Martha running ragged

Genesis 18:1-10; Psalm 15; Luke 10:38-42
Preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Knoxville, IA

Because I teach these days, I’m not a regular Sunday-after-Sunday preacher. I always feel a bit rusty when I sit down to write a sermon. This week I looked at a couple commentaries and some preaching blogs to see what people are saying about our readings today. Here’s what I found out:

• Abraham and Sarah in the Old Testament reading are to be praised for their hospitality. They welcome in the visiting angels and cook ‘em up a dandy supper.
• Today’s psalm gives us line after line of the things you need to do in order to dwell in the Lord’s sanctuary.
• And then we get to the story of Mary and Martha in the gospel reading, Jesus seems to tell Martha that her distracted doing is a problem.

So let’s recap. Genesis: Do good stuff like hospitality. Psalm 15: Do good stuff like keeping your oaths, not charging interest, no accepting bribes. Mary and Martha: stop doing good stuff. When we get to Jesus’ words to Martha, the commentators get their undies in a knot. Surely Jesus isn’t suggesting good works are a problem. That would be setting up an unfair and intolerant distinction between the sisters. It makes Jesus look like the bad guy here, when Martha was just trying to get a meal together for him and his hangers-on. It’s a hard word Jesus brings to Martha and to us today. But it’s also a word that contains the sweetest promise hidden in it.

Doing work is a good gift from God. Martha sure was right on that count. There’s nothing wrong with good, hard work – producing something for the common good or to meet your neighbor’s need. That’s something God has made us for. When Luther explained the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism, he told us what daily bread means. He said it includes everything we need in this life – including work and income.

Work is such a part of us that we hardly notice it until it’s gone. Unemployment numbers are important not just because people need to earn money to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. They’re important because they’re a sign of people who don’t have access to the good work God intends for us each day. When we don’t have work, we hurt. When there’s no work to do, it affects what Martin Luther called the conscience. He used that word to described our sense of ourselves. You conscience is your what you understand about your standing before God and before you neighbor. Lack of work wrenches your conscience, because your work helps tell you who you are and whose you are.

Later this week I’m driving out to western South Dakota for a big wingding at the old country school my dad attended. So I’ll meet lots of sheep and cattle ranchers whose last names I’m known for most of my 50 years. I’ll tell them my name and shake a handful of calluses. And you know what the first question they’ll ask me will be? They’ll say, “What do you do these days?” When I tell them I’m a Lutheran pastor and college religion and philosophy professor, they’ll know something about my place in the world.

So Martha’s puttering around the kitchen throwing a kosher casserole together is just a part of how God makes the world. Doing is a good thing. But when sin enters the picture, everything changes. When it comes to doing or not doing, we sinners are an odd bunch.

God’s given us a good batch of things to do and keep from doing: things like having no other gods, honoring your father and mother and remembering the Sabbath day and keeping it holy. And if that’s not enough God has given us neighbors galore to care for.

But from Adam and Eve in the Garden on down to us, we sinners have wanted it our way. We’re like two-year-olds in a high chair who refuse to let our parents feed us. We say, “My do it myself.” Doing? Yup. We like doing. As long as we get to decide what to do and when we do it.

We sinners treat the gift of doing, God’s gracious gift of work, just like we treat all of God’s gifts. Our sin-clouded eyes aren’t able to see God’s gifts as gifts. Because we don’t trust God to give us all we need for this life, we turn away from the divine giver and use the gifts for our own ends. At best we begin to think of God’s gifts as tools to achieve our own goals. I work so I can buy more consumer electronics. I work to keep my lawn green and mowed, so won’t be an object of scorn at our neighborhood block party. At worst we not only turn away from the divine giver, we also turn the gifts themselves into false gods. We look to the things of the creation, including work, as the be-all and end-all of our existence. We trust them to give us what we think we need. Instead of fearing, loving and trusting God above all things, we look to things to secure our future and stave off the terror of not knowing where we’re headed.

Now we’re at the corner Martha turned in her busyness. Her work had become the source of her security and future. The gift of work became an end in itself and just as quickly became a burden. She started to see all that needed to get done if the evening with their guest of honor was ever going to come together. And make no mistake, getting supper together in first-century Bethany was no easy task. There’s no nuking things in the microwave, no refrigeration, no Calphalon cookwear and no Cuisinart food processors. It’s just constant drudgery. And there sits Mary, hanging out with Jesus and the guys. She’s in the other room sitting at Jesus feet, gazing at him all star-struck like a 12-year-old at a Justin Bieber concert. Isn’t Jesus supposed to be all caring or something? Shouldn’t he notice her burden? Shouldn’t he whisper, “You know, Mary, I think Martha could use a little help out there”?

Martha’s gotten all turned around with work. Stoke the fire. Wipe the brow. Knead the bread. And forget about just who it is the supper’s being cooked for. Martha’s worried about getting the meal together, but even the Devil knows that if he wanted to Jesus could grab a couple rocks and turn them into nice loaves of focaccia. Martha’s forgotten about who she’s dealing with.

So Jesus brings her back to the place of the lilies of the field that neither toil nor spin. Doing what needs to get done is great. He just wants her to keep her doing in its proper place, so she can see what’s really going on in the house she and Mary and Lazarus share. The Lord himself is with them, the Holy One of God. He didn’t choose to go to dinner with the Chief Priest of the Temple in Jerusalem, he came here to Bethany.

There’s great danger in letting work be the one thing that defines you in any moment. Because you see yourself able to exert your efforts to accomplish something, you begin to think that you might even be in charge. You yourself become the ultimate cause of your days and deeds. You become the game master. It all depends on you. But when you live under that illusion, what happens when you come to a place where no effort of your own, no work, no exertion of effort can change anything?

I suspect there are quite a few people in Pella these past few days  are feeling the shifting tides of paralysis and powerlessness. Two boys drowned at an FCA camp pool party and there’s not a thing you can do to change the fact. The history will always be there. And nothing any of us does can create a different future. Life is full of those places and situations. We run along busy as can be and trip on the cold, unexpected truth that we are not in charge of our future. The word “cancer.” The loss of a job. The prospect of an empty next. The cruel names tossed in a middle school hallway. The slow, inexorable pull of gravity on our body’s various flesh bulbs. The inevitable last day and last breath that creep steadily toward us. All these things pull our ability to work out of our hands and remind us that we are not our own gods.

Each of these places in our lives offers a hidden Word from God, speaking to us the same way Jesus spoke to Martha. “You’re right,” he says, “You have come to the end of your rope. What exactly do you think happens when you discover you can’t fix things? Do you think the final catastrophe is at hand? Did you think you were in charge?” So Jesus brings a clear no to Martha and to us. There is a limit to what doing can accomplish, especially when it comes to ultimate matters like your death, your salvation, your verdict come Judgment Day.

But then Jesus turns Martha’s attention to her dear sister. “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” You see, there are lots of things you can do and may want to do. But there’s one thing that rises above everything else, and it’s not even a thing. It’s a person. Jesus. He has given himself to awestruck Mary, to busy Martha, to Lazarus soon to be dead and stinking in a tomb, to Peter, to Paul, to St. Monica and St. Clothild, to Martin Luther, and to you, sinners all. And here he promises that he can never be taken away. As Paul says in Romans, “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It’s just like Jesus to pull this on Martha. He has a habit of zeroing in our disasters and frustration. He has a way of finding our weak spots, of taking a magnifying glass to our sins and peccadilloes. He doesn’t mind pushing us to the limit and over it, because when we fall he gets to do what he does best: catching fallen sinners. He wants them to know that, work or no work, powerful or powerless, we remain subject to his own mighty affection. Meal schmeal, who cares what you’re cooking up for yourself. He has something better in store for you, the ultimate feast of mercy and forgiveness, the sacrament that bestows a future.

To paraphrase Psalm 15: You shall dwell in his sanctuary and live on his holy hill. No longer will you seek to be blameless in your work and production. Your purity comes from the one who died for you and rose again. He is the one who keeps his oath, even when it hurts. His promise on the cross is for you. Risen from the dead, he will never be shaken. He’s done all the work and now gives you the wages of faith: your salvation, forgiveness and deliverance from sin, death and the devil. For that we might just be willing to let the fires die out and the pots turn cold on the stove. And that’s just why we’re here today, to sit her at Jesus feet and hear him promise to stick with us always.

Calendars and to-do lists get put in the proper place when Jesus is around. Work becomes a gift again. And the invitation stays in place for the rest of our days: “Settle in now,” Jesus says, “And hear what I’m doing for you, always for you.” Amen.

Sam, Andy and Toy Story 3

In Toy Story 3 Andy is heading off to college (and behind the wheel of his own car, no less). It's somehow fitting that we saw this movie the summer before our son heads off to his freshman year at Luther College, in Decorah, Iowa. After all, he's grown up with Andy. And they're both members of the incoming class of 2014.


We first met Buzz, Woody and Andy in Decorah. We took our son to see Toy Story at the Viking Theater when he was almost three and I was serving as a pastor in Calmar. Now, as Andy leaves his toys behind, Sam leaves his own childhood behind to go back to Decorah for four years at Luther. And we discover that the movies were never about the toys, but about the boy who loved them.

Suffice it to say, sitting there next to the young man who still loves us, tears were shed in the darkness of a movie theater last weekend. But it's been a fun three movies and an even better 18 years of parenting. As Sam posted on his Facebook page, "Dear Andy, Thanks for sharing your toys with us." Thanks for sharing these years with us, Sam.

Beyond flames and tongues

A sermon preached at Grace Lutheran Church in Adel, Iowa, for Pentecost Sunday 2010.

Happy Pentecost and happy birthday to Christ’s church. This day was an important day even before the one that Acts tells us about. For the ancient Jews, including Jesus and his disciples, this was the day to remember how God gave the Law and Commandments to Moses on Mt. Sinai, from “You shall have no other gods” to “You shall not covet your neighbor’s manservant, maidservant, cattle or anything else that it your neighbors.” The Law and Commandments were such good things. They were a way to know how and where you stood: In or out? Righteous or unrighteous?

To this day we still like that Law stuff. In fact, it’s absolutely embedded in our consciousness without our thinking about it. Here’s a quick quiz for you. We’ll see how much Law you know. Complete the phrase:

• An object in motion [tends to stay in motion unless acted on by another force or object.]
• For every action there is [an equal and opposite reaction.]
• There’s no such thing as a [free lunch.]
• Pull yourself up by [our own bootstraps.]
• A stitch in time [saves nine.]
• A penny saved is [a penny earned.]
• What goes around [comes around.]
• Click it or [ticket.]

See how good you are at this? We could go on and on, couldn’t we? Yet this is plenty to remind you that you know exactly how the world works and that your life is conducted under the assumption that all these things are true. The pre-Holy Spirit Pentecost is a celebration of all this stuff, and there’s not a one among those unpronounceable hordes in Jerusalem who doesn’t operate under that same assumptions as you. Which makes it downright hard for them to figure out what’s what when the disciples wander into their midst.

Imagine dishing up the potato salad at your family’s Fourth of July picnic and Aunt Bertha, who’s rarely been out of Iowa let alone gone abroad, starts speaking Mandarin Chinese or Hindi or Swahili to the folks at the next picnic table. If you knew she’d never spoken that language before, you’d try to make sense of it somehow. Maybe she isn’t really speaking it. Maybe she’s just goofing on your picnic neighbors. Maybe she’s had a stroke. Or maybe she’s gotten into the cooler a little early and downed a few too many bottles of hard cider.

That’s exactly what those folks in Jerusalem did when they saw and heard what was happening with the disciples. Those fellas were Galileans. No way could they speak Greek. Everyone knew that Galilean fisherfolk could hardly speak their own Aramean dialect, let alone fancy schmancy Greek. So what are the options if you want to make sense of things? You might decide you didn’t hear right and just imagined you heard them speak your language. You might think your mind was playing tricks on you. Or maybe, just maybe, you might think, “These guys are blitzed to the gills.” And then you’d look at your hourglass or sundial, look down your nose, and think, “Oooh-whee. Drunk at this time of day?” The multiple-language-speaking disciples don’t fit into their categories, so the spectators in Jerusalem find one that fits: public drunkenness. The crowds know the world works according to the law, commandments, structures and powers. Their reaction to the disciples shows how truly strange living by faith looks to the world. Something incredible has happened to the disciples, and the crowds just don’t understand it.

But what happened to those twelve guys isn’t just tongues of flame and foreign languages. For a few hundred bucks you can buy a week of campfires at Concordia Language Villages in Minnesota and have your flames and foreign tongues. The miracle of Pentecost that the crowds didn’t understand goes much deeper. What the disciples experienced with the gift of the Holy Spirit is part of the mystery and wonder of their relationship with Jesus.

These followers for whom things exploded on Pentecost had been hand-picked by our Lord. Not a one among them was someone to be reckoned with. They weren’t people of power or position. All they were was a group of guys who heard Jesus say, “Follow me,” and couldn’t resist him. At first they thought they’d gotten in on the ground floor with someone who was going to make it big, like meeting the winner of American Idol way back at the initial auditions. But instead they wound up following Jesus’ path to the cross. They saw how our Lord’s utter faithfulness and devotion to God freed him, how it gave him power to heal and forgive, and how the sum total of his worldly success was a sarcastic scrawl on a board over his head on the cross: “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.”

These disciples were bound up in a relationship with the Son of Man who lived in full faith, and they saw exactly what it got him. Giving yourself up in devotion to God and in service to your neighbor attracts the world’s scorn, the condemnation of the powerful and the religious, and the shame of an execution by crucifixion. You see, to be the Christ (and a Christ-follower) means chucking your power into the ditch, snipping the apron strings that tie you to comfort and status, pinching off the shoots of success, and, plainly, dying to your own control, glory and carefully planned and managed future. For our Lord, true living means dying.

But if you think a few flickers of fire and speaking the language of the Phrygians and Medes is something, what happened to the disciples’ Lord was too much to believe. When it comes to blowing minds, Timothy Leary has nothing on Jesus Christ. Our Lord lay dead in a borrowed tomb. It looked like his program of bringing in the Kingdom of God was a bust, a complete failure. His followers had fled. And his dying words were a cry of abandonment by God. And yet. And yet. What happened two days later changed everything. The dead, crucified Jesus was alive. God’s raising him up said yes to the very path that looked like the end of all hope. The resurrection confirmed that Jesus’ path to the cross is the path, the only path of faithfulness.

The first part of the true miracle of Pentecost happened somewhere in the seven weeks between the Resurrection and this Jewish festival day. It happened as God’s own word in scripture worked on these lowly followers of Jesus. When Cleopas and his friend walked their grief off after seeing Jesus crucified, they didn’t recognize the risen Lord on the road to Emmaus. They didn’t understand anything about what Jesus meant, what he signified, what difference he made in the end. And they certainly didn’t recognize him. But there Jesus is, risen and new, bringing them the exact same stuff he’d given them all along. He taught them the scriptures, told them why, what and wherefore. And when they sat down to eat with him, they knew who he was and what he had been up to. These followers had a relationship with Jesus that came to be defined by his path to the cross. It was confirmed in the resurrection. And now with the word, it came clear.

Have you ever watched one of those Texas Hold-‘Em poker games on T.V.? There inevitably comes a time when a player puts down the cards, pushes every single chip into the center of the table, and says, “I’m all-in.” The player has such a great hand or such a great bluff that she’s willing to risk everything. What these followers of Jesus had experienced, learned and now were filled with, is the hand the Holy Spirit dealt in the promise of the resurrection to a ragtag bunch of losers. And here on Pentecost Sunday, these guys couldn’t help themselves. They had been released into an all-in life that risks everything for the only thing that lasts. Those tongues of fire were just the sparkly tip of a whole new life that had already begun when Jesus called to them to follow. The flames were the tip-top flickering of a relationship with the Lord who won’t and can’t stay dead, the Christ whom power and religion can’t eradicate, Jesus our brother, savior, high priest, good shepherd, treasure and hope. And now the followers became the forward picket, the rolling edge of the storm of faith.

And what about the Parthians and Medes, the people from Phrygia and Pamphylia, and all the rest? They were not to be left behind in their plodding allegiance to power, in their stuckness on what was comprehensible, reasonable or plausible. Those guys from Galilee weren’t drunk like they thought. It was, after all, only nine a.m. And Peter stepped to the fore to let loose a torrent. And that’s where the second part of the true miracle of Pentecost happened. Peter preached. The one who denied even knowing Jesus now couldn’t help the proclamation of the risen Lord from flowing trippingly off his tongue. He announces the truth of the situation to them, and does it by blasting both barrels: “You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know— this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”

And then the third part of the real miracle of Pentecost happened. The crowds in Jerusalem that mid-morning sabbath in Spring heard this word, this preaching, this ministry of the true gospel…and they believed. They asked Peter how the unvarnished truth of their complicity in Christ’s death might be dealt with. He told them, be steeped in the promise of forgiveness that comes in baptism. And 3000 of them came to believe that very day.

It turns out that that part of the miracle wasn’t a one-off affair. It was the beginning of the Holy Spirit’s ongoing breaking-in and breaking-open of sinners closed to hope, love and mercy. What this means for you, my fellow sinners, is that you are about to be included in that last part of the Pentecost miracle, for God has sent this preacher to you today. For I, too, have been given a relationship with the crucified and risen One. I have been given the gospel word and called to deliver it to you. And I have been given a tongue to speak to ears that are ready to hear.

This is the word for you, sinner, broken one, unbeliever. Listen closely. Jesus, dead for your sin and risen for your hope and joy, has made himself your Lord. He is given to you from the foundation of the world, that you, even you, might know God’s mercy. Not only that, but he has grafted himself to you so that his new life might be yours as well.

And if you wonder what you ought to do with that, well, there’s water in that font. You have a pastor in this congregation, and he is champing at the bit to attach God’s word of promise to that water and give you the kind of cleansing bath that only God can give. And if you’ve known that promise of Christ in the water, there is a meal that’s been cooked up to sustain those dripping wet from their divine bath. It’s a meal of simple bread and wine, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins. It is Jesus body and blood. It is the whole relationship he’s established with you, tied up in a handy little, worldly package.

Instead of leaving you harping on the implausibility of it all or slapping a label on the purveyors of this unlikely miracle, today I pray the Spirit gives you the faith that frees you, sustains you, and gives you eternal life. I pray God so works in you that the world may look at you and say, “Humph, drunk,” and that that will be your chance to say, “No, not drunk. But let me tell you about my Lord.” And in that moment, the real miracle of Pentecost will still be alive and new and true – for you and for the world. Amen.

Winter driving

Psalm 147:12-20 Second Sunday in Christmas

To begin, note two things: First, winter weather in western South Dakota is fickle, not to be regarded lightly. The air never stops moving, even on the most clement, merciful and kind days. Second, when driving the normal three hours on the two-lane black-top from Pierre to Sturgis there are zero stop signs and not many more outposts of civilization.

I had done a burial at Black Hills National Cemetery and caught a ride back to Pierre in the hearse with the funeral director’s wife. I volunteered to drive. As the sun slid behind the mountains at our back, an early November blizzard brought the curl of its system up from the south. The road turned from black top to white top. The edge of the road was more often than not imaginary. Beside me, Trudy prayed and sang spiritual songs. The coffin carrier began to feel like a coffin itself, shrouded in a pall. Burial cloths whipping around us.

The psalmist says, “He gives snow like wool; he scatters frost like ashes. He hurls down hail like crumbs — who can stand before his cold?” (Psalm 147:16-17) Standing I can do. Driving, not so much. Thanks to my winter excursion in the Feigum Funeral Home hearse, I have a winter driving phobia. I fear slick roads and whiteout conditions. Pulling out of the garage in the midst of flurries gets my pulse racing. Who will save me from this auto body of death?

My phobia, of course, is that I will lose control. And if I think I can manage the rest of my life a bit better than I can slick roads, it’s only an illusion. I am out of control, spinning, slipping, sliding through my days. The forecast is for more of the same. The slick lane leads to the ditch. Beware all you other drivers, I may take you out on the way in.

I have no ability to find my way to sunnier climes or drier paths. If I’m to make it home, it can only come at God’s behest. My help is in the name of the Lord. He alone “sends out his word, and melts them; he makes his wind blow, and the waters flow.” (Psalm 147 18)

At the font comes God’s promise of an eternal January thaw. He declares his word and provides more than safe haven from the storm. He is the divine Climate Changer. The weather system sent by his holy wind brings a life-giving Word that thaws the road and the icy, controlling heart, for Christ’s forgiveness and mercy are not fickle. They can be counted on to carry home a dead person like me more surely than any hearse.

So in our winters we pray and sing spiritual songs, even in the most limited visibility, for we are even now being carried home. We pray and sing, even when spinning in the face of on-coming traffic, for the one who is the Way promises to bring us with him to the end, safe and secure. We sing and pray, for our deliverance in Christ Jesus is dawning. The bright day of Epiphany is on its way.

Kicking and Saving

In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Luke 1:39-42 (Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year C)

Apparently encountering Jesus is a real kick. Just ask Elizabeth. He was already at it in utero, John was. Kicking. Goading. Getting sinners' attention — even his mother, old cousin Elizabeth. Whoever knew a baby could prepare the way of the Lord?

But crazier yet, whoever knew a baby could be the Lord? Jesus: God contained, limited, enveloped within Mary's womb. Immortal, invisible, God only wise. In light inaccessible, hid from our eyes. He's limited himself to a warm, wet place. He's wrapped himself up within a package of skin cells. He's hidden himself within our human hide.

The coming of the Lord Emmanuel, God With Us, is to ransom captive Israel, and his first step is to cut us open. His simple coming lays claim to all of creation as his own. He takes what is his, no matter how hard we grasp and claw at it as ours.

Whether floating in amniotic fluid, wriggling in swaddling clothes, or wrapped in his final shroud, he says, "Mine. All mine. Every last bit of it!" And it's a blow to the sinner's solar plexus. All our striving for something beyond ourselves, our doing for God is for naught. Our little plans and projects are now eviscerated. They lie empty and exposed. Elizabeth got off easy with a little taekwondo kick to her insides.

And though you know your life is lost and your salvation project is null and void, there's something that's so much easier to see now. In claiming it all for himself, Christ our Lord turns you to the only one who has the power to give you life and who promises to do it.

If he claims it all as his, that means even a hollow-hearted sinner such as you belongs to him. Now it's you who is wrapped, contained and ensconced. And not just in your own flesh, but in the heart of God. The baby Jesus, the boy Jesus in the Temple, the Jesus tossing the moneychangers on their ear, the risen Jesus revealing himself in the bread at Emmaus -- he swathes you within the very will of God.

Christ is put on you. You are enveloped in his comforter, gathered up in the Holy Spirit.

That's quite a kick.

On Being Lutheran but not "Lutheran"

A (belated) sermon for Reformation Sunday

Most semesters I get to teach a course called "Dynamics of Christian Faith and Life." Like most of my classes it's usually populated with a good mix of 19 and 20-year-olds, all of whom are at this incredibly important point in their development, exploring who they are, what they believe and what earthly good they might be in the world. About three times a semester in that class we play a fun game called "Stump the Professor." Students get to put me on the spot by writing down anonymous questions on slips of paper, and I get to try answering. It never fails that one of these fresh-faced young adults, looking for a place to be in the world asks the denomination question. "How do I know which church is the best when they all say they have the truth?" I know what's appropriate in a classroom, so I say, "Well, my family and I are members at Faith Lutheran Church, the Best Buy church on University. But you need to figure out what it is you're looking for and land where it's the right fit."Standing in front of you today, though, I can come clean. I'm Lutheran. I can't help being Lutheran. Being Lutheran is like breathing for me. It keeps me alive. And I'll tell you why.

I'm Lutheran because of what I believe. And boy do I ever believe a bunch of stuff. I can believe 30 things before I crawl out of bed in the morning. I believe that I can accomplish anything, if I just want it hard enough. I believe that I'll be able to stave off a miserable death from colon cancer if I eat a fiber-rich diet that gives me happy poop. I believe my future is in my own hands. I believe my wife has stuck with me for 19 years, because I'm lovable, likable and still have most of my hair. I believe that the little bit more in consumer goods that I accumulate every week, every month, every year, is a good thing – sure to make my life happy, because, as I also believe, more is better. I believe that we're in good enough shape financially to be able to have the church do an automatic withdrawal from our account each month. I believe my son is so talented, handsome and bright that there's nothing but glory ahead of him after high school, thanks to my genes. I believe in the aw-shucks cuteness of puppies, in the beauty of trees at the height of fall color and in a piping hot bowl of red beans and rice – all of it a sign of the existence of a glorious, marvelous, awesome God who accepts me just as I am. Oh, I believe. I really do. In all of it. And much, much more. I expect I'm not much different than you on that count. I believe that all of this is true.

And the reason I'm Lutheran is that what I believe, everything I believe, every last single thing I believe...is wrong. I'm Lutheran because not only is all that stuff wrong, it's dead wrong. None of it's true, and believing it has all kinds of possible consequences, but only one that is inevitable, certain and sure. What I believe will get me only one thing – a hole in the ground big enough to lower my body in when my power, glory and potential are over with. I'm Lutheran because day after day, when I look honestly at myself, what I believe in is me. And I want you to believe in me, too.

At first glance that's a pretty fine place to be. Look at me. I'm free to choose the life in front of me. Let's hook elbows and go forward into progress. It'll be sunshine, rainbows and lollipops. Well, there's that ache I get in my right knee when I walk too long. Yes, I know. There's also that time I took my son on a college visit to LA and stood at a car-rental counter at midnight with an expired driver's license. That wasn't my best moment of having my poop in a group. I know I'm not perfect. But the life I believe in will still be good, won't it? At least I've got my intentions rightly placed. I want to get better. I'm planning for my retirement. I got myself tenured at a good school, which means there's a tuition benefit for my kid. And I still have my potential. What's that you say? You want me to remember what the past month has been like? A wife and son sick in bed with colds. And then my son with a five-day fever and a another week of school missed. And my wife healthy one day and then in the hospital for a week with a staph infection. I can't wait to see that hospital bill. Even though I believe we'll be able to deal with it, thanks to our monthly insurance contributions, it's put some fear deep down inside me. I'm just a breath away from disaster. Maybe it'll be deeper cuts in state government that force a lay-off for my wife. Or an illness that hits my son that NyQuil, Tylenol and Mucinex can't handle. Blood coming from a place on my body that hasn't been cut. A lump that wasn't there before. A phone call from a family member that says, "I came home and she was dead." Or the doctor who says to me, "It's cancer and it's a fast one." Or how about the late-night drive home on the freeway and the lights that suddenly come across the median toward my lane. I believe. I believe. I believe. I really believe. I really do. But what will believing in my potential, my value, my promise, my good intentions or myself do for me then?

I'm Lutheran because of what I believe and because of what little good it does me. In our gospel reading today, Jesus says, "You will know the truth and the truth will set you free." I'm Lutheran, because the first part of knowing the truth is knowing what is not the truth. Ever since Luther's first hammer-fall on the nail holding up the 95 Theses in 16th Century Germany, we've been reminded of the world's most important distinction. To use Steve Paulson's words, God slices our reality in two, into what is Christ and what is not Christ. There's all kinds of stuff at work in the world, all kinds of intentions, all kinds of talents, gifts and powers, and, no matter how good or powerful any of them are, they are not Christ. They don't have the power to save me. I'm Lutheran because I'm so dang-blasted weary of what I believe, because I'm so tired of having to confect my days, invent my future and secure and protect what is rightfully mine. Once the truth gets told that what I have and hope to be is simply nothing, well, there's nothing to grab onto and keep safe anymore. Sure, my life, my family, my stuff -- it's all a good gift. But in the long run, it's nothing if it isn't Christ. If I keep grasping after my illusions of control and contentment, my actions begin to look like flailing at thin air.

I'm Lutheran because getting that truth out is crucial. It's the crux of everything. The literal cross road. I remember that I am dust and to dust I shall return. I confess that I can't believe enough. I confess that I don't believe. I confess that I won't believe in anything less than myself unless I'm forced to do it. And I finally let go when my powerlessness is clear. When exactly have I ever prayed to God, trusting in more than myself? When has it been that I've resorted to God's Word as the one place I could find hope? When have I ever been able to admit the truth of something like "Footprints in the Sand," which religious sophisticates love to mock? It's only when the bottom has dropped out – when I'm worn down to nothing and the only thing left to believe is that I'm being carried along by the one who carried his own cross. I'm Lutheran because I know the narrow nothingness where I, too, hang crucified with Jesus, with a voice too hoarse to speak my final plaintive cry, "My God. My God. Why have you forsaken me?"

I'm Lutheran because once there's nothing left I can grasp, work toward and assert, there is a Word that comes. One little Word that is not a what but a who. One little Word who has the power of eternity in his little finger and who subdues the devil, the world and my sinful self. This one remaining Word is the gospel that has been preached for nigh these 500 years since Luther, the 2000 years since Paul wrote Romans, and the timeless eons since God first looked at creation and said, "Tov me'od. Way good." Now that I know what is not Christ, what is Christ comes as glorious good news. Jesus is God for me. Jesus is my Lord – not a wimpy God who merely nods and accepts me but one who takes my disastrous attempts to conjure a life and makes the dead, old me new. My being Lutheran has so very little to do with a structure, institution and denomination that carries Luther's name and everything to do with Jesus' death and resurrection – and mine.

I'm Lutheran because Jesus is the one, the only to whom Luther, Paul, Peter, Mary Magdalene and the Ethiopian eunuch could point. I'm Lutheran because when I was a skinny little bed-wetter, my Sunday school teachers June Aldrin and Bob Lee gave Jesus to me, made sure I knew he was for me. I'm Lutheran because even when every attempt at being more religious and spiritual in college, from wanting to speak in tongues to reading my Bible every day, came to naught, I could go to worship and hear my campus pastor Mark Jerstad bring the truth back. I could confess my sin and hear an absolution that broke open a future with forgiveness as its linchpin. I'm Lutheran because if all I had to go on was the potential and power the world says I have inside me, then I would be lost, most to be pitied, and without a shred of hope. I'm Lutheran because the truth sets me free. I'm Lutheran because this is the proclamation given to me. Jesus Christ, true God from eternity and true human being, born of the virgin Mary, is my Lord. I'm Lutheran because it's not something I have to believe. It's not something I can ponder and nod assent to. It's not something I'm called forward to choose and turn my life over to. I'm Lutheran because Christ has made himself my Lord, pulling me out of the drowning waters of baptism and the death that is my life, with no choice or surrender of my own. I'm Lutheran because Jesus wants to feed me the flesh and blood he's given up for my sake. I'm Lutheran because he's not a belief, but the one person, the only one I can fully trust. I'm Lutheran because my Lord promises that where there is trust, I have a future that is better than any I could create. It's eternal. It's rich. It's true. And it keep setting me free.

So that's why I'm here. I'm Lutheran, galdernit, because what I believe is wrong as wrong can be. I'm Lutheran because the only one who is right and just is giving me new life. And how about you? In the face of his truth, are you also done believing, crafting, grasping and creating yourself and your future? Are you also not now drawn into trust and faith? Are you not also his, forgiven and set free? That's not just true. It's life itself. Amen.

A Scepter for Natalie: Pastor Gessert's Ordination

[Note: This sermon was preached at Natalie Gessert's ordination at Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church in Fairfax, VA, tonight.]

Allow me to bring in a topic that is of a holiness suitable to this sacred event, that is, suitable to the setting apart of an actual sinner to word and sacrament ministry. The holy thing I want to tell you about is truly a sacred realm: World of Warcraft. In case you’re not one of the 11 and a half million subscribers worldwide, World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role playing game, or MMORPG. You get to pretend you’re in an alternate world with giants, orcs, dwarves and the like. You maneuver through the world, gaining skills, encountering other players and, when necessary, going into battle.

In WoW it’s always helpful to gain an arsenal of weapons should you need to fight. Along with such things as the Arcanite Steam-Pistol and the Smashing Star of Arcane Wrath, one of the many weapons available to you is the Royal Diplomatic Scepter, which you can get from the Dark Iron Ambassador. You use it one-handed and it inflicts damage in the 37-69 range.

Of course, I really know nothing about World of Warcraft and the Royal Diplomatic Scepter. I’m more of a Candyland kind of guy and leave the online role playing games to my college students. But I do know about biblical scepters. A scepter is a crucial prop in the story of Queen Esther’s rescue of the Hebrew people from certain death. In our first reading tonight, Esther could not help her adopted father Mordecai, because she hadn’t been invited into the presence of the king. It would not do to enter the royal chambers uninvited, without being pointed at by the king’s golden scepter. To cross the threshold into King Ahasuerus’ inner court and go where you didn’t belong meant certain death. Esther told Mordecai that was the one law. It all depended on that single rule, on the royal and arbitrary whim of a king who may or may not look upon you with favor.

Scepters regularly appear in ancient stories as the symbol of royal power. They represent the king’s will. In The Iliad, the weak king Agamemnon sends Odysseus off to treat with the Achaeans. He lends his ambassador his royal scepter, so that Odysseus carries with him the authority of the throne. In Esther, to receive a point of the golden scepter is equal to the king speaking a word of welcome. It indicates the king’s will.

Natalie, I have brought you a glorious plastic royal scepter from our local party good store. Treasure it always, for it required an arduous quest through miles of Halloween paraphernalia-stocked aisles to find it. Come up here and get it, but be careful with it, because this is the equal to Ahasuerus’ golden scepter. It’s a scepter designed for wielding power. This is a scepter that makes demands on the one it points to. It’s a scepter of glory, of required and active righteousness.

Ah, yes – righteousness, it’s a fine, fine thing. As the Israelites in Deuteronomy say, “The LORD commanded us to obey all these decrees and to fear the LORD our God, so that we might always prosper and be kept alive, as is the case today. And if we are careful to obey all this law before the LORD our God, as he has commanded us, that will be our righteousness.” (Deut. 6:24-25) And as Micah asks, “What does the LORD require of you, but to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God” (6:8). In order to get the nod, the flick of the divine scepter, you must, must fulfill all righteousness. All righteousness? All. You don’t just get to do a bit o’ honey-flavored justice, or kinda, sorta like kindness, or act humble. No. God requires it all. You want entry into God’s inner chambers? Then love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind.

Go ahead. Choose to do that, okay? We’ve got some time here. I won’t make you come up for an altar call (it’s a Lutheran worship service, after all). Go ahead; say it with Joshua and his family in the Promised Land: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” That’s better, isn’t it? You’ll eat your Powdermilk Biscuits and do what the medieval Scholastic theologians said, “Facere quod in te est” (or, as Larry the Cable Guy translated it, “Git ‘er done”). Will you? Yes, I will.

And there’s the rub, right there in those four little letters, w-i-l-l. Will. Will you? Will you be righteous? Will you be the one your heavenly king requires you to be? In just a few moments, Natalie will be asked four times about her intentions, about what her will is in carrying out the ministry to which she’s called. My guess is that, when you say you’ll love God, do justice and git ‘er done for God, your intentions are not much better than Natalie’s. And I know her intentions are about as strong and durable as a square of Charmin hanging on the spindle in my bathroom at home.

If you are to gain the scepter’s nod, the good graces of your Lord and God, it will take something more than your flimsy assertions of a good will. When you and Natalie say, “I will,” sinners that you are, your will will last about as long as it takes to get that last lingual “L” to roll off your tongue. And then it’s back to the more pressing business of building of your own Disneyfied kingdom where you need not worry about other royal whims or the slings and arrows of outrageous divine fortune. When you’re the one with all the glory, you can be the flicker of scepters.

Natalie, the temptation to pick up that scepter is a strong one for pastors. As you know from putting countless second-year seminarians through their paces on the Lutheran Confessions mid-term, Philip Melanchthon devoted an entire long article in the Augsburg Confession to the temptation of this scepter. It’s titled, “On the Power of Bishops.” Lest anyone think, I’m going to go after present company here, please know Melanchthon was talking about the power God grants to all public proclaimers of his Word. The Confessions are clear. The power of bishops, pastors, preachers and popes lies not in wielding the rod of the Law, not in civil power, worldly might or organizational acumen, much less in winsome charm or psychotherapeutic chops. It lies solely in the one, little, devil-subduing thing that we Lutherans sing with such fervor whenever “A Mighty Fortress” is trotted out on Reformation Sunday.

The power that Natalie has in her hands, before, during and after the laying on of hands, with or without an historic episcopate, from the time that clear water flowed over her in baptism to the last shovel of dirt and “Ashes to Ashes” at her grave – this power is the Word of God and only the Word of God. So let’s get something straight. Your seminary’s mission statement notwithstanding, Natalie, you have not been called to be a leader in the church. You have been called instead to be a servant of the Word, this Word of whom John speaks in the glorious prelude to the Bach invention that is his gospel. It is the same Word who comes to do clean-up at the end of Revelation: the Word of God riding in on his white horse with a sword pointing at sinners from his mouth and his own name tattooed on his thigh (yes, Jesus has a tattoo – look it up in Revelation 19).

Unlike the scepter of Ahasuerus, the Word that God sends via Natalie’s (sometimes too active) mouth is a Word that brings life out of death. My dear and fellow sinner, you have been called out of the baptized to publicly bear this Word in a broken and fallen world. It is a Word who is the last thing we sinners would expect or want. The saving Word of God you will serve is no glorious Ahasuerus condemning the Jews in exile in Persia with little thought or care. This Word, Jesus Christ, present from the beginning, wasn’t even recognized by his own. The folks back home in Galilee wanted to toss him off a cliff. The fine upstanding righteous and religious ones in Jerusalem, who knew they were good enough to enter God’s inner chambers, took one look at him and said, “Crucify him. But take the cannoli.”

It’s an ignominious end. Hanging on a cross hardly makes Jesus look like he’s able to do anything for himself, much less for sinners. And yet… And yet, this cross is God’s very throne. As Hebrews (1:8) says, “Your throne…will last forever and ever, and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.” Everything changes in Jesus. No longer does the divine scepter demand your righteousness. Christ’s righteousness is the scepter that flings it your way. It’s the scepter of his righteousness that makes you worthy. No activity or deed or desire or intention of your own, but his work, his dirty, dying deed done dirt cheap, his cross. His crossbeam-bruised shoulders carry you into God’s holy of holies.

And Natalie tonight you are set apart to deliver those goods. I warn you, though; it’s not a shiny happy job for shiny happy people. It’s grunt work and often dispiriting to bring a Word that runs so counter to the world’s expectations of power. As we say on the prairies of South Dakota where I come from, a lot of times you’ll go home feeling like an excremental epithet. But it will happen way more often if you think you’ve been elevated to some vaunted position because you have a shiny scepter of glory.

So here’s the deal, and a heckuva a deal it is: Your real scepter is one no one would ever suspect. If you lined up all the scepters of the world’s kings and queens, monarchs and muckety-mucks, you’d never pick this one out as able to do the trick. It has neither gold nor silver, nor rubies and onyx. The scepter you are bestowed tonight is made of wood and rubber and little gold paint. As the psalmist says, this rod and staff brings sweet comfort. So come up here again and take this toilet plunger for your office to display alongside your framed copies of “Footprints in the Sand.” And let it be a reminder to you of where you will find ears ready to hear, who are hungering and horny for this living Word.

You’ll find those ears in the most fetid places, in the septic field of sin and brokenness. You will find these ears wherever the demands of life break your people down. You will find them scrambling to cobble together a life, managing calendars and shaky finances. You’ll see them popping zits and fretting about making the team, making the grade or making “it.” You will discover ears to hear when you enter into dark nights of the soul. The ends of the rope, the bottoms of glasses, the real-life versions of crash test dummies’ walls: These are all the places where we sinners come to know the truth: On my own I cannot attain the righteousness required. I believe I cannot by my own understanding or effort even do something as simple as believe.

So, Natalie, you are called to go where Ahasuerus’ legal scepter says, “Off with their heads!” You are called to point your new scepter, saying, “Sinner, the righteousness of our crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ is yours.” In fact, my young Padwan, at this very moment you are surrounded by these very sinners. Stand up and give that scepter a go. Point it at us, for we know our sin. And deliver the goods for we have ears to hear. We’re waiting for some absolution to come trippingly off your tongue. [Natalie speaks the absolution.]

And you my dear fellow forgiven sinners, do you believe this unlikely Word? The scepter of the Law says, “Do this, and it is never done.” But the scepter of the gospel says, “Believe this, and it is already done.” Your salvation is given you both this very night and whenever and wherever the Holy Spirit moves this newly minted pastor to point a plunger, open her sassy mouth and let fly with God’s promise in Christ Jesus. So get busy, Natalie. Fling. Flick. Point. Plunge. Forbear. Forgive. All in Christ’s name. You can count on our good Lord to help and guide you, for the King of Kings has opened his inner chambers just as the stone was rolled away from the tomb. Natalie, it’s time. The Word is given. Sinners await you. Bring us in. Please. Amen.