Healthy Congregations Thrive With Healthy Leadership

Healthy Congregations Thrive With Healthy Leadership

“Who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" Esther 4:14 (NIV)

The Book of Esther tells the compelling story of a Jewish woman, Esther (4th century, B.C.), who used her position in the harem of the king of Persia to prevent the genocide of her people. To do this, Esther had to risk her very life!

Esther is unique in that it’s the only book of the Bible that doesn’t explicitly mention God. And yet it’s impossible to read Esther without perceiving the guiding hand of God at work, raising up a powerful leader at the right moment, “for such a time as this.”

God is always doing that—calling forth leaders in the right place, at the right time, with the right gifts. Over the past year I have witnessed this a number of times in congregations of our synod. I recall, in particular, a couple of congregational presidents who, simply by virtue of the who they were and how they conducted themselves, helped keep parish crises from spinning out of control.

What makes for such healthy leadership? It’s tempting to think that leaders have special knowledge, extraordinary skills or magnetic personalities. But, as Dr. Peter Steinke points out in his Healthy Congregations training materials, leaders promote health in congregations primarily through their presence and functioning.

Steinke lists 26 attributes of such leaders. Let me highlight four of these attributes:

1. Healthy leaders know who they are. They are comfortable in their own skins and don’t hesitate to define themselves for others. They are anything but chameleons or “shape-hifters.” They resist being squeezed into other persons’ molds or preconceived notions of what a leader should be.

2. Healthy leaders take responsibility for their own actions. They know they can’t be responsible for how others function. They are self-aware, able to take criticism, willing to accept the consequences of their decisions

3. Healthy leaders regulate their own anxieties. They can move calmly, patiently, deliberately within an anxious church environment. They resist picking up the “virus” of worry or desperation. God graces them with the ability to weigh alternatives, think clearly, and act responsively.

4. Healthy leaders stay connected with others—including those absorbed by anxiety or those stirring up mischief in the congregation. Such leaders listen to others, creating space and time for respectful conversations. But they do not allow the mission to be thwarted or the congregation to be highjacked by persons with narrow agendas.

We’ve all seen how highly reactive persons can spread anxiety throughout a congregation—almost as if anxiety were a virus. But the same holds true for health in the congregation. Healthy leaders “spread” health throughout the system as they influence others to take responsible stands, keep focused on God’s mission, remain calm in adversity and stay connected with each other through thick and thin. Thank God for such servants in our midst!

Bishop Larry Wohlrabe

Questions for reflection and discussion:
Recall effective church leaders you have known. How did they contribute to the health of the congregation through their presence and functioning?
What leadership gifts has God given to you? What are your “growing edges” as a leader?
How does your congregation identify, call forth and nurture healthy leaders?

This is the seventh of an 11-part series of articles, based on the Healthy Congregations training materials by Dr. Peter Steinke. Bishop Larry encourages church councils and other leadership groups to use these articles for devotions/discussion as they meet together.

Jesus Gets Us Unstuck

Christ the King Lutheran Church, Moorhead
50th Anniversary—Reformation Sunday
October 26, 2008
John 8:31-36

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’ They answered him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, “You will be made free”?’

Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there for ever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

When I was in high school many moons ago, I (like your own Pastor Matt the birthday boy) was a member of FFA, which according to one wag, meant “Father Farms Alone.”

One of the things we Future Farmers of America in southern Minnesota did back in the early 1970s was to raise pheasants on our farms for release back into the wild. We did that because, due to a loss of habitat, the wild pheasant population in our area had declined drastically And so we FFA members raised birds to restock the depleted pheasant population.

There was just one problem with that, though. It wasn’t hard to hatch pheasants, feed and water pheasants, and give pheasants a nice place to grow up in. The problem wasn’t at the front end of that process—the problem came at the very end.

Those crazy pheasants, you see, had a hard time catching on to that “release back into the wild” business! I still remember, one spring morning, being part of a bunch of blue-jacketed FFA boys, who had a couple of cages full of ready-to-release pheasants on the back of some guy’s pickup…..and when we lifted one of those cages down to the ground….when we opened the door of that cage, the birds just sat there.

They weren’t exactly longing for freedom. These wild creatures, who had grown accustomed to three square meals in a nice, warm, safe place….these pheasants clung to the sides of their cage and would not stride out into the sunlit freedom for which we had raised them.

So we FFA boys had to literally drag the pheasants out of their cages, shoo them away, and then run back to the pickup so the pheasants wouldn’t follow us back home.

So much for pheasant freedom, I guess!

And that gives us a picture of a broader, deeper truth…namely, that one of the crazy things about freedom is that sometimes you can’t give it away!

Jesus bumps up against that strange truth in this morning’s gospel reading from John, chapter 8.

Here in these verses, Jesus aches to give away the freedom that he has come to bestow upon the world….and yet his listeners, those “Jews who had believed in him” weren’t buying any of it. Like my old FFA pheasants, Jesus’ hearers clung desperately to the sides of their cages, they couldn’t see any good reason to step forth into the glorious freedom Jesus was talking about.

Who us? they asked Jesus….We don’t need freedom. You can’t free us from anything. “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.”

That last line is about as outrageous as the inflated promises we’re hearing daily in the waning days of this presidential campaign season. “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.”

Such a statement could be true—only if you completely forgot slavery in Egypt, conquest by the Babylonians, exile by the Assyrians and every other episode in which God’s chosen people had CONSTANTLY been under some tyrant’s thumb. In fact, when Jesus and these Jews had their encounter, in that very moment, they were all under Roman rule, they were all in some sense “slaves” to the dictates of far-off Caesar.

Who us? Freedom? We don’t need to hear about that. “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone….”

….and denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, either!

This massive “disconnect,” this huge communication gap between Jesus and the “Jews who had believed in him”—this wasn’t just a “Jewish problem.” No, it was, and it still is a human problem.

None of us….not a single one of us….wants to imagine that we are not free. When we think of ourselves, we don’t use words like “slave” or “captive” or “prisoner.” That isn’t the self-image we carry around.

Freedom may be nice for someone else….but we don’t need any of it. We’re fine. We’re content. We’ve grown accustomed to things the way they are. What would we do with freedom?

It is precisely into this situation, into this human condition, that our Lord Jesus has come with a commission from his heavenly Father to set all the captives free. And so, right off the bat, Jesus almost always has to help us, first, see our need for freedom….just as he does here in John, chapter 8.

And so, face to face with these Jews who had believed in him, Jesus comes out and bluntly says it: “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.”

Sin is something that we don’t just dabble in, from time to time, Jesus says. Sin is not a “take it or leave it” thing for us. No, but rather, sin is like eating potato chips. We tell ourselves we’re just going to have one or two or maybe three…and then just like that we’ve polished off the whole bag. Sin swamps us, sin washes over us, sin overwhelms us.

Jesus has to talk just that bluntly here because the first step toward freedom involves sizing up the cage we’re already in, perceiving how we’re clinging to the walls of a prison cell that will be the death of us.

Jesus starts setting us free by helping us first see our lack of freedom. And then Jesus doesn’t just talk about freedom. No—but rather, Jesus does freedom to us. Jesus makes us free.

Syndicated columnist Mark Steyn writes: “The other day I found myself, for the umpteenth time, driving in Vermont behind a…vehicle [proudly displaying on its rear bumper a FREE TIBET bumper sticker.] It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for [those] 'FREE TIBET' [bumper] stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing [of his tiny nation] will actually get under way. For a while, my otherwise not terribly political wife got extremely irritated by these [bumper] stickers, demanding to know at a pancake breakfast at the local church what precisely some harmless hippy-dippy old neighbor of ours meant by the slogan he'd been proudly displaying [on his car] decade in, decade out: 'But what exactly are you doing to free Tibet?' she demanded. 'You're not doing anything, are you?' 'Give the guy a break,' I said back home. 'He's advertising his moral virtue, not calling for action. If [the U.S. secretary of defense] were to say, ‘Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division goes in on Thursday’, the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast.”

God so loved the world that God didn’t shower down on it a billion bumper stickers that say FREE SINNERS!

God so loved the world that God sent his Son, who came among us to do something about our servitude, that is, to make us free. And…“If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Jesus came among us, not just liking the idea of freedom, but bringing freedom, doing freedom, marching into Satan’s stronghold and blasting open the doors of his dark dungeon. Such freedom was precious enough to our Lord Jesus, that he was willing—more than willing—to shed his blood for it, for you and for me.

And that’s what we’re about, dear friends. We’re about setting people free, in Jesus’ name.

When we’re at our best, we Lutherans know that and we do it “in spades.” On this Reformation Sunday, every year, we recommit ourselves to being agents of God’s freedom, just as Martin Luther did 491 years ago, when he nailed that manifesto to the door of the Wittenberg Church—a declaration of independence, a charter of freedom for generations to come.

You’re about that here at Christ the King. You’re in the freedom business. Folks come here, not fully realizing how they’re stuck in some cage, stuck in an addiction, stuck in a revolving door of rotten relationships, stuck in the illusion of respectability, stuck in “affluenza,” stuck in whatever it is we’re stuck in.

We come here stuck—and Jesus gets us unstuck. Jesus makes us free. Jesus frees us from our past. Jesus frees us for God’s future, and the grand mission that God is forever calling us to serve.

That’s what you’ve been doing so well for the past 50 years, it’s what you’re about, after all: setting sinners free in the name of Jesus. Mending lives back together again through the grace of Christ the King.

Two weeks ago I was at another 50th anniversary celebration, down at United Lutheran Church of Elbow Lake. And during the children’s sermon that morning I asked the kids whether 50 years was old or young. Most of the kids thought 50 years was pretty old…but one bright young man raised his hand and said: “Fifty is old….but in ‘church years,’ fifty is still pretty young.”

You’re still pretty young here at Christ the King. In fact, you’re far closer to the beginning than to the ending of your days. God has lots more in store for you. You aren’t going to run out of things to do anytime soon.

Because as long as anyone—anyone!—is frantically clinging to the wall of some cage or prison cell….as long as anyone is still stuck in sin, Jesus, the savior from sin, Christ the King in our midst, will be at work, setting us all free.

In the name of Jesus.
Amen.

No Empty Seats

United Lutheran Church, Elbow Lake, MN
50th Anniversary--October 12, 2008
Matthew 22:1-14
In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Lambeau Field in the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin, is a holy place of sorts. Since 1960 every seat in Lambeau Field has been sold out for every Green Bay Packer home football game. Some 74,000 persons are on the waiting list for Green Bay Packer season tickets. The policy at Lambeau Field is: no empty seats!

So imagine a man who had waited a lifetime to go to a Packers home game, and when he finally got to do so (courtesy of a season-ticket-holder who couldn’t attend one Sunday afternoon), this man observed that the seat just in front of him was empty.

How could this be—an empty seat in Lambeau Field! At half-time the man finally worked up the gumption to ask the fellow sitting right next to the empty seat if he knew who normally sat there.

“Oh, that,” the man replied, “that was my late wife’s seat.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” the newcomer mumbled, feeling like a heel.

But still it bugged him….to have a single empty seat in Lambeau Field! It bugged him so badly that he spoke to the widower once again. “I know that you might want to remember your departed wife by leaving her seat vacant, but couldn’t you honor her memory just as well by inviting one of your dear friends to occupy that seat?”

“I suppose I could,” the widower replied, “but right now all my closest friends are still at my wife’s funeral.”

“No empty seats,” is the motto at Lambeau Field, and it clearly was the policy of the king in this parable.

His son, the crown prince, was getting married. A week’s worth of wedding festivities had been planned, and the invitation list had been painstakingly put together. Invitees were given advance notice of the days they should set aside.

And yet, when the hour of the wedding feast came, when the festivities were about to begin, all the invited ones turned out to be no-shows. Here it was a royal wedding, no less—people should have been falling all over each other to get in, but instead they all offered lame excuses when summoned to the wedding hall. Some were even downright offended by the intrusion of the king’s messengers, and a few of those messengers were-shockingly!—killed.

So the wedding feast was ready, the food was piping hot, and no one was showing up. The king was infuriated. After avenging the murderers of his messengers, he sent out his servants one more time, gathering up anyone and everyone they could find—“the good and the bad,” our text says.

And this time all the guests came—all the last minute invitees showed up, and the banquet hall was filled.

“No empty seats” was the king’s obsession and his goal, and he reached that goal—by hook or by crook.

And that tells us something about God, dear friends. God wants there to be “no empty seats” in God’s glorious kingdom. God is fiercely determined to fill every available space with his people, his chosen ones. God wants an SRO—standing room only—crowd around his throne.

And how about us? How do we feel about empty seats, say, in this sanctuary? Across the 270 congregations of our Northwestern Minnesota Synod only about 26% of our members are in worship each week. Imagine that: a church that seats 100 folks, drawing only 26 persons—that’s a lot of empty seats that the janitor needs to keep dusting off!

And worse than those empty seats is our complacency, our lackadaisicalness about them. We 21st century Lutherans have “made peace” with all the empty seats, we have acquiesced to that, we have accepted it much too glibly.

Think of it this way: what if we imagined each worship service as a sumptuous banquet, a veritable feast? What if (following the trajectory of this parable) we pictured Sunday morning worship as our own Old Country Buffet time? How would we feel if we regularly prepared food for 100 and 74 of them failed to show up? That’s a lot of Tupperware containers of leftovers we’d need to squeeze into the fridge! Wouldn’t it kill us to let all that good food go to waste?

And that, dear friends, is what’s happening all the time. For 50 years God has been serving up, each week in this congregation, a feast of mercy and grace and lovingkindness in Jesus Christ our Lord. God has been feeding you and those who came before you here at United Lutheran. The food that is served up here is nourishing, piping hot and delectable. It restores us and give us life.

But on a typical Sunday here in northwestern Minnesota, when the weekly banquet is ready—74% of us Lutherans are AWOL. 74% of us prefer starvation.

What if, dear friends, we rested a little less easily with that? What if we determined not to have anyone miss that meal? How might that fire our imaginations and move us out, like the king’s royal messengers, to invite and plead and cajole hungry people into eating the bread of life?

What if, dear sisters and brothers here at United Lutheran, what if you moved into the next 50 years of your congregation’s life, simply telling yourselves that you will no longer tolerate empty seats in God’s house? What if that even became part of your mission statement: No more empty seats?

But there’s another shorter parable tacked on to the parable of the wedding feast here in Matthew 22, a codicil of sorts, that at first seems awfully puzzling.

As the king surveys his filled-to-the-gills banquet hall, he spots a man not properly attired. Here’s what I think happened. The king invited all the wedding guests, made it possible for them to come, and even fitted each of them out with an appropriate wedding robe, as they entered the banqueting hall. It didn’t matter how dirty or filthy or tattered they were—the king would cover over all of that with a beautiful wedding robe, at no extra charge!

But one man brazenly snuck in in his old duds, the rags in which he felt most comfortable. He was making a “fashion statement” of sorts. It was his way of saying, in terms of his manner of dress, “take me just the way I am or take me not at all.”

And the king, to our great surprise, bounced the guy out into the street!

What’s going on here? Does this king want “no empty seats,” or not? Why would we invite this guy, only to evict him from the party? Was the king, after throwing open the doors to everyone, suddenly getting snooty?

Not at all! The king wanted to have mercy, wanted to share his generosity with all, right down to supplying them with a garment suitable for the occasion.

God accepts you and me, just the way we are—this is true. But God never leaves us “just the way we are.” God welcomes us to the banquet, and we can expect that that banquet will transform us, will make us new.

The man who turned up his nose at the offer of a free-rent wedding robe was, in effect, saying: I choose to enter and remain in my rags, my sin, my waywardness. And the king said: “Nothing doing. I want all of you—lock, stock and barrel. I want you and I intend to make of you a new creature.”

God wants no empty seats in God’s kingdom. God wants to fill all the seats in the banqueting hall. God welcomes you and me to the wedding feast—which is to say, God welcomes us to the transforming, renewing power of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

We will be changed by that. We will not be content to remain in our dirty old rags. We will long to wear the robe of righteousness, wrapped around us in our baptism. We will be glad—we will be overjoyed to wear the king’s gracious robe that covers over all our sinful brokenness and makes us clean and bright and new in God’s sight.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

"Rhyming" Word and Deed

Dilworth Lutheran Church
60th Anniversary Celebration, “Growing Disciples”
September 28, 2008
Matthew 21:23-32

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

I’d like to do something sort of strange this morning. I’m going to start by telling you how this sermon ends. It ends with this line: “God loves to wrap words in flesh and blood. God loves to make faith come alive in energy and action.”

Let me say that again, the conclusion to this sermon: “God loves to wrap words in flesh and blood. God loves to make faith come alive in energy and action.”

OK, that’s the end of this sermon. Now, back to the beginning.

Jesus is in the hot-seat here in Matthew 21, as he often is in the gospels. Jesus has been making a stir among the people, riding into Jerusalem like a king, angrily clearing all the merchants out of the Temple, cursing a fig tree so that it withers at once.

Jesus is making a scene, and the religious leaders of his people are understandably nervous. Like the dithering school board members in that old Broadway play The Music Man, always trying to get Professor Harold Hill to fork over his “credentials,” the Jerusalem religious establishment demand that Jesus show his ID and tender his resume.

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” they ask, and it is a very legitimate question. It’s the kind of question they should be asking, even as we wary voters, in this presidential election year are only smart to ask the same thing of Senators McCain and Obama. Show us your credentials, please!

But Jesus isn’t answering this question, at least not directly. He seems to dodge it by asking his own question: What did they make of the now-dead John the Baptist? Where did he get his authority—from God or from human beings?

It’s a no-win question for these religious leaders. If they say that John represented God’s authority, everyone will wonder why these religious leaders opposed John. But if they say that John was just another ordinary human being, they’ll risk upsetting the common folk for whom John had become a hero whose image continued to shine long after his martyrdom.

So Jesus’ accusers back off. Staring nervously at their feet, they mumble: “We don’t know where John’s authority came from”—basically the equivalent of: “No comment!”

Jesus knew they’d answer that way. And so Jesus uses his accusers’ “no comment” to justify his own refusal to answer their question. He wasn’t about to tell them how he got the power to do and say what he’d been doing and saying.

It seems like Jesus was ducking the question his accusers posed. Or was it that Jesus simply didn’t want to TELL his accusers about the source of his authority. For Jesus had another way of dealing with that. Jesus almost always preferred to let his actions do the talking for him.

…which is the point of the little parable Jesus tells next. It’s about as simple and straightforward as any of Jesus’ parables.

A man has two sons. He asks one to go work in the family vineyard, and the son replies: “Bug off, old man. I’ve got better things to do!” (You’ll notice, I’m taking a few liberties with the text…)

But this first son, after a while, feels crummy about what he said to his dear old dad, and so heaving a big sigh, the son puts on his work clothes and heads out to the vineyard. He does the opposite of what he said he’d do.

Meanwhile, thinking he struck out with his first son, the father turns to his second son and asks him to go work in the vineyard. “Sure, Dad, I’ll get right on it as soon as I finish this video game…” (I’m still taking a few liberties with the text…)

But the video game (or whatever else was distracting the second son) takes longer than he imagined, and by that point he has lost interest in obeying his father, and in fact he never makes it to the vineyard. Like the first son, the second son also does the opposite of what he said he’d so.

And so Jesus asks the Jerusalem religious elite: “Which of the two did the will of his father?” And the answer is obvious: only the first son actually did his father’s will.

And with that answer still on their lips, Jesus nails the religious authorities of Jerusalem with this inconvenient truth: “You guys are just like the second son. You talk a good line, but your actions betray you. You say a loud YES to God, but your lives are a huge NO. And meanwhile, the scum of the earth—the ones you look down your long noses at!—they are ‘getting it.’ Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.”

What is Jesus after here? What is he seeking?

Jesus is seeking a congruence, a correspondence, a “rhyming” of word and deed. That’s because Jesus is speaking for God, indeed Jesus is speaking as God here. And God just “loves to wrap words in flesh and blood…God loves to make faith come alive in energy and action.”

But wait a minute. We Lutherans love words and make much of faith—faith that grasps God’s promises. We’re skittish about doing stuff, leery of “works.” We know that nothing we do can make us right with God, after all.

So, we Lutherans are queasy about what Jesus is up to here in Matthew 21, because Jesus almost seems to de-value our words, our verbal professions of faith.

And yet, and yet, must we pit words against works, faith versus deeds in order to be good little Lutherans? Martin Luther himself once said of faith that it is “a living, busy, active, and mighty thing” (LW 35:370). And Luther himself showed again and again how God’s Word is always more than letters on a page, always more than mere talk. God’s Word is living and active, forgiving our past and forging our future. God’s Word is always, always more than syllables.

In Jesus, after all, God’s Word—God’s “I love you”—became flesh and lived among us (John 1). In Jesus, God’s grace and truth came alive in energy and action….going all the way to the Cross and the Grave for you and for me. God could have mailed us a love letter, but instead God sent us Jesus.

And now, dear brothers and sisters, God sends us, to be his own continuing “love letters” to a hurting, hungry world. We call that discipleship—hence your anniversary theme, “Growing Disciples”—and discipleship involves correlating, “rhyming” words with deeds in the most natural, indeed inevitable way.

When Martin Luther called faith a “living, busy, active, and mighty thing” it’s as if he were saying that faith is hyper-active. It’s in the nature of faith to snap, crackle and pop with life and vitality. God is forever taking our words and wrapping them in flesh and blood:
God wraps our longing for a fresh start and a new creation in the flesh and blood of fervent prayer.
God wraps our awe at the wonders of the universe in the flesh and blood of inspiring worship.
God wraps our pain at the hurt and heartache of this world in the flesh and blood of self-less service.
God wraps our gratitude for all good things in the flesh and blood of overflowing generosity.
God wraps our longing that others might know this Great News in the flesh and blood of winsome witness.

When God wrapped himself up in the flesh and blood of Jesus, born of Mary, we called that incarnation.

When God wraps himself up in our flesh and blood--in where we show up and what we do with our bodies and our being--we call that discipleship.

All of it—all of it—is God’s doing in our lives. God bids us go into his vineyard, and however we may at first answer him, the proof of the pudding will be in what actually happens, what results there—in the vineyard, that is, in God’s glorious world.

So dear friends at Dilworth Lutheran, today as you give thanks for 60 years of life and ministry, you are wisely and appropriately committing yourselves to “Growing Disciples”….which is just another way of saying that you’re opening yourselves up to God who “loves to wrap words in flesh and blood, who loves to make faith come alive in energy and action.”

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The Line Starts at the End

2008 Fall Cluster 6 Gathering
Women of the ELCA
Christ the King Lutheran Church, Moorhead
September 25, 2008
Matthew 20:16
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”

Have you noticed how in Matthew’s gospel, which we’ve been reading in worship this year, there always seems to be a “lineup” of one sort or another?

Jesus is always lining up his disciples, inviting them to follow him….or else he’s telling wild, reckless stories about lineups—like the laborers in the vineyard we heard about last Sunday, whose boss lined them up for payroll, starting with those who worked just one hour and going down to those who worked a full, day-long shift.

When Jesus lines us up, or when Jesus tells stories about lineups like last Sunday’s parable….he is always up to something, turning upside-down and inside-out all our cherished notions about who’s first, who’s on top, who’s at the head of the line.

I’m convinced that Jesus loves fruit-basket-upset…..because the only way he can reach us with the astounding claims of his glorious and gentle rule over all things, his coming kingdom, his new creation…the only way Jesus can get through to us by reversing all our notions of authority and glory and pre-eminence.

And the best, shorthand summary of what Jesus is up to in this regard, comes from the 20th chapter of St. Matthew, verse 16: “So the last will be first, and the first will be last….”…..or as I’ve paraphrased it for our consideration this evening: With Jesus, “the line starts at the end”…..with Jesus, the line forms at the rear.

What is this all about, this strange, upsetting, disorienting reversal of the ways we usually choose up sides, form lines or establish pecking orders?

What it’s all about is this: when Jesus comes into our lives he shakes everything up and reverses all the arrows. Up is down, and down is up….forward is backward and backward is forward…front is rear, and rear is front….first is last and last is first.

And that isn’t just something that Jesus lays on us, that Jesus expects of us or asks us to embrace. It is how Jesus himself lives and moves among us. Jesus leads us in the way where he would have us go.

· So, instead of us climbing our way up to heaven, Jesus descends, comes down from heaven to meet us and redeem us where we’re at.
· Instead of seeking advantage or authority over us….Jesus drains himself of conventional power and might…Jesus empties himself, becomes a slave, allows us to edge him out of the world and up onto a cross.
· Instead of grabbing first place through sheer force…..Jesus heads for the lower position, goes to the end of the line—seeks out the lost, the least, the last—and places himself utterly at our disposal, completely in our service.

Jesus leads the way in his topsy-turvy kingdom by forming an amazing line of followers…..and this line is formed at the rear, on the bottom of the heap, in last place.

And this same Jesus invites us to follow him, to travel where he has already gone for us…setting aside all power and privilege, emptying himself out completely, giving himself away for you and for me, thereby freeing us to do that for one another.

Jesus invites you and me to join his line of followers….and this line forms at the rear, this line starts at the end.

But just what does this look like? What difference does it make in our daily lives and in our corporate life in the church?

Let me suggest three of the many ways that Jesus’ fruit-basket-upset, his topsy-turvy new way of living engages you and me in our lives of faithful following.

1. First, when we join Jesus’ lineup of followers, we’re invited to trade our “respectability” for the privilege of serving those on the margins and edges of life.

We Lutherans, don’t you know, are a respectable bunch—and that’s not all bad. We are not known for rocking the boat, making waves, mixing things up, creating a scene.

If anything, we Lutherans have respectability and predictability and steadiness down to an art form. Garrison Keillor, of Prairie Home Companion fame--all he has to do is say the word “Lutheran” and the audience chuckles….because they picture us: steady-as-she-goes, bland, some might even say boring people who are utterly respectable.

But Jesus whose line starts at the end—Jesus frees us to surrender our respectability in service to the lost, the last and the least.

The easiest way for me to talk about this is to share with you what I’ve learned about a place in our Northwestern Minnesota Synod where that happens every day. It’s called Peoples Church and it’s located in Bemidji.

Peoples Church offers radical hospitality to all in the name of Jesus. Anyone and everyone is welcome, and those who are destitute are consciously recruited. Because Bemidji is located near three major tribal communities, many who come to Peoples Church are Native Americans—but there are at Peoples Church all colors and sizes and shapes of people.

When folks come to Peoples Church, whether for worship or the Sunday feast or an AA meeting or a “wisdom circle” discussion or a chance to pick up some clothes or bedding or other necessities of life…..when folks come to Peoples Church they are treated with respect and compassion. They hear the stories of Jesus and receive his body and blood…..their children are baptized, their dead are buried, and their dignity is honored. Those who usually find themselves last, are moved to the head of the line at Peoples Church.

That all sounds good, doesn’t it? But it comes at a cost. Peoples Church is a risky “gospel enterprise,” because it welcomes even people who have made bad choices, persons living with the consequences of mistakes and folks who have been and may still be in trouble with the law. (Just this past week I heard that 25% of all Native American men in our state are incarcerated in the prisons and jails of our state!) Peoples Church has many supporters—but it also has its detractors.

Because it is a mission congregation of our synod, I believe that Peoples Church—warts and all—is one of the ways we are all lining up behind Jesus, following our Savior who sacrificed his respectability for the shame of the Cross.

2. Here’s another way Jesus’ all-bets-are-off, inside-out way of living engages you and me in our lives of discipleship. When we become part of Jesus’ lineup of followers, we find that embracing faith doesn’t prevent us from walking with doubters.

Jesus certainly leads the way here. Jesus loved doubters—Jesus was always ready to listen to them, hear their questions, and tune in to their longings.

So also, you and I, because we know God holds us in the palm of his hands—we have the freedom to wear our faith with a light touch, that opens us up to questioners and seekers all around us.

Nowadays one of the biggest segments of these questioners and seekers are young adults between the ages of 20 and 40, often identified by pollsters as the most unchurched cohort in the U.S. population.

There are some 45,000 such young adults in the Fargo-Moorhead area, many of whom have yet to be embraced by a believe-able, life-changing faith in Jesus Christ. Over the last year there’s been a conversation about these young adult seekers here in our wider community—a conversation among ELCA folks who believe God calls us to new ways of sharing the good news.

Out of these conversations has come a proposal to start an “emergent church” in the greater Fargo-Moorhead area, and this proposal has now gained approval from the ELCA and the two local synods. For now we’re simply calling it “The Project,” and our first step will be to call an organizer or “minister of listening” to spend time simply meeting with young adults, listening to them and allowing their questions and longings, their hopes and dreams to shape a new form of church—a church that may not look like the churches we know and treasure, a church that will open up pathways to faith for a generation that might otherwise be lost to the cause of Christ.

3. Here’s a third “take” on following Jesus, getting into line behind our Savior—a line that forms at the rear. When we fall in step with Jesus and get behind him, we start flirting with a reckless, break-the-bank generosity. Such generosity flies in the face of our natural inclination to grasp and hold on to what we mistakenly think is ours to keep.

Lately I’ve been sharing a strange dream with people in our synod. I’ve been wondering out loud what it would be like if Lutherans became so notorious for their generosity—especially their financial generosity—that the IRS routinely audited Lutherans’ tax returns, because they appeared to be giving to church and charity way beyond their means.

I know that sounds wild and foolhardy, but it is possible. I have a friend, a dear friend who was audited by the IRS precisely for that reason.

You see my friend is a tither….you might call him a fanatical, industrial-strength tither. He always tithes on all of his income. Years ago when my friend’s mother died and he received a small inheritance, he and his wife insisted on tithing on that as well—all in one year. And when they filed their federal tax return, their charitable contributions looked all out of whack….so the IRS audited them.

Imagine that sort of thing regularly happening to us Lutheran disciples of the Lord Jesus! Why should the Mormons and the Seventh Day Adventists have all the fun of tithing and double-tithing? We Lutherans can easily outdo them in telling of God’s grace and abundance—why shouldn’t we start outdoing them in terms of the way we allow that same grace of God to wash over us and flow through us to others, for the sake of God’s mission in the world?

What does it look like when we follow Jesus—when we line up behind our Lord, for whom the last are first and the first are last?

It looks as though Jesus has upset all our applecarts and reversed all the arrows in our lives….
· Trading our “respectability” for Christ’s own radical hospitality to all…
· Embracing faith in ways that keep us open to doubters, questioners and seekers…
· And saying goodbye to our natural tendency to hang on to stuff for dear life…setting that aside to risk becoming so generous that the IRS might grow suspicious of us.

Does all of this sound a little wild and out of bounds? Does it even sound like a way you Women of the ELCA might “act boldly on [your] faith in Jesus Christ,” as your mission statement puts it?

I think it does.

And that’s why I find it so exciting….following the Lord Jesus who is always “reversing the arrows” and calling the first to be last and the last to be first.

Grace in Your Face

NW MN Synod

Theology for Ministry Conference

Fair Hills Resort, Detroit Lakes, MN
September 17, 2008
Matthew 20:1-16


Will Willimon, Methodist preacher and now bishop, tells about a time he preached on this text in the magnificent Chapel at Duke University. He writes:

She came up to me at the end of the service saying, “I was really troubled by the service today.” She was wearing a Duke blue usher’s robe. “Where do you get these stories that you tell in your talk?” she asked. “Stories? I guess I get them from growing up in South Carolina,” I said. “Well I was really bothered by the one today,” she said. “I just don’t think that’s anyway to treat people. I mean, if you work longer than other people, you should get paid more.” “Wait a minute,” I said. “That’s not my story, that’s from Matthew.” “Matthew?” she asked. “It’s in the Bible,” I said. “Why are you ushering here?” I asked. “Well that tall guy over there, I’m dating him. And he needed somebody to usher today so he called me and here I am,” she said. “Next question,” I said, “what is your religious background?” “We went to church some when I was a kid, but I’m not anything really,” she said. “Well let me tell you something. Just for your information. There is a sense in which you are the only person who got the story this morning. You found it offensive to your notion of justice. Right? Outrageous. Right? Well, just for your information, the man who told that story was later murdered for telling it. You got it. It really is an offensive, outrageous story. You got it.”

SOURCE: William Willimon, “Defining Justice with Jesus”
Sermon preached in Duke University Chapel 9/19/1999
http://www.chapel.duke.edu/worship/sunday/viewsermon.aspx?id=92

You could say, I think, that Will Willimon had a “post-modern moment” with that young usher in the Duke Chapel. She wasn’t buying what he was selling. Just because it was in the Bible, just because Jesus said it—she wasn’t swallowing it.

And that can be unsettling for us preachers—can’t it?

I think I had my own “post-modern moment” a few Sundays ago. I was in a congregation of our synod, preaching on Matthew 18:15-20…..and about midway through the sermon it’s like I was losing about a third of my hearers. A massive, simultaneous glazing-over-of-eyes seemed to be taking place. And I don’t think they were responding to me as a preacher as much as they were responding to Jesus and his hard word about treating folks who refuse to be reconciled as if they’re Gentiles or tax collectors.

It all came to a head when I uttered the e-word: “excommunication.” Right then, I thought one or two persons were ready to get up and walk out, and a whole bunch of others had pained looks on their faces that said: “You’ve got to be kidding!”

In that moment I thought to myself: “I’m not making this up. Jesus made this up and said it and (most of all) lived it and the evangelist wrote it down so that we can keep saying it….even though some folks, maybe many folks aren’t buying it.”

We’ve been pondering what it’s like to preach and “do church” at the post-modern turn, and, no offense to our great speakers, but I’m not sure I’m leaving this conference any smarter than I came. I doubt I’m going home any better equipped to preach and share Christ with a generation that reserves judgment about truth claims that used to be taken at face value, but now have to be defended, argued for, and (most importantly) lived out with greater and greater authenticity.

Part of me—a pretty big part of me—will never buy into this “post-modern” stuff….but this much I do know: it’s in the air we breathe, and we best remember that as we venture out to proclaim the truth that has met us in Jesus. We may not like the post-modern mindset (just as some days we may not like gravity!)…but we best learn how to deal with it.

Folks ain’t necessarily gonna buy the truth that we have to sell.

And maybe that’s just as well. There could be one thing worse than post-modern skepticism or post-modern relativism….and that’s the over-familiarity of the faithful, who nod encouragingly, look at us sympathetically while we preach, and then quickly glance down at their watches to see how many more minutes remain before the Vikings’ kickoff.

This young woman that Will Willimon talked about, all dressed up in her Duke Chapel blue ushers robe….this audacious young woman was at least grabbed by the truth enough to struggle with it and push back against it.

She got something other hearers missed—the sheer, “in your face” offensiveness of this story and its implications.

Here you have this wild, type-A vineyard owner. It must have been one of those years when the grapes all ripen –literally!--on the same day, when the harvest can’t wait another second longer….

So he keeps trotting back to the day labor pool that gathered in the marketplace….he makes five, count them, five trips to keep rounding up workers….from the early-bird-catches-the-worm crowd...down to the slackers who showed up late and hung over, still unemployed at the end of the afternoon….the vineyard owner just keeps snagging them all, putting them to work, promising them each a fair wage.

This vineyard owner…you just know he’s “up to something!”

And sure enough, at the end of the day, he stages—stages, mind you!—a most unusual method of doing the payroll. He has his manager line them up in order (something that’s always happening in Matthew’s gospel—have you been noticing that??)….the manager lines them up from last-hired down to first-hired, and he insists that they be paid in precisely that order.

The vineyard owner, in short, WANTS to be provocative here….as the one-hour workers each get a denarius and all sorts of eyes that line bug out! “Amazing! If those slackers each get a whole denarius, we’re going to receive even more. Happy days are here again…”

But then (cue the sound of a giant balloon slowly deflating), as that same denarius keeps getting paid to each of the workers, right down to the first-hired who started working at dawn—they now felt like fools—and worse, they felt cheated. And, in that frame of mind, they gave voice to envy, surely one of the ugliest of human emotions.

Here, right before their eyes, they had watched the value of the denarius drop. Talk about currency deflation!

Or was it? Each of the end-of-the-line crowd had agreed--had they not?--to work all day for a standard day’s wage? Wasn’t that the deal?

But we’re always noticing, aren’t we? We’re always situating ourselves in relation to others—and it’s those others and how they get treated that rankle us here.

When the Vineyard Owner catches wind of the grumbling, he says nothing that might soothe the troubled waters. In fact he actually makes matters worse. He gets in the face of the grumblers--reminding them that he did the hiring, he promised the fair wage, and he would pay them with his money—money he could do with exactly as he pleased, even if that meant being lavishly, extravagantly, breaking-the-bank-generous with those last-hired.

What’s offensive here, you see, is the Vineyard Owner’s “in your face grace.”

When we get the preaching of it right—which may not be all that often—when we say it right, somebody is going to be torqued off, someone’s going to get up and leave, someone will refuse be embraced by the truth of it.

And there, perhaps there, the post-modern mindset crowd does us all a favor, by giving voice to the skepticism that itself may be the strongest testimony to the truth of the gospel!

The Duke chapel usher giving the preacher a piece of her mind—she was pitching a slow ball, right over the plate to Will Willimon! She got it—that that Vineyard Owner with his Donald Trump attitude—that he was indeed “up to something,” getting right in the face of his most faithful employees—the ones whose blue ribbon work ethic was keeping them from“getting” their master’s amazing generosity.

The Duke chapel usher, in her skepticism, was so precariously close to faith…so frighteningly close to realizing how God is “up to something” in Jesus Christ. She was about a smidgin away from “catching” God’s “in your face grace.”

I wonder what happened to her, this earnest young coed in Duke Chapel. Did God’s in-your-face-grace finally wash over her? Did she become the president of the Duke Chapel ushers society and go on to the divinity school? Is she perhaps serving a three-point parish out in western North Dakota?

Or is she still searching for a believe-able God…still accosting preachers, keeping them humble, and demanding from them utter authenticity?

Hard to say! And it’s even harder to say which of those two paths might finally render greater service in God’s mission…

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Listen! God is Calling

Installation of Pastor Sherry Billberg
September 14, 2008
First Lutheran Church, Alexandria
I Samuel 3:1-10

Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.
2 At that time Eli, whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see, was lying down in his room; 3the lamp of God had not yet gone out, and Samuel was lying down in the temple of the Lord, where the ark of God was. 4Then the Lord called, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’* and he said, ‘Here I am!’ 5and ran to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ But he said, ‘I did not call; lie down again.’ So he went and lay down. 6The Lord called again, ‘Samuel!’ Samuel got up and went to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ But he said, ‘I did not call, my son; lie down again.’ 7Now Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him. 8The Lord called Samuel again, a third time. And he got up and went to Eli, and said, ‘Here I am, for you called me.’ Then Eli perceived that the Lord was calling the boy. 9Therefore Eli said to Samuel, ‘Go, lie down; and if he calls you, you shall say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” ’ So Samuel went and lay down in his place.
10 Now the Lord came and stood there, calling as before, ‘Samuel! Samuel!’ And Samuel said, ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

You’d think that being called by God wouldn’t be so hard. Hearing the voice of God speak—that should be easy, shouldn’t it? If God can’t communicate clearly—who can? If you and I can’t hear God talking to us—who will we hear?

And yet, it seems, hearing God is anything but easy. For all sorts of reasons, picking up the phone when God decides to call is fraught with difficulty.

Take young Samuel in our Old Testament lesson for this afternoon. Young Samuel has at least three strikes against him when God comes a calling.

First, the timing is all wrong. When Samuel is trying to go to sleep in the temple where he’d been serving under the elderly priest, Eli…..when Samuel was first called by God, Samuel had nothing to compare that with. “The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread” (v. 1).

The timing was all wrong for Samuel to “get it.” God came calling in the midst of a veritable drought—a long dry spell when no one was hearing God speak with any degree of frequency or familiarity. No wonder Samuel missed his cue; no one was expecting God to speak—folks maybe even thought that sort of business was a thing of the past, never to be repeated again.

Second, Samuel himself wasn’t exactly well-suited for hearing God. Our text says that “Samuel did not yet know the Lord, and the word of the Lord had not yet been revealed to him.”(v. 7) Samuel was just a boy, after all. He brought no seasoned wisdom, no depth of spiritual experience, no training in recognizing the things of God. The conventional wisdom of that time was that God didn’t bother with one so young—God did vital business with elders, those long past their salad days.

The timing was wrong….and the recipient of God’s call was most unexpected….

And then, to make matters worse, Samuel’s guide, old Eli was over the hill, way past his period of useful service to God. Eli was on the way out—God was removing from him the mantle of leadership. Eli’s days were numbered—his sins of omission, his failure to deal with his two rascally sons, were catching up with him.

And yet this flawed vessel Eli was the only one available to coach young Samuel in the ways of God. It had been a while, a long while, since Eli transacted business with the Almighty One…..and yet even the passage of years, maybe decades hadn’t totally dimmed Eli’s recollection of what to do.

Slowly it came back to Eli what was happening here. Gradually, gradually it dawned on Eli what was transpiring with the nocturnal pesterings of his young apprentice.

Eli—flawed vessel that he was!—Eli was the only one who could help Samuel—help him hear the rare and precious Word of the Lord. So Eli coached Samuel, giving him the words, the formula to utter next time he heard the voice that was disturbing his fitful slumber: Next time you hear him calling say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” (v. 10)

Amazing. You’d think hearing God call you would be easy as pie—like falling off a log. But nothing could be farther from the truth. The timing: all wrong. The hearer: way too young and untested. The guide, the coach: a has-been, a leader in the process of losing his position, “for cause” no less.

All wrong—all of it wrong—but still God’s voice gets through.

And isn’t that, dear friends, how it always turns out to be?

Hearing God call, perceiving God’s intervention, receiving God’s invitation—it’s always fraught with difficulty…..which (when you think about it)makes God’s call all the more astounding, all the more precious.

Somehow, somehow God gets through to us…..and when we think about it, when we look back on it, we’re glad, really, and thankful that it came through some struggle.

Sherry, you have been listening long and hard for the call of God in your life. You have pondered for many years what God has wanted you to do, where God has wanted you to be. These last few years, in particular, have been filled with testing and waiting and wondering about where God might be leading you.

I know—in the midst of all that—that one of your gifts, a gift that has served you well, is the gift of patience, monitoring your natural anxiety, giving space and time for God to get you where God has wanted you.

Sherry, the struggles you have known in hearing God call you, listening to God speak to you—those very struggles are a wonderful, equipping gift for the ministry that is now yours here at First Lutheran….a ministry of creating the spaces, the times and the conditions for letting God speak to his people in this congregation. You have been called to a wonderful, yet challenging ministry of helping others listen for God’s insistent voice, a ministry of assisting folks to discern the claims God is making on them.

None of that comes easily or automatically. At times, everything seems to be wrong—the timing, the hearer, the guide….none of them are what we were expecting them to be.

And yet maybe, just maybe, those times—when everything seems to be wrong—will be when God speaks most clearly and insistently. That should, by rights, not surprise us. For we follow and belong to the God whose presence and identification with us came through most memorably in that cry of divine absence, our Lord Jesus on the cross, crying out to the heavens: “My God, my God where are you? Why have you abandoned me?”

God is faithful, and God will get through to us. Of that we can be sure.

The God who visited young Samuel in the Temple, the God who visited this world decisively in Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, the God who called you in your baptism and who keeps calling us in all the circumstances of life…

This same God has called you here and now, to bear his Word and help others hear it. The timing will not always be perfect. The hearers of the Word will often be distracted. And you, Sherry, would-be guide that you are, you are better than Eli….but even you are not perfect….

And that will be fine, because what we’re counting on is that nothing, nothing will ever stop God from doing vital business with us, cleaning the earwax out of our ears, naming and claiming us in Christ, and calling us to be and to go where God wants us to.

In the name of Jesus.
Amen.