Tag Archives: Jesus

August 21, 2012

“Thank You Jesus” Sermon 08.19.2012

By Bishop Craig Schweitzer

John 6:51-58 • August 19, 2012

Click here to hear an audio recording of this sermon.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ. Amen.

This past week in the devotional, Christ in Our Home that’s published by Augsburg Fortress, the publishing entity of the ELCA there was a story about a man named Will. Will glanced at the clock in the upper corner of his computer screen. It was much later than he thought. He had been online for hours, reading news sites, blogs, and email, and updating his social network pages. It was hard to pull away from the screen. “This is foolish,” he thought. “Why am I wasting time this way?” He thought about his life and his loneliness after his recent divorce. “I’m looking for a connection,” he realized, “a relationship.” He looked at the computer screen and sighed, “This is too easy. It’s superficial, a poor substitute.”

Will’s story is a quest for a quick on-line connection or easy relationship that has little to do with the rest of his life. No thought about all that life is revealing to him beyond the din of his computer screen.

Or maybe you’ve seen this advertisement recently on television in the middle of the seemingly never ending array of political ads that are consuming the advertising world right now.

Following this link to the video on YouTube – http://youtu.be/TUGmcb3mhLM

The young girl thinks her parents are crazy and don’t have any friends, no real relationships or adventure in their life. When in reality the opposite is probably true. The ad is supposed to be humorous, but as a parent it is revealing to me in other ways too.

I think these stories are similar to what’s happening in John 6. The 6th chapter in John’s gospel is part of our worship for several weeks this summer. It’s a chapter of scripture that has been read and analyzed and debated for meaning and preached on for centuries. This is a dense and complex section of scripture. For me, it’s also one of the most challenging pieces of scripture, especially given the Roman Catholic tradition that I grew up in and for which I am very thankful. It’s definitely one of the most revealing teachings of Jesus for me.

There are thousands of people following Jesus at the beginning of chapter 6 as he feeds 5,000 or so people with just a few loaves of bread and couple of fish that a young boy was carrying around. It was probably his lunch that day.

But by the time we reach the end of this chapter, we see the result of Jesus’ challenging and revealing teaching as, “many have turned back and no longer went about with him.” The crowds were offended by what they saw and heard and were no longer interested in following Jesus.

I can relate. My own story at times or that of Will or the girl in that television ad or Jesus’ teaching in John 6 speak to us because they often reflect more of who we are than we’re comfortable admitting. You and I seek relationships that bring instant gratification, usually within parameters that we set and control. The crowds before Jesus sought a relationship with him as long as the loaves and fish were free and they could control the way in which they were to receive them.

But the relationship that Jesus offers them, and you and me, is more than a few fish and stale loaves of bread offered at a hillside picnic. More than simply liking someone’s Facebook status from your list of 687 Facebook friends. More than following the instructions from the latest article in People magazine about how to succeed in getting a date with another person.

The relationship that Jesus offers can even been seen as a little offensive in many ways, because it is nothing less than his own flesh and blood. It’s upsetting to the crowds, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” they say. Remember, this teaching from Jesus in John 6 is centuries before Twilight movies about vampires and werewolves were popular. I’d argue that it’s still upsetting and just as offensive today.

I once heard someone say, “When we eat food, it becomes us. When we eat spiritual food, we become it.” Have you ever thought of that as you receive the Sacrament of Holy Communion?

If you and I take the sacrament of Holy Communion seriously, the offense in Holy Communion is not in thinking about eating Jesus’ body and blood in a cannibalistic sort of way. The offense, the good news of life in Christ, is in the lengths that God will go in order to have a relationship with you and me. In verse 56 Jesus says to the crowds, and to you and me today, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” The bread and wine of Holy Communion are not simply symbols for Jesus’ body and blood. The bread and wine that we receive and consume in the sacrament of Holy Communion are Jesus body and blood because this Jesus abides in us. This Jesus lives in us.

Each and every time that you and I receive the sacrament, how do we respond to Jesus offering of his flesh and blood? To Jesus abiding love? To Jesus living in us?

This past week I preached and presided at the funeral of a sister in Christ from our congregation. I believe that she understood and lived life as a child of God fully aware of God’s love for her. Even understood the offensiveness of Jesus abiding in her.

I had many opportunities to experience this kind of love from God in this woman, but I think it was present most significantly every time I served her Holy Communion.

Every time this sister in Christ heard the words “The body of Christ, given for you. The blood of Christ, shed for you.” and received the bread and wine, her response was not, “it’s about time, I sent you an email two weeks ago God” or “God, I’ve been really good lately, I deserve this” or “oh well, it’s just bread and grape juice”. Her response to God’s love for her in the sacrament of Holy Communion was always “Thank you Jesus.”

In our celebration of the sacrament of Holy Communion today and for that matter, every time we celebrate the sacrament, I pray that our response to God’s revealing and even offensive love for us in the life, death, and resurrection of a savior named Jesus is thank you.

Thank you Jesus for walking with us in relationship in all ways and in all days.

Thank you Jesus for filling us in this meal with the Bread of life. Life, that no matter how hard we try, it simply doesn’t exist in technology or possessions or accomplishments of our own in this world.

Thank you Jesus for forgiving our sin and inviting us to this table, to come just as we are.

Thank you Jesus. Amen.

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July 11, 2012

“Stay There Until You Leave” 07.08.2012 Sermon

By Bishop Craig Schweitzer

Mark 6:1-13 • July 8, 2012

Click here to hear an audio recording of this sermon.

Brothers and sisters in Christ grace and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus. Amen.

President Franklin Roosevelt was known to endure long receiving lines to greet guests in the White House. We’d never imagine a president, especially not since 9/11, doing something so unprotected. Roosevelt was said to have complained that no one really paid any attention to what was said, so one day, during one of these receiving lines; he decided to try an experiment. To each person who passed down the line and shook his hand, he murmured, “I murdered my grandmother this morning.” The guests responded with phrases like, “Marvelous! Keep up the good work. We are proud of you. God bless you, sir.” It wasn’t until nearly the end of the line, while greeting the Ambassador from Bolivia, that his words were actually heard. Without flinching, the ambassador leaned over and whispered, “I’m sure she had it coming.”

Sometimes I think the mission of the church is a little like that. I worry that the mission of Christ’s church isn’t being heard. I worry that those who are called and sent to carry out the mission of the resurrected Jesus in the world haven’t even heard the story or don’t really know what the story of Jesus is or that Jesus loves them.

I worry that the mission of Christ’s church is more about sustaining massive institutions rather than empowering deeper relationships between all people whom God loves. I worry that the mission of Christ’s church is more about designing the perfect program or event in order to attract people that look and act just like us rather than opening our hearts to ministries that don’t necessarily fit the molds that we’ve used before, even though these new ministries are right in front of us.

Or worse yet, I worry that we are waiting for someone else to come along. Someone else who we think is more qualified to carry out this mission or insist that Christ’s mission for us can only be carried out by paid professionals like pastors and church staff. Even Jesus, of which you and I are not nor will we ever be no matter how hard we try or think we can be like Jesus. Even Jesus, sought help to carry out his mission to heal and restore life and bless this world. Jesus’ first disciples, and you and I today as well, are called to be part of that mission.

But sometimes I wish we believed it more than we do.

There’s a story of a fantastic salesman who sold a complicated filing system to a thriving business in town to try and help them become more efficient and even more of a thriving business.

About three months after the sale, the salesman checked in with the company to see how the new filing system was working out.

“Magnificently,” was the response from the company’s owner and president. “Out of this world!”

“Well, how is business?” asked the salesman.

To which the owner replied, “We had to give up our business to run the filing system.”

Has the church of Jesus Christ created so many filing systems that we forgot about the thriving business we had originally been given? That we have stopped listening to each other or become so distracted that we fail to hear God saying to us, “You are mine. I love you. I’ve called you. I send you.”

Jesus mandate to his disciples is to travel lightly and keep moving. Nowhere in scripture do we see Jesus sitting down with the disciples and a map, or a snakebite kit, or an extra suitcase with provisions that have been allocated for in the budget, or a feasibility study, or even a specific set of goals, strategies, or objectives. Jesus gives the disciples what they need. The disciples – a group of ordinary men that are at times one of the most confused and unaware collection of misfits the world has ever known, just like any man or woman sitting in this worship space today. Jesus gives the disciples, and you and me, only what we need most: a mission and the authority to carry it out.

The disciples’ success in carrying out this mission has nothing to do with their own abilities to achieve success. It has everything to do with the authority of Jesus and the confidence that Jesus has in them to carry out the mission and move the kingdom of God forward.

But what is a disciple anyway? Up to this point in Mark’s gospel, the main objective for being a disciple is following Jesus. Jesus is changing that today. Professor Rolf Jacobson defines a disciple in this way in his book Crazy Talk: A Not So-Stuffy Dictionary of Theological Terms. Jacobson says that a disciple is “a person who follows Jesus, who is, of course, pursuing us. So 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.” [pg. 53-54]

But I’m not a disciple, you may be thinking. I argue that you in fact are and that Jesus has already given you everything you need to carry out his mission in this world.

And how is that possible? Well, Jesus says that you won’t need anything for the journey, so you don’t need to pack. Pastor Eugene Peterson translates Jesus’ words from verse 8 like this: “Don’t think you need a lot of extra equipment for this. You are the equipment.” [The Message]

Barbara Brown Taylor helps us go a little further as she offers this insight. “Our call, as followers of Jesus, as those sent with power and authority (that derive from him) is to do the same: to heal, to attack the demons that plague our society and the world that God loves, to share the good news.”

And finally, in his commentary on Mark, Lamar Williamson, Jr. says, “Our resources do not accomplish the work of God, nor, finally, does the quality of our own lives. What counts is the power of God conferred on us by Jesus Christ. That is why he dares to send us, why we dare to go, and why remarkable good still comes through the obedience of inadequate messengers.” [Mark, Westminster John Knox Press, pg. 121-122]

You and I are called to be disciples in order that Jesus’ mission to bless and save and heal the world may be fulfilled. Not because of anything we have done, but because of what Jesus has done and is doing through us.

Faith in Jesus is important to our life in Christ as we try to be disciples who carry out a mission. But have you ever given much thought to Jesus’ faith in you? He must have had at least a little faith in the disciples to send them out to cast out demons, anoint the sick, and share the good news wherever they were.

Here’s a great question that I was asked recently by Pastor Rob Bell. I think it’s a great question for all of us to think about today, “Do you believe that God believes in you?”

You and I don’t stay in one place very long. We’ll only be in this place for about an hour. So what other places will you find yourself in this week? Do you believe that God believes in you in those places to share a little bit of Jesus’ mission with people that you meet in those places?

At the grocery store? Smile and give thanks to the cashier who is helping you and is working three jobs just to pay her rent right now.

Your office or place of work? Serve your co-workers and customers as the hands and feet of God in our world.

The kitchen table in your home? Listen deeply to one another as you try to live out of the love you have for one another in all that you say and do.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, don’t stay in any one place too long. But before you leave, make sure that you’ve shared a little of God’s love with those that you’ve met.

Amen.

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