The Innkeeper's Hospitality - A Sermon on Luke 2.1-20

I listened to a story on NPR that said Virgin Mobile had a study done about how the role someone played in the Christmas pageant affected their future. Marys and Josephs were the most successful, with Marys slightly outpacing Josephs. Jesus’s did surprisingly poorly, possibly because they had no lines. Though, I was baby Jesus and never chosen for Mary, though I did play a tone-deaf star once, and I feel like I turned out alright. Donkeys did better than sheep. Shepherds slightly outpaced wise men. But the one character the story didn’t cover at all was what were the future prospects of innkeepers?

The innkeeper is a central role in any pageant, their refusal to admit the Christchild is the turning point that sets the crisis in place. A weak or easily swayed innkeeper is liable to just let the Holy Family in, ruining the setup for everything that came next and forcing some poor parent volunteer to rush onstage and redirect Mary and Joseph back to the stable scene. But is this strict regard for regulation a benefit or a detriment to future success. How do our innkeepers fare?

I learned something this week about the design of first century Palestinian houses that has me rethinking the whole Christmas story, or at least the role of the innkeeper. The word translated as “inn,” as in “there was no place for them in the inn,” that word is better translated as “upper room.” It is the same word that shows up twenty chapters later when Jesus asked his disciples to prepare the Passover in an upstairs room for what will end up being the Last Supper. “Inn” is in fact sort of an odd choice of a translation because there weren’t inns in the first century. Instead, because of the expectation of hospitality and providing a respite to travelers, visitors passing through a city would be put up in the homes of local residents, a set-up not unlike an Air bnb. The reference to the “upper room” is because first century Palestinian houses were two story. The family lived on the second floor, while the first floor was home to the family livestock. Which is practical, if you think about it, because cows don’t navigate stairs all that well. And even if they did, do you really want to live below a cow? The other benefit of living above the stable is that heat rises. Israel is a moderate climate, but it is a desert so nights can get cool. Living above the stable gave the family the radiant heat of the animals downstairs.

The other thing we know about this story is that due to the registration, many people were on the move. With “all the world” forced to return “to their own towns to be registered,” Joseph and Mary would not have been the only people seeking refuge in the homes of the people in the small town of Bethlehem that day.

So here’s the shift all this made for me. So often this story is portrayed as a tragic example of human selfishness. A pregnant woman turned away at the door. The Son of God forced to lay in a feed trough, reminiscent of how at the end of his life he will hang alone on a cross, abandoned by all whom he loved and cared for. The innkeeper is cast as the first in a long line of people who will reject the Christ, the question then posed, will you be different? But what if that’s the wrong question, what if that’s the wrong portrayal? Given the background information about houses and the expectation of care for many many travelers, what if the story of Christmas is actually a story of incredible hospitality?

Picture it this way. Joseph and Mary, and many others travel to Bethlehem. A journey forced on them from Emperor Augustus’ need for power. Think of the hubris of this request in the first place, that “all the world should be registered.” Thousands upon thousands of people counted and recorded, measured for taxes and the distribution of soldiers. This registration was about tightening the imperial grip, it was about fixing a population in place so that they could more easily be controlled. It is a striking scene to picture, people uprooted and forced on the road at the whim of one person’s word.

By the time Mary and Joseph arrive, exhausted from their long journey, many others are in town as well. The resources of this small community are already stretched thin by the influx of visitors seeking hospitality. Imagine the owner of the home of whom Mary and Joseph sought refuge. He had already taken in many others, along with his own family, there is no space available in the living quarters, no room in the “upper room,” the inn where visitors would normally stay. But our “innkeeper,” if you will, took one look at this exhausted, bedraggled couple, one look at Mary’s bulging belly, and knew he could not turn them away. And he found space for them. There was no room, but he made room, made room in his home, in his heart, for the Christ child, so that the Holy Family would have a place to lay their heads.

The Christmas story is a story of the miracle of God’s economy, the abundance that exists if we only know how to see it. So many others might have thought of their own overpacked homes and thought, we simply cannot house another. But this man, rather than turn away the Christ child, found just a little bit more to share, and in that sharing, in that expanding of his expectations of what he had to offer, played host to the greatest miracle of all time.

In a few minutes we will gather around this table, where anyone who wants it is welcome to a piece of bread, or a gluten free cracker, and a sip of wine or grape juice. If you came to church hungry, this will not be enough. No one would call the food we are about to eat a meal. And yet, for those of us who come again and again to this table, we have experienced it as so much more than what it seems. This bit of bread and sip of wine is the food that feeds our souls, that nourishes and nurtures for the journey ahead. More would not satisfy the way this simple taste will.

Dear friends in Christ, the message of our innkeeper hero is this: you have enough to share, and whatever you have to share is enough. So often it feels like we have so little, we can do so little, so why try at all. Better to leave the trying to those with a lot, those who have power, who’s actions can make a difference. But the truth in this story is that there is no such thing as a small gift in the service of God. So come to this table for the taste that satisfies. Be fed with the presence of Christ. And then go out, filled for service, knowing that who you are, what you have, what you can offer is not just enough, it is exactly what this hungry and homeless world needs. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Jesus' Origin Story: A Sermon on Matthew 1:18-25

Well it’s taken us four weeks, but we finally get an Advent reading about the birth of Jesus. Though you might have noticed, or maybe you think I stopped early or came in late, but Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus may not have all you think it should. This is not the one Linus read in Charlie Brown Christmas. Matthew doesn’t have the angel appearing to Mary or the child leaping in Elizabeth’s womb. Matthew doesn’t have the decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. There’s no angel chorus, no shepherds, no manger or lack of room at the inn. Matthew does have one thing that Luke is missing; Matthew has wise men following a star. But other than that, this is not the Christmas story you might have been expecting.

We tend to try to lump all the Gospel accounts into one cohesive narrative. Which I think really does us a disservice because each Gospel has something different they are trying to tell us about the nature of God. So I promise you’ll get shepherds and angel choruses of Luke’s beloved Christmas version on Christmas Eve. But for today I want to encourage you to put all that aside for a bit, and let us just dig in to the good news that Matthew has for us. Good news that starts not at the birth of Jesus but actually forty-two generations before. So let’s jump forward a few verses and begin at the beginning.

The Gospel of Matthew starts: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacbo, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez…” You see how this is unfolding. Fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian exile, fourteen from the exile to Joseph, forty-two generations of who was the father of who, was the father of who, was the father of who. This section gets left out of the lectionary because, I get it, it’s kind of boring.

It’s boring, but its one of my favorite features of Matthew’s Gospel because tells us some super important things about who Jesus is. First, before it gives us this miraculous birth story of Jesus being conceived by the Holy Spirit, being the Son of God, this genealogy asserts an important truth about Jesus, that he is human. Jesus is the Messiah because he is from the promised lineage of David. God promised a Messiah would come from the root of the tree of Jesse, and we know God keeps God’s promises, because God also promised Abraham his descendants would number the stars, and, look, Abraham is in this lineage too.

So that in and of itself is cool. But here’s my favorite part about Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus. I pointed out the so and so is the father of so and so, and so and so is the father of so and so, and so on. But, there are four exceptions to the “father of” pattern. Four women are listed in the genealogy of Jesus; Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and the wife of Uriah. These aren’t characters who come up in the greatest hits bible stories all that often, so let me give a really quick snapshot of who these women are, before I tell you why I think this is so important.

Tamar was the daughter-in-law of Judah, one of Joseph of the technicolored dreamcoat’s brothers. Tamar’s husband died, and as we talked about a couple months ago now, there was at the time the weird rule that if a husband died without an heir, a man’s brother had to produce an heir for him. In this case, brother wasn’t particularly keen on this plan, and also died. Now, there was a third brother, but seeing how this was all unfolding, Judah told Tamar, you go back to your father’s house, and when the younger brother is of age, we’ll come get you. After a few years Tamar realized this wasn’t going anywhere, so in order to both do right by her husband and protect herself, she took matters into her own hands. She disguised herself, seduced Judah, and became pregnant. At first he was furious, but when he found out he was the father, he admitted “she is more in the right than I.” Which makes zero sense by current standards, I get it, but at the time by this action Tamar redeemed both her deceased husband and her father-in-law. Tamar displayed righteousness, right relation with her husband and the law, in assuring an heir for him.

So that’s Tamar. Rahab’s story’s not quite as scandalous, though she was a scandal. Rahab was a self-made woman, an owner of a “house of ill-repute,” attached to no man, who hid the spies of Israel as they came to figure out how to take over Israel from the Canaanites. Rahab’s righteousness was in supporting the people of Israel.

Ruth was also a widow, a Moabite whose loyalty to her Israelite mother-in-law led her to leave her own people and travel to a foreign land. Upon arriving in Israel, she met her next-of-kin by marriage, whom she brazenly approached to request him to fulfill his ethical responsibility to her deceased husband and, like Tamar, marry her so she could have an heir for her first husband. Boaz agreed, but there was actually a closer relative who had first “dibs” there is no less awkward way to say it, on Ruth, but when Boaz pointed out that any children would actually belong to the first husband, that man gave up his rights and Ruth and Boaz were married. Ruth was righteous in her relationship to Naomi, and righteous in her relationship to her family of marriage.

And then there’s the story so scandalous that Matthew doesn’t even name the woman, referring to her instead as “the wife of Uriah.” Uriah was a soldier in King David’s army, and while his army was in battle, David saw Uriah’s wife, wanted her, took her, and she became pregnant with David’s son. Now this would obviously have been problem for David, so first he tried to get Uriah to come back, so he would think the child was his. But Uriah was an honest man and a good commander who refused to leave his troops, so instead David made it so that Uriah was killed in battle, so he could take Uriah’s wife as his own. But here’s the piece that makes this woman such a powerhouse. She was not David’s first wife; she was his third, at the same time. Which, as an aside, when people talk about wanting to get back to the biblical view of marriage, I’m not sure which of these bad examples they’re hoping for. But anyway, and this child was not David’s first child, not by a long shot. There were many children ahead of him in line to be heir. But this woman, despite all that has happened to her, the death of her husband, she makes it so that her kid is the one in this genealogy, her kid is the one in David’s royal line, the one from whom the redemption of the world comes. In spite of David’s total disregard for righteousness, the wife of Uriah raised up a son who was righteous before God.

What these stories being included in this lineage tells us is that the pedigree of Jesus is messy and complicated. These are not the sort of stories you’d expect from a Messiah, not at least if you’re playing by the traditional social order. So the inclusion of these stories tell us, this is a God who isn’t all that concerned with the proper social order, this is a God who is concerned with expanding what it means to be in the family tree of God’s people.

Which brings us to “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah.” The reading talked about how Joseph found out that Mary was pregnant, and he knew the child wasn’t his, but “being a righteous man, and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.” What Matthew does here is right off the bat, he makes us grapple with the question of what does it mean to be righteous. I’ve generally defined righteous to mean being in right relationship with God. But righteous can also mean being right by the law. And the law said that Mary ought to be stoned for being pregnant outside of marriage and especially from someone other than her husband. And yet, after a visit from an angel—which, sure it’s an angel but still, this is a lot the angel was asking Joseph to buy into—Joseph took Mary as his wife, named Jesus, and raised the boy as his own. So if righteousness meant following the law, Joseph was not righteous. Not when he planned to dismiss Mary quietly, and definitely not when he went along with this crazy-sounding story. But of course history has proven Joseph to have been righteous. Joseph was righteous just as Tamar was when she tricked Judah, just as Rahab was when she hid God’s spies, just as Ruth was when she propositioned her next-of-kin, just as the wife of Uriah was when she advocated for her kid. Dear people of God, what these stories tell us is that righteousness is complicated. Righteousness doesn’t always look like what the law or the world tells us is expected.

And what I love the most about this lineage is thinking about how these stories must have impacted Jesus. What would it have been like for him to grow up knowing that he was the descendant of a woman who risked it all to protect her husband’s name, a self-made business woman, a loyal daughter-in-law, and a woman who overcame unspeakable horrors? What was it like to grow up in the household of a man who put his relationship with his wife above society’s expectations and a woman who took the greatest risk in answering God’s call? These earliest lessons set the framework for all of Jesus’ ministry, when he will reach out to heal the sick and the suffering, when he will break bread with tax collectors and sinners, and challenge those who see themselves as above reproach.

So dear people of God, here is the unique good news that Matthew has for you. Jesus the Messiah is divine. Conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of a virgin, this is a life that is nothing short of miraculous. But Jesus the Messiah is also totally human. And just like us, he brings with him family baggage, baby momma drama, and a whole lot of just plain weird and messed up. So this holiday season, and every other season, remember this: Righteousness, living in right relationship to God and to God’s people, is messy and complicated. Just like life is messy and complicated. Each of us comes to this life with our own genesis, our own origin story, our own struggles and situations where righteousness, right relationship seemed impossible. But look, Jesus’ family history, Jesus’ life, the people Jesus chose to associate with throughout his ministry, those people, those stories, were messy and complicated as well. Ours is a God who gets complicated human relationships. The way we struggle and fall short, the way we hurt each other, the way we tend to label and disabuse. And in all of this there is, there can be, righteousness. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Hear and See, Go and Tell - A Sermon on Matthew 11:2-11

Well, the lectionary gives us John the Baptist again this week. And like most sequels, it’s not as exciting as the original. Last week we had John as the “voice crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” This morning we have him in prison, asking of Jesus, “are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” What happened to our wild man in the wilderness, eating bugs and shouting “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”?

In fairness to John, this text has jumped us all the way to chapter eleven. A lot happened since we last saw John in the wilderness way back in chapter three, and none of it looked much like John had described. John spoke of the coming of one who was more powerful than him, one whose sandals he would not even be worthy to carry. One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit and fire, who like an ax, would cut down those who do not bear good fruit, to be burned with unquenchable fire. But what John had seen in the ensuring nine chapters involved a lot less burning. In fact, there wasn’t any fire at all that I could find. First Jesus went up a mountain and talked about how the poor, the meek, and the hungry would be blessed for three chapters. Preview of coming attractions, we’ll deep-dive into that in January and February, mark your calendars. Then he came down from the mountain and performed some legit miracles: healing a leper, a centurion’s servant, Peter’s mother-in-law and a whole bunch of other people who happened to be around the neighborhood, two people possessed by demons, a paralytic, a hemorrhaging woman, two blind men and one man who was both mute AND had a demon. He also calmed a storm and raised a girl from the dead. So, yes, a lot of impressive stuff. But do you see what was missing from John’s proclamation? Judgment. No one got judged, at least not in an obvious way. No one got cut off, cut down, or destroyed. Jesus said some more eschatological things—eschatological remember being our vocab word from a couple weeks ago, meaning “words about the last”—talking about not being afraid, gathering up the harvest, and gaining or losing the reward. But in terms of actual burning in unquenchable fire, not so much.

And John was concerned about this because John’s world looked like one that was in need of some judgment. First century Palestine, remember was the time of the Pax Romana, the “Peace of Rome.” And the so-called “peace of Rome” wasn’t peaceful, it was oppressive. Yes there wasn’t out and out warfare or riots in the streets, but that’s because the population was held in place by ruthless Roman soldiers, excessive taxes, and the selling out of those whose role it was to protect the people to serve their own greed. The Pharisees and Sadducees whom John called a “brood of vipers,” were getting richer and more powerful, and all of Jesus’ incredible healing miracles must have seemed to John like trying to protect your home from a forest fire with a garden hose. John wanted it to burn out of control, so that a whole new thing would spring up in its place.

And to be frank, I get John’s concern. I even get John’s desire for this whole mess to be wiped away and a new one to take its place. I drafted this on Wednesday, and right here was a line about how there hadn’t been a school shooting this week, and when she replied, she shared there had been two school shootings in Wisconsin and her local school was closed due to a “credible threat.” More times than I’d ever imagined could be possible so early into my career I’ve felt the need to completely scrap my sermon and start over because of some major catastrophe. There are still families being separated at our southern border. The war in Syria is still racking up death and destruction. The glaciers in Greenland are melting at an alarming rate, the rate of income inequality continues to widen. Oh, and the rate of opioid-related death in Calhoun county is twice the rate of the rest of the state, in case you wanted some good news closer to home. I could go on. And this is two-thousand years after John first asked the question, “are you the one who is to come?” I’m not, as you know, a believer in the whole “rapture theology” concept, the theory that God will remove all the faithful from the earth before destroying what remains in violent and bloody battle of death and destruction. I can give you the historical, scriptural, and theological reasons why I don’t adhere to that viewpoint, but that’s really a bible study topic not a sermon point. So I’ll leave it alone except to say that while I don’t believe it, I do get the popularity of it and the comfort some find in it. It’s a simple answer to a complex question, to be able to say, “yes, things are bad, but that’s because God’s going to destroy it and start again.” Terrifying, but simple.

John too craved a simple answer. Things are bad, Herod is a crook, the Roman Empire is oppressive and destruction, people are suffering. Jesus, you claimed to be the Son of God and bringer of the kingdom of heaven, now show up and be that. Take out the powerful with some axes and unquenchable fire and institute your own kingdom in its place. Or did I hope for the wrong person? Did I announce the wrong one?

And I love how Jesus responded, because Jesus gave John’s disciples such a simple answer, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” Jesus didn’t make claims of his authenticity or titles. He didn’t berate John for doubting him, didn’t command or demand John’s loyalty. Instead, he took John back to the basic role of the prophet, “Go and tell what you hear and see.” That, remember, is the role of a prophet. Not to predict the future, but to see the present for how it truly is, and to testify, to bear witness, to that truth. What comes of that truth-telling is out of the prophet’s hands. And there’s more even than that layered in Jesus’ words. Hearing and seeing in the Gospels are the first entrance points into discipleship. Being a disciple of Jesus starts not with proclaiming allegiance, confessing faith, or some other act of intellectual assent. Being a disciple of Jesus starts first with seeing, so that “soon you will see greater things than these.”

Notice also what Jesus reminded John’s disciples they had seen. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.” If those words sounded familiar when you heard me say them during the Gospel, that’s because you heard Laurie read a version of them. Isaiah chapter thirty-five, verses five and six, “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” It’s key that Jesus reference Isaiah, because remember who John was. John was “the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke,” so this reference back to Isaiah was familiar ground for John.

Another thing that occurred to me about Jesus directing John’s attention to these actions that seemed to fall short of the upending John had expected is that John won’t get to see the end of the story, John won’t live until the resurrection. John, you may remember, gets killed by Herod in chapter fourteen. John is never going to get to see the great upheaval of the crucifixion, when “darkness came over the whole land” and “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. The earth shook, and the rocks were split.” John didn’t get to see the completion of his proclamation; he only saw the start. What we see from Jesus here is assurance for John in the middle of the journey, that what he could see only in part would come into fullness, that his work would indeed “bear fruit worthy of repentance.”

And that, dear people of God, is the good news for us today. We, though resurrection people, like John live in the time between Christ has come and Christ will come again. We do not get to see the unfolding of the whole picture, we see only a foretaste of the feast to come. But that we see the kingdom only in bits and pieces, a piece of bread and a sip of wine, does not mean that the kingdom is not still coming, that the kingdom is not already here. And the gift of the stillness of Advent is how it, like Jesus did for John, calls us to hear and see. The Tree of Wishes went up last Sunday, and we are already down to one envelope. For many years this congregation had no children, and now there are days when we struggle to hear over them. The expanse of empty lot behind our building now spends its summers as a thriving community garden. Woman’s Co-op is creating a video project to project the voices of those in our community who are so often overlooked and unheard. Friends, hear and see these signs of the kingdom.

Hear and see, and then go and tell. Because the other good news of this passage is that we, like John, have a role to play. We are called not just to be witness but to bear witness. To be prophets ourselves, to take our place in bringing into being the unfolding kingdom of heaven. And just as we are called to hear and see God in ways both large and small, going and telling requires actions of all types and sizes. We don’t all have to be John the Baptist, no witness of the kingdom is too small to matter to God. Write a check to support an organization you care about, buy a cup of coffee for the person behind you in line, come in on a weekday and strike up a conversation with a Co-op member you haven’t met before, thank them for using our space during the week. Visit one of our homebound members, let someone in front of you in traffic, invite your neighbor to come with you to worship. Any and all of these actions are ways that we go and tell the good news of God. So see and hear, go and tell. Thanks be to God. Amen.

God's Judgment is Better than Santa's - A Sermon on Matthew 3:1-12

Merry Christmas, it’s time for unquenchable fire. I think I probably make this joke every year, but I really feel like Hallmark is missing out on a great line of John the Baptist themed holiday cards. Who doesn’t have someone in their life they want to send a card to with a picture of a man with wild hair and wild eyes eating bugs that says “Merry Christmas you brood of vipers” on the inside?

Our Gospel text today is all about judgment. At first this may seem like an unusual theme for the holiday season but Christmas is really the season of judgment. After all, let us remember this beloved Christmas song. “He’s making a list / He’s checking it twice / Gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.” Just to up the creep level just a bit, he isn’t just getting reports, he’s watching. “He sees you when you’re sleeping / He knows when you’re awake / He knows if you’ve been bad or good / So be good for goodness sake.” Who is this person for whom “You better watch out / You better not cry / You better not pout / I’m telling you why”? None other than “Santa Claus is coming to town.”

Sorry if I just ruined a beloved Christmas song for you, but the point is, our culture is talking about judgment this holiday season, and thus so too should we. We also need to talk about judgment, because we’re spending the rest of the year with the Gospel of Matthew, and this is not the only time we’ll hear about unquenchable fire. Matthew loves him some unquenchable fire. He’s also a big fan of weeping and gnashing of teeth, so it’s helpful to set some background now.

So let’s talk about judgment. First, we can acknowledge that we don’t really like to talk about judgment. We’d rather focus on the cute baby Jesus, and leave out the ax and the unquenchable fire. I think we don’t like to talk about judgment because we tend to think about it in the same strict dichotomy that Santa Claus presents. With Santa you’re either bad or good, naughty or nice. With judgment, you’re either wheat or chaff, either taking the proverbial down elevator to the hot place, or the up elevator to sit on the clouds with St. Peter. And we’re Lutheran, a lot of us have that edge of Minnesota nice that doesn’t want to make those kind of declarations of people, we’d rather just ignore judgment altogether.

But friends, here’s the thing about judgment. Judgment is actually good news. Let me say that again, it is good news that we have a God who judges. For theologian O. Wesley Allen, judgment and salvation are two sides of the same coin. Allen writes: “God’s mercy and love are meaningless if God cannot choose to see us and our situations in different ways. For Matthew, to meet and know Christ is to be judged and saved at the same time. I think most of you know I help coach girls basketball at St. Philip High School. The head coach, Devon, is always telling the girls don’t be concerned if we’re critical of you. Don’t be concerned if we’re pointing out things you could do differently or challenging you to try harder. Be concerned if we stop criticizing you. Because when we’re critical of you, when we’re pointing out how you can improve, it’s not because we don’t like you. On the contrary, we’re critical of you because we believe in you. We believe in your potential as a player and as a person. We see how much you’re capable of, we know how good you are, and we want to you know your own potential as well.

And if this is true about coaches of Class D girls basketball, how much more true is it about the creator of the universe. God’s judgment is a sign of God’s attention, it is a sign of God’s concern. We have to be judged in order to be saved. To be saved without first being judged would be meaningless. Think about it. If I came up to you and was like, “hey, I just wanted to you know that I forgive you” and you haven’t done anything to me, my forgiveness is meaningless. Not only meaningless but maybe hurtful, because am I just assuming you’ve done or are going to do something to warrant my forgiveness, so I am magnanimous to offer my forgiveness in advance. That’s not forgiveness, that’s showing off.

When we profess God’s salvation by grace, what we are professing is that God has judged us, has recognized our need for forgiveness, and has offered that forgiveness without us earning or deserving it. The only natural response then to this gift, as we have talked about, is gratitude. This is the fruit worthy of repentance.

Here is another good news about God’s judgment, it is not binary. God’s judgment is not the judgment of Santa, where you are either bad or good, naughty or nice. You are not destined to the eschatological version of either a lump of coal or the Red Ryder BB gun of your dreams. Judgment in a theological sense is truth telling. It is God seeing us exactly as we are, both the things we do right and the places we fall short, and revealing that truth to us. The prophets, and John the Baptist falls in that beloved company of the faithful, the prophets are always about truth telling. Prophets come to proclaim God’s judgment, that judgment being a true assessment of the situation as it is. Like my coaching example from earlier, this judgment is what allows us to change, what opens our eyes to the things that are wrong and empowers us to be different.

God judges us. That feels like sort of strange good news, but in a world that feels increasingly out of control, where there is so much hurt and hate and violence and despair, where there seems to be little truth-telling and no consequences from those who benefit the most in the oppression of others, I have to say that the promise that there is judgment feels like a comforting one. I want there to be some judgment. I want to know that those who are causing such pain, who are destroying our planet, who are living above the law will not do so forever. Yes, I’m a pastor and I’m supposed to be above such retributive hopes, but I’m also a person, and so I confess to you that I am not. This passage, and many others we’ll read in Matthew, assures us that there is judgment.

The challenging corollary to this of course, is that if God’s judgment is truth-telling, then God is also telling the truth about me. God is also calling me out for my failures, my shortcomings, the times that, like in that last paragraph of this sermon, my ego gets the best of me. Of course, that too is good news, though hard good news, because at the end of the day I want to do better, I want to be better. I want a God who judges, even if that judgment is uncomfortable, because if the truth of my actions are not pointed out, I can never hope to change.

Dear friends in Christ, as we await the coming of among us of the Son of God, know that you are judged by God. You are judged because God loves you so much that God wants only the best for you. So lean into that judgment. Let it challenge you, let it change you. Let it open your eyes to your struggles, open your heart to others, and your hands to those who need you. Bring that judgment to the waters of the font, carry them in your hands to the table, and let them be replaced with the promise of Christ’s presence. Yes, we are judged. We are judged because we are so so so loved. Amen.

Faith - A Sermon on Luke 17:5-10

One of the hosts on the preaching podcast I listen to said this week that a preacher should, and I quote, “by all means, preach on Habakkuk this weekend.” And then, as if David had listened to the same podcast, he picked a choir piece based on the Habakkuk reading, so here we go. First off, because you may not know anything about Habakkuk, or even that it was a book in the Bible, a bit of introduction. Habakkuk is one of the twelve minor prophets. Minor not because they’re unimportant, but because the books are short, compared to books like Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Speaking of Jeremiah, Habakkuk was probably a contemporary of his time, speaking to the people of the southern kingdom of Judah during the time of King Jehoiakim around the turn of the sixth century BCE. Which is really nothing more than your fun fact for the day because what I love about prophets is the timelessness of their messages, and that is certainly true about Habakkuk. Because whoever he was speaking to, the message he was delivering is one that feels super pertinent to today, the challenge of believing in a just God in the midst of an unjust world.

Habakkuk opens with this plea—actually we cannot even call it a plea, so much as a complaint to God for justice, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? Or cry to you, “Violence!” and you will not save?... Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law becomes slack and justice never prevails.” With Habakkuk, we hear a prophet who has waited long enough, and instead clamors, seriously, Lord, how long must we wait. You say you are a God of justice, so let’s see it.

I’ve mentioned before in recent sermons that I, like Habakkuk, am over it. I’m over thoughts and prayers that have no effect on the pandemic of gun violence. I’m over pretending that our climate is not changing, and that we humans are not the cause. I’m over the crisis at the border, I’m over the images of children in cages. I’m over the uncertainty, I’m over the failure to take action, I’m over living in a world where refugees are treated like a plague, people in poverty a problem, and those who cry for justice are labeled troublemakers, while dictators are eased and appeased, the powerful are given more power, and we are told not to trust what we see. I’m over it.

And with Habakkuk we get a prophet who’s not just over it, not just a prophet who demands God to do something, but a prophet who isn’t going anywhere until those demands are met. We skipped the section of chapter one where God answered, and Habakkuk challenged that answer, but we pick up again in chapter two with Habakkuk’s continued determination, “I will stand at my watchpost, and station myself on the rampart; I will keep watch to see what he will say to me.” Habakkuk is going to wait God out, going to wait for the answer he wants, the answer he needs, no matter how long that takes. And that, dear people of God, is what I think faith is. Faith is waiting, it’s waiting it out, it’s waiting for God, waiting on God.

Faith is waiting, but it’s also not passive. By waiting, I don’t mean that sort of “thoughts and prayers” sort of faith that we hear so much of these days, where we pray and then hope God will change the injustice of the world. Rather it is waiting in the way of Habakkuk, who is active in his declaration of injustice and his demand for action.

In the Gospel reading for this morning, the disciples asked Jesus, “increase our faith.” Which seems like a noble question, right? The thing that prompted the disciples request was Jesus’ command in verse four that if someone sinned against them and repented not just seven times, but seven times in one day, still the disciples were to forgive them. In verse five, we see the disciples’ response: well now Jesus, that sounds pretty hard so, if you want us to do that, you’re going to have to increase our faith. To which Jesus responded with this weird line about mustard seeds and mulberry trees. Which if you think it’s confusing in the translation, there’s all sorts of weird things packed into the Greek. My understanding of the nuances of grammar has never been all that good, so I’m going to just tell you the words I read in the commentary and maybe any of you English teachers in the room can explain it to the rest of us. Apparently the second clause in this sentence, the one about the mulberry tree, is what is known as a “second-class conditional phrase, a statement contrary to fact.” What that means is, that is the part of the sentence that proves the example. So basically, there’s an unspoken second part of this sentence that reads like this: “If you faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you, [but you cannot command a mulberry tree and have it obey you, so you do not have faith the size of a mustard seed].”

What I think Jesus was saying to the disciples here wasn’t that they didn’t need more faith, but that they didn’t even understand what faith is. Asking for more faith in order to do hard things is having faith in faith. It’s believing that faith will save you, that you can earn God’s grace through your faith. And yes, as Lutherans we believe and confess, as is written in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, that “by grace [we] have been saved through faith.” But the faith through which we have been saved is not our faith, it’s God’s. The line from Ephesians goes on, “by grace [we] have been saved through faith, and this is not of [our] own doing; it is the gift of God… so that no one may boast.” What the disciples needed to do the hard thing Jesus was asking wasn’t more faith, what they needed was God’s faith. And that is a thing we don’t have to ask for, that is a thing we are gifted by God, that is grace.

Then Jesus went on with this parable about slaves, and how slaves shouldn’t expect to be praised for doing their duties, should not be thanked for their work or served at the table. So too, should the disciples, when they live rightly, expect Jesus to give them special reward or treatment. But I was thinking about this, actually Eileen got me thinking about this in Bible study. Remember last week in the parable about the rich man and Lazarus, and I talked about how the parable ends with the chasm being uncrossable and people not believing even if someone rose from the dead. But the story itself doesn’t end that way, because we know that Jesus did rise from the dead, and in doing so Jesus didn’t just cross the chasm but in fact closed it. That same thing happens here. Because Jesus told the disciples, who among you would serve your slaves, and so you should say, “we are worthless slaves,” but think about what Jesus himself is going to do. We say it every Sunday, on the night he was betrayed, Jesus took bread, broke it, and gave it to his disciples. He took the cup, gave thanks, and gave it to his disciples. The disciples didn’t deserve this. They were all about to abandon him, one was about to deny him, and one was straight up going to betray him, so in no way are these guys doing “what they ought to have done” and yet, Jesus did to them exactly what he remarked that no one would do. Not because of their great faith did he do this, he did this, he does this, because of his great faith. We are saved by grace through the faith of God, when we have not even the faith of a mustard seed—because I don’t know about you, but I had a mulberry tree in my yard when I moved in, and all it did was make a mess. And even now that dad cut it down for me, it remains firmly rooted in place, so clearly my lack of a mustard seed of faith isn’t uprooting any trees—the faith that changes us is the faith of God in us, through us, that is the faith that changes the world.

The faith of Habakkuk is a faith in God, not in faith, but in God. A faith that waits on God, a faith that says, even though I have no faith that anything will change, still I will wait on you to answer, wait on you to move, wait on you to fulfill your justice. The faith of Habakkuk is a faith that perseveres despite all evidence to the contrary that our actions have meaning, because the faith is not in our actions, but in God who acts. I’ll share with you what that looks like for me. For me it looks like doing what I can do for climate action, for the refugee crisis, for gun violence reform. It means I call my congressperson, even though all I do is leave messages and we just about never vote the same way, I bring reusable bags to the store, I’ve gotten more conscientious about rinsing out things before I recycle them, I read the advocacy updates from Samaritas and the ELCA and I share them with you all, I crack jokes with the Co-op members, I listen to their stories, and I try to be a reminder of God’s presence in their lives. I do these things because as meaningless as those tiny actions may be, I refuse to give in in the face of hopelessness, I refuse to believe that my actions don’t matter, I refuse to believe that God is not still at work in the world and that these things are not having an impact.

The book of Habakkuk ends with this declaration of confidence, which the choir will sing as their offering piece today. The words from Habakkuk go like this:
Though the fig tree does not blossom,
and no fruit is on the vines;
though the produce of the olive fails,
and the fields yield no food;
though the flock is cut off from the fold,
and there is no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will exult in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the feet of a deer,
and makes me tread upon the heights.

Faith doesn’t change the world around us, faith changes us to change the world. And it’s not our faith that does the changing, it is the faith of God, a faith that is slow, so much slower than our human time scale wants or can grasp, but that is real and relentless and permanent. So have faith, dear friends in Christ. Have faith not in faith, and have faith not in you. But have faith in God, who is faithful. Amen.

Crossing the Chasm - A Sermon on Luke 16:19-31

Gloria’s teaching Sunday school this morning, and when we read this passage on Wednesday, she joked that on first read she thought her lesson for the kids should be, “well kids, you better be good and be nice to other people, or else you’re going to hell.” We laughed, and don’t worry Javana, it hopefully goes without saying that is NOT what Gloria is teaching the children in Sunday school, but it does get to the central question of this text, what are we to do with this parable?

Last week I mentioned that money and wealth is Jesus’ second most favorite topic to teach on, second only to the Kingdom of God, and here it is coming up again this morning. Theologian R. Alan Culpepper sees the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as the capstone moment in Jesus’ prophetic critique of wealth in Luke’s Gospel. In Mary’s song, the one we’re currently singing as the song of praise during the Eucharistic prayer, Mary declared that God “has brought the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly,” and at Jesus’ baptism, John the Baptist told the crowd that they should not take comfort in having Abraham as an ancestor, “for God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” In this passage we see that foretold reversal taking place, as the rich man is brought low to Hades while Lazarus is raised up to the side of Abraham. And actually the Greek is even more provocative. Lazarus is brought to Abraham’s “bosom,” which in Jewish tradition is the place of highest bliss, the place where martyrs were brought as a reward for their sacrifice. Lazarus in this parable is not just in heaven, he is an honored guest, seated at the place of prestige at the banquet feast of the Lord. Meanwhile, the rich man, who saw himself as a child of Abraham, who called Abraham father, and was even called “child” by Abraham, is in Hades, separated from the feast by an insurmountable chasm. Throughout Luke’s Gospel, we heard the message that the last shall be first and the first shall be last, in this parable, we are shown an image of that very declaration. “Child,” Abraham told Lazarus, “remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.”

And since we’re at that part of the story, let’s talk a little bit about this chasm, where did it come from? One possibility is the man built it himself. He built it when he walked past Lazarus laying at his gate again, and again, and again throughout their lives, never seeing Lazarus, never acknowledging his need. How simple it would have been for the rich man to do something, anything, to ease Lazarus’ suffering, but instead he continuously walked by, digging that chasm deeper and deeper. So accustomed to the presence of the chasm was the rich man that even in death he continued to dig deeper and deeper into it. That, I think, is the rich man’s sin, not that he never helped Lazarus, he never even saw Lazarus. Not as a person at least, not as an equal. Even from Hades, the rich man begged Abraham to “send Lazarus,” first to cool his tongue, and then to speak to his brothers. Lazarus remained nothing more than a set-piece in the rich man’s mind, a tool to be used, a servant to be ordered around as he pleased. The chasm the rich man created in life was not only fixed in place at his death, but it continued to grow, as he continued to push Lazarus away. This is the danger of dishonest wealth, the “mammon of wickedness,” as the Greek phrases it, it separates us, isolates us, draws us from each other and ultimately from God.

So “then who can be saved,” to take a phrase from Matthew’s Gospel? We go to church, we read scripture, to find hope, and hope seems in short supply in this parable. Hang with me, there is hope, there is good news, I promise we’ll get there. But first, let’s ask the question that is often key to unlocking a parable, who are we to be in this story? Are we the rich man, condemned to an eternity of suffering for mistakes we did not even realized we were making? Or are we Lazarus, tortured through life so that we can reap a final reward after we die? I don’t know about you, but both seem like pretty terrible options to me. Both also seem hopeless, fatalistic, and not in line with the God I read about in scripture. Was Lazarus really forced to suffer such agony and torment so that he could be rewarded in heaven? And was the rich man really without redemption? Was there no hope for him in the end, no possibility of repentance, no opportunity to turn and be saved? Let me pose then a third option, rather that the rich man or Lazarus, what if we are the brothers? Like the brothers, after all, we have Moses and the prophets, and like the brothers, our story is not yet set. We still have the opportunity to repent, to be different, to live different.

And, I promised there would be good news, here’s the good news. The parable as Jesus told it, is not how the story actually lived out. Because the parable ended with despair, “neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.” There would be no point in sending Lazarus, the brothers would not be changed. But, dear friends in Christ, Lazarus was not the one who was raised from the dead, Jesus was. And Jesus didn’t rise from the dead to convince us to believe, Jesus rose from the dead to close the chasm itself. What that means is that on this side of the resurrection, there is no chasm. Lazarus couldn’t cross it to soothe the rich man or to warn his brothers, but Jesus didn’t just cross it, Jesus canceled it out entirely.

What the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ did, dear people of God, is it transforms this parable from a threat to an opportunity. What the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ does is it invites us, since the chasm between us and God is closed, to think about how we then can cross chasms between us and others.

Dear friends in Christ, because of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, this parable is not threat. It is challenge. Don’t get me wrong, this is hard stuff, this is hard work, but it is not threat. Rather it is opportunity, it is invitation, to be about the work of crossing chasms. As Lutherans we preach a cruciform, a cross-shaped faith. Since the chasm between us and God is bridged by Christ, we then get to be about the work of bridging the chasm between us and others. So in light of the resurrection, this parable is about challenging us to see others whom we may have ignored, whom we may not have noticed, and reach out to them. This parable is meant to shake us out of our comfort zones, to be alert to those around us, that their presence might change us.

The good news of this parable is acts of service are transformational not to those we serve, but to us. When we help our neighbor, when we reach out to others, what we will find is we are the ones being changed. You are seen by God, you are loved by God. Take that promise, see others, love others, and you will be transformed. Thanks be to God. Amen.

How To Be Faithful: A Sermon on Luke 16:1-13

If you had to guess, what topic do you think Jesus talked about the most in the Gospels? Answer: the kingdom of God. What do you think is the second most popular topic Jesus taught on? Answer: money. Yep, a sermon about money, not just for stewardship season anymore. Nor should it have ever been confined to stewardship season, because clearly Jesus felt that money and wealth were important topics to speak of. Sixteen of the thirty-eight parables, and a whopping one in ten verse in the Gospels deal with the topic of money, how we use it, how we get it, and how it can use us. So buckle up, dear people of God. Because yes, it’s September 22nd, and the time for pledge cards is a month away, but it’s time to talk about money.

So we’ve got this parable this morning, which one of the commentaries I read described as, and I quote, “difficult to read and difficult to preach.” Awesome, these are always fun. And this parable of the absentee landlord and the dishonest manager does feel both difficult to read and to preach. Especially at the end, where the manager cuts the debts owed to the master, the master praises him for acting shrewdly—not normally an adjective we associate with uprightness and Godly living—and Jesus says, “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth.” Wait, what? “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” is not logic we generally think of as coming from Jesus, nor is “use wealth to get what you need,” so what is Jesus trying to get at here?

Before we get into the parable itself, it is important to notice the shift in audience here. Last week’s parables of the lost sheep, coin, and the skipped parable of the prodigal son were all addressed to the Pharisees. But today we read that Jesus said to his disciples, “There was a rich man…” This is an important distinction to notice, because it tells us that this is insider knowledge. This isn’t the sermon on the mount or the feeding of the five-thousand or the healing of some passerby. This is teaching for those whom were closest to him, who’d been traveling with him, who knew him. Which means this is going to be a hard teaching, a teaching meant to challenge, push, even test those who heard it. The message of the Gospel is described as one meant to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, and when Jesus spoke to his followers, he always seemed focused on making sure they didn’t get too comfortable.

So we’ve got this manager, whom the parable tells us had charges brought against him to his master, “that this man was squandering his property.” And like last’s week’s question about the definition of who is a sinner and who is righteous, the question here is, who is defining what it means to squander property? Is the manager defining it, is he legit bad at his job? Is the absentee landlord defining it, how does he know what property he has from a distance? Or is whoever reported on the manager defining it, and what motivations might this unnamed third party bring to the story? Whatever’s happening here with the so-called squandered property, the result was this: The manager was informed he needed to get the accounts in order, because he was out of a job. Oftentimes nowadays when someone finds themselves out of a job, especially a job in finance, rather than given time to organize the books, they are ceremoniously escorted out of the building. And this parable shows us the wisdom of that move, as with this additional time the manager came up with a scheme to provide for himself once he was no longer under the master’s employ. He called in several of the master’s debtor and dramatically cut the amount they owed. Now it’s a bit unclear here what exactly the manager was doing. Theologian R. Alan Culpepper offers three possibilities. The manager could have been a) cheating the master by reducing the size of the debt owed, b) deducting the interest, thus acting rightly in bringing the master in line with the Deuteronomic law against charging interest, or c) cutting the portion of the debt that was manager’s own commission. Whatever the motivation, the master praised the manager for his shrewdness, a move that seems strange and unlikely since in at least two of the options the master ended up with less money than he was supposed to have, and Jesus encouraged the disciples to use make friends for themselves by means of dishonest wealth. So, still the question, what is going on here? Is the manager the hero of the story? Who are we? Does Jesus want us to cheat the cheaters to advance the kingdom? Or make friends for ourselves with dishonest wealth so that we can obtain security? But verses ten to thirteen seem to contract that, with their disregard for dishonesty and the admonition that you cannot serve God and wealth. Is it faithful to be faithful with dishonest wealth? Was the manager serving God or himself in cutting the debts of the debtors? And, most importantly, what does this parable say to us in a world where finances are measured not in jugs of oil and containers of wheat, but in credit card debt, student loan payments, mortgages, stock-options, tax credits, and 401Ks. How are we to be shrewdly faithful?

Guess what friends, I cannot answer that question for you. And neither, sadly can scripture. I think a lot of times we want scripture to do that for us, or at least, I want it to do that for me. To give me a simple answer for exactly how I should act and what I should do in order to live rightly with God and my neighbor. The problem is Jesus almost never gave straight answers, and on the rare times he did, they were always to introductory problems. Remember a few weeks ago, Jesus turned to a large crowd and said, “none of you can be my disciples if you do not give up all of your possessions”? And we all thought, you can’t possibly mean that Jesus, that’s impossible! Well, this morning he told his disciples the parable of the dishonest manager, and suddenly getting rid of all our possessions, if not practically easier, seems at least conceptually easier. I know at least what it would look like to give away all my possessions, even though I cannot actually do it. But this, to faithfully and shrewdly manage dishonest wealth, that I am less confident in my ability to balance.

Friends, rather than answers, I think the gift this parable is offering us is questions. Because there is no one sized fits all answer for how we manage our personal finances. Leviticus chapter twenty-seven goes into great detail on how much is due to God, but the amounts are given in shekels, and they vary by the giver’s age and gender, and the priest’s assessment of the value, and whether the animal is a firstling, unless it is an unclean animal and then it needs to be assessed and given at one-fifth it’s value, and all of this changes if it’s a Jubilee year. So go ahead and try to figure out the conversion rate between a ritually clean firstling animal and 2019 US dollars, net or gross income, accumulated interest minus interest on debt, etc. We joke at stewardship time that your pledges are between you and God and Doug, because Doug is the financial secretary and does all the tallying, but the reality is even if we published the exact amount of everyone’s giving on a billboard somewhere, your pledge is between you and God, because only you and God know what that amount of money means to you. It is possible to make the largest financial contribution and still be the least generous, and conversely it is possible to give nothing but your time and be the most. Rather than give answers, what this parable does it invites us to wrestle with the questions money poses, and there are many, and it challenges us to ask ourselves who am I serving, am I serving God or money. Because it is possible to serve God with money, but it is also to easy to discover that our money is being served by us.

So consider this parable an opportunity, dear people of God, to think about your finances and whether you are using them, or if they may be using you. And this is complicated stuff, so I invite you to lean further in, to ask bigger questions, than can you up your pledge amount this year. Let this parable challenge you to think about where you spend your money, even on essential items. Does it go to people who are doing ethical work in the world, does it support things you care about? If you think, Pastor’s not talking to me, I’m broke, hang on. If you are a part of the US economic system, and you are, you’re a part of this conversation. You can shop at consignment stores that support good causes, you can share your resources, you can splurge on that kid’s girl scout cookies because you like cookies and supporting small children, these are all financial decisions that can be made by any of us at any income level. If you need to make a large purchase this year, a car or a lawn mower or a water heater, how do the choices you make reflect your values? Do you need a large car, that’s maybe less fuel efficient, because you spend your time helping senior get to appointments or hauling kids to soccer practice? Or is it just you most of the time, and something more environmentally friendly is a better fit? See how there are two right answers to that question. And of course, if you are lucky enough to have some resources, the questions get harder. Who are your investments with, and who are those investments benefiting? Are there corporations who don’t support your values who you need to divest from? Or is it more beneficial to stay invested, to have a say at the table, and to work for reform that way? Again, no one right answer, just a whole bunch of questions.

And here, at last, is the good news, dear people of God. Asking these questions, thinking about finances, wrestling with the ambiguity of these issues again and again and again, that in and of itself is an act of good stewardship, it is a way of being faithful. Yes it would be way easier if Jesus would just tell us how much we owe him every week, if Jesus would just send us a bill like the gas company, and we could pay it. But Jesus is not the gas company, and faith is not a transactional relationship. The fact is we don’t owe Jesus anything, because no amount of money could ever be enough for the gift we have received in Christ’s death and resurrection. Everything we do is a response to that gift which we already have. The opportunity and ability to manage our resources, however large or small they may be, is in itself a gift, it is a way for us to grow closer to God through the act of asking questions, learning, and challenging ourselves to lean in further. These hard and simple acts of faith are opportunities to strive for the kingdom. Theologian Fred Craddock reflected on this passage: “Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with a queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. Most likely this week will present no more than a chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for a county commissioner, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat. Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.” How will you be faithful this week? Thanks be to God. Amen.

God can walk and chew gum: A sermon on Luke 15:1-10

The thing I find the most interesting about this Gospel reading for this morning is how it begins. “Now all the tax collectors and the sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” When you heard it this morning, you maybe didn’t think too much of it. The point of these couple verses after all is just to set the stage for who Jesus is telling the parables to and to introduce who the “lost” are. But while we read Luke’s gospel as a series of short stories for convenience sake—it wouldn’t make sense for me to read the entire Gospel of Luke on a Sunday morning—it is not a series of short stories, it is a continuous narrative. So let me real quick run through the readings we’ve had the last couple Sundays, to refresh your memories and help you see why I find this intro so interesting.

Chapter fourteen started with Jesus being invited to the home of one of the Pharisees for a meal on the sabbath. Dinner parties in the first century were very transactional affairs. So it’s likely that there were a few reasons Jesus was invited to this gathering. One because as a visiting scholar who by this point in his ministry was traveling with a huge crowd of followers, Jesus probably had created quite a buzz at the synagogue that day, and the Pharisee wanted the prestige of hosting such an honored guest. But second, the Pharisees have already tried several times to catch Jesus working on the sabbath, an action that was seen as against the law of God, and several times Jesus had managed to wiggle out of their accusations by pointing out conflicting laws, so they were likely trying to catch him again. Which, in verse two Jesus healed a man with dropsy and followed up with a challenge to the Pharisees about pulling children out of wells on the sabbath, so the Pharisees were right on, that happened. Jesus followed that up with a parable challenging the social climbing antics of dinner parties, so we’re two for two so far on that.

But there’s another weird aspect of first century dinner parties you may not be aware of, and that is that first century dinner parties, at least among the elite, were public affairs. They were not egalitarian affairs; everyone was invited to join the dinner party. But, everyone was invited to watch the dinner party. First century dinner parties were less like a party you might host in your home and more like the royal wedding or the Oscars. Invitations were based on social standing, but those who were of too low standing to be invited could sit in the audience and watch. And after it was over everyone would gossip about who sat with who and who was wearing what, who enjoyed too much of the host’s wine, who had been snubbed, honored, etc. And just like at a royal wedding, the expectation was the invited guests would not interact with the audience. Unlike today, where the audience was on the far side of camera, the audience would have actually been in the room, but there was still an invisible fourth wall between guest and observer. Those watching were the audience, they weren’t really there.

So last week, we heard how Jesus turned to the “large crowds [who] were traveling with him” and addressed them. And he addressed them with that really hard teaching on the challenges of discipleship where Jesus talked about “whoever does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters… and even life itself cannot be [Jesus’] disciple” and whoever does not give up all their possessions cannot be [Jesus’] disciple. It was a tough teaching, a real reality check about how hard it is to truly follow Jesus. And this morning we see that that very tough teaching went completely over the Pharisees heads, because they were too busy grumbling that Jesus was talking to the audience in the middle of their dinner party! The choice of the word “grumbling” is an interesting one for Luke to use as well, because it’s the same word the book of Exodus used to describe the Israelites complaints against Moses, after he had helped them escape slavery in Egypt and they were wandering in the wilderness, when they started to lament all the cucumbers they’d had back in Egypt, when they were slaves, and how they wished they could have cucumbers again. So there’s certainly a hint of melodramatics here. Jesus just told you guys, and some other people, about how hard it is going to be to be his disciple, and you’re mad not about what he said, you’re mad that he’s not paying attention to you and you alone. Maybe, Pharisees, Jesus can walk and chew gum at the same time. Maybe he can actually pay attention to both you and the crowds, and maybe, believe it or not, Jesus thinks the crowds too are worthy of being taught.

And then we get to the parables themselves. Two stories of people losing a small part of what they have, seeking after that thing until they find it again, and then once it is found, rejoicing in its return. Key to understanding the radical nature of these two parables is to know that for either one lost sheep out of a hundred or one lost coin out of ten, the prudent response, the practical response, would be to cut your losses and move on. The time and energy expended in seeking out the lost thing is not worth the value of the lost thing in the first place. And yet, Jesus told these two parables of people who do just that. So is Jesus insinuating that even seemingly worthless things deserve being sought? Yes, that’s certainly part of what’s going on here. And that’s a huge good news piece. God seeks out and finds every sheep, even one sheep lost is a missing sheep too many for God. If you feel lost, if you’ve ever felt lost, that God is not going to discount you is some pretty stinking good news. I could say Amen right here and call it good, and that would be a solid sermon. But a question was raised in Bible study today that made me think that there may be even more going on here than just that. So verses seven and ten are the verses that loop the Pharisees into the parables, that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance. And the question that was asked was this, “what is the definition of a sinner in these verses, and what is the definition of the righteous?” And because I’m a good gospel scholar and I know that different words have different emphases in different Gospels, I responded, well, in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus spent most of his time with those who were called sinners by the Pharisees. So sinners were those who had failed to live up to the Pharisees interpretation of the law. And by contrast the righteous were those who kept the law as Pharisees understood it, i.e. the Pharisees. But the theological definition of sin, hamartia in the Greek, is separation. Sin is that which separates us from God, a sinner is someone who is separated from God. Righteousness, on the other hand is to be in right relationship with God, a righteous person is someone who is in relationship with God. So could we say then that in the moment of being found, the righteous sheep is the one sheep who was found by the shepherd, while the “sinner” sheep, and sinner in quotation marks here because I mean sin as a theological concept, sin as separation rather than sin as a separating action, the “sinner” sheep are the ninety-nine sheep who are not with the shepherd. Boooom, mind blown. Now, let me caution, please hold the sinner sheep thing super lightly because this is a sermon and I don’t have time to unpack that fully. Attention studies say I get about twelve minutes, and I’ve already used like ten of them. My point is the Pharisees working definitions of sinners and righteous were wrong because they were based on what they themselves could do. Or, more realistically, thought they could do. But the parables are about sheep and coins. Neither of which could be held responsible for getting lost, and neither of which could participate in their being found. The sheep and the coin were not found because they repented, they were found because the shepherd and the woman found them. So, therefore, our righteousness, our ability to be in right relationship with God is not about us finding God, it is about a God who found us.

That, dear people of God is the real good news in these parables. You have been found by God. You, individual you, not in this instance you as the collective but you have been sought out and found by God. God values you so much that God stopped at nothing to find you, God left everything to make sure that you were found. Notice the tenses I used there, God values you, present tense, so God left everything and found you, past tense. I used the past tense there because the finding of you has already happened, you were found in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. You, you alone, you as an individual, you who as the Psalmist said, God knew before you were born, you who God knit together in your mothers’ womb, you are not lost, have been found.

You, precious, beloved, named and claimed child of God, and every other precious, beloved, named and claimed child of God who ever was and who ever will be. Because see God is infinite and we are not. Which means God has that same all-encompassing, all-consuming, completely intentionally focused love for each and every one of us. God’s complete and total attention and love for one of us is in no way diminished by God having complete and total attention for someone else. God too, can walk and chew gum at the same time, God can love more than one of us, in fact, God does love all of us. God’s focus for each one of us is the same intensely individual focus as the shepherd leaving behind the ninety-nine to search for the one. Which means, and here’s the piece the Pharisees failed to grasp, God was seeking each of them out with the same intensity God was seeking out those whom they called sinners. The Pharisees just didn’t get to realize they were being sought, because they hadn’t yet realized they were lost. Which is in itself good news. Because God is infinite and we are not, because God does not have to pick and choose whom God is seeking, that means that God is on a hunt for you even, and maybe even especially, if you do not think you are lost. So if you’re pretty sure you’re not lost, hold on to this promise for the days you feel lost, so when that day comes, you can remember that God has always been seeking you.

There’s the good news, and here’s the challenge. Since God is seeking out the lost, if we have been found and we want to stay where God is, God’s with the lost, so that’s where we too need to be. The challenge is we, like Jesus, need to be out with those whom others may call sinners, because it is among them that Jesus so often was, and it is among them where Jesus still dwells. You are found, dear friends in Christ, you are found, so go find Christ in others. Amen.

God's Work. Our Hands. - A Sermon on Luke 14:25-33

Well now, the last time we were together Pastor Jennifer preached about the time a lawyer summed up the law as “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and love your neighbor as yourself.” And when the lawyer tested Jesus with the follow-up question, “and who is my neighbor?” Jesus followed up with a parable about how a man was beaten and left for dead, and the only person who would stop to help him was an outsider Samaritan. I have to admit, on first read I’m feeling a bit like I drew the short straw this year in our joint worship experiences, that Pastor Jennifer got the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and I got “Whoever comes to me and does not hate [their family]… cannot be my disciple.” How did we get from “Love God and love your neighbor” to “hate [your] father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself”? Who is this Jesus?

Not going to lie, I was stumped at first with where this sermon was going to go. How I was going to bring together this apparent command from Jesus to turn on our families and God’s Work. Our Hands. Sunday, a day dedicated to going out and showing God’s love for the world through service? But then I started thinking more about the Samaritan, and the risk he took in caring for the man on the side of the road. What repercussions might he have faced from this act of service?

I want to run through this Good Samaritan story again really quick, but first, I want you to picture in your mind the most villainous group you can imagine. And I mean group specifically, don’t think of an individual person here. This is probable the one and only time I’m going to invite you to lean into stereotypes, think of the group of people who you would completely stereotypically think of as the worst sort of people, who have the worst ideas, who are the most off-based, the most selfish, the most self-centered, the most cruel. Got that group in your mind? OK, good. Let’s go on.

If you’re following along, this is from Luke chapter ten, verses thirty to thirty-seven. “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho when he fell into the hands of robbers, who stripped him, beat him, and went away, leaving him half dead.” Jesus was telling this parable to a group of Judeans and Jewish religious leaders, so here’s what we should assume about the man, he was meant to be someone we can relate to, he was meant to be one of us. He was traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho, maybe he was coming back from worshipping at the temple, or trading in the city, or visiting relatives, or whatever. What matters is he’s our sort of person, he’s part of our family, he would be the sort of person that we would feel an obligation to care for. So when the priest and the Levite, two people in well-respected positions of leadership passed him by, they were neglecting one of their own, leaving a brother or sister in the ditch. What if it was someone in your family? Can you imagine being so callous as to walk on by? Picture that scene in your mind.

And now, add to the scene of your loved one in need, a member of the villainous group I had you think about earlier. Imagine they are the one who stop to help your injured loved one. They are the one moved with pity, who bandage their wounds, bring them to safety, and offer to pay whatever the cost for the care that they need. That villainous stereotype, that is how the Judean community viewed the Samaritans. So if that scene was jarring to you, that is how Jesus’ audience would have heard it as well.

And now, I want you to flip the script one more time. This is the cool thing about parables, they invite us to read them from a variety of different perspectives. Flip the script and imagine the person in the ditch is a member of that villainous community. They are not your family member, quite the opposite, they are someone who wishes your family harm. And you, a follower of Jesus Christ, do the thing that Jesus was commanding here. You step in and play the roll of the Good Samaritan. You pick this person up off the ground, you bandage their wounds, you care for them, you bring them to safety, you pay for their bills. Of course, on the surface, we all know that is the right thing to do, “love your neighbor” is second only to “Jesus” as the best possible answer to every Sunday school question. But think for a second if you actually had the opportunity to do that. Would you get pushback from some in your family, in your community, for helping out someone like that? Someone who wants to do harm to you? I invite you, again, for the first and probably only time, to lean into the stereotypes in your mind and really ask the question, if you did something as radical as the Samaritan did and helped someone whom was understood to be truly and really other, would you get pushback for that decision? I’d be willing to guess you would. When that Samaritan went back to his family and said, “I helped a Jew today,” I bet he took some heat from it. Just like you’ve maybe been forced to have uncomfortable conversations with some of your family members about your faith. Conversations you’d maybe rather not have had.

But then I need to ask, was it worth it in the end? To help the person in need, to follow the way of Christ, even though you had to have that awkward conversation, even though it caused some conflict, even though the people you love, the people who are your family, couldn’t understand the choices you made? I don’t know all of you super well, but I would guess, knowing the cultures of both St. Peter and Trinity, I would guess that you would say that it was. That it was worth it to follow Jesus, worth it to love the outsider, worth it to take that risk for the Gospel, even though it made people uncomfortable.

Following Jesus, being a disciple, being part of the kingdom of God, has a cost associated with it. It’s not all puppies and rainbows and everybody loves you. Sure some people, many people, maybe most people, thought what we did yesterday, going out and being God’s hands and feet in the world, was great. But some probably questioned if we were wasting our time. Especially you St. Peter folk, at Trinity we at least have a building here, why did you make the decision to spend an afternoon in Post/Franklin, when you could have been doing so many other things? There’s a cost associated with being a follower of Jesus. It costs our time, it costs our energy, and sometimes, when the call of Christ leads us to stand up for unpopular ideas, it can cost us relationships. Jesus knew that, and Jesus loved his potential disciples, loves us, enough to make it painfully clear that being his follower was not going to lead to glory and prestige. Jesus himself was on the way to the cross. So before you enter into this life, Jesus cautioned, think about it. Just like you wouldn’t start a building without making sure you can finish it, or enter a war without being sure you could win. Ok, let’s be real, many people do those things, but common sense says you shouldn’t. Just like that, make sure you know what you’re getting into before you enter into this life.

But, here’s the good news. Remember how I talked about how the neat thing about parables is they’re meant to be flipped and read from a bunch of different angles? We’ve been reading these parables this morning from the perspective of us as the man building the tower, or the king leading the army, weighing the cost before we proceed. And that’s certainly a right and good way to read them, but what if we flip them? What if God is the one building the tower, what if God is the one leading the army? What if God is the one picking up the cost and entering into the fray and risking relationships for the sake of the kingdom?

The good news, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, is that God is about the work of redemption. God is in fact in the middle of this work of redemption. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ are nothing less than God redeeming the world for Godself. And the promise we have, from this text and from the whole of scripture, is that God counted the cost before beginning the project. God did not enter into this work of salvation without first knowing what it would take. God is God, after all, God knew, God knows, what God is doing.

What this means, dear brothers and sisters, is that you are worth it to God. You have value, you are valued. God has not entered into this love of you haphazardly, God chose you, chose us, chose this world, as God’s people.

And what I think is even cooler, even more special, even more powerful and meaningful and strong. God did not just choose us to redeem, but God also chose us to be about God’s own work of redemption. God could have done this work on God’s own, God is God, after all, but God chose us to get to be God’s people in the world.

Dear people of God, it is work to be a disciple. There is cost. But, it is worth it, you are worth it, God values you above all else. So let us be about this work of redemption. This work which God has started, which God has promised to finish, and which God is about in us and the world. Amen.

Accessibility: A Sermon on Luke 14:1, 7-14

This morning’s passage is a bit of a weird one. On first read through it always feels a bit like a page from the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People,” like Jesus is giving sage advice for social climbing. Our text this morning started out with Jesus noticing how the guests were jockeying for position at the table to guarantee themselves a place of honor. This is one of those places where first century culture and our culture differ, so it’s important to stress just how much of a big deal seating assignments were. In a society where one’s social standing affected one’s access, to be seen as more or less important in the eyes of the culture, was crucial. So at first, Jesus’ advice here, to take not just a lower seat, but the lowest seat at a party, so that the host will need to point out your humility and raise you to a higher place, seems like nothing more than good advice for social climbing. If you take a seat lower than the one you deserve, not only will you not get the humiliation of being moved down in rank, but you will get the added glory of having your humility on display, thus earning you an even higher ranking and more social status, this person is important AND humble, what a winner!

But humility for the sake of humility is not actually humility at all. Maybe you’re familiar with the concept of the humble brag? The social media trope of putting oneself down for the purpose of fishing for compliments. That sort of self-deprecation isn’t humility at all, it is in itself a sort of gamesmanship, of using humility to draw attention to yourself. And what’s more, if the advice was to take a low seat so that you could be raised up, Jesus never took that advice. Jesus took the low seat all the time, but not so that others would thing better of him. In fact, his taking of the low seat is what got him killed. Jesus hung out with beggars and thieves and outcasts because Jesus genuinely wanted to spend time with those people, not as some sort of show of what a great egalitarian hero he was. And I wonder if he wants to spend time with the bottom of the social status people not only because he cared about those whom others had overlooked, but also because they were less annoying than those at the top of society. When you’re already at the bottom you don’t need to flaunt your humility, and there is a certain freedom in that, an honesty that is refreshing for those of us who are stuck in the game. So, I don’t think what’s going on here is Jesus giving advice for more effective social climbing. But what is going on here?

More than just successfully navigating the social game, what I think Jesus was doing here was completely throwing out the social order entirely. Taking the lowest seat at the table isn’t about getting to be raised up to the higher one, its about making a statement about the value of ranking people in the first place. When Rose Parks sat in the front of the bus, she wasn’t making a statement about her personal value against everyone else on the bus, she was making statement about the entire concept of grouping people by the color of their skin. Taking a place of lower status when society thinks you clearly deserve a different one puts the spotlight on the entire unjust system and forces us to ask uncomfortable questions about the nature of power, who has it and who wields it. The good news in this first half of Jesus parable is for those who find themselves cast down to lower status, because Jesus is saying, that position is a false position. In the kingdom of God those who exalt themselves shall be lowered, and those who lower themselves shall be exalted, and I think by default then, those who do not lower themselves, but are lowered by others, will too find themselves lifted up in the great upswelling of the kingdom of God. The challenge is for us who have some power in society, those of us who have something to lose. Which, pro tip, is all of us in one way or another. The challenge for us is to be on the lookout for those who have been unjustly demeaned, to put ourselves alongside of them and shine a light on the injustice. This is delicate work, for it is all too easy in doing this to shine a light on our own nobility and “wokeness,” but it is the work I think Jesus is calling us to. In the topsy-turvy calculus of the kingdom of God, my honor means nothing if it comes at the sake of someone else’s.

And Jesus didn’t just have instruction on how to be a good guest, he also had words for the hosts of the party. “When you give a luncheon or a dinner,” Jesus said, “do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors… invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed… for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” At first read, again, great advice for social climbing. Invite those lower on the social ladder than you, and you look like a great person for being so open and welcoming. But then I thought about it from the point of view of the poor, the lame, the crippled, those being invited to the dinner party for the sake of meeting Jesus’ words and I wondered, do they even want to come to the dinner party? Would they feel comfortable there? Would there be accommodations made for them so that they could participate fully? Or would they be on display, look at this poor person I invited to my party, what a great person am I! And again, if this is Jesus’ advice, Jesus never followed it. Jesus threw a couple of dinner parties in his day, think the feeding of the five-thousand or the post-resurrection breakfast on the beach, but in neither of them did Jesus specifically invite those in need. In the feeding of the five thousand there was no guest list at all, it was just food for whoever happened to be on the hill. And the breakfast on the beach was a very specific guest list, just his closest followers. And anyway, Jesus was way more likely to be a guest, to be the one doing the uncomfortable work of culturally commuting to a different group. So again, what’s going on here?

I think the good news in this parable is God wants and expects that everyone is invited to the party. When you feel excluded or overlooked by others, the good news here is Jesus is making a very firm stance on the expansiveness of welcome. The challenge is for us who find ourselves in the hosting role. This parable of Jesus means we need to find ways to make our gatherings accessible to all whom God wants included. As we talked about as we were going through the RIC process, it is not enough to say “all are welcome” and then not do the work to make sure that all really does mean all. Rather, what matters is to first do the background work so that we can then make a very specific invitation. You are welcome, and you will know you are welcome because I have done the work in advance to make sure I am prepared to be a good host. We’re doing this ADA work now, to make sure our building is accommodating to people with a variety of disabilities, and the question we keep asking as council is how can we be as accessible as possible to as many different people as possible. ADA has very specific requirements, but like any list of regulations, they need to be tailored to fit our unique setting. Like, for example, per ADA, our handicapped spots in the front of the building are not valid because, fairly, they force you to walk in what is a lane of traffic. True ADA-approved handicapped spots need to be in the parking lot, one for every twenty-five spots, and one spot specifically to accommodate a handicapped van, which means a designated walkway on either side to accommodate a wheelchair ramp. So, in the interest of accessibility and being ADA compliant, we’re working on getting the parking lot ready to make those spots. But, for a lot of our community, both in the congregation and the Co-op, the problem isn’t a handicapped van so much as its limited mobility, and the difficulty in walking all the way from the parking lot to the door. So, even though the front spots are not really valid handicapped spots, we talked in council about how we’re going to keep them, and maybe even get them signs to indicate they are for people with limited mobility, so that in our efforts to be ADA compliant we don’t accidentally become less accessible rather than more. And, let me encourage you to say thank you to Wayne, who spent an entire afternoon measuring and calculating the square footage of the parking lot, and Tish who called multiple asphalt companies, and ended up finding one who filled the pot holes for free, and to thank Diane Andert and Kendra in advance, because when you’re trying to think about how to make your building accessible, it’s super helpful to have people helping you who think through how to make spaces accessible for a living.

Yes, it’s a lot of work and no, it’s not going to be cheap. But it’s important work, and I think it’s even kingdom work, to make sure that when we invite people into our space, when we welcome people to our building, that we know we have done the work in advance to make sure that they truly are able to come and participate fully, in all ways. Not as tokens of how welcoming we are, but as full participants with gifts to give and wisdom to share. And we will be blessed. Not just at the resurrection of the righteous, but right now, with the gifts and wisdom that come from experiences not our own. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Peace - A Sermon on Luke 12:49-56

The choices of bulletin cover art this morning were, well, limited. It was this cartoony picture of the earth on fire barreling through space or six different options of a flaming sword. I went with the flaming earth because it reminded me of an early 200s viral internet cartoon called “The End of the World.” In it, a guy with a weird French-Canadian accent explained how the theory of mutually assured destruction is more than likely going to end in humanity blowing ourselves up. Which sounds depressing, but somehow the fact that it’s told through low-quality animation and bad jokes made the end of the world seem light-hearted and funny.

If there is one thing that Americans agree on these days, it is that we are divided. Last week I was listening to a program about political talk radio, and it was talking about how we have become so siloed that we do not even agree on the same base set of facts any longer. One conservative radio host shared how prior to 2015, when a listener would send him a comment with factual inaccuracies, he could counter the mistakes, and commentor would respond appreciatively of the new information. Now, he says, if he counters factual inaccuracies, the commentor challenges his facts.

At the risk of entering into the fray myself, apparently the ELCA made Fox News last week for a resolution approved at the Churchwide Assembly declaring the ELCA a “sanctuary church body.” And since you may be getting questions about what this means, it felt important as your pastor to offer some clarification. First off, what does the ELCA resolution actually say? Well, humorously, it says that the ELCA declares itself a sanctuary church body, and asks the Churchwide Council to provide a written report for what that means at the 2022 Churchwide Assembly. So, I’ll get back to you in three years with a full definition… But, what it does say is it recognizes that sanctuary is more than just a physical shelter, it also means having a response to those in need, a strategy to provide assistance, a vision for how the world should be, and a moral imperative to action. The resolution reaffirms that the ELCA has had a long-term and growing commitment to migrants and refugees. A commitment that includes the Lutheran missionary work of the 1800s, the welcoming of German migrants during World War II, at one point 1 in every 6 Lutherans in the world was a migrant or refugee, we come from a heritage who knows what it means to seek refuge. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service came out of the crisis of World War Two, and is now one of nine governmentally recognized refugee resettlement organizations, and one of only two that serves unaccompanied minors. So, contrary to the Fox News panel’s assertion, the ELCA is not encouraging its churches to break US immigration law, or any law. What it does mean is that the ELCA continues its commitment to support refugees as they are resettled in the US, to provide legal assistance to immigrants pursing their legally-protected right to seek asylum, and ensure undocumented immigrants know and understand their rights under US law. It also means that the ELCA will continue to advocate for just and humane treatment of detained immigrants, to accompany minors through immigration court proceedings, and to speak out against xenophobia, racism, and fear-mongering. Pastor Robert Jeffries referenced Romans 13, which urges obedience to civil authorities as they are ordained by God. Obedience unless, as Pastor Jeffries pointed out, those authorities ask us to go against moral obligations. And here’s where I differ with Pastor Jeffries suggestion that scripture has nothing to say about our treatment of migrants. I would argue that a text that reminds us of our ancestor Abraham giving and seeking hospitality in a foreign land, Moses leading the Israelites from slavery into freedom, and even Jesus fleeing a violent dictator and seeking asylum in Egypt, a text that, as we will read in a few weeks in Hebrews, urges us to “show hospitality to strangers” for the possibility of entertaining angels, has a lot to say about our moral obligation, to say nothing of the national and international laws guarding and protecting those who leave their own homes in search of safety and opportunity. That is what the ELCA Churchwide Assembly meant when it declared us a sanctuary church body.

I started this little screed with the phrase, “at the risk of entering into the fray myself,” but honestly, entering into the fray is precisely what I intended to do. Enter myself into the fray and give you language and background to enter yourselves into it as well. Because entering into the fray is what Jesus calls us to in our Gospel reading for this morning. “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” Whoa Jesus, where did this come from?! What happened to “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among God’s people”? Or “peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you”? Or, from just a few verses before, “do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom”? One of these things seems like not like the other.

So let’s talk a little bit about peace. Jeremiah and Ezekiel both spoke of the sins who led God’s people astray, “claiming, ‘peace, peace’ when there is no peace.” The peace Jeremiah and Ezekiel spoke against is the “go along to get along” sort of peace, the peace that ignores persecution in the interest of harmony, that values the status quo over the risk of salvation, that sees conflict as the problem rather than a symptom of a deeper wound. The time that Jesus lived in was a time of such fabled peace. First century Jerusalem was under what was known as the Pax Romana, the so-called “peace of Rome.” The Pax Romana was peace through strength, it was do what Rome tells you because Rome’s army is bigger than yours and it will crush you if you disobey. It wasn’t mutually assured destruction, because only one side ran the risk of being destroyed, but it was peace through fear of annihilation. And I would argue, and I think Jesus is arguing, that peace held in place by terror is not peace at all, it is captivity and violence.

Peace is not the absence of division, peace is not niceness, and peace is not necessarily calm. The peace of the kingdom of God, the peace Christ is bringing, is a peace that is freeing, a peace that is redeeming, a peace that is transformational. It is the “way of peace” Mary sung about in the magnificat, a peace that brings the powerful from their thrones, that lifts up the lowly, that fills the hungry, that scatters the proud, according to the promises God made. And that peace, Jesus recognizes, is not a peace that is absent of division. Jesus knew that this peace would bring division, because he’d already lived it. We’re in chapter twelve now, but way back in chapter four you might remember Jesus’ first sermon to his hometown synagogue, where he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, that he had been anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the townspeople responded by leading him to the brow of a hill that they might hurl him off the cliff. Jesus is already well aware that the message he brings is not one that will make him universally popular.

We’re in chapter twelve, we’re still a few chapters from the end, but since the Transfiguration, we’ve known where we’re headed. We’re headed to Jerusalem; we’re headed to the cross. The fire Jesus is eager to kindle is the fire of salvation, the baptism with which he will be baptized is death and resurrection. So yes, Jesus is eager to get this fire kindled, because this is the fire of change, the fire of transformation, the fire of God’s active, loving, saving, redeeming presence in the world.

And here’s the really good news. Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” But we’re not hearing these words from Jesus; we’re reading them two-thousand years after they were spoken. Which means, the fire Jesus wanted to kindle, consider it kindled. The baptism with which he was to be baptized, it has already been completed. That fire, that baptism, that was Christ’s death and resurrection. That was the event that forever set us free from the bonds of sin and death and for service to God and our neighbor.

Last Sunday I shared a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, but it’s so pertinent to this morning that I think it bears repeating. “There is no peace along the way to safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe.” That is the peace that Jesus died and rose again to bring us. A peace that is not free of division, rather a peace that sets us free. So enter into the fray, dear people of God. The fire is kindled. Amen.