Speaking Truth in Love: Death and Resurrection

Northwestern Minnesota Synod ELCA

Bishop's Monthly Bible Study

April 2016

When death intrudes into our lives we often become tongue-tied.

Someone we loved dies, and we don’t know what to say.   We know we should say something, especially to those who mourn, but what words fail us.

Too often we murmur trite comments that reflect a sappy, “greeting card” sentimentality:

·        The Lord only takes the best.

·        God needed another angel.

·        Your loved one is still with you, looking down from above.

·        It’s just her body that died--her real self, her soul still lives.

In our tongue-tied state we rely too often on comments that sound consoling but simply are not true.  None of these four oft-repeated comments reflect the deepest witness of Holy Scripture.

Faithful speech is always both loving and true.   This month’s study suggests some alternatives to the untrue things we find ourselves saying in funeral homes and at gravesides.   We’ll also draw out some implications of all this for our corporate life in the Body of Christ.

What’s Untrue Here?

If you’ve read this far you may already be offended, because you’ve not only said one of the four comments mentioned above—but you actually believe these words.   Please take another look at each of these four statements, in the light of our biblical witness:

The Lord only takes the best.   Nowhere does the Bible speak in this fashion.   I we stop just for a moment and think deeply, this statement cannot be true.   It is not only “the best” who die.  All of us—the best and the worst--die.    Moreover, what does such a statement really tell us about the Lord?   A Lord who “only takes the best” sounds more like a sadist than a Savior.

God needed another angel.   These words tug at our hearts, especially when we say them at the death of a child.   But there isn’t even a smidgen of scriptural truth in this statement.   Nothing in the Bible even implies that you and I are angels-in-waiting.    Angels are another order of beings within God’s vast creation; we humans are not “promoted” to angelic status when we die.  You and I always have been, always are and always will be human beings.   Created in God’s image, beloved by our Maker, redeemed by Christ, we are destined for “the life everlasting” (Apostles’ Creed) as resurrected human beings.

Your loved one is looking down from above.    This statement also taps into our emotions, seeking to bridge the chasm between the living and the blessed dead.   But again, this idea of our departed loved ones “looking down” on us is not found in the pages of the Bible.   Moreover, given the reality of sin and the complexity of every human relationship, the notion of a deceased relative or friend “watching” from on high may sound anything but comforting to some mourners.

It’s just the body that died—the real self is immortal.   This comment strikes at the very heart of the biblical witness about the nature of death and the “life of the world to come” (Nicene Creed).  Such thinking is rooted more in ancient Greek philosophy than in the history of God’s saving deeds in Israel and in Christ.   The Bible knows nothing of a disembodied human life—whether in this present age or in the age to come.  (For more on that, read carefully Paul’s magnificent 15^th chapter of I Corinthians.)   Truthful, loving speech asserts that God has created us and will one day resurrect us as whole beings—a unity of body, mind, and spirit.

What’s At Stake Here?

Many of the comments people make when someone dies have no biblical basis.  What’s worse is that they downplay or even ignore God’s death-defying salvation in Jesus Christ.   When we say these sorts of things we settle for less—far less!—than what God reveals to us about death, resurrection and the life of the world to come.

So what if we took another run at the whole question of truthful, loving speech in the face of death?   What truthful, loving words could we utter when someone we care about dies?  

First, don’t assume that you have to say anything—at least not right away.   Often our desire to say something when a death occurs reflects our need (the need of the speaker) than the need of the grieving one with whom we’re conversing.  It’s as if we have to fill the void of grief with noise rather than live with silence in the face of death.    Such noise can even be one of the ways we deny death or avoid pain.  

Let us pause and simply embrace those who grieve.  Let us not hesitate to allow first words simply to articulate sorrow at the loss that has happened.  “I’m so sorry…this is so sad….we share your grief.”   What a mourner needs first is to know that you are present, walking together on the journey of grief—and that you will continue to be there for them long after the funeral.   Our Lord Jesus, in his sobbing at the tomb of Lazarus (John 11:35) and in his walking with two disciples from Jerusalem to Emmaus (Luke 24:13-35) is our model here.  Notice how long Jesus the mysterious stranger simply walks with and listens to the two disciples in the Emmaus story.

Second, when we speak let us seek out words that are most congruent with what we know to be true in the life, suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.   For example:

Your loved one is in God’s strong, loving embrace.  It’s hard to top St. Paul’s simple but stirring words:    “If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.” (Romans 14:8)

Our God claimed (name)—and our God plays for keeps.  Speaking in such a fashion is possible because of our understanding of God’s claim upon us in our Baptism into Christ Jesus.  The funeral liturgy (ELW, p. 279ff)  is so helpful, especially as it reminds us that “we have been buried with [Christ] by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”  (Romans 6:4-5)

Nothing, not even death, can separate us from God’s love.   Such words reflect one of the strongest, clearest promises in the scriptures for a time of grief:  “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39)

God raised up Jesus, and God will raise (name) to new life.   In the four gospel stories of Jesus’ resurrection we witness how God deals with death.   Jesus defeats death—by dying.   God defeats death—by raising up the crucified Jesus.   On the last day, God—not death—will have the final word:   “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ.”  (I Corinthians 15:20-22)

Death and Resurrection in the Life of the Church

There is so much more that we could say about how to speak truthfully and lovingly in the face of the encounters with death that are part of our lives.  Let us conclude these reflections by pondering the connections between how we think and speak about the death and resurrection of individuals and how we reflect on the ongoing experience of death-and-resurrection for Christian communities.

The church of Jesus Christ, of course, will never die.   Jesus promised that “the gates of Hades will not prevail against [his church].”  (Matthew 16:18)  But this stirring promise does not mean that the church will not experience death-and-resurrection in the dynamics of how it lives and works within the vagaries of space and time.   This is particularly true with respect to patterns for how the church organizes itself to serve God’s mission in the world.

The church may not die, but certain ways of “doing church” will come and go.   We are often reluctant to recognize this, though.   We tend to associate certain forms or patterns or structures or programs of the church with the very existence of the church.

Our denial of death—our discomfort in speaking about death—carries over into how we “do church.”  In fact, our fear of the death of the “church as we have known it” is one of the things that’s killing us.  What if we regularly proclaimed that when one way of “doing church” dies, we expect the God of the God who raised Jesus to raise up fresh pathways for being church on the next leg of our journey?  

What we believe and proclaim about death can re-root our Christian communities in God’s resurrecting action.   After all, we believe in the God who promises:  “See, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:5)

Lawrence R. Wohlrabe serves as bishop of the

Northwestern Minnesota Synod of the

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

For reflection and/or discussion:

1. What are your earliest memories of a death of someone who had been part of your life?   What feelings did you experience?  What questions did you have?   What words of hope did you hear?
2. The study mentions four comments that persons sometimes make to those who are in grief.   What other “trite-and-untrue” things have you heard (or said) when someone dies?   What other language have you heard (or said) that witnesses faithfully to God’s truth about death and resurrection?
3. What in the life of your present congregation reflects a fear of death (the death of some structure or program or way of organizing for mission) that prevents your congregation from being open to God’s gift of fresh pathways to “being church?”

This is the fourth in a series of monthly bishop’s Bible studies during 2016 on the theme, Truth and Love at the Crossroads.  These columns are designed to equip the disciples and leadership groups such as church councils, for faithful and fruitful ministry.   Feel free to use each column for personal reflection or group discussion, e.g. church council meeting devotions/discussion.   

By Hook or By Crook, God Gets Through to Us

Installation of Pastor Edward Keith Lankford
March 12, 2016
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Henning, MN
I Samuel 3:1-10

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

You’d think that being called by God wouldn’t be so hard.   Hearing the voice of God speak—that should be easy, shouldn’t it?     If God can’t communicate clearly—well then who can?

If you and I can’t hear God talking to us—who will we hear?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Somehow, somehow God does get through to us…..and when we think about it, when we look back over how it happened, we’re glad, really, and thankful that it was through struggle that God’s voice was finally heard.

Keith, yours is one of the most striking “call stories” I have ever encountered.   It’s nothing short of miraculous that God has gotten you to this place, this moment, this ministry here as the pastor of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.

Talk about taking the scenic route, Keith!   From growing up as a Southern Baptist in Athens, Georgia….to losing your faith…“becoming apostate” as you bluntly put it, in your college years.

OK, I guess that sort of thing happens to lots of young adults.  But you took it to the max!  You weren’t just any old garden variety kind of unbeliever.   You didn’t just fall from faith for a brief season—you actively embraced atheism and attempted to bring others along with you, forming a student group that promoted science and skepticism as alternatives to Christianity.   You didn’t just reject Christian faith---you fought against it, even debating the merits of Christianity in public settings.  You were a fighter, a pugilist for paganism!

Wow, Keith!  We white bread upper Midwestern Lutherans hardly ever run into that sort of thing!

And as if your situation were not already perilous enough, you soon descended into a morass of drug and alcohol abuse that left you “lost and confused.”   (Didn’t we just encounter someone like that—the Prodigal Son in last Sunday’s gospel lesson?)

I think I can safely say that at one point in your life, you were about as far away from hearing God call you as you could possibly have been.   Everything was wrong:  the timing—all wrong, you—all wrong, those who were guiding you—all wrong.

But somehow, miracle of miracles, God still got through to you in the depths of apostasy and alcoholism….called you through the 12 step movement back into a spiritual life that rediscovered God….called you through your studies, called you through something as basic as translating the letter to the Romans, into a fresh encounter with Jesus Christ….

God called you to realize (as you have written) “that God allowed [you] to experience the afflictions of [your] life in order that [you might] better minister to those undergoing their own afflictions and better preach the gospel of Jesus Christ.”

The great German theologian Ernst Kaseman once said that the kingdom of God is fashioned from raw materials that are fundamentally useless.

God saw you, in your own depths, and it’s as if God said:  “Oh good!   Some wonderful crooked lumber, some flawed building material—my favorite kind!”

And so the call of God found you, Keith, revived your faith and convinced you that God had use for you—to turn you into a preacher and pastor, and to find your way from the hill country of Georgia to the lake country of northern Minnesota.

Who’d a thunk that could ever happen???

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

And yet maybe, just maybe, those times—when everything seems most wrong—will be the opening, when God speaks most clearly and winsomely.  

But really now—should that surprise us?   For we follow and we belong to the God whose presence and identification with us has come through most memorably in that cry of divine absence, our Lord Jesus on the cross, crying out to the heavens:  “My God, my God where are you?  Why have you abandoned me?”

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

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

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

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

In the name of Jesus.
Amen.

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.