The Shepherds and their Lamb

This sermon, part of a series on characters in Luke's nativity story, was preached at the weekly chapel service at Grand View University on November 29, 2016.

I have a soft spot in my heart for shepherds. This rough-and-tumble lot that the angels appeared to in the hills above Bethlehem are my kind of people. When my dad died a couple weeks ago out in western South Dakota, one thing I learned from relatives is that my Papa's first job when he was fourteen was as a sheep herder. He was so proud of that fact that they thought we'd have the Sheep Herders' National Anthem sung at the funeral. That didn't happen, but I hope you'll indulge me today by singing the first verse: “Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow.”

So shepherds, we mostly think of them in this story because of all the Christmas pageants we've seen at church or at school. Little ones are dressed like donkeys and cows, as angels with halos and wise men in bathrobes and crowns, and of course a line of little replicas of Linus Van Pelt, like in A Charlie Brown Christmas, with a blanket on his head and a shepherd's crook in his hand, innocently reciting our scripture reading for today.

But the guys on the hillside weren't at all like the cuteness we're used to. Jesus called himself the good shepherd, but that implies that a good shepherd is an unusual thing and that most people in that vocation weren’t so good. Having been around sheep at my grandparents’ ranch on the Great Plains, I know that the job isn’t a clean one, much less an easy one. The shepherds were dealing with creatures prone to brucellosis that causes aborted lambs in ewes and lesions on the rams’ privates, frothy bloat and free gas bloat which do what they say, scabies that causes hair to fall out, and scours where the animals poop themselves to death. It might not be a good idea to shake hands with one of these men. The shepherds in the Christmas story in Luke had to wade through a lot of ick, and they didn’t have the luxury of doing quality craftsmanship like Joseph did. There was no precision or eye for beauty in sheep herding. In this story, these fellas were out in the meadows at night. They’d brought their flock up either to graze on new shoots or to chomp on the stubble from the spring harvest. By day they could see hyenas or jackals approaching and protect the sheep and could maybe spell each other for a nap. But under the stars they’d have had to stave off sleep, kind of like a college student pulling all-nighters to get things done at the end of the semester.

What’s more, shepherds didn’t have much reputation as reliable people. The bad reputation started with their affinity for sheep, which are the dirtiest, smelliest, dumbest, and most self-involved creatures human beings have ever domesticated. The kind of sheep they raised were the middle-Eastern broad-tailed variety, whose backside waggers were fat and meaty and regarded as a real dinnertime delicacy to set next to your figs and hummus. While the sheep tails were highly desired, it wasn’t so for the shepherds. They wore no clothes made of finely spun cloth. Instead they may have worn a rough tunic, and probably on these cool spring nights they had on some sheepskin with the wool turned in. And to stave off the cold, they might have been sampling some first-century warming liquid, if you know what I mean, while they stood near their fires. All of which makes the shepherds the most unlikely people to play the role the angels cast them in.

One of Luke’s big themes in the gospel is witnessing. The whole story of Jesus and his disciples is told to show what those chosen followers of Jesus witnessed. Usually what they witnessed was Jesus’ care for outsiders, for the disreputable, for the outcast, for people in society’s shadows. And the first witnesses in Luke’s story aren’t good guys like Peter, James, and John. No, Luke tells us the first witnesses were the last people you’d want testifying on your behalf. The first witnesses who heard the announcement that the infinite and almighty God has taken weak, human, and finite form were this bunch of half-snockered neck-beards, scratching their nether regions while telling tall tales around the fire to keep themselves entertained.

Suddenly they were surrounded by both angels and the glory of the Lord. And when we’re talking about that glory, we’re talking the presence of God, being wrapped up in God’s very being. Who woulda thunk it? It wasn’t kings and high priests who got the announcement. It was the shepherds. On the other hand, what better people could God have sent the heavenly messengers to? If you’re powerful and people jump at your command, you’ll only have ears for your own sweet voice. If you’ve got your act together, you don’t need a savior, who is Christ the Lord. If you’re perfectly snuggled in your warm bed with its 800-count Egyptian cotton sheets, you’re not going to run off to see anything born in a cold cattle stall. So God chose the ones most likely to hear and go and give witness. These guys were duly impressed and wanted to see the one whom the angel told them about and whom the heavenly host praised.

What they found when they went down into town to that stable out back of the inn’s “No Vacancy” sign was something they were perfectly familiar with. Mary had had a little lamb. Outside the sphere of good and upright people, the shepherds saw this woman and man, Mary and Joseph, with a baby who was the Lamb of God. When they stepped up next to the manger, the shepherds did the job they’d been chosen for. They became the first witnesses, handing on what they’d first been given. The angels had told them what God was up to here, and they passed on the news to this set of new parents. In their post-partum exhaustion, Mary and Joseph received the news that their baby, a far distant descendant of King David, was the messiah, the savior, the Lord.

And everyone who heard it either went “Whoa!” or pondered it in their hearts. But the shepherds did something utterly unexpected. They didn’t stand around gawking, trying to hold on to the magnificence of it all like we probably would have. Instead, they went back up the hill to work. They went back to their vocations. After all, there was a flock to pull together at the end of the night. Those shepherds were still the kind of people your mom and dad never wanted you to be friends with, but they were also changed. They’d seen the angels’ announcement come true. And as they walked, and watched, and worked, all they could say was, “Man, that was freakin’ cool.” They’d returned to the hillside pastures, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

During this Advent season, as we wait for Christmas and are steeped in all the work we need to do, we pray that God would come to us unlikely people, too. We pray that we’d also know this baby is for us and for salvation. And that we’d be moved to tell as well. If the shepherds can be witnesses, what’s preventing you? Amen.

People Get Ready

This sermon for the first Sunday in Advent was preached at Luther Memorial Church in Des Moines, Iowa. It's based on the apocalypse in Matthew 24.

Here we are with Thanksgiving gone past in a flash. There are three more days in November, including Cyber Monday tomorrow. I don’t do Black Friday and don’t have a single gift purchased because I usually have my mind elsewhere with only two weeks left in fall semester. That’s fifteen hundred minutes of class time until finals. It sounds like a lot, but it’s only six classes that are left. And I still have some month-old papers to get graded. And don’t get me started on the knitting projects I wanted done for Christmas. On second thought, maybe you should get me started, because I might be ready in 27 days. I don’t know if I’m scrambling my legs off like George Jetson on his treadmill or if I’m a deer blinking paralyzed in the headlights.

Whichever it is, I know you know the feeling. The world bears down on you with an accusing finger, saying you haven’t done enough. I tried to warn my beloved freshmen in my first-year seminar about this back in September. I told them there would come a day when they look at the list of course work and papers and test they would have come the end of the semester and wonder how they ever got to that place. Well, both those students and their professor have landed in that spot. Who in the world plans to fall behind? Who puts together a to-do list that will be completed two weeks after a deadline? And yet we all wind up there.

At times like that we’re not so sure we’re on board with the Psalmist who was glad when they said, “Let’s go up to the house of the Lord.” The Psalmist was ready and happy to climb the steps to pay the piper and face the Maker of all things. I can’t even get the light bulb over the sink changed, and sure as you’re born or the piling system in my office down the street remains disorganized. How am I ever going to get my act together to be ready for the coming of the Son of Man?

Today we begin a new church year with the season of Advent. While the consumer world entrenched in the economy of buying and selling has already begun its version of the Christmas season, in the church we’re a little better a delayed gratification. Christmas carols and gifts and dancing around the tree and stockings hung by the chimney with care, these things can wait, because we need to do Advent in a way that Christmas goes deeper and we’re actually ready to receive Immanuel, God With Us. So we dress things up in blue, the color of hope and expectation. Like the expecting Mary who’s always portrayed in that color, we wait for God to deliver himself to us.

He’s already come to us in the flesh once in the manger in Bethlehem. And after his crucifixion and death, he came back yet again in his resurrected body that first Easter. If Advent is about waiting and preparation and readiness, the people Matthew wrote his gospel for were right there with us. They’d been told about all Jesus had done, and they’d been promised that Jesus would come back for them. But it wasn’t happening. Where was the glorious victory over sin, death, and the devil? Where was the day when mourning and crying would be over? Where are the heavenly streets of gold and beryl and jasper and diamonds? All they had was the same-old same-old, the day-to-day plodding through life, the dirty feet in sandals, the hauling of water from a well, the milking of goats, the occupying Roman army. And they had to wade through it all without flush toilets, toothpaste, and deodorant. Some glory, eh?

So Matthew gives his people Jesus’ words about when the grand and golden end would come breaking into their world. Christ bids us to hang on, for the resolution of it all is on its way. Hang on. It’s coming. It’s going to break in like the sun creeping up over the horizon. Bit by bit. Ray by ray. For now it may be that it’s still too dark to tell what’s going on. That’s no surprise. Only God has night vision to see it. Before Noah’s flood, no one knew the deluge was coming.

Who knows what the future will hold in this day? When I got the call about my father’s death two weeks ago, it wasn’t something I’d planned for, and neither had he. A sudden hole opened up where he belonged. But I’m not broken up over it. As Paul says, I can’t grieve like those who have no hope. What’s more I’m not sorrowful about our relationship. We had all kinds of past hurts and heartaches between us, but they’d been resolved. Nothing was unspoken. Even though I’d decided not to visit him when I had a slender opening in my calendar ten days before, I knew that if he died our relationship stood on solid, loving ground. So while it was unexpected, it also wasn’t something devastating. We were ready.

Martin Luther in his “Sermon on Preparing to Die” talked about being ready. He says make sure your family is taken care of. It’s the equivalent of not making your heirs spend days amazed that your home has become an episode of “Hoarders” because you literally haven’t gotten your house in order. Being prepared means not burdening them because you’d never signed a medical power of attorney or a living will. That’s the worldly stuff you need to have in place to be ready to meet your Maker. But that’s not the ultimate readiness. Luther says you also need to have your spiritual eyeglasses prescription up-to-date so you can see exactly what kind of God you have.

In that sense, being ready to meet God when God comes means getting the basics down. It means listening carefully to Matthew’s gospel where Jesus says that hehas come to fulfill all righteousness, rather than you. It means hearing Paul declare that you’re saved not by your works but by trusting that Christ has taken care of it all on the cross. Being ready for the Son of Man’s arrival is to take seriously the early petitions of the Lord’s Prayer where you ask for God’s name to be hallowed, God’s kingdom to come, God’s will to be done, all the while prayer that God would take your name, kingdom, and will out of the mix. To be ready and prepared means to have the same certainty as Romans that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

So many preachers take this passage from Matthew as a dire warning to make a decision for Christ so that, when his unexpected arrival happens, you won’t be left behind in the rapture to spend time in tribulation. But that’s not the kind of Lord we find in Matthew’s gospel. Jesus doesn’t threaten you with the fear of being abandoned behind the plow or left grinding meal or emptying bed pans, cooking supper, or cooking the books. Instead, Jesus is the one who wants to give you confidence and faith. He wants to be so good and so true that you can’t help but trust him while you’re slogging through life waiting for him to come. And while Jesus says the hour of his arrival will be unknown, God is keen for you to know where he’s going to arrive. If Jesus is the Word Made Flesh, then God will come unexpectedly wherever Christ’s promise breaks in from the future on sinners’ lives today, including right now when the Last Day becomes This Day. You may not have expected it when you drove here this morning, but the Son of Man has driven up to the curb to pull you into his limo as he dies for you, makes you his own in your baptism, and gives you all his gifts. (And if you’re not yet baptized, let’s talk. It’s time that you had the certainty the sacrament gives that you are his.)

See? You haven’t been left behind. You’ve been chosen, elected, hand-picked. You’re as ready and prepared as you ever need to be, because Jesus has been prepared from the foundation of the world to take you on, sins and all. There’s no telling what’s coming around the bend for you. It might be falling in love and becoming a drooling, slobbering romantic. It might be the hard road of cancer or dementia or a stroke. It might be a Powerball win or merely a three-storm winter with less shoveling. It might be your lingering death or your sudden demise. It might be the same-old same-old of family fault-lines and workplace drudgery. It might be the hoped-for invention of a weight-loss pill that actually works. Who knows? You can never tell. But you can go up to the house of the Lord with confidence and hope, for you can tell who it is who has come before you could ever expect him. You can know who died for you while you were still a sinner. You can be confident that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Just think about what the passage in Romans 8 says: Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate you from your Lord. That means nothing at all that you can face can be the thing that leaves you in the lurch. Not even the vast powers of heavenly creatures like angels can slice you away or leave you hanging, for they cannot go against God’s will and God’s word.

You see, he’s already come for you. And that means that whatever you face in this life, in field work and grinding of meal, in season and out, in joy and in sorrow, he has already swooped you up, and your life is hid in him. You may not see it yet, but it’s done. You’ll be tempted to want some visible evidence, but it’s been there all along. You’ve been told, just like the shepherds who heard from the angels in the hills above Bethlehem. The heavenly messengers said, “Quit shaking in your boots. Here’s where you can find him. He’s in a manger down in town.” What’s unexpected is that he hasn’t come with a rule book, legal code, or accountant’s ledger. He doesn’t come with a measuring rod, balancing scales, or lap timer. This unexpected Lord comes instead with a word for you: It is finished. You’re in. Fear not. Come what may. Amen.

Eulogy for Papa

My father, Dale Jones, died at 79 on November 11, 2016. This is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral in Sturgis, South Dakota, today.

How impossible it is to sum up a life lived just short of eighty years. I’m a historian, scholar, and theologian by trade, and to do the summing up while standing at a far remove of centuries is already difficult. But when the person you’re describing is so newly gone and when you’ve shared three-fourths of those eight decades with him, all perspective is lost. It’s all just a bag of emotions, and almost any one of you would have better insight than this son today.

But there are some things I can say. The first is that my mom and dad have loved me every day of my life. And later, when Dee entered the picture, the love from her direction came not as a substitute but as a gracious addition. Whatever fault lines there were in my dad’s inner existence, whatever led him to hunger and yearn for something greater, for something beyond himself, for something universal and whole and creative rather destructive, both the push and pull of it came from love. It was both the source and the ultimate end that wrapped him and carried him.

Second, for lots of people in Sturgis, my dad was just that goofy guy on the scooter with a long grabber in his hand and a basket full of empties he’d picked up on the side of the road. But that was just his mild-mannered alter ego. He was really a superhero in your midst. And his superpower was the ability to grab what was cast-off, starting with those empties but expanding to dumpster treasures and to actual people. Most of his adult life was written with a pen containing Serenity Ink. It saw nothing and no one as trash. It saw hope in each encounter. And when a bit of self-doubt kryptonite landed in his lap, he went to the curing places that were those relationships: to Dee, of course, to me and my siblings, to his grandchildren, to those whom he and Dee called their adopted kids, to friends like Clay and Mary Ellen, to people ranging from Australia to France, to whatever fellow drunk working their program was nearby.

Finally, the relationship my dad and I had was fraught. And there was plenty of baggage. And old friend had a similar relationship with his father, and earlier this week we talked about the arc of that father-son relationship. The fraughtness of our first twenty years, when we didn’t understand each other, and we kept missing the real and true connection that was hurt by his alcoholism and lots of earlier hurts he’d faced — that was on him. The next twenty years as he realized he was powerless over alcohol and every other thing that life consists of, and as he made a fearless and searching moral inventory and took action to correct things where possible — these years are on me. I was angry, embarrassed, scornful, and dismissive while he kept moving forward, trying his damnedest to be alive and to figure out how to be a both a sober and a loving dad.

But the last twenty years, give or take a few, have been years of joy and wonder. And that’s not on either of us. That responsibility has had to come from outside us. He’d say it was the universe exuding love. I’d probably point to a Judean preacher from the first century who was crucified. Either way and whatever the source, it came sneaking in to our relationship through you all, surrounding us with your own love and care.

First and foremost, the burden of seeing my dad and me renewed has been born by Dee for him and by Mary and Sam for me. But it can’t be limited to them. My brother and sister (and his as well), his grandchildren, my mom, this vast web of relationships we crawl around in – you’ve all meant something to the tiny world that was me and my dad. But seeing you drawn together to share our mourning is a sign that there is more to life than what happens between a first breath in a maternity home and a last gasp on the floor of a bedroom.

It’s that inter-connectedness that my dad loved and relied on. It’s what he reveled in. It’s the mercy that he bathed in. In spite of his death, it’s what remains when all are ashes and dust. I learned that from my dad. And I yearn for that to live on in my relationship with my own son, Sam, who is going to read the prayer Saint Francis wrote back in the middle ages. This version is the translation included in AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Francis himself would have been seen by his contemporaries as the goofy guy in town, loving his animals, and searching for life from God. His faith moved him to extend himself. And the words of his prayer speak to the exact world my dad wanted to live in, and what he hoped would be bound within the covers of the book of his life.

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace —

That where there is hatred, I may bring love,

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness,

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony,

That where there is error, I may bring truth,

That where there is doubt, I may bring faith,

That where there are shadows, I may bring light,

That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted,

To understand, than to be understood,

To love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen

The Beatitudes pretty much suck when you're driving a cheap 1972 Chevy Vega and think you're behind the wheel of something bigger

I was invited to be the speaker at the Reformation Festival at St. Dysmas Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation behind the walls of the South Dakota State Penitentiary. It's a place where your vision of what the Body of Christ looks like will be exploded. And it's a place I regard as the highest honor to preach at. Today's sermon for a room full of incarcerated believers, seekers, and sinners, is based on the All Saints Sunday gospel reading in Matthew 5:12 — the Beatitudes, from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Today’s gospel reading comes from a string of chapters in Matthew’s gospel that we call the Sermon on the Mount. It’s an account of what Jesus taught to the people who followed him one day at the top of a hill. We call the section we just heard The Beatitudes.

Speaking as an old sinner of long standing, I have to say that the Beatitudes are ridiculous. If Jesus thinks I’m gonna buy what he’s selling here, he’s wrong. It’s just not the way the world works. It’s a pitiful evangelism scheme, and it’s no way to get your fellow inmates out of their cells on a Thursday evening to make their trek up all those stairs to this prison chapel. Any smart person is going to turn away. No one wants to be poor inspirit. Who willingly asks to lose a loved one and grieve or mourn? Being reviled and persecuted? Fuggedaboudit. But these Beatitudes are just the beginning of the trouble in the Sermon on the Mount. Before Jesus is done with his work in this gospel, he’ll have us hoping to receive every single thing in this list of blessings.

The real problem, though, isn’t the list. It’s the person hearing Jesus’ words: me. Our rejection of what Jesus is up to has been the human story since the Garden of Eden when our first parents spurned God’s limits on them, mistrusting his word, and eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The problem was present for their son Cain who regarded his offering to God as better than the one God liked that was given by Abel, whom Cain murdered. It’s right there in Jacob’s grabbing his twin brother’s heel whilst being born and cheating his way through life. It’s there in King David’s demand that the bathing Bathsheba be brought to his quarters. It’s right in the middle of Jesus’ disciples when James and John argued about who’s the greatest, when Peter denied his Lord, and when Judas sold Jesus down the pike for thirty pieces of silver. Every single one of them operated on the principle that their own way was the best way.

What’s God going to do with us? He simply can’t let us be our own gods. Although God is a loving God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, God demands that our roles be clearly defined and strictly limited – at least on our part. God will be God, and we will be God’s people, and not the other way around. And yet we still want the whole relationship with God, the world, and our neighbors to be about us: our goodness, our, righteousness, our performance, our actions, our religion.

Here’s what Jesus does with it in the Sermon on the Mount: He starts by saying, “Lemme tell you the things that will make you blessed, happy, whole, full of peace, and joy and hope.” It’s an unlikely list. But it’s like he knows that we won’t have truck with any of it, so he turns things around with a bit of ethics that we’ll for sure go for. He talks justice. I can handle that. I keep good track of all rights and wrongs, especially when they concern me. Adultery? I’m married and I’m keeping my pants zipped and my eyes focused on the one I love. Retaliation? Well, you inmates know how that works. It might’ve been a problem in the past, right? But you’re good now. At least your intentions are aimed right. And loving others? We’re right there with Jesus, especially if your loved ones still want to be in contact with you.

We like that business. It’s a hidden, arbitrary God who insists on his own way, on choosing the better offerings, on judging us that we don’t like. So we think, “don’t just leave me be, God. Don’t hide behind your veil without revealing your plans for me. Just give me something to do.” But be careful what you ask of the Lord. Contrary to what lots of pious people say, God will always give you more than you can handle.

When Jesus talks about anger in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, “You’ve heard it said, ‘You shall not murder.’ But I say it’s bigger than that: One tiny bit of anger is equal to any murder in the first degree.” When Jesus reminds us of the command no to commit adultery, he says it’s more than about which body parts rub against each other and with whom. He says that lustful thoughts are just as bad, and you should cut off the body parts tempting you (church legends say that St. Origen obeyed Jesus and castrated himself to prevent those thoughts). Jesus recounts the old adage “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” but he won’t stand for justice like that. He tells us to turn the other cheek and give your cloak when someone asks for your coat. Worst of all, he tells us loving our loved ones isn’t enough. We need to love our enemies, too.

Every step of the way in this gospel, Jesus pushes our buttons. He tells parables that don’t spare us. He makes demands beyond what we can do. Finally in chapter 19, the disciples have had it. And they ask, “Jesus Christ [literally], who can do this?” But they’ve forgotten Jesus first sermon in the gospel where he announces “I have come to fulfill all righteousness. You can’t git ‘er done, but I can.”

As God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus knows what he’s come for. And he knows how helpless our case is. If you want to spin your wheels trying to gain traction against the world bearing down on you, he’s okay with that. But he knows how it’ll end up.

That's my 1972 Vega. The red one. Sadly, 40 years later it sits rusting behind the windbreak in a pasture at my grandparents' ranch.

Imagine my friend Neil’s SUV four-wheel drive with the removable hard top. He’d take us out for a spin on Forest Service roads back in the late 1970s when we worked at Bible camp in the Black Hills. Then imagine my very special 1972 red Chevy Vega with a three-speed stick, aluminum engine, and about two inches of clearance. If I’d taken that cheap little car out on those trails I would have been toast. The axle or the oil pan or the u-joint or something else a non-gearhead like me knows nothing about would have gotten hung up on a boulder. And there I’d be, stuck on some Forest Service road until the cows come home. If I’d wanted to try that, Neil would have said, “Go ahead. See how far you get. If you don’t want to tool around in my truck with me driving, that’s fine by me.”

Back in 1518, Martin Luther understood what it is to get hung up, to get stranded on our own desires and plans, and, more important, why God relishes it. He said, “Unless we completely despair of ourselves, we cannot merit the grace of Christ.” What he meant was, “As long as we’re stuck on ourselves and on our potential, we’ll have no need of what Jesus has to give us. And that’s what our Lord is up to in the Beatitudes. He’s pointing to the places in our lives where we’ve lost power, bottomed out, and encountered the end of our rope. They’re the places where our desire to be limitless and in control comes to naught, and we find that we’re severely limited and have no control.

When we get to that point, then Jesus can do what he’s come to do for you: Be the righteous one for you, offering himself on your behalf. Imagine you’re on trial (not something difficult for anyone wearing tan inmate scrubs in this room). God is at the judge’s bench, and the prosecuting attorney is ripping you apart: “You’ve done wrong. You haven’t done enough. You’re an out-and-out sinner.” But you’ve got the best possible person at your defense: Spiritu Sanctu, Esquire, Attorney-at-Gospel. And your lawyer's counsel is that when you stand up to deliver your plea, plead guilty. But don’t stop there. Look the judge in the eye and pin your sin on Jesus, the divine judge’s son. You see, Jesus knows you can’t do it, so he trades places with you and pits himself against God’s righteous demands.

Now when we look at these Beatitudes, we have to say there’s nothing especially noble or saving about grief or persecution in and of themselves. And God certainly doesn’t want to inflict that on anyone. But when you land in these places, then you can see. You are already blessed but have never been able to see while spending the energy on maintaining the illusion of control or the façade of goodness. But in these moments when all else is stripped away, then we can turn and spot what God’s doing.

When things are right and good, God has been afoot, spinning a swift dance step around you, patiently waiting to take you out on the floor. And when things go bad, as they often do – when you lose your freedom, when you lose your good name, when you lose all choices, when you lose a life on the outside, for instance –  the blinders come off. Then you can see what Paul in Ephesians declares: Christ, God’s Son, has given you his inheritance, his good name, his freedom, his own life. Then he promises one more thing – to take you through all this loss, all this mess, all the grief and persecution and death to the other side where you find yourself made new.

If that’s what happens with the Beatitudes, then, in spite of what a lousy church marketing plan they are, every time we find ourselves in those places, we will count ourselves blessed and bid Jesus to just give us more of the loss so we can have the everything he’s ready to give. Amen.

The Crooked Lord

This sermon on the parable of the dishonest steward was written to be preached to the members of St. Dysmas Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation behind the walls of the South Dakota State Penitentiary.

Luke 16:1-13 (from The Message)

Jesus said to his disciples, “There was once a rich man who had a manager. He got reports that the manager had been taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses. So he called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? You’re fired. And I want a complete audit of your books.’

"The manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? I’ve lost my job as manager. I’m not strong enough for a laboring job, and I’m too proud to beg. . . . Ah, I’ve got a plan. Here’s what I’ll do . . . then when I’m turned out into the street, people will take me into their houses.’

“Then he went at it. One after another, he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

“He replied, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil."

“The manager said, ‘Here, take your bill, sit down here—quick now—write fifty.’

“To the next he said, ‘And you, what do you owe?’

“He answered, ‘A hundred sacks of wheat.’

“He said, ‘Take your bill, write in eighty.’

“Now here’s a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”

Jesus went on to make these comments: “If you’re honest in small things, you’ll be honest in big things; if you’re a crook in small things, you’ll be a crook in big things. If you’re not honest in small jobs, who will put you in charge of the store? No worker can serve two bosses: He’ll either hate the first and love the second or adore the first and despise the second. You can’t serve both God and the Bank.”

The gospel of our Lord.

Today is my 26th wedding anniversary today. Mary and I met on January 1, 1990, in a Twin Cities suburb. Our pastors invited a bunch of people to their house to watch the Rose Bowl. When Mary rang the doorbell, our pastor Nancy opened it and said, “He’s here.” We spent the afternoon ogling each other, sitting side-by-side, discovering that this was someone interesting, and decided to go on an actual first date of some kind. Six weeks later we were engaged. That September we had a wedding. And the rest is history. We’ve had all these years of ups and downs, and we treasure our happy little life.

When I look back at meeting all of you here at St. Dysmas, it feels much the same way. It was a kind of pastoral love at first sight. You welcomed me in so heartily that I’ve been telling people for a year that St. Dysmas and my own congregation in Des Moines are the warmest churches I’ve ever known. But more than anything, I’ve treasured the time I’ve spent with you, because it feels like I found my people. Jesus talked about preaching to people who have ears to hear. I encounter college kids in my classroom every day who have that kind of hunger – mostly because, when they’ve had questions about faith in the past, what they’ve gotten in return is a load of bison flop. But you, my friends, my fellow sinners, my beloved miscreants and felons, you whose days are marked by the constant reminders of either the worst things you’ve ever done or the one thing you got caught for, your tan inmate scrubs won’t let you forget you’re literally penned in and forced to face the hardest truths. Now whether you’ll respond with any kind of faith or with more of the same-old, same-old that got you here is another matter entirely. And that’s what we’ve gotta pray for tonight: that God would give you ears for this gospel word and that God would use this Iowa sinner to deliver a promise that gives you freedom beyond what’s held you down.

If that’s what we’re after, though, tonight’s gospel reading is a doozy. And it’s probably not something any suits or whiteshirts in Pierre or on the hill would we regard as very edifying for a room full of inmates with hard histories, anger issues, and neck tattoos. That’s because Jesus told this story of a guy who’s an absolute crook and gets away with it. And then Jesus made matters worse by praising the fella’s moxie at writing off debts that other people owe his boss. There’s plenty of entertainment value in that. I like an anti-hero as much as anyone. But I suspect Jesus didn’t tell the story to give us a role model in a crook who cooks the books and gets off with not even a hand slap.

So often we have a problem when we come to God’s word. We think that this whole bundle of scripture and this business of being a Christian is all about God wanting us to be more upright, upstanding, and on the up-and-up. We think Christianity is about a moral system, ethics, and good behavior. God gives us the Bible to show us how to live. Jesus came to teach us to be better people. And God rewards those who meet the mark with an eternity in heaven with no bars on the windows, eternal internet access, and meals that include more than soy substitute as a stand-in for actual meat. But if that’s where we start, then that’s all we’ll get out of God’s word, out of Jesus, and out of any preacher. You’ll get lessons in successful Christian living. You’ll get three-point sermons that tell you how to be more spiritual. And you’ll hear Jesus’ preaching and teaching as something you need to decipher and find the golden nugget that will finally unlock your potential.

With that approach, this parable Jesus tells in tonight’s gospel will screw you up royally. It doesn’t promote good behavior. It doesn’t give you a solid bro you can model your life on. In fact, this section of Luke’s gospel is full of idiots who can’t figure out that a flock of sheep in the pen is better than one lost in the sage brush, a prodigal son who squandered everything and gets welcomed home, and guests at a fancy dinner banquet who turn out to be the winos, the homeless, the heroin shooters, the whores, and the disreputable. Jesus seems bent on upsetting all our preconceived notions of what God actually wants us to live like.

The religious leaders who heard Jesus tell these stories were none too happy about it. They also thought the project we call a human lifetime was about righteousness, purity, morality, and fulfilling the commandments. It’s no wonder that they started plotting to recruit Judas and to arrest and kill Jesus. Where’s the peace and security in a world where people like you, my friends, are held up as just the kind humans God has taken a shine to? Armed robbers, murderers, meth cookers, pedophiles, your house band, and your inside council members are the most unlikely bunch of reprobates for God to grab hold of. Thank God that’s what he does, though.

The story of the crooked manager contains more than meets the eye. Jesus is setting us up for a life of dishonesty, but he does put before us the prospect of using all the tricks and tools of the streetwise for the sake of faith. Jesus says they’re “smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They’re on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.” Jesus knows that the tactics of the crooked on their own lead to a hollow life and damage to others. But he understands how wily a person of faith has to be in this world. All kinds of temptations will crop to get you to believe and trust something other than Christ for your future. They’ll pop out at you when you least expect it. And they’ll often look pretty appealing. But even good things like being moral or religious or spiritual can also be a temptation to rely on something other than Jesus. And he’s not interested in us complacently basing our lives and our eternal future on good behavior. There’s more to the abundant life Jesus promises than keeping your head down in the chow line, keeping out of the SHU, and flying under the radar of your CO's. Even if it were, Jesus is pretty sure you don’t have it in you.

So Jesus does something else between the lines in this story tonight. He shows you why he like people like you so damn much. The manager in the story is about to get canned for embezzlement. He’s cooked the books, and he sees what’s coming down the pike. When it all falls apart, he won’t have a place to go for refuge. So he’ll create a group of people who’ll say, “That guy gave me a deal on my debt. I don’t care what his own crime was. He can stay with me.” So the guy goes around and writes off debt. It’s like a governor caught in a crime who decides to commute sentences and issue pardons because he knows he’s going to wind up on the hill and wants friends on the inside.

And that’s exactly what Jesus does for you. At the point in Luke’s gospel, Jesus knows that what’s waiting for him in Jerusalem is an execution on the cross that is the finally accounting by the religious leaders. So he sets his face to the task of forgiving people who owe a debt to society, who don’t meet what’s required by the law, and especially those that religion and religious people have beat up on with their demands for perfect obedience and moral purity. Jesus comes to you saying, “Your accounts are cleared. You don’t have to worry about that sin anymore.”

Our Lord is never going to find real friends, followers, or disciples among those who regard themselves as debt-free. They don’t need what Jesus is doling out. They’re sufficient unto themselves. But for people like you and me, Jesus is all we’ve got. We know that we don’t love God or our neighbors as we should and, worse, that we don’t want to. We know how far into the red our accounts with God are. So when Christ comes with this good news of the great divine debt-elimination program, we can only say, “I want what Jesus has to give.” What Jesus is doing is exactly what we pray for in the Lord’s Prayer when we say, “Thy will be done.” By being such an irresistible and attractive friend, he turns our will his way. He comes after us in such a way that we can’t help but be open to him. He grabs hold of us so that our old tricks now get turned around for his sake and the sake of the gospel.

After all, isn’t that what St. Dysmas is all about? You guys have survived by your wits forever. You’ve had to be on the alert to make sure you’re not caught. But now Jesus has caught you and calls you to use your substantial streetwise savvy to become his very presence behind the walls of the prison and out in the world when your sentence is up. And if there’s no pardon for you in this life, he’s going to make sure that you know exactly what awaits you in his home. There are no cells there. But he says that in his father’s house there are many mansions. And every single one of ‘em has an open door and the best kitchen ever, where there’s a divine chef cooking up the supper of the Lamb of God to fill you with eternal good things.

For my money, I’d rather have a Lord who’s crooked, who gives grace and mercy to those who don’t deserve it, than some demanding rule-giver whose relentless rule-giving leaves me in arrears. When you come to the altar for the sacrament tonight, know that you come to Christ who says, “What do you owe?” and who says in response, “Take your bill. Put zero on the bottom line. And scrawl 'debt paid in full.'” He’s done it for you. Amen.

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Wedding Lamb for Molly and Ryan

This wedding sermon was preached August 13, 2016, for Ryan Budmayr and Molly Willbur, who is the daughter of dear friends from my first call in Pierre, SD.

I’m going to step out on a limb tonight and take us into some dangerous territory. But I’m getting older and have less tolerance for preachers standing up front and spewing religious platitudes and other niceties that out in West River country where I come from we give a proper name connected to cow flop. So let’s start with the truth about marriage: : We live in a culture that is suspect. In so many ways, it presents us a picture of what life should be. Whether it’s a presidential campaign or an action movie or an inane sitcom on Tuesdays at eight, our fictional and actual lives hinge on a hoped-for utopia that depends on our work to achieve it.

That’s what we get in campaign ads on both sides of the aisle and from any given super-PAC. I get hooked by their vision of the future, of what could be — as long as I vote the right way. I’m a sucker for the western or the thriller where the individual hero summons the resources to escape the enemy’s horrors. Hopeless romantics like me are susceptible to the bended-knee moment in a romantic comedy when love’s buds break into bloom. This is all part of our culture’s way of operating. It depends on the sanctity of the individual, on bootstrap-pulling, and on freedom as our be-all and end-all. All of these are good things that I’d be hard-put to let go of.

As far as tonight is concerned is that there’s a constant temptation to romanticize what’s about to happen and to be all sentimental and ooey-gooey and googly-eyed. It all shapes our understanding of marriage — especially in those romantic movies, teen magazines, Cosmo, and bridal publications. They sell a bill of goods that leads to a goal that can’t be reached with their suggested tactics.

Instead of a focus-grouped, trial-ballooned set of actions, though, the great gifts of marriage require something more. The joy of your relationship will surely be present in the things you do together. But much more will it arise in the weathering of storms side-by-side, in the hindsight of years yoked together, and in the promises born out in the letting go of yourselves for your beloved.

The reality is that not in every arena of life, the vibrant gifts God intend for us are colored by our unwillingness to lose control, or do what my pals working a 12-step problem call “letting go and letting God.” Sin gives us a false picture of life’s purpose and meaning. It presents an illusion of the possibility of control, of being able to manage life, and pushes us into our constant need to get ahead of the curve. Our sinful hearts begin to think the Utopia of our desires is achievable.

The reality, of course, is that life is this blessed mix of joy and laughter mixed with some messy, gray, hard, stained days. The reality is more akin to one Thanksgiving of lumpy gravy and dry turkey after another, each one surrounded by loved ones whose mix is so important to who you are. Which is why you do well to listen to the words Matt read from Song of Songs. Although it isn’t as glamorous as romantic comedies, Modern Bride magazine, or sentimental wedding accoutrements, having a seal set on your heart by your partner’s vows and promises is way more valuable.

If you offered for love all the wealth of your house, all your good intentions, all your Utopian hopes and romantic desires, it wouldn’t be enough. Or as the reading says, “It would be utterly scorned.” But what we have in the gospel offers way more. We have a God who shows up in the hard stuff of actual living.

At my little Lutheran college in Iowa I teach a first-year seminar, and for all kinds of reasons I make my freshmen learn how to knit. They get a discount at a local knitting shop, and they get their size 9 needles and a skein of yarn, and they have to knit a dishcloth. My freshmen have all grown up with awards for participation and have been spoon-fed self-worth and acceptance, so they don’t much like it when their dishcloth isn’t perfect. And they complain about how awful it is. And my reply is always, “Relax. It’s a metaphor for your freshman year.”

So I made you two a metaphor for your marriage. I made you a little lamb. I didn’t have a pattern for a Black Angus heifer, so this will have to do. This lamb is kind of a mess. It’s misshapen. Its legs aren’t plumb. Its head is off kilter. It’s got cool dreadlocks, but one in back is too long. The plump body is out of proportion with everything else. On the whole it’s a pretty lousy job of knitting. But it was all done in love, each stitch knitted with the two of you in mind. And, messy as it is, I think it’s pretty perfect.

This Budmayr/Wilbur lamb is a reminder of the kind of God you have, who shows up in the knots and tangles and dropped stitches of your relationship, who keeps loving from beginning to end, from Alpha to Omega. What’s more, that it’s a lamb and not a knitted Butte County cow or Bell Fourche bronc, means you get to remember that the Lamb of God himself is there in the midst of your marriage.

On his account, even with the messes and brokenness of life, you will stand before God on the Last Day, and he will say to you, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” He’ll look at the misshapen marriage lamb you’ll have knit and think it’s the most perfect, darlingest thing. Ever.

You see, contrary to most of what you see around you about Christianity and about being married, it isn’t about getting things right or about being more moral-than-thou, or even about happiness being found in preventing or fixing messes. It’s about the process of living, being surrounded by mercy, granting one another a future by offering forgiveness. Instead of getting all the stitches right, it’s a pattern for gaining life in spite of the mistakes. My prayer for you is that thirty years from now, as you talked about at the rehearsal dinner last night, Ryan, the two of you will see how it all came together and how it started with the seal of your vows today.

So now you’ll start. You’ll use your promises to each other to make it happen. I bid you to stick with it. Don’t fall for the cow flop of the world’s picture of life. Grab onto each other and, literally, love the hell out of each other. Now let’s git ‘er done.

Called2Serve

This is the keynote address delivered at "Called2Serve," the national youth gathering for Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ on the Grand View University campus on July 21, 2016.

Welcome back from your service projects on this hot and humid day. I hope you all had on Duluth Trading Company moisture-wicking underwear today like I did. I want to start with a couple things tonight. First, a big shout-out to Culynn and Alex for how great their Bible studies have been this week. Let’s give ‘em a hand.

Second, I want to tell you about something we’re incredibly excited about here at Grand View. We’ve received a $600, 000 grant to serve the church and young people like you. On your way out tonight you’ll get a flyer about the Nexus event on our campus next summer. We’ll be hosting 150 young people who’ve said “Maybe me” when folks have asked who our future pastors are going to be. We’re looking for 50 kids for each of three weeks who have the gifts, the resilience, the faith, and the guts to think about what being a pastor might be like. Here’s a video from our campus pastor Russ Lackey and others. [They played a promotional video.]

We’ll give you a week of fun and learning, sweat and service. And then we’ll send you back to be a servant in your home congregation, equipped to ask more questions, and connected to other kids from Nexus who’ve become some of your best friends. And you know what? It’ll be absolutely free. And all you pastors and youth ministers and parents out there, keep an eye out for more info, because we’re counting on you to nominate kids. You know who has potential. The next generation of pastors needs you to pull ‘em out of the crowd.

Now let’s talk about other stuff. I want to tell you about our wrestling coach Nick Mitchell. For five years running now, Grand View’s wrestling team has been national champion. That’s an amazing feat for a little college in Iowa. It would be pretty easy for our wrestlers to have egos as big as their guns. But Coach Mitchell won’t let it happen. Before they ever set foot on our campus, Coach Mitchell tells the wrestlers that they’ll have to commit themselves to live the championship lifestyle. 

He says it’s not enough to want to be champions on the wrestling mat. Our wrestlers have drilled into them that they need to be champions in the classroom, in their dorms, in their relationships. What’s happened as a result is that our wrestlers wind up being academic all-Americans. They’re known in the college wrestling world not just for how quickly they can achieve a take-down or pin an opponent, but also for the quality of their character. Coach Mitchell has something to teach us about service. But this profile isn’t about winning or about championships. It’s about how important it is for the rest of your life to reflect your faith. In other words, what we’re up to tonight is to think about what it means for you to be a Christian.

I grew up in Sturgis, South Dakota. You may have heard of it. That’s the place with all the motorcycles. I couldn’t show you any picture beyond these wheels. It wouldn’t have been appropriate. But when I was a kid, Sturgis was a lovely place. We lived on the outskirts of town in a little eight-wide trailer house not much different from this one.  We were part of the tiny-house movement before anyone knew there was such a thing.

One summer morning when I was six or seven, my older sister and I were running through the sprinkler to stay cool. We were kids who were always singing. So it was sprinkler spritzing and singing songs. But we didn’t sing your normal kids’ diddies like “London Bridge” or “This Old Man” or “Wrecking Ball.” My sister had gone to church kindergarten where they taught the kids church hymns. Things like “My Faith Looks Up to Thee” and “Beauteeful Savior.” At some point during the singing and splashing, my sister decided it was time to go over to the corner of the yard and play school at the picnic table we had in the shade. I wanted none of that, because I knew who always got to play teacher, so I headed inside for a big glass of Kool-Aid in a 1960’s aluminum glass.

As I came around the front of the trailer, I grabbed hold of the hitch to swing around it like any active kid would. And it was like the trailer house was sucking me into itself. You know what it’s like when you get a shock from a bad outlet? That’s what it was like. But the buzzing didn’t stop. If I used all my strength I could pull one hand away, but the other would come loose. I yelled to my sister for help as loud as I could, but she couldn’t hear me. I was being electrocuted and the electricity was zapping the strength from my voice. At all seemed like it was happening in slow motion. But it ended as quickly as it began. My sister, who was safe because she was wearing leather-soled sandals, grabbed my arm to make me stop what she thought was my messing around. And she pulled me away from being as good as dead. As she dragged me away from the killing electrical field, my beloved sister was still singing. And you know what the words were that came off her lips? “I know that my Redeemer lives: What joy that blest assurance gives! He lives, he lives, who once was dead; He lives, my everlasting head!”

Somehow in that moment something significant happened. A kid’s electrocution became a sermon on his baptism. As good as dead, I had been handed back my life. And it became linked with the fact that Jesus himself lay dead and now lives. My life was no longer my own. Every minute I’ve lived since 1966, every breath I’ve drawn into my lungs, has come on account of someone else’s actions. I couldn’t breathe or pull my other hand away from that hitch to save my life. But death had no power over my sister that day. I was literally grounded in death and given new life. That’s where we always have to begin when we’re talking about our lives as Christian: with the realization and confession that none of this – none of this – happened because of something I did or even had the possibility of doing. It all happened because of Christ.

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther (from whom we get our name as Lutherans) wrote something called the “Heidelberg Disputation.” In it he was dragging on people who said we could use our free will to choose to be saved. But Luther pushed back. If you could bend your will to decide to be the person God wanted you to be, then we wouldn’t have needed what Christ did on the cross. And saying that was true meant you were dissing Jesus. Then Luther went to say a curious thing. He said “It is certain that we must completely despair of ourselves in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ.” Another way of saying that is “As long as you think you have something to contribute to your salvation or bring to God, you don’t get it yet.”

Thirty-five years ago I worked as a camp counselor at a Bible camp in South Dakota called NeSoDak Bible Camp.Some of you here tonight might even have gone there as campers. In those days developmentally disabled adults who were residents of the State Hospital and School in Redfield would join the fifth and sixth graders for a week of camp. Each cabin of kids would have one Redfield resident staying with them all week. I had the privilege of having Robert Schieffelbein in our cabin. The first night of camp I told my campers about the Robert’s arrival the next day. I told them their job was to be inviters. Whatever our cabin did, they would invite Robert.

Those boys were incredible hosts. They’d invite Robert to the canoe beach, to the crafts hut, to softball field, to breakfast, to campfire. But every time they invited Robert, they always got the same response.

“Robert, let’s go swimming.”“I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.”“Robert, let’s go canoeing.”“I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.”“Robert, let’s go to morning worship.”“I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.”

Dear Robert Schieffelbein, who’s probably long dead all these years later, gives us language to talk about ourselves when we come before God: “I can’t do it. I can’t do it, buddy.” All of Christian life begins with our confessing honestly that we come to God with nothing in our hands.

As someone who’s been given his life on a silver platter (well, some days it’s a paper plate), but you get the point. I had nothing to contribute. There’s a divide in my history. And in our Christian lives there’s also a divide – between before Christ and after. We Christians begin to see our lives according to two categories.

There’s Christ. He’s the one who saves. He’s the one who gives you life. He’s the one with so much mercy that your cup overflows. And then there’s everything else. That’s all the bad stuff, of course. But it’s all the good stuff in life, too. Your going to worship. Your digging into God’s Word. Your serving your neighbor. Your sitting in a school bus without air conditioning to go do a service project in hundred-degree heat. There’s Christ. And there’s everything else. None of which can save you. Despairing of yourself means understanding what belongs on each side of the divide.

But if nothing except Christ counts for your salvation, then why bother doing anything good? But you ask, surely there’s something that needs doing! Ah, lemme give you a Q-tip. Nothing. Got it? But if it’s nothing for me and everything for Christ, good works still have a place for us.

In a little book called “Freedom of a Christian,” Luther said that, since you don’t have to give God a whole passel of good works to prove your worthiness for heaven, now you have lots of good works to spare. And there are two reasons to do good works.

The first reason to do good works is that your neighbor needs ‘em. You don’t even have to go out of your way to find neighbors to serve. You’ve got ‘em all around you.When I tool down the road on I-235, I’m surrounded by neighbors in other cars. They depend on my driving safely and courteously.

When Oliver was a new-born, Culynn and Meg Curtis didn’t need to go looking for a neighbor to serve. They had one in the baby crying in the middle of the night.When you walk down the hallway during passing time, it’s crowded with neighbors.

I came across a Luther quote a couple weeks ago that I’d never read before. Listen to what he said in this sermon: “How is it possible that you are not called? You are always in some sort of position. You have always been a husband or a wife or a son or a daughter or a servant. Imagine the lowest position…[E]ven if you had four heads and ten hands you would scarcely have the energy for such a task. And I guarantee you would not be thinking about making a pilgrimage or doing some so-called ‘saintly’ work.” [Martin Luther, “Sermon on John 21:19-24” (1522), quoted in Mark D. Tranvik, Martin Luther and the Called Life (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016), 33.]

And when we talk about people needing your good works, I’m not talking about pretend needing. I’m a member of Luther Memorial Church – the big steeple up the plaza from us – and I see it happening there all the time. When my former student Katie lost her parental rights to two little boys and wound up in prison for several months, she was desperate for company, and members of the church visited her every dang Saturday. And they paid off here jail debt when she was released, so she could get a driver’s license. And during the peace, when I lean in to tell Betty I’m praying for her and let her know I’m aware of her grief two years now after her 50-year-old son was hit on his motorcycle by a drunk driver and died, she weeps right there in the middle aisle of our sanctuary. My first year-and-a-half as a newly-minted pastor I had to deal with seven baby deaths. Seven. Those grieving families couldn’t tell you who brought what hot dish to the house, but it kept ‘em moving.

Eleven years ago we bought our very first house. On our move-in morning, my 8th-grade son and I were at our lousy apartment with the movers to get the big furniture loaded up. My phone rang, and it was my nephew Nick who had graduated from high school two months before. He said, “Uncle Kenny, I just found my mom dead in her bed. I don’t know what to do.” That started the most awful day. How could I call my wife and tell her that her sister died? How could I tell her parents? How were we going to move into our house and then be able to drive four hours to a funeral for my wife’s sister?

I called our church secretary, and before I could drive over to the new place she had a group of church folks ready to serve. Our campus pastors and Grand View’s Academic Dean also showed up. By the end of the afternoon, our beds were put together with sheets and pillow cases on them. Our entire kitchen had been unpacked. And my Dean hung my tie-rack in the bedroom closet and carefully hung all my ties, so I could choose some appropriate funeral garb. Do you see what they did? In the face of death, they gave us life. Their eyes could see a neighbor’s need, and they acted. When they were all gone and we were left standing weeping in sorrow and amazement in our living room, they had given us space and life so my kid could say, “Mom and Dad, we need to pray. I’ll do it.”

You can think of all kinds of places you have neighbors, because God has placed you in a web of relationships. Your callings from God happen within that web. They’re as common as being a sister or a brother, or as vital as being a voter marking a ballot, or as far into the future as leaving a healthy planet to your great-great-great grandchildren. If you wonder about what you’re going to do with your life, like I did when I was in high school, you don’t have to wonder. Sure, you’ll have to figure out a job. But that’s secondary. This stuff is what truly matters. And the word we Lutherans use to describe it is “vocation.” It’s giving our life to others on account of Christ.

But what about that whole business of why we do good works? I told you there two reasons. I think we’re pretty clear on our neighbors needing us. But there’s that other reason. Luther said we do good works…because it sucks doing ‘em. Well, that’s not exactly what he said, but that’s the gist of it. We do good works because God is making us into new creatures every day of our lives, and the old sinner in us can’t stand it. The sinner in me wants it all to be about me. I want it my way or the highway. I don’t want to be put out in any way. I don’t want to give something to someone who doesn’t deserve it or appreciate it. But the new person of faith God is creating with this good news about Jesus recognizes how the Old Sinner in me clings to its ugly, selfish life. So if there’s nothing you can do to earn your salvation, there is something God lets you have a hand in. Whenever you do good works, it blocks the path of sin we so love to saunter down. Good works are one way the Holy Spirit uses to kill off the old sinner in you, so you won’t be hounded by what Luther called its evil deeds and desires. Doing good works, just like reading scripture, engaging in prayer, and worshiping God, work on you. They not only stymie the old you, they’re also ways God forms the new you. The word we use for that is discipleship. It’s what happened to those Jesus called to follow him.

Most people you might ask about what it means to be a Christian will tell you that it’s all about becoming a better person and being a moral example for lesser beings. But that really doesn’t fit with what we know about God in the person of Jesus Christ. Luther said it best when he said the Christian life is about two contradictory things that you have to hold together: A Christian is perfectly free. A Christian is perfectly dutiful.

Okay, I know. You still wonder if there’s something you need to do. After all, isn’t the theme this week “Called2Serve." You’ve had some good preaching and teaching these days. The mutual conversation and consolation of believers has happened on my campus (yay!). And I know the Spirit is working to create faith in you. So my response has to be: You’re free. What do you want to do? You’ve prayed “Thy will be done” in the Lord’s Prayer hundreds of times. God is answering your prayer by molding your will to match his own. That way, when I ask what you want to do, the Holy Spirit is going to shape your answer and grow fruit in you: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You can count on that happening. That’s the kind of God you have. You have a God who loves your neighbors enough to limit your sin and then give you to them in service. You have a God who loves you enough to die for you and give you life. There’s lots to get busy with. Go to it! Amen.