Holy Mess: A Sermon on Luke 2:1-20

It is a very familiar story. All the players are there, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels, and of course, most importantly, the baby Jesus, tucked safely in a manger “asleep on the hay.” This evening we began with a procession to the manger to lay the baby Jesus down. And as one would expect from the Savior of the world, the baby Jesus has laid there quietly throughout the beginning of the service, and will continue to stay quiet and calm until we are through. Like the old carol proclaims, “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Of course, in this case the little Lord Jesus is a doll, so, you know, that helps with the whole “no crying” thing. Live infants are rarely so accommodating.

Processing to the manger with the baby Jesus reminds me of another procession involving a different infant, this one not as accommodating as the baby Jesus has been this evening. Some of you were here a few months ago when my best friend and her family came to visit and you met her daughter Emma. Emma is now seriously pushing three, a bundle of boundless energy, blonde ringlets, and a mind of her own. The curls are a recent addition, the independence she has had since before she was born.

When Emma was just a couple months old, I was staying with them while I was scheduled to preach at my home church. Worship was at 10:30, and we made plans to be at church around ten. Emma, however, had other plans. I won’t go into detail, other than to say that I put my alb on in their car while Emma’s dad took a liberal read to traffic rules, bailed out of the car as it slowed to a stop in front of the church, walked in as the presiding minister said the amen following the confession and forgiveness, and sidled into my place in the procession as the organist struck the opening chords of the gathering hymn. As I struggled to catch my breath, my pastor handed me the lapel mic, eyebrows raised. “Emma,” I whispered, to which she, the single mother of her own charmingly rambunctious nine-year-old, smiled, gave a knowing nod, and took her own place in the procession.

Babies, children in general, are unpredictable. As anyone who has ever tried to schedule anything with a child in tow knows, they have their own way of doing things. Our baby plays his role well today, but had we a live infant in the manger; it is safe to say that by this point in the evening, we would probably have an empty manger and a rather annoyed live infant somewhere in the hallway.

In fact, if you think about it, there’s actually something a little bit off about the entire manger scene. Let’s break it down. We’ve got Mary and Joseph standing adoringly over the manger, both looking calm and collected, Joseph holding a lantern or a staff, or some other mark of manly protection over his little family. Surrounding the domestic scene are snow-white sheep, kneeling shepherds, a precious moments angel, and three kings bearing gifts, despite the glaringly obvious problem that the kings show up much later in Matthew’s Gospel, and not at all in Luke’s. And in the center of it all sleeps the baby Jesus, oblivious to the chaos around him, peacefully arranged on a bed of itchy hay as if it was a pillow of clouds, arms outstretched in a cosmic embrace. The whole thing is quiet, serene, and smells ever so faintly of the orange-scented cleaner Co-op used to mop the floors yesterday.

What’s odd about this picturesque little scene is that it bears very little resemblance to any actual experience of delivering a baby in a barnyard. Or delivering a baby anywhere, really. Jesus, for one, would have way less hair. And what hair he had would be mixed with hay and goopily plastered to his red, blotchy, misshapen head. Mary, rather than looking like she just delivered a baby on a made-for-TV special, would be tired, sweaty, and red-faced herself. Blissfully happy maybe—probably—but likely not quite so calm and collected. And Joseph? Well, I cannot imagine many first-time dads whose children were just delivered in a barnyard with the composure to calmly hold a lantern. As for the precious moments angel, remember his first words to every single person he met was basically to try to keep them from running away screaming. The actual manger scene probably had quite a bit more “what do we do with the Son of God now” and “look out, I just stepped in sheep poop” than it had fluffy clean sheep and quiet adoration.

The nativity was messy, and I’m not just talking about sheep poop. It was a time before paternity tests, but already the questions were circling about who was the father of this child, born in a stable because his parents could not provide a home for it, despite their best efforts. Attended on by shepherds, outcasts of society, dirty and forgotten. And if we expand our gospel to let the wise men into this strange little scene we also have to let in King Herod, the crazy, violent dictator so threatened by this child that he calls for the death of all children under two and forces the holy family to become refugees in Egypt. The clean, well-lit, orange-scented manger scene is nice, but the story we read in the Bible is way more messy.

Which is good I think because life, like the nativity, is messy. And like the nativity, we often try to create a story for ourselves that glosses over the darkness in exchange for a cleaned up version of the light. But the scriptures invite us to come as we are, bearing our own fears, our own scars, our own shaky insecurities. To come with our moments of “I can’t take the pain” and “whatever will we do now” and the piles of sheep poop that we avoid or not with varying levels of success. We try to clean up these varying versions of ourselves, with results that feel like white-washed sheep around a manger. Maybe, like Joseph, our hands shake this evening as we try to hold the lantern, for the work of keeping it all together is exhausting.

So while it may feel like an odd exercise to clear away the sentimentality surrounding the manger scene, and it probably wouldn’t sell many Christmas cards, but it will do something else. It will help us see that there is space in the story for us. For our hands, dirty as the shepherds, for our fears, wide as King Herod’s. For our stories of things unexpected and prayers for children who didn’t come.

The nativity scene is not something we stand at the edge of, it is something we are intimately a part of. We belong at the manger. We with our pain, our brokenness, our confusion and aloneness are the story. That is what Christmas is all about. The promise that God reached out to humanity and laid divine hands on us, on our sweaty foreheads and tear-stained faces, on our shaking hands and our fearful hearts. Reached out with an angel that left us quaking in our boots and said to us, “Do not be afraid. For to you is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” We come to this night not as observers but as participants in a holy miracle. The miracle that Christ was born to us, in us, and that in his birth, death, and resurrection we are made new.

This is hard, and it’s different, to see the story in this way. But I invite you this night to come. Come as you are, come who you are, because to you the Christ child is born. It may feel unfamiliar at first, like a toddler’s first few steps wobbly feet, to approach God in this way. But come, because the hand of God reaches out to steady those steps. And as you come, maybe offer to hold the baby for a bit, to take the Christ child for a walk so that Mary and Joseph can get some sleep. It’s hard work, this being born anew. But we’re all in it together. Thanks be to God. Amen.

"Favored One:" A Sermon on 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 and Luke 1:26-38

I find our first reading this morning from Second Samuel an interesting choice by the lectionary committee for this fourth Sunday in Advent. We are fully in the midst of our preparations for Christmas, you might have been expecting something more Christmasy. But let’s think about this story for a moment, maybe there’s more here than meets the eye.

So we’ve got the great and powerful King David, chosen and anointed by God as ruler over all of Israel. David, if you remember, came onto the scene when he was just a boy, the youngest son of Jesse, and he defeated Goliath, the great hero of the Philistines, with nothing but a sling and a stone. This earned him a place of honor in the house of the then-king Saul. Saul had been anointed as king by the prophet Samuel but his faithlessness eventually caused him to fall out of favor with God and so David was anointed by God in Saul’s place. This, as you might imagine, did not go over particularly well with Saul, who spent the rest of First Samuel trying to kill David. But eventually David’s forces won out over Saul’s and David was anointed as the second king of Israel.

So here we are this morning in Second Samuel. David is at the pinnacle of his power. After years and years of war, King David was “settled into his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies.” He was the ruler of an empire that stretched from the Mediterranean Sea to the Syrian Desert and from the Red Sea in the south well into what is now Lebanon in the north. It was a vast empire, and situated as it was on the major trade routes between Assyria to the north and Egypt to the south, it was a wealthy and powerful nation. And so, with all of this power and authority at his fingertips, David decided it was time to build the Lord a house. Ever since Moses had first received them while the Israelites were in exile in the Sinai, the Ten Commandments, the most holy covenant in which God was believed to dwell, had traveled with the people of Israel in a tent. Over the centuries an ark, basically a large trunk, had been created to transport them, but other than that, God’s house was pretty, austere, shall we say. Build God a nice house, seems like a pretty appropriate move, right. King’s got a nice house, people are at peace, God should have a nice house as well.

David’s piety, his faith in God and desire to serve God’s will, certainly played a part in his desire to build a suitable home for God. But it seems like there may be something else going on here. Walter Brueggemann points out that David’s desire to build God a house may also be a bit of royal self-aggrandizement. A powerful house for the powerful God of a powerful king. In a time when wars were quite literally viewed as battles between deities, it would make a big statement. Don’t mess with me, look at the kind of place where my God lives.

But God told David, God didn’t want David to build God a house. God pointed out that through everything Israel had gone through, God had never asked for a house. In fact, God said to David, “I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt, I took you from the pasture, I have been with you wherever you went, and I will appoint a place for my people and will plant them.” And finally, flipping David’s vision of coming into his own on its head, God said to David, “I will make you a house.”

David, for all his good intentions in serving God well, was still focused on what HE was going to do for God, how HE was going to serve God, and HE was going to make God’s presence great. But what God reminded David is that God did not need David to be made great. And, in fact, God was not particularly concerned about being raised up. Because, see, here’s the thing about raising up God, it’s all too easy for it to become less about raising up God and more about raising up ourselves. Do we glorify God because God is good, or because we hope it will somehow earn us more credit or glory? Look how faithful I am, look how good I am at serving God.

So contrast this story from Second Samuel with our Gospel reading from Luke. “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.” Right off the bat, we are dealing with a very different set of circumstances than we had in the palace of the king of Israel. Gone is Jerusalem, center of power. In its place is Galilee, a quiet, overlooked corner of the empire. And not just Galilee, but Nazareth, a tiny village in the backwaters of backwater Galilee. And the person in question? A girl child, in a time when a woman’s value was connected to the men in her life and a child had little value at all. A virgin engaged, but not yet married, to a man named Joseph. Her name, mentioned last, almost as an afterthought, was Mary.

So the angel appeared to a powerless girl from a powerless place in a powerless region and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you!” It seemed like pretty good, if unexpected, news, to be called “favored one” by an angel of the Lord. But the text says she was perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. In this moment I think we see Mary displaying wisdom beyond her years. She recognized something David never did figure out, that sometimes being the “favored one” of God is not all it’s cracked up to be. So she paused, perplexed, by this declaration of favor.

The angel went on and it quickly became clear that Mary’s hesitation was well-warranted. “Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God,” the angel reiterated. “And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.” Then the angel said a lot more things about how Jesus would be great, would be called the Son of the Most High, would reign over the house of Jacob, and on and on. And I wonder how much Mary heard of that grand speech, or if these words fell on overwhelmed ears. Because despite all this bluster of glory, the angel just told Mary that her prize for being the favored one of God was to be an unwed girl-child with a child of her own. It may have sounded like good news to the angel, but to Mary I kind of think it was down-right terrifying.

I wonder about the pause that followed that pronouncement by the angel. I wonder if Mary’s voice quavered in the moment, if she hesitated, or if she found herself answering before she was ready, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

As we sit on this last Sunday of Advent, in this pregnant tension before the coming of the Christ child, I think the juxtaposition of these two stories tells us something powerful and profound about the way God chooses to be born. There was no question that both David and Mary were God’s chosen. That both David and Mary were favored ones of God. That in both great work was accomplished and God’s glory was made known. But what we see in these stories is that’s God’s manifestation in the world is always in God’s hands and always to our benefit. God did not have David build God a house, because God wanted to be the one to build it. God came to a girl-child in a forgotten corner of the world because God is always showing up in the lost, the least, and the lowly. What we hear in these stories is that God’s presence is not dependent on us. We do not have to get it together to herald God’s coming. But in fact it is in our weakness that God comes. It is in our brokenness that God comes. It is in the quiet voice that steps forward despite ourselves and says I will try again that the Christ child is born.

Christ comes to us in the simplest of wrappings, in bread and wine, in water and word. In phone calls and hand-shakes and frozen hams. When we are scared, God comes. When we are unsure, God comes. Whenever and wherever and whoever we are, God’s presence is made known in our midst. And as Mary sung in the psalm today, in our soul and our spirit and our lives, God’s presence is magnified.

Mary questioned the angel who told her she would carry the Son of God. “How can this be since I am a virgin?” The angel, always the boisterous bearer of answers, responded, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy…For nothing will be impossible with God.”

The Almighty God, creator of heaven and earth took on flesh and was born among us. God came in Christ to experience the gamut of human emotion. God came in Christ to walk and teach and heal. God came in Christ to save us. There is something wildly impossible about a God whose love is so deep and real and vulnerable. But like the angel told Mary so many years ago, nothing is impossible with God. Amen.

I am Not: A Sermon on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24 and John 1:6-8, 19-28

Maybe I’ve been listening to too much talk radio, or reading too many letters to the editor, but this year I feel especially ready for Advent to come. With the news bouncing from the Ebola crisis, to the protests across the country over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, to ISIS, to the summer rush of unaccompanied minors, to the release this week of the torture report by the Senate Intelligence Committee, this has felt like a year of crying out with the psalmist, how long, O Lord. How long must we wait for your coming. And so Advent, a season where we wait with hopeful anticipation, like one waits for the promised arrival of a dear friend or family member, feels sweet on my tongue and long awaited. A deep sigh of relief that God really will come and really will make all things new. [pause]

So I don’t find Paul particularly helpful this morning, with his laundry list of things to do. Rejoice!, says Paul. Pray without ceasing. Give thanks in all circumstances. Do not quench the spirit, do not despise the words of the prophets, test everything, hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil. Paul! I want to say, take a breath, take a look around. Rejoice? Give thanks in all circumstances? Seriously? Hold fast to what is good, abstain from every form of evil, ok, yes, probably I ought to be doing those things, but they are way harder to do than they are to say. Give me a break here Paul!

I think the Thessalonians probably struggled with Paul’s laundry list of activities as well. Life was not always awesome in Thessalonica either; they dealt with economic insecurity, threats of terror, a Roman governmental system unfairly weighted to benefit natural-born Roman citizens, really a lot of the same issues and concerns we face today, the writer of Ecclesiastes put it well, “there is nothing new under the sun.” Plus, the first letter to the Thessalonians was written not all that long after the time of Christ. They were expecting an imminent return that should have happened, well, yesterday. Faithful believers, of the generation whom Christ had addressed, remember the ones who would not pass away? Well they were passing away, and the Thessalonians didn’t really know what to do about it, what that meant for the promise. So for Paul to give them this checklist in the middle of all this, probably felt pretty overwhelming. But then, Paul closes with these words: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.” May the God of peace himself sanctify you. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this. Paul ended this laundry list of ways to live with a promise. A promise that God is faithful, a promise that all things will be accomplished by God.

So Paul says: Rejoice, be thankful, cling to what is good, abstain from evil. But in the end, whether you rejoice or not, whether you are thankful or not, whether or not you cling to what is good or abstain from evil, the one who is coming is faithful, the one who is coming is blameless, the one who is coming is good, conquers evil, and on this lies the promise. So these things we are to be and to do come not out of our own abilities, but out of Christ who fulfills all that is promised. God is the actor in the sentence. We rejoice because God is faithful, not God is faithful because we rejoice.

I think John is a great example of that in our Gospel reading for today. Right at the beginning we learn that John was sent by God. John’s very existence in the story came out of God’s action, and not of John’s own doing. John did not hear God’s voice and respond; he did not discern a need. No, John was sent by God to testify to the light. He didn’t even have light himself, he was just supposed to talk about it. He was just supposed to stand in what felt like darkness and say, hey, guess what guys, I know you can’t see it, but there’s light. Now that feels like something that even I could do.

So John was talking about the light, and people started to get confused that, even though it still seemed pretty dark, maybe John was the light. So then we get this amazing little interchange between John and the religious leaders. Where the religious leaders are like, “who are you?” And John gives possibly the most unhelpful response ever, “I am not the Messiah.” Great, so we’ve checked that off the list. Who else aren’t you? A dinosaur, Governor Snyder, Justin Verlander, the Pope? Some studies put the number of people who have ever lived at around one-hundred and eight billion, so if we try to figure out who someone is by listing who they are not, we could be here for a while. But for John, who he is not is the most important identifier of who he is, it is the detail that makes everything else in his life make sense, that makes everything he does worth doing; the knowledge, the confidence that there is a Messiah, and it is not him.

Well the religious leaders want more than that, so they prod more. OK, so you’re not the Messiah, “are you Elijah?” “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” “No.” “So who then are you?” He said, “I am the voice of the one crying in the wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord.” And then he redirects the attention of the crowd, “Among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me.”

Because the thing John knew was, dark as it seemed, there was light. They could see John not because John was the light, but because the light of Christ had already come into the world. All John had to do was show it to them.

So I have an example of this for you. I’m not someone who hears God’s voice audibly. Some people have deep, verbal conversations with God, and that’s great but that’s just not the sort of prayer life that I’ve ever had. But I remember the summer I was working as a chaplain in a retirement community when I was called upon to visit one of the residents who was in the Intensive Care Unit at the local hospital. To gain entrance to the intensive care wing, you had to ring the buzzer outside a set of menacingly large grey doors. I remember staring up at those grey doors, feet shaking in black dress shoes so new they still squeaked, I’d purchased them specifically for that summer, shiny nametag labeling me as a “student chaplain” pinned to the collar of my shirt, thinking, “dear God, I have no idea what I am supposed to do here. I don’t know this person, I don’t know what to say, I don’t even know what it means to be a chaplain.” I didn’t even realize my words were a prayer until what I can only describe as a voice from within my chest responded, “I don’t know what you’re going to say either, but quite frankly, it doesn’t matter. Your presence is not the one that matters here, mine is. What I do know is that whatever you say, you’re not going to say any of it from this side the door, so you might as well walk in.”

You are not the messiah, I am not the messiah. But what we can do, what we do, what God uses us for, is to point to the Messiah. To point to the one whom John the Baptist said, stands among us whom we do not know. John is a great example for us of how to say, you know what, I’m not God, I’m not going to get it right all the time, I can’t save the day. But I know the one who is, I know the one who can, and I can point the way to that one for you. I can show you, I can tell you about the one who is that in my life, about where you can find that one in your midst.

This is what God sends us into the world to do. To testify to the light. To testify that in the midst of whatever is going on, Christ is there. And because we are confident in who we are not, we can be confident in whose we are. We can be confident in Christ’s presence. And we can be confident that the one who sent us into this world is faithful. Amen.

Just the Beginning: A Sermon on 2 Peter 3:8-15a and Mark 1:1-8

A line caught my attention while I was reading the Gospel last week. So much so, that I was tempted to comment on it, but on principle I don’t go off manuscript because there’s no telling where I might end up. So instead it’s been rattling around in my brain as I prepared for the sermon this week. The line was Mark 13, verses 30 and 31, where Jesus said: “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” I was caught as I was reading by the contradiction in that statement. Jesus said this generation, meaning, one would assume, the one that was alive two thousand years ago, would not pass away until the things Jesus had spoken of would take place. But in the same breath he said that heaven and the earth itself would pass away, but his words would not. These are strange words two thousand years later, but imagine how they must have sounded to the people hearing them for the first time. Especially after the crucifixion, after what had felt like the sun darkening and the powers of heaven being shaken. They were looking for Jesus to come again, right then, immediately.

But then Jesus didn’t come again; at least not in the way they were hoping. Things kind of went on as they always had, and as more and more time passed, the urgency of waiting for Christ’s return lessened. The “stay awake” that Jesus urged in Mark got harder as the time after Christ’s presence on earth got longer, the memories more distant.

That distance, that sense that the things Christ promised about his return were so far away as to be unreal, or at least unremarkable, is the problem the writer is addressing in the second reading this morning. This letter was written a ways after the crucifixion, some scholars date it to even a hundred years after. “The generation” that Jesus had spoken to had more or less “passed away” by that point, and the new generation of Christ followers didn’t feel the same urgency that their forefathers had. Maybe even doubted that Christ would return. So the writer of second Peter assures them they are not waiting for nothing. “But do not ignore this one fact, beloved,” the letter reads, “that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” The writer highlights that same contradiction Jesus spoke of in Mark, that God’s sense of time is not the same as our sense of time. That a “generation,” even “a thousand years” looks very different to the one who formed the cosmos. But, the writer of Peter goes on, it’s not that God has just lost track of time. Like Jesus said, “this generation” and then ten, twenty, a hundred years went by and suddenly God was like, “my gosh, where did the time go?!” No, the writer of Peter said, “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” God is not slow, but patient. God is waiting, working, biding God’s time until everyone has been drawn up into God’s cosmic embrace, until all the world has been brought to salvation.

Well, a hundred years is one thing, but here we are, two thousand years later, and one might be wondering the same questions that seemed to be plaguing the people to whom the letter of Peter was addressed. What are we waiting for? Did the day of the Lord come and we missed it? Is the day of the Lord ever coming at all?

In Advent we talk a lot about waiting, Advent is the season of waiting. And that can feel, well, boring, really. After all, who likes waiting? It conjures to mind images of sitting in the DMV, being stuck in traffic, standing in line. Waiting feels passive, or frustrating, like the control has been taken away from you. God’s going to come, in God’s good time, so you just sit tight until God gets around to showing up. Except the writer of Peter promises us it’s not like that at all. Yes, “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.” But it’s not that God’s just hanging out, God is patient, working away at bringing all to redemption. And the writer of Peter said, “in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.” But more than that, the writer of Peter went on, there is something for us to do while we are waiting. We are to “lead lives of holiness and godliness” because such lives are not just about something to do while we’re waiting, but in fact hasten the coming of the day of God.

So by waiting, by actively waiting, we in fact become a part of the new thing that God is doing in the world. Waiting for the day of the Lord is not a passive activity, something that we have to just sit around twiddling our thumbs until God deigns to make an appearance. Waiting is an opportunity for us to be a part of God’s creative presence in the world. It is an invitation to live into the redemption that God is bringing even now.

This gets us back to our Gospel reading for this morning. Last week Advent started, sort of randomly it seemed, at the end of Mark. This week, we hear the start, Mark one, the reading even started, “The beginning.” Actually, this Gospel reading starts even before the beginning. We call this book of the Bible, the Gospel of Mark. But its author titled it something different. Mark one, one is actually the title, “The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ.” This is not announcing the beginning of the story; it is announcing that the whole story is the beginning. Everything that followed, from John the Baptist appearing in the wilderness to the stars falling from heaven to the crucifixion to the empty tomb, all of that is just the beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ.

This is a bit of an aside, but for me stuff like this is really what makes the Bible come alive, what makes the Bible a living word. It’s these places in scripture where the Bible itself is like, look, this is only the beginning. The Bible itself, rich and full and clear as it is about the message of God’s love and God’s salvation of the world, is like, hey, everything here is only the beginning. God is bigger, more powerful, more graceful that can ever be contained, even in a book as long and as rich and as full as this. Mark isn’t the only place the Bible makes this claim. John’s Gospel says it, the poetry of Genesis sings it, the prophets hope proclaims it, the imagery of Revelation illustrates it. The scriptures themselves testify that in them we find the beginning, the place where we can meet God, so that the rest of God’s amazing story unfolding before us can be seen. The Bible does not promise an end to our questions; if it did it would be a dead word, a closed story. What the Bible promises us is that it teaches us how to look for the answers. We come here, to this sacred book, because we know that it shows us Christ, so that we can see Christ in the world around us.

The Beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Everything here, in this Gospel, in this Bible, everything we’ve experienced, is just the beginning, just a foretaste of the feast God is preparing for God’s creation. The best thing you can imagine, it’s just the beginning. And the worst thing, the darkest place, the biggest ending, endings as solemn as the slam of a rock against a tomb, the starkness of a cross, all of that is not the end of the story, it is merely the beginning. The worst thing that can happen is never the last thing that will happen. Because after the cross comes resurrection; after the closing of the tomb comes the stone being rolled away. After death comes life. So we wait. Not passively, but actively. Waiting, watching, working to restore the kingdom of God, knowing that such work hastens God’s coming into the world. And we do all this because God promises that this is just the beginning. Amen.

Unsatisfied: A Sermon on Mark 13:24-37

The Gospel reading for this week seems both strangely out of place and frighteningly pertinent. Frighteningly pertinent in a week where the 24-hour news cycle pumped out story after story of protests breaking out across the nation,—radiating, but almost detached—from the epicenter of Ferguson, Missouri and the shooting death of eighteen year old Michael Brown. But this reading seems strangely out of place for Advent one, the first Sunday in our journey toward the birth of the Christ child, the first Sunday of this new church year. Next week, Advent two, the lectionary reading is what you would expect for a beginning, Mark 1:1-8. It will even start out “The beginning…” But this week, the first Sunday of a year devoted to the Gospel of Mark, we start here, close to the end of Mark, with this strange and dramatic reading about the moon darkening, the stars falling, and the powers in the heaven being shaken.

As I was watching TV on Monday night and my brainless sitcom was interrupted by the announcement of the grand jury decision, as I read the paper or listened to NPR, the words of this Gospel reading kept running through my mind. I’m not going to share my opinion this morning because, quite frankly, I don’t know enough. I’ve never been to Ferguson, Missouri. I’m not a person of color. I wasn’t with the Grand Jury during the trial, I have read very little of the evidence. I don’t know who is at fault, who is to blame, if any one person could be held accountable. What I will say is that I see no winners. And I see something wrong with a world where an eighteen year old could feel so disillusioned with his life that he would charge a police officer, a world where a police officer could be so fearful that he would sense a threat from an unarmed eighteen year old. Was this an isolated incident, it would have been tragic. But the hard statistics are black teens are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white teens. People of color make up twenty-five percent of the U.S. population and sixty percent of the prison population. Whether or not it was a factor in this specific incident, racism is real, and it is pervasive, and it can be fatal.

But this lectionary text was not chosen as a commentary on world affairs, it was chosen for Advent. A season more closely associated with calm, with candles twinkling, with preparing for the birth of a baby. And yet, every year, Advent one starts us out with these strange apocalyptic texts proclaiming the end of the world. Keep awake! Advent one proclaims, keep awake because you do not know the day or the hour in which these things will take place, in which the Son of Man will come in glory.

But the fact that the readings for advent one always seem jarringly out of place is precisely the point of starting advent with them. Because the birth of the one we are waiting for is just as jarringly out of place and unexpected. The prophets proclaimed a Messiah would come, and a baby was born. The stars foretold the birth of a king, and pointed the way to a stable. Herod feared a threat to his kingdom, from an infant attended by cattle and shepherds.

And yet, this baby, away in a manger, lowly infant so tender and mild, sleep in heavenly peace, this baby would shake the foundations of the earth, cause the sun to darken and the stars to bow, this baby would be everything the prophets proclaimed, more than Herod could have dared to fear, greater than the message of salvation spelled in the stars.

The good news of Advent is that Christ comes in the middle of everything. In the middle of the mess of creation, in the middle of the mess of a stable, in the middle of the mess of our lives, that is precisely where the Christ child is born. Christ comes not in a place carefully prepared for him, but right into the brokenness and the heartache and the pain of a world in need of salvation. Starting Advent here reminds us that salvation is not something we do for ourselves; it is grace. Grace from the God who’s hands formed creation, and who’s hands are still at work molding and shaping and creating our world today. No matter how messy or broken or painful things look. How out of control, how fragmented; the promise of Advent is that Christ comes in the middle of all of that and makes all things new.

The world Jesus was born into was not ready for a savior. Herod was a brutal dictator, Mary was a poor, teenage mother, Israel was conquered by the Romans. Rioting, struggle, oppression, and violence were common and real. It was no place to raise the Christ child. But it is where a savior was born. Because God does not wait for humanity to clean up its mess before God sends salvation. In fact, God sends salvation in the midst of humanity’s mess. In the form on an infant unexpected. In the form of a barefoot prophet. In the form of a king on a cross.

So the question for us this advent season is not what do we have to do to prepare for the Christ child, but where is the Christ child already present? Where is God’s reign already being felt? Where is the kingdom already being made new? And how can we join in the work of God’s kingdom on earth?

The promise of Advent is that in the middle of what looks like ending, God is bringing a new beginning. It promises God comes not in scrubbed up, painted over, ready-to-go places, but a God who comes where God is needed most. And, more importantly, Advent promises that this new world is not just a future promise; it is a present reality. Advent promises that when you are feeling broken, hurt, lost, or alone, God is there. God is with us in every aspect of our lives, in every place where God is needed.

Like I mentioned in the children’s sermon, this year for Advent, I invite you to be open to the presence of this promise. Open to see the new and unexpected places in which God is making the world new. Maybe in big ways, but also in small ways. Advent is in peaceful protests in the midst of violence; advent is also in the sound of children, the quiet of the snow, in the smile of a friend. Advent is in the women of the co-op, sharing what they have and finding abundance in each other. Advent is in folk who mop the church, straighten the hallways, bake pies, and bring napkins, so that our building is ready to welcome guests. Advent is the phone calls you make to each other when someone is not at church, the rides to worship, the prayers and the praise and the promise. Advent is in the social justice team advocating for the neighborhood, the property committee fixing the garage door in the snow, thirty-seven fabric bundles for women in developing countries, all of these and more are promises of advent in our midst, of Christ coming to make all things new, and of our hands, our feet, our hearts and voices at work in the process of creation.

As I was reflecting on the sermon for this week, I came across a quote from theologian Henri Nouwen. The article had nothing to do with advent or with current world events, it was actually about an art exhibit in Texas, but it seemed amazingly pertinent to this coming of Advent. Nouwen said, “You are Christian only so long as you constantly pose critical questions to the society you live in… so long as you stay unsatisfied with the status quo and keep saying that a new world is coming.” Advent promises us that a new world is coming, and yes is already here. So stay awake, keep watch, because Christ is in our midst. Amen.

We are All Geeps: A Sermon on Matthew 25:31-46

So I have something I want to show you this morning. This is Butterfly. You may have noticed we’re a little bit ahead in the lectionary the past couple weeks, and Butterfly is the reason. We’re doing the special service next Sunday but I so wanted to show you this picture that I moved the lessons around so I would still get a chance to preach on this text. That’s because Butterfly here is a Geep. She was born in a petting zoo in Arizona. The zookeepers were surprised when the female sheep, aptly named Momma, became pregnant, as they didn’t have any male sheep. They soon determined the father was a particularly amorous pygmy goat named Michael. Butterfly has the face and hooves of a goat, but the wool and tail of a sheep, and is all cute. And what better way to talk about the parable of the sheep and the goats than an adorable baby sheep-goat.

Our reading for this morning comes at the end of Matthew’s Gospel, a section known as the “Sermon at the End of the World” or the “Judgment Discourse.” And this really is the end of Jesus’ ministry on earth. This sermon happens on a Tuesday and Jesus is crucified that Friday. In three days time, Jesus will be on a cross and the disciples’ world as they knew it will be over.

And so, at the end of his ministry, at the end of a teaching about the end of the world, Jesus closes with this parable about how when the Son of Man comes in his glory, he will come to separate humanity as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. To the sheep he will say, enter into the kingdom, “for I was hungry and you gave me food, thirsty and you gave me water, naked and you clothed me, sick or in prison and you visited me.” And the sheep are like, “what?” When did we do all that? And the Son of Man replied, “what you did to the least of these, you did to me.” And to the goats, “Enter into punishment, “for I was hungry and you gave me no food, thirsty and you gave me no water, sick or in prison and you did not visit me.” And the goats, similarly, are like, “what?” When Lord, when did we ever see you hungry or thirsty or sick or in prison and not respond? When did we ever see you at all?

The result of this seems pretty cut and dry. What we do matters. Our actions matter. The sheep got in for caring for the poor, the goats did not, so they did not. And I think there is truth in this. What we do, how we treat one another does matter to God. Faith is not about stringing together some correct list of beliefs. There is not a confirmation test in order to get into heaven. Faith is about how those beliefs change how we interact in the world, and those changes are most evident through our actions.

But remember what we’ve talked about before, how humanity loves to make rules for ourselves and for each other about who is and is not included in the kingdom of God. So I think if we make this passage one more list of things we have to do in order to be made acceptable to God, I think we sell this passage short. So here’s two things I find absolutely amazing about this story from Jesus, two things that I think blow wide open any simple read on the text. First, neither the sheep nor the goats had any idea that they were sheep or goats. The sheep didn’t know that they were caring for the Lord; they were just being sheep. They were just doing what needed doing. And the goats, similarly, were not turning up their noses at the sight of God. In fact, it sounds like they were actively looking for the Lord, and just never saw him anywhere. Neither the sheep nor the goats were intentionally doing, or not doing, anything for the sake of the Lord. Second, this parable comes at the very end of Jesus ministry on earth. The very next thing Jesus said was “You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.” Glory, in Matthew’s Gospel, is the crucifixion. Christ’s death on a cross is the moment where his status as the King of Kings and the Son of Man is most clearly displayed.

So for us, brothers and sisters, post-resurrection people who dwell in the days between Christ has died and Christ will come again, what that means is the Son of Man has already come in his glory. The judgment foretold in this parable is already taking place, the Son of Man is already separating the sheep from the goats. And we, like Butterfly, are geep. We are part sheep, part goat. Part people who live well, who care for each other, who feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, cloth the naked, visit the sick or in prison, not for any thought of repayment, but just because it’s the right thing to do. But we’re also goats sometimes. We have selfish motives, we fail to care for the least of these around us, we don’t measure up to the standards the Son of Man set before us. And so the Son of Man is at work in each of us, carefully separating the sheep from the goat, cutting away the selfless from the selfish, and drawing us each closer into the coming kingdom of God. This parable is not just a foretelling of future events, it is also an allegory of the way in which God is at work in each of our lives, changing us, molding us, making us more and more sheep-like every day.

As I was working on this sermon, I came across a story about what living into this kingdom of God can look like, and how God’s gentle shaping hand can change a community. I want to close by sharing this story. This is from a book by M. Scott Peck. And it’s a story about a little monastery. Once a great order, over time the monastery had dwindled down to the point were there were only five monks left: the abbot and four others, all over seventy.

Outside the monastery there was a hermitage. As the abbot agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to him to visit the hermitage and ask if by some possible chance the hermit could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

The hermit welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the hermit could only commiserate with him: “I know how it is,” he exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in all the nearby towns. So the old abbot and the hermit commiserated together. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. “It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years,” the abbot said, “but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?” “No, I am sorry,” the hermit responded. “I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.”

When the abbot returned to the monastery his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, “Well what did the hermit say?” “He couldn’t help,” the abbot answered. “We just commiserated and read the scriptures together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leaving — it was something cryptic — was that the Messiah is one of us. I don’t know what he meant.”

In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered these words and wondered whether there was any possible significance. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that’s the case, which one? Do you suppose he meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant the Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation.

On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light.

Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the hermit did mean Brother Elred.

But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah.

Of course the hermit didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn’t be that much for You, could I?

As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed the aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the hermit’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.

In these last days of the church year we remember that Christ the King has come in judgment. But a king who’s throne is a cross speaks judgment in ways we do not expect. The Son of Man looks down from his throne at all the nations gathered before him, nations of geeps with wooly coats and goaty faces and says come, enter into the joy of my kingdom. Amen.

Image from Today.com "Oh. My. Geep. Meet the Half Goat, Half Sheep who is All Cuteness." http://www.today.com/pets/baby-geep-cross-between-goat-sheep-stealing-hearts-everywhere-1D80007977

All Saints, the Beatitudes, and Stewardship (They Relate!): A Sermon on Matthew 5:1-12

As the posters around the church have been advertising, next Sunday is Consecration Sunday. Which means this morning is the morning I am supposed to say something insightful about stewardship. In addition, of course, to saints and the beatitudes. At first, I was not terribly excited about this combination of events. In fact, I will admit to Gloria that this sermon I am about to give is actually the second sermon I wrote for this weekend. In the first I ignored stewardship completely. And it was a pretty decent sermon. But then I went for a run, and as so often happens to me, I think it has something to do with not getting enough oxygen, the Holy Spirit proved to have a different plan for this morning’s sermon. In fact, the Holy Spirit seemed convinced that All Saints and the beatitudes have pretty important wisdom to share with us as we think about stewardship. So, against my initial desire but at the Holy Spirit’s urging, here is my sermon on All Saints, the beatitudes, and stewardship, and why all three are good news for us.

This sermon took the Holy Spirit’s urging because I don’t really like to preach about stewardship. And that really has more to do with my own struggles with the concept than it does about God. I am at a place in my life now where I can tithe, that has not always been the case. But I still wonder if I’m being generous enough, or too generous, am I managing the gifts God has given me the best I can? And while I frequently preach on things I don’t fully understand, that’s sort of the story of faith, money feels like a more complicated issue. I feel like how can I tell you about what is and is not faithful giving when I’m really not sure what that looks like in my own life. So I have to sort of get over myself in sermons about stewardship, and trust that somehow God finds my trying to be enough. I think this is where the saints really help us out.

I’d guess on any other day, if I asked you what a saint was, you would probably say a holy person, a Godly person, maybe a really good person. You might give Mother Teresa as an example, or Martin Luther King Jr. Maybe you’d think of one of the classics, like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Paul. But today invites us to remember ordinary saints, people who, when you think back on their lives of faith, you remember the ways they taught you, guided you, mentored you, challenged you, but you can also think back and, with that wry smile you only have toward someone you truly love, you can think, yes, he or she was truly a saint, but maybe not all the time…

One such saint who I remember this All Saints day is my grandmother Charlotte who passed away this past March. My grandmother is really the person who taught me how to worship. Every Sunday I would sit next to her in worship because she would rest the hymnal on the back of the pew in front of her, low enough so I could follow along. And when the offering plate came down the row, she would open her purse and hand me a dollar to put in the plate. I don’t know what my grandparents giving habits were, but I know they were faithful. After I put my dollar in the plate was passed to my grandfather, who put in their offering envelope. Theirs was a very traditional marriage, until he died my grandfather wrote the checks and my grandfather placed them in the plate. That was his job as head of the family. But my grandmother opened her wallet every week also, quietly teaching me about stewardship even though we never talked about it. I wish we’d talked about it. I wish I’d asked her why she so faithfully gave to the church, why she passed me a dollar to do the same. But she wasn’t much of a talker. It was one of the things that used to drive me crazy about her. She wasn’t perfect, my grandmother, but for me she was, she is, a saint. One of the people who led me to God.

One of the defining features of saints is not that they were these great, perfect, worker of miracles, but that they were people. They were good, honest, hard-working people who didn’t get it right every time, but who taught the value of trying again, of keeping on, people who remind us that God loves us no matter what.

The beatitudes is a great text for us this All Saints day because I think we sometimes hear the beatitudes with similar struggles that we hear the word saints. On this All Saint Sunday, we hear the story of how Jesus went up a mountain, followed by his disciples to teach them. A very important image in Matthew’s Gospel is Jesus as the new Moses, so we are very intentionally supposed to relate Jesus going up the mountain to give the Sermon on the Mount to Moses going up Mount Sinai to receive the Ten Commandments. But remember what we talked about last week, how human beings love laws. And how the Ten Commandments have so often become not guidelines for how to deepen inclusion, but checklists for creating exclusion.

And so, on a mountain, looking and sounding for all the world like Moses, Jesus gives what on this All Saints Sunday sounds deceptively like a checklist for sainthood. “Blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the peacemakers.” A nice little list, the pure in heart, the merciful, these all sounds like good saintlike qualities. We might be tempted to add “blessed are the stewards…” But it’s also kind of an intimidating list. What does it mean to be pure in heart, merciful, or thirst for justice? Am I doing enough? Does Jesus call me blessed?

But just as the Ten Commandments are not rules for exclusion, the Beatitudes are not a checklist for holiness. They are not practical advice; they are prophetic declaration. Jesus doesn’t say, if you are meek, you are blessed, if you mourn, you are blessed, if you seek justice, you are blessed. No Jesus says “Blessed are” each of these groups. What Jesus is doing here at the very beginning of the Sermon on the Mount is to say no matter who you are, and no matter how you find yourself, this one fact about you is true, you are blessed.

The beatitudes offer the range of the human experience, from mourning and meek to hunger for righteousness, from peacemaking to persecution, and in the face of each of these experiences Jesus says you are blessed. The beatitudes are not goals to check off a list, they are options of ways we might find ourselves. We are never all of them at any time, but through our lifetimes we experience all of them. And in any gathered community all of them are experienced by someone.

And what’s more, Jesus assures us that these experiences are not the end of the story. Each of these blessings is followed by a promise. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth, blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy, and so on. Jesus knows that following the Christian life is not a magic shield that will protect you from harm. In the walk of faith you will still be meek, you will still mourn, you will still hunger and thirst for righteousness. But Jesus promises that in those times, in those places, in those moments of fear and doubt and pain, you are blessed and Jesus will lead you through them, will always be with you, will never leave you. See Jesus is not in the life insurance business; he is in the life assurance business. Instead of establishing criteria that must be met, Jesus outlines the attributes where blessings are found. Instead of promising freedom from suffering, Jesus promises to be with us in suffering and to lead us through that suffering to a future reality. Jesus promises that no matter what happens, we are blessed and our future will be different than our present.

The beatitudes promise that wherever we find ourselves in our journey through sainthood, we are blessed, we are loved, we are claimed by God. Which brings me back to my grandmother and stewardship. See what my grandmother taught me by putting that dollar in the plate every week was that every gift mattered to God. That even I, six years old and clutching someone else’s dollar, had something to contribute to the gathered community. And that’s a really powerful thing for us to remember. When we look at the budget next month, the top item on it is benevolence. This church gives ten percent right off the top back to the church. We don’t have a lot, but we give of what we’re able. And we’re only able to do that, because of what this community does together. This benevolence is not one person’s gift, it’s a portion of all of our contributions. Maybe you’re not in a place right now where you can tithe. Maybe your job situation is tight, or your health has changed, or whatever, but you give what you can. Or maybe you can give more than ten percent. Maybe you’ve been tithing and this is a year you really feel in a place to challenge yourself. We as a church give ten percent away because each of us together gives what we can, and the sum of us is better than our parts. And that ten percent we give? It goes to help others in their mission. Some congregations are in even tighter financial straits than we are and they cannot afford to give ten percent. Others are doing really well and they can support more. And all of us congregations together support the synod, and all the synods support the wider church, and the wider church supports mission and ministry across the nation and across the world. We don’t as a church, as a synod, as individuals get it right all the time. But we try, and we learn, and we go at it again. All of us. All the saints. Together. Whoever, wherever, blessed by God and blessing others. Amen.

Reforming: A Sermon on Matthew 22:34-46

You’ll notice I’m wearing a different stole this morning. This is the first Sunday I’ve been with you that hasn’t had the color green, so it’s the first time I’ve gotten to venture out a bit in my stole wearing. This stole is particularly special to me because it is my ordination stole. It was a gift from my parents and it was the stole the bishop laid over my shoulders at my ordination.

This stole is also special because it was hand made for me. A friend my parents know from their church is a weaver, and he wove it for me. While it was in progress John taught my parents to use the loom so they could add a couple of rows. He also invited anyone from their church, the church I grew up in, to come to his home to add a few rows. The gold threads that weave through it are from thread he bought to make a stole for a dear friend and mentor of mine. So in addition to being beautiful, this stole makes me feel tied to the many hands that worked on it, the church that raised me, and my friend who wears the same thread when she leads worship.

The sort of funny story about this stole was, since it was an ordination present, it was supposed to be a surprise. Trusting that John wouldn’t lead my parents wrong, I told them I didn’t want to see it until my ordination. Well John thought that was a nice plan, but his partner Neil couldn’t handle the wait. So the summer after I graduated seminary, Neil discovered I was in town visiting my parents and invited the three of us to their house. John gave me a tour of his studio and showed me how the stole was made. Then we sat in their living room while Neil, excited as a kid at Christmas, handed me a wrapped box. Inside was the stole. I tried it on, Neil opened a bottle of champagne, we toasted my graduation, and many pictures were taken. And in the long two years that I waited for ordination, the memory of that evening in John and Neil’s living room was such a gift. Because in Neil’s enthusiasm and John’s bringing together of so many people, I remembered that people believed in me, in my sense of call, and in the work the Holy Spirit was doing through me. And that support was priceless.

We wear red at ordinations, Pentecost, and Reformation Sunday because red is the color of the Holy Spirit. There are many images of the Spirit, the color red comes from the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire that descended on the disciples at Pentecost, sending them out into the world. Fire is a good image for the Spirit I think because fire, like the Spirit is unpredictable. Fire can be a destructive and terrifying force. Growing up in wildfire country, I know the terror of an uncontrollable burn. But it is also life-giving. In the forests, fire clears out the dense underbrush that prevents new life from taking root. Some trees, like the Giant Sequoias, require the heat of the fire to germinate their seeds. Fire’s reason for existing is not as a destructive force but as a creative one, clearing out the clutter and allowing space for new life to emerge.

We celebrate Reformation Sunday with the color red because that same movement is what the Reformation did. It cut through the laws and restrictions that were holding the people of God captive and brought them back to the heart of God’s message of grace, truth, life, and forgiveness, while shaping that message to be understood in a new way for a new time. The Holy Spirit doesn’t change God, since the Holy Spirit is God, but the Holy Spirit’s continual movement provides the lens for us to see the timelessness of God in the midst of our time-limited existence. In systems designed for a different time, the message of God can be obstructed by restrictions, so through Luther and the Reformers, the Holy Spirit blew through the church so that God’s love was again clear.

The one problem I have with Reformation Sunday is we say we are celebrating The Reformation, as if reformation was a single moment in history. But the truth is, the Holy Spirit is continually reforming, continually moving, continually blowing through our human structures and bringing new life. In fact, I think Jesus himself is about Reformation in our Gospel reading for this morning. You may have noticed a pattern over the past few weeks of the religious leaders testing Jesus. This week, it’s the Pharisees. They ask Jesus, what is the greatest commandment. They ask him this to try and trick him, to catch him in false teaching, or to somehow prove that his priorities are off. No matter which of the ten he chooses, a case could certainly be made that one of the others is truly more important, so there is plenty of space to make him look the fool.

But Jesus doesn’t play their game. Instead he responded, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Instead of picking one commandment over another, as the Pharisees had asked, Jesus boiled all the commandments down into their core purpose, love. Love God, love neighbor. Love. It’s as simple as that.

The Pharisees saw the commandments as rules for who got to be in the church. Their intentions were good; to protect the holiness of the people of God, but the problem is they missed the purpose. The Pharisees used the commandments as a fence for keeping people out, but the commandments were intended as a guide for keeping people in. God knew that in order for relationships to flourish, people would need guidance. So God gave them the commandments, do not lie, to not steal, do not murder, do not covet, not to keep some people out, but in order that everyone would be able to stay in. God knew that lying, stealing, etc., would break apart the community, and God did not want that. The Pharisees minds worked to be exclusive, do this or you are out, but the reign of God is always about being inclusive, here are rules to help your community thrive. The reign of God is always about trying to bring more people, offer more forgiveness, create more healing. So when the Pharisees tried to get Jesus to draw the lines a little closer, Jesus instead went to the heart of the commandment and looked out. Love God, love neighbor. If you do that, everything else will fall into place.

I wish this missing the heart of God problem was unique to the Pharisees, or to the medieval church, but it’s not. The painful truth is the church is made up of people and people get it wrong sometimes. People get fixed on laws or rules, people seek to figure out who is in and who is out, and what we remember on this Reformation Sunday is that the work of the Holy Spirit is to be always blowing through the church, cutting away the things that hold us captive and drawing us closer into the very heart of God.

The church is not perfect. It can break your heart. Maybe it has already, maybe you know some of the painful ways that the people of God can get the message wrong. But the promise of our Gospel text and the reminder of the reformation is that while the church might get it wrong, Jesus never does. God is in the church, but God is not contained by the church. God is always bigger than the church and because God is bigger than the church, God is continually about drawing the church closer into the heart of God’s love. Being church in the reign of God is about being a place where forgiveness is practiced, where grace is experienced, and where love is made known. And if the law doesn’t do that, it doesn’t mean the law is wrong, but it does mean we are interpreting it wrong.

The church, this church, our national church, the universal church, like each of us, is a work in progress. And because it is made of people, it can let you down. I will not show up when I’m supposed to, or I’ll say something stupid. Someone else will be focused on something and will hurt your feelings or make you feel unwelcome or let you down. But here’s something else to add to that. Because God is in the church, as much as we have an incredible capacity for pain, we also have an incredible capacity for grace. And if we can hold on to that promise, that the Holy Spirit is always at work among us, like the Spirit did through the words of Jesus to the Pharisees, through the writings of Paul, through the teachings of the fathers, the words of the reformers, and through our work and prayer and praise today, we will discover that in the midst of our communities, the reign of God is indeed at hand. Thanks be to our always reforming, ever-loving, judgment breaking God. Amen.

Unexpected: A Sermon on Isaiah 45:1-7

A question I get asked a lot is if I had planned to move to Michigan. With you all I’d like to settle the question once and for all. No. No, I never intended to move to Michigan. In fact, prior to coming here to interview and subsequently moving here, I had been in the state of Michigan four times. Once when my brother started law school, once for his graduation. One trip to the UP last summer. And once, on a road trip across the Ohio turnpike in 2007, my roommate and I took a 20-minute detour for lunch at a Subway, so I could check Michigan off the “list of states I’d visited.” I liked Michigan; don’t get me wrong. The UP especially was lovely, and Ann Arbor is a great city. But until Bishop Satterlee called to ask me to consider interviewing with a little congregation in a city I’d never heard of, Michigan, lovely as it was, was just not really on my radar.

I shouldn’t I suppose, have been surprised to end up in a place I hadn’t expected. The story of my faith has always sort of felt like this, with my merrily making plans as to how my life would unfold, and God merrily coming along behind and messing those plans all up. The result of this messing always turning out to be more than I imagined, more than I maybe would have dreamed for myself. I have jokingly referred to this as God’s cosmic sense of humor, but I think it’s something more than that; more like God’s vast ability and desire to dream more for me than I think I deserve or am capable of.

God’s cosmic messing in our lives are always life-giving. But there are other times, when our stories are knocked aside in ways and by forces that do not seem life-giving. Ways in which the bad does not seem to be giving way to something better. Times in which we wonder where God is in the midst of such tragic calamity. The Israelites in Isaiah find themselves in the middle of just such a shift.

In our Isaiah reading for this morning, the Israelites are reeling from a cosmic messing up of their story that doesn’t feel life-giving or very much like God. I talked a little bit last week about how the book of Isaiah tells of the experience of exile. Last week we heard one of those in-breaking stories, promising hope in the midst of judgment. This morning our reading is from the middle of the book of Isaiah, smack in the middle of persecution under Babylon. The story had been going along fine for Israel, or so it felt. They were a wealthy and prosperous nation. Trade was booming, commerce was flourishing; God truly blessed them. On the surface, the story was great, but hovering just below another story was taking root. Corruption, greed, persecution, inequality, those were the true forces at work. Sin and brokenness had slipped into the system. And sin, as it has a way of doing, does not confine itself to those whom welcomed it in. The headlines of wealth and prosperity were just that, headlines. Below them the foundation of justice was weak. And so, when the Babylonians came calling, the system crumbled, taking with it the guilty and the innocent alike.

That’s the thing about sin. It is not bound to those who created it. When sin comes to collect, it has no sense of equity, no restriction to those from whom it is owed. Sin takes its piece from the middle, demanding more and bigger interest on its debt. And the Isarelites, those who benefitted from the inequality and those who suffered, all found their stories washed away in the wake of the exile in Babylon. Guilty or not, all were held by the bronze doors and iron bars of captivity.

And then, unexpectedly, the story changed. Out of the midst of a future that seemed to hold nothing but exile and destruction, a savior broke through. “Thus says the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped…I will go before you and level the mountains, I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron, I will give you the treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that it is I, the LORD, the God of Israel, who call you by your name.”

God is always messing up our stories in order to bring us to life. No matter how clearly the path we think we have drawn, or how stuck in sin we seem to be, God is always moving and driving and bringing life in darkness, hope when all seems hopeless.

And here’s the really crazy part of this story. Those promises, that hope, can come from the most unexpected of sources. God promised the people of Israel “treasures of darkness and riches hidden in secret places.” And that salvation would come to Israel from such an unlikely source as Cyrus was certainly such a treasure. Because here’s the thing about Cyrus. He wasn’t an Israelite. He wasn’t seeking to bring justice or promote harmony. Cyrus was the king of Persia. He was the pagan leader of a heathen nation. And yet, it was through him the God would deliver God’s people from exile. God said to Cyrus, “for the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me. [Because] I am the LORD, and there is no other; besides me there is no god.”

It seems wildly unlikely that salvation would come through Cyrus. But if we look back, the whole of our salvation history is the story of a God who always breaks through in the most wildly unlikely ways. The son of a Hebrew slave, left in a basket and raised as a foster child in the court of Pharaoh, raised his rod and the Red Sea broke in two so the Israelites could march to freedom. The heathen king of Persia conquered the Babylonians in his own quest for power, and freed the Israelites from their exile. And of course, that most unexpected of indwellings, that began when the birthing wail of an infant in a stable cut through a cold winter night, reached it’s height on a Friday afternoon when the dying gasp of a political prisoner caused the curtain of the temple to be torn in two, and finally came to completion when an earthquake revealed an empty tomb, breaking open the barrier of sin and death that kept us apart from God. A breaking we remember when we gather at the font or around the table and experience for ourselves a God who breaks through each and every day in the most common elements of bread and wine and water.

God breaks into our lives in unexpected places, God breaks into our lives in unexpected ways, God breaks into our lives in unexpected people. Sometimes those unexpected people are even us…

That is the possibly the most unexpected twist in this text. This text is addressed not to the oppressed Israelites, but to the King of Persia. God chose Cyrus, of all people, to bring hope to the Israelites. Cyrus, who never even knew it, never even knew God, was God’s instrument in bringing salvation. And if God chose Cyrus, then God can and does choose us. Not only does God break into the captive places in our lives, but God also uses us to break into the captive places in others' lives. God told Cyrus, “I call you by your name. I surname you, though you do not know me.” And God calls us by our names too. Surnames us, in ways we do not even know. We are the ones God uses to break into this world. God uses us, though we do not know what we are doing, or where we are going, though we may not even know it is God who is acting, but uses us to be God’s hands and feet creating light and life in this world.

Our unexpected God breaks in. This is the history of our salvation; this is the promise of our future. God, who loved us so much that slavery under Pharaoh, that exile in a foreign land, that even death itself could not keep God apart from us, is still working in our lives and communities to break down everything that holds us captive. This unexpected God is even working through us. Thanks be to God. Amen.

Failure to Party: A Sermon on Isaiah 25:1-9 and Matthew 22:1-14

Isaiah is my favorite prophet. If I haven’t told you this yet, you should be aware that throughout the course of our ministry together, you will probably hear a lot of sermons on Isaiah, because I love the book of Isaiah.

So a little background before we begin. The book of Isaiah is actually three books written at three different periods in Israel’s history that were sort of cobbled together to become one book. The beginning is from the prophet Isaiah himself before the fall of Israel to the Babylonians, the later sections were probably composed by people in the Isaiahic school during and after the exile. This was totally acceptable practice; the ancient near east had very different ideas about plagiarism and authorship than we do. After a religious leader died it was considered totally appropriate for that person’s followers to continue to write and prophesy in their name. Sort of like how a ghostwriter would function now, except way more commonplace and expected. This is especially important in Isaiah because from this practice we get this beautiful prose narrative of the history of Israel, from the corruption of the heights of power, through the downfall and exile, and into the freedom of the restored Jerusalem. It is a book that, more than any other, tells how God stays with God’s people throughout all darkness and leads them into freedom.

Isaiah can mostly be read chronologically, with the beginning the warnings before the fall, the middle the period of exile, and the end the restoration of Jerusalem. But because centuries of editors have played with the text, throughout each of the sections are these snapshots of the promised reign of glory, moments of hope amidst the chaos. Our first reading for this morning is one of those moments.

This beautiful pronouncement of hope, of how the Lord is a refuge to the poor, a shelter in the storm, a doer of wondrous things. Of how the Lord will set a feast of rich foods and well-aged wines, and how death will be swallowed up forever. All of this comes in the middle of a pronouncement of judgment upon the earth. If you read chapter 24 you’ll notice that this reading stands out as in sharp contrast with the doom and gloom that surround it. Things will be dark, the book of Isaiah says. Things will be dark and hard and scary. Israel will fall. Violence will reign. But don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid when you look around and God seems very far away. Don’t be afraid when the world seems out of control and all you see is darkness. Don’t be afraid, because God has done wondrous things. Don’t be afraid because God is preparing a feast. The day we have waited for will come, and on the mountain of the Lord we will rejoice in this promise. So, the book of Israel proclaims, “let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”

The beautiful feast imagery in Isaiah, “of rich foods [and] well-aged wines, of rich foods filled with marrow, [and] well-aged wines strained clear,” a feast at which God “will wipe away the tears from all faces [and] swallow up death forever” seems to both compliment and challenge to our gospel this morning, this very strange parable Jesus told the chief priests and elders. So to see what these two readings might be having to tell us, let’s first take a look at some of the absurdities in this parable story.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a banquet for his son.” Now that seems to line up alright. The kingdom of heaven as a banquet feast, “a feast of rich foods,” of foods fit for a king. But here’s where the parable gets strange. The king sets the feast, but no one will come. Here’s the thing, when the king invites you to a banquet, you clear your schedule. You don’t not go the king’s banquet, you just don’t. But these guests, they don’t go. So the king again sends messengers to tell the guests, look, everything’s ready, the food’s set, come to the party. But still the guests won’t come. So the king burns down his own city. Ransacks it, destroys it, leaves it in a heap of smoldering ash. I’ve read enough fantasy novels to know that storybook kings sometimes do weird things, but burn their own city to the ground? Seems like some pretty poor decision-making.

So then, now that the city is destroyed, the king sort of nonchalantly sends the messengers back out to find anyone who survived the rampage to invite them to the party. Two things strike me about verses eight and nine here. First the callousness of the king in verse eight, “The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy.” Such an offhand remark to explain the destruction of a city. And second, the surprising openness of verse nine, “Go, therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.” In sudden sharp contrast, now the feast is open to all. Suddenly we see a banquet that sounds like the elaborate feast described in Isaiah. The oxen are slaughtered, the dinner is prepared, and everyone, good and bad, is invited. The doors are flung wide, the party is at hand, come and taste the feast prepared. Which is some pretty great news. The kingdom of heaven is open to everyone. All are welcome at the banquet feast of the Lord.

And as a preacher, it would be so nice if Jesus stopped talking here. But he didn’t. The story takes one last weird turn for us. Because then we discover that the king came into the party and discovered one of his guests was not wearing the proper clothing. Which, considering all of the guests were just picked up out of the rubble of a destroyed city and brought with no prior information to the wedding, seems not all that unlikely. It actually seems pretty amazing that only one guy was not properly outfitted for a wedding, that the banquet wasn’t entirely made up of people in sooty, smoke-stained street clothes. Then the king has the man bound hand and foot and thrown into the outer darkness, “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” a phrase that Matthew’s Gospel is uniquely focused on. For, says the end of the parable, “many are called, but few are chosen.”

This parable has a hard edge and takes a dark turn. Read like we often read parables, with God playing the role of the king, it’s hard to quite know what to do with it. I think part of what’s going on here is strife within Matthew’s own community. The struggle between Jesus and the religious leaders over authority is the same struggle between the religious leaders and the followers of Jesus that the people of Matthew’s community saw lived out day after day as they tried to make sense of the world after Jesus death and resurrection, after the Temple had fallen. Stories such as this one reminded them that Jesus too had struggled with close-minded religious leaders, and that Jesus had harsh words for such people.

And there is wisdom and guidance in that. But we read this parable from a different place than Matthew’s community. We read it not as an oppressed minority reeling from the destruction of the temple. We read it as Jesus disciples hear it, as a radical promise that God invites everyone to the banquet, good and bad, because God is a God of radical welcome and expansive love. So, because we read it from a different place, I want to wonder with you for a bit about what this parable might mean for us from the point of view of different characters. How might it change how we understand the banquet feast?

What if the king is not God, but the religious leaders? What if the feast is set, the banquet is thrown, but because of the king’s exclusivity, he still ends up dining alone. Yes he threw open the doors to everyone, but still there were hidden restrictions, laws and codes in place for who was welcome. Eventually, such barriers will end in the same place, a banquet set for an empty room. How does this parable then challenge us to question our own hospitality? What barriers might we still have up in truly believing that the feast is set for all?

Or what if the failure of the man dressed incorrectly was not his inability to wear the proper clothing, but his hesitation to enter fully into the joy of the feast. After all, if everyone else was dressed in wedding robes, clearly the possibility was out there that he too could have become properly attired. What if his problem was a failure to party? And so, by standing arms crossed at the edge of the party, afraid to truly let his guard down and have a good time, lest he look the fool, he missed out on the celebration entirely? How might this parable challenge us to consider our own joy? Is our faith fun? Something we engage because it brings a smile to our faces and a dance to our steps? Or to we approach a life of faith more as a life of obligation? We’re here to check the box off of “good person,” to fill the slot of our resume, but in doing so we forget that in the end this is a banquet, and we are called to dance. How might we be being challenged to bring more joy, more laughter, more downright silliness into this world?

This parable asks hard questions of us. It ends in a place with no clear answers and frightening challenges. But here’s the good news, sisters and brothers, even in the midst of our questions, in the midst of our shortcomings, and failures to welcome, still the feast is set. So come to this table with your questions. Come feeling unwelcoming or unwelcome. Come overfull or underdressed. Come filled with joy or cautious in fear. Come to a foretaste of the rich foods, of the well-aged wines strained clear. Come with your questions unanswered, knowing that such questions and wondering can only bring us closer to the heart of God, who promises in the midst of all our fears and doubts, to rest God’s holy hand upon this mountain. Amen.

Amazing in our Eyes: A Sermon on Matthew 21:33-46

Here we are in the second of three parables of Jesus response to the chief priests and the elders questions about authority. Last week, we heard about how the chief priests and elders would be second into the kingdom of God and this week it seems like maybe they aren’t getting in at all. I confess I don’t love preaching parables. Preaching always seems like a bit of a bold endeavor, and parables even more so. Here’s a lesson that Jesus himself chose to teach using a story, and now I’m going to try to explain it out to you in ten to twelve minutes. Seems a bit ambitious if you ask me.

And this parable seems like an especially funny one for explaining. Not funny, ha-ha, but funny as in confusing. So there’s a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a fence around it, dug a wine press, built a watchtower, and generally did all the things one would do to have a successful crop. Then the landowner leased the vineyard to some tenants to care for it while he was away. This was standard practice in first century Palestine. Wealthy landowners would often find others to work their land for them in exchange for a portion of the crops. What’s odd about these tenants is that they seem to get too attached to the property. Like the way my friend’s two-year-old firmly believes that any toy she is playing with is her toy, the tenants seem to think that the land they are working should belong to them. So when the landlord sends his slaves to gather up his portion of the produce, the tenants seize the slaves, beating and killing them. Again the landlord sends slaves; again the tenants kill them. Finally, the landlord sends his son, thinking, “surely they will respect my son.” Now let’s pause here for a second and think this decision through. On one hand, Jesus is telling this story to a patriarchal society. One’s entire social status is based around one’s alliance to the patriarch. So to assume that the son would have the weight of the landlord is a totally legal and reasonable belief. But the tenants have thus far not shown any great concern for the legal or rational ramifications of their actions. So why he would think that his son, a much more valuable commodity than any of the servants he’d thus far sent, would have the effect he is looking for seems sort of unbelievable.

And of course, the tenants don’t respect the son. They kill him as well, thinking that with the son out of the way they can have the inheritance.

So what, Jesus asked the chief priests and the elders, will the landowner do to those tenants? They say to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” This seems like a harsh, but possible rational response to the problem at hand. One might even wonder why the landlord took so long to send in a stronger force to deal with his unruly tenants. It would seem after the first set of slaves were killed like it was past time to get rid of that group and go with tenants who were a little less possessive.

And of course, because we’ve read enough of these parables, we can see the trick Jesus has pulled on the chief priests and the elders here. The landlord, obviously, is God. You can hear the echoes of the creation story in the creation of the vineyard, how in the beginning, God filled the universe with everything necessary for life, just as the landlord filled the vineyard with everything needed for the harvest. And then God/the landlord turned the vineyard/earth over to tenants, who would care for God’s creation and bring it to fullness. But what did the nasty tenants do? They killed the prophets, over and over again. What is the Old Testament but the story of God’s people turning away from the messengers God has sent them. So finally, the landlord sent the son. And the tenants killed the son, so great was their desire for power. But then what happened? [Pause]

Jesus followed up their call for vengeance by quoting the book of Isaiah, asking, “Have you never read in the scriptures?” Here’s where we have an advantage over the chief priests and the elders to whom Jesus addressed the original question. Because the chief priests and the elders don’t yet know what’s to come. But we do. We know just how true this story is to our story. We know that the landlord did indeed send the son, God’s only Son, our Lord. And that in just a short time from when Jesus had this conversation in the temple, the parable would play out just as he had described it.

But what happened after Jesus was put to death? He rose again. And in doing so, he defeated death. And the words from Isaiah would ring true in a way that no one could have guessed, no one could have imagined. “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”

This parable paints for us a story of the indescribable vastness of God’s love. God’s relationship to God’s creation is not a tenant/landlord relationship. A landlord, someone more interested in the production of product than the prospects of the tenants, would certainly have turned those rotten, violent folk out at the first sign of disloyalty. But God the good landlord puts relationship with the tenants above production of the harvest. God so desperately wants to be in relationship with God’s people that no matter how many times they turn away, God sends another messenger. Even to the point of sending God’s own son.

And when God’s own son is put to death, even that becomes life-giving, becomes an opportunity for redemption, for relationship, for God to claim us as daughters and sons, heirs of the promise of the kingdom of God. God’s greatest gift of life, came through death on a cross. Hope came out of despair. Light out of the deepest darkness. The incredible, paradoxical foolishness of the cross is the apex of God’s love song to creation. A song so powerful that it draws everyone into its power. So powerful that power is transformed into mercy. This truly is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.

The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls. The cornerstone that is Christ will crush you with its mercy. I don’t mean that in some sort of trite, all trials come from God, sense. I mean that so powerful is the grace and the mercy of God that you will find yourself broken in God’s presence. You will find your guilt broken, your shame broken, your greed broken, your need for self-control. All the things that hold us captive, all the things that keep us separate, all are broken to pieces, all are swept away by the power and the mercy and the grace of God. And in that breaking, in that letting go, you will find yourself put together again, stronger, deeper, new, refreshed, restored, in the nearness of Christ.

God can make us new. God does make us new. With the strong and steady hands of the master vintner, God breaks away all that keeps us captive and we find ourselves renewed, recreated, in the light of this new relationship. The stone that the builders rejected breaks away our brokenness so that we stand with Christ at the cornerstone of God’s harvest.

The harvest is ready, prepared for those who bear the fruit of redemption. A broken feast, for broken people, a holy feast, for God’s own people. So, come to this table. Come and taste the fruit of the vineyard. Bring your brokenness to be broken away by God. Come because this is the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes. Amen.

90s Pop Music, the Present Perfect Tense, and God's Consistent Yes: A Sermon on Matthew 21:23-32

My friend Kristin is visiting this weekend. And Kristin, among other things, reintroduced me to the band Sister Hazel. I share this with you because this week I was reading commentaries on our Gospel reading and one of them actually quoted “Change Your Mind” by Sister Hazel. This had two effects on me. 1) It seemed like a funny coincidence since Kristin would be here for this sermon, and 2) it caused me to have “Change Your Mind” by Sister Hazel stuck in my head for the better part of this week, along with another similarly themed classic, “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson.

But back to “Change Your Mind.” If you’re not familiar with this turn of the century cult classic, the chorus goes: If you want to be somebody else, if you’re tired of fighting battles with yourself. If you want to be somebody else, change your mind. As someone who came of age in the 90s with a bit of an, independent, shall we say, streak—my grandmother would tell you stubborn, but I’ve always felt “independent” sounded better—this song was kind of a mantra for me. It spoke to my desire to do things on my own, to forge my own path, to make a difference. Yeah, I would think, hitting rewind on my tape player, that’s right, if you want things to be different, the person you’ve got to change is you. It was right up there with Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” on my favorite self-empowerment mixed tape.

So it was, I confess, a little jarring to read Change Your Mind quoted in a commentary on our parable for this morning. Because the song always felt like what the parable seemed to be stressing. That our actions matter more than our words, that we are the only ones who can change our situations. Just do it, both the song and the parable seem to be saying. Just live the way you’re supposed to. Change your mind.

But that, as you may already be aware, is way easier said than done. Just change your mind, lead singer Ken Block crooned. If you don’t like something, just change it. This was a good soundtrack to my adolescence, but now that I’m aware that I in fact do not know everything, it’s a bit less successful. See, what I’ve come to realize about myself, and what you may feel about yourself, is that I relate a lot more to the first brother than I do to the second. I am more apt to change my mind and do the wrong thing than to change my mind into becoming a person of great virtue and work-ethic.

So I struggled with this parable, as a preacher, as a theologian, and also as a follower of Christ. It’s nice, I guess, that actions speak louder than words, but I’m still not totally confident I want to be judged by my actions. There are too many times when I’ve done the wrong thing, too many times I’ve walked away, too many times I’ve said one thing and done another. This parable seems to focus on the sort of decision theology, the sort of “make yourself right with God” ideas that make me so uncomfortable, because they seem so unreachable. Just do it is a great mantra for sports or pop psychology or adolescent angst. But when my soul is on the line, trusting in my own ability to just do it seems like a frightening and, quite frankly, foolish gamble. So, where is the good news in this parable?

Parables, as I’ve mentioned, are a tricky teaching tool, and the first pass over is rarely the full story. So yes, actions speak louder than words is a true and important lesson for us, but there’s more to this one. So as I wrestled with what else might be going on in this one, I tried something a little different. I backed in; starting from the end, from the explanation of the analogy that Jesus made and I noticed a surprising thing. The difference between the prostitutes and tax collectors and the chief priests and the elders was this, the prostitutes and tax collectors were willing to let go of their past in order to enter into the future that Christ was offering while the chief priests and the elders were not. The so-called “sinners” walked away from the life they’d had before, whereas the “righteous” hung onto that past as proof of their righteousness. Each was set free from the sins and brokenness that had defined them, but only the tax collectors and prostitutes, only the brother that said no, had hands free to accept the gift. The truth is that both brothers, the chief priests and elders, the prostitutes and tax collectors, all of us, have all said No to God at one point or another. And what set the first brother and the prostitutes and tax collectors apart was that the answer was able to change from no to yes.

And here’s where this whole thing just gets really good. So the situation that prompted Jesus to tell this parable is a conversation between him and the chief priests and the elders about authority. Who gave him the authority to preach, who gave John the authority to baptize. And baptism is, I think, the key to understanding this whole thing. Because what happens at baptism is that God turn our no into God’s yes. At baptism our hearts, our minds, are changed as we become children of God. And this isn’t like a one-time thing. It’s not like suddenly the second brother had this conversion experience where his no was gone and he never said no again. But continually God is pouring grace into us, turning our nos into yeses, again and again. That I think is the power of this story, that we are always being reformed, being remade into the image of God. That over and over again our sin is taken away and we start again.

I think a few of you are English teachers; baptism is like the present perfect tense of sacraments. It is an event that happened once, but whose effects are continually felt into the present. It’s like dropping a stone in a pool and watching the ripples go out, and then another stone, and then another, again and again, stones dropping into eternity, forever changing the surface of the water and the courses of our lives. It means that we are forever changed, that our minds are forever transformed, and that no matter how many nos we might say, no matter what sins we might make, what brokenness might remain within us, God is continually working and moving in our lives, changing those nos to yeses. We don’t know how long it took the first brother to go back to the vineyard; maybe it was years. Took Jonah two tries to get to Nineveh, and quite a while after that to recognize the power of God’s grace, but it didn’t stop God’s grace from working.

We start every service at the font with a time of confession and forgiveness. We start at the font because baptism and confession and forgiveness are intricately linked. Baptism is the one time event, the first stone in the pond, and this time of confession and forgiveness is the ripples running out, every stone following, the opportunity to remember every Sunday, again and again, that this promise God made to us in baptism is true, is real, and is lasting. That it wasn’t something that happened once, long ago, that maybe you don’t even remember. But it is an event that is continuing to have ripple effects in your life today. Confession and forgiveness is a tricky little rite. We put it at the beginning of the service to remind us of how baptism marked a new life for us. But sometimes this location can have a different effect, can make it feel like some sort of mark of entry, like we have to get right before God before we can come into worship. The truth of it is the confession part is for us. The confession is to help us hear better the words that follow. But the important part is the forgiveness, the important part is God saying not, you need to be forgiven, but don’t forget that you are forgiven. Don’t forget that you are loved. Don’t forget that you are a child of God, precious in God’s sight. So from this Sunday on out, I invite you to focus on the forgiveness section, on the promise that you are forgiven, that you are made new, that every moment is a chance to start again, to try again, to believe yourself to be the kind of person God has made you to be, the kind of person God already knows you to be. Thanks be to God, who made us all new, and who is continually working until we can recognize it too. Amen.