Come among us, O God, and patch up broken relationships, heal fractured marriages, and restore hope for our children.  Create jobs for our unemployed or underemployed friends…make a home for our displaced, desperate neighbors.

O that you would tear open the heavens and come down here and make yourself plain to us.  

Cause us to see that you, O God, are undeniable and unavoidable.   “Get in our faces, Lord God—and make it impossible for us to ignore you or sidestep your will.”

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down,” pleads the ancient prophet Isaiah in our first lesson for today….reminding us that this season of Advent always begins with songs of plaintive longing---songs sung in a minor key, songs that have been echoing for 25 centuries…songs like “O come, O come, Emmanuel.”

Before we go any farther, we must remember that old Isaiah the prophet addressed a defeated, exiled people…the wandering Jews who lived five centuries before the birth of Christ---a people in exile who were not free to come or go as they pleased….a people who could not worship in their beloved temple in Jerusalem

Truth be told, they couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel.   And they struggled to trust that God was still alive and well and active in their lives.

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down” they cried, night and day.

As we ponder this text we can’t help but hear their aching longing…their gnawing hunger for the tangible, living, life-restoring presence of God.

·      “Descend to us, God, and do the stuff you used to do,”  Isaiah cries out

·      “Come down from heaven, O God, and make a mountain or two quake again—the way you did when you thundered on Mt. Sinai.”

·      Light a fire again, O God, the way you did when the prophet Elijah battled the pagan prophets of Baal on Mt. Carmel. 

·      Make a name for yourself again, O God, the way you did when you brought your people through the waters of the Red Sea and defeated the army of Egypt’s pharaoh.”

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down…!   So that we would never again have to wonder if you exist, if you care, if you are here beside us—attuned to all the ups and downs of our lives.”

This morning, my friends, we hear once again these ancient words of Isaiah….still grabbing us, still hooking us, still resonating with our longings…still rhyming with our own hunger  for the concrete,  tangible, presence of God in all of our lives.

Advent begins this year the way Advent always begins--with a song of longing—an agonizing tune that cries out:  “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”

We hear these ancient words of Isaiah….appropriately enough, on this first Sunday in Advent…when we are preparing ourselves once again to ponder and celebrate just how, in fact God has already chosen to rend the heavens and come down to live among us.

The prophet’s lament, you see, has borne amazing fruit…all because God has done and God continues to do exactly what Isaiah longingly called for.

God has done so…and God keeps doing exactly what Isaiah called for, but in a most eye-opening, unexpected way.

…for you see that, when God rends the heavens, when God tears open the sky…it’s not to create a ginormous galaxy-wide gash so that legions of angels can march through it in order to mop up all evidence of evil on earth.

Rather, when God rends open the heavens…God does so in the seemingly smallest of ways.   God cracks open just a tiny little fissure in the sky, small enough for a newborn infant to squeeze through, so that this very same infant could show up in a feed-bunk inside a frigid Palestinian stable…

….and so that this child might eventually grow into a man, the Man for Others, (Bonhoeffer) who  stretched out his arms on a Cross—for you and for me and for everyone else!

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

One Little Word

Dear friends, I preached this sermon on June 19, 1986 in the Chapel of the Cross in Northwestern Hall on the campus of Luther Seminary in St Paul.   I was serving as the seminary's first Director of Admissions at the time.  I wrote this sermon using my ancient Olympia manual typewriter; this is the first time I have published this message from 37 years ago.   I dedicate this post to the memory of six seminary faculty who also preached during the same summer session of 1986:  Paul Knutson, Eugene Kreider, Donald Juel, James Nestingen, Terry Fretheim and Paul Sonnack.   God bless their memory!  

May God also bless our memory of the Chapel of the Cross which was decommissioned in 2021.

CHAPEL SERMON

Luther Northwestern Seminary

June 19, 1986

This may sound strange to you, but for most of my life I’ve had the habit of daydreaming during Sunday morning worship.

When I was a little boy I recall getting distracted during “church” by questions like…what would happen if a gigantic bumblebee swooped through that little open window by the organ some Sunday and stung the preacher on the nose smack dab in the middle of communion…and why it was that one of the stained glass windows along the pulpit side of the church featured a hand raised in something that looked like the Boy Scout salute—when our congregation didn’t even have a scout troop, let alone “believe” in scouting.

When I was young my Sunday morning daydreaming tended to be about very tangible, concrete matters…like what in the world a “Holy Ghost” might look like…and how in the world a Holy Ghost could conceive a baby…and what phrases like “temporal and eternal punishment”…”extol the stem of Jesse’s rod”…and “meet, right and salutary” meant…and what actually went on in that little football huddle that gathered up front around the baptismal font every once in a while, what did those people do to make that poor, helpless baby scream so hard, I wondered?

I guess I’ve always had the habit of day-dreaming during Sunday morning worship…and as I’ve grown older, gone to seminary and gotten ordained my day-dreaming hasn’t really diminished…though it may have become a bit more theologically sophisticated…

…so that now I sing hymns like this one…and wonder after verse 3 what that one little word that subdues the devil might actually be.

“Though hordes of devils fill the land all threatening to devour us, we tremble not, unmoved we stand; they cannot overpower us.  Let this world’s tyrant rage; in battle we’ll engage!  His might is doomed to fail; God’s judgment must prevail.  ONE LITTLE WORD SUBDUES HIM!”

 But what one little word…is what I want to know…what I daydream about during those interminable Reformation rallies we Lutherans subject ourselves to every last Sunday in October.

The third verse of this majestic hymn conjured up in my mind an image of Martin Luther, holed up in his Wartburg Castle study, surrounded by stacks of Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, in a cold sweat because he’s constipated as usual, his kidney stones are paining him again, and worst of all those old doubts, questions and anxieties are crashing in upon him.

Verse three of this hymn causes me to envision this tormented soul…groping, grasping for a blunt object to be flung in self-defense at a shadow where the devil seems to be lurking. 

What word did Luther utter while simultaneously flinging his trusty inkwell at the Tempter?   What, for Luther, might have been that “one little word” that subdues the Evil One?

There are, I suppose, a host of obvious possibilities…in-house, Reformation language, code words, incantations (if you will) that we Lutherans might try out in an exorcism if we ever got roped into doing an exorcism.

For instance there’s that all-time favorite word “grace”…as in the ever-present “Grace Lutheran Church”, “saved by grace” and that popular whipping-boy of ours, “cheap grace.”   It just could be that “grace” is all that needs to be said to force Satan into beating a hasty retreat…

…but then again, there are plenty of other, equally-likely possibilities.  The one little word that makes the devil go gaa-gaa could be “justification”…or “cross” (as in “theology of the ______”)….or that all-purpose answer seminarians put down on test papers when they don’t know the real answer:  “JESUS!”    “Jesus” could be the one little word that stops Lucifer dead in his tracks….

….but I have my doubts.  I don’t think that even “Jesus” is the word…any more than “grace” or “justification” or “cross” or any other in-house, Reformation code word is the word, the one little word that drives the diabolos dingy!

You can repeat all those good words until you’re blue in the face, after all, and absolutely nothing will happen…because as good ad as true and as beautiful as those words might be…none of them have the power actually to “deliver the goods”…

…and Luther knew that.  He didn’t discover or concoct or create any one of those words…any more than he was the first person to read the Epistle to the Romans!  But what Luther did discover (or, perhaps we should say, what discovered Luther!) was a whole new way of hearing all those old familiar words, so that a new creation, so that entirely new people might emerge from the hearing of those words.

It is to that entirely new way of hearing the gospel that we must attend if we want to ferret out the one little word that subdues Satan…

….and when we do so we’re going to be surprised to discover that the conjunctions, the prepositions, and the pronouns are the words that really pack a wallop.

What is the one little word, anyway?

Maybe it’s a word like “nevertheless”…a “conjunctive adverb” (according to my dictionary) that signals fresh possibilities on dead-end streets, hope in despair, a “yes” in the face of every “no.”

What is the one little word?

It could be a strategically placed “because” where we’d normally expect to see a great big “if”…a strategically placed “because” that turns us away from our dour introspection, toward instead the mighty acts of One who even before we shifted out of neutral had already acted to save us.

What is the one little word that spells the end for the devil?

It just might be that harmless, taken-for-granted, misused and abused pronoun “YOU”…attached, though, to a promise spoken by one flesh-and-blood human being to another in the name of and with the authority of the crucified and risen Lord.

If I had to settle on just one word, I’d bet my whole wad on that little pronoun.

The one word, I have a hunch…the one little word the devil will do anything to stifle because he knows it’ll cook his goose is that word “you”—attached to a promise of the Gospel:

     Zaccheus, come down; I must eat with you, in your house today.

     You did not choose me, but I chose you…

     Your sins are forgiven…

     Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you…

     Lo, I am with you always even to the close of the age.

That one little bugger of a word “you” cuts through all the mustard, slices through all the verbiage, bursts through all the ways we attempt to keep God under wraps, at arm’s length…all the ways we try to maintain a safe distance between ourselves and the dynamite of the gospel.

That word, that one stinking little word attached to a promise spoken for Christ, by Christ, actually delivers the goods, does the good news, opens up the future, creates a new world and new people…

…all of which is not to deny for one second that it’s a dangerous little word.  The evil one hates that little word so much that he’s been known to have certain sayers of it crucified…and every preacher I know of, myself included, struggles to actually say it in all its risky, scandalous splendor…

…which is why I’d bet my bottom dollar that it actually is the one little word that subdues the devil…knocks him and us out of the driver’s seat…because it’s the one little word that can make a sermon more than a lecture on our spiritual and moral possibilities…it’s the one little word that finally hooks us, gets down under our skin, anchoring us in a love that’ll never let us go.  “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit….I declare unto you the entire forgiveness of all your sins….This is the body and blood of Christ, for you….Jesus crucified, dead, buried and risen…so that you might live the life you were created for—trusting God, loving, your neighbors, caring for the earth.”

“You”…a toothless, three-letter, nickel and dime pronoun…until, that is, it’s used to single out and name the recipient, the receiver, the hearer of a promise of Christ.   Then that pitiful little pronoun becomes more explosive than the combined megatonnage of all this world’s nuclear arsenals….

…for it’s that gospel-promise “YOU” that makes it possible for good-for-nothings to believe otherwise about themselves….

…it’s that gospel-promise “YOU” uttered in a Russian Orthodox baptismal liturgy that frees beleaguered believers to recognize the true super-power to whom they’ve been consigned forever….

…it’s that gospel-promise “YOU” heard at communion rails in Soweto Township that empowers folks to hope and struggle and live on in the face of oppression.

…it’s that gospel-promise “YOU” that frees farmers facing foreclosure to continue in their calling to till and keep the land.

…it’s -promise “YOU” that lets hope take root on hospital oncology wards…

…it’s that gospel-promise “YOU” that stirs me from my apathetic, complacent stupor…

…it’s that gospel-promise “YOU” that will see you through your seminary education, that will undergird you in your ministry, that will sustain you in your life.

And you don’t have just my word on that, either!

You have God’s Word on it!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

 

 

Shining Together Capital Campaign Celebration Sunday

April 16, 2023/Second Sunday of Easter

Trinity Lutheran Church, Moorhead, MN

John 20:19-31

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

The lesson that was just read is one of the Bible stories we’ve all heard at least annually in our Sunday morning worship services.

Even in 1978 when we North American Lutherans moved away from our old one-year lectionary (a lectionary, which is a list of  appointed scripture lessons for all the Sundays and festivals in the church year)….even when we started using a new 3-year lectionary that was designed to expose us to three times as many different Sunday scripture readings over the course of three years—even so we’ve still been hearing this Thomas story every single year on this Second Sunday of Easter.  

Why is that?   I think that we share this gripping story, which is told only here in John’s Gospel…because of the provocative and timely way it acknowledges that not everyone who hears the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection immediately believes it. 

Even if some folks who catch wind of the story of Easter don’t always believe it at first, they may well come to believe it later, as in fact happened to Thomas, one of Jesus’ 12 disciples, Jesus’ closest followers.   

Thomas, you see, started out as someone stuck on the notion that “seeing is believing.” Later, though, Thomas became a proclaimer of Christ who learned that “believing is seeing” particularly when we’re grappling with the miracle of our Lord’s Resurrection. 

What wonderful news that is for all of us who have come to believe in Christ even though (unlike Thomas) we have not put our fingers right into the nail-holes in Jesus’ hands, let alone thrust our hands right into the sword-pierced side of our Savior.

Notice how the Risen Christ took Thomas by the hand and walked him through everything Thomas had asked for, everything Thomas needed to know in order to embrace the truth of Christ’s resurrection.

Amazing!   Rather than scolding Thomas—the Risen Christ took as much time as Thomas needed in order to proclaim boldly and clearly those powerful words:  “My Lord and my God!”

I believe that the reason the  Risen Christ was so patient with skeptical Thomas…was that Jesus knew there was a believer already living inside of Thomas…..and not just a believer, mind you, but a proclaimer of the Good News of Jesus’ saving life, redemptive death and miraculous resurrection.

As some of us preacher-types like to say:    Thomas the doubter became Thomas the shouter….Thomas who spent himself, losing his own life for the sake of sharing Christ wherever his feet took him.

But just where was that?  Where exactly did Thomas’s feet take him?

Fourteen years ago, Joy and I made our first trip to our synod’s companion synod in India, and it was during that pilgrimage that we learned how precious St Thomas has been and still is to our fellow Christians in India.   These believers who live way on the opposite side of the globe, have followed our Lord’s command to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

A tradition not found in our Bible but cherished by many of India’s Christians is that St. Thomas traveled over 4,000 miles from Jerusalem in Israel to Chennai (formerly Madras) in India, in order to preach the Good News of Jesus Christ.

When Joy and I visited the city of Chennai, we found ourselves surrounded by artwork, architecture, stories, and the 21^st century presence of Indian Christians many of whom belong to the Mar Thoma Church, that is:  the Saint Thomas Church, numbering over 1.6 million believers in India and around the world.

We began our first day in Chennai by climbing a small hill called St. Thomas Mount—the hill on which St Thomas is believed to have been killed by a spear thrust into him by an opponent of Thomas’s preaching of Christ, in the year 72 A.D.

At the bottom of St Thomas Mount, we visited the lovely Basilica Cathedral of St. Thomas, which was built in 1523 A.D. (during the lifetime of Martin Luther).    In the crypt underneath the cathedral we paused in a small chapel that housed a statue of the martyred St Thomas, lying in repose inside a glass-encased casket—next to a wall displaying a relic that allegedly contained part of one of St Thomas’s fingers.

Now I realize you may be wondering:  Why all this attention to St Thomas?

It’s because the Mar Thoma Christians and all other Christians around the globe, didn’t just come to faith in the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ by accident.

Far from it!    For, you see, when the Risen Christ commissioned his disciples to “go and make disciples of all nations” they did indeed fan out from Jerusalem to eventually blanket the whole earth…including you and me and all our forebears in faith who’ve been brought into the Body of Christ, wherein we here at Trinity are now seeking fresh ways to shine together, bearing the light of Christ. 

But before we dove into our capital campaign, we took one of wisest, most significant steps we could have taken:  the initial step of creating a missional narrative for our congregation that boldly declares:   “God is calling Trinity Lutheran Church to shine the light of Christ into Downtown Moorhead and beyond.”

Thank God that this eye-catching, compelling call is now leading us to refocus our vision, renew our ministries, and refresh our facilities.  

In closing, I invite you to notice something in the order of worship in your bulletin…near the sermon…a unique symbol that comes from India.  It’s the emblem of our our sisters and brothers in Christ of India’s Mar Thoma Church.  

When I recently discovered this emblem, I was struck by the slogan "Lighted to Lighten”—a slogan from the other side of the world that is nearly identical to our congregation’s missional calling to “Be A Light!” here in downtown Moorhead and beyond.

 My dear friends:  on this Second Sunday of Easter, this “Shining Together” festival, may the Risen Christ take all of us by the hand and inspire us to shine the light of Christ wherever we go…especially into downtown Moorhead and beyond!

In the name of Jesus, the light of the world.  Amen.