The Seventh Mark of the Church: The Suffering Moral Baker

When Luther drafted his list of the marks of the church in On the Councils and the Churches, he included the obvious ones like the Word, Sacraments, and Prayer. But for some his final mark of the church is unexpected: suffering. He calls it the cross, but suffering is what he means. Those who follow Christ will get the same treatment he did. If the world does this to the wood when it's green, just think what'll happen when it's dry.

Indiana's recent so-called Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) has put me to thinking about this mark of the church. Certainly Christ's upside down kingdom can be at odds with the world, and it's likely to be on the receiving end of some reprobation as worthless or dangerous. But when Jesus tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves and after the resurrection tells Peter to "Feed my sheep," it sets us up for another kind of suffering.

That's the suffering that comes when we call ourselves Christian but turn the faith into a moral code. We treat Jesus as Moses and become indignant that the world doesn't follow our morality to a tee. For Jesus calls us into vocations that will inevitably pull us out of our well-spun law-abiding cocoons into service to those who have no respect for our comfort, our spiritual pleasure, or our moral systems.

The truth is that, in our God-given vocations as baker, florist, professor, or parent, Jesus' fate becomes our own. In serving our vocations faithfully we find our crosses, and we'll wind up saying, "It kills me to do this." Honestly, as a dad I don't like changing dirty diapers or cleaning up vomit. As a professor I don't like picking up trash on my trek across campus to my next class. And yet I've been given these vocation where I'm face-to-face with a baby who has no respect for my 3:00 a.m. need for sleep, with students who drop straw wrappers and to-go cups, and with people who don't share my morality.

In Freedom of a Christian, Luther gives two reasons why we do good works. The first is because our neighbors need them. A splendid cake is a mighty good thing to have at my neighbor's wedding  — just as having safe fellow commuters on the freeway is a good thing and a service I give my neighbor. The second reason to do good works is to restrain the old sinner in me who does not want to let go of my control, my security, or the morality I think will sustain them both. But the new inner person of faith in me, the one that is created by the gospel, insists on doing what I'd normally disdain in order to remain faithful.

To deny service to those I disagree with or whom I find morally reprehensible is to turn my back on the one for whom my own sin is anathema and yet who still treats me as a beloved child for Jesus' sake. In Christ God himself has gone against his own legal code and broken the living daylights out of the commandments in order to save me. In that light, to hew closely to my ethical standards may indeed be moral, but it sure isn't faithful. I imagine that if Jesus showed up today, he wouldn't tell a parable about the wheat and tares to call me on the carpet, but would instead hold a mirror to me with a story about a pious, indignant, and moral Indianapolis baker.

When the Son of Man comes to separate the sheep from the goats, I don't want it said of me that Jesus was in prison and I didn't visit, was naked and I didn't provide clothes, wanted a wedding catered and I did not bake the most glorious five-tiered cake possible. Although whether I'd include glitchy icing is another question entirely.

The Poison that Cures

This sermon was preached March 14-15, 2015, at Lutheran Memorial Church in Pierre, South Dakota, where I first served as a pastor twenty-five years before. I was asked to preach when I accompanied Grand View University's choir on their spring tour. The sermon is based on Numbers 21:4-9 (the Israelites rescue from venomous snakes in the wilderness) and John 3:14-21 (Jesus' allusion to the bronze snake lifted up in the first passage).

Next month I’ll be able to mark twenty-five years since I first came to be associated with Lutheran Memorial Church. My fiancée Mary and I showed up at your doorstep on Palm Sunday, 1990, for an interview. I was a seminary senior, all wet-behind-the-ears, rarin’ to go, and with a certain naiveté that would soon be replaced by the real rough-and-tumble of daily pastoral ministry. I wasn’t much of a pastor when I shook hands with folks at the meet-and-greet in the fellowship hall when I interviewed, and I didn’t know much more by the time we moved into the parsonage at the end of June on the hottest day of the year (with a broken-down AC unit, to boot). But I can say this with no uncertainty whatsoever: You made me a pastor during those 4½ years serving in Pierre and Hayes. I’m quite a bit older now (not far from the age Esther Schleuter was when she crashed 60-Plus events even though she was too young). The kids who were in confirmation and the youth group are now in their 40s with kids of their own. Yet though I have years of ministry under my belt, it was here that the patterns were set: being invited into your great questions, your sorrows, and joys, and being called to deliver a word from God that was wild and wooly enough to match your lives.

We certainly had some good times. I remember the weekly men’s breakfasts with Myron and Clyde and Don. And coffee with quilters every Wednesday afternoon where we’d hear about Trudy’s lost brassiere. And youth group retreats to NeSoDak or the youth gathering in Dallas. And the annual Hayes picnic where I’d debate the relative stupidity of sheep with Mary Hedman. And spotting congregational members at our wedding in Minneapolis. And putting together a nursery in the now long-gone parsonage with Lori Wilbur and Sandy Zinter. And, of course, holding our baby the first time at St. Mary’s hospital. But it’s the dark places I remember best – those times when you came up against the poisonous powers that sap your life, diminish your value, and shrink whatever faith you had coming in.

I don’t remember the exact count anymore, but I know that my first year-and-a-half here I had to navigate no less than five baby deaths, including Lewis Ode buried over in Scotty Philipps Cemetery on the other side of the River with a botanical drawing of the Resurrection plant etched into the back side of his grave stone. And there was Chad a year out of high school whose truck rolled coming back from Sturgis. And the names of those at the other end of life’s spectrum go on and on: Mary Neuharth, Clara Nygaard, John Redlin, Lorna Herseth, Mark Werpy. Every funeral left behind a gaping hole where a loved one belonged and sometimes left behind brokenness that never had a chance to be resolved. You came to me to talk about some of that brokenness: marriages falling apart, depression, confusion, addiction, and cancer. And then there was the Governor’s plane that went down, flags at half mast, and the capitol rotunda with lines of people passing by a casket that was too small for George Speaker Mickelson’s eighth-of-a-ton frame.

What exactly was that all about all those years ago? What’s behind all the darkness you let me in on? For that matter, what’s behind the dark and broken places in your lives this day? Our Old Testament and gospel readings have something to say about that. They both talk about a poison that kills us and that requires healing. As they wandered the wilderness after God freed them from bondage in Egypt, Moses and the Israelites encountered an infestation of venomous serpents. The people were bitten and were dying right and left, and they cried to God for help. So God had Moses craft a bronze snake and put it on a pole. When the people looked at it they were spared from death by poison. Hundreds of years later, in our gospel reading, when Nicodemus came to Jesus under cover of darkness to spare his reputation with the other Pharisees, Jesus likens himself to that bronze serpent by saying that the one who for all the world looks like he’s a danger to you is the exact one who can save you from whatever’s poisoning you.

There’s irony there, because the religious leaders and Roman officials certainly thought of Jesus as poison to their well-considered religious and political systems. For the Pharisees and Sadducees, Jesus was a blasphemer bent on disrupting their religion and on corrupting people with his seeming disregard for the religious laws. The penalty for that kind of thing was stoning. And for Roman officials, Jesus was a treasonous threat to good order. The people who lived under their occupying army were being stirred up, and when Jesus began to be called the awaited king and messiah that put him in competition with the emperor’s power. The penalty for that kind of sedition was death on a cross. They all thought they knew the way to get rid of the poison in their midst: exert the full force of the law at their command. “If we kill Jesus, that’ll eliminate the threat and give the people a little lesson in obedience for good measure.”

We’re not so different are we? We hear Jesus words that the first will be last and the last will be first, and our response is, “I like you personally, Jesus, but I’d rather you didn’t demand so much of me. It’s like you want to take over my whole life.” We get suspicious of folks who take Jesus too seriously. “Losing my life for his sake and the gospel? Well, maybe. But let me finish binge-watching the latest season of House of Cards on Netflix first.” Jesus’ way is poison to our best laid plans, and the natural human response is to shirk it or shrug it off at best and, on the other end of the spectrum, to kill him.

So we’re left stewing in our own darkness, scrambling to find some release from the real poison in our lives. We work our pitiful tails off to accomplish what? Success? Security? Good order? Just the right legislative act that will bring about our preferred view of the world? We know very well that it all comes to naught. Get something done at work, and there just another item on the to-do list. Dust your fireplace mantle, and it’ll need to be done again in a week. Pass your history test and tomorrow you’ll face chemistry. Any law passed across the street and signed by Governor Daugaard’s pen will need refining, and even then it won’t work in every single situation. Gravity will have its way with us as toned teenage bodies give way to the middle-age sag of boobs and backsides. Even being able to look back on a good life, you’ll be reminded that in spite of the memories that death rate for human beings remains a hundred per cent.

What’s the cure? We look to our work, our efforts and toil, to save us from the poison of death by establishing some legacy. We Botox our crow’s feet to gain the illusion of youth. For some of us the path leads to attempts to anesthetize ourselves from life’s pain through drug and drink and the pleasures of our nether regions. Sometimes we look to our golf game, walking field with a well-trained hunting dog, or catching our limit of walleye as good ways to forget. Or we look to the pleasures of children and grandchildren. But even with these most wonderful parts of life, they might temporarily put our sickness unto death into remission, the venom remains, slowly, steadily, bringing us to a final full stop.

What Jesus’ opponents can’t figure out is that the solution to the snakes in the wilderness and their deadly bite is not to run from death by controlling the world around you in order to eliminate the poison. Here in John 3, Jesus tells them and us the one needful thing. The way to regain your life is not to eliminate the poison but to run to the one the world has labeled as dangerous to their control. When Jesus reminds Nicodemus of the story of his ancestors and the serpents in the wilderness, Jesus knows what’s coming down the line. He himself will be lifted up on a cross. The powers that be will present him there as a deterrent to sinners, and they’ll brush their hands and say, “There. God rid of the poison.” The irony is that, while the religious and political officials want him gone, this one who’s branded as poison is the only dose of anti-venom there is.

Of course, it’s utterly ridiculous to think that. When I was growing up we’d go to my grandparent’s ranch in central Meade County in that beautiful West River country. Sometimes the whole clan would gather to go shoot rattlesnakes. The pickups and station wagons would pull up around a known rattlesnake den. The menfolk would step out of the vehicles with their rifles and start shooting. We kids would play the game of hopping out of one pickup box and running to the next, always keeping an eye out for snakes. Ah, it makes me puff my chest out to come from a place and time where we could do that. Yet, what if one of us kids hadn’t watched out and were the victim of a snakebite? We were all schooled in first aid at school about what to do: use a knife to slice open the wound and start sucking out the blood and venom. We wouldn't add more venom.

But if Jesus has been labeled poison, he’s advising us that his brand of venom is actually the cure for what ails us: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life.” The context of this most-famous Bible verse is this whole business of serpents and venom. It’s such a nice thing to think of God loving the world. But the verse isn’t about the world or niceness. It’s about you. It’s about your darkness. It’s about the places and things that break you down. Jesus says, “Whoever believes will not perish.” That means the end of your death comes in the last place we’d want to look. It doesn’t come with genetic breakthroughs, new drugs and medical procedures. It doesn’t come by producing kids that turn out. It doesn’t come with advancement in a career or even from simply having a job. It only comes by letting go and falling in with that rascal Jesus.

And now we’re at the spot where my trip down memory lane and God’s word today finally connect. While we won’t race to take up the poison of Jesus, God makes sure that, when you go searching for options and come out empty-handed, you aren’t left standing there dumbfounded. When you hear the word cancer, when the machines keeping a loved-one are about to be shut down, when babies are stillborn, when teenagers roll their trucks, when your girlfriend sinks into the daze of dementia, when your finances are in turmoil, when your marriage is over and you know it’s your own damned fault, when your town faces a flooding river or the death of your governor, when your girlfriend breaks up with you and your grades suck and you just want to end it all, when, when, when… Oh, I tell you, it’s an honor to have been your pastor, called to show up with a word, tasked with the work of bringing you Jesus and his promise to be lifted up for you so you can live.

After the governor’s plane crash, the lieutenant governor Walter Dale Miller, who hadn’t yet been sworn in, came to me and Pastor Zellmer. Many of the other pastors in town had parishioners who had died, so he told us that we were to accompany him as he went to every department of state government that lost someone and we were going to bring scripture and a prayer. And after having been a pastor for over two years, that’s when I finally got it. It doesn’t matter if I’m a shy introvert who hasn’t read enough of his Bible. It doesn’t matter if I’m laid just as low in grief. It doesn’t matter whether I have sterling words on my lips. It matters that I’m there. Because I have a word of life that, when it comes to the biggest poisons in our lives, will be the only thing to cling to, the only thing that offers hope, the only thing that is big enough to counter death and bring life – because I know that word, it has to be delivered. And when it is, the darkness must give way to the light. It must.

This congregation has stood strong since those first Norwegians on these prairies saw fit to establish a church. And though it might seem like it’s just a normal thing for you who are their legacy to just come to church of a Sunday morning – after all, it’s just you sitting here in that pew – what’s actually happened here for more than a century is actually quite extraordinary. No, that’s not the right way to talk about it. What’s happened way back then, what happened during my years with you in the 90s, and what’s happening right now in this very moment, this is holy ground. This is the place and moment that your savior is lifted up, where he takes every drop of venom that sin, death, and the devil have sunk into you and places it in the spear-wound in his side. And it happens because there’s a word of grace and hope, a promise of release and healing, that is placed in your ear.

 

If this is a day when you’ve found yourself facing darkness, if you’re at the end of your rope, if the logic of your enlightened mind can no longer give you meaning, if death is knocking at your door, if you have nowhere to turn, then listen up. There’s a word for you. Christ himself, God’s only Son, has made you his own. Your broken life is hid in him. He is determined to bring you with him, so your own crucifixion becomes an Easter morning. Your sins are fully and eternally forgiven. There, now, Jesus has been lifted up before you. You can look to him. You who are baptized have long had that assurance, and if you’re not yet baptized I know a couple pastors who are eager to talk to you. You who come to the table for Christ’s body and blood, will step away having taken in the thing that ends this darkness: an eternal forgiveness swallowed in with the bread and wine, Christ’s body and blood.

So are you healed now? It may not seem like it. Cancerous cells my still float in your blood. Your finances may still be a mess. A divorce may still loom. But the anti-venom is now at work. This gospel has now been placed in you. And it does not fail. God's word does not go out and return empty. I thank you for making me into a pastor, for making me the delivery vehicle for the word, for sustaining me and Mary and Sam, and for remaining a place that lifts up Jesus for the world of dying, sinful folks to look to and believe. And live. Amen.

The Demon Is Done

This sermon was written for my sister Lynne and her family following her twin daughter Brooke's death of a drug overdose. The sermon wasn't preached anywhere, but the tragedy demanded a word. And it's what I do. Thanks to Lynne for her gracious permission to share it here. (If you're reading it, say a prayer of thanks for Brooke and bid God comfort her family.)

Mark 7:24-30

[Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go — the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

What an amazing woman this feisty mother was. She knew she had no business with someone like Jesus. No first century female in her right mind would approach a man and speak to him, much less make demands of him. But what else was she to do? Her daughter was in a bad way, possessed by a power bigger than the girl was. The whole situation was out of control, and life no longer worked. She’d heard of this Jewish teacher from Galilee and, though her religion and his had clashed for a long, long time, if her daughter was going to survive she was going to have to screw her courage to the sticking place and risk getting in Jesus’ face.

And this Jesus was just as determined. He’d been hounded by the crowds demanding divine power from him and by religious leaders trying to trap him into betraying their laws. He just needed a break. This business of being the Son of God and the long-awaited king of the Jews was draining. What’s a messiah to do when he’s tired but get away for a little recharging time? He’d set his face to a comfy memory foam mattress in an upstairs bedroom of this house and a good, long nap.

The Syrophoenician woman wouldn’t let it happen. Her daughter was too important for that. She barged right into a stranger’s house, stood in front of him and said, “Please free my daughter from the demon that controls her.” It had to have been a shock to Jesus. Not only had he set his sights on that bed, he was also determined to save his fellow Jews. This woman and her plea were getting in the way of both goals. So Jesus’ first response was to dismiss her as intruding on his mission. He basically said, “What I’ve got is pretty significant stuff. It’s for the Jews, not people like you who’ve never done things the way the Jews say religion needs to be done.”

Ah, but there was that daughter back home, trapped by a demon and as good as dead. The woman had heard of Jesus’ dealings with demons and diseases. He’d been doling out divine favor right and left. He’d been extravagant with his largesse. It wasn’t just the holy rollers who got something from him. It was the outcasts, lepers, and out-and-out sinners. This mother was so desperate that she was willing to take even the smallest portion of what Jesus had. A wink of an eye, maybe. A flick of his little finger. A crumb from the banquet he’d served up to the Jews. When a possessed daughter is at stake, a mother can’t take no for an answer.

On this day, when there are so few answers, such great tragedy, and so little hope, this desperate woman from the wrong side of the tracks shows us exactly what to do. There’s a daughter who’s a stake today. She’s been possessed by a power bigger than she was. Brooke’s situation was so out of control that she’s even beyond where the woman’s daughter in the story was. Here we are facing the hard, cold fact that Brooke has died at a demon’s hands – hands with a capital H. There’s nowhere we can look to turn back time, to rescue her, or to fix this ultimate brokenness. We’ve heard that Jesus has power to fix things. Isn’t that what we learned in Sunday school? Oh, I know there have been prayers lifted up for Brooke these past years, and this funeral is the answer we get? Today it seems like Jesus has secluded himself in some inaccessible place. What’s a mom and dad, a sister and brother, and a passel of mourners to do?

The only thing to do is get right into Jesus’ face, eyeball to eyeball, and remind him what he came to do, and beg him for the crumbs. Isn’t freedom from addiction for one twenty-something twin a tiny thing in the vast scope of the cosmos and the salvation of humanity? The only thing to do is to step into the divine house, hold out a hand, and say, “Please, Jesus, give me something. I can’t stand this hopelessness. I can’t live in a world empty of Brooke. I can’t move forward.” If Jesus gave that Syrophoenician mother a crumb of the grand table of God’s power by releasing her daughter from a demon, then Jesus replies to our fresh mouths and incessant begging by giving us that – and more.

The first thing he gives us is a certain end to Brooke’s demons. There’s not a single drug that can threaten her ever again. She’s been released as fully as that uppity mother’s girl was. The first thing most of us ever knew about Brooke’s death was Alyssa’s post on Facebook: “RIP my beautiful twin sister. I love you.” So many others have also said RIP, rest in peace. There’s no place more peaceful than where the dead lie. Lynne has made sure her hair was done right. Such a small last thing from a mother’s big heart, such an act of love and readying Brooke to lie peacefully.

Of course, we hear Jesus say he’s giving Brooke peace, but our reply has to be, “That’s not enough. You gave that Syrophoenician daughter her life back. Pony up, dude.” To which our Lord says, “And what was that life she got? I’ve given Brooke something more. Did I not promise that with the water and the word? Did I not say I will be with you always? And like the highway between Lebanon and Gettysburg, that road goes both ways: You, Brooke, will be with me where I am.”

What that desperate mother taught Jesus is that the scope of his mission was far too narrow. He had to set his sights on everyone hounded by demons, from first century Palestine to twenty-first century PA. That gutsy woman wouldn’t quit until she had wrung a yes out of Jesus’ no, until she forced him to give life where there was only death and despair. She broke Jesus open when she begged for crumbs. She pulled him so far from his original path that he wound up descending to the dead to grab them and raise them up with him — our dear Brooke included.

If Brooke’s now safely held in Jesus’ risen hand, that leaves one more place where Jesus has to cast out demons. It’s here today where we face the gnawing demon of grief. Oh, it’s an empty, gaping maw where Brooke belongs. The waves of sorrow feel more like a tsunami, drowning us again and again.  So I make my impudent plea that he would free you from grief. Not freedom from memories, for those are a gift to anyone who knew Brooke. But freedom from having to bear this load day after day. And to a begging uncle and preacher, Jesus responds, “I’m already making it happen. I’ve got those broken hearts in hand. Look at all these people who loved Brooke gathered today to hold hands, to cling together, to love and care for each other even as Brooke loved them. Didn’t I promise I would be there in your midst?”

Our plea for hope and help is itself a sign of his presence. The power of heroin has met its match in Christ’s own eternal power. The grave has become not a bitter end but a gate to new life. Brooke already has it. Jesus already has said, “You may go. The demon has left your daughter.” And now today he says to you, “Go and live, rejoicing in who Brooke has been and anticipating a day when I also whisper a getting-up word to you: ‘Psst. Time to rise. She’s been waiting for you. That empty Brooke-sized hole in you is about to be filled. Let’s go.” Amen.