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.
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