Picking a Fight With Death

Trinity Lutheran Church, Moorhead, MN

Lent 5/April 2, 2017/John 11:1-45

Installation of Pr. Kristina Waters

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

In this gospel lesson we come across two of the Bible’s most precious gems.

One of these gems is verse 25, where Jesus declares:  “I am the resurrection and the life…”

The other comes ten verses later:  “Jesus began to weep” or as an older translation put it: “Jesus wept”—the shortest verse in the Bible.

The first of these two verses cheers us when we mourn:  “I am the resurrection and the life.”  

The second of these gems is cheers squirrelly confirmation students seeking an easy short Bible verse to memorize.  John 11:35 is like the free square in the center of the Scrabble board:  “Jesus wept.”  Check!

All kidding aside, these two verses encapsulate this entire 11^th chapter of St John’s Gospel.  

Because one of the things everyone needs to know about Jesus is that he wept.  

Jesus was and is truly human, really one of us.  

Jesus wasn’t protected from life’s hard edges.  He didn’t get a “free pass” from the dregs of our existence.

“Jesus wept.”   John doesn’t pinpoint precisely why Jesus wept.   Was it on account of his deep affection for Lazarus and his sisters?  Did he regret not getting to Bethany sooner, before Lazarus died?  Or did Jesus weep because everyone else was weeping?  Or did Lazarus’s death remind Jesus of his own impending death.

“Jesus wept.”   Let those two words sink in:  we have a Savior whose tear ducts are fully functional.

“Jesus wept” even as we have wept and we shall weep again….because losing loved ones is awful, because death is—literally!-- the pits.

“Jesus wept,” sums up one key thread of this story.   God’s Word in human flesh knew grief intimately. 

But these were not tears of despair.  Verse 33 mentons that 

“when Jesus saw [Mary] weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.”  

“Greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” –that phrase depicts Jesus shuddering, being shaken to the core, angry even at the horrible hold death has on us!

Jesus groans as he approaches Lazarus’s grave, because he knows in his bones that this just isn’t right—this state of affairs shall not stand!

In Jesus’ tears there’s an undercurrent of righteous anger—indeed a defiance of death stirring deep within Jesus.  

Jesus travels to Bethany to pick a fight with death—to announce that death is about to be up-ended.

Which leads us to the other gem in this lesson:  “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Jesus speaks these words in response to Martha who at first chided Jesus for dilly-dallying and then—in the same breath--voiced her hope that Lazarus would rise again on the Last Day, the Resurrection Day….

….but Jesus cut her off with one of the most astonishing promises in the Gospels:  “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Here, Jesus snatches the hope of a future resurrection and ushers it right into the present moment boldly announcing that in him the resurrection is already walking around on two feet.  Life itself is pushing its way through the mourners wailing at Lazarus’s tomb. 

Jesus goes beyond promising resurrection and life in God’s good time.

He insists that he, Jesus is the resurrection and the life, right here, right now.

And that’s why Jesus didn’t scurry off to Bethany the moment he heard of Lazarus’s mortal illness.   Jesus waited  so that Lazarus could get “good and dead,” four days in the grave, all traces of his spirit having vanished from the scene….

Jesus needed Lazarus to be really dead so that folks would witness God’s power not just to prevent death but to undo death.

Jesus arrives in Bethany, seemingly too late, with the stench of decay already in the air.  He waits for just the right moment, when all seems utterly lost, in order to take charge of the situation.

For in Jesus the Resurrection and the Life has arrived to pick a fight with Death—and that’s a fight that Death is surely going to lose.

As if all that were not enough, Jesus commandeers those around him to help him finish this astonishing miracle.

Isn’t it fascinating that instead of crawling into the tomb and single-handedly dragging Lazarus out—Jesus calls to Lazarus, Jesus issues an executive order fully confident that dead Lazarus will hear it and obey.

And then when Lazarus shuffles to the door of his tomb, Jesus hustles the whole community into action:  “Unbind him, and let him go.”   Come on, folks--turn Lazarus loose!

Let’s call this “Round One” in a three-round battle that our Lord waged with Death.  

Virtually every detail in our gospel lesion foreshadows another drama, soon to play out in Jerusalem.

The late great preacher Fred Craddock observes, “The passion of Jesus bleeds through the surface of [this] story…. Jesus is experiencing something like a Gethsemane, for he knows that calling Lazarus out of the tomb means that he must enter it.”[1] 

When Jesus was arrested, tried, executed and buried he dealt Death a knockout punch.   Let’s call that “Round Two” in our Lord’s fight-to-the finish with Death.   As we shall celebrate in two weeks, the Resurrection and the Life won that round—for you and me and all people.

But there’s even more:  the story of Lazarus, along with the passion of our Lord Jesus….these core narratives of faith “bleed through” into our own lives of following Jesus today.

We weep—as Jesus wept—because death still robs us so cruelly, so brazenly.

We weep though, as persons who feel it in our bones that this sad state of affairs shall not stand.  

Our Risen Lord Jesus is seeing to that!   Whatever sort of “tomb” we may be stuck in—Jesus is always calling us out of the darkness into the light..

Let’s call this “Round Three” in the battle between death and the Resurrection and the Life.

Jesus is still catching us up in this fight to the finish with death.   

Jesus “calls us out”—out of whatever tomb holds us captive.

And—lo and behold—Jesus even enlists us, to be part of the action, calling out others….setting free those whom Jesus places in our paths, just as Jesus enlisted Lazarus’s neighbors to unwrap the bands of grave-cloths, and turn him loose.

This is, in fact, the most critical thing that marks us…not just as a happy club to belong to, but as the community of Christ, who is the Resurrection and the Life, even now, here today.

Pastor Kristina, I can imagine no better watchword for you, as today you formally assume your ministry as Pastor for Community.

May you, may all of us, never forget that this community lives every day between “Jesus wept” and Jesus’ promise: “I am the Resurrection and the Life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” 

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

---

[1] Fred Craddock, “A Twofold Death and Resurrection,” The Christian Century, March 21-28, 1999.

Jesus: The Blessed Disrupter

Lent 4/Year A/March 26 & 29, 2017

John 9:1-41

Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd, Moorhead

Installation of Pastor Taylor and Deacon Julie Wilson

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

I have a multiple choice question for you this morning/evening:  Which of the following three statements do you think comes closest to the truth?

A.     Having Jesus come into your life makes everything better.

B.     Having Jesus come into your life disrupts everything.

C.     Both A. and B.

How do you suppose this blind man here in John 9 might have responded?

At first blush I think he’d probably have answered:  A!   When this guy had his own “Life at the Crossroads” encounter with Jesus, everything got better!

He’d been blind from birth after all!  Can you imagine what that was like: living your whole life in darkness?  Never seeing a sunrise, never beholding the faces of those around you, never gazing dumbstruck into a starry night sky?

But then one day—out of the clear blue—this blind man crossed paths with Jesus who healed him, just like that.

What a rush that must have been!  Seeing clearly for the first time since he was born.   I’d call that a very good day—to be blind from birth and then—all of a sudden, able to behold everything--whiter whites, brighter brights, the whole amazing multi-colored universe suddenly coming alive and in focus! 

Amazing!  Astounding!   Crossing paths with Jesus that day made everything better for this man, right?

Except that’s not exactly how this story in John 9 actually unfolds—not at all!

To be sure, the light did come on for this blind man.  His useless eyes were finally working the way they were meant to!

It should have been “party time” for him and his family and his neighbors and his faith community.  Pull out all the stops—“I once was blind, but now I see!”   Praise the Lord!

But that’s not how the story actually plays out here.   The wonderful thing that happened to this man also introduced all sorts of complexity into his life.  

He, his family and his friends got all tied up in knots—trying to deal with a bunch of “hot potato” questions.  

·        So who exactly was behind this healing—was it God or the devil?  

·        And since this healing had happened on the Sabbath Day, the day of rest—had the healer violated God’s “don’t work on the Sabbath” commandment?  

·        And what’s more, did this healer have some ulterior motive in mind?  Was it truly a simple healing?  Or was it some sort of political statement?

Here, when folks should have been turning cartwheels in the streets, all these questions came bubbling up.

And before you knew it the whole neighborhood was in a hubbub.  Just like that the blind man’s business became everyone’s business.   Everybody got their undies in a bunch!

What he should have remembered as the day he got his eyes back—became, for this man, the day when he was kicked out of his faith community—simply because he told the truth, several times, about how his sightless eyes had been restored.

When Jesus comes into your life does everything get better, or is everything disrupted?   By the end of this story, the blind man surely would have answered YES.  

Jesus simultaneously makes everything better AND, in the process, Jesus also disrupts everything!

At the climax of this story, Jesus (who, curiously, was off-stage during all the hubbub)….Jesus finds the man whom he had healed.   In fact it’s the first time the formerly blind man actually sees Jesus in this story.

Having revealed himself to the man, Jesus offers this compelling word of interpretation:  "I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind."

Sounds as though even Jesus would answer our multiple-choice question with answer C.  

Jesus “confesses” (if you will) that when his path crosses our path, when we encounter Jesus at the Crossroads of our lives--everything does get better, but only because everything we thought we could count on is first disrupted.

And thank God for that!

Because, my friends, there are all sorts of things in our lives that need disrupting so that our eyes might finally see things clearly.

Jesus comes along and disrupts everything we thought we knew about God.   We’re born believing that God isn’t happy with us and we somehow need to get ourselves on God’s good side.  

But Jesus comes along and opens our eyes to see that before we even think about taking a single step toward God, God has already come running toward us, like the Father of the Prodigal Son--eagerly, joyfully scooping us up in his strong, loving, forgiving arms.

Jesus encounters us in a way that disrupts everything we thought was true about ourselves.   On our own, we imagine that “we’ve got this”—that we can pull our own strings, fashion our own lives, truly make something of ourselves.

But Jesus opens our eyes to see that on our own we can’t really do much of anything…and that’s OK because God’s the One who’s got our backs--from the moment we take our first breath.  In other words:  all we are and all we have comes to us, every moment of every day, as a sheer undeserved gift from God.

Jesus crosses our path and disrupts everything we thought was true about our neighbors.  We start out in life with the sneaking suspicion that in this dog-eat-dog world no one “out there” can be trusted.

But Jesus opens our blind eyes, helping us see that because God has created us all and Jesus has died for us all, we are brothers and sisters—beloved children of an unfailingly faithful Parent.

Jesus meets us and disrupts everything we thought was true even about the earth itself.  We tend to think that the world is our oyster, a treasure trove of resources for us to do with just as we please.

But Jesus opens our blind eyes to behold how this good earth has been daringly entrusted to us…so that we might tend, keep and care for it not just for ourselves, but for the sake of all our fellow creatures—past, present and future.

When you and I cross paths with Jesus…we encounter Someone who truly does make everything better…but only after first disrupting our “me, myself and I” lives….

….which means that the adventure of faith is more—much more!--than we bargained for:  more joyous, yes, but also more unsettling and challenging to everything we thought was true.

So, my dear friends, whenever Jesus crosses your path—hang on to your hats!   And whatever you do, stay close, tightly connected with all the others who are with you in this adventure of living, breathing faith.

For God has given you a host of companions for this journey—persons like the Wilsons—Pastor Taylor and Deacon Julie—whom we formally welcome this morning/evening.   They—along with your wonderful church staff and all your other Good Shepherd friends—all of them are also God’s gifts to you, here to help you make sense of this amazing Lord Jesus Christ who constantly disrupts our lives in order to open our eyes to see everything the way it truly is.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Indiscriminate Mercy

Epiphany 7/February 19, 2017

Faith, Badger; Bethel, Greenbush; First, Middle River

Matthew 5:38-48

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

If you ever visit the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, you may see a very old book published in 1820 that’s entitled:   The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth Extracted Textually from the Gospels in Greek, Latin, French & English.

This book is also called the Jefferson Bible, because its author was Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence and served as this country’s third president.

Jefferson, who was a brilliant man, was curious about everything in the world, including  religion and the Bible.

The Jefferson Bible was a project Jefferson worked on for many of his retirement years, his main tools being a sharp razor and a bottle of glue….because what Thomas Jefferson did was to edit out all the portions of the New Testament that he found unhelpful and not worthy of believing.  

In short, what Jefferson did was to cut out all references to Jesus’ miracles, his divinity and his resurrection.  What Jefferson left in his Bible were simply the sublime teachings and ethics of Jesus—nothing more.

Now, when we hear about this we’re probably shocked.  Most of us would never even dream of putting together our own cut-and-paste Bibles.

And yet, with much more subtlety, we and most other Bible-readers find ways to pay attention to some portions of the Bible while passing over other portions.

And this gospel lesson at the conclusion of Matthew chapter five is a striking case in point.

There are some deeply disturbing things in this passage.  Jesus utters words we simply cannot swallow….and have no intention of actually putting into practice.

We hear what Jesus commands here, and our first inclination is to say, “Nope.  That’ll never do!”

·      If an evildoer messes with us or with those we love, we will resist that evildoer, quickly claiming our right to self-defense.

·      If someone sues us we will not knuckle under, but we’ll “lawyer up” so that we can meet our opponent in court.

·      We do not drop a dollar in every outstretched hand of every beggar we happen to meet.

·      If enemies bedevil us, we will not love them and our first inclination will not be to pray for them—except perhaps to pray that they’ll stop harassing us.

·      And no, most definitely not, we will not be perfect…because, as everyone knows no one but God is perfect!

We may not go after this passage with a razor in one hand and a bottle of glue in the other, but by what we actually do or fail to do, we will treat most of these verses as “dead letters”—pie in the sky stuff that Jesus couldn’t possible expect anyone on earth to take seriously.

And once we’ve cleared away the parts of this text that Jesus can’t possibly expect us to take seriously, there’s not much else left here except…..except what Jesus says about our Father in heaven, who “makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

There, right there—did you feel it?--a little breath of fresh air from heaven comes wafting our way.   Smack dab in the middle of all these impossible commands from our Lord, we catch a fleeting vision not of ourselves down here grubbing away in this dog-eat-dog world—but rather a vision of God and God’s own wild, profligate, unmeasured grace and mercy.

Finally something we can say “Yes” to!   Mired in this tired old deeply flawed world, we look up and remember that there is a God who is indiscriminately merciful, beaming down sunshine on both friends and foes, showering down rain on the deserving and the undeserving alike.

We want such a One to be our Father in heaven.  

We want to be children of someone who displays such wide mercy.

We’d love to be “chips off the old block”—daughters and sons of such a lavishly loving God.  

There’s just one problem, though.   This vision of God’s overflowing, prodigal grace--evidenced in both the sunshine and the rain—this refreshing vision is completely enmeshed with all the other words of Jesus here that seem so out of kilter.  

With even the sharpest razor, we cannot separate these two parts of this passage.

“Love your enemies,” says Jesus, “and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”

How can we possibly wrap our arms around this whole passage—embracing both the ridiculous commands and the vision of our Father’s indiscriminate mercy?

·      First, we might remember how much Jesus—throughout the Sermon on the Mount—loves hyperbolic speech (phrases like:  “If your right eye offends you, pluck it out!”)    Jesus is always pushing the envelope to wake us up, shake us up and re-set how we look at everything.   Maybe that’s what’s going on with all these impossible demands.  Jesus’s aim may not be simply to lay on us an impossible “to do” list.   Rather, Jesus may be getting us off the dime, and opening us up to imagine what life in God’s world was always meant to be. 

·      Second, we can entertain the possibility that by sharpening God’s will for us here, Jesus is making us realize how far this fallen, rebellious, sin-laden world still is from God’s kingdom as we long for it to be.   We human beings go to great length to resist evildoers, litigate our grudges, bypass beggars, oppose enemies—but how’s that working out for us?  How’s this world doing?  

·      Third, and really most critically, this text opens our eyes to all the ways that Jesus doesn’t just deliver this sermon—but in the end, how he finally lives this sermon to the max:   refusing to resist his false accusers, willingly walking that extra mile to the Place of the Skull,  expending his dying breath in prayer for his enemies, and finally dying at the hands of evildoers—the very evildoers—including you and me!—for whom he gave his life.

As all this begins to dawn on us once again, God moves us closer to God’s great vision of a new creation utterly at peace, a new creation in which God will woo and wheedle us to grow up fully into the likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ who was crucified for us and vindicated by God when he raised him from the dead.

That’s what the final verse here—the “be ye perfect” part of this text—is all about.  

Jesus doesn’t hold up a sterile, flawless version of perfection here, as much as he points us toward God who is always leading us into the fullness of his final future in Jesus Christ.

A better translation of verse 48 comes from Bible commentator Frederick Dale Bruner:   “So then, you folks are going to be a perfectly mature people, just as your heavenly Father is perfectly mature.”  (Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew, A Commentary:  The Christbook, Matthew 1-12, Eerdmans, copyright 2004, p. 266)

This, you see, is God’s most astonishing work in us.  

Jesus our Crucified and Risen Lord, rolls up his sleeves, and takes us on:   giving us, and fashioning in us, all that he commands!

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

A Force To Be Reckoned With

Epiphany 5/Year A/February 5, 2017

North Beltrami Lutheran Parish

Ordination and Installation of Pr. Anne Meredith

Matthew 5:13-20

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

       

“You are the salt of the earth.”

Notice, please, three things about this remarkable statement that comes to our ears from the lips of our Lord.

First, Jesus says: “You are…”  You are…the salt of the earth.

       

Jesus could have said: “Get serious—why don’t you?—and become the salt of the earth….or:  follow these ten easy steps and make yourselves the salt of the earth.”

       

But Jesus didn’t launch us into a self-improvement program here. Jesus didn’t establish a 501(c)3 non-profit organization called the Salt-of-the-Earth Transformational Leadership Institute.

       

No.  Jesus just uttered a promise.  He simply announced: “You are the salt of the earth.”   This is the way things already are…the way that things shall most certainly be.

       

Spoken by the One who existed before the first day of creation, who in the fullness of time went to the Cross and the Grave—the One who now  has death behind him…these words define a fact we can count on: “You are the salt of the earth”—end of story…

…because this is God’s business.  This is who God has made you to be…what God calls you to embody. You are salt—so be who you are.

Second, Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth.”

You are not the honey of the earth, sent to sugar-coat all of life’s harsh realities.

       

Nor are you the pablum of the earth…bland, easy-to-digest cereal for babies and older folks with weak stomachs.

You are not the WD-40 of the earth, sent to lubricate and smooth over all life’s hard edges.

       

You are not the duct tape of the earth, desperately trying to hold the world together.

       

No. You are salt.   Which, is to say: you are a force to be reckoned with.

Salt, after all, is a biting, bracing, reactive substance.   And we northern Minnesotans know all about that!  We have two seasons every year:  the season of road salt…closely followed by the season of road repair.   The second season focuses on fixing up all the damage done in the first season by the road-salt we can’t live without every winter.    (I am exaggerating only a little!)

Salt, paradoxically is either life-giving or life-taking, depending on how much of it we take in.  Too little salt or too much salt and we are dead.   And yet the right amount of salt helps keep us alive.

       

Salt is deceptively powerful.  Salt makes chemical reactions happen. Salt preserves food.  Salt brings zip and zest to our eating. Salt makes food tangier, tastier.

When Jesus declares us to be the salt of the earth, he’s tipping us off that we’re going to make a difference in the world—whether or not we even realize it.

       

You are the salt of the earth, says Jesus.   Our Lord wills us to be catalysts for divine change, agents of God’s promised future.  When we’re around, fully alive, stuff happens.  We salty ones help preserve this world.  God keeps the world going for the sake of the Promise God sends us to share and live out.

       

How about that?!?   We’re here to make everything more interesting, engaging, and fascinating. Our mission is to add zip and zest, to make tasty and tangy a world that can seem so bland, tedious and tasteless. We cause the world to sparkle with the spice of  God’s Great News in Jesus Christ. 

3.  Third, Jesus says: “You are the salt of the earth.”

       

Salt does its thing only as it gets dissolved in the broth, mixed in with the stew, sprinkled on the pot roast.  Salt has to get shaken out, sprinkled, scattered.  

Salt loses itself in whatever dish it’s stirred into.   When that happens, folks don’t say” “That sure is tasty salt.”   No. Instead they say things like: “My, this is a scrumptious roast. Goodness, this is a savory hotdish. Heavens to Betsy, this is a delectable stew. My compliments to the Chef!”

Salt is meant to get lost and live on only in connection with whatever it is salting….

       

…which is to say: salt is of use only as it loses itself.  Salt that stays hermetically sealed in a salt-cellar isn’t good for much. It may stay high and dry and “pure”…but it’ll never accomplish anything.  It will be useless—worthless.

And here’s what’s perhaps most amazing:   it doesn’t take much salt  to do the trick. A teaspoon of salt does wonders in a whole pot of soup. A pinch of salt transforms the flavor of a whole lump of bread-dough.

       

You, God’s precious salty people in Christ, as you are “stirred into the world” have an effect on that world that’s all out of proportion to your numbers in the world. Salt is like that. Like those ancient Brylcream commercials, “a little dab’ll do ya!”

Does the bigness of the universe and the hugeness of its problems overwhelm you?  Do you lament the fact that you’re just one person—“and what difference can one person make?”

       

Be of good cheer! You are salt and salt is most effective in small quantities. Just a pinch, just a bit of salt makes all the difference in the world. God intends to use you to change, to preserve, to make more tasty the little corner of creation where God has planted you.

       

Christian people who are aloof, holed up in their “mighty fortress” church buildings, pursuing their “purity projects,” and never actually venturing forth into God’s world aren’t good for much of anything. They may appear to be salt…but such “salt” really isn’t worth much. It’s like salt that somehow has lost its saltiness and is good only for being discarded.

       

You are the salt of the earth, Jesus declares to us.

       

Your purpose is to spend yourself, following in the footsteps of our Lord Jesus Christ who expended himself on the Cross—to destroy sin, to take the teeth out of death, and to refashion the world to be fresh and new and “tasty” once again.

       

Jesus saved the world only as he lost himself, poured himself out into the world, for the sake of the world.   Jesus came to be dissolved into his calling to seek and save the lost.

       

This same salty Jesus now declares to us: “You are the salt of the earth.” You’re worth your weight in salt when you get close to others…especially to bland, tedious, tasteless, unsavory folks. You make them tasty by seasoning them with the Good News of Jesus Christ…for you are the salt of the earth.

       

On our better days, on our best days, we know that we who are Christ’s Body “live, move and have our being” for the sake of the world around us.  Or, as one of my former pastors liked to say: “the church is the only organization that exists primarily for those who aren’t its members.”

So there you have it:   You are….the salt….of the earth.

That has been true for you, Anne since the day of your baptism.  It’s been true for you for as long as you followed Jesus.

But this morning, as you are ordained to the ministry of Word and Sacrament and installed to serve this parish, this promise comes at you with new vigor and possibilities.

You are going to be a “salty” pastor….just because God says so.  As you look back over your life, please remember that you didn’t get yourself into this business.  God has been coming after you, hot and heavy, wooing and wheedling you into this calling, teasing out the pastor in you.

So hunker down behind God’s call, especially when things get tough.  Take on Martin Luther’s heartfelt confession that without God’s calling to you you’d make a hash of everything you try to do!

You are a salty pastor, Anne, presented now with all sorts of new ways to be a catalyst in God’s service, a reactive agent of God’s gentle but powerful rule over all things.

Dear people of Zion and Our Savior’s, please know that God has called Pastor Anne not to let sleeping dogs lie but to be salt, a force to contend with, a reactive agent of God’s barrier-breaking, sin-forgiving, future- opening work.   God has called Anne to be the salty pastor of a salty people!

Finally, Anne, being the salt God declares you to be means you will be expended—not in some crass, wasteful way--but in a Christ-like, cross-shaped redemptive way, always for the sake of your neighbors in this parish and its mission field.  

God has plans for you.  God means to do some great things through you and through this faith community, as you get close to folks and as you are dissolved in daring witness, loving care and costly service.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Broken, Leaky and Blessed

Installation of Pr. Sheila Michaels, Lutheran Campus Pastor

White Earth Tribal and Community College

January 29, 2017--Epiphany 4/Year A

St Columba’s Episcopal Church, White Earth, MN

Matthew 5:1-12

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

So let me begin this afternoon with a confession.  For most of my 35+ years of pastoral ministry I avoided preaching on this beloved passage that marks the beginning of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Although I’ve always loved reading the Beatitudes—it’s preaching on them that has been a stretch.

And with good reason!

These verses, after all, are already part of a sermon delivered by Jesus himself.   Who am I to create a sermon based on a sermon by Jesus?   What could I possibly add to or clarify in what Jesus has already uttered?

How could a Minnesota farm-boy possibly dare to preach a sermon based on a sermon by Jesus?   That’s just ridiculous!

What’s more, the Beatitudes have always seemed to be calling us to some kind of moral crusade or a course of self-improvement.  

Too often we hear these verses and imagine them calling us to transform our lives.   We have the sense that Jesus is saying to us:  “Don’t just sit there:  do something!”   Be more humble, practice mercy, make peace…and much more..   

And for Protestant Christians that is always dangerous place to be—whenever the good news of Jesus comes off like good advice from Jesus.

So for most of the time since 1981 when I was ordained I simply “ducked” whenever this gospel lesson popped up in the lectionary…..until two preachers[1] wiser than me opened my eyes to what’s going on here in the first twelve verses of Matthew 5.

One of these wise preachers suggested that the Beatitudes aren’t so much a strategy for moral improvement as they are Jesus’ own “I Have a Dream” speech.

The Beatitudes are Jesus’ “I Have a Dream” speech.  Ponder that for a moment—perhaps with Martin Luther King’s soaring speech in the back of your mind.

The Beatitudes are not about self-improvement or “making this a better world” as much as they are a chance to hear from Jesus, very early in his ministry, a vision of how God sees the world and all of us—both now and in God’s future.

The Beatitudes are framed, not as demands, but as promises throughout, promises of what is and what shall be, in the tender compassion of our God.

What does Jesus see as he looks out over the crowd?     

Jesus sees a graced, gifted, blessed life where others see only pain, heartache, deficit and loss.   

Jesus sees poor souls seemingly bereft of riches….

Jesus envisions sorrowful mourners, humble nobodies, hungry hearts….

Jesus looks at the profoundly sincere, the makers-of-peace, the persecuted….

…and all around them Jesus bestows, Jesus promises a circle of God’s blessing.  

Those whom this dying world ignores, bypasses, even curses—all of them are blessed by God, blessed to be blessings.

And this isn’t something we need to do anything about.

This is something that Jesus’ hearers, including you and me--this is simply who we ARE in the mercy of God.

“I have a dream,” Dr. King announced….and then in soaring rhetoric that still captures our hearts he shared a vision not of what he hoped might happen if everybody finally got their acts together….but rather, he shared a vision of what God was already up to, what God was surely bringing about:  a future in which all God’s children would sing—with one voice—“Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last.”

That, or something very much like it, is what Jesus was doing when he sat down on a mountainside and delivered this sermon.   Not a strategy for moral action, but a panoramic vista on the future that God in Christ is bringing into our lives and our world, even now.

That’s the first fresh thing I learned about the Beatitudes a while back…and the second new insight I received came from a preacher who said this:  in the Beatitudes, Jesus intentionally focuses on all the “breakage” in our lives.

Not just here in these twelve verses, but throughout the Bible, God is always dealing with “breakage.”  

It is, in fact, second nature for God to take the breakage in our lives and transform it into blessing.  What else should we expect, after all, from the One who took the breakage of the Cross and transformed it into the blessing of Easter?

This is, I think, a profound word for you, Pastor Sheila, as you are installed as Lutheran campus pastor for the White Earth Tribal and Community College.

You are already a key bridge-builder and healer in this unique community of learners who bring all the joys and gifts, along with all the challenges and heartaches of young people today.  

Today we publicly name you as pastor within this college, remembering that pastors are instruments through whom God gets close to us, close especially to all the breakage in our lives because of what Martin Luther called sin, death and the power of the devil.

Pastors are persons called to see and not ignore all the “breakage” in our lives.  

Pastors, in the name of the crucified and risen Christ, pronounce God’s surprising, undeserved blessing upon us, precisely in our brokenness.

So, when all our sources of security are broken open, we realize how “poor in spirit” we truly are.

When all our hope for heaven on earth is broken open, we become people who can only “hunger and thirst for [God’s] righteousness”

As we name the hope that is in us—a hope that runs right up against the grain in this world—we’re broken open in the act of suffering, being persecuted for being out of line with the world.

Each of these beatitudes begins with some experience of brokenness….a brokenness that opens us up to God who delights in filling that brokenness with blessing.

When we’re most keenly aware of being broken, bereft, at the end of our rope—like those whom Jesus addressed in his Sermon on the Mount--here is what God in Jesus 

Christ says to us: 

You are blessed.  

You are the apple of God’s eye.  

You are Jesus’ joy and delight.  

You will not be disappointed.  

In God’s good time—in the future that God alone holds in the palm of his hands—in that future your future is disclosed, for the sake of God’s beloved Son, Jesus Christ.

It would be so wonderful if blessings came in a less painful way.  We wish God simply doled out blessings the way Ed McMahon used to pull up to some unsuspecting soul’s house, scrambling out of the Publishers Clearing House Sweepstakes prize van, with an over-sized check for a million dollars.

But in God’s Kingdom, it doesn’t work that way.   In God’s Kingdom we are broken open, so that God has space to redeem and restore and bless.   Blessing enters in most readily, clearly and unmistakably wherever there is “breakage” that opens up room for blessing, thus making everything and everyone new, in Jesus Christ.

But even that is not the end of the matter.  

The same preacher who taught me about “breakage” in our lives went on to say that God’s blessings are always “leaky.”    

God never blesses any of us in such a way that we just hang onto that blessing and hold it in, purely for ourselves. 

No, blessings by their very nature tend to “leak”—to leak out of our hands, into the hands of other broken ones, all around us….

…and in fact, that’s exactly why God put us here:  to leak God’s blessings to us so that others might hear Jesus’ own “I Have a Dream” speech…and in that way, be blessed forever.

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

---

[1] I think the first of them was David Lose, and I know the second of them was Martha Stortz who spoke to the ELCA Conference of Bishops some years ago.

Go!

Ordination Sermon for Kent Krumwiede

January 21, 2017 at Trinity Lutheran Church, Truman, MN

Matthew 28:16-20

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

These verses from Matthew 28 are like a pair of old shoes for you, Kent.   As you told me, this passage has been “visiting” you at key junctures in your life….hovering over your own Baptism….on your lips as the script for a worship skit you were in as a Sunday Schooler…and, almost inevitably, on your confirmation day, your Bible verse was this one, the Great Commission.

The more these verse have “visited” you, the stronger your own sense of call has grown, and so it makes perfect sense that today as your life comes full circle, once again, you are under the banner of the Great Commission.  

But this is about so much more than good memories regarding all the ways God has been getting at you over the decades….wooing and wheedling and working on you to become a pastor in the church.

You will always “look back” when you consider Matthew 28, but in these next moments I invite you also to look forward, to the many years of pastoral ministry that await.   This text is a rich, rich tool-kit for ministry, and you will never exhaust its treasures. 

Let me name five of these treasures.

First there is the treasure of honesty humility in this text.

“Humility” might not be the first word we associate with the Great Commission.  Some have been uncomfortable with the triumphalistic ring about the whole notion of making disciples of all nations.

It does fire the imagination—to envision Word of Christ encompassing the globe.   Reminds me of the old Lutheran Hour Rallies I attended as a kid growing up over by Amboy.  The venerable Oswald C.J. Hoffmann would preach a fiery sermon, but only after the “parade of nations”—local folks, arrayed in clothing reflective of all corners of the globe, filing into the arena, all singing:  “Jesus, shall reign where ‘ere the sun, does its successive journeys run.”   Hard not to get a shiver up your spine—when you sing bold words like those!

And yet there is a tone of sober realism at the beginning of this passage, because it says that the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them (Matthew 28:16).    Eleven disciples—that doesn’t sound right---weren’t there supposed to be twelve?  But there was a dropout, who abandoned Jesus and skipped out on the apostolic adventure, the Betrayer Judas.

So the eleven remaining disciples arrive at the mountain, and the Risen Jesus is there, and they worshipped him—but some doubted.    Isn’t that stunning:  the glorious Risen Christ right before their eyes, but some still doubted?

The Great Commission starts with honest humility:   a realistic reminder that ministry in the name of the Risen Christ always involves working with dropouts and doubters.   It was precisely for such folks, people like you and me, that Jesus came into the world---to call us dropouts and doubters to follow him.  

May such honest humility always be your starting point in ministry, Kent.    You will do your best work, pray like crazy, preach your heart out….and some will not buy it and others will have doubts.   But why should any of us pastors be exempt from challenges that even Jesus faced?

The second treasure in this text is the solid grounding of our ministry, based solely on the saving work of Jesus Christ.    The grounding of our ministry—the only reason we even attempt this audacious work—is that the Risen Jesus has death behind him and now sits at the control panel of the cosmos:    “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”

Again, what an audacious claim!   On Good Friday, at the cross, Jesus seemed utterly powerless.   But in the wild unpredictable way that God does business with us—making power perfect in weakness!—the Biggest Loser turned out to be the true Master of the Universe, God’s universe!

Kent, you didn’t get yourself into this business.  God called you, and God in Christ will continue to call you.   Some days—perhaps most days—that may be the only thing that keeps you going as a pastor.   As we shall shortly hear in the rite of ordination:   Be of good courage, for God has called you, and your labor in the Lord Is not in vain!

The third treasure in this text is that tiny word:  GO.    Pastors are persons on the go; they reflect a “going” God,;  they serve a church that is on the move.

“Go, therefore….”the Risen Christ commands his followers.  “Go!”   We never outgrow our need to hear that tiny word, because the longer we live in this world, the easier it is to get settled and comfortable and, frankly, immobile.

The church of our youth, Kent, was a church that emphasized “coming” more than “going.”   Come to our church where you’ll come to know God.  We’ll even unlock our doors every Sunday and at other times, precisely so that persons can come to God, present themselves before their Creator.

The church of today and tomorrow, is increasingly a church about “going.”   And that isn’t some fancy new fad.  It is rather about taking Jesus at his word when he commanded his disciples:  “Go, therefore…”  

A going church is more about people than place, more about moving than settling in.   A church that hears Jesus’ “Go!” clearly will be a movement more than an organization.   We take our cues from a peripatetic Savior who hardly ever sat still, but was always seeking, searching out sinners, setting them free.

Pastoral ministry that reflects Jesus’ own ministry is about such going, seeking, searching finding and liberating sinners.   It is about mobilizing an all-too-often immobile community, just because Jesus told us to “GO!”   Get out there.   There’s a whole world dying to hear what God has to say, and pastors provide the vocal cords to make that happen and the hands to raise up a whole community of Good News speakers.

So we go….and we move….but this is anything but mindless activity on our part.   Jesus’ Great Commission zeroes in on specific, potent ways of continuing Christ’s work on earth.    So hot on the heels of Jesus’ command to go comes the fourth treasure in this text, the sharp focus for ministry that flows forth from making disciples…baptizing…and teaching.

The momentum Jesus produces when he commands his people to Go, is purposeful.   There’s an agenda here.   Disciples who themselves are still trying to get the knack of following Jesus are empowered to start making others into followers of Jesus.     The path begins in the water and Word of Baptism, and it continues through a lifetime of feasting on the Word made flesh, in the bread of life, the cup of salvation.   The path is widened and deepened as disciples are taught what they need to know to heed the Great Commission.  

So you’ll receive some gifts today, Kent.   If you’re lucky you’ll get a good walking stick, a baptismal shell, a communion kit (though you may already have one), and—believe it or not!--a few more books. 

Now, you and Lisa might think your house already has more than enough books—you’ve finished seminary, after all!   But don’t forget that “seminary” means a “seed bed.”  All seminary really accomplishes is to give you a good start on a lifetime of learning so that you’ll never run out of things to teach the people of God. 

You and I and every other pastor needs to be a disciple always in formation, an administrator of the sacraments who never plumbs the full depth of baptism and the Supper, and one who teaches the faith in the face of your awareness that the more you learn the more you know how much you don’t yet know.

Finally, the Great Commission provides one last treasure for ministry:   the promise of our Lord’s stubborn, come-what-may, abiding presence.    For all the highs and lows, the ups and downs on pastoral ministry there is one thing you can always count on:   that Jesus has your back!   

That’s why Matthew’s gospel ends as it began, with the promise of Immanuel, God-with-us (Matthew 1:23).   No words are sweeter to the ears of every believer, every pastor, than Jesus final words in this gospel:   “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  (Matthew 28:20)

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.