Though We Are Many, We Are One

Proper 18A-26
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

The Minnesota Golden Gophers beat the Eastern Illinois Panthers on Thursday 59-7. My wife’s cousin, Tyler, is a big fan. When I asked him how the Gophers were doing, he said, “Man, we’re smok’in ‘em!” I’m a football fan myself, so I confess to having similar feelings of satisfaction when my team dominates another and to desolation when they lose.

In stressful times, retreat into competitive sports fandom can be a source of needed respite and connection. But this type of community is a sort of a sugar high compared to the one Jesus would have us build. True solidarity does not grow by dividing people into opposing camps of insiders and outsiders. Although this is exactly how nearly all nationalisms and religious allegiances have been formed up in the past as well as today.

In the kingdom of God, by contrast, conflict is a source of learning and wisdom, not winners and losers. The culture we swim in has become so combative that nearly every disagreement needs a winner. “We even have language for it. Someone gets “destroyed.” Someone gets “owned.” Someone “slam dunks” on them. The goal is not to persuade the other person, understand them, or preserve a relationship. The goal is to win while everyone else watches.” (Micah Krey, “15th Sunday after Pentecost,” Writings on Recovery and Preaching, 9/6/26)

Combat culture infects our politics and our social media. It works its way into our families, workplaces, congregation, neighborhood, and condo board meetings. When someone hurts us, we may speak to everyone except the person involved. On the playground or on the street, we take ‘one or two others with us’ to even the odds in a fight—not to help us listen—but to intimidate. No wonder loneliness has become so epidemic. Jesus invites us to move in the opposite direction. (Krey)

Since ancient times, our gospels, like the one we read from Matthew, encourage us not to run from but to explore our differences and conflicts—not with anger or shame—but with curiosity and listening. They encourage us to find real connection again by sharing our stories and gleaning the wisdom that is found there.

Good things come from talking to people with different ideas and opinions. Parker J. Palmer, author of Healing the Heart of Democracy, reminds us that this country was born out of our difference. “At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, 30 percent of the delegates walked out without signing the thing — and those who did sign disagreed so fundamentally that they were forced to create a conflict-holding system of government. In fact, they created the first form of government that treats conflict not as the enemy of a good social order but as the engine of a better social order. Conflict can be creative, and we have to recover that sensibility.” (Parker J. Palmer, as quoted in Reclaiming We the People, NYT September 4, 2014)

Healthy congregations thrive on honest dialogue and communication to discern priorities, identify opportunities, and set their mission—just as will do in the coming weeks and months as we look forward to ministry in 2030 and beyond. Jesus teaches us to encourage one another to speak the truth in love as God gives us to know the truth. Listen more than you speak. Engage each other in honest conversation. Offer all of it to God in prayer and contemplation to discern the leading of the Holy Spirit.

The lectionary divides our gospel into small sections. But Matthew does not. It’s hard sometimes to discern the context for our gospel lessons. Jesus’ teaching about conflict resolution begins with a child placed in the center as an example of what we must be like, moves through the shepherd searching for one lost sheep, and ends with a warning against receiving mercy while withholding it from another. “Matthew surrounds the practice of confrontation with humility on one side and extravagant forgiveness on the other. Without this narrative context, this passage can become a weapon…within its narrative context, it becomes a practice for people who know that every member of the church stands in need of truth, protection, forgiveness, and grace.” (Krey) Jesus teaches us to build community, not by division but by addition; not by exclusion but by inclusion.

The goal is not to win but to regain a friend, a neighbor, a coworker, or a sibling in Christ. Democracy works and conflicts lead to deeper understanding because God has woven the divine spark of infinite beauty and meaning into the very fabric of our existence. You are a living tabernacle of the Living Presence of the Eternal One. By this we gain a tremendous respect for ourselves, despite the brokenness and chaos we all carry. By this we find the courage to be curious and hopeful in encounter with our differences and each other. The gift of God’s presence makes it possible for us to love not-likable people. The field between us has been leveled. We are all connected. (Richard Rohr)

In the past two weeks, we lost giants among us. Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry, and Gloria Steinem each taught us in their own way how to build communities of inclusion, solidarity, generosity, and joy. They showed us by the lives they lived we could be more than members of competing tribes. We belong to each other, and to the beloved community Christ calls us to now. Each of them pointed to the lesson implicit in the gospel about conflict resolution and democracy to the struggle for justice for all. Faced with opposition and setbacks they were undaunted; their hope and joy were unbent. Each of them are examples to us now as we join their struggle to widen circles of inclusion and to build the kin-dom of God.

There is no shortage of places for you and I to apply ourselves. This week, the United Nations has acknowledged that Earth has lost its chance to prevent some of the worst of global warming’s harms. Global warming will exceed the 1.5-degree limit, agreed upon by the world in the 2015 Paris climate accord, because of warming from the burning of coal, oil and gas. At the same time, it is clear the current Administration intends to willfully ignore these facts, and what’s more, it intends to disrupt mid-term elections by sowing doubt and confusion; making accusations of fraud and rigged voting machines; attempting to secure voter rolls and utilizing the post office to restrict mail-in ballots; assigning federal agents at key polling places to intimidate; and by trying to stop state certification and/or not seat newly elected members of Congress.

Ten years from now—by 2036—regardless of what unfolds—let’s be sure that we don’t look back with regret at what we did or didn’t do. Let’s follow the example of Dolly, Wendell, and Gloria. Let’s do what we can to build the inclusive community Jesus invites us into and to which we already belong. We have one significant opportunity to do this in a few weeks. Make sure you vote. Vote early. Encourage friends and family to vote. Sociologists have determined that just by talking about how a plan for how people are going to vote dramatically increases the chance they will follow through.

Jesus said, ‘wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of you” (Matthew 18:20). Two people are more than two; three people are more than three. The sum of our individual ideas, resources, and abilities is multiplied with the synergies God’s presence provides. God is the real life 24/7 social network to which we are all connected no matter where we go or what might be happening to the local power grid. Low! I tell you a mystery, that though we are many, we are one.

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Following in Jesus’ Footsteps

Proper 17A-26
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“Take up your cross and follow me,” Jesus said (Matt. 16:24). Preaching here in front of a 30-foot-tall cross made of red granite in a time when we encounter crosses nearly everywhere, it’s hard to imagine what effect these words had on the disciples. We must think back to a time when the cross was not a symbol of holiness but of shame, back to when the cross was not an instrument of grace, but of the power of Rome to humiliate, torture, and utterly erase its foes.

The disciples had invested three years following Jesus. They had suspended their lives and disrupted their families. They were encouraged by his miracles. They were inspired by his charismatic ability to draw large crowds. They had let themselves dare to imagine Jesus’ proclamations about the arrival of a new kingdom were true. “So, what could be more disorienting, more ludicrous, than the news that their would-be champion was determined to walk straight into a death trap? To give himself over not only to severe physical pain, but to humiliation and disgrace? To surrender without a fight to a common criminal’s death?” (Debi Thomas, “Losing and Saving,” Journey with Jesus, 8/23/20).

Peter took Jesus aside and scolded him upon hearing this grotesque prediction for the first time. Jesus responded with what may be the sharpest rebuke anywhere in scripture, “Get behind me Satan!” (16:23). Then he turned to the crowd and summed up his whole message in two sentences: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (v. 24). As Martin Luther might say, “Was ist das?” What is this? What does this mean?

Before we can answer we must clear away the obstacles that block our understanding of Jesus’ teaching. Modern people swim in a centuries old culture that has worked very hard to domesticate the cross and obscure the massive scandal that it was to ancient people. A God who dies on a cross doesn’t compute. Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033–1109) attempted to explain the meaning of the cross in connection with the medieval code of feudal honor and shame familiar to people in his time. Death on the cross, Anselm said, ‘was the price God demanded must be paid for human sin which needed to be paid by one who was equally divine to restore God’s honor.’

This idea, however well-intentioned turned God into the tyrant who demanded that Jesus’ die. It shifted the blame away from us and onto God. Despite being unbiblical, sadly, this idea is nearly ubiquitous today. It is part of the culture. Ask anyone on the street why Jesus had to die and people will most likely say it was to pay the debt God demanded must be paid for human sin. So, every Lent, we thank Jesus for having endured such an awful thing, while, at the same time, we are relieved of the burden of having to imitate him.

But Jesus did not say, watch me pick up this cross. He told us to take up our cross and follow him. The cross is not just something that happened to Jesus one day. It is a way of life. It is the way to life and the abundance of life to which we are gifted and called. “We believe in a Jesus-kind-of-Christ—a God who is going to the mat with humanity and not just presenting us with a heavenly, cosmic vision. If Christ represents the resurrected state, then Jesus represents the crucified/ resurrecting path of getting there.”  Follow me, Jesus said, walk the way of the cross to find new life…There is nothing really supernatural about love and suffering. It is completely natural, taking us through the deep interplay of death and life, surrender and forgiveness, in all their basic and foundational manifestations.  Authentic Christianity is not so much a belief system as a life-and-death system that shows us how to give away our life, how to give away our love, and eventually how to give away our death. Basically, how to give away—and in doing so, to connect with the world, with all other creatures, and with God.” (Richard Rohr, Following in Jesus’ Footsteps,” Daily Meditations, 8/30/26)

Among many teachers, preachers, prophets, and mystics of the church, St. Francis, taught, countering Anselm, that the cross was not necessary to satisfy God. Instead, the cross was a freely chosen revelation of Love on God’s part. Jesus freely chose to go to the cross to show us that God’s love for us is unbreakable, however violent and depraved our actions may be to reject that love. The empty cross proclaims that your ideas about God are too small. Let me show you, Jesus says, who you are created to be. Let go of your petty fears, your love of comfort, and your egoistic striving. Let go of your small, ego “self,” and awaken to the grandeur of yourself rooted in God, the Divine Life, deep within your center, in whom you live and move and have your being.

Jesus’ “bad” news is the Good News. “To take up a cross as Jesus did is to stand, always, in the center of the world’s pain. Not just to glance in the general direction of suffering and then sidle away, but to dwell there. To identify ourselves with those who are aching, weeping, screaming, and dying. To insist that our comfort isn’t worth it unless the least and the lost can share in it, too.” (Thomas)

“Taking up the cross means… accepting — against all the lies of my culture — that I will die. It means following up that courageous acceptance with the most important question I can ask: given my inevitable death, how shall I spend this brief, singular, God-breathed life?” (Thomas)

“Shall I hoard it in fear, or give it away in hope? Shall I protect myself with numbness and apathy, or experience the abundant life Jesus offers to those who ache, weep, and bleed alongside the world’s suffering? Shall I, like Peter, push suffering away at all costs — and in doing so, push Jesus away, too? Or shall I accompany the one I call Savior down the only road that actually leads to eternal life?” (Thomas)

“There is a spectator version of Christianity out there, and plenty of people decide to live it. But let’s not pretend for one moment that it’s the version Jesus calls us to. Let’s not fool ourselves into assuming that faith-on-the-sidelines will grant us safety, immunity, joy, or blessing. It will not. Those who save their lives will lose them. Those who lose their lives will save them. That’s the truth Jesus vindicated when he died and rose from the grave. We can take it or leave it.” (Thomas)
Dear church, can we be the sort of church that helps one another to bear crosses instead of building them? Jesus rebuked Peter for his failure to see that his vocation involved suffering as well as glory. Anyone who thinks the gospel is a path to prosperity will here be confronted with the dark and painful reality of the cross.

For his forty years of faithfulness to God’s call, the prophet Jeremiah (our first reading) was beaten (20:2), threatened with death (26:8), imprisoned (37:15), thrown down a well (38:6), and derided as an unpatriotic traitor. Almost no one listened to him. He was an isolated man of “reproach” among his own people (15:15). Maybe that’s why Jeremiah reminded early Christians so much of Jesus. Jeremiah was a Christ-figure: in dying to self he lived to God and for others. Jeremiah shows us that in losing our lives we find them. (Daniel Clendenin, My Journey with Jesus)

With a song on our lips and love in our hearts, Jesus calls to us, to follow his footsteps. “Will you leave yourself behind if I but call your name? Will you care for cruel and kind and never be the same? Will you risk the hostile stare, should your life attract or scare? Will you let me answer prayer in you and you in me?” (“Will you Come and Follow Me?” ELW # 798)

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House of Living Stones

Proper 16A-26
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

‘On this rock I will build my church.’ (Matthew 16:18). The church in Rome and the doctrine of the primacy of Peter is built upon a single sentence uttered by Jesus in a place called Caesarea Philippi. Lutherans trace a straight line from the Roman Papacy to the financial and spiritual corruption that built the magnificent St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome, to the Protestant Reformation and the formation of a half dozen other Protestant denominations. Like Peter, Christians get the answer to Jesus’ question, ‘Who do you say that I am,” partly right. Jesus is the Messiah, AND, like him, they get it partly wrong. In the very next breath, Peter will tell Jesus to forget about going to the cross. (We’ll read that part of the story next week.) There’s a gap between words and our deeds.

We want the devotion without the transformation. We keep Jesus in our h.e.a.r.t. without the cross.
Peter’s partially right and partly wrong answer follows the outline of a familiar tragic pattern. Jesus followers throughout history like to commend themselves for confessing Jesus as Messiah, but they are less concerned about aligning their values, lifestyles, and community around the content of what that confession means. This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called cheap grace. We accept the love of Jesus but withhold that love from one another. Through the centuries, Christians create magnificent Basilica’s like St. Peter’s and elaborate hierarchies of religious control that, sadly, are better at building crosses than bearing them.

Jesus and the disciples are in Caesarea Philippi, about twenty-five miles north of their home base in Galilee, a favorite vacation spot for Roman officials. It probably felt like another planet. An ancient temple to Baal had once been there. When the disciple’s visit another complex devoted to the worship of a half-goat, half man deity named “Pan” stood before them. Just a few decades before our story the Roman emperor, Augustus, had placed governance of the city in the hands of Herod the Great. To express his gratitude Herod built a large temple made of white marble dedicated to his benefactor, Caesar Augustus. After Herod’s death, his son, Philipp renamed the city, Caesarea Philippi. It was a place that represented the power of the empire and reiterated the values of imperial theology: Caesar is lord, and Rome always wins at any cost.

It was here that Jesus chose to ask the disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus and Caesar embody two radically different visions for the world. They weild dramatically opposite methods to building their respective kingdoms. Today’s gospel strangely mirrors of our own time. We are living in a Caesarea Philippi–like moment. Christian Nationalism preaches a Caesar-like Jesus whose church is controlled by white, cis, straight men. Cruelty, not compassion, is the coin of the realm, as we watch it play out in places like Springfield, Ohio this week, where Haitian immigrants are being rounded up, demeaned, incarcerated and deported. The Golden Rule—do unto others only what you would have them do unto you—is replaced by the iron rule, do unto others before they do unto you. In the face of this rising allegiance to a counterfeit Christ, the Jesus of history has a question for us: “Who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16:15). Our answer, of course, like Peter’s, is best measured, not in our words, but in our deeds.

Our gospel includes one of the relatively rare uses of the word ‘ekklesia,’ from which we derive our word ‘church.’ Jesus’ promise to build his church on Peter, ‘the rock’ inspires mental images of great big beautiful solemn and solid church buildings for people today. Yet, the word paints a different picture, not of a building, but of a people. ‘Ekklesia’ means ‘the called-out.’ Our summer-style liturgy highlights the contrast between these two meanings of ‘church.’ Here, we see the church is nothing but each other. It is the circle of ordinary people gathered in mystical communion around Christ’s table. So, the question becomes clear. What are we called out from? What are we called out for?

I think we find a clue in Jesus’ question, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (16:13). Studying the gospel this week, I did a double take. To my way of thinking, ‘The Son of Man’ is a synonym for the Messiah. It would be as if Jesus’ question included the answer. ‘Who do people say that I, the messiah, is? Instead, Jesus’ self-proclaimed a title, the Son of Man, comes from the Book of Daniel which was popular in the 1st Century. Daniel chapter seven outlines a hopeful political vision of a hero called ‘the Son of Man’ who brings an end to the reign of oppressive empires.

Empires and religious hierarchies inevitably seek to control God’s grace. They attempt to turn grace into a commodity and the church into a franchise. God’s love becomes just another object of production which can be meted out or withhold according to whatever maximizes the power of church/state leaders rather than give honor to God. The problem for empires and religious hierarchies is Christ cannot be controlled or domesticated. There is always some surplus of Spirit that empire cannot fit into the box. The power of grace emerges from underneath, by people with nothing, who are willing to pay the cost of devotion and transformation. The flickering light of the gospel survives in human lives, bodies, minds, and souls inflamed by presence of the living God. It passes from generation to generation like a candle on a windowsill. It flickers but it is not fragile. It flickers because somebody keeps relighting it, and it’s almost always somebody the empire had already written off. (Tripp Fuller) This is the great Good News.

The light which cannot be extinguished or controlled is revealed, for example, in the words of the prophets who nurture and evoke a new way of thinking. When prophets see that the status quo is not working, they encourage what might be called holy disorder, a scenario in which the fundamental conditions and relationships of the group are disrupted. (Rohr) The process of allowing and creating holy disorder is surely what Representative John Lewis once called getting into “good trouble.”

For them, good trouble and holy disorder could draw forth better things—an entirely different consciousness characterized by more justice, more mercy, greater closeness to God. Jesus came to give us a way of being human that does away with empires that operate with violence and force. What Peter could not foresee, and what he got wrong (which we will hear more about next week,) is that God’s kingdom comes with a completely different kind of politics. Instead of a politics based on law backed with the force of sanctioned violence, the politics of God’s kingdom re-centers the law on love by way of the cross. “Violence cannot defeat violence. Hate cannot defeat hate. Fear cannot defeat fear. Domination cannot defeat domination. God’s way is different” (Brian D. MClaren, We Make the Road by Walking, pp. 118-19). “For Jesus’s earliest followers this declaration was a way of affirming that Jesus’s message of nonviolence, abundance, generosity, compassion, and inclusivity align with the very character of God” (Scott).

Jesus has given us the keys to this new kind of kingdom. Jesus gave the keys, not to a person, not to an institution, but to people called-out to love and serve God and to advance the kingdom of justice wherever they find themselves in the world. God continues to build on the rock that human builders have rejected. Peter, who, at times was himself a stumbling block, who at times was rocky soil in which faith withers, was also an example of what Jesus can accomplish in a through our hands and voices. None of us would choose this kind of Rock on which to build the church. But Jesus does. “In temples made with hands God the Most High is not dwelling…Christ builds a house of living stones: we are God’s own habitation. Where two or three will seek Christ’s face, he in their midst will show his grace, blessings upon them bestowing.” (Built on a Rock, ELW #652)

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Build a Larger Table

Proper 15A-26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jesus is having a really-bad-no-good-day. Can you think of a time that Jesus acts less ‘Jesus-y?’ It’s the kind of story, caught on a cell phone camera, that goes viral today.  Proof among foes that Jesus is not qualified to be the Messiah. So why does Matthew include it?  I hope you’ll bear with me.

We start with the context. Jesus and the disciples are near the Lebanese cities of Tyre and Sidon, which today, experience severe humanitarian strain and displacement amid ongoing heavy Israeli airstrikes, prompting thousands to flee north toward Sidon and Beirut. Today’s wars and today’s gospel link ancient and modern conflicts together in an unholy thread. Jesus is 70 miles north and west of where he was last Sunday near the Sea of Galilee—and approximately 50 miles north of Israel’s border—and it’s here, in a foreign land that a nameless woman begins following them. Her daughter is suffering. She knows Jesus has power to heal. Desperate for help, she approaches him with faith, shouting “Have mercy on me.” She calls him “Lord” and “Son of David.” (Matthew 15:22). Jesus ignored her but, nevertheless, she persists, breaking the ancient boundary between insiders and outsiders. She schools us, there are no outsiders when it comes to grace.

Just one chapter earlier, the disciples looked at a hungry crowd and urged Jesus to “Send the crowds away” (14:15). Jesus refused. “They need not go away,” he told them. Instead, he fed them until everyone had enough, and twelve baskets of bread remained. Now another person approaches in desperate need. Again, the disciples say, “Send her away” (15:23). But this time, Jesus is silent. Jesus says, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (15:24), and he doubles down: “It is not fair,” Jesus said, “to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (15:26). Calling someone a ‘dog’ is an especially scandalous slur in Middle Eastern culture to this day. The same Jesus who refused to send away the hungry crowds now seems ready to send away a desperate mother. What’s going on?  (Micah Krey, “Matthew 15:[10-20] 21-28,” Writings on Recovery and Preaching, August 16, 2026)

Matthew clues us in on what he’s up to. He says the unnamed woman was a Canaanite.  The label is strange, because, in Jesus’ time, there were no “Canaanites.” The land of Canaan was ancient history even then. It would be like calling “Chicago” by its old Algonquian name “shikaakwa,” meaning “stinking onion.” Matthew’s audience would understand perfectly. He is making use of Jesus’ really-bad-no-good-day to challenge ancient enmities between nations based on religion, gender, and culture.  Matthew connects this Jesus story with Joshua’s conquest of the Promised Land more than a thousand years earlier.

This is something Matthew loves to do.  He loves to weave together storylines from the Hebrew bible to teach us something important about Jesus and about discipleship. It’s not obvious to English speakers, but Jesus and Joshua are the exact same name. In Hebrew and Aramaic, Jesus was called Yeshua (or Yehoshua), which translates to English as “Joshua.” Both names mean “Yahweh is salvation.” According to Matthew, therefore, this annoying but faithful woman is not only an outsider, not only the wrong gender, but she is part of an enemy people. (Barbara Lundbland). This time, however, the story of inter-faith, international encounter has a different ending. In Jesus’ hands, there is solidarity and transformation rather than conquest and genocide,

Jesus does not supersede or replace the Hebrew bible but is its fulfillment. Jesus quotes the prophet Hosea twice (Matthew 9:13 and 12:7) saying “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” It means that God values genuine love, human compassion, and kindness higher than empty religious rules or traditional rituals. What defines us as children of God proceeds from the heart and not from our cultural or religious habits.

This gospel is especially scandalous for believers who are taught that Jesus has nothing to learn. This idea that Jesus has nothing to learn mirrors our own cultural arrogance not the bible. Jesus learns something important about himself and his God-given mission from encounter with the Canaanite woman. Jesus’s self-understanding expands beyond the “house of Israel.”

This story is difficult for many Christians to hear especially if we grew up with the idea of a “Perfect Jesus” who is technically human, but his incarnation falls several steps short of actual human-ness.  He never messes up, never doubts, never backtracked, and always knows what he is doing. The problem with “Perfect Jesus,” of course, is that he doesn’t exist. The Jesus who appears in the Gospels is not half-incarnate.  He is as fully human as he is fully God. Which is to say, he struggles, he snaps, he discovers, he grows, he falters, he learns, he fears, and he overcomes.” (Debi Thomas, “Is It Good News Yet?”, Journey with Jesus, 8/09/20)

The question then becomes –can we like Jesus learn from each other? Can we recognize the truth when we hear the truth regardless of where it comes from or who said it? We should not be surprised that Jesus bears the wounds of his community as well as its hopes. “Humanity is not simply hunger and fatigue. It is also inherited grief, inherited enemies, and inherited stories about who belongs and who does not. But those inherited divisions do not have the final word. The woman refuses to accept the boundary. She takes Jesus’ own image of bread and transforms it.” (Krey)

Matthew started down this path in chapter 1. Jesus is descended from other Canaanite women, Tamar and Rahab listed in Jesus’ genealogy. They were both outsiders who proved to be women of great faith. Like them, this Canaanite woman absorbs Jesus’ insults and turns the other cheek in a creative, nonviolent response to injustice (just as Jesus advised us to do in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:39).

            Love your enemies, Jesus said in Matthew 5:44.  But here, in Matthew 15 it’s not so easy, not even for Jesus. Jesus’ really-bad-no-good-day challenges us to look beyond the artificial boundaries and borders of ethnicity, nation, and religion that divide people into insiders and outsiders –divisions that make us feel safe with some people, and afraid of others. Earlier I said this gospel exposes the unholy link between ancient and modern grievances—not just of others—but also our own unspoken and subconscious biases. Are we, like Jesus, ready to be changed by God’s grace?

Jesus was converted that day to a larger vision of the commonwealth of God. Jesus saw and heard a fuller revelation of God in the voice and in the face of the Canaanite woman. She became visible rather than invisible. Jesus looked and listened, and she became fully human, a mother, a child of God, because—yes—Jesus realizes, Canaanite lives matter. Palestinian lives matter. Brown lives matter.  Immigrant lives matter. Trans lives matter.

Can we like Jesus grow ears that recognize the truth when we hear the truth? Can we abandon our prejudice, our inherited wounds, and inherited enemies rather than perpetuate them? Can we, as Americans, be honest about the genocides that lay at the foundation of our birth as a nation? Our ancestors used the stolen labor of Africans and the stolen land of Native peoples to build our democracy, with tragic irony, on the ideal that all human beings are created equal.

Jesus finally said to her, “Woman, great is your faith.” Jesus will go on to heal Gentiles later in this chapter 15 (Matt 15:30-31) and then perform the same miraculous feeding among the Gentiles (Matt 15:32-38) as he did among his fellow Jews (in Matt 14). The unnamed Canaanite woman is the only person in all four gospels to enter a verbal sparring match with Jesus and prevail. Matthew dares give us a very human pre-resurrection Jesus and paints a compelling picture of this woman. Even Jesus must learn how radically good the Good News is. Her persistence, perceptiveness, and humility garner the admiration and blessing of Jesus. She becomes an example of faithfulness for us to emulate. She turns Jesus’ slur right back at him. She replies, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table’ (v. 27).

Her brilliant response cuts to the very heart of Jesus’s boundary-breaking, taboo-busting, division-destroying ministry of table fellowship. Her witness shatters the arrogance and prejudice that we continue to harbor today.  The Messiah eats with tax collectors and prostitutes.  We are one body with the rabbi who breaks bread with sinners.  The table is precisely where Jesus shows the world who God is.  (Thomas)

“Christ became our doorway to the reign of God. So must our tables welcome all who roam. None can be excluded; all must find a home” (Build a Larger Table, ACS #1062).

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The Calm Amidst the Storm

Proper 14A-26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

After feeding the 5000 Jesus ordered the disciples into a boat. He dismissed the crowds and sent the disciples to the other side of the Sea. Then he went up the mountain by himself to pray (Matthew 14:22-23). Jesus resumed the search for solitude he first felt on hearing the news—John the Baptist was dead.

Matthew sets the scene for us in the first two sentences. Then our gospel unfolds like an acted-out parable. We learn that solitude, silence, and prayer is necessary even for the second person of the Trinity, Jesus, the Son of God. We learn that the followers of Jesus are both called and sent. We learn that prayer is the fuel that makes their ministry go. Christ is the calm amidst the storm.

Jesus “compelled” the disciples into the boat. Ministry is not optional. The language is unusually strong. Matthew makes it clear the disciples did not choose this journey for themselves. They are going because Jesus sent them. The Sea of Galilee is not a big body of water.  It’s never more than seven miles across from east-to-west. Yet Peter and the disciples struggle. Their boat is “battered” and “thrashed” by wind and waves. Jesus sent them into the storm on their own. Sometime between three and six in the morning, Jesus hailed them from the water saying, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” (v. 27).

We should pause to say what this story is NOT. Peter is often singled out as either the hero or the failure of this story. Some celebrate his courage for stepping out of the boat. Others criticize him for losing focus and sinking. But both readings make Peter’s fear or lack of it the center of the story. Matthew’s focus is elsewhere. (Micha Krey, “Matthew 14:22-33,” Writings on Recovery and Preaching, 8/9/26)

Some of you may have grown up with “Fear not!” Christianity. This type of Christianity teaches ‘You can’t be fearful and faithful at the same time. As if fear is a clear sign that you lack faith.’ Yet, instead of courage or trust, this type of religion turns our ever-present fears into guilt, shame, and hopelessness.

“Nowhere in the Gospels are we called to prove our faith (or test God’s character) by taking pointless risks that threaten our lives… Whether we’re talking about respecting the power of the sea during a vicious storm, or heeding expert medical advice during a global pandemic, the same caution applies.  Recklessness is not faith.  Stupidity is not courage.” (Debie Thomas, “Out on the Water,” Journey with Jesus, 8/2/20)

Matthew invites us to consider something larger. Jesus sends the disciples into the storm on their own. And then he comes to them there. This is not the first time the disciples have experienced a life-threatening storm at sea. Back in Matthew 8, Jesus and the disciples crossed these same waters. A violent storm arose while Jesus slept peacefully in the boat. Terrified, the disciples cried out, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” (8:25). Jesus rebuked the winds and the sea, and there was a great calm. The disciples responded with amazement: “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (v 27). That earlier story established something essential. Jesus possesses authority over creation itself. The wind obeys him. The sea obeys him. Chaos obeys him.

“Today’s story assumes we remember that earlier revelation. The question is no longer whether Jesus has authority over the sea. The question is whether the disciples believe that authority still belongs to him—even when he is not already sitting in the boat beside them.”

Peter’s words are not a request to prove his faithfulness. They are a request for Jesus to reveal himself. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water” (v 28). Peter is able to step onto the water because Jesus has spoken. Then Peter notices the wind. The storm has not disappeared. The waves are still present. The danger is still real. Peter begins to sink. And in the most human moment of the story, he cries out:“Lord, save me!” (v 30). This is not Peter failing a test. This is Peter doing what disciples have always done in Matthew. When they are overwhelmed, they cry out to Jesus. (Krey)

The same Lord who says, “Come,” is the Lord who says, “I have you.” At the very start of Matthew, Jesus is named Emmanuel: “God with us” (1:23). Not God distant from us. Not God present only when circumstances are calm. Jesus calls and sends us. God is with us. The disciples are learning what that means. The question is not whether Peter has enough faith. The question both for them and for us is: Where is Christ to be found as we go out in obedience to his command to love and to serve? (Krey)

The answer throughout this section of Matthew has been remarkably consistent. The crowds are hungry. Jesus comes to them. The disciples are overwhelmed by feeding thousands. Jesus provides. Now the disciples are isolated on a storm-tossed sea. Jesus comes again. Again and again throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus moves toward people in their vulnerability rather than waiting for them to find their way to him. That pattern matters because the storm is not evidence that the disciples have failed. They are not there because they ignored Jesus. They are there because they obeyed Jesus. And yet, obedience does not guarantee calm waters.

Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus sends disciples into places they would never choose for themselves. He sends them to proclaim the kingdom. He sends them to heal. He sends them into villages where they may be welcomed or rejected. Eventually, he will send them to all nations. Being sent does not guarantee smooth sailing. Being sent guarantees Christ’s presence. Followers of Jesus are both called and sent.

So, like Jesus, we pray.  Prayer is the fuel that makes ministry happen. We worship, we sing, we meditate because, like Jesus, we need silence and solitude to stop our mind from whirling and root ourselves in the abiding presence of God that is always in with and under each moment. There is so much to be afraid of in our world right now. Jesus throws us a lifeline.

Like Jesus on the mountain, like Elijah in the cave on Mt. Horeb, God speaks from within “the sound of sheer silence” emanating deep from the life within all life (1 Kings 19:11-12). Jesus withdrew for prayer on a regular basis. There seems to be a rhythm in his life between the times of active ministry and the times of prayer-filled solitude.

Sometimes, like the prophet Elijah, when we go to God in prayer what we learn is we are full of it.  The power of prayer is an antidote to navel gazing and narcissism. Prayer brings accountability and repentance as much as healing and wisdom. When our mind and hearts re-center in prayer something surprising happens. It occurs to us that maybe we can add to our happiness and joy, not by holding on to life’s treasures, but by giving them away.

Jesus, Savior, pilot me to traverse the boundary between strangers, to forge authentic bonds of peace and stability, to uncover our common connections, and our God-given gifts to calm the storm. Do not be afraid dear church. The church is built to travel.  It’s built to traverse, tempest-tossed, upon the turbulent seas that separate God’s people from one another.  We are called and sent. Emmanuel, Christ Jesus is with us.

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The Kingdom Comes

Proper 13A-26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jesus said, “you give them something to eat” (Matthew 14:16). The disciples were willing to disrupt their families and uproot their lives to follow Jesus—but you can almost see their jaws drop when he told them it was their turn to make dinner.

My study bible calls this ‘The Feeding of the 5,000.” It could also be called “The Feeding of Many More Than 5000” if you include the women and children. Other authorities call this the “Multiplying of the Loaves.” Yet, I think these names point us toward the wrong miracle. I’d call this story the “Miracle of Opening Hearts Held Captive by Scarcity to the Reality of Abundance.”

Jesus’ impromptu repast on the grass in the hills beside the sea shows us how to become human again. Jesus showed them how to pass beyond the hidden gates of the kingdom of God that is always in, with, under every time and place.  People who were cogs in the machine, mere consumers and human resources for their overlords, alienated from themselves and each other, divided into warring camps and manipulated by fear—miraculously found themselves inside the mutual indwelling presence of God on a grassy hill beside the sea of Galilee.

All four gospels tell this story, but only Matthew places it immediately following the death of John the Baptist. If you read Matthew straight through — and not skip around as the lectionary does, you immediately notice that Jesus has just received news that John the Baptist—his forerunner, his baptizer, and likely also his teacher—was brutally beheaded by Herod Antipas. That’s when Jesus decides to hop in a boat intending to sail to a deserted area alone (14:1–12). “Jesus wasn’t only tired or overworked. He was grieving, most likely in shock, and certainly conflicted about what might happen next to both him and his followers.” (Diana Butler Bass, “Compassion is the Miracle,” Sunday Musings, 8/01/26)

Matthew draws a sobering contrast between the picnic meal hosted by Jesus in the wilderness, and the extravagant party King Herod threw himself for his birthday and the 1-percenters of Palestine in his fancy castle.  Whereas Herod was afraid of his own guests (v. 5) and of what they might think of him (v.9), Jesus has compassion and cares for the crowd (v. 14), despite his desire to be alone (13a).  Herod is tricked into putting John to death (v. 10).  Whereas Jesus provides life by curing the sick (v. 14) and feeding the hungry (v. 19). Wealthy King Herod took a life. Jesus restored lives. The compassion of the one meal stands in sharp contrast to the mean-spiritedness of the other (Walter Bruggeman).

The siren song of worldly power would make us crave the opulence and exclusivity offered by Herod, while Jesus invites us to take our seat at the table as children of God. One host creates anxiety; the other offers tranquility.  One operates upon the logic of fear; the other is animated by grace. One creates winners and losers; the other creates a humble community of joy as like those who receive a great gift.

The first Christians plainly linked this story with their experience of the Eucharist.  The “Miracle of Opening Hearts Held Captive by Scarcity to the Reality of Abundance” is a story about the kind of community God intends for us. The kingdom comes when diverse people from all walks of life become part of a single family and are fed at the same table. Here is a foretaste of the feast to come when people of every nation are united in faith and love toward God.  Here is the bread of life, in Christ Jesus, like manna from heaven. Here is the forever promise of God to bring abundance out of scarcity. Here is the blessing and invitation to offer to others what we have been given –our compassion, our energy, our vision—as well as our food and material resources. Jesus’ presence brings into stark relief the clash between the kingdom of heaven and the kingdoms of the earth.

Jesus set out by boat to be alone, but his plan fails. The crowds pursue him. Some even gather at his destination before he can come ashore. No doubt, they have heard about the execution, too. They knew that John was dead; they surely understood that Jesus was distraught. Perhaps, they weren’t simply miracle groupies or Palestinian paparazzi chasing a new spiritual celebrity. Might the crowds be responding to Jesus’ loss with sympathy and empathy?

This sheds new light on the miracle. What is the miracle here? This is a miracle of human compassion. The crowds responded to Jesus’ loss with sympathy and empathy. And what did a mournful, worried, exhausted Jesus do?  Jesus had compassion. Compassion” means to “suffer with.” The Greek verb in 14:14 is splagchnizomai. We’ve heard this word once already seven weeks ago on June 14th, when we read Matthew 9:36: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” splagchnizomai is an onomatopoeia. It sounds like what it means. Compassion seizes his guts. Jesus commissions the Twelve to make dinner. “In other words, whenever Jesus feels compassion for those who are disadvantaged and in harm’s way, he calls the church into action.” (Matt Skinner, “Commentary on Matthew 14:13-21, Working Preacher, 8/2/26)

Even today, no one goes on a hike into the wilderness without food and water. How then could people who lived in the region fail to know this? Isn’t it improbable that the multitude following Jesus into a “desert place” would not have food? And wouldn’t both Jesus and the disciples have had a pretty good idea that there was food out there in satchels and purses? (Skinner)

So why does the narrative initially proceed under the assumption that food is not available? Scholars offer two reasons. The first is the religious idea of keeping kosher not only applied to food, separating clean from unclean, but more importantly to who you eat the food with. Eating with unclean people makes you unclean. So, one didn’t typically eat with strangers in proximity. The second reason is the prevalence of scarcity-thinking that has plagued humanity ever since the serpent convinced Eve and Adam that God was holding out on them. They keep their own food stashed away to avoid conflict with people over not having enough. (Skinner)

Jesus has a different idea. He knows a thing or two about God’s delight in providing sustenance—food given “without price,” as Isaiah 55:1 puts it. He also knows about enlisting others in the toil and joy of offering food to people who are hungry. The meal upon the hillside wasn’t going to descend from the heavens; it was going to be passed around by human hands. The hearts of the folks there that day miraculously opened to abundance and solidarity. God’s kingdom came. It descended upon them that day as God’s will was done on earth as in heaven.

This is the miracle. This is the miracle that is always within our grasp. It is the “…miracle of being human together, of taking the journey from hopelessness, brokenness, and suffering to kindness, restoration, and liberation.” (Diana Butler Bass, “Compassion is the Miracle,” Sunday Musings, 8/01/26) Miracles need not be rare. Miracles do not require magic or the suspension of the laws of science. But there will always be miracles when we extend our hearts and hands with God to help make them happen. Because true compassion is a miracle.

Compassion is motivated by God’s love which is never merely about “the poor” or “injustice,” or about “society” but is always about the people standing right in front of us. The American poet Christian Wiman has said, “If nature abhors a vacuum, Christ abhors a vagueness. If God is love, Christ is love for this one person, this one place, this one time-bound and time ravaged self.”  Reluctant, disbelieving and under protest, the disciples offered the crowd the not-enough that was theirs, and it was enough, in fact, it was more than enough.

Jesus’ messianic powers include and involve our poor efforts.  God’s work is done through our hands. “You give them something to eat.” It is the disciple’s own food that Jesus uses to do a miracle. Out of scarcity God produces an abundance. Out of fear, life in Christ makes for peace.  As the Prophet Isaiah foretold, on that day we shall dwell together in the shelter of the Lord, we “…shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12). See! Jesus prepares a great banquet for us today.  Come, eat, be filled, and live.

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What a Mess!

Proper 11A-26
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Last week Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to a Sower scattering seed with reckless abundance. This week the image shifts from the generosity of the Sower to the patience of the landowner. The good seed has taken root, but it is not alone. An enemy has sown weeds among the wheat, and now both grow together until the harvest. (Micah Krey) Our parable asks: How are the people of God to live in a world where good and evil remain tangled together?
If Jesus truly is the Messiah, why hasn’t everything changed? It’s still John the Baptist’s question from a few weeks ago, “Are you the one…or are we to wait for another?” Not enough has changed!

Jesus doesn’t pull any punches. An enemy has sown weeds among the wheat. It was not an accident or an unfortunate mistake. Noxious weeds were intentionally sown into the field by a real enemy whose motivations are loveless and sinister. Scholars believe the ‘weed’ Jesus is talking about is called bearded darnel, or “false wheat.” It looks virtually identical to wheat and is not merely a nuisance but is poisonous causing illness and even death if consumed in large quantities. Today’s parable teaches that evil is real, insidious, intentional, dangerous and outrageous. Common sense would dictate a single course of action. Go and tear out those weeds at once! But Jesus says no. “No” and “wait.”

Jesus insists on patience, humility, and restraint when it comes to patrolling the borders of his precious field. He asks us, even as we acknowledge the pernicious reality of evil, to accept his timing instead of ours when it comes to destroying it. Why? Because he knows that the business of discernment is much harder than we think it is: “Turn us loose with a machete and there is no telling what we will chop down and what we will spare.” (Debi Thomas, “Let Them Grow Together,” Journey with Jesus, 7/12/20)

There is no way to police the wheat field without damaging the wheat. There is no way to rid us of everything bad without distorting everything good. What looks at first like a problem can turn out to be the solution, and what appears to be the solution can turn out to be the problem.
For example, farmers in New Zealand battled a noxious weed called Gorse for almost a century. A thicket of Gorse grows nine feet tall and chest deep in thorns impassible to sheep, cattle, deer and goats. The government of New Zealand passed a law demanding that landowners eradicate Gorse any way possible. They sprayed it, bulldozed it, uprooted it, and burned it. The Gorse always grew back while costly conservation efforts to restore the once lush ancient forest failed.

In 1987 a full botanical survey of Banks peninsula in New Zealand found less than 1% of old growth forest remained. That’s when botanist Hugh Wilson and a famer named, Maurice Wright, proposed a heretical new solution. Do nothing. They bought land, built a fence around it, kicked out the sheep and waited.

Wilson had noticed native seedlings coming up under the Gorse. Gorse casts profound shade needed to shelter young native plants. The seeds from the ancient forest where already in the soil just waiting for the right conditions to grow. Gorse is a legume that naturally fixes nitrogen into the soil fertilizing the ground. Moreover, as it matures Gorse breaks down under its own weight allowing light to come down onto the ground. Native plants and trees began to take over. The plant the government of New Zealand spent 90 years trying to exterminate was the fastest route back to native forest. The Gorse became a temporary structure that built its own replacement and then vanished. Today 350 native plants and 35 native bird species have returned. 47 waterfalls flow year-round up from a handful before the forest returned and the hills stopped bleeding water in summer. All this was accomplished without killing any Gorse or by planting a single tree. (Treeline Journal, Youtube)

We inhabit a mindset of either-or, right and wrong, good guys and bad guys. This would seem natural, especially for religious folk. But the real world God creates operates differently. Complex open systems are both-and. This should not surprise us, but it still does. This teaching runs deep in the Christian witness and in our Lutheran heritage specifically. We say, “God is One, and God is Three. Jesus is God and Jesus is human. The Bible is God’s Word, and the Bible is authored by flawed humans. Creation is good, and Creation is broken. To give is to receive. To die is to live. To pardon is to be pardoned. To be weak is to be strong. To serve is to reign. We’re saved by grace, and faith without works is dead. We are in the world, but we are not of the world. The kingdom of God is coming, and the kingdom of God is here, within us… at every point, Christianity calls us to hold together truths that seem bizarre, nonsensical, counterintuitive, and irreconcilable.” (Thomas)

“Every facet of the religion, from its theology to its ethics, to its holy book, to its founder’s own identity, invites us to occupy holy in-between places, places of hard but life-giving ambiguity.” It’s not that we hold paradox; it’s that paradox holds us. We are held in a deep place. An ample place. A real place. (Thomas)

God knows we are, after all, like the field in the parable, both mixed and messy. Each of us individually, our faith communities corporately, and our world in its entirety, contain wheat and weed, good and evil, the fruitful and the poisonous. We are each, in Martin Luther’s famous words, “simul justus et peccator.” At the same time both sinner and saint. To confess this paradox is not to be puritanical — it is to be discerning and wise. It is to live in the world as it is while striving with God for the world as it should be. And it is to believe in Jesus.
Jesus’s parable says without apology that evil is doomed: oppression will end. Injustice will die. Evil always includes the seeds of its own demise. In short, all that chokes, starves, breaks, distorts, poisons, and harms God’s beloved, will burn away. Not because God hates the world. But because God loves it. (Thomas)

This is not to say we should ignore evil. But it is to say that we should move gently and with great care, recognizing that our task is to grow the good, not burn the bad. Our job is to bless the field, not curse it. Remember, the field is not ours, it is God’s. Only God knows it intimately enough to tend it. Only God loves it enough to bring it safely to harvest. (Thomas)
God’s garden is a mess, but God is patient and wise. The bearded darnel in our hearts, the prickly Gorse in our minds is being transformed by grace into nourishing wheat. The passionate, protective, and deeply righteous love of God will not suffer evil to rule the world forever. May God ripen your spirit, restore you in your broken places, and bring us to fullness of life. (Thomas)

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From Hard-Scrabble Hearts

Proper 10A-26
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

For three Sundays, we are camped out here in Matthew 13 which contains seven parables about the kingdom of heaven or “realm of God.” Each offers an answer to the question: What happens when the kingdom of heaven is proclaimed? Our scriptures give witness. Some will hear it. Some resist it. Some misunderstand it. Some bear astonishing fruit while the natural world, the surrounding spiritual animacy of the web of life will have just one response. It will give God praise.

“A Sower went out to sow,” Jesus said. He flung seeds everywhere—on the path, on the rocks, among the thorns, and finally some land on good soil. “That is what the kingdom of heaven looks like. “God refuses to ration grace. The Word of the kingdom is proclaimed to saints and skeptics alike. To disciples and doubters. To those eager to hear and to those who have grown cynical. To people whose lives seem well cultivated and to those whose lives feel overrun with rocks, weeds, and hard-packed paths. The Sower just keeps sowing…most of us have experienced all four soils.” (Micah Krey, Writings on Recovery and Preaching, “7th Sunday After Pentecost,” July 12, 2026) God pours out grace without considering the worthiness of the recipient. This parable should uproot our faulty assumptions about who is deserving. Let anyone with ears to hear rejoice!

Here in Matthew 13, after repeated rejection and controversy, Jesus makes a strategic choice to begin speaking in parables. Matthew uses the conjunction hoti, which can be translated as “because.” Jesus does not speak in parables in order to keep people from understanding. Jesus speaks in parables because they have already become people who “look but do not perceive” and “hear but do not listen.” Parables stick with us. They work on our imagination. Until finally, when we are ready, they explode false understandings and make room for grace to grow again bearing new fruit some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

But this chapter filled with parables doesn’t begin with a parable. Matthew begins with movement. “That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat beside the sea.” (Matthew 13:1) That same day. Everywhere Jesus turns, someone questions who he is and by what authority he speaks. And so, he walks to the sea and because the crowds are so large, he gets into a boat and sits down while everyone remains standing on the shore. Many commentators note that the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee forms a natural amphitheater. Water carries sound well. And so, Jesus’ boat becomes an ideal place from which to address a large crowd.

Scholars suggest something more is happening as well. Look where Jesus is teaching. Not from the synagogue. Not from the Temple. Not from the home where chapter 12 ended. He’s teaching from a fishing boat. “Throughout Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus continually relocates where God’s authority is encountered. The Sermon on the Mount happens on a hillside, not in Jerusalem. Fishermen become the first disciples rather than religious scholars. Children understand what the wise often miss. Tax collectors find mercy while the righteous argue over technicalities. Now the kingdom is proclaimed from the water. Away from the formal institutions that have dismissed his authority.” (Krey)

Matthew tells us that Jesus sat down, the traditional posture for authoritative teaching, but the classroom has changed. “Instead of walls, there is shoreline. Instead of benches, there is sand. Instead of institutional architecture, creation itself becomes the sanctuary.” (Krey)

This resonates with a major theme in our bible. The natural world participates in giving witness to God. Isaiah describes a God who pours rain and snow down from heaven without measure, watering everything on earth in the full confidence that what needs to grow will grow (Isaiah 55:10). Isaiah promises God’s people, “For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands” (Isaiah 55:12). The psalmist echoes, “The pastures of the wilderness overflow, the hills gird themselves with joy, the meadows clothe themselves with flocks, the valleys deck themselves with grain, and they shout and sing together for joy.” (Psalm 65:9-13)

For centuries, Christians have dismissed these words are mere poetic flourish. But contemporary science, philosophers and theologians bring us back where our ancestors in faith started. “At the heart of matter, is the heart of God.” Jesuit priest, paleontologist, and mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) is one of these thinkers who ask us to reexamine our assumptions about how the world works. Teilhard wrote “Let us leave the surface, and, without leaving the world, plunge into God.” When we experience the beat of this sacredness deep within us or encounter it in the body of the earth or the body of another, we have a sense of being addressed by name, said Teilhard. In other words, the life at the heart of all life is not just energy; it is presence. The universe is radically relational. In and through matter we are born for relationship, and at the heart of our relationship with the earth and one another is relationship with the divine. (John Philip Newell, Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul. P. 171-172 // quoting Chardin, The Heart of Matter, p. 15)

Around the age of thirty, Teilhard had an epiphany in which he experienced himself being addressed by the Light that shines in matter. What he heard within himself were words from Matthew’s gospel, in Latin ‘Ego sum, noli timere’ (It is I; do not be afraid, Matthew 14:27). He heard these words not from afar, as it were, or from above the physical, but from deep within the matter of the universe. The assurance that came to him in that moment was: “Do not be afraid to see matter as sacred; do not be afraid to adore this Light that is deep in all things. It is I.”

“The universe,” as Teilhard later wrote, now became “something that loved and could be loved.” This was a way of saying that God can be found in all things. The Sower has been sowing for 13.8 billion years. The stars, the periodic table of elements, a myriad of life forms, all arranged in symbiotic communities, tending toward ever greater complexity, the harmony of contrasts, and beauty. In one of this last writings, Teilhard said, Christianity “is reaching the end of one of the natural cycles of its existence…After what will soon be two thousand years, Christ must be born again. (Xnity and Evolution, 94-95) In that born-again Christianity, he said, Christ will no longer be seen as a deserter of the earth. He will be seen as a lover of the earth, at one with the earth. (Newel)

Teilhard saw that evolution is not opposed to the story of creation, rather evolution is the story of how God creates. The Divine Sower pours out seeds of grace upon all people, all things, from within the heart of all matter, at the heart of each moment, across the cosmos, across time.
“This does not mean that evolution always moves toward love in a straightforward way. Indeed, the process of evolution also involves destruction, tragedy, and loss. The creative advance into novelty includes not only harmonious cooperation but also intense struggle. The emergence of beauty is inseparable from the presence of suffering. The cosmos is shaped by moments of tragic beauty—where love and loss, order and chaos, emerge together in a grand improvisational unfolding.” (The Cosmic Lure of Love: Teilhard, Whitehead, and the Evolution of Sympathy, Open Horizons)

Recently retired ELCA Bishop Tim Smith of the North Carolina Synod has said “you can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you cannot count the number of apples in a seed.” Most apples contain five seeds. Many apple tree varieties produce up to five hundred apples each season and can produce fruit for eight or more years. What is slowly coming into being in you, is that you can look on the face of anyone, any creature, stand on any horizon and see that it is your sister or brother or sibling. Then you will know the day has come that you are blossoming into a new creation in Christ. May the wasteful abundance of God’s grace transform our hard-scrabble hearts and fuel our growth with joy. May God be praised.

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Embraced by Grace

Proper 9A-26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

To what should I compare this generation?  They are like toddlers crying all the louder when they hear other children crying. Nothing satisfies them. “Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds,” Jesus said (Matthew 11:16, 18, & 19).

It is remarkable, and maybe a little depressing, how applicable Jesus’ words are to today. “Jesus describes children sitting in the marketplace making contradictory demands. John the Baptist preached an austere message of repentance, and the people complained he was possessed by a demon. Jesus invited everyone to the table for food and drink, and the people called him a glutton and a drunkard.

How often do we miss what really matters in the moment, in this time and place? “We claim to be wise and discerning, but we don’t recognize the divine when we encounter it.  God is always too much or too little for us; too severe or too generous, too demanding, or too provocative.  [Caught in the swirl of our emotions], we [like children] have little capacity to discern what is good and right and holy and true” (Debi Thomas, “A Lighter Burden,” Journey with Jesus, 6/28/20.)

Today is the 174th anniversary of Frederick Douglass’ speech at Corinthian Hall. Douglass’ claims about the complicity of the church in perpetuating the evil of chattel slavery seem obvious to us now. Through the long lens of history, we see the same old serpent at work in and among us today. Jesus calls us today to step out from behind the innocence of childhood with regard to our history. ‘When I was a child, I spoke like a child I thought like a child; now that we are grown, we are finished with childish ways.’ (1 Corinthians 13:11).

And so, yes, we celebrate with hot dogs and fireworks. We honor the 250th anniversary of our nation, by holding together the best and the worst, the sunny side and the underside of everything, be it an event, be it our workplace, be it our family, our congregation, or be it our own souls. Truth-telling about your country is not hatred of your country. It is the form love takes once we’ve grown up. (Cornel West)

American philosopher, theologian and Black activist, Cornel West, asserts the Revolution was “the beginning of an anti-imperial movement against the largest empire of the day,” a courageous wager that ordinary people could build arrangements where each person carries equal worth and dignity.”  [And also] …it was a courageous movement “…wedded to genocide of indigenous peoples and wedded to barbaric enslavement of my own ancestors,” West said. (Tripp Fuller, “Guilty of Our Own Innocence with Cornel West: A Sermon for America’s 250th Birthday Party,” Homebrewed Christianity, 7/4/26).

Roughly 15,000 enslaved Africans fought for the British whereas just 5,000 fought for the Americans. Why? Because the British empire offered emancipation, and the revolutionaries were not. The people with the most at stake in the promise of liberty looked at both armies and concluded that freedom was more likely to come from King George. (Fuller)

“That’s the gift Christians bring to the 250th that nobody else in the public square is carrying. We are the people who are supposed to be able to stare at a cross — an instrument of imperial execution, in case we’ve forgotten what the jewelry means — and not flinch, because we believe the truth is survivable. More than survivable. We believe it’s the doorway.” (Fuller)

Yesterday, for the 250th anniversary of American independence, roughly 400 members of the Nazi white nationalist group Patriot Front marched through the nation’s capital, some carrying Confederate flags. By contrast, what joy, has been kindled in me watching World Cup soccer fans in the U.S. Seeing our nation through their eyes renews my love for America. I am inspired, not because of their amazement at American portion sizes and air conditioning, but by the spirit of international reverie and fellowship they embody.  They are a sign of what is good, right, holy, and true that “…All people are created equal and loved by God. We hold these conflicting events together without flinching because the truth is survivable. Because truth is the door to greater wisdom and grace in the future.

It was Martin Luther’s Small Catechism which taught us to say: “I believe that I cannot by my own understanding or effort believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him.” The wise and intelligent rely upon their own abilities rather than God’s grace. They do not bear the yoke of freedom. Instead, they fashion yokes for others to shoulder life’s burdens.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “Thus says the Lord: Stand at the crossroads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it and find rest for your souls” (Jeremiah 6:16).  Our ancestors in faith have handed down two radical and distinctive ideas. The first is that being chosen by God is not an exclusive blessing as if God blesses some to the exclusion of others. No. From the very moment of creation (Genesis 1) up to and through our own baptism—the blessings of God are universal. God’s blessings are not exclusive, but rather instrumental.

God doesn’t love the ancient Hebrew people or anybody else because they are good. This truth just does not compute inside our binary, judging, competing, and comparing brains. God does not love you because you are good; God loves you because God is good, and then you can be good because you draw upon such an Infinite Source of Goodness. (Brian McLaren, “Jesus Came for Everyone,” Daily Meditations, 7/1/26)

The second radical and distinctive idea Jeremiah and others pass down to us is that God works inside human history. We are called to put our shoulders to the yoke, to engage the work of God unique to our time so that the divine commonwealth (or i.e. the kingdom) may come on earth as in heaven.

Apparently, I was an insufferable and inconsolable toddler. My nickname, coined by my uncle Norm, was ‘the mon-ster.’  Hearing these stories repeated my mom is quick to rise to my defense.  She says, ‘I was slow to wake up from a nap’, and/or ‘crabby when I was hungry’, and/or ‘ kind’a whiney when I got car sick’ which apparently, was like all the time—but finally, once the appropriate remedy could be administered, I became a lovely little child again. What was the magic cure?  It was simply to be held—preferably sitting on mama’s lap for a time put me in my right mind.

“My yoke is easy, and my burden is light,” Jesus said. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28 & 30). The yoke Jesus describes in our gospel today is a double yoke joining two animals, side by side, in their daily labor. Is it stretching the metaphor too far? Or is the yoke to which Jesus invites us simply a way of being held? We are embraced by grace by putting on the yoke of Christ. Suddenly the storm is stilled, the whirl of anxiety, the petty passions are driven away in God’s loving embrace. Embraced by grace, we do not become super-human –we simply become more human. We become the beloved, playful, creative, honest, and loving little children to whom, Jesus said, the kingdom of God belongs.

Beloved, it is time for us to grow up. The many challenges we face are global in scale. Unlike previous generations we will not resolve them with new technology or greater military force.  They require collaboration between cultures, among religions, across ancient divides. This is what it means to grow up. It does not mean that we won’t make mistakes.  It simply means that we can hold the good and bad of history together without flinching, that we can face the challenges before us with the confidence that comes from knowing we are not alone. We may not always or often be successful, but this is how we do God’s work with our hands. “Take my yoke, I am beside you; take and learn humility.” (ACS #1017)

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The Sword of Truth

Proper 7A-26

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”  (Matthew 10:34-37).  Family against family.  ‘Your foes will be members of your own household.’ Happy Father’s Day!?

For families already strained by political divisions, culture wars, and religious intolerance, Matthew 10 can feel like a slap in the face. For others who grew up in evangelical settings listening to sermons about obedience and submission, the devil and Hell, division and threat, this was truly a text of terror.

Jesus speaks of persecution, division, crosses, and losing one’s life. These are not comforting words. So, what’s going on?

This week’s gospel continues Jesus’ “Mission Discourse,” which we began last week. Jesus sent the disciples out to proclaim that “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Jesus was not attempting to frighten his disciples. He was preparing them. Three times he tells the disciples not to be afraid. It may be a simple fact of human nature. You and I are often more comfortable celebrating peace than truth. The unpleasant truth is always difficult, both to speak and to listen to.  We shield ourselves against its wounding accuracy –not just as individuals, but as families, denominations, as a people and as a nation.

As Jesus prepared the disciples for mission, he prepared them for resistance. “A disciple is not above the teacher. If Jesus himself has been misunderstood, maligned, and accused of serving evil (Beelzebul), then those who follow him should not be surprised when they experience similar opposition.” (Micah Krey, Writings on Recovery and Preaching, 4th Sunday After Pentecost, 2026)

The prophetic witness runs deep in our tradition. The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “If I say, “I will not mention [God] or speak any more in [God’s] name,” then within me there is something like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot” (Jeremiah 20:9). Hebrew prophets spoke truth to power in opposition to the Judean/Israeli government long ago. This was not antisemitic. Rather it was an expression of God’s justice and mercy. The prophet speaks painful words, so that the tender grace of God may take root in our hearts.

This is exhausting, of course. Jeremiah seems to have grown weary of truth telling. “I have become a laughingstock!  Everyone mocks me!” (Jeremiah 20:7).  Every prophet soon comes to realize that nobody loves you for being the enemy of their illusions.  Every prophet quickly discovers the almost unworldly power of homeostasis –the tendency of all systems to stubbornly resist change.  More than truth, “most of us want peace at any price –as long as the peace is ours and somebody else pays the price.” (William Sloan Coffin, Not to Bring Peace, But a Sword, February 16, 1992).

Jesus expressed the power and the pain of truth telling when he said, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” (v. 34). Jesus who teaches love of enemy, who commanded Peter to put away his sword in the garden, who entered Jerusalem riding not a war horse, but a donkey was not suddenly advocating violence. Rather, Jesus is describing the consequences of God’s kingdom breaking into the world. The truth shall set us free, but first, it will make a lot of people mad.

“Throughout Scripture, the image of the sword is connected not to physical violence but to the power of truthful speech and the Word of God. Proverbs says, “Rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing” (12:18). Hebrews describes the word of God as “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” (Hebrews 4:12). In Revelation, the risen Christ repeatedly carries a sharp sword that proceeds not from his hand but from his mouth (1:16; 19:15). The image is not one of military conquest or violent action but of truth spoken with divine authority. (Krey)

Jesus is not commanding violence. He is describing what happens when the kingdom of God comes near. He is not attacking family relationships. He is insisting that no loyalty can supersede loyalty to God.

We stand in need of such truth-telling. This period of 15 days that spans the space between Juneteenth and Independence Day is a unique opportunity for honest reckoning with our past to secure a more vibrant future. Occurring year after year, these days are a season of critical patriotism for our time. Especially as we celebrate and lament the semi-quincentennial of American. Might we develop a new civic liturgy that includes the creative interplay of lament and celebration, reckoning and repair, truth-telling and hope? (Robert P. Jones, “Let’s Tell a New Story: Juneteenth and a Season of Critical Patriotism,” Redeeming Democracy 6/19/26)

Interfaith celebrations of Juneteenth like the beautiful moving service this Friday in Edgewater are one way to do this. Prayerfully learning from the prophets of our age like Frederick Douglass (as we have done today, and for the next two Sundays) is another.

Nine years before the outbreak of the Civil War, July 5th, 1852, the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society of Rochester, New York, invited Frederick Douglass to speak at Corinthian Hall, the city’s most prestigious public venue. It was the 76th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Douglass stepped onto the high speaker’s platform without an introduction. In his very person he represented an impossibility. He is black. He is an escaped slave. He taught himself to read and write. He is, arguably, the most famous speaker of his age. Douglass was living proof of what was, in fact, possible and, at also, a living testament to the heart wrenching tragedy and wasted potential wrought by racism.

Cradling his 30-page text, Douglass drew on the tradition of the Hebrew prophets and delivered a long list of uniquely American blessings and woes. But he did not merely unleash anger at the hypocrisy of white celebrations of independence in a nation where chattel slavery remained legal. Douglass crafted a piece of art, what historian David Blight describes as a rhetorical “symphony in three movements.”

Douglass began by praising the genius of the founding fathers and referred to the Fourth of July as an American Passover. It is a holiday that celebrates the narrative we most like to tell ourselves about our origins and identity. It is here that we recite the story of American freedom, equality, and justice for all.

In middle portion of the speech, possessive pronouns shift from “our” to “your.” Douglass forcefully highlighted the distance between himself and his white audience. He addresses the other founding story of America, less celebrated, but just as persistent and deep: the America which an exclusive possession of white Christian men. It is this version of America which has again risen to prominence today. Does it surprise us? We cannot pretend it doesn’t exist. We must tell the truth if we are ever finally to root it out and defeat it. Douglass exposed the hypocrisy of slavery in a republic founded on the Declaration of Independence declaring that slavery “brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity a lie.”

In the final movement of the speech, Douglass again held out hope that the United States might yet live to be a nation worthy of its professed values. The struggle continues. The mission is ongoing. Jesus’ warnings about conflict and rejection are surrounded by assurances of God’s care. We, with the disciples, are reminded that nothing hidden will remain hidden forever, that truth ultimately comes to light, and that even the smallest sparrow does not fall apart from God’s knowledge. Indeed, all the hairs on your head have been counted. “When through fire-y trials your pathway shall lie, my grace, all sufficient, shall be your supply.  The flames shall not hurt you; I only design your dross to consume and your gold to refine.” (ELW # 796, “How Firm a Foundation”)

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