This is the hymn text I wrote for Paige and Matt's wedding. It's sung to the tune "Martyrdom" ("As Pants the Hart for Cooling Streams"). The planter in the first verse is Paige's late father who planted tree after tree on his acreage in central South Dakota.
In prairie field an olive grove,
Its wind-blown branches sway,
Its planter’s joy to see it grow,
Foretells our God’s New Day.
A tree once stood in Eden’s bowers,
Its fruit the Lord forbade.
Now we in sin, who took and ate,
Are cast from his rich glade.
On Calv’ry’s hill a tree did bear
The body of the Lord.
He is the shoot from Jesse’s trunk;
His blood for us is poured.
Thus, in God’s love, the sinful branch
Is grafted to his Son,
From whom all hope, all joy, all pow’r,
And life eternal run.
O, God, with love these two entwine
And plant them by your flood
That they might serve and trust and know
Your never-ending good.
© 2010 All rights reserved
Monday, December 20, 2010
An Olive Grove Marriage
A wedding sermon for Matt Bock and Paige Wilbur
First Lutheran Church, Sioux Falls, SD
December 18, 2010
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit. (Jeremiah 17:8)
If you take a drive along the two-lane roads of South Dakota, you’ll come to a gravel road every mile – at least East River where the landforms allow roads to follow the six-mile-by-six-mile grid established in homesteading days. West River the roads are a bit more scattershot, just like the people. But pretty much wherever you go between Luverne, Minnesota, and Newcastle, Wyoming, you will find stands of trees that weren’t there when the first folks from back East pushed their way across the prairies.
When they planted their own roots under this wide-open sky, they also planted trees: the cottonwoods that were native species, catalpa that grew quickly and made for good fence posts when you needed barbed-wire boundaries, and later elms and Russian olives. These stands of trees provided protection from the endless, crazy-making wind. When the blizzards would come (and they always would), these trees could mark the line between life and death as they sent the drifts around and past the tarpaper shacks and soddies, dugouts and barns.
When Jeremiah speaks God’s word in the passage just read, he knows the value of a strong, living tree. In fact, such a tree is so important that it becomes the metaphor for what a faithful relationship with God is like: a tree whose roots are sunk deep in the water, thriving, spreading out branches and (as Jesus says in the parable of the mustard seed) making a home for the birds.
Trees keep appearing in scripture. Jeremiah is just one of countless tree lovers and huggers and planters in God’s word, including the tale-teller who gives us the story of the Garden of Eden. In Genesis the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the picture of our rebellion in the Fall. God set the tree apart, and our forebears in the Garden said, “Maybe God can’t be trusted. Maybe God’s holding something back. Maybe we ought to branch out and see to things ourselves by laying hold of some of that fruit.”
Now all this talk of trees is quite the goofy thing to focus on at a wedding. Shouldn’t we talk about that crazy little thing called love? Shouldn’t we concentrate on how beautiful you are, Paige, and how hunkaliciously cleaned-up you are, Matt? (Yes, I’ve seen Facebook postings of you on the Governor’s Hunt.) And we could focus on the flowers and the attendants’ dresses (will they ever wear them again?), and the wedding colors รก la Brides magazine, and yet that wouldn’t reflect either your faith or your spirited and mature sense of what a marriage is.
It’s true — you’ll never be more beautiful or optimistic about life than today, but the gospel of our Lord just isn’t designed to speak to success and prosperity and glory. God’s word on this, your wedding day, comes to tell you who you are and whose you are, so that on some future day when this day is a warm memory, a photo album and a boxed wedding dress under the bed, and you have come to know the limits of your power and strength, this word about a planted and nourished tree comes to give you hope to cling to.
The gospel today is aimed at a future day when you will be undone by life – maybe by the big sorrows, but more likely by the mundane daily slog and the pressing temptation to center in on yourself and lose sight of the two become one. The tree of Jeremiah will be the ideal that you once had and the mirror to what you can’t find, what you can’t make happen on your own.
That will be the day when you must, must, must zero in on the tree of life, Christ’s cross and the mercy made real and given to you there. That is the tree that provides you true protection, because if you can’t create your own future or muster up a rich life together, your Lord does. What looks like a tree that is your own autonomous self in Jeremiah requires that you look more closely. The tree is only in the barest sense, you. There’s a seam there, where you have been joined to your Lord, for he makes you his own in your baptism, grafts both of you to himself, lets his nourishing sap flow into you. As Paul says, “The life I once had is now hid in Christ.”
That true life promised to you is the thing, the one thing, that surrounds and sustains your coming years, for what flows into you is his deep and abiding forgiveness. And where his forgiveness is present, your past missteps and mistakes and petty peccadilloes can no longer be the markers for who you are. Instead his mercy grants, only and ever, a new and eternal future.
When Christ grafts you to himself, he takes away your pride and ambition as operating principles in your marriage. Those things belong to a life that is no longer yours, and in their place the Lord has given you much more to share with each other. Paul calls them the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So even before we ask God to bless you, he’s already accomplished it. It’s just like our Lord to know you so well that he provides exactly what you’ll need to grow in your marriage and into eternity. And when you turn toward one another with his same mercy and overflowing with these fruits, it will be a sure and certain sign of your grafting, of your identity as Christ’s people of the cross, a reminder again and again of who you are and whose you are.
In the end, when the last of those prairie groves dies out and the wind moves unhindered across the grasslands and dilapidated out-buildings, this last tree remains to bear you into the New Jerusalem where you will find a place in an eternal grove. Until then, Paige and Matt, spread out your branches, be fruitful, multiply (and I don’t mean your times tables), bask in the life that flows in you. You shall not be moved, because you belong to Christ, and him alone. Amen.
First Lutheran Church, Sioux Falls, SD
December 18, 2010
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
in the year of drought it is not anxious,
and it does not cease to bear fruit. (Jeremiah 17:8)
If you take a drive along the two-lane roads of South Dakota, you’ll come to a gravel road every mile – at least East River where the landforms allow roads to follow the six-mile-by-six-mile grid established in homesteading days. West River the roads are a bit more scattershot, just like the people. But pretty much wherever you go between Luverne, Minnesota, and Newcastle, Wyoming, you will find stands of trees that weren’t there when the first folks from back East pushed their way across the prairies.
When they planted their own roots under this wide-open sky, they also planted trees: the cottonwoods that were native species, catalpa that grew quickly and made for good fence posts when you needed barbed-wire boundaries, and later elms and Russian olives. These stands of trees provided protection from the endless, crazy-making wind. When the blizzards would come (and they always would), these trees could mark the line between life and death as they sent the drifts around and past the tarpaper shacks and soddies, dugouts and barns.
When Jeremiah speaks God’s word in the passage just read, he knows the value of a strong, living tree. In fact, such a tree is so important that it becomes the metaphor for what a faithful relationship with God is like: a tree whose roots are sunk deep in the water, thriving, spreading out branches and (as Jesus says in the parable of the mustard seed) making a home for the birds.
Trees keep appearing in scripture. Jeremiah is just one of countless tree lovers and huggers and planters in God’s word, including the tale-teller who gives us the story of the Garden of Eden. In Genesis the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is the picture of our rebellion in the Fall. God set the tree apart, and our forebears in the Garden said, “Maybe God can’t be trusted. Maybe God’s holding something back. Maybe we ought to branch out and see to things ourselves by laying hold of some of that fruit.”
Now all this talk of trees is quite the goofy thing to focus on at a wedding. Shouldn’t we talk about that crazy little thing called love? Shouldn’t we concentrate on how beautiful you are, Paige, and how hunkaliciously cleaned-up you are, Matt? (Yes, I’ve seen Facebook postings of you on the Governor’s Hunt.) And we could focus on the flowers and the attendants’ dresses (will they ever wear them again?), and the wedding colors รก la Brides magazine, and yet that wouldn’t reflect either your faith or your spirited and mature sense of what a marriage is.
It’s true — you’ll never be more beautiful or optimistic about life than today, but the gospel of our Lord just isn’t designed to speak to success and prosperity and glory. God’s word on this, your wedding day, comes to tell you who you are and whose you are, so that on some future day when this day is a warm memory, a photo album and a boxed wedding dress under the bed, and you have come to know the limits of your power and strength, this word about a planted and nourished tree comes to give you hope to cling to.
The gospel today is aimed at a future day when you will be undone by life – maybe by the big sorrows, but more likely by the mundane daily slog and the pressing temptation to center in on yourself and lose sight of the two become one. The tree of Jeremiah will be the ideal that you once had and the mirror to what you can’t find, what you can’t make happen on your own.
That will be the day when you must, must, must zero in on the tree of life, Christ’s cross and the mercy made real and given to you there. That is the tree that provides you true protection, because if you can’t create your own future or muster up a rich life together, your Lord does. What looks like a tree that is your own autonomous self in Jeremiah requires that you look more closely. The tree is only in the barest sense, you. There’s a seam there, where you have been joined to your Lord, for he makes you his own in your baptism, grafts both of you to himself, lets his nourishing sap flow into you. As Paul says, “The life I once had is now hid in Christ.”
That true life promised to you is the thing, the one thing, that surrounds and sustains your coming years, for what flows into you is his deep and abiding forgiveness. And where his forgiveness is present, your past missteps and mistakes and petty peccadilloes can no longer be the markers for who you are. Instead his mercy grants, only and ever, a new and eternal future.
When Christ grafts you to himself, he takes away your pride and ambition as operating principles in your marriage. Those things belong to a life that is no longer yours, and in their place the Lord has given you much more to share with each other. Paul calls them the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So even before we ask God to bless you, he’s already accomplished it. It’s just like our Lord to know you so well that he provides exactly what you’ll need to grow in your marriage and into eternity. And when you turn toward one another with his same mercy and overflowing with these fruits, it will be a sure and certain sign of your grafting, of your identity as Christ’s people of the cross, a reminder again and again of who you are and whose you are.
In the end, when the last of those prairie groves dies out and the wind moves unhindered across the grasslands and dilapidated out-buildings, this last tree remains to bear you into the New Jerusalem where you will find a place in an eternal grove. Until then, Paige and Matt, spread out your branches, be fruitful, multiply (and I don’t mean your times tables), bask in the life that flows in you. You shall not be moved, because you belong to Christ, and him alone. Amen.
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Judgment and mercy for real sinners
Malachi 4:1-2a and Luke 21:5-19
It’s that time of year, a few short weeks before Advent begins, when the assigned Bible readings serve up the terror of the end times. I’d rather preach on Jesus saying no to divorce than to have to deal with the threat of arrest and persecution when the authorities sense the presence of Christ in me. I would so very much prefer to avoid Malachi’s warning about the arrogant being burnt up and the evildoers being cut down like Iowa corn stalks reduced to field stubble and no-till acreage. But those passages of God’s Word have been read now. They hang in the air, forcing themselves on us. Now they won’t let us go until God has a chance to speak through them. If God’s Word won’t give us any other option, we might as well go after these passages and see if the Holy Spirit isn’t actually speaking in them.
The prophet Malachi’s words are a dire warning: For the arrogant and evildoers, that is, for sinners like you and me, the future holds very little hope. It’s going to be worse for us than what a menopausal woman means when she says, “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” No, there’s a burning-up time a-coming. Just a few verses before our passage, Malachi says, “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.” The refiner’s fire is what a metal smith uses to burn out all the impurities in silver ore or gold ore, so that the only thing left is the purest of metals. Fullers’ soap is full of caustic alkali and in ancient times was used to purify wool to its ultimate whiteness before it could be used for cloth. The smelter burns. Alkali burns. And the Lord himself burns up all the evil he touches.
How is it that I am to be included among the arrogant, the evildoers and the sinful? Surely God would not move against me in such a violent, no-second-chances way! Yet I am included, and so are you. The sin and evil that the prophet rails against grows in the fertile ground of our hearts, for the Lord demands righteousness of his human creatures and, if there’s one thing we’re not, it’s righteous. We are not all God has made us to be. Who among us doesn’t know the foibles and peccadilloes we so slyly cover over daily, the corner-cutting, the getting by with good-enough? When we look at ourselves honestly, who among us has not committed a long list of sins, big and small, sins of commission and sins of omission? “I was hungry and you did not feed me,” Jesus says in Matthew 25, “I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”
And when we hear the prophet speak these harsh words against us, it reveals something even worse. Not only do we sin, but when God sends a messenger to speak the truth to us, we react by becoming indignant. We refuse to confess our unwillingness to obey this almighty God, to confess our constant desire to go our own way, but we pile sin upon sin by questioning God’s judgment and will. “Surely God couldn’t judge someone like me who has such good intentions. God’s the one with the problem. And if it’s not God, then it’s God’s word or his messenger. For certainly the God of love would not turn away from someone who deserves divine favor like I do!” Ah, there’s the rub. Do you see how our very reaction to God’s judgment in Malachi reveals our core? For we, like our forebears in the Garden, have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have demanded our place in God’s judgment seat, where we will be the determiners of our own future and fate, where we will be the arbiters of our own salvation, where we gather a lifetime of evidence to justify ourselves. As Psalm 14 says, “They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.” And as Paul says in Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
I will often ask students in my courses if sinners get to go to heaven. The kids who have some church background will invariably say, “Of course, sinners go to heaven. A loving God won’t turn them away.” But the students who have little connection to Christianity know better. Their sense of God’s judgment is closer to the view of Malachi and of the rest of God’s word in scripture. These students have heard the rumors that God is a God who judges, who separates good from evil, and who desires righteousness not sin. The almighty God will brook no sin, allow no evil, make room for no self-seeking hearts in his glorious, eternal kingdom. God reserves his throne of judgment for the sentence he doles out. The jig is up: We sinners with our arrogance, our evil doing and lack of doing, our utter unwillingness and inability to focus on anything but our own will, we stand condemned and have a future as eternal field stubble.
Is there no way out? Is there no small bit of allowance from God? Won’t God recognize some two or three atoms of sparkling goodness that remain? We’d certainly like that, but here’s the deal. God has taken on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. He is crucified and risen. And it all happens because there is no other way. God has done the saving deed, because human beings (you and me included) will not change, will not grasp God’s righteousness, and will always try to substitute our own paltry shadowy substitute self-righteousness in its place. In the coming month before Christmas and during the Christmas season itself, we will hear that God comes in Christ for you. If there were something you could already have done or some evidence you could present to God to affect his judgment on you, there would have been no need for Christ. And his excruciating death on Good Friday would be useless, except as a particularly awful role model for how to behave people treat you poorly.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is good news indeed. But he’s good news for sinners worthy of the name. In the gospel reading, Jesus says lots of people will parade themselves before you as spectacular examples of righteous, religious behavior. Some of those people will trot out a conservative view of righteous behavior. Others will send out a religious pop-up ad trumpeting a liberal view of righteous behavior. And yet our readings push back, saying no zealot knows the truth. The arrogant are headed to the refiner’s fire. Those who are cocksure of their worthiness have a burning alkaline fullers’ soap waiting.
But those who confess their sin, their inability to do and achieve righteousness, and their core desire to go it alone, these have another word that God stands ready to speak. In 1518, some six months after he posted the Ninety-Five Theses, Martin Luther was told to defend his teaching at a meeting of his monastic order. In his disputation to his fellow Augustinians, he said that only those who despair of their own ability to gain righteousness on their own are worthy to receive the grace of Christ. With that we come near to the rich, true good news hidden in the cracks and crevices of these harsh readings. Deuteronomy says, “See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand.” The hammer of God comes down. The gavel of the divine judge bangs on his bench. The defendant is declared guilty, so that for Christ’s sake, the guilty party might be freed. The judgment comes so that you and I, sinners all, might confess or, as Jesus says in the gospel reading, that you might have an opportunity to testify.
One summer I worked at one of our Bible camps in South Dakota. Along with the new batch of fifth and sixth grader that descended on us each week that summer, the South Dakota State Hospital and School brought a bus-load of developmentally-disabled adults to be a part of our camp community. Each cabin of seven or eight kids had one of those wonderful, memorable people living with us. One week my group of boys welcomed 30-something Robert Schieffelbein to live with us. I remember Robert even though I can’t recall even one of the younger campers in that group. And what sticks with me about Robert Schieffelbein is that every time we invited him to join in on some camp activity he said, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.” We’d say, “C’mon Robert.” He’d say, “I can’t do it, buddy.”
Robert’s words are the words of confession, his testimony. “I can’t do it.” And they are the first words of our own confession. We come before God to say, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it, divine buddy.” And then we point to the one who has promised to take us sinners on. The prophet Malachi promises, “But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” To revere God’s name is to be able to name the one whom God established in heaven and on earth to rescue us sinners, the “we-can’t-do-it” folks. When Mark starts off his gospel, he says, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” He’s saying that this good news starts, has its source, and completely stems from Jesus. But who in the world will hear about Jesus and regard it as good news? For whom will Jesus be such good news that they fear no worldly authority or virulent accusation? What kind of person can’t resist the kind of savior Jesus is? On whom does this sun of righteousness rise? Who finds healing in Christ’s outstretched, nail-marked wings? It’s sinners. It’s the ones who bear the badge openly, who confess, “I can’t do it, buddy, but Jesus does.”
While Luther was in hiding at the Wartburg Castle after the Diet of Worms in 1521, Philip Melanchthon, his fellow professor at the University of Wittenberg, wrote to him to ask how he could become a better preacher. Luther responded, “Become a sinner, a real sinner, not a sham sinner – one who knows the depth and breadth of your sin.” And Luther famously said, “Then sin boldly, and trust all the more boldly in Christ your savior.” So, if we ask if sinners in general go to heaven, the answer will always be, “No. Ain’t no room for that nastiness in the new Jerusalem.” But if we ask about real, particular and bold sinners who are up-front about their sin and unabashed about their Lord, then the answer is, “You can’t do it, buddy. Yet Christ does it for you.”
These are the ones for whom the prophet Isaiah speaks, when he announces the word of the Lord, saying, “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.” Those who wish to stand before God’s judgment seat will only hear a sentence of condemnation, yet those who come fragile and broken to God’s mercy seat, claiming Christ’s mercy, shall hear this good news: The kingdom has been prepared from the foundation of the world, and this kingdom is now yours. Whatever calamity afflicts you, whatever disaster lies in your path, whatever betrayal breaks you, whatever portents indicate otherwise, the gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, stands sure for you: You, sinner, are forgiven, claimed and restored already and eternally. Amen.
It’s that time of year, a few short weeks before Advent begins, when the assigned Bible readings serve up the terror of the end times. I’d rather preach on Jesus saying no to divorce than to have to deal with the threat of arrest and persecution when the authorities sense the presence of Christ in me. I would so very much prefer to avoid Malachi’s warning about the arrogant being burnt up and the evildoers being cut down like Iowa corn stalks reduced to field stubble and no-till acreage. But those passages of God’s Word have been read now. They hang in the air, forcing themselves on us. Now they won’t let us go until God has a chance to speak through them. If God’s Word won’t give us any other option, we might as well go after these passages and see if the Holy Spirit isn’t actually speaking in them.
The prophet Malachi’s words are a dire warning: For the arrogant and evildoers, that is, for sinners like you and me, the future holds very little hope. It’s going to be worse for us than what a menopausal woman means when she says, “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” No, there’s a burning-up time a-coming. Just a few verses before our passage, Malachi says, “Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap.” The refiner’s fire is what a metal smith uses to burn out all the impurities in silver ore or gold ore, so that the only thing left is the purest of metals. Fullers’ soap is full of caustic alkali and in ancient times was used to purify wool to its ultimate whiteness before it could be used for cloth. The smelter burns. Alkali burns. And the Lord himself burns up all the evil he touches.
How is it that I am to be included among the arrogant, the evildoers and the sinful? Surely God would not move against me in such a violent, no-second-chances way! Yet I am included, and so are you. The sin and evil that the prophet rails against grows in the fertile ground of our hearts, for the Lord demands righteousness of his human creatures and, if there’s one thing we’re not, it’s righteous. We are not all God has made us to be. Who among us doesn’t know the foibles and peccadilloes we so slyly cover over daily, the corner-cutting, the getting by with good-enough? When we look at ourselves honestly, who among us has not committed a long list of sins, big and small, sins of commission and sins of omission? “I was hungry and you did not feed me,” Jesus says in Matthew 25, “I was thirsty and you gave me no drink. I was sick and in prison and you did not visit me.”
And when we hear the prophet speak these harsh words against us, it reveals something even worse. Not only do we sin, but when God sends a messenger to speak the truth to us, we react by becoming indignant. We refuse to confess our unwillingness to obey this almighty God, to confess our constant desire to go our own way, but we pile sin upon sin by questioning God’s judgment and will. “Surely God couldn’t judge someone like me who has such good intentions. God’s the one with the problem. And if it’s not God, then it’s God’s word or his messenger. For certainly the God of love would not turn away from someone who deserves divine favor like I do!” Ah, there’s the rub. Do you see how our very reaction to God’s judgment in Malachi reveals our core? For we, like our forebears in the Garden, have eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We have demanded our place in God’s judgment seat, where we will be the determiners of our own future and fate, where we will be the arbiters of our own salvation, where we gather a lifetime of evidence to justify ourselves. As Psalm 14 says, “They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one.” And as Paul says in Romans, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
I will often ask students in my courses if sinners get to go to heaven. The kids who have some church background will invariably say, “Of course, sinners go to heaven. A loving God won’t turn them away.” But the students who have little connection to Christianity know better. Their sense of God’s judgment is closer to the view of Malachi and of the rest of God’s word in scripture. These students have heard the rumors that God is a God who judges, who separates good from evil, and who desires righteousness not sin. The almighty God will brook no sin, allow no evil, make room for no self-seeking hearts in his glorious, eternal kingdom. God reserves his throne of judgment for the sentence he doles out. The jig is up: We sinners with our arrogance, our evil doing and lack of doing, our utter unwillingness and inability to focus on anything but our own will, we stand condemned and have a future as eternal field stubble.
Is there no way out? Is there no small bit of allowance from God? Won’t God recognize some two or three atoms of sparkling goodness that remain? We’d certainly like that, but here’s the deal. God has taken on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. He is crucified and risen. And it all happens because there is no other way. God has done the saving deed, because human beings (you and me included) will not change, will not grasp God’s righteousness, and will always try to substitute our own paltry shadowy substitute self-righteousness in its place. In the coming month before Christmas and during the Christmas season itself, we will hear that God comes in Christ for you. If there were something you could already have done or some evidence you could present to God to affect his judgment on you, there would have been no need for Christ. And his excruciating death on Good Friday would be useless, except as a particularly awful role model for how to behave people treat you poorly.
Our Lord Jesus Christ is good news indeed. But he’s good news for sinners worthy of the name. In the gospel reading, Jesus says lots of people will parade themselves before you as spectacular examples of righteous, religious behavior. Some of those people will trot out a conservative view of righteous behavior. Others will send out a religious pop-up ad trumpeting a liberal view of righteous behavior. And yet our readings push back, saying no zealot knows the truth. The arrogant are headed to the refiner’s fire. Those who are cocksure of their worthiness have a burning alkaline fullers’ soap waiting.
But those who confess their sin, their inability to do and achieve righteousness, and their core desire to go it alone, these have another word that God stands ready to speak. In 1518, some six months after he posted the Ninety-Five Theses, Martin Luther was told to defend his teaching at a meeting of his monastic order. In his disputation to his fellow Augustinians, he said that only those who despair of their own ability to gain righteousness on their own are worthy to receive the grace of Christ. With that we come near to the rich, true good news hidden in the cracks and crevices of these harsh readings. Deuteronomy says, “See now that I, even I, am he; there is no god besides me. I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; and no one can deliver from my hand.” The hammer of God comes down. The gavel of the divine judge bangs on his bench. The defendant is declared guilty, so that for Christ’s sake, the guilty party might be freed. The judgment comes so that you and I, sinners all, might confess or, as Jesus says in the gospel reading, that you might have an opportunity to testify.
One summer I worked at one of our Bible camps in South Dakota. Along with the new batch of fifth and sixth grader that descended on us each week that summer, the South Dakota State Hospital and School brought a bus-load of developmentally-disabled adults to be a part of our camp community. Each cabin of seven or eight kids had one of those wonderful, memorable people living with us. One week my group of boys welcomed 30-something Robert Schieffelbein to live with us. I remember Robert even though I can’t recall even one of the younger campers in that group. And what sticks with me about Robert Schieffelbein is that every time we invited him to join in on some camp activity he said, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.” We’d say, “C’mon Robert.” He’d say, “I can’t do it, buddy.”
Robert’s words are the words of confession, his testimony. “I can’t do it.” And they are the first words of our own confession. We come before God to say, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it, divine buddy.” And then we point to the one who has promised to take us sinners on. The prophet Malachi promises, “But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.” To revere God’s name is to be able to name the one whom God established in heaven and on earth to rescue us sinners, the “we-can’t-do-it” folks. When Mark starts off his gospel, he says, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the son of God.” He’s saying that this good news starts, has its source, and completely stems from Jesus. But who in the world will hear about Jesus and regard it as good news? For whom will Jesus be such good news that they fear no worldly authority or virulent accusation? What kind of person can’t resist the kind of savior Jesus is? On whom does this sun of righteousness rise? Who finds healing in Christ’s outstretched, nail-marked wings? It’s sinners. It’s the ones who bear the badge openly, who confess, “I can’t do it, buddy, but Jesus does.”
While Luther was in hiding at the Wartburg Castle after the Diet of Worms in 1521, Philip Melanchthon, his fellow professor at the University of Wittenberg, wrote to him to ask how he could become a better preacher. Luther responded, “Become a sinner, a real sinner, not a sham sinner – one who knows the depth and breadth of your sin.” And Luther famously said, “Then sin boldly, and trust all the more boldly in Christ your savior.” So, if we ask if sinners in general go to heaven, the answer will always be, “No. Ain’t no room for that nastiness in the new Jerusalem.” But if we ask about real, particular and bold sinners who are up-front about their sin and unabashed about their Lord, then the answer is, “You can’t do it, buddy. Yet Christ does it for you.”
These are the ones for whom the prophet Isaiah speaks, when he announces the word of the Lord, saying, “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.” Those who wish to stand before God’s judgment seat will only hear a sentence of condemnation, yet those who come fragile and broken to God’s mercy seat, claiming Christ’s mercy, shall hear this good news: The kingdom has been prepared from the foundation of the world, and this kingdom is now yours. Whatever calamity afflicts you, whatever disaster lies in your path, whatever betrayal breaks you, whatever portents indicate otherwise, the gospel of Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, stands sure for you: You, sinner, are forgiven, claimed and restored already and eternally. Amen.
Friday, August 20, 2010
On Being Straightened Out
Our Gospel reading this morning is a tale of bondage and freedom. The bondage and then the release Jesus provides take us into two different ways of living and believing. They move us from a world of glory to the utter reality of Jesus’ cross-shaped new life. And it all hinges on a single word from our Lord.
This crippled-over woman was useless, good-for-nothing in the shape she was in – all curved in on herself. For eighteen years her spine had twisted so far that she was nearly folded up into a package that looked nothing like a human being was supposed to look. They said she had a spirit in her that made this happen, but we ought to remember that’s the language ancient people used to talk about what causes things. While we look to viruses and pathogens as causes of illnesses, people in biblical times didn’t have microscopes or the scientific method. They looked at insurmountable things like illnesses and saw demons and spirits at work – things they had no control over. At any rate, this woman couldn’t stand up straight. This bit of human origami couldn’t unfold herself into a position that would free her to carry on life.
Just before the story of this healing, our gospel writer Luke tells us a bit about how this woman was regarded. Jesus tells the parable of the fig tree. A man who owns a vineyard also has a fig tree planted there. When he comes to pluck a couple figs for his afternoon snack he finds a barren tree. In fact, it’s happened for three years running. So he tells the gardener to cut it down and use the soil for something more productive. Our crippled woman is unproductive. She can’t bear any fruit worthy of the kingdom of God. She can’t tend her household. She can’t serve on the PTA. She can’t dandle grandbabies on her knee. She’s a drag on society. She’s a misplaced fig tree stuck where productive, useful people might better work. And yet, how does the gardener in Jesus’ parable respond? He says, “Hang on another year. Let me work the soil and add a bit of manure as fertilizer. If that doesn’t do the trick, then it might be a good idea to chop the tree down.” Luke shows Jesus doing that very thing to the crippled woman.
All it takes is a word from Jesus to straighten her out: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” The ancient Greek word Jesus uses there is apolelusai (apolelusai), and it means to release. Try this with me: Stick out your index finger on one hand and grasp it with your other hand. Now squeeze as tight as you can. Keep squeezing. Tighter. Tighter. For just a bit longer. Now let go. That’s apolelusai – the release of a muscle or tendon that’s being flexed or held tight. What takes us four words to say in English, “you are set free,” is just one word in Greek: apolelusai. To paraphrase “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” one little word subdues her ailment. One little word and this woman was released from the grip of her illness. It’s no surprise that after living all hunched over for eighteen years she did a quick stretch and started praising God for release from her bondage. That woman was no dummy when it comes to the source of her healing. She knew whom to thank and praise, serve and obey.
What is this word from Jesus? What power does it have? His word is simply himself. He gives himself to her, attends to her, lays consoling eyes and powerful hands on her, and claims her as his own. The bent-over woman comes into Jesus’ presence and he transplants her into the good soil of his kingdom. He turns her soil and adds the fertile mix of his coming death and resurrection – which the world regards as pure manure, barnyard leavings. The Word of God himself, Jesus Christ, is added to her dead limbs and spines and, bam!, fruit appears. The woman can’t stop telling people what God has done, and the crowds hear and rejoice.
Did I mention that all this happened on the Sabbath day? Oh, yes, it did. And there’s the rub. Jewish religious law is very clear on this count. It would come to include 39 categories of work that could not be done on God’s day of rest, including carrying, writing, erasing, harvesting, plowing, weaving, cooking, building, tying and thirty others. When Jesus heals the woman, he’s breaking the Sabbath command to rest. And any time you break any of these lesser commandments, you’re also breaking the granddaddy of them all, “You shall have no other gods before me.” By deciding yourself what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath, you’re putting yourself before God who himself commanded the day of rest.
The leader of the synagogue will have no truck with that. He knows the law and knows that it doesn’t give an inch. He lives his entire life within the parameters of this legal system. For him, virtue and piety are the criteria for both future success and God’s good pleasure. If you don’t act as religiously as required, there’s no place for you in God’s kingdom. Jesus blows it all away by assuming his right to bring people into the kingdom when and where he pleases. So the leader of the synagogue calls Jesus on it. And now we get to the crux of the matter.
This story of Jesus healing the woman isn’t really about physical sickness and infirmity (although God does promise to bring healing to all). No, in this story we find the very thing Jesus, the great physician, has come to set right: sin. While the crippled woman had a spine that curved her in on herself, the leader of the synagogue is even more curved in and needs Jesus’ release just as much. Jesus claims all of the creation for his own. He says he wants to “draw all unto himself.” When he says, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” he makes himself the criterion for entry into God’s kingdom. Sinners want nothing to do with that, neither the leader of the synagogue nor we sinners gathered together today. We’d rather be a part of a system where we can determine who’s in and who’s out. So we look to legalities, immutable commands that allow us to rate ourselves and others and, if necessary, work just a little harder to achieve a future for ourselves. Usually that comes down to being virtuous, pious or religious. But when God takes on human flesh and bone in the person of Jesus, he means to end it all. He says, “That religious business of clothing yourself in piety and virtue? Enough! It’s time to stop that folderol.” For the leader of the synagogue, that was too upsetting. Better the ceaseless demands of the law than the danger of letting go.
That rabbi was just as barren as the crippled woman. He too was curved in on himself, constantly looking at his own navel to see if he was good enough, righteous enough, clean enough. If he’d been alive today, he would have fallen prey to the legal scheme of our own day: the advertising and marketing world that demands of you to buy this, accumulate that, wear these, if you want to secure your future. We’re called on to satisfy those demands, and they force us to look inward to see if we’ve achieved the goals they set before us. When Jesus cuts in our dance with the law and insists on being paired up with us for the rest of his divine gala, we object. We say, “I’m not going to polka with you, because God’s orchestra is playing a waltz. The dance goes like this: one, two, three, one, two, three.” But it’s even worse than that. We don’t just refuse to dance, we take our new divine dance partners out behind the dancehall and let the brutes with Budweisers in one hand and brass knuckles in the other teach him what’s what. When Pontius Pilate presents an option for what to do with a lawbreaker like Jesus, our only answer is, “Crucify him!” We’d always rather stick to our schemes of glory, glitz and glamour than succumb to a life where we are nothing and Christ is everything, our all in all.
It sure would be nice if we could just jinn up our courage and muster the wherewithal to simply decide to answer Pilate differently. If only we had it in us. But we don’t. We can’t do it. We and that rabbi are just as stuck as the crippled woman who can’t straighten herself out. If we don’t have it in us, it’s going to take something outside of us. That something isn’t a thing, but a somebody – Jesus, who heals and straightens and makes new. You see he has come for sinners, and not just to restore you to the possibility of doing something good, but to make something new out of the nothing that is you. You know where your life is headed – to a plot of land about seven feet by three feet or to a cardboard container ready to hold some ashes. Created from nothing, you end up as nothing. And yet Christ comes to make something new out of your nothingness. The rabbi refused to let go of his imagined control and came away having been put to shame. The crippled woman knew she had no ability to fix things, to bear fruit or to stand as righteous before God, and she was given new life. The rabbi demanded commandments and obedience, and that’s what he was left with – the judgment of God. The crippled woman ran into God’s promise in Jesus and was made new.
Jesus certainly isn’t polite about these things. In fact, he bids you to run from God to God. That means Christ pulls you away from thinking all of God’s ultimates like salvation, forgiveness and eternal life depend on your fulfilling God’s demands. And he draws you in to his kingdom where it all hinges on his promise to you. And of course, that’s what the Sabbath was always for in the first place. It’s given not just so you can rest your weary bones, but so that your spirit can rest fully and finally in him, the great physician, the divine promise, the Lord of all life. Is this not why we gather together to worship? We worship so we can confess our nothingness, our inability to find any life in virtue, piety and religion, our unwillingness to anything but our own people. We worship together so we can sing, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” We gather together together so we, too, might be set free, so that we, too, might know a true and eternal Sabbath. We gather together to be straightened out from looking at our own navels and so that we can begin looking to our neighbor’s need.
So how about about it? Look at your navel now and repeat after me: I confess. And now straighten up and look my way and hear what Jesus has sent me to tell you: You, my fellow sinner, are forgiven in his name. You, dear friend, are given his unbreakable promise of salvation and new life. Where before you were curved in on yourself and good for nothing, now you are unfolded and made new. You now know Christ’s gift of apolelusai. Now you can sing God’s praises with that straightened-out, good-for-lots-of-things woman and the psalmist: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits – who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.” Now, you former barren fig trees, let’s see if a little fruit doesn’t start growing on your branches. Amen.
This crippled-over woman was useless, good-for-nothing in the shape she was in – all curved in on herself. For eighteen years her spine had twisted so far that she was nearly folded up into a package that looked nothing like a human being was supposed to look. They said she had a spirit in her that made this happen, but we ought to remember that’s the language ancient people used to talk about what causes things. While we look to viruses and pathogens as causes of illnesses, people in biblical times didn’t have microscopes or the scientific method. They looked at insurmountable things like illnesses and saw demons and spirits at work – things they had no control over. At any rate, this woman couldn’t stand up straight. This bit of human origami couldn’t unfold herself into a position that would free her to carry on life.
Just before the story of this healing, our gospel writer Luke tells us a bit about how this woman was regarded. Jesus tells the parable of the fig tree. A man who owns a vineyard also has a fig tree planted there. When he comes to pluck a couple figs for his afternoon snack he finds a barren tree. In fact, it’s happened for three years running. So he tells the gardener to cut it down and use the soil for something more productive. Our crippled woman is unproductive. She can’t bear any fruit worthy of the kingdom of God. She can’t tend her household. She can’t serve on the PTA. She can’t dandle grandbabies on her knee. She’s a drag on society. She’s a misplaced fig tree stuck where productive, useful people might better work. And yet, how does the gardener in Jesus’ parable respond? He says, “Hang on another year. Let me work the soil and add a bit of manure as fertilizer. If that doesn’t do the trick, then it might be a good idea to chop the tree down.” Luke shows Jesus doing that very thing to the crippled woman.
All it takes is a word from Jesus to straighten her out: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” The ancient Greek word Jesus uses there is apolelusai (apolelusai), and it means to release. Try this with me: Stick out your index finger on one hand and grasp it with your other hand. Now squeeze as tight as you can. Keep squeezing. Tighter. Tighter. For just a bit longer. Now let go. That’s apolelusai – the release of a muscle or tendon that’s being flexed or held tight. What takes us four words to say in English, “you are set free,” is just one word in Greek: apolelusai. To paraphrase “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” one little word subdues her ailment. One little word and this woman was released from the grip of her illness. It’s no surprise that after living all hunched over for eighteen years she did a quick stretch and started praising God for release from her bondage. That woman was no dummy when it comes to the source of her healing. She knew whom to thank and praise, serve and obey.
What is this word from Jesus? What power does it have? His word is simply himself. He gives himself to her, attends to her, lays consoling eyes and powerful hands on her, and claims her as his own. The bent-over woman comes into Jesus’ presence and he transplants her into the good soil of his kingdom. He turns her soil and adds the fertile mix of his coming death and resurrection – which the world regards as pure manure, barnyard leavings. The Word of God himself, Jesus Christ, is added to her dead limbs and spines and, bam!, fruit appears. The woman can’t stop telling people what God has done, and the crowds hear and rejoice.
Did I mention that all this happened on the Sabbath day? Oh, yes, it did. And there’s the rub. Jewish religious law is very clear on this count. It would come to include 39 categories of work that could not be done on God’s day of rest, including carrying, writing, erasing, harvesting, plowing, weaving, cooking, building, tying and thirty others. When Jesus heals the woman, he’s breaking the Sabbath command to rest. And any time you break any of these lesser commandments, you’re also breaking the granddaddy of them all, “You shall have no other gods before me.” By deciding yourself what you can and can’t do on the Sabbath, you’re putting yourself before God who himself commanded the day of rest.
The leader of the synagogue will have no truck with that. He knows the law and knows that it doesn’t give an inch. He lives his entire life within the parameters of this legal system. For him, virtue and piety are the criteria for both future success and God’s good pleasure. If you don’t act as religiously as required, there’s no place for you in God’s kingdom. Jesus blows it all away by assuming his right to bring people into the kingdom when and where he pleases. So the leader of the synagogue calls Jesus on it. And now we get to the crux of the matter.
This story of Jesus healing the woman isn’t really about physical sickness and infirmity (although God does promise to bring healing to all). No, in this story we find the very thing Jesus, the great physician, has come to set right: sin. While the crippled woman had a spine that curved her in on herself, the leader of the synagogue is even more curved in and needs Jesus’ release just as much. Jesus claims all of the creation for his own. He says he wants to “draw all unto himself.” When he says, “I am the way, the truth and the life,” he makes himself the criterion for entry into God’s kingdom. Sinners want nothing to do with that, neither the leader of the synagogue nor we sinners gathered together today. We’d rather be a part of a system where we can determine who’s in and who’s out. So we look to legalities, immutable commands that allow us to rate ourselves and others and, if necessary, work just a little harder to achieve a future for ourselves. Usually that comes down to being virtuous, pious or religious. But when God takes on human flesh and bone in the person of Jesus, he means to end it all. He says, “That religious business of clothing yourself in piety and virtue? Enough! It’s time to stop that folderol.” For the leader of the synagogue, that was too upsetting. Better the ceaseless demands of the law than the danger of letting go.
That rabbi was just as barren as the crippled woman. He too was curved in on himself, constantly looking at his own navel to see if he was good enough, righteous enough, clean enough. If he’d been alive today, he would have fallen prey to the legal scheme of our own day: the advertising and marketing world that demands of you to buy this, accumulate that, wear these, if you want to secure your future. We’re called on to satisfy those demands, and they force us to look inward to see if we’ve achieved the goals they set before us. When Jesus cuts in our dance with the law and insists on being paired up with us for the rest of his divine gala, we object. We say, “I’m not going to polka with you, because God’s orchestra is playing a waltz. The dance goes like this: one, two, three, one, two, three.” But it’s even worse than that. We don’t just refuse to dance, we take our new divine dance partners out behind the dancehall and let the brutes with Budweisers in one hand and brass knuckles in the other teach him what’s what. When Pontius Pilate presents an option for what to do with a lawbreaker like Jesus, our only answer is, “Crucify him!” We’d always rather stick to our schemes of glory, glitz and glamour than succumb to a life where we are nothing and Christ is everything, our all in all.
It sure would be nice if we could just jinn up our courage and muster the wherewithal to simply decide to answer Pilate differently. If only we had it in us. But we don’t. We can’t do it. We and that rabbi are just as stuck as the crippled woman who can’t straighten herself out. If we don’t have it in us, it’s going to take something outside of us. That something isn’t a thing, but a somebody – Jesus, who heals and straightens and makes new. You see he has come for sinners, and not just to restore you to the possibility of doing something good, but to make something new out of the nothing that is you. You know where your life is headed – to a plot of land about seven feet by three feet or to a cardboard container ready to hold some ashes. Created from nothing, you end up as nothing. And yet Christ comes to make something new out of your nothingness. The rabbi refused to let go of his imagined control and came away having been put to shame. The crippled woman knew she had no ability to fix things, to bear fruit or to stand as righteous before God, and she was given new life. The rabbi demanded commandments and obedience, and that’s what he was left with – the judgment of God. The crippled woman ran into God’s promise in Jesus and was made new.
Jesus certainly isn’t polite about these things. In fact, he bids you to run from God to God. That means Christ pulls you away from thinking all of God’s ultimates like salvation, forgiveness and eternal life depend on your fulfilling God’s demands. And he draws you in to his kingdom where it all hinges on his promise to you. And of course, that’s what the Sabbath was always for in the first place. It’s given not just so you can rest your weary bones, but so that your spirit can rest fully and finally in him, the great physician, the divine promise, the Lord of all life. Is this not why we gather together to worship? We worship so we can confess our nothingness, our inability to find any life in virtue, piety and religion, our unwillingness to anything but our own people. We worship together so we can sing, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” We gather together together so we, too, might be set free, so that we, too, might know a true and eternal Sabbath. We gather together to be straightened out from looking at our own navels and so that we can begin looking to our neighbor’s need.
So how about about it? Look at your navel now and repeat after me: I confess. And now straighten up and look my way and hear what Jesus has sent me to tell you: You, my fellow sinner, are forgiven in his name. You, dear friend, are given his unbreakable promise of salvation and new life. Where before you were curved in on yourself and good for nothing, now you are unfolded and made new. You now know Christ’s gift of apolelusai. Now you can sing God’s praises with that straightened-out, good-for-lots-of-things woman and the psalmist: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits – who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's.” Now, you former barren fig trees, let’s see if a little fruit doesn’t start growing on your branches. Amen.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Martha running ragged
Genesis 18:1-10; Psalm 15; Luke 10:38-42
Preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Knoxville, IA
Because I teach these days, I’m not a regular Sunday-after-Sunday preacher. I always feel a bit rusty when I sit down to write a sermon. This week I looked at a couple commentaries and some preaching blogs to see what people are saying about our readings today. Here’s what I found out:
Doing work is a good gift from God. Martha sure was right on that count. There’s nothing wrong with good, hard work – producing something for the common good or to meet your neighbor’s need. That’s something God has made us for. When Luther explained the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism, he told us what daily bread means. He said it includes everything we need in this life – including work and income.
Work is such a part of us that we hardly notice it until it’s gone. Unemployment numbers are important not just because people need to earn money to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. They’re important because they’re a sign of people who don’t have access to the good work God intends for us each day. When we don’t have work, we hurt. When there’s no work to do, it affects what Martin Luther called the conscience. He used that word to described our sense of ourselves. You conscience is your what you understand about your standing before God and before you neighbor. Lack of work wrenches your conscience, because your work helps tell you who you are and whose you are.
Later this week I’m driving out to western South Dakota for a big wingding at the old country school my dad attended. So I’ll meet lots of sheep and cattle ranchers whose last names I’m known for most of my 50 years. I’ll tell them my name and shake a handful of calluses. And you know what the first question they’ll ask me will be? They’ll say, “What do you do these days?” When I tell them I’m a Lutheran pastor and college religion and philosophy professor, they’ll know something about my place in the world.
So Martha’s puttering around the kitchen throwing a kosher casserole together is just a part of how God makes the world. Doing is a good thing. But when sin enters the picture, everything changes. When it comes to doing or not doing, we sinners are an odd bunch.
God’s given us a good batch of things to do and keep from doing: things like having no other gods, honoring your father and mother and remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy. And if that’s not enough God has given us neighbors galore to care for.
But from Adam and Eve in the Garden on down to us, we sinners have wanted it our way. We’re like two-year-olds in a high chair who refuse to let our parents feed us. We say, “My do it myself.” Doing? Yup. We like doing. As long as we get to decide what to do and when we do it.
We sinners treat the gift of doing, God’s gracious gift of work, just like we treat all of God’s gifts. Our sin-clouded eyes aren’t able to see God’s gifts as gifts. Because we don’t trust God to give us all we need for this life, we turn away from the divine giver and use the gifts for our own ends. At best we begin to think of God’s gifts as tools to achieve our own goals. I work so I can buy more consumer electronics. I work to keep my lawn green and mowed, so won’t be an object of scorn at our neighborhood block party. At worst we not only turn away from the divine giver, we also turn the gifts themselves into false gods. We look to the things of the creation, including work, as the be-all and end-all of our existence. We trust them to give us what we think we need. Instead of fearing, loving and trusting God above all things, we look to things to secure our future and stave off the terror of not knowing where we’re headed.
Now we’re at the corner Martha turned in her busyness. Her work had become the source of her security and future. The gift of work became an end in itself and just as quickly became a burden. She started to see all that needed to get done if the evening with their guest of honor was ever going to come together. And make no mistake, getting supper together in first-century Bethany was no easy task. There’s no nuking things in the microwave, no refrigeration, no Calphalon cookwear and no Cuisinart food processors. It’s just constant drudgery. And there sits Mary, hanging out with Jesus and the guys. She’s in the other room sitting at Jesus feet, gazing at him all star-struck like a 12-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert. Isn’t Jesus supposed to be all caring or something? Shouldn’t he notice her burden? Shouldn’t he whisper, “You know, Mary, I think Martha could use a little help out there”?
Martha’s gotten all turned around with work. Stoke the fire. Wipe the brow. Knead the bread. And forget about just who it is the supper’s being cooked for. Martha’s worried about getting the meal together, but even the Devil knows that if he wanted to Jesus could grab a couple rocks and turn them into nice loaves of focaccia. Martha’s forgotten about who she’s dealing with.
So Jesus brings her back to the place of the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin. Doing what needs to get done is great. He just wants her to keep her doing in its proper place, so she can see what’s really going on in the house she and Mary and Lazarus share. The Lord himself is with them, the Holy One of God. He didn’t choose to go to dinner with the Chief Priest of the Temple in Jerusalem, he came here to Bethany.
There’s great danger in letting work be the one thing that defines you in any moment. Because you see yourself able to exert your efforts to accomplish something, you begin to think that you might even be in charge. You yourself become the ultimate cause of your days and deeds. You become the game master. It all depends on you. But when you live under that illusion, what happens when you come to a place where no effort of your own, no work, no exertion of effort can change anything?
I suspect there are quite a few people in Pella these past few days are feeling the shifting tides of paralysis and powerlessness. Two boys drowned at an FCA camp pool party and there’s not a thing you can do to change the fact. The history will always be there. And nothing any of us does can create a different future. Life is full of those places and situations. We run along busy as can be and trip on the cold, unexpected truth that we are not in charge of our future. The word “cancer.” The loss of a job. The prospect of an empty next. The cruel names tossed in a middle school hallway. The slow, inexorable pull of gravity on our body’s various flesh bulbs. The inevitable last day and last breath that creep steadily toward us. All these things pull our ability to work out of our hands and remind us that we are not our own gods.
Each of these places in our lives offers a hidden Word from God, speaking to us the same way Jesus spoke to Martha. “You’re right,” he says, “You have come to the end of your rope. What exactly do you think happens when you discover you can’t fix things? Do you think the final catastrophe is at hand? Did you think you were in charge?” So Jesus brings a clear no to Martha and to us. There is a limit to what doing can accomplish, especially when it comes to ultimate matters like your death, your salvation, your verdict come Judgment Day.
But then Jesus turns Martha’s attention to her dear sister. “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” You see, there are lots of things you can do and may want to do. But there’s one thing that rises above everything else, and it’s not even a thing. It’s a person. Jesus. He has given himself to awestruck Mary, to busy Martha, to Lazarus soon to be dead and stinking in a tomb, to Peter, to Paul, to St. Monica and St. Clothild, to Martin Luther, and to you, sinners all. And here he promises that he can never be taken away. As Paul says in Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It’s just like Jesus to pull this on Martha. He has a habit of zeroing in our disasters and frustration. He has a way of finding our weak spots, of taking a magnifying glass to our sins and peccadilloes. He doesn’t mind pushing us to the limit and over it, because when we fall he gets to do what he does best: catching fallen sinners. He wants them to know that, work or no work, powerful or powerless, we remain subject to his own mighty affection. Meal schmeal, who cares what you’re cooking up for yourself. He has something better in store for you, the ultimate feast of mercy and forgiveness, the sacrament that bestows a future.
To paraphrase Psalm 15: You shall dwell in his sanctuary and live on his holy hill. No longer will you seek to be blameless in your work and production. Your purity comes from the one who died for you and rose again. He is the one who keeps his oath, even when it hurts. His promise on the cross is for you. Risen from the dead, he will never be shaken. He’s done all the work and now gives you the wages of faith: your salvation, forgiveness and deliverance from sin, death and the devil. For that we might just be willing to let the fires die out and the pots turn cold on the stove. And that’s just why we’re here today, to sit her at Jesus feet and hear him promise to stick with us always.
Calendars and to-do lists get put in the proper place when Jesus is around. Work becomes a gift again. And the invitation stays in place for the rest of our days: “Settle in now,” Jesus says, “And hear what I’m doing for you, always for you.” Amen.
Preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Knoxville, IA
Because I teach these days, I’m not a regular Sunday-after-Sunday preacher. I always feel a bit rusty when I sit down to write a sermon. This week I looked at a couple commentaries and some preaching blogs to see what people are saying about our readings today. Here’s what I found out:
- Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament reading are to be praised for their hospitality. They welcome in the visiting angels and cook ‘em up a dandy supper.
- Today’s psalm gives us line after line of the things you need to do in order to dwell in the Lord’s sanctuary.
- And then we get to the story of Mary and Martha in the gospel reading, Jesus seems to tell Martha that her distracted doing is a problem.
Doing work is a good gift from God. Martha sure was right on that count. There’s nothing wrong with good, hard work – producing something for the common good or to meet your neighbor’s need. That’s something God has made us for. When Luther explained the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism, he told us what daily bread means. He said it includes everything we need in this life – including work and income.
Work is such a part of us that we hardly notice it until it’s gone. Unemployment numbers are important not just because people need to earn money to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. They’re important because they’re a sign of people who don’t have access to the good work God intends for us each day. When we don’t have work, we hurt. When there’s no work to do, it affects what Martin Luther called the conscience. He used that word to described our sense of ourselves. You conscience is your what you understand about your standing before God and before you neighbor. Lack of work wrenches your conscience, because your work helps tell you who you are and whose you are.
Later this week I’m driving out to western South Dakota for a big wingding at the old country school my dad attended. So I’ll meet lots of sheep and cattle ranchers whose last names I’m known for most of my 50 years. I’ll tell them my name and shake a handful of calluses. And you know what the first question they’ll ask me will be? They’ll say, “What do you do these days?” When I tell them I’m a Lutheran pastor and college religion and philosophy professor, they’ll know something about my place in the world.
So Martha’s puttering around the kitchen throwing a kosher casserole together is just a part of how God makes the world. Doing is a good thing. But when sin enters the picture, everything changes. When it comes to doing or not doing, we sinners are an odd bunch.
God’s given us a good batch of things to do and keep from doing: things like having no other gods, honoring your father and mother and remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy. And if that’s not enough God has given us neighbors galore to care for.
But from Adam and Eve in the Garden on down to us, we sinners have wanted it our way. We’re like two-year-olds in a high chair who refuse to let our parents feed us. We say, “My do it myself.” Doing? Yup. We like doing. As long as we get to decide what to do and when we do it.
We sinners treat the gift of doing, God’s gracious gift of work, just like we treat all of God’s gifts. Our sin-clouded eyes aren’t able to see God’s gifts as gifts. Because we don’t trust God to give us all we need for this life, we turn away from the divine giver and use the gifts for our own ends. At best we begin to think of God’s gifts as tools to achieve our own goals. I work so I can buy more consumer electronics. I work to keep my lawn green and mowed, so won’t be an object of scorn at our neighborhood block party. At worst we not only turn away from the divine giver, we also turn the gifts themselves into false gods. We look to the things of the creation, including work, as the be-all and end-all of our existence. We trust them to give us what we think we need. Instead of fearing, loving and trusting God above all things, we look to things to secure our future and stave off the terror of not knowing where we’re headed.
Now we’re at the corner Martha turned in her busyness. Her work had become the source of her security and future. The gift of work became an end in itself and just as quickly became a burden. She started to see all that needed to get done if the evening with their guest of honor was ever going to come together. And make no mistake, getting supper together in first-century Bethany was no easy task. There’s no nuking things in the microwave, no refrigeration, no Calphalon cookwear and no Cuisinart food processors. It’s just constant drudgery. And there sits Mary, hanging out with Jesus and the guys. She’s in the other room sitting at Jesus feet, gazing at him all star-struck like a 12-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert. Isn’t Jesus supposed to be all caring or something? Shouldn’t he notice her burden? Shouldn’t he whisper, “You know, Mary, I think Martha could use a little help out there”?
Martha’s gotten all turned around with work. Stoke the fire. Wipe the brow. Knead the bread. And forget about just who it is the supper’s being cooked for. Martha’s worried about getting the meal together, but even the Devil knows that if he wanted to Jesus could grab a couple rocks and turn them into nice loaves of focaccia. Martha’s forgotten about who she’s dealing with.
So Jesus brings her back to the place of the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin. Doing what needs to get done is great. He just wants her to keep her doing in its proper place, so she can see what’s really going on in the house she and Mary and Lazarus share. The Lord himself is with them, the Holy One of God. He didn’t choose to go to dinner with the Chief Priest of the Temple in Jerusalem, he came here to Bethany.
There’s great danger in letting work be the one thing that defines you in any moment. Because you see yourself able to exert your efforts to accomplish something, you begin to think that you might even be in charge. You yourself become the ultimate cause of your days and deeds. You become the game master. It all depends on you. But when you live under that illusion, what happens when you come to a place where no effort of your own, no work, no exertion of effort can change anything?
I suspect there are quite a few people in Pella these past few days are feeling the shifting tides of paralysis and powerlessness. Two boys drowned at an FCA camp pool party and there’s not a thing you can do to change the fact. The history will always be there. And nothing any of us does can create a different future. Life is full of those places and situations. We run along busy as can be and trip on the cold, unexpected truth that we are not in charge of our future. The word “cancer.” The loss of a job. The prospect of an empty next. The cruel names tossed in a middle school hallway. The slow, inexorable pull of gravity on our body’s various flesh bulbs. The inevitable last day and last breath that creep steadily toward us. All these things pull our ability to work out of our hands and remind us that we are not our own gods.
Each of these places in our lives offers a hidden Word from God, speaking to us the same way Jesus spoke to Martha. “You’re right,” he says, “You have come to the end of your rope. What exactly do you think happens when you discover you can’t fix things? Do you think the final catastrophe is at hand? Did you think you were in charge?” So Jesus brings a clear no to Martha and to us. There is a limit to what doing can accomplish, especially when it comes to ultimate matters like your death, your salvation, your verdict come Judgment Day.
But then Jesus turns Martha’s attention to her dear sister. “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” You see, there are lots of things you can do and may want to do. But there’s one thing that rises above everything else, and it’s not even a thing. It’s a person. Jesus. He has given himself to awestruck Mary, to busy Martha, to Lazarus soon to be dead and stinking in a tomb, to Peter, to Paul, to St. Monica and St. Clothild, to Martin Luther, and to you, sinners all. And here he promises that he can never be taken away. As Paul says in Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
It’s just like Jesus to pull this on Martha. He has a habit of zeroing in our disasters and frustration. He has a way of finding our weak spots, of taking a magnifying glass to our sins and peccadilloes. He doesn’t mind pushing us to the limit and over it, because when we fall he gets to do what he does best: catching fallen sinners. He wants them to know that, work or no work, powerful or powerless, we remain subject to his own mighty affection. Meal schmeal, who cares what you’re cooking up for yourself. He has something better in store for you, the ultimate feast of mercy and forgiveness, the sacrament that bestows a future.
To paraphrase Psalm 15: You shall dwell in his sanctuary and live on his holy hill. No longer will you seek to be blameless in your work and production. Your purity comes from the one who died for you and rose again. He is the one who keeps his oath, even when it hurts. His promise on the cross is for you. Risen from the dead, he will never be shaken. He’s done all the work and now gives you the wages of faith: your salvation, forgiveness and deliverance from sin, death and the devil. For that we might just be willing to let the fires die out and the pots turn cold on the stove. And that’s just why we’re here today, to sit her at Jesus feet and hear him promise to stick with us always.
Calendars and to-do lists get put in the proper place when Jesus is around. Work becomes a gift again. And the invitation stays in place for the rest of our days: “Settle in now,” Jesus says, “And hear what I’m doing for you, always for you.” Amen.
Friday, June 25, 2010
Sam, Andy and Toy Story 3
In Toy Story 3 Andy is heading off to college (and behind the wheel of his own car, no less). It's somehow fitting that we saw this movie the summer before our son heads off to his freshman year at Luther College, in Decorah, Iowa. After all, he's grown up with Andy. And they're both members of the incoming class of 2014.
We first met Buzz, Woody and Andy in Decorah. We took our son to see Toy Story at the Viking Theater when he was almost three and I was serving as a pastor in Calmar. Now, as Andy leaves his toys behind, Sam leaves his own childhood behind to go back to Decorah for four years at Luther. And we discover that the movies were never about the toys, but about the boy who loved them.
Suffice it to say, sitting there next to the young man who still loves us, tears were shed in the darkness of a movie theater last weekend. But it's been a fun three movies and an even better 18 years of parenting. As Sam posted on his Facebook page, "Dear Andy, Thanks for sharing your toys with us." Thanks for sharing these years with us, Sam.
We first met Buzz, Woody and Andy in Decorah. We took our son to see Toy Story at the Viking Theater when he was almost three and I was serving as a pastor in Calmar. Now, as Andy leaves his toys behind, Sam leaves his own childhood behind to go back to Decorah for four years at Luther. And we discover that the movies were never about the toys, but about the boy who loved them.
Suffice it to say, sitting there next to the young man who still loves us, tears were shed in the darkness of a movie theater last weekend. But it's been a fun three movies and an even better 18 years of parenting. As Sam posted on his Facebook page, "Dear Andy, Thanks for sharing your toys with us." Thanks for sharing these years with us, Sam.
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Beyond flames and tongues
A sermon preached at Grace Lutheran Church in Adel, Iowa, for Pentecost Sunday 2010.
Happy Pentecost and happy birthday to Christ’s church. This day was an important day even before the one that Acts tells us about. For the ancient Jews, including Jesus and his disciples, this was the day to remember how God gave the Law and Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai, from “You shall have no other gods” to “You shall not covet your neighbor’s manservant, maidservant, cattle or anything else that it your neighbors.” The Law and Commandments were such good things. They were a way to know how and where you stood: In or out? Righteous or unrighteous?
To this day we still like that Law stuff. In fact, it’s absolutely embedded in our consciousness without our thinking about it. Here’s a quick quiz for you. We’ll see how much Law you know. Complete the phrase:
Imagine dishing up the potato salad at your family’s Fourth of July picnic and Aunt Bertha, who’s rarely been out of Iowa let alone gone abroad, starts speaking Mandarin Chinese or Hindi or Swahili to the folks at the next picnic table. If you knew she’d never spoken that language before, you’d try to make sense of it somehow. Maybe she isn’t really speaking it. Maybe she’s just goofing on your picnic neighbors. Maybe she’s had a stroke. Or maybe she’s gotten into the cooler a little early and downed a few too many bottles of hard cider.
That’s exactly what those folks in Jerusalem did when they saw and heard what was happening with the disciples. Those fellas were Galileans. No way could they speak Greek. Everyone knew that Galilean fisherfolk could hardly speak their own Aramean dialect, let alone fancy schmancy Greek. So what are the options if you want to make sense of things? You might decide you didn’t hear right and just imagined you heard them speak your language. You might think your mind was playing tricks on you. Or maybe, just maybe, you might think, “These guys are blitzed to the gills.” And then you’d look at your hourglass or sundial, look down your nose, and think, “Oooh-whee. Drunk at this time of day?” The multiple-language-speaking disciples don’t fit into their categories, so the spectators in Jerusalem find one that fits: public drunkenness. The crowds know the world works according to the law, commandments, structures and powers. Their reaction to the disciples shows how truly strange living by faith looks to the world. Something incredible has happened to the disciples, and the crowds just don’t understand it.
But what happened to those twelve guys isn’t just tongues of flame and foreign languages. For a few hundred bucks you can buy a week of campfires at Concordia Language Villages in Minnesota and have your flames and foreign tongues. The miracle of Pentecost that the crowds didn’t understand goes much deeper. What the disciples experienced with the gift of the Holy Spirit is part of the mystery and wonder of their relationship with Jesus.
These followers for whom things exploded on Pentecost had been hand-picked by our Lord. Not a one among them was someone to be reckoned with. They weren’t people of power or position. All they were was a group of guys who heard Jesus say, “Follow me,” and couldn’t resist him. At first they thought they’d gotten in on the ground floor with someone who was going to make it big, like meeting the winner of American Idol way back at the initial auditions. But instead they wound up following Jesus’ path to the cross. They saw how our Lord’s utter faithfulness and devotion to God freed him, how it gave him power to heal and forgive, and how the sum total of his worldly success was a sarcastic scrawl on a board over his head on the cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
These disciples were bound up in a relationship with the Son of Man who lived in full faith, and they saw exactly what it got him. Giving yourself up in devotion to God and in service to your neighbor attracts the world’s scorn, the condemnation of the powerful and the religious, and the shame of an execution by crucifixion. You see, to be the Christ (and a Christ-follower) means chucking your power into the ditch, snipping the apron strings that tie you to comfort and status, pinching off the shoots of success, and, plainly, dying to your own control, glory and carefully planned and managed future. For our Lord, true living means dying.
But if you think a few flickers of fire and speaking the language of the Phrygians and Medes is something, what happened to the disciples’ Lord was too much to believe. When it comes to blowing minds, Timothy Leary has nothing on Jesus Christ. Our Lord lay dead in a borrowed tomb. It looked like his program of bringing in the Kingdom of God was a bust, a complete failure. His followers had fled. And his dying words were a cry of abandonment by God. And yet. And yet. What happened two days later changed everything. The dead, crucified Jesus was alive. God’s raising him up said yes to the very path that looked like the end of all hope. The resurrection confirmed that Jesus’ path to the cross is the path, the only path of faithfulness.
The first part of the true miracle of Pentecost happened somewhere in the seven weeks between the Resurrection and this Jewish festival day. It happened as God’s own word in scripture worked on these lowly followers of Jesus. When Cleopas and his friend walked their grief off after seeing Jesus crucified, they didn’t recognize the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus. They didn’t understand anything about what Jesus meant, what he signified, what difference he made in the end. And they certainly didn’t recognize him. But there Jesus is, risen and new, bringing them the exact same stuff he’d given them all along. He taught them the scriptures, told them why, what and wherefore. And when they sat down to eat with him, they knew who he was and what he had been up to. These followers had a relationship with Jesus that came to be defined by his path to the cross. It was confirmed in the resurrection. And now with the word, it came clear.
Have you ever watched one of those Texas Hold-‘Em poker games on T.V.? There inevitably comes a time when a player puts down the cards, pushes every single chip into the center of the table, and says, “I’m all-in.” The player has such a great hand or such a great bluff that she’s willing to risk everything. What these followers of Jesus had experienced, learned and now were filled with, is the hand the Holy Spirit dealt in the promise of the resurrection to a ragtag bunch of losers. And here on Pentecost Sunday, these guys couldn’t help themselves. They had been released into an all-in life that risks everything for the only thing that lasts. Those tongues of fire were just the sparkly tip of a whole new life that had already begun when Jesus called to them to follow. The flames were the tip-top flickering of a relationship with the Lord who won’t and can’t stay dead, the Christ whom power and religion can’t eradicate, Jesus our brother, savior, high priest, good shepherd, treasure and hope. And now the followers became the forward picket, the rolling edge of the storm of faith.
And what about the Parthians and Medes, the people from Phrygia and Pamphylia, and all the rest? They were not to be left behind in their plodding allegiance to power, in their stuckness on what was comprehensible, reasonable or plausible. Those guys from Galilee weren’t drunk like they thought. It was, after all, only nine a.m. And Peter stepped to the fore to let loose a torrent. And that’s where the second part of the true miracle of Pentecost happened. Peter preached. The one who denied even knowing Jesus now couldn’t help the proclamation of the risen Lord from flowing trippingly off his tongue. He announces the truth of the situation to them, and does it by blasting both barrels: “You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”
And then the third part of the real miracle of Pentecost happened. The crowds in Jerusalem that mid-morning sabbath in Spring heard this word, this preaching, this ministry of the true gospel…and they believed. They asked Peter how the unvarnished truth of their complicity in Christ’s death might be dealt with. He told them, be steeped in the promise of forgiveness that comes in baptism. And 3000 of them came to believe that very day.
It turns out that that part of the miracle wasn’t a one-off affair. It was the beginning of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing breaking-in and breaking-open of sinners closed to hope, love and mercy. What this means for you, my fellow sinners, is that you are about to be included in that last part of the Pentecost miracle, for God has sent this preacher to you today. For I, too, have been given a relationship with the crucified and risen One. I have been given the gospel word and called to deliver it to you. And I have been given a tongue to speak to ears that are ready to hear.
This is the word for you, sinner, broken one, unbeliever. Listen closely. Jesus, dead for your sin and risen for your hope and joy, has made himself your Lord. He is given to you from the foundation of the world, that you, even you, might know God’s mercy. Not only that, but he has grafted himself to you so that his new life might be yours as well.
And if you wonder what you ought to do with that, well, there’s water in that font. You have a pastor in this congregation, and he is champing at the bit to attach God’s word of promise to that water and give you the kind of cleansing bath that only God can give. And if you’ve known that promise of Christ in the water, there is a meal that’s been cooked up to sustain those dripping wet from their divine bath. It’s a meal of simple bread and wine, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. It is Jesus body and blood. It is the whole relationship he’s established with you, tied up in a handy little, worldly package.
Instead of leaving you harping on the implausibility of it all or slapping a label on the purveyors of this unlikely miracle, today I pray the Spirit gives you the faith that frees you, sustains you, and gives you eternal life. I pray God so works in you that the world may look at you and say, “Humph, drunk,” and that that will be your chance to say, “No, not drunk. But let me tell you about my Lord.” And in that moment, the real miracle of Pentecost will still be alive and new and true – for you and for the world. Amen.
Happy Pentecost and happy birthday to Christ’s church. This day was an important day even before the one that Acts tells us about. For the ancient Jews, including Jesus and his disciples, this was the day to remember how God gave the Law and Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai, from “You shall have no other gods” to “You shall not covet your neighbor’s manservant, maidservant, cattle or anything else that it your neighbors.” The Law and Commandments were such good things. They were a way to know how and where you stood: In or out? Righteous or unrighteous?
To this day we still like that Law stuff. In fact, it’s absolutely embedded in our consciousness without our thinking about it. Here’s a quick quiz for you. We’ll see how much Law you know. Complete the phrase:
- An object in motion [tends to stay in motion unless acted on by another force or object.]
- For every action there is [an equal and opposite reaction.]
- There’s no such thing as a [free lunch.]
- Pull yourself up by [our own bootstraps.]
- A stitch in time [saves nine.]
- A penny saved is [a penny earned.]
- What goes around [comes around.]
- Click it or [ticket.]
Imagine dishing up the potato salad at your family’s Fourth of July picnic and Aunt Bertha, who’s rarely been out of Iowa let alone gone abroad, starts speaking Mandarin Chinese or Hindi or Swahili to the folks at the next picnic table. If you knew she’d never spoken that language before, you’d try to make sense of it somehow. Maybe she isn’t really speaking it. Maybe she’s just goofing on your picnic neighbors. Maybe she’s had a stroke. Or maybe she’s gotten into the cooler a little early and downed a few too many bottles of hard cider.
That’s exactly what those folks in Jerusalem did when they saw and heard what was happening with the disciples. Those fellas were Galileans. No way could they speak Greek. Everyone knew that Galilean fisherfolk could hardly speak their own Aramean dialect, let alone fancy schmancy Greek. So what are the options if you want to make sense of things? You might decide you didn’t hear right and just imagined you heard them speak your language. You might think your mind was playing tricks on you. Or maybe, just maybe, you might think, “These guys are blitzed to the gills.” And then you’d look at your hourglass or sundial, look down your nose, and think, “Oooh-whee. Drunk at this time of day?” The multiple-language-speaking disciples don’t fit into their categories, so the spectators in Jerusalem find one that fits: public drunkenness. The crowds know the world works according to the law, commandments, structures and powers. Their reaction to the disciples shows how truly strange living by faith looks to the world. Something incredible has happened to the disciples, and the crowds just don’t understand it.
But what happened to those twelve guys isn’t just tongues of flame and foreign languages. For a few hundred bucks you can buy a week of campfires at Concordia Language Villages in Minnesota and have your flames and foreign tongues. The miracle of Pentecost that the crowds didn’t understand goes much deeper. What the disciples experienced with the gift of the Holy Spirit is part of the mystery and wonder of their relationship with Jesus.
These followers for whom things exploded on Pentecost had been hand-picked by our Lord. Not a one among them was someone to be reckoned with. They weren’t people of power or position. All they were was a group of guys who heard Jesus say, “Follow me,” and couldn’t resist him. At first they thought they’d gotten in on the ground floor with someone who was going to make it big, like meeting the winner of American Idol way back at the initial auditions. But instead they wound up following Jesus’ path to the cross. They saw how our Lord’s utter faithfulness and devotion to God freed him, how it gave him power to heal and forgive, and how the sum total of his worldly success was a sarcastic scrawl on a board over his head on the cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”
These disciples were bound up in a relationship with the Son of Man who lived in full faith, and they saw exactly what it got him. Giving yourself up in devotion to God and in service to your neighbor attracts the world’s scorn, the condemnation of the powerful and the religious, and the shame of an execution by crucifixion. You see, to be the Christ (and a Christ-follower) means chucking your power into the ditch, snipping the apron strings that tie you to comfort and status, pinching off the shoots of success, and, plainly, dying to your own control, glory and carefully planned and managed future. For our Lord, true living means dying.
But if you think a few flickers of fire and speaking the language of the Phrygians and Medes is something, what happened to the disciples’ Lord was too much to believe. When it comes to blowing minds, Timothy Leary has nothing on Jesus Christ. Our Lord lay dead in a borrowed tomb. It looked like his program of bringing in the Kingdom of God was a bust, a complete failure. His followers had fled. And his dying words were a cry of abandonment by God. And yet. And yet. What happened two days later changed everything. The dead, crucified Jesus was alive. God’s raising him up said yes to the very path that looked like the end of all hope. The resurrection confirmed that Jesus’ path to the cross is the path, the only path of faithfulness.
The first part of the true miracle of Pentecost happened somewhere in the seven weeks between the Resurrection and this Jewish festival day. It happened as God’s own word in scripture worked on these lowly followers of Jesus. When Cleopas and his friend walked their grief off after seeing Jesus crucified, they didn’t recognize the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus. They didn’t understand anything about what Jesus meant, what he signified, what difference he made in the end. And they certainly didn’t recognize him. But there Jesus is, risen and new, bringing them the exact same stuff he’d given them all along. He taught them the scriptures, told them why, what and wherefore. And when they sat down to eat with him, they knew who he was and what he had been up to. These followers had a relationship with Jesus that came to be defined by his path to the cross. It was confirmed in the resurrection. And now with the word, it came clear.
Have you ever watched one of those Texas Hold-‘Em poker games on T.V.? There inevitably comes a time when a player puts down the cards, pushes every single chip into the center of the table, and says, “I’m all-in.” The player has such a great hand or such a great bluff that she’s willing to risk everything. What these followers of Jesus had experienced, learned and now were filled with, is the hand the Holy Spirit dealt in the promise of the resurrection to a ragtag bunch of losers. And here on Pentecost Sunday, these guys couldn’t help themselves. They had been released into an all-in life that risks everything for the only thing that lasts. Those tongues of fire were just the sparkly tip of a whole new life that had already begun when Jesus called to them to follow. The flames were the tip-top flickering of a relationship with the Lord who won’t and can’t stay dead, the Christ whom power and religion can’t eradicate, Jesus our brother, savior, high priest, good shepherd, treasure and hope. And now the followers became the forward picket, the rolling edge of the storm of faith.
And what about the Parthians and Medes, the people from Phrygia and Pamphylia, and all the rest? They were not to be left behind in their plodding allegiance to power, in their stuckness on what was comprehensible, reasonable or plausible. Those guys from Galilee weren’t drunk like they thought. It was, after all, only nine a.m. And Peter stepped to the fore to let loose a torrent. And that’s where the second part of the true miracle of Pentecost happened. Peter preached. The one who denied even knowing Jesus now couldn’t help the proclamation of the risen Lord from flowing trippingly off his tongue. He announces the truth of the situation to them, and does it by blasting both barrels: “You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”
And then the third part of the real miracle of Pentecost happened. The crowds in Jerusalem that mid-morning sabbath in Spring heard this word, this preaching, this ministry of the true gospel…and they believed. They asked Peter how the unvarnished truth of their complicity in Christ’s death might be dealt with. He told them, be steeped in the promise of forgiveness that comes in baptism. And 3000 of them came to believe that very day.
It turns out that that part of the miracle wasn’t a one-off affair. It was the beginning of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing breaking-in and breaking-open of sinners closed to hope, love and mercy. What this means for you, my fellow sinners, is that you are about to be included in that last part of the Pentecost miracle, for God has sent this preacher to you today. For I, too, have been given a relationship with the crucified and risen One. I have been given the gospel word and called to deliver it to you. And I have been given a tongue to speak to ears that are ready to hear.
This is the word for you, sinner, broken one, unbeliever. Listen closely. Jesus, dead for your sin and risen for your hope and joy, has made himself your Lord. He is given to you from the foundation of the world, that you, even you, might know God’s mercy. Not only that, but he has grafted himself to you so that his new life might be yours as well.
And if you wonder what you ought to do with that, well, there’s water in that font. You have a pastor in this congregation, and he is champing at the bit to attach God’s word of promise to that water and give you the kind of cleansing bath that only God can give. And if you’ve known that promise of Christ in the water, there is a meal that’s been cooked up to sustain those dripping wet from their divine bath. It’s a meal of simple bread and wine, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. It is Jesus body and blood. It is the whole relationship he’s established with you, tied up in a handy little, worldly package.
Instead of leaving you harping on the implausibility of it all or slapping a label on the purveyors of this unlikely miracle, today I pray the Spirit gives you the faith that frees you, sustains you, and gives you eternal life. I pray God so works in you that the world may look at you and say, “Humph, drunk,” and that that will be your chance to say, “No, not drunk. But let me tell you about my Lord.” And in that moment, the real miracle of Pentecost will still be alive and new and true – for you and for the world. Amen.
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