Recalibrating the Compass

Aspelund Lutheran Church, Flom, MN (Wild Rice Parish)
May 31, 2009/Pentecost Sunday
Acts 2:1-21

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Moving from A to B can be disorienting.

If you’ve ever had to pick up stakes, load all your possessions into a moving van and travel to a new home--you know what I mean. Moving from A to B can be disorienting.

Six years ago my wife and I moved from southern Minnesota where we had lived almost all of our lives. We’d moved a few times earlier, but this was different. Moving from Redwood Falls (where we’d been for over 12 years) to Moorhead forced me to reset my internal compass. I knew what it meant to go “up north” for a vacation, or for some camping, or to fish…but what did it mean to LIVE “up north”?

It took me several years to settle into my new home, re-calibrate my internal compass, and feel “centered” again.

Moving from A to B is disorienting.

That was certainly true for Jesus’ closest companions following his Resurrection. Talk about “recalibrating the compass!”

The disciples had grown up in a Good Friday world. They assumed that life is hard, we’re stuck in sin, and death is the end of the line.

And then Jesus died, and with him all his followers’ hopes and dreams quickly faded. What more could they expect in a Good Friday world? It was just business as usual….

….until three days later, when Jesus burst forth from his grave! Easter plowed into their Good Friday world like a gigantic earth-moving machine, permanently altering the landscape of their lives. Now Jesus’ disciples were a bunch of Good Friday guys…trying to inhabit an Easter world.

Talk about disorientation! And it shows, I think, in all four of the gospel accounts of Easter. The disciples, the women who traveled with them, the whole lot—were simply thrown off--knocked loopy by the reality of the Resurrection.

It shows in the first two chapters of the Book of Acts, as well. The disciples are trying their darnedest to catch up with where God is taking them….but the effort leaves them breathless and dazed.

For example, in Acts, chapter 1, the disciples ask the risen Jesus dumb questions like: “So, Jesus, is this pay back time? Now that you’ve beaten death, Jesus, are you going to send the Romans packing, and restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6)

The Resurrected Jesus has other fish to fry, though. “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority,” (Acts 1:7) Jesus tells them. “Pay back and peering into the secret purposes of God—that’s way above your pay grade, my friends. Focus on this instead: “… you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. (Acts 1:8)

Then, just as Jesus was saying this to his disciples…he “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9) Poof! Jesus disappeared from their midst. No wonder the disciples just stood there--slack-jawed, staring off into the wild blue yonder. If took two angels to make them “come to” and return to Jerusalem. If those angels hadn’t shown up, the disciples might still be standing there on the Mount of Olives, gazing up into the sky!

That’s because the Resurrection is so jarring, so disorienting. We’re born into a Good Friday world….but now Easter is here, and all bets are off.

And it gets even crazier on this day, Pentecost Sunday. Because if Easter marked the resurrection of the crucified Jesus, Pentecost marks the resurrection of his followers, you and me, into a brand, spanking new life of witness and service in a world that has changed right under our feet. For this old Good Friday world has been overtaken by, over-run by, re-oriented by Easter.

Pentecost, you see, is “another Easter,” and we see that writ large here in this morning’s lesson from Acts, chapter 2.

Pentecost begins, as Easter begins, in a graveyard: the upper room where the disciples had gathered together, in safety and security (so they thought) behind closed doors.

They were as good as dead when Pentecost happened to them. All the disciples could do was wait and pray in the darkness.

Pentecost begins in the tomb of the Upper Room, with disciples who are dazed, confused, as good as dead…

And then God acts once again. God’s resurrecting power cuts loose. Three powerful signs that God is launching a New Creation all burst on the scene when the day of Pentecost arrives.

First there is “a sound like the rush of a violent wind.” (Acts 2:2). This is a re-creating, resuscitating wind…the breath of God….the Spirit invading the house of death, reviving the disciples. God breathed into their nostrils the breath of life once again…just as God had done eons ago in the garden with Adam, and as God did in that other garden, when God resurrected Jesus his Son.

Second, fire breaks out, as well—wind and fire, a deadly combination in a Good Friday world….but in the new world of Easter, this fire brings life. No longer is the fire of God’s presence confined to the altar in the Temple. No—but rather now this fire burns in every believer. Tongues of fire mark each disciple as a living, moving “altar” in the world—announcing that God is alive and well, in Jesus Christ, and everything is being made new.

But there is more. To the miracles of the wind and the fire, God adds the greatest miracle of all: the miracle of human speech….not the babbling of people talking past one another….but a speaking that births a new community, a telling that brings people together, miraculously hearing “each of us, in our own native language” (Acts 2:8)

And suddenly the audience, all those wayfaring strangers in Jerusalem for the High Holy Day…now it is all of them who are disoriented by the goings-on—disoriented by the Resurrection breaking out among them.

Who taught these backwater hicks from Galilee all these languages? How did they learn to speak in our native tongues? Are these guys for real—or have they simply had too much to drink?

Do you hear it—the disorientation of the Pentecost Day crowd, as they move from A to B, from Good Friday to Easter?

First God raises up the crucified Jesus on Easter Sunday.

Now God raises up the dazed and confused followers of Jesus on Pentecost Sunday.

And the world will never be the same again. You and I will never be the same again. God is hitting the re-set button of the whole creation. God is enlisting all of us—every single one of us—to be a witness to the resurrection…to coax folks from their dark, dank Good Friday worlds….into the bright sunlight of the Easter world that is our future.

It’s enough to make your head spin, isn’t it? But this is where you and I live, dear friends. This is the world, the real world that God has opened up before us. We have a living God on our hands!

And because Jesus refuses to live in the Easter world by himself, he catches us up in his new life. That’s what Pentecost is all about—Jesus’ unending life washing over us in baptism, Jesus’ “forever and ever” life flowing into us whenever we eat the Lord’s Supper. It’s the life that I’m preaching into your ears right now. This is your future: life, life and more life in Jesus Christ.
Pentecost catches us up in that, births us as the church, to embrace our true calling. And that calling is to take the burning fire of Christ’s life off the altar and out into the world, to perform this crazy, Christ-powered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the gasping, dying souls all around us….to beckon everyone we encounter into the dawning Easter world.

And this isn’t something that just a privileged few are called to do, either. No! As Peter declares in his Pentecost sermon: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh…Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Acts 2:17, 21)

What a master-stroke of genius! Jesus could have done it all by himself…but instead he left us physically, in order to come back to us in the power of his Spirit…filling our lungs with the oxygen of Easter, igniting us to glow in the darkness of this Good Friday world, speaking through us the promise of a New Creation. That’s what Pentecost is all about---the Spirit’s surprising empowerment of us to be his breath, his fire, his Word…setting the whole world ablaze with God’s love.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

You Are What You Eat

You Are What You Eat
Opening Worship
Northwestern Minnesota Synod Assembly
May 16, 2009
Revelation 10

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

When I was studying Hebrew at Luther Seminary in the summer of 1977, I befriended a fellow named Peter who had grown up Lutheran but was now a Greek Orthodox priest.

One evening at supper, Peter blurted out: “You know Wohlrabe, I don’t get it! You grew up in the Missouri Synod, but you actually know what’s in the Bible. You don’t just thump it!”

We can, of course, do many things with a Bible.
· We can thump it.
· We can use it as a projectile weapon—as in “throw the Book at ‘em!”
· We can mine the Bible for ammunition in debates.
· We can venerate the Bible as a relic or lucky rabbit’s foot.
· We can even read the Bible--regularly, faithfully, pondering its claims…

But who among us really, now—seriously, now—would want to EAT this Book, bite off, chew, swallow and digest the Bible?

And yet that’s precisely what John the Seer, is commanded to do here in Revelation chapter 10.

Revelation is one of the Bible’s most puzzling books. Like a kaleidoscope, it reveals cascading images of God’s victory, God’s final future in Jesus Christ….and this tenth chapter offers one of the most intriguing images of all.

Picture this scene: An enormous angel, so huge he’s wrapped in a cloud, wearing a rainbow on his head, descends from heaven to straddle the earth—one foot on the land, the other foot in the sea. And from this globe-spanning “pulpit” the angel proclaims the Word of God in peels of thunder.

John the Seer is so awestruck by this experience that he feverishly tries to scribble some sermon notes about it, get it down in writing…

But God stops John dead in his tracks, commanding him NOT to write down what he is hearing and experiencing. God has a better idea! “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land….take it, and eat.” (vv. 8-9)

Eat this scroll. Chew up and swallow this book. Take this Word deep into yourself.

Don’t just read it—don’t just take notes on it! Get it down under your skin, get it into your digestive track, get it into your soul, mind and body.

We are here today and tomorrow not just to read or learn or understand the contents of God’s Word….but to eat this Word, to drink it in, to take it into ourselves and “metabolize” it in lives of trust, sharing, generosity and action.

That’s because our ELCA Book of Faith Initiative is about so much more than “biblical literacy.” It’s about gaining, or perhaps regaining, our gospel fluency in the Word of God as the first language—we might say the “heart language”--of Christian faith and life and mission.

And what better way to picture that, than to EAT this Book, just as we consume carbohydrates and fats and proteins—metabolizing those foods into energy and action?

A member of our synod staff was given a plaque that reads: “If ‘you are what you eat,’ then I must be fast, easy and cheap!”

How true! What do we eat nowadays? It’s not a pretty sight, is it? We toss down fast food, hurriedly rustle up easy food, chow down on way too much cheap food.

Revelation 10 invites us to consume the good stuff, the stick-to-your-ribs, life-changing nourishment of God’s precious Word--our finest food.

John the Seer is told that when he eats the scroll, when he eats the book, he will experience two things.

“So I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth…” (v. 10) God’s nourishing Word is first of all, sweet as honey in our mouths.

The first thing John the Seer experiences is that the Word of God is sweet—the sweetest thing we’ll ever taste.

The Book of Faith is delicious—“scrumptious Scripture,” we might say. All the junk food we’ve been gorging ourselves on pales in comparison.

Eugene Peterson, in his wonderful volume Eat This Book, talks about this spiritual junk food that in our waywardness we hanker for—all the “other texts” by which we feverishly try to live our lives. Peterson sums up our lives without Christ as lives lived around another “trinity”—our Holy Needs, our Holy Wants, and our Holy Feelings.[1]

God’s Word, though, is like honey in our mouth—it’s oh so sweet, because it brings Jesus to us. The Bible is, quite simply, the Jesus Book…the getting-ready-for-Jesus Old Testament…and the living-out-Jesus New Testament!

When we consume God’s Word, when we eat Jesus, when we drink in the proclaimed gospel, when this Book of Faith washes over us, “marinating” us in God’s love…it is so very sweet, like honey in the mouth.

But there’s a second thing that happens when we eat this Word, this Book of Faith. It can, it will, it must upset us.

John the Seer did as he was told. He ate the scroll the angel handed to him, “it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it, my stomach was made bitter.” (v. 10)

Watch out. This is not bland, white, comfort food! This isn’t the sort of safe, stomach-calming food you nibble at when you’re getting over the flu.

No, this Book, this Word, that tastes so sweet in the mouth causes our bellies to churn. Eat enough of the Bible and you’ll always need to keep the Pepto Bismol handy! As we take it in, we grow unsettled—unsettled with the world as it has come to be, troubled by the wreckage of sin in our lives.

All of which is to say: the Book of Faith gives us what we truly need, not necessarily what we want. Lutherans have always said that the Word of God cuts in upon us as both Law and Gospel, threat and promise, death and life.

If you are lucky, if you are blessed, God’s Word will make you sick. Sick of the devil. Sick of death. Sick of sin. The Book of Faith will upend you and cause you to lose your appetite for all the other stuff, all the “fast, easy and cheap” food you thought would sustain you—your holy wants, needs and feelings.

And that will be good. Sometimes, friends, we’ve got to clean out our refrigerators—you know: throw out all the leftovers, all the stuff that’s turning green on that back shelf, toss all the stale Christmas candy, purge ourselves of all the junk food that’s killing us. We clean our pantries to make room for the good stuff, for the “road food” of God’s Word that unsettles us, saves us, and sends us.

And it is road food, mind you! More and more I’m noticing in the Scriptures—and I hope you are noticing, too!—that there is always a sending going on here. God is always steering us into a missional turn, sending us back into the world in the strength of God’s food, God’s Word.

It’s here, too, in our text from Revelation 10. After John the Seer has heard the angel proclaiming the Word, after he’s been told not to take any sermon notes on it, after he’s been commanded to eat this word, after he’s found it sweet on his lips but unsettling in his gut—what then?

In the end, John the Seer is sent back to the world, the world where cheap food, fast food, and easy food is all-too-often mistaken for soul food.

John is turned back to the world, as you and I are turned back to our world. “Then they said to me, ‘You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.’” (v. 11)

And here’s the payoff, for you and me as well, dear friends. This food, this Word, this Book of Faith always, always, always gets us moving somewhere. It always drives us back into the world, it always sends us toward our neighbors, it always calls forth the missionary inside of us, yearning to breathe free.

All that God in Christ has done and is doing and will yet do in us is not just to save us, but to send us. God’s ulterior motive isn’t that you’re safe, but that you are sent.

One last time, in the words of Eugene Peterson: “Christians feed on Scripture. Holy Scripture nurtures the holy community as food nurtures the human body. Christians don’t simply learn or study or use Scripture; we assimilate it, take it into our lives in such a way that it gets metabolized into acts of love, cups of cold water, missions into all the world, healing and evangelism and justice in Jesus’ name, hands raised in adoration of the Father, feet washed in company with the Son.”[2]

In the name of Jesus. Amen.




[1] Eugene Peterson, Eat This Book: A Conversation in the Art of Spiritual Reading (Eerdmans, 2006), p. 32
[2] Peterson, p. 18.

Don't Waste a Crisis!

Opening Word
Northwestern Minnesota Synod

Stewardship Events
April 19-20, 2009

“We want you to know, brothers and sisters, about the grace of God that has been granted to the churches of Macedonia; for during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For, as I can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints—and this, not merely as we expected; they gave themselves first to the Lord and, by the will of God, to us…” II Cor. 8:1-5

How many crises are staring us in the face this evening? Let’s see now…
· We’re in the midst of a global financial crisis.
· Many believe we’re facing an unprecedented environmental crisis, marked by manmade climate change.
· And, just for good measure, here in the upper Midwest we’re recovering from our second “500-year flood” in just the last 12 years!

And those are just the BIG world-spanning, history-turning crises. How about the individual crises you and I may be facing as well: health crises, work crises, family crises—whatever?

Sounds like a good time to pull back, hedge our bets, and play it safe--right? If we soberly assess all these crises, that seems like the reasonable thing to do.

And yet, voices--some rather surprising voices--urge us to do anything BUT “hunker down.”

Last November, as he was preparing to assume his new position, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel made a bold statement that’s been quoted time and again, ever since: “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”[1]

How does that strike us as followers of Jesus Christ?

Whether or not he intended to, Rahm Emanuel echoes the biblical witness in uncanny ways.

The God of the Bible is forever redeeming crises, taking disasters and using them to open up a fresh future. This Easter season is the best example of that: out of the dark crisis of Good Friday God has worked the future-opening miracle of Easter Sunday….out of the dire disaster of Jesus’ death, God has brought the splendor of New Life, in the power of the resurrection.

And that amazing pattern, that astounding template, keeps getting repeated throughout the pages of the New Testament and—indeed—in the pages of our own lives.

All of this speaks powerfully to the issue that has brought us together this evening—the issue of generosity, the issue of how we live out our stewardship of all God’s good gifts.

Stewardship! This might seem like a terrible time to be talking about that: our care-taking, our giving, our generosity. This might seem like the last thing we should be considering during a global recession.

But, in truth, this may well be the best time, the opportune moment, a critical-turning-point for reconsidering and re-imagining just what it means to belong to a God of grace and abundance, whose generosity washes over our lives so lavishly that it spills over, through us, into the whole world.

Ponder, for example, this amazing story in II Corinthians, chapter 8.

It’s impossible to piece together exactly what happened, but here’s our best guess: the early church, which was first established in Jerusalem, endured horrific persecution and impoverishment in the first few decades of its existence.

This extreme crisis experienced by the Jerusalem believers became known throughout the fledgling Christian churches scattered around the lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea.
And through preachers like St. Paul, an appeal went out—not unlike the email alerts some of us receive whenever some disaster or human crisis cries out for our help.

In response to this appeal, one of the least-likely churches insisted on helping out. Christians in Macedonia, who were themselves hungry and persecuted, insisted--absolutely insisted!--on making an eye-popping donation, far in excess of what they seemed to be capable of.

There simply were no “deep pockets” in Macedonia…no “low-hanging fruit” just waiting to be plucked. The Macedonian Christians were dirt poor, wretchedly persecuted, utterly impoverished.

But that would not stop them from giving far more than they could afford to give.

It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in a while, I have had to encourage a Christian to be cautious in his or her generosity. Every once in a great while I have encountered someone who wanted to give more than they could really afford to give, someone whose generosity was so overflowing that she could end up impoverishing herself.

When I have done that, I have always wondered deep down inside myself, whether it’s any of my business to offer such advice. And all the while this story of the Macedonian believers, has stuck in my craw!

What if, just what if, one of the most breath-taking ways God cares for the world, what if one of the greatest ways God pursues his mission in the world is by using the poorest of the poor to grab our attention, put all our middle-class “poor-talk” into proper perspective and simply “goose” us into generosity?

What if God still uses modern-day Macedonians to wake us up, to stir us from our crisis-induced stupor and say to us: “I am still in charge here. I am still the God of Good Friday and Easter. I remain the God who knows only one way of giving: abundantly, over-flowingly, never stingily. And I call you, my dear and precious people, to throw caution to the wind and spend yourselves utterly, in witness and service and generosity, all for the sake of my crucified and risen Son, ….who ‘though he was rich, yet for your sakes…became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’”? II Cor. 8:9.

Let us pray: God of abundance, you have poured out a large measure of earthly blessings: our table is richly furnished, our cup overflows, and we live in safety and security. Teach us to set our hearts on you and not these material blessings. Keep us from becoming either paralyzed by crises or captivated by prosperity, and grant us wisdom to use your blessings to your glory and to the service of humankind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Based on a prayer for “the proper use of wealth,” Evangelical Lutheran Worship, p. 80.


[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/us/politics/07obama.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all (accessed on 4/18/09)

Doubters Into Shouters

Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church, Puposky, MN
Trinity Lutheran Church, Debs, MN
April 19, 2009
Second Sunday of Easter/John 20:19-31

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

One of the things I love about the Bible is that it has dirty laundry hanging out all over it.
The folks who put the Good Book together could have cleaned things up, smoothed over the rough spots, rounded off the jagged corners--but they didn’t.

The Bible tells the story of God and God’s people “warts and all”—no holds barred, no apologies offered. Nothing gets sanitized or swept under the rug--even episodes that don’t exactly put believers in the kindest light.

Take this familiar gospel lesson for the Second Sunday of Easter.

There are no two ways about it: This is a story about unbelievers....unbelievers who because they were Jesus’ disciples should by rights have known better.

This morning’s gospel lesson is about unbelievers.

First there are those ten men, huddled together behind locked doors (in a “safe house”) on that first Easter. They have spent years with Jesus. They have walked miles with Jesus. They have heard Jesus teach, seen Jesus work wonders. They have lived as close to Jesus as anyone. But still they’re clueless.

They thought Jesus was done for.
They assumed that their adventures with Jesus were over.
They had nowhere to go, no place to turn, no future to look forward to.
So, fearful that Jesus’ fate might come their way as well, these ten disciples pulled the shades, locked the doors, put out the cat, and hid.

They were (at this point) unbelievers. They couldn’t muster even half-an-ounce of faith that God might still have something in store for Jesus or for them.

This gospel lesson is a story about unbelievers like those 10 scared-rabbit disciples, huddled behind barricaded doors on the first Easter.

And then there is that disciple who was missing--good old Thomas.

Thomas missed all the hoopla when Jesus showed up three days after his burial. Thomas had pressing business elsewhere that day. Perhaps he was out “on assignment.” For whatever reason, Thomas didn’t get to see the risen Christ.

And so--simply because that’s the kind of guy he was--Thomas declared that he wasn’t going to believe without at least as much proof as the other ten disciples had already received.

You’ve got to love Thomas.

He was no dummy. Every church council needs at least once Thomas on it--and God seems to make that happen.

You have to love Thomas. He was the kind of fellow who never got snookered, who took absolutely nothing at face value, accepted no wooden nickels, bought no cut-rate swampland in Florida.

I sometimes imagine Thomas as the Eeyore of the disciples.

You remember Eeyore--the stuffed donkey in the Winnie the Pooh stories. Eeyore is a cold, hard realist. He never views the world through rose-tinted glasses. No matter how brightly the sun might be shining, Eeyore always knows that a storm cloud will show up on the horizon soon enough. “Always look on the dark side of life”—that’s Eeyore’s motto.

And it seems to be Thomas’s motto too--at least as we encounter him in the Gospel of John.

Although Thomas is mentioned in all four gospels, he only speaks in John’s Gospel. Thomas has four brief “lines” in John’s script—and he always speaks with the voice of cold, hard realism.
In John, chapter 11, when Jesus tells his disciples that his friend Lazarus has died and they must go to him, Thomas--always Mr. Sunshine!--glumly responds: “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

In John 14, just after Jesus tells his disciples that they know the way to the place where he is going, Thomas the Realist begs to differ: “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

And then, here in John chapter 20, we see Thomas in all his skeptical glory. Demanding certified proof--visual and tactile evidence--that Jesus is really alive again.
You’ve got to love Thomas--unvarnished skeptic that he is.

And you’ve got to love the fact that his story didn’t get edited out of the Scriptures! His story didn’t wind up on the cutting-room floor.

There is good news in that, good news for unbelievers like you and like me....folks who can go head to head, toe to toe with Thomas in his dark doubting.

Because there is room for Thomas in the Bible, there is room enough in God’s story for you and for me as well.

For we certainly are all capable of Thomas’s skepticism--aren’t we? We have our own doubts about this whole Easter/resurrection/life beyond the grave business. We stoic northern European type-Looterans, know just how to take the wind out of the sails of whoever has the audacity to get too enthusiastic about anything.

Thomas fits us like a glove. Thomas is you and me. And the Bible--miracle of miracles!--does not shrink from telling his story.

But that’s not all.

The Bible doesn’t simply make us feel at home with all the other unbelievers who dot its pages.

The Bible doesn’t merely make us into more healthy, well-adjusted unbelievers. The Bible does more than make us comfortable with our doubts.

The Bible also tells us what God does with unbelievers, how God deals with doubters.

And what God does is simply this: God turns unbelievers into gospel-speakers.

God transforms doubters into shouters.

That, too, is the story--in fact it is the real story--of this gospel text.

First Jesus comes to those ten little lost lambs on that first Easter evening. Although the doors are locked, Jesus stands among them and gives them--not a stern lecture about the dangers of unbelief--but a word of gentle peace.

“Shalom!” That’s the first word Jesus has for this pack of unbelievers. “Peace to the nth degree,” Jesus says to them. And then, so that they will know he is truly Jesus and he now has death behind him, Jesus shows them the scars of his crucifixion.

Curious--isn’t it--that Jesus doesn’t offer proof that he is alive. Jesus doesn’t strap on a blood pressure cuff or a heart monitor or a brain wave detector. He doesn’t offer a DNA sample for testing.

Jesus proves he is alive by reminding his disciples that he was really dead. Then, and only then, do the disciples rejoice, in giddy recognition of their risen Lord.

And then, not wasting a second, Jesus gives these unbelievers work to do and empowers them to do it--all in one breath (literally--all in one breath!) “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”(v. 22-23)
What does Jesus do with these ten, knee-knocking unbelievers? He drafts them for his service, makes them his ambassadors, catches them up in his own work of piecing back together the whole creation--one shattered relationship, one jaded unbeliever, one repentant sinner at a time.

And Thomas? What does Jesus do for Thomas?

Two weeks after the first Easter Jesus does for Thomas exactly what Thomas needed him to do. Jesus graciously, lavishly gives Thomas the grounds he needs to become a believer. “Put your finger here, Thomas...Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do whatever you need to with me in order to have faith. Do not doubt but believe.” (v. 27)

What does Jesus do for Thomas? He transforms Thomas the doubter into Thomas the shouter.
Thomas doesn’t have very many lines in the Gospel of John, but Thomas does finally get the best line of all, Thomas’s last line in this Gospel: “My Lord and my God!”(v. 28) he exclaims.

And may we so declare those very same words! May Thomas’s good confession find its way to our lips, as well!

It is for us, you see, that the Bible tells us this story--warts and all.

It is for us that the Bible lets the dirty laundry hang out all over. Or as John the gospel writer puts it: “These are written that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.” (v. 31)

There’s the pay off! It is for you and me that the Bible allows the stories of unbelievers and doubters to be told....for only in so telling do we also come to behold what God does with unbelievers and doubters.

And what God does with them, in the pages of Scripture, is what God still does with the unbelievers and doubters in our midst, with you and with me.

God in Christ turns unbelievers--you and me!--into gospel-speakers.

God transforms doubters--you and me!--into shouters who love to deliver Thomas’s greatest line: “My Lord and My God!”

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Acts of God

Comments at "The Crest"
Fargo-Moorhead Community Worship Event
Fargo Theatre--Saturday, April 4, 2009

”Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ.” Galatians 6:2

Have you noticed how insurance policies, laws, and newspaper accounts often call tornadoes, earthquakes and floods “acts of God?” Why do we so often hear this phrase “act of God” in the same breath as we hear of a natural disaster?

Doesn’t that amount to a huge “bum rap” for God? In these last weeks I’ve witnessed all sorts of other “acts of God”—and I bet you have, too!
· I’ve seen aching arms and tired muscles filling millions of sandbags. That’s an act of God.
· You’ve eaten bologna sandwiches, and pizza, and all sorts of other food, lovingly prepared by hands perhaps not strong enough to haul sandbags. That’s an act of God.
· We’ve observed governmental officials, relief agency workers, National Guard members, church folk and neighbors from all over…working 24/7 to save life and preserve property. That’s an act of God.

Dear friends: “acts of God” are all around us here in Fargo-Moorhead! Acts of God have drawn us here this afternoon. God is all over the place….and we’re counting on God to keep acting among us, in us, and through us in the weeks of cleanup and recovery yet to come.

Those of us who represent the Lutheran branch of the Christian family are here and will continue to be here through the arm of Lutheran Disaster Response--often the last church relief agency to leave the scene of a disaster. We will be here because God is here, acting among us.

Let ‘s pray: God, you are awesome. We see how amazing you are in forces of nature that take our breath away. But we also perceive your presence in acts of kindness, aching muscles, sandbags, bologna sandwiches, homes opened to evacuees, and the dedication of our leaders. Keep our eyes peeled, gracious God, to see you wherever and whenever you are among us, acting in us and through us to save your people and renew your whole creation. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

"But God..."

Halstad and Augustana Lutheran Churches, Halstad, MN
Installation of Pr. Christine Iverson

March 22, 2009 (Lent 4)
Ephesians 2:1-10

Earlier this month I had my first-ever MRI. I had been noticing that something wasn’t quite right, a part of me was hurting that shouldn’t have been hurting, and after putting it off and putting it off I finally saw a doctor.

He examined me and told me he thought nothing was wrong, but just to be sure, he ordered the MRI. “I really don’t think it’s anything serious,” the doctor murmured, trying to reassure me.

But deep down I knew that when a doctor orders an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) something awful, something deadly could show up….and as I waited to receive the results of my MRI, my mind played out all the scenarios, imagined all the possibilities—including the possibility that I had a fatal disease and that pretty soon this world would have to go on without me.

Some of you have been there, I’m sure.

Some of you have had MRIs or blood tests or biopsies….and then you’ve had to sit wait helplessly for the results, wondering whether it was nothing (as your doctor tried to reassure you)…or whether you might be very sick--sick enough to die.

This season of Lent, it seems to me, is the most honest season of the church year. I say that because Lent doesn’t let us off the hook. Lent exposes the inconvenient truth of our mortality.

Lent begins and ends in death--the thing we most avoid thinking about. Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, with a sooty cross on our foreheads, and the words: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Lent begins with that grim reminder, and Lent ends on a Friday afternoon, with a man dying on a cross, crying out: “My God, my God why have you forsaken me.”

Lent, I suppose you could say, is good for us. It’s like 40 days of waiting for the MRI results, the pathology report to come in. Lent causes us to fess up and face up to the fact that this world did fine for eons before we were born, and one day soon this world will go on again without us.

Death will overtake us, swallow us up.

That’s where this morning’s Second Lesson begins, knee-deep in death. “You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.”

You were dead, the apostle writes. Your sins were killing you. The evil one had a hold on you. You were all toast.

On one level we already know that. We realize that no one is going to get out of this world alive.

And yet we sure don’t live that way. We go about our business, play with the kids, work too hard, shop, watch TV, play cards and while away the hours….until some visit to the doctor, until the season of Lent, until some other “wake up” call reminds us: “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Our Second Lesson dives deeply this death that haunts us and hunts us. No one escapes it--nobody gets a free pass. ”All of us,” the apostle continues, “all of us once lived…in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.”

And then, all of a sudden, the mood of this Second Lesson changes.

Having rubbed our noses in our waywardness and mortality, the apostle takes a sharp turn. “You were dead,” all right….”But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—…”

Here are the Lenten lab results, dear friends: we are all goners…but God has something more in store for us.

There they are: two of the sweetest words in the whole Bible: “but God…”

It seems as though death is going to have the last word here, but God will not let that happen!

God always, always, always gets the last word—and don’t you forget it.

God doesn’t let minor inconveniences like us being dead in our trespasses and sins keep God from doing what he does best: raising the dead, forgiving sins, saving us—rescuing us—even when we were toast!

Nowadays some folks suggest that such “salvation” talk is passé.

Speaking of Jesus rescuing us or saving us—that smacks too much of revival tents, sawdust trails and televangelists interviewing tearful sinners who “once were lost, but now are found.”

But this is not passé.

What we have here in Ephesians 2 is (in the words of one teacher of preachers[i]) the “molten core of the Christian faith.” The name “Jesus” literally means: “the Lord saves.”

Here’s the molten core of our faith: we are dead, but God’s going to raise us up with Jesus Christ.
The God we meet in Jesus Christ is, quite simply, a rescuing God. That’s what God does. God is forever stooping down and scooping us up, tearing us loose from death’s tentacles, cleaning us up, raising us up with the crucified Jesus, and seating us “in the heavenly places” with our Savior forever.

And all of that is like a solitary moment in time here in Ephesians 2—collapsed into one shining instant: dead, made alive, raised to the heavenly places—all in one fell swoop!

And as if this weren’t already too wonderful to be true…Ephesians reminds us that all of it comes as sheer gift—unvarnished grace—undeserved mercy!

Pastor Christine tells me that verses 8-9 here in Ephesians 2 were her confirmation verse: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”

I’m guessing, Pastor Christine, that you’ll want to share this message here in the Halstad and Augustana parish. This will be your song, right? Sing it for as long as you serve here…and you will do well.

None of this is passé.

The God who has called you from Kansas to Minnesota is a rescuing, saving God. These people know the bite of death, the anxiety of wondering what the future holds. Set them free. Say to them: “Things may look bleak right now, but God’s going to have the last word.” Let all your preaching, all your teaching, all your consoling, all your leading be variations on that theme.

And you, dear people of God, I know how long you’ve been pining for this day to come. Your long wait for a new pastor seemed unending, didn’t it? At some points you felt as though you were maybe dying—that God had forgotten you.

But God had another idea. God kept reviving your hope. God never let you forget the greatest promise of all—that God will have the last word, and that word is forgiveness, freedom and life forever in Jesus Christ.

Now I realize that I’ve come to the end of this sermon and I still haven’t told you how my MRI turned out. Here’s what I learned: I was OK. No signs of cancer or any other “awful awful.” God must have further use for me, I guess.

….Which brings us to the last line in our lesson from Ephesians 2. Why does God bother with us? Why doesn’t God just leave us dead in our sins and trespasses? Why does God raise us up to the heavenly places in Christ Jesus?

Because God loves us, of course,….but also because God wants to get some use out of us for the rest of our earthly lives. ”For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life. “

God beats back death, God forgives sins, God opens up the future for us in Jesus Christ to make us forget ourselves long enough to do some good for others.

God goes to the trouble of rescuing you and me, so that God can catch us up in God’s great rescue mission. God has brought Pastor Christine to you, not just to make you safe in the arms of Jesus…but to send you, with the risen Jesus, into the world—making peace, speaking truth, and rescuing the lost, the last and the least.

[i] “Just As I Am (Eph. 2:1-10)” by Thomas G. Long. The Christian Century (March 21, 2006, p. 18). Accessed at http://www.religion-online.org/showarticle.asp?title=3334.

Truth or Love?

Synod Theological Day
March 3, 2009 at Trinity, Pelican Rapids
Moral Conversation Process

Ephesians 4:11-16
"The gifts [Christ] gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love."

“Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ….”

Truth and love: now which will it be?

In the Lutheran church of my youth—that would be the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church of my youth—folks actually put the question like that: which is more important, truth or love?

If memory serves, there were even church convention resolutions that took up that question, arguing for the supremacy of the one over the other….the truth team duking it out with the love squad….the vote tally, finally tipping the balance.

I’m not making that up.

Truth and love: which is most important?

There is only one answer to that question, I believe, and the answer is YES. The answer must be one that refuses to drive a wedge between those cardinal principles, those core values for Christian folk, truth and love.

Which will it be—truth or love? YES, yes, yes to both…don’t you dare think you can have or will have the one without the other. “Speaking the truth in love, we must grow up,” pleads the apostle, refusing to pick one over the other.

In the church of Jesus Christ there is no room for truth that runs roughshod over love for real human beings….nor is there room for love of the “sloppy agape” variety that has no substance, no concreteness, no rootedness-in-truth to it.

Today, we gather to learn one way of speaking the truth in love. We gather with a view, obviously and specifically, toward the continuing conversation about human sexuality that we’ve been having for a long, long time as the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Today we gather in the conviction that the apostle got it just right. We will take no votes about which should prevail—truth or love. We say yes to both, we commit ourselves to both, we will not pursue the one without the other.

Not that that will make everything all right or cause thorny issues to get simpler to puzzle out….far from it. In some respects, the easier path is to choose one over the other, truth over love….or love trumping truth. It’s harder, always harder, to hold the two together….

But that is what God, through the apostle, is calling us to do, linking that (by the way!) to our growth, our maturing in Christ.

I just wrote the last of an 11-part series of articles on Healthy Congregations. In his writing, Dr. Peter Steinke offers his own commentary on this text from Ephesians chapter 4. He speaks about the church as a human community, an emotional/relational family system….and he holds up two cardinal values: (1) Define yourself—take stands—speak with your own voice….
….but then Steinke adds: “and (2) stay connected with those who disagree.”

Sounds like another “take” on truth and love. Stand up and speak the truth….but not in such a way that you drive a wedge permanently between a brother or sister in Christ. Take stands….as you stay connected.

Our goal today is not to pull a rabbit out of a hat and give you a “magic bullet” for having consistently great, deep, satisfying conversations about vexing moral issues. Our goal is to equip you to do what the church needs to do in times like these.

As our culture seems to be divided, increasingly, by the extremes….enthralled by the cable TV news “talking heads” who represent the predictable blue/red, traditional/progressive, secular/religious polar opposites…..as that happens, we in the church have a marvelous opportunity presented to us—a chance to be and do something else.

This is our time, the right time, to provide an exceedingly rare thing in our contentious culture: a free and open space for people of goodwill to come together around neuralgic questions and vexing issues without hurting each other…..we are invited into that sacred space where people speak out of their hearts, but also speak to the hearts of others…refusing, steadfastly refusing to drive a wedge between the truth and the love that have met us in Jesus Christ.