Come Let Us Reason Together

Although I use this blog primarily to post some of my public writing and speaking, I do occasionally do some "blogging" in the more customary sense of the term.   This is one such reflection--and I remind the gentle reader of my standard disclaimer:  these are my thoughts, not the official position of the NW MN Synod ELCA:

I’ve been reflecting these days on the astonishing comment by Senator Lindsey Graham (SC) who was caught musing aloud about how the fortunes of the Republican Party appear bleak:  “We're not generating enough angry white guys to stay in business for the long term.”

So this morning, while enjoying the “free” breakfast in my motel, I slowly realized that two fellows at the next table are among Sen. Graham’s much-desired army of “angry white guys.”

Of course they were watching Fox News on the TV in the little breakfast nook.  And they were offering rather loud and public commentary on every item that popped up on the screen (there were just three of us in the breakfast area at the time). 

I can deal with that.  It’s a free country, and it takes all kinds of folks to make up the crazy-quilt we call America.  We operate on the basis of a two-party political system.  Vigorous, thoughtful, well-reasoned debate is crucial to the American experiment.

But I listened in vain for even a HINT of that in what my table-neighbors were discussing.   And I can deal with that, too.

But the longer I listened, the harder it was to stay there (I carefully shielded my iPad so the guys couldn’t see that I was reading the Sunday Review section of the NY Times).

They freely expressed personal disdain for, not just honest disagreement with, our President….and his wife!

They lamented the decision by one of their older parents who “still votes Democratic”—frustrated that the senior adult mom, “just doesn’t take time to get informed” (presumably by the fair-and-balanced commentary always featured on Fox News).

And when they started speculating on the “coming civil war between the haves and have-nots in America,” I decided it was time for some fresh air and a walk.

Now, I suppose I just happened to be sitting in the wrong place at the wrong (or right?) time.  

Or was I treated to an up-close overhearing of a slice of conversation that is replicated thousands of times in thousands of places, not just across northwestern Minnesota, but across our whole country?

I am cautious about using the word “fear,” but I left this scene feeling fearful about the state of political discourse in our country in this autumn of 2012.

And I couldn’t help but to recall the ancient wisdom of Isaiah:  “Come, let us reason together” (Isaiah 1:18).    Can we still do that as citizens (not just taxpayers or “consumers of governmental services”) of the United States?   Where is it happening well?   Where does it need to happen more?   In our churches?

Joy in Serving

Joy in Serving
NW MN Synod Theology for Ministry Conference
September 18, 2012
Colossians 3:12-17

                                                                     

So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.  (The Message, paraphrase by Eugene Peterson)

The fireworks were a dead giveaway that these folks had come together to “cut loose”….with bottle rockets, gaudy balloons, a mariachi band, and lovely young chiquitas in their dancing clothes.

Houston:  we’re not among the Lutherans of the upper Midwest--God’s frozen chosen!

No, we’re in the countryside near Esteli, Nicaragua.  Forty rural families are giddy with joy over a new, hand-cranked well bringing cool, clear water up from 130 feet below ground.   Lutheran World Relief provided the funds, the local well committee made the plan, the community rolled up its sleeves and did the work, and now the beneficiaries of such service couldn’t help themselves.   

“This water is God’s gift to us—of course, we will share it with everyone who is thirsty.”  

Irrational exuberance crowns a service project that means life for God’s people.  El agua es la vida, it says on a nearby sign:  “Water is life!”

The snake-dancing on the floor of the Mercedes Benz Superdome was another dead giveaway.    Thank God the youth of the church had taken control of this stadium in New Orleans, and they were getting pumped as a soulful saxophone led them--35,000 youth and adult leaders--in singing Jesus Loves Me. 

Houston:  these are not the ho-hum Lutherans who furnish ever-ready laugh-lines in Prairie Home Companion monologues.

The youth of our church were there in full force last July, listening spellbound as a speaker, acknowledged that some had protested her presence there.   Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber confessed astonishingly that her sharp critics were right about one thing:  she wasn’t worthy to be there, speaking to all those Lutheran young people—“but this is the kind of God we’re dealing with”—the God who is forever qualifying flawed persons to do God’s work! 

And just like that the whole crowd was up on their feet, making a holy racket, giving Jesus another standing ovation.  More irrational exuberance.

Even in the austere, thousand-year-old English cathedral of Durham, dominating the verdant landscape of Northumberland, a heavenly choir signals another dead giveaway about the joy of serving.  Tow-headed little boys who should by rights be running around on a rugby field, instead are decked out in cassocks and surplices, belting out John Rutter’s “Gloria” with their fluty little treble voices filling the sanctuary of a shrine that still holds the moldering remains of old St Cuthbert of Lindisfarne and the Venerable Bede.  I kid you not, you can almost hear the singing of “angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven” in that place.  

Houston:  even the walls of this ancient cathedral cannot contain the hilaritas of the Gospel as it soars in song from the sweet voices of little pre-pubescent choristers.

More irrational exuberance—and where you’d least expect it!

All summer long, I kept stumbling on to it:   the flashes, the outbreaks of evangelical fervor that burst forth whenever (as Eugene Peterson paraphrases our text) “the Word of Christ—the Message—[has] the run of the house.”

This is where our being in Christ and our doing as the Body of Christ lead us:  to the giddy joy that inevitably accompanies even the humblest service, done in the name of the Lord Jesus. 

But really now—“Joy in Serving?”

That phrase has always seemed a little like a “con” to me.   Yes, yes, you worked hard, got sweaty and dirty, rubbed elbows with down-and-outers, but wasn’t it fun?  Isn’t it wonderful to experience such “Joy in Serving?”

Joy in Serving:  Really?

Yes, really!  This hilaritas of grace is what we were created for….and now in the mercy of God, it is what we are being recreated for, in Christ Jesus.

But, in truth, we glimpse flashes of such crazy joy, such irrational exuberance breaking out all through the biblical story….

Miriam and the other Hebrew womenfolk, kick up their heels, shake their tambourines, create a song we’re still singing, and invent the line dance--right there by the Red Sea….even as Pharoah’s army (what’s left of it) washes up on the shore.  (Exodus 15:20-21)

King David, having recaptured the Ark of God, strips down to his boxers so that he can dance “with all his might” in advance of the ox-cart that bears the Ark back to its rightful resting place in Israel.  (II Samuel 6)

Isaiah paints a gaudy, over-the-top portrait of what the exiles’ return will look like, in punch-drunk images of greenery filling the desert, lame beggars leaping like Olympic athletes, stuttering deaf-mutes singing arias like Pavarotti, and a Royal Interstate Highway being carved through the wilderness…talk about “rebuilding the infrastructure!”(Isaiah 35:1-10)

And Jesus, even as Jesus faces the horrors of Holy Week, even Jesus cannot contain his exuberance, in the haunting words of Hebrews, even Jesus “who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame.”  (Hebrews 12:2)

But it doesn’t stop there:   Paul and Silas, shackled in the bowels of a Philippian prison, singing hymns at midnight, so raucously that the ground trembles and the prison doors burst open.  (Acts 16:25-34)

You get the picture….the joy of it all, the joy of being God’s beloved ones, the joy of doing God’s work with the least and the last and the lost, this crazy joy just keeps breaking out….because “this is the kind of God we’re dealing with,” as Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber proclaimed it so powerfully down in New Orleans.

My dear friends, I am not here this morning to encourage you to please be more joyful in your serving.   The last thing I want is for someone to go home from Fair Hills and tell their church council that “now the bishop says we all have to be more joyful.”

Please don’t do that.

No human being can make someone else more joyful.   That’s ridiculous—like trying to make flowers grow by pulling on them!

No, it is not up to us to get our acts together and be more joyful.

God is already taking care of that, you see.  God will provide your joy.   God creates the hilaritas of grace, and most of the time we realize that only after the fact, only after a little irrational exuberance has broken out in our midst.

Perhaps you and I simply need to be on the watch for it—and to get out of the way when it comes, this unfathomable joy that inevitably accompanies our serving.

And maybe, just maybe, God might use us to put in place the conditions wherein God’s joy will break out.

Do you know, for example, that we have a few congregations in this synod where the passing of the peace is starting to last way too long?   Why--everybody gets out of their seats, crosses the center aisle, and mills around, administering even hugs and a few furtive “kisses of peace!”

This sort of thing could get out of hand, don’t you think?   Perhaps someone needs to craft a new liturgical dialog for the ELW, for when the passing of the peace goes on too long.  Something like:  “P:  All right, all right, break it up and sit down for Pete’s sake,” to which the only possible liturgical response from the faithful would have to be:  “C:  Nothing doing, Bub!”

For when the joy of serving breaks out, as it will when God’s message of mercy “has the run of the house,” our best response is just to stand back, let it happen and simply be carried along by its swift, overpowering current!

For if it is God and God’s people whom we serve, how will we do so with anything less than the hilaritas of our Savior,  “thanking God the Father every step of the way?”

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

Dying, We Live

Christ the King Lutheran Church, Moorhead, MN
September 16, 2012—Installation of Pr. Ingrid Skilbred
Mark 8:27-38

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

 “Christian’s the name—confessing’s the game.”

That’s a little too cute, I realize--but it does get right to the heart of this gospel text.  

To follow Jesus is to confess Jesus.   A church caught up in God’s mission is always going public with God’s astonishing mercy in Jesus Christ.

This morning, as we dive deeply into this story, we learn at least three things about what such confessing looks like:  

·      We learn how chances to confess often come on the margins of life, when we’re “in the thick of it.”

·      We learn that confessing is more than sharing information or passing on gossip.  

·      And most importantly, we learn how confessing with our lips inevitably moves us toward doing costly deeds of self-forgetful, self-emptying love.

1.     The first thing we learn here is that confessing Christ often happens on the margins, when we’re under stress or affliction.   Most of the time confessing Christ isn’t something we do while sipping tea in the parlor—it’s not  an armchair exercise for persons who dabble in religion. 

No.  Confessing Christ happens most often when you and I are in “the thick of it.”

Here in Mark 8, Jesus and his disciples are leaving the comfort of their own land and traveling into the non-Jewish villages of Caesarea Philippi.   Leaving the familiarity of home, they venture out into alien territory, a veritable religious marketplace.  Before they head off into this frontier region, Jesus schools his disciples in the art of confessing.

We live in a 21^st century religious marketplace.  Long gone is the day when we could assume everyone’s a church member or a Christian.   Nowadays it’s easy to rub elbows with persons captive to other values, living out other scripts, following other “gods.”    What opinions they have of Jesus (if any) are probably all over the map.

We’re also living under unsettled economic conditions, enduring a contentious election season, in a society that’s increasingly polarized, and in a church body wrestling with all sorts of vexing questions.

Hot enough for you?

So, when the time comes, when someone pitches us a slow ball right over home plate!—what will we say?   When it’s time for us to speak up for Jesus and his way of life—what words fall out of our mouths?

Pastor Ingrid, God has called you here for such a time as this.   You “get it”—that pastoring in the 21^st century is all about being ready whenever and wherever the opportunity arises to bring Jesus into the conversation and make Jesus real in fresh ways.   God has especially gifted you for making vital faith-connections with persons in the first third of life and with the families of those “first-thirders.”  We are glad that you are “in the thick of it” here at Christ the King!

2.   The second thing we learn in this story from Mark’s gospel is that confessing Christ is about so much more than sharing information or passing on gossip.

That’s how it seems to start out here in our text.  Jesus asks his disciples for the local skinny—“What are folks saying about me?”

It’s always easy to speculate on what others are thinking, right?   We hear their words, watch their body language, intuit their opinions.   

And who doesn’t enjoy passing on a little gossip—always, of course, juicing it up just a little bit in the process?

So when Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?”   The disciples are bursting with answers:   Some say you’re John the Baptist—back from the grave.  Others think you’re Elijah, who was taken up into heaven in a whirlwind.  Still others see you as the second coming of some other Old Testament prophet.

But that sort of talk isn’t “confessing.”   Imparting information, passing on gossip—that’s not “confessing.”  

We get to “confessing” only when we hear Jesus’ second question to his disciples:  “But who do YOU say that I am?”

At this point in the story an uncomfortable silence descends upon the otherwise-chatty disciples.    Because now they have to “speak for themselves”—now Jesus is getting personal, putting them on the spot, peering into their hearts, seeking their own response.

And they suddenly get tongue-tied…all of them, except for Peter.   Never adept at biting his tongue, Peter blurted out what he’d probably been thinking for quite a while:  “You are the Messiah.”  “Jesus, you are God’s ‘one and only’—you are the one we’ve been waiting for.”

And of course, Peter was exactly right!   Peter had Jesus’ identity down pat!

Pastor Ingrid, I believe God has brought you here, not only to help these good folks “get it right” about who Jesus really is.

But I believe you are here to help them with their own confessing of Christ beyond these four walls.   For this congregation doesn’t just need three great pastors…but rather Christ the King needs to form, nurture, shape and send out 2100 confessors of Christ as you continue to be one of the “growingest” congregations in our whole synod.  

And you, Pastor Ingrid, get to be right “in the thick of it”—helping these folks speak up when someone pitches a slow ball right over home plate to them, modeling for them ways to bring Jesus into their conversations.

Third, this beloved gospel story shows how confessing moves beyond bold words, to costly deeds of self-forgetful, self-emptying love.  Because speaking up for Jesus inevitably leads to acting up like Jesus, out in our world.

Confessing Christ aligns us with God and God’s ways…and therefore setting ourselves against everything that opposes God and God’s ways.   Confessing Christ puts our lives on the line.   Our feet follow our tongues, serving God’s mission to rescue and redeem a hostile, but hungry world. 

Peter the great confessor nailed it when it came to naming the identity of Jesus—but Peter “slipped on a banana peel” when it came to naming the way of Jesus—the way Jesus would act as our Messiah. 

I think that’s because Peter was smart enough to know that if Jesus truly was going to be a Messiah only by way of the Cross…the same life-script would beckon all who follow this Messiah, including Peter.

And that is how Jesus enacted the role of Messiah:  he opted to give it all up, to toss it all away, to let go of everything and open himself up to the very worst we sinners could dish out.    Peter couldn’t stomach that—couldn’t bear to think of the cost—the “blood, sweat and tears” price-tag of our redemption.

So Peter quickly offered a counter-confession to Jesus—“God forbid!”

…to which Jesus fired back just as strongly:  “Get behind me, Satan.”  

“Stand aside, Adversary…..I’m doing things God’s way, not the same old, same old human way.”

So Pastor Ingrid, as you take up your calling here at Christ the King, you will want to avoid Peter’s path of least resistance.   You will, instead, help the people of this congregation learn how to die--to let go of all that we might cling to and to give ourselves away for God in the world.

This past week at a retreat for Christian leaders from across our state, I heard one of my ministry colleagues say something that has stuck in my craw..

“You know, it really helps, to have died a few times already,” my friend observed.

Listen to that again:  “It really helps, to have died a few times already.”

I don’t think my friend was talking about near-death experiences in hospital emergency rooms.

No, but rather this Christian leader was thinking back over long years of life and work that had included several reversals-of-fortune, times when she had to say goodbye to certain jobs or securities or ways of being in the world.    She referred to those experiences of loss as times when she had died a little—yet still lived to tell about it.

What Peter and the other disciples had to learn, and what we too are forever learning is that with Jesus, dying doesn’t mean that life is over.

Quite the contrary:  with Jesus, dying is when a better life begins.  Dying to whatever has its hooks in us marks the start of really living—no longer under our own power, but in the uncanny strength that comes from God alone.

Pastor Ingrid, God has brought you to this congregation to help these beloved ones learn how we are always being transformed by God, even through the “deaths” that come our way—all so that we might be ushered afresh into the new life that only Jesus the Risen One so graciously gives.

Help us, dear Jesus, with these three things:

To see you more clearly,
To love you more dearly, and
To follow you more nearly.
Amen.

Living Boldly--Living Well

Living Boldly—Living Well

NW MN Synod Women’s Organization Convention

September 8, 2012

Calvary Lutheran Church, Park Rapids, MN

Isaiah 35:1-10

 

One of my favorite Prairie Home Companion sketches is entitled Rhubarb.   It’s a story about Dorothy the cook at the Chatterbox Café.  

 

Dorothy makes the best rhubarb pie on the planet.   When she bakes a fresh batch of rhubarb pies, word travels quickly up and down the main street of Lake Wobegon…and before noon all the pie is gone.

 

Patrons in the Chatterbox (mostly men)  moan and groan in rhubarb-induced ecstasy.   They fairly swoon over Dorothy’s great pie.   Tears of gratitude stream down their faces as they toss down their  2^nd and 3^rd helpings.

 

There’s just one thing, though:   Dorothy herself never eats her own wondrous creation.   She bakes the most scrumptious rhubarb pie in the galaxy—but she never quite gets around to sampling her own masterpiece.

 

"How can the bringer of such good things derive no enjoyment from it?" Pastor Ingquist  of Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church wonders, as he sits on a stool at the Chatterbox counter, savoring the last morsel of his piece of rhubarb pie.

 

I’m going to guess that most of you have a bit of Dorothy in you.   You are hard-working servants.  People look to you for leadership in your women’s group and congregation.   You are often the first worker to show up and the last worker to leave, whenever there is a church “doing”.

 

And I’m also guessing that sometimes you’ve had it up to here with all of that!   

 

…because you serve others to the neglect of your own needs—you make the best rhubarb pie in the world, but seldom save a bite for yourself.   And that, my friends, is a “health and wellness” issue.

 

So it is to you specifically that I want to speak.   It is your self-sacrificing, servant hearts that I wish to address in these moments.

 

Let me suggest three reasons why folks like us don’t always derive the joy that we might from serving God and his people

 

First there is the tyranny of time.   I bet that most of you are busy folks.   You burn the candle at both ends and have a hard time saying “no,” don’t you?

 

Although we have all the time in the world, it never feels that way.  So we complain about being “short” on time or “out” of time….and we also want to make the most of our time (that’s in the Bible, isn’t it?)….but no matter how hard we try to do that, we always come up short.

 

So much to do; so little time to do it.   The tyranny of time sucks the joy out of our serving.

 

Second, there is the weight of sin--our own sin and the sin of those all around us.  That, too, robs us of happiness as we bring God's good things to others.

 

Of course everyone on the planet is a sinner….but servants of God feel the weight of sin more keenly, because (frankly) we live with such high ideals and lofty expectations.

 

We servants expect a lot of others and even more of ourselves.   Because we serve God and God’s people, how could we not?

 

But our high expectations and lofty ideals set us up for miserable failure.   Christians are supposed to be joyful, loving, generous people….never cantankerous or impatient or grumpy or (as we like to say) dysfunctional.   And yet, with breathtaking frequency we are all of those things….and that too—the weight of sin--robs us of the enjoyment we should derive from delivering the good things of God.

 

Thirdly, there is the burden of servanthood that also blunts our joy as workers for God.   Because servanthood is hard work, entailing deep sacrifice and often yielding little thanks for our efforts.

 

I remember how my late mother used to slave away when it was our family's "turn" to host the relatives for holiday meals.  She would rise long before the first rays of sunlight pierced the eastern sky--peeling potatoes, stuffing turkeys, and baking pies.  She would fuss and stew all morning, worried that something would not turn out just right.

 

And when dinner time arrived Mom would make endless trips back and forth between the kitchen and the table, bearing platters of steaming food, obsessed with making sure that all her guests were well-fed.

 

Only after repeated pleas, only after everyone else was stuffed, would my mother FINALLY sit down and eat her own tiny plate of the now-cooled-off food that she had so lavishly dished up.

 

Is that the model of servanthood too many of us have embraced-- a model in which we take "losing ourselves" too seriously, a model in which we take ourselves too seriously?   Must feeding the hungry forever entail the starving the one who feeds?

 

You know how, just before takeoff, airplane flight attendants always runs through the safety instructions.   One of the things we’re told is that if the passenger cabin should lose air pressure, oxygen masks will automatically fall down above each seat.   When that happens we’re commanded to do something that always seems wrong to my servant-heart:   put your own oxygen mask on before you help your neighbor put on his or her oxygen mask.

 

No, no, no.   That can’t be right.    Shouldn’t we help others before we help ourselves?  

 

Not in a jet plane flying at 39,000 feet above sea level….because if you don’t put your own oxygen mask on first, you may not be conscious or even alive to help your neighbor.   You owe it to yourself and to others to breathe first, before helping others breathe. 

 

That is why I am so glad you are here today.  I rejoice that God has cut through the tyranny of time for you to be in this place....where you can lay aside the weight of your sin and reconsider the burden of servanthood.

 

Think of this day as your opportunity to strap on the oxygen mask and breathe deeply from the restorative oxygen of God’s Word.

 

And who better to guide us than old Isaiah the prophet?   Faced with the question of why the bringers of good things derive no enjoyment from it, Isaiah doesn’t scold us or tell us to get a better attitude or suck it up or try a little harder.

 

Isaiah points us instead to God, to what God is doing in our midst.

 

Did you notice, here in Isaiah 35, that excess, that over-flowing-ness in the Word of God that is always catching us up short?  This passage is about the wilderness, after all—the dry, parched places of life where we feel utterly cut-off, bereft of all hope.

 

But this wilderness in Isaiah’s prophecy is turning lush and verdant, as God renews all things.   “It shall blossom”—not just a little bit, not just “enough”—but “abundantly( v. 2).

 

And the lame don’t just limber up—they aren’t merely content with hobbling around—no, “they leap like a deer!”  (v. 6)  

 

The speechless manage to do much more than croak out a few syllables—rather, “they sing for joy.” (v. 7) 

 

The dry land doesn’t just show a few hints of greenery—it becomes like a northern Minnesota wetland in summer, teeming with life.

 

And right through the middle of this barren, God-forsaken “dead man’s gulch”—the kind of place any sane person would avoid at all cost—right through the middle of it we see not just a narrow rocky trail—but a wide highway, the Holy Way, the way back home for God’s exiled people.

 

Here in Isaiah 35 God invites us to set our hopes too high for a change—because the higher we hope, the higher will God outdo us in giving us all that we will ever need. 

If the tyranny of time, if the weight of sin, if the burden of servanthood leave you parched, dehydrated and shriveled up...unable to enjoy the good things you are constantly bearing to God's people....I invite you stop, here and now, and listen to these words:

 

It is for you that God is at work, reclaiming the whole creation in life, death and resurrection of  his Son, Jesus Christ. 

 

It is for others, too--make no mistake about it.   But right now, in this moment, it is for you.

 

It is the tyranny of your time that God means to undo, in order to say to you:  "Be strong, do not fear!"

 

It is the weight of your sin that God in Christ chooses to bear to the Cross and the Grave--freely, willingly, fully...so that you might be numbered among the redeemed and the ransomed.

 

It is the burden of your servanthood that God would lift from you, at least for today....so that God's own everlasting joy might be upon your heads, so that sorrow and sighing might flee away.

 

You have God's word on it.

 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

 

 

On Not Taking "No" for an Answer

Bethesda Lutheran Church, Moorhead, MN

September 9, 2012

Mark 7:24-37

How good are you at taking “no” for an answer?

Whether you’re selling a product or issuing an invitation….whether you’re locked in an argument or simply trying to “make your case”….how do you respond when the other person shakes her head and says:  “You have not persuaded me.”

Do you try again, dig in deeper….or do you shrug your shoulders and mutter:  “Oh well, you win some and you lose some?”

This Syrophoenician woman in our gospel story was absolutely no good at taking “no” for an answer.

This woman, a non-Jew from a people who had never been very good neighbors to the Jews, seeks out a visiting Jew named Jesus who appears to have come to her seashore city, simply wanting to “get away from it all.”   Why else would Jesus be holed up in that area, “the region of Tyre” where the local citizens were not of his kind, and thus all-too-happy to leave him alone?

But somehow this woman found Jesus.  Breaking all sorts of gender taboos and social conventions about Jews keeping their distance from Gentiles…..this woman located Jesus because she had one laser focus, one single-minded purpose:   to get help for her deranged daughter.

And for her trouble, this woman receives a unique response from Jesus, the normally compassionate healer and savior.    Hers is the only request for help uttered in the four gospels to which Jesus responded, “No—nothing doing.”

That alone might have defeated other petitioners, but not this woman.   A “no” from Jesus should have put an end to the matter, but not with this woman, who persisted in hounding Jesus to give her daughter aid.   

Isn’t that just like a parent of a very sick child, though?

But the response she received isn’t “just like Jesus.”   It shocks us with its apparent rudeness.   In the face of woman’s repeated pleading Jesus dismisses her, rather crudely:   "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs."

Translation:  “Let the children of my people Israel be fed first, for it is not fair to take the chosen Jewish children’s food and throw it to the unclean Gentile dogs.”

Ouch.  That had to sting!  Whatever got into Jesus?

But Mark, the teller of this story, doesn’t even pause to ponder that question.   Mark, rather keeps the spotlight on this Gentile woman, who—rather than allowing herself to be rebuffed—simply barrels on  ahead, coming back at Jesus, using his own words to gain her advantage.

“"Sir,” she shot back at Jesus, “even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."

Now I wonder if Jesus was expecting THAT!

I wonder if Jesus suspected how this woman was “on to him.”

It is as if this woman, whatever research she had done on Jesus, knew and believed in the center of her being two things about him:   that Jesus came into the world to help people…..and that Jesus did this out of the overflowing abundance of God.   

She trusted that Jesus’s capacity to heal was so potent that all the woman needed was just a little bit of it…simply the ”crumbs” from the table of this Master would get the job done, bring healing to her tormented daughter.

For saying this, for articulating this persuasive logic (logos), for making this compelling case, Jesus gave the woman what she was seeking:  "For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter."

More than another tale of a wondrous healing, this gospel story holds up for us a picture of faith in which faith is something more robust and muscular than we often imagine it to be.

Faith, we Lutherans are wont to say, is the means whereby we receive the good gifts of God---forgiveness, freedom and a future without end in Jesus Christ.

God gives us those things, unconditionally, for Jesus’s sake….and we receive those things by faith.   Faith in this way of describing it, is often viewed as a wholly passive thing, a mere receiving.

But what if faith has more to it than that?   What if faith is like your heart muscle—a pump in your chest that’s so powerful and persistent that it will beat continuously from the moment you come alive until you draw your final breath?

What if faith is like this Syrophoenician woman’s fierce determination not to accept “no” for an answer—even if the “no” seems to be coming straight from God?    What if faith is like a muscle to be toned and pounded by a lifetime of rigorous reflection and rugged resistance against everything and anything that would challenge such faith?

I am captivated by that question, especially on this Rally Day for so many of our churches….when our focus turns again toward another program year of faith formation, especially for those in the first third of life.

What quality or character of faith does God seek to form in each one of us?  A passive, receiving-only sort of faith?  Or a more adventuresome, daunting faith that boldly sails out of safe harbors, straight into stormy seas….fearlessly, recklessly trusting that God’s abundance, God’s overflowing, overpowering grace will meet us wherever we look?

Recently a retired pastor friend told me about an amazing adult Bible study group that meets right here in Moorhead every Friday morning.   This is not just a chance for Lutherans to quietly sip coffee together and dip gingerly into the scriptures.   When this group met for the first time, the tone was set by one of the participants who told my friend:  "I assume that you're going to draft questions for us, and when you do, make them as hard as possible." 

Not surprisingly, this Bible study is still going full-tilt after 4 ½ years.  And what gives it such zip and crackling energy is the constant expectation that dwelling in God’s Word should be a  hold-on-to-your cap, energetic endeavor that challenges participants to the max.

“We…discover that during virtually all of our discussions the risen Jesus shows up,” my pastor-friend went on to tell me.  “We find ourselves on a fantastic journey with [the risen Jesus] in the context of the gospel, and in the context of our individual lives between sessions.  Indeed, when we [come]together, we…share life experiences (without betraying confidences), which [serve] to further illumine our understanding of the gospel.”

So what if, as Bethesda begins another program year of Christian growth and learning and service, you cultivated among yourselves such an expectation that dwelling in God’s Word will be one of the most graciously-unsettling exercises for disciples of all ages?

What if cultivating the questions—the hardest questions you can pose to God and God’s people—what if treasuring lively, difficult questions became the heart of all your endeavors to grow together in God’s grace?   What if your children developed within them a constant expectancy that God is so huge and wide and full of mercy that we can throw anything at this God, and God can more than handle it all?

What a sea change that might bring about in the church!

Two years ago Kenda Creasy Dean of the faculty of Princeton Theological Seminary wrote a book entitled  Almost Christian:  What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.  In this book she unpacked the critical findings of the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) that was conducted in 2005.

A central conclusion of this nationwide survey of American youth is that most of them adhere to something Dr. Dean calls Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.   That is to say:   “Religion helps you to be nice (it's moralistic) and feel good (it's therapeutic), but otherwise God stays out of the way except in emergencies (it's Deist).  That's what most teenagers think.  The ways they described God in the study were revealing; God was either the cosmic butler (staying out of the way until called upon to meet my needs) or the divine therapist (God's main goal is to help me feel good about myself).”[1]

And where did our young people learn such a vanilla, pale-imitation shadow of robust Christian faith?

They learned it from us, not because we intended to teach this, but because this is how Christian faith has come off to too many of the next generation—a tepid, harmless version of the Real Thing.

If we think there is a better way, a more compelling vision to share with our children….let us take our cues from this nameless Syrophoenician woman in Mark, chapter 7. 

Let us “catch” if we can, even a small measure of her reckless, damn-the-torpedoes faith that will not take “no” for an answer, because it is a faith that comes straight from our reckless God who never takes “no” for an answer, either!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

---

[1] “Almost Christian: Q&A with Kenda Creasy Dean” by Terrace Crawford.   Accessed on August 28, 2011 at  

http://www.churchleaders.com/youth/youth-leaders-articles/145646-almost-christian-q-a-with-kenda-creasy-dean.html.   All quotes in this column are from this article.