Sermon for March 28th - Palm Sunday

Focus: Christ marches toward the cross and resurrection.

One of my favorite hymns is ELW 866 “We Are Marching in the Light of God” perhaps you’ve heard it:

We are marching in the light of God.

We are marching in the light of God.

And so it continues. The whole verse is just singing those words “We are marching in the light of God” 8 times. So easy a child could sing it. Simple, right? 

Well, it was a children’s song, but it was anything but simple. The song was sung in the 20th century by Zulu children’s choirs in South Africa, and its name there is Siyahamba, in English “Freedom is Coming.” The song was easy enough that children and adults of all ages could learn it, memorize it, and march to the beat—and brave enough that it inspired people to take up the freedom work of ending the racist system of Apartheid and challenging the white powers-that-be to see everyone “in the light of God”—the way God sees each human being.

Marches may be for children, but they aren’t childish. They may be easy to learn, but they are not simple. They may be fun to watch, but it takes courage to put one foot in front of the other.

Jesus’s march today is the Palm Sunday procession. Marches in Jesus’s time were not simple Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parades. No, they were a statement of power. Amy-Jill Levine wrote in our bible study “A triumphal entry is a military parade. It’s a sign of a conquering commander coming into the city and celebrating his victory.” 1 

But the Palm Sunday march of Jesus turns everything we knew about marches on its head. Jesus is not a military commander. He is a Rabbi. He is not riding in on a white horse, but on a colt or a donkey—depending which version you read. Most important to the story: he is not really a king! That is the Roman emperor Caesar! This is the rub. By calling him “Son of David”—ancestor of the great king, this march is putting the powers-that-be on notice that Jesus is challenging them. Challenging their power, challenging their authority, challenging the entire basis for their rule. Notice where the march ends? The Temple, the most powerful place in Jerusalem where all the elites gathered. Please don’t let the fun of our children’s palm parades fool you. This is not a simple childish, or fun thing: Jesus is risking quite a bit with this march—his very life.

Shouting “Hosanna”—“Save us, we pray!” would have taken courage because it would have meant saying to the Romans, to the chief priests, to all the authorities that, “you are not our savior.” But how much more courage to get behind Jesus. To take your place in the march and follow him. To follow him to the Temple to preach, teach, even overturn tables, to follow him to the upper room and the garden of Gethsemane, to the judgment hall and to the cross, to the tomb on Easter morning.

We did not live in those times. We will never know if we would have joined the march, or if we would have stayed on the sidelines, if we would have prayed with Jesus in the garden or fallen asleep, if we would have followed him to Calvary or fled in despair. But Palm Sunday reminds us that every day in this world, we still have choices to make.

Who is your king? They say people vote with their feet. Well, who are you going to follow? Which march are you going to join?

Are you going to join the march of the modern-day Caesars who promise you wealth at the price of justice, success at the price of oppression, personal prosperity at the price of others’ poverty, comfort at the price of conscience, respectability at the price of righteousness, or are you going to march behind Jesus, knowing that means the cross: risking everything for the one who promises resurrection, new life, a renewed world, and a new creation?

“All glory, laud, and honor, to you redeemer king, to whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.” Jesus once called for a childlike faith. I don’t think he meant it was easy. Those children on Palm Sunday, like the ones in South Africa, have something to teach us. Can we learn their songs, put one foot in front of another, walk the walk? Can we join the march?

Amen.

1 Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018), 36-7.

Sermon for March 21st - Fifth Sunday of Lent

Focus: Jesus renews God’s covenant with Israel.

One of my favorite movies is They Shall Not Grow Old, a 2018 documentary released for the World War I centennial. The documentary relied entirely on decades-old interviews with veterans of the war, as well as original footage. Now if you’ve ever seen video footage from one hundred years ago, you know the problems. For starters, some of it has been damaged or exposed to sun or just the passage of time and is hard to see. Second, the camera speed isn’t quite right, so the people appear to be walking in comical, herky-jerky motion. Third, movies at the time did not have any sound. Finally, and most importantly, it’s all in black-and-white, so the people you are watching seem like ancient history, not like the rest of us. In They Shall Not Grow Old, director and producer Peter Jackson changes all of that. He and his team spent thousands of hours meticulously compiling the video, correcting the speed of the film, finding just the right audio to insert at just the right moment, and colorizing the film down to the smallest detail on every last uniform. The result? The movie is true to its title: They Shall Not Grow Old. Suddenly, you are right there with these men and boys on a battleship or in the trenches. They are the same people and stories as they ever were before, but suddenly we see them. They are alive, they are real, they are renewed.

Renewal is the topic in our reading from the book of Jeremiah today: God promises a “new covenant.” A “new deal,” if you will. So often we Christians think of the Old Testament as being the bad, old covenant that needed to be thrown away and the New Testament as the “new and improved” sequel. But, as Dr. Amy-Jill Levine has pointed out so many times in our Lenten Bible study, for Jews at the time and for Jesus, the problem was not the covenant or the relationship between God and the people itself. No, it’s that it needed to be renewed. It needed to come alive in a new way. It needed to become real to the people again.

That’s why Jeremiah’s “new covenant” never throws away the old. Notice that it’s the same promise as always before: “I will be your God and you will be my people.” It’s even the same laws. “I will write my law on their hearts.” The difference? It’s knowing the Lord. It’s an intimacy. It’s taking the laws and ways and covenant and relationship with God off the pages of the old, dusty scrolls and planting it directly in their hearts.  

In Jesus Christ, that is what happens. Today he promises, “I, when I am lifted up on the cross, will draw all people to myself.” Jesus is the best of the old covenant: born a Jew, faithfully kept all the laws, lived fully in relationship with God and with his neighbors. But as the living, breathing word of God, he himself embodies the very promises, the very laws, the very relationship that God promises. Best of all, on the cross he renews this covenant for Jews and Gentiles such as all of us alike. Every week, when we hear the words “This cup is the new covenant in my blood,” we get to take into our hearts, into our very bodies and souls, the God who has been faithful to his covenant people of all times and places. When we eat this bread and drink this cup: he makes us alive, he makes us our most real, truest selves, he forms us as his holy people renewed for the sake of the world.

In these words of promise, in this bread and wine, on the cross, we see the covenant “I will be your God” renewed and fulfilled in Jesus. Perhaps as things slowly return to normal, we his people can shoot for something better than normal: renewal. How can we live as people of the renewed covenant? How can we take what is best about the Christianity we have learned, taught, and known, the best about the Christ we meet here every week and make it alive, real, and renewed for others? How is Jesus renewing his covenant in our time and place? 

Amen.

Sermon for March 14th - Fourth Sunday of Lent

Focus: Jesus saves us from our sins.

A couple months ago, I remember seeing a video on Facebook of the first trucks leaving Pfizer in Portage to deliver vaccines across the country. As of now, there is still work to do: about ten percent of adults are vaccinated, and the pandemic is still at dangerous levels. But that image of those trucks leaving the plant in the dark early morning will always stick with me as something we had not had in a long time: a visible symbol of hope that the medicine we needed was on the way: that things would get better.

It is hard not to think of the connection to the pandemic when we hear the story from Numbers this morning about the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. This passage takes place not so long after God and Moses rescued them from slavery in Egypt, brought them out with mighty acts of power, staged a miraculous escape through the Red Sea on dry ground, and then received the Ten Commandments, as we heard last week. Finally, it takes place after God has been raining down “manna”—bread from heaven—to feed them on their journeys. But a funny thing happened on the way to the Promised Land. After a brief detour around the land of Edom (the Edomites did not allow the Israelites to pass through their country), the people grow impatient. They are whining, they are upset, they are grumbling. They are upset that they’re not getting where they’re going, they’re upset at the menu, they’re upset at, who knows what—probably each other, certainly Moses. Waiting to get where you’re going like kids on a car trip, or waiting for things to get better, like us now is not fun. In fact, they are so upset that they fall into nostalgia or homesickness. Only the home they’re longing for is Egypt! Where they used to be enslaved!

God responds by sending a plague of poisonous serpents who bite the people and cause them to die. This seems harsh to us. But if the punishment is severe, God is also quick to rescue. When the people recognize that they have sinned, confess their sins to Moses, and repent, God gives a foolproof snake-poison “vaccine.” A snake on a pole that whoever is bitten only has to look on it to live. The image is so famous that still today it is used as a symbol of healing and medicine.  

Here’s the secret of the story. The problem was never really the snakes. It was the people’s lack of trust in God. The people were wandering in the wilderness. No one is surprised when you find snakes in the wilderness. It’s also no surprise when quarreling, impatience, grumbling, and anger keep you from getting where you want to go. The snakes are the breaking point: the moment when the you-know-what hits the fan, and the people realize they need to reevaluate: they need to be honest with themselves, they need to name and deal with their sin, they need to find their direction, they need to get back to God. In a word: repentance. Set aside the short- term immediate fix of the snake on the pole. Repentance is the medicine they really need to change their lives for good.

Sounds a lot like Lent to me.

We have now had a year to reflect on this pandemic. This pandemic has done nothing but highlight exactly the way our society is still wandering in the wilderness: divisions between wealthy and poor, the inadequacy of our care for our elderly and the most vulnerable, a racial chasm between black and white, all the people we rely on to be “essential” but expose to low- paying, low-safety jobs, the simple day-to-day “human” interactions like hugs or handshakes that we took for granted, our stubborn unwillingness to be minorly inconvenienced to keep our neighbors alive, a choose-your-own-adventure understanding of truth, our constant struggle as churches to change, our tendency to place our trust in fallible human leaders instead of God.  

On Prayer Breakfast Tuesday, I asked a simple question: “What have you learned about yourself?”   

Don’t get me wrong: I am overjoyed that the vaccines are getting into arms. I am so grateful to have received my own. But the vaccine is our snake on the pole. It may save our bodies from the pandemic, but unless we do the hard work of repentance: the reevaluation, the self-honesty, the naming and dealing with our sin, finding our direction, getting back to God, we won’t be taking the medicine we need to save our souls and the soul of our country for the long-term.  

That medicine, that Savior is Jesus Christ. Lifted up not on a pole, but on the cross. This morning salvation has come to us in words so famous that many of us can quote them by heart: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

The medicine we need in our world right now is belief in Jesus. On the cross, he has been lifted up so that all people can see him, can come to him, can receive his grace, his forgiveness, his eternal life. For all the things and people we have trusted in, this world already has been saved by the one who gave himself for us, who gave us his life so that we may live with him, in him, and for him forever.

Belief in Jesus: that is eternal life. And it’s also life right now. Because believing in Jesus means believing in what he taught: “Love one another as I have first loved you.” “Greater love knows no measure than this, that one lay down their life for a friend.”  

That’s not just a shot in the arm. That’s not just how we get through this pandemic. That’s how we get through every plague and every challenge we face: together. In love. Trusting in the God who “so loves” us and the whole world. When we see this crucifix, may it be a sign of hope for us and for all people of the God who saves us and will bring us one day to the Promised Land.

Amen.

Sermon for March 7th - Third Sunday of Lent

Focus: Jesus gets in the middle between us and the forces of evil.

In our house growing up, we often heard the phrase, “Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones”—usually followed by a piercing “Mom-look.” In other words, don’t throw around accusations unless you’re perfect. The phrase goes back to the Gospel of John [8:2-11]. A woman is caught in adultery, and Jesus gets right in the middle of an angry mob about to put her to death and says these famous words: “Let whoever is without sin cast the first stone.” One by one, those in the mob all walk away—and finally, so does the woman, unharmed. 

Yes, we’ve probably all heard about “stone-throwing.” But what about stone-catching? 

Near the end of Just Mercy, Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer who defends people wrongfully condemned, talks of a person he met at a courthouse in New Orleans. She had first come to the court fifteen years ago when her grandson had been murdered. She watched the judge sentence the perpetrators, teenage boys, to life in prison and said, “I thought it would make me feel better but it actually made me feel worse.” After the decision, a random person came and just let her cry for a couple hours until she felt a bit better. This experience was so powerful that she committed to coming to the courthouse every day the next fifteen years to make herself  someone people could lean on, whether families of the victim or the accused. She said, “All these young children being sent to prison forever, all this grief and violence. Those judges throwing people away like they’re not even human, people shooting each other, hurting each other like they don’t care. I don’t know, it’s a lot of pain. I decided that I was supposed to be here to catch some of the stones people cast at each other.” 1

Stone-catching. That’s a lot more work than just not stone-throwing. But what if stone-catching is what we are called to do?

Our Old Testament story today continues the series of covenant (deal, pact, relationship) stories with the most famous covenant in the whole book: Mount Sinai—the Ten Commandments. The Ten Commandments are a set of rules that I think most of us probably sum up in three words: Thou shalt not: commit adultery, make unto thee a graven image, steal, murder, and so on. Understood this way, it’s really not so bad. If you haven’t killed anyone in the last week, you may think you can already check one off your list—not a bad start! Except that people going all the way back to Jesus and to Jewish interpreters long before him have always said that each commandment doesn’t only mean don’t do something; it also means something positive that you’re supposed to do.

One that comes to mind in our day and age is the eighth commandment: “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” The surface level meaning? Don’t tell lies about your neighbor in everyday life, and esp. not in court where the lies have a huge impact. Martin Luther says it means something a bit more for Christians: “We should fear and love God so that we do not desert or deceive, betray or besmirch our neighbors, or wreck their reputations, but 1. Speak up for them, 2. Speak well of them, 3. And always assume the best about them.” 2

What does that mean? In a word, stone-catching. That’s really hard. Most of us would rather not get involved. We say I’d rather not get in the middle of it. Nikki and I recently watched the movie Wonder 3 about a boy whose face is marked by a serious and visible physical disability who finally starts school after years of home-schooling. Did I mention the school he’s starting is middle school? Yeah. After a month or two of class, he finally makes one friend. He is crushed when he sees the friend talking with a few of the cool kids about how terrible he looks and about how his life must really not be worth living. His friend never really believed these things about him. It was just easier to go along with what was being said than take a stand. The movie finally changes when his friend stands up for him, and then others start standing up for him, and finally he is able to stand up for himself.

That is the power of stone-catching. Stone-catching saves people’s dignity. It saves the dignity of the person people are throwing stones at: they are no longer deserted, besmirched, betrayed. It saves the dignity of the stone-thrower: calling them to think about what they are saying. And finally it saves the dignity of the stone-catcher: they become someone who does the right thing even when it’s unpopular or hard.

And man is it hard. Our society does not place a lot of value on stone-catchers. We place a lot more value on the people who come up with the “quick diss,” the slam dunk tweet, the “politically incorrect” [read: “mean”] speech, the gossip, the person who “tells it like it is.” If you stand up and get in the way: if you defend an unpopular person’s reputation, if you correct someone who’s telling a lie, if you call out hypocrisy, you will not make many friends.

But the thing is: when the stones are coming in at you, don’t you really want that person who will step in and catch a few of them before they hit? Don’t you want someone who’s not afraid to step in, to do the right thing, to say the loving thing, to get in the middle.

That’s what Jesus did for us. When the woman was accused of adultery, Jesus got into the middle of a violent situation and with a word of truth and love restored everyone’s dignity. When the Temple had become a marketplace, a den of thieves, and home of religious hypocrites, Jesus got in the middle and made a scene, calling everyone to the dignity of children in “his Father’s house.” Finally, when the stones came for him and no one was left to defend him, he got in the middle between his accusers and the righteous anger of God and said, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

This is the foolishness of the cross. From a self-interested perspective, being a stone-catcher doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s a better “business decision” to lie low, to go along to get along. But that has never changed lives, it has never restored anyone’s dignity, it has never led to resurrection and new life in our relationships and in the world. On the cross we see the one who gets in the middle: between sin and judgment, between the devil and humanity, between death and resurrection, between the world the way it is and the kingdom of heaven Jesus is creating, between the stones we throw at each other and the stone that was rolled away from the tomb on the Third Day.

Once again, in Lent, we are asked: what are we willing to risk? Are we willing to not only opt out but to confront this death-giving cycle of lies and hate? Are we willing to get in the middle for our neighbors? Are we willing to be stone-catchers?

1 Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy (London: Oneworld Publishers, 2015), 307-8.2

Martin Luther, Small Catechism: Memorizing Edition, tr. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson (Thornbush Press, 2020), 15.

3 Wonder, Stephen Chbosky (Lionsgate, 2017).

Sermon for February 28th - Second Sunday of Lent

Focus: God is faithful to his baptismal promises to us.

In the introduction to our bible study book Entering the Passion of Jesus, Amy-Jill Levine writes, “In every good story, there is history and there s risk; and the stories of Holy Week, also called Passion Week, are brimming with both history and risk.

”1 History and risk. Abraham knew both well. Many of us probably know Abraham from the Sunday school song, “Father Abraham had many sons. Many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them, and so are you, so let’s all praise the Lord!” But it wasn’t always that way. When we meet Abraham in chapter 12, he’s got a different name: Abram, he’s 75-years-old, and he and his wife Sarah have no children and very little land. God comes to Abram, and his first words are, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.” By the end of the story, that’s exactly what happens. That’s the history.

But at every moment of that history is risk. Put yourself in Abraham’s place.

If God told you to get up and leave your home and your family and everything you knew, would

you leave? If God told you to change your name, would you do it?

If God told you that you would bear a child at age 100, would you believe him?

And, men, let’s not even get into the question of whether we’d get circumcised at that age.

Today’s story focuses on those last two questions. Abraham is promised time and again that he will have a child going all the way back to 12, and it never seems to happen. This is still a painful experience for so many today. Back then was no exception, when being able to pass on your possessions and your name to a child—and yes, at the time, a son—was everything. When we first meet Abraham, Eliezer of Damascus is his heir. Later, after decades of waiting, Abraham takes matters into his own hands and has a child with his servant Hagar. His child is named Ishmael.

And now, with Ishmael already born, God is coming to him again. In a way, God is promising him more than he has now: a son from his own wife Sarah. But Abraham faces several practical questions: Is he willing to risk the ridicule of being laughed at by Sarah and/or others, the hardship of raising another child when he’s well past the century mark, of having another mouth to feed, of the disappointment and anger he knows this will cause Hagar and Ishmael? Is he willing in so many ways to start over? But not just that. Beyond all the practical questions: Is Abraham willing to trust in God’s promises for him and for Sarah once again? Is he still willing to step out in risk? After so much disappointment, are he and Sarah still willing to hope for something more than what they already have?  

I could tell you the happy ending to this story, of the birth of his son Isaac, of the birth of his grandson Jacob and then his twelve sons, how Abraham really did become “Father Abraham,” of all the nations. But it seems to me that our life in faith is a lot closer to Abraham right here at this moment, to Sarah right here at this moment, than it is to Father Abraham of the song. The daily life of faith is: what that we have right now are we willing to risk for the promises of the Gospel?

Amy-Jill Levine writes:

During Lent, we should ask ourselves, what should I have done that I did not do? What risk should I have taken that I was afraid to take? When did my sense of self- preservation trump my sense of courage? Jesus not only takes up his own cross, Mark 8:34 states, “He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”…The Passion narrative asks much of us, and it also through Jesus’ example, gives us the knowledge that we can do what we are asked, and the assurance that we will succeed.2

Taking up our cross, it’s not about the small jokes we make like when we say, “I’m chronically late, guess it’s my cross to bear,” and so on. No, it’s about when we step out to take a risk in love for the Gospel and for our neighbors. Taking up our cross is risking the apology or the tough conversation or offering forgiveness in the hope that a better relationship is possible. Taking up our cross is risking saying the unpopular thing in hope that a more loving, more just world is possible. Taking up our cross during a pandemic looks like risking our own comfort or convenience in the hope of saving others’ lives. Taking up our cross means giving of ourselves and our possessions, in the hope that God will make sure there is enough to go around for all. Taking up our cross means risking talking to someone we disagree with or looking at something in a new way, risking that we might be wrong or need to change our minds, in the hope that God will lead us to the truth together. Taking up our cross is when we refuse to accept “good enough” and step out in faith, with Abraham, with Peter, behind Jesus.

The faith God asks of us is not easy. It’s not theoretical. It is lived out in daily, practical decisions. In our stories today, Abraham laughed at what God asked of him, Peter got angry and, get this, rebuked Jesus. But faith that is willing to risk loss, shame, even the cross, is the only faith that has ever led to resurrection. A risk-taking faith: that’s our part of our covenant, our pact, our relationship with God.

On God’s end, all the best promises. Abraham was promised land, descendants, and to be a blessing. We are promised righteousness, forgiveness, resurrection, eternal life, and so much more, to walk in newness of life: a world restored and renewed. We Christians are not just hoping for more than we have; we are hoping for the most anyone could ever have. We can risk stepping out in faith that God is reliable because we know his history. God was faithful to Abraham: giving him a son Isaac. God was faithful to Jesus, resurrecting him on the third day. 

We can trust that God will be reliable for us too by looking to our sign of the covenant. Abraham was circumcised and renamed. It is hard to think of a more daily reminder of his special relationship with God. Except perhaps for the daily sign that we have: our baptism. Every day, we can trace the sign of the cross on our forehead. Every day, we can remember our new name child of God. Every day as water washes over our face and our bodies, we can remember the water that gave us something better than a risk or a history: a future in Christ forever. With that eternal future secure for us, what in the present are we willing to risk for the Gospel and for our neighbors?

1 Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018), 7.
2 Amy-Jill Levine, Entering the Passion of Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2018), 9.

Sermon for February 21st - First Sunday of Lent

Focus: Baptism is the sign of God’s yes to us and creation.

When it was first constructed, the capitol building in Washington, DC looked very different from how it does today. The main thing missing was the huge dome or rotunda that lines the DC

skyline, which was not built until years later. In fact, they were still working on it during the

Civil War, that terrible conflict in which over 600,000 Americans lost their lives to preserve the

Union and end slavery. There is a story that, faced with such a conflict, President Lincoln was

asked whether it was really worth the time or expense to build the capitol rotunda. According to

the story, Lincoln responded, “If people see the Capitol going on, it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on.”

Our Old Testament story this morning speaks of another story of terrible conflict: the flood.

Noah’s ark is painted all over nurseries and depicted in children’s bibles. This probably would

have surprised Noah and the people and creatures who lived through this flood because it must

have been a very scary time. God gets so upset with sinful human beings that he creates a

destructive flood, rain of 40 days and 40 nights to wipe out everyone except Noah and his

family, and of course the 2 animals of every kind that make for the adorable nursery decorations.

What can we learn from this frankly disturbing story? First, it has to be said: God takes sin and

evil very seriously. If you are troubled by the particular solution of this story, I don’t blame you;

I think many of us are. But I will say this: as human beings, don’t we want a God who takes evil

seriously? I’m not just talking about the sins that society obsesses about: cussin’, carousin’,

carryin’ on, and what have you. But in a world where truly terrible things happen to people of

all ages and all backgrounds all the time, don’t we want a God who isn’t ok with that? No matter what else you might say about this story, a God who can get angry is a God who cares. The story of the flood is about God who cares about us and creation: more, God who loves his

creation so much that he won’t let it simply destroy itself.

Second, there is another side of this story. Why do the flood waters subside? You have to go

back to verse 8:1: “But God remembered Noah and all the wild animals that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.”

Why do you think Genesis tells us God remembered Noah and the animals with him? Do you

think God somehow forgot about them? I mean, other than Noah and people and animals on the

ark, there’s not a lot going on to worry about right now! No, when God remembers, it isn’t just

about calling to mind. When God remembers, it’s a call to action. Notice that in the very same

verse, as soon as God remembers Noah and the animals, God acts, things happen, the flood

stops. 

All of this comes together in the most beloved part of the story: the rainbow. 12 God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: 13 I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. 14 When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, 15 I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”

We often think that the rainbow is a sign for us. And it is, more on that in a second. But in the

story, God says, “when the bow is seen in the clouds, I [God!] will remember my covenant

between me and you and every living creature of all flesh.”

The rainbow is a reminder for God. It is a reminder of God’s covenant, God’s deal or pact with

humanity and all creatures. It is a reminder for God of his great love for humanity and all

creatures. And when God remembers, God acts. Every day, God provides sun to warm the

earth, rain to make things grow, oxygen to breathe. As God tells Noah, “ 22 As long as the earth

endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not

cease.” The rainbow is a reminder to God and to us of God’s yes to creation. Every time we see

the sun rise in the morning or set in the evening, every time we see plants sprout up or leaves

change color, every time we see raindrops land on the earth, or a rainbow clear away the clouds,

it is a reminder to us and to God of our covenant, our relationship between us and our fatherly

creator and provider that God’s good creation will go on. Living in covenant with the God of the rainbow means caring for our fellow human beings and our fellow creatures, caring for all of creation, siding with the forces of life and wholeness against destruction and decay.

These promises of life are completely fulfilled in Jesus Christ. When God saved us and all

creation once and for all from sin, evil, the devil, and death, he did it not through anger or wrath

or a death-giving flood, but through grace, forgiveness, and the self-giving love of his Son on the cross. 

Baptism is our ark. Through the waters of baptism, we are joined to Jesus. As Noah’s family and all the animals were saved along with him, so we and all of creation are saved through the righteousness of Jesus. 

In baptism, each of us is named and claimed by God. Baptism is the sign of our covenant, our relationship with God. In baptism, we were washed and marked with the sign of Jesus’s cross. Just as God remembered his beloved Son Jesus and raised him on Easter morning, so in baptism God remembers all of us and will raise us to everlasting life, too. 

Just as the rainbow is the sign of God’s yes to creation, that life will go on, baptism is the sign of God’s eternal yes to all of us: to our lives, to our future, to our special status as beloved children of God. In scary times, when the floods of life come, whether those floods are temptation like Jesus faced in the wilderness, the floods of a pandemic, or the floods of facing the hour of our death, we can hold onto this sign of our baptism and remember God’s promise to us that we are not forgotten, that God has promised to remember us and to act with resurrection and forgiveness. And that life: new, eternal, forgiven, flooded by Jesus’s love will go on.  

Amen.

Sermon for February 17th - Ash Wednesday

Focus: God calls us into his covenant of love.

If you’ve ever felt like you and your significant other are speaking different languages, maybe

you are—according to Gary Chapman, whose book The 5 Love Languages Nikki and I were

assigned to read for premarital counseling. The book describes how each of us communicates

and receives love in different ways. The five so-called “love languages” Chapman identifies are

words of affirmation, quality time together, acts of service, receiving gifts, and physical touch.

Expressing love through one “language,” may be completely lost on your spouse if they

understand love in a different way. Early in the book he writes,

Your emotional love language and the language of your spouse may be as different as

Chinese from English. No matter how hard you try to express love in English, if your

spouse understands only Chinese, you will never understand how to love each other. My

friend on the plane was speaking the language of affirming words to his third wife when

he said, “I told her how beautiful she was. I told her I loved her. I told her how proud I

was to be her husband.” He was speaking love, and he was sincere, but she did not

understand his language. Perhaps she was looking for love in his behavior and didn’t see

it. Being sincere is not enough. We must be willing to learn our spouse’s primary love

language if we are to be effective communicators of love. 1

Lent is about love. But not just any love. Love in our most important relationship: our

relationship with God. This love is like a beautiful marriage covenant, a covenant made

possible, called into being by Jesus’s great love for us on the cross. But a marriage covenant

involves two sides. On our side, this relationship is characterized by the words of the “double-

love command”: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul,

and with all your mind….You shall love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:37, 39).”

All of us are here because we love God and want to love him more. That’s a great start for this

Lenten season! The question is: how does that love get expressed? Are we speaking God’s love

language?

That was the question the prophet Isaiah was putting before the Israelites in tonight’s reading.

The people of Israel don’t get what’s going on. They have knelt before God in devout

disciplines of prayer and fasting. They clearly do love God! But it doesn’t seem to be working.

They are still stuck in exile in faraway Babylon: no king, no Temple, they aren’t much of a

nation to speak of anymore. And they complain, “ 3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why

humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”

Answer: They are speaking the wrong love language. It’s not that God doesn’t see or doesn’t

notice the fasting. It’s just not the love that is most important to God. The way to God’s heart?

The prophet answers:

“ 6 Is not this the fast that I choose:

  to loose the bonds of injustice,

  to undo the thongs of the yoke,

 to let the oppressed go free,

  and to break every yoke?

  7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,

  and bring the homeless poor into your house;

 when you see the naked, to cover them,

  and not to hide yourself from your own kin?”

I suspect the answer is the same in our time. If ever in our lifetimes our country has seen the

need in our society for God’s grace, healing, and renewal, it is this last year. This pandemic has

laid bare many of the shortcomings, inequalities, and silent cruelties that we have too often

looked away from when things were well with the rest of us. There are many ways that we could address these problems: political, legal, scientific, medical solutions. These all have to be a part of how we repent as individuals and as a nation. But the most fundamental way that we

Christians can repent, can turn around, can start anew is by recommitting to our love, our

marriage covenant with God. Ashes, giving up chocolate, if they help get us in the right mindset

for this great work, then they are a fine beginning. But how about the things Isaiah described?

Breaking the bonds of injustice, letting the oppressed go free, breaking every yoke, sharing our

bread, housing the homeless, clothing the naked, coming to the aid of our brothers and sisters in

time of need? Now you’re speaking God’s language.

Throughout this time of Lent, we’ll be paying special attention to the Old Testament readings.

Every week, we will hear of God coming to God’s people in love and in covenant. We will wind

up with the new covenant made with us at the Last Supper and the cross, a new covenant

summed up with a new commandment, “Love one other as I have first loved you (Jn 13:34).” In

a world plagued by so many words of hate, can we recommit ourselves this Lent to our covenant with God? To hear and speak God’s language of love to all the world. 

Amen.

1 Gary Chapman, The 5 Love Languages: The Secret to Love That Lasts (Chicago: Northfield, 1992), 15.

Sermon for February 14th

Focus: Jesus is the God of the mountaintop, too.

Transfiguration is one of those words you only ever hear in church. It means “a complete

change of form or appearance into a more beautiful or spiritual state.” 1 We have this festival of

Jesus’s Transfiguration every year, and you can pretty much predict the sermon message and the

3 or 4 hymns we will sing, including “How Good, Lord, to Be Here!” which ends with the stanza

“How good, Lord, to be here! Yet we may not remain; But since you bid us leave the mount,

Come with us to the plain.” Or as I preach it every year: “The God of the mountaintop is the

God of the valley, too.”

Only…this year is not every year. It’s easy to say, “the God of the mountaintop is the God of the

valley, too,” when you’re standing on the mountaintop—or at least in front of a congregation

with Holy Communion 15 minutes away, and doughnuts and refreshments another 15 minutes

after that.

But that’s not where we are this year. Where are we? Well, let’s ask ourselves. I want each of

us to take a minute right now and think about what this pandemic has meant: to you, your family,

our country, God’s world, over the last year. Let that silence, let those memories, let those

people and those faces preach just for a minute.

This is the valley.

Don’t get me wrong: It took faith for Peter, James, and John to follow Jesus up the mountain just

as it took faith for each of us to wake up every Sunday and drive out to North Main or Buckhorn

Road. Maybe we didn’t see Jesus shining with the uncreated light of the glory of God the Father

every week then, but we all have some pretty cherished memories at those places and with each

other. Every week, even on the Sundays in February, Jesus showed up in word and water, in

bread and wine.

But following Jesus back down the mountain, that was the most faithful thing that Peter, James,

and John had done so far. Why? Because in just the previous chapter, Jesus has told them what

is going to happen. Mark says: “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo

great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and

after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly (Mk 8:31-2).” So when God the Father

on the mountaintop out of the cloud says, “Listen to him,” this is what he means, not just Listen

to him and say your prayers, do your job, and be good people, but Listen to him because hard

times are ahead. Following Jesus into and through the valley, that is faith.

All of you are here, all of you are listening to this or reading this because in some way, no matter

how many doubts or questions you might have, at some level, you believe Jesus’s promise: “yea

though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me (Ps 23:4).”

What does it look like for Jesus to be with us? We might wish it would be him bearing us up “on

eagle’s wings,” and getting us the you-know-what out of this valley. I’m sure Peter would have

wished that on Good Friday; Jesus himself wished that in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Father if

it is your will, take this cup from me (Mk 15:36).” But more often, Jesus comes into the valley

by transfiguring the suffering that we see—that word “a complete change of form or appearance

into a more beautiful or spiritual state.”

If this year, has revealed the absolute worst in our world, it has revealed the absolute best, too.

When I look at mortality counts, the toll on our hospitals, unemployment, social distancing and

social disintegration, how can I not see death? But when I see frontline workers risking their

lives so that others might live, pastors, priests, and lay people sharing the Gospel in new ways,

incredible generosity to food banks and churches alike, and cards, calls, and Zoom Christmases

to keep others safe and connected, how can I not see Christ?

Mountaintop experiences are for life in the valley. They show us who Christ is and what he is

about and the light he brings to us and the world, when the cloud of darkness of our present

reality would veil our faith. The light of the transfigured Christ is never quite extinguished. It is

the light that shatters the stone to the tomb, streams forth through the breaking of the bread at

Emmaus, illumines Jesus’s face to Mary Magdalene in the garden, and speeds the feet of a

heartbroken Peter to the empty tomb. It is a light that holds out faith and hope even in the valley.

It is the light we need right now.

Today is a very different Transfiguration Sunday because we are in a very different place. Over

the last year, we have met God in the valley. But today, I want you and all of us to trust in this

promise: the God of the valley is the God of the mountaintop, too. Hang onto those glimpses of

hope, hang onto those promises of Christ; listen to him: listen to his words of life. Let the light

of the Christ we know and who is with us now transfigure the pain and suffering that we and our

world have gone through. Because after every valley, Lent, and cross, there is Easter.

Amen.

1 https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/transfiguration

Sermon for February 7th

A Homily from Pr. James Smith

Focus: Jesus calls us to life-giving work.

The movie The Founder1, available on Netflix, is about how, “After a fateful encounter with the

McDonald brothers, struggling salesman Ray Kroc becomes driven to change the way hamburgers are made and sold.” 1 The title plays on who really is the founder of McDonald’s.

Technically, it’s the McDonald’s brothers. They gave the restaurant its name and founded the

first couple locations in California. But McDonald’s then was very different. It wasn’t fast, and

the menu was wide-ranging and hardly recognizable. In some ways, you could argue that it was

a slightly better restaurant, but it wasn’t McDonald’s. Ray Kroc had a critical insight: there are

tons of restaurants where you sit down, pick out one of many items, and wait a while for a

moderate price. For Kroc, McDonald’s needed to focus on where they were needed and what

they were good at. Ray Kroc is the real founder because he made McDonald’s what it is today:

By simplifying the menu, originally eliminating just about everything but hamburgers and fries,

he allowed McDonald’s to focus on low prices and fast food that was, well, fast, all while having a business that was easy to franchise and expand across the country. The rest is history—and a decent movie. 

There is a similar moment in today’s Gospel story from Mark (Hang with me, now). In Jesus’s first day in ministry, he has cast out demons and healed many people who were sick, including Peter’s mother-in-law. The disciples realize this is a pretty good gig; think how popular someone would be who could simply lay on hands and perform a one-time vaccine right now 

  (without the poke); and they want to capitalize. This is good business for their reputation and social standing if nothing else: “Everyone’s searching for you!” Only the next morning, Jesus is gone. Mark says that Simon Peter and the disciples hunted for Jesus almost like he’s some sort of raccoon that they’re trying to corner. Where did their meal-ticket to fame and fortune go!? 

When they finally find him, he surprises them. The most powerful and popular sensation in all of Galilee, is alone, praying in a deserted place. And when they tell him to get up and get moving and healing, he says, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” 

This is not exactly what they had in mind. Neighboring towns means travel, it means saying 

goodbye to friends and family that you have in your hometown of Capernaum, it means having

to rely on others’ hospitality: this crew isn’t rich. More than any of that, it means starting over. Instead of cashing in on their popularity at home and also healing the people they know and love, it means going to some town where you might not know anyone, and where they don’t know you and might be suspicious of you. This is not the “business model” that any of the disciples had in mind after only their first day on the job.

In our reading for prayer breakfast for Tuesday, theologian Frederick Buechner wrote about “vocation,” a word that means “the work a person is called to do by God.” Most of us probably don’t show up or tune in Sunday mornings to hear about work; that’s what we do the rest of the week! But in a way, that’s Buechner’s point. He writes, 

All different kinds of voices call you to all different kinds of work. Which is the voice of God? A good rule for finding out is this: the kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you really get a kick out of your work, you’ve presumably met requirement (a), but if your work is writing cigarette ads, the chances are you’ve missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work is being a doctor in a leper colony, you probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you’re bored and depressed by it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a), but you probably aren’t helping your patients much either….The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deepest hunger meet.2 

The message from today’s reading is about vocation, about calling. Jesus knows his vocation.

His disciples don’t—not yet. What is his vocation? He spells it out for us: “To proclaim the

message—the Good News—for that is what I have come to do.” His disciples not only don’t

understand that, but they are distracting him from that message. The devil tempts Jesus to use

his superhuman powers to impress others or even to fix very real social evils, and in a way, that’s what the disciples want him to do, too. There is nothing wrong with any of this! Except that if all he does is heal friends in Capernaum, it gets in the way of what Jesus came to do: proclaim the saving Good News to all who can hear it. 

What is our vocation? What is our calling? Where does our deep gladness meet the world’s deepest hunger? There are sooooo many things we could do as a church; every day my e-mail is inundated with marketing campaigns featuring everything from online tech services to new organs to campaigns to send money to missionaries in China and everything in-between. As individuals, we also face the same questions: how will we spend our work-time, our free-time, our family-time, our service-time? The problem in our world, in our church, and in our lives is not a lack of calling. It’s a lack of direction. 

Jesus’s solution: It’s every bit as counter-cultural then as it is today. Prayer. Martin Luther once supposedly said, “I have so much to do today that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” It’s funny. And grossly impractical, we say to ourselves. We have so much to do every day! But what if that time for prayer, far from wasting time, actually frees up time? What if prayer is asking God: Where do you really need me? What are you really calling me to do right now? I can’t promise that’s how it will work in your life—you’ll have to find that out for yourself—but I can tell you that’s how it has worked in mine and in my ministry. 

God is not calling us to endless busywork nor thankless grinding. Frankly, that makes God way less demanding than our jobs, self-help campaigns, or 21st century culture. The people who are worst at this work are the disciples: who are restlessly moving, searching, hunting through the night to find Jesus and make him do what they want. The people who get it? Jesus who prayed. And Peter’s mother-in-law who has just experienced rest and restoration and then is able to serve. 

As we begin another year, maybe it’s worth giving discipleship a chance. After-all, over the last 11 months, we’ve tried everything else. This is not to give you more work to do. But to prayerfully discern the work God and the world need you to do and to experience the deep gladness that comes from answering God’s call. 

Amen.

1 https://www.netflix.com/title/80101899, accessed 2/3/2021.

2 Frederick Buechner, Beyond Works: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2004), 404-5.

Sermon for January 31st

A Homily from Pr. James Smith

Focus: Jesus exercises his authority to save us.

One of the wonderful things about being a pastor is, if you keep your ears open, you can get all kinds of wisdom. I remember one person in my first call in southern Indiana whose words have had a profound effect on my ministry and on my life. She used to tell me, “People will forget what you say, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.” While, ironically, I do

remember her words, I remember even more how she made me feel: trusted, valued, encouraged. It is her compassionate care that has stuck with me even after leaving that church, allowing me to hear and know the wisdom of her words. 

Words seem to be the focus of our stories today. Shortly before Moses’s death in Deuteronomy, God promised that someday he would raise up another prophet “like Moses (Dt 18:15),” one whom “the LORD knew face-to-face (Dt 34:10)” and who would share these words of divine teaching and wisdom with the people of Israel. The years, decades, centuries passed, as prophets came and went: some great, others not so much, scribes filled their places: some faithful, others not as much, and all along the people waited for the LORD to fulfill this promise of a mighty prophet. 

And finally, in the person and teaching of Jesus Christ, God fulfills the promise. The word that is used twice today to describe Jesus’s teaching is authority. “They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one with authority, and not as their scribes”—and “What is this? A new teaching—with authority!” 

But you know what I want to know? 

What he actually teaches! 

Look over the passage again. For however much the people “were astounded,” however much “they were amazed,” Mark never tells us what Jesus’s teaching actually was. In fact, this really becomes a theme of Mark’s Gospel. In Matthew, we have Jesus’s “Sermon on the Mount,” in Luke, beautiful parables, and if you open the Gospel of John, Jesus just gives one long speech after another. But in the Gospel of Mark, we hear very little about what Jesus actually taught. 

There often is a temptation to think that what made Jesus special was his teachings. So Jesus takes his place alongside Buddha, and Gandhi, and whoever else, but if Jesus’s teachings are what make him great, that’s not what Mark tells us. No, instead, Jesus’s authority seems to come from somewhere else. 

What could that be? Could it be his family? Not likely. The son of a carpenter. Could his authority come from his eloquence? Perhaps, but if so, again, where are his words? Could it come from his social status? Certainly he had to have some sort of level of respect to be allowed to preach and teach, but he himself was not a priest or a scribe. 

Jesus’s authority comes from none of those things. The word Mark uses for authority in Greek is ἐξουσία, and unlike some of the bad connotations our word authority has, it’s entirely positive. It means “what comes out of your being.” Authority is not a schtick of being a Tough Guy® or appearing to be in control. No, authority is what comes out of who you are.

And in this passage, we see exactly what Jesus’s authority is. His authority is his love. And to

be more specific, it’s how he uses that love: to save others. 

Because right in the middle of his sermon, Jesus has something happen that I’ve not yet had to deal with as a pastor: a man starts convulsing and screaming right in front of him. (Remind me of this if I ever get flustered when Titus coos while I’m trying to preach.) This poor man is being driven literally outside of himself by a demon. In contrast to Jesus, this is a man who has no authority, who cannot even control his own actions or speech. 

And Jesus confronts the demon. He commands him. And the demon, amazingly, recognizes who Jesus is. And not only that, what he has come to do. The demon in one line shows remarkable insight that will take the apostles three years to piece together! The demon says, “What have you to do with us Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? [Yes, he has! Remember last week: the kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of the devil.] I know who you are, the holy one of God”—a confession of faith Peter the Rock won’t make for seven more chapters. And the demon…comes out! Voila! 

But you know what stands out to me? “Be silent, and come out of him.” Come out of him. In this chaotic moment when Jesus is literally being yelled at by the forces of hell, he sees the humanity of this poor man suffering in front of him. This unnamed man who is not himself in any way, shape, or form, who has nothing to offer Jesus in return, and honestly, is doing nothing but distracting from Jesus’s teaching, is still a human being: a human being who is the object of Jesus’s love, compassion, salvation. 

That’s what authority looks like. If people went home that Sabbath day debating the finer points of Jesus’s sermon, we don’t hear about it. But we do have their reaction recorded after he saved this one man. We imagine that many of them came back to synagogue the next week to hear him again, perhaps they were later in the pews for the “Sermon on the Mount” or the feeding of the 5000. But in this act of saving love toward one man, Jesus’s message as being the Savior of the world was vividly, memorably, authoritatively clear. 

Every one of us is that man. Every one of us stands before God in need of mercy that can’t come from ourselves, but must come from out of his heart and his great love. And on the cross and in the waters of baptism, Christ has shown his great love for each and every one of us as the Word of God who speaks louder than human words. 

So what is our authority as Christ’s church? If we are to “fish for people,” to bring people to Jesus, as we discussed last week, what does that look like? Let there be no doubt: We face the same forces of evil at work in the world now that were active at the synagogue in Capernaum back then. 

Pope Francis once described the church as a field hospital. His point? You tend to people’s hurt and injuries, and only then do you teach them. I suspect that when this current crisis is finally over, people are not going to remember what I said week-to-week or what we said week-to- week, but they will remember how we made them feel. Did we treat their lives as valued and precious, as people Christ died for (1 Cor 8:11)? Was our message one of spoken words or the Word in action? How will we exercise the authority given to us for the sake of the world Christ loves?

Amen.