Grace & peace to you in the name of our Savior Jesus!
On December 6, 2022, I was hospitalized for what I was told would be a “routine” and “fairly easy” surgery. Less than 7% of the time, complications arise from this surgery. Unfortunately, I fell into that 7% group and ended up spending 22 days, including Christmas, in the hospital with numerous complications and additional surgeries.
A couple pastors in my synod asked me recently – “How’s your prayer life?”
How’s my prayer life? Wow! That’s an intense and challenging question. Maybe even a little offensive given the last few weeks of my life.
Looking back on my journey since December 6, I’m struck by how difficult it has been to have a prayer life. Lying in a hospital bed, not sure what the next few hours or days might bring, prayer was not something that I thought much about. Most of the time, depending on how much pain medication I was being given, prayer was impossible.
Another pastor reminded me recently of the Apostle Paul’s words in the eighth chapter of Romans. It speaks to how I have answered the question “How’s your prayer life?”
Paul writes, “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” (Romans 8:26)
I’ve found great comfort and strength in Paul’s words in these days that have moved from a hospital room to time at home so I can heal and recover. When I was lying in the hospital, not able to pray, the Spirit interceded through others, holding me and my family in prayer.
With sighs too deep for words, I give God thanks and praise for the Spirit’s interceding.
With sighs too deep for words, I am forever grateful for all who hold me in prayer when I simply can’t pray.
With sighs too deep for words, I give thanks that my prayer life has been restored in ways that I couldn’t possibly have imagined before December 6, 2022.
Sisters and brothers in Christ, how’s your prayer life??
Until next time, may Christ’s peace be with you always and in all ways…
Grace and peace to you from our Savior and King, Jesus!
As followers of Jesus, we recently had the opportunity to celebrate Christ our King! In the United States, we will celebrate an interesting holiday known as Thanksgiving. At the center of both Christ the King Sunday and Thanksgiving Thursday, I believe gratitude or grateful are good words to guide these days.
I had the honor of being a guest in the home of a fellow brother in Christ recently. I always enjoy visits with this brother in Christ and always learn something from him that helps me grow in my relationship with God and my relationship with my neighbor as a follower of Jesus.
My brother has a daily practice that has become a more intentional part of my own faith journey since my visit. A daily expression of gratitude. He begins each day by offering gratitude – for the new day, for good rest, for conversation with friends, for the spider crawling on the window as the sun rose the morning we were together.
For my brother in Christ, being grateful is not something that he thinks about during Sunday worship or on a holiday we call Thanksgiving. It is a daily practice that encompasses all aspects of his life as a follower of Jesus.
During my visit, he introduced me to a group of God’s children who are part of something called Grateful Living. You can find out more about them here – https://grateful.org/. They have a short video that will give you a wonderful introduction to what Grateful Living looks like – https://youtu.be/zSt7k_q_qRU. It’s well worth a few minutes of your time today.
Sisters and brothers in Christ, as we journey through this week of Thanksgiving, I invite you to think differently about what that might mean. What are you grateful for? Maybe you can take a moment to share what you are grateful for with your fellow sisters and brothers, or, if you are comfortable doing so, share it in the comments. I promise you, someone will be blessed by what you share!
Thanksgiving blessings to you this week, and always!
Until next time, may the peace of Christ be with you always and in all ways…
Grace & peace to you in the name of our Savior Jesus!
Today is a unique day for followers of Jesus. Yesterday in worship, many Protestant congregations, we celebrated All Saint’s Day. November 1 is the actual date for All Saint’s Day. In many Protestant congregations, we acknowledge this holy day on the closest Sunday following Reformation Sunday.
Tomorrow, at least in the United States, we will celebrate Election Day.
On the surface, these two days seem very unrelated.
I invite us to look just a little below the surface and see that these two days share a lot in common.
As we sit in the day in between this year, we have a chance to give God thanks and praise for both –
For the saints in our lives who have died in the faith and join with the eternal cloud of witnesses.
And for the saints who felt called to place their names on a ballot in the hope of being elected to serve citizens in our communities, states, and nation.
I appreciated the overview of All Saint’s Day worship that was offered in one of our church’s worship resources yesterday. “Who are the saints, and what do they have to say to us? Rather than being perfect Christians, the saints are people who have been made whole by the grace of God, through baptism into Christ. The communion of saints is a diverse array of witnesses who remind us of God’s continuing faithfulness, past, present, and future.” [from www.sundaysandseasons.org]
If that is true, which I think it is, there are saints among us who are no longer with us in this world. Yes, even those who drove you crazy…are saints.
There are saints among us, walking with us in this world each day who drive us crazy in more ways than we can count…they are saints too.
And, there are also saints who are seeking public office in a variety of ways during tomorrow’s elections. Yes, even those who you didn’t vote for…are saints.
In the Small Catechism, Luther taught us that “This is most certainly true.”
The saints of our faith journey include God’s children like friends and parents, siblings and grandparents, co-workers and cousins, aunts and neighbors.
The saints of our faith journey also include God’s children like our city and county commissioners, state legislators and district court judges, city mayors, and even those who serve in the United States Congress. And, yes, even those whom we will never choose to vote for in an election, are saints.
On this day in between two days that celebrate the saints God places along our path, maybe we can take a few moments and give God thanks today for all the saints.
Who are some of the saints in your life that you are giving thanks for today???
Until next time, may Christ’s peace be with you always and in all ways…
Grace and peace to you from our Savior Jesus the Christ!
Happy Reformation Day!!
This is a significant day for Lutheran Christians. On this day we remember and give thanks for a 16th Century German monk named the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther. October 31, 1517 is the day that Lutheran Christians believe Dr. Luther offered 95 theses or the Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences that expressed concerns he had about the church. I don’t believe Luther was looking for fame as one of the world’s great church fathers and reformers. I don’t think Luther was interested in starting a new branch of the Christian tree. Luther was challenging the church to be in the daily practice of reform.
Here’s the simple and honest question I’d like us to think about on this year’s Reformation Day …
Is the church you and I are connected to a church that has reformed?
This church started a long time ago and hasn’t done anything new since. And refuses to do anything new now.
Or…
Is the church you and I are connected to a church that is constantly reforming?
These churches constantly look for new ways to bless and serve their neighbor in Jesus’ name; seek new opportunities to proclaim the gospel of Jesus for the sake of the salvation of all of God’s creation; and have an ongoing awareness of where the Holy Spirit may be leading them next in mission and ministry.
As I travel across this church (the ELCA) as a synod bishop, the number of faith communities I encounter that have reformed and have no interest in reforming is a bit disheartening.
I am also filled with abundant hope by the many faith communities I encounter who are reforming in amazing and grace-filled ways. It’s in their DNA.
Has your church reformed??
Or, is your church reforming??
As you think about the church being in a constant state of reform on this year’s Reformation Day, I’d love hear what’s happening in your faith community that is bringing forth reform!
Use the comment sections to share your faith community’s story of reform.
Until next time, may the peace of Christ be with you always and in all ways…
This sermon was offered at Lutheran Church of the Cross in Bismarck, ND on October 17, 2021
Mark 10:34-45 • October 17, 2021
Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
I give thanks for the invitation to be with you today Lutheran Church of the Cross. For your elected leaders. For Deacon Janie. For Murray Sagsveen who serves so graciously and selflessly as our synod’s attorney.
And for Pastor Lisa, whom we celebrate today for all that God has done and continues to do through the ministry God calls her into.
I’m able to be in a different congregation of our synod nearly ever Sunday of the year – about 40-45 Sundays. It is a great blessing to be able to worship with so many of our congregations and one of the joys of serving as your bishop.
God is good.
There are a lot of good things happening on the prairies of western North Dakota because God is good and at work through people of faith in congregations like yours.
Congregations who take seriously Jesus calling us into a life of service toward our neighbors, not the other way around.
I also want to take a minute and bring greetings to you, members of Lutheran Church of the Cross, from your brothers and sisters in Christ of the WND Synod – more than 160 congregations, 55,000 or so brothers and sisters serving the western two-thirds of our great state;
I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters across the ELCA – around 9,000 congregations, about 3 million brothers and sisters across the United States and the Caribbean;
and, I bring you greetings from your siblings in the Lutheran World Federation, of which our denomination of the ELCA is the only representative of from the United States. LWF connects 148 Lutheran denominations, over 77 million children of God, in 99 different countries who, together, are sharing in God’s ministry and mission around the world, we are serving on every continent, except Antarctica.
I offer those greetings from our synod, the ELCA, and LWF every chance I get. They are important for us to hear because they help us center ourselves on just how big the church is that we are connected to – beyond the walls of our local congregations.
And they remind us of who we are, as people of faith who have been called by the Savior of the world into a mission and ministry that is anything but easy – after all, as Jesus tells us in the verses immediately before the ones we heard today…there is a cross and a crucifixion along this path.
Today’s gospel starts with a couple disciples discussing, maybe even arguing about, who is Jesus’ favorite. To which Jesus, in true Jesus fashion, offers a teaching on power and importance as it relates not only to this world, but to God’s kingdom – this world and beyond so to speak. Today’s gospel also speaks to how God’s kingdom looks is nothing like what anyone of us thinks it’s supposed to look like. No matter how many times or in how many ways Jesus tries to show the disciples this fact, the disciples never seem to quite get it.
Remember, Mark’s gospel is the gospel that ends with the disciples running away from the empty tomb in fear and trembling and telling nothing to anyone about it.
If all we knew today of the Jesus story was the disciples account of it from the end of the gospel of Mark, I’m not sure there would be a Christian church today.
Or, more so, followers of Jesus like you and me.
Long before I realized that God had already planted a seed in me, that would one day grow into a vocation serving in the Lutheran church, I was a professional musician. Standing in front of people to present something on my heart usually took place in a smokey jazz club or on auditorium stage, not in a church pulpit.
Another part of my story that I want you to hear…I didn’t grow up Lutheran.
I grew up Roman Catholic.
My family was active in church when I was growing up, but I really struggled to connect.
Yea, I believed, after all, my mom and grandmothers told me I should. But I didn’t really know Jesus as the Messiah or that trying to follow Jesus was going to have a fairly significant impact on the how, what, and why of my life.
You see, I had a lot of questions, and I don’t think my self-absorbed musician ego really cared much about other people or what other people thought – especially not in the way Jesus calls us to think about in today’s gospel.
After a few years of exploring and worshiping within many different Christian denominations, and, to be honest, even exploring other faith traditions, I ended up feeling most connected whenever I was in an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation.
In the ELCA, I felt welcome.
I felt accepted for who I was,
even though I often sounded a lot more like the disciples at the beginning of our gospel today and nothing like a disciple who was willing to actually become the servant Jesus was asking me to become.
And in spite of that, during this time, I was encouraged to ask challenging questions. Questions about faith and God, Jesus and politics, scripture and church hierarchy.
To dig deeply into things about the church that I disagreed with or simply didn’t understand because I thought it was too difficult.
As I look back now, what I think was happening during this season of my life is this…I was encountering people of faith, who called Jesus the Messiah. People of faith who shared in the communal experience of trying to make sense our shared call in life that is rooted in service toward others, not being served by others.
Like James and John, you and I are quick to assume that following Christ Jesus leads to success, power, and glory – especially if we are getting our information on following Jesus from most Christian media today.
You’re not alone in that.
I know that’s what my heart and ego told me as a young musician what being a Christian was all about.
Like James and John, we ask for what we know and think we want, or maybe even think we need – and we know that that always involves success, power, and glory.
The good news of following Jesus is that, this Jesus turns our lust for success, power, and glory on its head: “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”
Being a servant toward others in life-giving and selfless ways is at the center of life together in Christian community.
In this first year serving as your bishop, I’ve spent a lot of time in devotion and prayer walking through the small catechism. Each day I reflect and pray through one part of the catechism.
What does it mean when we pray – as we will today in worship today – “thy kingdom come”?
Well, according to one of our church’s core teachings, the Small Catechism, it means “In fact, God’s kingdom comes on its own without prayer, but we ask in this prayer that it may also come to us. This comes about whenever our heavenly Father gives us his Holy Spirit, so that through the Holy Spirit’s grace we believe God’s holy word and live godly lives here in time and hereafter in eternity.”
Pastor Shane Claiborne was speaking at a national youth gathering that I attended several years ago. He talked about his faith journey and call into Christian leadership. I don’t remember all the details of his testimony, but I do remember this.
He said that before he started following Jesus, he had everything in his life together. Everything made sense. And everything was under his control.
And then he met Jesus, and everything in his life was turned upside down. Claiborne told the crowd of 30,000 or so Lutheran youth from across the United States that he didn’t think about helping people or loving people unconditionally or serving people, before he met Jesus.
After he met Jesus, he began to think constantly and live his life in ways every day to serve other people – the poor, the hungry, the rich, the lonely. To speak out against things that oppress people, and to love his neighbor unconditionally.
Jesus showed him those things.
And Jesus continues to show him that path along his faith journey.
One of the key parts of Pastor Claiborne’s mission and ministry today is building movements of Christians that look like Jesus again.
Christians that take Jesus seriously about becoming a servant, about being a slave to another;
Christians that take Jesus seriously as children of God receive compassion that asks for nothing in return;
Christians that Jesus seriously and are not afraid to go into our city streets and public schools and government buildings and profess that Jesus is Lord.
Jesus shows us that again today, sisters and brothers, as Jesus invites us into a life of service.
And we don’t do the work of Jesus by beating people over the head with a Bible or arguing over who is the greatest or most important or hating our neighbor because they think different than we do about things like global pandemics and the effectiveness of wearing a mask.
We do this by embracing one another with the unconditional love of God you and I have already received in Christ Jesus.
As we share the grace and truth of Jesus Christ together, I’m not going to say that I always agree with everything our church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, says or does, and I think the ELCA knows that – maybe more so now than before I was called to be a synod Bishop.
But this church, the ELCA, continues to love me and accept me just as I am.
I haven’t found that truth in any other faith community I’ve explored – Christian or some other faith tradition.
A life of faith is expressed through service to one another. The responsibility of each and every one of us, who claim to be a follower of Jesus, is to always remember that individually and in community, we share life together in a covenantal and sacred relationship.
A sacred relationship that is a gift from God.
A covenantal relationship that always calls us to focus on how our life together in community embodies how God wants us to live so that all may be blessed – not just those who sit in a church sanctuary once in a while.
In Pastor Lisa’s 30 years of ordained ministry this is all she has been trying to do.
Whether that was serving on synod council or synod staff, walking with leaders in Luther League or LYO, or listening while helping communities navigate through waters filled with conflict, that was all she was trying to do.
Whether that was serving as a pastor in any number of congregations, congregations with names like St. Paul’s or Grace or Lord of Life or Lutheran Church of the Cross, I believe Pastor Lisa was trying to be a servant in all she said and did.
And even for Pastor Lisa, this self-giving life of service that Jesus has and continues to call her into doesn’t always come naturally.
This is often hard and thankless work.
The same is true for you and for me. If we’re being honest with ourselves.
This doesn’t always come naturally for us – especially those of us living in a country like the United States.
The way of Christian discipleship, and entering fully into a life of faith, calls us into a new set of values.
A new way of seeing the world in which we live.
A new way of life that contrasts with the philosophy of “looking out for number one.”
Again, sisters and brothers of Lutheran Church of the Cross, thank you for the invitation to be with you.
Each one of you is a gift to the work God is calling us into in this little corner of Christ’s church.
I pray that you continue to be abundantly blessed as you seek to serve and not be served in all that you say and do as followers of Jesus.
As I was preparing a Saturday morning cup of coffee, I was struck by the view outside of my kitchen window. A thick layer of fog had engulfed the Missouri River valley and much of the city of Mandan. It gave me pause as I reflected upon the past week. A week in which I experienced the incredible weight we are called to carry as followers of Jesus. Weight that can sometimes make experiencing the gospel difficult to see through all the fog.
The fall meeting of the ELCA Conference of Bishops wrapped up on Friday afternoon. Our work as a conference during this meeting included care for our rostered ministers, conversations around our church’s sacramental theology, deep discernment about issues like racism that continues to infect our church and country, and work being done to create memorials that will offer support to victims of clergy sexual abuse.
As our time together concluded, I felt the weight of this call in the office of bishop.
The fog so thick that we can’t possibly see a way forward.
Where is the gospel in all of this? Do I still even know what the gift of faith is all about?
In those times, we need to be reminded that Jesus is always beside us and saying to us, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Whenever I felt like the weight of this week was just too heavy to bear, I reminded myself that I wasn’t alone. That Jesus was with me all along. The burden didn’t feel quite so heavy then. The fog wasn’t quite as thick.
As our synod gathered to grieve the death of the Rev. Donna Dohrmann this week, we didn’t walk that journey alone either. Donna’s family, and each of us who grieve, were surrounded by people of faith who prayed, sang, proclaimed the good news of resurrection promises, celebrated the Sacrament of Holy Communion, and commended our sister in Christ to God’s eternal care…together.
By the time I finished writing this blog post, the fog that had blanketed the Missouri River valley this morning had lifted. In much the same way that the weight of the past week began to lift a little too.
Please join me in prayer…
We pray for your grace, dear God, to listen attentively and share faithfully.
We pray for hearts and minds that are open to one another,
open to your truth,
and open to whatever you may be doing in our midst.
In the name of Jesus we pray.
Amen.
(prayer written by Rev. Mark Gravrock, Montana Synod)
Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and Lord and Savior Jesus who is the Christ. Amen.
St. John Lutheran Church, it is great to be with you this morning. I’m grateful for the ministry and mission God does through each one of you in this congregation, grateful for your elected leadership, and incredibly grateful for your amazing pastors – Pastor Lisa and Pastor Joe. Thank you for the invitation to be with you today. I have the opportunity to be in a different congregation in our synod nearly every Sunday of the year, it’s one of the great blessings of this call.
I also want to offer greetings to you from your brothers and sisters of the WND Synod – more than 160 congregations, around 55,000+ brothers and sisters;
I bring you greetings from your brothers and sisters across the ELCA – 9,000 congregations, nearly 3 million brothers and sisters;
and, I bring you greetings from your siblings in the Lutheran World Federation, of which our denomination of the ELCA is the only representative of from the United States. LWF connects 148 Lutheran denominations, over 77 million children of God, in 99 different countries who, together, are sharing in God’s ministry and mission around the world.
I begin every sermon I offer as I serve as your Bishop with those greetings. They are important for us to hear because they help us re-center ourselves on just how big the church is that we are connected to – beyond the walls of our local congregations.
And just how wide the reach of our shepherd Jesus is – not only for us in the ELCA, but all of God’s good creation.
We’ve been in this chapter of Mark’s gospel for the past few weeks. Hopefully you’ve noticed. There’s a lot going on! Mark is known as the gospel that moves fast – chapter six has things moving at a speed that seems crazy even by Mark’s standards.
Jesus is rejected in his hometown.
The twelve out on their mission.
Jesus feeds five thousand people and then walks on water.
Just last week, John the Baptist was beheaded. Hopefully you received Pastor Joe’s excellent proclamation of the good news last weekend in spite of that most violent and disturbing of gospel readings.
For Mark, the central concern of Jesus’ mission and ministry is the inauguration of the kingdom of God in, with, and through Jesus.
Remember the opening words of this gospel?
“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
This good news is going to completely flip the world upside down!
This good news means that all sheep will be cared for with unending compassion;
all brokenness will be restored and made whole;
everything in every part of creation will be healed.
That sounds fantastic doesn’t it! Those who witnessed these things taking place with their very own eyes in their own time, 2,000 years ago, they thought it was.
2,000 years later, in our own time and with our own eyes, do we think it’s all that fantastic?
Long before God planted a seed in me around the possibility of a vocation that would one day involve serving in the Lutheran church, I was a professional musician. Standing in front of people to present something on my heart usually took place in a smoky jazz club or on auditorium stage, not in a church pulpit.
Another part of my story that you may or may not know…I didn’t grow up Lutheran. I grew up Roman Catholic.
My family was active in church as a child, but I really struggled to connect. Yea, I believed, after all, my mom and grandma told me I should. But I didn’t understand why or how belief made any difference to the life I was trying to live.
I had a lot of questions and rarely did I feel like I found answers to those questions about church or faith in ways that gave me closure or peace.
Often my questions were answered by people saying things like “because” or “that’s just the way it is” or “it’s not our job to ask those questions or know their answers. That’s for religious people like the priests to know.”
Eventually I began to dig deeper into my questions, to no longer be afraid of them, and to engage in deep conversations with trusted friends and family and spiritual mentors inside and outside of the Roman Catholic tradition of my youth.
Conversations about God and Jesus; faith and politics; justice and scripture; church hierarchy and history.
After a few years of exploring and worshiping within many different Christian denominations, and even exploring other faith traditions, I ended up feeling most connected whenever I was in an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation.
Now, remember, the thought of being a pastor one day, or the even more remote thought of being a Bishop, still sounds absolutely crazy to me.
But in the ELCA, I felt welcome.
I was encouraged to ask challenging questions.
To dig deeply into things about the church that I disagreed with or simply didn’t understand.
I wasn’t judged for who I was as a musician with hair that was longer than Pastor Joe’s, or more so, for who I was as a human being.
There are two times in today’s gospel when Jesus is in a boat that arrives at a lakeshore.
When the first boat lands in the first part of our gospel today, people receive compassion from Jesus in ways they have never imagined receiving from anyone before. And they are taught things by Jesus that will change every part of their lives forever.
During that season of my life when I was encountering Jesus in ways I never dreamt of encountering, as I dug deeper into the story of Jesus, I began to understand and see how Jesus’ story, is part of my story. I began to realize that my life, and the life of everyone who has or ever will claim to be a follower of Jesus, we’re not all that different from one another.
You and I live in a broken world that continues to wander through life like a sheep without a shepherd. We long to receive compassion from others. And at the same time, we refuse to see how Jesus is at work in and through us still today.
In the second boat, in the later part of our gospel reading today, healing happens as crowds of people rush to Jesus, begging for the opportunity to simply touch the fringe of his cloak.
I don’t care how big your ego is, or how tough you think you are, you and I have all been part of similar stories at one time or another.
We have all experienced human brokenness like the characters in today’s gospel.
Every one of us sitting in this sanctuary on a beautiful Sunday morning in July or joining us online or on the radio, every one of us is holding onto hidden pains and brokenness. Things that are the result of troubled marriages or other broken relationships, mental illness, loneliness, substance abuse, political divides with -isms of all kinds, unexpected news from your doctor about a health diagnosis, and so on…
2,000 years after this gospel story took place along a middle eastern lakeshore, God’s children are still begging to touch Jesus’ cloak in order to be healed.
Today’s gospel brings us good news that assures us once again that Jesus sees our needs and responds with compassion.
The overarching good news of the savior of the world is that Jesus meets us where we are, knows our name, understands our brokenness and invites us into a relationship that will bring forth a radical new kingdom of grace and peace for all of God’s creation.
Pastor Shane Claiborne was speaking at a national youth gathering that I was at several years ago. He talked about his faith journey and call into Christian leadership. I don’t remember all of the details of his testimony, but I do remember this. He said that before he started following Jesus he had everything in his life together. Everything made sense. And everything was under his control.
And then he met Jesus, and everything in his life got messed up. Claiborne told the crowd of 30,000 or so Lutheran youth from across the United States that he didn’t think about helping people or loving people unconditionally or serving people, before he met Jesus.
After he met Jesus he began to think constantly and live his life in ways where every day he felt called to serve the poor, to feed the hungry, to speak out against things that oppress people, and to love his neighbor unconditionally.
Jesus showed him those things.
And Jesus continues to show him that path along his faith journey.
One of the key purposes of Pastor Claiborne’s ministry today is building movements of Christians that look like Jesus again.
Christians that take Jesus seriously as lost sheep are unconditionally loved back into the flock;
take Jesus seriously as children of God receive compassion that asks for nothing in return;
take Jesus seriously and not be afraid to go into our city streets and public schools and government buildings and profess that Jesus is Lord.
And Jesus shows us again today, we don’t this work by beating people over the head with a Bible.
We do this work by embracing them with the unconditional love of God you and I have already received in Christ Jesus.
Even though many years have passed, I continue to be grateful for brothers and sisters in Christ in an ELCA congregation on the North Dakota prairie. Sisters and brothers who showed me for seemingly the very first time in my life, that I in fact am loved by God unconditionally and held in the Shepherd’s embrace forever.
And today, in these early months of serving as your Bishop, I continue to be grateful for their witness to me, and for the many ways I’m discovering every day, how we as people of faith in the western North Dakota Synod, part of this crazy little church called the ELCA, how all of us are all connected together in the ever-unfolding story of the good news of the savior of the world, Jesus the Christ.
As we share this good news together, I’m not going to say that I always agree with everything the ELCA says or does, and I think the ELCA knows that – maybe more so than before I was called to be a synod Bishop.
But this church, the ELCA, continues to love me and accept me just the same.
I haven’t found that truth in any other faith community I’ve explored – Christian or some other faith tradition.
Brothers and sisters in Christ of Saint John Lutheran Church, I’m grateful for your commitment to God’s work through you. As you leave worship today, push your boats out into the water and embrace the mission God is sending you into the world with at St. John. And as you go “living in service to Christ” may God continue to bless you and keep you as God’s mission to bless and serve the world is fulfilled through you. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and Lord and Savior Jesus who is the Christ. Amen.
Sunne Lutheran Church, I bring you greetings on behalf of your brothers and sisters of the WND Synod – more than 160 congregations, around 55,000+ brothers and sisters;
I bring you greetings on behalf of your brothers and sisters across the ELCA – 9,000 congregations, nearly 3 million brothers and sisters;
and, I bring you greetings on behalf of your siblings in the Lutheran World Federation, of which our denomination of the ELCA is the only representative of from the United States. LWF connects 148 Lutheran denominations, over 77 million children of God, in 99 different countries who, together, are sharing in God’s ministry and mission around the world.
I open nearly every sermon I offer as I serve as your Bishop with those greetings. They are important for us to hear and help us re-center ourselves on just how big the church is that we are connected to – beyond the walls of our local congregations.
And those greetings bring a bit of joy and good news for us today, because…well…the gospel reading we just received.
Whenever this gospel reading comes along in our worship – which is every 3 years in case you didn’t know – I hesitate a little to conclude the reading by saying “The Gospel of our Lord.”
After all – the gospel is the good news of our Lord. The good news of God’s love for us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
How in any way are these 15 verses of the gospel of Mark good news?
John the Baptist – Jesus’ close relative and first proclaimer of the good news of the Messiah coming into the world – is in prison. Although many seem to think he’s already dead.
Herod’s wife used to be his brother’s wife. And she seems like someone who holds onto grudges by seeking revenge. Revenge at any cost.
Herod’s daughter is dancing at her father’s party. Dancing in ways that are pleasing to her father and his guests. One can only imagine what kind of incestuous dancing this may have been.
Herod gets caught in a trap to murder John the Baptist by his wife and daughter, even though he is intrigued by John’s teaching and proclamation. Remember, Herod even protects John.
Jesus is never mentioned. In fact, this is the only story in the gospel of Mark in which Jesus doesn’t even make an appearance.
How is this gospel? How is this good news?
I don’t know, maybe the question we could be asking ourselves is this…why is this shocking story so important to Mark’s telling of who Jesus is?
One possible answer to that question that I’ve found helpful in recent years comes from the writing of a theology professor at the University of Mary in Bismarck – right in the backyard of Sunne Lutheran. A few years ago, Dr. Leroy Huizenga wrote a book called “Loosing the Lion.” It focuses entirely on the gospel of Mark. His opening words of the book speak truth to our gospel this morning which originates in the first century and the time in which we find ourselves living out our faith in some twenty centuries later.
“Our age is numb.” Huizenga writes, “It’s numb to beauty, to goodness, to truth, because it’s numb to grace, and ultimately numb to God.”
Huizenga uses these opening words to remind us of the shocking ways in which the gospel of Mark tells us the beautiful story of the good news of Jesus Christ, the savior of the world.
In other words, today’s gospel reading may not seem like good news on the surface. But if we dig just a little deeper – something that you and I are not always good at doing in our faith journey – we will discover something much more. Something that will bring forth gospel and restore new life in each one of us and the neighbors that God places in our path along the way.
Long before God planted a seed in me around the possibility of a vocation that would one day involve serving in the Lutheran church, I was a professional musician. Standing in front of people to present something on my heart usually took place in a smoky jazz club or on auditorium stage, not in a church pulpit.
My life during this time, didn’t involve people’s heads being served on a platter, but it also didn’t reflect a soft-spoken, silhouetted Jesus wistfully walking down the street, which is how so many of us imagine Jesus looks.
My life, then and now, is a whole lot messier than that.
Another part of my story that you may or may not know…I didn’t grow up Lutheran. I grew up Roman Catholic.
My family was active in church as a child, but I really struggled to connect. Yea, I believed, after all, my mom and grandma told me I should. But I didn’t understand why or how belief made any difference to the life I was trying to live. And I definitely didn’t understand how crazy stories like today’s gospel had anything to do with my story.
I had a lot of questions and rarely did I feel like I found answers to those questions about church or faith in ways that gave me closure or peace.
Often my questions were answered by people saying things like “because” or “that’s just the way it is” or “it’s not our job to ask those questions or know their answers. That’s for religious people like the priests to know.”
Eventually I began to dig deeper into my questions, to no longer be afraid of the questions I was asking, and to engage in deep conversations with trusted friends and family and spiritual mentors inside and outside of the Roman Catholic tradition of my youth.
Conversations about God and Jesus; faith and politics; justice and scripture; church hierarchy and history.
After a few years of exploring and worshiping within many different Christian denominations and other faith traditions, I ended up feeling most connected whenever I was in an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation.
Now, remember, the thought of being a pastor, or the even more remote thought of being a Bishop one day, still sounds absolutely crazy to me.
But in the ELCA, I felt welcome.
I was encouraged to ask challenging questions.
To dig deeply into things about the church that I disagreed with or simply didn’t understand.
I wasn’t judged for who I was as a musician or more so, for who I was as a human being.
As I dug deeper into the story of Jesus, I began to understand and see how Jesus’ story, is part of my story. I began to realize that my life and the life of everyone who has or ever will claim to be a follower of Jesus, we’re not all that different from one another.
You see, sisters and brothers in Christ, you and I live in a broken world that continues to mirror the story of John’s beheading.
We have all been part of a similar story at one time or another.
Persons in power deflecting fault.
Times when we have sought revenge at all costs on those who have been bold enough to speak truth to us.
Making vane promises that we know will cause harm to others if we ever have to in fact bring those promises into reality.
Lording power over another part of God’s creation because we think they are somehow less important to God than we are.
“Herod’s beheading of John seems rather brutal, something we look for on Game of Thrones but are surprised to see in a Gospel (conveniently forgetting, of course, the brutality of the cross!). Yet are Herod’s actions really all that far from the callous manipulations of power we see today? This is our world and our story, and perhaps we forget that only because we have become so numbingly accustomed to seeing it play out daily in the headlines.” [www.inthemeantime.com]
It is my hope and prayer that we haven’t become numb – as Professor Huizenga and Pastor Lose suggest.
But if we have – or if and when we do, I’m thankful for the shocking good news that you and I are invited to receive from the gospel of Saint Mark today.
Even though many years have passed, I continue to be grateful for brothers and sisters in Christ in an ELCA congregation on the prairie. Sisters and brothers who showed me for seemingly the very first time in my life, that I in fact am part of God’s story in and through Jesus – regardless of how incredibly messy that story appears to be from time to time.
And today, in these early months of serving as your Bishop, I continue to be grateful for their witness to me, and for the many ways I’m discovering every day, how we as people of faith in the western North Dakota Synod, part of this crazy little church called the ELCA, how our stories are all connected together in the ever unfolding story of the good news of the savior of the world, Jesus the Christ.
I’m not going to say that I always agree with everything the ELCA says or does, and I think the ELCA knows that – maybe more so than before I was called to be a synod Bishop.
But this church, the ELCA, continues to love me and accept me just the same.
I haven’t found that truth in any other faith community I’ve explored – Christian or some other faith tradition.
Just like Herod and all of the other crazy characters we find in scripture, you and I are invited each and every day to listen to the challenging voice of God in our day and age. To really listen. And in doing so, to turn away from the lures and temptations that attempt to seduce us away from loyalty to God.
And just like John the Baptist…through us – through you and through me – God speaks words of peace, love, forgiveness, and mercy. These words of truth challenge the world’s appetite toward violence, hatred, deceit, judgment, and ultimately death. [sundaysandseasons.com]
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I’m grateful for your commitment to Gods’s work through Sunne Lutheran Church. May God continue to bless you and keep you as God’s mission to bless and serve the world is fulfilled through you as we await God’s final redemption for all creation.
After all, that’s all John the Baptist was trying to do. And that most certainly is good news. Amen.
Rainy Butte is located near Amidon and New England, North Dakota. Lebanon Lutheran Church in Amidon invited me to join their outdoor worship service on Rainy Butte on June 27, 2021. It was a glorious day in an even more glorious place! The video quality isn’t the best, but it does give you a little feel for where we were worshipping.
Mark 5:21-43 • June 27, 2021 • “Believe…”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Children of God from congregations across the southwestern corner of our synod, I bring greetings to you on behalf of your brothers and sisters of the WND Synod – more than 160 congregations, around 60,000+ brothers and sisters;
I bring greetings on behalf of your brothers and sisters across the ELCA – 9,000 congregations, 3 million brothers and sisters;
and, I bring you greetings on behalf of your brothers and sisters in the Lutheran World Federation, of which our denomination of the ELCA is the only representative of from the United States. LWF connects 148 Lutheran denominations, over 77 million children of God, in 99 different countries who, together, are sharing in God’s ministry and mission around the world.
It is such a joy to be with you today as we worship on this beautiful piece of God’s good creation. One can’t help but stand in awe of the beauty of God’s creation – especially the beauty of the prairie of North Dakota.
I also want to offer my condolences on behalf of the western North Dakota Synod following the recent death of our sister in Christ Carolyn Erickson. She was an amazing witness to the grace and unconditional love of God. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to meet her a few times over the years. And grateful for the tremendous impact that her and Pastor Jerry have had on Christ’s church.
Carolyn was actually one of the first people I talked with after beginning my time serving in the office of Bishop on September 1, 2020. She was making sure that I had this date on my calendar right away – for two reasons, one is that today is her birthday and two was the great celebration of worship on Rainy Butte that was being planned.
Carolyn may not be with us today physically, but she is most definitely present in countless other ways as we gather to worship and give God our thanks and praise!
There are two stories in today’s text from Mark that challenge an interesting group of characters to “just believe.” The story of Jairus and his dying daughter and the story of a woman who has been suffering for 12 years.
Jesus has entered this village on the other side – probably west of the Sea of Galilee. He is met by a leader of the community, Jairus – a significant figure in the synagogue. Someone who should not even be acknowledging Jesus’ existence, much less be seen with him. And on top of that falling at Jesus’ feet begging him to come and heal his daughter. Jairus believes that Jesus can heal his daughter even though his tradition and culture tell him not to believe.
Jairus’ story is interrupted by an unnamed woman who has been very sick with hemorrhages and bleeding for 12 years. For 12 years this woman has been an outcast in society. She is not welcome anywhere or by anyone. Under the law, she is so unclean that anyone who even comes in contact with her will also be unclean. This woman also believes that Jesus can heal her even though her tradition and culture tell her different.
In spite of all the risks that these characters face, they believe Jesus can heal them if they can just touch him.
Which character did you relate to as we heard this text today? Are you like Jairus. A strong symbol in the community of elite social status, great respect, and wealth. Often, these folks feel like the world is on their shoulders and they seem to know just how to keep it under control and under their control specifically. The world runs exactly as they think it should run, until something unexpected happens. Now you turn to Jesus as the only possible source of healing out of your desperation.
Or are you like the suffering woman. You feel invisible and isolated from the rest of the community. You feel abandoned and ignored. If you even touch another person, they will be as unclean as you are. Desperately, you seek human affection to try and feel “normal” no matter what the cost. You believe that if you can but touch Jesus or just get close enough to him, he will make you whole again.
Or maybe you are like the dying little girl. Death looms over you. You feel like your time is running out. You fear that if anyone reaches out and touches you, they may also be threatened with death. You desperately want to be able to live a full life again. You believe that new life will be possible if Jesus can just touch you.
I know I can see myself in all three of these characters. I would guess that you probably can too.
Long before God planted a seed in me around the possibility of a vocation that would one day involve serving in the Lutheran church, I was a professional musician. Standing in front of people to present something on my heart usually took place in a smokey jazz club or on auditorium stage, not in a church pulpit.
In many ways, I can relate to Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman in our gospel today, falling at the feet of Jesus, in search of something they didn’t know quite how to find.
Another part of my story that you may or may not know…I didn’t grow up Lutheran. I grew up Roman Catholic.
My family was active in church as a child, but I really struggled to connect. Yes, I believed, after all, my mom and grandma told me I should. But I didn’t understand why or how belief made any difference to the life I was trying to live.
I had a lot of questions and rarely did I feel like I found answers to those questions about church or faith in ways that gave me closure or peace.
Often my questions were answered by people saying things like “because” or “that’s just the way it is” or “it’s not our job to ask those questions or know their answers. That’s for religious people to know.” “Just keep quiet and believe.”
Eventually I began to dig deeper into my questions, to no longer be afraid of the questions I was asking, and to engage in deep conversations with trusted friends and family and spiritual mentors inside and outside of the Roman Catholic tradition of my youth.
Conversations about God and Jesus; faith and politics; justice and scripture; church hierarchy and history. Conversations about call and vocation. Belief.
After a few years of exploring and worshiping within many different Christian denominations, I ended up feeling most connected whenever I was in an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation.
Now, the thought of being a pastor or the even more remote thought of being a Bishop one day still sounds absolutely crazy to me.
But in the ELCA, I felt welcome.
I was encouraged to ask challenging questions.
To dig deeply into things about the church that I disagreed with or simply didn’t understand.
I wasn’t judged for who I was as a musician or more so, for who I was as a human being.
I began to feel like I had actually touched the cloak of Jesus and was being healed in ways I didn’t know needed healing.
I’m not going to say that I always agree with everything the ELCA says or does, and I think the ELCA knows that – maybe more so than before I was called to be a synod Bishop.
But this church, the ELCA, continues to love me and accept me just the same.
I haven’t found that truth in any other church I’ve explored – Christian or some other faith tradition.
Just believe.
Jesus says to Jairus, “do not fear. Only believe.”
Jesus says to the suffering woman, “Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your disease.”
Jesus says to the dying little girl, “Talitha cum.” “Little girl, get up!”
Just believe.
Do you see the miracles taking place in this story?
There are not just two healings taking place.
There is the miracle of the healings, sure, but there is also the miracle of Jesus breaking down barriers that had been created by the community. Barriers that the community built.
Barriers that protected the upper-class like leaders of the synagogue and Jairus’ family and placed them on high pedestals above everyone else.
Barriers that kept people like the suffering woman isolated from everyone so she wouldn’t infect others.
Because Jairus, the suffering woman, and the little girl believed in Jesus – not only were they healed, but barriers came crashing down in miraculous ways for this community.
I don’t know about you, but there are times in my life when I feel like things are out of control. Times of unexpected illness, tragedy, and death.
On March 8, 2020, Wendy and I were enjoying a baseball game watching America’s team play in Mesa, Arizona. A few short months later, on July 28th, Wendy had an accident that although not necessarily life-threatening, has, and continues to be, life-changing.
A few months after that, on October 19th to be exact, my mother died from coronavirus. She didn’t die of or with covid, she died from covid. And my prayer is that her memory is not simply because she is one of the covid death statistics in North Dakota.
There are also times of great joy and celebration in our lives. Joy in new life, new careers and callings, and new relationships.
Wendy started a new job with a fantastic company in April 2020 and I received an unexpected new call from all of you, as the Holy Spirit worked through you, into the office of bishop. A call in which new relationships are forming daily that I give God thanks and praise for.
In this story from Mark’s gospel, you and I are reminded that in good times and bad,
and the Lord knows that we’ve had plenty of both in the past 18 months,
in all those times, Jesus was with us.
Jesus comes to us and says, “Do not fear; only believe.”
And please don’t hear me saying that if you believe, you will be able to get God to do what you want. The good news of Jesus is not about how to get God to do what you want God to. Today’s gospel is a story about who God is, how God acts, and what God is like as we live in relationship with him and with each other as the body of Christ.
That is why I can stand before you today and confidently and boldly proclaim to you as your Bishop and fellow child of God, “Just believe!”
It is one of the hardest things you or I will ever do as followers of the risen savior Jesus.
One of my favorite hymns in our hymnbook is written by a friend of mine whose name is Handt Hanson. It’s a hymn with the title “Good Soil.” I think the words of this hymn may help each of us understand the good news of Jesus for us today, inviting us to come before the feet of Jesus and say, “I believe.”
If you know it, join me…I’ll do my best with the pitch and melody.
“Lord, let my heart be good soil, open to the seed of your word. Lord, let my heart be good soil, where love can grow and peace is understood. When my heart is hard, break the stone away. When my heart is cold, warm it with the day. When my heart is lost, lead me on your way. Lord, let my heart, Lord, let my heart, Lord, let my heart be good soil.”
May your heart be good soil sisters and brothers in Christ. As you believe in the good news of the savior of the world Jesus the Christ, may God continue to bless you and keep you as his mission to bless and serve the world is fulfilled through you.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
First of all, Happy Father’s Day! Happy Father’s day to my dad as well as my father-in-law. Happy Father’s day to everyone who has been a blessing to me as a father figure. And even, Happy Father’s Day to all the dads who struggle to be a dad. All of us get this dad-duty wrong from time to time. And some, get it wrong more often than they get it right. You are not alone if I’m speaking to you. There are many ways you and I can grow and get better at being a dad most especially by surrounding ourselves with other dads along the journey.
So…to all the dads…Happy Father’s Day!
Second, this may just be my least favorite time of the year. We celebrate the Summer Solstice this weekend. For those of us who live this far north in the hemisphere, the solstice is the beginning of the end. It is. It’s the start of shorter days, which all too quickly bring us back to the darkness and cold of winter.
And for some reason – I’ll let you pick whatever reason you’d like to pick – this year it seems even more significant that summer is already on its way out. It’s all downhill from here folks…snow shovels and winter coats will soon be part of our everyday life on the prairie once again.
Third, it is a great joy to be with you in worship again. I am so excited to be celebrating the installation of Pastor Madsen – albeit a bit delayed because of all of the storms we’ve faced in the past year – so, this day, without question, is a great day of celebration. Thank you, for the invitation to be with you!
Finally, I do this at every opportunity I have, I bring greetings on behalf of your brothers and sisters across the Western North Dakota Synod – more than 160 congregations; I bring you greetings on behalf of your brothers and sisters who are part of the more than 9,000 congregations within our Lutheran Christian denomination of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; and, I bring greetings on behalf of the Lutheran World Federation, of which we are the only Lutheran body represented from the United States. LWF encompasses 148 Lutheran churches, more than 77 million children of God serving in 99 countries around the world.
The gospel before us today involves boats and fishermen; storms and the power of God; and, the faith of people who claim to follow Jesus – or lack of faith as we just heard a few minutes ago.
Certainly, storms are something we can all relate to as people of the prairie. I live in a house that overlooks the Missouri River valley. My backyard has an amazing view of the western horizon. As I look west, the view of storms rolling in is incredible – regardless of the season.
Being a native of the North Dakota prairie, I find myself more often than not, standing in my backyard looking across the valley, watching a storm roll in, even when I probably should be taking shelter in a safer location like the inside of my house.
This week’s gospel is found in three of the four gospels. In Mark’s telling of the story, I’ve always been struck by verse 36 that says “other boats were with him.” Why is that little piece of information important to Mark and not to Matthew or Luke?
Well…one theologian believes that it helps us see that we are in the “other boats” as we are called to faith by God. From the very earliest days of Jesus’ ministry among the first disciples and through-out our own life of faith as Jesus’ followers, we are invited to come along.
After all, you and I believe that Jesus, the Son of God, is not merely a first-century miracle worker. We believe that Jesus is the very presence of God conquering evil from the beginning of time and through any and all storms that we will travel through in our own lifetime.
Over the past year, and probably even since I was last with you just a few short months ago, you and I have faced storms.
Storms that have affected our families.
Storms that have impacted the communities in which we live like greater Williston and Williams County areas.
You all had a pretty intense thunderstorm in Williams county just a few days ago.
Other storms that have maybe have even happened within First Lutheran Church’s mission and ministry over its long history in this community.
Or storms, that are often the most painful kind, storms that happen within our individual lives.
We can identify some of these storms easily as things like addiction, broken relationships, a global pandemic, sluggish energy prices and an uncertain future, drought that is directly impacting ever part of our state’s economic engine, or any of the -isms you can think of that occupy news headlines and social media pages this days, like racism, sexism, nationalism, ageism, elitism, etc.
As you and I sit in this boat, that the church of today calls a sanctuary, with all of the storms that rage within us and around us, how are you doing? Are you panicking? Are you asleep? Are you afraid? Have you reached a point where you have yelled out to Jesus because we are perishing!?!
In your own journey as a child of God, follower of Jesus, which has been greater in your recent faith life…fear of the storm or fear of the power of God?? Because fear is at the heart of everything that tears us away from being in relationship with the God of all creation.
Notice that Jesus doesn’t fear the storm that has come upon the boats they are in. If we look at the rest of the story of Jesus that we have in the gospels, Jesus doesn’t fear any of the storms he faces.
And, as we see over and over and over again, he definitely doesn’t fear the power of God.
In fact, throughout the gospels, Jesus embraces the power of God in order for God’s power to be a blessing to God’s children.
Jesus’ clarity about God’s power keeps his head above the swirling waters of anxiety and fear that submerge his disciples. Faith – not lack of care – is what drives Jesus’ character.
As faith communities, our churches act like the disciples on that boat all too often, don’t we?
Do we allow God’s power to bring peace in the middle of the storms that rage around us?
Or, do we continue to allow destructive behaviors to persist in our lives and the communities in which we live that feed storms with fear. Fear that strengthens their ability to destroy our relationships with each other and with God?
A good friend of mine offered a blog post early in the pandemic of 2020 called “My House Has Seen A Lot of Days.” He has lived for the past 20 years in a house in small eastern Pennsylvania town that was built around 1860. That’s before North Dakota was even a state. He was reflecting on all the things his house has experienced – the Civil War, two World Wars, assassinations of legendary leaders with names like Kennedy and King, the civil rights movement, two waves of the Spanish Flu.
As he pondered the stories the walls of his house contain as he wrote, “We can search ourselves, finding ways to contribute and change the world for the better. Or we can sit around pushing disproven conspiracy theories and inflammatory garbage on social media. We can approach our problems and each other with the intention of finding both solutions and unity. Or we can come at everything and everyone with a shield of self-righteousness: ready to fight, be right, and win.
Our outcomes are not guaranteed.” he wrote. “What we say or don’t say matters. What we do or don’t do matters.
Years from now people will sit around in what’s currently my living room, talking about these extraordinary times, what it must have been like to live through them, and how we reacted to our situation. If part of me is somehow still there in spirit, I hope I can listen in proudly.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we continue our journey of faith together as brothers and sisters in Christ of First Lutheran Church in Williston, North Dakota, called into ministry and mission together as the Western North Dakota Synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran World Federation, remember always that Jesus is with us.
When storms rage around us that stand in the way of God’s mission and ministry for us in this time and place, Jesus is there to rebuke the wind.
When storms rage that cause us to cower in fear, Jesus is with us, Jesus is there to say Peace, be still…to the waves and to our fear-filled bodies.
When storms rage that try to convince us that the power of God is not with us, Jesus is with us to us that the power of God is always with us to bring blessing.
Will future generations of the Lutheran Christian tradition believe that we actually lived out our faith confident that Jesus was with us? If we could hear their conversations taking place in our boat 10, 20, 100, 500 years from now, what will you and I hear them say?
In a few minutes, we will have an opportunity to exchange the peace of Christ. Take note that for followers of Jesus, this isn’t another opportunity to say good morning to one another. This isn’t a simple greeting to friends we know well who are sitting next to us only to ignore friends we don’t know who are also sitting next to us.
The greeting of peace within a Christian worship service – whether you are online or in-person today – is our opportunity to fully live into who we are as Christian community. A community that is unlike any other community we are part of, because this community believes that Jesus, and Jesus alone, is the one who can command the storms of our lives to be still.
Sisters and brothers in Christ of First Lutheran Church in Williston, North Dakota, Jesus is saying to any storm that may be raging in your life or in this congregation today…peace, be still. Peace, be still. Amen.
Just catching up on things after failing to post on the blog in a while. Here is a sermon offered during the Opening Worship of the 2021 Western North Dakota Synod Assembly.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
To this year’s voting members – either joining us in person in Minot or via our digital community – and to everyone else joining us via the livestream, I bring greetings on behalf of your brothers and sisters across the WND Synod – more than 160 congregations, 10’s of thousands of brothers and sisters serving together in the western two-thirds of our beautiful state of North Dakota; I bring greetings on behalf of your brothers and sisters across the ELCA – 9,000 congregations, around 3 million brothers and sisters serving together across the United States and Caribbean; and, I bring you greetings on behalf of your brothers and sisters in the Lutheran World Federation, of which our denomination of the ELCA is the only representative of from the United States. LWF connects 148 Lutheran denominations, over 77 million children of God, in 99 different countries who, together, are sharing in God’s ministry and mission around the world.
Those greetings have become repetitive and second nature for me as I’ve traveled across our synod in these first few months serving as your Bishop. They are greetings that I believe are appropriate and important to offer every time I speak on behalf of the church or proclaim the gospel good news in worship.
I think they’re important, because often times we get stuck believing God’s work is only happening through the church when we can actually see it with our own eyes in our little corner of the world.
I also think those greetings are important because so often you and I live out our faith as Jesus commands us to do in today’s gospel by putting greater importance one part and less importance on other parts.
Jesus commands us to love God. Love people. Love self.
Love God – you bet – I get that.
Love self – absolutely – after all, you have to look out for number one, right?
Love neighbor – eh – if I have time or feel like doing it someday, I might get around to that one.
I’m not sure if this is only a condition for people who live in extremely affluent parts of the world like we do or if it’s just a part of the human condition in general.
Our love of self is always comes above everything else. Or, maybe I’m the only one who gets stuck in the darkness of the sin of self more often than I will admit in public. Maybe you never experience that.
I mean, you and I are okay with loving God – as long as God is the god we think God should be.
And, if we have the energy or time, we’ll love our neighbor.
Maybe.
But they better look like me. They better vote like me. They better have the same viewpoint about masks and covid-19 that I had. As long as they _________, you insert whatever you want…we all place conditions on what it means to love our neighbor.
Notice, Jesus’ doesn’t place any conditions or restrictions or qualifications on what loving our neighbor is all about.
If you’ve paid attention to anything I’ve written or spoken since September 1, 2020, you know that Jesus’ commands to us in the gospel of Saint Matthew have become kind of a theme verse for these early days serving in the Office of Bishop.
I’m not sure if they will always be central, but they will always be part of who I am – or at least who I’m trying to be – as a child of God who has been called into this holy and mysterious vocation of Bishop.
Let’s face it, these are easy words for us to hear. And at the same time, they are incredibly difficult words for us to live out. Maybe we could think about it like this…living our lives as Jesus commands us to live…takes practice.
After all, practice makes perfect, right?
Back in the early ‘90’s, psychologist Anders Ericsson conducted a research project. His research involved examining distinctions among piano students of differing abilities, including those who performed at elite levels and those who were merely average. His research suggested that the key difference between a musician capable of performing at Carnegie Hall and one who just plays as a hobby was the quality and quantity of practice.
I’m not sure if I’m ready to admit this or not yet, but one of my former teachers may have been right. Her name was Norma McNamara. She was my guitar teacher as a child. She loved to say to me “practice makes perfect. And, Craig, it’d be great if you could spend a little more time practicing this week.”
Now, Dr. Ericcson’s theories have been challenged and fine-tuned over the past three decades. Additional scientists have taken a closer look at elements of performance in music, athletics, language acquisition, etc. What they’ve discovered is that things like memory, physical characteristics, age of learning certain skills, and even how people deal with their mistakes can contribute to high achievement. What they’ve also discovered is the truth that repetition and careful practice remain critical elements. [www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/October-20-30-a-matthew-2234-46]
Here’s the thing with repetition and careful practice as it relates to our faith journey and Jesus commandments in today’s gospel – Jesus’ words are not simply a moral saying or something that Jesus is okay with us only doing if we ever get around to feeling like doing it.
Embracing our faith and allowing God to work through us in the ways Jesus commands, takes practice – scripture study, worship, service, prayer, giving of ourselves physically, emotionally, spiritually, financially.
Jesus doesn’t give us a free pass, if we choose to ignore God’s commands to love God, love people, love self.
As Christians, practice focused on these things is at the core of who we are as followers of Jesus – especially if we look at it from the Lutheran branch of the Christian family tree. Don’t believe me – take a few minutes over the next few weeks and review the promises made in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism as just one example.
Bishop Hanson went on to say, “To be a Lutheran is to understand that the God who has named me and claimed me, called me by name in the waters of Baptism, has not chosen to develop a relationship that’s just with Mark Hanson, but is so gracious, that God always is restoring me to community.”
As we begin this journey into a world and a church that is quickly moving, and unfortunately forgetting, about the global pandemic that we’ve been through over the past year, let’s not move too fast.
Let’s take time to reflect on how God is restoring us to community.
And to get there, I believe we need to take time to confess – individually and communally within each of our local faith families.
To take time to confess the many ways we really didn’t care about being in community with others during this pandemic.
Confess the times when we really didn’t care about our neighbor – especially when we found out they voted differently than we did or because we disagreed on how society addressed the pandemic or because the other person Jesus thinks I should love has a different skin color than me or a different sexual orientation or gender than I am, and because of those things, not even Jesus can make me be loving toward them.
Notice, again, this isn’t how Jesus teaches us to behave as his followers – in these verses or in any other verse in the gospels.
In fact, if you can show me one verse of scripture when Jesus teaches us that we can pick and choose who our neighbor is, and how we do or don’t care from them, point that out to me – I’ll buy you lunch!
I’m pretty confident I won’t have to do that anytime soon.
At least not for that reason.
During this season of the church, maybe words from the 20th century church reformer and activist Dorothy Day can be helpful.
And maybe sting just a little too.
Day is often credited with saying, “I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.”
Sisters and brothers in Christ, take all the time…take all the time you think you and your congregations need in this season. But, I beg you, do not ignore taking time for the work of confession.
Receiving God’s unconditional and unmerited grace in forgiveness is the only way that we will move forward as children of God, as a church, as a human family.
Love God. Love people. Love self.
I believe this holy ritual of confession and forgiveness will be one of the grounding pieces that can help us move forward as followers of Jesus; unite us once again as communities of faith across the western North Dakota synod; renew us as one of the sixty-five synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; and restore us globally and eternally together as children of God in the one body of Christ; commanded by our savior to love God, love people and love self.
And finally, it is my hope and prayer that the 2021 Western North Dakota Synod Assembly provides each one of us with an idea or two – a little spark of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration – that will empower us to love God, love people, and love self in ways we’ve never dreamt of experiencing before.
Theologian Brian McLaren closes his most recent book, Faith After Doubt, with a blessing. I close my first sermon before a Synod Assembly with McLaren’s words.
Blessed are the curious, for their curiosity honors reality.
Blessed are the uncertain and those with second thoughts, for their minds are still open.
Blessed are the wonderers, for they shall find what is wonderful.
Blessed are those who question their answers, for their horizons will expand forever.
Blessed are those who often feel foolish, for they are wiser than those who always think themselves wise.
Blessed are those who are scolded, suspected, and labeled as heretics by the gatekeepers, for the prophets and mystics were treated in the same way by the gatekeepers of their day.
Blessed are those who know their unknowing, for they shall have the last laugh.
Blessed are the perplexed, for they have reached the frontiers of contemplation.
Blessed are they who become cynical about their cynicism and suspicious of their suspicion, for they will enter the second innocence.
Blessed are the doubters, for they shall see through false gods.
Blessed are the lovers, for they shall see God everywhere.
Whether you are in Minot or online for this year’s Synod Assembly, I’m glad you are here. May God bless our time together and keep us wrapped in the unconditional love of our savior Jesus.
A colleague of mine in the ELCA’s Conference of Bishops posted a beautiful prayer today. It’s called, “A Prayer For: The Exhausted.” I shared an image of the prayer on my Facebook page as soon as I saw it. It spoke to me, especially in light of the fact that I’m attempting to take a few days off for the first time in several weeks. I’m not sure if I’m exhausted, but I’m definitely a little tired. As I’ve offered this prayer today, Jesus’ words from Matthew’s gospel echo between the prayer’s poetic verses.
Jesus said, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
(Matthew 11:28-30)
Being called to serve in the church is difficult in the best of times. I’m not sure what kind of times we are walking through today, but the best of times might not be the first descriptive word most pastors, deacons, church staff, or volunteer church leaders would use? This truth is compounded by the ongoing reality of COVID-19; our daily struggle to navigate digital and in-person worlds; the seemingly unending cycle of political rhetoric; and a million other things that seek our attention. In my first few months serving as a Bishop, the conversations I’ve had with church leaders usually don’t involve joyful exhortations because everything is going exactly as they had planned.
But God is faithful. And God is still God. Jesus is still Jesus. And Jesus will always be our Savior. May Jesus’ words in Matthew’s gospel remind us that we don’t walk this journey alone – in the best of times and in every other time that we encounter along the way. As tired, or maybe even exhausted, as we are sometimes, remember…we are never alone. Thanks be to God!
In the days following my election to the Office of Bishop in July 2020, I felt like a wandering, lost soul in the desert. I spent several days in prayer and quiet meandering with my thoughts, feelings, and doubts. During that time, I heard the story in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 22, over and over again. If you haven’t read it in a while, I invite you to open up your Bible and check it out.
The story is a conversation between Jesus and a lawyer who tries to test the Savior. Jesus’ response to this testing has served as the primary compass for my first few months as Bishop. I believe more deeply with each new day that God has placed this prophetic teaching from Jesus on my heart for more than just my first few months serving in the Office of the Bishop. And I give God thanks for that truth.
Needless to say, I intended to write something different for this week’s blog post, but Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 22 called me down a different path.
Recent events unfolding before us are unlike any other…
… ongoing battles over coronavirus…
… unending killing of our fellow brothers and sisters on our city streets…
… the unimaginable movements in our own little piece of God’s creation that seem to have us spiraling out of control as a nation…
… the idolatress behavior toward any number of people and things that are in complete contradiction to following Jesus.
My heart aches.
My soul cries out.
And, yet, as the evil noise of the world seeks to overtake us, I hear Jesus say, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
I was thankful on the Feast of Epiphany to be invited into a time of worship and prayer at St. John Lutheran Church in Dickinson, ND. As I participated in their online community, this brief time of worship was like healing balm on a weary world and weary souls. As the Holy Spirit breathed through “A Time for Prayer,” Pastor Joe and Pastor Lisa never mentioned it, but Jesus’ words to “love your neighbor as yourself” echoed through my iPhone screen and into my very soul.
My friend and brother in Christ, Pastor Brian Derrer of Christ the Savior Lutheran Church in Fischers, Ind., wrote a prayer of lament on Wednesday evening. With his permission, I share it today as a way for us to reflect upon Jesus’ command, regardless of how we feel about events of the past several days and months. After all, we are followers of the Savior of the world Jesus the Christ. A Savior who calls us to “love our neighbor as yourself” in all that we say and do.
May Pastor Brian’s prayer bring peace to you in these days and hope for the days that lie ahead.
“We need to lament.
How long O Lord?
How long will we turn from the way of loving our neighbors?
How long shall we choose fabricated narratives that foment hate instead of the way of truth that speaks life?
Turn us to You, O Lord.
Turn us away from violence, hate, false witness.
Help us listen well to one another, while holding fast to the way that Jesus makes known.
Have mercy on us, O Lord…
…on our nation…
…on our communities and congregations…
…on the countless fellow citizens who long for peace, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…
It is the first day of a New Year!! And all God’s children say, “Thanks be to God!!” One of the scripture readings from the lectionary for the first day of this new year is the Aaronic Blessing or Priestly Benediction. It’s a fitting scripture for us to hear today. It’s comforting in ways I’m not sure I’ve ever thought about before. Comforting to know that the previous year is finally gone! Comforting to know that God is always with us!
To say that 2020 was difficult…is…well…an understatement. To say that 2020 was filled with fear and trembling doesn’t begin to describe the journey we just traveled. To say that 2020 revealed human behavior showcased through some of the most disgusting tendencies we’ve ever seen, behaviors that none of us should be okay with, was disheartening.
BUT – and this might surprise some of you – I am thankful for 2020.
“God bless you and keep you,
God smile on you and gift you,
God look you full in the face and make you prosper.”
Numbers 6:24-26 (The Message)
I’m thankful that 2020 reminded me of the importance of family. 2020 forced my family to grieve deeply at the untimely death of my mother. COVID-19 is pure evil and leaves death and destruction in its wake. As a family, we experienced this death and destruction first-hand. Grieving the death of my mother has reminded me, and I believe everyone in my family, just how significant family is. Just how important and beautiful our relationship with God is as it is lived out through our family. Thank you 2020. I love you mom!
I’m thankful that 2020 gave Wendy and me an unexpected experience of the healing power of God’s touch. The holy work of God’s hands guiding the hands of doctors and nurses and medical staff we never dreamt we’d ever need has been a sacred time. Wendy continues to heal from her July 28th accident. It was an accident that will change her life, and mine, forever. God’s healing hands have been upon Wendy this year. And both of us have been changed as we’ve witnessed the healing power of those hands. Thank you 2020.
I’m thankful that 2020 revealed to me a deeper understanding of call. This was revealed to me most directly during the Western North Dakota Synod Assembly on July 17th. God has continued to reveal this to me as I have served as Bishop since September. The church is a big, beautiful reflection of God’s presence in the world, albeit far from perfect. Thank you 2020. May God continue to bless and keep Christ’s church!
Sisters and brothers in Christ, as we begin our journey into a new year, may God’s presence in our lives remind us just how much we are blessed and kept by the God of all creation. May God’s face shining upon us, bring grace upon grace in all we say and do. May God walking with us through whatever 2021 throws at us, give us peace beyond all understanding. Amen. Let it be so.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the risen Christ. Amen.
My guess is that you’ve heard the gospel reading for today before. You know a lot, or at least a little, about this story of Jesus’ friend Lazarus.
Lazarus is Mary and Martha’s brother. They are close friends of Jesus from the town of Bethany. They sent word to Jesus that their brother was sick. One would guess that they hoped Jesus would immediately drop what he was doing and head to Bethany to be with the family. After all, isn’t that what you and I would do for a close friend in need? But for two days, Jesus simply stays in the place he was. It wasn’t God’s time yet seems to be his rational.
Lazarus ends up dying by the time Jesus arrives. Mary and Martha seem to be a little perplexed as to why Jesus took so long to get there. If he had really cared about them and made it in time, maybe Lazarus wouldn’t have died. It wasn’t God’s time yet.
Fast forward to the end of the story, Jesus goes to Lazarus’ tomb and asks for the stone to be rolled away. It’s been several days since his death, surely opening the tomb wouldn’t have been a pleasant smell. Jesus cries out “Lazarus, come out!” And out of the tomb of death walks a man fully alive, still wrapped in the burial cloth of death. Now, it was God’s time.
And here’s the even more amazing part of this story – in order for God’s glory to be fully revealed through Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus tells the community who has just witnessed this miracle to unbind Lazarus and let him go. The community frees Lazarus from the bondage of death.
For children of God, hope always overcomes despair. Hope always overcomes fear. Hope always overcomes death. As followers of Jesus, we know that our Lenten journey is going to take us to Jesus on the cross of Good Friday. We know that Jesus will lie in a tomb for a few days. We also know and say that we believe, that Jesus didn’t stay on the cross, he didn’t stay in the tomb. In God’s time, Jesus rose from the dead and conquered any death that we will ever face. Our hope, in the God of all creation, is what unbinds us and sets us free.
What does this look like for you and me as brothers and sisters in a faith community called Good Shepherd Lutheran Church? What does all of this mean? What can God possibly be saying to us today through an ancient story from the gospel of Saint John about Jesus and his friends in Bethany? Especially as we continue to try and live in these days of COVID-19. A time when not being able to be together physically for worship is becoming the new normal. A time filled with moments that feel like we are trapped in a tomb of death and have no idea when the stone will be rolled away.
When will God’s time be in order for us to unbind each other and go forward with a life that makes more sense than the one we are living on the last Sunday of March 2020?
My dear friend and colleague, Pastor Taryn Montgomery offers a picture of what this might look like. Many of you might remember Pastor Taryn. She was a guest preacher a few years ago during a stewardship sermon series. She has an incredibly talented videographer at her church in Minnesota. And even though this video was produced for her congregation, I asked her if I could share it with all of you too. Because it speaks so directly to how you and I are the church in this time of COVID-19. How God is calling us to unbind one another with the hope that only God can provide.
Take a look…
In 1527, Germany was under siege from the bubonic plague. A fellow pastor asked Martin Luther how he was handling the situation. Luther’s response in one of the reasons why I feel blessed to be a Lutheran Christian some 500 years later.
“I shall ask God mercifully to protect us. Then I shall fumigate, help purify the air, administer medicine and take it. I shall avoid places and persons where my presence is not needed in order not to become contaminated and thus perchance inflict and pollute others, and so cause their death as a result of my negligence.
If God should wish to take me, he will surely find me, and I have done what he has expected of me and so I am not responsible for either my own death or the death of others.
If my neighbor needs me, however, I shall not avoid place or person but will go freely, as stated above. See, this is such a God-fearing faith because it is neither brash nor foolhardy and does not tempt God.” [Whether one may flee from a Deadly Plague, Luther’s Works, Vol. 43, pg. 132]
We might not be living in the same time as the black plague of the middle ages, but we are definitely living in a unique time that none of us has ever experienced before. I’m offering today’s message from the Hillside Park shelter where we hold Worship in the Park each summer. It is one of the great ways Good Shepherd is church to our community during the year.
We are still the church brothers and sisters in Christ. You and I are still being called out to be the church. And I can think of no other time in the history of any of our lives when that is more important that right now. Be the church, because the world needs to see Jesus right now.
In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says to Martha, “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.”
Those aren’t words for an ancient time. They are words for you today. For me today. And for every child of God who is struggling to feel alive during this time or any other time in their life along this journey of faith.
Stay well brothers and sisters. And until we are able to worship alongside one another in person again, be the church. May God continue to bless you. And may you feel God’s presence beside you, embracing you in love as only Christ Jesus can do. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
In Baptism our gracious heavenly Father frees us from sin and death by joining us to the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. We are born children of a fallen humanity; through water and the Holy Spirit, we are reborn children of God and made members of the church, the Body of Christ. Living with Christ, and in the communion of the saints, we grow in faith, love, and obedience to the will of God.
Those words are offered at the beginning of every celebration of the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. We come to or are carried, to a baptismal font, or similar place of water. Words of promise are offered between families, individuals, a gathered faith community and God. Water flows freely and the breath of the Holy Spirit is felt as we hear “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
And in our Lutheran Christian faith tradition, our foreheads are marked with the cross of Christ as the words “Child of God, you have been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit forever” are spoken.
Forever.
Not just on the good days of our life. Not just on the days that we have everything figured out. Not just on the days when we actually take 30 seconds to pay attention to God’s presence in our life. Not just in the darkest, most difficult days of our life.
Forever.
In the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, God claims us as God’s own child…forever.
Hopefully, by now, you know that today is Ash Wednesday. This day is one of the holiest and most important days of the year for those who claim to be followers of Jesus. It marks the beginning of a 40-day journey known as Lent which ultimately leads us into Holy Week and Christ’s betrayal, crucifixion, and death. And in the end, Lent concludes as we once again experience great worship celebrations of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday.
So today, on this Ash Wednesday, you and I join hundreds of millions of our brothers and sisters in Christ around the world and begin one of the most sacred journeys our Christian faith knows.
May we not enter into this journey lightly.
And may the mark of the cross upon our foreheads, given to us as a gift in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, guide us along the way. Along the way, even as a cross of ash is placed on our foreheads today.
Each year in Lent, we are invited into more intentional and frequent times of worship as a faith community. Yes…we will continue to gather for weekly worship on Saturdays and Sundays. However, in addition to those times of worship, we are also invited into special times of worship that only happen during Lent. At Good Shepherd, Wednesday is the day we gather. Lent can be an intentional part of our faith journey. Let’s be honest, in order to fully live into the season of Lent, it requires us to be intentional about it. And to be intentional with our Lenten journey, God actually asks for more of our time to be dedicated to prayer and worship.
Our Lenten journey on Wednesdays this year will be wrapped around the theme “Our Journey to the Promised Land.” The core story of the Bible is the Exodus story. It’s a story of God’s people on a journey. It’s a story that has been, and continues to be, repeated as God’s children, people just like you and me, continue to walk through our life along this journey called faith.
Over the next six weeks, you and I will journey together through the Exodus story. It will help us see and hopefully discover in new ways, how this ancient story in an ancient collection of books called the Bible, still speaks to our own faith journey today.
A faith journey with times when we feel stuck and struggle to get anything accomplished. As we will discover, Moses and the Israelite people of the Exodus story experienced the same thing along the way.
At other times we are simply confused, not sure what is happening or why it’s happening or what any of it means for our journey. Moses and the Israelite people of the Exodus story had the same experiences along the way.
At times we long for things to be the way things used to be. The good old days as some of us like to call them. We long for things to be the way they used to be, when our journey made more sense and was far less chaotic and confusing. Moses and the Israelite people of the Exodus story, even without social media and the internet, experienced this same longing along their way too.
And still, at other times in our journey, we celebrate the possibilities and opportunities God is placing before us. Our journey into the future looks bright and we are excited to get things started. Moses and the Israelite people also experienced times of great potential as their journey ultimately led them to the Promised Land.
Our own journey to the Promised Land is our focus this year in Lent as a faith community. I believe it will be a blessing – in large part because we get to take this journey together through these additional and intentional times of worship every Wednesday during this holy season. It’s a journey that may only last for six weeks during a season we called Lent, but as we know from the promises God made to us in our baptism, this journey is far longer than six weeks. It’s forever.
As we come forward to receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion on this Ash Wednesday our foreheads will be marked with the cross of Christ. Instead of water and oil as was used in our baptism, today our foreheads will be marked with black ash. And instead of hearing the words, “Child of God, you have been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit”, today we will hear the words, “Child of God, remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the materials used and the words shared may sound and feel differently, but they actually aren’t all that different. And both of them remind us that we are God’s children…not just on the day of our baptism, not just on a holy day called Ash Wednesday during a crazy church season called Lent…but forever.
Blessings to you in your Lenten journey this year. And may God continue to richly bless your journey in faith. A journey that has no end. Thanks be to God. Amen.
What do you think of when you think of God? What picture or word comes to mind when you imagine what God is like?
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
So did today’s gospel reading align with your answer to the question what do you think of when you think of God? Or describe what you imagine God to be like? I’m guessing that there might be a slight difference. There is for me whenever I encounter this section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel.
The way we often hear this teaching from Jesus, and yes, this is Jesus speaking, is one of judgment. Judgment and suffering descending upon us for breaking God’s rules. Judgment and suffering descending upon us as Jesus speaks to us directly about anger and murder, adultery and lust, divorce and oaths.
And unfortunately, our more common stance with teachings like this involves descending judgment upon our neighbor because of their bad life choices. Life choices that we think allow us to place our own judgment upon them directly. We don’t need Jesus to mediate that judgment, we can handle it all on our own. If you think gossip and infidelity are recent additions to the human condition, Jesus just proved that theory wrong in today’s gospel.
Unfortunately, though, this is where you and I most often stay. We stay in a place where we feel like we are the one being judged and we’ll never be good enough. Or we feel like we are the one who gets to do the judging of another child of God. And we get stuck in one of those places.
We get stuck believing that our relationship with God is based upon a transaction. If we are good, God will love us. If we don’t break the rules, we’ll get rewarded with riches beyond our wildest imagination. If we have good morals – whatever that may or may not mean to you – if we just live up to our expectation of morality than all will be right with my soul and Jesus will love me more than the person who doesn’t live up to the same moral standards I’ve established.
21st Century author and theologian Bob Goff recently said, “Our problem following Jesus is we’re trying to be a better version of us, rather than a more accurate reflection of Him.”
The Sermon on the Mount, which encompasses the fifth, sixth and seventh chapters of Matthew’s gospel, is Jesus showing us what our life following him is going to look like. And if we’re being honest with ourselves, everything we thought we knew about following Jesus is really quite different from what following Jesus is actually like.
Everything we think we can control, we really have no control over.
Every moral standard we think we can live up to far more successfully than our neighbor can, we actually can’t.
Every better version of ourselves that we create in our own image, has little to nothing to do with being a reflection of Jesus in the ways Jesus invites us to be as his disciples.
It’s important to remember, Jesus isn’t throwing the law out and saying it no longer matters. Instead, he is redefining the law as it has been interpreted by the Jewish leaders of his day. I think he’s also redefining the law for the ways it is often so poorly interpreted still today. Ways of using the law by religious and secular leaders that seek to divide God’s kingdom and destroy the possibility of you and I ever being able to have a healthy relationship with each other or with God.
There’s a rhythm to Jesus’ statements in this section of the Sermon on the Mount as he embarks on this redefining. It sounds like this “You have heard it said…but I say to you.” Jesus is being careful to show us that he does not abolish the law or that he is simply replacing it from any earlier version. He’s trying to show us that our relationship with God is now different because of him. That the law is now being fulfilled because of him.
And in this challenging section of Matthew’s gospel, maybe having this new picture of our relationship with God is all that Jesus is trying to show us.
Jesus is saying to us, “You have heard it said that you will never be good enough to live up to your parent’s or your bosses’ expectations, but I say to you, you are loved unconditionally.”
Jesus is saying to us, “You have heard it said that if you just live a moral life as determined by the society around you at the time, all will be ok, but I say to you, you are accepted where you are, as you are, because of whose you are.”
Jesus closing words to us in this section of the Sermon on the Mount help us go even deeper. Jesus says, “Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than that comes from the evil one.”
One of the 20th century’s greatest church and cultural reformers was Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was an outspoken Lutheran pastor in Germany who was killed in a Nazi concentration camp just a few months before the end of World War 2. He was thrown into prison for the stances he took against the Nazi regime in Germany. Stances against Naziism that were deeply shaped by his Christian faith.
In a 1938 confirmation sermon, Bonhoeffer preached on the gospel reading that’s before us today.
Note that this sermon and gospel reading were offered at a confirmation worship service.
Note the date of the sermon, 1938 – a short time before the start of the war.
And note the context – young people receiving the rite of confirmation, about to affirm their Christian faith and begin to live out that faith as adults in the eyes of the church.
Bonhoeffer proclaimed, “You have only one master now…But with this ‘yes’ to God belongs just as clear a ‘no.’ Your ‘yes’ to God,” Bonhoeffer said, “requires your ‘no’ to all injustice, to all evil, to all lies, to all oppression and violation of the weak and poor, to all ungodliness, and to all mockery of what is holy. Your ‘yes’ to God requires a ‘no’ to everything that tries to interfere with your serving God alone, even if that is your job, your possessions, your home, or your honor in the world. Belief means decision.” Bonhoeffer preached.
Remember, those words were part of a sermon to a congregation of young people about to affirm their Christian faith and begin their adult journey, living into the promises made in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. Young people who were about to face what we now know as a time when the world experienced the wrath of one of the most violent, lethal and evil regimes in the history of humankind. And remember, this didn’t happen 3,000 years ago. It happened just a few years ago.
I believe God’s proclamation through Dietrich Bonhoeffer continues to ring true today, just as it did in 1938. I also believe that our savior Jesus’ teachings continue to ring true today, just as they did 2,000 years ago on a mountaintop near the Sea of Galilee.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, there will be times in your life, I know for a fact there have been times in my life when it will be difficult to say no, so we can say yes to God.
There will be times when you and I will fall short of expectations – either our own expectations or the expectations others have of us or even the expectations God has for us.
There will be times when we will do something to another child of God that will cause pain to us or them without evening knowing we are causing pain.
There will be times when anger and poor decisions will break apart relationships to the point where they may never be repaired. At least not repaired in this lifetime.
And in all of those times, for those of us who seek to follow Jesus and do the best we can as we walk this faith journey each day, it is my hope and prayer that we never lose sight of the fact that our life in Christ is a shared relationship, not something we do alone. And in that shared relationship, let’s confidently say ‘yes’ to God…even as we live in the middle of a world filled with chaos that thinks we should say no.
So what was your picture of God when I asked you that question about 12 minutes ago?
500 years ago, students living with the great 16th-century church reformer Martin Luther asked him that exact same question. His response was, “When I think of God, I think of a man hanging on a tree.”
In the cross of Christ we see God’s love poured out for the whole world, God’s ‘yes’ to us.
The cross of Christ is a reminder that God will go to any and all lengths to show us just how much God loves us.
The cross of Christ shows us that God’s love has no boundaries no matter how many times and ways and places that we place boundaries in front of each other, no matter how many times we say ‘no’ to the God of all creation in order to fulfill our human egotistical desires.
The cross of Christ can’t be destroyed by any judgment we place on ourselves or our neighbor, because the cross of Christ always pushes us to more fully love one another.
May that same cross guide your journey and mine as we live out our Christian faith in the Lutheran tradition in a world deeply needing to know God is still here and that God is always with them in a savior named Jesus. May we never be afraid to say ‘yes’ to that truth. Amen.
My colleague was scheduled to preach on this day but needed to cancel at the last minute due to the stomach flu. I was called on to preach on short notice. Thus, no written manuscript to share on the blog and a bit of a wandering message. All in all, I’m ok with what God ended up doing with this sermon.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, the one who calls us into mission, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
The gospel reading we just received comes right after the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness and right before the beginning of a major three-chapter teaching section from Jesus called the Sermon on the Mount. And you may have noticed that today’s gospel is closely related to all of the gospel readings that we have received thus far in the Epiphany season. A common theme that runs throughout Epiphany this year is that of call.
Last week, Pastor Bob referred to your call as the thing that makes your heart jump when you do it. The thing that you can’t help but do. The thing that is part of every aspect of your life. The thing that Jesus invites you to come and see and just like the brothers Peter and Andrew, James and John, when Jesus says “follow me” you immediately drop what you are doing and follow.
If you are a member of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, hopefully, you know that this weekend is the Annual Meeting. This meeting, unfortunately, is one of the most sparsely attended things we do together as a congregation. I always find that disheartening. Because a congregation’s Annual Meeting is one of the most important things we do together. It’s one of the most important ways we demonstrate our willingness to answer Jesus’ call to follow.
A congregation’s Annual Meeting is a time to make decisions about future leadership. A time to reflect upon the ways that Jesus has called us to follow in the last 12 months. And a time to celebrate the many ways we anticipate Jesus calling us to follow in the coming year.
If you can spare an hour of time, please attend the Annual Meeting on Sunday at 12:15 in the Lynne Center.
Together as a faith community, we see Jesus’ call to follow unfold as we live out our mission in community. In a sermon offered a few years ago by Deacon Beth Anderson, she said, “God calls us together into community so that we might be fed and nourished, and so that we might work together caring for all of God’s people and the rest of creation.”
At one of the recent Community Leader Gatherings hosted by Good Shepherd, one of our guests expressed his appreciation for Good Shepherd’s ministry of hospitality to organizations like Gambler’s Anonymous, Al-Anon, and Alcoholics Anonymous. This individual said that they first entered Good Shepherd’s doors in 1981 to attend their first AA meeting. Because of the welcome they experienced during that first visit to Good Shepherd, they believe they are still sober today.
And, an even more spectacular part of this story is that this individual has gone on to a lifetime serving thousands of other children of God through a career in behavioral health and addiction services. A journey of sobriety and a career in helping others that had its beginning because of a welcome received when this person entered Good Shepherd for a meeting in 1981.
Every Friday, there are about 120 home-schooled children and their families participating in activities at Good Shepherd through an organization called Catholic Schoolhouse. It is a Roman Catholic organization serving home-schooled families in Bismarck-Mandan. They too experience a warm welcome and gracious hospitality each week. This is yet another story of Good Shepherd listening to God’s call and then putting that call into action as Jesus invites us to follow.
In 2019, the offering of our hands, feet, voices and financial resources not only provided a safe and welcoming building for people to gather in. You and I, who call this congregation our faith home also provided nearly $240,000 in financial support to ministries taking place outside our building. Financial support that enabled these ministries to serve God’s children where they are – whether those individuals are located in downtown Bismarck or Watford City, North Dakota or Santa Ana, El Salvador.
Hopefully, it’s no secret to you that I believe with everything I am as one of your pastors that you and I are called by God to be together as members of this faith community. Our work together not only calls us to serve the neighbor outside of our congregation’s walls, but also those who are located inside the walls. Our mission “to share the Shepherd’s love with all of God’s children” empowers us to do both. To serve those who are members and not members. And to do both with excellence.
Each week, nearly 800 young people under the age of 18 gather for Church School, Confirmation, Bible study, devotional time and service work. It’s a staggering number of young people and their families that gather us together into a community larger than most towns in North Dakota.
In the past few years, many Church School classrooms are often overflowing with enthusiastic students – overflowing to the point where we struggle to fit an adult leader into the classroom. And our confirmation ministry has continued to grow to the point where we can no longer hold formal classes with all three grades of students on the same day or in the same room.
This fall, 69 young people will affirm their faith in the Rite of Confirmation.
One mother of two confirmation students recently told me that her kids, “crave coming to church and being part of what God is doing here. When one thing ends,” she said, “they are immediately talking about the next thing and looking forward to the ways they can be part of it.”
Thousands of service hours happen each year through our youth and family ministries. Service work in places like Good Shepherd or the Dakota Zoo or Heaven’s Helper’s Soup Café or on the streets of Denver, Colorado and Minneapolis, Minnesota or among our brothers and sisters served by the Good Heart Community Center on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation.
This past Thursday and this coming Monday we offer compassionate, Christ-centered care to families who are grieving the death of loved ones. During these times, this Sanctuary is filled with people grieving the death of someone they love and at the same time celebrating the promise of resurrection and life eternal that is a gift we are given in the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. A sanctuary and fellowship area of the Lynne Center filled beyond capacity as we provide care for one another during this most important and difficult season of our faith journey.
A few years ago Good Shepherd’s endowment provided a grant to our congregation for use in a newly formed transportation ministry. If people in our congregation, or wider community for that matter, need help to get to church, appointments or other events, Good Shepherd can provide funds for a taxi, transit service, Uber or Lyft to get them safely where they need to go.
And finally, brothers and sisters in Christ, the images that are scrolling on the screens during worship today, illustrate hundreds of additional stories of Good Shepherd living out its mission from God. And our 2019 Annual Report lifts up even more. If you have yet to look at it, please take some time to open it up.
I share these stories with you today, not only because this week is our Annual Meeting, or because the Epiphany season focuses our attention so directly on our call as children of God. I share these stories with you today because these stories are ways in which you and I, as a faith community called Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, are answering Jesus’ invitation to follow.
These stories are living, breathing stories of the Shepherd’s love being shared. Our response to the invitation offered to us with each new day connects us with millions of other children of God since Peter, Andrew, James and John first answered Jesus call.
A call and an answer that ushered in the kingdom of God.
A call and an answer that continues to unfold today as we teach in our churches and proclaim the good news of the kingdom in all we say and do as individuals … and … as members of faith communities like Good Shepherd.
Brothers and sisters, Jesus is calling, will you follow? Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ-child we are here to worship on this holy day. Amen.
There is an ancient spiritual practice among Christians called Lectio Divina. It’s a way to read scripture slowly, repeatedly and prayerfully. In recent decades, the practice of reading and studying scripture like this has seen renewed interest. At Good Shepherd, we regularly practice something called Dwelling in the Word, which is a similar kind of prayerful scripture reading.
Both of these practices are an important part of my own faith journey. There isn’t a sermon I offer or a word I write that isn’t impacted by using lectio or dwelling in my study and preparation. Drop me an email or give me a call if you’d like to learn more about either of them. I promise they will positively impact your faith journey. Now, before I lose you completely because you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with Christmas or our worship today, stay with me.
Even if this is the first time in your life that you have been in a church for worship, I’m guessing you have heard Luke, chapter two before. You’ve probably heard about the baby Jesus before. You’ve heard about the shepherds and the angels. About Mary and Joseph. Maybe you’ve even heard this story as it is told by Linus from a Charlie Brown Christmas or heard it told through one of the thousands of Christmas movies that exist.
But, I ask every one of us gathered here today on this holiest of nights, have you really ever heard this story before?
In fact, I would challenge you after all the Christmas craziness is over and gone, I challenge you to sit down and read through Luke chapter two again. Read it slowly, quietly, prayerfully. It might surprise you what the Holy Spirit will reveal to you about Jesus and his birth and why any part of this story still matters for you.
Pastor Amy Redwine points us to why this story still matters and who it’s for, as she writes, “Of the four gospels, Luke’s is written for the most ordinary of us, including – maybe even especially – all those who have been pushed aside and marginalized: the young, the poor, the refugee, the laborer. Luke wants to make sure we know that this baby, who is nothing less than Emmanuel. God-with-us, came not for some but for all. Luke wants us to know, there are no extras in this story. Everyone belongs. [Amy Starr Redwine, Journal for Preachers, Vol. XLIII, #1, Advent 2019]
As I began preparing for this year’s Christmas Eve sermon several months ago, I began as I always do, by slowly, intentionally and prayerfully reading the scripture texts for the day. And, as we all know, and I’ve already shared, the scripture for today includes a story that we most often hear on Christmas. The story of Jesus’ birth as offered to us in the second chapter of Saint Luke’s gospel.
I’ve read this story hundreds, if not thousands of times before. I’ve written countless articles, blog posts, sermons and seminary papers about it. Surely, there is nothing new that I could hear from it. Surely I’ve uncovered all that the Holy Spirit wanted to reveal to me in a lifetime spent hearing and studying this story. Surely I know everyone who belongs, who is important in this story.
This year, though, the Holy Spirit decided that I needed to hear something new. Something I wasn’t expecting. Something I had never heard before.
In the nineteenth verse of the second chapter of Luke, I heard, as if for the very first time, “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” Mary pondered them in her heart. While everything around her was blowing up with shouts of joy from shepherds and angels and everything else in all creation, Mary was quiet. Mary pondered. Mary.
To be honest, I’ve never given Mary much thought before. Of course, I should have. She is, after all, the mother of the savior of the world. But it is so easy to focus on the excitement and noise and chaos of the Christmas story that I think I may have actually been missing part of the center of the Christmas story my entire life. An unwed, teenage woman, giving birth to the savior of the world, the Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us. A birth and a woman who’s experience on that holy night changes creation forever.
And in that moment, as Mary holds the baby Jesus and ponders in her heart what this might mean, she doesn’t send a tweet. She doesn’t rush to her Shutterfly account to change her Christmas card order before it ships. She’s not posting on Facebook all that she has seen and heard. She simply, quietly…ponders.
As Mary takes in all the events of Jesus’ birth, Luke tells us she “treasured” and “pondered” them in her heart. The word “pondered” here is the word symballo in Greek, which can also have stronger and more contentious meanings like “to engage in war with” and “to wrestle with.” Mary takes in, treasures, but she also wrestles deeply with the meaning of the experiences she is having because of Jesus birth.
Later in our worship today, we will sing “let every heart prepare him room.” Will our hearts have room to wage war with, wrestle with, to ponder what the birth of a savior named Jesus has to do with us as we seek to try and follow this savior beyond today?
I’m not going to pretend to know why you are here. I don’t know what you are feeling as I share this crazy discovery I’ve had with a scripture reading that we hear every year at Christmas. I don’t know if you’ve ever had an experience that felt like you were wrestling with God before. Or if you believe that the Holy Spirit has anything to do with our faith journey. I’m not going to judge you if this is your 1st or 500th time hearing the Christmas story as told from the gospel of Saint Luke.
I’m okay with wherever you may be.
As I’ve studied and wrestled with and pondered in preparation for this time of worship, I want you to know that I’m glad you are here today. I want you to know that I’m really glad you and I are able to experience the Christmas story together tonight. To ponder it a little more deeply.
I believe the people who are sitting near you today are glad that you are here as well, after all, they are part of this story too. They might even be wrestling with it just like you are.
And I believe with everything that I am as a Christian pastor that Jesus Christ, the savior of the world whose birth we celebrate tonight, is glad you are here too.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, as our journey of faith continues beyond this time in worship on this most sacred night called Christmas, take time to silence the chaos and noise of the world around you once in a while. Take time to wage war with the things that pull you away from your relationship with God. Take time to simply be with God. To make room in your heart for the Christ-child to live. To ponder a little in order to hear the quiet voice of God speaking to you by name. To wrestle with the fact that God has come to us in Jesus, and because of that truth, nothing in all creation will ever be the same again.
Merry Christmas brothers and sisters. Merry Christmas. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ child who comes. Amen.
If you have been in a Christian worship service during the season of Advent – either this year or any other year before – chances are likely you have heard a little bit about Jesus’ cousin, John. John the Baptist or John the Baptizer as he is often called. John plays a pretty significant role in the story of Jesus. Most of the scripture that we hear during Advent, John is present in one way or another.
And most often, when we think of John, we think of this crazy man living in the wilderness, wearing clothing made of camel’s hair, and eating locusts and wild honey. A crazy man running around telling people to “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” There’s more to that crazy story about John the Baptist in the third chapter of Matthew if you want to dig deeper.
In short, though, John is not only a crazy guy living in the wilderness or simply Jesus’ long lost cousin, John is also kind of a prophet. A prophet who is confident that the Messiah is coming. John is the one whom the prophet Isaiah said would be a voice crying out in the wilderness, declaring “prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” John is someone whom the Old Testament prophets proclaimed would be the strong, confident person who would tell us exactly when the Messiah had arrived. The person who would let us know when the Kingdom of God was being ushered in with the Savior’s arrival.
Just a few chapters after this image is painted for us of a confident and bold John, the writer of Matthew’s gospel gives us a very different vision of who John is.
Rather than being a crazy guy living in the wilderness calling us to repent.
Rather than a man filled with passion at the arrival of the Messiah.
This John is unsure.
This John has doubt.
He is sitting in a prison cell, knowing that his death is near. He’s no longer certain whether the Jesus he has known is actually the Messiah. Was the one he baptized really the one he, and the rest of creation, had been waiting for all along?
In John’s darkest moment, in his weakest day, he calls out to Jesus “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
How often do our lives of faith sound or look like John’s? Living life fully and adventurously. Partying it up, shopping until we drop, oblivious to the needs of others around us as we head toward Christmas at a frantic pace that leaves us exhausted and confused.
And then all of a sudden, we discover ourselves confined.
It might not be a prison cell as in John’s case. Maybe it’s burdensome debt in the aftermath of joyful Christmas shopping or simply a lifetime of irresponsible spending? Maybe it’s a relationship with someone we’ve loved deeply that is anything but loving and healthy right now? Maybe it’s unrealistic expectations you and I place upon a season like Christmas, expectations that only actually come true in Hallmark Christmas movies or greeting cards?
Wherever you may be today, I invite you to join John from whatever prison cell you are in and not be afraid to ask Jesus again “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”
Jesus’ response to John’s question is not what John was expecting. John was expecting a Messiah that would be powerful in ways that would destroy evil people like King Herod, the very reason why he was in jail in the first place. John was expecting a Messiah who would destroy all that was wrong with the world in his eyes, and make it right.
But that’s not who Jesus is as the Messiah. By this point in time though, John is probably wondering if all that baptizing, wearing odd clothing, eating weird food, and preaching in the wilderness meant anything at all. After all, it certainly hasn’t made John’s life any better. Was all of his work done for nothing?
And then Jesus responds –
“Go and tell John what you hear and see; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” And then Jesus goes on to show the crowds further examples of what the Kingdom of God coming into the world through the Messiah looks like.
Brothers and sisters, in this Advent season, what are you seeing and hearing as you ask Jesus if he is the one? How are you experiencing the Kingdom of God coming into the world?
Is the Messiah you are seeking one who will rule the nations with military power and might? The Messiah who is coming into our world is the one standing next to you as you feed the hungry and help the poor in our community with your hands, feet, voices, and financial resources? Work that you and I do together as Good Shepherd each year by volunteering thousands of hours of time and hundreds of thousands of dollars to share Christ’s love with our brothers and sisters.
Is the Messiah you are seeking the one who can only be found in church buildings like the one we are sitting in right now? The Messiah who is coming into our world is the one who is walking beside all of God’s children, in every place and time. That might look an awful lot like a public school classroom or the state capital building or on the internet and social media sites you and I visit or among those living in refugee camps in parts of the world that we will never step foot or among fellow child of God who lives in our own state’s penitentiary.
John’s expectation of the coming Messiah needed to change. What he expected and what God actually sent are very different. How do our expectations of the coming Messiah need the same kind of change this Advent? Maybe for you, they need to change in ways you can’t even imagine while sitting here today? Maybe you have a bit of fear or anxiety about the change that needs to take place? I know my own expectations of the coming Messiah have been challenged and needed change recently.
For the past year or so, Good Shepherd has been part of a mission project with Luther Seminary and the Lily Foundation called Leadership for Faithful Innovation. A recently formed Guiding Team in our own congregation will continue to walk us through this project. In so many ways, this process may change how we see and hear the coming Messiah. At least, that is my hope as one of your spiritual leaders.
During Advent, our Guiding Team is inviting us to share God Moments with each other. To share times when we see the Messiah coming into the world in our everyday lives. These God Moments might simply be a photo that captures a moment or a brief reflection or a short story. It might be a life-changing experience or a simple encounter that caused you to stop for a few seconds and give God thanks.
What you and I are being invited to do is the exact same thing that Jesus tells John’s disciples to do – “Go and tell John what you hear and see.”
As our Advent journey continues this week, you and I will probably again ask Jesus the question “Are you the Messiah, or are we to wait for another?” In our journey of faith, as we ask that question, do not be afraid to tell others what you hear and see. It probably won’t look like a military takeover, but it might bring good news to the poor. It probably won’t immediately solve all of the hunger and homeless issues our communities face, but it might relieve the suffering of one child of God, or maybe even two.
A colleague, Pastor Dave Lose writes, “Because we believe Christ is coming to bring healing, peace, justice, and hope, we act now to make our congregations and communities, our country and the world more healthy, more peaceful, more just, more hopeful.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, may you be blessed in all of your God moments this Advent. I hope and pray that they are moments to show others what you hear and see, moments that prepare the way for Christ, moments that celebrate the Messiah who comes to us. And in the hope that each moment brings, I will continue to pray…Come Lord Jesus, Come. Amen.
Commitment Weekend • Christ the King • November 24, 2019
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord, Savior and King Jesus the Christ. Amen.
So, one appropriate greeting for today in the church is, Happy New Year! Because, this is, technically speaking, the last weekend of the year for the Christian church. Christ the King Day is our New Year’s Eve so to speak. It’s kind of interesting, isn’t it, that Lutheran Christians celebrate the end of one year and the beginning of another by hearing scripture readings about Jesus bloody and gruesome death on a cross. Doesn’t seem like much of a festive occasion, does it?
Today also marks one of the great celebration days in the life of our congregation. We celebrate all that God is doing and all that God will continue – hopefully – to do in our congregation over the next year. Today, we prayerfully make our financial commitments to our shared work.
Commitment weekend in the life of a congregation like Good Shepherd has nothing to do with your pastor standing before you and begging you for more of your hard-earned money. Commitment weekend has everything to do with celebrating the work God is already doing through the congregation we love and the ways God is inviting us to be part of that work through our financial gifts. Financial gifts that are God’s in the first place by the way.
At the heart of all this – one theologian asked a question this week that I’ve found absolutely spot on. They asked “Who is Jesus?” As you hear that question, what do you hear? If someone asked you this week, “You’re a Christian, aren’t you? Don’t you go to that crazy Lutheran church by the Y? Who is Jesus anyway? Why do you waste your time with all of that Jesus stuff?”
This theologian didn’t just ask the question “Who is Jesus?” and then stop. They tried to dig a little deeper into it, especially as it relates to the gospel reading before us today. A gospel reading that seems incredibly out of place given the time of the year and the fact that this week is Thanksgiving, and Advent and Christmas come immediately on the heels of the Thanksgiving holiday.
Here’s what they wrote – “Jesus’ true identity seems to remain a mystery for most of the disciples. Jesus can teach, preach, heal, cast out demons, challenge authority and more, but still they do not comprehend. You might say it is a case of mistaken identity as the disciples and other followers seem to be hoping to discover something very different from the real Jesus. It is the criminal executed with Jesus who in his dying desperation says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Clearly, the criminal has no other hope, still in this moment he acknowledges Jesus’ true identity.”
They concluded their thought by bringing this question of Jesus identity to today, “Modern followers of Jesus,” they wrote, “resemble those ancient followers in many ways. Everyone has their own image of Jesus, the gifts we want Jesus to bring us, the ways we want Jesus to fix those things in our lives that cause pain or suffering. In our anxiety we want Jesus to be our magical everything in an instant.” [THANK YOU to the writers of the sermon illustration section of www.sundaysandseasons.com for this wonderful insight on which this sermon is built]
Hanging on a cross, brothers and sisters, Jesus isn’t a genie in a bottle waiting to grant you your next week. But Jesus is the King, the savior of the world, preparing the way for you. For me. And for everyone who ever has or ever will claim to be a follower of this King.
The simple question – “who is Jesus?” – is why I believe we intentionally set aside a day in the church year to celebrate Christ as King. And asking each other the question “Who is Jesus?” is why I believe making a prayerful financial commitment to the congregation that we are members of each year is such an important act of discipleship.
I spent about 30 hours in Chicago this week. Around 8 of those hours were in Chicago’s O’Hare International airport. As I sat in the airport, I couldn’t help but look around and ask “I wonder who these folks, running frantically through the airport, think Jesus is? Do they know? Have they ever experienced Jesus before? Especially this Jesus hanging on a cross. Jesus who says to a scumbag criminal hanging next to him “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Would they financially support or give of their time for the work of that Jesus? I kept thinking, am I – even while wearing a clerical collar in one of the largest airports in the world – showing anyone around me a little bit of who Jesus is?
In a few minutes, you and I will be invited to share our weekly tithes and offerings. Tithes and offerings are Good Shepherd’s only source of financial support for the work God is doing here. We will also be invited today to prayerfully consider what our financial commitment to this work might look like over the next year. Both – our weekly offerings and tithes; and the yearly financial promise we make before God – are among the most significant ways we live out our faith as disciples of Jesus as our answers to the question “who is Jesus?” take shape.
Since I started serving at Good Shepherd in 2002, the annual ministry financial plan, or church budget, of Good Shepherd seems to always work itself out by the end of the year. I trust that the Holy Spirit is part of the reason why that happens.
At the same time, I struggle with the way it happens. I struggle that folks wait to give anything to God’s work through their church until the last minute. As if God isn’t blessing them in March or June. They wait to see if they need to give anything at all or if the church budget can be balanced without their giving and they can just keep it all to themselves.
I struggle with this because I see first-hand, literally hundreds of missed mission and ministry opportunities God places before us each year that we can’t do because we can’t financially support them at the time God presents them to us during the year. I can’t help but imagine what it would look like if a congregation like Good Shepherd – or any other Christian community for that matter – fully embraced the incredible potential that God places before us to show others who Jesus is. Especially if our giving was a reflection of the abundance God has blessed us with and not just because the church needs to make a budget.
Think about it this way. There’s been a chart in your bulletin throughout November that highlights what I believe the Spirit is trying to say to us today. There are a little over 1,600 households who consider themselves members of Good Shepherd. About half of those households give less than $1 per year to support God’s work through our congregation. If every one of those 1,600 households increased their giving by just $5 per week – about the cost of a cup of coffee or a cheap glass of wine – we would see an increase in our potential to grow our mission and ministry by nearly $400,000. Just imagine the impact an additional $400,000 a year could have on God’s children. God’s children, who maybe for the first time in their life, would be able to experience who Jesus is, simply because you and I made a decision to forego one cup of coffee a week over the next year.
A few months ago I wrote an article called the 4 Gs of Discipleship. This was something first introduced to me by Pastor Tim Johnson. You might remember Pastor Tim when he did an Intentional Interim here. Over 40+ years of serving in pastoral ministry he shared these four truths of discipleship with every new member he ever had the privilege of meeting.
He would start by stating that if their only role in joining the church was to take up space, he didn’t believe they actually wanted to become members of the church or live as disciples of Jesus. His four Gs of discipleship are that disciples of Jesus – gather together as a community of faith in many times and places; they grow alongside their brothers and sisters in Christ throughout their journey of faith, they don’t just grow until Confirmation is finally over; they go into the world to show everyone they meet who Jesus is; AND, they give to support the ministry and mission God is calling the congregation they are joining to live out in the world.
On this Christ the King and Commitment weekend, we are reminded that all four Gs of discipleship – gather, grow, give, and go – are central to our life of faith. After all, we are disciples of Jesus who not only ask ourselves “Who is Jesus?”, but we also try to live our answer to that question in ways that demonstrate who Jesus is for us in all that we say and do.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, I believe that is what’s before us today as a congregation. Who is Jesus? How do the gifts of our hands, feet, voices and financial resources demonstrate that we know who is Jesus is, that we’re seeking to more deeply experience what it means to know Jesus every day and that we are willing to share who Jesus is with everyone God places along our path? Who is Jesus for you? Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
Our gospel text today begins by informing us that large crowds are traveling with Jesus by this point in his ministry. I wonder how large the crowds were after Jesus offers this teaching to them about discipleship. About what it looks like to actually be a disciple.
In my own faith journey, if I read Jesus instruction in today’s gospel in a black and white literal way, I can’t help believe that I’d be one of those in the crowd who walks away at this point. Following this Jesus is just going to be WAY too hard.
Hate my family? Are you kidding me Jesus? Yes, they drive me nuts some times, but hate them? I couldn’t possibly do that.
Carry the cross? Oh that’s easy. I’m carrying all kinds of crosses all the time Jesus, which one do you want me to carry now?
Or maybe the one that seems to sting the most, “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”
Many of you know that I own a few guitars. How many, you ask? Well…more than I probably should, but definitely one less than too many. My guitars are part of my very being. Simply put, I believe that I can no more be a good husband, father, pastor, son or anything else God calls me to be without the presence of my guitars. Music ebbs and flows through everything that I am or am called to do or be as a child of God, a disciple of Jesus. I don’t see my guitars as possessions but as extensions of who I am.
I’ve been shopping for a new addition to the family lately. This past Monday, I was able to make a deal on a guitar that I’d been looking at for a few weeks. It’s actually the one that’s on the screen today – and soon, with the help of FedEx, after making a deal on it this past Labor Day Monday, this guitar will become part of our family. And I’m very grateful for that.
Shortly after this exciting purchase and sharing the good news with my wife, I sat down to do a few minutes of sermon study before we had to leave for a brunch that we were invited to attend. As I came to the last verse of our gospel reading, my heart sank. I was still basking in the joy of a new guitar as I heard Jesus say to me “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”
Of the four gospels, Luke is the gospel that speaks about wealth the most. Luke points to the way wealth gets in the way of being able to follow Jesus. Being able to be a disciple.
All of the scripture and themes that are before us on this Rally Day – the kick-off to Good Shepherd’s fall ministry and mission – all center us again on discipleship. And what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. This couldn’t be a more perfect theme for this day. Because all too often, the way we live our life each day actually pulls us away from being a disciple of Jesus.
So, let’s take a few minutes and dig a little deeper into this. What does it mean to be a disciple? What is a disciple? Are disciples only the 12 men that Jesus chose to follow him at the beginning of the gospel story? Or are you and I also disciples as the gospel story continues to be told and written in our day and time?
One description for a disciple that I’ve found helpful over the years is this. “A (disciple is a) person who follows Jesus, who is, of course, pursuing us. Being a disciple is always to know that Jesus is on a mission to us – to love us, to save us, and to bless us. And being a disciple is always to know that we follow Jesus on this mission and that Jesus is on a mission through us – to love through us, to save through us, and to bless through us.” [Crazy Talk, Rev. Dr. Rolf Jacobson, pg. 53-54]
Being a disciple of Jesus is not something we initiate, it’s something God initiates through Jesus for us. Being a disciple is not about worrying that we’ll get caught if we don’t obey a prescribed set of rules.
Being a disciple is a way of living that shows others who Jesus is through you. If you are a disciple of Jesus, people around you should know it and experience Jesus in all that you say and do.
How do people in your life right now experience Jesus through you as you participate in worship? Are you just sitting there? Or are you actively engaged and participating?
How will people in your life experience Jesus through you on Tuesday or another time when you are not in a formal church worship service?
At the end of our worship today we will participate in a blessing of our vocations. On this Rally Day, it’s a way that sends us out into the world knowing that everything we say and do in our life, is a reflection of Jesus working through us. The word we use to describe this is our vocation. Whatever vocation you are being called to live out this week, it is Jesus working through you that enables that vocation to exist in the first place.
Jesus is on a mission to you that is being lived out in the world through you, right now.
May the vocations God calls you and me into being a reflection of this truth for all the world to see.
The truth of what a disciple looks like today.
Another description of a disciple that I like is this – “To be a disciple of Jesus is to be a student, learner, or apprentice in a community of mutual growth in love.” [The Agile Church,Dwight Zscheile, pg. 10]
I’ve always seen myself as a student and learner. I’m constantly trying to understand more deeply what it means to be a disciple, what it means to live my life as a disciple. I’m constantly reading, studying scripture, taking classes, and having conversations with brothers and sisters in Christ about faith and life.
All of us who call Good Shepherd our faith home has countless opportunities outside of weekly worship to be students. To be life-long learners of the faith in a community of faith that loves us deeply.
I invite you to get involved over the next few months in at least one of the wide variety of ministry programs and events offered at Good Shepherd. I believe they will challenge you to grow deeper in what it means to be a disciple of Jesus.
And maybe the most pointed description of being a disciple I’ve ever come across is from Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his classic book The Cost of Discipleship. Shortly before Bonhoeffer was executed in a Nazi concentration camp in April 1945, he wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him to come and die.”
When Jesus calls you to be his disciple, he calls you to come and die.
For us, as Lutheran Christians, this call to come and die is exactly what we are talking about when we begin the celebration of the sacrament of Holy Baptism with the words “In baptism our gracious heavenly Father frees us from sin and death by joining us to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
You see, baptism is not a five-minute liturgy during a worship service with a bunch of words and promises that have no bearing on the rest of our lives. Baptism joins us to the death and resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus. In baptism, we are called to be disciples.
Jesus knows there are many things that will compete for our attention. Many things. Way too many things.
What Jesus asks of us as God’s children who are called to be his disciples, is that we put all of the things that compete for our attention aside and focus only on him and the cross which ultimately gives us life?
Discipleship calls us to come and die. Because it is only in a death like this that we will ever be joined to life with Jesus.
Several times a year, I’m invited to offer an opening prayer or invocation for local events or conventions in town. Often times, a presentation of the colors followed by the pledge of allegiance or singing of the national anthem happens at the same time. At one of these events, the color guard and the pledge of allegiance came before the prayer. This was the first, and only time as far as I can remember, that it has ever happened in this order. I honestly didn’t think much of it. Someone forgot to tell the MC what the agenda for the day was going to be.
After I finished the prayer and left the stage, I was met by the commander of the color guard. He waited for me because he wanted to offer an apology. He said, “I’m very sorry Reverend. Something got messed up in the schedule and I’m very sorry it happened. You have my word that it will not happen again.”
I asked him what was wrong. I thought everything went just fine.
He said, “It didn’t go fine pastor. We are not supposed to present the colors before the prayer. It is always God before country. Always. I’m very sorry.”
Now, I’m far from an expert on this. And I’m not sure there is a steadfast, black and white rule on this. I’ve actually researched it a little and what I’ve found is that it varies a little depending on the type of event or location of the event or who’s at the event. The order is even different between the chambers of the United States Congress – one way in the Senate, a different way in the House.
What struck me in that brief conversation and apology from the commander was not so much the order of things at this event, but the heart of things expressed by a disciple of Jesus. The heart of this decorated veteran now serving proudly and faithfully as a commander of a local color guard reminding me, the pastor, as he said “It’s God before country pastor. It’s always supposed to be God before country.”
“Why yes, sir. Yes. Yes it is,” was the only reply I could offer. And I thanked him for reminding me of that truth.
So, brothers and sisters in Christ, on this Rally Day, in the life of our congregation, I believe that’s all Jesus is trying to say to his disciples – to you and me – again today.
Above your relationship with your father or mother; wife or children; brothers or sisters, your relationship with God is most important and always comes first. Frankly, I do not believe you can have a healthy relationship with anyone else if you don’t have a healthy relationship with God.
And may our possessions never become things that possess us and take control of our lives if we truly want to be disciples of Jesus. Yes, I am looking forward to that new guitar arriving soon, I’m not going to lie about that. But that guitar, or any other guitar I own, will never get in the way of how I respond to Jesus calling me to serve as one of his disciples.
Finally, as our vocations are blessed today, I hope and pray that we enter this new day and a new week, and a new season of the church’s year, by confidently taking up our cross and following Jesus wherever he may lead. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord of all healing and savior of the world Jesus the Christ. Amen.
This week gives me an opportunity to remind everyone in worship that your pastors, in fact, do not select the scripture readings we receive each week in worship. And thanks be to God for that truth. You see, if your pastors were the ones who decided which scripture readings we would use, I firmly believe the list of those readings would be quite short and the readings before us today – especially the gospel reading – would probably not be on that list.
Good Shepherd, and the majority of congregations in our denomination of the ELCA and dozens of our sister Christian denominations around the world, follow something known as the Revised Common Lectionary. The Revised Common Lectionary was first developed in the late 1960’s.
It’s a 3-year sequence of readings that walk us through the bulk of the Bible as one Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament, and Gospel reading are assigned for each Sunday and festival day of the church year.
The gospel reading from Saint Luke that is before us today is a story of Jesus teaching in the synagogue. This particular story is only found in Luke’s gospel. Even though it is unique to Luke’s gospel, it is not unique to the overarching picture that all four gospels are trying to show us regarding who Jesus is and what Jesus has come into the world to do.
There are three prominent themes in this text – Sabbath and what the practice of Sabbath may or may not mean; healing or exorcism of a woman suffering from the bondage of none other than Satan himself; and, a conflict that breaks out between Jesus and the religious leaders of the synagogue.
The Sabbath. I hope that most of us know that keeping Sabbath is one of the 10 Commandments. It’s the third commandment actually – “Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy.” And in our Catechism we learn the meaning of this commandment that “We are to fear and love God, so that we do not despise preaching or God’s word, but instead keep that word holy and gladly hear and learn it.”
The challenge with the Sabbath is that culture, over thousands of years of human arrogance and sin, has driven you and me away from what I believe God actually intended the Sabbath to be.
Now, If you didn’t know that insight about the third commandment and Sabbath, maybe you recall the origination of Sabbath as it’s found within the seven days of creation in Genesis, the second chapter of the first book of the Bible. In that chapter, we hear “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day, God finished the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day and hallowed it because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation.”
Now, for some faith traditions, the Sabbath is to be observed on Saturday, for others it’s Sunday. And for many of my pastoral colleagues, it’s a different day of the week entirely.
First of all, it’s impossible for us to think about the seven days of creation as seven 24-hour days like we have today. Our seven 24-hour days in a week system of time has only existed for 4,000-5,000 years or so. And regardless of how old you think creation is, the way we have kept time over the past 5,000 or so years is far different than the way time was kept at the beginning of creation. Or even the way I think the time is kept today by God.
What I’m trying to get at is this, if Sabbath-keeping for you is only about a prescribed time of the week or a particular day or certain practices that you must follow using a prescribed set of rules, you might be getting caught up in things which actually have nothing to do with what Sabbath-keeping is all about. I think this is at the heart of what Jesus is showing us in today’s gospel reading. And I do think it’s the reason why the religious leader is so upset by Jesus healing on the Sabbath.
On my calendar, Mondays are blocked off as my Sabbath day. Of the 52 Mondays in 2019, I’m hoping for about 15 of them to be actual Sabbath days. When my phone rings or I get a late-night text message or email, I do my best to answer. And often those calls to serve God’s children just so happen to fall on what is scheduled to be my Sabbath day.
Just because I fail to keep Monday sacred and set aside from any form of work more often than not, does not mean that I’m ignoring the Sabbath. If I was in fact blatantly ignoring Sabbath, I couldn’t stand before you today as one of your pastors and a fellow child of God claiming to follow this Jesus. Very simply and directly put, I do not believe that one can be a follower of Jesus and intentionally ignore God’s command to remember the Sabbath.
One theologian’s thoughts on Sabbath were helpful for me to hear again this week – “Maybe ‘Remember the Sabbath’ is being too polite about it.” He said. “There’s no ‘thou shalt’ or ‘thou shalt not.’ Perhaps a rewording is in order. Something like: (God saying to us…) ‘Hey, … ! What is wrong with you people? 168 hours in a week is not enough for you? I ask you to set aside just one day so that you can rest up long enough to be renewed for the coming week, and what do you do? Double overtime, 80-hour workweeks, and supercenters open 24/7! How are you ever going to slow down long enough so that you can gather together in Christian worship and sit still long enough to hear the Word that I have to share with you? Stop! Listen!” [Crazy Talk, Rolf Jacobson, pg. 150]
When God entered the seventh day of creation, he didn’t simply push it aside and ignore all he had created in order to make sure he had time to take a nap. God hallowed what had been created. Hallow – another one of those crazy church words. It means to make holy or to set apart.
In other words, the Sabbath is not about being lazy and making sure you can selfishly take a nap. The Sabbath is about time you intentionally set aside in order to see what is already holy before you. In order to be drawn closer to God.
I gravitate quite freely and am getting better at openly admitting that I’m a bit of a workaholic. Having this tendency, and being called to serve in the vocation of pastor where the opportunity to work is always before me, there are more times than I care to admit when Sabbath-keeping is challenging. The reality is today’s gospel reading should be on my shortlist of scripture. It might help remind me of the many times hypocrisy enters into my speech, especially when I’m tired because I’ve been working too many hours; times when Satan cripples my ability to see God’s beauty in all of God’s good creation and all of God’s children; times when I need to let Jesus touch me, without even asking him to touch me, in order to be healed, so my heart can be opened and my spirit can be renewed in the regular rhythm of remembering the Sabbath and keeping it holy.
In our gospel reading today, in one sense Jesus is breaking the Sabbath in the present moment. Disregarding all of the rules that one is supposed to follow for proper Sabbath observation. In Jesus’ opinion, this woman’s suffering has gone on long enough and she simply cannot wait another day for healing to take place. Her future begins now. And it begins with great joy as healing happens on the Sabbath.
In another sense, Jesus is not breaking, but fulfilling the commandment of Sabbath. Fulfilling the commandment of the Sabbath in ways that the religious leaders in Jesus’ day didn’t understand because they were trying to hold on as tightly as they could to the rules and regulations of the past. Rules and regulations that Jesus, the savior of the world, came to fulfill. Imagine the relief that the woman in our gospel reading must have felt after 18 long agonizing years of being crippled by Satan.
Where in your life is the chaos and noise of this world blocking your ability to hear Jesus say to you “you are set free from your ailment?”
Where in your life are the rules and regulations you’re hanging onto so tightly destroying your very soul and causing your heart to be closed to the new thing God is doing in your life, in our community, in our world?
Brothers and sisters in Christ, this “is what God has given us in the Sabbath – the gift of reconnecting with our soul, the gift of reconnecting with God, the gift of once again realizing what freedom of life means. It is the chance to once again stand up straight and praise God for all that we are and all that we will become. It is the freedom to be what God intended us to be.” [https://journeytopenuel.com/2016/08/14/proper-16c-the-sabbath-is-calling/]
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Savior and refining fire Jesus the Christ. Amen.
If you remember the gospel reading from last week as we began this journey through the twelfth chapter of the gospel of Saint Luke, you may recall the tone of that teaching from Jesus to be a bit more gentle. And I would argue with Pastor Julie’s thesis that mathematics is God’s language. I do not believe that. I guess we’d be divided on that thesis.
And you know what, that’s ok. After all, we are church.
I have a dear mentor and friend, a former Bishop in our denomination, who has his own theory about math and the church. He’s told me many times over the years that he believes Lutherans are bad at math. “We spend way to much time focused on subtraction and division,” he’d say, “rather than addition and multiplication.” The longer I am called to serve as a Lutheran pastor, the more prophetic and true I think this retired Bishop’s thoughts on mathematics and the church are. But we are still called to be church.
500 years ago, in essence, there was one Lutheran denomination that emerged out of the Reformation – whether Martin Luther wanted a new church to come out of the Reformation or not is beside the point. Today, as far as I can figure out – remember I’m not much of a math person – there are more than 150 Christian denominations around the world who identify themselves as Lutheran. More than 150 different kinds of Lutheran denominations. We are church?
I don’t believe the division we’ve seen in the Lutheran Christian movement over the past five centuries is the kind of division Jesus is speaking of in the gospel of Luke. It’s not the same thing. But I do believe with everything I am as a follower of Jesus, that the division we continue to see in the Lutheran world, and really all of Christian world, breaks God’s heart. I do not believe this is what God hoped would happen in our world when he sent Jesus into it. I do not believe that the divided church today is what Jesus intended to have happen. We are church.
If you’re only image of Jesus is that of a gentle, shepherd with a quiet voice, someone who is kind of a pushover, I invite you to spend some time re-reading the gospel text that’s in front of us today.
Jesus saying “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” Doesn’t exactly give us a picture of a gentle Jesus.
Jesus saying, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Doesn’t exactly plant in my mind a gentle shepherd sitting by a lakeshore sharing stories that are easy to understand and apply to my life in ways that I can control. Ways that I’ll then apply to my life as I see the need. Ways that I can choose to do or not do in three easy steps from the comfort of my living room couch.
Jesus calling us “hypocrites” doesn’t exactly speak to unconditional love and acceptance and encouragement to continue destroying each other and sinning without thought of how it hurts us and our neighbors. We are church.
Today’s gospel reading is one of the only times where I think Jesus is actually a bit ticked off. He doesn’t like the way things are and the way they seem to continue to be. Remember, Jesus didn’t come in to the world to start a new church or religious denomination because he disagreed with the one that was already here. He came because God knew that we needed a savior. God knew that we were going to screw things up and it was only because of a savior that we were ever going to be able to start getting any of this right. We are church.
Jesus wasn’t talking about division in the ways we think about it today. I mean, come on, if I just say the word division, every one of you immediately has a picture in your mind of what that looks like for you in our world today. Our sin-filled world continues to be fed by division and it seems to get more and more divided with each passing day. Our unquenchable thirst and appetite for division didn’t surprise God 2,000 years ago. And I don’t believe it surprises God today.
Which is why Jesus is so eager to light a fire. Because it’s a fire of change. A fire of God’s goodness and activity in the world. A fire that will bring about God’s kingdom now. No wonder why Jesus is so excited to get this thing started. It’s really too bad that we still miss that today. After all, we are church.
I just returned from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’sChurchwide Assembly. This Assembly meets every three years and is the highest legislative and policy-making body of our church. I was not a voting member. However, this was my fourth Churchwide Assembly. I participate as part of the worship leadership team. I’m grateful for the invitation to help with leading worship each day of the Assembly.
And I’m grateful that we have something called a Churchwide Assembly in our denomination – they do a lot of good things. They also do a lot of things that leave me scratching my head for a long time after the dust of a Churchwide Assembly has settled.
There are policy decisions that were made at this year’s Churchwide Assembly that I’m not sure I will ever agree on, but I am thankful that the we in “We are Church” still includes me. Maybe that uncomfortable feeling I have in cases of decisions made that I don’t agree with is a little of the fire that Jesus is speaking of in today’s gospel reading. Fire that is challenging me to rethink my theological understanding of something. Challenging me to be open to a new way of doing something. Challenging me to stay connected to my brothers and sisters in the body of Christ that we call the church even as I struggle with my own belief.
There are also decisions that were made at this year’s Churchwide Assembly that I celebrate and cheer. But I know in the shadow of my celebration, there is someone who is grieving or even angry at the same time. Sin calls me to just push them aside. Jesus calls me to not be a hypocrite and to interpret the present time as an opportunity to offer care for the one I may have already pushed away. We are church.
Pastor Debbie Thomas wrote this week that, “If ‘tender Jesus, meek and mild’ is what we prefer, then this week’s text is not for us. If feel-good religion is the comfort zone we refuse to leave, then we’re missing out, because the peace of God is about so much more than good feelings. Or to put it differently, if neither you nor anyone within your sphere of influence has ever been provoked, disturbed, surprised, or challenged by your life of faith, then things are not okay in your life of faith.” We are church.
By the end of the Churchwide Assembly week, aside from being exhausted mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, I was also very grateful. Grateful to have discovered anew how holy and beautiful the theme “We are Church” is. And how grateful I am to be able to be part of this thing called church. I am a long way from agreeing with everything we do together as a denomination or everything we do together as the congregation of Good Shepherd Lutheran Church for that matter, but in everything you and I do together as followers of the risen savior of Jesus … “We are Church.”
I hope and pray that God continues to want us to be church for a long time to come. And I hope and pray that Jesus lights a fire in each one of us in ways that inspire us to get better at math – math that involves addition and multiplication rather than subtraction and division. Because we are church. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace, and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
A young boy – fourth or fifth grade – was kneeling beside his bed one evening, offering his bedtime prayers. His mother overheard part of the prayer as she stood outside the bedroom. Part of his passionate and persistent prayer included, “Let it be Tokyo! Please dear God, let it be Tokyo!”
Mom walked into the room for a goodnight kiss when he had finished. She asked him, “What did you mean, ‘Let it be Tokyo’?”
The boy said, “We had a geography test today and I was praying to God that God would make Tokyo the capital of France.”
Does that sound like any of your prayers? Or at least familiar to some of them? I know it sounds a bit like some of my prayers.
What’s your earliest memory of prayer?
Who taught you how to pray?
This may surprise some of you, but I don’t remember ever receiving formal training on prayer or how to pray. At least not in the way that this unnamed disciple is asking Jesus to do for him in our gospel reading today.
I think my first memory of prayer is probably this bedtime prayer. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I die before I wake, I pray the Lord, my soul, to take.”
Or I remember a meal prayer from the Catholic tradition of my childhood – “Bless us, oh Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty. Through Christ, our Lord. Amen.” I actually remember offering that prayer once as the table prayer for an event here. I invited everyone to join me in saying it. At the end of the prayer, all I saw was the blank stares of a whole lot of Lutherans who had no idea what prayer I had just offered.
I also have fond memories of watching my German-Russian immigrant grandparents pray the rosary at St. Phillip Neri Catholic Church in Napoleon, ND. Sometimes prayed in German. Sometimes in English. Often some hybrid combination of the two languages. Even though my grandfather arrived in the United States as a young man, his first language was German until the day he died. He did learn English in order to survive in the US, but I do not believe it ever became his primary language.
Over my lifetime, I’ve read hundreds of articles and books on prayer, attended conferences and spiritual retreats that have impacted my prayer life deeply, and I even have two hours of every day blocked off on my calendar specifically for prayer.
I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that I don’t recall ever asking someone to, “teach me how to pray.” like this disciple asks Jesus to do. And to be honest, I think prayer, has been, and continues to be, a journey for me. A deep and sacred journey that we call faith that will one day culminate in meeting Jesus face to face. Until then, I continue along the way. And some days are better than others when it comes to prayer.
I’ve referenced the book “Help. Thanks. Wow. The Three Essential Prayers.” in many places in recent years. I continue to see it as one of the better books on prayer that I’ve come across in the last decade or so. Anne Lamott is the author. She has a way of expressing faith and the spiritual journey that really connects with me. Her simple, yet profound, 102 page book is a brilliant exploration of prayer.
She opens the book with a chapter called Prayer 101 and says, “I do not know much about God and prayer, but I have come to believe,…, there’s something to be said about keeping prayer simple.” [pg. 1]
“Prayer means that, in some unique way, we believe we’re invited into a relationship with someone who hears us when we speak in silence.” [pg. 4]
“Prayer can be motion and stillness and energy – all at the same time.” [pg. 5]
“Prayer is talking to someone or anything with which we seek union, even if we are bitter or insane or broken. Prayer is taking a chance that against all odds and past history, we are loved and chosen, and do not have to get it together before we show up.” [pg. 5-6]
Lamott concludes the Prayer 101 chapter by saying, “…prayer is our sometimes real selves trying to communicate with the Real, with Truth, with the Light. It is us reaching out to be heard, hoping to be found by a light and warmth in the world, instead of darkness and cold.” [pg. 7]
For my own faith journey, what I think I see prayer becoming more and more each day, is less a prescribed format that we must follow in order for God to hear our prayers and more as a way of life in which prayer is constantly unfolding in every part of my life.
Prayer is less about an activity that I carve out of my busy schedule and more of a rhythm that is simply part of my everyday journey.
Every conversation I have is prayer.
Every thought I have is prayer.
Every move I make is prayer.
Everything I touch is prayer.
I believe it is beautiful and holy and sacred, the many times we pray during a worship service – the confession and prayer of the day, the Prayers of God’s People, our songs and hymns, the Lord’s Prayer.
My hope though, as one of your pastors, is that the prayer we share as a community when we gather for worship is not the only time you and I think about praying. My hope is that the prayer we offer when we gather as a community of faith sends us into the world to live all of our lives as living examples of prayer.
The great 20th Century theologian CS Lewis, once said, “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.”
I believe Lewis’ insight is central to what Jesus teaches us about prayer in the gospels. Jesus is trying to show us how prayer is actually lived out along our faith journey. Frankly, if all we believe about prayer is that it’s about getting what we want when we want it, and how we want it, we might be missing the point of what prayer is all together – at least according to what Jesus teaches us about prayer.
Or as another theologian asked this week, “Does prayer make things happen, or change my perceptions of what ‘is’ already?” [www.christiancentury.org/article/2016-06/july-24-17th-Sunday-ordinary-time]
What I believe Jesus says about prayer, is that prayer re-centers us on the fact that the Holy Spirit is already present.
That the Holy Spirit is already with us and is a gift from God.
That our prayer life – and our persistence in our prayer life – encompasses all that we say and do.
And that this prayer life is already bringing us closer and closer into relationship with each other and in relationship with God through our savior Jesus.
In other words, maybe the answer to our prayer is the fact that God is already with us.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, prayer isn’t only something we are supposed to set aside time to do, that is if we are ever actually able to fit it into our already over-scheduled lives.
It’s not something we should do only when we need something from God or want God to do something for us.
Prayer isn’t simply about memorization and then making sure we are using those memorized prayers at the correct time and in the correct way.
Prayer is how we live out our lives of faith as the Holy Spirit breathes through us.
May you and I be blessed as we live out our lives of faith.
Lives of faith that begin and end in prayer. And all God’s children say.., Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
A pastor, not this pastor, by the way, decided to skip church one Sunday morning and go play golf.
He called his Associate Pastor early in the day and told them he wasn’t feeling well and wouldn’t be at worship. His plan was coming together perfectly. And to make it even more perfect, he drove to a golf course in another city, so nobody would know him.
He teed off on the first hole. Just as his club hit the golf ball perfectly, a huge gust of wind caught the ball, carried it an extra 175 yards and dropped it right in the hole. A 452-yard hole in one.
An angel looked at God and said: “What’d you do that for?”
God smiled and said, “Who’s he going to tell?”
Someone shared that story with me recently on one of my social media sites. And since many of you are not connected with my pastoral ministry online, I thought it’d be a cute story to share today. Honestly, I’m not sure if it has anything to do with today’s gospel at all.
Today’s gospel and the themes weaving throughout our worship together this week are probably familiar to you. Or at least a little familiar. After all, the parable that we know and love as the Good Samaritan is one that extends far beyond the reach of Christianity.
Entire organizations in our society are built around this parable of Jesus – think the Good Samaritan Society that seeks to provide care to some of the most vulnerable in our communities.
United States Presidents and other world leaders have used this parable as an example of national pride and concern for fellow citizens over countless centuries.
And faith communities like our very own congregation often model their mission and ministry out of this parable. How else can we explain the Good Samaritan fund in Good Shepherd’s annual ministry financial plan? Or the fact that even our mission statement echoes its truth. We believe that, as a congregation, we are called “to share the Shepherd’s love with all of God’s children.” In all that we say and do together as a church, this parable is at least part of our work together. Our mission statement doesn’t just say that we should share God’s love only with people from Bismarck who are members of Good Shepherd or only with people whom we deem worthy of God’s love or only with Christians who are also Lutheran or only with people who are citizens of the United States.
All means all for Jesus throughout the gospels and this parable states that truth very directly.
And so we try, as Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, to the best of our God-given ability to live up to that “all” in the mission God has called our congregation, and congregations like us around to the world, to live out in God’s creation.
Brothers and sisters, this is good. Very good. It’s no wonder why this parable is called good. It’s no wonder why this parable has been a blessing to God’s people for 2,000 years.
But here’s something to note. Did you catch that Jesus never says anything about “good” in this parable? He doesn’t call the Samaritan good. Not even once. And he doesn’t say the lawyer or the priest or the Levite are bad either. Or good.
Pastor Eugene Peterson believes that the parables of Jesus are narrative time bombs designed to explode people into new awareness.
Maybe that’s why this parable has become known as the Parable of the Good Samaritan over the last 2,000 years or so. Once in awhile, God’s children need something that causes us to explode a little in order to be moved into a new awareness as it relates to our faith life.
The parable before us today is not simply about doing good when you feel like it, it’s about taking care of your neighbor. Treating everyone as the beloved children of God that they are, wherever they are, whoever they may be.
I’m guessing that you all are a lot like me. We all think we are or at least want to be the Samaritan in this story. It’s a lot better to see ourselves in that role and gives us another opportunity to make fun of and judge the behavior of the lawyer or the priest or the Levite.
Truth be told though, you and I often act more like the lawyer, asking Jesus who really is our neighbor. God can’t possibly love everyone, can he? We need clarification about just who our neighbor actually is before we are going to even think about doing anything for someone else.
Or, we are like the priest, afraid to get our hands dirty to do something good for someone we do not know. Someone different from us. Someone who’s not Lutheran. Or maybe even not Christian. We go out of our way to go around that neighbor in need. Someone who actually knows them can help. Someone who’s part of their community. At least that’s what we often think or say.
Or we are like the Levite, and simply walk by, because the one who needs our help doesn’t actually deserve our help. Why can’t they just pick themselves up and get a job, help themselves for a change?
Let’s take another look at the gospel before us today. And in the spirit of Eugene Peterson’s language, I’ll put a little more fuel on the fire for the narrative time bomb this parable gives us today, shifting us into a new awareness.
A man fell into a pit and couldn’t get himself out.
A subjective person came along and said, “I feel for you down there.”
An objective person came along and said, “It’s logical that someone would fall down there.”
A Pharisee said, “Only bad people fall into a pit.”
A mathematician calculated how he fell into the pit in the first place.
A news reporter wanted an exclusive story on his pit.
A fundamentalist said, “You deserve your pit.”
An IRS man asked if he was paying taxes on the pit.
A self-pitying woman said, “You haven’t seen anything until you’ve seen my pit.”
A charismatic said, “Just confess that you’re not in a pit.”
An optimist said, “Things could be worse.”
A pessimist said, “Things will get worse.”
Jesus, seeing the man in the pit, took him by the hand and lifted him out. (from Barbara Johnson, Ecunet, Homiletics, July-September 1995)
At the beginning of today’s gospel reading, a man, who is identified by Luke as a lawyer, asks Jesus “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
The lawyer offers a list – “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”
The lawyer then asks Jesus what I believe is a genuine and faithful question – “And who is my neighbor?” The Parable of the Good Samaritan is how Jesus addresses the lawyer’s follow-up question. A follow-up question that may be the heart of what I believe the Spirit is trying to say through this sermon today.
Jesus shares the parable and then answers the lawyer’s follow up question with another question. “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” The lawyer, and you and I say, “The one who showed him mercy.”
Jesus says to the lawyer, and to every child of God who has ever claimed to be a follower of Jesus since that day, “Go and do likewise.”
In her 2004 Christmas message, Queen Elizabeth II refers to this parable as being a story about “tolerance and respecting others.” She summarizes it in this way. “Everyone is our neighbor, no matter what race, creed or colour. The need to look after a fellow human being is far more important than any cultural or religious differences.” [Short Stories by Jesus, by Amy Jill-Levine, pg. 79]
Maybe God – through our savior Jesus – is coming to you today as the one who is in the ditch; or maybe God is coming to you and inviting you to be the one who shows compassion and mercy; or maybe God is even coming to you and me today as children of God who need to be reminded who our neighbor is in the first place, so we’ll finally stop beating them up. Or worse yet, walking by and ignoring them, leaving them on the side of the road to die alone.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, as we see our neighbors along this journey we call faith, I hope and pray that we are bold enough to respond to Jesus’ call for mercy. To “go and do likewise.” Because that indeed is good, good news. As Martin Luther instructed us about five centuries ago, “God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbor does.”
And, oh yea, if I ever do get a 452-yard hole in one – I guarantee you, that I will share that good news with you too! Even if it happens on a Sunday morning.
Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father, and our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ. Amen.
In our gospel reading today from the eighth chapter of the gospel according to Saint Luke, we hear a story that I’m guessing is familiar to many of us. The demons and the pigs.
In the story we have a naked man with a bit of a problem – he’s possessed by demons. Not just one demon either. A Legion of demons. Like thousands of demons.
The community has tried to get rid of him. They’ve chained him up, which doesn’t keep him under control. They finally think they have a plan, we’ll isolate him away from the community, in the cemetery, among the tombs. FAAAAR away from any of the normal people in the community.
And, now, as far as all the normal and good people in the community are concerned, this man is as good as dead. Note that the community hasn’t really solved anything, but the problem of this naked, demon-possessed man is at least far enough away to no longer be a nuisance to them.
In a reflection on today’s gospel reading, now retired Wartburg College biblical studies professor Judith Jones said, “Jesus comes to challenge and cast out every power that prevents us from living fully and freely as human beings created in God’s image. Jesus claims sovereignty not just over our soul, but over our lives here on earth. Many among us resist that news, finding deliverance from Legion too frightening, too demanding, too costly. But those whom Jesus has healed and freed know that his liberating love is indeed good news, the gospel that he commands us to proclaim throughout our cities and towns. Still today God is at work in Jesus, bringing God’s kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.” [www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=4108]
Did you hear that? “Jesus comes to challenge and cast out every power that prevents us from living fully and freely as human beings created in God’s image. Still today,” Professor Jones believes, “God is at work in Jesus, bringing God’s kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven.”
What I believe Jones’ is saying is that today’s gospel reading is not just a quaint little Bible story about a naked man and some pigs. It’s not a story we can ignore because we think it’s not about us anyway. I mean, how many naked men possessed by demons have you ever seen running through the streets of Bismarck? I don’t think I’ve ever seen that.
What Professor Jones is saying though, is that this story is in fact about you. It’s about me. It’s about communities that we know and love like Bismarck or Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.
The gospel of Luke was written around the year 80 a.d. In that time of human history, demons and unclean spirits were not just something that possessed someone and caused them to run around town naked saying strange things. Demons and unclean spirits were things that separated people from being in relationship with other people. And they didn’t just involve demons like a bad horror movie. It also included other kinds of illnesses – think of some of the other healing stories in the gospels like the hemorrhaging woman or the blind man or Jairus’ 12-year old daughter, which is the story that comes immediately after today’s story.
What’s maybe most amazing about the healing stories of Jesus is not just the healing. It’s also the restoration of relationships. And the freedom that restoring those relationships brings to someone’s life and to the community in which they live.
In the story before us today, the demon-possessed naked man is not the one who freed himself, nor is it the community, is it? In Jesus’ healing stories, people are healed because of their encounter with Jesus. It might be a dramatic encounter like the story we heard today with thousands of demons being cast into a herd of pigs that then run off a cliff and drown in the sea. It might also be someone reaching out and simply touching Jesus cloak as he walks by, as is the case with the woman who has been suffering from hemorrhages for 12 years.
In whatever way these healings happen, they happen because of an experience the person has with the Savior Jesus. And they happen in ways that no one is expecting them to happen.
I’ll be honest, sometimes the miraculous healing stories we hear in the gospels are hard for me to wrap my head and heart around.
I’ve presided at way too many funerals of people who have endured evil journeys with the demons of cancer only to be taken from their loved ones in an untimely death.
I’ve sat with way too many people trying to stay sober in a world that makes it incredibly easy for the demons of alcohol, sex, and drugs to exist.
I’ve walked with way too many people who are on the receiving end of people possessed by unclean spirits. Unclean spirits that project racism and bigotry on other children of God. Beloved children of God who find it nearly impossible to find a safe place to live or be employed simply because of their skin color or sexuality. Even in a community like ours with an almost non-existent unemployment rate.
It’d be easy for me, to be very cynical and simply push aside the healing stories in scripture. These are just made up ancient stories anyway, that have no relevance to my life or the world in which I live today.
It’d be very easy for me, to simply ignore the reality of how I’m part of the healing stories and how they are trying to show me what it looks like to live as a faithful follower of Jesus.
I have to admit, I spend a fair amount of time each week yelling at God and asking where in the heck God is and why God doesn’t heal anymore.
And in every one of those times, if I actually stop yelling and simply listen a little, I often hear Jesus say something to me like he said to the woman who’s hemorrhaging stopped simply by touching his cloak, “your faith has made you well; go in peace.”
Or I hear Jesus saying, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.” just like Jesus said to us in this very worship space a few weeks ago on Pentecost.
Or I hear something like the time Jesus said to the demon-possessed naked man after he was healed … “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.”
Shortly after he was freed from years of unjust imprisonment in South Africa simply because of the color of his skin, Nelson Mandela said, “For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects, and enhances the freedom of others.”
Brothers and sisters in Christ, return to your home and declare how much God has done so that children of God who are possessed by demons like cancer can be reassured of the promise of eternal life simply because of your presence and healing touch. A presence and touch that sets people free.
Return to your home, and declare how much God has done so that children of God who are possessed by unclean spirits that allow poverty, hunger, addiction, and homelessness to still exist can be set free from those chains through your bold acts of compassion.
Bold acts of compassion as you and I support ministries like World Hunger, local homeless shelters and affordable housing projects, or even through a simple wooden box called the Little Free Pantry on the north side of Good Shepherd’s property. Bold acts of compassion that set people free.
As children of God, claimed, named, forgiven and set free in our baptism, you and I are followers of Jesus who are sent into the world with the power of the Holy Spirit to cast out demons and break the chains of bondage because God is at work in us and through us right now, today.
So you know what, if you haven’t realized it yet, maybe you do now. Today’s gospel is about us. Thanks be to God that it is. Never stop declaring how much God has done for and continues to do through you to bless the world in which we live right now. God is at work in Jesus, bringing God’s kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven. Amen.
We celebrate one of the great festival days of the church this week. As important as Christmas and Easter without the shopping, credit card debt, and Easter bunnies.
Today…we celebrate Pentecost.
Pentecost is a celebration of the breath of the Spirit of God being received upon the first followers of Jesus. It is the start of what we now know as the church. The beginning of the Jesus movement so to speak.
Every year on this day we hear two readings from scripture – the first is from the book of Acts. A reading of nations and names that gives even the most experienced reader of scripture a little anxiety when they are asked to serve as a liturgical reader in church on this day.
The second is always from the gospel of John. Although the text varies from year to year, the readings from John are all highlighting times when Jesus is trying to explain, again and again, that God will send someone else to be with the disciples – the Advocate or the Holy Spirit –after he has returned to the Father. This is a teaching and a truth that I think disciples like you and me still struggle to believe or understand today.
And I don’t think we are struggling to understand these stories and our place in them today just because we heard it for the first time today in Pastor Selva’s native language of Tamil rather than English.
I’m guessing, there is a distinct possibility, that many who are gathered here today did not follow much of what was being said in either of today’s scripture readings. Either because you didn’t understand the language being spoken or you don’t have any idea what the difference is between the Parthians and the people who live in Cappadocia. Well, brothers and sisters, you’re not alone if you feel this way.
Those who witnessed the day of Pentecost as told to us from the book of Acts and those who had been following Jesus for nearly three years by the time the story in John’s gospel takes place, they didn’t get it either.
It’s ok if we feel like we need to join them and say “What does this mean?”
What does this mean? for those who were gathered in that house and experienced the Spirit descending upon them as tongues of fire. Well, for one thing, it meant a new life. Life as they knew it before that event and life after that event was different. A sudden and new way of being that would send them out of the confines of the house they were gathered in and into every house, on every corner, in every part of God’s creation. Truth be told, if Pentecost didn’t happen, nobody outside of this small little circle of friends would have heard of the story of Jesus or what impact this Jesus might have on them or on the world.
What does this mean? Well, for Lutheran Christians, you and I believe that we receive the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of Holy Baptism. And because of that truth, the Holy Spirit is alive in us…right now. We are being sent every second of every day to proclaim and share the good news of Jesus wherever we are with whomever we are with. As part of the faith community known as Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, you and I do this in some pretty amazing ways and places.
Within the membership of our congregation, we share the peace of Christ with one another by actively welcoming people who gather for worship; or by hosting Day Camp with our bible camp, Camp of the Cross; or by providing compassionate care for families following the death of loved ones.
The Holy Spirit also works through us as a Cornerstone Congregation of Lutheran World Relief helping sustain coffee farming committees in Nicaragua or through our shared ministry with our sister church, Cristo Rey Lutheran Church, in Santa Ana, El Salvador or across the countries of the Central African Republic, Cameroon, and Madagascar.
The language of the Spirit’s work may sound one way as dozens of Day Camp kids run through the hallways of our church joyfully celebrating Jesus’ love for them, and sound completely different as people gather over the casket of a deceased loved one at the beginning of a funeral worship service. Both of these sounds of the Spirit were heard in our congregation this past week.
In every person, it’s the same Spirit.
The same Spirit that is calling you and me into this work as Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.
The language of the Spirit’s work may sound one way through Lutheran Social Services of North Dakota as we provide more than 1,000 units of quality, affordable housing to brothers and sisters in every corner of our state. Brothers and sisters who would otherwise not have a place to call home if it wasn’t for the Spirit’s work through us. And the Spirit’s voice may sound completely different as Cristo Rey Lutheran Church provides a sanctuary of peace on gang and drug infested Salvadoran streets. Streets where the smell of poverty is often overcome by the smell of gunfire and blood.
In every place, it’s the same Spirit.
The same Spirit that is calling you and me into this work as Good Shepherd Lutheran Church.
The language may sound and look different from one place to another, or one person to another, but it’s the same Spirit at work, bringing peace and wholeness in a world filled way to full with division and brokenness.
One theologian offered this insight on Pentecost that further illustrates what I believe God is trying to say to us through the sermon this week.
“The writer of John’s gospel describes it this way – the Advocate, the one whom the Father will send, will teach the disciples everything they need to know. God is not yet finished revealing who God is, and the disciples are not yet finished learning. Through the Spirit of truth, the disciples will do the work of Jesus, and his life will continue through them.
In holy baptism, the Spirit rests on the heads of young and old alike. Filled with the Holy Spirit, the baptized have an old, old story to tell of Jesus and his love – and a new, new story of how God is birthing sudden, surprising, and unmerited life all around us, every day. God is at work, here, now in the world through the lives of everyday Christians. Jesus’ work continues through the lives of all the baptized. We discover meaning from this Pentecost story today, not only for our own sake but for the sake of the world that so hungers for this life.” [www.sundaysandseasons.com]
Brothers and sisters in Christ, the Spirit’s work in you doesn’t mean that you have to run off to Nicaragua or serve on the summer staff at bible camp or even agree with all of the work that God calls us to do together through Good Shepherd or the other 151 congregations of the western North Dakota Synod or through partner ministries like Lutheran Social Services or within our denomination of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
The fact remains that God is calling us to do God’s work. That the Spirit is at work through you, and through me. Period. That’s what Pentecost is all about. That’s what Pentecost means. That’s why Pentecost is so important for those of us who claim to be followers of Jesus.
Let me leave you with one simple way that we can demonstrate the Spirit’s work and presence in our lives even before we leave worship today. As you look around this sanctuary, I’m guessing you’ll see someone you do not know. I invite you to reach out to that person with a greeting of Christ’s peace when we come to that time in our worship service. In other words, don’t just greet those you already know when you share the peace of Christ today.
That simple act of sharing Christ’s peace with someone you don’t know, may be a great blessing to the one receiving Christ’s peace from you. It may bring peace to someone whose life may not be very peaceful today. It’s one simple way that the Spirit’s work through us is bringing us one step closer to that day when everyone will call upon the name of the Lord. Come Holy Spirit, come. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our risen Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
A friend of mine who serves a fantastic church in Texas shared with me some exciting news about a recent discovery in biblical archaeology. A new fragment of our gospel reading has been discovered. For nearly 2,000 years, there has been a missing verse between verse 12 and 13 in the 24th chapter of Luke.
Peter returns home in verse 12 “wondering to himself what had happened” or “amazed at what had happened” as another translation says. Remember, Peter has gone to the tomb because several of the women had just told him about the empty tomb. He didn’t believe them. He had to see for himself.
The newly discovered verse that follows verse 12 says this. “When Peter returned from the empty tomb, the women looked at him and said, ‘So, what did you find?’ Peter replied, ‘He is not there. You were right, I was wrong.” Mary Magdalene and the other women leaned in and asked, ‘What did you say?’ And Peter, now looking at his feet, said, ‘You were right, I was wrong.’ The women returned to their homes rejoicing for all they had seen and heard!”
Luke’s gospel continues on from there.
In all seriousness though, isn’t it interesting that the men are the ones in all four gospels who have the most difficulty believing the resurrection. Trying to understand what has happened. It’s the women who step up to the plate in all four gospels and proclaim the good news of the resurrection.
Mary Magdalene is one of my favorite characters in the gospels. In so many ways, I think she is a much better example of being a disciple of Jesus than any of the 12 men whom Jesus supposedly chose.
Mary is the woman in all four gospels who is at the foot of the cross on Good Friday and at the tomb early on the first day of the week. Even though Mary Magdalene seemingly disappears from the story after the resurrection, never to be mentioned again in the New Testament, one can’t help but be drawn into just how important she is to the story. After all, she is the one to show us the significance of Jesus’ resurrection and what following this Jesus might look like.
Just like Mary Magdalene, you and I are called by name.
Just like Mary Magdalene, you and I can bring all of our failures and doubts to the cross.
Just like Mary Magdalene, you and I are invited to experience an intimate encounter with the risen Christ with each new day, with every breathe we take. And as we are transformed by those encounters, we take up our cross and live a life of resurrection here and now as God lives and breathes through us.
You see, brothers and sisters in Christ, the resurrection is not only about a historical event that we are asked to try and wrap our heads around in order to believe it actually happened 2,000 years ago. The resurrection is not only about some future event that will happen when we die or at the second coming of Jesus. The resurrection is happening right now. All around us.
Can you see it? Can you hear it? Can you smell it? Can you feel it?
Mary Magdalene and the other women on that first day of the week did. And as the story continues throughout the New Testament, Peter and the other disciples eventually do too.
Clarence Jordan, one of the founding fathers of Koinonia Farms which became what we know today as Habitat for Humanity once said, “The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church.” [www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2012/03/practice-resurrection-progressive-theology-for-Easter/]
As I close my morning prayer practice each day, I do so with the Apostle’s Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, and I ask myself almost daily, do I believe this?
Do I believe in the resurrection of the body as I claim to believe it when I recite the third article of the creed?
Do I live my life in ways that demonstrate God’s kingdom coming, God’s will being done on earth as in heaven as I pray the second and third petitions of the Lord’s prayer?
This year on Easter Sunday, I’m not wrestling with whether or not I believe in the resurrection as much as I’m wrestling with how am I living the resurrection? How am I practicing the resurrection right now? Because that’s what I think is happening in the resurrection story that is in front of us today in the 24th chapter of the gospel according to Saint Luke.
In a wonderful little book called Just This,Franciscan priest Richard Rohr illustrates much of what I’m trying to offer in this Easter sermon. He writes, “Your life is not about you; you are about Life. You are an instance of a universal, and even eternal, pattern. The One Life that many of us call “God” is living itself in you, and through you, and as you! … All you can really do is agree to joyously participate! Life in the Spirit will feel like being caught much more than being taught about any particular doctrine.”
In other words, Easter is not so much what you believe about the resurrection or whether or not you believe it at all. Easter is about living in the resurrection and practicing it in your life now because your life is not about you, your life is already part of the source of all life, the God of all creation. Whether you like it or not, God has already claimed you as his own child and wants you to be part of this journey called the resurrection that begins now!
As Pastor Rob Bell said in our call to worship this morning, “Resurrection says that what we do with our lives matters, in this body, the one that we inhabit right now.”
In our gospel reading for this Easter Sunday, Mary Magdalene encounters a couple of angels at the tomb who help her remember everything that Jesus had said to her about his death and resurrection. The resurrection didn’t cause them to simply remember the things that had happened, like remembering where you left your car keys. The resurrection caused them to live and breath differently. And that mattered 2,000 years ago. And 2,000 years later, it still matters. What you and I do today matters. Because resurrection matters.
In another book by Richard Rohr called Immortal Diamond [page 211-212], he offers a list that he calls twelve ways to practice resurrection now. I won’t give you the entire list, but here are a few that stood out for me in light of our worship together today and the gospel text that’s before us –
Practice resurrection now by refusing to identify with negative, blaming, antagonistic, or fearful thoughts. You can’t stop having them, but don’t give in to them. Leave them at the foot of the cross.
Practice resurrection now by apologizing when you hurt another person or situation.
Practice resurrection now by undoing your mistakes with positive actions toward the offended persons or situations.
Practice resurrection now by always seeking to change yourself before trying to change others.
Practice resurrection now by choosing, as much as possible, to serve rather than be served.
Finally, practice resurrection now by never doubting that it is all about love in the end.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t just believe in resurrection – practice resurrection! Because in the end, that’s really what Easter is all about. Amen.
Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.
If you are visiting Good Shepherd this weekend, please know that not all of our pastors can rock the color-wheel of hair like this. And be assured that this is only a temporary adjustment to what is normal. For three years now, I’ve changed my hair color dramatically in the spring which quickly follows with the shedding of this colorful masterpiece at an event called Brave the Shave. Come back next week to see what I’m talking about!
And to everyone who has supported my efforts and hundreds of other people’s efforts for this year’s Brave the Shave, I say thank you! This event, and other events like it this month in our community such as the Great American Bike Race, are a gift to our community.
They are ways in which we live out the extravagant love God has for us by loving others in our community with similar extravagance.
I’d like to highlight a few things about today’s extravagant gospel reading on this last Sunday in Lent.
It’s important to notice that this story of Mary washing Jesus is offered in all four gospels. Matthew, Mark, and Luke differ from John’s version – the head, not the feet; an unnamed woman rather than a woman named Mary who has a deep and loving relationship with Jesus.
In Mark’s version, Jesus praises the anointing as a “beautiful thing.”
I’ve always liked that image for this story.
Even though Mark is the only gospel that says that directly, I think they all share in the beauty of Mary’s expression of love toward Jesus. And so, Jesus might not be saying this directly in John’s gospel, but we can’t help read the text in any other way. When he says “Leave her alone.” he’s lifting up the beauty of what Mary has done for him.
This is a beautiful thing that she has done for Jesus.
And so, yes, the story might be a little different in each gospel, but I think the message is the same. And it is a beautiful thing.
In the gospel of Saint John, Mary’s act of discipleship in the 12th chapter sets the stage for Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet in the 13th chapter.
Both events of washing and anointing take place in a private home, not a large public space. As far as we know, there were no pictures of these events posted to Instagram and Twitter.
Both events of washing and anointing involve a meal. A meal served by Martha in today’s gospel and a meal the disciples will celebrate on a day in Holy Week that we now know as Maundy Thursday. A meal we remember as the Last Supper. A meal that is one of the reasons why the sacrament of Holy Communion is central to our faith.
Both events have people who don’t like all of this washing and anointing going on. Judas complaining about the wasteful use of expensive perfume in today’s story. Peter insists that he be the one to wash feet, not Jesus as the story is told in chapter 13.
Both events, point us to future events that will soon unfold. Events that will change the world forever.
It’s a statement that can serve to ground us in our gospel reading this week. God loves to do the unexpected with, for, and through unexpected people.
Mary, maybe even without knowing that she was doing it, was preparing Jesus for the events soon to come. Namely his journey to Jerusalem. A journey that will begin with a triumphant entry on a day we now celebrate as Palm Sunday and end a few short days later with a cross of death on a Friday that we dare call good.
God was doing something unexpected and beautiful through a woman named Mary just six days before the Passover. She was demonstrating extravagant love for God, love for the disciples, and love for us.
How do we receive this call to be a disciple of Jesus in the extravagant, loving ways Mary shows us?
I believe with everything that I am as a child of God that God is doing something unexpected, still today, through all of us un-expecting people.
Because our relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus always grounds us in the present moment and at the same time pulls us extravagantly into the future. God is not standing behind us, hoping we won’t mess things up again. God is standing with us, doing extravagant and beautiful things in, with and through us along every step of this journey called faith. A journey of faith that is anointed and holy.
We began our Lenten journey a few weeks ago in much the same way followers of Jesus have done every spring for centuries. On Ash Wednesday, we celebrated a meal together and received the mark of a cross on our foreheads with ashes. It is a dramatic and ancient ritual of faith that reminds us of our mortality, but that’s not all.
You see, by honestly facing the reality of our earthly death, we are more fully able to live honoring our own vulnerability and the humanity of others. Our lives are to be lived with extravagant gratefulness for all that God has done and is doing for us through Jesus.
Lent, then, isn’t just a season of the church that we hope we will be able to endure again this year because we gave up chocolate.
Lent invites us into a journey with the savior of the world who shows us, again and again, the extravagant love God has for you, for me, and for all of God’s good creation.
Ash Wednesday doesn’t just highlight our mortality in a morbid depressing way. And Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet is not just preparing Jesus for the gruesome death he would soon subject himself to.
Ash Wednesday and Mary’s anointing help remind us whose we are. What a beautiful thing it is that this year they are the bookends that hold our Lenten journey together.
Whose we are, as we’re claimed as God’s children in the sacred and holy waters and promises made in the sacrament of Holy Baptism. A sacrament in which we are anointed and marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit forever.
In an awesome little book called Baptized We Live, Pastor Dan Erlander wrote, “Following Jesus in his death and resurrection means our baptism becomes the overpowering event in our lives, the event which tells us who we are and how we are to live.”
Just like Mary, Judas, Jesus, Martha, Lazarus and the others in our gospel reading today, you and I will share a meal together. And during that meal, we’re also going to have an opportunity to be anointed. Anointed as we were in our baptism. Anointed in order for us to not only remember our baptism in these remaining days of our Lenten journey, but also to renew our lives as disciples of Jesus today, knowing whose we are and the ways we are called to live each new day out the extravagant love God has for us.
So brothers and sisters in Christ, as you and I share in the sacramental meal of Holy Communion, our foreheads will be anointed with oil today and we will once again hear the words “You have been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit, forever.” May that truth walk with us in all that we say and do – not just during Lent, but in every day of our life of faith.
In every crazy day with dyed hair.
In every community event like Brave the Shave and the Great American Bike Race.
In every way that an ancient story about expensive perfume poured over dirty feet still speaks to us, and still calls us deeper into a life of discipleship.
May we join Jesus in seeing just how beautiful all of this truly is. Amen.
I so appreciate the writing of Pastor Lisa Lewton from St. John Lutheran Church in Dickinson, ND. This Ash Wednesday offering is worth a few minutes of your day. Blessings upon your Lenten journey this year!
Bishop Craig
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Today is Ash Wednesday, and so you must Let go. Let go of complexities you added to your life that now feel normal. You…
Many of you know that I own a few guitars. How many, you ask? Well…more than I probably should, but definitely one less than too many. My guitars are part of my very being. Simply put, I believe that I can no more be a good husband, father, pastor, son or anything else God calls me to be without the presence of my guitars. Music ebbs and flows through everything that I am or am called to do or be as a child of God, a disciple of Jesus. I don’t see my guitars as possessions but as extensions of who I am.
And may our possessions never become things that possess us and take control of our lives if we truly want to be disciples of Jesus. Yes, I am looking forward to that new guitar arriving soon, I’m not going to lie about that. But that guitar, or any other guitar I own, will never get in the way of how I respond to Jesus calling me to serve as one of his disciples.
don’t believe the division we’ve seen in the Lutheran Christian movement over the past five centuries is the kind of division Jesus is speaking of in the gospel of Luke. It’s not the same thing. But I do believe with everything I am as a follower of Jesus, that the division we continue to see in the Lutheran world, and really all of Christian world, breaks God’s heart. I do not believe this is what God hoped would happen in our world when he sent Jesus into it. I do not believe that the divided church today is what Jesus intended to have happen. We are church.
I just returned from the 
And to everyone who has supported my efforts and hundreds of other people’s efforts for this year’s Brave the Shave, I say thank you! This event, and other events like it this month in our community such as the Great American Bike Race, are a gift to our community.
Both events have people who don’t like all of this washing and anointing going on. Judas complaining about the wasteful use of expensive perfume in today’s story. Peter insists that he be the one to wash feet, not Jesus as the story is told in chapter 13.
Bishop Craig Schweitzer 