A couple months ago in the Trumpet I wrote about how I was thinking of doing an occasional series on planning and preparing for funerals. You’ll notice in the announcements the first one of those is coming up in a couple weeks. Cheryl Marshall from Kempf Funeral Home is going to be here to talk about pre-planning a funeral. Full disclosure, yes, she is from a funeral home, so she certainly has an angle here. But she spoke at St. Peter, and Pastor Jennifer said the presentation is really interesting and she doesn’t do a hard sell. I thought about learning the information myself and just teaching the class, then I visited a couple funeral homes, asked about the process, and realized I probably should stay in my lane and invite someone in the field to share. If you decide to preplan, I am by no means endorsing or not endorsing Kempf. Cheryl was very nice when I met with her, but I’m also a big fan of Tom Coleman from Henry’s because he and I always talk running, and the people from Farley-Estes are nice too.
Anyway, I’m rambling. Moral of the story, and of the rambling really, is that there can be a bit of awkwardness in talking about something as seemingly final as end-of-life decisions, estates, and funeral planning. We live in a culture that avoids, even denies, death. We don’t even like to say the word “death,” preferring euphemisms like “passed away” or “departed.” Which don’t even make sense. What does “passing away” even mean? How does one “pass”?
The sad truth of this is we can be so laser-focused on avoiding death at all costs that we can get in the way of life. Our medical system is set up to see death as failure, but I heard about a study recently where end-stage lung cancer patients who started hospice care sooner actually lived longer, and with better quality of life, than those who pursued every available medical option. Death is a part of life, and recognizing that, not being afraid of that, and having conversations about how we want to live at the end of our lives can actually improve life we have at the end of our lives, and make that transition easier on ourselves and on those we love.
That conversation is exactly the conversation we drop in on Jesus having with his disciples in our Gospel reading for this morning. To situate us, since we’ve been jumping around quite a bit lately, this is from what is known as the Farewell Discourse, which was Jesus’ last words to his disciples after he washed their feet and before he went to the cross. What Jesus is doing here is he is preparing his disciples for their life after his death. He is assuring them that there will be life and that they will not be alone. This is a short section, the whole discourse is four chapters long, but I just want to walk you through it, because it’s one of my favorite passages of scripture. It’s actually a passage I read at funerals a lot, because I find such comfort in Jesus’ words.
Jesus said, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” We will make our home with them. Rolf Jacobson from Luther Seminary said this line is about the importance of Jesus’ ascension into heaven. Dr. Jacobson said that Jesus’ incarnation is “misery loves company,” the crucifixion is “misery really loves company,” and the resurrection is only that Jesus is alive. But the ascension is where Jesus brings the incarnation full circle and returns to the Father to make a place for us. Jesus’ ascension is where our new life is promised, and the coming of the Spirit in and among us on Pentecost is where that new life starts to break in.
So Jesus is going not just because Jesus wants to be with the Father, but because Jesus is preparing our place in the relationship with him and the Father. A relationship that will be sustained on earth through, “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name.” This Advocate “will teach us everything and remind us of all Jesus said to us.” A fun game, by the way, is to look up this verse in different translations of the Bible, because the word translated in the NRSV as advocate is one of those Greek words that is too deep and rich and nuanced for one English word. The word means advocate, like someone who speaks on your behalf, and it also means, comforter, guide, companion, and friend, to name a few. So while Jesus is ascended into heaven, preparing space for us in the relationship between Jesus and the Father, we already are a part of that relationship, right here, right now, through the Holy Spirit. It’s the great already and not yet of being resurrection people, even as Jesus is preparing a place for us, even as we are still in the midst of our journey, already we have the presence of this relationship in and among us. Friends, I can’t even really put words to this, to me it feels like a hug, and there aren’t good words to describe a good hug.
“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” This is a great line, because there’s something incredibly subversive about what Jesus is saying here. Jesus lived during the time of what was known as the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. It was called the peace of Rome because all of the wars fought in conquest to create the Roman Empire were more or less over, and the Roman military was now engaged in occupying territory rather than acquiring it. So let’s be clear, if we describe peace as merely the absence of actual battle then yes, there was peace. But it was a peace held by power, by might, and most importantly, by fear. And peace through fear is no peace at all. You can get security through fear, you can get stability through fear, but you cannot get peace through fear. And, what’s more, the tension on a system held in place by fear is so powerful that it will inevitably snap the system. Peace through fear is temporary. But real peace, true peace, the peace which Jesus gives, is free of fear. It may not be stable, it may not be sure, but it is deep, and true, and life-giving. The peace of Jesus is a peace that cannot see the ending, but can trust that the next step is sure, and that there will be a next step, and a step after that. The peace of Jesus is resurrection peace. It is peace anchored in the promise that the end is never the end, because there is no end in the circle of relationship in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And then we’ve got maybe one of the weirdest grammatical constructions in scripture. “You heard me say, ‘I am going away, and I am coming to you.’” For the record, if that is a line from earlier in scripture, I don’t remember it. And I have no idea what it means, what Jesus is talking about. I don’t know how Jesus could be both coming and going. But it makes me think of what we were talking about earlier, about Jesus going to the Father and the Holy Spirit coming. In order for there to be a next thing, there has to be an end to the previous thing. The incarnation, the incredible gift of God taking on flesh in order to be with us, that finite being had to end in order for the infiniteness of God to unfold. The incarnate Jesus had to go away in order to make space for the Christ to come.
And here’s the last big, powerful push to drive this message of love home. “If you love me,” and, fun fact, because I can’t resist a good fun fact. The word translated “if” here, apparently it’s a functional if. Which means it it’s not a condition, it’s a statement of fact. So it read more like, “If you love me, and you do, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father… And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe.” Friends, think about it, none of these things are true yet. But they will be. The disciples do love Jesus, but they are not rejoicing that he is going to the Father. Quite the opposite really, they are going to be dejected, depressed, and even terrified at the events that are about to occur. And when they do occur, even though Jesus told them about them so that they would believe, they do not. Not right away, anyway.
But they will. They will believe. They will rejoice. They will have peace, they will not fear. What Jesus does in these words is he speaks into being a new reality. A reality that is still unfolding, but will unfold. All of this promise will take place, because Jesus, the word made flesh, spoke it into being.
All that fancy theological pondering to say this simple promise. Because of Jesus, because of his incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension, we have relationship with God the Father and nothing can ever separate us from that relationship. Not doubt, not sin, not fear, not even death itself, heck especially not death itself can ever separate us from that love. Paul told the Corinthians: “When we live we live in Christ and when we die we die to Christ, so that whether we live or whether we die, we belong to God.” Amen.
The extraordinary can look so ordinary
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Monday, May 20, 2019
Jesus Loves You: A Sermon on John 13:31-35
In honor of having just returned from our own bishop’s election, I want to share the story of a bishop’s election I was part of six years ago in California. I’m sure I’ve shared this story before, but it’s one of my favorites and I think it bears repeating as one of the most spiritual experiences I’ve ever had.
So this synod assembly started at 3 pm on a Thursday, as gatherings of people trying to accomplish business through Roberts’ Rules of Order are wont to do, with a nearly three hour fight over procedure. A fight that I found particularly annoying, not just because the opening session was only supposed to last two and a half hours to begin with, and that three hour fight meant we were all an hour late to dinner, but also because I was good friends with the chair of the elections committee. I knew the months she’d put into trying to set up the process to be as fair and transparent as possible. A system some grumpy dude, who was probably mainly there because he was the only person in his congregation who could get out of work for two days, had forced us to completely redo following three hours of boring conversation. But eventually, we cast the first nominating ballot and got to leave. So imagine my intense delight the next morning to get up and discover that because we started at three and didn’t vote until six, and the registration table had continued to allow people to register and receive ballots, there were considerably more ballots cast then there had been people credentialed when the session had started, leading to having to have the entire first day’s vote thrown out and redone. Leading to not only more work, but also, because of the time needed to count ballots, more time to fight about procedure. By the time we broke for lunch, I was seriously considering breaking out entirely.
But then we came back from lunch and started with the five-minute candidate statements, and something funny started happening. This sense of the Holy Spirit started showing up in the space. We heard the statements, recast ballots, and the candidates went from six to four, and those four all felt right. Then we had Q and A time, and voted again and the four went down to three, and again it just felt right. More questions, another vote, three to two, and this calm fell over the gathered assembly.
Here’s the background detail I didn’t mention, one of these candidates was the Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin, who in addition to being a brilliant Reformation scholar, wonderful pastoral presence, and all-around nice person, is a partnered gay man. So some of that tension in the room was about the possibility of the historic statement of electing the ELCA’s first openly gay bishop. Southwest California Synod, like much of the ELCA, had been hit pretty hard from the ELCA’s decision to start ordaining LGBTQ clergy, and no one was really sure how this next step would unfold. But following the debacle of Thursday, each step of the process it was just increasingly clear that Pastor Erwin was being lifted up as the next bishop. All of the candidates were excellent, it wasn’t like there was a bad choice, but there was just so clearly the right choice for that moment, that by the time we got to the last vote, two names on the ballot with the winner being the bishop, voting felt out of our hands. We prayed, we voted, and when the results appeared on the screen, showing the majority going to Pastor Erwin, a silence I can only describe as holy fell over the assembly. And then the entire room exploded in raucous applause. The woman next to me, whom I had at this point not spoken to, wrapped her arms around me and hugged me. Through her tears, she explained that in 2009 her children’s church had left the ELCA over the decision to ordain LGBTQ clergy, and her children, in response, had left not only that congregation but church entirely. The bitterness that fight produced made her children not feel safe. If their church couldn’t embrace everyone, they felt like it could no longer embrace them. “I know we still have a long way to go,” she said to me, “I know this doesn’t make everyone welcoming. But maybe this is a step, maybe my kids could feel safe in church again, could come back again, could bring my grandchildren back, if they really knew they truly were welcome.”
There is this weird thing that happens sometimes at synod assemblies and other large gatherings of the church, where in the middle of a contentious discussion something will happen that will make the whole thing feel sacredly out of our hands. I wasn’t there, but I’ve heard a similar feeling of peaceful inevitability settled over the assembly at the 2013 churchwide assembly that elected Elizabeth Eaton as the first female Presiding Bishop of the ELCA. The vote was historic, but it felt not like a first but like a Spirit-led movement. Like the opening up of who could be called by God to positions of leadership in the church was happening not by us but for us. We act, not knowing what we are doing, what the results of those actions might be, and through those uncertain actions, the Reign of God expands.
Our Gospel reading for this morning might sound familiar, because we read it a month ago on Maundy Thursday. Jesus said these words to his disciples on the night of his betrayal, having just washed their feet, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer… Where I am going, you cannot come.” By “a little longer” he meant less than twenty-four hours, and by where he was going he meant the cross, he meant death. In a few minutes he will tell them, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” and that is what Jesus was preparing to do. But before he did that, he gave his disciples this one last commandment, “love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
Love one another. What strikes me about this command is that it is an action, not a belief or an idea. Jesus didn’t command them to believe in him, or to teach others about him, he told them to love one another. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
I think Jesus told the disciples this because he knew that it was going to be hard to believe. There were going to be times that would be dark, days that would be hard. The crucifixion itself yes, but even past that. Even after the resurrection, the appearances in the locked room, the breakfast on the beach, the disciples were going to face tough days. Days that it was going to hard to trust that things were still going as they ought, hard to believe that God was still with them. And on those days, in those moments, when belief would feel hard to come by, they were going to have to rely on something a little more concrete, they were going to have to rely on the love of each other. And that love would be what would hold them when they could not believe.
Dear friends in Christ, this is why we still gather every Sunday, this is why we still meet in communities, why church still matters. Because it can be hard to believe. Just belief in itself, that someone could rise from the dead, is one thing. But holding that belief when things are hard. When faced with an illness, or loss of a job, or a broken relationship, or a broken world, believing in the face of those things that God still loves you, that God is still with you, that God has still got you, that can feel impossible. So in those times when you cannot believe, it is my prayer for you, and I think the reason God gave us church, that you can come here and know that you are loved. That you can rest in love until you find your way to belief again. And on the days when you do believe, when things are good and God feels near and the world is as it should, you can come here and share that love with someone else. You can be the person who holds the belief of another, so that they have a place to rest in their struggle.
Dear people of God, Jesus loves you. May you know love, may you be love. Amen.
So this synod assembly started at 3 pm on a Thursday, as gatherings of people trying to accomplish business through Roberts’ Rules of Order are wont to do, with a nearly three hour fight over procedure. A fight that I found particularly annoying, not just because the opening session was only supposed to last two and a half hours to begin with, and that three hour fight meant we were all an hour late to dinner, but also because I was good friends with the chair of the elections committee. I knew the months she’d put into trying to set up the process to be as fair and transparent as possible. A system some grumpy dude, who was probably mainly there because he was the only person in his congregation who could get out of work for two days, had forced us to completely redo following three hours of boring conversation. But eventually, we cast the first nominating ballot and got to leave. So imagine my intense delight the next morning to get up and discover that because we started at three and didn’t vote until six, and the registration table had continued to allow people to register and receive ballots, there were considerably more ballots cast then there had been people credentialed when the session had started, leading to having to have the entire first day’s vote thrown out and redone. Leading to not only more work, but also, because of the time needed to count ballots, more time to fight about procedure. By the time we broke for lunch, I was seriously considering breaking out entirely.
But then we came back from lunch and started with the five-minute candidate statements, and something funny started happening. This sense of the Holy Spirit started showing up in the space. We heard the statements, recast ballots, and the candidates went from six to four, and those four all felt right. Then we had Q and A time, and voted again and the four went down to three, and again it just felt right. More questions, another vote, three to two, and this calm fell over the gathered assembly.
Here’s the background detail I didn’t mention, one of these candidates was the Rev. Dr. R. Guy Erwin, who in addition to being a brilliant Reformation scholar, wonderful pastoral presence, and all-around nice person, is a partnered gay man. So some of that tension in the room was about the possibility of the historic statement of electing the ELCA’s first openly gay bishop. Southwest California Synod, like much of the ELCA, had been hit pretty hard from the ELCA’s decision to start ordaining LGBTQ clergy, and no one was really sure how this next step would unfold. But following the debacle of Thursday, each step of the process it was just increasingly clear that Pastor Erwin was being lifted up as the next bishop. All of the candidates were excellent, it wasn’t like there was a bad choice, but there was just so clearly the right choice for that moment, that by the time we got to the last vote, two names on the ballot with the winner being the bishop, voting felt out of our hands. We prayed, we voted, and when the results appeared on the screen, showing the majority going to Pastor Erwin, a silence I can only describe as holy fell over the assembly. And then the entire room exploded in raucous applause. The woman next to me, whom I had at this point not spoken to, wrapped her arms around me and hugged me. Through her tears, she explained that in 2009 her children’s church had left the ELCA over the decision to ordain LGBTQ clergy, and her children, in response, had left not only that congregation but church entirely. The bitterness that fight produced made her children not feel safe. If their church couldn’t embrace everyone, they felt like it could no longer embrace them. “I know we still have a long way to go,” she said to me, “I know this doesn’t make everyone welcoming. But maybe this is a step, maybe my kids could feel safe in church again, could come back again, could bring my grandchildren back, if they really knew they truly were welcome.”
There is this weird thing that happens sometimes at synod assemblies and other large gatherings of the church, where in the middle of a contentious discussion something will happen that will make the whole thing feel sacredly out of our hands. I wasn’t there, but I’ve heard a similar feeling of peaceful inevitability settled over the assembly at the 2013 churchwide assembly that elected Elizabeth Eaton as the first female Presiding Bishop of the ELCA. The vote was historic, but it felt not like a first but like a Spirit-led movement. Like the opening up of who could be called by God to positions of leadership in the church was happening not by us but for us. We act, not knowing what we are doing, what the results of those actions might be, and through those uncertain actions, the Reign of God expands.
Our Gospel reading for this morning might sound familiar, because we read it a month ago on Maundy Thursday. Jesus said these words to his disciples on the night of his betrayal, having just washed their feet, “Little children, I am with you only a little longer… Where I am going, you cannot come.” By “a little longer” he meant less than twenty-four hours, and by where he was going he meant the cross, he meant death. In a few minutes he will tell them, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” and that is what Jesus was preparing to do. But before he did that, he gave his disciples this one last commandment, “love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
Love one another. What strikes me about this command is that it is an action, not a belief or an idea. Jesus didn’t command them to believe in him, or to teach others about him, he told them to love one another. “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
I think Jesus told the disciples this because he knew that it was going to be hard to believe. There were going to be times that would be dark, days that would be hard. The crucifixion itself yes, but even past that. Even after the resurrection, the appearances in the locked room, the breakfast on the beach, the disciples were going to face tough days. Days that it was going to hard to trust that things were still going as they ought, hard to believe that God was still with them. And on those days, in those moments, when belief would feel hard to come by, they were going to have to rely on something a little more concrete, they were going to have to rely on the love of each other. And that love would be what would hold them when they could not believe.
Dear friends in Christ, this is why we still gather every Sunday, this is why we still meet in communities, why church still matters. Because it can be hard to believe. Just belief in itself, that someone could rise from the dead, is one thing. But holding that belief when things are hard. When faced with an illness, or loss of a job, or a broken relationship, or a broken world, believing in the face of those things that God still loves you, that God is still with you, that God has still got you, that can feel impossible. So in those times when you cannot believe, it is my prayer for you, and I think the reason God gave us church, that you can come here and know that you are loved. That you can rest in love until you find your way to belief again. And on the days when you do believe, when things are good and God feels near and the world is as it should, you can come here and share that love with someone else. You can be the person who holds the belief of another, so that they have a place to rest in their struggle.
Dear people of God, Jesus loves you. May you know love, may you be love. Amen.
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Jesus Knows Us: A Sermon on John 10:22-30
I want to do a bit of locating before we get into the meat of the Gospel text this morning. First off, fun fact, the fourth Sunday of Easter every year is what is called Good Shepherd Sunday. It’s called Good Shepherd Sunday because the Gospel reading for the fourth Sunday of Easter is always part of John, chapter ten, what is known as the Good Shepherd discourse. It’s the part where Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep, who cares for the sheep, who is the gate for the sheep, who’s sheep hear his voice, etc. Our readings come from what is known as the Revised Common Lectionary, which is a three year cycle of readings. So on the fourth Sunday of Easter Year A, the gospel is John chapter ten verses one through ten, Year B is verses eleven through eighteen, and today, in Year C, the reading is verses twenty-two through thirty. All this to say, while this morning we’re hearing Jesus talk about sheep for the first time, those around him had been hearing this sheep talk for a while. Eighteen verses of it, to be exact. So when asked, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly,” if Jesus’ answer, “I have told you and you do not believe,” sounds a little impatient, well, he had just finished answering that question in a pretty repetitive manner, so…
Part of what’s coloring my reading of our Gospel is the grief I’m feeling over the death this week of Rachel Held Evans, one of my favorite Christian writers and thinkers. Evans was my age and she died of complications from the flu. What made her such a compelling writer to myself and so many others was the honesty she brought to her questions and her faith. One of the books of hers that I keep near is titled Searching for Sundays. In it, Evans wrote about her struggles with the church of her childhood, what in the end caused her to leave, and why she still believed in Jesus, despite all her doubts.
What drove Evans out of her faith is the same thing that has so often caused me to question mine, and maybe something you have struggled with, the seemingly unwavering assurance that Christianity is so often spoken of. Maybe you’ve had the experience where you’re watching the news and they’ll talk about the “Christian vote,” and you’ll think, “I don’t want to vote for that.” Or “Christians believe,” and you think, “I don’t believe that.” Or “all Christians feel,” and you think, “I don’t.” Mostly, most days, I’m pretty confident in what I think, believe, and feel about faith. I hang out with you people all the time, and our commitment as a congregation to grace and love and inclusion and justice keeps me grounded. There is a lot I don’t know, and I’m ok in the not knowing. I believe that I am saved by grace alone, and that there is nothing I could ever do that could change God’s love for me. I believe that to my core, with a knowledge that is not intellectual but internal. But I will tell you that even as a pastor, there are days when I’m listening to the radio or reading the paper, and I’ll hear something about the Christian vote or the Christian message or the Christian media, spoken with such conviction that I’ll find myself wondering, do I have this thing wrong?
“How long will you keep us in suspense,” the Jews asked Jesus in our Gospel reading for this morning. “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” At this point we have to tread carefully because this question, and questions like it, from a group whom John’s Gospel refers to as “the Jews” has been used throughout history to permit, justify, even encourage, anti-Semitism. It is too easy to read this passage, hear this question about “the Jews” and their rules, and to pat ourselves on the back because we are “saved by grace through faith apart from works.” But this is not a Jewish problem, this is a people problem. In the book I referenced earlier, Evans talked about sitting down with her pastor and the fourteen point doctrinal statement, a signature on which was required for membership. Now, at Trinity we don’t have a fourteen point doctrinal statement, adherence to which is required for membership. Honestly, we don’t even really have a good definition of membership. Basically, if you want to be a member here, Connie makes you lunch one Sunday, and then the next Sunday we invite you to come to the front of the congregation, we all say the Apostles Creed together, and then after worship we have cake. Connie just gave me some potential dates for the next new member luncheon, so if you’re interested joining Trinity, catch me later. We’ll pick the date that works best for most people and I’ll get a cake ordered. But, for me at least, there is always this tiny, niggling part of my brain that wonders if this grace thing really could be true. If God really could just love us unconditionally, really could forgive anything, really has space for all the doubts, fears, concerns, and questions. So I really cannot begrudge these early questioners of Jesus their question. “Tell me plainly,” I too want to ask, “just what to do, what to think, how to live, how to act, to know that I truly am living right, being right, doing right.” Tell me plainly.
To which Jesus responded, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” My sheep hear my voice. This, friends, does not often feel like an answer. My sheep hear my voice does not tell me anything about how to think or feel or act or believe. Hearing doesn’t even seem like an action I’m really able to do. Listening, I can do. I know how to listen. But actually hearing is out of my control because hearing requires action on the part of another. Watch, we’ll do an experiment. When I raise my hand, I want you to listen to me. [Raise hand, pause, lower hand.] Did you hear anything? No, because I didn’t say anything. Or do anything. Honestly, I held my breath and stood really still; just to make sure you couldn’t hear me breathing. But now you can hear me, not because your listening changed, but because my talking did. Hearing isn’t a solo activity; it requires action on the part of another. So when Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice,” he wasn’t praising his sheep for their superior hearing abilities; he was pointing out the presence of his own voice in the life of his sheep. The act of hearing Jesus is Jesus’ action, not ours. And hearing Jesus is not just something we do with our ears either, as we know from the story preceding this one, where the man born blind saw Jesus when the sighted Pharisees could not. Hearing Jesus for you may be the sun peaking through the clouds after a rain, or the deep breath of air when you didn’t know you’d been holding your breath, the wine of communion on your tongue, or the sound of the person next to you in the pews saying the Apostles’ Creed, muttering the familiar “I believe” for you on the days that you do not believe. Listening helps, sure, but listening is certainly not a prerequisite for hearing. That I stand before you today, as an ordained Lutheran clergyperson in the great state of Michigan of all places is testament to the fact that if God wants you to hear, even if you are fairly actively not listening, God has ways of getting God’s point across.
“My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus said. “I know them, and they follow me.” I know them. Again, here, the first action, the moving action, is from Jesus. I know them. Following, dear people of God, comes not after knowing, it comes after being known. We are not disciples because we know Jesus; we are disciples because we are known by Jesus. Because the knowing is not our own, then it makes sense that our following is not perfect, that our steps are uncertain, that we do not see the way all the time. We do not follow what we know, we follow because we are known.
If you’ve ever been to my Bible studies, or had conversations with me, you’ll know that my faith is not one of great certainty. I don’t see that as a weakness either, in fact I think it’s a strength. I tend to not trust people who have all the answers, because if you have all the answers it seems like you’re probably not asking good enough questions. But there is one thing I know, beyond all doubt, and more importantly beyond all reason. This isn’t something I believe all the time, my brain is not big enough for that, but it is something I know from the depth of my being. That thing is this: You, I, we, are loved by God. Unconditionally, unexplainably, not because of who we are, but because love is who God is. “My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus said. “I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” Note: Jesus didn’t say we will never die, never hurt, never suffer, never feel pain, but he did say that we will never perish. Suffering and death are a part of living, but as resurrection people, the promise is that that the end is never the end. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”
Dear people of God, you are known by Jesus. And nothing, no one, can ever change that. No matter what. Amen.
Part of what’s coloring my reading of our Gospel is the grief I’m feeling over the death this week of Rachel Held Evans, one of my favorite Christian writers and thinkers. Evans was my age and she died of complications from the flu. What made her such a compelling writer to myself and so many others was the honesty she brought to her questions and her faith. One of the books of hers that I keep near is titled Searching for Sundays. In it, Evans wrote about her struggles with the church of her childhood, what in the end caused her to leave, and why she still believed in Jesus, despite all her doubts.
What drove Evans out of her faith is the same thing that has so often caused me to question mine, and maybe something you have struggled with, the seemingly unwavering assurance that Christianity is so often spoken of. Maybe you’ve had the experience where you’re watching the news and they’ll talk about the “Christian vote,” and you’ll think, “I don’t want to vote for that.” Or “Christians believe,” and you think, “I don’t believe that.” Or “all Christians feel,” and you think, “I don’t.” Mostly, most days, I’m pretty confident in what I think, believe, and feel about faith. I hang out with you people all the time, and our commitment as a congregation to grace and love and inclusion and justice keeps me grounded. There is a lot I don’t know, and I’m ok in the not knowing. I believe that I am saved by grace alone, and that there is nothing I could ever do that could change God’s love for me. I believe that to my core, with a knowledge that is not intellectual but internal. But I will tell you that even as a pastor, there are days when I’m listening to the radio or reading the paper, and I’ll hear something about the Christian vote or the Christian message or the Christian media, spoken with such conviction that I’ll find myself wondering, do I have this thing wrong?
“How long will you keep us in suspense,” the Jews asked Jesus in our Gospel reading for this morning. “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” At this point we have to tread carefully because this question, and questions like it, from a group whom John’s Gospel refers to as “the Jews” has been used throughout history to permit, justify, even encourage, anti-Semitism. It is too easy to read this passage, hear this question about “the Jews” and their rules, and to pat ourselves on the back because we are “saved by grace through faith apart from works.” But this is not a Jewish problem, this is a people problem. In the book I referenced earlier, Evans talked about sitting down with her pastor and the fourteen point doctrinal statement, a signature on which was required for membership. Now, at Trinity we don’t have a fourteen point doctrinal statement, adherence to which is required for membership. Honestly, we don’t even really have a good definition of membership. Basically, if you want to be a member here, Connie makes you lunch one Sunday, and then the next Sunday we invite you to come to the front of the congregation, we all say the Apostles Creed together, and then after worship we have cake. Connie just gave me some potential dates for the next new member luncheon, so if you’re interested joining Trinity, catch me later. We’ll pick the date that works best for most people and I’ll get a cake ordered. But, for me at least, there is always this tiny, niggling part of my brain that wonders if this grace thing really could be true. If God really could just love us unconditionally, really could forgive anything, really has space for all the doubts, fears, concerns, and questions. So I really cannot begrudge these early questioners of Jesus their question. “Tell me plainly,” I too want to ask, “just what to do, what to think, how to live, how to act, to know that I truly am living right, being right, doing right.” Tell me plainly.
To which Jesus responded, “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” My sheep hear my voice. This, friends, does not often feel like an answer. My sheep hear my voice does not tell me anything about how to think or feel or act or believe. Hearing doesn’t even seem like an action I’m really able to do. Listening, I can do. I know how to listen. But actually hearing is out of my control because hearing requires action on the part of another. Watch, we’ll do an experiment. When I raise my hand, I want you to listen to me. [Raise hand, pause, lower hand.] Did you hear anything? No, because I didn’t say anything. Or do anything. Honestly, I held my breath and stood really still; just to make sure you couldn’t hear me breathing. But now you can hear me, not because your listening changed, but because my talking did. Hearing isn’t a solo activity; it requires action on the part of another. So when Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice,” he wasn’t praising his sheep for their superior hearing abilities; he was pointing out the presence of his own voice in the life of his sheep. The act of hearing Jesus is Jesus’ action, not ours. And hearing Jesus is not just something we do with our ears either, as we know from the story preceding this one, where the man born blind saw Jesus when the sighted Pharisees could not. Hearing Jesus for you may be the sun peaking through the clouds after a rain, or the deep breath of air when you didn’t know you’d been holding your breath, the wine of communion on your tongue, or the sound of the person next to you in the pews saying the Apostles’ Creed, muttering the familiar “I believe” for you on the days that you do not believe. Listening helps, sure, but listening is certainly not a prerequisite for hearing. That I stand before you today, as an ordained Lutheran clergyperson in the great state of Michigan of all places is testament to the fact that if God wants you to hear, even if you are fairly actively not listening, God has ways of getting God’s point across.
“My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus said. “I know them, and they follow me.” I know them. Again, here, the first action, the moving action, is from Jesus. I know them. Following, dear people of God, comes not after knowing, it comes after being known. We are not disciples because we know Jesus; we are disciples because we are known by Jesus. Because the knowing is not our own, then it makes sense that our following is not perfect, that our steps are uncertain, that we do not see the way all the time. We do not follow what we know, we follow because we are known.
If you’ve ever been to my Bible studies, or had conversations with me, you’ll know that my faith is not one of great certainty. I don’t see that as a weakness either, in fact I think it’s a strength. I tend to not trust people who have all the answers, because if you have all the answers it seems like you’re probably not asking good enough questions. But there is one thing I know, beyond all doubt, and more importantly beyond all reason. This isn’t something I believe all the time, my brain is not big enough for that, but it is something I know from the depth of my being. That thing is this: You, I, we, are loved by God. Unconditionally, unexplainably, not because of who we are, but because love is who God is. “My sheep hear my voice,” Jesus said. “I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” Note: Jesus didn’t say we will never die, never hurt, never suffer, never feel pain, but he did say that we will never perish. Suffering and death are a part of living, but as resurrection people, the promise is that that the end is never the end. “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”
Dear people of God, you are known by Jesus. And nothing, no one, can ever change that. No matter what. Amen.
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