In the Middle of a Miracle

Advent 4A-22

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

I met a kid at tutoring on Monday night. His name was ‘Nottie.’ I had to ask him to repeat it for me.  I wasn’t sure I heard it right. ‘Naughty,’ I asked?  Barely interested and without looking up, he said, “yes.”  Obviously, he was already clued in and a little bored with the topic. His name sounds funny to English speakers.  My name, Montgomery, is unusual too. Suddenly I thought of all the ways kids at school might have teased him for something he had no part in choosing. I once asked my parents why they choose my name—thinking that if it had something to do with the Montgomery bus boycott, that would be cool. But no. It seems they just wanted something ‘different,’ that, and my mother liked the actor, Montgomery Clift.  I asked Nottie whether his name meant anything in his native language, Amheric. His response surprised me.  Yes, he said, ‘Nottie means ‘kissed by God.’

Beautiful. Sometimes a name can express all a parent’s hopes and dreams in a single word. Joseph’s name meant “God will give.”  It connected him to Joseph and his multi-colored dream coat. It connected his story to the indestructible promise God made to his ancestors to bless them with abundance throughout the generations.

Joseph was coming into his own. He would have a family, a career, maybe even his own business. Yet, the shock and scandal of Mary’s pregnancy threatened to shatter all his grand expectations. On one pivotal night, because of a single dream, Joseph chose to trade his own good name for one synonymous with disgrace and derision.  He would look like a fool to his friends and family. Joseph says yes. And the baby is born: Emmanuel, God-with-us, the promise of Israel. Joseph was kissed by God.

Joseph’s willingness to forsake conventional righteousness, ennobled him. That he changes direction overnight in a dark conversation makes him an Advent icon.  As Carl Jung might have said, Joseph was awakened by his dream. As ephemeral as this new dream was, both Mary and Joseph proved willing to turn their lives inside out so that the urgent prayers of Israel could be answered by the birth of a baby whose name would be, “save” (Matthew 1:18-25). (Suzanne, Suzanne Guthrie, At The Edge of the Enclosure, 2013).

It’s well known that Mother Teresa once had a profoundly vivid experience of the presence of Jesus as a young woman.  That vision was the beginning of her legendary ministry among the poorest of the poor in Calcutta, India.  Years later, near the end of her life, she was asked about it in an interview.  The reporter assumed she must have had many such experiences all through her amazing life.  Her answer was a surprise.  No, she said, it had happened only just that once –and never again.  Yet she had lived her entire life in faithfulness to that dream and that is why we honor her. Mother Teresa was kissed by God.  Beware the kiss of God.

We love to sing “Away in a Manger?” “Silent Night?” “Joy to the World?” These hymns evoke such warm feelings and teary-eyed tenderness we forget what stress the Holy Family must have been under. Our psalm today is full of lament in search of answers from God. “How long will your anger fume when your people pray?” (Psalm 80:4).  In a jam like Joseph, it’s only right he would be fitful and agitated, raise his fist and shout, “Why me, Lord?”  What have I done to deserve this?  Soon there will be other shoes to drop too. The holy family will flee to Egypt, and King Herod’s desperate attempt to kill baby Jesus will result in the slaughter of the innocents. Call Angel Gabriel. Get him back. This whole thing sounds wrong. Sometimes, we can be right in the middle of a miracle and still complain about it. Do you know that you too, are kissed by God?

Like Joseph and Mary, we stand apart to stand for the whole. We give ourselves to God’s dream for this fallen world. Can we see ourselves becoming like Joseph and Mary? Which dream shall we live by –the dreams approved by the world, or those which God has for us and our lives together?

Maybe you think Joseph and Mary were chosen because they were different—or because they were good—maybe even very, very good? Researchers confirm, over and over, the great majority of us still believe the way you get to chosen by God is by being a good person—that you get what you deserve. We hear this message everywhere playing on an endless nauseating loop. Santa’s coming so, ‘You’d better watch out, you better not cry, I’m telling you why –only good little boys and girls get presents—and all the rest on the naughty list get a lump of coal.

We Lutherans know better. By grace alone is central to who we are. Grace is God’s fundamental driving power, expressed by God’s dogged commitment to bring beauty out of what’s broken. Or, as the great contemporary theologian, Bono of U2 sang, grace travels outside of Karma. Joseph and Mary said yes to God’s preposterous, dangerous, adventurous invitation and that made all the difference. Others would call them naughty. Yet they were kissed by God. They lived by faith alone.

Which brings us to the greatest Christmas miracle of all.  I mean, why did God bother with Joseph and Mary at all?  Why take on flesh, live among us, suffer and die?  Well, apparently, God’s way of being is a call to radical solidarity.  Active, practical care is God’s way, not only of deepening relationship with us, but also of making worlds worth living in, including the whole more than human universe. Now that’s quite a Christmas gift.

We live in radical solidarity with all life.  We live, not with all the answers, but by faith. The Welsh poet -R.S. Thomas ( 1913-2000) wrote a poem called “The Bright Field” with some good advice for would-be dreamers of God.  He wrote:

I have seen the sun break through

To illuminate a small field for a while,

And gone my way and forgotten it

But that was the pearl of great price,

The one field that had the treasure in it.

I realize now that I must give all that I have to possess it.

Life is not hurrying on to a receding future,

Nor hankering after an imagined past.

It is turning aside like Moses

To the miracle of a lit bush,

To a brightness that seemed as transitory as your youth once,

But is the eternity that awaits you.

/by

Dark Night of the Soul

Advent 3A-22
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

It’s a blue Christmas for John the Baptist. He paces back and forth in his narrow cell. Imprisoned by King Herod, he questions the choices he’s made. Last Sunday, he seemed so sure of himself. John preached a baptism of fire and spirit in the wilderness beside the Jordan. But now, facing death, he’s not so sure. He sends messengers to question Jesus. “Are you the one, or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3).

Some might hand out demerits to John for his lack of faith. But not Jesus. He does not put John on the naughty list. Jesus doesn’t throw John under the bus. Questions and doubts are not enough to rupture their relationship or call into question John’s loyalty and dedication. As we say every Sunday, ‘Wherever you are, whatever your background, regardless of your doubts and questions, you are welcome in this community of faith.’

“Truly,” Jesus said, “I tell you no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist” (Matt 11:11). Yet, this is not the sort of faith story we like to tell—even though many of us, and, if we are honest, have lived some version of it. We like conversion stories that go straight from darkness to light, from ignorance to knowledge, from despair to joy and stay there. Yet, John’s story doesn’t follow this happy trajectory. It’s an anti-conversion story. “John’s journey is a backwards one. From certitude to doubt. From boldness to hesitation. From knowing to unknowing. From heavenly light to jail cell darkness.” (Debie Thomas, Journey with Jesus, “Has It All Been For Nothing?”, 12-8-19). All our striving, all our planning, all our praying and hoping— has it all been for nothing?

We might call it spiritual failure, or maybe faithlessness? In the sixteenth century, another John, Saint John of the Cross, would call it the dark night of the soul. We might judge ourselves for it. Jesus doesn’t. Notice, Jesus responds to his cousin’s pained question with composure, gentleness, and understanding. What was happening to John wasn’t fair. The stupid capricious power of King Herod cut John’s life short. This gospel teaches us it’s okay to doubt, question, rage, and shake our fist at God –as many psalmists do.

Yet, honestly, I think there is something more hidden within this gospel. Some wisdom that waits to open for us whenever we, like John, come close to treading on despair. In fact, something like the disillusionment John experienced may even be necessary for us to glimpse the joy and hope that comes from God alone. Of course, Advent is perfect for this. Our ancestors in faith passed down stories like this one about John to rekindle the spirit, to restore our imagination precisely in times when everything appears hopeless, to help us endure our own dark night of the soul.

Fears of the apocalypse seem to be everywhere in popular culture. There was Planet of the Apes and Mad Max. The Blade Runner and the Matrix. Zombies—lots of zombies. In Star Wars, The Hunger Games, and the endless Avenger series, good battles evil on a cosmic scale. Yes. The Advent blues seem to fit us like an old pair of jeans. In the 1950’s we were so sure of ourselves, so confident about the future. We had conquered the evil of fascism and overcome the great depression. Now our addiction to an economy of extraction, the politics of fear, an endless war on terrorism, the rise of Christian nationalism, and the propagation (seemingly) everywhere of religion that fosters hate rather than love, clouds our optimism for the future with fear. In the darkness of night, the question creeps into consciousness—has it all been for nothing?
Our ancestors in faith knew this moment would come. They packed the mysterious themes and images of apocalypse into the bible to open and reveal their wisdom in just such a time as this. After all, they knew about disillusionment. They too, experienced desolation. The economy we worshipped, the privilege and high esteem in which we held ourselves is coming to an end. Yes, they council, but do not fear. These are but the birth pangs, the beginning of wisdom which holds the cure to warring madness. Could we dare to hope the world is about to turn?

See, our ancestors bequeathed to us the key that opens the gates of the New Jerusalem. Faith in Jesus unlocks our fear and frees our imagination to glimpse the world God intends which is already here and not yet. We are meant to be citizens of this counter world in partnership with creation, where love is love, and beauty is revealed in the harmony of contrasts. We are called to walk by faith into the heart of God’s vision for life together that God will show us.
But Jesus doesn’t sugar coat it. The baby born in a barn will die a criminal death. John’s death will be both tragic and dumb—a travesty of injustice. To add icing on the cake, soon, Jesus’ mother and brothers will show up too, presumably wanting to question their problematic child and brother and lock him away at home. How does Jesus answer?

Our reading today 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). God’s heroes may suffer violence, yet they are not the ones who inflict it.

This holy season of Advent invites us to honor doubt, despair, and silence as reasonable reactions to a broken world. To create sacred space for grief, mourn freely, and rage against injustice. To let joy be joy, sorrow be sorrow, horror be horror. To feel deeply because that’s exactly what God does. (Thomas)
In the gloom of his prison cell, Jesus prepared John to meet the living God who is always more, who’s coming is always different, whose power is always greater and more glorious than we could have imagined. See, the Lord Jesus stoops from heaven to put a new song in our heart. See, Christ comes to walk with us. Jesus enters our life with comfort and courage no matter how messy or fraught with ugly strife, bickering or bitterness. Jesus comes not in wrath but in love; not as one who seeks to destroy, but as one with power to transform and renew. Jesus took on flesh and lived among us. This spirit of Christ is upon you. Our dark night is ending. The first light of hope breaks now as the dawn.

/by

Your Armor of Light

Advent 1A-22

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Jesus sat and spoke to the disciples.  He is somewhere on the Mount of Olives across the Kidron valley from the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  The time and manner of his coronation as Lord and King remain unimaginable to his little band of followers.  They still don’t know what’s about to hit them though Jesus had told them on three separate occasions.

That moment of surprise eventually comes for us all. The Day of the Lord comes like a thief in the night. We are thrust to the forefront. We are called upon to bear the weight of discipleship. The kingdom arrives like the floodwaters that bore up Noah’s ark (Matthew 24: 38, 43). The moment of decision confronts us with the challenge to wage the faith with our own words and actions. Advent—this discipline of waiting, of watching, of expecting God’s liberating grace to break in upon our short and shallow lives—shocks us from complacency. Advent counsels us to expect the unexpected.

Of course, when that Kairos moment arrives, filled to overflowing with the bounteous possibility and potential of God’s redeeming grace, most often, we fumble the hand-off, or manage to appreciate the graciousness of the moment only with the benefit of hindsight. Perhaps it is cold comfort. The moments we choose to act selfishly, or greedily, or jealously, or with vengeance pile up and compound our loss, shame, guilt and regret, but Jesus does not use our failures of omission or commission to kick us off his team.

“Eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage” (Mt. 24:38) as they did in the days of Noah will not put you in the goat line as opposed to the sheep line on the day of Christ. The people who lived in the days of Noah or the unlucky person whose house was about to be robbed are not singled out by Jesus in our gospel today because they were more sinful than any others. Instead, their mess up was a failure of imagination. They were unprepared for grace when it came because they thought nothing could or would ever change. They were too cynical for faith to get ahold of them.

Cynicism may appear fashionable, or make you seem smarter or more cosmopolitan, but cynicism has deathly consequences. We risk accepting politics as usual, or accepting lies as the truth, or becoming complacent in the face of injustice, or fearfully assigning blame to victims and outsiders, and thinking too small. We risk being obtuse and unaware as the wonder and beauty of grace play around us.

This season of Advent is a call to wake from weak resignation to the status quo. Advent is strong gospel medicine to open our eyes, our heart, our mouth, and our hands to the surprising in-breaking presence of God here, now, in our midst today—and all our future todays—and at upon the moment of our death, until the end of time. Christ is the alpha and omega. Everything comes from Christ and is going to Christ.

Little by little and all at once today’s gospel trains us to expect the unexpected just as Joseph did in responding to the Angel Gabriel’s assurances to reconcile with Mary—and just as Noah did before the rains came—and as the disciples did in following Jesus after the resurrection. Advent breaks open our imagination to follow the winds of the Spirit moving now in unexpected ways in your life and in mine, and in our life together, to be a living sanctuary of hope and grace.

My sincere wish for this Advent gospel is that it breaks through what we think we know about the bible that distorts our understanding of its message. Since about the fifth or sixth century, Christians in the West began to wear spectacles with a Greek and Roman philosophical lens. This Greco-Roman lens distorts and obscurs the gospel witness, including our understanding of texts like ours from Matthew today. Wearing these spectacles Christians began seeing things in the bible narrative that aren’t there.

 Through centuries, this distorted view compounded until the biblical narrative we inherited, and literally everyone already knows by heart, is a story line in six parts which, goes something like this: 1) the perfection of God’s Eden was; 2) followed by the human fall into Sin; 3) so the condemnation under which we are all now living; 4) must be followed, upon our death; 5) either by life in heaven or; 6) eternal, conscious torment in hell.

Sound familiar? The art, literature, and theology of Western civilization overflows with reflection and/or rejection of these themes by which all history, and all human experience, and all our own experience is assessed. (Brian D. McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity, pp. 33-62)

When we remove our Greco-Roman-colored glasses the message of the Torah, the prophets, Jesus, and the first disciples’ changes. We are blessed with scholarship which has begun to let us see behind the Greek and Roman lens our theological forebears laid over it. A new kind of Christianity has come into view that is actually very, very old. The familiar six-step story line of the bible collapses into three: 1) God’s good, evolving world is marred by human evil and sin; 2) rather than reject us God works to liberate and reform us along with the rest of creation; and 3) God calls us to inhabit the sacred dream of the peaceable kingdom like we read about today in Isaiah here on earth as in heaven. (McLaren)

Creation. Exodus/Liberation. The Peaceable Kingdom. That’s it. That’s the story. Even now, God’s wisdom draws nations up to a higher level of relating, so disputes are settled nonviolently, wisely, and peacefully. God gets involved in human suffering and injustice to pull us out of it. Perhaps what is most shocking and unexpected for us this Advent is that the Day of the Lord comes –not in the sky but here on earth; not merely upon our death but also now, today; not outside of history for all eternity, but happening now within it; not for humanity alone but for all life to thrive.

Our ancestors in faith spent two generations crossing the desert to get to the promised land overflowing with milk and honey. Today, we are called to journey by faith, not to a place, but to a day when “they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks” (Isaiah 2:4b).  In Advent, we await Jesus’ birth. We await the coming of the savior. We look for the kingdom to come. We search for these gifts of God which are already here, and also, very far away. We live by faith and not by sight. We are people who imagine how the world can be different, who dare to dream the impossible dream and to live it. By this faithful work we have glimpsed the peaceable kingdom, we have seen a living sanctuary of hope and grace take shape among us.

This kind of Advent is not about rapture but rupture. The rapture is not a biblical idea. On the cross Jesus himself ultimately became the one left behind. When all others got swept up in the spirit of violence against him Jesus was the only one not caught up in it. There was no rapture to save Jesus from the cross but resurrection, like that which we are offered by the Word, and in the font, and at the table.  God’s rupture brings transformation and change. (Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary, Advent 1A)

Advent wants to shake us out of our complacency, out of our cynicism, out of our prejudice, out of what we think we already know, out of our ideologies and learned expectations—all the things that keep us from seeing the abundant grace God pours out new and fresh into each moment. See, now is the time to wake from sleep. The night is far gone, the day is near. Let us lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light…” (Romans 13:11-12a).

/by

Jesus or Judas?

Christ the King, C-22

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Today’s gospel offers us a choice. Shall we follow Jesus or Judas? It may sound like a rhetorical question.  After all, as every kid in Sunday school knows, the right answer to every question is always Jesus.  But the question carries us beyond what we know to assess the truth about how we live. There, the correct answer can be both more cutting and more difficult.

On his coronation day, the king on a cross invites us to live as he does.  See, the door to life lived in God with Jesus stands wide open. A hideous instrument of torture and death is transformed. The cross has become for us a trail marker, a cairn, to mark our path, and guide our feet. On the cross, Jesus shows us the way. He models for us how to live. “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said, “today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) Today. With me. Paradise. Jesus’ gracious words of forgiveness to the criminal hanging beside him are keys that unlock God’s grace in our life.  We are called to be a cruciform people.

The way of Jesus destroys the wisdom of the wise and the discernment of the discerning. Jesus is a different kind of king to be sure.  The passion narratives of all four gospels contrast the way of 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 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 to losing his life on the cross.   (Pastor David Henry)

The way of Judas prioritizes self-preservation.  The way of Jesus values love. Think what Jesus was up against.  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 teaches there is nothing you can do to make God not love you.  ‘You can disappoint me,’ he says. ‘You can break my heart and grieve my Spirit.’  Yet the steadfast love and character of God shall remain unchanged. For “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).

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

Look.  It’s not easy.  In the name of Christ, the Church has embraced Judas over Jesus again and again throughout history.  The Doctrine of Discovery endorsed colonialism, genocide, and land theft and continues as people of faith stand by and watch the destruction of the planet.  Guided by the gospel of Judas more than Jesus, great majorities of sincere Christians supported the institution of slavery and remain willfully blind to the legacy of structural, systemic racism and privilege today. We grieve our evangelical brothers and sisters who energetically proclaim the anti-gospel of Christian nationalism which undermines biblical teaching for social justice, concern for the immigrant, and promotes the way of the gun over the way of peace. People of faith support bigotry and violence aimed at the LGBTQ community.  We grieve with families and friends of victims of those killed and wounded last night in a mass shooting in Colorado Springs. Lifted upon the cross, the gospel of Jesus calls us to account for our sin, to acknowledge our failings, and to climb down from our high horse.

Jesus hung in the gap between one man’s derision and another man’s hunger. Upon his death, the powers that be brushed their hands, confident they had put an end to this Jesus business once and for all.  Yet it was not the end, but only the beginning.  Death is inevitable—yes.  None of us can predict it.  We cannot avoid it.  None can control it.  Yet Christ has shown us we need not fear it.  The way of Judas is wrong. Life isn’t about just surviving. Jesus has shown us how to live.

St. Paul testified that Jesus is our cosmic king, “for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible…” (Colossians 1:16). Paul likely quoted these words from an early Christian hymn.  Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of the dead” (1:15).  Jesus rules, not with a scepter, but from a cross.  He reigns, not with the power of a dictator, but with power like that of an infant child in a manger.  He rules with love and not control.  He seeks brothers and sisters, not subjects.  The power of Jesus restores life and builds people up rather than dominates them.  The power of Christ the King, like the babe born in Bethlehem, or like an exhausted, bleeding, and humiliated man dying upon a cross –is as fragile and as tenacious as Life itself.

 Jesus or Judas? Christ the King loves you with an undying, unbreakable love. See, death is swallowed up by life and Life is all that remains. Jesus has shown us the Way of Life leads through and beyond death.  Despite our mistakes and failures, Jesus calls us to return to the path. Today. With me. In paradise.  My prayer for this hard season in America’s history is that we may help one another find ways to walk as Jesus walked — to spend ourselves for love of neighbors and strangers—to listen, to protect, to endure, to bless and to be a living sanctuary of hope and grace.

/by

In From the Storm

Proper 28C-22
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. 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 the world around them swirls with conflict and chaos they have a place in their hearts and minds to come in from the storm.

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 for them to imagine. Yet to the hopeless poor like those Stefani serves, people who are feeling crushed by the weight of life circumstances then constrain and oppress them, Jesus’ ominous warning sounds like good news.

Among us, bible stories about ‘apocalypse’ and ‘end-times’ call to mind God’s wrathful destruction of the world and of sinners. That’s because, we, like the disciples, mostly have the wrong idea. We’re going to get a lot of apocalyptic stories of the end-times these next few weeks which aim to kindle our hope not to enflame our fear. Bible apocalypse was made for times like these when wars and rumors of wars swirl around us and the future is so uncertain.

An ‘apocalypse’ is an unveiling, and the ‘end-times’ are when the eternal things are revealed, not to destroy the world but to restore it, not to end all life on this planet but so that it may flourish. Apocalypse points the way in a world of endings toward the peaceable kingdom of God, and to new beginnings which are always and everywhere being springing up in, with, under, and around us. Thanks be to God. Jesus invites us to come in from the cold.

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. From this vantage point so-called big things become very small and certain other things which may seem small now, loom large.

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 was a bewildering event that 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].

It’s time to come in from the cold. Jesus does this, in part, by popping our spiritual bubbles. The disciples drew 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 will remain of our life when we are done living it? Come in from the cold, 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,” implying that our conceptions of God and faith must always fall short, always fail. “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. In other words, let’s undergo apocalypse so that truth will set us free. Let’s open our eyes, our hearts, our minds to see the world as Jesus sees it. (Debie Thomas) Open your imagination. Come in from the cold.

Christians like Stefani remain joyful yet engage fully in all the sadness in the world. Her sense of calm and confidence in the face of tremendous grief comes from knowing she is already living in the undying life of God. Because she imagines herself seated at the heavenly banquet, she has resources in God to draw upon that never run out. Stefani says, ‘It’s a Good Friday world we live in.” (p. 37). But we are an Easter people.

If you’re like me, then you breathed a sigh of relief this week. Authoritarianism and the toxic oxymoron of Christian nationalism suffered defeat. As of yesterday, every election denier who sought to become the top election official in their state lost at the polls (NYT, 11/13/22). Yet we’re not out of the woods our future, and that of future generations, still hang in the balance. We must come in from the cold. Dwell in the shelter of the Lord. Our ancestors in faith marked a lighted pathway out of the swirl and chaos stoked by those who want to keep us locked in our fear.

In the midst of the endings and upheaval which are part of every life, Jesus points toward new beginnings. When we follow Jesus we begin to imagine and “…to make a new community — one that embodies peace, justice, and righteousness; that gives itself to hope, faith, and love. It is a people gathered in sharing and sabbath, in generosity and gratitude. That community will insist that new life comes of every death, that resurrection is a practice and not a miracle. In the midst of the world’s decay, the Kingdom is coming — not with a bang but with a whisper” (Diana Butler Bass, Sunday Musings, 11/13/22).

It’s time to come in from the Cold. “People who live in such a way — especially in a world whirling with wars and rumors and 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 signs are really important. This age is, indeed, ending and God’s reign is near. But don’t be surprised. Stay the course. Tell your story. Honor God’s name” (Bass).

/by

Lean Back, Kick Forward

All Saints C-22
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
November 6, 2022

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.)

Each season offers insight into the character of God our creator. But for me, chief among them, is the fall. We’ve had a spectacular fall! We are thankful for perfect shirt sleeved days stomping through fallen leaves. We are grateful for horizontal sunshine that bathes the world in dramatic light and shadow. We are grateful for the spectacular kaleidoscope of incandescent colors which reveal themselves after hiding in plain sight during the rest of the year. And there is the somewhat mournful turning inward quality of the fall. After the leaves fall you can see further into the forest. Today, in grief and love, we pause to gaze further into the mysterious inner working of ourselves inherited from those that came before us who journey with us still.

We—each of us—are the product of people. People who nurtured us, taught us, and formed us. Yes. After the leaves fall, we can indeed see further into the forest. Today, we give thanks the loved ones who went before us. Today, at the Table and at the font, we gather with the generations in faith, who, even now, accompany us, cheer for us, and pray for us along with all the saints in light in Christ Jesus.

One of those gathered here with us today, who lingers large in my memory, is Pastor Stephen Swanson. Pastor Steve was my teaching parish pastor more than thirty years ago while I was still in seminary. I spent a little more than a year working and attending at Resurrection Lutheran in Lakeview. Yesterday, I attended his funeral. I credit Pastor Steve with awakening a love for the liturgy in me. Worship at Resurrection Lutheran brought worship to life. I believe my first experience of the Triduum and the Easter Vigil was at Resurrection. Pastor Steve was a remarkable example of a parish pastor who seemed always ready to respond to injustice. Steve hosted Bishop Medardo Gomez of El Salvador many times to raise support and awareness in Chicago who was arrested and tortured for speaking out against the death squads and other abuses of human rights taking place there. While I was still in seminary and doing field work at the Chicago office of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (as it was known at that time), the staff was desperate. They had just five days to prepare for a family of 23 Somalis coming to Chicago. Where could they find a host congregation for so many? I called Steve. Almost without thinking, Steve said yes. A cry of joy rose up in heaven and in the LIRS office that day.

Children playing on a swing lean way back and then kick forward to go higher and higher. Lutherans lean back into the gathering of saints, lean back into the wisdom of the ages, lean back into Word and Sacraments, lean back into Solo gratia, sola scriptura, sola fide, and sola Christos, (by grace alone, by scripture alone, by faith alone, and by Christ alone) and then kick forward. We generate momentum to swing higher and take flight by leaning on the wisdom of the past as a springboard.
St. Paul writes, “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). The Eucharist presents the truth of this gospel in a mixture of words and actions. You cannot think about such a universal truth logically; you can only slowly digest it! “Eat it and know who you are,” St. Augustine said. Baptism is the same. In water and the Word we rise daily to discover yet again who we are truly created to be.

Only slowly does the truth become believable. Finally, 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 are 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.

We fall into the rhythm of discipleship, lean back and kick forward following the example of Jesus. Can the gospel’s mission impossible become more possible? 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)

Theologians will say these Beatitudes are descriptive of God’s kingdom, not prescriptive of what we need to try and be more of. Regular people say, ‘Sure Jesus, in an ideal world, I might be willing to do all these things—but in case you haven’t noticed—this not an ideal world!’ That’s when the Communion of Saints begin to speak to us from the shadows of our awareness, 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 way to begin making a better world unless evil is returned with forgiveness and mercy. Let all the Saints sing alleluia!

I go to prepare a place for you. There’s a reserved seat for you right at the great banquet with all the saints in light Jesus has laid out for us. Come, share in the inheritance of all the saints. Come to the table prepared for you.

/by

Join the Parade

Proper 26C-22 – Reformation Sunday

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

“Zaccheus was a wee, little man, and a wee, little man was he.” It’s hard for me to read this gospel without that bible song running through my head. “He climbed up in a sycamore tree, For the Lord he wanted to see.” This wee little story, found only in the gospel of Luke, holds obvious fascination for children. Yet, it is no mere plaything. We are living in the age of Zacchaeus. For all our privilege, education, and wealth the Church finds itself looking again to Jesus hoping to learn what we’re missing. I wonder, what’s more surprising, that rich little Zacchaeus was curious enough to climb a tree to see Jesus; or what happened after he climbed down? He was open enough to follow with him.  Can we, like Zacchaeus, climb down from our own privilege and our modern life-style, to follow Jesus?

This Reformation Sunday would be impossible without Luther’s famous hymn A Mighty Fortress (ELW #503-505). There are no less than three versions in our hymnal! Luther’s hymn is a paraphrase of Psalm 46, which sings of a river “whose streams make glad the city of God” (46:4). Rivers bring life-giving waters, and rivers flood and reshape the terrain despite our best efforts to control them. The Holy Spirit is such a river. Reformation is the Spirit’s never-ending work. The Spirit upended the life of little Zacchaeus, knocked blind Saul from his horse on the road to Damascus, blew the doors off the Church in 1517, and courses through our lives today.

Our Lutheran ancestors were protesters before they were reformers—they accused the church of their day of being too rich, too political, in thrall to kings and princes, having sold its soul to the powerful.  They taught, and argued for freedom—spiritual, economic, and political—and for God’s justice to be embodied in the church and the world. (Diana Butler-Bass)

 “[Luther] removed the barrier which put priests nearer to God. He encouraged priests to marry. Ordained ministry suddenly became about preaching and teaching rather than acting as civil judge, tax collector, and/or manager of large estates. One surprising consequence of the Reformation was that, by the 1550’s, the number of clergy persons in Protestant cities dropped by as much as two-thirds (Stephen Ozment). Priesthood became less profitable. Now, the faithful could serve God by being a shoemaker or blacksmith as well as by being a priest. Empty monasteries became hospitals, hospices, and schools.

Before Luther, the notion that every individual should read and interpret the bible for himself or—worse—herself, instead of deferring to learned authorities, would have seemed outrageous and dangerous in premodern societies everywhere else in the world. Luther’s Sola Scriptura, the belief that every individual should read and weigh biblical teaching for themselves was astonishing on many levels. It led to an explosion of literacy among both men and women, that literally radiated out from Wittenberg, spread throughout Europe, and later across the globe. Sola scriptura is credited with energizing innovation, with laying the legal groundwork for representational democracy, modern economic prosperity, and the flourishing of the science. (Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World.)

That’s the good news. The Protestant Reformation brought profound and positive social change. Yay God. Yet we now see it also cast a very long shadow. European wars of religion stretched on for 125 years. The natural world suffered as it was emptied of value except for what could be extracted from it.  The diverse peoples of the world became subjects to be ruled, converted, killed, or enslaved—and the Church enthusiastically lent its stamp of approval to the whole project of global domination. No. The Spirit is not yet done with us. Could it be time, finally, to climb down from our lofty self and join the all-people’s parade?

I challenge anyone to be a better, more industrious, or more creative servant of the gospel than Emmy Evald. Emmy, our hero, the ultimate matriarch of Immanuel, was college roommate and life-long friend of Jane Adams. She was the ally and friend of Susan B. Anthony. Yet, like all of us, Emmy could only see so far. Emmy was a suffragette but not an abolitionist.  She built schools, hospitals, and homes for poor women throughout the U.S., Puerto Rico, China, India, Africa, and the Holy Land to bring good news to lost souls she believed were living in darkness and lost to God without Christianity. Yes. We, like Emmy, once were blind, but now we see, don’t we? How service to the gospel became tragically mixed with the poison and arrogance of white supremacy?  Jesus bids us come down.  He wants to make a home with us.

Like rich little Zacchaeus we stand high up in our lofty perch of accumulated Western wealth wrung from the sweat of other people’s labor, living on stolen land waiting, watching, and hoping for Jesus to show us again what our lives are missing. Jesus sees us. Jesus bids us to learn from our mistakes. As we stand near the end of 2022 and look over into 2023, we know the terrain ahead has been flooded is being reshaped and will be changed. We are living amid a new reformation. Yay God?

The story of rich little Zacchaeus points the way to forgiveness and inclusion. These are Jesus’ most urgent and often repeated lessons. Forgiveness and inclusion are the practical names of love. Without them love is no more than a sentimental valentine. Forgiveness and inclusion are also the two practices that most undercut human violence. (Richard Rohr, Things Hidden, 150-151).

Notice: Jesus didn’t ask Zacchaeus to confess his faith or pass a spiritual litmus test. Jesus does not condemn, lecture, or ignore him but simply challenges him to true conversion. Zacchaeus response is equally surprising. He says yes with his whole being, transforming his life without hesitation. Grace is that simple. It’s that amazing. There is nothing to do but climb down from our trees and join the parade.

Zacchaeus was a sinner by anyone’s standards, supporting the occupying Roman government through tax collection, cheating his own people in the process, and becoming a very rich man. Jesus’ words scandalize the crowd and stun Zacchaeus: “Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house” (Luke 19:5). Without hesitation, Zacchaeus responds to Jesus’ invitation with equal generosity. He opens his house, heart, and life by proclaiming that “half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor,” and from those he has cheated, he will “repay it four times over.” In other words, Zacchaeus is even willing to pay reparations.

The Baptist theologian A.J. Conyers called the ongoing work of the Spirit “correcting the correction.” The work of genuine reformation, whether of the institutional church, or that of our individual lives, is never finished. We stand here in need of renewal and restoration of mind and spirit.  We come here to stand in the light of grace and to shine once again with some small portion of the image and likeness of God. This is our story.  This is our song. God who formed and reforms us calls us out to join the Jesus parade.  Amen.

/by

When It’s Wrong to Be Right

Proper 25C-22

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

Today’s gospel is like a Far Side cartoon. It tells an entire story in a single frame—only not a very funny one. The Pharisee in our gospel today was, as Mark Twain might have described him, “a good man in the worst sense of the word.”  I wish I could say I don’t recognize him. Will religion ever be free from those who use it merely to aggrandize themselves? Our evangelical siblings in faith have sparked a fire fueled by conservative religion and politics which now burns beyond their control and that threatens to replace democracy with their narrow-minded theocracy ruled by men like this Pharisee in our gospel today.

The Pharisee was religiously righteous. The other, a tax collector, was universally despised, a traitor to his people, and aid to the foreign oppressor in Rome. The religious expert 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 prayed loudly and only “about himself;” whereas the tax collector could barely pray at all. The Pharisee puffed out his chest in pride; the publican beat his breast in sorrow.

Yet, Jesus said, the respectable, reputable believer, so competent and accomplished, who had done everything right, was rejected, whereas the secular sinner — the disreputable, inadequate, and incompetent failure — “went home justified before God.” (Daniel Clendenin)

Jesus said, “I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Luke 5:32). His words echo the accusation of his enemies who complained: “this man welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2).  In fact, many sinful people followed Jesus. Today, we might call them “failures.” Failures flocked to Jesus. They felt safe, somehow sheltered rather than judged; valued rather than dismissed; called rather than belittled; transformed rather than labeled. When they were with Jesus, the kingdom came to earth just as it is in heaven. Can Jesus accomplish the same today among us?

The parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in Luke contrasts two characters set in bold relief. Together they paint us a picture of two ways of being religious. One way is death-dealing, the other is life-giving. In the kingdom of heaven ruled by our Lord Jesus Christ, the winner loses, and the loser wins.

Lutherans know this. We are sanctified by grace alone. Yet, like the Pharisee, somehow, we keep trying to make religion a ladder that leads up to God –or that takes us at least one step higher than the rest of our neighbors. But self-justification doesn’t work, and neither is it necessary. God accepts me “just as I am.”  Full stop. We have a hard time accepting that God comes down to us, which, after all, is the meaning of the Incarnation (see Philippians 2:5-8). We must 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 man. How often do we have to look at the Crucified and miss the point? Follow Jesus on this pathway of descent. Walk the way of his cross. Learn the wisdom of winning by losing so that you may be more kind, that you may be a better listener, that you may grow thicker skin, become more compassionate, more ready to cry foul when others suffer injustice, that you may be more generous, more welcoming, more hospitable, that you may be a better lover, friend, parent, spouse, sibling, and neighbor and may we let the kingdom come 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 can receive mercy, and only those who forgive will be forgiven (Luke 6:36-38).  The Pharisee had enough religion to be virtuous, but not enough to be humble.  As a result, his religion drove him away from the tax collector rather than toward him. (Culpepper, Luke, New Interpreter’s Bible).  Ironically, his religion became an obstacle that stood between him and the saving power of God.  D.L. Moody once said, “God sends no one away empty except those who are already full of themselves.”

It’s like one of those quizzes you take on the internet. Which type of Christian are you today?  Are you channeling your inner pharisee or your repentant tax collector? We take the measure of our faith by its fruits.  A humble heart and a hunger for justice offer more evidence of grace than does any religious success.

Luther encouraged Christians to awake each morning and rededicate themselves to the spirit of reformation found in baptism. Baptism makes us all equals –equally unable to be righteous in God’s eyes –equally lucky and blessed by God’s generous mercy and forgiveness. The grace of God poured out for us in Christ Jesus sets us free to love and serve one another as equals; to embrace our inner-pharisee and be healed.

The punchline in Jesus’ one-panel parable-cartoon from our gospel today is the realization that God loves both. God loves the tax collector and the pharisee the same. Grace opens a door out from anger, division, grievance, and tribe. To find our way into that place, into what has been called the peaceable kingdom, Jesus says, we need only seven words — the same ones mumbled by the tax collector as he stood at a distance from the temple and stared at the ground: “God, have mercy on me, a failure.”  Cast your unadorned self upon God and experience the inward flow of grace. This is the love we need to heal and to feel confident in our connection to God and each other.  We are made human again.  Enemies become friends and allies. This is how the kingdom comes and we are a living sanctuary of hope and grace. We become circles of people here at Immanuel around the altar, at the font, at the tutoring table, and among neighbors including children, and youth in which it is possible to glimpse and to feel the power and the presences of God.  How great is that?

/by

Can I Get a Witness?

St. Luke, Evangelist 10-22
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

It happened so quickly. We were sleeping with the windows open. It was early May of last year. I woke up to a scratchy metal-on-metal sound, like someone dragging a file cabinet across the sidewalk. Then, more awake, I heard it again. I stumbled onto the balcony in time to see Russell’s 2008 Prius being lowered to the ground. Two men dressed in black had just stolen the catalytic converter. Catalytic converter thefts are on the rise and have nearly tripled in Chicago this year!

What happened next was like an episode of the Keystone Cops. I yelled and they rushed to get away. 10 or 12 stolen converters spilled out of their van onto the road. As they raced to pick them up, I fumbled with my phone, still half asleep without my glasses and took a video. Later, talking to the police, I realized I was just another eyewitness with a fuzzy story and a blurry video not helpful at all to the police.

At his Ascension Jesus told the disciples to go and tell what they had seen and heard, “You are witnesses of these things,” Jesus said (Luke 24:48). As eyewitnesses to criminal activity, we often get the facts wrong. But there is another way to witness that we are often right. Our lived experience is more reliable, and even, invaluable. This type of witness goes by another name we call wisdom. Wisdom stories, from people who gave witness to what life has taught them fill the pages of scripture and are to be treasured. This is the kind of witness Jesus to which Jesus calls us today.

I am such a witness. I tell you, some of the most alive people I have known have been people living near death. I can attest that hospitals rooms are as good a place to encounter the living God as church sanctuaries. In a hospital room I helped a man dying of AIDS plan his funeral. In the hospital I spent an unforgettable night with my grandmother before she died. In intensive care, I spent the last 20 minutes of a man’s life with his family gathered around him to say goodbye while he slowly and irreversibly bled to death.

Each of these sad events (and with many others I could recount) are engraved upon my memory in a way I think I will never forget, yet, not in the way that you might think. Each of these occasions is memorable to me—not for their horror– but for their gracefulness. I am a witness. These events stand out for me as moments filled with the presence of God. Each was an occasion to glean wisdom—no about death or dying, but about life and living.

On this, the festival of St. Luke, we remember the traditional author of the Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, who is identified with the Church’s ministry of healing. In Jesus Christ, the dominion of God has broken into our world, bringing wholeness, and peace. One-fifth of the gospels relate to Jesus’ ministry of healing. It is a misconception to say that Jesus came to save “sin-sick” souls. Jesus didn’t stop there. Jesus brought both physical and mental health to those he healed. He restored balance and vitality to the wider community. His mission was to defeat the powers of evil that permeate our world and our lives. Health is not the absence of illness. It is the presence of God reaching into every aspect of our community, joining our lives with all life in the universe.

This Spirit of Life is upon you. It is the Spirit of God’s shalom. We bear the mark of health and healing upon our foreheads in the sign of the cross from baptism. Where there is any weariness, we are called and strengthened to be bear witness in solidarity. Wherever people are hungry, we are called and strengthened to be food. Where there is bitterness and strife, we are called and strengthened to be agents of reconciliation. Where there is illness and despair, we are called and strengthened to be gospel medicine. We acknowledge and repent that so much disease is not caused by viruses or infections but by poverty, which, so often, is the result of human oppression, exploitation, and war.

How can we do this? Is it by an act of will? Shall we set personal goals or make resolutions? No. So often, we hear this default advice on growing in Christ and making change, It can be summed up in five words: ‘Try harder to be better.’ “It’s a form of growth-by-management that uniquely appeals to people living in Western culture, where ‘pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps’ is the 11th Commandment” (Rick Lawrence, Friday Thoughts, Vibrant Faith, 10/14/22). It’s not only a failed strategy, but also it is not biblically true. It does not build us up; but rather, only wears us down.

Our ancestors in faith offer us wisdom. They tell of a road less traveled. “Jesus did not promote a “try harder to be better” approach to growth, or as a response to sin. Instead, He urged us to “abide in Him,” so that the life that emanates from Him would flow through us.” That’s it. “Jesus’ invitation is not a call from the boss to up our production; it’s a call from our Lover, who wants us to come to bed. Our lives are really about drawing ever nearer to Jesus, the source of ‘living water’—not trying ever harder to be a better Christian” (Lawrence).

Upon his death, the curtain in the Temple was torn in two (Luke 23:45). The kingdom of heaven is nigh. Salvation and healing in the bible, often go by the same word, ‘sozo.’ Both are at hand. ‘The world, the universe, is the “body of God:” all matter, all flesh, all myriad beings, things, and processes that constitute physical reality are in and of God’ (Sallie McFague, The Body of God: An Ecological Theology). See, the world is heaven adjacent. Wellness and peace are restored in us as we step across the threshold of faith and into the embrace of Christ our savior.

The renewal of our lives and communities is not something we achieve all by ourselves. Shalom –a balance of mind, body, spirit and community—is a product of healthy communities with Christ in the center. With God as our companion, the prophet Isaiah testifies, ‘the waters shall appear over the burning sand and the thirsty ground shall become a pool. The tongue of the speechless shall sing for joy and the lame shall leap like a deer’ (Isaiah 35:6-7).

/by

Who Will Be Neighbor?

Proper 22C-22

Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

A hymn inspired by today’s gospel sung in Austria goes like this:

Lord, we are your worthless servants

Doing only what we must

And our deeds would be amazing

If our faith were specks of dust

But, instead, we cause to stumble

Little ones who come to Thee

Tie a millstone ‘around our necks and

Drown us in the deep blue sea. (Austrian Hymn)

I promise.  You won’t find that hymn in the ELW!  But you will find these words in the bible.  They cause us to wonder, just what kind of friend do we have in Jesus?  The demands of discipleship are daunting.  Sometimes faith feels heavy.

Columbus Day is now also Indigenous People’s Day. Mass incarceration is the New Jim Crow.  What we called ‘progress,’ is killing us. Weighed down by problems of our own making, added to the needs of the poor, piled on top our personal struggles, faith can feel like a millstone tied around our necks.

Feeling something like this dreadful weight, the disciples felt inadequate. “Lord, increase our faith!” they plead (Luke 17:5). They are on the way from Galilee to Jerusalem. They walk.  Jesus talks.  The disciples take notes.  Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:13b). ‘Offer forgiveness to everyone who asks –not seven times, but seventy times seven!’ (vs. 4). When the crowds were hungry the disciples wanted to send them away; no Jesus said, you give them something to eat (9:12-13).  When a father with a demon-possessed boy asked the disciples for help, they didn’t know what to do. Jesus called them faithless and obtuse, unwilling to learn (9:38-41).  When the twelve heard about a successful exorcist working independently from them, they wanted to stop him; no Jesus said, leave him alone (9:49-50).  When Samaritan villagers refused to give them shelter, James and John asked God to send down heavenly fire upon them; again, Jesus rebuked them (9:51-55).

When the disciples returned from their mission with the 70, they felt powerful and were filled with joy.  But now the weight of Jesus’ expectations filled them with dread. They are painfully aware of what they lack. We’re going to need more faith Jesus—more people, more resources, more strength! (As we prepare to discuss the 2023 budget today after worship, I can relate to that.)

Their urgent plea was reasonable. After all, what can you accomplish in this world without capital, competence, ambition, and power? I wouldn’t say their requests fell upon deaf ears. Yet, Jesus knew it was not going to play out that way for the disciples. Yes. Even what little they had would soon be taken away. Jesus would be crucified, die, and be buried.  Jesus knew what we, looking back, now know, even their meager gifts would be enough!  Somehow, despite everything, the world was about to turn.

The disciples were learning. When it comes to faith, more doesn’t matter. Faith is not a noun but a verb. There on the road to Jerusalem, the disciples still equate faith with a power they might possess –as though it were a skill they had yet to master. They are thinking of faith as like magic hocus-pocus wielded by fairies and wizards. They just need the right prayer or incantation. Soon, they would learn faith is not something you can add to or subtract from. It’s not a skill set. It’s not an incantation but an invitation to relationship. Here’s the thing. Faith is trust in Jesus.

Look how often and how lavishly, in contrast to the disciples, Jesus commends the faith of those who seek him out. “Your faith has saved you,” he tells the woman who anoints his feet (Luke 7:50), the Samaritan leper who returns to thank him (Luke 17:11), the hemorrhaging woman who grasps his cloak (Matthew 9:20).  “Your faith has made you well,” he tells a blind beggar (Luke 18:35).  “Such faith I have not seen in all of Israel!” he exclaims about a Roman centurion (Matthew 8:10).

“What is it that Jesus commends in these people?  As far as I can tell, the only thing they do is turn to him.  Orient themselves in his direction.  Trust him.  What earns his admiration is their willingness — even in difficult, painful, and potentially risky circumstances — to lean into his goodness, healing, justice, and mercy.” (Debi Thomas, Doing Faith, Journey with Jesus, 9/25/16).

Faith is when I can’t –I turn to Jesus because Jesus can. Jesus pressed this point with the disciples. He asked them, which one of you would say to your slave, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? (Luke 17:7).  The answer –no one would. ‘Or, which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, would leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one?’ Nobody would do that.  But Jesus does, and that’s the point.  Which of you, after your waiter came in from working all day would tell him to sit down while you served him?’ None of would do that; but Jesus does. We don’t deserve to be served, but in fact that’s what Jesus does for us.

One of my favorite hymns, which (unlike the Austrian hymn) is in the ELW, may be unfamiliar because it is meant to be sung at Evening Prayer or Compline, services which we rarely do together. It’s called, “Now it is Evening.” “Now it is evening: here in our meeting may we remember Christ our friend. Some may be strangers, who will be neighbor? Where there is welcome, Christ is our friend” (ELW #572).

Neighborliness is God’s gift for faith. In history and around the world, neighborliness has been and continues to be our superpower. Through faith, we are transformed into neighbor, and this is the beginning of changing everything –from our closest relationships to our economy and our democracy.

Here’s where the world turns.  Here’s where the weight is lifted, and the scales fall from our eyes. Finally, we move beyond the impossibility of ever being perfect into joy and praise. Faith is born from God’s gift, not from God’s demands. Receiving the good that only God can give, faith opens our hearts and minds to God’s abundant grace. Our poor gifts and skills will never be enough, yet we trust God will use all we have to move heaven and earth.

“‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’” (Matthew 11:28-30). The yoke we wear through faith in Jesus is simply to be friend and neighbor.  Where there is caring, Christ is our light.

/by