NW MN Synod Theology for Ministry Conference, Fair Hills Resort
Pentecost 17/Year C/Luke 16:19-31
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
In verse 26, Father Abraham says to the rich man in torment: “Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed…”
Between the rich man in Hades and Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, “a great chasm”—the Greek says: a chasma mega, that is: a wide gorge, a “super- sized” canyon that separates heaven from hell. It cannot be crossed.
Death places you on one side or the other—and there you stay—forever!
Now, there’s an attention-getter if I ever saw one!
It’s an image we will not soon forget—an image, I believe, that helps us unlock what Jesus is driving at here.
For the chasma mega that existed between the rich man and Lazarus didn’t just open up when they died. That chasm, that gorge, that canyon between them existed throughout this story.
In fact, I believe that this mega-chasm spoken of toward the end of the story, is related to three other chasms, three other “divides” that exist in this parable and in our own world as well.
Here’s what I mean:
First, there was the chasm that existed between Lazarus begging at the gate and the rich man stuffing himself daily with fine food. Though they may have been only feet apart at the time, they might as well have been separated by light years—poor, ailing Lazarus with his cardboard hand-scrawled “help wanted” sign and the rich man at his 24-hours-a-day buffet.
Long before they died, Lazarus and the rich man were separated by a wide gulf—the gulf between the haves and the have-nots, between those who can help themselves and those who are helpless.
There’s a way in which death didn’t so much open up the chasm between Lazarus and the rich man—death merely revealed the chasm that had always been there. The parable takes us from seeing this chasm in the way the world pictures such things, to seeing how God views them. It’s a difference in perspective, a difference in “camera-angle” that is revealed at the point of their death.
This same mega-chasma exists in our world, in our day—does it not? It’s said that this chasm between rich and poor not only exists—but that it’s widening, that the “haves” are growing farther and farther distant from the “have-nots,” that many of the world’s troubles arise from the fact that those who can help themselves NEED keep their distance from, need to protect themselves from those who have not.
There is a way to bridge this gap, to close this chasm. It is the way of Jesus, Christ’s own life overflowing that helps us see life is not a zero-sum game, but rather it is life lived in the abundance of God. And I thank God that throughout our synod and our whole church, especially in this unsettled time, “feeding the hungry” is at least one thing we can all do together.
It all starts with noticing, not ignoring, the poor among us. Did you notice how only one character in this parable is named—not the rich man (whose biography surely was listed in the Who’s Who volume of his day)—but Lazarus. Lazarus alone has a name here. He’s not just another faceless, nameless beggar. We’re told who he is. His name is Lazarus which means “God helps.”
The rich man realizes this, the rich man calls the beggar by name—but only after his time has passed, only in death does he come to name the name of the beggar who had been at this door all those years.
In the moment of death, when the rich man finally “gets it”—then, then he also finally starts to care about someone other than himself.
He remembers that he has five brothers, still at home, still alive, still faced with an opportunity that the rich man no longer has. And the rich man—for the first time in the story—expresses concern for someone other than himself.
“Father [Abraham], I beg you to send [Lazarus] to my father’s house— for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.”
The rich man imagines that if a poltergeist came back from “the other side” and scared the liver out of his five brothers—sort of like the Ghost of Christmas Past visiting Ebenezer Scrooge—then, then they might turn their lives around and avoid the punishment the rich man was experiencing in Hades.
Sounds like a plan—doesn’t it? And again, if truth be told, there are all sorts of well-meaning Christians who actually buy into the rich man’s way of thinking.
That is: lots of people imagine that faith is chiefly about avoiding hell and heading for heaven, right? And how better to achieve that purpose than to use fear and warning as your primary tools.
“Do you know how hot it is in hell? Have you thought about how long eternity will be? If you don’t make the right choice and get your act together before you die—you’re going to find out, buddy!”
Notice how such preaching, such exhortation focuses on raw self-interest. Save your skin at all costs. Look out for yourself, lest you come to the same place of everlasting fire where the rich man was tormented—longing, longing for just one drop of cool water on his parched tongue.
But Father Abraham, speaking for God I believe, refuses to play along with the rich man’s request. He declines to send Lazarus back to earth to scare the bejeebers out of the rich man’s five brothers. No deal!
In so doing, I believe we see the second mega-chasm in this story. It’s the chasm between thinking that faith is about fear—fear of hellfire, fear motivated by self-interest—and understanding that faith means freedom—freedom from being all bound up in oneself, freedom to live the generous life that children of God live simply because they’re children of a generous God who abundantly gave us his only precious Son to free us from self-interest, to free us to pour out our lives willingly and generously, for others..
“They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them,” Father Abraham replies to the rich man regarding his brothers. The five brothers don’t need a spook from the far side of grave, they’ve got the Bible, right there in their laps. That is to say: they have the Book of Faith, the same Word of God that’s been given to you and to me.
But the rich man isn’t convinced. The rich man strongly suspects that his five brothers aren’t “into” regular worship and Bible study—that being too pedestrian, too tame, too ho-hum.
He says, “No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” The rich man knows his five brothers—he can read them like a book—and he knows that a book will never be enough for them.
They already have the scriptures. What they need is a spectacle. And so he repeats his request: “Please, Father Abraham, send them Lazarus, back from the tomb. Let Lazarus rattle his ghost’s chains in their faces—like the ghost of Jacob Marley confronting Scrooge right in his own bedroom.”
But Father Abraham isn’t buying any of that. Father Abraham recognizes what I’m calling the third mega-chasm here in his story—the chasm, the gorge, the valley between the spectacular, the razzle-dazzle and the sure, steady Word of God.
Father Abraham replies to the rich man, for the final time: “If [your five brothers] do not listen to Moses and the prophets, if they can’t make time for the scriptures they already have--neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”’
God could, I suppose, dazzle us daily with pyrotechnics. God could amaze us with spectacles that take our breath away. God could overwhelm us, God could make us see—so that seeing, we’d no longer need to believe.
But our God doesn’t operate that way. Our God moves into our lives in strong, steady ways always, always with a Word that opens us up to believe—to live by faith, not sight.
We have that Word—and even better, this Word has us! It is the same Word that the rich man probably heard in his life—the same Word that his five brothers also had.
It is the Word of God who created an astonishing world of breath-taking abundance, assets upon assets—freely, recklessly given to us, God’s creatures.
It is the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ who though he was rich yet for our sakes became poor.
It is the Word of the Spirit who catches us up in God’s tomorrow and makes us and all things new.
If that Word doesn’t do the trick for you and me—nothing else will.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Striking While the Iron is Hot
First Lutheran, Audubon
Installation of Pr. David Beety
September 19, 2010
Luke 16:1-11
Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2So he summoned him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” 3Then the manager said to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” 5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” 6He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” 7Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” 8And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
10 ‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth,* who will entrust to you the true riches?
“Strike while the iron is hot.”
Have you ever said that—either to yourself or to someone else?
“Strike while the iron is hot.”
The image goes back to an era when every town had a blacksmith—a man adept at bending iron.
I’m just old enough to remember Floyd Robbens, my little hometown’s blacksmith. Floyd’s welding shop on the edge of town was where all the farmers (like my dad) took their broken farm implement parts for repair.
Sometimes, welding was not enough. Floyd had to fire up his forge and use huge tongs to put the metal part into the fire, heat it up until it was red hot….and then Floyd would take a hammer and strike the iron, bending it, returning it to its proper shape.
Floyd knew when the iron was hot enough, and he sensed when he had to act with speed, accuracy and determination….getting the job done before the metal cooled and hardened.
“Strike while the iron is hot” is a colorful way of saying: “Do something, for goodness’ sake. Don’t dilly-dally. Seize the day! Act while you can, before the moment passes….before the opportunity slips away.”
“Strike while the iron is hot” might have been the motto of the manager here in this peculiar parable from Luke 16.
It really is a strange story--this parable that drives preachers nuts every time it turns up in the Sunday lectionary rotation.
First there’s a rich man who had made loans to all sorts of people. They’d borrowed certain commodities from him, with a promise to return what they borrowed plus some extra oil or some additional wheat, to cover the “finance charges.”
Then there’s the rich man’s manager who, we learn, has been playing fast and loose with his boss’s assets….so recklessly that he gets caught and given the boot.
Such a sad turn of events might have paralyzed another manager, but instead it galvanized this manager. He sizes up his sorry state, and decides on a creative-but-reckless course of action.
Instead of putting his records in order, this shyster shrewdly “cooks the books” to ingratiate himself with those who owed debts to the rich man. “You owe my master 100 jugs of oil? Let’s write off half of that debt—make it fifty jugs of oil instead.”
And here’s where the story really gets interesting: because when the boss finds out how badly his manager has bilked him he commends him for his resolute, imaginative response—his daring shrewdness.
The manager epitomized that old saw, “strike while the iron is hot.” His master praised him for that--rather than calling the cops.
But why? What’s the point here?
At first glance, even Jesus seems to have been unsure about just what this story meant, as he heaped up all sorts of “morals” to the story—spun out various conclusions we might draw.
For my money, though, the first of these possible endings strikes just the right note: “His master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”
So, for our day, what is it that the “children of this age” are so good at?
They’re good at telling their story, marketing their product, and making us want to buy.
• So, Capital One wants to know what’s in our wallets.
• And Geico makes taking out a second mortgage so easy a caveman can do it.
• And Verizon has this geeky guy and his whole network of support staff, who if we just purchase their cellphone package, are going to follow us around, wherever we go.
We know all those advertising campaigns and jingles forward and backward, and they make all that stuff—all that junk—so attractive and irresistible that we just have to have it.
And meanwhile, meanwhile, about the only person who ever mentions Lutherans on the national scene is Garrison Keillor every Saturday about 5 p.m. on National Public Radio. If you’re in the habit of listening to his Prairie Home Companion show, as I do, you may have noticed how all Mr. Keillor has to do is say the word “Lutheran” and the audience chuckles—not because we’re such wacky, edgy folks--but because we epitomize solidity and stability and utterly boring predictability.
We Lutherans have “safe and sensible” down pat. We’ve parlayed sanity and serenity into an art form. We are champions of inertia.
And meanwhile, all around us, persons are dying for some good news, a shred of hope, a word that might set them free and set their feet ‘a marching toward God’s bright future.
But we Lutherans act as if our feet are stuck in cement. We’re like junior high kids at their first dance….everyone standing shyly around the edge of the gym, waiting for someone else to step out on the dance floor and make the first move.
Dear friends, to each of us and to all of us together, I believe that our Lord Jesus has told this crazy parable to get us off our duffs. To learn something from this fraudulent manager—not about financial management—but about sizing up our moment, seizing our day and acting in a risky way for the sake of sharing God’s good news in Jesus Christ.
Goodness knows, we follow the greatest Risk-Taker of them all. Goodness knows Jesus our Lord went way out on a limb—for us!—when he took on our flesh, walked in our shoes, and made himself vulnerable to the worst humanity can dish out—even death on a cross, for us and for our salvation.
Talk about a scheme, a plan, that looked like it had no earthly chance for success!
But it did work, and it continues to work on you and me, this plan of God in Jesus Christ to do whatever it takes to win us for him, to bring us to repentance and newness of life, and to plant God’s kingdom of heaven, right here on earth.
So, how do we read the signs of our times? How do we size up things in our day, our world? We have neighbors who don’t know Jesus—what are we going to do about that? We have friends, even here in our congregation, who have just scratched the surface of the Christian life. How are we going to walk with them, deeper and deeper, into God’s Word and God’s mission?
I can’t tell you just exactly how to do it, though I think you’re taking some steps in the right direction…steps like offering your new “Jam Session with a Punch” and “Jacob’s Well” ministries on Wednesday evening. Giving those sorts of things a try tells me that you good Lutherans of Audubon aren’t stuck, that your feet are not set in cement, that you’re ready to venture out into your mission field with the Good News about Jesus Christ.
And, I truly think, you have taken another good step, by calling Pastor Dave Beety to hang around with you for a while longer. You know he came to you “on waivers,” but now you’ve been bright enough to offer him an open-ended Call. That’s the sort of thing that makes me think you’re pretty bright—you “children of light,” you!
So, this morning, together, we are striking while the iron is hot. We’re putting Pastor Betty in his place as your preacher, your shepherd and your guide…a path-finder toward God’s future in Jesus Christ. He will help you do the most important thing we 21st century Lutherans need to do: to overcome our centuries-long love affair with inertia, to get moving as the people of God….moving to places you may not have been, bearing the gospel where it needs to go.
Pastor Dave brings many good gifts, not the least of which is energy and what I call a “sanctified shrewdness” that will serve you all well.
God bless you as you “seal the deal” on this new partnership. God be with you as you keep your feet moving, following Jesus, the One who calls you and has made you to be children of light.
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Installation of Pr. David Beety
September 19, 2010
Luke 16:1-11
Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2So he summoned him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” 3Then the manager said to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” 5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” 6He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” 7Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” 8And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
10 ‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth,* who will entrust to you the true riches?
“Strike while the iron is hot.”
Have you ever said that—either to yourself or to someone else?
“Strike while the iron is hot.”
The image goes back to an era when every town had a blacksmith—a man adept at bending iron.
I’m just old enough to remember Floyd Robbens, my little hometown’s blacksmith. Floyd’s welding shop on the edge of town was where all the farmers (like my dad) took their broken farm implement parts for repair.
Sometimes, welding was not enough. Floyd had to fire up his forge and use huge tongs to put the metal part into the fire, heat it up until it was red hot….and then Floyd would take a hammer and strike the iron, bending it, returning it to its proper shape.
Floyd knew when the iron was hot enough, and he sensed when he had to act with speed, accuracy and determination….getting the job done before the metal cooled and hardened.
“Strike while the iron is hot” is a colorful way of saying: “Do something, for goodness’ sake. Don’t dilly-dally. Seize the day! Act while you can, before the moment passes….before the opportunity slips away.”
“Strike while the iron is hot” might have been the motto of the manager here in this peculiar parable from Luke 16.
It really is a strange story--this parable that drives preachers nuts every time it turns up in the Sunday lectionary rotation.
First there’s a rich man who had made loans to all sorts of people. They’d borrowed certain commodities from him, with a promise to return what they borrowed plus some extra oil or some additional wheat, to cover the “finance charges.”
Then there’s the rich man’s manager who, we learn, has been playing fast and loose with his boss’s assets….so recklessly that he gets caught and given the boot.
Such a sad turn of events might have paralyzed another manager, but instead it galvanized this manager. He sizes up his sorry state, and decides on a creative-but-reckless course of action.
Instead of putting his records in order, this shyster shrewdly “cooks the books” to ingratiate himself with those who owed debts to the rich man. “You owe my master 100 jugs of oil? Let’s write off half of that debt—make it fifty jugs of oil instead.”
And here’s where the story really gets interesting: because when the boss finds out how badly his manager has bilked him he commends him for his resolute, imaginative response—his daring shrewdness.
The manager epitomized that old saw, “strike while the iron is hot.” His master praised him for that--rather than calling the cops.
But why? What’s the point here?
At first glance, even Jesus seems to have been unsure about just what this story meant, as he heaped up all sorts of “morals” to the story—spun out various conclusions we might draw.
For my money, though, the first of these possible endings strikes just the right note: “His master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”
So, for our day, what is it that the “children of this age” are so good at?
They’re good at telling their story, marketing their product, and making us want to buy.
• So, Capital One wants to know what’s in our wallets.
• And Geico makes taking out a second mortgage so easy a caveman can do it.
• And Verizon has this geeky guy and his whole network of support staff, who if we just purchase their cellphone package, are going to follow us around, wherever we go.
We know all those advertising campaigns and jingles forward and backward, and they make all that stuff—all that junk—so attractive and irresistible that we just have to have it.
And meanwhile, meanwhile, about the only person who ever mentions Lutherans on the national scene is Garrison Keillor every Saturday about 5 p.m. on National Public Radio. If you’re in the habit of listening to his Prairie Home Companion show, as I do, you may have noticed how all Mr. Keillor has to do is say the word “Lutheran” and the audience chuckles—not because we’re such wacky, edgy folks--but because we epitomize solidity and stability and utterly boring predictability.
We Lutherans have “safe and sensible” down pat. We’ve parlayed sanity and serenity into an art form. We are champions of inertia.
And meanwhile, all around us, persons are dying for some good news, a shred of hope, a word that might set them free and set their feet ‘a marching toward God’s bright future.
But we Lutherans act as if our feet are stuck in cement. We’re like junior high kids at their first dance….everyone standing shyly around the edge of the gym, waiting for someone else to step out on the dance floor and make the first move.
Dear friends, to each of us and to all of us together, I believe that our Lord Jesus has told this crazy parable to get us off our duffs. To learn something from this fraudulent manager—not about financial management—but about sizing up our moment, seizing our day and acting in a risky way for the sake of sharing God’s good news in Jesus Christ.
Goodness knows, we follow the greatest Risk-Taker of them all. Goodness knows Jesus our Lord went way out on a limb—for us!—when he took on our flesh, walked in our shoes, and made himself vulnerable to the worst humanity can dish out—even death on a cross, for us and for our salvation.
Talk about a scheme, a plan, that looked like it had no earthly chance for success!
But it did work, and it continues to work on you and me, this plan of God in Jesus Christ to do whatever it takes to win us for him, to bring us to repentance and newness of life, and to plant God’s kingdom of heaven, right here on earth.
So, how do we read the signs of our times? How do we size up things in our day, our world? We have neighbors who don’t know Jesus—what are we going to do about that? We have friends, even here in our congregation, who have just scratched the surface of the Christian life. How are we going to walk with them, deeper and deeper, into God’s Word and God’s mission?
I can’t tell you just exactly how to do it, though I think you’re taking some steps in the right direction…steps like offering your new “Jam Session with a Punch” and “Jacob’s Well” ministries on Wednesday evening. Giving those sorts of things a try tells me that you good Lutherans of Audubon aren’t stuck, that your feet are not set in cement, that you’re ready to venture out into your mission field with the Good News about Jesus Christ.
And, I truly think, you have taken another good step, by calling Pastor Dave Beety to hang around with you for a while longer. You know he came to you “on waivers,” but now you’ve been bright enough to offer him an open-ended Call. That’s the sort of thing that makes me think you’re pretty bright—you “children of light,” you!
So, this morning, together, we are striking while the iron is hot. We’re putting Pastor Betty in his place as your preacher, your shepherd and your guide…a path-finder toward God’s future in Jesus Christ. He will help you do the most important thing we 21st century Lutherans need to do: to overcome our centuries-long love affair with inertia, to get moving as the people of God….moving to places you may not have been, bearing the gospel where it needs to go.
Pastor Dave brings many good gifts, not the least of which is energy and what I call a “sanctified shrewdness” that will serve you all well.
God bless you as you “seal the deal” on this new partnership. God be with you as you keep your feet moving, following Jesus, the One who calls you and has made you to be children of light.
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Break Out the Champagne!
Goodridge Lutheran Parish—at Faith, Goodridge
September 12, 2010
Luke 15:1-10
Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’
So he told them this parable: ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.
‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Last month I read a newspaper article* that told a story that haunts me still. It was a story about the puzzling disappearance of many of Japan’s oldest residents.
Japan, you may have heard, has a reputation for being home to some of the oldest people in the world—a testament to the Japanese peoples’ healthier diet and strong commitment to the elderly.
But all that started to unravel last month when police found the mummified body of a man who was thought to be 111 years old. The man’s body was discovered at home, in his bed, where he had died some three decades ago. His 81 year old daughter had kept the death secret all that time in order to keep pocketing the man’s pension checks…..but what was even more disturbing was the fact that no one else seems to have missed the old gentleman.
This bizarre event spurred Japanese officials to go looking for other centenarians…and to their shock and dismay, they were unable to find nearly 300 of their country’s oldest residents. “Missing in action” in one of the world’s most densely-populated nations!
I shared this strange story with a friend the other day….and my friend—who happens to be single—wondered out loud: “What if I died at home? Who would miss me?”
It is a disturbing thought: being forgotten, out of sight-out of mind, lost. If you disappeared, would there be anyone out there looking for you?
The good news here in Luke 15 is that there is always Someone looking for you—whoever you are, wherever you might be, however you got lost, Someone is obsessively seeking you….peering into every nook and cranny, flashlight shining, broom at work, sweeping away any cobwebs that might hide you.
Someone is looking for you, even now. And that Someone is God—the One who created you, the One who died on the Cross for you, the One who made you his own in the water of Holy Baptism. This One is always hunting for you—he will not forget you, never, ever, ever.
Jesus offers two pictures of this obsessed, search-and-rescue God of ours. The first picture is of God the shepherd, crook in hand, trudging everywhere, earnestly seeking out a stray, a lamb that wandered from the safety of the flock. Must find! Must rescue! Must return to the flock!
The second picture Jesus provides of our seek-the-lost God is of a woman, part of her dowry or her life savings having disappeared….a woman on a mission, seeking a coin, turning her humble home upside down, looking over, under, around every piece of furniture…..broom in hand, sweeping away all the debris that might be hiding her treasure.
Someone is on the lookout for you. That’s the implication of these two tiny parables. Someone is obsessed with finding you. Someone will not rest until he finds you.
And it doesn’t even matter how you got lost in the first place.
People get lost every day…by happenstance, by accident, or because someone else led them astray.
And, as if that weren’t bad enough, we also choose to be lost. We get ourselves lost. We deliberately make choices that put us in harm’s way, place us in danger, invite death into our lives.
This is the worst kind of lostness: the lostness of our own choosing. And Jesus had a particular concern for that--the most dreadful kind of lostness.
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,” is how our gospel lesson begins. It starts as an accusation against Jesus by persons who kept track of such things. Jesus troubled them with his fierce determination to sit with folks who wanted to be lost—sinners, persons curved in on themselves, you and me in our self-chosen lostness—the lostness of going our own way, going away from God, running from all that is good.
Even this worst kind of lostness does not deter the searching shepherd, the frantic housewife, from seeking us out. The shepherd’s crook, the sweeping broom, the floodlight of God’s grace is aimed at us—especially aimed at us when we want to be lost.
Which is why the end of all that searching and seeking is repentance, the coming to our senses, the waking up, the turning from destruction, the return to the freedom of the Father’s house that is repentance.
Here’s just how obsessed the Shepherd is with us. He does not subscribe to the Little Bo Peep philosophy that blithely says: “Leave them alone and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them.” That’s a formula for winding up with a whole pile of dead sheep!
Here’s how obsessed our climb-every-mountain Shepherd, our leave-no-stone-unturned Housewife is: God comes after us, he doesn’t allow us to “make our bed and lie in it,” God does not take our no for an answer—not without a fight, that is.
The goal is repentance, the turning from my way to God’s way with me, the turning from death to life….and that is a good and joyful thing.
Because however we think of repentance, however we’ve been taught about sorrow over sin, asking for forgiveness and resolving to amend our lives...repentance starts, it always starts with the simple act of being found.
And that is something over which we have absolutely no control.
The lost sheep probably was fleeing from its rescuer, or it may have been so injured it couldn’t stand on its own—that’s why it needed to be carried home. And the lost coin—it didn’t suddenly grow legs. It didn’t roll itself out from under the couch, into the light of day to be found.
No. To be found is to experience sheer, gratuitous, overflowing, seeking, saving Love in the flesh. The love of Jesus who went to the Cross and the grave for you and for me. “Love that found me—wondrous thought!—found me when I sought him not.” (ELW #609).
And how can there be anything other than joy—sheer, giddy delight--in such repentance?
I know, I know: we don’t normally link those words—“repentance” and “joy”….but Jesus does, and we will when we take our cues from Jesus.
“Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.”
However you picture heaven—whether you picture streets paved with gold, crystal fountains, a healing river flowing from the throne of God—or whether you picture a Hallmark greeting card, cartoon heaven of drifting above the clouds, strumming a harp and enjoying eternal idleness…
However you picture heaven—please leave room for this: images of wild, out-of-control feasting and partying. Because Jesus our Lord draws back the curtain here in Luke 15, and he shows us angels doing cartwheels, members of the heavenly host getting tipsy and a little out of control….Jesus reveals to us a wild, noisy party breaking out every time one, just one, lost coin, one lost sheep, one sorry sinner returns, repents, is brought home again.
That’s God’s new math: just one. No “critical mass” is necessary for the hosts of heaven to break out the champagne. All it takes is one, just one sinner found. Just one.
In fact, I think that Jesus doesn’t just tell us about it here in Luke 15. Jesus shows us a glimpse of heaven—Jesus acts out heaven for us in the first verse of this lesson: Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’
A little bit of heaven was there, where Jesus was getting close to all the wrong people.
And a little bit of heaven is here this morning in Goodridge as well. It’s a Jesus Party that has brought us out this morning. For good reason many Lutherans call this Rally Day—a time to rally the troops, gather up all the wanderers once again and revel in the fact that the Good Shepherd has found us, God the Fastidious Homemaker has discovered us, God’s dearest treasure, God’s precious flock.
So we’re here for a party. Which means we’re here to give and receive gifts—Bible of all things! Think of them as “homing devices” for our children….divine GPS locators that will help them when they wander off. We return from wherever we’ve been all summer, so that we might sit under the Word that is always seeking us out, so that we might dine with Jesus who just loves rubbing elbows with sinners.
And—here’s what I’m really looking forward to—we’re going to eat together. Because eating together brings us about as close as we can get to heaven-on-earth, with Jesus, in our true home, never more to wander again because we’re found. Found! Found!
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
*"Japan, Checking on Its Oldest, Finds Many Gone," by Martin Fackler. The New York Times, August 14, 2010.
September 12, 2010
Luke 15:1-10
Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’
So he told them this parable: ‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.
‘Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Last month I read a newspaper article* that told a story that haunts me still. It was a story about the puzzling disappearance of many of Japan’s oldest residents.
Japan, you may have heard, has a reputation for being home to some of the oldest people in the world—a testament to the Japanese peoples’ healthier diet and strong commitment to the elderly.
But all that started to unravel last month when police found the mummified body of a man who was thought to be 111 years old. The man’s body was discovered at home, in his bed, where he had died some three decades ago. His 81 year old daughter had kept the death secret all that time in order to keep pocketing the man’s pension checks…..but what was even more disturbing was the fact that no one else seems to have missed the old gentleman.
This bizarre event spurred Japanese officials to go looking for other centenarians…and to their shock and dismay, they were unable to find nearly 300 of their country’s oldest residents. “Missing in action” in one of the world’s most densely-populated nations!
I shared this strange story with a friend the other day….and my friend—who happens to be single—wondered out loud: “What if I died at home? Who would miss me?”
It is a disturbing thought: being forgotten, out of sight-out of mind, lost. If you disappeared, would there be anyone out there looking for you?
The good news here in Luke 15 is that there is always Someone looking for you—whoever you are, wherever you might be, however you got lost, Someone is obsessively seeking you….peering into every nook and cranny, flashlight shining, broom at work, sweeping away any cobwebs that might hide you.
Someone is looking for you, even now. And that Someone is God—the One who created you, the One who died on the Cross for you, the One who made you his own in the water of Holy Baptism. This One is always hunting for you—he will not forget you, never, ever, ever.
Jesus offers two pictures of this obsessed, search-and-rescue God of ours. The first picture is of God the shepherd, crook in hand, trudging everywhere, earnestly seeking out a stray, a lamb that wandered from the safety of the flock. Must find! Must rescue! Must return to the flock!
The second picture Jesus provides of our seek-the-lost God is of a woman, part of her dowry or her life savings having disappeared….a woman on a mission, seeking a coin, turning her humble home upside down, looking over, under, around every piece of furniture…..broom in hand, sweeping away all the debris that might be hiding her treasure.
Someone is on the lookout for you. That’s the implication of these two tiny parables. Someone is obsessed with finding you. Someone will not rest until he finds you.
And it doesn’t even matter how you got lost in the first place.
People get lost every day…by happenstance, by accident, or because someone else led them astray.
And, as if that weren’t bad enough, we also choose to be lost. We get ourselves lost. We deliberately make choices that put us in harm’s way, place us in danger, invite death into our lives.
This is the worst kind of lostness: the lostness of our own choosing. And Jesus had a particular concern for that--the most dreadful kind of lostness.
“This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them,” is how our gospel lesson begins. It starts as an accusation against Jesus by persons who kept track of such things. Jesus troubled them with his fierce determination to sit with folks who wanted to be lost—sinners, persons curved in on themselves, you and me in our self-chosen lostness—the lostness of going our own way, going away from God, running from all that is good.
Even this worst kind of lostness does not deter the searching shepherd, the frantic housewife, from seeking us out. The shepherd’s crook, the sweeping broom, the floodlight of God’s grace is aimed at us—especially aimed at us when we want to be lost.
Which is why the end of all that searching and seeking is repentance, the coming to our senses, the waking up, the turning from destruction, the return to the freedom of the Father’s house that is repentance.
Here’s just how obsessed the Shepherd is with us. He does not subscribe to the Little Bo Peep philosophy that blithely says: “Leave them alone and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them.” That’s a formula for winding up with a whole pile of dead sheep!
Here’s how obsessed our climb-every-mountain Shepherd, our leave-no-stone-unturned Housewife is: God comes after us, he doesn’t allow us to “make our bed and lie in it,” God does not take our no for an answer—not without a fight, that is.
The goal is repentance, the turning from my way to God’s way with me, the turning from death to life….and that is a good and joyful thing.
Because however we think of repentance, however we’ve been taught about sorrow over sin, asking for forgiveness and resolving to amend our lives...repentance starts, it always starts with the simple act of being found.
And that is something over which we have absolutely no control.
The lost sheep probably was fleeing from its rescuer, or it may have been so injured it couldn’t stand on its own—that’s why it needed to be carried home. And the lost coin—it didn’t suddenly grow legs. It didn’t roll itself out from under the couch, into the light of day to be found.
No. To be found is to experience sheer, gratuitous, overflowing, seeking, saving Love in the flesh. The love of Jesus who went to the Cross and the grave for you and for me. “Love that found me—wondrous thought!—found me when I sought him not.” (ELW #609).
And how can there be anything other than joy—sheer, giddy delight--in such repentance?
I know, I know: we don’t normally link those words—“repentance” and “joy”….but Jesus does, and we will when we take our cues from Jesus.
“Just so I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.”
However you picture heaven—whether you picture streets paved with gold, crystal fountains, a healing river flowing from the throne of God—or whether you picture a Hallmark greeting card, cartoon heaven of drifting above the clouds, strumming a harp and enjoying eternal idleness…
However you picture heaven—please leave room for this: images of wild, out-of-control feasting and partying. Because Jesus our Lord draws back the curtain here in Luke 15, and he shows us angels doing cartwheels, members of the heavenly host getting tipsy and a little out of control….Jesus reveals to us a wild, noisy party breaking out every time one, just one, lost coin, one lost sheep, one sorry sinner returns, repents, is brought home again.
That’s God’s new math: just one. No “critical mass” is necessary for the hosts of heaven to break out the champagne. All it takes is one, just one sinner found. Just one.
In fact, I think that Jesus doesn’t just tell us about it here in Luke 15. Jesus shows us a glimpse of heaven—Jesus acts out heaven for us in the first verse of this lesson: Now all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’
A little bit of heaven was there, where Jesus was getting close to all the wrong people.
And a little bit of heaven is here this morning in Goodridge as well. It’s a Jesus Party that has brought us out this morning. For good reason many Lutherans call this Rally Day—a time to rally the troops, gather up all the wanderers once again and revel in the fact that the Good Shepherd has found us, God the Fastidious Homemaker has discovered us, God’s dearest treasure, God’s precious flock.
So we’re here for a party. Which means we’re here to give and receive gifts—Bible of all things! Think of them as “homing devices” for our children….divine GPS locators that will help them when they wander off. We return from wherever we’ve been all summer, so that we might sit under the Word that is always seeking us out, so that we might dine with Jesus who just loves rubbing elbows with sinners.
And—here’s what I’m really looking forward to—we’re going to eat together. Because eating together brings us about as close as we can get to heaven-on-earth, with Jesus, in our true home, never more to wander again because we’re found. Found! Found!
In the name of Jesus.
Amen.
*"Japan, Checking on Its Oldest, Finds Many Gone," by Martin Fackler. The New York Times, August 14, 2010.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Life Overflowing: The Next Generation
Life Overflowing: The Next Generation
“Don't you see that children are God's best gift? the fruit of the womb his generous legacy?” Psalm 127:3 (The Message)
“Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:6-9
[Jesus said] “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” Mark 10:14
September puts the spotlight on our children, as they head back to school and return to our Sunday Schools and confirmation ministries. “Free range” kids who’ve been on the loose over summer are falling into line once again, shaped up by their wonderful teachers (our heroes!)
By virtue of their Baptism into Christ our children, of whatever age, are the church of today—along with all the rest of us “gray-hairs.” We resist the notion that children and youth are merely “the church of tomorrow.” Amen!
And yet, these young ones are the next generation of God’s church on earth, too. In particular, today’s youth are the leaders of tomorrow’s church. Watch out! They mean to take over from us! We thank God for an abundance of children to treasure today, to be formed into Christ, and to be prepared to serve God’s mission.
Birth Dearth?
But wait, do we really have an abundance of children in our midst? Folks in rural synods like ours often lament the loss of our children and young people. We look with longing at faded, yellowed pictures depicting the good old days when Sunday Schools were bursting at the seams. Nowadays it seems like we face a disheartening “birth dearth.”
But is that really the case? For years I’ve been playing a mean trick on call committees in congregations up and down western Minnesota. While discerning the congregation’s potential for mission and ministry, I pose this question: “In your local zip code area, which segment of the population is larger—the number of senior adults over the age of 65, or the number of children and youth age 18 or younger?”
Almost always, this answer is, “senior adults over age 65.” And almost always that answer is wrong! When I share the latest statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau (available to every congregation on the ELCA website at http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Research-and-Evaluation/ZIP-Code-Report.aspx) call committee members often refuse to believe me. “On Sunday mornings it’s mainly older adults in worship—our youth have disappeared!”
But that depends upon who we’re counting as “our” youth? Surely we’re responsible for more than the children who worship regularly in our congregations. What about the other young ones who have been baptized in our congregations, whom we list on our membership rolls and responsibility lists? What about all the young ones in our local “mission field,” many of them unchurched? Just who are “our” children, anyway?
They’re All Our Kids!
More and more I’ve come to believe that they’re all our kids. If children and youth live within the mission field of our congregations, they are in some sense “ours.” Ours to serve. Ours to invite. Ours to know by name. Ours to love and care for and uphold in prayer. What if—especially in our smaller rural communities—we cultivated a radical sense of responsibility for all the children and youth who walk among us? What if we insisted that “they’re all our kids?” Hmmmm. If we followed that idea to its logical conclusion, we might take more seriously (i.e. support with our offerings and our tax dollars) both the religious education and the public school education of “our kids!”
They’re all our kids because, first and foremost, they’re all God’s kids. The God of the scriptures—the God we know in Jesus Christ—gives children infinite worth. In the words of the psalmist, they are “God’s best gift” to us in our earthly lives. Children, as Jesus reminds us, have an inside track on the kingdom of God—they “get it” in ways we adults can only envy.
Saturation Education
So what is more central in our Christian discipleship than making good on the promises we utter whenever a child is baptized—to “faithfully bring them to the serves of God’s house, and teach them the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments….[to] place in their hands the Holy Scriptures and provide for their instruction in the Christian faith?” (LBW, p. 121; cf. ELW p. 228)
When we take responsibility for the newly-baptized, we commit ourselves to a “saturation education” that surrounds each child with the life of the Lord Jesus, “until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). Taking our cues from great texts like Deuteronomy 6:6-9, we regard the home as the critical location where this happens—which is why increasingly our congregational Christian education efforts are aiming at equipping parents and other adult family members and friends to be the primary nurturers of Christian faith. That’s why our synod continues to seek out ways to partner with dynamic faith-formation agencies like Vibrant Faith Ministries (http://www.youthandfamilyinstitute.org/).
While traveling in India last November, we learned how precious children are in our companion synod, the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC). Everywhere we traveled, in every congregation we visited, we encountered some of the most beautiful and outgoing kids on the face of the earth. Education—including parochial schools—as been and continues to be a signature ministry of the AELC.
Every Church Can Do This
Sometimes small-membership churches under-estimate their capacity to minister meaningfully among children and youth. “We could have a dynamic youth ministry if we just had more members and more dollars.” But the best things we can offer our young ones don’t cost much. In fact, I’m always tickled to observe how some of the smallest congregations in our synod “shine” in the ways they treasure their children. Here’s some ways we all can nurture the youth among us:
• Learn their names and call them by name.
• Call forth their best gifts. Don’t just give youth “grunt work” in the church. Let them shine as musicians, teachers of younger children, friendly visitors to the lonely, mission trip adventurers, etc.
• Listen to them. Bend over backwards to draw them into congregational discussions about where God is leading you in mission. Remember, they’re going to take over some day—so why wait to hear what’s on their minds?
• Do as much ministry inter-generationally as you can. Finagle ways to bring your youngest and oldest generations together.
• Mentor them in faith and in life, give them space to spread their wings, be open to their wild ideas, and above all stand with them—don’t give up on them.
• Tend the children and youth you actually have, rather than lamenting the absence of other youth.
• Be genuine. Kids can smell phoniness a mile away.
• Give them Jesus—first, last and always. And look for Jesus’ face in their faces.
Bishop Larry Wohlrabe
Northwestern Minnesota Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
God’s work. Our hands.
For reflection and discussion:
1. How is your congregation preparing youth to take over the leadership of the church?
2. Go to the ELCA website and figure out how many kids, ages 18 and younger, reside in your zip code area. How many do you see in worship in your congregation? How many of them are on your church’s membership list? How many are unchurched? Pray about and talk with others about how your congregation could treasure all the children in your mission field.
3. What might be different in your congregation’s ministry if more members believed and acted as though “they’re all our children?”
This is the eighth in a series of articles on the theme Life Overflowing—an ongoing exercise in missional theology for the disciples and congregations of the Northwestern Minnesota Synod during the year 2010. These articles may be used for personal reflection; they may also serve as background study or a devotional resource for congregation councils and other parish leadership groups.
“Don't you see that children are God's best gift? the fruit of the womb his generous legacy?” Psalm 127:3 (The Message)
“Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” Deuteronomy 6:6-9
[Jesus said] “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.” Mark 10:14
By virtue of their Baptism into Christ our children, of whatever age, are the church of today—along with all the rest of us “gray-hairs.” We resist the notion that children and youth are merely “the church of tomorrow.” Amen!
And yet, these young ones are the next generation of God’s church on earth, too. In particular, today’s youth are the leaders of tomorrow’s church. Watch out! They mean to take over from us! We thank God for an abundance of children to treasure today, to be formed into Christ, and to be prepared to serve God’s mission.
Birth Dearth?
But wait, do we really have an abundance of children in our midst? Folks in rural synods like ours often lament the loss of our children and young people. We look with longing at faded, yellowed pictures depicting the good old days when Sunday Schools were bursting at the seams. Nowadays it seems like we face a disheartening “birth dearth.”
But is that really the case? For years I’ve been playing a mean trick on call committees in congregations up and down western Minnesota. While discerning the congregation’s potential for mission and ministry, I pose this question: “In your local zip code area, which segment of the population is larger—the number of senior adults over the age of 65, or the number of children and youth age 18 or younger?”
Almost always, this answer is, “senior adults over age 65.” And almost always that answer is wrong! When I share the latest statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau (available to every congregation on the ELCA website at http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Research-and-Evaluation/ZIP-Code-Report.aspx) call committee members often refuse to believe me. “On Sunday mornings it’s mainly older adults in worship—our youth have disappeared!”
But that depends upon who we’re counting as “our” youth? Surely we’re responsible for more than the children who worship regularly in our congregations. What about the other young ones who have been baptized in our congregations, whom we list on our membership rolls and responsibility lists? What about all the young ones in our local “mission field,” many of them unchurched? Just who are “our” children, anyway?
They’re All Our Kids!
More and more I’ve come to believe that they’re all our kids. If children and youth live within the mission field of our congregations, they are in some sense “ours.” Ours to serve. Ours to invite. Ours to know by name. Ours to love and care for and uphold in prayer. What if—especially in our smaller rural communities—we cultivated a radical sense of responsibility for all the children and youth who walk among us? What if we insisted that “they’re all our kids?” Hmmmm. If we followed that idea to its logical conclusion, we might take more seriously (i.e. support with our offerings and our tax dollars) both the religious education and the public school education of “our kids!”
They’re all our kids because, first and foremost, they’re all God’s kids. The God of the scriptures—the God we know in Jesus Christ—gives children infinite worth. In the words of the psalmist, they are “God’s best gift” to us in our earthly lives. Children, as Jesus reminds us, have an inside track on the kingdom of God—they “get it” in ways we adults can only envy.
Saturation Education
So what is more central in our Christian discipleship than making good on the promises we utter whenever a child is baptized—to “faithfully bring them to the serves of God’s house, and teach them the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed and the Ten Commandments….[to] place in their hands the Holy Scriptures and provide for their instruction in the Christian faith?” (LBW, p. 121; cf. ELW p. 228)
When we take responsibility for the newly-baptized, we commit ourselves to a “saturation education” that surrounds each child with the life of the Lord Jesus, “until Christ is formed in you” (Galatians 4:19). Taking our cues from great texts like Deuteronomy 6:6-9, we regard the home as the critical location where this happens—which is why increasingly our congregational Christian education efforts are aiming at equipping parents and other adult family members and friends to be the primary nurturers of Christian faith. That’s why our synod continues to seek out ways to partner with dynamic faith-formation agencies like Vibrant Faith Ministries (http://www.youthandfamilyinstitute.org/).
While traveling in India last November, we learned how precious children are in our companion synod, the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC). Everywhere we traveled, in every congregation we visited, we encountered some of the most beautiful and outgoing kids on the face of the earth. Education—including parochial schools—as been and continues to be a signature ministry of the AELC.
Every Church Can Do This
Sometimes small-membership churches under-estimate their capacity to minister meaningfully among children and youth. “We could have a dynamic youth ministry if we just had more members and more dollars.” But the best things we can offer our young ones don’t cost much. In fact, I’m always tickled to observe how some of the smallest congregations in our synod “shine” in the ways they treasure their children. Here’s some ways we all can nurture the youth among us:
• Learn their names and call them by name.
• Call forth their best gifts. Don’t just give youth “grunt work” in the church. Let them shine as musicians, teachers of younger children, friendly visitors to the lonely, mission trip adventurers, etc.
• Listen to them. Bend over backwards to draw them into congregational discussions about where God is leading you in mission. Remember, they’re going to take over some day—so why wait to hear what’s on their minds?
• Do as much ministry inter-generationally as you can. Finagle ways to bring your youngest and oldest generations together.
• Mentor them in faith and in life, give them space to spread their wings, be open to their wild ideas, and above all stand with them—don’t give up on them.
• Tend the children and youth you actually have, rather than lamenting the absence of other youth.
• Be genuine. Kids can smell phoniness a mile away.
• Give them Jesus—first, last and always. And look for Jesus’ face in their faces.
Bishop Larry Wohlrabe
Northwestern Minnesota Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
God’s work. Our hands.
For reflection and discussion:
1. How is your congregation preparing youth to take over the leadership of the church?
2. Go to the ELCA website and figure out how many kids, ages 18 and younger, reside in your zip code area. How many do you see in worship in your congregation? How many of them are on your church’s membership list? How many are unchurched? Pray about and talk with others about how your congregation could treasure all the children in your mission field.
3. What might be different in your congregation’s ministry if more members believed and acted as though “they’re all our children?”
This is the eighth in a series of articles on the theme Life Overflowing—an ongoing exercise in missional theology for the disciples and congregations of the Northwestern Minnesota Synod during the year 2010. These articles may be used for personal reflection; they may also serve as background study or a devotional resource for congregation councils and other parish leadership groups.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Moochers at the Table of Grace
Trinity Lutheran Church, Moorhead
Installation of Pastors Alexis Twito, Colin Grangaard and Rick Reiten
August 29, 2010
Luke 14:1, 7-14
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely…. 7When [Jesus] noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 12[Jesus] said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
These waning days of August are such a nostalgic time…reminding us of the end of so many summers, the beginning of so many autumns….and always, always the return to school.
In the next ten days thousands of students will return to classes in Fargo and Moorhead….from pre-schoolers to graduate students….so different in so many ways, and yet also so similar: all of them pondering the same question: “How will I fit in? How will I make a place for myself in this class, this school, this community of learning?”
It’s a question, really, that we bring to every moment of life: How do I fit in? How do I fashion a place for myself?
And sometimes that question gets very specific. My son-in-law who attends law school in St. Paul told me that he has a very, very definite “place” among his peers-- because they’re all graded strictly on a curve. Every student occupies exactly one spot on that Bell curve, depending upon their performance. Every class, every discussion, every test influences just where that spot is….and that in turn influences where you wind up, how good a position you will win for yourself in the dog-eat-dog world of lawyering.
How do I fit in? How do I fashion a place for myself?--questions that are as old as the hills. In fact, they form the backdrop for this gospel lesson from Luke 14.
It is the Sabbath, and people are at table in the home of a Pharisee. Jesus is present, and everyone is watching him like a hawk. Why? I think it’s because Jesus had a way of shaking things up, wherever he went.
Jesus just didn’t “do” idle chit-chat. We Midwestern Lutherans can talk for hours about nothing—the weather, our tomato plants, where to pick up the best sweet corn, and—“how about those Twins?” You know the drill.
But Jesus didn’t know the drill. Jesus only “did” purposeful speech, usually disruptive speech. Having Jesus over to dinner was always risky—he often ignored conventional etiquette, he wasn’t a keep-your-opinions-to-yourself-please guest.
So people were watching him…and Jesus, in turn was watching them, observing especially how they positioned themselves in the context of this meal.
Now here we’re at a disadvantage, because we’ve reduced “being at table” to little more than consuming the carbs and proteins we need to keep going.
For Jesus and his fellow diners, though, eating a meal together was sacred time, in holy space….which is why so much of the action in Luke’s Gospel happens “at table.” For Jesus and his fellow diners, eating together was about table fellowship, a profound way of sharing life together.
So people are watching Jesus, and Jesus is watching them, and then--true to form—he opens his mouth and says something wild, uncomfortable, and world-turning.
First, Jesus addresses his fellow-guests. They would be wise to aim low, head for the humblest position in the pecking order. After all, if you take the lowest place, you have nowhere to go but up on the social ladder.
But what sounds at first like advice from Miss Manners is so much more. The giveaway word here is παραβολη—parable, which means kingdom talk—Jesus is opening up a vista on the kingdom of God.
Taking the lowest seat isn’t a reverse-English way of jockeying for power: “After you….no, after you….no really, I insist, after you….”
Taking the lowest available seat goes beyond prudential choice. It is God’s way, as Jesus himself was forever demonstrating. Jesus always “aimed low”—headed right for where the no-accounts were seated. Jesus consistently positioned himself with the gap-toothed, knock-kneed, could-use-a-bath crowd.
Jesus’ place was and still is with those who can’t make it on their own.
Speaking of whom….Jesus offered his host a little more unsolicited advice: When you give a luncheon or a dinner… invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
It’s not just about how you position yourself, but who you position yourself with.
Our natural tendency is to hang out with our social equals, or, if given the chance, to surround ourselves with power-people who can do something for us in return. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, and we both come out ahead…although I’d be delighted to come out a little farther ahead, thank you very much!
So we’re at a party, talking with someone who all the while is looking over our shoulder to see who else is at the party. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and reciprocity is the coin of the realm.
But not in the kingdom of God. In God’s astonishing but gentle way of ruling over all things, everyone is equally beholding to the Host of the feast. Our differences are really trifling, the tie that binds us all—our common need for what only God can give.
So what if we started acting as if that were true, right here and now? Well, our meals and our parties and—come to think of it—our weekly worship gatherings would look so very much more like the “duke’s mixture” that in fact we are.
And how could we picture that more wildly, more imaginatively, than if we constructed our guest lists by starting with all the folks who could never in a million years, pay us back. People whose need outstrips their ability to pay. People who might even be a drag on us—might hold us back, might reshape us, might refashion how we look at everything—through kingdom eyes for a change.
In other words: remove reciprocity from the equation, and in its place substitute the gratuitous grace of God, the overflowing unmerited mercy of the One who took the lowest place imaginable, a Roman execution cross, for us and for our salvation.
Now, I could go on and on, but the home stretch is beckoning, so let me close by shining the light of this text on you three—Alexis, Colin and Rick. What does this all have to do with you, and the ministry partnership that we launch here this morning?
We are here to install you, after all. And installation involves putting you in your place.
The double entendre in that phrase can serve us well.
I know that none of you fell off the turnip truck yesterday. In the hothouse environment of the seminary, each of you has been a shining star. You landed on the cheerful side of the Bell Curve.
But this morning, I invite you to regard all of that as sheer gift. Your gifts are God’s gifts to you, and now here at Trinity, God’s gifts through you. If I believed in luck, I’d say: “Aren’t we all so lucky to have you!”
But there is more. As you begin your ministry here at Trinity, I invite you to aim low.
Bet you haven’t heard advice like that—you high achievers, you.
But this is kingdom talk, don’t you see? “Aim low” is kingdom talk for: situate yourselves where Jesus would be. Let God position you where you can do the most good—with those who know they can’t make it on their own. And doesn’t that really describe us all—even the brightest and best shining stars, sitting here in the pews this morning?
Trinity is richly blessed with a wonderful spectrum of folks who all share two things in common: first, they’re sinners and, second, Jesus has saved them in order to send them into God’s mission.
And you three new pastors will have entrée into their lives when they need God most. I love that old line from C.S. Lewis: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains…[Pain is God’s] megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Aim low—be where Jesus would be—and, as you help Trinity to serve God’s mission—finagle ways to keep making sure the guest list always includes folks who can never repay God for his goodness.
Last Wednesday your “Music on the Blacktop” event served over 900 people. What an amazing “Jesus party!”—truly, one of the very best things you do here at Trinity.
And I certainly hope that many of those 900 showed up just to mooch some free ice cream and bask in camaraderie…because, you know, we’re all moochers at God’s table of grace.
If Christ’s church has a future in this 21st century, it will be shaped by parties that bring all of us moochers together, positioned by God—put in our places by God--to partake of a feast we will never deserve.
So, welcome, Alexis, Colin and Rick….welcome to this table. On behalf of all the other moochers gathered here this morning, we call you to be wherever Jesus would be, surrounded by all the ragamuffin kingdom people who are simply amazed to be here.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Installation of Pastors Alexis Twito, Colin Grangaard and Rick Reiten
August 29, 2010
Luke 14:1, 7-14
On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely…. 7When [Jesus] noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. 8“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; 9and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. 10But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. 11For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” 12[Jesus] said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. 13But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. 14And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
These waning days of August are such a nostalgic time…reminding us of the end of so many summers, the beginning of so many autumns….and always, always the return to school.
In the next ten days thousands of students will return to classes in Fargo and Moorhead….from pre-schoolers to graduate students….so different in so many ways, and yet also so similar: all of them pondering the same question: “How will I fit in? How will I make a place for myself in this class, this school, this community of learning?”
It’s a question, really, that we bring to every moment of life: How do I fit in? How do I fashion a place for myself?
And sometimes that question gets very specific. My son-in-law who attends law school in St. Paul told me that he has a very, very definite “place” among his peers-- because they’re all graded strictly on a curve. Every student occupies exactly one spot on that Bell curve, depending upon their performance. Every class, every discussion, every test influences just where that spot is….and that in turn influences where you wind up, how good a position you will win for yourself in the dog-eat-dog world of lawyering.
How do I fit in? How do I fashion a place for myself?--questions that are as old as the hills. In fact, they form the backdrop for this gospel lesson from Luke 14.
It is the Sabbath, and people are at table in the home of a Pharisee. Jesus is present, and everyone is watching him like a hawk. Why? I think it’s because Jesus had a way of shaking things up, wherever he went.
Jesus just didn’t “do” idle chit-chat. We Midwestern Lutherans can talk for hours about nothing—the weather, our tomato plants, where to pick up the best sweet corn, and—“how about those Twins?” You know the drill.
But Jesus didn’t know the drill. Jesus only “did” purposeful speech, usually disruptive speech. Having Jesus over to dinner was always risky—he often ignored conventional etiquette, he wasn’t a keep-your-opinions-to-yourself-please guest.
So people were watching him…and Jesus, in turn was watching them, observing especially how they positioned themselves in the context of this meal.
Now here we’re at a disadvantage, because we’ve reduced “being at table” to little more than consuming the carbs and proteins we need to keep going.
For Jesus and his fellow diners, though, eating a meal together was sacred time, in holy space….which is why so much of the action in Luke’s Gospel happens “at table.” For Jesus and his fellow diners, eating together was about table fellowship, a profound way of sharing life together.
So people are watching Jesus, and Jesus is watching them, and then--true to form—he opens his mouth and says something wild, uncomfortable, and world-turning.
First, Jesus addresses his fellow-guests. They would be wise to aim low, head for the humblest position in the pecking order. After all, if you take the lowest place, you have nowhere to go but up on the social ladder.
But what sounds at first like advice from Miss Manners is so much more. The giveaway word here is παραβολη—parable, which means kingdom talk—Jesus is opening up a vista on the kingdom of God.
Taking the lowest seat isn’t a reverse-English way of jockeying for power: “After you….no, after you….no really, I insist, after you….”
Taking the lowest available seat goes beyond prudential choice. It is God’s way, as Jesus himself was forever demonstrating. Jesus always “aimed low”—headed right for where the no-accounts were seated. Jesus consistently positioned himself with the gap-toothed, knock-kneed, could-use-a-bath crowd.
Jesus’ place was and still is with those who can’t make it on their own.
Speaking of whom….Jesus offered his host a little more unsolicited advice: When you give a luncheon or a dinner… invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.
It’s not just about how you position yourself, but who you position yourself with.
Our natural tendency is to hang out with our social equals, or, if given the chance, to surround ourselves with power-people who can do something for us in return. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, and we both come out ahead…although I’d be delighted to come out a little farther ahead, thank you very much!
So we’re at a party, talking with someone who all the while is looking over our shoulder to see who else is at the party. It’s not what you know, it’s who you know, and reciprocity is the coin of the realm.
But not in the kingdom of God. In God’s astonishing but gentle way of ruling over all things, everyone is equally beholding to the Host of the feast. Our differences are really trifling, the tie that binds us all—our common need for what only God can give.
So what if we started acting as if that were true, right here and now? Well, our meals and our parties and—come to think of it—our weekly worship gatherings would look so very much more like the “duke’s mixture” that in fact we are.
And how could we picture that more wildly, more imaginatively, than if we constructed our guest lists by starting with all the folks who could never in a million years, pay us back. People whose need outstrips their ability to pay. People who might even be a drag on us—might hold us back, might reshape us, might refashion how we look at everything—through kingdom eyes for a change.
In other words: remove reciprocity from the equation, and in its place substitute the gratuitous grace of God, the overflowing unmerited mercy of the One who took the lowest place imaginable, a Roman execution cross, for us and for our salvation.
Now, I could go on and on, but the home stretch is beckoning, so let me close by shining the light of this text on you three—Alexis, Colin and Rick. What does this all have to do with you, and the ministry partnership that we launch here this morning?
We are here to install you, after all. And installation involves putting you in your place.
The double entendre in that phrase can serve us well.
I know that none of you fell off the turnip truck yesterday. In the hothouse environment of the seminary, each of you has been a shining star. You landed on the cheerful side of the Bell Curve.
But this morning, I invite you to regard all of that as sheer gift. Your gifts are God’s gifts to you, and now here at Trinity, God’s gifts through you. If I believed in luck, I’d say: “Aren’t we all so lucky to have you!”
But there is more. As you begin your ministry here at Trinity, I invite you to aim low.
Bet you haven’t heard advice like that—you high achievers, you.
But this is kingdom talk, don’t you see? “Aim low” is kingdom talk for: situate yourselves where Jesus would be. Let God position you where you can do the most good—with those who know they can’t make it on their own. And doesn’t that really describe us all—even the brightest and best shining stars, sitting here in the pews this morning?
Trinity is richly blessed with a wonderful spectrum of folks who all share two things in common: first, they’re sinners and, second, Jesus has saved them in order to send them into God’s mission.
And you three new pastors will have entrée into their lives when they need God most. I love that old line from C.S. Lewis: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains…[Pain is God’s] megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
Aim low—be where Jesus would be—and, as you help Trinity to serve God’s mission—finagle ways to keep making sure the guest list always includes folks who can never repay God for his goodness.
Last Wednesday your “Music on the Blacktop” event served over 900 people. What an amazing “Jesus party!”—truly, one of the very best things you do here at Trinity.
And I certainly hope that many of those 900 showed up just to mooch some free ice cream and bask in camaraderie…because, you know, we’re all moochers at God’s table of grace.
If Christ’s church has a future in this 21st century, it will be shaped by parties that bring all of us moochers together, positioned by God—put in our places by God--to partake of a feast we will never deserve.
So, welcome, Alexis, Colin and Rick….welcome to this table. On behalf of all the other moochers gathered here this morning, we call you to be wherever Jesus would be, surrounded by all the ragamuffin kingdom people who are simply amazed to be here.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Joining the Apostolic Strike Force
Ordination of Sheila Michaels
August 22, 2010
Redeemer Lutheran Church, Thief River Falls, MN
Luke 10:1-9
After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” 6And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”
Thank you so much, Sheila, for selecting this great gospel text for your ordination day. It’s become one of my favorite guiding lights in God’s Word…truly a touchstone for the missional church of the 21st century.
Few gospel passages manage to seem so far removed from our current context—and yet at the same time so apropos, so close to this time and place, this apostolic moment in which we find ourselves in the year 2010.
This text, at first blush, seems so foreign to us, with its stark instructions for a strike force of 70 ambassadors who fan out across the countryside, all of them on foot, to prepare the way for Jesus’ own itinerant ministry. It strikes us as odd, even exotic, to imagine persons traveling swiftly in such Spartan fashion—we could never do that (could we?) even if we wanted to. Heading out with just the clothes on our back and counting on strangers to take us in—who would attempt a trip like that in this time and place?
And yet as odd and as far-removed as this story seems to be from the world in which we live, there is also a striking immediacy to this gospel lesson. For although our situation may have changed, our calling has not…a calling to announce God’s rule over all things—the gracious and gentle rule begun, continued and brought to fruition in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.
And this gospel lesson “works”—especially well—for a service of ordination, as the church sets aside, blesses and sends another laborer into the mission field. There is good stuff here, Sheila, stuff you can use, stuff you can count on to see you through. Let me highlight three keynotes in this text.
1. First, there is the up-front assurance of a bountiful harvest. True to form—for that is always how God operates--the promise is central here. It comes first, before anything else. The harvest is plentiful, Jesus declares.
Isn’t that just like him? Jesus leads with a promise, just as God is forever uttering promises—before we can even get a word in edgewise. The promise leads the way: the harvest is plentiful. You need to know that. Before you venture out into the field—trust in this fact: it’s going to be a bumper crop! God has decided that. And so you can count on it to be true.
Now I grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota, and one thing I remember from those farming years is that you know how the harvest turns out only after every last ear of corn, every last bushel of grain is safely tucked away in the granary…
Until that point, until the combines have scoured every acre, until you are deep into autumn—not until every last threat to the crop has passed away, not until the last minute of the whole “gathering in” business, can anyone say: “The harvest is plentiful.”
But that is not how God operates. That is not how Jesus does business. God in Jesus Christ always leads with the promise, and here the promise is that there are all sorts of persons out there with ears for the gospel, Sheila. There is no shortage—absolutely no lack—of potential disciples, followers and believers. God isn’t stingy in any of that, and that is a promise you can count on as you begin your ordained ministry.
God intends to bless your ministry, Sheila. God is delighted to have you join the ranks of “harvesters.” There’s a bountiful crop out there—though we always seem to be short of “harvesters”--so adding you to the apostolic strike force is sort of a coup, Sheila.
And you can carry out your ministry in the confidence that it doesn’t depend on you, Sheila. Your warmth, your smile, your winning way, your facility with words, your great work ethic—all of those are good gifts you bring. But the harvest doesn’t depend on any of them. In fact, quite often God will succeed despite you, Sheila….and when that happens, it will simply be confirmation that you’re normal, like every other pastor.
2. The second gift God’s Word gives you here, Sheila, is the freedom to travel as lightly as possibly.
You will find—you probably have already found--that there are plenty of folks out there who want to tell you how to be a good pastor. There are oodles and caboodles of programs and plans and 7-step approaches and how-to guides for better, more faithful, more effective pastoring.
As if all that were not enough, think of the times in which we live. This is an anxious age in the world and in the church, Sheila. And one way that anxiety gets expressed is by a desire to draw hard lines, to get everyone lined up straight and moving in lockstep fashion, a desire for uniformity on everything under the sun. I think that some of that is happening in our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—a distrust of one another, compounded by nervous efforts to add terms and conditions and escape clauses to the simple Gospel of God’s gratuitous, overflowing love in Jesus Christ the Crucified and Risen One.
And then there are the expectations that get laid on pastors. It’s been said that being a pastor is like being a dog at a whistlers’ convention. The people of God—God bless them, God love them!—will make it hard for you, at times, to travel as lightly as Jesus invites you to travel here in Luke chapter 10. Expectations will be laid upon you, so much so that you will feel overwhelmed….and when you do feel that way, I invite you to return to Jesus’ great “reducing plan” here in your ordination text. Strip away the excess baggage and return to the basic, the foundational, the one thing needful.
In other words: give them Jesus. When in doubt, give them Jesus. When expectations mount up like the Red River in spring flood stage, give them Jesus. Shuck off all the flotsam and jetsam that piles up. Hone in on the only essential thing. Travel lightly. Give them Jesus—preach Jesus, baptize in Jesus’ name, feed people on Jesus’ body and blood—everything else is fine, but it’s window-dressing, really. Jesus is who we need the most.
3. Third, count on help along the way, Sheila. Thank God, you’re not all alone in this adventure called pastoral ministry.
That’s of course, why Jesus could send out the 70 emissaries in such Spartan fashion-- no purse, no bag, no sandals, no picnic baskets, no ATM cards, no GPS locators. Jesus sent them out with virtually nothing because Jesus knew there would be persons along the way who would help out. Simple as that.
Jesus sent out the seventy as lambs amidst wolves….and yet not everyone “out there” was a wolf. There would be other “lambs,” there would be people of peace, there would be hospitable hosts who would receive them, shelter them, feed them, maybe even join forces with them.
And that is a great and welcome word for today’s church—the missional church of the 21st century. Gone, thankfully, is the day when we expect pastors to “do it all.” Thirty years ago, when I was finishing up seminary, we were getting ready to kiss that tired old model for ministry goodbye. The myth of the “omni-competent” pastor was starting to die, but it still had traction in many places.
This is, of course, about more than keeping pastors from burning out. It’s mainly about empowering and equipping the whole people of God to take up their callings to serve God’s mission in the world. Over-functioning pastors require under-functioning church members….but Jesus has a much better idea: a whole company of disciples who pray, and study the Word, and worship, and bear witness, and give generously, and serve their neighbors in countless ways….with pastors in the mix to serve up the Word and Sacraments for the nurturing and sustaining of all God’s baptized children.
Sheila, if I have learned one thing about you, it’s that you have a nearly inexhaustible energy for life and family and ministry. You run circles around the rest of us, and you manage to keep an amazing number of balls in the air at any one point in time.
But God has given you partners in this good work, and I know that you know that. The flock that has called you to serve with them, the good people of the Bethlehem and Nazareth congregations, they are brimming with life and energy and gifts for God’s work. So how will you form a holy partnership, a sanctified synergy that will free up everyone’s best gifts for ministry?
Of course, you already know everything I’ve said in this sermon, Sheila..but please, hear it one more time:
• The harvest is plentiful,
• You’re free to travel lightly, and
• There’ll be plenty of help along the way.
These breath-taking promises are the greatest gifts you’ll receive today—all of them from God’s own generous hand.
In the name of Jesus.
August 22, 2010
Redeemer Lutheran Church, Thief River Falls, MN
Luke 10:1-9
After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2He said to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5Whatever house you enter, first say, “Peace to this house!” 6And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9cure the sick who are there, and say to them, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”
Thank you so much, Sheila, for selecting this great gospel text for your ordination day. It’s become one of my favorite guiding lights in God’s Word…truly a touchstone for the missional church of the 21st century.
Few gospel passages manage to seem so far removed from our current context—and yet at the same time so apropos, so close to this time and place, this apostolic moment in which we find ourselves in the year 2010.
This text, at first blush, seems so foreign to us, with its stark instructions for a strike force of 70 ambassadors who fan out across the countryside, all of them on foot, to prepare the way for Jesus’ own itinerant ministry. It strikes us as odd, even exotic, to imagine persons traveling swiftly in such Spartan fashion—we could never do that (could we?) even if we wanted to. Heading out with just the clothes on our back and counting on strangers to take us in—who would attempt a trip like that in this time and place?
And yet as odd and as far-removed as this story seems to be from the world in which we live, there is also a striking immediacy to this gospel lesson. For although our situation may have changed, our calling has not…a calling to announce God’s rule over all things—the gracious and gentle rule begun, continued and brought to fruition in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah.
And this gospel lesson “works”—especially well—for a service of ordination, as the church sets aside, blesses and sends another laborer into the mission field. There is good stuff here, Sheila, stuff you can use, stuff you can count on to see you through. Let me highlight three keynotes in this text.
1. First, there is the up-front assurance of a bountiful harvest. True to form—for that is always how God operates--the promise is central here. It comes first, before anything else. The harvest is plentiful, Jesus declares.
Isn’t that just like him? Jesus leads with a promise, just as God is forever uttering promises—before we can even get a word in edgewise. The promise leads the way: the harvest is plentiful. You need to know that. Before you venture out into the field—trust in this fact: it’s going to be a bumper crop! God has decided that. And so you can count on it to be true.
Now I grew up on a farm in southern Minnesota, and one thing I remember from those farming years is that you know how the harvest turns out only after every last ear of corn, every last bushel of grain is safely tucked away in the granary…
Until that point, until the combines have scoured every acre, until you are deep into autumn—not until every last threat to the crop has passed away, not until the last minute of the whole “gathering in” business, can anyone say: “The harvest is plentiful.”
But that is not how God operates. That is not how Jesus does business. God in Jesus Christ always leads with the promise, and here the promise is that there are all sorts of persons out there with ears for the gospel, Sheila. There is no shortage—absolutely no lack—of potential disciples, followers and believers. God isn’t stingy in any of that, and that is a promise you can count on as you begin your ordained ministry.
God intends to bless your ministry, Sheila. God is delighted to have you join the ranks of “harvesters.” There’s a bountiful crop out there—though we always seem to be short of “harvesters”--so adding you to the apostolic strike force is sort of a coup, Sheila.
And you can carry out your ministry in the confidence that it doesn’t depend on you, Sheila. Your warmth, your smile, your winning way, your facility with words, your great work ethic—all of those are good gifts you bring. But the harvest doesn’t depend on any of them. In fact, quite often God will succeed despite you, Sheila….and when that happens, it will simply be confirmation that you’re normal, like every other pastor.
2. The second gift God’s Word gives you here, Sheila, is the freedom to travel as lightly as possibly.
You will find—you probably have already found--that there are plenty of folks out there who want to tell you how to be a good pastor. There are oodles and caboodles of programs and plans and 7-step approaches and how-to guides for better, more faithful, more effective pastoring.
As if all that were not enough, think of the times in which we live. This is an anxious age in the world and in the church, Sheila. And one way that anxiety gets expressed is by a desire to draw hard lines, to get everyone lined up straight and moving in lockstep fashion, a desire for uniformity on everything under the sun. I think that some of that is happening in our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America—a distrust of one another, compounded by nervous efforts to add terms and conditions and escape clauses to the simple Gospel of God’s gratuitous, overflowing love in Jesus Christ the Crucified and Risen One.
And then there are the expectations that get laid on pastors. It’s been said that being a pastor is like being a dog at a whistlers’ convention. The people of God—God bless them, God love them!—will make it hard for you, at times, to travel as lightly as Jesus invites you to travel here in Luke chapter 10. Expectations will be laid upon you, so much so that you will feel overwhelmed….and when you do feel that way, I invite you to return to Jesus’ great “reducing plan” here in your ordination text. Strip away the excess baggage and return to the basic, the foundational, the one thing needful.
In other words: give them Jesus. When in doubt, give them Jesus. When expectations mount up like the Red River in spring flood stage, give them Jesus. Shuck off all the flotsam and jetsam that piles up. Hone in on the only essential thing. Travel lightly. Give them Jesus—preach Jesus, baptize in Jesus’ name, feed people on Jesus’ body and blood—everything else is fine, but it’s window-dressing, really. Jesus is who we need the most.
3. Third, count on help along the way, Sheila. Thank God, you’re not all alone in this adventure called pastoral ministry.
That’s of course, why Jesus could send out the 70 emissaries in such Spartan fashion-- no purse, no bag, no sandals, no picnic baskets, no ATM cards, no GPS locators. Jesus sent them out with virtually nothing because Jesus knew there would be persons along the way who would help out. Simple as that.
Jesus sent out the seventy as lambs amidst wolves….and yet not everyone “out there” was a wolf. There would be other “lambs,” there would be people of peace, there would be hospitable hosts who would receive them, shelter them, feed them, maybe even join forces with them.
And that is a great and welcome word for today’s church—the missional church of the 21st century. Gone, thankfully, is the day when we expect pastors to “do it all.” Thirty years ago, when I was finishing up seminary, we were getting ready to kiss that tired old model for ministry goodbye. The myth of the “omni-competent” pastor was starting to die, but it still had traction in many places.
This is, of course, about more than keeping pastors from burning out. It’s mainly about empowering and equipping the whole people of God to take up their callings to serve God’s mission in the world. Over-functioning pastors require under-functioning church members….but Jesus has a much better idea: a whole company of disciples who pray, and study the Word, and worship, and bear witness, and give generously, and serve their neighbors in countless ways….with pastors in the mix to serve up the Word and Sacraments for the nurturing and sustaining of all God’s baptized children.
Sheila, if I have learned one thing about you, it’s that you have a nearly inexhaustible energy for life and family and ministry. You run circles around the rest of us, and you manage to keep an amazing number of balls in the air at any one point in time.
But God has given you partners in this good work, and I know that you know that. The flock that has called you to serve with them, the good people of the Bethlehem and Nazareth congregations, they are brimming with life and energy and gifts for God’s work. So how will you form a holy partnership, a sanctified synergy that will free up everyone’s best gifts for ministry?
Of course, you already know everything I’ve said in this sermon, Sheila..but please, hear it one more time:
• The harvest is plentiful,
• You’re free to travel lightly, and
• There’ll be plenty of help along the way.
These breath-taking promises are the greatest gifts you’ll receive today—all of them from God’s own generous hand.
In the name of Jesus.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Disturber of the Peace
Tonseth Lutheran Church of Erhard, MN
Pentecost 12/August 15, 2010
Luke 12:49-56
Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace.
Let those words sink in: Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace.
If your first response is: “Oh no, that can’t be true. You must have it wrong….”
….If you’re inclined to disagree—you are not alone.
Our natural instinct is to spring to Jesus’ defense, to say: “Jesus, a disturber of the peace—it can’t be true. He is the Prince of Peace. Peace is his greatest gift to us. How can you—how can anyone say that Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace?”
The problem, you see, is that it’s not just anyone who says that. It’s Jesus himself who says that, rather bluntly, quite clearly, here in this unusual text from Luke 12.
Here’s what Jesus himself has to say: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” (vv. 49-51)
Then, adding insult to injury, Jesus tells us just where the division will be most acute: in families, in the basic social unit that makes up the fabric of human community. Jesus divides not strangers but kin--fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, in-laws, the whole family system.
Division will hit that close to home, that close to the heart of life.
Jesus Christ came to bring not peace, but division….and that’s probably the last thing any of us wanted to hear this morning.
Most wise pastors, when they see this gospel lesson coming up in the lectionary, ….schedule vacation time for themselves (inviting some guest preacher—say, the bishop!—to fill the pulpit).
Even pastors don’t like this text….and I don’t blame them!
Because we don’t need to go to church to get bent out of shape. We go to church to put it back together, to find some comfort, grab some hope and get charged up for another week of work.
So what are we to make of this strange, maddening text that the lectionary hands us this morning? What does Jesus mean when he says that he has come to bring not peace but division?
Here’s my best guess: Jesus declares himself to be a disturber-of-the-peace….because he has come into the world to change everything.
And change is something we fight, tooth and nail. The only person who likes change is a baby with a dirty diaper—and even then, the baby cries like crazy while the diaper is being changed!
Jesus disturbs the peace because he shakes everything up, turns everything upside down, leaves no stone unturned. Jesus came to change everything that we’re accustomed to, everything we take for granted, every assumption we make.
Jesus disturbs the peace because he has come to change
• how we think about God,
• how we think about ourselves, and
• how we think about one another and the world.
1. Jesus has come to change how we think about, how we imagine, how we relate to God.
We assume that God—if he exists—is Someone we have to deal with, Someone we have to get on the good side of, Someone we must “do business with.”
And Jesus came to change all that. Jesus came to reveal to us, to give us, indeed to be for us a God who is hopelessly in love with us—and there’s nothing we can do about that.
Jesus came to let us know that our God is not a “let’s make a deal God.” We can’t do a blessed thing to get on this God’s good side. In Jesus Christ this God has drawn near to us, embraced us unconditionally, and promised never to let us go—regardless of how hard we might push back.
Jesus came to give us—not a God we have to work at cozying up to—but a God who is “for us,” come what may.
And that alters all our assumptions about God. How can you “do business” with a God like that? Well, you can’t…and that unnerves us…to have a God we can’t bargain with, a God we can’t “buy off.”
2. Second, Jesus came to change how we view ourselves.
Left to our own devices, we see ourselves at the heart of everything. We’re at the center of our own little solar system—everything else revolves around us. And, when all is said and done, we can’t count on anyone BUT ourselves. We must secure our own survival and success.
Jesus came to change that, and in so doing Jesus has again “disturbed our peace.”
Jesus came to pry us loose from ourselves. To stop us from imaging that we’re in the center of the universe. Jesus came to restore our true dignity—the dignity of being a son or daughter of God, whose passionate beating heart is truly at the center of the universe.
And how did Jesus do that? By allowing himself to be dislodged, by letting go of his life at the Cross, by embracing hope not survival as the ultimate good—hope that not even death can destroy.
That’s what Jesus’ life, Jesus death and Jesus’ resurrection are all about—opening us to a radically new way of living—a way of life no longer defined by clinging to ourselves, but rather defined by letting go of life, entrusting ourselves to God, realizing that God clings to us—and that is enough.
3. Third, Jesus came to change how we view one another and the world.
On our own, in our natural state, we view other persons and indeed the world itself as competitors. If our chief goal is to survive, and we’re surrounded by others with the same goal, we’re born into a state of competition-to-the-death. And we live out our days in a sort of uneasy “peace” with that fact…
…..until Jesus comes along and changes it all once again.
Jesus turns us “inside out”…Jesus pries our fingers loose from the tight grip we try to maintain, holding our lives together…..Jesus opens our eyes to a new panoramic view of the others all around us….Jesus lets us see them not as competitors but as neighbors.
If we don’t have to do business with God, don’t have to win God over to love us….we now can turn to the ones with whom we do have business—the neighbors all around us, including the earth itself….which is more than a pile of resources at our disposal. Jesus gives us the earth once again, as God’s good creation, with gifts enough for all to share as we live in the hope that God alone gives.
So there you have it.
Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace….the fragile, precarious peace, that is, of a world and of people who had it all wrong in the first place. Jesus was a disturber of this peace that is no peace—no sure, lasting peace.
That peace—that false peace of a fallen world—Jesus came to sweep it all away. And so, if Jesus brings division into our neatly ordered world, it is a division between those who still cling to the old, dying, god-forsaken world….and those who have come to see and long for the New Creation that Jesus even now is ushering in.
One last thought: I’ve been saying that Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace. But we could just as easily, just as accurately say that Jesus Christ is, Jesus Christ remains a disturber of the peace….because he is risen, he lives today, he lives within you and me and everyone else whom he has embraced in baptism, in faith, in discipleship and in God’s mission.
Which is to say: you and I may well be accused from time to time of “disturbing the peace.” In fact, such rabble-rousing is a mark of faithfulness to the God we have come to know in Jesus Christ.
I realize that most folks don’t use the words “Lutheran” and “rabble-rousing” in the same sentence.
But even for us calm, cool Lutherans, this is true: Jesus makes us uneasy with this old, dying world. Jesus shatters the false, walk-on-eggshells-peace-that-is-no-peace. Jesus living in you and in me and in all his followers continues to be a refining fire, a renewing baptismal stream, a dividing point between an old world that is passing away….and the New Creation that we point to, long for and are eager to inhabit in all its fullness.
So stir things up, my dear friends. You have nothing to fear from the change that Jesus brings. He alone gives you God as God truly is. Jesus alone bestows on you your true identity. Jesus only opens your eyes to see all humanity, to behold the earth itself, to receive God’s whole creation as the good gift it was always meant to be.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
Pentecost 12/August 15, 2010
Luke 12:49-56
Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace.
Let those words sink in: Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace.
If your first response is: “Oh no, that can’t be true. You must have it wrong….”
….If you’re inclined to disagree—you are not alone.
Our natural instinct is to spring to Jesus’ defense, to say: “Jesus, a disturber of the peace—it can’t be true. He is the Prince of Peace. Peace is his greatest gift to us. How can you—how can anyone say that Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace?”
The problem, you see, is that it’s not just anyone who says that. It’s Jesus himself who says that, rather bluntly, quite clearly, here in this unusual text from Luke 12.
Here’s what Jesus himself has to say: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” (vv. 49-51)
Then, adding insult to injury, Jesus tells us just where the division will be most acute: in families, in the basic social unit that makes up the fabric of human community. Jesus divides not strangers but kin--fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, in-laws, the whole family system.
Division will hit that close to home, that close to the heart of life.
Jesus Christ came to bring not peace, but division….and that’s probably the last thing any of us wanted to hear this morning.
Most wise pastors, when they see this gospel lesson coming up in the lectionary, ….schedule vacation time for themselves (inviting some guest preacher—say, the bishop!—to fill the pulpit).
Even pastors don’t like this text….and I don’t blame them!
Because we don’t need to go to church to get bent out of shape. We go to church to put it back together, to find some comfort, grab some hope and get charged up for another week of work.
So what are we to make of this strange, maddening text that the lectionary hands us this morning? What does Jesus mean when he says that he has come to bring not peace but division?
Here’s my best guess: Jesus declares himself to be a disturber-of-the-peace….because he has come into the world to change everything.
And change is something we fight, tooth and nail. The only person who likes change is a baby with a dirty diaper—and even then, the baby cries like crazy while the diaper is being changed!
Jesus disturbs the peace because he shakes everything up, turns everything upside down, leaves no stone unturned. Jesus came to change everything that we’re accustomed to, everything we take for granted, every assumption we make.
Jesus disturbs the peace because he has come to change
• how we think about God,
• how we think about ourselves, and
• how we think about one another and the world.
1. Jesus has come to change how we think about, how we imagine, how we relate to God.
We assume that God—if he exists—is Someone we have to deal with, Someone we have to get on the good side of, Someone we must “do business with.”
And Jesus came to change all that. Jesus came to reveal to us, to give us, indeed to be for us a God who is hopelessly in love with us—and there’s nothing we can do about that.
Jesus came to let us know that our God is not a “let’s make a deal God.” We can’t do a blessed thing to get on this God’s good side. In Jesus Christ this God has drawn near to us, embraced us unconditionally, and promised never to let us go—regardless of how hard we might push back.
Jesus came to give us—not a God we have to work at cozying up to—but a God who is “for us,” come what may.
And that alters all our assumptions about God. How can you “do business” with a God like that? Well, you can’t…and that unnerves us…to have a God we can’t bargain with, a God we can’t “buy off.”
2. Second, Jesus came to change how we view ourselves.
Left to our own devices, we see ourselves at the heart of everything. We’re at the center of our own little solar system—everything else revolves around us. And, when all is said and done, we can’t count on anyone BUT ourselves. We must secure our own survival and success.
Jesus came to change that, and in so doing Jesus has again “disturbed our peace.”
Jesus came to pry us loose from ourselves. To stop us from imaging that we’re in the center of the universe. Jesus came to restore our true dignity—the dignity of being a son or daughter of God, whose passionate beating heart is truly at the center of the universe.
And how did Jesus do that? By allowing himself to be dislodged, by letting go of his life at the Cross, by embracing hope not survival as the ultimate good—hope that not even death can destroy.
That’s what Jesus’ life, Jesus death and Jesus’ resurrection are all about—opening us to a radically new way of living—a way of life no longer defined by clinging to ourselves, but rather defined by letting go of life, entrusting ourselves to God, realizing that God clings to us—and that is enough.
3. Third, Jesus came to change how we view one another and the world.
On our own, in our natural state, we view other persons and indeed the world itself as competitors. If our chief goal is to survive, and we’re surrounded by others with the same goal, we’re born into a state of competition-to-the-death. And we live out our days in a sort of uneasy “peace” with that fact…
…..until Jesus comes along and changes it all once again.
Jesus turns us “inside out”…Jesus pries our fingers loose from the tight grip we try to maintain, holding our lives together…..Jesus opens our eyes to a new panoramic view of the others all around us….Jesus lets us see them not as competitors but as neighbors.
If we don’t have to do business with God, don’t have to win God over to love us….we now can turn to the ones with whom we do have business—the neighbors all around us, including the earth itself….which is more than a pile of resources at our disposal. Jesus gives us the earth once again, as God’s good creation, with gifts enough for all to share as we live in the hope that God alone gives.
So there you have it.
Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace….the fragile, precarious peace, that is, of a world and of people who had it all wrong in the first place. Jesus was a disturber of this peace that is no peace—no sure, lasting peace.
That peace—that false peace of a fallen world—Jesus came to sweep it all away. And so, if Jesus brings division into our neatly ordered world, it is a division between those who still cling to the old, dying, god-forsaken world….and those who have come to see and long for the New Creation that Jesus even now is ushering in.
One last thought: I’ve been saying that Jesus Christ was a disturber of the peace. But we could just as easily, just as accurately say that Jesus Christ is, Jesus Christ remains a disturber of the peace….because he is risen, he lives today, he lives within you and me and everyone else whom he has embraced in baptism, in faith, in discipleship and in God’s mission.
Which is to say: you and I may well be accused from time to time of “disturbing the peace.” In fact, such rabble-rousing is a mark of faithfulness to the God we have come to know in Jesus Christ.
I realize that most folks don’t use the words “Lutheran” and “rabble-rousing” in the same sentence.
But even for us calm, cool Lutherans, this is true: Jesus makes us uneasy with this old, dying world. Jesus shatters the false, walk-on-eggshells-peace-that-is-no-peace. Jesus living in you and in me and in all his followers continues to be a refining fire, a renewing baptismal stream, a dividing point between an old world that is passing away….and the New Creation that we point to, long for and are eager to inhabit in all its fullness.
So stir things up, my dear friends. You have nothing to fear from the change that Jesus brings. He alone gives you God as God truly is. Jesus alone bestows on you your true identity. Jesus only opens your eyes to see all humanity, to behold the earth itself, to receive God’s whole creation as the good gift it was always meant to be.
In the name of Jesus. Amen.
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