The Trinity Roadmap

Zion Lutheran Church, Lake Bronson, MN

Maria Lutheran Church, Kennedy, MN

June 3, 2012

Trinity Sunday

 In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

This is the Sunday when many preachers wimp out, “duck and cover,” sidestep a golden opportunity to preach and teach God’s triune love for us, God’s three-person-ed overture to us.

Yup.  Today, Trinity Sunday, is when many preachers pray:  “Dear Lord, please let Trinity Sunday fall on baccalaureate or senior recognition Sunday or even Soil and Water Stewardship Sunday.   Please, please don’t expect me to get all tangled up in the intricacies of an ancient doctrine.  It’s summer, after all—folks can just barely stay focused on any sermon—let alone one on the Trinity.   Next year, God, I promise—Scout’s honor—I’ll take a crack at it!”

Why do preachers flee, why do they pass up the chance that Trinity Sunday offers them?   I think it’s because the doctrine of the Trinity seems like a bad math problem—like trying to explain how 1 + 1 + 1 = 1.   I suspect that we preachers are flummoxed by all those strained analogies we’ve heard over the years—you know:  “God is like water, which can be solid, liquid and gas”  We get lost in all the abstract language that highfaluting theologians have passed on to us.    

Or are we simply intimidated by the Holy Trinity?  Do we avoid preaching and teaching this dogma simply because we know we’ll never get it right—we’ll never, ever do justice to God’s “Godness”—so why even bother?

In his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Eugene Peterson suggests a way out of the preacher’s dilemma.  “Early on,” writes Peterson, “the Christian community realized that everything about us—our worshiping and learning, conversing and listening, teaching and preaching, obeying and deciding, working and playing, eating and sleeping—[everything] takes place in the ‘country’ of the Trinity, that is, in the presence and among the operations of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.”[i]

If the Trinity is a whole “country”—a field of divine action—well then perhaps the doctrine of the Trinity is more like a useful roadmap than a bad math problem.  It helps us avoid blind alleys, detours and thickets.  It guides us on the path, it helps us go where God is leading us.

What if, what if our teaching and preaching of the three-in-one God were more like spreading out a roadmap on the hood of our car…getting ready for a journey through the world, toward God’s future?   What might such a roadmap tell us?

Let me suggest three possibilities:

I.    First, the Trinity roadmap helps insure that our God is big enough—his grace amazing enough.

The Trinity roadmap keeps us from settling for a too-small God.

This doctrine prevents us from limiting ourselves to a Father-only God, a kindly watchmaker who "way back when" wound this world up and then left it to run on its own....while he dozed off in heaven, like a cosmic grandpa--fast asleep in his rocking chair.

The Trinity roadmap refuses to let us settle for a Son-only, hero-God, whose selfless sacrifice settled our accounts, removed our guilt and left us a model worthy of our imitation.

The Trinity roadmap leads us to more than a Spirit-only God, who like an unseen, invisible force...unlocks doors, deciphers puzzles, reveals secrets, inspires seekers, enlightens searchers.

The Trinity roadmap will not let us settle for any single one of these too-small gods by insisting that we must talk about all three of them if we're going to talk about any one of them...by insisting that we speak of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in order to have a big-enough, gracious-enough God on our hands. 

Where God is concerned we need to say it three times before we've said it right--even once!

We need to talk about God the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth...who has indeed put this world together like a master craftsman...but who, instead of leaving it to run on its own, has remained intricately involved with the Creation from Day One.   We must speak of God the Father almighty, who to rescue us from our waywardness dispatched his only Son into the world to liberate us.  We need to talk about the Father who sent the Son and in the power of the Spirit continues to grant new life...and who will one day usher in a New Creation.

We need to talk about God the Son...who at the cross has won us back, in order to restore his Father's creation to its original goodness...so that after rising from the dead he might continue in the power of his Spirit to be with us day by day...enlivening us in each moment to walk as his disciples.

We need to talk about God the Spirit as well...a Spirit who doesn't just reveal anything or everything to us...but who constantly focuses on and confesses with our lips what the Father and the Son are up to...the same Spirit who hovered over the waters at the dawn of time...the same Spirit who makes the Son's story more than a tragic martyr's tale...the same Spirit who loosens our lips and frees us to proclaim God's mighty deeds in history.

The Trinity roadmap helps make sure that our God is big enough and gracious enough...by wooing us to talk about the Father and the Son and the Spirit...by insisting that we haven't said a true enough word about God until we've said that Word three times in three different ways.

II.    Second, the Trinity roadmap helps our worship to be deep enough, our prayers passionate enough, our spirituality focused enough. 

The Trinity roadmap reminds us that it’s never enough to occasionally tip our hats to the "Man Upstairs"...that we need more than an occasional encounter with God in the beauty of nature out on the lake or the back nine...that we will not be sustained by a cozy "me and sweet Jesus" love affair...that our private spiritual experiences will take us only so far.

The Trinity roadmap exposes us to the beauty of creation, but also its brokenness, its birth-pang longing and groaning for the new creation in Christ the Son that is already dawning upon us in the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Trinity roadmap guides to a love for our Savior that is always more than a private matter...never oblivious to the Father's intention to save everyone...never ignorant of the Spirit's calling, gathering, enlightening and sanctifying of the whole Christian church on earth.

The Trinity roadmap insists that our spirituality...however satisfying it might be...must bring us to a deeper awareness of all that the Father and the Son have done for us...catching us up in the whole scope of the Spirit's restoring, reconciling work in the world.

The doctrine of the Trinity keeps our worship deep enough, our prayers passionate enough, our spirituality focused enough…always reminding us that we pray to the Father only in the name of the Son and through the power of the Spirit.

III.  Third, the Trinity roadmap points us to a mission and ministry in the world that is wide enough.

Whatever it is we may think God is up to...God is always up to more. 

Whatever it is that we hear God calling us to do in partnership with him...it is always more.

The Trinity roadmap helps keep us from narrowing mission to the this-worldly work of rescuing the creation and liberating God's creatures.

In the same breath, the Trinity roadmap keeps us from narrowing mission and ministry to the other-worldly work of saving scattered souls from future hellfire.

So also, the Trinity roadmap prevents us from defining ministry consumeristically, as the meeting of our needs, wants or desires.

The Trinity roadmap attracts us toward a mission and a ministry in the world that is wide enough...never letting us forget that God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son that whosoever believes in him [through the power of the Holy Spirit] shall be saved.

But enough!  I’m starting to repeat myself, in case you hadn’t noticed.  And yet, after all, isn’t Trinity Sunday a day for repetition? 

The Trinity roadmap, if it reveals nothing else, reminds us that in the “country” of the Holy Trinity we always need to say things three times before we've said them even once.   As in any good story or any decent sermon, the “rule of three” applies:  we believe, teach and confess the Holy Trinity to make sure that

·      our God is big enough and gracious enough,

·      our worship deep, passionate and focused enough, and

·      our mission and ministry wide enough and compelling enough to be worthy of the one we invoke as Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

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[i] Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places:  A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (Eerdmans, 2005), p. 6.

To Be. To Do. Joy in Serving.

To Be.  To Do.  Joy in Serving.

Northwestern Minnesota Synod Assembly

May 11, 2012 at Concordia College, Moorhead, MN

John 15:9-17

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

God chooses to do nothing without us.

Let me say that again:  “God chooses to do nothing without us.”

Please hear that clearly, friends.   I’m not saying that God can’t do anything without us.   I’m saying that God chooses to do nothing without us.

This is God’s modus operandi, God’s M.O.   God imagines, speaks and acts always with us, the whole human family and the splendid creation that is our home, clearly in view. 

God chooses to do nothing without us.

So, when God creates, as Genesis tells it, the culmination of the whole creation is God’s fashioning of human beings who alone—among all creatures—bear God’s spitting image, reflecting God in all that has been made.  

God chooses to do nothing without us.

So, when God acts to rescue and save us, when God intervenes to bring us back from our waywardness, God doesn’t step outside of the creation….but enters more deeply into the creation, for us and for our salvation.  

God condescends into our lives, “gets skin in the game” by becoming clothed with our flesh.  And then this God-with-human-skin-on lives our life, bears our sin, dies our death, and rises again so that we might never have to wonder whether God is “for us”—come what may!

God chooses to do nothing without us.

So, when God’s astonishing victory in the Resurrected Christ bids to become the story of the world….when the Resurrection of Christ crucified becomes the vibrant heartbeat of the universe….God doesn’t step out of the creation to do all that, but God stoops down again, breathing the Spirit into us, stirring us up with a Pentecost-tempest, and praying within us in sighs too deep for words. 

God chooses to do nothing without us.

And that remains true right now and for all the future “nows” God will yet grant us, until the New Creation finally dawns in all its glory.

So, today also, my friends, here and now, my beloved ones, God chooses to do nothing without us.

And this is what that looks like, feels like, tastes like, sounds like….

It looks like Jesus, the Servant Par Excellence, clothed for the humblest work, choosing to do what no first-century master could force even his slave to perform.   “I have set you an example,” Jesus says on the night of his betrayal, “that you also should do as I have done to you.”  (John 13:15)

This is who our Lord Jesus was and is:  “I am among you as one who serves.”  (Luke 22:27) That is who I am.   That is what I do.   And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It all comes together in Jesus.   So, in this gospel lesson Jesus seamlessly weaves together things we try to keep separate: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  Life-giving love and commandment-keeping service are all of a piece.

Where we construct dichotomies, Jesus creates synergy.   Asked to name the greatest commandment, Jesus seems, at first to fudge (like an election-year politician!)—to try to say two things, articulate two commandments.  

But not really.  The one commandment, the only commandment worth our time and attention is about loving God AND loving the neighbor, not so much as step one and step two—but more on the order of the “heads and tails” of a single coin.  You can’t have one without the other—God and our neighbor welded, melded together, for time and all eternity.

That’s because God chooses to do nothing without us, don’t you see?  

God is always finagling new ways to climb into human skin, in Jesus, and now in the community that is the Risen Jesus, for the sake of “getting at the world,” saving, restoring, renewing, transforming, making you and me and all things new.

God labors over, God aches for this whole groaning creation, this whole struggling human family….and the way, the main way God “gets at” us, is through us—our voices, our hearts, our feet, our hands.

In case you haven’t noticed, the world has been put together in such a way that we all wind up helping one another.[1]   That’s simply a fact of life:  God has hard-wired the exchange of energies, the trading of our labors, into the very fabric of things.   We can’t help but help one another.     

But so that might not be a burden we resent…God remakes us and all things, in the image of Christ the New Adam, we receive back these conditions of life as divine gifts.   In Christ, we receive God’s intention to care for us and for all things as what we are privileged to do, called to do.

….Which is that marvelous idea vocation is all about.  

Blessed Martin Luther wanted us to know, that all of this is good, because all of it is from God.

So, when God needs something to happen, God commandeers baptized women and men to get into the act.    Service, someone has said, is simply love with work clothes on.

So, when the cows need to be milked, God milks them (declared Luther) through vocations of the milk-maids.

And, when you strap on your utility-belt or enter your workshop, God preaches to you through all those tools you’ve managed to accumulate.

“…Just look at your tools—at your needle or thimble, your beer barrel, your goods, your scales or yardstick or measure….All this is continually crying out to you:  ‘Friend, use me in your relations with your neighbor just as you would want your neighbor to use his property in his relations with you.’”   (Martin Luther)

Serving the neighbor isn’t a hobby or a spare-time activity.   Service to the neighbor is woven so tightly into the fabric of the New Creation that it starts to become second-nature for us.  It’s simply who we are, what we do, because God has called us to it. 

Service is how God “gets at” the world, in costly care and redeeming compassion.

So we’re all here with work clothes on today.   We’re ready to get dirty, to step out of our comfort zones, to travel to places of deep need and longing.   We’re going where Jesus just loves to go!

We will transform those places and people, because God goes with us and works through us.

But we will be transformed, too.   That’s why we’re calling them service learning opportunities.   We never know who will benefit the most—the one who serves or the one who is served.  For that’s how God’s economy of grace works, so very differently from the zero-sum economies of this world.  God’s love in Jesus Christ, is the only thing that actually multiplies as it is divided.

Sometimes, sometimes this service learning stuff sneaks up on us, though.   We may think that we believe our way into a new way of acting….but it can happen the other way around, just as easily.

C.S. Lewis was once asked, by an earnest Christian:  “What if I don’t feel like loving or serving my neighbor?”  To which Lewis, without skipping a beat, responded:   “Pretend that you do.” 

Lewis’s sly rejoinder is illustrated memorably in a story that evangelist Tony Campolo[2] once told:

 “…(He recalled a time when he was lecturing at the University of Manchester in England)…”and there were two young men who said, ‘We want to come and work with your team in the cities of America. We want to work in the inner city for the summer, but we have to tell you something. Can we be missionaries with your organization even if we don’t believe in God?’

“(Tony Campolo) paused for a moment and…said of course, but here’s the deal: you’ve got to pretend you believe in God. All summer long you’ve got to do Bible studies with the boys and girls, sing gospel songs, play games, go to church with them on Sunday. If you do all the things that a believer would do, you can come. You don’t have to be a believer.

“You know what happened. Both of those young men are Anglican priests in England today. They were transformed by what they did…”

If the very thought of that tickles you, causes you to smile or even chuckle at the astonishing sacramental serendipity of such service to the neighbor….well then you’ve caught sight of the giddy joy that is afoot here.  “I have said these things to you”—about costly love, and commandment-keeping service….”I have said these things to you,” declares our Lord Jesus, “so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

This serving of the neighbor is not some grim, white-knuckled business, my friends.   This rhythm of faith-filled serving is what we were created for.   The salvation that has washed over us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ reaches its culmination when we “good for nothing” sinners are refashioned by Christ into “good for something” servants—“good for something:”  good for being Jesus, doing Jesus, serving the neighbor as “second-nature” to us.   Being good, and doing good, as Jesus did and as Jesus does, just for the fun of it…simply for the sheer joy of it.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

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[1] Gerhard Forde and James Nestingen, Free To Be:  A Handbook to Luther’s small Catechism (Augsburg, 1975), p. 52

[2] http://www.csec.org/csec/sermon/campolo_5218.htm

Traveling Through Samaria

Where Are You Leading Us, Lord?  

Traveling Through Samaria

“When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him…”    Luke 9:51-53a

If in his time on earth Jesus had ever filled out an IRS Form 1040, what occupation might he have listed, right behind his signature, on the bottom of page 2?   “Son of God?”  “Long-Expected Messiah?” “Savior of the World?”   

Any of those responses would have been accurate, of course.   But, they’d never have “registered” with the Roman empire’s tax authorities.   I think something more on the order of “itinerant preacher” or “traveling healer” might have made the most sense.   Whoever Jesus was, whatever Jesus did, he was always on the move.

Traveling Man

Although there’s a hint in Mark 2:1 that Jesus had a home in Capernaum, his ministry seems to have been  described best by his stark contention that “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matthew 8:20).   Jesus was, in short, a traveling man.

And that was true from the very beginning of his time on earth.   Jesus was born while Mary and Joseph were away from their home (Nazareth), having traveled under orders to their ancestral village, Bethlehem.  Matthew’s gospel tells us that because of the treachery of King Herod, his parents had to flee to Egypt when Jesus was merely an infant (Matthew 2:14-15).   The lone scriptural story we have of Jesus’ childhood occurs in the context of his family’s annual pilgrimage from Nazareth to Jerusalem, for the Passover (Luke 2:41-51).

From the very beginning, to the very end of Jesus’ earthly story, as related to us via the four gospels, he was on the move.    Jesus’ life was not a settled existence of comfort and ease.   Jesus had places to go, people to see, his Father’s will to accomplish, God’s rescue mission to pursue.   Jesus didn’t wait for life to come to him; he was forever going out to meet whatever or whoever was on his path.

So the story of Jesus’ life, as the gospels tell it, has a breathless, constantly changing quality to it.   The pace of Mark’s gospel (which we’re focusing on this year in our lectionary) is especially relentless and fast-moving.  “Immediately” is one of Mark’s favorite vocabulary words!

Jesus travels to the Jordan for his baptismal “inauguration” in ministry, then treks into the wilderness to be tempted for 40 days and nights, then begins three years of perambulating ministry—never staying any one place for long, always feeling the tug of the Cross, eager for the dramatic final leg of the journey.   Along the way Jesus gathers followers who—literally (but also metaphorically) follow him---trace his steps, travel where Jesus travels, on the move with their traveling Master.

The Gospels as Travel Narratives

This gives a “travel narrative” quality to the four gospels.   The evangelists (writers/editors of the gospels) even use this on-the-move character of Jesus’ life and ministry as a principle of organizing and interpreting Jesus’ teaching, preaching healing, saving activities.   As this happens, implications are constantly drawn out for the continuing faithful lives of all Christ’s followers, in every time and place.

In his book, Tell It Slant (2008, Eerdmans)[1] Eugene Peterson points out that the center of Luke’s gospel is an extended travel narrative (Luke 9:51-19:44) in which Jesus and his followers leave the familiarity of Galilee (in the north) in order to spend significant time moving through the unfamiliar territory of Samaria (in the middle) before the final chapter of Jesus’ story unfolds in Jerusalem (in the south).

Peterson finds significance in the fact that so many of Jesus’ greatest parables and teachings on prayer are “located” in this Samaritan portion of the journey.  “It is while traveling through Samaria…that Jesus takes the time to tell stories that prepare his followers to bring the ordinariness of their lives into conscious awareness and participation in this kingdom life.”  (pp. 15-16).    Peterson finds two things especially intriguing in this Travel Narrative:

“First, it deals with what takes place ‘in between’ the focused areas of Jesus’ life and ministry, Galilee and Jerusalem.   Jesus and his disciples are traveling through the unfamiliar and uncongenial country of Samaria…(which) is not home ground to Jesus and his companions….They don’t know these people and have little in common with them….[Jesus and company] are outsiders to this country and this people”  (p. 17).

Implications for Our Traveling

Peterson perceives an analogy here between the Samaritan part of Jesus’ journey and the portion of our faith-journeys that happens “between Sundays,” i.e. in between our weekly “set-aside, protected time[s] and place[s] for prayer and prayerful listening among men and women who are ‘on our side.’”   In fact, most of our lives of discipleship play out during the other six days of each week, away from the church building, sort of like traveling through Samaria.   The gathered church that we experience on Sundays lives out most of its days as the scattered church in the world during the remainder of each week.   “We spend most of our time with people who are not following Jesus as we have been, who do not share our assumptions and beliefs and convictions regarding God and his kingdom.”  (p. 17)

The second thing that intrigues Peterson about Luke’s long Travel Narrative “is how frequently Jesus tells stories, the mini-stories we name parables.”   Why is this significant?   It’s because the parable, “is a way of saying something that requires the imaginative participation of the listener….a parable involves the hearer.”   Moreover, Jesus’ parables in the Travel Narrative are not overtly religious in their language or focus.   “They are stories about farmers and judges and victims, about coins and sheep and prodigal sons, about wedding banquets, building barns and towers and going to war, a friend who wakes you in the middle of the night to ask for a loaf of bread, the courtesies of hospitality, crooks and beggars, fig trees and manure” (p. 19)

Peterson perceives a mission strategy in Jesus’ preference for story-telling while traveling through Samaria.   “Samaritans, then and now, have centuries of well-developed indifference, if not outright aversion, to God-language—at least the kind used by synagogue and church people….So, as Jesus goes through Samaria he is very restrained in his use of explicit God-language….Jesus circles around his listeners’ defenses.  He tells parables.  A parable keeps the message at a distance, slows down comprehension, blocks automatic prejudicial reactions, dismantles stereotypes.  A parable comes up on the listener obliquely, on the ‘slant’” (p. 20).[2]

There are profound implications here as we live out our own Travel Narratives as disciples of Jesus.   As we achingly seek out ways of sharing Christ with those (“Samaritans”) around us, might we not discover that engaging stories will usually be more winsome than compelling arguments?   (Please tell me:  How likely is it that we will argue anyone into the Kingdom of God?)  In our own Monday through Saturday journeying—in which we can’t always presume a shared God-story with the “Samaritans” around us—how might we cultivate Jesus’ art of spinning yarns (parables) that crack open the Good News in fresh ways?

A Church That’s Going Mobile

This month’s Bible study, as you may have noticed, reiterates themes from last month’s Bible study (“Toward a Church That’s All About ‘Going’”).   One of the biggest challenges before us, it seems to me, is this:   “How do we jack up the church and put wheels under it?”    How is God un-settling us in order to equip us for “going mobile” with the Good News of Jesus Christ?

If the church is the only Body the Risen One still has in this world—ought we not pay closer attention to how Jesus himself lived in this world?   As we do so, we will notice, time and again, how Jesus was always on the move.   He did not wait for people to come to him; he was always heading out and meeting someone new, wading into the muck and mud of life, walking right up to hard questions and prickly controversies.   This Traveling Man still calls us to be a traveling church, does he not?

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

For reflection and discussion:
1.      What strikes you about the notion that Jesus was primarily a “traveling man?”
2.      How is it for you, “traveling through Samaria” each week?   What is it like for you, living alongside folks who may not share your commitment to following Jesus?
3.      Why might stories (parables) be more effective than arguments, in sharing Christ with others?
4.      What are some of the reasons why it’s so challenging to “jack up the church and put wheels under it?”

This is the fifth in a series of monthly Bible studies during 2012 focused on the question:  “Where Are You Leading Us, Lord?”   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.

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[1] Eugene H. Peterson, Tell it Slant:  A Conversation on the Language of Jesus in His Stories and Prayers, Eerdmans, 2008.

[2] This explains the title of Peterson’s book, Tell it Slant.

Still My Favorite Easter Quote

If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if Christ is not risen—nothing else matters.   

Jaroslav Pelikan (1923-2006)  Quoted in the Yale Department of History Newsletter, Spring (2007), 3.

No Way to Run a Resurrection

Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, Moorhead

Easter Sunday—April 16, 2006

Mark 16:1-8

Are you as annoyed as I am with movies that have strange, jarring endings?

When I buy my ticket and popcorn and get all settled down in my comfy theater seat, I want whatever movie I’m watching to “end well.”  

I want there to be a sunset, with birds singing and the orchestra swelling.  I want the boy to get the girl, the woman to win her man.  I want all the bad guys to get what they’ve got coming, all conflicts to be resolved, all tensions released.  I want closure.  I want all the loose ends tied up.  I want “happily ever after” endings to my movies.

It drives me nuts when a movie director thinks he needs to throw me a curve ball at the last minute--concluding a film with a straight-out-of-leftfield “zinger.”

M. Night Shyamalan is an Indian-born movie director whose films often feature these kinds of disturbing endings.  He directed movies like Signs, The Village, Unbreakable and (perhaps most memorably) The Sixth Sense.    

Even if you never saw The Sixth Sense back in 1999, you probably remember the TV advertisements for it, featuring a terrified little boy whispering:  “I see dead people.”   That movie—The Sixth Sense—has a classic unpredictable, “twist” ending to it.  The first time I saw it—I was blown away.

In our gospel lesson from Mark 16 we meet three women who are terrified—not because “they see dead people”—but because they DON’T see dead people, one dead person in particular.

At dawn, with the sun just peeking over the eastern horizon, they make their way to a cemetery to the fresh grave of a friend, to use spices and ointments to stave off the stench of death—but the corpse they come for is gone.  

How unsettling.   Dead people usually do others the courtesy of staying put—but not this Dead Person named Jesus.

He’s missing—and in his place a young man dressed in white—a complete stranger--stands there, delivering a wild message that shakes these women to the core of their being:  ‘Do not be alarmed; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. ⁷But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him, just as he told you.’

That’s it.  That’s all they get, these three women.   There’s no earthquake here, no angel descending from heaven and splitting the stone in two, no Roman guards shuddering and playing dead.   These women don’t actually encounter the risen Jesus.   They don’t even poke around inside the tomb a bit to check things out for themselves.

No.  None of that.   These women just hear what the man-in-white has to say, then turn tail and run.

And here’s the sentence with which Mark the evangelist concludes his gospel:  So [the women] went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

That’s it.  That’s all Mark wrote—sort of a “THUD” of an ending—a DUD of an ending--if you ask me.   The last word of Mark’s gospel is “afraid.”   No gentle sunset, no birds singing, no orchestra swelling, no closure achieved, no “happily ever after.”   None of that—Mark’s final word is “afraid.”

This is no way to run a resurrection—no way for a gospel to end.   There has to be something missing here, wouldn’t you agree?

Apparently, in the first few years after Mark’s gospel began to circulate in the mid-first-century, others thought they needed to tidy things up a bit--take another run at it.

And so, in no time, several alternative endings were suggested for Mark’s gospel.   Look for a moment at page 55 in the NT portion of your pew Bible, and you’ll see a shorter ending, a longer ending and all sorts of footnotes. 

The guys who copied and transmitted Mark’s gospel practically went nuts trying to give this gospel a better ending—trying to do what Mark for some reason didn’t do.

But I’m afraid it was a lost cause.  None of those “alternative endings” has ever caught on.  None of them have rung true with the authentic voice of Mark himself.   They all fall into the “close, but no cigar” range of acceptability.

For my money, the ending we seem stuck with is the ending Mark intended.   Like M. Night Shyamalan, Mark wants us to squirm a bit—wants us to feel—to feel just a bit the way those women probably felt.

I think that’s one reason why Mark ends his gospel in this fashion.   As Pastor Nancy said so well in her Easter letter to the congregation, “If I were one of those women who had come to the tomb on  Sunday morning expecting to embalm my loved one, and met a young man who told me he was alive, I would be so scared I would run away.  And I wouldn’t tell a soul, at least not for a while.  My heart would be pounding so hard I would not have the breath to speak.”

Yesiree, despite how unsettling it is, Mark’s ending gets some things exactly right.  If God has raised up Jesus from the grave—well then everything is up for grabs.  Life and death, heaven and hell, the past—present—and-future,  everything has turned.   How could the first witnesses to such a revolutionary moment in human history be anything but terrified, struck dumb, beside themselves with fear?

So might we, appropriately, shudder on this Easter morning.  I’ve always been glad that all four verses of  that old spiritual Were You There? make reference to trembling—including the last verse, the Easter verse.   We tremble—and not just in the face of Jesus crucified, dead and buried.   “Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?…   Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.”

We tremble, because nothing is the same for us, for you and me, either.

There is Someone who has loved us to death—his death—and come back from death to love us forever.  He’s loose in the world.   He’s on the move—in fact, as the man-in-white tells the women:  “he is going ahead of you to Galilee.”

Where is the risen Jesus in Mark’s last chapter?  He’s nowhere to be seen—not because he’s playing peek-a-boo with us, but because he’s out ahead of us.

This brings us to the other reason Mark may have had in mind by penning such a disturbing conclusion to his gospel.

Sometimes, when a movie director ends a film with a “twist,” it’s a clue that the studio’s marketing department has gotten into the act.  They’re preparing the crowd for a sequel!

What if that’s happening, too, at the end of Mark’s gospel?   That last sentence about the women fleeing in fear—doesn’t it just scream out for a “sequel?”

But Mark never got around to writing a sequel to his gospel (unlike Luke, another gospel-writer who went on to write the Acts of the Apostles).   Did Mark just run out of time or ideas or material?

Or did Mark think that somebody else should write his sequel?   Did Mark want his readers to know that they would be writing the sequel to his little book, by what they did with the Good News of Jesus Christ—crucified, dead, buried, and risen?

Dear friends, I believe our elder brother in faith, St. Mark the Evangelist has given each of us a little “writing assignment.”   He ends his gospel in this jarring, unsettling way, because he wants each of us to draft our own conclusion—based on how we come to hear, believe in and follow this risen Lord Jesus Christ.

And where will we find this Risen Lord?   He’s always out ahead of us, “in Galilee,” that is:  in the mission field, in the place of service, wherever the Word gets shared, wherever the Risen Lord lives through you and me, his Easter People.

In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

A Church That's All About GOING

Where Are You Leading Us, Lord?  

Toward a Church That’s All About “Going”

Bishop’s Bible Study on Matthew 28:16-20

Based on a message Bp. Wohlrabe delivered at a Joint Lenten Service

Sponsored by the ELCA Congregations of Fergus Falls

“Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted.  And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.  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, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.’”   Matthew 28:16-20

Coming to Church

 I grew up in a church that was all about “coming.”[i]   Whatever kind of question or longing or concern you might have could be addressed if you would simply come—come to church.   Church was a place where you came to learn about Jesus, where you came to get close to God and your fellow Christians, where you came for the “straight scoop” about all the big religious questions, where you came to be nourished with God’s Word and Sacraments so that you could face all the ups and downs of life.

This church of my youth—which was all about “coming”, coming to church, coming to God—this church worked best for those who were already part of it.   In fact, we regularly thought of this church as our church, a church that sturdy, no-nonsense German Lutherans-- “our kind of people”--had built and sustained.

It’s not that others weren’t welcome.   Far from it!  Among many other good things we were doing—we were a church that engaged in “mission work,” especially in far-off parts of the world where folks very different from us hadn’t yet heard of Jesus.    We sent brave missionaries to those exotic places so that they could invite people to come—to come to Jesus, to come to faith, to come to church.   We gave some of our money so that churches could be started in those far-flung corners of the world so that Christians would have some place to come, too.

Closer to home, we honestly weren’t aware that we might have near-neighbors who didn’t know about Jesus.   In my little town in southern Minnesota everyone came to a church (or so we thought).  If newcomers showed up in town they certainly were welcome to come to our church.   We even left the doors to the church building unlocked on Sunday mornings.  If they really wanted to come to our church, no one would stop them.  Shoot!  We might even make space for them in one of the pews that weren’t already taken by some of our long-time, faithful church members.

I grew up in a church that was all about “coming,” and perhaps you did, too.  I am thankful for this church of my youth.  It’s where faith was planted and nurtured in my life.  I’m glad I came to church as a boy; it’s become a habit I haven’t yet broken.

I grew up in a church that was all about “coming.”

Going As Church

Today, I am growing into a church that is all about “going.”    This “going” church feels a lot messier than the church I grew up in.  Things aren’t all buttoned up and nailed down.   There is more movement in this “going” church….it’s a much more mobile and portable and (at times) chaotic than the church I grew up in.

This “going” church isn’t so much a place as it is a movement.   Hard to capture it in a snapshot—the church I’m growing into is best imagined in moving pictures, testimonies, interviews with real live people…because this “going” church is a people more than it is a place.   And these people are going somewhere, somewhere where Jesus already has gone, somewhere where God is leading them to go.

This church of today is less defined by what happens in just one place.  It is more about how the people who gather together every week are scattered into the mission field that is all around them.   Ideally, this church is aimed at those who AREN’T already part of it!

The church into which I am growing is a going church that continually sends people like me into the world to carry Christ and to be Christ wherever life takes us.   “Mission” isn’t one of many extra-curricular activities of the church.  No--“mission” is the flaming center of this church.

Today’s “going” church doesn’t just leave the door unlocked on Sunday mornings, in the hope that some stranger will happen by and enter.   Today’s “going” church goes to, intentionally seeks folks who haven’t yet heard the gospel in a believable way.  Through words and deeds and simply by “being” the Body of Christ in the world, this church goes to whomever Christ is beckoning us, whether that person is a near-neighbor or someone who lives far away.

Many of us grew up in a church that was all about “coming.”   But we’re growing into a church that is all about “going.”

And we believe that this isn’t just a fad that will be popular for a while before it fades away.  We believe that this is actually a return to the church God always intended  us to be.

Jesus’ First Word

Because after his resurrection, the Risen and Living Lord Jesus’ first word was:   “Go!”   “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”  Be and bring forth a church that will be all about going.

And this isn’t just a demand Jesus lays on us.  It is an energizing invitation to be about what Jesus himself has always been about.

We are growing into a church that’s all about going because we belong to a God who is all about going.

The God we meet in the Bible is a traveling God, don’t you know?   Not enthroned, aloof, out of touch—

God is always on the go throughout the scriptures.   God walks with our first parents in the Garden.  God accompanies Abraham and Sarah to a land he would show them.  God escapes Egypt with Moses and the Hebrew slaves.   God leads Joshua into the promised land.   God sojourns with prophets, priests and kings. 

And when the moment was right God went into the world—intimately, personally—in the flesh and blood of Jesus.

Jesus, who had no place to rest his weary head, was always on the go, forever gathering up a people who would be on the go with him.   Jesus was always moving—healing diseases, casting out devils, throwing parties for sinners, confronting opponents, recklessly proclaiming God’s rule over all things,  marching into the palaces of worldly power, trudging to the Cross, entering the grave, and on Easter morning getting up and going once again.

Our Lord Jesus calls us to be a going church, not to be something he is not, but to fall in step with him, the Going One, who is always going ahead of us, piecing back together the whole creation, aligning heaven and earth, beckoning us forward into God’s future.

I recently saw a great bumper sticker that read:  “Don’t look back.  You aren’t going that way!”

If Jesus drove a car, that could have been his bumper sticker.    

Now at first blush, this sounds pretty exciting, doesn’t it!?   We’re not a bunch of sticks-in-the mud.  We’re a church that’s all about going.  

Tempted to Turn Back

But chew on that a while, and questions will start to pop up.   It’s not easy, after all, to take a church and put wheels under it….to take a comfortable, settled people and make them mobile, send them out, have them go where Jesus is going.

For centuries, you see, we’ve been trying to get the church put together, nailed down, grounded, stable, secure.   And now we’re supposed to pry all that loose and have the church “go mobile?”  Really, now??

This “church on the go” sounds messy and downright scary.   Because if Jesus bids us go where he has gone…to move where Jesus wants us to be….we could find ourselves in a heap of trouble.  

Recently I read a new book entitled Simply Jesus.     The author, N.T. Wright, declared that “the story of 'how Jesus became king'…across the world [as related to us in the Book of Acts]...is anything but the smooth, triumphant process of a conquering worldly monarch, obliterating the opposition by the normal military methods. The methods of kingdom work are in accordance with the message of Jesus as king: that is, they involve suffering, misunderstanding, violence, execution, and in the final spectacular scene [at the end of the Book of Acts]...shipwreck."  (pp. 200-201).

Ponder that long enough, and we might get cold feet.  We might retreat behind the walls of our well-insured church buildings.   We might prefer being a church that’s all about “coming,” being at the center, getting folks to come to us and adopt our ways and be just like us.   

We might look back and think about where we’ve been and say:  “Let’s just try to be that kind of a church again—all buttoned up, nailed down, safe and secure.”

But remember that bumper sticker on the back of Jesus’ car:  “Don’t look back.  You aren’t going that way.”

For if it’s Jesus we’re following….our noses will always be pointed toward his future, toward God’s tomorrow, toward which our Lord Jesus, in the power of his resurrection said this word first:   “Go!   Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

Bishop Larry Wohlrabe

Northwestern Minnesota Synod

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

God’s work.  Our hands.

For reflection and discussion:

1.      Was the church of your youth primarily a “coming” church or a “going” church?   Or was it both?

2.      Where is your church on the “coming” and “going” continuum right now?

3.      What energizes you about becoming more of a “going” church?   What concerns you about making this transition?

4.      Where and to whom is God calling your congregation to go TODAY?

This is the fourth in a series of monthly Bible studies during 2012 focused on the question:  “Where Are You Leading Us, Lord?”   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.

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[i] I’m indebted to Pr. Stephen McKinley who wrote the popular “Pastor Loci” column in the dear-departed Lutheran Partners magazine, for the language of a “coming” and “going” church.