A New Creation Mind in an Old Creation World

Joint Lenten Worship Service

PioneerCare Center, Fergus Falls, MN

March 20, 2013

Philippians 2:5-11

 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

So Lena calls Ole on his cell phone while he’s out driving on the freeway.   And Lena says:  “Ole, be careful out dere! I yust heard on da radio dat some nut is driving his car the wrong direction on one half of da freeway.”

To which Ole replies:  “Yiminy Christmas, Lena, it’s not yust one nut driving da wrong vay—dere must be hundreds of dem doing dat out here!”

Thirty-two years ago I actually found myself in a similar situation, and believe me, it was no joke. 

My wife, my mom and I were driving down an entrance ramp onto Highway 36 in Roseville, when we hit a patch of ice, spinning our car around 180 degrees….leaving us facing right into oncoming traffic.

FORTUNATELY that oncoming traffic was still about a mile away from us at the time, giving us just a few seconds to scoot out of the roadway and off onto the shoulder.

But for one terrifying moment--frozen in time--we knew how frightening and disorienting it was to be heading the wrong direction on a one-way road.

That image might help us make sense of what our Lord Jesus experienced as Paul describes it here in Philippians.  

…because what Jesus did was to travel the wrong direction on a one-way road.   That’s what got him betrayed, framed, strung up, killed and tossed in a borrowed grave.

And it wasn't one of those situations where the DOT or the street department pulls a switcheroo and suddenly makes an old familiar two-way street into a new one-way street, either.

No, Jesus didn't get caught unawares here.  Rather:  Jesus deliberately headed the wrong direction on a street that had known nothing but one-way traffic forever and ever...

The street Jesus went the wrong way down, had been a one-way street ever since the serpent slithered up to Adam and Eve in the Garden and hissed:  "You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of [this fruit] your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."  (Gen.3: 5)

On that day, lost to us now in the mists of our primeval past....our first parents set us all on a course we've been traveling ever since.  It's a one-way street from emptiness to fullness, from humility to glory, from earth to heaven...and all who travel it (ourselves included) assume that by following this one-way road we’ll somehow "become like God."

This one-way street that is stretched out before us...always seems to be leading us onward and upward.  Signs along the way tell us to:  "Make your own decisions.  Chart your own course.  Claim your destiny.  Be full!  Grab some glory!  It’s all within your grasp!

Here in Philippians 2 Paul tells us that it was on this road that Jesus set out to travel, deliberately heading the opposite direction on that one-way street.

"Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus," Paul writes, "who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross."

All the road signs screamed:  "Grab it.  Seize the advantage.  Get ahead.  Enlarge your holdings!"

But Jesus didn’t even notice those signs….because he was heading the other way on that one-way street.  So Jesus didn't exploit his position—or grab and hang onto his divine prerogatives.

 Jesus didn't fill himself up with good things.  Instead, he emptied himself out.

 Jesus didn't hang on to life with a white-knuckled grip.  Instead, he let all of that go...pushed it all aside.

 Jesus chose to walk straight down the middle of a one-way street, heading in the wrong direction.

 And what happened to Jesus is what happens to anyone who gets caught heading the wrong direction on a one-way road:  Sin, death and the devil—coming on like a Mack truck!-- hit Jesus hard, wiped him out, laid him low, and buried him!

 And then with Jesus out of the way....the traffic resumed, roaring up that one way “glory” road from earth to heaven.

 But three days later....something astonishing happened.  (To hear the full story you’ll have to show up for worship a week from this coming Sunday.)

 But for now, let’s just say that three days after Jesus got “creamed” on that one-way street....everyone woke up--including Jesus!--only to discover that in the darkness of the night Someone had switched all the road signs.  Someone had turned the one-way street arrows around 180 degrees. 

 On Easter morning, God changed the direction of that road once and for all.

 And when God did that--lo and behold!--we began to see what God had intended for us from the very start. 

 Here--we had it all wrong!  The one-way street we human beings had been traveling was heading in the wrong direction all along.  It was never meant to run from earth up to heaven.  All along...God the Almighty Creator, God the Consummate Self-Giver...all along God had intended it to be a road from heaven down to earth.

 And Jesus traveled that road faithfully, courageously for you and for me.  Jesus headed in what seemed to be the wrong way on a one-way street....so that we might see, finally, with eyes wide open, that Jesus was actually traveling the right way, the only way on God's royal highway...traveling down for us from heaven to earth, down from mastery to slavery, down from glory to disgrace—and then back again to glory.

 "Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."

 This is how God gets to us, how God transforms us, makes us new…by going against the customary flow of traffic in this dying world and opening up for us a new and better way, God’s way.

 Friends, we don’t really know what a god is….we don’t truly understand who the one and only God is, until our eyes behold Jesus, who discloses God’s true nature as the God who always comes down, the God who sets everything aside and becomes empty for us, the God who suffers and dies and is buried for us.

 Jesus shows us not a command-and-control version of God.   Jesus reveals to us not a “faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive” Superman-style-God.

 Jesus shows us…indeed Jesus is for us the God who descends, becomes empty, embraces humility…because that is God’s way of being God….and God’s way for you and for me.

 …and that’s why this passage from Philippians starts out by saying:  “Let the same mind be in you [all] that was in Christ Jesus….”

 God in Christ wants to get inside our heads, our hearts and our hands.   God intends to form the “mind of Christ” in us communally.  As NT scholar  Elizabeth Shively observes:  “Paul does not call on individuals to imitate Christ in the privacy of their prayer closets….Paul aims [instead] to form a collective mind that informs collective actions….following Jesus’ example of humility and service to others.”[1]

 God gives to us a New Creation mind in this old creation world.  God opens up for us an alternative existence—God invites us to come down, to empty ourselves, to live the humble, cross-shaped life of Jesus Christ.

 Last week I think we may have caught a fleeting glimpse of what that might look like in this time and place. 

 Moments after the white smoke poured from the chimney of Rome’s grand Sistine Chapel, a friend of the new pope embraced him and whispered three words into his ear:  “Remember the poor!”

 In that moment, Argentina’s Cardinal Bergoglio realized he had to take Francis for his name—for Francis of Assisi, who in the 12^th spurned his family’s vast wealth to embrace a life of poverty and Christ-like self-giving.

 What would it look like, my dear friends, if all of us, if the whole church, the whole Body of Christ on earth heard—and heeded!--that same voice whispering in our ears:  “Remember the poor?”

 In the name of Jesus.

 

Amen.

 

 

---

[1] Elizabeth Shively, Commentary on Second Reading, Working Preacher.org (accessed on 3/18/3013).

Marked for Death

Lake Grove Lutheran Church, Waubun, MN

Lent 5—March 17, 2013

John 12:1-8



 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

When you hear a story, what do you notice?  What grabs your attention?  What shocks you?

This morning’s gospel tells a story that is found in some form in each of the four gospels:  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Some features of the story are consistent in all four versions.  

·      A woman comes to Jesus, in a public setting, and does something to him that is intimate and shocking—arousing strong reactions from onlookers.

·      In each of the stories a woman anoints Jesus with very costly perfume.  The anointing evokes various interpretations from those who are watching, and they respond to it—always unfavorably.

·      In each of the stories, though, there is one person—Jesus himself!--who defends the woman—stands up for her and receives her anointing for what it is:  an act of sheer devotion and pure love.

As you hear this story, what do you notice?  What captures your attention?  What shocks you?

Perhaps, like so many others over the years, you wonder if it was appropriate for a woman to take such liberties with a man.    Lots of the negative reactions to this “floating tradition” focus on the ways the woman broke first century social taboos by touching Jesus’ body—entering intimate space normally reserved only for a spouse.

We could go down that familiar road, I suppose.   Sexuality—relationships--how men and women connect with one another—that’s a topic we’re always ready to think about, maybe even talk about, especially if we can talk about someone else’s sexuality!

But that’s not what John’s gospel focuses on.

We could, instead, zero in on the costliness of the perfume.   Three of the four gospels hint at an astronomical price-tag:   suggesting the ointment cost 300 days’ worth of wages.   Who would do such a thing?  Pour out ointment that cost the equivalent of nearly one year’s salary?

In three of the gospels, the extravagance of the woman’s act is what comes under scrutiny.   “Why wasn’t this money given to the poor, instead?”

Several times this past week, as all eyes were glued to TV reports about the conclave of cardinals electing a new pope in Rome, I heard folks remark on the extravagance and splendor of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome….raising the question of why “those Catholics” spend so much money on opulence rather than compassion for the poor.

We could go down that road, too, with this text.  That wouldn’t be hard to do.

But that’s not what John’s gospel focuses on.

No, what John’s gospel emphasizes is something else.   The dead giveaway is the part of Jesus’ body that Mary anoints with the costly perfume.

She does not anoint his head—as if she were marking him as the King of Israel!

No, Mary went to the other end of Jesus’ body—anointed his feet, something that was never done to a living person.

Feet were anointed by first century Jews—but only after a person had died.

There’s the shocker in this text.   Mary, a close friend of Jesus, treats Jesus’ body as if the life had already gone out from him.   Mary marks Jesus for death.

And Jesus gets that—and announces it, loud and clear:  “Leave her alone,” Jesus responds.  “[Mary] bought [this ointment] so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”

There, right there is what should shock us as we listen to this story.    Our attention needs to be riveted not on any social taboos Mary broke, nor on her extravagant waste of resources that could have gone to the poor.

Rather, our attention needs to be focused on the Great Unmentionable, death itself.

Mary’s unsettling prophetic action fixes our eyes on what was about to happen to Jesus.  Indeed, she performed her act of devotion as if it had already happened.  

Mary treats Jesus like a “dead man walking”—and that is what’s most shocking here in John chapter 12.

Mary’s dramatic act prevents us from keeping death at bay, out of sight, out of mind.   Mary forces us to see what is soon to happen to Jesus.   Mary confronts us with death.

Mary does this in a setting, and among a cast of characters, over whom death has already cast a pall.  It’s the home of Lazarus, who not that many days previously had himself been dead for a while.

You know the story from the eleventh chapter of John’s gospel:  Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, had fallen seriously ill.  Jesus had been sent for—but he arrived in Bethany too late.   By the time Jesus got there, Lazarus was already dead, buried-in-the-tomb dead.   Decay was already taking its toll on Lazarus’s body.

And it grieved Jesus so deeply that at first all he could do was to weep with all the other mourners at Lazarus’s grave.  And then, as Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, Jesus in his grief “roared so loud at death that he scared death away.”[1]

But death didn’t depart from the scene for long.  

Death hangs over this story in John chapter twelve.   For we know where this story is heading.  We see them sitting there in the living room in Bethany:  Lazarus who was dead and Jesus who will soon be dead….in conversation with Judas who will betray Jesus into death.

The air is thick with death, and Mary only makes matters worse by doing something so shocking that no one can ignore its implications.    Mary marks Jesus for death.   And Jesus receives Mary’s devotion and names it for what it is.

This is what John focuses on:  the gathering storm clouds soon to engulf Jesus, the conspiracy that is already playing itself out that will leave Jesus in the grave, switching places (as it were) with Mary’s brother Lazarus.

This is what John focuses on.  This is what should shock us in this story.

But, in truth, it is even deeper than that. 

It’s not just that Jesus will die that should shock us here.

It is that Jesus will die for us and for our salvation.

Mary marks Jesus not for some accidental encounter with the Grim Reaper.   It’s not as if Jesus will step off a curb and be run over by a careening truck or something…

No, Mary marks Jesus for a death that he is ready to take on freely, for you and for me.

·      There is something wrong with us, that only the death of Jesus will make right.   

·      There is in us a waywardness, that only the death of Jesus can heal.

·      There is in us a self-centeredness, from which only the sacrifice of the Son of God can free us.

·      There is in us a rendezvous with death—our mortality--that only the death of our Savior can undo. 

This time, when Jesus roars at death on the Cross on a Friday afternoon...when Jesus rails against death….he won’t just scare death away temporarily as he did at Lazarus’s tomb.

No,  Jesus’ words “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”…Jesus’ embrace of death will spell the end of death.   Jesus’ going down to the grave for us, will transform the grave from the End it used to be to the Beginning of the New Creation that walked out of the grave on Easter morning.

That, all of that, is what Mary’s astonishing action, a week before Jesus final Passover, signified….and not just for Jesus, but for you and for me and for all people.

Mary marked Jesus for death, but not just any death.   This is the death that puts an end to the old—puts an end to sin, death and the power of the devil.

This death of Jesus for us on the Cross puts an end to the old, as it paves the way for the new…God’s New Creation in which sin will not have a future with us, in which the power of the devil is neutered, in which death no longer holds sway over us.

In this New Creation, in which we are already privileged to live and move and have our being….in this New Creation we are not ashamed to love Jesus as extravagantly as Mary did, or to care deeply for the poor who are always with us, or to look forward eagerly and move ahead not in fear but in hope.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

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[1] “The Prophet Mary,” a sermon by Barbara Brown Taylor on March 21, 2010 (accessed at http://day1.org/1760-the_prophet_mary.print).

What Makes Angels Do Cartwheels

Faith Lutheran Church, Pelican Rapids, MN

March 10, 2013
Celebration Sunday for “Build on Faith” Campaign
Luke 15:1–3, 11b–32

In the fifteenth chapter of St Luke’s gospel we find three of our most favorite parables--three parables of Jesus that are bound together by two red threads.

First, these are all three parables of lost things:  a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. 

It’s terrible to misplace precious things or to lose people that are near and dear to us.   We get frantic, we become sad, we feel bewildered.   Something or someone we were counting on—simply disappears.

But how awesome it is when the lost is found!   Life can begin again, we get back on track, we get unstuck and start moving forward once more.

Which leads me to the second red thread binding these three parables together.  

They aren’t merely parables of lost things.

They are also stories about finding the lost—and the celebration that erupts whenever that happens.

These are three parables of lostness, but they’re also three parables of celebration—that the lost has been found.

In each of these homespun tales, a party breaks out.    The jubilant shepherd, carrying home the wandering lamb, invites his neighbors to join him for a feast.   The frazzled woman, after turning her house upside down, invites her friends over to rejoice with her.   And the father, the patient waiting father—no sooner does he wrap his old arms around his wandering son—but he’s barking out orders for a feast to end all feasts….complete with rich food, flowing wine, dress-up clothes (starting with the lost son himself).

Somehow I don’t think the waiting father had in mind a quiet little party at home.  

No—he flings wide the doors, asks the whole neighborhood to come over, spares no expense, goes a little crazy in celebrating because “this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!” (Luke 15:24)

Three parables of lostness.  Three parables of celebration.

And, as is true of all of Jesus’ best stories, these parables of life here on earth reflect conditions that simultaneously prevail in the kingdom of heaven.   What these parables describe as happening here below reflect something that is playing itself out in the heavenly throne room, before almighty God.

Have you ever wondered what it takes for an angel to do a  cartwheel?   What makes the members of the heavenly host “break out the bubbly?”   What transforms heaven into “Party Central?”  

Just one thing:  just one sinner who is lost, finding her way back home.

Just that.  That’s all it takes.  One wandering soul regaining the GPS coordinates for “home.”   One miserable sinner saying:  I can’t take it any more.  I can’t do it on my own.  God, help me, rescue me, save me.  

There….something as small as that, makes the “whole company of heaven” enter a state of ecstasy.  It’s what God longs for most.

The words God pines for more than anything else go like this:  “I’m tired of wandering.  I want to come home.”

Say those words with me now, if you would:  “I’m tired of wandering. I want to come home.”

There—did you hear it?   An angel just let out a little squeal of delight.   One of the cherubim—or was it one of the seraphim?—uncorked a champagne bottle.   And God—God just about split a gut, laughing with tears rolling down his cheeks at the prospect of just one more sinner coming home.

So, things that happen here on earth can reflect what’s also going on in heaven….

…and—here’s the kicker—what’s going on in heaven “bounces back” here to earth.

Which leads us to the purpose of this day here at Faith Lutheran Church.   For you belong to the God who rejoices in just one lost soul turning up found….and the joy that God gets out of that regularly echoes here in the community God has established, the Body of Christ in this place.

For we too, find our greatest joy—do we not?—in being a community that specializes in finding lost things, rescuing lost souls.

That is, when all is said and done, what goes on here and in every Christian community.  

We all take turns being lost and being found, wandering and seeking out….and when that happens, how can we not throw a big, big, big party?

We’re gathered for such a party this morning! 

You have completed a marvelous building project here at Faith.  After saying goodbye to your old fellowship hall, you constructed a new one—a place for gathering as God’s people, teaching the faith, doing the “business” of this congregation, and welcoming under your roof so many fine organizations here in Pelican Rapids.

By putting up this new fellowship hall, by opening your doors to your congregation and your community, you have announced that Faith Lutheran Church intends to be known as one of God’s lost-and-found places here in Pelican Rapids.  

You have created space that is free, inviting, accessible…a place where God our waiting father runs out to meet us, embrace us, restore us and make us new.

And that is no small thing in today’s world!

It is not a foregone conclusion, shared by all, that all the lost should necessarily be found…or that we should rejoice when every single wanderer returns home.

There are attitudes and realities in today’s world that are nasty and brutish, unwelcoming and inhospitable.

If someone is lost, we wonder:  “What did this person think or say or do to get in such a pickle?   How did this person contribute to his ‘lostness?’”

Such questions are nothing new.   They’re here in this gospel lesson, voiced by the elder son—the older brother of the prodigal son.

The elder son was the responsible child.  He stayed close to home—no wandering off.  He did his duty—to a fault.   He served his father—day and night.

The elder son was in no mood for rejoicing when his good-for-nothing brother finally dragged his sorry carcass back home.

This part of the story comes to a head when the celebration begins—and isn’t that interesting?  It’s the celebration that smokes out the deep, deep resentment of the elder son.   Everyone is having a good time—the father, the wayward younger son, the servants, the neighbors who came over to see what all the fuss was about.

But the elder son is out in the backyard, away from the celebration, seething in anger, stewing in his own juices, unable to fathom what his worthless little brother ever did to deserve such a homecoming.

But you see that was the wrong question!  It’s never about “deserving” to be found.

The younger son did nothing to deserve the party that was thrown for him.   It wasn’t about “deserving,” but it was about having a waiting, watching Father who ran out to meet him before he had come all the way home, before he could deliver his little “repentance speech,” —the father had already started to wrap the prodigal son in lavish mercy…

I wonder if the Apostle Paul was offering his own commentary on this parable when in Romans chapter 5 Paul writes:  “while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)

If we’re lost, we don’t really deserve to be found.   The elder son got that part right.

But what he failed to see is that “being found” has nothing to do with “deserving.”

Being found just happens—like a gift out of the clear blue yonder.  Being found is the result of belong to a searching shepherd, a persistent house-sweeper, a fiercely determined waiting Father.

Being found, you see, is always a “God thing.”   It’s what God in Jesus Christ does, what God loves to do more than anything else.  It gives God joy—to find just one wanderer, to restore just one lost soul.

That’s what makes the heavenly rafters shake.

That’s what makes Faith Lutheran Church a lost-and-found place.

That why we’re celebrating today—celebrating so unabashedly that we even dig down deep into our pockets to give ourselves away--all to be part of God’s great party in heaven above and right here below, in this place, in this moment.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

Prayer for Justice

"Prayer for Justice"

Rotunda--Minnestate State Capitol

Joint Religious Legislative Coalition "Day on the Hill" 

February 21, 2013

 

Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made. Your mercy encompasses all, your compassion washes over your whole creation. You are always laboring over this good earth and all who call it home.

In your mercy, you bestow on us the awesome responsibility to reflect your image in caring for your creation, treasuring our neighbors and pursuing passionately your way of justice and peace.

You have taught us today about the deep challenges and the promising opportunities that face our state.

You have inspired us with the examples of others who have tirelessly served the common good.....those whom we have just honored as well as those champions of justice who have passed from among us over the last year,like the late Msgr. James Habinger, former head of the MN Catholic Conference and JRLC board member.

Now you call us to step out in the freedom that is your gift to us—to give voice, in this great hall of justice, to our deepest faith commitments.

As we engage with those who have been elected to serve all the people of Minnesota….let us remember that we are your voice, your hands, your feet in the world.

Enable us to listen thoughtfully, think clearly and speak boldly.

Empower us to bear winsome, courageous witness to your way of justice and mercy.

Open the hearts and minds of those with whom we will converse.

And bless them as they seek to fulfill their callings in public service.

Remind us, every step of the way, that we speak and act not for ourselves but on behalf of others who need your watchful care and keeping—the poor and the sick, the elderly and the youth, the stranger and the sojourner, the disadvantaged and the marginalized.

In your powerful name we pray. Amen.

Picking the Right Kind of Fight

Our Saviour Lutheran Church, Sebeka, MN

February 3, 2013--Epiphany 4

Luke 4:21-30

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Today—February 3, 2013—is a big day.   It’s the Lord’s Day, when we gather for worship trusting that God will show up among us in Word and Sacrament and a gathered community of sinners who are also saints.   That’s a big thing.

And speaking of sacraments, it’s Baby Brigid’s Baptism Day.   Another little Stout will become a Christian, and not a moment too soon.   That’s a big thing.

Oh, and I hear that there’s some big football game later today down in New Orleans, the 49ers vs. the Ravens and  all the hoopla that will go with it.   That’s a big thing.

And then there’s something else happening “under the radar” all across the Upper Midwest today.   Pastors are heaving a sigh of relief because (with the exception a few congregations like yours) today normally marks the end of “annual meeting season.”   

Now that might not seem like such a big thing to you….but it’s a really big thing to most pastors.

Because, you see, annual meetings make pastors nervous.  

Annual meetings have the reputation for being occasions when even  Minnesota-nice Lutherans don’t always behave like adults.    Annual meetings are often long, drawn out, pointless and conflicted.   A pastor friend once told me he referred to his congregation’s annual meeting as “The Night of the Long Knives.”

So, many pastors think that the best annual meeting is a short one in which nothing happens.   

Twice within the last week I heard pastors extolling the brevity of their annual meetings, with 15 minutes being the new record for the shortest, sweetest annual meeting ever!

But is an annual meeting of a Christian congregation that’s short and sweet, in which nothing basically happens--is that necessarily a good thing?   Is it a sign of faithfulness or fruitfulness as God’s people?

Do we gather for worship, do we come together as church, just to be comforted—never to be unsettled?  Is every conflict that bubbles up within the community of faith a disaster?    Did God the Father send his beloved Son into our world simply to soothe us and lull us to sleep?

What about Jesus when he lived on earth?   Did he always keep things on an even keel?  Or did Jesus evoke disagreement?   Did Jesus call forth questions and challenges?   Did Jesus even go so far as to pick fights—in order to agitate, to shake up his hearers?

…..which brings us to our gospel lesson for this morning.

This is the second half of a “to be continued” gospel reading from Luke chapter 4.   We heard the first half of the story last Sunday.  Jesus as a young adult, returns to his hometown Nazareth and attends worship in the Jewish synagogue.   He reads from the Prophet Isaiah, taking the prophet’s vision as his own, Jesus’ own, mission statement.

Jesus says that proclaiming release to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, and the dawn of the Lord’s year of favor—Jesus says that all of that is his work, his mission, his goal.

And at first that sounds just great!  

But then, ever so subtly, the synagogue crowd starts to turn.    They move from their first reaction—“All spoke well of him and were amazed at [his] gracious words…”—they move from affirming to wondering:  “Is not this Joseph's son?"

And Jesus, reading their faces and discerning their wonderings, Jesus refuses to leave well enough alone.

So Jesus pokes at the folks in Nazareth’s synagogue.  Jesus prods their questions, and then he does something really provocative—he tells them a couple Bible stories from the Old Testament.

And by the time Jesus is finished with all that, the crowd becomes so ticked off, so incensed that they’re ready to haul Jesus out of the church building and drag him to a cliff—not a metaphorical cliff, mind you, not a “fiscal cliff” but a real, PHYSICAL cliff--in order to hurl Jesus down to his death.

Now that’s a church conflict to beat any church conflict I have ever seen!

So what are we to make of this?    Three things:

1.    Let’s not immediately assume that the worshipers in Nazareth’s synagogue were a dysfunctional congregation that needed to learn family systems theory or go through group counseling for anger management—though their response is definitely “over the top.”  Let’s assume, not that they were especially “sick,” but they were human, which means that sin was fully operative there on that Sabbath day when Jesus came to church.

2.   Let’s also not assume that this is just a story about Jesus being a smarty-pants provocateur—someone whose chief mission in life was to get under people’s skins and make them upset.   One of my college roommates was like that.   He was always ready to needle me about something, anything, just to get a rise out of me.   Jesus, though, didn’t show up among us to annoy people.

3.   Instead, let’s assume this:   that Jesus came bearing the full Word of God to the worshipers in Nazareth’s synagogue….and when that full Word of God--a Word that always both accuses and liberates---when the Word has its way with us, we will resist it, we will try to keep it at bay, we will realize we’re under attack and feel the need to lash out at it….before finally that Word finds a home in our hearts and sets us free.

This is what was playing out in Nazareth’s synagogue so long ago:  the Word of God in all its glory, unleashed by him who was the embodied Word of God, proclaimed release to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed, the year of the Lord’s favor dawning upon us.  

“Bring it on!” we say, at least at first….

But when Jesus starts to spell out just for whom this Word has come, then he encounters the deadly pushback from his fellow worshipers in Nazareth.

Because release, recovery and freedom sound great if you and I are the intended recipients…..but what if God has something bigger in mind?

So Jesus tells Bible stories about all the wrong kinds of people also being drawn into the orbit of God’s gracious favor.  

Jesus painfully reminds his hearers that when famine covered the land the Lord’s prophet Elijah went not to the house of a good Jewish mother….but to the hovel of a despised Gentile—a poor widow and her starving son.

And Jesus pointedly reminds his hearers that when Elijah’s successor Elisha healed a leper—in a land filled with deserving Jewish lepers!—it was a hated Gentile leper, the commander of Israel’s Syrian enemies, who was healed of leprosy.

Release, recovery and freedom don’t sound so great when we learn that God’s going to give such gifts to “those kind of people,” too!

And that’s why the crowd stormed out of the synagogue, ready to lynch the preacher Jesus.

….which brings me back to a question I asked earlier:      Do we gather for worship, do we come together as church, just to be comforted—never to be unsettled? 

And because we are regularly unsettled in the church, maybe we need to ask:   are we unsettled about things that matter—especially, things that matter to God?

So here’s an example.    I was just with some folks from one of my favorite congregations in our synod. 

I love these folks because they have a really, really good fight at every annual meeting of their congregation.

And here’s the question that sets them off:  “How can we get behind God’s mission in an even bigger way this year?”    This congregation “fights” about how they can increase their offerings for mission beyond their congregation, how they can do even more than what the church council proposes in the annual budget.

This congregation doesn’t fight about the color of the carpet or the heating bill or whether the pastor is attending enough high school basketball games.    They don’t fight about what someone else did wrong.    They fight about whether they themselves are being faithful to their faithful God.

What a great thing to fight about at an annual church meeting!   Why—it might even be worth investing more than 15 minutes, if we get to talk about things like THAT!

Jesus comforts AND unsettles us always—thank God!

God’s Word is always accusing us in the same breath that it is setting us free.

And God’s people are forever fighting, if the truth be told.  

The only question really is this:  are we fighting about things that matter to God?

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

The Great Agitator

Trinity Lutheran Church, Moorhead
January 20, 2012 (Global Mission Sunday)
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
John 2:1-11

Two weeks ago today I worshiped at Iglesia Luterana Santissima Trinidad (Lutheran Church of the Most Holy Trinity) on the island of Puerto Rico.   It was a big deal, because it was a major holiday—Tres Reyes Day, “Three Kings Day.”

Our Spanish-speaking friends treat the coming of the Magi on January 6^th like a second Christmas—complete with gift-giving, special sweets, and a fiesta where everybody gets just a little carried away.

And during the worship services, three kings actually show up, process down the center aisle, help lead the worship, distribute the gifts of Christ’s Body and Blood….and then—like rock stars!—have their pictures taken with any worshipers who want to pose with them.

That’s because on Puerto Rico and throughout Latin America, these are not your ordinary Three Kings.  

They look nothing like our pale imitation Wise Men here in the Midwest—three young boys or three embarrassed men who got talked into putting on their bathrobes and donning “crowns” that look suspiciously like giveaways from  Burger King.

No, but in Latin America the kings are decked out like royalty in the flesh…with rich, flowing robes:  deep purple, royal blue, scarlet red robes….gaudy, jewel-bestudded crowns, and ZZ-Top-length beards that really make the Tres Reyes look like potentates from half a world away!

Seeing them took my breath away and moved me to tears as I beheld this part of the biblical story unfolding as I had never experienced it before. 

Because as I witnessed these exotic travelers in worship on January 6^th, it dawned on me how during the season of Epiphany, God is forever agitating God’s people, shaking us loose from all our assumptions about who’s in and who’s out….and reminding us that God and God alone decides who “our kind of people” will be.

Left to our own devices we will always circle the wagons and draw the lines between “us” and “them” more sharply, more defensively…..while God is forever flinging wide the doors to let in all the wrong crowd.

God the Great Agitator is always mixing it up and mixing us up, so that God can reveal once again how Jesus Christ, God’s beloved Son, our Savior, is for everybody, that Christmas spells good news of great joy to all people, and that God consistently expands the circle wider and wider than we would normally allow it to be.

The season of Epiphany used to seem like “filler material” to me…..a way to survive the frigid wintry Sundays between Christmas and Ash Wednesday.

But now, later in life Epiphany has become one of my most treasured seasons in the church year, because during the Epiphany season God just keeps sharpening the image of what happened when the Word became flesh.   God simply  continues to surprise us, week by week, during Epiphany…unfolding revelations that all seem to say: “You thought I was this way, but I’m not….I’m more, I’m up to more, and I’m accomplishing more in your presence than you could ever imagine.”

THAT’s what’s going on in the Epiphany season.

First, on the Day of Epiphany, the magi barge into the domestic tranquility of Mary, Joseph and little Jesus….bearing over-the-top gifts of wealth (gold!) and wonder (frankincense!) and foreboding (myrrh, a spice used in burials).

Then, we shift to the Jordan River (in last Sunday’s gospel reading) where a fully-grown Jesus turns up in the last place anyone might expect him….with sinners coming out in droves to be washed clean in the water by John the Baptist….and Jesus joins them, hobnobs with the unworthy, shows himself to be the sinners’ best friend.

And now today, in our gospel lesson from John 2, Jesus and his disciples show up at a wedding of all things.  In the ordinariness of a first-century Jewish marriage feast….the unexpected plenitude of God’s lavish grace overflows—quite literally!—in the form of an abundance of exquisite wine.

God the Great Agitator, Jesus the surprising Disrupter of Business as Usual shines through, comes to the rescue, and reveals that God is up to something huge.

That’s what Epiphany is all about….which is why faithful churches like Trinity view the Epiphany season as “prime time” to step back and look beyond the four walls of this magnificent edifice, in order to behold the global reach of the Good News…..to celebrate all the ways that God is forever redefining “our kind of people” through the life, death and resurrection of God’s beloved Son, Jesus.

And as we do that, taking our cures this morning from the Wedding at Cana story, we will notice at least three things:

First we will notice, and be overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of God’s lavish grace, shed upon the whole world.   Abundance breaks out at Cana’s wedding feast when Jesus offers an over-the-top solution to a simple problem.   The wine has run out early and the guests are about to turn surly, when all at once there’s plenty of wine, too much wine really, perhaps 180 gallons of wine which may have transformed a feast on the verge of petering out prematurely into a party that just might never end.

The Good News of Jesus Christ, spread around the globe over 20 centuries is like that.   God never gives us just enough for here and now.   God always overdoes it, grace so overflowing like the old Sherwin Williams paint logo—that it literally “covers the earth.”  

This past November, traveling with a group of 19 from our synod in India, I heard again why the story of Jesus Christ is so captivating to the Dalits, the untouchables in India who make up 95% of the Lutherans of India.  In the dominant faith story told in India, you see, the Dalits don’t even register—they have no place in their own national faith story.   But the Good News of Jesus has changed all that, washing over them abundantly with the astonishing message that in Christ, you have a place in the story from the very beginning and all the way through to the final ending.

Second, taking the Wedding at Cana story as our cue, we will taste the richness of this wine.   John’s gospel reveals the confusion of the wedding steward—you usually start the celebration with the good wine (when everyone ‘s taste buds are wide awake) and then you taper off, as the guests get a little sloshed, bringing out the rot-gut later when no one will notice.  

But not when Jesus is the wine steward!   No:  “You have saved the good wine until now”—in this end of all ages, the Good Stuff shows up, the Word made flesh for the life of the world.

Celebrating the global span of the Good News of Jesus Christ we can’t help but taste the richness of the global church.   I love our congregations here in Minnesota, the land of God’s frozen chosen; this is and always will be my spiritual home.  

But I also love visiting our exotic, far-flung cousins in the Body of Christ, as I’ve done over the past year...from the soaring arches of Durham Cathedral with its magnificent organ and choirs….to the toe-tapping Dixieland jazz of New Orleans….to the fireworks and flamenco dancers of Nicaraguan rural churches….to the haunting, soulful Telegu chanting of the psalms in our companion synod, the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church of southern India.   This is rich, rich wine!

Third, as we drink the abundant rich wine of the gospel, we realize afresh how God is making all things new, all across the globe.  

Here in John 2 those six stone water jars each hold 20 to 30 gallons of water for the old purification rituals of traditional Judaism.  But then Jesus comes along and retrofits these huge water jars.  Without even asking permission Jesus fills these old jars with fresh, exhilarating wine—the wine of God’s Kingdom. 

So also, celebrating the global church, we behold the every-day-newness of God’s grace.   God is still reclaiming tired old stone jars and retrofitting them for God’s new creation in Jesus Christ.   Jesus, and the Jesus way of life, you see, is infinitely “translate-able” into every fresh context, every dawning era.  

So Indian Christianity looks both Christian and Indian, and Latin American faith has a Gospel tune with a salsa beat, and Tanzanian believers revere Jesus while depicting him as a very brown Tanzanian.   And rather than degrading the gospel, such “translation” enhances, adds value to the Good News for us and for all people.

Please join me in prayer:   “Stir us up, O God.  Agitate us with a fresh revelation of your all-encompassing mercy in Jesus Christ.   Open our eyes to behold the abundance, the richness and the newness of your divine life, poured out for the sake of the whole world.   In Jesus’ name.  Amen.”