For Such a Time as This

Baptism of our Lord-A26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America…” I remember standing to face the flag in kindergarten, hand over my heart, to recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Years earlier, like many of you, I was baptized as an infant at Elim Lutheran Church in Fargo North Dakota. The minister traced the cross on my forehead and said, “Child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” (ELW p. 231) I have pledged allegiance to both the font and to the flag. Which holds higher place?

I think we all know the right answer. Allegiance to God comes before fidelity to nation. Yet, somehow, many Christians today have reversed this order. With a straight face they claim God favors America above all other nations, or that God values white men above other people. Or worse, they proclaim an anti-gospel of power for power’s sake, which Senior White House aide Stephen Miller this week called, ‘…the iron law of the world since the beginning of time,’ (CNN interview with Jack Tapper, 1/5/26).

As Lutheran pastor and theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, made clear, ‘Those who are baptized no longer belong to the world, no longer serve the world, and are no longer subject to it. They belong to Christ alone and relate to the world only through Christ.’ (Bonhoeffer, Introduction to the Cost of Discipleship, 1937).

At his baptism, Jesus experienced a moment of divine revelation, called an epiphany, as he came up out of the water. The word “epiphany” comes from the Greek meaning “insight,” or “appearing,” or “revealing,” or “a shining forth.” We cannot create epiphanies, but we can respond to them. The Sacrament of baptism is an outward, visible sign of an inward, invisible grace. In other words, it is an epiphany. (Debi Thomas, “Stepping In,” Journey with Jesus, 1/05/20)

“To embrace Christ’s baptism story is to embrace the core truth that we are united, interdependent, connected, one.  It is to sit with the staggering reality that we are deeply, loved. We belong to a created universe that whispers, laughs, and shouts God’s name from every nook and corner. Christians are called into radical solidarity, not radical separateness.” The One who holds history, holds time, holds earth and sun and wind and sky, and holds me and you. (Thomas).

The epiphany of Christ reveals a golden rule emanating from the heart of creation that is older than the iron rule of rulers. Dictators may love gold, but they hate the golden rule. Christ the logos, is the golden law which operates in all things pulling us toward life and the abundance of life. This sense of epiphany, rooted in the incarnation, widens our vision so that everything can be a sacrament, meaning every person, creature, plant, and object can be an opportunity to encounter something of the Divine Presence in the world.  (Richard Rohr, “Recognizing Grace,” Daily Meditations, 11/10/25)

‘Which means I must choose Epiphany.  Choose it and then practice it.  The challenge is always before us: look again. Look harder. See freshly.  Stand in the place that looks utterly ordinary, and regardless of how scared or jaded you feel, cling to the possibility of a surprise that is God. Listen to the ordinary and know that it is infused with divine mystery.  Epiphany is deep water. You must take a deep breath and plunge in.’  God does not dominate us with an iron rule. Instead, God calls us into relationship ruled by the law of love. Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

That is why everything that comes into the world brings novelty into the world; starting with the first great novelty—14 billion years ago when the universe exploded into existence. For the first 2 billion years, all there was, as Genesis tells us, was light; all there was, was energy. We are the product of that light.

And then, as if that illumination were not miraculous enough, some of these stars collapsed and exploded again, sending out more material that had never existed which ultimately makes me and you possible. We would not exist without carbon; we would not exist without iron.

Fast forward another four billion years and on one very lucky planet, the third rock from the sun, there is pervasive thunder and lightning. But not lightning like we see today. The lightning of ten billion years ago is a lightning that is constant and everywhere! Life emerged in the frothy mix of lightning and water on planet earth. Do you know what powers your consciousness? We are packets of lightning. Our nervous systems are electrical systems. The flash of lightning that burst into life, continues to burst inside of you at this moment. I am speaking words and you are hearing me thanks to bottled lightning.

And then, as if that were not miracle enough, these little packets of lightning—learned to eat. Life learned to digest life. Life learned to grow by building more life, and the miracles continued as cells learned how to convey information. We got some backbone in ourselves, and then did something astonishing, unprecedented: We left our mother, the ocean.

“I told you before that you are portable lightning, but that is not the whole story. You are also portable bags of ocean; the saline solution of your blood is closer to the content of ocean water than you realize. We are living, walking puddles of ocean, powered by lightning. In our bodies, in our self, is the entire story of the universe continuing to unfold. You yourselves contain the energy of the Big Bang, the primordial lightning out of which life emerged, the salty life-giving mix of the sea, the sociability of primates—all of that ancient history is in you, in each of us.” As the poet Walt Whitman once said, ‘You contain multitudes.’ (Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, “CLAY in the Potter’s Hands: Human Evolution in a Self-Creating World,” Creative Transformation magazine).

“Christ is the communion of divine personal love expressed in every created form of reality — every star, leaf, bird, fish, tree, rabbit, and human person” (Ilia Delio). The French poet and philosopher, Paul Valéry, said, “The universe is built on a plan, the profound symmetry of which is somehow present in the inner structure of our own intellect.” I could not be me without ‘we.’ In fact, I could not exist without us. A shift takes place when we see life in this way. Our minds, our bodies, our emotions, our way of being in the world, are the universe itself organized into consciousness. Or the universe organizing itself and erupting into consciousness.” (Artson). ‘If that’s not an epiphany I don’t know what is.

“This extraordinary season [of Epiphany] induces awe. Epiphany reveals that there is more to the world than what we accept as “ordinary.” And there are powers and principalities that will press against Epiphany with fear and great violence….” as King Herod did at the birth of Jesus (Diana Butler Bass, A Beautiful Year, p. 78).

There will always be those who attempt to deny or to destroy the rule of love, but love is undeniable and indestructible because love is life itself.  Epiphany is made for such a time as this. Perhaps Epiphany is the season we most need now. “We need its clarity, its sharp starkness. Maybe this moment in history is an epiphany — the ordinary is being pulled back to reveal that which has been hidden from view—both the ugly and the sublime. “It is as if the universe has cracked open with truth and terror. We live in awful and awe-filled times.” Some of what we know as ordinary has become the gateway to glory; and some of what we, and people like Stephen Miller have accepted as ordinary, has shown itself to be just another hiding place of vanity and self-delusion. It takes an epiphany to reveal which is which — to know the deepest love in the world and live in the tailings of the star.” (Butler-Bass).

“Yes, baptism promises new life, but it always drowns before it resurrects.”  (Thomas). ‘You are fearfully and wonderfully made’ (Psalm 139:14). You are descended from generations of stars. You are born of lightning, born of ocean, formed of Spirit and of earth. You are friends of Christ Jesus. You are children of God. “We are to be light bearers. You are to choose the light” (Madeline L’Engle, Ring of Endless Light).  So, arise. Shine. Be light.

/by

Our Hearts Grow

First Sunday of Christmas- A25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

When the Grinch stole Christmas, they say his very small heart grew four times that day once he heard the joyful singing of the Who’s down in Whoville celebrating despite the shocking discovery that all their Christmas presents, holiday food, and decorations were gone. The Grinch repented. His heart was changed. He suddenly had the strength of 10 Grinches once he realized that Christmas is about grace-filled community more than empty materialism. Even more amazing, the Who’s did not slap him in jail for what he had done but welcomed him in fellowship at their Christmas table.

There’s a whole lot of gospel in Dr. Suess. Yet I wonder, would his heart have soften as much if the Who’s insisted on welcoming resident aliens or people of a different religion to their town? Does the outcome change once Whoville became diverse and pluralistic—including perhaps Star-belly Sneetches and Plain-belly Sneetches, Sam-I-Am, Yertle the Turtle, and the Lorax?

Perhaps you heard about the nativity scene outside Lake Street Church in Evanston? It was attacked recently. The scene had featured baby Jesus wearing zip ties, Mary and Jesus wearing gas masks, and all three flanked by Roman centurions dressed as ICE agents wearing masks and sunglasses. Vandals decapitated and smashed the statue of Mary. The church replaced the destroyed Mary with a sign saying that Mary had been beaten and dragged away in front of her son and is being held in immigration detention.

Anti-ICE nativity scenes sprouted up in communities across America this year. Many, including the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, condemned them, declaring such politically divisive displays are incompatible with being a place of prayer and worship. I wonder, have they read today’s gospel? “When the magi had departed, an angel from the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up. Take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt…for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him’” (Matthew 2:13). The Nativity scene, like Dr. Suess’ Whoville, is a parable of radical hospitality and empathy. In a country where white Christianity has become a weapon of authoritarian violence, anti-ICE nativities re-center the reason for the season: Christ’s humble beginnings amid political violence. (Emma Cieslik, “Anti-ICE Nativities Are the Reason for the Season,” Sojourners Magazine, 12/22/25)

The Word was born in the flesh of a human mother and laid in a manger. God became just as vulnerable to trampling boots and automatic rifles as the children of Gaza and the children slaughtered in and around Bethlehem by order of King Herod (Mt. 2:16). “Here is where the mystery deepens so profoundly as to escape comprehension. It goes against what we think are our deepest instincts. We do everything to make ourselves less vulnerable, from putting on plated armor, to hardening our feelings, to buying weapons to defend us from the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” to quote Hamlet. If the Word, without whom nothing that was made was made, is willing to be so defenseless, then perhaps it isn’t really our deepest instinct to defend ourselves so aggressively after all. (Andrew Marr, Moving and Resting in God’s Desire, ch. 5, “A Word from Above,” pp. 91-93.)

“The birth of Jesus is a new birth of mercy in the world. The fearful world of Pharaoh/Herod dreads mercy. But, says the story, mercy will have its way. Neither Herod of the empire nor the raw power of death will stop the future given in God’s good mercy.” No wonder heaven and nature dance and sing.” (Marr) From beginning to end, Matthew’s gospel intends to awaken minds, hearts, and bodies left for dead by the powers of domination and violence.

In her own reflections on this text, Lutheran pastor Pam Fickenscher observes: “You could make a good argument that we should save this story for another day — Lent, maybe, or some late-night adults-only occasion. But our songs of peace and public displays of charity have not erased the headlines of child poverty, gun violence, and even genocide. This is a brutal world. Today the victims are statistically less likely to be Jewish and more likely to be from Darfur, or [Gaza], Zimbabwe, or Ukraine Iraq, but the sounds of Rachel weeping for her children are not uncommon. If we could hear them, they would drown out our cheerful, tinny carols every few seconds or so.” (Pam Fickenscher, “Remembering Rachel: The Slaughter of the Innocents,” Journey with Jesus, 12/30/07).

The birth of the baby Jesus is the antidote to Christmas sentimentality and every form of cheap comfort. The events surrounding his birth remind us how the savior of the world “shared in our humanity” and was “made like us in every respect.” Because Jesus suffered our every pain and sorrow, beginning from an infanticide at his birth and lasting to his death as a criminal, “he is able to help those who suffer” (Hebrews 2:10–18). (Daniel Clendenin, “Beyond a Sentimental Gospel: The Slaughter of the Innocents,” Journey with Jesus, 2010)

The king Herods of the world, whether ancient or modern, are right about one thing; if Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is decidedly not lord. These kings do the opposite of the magi; they work hard to make the subversive kin-dom of Jesus subservient to the political power of the state. The Christmas message kindles a preposterous hope. The Herods, Pharoahs, Caesars, and Christian nationalists have power to do great harm, but they do not prevail.

This week the Department of Homeland Security posted, “This Christmas, our hearts grow as our illegal population shrinks.” The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) shared an AI video of Santa Claus putting on a bulletproof vest, then handcuffing an immigrant, processing the person, and then loading them onto an “ICE” plane for deportation. Journalist Jennifer Rubin writes, “…White Christian nationalists generally do not seem interested in good works, helping the most vulnerable, or personal character. This is a movement seeking power, not redemption. Its adherents are motivated to remake America into a white, Christian dominated nation. Lacking the votes to bring their goals about through democracy, they are all too willing to suppress voting and rely on other anti-democratic measures. Blowing up people on the high seas, separating children from parents, brutalizing Hispanics, and taking away SNAP benefits are features, not bugs for people lacking empathy who seek racial and religious dominance.” (Jennifer Rubin, The Contrarian, 12/23/25).

We need something more than holiday cheer to recover from what ails us. We need strong gospel medicine to turn from the fever dream of unilateral power and to embrace the golden rule of love. We cleave to Christ and not the gun. This is how we begin to make a difference in this world. As we face a New Year, the only resolution we need make is to let Christ live in us and through us. The way of Jesus goes through reality—the reality of suffering—not around it, or over it, but through it. This is the Good News for us as we head into January and return to our post-holiday realities. Our hymn of the day is our prayer: “Give us, God, such faith and courage when we move from place to place, and to those who come among us, make us channels of your grace. Let us see in every stranger refugees from Bethlehem, help us offer each welcome and receive Christ in them, (ACS #1060). And let our hearts grow four times larger filled with God’s compassion and love.

/by

God’s Best Gift

Christmas Eve – 25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

‘Let the heavens rejoice. Let the earth be glad. ‘The mountains and hills burst into song. ‘The trees of the wood shout for joy and clap their hands’ (Psalm 96:11-12 & Isaiah 55:12). “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (Luke 2:11). 13.8 billion years ago God created the heavens and much later formed humankind in the divine image. Earth and cosmos resonate as with music as the Word, which was with God, and the Word that was God…brings all things into to being through Christ. Without Christ nothing comes to be (John 1:1, 3).
On this night, this holy night, we tell the old, old story of union with God, union with one another, and union with creation. Immanuel, ‘God with us,” incarnation, is God’s best gift. The Spirit of God is poured to fill all things with beauty, wisdom, and grace. “To be alive in the adventure of Jesus is to kneel at the manger and gaze upon that little baby who is radiant with so much promise for our world today.” (Brian D. McLaren, We Make the Road by Walking: A Year-Long Quest for Spiritual Formation, Reorientation, and Activation (Jericho Books, 2014), 79–80.)

“On Christmas Eve, we celebrate a new beginning. We welcome the dawning of a new light. A new day begins with sunrise. A new year begins with lengthening days. A new life begins with infant eyes taking in their first view of a world bathed in light. And a new era in human history began when God’s light came shining into our world through Jesus.” (McLaren)
“What do we mean when we say Jesus is the light? Just as a glow on the eastern horizon tells us that a long night is almost over, Jesus’ birth signals the beginning of the end for the dark night of fear, hostility, violence, and greed that has descended on our world. Jesus’ birth signals the start of a new day, a new way, a new understanding of what it means to be alive.” (McLaren)

“Aliveness, he will teach, is a gift available to all by God’s grace. It flows not from taking, but giving, not from fear but from faith, not from conflict but from reconciliation, not from domination but from service. It isn’t found in the outward trappings of religion—rules and rituals, controversies and scruples, temples and traditions. No, it springs up from our innermost being like a fountain of living water. It intoxicates us like the best wine ever and so turns life from a disappointment into a banquet. This new light of aliveness and love opens us up to rethink everything—to go back and become like little children again. Then we can rediscover the world with a fresh, childlike wonder—seeing the world in a new light, the light of Christ.” (McLaren)

‘When Christians hear the word “incarnation,” most of us think about the birth of Jesus, who personally demonstrated God’s radical unity with humanity. But the first incarnation, God’s best gift, was the moment described in Genesis 1, when God joined in unity with the physical universe and became the light inside of everything. The incarnation, then, is not only “God becoming Jesus.” It is a much broader and ubiquitous event in which God is encountered in other human beings, and on a mountain, or in a blade of grass, and in a bird in flight.’ Seeing in this way reframes, reenergizes, and broadens our religious beliefs, in a way that is urgently needed today. “It can offer us the deep and universal meaning that Western civilization seems to lack and long.” (Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, Christ in All Things, 12/22/25).  

Incarnation, God’s best gift, has the potential to enliven dialogue of mutual respect and learning between people of different religions. God’s gift can bring to life deep felt connection and reverence with the land and its creatures. God’s gift is the basis upon which democracy becomes possible. Belief in God-given universal equality and dignity enables citizens to reason together across political differences for the common good.

This Christmas story is powerful gospel medicine. 20th century, English author, philosopher, Christian apologist, poet, journalist and magazine editor, G. K. Chesterton reminds us that, ‘our religion is not the church we belong to, but the cosmos we live inside of’ (G. K. Chesterton, Irish Impressions (John Lane, 1920), p. 215). The universe revealed in Christ Jesus is filled with aliveness. What kind of universe do you inhabit? Once we recognize that the entire physical world around us, all creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world is transformed. It becomes a home, safe and enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply. It is a place to encounter the risen infant Christ in everyone, in every place, including the face of a friend, a neighbor, a stranger, even our enemies.

Jesuit priest, scientist, and mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), taught that ‘God is incarnate in matter, in flesh, in all of creation, in the cosmos…We are all together “carried in the one world-womb; yet each of us is our own little microcosm in which the incarnation, God’s best gift, is wrought independently with degrees of intensity, and shades that are incommunicable.’ (Ursula King, Christ in All Things: Exploring Spirituality with Teilhard de Chardin (Orbis Books, 1997), 64–65; Hymn of the Universe, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (Harper and Row, 1965), 24, 28.)

Enchantment came naturally to our forebears in faith and to indigenous peoples. Re-enchantment born of incarnation is urgently needed to restore civilization to health and balance. See! Everything sparkles with the fullness and presence of God. Matter is not empty, but everything speaks of the One Life. Spirit and nature. Sacred and secular. Body and soul. Light and darkness. Insider and outsider. Saints and sinners. Life and death. In Christ these dualisms vanish. God is in with and under it all.

Scripture says, ‘Mary treasured the words people said about Jesus and pondered them in her heart’ (Luke 2:19). We wonder at these things too. Wherever two are three are gathered in Jesus’ name, we are midwives to the aliveness of grace God is bringing into being.

Poet and liturgical artist, Jan Richardson, writes beautifully about the mystery of faith in a poem entitled, “How The Light Comes”:

I cannot tell you how the light comes.
What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining.
That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us.
That it loves searching out what is hidden, what is lost, what is forgotten or in peril or in pain.

That it has a fondness for the body, for finding its way toward the flesh, for tracing the edges of form, for shining forth through the eye, the hand, the heart.

I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does.

That it will.
That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee.

And so, may we this day turn ourselves toward it.
May we lift our faces to let it find us.
May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes.
May we open and open more and open still to the blessed light
that comes.

(How The Light Comes, Jan Richardson, printed in Circle of Grace, p.59)

/by

What Kind of Messiah?

Advent 3A-25

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Last Sunday, we read about John’s preaching in the wilderness beside the River Jordan. He seemed so sure of himself.  But now, in his prison cell facing death, he is not so confident.  He sends messengers to ask Jesus, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3)

The question rings like a bell through the centuries. It sounds almost uniquely modern. Disappointments, sickness, death, tragedy, injustice, and evil take turns so that we lose confidence in faith. ‘We had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to rescue us’ (Luke 24:21). But now, we’re not so sure.

Jesus failed to meet John’s expectations.  Matthew’s gospel tells us Jesus had done great deeds of power in cities throughout Galilee, in Chorazin, Bethsaida and Capernaum. But the people did not repent. They sort of just shrugged.  Other ridiculed Jesus, “Look, [they said, this Jesus is] a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Matthew 11:19).  Even Jesus’ own mother and his brothers showed up to question him, presumably to take him home and out of the public eye.

‘Are you the one who is to come, Jesus, or are we to wait for another?’  John questioned Jesus afterlistening to an accounting of Jesus’ deeds (11:2-3), not despite them.  John realized that Jesus was not the supernatural judge his preaching had foretold (Paul S. Nancarrow).  John uses emphatic language in Greek.  He asked Jesus if they should be looking toward someone or something else entirely! (Keener, A Commentary on the Gospel of Matthew)

What kind of Messiah were you expecting this Christmas?  Perhaps, like John, you have wondered why the Savior doesn’t simply come down and save us? John the Baptist might have wondered why Jesus didn’t come knock down the walls of his prison, unbind his chains, and set him free.  What kind of Messiah is this Jesus of Nazareth?

Notice, Jesus doesn’t take offense at John’s questions.  Jesus didn’t get defensive. Jesus complemented John even as he remained firm in his own Godly vision for mission.  He responds by asking John’s messengers and the crowd gathered around them, to remember ‘what they had they gone out in the wilderness beside the Jordan to see?’  He asked them to show what they already knew—that neither John nor Jesus were some spectacle—a traveling road show of wonders.  Neither John nor Jesus wore fine robes or lived in royal place such as kings do.  Don’t come here if that’s what you seek.  He told John’s disciples to report what they saw with their eyes, and heard with their ears, and experienced for themselves.

Jesus turned to the passage we read today from Isaiah 35 to direct their attention to a different set of messianic expectations rooted in scripture: not the destruction-filled imagery from the book of Daniel, but the shalom-filled imagery of peace and well-being from Isaiah: “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” (Matthew 11:5). Jesus invited John to consider a different vision from within the pages of scripture about who the Messiah is.

Our readings this week all point to something John missed that is essential to the character of God.  “All five passages emphasize the people toward whom God is focused. These Scriptures describe at least eighteen — eighteen! — sorts of people in pain who might be forgotten by the world but who are nevertheless remembered by God: the blind, the lame, the diseased, the deaf, the dead, the poor, the dumb, the oppressed, the hungry, the prisoners, the bowed down, foreigners, orphans, widows, the humble, and then, my three favorites, those with feeble hands, weak knees, and fearful hearts.” (Daniel Clendenin)

John and Jesus called us to live according to the way of God and not the way of the world.  The way of God described over and over again by the prophets: is care of society’s most vulnerable (the widow, the orphan, the immigrant); to limit the gap between rich and poor (the Year of Jubilee), not to use power to further the narrow self-interest of yourself and your friends; to not accumulate wealth at the expense of the poor (Jeanyne B. Slettom, Process and Faith).

This is the kind of world that cannot be built by force or the threat of violence but only by love—specifically, by love of God and love of neighbor. John’s followers returned to him.  We don’t know whether he was satisfied with the answer.  Judging from history –I’d say most people are not.

Traveling throughout Great Britain on sabbatical, visiting castle after ruined castle, opened a window for me on the long history of Christianity’s compromising relationship with political power and the economics of Empire. Leaders of the Church were seldom content in the gospel of love alone but sought to add some small measure of political protection to preserve and extend their own power and wealth. Each castle ruin includes, of course, the story of how they met their own predictable and often violent end.

One such place, St. John’s Chapel in the Tower of London. It was built as a place of worship for William the Conqueror inside the iconic royal, military, and prison complex haunted now by stories of countless people imprisoned, tortured, beheaded and hanged there. The Tower is home to an extensive collection of armaments documenting the vast fortunes and enormous amounts of human ingenuity expended on creating the very best weapons of war. The Tower is also the place to see the Crown jewels, some of the biggest, brightest diamonds and gemstones in the world, pilfered, plundered, and stolen from the four corners of the British Empire. So, what was the purpose of St. John’s Chapel? Did it calm the conscience of the powerful?  Did it falsely undergird confidence in their favored status and right to rule—as if God could forget the poor, imprisoned, and orphaned?

Behavioral science tells us we often learn most from our mistakes. Could the collapse of our democracy and impending doom we foresee being wrought by the economics of extraction show us what we, like John the Baptist, either missed or willfully ignored about the Messiah?   Amid collapse, in a time of polycrisis, could the world finally be about to turn?

“The challenge for us in Advent is to allow Jesus to restore our senses, to have him open our eyes and ears so that we can go and tell others what we hear and see” (Erin Martin, Blogging Toward Sunday).  In Christ, we see that God is a friend of the lost.  In Christ, we hear that God stands amid our suffering.  In Christ, God enters our world of darkness and death and decisively fills it with light and life. Jesus has given us new eyes, new ears, a new heart and a new life. He says to us ‘Stop worrying so much about the afterlife. That is in my hands, Jesus says. Focus instead on what I have put in your hands, the world, all its people, and myriads of living creatures so love will reign all in all.’

This Advent, prepare to meet the living God who is always more, whose coming is always different, whose power is always greater and more glorious than we could have imagined.  Who is this Jesus? He is the one who stoops down from heaven.  He is the one who comes to walk with us no matter how messy or fraught with ugly strife, bickering or bitterness our life may be.  He comes not in wrath but in love; not as one who seeks to destroy, but as one with power to transform and renew.  See, the Messiah took on flesh and lived among us.  The spirit of Christ is upon you.  Even now, Jesus dives to bottom of the mucky sea that is our life, to make us new from within.

/by

Paradise

Christ the King C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) Today. With me. In paradise. For his coronation, Jesus our king on a cross, invited people to live as he did. He opened a door to our life lived in God. A hideous instrument of torture and death was transformed. On the cross, Jesus shows us the way to live together in paradise. We have become a cruciform people.

Some of you remember our old friend, David Henry. As he was fond of saying, all four gospels contrast the way of life we have in Jesus with the way of Judas. The way of Judas is smart by worldly standards. The way of Jesus is foolishness. Judas avoids capture. Jesus is seized into custody. Judas is given free passage. Jesus is beaten and sentenced to death. Judas operates for himself alone. Jesus values love. Judas prioritizes self-preservation. Jesus stands in solidarity with everyone, especially the poor and all those who suffer. Judas turns a tidy profit—30 pieces of silver. Jesus gives all that he has—even losing his life on the cross. Judas dies alienated and alone. Jesus invites us to dwell with him in paradise from which we cannot be expelled, and which no one can take from us. (Pastor David Henry)

The way of Jesus destroys the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning. A ruthless Empire of occupation, a corrupt religious hierarchy, a blind, feckless people, faithless friends and betrayers threw their very worst at Jesus and still his heart was full, and his hands wide open. From the cross, Jesus demonstrates that nothing you can do can make God not love you. ‘You can disappoint me,’ he says. ‘You can break my heart and grieve my Spirit.’

Jesus, our king of kings and Lord of Lords, reigns from his throne on the cross, (Revelation 19:16). He bids us to follow him. Set aside your fears and embrace the way of love—for that is the way which leads into abundant life. The choice is always yours. Jesus or Judas? Life or death? Choose life. The path is open. The gate is unlocked. Today. Come be with me in paradise.

Jesus saves us from the illusion that we can free ourselves by killing our enemies. Christ our king offers no path to glory that sidesteps humility, surrender, and sacrificial love. The Lord does not grant me permission to secure my prosperity at the expense of another person’s sweat and suffering. There is no tolerance for the belief that holy ends justify debased means. Truth telling is not optional. God’s kingdom favors the broken-hearted over the cynical and contemptuous. Christ’s church cannot thrive when it aligns itself with brute power. We cannot be Christ’s church offering right answers but not right living. Where does this leave us? I think it leaves us with a king who makes us uncomfortable. (Debie Thomas, A King for This Hour, Journey with Jesus, 11/13/16)

Today, on Christ the King Sunday, our readings point at simple and startling truth: God never wanted kings. Any celebration of Christ the King must become an invitation to deconstruct one of humanity’s worst ideas. Dominion in the book of Genesis was never intended to mean domination. Our twisted view of kingship has done more damage than good. No kings isn’t just a political slogan it’s God’s plea to humanity. Jesus said, I no longer call you servants but friends (John 15:15). On this the last day of the year of our worship cycle we ponder the failure of kings. And we know the calendar will soon turn to the story of a child.” (Diana Butler Bass, A Beautiful Year, p. 313.)

Today you will be with me in paradise, Jesus said. But in the history of Western Christianity paradise became disconnected from today, placing salvation beyond, behind, or ahead of us—but not in the here and now. Paradise became disconnected from full engagement in the present.

Recent scholarship reveals that paradise was the dominant image of early Christian sanctuaries and liturgies (Brock and Parker, Saving Paradise, 2008). For the first thousand years after Christ, paradise meant something more than heaven or the afterlife. For them, paradise was this world permeated and blessed by the Spirit of God. Paradise was the salvation the Spirit offers us in baptism. To experience the Spirit of God in all things and the beauties of this world, early Christians helped each other cultivate an acute attunement to the life around them through art and worship.

These scholars claim “What we need now is a religious perspective that does not locate salvation in a future end point, a transcendent realm, or a zone after death,” (p. 417). In exile and in search of paradise, Christians “…today are anxious for home, for grounding, for meaning, for contact, for communion, and for escape from the present life, which can never match up to our imaginary goals.” Western culture needs to face the origins of its hollowness and to relinquish its violent, colonizing habits (p. 417).

Another Christianity is possible with the return to the wisdom of our ancestors. Paradise is already present. We have neither to retrieve it or construct it. We have only to perceive it and to bring our lives and our cultures into accord with it. This is the way of Jesus. But the way of Judas remains a powerful temptation among us.

Just ten days ago, the Michigan House of Representatives passed resolution 222, declaring that today, November 23rd, be known as Christ the King Sunday in the state of Michigan. Ignoring 240,000 Muslims living in metropolitan Detroit, legislators wished to pause, honor, and acknowledge Christ’s kingship within every aspect of life.
It reminds me of when the disciples got Jesus’ title right, he is the Messiah of God, but repeatedly, misunderstood what it meant for him to be the Christ.

Jesus shows us what God looks like in sandals. Jesus is the type of king who knelt at the feet of his disciples, who washed their feet as a slave would, and said to them, I no longer call you servants but friends. This is the exact opposite of the kind of kingship expressed in Resolution 222. God’s power leads to a whole different way of being human. A cruciform people following the way of Jesus serves community and bears crosses. It doesn’t build crosses for others to hang upon. Meanwhile news media reported this week that proponents of Christian nationalism and authoritarianism following the way of Judas, not Jesus, report that Agencies within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), intend to implement a comprehensive plan to target Spanish-speaking churches across the country during the upcoming holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

St. Paul quotes an ancient hymn. Jesus is our cosmic king, “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…” (Colossians 1:16). Jesus is the “head” of the church, not as in Caesar holding dominion over people in a pyramid of power. It isn’t about Jesus being “head” as in the CEO of a company. Instead, the title used here implies the head of a river, the source. This theological poetic metaphor shifts power away from a top-down structure of dominion toward an organic and interconnected image, strengthening the notion of and promise of a new Eden. (Diana Butler Bass, A Beautiful Year, pp 312-313.) Today, with me, in paradise.

As Jesus hung in the gap between one man’s derision and another man’s hunger, he ruled, not with the power of a dictator, but with power like that of an infant child in a manger. So, what shall it be? Jesus or Judas? The choice is yours. Despite your mistakes and failures, Jesus calls you now to return to the path to paradise. See, all people become kings in the presence of God. And in that equality, kingship forever dissolves in worship and wonder, the full measure of divine friendship and shared well-being. The second century theologian, Clement of Alexandria once said, “Everything belongs to the God of beauty.” One’s response to the gifts of life already given, the beauty already here, makes all the difference. (Brock and Palmer, p.419)

/by

The Shelter of Friends

Proper 28C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Her name is Stefani. She laughs easily with a throaty chuckle. Her eyes sparkle. ‘Bliss,’ could be her nickname. But her words catch us by surprise. In a quiet moment, she says, “What a sad world. I look around the world and grieve.”

Stefani is not a sad person, but she has the capacity to grieve, and she has had a good deal of personal experience. Stefani Schatz moved with her husband to live and work among the poor to follow Jesus. She says, “I work with people who have no jobs, and whose families for two or three generations have had no jobs. I see people who die here at a younger age than other places because of alcoholism, and drugs [They lack access to health care, grocery stores, and other basic necessities.] I see people living in homes that crumble around them…There is no sense of hope…This feeling pervades everything.” (Anne Sutherland Howard, Claiming the Beatitudes, p. 33-34).

For people like Stefani and her husband faith is not an abstraction but a shelter. While conflict and chaos swirls around them they have a place in their heart, mind and soul to come in from the storm. They find shelter in Christ—and so can we, so can you. Jesus told the disciples, even if ‘You are hated by all because of my name, not a hair of your head will perish, by your endurance you will gain your souls.’ (Luke 21:17-19.)

We share this shelter of living stones with all people. It is our truest and best home. We draw others in with us to shelter from life’s many storms. That is why, on Friday, a peaceful, nonviolent interfaith group of pastors, imams, rabbis, and deacons (including Immanuel member, ELCA pastor and former Bishop Stephen Bouman) stepped past the barricade at the ICE facility in Broadview carrying bread and wine for communion and a letter demanding access to share spiritual solidarity with our incarcerated neighbors. They were pushed back. Many were shoved to the ground. 21 were arrested, including pastor Luke Harris-Ferree of Grace Lutheran in Evanston. They were denied access even though, spiritual care was routinely administered there in the past, even though, according to CBS News, just 16 of 607 people detained there by ICE have criminal histories. In fact, 3,300 people have been detained in Chicago in total and most of their names have yet to be made public. (Sabrina Franza, Charlie De Mar, Rebecca McCann, Christopher Selfridge, CBS Chicago, 10:51 AM CST, 11/15/25.)

The church is not a building. In fact, Jesus doesn’t use the word ‘church’. Instead, he called us friends. We are friends in Christ. The church is people, people who love people, people who love and serve the living God. Sadly, this is a lesson we must learn over and over again.

As they walked past the magnificent Temple in Jerusalem, Jesus told the disciples, not one stone would be left upon another (Luke 21:6). The ruin of it must have been impossible to imagine. Yet to the hopeless poor and incarcerated like those Stefani and our siblings in faith serve, people who are being crushed by the weight of life circumstances that oppress them—Jesus’ ominous warning sounds like good news.

When Jesus talks about the ‘end-times’ we, like the disciples, mostly have the wrong idea of what Jesus is talking about. He aims to kindle our hope not to enflame our fear. Maybe we’re just more ready to hear what Jesus is saying these days. The truth is we know that things have been ending for a long time. When wars, insurrections, betrayals and injustice begin to swirl around us, the apocalyptic language of the bible teaches us to switch to the long view. Bulgarian-born writer Maria Popova has called this a telescopic perspective on the world. Think of your life, she suggests, not in the span of days or years, or even generations, but from the perspective across geological epochs and cosmic space. The bible trains us to view our life through this telescopic perspective with its language about the end-times.

When we do this, the so-called big things become very small and certain other things which may seem small now, loom large. We can better see the hand of God pull, lure, shape, and instruct us from within everything and everyone. We are not the first generation of believers to feel discouraged and bewildered by world events. When the Temple was destroyed in 70 A.D., it seemed to signal the end of the world. Josephus’ account of the conquest of Jerusalem by the Romans just thirty years after Jesus’ resurrection is no less spectacular that his description of the Temple itself which he described as blinding in reflected sunlight clad in so much gold. He writes, “The roar of the flames streaming far and wide mingled with the groans of the falling victims; and owing to the height of the hill and the mass of the burning pile, one would have thought that the whole city was ablaze” (War 6.271-275) [p. 359].

Friends in Christ take shelter, come home, to where the ground beneath your feet becomes solid and the courage to slay demons finds strength. Jesus called us friends and takes us in, partly, by popping our spiritual bubbles. The disciples drew false confidence from the grandeur of the temple. Today’s gospel challenges us to take inventory. What lies or illusions have I mistaken for truth? On what shiny religious edifice have I pinned my hopes? In what memories or traditions do I attempt to put God in a box? Why do I cling to permanence when Jesus invites me to evolve? Can I embrace a journey of faith that includes rubble, ruin, and failure? As the traditions I love, places I built, things I cried and prayed for fall apart? (Debie Thomas, By Your Endurance, Journey with Jesus, 11/10/19) What remains of our life when we are done living it? Come in. Take shelter, Jesus says. Let us work together on what lasts.

The 13th century mystic Meister Eckhart once wrote, “Let us pray to God that we may be free of God.” Our ideas of God and faith inevitably always fall short. “Let’s name honestly, he suggests, the imposter gods we conjure because we fear the Mystery who really is. Let’s admit that we shape these gods in our own image, and that they serve us as much as we serve them. Let’s open our hearts, our minds, and souls to the world Jesus sees while living within the shelter of friends, our true home that Christ has made possible. (Debie Thomas)

Christians like Stefani remain joyful yet engage fully in all the sadness in the world. Our nonviolent siblings outside the ICE abduction center find calm and confidence in the face of tremendous grief from knowing they are with us in the undying life of God. Because they imagine themselves seated at the heavenly banquet, they have resources in God to draw upon that never run out. (p. 37).

“People who live in such a way — especially in a world whirling with wars and rumors of war, awash in conspiracies and insurrections — aren’t always loved by those whose power thrives on fear. Indeed, the powerful would keep us on an emotional razor’s edge of Armageddon all the time. Jesus insists, however, that his friends not get distracted. Pay attention to what is true. Know what is really important. This age is, indeed, ending. God’s reign is near. But don’t be surprised. Take shelter. Stay the course. Love one another just as I have loved you for I have counted all the hairs on your head and not one of them shall perish. (Bass).

/by

Cosmic Kin

All Saints-C25

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

For those

who walked with us,

This is a prayer.

For those

who have gone ahead,

this is a blessing.

For those

who touched and tended us,

who lingered with us

while they lived,

this a thanksgiving.

For those

who journey still with us

in the shadows of awareness,

in the crevices of memory,

in the landscape of our dreams,

this is a benediction. (Jan Richardson, “For Those Who Walked with Us” The Painted Prayerbook.)

The feast of All Saints offers insight into the character of God our creator. Today’s liturgy has its historical origins from when our Christian ancestors moved northward into ancient Europe. There, they encountered and adopted two ancient seasonal festivals, one held near the spring equinox and the other at the end of autumn. These festivals informed what we now call Easter and All Saints.  “Both festivals, falling at or near seasonal equinoxes of Mother Earth’s cycles of fertility, are held in the liminal time between winter and summer. They mark the transitory balance of dark and light, the two rare moments when moon and sun are equal…. [Today] At the threshold of what has been and what will be, we more fully understand both the miracle of resurrection and the mystery of death” (Diana Butler Bass, A Beautiful Year, 2025, pp. 296-297).

All life is lovingly held in the palm of God’s hand.  The poet and essayist, Mary Oliver, wrote, “Do you think there is anything, not attached by its unbreakable cord to everything else?” Such profound truths draw nearer to us when the colors and smells of autumn death are upon us.

“On these days, we are invited to be aware of deep time—that is, past, present, and future time gathered into one especially holy moment. We are reminded that our ancestors are still in us and work with us and through us” Deep time, along with the communion of saints professed in our creeds, means that our goodness is not just our own, nor is our badness just our own. We are intrinsically social animals. We carry the lived and the unlived (and unhealed) lives of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents as far back as DNA and genomes can trace them—and beyond that—including the whole 13.8-billion-year history of the universe.  We are the very first generation to know that this is literally and genetically and cosmically true. There is deep healing and understanding when we honor the full cycle of life. (Richard Rohr, “Fullness of Time,” Daily Meditations, 10/31/25).

We hold these truths to be self-evident. We uphold the fundamental dignity of all human beings even as federal support for SNAP benefits ends, immigrant neighbors are abducted and terrorized, and military ships amass as for war in the Caribbean.

We proclaim the words of St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians.  “And [God] has put all things under [Christ’s] feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all (Ephesians 1:22-23).  We are in communion with Christ, communion our ancestors in faith, communion with all things living and that have ever lived, in communion now with all those who suffer want or injustice.

The Eucharist re-presents this gospel truth to us each Sunday with a mixture of words and actions.  We cannot process such a universal truth logically; but we can slowly digest it! “Eat it and know who you are,” St. Augustine once said. Likewise, in baptism water and the Word combine to instruct us each day as we rise who and whose we are. We are children of God, and so is everyone else.

Only slowly does the truth become believable. Finally, we realize that the Body of Christ is not out there, or up in heaven; it’s in you—it’s here and now and everywhere. Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. Slowly, little by little and sometimes, all at once, you and I awaken to possibility we may take part in the second coming of Christ. We do God’s work with our hands.  Together, we are a living sanctuary of hope and grace where we and all who are hurting now may take shelter and grow in grace.

It sounds like mission impossible. Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies. Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, look them in the eye and offer the other cheek also. If anyone takes your coat offer them your shirt.  Give to everyone who begs from you. If anyone steals your stuff, don’t ask for it back. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.’ (Luke 6:27-31)

Mission impossible becomes mission possible when we join our lives together in Christ. On days like today, amidst fall colors, candles, icons, photos, and keepsakes of departed loved ones, perhaps we are closer to realizing that our lives exist in kinship. “It is not just that my well-being and yours are at some very real level bound up together if we look closely enough at our economies and societies and ecologies. We may resist this knowledge and live in lonely and unhealthy defiance of it. Nevertheless, we are joined at all times by the substance of our beings — the energy and matter of our bodies, the air we breathe, the ground we stand on, and the mysterious stuff of consciousness itself — and this is as much common sense as high science.” (Krista Tippett, “On Staying Grounded,” On Being, 11/01/25).

Today, we may listen to the great communion of saints now gathered around us speaking from the shadows and the light, from the crevices of memory, and in the landscape of our dreams. Yes, they say. The power of evil is real. But there’s no better way to make a better world than when evil is returned with forgiveness and mercy. All the Saints in heaven sing alleluia!

/by

Human is Human is Human is Human

Proper 25C-25

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

The author of Second Timothy writes, ‘I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith…there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which…belongs to all who long for Christ’s appearing’ (2 Timothy 4:7&8). It’s a memorable statement of a life well lived. In contrast, today’s gospel is like a cartoon—but not a very funny one. As Mark Twain might have described him, the Pharisee in our gospel was, “a good man in the very worst sense of the word.”  He claimed a crown of self-righteousness to elevate himself above others. I wish I could say I don’t recognize him among certain people we encounter in the news, or worse, in myself.

The Pharisee was upstanding and religiously righteous. The tax collector was universally despised, a traitor to his people, and aid to the foreign oppressor in Rome. The religious striver was smug and confident; the outsider was anxious and insecure. The self-appointed saint paraded to the temple; the sinner “stood at a distance” from that sacred building—a nonverbal expression of his spiritual alienation. The righteous man stands up; the sinful man looked down. In an act of shocking narcissism, the Pharisee prays aloud loudly and only “about himself;” whereas the tax collector could barely pray at all.

Yet, Jesus says, the respectable, reputable believer, so competent and accomplished, who does everything right, is rejected, whereas the secular sinner — the disreputable, inadequate, and incompetent failure — “goes home justified before God” (Daniel Clendenin). It’s a story of reversal, of the first becoming last and the last becoming first. A clean heart is born of true repentance. But then Jesus’ parable gets a little weird. Notice, neither the Pharisee nor the tax collector are aware of the judgement God renders on their prayers.

Scholar, Walter Wink, comments that both men are victims of a religious system that taught them God would love them only if they were successful in playing by the rules laid out by authorities in the temple. Both need deliverance. Both men are loved by God. Jesus is not teaching us to stand at the margins and beat our breasts as a way of gaining religious favor. He is shattering the whole idea that God’s grace is scarce, or withheld, or dispensed like a commodity controlled by pastors, priests, or bishops. Jesus is overthrowing the unholy idea that your worth in the eyes of God is determined by anything you do. He is declaring a new economy, one that neither character in our gospel recognized.

Jesus told stories called parables. The word, “parable” comes from two Greek terms, para, meaning “to come alongside,” and ballein, meaning “to throw.” A parable is intended to be a story that comes alongside our regular understanding and, frankly, upsets it. The parables of Jesus do not offer any rules, commands, or doctrines. Instead, they are open-ended tales that invite us to struggle with their meaning, to wonder, to see the world from unexpected angles. Parables “challenge us to look into the hidden aspects of our own values, our own lives. They bring to the surface unasked questions, and they reveal the answers we have always known, but refuse to acknowledge.” (Amy-Jill Levine )

In the kingdom of heaven ruled by our Lord Jesus Christ, the winner loses, and the loser wins. Both the winners and the losers are loved equally by God. There is nothing you can do to earn this love, or to increase it, or to decrease it. There is nothing we can do but to accept this gift, embrace it, trust it, believe it, and live it.

This is Lutheranism 101. On this Reformation Sunday, we tip our hat to Luther’s famous teaching that we are sanctified by grace alone. Yet somehow, we keep trying to make religion a ladder we use to climb up to God or at least takes us one step higher than our neighbors. But self-justification doesn’t work, and neither is it necessary. God accepts you “just as you are.”  Full stop. Why do we have such a hard time accepting that God comes down to us, which, after all, is the meaning of the Incarnation (see Philippians 2:5-8). Stop running up the down escalator!  We will miss Jesus on the way—as he descends into our so very ordinary world.

Christians have named this paschal mystery, this path of descent, the Way of the Cross. Jesus brings it front and center. A “crucified God” became the logo and central image of our Christian religion: a vulnerable, dying, bleeding, losing, brown, Palestinian Jewish man. How often do we look upon the Crucified and miss the point?

Katherine of Genoa, a 15th century Italian mystic saint, once said, “My deepest me is God.” Each of us find our fullest and best self by trusting in the inescapable and abundant love of God. To become a follower of Christ is to realize God makes no distinction between races, colors, clans, or religions. Human is human is human is human. It is a violation against God to say that to make America great it must remain white.  It is a transgression against Christ to be indifferent to the suffering of our neighbors who must look over their shoulders every day as they go to work or walk down the street, who live in terror of being abducted, their families torn apart, treated unfairly without due process of the law.  It is an abomination to blow up boats in the Caribbean, or bomb and destroy entire cities on the West Bank and in Gaza as if some people are less than human.  Doing so only makes us less human.

We are called to walk a different path. Follow Jesus on the path of descent. Walk the way of his cross. Learn the wisdom of winning by losing so that you may become more human, more kind, a better listener, grow thicker skin, be more compassionate, more ready to cry foul when others suffer injustice, be more generous, more welcoming, more hospitable, be a better lover, friend, parent, spouse, sibling, and neighbor. Let God’s kin-dom come in us, through us, and among us.

Remember how Luke’s gospel begins.  In the wonderful, famous prayers Zechariah and Mary from the first chapter of Luke, each of them gives thanks to God.  God has sent the rich away empty and filled the hungry with good things (Luke 1:53). God’s grace is paradoxical: only the merciful may receive mercy, and only those who forgive are forgiven (Luke 6:36-38).  The Pharisee had enough religion to be virtuous, but not enough to be humble. Sadly, the tax collector had too much religion to realize his prayers were answered by God. Let our religion be so filled with grace that our faith neither puffs us up, nor holds us (or others) down but lifts all people into God’s embrace. One holy human family in solidarity, justice, and peace.

/by

Wrestling with God

Proper 24C-25

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8b) How would you answer Jesus’ question?  Second Timothy sounds like it could be written today. “For the time is coming when people will not put up with sound teaching, but, having their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires and will turn away from listening to the truth—” (2 Timothy 4:3-5).

 We live in a time when many Christian siblings have replaced the gospel with an anti-gospel. We see evil masquerading as law and order, antisemitism, and as government efficiency. Freedom is manipulated to destroy our freedoms—and I could go on—and so could you. Yesterday was an important and joyful counterpoint. In what some have said is the largest public protest in U.S. history people turned out and said, No!

 Together they provide one answer to Jesus’ question. Yes, because the separation of the church and state is a sacred boundary.  It’s one Christians have fought for and died for. Because that separation doesn’t just benefit the State, it benefits the church.  The protections go both ways. When religion gets too cozy with political power it loses its prophetic voice and its ability to speak truth to power.  Moreover, church people have often needed those outside it to remind them of their own values –such as the abolition of slavery, the inclusion of women, voting rights, civil rights, GLBTQIA+ rights.  Yes.  We need the separation of church and state but that is not the same thing as a separation of faith and politics. We must bring our faith into the public sphere to question power and reinforce the individual value of every human being. (Heather Cox Richardson and James Talarico, “A New Way to Think About Religion and Politics,” America Conversations, 10/11/25)

Seminarian James Tarico, a candidate for the US Senate in Texas has said, “Democracy is very much a spiritual exercise.  It’s not just a form of government. “It really is a commitment that we have to our neighbors, especially our neighbors who are different from us, especially our neighbors who disagree with us on important issues. And unless we have that moral commitment to each other, there’s no way we can continue this American experiment.” (Heather Cox Richardson, “A New Way to Think About Religion and Politics with James Talarico,” American Conversations,  10/11/25.)

Yes Jesus, we find evidence of faith on earth. But it doesn’t look like what we expected. It doesn’t always come from behind altars or from Bishops and councils, but we see prophetic faith springing up everywhere in people and places who are making a difference in the streets, and beside hospital beds, and feeding the hungry, or with those who refuse to laugh at a cruel joke.

  And yet, perhaps for the first time in the history of the human species, Jesus’ question about finding faith provokes a different and deeper one: is the future of our civilization sustainable?  Jesus is not merely pointing out the sins, commissions, and omissions of other Christians. A closer look at history reveals that work to end the injustices I mentioned a moment ago was not well supported by church folks.  Most Christians did not oppose slavery.  Most Lutherans cozied up to Hitler. Most did not like Martin Luther King. Today, many of us are just now waking up to the fact that our highly prized lifestyles are tightly connected to the destruction of people and the planet. “And so, asked another way, when the Son of Man comes, will he find any people on earth? And if they way we are living now inevitably will lead to there being no people on earth, wouldn’t that be a profound indictment of our lack of faith?

So, let’s turn to our parable of the bothersome widow. What are we to make of it?  I wonder if Jesus is asking us to take a good honest look at ourselves. Shine the light of grace into the dark corners of our heart –bravely ask the hard and difficult questions about the systems, economy, and culture we have created. The parable of the bothersome widow might just be about the state of our hearts, and about the motivations behind our prayers. Maybe what’s at stake is not who God is and how God operates in the world but who we are, and why we need so desperately to be people of persistent prayer.” (Debi Thomas, “The Bothersome Widow,” Journey with Jesus, 10/13/19)

“The parable demonstrates an intrinsic unity between justice and prayer. Jesus portrays the widow as the one whose pleadings for God’s justice are the essence of prayer. As Jesus taught and demonstrated in his own life, prayer is the way of breaking ourselves open to the presence of God’s love at the center of our being. And as that happens, we embody the yearning for God’s purposes to break into the world. That’s how Jesus is teaching us, in this parable, to pray, and telling us to pray always.

And this comes in the face of what seem to be impossible odds. In the parable, this unjust judge, with real power in society, had no respect for people, and certainly no fear of God. He was a law unto himself. The parallels to today are chilling.” And also hopeful, because the bothersome widow prevails. (Diana Butler Bass)

Our first reading from Genesis promises God will not abandon us to our own worst choices and instincts and that grace never tires of working toward our personal and collective transformation. One of my favorite art works here at Immanuel is tucked away in the back stairwell. It’s the series of three stained glass windows depicting Jacob’s ladder.  Jacob’s name implies that he is a person who takes advantage of others in whatever way suits him best. ‘Jacob’ means ‘cheater’ or ‘deceiver’. And yet,

Jacob’s dream of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven reaffirms God’s covenant with Abraham’s descendants and symbolizes God’s direct communication with humanity and the divine connection between heaven and earth, signifying God’s promise, guidance, and presence (Genesis 28:10-22).

 About 20 years later, Jacob the cheater is heading home. He was fleeing one set of problems of his own making and returning to the scene of another. As Jacob contemplates the deceit, the trickery, the craftiness, the manipulation, the way in which he had cheated his brother Esau out of his heritage, he isn’t sure about the reception he is to receive. Then the news came. Jacob’s messengers returned to tell him his brother, Esau, was indeed coming to meet him along with 400 armed men with him.” (Genesis 32).

Well, as you might imagine, Jacob couldn’t sleep. The details of the story are a little sketchy.  A man comes unbidden, uncalculated, to wrestle with him. Later, Jacob later called the place “Peniel” because he had seen “God face to face.” Jacob faced his demons, and God blessed him with a new identity, signified with a new name. He is no longer Jacob, the cheat, but his name is “Israel”, meaning “he who struggles with God”. The struggle left Jacob with a limp and symbolized a pivotal moment of transformation and a deeper, albeit lifelong, relationship with God.

With the new name, Jacob is told that, even in his weakness, even with his failures, even with his sorry track record, God can work through him.  God works with imperfect people.  God makes Jacobs into Israels.  By grace, God works even now to transform us from the inside out. Faith will not perish but lead us ever forward in the struggle for justice and in making homes, neighborhoods, and communities of peace to live in.   

/by

Making Eucharist

Proper 23C-25

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Good morning, Immanuel. It’s good to be back. I want to say a very big ‘thank you’ to all of you. I was charmed and amazed at the great privilege you gifted me and my family with. Your support and encouragement were amazing. I feel we are blessed by our leader team. I’m truly thankful to pastor Kelly, and our staff Ricardo, Jordan, and Julia. I spent time in Colorado with my mom. Kari and I hung out with friends in Banff, Canada.  I went back packing with my sons (and a girl friend) in Isle Royale National Park. Leah and I explored Scotland.  I lived the monastic life at Iona. I tramped around London. I took online classes, attended conferences, and planted a savannah garden of Illinois natives. (It’s growing very well.) Out of curiosity, I worshiped in a different church most every Sunday and watched the Immanuel livestream each week. I know I’m biased but Immanuel, you’re the best.

How fitting that giving thanks is our theme this Sunday. Last week we heard Jesus scold the disciples.  He told them not to expect thanks for all the good things they do in Jesus’ name (Luke 17:10). Today, we hear the rest of the story.  Don’t wait to receive thanks, Jesus says, but always remember to give it. Thanksgiving is not a duty but a lifeline.  Thanksgiving—literally eucharist—is a means to grab onto grace and take it inside us like lighting in a bottle. Gratitude spills into love.

We begin with the story of ten lepers who were cured.  All ten were cured but only one was made whole—the one who turned to give Jesus thanks, and that one was a Samaritan—in other words—a despised foreigner.  As a group the Samaritans go two for three in Luke’s gospel: 1) Yes. They refuse welcome the disciples in chapter nine (9:53); but 2) the Good Samaritan is a Christ-like figure (10:25), and the Samaritan leper is a church-like figure (17:11). The leper is exemplary of the sort of devotion God expects from the faithful but does not always receive.

Ten are healed. But one returned to say thank you. It took him but a moment. Yet in that moment he is changed. Jesus told him “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well” (17:19). The Greek word for “well” is sózó. That word doesn’t just mean to be cured from an illness. Rather, it means to be saved, rescued, or delivered — healed body and soul.” (Diana Butler Bass, The Cottage, Sunday Musings, “Turn Around, Say Thanks,” 10/11/25)

The Samaritan leper shows us where the church of Christ must be today. It is the story about the gratitude of a foreigner who receives welcome. The church must be such a place. These days, as brown-skinned children languish in cages, racist politicians weaponize borders, and racial and religious minorities fear mistreatment in their own neighborhoods, schools, and worship spaces, the leper’s story shows us where to look for the kindom of God. This gospel spells out what it means that in Christ, we are all one. It proclaims the church’s ongoing responsibility to the stranger, the alien, and the Other. It reveals what happens to our differences at the foot of the Cross. Such distinctions disappear. In a spirit of joy and thanksgiving we give thanks, literally, we make eucharist everywhere we go. We carry the spirit of thanksgiving into the broken places of society so all may be made well. (Debi Thomas: A Foreigner’s Praise, Journey with Jesus, 10/06/19).

You might be saying, well, I’m not sure I have much to be thankful for right now. There’s crisis and collapse everywhere I look. I don’t know whether you noticed, but things are not looking good. It is tempting to disengage.

To you, scripture whispers this gospel truth. Giving thanks is a life hack gleaned from real-life experience of our ancestors in faith who coped and thrived in times more chaotic, difficult, and dangerous than our own. Giving thanks gives life.  Giving thanks gives us courage. Giving thanks shows us where and with whom to be the church. Giving thanks takes practice. Our tradition offers many ways to strengthen our thanks-giving muscles through prayer, song, and meditation. The Jesuits practice the daily examen. Some keep a gratitude journal. Others routinely give thanks at mealtime.

Ask yourself ‘why does a leper give thanks?’  Because gratitude is living water to quench thirsty souls and brings life to the entire landscape. Gratitude gets lost in the ledger when we keep accounts and life becomes small.  Gratitude, like love, grows when it is shared

Making eucharist flows from awe and wonder. It is the recognition that life is a gift and everything in it. Give thanks to the plants for the air we breathe.  Give thanks to the earth for clean water.  Give thanks to the Sun for the color of the sky.  Give thanks to the creatures for tending to the earth, for clothing, for tools, and for food. Does such thanks-giving sound familiar? Such is the wisdom of indigenous peoples and cultures that our civilization has worked so thoroughly to root out and destroy.

Making eucharist may be the antidote for the death-dealing economy of colonialism, extraction, domination, land theft, and exploitation we all participate and benefited from leading toward civilization collapse. It is perhaps ironic that the wisdom of the Samaritan leper is now echoed by quantum physics, and eco-biology pointing toward embrace of the wisdom indigenous teachers once proclaimed on these shores. They told us that we are all relations, and our futures are interwoven in one web of life. “They reflect the gracious spirit of the Shoshone elder who said, ‘Do not begrudge the white man for coming here. Though he doesn’t know it yet, he has come to learn from us.’” (Brian McLaren, Life After Doom, p. 125).

Native teachers tell us that gratitude and reciprocity are the currency of a gift economy, and they have the remarkable property of multiplying with every exchange, their energy concentrating as they pass from hand to hand, a truly renewable resource. This is how the natural world has worked and thrived for millennia. Can we imagine a human economy with a currency which emulates the flow from Mother Earth? A currency of gifts?

Come to the table.  Come to the Eucharist. Lay your burdens down. May bitterness be replaced with laughing; despair exchanged for joy; and grief become an occasion for new love. Don’t count your thanks, but always remember to give it, for in doing so we are made well. May we always be so bold and fearless as to say “thanks.”

/by