Grace Period

Faith Lutheran Church, Miltona, MN

February 28, 2016/Lent 3

Luke 13:1-9

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

How quickly everything can change.

Two weeks ago a 79-year-old man was found dead in a bed on a ranch down in Texas.   It’s the kind of thing that happens about 300,000 times every year in America:  an elderly person with cardiovascular disease dies at home or wherever he or she happens to be.

But this particular man, Antonin Scalia, wasn’t just any 79-year-old man.  He was the longest-serving justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.  When his heart stopped beating the campaign for president of the United States took a new sharp turn, just like that. 

News-hungry cable TV networks suddenly had a juicy story-line to pursue:  what would happen when the current president, a Democrat, appointed a replacement for Justice Scalia?   Would the Republican-controlled Senate confirm such an appointment before a new president takes office?

How quickly everything can change.

One line in a news story about Justice Scalia’s death caught my attention, though.   In an article exploring the question of whether an autopsy should have been performed on Mr. Scalia’s body, a physician said (and I quote):  “If you are over 60 and are found dead in bed, most medical examiners’ offices don’t do an autopsy unless there is some obvious trauma.”[1]

What grabbed me in that quote is that I am over 60.   This physician was referring to persons like me!  He was saying that what happened to Justice Scalia could happen to me.  Along with everyone else age 60 or older, I’m “in the zone,” the sudden death zone.

Life is fragile and fleeting.  We simply don’t know when death could catch up to us!

Yes, of course, that’s true….but for you and me gathered together here at Faith Lutheran this morning—February 28, 2016—that did NOT happen.   We didn’t die this past week.   We lived to see another Sunday morning, thanks be to God.

We’re still all here--still alive and kicking.

Why?  Why do you suppose that is?  Why didn’t you die this past week?

Maybe you’re just plain careful.  You always dress for the weather, you don’t smoke, you never drink and drive. 

Or maybe the reason you’re still alive is that you avoid heights, excessive speeds, hang-gliding, alligator-wrestling, the San Andreas fault and sharp objects. 

 Why are you still alive ... and here…on February 28, 2016?

Perhaps it’s due to all the ways you take good care of yourself: watching your weight, blood pressure and cholesterol…eating a high-fiber, low-fat, low-carbohydrate, low-taste diet…exercising vigorously at least three times a week.

Why aren’t you dead yet?

Is it just that “your number isn’t up?”--as if we were all standing around the J.C. Penney service counter waiting for the clerk to call out the number on that slip in our hot little hands.

I ask you: Why is your body still occupying space and time?  Why are you still alive?

Our gospel lesson from Luke 13 offers a striking response to this provocative question.    Jesus declares here that if you’re still alive it’s solely because the One who made you and to whom you’ll someday return has decided to give you some extra time to live. 

God has granted you and me a totally-undeserved reprieve—some bonus time to repent, be renewed by God’s grace and be of use to our neighbors.

This scene in Luke 13 opens with one of those “ain’t it awful” discussions we’ve all been part of—whenever we hash over the latest natural disaster or outbreak of senseless violence.

“Ain’t it awful about those poor Galilean worshipers, up in Jerusalem for the high holy days?    The gall of that murdering tyrant Pilate!--not just killing them, but mixing their blood with their sacrifices--and right in the temple, no less?”

 “And what about that shocking construction accident?  I hear that that new tower over in Siloam simply collapsed without warning, squashing those bystanders like ants.  The body count stands at eighteen right now, but they’re still sifting through the rubble.  Ain’t it awful?  What’s this world coming to?  Why do such things happen?”

On just about any weekday morning you can overhear conversations just like these in the next booth at the café where you go for coffee and conversation.

“Ain’t it awful about those six persons killed at random last weekend by that crazy shooter in Kalamazoo, Michigan?  Isn’t it shocking—those three folks gunned down at that manufacturing plant down in Kansas?  What’s this world coming to?”

Although we’d probably not say it out loud, we might even wonder why these sorts of tragedies strike those “other people.”  We might wonder (at least, to ourselves) what they might have done or said to bring down such calamity upon themselves?

According to Jesus that’s the very last question that should be on our minds!  “Do you think that (they) were worse sinners than all the others?  I tell you, No; but unless you repent you will all likewise perish.”

Tragedies that always seem to strike “somebody else” are not occasions for armchair speculation or Monday-morning quarterbacking. 

They are, rather, opportunities for us to sit up straight and take stock of our lives:  our lives that could be could be cut off just as suddenly, just as shockingly, just as tragically. 

When sudden deaths or other disasters strike, we should ask NOT “Why them?” but rather, “Why not me?”

What am I still doing here--alive and kicking?  For what reason am I still encumbering the earth?

In response to that question, Jesus spins a yarn about a fig tree in a vineyard–a fig tree that proved to be utterly unproductive--not just for one or even two years, but over a span of three consecutive growing seasons.

“Cut it down!” the hard-nosed, profit-minded owner of the vineyard commands.  “It’s just sapping up water and soil nutrients, while producing absolutely zilch.  At least we might recoup some of our losses if we turned that barren fig tree into kindling!”

“Not so fast,” his vinedresser responds.  “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but I still see some potential in that barren tree.  As ridiculous as it sounds I’d like to have one more chance to mulch, cultivate and fertilize it.  Then, 365 days from today--if my hunch is right--you’ll have figs coming out of your ears.  And if I’m wrong, you can still sharpen your axe and turn it into firewood.”

What are you still doing here?  Why are you still alive and kicking on this February 28, 2016?

From the perspective of this parable it doesn’t have nearly as much to do with your luck, your carefulness, your exercise program or your genes ... as it has to do with the mercy of the Almighty One ... who, like that patiently hopeful vinedresser in the parable, seems to think that giving you and me a little more time might do some good.

What are we still doing here?

Enjoying a reprieve, another crack at repentance, a grace period, offering us  another chance to sort out the trivial from the essential, to turn away from whatever it is that stands between us and our Maker, one more – it could even be one last – time to hear the promise of freedom, hope and a future without end in Jesus Christ.

 Why aren’t you dead yet?  Because as my late father-in-law liked to say: “The devil doesn’t want you, and the Lord doesn’t need you.”

God wants you here a little longer.  God has opened up for us all a grace period in which we might continue living our lives here on this good earth.

God would like to try his hand at cultivating, mulching and fertilizing you in order to see what new and exciting fruit you might still bear. 

God wants you to have at least one additional day to trust in him, look after your neighbor, and tend your little corner of the earth. 

God wants you to ponder the Cross and Empty Tomb of his beloved Son a little longer. 

God wants you to know one more time that you belong to him – dead or alive.

That’s why your funeral has been postponed.  That’s why I am still residing at 1228 Seventeenth Street North in Moorhead, MN.

And if by some miracle we should all survive another week and gather here seven days from now wondering:  Why aren’t we dead yet?  Why are we here?… 

...The answer will still be the same:  Because this life that we have isn’t ours to possess. It is God’s to give, each and every day.

This life that we’ve been blessed with is a grace period.    In spite of our unfruitfulness, our Creator—for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ--God has granted us all an extension, some more time, an undeserved grace period, so that we might live out the full measure of all the days God graciously bestows upon us. 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

---

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/21/health/antonin-scalia-autopsy.html

The Upending, Unending Feast

First Lutheran Church, Salol, MN

January 17, 2016

Epiphany 2

John 2:1-11

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Once there was a pastor who was paying a visit on an elderly woman in his parish.   This woman had a reputation for expressing strong opinions and not being afraid to criticize the pastor—but, to her credit, she didn’t do that behind the pastor’s back, but spoke to him directly, sharing her concerns with him, face to face.

“One of the things I have against you, Pastor,” the woman began to say, “is that I hear you like to have a glass of wine now and then…and you don’t preach about the evils of drinking.”

The pastor, who’d heard this complaint from her before, smiled and said:  “Well, Edna, have you forgotten that even our dear Lord Jesus turned water into wine at the Wedding in Cana?”

….to which Edna replied:  “No I haven’t forgotten that….and, to be honest, that’s one of the things I have against Jesus, too!”

This is but one of many jokes that have been told about Jesus’ first miracle here in the 2^nd chapter of St John.

I think that telling jokes is one of the ways we deal with serious things we don’t fully understand.  

The miracles of Jesus, frankly, baffle us.   We don’t know what exactly to make of them—and that may be especially the case with this one, the miracle of water into wine at the Wedding in Cana.

In this miracle, Jesus doesn’t save anyone’s life or heal their illness or restore their sight.  

Turning water into wine seems more like an illusion, some sleight-of-hand, a parlor-trick.

Which of course couldn’t be further from the truth!....especially as we pay attention closely to the language St John uses here, when he calls this NOT a “miracle” but a “sign.”   “Jesus did this, the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee….”

For John the key word is “sign,” not “miracle”…because while a miracle can become an end in itself—stopping us dead in our tracks….

…a sign keeps us moving….because a sign points ahead to something else, some bigger reality, some fresher, more transforming insight--a revelation--in this season we might say, an epiphany.

If this is a sign, not a parlor trick, to what does this sign point?

Let me suggest three startling realities to which this sign points.

First, Jesus’ turning water to wine, especially the way it’s told here with such an economy of language, points us to all the ways God works among us in hidden ways—away from the spotlight, behind the scenes, in the daily-ness  of life.

I picture this Jewish wedding in Cana as a panoramic, week-long party, a play being acted out on a huge stage, with the bride and the groom and their friends and family members all in the spotlight….

….while behind the scenes, tucked into the background, another drama is silently unfolding.  

Someone had miscalculated, apparently.   The wedding guests had hit the wine a little too hard, too early in this multi-day wedding reception.   As the celebration was going on full-tilt, the wedding host draws aside the bridegroom and breaks the awful news to him:  “the wine is giving out.”

This week-long celebration could come to a screeching halt, long before anyone anticipated!

The wedding host speaks quietly to the groom who, for some 

reason passes it on to Mary who in turn passes it on to Jesus.   Then Jesus—behind the scenes, mind you!—asks the servants (the “wait staff”) to fill six large jars with water and take some of this “water” to the wedding host who is utterly baffled by where this luscious,new wine came from so late in the game.

We know, of course, because we’re the readers of John’s gospel, twenty centuries after the fact.  We know what’s going on here, only because we have the benefit of centuries of hindsight.

But on that day in Cana of Galilee, with the exception of Jesus’ circle of disciples, no one knew just what had happened.  All they realized was that the wine kept flowing and the celebration continued, to the joy of the bride and groom and to the delight of those who loved them.

“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee….” And although down through the ages the whole world has come to know what happened here, on the day it happened, in Cana of Galilee, only handful of folks—Jesus’ closest followers—believed he had done something amazing.

But God is always doing that sort of thing. 

God is always at work, even when we are unaware, clueless….and that’s a sign worth paying attention to.   You and I have already experienced God’s power today, just by getting up, raising us from our slumbers on this bitterly cold morning, making sure our cars started (!),  finding our way here to this holy place, because we’ve learned that God shows up here, often when we least expect it.

There’s a second thing this sign points to, though, and that is signaled by the magnitude of what Jesus did here. 

Jesus does a wonder involving both quantity and quality here. 

If you do the math, you quickly calculate that Jesus produced not just a tidy little batch of wine but somewhere between 700 and 1,000 gallons of the stuff--just like that.

Jesus didn’t produce just enough wine for the bridegroom to save face and the revelers to keep on partying.   No, he produces enough wine to satisfy not just the wedding guests—but to slake the thirst of the whole town and beyond.

But isn’t that just like God?   God is always going overboard, lavishing good things upon his precious people.   That’s because God knows how to give gifts in only one way:  with an open hand--abundantly, lavishly, unsparingly. 

The sheer magnitude of this unexpected gift of wine is matched by its quality and flavor.

And the quality of these six large jars of wine defied the logic of how first century Jewish wedding hosts normally functioned:  serve the good wine first, then when everyone’s senses are a bit impaired, bring on the cheap wine, when no one will notice the difference.

No, Jesus provides the most and the best of the wine at the end of this wedding.  Isn’t that just like God—to surprise us with more than we could have imagined and better than we ever deserved.   

“You have kept the good wine until now,” the wedding host muses, not really realizing he was tasting not a chardonnay but a sign that pointed beyond itself, pointed ahead, to what God was about to do in this Jesus the mysterious wedding guest.

And this brings us to the third and greatest reality here.   This sign points us and everyone with eyes to see to what God was about to do—not just on that day in Cana of Galilee—but in all the days yet to come…as God prepared to fulfill all the old ways in the advent of God’s new way, in Jesus Christ.

Those six stone water-jars, you see, represented an ancient, passing-away age that focused on us trying to wash away our sin, extract our impurity, remove our uncleanness—really a never-ending task, when you think about it.

But Jesus beheld in those six stone water jars the raw materials for the New Creation.   Jesus boldly determined, in one single act, to sweep aside the old and make way for the new.  

It was scandalous for Jesus to commandeer these sacred vessels of the old age, in order to inaugurate God’s new age….as the six water containers were filled to overflowing with the soul-gladdening, face-brightening wine of God’s Kingdom, bursting into this old, dying world.

But really, how can we miss, dear friends, the connection to the wine that we still share, the cup of the new covenant that conveys to us, indeed allows us to receive into our dying bodies the life-giving blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ?

If it were up to us to wash away our own sin, every day, there’d never be enough soap and water to get the job done.  We’d never get anything else done!

That’s why God came to us in Jesus Christ to take care of sin, once and for all on the Cross, and to open up God’s new creation on Easter morning.   And that’s the greatest reality to which this sign points—God’s “once and for all” sin-forgiving, death-defying, future-opening saving work in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

God says to us, in effect:   put down your soap and water.   Come to a party instead—my own beloved Son’s Party, the heavenly bridegroom’s Wedding Feast that knows no end.

And make sure, please make sure to invite all your friends and neighbors to this Wedding Feast that will last forever!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

All Stirred Up

Winchester Lutheran Church, Borup, MN

Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Felton, MN

December 20, 2015/Advent 4

Luke 1:39-55

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

We’re deep in December, plunged into the darkness of winter, far into a month when we crave the light, plead for the sun to shine once again.

And as usual in this 12^th month of the year, you and I feel stuck.

We’re stuck, along with so many other Americans these days, stuck in fear….stuck in anxiety about mass shootings…unnerved by terrorist incidents…bogged down in our suspicion about strangers in our midst.

December is always the month when we’re most keenly aware of what a mess this old world is in.  That becomes clearest every year, right about this time.  

Even if we may not be stuck in the fear and foreboding of this moment--we’re stuck in the memories of Decembers past—the news reporters kindly reminding us, that this past Monday was the third anniversary of that horrific elementary school shooting in Newtown, CT.

We’re stuck in the deep, dark, fearful days of December.   Stuck in the mess that this world seems to be in.

Even if we’re not thinking about the wider world’s affairs, we sense the stuckness in our own little corners of the world.  

Why does it seem that so many people we’ve loved all died in November or December?   Joy and I, in our own little family, remember how three of our parents left us in late autumns past. 

And in this parish, you’ve watched and waited and prayed with your beloved Pastor Karla as her dear Duane was dying of cancer. 

Grief has its way with us all—and December is when we feel that most keenly.

We’re stuck in these December days, stuck, always stuck in fear and darkness and distrust of one another amidst the aching grief of untimely loss.

We’re stuck so badly that we can’t stand it any longer…..which is why on these four Sundays in Advent it’s only natural for us to cry out, to plead with God to get us unstuck.

And that, my friends, is exactly what God does—every December.  

When it seems as though the darkness has won the day—the light starts to return, God takes steps to get us unstuck once again, here and now, on this fourth Sunday of Advent.

This morning God is showing up, to pull us out of the muck of fear and grief and deep uncertainty about everything we thought we could count on.

God shows up, placing on our lips two words about getting unstuck, and those two words are “stir up!”

Advent is the “stir up” season of the Christian year…..and we’re not talking about horses and the kinds of stirrups we find on saddles, either!

“Stir up” are the two words that begin each of the prayers of the day on these four Sundays of Advent.

Sick and tired of being sick and tired, we cry out:  “Stir up!”

Stir us up, God, we pray on two of the four Sundays in Advent:  “Stir up the wills of your faithful people, Lord God,…open our ears to the words of your prophets…Stir up our hearts, Lord God, to prepare the way of your only Son,” we pray.

Two of the Sundays in Advent we cry out to God to stir us up.  

And that’s a pretty big prayer…but not nearly as big as what we pray for on the other two Sundays in Advent.

Because on those other two Sundays—the first and last Sundays in Advent, we pray for God, pleading that God would be stirred up for us:  “Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come….save us from the threatening dangers of our sins….Stir up your power, Lord Christ, and come….free us from the sin that binds us, that we may receive you in joy and serve you always,” we pray this morning.

It’s an astonishing thing, for mere mortals like us to pray for God, to beg God to stir up God’s very self for us and for this whole aching world.

But that’s what we pray for in this Advent season….and that’s what’s playing out here in our Gospel lesson from Luke 1.   

God is stirred up here….and when God gets stirred up—watch out!   Everything gets turned upside down.   All the stuckness of this old groaning creation breaks loose.   All the messes we’ve made for ourselves get straightened out.  

Things we just take for granted—the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer, the powerful keeping everyone else under their thumbs—all of it gets tossed up in the air when God gets stirred up for us and for our salvation.

And the reach of all this “stirring up” is so vast, so far, so wide, so deep that you’d think God would need tons of dynamite or megatons of nuclear power to pull it off….

…..but that’s not at all how it happens.

When God gets stirred up on behalf of God’s whole, sorry creation….God always starts small.   A young girl scurries across the Judean countryside, escaping from her unsettled world, longing for the safety of her cousin Elizabeth’s kitchen.

And then, they’re both there, together, dancing a little jig in Elizabeth’s kitchen:  Mary and her ancient cousin, both pregnant under extraordinary circumstances---because God is stirring in their midst.

Old Elizabeth feels it….the first fluttering of the fetus growing inside her old, dead womb….her child leaping for the first time when Mary crosses the threshold.

THAT’s what things look like when God gets stirred up!  

God enters into this messed up world in the smallest of ways….in the word that Elizabeth’s child, John the Baptist, will soon proclaim as he points to his cousin, God’s barrier-breaking, sin-obliterating, future-opening Word Made Flesh:  Jesus the Christ.

When we are most stuck, most deeply sunk in fear and distrust and suspicion of one another….God in the tiny child comes among us to get us unstuck, to uncurl us from our fetal position, to turn us away from ourselves and our anxieties, to return us to God, to turn us inside out toward our neighbors:  able to trust again, love again, risk ourselves again as God in Christ has risked all for us.

And this shall be a sign to you:  expect God to start small….in a baby, lying in a manger.

This shall be a sign to you:   anticipate God starting small in the baptismal splash, the morsel of bread, the sip of wine, the word that strangely, unexpectedly stirs you.

This shall be a sign to you:   perceive God coming to us in the stranger who’s starting to look more like a neighbor.

This shall be a sign to you:   behold God replacing fear with faith, suspicion with trust, hatred with hope.

This shall be a sign for you:   realize that sin no longer has a hold on you, the devil no longer has you under his thumb, death never again will have the last word with you.

This shall be a sign for you:  because God is getting stirred up, this world—your world--will never be the same again.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

Religious Freedom and Love of Neighbor

On December 10, 2015 I participated in a meeting of the board of directors of the Minnesota Council of Churches.   The following statement was approved by the board for sharing with the member faith communions in Minnesota.   I invite you to pass on this document to others, including your own faith community.

Respect for Religious Freedom and Love of Neighbor: A Call to Offer These Christmas Gifts

Minnesota Council of Churches

Statement of the Board of Directors

2015-12-11

As Christian leaders who serve as the board of the Minnesota Council of Churches, we want to speak to our communities of faith and to the larger community of people living in Minnesota.

To begin, we want to address the members of all our communities of faith.  We call on people to speak with respect in a tender time when we all feel vulnerable and unsafe after acts of mass violence.  “Be not afraid…” is an exhortation in the Bible, again and again.  Let that be the deep value in which we rest. Courageously reaching out to our neighbors, learning more about their stories, and supporting our newest neighbors is a gift worth giving in this Advent and Christmas season.

Secondly, we express appreciation for and commend consideration of all candidates in our political process who are respectfully engaging the issues of how we best build up the life of our state and nation and serve the common good.  We encourage people in political conversations in family, communities and work contexts to speak with care.  Our words matter.  Let us commit to refrain from using speech that reflects hatred of others and contributes to the division of our society.

We also ask media outlets to tell the stories of candidates, who in their campaigns, debates and addresses are offering constructive proposals for our shared life together.  Your choice of stories matters and can build up or tear down the common good.  When we focus only on the negative or inflammatory, we do not have time to hear the larger conversation and participate in discernment about our shared future together.

Most importantly, in a time when hard actions and sharp words have been directed at our Muslim neighbors, we want to speak a word of support and pledge to walk with them and support their freedom to practice their religion.  This country is built on that freedom.  We pledge to walk respectfully and to learn from one another.  The Islamic community in Minnesota is vibrant and diverse, contributing much to the state - as citizens, teachers, police officers, medical workers, tradespersons, community leaders, mothers and fathers.  We stand in solidarity with the Muslim communities of Minnesota and are ready to denounce the vitriol that comes their way.  As Christians, we are called to love all our neighbors.  Muslims are our neighbors, and we love them. 

Finally, we are committed to continuing our long experience of working with diverse faith communities and of welcoming refugees into our midst, without regard for religion or ethnicity.  We are committed to building communities of respect.  We call for respect, support and helpful curiosity, instead of critique and attack, in the days to come from all people as we seek to build the best Minnesota possible.

We invite the sharing of this statement

MCC Members - Minnesota Jurisdictions of the following:

African Methodist Episcopal Church

American Baptist Churches, USA

Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

Church of God in Christ

Church of the Brethren

The Episcopal Church in Minnesota

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America  

Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Mennonite Church

Moravian Church

National Association of Congregational Christian Churches

National Baptist Convention

Pentecostal World Assemblies

Presbyterian Church (USA)

United Church of Christ

United Methodist Church

Border-Crossing Pastor

Ordination of Rufus Kudee

Trinity Lutheran Church, Thief River Falls, MN

November 8, 2015

Matthew 28:16-20

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

Rufus, you have come a long way to get here--traversed many miles to arrive at this moment.

That’s the kind of thing preachers say when someone is about to be ordained.   Metaphorically speaking, every ordinand has “come a long way” to arrive at this moment, the day of ordination.

But in your case, Rufus, I am speaking more than metaphorically.

I mean to say—quite literally—that you have traveled thousands of real miles (5,280 feet long miles!) to arrive here at Trinity on November 8, 2015.

Reading your biography, is like reading a travelogue, a world-spanning, globe-trotting travelogue….

…Because you were born in Zorzor, Liberia, the second largest city in Lofa County, where it was a balmly 82 degrees yesterday morning (our time).   You were born 5,670 miles from here (as the crow flies!)

You have journey far to get here, Rufus, quite literally.

And it wasn’t exactly a pleasure trip, either.   You and your family fled from the Liberian civil war when you were just barely a teenager.  You escaped first to the Ivory Coast, and later lived in Nigeria, and then in 1999 you moved to Ghana where you worked as an evangelist, preacher and church planter at a refugee camp filled with 40,000 other refugees from Liberia.  Finally you crossed the Atlantic and came to America where you’ve lived in Minneapolis; Columbus Ohio; Thief River Falls; St Paul for seminary…..and now back to Thief River Falls before you make your way up to another border—border between the USA and Canada, where the folks of the Bethany-MtCarmel parish are preparing to welcome you to Williams and Roosevelt, where it was a balmy 28 degrees yesterday morning.

You take the prize, Rufus—of all the ordinations I’ve been part of, you and your dear family have traveled the farthest to get here!

And along the way you have crossed many borders.  How fitting--because you belong to a border-crossing God….and it is this boundary-breaking, barrier-bashing, border-crossing God who today calls you into the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

Long, long before you showed up on the scene in 1980….your God had been crossing borders for eons.   God whom we know best in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ was crossing borders for millenia before any of us were born.

God in Christ has crossed the borders between heaven and earth, between divinity and humanity, between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, between life and death.  Our God is a border crossing God--for us and for our salvation.

And today, dear Rufus, God is setting you apart to continue being a border-crossing pastor.

There are borders that the church here in our part of God’s world needs to cross, and I think you can help us with that.

We need look no farther than the Great Commission of our Lord Jesus Christ to realize what it means in this 21^st century to be a border-crossing people of God.

On a mountain in Galilee, the risen Jesus (whom some still doubted, even after he arose from the dead!)….Jesus commissioned them to cross borders, out of Galilee and around the world, to capture “all nations” for Jesus the Christ.

In this commissioning, this sending of Jesus’ first followers, we notice four action words, four verbs, that move us forward.

First, the risen Christ says GO….”Go therefore and make disciples of all nations….”

The church of Jesus Christ, at its best, is a “going” church, a church on the move, crossing borders, reaching out as wide and far as God’s arms seek to embrace.

But along the way, as the church was planted all across this globe, we sometimes became too comfortable, sedate and settled.

Here in North America, the church has been around for centuries.   We’ve subtly shifted from being a “going” church to becoming a “coming” church.   “We’ll unlock the doors of our church buildings on Sunday mornings, so you all can come to where we’re already gathered….you know where to find us.   Come, join us, if you’re bold enough to enter our space!”

Rufus, God calls you to help the church cross the border from being “you come to us” communities to becoming “go out into the world” movements of Christ-followers on the move.   You’ve got experience doing that sort of thing, under far more challenging conditions than you’ll encounter in Roseau County!

Second, the risen Christ says MAKE DISCIPLES….”Go therefore and make disciples of all nations….help people follow Jesus.”

Not that many years ago, when our ELCA started lifting up the notion of discipleship—some of us North American Lutherans got a little queasy.  We were comfortable thinking of ourselves as receivers of God’s grace, hearers of the Word, believers in the gospel….but disciples who actually followed Jesus?    The very thought of that seemed to jeopardize our understanding of grace by over-emphasizing inappropriately our response to God’s goodness.

One of Martin Luther’s most loyal students during the 16^th century Reformation went so far as to teach that good works aren’t just unnecessary to gain God’s favor…..but that good works are detrimental to our salvation.

Rufus, God calls you to be a pastor who leads people into a genuine, wholistic life of faith, hope and love….a life in which we don’t just hear and receive the Word but in which we open themselves to being transformed by that Word.

Rufus, God is setting you apart to be a pastor who crosses the border from receiving Christ to following Christ, out into the world, as people of a going church that is itself an extension of God’s great rescue and renewal movement, God’s mission in our world.

Third, the risen Christ says BAPTIZE….”Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…”

All too often in America we reduce faith to a head trip.  We exchange the Good News of Jesus for a dose of Good Advice from Jesus.

Rufus, God calls you to be a pastor who crosses the border from faith as a headtrip to discipleship as a transformative experience of the seeking, saving, sending God we know best in Jesus Christ.   Our God doesn’t just give us good advice that we have to make a decision about.  No!   Our God just comes flat out and pronounces his freeing forgiveness, washes away our sins, and feeds our hungry souls with the Body and Blood of our Savior.   Our God continues to be enfleshed, incarnated in the proclamation, the Bath and the Meal that make Christ real and alive in our midst.  

Fourth, the risen Christ says TEACH…”go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them….and teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.”

Rufus, the mission field you’re entering is filled with folks who sometimes succumb to “magical thinking”—imagining that we’re done when we’re baptized or when we’ve joined a congregation or when we’ve been confirmed or whatever.  

Truth be told, all those sorts of things are entry points, not end-points.   If people come

 to you to have their child “done” in Holy Baptism, Rufus, you have my permission to tell them that that’s impossible.   We’re not done when we’re baptized or when we’re brought to faith:  we’ve just begun, or more accurately God has just begun in us the good work that God will surely bring to completion by the Day of Jesus Christ.

Well, there you have it:   four verbs, four action words that will make you a border-crossing pastor:   go, make disciples, baptize, teach.   It’s as easy as that, Rufus, right?

No, far from it.  There’s nothing easy or automatic about any of that.   If you’re honest, you’ll feel inadequate, unable to do justice to any of those four verbs.

When you feel inadequate….give thanks to God!   Because your sense of inadequacy will signal that God is helping you cross another border:  the border between self-sufficiency and utter dependence upon God to make it so.

That’s why these four verbs in Matthew 28 are wrapped up inside two astonishing, mind-blowing promises:  

One—that the Risen Christ who calls you to be a border crossing pastor has received “all authority in heaven and on earth”….and

Two—that this One, our Lord Jesus Christ, is always with us, “to the end of the age.”

So my final word to you, Rufus, as you prepare to leave this place and head up north to your first Call:   lift up your eyes and look ahead.    Someone is already out there, ahead of you, blazing the trail, preparing the way for you to join him in God’s barrier-bashing, boundary-breaking, barrier-crossing, future-opening work.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.