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.

Fear and Action - A Sermon on Luke 12:32-40

This is the two-hundred and twenty-third day of 2019, and there have been two-hundred and fifty-five mass shootings this year, resulting in two-hundred and seventy-five dead and one-thousand and fifty-five injured. That works out to more than one mass shooting for every day of 2019.

I got these statistics from the Gun Violence Archive, a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide online, public access to statistics about gun-related incidents in the US. The Gun Violence Archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which at least four people, not including the gunman are killed or injured. In addition to mass shootings, there have been thirty-three thousand, two-hundred and thirty-seven total gun incidents in 2019, resulting in eight-thousand, seven-hundred and ninety-six gun deaths, and seventeen-thousand, four-hundred and eighty injuries. To put that in context, numbers-wise the entire population of Albion has been killed in gun-related incidents this year, and the city of Wayne has been injured. I checked these statistics Tuesday, so this is just as of Tuesday. Who knows what’s happened since then.

So when our Gospel reading for this morning starts out with Jesus saying, “Do not be afraid, little flock,” I have to admit, I am afraid. I grew up going to the Gilroy Garlic Festival, I’m not a regular patron of Wal-Mart, but I do frequent the occasional box store. I like to see movies, I coach in a school, these have all been scenes of inexplicable violence. And more frightening for me than the random mass shooter is the known one. The United States has the highest rate of domestic violence related gun deaths of women in the developed world. One in four women in this country have experienced domestic violent, and the abuser owning a gun increases a woman’s risk of death by 500%. Oh, and while we tend to think of mass shootings as committed by random, violent strangers, over half of all mass shootings, defined, if you remember, as an incident where four or more people not the shooter are killed or injured, over half of all mass shootings are related to domestic violence. More than the risk of being randomly shot at a night club, I worry about being the unintended consequence of someone else’s domestic dispute.

This violence not only frightens me, it angers me. It angers me because it’s being done in our name, in the name of Christianity. The hateful, violent rhetoric the El Paso shooter spouted on the internet before his rampage, that rhetoric wasn’t his alone. He may have been a lone wolf shooter, but his ideas weren’t lone wolf ideas. They are very common views in what is known as Christian Identity. Christian Identity is a racist, anti-Semitic, white supremacist interpretation of Christianity, of our sacred texts, that asserts that white people are the true descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And how they get Germans and Norwegians from Middle Eastern genealogy is beyond me but the point is, this is being done in the name of our religious tradition. Now, the El Paso shooter is the far end of the violent extremism spectrum sure, but that rhetoric, that rhetoric is rampant in our cultural conversation and it has to stop. It has to stop and we have to speak out against it, because as despicable as these actions are, and as far removed as these beliefs seem from what we believe, the Christian Identity movement comes from our tradition, and like God with the rich man, we have to be the ones to step up and be our brothers’ keepers.

So yeah, I’m afraid and I’m angry, and I’m sorry Jesus, but “do not be afraid, little flock,” those words are not enough for me this morning. I don’t want to be patronized, I don’t want to be comforted or assuaged by empty promises, by thoughts and prayers that lead nowhere. I want, like John and James asked for a few chapters early, for fire to come down and consume those who wield power so viciously. Don’t tell me Jesus, not to be afraid, unless you’ve got some actions to back it up.

Which is why verse thirty-two does not end, “do not be afraid, little flock,” but Jesus goes on, “for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Let me say that again, “for it is YOUR FATHER’S good pleasure to GIVE you the kingdom.” What that tells us is that the action part of this is on God. Yes, there are things we can do, and the verses preceding this are all about that, but at the end of the day, this is about God, about what God wants for us, about how God wants us to be able to live. I love the way Theologian Matthew Skinner from Luther Seminary described it. Dr. Skinner said, “the point isn’t to coax a grumpy or frugal deity into being nice to us. Rather, God eagerly wants the “kingdom”… to take root in the real, lived experiences of Jesus’s followers. Why? Because that’s God’s good pleasure.” So it’s not, do these things, including don’t be afraid, so that God likes you; it’s the reverse of that. It’s God likes you, so you can do these things and not be afraid.

OK, God likes me, I’m not having to plead for God’s favor. That’s a start but it’s still been a week, month, year, two decades since Columbine brought the possibility of massive acts of violence to at least my collective memory, and God liking me, well, that’s great but still not enough. So Jesus gives us this story about the watchful servants.

“Be dressed for action,” Jesus said. Get your work clothes on, basically, “and have your lamps lit.” It had never occurred to me, but I was reading this week about how much work the slaves in this story would have had to do in order to keep the lamps lit in wait for their master. I turn on a light and it stays on. But these were oil lamps. So they needed to have the oil refilled, the wicks trimmed, the whatever else you have to do with oil lamp. The point is the slaves weren’t sitting around, lounging back on chairs, struggling to stay awake until the master returned so they could jump up and greet him at the door. They were working.

So what can we do? Well, I just learned of a document that the ELCA, our denomination, produced, called A 60-Day Journey Toward Justice in a Culture of Gun Violence. The document was written to start on June 16th, the day before the fourth anniversary of the shooting at Mother Emmanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina, but it can be used over any 60 day period. It’s just what it sounds like, a resource of daily prayers, scripture, church teaching, and information to help us resensitize ourselves on the issues of gun violence, to learn what the facts are, what the church has done and is doing, where Christ through scripture is calling us, and to help us learn how we can actually take action. It’s that action step that I found helpful. I can feel afraid and angry all day, but all that leaves me is feeling stuck. What I need is, to use the words of the Gospel reading today, some wicks to be trimming and some oil to be filling, so I don’t feel powerless and I don’t get discouraged. I’m going to commit myself to reading it, one day at a time, clicking on the links, and educating myself as much as I can on this issue. Verse thirty-four of our Gospel said “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” In our increasingly busy world, one of the greatest treasures I have is the treasure of my time. So if my heart is truly going to be with those who are suffering from the affects of the scourge of gun violence, the treasure of my time needs to be in learning about so that I can act on, this issue. I’ll post a link to the document on the Trinity Facebook page and at the end of the sermon manuscript on our website. If you want to join me in this journey, I commit to starting Monday. I invite you.

The Gospel reading for this morning ends with this sort of strange message of foreboding, “But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.” What I hear in this passage is the reality that we cannot protect ourselves from everything. Disasters occur, violence happens, the risk of being a person among people is real. As much as we want to, we cannot protect ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, from every possible risk or disaster. Nor, honestly, I think, would we want to. For the sort of isolation and control that would require is the opposite of the kind of freedom God has for us. There’s a quote in my office from Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you may remember, was a German Lutheran pastor who had been teaching at Union Seminary in New York City, but returned to Germany during World War Two to work against Hitler and the Nazi regime, a decision which ended in his death in a German concentration camp. Bonhoeffer said: “There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared, it is itself the great venture and can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security… Peace means giving oneself completely to God’s commandment, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of the Almighty God.”

So yes, it is chaotic and it is scary. But what this Gospel text tells us, what our faith tells us, is that God has us. Already, right now, forever, it is God’s GOOD PLEASURE to care about us. And, because of that promise, because of the promise that we are already God’s, we are not helpless and we are not hopeless. Violence, hatred, anger, fear, those are real things, and they are big things, but we are not powerless in the face of them. So stay alert, be dressed for action, do what you can do now to keep your lamps lit. Because thieves are not the only thing that come unexpectedly. We “also must be ready, for the Son of Man [also] is coming at an unexpected hour.” Thanks be to God. Amen.

A 60-Day Journey Toward Justice in a Culture of Gun Violence:
ELCA website: https://elca.org/60days
Direct link to the PDF itself: https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/60DaysGunViolence.pdf?_ga=2.220511249.867975539.1565195244-1719456600.1496941453

Not Alone - A Sermon on Luke 12:13-21

Good morning! I bring you greetings from the forty or so sisters and brother in Christ who are gathered in worship right now at Trinity Lutheran Church in Battle Creek. And I bring greetings from the 300 or so mainly sisters but some brothers in Christ who gather in our building during the week as part of the Woman’s Co-op. Since part of the reason I’m here is to thank you for your support of our ministry through our mission partnership, I want to start by telling you a little bit about Trinity and the ministry your gift is helping.

Trinity was founded in 1904 to serve the people of the new neighborhood the Post Cereal factory was building for its employees. In the, what, hundred and fifteen years since, the Post Addition neighborhood has changed a lot. And not, I’ll be honest, for the better. Like so many older inner city neighborhoods, Post struggles with aging infrastructure and housing stock. We have some of the highest percentage of rental properties in the city, which means we have a very transient population. Post hasn’t bounced back from the 2008 housing crisis; we still have a ton of foreclosed, abandoned and condemned homes. We have one of the highest concentrations of blight. Children in Post have the highest lead concentrations. And with these things tends to come crime, lack of resources, lack of access to services.

But before I paint this place too negatively hear this, I love being a part of the Post neighborhood. Because, yeah, it’s a rough neighborhood. But the people who live there are some of the best, hardest working, most dedicated, creative, caring folk you’ll ever meet. For God’s Work. Our Hands. Sunday next month, we’re organizing a big neighborhood clean-up and block party, and we’ve got people coming out of the woodwork to support us. Like I mentioned, Trinity, we’re small, there’s like forty of us. We were thinking a dumpster or two in our parking lot and walking around with trash bags. But we’ve got over a hundred volunteers partnering on this thing. Post Consumer Foods is renting carnival games, the homeless shelter is going to have their guys come out and grill hot dogs to give away, one of the local charter schools is renting a bounce house, the police are providing sno cones and popcorn, we’ve got a full-on carnival.

But the coolest ministry we get to be a part of isn’t ours, it’s the ministry of an organization we are privileged to share our building with. The Woman’s Co-op is housed at Trinity and they are what their name sounds like, a cooperative network of women who are working together to help raise themselves and their families out of poverty. Co-op has all the things you’d expect in a social services provider, but what really makes them unique is the network. Members support each other. One of the members who, side note: this woman is a food budgeting wizard. Every member has to take a class with her on how to stretch their food budget. I’m vegetarian, and thanks to her, I know how to make one of those $5 rotisserie chickens from Meijers stretch across seven healthy and delicious meals. But anyway, she described how Co-op working is that the members on their own don’t have what they need, but they all have something to share. So, maybe my kid needs new clothes, and your kid has a bunch of hand-me-downs you’re not using. And you need a ride to work. I don’t have a car, but my friend Sarah does. And Sarah doesn’t have a washing machine at her house, but I do. So I can help with Sarah’s laundry, she can drive you to work, and I can have your hand-me-downs. Everyone shares from their abundance to meet someone else’s need. I’ve seen women come in on a Friday afternoon, desperate for food to get their family through the weekend. A call will go out, the network will rally, and a food basket will be generated. Then, when the network’s been totally tapped, another woman will come in who also needs food for the weekend, and the first woman will split her food basket with the second, because she got more than her family really needed for just the weekend, and she wanted to share it with her Co-op sister.

All this got me thinking about the parable we heard this morning, about the rich man and his barns of stuff. The classic read on this parable, which is a good one, is the whole be generous because you can’t take it with you idea. You never see a hearse pulling a u-haul. And that’s true. “Vanity, vanity, all is vanities,” as the writer of Ecclesiastes said. But what really struck me about our pleased as punch farmer was how arrogant and self-absorbed he was. “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops? I know, I will pull down barns and build larger ones, and I store my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, soul” you are awesome. All this my, my, my, he sounds like my best friend’s two-year-old, who always wants to “do it self,” “do it self.” Usually, this command coming right before he just about pulls something over on himself, or puts his shoes on the wrong feet, or falls, or some other catastrophe, because he’s two and he’s not actually capable of “doing it self” yet. That level of self-confidence isn’t even all that cute when you’re two, but when you’re a full-grown adult, like our farming friend here, it’s downright annoying.

And the arrogance to presume that all this grain and these goods were his and his alone, that he’d earned them and didn’t have to share them. Come on now. Now, hear me out, farming is hard work. I come from a family of farmers; that is labor. They have to scrimp and save and stretch and push, so I’m not saying that what this guy got didn’t take work. But, first off, the parable says “the land of a rich man produced abundantly,” so we can sort of assume that someone else was doing the real manual labor for this guy. And, even with that, there is a ton of other people that go into our success. Last week the Gospel reading was about the Lord’s Prayer, and in my congregation we talked about how Luther described the prayer for daily bread as including all of the things that went into that bread, things like land to grow the crops, clothes to wear while doing the labor, a home to live in, good weather, good family, a good government, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, etc. No matter how hard our rich friend worked, he did not control the weather, provide the infrastructure, invent the tools of farming. There is nothing that we can accomplish completely and totally on our own, everything requires the help, support, input, and ingenuity of another.

And the last thing that strikes me about this guy is how lonely and vulnerable he must have been. Lonely, because yeah, it’s nice to have stuff, but how much more fun is it to have people to share it with? Barns full of things can’t comfort you when you’re feeling sad or help you figure out a problem or laugh at your jokes. And vulnerable because no matter how diligent we are, how careful our saving, how organized our plans, a thing I’ve learned from the women of Co-op is just how easily the bottom can drop out on us. When that happens, and it happens to all of us at some point, we need a network we can fall back on, people we can trust, who will love us, support us, share their kid’s hand-me-downs, or a ride to work or the doctor, or, the thing we as the church are so famously and importantly known for, that baking dish full of casserole at just the right moment. This guy didn’t have that.

And so, the good news for me in this text is that God called him out on it. A bit harshly, but if this guy’s anything like me, sometimes I need someone to grab me by the shoulders, give me a big shake, and say, ‘you fool,’ wake up and see all you have in your life. And in this parable, God does that for this man, and through this parable, Jesus does that for us. Grabs us, shakes us, and says, you’re not in this thing alone. Not when everything is going great, and definitely not when things are going bad, this whole thing, this life thing, it’s not yours to carry. You are not solely responsible for your own success, but neither are you destined to wrestle through your own struggles. Life is a team sport, Jesus says, and here, I have given you your teammates.

So thank you, on behalf of the members of Trinity Lutheran Church and the Woman’s Co-op, for being our teammates in this work of being the people of God. Thanks for reminding us that we’re not alone, thanks for believing that the ministry we’re about with and for the people of the Post Addition matters, thanks for helping us be the people of God in our neighborhood. As our Presiding Bishop Eaton says, We are church together, for the sake of the world. Thank you for being church with us. And thanks be to God for giving us, one to another. Amen.