To Be Known by the Knower

Lincoln Lutheran Church, Hoffman, MN

April 22, 2018/Easter 4, Year B

John 10:11-18

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

“It’s not what you know but who you know that matters.”  So goes a familiar piece of conventional wisdom. 

In just about any endeavor of life...as important as education, experience or hard work might be...those who REALLY get ahead cultivate the right kind of connections, build the best social network.

Because:  “It’s not what you know but who you know that matters.” 

And yet our gospel lesson from John 10 turns that little piece of conventional wisdom on its head...declaring to us that ultimately it’s NOT what you know or even WHO you know...but rather who knows YOU that counts.

“It’s not what you know or who you know...but WHO KNOWS YOU that matters.”

That Unconventional Wisdom pops right out of this text, as we hear our Lord Jesus declaring: “I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own...”

The greatest claim we can make is that we’re known, recognized, claimed, named, grasped, protected, held firmly—forever!--by Jesus the Good Shepherd.

Jesus knows you better than you know yourself. 

You are far more than a blip on some celestial computer screen. 

You are more than a number in a heavenly record book.

You are more than a “to whom it may concern” address on God’s mailing list. 

You are KNOWN in such a way that you will never be “just another face” in the crowd.

The Good Shepherd knows you...with a knowing that recognizes your one-of-a-kind character, a knowing that keeps you from ever falling in the cracks--a knowing that means life for you and a future without end. 

“I am the Good Shepherd,” says Jesus, “I know my own...”

I can still see the image from over 40 years ago. 

It was about 3:00 a.m. on a farm just west of Tyler, Minnesota.  Ma Christensen (who didn’t like it when her son-in-law called her that)…Ma Christensen would rise from her bed, pull on a snowmobile suit, boil water and stir up nine bottles of milk-replacer. 

Then she would trudge out through the brisk late-winter darkness to the barn...where just the sound of that old rusty, creaky doorknob turning would trigger the insistent bleating of nine hungry little lambs. 

Having heard their raucous greeting, the good shepherdess would climb into their pen and feed them...but not until she first called them each by name: Huey, Duey and Luey...Ringo, Midnight and Blacky...Maynard, Snowball and Lamb-chop. 

They just looked like sheep to me:  nine future mutton roasts, nine pre-cooked legs of lamb.  I couldn’t begin to tell one from the other...but Ma Christensen?--she recognized each by sight, by name...she knew them as only someone can who cares enough, loves enough to get out of a nice warm bed and brave the icy prairie wind for the 3:00 a.m. feeding.

“I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own”...I know you better than you know yourself.

Isn’t that incredible…that such words should be spoken to us?  Isn’t it amazing that you and I are are known by such a One?

Maybe...and then again, maybe not.  As we mull it over, perhaps it isn’t as wonderful as at first it might sound.

To be known, after all, doesn’t exactly leave us in charge, in control, or calling the shots.

To be the one who does the knowing:  that’s the more powerful position to hold. 

But to be known: that takes matters out of our hands.

Now that I’m in my eleventh year of serving as bishop, having traveled extensively throughout the 21 counties of our synod, I am still surprised when—in a local café or other gathering place—someone recognizes me and asks:  “How’s the bishop today?”

Though well-intended, such greetings still take me by surprise.  It still startles me to be known by people I myself may not know. 

And yet it happens—and there’s nothing I can do to stop it from happening. 

Look at these verses from John chapter 10 more closely.  The Good Shepherd rather selfishly grabs all the verbs, dominates all the action here.  He’s anything but a wimp.  The Good Shepherd knows his own, lays down his life for his own, takes his life up again, brings in other sheep so that there shall be (not might be, but shall be!) one flock and one shepherd.  The

Good Shepherd does it all...insists on having it his way.

There can seem to be a threatening edge to being known by such a One.  Because to be known by this Good Shepherd is to find yourself completely within his power.

What do you think of them apples?  Can we take it—this being known by someone like this Good Shepherd?

Only as our eyes are opened, only as we are grasped by his gracious embrace, only as we are “over-powered” by the ardent love of this Good Shepherd.

Because, you see, this One who knows us better than we know ourselves is hopelessly devoted to us.  That is his power over us.

What makes this shepherd good is that he has more, much more, than a hireling’s ho-hum interest in us.  What makes this shepherd good is that he is good for something, good for us.  He exists on our behalf. 

And this isn’t just talk: it is a passionate suffering, a brutal death, and a grim burial for us.  It is a willful, pre-meditated, eager laying down of a life for us.  It is a Shepherd plunging into the icy waters of a raging river to rescue a wayward lamb:  that is this Shepherd’s power over us...

...which is why his intimate knowing of us threatens no one except the Old Adam, the Old Eve, the ancient sinner in us who always wants to be in the driver’s seat.

The Good Shepherd’s knowing of us puts to death the self-focused, stay-in-charge-at-any-cost sinner in us...so that a new person, a newborn lamb with ears keenly attuned to the shepherd’s voice might come forth.

Only then do we know even as we have been known.  Then we know our Knower because we have first been known by our Knower, overcome by his love that will not let us go, embraced in his arms that will never lose their grip on us, enfolded in protection no thief or wolf can penetrate.

“I am the Good Shepherd; I know my own and my own know me...”  This knowing of the Good Shepherd comes full circle only when we know our Knower...and not us only, but all of those “other sheep” as well.

That fleeting reference to “other sheep” here in our text, reminds us that the Good Shepherd’s flock-tending is not yet finished. 

There are still some “other sheep” out there!  Maybe you even know some of them.

“I must bring them also,” Jesus declares.  “So there shall be one flock, one shepherd.”

When he thinks of those “other sheep” the Good Shepherd never mutters under his break, “Leave them alone and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them.” 

No.  The Good Shepherd doesn’t practice the Little Bo-Peep Method of Sheep-Tending. 

The Good Shepherd has a restless passion for those other sheep that matches his passion for us, a passion he shares with us so that we, too, start to  “feel” for those other sheep.

“I must bring them in too,” he declares.  “I must bring them through the still water of Baptism, I must welcome them to my banquet Table, I must draw them within earshot of my Voice so that they might know me even as I already know them...”

And we who all-too-often are sheepish about our part in the Good Shepherd’s ardent mission…we find ourselves nodding in agreement, echoing the shepherd’s resolve, getting caught up in his search for those beloved “other sheep,” sensing deep in our bones that it really can be no other way for us who are known by such a Knower. 

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Beautiful Feet

Ordination of Laurie Lynn Albertson

Trinity Lutheran Church, Detroit Lakes, MN

Isaiah 52:7-10

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

If this sermon had a title it would be just two words:  “Beautiful Feet.”

Beautiful Feet?   Really, now?   Truth be told, most of us (myself included) would hesitate to slap those two words together because, frankly, we’re embarrassed by our feet—especially ashamed of how our feet appear to be anything but “beautiful.”

Beautiful feet?   To many of us that actually sounds like an oxymoron—you know:  a contradiction in terms—along the lines of :   “living dead” or “crash landing” or “civil war” or “jumbo shrimp.”

And yet our First Lesson for today, from Isaiah 52, weds those two words together:  “How beautiful are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news…”   What was going through Isaiah’s mind when he put those two words together?   And why, centuries later, did the Apostle Paul quote this passage in the 10^th chapter of his letter to the Romans?

What is so beautiful about these “beautiful feet?”

Well, for starters, the feet Isaiah described were beautiful because they were so eagerly anticipated.   

Beautiful feet are longed-for, anticipated feet!

The picture the prophet paints here is pregnant with pathos.  Old watchmen who should have cashed it in years ago, old watchmen who should have  been retired and living off their Social Security…..old watchmen are standing lookout on the ruins of the walls that once surrounded their holy city, Jerusalem before it was sacked by their enemies, the Babylonians, in 587 B.C.

Old, over-the-hill watchmen ache with longing for some shred of good news, some slender sign that the Lord might yet vindicate his exiled people, that the Lord might even bring back a remnant to Jerusalem, from far-off wicked Babylon, in order to repopulate the Holy City.

Picture these wizened, ancient watchmen on the crumbled walls of Jerusalem, doing what watchmen do best—that is:  watching, gazing off toward the northeastern sky, looking to the mountains between sacred Jerusalem and sinful Babylon, stubbornly waiting, eagerly anticipating a messenger whose winged feet might bring good news to famished, ravaged Jerusalem.

What makes these feet beautiful is that they are anticipated feet, creating the footsteps that the faithful watchers on the walls are pining to hear.

Dear Laurie, in the pastoral ministry that you’ve already been trying on for several years, you have no doubt come to recognize when members of your flock long to hear your footsteps on their front steps, your knock at their doors.   For truly, this world is filled with folks just aching to hear someone’s footsteps….folks deeply longing for a sign—any sign!--that God is alive and well and has everything in hand.

God’s gift of hope and new life and a fresh start is what people are looking for, longing for, aching for.    People right now are living in anticipation that someone will come along, bursting with the joyful tidings that God is making all things new, setting the world right, restoring all things for the sake of the crucified, resurrected Jesus Christ, our Savior.

The bearing, the bringing of that news--so eagerly anticipated!--is what makes your feet beautiful.

Second, the beautiful feet of which Isaiah speaks are beautiful because they come from someplace else—those feet aren’t from around here.   These feet are beautiful because they make their way toward us from beyond us:   bringing a message that isn’t “old hat,” bearing astonishingly good news that isn’t already at our fingertips.

No one needed to tell those venerable old watchmen on the ruined walls of Jerusalem that they were fresh out of hope.   They already realized the folly of poking around in the rubble at their feet, combing through the ashes for some hint, some glint of good news that they might somehow “gin up!”

Those watchmen didn’t look deep within themselves for good news.  No, they were on the lookout, necks craned toward the distant horizon, pining for a liberating word that could only come from beyond them.

Dear Laurie, there are folks in this broken world who are utterly empty, fresh out of hope, incapable of producing the very good news they long to hear.

There are persons who’ve had it up to here with self-help quackery or the nostrums of “look-deep-within-yourself” counselors.   They get it:  they understand that the terrors they face and the death that awaits them simply cannot be remedied by any do-it-yourself project of their own making.

All of which is to say:  we are surrounded by persons who hunger deep within themselves for good news that can only come from outside ourselves.   Martin Luther used a Latin phrase, “extra nos” which means literally “from outside of ourselves.”  

Luther reveled in the “extra nos” of the gospel, the outside-of-ourselves-ness, the sheer breath-taking graciousness of what God has done, is doing and will keep doing through a Savior named Jesus who ceaselessly delivers forgiveness for every failing, freedom from every fear, and a future without end.

What makes your feet beautiful is that they’re feet that follow a Savior we didn’t manufacture, a Redeemer who isn’t from around here, but who showed up here in the fullness of time, to bestow on all of us gifts beyond measure—pure grace with no strings attached.

Third, the feet that Isaiah calls beautiful, are feet on the move.   A single snapshot of these feet will never do them justice.   These feet simply are never “frozen in time.”  No, it has to be a moving picture, a from-there-to-here dynamic image of feet in motion, feet coming to us, feet accompanying us in our journeys.

Laurie, you already have been living in the 21st century reality that “church” is about so much more than getting people to come to us.   You’ve been putting into practice what it means for church to be out-and-about, “on the go,”  leaving our treasured church buildings, moving out, finding those whom God is calling, accompanying them in their faith-filled journey toward God’s New Day.

Your feet are beautiful, because they’re feet on the go, feet that head out to where folks actually live,  feet that fall into step with them and accompany them in the adventure of a living faith in a hurting world.

Now, I realize, that really none of what I’ve said is exactly new to you, Laurie. 

You’ve been about the good work of pastoral ministry for a while, growing deeper in your awareness of how persons long for the gospel, how people are hungry for good news that comes from beyond themselves, how “doing church” in this 21^st century always involves getting off our butts, not waiting for others to come to us, but continually seeking them out in order to deliver to them the always-fresh, ever-new message of Jesus Christ who died for us, Jesus Christ who was raised for us, Jesus Christ who will come again to make us and all things new.

You already get all that, Laurie.  You’ve been growing into this ministry for years.   So what makes this day so special?

I think it’s simply that God is “sealing the deal” for good, spreading some sweet frosting on a delicious cake--in such a way that you joyously, unreservedly can’t help but respond:  “I will, and I ask God to help me.”

Thanks, dear Laurie, for giving us the privilege of sharing this holy day with you—and for allowing us, on behalf of Christ’s whole church, to promise to be there for you, for as long as God gives you faith and life and hope to keep setting your beautiful feet in motion, always in God’s service, for the sake of all to whom God sends you.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Our God is a Calling God

Epiphany 3/January 21, 2018

Installation of Pr. Terry Hagensen

New Salem Lutheran Church, Turtle River, MN

John 3:1-5, 10

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

God, our God, is a God who calls.

Let me say that again:  our God is a calling God

That short sentence speaks volumes about this God whom we trust.

It says to us, first of all, that we have a God who yearns to be in relationship with us, ardently desires to converse with us.

Our God, wants to engage us, affect us, “have words” with us….in such a way that we can respond, from our hearts, in our own unique voice.

God calls us with the expectation that we’ll respond—while knowing that how we’ll respond is never a foregone conclusion. 

God is a God who calls us--meaning that God chooses not to coerce us, but speaks to us in ways that free us to speak back to God and have an effect on God, thus being responsive to God.

And the range of our possible answers to this calling God runs all the way from the most resounding of YESes to the most stubborn of NOs.

The Bible--which might well be described as a treasury of call stories--the Bible constantly demonstrates how risk-taking it is for God to choose calling over coercing…because the Bible never tires of reminding us that people like us might well decide to ignore or sidestep or even outright reject God’s call.

Our cell phone rings.  The display identifies the caller as God.  And we hit the DECLINE CALL button.

That can happen.  In fact, that does happen—all the time.  If there’s anything predictable in this whole long narrative of call stories we call the Bible—if there’s a recurring pattern we can’t help but notice, it’s that human beings usually resist God’s call, at least when it first comes to them.

In our First Lesson we meet one of the Bible’s most spectacular “resisters” of God’s call in his life.   

When God first calls Jonah, God asks him to head east, to wicked Nineveh, the capital of Israel’s vicious enemies, the Assyrians.

“Go east young man,” God calls to Jonah, and Jonah responds by heading as far west as he can, far away from where God wants him to go.  

God says “Nineveh” in the east, and Jonah replies “No, I prefer Tarshish” in the west.

And amazingly, rather than immediately vetoing Jonah’s rebellious response, God lets Jonah go where he wants to go.  God opens up space and time to allow Jonah to head off in his own contrary direction—how surprising!

So Jonah books passage on a boat bound for Tarshish…and we all know how that went. 

The boat did not have smooth sailing, a horrible storm descended upon it, leaving the sailors no choice but to lighten the load—to toss out all the unneeded baggage, which soon included Jonah himself—thrown overboard to become fishfood.

But (as so often happens in the Bible) what appears to be the end of Jonah’s call story—being swallowed by a great fish!—turns out to be instead a “time out”-- three days to think it over in the belly of the fish, three days for Jonah to consider his situation, to remember God, pray to God, turn from his resistance…and then to find himself vomited out on a beach, where God calls him once again:  “Jonah, go to Nineveh...”

…and this time Jonah obeys God’s call.

God is a calling God, not a coercing God.   God calls us, and even though we usually resist that call, God doesn’t give up, because God calls tenaciously, God has all the time in the world and is thus willing to outwait us, God keeps coming after us, wooing and winning us over and setting our feet in the direction we need to go.

As I like to say, especially to persons trying to discern God’s call in their lives:  don’t get all hot and bothered.  God will get you wherever God needs you—but it just might happen, not on your timetable, but in God’s good time.

So Pastor Terry, what these folks may not realize is that you and I have known each other for a long time--over 25 years by my count, from the day we first met when the ink on your diploma from Wartburg Seminary was barely dry, when you were assigned for your first call to the SW MN Synod on whose staff I was then serving.

We’ve known each other for a long time, and I’m pretty familiar with the twists and turns in your long, unfolding call story—a call story that starts a new chapter, right here, right now, today at New Salem.

Your long call story is similar to but also different from the call stories of so many pastors.

Early on, during your high school years, you pondered what God wanted you to do with your life.  You’ve described that this way: “my prayer was for God to direct me towards what was best suited for me, from running the family [dairy] farm, to working in the local factory to preaching the gospel.  I believed at that time I would hear and had full intentions of obeying, but I will say I hoped it wouldn’t be one of the first two.”

You discerned a call into public ministry, first as a rostered lay minister, eventually as a pastor…and ever since you have heard God calling you deeper and deeper into the ministry of Word and Sacrament.

At the same time, though, your call was challenged by circumstances in your own life but also by a big, long, lumbering discernment process your church was engaged in…a church-wide wrestling match over whether and if and how it might receive, welcome, and call forth the ministries of gifted persons who happen to be in loving relationships with persons of the same gender.

All of us have times in our lives when our sense of call is challenged….but you, Pastor Terry, have had your call challenged in one of the longest, most painful and protracted of ways.  It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that your struggle to follow your calling has dragged you through a kind of hell (or: through the belly of the beast?)…and yet here we are today, together, to celebrate this new chapter—a chapter that you and many others have wondered whether it would ever happen.

Thanks be to God, and thanks to the daring and heartfelt discernment of call that happened here at New Salem, today we are welcoming and installing you as pastor of this congregation.   That’s a tribute both to your tenacity--with the support of your family, your spouse Kevin and these good folks of New Salem--and it’s also a tribute to God’s tenacity in calling you.

So now, inasmuch as you’ve been coughed up on the shore of the Turtle River Lake, how will this new chapter in your call story unfold?

I’m pretty sure, Terry, that you will do far, far better than Jonah did here in our text for today.

Coughed up by the great fish, given a reprieve by God, setting off finally for Nineveh, Jonah—it would seem—obeyed God’s call, but in a way that was carefully calculated to fail.

Jonah concocts a scheme to be the most lackluster, unsuccessful preacher he could be.   He ventures only a third of the way into the huge, sprawling city of Nineveh.   Jonah doesn’t bother to find an interpreter, but he utters a single one-sentence sermon (in Hebrew, not Assyrian):   "Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!" 

One line, in a foreign tongue, uttered just once on the edge of  a huge city, filled with nothing but a threat of doom and gloom, calculated to drive the Ninevites to utter despair…

But astonishingly, amazingly…“the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth….[And] when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and [God] did not do it.” 

God got Jonah where God needed Jonah to be—and through Jonah’s brief, inarticulate, awful “sermon”—God accomplished precisely what God always wants most to do:  to have mercy on people who did not deserve it.

Pastor Terry, you have been called here to New Salem because you’re a fine, gifted pastor.  Since high school you’ve been trying to follow God’s call: to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, for us and for our salvation.

If I know you, you will not preach sermons calculated to fail or to thwart God’s great sinner-seeking, mercy-shedding rescue mission.

Not that you’ll always get it right—no pastor does.  But I’m sure you will try harder and bring more gifts to bear on your sharing of Christ—especially for the sake of those who are forgotten, marginalized, and seemingly on the outside looking in…

And you have God’s word on this—and you people of New Salem also have God’s word on this:  that the barrier-breaking, future-opening Word of God will always be the last Word:  you are forgiven, you are free, and you are sent into the world for the sake of Jesus Christ to bear God’s creative and redeeming Word wherever God calls you. 

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

A Statement From the ELCA Synod Bishops of Minnesota

A Statement From the ELCA Synod Bishops of Minnesota

In the church’s way of telling time January is the season of Epiphany, when Christians remember the Magi—travelers from the east who followed a star to the infant Jesus.  Not by accident these mysterious wayfarers are often depicted as reflecting the wondrous diversity of the whole world.  The Christ child is thus honored as Lord of all, regardless of race or gender or class or nationality.

In this season of Epiphany (“revealing”) we bishops speak with one voice in professing that we believe all people are loved by God, priceless and full of amazing potential. We rebuke our nation’s president for the vile, bigoted language he reportedly used on January 11^th to describe certain countries in God’s beloved world.   

This episode far transcends the “politics” of the moment.  It speaks to the very soul of our nation and touches upon some of our dearest American values:  deep respect, loving care, and welcoming hospitality toward others—especially the marginalized.    We are not just grieved by the unfortunate language that was used.   More troubling to us is the president’s assumption that our country should only care about and receive the gifted and successful of the world—along with the presumption that he knows which countries provide such.   Our disagreement with the president arises from both our faith and our personal experiences with neighbors from around the globe.

We bishops call upon all Minnesotans to join us in repudiating racism and all other forms of bigotry.   We implore all ten members of our state’s U. S. Congressional Delegation to ask the president to apologize for his unfortunate remarks, to engage with international partners in seriously addressing the global refugee crisis, and to work in bipartisan fashion toward truly comprehensive and compassionate immigration reform in our own country.

Bishop Thomas Aitken, Northeastern Minnesota Synod

Bishop Jon Anderson, Southwestern Minnesota Synod

Bishop Steven Delzer, Southeastern Minnesota Synod

Bishop Patricia Lull, Saint Paul Area Synod

Bishop Ann Svennungsen, Minneapolis Area Synod

Bishop Lawrence Wohlrabe, Northwestern Minnesota Synod

EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN CHURCH IN AMERICA

On Keeping Christmas Well: A Meditation

“…And it was always said of him that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.  May that be truly said of us, and all of us!  And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us Every One!”   (Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol[1])

Amidst the soaring prophecies of Isaiah, the tender Nativity narrative in Luke 2, and the bracing “Stir up” prayers of Advent, some of us take time in December to reread Charles Dickens’s masterwork, A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843.

This story has woven its way into our cultural imagination, not only as a book to be read but through all its dramatic and cinematic retellings.   What an amazing metamorphosis of that miserly curmudgeon Ebenezer Scrooge:  “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!”[2]

Through a series of ghostly encounters with the Spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future the old coot was transformed—all in one night!—into an endearing soul, of whom it was said:  “he knew how to keep Christmas well.”

Just what is this “keeping Christmas” business, though?

Nowadays one might conclude that “keeping Christmas” is all about attitudes, policy positions and words of greeting.   So we vow to “keep Christ in Christmas” (as if that were really up to us!)   We take sides in our culture’s “War on Christmas,” whether by defending creches in public squares or by lamenting the dearth of sacred songs in public school concerts or by emphatically countering “Happy Holidays” with “Merry Christmas.”

But “keeping Christmas” is about so much more than posturing or preening, words that we say, and righteous (self-righteous?) positions that we defend.

Remember again, how a renewed Ebenezer Scrooge “kept Christmas” on the first day of the rest of his life:

·      +  He began noticing the “little people” he’d been ignoring…starting with a neighbor-boy on Christmas morning.

·       +  He plotted ways to subvert the poverty of his faithful employee Bob Cratchitt, the whole Cratchitt family, and especially the invalid Tiny Tim.

·       +  He pledged an eye-popping donation to the community chest for “the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time.”[3]

·        +  He  mended fences with those from whom he had been estranged, starting with his own nephew Fred.

To be sure, the repentant Scrooge did go to church on Christmas morning, and offered greetings to others, with a hearty “Merry Christmas.”[4]  Words do matter, after all.

But what made all the difference in the world was Scrooge’s repentant resolve to keep Christmas by keeping faith with those for whom Jesus Christ came into this world (see Matthew 25:31-46).

And, in Dickens’s own words:  “May that be truly said of us, and all of us!”

Let us pray:   Gracious God, teach us how to “keep Christmas” in all the ways that really matter.   Help us notice those whom it would be easy to ignore—persons who don’t look like us, refugees who simply want a fresh start, newcomers who desire to become our neighbors.   Teach us to plot fresh ways to subvert poverty in our troubled world.   Stir us to embrace eye-popping generosity.   And give us courage to build bridges, mend fences and relentlessly pursue the reconciliation for which the Christ-Child was born among us.  In the strong name of Jesus, the Prince of Peace.   Amen.

Merry Christmas, my dearly beloved ones.   God bless us, every one!

Bishop Lawrence Wohlrabe

Northwestern Minnesota Synod

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

God’s work.  Our hands.

---

[1] Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (NY:Bantam Books, 1966), p. 88

[2] Ibid., p. 4.

[3] Ibid., p. 9.

[4] Ibid., pp. 85-86.

Together in Hope

Lutherans and Catholics Together in Hope

Joint Reformation Worship Service

Our Lady of Victory Catholic Church, Fergus Falls, MN

November 5, 2017

Photo credit:  Matthew Zelie

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

Forty-four years ago, when I was a freshman in college, I took a course entitled “Religious Bodies in America.”

For a farm boy, having his first experience of city life…for someone reared in a conservative branch of Lutheranism…this class on “Religious Bodies in America was eye-opening, assumption-challenging, and horizon-expanding.

As I recall, that class was structured around discovering how those other religious bodies alldiffered from my branch of Lutheranism.

Indeed that’s how such classes in comparative religion have often been structured:  identify the differences in order to understand more clearly why “my” church is the one and only true church.

Well, my dear Catholic and Lutheran friends, a lot of water has gone over the dam since I took that class in 1973.  During these four decades relationships among Christian churches—and especially among Catholics and Lutherans, have experienced a sea-change in our understanding and our relationships.

We have received an ever-deepening awareness that—despite our differences—far more unites us than divides us.  

Let me suggest just three examples…

First, we are firmly united by our profound, shared focus on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus the Christ.   The cross is crucially central in both of our churches.  We unabashedly keep our eyes on Jesus Christ--crucified and risen for the life of the world.

Second, we all “do church” in ways that reflect a deeply sacramental perspective.   We Lutherans and Catholics firmly believe that the incarnation—the Word of God taking on flesh in the child of Mary—drives all the ways God seeks to get through to us.   We are convinced that the finite truly bears the infinite—that God always comes to us garbed in water, bread, wine, syllables, beauty, song, and all the rest of the best of this good creation—thus delivering to us faith and forgiveness and a future without end.

Third, in our Catholic and Lutheran ways of peering out at God’s creation, we are forever being summoned into  globe-spanning mission, ministries that seek out everyone, and service that that refuses to deny God’s love to anyone fashioned in God’s image.  It is not a coincidence, therefore, that both Catholics and Lutherans are communions that are global in scope.  Nor should it surprise us one bit that our two faith families tend two of the most wide-reaching networks of social service agencies on the planet.

More, so much more unites us than divides us, my brothers and sisters.  And perhaps that’s why folks frequently mistake us for one another…especially why some of us Lutherans are often acknowledged and sometimes accused of being “too Catholic.”

Years ago, on a snowy Christmas Eve, I was out on the road late in the evening.   As I longed to be home with my family, I recall catching a Christmas Eve worship service on my car’s radio.  The worship was lovely, with music and a spoken Word that fed my faith.  As I made my way across southern Minnesota that Christmas Eve, I tried to guess what Lutheran church that was hosting this worship service….until finally the announcer interrupted the broadcast to thank us all for joining this broadcast of the midnight Mass from the great Abbey Church of St John’s University in Collegeville.

May that—and all the other times we Catholics and Lutherans are mistaken for one another—draw us into even closer communion, as we celebrate how God is revealing to us that what we share in Jesus Christ, in the sacramentality of life, and in our mission in the world, God is continually weaving us together as one.

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

We Are God's House of Living Stones

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Parkers Prairie, MN

October 29, 2017—Reformation Sunday

I Kings 5:1-5; 8:1-13 (Narrative Lectionary)

In the name of Jesus.  Amen.

If I were to utter the word “church” what image would pop into your head first?

If I said “church,” your Pavlov’s-dog-reaction would be to imagine a building….perhaps the building that we’re in right now, or maybe the first church you belonged to, wherever that might be.

It’s entirely natural for us to hear the word “church” and immediately conjure up in our minds the image of a building.

And, frankly, that speaks volumes about us, our place in the world and our time in human history.  It is hard, if not impossible, to think “church” without picturing a building, a house, God’s house, to be specific.

In my time as bishop I have read scores of congregational histories, and almost without fail these records of local church history have emphasized two things:   the church buildings they erected and the pastors they called….as if those particular “markers” were the main things in the story of our churches.

But isn’t that what we’re taught growing up?   Didn’t our parents or whoever nurtured our faith—didn’t they say to us:  “Get up—get dressed--we’re going to God’s house this Sunday morning?”

I say “church,” you picture a building:  it’s the most natural, understandable reaction…

….even though we do know better!

For in the same breath that we teach our little ones to call this building “God’s house”—equating “church” with “building”--we also teach them songs that convey a different message….

….a message that goes like this: 

“The church is not a building;

the church is not a steeple;

the church is not a resting place;

the church is a people.

I am the church! You are the church!

We are the church together!

All who follow Jesus,

all around the world!

Yes, we're the church together!”[1]

Truth be told, there are competing, even conflicting messages we give our kids about the church….and this fact exposes a longer, deeper debate we find right in the Bible itself.  

There’s an argument, a back-and-forth debate right within the scriptures, about whether God wants, let along needs any sort of dwelling or building.   

In short:  how can God be “located”?

There are traces of that long debate right here in this morning’s lesson from the book of I Kings.   A transition has taken place within Israel’s royal family, the throne having passed from King David to his son, the newly crowned King Solomon, who immediately sets out to do something his famous father was not allowed to do:  “…  my father David could not build a house for the name of the Lord his God because of the warfare with which his enemies surrounded him, until the Lord put them under the soles of his feet.  But now the Lord my God has given me rest on every side; there is neither adversary nor misfortune. So I intend to build a house for the name of the Lord my God….”

But was good King David forbidden to build a temple solely because he had too much “blood on his hands?”  

In the seventh chapter of II Samuel God himself offers a different answer to that question:  “Are you [David]  the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’” (II Samuel 7:4-7)

Here we encounter a God who is extremely reluctant to have any permanent structure, or temple, or “church building,” if you will.   

It’s as if God realizes—and he wants his people to realize—that a temple like the temples other ancient peoples built, would always be a mixed blessing.  Certainly, a Temple could provide a focal point, a point of contact between God and God’s people…..but it could also convey other, less flattering, less faithful realities.

A Temple, after all, could represent an attempt to “contain” God, to lock up God in a box, to put God at the beck and call of God’s people.

By erecting a temple where people could find God, Israel was simultaneously flirting with the possibility of trying to restrict God’s fierce, wild freedom to travel wherever his people might go, to constantly encounter them in all their meanderings—in the sheer dailiness of their lives—and to arrive at their destination always, always ahead of them.

In other words:  is our God a God who can be pinned down, hemmed in, put in his place?

Or is our God a “traveling God,” who always accompanies and guides his people on their pilgrimage through life?

In short, is the church a place or a people?

Centuries after King Solomon built Israel’s first Temple, in the midst of the Reformation of the church that Martin Luther started 500 years ago this week, the Great Reformer himself had this to say about the church:   “Thank God, [to-day] a child seven years old knows what the Church is, namely, the holy believers and lambs who hear the voice of their Shepherd.”[2]

In other words, while the church might be a building, it is always a people!

So what shall we make of this Old Testament story of Solomon’s building of the Temple?

I believe it reflects a heartfelt desire to honor God, to glorify God for all of God’s goodness.

The Temple would be a point of contact for people—both the people of Israel but also foreigners who would hear about the God of Israel—a location on earth to which people could turn and pray to God who fills all time and space.

One thing Solomon’s Temple could never be, though, was a “container” for God.   The people of Israel could never “contain” God or keep God under wraps in the Temple. 

God is too wild, too fierce, too free for anything like that.

Notice again what happened when Solomon’s temple was “open for business:”    “When the priests came out of the holy place, a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.”  (vv. 10-11)

God may meet us in our holy places, to be sure, but God’s freedom can never be circumscribed by whatever walls or “boundaries” we erect.    God will always, always, always be bigger….wilder…and freer than any structures that we construct.

And there is powerfully good news in that fact, because even though we crave holy places where  God is accessible to us, holy places like this lovely church building...the temples we put up are never our final destination.   

Rather, I invite us to consider the buildings we call churches not so much as resting places or destinations as they are mission outposts, way-stations on our pilgrimage through life.

When all is said and done, it’s what happens in spaces like this that matters the most. 

It’s our gathering together, our baptizing, our remembering of our baptisms, our eating and drinking at the Lord’s table, our praying and pleading and praising, our hearing of the Word, our speaking with one another, our fellowshipping together, our planning and dreaming for mission and ministry in the world, it’s in all those things happening that God is made known and that God’s true church becomes visible---not in brick or mortar, but in lives transformed by the freedom, forgiveness and a new future through which God is always beckoning us forward toward the day when God in Christ will be our all in all.

Today we sing two great Reformation hymns.  

We’ve already sung A Mighty Fortress….which isn’t a hymn of praise for a building, mind you, but a poetic confession that God is our refuge, our sanctuary, our place of safety and nurture and sending….

And then, in a few moments, we will sing these words, which truly put this morning’s lesson in proper, faith-engendering, future-opening perspective:

“Christ builds a house of living stones:

We are his own habitation;

He fills our hearts, his humble thrones,

Granting us life and Salvation.

Where two or three will seek his face,

He in their midst will show his grace,

Blessings upon them bestowing.”[3]

In the name of Jesus.   Amen.

---

[1] http://www.pateys.nf.ca/cgi-bin/lyrics.pl?hymnnumber=475

[2] Smalcald Articles, Part Three, Article XII.

[3] Build on a Rock, ELW #652, stanza 3.