The Next Generation: "The 2020 Crossover"

The Next Generation:  “The 2020 Crossover”

Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb is a reward.  Like arrows in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one’s youth.  Psalm 127:3-4 (NKJV)

Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God commanded you, so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.  Deut. 5:16

One of the privileges of my ministry is the opportunity to meet and learn from other leaders across our state and nation.   Last month, as I retreated for 24 hours with other “heads of communions” that are part of the Minnesota Council of Churches, we heard a compelling presentation from Mr. Tom Gillaspy, the state demographer for Minnesota.

Statistics or “Sadistics?”

Now, I realize that statistics aren’t everyone’s cup of tea.   (When my daughter took a college class in the subject, she deliberately mispronounced “statistics” as “sadistics!”)  But we can learn much, for the sake of mission and ministry, about what statisticians study on a daily basis.   Demographers like Gillaspy carefully count the “trees” so that we can discern how the “forest” seems to be growing or not growing, as the case may be.

In the midst of a wide-ranging presentation on the U.S. Census of 2010, Mr. Gillaspy dropped one  factoid that has been exercising my imagination.   As I reported in my Next Generation column last March, it may surprise us to realize that in 17 of the 21 counties of our synod there are more children and youth under the age of 18 than there are senior adults who are age 65+.    In fact, this is and has been true across our entire state of Minnesota, as well.

But in less than a decade all of this will change.   Gillaspy shared a chart that revealed the population trend-lines, for youth and seniors, as crossing over in 2020.   When this “2020 Crossover” hits, our state will have more seniors than youth.

Awareness of this reality is already influencing political debate in Minnesota.   Two of the biggest portions of our state government’s budget involve education aid to public schools offering K-12 education and support for long-term care for needy seniors.   In this regard, Gillaspy pointed out that what it costs us to educate one K-12 student for one year is roughly what it costs us to maintain one senior adult in a long-term care facility for one month.

Pause for a moment, and let that sink in. 

Having recently served as power-for-attorney for a frail elderly adult, I can testify to the truth of Mr. Gillaspy’s observations.  I was startled at how quickly my late mother’s financial resources were drawn down by each monthly rent check paid to her assisted-living facility.  Yikes!

Inter-Generational Competition

One of the implications of these demographic trends is the disturbing specter of inter-generational competition and even strife.   Frail elderly persons (whose ranks many of us will be joining!) will need more and more from a system whose resources are not infinite.   Young workers will be supporting—through their Social Security and Medicare taxes—a burgeoning number of senior adults, making it all the more challenging to save up for their own retirements.

Precisely at this point we as people of Christian faith are called to speak up and enter the political discussions swirling around us.   Perhaps even more vitally, we need to engage deeply in the cultural conversation about the place and role of all the generations on our planet—from the youngest to the eldest.

Getting In A Word Edgewise

We come to these encounters with some deep convictions, drawn from the wellspring of biblical wisdom.   

First, we have a bias against viewing the world solely through the lens of “what’s in it for me.”    We have been fashioned by a generous Creator who bestows gifts in just one way:  abundantly.  There is enough to satisfy everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.   Living as Christian disciples we are called to speak out from the profound apostolic perspective that “you are not your own…you were bought with a price” (I Cor. 6:19b-20a).

Second, we will resist every effort to pit the interests of one generation over against the interests of another generation.   The scriptural witness is that God values the whole human family and the whole human being in every stage of development from the dawn of life to the sunset of earthly death—and, indeed, God’s care extends beyond earthly death, in the power of Christ’s Resurrection!  

The psalmist rightly calls children a heritage from the Lord (Psalm 127).    We have a profound stake in the Next Generation of disciples.   But we also care deeply about those who have walked long in Christian faith.  The Fourth Commandment was given, originally, for the sake of older parents—an injunction to adult “children” not to abandon or dis-respect the generation that brought them into this world.   When we exercise proper care for all the generations, we will taste the fruits of the Fourth Commandment, which includes a promise:     “so that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land that the Lord your God is giving you”  (Deuteronomy 5).

Third, we will cling to the hope that is ours in Christ Jesus.   These are sobering, even desperate, times.   If we stare right into the teeth of the awful truth that demographers bring to our attention, we will lose heart. 

But, as I am fond of saying, demography is not necessarily destiny.  We believe, teach and confess that the God in whom we trust is the God who specializes in “hopeless cases.”   The great British writer and Christian apologist, G.K. Chesterton, hit the nail on the head when he observed:  “Christianity has died many times and risen again; for it had a God who knew the way out of the grave.”

Beating Back Paralysis

As I write this column, I have fresh memories of our two weeks with five visitors from the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church (AELC).   The AELC carries out its mission and ministry on the teeming sub-continent of India—with 1.2 billion citizens of the world’s largest democracy.   A signature ministry of the AELC involves youth and education; church-sponsored schools are one of many “open doors” to India’s “seekers” who want to find out about the way of Jesus Christ.

As we visited some of the splendid long-term care facilities in our synod that are affiliated with our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, our AELC friends talked about the fact that they don’t have anything comparable to our long-term care system.    All too often, the elderly in India are reduced to begging—and their families end up abandoning them.   (This isn’t necessarily as cruel as it sounds; some families are forced to choose between feeding the children or caring for the seniors, as a matter of economic necessity.)  This is a source of piercing pain for our sisters and brothers of the AELC.

 As we express care for all the generations on Earth, let us not allow paralysis to keep us from pondering the ministry implications of the “2020 Crossover.”   Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ cannot sit out this critical discussion in our political life and in our wider culture.   God calls us to give voice to the convictions that arise from the Word of God, for this time and place.   God invites passionate Jesus-communities to enter the fray and ask ourselves:  “How might we reshape our ministries to respond to the challenges that will come with the ‘2020 Crossover?’”

 Walking together into God’s tomorrow,

 Bishop Larry Wohlrabe

Northwestern Minnesota Synod
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
God’s work.  Our hands.

For reflection and discussion:

1.      What feelings do you experience as you read about the “2020 Crossover?”

2.      Where do you already see signs of inter-generational competition in our communities?

3.      The column lifts up three implications from biblical wisdom for how Christian disciples will engage in the cultural conversation about the “2020 Crossover.”   What other implications for this discussion do you draw from God’s Word?

4.      What is one way your congregation might start preparing now for the ministry challenges that will come with the “2020 Crossover?”

This is the tenth in a series of columns on Bishop Wohlrabe’s “Next Generation” vision (available at http://www.nwmnsynod.org/BISHOP'S%20PAGE.htm)  for the NW MN Synod.   These columns are designed to equip the disciples and leadership groups such as church councils, for faithful and fruitful ministry.   Feel free to use the column for personal reflection or group discussion, e.g. church council meeting devotions/discussion.

Renewing Strength

NW MN Synod Women’s Organization Convention

Redeemer Lutheran Church, Thief River Falls

September 10, 2011

Isaiah 40:31

“…those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.”

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

When I turned 40 my dear sister sent me a birthday card that I’ve never forgotten.   I don’t remember the artwork or the sassy verse that was on the card, but I do remember what my sister wrote to me, inside that card.

She was trained as a nurse, you see, and for some reason she thought that my turning 40 was a good time for her to remind me of all the ways that life declines at that point—to remind me that age 40 truly is “over the hill.”  

My sister poured it on pretty thick…mentioning the loss of brain cells, loss of visual acuity and hearing, loss of muscle tone, loss of bone density.  You name it—everything starts falling apart, heading downhill after age 40

“Gee, sis—thanks for bringing this to my attention!”  Thanks for making sure I remember all the ways that as I age, I lose the strength I once enjoyed.

I thought of that as I pondered your theme verse about “renewing strength.”   Yes, that’s what we’re all looking for—isn’t it?  A way to regain lost territory, recover lost ground, get back in the game, be restored to what we once were.  

But how does that happen?

A couple of years ago my physician gave me his answer, in the form of a book entitled:  Younger Next Year.    It’s a book about how one can halt, even reverse the effects of the aging process.   Not by going on a particular diet.  Not by taking a special pill.  Not by resting or doing yoga or engaging in some sort of mind-over-matter meditation.

No, the way to restore strength is to exercise, pure and simple….to be so committed to regular, vigorous physical activity that you make plans now to spend some time exercising on the morning of the day you die.

Strength is restored, not by resting, not by reposing on a feather bed, not by taking it easy.

Strength is restored by regularly encountering, bumping up against, “pushing yourself” against some form of stout resistance.  

You get stronger when you work, even over-work, your muscles.   When the coach yells “make it hurt,” he’s doing you a big favor, urging you to take a step toward restoring your strength.

In short you restore your strength by expending your strength.

Now, you might be thinking:  that’s all well and good—if we were here for advice on our physical health, here to think about restoring the strength of our bodily muscles.

But what’s the connection between all of this and the “things of God?”   What if the “muscle” that needs to be worked happens to be your soul, your faith?

Strange as it might seem, ask the question that way and the answer is still basically the same:   if  your soul has grown weak, if your faith is flabby, if your spirit is what needs to be restored, the best thing that can happen to you is to exercise it by encountering some resistance—especially resistance that God allows to come your way—maybe even resistance that God actually brings upon you.

There is a deeply biblical pattern in that, and we see it in spades here in Isaiah 40—the source of your theme verse about “Renewing Strength.”

In the first 39 chapters of Isaiah we see how God allowed, how God handed over his chosen people to come up against some of the worst resistance they ever experienced:  the soul-robbing, strength-draining resistance of the Exile.  

After centuries of disobedience and waywardness, God allowed his precious people to reap the fruits of their faithlessness by permitting their enemies, the Babylonians, to kidnap them, remove them from their home in the Promised Land and haul them off to a far country.

Talk about “encountering resistance!”   Exile like that wiped out most other ancient nations and tribes—and by all accounts the Exile nearly spelled the end for the people of Israel, too.

But if God allowed the extremity of exile to come upon them, it was not in order to bring Israel’s life to an end.  

No.   God, instead, tested and tried the temper of his people, in the refining fire of persecution and exile, to bring them up against the kind of resistance that could have killed them—all of it, in order to bring them out of exile, restore their strength, and give them wings to soar like eagles once again.

That’s what Isaiah starts to sing about starting here in this hinge chapter—chapter 40 of his book.  Here in chapter 40 the prophet hones in, like a laser, on the two questions that dogged the people of Israel as they languished for years in Exile, far, far from home.

First, they wondered if God still had the stuff to help them, to bring them out of the hole they had dug for themselves.   Israel wondered, in the first place, if God could help them….

…which is why Isaiah goes to such lengths earlier in this chapter to magnify the immensity and the incomparability of his God: 

Have you not known? Have you not heard?...

It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,

   and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;…

who brings princes to naught,

   and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

Could God help us?   That was the first question the exiles asked themselves…but it quickly led to a second, even more poignant question:  if God indeed could help us, would God actually do so?   Does God still care enough about us, to give us a second chance?

If the first question inquired into God’s power, the second question delved even deeper, into God’s mercy….which is why just two verses before our theme verse, we read this hinge sentence in this hinge chapter of Isaiah’s book:

[God]  does not faint or grow weary;

   his understanding is unsearchable.

He gives power to the faint,

   and strengthens the powerless.

Isaiah is sure of two things—two things his exiled sisters and brothers longed to know for themselves.  Isaiah recognizes the incomparable power of God….a power that is seen most clearly in the unfathomable mercy of God.

God can help them in their weakness—with one hand tied behind God’s back.

But the even better news is that God will help them in their weakness.   God’s power is made known chiefly in showing mercy.

….those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

   they shall walk and not faint.

Notice please, the deep comfort of all these “shalls.”

But notice also the strenuousness of these “shalls.”

God restores strength to his people as they exercise the strength that God alone gives them.   Faith’s muscularity is restored as we flex the faith-muscles that God has already given to us.  

We realize that we’re not weary—because we’re already running.  It dawns on us that we no longer feel faint—because we’re up on our legs, walking  brisklytoward God’s tomorrow.

This is a peculiar business, isn’t it?  It’s about God’s ways, not our ways.   It’s about God trying and testing those whom God loves.   It’s about faith more precious than gold, being purified in the Refiner’s fire.   It’s about Jesus, “the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the … joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame…”  (Hebrews 12:2).

I don’t know that we should think of ourselves as living in an Exile time.   But I do know that these are scary, unsettling days on our planet.   Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of 9/11. 

Over this past decade it has come to seem as though everything we thought we could count on is up for grabs—my goodness, even the post office is ready to go belly up!   In our country, across our world, even in our church—everything we used to just take for granted seems to have evaporated.   The only constant is change.   What can we count on?   Who can restore us?

Can God get us out of this mess—does God have the power to do that?   And even more importantly, will God save us—does God still care about us enough to draw us up out of the soup we’re in?

Listen to Isaiah as he pours the gospel into our ears!

Have you not known? Have you not heard?

The Lord is the everlasting God,

   the Creator of the ends of the earth….

He gives power to the faint,

   and strengthens the powerless…. 

 …those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,

   they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,

   they shall walk and not faint.

The resistance you feel, the obstacles you’re up against just may be how God is restoring your strength in your exercising of it. 

Why are eagles so good at flying?  Because they fly a lot, every day, in the strength that God freely gives to them.

God can give you this same strength.   Better yet, God will give you this same strength.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

Untying the Knot

Dedication of Church Entryway

Faith Lutheran Church, Wolverton, MN

September 11, 2011

Matthew 18:21-35

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

So what’s so special about the number 77?

Here in this gospel lesson, Peter comes to Jesus with a very good question:  “If another member of church sins against me, how often should I forgive?”

And like an eager-beaver, impress-the-teacher student, sitting in the front row of a classroom, straining to be noticed….Peter offers an answer to his own question.   “Should I forgive someone ‘as many as seven times?’”

What you may not know is that Peter was being pretty generous here.   The great rabbis of his day taught that Jews owed one another three gestures of forgiveness.

But Peter had been hanging around Jesus long enough to sense that Jesus would want to raise that number…..so Peter doubles the rabbi’s number and adds one more for good measure.

Seven!   Is seven the number of times I should forgive someone who does me wrong?

Peter comes off like a young man who really wants to impress the adults.

But Jesus immediately deflates Peter’s pretentiousness, upping the ante elevenfold.

“Not seven times, I tell you, but seventy-seven times” (some ancient manuscripts read:  seventy times seven).

Wow!   Peter undershot that one by a country mile.   Forgiving someone seven times—really quite a feat, when you think about it—but that doesn’t even come close to what Jesus is after here.    Jesus increases Peter’s seven by a magnitude of eleven.

So I ask you, what’s so special about the number 77?  

We could come up with all sorts of answers, most of them having to do with seven being the perfect number in the mindset of first-century Jews….but I don’t really think this particular number matters all that much.  It’s not a password or a PIN number or an access code to deep mysteries.

I think Jesus hit upon 77 as the number of times we need to forgive someone, because if you even try to do that—to forgive someone 77 times--sooner or later you will lose track.  You will forget what the “count” is—in fact, you’ll probably chuck it all and simply stop bothering to keep score at all.

And then you will understand that the number “77” is a placeholder for “countless.”

“If another member of church sins against me, how often should I forgive?” Peter asks.

And Jesus, in effect, says:  “forgive count-lessly….forgive so many times you lose track of the score….forgive as God forgives….anything less than that will be the death of you…”

So now the question becomes less about arithmetic, and more about the very heart of forgiveness, and here’s where we hit pay-dirt.   Because at its core, the biblical notion of forgiving someone has to do with freedom….with setting someone  else free, and in the process yourself also being set free.

Because in God’s Word, the root-word for “forgiveness” conjures up the image of untying a knot.  

Have you ever been stuck, annoyingly delayed, trying to untangle a pesky knot in a thread, a shoelace, a cord, or a rope?   When that happens, time stands still.  Everything grinds to a halt until you untie that pesky knot.  

Then you are free.  Free to move on.   Free to be, once again.

THAT’s the picture I’d like to imbed in your brain, your heart, your soul today.   Forgiveness is about getting unstuck, it’s about untying a deadly knot in your life, it’s about moving out, moving ahead again into a vast sphere of freedom and a new future in which God intends for you to love and live and have your being. 

And freedom is what this day is about, isn’t it?

Freedom is the red thread that draws together all that’s on our minds on this September 11, 2011.

“Freedom” helps us understand the deep meaning of this accessible entryway that you have labored long and hard to make happen.  

I trust that you made this investment for the sake of freedom, freedom for everyone to find their way to this house of God, where the liberating Word and the future-opening Sacraments of our Lord Jesus Christ can be accessible to, available to ALL.

Several years ago, I was in another congregation of this synod—a church that had recently constructed their own accessible entryway—and the pastor told me about an elderly man who came to that church on dedication day, with tears streaming down his old wrinkled face.

That man proudly drove his motorized wheelchair up the street, onto the sidewalk and through the front door of his church—a sacred space he had not been in for decades….and now he could be where his heart had always longed to be, in HIS church, once again.

It was about freedom for that dear old soul—freedom from all the barriers that had tied him up in knots.   Freedom to feed again on the precious Gospel, as it was proclaimed from a pulpit he had not sat beneath for ages.

This day is about freedom—the “untying-the-knot” freedom that is Jesus’ specialty, God’s forgiveness that drives our sin away from us, as far as the east is from the west, that restarts the clock, that sets aside the stumbling blocks and other obstacles between us and God’s overflowing goodness.

And in a way, that red thread also ties us to the other story that’s on our minds this morning:  as we recall the tragedy of ten years ago, what for a decade we have called “9/11.”

Most of us who were alive in 2001 will remember where we were and exactly what we were doing on that fateful morning.

I was living in Redwood Falls, MN, where I had been on the synod staff for over a decade.   I was returning to my home from my morning workout at our community center….and as I got out of my car I caught just a word, just a phrase, about a building being hit by an airplane in New York City.  

When I got home, I dished up a bowl of breakfast cereal and went down to our family room to turn on the TV….and two hours later I noticed I still hadn’t eaten that bowl of breakfast cereal—so mesmerized was I, so “stuck” in watching the cascades of heart-rending images that poured forth from my television set.

9/11 was for many of us, the scariest day of our lives—the day we began to wonder if the whole world had gone mad, if everything we thought we could count on had simply evaporated.

It was easy, as I recall, easy to get stuck on 9/11:  stuck in our fears and anxieties and hatred for those who did this vile thing—murdering over 3,000 innocent Americans on one day, the worst attack on our homeland in our nation’s history.

But thank God, we did not remain stuck for long.   We roused ourselves, took action to restore a measure of safety and security to our lives, and brought justice to those who perpetrated this outrage.

But still, I wonder, if we Americans have truly gotten ourselves completely “unstuck” from the events of 9/11.   I wonder if at times we still allow ourselves to be paralyzed by fear and anxiety, tied up in a quest for revenge that has taken us beyond the pursuit of justice, drawn ourselves into ourselves, made us less open to our neighbors, to the world, and to the future.

Our great country--and indeed every people and place on the face of the earth--we still all need to know what brings joy to the heart of the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ….and that is the freedom that only God gives to us, the freedom that is centered in the astonishing forgiveness we have received and in which we are invited to live every day of our lives, in Jesus Christ.

It’s really the red thread that ties it all together this morning:  it’s about freedom.   God intends for us a life that is unshackled by paralyzing fears, smoldering resentments, and foreboding about the future.   Jesus came to untie all those “knots.”

And this freedom is meant to be shared, pure and simple.   I take that to be the central point of the parable of the two debtors that Jesus tells in the second part of our gospel lesson.   The freedom that comes from forgiveness is something for us to receive—but never to keep, for ourselves.  

Try to “freeze” it or hang on to it selfishly, and it melts in your hand.   Share it, as lavishly as God forgives you, and it keeps coming back to you, eleven-fold, a full measure heaped up, pressed down, and overflowing, right in your lap.

Freedom.   God created you for that.   And Jesus Christ is recreating you, even now, to bask in, to receive, and to pass on this freedom.   The freedom that is forgiveness.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

A Confession on Which a Church Can be Built

Grace Lutheran Church, Detroit Lakes, MN

August 21, 2011—Pentecost 10

Matthew 16:13-20

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

Jesus asks two questions in this gospel text—two questions that, at first, sound a lot alike.  

But these questions are really miles apart!   They’re separated by light years!

First, Jesus asks his followers, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (v. 13)   In other words Jesus asks:  “What are folks saying about me?”

This first question requests information.   It fishes for the local gossip.  

You and I kick around questions like this all the time.  We love it, too--especially when we’re drinking coffee or sitting in the local watering hole or wherever it is we like to trade “the latest” on what’s happening in the lives of others.

And as we share this information with one another, we invariably spice it up a little.  A friend of mine calls that “value-added  hearing.”   Gossip tends toward becoming juicier as it is shared.

Ask me to share what I’ve heard about someone else, and I can talk your arm off.   Ask me to talk about anything—and you might not be able to shut me up.   And I bet that some of you are like that too.

So when Jesus asks this question, immediately he hears a flurry of responses:   “Some say [that you are] John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” (v. 14)  I think the disciples could have gone on and on responding to this first question, because all it asked of them was to talk about Jesus.

So also, you and I love to talk about people or news or ideas.  Talking about someone or something else requires nothing of us more than a good memory and articulate speech.   Trading gossip entails no deep investment of ourselves in what we are saying—we don’t even need to think about it all that much.

But Jesus wasn’t patient enough to just let the disciple jabber on about him.  Cutting them off, he launched his second question in our text—and, warning!—it’s the second question that usually gets us!   “But who do you say that I am?” (v. 15)

Now I picture a moment of silence—a pregnant pause—in the bantering of the disciples, because they know how different this second question is from Jesus’ first question.

And we would do well to pause and notice that difference, for ourselves.   If Jesus asks for information about what people are saying about him, in the first question, he is asking for something deeper, something far more potentially life-changing in the second question.

Jesus is calling his followers to look him square in the face, to gaze right into his eyes and speak for themselves.   Rather than talking about Jesus, this second question asks them to talk of Jesus, to speak to Jesus….and these small words (the prepositions!) make all the difference.

I imagine a moment of silence at this point in the story—indeed, I hope there was such a silence—because to do justice to this second question, the disciples had to take some deep breaths, gather their thoughts, and steel themselves for a worthy answer that needed to come from somewhere other than “off the top of their heads.”

In short, this second question was designed to call forth a confession—a confession that would determine how these twelve men would spend the rest of their lives and how they would probably all die, as well.

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” (v. 16) proclaimed Peter, perhaps after clearing his throat. 

“You are the Messiah—you are the One we’ve been waiting for!”

And when Peter said those words, I picture them hanging there in mid-air—for just a few seconds.  And I hope that Jesus and the other eleven disciples paused, to let Peter’s words sink in.

We know moments like this.   We’re all caught up in the hurly-burly of a wide-ranging conversation….and then someone asks or says something that stops everyone dead in their tracks, because the conversation has suddenly dropped to a deeper level of significance.

That’s what’s going on here, as we can tell from Jesus’ response:   “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it….”  (vv. 17-18)

Wow!  Can you see, can you hear how Jesus and Peter took this whole exchange among the disciples and drove it to a deeper level?    Jesus asks his disciples to speak for themselves—and Peter does that—and Jesus calls Peter’s confession the kind of thing upon which he can build a whole CHURCH!

Some answers to questions are like that.  Some confessions we blurt out can heal our pasts and open up new futures.   

Such deep, “I-Thou” communication always includes the word “you.”   This is not talking about someone else.  It is speaking to someone—we call that “direct address.”

So in that great old Broadway musical, Fiddler on the Roof, in the middle of a long discussion about their three daughters and the young men who are courting them….in a conversation about love…..Tevye blurts out to his wife, Golda:  “Do you love me?”    And Golda gets so discombopulated—she can barely respond.

Or you’re in the food court of your favorite mall, and it’s jam-packed with people, and the racket is so loud you can hardly hear yourself think….but then a silence engulfs the cacophany as everyone notices a young man, down on one knee, giving a very small box to his beloved, who has tears streaming down her lovely face….and suddenly everyone knows that something life-changing and world-transforming has happened, right there at West Acres.   A new life has begun.

Or you’re in your physician’s office, and she’s going through the results of labs with you, and she says:  the test came back positive—you’re going to have a baby.

Or you’re in that same doctor’s office, in the same kind of conversation all about medical tests you barely understand, and the word “cancer” pops up….and suddenly your life gets a lot more complicated.

Or you’re here in this very sanctuary….and someone brings a child to the font, someone holds out their hands at the communion rail, someone (maybe you!) names in your heart the sin that is killing you….and you hear God’s amazing promise:  all of this is FOR YOU—the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is for the sake of your life, your death, your resurrection.

God specializes in this sort of speaking—a speaking that actually alters reality and creates a whole new world.  And God is mighty good at it.   God speaks and the whole universe is created.   God speaks and your slate is wiped clean.  God speaks and death no longer has dominion over you.   God speaks and you are given a mission big enough to claim your life.   God speaks and the Devil runs for cover.   God speaks—and the Cross of Calvary leads directly to the Empty Tomb, Good Friday gives way to Easter.

God specializes in this sort of speaking.   God loves this way of communicating so much that God calls you and me to enter into it, ourselves.   For this is how the Church is formed and sustained and extended throughout the world.

Jesus lays claim to others when you and I stop talking ABOUT him, and starting talking to him, and speaking of him to those we meet.   “You are the Messiah,” Peter blurted out.   “Jesus is my everything,” we stammer.   “Death doesn’t have the final word now,” we whisper in the funeral home, to a beloved one in grief.   “God has a purpose for your life,” we murmur to a young person, wondering what to do in the world.   “Your mistakes, the mess you have made of things, God has redeemed all of that.  Jesus has carried it all to his Cross and buried it in his grave.   You get to have a fresh start again, in Christ Jesus.”

Dare we speak that way to one another, my dear friends?

Yes, by all means.   God is counting on us to do precisely that.   The church our Lord Jesus Christ has built and is still building feeds off confessions like these.   God is staking everything on words that he will give to us, opening our lips, untangling our tongues and saying—loud and clear, to anyone within earshot—“this Jesus—he really is the One we’ve been waiting for, the only One we can count on in life and in death and in everything else that will ever come our way.”

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

How God Inflicts Abundant Life on Us

Ordination of Jeanette Bidne

Trinity Lutheran Church, Kiester, MN

July 31, 2011

John 10:10b

[Jesus said]  “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

You love this verse, Jeanette…and as you’ve made your way through seminary and the ELCA candidacy process, you’ve kept coming back to this promise of our Lord—again and again and again.

And you are by no means alone.   Any number of us here this afternoon, if asked to name our 20 favorite Bible verses would probably include this one:  “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

This is one of the Bible’s “keepers,” isn’t it?   This is a wall-plaque, embroidered-pillow, tattoo-it-on-your-forehead verse:  “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Amen and amen!

But can we really talk this way nowadays?  Can we get by with it—especially now when ANY talk of “abundance” seems out of place?

Thomas Friedman, one of my favorite newspaper columnists, says that “we are leaving an era where to be a mayor, governor, senator or president was, on balance, to give things away to people. And we are entering an era where to be a leader will mean, on balance, to take things away from people. It is the only way we’ll get our fiscal house in order before the market, brutally, does it for us.”  (New York Times, December 25, 2010)

Abundance, argues Friedman—in any meaningful sense—abundance is a thing of the past.    We have entered the lean years for our country and our planet.   Life is a zero-sum game.   The pie is only so big…and we all need to learn how to live on a smaller slice of it.

“Abundantly” is a word destined for the moth balls.    Abundance is a thing of the past in all aspects of life.   We are short in the marketplace, but also we’re short on intangibles like civility, reasonableness, goodwill, compromise and mutual sacrifice for the common good.

And, as if all that were not enough, we also seem to be fresh out of things like safety and security and hope for a brighter tomorrow.

Deprivation, not abundance, feels like the “coin of the realm.”  

And yet Jesus, here in John chapter 10, goes against the grain, speaking a distinctly counter-cultural word:  “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Jeanette, are you sure you really want to invest so much in this one verse and all that it represents?  It’s a little naïve, don’t you think?   How about, instead, a dose of cold, hard realism?

Unless, of course, that’s exactly what this verse is setting forth here, right under our noses.   Because the context of this beloved verse is the sheep-fold.   The “frame” for this passage in John is filled with cold, hard realism that boils down to this:  there is always something or someone who wants to fleece the flock, attack the sheep, and have fresh mutton for supper.

Jesus comes on the scene here, fully aware that wherever there are sheep there are thieves and imposters and rustlers who only want to “steal and kill and destroy” (v. 10a).   Deprivation, oppression and loss mark the natural state of things in this fallen world.   And Jesus is no Pollyanna about that.

It’s just that Jesus is not willing to allow those harsh, cold realities to have a future with us--his beloved flock.  

Jesus isn’t some serene guru teaching timeless truths here.  Jesus is, rather, the tip of the spear of an invasion force that’s taking over this poor, old, dying world.   And his aim is quite simple:  to inflict life, God’s life, upon us!    “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

Today, Jeanette, you formally help lead this invasion force that even now is turning the world upside down and challenging every bit of conventional wisdom we live by.   Jesus, having already recruited you, now formally enlists you to “call out” everything and everyone who would “steal and kill and destroy” members of his precious flock.

You are being set aside to announce until you’re blue in the face this fresh new reality:  “I—Jesus!--have come that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”

 And what might that look like?

 In her book Almost Christian, Kenda Creasy Dean suggests that the abundant life Jesus brings is marked by at least four things:  a creed that grounds us, a community that enfolds us, a mission that captures us, and a hope that draws us into God’s tomorrow.

 So in a world filled with all sorts of competing God-stories and alternative explanations of reality, the church invites you, Jeanette, to sally forth with the greatest story, the truest account of what matters most.  It is the story of God’s intoxicating love for all that God has made, a mercy so overpowering that God couldn’t resist becoming one of us, entering into every nook and cranny of our lives, even to the point of dying with us which was also a dying for us, in Jesus Christ.   That’s how God has unleashed, how God has inflicted “abundant life” on the world—life that in the power of Christ’s resurrection continues to expand and multiply and grow—through us—until it fills the universe, until God is “all in all.”

 That, Jeanette, or something like it is the creed that claims us, the story that grounds us.   We Christian preachers are the original Johnny-one-notes, because when all is said and done, we just have Jesus to offer to a depleted, dried up, “fresh-out-of-everything “world.

 This creed that claims us produces a community that enfolds us.   Think of the “abundant life” that Jesus came to bring less as a deep, pristine lake and more as a wide, swift-flowing river….catching up in its compelling current everyone it washes over.   For that is how Christ’s abundant life keeps expanding—it invades us and commandeers us to invade others with it as well.   Jesus’ abundant life is the only thing that multiples as it is divided.

 I have not yet come to know directly the community of Christ at Esther Lutheran Church.   But this much I do know:  persons who come in contact with this congregation have a hard time keeping their feet on the ground afterward.   I’ve heard that in your voice, Jeanette, as you breathlessly tell others about your first few times at Esther….and I run into it every time my colleague Pastor Laurie Natwick comes back from a meeting with the council or call committee or members of Esther.  It sometimes takes me a day or two to bring Laurie back down to earth.  It’s as if the folks at Esther have gotten a little giddy on God’s intoxicating love in Jesus Christ, so much so that they’ve forgotten all the reasons why things will never work.   The Esther congregation has gotten to thinking that God is alive and well and catching them up in his mission.   (I wonder, Jeanette, whether in addition to issuing you a ministerial stole this afternoon, we perhaps should also hand over a crash helmet and a life preserver or two…)

 Which brings me to the third mark of what Christ’s abundant life is like:  it’s a life centered around and fully invested in God’s mission of rescuing and reclaiming the whole creation.  This mission of God captures our imagination and gives us purpose.

 Awash in Jesus’ abundant life, we simply know in our heart of hearts that this is too good to keep for ourselves.    As Kenda Creasy Dean puts it:  “When we realize what God has done, when we discover that Christ has bound himself to us so radically that nothing can separate us from him when we gratefully reciprocate by fastening our lives to his life, death and resurrection in baptism, the Holy Spirit empowers us to consciously participate in the life of God.  Where Jesus goes, we go; when Christ suffers, we suffer; what God gives, we give.  Our lives are so bound up with Christ that the Holy Spirit gives us more of God’s love than we can fathom or hold…This is how God enters the world:  through people like us.”  (Almost Christian, p. 88)

 What kind of foolishness is this?  It’s the foolishness of people who fearlessly believe that God stands at the end of history—that boundless hope draws us forward into God’s tomorrow.  Jeanette, this is the fourth mark of the abundant life that Jesus rains down upon us.    Let your preaching and living of the gospel be suffused with a contagious hope in Jesus Christ, that your hearers won’t be able to avoid “leaning into” God’s coming kingdom.

 There is nothing naïve about any of this, Jeanette.  Jesus isn’t backing down from any of his promises to us.  Most assuredly—in the face of all naysayers—Jesus insists that we have life, and have it abundantly.   That’s really all you have to say and live and help God’s people wrap themselves around, for as long as God gives you breath.

 Jesus said:  “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”    We take him at his word.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.