Foolish Expectations

Text: Luke 2:22-40

Does God encourage Simeon’s foolish expectations?

The story in the Gospel passage takes place when Jesus is just 40 days old. Brought to the Temple in Jerusalem with his parents, he is seen by Simeon. Simeon took his own faith and its teachings seriously. You would call him religious. He had been told that in his life he would see the coming of the Messiah, a man who would restore Israel to its glorious position as a great and powerful nation. Not one under the thumb of Rome and ruled by petty and corrupt tyrants. When he sees Jesus, Simeon declares that his life’s wait is over. His wait is over. Jesus is the one he expected.

Yet it never happened the way Simeon hoped. In the story, these events happened at the beginning of the life of Jesus. But the story itself was written much later, nearly 100 years later. And by then Jerusalem had been conquered and sacked. The Temple in which the story takes place was destroyed seventy years after Jesus’ birth and before Luke wrote his Gospel. Simeon’s expectations were met only in the story, never in history.

Expectations are difficult and sometimes cruel masters. They start innocently, with a vision of what might be. Wouldn’t it be great if such and such happened? A fine job or a life’s good companion or a house in the country. In the case of Israel at the time of Jesus and Simeon, perhaps a vision of a free and restored Israel. Then to this vision is added a sense that what we hope for is what should be. That is, what we imagine is what we deserve, is natural and logical. Or predicted, by our parents, say, or our friends, or perhaps by a prophet. And finally vision and destiny merge into a kind of confident inevitability. Which becomes a focus and guide for our lives, part of the central story, a part which seems already written but as yet unrealized.

For this reason, unfulfilled expectations can shatter us. Expectations not fulfilled change us. Expectations seem as real as history. They can be as much a part of us as our past. Expectations are not the same as goals. Goals can be met more or less well. A partially realized goal is an accomplishment. But an expectation can only be met or not. And usually not, for no reality can equal the power of our visionary imaginations and hopes.

The destruction of the Temple in the year 70 shattered Israel’s view of itself and of its future. Israel’s expectations, personified in Simeon, were never met.

So how did this sad story ever make it into Luke? Why not leave it out, or remove it?

The expectation of Simeon was an expectation of power. The title Messiah, or Christ, means anointed one. The anointed one was king. The king was the national and religious ruler. The Messiah was a savior in the sense that he would save Israel from being conquered and oppressed, and would restore Israel’s greatness.

Yet the vision that was the foundation of Israel’s expectations was not one of power. It was a vision of light. The goal God set for Israel was not to rule other people and other lands. It was to be a good example to those people and lands. As Simeon sings when he picks up Jesus, Israel’s hope and destiny were to be a light to the nations. Israel was to be light like a beacon, a guide to what is good and godly. And to be light like a spot light, revealing God in all things. The Messiah was not to be a swinger of swords but a swinger of lanterns.

Evangelism, which means spreading the good news, is an activity of action, not of talk. It is a do what I do kind of thing. Not a do what I say kind of thing. Our friend Martin Luther spoke a lot of about the Word of God, but the words of God speak with us in what we do. Our salvation is not dependent on works, Luther reminded us. But it is expressed in works. The word of God goes out from us in works. It is what people see in us and our lives that makes us evangelical bearers of good news. Makes us lights to others.

Today we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen. We know about Stephen from the book of Acts. You can read about him mostly in chapters six and seven. Stephen was a leader of the church and was also its first martyr, and much of the readings have to do with his execution by stoning. But he is known mostly for forgiving his executioners. His last words were “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.”

Saint Stephen’s Day is always the day after Christmas, so this year it was this past Friday. St Stephen’s Day has traditionally been a day for the redistribution of wealth. In a minor way. That is, rich ladies and gentlemen would give gifts to the poor. The Feast of Stephen is a day for being grateful for all the abundance most of us have and realizing that we are called to share some of that with those who have little or nothing.

The closing hymn for today is Good King Wenceslas, who in the song brings food, wine, and firewood to a hungry and freezing peasant. He does this at peril to himself and his companion, but his goodness prevails, and they are kept warm on their mission. The closing words are: Therefore, Christians, be sure, you who have wealth or status, when you bless the poor, you yourselves will find blessing. Or to put it another way, when you provide light, you will find light.

To be a light to others requires humility, trust, and courage. It requires a sense that we are not greater than one another and that we do not therefore deserve more than they. It requires trusting that God will watch over us and provide for us as Jesus tells us God does, even when we make ourselves vulnerable. As caring for others always makes us. And it requires that, since being humble and trusting is scary and can lead to uncertain adventures, we are able to act in the face of fear.

In that, we expect to have God’s help. When Simeon is expecting God, the word that Luke uses means “receptive” or “open to God.” This story in Luke, written long after it should have been proven false by the events of history, is not mostly a story of history. It does not suggest that God encourages Simeon in his foolishness.

The story tells us more about God than it does about us. It does suggest, it seems to me, that God is a creature of expectations, too. That even though we, like Simeon, have been disappointed, we find that God continues to be with us in vision, destiny, and confidence. That God’s expectations, at least part of them and in some way we can partially understand, endure.

Expectations can be cruel and hurtful. But they also can support us in hope. We are made in the image of God, we are children of God, and we in our faith expect that the world will someday be as God intended it to be. And in the meantime, we continue to expect that, even though it sometimes takes more humility, trust, and courage than we can find in ourselves, we will with God’s help be a light to others.

Parents Pondering

Text: Luke 1:26-38
Other texts: Luke 1:47-55

Advent is a season of reflection. At the beginning, we are encouraged to look at our past and our present. What have we been doing? What are we doing now? But gradually over the weeks our view changes. And by today, we find ourselves looking at our present and our future. That’s how scripture leads us. Today we see Christmas just ahead. Once we start talking about Mary and Joseph and angels making announcements, we know that Christmas, and the celebration of the birth of Jesus is the point. And that the reflections that are important are less ours and more Mary’s, who ponders her role as mother of God.

And we ponder with her.

I’d like to talk a little theology before we go too much further. A central joy—or a central difficulty, depending on your point of view—a central thing about Christianity is that it claims that Jesus was a person and Jesus was divine. Jesus was more than a good and wise teacher. And also: Jesus was more than God come down from heaven in a human being outfit. Different faiths usually end up emphasizing one or the other aspects of Jesus. More human, or more divine. Early Christian thinkers and writers (meaning third and fourth century ones) spent a lot of time trying to figure out how the two aspects of Jesus could coexist. There were lots of theories. The ones we don’t follow now were condemned as heresies. Jesus wasn’t really divine but only really good, said some. Jesus wasn’t really human, but only pretended, said others. Jesus multitasked, being divine sometimes and human other times, said still others.

In the end, what the church said was that none of these explanations was right. In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther spoke adamantly and forcefully, as he usually did, saying that Jesus was 100% human and 100% divine. How that all worked out in detail was not for him to say. Typically Lutheran, it seems an improbable position to hold. But we cannot say that sometimes Jesus does God things and other times does human things. Jesus is always both.

Nonetheless, the church has a tendency to lean a bit to one side of the issue. Usually we talk about the divinity of Jesus, especially when we talk about salvation and power and kingdoms and intercession and such things, as we often do in worship.

But Christmas is a gigantic celebration of the humanity of Jesus. There is a lot of divinity at Christmas, but the person of Jesus himself, the central character, is still just a baby boy. And the stories are stories of moms and dads and births, which are pretty common human stories. As we know here from experience. So today, still in Advent, we get to think about Jesus and things that are human. And especially his mother, Mary.

Mary was an ordinary girl, as far as we know. Not ordinary for long, of course, but there is nothing in the Bible story that says she was particularly good, or beautiful, or pure. Nothing special. She was probably poor. She was probably young, maybe thirteen years old or so. She was related by marriage to some folks who were priests.

Mary is distressed when the angel Gabriel comes to visit. As you can imagine. Our Bible says she was much perplexed and pondered Gabriel’s greeting. But a truer translation would be to say that Mary was freaked out. And also she was discombobulated. The word Luke uses here means she was trying to find words to make sense of a bunch of ideas that did not easily fit together. How could she, poor young ordinary Mary, have a baby who was going to be a king and called Son of the Most High?

It does not take Mary long, though, to see what this all implies. The world will change. In a good way. So Mary sings a song about it (which we call the Magnificat, based on the first word of the song in Latin).

Being thirteen, Mary first wants to know: what about me? How is this going to affect me? But the “Magnificat” is a song of gradually widening implications, as Mary the singer realizes that more and more of the world will be changed through her child. First, she will be: “all generations will call me blessed” and “the Almighty has done great things for me.” Then people like her: He has lifted up the lowly and fed the hungry. Then all of Israel: He has come to the help of Israel. And finally, all the children of Abraham forever.

Mary’s hopes seem grandiose. But they are not much different from the hopes of mothers and fathers generally. Children make us think in the same widening circles: me, my family, the world. When you think about having a child, you cannot help spinning out imaginary futures. Will my child be good, successful, happy, imaginative, respected, kind? Will we be good parents, can we handle this, what if it turns out to be hard, will we make the same mistakes our own parents made? Did Mary wonder about these things? What could the angel’s proclamation possibly mean to a new, young, mother to be? How could she imagine the future of her son?

When parents think about their children, their minds are full of conflicting ideas, just as Mary’s was. The future for all children is a mix of opportunities and problems, of sorrow and glory. No one knows how things are going to turn out in detail, even when an angel delivers the message.

Children are part of their parents, but they are part of the world too, and increasingly so. Jesus at one point denies his family, a moment which I’m sure was hard on his parents. But children do that. They sometimes have to. They become people who change the world, for good or for ill. And the world will have expectations of them. If Mary really could have foreseen the future life of her son-to-be, how would she have felt on the day he was born?

Mary and Jesus are human-sized human-feeling humans, which makes them like everybody. It is important for our theology and our faith to remember that. It is easy to imagine what Mary was going through, in spite of her since then being encrusted and distorted with centuries of church teachings. Mary was young, poor, frightened and confused, excited and worried and giddily hopeful, and I suspect Joseph was, too. As we would be or have been.

These days are not days for theologizing. Christmas, though it is the event of the incarnation, is not about theology. It is about human, creaturely events and thoughts. Christianity is an earthy faith. Especially for Lutherans, who at their best, like Martin Luther admire things that are physical and messy.

The good news on Christmas is simply divine. A child will be born. His parents will be amazed. They will wonder: what will happen next?

Is Christmas OK?

Gospel: Mark 14:3-7, 9

Is Christmas o.k.?

Do we do it wrong? Have we missed the boat on Christmas? Have we got our priorities wrong? Have we forgotten the true meaning of Christmas? Is Christmas o.k.? Or does it need repair?

To hear some people, you might think it does. Some people say—and ministers say it loudest—that we don’t do it right.

Some people say we are too materialistic at Christmas. Every store has a sale. The merchants are frantic. We worry about what we can buy. We worry if it is OK to buy. Some of us worry we won’t get what we want. Some of us worry we’ll get too much. The part of our minds that likes to think about Things goes into high gear.

Some people say we are too hectic at Christmas. We feel sometimes like we are stuck on an endless journey. Work, pack, ship, repeat. So many parties to go to. So many parties to plan. So many decorations to hang. So many cards to send. So little time, so much to do. Sometimes we feel like the White Rabbit in Alice and Wonderland, running around late, late, late. Late.

Some people say we are too extravagant at Christmas.

Some people say we miss the true meaning of Christmas. We are celebrating, after all, the birth of Jesus. This is Christ’s birthday. Where is Christ among the Christmas trees, where is Christ among the Santas, where is Christ among the crowds of shoppers? Where is Christ among the presents and the parties?

That’s what some people say. Some people say we do it wrong.

It is hard to disagree with what some people say, especially when sometimes those “some people” are us.

But it is hard to agree, too. Christmas can be a confusing time. We are confused about how we feel. Especially in these days. When we listen to our hearts, we hear two voices. One voice speaks about anxiety. The other voice speaks about joy. When you listen to your heart, which voice calls you the loudest?

Do you hear the voice of Christmas anxiety? That voice tells us that we are harassed, apprehensive, and manipulated. That voice agrees with what “people say.” That voice makes us feel guilty, poor, and overwhelmed all at once. That voice says we do Christmas wrong. That voice tells us about things, and money, and time. That voice is dismayed at the extravagance of Christmas.

Or do you hear the voice of Christmas joy? That voice reminds us of the pleasure of thinking hard about the people we are buying gifts for. That voice reminds us of the friends and neighbors who come to all those parties. That voice reminds us of the pleasures in making food for others, and for eating food made for us. It tells us of generosity and the gratitude behind all that shopping and shipping. That voice says we do Christmas right. That voice tells us about people we love. It tells us about things that we are blessed to do. That voice delights in the extravagance of Christmas.

Which voice do you trust? They both speak loudly at Christmas. We get confused. We begin to doubt our own feelings. How can we take such pleasure in all this materialism? Particularly in these hard and perilous and sometimes sorrowful times. How can we be so excited at all this running around? It’s a horrible state, for it makes us feel bad about feeling good. It makes us feel bad about feeling joyful.

Why have we become afraid to delight in extravagance?

We are afraid to be extravagant because people scold us. They scold us as they scolded the woman in today’s Gospel reading.

That nameless woman approached Jesus. She broke open a jar of very costly ointment. She anointed Jesus. How extravagant was this? A denarius was the pay for a day’s worth of labor. The jar, valued at 300 denarii, was worth a year’s wages. She gave a gift that cost a year’s wages, a year’s salary. Imagine that. Imagine giving a gift that cost your whole year’s salary. Imagine spending that much on perfume. What a waste!

What a waste, said the men who were there. What a waste, they scolded the woman. How unreasonable! Whatever made her do it?

People scolded the woman for spending unwisely. Think of the poor, said the men who were there. This jar could have been sold and the money given away.

But the men were hypocrites. There have been and will be many hungry mouths to feed, said Jesus. Did the men feed the poor yesterday, will they feed the poor tomorrow? Were they concerned or were they crabby? Did they love the poor or did they resent the woman? Good question. Could it be that their hearts were filled not with generosity? But with jealousy?

Sometimes the voice we hear sounds a lot like the scolding men. Were they right to scold the woman? Do you agree that her extravagant gift was both wasteful and misguided?

No one knows anything about the woman in this story. We don’t know her name, her wealth, or her status. We don’t know how she knew Jesus. All we know about her is the way she gave her gift to Jesus. We know three things.

One, she gave from love. It doesn’t say so in the text, but how else can we explain that she came to a house uninvited, to give a gift worth a year’s salary, in the face of being scolded and rebuked?

Two, she gave intimately. This was a special gift from her alone to him alone. It was a gift made thoughtfully, carefully, with Jesus in mind. By her gift she and Jesus shared something no others had. She anointed Jesus; she touched him and honored him with her gift. She blessed him by her gift. And she was blessed in turn by his acceptance of it. The gift joined the two in generosity. The gift joined the two in gratitude.

Three, she gave extravagantly. She was not cautious or careful. She was not reasonable. She listened to the voice of joy.

And what did Jesus do? Jesus welcomed her. Jesus brushed aside the anxious voices. Jesus welcomed her and approved her love, her intimacy, and her extravagance.

This Christmas we are celebrating the birth of Jesus. Jesus is God’s very costly gift to us. To all people. Unreasonable and unexplainable. God gives Jesus to us as the woman gave to Jesus, in love for us, and in intimacy that binds each of us to God, and in extravagance.

Let’s put Santa Claus back into Christmas. Toys and homemade gifts, cider and cookies, lots of laughter and stuffed tummies are in the spirit of Christmas.

They spring from our love for other people. They come from our intimate and special affection for friends and family. They come from our sense of God’s good extravagance.

Christmas is o.k. This is time for celebration. This is the time for presents, parties, and, if you like, expensive perfume.

Quiet that anxious voice.

Welcome that joyful voice.

Leave care and caution for other days. Trust the voice that moves your heart toward people you love.

In the coming days, think extravagantly, give lovingly, and go with joy.

Praise be to God. And amen.

Great Beginnings

Text: Mark 1:1-8

Lots of people were expecting Christ. No one was expecting Jesus.

Lots of people were hoping for a charismatic, powerful man descended from great king David to save the people of Israel. Lots of people were hoping for a wise and powerful prophet to free the people from their oppressors. Lots of people were hoping for a christ, which just means anointed one, a chosen ruler, to restore Israel’s greatness.

No one was expecting a couple of motley, lower class wanderers to be the tools of God’s hands. John and Jesus were nobodies. Almost below the lowest social rung, lower than subsistence farmers. Yet, especially in Mark’s Gospel, these two men appear out of nowhere and start shaking things up. I don’t know whether God works in mysterious ways, but I’m certain that God works in surprising ways. Jesus was a surprise to everybody, except evidently not to John.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God. Typical Mark, who is always rushing into things without much ceremony. The sentence doesn’t even have a verb. He gets the facts out quick. This is a story about a man named Jesus, who was prophetic and messianic figure, and more, who has a special relationship with God. Though it is hard for us to think about these titles without putting them in upper case, for Mark and his first readers, they are names to distinguish this man, this particular Jesus, this particular figure.

Mark was an enthusiast. He invented a whole new way of writing. He invented the gospel, which is just an English way to translate the Greek word for “good news.” And the Greek word itself comes directly to us in the words evangelical (as in the Evangelical Lutheran Church) and evangelism. Mark was the first evangelist. The first gospel writer. The first to write this kind of story about someone. Mark invented this form so that he could say to the world: I have to tell you about this amazing guy who was full of surprises. I have to tell you this story. And so he does.

The beginning of the good news, Mark says. Unlike the other three Gospels, Mark tells us nothing at the start about Jesus. No birth story as in Matthew and Luke. No theological hymn, as in John. The beginning of the good news is not the beginning of Jesus himself but the beginning of his work, his ministry. What he does.

In the beginning you never know what’s going to happen. All you know about the beginning of things is that something is going to happen, but you don’t know what it is. Beginnings are the most uncertain times, since they are all about an unknown future. The beginning of something is the end of predictability, pattern, and comfort. No wonder beginnings make people nervous.

But it is worse than that. Because you don’t even know when something is a beginning until you see it having already begun. Beginnings are recognized by the disturbances they cause in our lives. We don’t realize that something new has begun until we are in the middle of those disturbances. You don’t realize you’re falling in love until you are in love. You don’t realize you’ve begun a new vocation until you are in the middle of it. We say: when I first met you, I didn’t realize you were going to be my life’s partner. Life is usually full of events that end up making no difference. People whom we meet who are maybe interesting but not captivating to us. Those events are not beginnings because nothing happens afterward. They are just events, common, frequent, and forgettable. Beginnings are places, seen in retrospect, where our lives are changed. Where they turn. The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ. A story in which, it turns out, something changed.

John was in the desert preaching repentance. The word repentance means to change direction. To turn or return. Repentance and beginnings are related in that way. Repentance is a good word for Advent, when we are supposed to be thinking about the direction in which we are going and whether it would be good to continue in that direction or whether we might rather change direction. That is hard to think about.

It is appropriate that John was in the desert. The desert is a good place to think about things like this. About change. Even the symbolic desert of our lives. First, the desert is deserted. It has fewer distractions that might seduce us away from our hard thoughts. And second, the desert is a rough place. A tough spot. The prospect of changing things is unattractive when things are going well. Long ago I worked for a large computer company that went under because things looked so good for so long. Maybe something similar is happening with the car companies today. Certainly, it happens in our own lives.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, our lives are full of times of change. When these seem to be good but maybe confusing times, we politely call them times of transition. When they seem to be distressing and uncomfortable, we say things are messed up. Two different views of the same thing, mostly. Something was once one way and will soon be another way, but we never know for sure what that other way will be. There is a lot of trust involved here, like it or not.

John the baptizer, Mark calls him. We usually call him John the baptist, but baptizer is better. It tells us what he was doing, rather than his title. John was preaching a baptism of repentance, it says. One way to interpret this was that John was telling us to change direction, so that God might be more inclined to come be with us. Another way to interpret this was that John was telling us to be receptive to God who was already trying to turn us. Or to put it another way: are we trying to get a message to God or trying to be quiet long enough so God can get a word in edgewise?

What John seems to be doing is preparing his listeners—and by extension, the world—to be open to Jesus who follows John. John is the opening act. John is softening the audience up for the main show. Getting them in a good frame of mind to hear, listen, enjoy, partake. And then Jesus walks onto the stage.

In this way, all baptisms are rites of repentance. We teach that they do not provide spell-like protection or detergent-like permanent cleansing. Instead, baptism is a beginning.

Today some of you will become members of this church by a celebration called the Affirmation of Baptism. That is the prescribed rite for new members. It is fitting that we use this rite because it is about beginnings and also about change. You will hear the promises made for you in baptism. And you will be asked if you intend to continue them. And after hearing them read, you will respond: I will, by God’s help and guidance. You will be saying by this that you are open to God in your lives.

Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirt, says John the baptizer. The Holy Spirit is, it seems to me, God’s agent of surprise. It is the Spirit who guides us when we reach out our hands for help and step timidly forward into the unknown future. It is the Spirit who meets us when we begin to change direction and sometimes bumps us encouragingly when we stubbornly or fearfully don’t.

Thank God that the Spirit is with us in a life full of beginnings. That is good news.

Deep Sorrow

Text: Isaiah 64:1-9
Other texts: Mark 13:24-37

Come down, God! O that you would come down! O that you would tear open the heavens and come down!

There is such longing in these words, these words in Isaiah. So much loneliness. These are words of a people abandoned. People left alone. People confused and without direction. You hid yourself, they say, and we have faded like the leaves in the late autumn days. You have hidden yourself from us, they say, and we are blown about by the cold wind.

When these words were written, it was a time of fragile and uncertain hopefulness. Somewhat like our time now. The exile of the people of Israel was at an end, they were returning or had returned home, but their land and nation had been devastated. They look forward to rebuilding. Yet in this hopefulness the prophet calls expectantly for God’s presence and guidance. God had hidden God’s face.

We are living in uneasy, queasy, times at the moment. Yet the presentation each of us makes is unchanged. As always, we show to the world the best we can. We put on a good face. No one wants to hear about our troubles, we think. If they only knew, we think, they would think less of us. To reveal ourselves to others or to an other makes us vulnerable. Being vulnerable is the last thing we want to do when we do not feel so great inside. When someone asks us how things are going, we might answer “OK” instead of “great” Just a hint. That’s about as much information as they need. Maybe too much.

Everyone else seems fine. They are all smiles. They are doing well, it looks like. But we are reminded not to compare our insides with someone else’s outside. Who knows what is going on in their lives, their homes, their families, their heads? Maybe they are hard on the outside and soft on the inside, just like us.

For many, for much of the time, suffering and sadness are not far below our OK exteriors. There are no shortage of causes: worries about money, safety, food. Disappointments about careers, relationships, performance. Regrets and unresolved conflicts. And for some, worse: war, poverty, hunger, grief. You have fed us, the psalm says, with the bread of tears. You have given us bowls of tears to drink.

We suffer. Why is that so? It seems to be our nature as human creatures. Perhaps it is because we so easily imagine the future. A time yet to come when the present will be as it should be, could be. Yet it never comes. Or perhaps it is because as social beings we long for intimate and complete unity with others. And yet we are aware of our fundamental loneliness. Or perhaps it is because, even lonely, we are connected with—feel with, which is what the word compassion means—connected with others, even strangers, and bear the burden of all their sorrows. Yet we can do little to relieve them.

O that you would come down! O that you would tear open the heavens and come down! says Isaiah, who tries to explain in this passage people’s sadness. It is because God has abandoned God’s people, he says. We sinned, Isaiah says, because God hid God’s self. The passage through its symbols reminds God and reminds Israel of the time when God last came. Of that time when God came down on the mountain of Sinai and adopted Israel as a people. And gave them guidance. Of that time when God came as fire, burning a bush, speaking to them in a clear voice, and making promises. Come down, God.

We call for one who can know our sorrow and can heal our sorrow. So in our deepest prayers, we pray with the Israelites: Come here, God. Come here, be with me. Come here, guide me. Come here, comfort me. Come here, heal me. Come here, bring me peace.

For some, and in some times, people have felt there is no solution in their age for the suffering that they endure. They have felt that the only solution to suffering is the end of the world as we know it. They cannot imagine a healing powerful enough to restore our present existence to the way it should be. In those times those people hope for a grand upheaval and see it coming. Writings about that upheaval are called apocalyptic. The word comes from the name in Greek of the Book of Revelation, which is the most extensive writing we have of its type. But a smaller version of this kind of story appears also in Mark (which we heard today) and in Matthew and Luke. The verses in these Gospel passages are called the “little apocalypse.” They all predict the immediate return of Jesus and a drastic change in the world. These passages are a problem now because “these things,” as Jesus said, did not happen in the lifetime of his disciples. We can try all sorts of ways to explain this, but it seems to me that these passages are just another way of saying what we have already heard in Isaiah. Come here, Jesus. Come here, be with me. Come down from the cross and return to your people. Help us. Deliver us from suffering and sadness.

This is the season of Advent. Advent is traditionally a time of reflection. It is a time to look at ourselves and our lives and see how well things are going. On the inside. It is time to keep awake, as Jesus says in Mark. It is the kind of awake you feel when you’ve just worked out at the gym (before you get endorphin-sleepy). Where all your senses are sharp and when your mind is open. And with those senses and with this open mind, we try to look closely at the intersection of our lives and God in our lives. During most of our days that spot, where God meets us, is a little vague and easily missed among all the other conversations we have inside our heads. And among all the sorrows that are calling, seeking to be relieved. To attend to God, to stay awake, takes the same energy and concern that attending to any other relationship we might have. Sometimes you take someone you love for granted, but you cannot keep doing that and have the relationship work. And the same is true of the relationship you have with God.

The spiritual disciplines of Lent apply to Advent, too. Especially the discipline of prayer. During these days, talk to God in prayer. Thank God. Ask God for what you want and need. Ask God to help you find out what you want and need. Ask for help, for comfort, for understanding of things. For patience, clarity, and enthusiasm (or whatever are your inside desires). Tell God of your sorrows. Tell God you’d like God to come down and talk with you clearly and immediately.

Our hope is in God because God is our maker. We are the clay and you are the potter, says the prophet Isaiah. Who else knows us better? Who else has more of a stake in us? Who else greets us with such powerful intention? Come down here, God. We need you. We are the work of your hand. We are your people.

We Are the Water

Text: Amos 5:18–24

There have been in the press lots of comments about John McCain’s concession speech on Tuesday. It was gracious, relaxed, and forward-looking. Many people have said that the real John McCain had re-emerged. They said that this was the McCain they had known and admired. Some people speculated on whether the results of the election would have been different if this McCain, this brave and gracious man, had been the one who had campaigned over the past few months. For the general consensus was that in the campaign the candidate had not been true to himself. That in the campaign he had been fighting against his own nature.

It is a common failing. And an understandable one. The parts of us that are fearful and greedy—fear and greed being two sides of the same coin—those parts of us make us do things we rather not do, really. Or to put it more strongly, to do things that go against the person we really are. Or to say it in another way: to do things that go against the person God made us to be.

Amos was the earliest of the prophets of Israel. Unlike the prophets we read more frequently, Amos wrote before the fall of Israel, the northern Kingdom, and before the fall of Judah and the exile of most of Israel to Babylon. Unlike Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel, or at least portions of them, who try to make sense of the destruction of Israel, Amos has no explanations. There was nothing yet to explain. Israel was whole and strong and its people prosperous, more or less. The criticism of the nation that the other prophets saw as a reason for the exile, Amos shares. He criticizes, too. But he offers not an explanation but a warning.

The book of Amos is for the most part dark and gloomy. Amos does not warn the people with the expectation that they will mend their ways. For Amos, the time for repentance has passed long ago. Too late for all that. Amos says that the people have abandoned the ways of God. And as a result, Israel will die. The nation will be destroyed and the land taken away. And the people exiled. Which is what happened.

Israel, Amos says, has gone against its own nature. And for that, it will suffer. Not as punishment, but as the natural result. It’s biology. Going against who you are causes suffering.

The nation of Israel was God’s creation. There was an agreement between God and the Israelites. I will be your God, you will be my people. A covenant, as we say. The covenant was like a design document. It was more than just a series of laws. The agreement between God and Israel—this formal relationship—defines Israel, defines its nature. And essential to this nature, a defining characteristic of this nation, was the idea and practice of justice. Justice. So in the passage we heard today, God says through Amos, I’m not really interested in all this worship stuff right now. Take all that stuff away. What I’m concerned about is justice. It is as if God were saying, You are not the same nation I created and thought I knew. For I see that you have forgotten to be just.

When we talk about justice these days, it often means something about courts and jail and punishment. The justice system, or bringing someone to justice. But that’s not what is meant here.

First, justice primarily is enacted (and justice primarily is demonstrated) through the nation’s treatment of the poor and the outcast. The prosperous and the strong can take care of the themselves, but in Israel’s time, as in every time, the poor have little power and few friends in high places. God’s people watch out for all people, and especially those that no one else watches out for. The sick and the crazy and the inelegant and the uneducated and the hard to understand and the ones that make you uncomfortable. In a just nation, the people care for all the outcasts.

Second, to be just is to be aligned with God’s intentions for the world. Justice and righteousness are intertwined and inseparable. Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, God says in Amos. Righteousness does not mean holy and proud and right and good. It means to be in agreement with God. To be on the same wavelength. Righteousness is like having a friend who finishes your sentences, or one with whom you can just sit quietly together, being with them in harmony, or one whom you haven’t seen in a long time, but when you do, you just start up the conversation as if you were never apart. In a just nation, there is no tension between the intentions of God and the actions of people.

And third, justice is in the nature of humans. As Israel is created to be just, and as Israel becomes ill and confused when it forgets that, so people are created to be just. And we get ill and confused when we forget that. When we see injustice, things seem out of kilter. When we are perpetrators of injustice, it makes us sick. It weakens us inside and takes away our capacity for pleasure and joy. We cannot easily oppress others nor leave the poor and the outcast on the roadside. We do it, but then we pay a price, not through some divine punishment, but in painful and queasy souls.

When we act unjustly, or condone injustice, we are going against our nature. We are not the people we were created to be. We are at odds with ourselves.

When we hear what God says through Amos, we might think that God despises the worship of Israel—”I hate, I despise your religious feasts,” it says—we might think it is because Israel has violated some rule. But it sounds to me that God is more sorrowful than angry, the same way you might be if you saw someone act against his or her own best self. Alas, says God. The word in Amos is a word for grief, not anger. What is happening to Israel is tragic and sad. Israel dies, according to Amos, because it is no longer the nation that God created.

Let justice roll down like waters. If justice is like a river flowing, then we are in the river. When we act in or tolerate injustice, we swim upstream. It is tiring and ineffective. When we act justly, we float downstream. When we put aside our fear and greed, we are able to be the people we really are, God’s creatures. But the river of justice is not something that surrounds us. It is us. There is no such river that exists without us. We are not only in the river of justice, we are that river. When in our daily decisions, large and small, global and personal, we are just, then river of justice flows. And we pray that the world may become what God hoped for in its creation.

Only One Foot in Heaven

Text: Revelation 7:9-17
Other texts: Matthew 5:1-12

If you were looking for a book in the Bible that talked about the other world you might decide to turn your Bible over and open it at the back and look at Revelation.

This strange book is unloved by many, including Martin Luther, who felt it had no place in the Bible. He thought it should have been left off the list when they were choosing which books were in and which were out. The book of Revelation has been used and abused from its beginning. It is an example of apocalyptic literature. In fact, the word “apocalypse” is just the name of the book in Greek. It means “things revealed.” The word does not mean the end of the world.

Though on the face of it the book seems to be about that. It is full of weird images and symbols and creatures and violence. Revelation has been used by those who hope for the destruction of the earthly life and for the establishment of another kind of life in another kind of place. A story of escape from the sorrows of this life into a heavenly life. Or escape from its sins. They hope to be part of the elect who make it and not part of those left behind.

It is certainly likely that the community to whom this book was first addressed had plenty of sorrows to contend with. They lived in the empire of Rome under Roman rule. They were an occupied people, with little control over their own lives, powerless, and seeing no hopeful horizon ahead. In times like these, people imagine a radical change, divine destruction of their enemies, and a restoration of both peace and power to the good and the righteous.

But it is not so much the end of the world that such people long for as it is the end of the age. The end of the evil times and a restoration of the times as they were intended to be. A return to ideal and so far unachieved good times. So you might consider the story of Revelation not to be the story of ruin of the world but a restart after a seemingly failed first attempt. A re-doing, not an un-doing.

There is a tension in our lives between wishing for a better present or longing to escape the present. Do we stick with the bad or do we flee? Stay in or get out? Do we work from within or resign? Do we make do with what we have been dealt or do we re-deal, or do we leave the table altogether? When we talk about the coming kingdom of God, do we hope in our hearts most for the good life on earth or the good life in heaven? What exactly is God’s promise? To save us out of our lives someday or to strengthen and bring joy to our lives this day?

This passage from Revelation that we just heard starts with praise and worship of God seated on the throne. “Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to God forever.” You are not mistaken if you think that these words resemble the Gloria that we sang at the beginning of worship today. It is not a coincidence. The words of our worship that honor and thank God and acknowledge God as the source of all things often come from the Book of Revelation. So we start, in worship as in this reading, as in perhaps our own spiritual lives, with a glance, a bow, a thank you, to God. We start with the ineffable, with a sense of mystery and grandeur, with gratitude at what we have been given, and with humility.

But the last part of this same passage turns the worshippers’ attention back to the things of this life. The Lamb who sits at the center of the throne, always interpreted as Jesus, looks after the sorrows and trials of us, his people. In the Gloria, we end with Jesus’ presence here with us. “For God has come to dwell with us,” we say. God is with us here, here where as it says in Revelation, here where there is hunger, thirst, and scorching heat. Here in this world the Lamb guides us to springs of water and wipes away our tears. At the end of Revelation the people come to a new city, the New Jerusalem. The book of Revelation ends not with all the world being taken up into some heavenly castle, but gathered instead in a new place into which God has been restored and re-seated as sovereign.

The list of blessings or beatitudes—same word—appear in both the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. But in Matthew, whose version we just heard, the earthly is qualified constantly by the heavenly. What appears in Luke as “blessed are the poor” becomes “blessed are the poor in spirit.” “Blessed are the hungry” becomes “blessed who hunger for righteousness.” And so forth. I used to disdain the Matthew version, thinking that it spiritualized the physical. But now it seems to me that together these two versions—the physical and spiritual—describe our nearly equal needs for both physical and spiritual food, peace, and companionship. You cannot bless one without the other.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, of which we are a part, has a motto. It says: God’s work. Our hands. We cannot leave the work of the world to God, sitting on our couches waiting for the dramatic end, nor can we do the work ourselves, trusting in our own abilities and goodness. Faith, this church, has a motto too. It appears on our website and in the literature we send out. It says: Spirit, Joy, Reverence, Service. There is no way to separate out the life of the spirit from the life in the world. The life of worship from the life of service. God knows, we are physical and spiritual creatures. God constantly call us back into real life from our fantastic visions of escape.

All Saints day used to honor only the Christian martyrs. Then about 1200 years ago it was changed to honor all the official Saints. And then later to honor all the Christian dead. Yet on this day we honor all who come to worship and to serve the Lord. Not to flee from the world but to serve it. Martin Luther reminded us that we are saints and sinners both. Both sinners and saints at the same time.

Here we stand. With one foot in heaven and one foot on earth. Thanks be to God.

Thick Like Jello

Text: John 8:31-36
Other texts: Romans 3:19-28

It is an unfortunate fact of life that the older we are the creakier we get. Speed becomes slow. Fresh becomes foul.

This tendency of things flowing and free to thicken up like jello in the refrigerator appears in organizations just as much as it appears in organisms. The brash entrepreneur becomes the timid boss. The upstart competitor becomes the conservative market leader.

And it happens in the church. The counter-culture becomes the establishment. Those who preach poverty become rich. Those who preach humility become powerful. Those who beg God for deliverance become those who hold the keys. Until someone comes along to shake things up again.

If Martin Luther, the man after whom the Lutheran church is named, could look down on us this day, I’m sure he would be dismayed. He never hoped to break the church universal into two, and then many, denominations. Luther never planned to start a new church. He once said, “I ask that men make no reference to my name; let them call themselves Christians, not Lutherans. What is Luther? After all, the teaching is not mine. Neither was I crucified for anyone. St. Paul would not allow the Christians to call themselves Pauline, but Christian. How then should I—poor stinking maggot-fodder that I am—come to have men call the children of Christ by my wretched name? Not so, my dear friends; let us abolish all party names and call ourselves Christians, after him whose teaching we hold.” Yet here we are, sitting in a church called Lutheran.

But Luther perhaps forgot that Jesus would have felt the same way about people calling themselves Christian. Though he spoke a lot about himself and his role, Jesus was not out to start a new church. He was a reformer, a Jew out to fulfill and refresh the law of the Jews.

Both Jesus and Luther lived in a time when the vibrant core of people’s faith and the intimate connection it had with God had become old, tired, and most of all entrenched. Their organized religions had become the main powerful and greedy institutions of their day. These institutions had begun to forget their source in God. And they had begun to forget what their scriptures told them: that they were once the hope of poor and outcast people against the power of the world.

Today is Reformation Sunday. On this day we celebrate the Reformation. It is a little ironic that this day is the only day in the church year in which we focus on an event in church history and not on something in the life and teachings of Jesus. Not even on a theological theme as some other Sundays, like Trinity Sunday, do.

Reformation Day, which is Friday, is the 491st anniversary of the day in which Martin Luther was said to have nailed up 95 arguments, or theses, against the goings-on of the church. And the church in this case means the Church of Rome. Not the only Christian church, but certainly the one that dominated the life of Europe at the time. Luther’s pretty dry words did not start the Reformation, but they did provide the spark that ignited a lot of flammable material that had been accumulating for more than a century.

Luther’s arguments were theological. But the reason we are called Lutherans today is political. If the church had engaged Luther instead of freaking out about him, there probably would be no Protestants now. There might have been instead a slightly different (or even drastically different) Reformed Church of Rome. But the church was old and creaky and set in its comfortable and privileged ways. It did not want to be reformed at that moment. And it certainly did not want some young brash upstart to tell it how to do its business. They did not crucify Luther like they did Jesus (who also really riled up the establishment) but they did put out an order for Luther’s arrest for treason as a heretic and put his life in danger. One of the many charges was that Luther brought “confusion to all the public affairs of our Holy Mother Church.” Which was, I think, the main point.

There is much to be loved about the Reformation, including a theology of radical grace and forgiveness and the emphasis on the power of scripture over the power of tradition and churchly authority. And there is much to be liked about Luther, who could say things like God would welcome us “Even though you were scaly, scabby, stinking, and most filthy.”

But what is not to be loved about the Reformation is our sometimes sense of accomplishment and completion. There is a lot of self-congratulations about this celebration, as if we somehow had missed a close call but all that is mercifully behind us now.

If you have ever changed your ways, if you have ever struggled with some dangerous obsession or been in deathly deep sorrow, you know that being reformed is never a one-time thing. It is an ongoing process that involves vigilance, hope, and gratitude.

Paul writes in his letter to Rome, “Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded.” This verse, even more than the famous next verse in which he talks about justification, seems to me to be one of the most important things Paul says. There is no boasting allowed. Not because it is prideful, which it is, but because it is stupid.

Our denominational parters, the reformed churches, have a motto. It says “reformed and always reforming.” The purpose of this motto is to remind them that God is still at work in the world and in the church. God did not stop after Moses, Jesus, and Luther. God is constantly messing about with the world and encouraging us to be on the lookout for chances to reform what is stuck, to renew what is decrepit, and to restore what is broken.

Just now we baptized young [child just baptized]. Baptism is a one-time event in the life of Christians, but it is not the last event. Something has happened, but not everything has happened. We have sent [this child] out in mission—even though he is very small—out in mission for the life of the world. By making promises for him, we remind ourselves that God continues to act here, and that we are part of that action. Let your light so shine.

It is great to celebrate the Reformation, the courage and practical intelligence of Martin Luther, the passion of all the reformers, the theological insights that resulted. But we do not celebrate this event because it accomplished something grand and permanent. We celebrate because we have enough trust in God that we might hope for reform again and again.

Coin Tricks

Text: Matthew 22:15-22

There are some who say that Jesus is doing a coin trick. Holding the coin that the Pharisees give him, Jesus says: Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Give to God the things that are God’s. The trick, according to some, is that Jesus knows that nothing is really Caesar’s. Caesar claimed divinity, but Jesus knows, and we know, that Caesar was just a man. He neither made the world nor owns the world. The world is made by God and the world is God’s. So what is God’s is everything. And Caesar deserves nothing. This interpretation of the passage is good for those who are trying to get people to give money to the church.

There are others who say Jesus is doing a coin trick, but of a different kind. Holding the coin that the Pharisees give him, Jesus points out that it has two sides. On one side is an image of Caesar. The trick is that on the other side there is not. According to some, Jesus is proposing that the world is divided into two parts, as cleanly split as the two sides of a coin. A secular worldly realm ruled by Caesar or modern equivalents, and a divine realm. Some things in our lives belong in one realm and other things belong in the other. Taxes and rents and passion belong to Caesar. Prayer and scripture and preaching belong to God. This interpretation is good for people who would like to live two kinds of life: a worldly life and a Sunday life.

But there is no coin trick of either kind. On the one hand, Jesus does not say in this passage that everything is God’s. The passage does not pretend to settle disputes between the world and the divine about who owns what. It is not about sovereignty. It does not help us decide what to do with our money or our time or our affection.

And on the other hand, Jesus does not say we should live a balanced life. Jesus is not proposing that Caesar and God have some kind of equity, some similar legitimacy, some equivalent claim on people. God and Caesar are not on opposite sides of the same coin. Jesus is not saying: some things belong to the world, some things belong to God. You pick. It all depends. Jesus is not saying that. This passage is not support for what Martin Luther called Two Kingdoms. It makes no statement about the role of worldly power.

This passage is not about claims that God or Caesar make on us. It is about claims we make on God or Caesar. It is about the ways we try to stand up as humans in this world. About what we grab for when the ground of our existence is shaking. It is about trust.

In our pockets we carry these little pictures of George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and such. We are not worshipping these people or the coins or even any thing they stand for. But we do count on them. When we have more of them, we feel better. They protect us and feed us. We trust in them.

When Jesus holds up that coin, he poses a question and makes a proposition. The question he poses is this: whom do you trust? On what do you rely? To whom do you turn? God, or something else? And the proposition he makes is that you cannot answer “Both.” You cannot answer “I trust in both.” Jesus is saying that you cannot answer that way.

There is an idea in physics—I may have this wrong, I’m no scientist—that says that two connected particles, even if separated by great distance, can affect each other instantly, faster than light. Before either particle is observed, its state is unknown, probabilistic. But once you look at one, it becomes known. And at that minute, so does the state of its companion particle. Choosing to trust God or Caesar is a little like that. Which one you choose affects how you see the other. Hypothetically, we can rely on things of the world and on God both. But in practice it seems not to work out that way.

In my case, I might say I trust in God, but I end up worrying about what I should be doing, just in case. Or it is like accepting an offer of a ride back from the movie with a friend, but then calling a cab as insurance. Or inviting two people to go out on a date at the same time, because you’re afraid of being stood up by one of them. Someone is not going to be happy.

When we speak of faith we sometimes say “I believe.” I believe in God. But believing in God doesn’t mean believing that God exists. For the readers of the Bible and the followers of Jesus, the question was never God’s existence. God’s existence was assumed. It goes without saying: God exists. The question is one of trust. Which is another word for faith. Believing in God means believing that God exists for you. That God knows you. That you can rely on God. That you can trust God.

[Child just baptized] is just a little baby. Does he know whom to trust right now? Probably. Trust mom, trust dad. Everyone else, he’s not so sure about them. In his life he will live in a world in which Caesar and God both exist. His parents and his sponsors have just promised “to live with him among God’s faithful people, bring him to the word of God and the holy supper, and nurture him in faith and prayer.” Why? “so that” they have promised, “so that he may learn to trust God.” This is practical advice for people learning to trust God. Gather with others, read the Bible, share in the Lord’s Supper, pray.

Caesar is great. Caesar gives us a lot of things that it seems we cannot do without. Caesar keeps the cars driving on the right so we don’t smash into each other. Caesar organizes firefighters so that buildings don’t burn down. Caesar creates money banks and creates food banks. But in the end, Caesar does not really care about us. Not about you and me in particular. Except as they affect Caesar and the things Caesar cares about. Caesar needs things to work. Caesar’s affection for you is contingent. It is conditional. If you are good in a way that Caesar defines (and I’m not saying you wouldn’t define it in the same way, I’m not saying you wouldn’t think it good, too), if you are good in that way, then Caesar loves you. If not—well, then not. This is not evil or wicked or mean. It is just the way the things of Caesar work. Caesar is, in the words of the Gospel passage, partial. Shows partiality. Between you and Caesar there is always something that gets in the way. What always gets in the way is Caesar’s requirement to see us as functional.

God is great. But unlike Caesar, God cares about us. God is passionate about you, meaning God has feelings for you. God has compassion for you. You in particular. The way we understand God through our experience and through Jesus, God cannot be dispassionate about you. God’s compassion for you is unaffected by your worth or goodness or behavior. That does not mean that God isn’t chagrined or saddened or annoyed by things we do. But God’s compassion for you is not contingent. It is unconditional. God does not regard people with partiality. There is nothing in the way between us and God.

Whom shall we trust? Whom shall we trust with our hardest questions? Who we will let guide us? Whom do we thank for the gifts of life? Whose words make the world understandable?

How do we best stand as humans in this world? To whom do we turn when the ground of our existence is shaking?

The Open Air

Text: Philippians 3:4b-14

Paul writes about claustrophobia and about the open air.

He writes about forest-covered narrowed-horizon New England and about the open plains of the midwest where you can see the weather coming miles away. He writes about Tokyo with its twisty narrow streets and about Paris with its grand wide boulevards. He writes about oppressive, stultifying relationships and about partnerships of shared adventure and enthusiasm.

He writes about these things, but not in so many words.

Paul writes about things of the flesh. Not about flesh itself, not about our body’s joys and foibles. When Paul speaks about the flesh, he means things of this world. He means stuff. Stuff that we carry around with us. Stuff we store away. Stuff we fret about. When Paul writes about flesh, he means all the things to which we are so attached and so attracted, all things that we hope will give us comfort, safety, and a sense of purpose. Some of that stuff is material. Material goods. Shoes and iPods and wallpaper. Lines of credit. Student loans. But mostly not. On Paul’s own list are things of accomplishment and birth. Status, class, ethnic origin, positions of authority and responsibility, titles, reputation, the respect of friends and colleagues. It’s things and things associated with things.

Paul had been a hot ticket in Palestine. He had been an enforcer for the power elite. He searched for followers of Jesus and brought them to justice. He himself was a member of the power elite. He was skillful, sophisticated, and well-educated. He was a faithful worshipper. he knew what to wear and how to meet and greet. He was the right people. Besides all that, Paul was a Roman citizen, a man of special privilege that extended beyond Palestine to all the Roman empire.

Paul trusted these things, as we do, to protect him, give him purpose, bring him peace of mind, and provide him a solid base for action. But in his life, things did not prove trustworthy. What Paul depended on turned out to be not dependable. They did not bring him what he needed. The things Paul turned to were worse than unreliable. They were harmful.

Things—material and immaterial—make demands on us. We think they serve us, but we serve them. They require maintenance. They require polish. The require upkeep. They require dealing with. Taking out, putting away, classifying, certifying, and qualifying.

Things define us. And they define us often in ways in which we do not want to be defined. We are known by the things we keep. And we are known by the things we are born into. We are known by the skills we have acquired. I’m a craftsperson. I’m a scientist. I’m a person of faith. I’m a protector of others. I’m an enforcer, says Paul, I’m a Roman, I’m a follower of Jesus.

Things speak for us. They tell others what to expect from us. But more often than not they lie. Things of the flesh tell lies about us. We are not what we have or have accomplished. Things of the flesh steal us, they steal who we are. They steal our future. They are liars and cheats. They do not give us what they promise.

Paul says so. I trusted in the flesh, he says, but now I regard all those things as so much rubbish. Worse than worthless.

This is not a glorification of poverty. It does not glorify loss—inflicted or accidental—and turn it into gain. This passage, at least, is not about self-denial or suffering. It does not mean that material things and accomplishments are useless. Paul eats. Paul exploits his Roman privilege. Paul writes letters. Paul uses his skills of persuasion.

But it does mean that things have very little to do with him. They have lost their power over him. He is not seduced by their demands. They do not define him. They do not speak for him. What has changed for Paul is that he no longer trusts in the flesh. The flesh is not trustworthy. It is trash.

What is trustworthy, what is not trash, Paul says, is Jesus. I want to know Chrst, he says. I want to gain Christ. Jesus is different from those other things, that trash. This is a ongoing realization to Paul. Something that proves itself to him again and again. Changing one’s point of view, no matter how lovely the new scene, is not easy. I press on to the goal for the prize. I’m looking that way, says Paul. Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.

This passage of Paul’s is not a book of rules for good Christians. It is not a big “should.” It is a poem. A poem of praise and thanksgiving. Paul sees and knows from his experience that the things of the flesh press in on us. To trust in the the flesh is claustrophobic. Things take our breath away and suffocate us. We, who are designed to need things are not designed to be trapped by them.

We are designed to be free. Paul’s passage is a long and enthusiastic sigh of relief. Turning to a new kind of life, he can breathe again. Thank God!

A few minutes ago we baptized [a child just baptized]. Among other important things, baptism is a kind of initiation into a point of view. We say that to be baptized is to be reborn, to be born renewed. How can a young child be reborn? But we are born, as Paul says, to the flesh, to the world of stuff. We are baptized into Christ. What [the child's] sponsors and parents promised was to show her that point of view. Paul’s point of view. To keep her eye on the prize. To make sure that she knows what counts as rubbish. And to keep her free.

A monk recently described humans as a bit of gold, but a bit of gold buried in a trash heap. Paul does not want to be found in that trash heap. I want to be found in Christ, he says. I want to be surrounded by Jesus, he says. Not by junk.

Constantine Being Tricky

Text: Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32

Three hundred years after the death of Jesus, the Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity. Before that time Christians had been outlaws. After that time, Christianity became an authorized religion in the empire. Granting Christians authority to gather in worship made the institutional church possible. Some say that was good, some say not so good. Certainly without Constantine Christianity would have been very different, and we would likely not be sitting here today in this beautiful building, spending time in public worship, and singing grand hymns loudly.

It is said that Constantine refused to be baptized until he was on his deathbed. He put it off because he didn’t want to leave time between baptism and death. The more time he had, he figured, the more chances he had to commit more sins. He wanted his sins to be behind him, and he wanted to be absolved of as many of them as possible. He felt that if he repented at the last minute, he would be all set. If he repented at the last minute, he would greet his death sin-free. It didn’t really matter about his previous life. It didn’t matter what kind of person he had been or done. If he timed it right, he would be all set in the life to come. Did it work? Not for us to say.

Was Constantine right? Is this how God works? And can a life of evil be washed away by one good deed? Can a life of good be forever polluted by one evil deed? Is the last thing we do in our lives more important than all the rest we do? Or is the last thing just one of many in a big pot of good and evil deeds all stewed together, making only a little difference to the flavor?

In the reading today from Ezekiel, the prophet argues against a proverb. “The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.” The Israelites have been taken into exile, and are looking for an explanation. How did this come to be that they have endured such suffering? Is it something they did, or something done by their people, their parents and parents before them? Whose fault is it? They quote the proverb because it tells them that they are victims of history. Their ancestor have eaten sour grapes, but they, the exiles, have to grit their teeth.

Ezekiel says: stop it! Stop quoting that proverb. God does not punish the children for the sins of the parents. In the section of this passage that we skipped, Ezekiel gives a long, impassioned argument, with examples.

It might seem in this reading that God works the way Constantine thinks God works. When the wicked turn good, they reap the rewards. When the good turn wicked, then endure the punishment. The Israelites, good and wicked alike, evidently call this unfair. Shouldn’t there be what one person called a “treasury of merit,” an account of good and wicked deeds? Shouldn’t all your good count for something? Shouldn’t all your evil be reckoned with?

But then who does the counting and who does the reckoning? Does each action automatically add to or subtract from the balance? Is this all mechanical, some eternal accounting system in God’s heaven or God’s brain? If it is, how can God get into our lives and bless us? Where is the slack, the crack, the sloppiness, the uncertainty that opens the way for God to act?

Ezekiel is on Israel’s case because the proverb, or the thinking that is behind it, leads to a kind of fatalism. If it is our parents’ fault, then there is nothing we can do to change things. If our future is determined by our past, then trajectory of our destiny is already calculated. It leads us either to despair—nothing I can do can make my life better. Or it leads to destruction—no goofy, dangerous thing I can do can make my life worse.

Ezekiel argues that what we, ourselves, do makes a difference. It makes a difference to God, and therefore it makes a difference to our lives. What we do affects God. God acts in response to our actions. What God does affects our lives. God’s blessings matter.

But it would be stretching things a bit if, realizing this, we decided we knew how to manipulate God. To control God by clever timing, to force God’s hand, as Constantine wanted to do. What Ezekiel asks for is repentance, not maneuvering.

Repentance means to turn in another direction. Not just to take some action which is out of character from time to time, but to become a new person. Repentance has little to do with apologies and firm declarations of purpose. Repentance means to be reborn, renewed, reconsidered.

Ezekiel is talking about our primary orientation, the direction in which our heart is drawn and to which we turn for guidance. This orientation is what you, parents and sponsors, have promised [this child just baptized] in his baptism—to aim his life in a particular direction, toward God.

Ezekiel is offering new hope to Israel, not a new scheme for redemption. If we have no desire to be different than we are, then these words of Ezekiel’s offer nothing to us at the moment.

But for those who feel that their lives are in a predictable and not so pleasant rut, for those who feel trapped, for those caught in disagreeable patterns, the prophet offers encouragement. I am pleased, says God through Ezekiel, when people get themselves a new heart and a new spirit. Not only is God changed by changes we make in our lives, God is not neutral about it. God is not apathetic about the choices we make and the lives we lead. God is prejudiced in our favor. God prefers blessings over curses, forgiveness over condemnation, abundance over scarcity. God has a preference for life.

The future is not today elongated out in time. And it is not the inevitable working out of our past. God has no interest, Ezekiel tell us, in our continuing despair or destruction. I have no pleasure in the suffering of anyone, says God. Turn, then, and live.

Annoying Grace

Text: Matthew 20:1-16
Other texts: Jonah 3:10-4:11

A blessing is a favorable outcome. When we ask for God’s blessing, we ask God to contribute to a favorable outcome. When we sit down to eat, we say a blessing (which is also called “grace,” and I’ll talk about that in a minute). Bless this food, we might say. Meaning make this food be good for us, keep us healthy, gives us energy for life. It doesn’t mean transform this food into superfood. When we ask for a blessing of some tangible thing, like a new house, we are asking that God make our time here good, that what goes on here be full of joy and not sorrow. Or bless this new endeavor, meaning make it go well, be prosperous, give pleasure to those involved.

When we do receive favorable outcomes, we say we are blessed. This church is blessed these days with lots of young children and new babies. I’ll talk about that in a minute, too.

Blessings are gifts from God. A blessing is a gift. That means you get it for free. You do not have to earn it. A blessing is not a reward for something. Not a reward for special service or for good deeds or for being a person of good character. Blessings are given by God freely and extravagantly. Thank God for that. You can do bad things, think bad thoughts, plan bad schemes, and still be blessed, still get a blessing.

It is annoying. At least it is annoying to the workers in the story we just heard in today’s Gospel reading. Some of the workers put in a full day’s hard work. Some of them put in a half day’s work. Some hardly worked at all. At the end of the day, the landowner pays everyone the same. Not the same per hour, the same total. It does not seem fair

It is clearly not fair. Fairness would be everyone gets paid according to his or her effort, or time spent, or grapes picked. The workers who work harder or better or longer deserve to get paid better. That’s what they think, and that’s what we think too.

The landowner says, reasonably, that each person had made a deal for a fixed amount of money. A deal’s a deal. That may be so, but arguing the legality of employment contracts is not what this parable teaches. What this parable teaches is that God is not fair. That what you deserve and what you get are unrelated.

God is generous. The complaint of the early workers is not that they got too little but that the others got too much. The first workers were the stars, the type-A workers, the ambitious ones. What they don’t like is that the later workers were made equal to them. They were treated the same. “You have made them equal to us,” they say. It is not right, they say. You have no right to pay the others what we got. You are too free with your blessings.

This giving of undeserved blessings is what the church calls grace. God’s grace is God’s blessings that we get just for being a person. A free gift. When we say “grace” at meals, we are thanking God for the gift of life and the food that makes it possible. The words in Greek—which is the language of the New Testament—the words in Greek for grace, for gift, for pleasure and joy, and for thanks all come from the same word.

This church is in the midst of lots of baptisms. Baptism is one of the two sacraments in most Protestant churches. The other sacrament is Holy Communion. A sacrament is not just something that is holy and spiritual and with which God is involved. Lots of things are holy and spiritual, and God is involved with most things in life. The official definition of a sacrament is something that has a physical element (like water in baptism and food in the Lord’s Supper), is something that Jesus said we should do (“go and baptize” he said, and “do this”—share this meal—he said), and it is a means of grace. This last phrase—means of grace—is church jargon.

Sacraments do not provide grace. This notion is central to Lutheran thinking. Sacraments are not something that people do to earn or merit God’s favor. A sacrament is not a transaction. People have God’s favor already. Baptism is not, therefore, a requirement to gain God’s favor, in this life or the next.

Sacraments are a vehicle for God’s blessings. In the sacraments we are made mindful of God’s gifts. The sacraments are like a spiritual UPS truck. They are “means” of grace as in “conveyance” of grace. They are especially good at delivering God’s grace, but they are not the only way. The sacraments themselves are a gift, a way—a means—for God to say: you and me? We’re cool.

In the sacraments God has promised to be especially available, so to speak. We conclude that to be true because Jesus told us we should observe these particular sacraments. Not because God requires it of us, but because we need them. Just as we need food or air. Without the sacraments we are not condemned, but we might go around hungry and short of breath.

Thinking that we can make God favor us by doing something that God likes is a way of hoping that we can persuade God to do what we want. It is a way of trying to control God. I’ll do this good thing that you want and then you, God, you’ll do this thing that I want. But first of all, it seems that God does not work like that. And second, what we want and what God wants do not always line up.

God favors justice. I’ll pay whatever is just, says the landowner. And when the workers complain, he says that he is being just. What the workers want is fair compensation, but fair compensation is not God’s interest here. God as often as not favors generosity. The workers are envious, which is the opposite—envy is the opposite of generosity. When God changes God’s mind, which happens from time to time in the Bible, the change is usually in favor of mercy. So Jonah in the first reading is annoyed with God because God has been generous to the Ninevites. I knew it! says Jonah. That’s why I didn’t want this job in the first place. I knew you were merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God’s blessings can make us angry. But God chooses to give them anyway. You see with an evil eye, the reading says, what is good. “I want to do this,” God says.

Am I not allowed to be just? says the landowner. Is not God allowed to want mercy and justice? Am I not allowed to save the people of Nineveh? God asks Jonah.

We judge others by our standards. But fortunately for us, God listens to us about as well as the landowner listened to the workers and as well as God listened to Jonah. They complain that God is unfair.

God is unfair. Where we would be envious, God is extravagant. God is free with blessings because God wants to bless us. We are favored just because we are. It is God’s grace.

A Way of Life

Text: Matthew 18:21-22 Other texts: Romans 14:10

Imagine.

Imagine a world in which people held grudges.

Imagine a world in which people extracted revenge for sins committed against them. Or against their friends, or even their ancestors. Imagine a world of blood feuds.

Imagine a world in which people executed others because of their sins. Imagine a world in which wars were fought over the sins of nations.

Imagine a world in which children were disinherited, or parents neglected, or brothers and sisters estranged because of sins of one sort or another. Imagine a world in which people were excommunicated, exiled, expunged for their sins.

It takes no imagination to imagine such a world.

“Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?” asks Paul. “Or why do you despise your brother or sister?” Withholding forgiveness is the way we work. We are addicted to unforgiveness. Mercilessness, we might have once called it. But that word, meaning without mercy, now has a flavor of viciousness. We withhold forgiveness not because we are mean and vicious—though it might make us do things that are mean and vicious. We withhold forgiveness because it seems to be sensible, normal, and understandable. It is a way of life. Retribution is in the air. To forgive others seems, at times, at the worst times, to be naive, pathetic, unrealistic.

Unforgiveness is an addiction. It is a learned behavior that makes us uncomfortable when it is withdrawn. As Jesus asks us to, asking us to forgive one another. It makes us anxious.

So when Peter asks, “how many times do I have to forgive?” we listen with him for the answer from Jesus. Seven seems like more than enough. Let’s not go overboard. To forgive someone seven crimes, seven injuries, seven insults, seven threats. If Peter is like us, maybe he thinks: Already, seven is too many.

Seeking to explain why churches are losing members these days, a theologian has said recently that people see Christianity as a system of beliefs rather than a way of life. They think that Christianity teaches what to think more than it teaches what to do.

It is true that what you think makes a difference, just as what you say makes a difference. Sticks and stones may break bones, but people usually don’t wield sticks and stones unless they have thought and spoken about bone breaking long before they picked up their weapons. Wars and genocides and executions happen after people have thought and spoken about them. Words don’t just describe what we do, they form us. So what we think and say as a result of hearing Jesus makes a difference.

And one of the things Jesus said was that to follow him was to live in a different way. Following Jesus is a way of life. I am the way, Jesus said. This is more than a metaphor. Jesus taught about the coming kingdom of God. This kingdom on earth will come when people do the things that Jesus said to do. Among other things, believing in Jesus means believing that if we do what he said to do, we trust that the world will become the world he said it would. And what he says here in Matthew is to forgive one another.

We are taught as children to forgive each other. If you bean your sister with your toy truck, or smash your brother’s Lego castle, your mom or dad teaches you: “Say you are sorry.” And when you do offer your apologies, no matter how reluctantly, your folks tell your brother or sister to accept them. This is a protocol for forgiveness. I’m sorry—it’s OK. Even if you are not, and even if it isn’t, this protocol works. It is possible for us to forgive, and we are taught to do so. And we believe that that is how God works.

Forgiveness saves the one forgiving as much as the one forgiven. Not forgiving others is deadly. We use the expression “hold a grudge.” As if you could just pass it on to someone else. Here, hold this grudge for me a moment. Wouldn’t that be great. But the grudge is ours. And as we gather more and more unforgiven sins, our grudges accumulate. Pretty soon, we are weighed down with them. Our resentments and hard feelings sit like stones in our pockets. Before long our pockets—our hearts—are full of stones, and we cannot run, cannot play, cannot dance, cannot laugh.

The word for forgiveness that Peter uses in his question means to let go, but even more it means to “shove away.” How many times must I let go of sins done me? It takes effort. They are hard to get rid of. How many times must I shove those sins away from me? asks Peter.

There is no limit. That is Jesus’ answer. Whether it is seventy-seven times or, as you could also translate it, seventy times seven (490 times), the number means infinity. There is never a time, says Jesus, when you can stop forgiving the sins done to you.

This is not just therapeutic advice. To do this is to act in a new way. To live this way is to adopt a new kind of life. If people were to live this way, it would be new kind of world. It would be a new kind of kingdom. The difficulty of letting go of other’s sins is exceeded by the pow er of the results.

Baptism [a child was baptized today] is a sacrament of forgiveness. It bestows, as you just heard, new life. Not because it is a magic spell or because it is some kind of divine cleansing agent. But because it is an initiation into a new world. A world in which forgiveness, not retribution, is the expectation. A world in which forgiveness is the standard. Imagine a world that was addicted to forgiveness.

Imagine that.

Losing God, Losing Others

Text: Matthew 18:15-20
Other text: Ezekiel 33:7-11

It is not surprising that Ezekiel’s audience was discouraged and disillusioned. Their identity as a people and as a nation—the people and nation of Israel—was eroding. Who they were depended on a notion of God who had given them a land that was theirs to keep, a dynasty of powerful kings who would always rule, and a special spot in God’s heart. Yet now the land was occupied, and the kings and the other leaders captured and in exile. And as for God’s heart? Maybe God was fickle. The people, for their part, were losing heart.

Ezekiel the prophet was called to preach to the Israelites in exile and in the time of the destruction of the Temple, God’s house, in Jerusalem. He preached to a population that was overwhelmed by loss. They had lost their homes, they had lost their land, they had lost their power, and they had lost friends and family. More important to Ezekiel, though, is that they had begun to lose their sense of God—of their identity as a people blessed by God, of their conviction of God’s power, of their obligations under the covenant with God.

Ezekiel was called to both warn and console the exiles. He warns them that they had turned to idols. That is, they had lost sight of God because their eyes had begun to wander to perhaps more attractive partners. They were unable to hear God because their ears were seduced by catchier tunes. Israel, once the maverick and feisty nomads-turned-nation had become established, corrupt, and proud of its own accomplishments. Its hands were sore from patting itself on the back.

As a result, its people ended up in Babylon, far from home and hearth. Not because God’s heart had hardened regarding Israel. God wept for Israel. God had not punished Israel for violating God’s law and covenant. Instead, God’s law had been a force for Israel’s freedom. Israel’s agreement with God gave life. Israel’s deadly exile came about because the people had thrown away what made them good and strong.

It is odd that God, creator of the universe, should be so easy to lose. Not that we just misplace God, forgetting where to look—though sometimes that is how it feels when we need God most. But that, like the exiles, our eyes and ears get untuned somehow, and God’s words to us are less distinct. Sometimes they are covered by the cacophony of other sounds, the busy-ness of other sights of the world. And other times it seems as if we have lost the ability to hear in our native tongue.

Other losses follow (or maybe the other losses come first). Things that at times—in the history of the world and in the history of our own lives—things that seem so present become vague or fantastic or foolish or as a child might think. The power of prayer to change the world. The action of miracles. The strength and interest of the divine to protect the world and its creatures, and us, against evil. Hope in a new world. And especially the power and necessity of forgiveness.

The chapter in Matthew from which we just heard is all about forgiveness. Forgiveness is, I sometimes think, the hardest of all God’s gifts to accept. And therefore the first we discard. Or at least put at the back of the closet. Yet it is at the center of our theology and at the center of the teachings of Jesus. Forgiveness goes two ways. It is the joy of Christianity, that we are forgiven, not stuck in some evil rut. And it is the shock of Christianity, that we are called to forgive others, even the evil ones. For Jesus, the foundation of the kingdom of God is forgiving and being forgiven. But it is so hard to do that we cannot do it unless God is right there with us.

The passage in Matthew is in one sense about discipline. A person does something bad. It hurts you or people you love and hang around with. The backstory here is that your first impulse is to strike back. Or, more politely, to tell the person to take a hike. Get lost, go find some other folks to bother.

But Jesus says no. Not the thing to do. You should go through these steps. First you talk to the person one on one. (Not so easy, as you may have experienced in your own life.) Then if that does not work, you go with a couple of buddies. Then with the whole church. Then, finally, you treat the person as if he or she was a gentile or a tax collector. Which sounds pretty bad until you remember that eating and talking with gentiles and tax collectors is just what Jesus liked to do best.

These verses in Matthew on the one hand might tell us that we have to work really hard at reconciliation, going through all these convoluted steps. Or on the other hand—the hand I prefer, they might tell us that it should be really hard to lose someone. It takes many steps to let someone go.

God has a preference for forgiveness. If just a couple of you ask for anything, it will be done, Jesus promises. This promise is not the blank check it seems to be. It is a promise made in the context of reconciliation. If just a few of you folks want to get together and reconcile themselves and others, then I’ll go for it, says God. I’ll be there with them, those few folks, says Jesus.

Near the end of the book of Ezekiel, the part from which we read, Ezekiel comforts Israel with the promise of a new world. A restored kingdom. Throughout his ministry, Jesus energizes his followers with the promise of the coming of God’s kingdom, a world restored. The foundation of Christianity depends on the notion of a God who acts to renew the world. God is not fickle. God is stubborn, patient, and persistent. As far away as God sometimes seems, God is never lost.

And the foundation of the community of Christians, meaning the church, is forgiveness. The church is a place in which people can be seeds of forgiveness in a world which is juiced on guilt and blame. A church is a place to which any person may come hoping for acceptance and a place in which people here offer it. Even two or three, gathered in the name of Jesus.

No Fighting Back!

Text: Romans 12:9-21
Other texts: Matthew 16:21-28

To be holy means to be separate. That’s what holy is: a place, a people, a culture separate from the world around it. Holy does not mean religious.

A sanctuary is a holy place. That is what the word sanctuary means. A sanctuary is a place removed from the rest of the world. When people say in common speech that they seek sanctuary, they mean a place that is safe. A sanctuary is safe because it can and does abide by rules that might not conform to the rules of the surrounding world.

Holy means separate. It does not necessarily mean better. Though people might come to a holy place because it does seem better to them. But to say that someone is holy does not mean that he or she is more virtuous. Just different. By choice.

The people of Israel were God’s chosen people. I will be your God, said God, and you will be my people. They were thus made holy by their agreement, or covenant as church people like to say. The law given by God to Israel served, among many other things, to define and enforce the holiness of Israel, its separation.

When something is separate there is a boundary between the inside, so to speak, and the outside. The boundary can be a physical boundary, like a wall or national border, or a behavioral boundary, like the law. Or like the actions that Christians are supposed to follow according to the command of Christ. “If you do this,” Jesus said, “people will know you are my disciples.” They will see a difference. When Jesus said, “do this,” he explained, he meant “to love one another as I have loved you.” Which, among other things, is what the apostle Paul talks about in Romans.

Paul, who provided the passage we just heard from his letter to Romans, was really interested in boundaries. He didn’t like them much.

Though he did benefit from them. He was a devout Jew, and a leader, and he was a Roman citizen, which gave him special additional privileges. Yet in his letter to Rome, he tries to render those boundaries meaningless. And in these verses, he argues that the attitude we have and the actions we take cannot be much different toward the people on the inside—the people like us, our family and friends—from the people on the outside—them, the others, our enemies. There may be an actual difference, but when it comes to loving one another, there can be no difference. This is pretty radical. And it is central to Christianity. And it makes Christians different in theory.

Paul’s argument here has three parts. The first part is general: love for all people must be genuine, without hypocrisy. Evil is bad and you should hate and loathe and abhor it. Good is good, and you should hold tight to it. This sets the stage for the rest of the argument. Paul is saying in this first verse: I’m not kidding. These are not just nice words. Pay attention and really do what I say.

The second and third parts of the argument tell followers of Jesus how to implement this love with two groups. The first group are the insiders, family and friends. The second group are the outsiders, the enemies.

We might guess Paul’s argument. Be good to your friends. Be bad to your enemies. Right? I’m mean, works for me. That’s how we do it, mostly. Give our friends gifts, avoid our enemies. Forgive our friends, throw our enemies in jail. Protect our friends, beat up on our enemies. Party with our friends, keep our enemies on the other side of the wall.

So Paul’s first words are not a surprise: that you treat your friends with honor and respect. And that you have affection for them. That you like to do things with them. That you give them the benefit of the doubt. That you have high hopes for them, and rejoice in their successes. And that when problems arise, as they do in every relationship, you work things through with them, persevering in times of trouble. And that you support each other financially, and that you all party together. That is what Paul says, in so many words, in the first verses of this passage to the Romans, the verses that tell us what to do when it comes to friends and family.

But when it comes to enemies—we are in for a surprise. When it comes to enemies, Paul sounds just like Jesus.

Bless those who come after you and attack you. Have as much respect for them as you do for your friends. When they mourn, mourn with them (don’t despise them and don’t gloat over their problems or defeats). Don’t think you are better than they are. Help your enemies out: feed them when they are hungry.

And most of all, do not repay them for the evil they cause you. Do not pay them back. Do not take it upon yourself to avenge the wrongs done you. This is really hard.

Paul knows it is hard. In the verses about your friends, he uses no verbs, just adjectives. The good things that you do for and with your friends are just what family ties and friendship are all about. It almost goes without saying. But when he talks about enemies, he uses strong commanding verbs. Do this, and do this, and don’t ever do this.

We like to be in control. And violence is the most extreme technique for control. Someone does something you don’t like, you try to control his behavior. If talking and negotiating and bribing and reasoning don’t work, then you bop him on the head, or tie him up, or much more serious variations of bopping and tying. What Paul is saying is that we must—using those commanding verbs—we must give that all up. Relinquish that control and give the rest to God.

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus tells Peter that his mind is on worldly things, on human things. But human things are the things Jesus mostly talks about in his ministry, and human things in the end bring him to trial and execution, which are human actions of violence.

Paul rarely quotes Jesus. But these words of Paul here in Romans mirror the words of Jesus. Who do you say that I am, Jesus asks his disciples earlier in Matthew. You are the Messiah, one of them answers. The Messiah is a world-changer. The words of Jesus could change the world. But they are hard to follow. The world remains much the same.

Paul is not naive. There is a difference between the inside and the outside. We are built to see the differences between people. But the difference between the people on the inside—us—and the people on the outside—them—is not in the way we should behave toward them, but in how hard it is to behave in the same way toward all.

Our part of the job is to be good. Our responsibility is to use all our energies to be peaceful. It takes a lot of energy. As far as it is in your power, Paul says, live in peace with all other people. He does not just mean “try to live peaceably.” He means that when it comes to things over which you have control, when it is up to you, decide for peace. With all other people. The word “all” is right there in the Bible.

Do not let evil overcome you by making you do what you should not do. You overcome evil with good.

This is pretty weird. To behave this way is not to behave as the world behaves. A people who behaved this way would be unlike the world around them. They would be separate from that world. A people who lived as Paul commands in this passage in Romans would be a holy people.

May God so guide us. Amen.

What is Church?

Text: Matthew 16:13-20
Other texts: Romans 12:1-8

The word “church” appears only two times in all the Gospels. The first time is in the passage we just heard. The second time is also in Matthew, two chapters later.

It is useful to point this out so that we church people do not get to feel too self-important. Jesus spends next to no time in his ministry establishing, concocting, or even discussing church. He spends a lot of time hanging around with people, gathering them together, healing them, teaching them, and calling them to follow him.

People who are interested in the institution of the church like this verse in Matthew, in which Jesus says to Peter, “on this rock I will build my church.” They like it because it makes the church seem reasonable. By this I mean it makes the church seem like any other human organization, with founders and foundations. It seems structured in a way that a lot of our world is already structured. It works in a fairly predictable, thought-out way. It also establishes a legitimacy to certain ways of organizing churches, Peter being the first of a long line of special people who become church rulers. If your assembly of Christians cannot trace itself through an order of succession back to Peter, well—some might say—then, you are not the church of Jesus. St Augustine, a favorite of our buddy Martin Luther, said this to be so, and he has not been the only one.

There have been times—and not so long ago—in which the church has acted a lot like everyone else. Faith Lutheran Church, for example, is a chartered corporation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We have officers and a set of bylaws that are registered with the state. Our parent, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America talks about things like market share and church growth and demographics. I don’t think this is all bad, but it is not the essence of what it means to be a church.

In good times, this sort of reasonableness in the sense that I’m using is fine. We feel we can explain how and why things are happening. If a church is growing, we figure there is a reason. And we often think the reason is us—that we are doing something right. If we really think that it is something we are doing, we write a book about it, so that other churches can do it right, too. That’s good. It gives people ideas. Being a church is oddly hard, and ideas help.

But when times are not so great, explanations are not helpful. Rarely do people write books explaining what they did wrong. That may be partly because it is discouraging and embarrassing. But mostly it is because no one really knows what they did wrong. The church turns out not to be so reasonable after all.

On any Sunday in Boston and Cambridge, there are about 300 Lutherans altogether worshipping in churches. That’s a far cry from the way it was in the middle of the twentieth century, when there were lots of Lutheran churches here, and Faith alone had 1200 members. So, is the current situation good or bad? I know it has been a rough summer for some of the churches in the Boston area. There have been lost pastors, declining attendance, and turmoil. Is that good or bad? But in another church—Our Savior in Dorchester, which nearly closed its doors a couple of years ago—the church is being revitalized with new ideas and committed helpers. Is that good or bad? How should we judge these things? Should we judge these things at all?

Paul, unlike Peter, was not the rock on which the church stood. He was, however, the person who made the early church grow. Paul was a missionary, and planting churches was his business. Paul, unlike Jesus, used the word “church” a lot. He had ideas about what was right and what was wrong. He had no problem judging anything. But when Paul describes the church, he does not talk about reasonable things at all. He talks about the people who are gathered together, and what they are doing, and what they should do. Paul does not see the church as a place to which people come. The church is the people, not the place.

This passage we heard from Romans lists some things that people in the church do. Gifts they bring, as Paul says. The list is like similar lists in other letters of Paul, but it is not the same. All these letters list different gifts. Paul is not creating an organization chart with boxes for open requisitions. It is not that any one church needs a prophet, a giver, and a teacher, and that they had better go out and get one. It is that the church is a place in which prophets, givers, and teachers and all sorts of other people come together and when they do, their gifts are used. Every church is different. There is no way to write a book about how we did it because each church is a different gathering. Which is, I would say, a good thing. The church’s job is not to recruit people with special gifts, but to be a place in which people can put the gifts they have to great use.

The word “church” that Jesus uses hardly ever and that Paul uses all the time is in Greek “ekklesia.” It means a people called out to gather. So it means first a bunch of people, which we’ve just be talking about.

And second, a people called. No one is compelled to come to church anymore. People come because they feel drawn, or called, to gather.

And third, people who are called out. Out of their own individual existences. Out of one part of their lives into another. Or out of their own individual thoughts and patterns into others, new thoughts and patterns (and perhaps transformed, as Paul says).

And fourth, people who are called out to gather. People called out from one place to a particular place. A place of meeting with others, to relationships and interactions with particular others, people they engage with on purpose.

And finally, all this is in the service of God. People are called out to gather so that they might know, worship, and confront God. We are all here because in our many different ways—each according to the measure of faith God has assigned, Paul would say—we are here because we take God seriously.

The good news is that God, according to Paul, likes this. The word our Bible translates as “acceptable” is better translated “pleasing.” Worship pleases God. Our gathering here makes God feel good. A church is a place in which the gathering of people called out makes God feel good.

Peter’s name used to be Simon. Jesus in this passage called him Peter. But until that time there was no such name as “Peter.” People did not name their children Peter. Peter in Greek means “rock.” So Jesus is giving Peter not a new first name but a nickname. Jesus is calling Simon “Rocky.” Jesus says, I tell you, Rocky, on this rock I’ll build my church.

Peter, who is so flattered here in this passage, is the same Peter who a couple of verses later is called a stumbling block like a rock on a path, and the same Peter who denies Jesus at his trial. Peter is a man of enthusiasms, strengths, weaknesses, second thoughts, craziness, cowardice and bravery. Just like us. Just like all the people who are called out to gather.

The foundation of the church is not like granite blocks or poured concrete, firm, unshakeable, boring. If Peter is Rocky, then the foundation of the church is a bunch of pebbles and sand, shifting, unpredictable, flexible, and exciting.

And our job here is to be a place to hang out. A place that makes use of God’s gifts in people. A place to engage in serous conversation with God. A place to do that with others. And a place to hear God’s call.