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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peace - A Sermon on Luke 12:49-56

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simple: A Sermon on Luke 11:1-13

So I don’t know if I’m super smart or if Jesus is, but here’s the funny coincidence of my life right now. As I think most of you know, I do some freelance work writing Vacation Bible School curriculums for ELCA World Hunger. ELCA World Hunger is the service arm of our denomination, the ELCA, and it supports programs both in the US and around the world that create sustainable communities. Actually, let me just step away from the sermon for a sec here and toot our church’s horn, because this is a pretty cool ministry we support. It’s called ELCA World Hunger, but the focus isn’t just on hunger, it’s about actually changing the systems that perpetuate poverty. So they don’t just provide food, they provide like, animals and seeds for farmers, training and education to help farmers farm more effectively, microloans for small businesses, school supplies and tuition for children, health care and preventative medicine, advocacy, and they do all this through local partners, people who know the community and what the real, on the ground needs and solutions are. The ELCA is known around the world as being one of the first groups on the ground when a disaster strikes and, maybe more importantly, the last to leave.

But, to the task at hand. So we just finished the Family Camp using the 2019 curriculum, which was based on the Parable of the Good Samaritan from Luke chapter ten, also known as the Gospel reading from last Sunday. And this week I turned in the manuscript for the 2020 curriculum, which is based on the Lord’s Prayer, also known as the Gospel reading for this Sunday. I did not, when I came up with the theme for the 2020 VBS, realize that these two readings came in line with each other like that, but I’m feeling pretty smart now that I do.

I want to start with a little bit of teaching about the Lord’s Prayer and what we’re praying for when we say those familiar words. Last week we heard a lawyer summarize the law as “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” “You have given the right answer,” Jesus responded. “Do this, and you will live.” Love God and love your neighbor. As the Gospel of Matthew phrased it in its recounting of the event, “On these two commandments hang the law and all the prophets.”

So now, just a few verses later, we find Jesus at prayer. Prayer holds a special role in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus prayed before all the major turning points of his ministry. When one of his disciples noticed Jesus had finished his prayer, the disciple asked, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Theologian Matthew Skinner wrote that he thinks the disciple wasn’t asking for proper praying techniques, models or “best practices” for prayer, he was asking, Lord, “show us your heart,” “tell us, what is it like to be in communion with God.” This request for instruction on prayer, as Dr. Skinner reads it, was asking Jesus to teach them “what love looks like—love in action, love for God and neighbor.” To which Jesus replied, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.” Opening by addressing God as father tells us this prayer is about relationship, a relationship we can depend on. We do not address the benevolent creator, Lord of the Universe, Alpha and the Omega, great shepherd of the sheep, or any other majestic, fancy, formal title, we address God who is father, who is not just in relationship with us, but is family to us. This prayer is not the pleas of a serf to their overlord; it is the intimacy of a child to a parent. And what is that prayer? Well, first, “hallowed be your name, your kingdom come.” Hallowed, by the way, is just a fancy way of saying holy, set apart, marked for a purpose. So when we pray that God’s name be hallowed, that God’s kingdom come, what we’re praying for is for God to be God. And more than that, as Luther wrote in the Small Catechism, “It is true that God’s name is holy in itself… [that] God’s kingdom comes on its own… but we ask in this prayer that it may also become holy in and among us… that it may also come to us.” We are asking, praying, that God might lead us, that God might make us more like God. We are asking that the one we call Father might be in relationship with us. As Luther might phrase it, it is true that God loves us, but we ask in this prayer that God might lead us to better love God.

Love God. That’s step one, that’s what it all comes down to, where it all starts. And what’s next? Love your neighbor. Let’s start with this request for daily bread. I started by talking about how ELCA World Hunger doesn’t just provide food, it provides all the things needed to make food possible. Luther describes this request for bread like that. Daily bread is “everything included in the necessities and nourishment for our bodies, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, farm, fields, livestock, money, property, an upright spouse, upright children, upright members of the household, upright and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, decency, honor, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.” So, basically, everything. And that word “daily” is interesting too. It’s not a very common Greek word, but it seems to mean something physical, something tangible, something we can touch. And the verb “give” is in the present tense, which in the Greek means it’s repetitive, it happens again and again. So what we are saying here is that every day, again and again, not just that God will give us what we need, but that we will recognize it, trust it, and receive it with thanksgiving.

The prayer goes on: “And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” “For we ourselves forgive everyone” sounds more aspirational than accurate, but hey, aim high. Here’s your fun Greek fact for the day. The first forgive, “forgive us our sins,” that’s in what’s called the aorist tense. It’s used to describe an event that happens once with lasting effects. And the second, “as we ourselves forgive everyone,” that one is in the present tense. Which, as I mentioned earlier, describes an event that happens repeatedly. We forgive then, we can forgive, because we have been forgiven. Not again and again, like some sort of whiteboard that has to be continually wiped clean, and then gets that like gunky pen buildup on it after a while, but once for all time, forever. To continue with the bad whiteboard analogy, the forgiveness of God is like putting the cap on the pen, so now we can write our sins on the whiteboard all we want, but nothing shows up. We forgive, we can forgive, because that’s the kind of forgiveness we already have.

“And do not bring us to the time of trial.” This one’s a bit of a tricky one, because one might ask, why would we need to ask God not to bring us to trial. Shouldn’t not bringing us to trial, or temptation, or sin, depending on your translation, shouldn’t that just be a thing God doesn’t do? Luther had a funny story he loved to use to describe this about a young monk who “longed to rid himself of his evil thoughts.” An older, wiser, fellow monk said to him, “Dear brother, you cannot prevent the birds from flying over your head, but you can certainly keep them from building a nest in your hair.” The point being, trials, temptations, are a part of life. This prayer is about having the strength, the courage, and the perseverance to move forward despite the obstacles, to have confidence in the presence of God. Bread, forgiveness, perseverance: all things without which we cannot love our neighbor.

Love God, love your neighbor, it’s as simple as that. As Jesus told the lawyer back in chapter ten, “Do this and you will live.” Of course, as the lawyer’s immediate follow-up question and Mary and Martha’s confusing interaction displayed, put into any actual situation it immediately becomes not simple. So here then is the good news in the parables. First we have the parable of the friend going and waking another friend up in the middle of the night, asking for bread. The request is granted “because of his persistence”, says the translation we heard. But, one more Greek fun fact, this is probably better translated as “shamelessness.” Theologian Walter Liefeld describes it thusly, “the petitioner”—the one requesting bread so, in the context of the Lord’s prayer, us—“acts in shameless disregard of his neighbor (and perhaps of the other neighbors who will witness this midnight disturbance).” In other words, we humans can be needy and kind of demanding. But, Liefeld goes on, “the focus quickly shifts to the one in bed. Though the petitioner asks in a shameful way, his neighbor deals with the shame in a way that will bring honor to them both. Perhaps this is a better away to view what “hallowed be your name” means: God will act to honor Gods name even when we act in dishonorable ways.”

Moral of the story here, prayer isn’t about asking God for what we need; it isn’t about us at all. Writes Theologian Brian Peterson, “We are not the key that makes prayer “work.” If we keep asking, seeking, knocking, it is only because God has done so first, and continues to do so.”

I want to close by pointing out the picture on the front of your bulletin. It’s a stylized version of that famous painting that is so often described as Jesus knocking on the door of your heart. The question being: will you receive Jesus into your heart, will you open the metaphorical door and let Jesus in? This always seemed a weird question. Jesus appeared behind locked doors to his disciples, he rose from the dead and found his way out of a tomb sealed with a stone, so why this garden gate is apparently such an obstacle I’ve never understood. So I wonder if maybe we have the question of this painting wrong. Maybe Jesus is not the weary traveler, beating on the door of our heart, begging for us to grant him hospitality. Maybe Jesus is the neighborhood instigator, knocking on the door of your life, inviting you to come out into the world where he already is.

This whole thing ends where talk about God always ends. God loves you. Right now, who you are, as you are. God is not knocking on the door of your heart begging for admission. Neither is God callously waiting for you to knock loud enough, beg persistently enough, pray well enough, for God to respond to your request. God loves you. And all of this, worship, scripture, prayer, even the law itself, all of this is all about letting you know this one simple fact. You are loved by God. It really is as simple as that. Amen.