Expectations: A Christmas Eve Sermon on Luke 2:1-20

It feels weird to me that it’s Christmas Eve, but there’s no snow on the ground and it’s been in the forties all week. I don’t know why this feels weird to me. I’m from southern California, a place where we sang I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas with the same seriousness as we sang Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer. Every kid knows reindeers fly and unless Grandma decided to do some roofing on midnight on Christmas Eve, Grandma is perfectly safe. But even though the forecast says it should be in the sixties and sunny tomorrow when I get to my parents’ house, like it was for every Christmas of my childhood, there’s still this part of me that grew up with the same Norman Rockwell paintings as you all did and feels like there’s something missing, like it’s not quite Christmas, without snow.

And beyond snow, the whole Christmas season is a time thick with expectation. We often come into this holiday with this vision in our minds of how this is supposed to be, and rarely does expectation meet reality. Maybe it’s a simple thing. The church office computer met its untimely demise on Wednesday. Inconvenient and anxiety-producing, yes, but we’re still here, we still have bulletins. Gwen’s friend rescued the files from the now-fried motherboard, Gwen worked on the bulletin on her home computer, and it all worked out. Even if it hadn’t and we were sharing copies of the hymns copied out of the office hymnal, it still would have worked out and it would have made a good story. Like the time the power went out mid-worship and we all had to migrate to the social hall. Maybe your Christmas crisis is like the office Christmas crisis, the goose got over-cooked, or the dishwasher chose today to die, or your family got stuck in traffic, something annoying and frustrating and not what you’d envisioned, but something that will make a hilarious Christmas tale for years to come.

But maybe too, the misplaced expectations are more serious. The relationship you’d hoped could mend cannot. The loved one’s absence stings more severely than you expected. The grief, fear, disappointment, sadness, pulls stronger in the festive lights and sounds of this “most wonderful time of the year.” In a culture, and a season, so all-consumed with a carefully curated joy, it feels like there shouldn’t be space for anything but radiance on this night. So what do we do when real life creeps in, when our actual humanness messes with the perfect divinity of how we imagine this season to be?

The good news is that there is no scene more unexpected, more messy, then the one we hear this night. First off, we have an angel who came to two families to proclaim to them their role in ushering in God’s salvation. But these two families were not leaders or rulers, kings or diplomats, warriors or wise sages. They were an aging priest and his equally aged wife living their days in the hill country of Judea, and an unmarried teenager and her cautious fiancée from the even more unlikely region of the Galilee. These are the two families who were to give birth to, to raise, the one who would be called “Prophet of the Most High” and the one who would be called “Son of the Most High” and “Son of God.” When the people had heard the “promises made to their ancestors” and the words God “spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets,” that God would “raise up a mighty savior… in the house of his servant David,” this was not the branch of the Davidic family tree that they imagined such a savior would come. People who are supposed to be powerful, people who are to change, to save, the world, are supposed to be strong and mighty and, well, have power. A pretty far cry from two babies born in out-of-the-way corners of society. At least Moses had the whole basket switch-a-roo and was raised by the daughter of the Pharaoh. These two had no indication that they could possibly be the Savior of the world and his messenger. The Angel Gabriel’s proclamation, Mary’s Magnificat, and Zechariah’s Benedictus notwithstanding, Jesus does not have the pedigree to be the sort of successor to David for whom the people of God had been waiting.

And then there’s the manger scene itself. Mary and Joseph, relegated to the barn because there was “no room for them in the inn.” The King of Kings resting not on pillows of silk, but in feed trough. Not attended to by servants, but lulled to sleep by the rustling of cattle, sheep, and goats. And despite the pastoral quietude with which the scene is portrayed, I went with my godson on his class trip to the farm this fall and was reminded that there is one dimension of barns that really cannot be captured in images, the smell. It smells in barns. The sickly sweet, cloying aroma of livestock packed in a contained space is something that never comes up. There are a lot of Christmas theme scented candles this time of year, but no one ever sells manger-scented ones. If we want to really remember the reason for the season that may be a missed marketing opportunity.

And then we pan out from the manger a bit, and there are some shepherds. Which shepherds have a bit of a mixed metaphor here. Because on one hand, shepherds were an image of kingship in the Old Testament. King David, from who’s line Jesus has come, was himself a shepherd, and his kingship was often described as shepherding Israel. Protecting it from invaders and watching over it as a shepherd cares for his sheep. But, on the other hand, the shepherds in this story actual shepherds, not metaphors for royalty. And actual shepherds bear about as much similarity to King David as Christmas-spice scented candles bear to an actual manger. It’s a pretty image, until you get a whiff of it. But these are the people who are given the first notice that a savior has been born. Not Herod in his palace in Jerusalem, Quirinius in Syria, or Emperor Augustus way off in Rome, all three locations, by the way, way more expected places for the birth of a king who would shepherd God’s people. But this angel appeared to actual shepherds, in a field, with sheep. Who immediately upon hearing the news dropped what they were doing, or more likely gathered their sheep with them and brought them along, to see this promised Messiah.

So friends, on this night of all nights, I invite you to put aside your expectations of what this night should be, and who you should be to enter into it. Put aside whatever poor measuring device, be it paycheck or pant size or general holiday cheeriness, under which you are not measuring up, and just be in the promise of the presence of our infant savior. Because trust me, I can smell you, or, more accurately, I cannot smell you, so I can say with great confidence, there is nothing about you that is weirder or more unexpected or ill-fitting then where the Christ child was actually born. Jesus was not born into a Norman Rockwell painting, Jesus was born into our world, into our lives. It is in the mess, the real mess and muck and reality of this world that God came, that God wanted to come, and that God still comes.

So, if only for tonight, set aside your expectations, and just wonder at the sight. For as the Angel Gabriel once said to shepherds in a field, “To you is born this day in the City of David, a Savior who is the Messiah, the Lord.” Thanks be to God. Amen.

Change Has Come: A Sermon on Luke 1:57-80

A bit of an aside before we begin, but I had a really interesting first hand experience with this text this week. I meet monthly with a group of colleagues, and one of them had surgery on his vocal chords this week. So when we gathered Thursday, he was completely unable to speak. He communicated with us through gestures and a text-to-talk app on his phone. The text-to-talk app, while helpful, was a slow process. And for reasons I don’t know its already robotic voice had a British accent, which made it pretty hard to understand. So mostly, he just listened. And while my colleague is always an excellent listener with a gift for asking good questions, somehow in his silence I noticed that gift even more profoundly. I missed his quick wit and the ease of conversation, and felt the weight of the dialogue having to be carried by the two of us who still had voices, but I did really notice, and appreciate, his mostly silent presence in the space, interspersed with short, robotic British, comments that gently moved the conversation forward. Had I been the voiceless one, I may have simply not come. I’m really glad he had the wisdom to be there because voice or no voice, in this busy pre-Christmas week, I appreciated his calming presence.

Before we get into the meat of this Gospel reading, lets recap a little bit for anyone who wasn’t here two weeks ago or who just needs a refresher on who Zechariah and Elizabeth were and why it was weird that Zechariah wasn’t talking. We read earlier in Luke’s Gospel that Zechariah and Elizabeth were faithful followers of God. Zechariah was a priest and Elizabeth a descendent of Aaron, both were described as “righteous before God, living blamelessly.” But the couple had no children, and were both “getting on in years.” One day, Zechariah was given the privilege of entering the Temple to offer incense to the Lord. And while he was in the Temple, the Angel Gabriel appeared to him and told him his prayers had been answered because Elizabeth was going to become pregnant and give birth to a son. And not just any son. This son was to be named John, a name which means “God has shown favor” or “God is gracious,” because, “he will be great in the sight of the Lord… even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will turn many of the people to Israel to the Lord… [and] make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Yet despite Zechariah’s righteousness, his response to this miraculous messenger, and message, was not joy but hesitation. “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years?” While one has to admit Zechariah’s very legitimate question, Gabriel had no time for such concerns. “I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God, and I have been sent to speak to you… But now, since you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time, you will become mute, unable to speak, until the day these things occurred.” Zechariah came out of the Temple unable to speak and following the completion of his Temple service, they returned to their home in the Judean hill country where Elizabeth did become pregnant, as the angel had said.

All that happened nine months and eight days ago. We pick up the story after child has been born, Elizabeth’s relatives and neighbors have rejoiced at the birth just as the angel said they would, and the time has come, per Mosaic law, for the child to be named. By first century custom, the right to name a child belonged to the father because naming something was seen as a way to claim ownership over it. But since Zechariah was unable to speak, their neighbors and relatives assumed they would name the boy after his father, thus labeling the child as belonging to Zechariah. But contrary to custom, Elizabeth spoke up and interjected, “No; he is to be called John.” One interesting aside in Luke’s narrative is that both John and Jesus were named not by their fathers, as per custom, but by their mothers. According to the direction of the Angel Gabriel, but still. Already in this subtle shift away from the cultural narrative of the father claiming naming rights, we see that God doing a new thing here, a thing that is shifting the power balance from its traditional centers to those whom have been marginalized. Watch that theme develop; we’ll see it for the next year we spend in Luke.

But this was still the first century, so despite Elizabeth’s assertion, the relatives and neighbors weren’t sure about choice. “‘None of your relatives has this name.’ Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him.” To which Zechariah, by writing on a tablet, affirmed, “‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed.” But what’s really amazing is what happened next. For immediately after affirming the child’s name was to be John, Zechariah regained the ability to speak. And speak he did, praising God with this beautiful prophetic message, which is often called the Song of Zechariah or the Benedictus, after the first word in the Latin translation, “blessed.”

The Song of Zechariah is one of my favorite pieces of scripture. The Service of Morning Prayer in our hymnal has a song based on this passage, and in seminary, this service was the setting for our Tuesday chapel worship every week. So every Tuesday we would chant these beautiful words, “Blessed be the God of Israel, who comes to set us free. Who visits and redeems us and grants us liberty. So have the prophets long declared that with a mighty arm, God shall turn back our enemies and those who wish us harm.” And like anything you do over and over, week after week, even six years out from seminary, I still carry that song, still find comfort and strength and hope in it.

What I find so powerful about Zechariah’s words is how assured and confident they are. Like Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s Benedictus speaks of the coming Savior, speaks of Jesus, in the past tense. “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, because he has… redeemed his people. He has raised up a mighty savior… He has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant.” Again that repetitive past tense, he has, he has, he has. It is only when Zechariah gets to the part of the song where he is speaking of the human realm, when he is speaking of his own son, that he switches to the future tense, to what for us and for his listeners would be the proper order. “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways.” Also like Mary’s Magnificat, Zechariah’s song is full of references to Old Testament promises of God’s saving acts. The phrase “mighty savior” in the Greek literally translates to “horn of salvation,” an image the Psalmist used to talk about God’s power and might. There is reference to the covenants, the promises, God made to Abraham and to David, and now Jesus and John are the fulfillment of those covenants. References to dawn and light evoke God’s triumph over sin and death. There is so much hope and promise packed into these few brief verses; I could talk all day about it if you’d let me.

But this morning, at this time, what I find the most hopeful, the most powerful about the Song of Zechariah, is that Zechariah is the one who sang it. Because remember who Zechariah is, remember what just ended for him. Zechariah, a priest and righteous man, who’d lived blamelessly before God for his whole life, doubted the seemingly ridiculous claim of an angel who appeared to him in the Temple, and then was struck mute for nine months. This guy literally just got his voice back, is set in his ways, and, let’s face it, is probably sleep-deprived because he’s got an eight day old baby, and the first thing out of his mouth is this powerful song of praise. This seems out of character to me for a guy who encountered an angel in a Temple and was like, “I don’t know if I should trust you, I’m pretty old.”

What the Song of Zechariah shows us is the power of God to change us, to transform us, to make us capable of more than we know. In Zechariah’s mind he was old, set in his ways, unable to do anything but the faithful, settled things he’d always done. But God had a new purpose, a new task, a new adventure, in mind for Zechariah, and in this song we see Zechariah embracing it. Yes it took him a while, but he got there eventually. Some of you may have heard one of my common quips about my relationship with God. Oftentimes when I’m facing a major choice or transition in life, it seems like I’ll spend a great deal of time carefully explaining to God exactly what would be the best thing to happen, the best place for me to end up. And then God, with boundless compassion, will look at me and say, “awe, that’s adorable that you put all that time into a plan. But no, I’m going to put you over here now,” and there I go. It’s how I ended up in Syracuse on internship. Not my first choice, but probably the place I learned the most. It’s how I ended in California for my first call, when I determinedly wanted to go back to DC. And it’s how I ended up here; Battle Creek being a place I didn’t even know existed, and thus couldn’t imagine being.

The good news, dear friends in Christ, on this final Sunday in Advent, as we await the imminent arrival of the promised savior, is that in the birth, death, and resurrection, God has changed, has saved, the world. “Has” as in already has, past tense, our salvation is upon us. And we, much as we, like Zechariah, may not be able to understand or imagine it, are the people God is using to bring this revelation of God’s love to light. We can and we will be the ones who bear this good news. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Mary Knew: A Sermon on Luke 1:26-56

While we at Trinity are still enjoying the treasure trove of amazing Advent music, the rest of the world has gone full on Christmas by now. Their loss really, because Advent songs are so great, but anyway. One of the more modern carols that gets play this time of year is the praise and worship song from the early nineties, “Mary Did You Know.” If you haven’t heard it, it musically really is a lovely song. Pentatonix has an especially beautiful, haunting and almost aching rendition of it. The music, and of course their harmonies, are gorgeous. But, musicality aside, I’m not a huge fan of the song because friends, Mary totally knew. She knew.

She knew because the angel told her, “you will conceive… and bear a son... [who] will be called Son of the Most High.” She knew when she saw her cousin Elizabeth, miraculously also with child. She knew when that same child leapt in Elizabeth’s womb, and when Elizabeth proclaimed, “Blessed are you among women… the mother of my Lord.”

And not only did Mary know, Mary agreed to it. Mary said yes. Pastor Nadia Bolz Weber says the biggest miracle of the birth of Jesus is not the whole Holy Spirit conception thing, but the fact that the angel found someone willing to take on the project in the first place. Because in first century Palestine, bearing a child out of wedlock was at best an invitation for gossip, and at worst could end in stoning. And let’s not be too judgmental on the first century. While stoning’s off the table, I can tell you from my own experience, and I’d guess the rest of the women in the room have similar stories, whether a woman, by choice or not by choice, has or does not have children, many people still feel entitled to have a say in decisions that should belong to oneself, possibly with consultation from one’s significant other and/or doctor. But, I digress. The point is, Gabriel showed up and laid this whole pretty much unbelievable scheme out, and after just a few clarifying questions, Mary said yes. Not just yes, but yes with conviction. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

Last week we heard Gabriel present a similar promise to Zechariah, though with much lower stakes as Zechariah a) had been praying for a child, b) was married, c) was quite a bit older than Mary, and, maybe most importantly, d) was a dude, and thus not the one getting pregnant. But Zechariah was all, I don’t know about this. I’m old, Elizabeth’s old, you’re a weird messenger from God, “how will I know that this is so?” Mary, on the other hand, with such a bigger task assigned to her, was all in. “Here am I… Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” While Zechariah can be a comforting companion for us, reminding us that even those who seem the most faithful, the most devout, the most connected to God, can become comfortable with the status quo and miss the miraculous inbreaking of God among us; Mary is a challenging companion, because Mary gives us a model of what it looks like to take risks in our faith. To respond, “Here I am,” when God interrupts our lives to call us to stand up for those in need, to feed the hungry, cloth the naked, heal the sick, visit the imprisoned, and advocate on behalf of those whom the rich and powerful have forgotten or silenced or trampled in their reach for the top. To proclaim, “Let it be with me according to your word,” when we are given the seemingly impossible task of bringing God’s kingdom to earth, of being God’s hands, and feet, and heart, and voice in the world.

This is a big, bold statement, to say to God, let your word decide how I live, how I love, how I serve, who I am. Let your hope, your grace, your expectations, define me and not those of the world around me. Let me act with courage and bravery when I am the one in a place to stand up to injustice, to speak for the voiceless, to love God’s people. Let me believe the unbelievable, stand up to the undefeatable, risk the impossible, trusting in the promise that nothing is impossible with God. These are big words, and this is a big ask.

But let’s be clear, Mary didn’t make this statement naively. Mary didn’t enter into this project of bearing the Christ child recklessly. Mary knew exactly what she was signing up for, and she did it because she knew who God is. She knew God’s power, God’s commitment, God’s love for God’s people and for God’s whole creation. Mary knew God, and because she knew God, she had the courage to take this bold step. We know this, because of the song Mary sang at the end of this reading.

“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior… Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed.” We who know the two-thousand year arc of Mary’s narrative know this to be true, but in the short term Mary demonstrates one of the core truths of what it means to be blessed by God. To be blessed by God does not mean that things will be easy, that we’ll get what we want, or that life will be smooth. In fact, more than likely we cannot tell based on how we feel or how our lives seem to be going if we are blessed or not. Because as Mary demonstrates, to be blessed by God means to be in a place where God can use you for God’s purpose in the world, where you can be an instrument of bringing God’s saving, loving, grace-filled, hopeful, presence to places and people who so desperately need it. Being blessed by God does not always feel like blessing, as Mary probably experienced as she endured the whispers in her small village as the news spread that she was pregnant, as she worried over her missing twelve-year old son, and as she watched her thirty-three year old son handed over to be crucified. Being blessed by God means believing that God is playing the long game, and that the end of God’s story is never the end. It is always life, always hope, always resurrection. That is what Mary knew blessing to be.

The rest of Mary’s song speaks of God’s redeeming work not as the future, but as something that has already be fulfilled. “He has shown strength… he has scattered the proud… he has brought down the powerful… and lifted up the lowly… he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” He has, he has, he has. Remember, this song was sung while Mary was still pregnant. And barely pregnant at that. This was early yet, like first trimester. But Mary was able to sing this song with conviction because she had the promises of scripture. She knew how God has acted in the past, she had the stories of “those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word,” and so she could sing that these things that had not yet happened, will happen. For the child she was bearing, is the one whose impending death has already destroyed death. Because just as God is not bound by space and time, the crucifixion is not bound by space and time. Jesus’ death on the cross echoes forward and backward throughout time and space, it is the historical event that changed history, that fulfilled the promises made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants, and to all of God’s creation, forever.

Dear friends in Christ, Mary knew. She knew she was carrying the Christ child, she knew the importance of this task, she knew the saving effect it would have, it had already had, on the world. She knew the risk, she knew the challenge, she knew the fear. But she also knew that she was blessed. Not because of who she was, but because of who God is, and because of what God was doing through her. Mary knew, and it gave her the courage to step forward boldly. May we too be filled with such hope and courage. The courage to know that we do not have to be afraid, because God has already acted. Amen.

New Ways, Old Love: A Sermon on Luke 1:1-25

So I’m going rouge this year and we’re breaking away from the Revised Common Lectionary this year for Advent. The Revised Common Lectionary, FYI, is the order of readings we read every Sunday, readings which are shared by a lot of different churches, not just Lutheran, all over the world. And I love using the Revised Common Lectionary, one because it forces me to preach on texts that I wouldn’t necessarily choose, as I’ve expressed in sermons before. And two, because I like the continuity of being in step with other Christians around the world, all of us reading the same texts in our own languages and contexts. Always feels a bit like Pentecost in that way.

But since we’re in Luke this year, I decided it would be fun to break away from the Lectionary for a season and start this year of journeying with Luke by hearing the story told the way the writer wanted to tell it. So for the next three weeks, we are going to work our way through the first chapter of Luke. That way when Christmas Eve comes and we hear the beloved account of Jesus’ birth in a stable, we’ll know how we got there. So let us then, in the writer of Luke’s own words, undertake the reading of this orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us.

The Gospel of Luke begins with what theologian R. Alan Culpepper, “a perfectly constructed prologue… [that is] both carefully worded and deliberately vague, simultaneously clarifying and obscuring.” Which is neither here nor there, but the quote made me laugh when I read it, so I wanted to share it with you all. I like Culpepper’s dry humor and he’s the writer of my favorite commentary on Luke, so we’ll be spending a lot of time with him this year as well.

But for all it is “both carefully worded and vague,” the prologue does lay out for us three important themes for what will follow. First, this orderly account is “of the events that have been fulfilled among us.” Which means, as crazy as this claim that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, taking on human flesh and walking among us, the writer reminds us that this is not a new claim. God did not just show up on the scene in the person of Jesus and start redeeming humanity. God has never left God’s people; God has been at this work of redemption for time immemorial. Jesus is the fulfillment of the promise that Christ will come, and so we can wait with confidence that Christ will come again.

Second, this orderly account “was handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses.” This means that this story isn’t something we have to come to on our own; it is given to us by witnesses since the beginning. There are others who know it to be true, who have experienced its truth, and who’s testimony we can trust. We are not alone in this story; we follow in well trodden footsteps.

And finally, this orderly account is so we “may know the truth.” This phrase translated here as “know the truth” has this sense not only of intellectual understanding, but of something deeper, richer, and fuller than that. Luke is talking here about heart knowledge, of those truths beyond words that we hold in our bones. Luke tells this story, we read this story, because this is a story of knowing (point to heart). This story is meant for us to find comfort, to find hope, to see how God keeps God’s promises, to hear this corroborated through many witnesses, and through those witnesses and through these stories, to experience for ourselves God’s redemptive love and power, so that we too become witnesses to that same truth for others. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of long-held promises, the presence of knowledgeable companions, and an assurance of God’s trustworthiness. Keep those three things in mind as we journey through Luke’s Gospel.

So we get past the prologue and the writer of Luke first introduces us not to Jesus, but to a priest named Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth, whom Luke described as “righteous” and “blameless.” Even their names evoke piety, Zechariah means “God has remembered” and Elizabeth something like “My God’s oath.” He is a priest and she, a descendent of Aaron, married one, these two are all the right things. Yet even with this stellar pedigree, they have no children. Now today not having kids is a totally acceptable life choice, but not so much in their time. And now they’re old, too old to have kids. A righteous couple, past childbearing age, whose prayers for a child have thus far gone unanswered. There are echoes in this story of quite a few Old Testament characters, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekkah, Jacob and Rachel, Hannah, who’s song of praise we’ll read next week, just to name a few. Remember the prologue; this is not God’s first time at the party.

Then the story goes on, one day, “when he was serving as priest… he was chosen by lot to enter the sanctuary of the Lord and offer incense.” Now on one hand, this was a totally mundane action. Twice a day, a priest would enter into the sanctuary to make an incense offering to the Lord. “The whole assembly of the people” whom Luke described as “praying outside” would have gathered daily for this ritual. But for Zechariah, to be chosen to be the priest who actually made the sacrifice would have been a once in a lifetime honor. This day marked the pinnacle of his lifetime of service. And then, right in the middle of his big moment, an angel of the Lord appeared and threw off everything. We don’t even know if Zechariah actually got to offer the incense or not, because from that point on all that matters is this angel, and Zechariah’s response to him. The angel’s interruption of this moment that is both sacred and mundane tells us something else important about the nature of God, and that is God shows up in the sacred, and the mundane, and for that matter, the sacredly mundane. And Zechariah, as faithful and as righteous as he was, and as long as he had been praying for just this very moment, to be in the Temple, to be in the presence of God, to be told he would have a child, when that event, the thing he had wanted and watched for and prayed for for so long, when it finally happens, his response was first terror and fear, followed immediately by doubt. “How will I know that this is so?” Which, I feel like the proof he’s looking for should be pretty easy to tell, he’ll know it when Elizabeth gets pregnant, but anyway. “How will I know that this is so? For I am an old man, and my wife is getting on in years.” Now Zechariah, a faithful and righteous priest, should have been well aware that age was not his biggest concern. Abraham and Sarah were like ninety-nine when they had Isaac. Again, Zechariah and Elizabeth, not God’s first rodeo with the miraculous birth thing. And I love the angel’s response. Zechariah says, “I am old,” and Gabriel responds, “I am Gabriel.” I’ll see your biological limitations, and raise you, because I’m an Angel of the Lord. I have come to inform you that God is about to act in a mighty way on the earth and in your life. Just like he did in the time of Abraham and Sarah, but also in a new way. For your child is not the start of a nation, your child is the pronouncer of salvation. Because of John, the whole world will know that the one who will bring all the nations together, the one who will turn the world over, is coming into the world.

This story of Zechariah is a good one for us who gather here every Sunday, who are the faithful, because it reminds us that God shows up in our worship, that God transforms us in worship, but God does that in ways we often do not expect. Because Zechariah, in a lot of ways, is us. Yes he was a priest, and yes he was righteous and blameless, and that’s a high bar. But he was one of a whole bunch of priests, and he wasn’t one of the big powerful ones. The kind of priest he was is like the kind of people we are, well-meaning, faithful, long-standing folk going through the steps of a life of faith to the best we are able, over and over and over again. And yet it was to Zechariah and Elizabeth, in the middle of their everyday lives, that this pronouncement was given. So this Advent season, I invite you to be alert for those moments of God breaking into our world to do the same old thing, love us, forgive us, redeem us, but in a new way. Because the Old story of God’s love never changes, but God is never through inventing new ways to demonstrate the same old, trusted love. Amen.

Sponge Cake: A Sermon on Luke 21:25-36

I had to drive up to Mt. Pleasant this week for a meeting with the synod outreach committee that handles our grant funding. As David probably knows, north of Lansing is out of the Michigan Radio listening area, so as I was driving back I was listening to a podcast interview with physician Rachel Naomi Remen. Dr. Remen was telling a story about how her grandmother had grown up under oppression as a Jew in Soviet Russia. As a response to the hunger she’d experienced in her childhood, her grandmother’s refrigerator was always stocked to the gills. So much so, that if you weren’t careful when you opened the door, an egg would tumble out and break on the kitchen floor. And whenever this happened, her grandmother would always smile slyly and remark, “tonight, we’ll have sponge cake.” Now, I confess I don’t completely understand how the broken egg ended up as sponge cake, if she was scrapping it off the floor or what, but the point of the story was concerned as her grandmother was about not having enough to eat, a broken egg wasn’t a reason to be sad, it was an opportunity to make a cake. Dr. Remen then went on to share how she never met her grandmother, who died before she was born. But when she was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease at fifteen and told she probably wouldn’t live past forty, her mother put her arms around her and said, “we’ll make a sponge cake. We don’t know the recipe yet, but we’ll figure it out, and we’ll make a sponge cake.” Her whole life, Dr. Remen said, has been figuring out the recipe for how to turn the broken egg of her diagnosis, and other broken eggs along the way, into sponge cake.

So it’s the first Sunday of Advent, and Advent always starts with these really strange and scary texts about how “there will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars… [and] People will faint with fear and foreboding… for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” This proclamation from Jesus comes right on the heels of the reading we heard two weeks ago about how the Temple, believed to be the dwelling place of God on earth, would be torn down, not a stone left on stone. Now, we can argue all day if Jesus’ words here were literally or metaphorical, and what events he was precisely referring to, and my read is probably the truth is closer to a bit of both, but really none of that matters. What matters is Jesus’ words here are frightening, and they were meant to be frightening. To put this in context, we’re reading it in early December, but this story happened a couple days before the Passover. In just a day or so, the disciples will watch Jesus arrested by a crowd in the garden, handed over to Pilate, tried in a sham court, beaten, mocked, and hung on a cross to die. The disciples were headed into a dark and scary time, for they were about to see the powers of heaven not just shaken, but destroyed. Betrayed, killed, and left in a tomb for dead. And death, as we all know, is the end. There’s no coming back from death. There is no way to turn that egg into cake.

But at the end of all these dire predictions of peril and destruction, Jesus went on, “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” Let me read that again. “Now when these things begin to take place.” These things, remember, being, “signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among the nations;” “wars and rumors of war,” “Jerusalem surrounded by armies… they will fall by the edge of the sword and be taken away as captives…and Jerusalem will be trampled on.” When all “these things begin to take place, stand up and raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” I’ve never actually been to war, but I’m pretty sure that when you are in peril the thing you are not supposed to do is to “stand up and raise up your heads,” because that is going to increase the likelihood that you will get shot, but that is exactly what Jesus told the disciples to do, “because your redemption is drawing near.”

What Jesus is telling the disciples here, has been telling them throughout this whole section, is to not trust their eyes, because what they think they see, what they think they understand, is not the full story, it’s only a part. “Many will come in my name and say I am he,” and promise you safety, “and they will lead many astray,” do not trust them. “There will be wars and rumors of war,” do not trust them. “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars… and people will faint from fear and foreboding,” but you, you don’t need to faint, and you don’t need to fear. Instead, you are to “stand up and raise up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

The amazing thing about Christianity, about this faith we claim, about this God we follow, is that entering into the Kingdom of God is the experience of having everything we’ve thought to be true, everything the world has told us to expect, turned upside down. All Advent we wait for the coming of a great and powerful king, and we are given a refugee baby born to an unwed teenage mother and a reluctant fill-in father. The manger scene would be the least powerful image imaginable, except what is more powerful, what is more fierce, what is more permanent, than a parent’s love for a child. And what turns over your expectations, upends your understanding, takes over your existence, and shows you a love deeper, fuller, and more completely than you ever imagined, than a baby.

Then that baby grew up, gathered a rag-tag band of fishermen and tax collectors, and set out on a ministry among the poor and suffering. Crowds gathered in his wake, crowds of the hungry, the hurting, the sick, and the poor. He passed over the wealthy and powerful to break bread with sinners and prostitutes. He entered Jerusalem on a donkey, a farce of the imperial parades of the powerful, and he died the death of a political prisoner, hung on a cross between two common thieves, robed in purple, the color of royalty, a crown of thorns on his head, under a sign that mockingly read, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” But mockery or not, it was true that he was, that he is king, not just of the Jews but of the whole of the universe. As Paul wrote in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “for the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”

Don’t trust your eyes, Jesus told the disciples, Jesus tells us. Don’t trust your eyes, don’t trust your wisdom, don’t trust your fear. Trust only this: The Kingdom of God is the unexpected reversal of all you knew. The powerful will be laid low, and the lowly will be lifted up. If it looks like the end, it is not the end, it is only the beginning of what is to come. So stand up, raise up your heads, for your redemption is near. Amen.

What is Truth?: A Sermon on John 18:33-38a

If you’ve been here on a Good Friday, you may remember that it is my Lenten discipline every year to memorize the Passion narrative from John’s Gospel and recite it on Good Friday. I’ve done this for four years now, and every time it is this dialogue between Jesus and Pilate, and especially Pilate’s question of what is truth that catches my attention. I spend a lot of time each year mulling over that question and how to recite it. Is Pilate curious, “what is truth?” Is he incredulous, “what is truth?” Is he mocking, “what is truth?”

A bit of an aside, but it seems important to remind folk, how much interpretation goes into reading. We think we’re reading something objectively, but there is no tone in the written word, we are inserting the nuance ourselves. Beware, or at least be wary of people who tell you they read scripture objectively, because at best they are unaware of the blinders they are bringing to their understanding. Understanding the nuance of written language requires looking into the history of the person, trying to understand the context, and even then it is no more than an educated guess.

And as a good Millennial, this idea that our best interpretation and understanding is no more than an educated guess doesn’t bother me, it actually is what makes scripture, makes faith so fascinating, so rich and deep and powerful. Because Pilate wanted an answer and Jesus instead offered him a relationship, something which by its very nature is not fixed, but moving. It is always growing and changing, and forcing us to grow and change, and I loved that depth and complexity about Jesus. I loved the idea that Truth, the Truth with a Capital T that is Jesus, is bigger than something we can know, richer and even more flexible than facts. The world always felt, to my questioning millennial sensibilities, like it held so much curiosity and diversity, and I needed a God who could hold all my questions, my curiosities, my doubts, and my fears. That the Truth of Jesus was relationship was a Truth that felt big enough for that.

That was the sermon I would have preached on that text two years ago. And it probably would have been a decent sermon, though it also probably would have made a better systematic theology paper so you maybe should be glad that I don’t generally preach on Good Friday. But in the last two years, the phrase “alternative facts” has entered our national lexicon, and I’ve found myself having to reevaluate my relationship to the concept of truth. Because I love, and I really do love, if you’ve been to the bible chats on Wednesdays, you’ve experienced this, the idea that each of us bring both our own perspectives and our own limitations, and only by hearing the perspectives of many different people can we overcome our own limited worldview and come closer to full knowledge. But the side of me that values logic and reason bristles when that one friend on Facebook, and we all have that one friend, mine is a loose acquaintance from DC, posts that thing that is just objectively untrue, and I find myself shouting at the computer screen, “Have you never heard of Snopes?” Sometimes I feel like I can’t tell if the world’s gone crazy or if I have, so different are the realities that seem to exist between people.

People living next to each other and experiencing very different versions of reality is not new, a very similar thing was happening in Jesus’ time. Jesus lived during what was known as the Pax Romana, the Peace of Rome. Pax Romana was a two-hundred year period of relative peace and stability that started when Octavian, who would eventually become Caesar Augustus, defeated Mark Antony, ending the Final War of the Roman Republic and transforming Rome from a Republic to an Empire. If Caesar Augustus sounds familiar, we hear his name on Christmas Eve, “There came a degree from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered…”

I described the Pax Romana as a period of “relative peace,” because whether you experienced peace depended on how you sat in favor with the Emperor. We’ve talked before about the Siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in 68 CE, a battle so violent that the historian Josephus described blood running ankle deep through the streets, that was during this so-called period of peace. A peace held through strength and through the brutal destruction of anyone who posed a threat to the power held by those who benefited from that peace.

Pilate was very much part of that kind of peace. The synoptic Gospels give Pilate a bit of a pass, but John’s description of Pilate is probably the most accurate. He was a ruthless leader, most historians of his time described him as vicious, brutal, and cruel. His participation in the trial of Jesus had little to do with concern for Jesus’ guilt or innocence, rather Pilate was interested in humiliating his adversaries, the religious leaders, and further cementing his own power.

The Peace of Rome was Pilate’s truth. For Pilate, it was true that he was living in a period of peace, that it was his role to maintain that peace, and that the best way to do that was to crush anyone who questioned that peace or threatened his power. What was true for Pilate was what worked best for him, what brought him power, and strength and control.

And then Jesus showed up in Pilate’s headquarters, early in the morning on the day before the Passover. Brought over at the behest of Caiaphas the High Priest by the contingent of police and soldiers who had arrested and bound him in the Garden of Gethsemane. Already betrayed by Judas, denied by Peter, abandoned by his followers, Jesus was alone, imprisoned, and constrained, the opposite of everything Pilate saw himself to be. But when Pilate started questioning Jesus, immediately everything shifted.

“Are you the King of the Jews?” he asked, a question I hear as thick with mockery. In Pilate’s truth, Jesus could not be a king, for kings were powerful, mighty and in control, not like this itinerate preacher in chains before him. “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” Jesus replied calmly, taking charge in that moment not just of the conversation, but of the entire scene. The question essentially, are you, Pilate, really in control, or are you no more than a puppet for others? Pilate, on his heels, answered back, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done?” And Jesus, in that Jesus way, answered the question that Pilate was not asking, “My kingdom is not from this world.”

This Sunday we’re celebrating Christ the King Sunday. We tend to think of church festivals as being ancient, and most of them are. But Christ the King Sunday is actually a very recent addition to the liturgical calendar, less than one-hundred years old. Pope Pius the eleventh instituted Christ the King Sunday in 1925 as a response his concerns about growing nationalism. We just celebrated the 100th anniversary of the end of World War One on November 11th, 1918, by 1925 Hitler was gaining power in Germany and Benito Mussolini had given up all pretense of Italy being a democracy and firmly established a dictatorship. The purpose of the Feast of Christ the King was to remind believers that since Christ set us free from the bonds of sin, then our loyalties belong to Christ and him alone. There is also an end of days feel to this festival; reminding us that we live in the period between Christ has risen and Christ will come again. That even as things feel chaotic and out of control, and like we heard in last week’s reading, many competing voices are claiming they can save us, we have only one savior, in fact we have already been saved, and that savior will in time restore us and all of creation to fullness.

That Jesus is King is not just true, it is Truth. It is Truth because contrary to Pilate’s understanding, the Kingdom of God is not a geographical place, with borders that can be patrolled and controlled; the Kingdom of God is a relationship. And because the Kingdom of God isn’t a place but a relationship, it cannot be controlled through might and power because you cannot force someone to love you. You can force them to fear you, you can force them to honor you, you can force them to obey you, but you cannot force them to love you. And the Kingdom of God is a kingdom whose boundaries are defined by love, whose justice is legislated by love, whose power is expressed in love.

The Truth of Jesus is that love is the most powerful force of all because it presents not as force, but is power made perfect in weakness. In a few weeks we’ll celebrate that this King of the Universe came into the world in a way Pilate could never have imagined, as an infant born in a stable because Augustus forced his parents on the road, becoming a refugee because of the threats of an unstable tyrant, raised not in the center of power but in forgotten, rural Galilee, a man who passed by the powerful, to lift up the powerless, who ate with lepers and prostitutes, and who died to become food for the world. The Truth, is as simple as this, God loves you, and me, and every single other person in the world. Even, dare I say, Pilate. Because the Truth, dear people of God, is this, that God so loves the world. Amen.

Birth Pangs: A Sermon on Mark 13:1-8

“This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” Now, let me preface this by reminding you all that I don’t have children. I have never experienced the “miracle of life.” But, I’ve had enough friends who have by this point to tell you; it doesn’t seem all that fun. It’s been described to me as starting with nausea, then your clothes don’t fit. Necessitating shopping, which hell for me might actually be having to spend eternity in clothing stores. Eventually you move on to being tired all the time, and this is all pre-delivery. Actually having to remove the alien that’s been growing in your body for nine months, yeah, I don’t really want to think about it. But then, it’s over, and you have a beautiful baby, whom you will love and worry about and take care of, for the rest of your life. My brother and I are thirty-two and thirty-five, and we still have stuff in my parents’ storage unit. All jokes aside, I’ve heard having children described as ripping your heart out of your body and letting it walk around free outside of you.

But, as hard as this whole labor and delivery thing is, and as scary as letting something you love, something that was once literally a part of you, walk around free, the fact of our continued existence as a species tells us that the joy outweighs the cost. What comes after the birth pangs, this tiny, perfect little person, who will keep you up at night and make a lot of noise, and eat all your food, and eventually grow up to be a fully-sized adult human being who will more than likely still keep you up and night, and come home and eat all your food, all that, I’m told, is worth it.

To understand our Gospel reading for today, and what Jesus was describing when he was talking about birth pangs, it’s helpful to look back a few verses and remember where we came from. Last Sunday, we heard how Jesus was teaching in the Temple. And as he taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces… They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” Then he went and sat by the treasury and watched people putting in their offering. A widow came and threw in two copper coins, worth a penny, and Jesus pointed her out, saying, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” Then immediately after this, our reading this morning started, “As Jesus came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” Literally moments before, Jesus had told his disciples to beware those who take advantage of their role to puff up their own status, and now those same disciples are blown away by the opulence and grandeur of the Temple, built by the same gifts thrown into the treasury that Jesus had just spoken of. How quick we humans are to get caught up in appearances and lose sight of what really matters.

When Jesus heard his disciples marveling at the Temple, he immediately brought them back, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” It’s hard to understand just how unthinkable Jesus’ words would have been to his disciples. The Temple was a massive structure, built into the side of a mountain out of immense stones. Those stones were marble outlaid with gold, so that the building was said to shine such that it was almost blinding in the sun. The effort, the violence and destruction it would have taken to dismantle such a structure, was beyond comprehension.

So later, sitting on the Mount of Olives, overlooking the Temple, the disciples asked Jesus, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” What should we look for, what are the warning signs? How should we prepare for this time of darkness? And Jesus, you’ll notice, in his Jesus way, didn’t answer their question. He didn’t tell them what to look for, instead, he told them what not to look for. ““Beware that no one leads you astray… When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed… For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” What Jesus was telling his disciples here was that what looks like the end is not the end. What looks like the end is not the end. This was important for Jesus’ disciples because at chapter thirteen we are two short days from what by all accounts is the end from which there is no return, we are two short days from Jesus’ death on a cross. And yet, the promise of our faith is that what looks like the end is not the end. Because three days after that death, the stone was rolled away, the tomb was found empty, and Jesus Christ lived again. Resurrection means the end is not the end, the end is never the end, there is always life after death.

If we read on in chapter thirteen, Jesus spoke of dire things that would happen to the disciples, “they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me… when they bring you to trial and hand you over, do not worry beforehand about what you are to say; but say whatever is given you at that time, for it is not you who speak, but the Holy Spirit.” From the book of Acts, we know those things happened. Many of the disciples were handed over to councils, beaten, jailed, and handed over to stand trial. And yet, as promised, the end was not the end. The Holy Spirit did speak for them, they did find words, they did share the good news. And we gather here, two-thousand years later as proof of this central promise, that what looks like the end, dark and uncertain as it might seem, is not the end, it is only the beginning.

I started the sermon by talking about birth pangs. Giving birth is one of the most dangerous and fragile times in life for both the woman and the baby. It can also be the hardest time on a relationship, many marriages end within the first year after the first child is born, the strain on the relationship with all that transition is so great. Times of transition, times of upheaval, times when we do not know where we are going and how, or if, we will get there, those can be scary times. And in those times of uncertainty, we sometimes, like the disciples, find ourselves looking for the flashiest, biggest, strongest message, looking for someone who will promise to have the answers, to know the path, and to lead us through. What these words from Jesus reminded the disciples, and remind us, is that sometimes the road is just hard. Sometimes there is not short-cut, there is no clear path, and the only way though is through. Giving birth is hard work, it’s called labor for a reason. There’s no short-cut, no workaround. But you have to do the work, you have to push through, because if you don’t, both your life and the life of your baby will be in danger.

At Trinity, we’ve been in this redevelopment process, this process of reforming ourselves as a congregation, for a while now. And it’s hard work. We’re starting to see the fruits of it, there are a lot of new faces in the room today that weren’t here when I came four years ago, and that’s so powerful to see, I am so glad to see who we are as a community and who we are becoming. But there is still a lot of work to be done; we are still just in the beginning of the birth pangs. And maybe after this reading you’ll be comforted to know that I hold no delusions that “I am he,” for maybe obvious reasons. I, first off, don’t identify as “he.” But, more importantly, I don’t know either exactly where we’re going or quite how to get there. I may well be leading us astray, but only because, as Thomas Merton prayed, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going…” And, like the disciples, I confess I too sometimes get caught up in metrics and numbers and how well we match up. But whoever we are, and whoever we become, the promise in this passage, the great hope of our faith, is that no matter what trials we face, no matter how scary life may feel, how uncertain things may be, God is, always has been, and always will be, with us. Guiding us, leading us, supporting us, and caring for us. Eons ago, God took God’s own heart out of God’s chest when God created us, granted us freedom, and permitted us to walk around outside of God’s body. We are the children who make a lot of noise, and eat all God’s food, and keep God up at night, because God loves us, like a parent loves a child, with a love that never ends. Amen.

Some Stuff was Voted On: A Sermon on 1 Kings 17:8-16 and Mark 12:38-44

So, you may have heard we voted on some stuff this week, both as a congregation and as a nation. Last Sunday we voted to adopt a new vision statement and core values, and on submitting those core values to Reconciling Works to be listed as a congregation who is welcoming to LGBTQ folk. Both things passed, which was super exciting. You can read the new core values, and share them with your friends, on the website. And if you go to the Reconciling in Christ website, you can search for us! And then on Tuesday, we as a nation had an election, where we voted on a bunch of people and stuff. And some people won, and some didn’t. And some stuff passed, and some didn’t. Actually, in Michigan all the stuff passed, but in some other states some stuff didn’t.

And for the last month I’ve been saying, this is super important, make sure you get out and vote. And for the last, geez, at least a year, I’ve been badgering the council and the Redevelopment Team, come on, we’ve got to get this vision statement and these core values done, and we’ve got to get everyone’s input on it, and let everyone vote on it, it’s super important. And now we’ve done all that and, guess what, none of it really matters. Wittmer or Schuette, Bizon or Noble, Prop one, Prop two, whoever you voted for, whether you were for or against any of the propositions, whatever circle you personally filled in on Tuesday, I don’t care. Today is neither the day for dancing in the streets nor for casting your hands up in despair. A bunch of people were elected on Tuesday. People who will do some good things and some bad things. Who will make some decisions you’ll like, and some you’ll hate. Even a stopped clock is right twice, I can just about guarantee that no matter how elated you may be with a victor, they will not make every single decision you would want. And no matter how incredibly, horribly awful you think the new office holder is, they will do something that you will agree with. Neither Jesus nor Satan was elected on Tuesday, just a whole bunch of people. Some of whom we liked, some we didn’t, but that’s all they are. People, just like you and I.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I do think elections matter. But I push the point about elections being about people because I think we have a tendency to forget that these are people we elected, not saviors. It’s important to remember that because when we forget, when we raise them to the level of hero or villain, then we can blame them and distance ourselves, when things don’t go as we want.

What got me thinking about this was our Gospel reading for this morning, and specifically how many sermons I’ve heard and, I admit, preached, on the widow and her two copper coins. How selfless and generous she was, how strong her faith must have been, to give everything she had, the Greek literally translates “her whole life,” to God. She is so often raised up as a model of true generosity and faithfulness, oh that we could be more like the widow and give all that we have, everything that we are, to God.

But we won’t follow in the model of the widow and give everything we have. Or, at least, I won’t. I’ll give up a lot for God, and I try to be generous, but I also know the value of solid financial planning, and maybe it’s a sign of my lack of faith, but I know how compound interest works and it feels important to save for retirement. The bar the widow sets for us is so high as to be unrealistic. And since it’s impossible, rather than be a useful model, she becomes an excuse. Since I cannot give everything I have and trust completely in God like the widow, then why try. I’m going to fall short anyway, so does it really matter what I do with my money?

Not only is the widow’s example impractical, quite frankly it also feels unethical. As your pastor, let me be clear. I want you to give generously to the church and its mission. I want you to practice good stewardship of your resources. I want you to have faith, to take risks in your generosity, and to trust that God will provide. But I do not want you beggar yourself for the church. I won’t ask it of you. So what’s really going on here?

As popular and well known as the second half of this reading is, those wise souls who created the lectionary gave us the part before, the warning about the scribes. And while I joke about the lectionary and my disagreements with it a lot, I think they really nailed the division this week. Because I think we cannot understand Jesus’ words about the widow unless we understand what he first said about the scribes.

“As Jesus taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets!” And here’s the important verse, the verse that links this section to the next, “They devour widows houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” They devour widows houses. And then a story about a widow, house destroyed, giving her last two copper coins to the institution that pays the scribes. I got to thinking as I read this, what if rather than lifting up the widow as a model, Jesus pointed her out as a proof of his condemnation of scribes, and of the religious system that taught this woman that the way not just to her salvation, but to her very survival, was to give literally everything she had to an institution that had already failed in its responsibility to her so fully as to leave her with only two copper coins to begin with, and then to ask those coins of her. I wonder if rather than “be like the widow,” the real challenge Jesus presented to his followers was “don’t be like the scribes.” Don’t create a religious system where those who have little give everything, in the blind hope of having something; while those with a lot, like the rich man feel like they have too much to lose. I wonder if Jesus lifted up the widow not as a model of generosity, but as an example of how the people of God had failed to live up to the obligation given by Moses in Exodus, to “not abuse any widow or orphan… [for] when they cry out to me, I will surely heed their cry.”

And if the fate of this widow, giving her last two coins to an institution who did not care for her, shows us what it looks like when the church fails its people, the Old Testament reading about Elijah and the widow of Zarephath is the hope, is what it looks like when we are the people of God are at our best. Unlike the woman putting her two copper coins in the treasury, Elijah asked the woman to share what she had with him. He asked for a portion. And yes, a portion of her meager goods was a huge sacrifice, but it was still just a portion. And that portion, that sharing, sustained both of them until the drought was through. In the same vein as the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, God’s economy is a sharing economy, when each of us gives of what we have; trusting in another to do the same, there is enough to go around. Giving everything we have isn’t a relationship. It’s a one-time transaction, when it’s gone, it’s gone. But to share, I have to know you, I have to know what you need, how much, and when, and you have to know the same things about me.

So I started this sermon by talking about the election. And we’re going to get back to the there, but first let me tell you what got me thinking about this was part of the core values conversation at the October council meeting. So the council and the Redevelopment Team had been wordsmithing these things for months. And they were getting frustrated because we were talking about the same thing over and over again, and I was getting frustrated because I felt like I wasn’t getting the feedback I needed to feel like these were values we all held and not just values that I thought sounded nice. So we were going back and forth about it, at my request, again, at the October meeting. And it was getting late, and I was pushing the point, and Teresa finally piped up and was like, “what is the point of this? No one is going to come into our church and ask to read our core values before they decide to join. Either they’re going to like us, and like our mission, or they’re not. No amount of fancy words are going to change that.” And it was late, and I was tired, and I must confess I got a little annoyed at Teresa for saying that. After all, we’d been at this thing for months, and we were so close to the finish line, and couldn’t she just give her input for one last council meeting so we could get this to a vote so we could get it before the congregation and be done with it! But I went home that night and I thought about it, and she was right. I was also right, the activity of crafting our core values, setting them to paper, voting on them, all of the time and effort we’ve put into this project lets us know what our values are and gives us a guide for how we are to live out our calling as the people of God in this place. But Teresa was also right, because if all we do with these core values is vote on them, paste them on our website, and call it a day, they mean nothing. That we wrote them down doesn’t matter, what matters is what we do with them. What matters is how we live them out. How we give love, how we show grace, how we practice inclusion, work for social justice, and put all these things into action. How we live them is what makes our core values matter.

The same is true for the election on Tuesday. It does matter that you voted, that you took the time to research candidates, consider the proposals, and made a decision. But if that’s all you do. If now that you’ve filled in your row of circles, you call it a day and wash your hands of the whole thing until you’re called upon to fill in a bunch of circles next time, then it really doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do with the people who have now been elected, what matters is how we move forward. Because we elected a bunch of people who are neither Jesus nor Satan, and who will do some things we like, and some things we don’t. So whether your guy or gal won or lost, and whether your proposition passed or failed, none of it matters unless we keep bringing all that we have to work for the widows and orphans of our society, those in need of support and care. And the promise in the Old Testament reading is that when we do that. When we get skin in the game, when we share what we have, money yes, but also our voices, our time, and our ideas, rather than leave it up to figureheads to either praise or blame, then there is not just enough, but abundance, to go around. The jar will not be emptied friends, and the jug will not fail, that is what God promises, so we have plenty to share. Amen.

Make Some Noise: An All Saints Day Sermon on Mark 12:28-34

We are celebrating All Saints Day today, because we always celebrate it on the first Sunday in November. But the somber beginning to the service, with the reading of names of our dearly departed, and carrying forward candles, seems even more appropriate this day, at the close of a week when our nation laid thirteen people to rest among the saints triumphant, eleven people shot in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, and two in a grocery store in Louisville. Thirteen people, victims of racism and anti-Semitism, and we’re lucky that number isn’t higher. The Louisville shooter first tried to enter an African American church where earlier that day seventy people had been at worship. And we’re just a week out from fourteen pipe bombs being sent through the mail to targets across the nation, pipe bombs that could have gone off at any number of crowded places killing any number of innocent people. Thirteen funerals this week, for thirteen people killed by blind hate. I didn’t know them, but the weight of their loss, the weight of our nation’s collective grief at hatred spun out of control, sits heavy on my heart. At an interfaith service last Sunday, the rabbi of Tree of Life Synagogue, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, shared how as he lays awake at night, he reflects on Psalm twenty-three, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” “Well God, I want,” said Rabbi Myers, “What I want, you can’t give me. You can’t return these eleven beautiful souls.”

One thing I admire about our brothers and sisters of the Jewish faith, a thing I think we as Christians lost somewhere along the way and could learn from them, is the understanding that it’s ok to argue with God, it’s ok to be angry with God. God is big; God can take it. The psalms, our collective first prayer book, is rich with examples of such turmoil. Rabbi Myers described wrestling with Psalm twenty-three. The Psalm immediately preceding it, Psalm twenty-two, is the Psalmist wrestling with God. It begins, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me,” and then dances back and forth between praise and anguish, between hope and despair. The psalms teach us that faith and anger are not contradictory feelings, but in fact it takes deep faith to hold righteous anger, to understand the truth in it. If God is a capricious God, uncaring or unattached, then there would be no point to anger. It is precisely because we know Go to be “a merciful God, slow anger and abounding in steadfast love,” that fuels the psalmist’s anger and demand for God to show up and be God, to show up and do what a righteous God should do. Even when, as Rabbi Myers remarked, that thing we want is a thing we cannot have.

And if faith and anger are not contradictory feelings, neither are anger and love. Hate and love are contradictory, as are hate and faith, but anger and love are not. Like faith, love can be what fuels anger, and love is also what tempers it, what keeps it in tension and moving in ways that are helpful and healing. Friends, I think God is angry at the state of our world right now, at the violence, the division, the degradation of our planet and of each other, God’s good creation. God’s anger is fueled not be vengeance, but by God’s own deep love for us and for this world which God called good. At least, I hope God is angry, because if God is not, I don’t know where to stand.

And in the same way I take comfort in the back and forth of the psalms, and the example in them of the back and forth of faith and anger, of anger and love, I take comfort in the example Jesus set in our Gospel reading for this morning. Because as tumultuous, violent, and uncertain as the world feels today, it has nothing on the uncertainty and instability of Jesus’ time. Our Gospel for this morning was from Mark chapter twelve, which is right in the middle of Holy Week. Fun fact for you, Mark is a Gospel known for its urgency and the use of the word “immediately.” But after the triumphant entry into Jerusalem in Mark chapter eleven, the pace of the narrative slows way down, and the last days of Jesus’ life take up as much as the entire Galilean ministry. Everything from here until his death in chapter fifteen is Jesus ratcheting up the tension until it finally breaks open on the cross, death no longer able to hold back the promise Christ contained.

As part of that ratcheting up of tension, since the coming into Jerusalem Jesus had been engaged in arguments, with the chief priests, the elders, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, about anything and everything, as they tried to trap him. But the scribe who approached him in this morning’s reading was different. “Seeing that [Jesus] answered them well, he asked him, ‘Which commandment is the first of all?’” This question, unlike all the others lobbied at Jesus before, was an honest one. This was the sort of question which two religious scholars would debate back and forth between each other, not to change the other’s mind but to learn from each other, to have their own minds challenged and grown. Another gift we need to relearn from our Jewish sisters and brothers is the tradition of religious debate not to change the other’s mind, but to challenge our own. Entering into the sort of honest conversation that the scribe engaged Jesus is risky, because it involves true openness. So often we engage those with whom we disagree, if we engage them at all, in the same way the other religious leaders engaged Jesus, with the “correct” answer already firmly in our minds, confident that we know the one right answer, and that nothing the other person says could do anything to change what we know to be true.

The answer Jesus gave was both disarmingly simply and endlessly complex. “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’” This is what is known in Judaism as the Shema, from the Hebrew word for “hear,” and as we heard in our first reading from Deuteronomy, this is a verse that the scribe would have known well, one which he would have had mounted on the lintels of his door, which is still hung on the doors of Jewish homes today. The shooter in Pittsburgh inevitably walked under it to enter the sanctuary, this bold proclamation held by Jews and Christians alike, “Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” And Jesus went on, “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

Love God; love your neighbor. Such seemingly simple commandments, yet if you’ve ever watched some you love hurt themselves or others and not known how to respond, you know how complicated these are, how nuanced and situational and ripe for mistake and misinterpretation they can be. An act done in love can feel like hate, or what we think we do in love can come instead from our own self-interest. These commands to love are both too simple and too vast to be understood on our own. We can only see the world through our own limited experience, to love our neighbor we have to know their own experience. And to love God requires knowledge beyond knowing.

I grieve the way this morning’s Gospel reading ended, “after that no one dared ask Jesus any questions.” I wish the questions had continued. Not in the way of the earlier questions, those asked to trick and to trap and to prove, but in the way of the scribe’s question, to learn, to teach, to challenge and to engage. To hear another’s perspective in the world and to wonder about how it differs from one’s own, and how their perspectives may have been formed from their experience, how love and faith can look different to each person, and how our love of God and neighbor can grow from knowing another’s perspective.

So the challenge I hear for myself in this Gospel reading, and the challenge I give to all of you, in this time and season of conflict and division, is to not be afraid to ask questions. Yes, there are extremes, there are falsehoods that cannot and should not be reasoned with, the hatred-fueled violence of racism and anti-Semitism that we saw played out this week are examples of that. But the silence of fear gives space for those fringes to thrive, rather than being pushed to the edges where hatred belongs. I invite you this week to find someone you disagree with and have a conversation with them. Not to change their mind, and not to change your mind, but simply to learn more about what they think and what caused them to come to that conclusion. I will share with you that I had such a conversation last week, about one of the ballot propositions, and while my views were not changed by the dialogue, I found myself more deeply engaged by their questions then I had been before, and more committed to being engaged in the process, so that the result that I hope will come out of the vote is what actually emerges, a result that is freeing and life-giving and good for the largest amount of people. The conversation was frustrating, it made me angry, but it forced me out of my silo to see the sides of the argument I had been missing, the gaps in my framework, and the real problems that still persisted. I came out of the conversation both clearer about my own opinion and with more respect for those whose vote will be different than mine, for from the conversation I know that while we want the same goal, our varying perspectives see different pathways forward. So we can disagree on how best to solve this, and yet still work together regardless of the result of the ballot proposal, because in the end the hope is the same. And our differing experiences bring up gaps in the other’s argument, leading to more growth overall.

Death dwells in the silence, and as Jesus told the questioning Pharisees in the verse immediately before our reading this morning, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” So let’s go make some noise. Amen.

Reformation Boldness: A Sermon on Mark 10:46-52

It’s Reformation Day! If you’re new to the Lutheran tradition, or even if you’re not, you may be wondering why everyone’s wearing red, why there are red streamers on the chairs for you to wave around, and what any of this means. So, quick history lesson. Every five-hundred years or so, the church, and by church I mean the whole church, like Christianity as a collective, undergoes a major shift. Two-thousand years ago, that shift was the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Which is THE shift, the one that changed human history both before and after. From that, five-hundred years later we get the Great Fall, the fall of the Roman Empire, and the disintegration of the Imperial Church established under Emperor Constantine. Then, five-hundred years after that, the Great Schism, where the Eastern and Western churches split. Five hundred years later, on October 31st, 1517, is the shift we’re celebrating today, when a German monk named Martin Luther felt that the Church had moved away from its mission to proclaim the unconditional grace and love of God for all people, and started an effort to reform the Church. That movement led to what is known as the Great Reformation. I’m tempted to go into more detail on this, because I’m a nerd, but this is a sermon and I only have twelve to fifteen minutes, so I’m going to leave it as a flyover view, but please, ask me more later, because I love to talk history. But, one of the big ideas that Luther championed was that we can never obey God’s law enough to earn our salvation. Every one of us is a sinner, every one of us is broken. Yet, also, because of what Jesus did for us at the cross, we are, to quote Paul, “united with Christ in a death like his, [and] we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Meaning, because of God’s grace and forgiveness we are set free from the bonds of sin and death, we are set free from our brokenness, and are children of God, a part of God’s family, and therefore also saints. Ready for your fancy, churchy phrase for the week? The official theological term for this is simul justus et peccator, “simultaneously saint and sinner,” we are one-hundred percent of both, all of the time. Nadia Bolz Weber, a theologian I love so much I’ve got the council reading her book for the rest of the year, talks about how this is why Lutheran theology makes sense to her, because the idea that we are both saint and sinner is the best explanation she’s heard for her own experience of being alive in this world, of how she is simultaneously capable of doing horrible things, of hurting people, of overlooking the needs of others, of being selfish, and greedy, and mean, and, insert your vice here, I can certainly insert mine, and yet at the same time she is also capable of incredible goodness. Of loving people she didn’t think she could love, of caring for others, of putting others needs above her own.

Our Gospel reading for this morning has that idea of simul justus et peccator, simultaneously saint and sinner, buried right in it. But you have to have a better grasp of ancient Biblical languages then I do to catch it, so thank God for super smart people who publish commentaries. The reading tells us that the name of the blind man who was healed is “Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus.” Which if you read Hebrew is a bit of Department of Redundancy Department, because the prefix “bar” in Hebrew means “son.” So in Hebrew, verse forty-six names this man, “Son of Timeaus, Son of Timaeus.” But Mark wasn’t written in Hebrew, though much of his Jewish audience would have spoken it, it was written in Greek. And Timaeus sounds a lot like the Greek word timaios, which means “highly prized.” So we’ve got Greek, we’ve got Hebrew, but there was a third language that was commonly spoke in first century Palestine, Aramaic. And Timaeus also sounds like the Aramaic word tame which means “unclean.” So we’ve got some wordplay here, Bartimaeus echoes both “unclean” and “highly prized.” Both, given the theology of the time, sinner and saint. It’s important also to remember that Mark very rarely named the person Jesus was healing in the Gospel. So that Mark chose name Bartimaeus means we are meant to pick up on the double meaning.

So Jesus and his disciples came to Jericho, about twenty miles outside of Jerusalem and, more importantly, their last stop before Jesus triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, when they came across Bartimaeus, a blind beggar sitting along the side of the road. And Bartimaeus may have been blind, but he was not mute. Because immediately, “when he heard that it was Jesus he began to shout out and say, ‘Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.’” “Have mercy on me.” What a different request Bartimaeus had for Jesus then James and John from last week, “grant us to sit… in your glory,” or the rich man from three weeks ago, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” Bartimaeus asked for mercy and to be able to see. And Jesus granted Bartimaeus’s request. Again, just as Jesus had with the rich man, whose question he answered, and with James and John, who he assured would drink the same cup and be baptized with the same baptism. Yet look at the difference in the responses. The rich man went away grieving, for he didn’t think he could live up to what Jesus was asking. James and John didn’t understand what they’d asked for; though history tells us they did live up to it. But Bartimaeus, when he was told, “Go, your faith has made you well,” did the opposite. Instead of going, he followed; he joined the thrones who lined the roads into Jerusalem, waving branches and shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David.”

There’s another piece that asks us to read this story as the corollary to last week’s James and John story, and it’s the question Jesus posed. To both James and John and to Bartimaeus, Jesus asked, “what do you want me to do for you?” I read these two stories as both hope and challenge. Hope because, yet again the disciples are giving us the example of what not to do. Don’t follow Jesus as a way to fame and fortune, because that’s not where this train was headed, at least, not as the world defined it. But for all the disciples got it wrong, over and over and over again, Jesus kept them around, he loved them, he forgave them, he encouraged them, and eventually James and John got there, it just took them a while. In Mark’s Gospel the disciples function as this constant reminder to the reader that if the disciples missed the boat that many times while literally walking behind Jesus, certainly Jesus isn’t giving up on you either. And while the disciples are hope, we can’t misunderstand as badly as they did, Bartimaeus is challenge. Because Bartimaeus exemplifies the right response, the request for mercy, the courage to jump to Jesus’ invitation, the risk to ask for what was needed, and then ignoring the offer to go, choosing instead to follow.

To recap, every five-hundred years or so the church goes through a major shift, a shift so cataclysmic that those in the midst of it are led to wonder if the church will even survive. And if you were following along with my history lesson you might have caught that I said that the shift we’re celebrating today happened five-hundred and one years ago. Which means friends, we are yet again in the middle of just such a shift. If things feel unsteady right now, that fits the pattern. The Great Fall, The Great Schism, The Great Reformation, and theologian Phyllis Tickle named this time in our history as well, the Great Emergence. From each of those shifts the church emerged not as it had been before, but different, remade, renewed. We don’t know where we’re going, we don’t know what church is going to look like when we get to the other side of this. But on Reformation we remember, and we celebrate, that Luther really didn’t know either, but he had the courage to risk reformation anyway. He captured this in one of his evening prayers, where he wrote, “O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.” For me, this prayer captures the heart of the Reformation, and the heart of our work as people still being reformed, to step out with courage, on paths we don’t know, trusting that God is guiding us. At times in my life where I have felt lost, that prayer and another one by Thomas Merton that literally starts, “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going…” are the words that have given me comfort and the courage to go forward, even as I did not know where the path might lead.

So it’s Reformation Sunday, but it’s also Consecration Sunday, the Sunday when we set aside time to make financial pledges, to take the time to think about, and write down, how much we are financially going to be able to give to the work of God through the church this year. I love that the last few years these two Sundays have overlapped, because I think there are few examples of stepping forward in courage, few actions more requiring of uncertain risk, then making a financial pledge for an entire year. Because a year is a super long time. And we have no idea what that year might bring. You might make a pledge you intend to keep, and then something changes in your life and you are unable to meet the amount you wrote down. Or, in reverse, you might walk out the door today and discover you won the however many billion dollar Powerball and your pledge is suddenly incredibly low-balled. Which, by the way, if you win the Powerball, I’m not asking for a full ten-percent, but I’d love enough to buy and maintain Triangle in perpetuity. Just throwing that out there… I’ll also add that when you see the card, you’ll notice there’s a sentence at the bottom reminding you that this is an estimate of your intended giving, and you are free to raise or lower it at any time. I’m not asking you to sign a binding contract; I’m never even going to see your pledge card. This is between you and God. I’m asking you to write something down because we humans are physical beings; the physical action of writing things down is important and meaningful. But point is we have this card and we really have no idea what the year ahead might hold. Yet every year we do this anyway, as an experience at stepping out in faith, at risking something for the sake of God’s work in this place, and in gratitude for all that we have received. No, my two-hundred and thirty-one dollars a pay period is not a reformation. Unlike Luther, the world is not shifting on its axis because I’m turning a card in. At least, I don’t think it is. But Luther didn’t know he was shifting the world when he asked the questions of the Ninety Five These. And, he alone didn’t shift the world anyway, he started it and then the Holy Spirit took Luther’s action, and crazy and wonderful things followed.

So, dear friends, dear people of God. Let’s be bold. Let’s be bold as individuals, but let’s be bold as a congregation, as the church of God in this place. Because stewardship doesn’t end with putting these cards in the basket, it is then up to us to put our gathered giving into action, to move these pledges from this basket, from these doors, and out into the world. Bartimaeus didn’t stop when he received healing; he followed Jesus to Jerusalem and saw the world made new. And making this promise to give of our money, while maybe the hard part, is really not the best part, the best part is when the Holy Spirit puts these pledges at work to shift the axis of the world in a million large and small ways. Because guess what friends, that is already happening. I wish you could be a fly on the wall for one day of what I get to do in this place, what your diligent support of this congregation year after year, has allowed me to be a part of. Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t stop me in the hall to ask for prayer, share a story, or tell me of how God is at work in their lives because you have made this space possible. The Reformation has started dear people, let’s follow the leading of our brother Bartimaeus, both unclean and highly beloved, and step forward in courage. Because Jesus is going ahead of us, and all history tells us is whatever is coming next is better than we could ever imagine. Amen.

We don't know, but Jesus does: A Sermon on Mark 10:35-45

I heard the Bishop preach on this text on Wednesday, and he said that based on this text the mission statement for all of our churches could be as follows: “[blank] Lutheran Church, on the road, to the cross, following Jesus.” Since we’ve been doing a lot of work around our vision statement and core values recently, his comment really stuck with me. And here let me insert an explanatory fact about the difference between a mission statement and a vision statement. Per the consulting firm Bain and Company, “A Mission Statement defines the company's business, its objectives and its approach to reach those objectives. [Whereas] a Vision Statement describes the desired future position of the company.” Basically, a vision statement is who we want to be, a mission statement is who we are as we get there. So, given that definition, if at the November fourth special meeting we adopt as our vision statement, that the thing we want to be, is “a gathering of God’s people, anchored in the Post neighborhood, reflecting God’s freeing power to our congregation, our neighborhood, and our community,” what would it mean if our mission statement, who we are as we get there is “Trinity Lutheran Church, on the road, to the cross, following Jesus”?

In our Gospel reading for this morning James and John, whose mission statement was quite literally “on the road, to the cross, following Jesus,” verse thirty-two reads “They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead on them,” clearly had a sense of the vision they thought this mission statement was out to accomplish. For James and John, the vision statement of their journey could probably be summer up as, “Jesus, in Jerusalem, in his glory.” And, let’s face it, they weren’t wrong. That was the exact vision for which the trip was headed. And they got this vision from Jesus himself. It was just a couple of months ago in Mark eight that we heard Jesus talk about “when [the Son of Man] comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Immediately before today’s reading, in verse thirty-three, Jesus said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem…” The disciples knew the Old Testament prophesies, about how a leader would emerge from the line of David who would restore the kingdom of Israel. Certainly, just a few short verses before the Passion narrative starts, they surely felt the gathering tension around Jesus. It’s easy to see how they came to catch the vision of “Jesus, in Jerusalem, in his glory.”

Of course, then Jesus told them how “the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death… and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” The disciples again had clearly completely missed that part about what the vision statement “Jesus, in Jerusalem, in his glory” was going to mean.

So James and John asked him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask.” Jesus had to know where such a request would be headed; these two had not earned the nickname “Sons of Thunder” for nothing. These were the men who when Jesus came calling, immediately left their father sitting alone in his boat with his nets to follow, the Zebedee brothers were not known for carefully weighing pros and cons. They were all in, one-hundred percent, all the time. Yet Jesus’ response to this brazen request was amazingly calm. OK, “what is it you want me to do for you?” Given the opening, James and John dove right in, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” If I was Jesus, the response would have been an immediate face palm. Come on guys, Jesus just finished telling you he was going to suffer and die in Jerusalem, and the response you had was, OK, but when everybody’s worshiping you, let me be right up there with you.

But Jesus is not me, and Jesus kept his cool, “you do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized?” This question may sound weird to us, but it would have been a familiar idiom for the disciples. “Cup” in the Old Testament was a common metaphor for suffering. And the linked baptism reference calls to mind all the imagery in the Psalms of sufferers being overwhelmed by water. So James and John had to have known Jesus was asking them if they were prepared to suffer. But they bowled right on through, “We are able.”

But here’s the incredible thing about that statement. As arrogant and misguided and big-headed as it was, as much as James and John had absolutely no idea what they were saying, it was also true. Not in the way they meant it certainly, but it was still true. James and John would both face the kind of suffering Jesus faced, they would both “drink the cup” of persecution, they would both be baptized into Christ’s death. Acts chapter twelve tells us that “James, the brother of John,” was killed by King Herod. We don’t know how John eventually died, but at least twice he ended up in prison with Peter so one can assume his life after Jesus’ resurrection also didn’t involve being worshiped and adored in the way he seemed to have envisioned when he and his brother asked to sit at Jesus’ right and left in his glory.

So yes, John and James had no idea what they were saying when they brashly told Jesus, “we are able” to suffer as he would, but also yes they were correct, they could and they would. They didn’t know what was ahead of them on that day on the road to Jerusalem, but by the time of Acts, James and John certainly knew the stakes of continuing to proclaim the good news of Jesus, and proclaim they would, all the way to the end.

And Jesus, before all of this, before the true nature of his glory was revealed, back on the road to Jerusalem, with John and James following him to the cross, knew that they were in fact able, and honored that. “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” Jesus knew James and John better then they knew themselves, he knew their future, he knew the great things they were capable of, the great things they would do. He knew their faith, their trust, their devotion, even though they did not know it themselves, though they did not know what they were asking. This cup that I drink, you will drink. You are more than you know.

To bring this around full circle, on November fourth we will have the opportunity as a congregation to vote on adopting our new vision statement and core values. And I admit a level of bias here, I helped write the vision statement, but I think it is a very good one. “Trinity Lutheran Church is a gathering place of God’s people, anchored in the Post neighborhood, reflecting God’s freeing power to our congregation, our neighborhood, and the wider community.” Given the earlier definition of a vision statement as a statement about who we want to be, a congregation anchored, and anchoring a neighborhood that really needs to know it is loved, reflecting the power of God to each other, to the neighborhood, and to the world, is a pretty great aspiration. I think it is the sort of vision of how we might be a part of spreading the Kingdom of God that is what we as church are called to. And while it is impossible to know what is ahead of us, your history of presence in this community, from your founding as a neighborhood church until now, seems to assert that it is a vision that we are capable of reaching. But the example of James and John is a caution, just because we are able, and just because it is the right vision, does not mean that we know the form the vision will take. We may feel we are called to be a gathering of God’s people, to be anchored in the Post neighborhood, and to reflect God’s freeing power, and that may well be true, but there are a million different forms that vision could take. Just like James and John were able to drink the cup Jesus drank, were able to be baptized in his baptism, and yet still had no idea the road that would take them. And the good news in all of this is, while James and John did not know the form of the vision, they still had the mission, who they would be as they went there. The mission to be “on the road, going up to Jerusalem, [to the cross], and Jesus was walking ahead of them.” And so, as we live out the vision to which we feel called, maybe the bishop’s suggested mission statement is a good one for us as well. “Trinity Lutheran Church, on the road, to the cross, following Jesus.” Thanks be to God. Amen.