Carry You!

Text: Isaiah 63:7-9, Matthew 2:13-23

The scholars who through their books guide poor parish preachers advise us to put aside sentimentality this Sunday. Christmas joy is so yesterday. “Hollow theology,” one said. They berate us because, while the Christmas story is nice and heartwarming, the real world is out there, and we are in it. One scholar says, “‘Be of good cheer’ masks the reality that much of the time life is anything but cheery.” In their argument, they cite the readings for today. They remind us to put things in context.

They remind us about Isaiah. These three verses are full of exuberance. It recounts the fine deeds of God, and sings God’s praises. But the verses have been quoted out of context, they say. “Airlifted,” one says, “out of a chapter thick with divine wrath and human despair.” In Isaiah, chapter 63, from which these verses were picked, we hear about God who is angry, tired, and disillusioned, and a world that fits that mood. We should, we are advised, not be tempted to focus on verses 7, 8, and 9. Lest, I supposed, we are tricked into finding pleasure in God, the world, and God’s works.

They remind us about Herod, the evil king in Matthew’s story of young Jesus and his family. “Nothing sentimental about Matthew’s ‘Christmas story’”—the writer puts that in quotes to reinforce his point. It is set in times—its context—set in times of turbulence and terror. Herod was certainly and truly a bad person. He killed his rivals. He built fortresses all around Israel because he was afraid of being deposed. He murdered his wife and one of his sons. As he was dying, he ordered the execution of all political prisoners so that all the people would mourn. There is no historical record of the slaughter of the innocents that Matthew writes about, but it would have been in character for him. He could and would have done it. The times were wicked.

We give thanks for these scholars. But really, we don’t need any reminders about how the world is. We have our own context. It is more or less the same as the world has always been. We are not ignorant of times of terror and turbulence. We are not strangers to human despair and surprising sorrow, or to unfairness and stupidity and evils. We know too much of cruelty already. We don’t need to be reminded that the peace of the child in the manger, shepherds all around, is not normal. It is extraordinary.

That is the point.

The verses from Isaiah and the “Christmas story” are signs that in the midst of trouble and sorrow, God is still good. Though Herod is as horrible as bad kings can be, the idea of the story in Matthew is that some escape. Though the Israelites may have had a rough go of it in the previous few centuries, they praise God for what God has already done: freed them from slavery, returned them from exile. “I will recount the gracious deeds of the Lord, the praiseworthy acts of the Lord, because of all that the Lord has done for us,” Isaiah sings. Israel reminds itself of the God who was there, who adopted and cared for them, raised them and taught them. The God who is their God. “These are my people,” God says. “These are my children.” In their distress, it says, God, too was distressed.

My niece, when she was a toddler, used to raise her arms to her parents and say “carry you!” Do you want me to carry you? they had asked her so many times. When she was tired. Or when she was frightened. Or when she was surrounded by lots of big adults in crowds. When the forces of her world bore down on her or her own resources were weakened. So it is with us, God’s children. “In his love and in his mercy God lifted them up and carried them,” Isaiah says. Carry you.

It is misleading to call the “Christmas story” sentimental. The context for Matthew is not the evils of the world—though he would agree that are certainly in the world—the context for Matthew is the prophetic history of God’s goodness and hope for the world. The point is not that Herod was a cruel genocidal king. Everyone knew that. The point is the God intervened to save one. Matthew puts the story in context, in the context of God’s work, God’s history, God’s promise, God’s reign. And especially God’s challenge to the other forces of the world which otherwise seem so unstoppable.

We can respond to things of the world with weeping and complaining and being discouraged. And there are plenty of times for that. But not today. Today we remember and respond with praise for all things God has given us. We sing with all the world, following the words of the psalm. Praise God. The sun and moon and stars, the heavens and the seas praise God. The monsters, fog, fire, hail, and wind praise God. The mountains, the trees, the beasts, the birds praise God. The kings and rulers, men and maids. Let us all praise God, for he has raised up strength for his people. Carry you!

If that is sentimental, if that is hollow theology, well then: hooray for that. Praise God and be thankful.

Wandering Brings Us Home

Text: Matthew 1:1-25

We humans are built for wandering. It is no wonder that Moses wandered around in the desert for 40 years. I imagine that when Adam and Eve were ejected out of the garden of Eden, they said “wow! look at all that open space; we can go wandering about in it.” The good news about wandering is that you cover a lot of territory pretty thoroughly. It is good for finding new things and having new experiences. The bad news is that life of wandering can seem a little aimless. The question is, are we getting anywhere?

This is the question of Advent. The season seems at first to be a transition between the past and the future. It is a time of equal parts reflection and anticipation. Where do we come from? Where are we going? We review the past, with its regrets and sorrows, and also its accomplishments and pleasures. And we are pulled forward, hoping for guidance and fulfillment, delight and contentment. In our theological life, Advent lies between Pentecost and Christmas, between the daily and the divine.

Yet in that way, more than in any other season of the church, Advent is a season of the immediate present. It sits looking equally at the past and at the beyond, which is where most of the time most of us sit. Our brains tell us constantly of the stories we have just lived and just as constantly writing new ones, in which we are the hero, or the villain.

That’s where the passage from Matthew sits, too, as long as you remember that the Gospel begins with the “begats.” That’s the word that the old King James version used to tie together the generations: “Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob, …” and so forth. “Begat” is the old word. Our pew Bibles say “Abraham was the father of Issac” and a modern popular Bible says “Abraham had Issac.” But the word in the Bible means more like “Is the origin of” or “Is the bringing forth of.” It is the same root as the words generation, genealogy, and—more significantly—the word genesis, the book of creation.

These men and women that Matthew lists are not just like beads on a string. Each gives rise to the next. The whole process is organic, to say the least. For Matthew, this long rope of generations is a path of constant unfolding and revelation. They are connected by their divine origin. Abraham is miraculously the father of all Israel. And connected by their divine purpose. Jesus is miraculously the point of all this childbearing.

Matthew looks backward, and what he sees is an inevitability. A direct and designed path from the past to now. Abraham to Joseph and then Jesus. Yet even Matthew must have noticed that his list is not just Hebrew father to son, father to son, like a Jacob’s ladder, step by step. There are some side steps through gentile women, and some pieces are missing and names that don’t appear elsewhere in the Bible. But Matthew saw it a perfect. And so did Martin Luther, our denominational namesake. They both see the present giving meaning to the events of the past and linking them together in purpose.

This is, we can no doubt safely say, not how it appeared to those who lived these lives each so concisely encapsulated into a single “begat.” It is difficult to judge the present by its future outcome, almost impossible in even our own lives and never spanning forty-two generations and nine hundred years. There is no way that the meaning that Matthew and Luther gave to these men and women was visible to them.

They, like us, looked back a little and forward a little less. If anything, I suspect they looked back to their immediate forbears with admiration, anger, and grief, just as we do. They looked forward with uncertainly, just as we do.

The mountains of Colorado descend abruptly to the plains of the midwest. The foothills aren’t much to talk about. The mountains are tall, and in a minute they are nothing at all. You travel in the mountains in narrow valleys and over passes. There are just not that many places to go. You are hemmed in by circumstance. But when you come down from the mountain, you are spit out onto vast possibility. You can go anywhere. It can be scary.

More of our lives is lived, it seems to me, on the plains than in the mountains. The plains are made for wandering, and that’s what mostly we do. Not necessarily vaguely or lost, like the wandering Israelites, but without a clear destination. Gradually our purpose—our destination—becomes clearer. But that is only because the time of our lives ahead of us is less and the possible routes become more limited. Until we find ourselves where we find ourselves. How did I get here? I can trace back the path. But how the heck did I get here? How did Pastor Seitz get to Boston, he asked in his sermon a couple of weeks ago. He never thought he’d live here. I once declared that I’d settle anywhere but in Massachusetts. I’ve been here forty years now. So much for declaiming. People’s stories are strange.

There are three histories in the Bible. One is the personal history of each character. People’s stories. Each of those people in Matthew’s genealogy. And by extension, our stories, each of us. Stories that get revealed by our living them. Pointing nowhere, though going somewhere. And the second is the history of creation, starting with Genesis, ending in our Bible with Revelation and in our theology with the end of time. And the third is what people call salvation history. The story of God’s involvement with people, starting with the covenant with Abraham and extending to Jesus and beyond. This is the history that Matthew presents. The story of Mary and Joseph and the coming child is part of all three histories.

For Christians, in fact, the histories are combined in Jesus. The meaning of the three histories are merged. We say that the meaning of the life of Jesus comes out of creation and salvation history, and the point of those histories in turn comes from Jesus. So Paul can write that we are in God and God is in us. And that by living in Jesus we are transformed. And that the death of Jesus changes ours.

We see in short times. We see back more clearly than forward. But God sees differently. God sees the whole of which we see only a part. The sense that Matthew makes of the chain of ancestors, God makes with all of us. It is not that God knows the unknowable, not that God knows the future—I can’t speak to that—but that God sees the whole story as a story producing life and holiness. The whole story, past and future, is to God, I think, ever blooming, blossoming, ever generating life. Whether or not we see how it could be, we are a part of that.

We can see that way—God’s way—too. The God in us, the God in whose image we are said to be made, lets us see that way, too. In days such as Advent, in the rites and meditations and reflections and songs, in the contemplation of the past and in the hopes for Jesus, we are taught how to see that way and we are reminded that we can see that way.

Our paths combine with and become part of the story of God in the world. We are not alone. Immanuel, God with us. We are able to see a little as God must see. To see the intensity of life even in the face of death, to see the combination of the secular and the divine, to know the presence of God among us.

We wander, but not aimlessly, even if our aim is unclear to us. We are in God’s story. God is in ours.

Grace to you and peace from God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Waiting

This sermon was preached by Craig Simenson

Isaiah 35:1-10 and Matthew 11:2-11

Puddles this morning, but no snow and ice yet. Still, things are changing underneath our feet these days. Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight! This is more or less John the prophet’s refrain. We heard the words last Sunday: One who is more powerful than I is coming after me. The one who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

And, it’s true… looking around recently, in only the past couple weeks, some things in our everyday worlds already seem to be changing. Maybe not with the intensity of John’s fire, but there are little colored lights already strung, “burning,” in the windows and along fence lines. Right in front of us and by our side – and maybe within us, too – there are preparations being made for what is to come in the weeks ahead.

But… we are not quite there yet.

Interestingly, this is exactly where the church calendar begins. Not with a ball dropping or champagne bubbling and a toast, not with noisemakers or the party hats with those little elastic strings, not with a shower of confetti or a college football extravaganza. But with Advent, a season marked more by waiting than by celebration of a new year. A season where the party is not quite here yet. Where instead we’re left to prepare ourselves for what is still to come.

Quite naturally it seems, our rituals this time of year most often revolve around our sense of expectation. Where we’re left waiting for the next candle to be lit on the Advent wreath: Hope, Peace, Joy… Waiting for the next line of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” or maybe “Come now. Come, O Lord Jesus,” whatever the case might be. Waiting for the next little door to be opened on the Advent calendar (hopefully, to some really good chocolate). Left waiting for the day that is close enough but still far away.

And yet, this church season of waiting—this season of what is still to come is, in many ways, a different kind of experience than much of what is collecting around us in our everyday worlds now. Like those songs already playing in the supermarket that we can’t help but sing along to (even if only in our heads, even if we don’t want to). Personally, I so very much look forward to “rockin’ around the Christmas tree.” I just don’t think I’m quite ready yet.

Yes, it’s true… our world, like us, has a hard time waiting. Maybe, it’s because, at its heart, waiting is a somewhat risky practice. After all, we may well be waiting for something that will not come. And if one waits long enough, we might even start questioning what it is we were getting ready for in the first place.

So the disciples of John the prophet, John the baptizer, come to ask Jesus their question:

Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?

Jesus turns their question around though. With the answers that apparently barely need to be spoken, with answers that they apparently already know: Go and tell [about]… what you hear and see.

Jesus turns our questions around, and keeps turning them—so that we might see ourselves more clearly: Who are you waiting for anyway? And what did you go out into the wilderness to look at?

Are you the one who is to come?, they ask him. As if the one they are speaking to, this Jesus, is not already there in front of them.

Perhaps it barely needs to be said by me. More than likely, you already know – that in all of our preparations of this season – in the planning and plane tickets, in the searching and shopping for those perfect gifts – we’re likely to be carried away into the season that isn’t quite here yet. And, in this, it seems that we are in real danger of losing sight of the wonders of this waiting season. In this, it seems we risk forgetting not only what set us out into this wilderness to begin with, but also the holy highway unfurling out before us in everything we hear and see and touch in these waiting moments. We risk losing the chance to truly hold our expectations, aspirations and intentions up for examination:

Who are we waiting for anyway? Year after year, who are we looking for out in this Advent wilderness? And will we know it when it is standing right here in front of us already?

To recognize the way, we not only need to look to where it leads, but also pay attention to the steps as we walk them. And we need to remain present to the ones who are walking beside us—in a wilderness changing underneath our feet.

The one who is still yet to come may very well already be right here in front of us. Waiting with us for the light and new birth to come. Traveling this same highway. Wide open to hear and see and touch all that is already present on this still-darkening road. Waiting in wonder for the illumination of fire and Spirit that is still yet to come.

Letter to Faith

This sermon was preached by Pastor Seitz

Text: Matthew 3:1–12

Dear Congregation of Faith Lutheran Church,

It is under uncomfortable circumstances that I bring this message to you today. The discomfort stems from the fact that this is my last message to you as your Assistant Pastor.

And although it is sad—it is also reason to rejoice. Because although discomfort is unpleasant, it is also a blessing.

I came here under uncomfortable circumstances. I sent here—driven here by the Holy Spirit—really. The proof that I was called to come is in the fact that while I was in college I took a year off to build houses. I decided if I was going to learn a trade in order to earn some money, Carpenter seemed a good way to go. I saved all the money I could for 9 months and I took my earnings and traveled across the country. I had lived in Washington State my whole life and I wanted to drive across the country to explore the West Coast. Being from the Pacific Northwest I decided to head for New England.

In retrospect I think my experience was due, in part, to the liberated attitude I possessed by the time I reached the East Coast. The kind of attitude that comes from taking a risk in order to go exploring and finding that mile after mile and state after state you are more capable than you had previously known.

To make a long story short—Amherst Massachusetts and I did not get along. Upon returning safely to Washington State a few months older and countless experiences wiser, I swore an oath that I would never live on the East Coast. I had a few rowing buddies who lived in Boston and whenever we talked and they shared how great Boston was, I was happy to remind them that although Boston is cool—I will never live on the East Coast. Never.

Had I not broken that oath and lived with the complete and utter discomfort of living someplace I swore an oath I would never live, without a Call in any church lined-up before I moved out here, without knowing whether it would work out or not—had I not through that—I would not know how to rely on Jesus and trust in God the way that I do now.

I would not have the countless blessings of an amazing wife and partner or a beautiful son who has been cared for and nurtured by this community so that church is one of his favorite places to be.

I would not know what it means to put all my trust in God and to know that God is even more present to us when we are uncomfortable. Had I not followed the Spirit into someplace uncomfortable.

In the story of John, when John is baptizing everyone—from Jerusalem to all of Judea and all along the river Jordan—when John is baptizing the masses, it says in today’s Gospel, they were confessing their sins.

It is culturally so radically different from today that it’s virtually impossible to appreciate how different it was in John’s time from today—but just consider life in John’s region as a Jew. A culture and a region where both daily life and religious life were directed by the Law of the Covenant.

John father was a Priest. The Gospel of Luke tells us the story of Zachariah and Elizabeth as one of tremendous faith and obedience to God when God calls us to do things that make us uncomfortable. John was raised in a family that holds the Law of the Covenant up as the highest Law and obedience to the Law as the most effective means of having a relationship with God. The Law would have been the very building blocks of language for John.

The entire Jewish community was focused on the Law of the Covenant and on obedience to the Law. The Law directed not only religious observances but the government and the pulse of daily life. The Law was so strict that just touching an unclean person on the same day you were going to Synogogue made you unfit for the Synagogue. How much more so to commit a sin.

The reality of constant pressure and constant scrutiny is a daily reality in John’s world. The reality of knowing that any sin confessed would require an act of penance, a sacrifice, an offering in order to receive YAHWEH’s pardon.

The act of confessing one’s sins to another person is challenging under the best of circumstances, but in John’s time the act of confessing one’s sins in front of a wild man and one’s entire community would have been painful to point of excruciating. It would have been unheard of, radical, and extremely uncomfortable.

But without the discomfort of going against everything they had been taught and everything that their instincts tell them—without the risk of confessing their sins aloud before God and man and being washed by a wild man in a baptism of repentance—they would not have been transformed by baptism. They would not have known acceptance by God as clean and blameless before the Lord, they would not have known God’s mercy as God’s love.

The Gospel of John the Baptizer is the original Gospel. “Repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” This is the same message Jesus started his ministry with, his first words when he began preaching—word for word. Jesus preached it and it came from John. The Holy Spirit to me more specific.

Challenge and Acceptance. Repentance means turn away from whatever distracts you from God and turn towards God. Change your life in a way that requires you to rely on God and in turn experience the presence of God. Repent, take a step away from your comfort and be uncomfortable, and receive the blessing of God’s comfort.

Repent, be Uncomfortable, and receive the blessing of God’s support.

The reason the masses came to John is that he preached a Gospel of acceptance. A message of forgiveness. He preached the Spirit of Welcoming.

If someone was in this church 5 years ago and they came back today, they might not recognize too many faces, and they would not recognize the area under the balcony, but I l know they would recognize this congregation.

Because even though many things have changed—the Spirit of Welcoming here at Faith Lutheran Church is the same.

People underestimate the power of being a welcoming church, but have you ever visited a congregation that failed to be welcoming?

And hospitality is one of the most important aspects of Christianity, it is one of the central precepts taught throughout scripture and the throughout the church, and it is a focal point of Jesus throughout his teachings and his direction to his followers.

The reason for this being that hospitality is not always comfortable. Which is good because, in truth, being uncomfortable is necessary for growth.

So even though it is under uncomfortable circumstances that I share this message with you today, the circumstances are also a blessing.

Pursuing a full time call at MIT is a move in response to the Holy Spirit. I am following where the Lord is Calling me. It is uncertain how long it will take to raise the money to sustain a full time call but I am moving forward with the knowledge and the reassurance that the Lord will be with me and once again show me His comfort, His presence, and His blessing.

And although there are uncertainties in life and in our journey with Christ, I am certain of one thing. I know that I could come back in another 5 years and even though I may not recognize many faces, but I would still recognize this congregation. Anyone could recognize it once they have experienced it, the Spirit of Welcoming.

Regardless of where we are we share the connection in His blessing.

And although there are uncertainties in life and in our journey with Christ, I am certain of one thing. I know that I could come back in another 5 years and even though I may not recognize many faces, but I would still recognize this congregation. Anyone could recognize it once they have experienced it, the Spirit of Welcoming.

Regardless of where we are we share the connection in the Body of Christ, through the Holy Spirit, the same spirit that taught the original Gospel to John, then to Jesus, and to us.

We will all grow as a result of this discomfort. I will grow and so will this congregation. Not because of the discomfort itself; but rather, because this is the kind of risk that invites us and calls us to rely upon God—calls us to trust in God for the unknown future.

Repent the Kingdom of God is at hand. Take risks that make you rely on God and know God’s blessing.

When we cease being able to risk we cease being able to grow.

If my first 5 years here in Cambridge are any kind of indicator, I can’t wait to see what the next 5 years will bring.

My Peace I brought to this congregation when I arrived here and first experienced its Spirit of Welcoming, as uncomfortable and uncertain I may have been. My Peace I leave with you—this congregation of Faith Lutheran Church. Serving you has been a blessing.

Father forgive us, Spirit Guide us, In the name of Jesus, Amen

It Is Not What You Know

Text: Romans 13:8-14
Other texts: Matthew 24:36-44

Paul writes that we know what time it is. Matthew writes that we will never know when the time will come.

Paul writes that we know it is the end of the long dark night and the glimpse of a new day. The time is now to gather up the lose ends, to make amends to those we have harmed—willfully or not. That in light of the coming light, it is time to attend to the commandments God has given us: love one another, do no harm to others. The time is now.

Matthew writes that we—in good company with the angels and the Son of God—we cannot know when the new day will dawn. As with those caught in the waves of the flood that Noah escaped, our world might be changed in an instant. The message is the same as Paul’s: love one another, do no harm to others. The time might be now.

Paul and Matthew speak with the same urgency. Whether we know nothing of the time or know exactly what time it is. And if that is so, does what we know make a difference? What does it matter what we know? Does it matter at all?

The first reading today is from Paul’s letter to Romans. We are reading this book in Bible study after coffee hour, but we are not up to chapter 13 yet. The passage we heard is from verses 11 to 14. But these verses are a little out of context. They are the tail end of an argument that Paul makes about how to live a Christian life. The argument starts at verse 8. Here’s how it goes:

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.”

Then it goes on with the verses we heard: Besides this, you know what time it is, and so forth.

What Paul is saying is that the breaking dawn of a new age forcefully reminds us of the importance of the commandments—in the law and reinforced by Jesus—to love one another as oneself. And what that entails is to do no wrong to others. We are not doing what God said to do. We harm other people all the time, intentionally or more often otherwise, mindlessly. We should not. That’s what God said. Remember that that’s what God said. The urgency that Paul feels is not about what is going to happen next. The urgency is about what we should be doing right now. The end of the darkness means that there is not much time, in Paul’s thinking. But whether there is little time or a lot of time, our job is the same. Love our neighbors. Do no harm.

We don’t know, in spite of Paul’s energetic arguments, about the future. Being faithful Christians does not instantly make everything precisely clear. But what we do know about is now. We know how we are behaving right now. And we know how we should be behaving. Nothing is changed about that. That is not new. It is old. We do know what is right. That is something we are very good at. Not that we listen to what we know all the time. We are also good at denying things and excusing things. But that does not mean we don’t know better.

There are voices that advise us to do what is legal, or expedient, or prudent, even. Good for ourselves, our families, our companies. As if that were enough. Yet we know what is right. We are advised not to pay attention to what we know. We are told that as long as it is official and well-considered and does not hurt anyone directly, that it does not matter.

But it does. We are advised to lie to ourselves. It makes us sick. Lying to yourself about whether you are doing what is right makes you sick. Sick at heart. It is a corruption, a wound of sorts. Something ill and malfunctioning. Our bodies and our souls know this. It is another thing we know.

The word salvation means to heal. One purpose of the law—the commandments that Paul quotes from—one purpose of the law is to heal that sickness of heart. It is like a medicine, or an antidote. Loving one another, doing no harm to others, is a way to keep us from getting sick. And to make us better when we are sick. In the metaphoric darkness that Paul likes to write about, we are sick. He reminds us that we know what is right. It is written down in this book, the Bible, and, as Jeremiah later said, in our hearts.

Paul then summarizes the commandments the same way Jesus did: love one another. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, Paul writes, therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law. It fulfills the law because it is identical to the law. That is, people who follow the law and people who love one another do the same thing. Exactly the same thing. There is no detectable difference.

What we do matters. When we do what is right—defined as we are talking about as loving one another and therefore doing no harm—it matters. It matters to the world. It matters to us. I’m not making this up. It is what Jesus taught. When you say to yourself, it doesn’t matter what I do, you are lying to yourself. When others tell you that it doesn’t matter, they are mistaken.

That what we do matters is a gift; it is not a burden. What could be worse than living a life in which what you did, did not matter. What kind of life would that be? Not a good one, I think.

Paul and Matthew talk about a new dawn, a new day, a new age. It sounds so sudden, but it is not. The day dawns slowly. Until that moment, we are in the dark. Until that moment, our faith gives us a way to measure a good life. Do we love one another? Do we do no harm?

Matthew is right. About that day, when all is resolved, about that hour, no one knows. And Paul is right too. We know what time it is now. And though we are in the night, let us lay aside the things of darkness. Let us put on the ways of the light. Let us live as if it were the day.

We Want a King

Text: Jeremiah 23:1-6, Psalm 46

The people wanted a king.

Some time after the Israelites had settled into the promised land, they began to long for a king. You can read about this in the first book of Samuel. God sees this as an issue, and God says to the prophet Samuel, “they have rejected me [God], from being king over them.” Samuel speaks the word of God to the people and tells them all the bad things that kings do. Raise taxes from you, send your children off to war, abuse their power, favor their cronies. The usual list. But the people want a king. “We are determined to have a king over us so that we might be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” And so in the end they get what they want, and Saul, the first king of Israel, is crowned.

In time Saul gives way to David, Israel’s greatest king, loved and feared. Solomon follows David. And shortly thereafter Israel splits into two nations, and a series of kings rule them, each king worse than the last. The final king is Zedekiah—ending a long line of poor and ineffective leaders—who the Bible says “did what was evil in the sight of the Lord,” as his predecessors before him did. It was just as Samuel had told them it would be. But the lesson the Israelites learned from this was not, as you might think, to get rid of kings and rulers. Instead, they longed not for no king, but for a better king. They longed for a king, in particular, who was like David. Wise and powerful.

Today is the feast of Christ the King. Recently some have started to call it the Realm of Christ Sunday. I’m sympathetic with that. Kings are a little monarchical, anti-democratic, paternalistic, and old fashioned. Plus sometimes abusive, corrupt, and war-loving. That’s not how we want to see Jesus. Maybe “realm” is better. We would like Jesus to be more modern. “The reign of Christ is a reign of peace,” as one commentator wrote. Jesus, this guy goes on, “is a model of radical inclusivity. Someone who sees the value God has bestowed on every human being.” Now you know I think all that is mostly true. But that it is not the whole story. And it is not what the people of the Gospels thought when they thought of Jesus as a king. And it is not what many Christians in history have thought. What they wanted from Jesus is what the Israelites wanted. A powerful king like David, strong, good, and mighty. Christ the King.

People want a leader. That’s because our world seems always to be unraveling. Things fall apart. Martin Luther took today’s psalm, Psalm 46, as his inspiration for the fight song of the Reformation, A Mighty Fortress. In the translation we sing, it says that the forces of the world threaten to devour us. Another version, which seems to me to be more like it feels, says that those forces threaten to undo us. It is the struggle of life over death, meaning over chaos, growth over decay. Information over entropy, if you like.

John Calvin, a reformer like Luther, but a lot more gloomy, thought that in his time the cosmos was disintegrating. It does feel like that sometimes. It is the unfortunate way of things. The psalm compares the wobbliness of nations and kingdoms to the upheaval of earthquakes and hurricanes. The verbs it uses are the same for both. In times like his, in times like ours: What can we count on? To whom do we turn?

People want peace and prosperity. And justice. We hope for those things from our leaders, and when we go without those things it is the leaders that we blame. A leader is supposed to be like a shepherd to us. In the time of prophets like Jeremiah, that is what being a king meant. A shepherd guardian.

Leaders—any leader, in the church, commerce, politics, the academy—leaders are not supposed to be in it for themselves. They are not supposed to line their own pockets. They are not supposed to own everything. They are not supposed to disdain the sheep. They are not supposed to favor their buddies. They are not supposed to risk the lives of the sheep recklessly.

Yet that is what they too often do. Jeremiah’s rant in today’s reading is about bad shepherds, bad leaders. Jeremiah condemns Zedekiah and his predecessors. Under their so-called leadership, the nation falters and the people are aimless. You have not attended to my sheep, God says in the reading. I’ll do it myself, God says.

God in Jeremiah promises a king like David, from David’s line, wise and just.Those who heard Jeremiah prophesy imagined a forceful, fine-looking, valiant king as they imagined David to be. A king of all Israel who would restore it and its people.

And a few centuries later there were those who hoped Jesus might be that king. But it did not turn out the way they hoped. They were disappointed.

When Christians speak of Christ the King, they see in Jesus a hint of Jeremiah’s promise. But our hope is no longer for a new and redeeming king of Israel but of a king for the world.

We expect that kings of our nations will be good (not corrupt, cowardly, and so forth). But we do not want our own kings to be nice. Or rather, we want them to be nice to us sheep, but not nice to the wolves. We are not all one flock, we are scattered into nations, and we see other nations as wolves in disguise. As they no doubt see us. So it will not be by our own devices that the realm of Christ will happen. Not by kings of nations.

Nations make much ado, it says in the psalm. God seems uninterested in all that. God in the psalm brings desolations on the earth—[that’s how the pew Bibles put it]—but what gets dissolved are things long overdue for it. Arrows and spears and shields. War. And weapons. All gone.

Luther, writing A Mighty Fortress, saw a battle, a struggle between forces. But for Luther, the enemy was not us, other sheep. For Luther, the enemy was Satan, or evil, or “this world’s tyrant.” The devil and all his empty promises. Luther, who always spoke in earthy terms, was said to wish to spit in the Devil’s eye, and said that the Lord’s Supper gave us sustenance to fight the Devil. He gave evil personality. That feeling we have that the world is coming unravelled, Luther described as the result of a divine agent.

The people want a king. But not for the same reasons that the Israelites badgered Samuel. We want a king to heal the world, to knit up the unravelling. To fight the evil one. To redo what chaos undoes. To lead us. To teach us and to guide us and to make us courageous. To be a model for us. We want peace and prosperity and justice for all of us. We want protection against the corrosion that fear creates. We cannot do this ourselves. We turn to Christ to be our king.

By honoring Christ as King this day, we remind, comfort, and encourage ourselves that the future of the world is not finally in our hands. That God continues to be intimately concerned with the world and us. We are not alone. God is in the midst of us. The lord of hosts is with us.

Working and Eating

Text: 2 Thessalonians 3:6–13

This sermon preached by Katie Wilson, vicar this year at Faith

I would like to begin by thanking Pastor Stein and the community of Faith for the opportunity to stand before you all and share with you from my heart. The honor and the privilege of standing here, today, is an honor and privilege that I never expected to have; I am deeply grateful.

Today I would like to speak about food, and community, and what it means to work and to eat.

I am a new face here at Faith Lutheran, and I have come to stand here in church because of the work I do with Faith Kitchen. Twice a month, beneath the very floor beams on which your feet currently rest, the basement of this building is transformed into a hub of energy and exchange. Food that would have been thrown away has been reclaimed, processed, and redistributed by a fantastic entity that deserves our great respect: the Greater Boston Food Bank. Hundreds of pounds of food come to us: frozen fish, canned fruits, dry goods, meat, pasta, ice cream. This food is overflow or overstock from the FDA, from the co-op, from grocery stores. It was unneeded or unwanted in the eyes of its previous owners and thus was designated as a donation.

Our work in Faith Kitchen begins with this food: we defrost fillets of fish and slice pungent onions, we boil rice and simmer soup, sometimes we peel and chop individual potatoes like precious jewels before they are boiled and drained and mashed by hand—sometimes we open a cardboard box and mix flakes of dehydrated potato product with enough hot water to reconstitute it, to make it food. Sometimes the minestrone is made from scratch with garden grown greens floating in a savory broth coaxed from onions, garlic, tomatoes, oil, and time spent simmering slowly on the stove—sometimes my job is to open one prepackaged box after another and pour the standardized contents into a pot to heat. In either case, whether we are cooking from scratch or embracing convenient shortcuts, cooking is an alchemical process. When we are in the kitchen our business is the transformation of raw material into caloric value that not only satiates hunger and fulfills nutritional needs, but also satisfies the human need for love, attention, care and a place within community.

So now we are getting into the real business of Faith Kitchen. While food is the bedrock of this program it is the people participating that make it what it is. I am not speaking only of those who come week after week to volunteer their time and energy cooking and cleaning and serving, though they of course are essential. At every meal the doors of Faith Kitchen are metaphorically thrown wide open and all are welcome to join us and eat. All are invited to the table. It is reasonable to assume that our demographics reflect a portion of the local homeless population, the disadvantaged and the underserved. Many guests do have homes and jobs, however, and yet are living on a budget that is getting tighter and tighter—so tight they cannot afford the nutrition they and their families need, despite their work and effort. Ever increasing numbers of people who never expected to find themselves hungry may find themselves short this month, and might find respite in a free hot meal. But there is no doorman at the entryway to Faith Kitchen checking off a list of qualifications. There is no judgment, no requirement to be there. All are welcome. All are welcome.

What then do we do with a passage such as the one we read today in Thessalonians, a passage that states “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat”? Reading this passage literally we hear a voice of unequivocal judgment: those living in idleness, those busybodies, and those unwilling to work should not eat. Reflecting on this passage, however, I am called to ask of myself, and of us: What does it mean to work? And what does it mean to eat?

I can say that my work at Faith Kitchen is to cook and to clean, to order food, plan menus, set up tables, even lead the community in prayer. In the other aspects of my life my work is to read, to attend lectures, to write intelligent papers that may or may not have any relevance to my daily life. Perhaps you are a teacher, an accountant, a waste disposal expert. Perhaps you are a musician, a mother or father, the director of an organization, a gardener, or a sales clerk. What I would like to suggest is that however you earn your living, whatever work you do, there is another strain of work that we are constantly presented with. Each and every one of us is presented with the opportunity to do this work every day of our lives. No matter how much or how little money we make, no matter how prestigious or not our title or description or lack thereof may be, I suggest that each day we are faced with the work of bringing attention, and integrity, into every one of our mundane and individual interactions.

What does it mean to work? The work that I am speaking of is paying attention to the attention that we are giving to the task at hand, to the person in front of us, to the prayer being spoken in our hearts. Paying attention to how we pay attention helps us uncover the motives underneath the actions that we take—we may find, for example, that we are peeling potatoes with resentment for being stuck with the dinner shift or with envy for the person making chocolate cake and licking batter off the spoon. Pay attention to how you listen in your next conversation with a family member, close friend, or co-worker: to what extent are you able to purely listen? What does it mean to listen without injecting your own judgment even silently, to listen without interruption, without planning the next thing that you want to say, without waiting until it is your own turn to talk? Pay attention to this.

It is not attention alone that is the work, however. I am often extremely aware that I am making a fool of myself or acting with my own self-interest at heart. Cultivating awareness of intentions and actions is a crucial practice but it is an empty practice if we are not also cultivating integrity and compassion to match this attentive awareness.

What I am most interested in is the way that every minute interaction, every mundane chore and event and relationship, every choice made and word spoken is what constantly creates the world and the community that we inhabit. The means that we employ to bring about our ends are, in fact, constantly creating further means and ends. We are constantly engendering the world around us, and that creation is enacted for better or worse based on each interaction we have. Our work is to make the world around us a better and more beautiful place, and I believe that we do so every time we bring our full attention and full integrity into a relationship, an interaction, a project, a meal, or even a brief and fleeting moment of prayer. This is what it means to work.

But what does it mean to eat? When we eat we are feeding our body fuel, we are giving it the calories it needs to physiologically propel ourselves through the world. But eating is also nourishment, and nourishment happens on many levels. Our hearts and souls and minds must be at rest to enjoy a good meal. The company will hopefully be good or the silence pure and sweet. Pausing for a moment of prayer before beginning helps us to appreciate the food, to take it in more mindfully and gratefully. Pausing for prayer in this way is a means of bringing intention, and attention, to the act of eating, and is a way to acknowledge that the act of consuming food is far more significant than simply loading up on calories as a means to an end. In a communal space, such as the bustling and boisterous basement of Faith Lutheran on meal nights, this act of communal prayer acts as much to unite the community as it does to quiet and center the individual mind. When we pray together, even in silence, and then eat together, we are sending the message to ourselves and to each other: we are in this together. We are not alone. Knowing this is nourishment. Sharing this is nourishment.

When we eat we are nourished by the gifts the earth has heaped upon us. Our attention to the food and our intentions to nourish the community indeed do transform donations that were once considered waste into vital nourishment for many people. But more importantly, it is the intention and integrity of the individuals at Faith Kitchen—volunteers and guests alike—that transform the space from a basement into a community. This community is what enables us to eat, to truly eat, to be truly nourished.

When Thessalonians states that “those who do not work should not eat,” I do not believe this is a condemnation of those guests that we so happily open our doors to each month, and invite in for a free meal. Rather, I would ask if it is possible to be nourished without doing the work of showing up in presence and attention. If one is not able to work—to be present and compassionate with others, to bring attention and integrity to their most mundane actions—is it even possible to be nourished by mundane meals or by the community that surrounds us?

The passage we read from Thessalonians closes with the words: “now such persons we command and exhort in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living. Brothers and sisters, do not be weary in doing what is right.” Likewise I would like to exhort all of us to do this work, quietly and constantly, in each relationship and friendship and task at hand. Lest I sound too much like a “preacher in a pulpit” I would also like to say that these are goals that I aspire towards and to which I constantly fail. Our work is not to be perfect, but to remember the kind of person we would like to be, the kind of world we would like to live in, and to help create it. Each interaction, each meal, each moment, presents us with the opportunity to do this work, and thus to eat, and to be nourished. May we all work. May we all eat. And may we “not be weary in doing what is right,” little by little, step by step, word by word, and meal by meal.

How Will I Look in Heaven

Text: Luke 20:27-38

At the center of Christianity is renewal. Jesus brings renewal to the world and to each of us. Things that are bad will become good. What is broken will be fixed. Jesus teaches about living a good life, about being a good person. But those teachings guide us to change ourselves and thus the world for the better. Through Jesus, things will be different. That difference is a cause of and also a result of our trust in God and in Jesus. Jesus saves the world and saves us by changing us.

When people talk about the effect of being Christian, their sentences are full of words that mean renewal: return, reborn, refresh, repair, restore. And resurrection. These words are so full of life and joy and hope that they seem about to pop. All those “re-“ words inspire us for two reasons.

First, they make us realize that we are made for better things. We are not created broken and needing to be whipped into goodness (as if that were possible). We were created good and became broken. Inside the potential of the world and inside the potential of our souls is God’s goodness. But it has somehow been corrupted, become cloudy, distorted. So the evil in the world is a mistake, not fundamental. Or if you were to speak like Martin Luther, done to us by Satan, the Evil One, the Lord of Darkness. Or like the apostle Paul—who taught much to Luther—by the power of Sin. Paul and Luther are trying to describe the same thing: innate goodness perverted. We are not designed to suffer, but to live contentedly and joyfully. That is what God intended and does intend.

And second, these words give us hope that what we were designed to be can in fact someday be. We can be renewed—made as intended again. We can be restored—made whole again. We can be refreshed—made vital again. We can reborn—start again.

Things sometimes do not go so well for us. Circumstances, chemistry, poor choices, natural events, forces in and out of our control—for whatever reason, our lives are sometimes not so great. Something happens that shouldn’t; something does not happen that should. We feel beaten down for a moment, or for much longer, and cannot escape. Sometimes things look bleak. In these moments, it is easy to think that the way we are now will be the way we are going to be forever. That the future will be today all over again. In those times, renewal seems to be a bad joke. Rebirth, longed for, seems unattainable. No joy. We imagine God to be powerless to restore us, or maybe just uninterested.

In today’s Gospel story, the Sadducees try to make a fool of Jesus. They do not believe in the resurrection of the dead (unlike the Pharisees, as I said earlier, who do). They want to trip Jesus up, so they invent this far-fetched story of a woman marrying seven brothers in a row. If they are all resurrected when they die, then to whom will she be married, they ask Jesus. This is a joke. You can imagine them congratulating themselves on their sneaky, clever example. High fives all around. That’s a good one, they all say. They are laughing at Jesus.

But Jesus takes them seriously. Their question is a variant on a more modern version: What will I look like in heaven? Heaven being, in this view (as in the Sadducees’), like earth only better. Which of the many ways I’ve been and seen in my life will I be in heaven? Will I be old and creaky? Young and foolish? Will the extravagant part of me, that I like, be diminished? Will my rough edges, only some of which I don’t like, be ground away? What clothes will I wear, if any?

What Jesus says to the Sadducees—and what we hear for ourselves in this story—is that they are thinking that resurrection is just like here and now, only longer. That the eternal future is just like today—more or less—over and over again. But Jesus says it is not. It is different. The Sadducees think of God in a tiny, constricted sort of way. They see God’s options as limited. They lack imagination.

The strange thinking of the Sadducees is not that different from ours when we feel stuck in the present, when we are out of hope, and see the future as an extension of the present. It represents a kind of cosmic discouragement. The Sadducees’ absurd story of the brothers and the widow is designed to shut out the future. They are doing what we do when we tell ourselves that forces in the world or in ourselves make a different future unlikely, impossible.

Jesus teachings, and especially in the Gospel of Luke, counter that discouragement. Jesus teaches that the last shall be first, that the lowly shall stand, that the hungry will be filled, that the poor will be satisfied. These are stories of new futures. Captivity will be freedom, enemies will be as family, greed will be generosity. Sadness will be happiness.

Jesus encourages us—as he did the Sadducees—to expect more, to expect much, from God. Christianity teaches hope for a transformed world. A world not in which the poor get riches, but one in which there are no poor and rich. Not one in which the wounds of war are healed, but one in which there is no war. Not one in which the hungry are given food, but in which no one goes hungry. The goal of the ministry of Jesus is to transform the world. The effect of the ministry of Jesus is to transform each of us, and thereby transform the world.

It does not require magical thinking to trust we can be renewed, restored, refreshed, reborn. Resurrected. On the contrary, to think that anything is static goes against our knowledge of the way things work in the universe and of our own experience. A member of Faith once said that you never know what this church will be like six months from now. The spirit moves this place. And moves in our lives. Even death does not change that. The world is dynamic. We know that the stars in the heaven are not fixed, that all things are in motion, that movement in time is the rule of creation. And we know that is true in our lives.

We do not need to be like the Sadducees. We do not need to let our inability to see how the future will unfold hem in our hopes for new life.

Coming Down

Text: Luke 18:9-14

This parable is not for everyone. Jesus did not tell this parable for all to hear. He told the parable to some, it says. Some who trusted in themselves and regarded others with contempt. Perhaps a small group. Perhaps not.

This story is about two sinners. Two men who sin. And two who are favored by God. Two men who are blessed. The same two men. A Pharisee and a tax collector.

The Pharisee is blessed by being good. The Pharisees were a bunch of liberal, pretty inclusive, religiously observant faithful people. They had the blessings of living a life a faith, the confidence that comes from knowing that you are known by God. The joy of the discipline of a faithful life and the strength that living a life founded on faith can be. The Pharisee is thankful, generous, nearly always mindful of God and God’s ethics. He seems in this story to be content and happy. What we hope for in our own lives of faith.

Yet the Pharisee is a sinner. He personifies the problem in the story. He is the one, we soon figure out, who embodies the two sins that are the point of this parable.

The first sin is that he trusts in himself to be righteous. Which means that he believes his many blessings are a result of his own effort. He is good because of the person he is, the work he has done, his generosity, his careful living. The Pharisee is like us when we think that gifts of body, mind, or character—being smart, or healthy, or kindly—are something that we have been responsible for on our own. God favors the Pharisee, he thinks, because of the way he acts. His blessings in life are proof of that. And in his arrogance he sees—his second sin—he concludes that those who are not blessed are condemned by God. And so rightly—by his own judgment—he despises those not like him. “I thank you, God, that I am not like other people.” People like that tax collector over there.

The tax collector is a sinner. Tax collectors at that time were in general not nice people. They were not government employees, but independent contractors given a license or concession by Rome. They paid an upfront fee to Rome. Their business was to make a profit beyond that fee in any way they could. They were known as greedy, nasty, extortionists. Rogues and thieves, as the Pharisee calls them.

Yet the tax collector is blessed. He is justified, as it says in Luke, meaning that he has it right. He is humble before God. He knows in his heart that it is God to whom he must answer. He acknowledges, unlike the Pharisee, that he has made a mess of things, and he desires for God’s blessing in spite of his deeds, not because of them.

Both of these men seek to be righteous. Righteous is a strange sort of word. It means “fine,” as in “what a fine day.” Or “what a perfect day,” but not “a perfect score.” It does not mean “good,” as in “be a good boy,” but it does mean “good” as in “it is good to be here.” Or “good” as God said when God created the world. It means to be right with God. In that way, it stands for all the ways there are to be at peace, content, “actualized” as people used to say. To be righteous is to be as God created us to be and as we each of us always wanted to be. To be good, to be fine, to be happy.

Most of our lives are a little gritty, and little out of sorts. Things are a little out of key, off color, clumsy. We get tripped up and trip over ourselves. This kind of minor daily suffering is the opposite of righteousness.

Justice, which comes from the same word as righteousness in the Bible, is the setting of things right. To right what is askew, or off kilter. So we have social justice, economic justice, ecological justice. God is righteous because it seems that God’s deeds match what we imagine God’s nature to be. God is just because God’s intent is that things will be made fine.

The tax collector goes home justified because he has given himself up to the way of things as they should be, to the way of God. For the moment, at least. Who knows what he did later. It does not say. It does not matter. The Pharisee, for all his claims of righteousness, is not. Because he has given himself up to nothing. He goes his own way. And we who hear this story feel it to be so. In spite of our knowing that the Pharisee is a good man and the tax collector a nasty one, we can see that in this story, at least, it is the tax collector who is blessed and leaves the story in peace. But the Pharisee just leaves.

In the parable the Pharisee looks up and the tax collector looks down. The Pharisee looks to heaven (though it does not for sure say so), and the tax collector looks to the earth. In our Sunday worship, in the dialog (the beginning of the eucharistic prayer), the minister says “lift up your hearts,” and the congregation responds, “we lift them to the Lord.” A scholarly colleague said last week at a clergy gathering that this is unfortunate wording. He prefers “open your hearts,” and “we open them to the Lord.” So we are going to try that today. His point is that, especially for Lutherans, our job is not to lift ourselves up to God, ascending, sort of, to the heavens. To become divine. Our job is to be creatures of the earth, opening ourselves to the God who comes to be with us. This being with us is what Jesus did. This is what God does in almost all the stories in the Bible. We are on an adventure with God, but the instigator and guide of this divine journey is God, not us.

The Pharisee in his arrogance wants—expects, maybe?—to be exalted. To be made more heavenly and pure. The tax collector knows that he is always a sinner, but that God is always with him nonetheless. It is not helpful in prayer to prove ourselves to God, to impress God. God is already impressed. Or not. But to call on God to be present in us.

We come here hoping for something. You might say we come hoping for righteousness. We come for some transformation, some new thing, new way to live and to be. Not to be immaculate. But to be as earthy as God made us and at peace with all things, ourselves, and others. That is a big hope. As in all transformations of this sort, we start by acknowledging that we live in sin and suffering—what the tax collector did and the Pharisee did not—and that it is beyond us by ourselves to transform ourselves—as the tax collector realized and the Pharisee did not. To open ourselves, asking God to transform us, and not to leave as we arrived, unchanged.

This parable is not for everyone. Not all will hear this parable. For those who do trust in themselves that they are righteous, who trust that they can right themselves, this parable is empty of meaning. For those who do not suffer, for those who not sin, for those who are content, this parable offers nothing. But for the rest of us sinners, it reminds us that we may open our hearts to God in expectation of new life.

Striving with God

This sermon preached by Craig Simenson, a leader at Faith Kitchen and vicar at Faith last year.

What does it mean to strive with God? Where does it happen, and who can we expect to be when it’s all over?

Jacob, “the swindler.” Jacob, the one wrestling all his life. Struggling with his brother even within their mother’s womb. Jacob, the one tumbling out at birth, still holding on to Esau’s heel.

Jacob, the one left all alone now on the banks of the river Jabbok. Undoubtedly, agonizing over what daybreak will bring to him, and how he will ever face his twice-swindled brother and live. Jacob, left only with himself. Left only to wrestle in the dark, against the one who refuses to tell us his name. Jacob, the one who will not let go, who will not give up.

The one who prevails and yet cannot walk away from this so-called victory whole. Jacob, who sees the face of God and lives—A better man for the encounter, maybe. But, most certainly, a man who is only able to walk away limping as he goes.

This wounded Jacob, this one now known to us as Israel, offers us a different vision of what it means to strive with God and prevail. A vision that might look very different from how we imagine our lives should go. A vision for ourselves and what it means to not give up—for what it means to be faithful—that might look very different from the way we hope it will work out for us in the end. A different vision that perhaps challenges us to let go of the idea that if we keep on working at what’s wrong in our lives, that if we hold on in the struggle, we will finally win unscathed and completely changed. That we’ll finally become the people we always thought we should be, the kind of people that we thought God always wanted us to be. That, if we’re faithful and don’t give up hope, we’ll finally be able to fix everything that is wrong in our lives—that we’ll be healthy again, that our loved ones won’t be sick anymore, that our once-happy relationships will be just the way they were before, that we’ll be able to leave our nagging doubts behind us, that we can finally just shut all of our problems up and shut them out of our lives.

In Jacob, we are called to let go of the idea that striving with God and prevailing means that our fears and doubts, our grief, hurts and disappointments in life will suddenly vanish. Called to let go of the idea that prevailing in the trials of our lives always means walking stridently forward. Called to let go of the expectation that getting it right will finally mean getting our feet back under us again.

All of this is not to say that transformation and healing does not happen. All of this is not to say that hope does not matter in our lives. But it is to say that, at a fundamental level, transformation does not change our woundedness. We cannot wrestle with God and ourselves, and expect that our victory will mean an end to the struggle and suffering in our lives. We cannot expect that we will endure the trials of our lives to one day find that all of our hurting has finally left us alone.

Rather, Jacob shows us that being faithful, that not giving up in our struggling and striving, finally means finding that we are forever marked by the wounds of that great struggle. Seeing the face of God and living to walk away from it means that our woundedness will most often be more evident than it ever was before. Seeing the face of God is to see that we have always been limping, that we come to victory in life and death already beaten.

This is what it often means to live from day to day. This is what it means to journey with God. For Christians, this, too, is what it means to pray. For we come to our prayers limping as we go. Alongside our joys and celebrations, we pray listening to what cries out in our lives. We pray paying attention to our wounds, to what is hurting, to what is broken inside of us and around us beyond repair. Wrestling with them as we go. Holding onto them even in the dark, even when we cannot name them. Embracing them, holding onto them in love even when they break us.

We pray faithfully limping. In faith, trusting that God’s justice will somehow prevail. Somehow trusting in a love that runs to meet us even as we limp ahead.

Trusting in a victorious God who comes to us already beaten, a God forever marked by the wounds of our great struggle. Christ lifted up before us not on the throne of judgment but on the bloodied tree, a body broken, with wounds that not even resurrection could erase. A God—holes in his hands, wound at his side—limping to meet us, too.

Alleluia.

It Starts with Thanks and Praise

Text: Luke 17:11-19 and 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15c

In most Lutheran churches the readings for the day are listed in a lectionary. The first reading and the Gospel reading are supposed to be related in some way. Sometimes the connection is obvious. But sometimes it seems they are hardly related at all. And sometimes it seems like they are related by only trivially, by some common word. And sometimes, like today, they are related in a deep way.

The first story is about Naaman, commander of the army of King Aram, who defeated the Israelites in battle. But Naaman is sick. He is sent to Elijah the Israelite prophet. He has what is described as leprosy, which is probably some skin disease, but not what we’d call leprosy today. The second story is similar. Some men who come to Jesus because they are sick; they have leprosy, too, another skin disease that is also not what we’d call leprosy. In both stories, the sick are cured. In both stories the healing is done at a distance.

But that is not what connects these two passages. There are lots of stories in the Bible about sick people getting cures. What strikes us in both these two particular stories is that they both reveal moral defects. We are shocked at the behavior of Naaman in the first story and the nine men who walked away in the second. They seem to be arrogant and entitled. They are oblivious to what is going on. And, at least for a time or at least for some, they are ungrateful.

There is a persuasive power to ideas. That’s sort of by definition. Any idea worth its salt changes things in people. But some thoughts, some of the time, in some people, cause a kind of blindness. We do things based on what we think things should be instead of what they are. Prejudice is a common example. Our thoughts about people blind us to the real people in front of us. Disappointment is another, where our thoughts about how things should go turn out blind us to the gifts that we are receiving. This idea-blindness influences everything from what we do and say in relationships, to how we vote, to how we do our jobs, to how we walk down a city street, to what we wear, to how we view God.

Naaman comes to Elijah the prophet with expectations—which is an idea in which “what should be” replaces “what is.” Naaman expects that because of his stature, his rank, his value to the king who is in power over Israel, and probably even his character and goodness—Naaman expects something appropriate will happen when he visits this Hebrew prophet. He expects deference. But Elijah does not even greet the great commander. Instead, he sends Naaman some stupid instructions by messenger, the email of his day. Naaman gets angry. “I thought,” he says, “I thought at least Elijah would come out and stand and call on the name of God and wave his hand over the spot and cure me.” Very particular and detailed expectations. Though Naaman is offered the gift of health, he nearly refuses it.

Naaman is not alone. In the portion of the passage that the lectionary skips, Aram sends the king of Israel a gift of 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and some fine clothing. Rather than pleasing the king, it makes him frantic. He has an idea that Aram is making demands on him and he is afraid he will fail. “Look” he says, “Aram is trying to pick a quarrel with me.” Though the king is offered the gift of a fortune, he nearly refuses it.

Our expectations of the way things should be blind us to the gifts that God has given us. Rather than feel blessed we feel deprived. Rather than feel surrounded by much good, we feel shortchanged. Rather than feeling joy, we feel fear. And because we do not see the gifts, we do not see the giver. All we see are situations and transactions and conditions—all lacking somehow. God becomes invisible.

Ten people come to Jesus for a cure. Jesus sends them all away. And as they go, they are in fact cured. What a scene that must have been on the road. We do not know what nine of them did. But we do know what one of them did. He comes back. He throws himself at the feet of Jesus and thanks him. This is not mostly a story about a miracle cure. The cure itself takes place off-stage. We do not see it. But we do see the man returning. As we see Naaman returning. Both men are transformed. Not only transformed in health but also transformed in sight. They both see God where they did not before. God has become visible to them. They return in thanksgiving. And being thankful, they see God.

Thanksgiving is the foundation of faith. Hallelujah—hooray!—says the psalm. I give thanks with my whole heart and mind. Thanksgiving is the fruit of the creation story in Genesis, whose story line is essentially: what a great world God has made! Thank you, God. God’s work, says the psalm, is full of splendor and majesty and marvels. This sense of awe and wonder and mystery is a form of thanksgiving. Thanksgiving to God creator and provider of all things. God who gives us life—amazing in itself—and that we are able to take pleasure in it. Even more amazing.

To be thankful is not a chore, but a joy. Not law, but grace, Lutherans might say. Naaman and the man come back to Elijah and Jesus not because of social obligation or guilty consciences, but because they are overwhelmed with gratitude. Praise God! they say.

Writing about the story in Luke, one scholar asks “Who actually would enjoy the thought of owing everything good and worthy in his or her life, indeed life itself, to someone else, to confess that we are definitely not self-made but—quite the opposite—created beings? Who would claim that leading a life of thanksgiving is the reason for and foundation of personal and communal joy?”

Wow. I read this and thought: I would. And I think that many of you here would, too.

Thanksgiving is the center of Christian worship. What we do here is by and large gratitude expressed in ritual. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God, begins the Great Thanksgiving of the Lord’s Supper. The word for the Lord’s Supper, for Holy Communion, is Eucharist. That word, letter for letter direct from the Greek, means thank you. It is the word the leper uses to thank Jesus. The church and worship is like a workshop for thanksgiving, a bench, tools, instructions for living a grateful life. What would worship be like without thanksgiving? A dismal expression of sacrifice and fear.

I am a little concerned for the world these days. What I see is a stinginess of character. Rather than generosity of spirit. A sense among many people that they are not getting what they expected. That they are deprived. It makes people sour. Gratitude is a basic human need. We need to be grateful much as we need to eat. Naaman and the man get a double gift: they get health and they get to be grateful. But we are starving for gratitude.

C. S. Lewis wrote that gratitude and praise—its verbal expression—seems almost to be inner health made audible. But more often it works the other way around. Expressing thanks promotes inner health. When we are feeling hungry, we need to eat. Likewise, when we are feeling deprived, we need to give thanks.

The psalm says: God calls God’s wonders to be remembered. Therefore we pray: Remember when we get up in the morning and when we go to bed at night. It is good to give God thanks and praise.

Being Faithful

Text: Luke 17:5-10
Other texts: 2 Timothy 1:1-14

You cannot plant a bush in the sea. Jesus does not suggest you can. Or that you should. This is a not a story about super powers and impossible feats. The disciples asked a silly question. Jesus gave them a silly answer in return. Disciples are students. Jesus is the teacher. This is a way he teaches. He is mocking them. Just a little. In a nice way.

The disciples want more faith. What does that mean? Faith is not something you can put in your pocket. Faith is not something you can store in a drawer. Faith is a gift, as it says in the Second Letter to Timothy that we just heard. But it is not something you would get in a package. It is not an infusion you can put in your tea or a coat you can wear on your back. It is not a thing at all. You cannot get more of it. As one Bible translation says of this passage: “the Master said, ‘You don't need more faith. There is no “more” or “less” in faith.’ Faith is not something you have. It is something you do. People say of their especially faithful friends: you have so much faith. They mean: I see by what you do that you have a close relationship with God. I see that you are tight with God.

The disciples asked a silly question. But it was not a stupid question. The disciples need something from Jesus. There is something missing in them that they ask Jesus to supply. There is some void in them that they are asking Jesus to fill. Jesus, help us!

What do they want? What is it we want in a faithful relationship. What do we mean when we say someone is faithful? A faithful spouse, say. Or a faithful friend. Or a faithful employee.With people we can say what a faithful relationship means. What being in a faithful relationship gives us, why it is valuable, and why we seek it out, and even why it is so tragic when it falls apart. Or feels like it is about to. And when, in that case, we cry out: Give us more faith. Something is not working. Help us. That’s how it is with God, too.

A faithful relationship gives us at least three things. First, it gives us courage in the face of an uncertain future. The future is both exciting and scary. We both rush into it and we hesitate. No one knows what is going to happen. The disciples have hooked their wagon to this star that is Jesus. What an adventure! What a risk! God did not give you cowardice, it says in Timothy. But we are all cowards. Another translation says: God did not give you timidity. That’s easier to take. We are all timid. A faithful relationship—with God, with someone you love—gives us courage.

And second, it gives us the humility not to feel we have to do everything ourselves. We need partners in life that we can count on. We do not have enough time, energy, or even skills to do all the important things we have to do. In the world, in our families, our jobs, in our selves. Who can give us a hand? Someone who knows us well enough to do what we hope for. Someone who loves us well enough not to intentionally hurt us or betray us or let us down. Someone who will let us put aside our protective pride and to whom we are willing to hand things over a bit. A faithful relationship—with God, with someone you love—gives us humility.

And third, it gives us the satisfaction of wholehearted engagement with someone else besides us. We are often alone, tentative, private, and careful. We have to do that, but it does not mean we like to. We long to be totally present for another, to be present for them. Probably satisfaction is too weak a word. Maybe thrill plus contentment would be a better way to describe it. Fulfillment would work. And engagement: maybe entanglement would be better. A faithful relationship—with God, with someone you love—gives the thrill plus contentment of wholehearted entanglement.

These gifts of a faithful relationship are ours because we count on the faithfulness of another and have in turn promised our own. The word for that counting-on is trust. It is not a coincidence that the word for faith in the Bible is exactly the word for trust. What the disciples want to know is whether they can trust Jesus. They want to know—in the face of all the hardships and hard work that following Jesus entails—whether they should stay with Jesus or leave him. They see the gifts of faith. They are asking Jesus whether they can trust him to be faithful. And they are asking themselves whether they can be faithful to Jesus.

The Second Letter to Timothy has been called practical ecclesiology. That is, a letter about what churches and church goers should do. It is unlikely that the letter was written by Paul, but it certainly shares some of Paul’s concerns. And one of Paul’s most pressing concerns was the health and future of the churches that he started. You can detect in this passage a worry about whether Timothy is going to hang in there. So it, like the passage in Luke, is not so much about theology as about how to live. Timothy and the disciples know what to believe—they no doubt believe the right things—they are just not sure they can do the right things. The writer says to them: You can.

In Luke, the disciples ask for more faith and Jesus tells them about service. Our doubts, questions, and demands do not diminish our faithful relationship with God. They strengthen it as much as our prayers and praises and song and thanksgivings do. Just as in relationships with people. Our call as Christians is not to win arguments with others or even with ourselves. It is, as Jesus taught in a few verses earlier in Luke, to forgive others seventy times seven times. To love our neighbors and our enemies as ourselves. To act justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with God.

Help us! cry the students of Jesus. They—we—are advised in Timothy to rekindle the gift of God which is within you. To rekindle the flame. That’s a good word for relationships. Rekindling the flame is a modest task that keeps relationships faithful in times of trouble and doubt. With God and with those you love. It is task that requires only patience, delicacy, and attention. Not even belief or hope. Start small, protect the flame and nurture it, give it space and air, fan it when it becomes more robust. That’s how it goes with God and with people.

There is no need for superpowers. Instead, remember, it says in Timothy. Remember what it means to be faithful. Remember the one in whom you trust. And who trusts you. And keep up the good work.

A Land of Two Stories

Text: 1 Timothy 6:6-19
Other texts: Luke 16:19-31

There is a struggle going on in our hearts. It is a struggle of beliefs, of convictions, of trust, of the source of our hope. It is a struggle of two stories fighting for our souls.

On one side is the story of abundance. This is the story of the first chapter of Genesis, in which God gave us the world and all things in it. It is good, it is good, it is good, God says in Genesis. It is the story of God’s care for us revealed in creation and in beauty and in the pleasure we take in things. It is a story of God’s compassion for us and God’s provision for God’s creatures. It is the story of Psalm 104: God opens God’s hand and the world is full of good things. And it is the story of the psalm for today: God who brings freedom, and food, sustenance. It is the story that Jesus is—generously coming here—and the story that Jesus tells. Do not worry, you can trust God, he says. It is good.

But on the other side is the story of scarcity. This story is in Genesis, also. It is the story of famine in Egypt, of being prudent, cautious, and storing things up for the future. It is the story of being hungry in the desert, when the Israelites longed for the cook pots filled with food they no longer had. It is the other story in Pslam 104: God hides God’s face and creation withers and dies. And in today’s psalm: in the end we perish, and our thoughts go with us.

These stories are in us, competing to guide us and to be the story that we use to make sense of the world. Oddly, both stories describe the world. But they are not equal. The story of abundance is the foundation of generosity and satisfaction and hope. The story of scarcity is the foundation of fear and worry and isolation. The question is: are we blessed or are we deprived? Thankful or wretched?Which story do we believe most?

All of us know which is better. It is better to feel satisfied by abundance than to feel harassed by scarcity. But I look at myself and I look at people I know, and I know that we feel harassed at least as often as we feel satisfied. I do not like it.

Luke, the writer of today’s Gospel reading and also of the book of Acts, spends a lot of time talking about money. How we think about money has exactly to do with which story we most believe. That is one reason why we talk about it so much. That is the reason Jesus talks about it so much, too. More so that any other single topic. That’s because it reveals to us how we feel about God and about our relationship with God and mostly about whether we trust God or not.

The early Christian church—just like the modern church—worried a lot about money, too. The first letter to Timothy, today’s second reading, is a guide to Christian behavior. And in today’s passage, which concludes this letter, we learn about how to behave with money. Or at least get a critique about it.

The writer of this letter warns against people who love money. Lovers of money, Luke calls them in the Gospel reading. This word (it is just one word in Greek)—this word, lovers of money, appears only in this passage in Luke and in the letter to Timothy. It could mean just people who love money—like it a lot. But it would be more useful and more accurate to think of it as people who are having a love affair with money. They are money’s lovers. Because it is being money’s lovers that gets us all in trouble, in both Luke and in Timothy. Having an affair with money.

Our relationship with money can be exciting, energizing, transforming. But like an affair, loving money is a betrayal of our love for another—God in this case, and other human beings—and a promise that we formally made, not coincidently, in baptism. And it plunges, as it says in Timothy, it plunges people into ruin and destruction. “People” meaning not only the lover, but the many who are harmed by the action of the lover. As Lazarus, for example, was, by the rich man’s inattention. And as many in the world today likewise are.

Money is like any addiction. One person described the process of addiction as: First, fun; then, fun plus problems; and finally, just problems. The love of money is like that. What we hope from money is what we hope from love. Strength for life, wholehearted trust, and partnership. What we get as money’s lover, however, is the opposite. Futility, betrayal, and a cruel master. Money is not effective or reliable, and it demands more from us than it gives.

What we seem to want from life, it says in Timothy, is godliness and contentment. Contentment and abundance are cousins of each other. The word contentment here means satisfaction. Having a sufficient amount. It means having enough. Not a skimpy amount, but sufficient to be strong enough to prosper as creatures. If we have food and shelter, it says, then that will be sufficient. This letter is not a call to poverty. It is an encouragement to find what is enough. And enough, in this meaning, is not just enough for each of us. It includes enough for helping others, too. Enough to protect us against the elements and to help others. And also from Genesis: enough for sabbath, enough for rest.

Nonetheless, we fall into temptation, it says in Timothy (and as we know it to be true). It is easy to get trapped, it says, by many senseless and harmful desires. Having more than enough. We can call this greed, but it comes from fear. It comes from listening too much to that story of scarcity. From thinking that we must rely on ourselves to get enough. From having to control all the world, as the rich man tries to do, even in death.

We in this country and everywhere are telling the story of scarcity more and more. That scares me.

There is not much room for God in our lives in that story of scarcity. If there is nothing given—if we are not the recipients of graceful abundance—then perhaps there is no giver. Or maybe it is the other way around. If we are not sure there is a giver, then we cannot trust that we will be given what we need. If we cannot rely on God, then we are right to turn to money, to ourselves. But the end of that way is sadness. For experience teaches us that neither money nor our own efforts are reliable. Nor do they work. And if we cannot trust money and we cannot trust ourselves and we cannot trust God, then we are in the soup.

How can we be sure that God will provide for us? For one thing, we have scripture—Moses and the prophets, it says in Luke. And the teachings of Jesus, who tells us over and over not to be afraid and not to worry. But that was not enough for the rich man. He wanted a more certain sign. Something 100% believable. He thinks a visit from dead Lazarus would do it for his brothers. But of course, they’d just say it was not really Lazarus, or that he hadn’t really died, or that it wasn’t really a message from their brother, or that it was, but who cares? There is no certain sign.

We trust God because we when we do—amazingly, when we are very generous and forgiving and easy-going—good things happen to us and our friends and our world. Strange, but true. And even stranger, the reverse is also true: when we act as if we trust God—acting as if we were generous and forgiving—then we find we trust God. Trusting God is a consequence more than a cause of how we live our lives. Trust, like love, takes practice.

This story in Luke and this exhortation in Timothy are not moralizing tales. That is, they are not telling us that we had better shape up because God wants us to. When the rich man is being tormented in Hades, Abraham takes no pleasure in his fate. Even in this “I told you so” story, Abraham seems sad and moved with compassion.

Being in love with money is a trap, it says in Timothy. In the trap is a life of many piercing pains. The words of the Gospels and the teachings of Jesus help us escape the trap. Be generous, be forgiving, be ready to share, love people more than you love money.

When we are baptized, two things happen. First, we resolve—or someone does on our behalf, as they did today for [child baptized today]—we resolve to take a side in the struggle of our hearts. To listen hard for the story of abundance (and to retell it) and as much as we are able, to cover our ears and shut out the story of scarcity. And second, we are given some necessary help, in the form of the Holy Spirit and in the support of the community of Christians. And when people affirm their baptism, as folks did today, both they and the community renew that resolve and reliance.

Quiet the story of scarcity that brings you fear. Repeat to yourselves every day the story of abundance that brings you contentment. Baptism is the symbol of a new life. Take hold, as it says in Timothy, of the life that really is life.

Jesus, the one, and the many

Text: Luke 15:1-10

As he often does in the Gospels, Jesus makes a little joke.

The Pharisees are unhappy with Jesus because he eats with the riffraff. He also eats with the Pharisees, but we don’t hear from the people who don’t think Jesus should do that. I’m sure there were some. “How come you, Jesus, a man of the people, consort with those fancy snobs?” But the voices of the tax collectors and sinners are rarely heard, in the Gospels as in real life.

I sometimes have a feeling that the Pharisees amuse Jesus. He is always getting their goat. And when they make stupid pronouncements, he embarrasses them. When they try to catch him making a mistake, they find that it was they who erred. You would think that after a while, they’d give up.

The Pharisees really don’t like it that Jesus stretches the bounds of what is permissible. There is a way you are supposed to act, and many times Jesus does not act that way. Some of their objections are social and some legal. Tax collectors were scum, working for the man, meaning Rome. Sinners were law-violators. They did what God said not to, or did not do what God said to. Neither were, in the Pharisees’ eyes, fit company for a rabbi, a teacher, like Jesus. Jesus did the wrong thing, set a bad example, and was rousing the rabble by his teachings.

To answer their complaint, Jesus, as he often does, tells a parable. A parable is a wicked little story that makes you think. He tells two. The first one is about some sheep. “Which of you,” he asks them, “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?”

Would you leave ninety-nine sheep in the wilderness? All you who would leave those ninety-nine sheep to fend for themselves, those good and faithful and wise sheep who did not wander off recklessly, to search for that idiot sheep who seems clueless and endangers all the rest, all you who would do that, raise your hands.

The answer to Jesus’ question is: no one. It makes no sense. That’s the joke. No one would. To risk the many for the sake of one. It goes against the theory of the greater good. Which says that better for one to suffer so that the many might not. It it the reason behind much of the way societies work, from things as diverse as torture and triage and scapegoating.

It is the way we work, but it is not the way Jesus works. Jesus seems much more concerned—and it gets him into trouble all the time—more concerned about the particular than the general. The theory of the greater good compares the actual, present, and particular suffering with a hypothetical, future, and general good. An individual suffers now for some predicted suffering of many. Jesus seems to care more for the person who is really suffering now than he cares for the potential or even likely future.

The Pharisees are rightly worried about the rule of law and the stability of culture. So when Jesus does what he does—heals on the Sabbath in the face of a law against it, or lets his disciples glean food then, or touches and cures the hemorrhaging woman, or hangs around with the illegals—he acts in favor of persons over principles. And also, he seems to see the particular person and his or her particular situation instead of what that person represents. Some real person that you can sit down and share a meal with, not a drunk or an illegal or an alien or a tax collector or a sinner. So in the parable, the shepherd seeks to find the one sheep that at the moment is actually lost at the risk of a possible, but not actual, danger to the many others.

What makes things lost is that someone misses them. People can feel lost emotionally, of course, but what makes the lost sheep and, in the second parable, the lost coin be lost is that someone wants to find them. Even when people say that they feel lost, they mean that they are searching for some other version of themselves that they once knew or hope to know. The shepherd wants to know: where is my sheep? The woman wants to know: where is my coin? What makes the single coin and the single sheep special is that they are desired, wanted, sought out.

The Pharisees grumble that Jesus welcomes the sinners, the reading says. But the word the Pharisees use really means to seek out. To go looking for. The action is on the part of Jesus, not the sinners. The action in the parables is on the part of the seeker, not the sheep or coin that is sought. God looks for each of us. We are looked for by God. God comes and gets us.

Sometimes we say we lose our faith. When people say that, they mean that they have lost the conviction that they have been found. That is, that they are like the sheep and the coin, apart from God and apart from any center in which their souls may take rest. But worse, it also means that they have lost the conviction that anyone is even searching for them. They feel not only separated but abandoned, which is a whole other thing. They feel like people who have suddenly fallen out of love, or children who are estranged from their parents or someone who has lost another to death. Not even missing, because they feel that no one even seeks them.

The Pharisees complain that Jesus eats with sinners. These people are not lost to the Pharisees, who are not seeking them but rather wish they were gone. How much better, they think, if the people who annoy or threaten us were just to disappear. But the sinners no doubt see things very differently. Jesus makes them appear. He seeks them out, making them not invisible but missing. That is, they are longed for.

Jesus writes that there is more joy when a sinner repents than when ninety-nine righteous persons do. But this is the second joke Jesus tells in this passage. For it would be hard to find even one sinless person much less ninety-nine in a crowd of one hundred. As Lutherans are taught, we are all saints and sinners. We are all in this sense separate from the source of our being and life. We are all missing; God is seeking out each one of us. We are not the ninety-nine virtuous souls who never wander. It is good for us that God is unreasonably looking for us.

When the Pharisees are unable or refuse or are too timid to see the sufferings of flesh-and-blood individual people, when they are willing to sacrifice them for the vague and the general, when they wish to wish them away—when the Pharisees do that, they turn their backs on the pleasure of a divine grace. They deny themselves the joy that concludes both these parables of Jesus. For these parables are less about repentance and more about joy. That is the direction in which their plots move. The high point of these stories is the joy of the finder. A joy even angels in heaven share, says Jesus. These stories do not call us sinners to repent. They invite those of us who think we are righteous to join the sinners, who are also us.

The Pharisees evidently think that they are favorites of God and that the sinners are not. And the sinners—well, we don’t know what they think. Some probably agree with the Pharisees and others think the opposite.

All have hopes and fears. Jesus says that ninety-nine were left. We like to imagine—it suits us to imagine—that they are a bunch of well-organized, well-balanced, good sheep. But Jesus does not say that.

It is more likely that all one hundred sheep are wandering around. It is a big mess. No one knows what’s going on. Some feel secure and some feel condemned. But each one is lost. The most arrogant Pharisee and the most humble sinner are all lost. Each one is frightened and clueless. And walking in our wilderness, there is Jesus, the shepherd. Missing every one of us, wanting each one of us, seeking us out.

The Worth of It

Text: Luke 14:25-33
Other texts: Deuteronomy 30:15-20

Here is our story up to now. This is what Jesus has done so far in this one chapter—chapter 14—in Luke.

First he tells some fancy dinner guests that the last will be first and the first—meaning them—will be last. Then he tells them that instead of inviting their family and friends to dinner, they should have invited poor and sick people. Then he tells a parable of another feast in which the original guests offer lame excuses and so the are replaced by street people. Then, today, he tells us who can and cannot be his disciples, and it seems a little rough. His followers might have wondered what they were getting into.

You might find Jesus to be a little cranky in these stories. Or at least forceful. But I hear in the voice of Jesus and in the stories he tells in this section of Luke a deep sadness. The things that go with being a disciple of Jesus are hard and upsetting sometimes. And he knows, I’m sure, that most people will find them so.

You cannot be my disciple, he says three times. These verses are littered with negatives. There are thirteen occurrences in the Greek of the word “no” in these eight verses. These are not happy sayings, and they are not encouraging ones. Jesus knows that being a disciple, a follower, is hard. He is not commanding us here, or threatening us, or laying down admission requirements. He is telling us how it is, how it will be.

In today’s reading Jesus presents three choices. Or better to say, Jesus makes three offers. He presents to us three attributes of the life of a follower of Jesus. They are allegiance, risk, and poverty. It is as if—as he teaches us in the two parables—the one about the tower and the one about the king—as if he wants us to know what’s up before we sign up.

First, allegiance. To whom do we turn for blessings? To whom do we turn for safety? And who calls us to responsibility? In other words, what is the source of a life that is prosperous, secure, and good? Those things to which, or to whom, we turn are the things that command our allegiance. The list is long for most of us, and includes things like our own skills, our close friends, our loving families, our possessions, the rules of our culture. When we say that we must attend to these things, then they have our allegiance. Sometimes these things deserve it, and other times not. But no matter what, Jesus says, they are secondary to what God calls us to be and do.

If you do not hate your parents, your spouse, your family, Jesus says, you cannot become his disciple. And not only that, but if you do not hate life itself, you cannot become his disciple. Jesus is not talking about degrees of love here. He is not mostly talking about emotion. The word “hate” is the opposite of the kind of love that we have for our neighbors and our enemies. We don’t have to like our enemies and we don’t have to dislike our family and friends and life.

But we should not soften what he says too much. He is saying that his followers disavow the things that—in the time of Jesus and in our time—command their allegiance. He is saying that his followers put all those other people on notice. If there is a choice between God and them, the choice goes to God. Not to their families, not even to the preservation of their own lives.

Jesus is describing a way of life. That’s what makes this so shocking, so hard, and so potentially rewarding. He is not describing a way to slightly adjust things. He is saying that to be his disciple one must live with God always in mind. We must ask when taking some action: does this action I’m taking align me with God or not? When making some decision: in this decision that I am making, am I thinking about God or not? And, practically, if not then is there some other way I can act or other decision I can make?

Second, risk. Jesus was tried and executed for his teachings and his actions. All this about making the first people be the last, about disavowing your family, about not honoring the sabbath, about loving your enemies, about turning the other cheek—that made people angry. And if the followers of Jesus do what he did and do what he said to do, people will be angry at them, too. And disown them, and imprison or exile them, and maybe harm them.

Jesus proposes a new way of living, but to proclaim that and then to actually do it is a risky endeavor. The cross is not a pleasant symbol. Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus in spite of the cross, not because of it. The cross was a means of violent and hateful death. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple, Jesus tells the crowd. It is a risk-filled path. Jesus warns his followers.

And third, poverty. In our culture, we are at least as distracted by possessions as we are by relations. To acquire and protect our possessions, to house and maintain them, distracts us from God’s call to us to love God and to love our neighbor. We are tempted to love God and neighbor less than we love our stuff. We are willing to harm our neighbor and ignore God’s commands for the sake of our stuff.

This is not news. In the parable of the feast in Luke, the invited guests fail to show up because they have been diverted by what they own or wish to own. I’m sorry, one says, I just bought a new house (he really says land, but it’s the same thing) and have to go look at it. I’m sorry, the other says, I just bought a new car (he really says oxen), and I want to try it out. People like stuff and are unwilling to let it go. It was just reported that the wealthiest top 1% of people in this country receive 23% of the all the income. They are holding on to that money. Thirty years ago it was 9%.

Jesus says that none can become his disciples unless they say farewell to all their possessions. Not give up, as the words in our Bible have it. But: say farewell to. Not a loss, but a separation from possessions. A dis-attachment.

The things that Jesus places in opposition to being a disciple of his are all entanglements. They are things that we get stuck to. Family. Safety. Possessions. They take effort and energy away from God. That is, we are unable to respond to God’s calls—calls to care for all others, to refrain from violence, to give freely, and to be grateful.

There are always multiple calls on our time and work. We are always managing our attention and care. A parent caring for a difficult child might shortchange his other children. A person caring for a sick parent might shortchange the rest of her family. A doctor spending hours caring for his patients might shortchange his spouse. It is harder to turn our backs on our responsibilities than it is on our possessions. But if something has to be shortchanged, Jesus says, it is our entanglements, not God.

When Jesus says that people cannot be his disciples, he is not judging them. He is not condemning them for their ineptitude or their inabilities. He is talking physics here, not morality. To lose weight, eat less or exercise more. To move an object at rest, apply a force in the direction you hope for. There is no should here. It is the way things are.

Now, this all seems pretty grim. The things Jesus wants us to let go, to say farewell to, are things we like. Things that sustain us, even, like our network of family and friends. If that’s what disciples of Jesus do, is it worth it?

It is a hard question to answer. If it were easy, we wouldn’t be hearing about it in Luke’s Gospel. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be upsetting to contemplate. A rule of thumb in reading scripture says that if someone in the Bible talks about how people should do something, it means that they were not doing it. Moses tells the people of Israel to obey the law of God, to choose life over death, because they have not been and probably don’t want to. If it were easy to choose life over death, Moses wouldn’t be talking so much about it. When Paul tells the people of Corinth not to be so snooty about sharing the Lord’s Supper, it is because they have been. When Jesus tells the crowd that they must carry their cross, it is because they are reluctant to. For many in that crowd the consequences of discipleship are just not worth it.

But for others … What the crowd—a large crowd, Luke says—what the crowd sought from Jesus was a new life. For one reason or another—it doesn’t say—they were lost or tired or confused or unable to cope or unsatisfied. They listened to Jesus—people listen to Jesus now—because they—because we—hope to hear about a new way to live. They need to get out of themselves and the patterns of their lives. Patterns that are tiring, boring, dangerous. They need to be freed from what John Calvin called “the deadly pestilence of love of strife and love of self.” It goes beyond being a good and responsible person—they want to be a new person. That’s what Jesus is talking about. That’s is why people are willing to consider what he has to say, as hard as it is to hear. That is why they are willing to follow Jesus.

This transformation of our being is, for most of us (but not all of us), a long process. It happens in a lifetime rather than in a moment. And, for most of us, it requires the support of a community of other people looking for something similar. Moses was speaking to all of the Israelites, but what happened did happen because of what each person did. Discipleship is a communal activity that is implemented in the decisions that each one of us makes over time.

I have set before you life and death, Moses says. He is asking them to love God with all their hearts and souls and minds and to love their neighbors as themselves. This is not about emotions and feelings, even though emotions and feelings come from it. To follow God, to follow Jesus, is a rational and decisive act. Or better: many rational and decisive acts, one after the other, in different circumstances and over time. In those places and times, as much as you are able, choose life.

I set before you life and death, says Jesus. Choose life that you may live.