Revelation: God is with Us in the Worst of Times

Written for Sunday morning worship at the Chapel of the Resurrection, Valparaiso University, Valparaiso, IN | 6th Sunday of Easter | May 22, 2022

Readings: Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5, John 14:23-29

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The Book of Revelation was written for the people of Ukraine.

I don’t mean that literally, of course. I don’t mean that John of Patmos stood on an island 2,000 years ago and received a vision about a war that would happen in 2022. I don’t mean that if we carefully interpret all the weird symbols of Revelation – the horseman of the apocalypse, the beasts and dragons, the seals on the scroll – that they’ll point directly at specific events in our own time. I don’t think that those things, those words of God, have been lying dormant for thousands of years until they finally reached our ears in our time.

But still: the Book of Revelation was written for the people of Ukraine.

Because — all those strange Revelation symbols are there to make us think about realities that are true in every time.

That haunting number, 666, points to Caesar, and to all who use the power they have over people in ways that cause destruction and suffering.

The monsters represent things like enemy military power and lies and even just plain, evil death.

All those strange symbols are there to make us think about these things differently – from God’s perspective. From the perspective of Easter – of Christ’s resurrection – his triumph over all these powers. 

Revelation points to the end goal of the resurrection: the day when “God will cage the monsters that plague humanity and deal with evil forever.”

The passage from Revelation that Kuda read for us a few moments ago comes after all our monsters have been conquered. Cruel rulers, lies, even “Death and Hades” (Rev. 20:13) have been conquered by Jesus. We are given a vision of the fulfillment of God’s plan, God’s promises. 

Do you remember the story of the exodus from Egypt? God hears the cries of the people of Israel, the crying out from their lives of slavery, lives full of abuse and death. God hears; God sees; and God responds (Ex. 2:23-25). God enters their situation: through Moses, as a pillar of fire by day and a pillar of cloud by night, God is with God’s people, and God saves them.

Do you remember the story of the fiery furnace? The faithful Jews Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego refuse to obey the command of the King of Babylon and worship a false god, and so they are thrown into a furnace that is heated seven times beyond its usual fire. But when the king gazes into the flames, he sees not three figures, but four – “and the fourth has the appearance of a god.” The three men are saved (Daniel 3).

Do you remember the story of the Gospel of John, chapter 1? It’s that beautiful passage that begins, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then it tells us: “the Word became flesh and lived among us.” And as John unwraps this story, it emphasizes more than any other Gospel that in Jesus we see and hear and feel God, right here among us in all of our sickness and suffering and sin. God comes to save  us.

This is what our faith tells us God does over and over. The holy, eternal God enters into moments in our time, into the midst of our troubles, when we are surrounded by evil that seems so much greater than us. God comes to us, and God saves us.

The end of Revelation is the ultimate of these stories. Once again our holy God comes to earth, comes to us. John of Patmos saw a vision of the “holy city of Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.” He saw that there was no Temple in this city, no special holy building for people to go and seek God – because God was there, in the midst of the city.

This vision is full of promises: the promise that God is stronger than every power of this world. The promise that God always cares for those who suffer. And the promise that one day God will conquer all the death-dealing powers for good.

And if we listen to today’s passage like it’s music, we’ll hear one sound ringing through over and over again: Life. Life. Life. The Book of Life. The Water of Life. The Tree of Life.

God vanquishes all the death-dealing powers, and God fills every corner of creation with life.

Not survival. Not just staying alive. Not struggling to make ends meet; not living in fear; not fleeing home to escape violence.

God’s new creation flows with the kind of life that we long for. The Bible offers us images of God’s new creation that help us imagine…

A world so peaceful that a wolf and lamb can share a home (Isaiah 11:6-9).

A world without scarcity and without hunger, without the fear and greed that so often create scarcity – a world so abundant and generous that we will all have enough good food to eat (Isaiah 55:1-2).

A safe world, where God’s children don’t have to worry about being driven from their homes (Amos 9:13-15).

A united world, with healing for all nations, where we come together in the light of God’s truth and grace.

That is the resurrection promise that God offers through the book of Revelation. Ultimate, everlasting victory over the powers of evil that feel so overpowering to us. All its weird symbols are there to help us imagine our world from the vantage point of heaven – of victory – of true life. So that image, that imagination, could be with us in our world now, in our situations.

In Ukraine. In Buffalo. In hospitals. In prisons.

Even the Ruins Have Perished, Georges Rouault (1926). Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame. Via Marble.

That ability to imagine life from the vantage point of heaven, victory, and true life is one of the great gifts of the Holy Spirit. A gift that we are given now. A gift that is powerful right now.

Through the Spirit, God makes us hope in the midst of destruction.

God makes us find light in the darkest night.

God makes us feel peace in chaos.

Jesus said, “..the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

Let us pray.

Creator of the universe, you made the world in beauty, and you restore all things in glory through the victory of Jesus Christ. We pray that, wherever your image is still disfigured by poverty, sickness, selfishness, war, and greed, the new creation in Jesus Christ may appear in justice, love, and peace, to the glory of your name.

You stand among us in the shadows of our time. As we move through every sorrow and trial of this life, uphold us with knowledge of the final morning when, in the glorious presence of your risen Son, we will share in his resurrection, redeemed and restored to fullness of life and forever freed to be your people. Amen.

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Bibliography

The Bible Project, “Overview: Revelation 1:11,” YouTube, 14 December 2016. Accessed 20 June 2022.

    “Overview: Revelation 12-22,” YouTube, 14 December 2016. Accessed 20 June 2022.

Christopher Rowland, “Revelation,” Global Bible Commentary, ed. Daniel Patte, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004), pp. 559-570.

God Turns Weakness into Strength

Written for Valparaiso University’s Chapel of the Resurrection Sunday Worship | 5th Sunday after the Epiphany | February 7, 2021

Readings: Isaiah 40:21-31; Mark 1:29-39

You can watch this sermon online here!

Simon Peter’s mother-in-law had a fever. A fever, an ailment we have culturally re-learned to take very, very seriously in these COVID times. A fever makes the sick person and all those who love them start glancing — uncontrollably — at mortality…something they thought they had tucked under a rug and learned not to trip over too often.

Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was in bed with A FEVER. 

And Jesus came, and he took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she — and Mark makes this seem like immediately — she began to serve them.

Maybe, like me, you’ve been part of group Bible studies that have gotten a little sidetracked by that part. Jesus heals a woman, and of course she gets up and starts serving the men. Depending on the group, that can lead to a big ol’ discussion about The Patriarchy or to stories like: “I need to do everything for my Roger; he couldn’t make it a week on his own! After we were first married, I asked him to do the ironing just once because I was busy with the baby, and he burned so many holes, he ended up with fewer clean shirts than when I’d started the laundry!” 

But since Mark was such a concise writer, including only what’s meaningful before moving on to the next amazing thing Jesus did, I think we can assume that Mark didn’t include this little detail just so that we’d remember forever that Peter’s mother-in-law was immediately feeling well enough that she could make Jesus and the Boys sandwiches. 

Mark wanted us to remember that Peter’s mother-in-law was healed by Jesus, and then after that healing, her life was one of service. This verse could be translated: “…she began to minister to them.” This verse could remind us of how Jesus will describe the role of a disciple later in the book: “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:43-45).

This story about Peter’s mother-in-law is an example of the life of a Jesus-follower: Jesus raises us to new life, and then, in response, we live lives of service.

God’s healing work was not only to take away her fever; God’s healing work also included transforming her illness into a source of joy and service. If you can imagine Simon Peter and the Boys sitting around, re-telling this story.

I don’t think it would be the kind of story that makes the whole room get quiet and somber. It wouldn’t be the story of “that time we all thought Peter’s wife’s mama almost died.” 

They’d re-tell it with the joy of knowing how the story ends. With laughter and people talking all over each other. And, being preachers and apostles, they’d tell the story in a way that reminded everyone that God does amazing things. 

And for generations people like us have been finding inspiration in how that healed woman was so happy and so thankful that she couldn’t wait to get up and start serving God by serving the people around her.

And we carry away the lesson: God changes even the darkest, most difficult times in our lives, transforming them from windows on our own weakness and frailty and suffering, making them into reserves of strength and wisdom and courage for us to draw from as we serve.

Louis Buchetto, When you see only the dark, know the Light will soon return (2004). Leroux Street Parkign Lot, Flagstaff, AZ. Via Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s Art in the Christian Tradition.

As a pastor whose call to service often looks caring for someone as God working that transformation in their lives, I’ve had the great joy of seeing people so transformed. 

A man holding God’s hand through the pain of his divorce, until he could one day volunteer to be a listening ear and source of support to other people in the congregation going through their own times of grieving.

A teenager who had gotten far enough along on his own journey of learning to have depression and anxiety and to live life with purpose and joy, that he now felt called to help others who were still struggling to see if that was even possible.

When we are reminded that God has given us gifts and talents and resources, and God calls us just as we are into service for God’s mission — well I don’t know about you all, but I get pretty jazzed up when I think about it. Sometimes I get really down on myself, but God reminds me that God has given me strengths. And even as I am sinful, God accepts and welcomes me. That’s powerful.

This story about Simon Peter’s mother-in-law reminds us that’s not all. God is even bigger than that. God will seize our entanglements with sin and pain and suffering and disease and natural disasters and whatever it is in life that just makes us feel like we’ve been thrown into the pit — and God will transform those times in our lives — those times we would sometimes gladly edit out — God transforms even those things until they are no longer things that overcame us — they are now things we own and control, stories we can tell in our way, until the deepest and darkest of the holes we fell into are now trees bearing fruit for God and for neighbor.

But still this joyful faith leaves us with a question: 

Simon Peter’s mother-in-law was fevered one second and back on her feat, serving like a saint the next. 

Healing usually doesn’t work like that. Grieving doesn’t work like that. Getting out of jail and re-integrating yourself into society doesn’t work like that. Returning home from war doesn’t look like that. Learning to manage sudden attacks of shortness of breath and tightness of chest and mind telling you you’re unsafe doesn’t work like that. Living with the daily micro-aggressions of racism and sexism and ableism and whatever other “ism” doesn’t work like that. Getting out of debt doesn’t work like that. Being in recovery from an addiction doesn’t work like that. Human suffering, I think, doesn’t work like that.

So what about those of us who are in the deep end of our grief or our suffering or our struggle? What about those of us who don’t feel like our experiences are being transformed? Those of us who have lost hope that transformation is even possible? What Gospel can those of us hear from this Gospel story?

Jesus spent that whole evening healing people; Mark says that around sunset the whole city showed up at Simon Peter’s house, begging for Jesus. Let’s dwell on that evening in Jesus’s life for the moment. He would have spent hours and hours getting intimate knowledge of the worst parts of being human. Coughing, rattling chests, limps, cries of pain, skin blotches, wounds, stories of accidents that make you wish you’d never heard them. And desperation and hopelessness and anger. The things that overwhelm some of us when we visit a hospital. The very things that make it hard for a lot of us humans to keep believing in a loving God, right? 

And yes, maybe Jesus was able to experience all those things differently on account of being fully-God and fully-man,on account of being the one who can offer healing. But we know from the story of Lazarus that human pain still has the power to break his heart. And I can’t help but think about a story that will come up just a few chapters further into the Gospel of Mark: a woman suffering with a chronic disease will reach out to touch Jesus’ cloak for just a second, and Jesus, without seeing her, will “realize that power has gone out from him” (Mark 5:25-34). 

What kind of effect does the work of healing have on Jesus?

It’s not unreasonable to think that healing a crowd of people could exhaust and maybe even depress Jesus. Or to imagine the holy Son of Man casting out one final, shrieking demon before collapsing onto whatever piece of furniture or floor was still open. And he slept for a while.

Then, Mark tells us, “in the morning, while it was still very dark, [Jesus] got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.” Why do you think woke Jesus up so early in the morning? What do you think Jesus’s prayers were like? What kind of things would he need to get off his chest as he talked to his Father? What might he have asked for — for himself, for his disciples, for the people he’d just been with? 

And why are these stories — of Jesus literally sneaking off for a quiet time of prayer — so common throughout the Gospels?

Priest and theologian Henri Nouwen wrote in his book The Wounded Healer:

The man who articulates the movements of his inner life, who can give names to his varied experiences, need no longer be a victim of himself, but is able slowly and consistently to remove the obstacles that prevent the spirit from entering. He is able to create space for Him whose heart is greater than his, whose eyes see more than his, and whose hands can heal more than his.

Put in less beautiful words: when we spend time focusing on what’s going on inside of us, working out it’s reality especially when it’s harsh and painful — that is like giving God’s Spirit time and space to be with us in our pain, like inviting God-power to do that work of transformation that we can’t do by ourselves.

Jesus, I think, made that room for God in those quiet moments away from the rest of the group. We  might do the same.

Or, we might make room for God by journaling. Or by talking to a friend, a pastor, a counselor. Multiple students have told me about finding songs that spoke to what they were struggling with, and those songs helped them open up room for God. 

When we feel like we are down deep in the pit, we need only get up the energy to scoot over a little bit and make room for God to be there with us. Or maybe to just look over, and see that God is already there.

 For a while our conversations with God might be filled only with lament — and that is good. For a while our conversations might be only silence — and that is good. Because anything we offer to God — even a tiny little seed that we barely believe exists — that is enough for God to work with. That is enough for God to start the work of transformation.

The prophet Isaiah said:

Why do you say…”My way is hidden from the Lord,And my right is disregarded by my God”?
Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
The Creator of the ends of the earth.
God does not faint or grow weary;
God’s understanding is unsearchable.
God gives power to the faint,
And strengthens the powerless.

Even youths will faint and grow weary,
And the young will fall exhausted;
But those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
They shall mount up with wings like eagles,
They shall run and not be weary,
They shall walk and not faint.

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

God Gives Us New Hope When We Feel Hopeless

Written for St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Franklin, TN + 3rd Sunday of Easter + April 26, 2020

Reading: Luke 24:13-35

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You can watch this sermon here.

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This story from the Gospel of Luke is one of my favorite Bible stories. It has been since I first really got to know it, back in college, when I was part of a Christian acting group. We performed a version of the Road to Emmaus story, and I played half of a donkey.

But you know how every time you come back to a Bible passage, even one you know really well, it touches you in a different way? Well, this time, when I read this passage, this is the phrase that really caught at my heart: “But we had hoped…”

These two Jesus-followers – Cleopas and..someone else – are walking down a road just three days after Jesus’s crucifixion. And this stranger starts walking along with them, and he asks, “Hey, what are y’all talking about?” and they’re like, “Uh…don’t you even know about Jesus of Nazareth?” And they explain how Jesus had done so many amazing miracles and taught such life-changing lessons – but then their own religious leaders handed him over to the enemy, and the Romans executed him. And then they say, “But we had hoped that he would be the one to redeem Israel.”

“But we had hoped…”

I bet that expression is something we all can relate to right now.

But we had hoped that we’d have a great graduation ceremony.

But we had hoped to meet certain goals at work this quarter.

But we had hoped to just keep working at all.

But we had hoped to go on this great vacation.

But we had hoped to spend a week at Affirm with our friends.

But we had hoped to pay off some debts.

But we had hoped to start a building campaign.

But we had hoped – without even thinking about it – that life would keep going on like normal. We had hoped to stay safe and healthy.

We had hoped…but it’s not turning out that way.

Jesus’s disciples say that they had hoped that Jesus “would be the one to redeem Israel.” And the word “redeem” means to release or to free or to liberate someone. So like God had once redeemed – God had once liberated – the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, Jesus’s disciples had hoped that he would free them from being ruled over by the Romans, and that Israel could be its own independent country again. They had hoped that they would get to see the start of a brand new world for their people: a world where they ruled themselves; a world where they were free; a world where there was peace and justice and righteousness.

But the powers that they’d hoped Jesus would free them from – Jesus was killed by those same powers.

We have to wonder what that violent disappointment did to the faith of those disciples. I mean, Jesus had really seemed to be the messiah: he had taught like a great prophet; he had done rare miracles; he had gathered a big following; and just a week before, he had ridden into Jerusalem like a triumphant king ,and crowds of people had outright called him the messiah. It had seemed like God was so obviously with Jesus.

But now Jesus was dead, and the disciples must have wondered if they’d been wrong all along. If, somehow, God had never been with Jesus after all. Even Jesus on the cross had cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

It looked like all was lost. It looked like God was not with them, after all. Their faith must have broken into pieces.

And even though the hopes that the disciples had might seem pretty different from our own hopes…maybe we can still relate. Because maybe all the disappointed hopes we are carrying around right now – from little disappointments to huge problems – maybe they are all adding up and shaking our faith.

When the disciples express their own shaken faith to the “stranger,” he replies, “Oh, how foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?’

Probably the first thing we hear in that reply is a reprimand, a bit of slap on the wrist. But those words are also overflowing with exactly the good news that Cleopas and the other disciple most needed to hear.

Because a paraphrase of those words might be: You had hoped that Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel – and your hope was not wrong. It’s just that you hoped it would happen one way – and instead it happened another way. It happened the way God had always said it would.

Though the stranger starts off by saying “Oh, how foolish you are,” hidden in that reprimand is an affirmation, a validation, a message that would comfort them and renew their hope.

The person who gives the two disciples this message – they see him as a stranger, which is interesting. Because, as we know, but they don’t – the stranger is Jesus, the very person they’re talking about. The Gospel tells us that “their eyes were kept from recognizing him.”

There are a lot of reasons people give to make sense of why the disciples couldn’t recognize Jesus. But here’s one that I think fits the story really well: Sometimes it’s hard to see Jesus for who he really is instead of who we hoped he would be.

These disciples had thought Jesus would be the messiah in a certain way. So when that didn’t happen, they stopped seeing him as the messiah. They thought that Jesus’s death was the end of that hope. And so they couldn’t believe the women who said that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and they couldn’t see the resurrected Jesus when he walked and talked with them.

Maybe we can relate. It’s hard for us to Jesus for who he really is instead of who we hoped he would be.

A lot of the time, we carry hopes like these: that following Jesus will make our lives easier, more comfortable; that because of our faith, God will protect us from all harm; that God will make good things happen for us.

And so when we find ourselves in a really difficult place – like we are all in together now, with the coronavirus situation – when things get painful, threatening, dangerous…then we find that Jesus is not the savior we’d hoped he would be. And so maybe it gets hard to see him – to see God – at all. Maybe it gets hard o keep having faith, to keep trusting in God.

But maybe, like those disciples on the road to Emmaus, we are having a hard time seeing Jesus because we were expecting the wrong things. Maybe if Jesus appeared to us as a stranger sitting on our living room couch, he’d respond to our own shaken faith by saying, “But didn’t you know that God has always worked in a different way than the way you were expecting?”

When are these two disciples finally able to see Jesus for who he was? It’s not when he’s explaining the Bible to them, it’s by some light shining from his resurrected body – it’s when they’re sitting at dinner, and Jesus takes a loaf of bread, and he blesses it, and he breaks it.

And especially this soon after Maundy Thursday, this action should ring all sorts of bells for us.

At the last supper with his disciples, on the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took a loaf of bread, gave thanks, and broke it, saying, “This is my body, given for you.”

The breaking of the bread was – and is – a symbol for the sacrifice of Jesus. It’s a symbol of how God chose to redeem Israel and the world through the way of suffering and death. For those disciples, maybe that moment of breaking the bread and remembering Jesus’s broken body – maybe that was when it all clicked. Of course the messiah had to suffer and then enter into his glory! It’s what the scriptures have been pointing to all along!

How can that memory – the breaking of the bread, the broken body of Jesus – how can that help us when we are feeling our own hopes disappointed, our own faith shaken?

In this time of the coronavirus, if our faith is ever shaken, if we are wondering how God could let this kind of thing happen, maybe we can remember:

Our hopes that God would keep things like pandemic away from us – those hopes our rooted in our own desires; they are not taught to us in scripture. So this crisis does not disprove our faith; but it does teach us that we need to learn to see God differently, to hope for different things – to hope and trust in who God actually is.

Scripture doesn’t tell us that God will only make good things happen for us. Instead, scripture teaches us that God will be with us when the suffering does come. God will give us peace that passes understanding; God will help us make meaning out of what is happening in our lives; God will strengthen our spirts. And while God does not cause the suffering of the world, God will work through it to create goodness – maybe just not in the way we expect.

As St. Paul reminded the early Christians facing suffering and persecution:

What then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? [God] who did not spare [God’s] own Son, but gave him up for us all – how will God not also, along with him, gracioulsy give us all things?…What shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nro anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31-32, 35, 37-39)

When we see the brokeness in our world, may God open our eyes to see God with us. Amen.

Interior of the Church of the Light, Tadao Ando (1999). Via Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s Art in the Christian Tradition.

The One Who IS in Control

Written for the ELCA Southeastern Synod Leadership Convocation 2019 Evening Prayer + October 15, 2019

Reading: Revelation 12:7-17

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 So, I’m curious about whether this is a common experience for us professional minister-types.

I mean, not getting exiled to an island and then having visions of giant dragons who shoot water from their mouths.

But, I mean: When I was doing CPE in a hospital, a lot of people wanted to talk about this book of crazy visions, the book of Revelation. They’d tell me theories they’d heard about what it all meant. Y’know, theories about who the antichrist was or where he would come from, or things like: The mark of the beast is credit cards! – but not in anti-capitalist way that I could get behind. It was something about pretty soon we’d all be getting computer chips implanted to help us pay for things more quickly or something, and then it’d be the end of the world.

And then they’d ask me a question like, “What do your professors tell you all about Revelation?”

“Uh…not much?” I thought but never said, because I figured it was probably not a helpful answer, and giving a lecture on the Church and Roman history would be even less pastoral.

One day the pastoral care office got a fax – a fax, in 2012 – about a patient who was having apocalyptic theological questions, and everybody giggled and said “send the intern,” and this poor guy thought he was the abomination described in the Book of Daniel. (I tried pointing him to “nothing can separate us from the love of Christ,” but he threw me out of his room.)

Still today, when I do graveside services, I almost always end up meeting a Baptist who wants to talk about the rapture. “What are you again? Lutheran? What do you all believe about the rapture?”

“Uh…not much?” Again, not a helpful answer.

But I’ve been in so many of these kinds of conversations in these kinds of situations – hospital rooms, gravesides – that it cannot be a coincidence. So why? Why do these weird apocalyptic questions keep coming up, and at times when a loved one is plugged in to IVs, or being lowered into the ground? Why do they come up again when a tsunami comes, or we hear new reports of missiles being tested, or the president does something that makes us want to rip out our hair, or when we can’t seem to go a week without hearing about another shooting? Why do those kinds of things make people want to dig out their Bibles and start interpreting dragons and angels with big bowls and the hidden meaning of numbers?

I bet a lot of you are thinking what I’m thinking: it’s an understanding thing. It’s a control thing.

I remember someone in the hospital asking, Why is my wife so sick, when all those drug dealers are healthy? before he started talking about the Book of Revelation.

When we’re in situations that we have no control over and that we can’t make sense of, we struggle even harder to understand the mind of God. And so we jump into the Bible and into visions of the Judgment Day, because if we can figure out what God’s Big Plan is, then maybe we can make sense of what’s happening to us right now. When things seem senseless or unfair, we think, maybe if we can see the hidden meaning, it’ll make this easier to bear. It’ll feel like we have some control, because at least we know what God is doing here.

But the Word of God was not meant to give us total understanding or control; it was meant to point us toward the One who does understand, the One who is in control – and to tell us who that One is.

The Creator God, who will not abandon the world and people God made.

The Incarnate God, who came 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, to proclaim God’s love.

The Spirit of God, who gives us peace that passes understanding and who empowers us to act in whatever situations we face.

The Triune God, whose love and faithfulness are stronger than anything that can ever happen to us.

These writings are not meant to let us in on God’s Big Plan so that we can predict the future, but they were written to empower our faith enough that we can say:

Y’know what, world? Fine. Let this bad shit happen. We’ve got our eyes open. We see the way our bodies and all creation groan. We see the ways that fear causes people to hate each other, to take up arms, to take up tiki torches, to hoard wealth and point fingers and to build up defenses.

We see you, Powers of Evil. But we see what’s beyond you, too. We see God, and who God is.

So try your worst, Satan. Because God’s got us. And watch out world, because God’s not giving up, and neither are we.

“The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated.”

“Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of [God’s] Messiah,”

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Amen.

“The Angel Binding Satan,” The Macklin Bible (1797) by Philippe-Jacques de Loutherbourg and John Landseer. Via Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s Art in the Christian Tradition.

God, in the Midst of Violence

Written for St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Franklin, TN + 9th Sunday after Pentecost + August 11, 2019

Reading: Luke 12:32-40

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So I’ll start by straight-up admitting that I’m going to start us off in a pretty dark, heavy place this week.

Last Sunday I woke up to see a news alert on my phone: a mass shooting in Dayton, OH. And I’m sure my reaction to that news was the same as your reaction; some mix of shock and lament and overwhelming weariness. Oh God, another one? We’d heard of the El Paso shooting just 13 hours before. And just six days before that there was the shooting at the Garlic Festival in California – which we already seem to have almost forgotten. And of course, those are just the shootings that made the news: Chicago continues to experience almost daily gun violence, and other, smaller-scale shootings – even those that technically fit the definition of “mass shooting” – just don’t make the national news.[1]

But last week I just did not have the heart to preach about gun violence again. How can we keep talking about it when nothing seems to change? It’s exhausting, right?  And yet throughout this last week, I’ve noticed that most of us do feel the need to talk about this violence together and to pray about it together. People keep bringing it up in conversations, in devotions, in Bible studies. And this is a good thing: this is a sign that God is keeping our hearts compassionate and open. We can’t let ourselves get hardened, we can’t let these mass shootings start to feel normal, because that would mean we’ve surrendered. That would mean the powers of violence and evil won.

So, as people of faith, let’s think about gun violence together again this morning – even though it’s exhausting. It’s only by really looking this painful reality in the face that we can find a way to hope and maybe even to hear how God is calling us to respond.

I wanted to start by sharing some of an ELCA social message called “Community Violence.”[2] As you listen to this message, try to guess when it was written.

People who were poor and vulnerable have long experienced life as “nasty, brutish, and short;” now those who thought they were privileged and protected are also haunted by violence. Many of the young, who previously were sheltered from exposure to violence, are…increasingly both its victims and its perpetrators…

The message goes on to describe the rise of fear nationally, which leads to “tough on crime” policy stances, including use of the death penalty. “Violence and rumors of violence continue to spread – feared yet also expected in daily life.”

Alright, lock in your guesses about what year this was written. It wasn’t this week. It wasn’t after Parkland. It wasn’t after Sandy Hook. It wasn’t even after Columbine. It was adopted by the ELCA in 1994. That’s twenty-five years ago. That’s five years before the shooting at Columbine, which is usually used to mark the beginning of the mass shooting epidemic. And yet it reads like a commentary on today’s news headlines.

That’s very depressing. Our church and our nation recognized the problem of violence that long ago, and yet we haven’t found our way to solutions. Instead it feels like we’ve somehow let things get even worse. What we’ve been doing for the last 25 years – what we’re doing now – it’s not working. And yet we’re stuck in this gridlock.

Reflecting on that history, and living in the world of overwhelming mass-shooting headlines and kids practicing active shooter lock-downs in schools  – it gets really easy to feel like God isn’t in this with us. Like God is nowhere.

One of the reasons we gather together as a church is to rely on one another – and the presence of the Holy Spirit among us – to build up our faith that God is here with us. That even in the midst of the depressing headlines – and everything else that might be going on in our personal lives – God offers us hope and peace.

How good it is that, after these weeks of tragedy, we could gather together this morning to hear Jesus’s comforting words: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It’s a reminder for us: one of Jesus’s main messages was that even in a world marred by violence and tragedy, we can trust in God – and God will give us peace in the middle of the storms; God will give us hope and confidence in our future in God’s kingdom.

Remember: Jesus also lived in a time of great violence, and his people were suffering from oppression. Jesus offered his words of comfort to those who were most vulnerable, who lived on the edge of danger: the people who were poor, the people who were sick, the people who were outcast, the people who lived with the threat of random violence. His words “Do not be afraid” are not a pie-in-the-sky kind of encouragement; they are not given to those who live in safety and security; but he offers assurance to people who every day faced violence and persecution and hardship. When Jesus said, “Do not be afraid,” he was not trying to deny what was going on in the world, but instead he was reminding people that God stood with them as they faced their hardships. That even when the world tries to inject us with fear, God can overpower that fear with God’s peace.

But, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, it’s often difficult to see God at work to save us in our daily world when it seems like the violence and the fear just keep getting worse. And faced with that problem, that feeling that God has left us to our own devices, it’s tempting to turn Jesus’s words of comfort into a promise of heaven – and only a promise of heaven.

If you’re feeling like that this week, remember: Jesus’s words of comfort were not only for the afterlife. They were meant to remind us that God is at work in our world right here and now. We know this because Jesus accompanied his words of comfort with action. He healed people. He transformed people’s hearts and minds. He challenged the religious and political norms of his day. He called for change and for justice. He fed people. He consoled people. He lived peacefully and compassionately.

So “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” – on earth as it is in heaven.

Of course this is also a reminder that Jesus did all these good things through his body. God had acted in the world before the incarnation, and I believe the Holy Spirit continues to work in the world today. Many of you have stories of God’s power at work in your own lives, both spiritually and physically (and if you’re having lunch with family or friends after worship, it might be a good time to encourage one another with those stories). But Jesus’s physical presence on earth was the clearest way we have ever seen God at work in the world. That’s why we Christians make such a big deal about Jesus and the incarnation.

Today we, the Church, are Christ’s physical body on earth – called to be that clear sign of God’s presence. And so God calls us to evangelize, to share the good news of Jesus with the world, not only by talking about the afterlife, and not only by doing good works in our communities, but also by “throwing the light of the gospel on the great human problems of our time.”[3] That means showing the world that believes that God is no where that, actually, God is now here. In these times – and especially in these weeks – that means speaking words of hope while the world despairs. That means promoting peace when the world keeps giving in to this cycle of violence. That means challenging the damaging social habits that the world thinks are “just the way things are.”

Attendees of the ELCA Churchwide Gathering march to the ICE building in Milwaukee for a prayer vigil (Aug. 7, 2019). Photo by Emily McFarlan Miller via Religion News.

We are reminded of this in the gospel reading when Jesus follows up his words of comfort with a call to his disciples: “Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit.” We might interpret this: Don’t just sit around trying to feel at peace and waiting for heaven. Anticipate God – and God’s work in the world.

A pastor wrote about this week’s gospel story: Jesus’s teachings “instruct [his] community to live in the world without being of the world.”[4] In other words, “[His] hearers [like us] live in the real world. He does not seem to expect them to live somewhere else. But they are to feel and desire and to frame their whole existence as if they belong somewhere else.”[5]

The ELCA’s “Community Violence” social message puts that teaching in the context of the violence we see in the world around us:

The Holy Spirit works among us to wrench us from violence, hate, greed, and fear, and transforms us into people who are called to trust God and live in community with one another. In doing so, we need to confront the violent tendencies within ourselves and our society, and find ways to cultivate the practice of nonviolence. Christians, as the salt of the earth (Mt. 5:13) and light of the world (Mt. 5:14), are called to respond to violent crime in the restorative ways taught by Jesus (Mt. 5:38-39) and shown by his actions (Jn. 8:3-11). Rather than reacting out of fear, or out of a vengeful desire to “get even” with those we consider our “enemies” (Lk. 6:27ff), we realize they are our neighbors. We are empowered to take up the challenge to prevent violence and to attack the complex causes that make violence so pervasive.

So how can we – empowered by the Holy Spirit – challenge this world of violence and offer God’s peace? How can we live in the world without being of the world? Let us pray for the wisdom to know, in things great and small. Let us be willing to challenge our world – and ourselves.

God in whom we trust: The world trembles out of control. The violence builds, some by terrorism, some by state greed dressed up as policy, violence on every side.

You, in the midst of the out-of-control violence. We confess you steadfast, loyal, reliable, but we wonder if you yourself are engaged in brutality. We confess you to be governor and ruler, but we wonder if you manage.

We in the midst of our out-of-control violence, we in great faith, we in deep vocational call, we in our several anxieties. We – alongside you – in the trembling.

This day we pray for freedom to move beyond fear to caring, beyond self to neighbor, beyond protection to growth. That we may be a sign of steadfastness, that anxiety may not win the day. You are the one who said, “Do not be anxious.” And now we submit to you. Amen.[6]

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ELCA Resources on Violence

A 60-Day Journey Toward Justice in a Culture of Gun Violence, (2019). https://elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Addressing-Social-Concerns/60-Days

“A Sustained Journey: How the ELCA has addressed the issue of gun violence”, (2019). https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/60DaysGunViolence_Summary_Overview.pdf

Community Violence, social message (1994). https://elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Messages/Community-Violence

For Peace in God’s World, social statement (1995). https://elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Statements/Peace

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References

[1]     See the Gun Violence Archive for up-to-date statistics: https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting?year=2019  Accessed 10 August 2019.

[2]     “A Message on Community Violence,” Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 1994. Available online: https://elca.org/Faith/Faith-and-Society/Social-Messages/Community-Violence Accessed 10 August 2019.

[3]     W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft, quoted in Michael Kinnamon’s “W. A. Visser ‘t Hooft’s confrontation with nationalist idolatry among Christians,” The Christian Century, 8 August 2019. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/w-visser-t-hooft-s-confrontation-nationalist-idolatry-among-christians  Accessed 10 August 2019.

[4]     Hardy Kim, “Changed by something radically other (Luke 12:32-40),” The Christian Century, Sunday’s Coming, 5 August 2019. https://www.christiancentury.org/blog-post/sundays-coming/changed-something-radically-other-luke-1232-40  Accessed 10 August 2019.

[5]     Hardy Kim, “August 11, Ordinary 19C (Luke 12:32-40),” The Christian Century, Living by the Word, 16 July 2019. https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/august-11-ordinary-19c-luke-1232-40  Accessed 10 August 2019.

[6]     Walter Brueggemann, “God’s Gift in the Midst of Violence,” Prayers for a Privileged People, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2008), pp. 77-78.

The Mystery of the Cross

Written for St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Franklin, TN + Good Friday + April 19, 2019

Readings: Isaiah 52:13-53:12, John 18:1-19:42

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“It is finished.”

Those are Jesus’s last words according to the Gospel of John. Those words tell us more than the simple fact that Jesus’s life is coming to its end. They point us toward the meaning of Jesus’s entire life: the teachings and the healings and the sense of the presence of God on earth, all coming to a point in this final moment on the cross. A life lived for others makes the last sacrifice. It is finished. It is accomplished. He has fulfilled God’s plan for his life.

The other gospels report Jesus’s last words differently.

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’s final words are: “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Those words help us to see Jesus’s faith and his faithfulness. That through the temptations of life, the hardships, the dangers, the misjudgment, the pain, and now even in the moment of death, Jesus has placed his trust in God. Throughout his life Jesus taught that all of our worries in this life, all of our striving after wealth and security, all of our sickness and our sin — all those things pose no threat to the love and care of God. And now on the cross he shows his faith that even death itself is no match for God’s care. “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” Jesus says, and he dies as he lived: resting in the true peace and security of God’s care.

In the gospels of Matthew and Mark, Jesus’s final words are echoes of his ancestor, King David’s, words in Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Those words tell us of Jesus’s humanity. That the cross was no illusion, where the Son of God only appeared to suffer and to die; that Jesus’s suffering was not made light by his sense of purpose or his relationship with God. That maybe in the last, excruciating day of Jesus’s life, filled with not only physical pain but also betrayal and abandonment, that maybe in that time Jesus doubted himself, doubted God, wondered where God was and why he was going through all this. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus cried out — and we know he really understands when we are driven to lament, or grief, or doubt.

It’s a testament to the great mystery of Christ’s crucifixion that it can mean all these things at once. That the cross can be for us a symbol of trial and suffering and heart-rending lament, and a symbol of trust in God’s compassion and power. That the cross can appear as a moment when God abandoned the most faithful follower, and yet is the moment when God’s plan of salvation was being fulfilled. That the cross stands for us as an instrument of condemnation and an instrument of forgiveness, an instrument of death and an instrument of life.

It would be much easier, and more logical, to believe something more straightforward. To believe that God’s power is evident in earthly power and prosperity rather than in moments of weakness and pain. Doesn’t it come more naturally to believe that God’s blessing and power are with the healthiest people, the richest people, the people who can get things to go their way? Wouldn’t it make a little more sense to see God in the man with the power to pass judgment than to see God in the man condemned to death on the cross?

But for St. Paul, Christ’s death on the cross taught that just the opposite was true. He wrote:

God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?…We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block, a scandal, foolishness to outsiders, but to those who are called, the crucified Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. [paraphrased]

Jesus’s betrayal, arrest, suffering, and execution were not what they most obviously appeared to be; they were not evidence that Jesus was a fake, or that God had abandoned him. The great mystery of Good Friday is that the Son of God was condemned to die on a cross; and that God turned that condemnation and that death into glorification and into life for the world. Contrary to everything that seemed so obvious, God was not gone; God was there. And God was still at work.

And so in our lives, we can trust that our times of trial, our times of doubt or suffering or despair, are not times that God has abandoned us. We can trust that God is still here, still with us, and still at work to save us.

It is that foolish-sounding wisdom of the cross that gave St. Paul the faith to write: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The cross reminds us how God’s power works in the world and in our lives. God turns our sufferings into seeds from which new life may grow. God uses our doubts to renew our faith. God uses our guilt and remorse to lead us to forgiveness and goodness. God uses the times that feel like the end to create a new beginning.

Some days are like today, like Good Friday, when we need to gather in the shadow of the cross, the shadow of suffering and death, to hold on to the faith that God’s love is strong and true and present, and to hope that tomorrow we will see and know God’s truth and God’s power.

Today we gather together in awe of the mystery that this is how God works in our world. That it is through the cross that we are saved. Through the senselessness of this tragedy that we find meaning. That it is through this death that life is given to the world.

Cristo Negro, Martin Ruiz Anglada (1995). Via Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s Art in the Christian Tradition.

God is Faithful

Written for St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Franklin, TN + 2nd Sunday in Lent + March 17, 2019

Readings: Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35

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Remember back to our Old Testament reading. It began with the Lord coming to Abram in a vision, saying, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

But did Abram feel a sense of deep peace at that divine reassurance? Did he thank God for that promise of protection and blessing? Not so much.

The Message translation of the Bible puts Abram’s response like this: “God, Master, what use are your gifts as long as I’m childless and Eliezer of Damascus is going to inherit everything?…See, you’ve given me no children, and now a mere house servant is going to get it all.”

The problem was God had already promised Abram children; but Abram was still waiting for the fulfillment of that promise. At the very beginning of Abram’s story, God told him: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation.” (Genesis 12:2). In other words: Abram, you will have so many descendants that they will be their own nation. Abram was seventy-five years old when God called him to leave behind everything and start out on that adventure. (Keep that part of the story in your back pocket, any of you who are in your “golden years” and think your story won’t have any more exciting parts; Abram’s story apparently wasn’t worth telling until he was seventy-five. You never know what God might still do in your life.)

Abram was seventy-five and childless when God promised him a nationful of children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. It must have been a hard promise to believe. But Abram did believe, enough to pack up his household, leave his homeland, and journey to Canaan.

But by the time of today’s reading, that promise was at least ten years old, and Abram was around eighty-five (Gen. 16:3, 16). That’s ten years of waiting for God to come through on God’s promise; ten years of waiting for God to deliver the promised miracle child; and ten years of disappointment. Maybe by that time Abram had given up hope, had figured, Well, that’s one promise God’s not going to keep. After all, humans don’t always keep their promises – maybe God was the same way sometimes. And maybe, despite God’s continuing presence in his life, Abram was starting to get impatient and hopeless and even resentful. “God, Master, what use are your gifts as long as I’m childless?”

But in response to Abram’s frustrated outburst, God repeated the promise: “A son of your own body will be your heir…Look at the sky. Count the stars. Can you do it?” That’s how many descendants you’ll have.[1]

But. Even though Abram believed the Lord; even though God and Abram performed this intense ancient covenant ceremony with animal sacrifices and holy fire; even though Abram and his wife, Sarai, apparently started thinking, Well, maybe God’s waiting for us to take action, and Abram had a child with her handmaiden, Hagar, which resulted not in God fulfilling the promise, but in a really messy domestic situation…Still fourteen more years go by without Abram and Sarai having a child together, without God fulfilling the promise.

When Abram was ninety-nine and Sarai was ninety, God said to Abram yet again, “You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations…and kings shall come from you.” And this will happen through the son that Sarai will bear you. And God further made the point by renaming them: Abraham (meaning “father of a multitude”) and Sarah (meaning something like “queen”). 

James Jacques Joseph Tissot, God’s Promise to Abram (1896-1902). From the Jewish Museum (New York), via Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s Art in the Christian Tradition.

Abraham just fell on his face laughing; it seemed so ridiculous to keep up any hope in that promise (Gen. 17). Still, Abraham could be faithful even we he had trouble believing; he did what God asked, even though it was painful, establishing the covenant ritual of circumcision.

And finally, a year later, when Abraham was 100 years old and had been waiting on God’s promise for twenty-five years, finally Sarah gave birth to their own son, Isaac, the promised child (Gen. 21).

When we hear Abraham and Sarah’s story, we probably want to ask: Why did God wait so long to fulfill the promise? Why keep Abraham and Sarah waiting for twenty-five years? Certainly we want to ask those kinds of questions when we feel stuck in our own times of waiting for God to come through. “How long, O Lord?” we ask – and it’s a phrase millions of faithful people have cried before.  That question shows up over and over in our scriptures: “How long, O Lord?” ask the Psalms (over and over again);[2] and the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah and Habakkuk and Zechariah;[3] and the martyrs in the Book of Revelation.[4] How long, O Lord? And why?

The story doesn’t give us an answer, really. The reason why remains a mystery. But it does offer us hope: that even when it seems like the waiting is going on forever, and the promise has been abandoned; even when holding on to hope seems ridiculous, and it looks like it’s time to give up; even when we are depressed or about ready to explode at God – even through all that God is still faithful. Abraham’s story tells us that even when God seems to have forgotten us, or is taking way longer to help us than we find remotely reasonable, even then God remains faithful. And one day God will act in a way that helps us see that God is faithful, that God has been faithful all along.

And, based on God’s relationship with Abraham, God understands that along that journey we’re going to get frustrated and lash out and ask “Why?” and “How long?” and “Are you even there?” God’s response to Abraham’s outbursts like that was always to repeat the promise again.

God’s ultimate response to God’s people throughout scripture is to repeat the promise. When they’re innocent and caught in a bad situation, or when they’re unfaithful or sinful or stubborn; whether on an individual scale – like with David or Daniel or Paul– or on a national scale, like the entire people of Israel: God keeps on repeating the promise, over and over again: I am with you.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus stood looking at the city of Jerusalem, and said: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

On the one hand, it’s an indictment against the city and its people: Over and over you’ve refused to listen to God, killed the messengers God sends, rejected both God’s law and God’s grace.

But on the other hand, Jesus’s words are a reminder of God’s enduring faithfulness to Jerusalem and all Israel: Even though the people keep up their pattern of rejecting God’s messengers, their pattern of turning away from God, their pattern of violence  – even still God continued to send them prophets and messages and opportunities to repent and return to the Lord. And the man speaking those harsh words over the city – “Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” – that man was God’s promise come to life: God with them in flesh. God kept on repeating the promise. God keeps on repeating the promise.

So there’s some double good news to be heard today:

The first piece of good news is that if you’re feeling stuck in a time of waiting on God – you can still hold on to hope that God is faithful to you. Even if you’re angry or you’re doubting, God remains faithful to you. Hold on to that. Wait for the Lord; be strong, take heart (Ps. 27:14).

And the second piece of good news is: If you’re ever stuck feeling like God won’t possibly be faithful to you anymore; if you ever feel like you’re not good enough, like you’ve been disobedient one too many times, like your faith isn’t strong enough…remember that God’s response to that is not to turn away from you, but to repeat the promise to you, over and over again, until you can hear it and believe: God is with you. God is faithful to you.

Let us pray. Hope beyond all human hope, you promised descendants as numerous as the stars to old Abraham and barren Sarah. You promise light and salvation in the midst of darkness and despair, and promise redemption to a world that will not listen. Gather us to yourself in tenderness, open our ears to listen to your word, and teach us to live faithfully as people confident of the fulfillment of your promises. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.[5]

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[1]     Gen. 15:4-5 (Message paraphrase translation).

[2]     Psalm 13, 35, 79…

[3]     Isaiah 6:11, Jeremiah 47:6; Habakkuk 1:2; Zechariah 1:12.

[4]     Revelation 6:10

[5]     Scripture prayer from Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s Revised Common Lectionary website (2^nd Sunday in Lent, Year C; 17 March 2019). https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/prayers.php?id=119 Accessed 15 March, 2019.

God Comes to Us, in the Middle of it All

Written for St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Franklin, TN + 2nd Sunday in Advent + December 9, 2018

Reading: Luke 3:1-6

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Did anyone else think the first part of today’s Gospel reading sounded maybe…kinda…boring? “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip was…” (etc — I won’t make you sit through it again). It’s not far off from those really list-like passages that people sometimes poke fun at: “and Enoch begat Irad and Irad begat Mehujael and Mehujael begat Methushael…”

If the reading had ended right after that list (“during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness,”) and I’d said, “the Gospel of the Lord,” I’m sure at least some of us would have thought, “Ok, I guess.”

Of course Luke is trying to make a pretty important point with this list. And the point is: All of this that I’m telling you about John the Baptist and and Jesus of Nazareth — it really happened. In this world. At a certain time. Naming who was ruling and for how long was a way of telling people the date of John the Baptist’s ministry out there in the wilderness.

But if you hear a list of rulers’ names, it’s going to bring to mind more than just the general dates of their time in office. If you’re watching a movie and the first scene is a newspaper headline with a big picture of President Lyndon B. Johnson, you’ll know the movie’s set in the 1960s. But other information will flash through your mind, too, like: President JFK was recently assassinated; the Civil Rights Movement is going on; the Vietnam War is underway. That one image might bring back memories from your own life during that time, or stories that are important to your family. Naming who was leader gives us a quick recall of a whole situation.

The same must have been true for Luke’s original readers when they read this list of names. Pontius Pilate? He walked all over Jewish religious customs. He brought graven images into the holy city. He threatened and killed people when they protested.[1] He was the one who ended up sentencing Jesus to death. And the high priests Annas and Caiphas? They were the ones who made him do it.

And then there’s King Herod Antipas. His father, Herod the Great, had brought an end to the most recent Jewish line of kings by killing them off: including his own wife and his sons by her. Herod the Great had ordered great buildings to be built all over Judea, but when projects were finished the laborers were left without work, and the economy got even worse for the poor people of Israel. Outbreaks of riots and violence became really common.[2] Herod Antipas ordered the execution of John the Baptist, and was later involved in the trial of Jesus. Eventually he was accused of conspiracy against the emperor and sent off into exile.[3]

All this and more may have flashed through the minds of Luke’s original audience when they saw this list of kings and rulers. Personal experiences. Rumors. Events now lost to history. As one Bible scholar put it: “Behind the list of names and places is a story of oppression and misery that was building up to an exploding point.”[4] That exploding point is what Jesus predicted in last week’s Gospel reading (Luke 21:25-36); it’s the big event that Luke and his first audience would have known that list of names was leading up to: the great Jewish revolt against Rome; the sacking of Jerusalem; the destruction of the Temple — the building that for so many Jews signified God’s presence with them.

Can you imagine living in that time? For some people, it must have seemed like the world was ending. It must have seemed like there was no hope.

Yet it was at that time, in the middle of all that violence and chaos and hardship, that “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.”

John the Baptist preaching in the desert, (1973), JESUS MAFA, via Vanderbilt Divinity Library’s Art in the Christian Tradition.

Sometimes we fall into the habit of thinking that our holy and perfect God is only in holy and perfect places. I’m thinking about how we treat our church buildings: places where we should wear our Sunday best and be on our best behavior. Like when parents tell kids, “Don’t lie, we’re in God’s house,” or even us adults sometimes catch ourselves: “Woops, I shouldn’t swear in church.” Then, when we go out into our daily lives, do they feel less like places where God is dwelling with us?

Or, who do you picture when you think about the “perfect Christian”? Is it someone like Martha Stewart — only without the prison background? (Or maybe she uses that prison story from her past to share her powerful, tear-jerking testimony about what Jesus has done in her life.) Someone who’s got it all together, someone who is gracious and well-mannered and who keeps her house clean and her life neat and ordered?

Well then, what if we don’t measure up to all of that? What if, actually, sometimes we let a swear word slip, and we can’t always figure out how to not fight with the people around us, and we just don’t feel like raking our neighbor’s leaves? What if, actually, our kids are driving us crazy and our sister’s in rehab and our parents are making it really hard for us to honor them…and maybe we just can’t seem to help but overeat or over-drink and we keep forgetting things on our calendar and frankly, we don’t feel like we have everything under control and maybe sometimes we feel like we’re losing our minds?

On a different level: What if we are living in a time when the country seems so divided, like everyone is always at each other’s throats? What if the people who used to be the moral leaders in our society are failing us? What if hospitals keeps closing? What if the news is filled with stories of violence? What if the climate is changing and there are more droughts and wildfires and stronger hurricanes? What if it feels like the whole world is going crazy?

If today’s brief, listy Gospel reading teaches us anything, it’s that those are exactly the times when God comes into the world. This world. Our world. Those are the times when God’s word comes to us, reminding us of God’s promises: “Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways be made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Our lives and our world can never get too rough for God to come in. Our goal should not be to work hard enough to get our lives perfect enough so that we can earn God’s presence. Our hope should not be built on watching this world get better so that we can see God at work in it again.

No, the word coming to us in this Gospel says, “Prepare the way of the Lord,” even in the middle of all our imperfection and chaos and pain. Prepare the way of the Lord — because those are the times and places that God always comes into with salvation and healing and hope. Like God sent Moses to the Israelites in slavery; like God sent the angel into the fiery furnace; like God in Christ came to Israel in the midst of all that chaos and war. God goes into the mess and the suffering; that is who God is. And surely God will come to us in the depths of our own messiness and hurt.

So how can we prepare the way of the Lord in our lives? Maybe we can find new times to pray and listen for what God is saying to us: when we’re alone in the car, when we’re doing the dishes, when we’re waiting for our coffee. Maybe we can be vulnerable and open up to a friend, making room for God to work in our lives through them. Maybe, with God’s help, we can try to break through a habit that gets in the way of our healing. Maybe we can try something new, or meet someone new, and see what God does there. Maybe we can help prepare a way for God in the community around us by volunteering, sharing our resources, or focusing on listening more to others. Making new room for God in our lives can be simpler and more down-to-earth than we usually think.

So as we journey through this Advent season, pray and discover how you can prepare the way of the Lord in your life, just as it is. Expect to see God in the places you think God would never go. Expect God in your life and in this world, and your eyes might be opened to see new hope.

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[1] Information from the accounts of Josephus and Philo, referenced in the Wikipedia article “Pontius Pilate,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontius_Pilate#Jewish_literature:_Philo_and_Josephus Accessed 8 December 2018.

[2] “First Jewish-Roman War,” (section on the war’s background), Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Jewish%E2%80%93Roman_War Accessed 8 December 2018. The Wikipedia article references Cohen, Shaye. “Roman Domination: The Jewish Revolt and the Destruction of the Second Temple” in Ancient Israel: From Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple,ed. Hershel Shanks (Prentice Hall, Biblical Archeology Society), p. 269, 273.

[3] “Herod Antipas,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herod_Antipas Accessed 8 December 2018.

[4] N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), p. 32.

For Good Friday (and the Moments Like It)

Written for St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Franklin, TN + Good Friday + April 14, 2017

Reading: John 18-19

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In 1928 Dietrich Bonhoeffer — just 22 years old and still too young to be ordained  — preached these words as part of a sermon:

On Good Friday let us not think right away about the fact that with Easter things were given a new direction. We want to think about how with the death of Jesus the disciples saw all hope dashed. Scattered from each other, they brooded in hopeless sorrow about what had happened. Only when we can take the death of Jesus just as seriously as they did, will we rightly understand what the resurrection message can bring.^[1]

So I want us to dwell in this hopeless moment with the disciples for a while. They didn’t know would happen next. We may look back and say: they should have known; Jesus told them he would be raised from the dead. But would we have been able to believe that after the whirlwind of betrayal and violence? All the hopes raised by Jesus’s triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the people taking to the streets with palm branches to welcome him, shouting “Hosanna!” — all those hopes shattered just a few days later, after one of Jesus’s closest disciples led the police right to him, after the crowds of Jerusalem suddenly changed their cry from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!” It had all changed so quickly, and all the disciples’ dreams of following their beloved leader into a new world hung there on the cross with him, crucified by the same old cruel world that always had been and always would be. The disciples hid themselves away and let that truth dig its hopeless hole inside them: Jesus was dead. It was over. It had all been for nothing.

Good Friday is a holy time to reflect on this moment of hopelessness and the millions of other moments like it. Such times — when all seems lost — are tragically commonplace. We know them from history: people being captured and enslaved; stock markets crashing; boats sinking; trains of people pulling into internment camps; wars being declared and wars being surrendered. We know hopeless moments from the news: shootings; human trafficking; starvation; bombs dropping. We know hopeless moments from personal experience: job loss; a bad diagnosis; injury; depression; broken relationships; death.

And yet as Christians on this side of Easter, even in such hopeless moments, we hold on to hope. We call this Friday, where we remember Christ’s crucifixion, “good.” We believe that God is there in our moments of tragedy. Why do we hold on to hope? How?

We hold on to hope because we know what comes next in this story and in stories like it. We know stories from the Bible: Joseph was left for dead, sold into slavery, and then imprisoned; but then he became a powerful leader in Egypt and saved his family from a famine (Genesis 37, 39-45). Moses killed a man and ran away from Pharaoh’s punishment into self-exile, but during his exile he was called by God to lead the Israelites out of slavery (Exodus 2-3). We know stories from our own time: John Garrett suffered from a terrible heart condition, but he became a great spokesperson for organ donation. My grandmother was a fairly young widow, but in her widowhood she has learned to drive and overcome her fear of flying and made so many new friends. Your world probably once felt like it was ending, but you made it through.

Jesus was crucified, but the resurrection morning is coming.

As, in the Old Testament, Joseph said to his brothers, so we can say to the moments where hopelessness threatens us: “Even though you intended to harm me, God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20). We believe that one day we will look back on the darkest moments of our lives and be able to see them as the blessed dirt out of which God grew new life again. Jesus taught us this in the Beatitudes:

“Blessed are you who hunger now, for you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh” (Luke 6:21).

The Good Friday moment, which seem so senseless, which feels like it must be an ending, or a pit we can’t climb out of — God will helps us make meaning out of it and find the good on the other side.

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote to a student who going through a time of suffering:

“So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?”^[2]

When Jesus was crucified, the disciples felt hopeless, afraid, left with nothing. Even Jesus felt abandoned by God in that moment. But we believe that God was there, suffering with them in the face of the world’s injustice and sin, but ready to use that evil moment for good. Ready to turn tragedy into a miracle, ready to turn death into new life.

And so we can remember in our moments of loneliness and loss, depression and hopelessness: even those moments are blessed by God with the promise of the future.

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^[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, sermon in Barcelona for the third Sunday in Lent, 11 March 1928. Quoted in God is on the Cross, trans. O. C. Dean Jr., ed. Jana Riess, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 102.

^[2] Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet.

Moments of Grace

Written for St. Andrew Lutheran Church, Franklin, TN + 11th Sunday After Pentecost + July 31, 2016

Readings: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 12-14 & 2:18-23; Colossians 3:1-11; Luke 12:13-21

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In fairy tales the world usually makes sense. There may be crazy things like talking frogs and  snacks that give people the ability to fly, but in the big picture things make sense. The hero succeeds in the name of what is right; the innocent village is saved; the villains face the consequences of their evil ways, and the good characters live happily ever after. In fairy tales things almost always happen the way we feel they are supposed to happen.

Maybe that is the most fantastical thing about fairy tales, because real life isn’t very much like that. In real life there is some chance that what we do will lead to the expected results. Like in Aesop’s fable about the ant and the grasshopper: the grasshopper spends all summer partying, while the ant toils away, storing up food. When winter comes, the grasshopper has no food and goes hungry, but the ant is able to live off of his rations. There’s definitely wisdom in this story: it’s a good idea to do the work you need to do in order to meet your needs, and hopefully if you work hard like the ant, you’ll be full like the ant.

But sometimes even when we try our best to be good, to work hard, and to be healthy and wise, things don’t go according to plan. Sometimes life is much more like the parable Jesus told in today’s gospel reading: the rich man is blessed with an abundance of crops, figures out a way to store them so that he can retire to rest and live off his stores…and then that night he dies. His work and his planning come to nothing.

“Rich Man,” Wenceslaus Hollar, 1607-1677. Via Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library.

This kind of story is far too familiar. Hearing Jesus’s parable makes me think about people in our community who work long hours — maybe juggling two or three jobs — and still can’t make ends meet. It makes me think of people I’ve known — in the hospital, in my family, in this congregation — who have tried their best to live healthy lives and still find their bodies taken over by diseases while they are young. It makes me think of children who do their very best and yet can’t escape the addiction or the abuse or the poverty of their families. It makes me think of sudden accidents and betrayals by friends or family, of children who die before their parents…it makes me think of the simple fact that we’re all going to die one day. Sometimes these realities can make all our hard work and even life itself seem so meaningless.

This is the mental space the “Teacher” writing Ecclesiastes is living in. “Vanity of vanities,” he says, “all is vanity!” The Hebrew word translated to “vanity” means something like “vapor” or “breath” or “smoke.” Using that word to describe life paints a picture of how fleeting life is and how impossible it is to grasp it and control it. The Teacher laments about the futility of working: sure, he may earn good money, but then he will leave it to his children — it will be for them to invest and to enjoy, and who knows if they’ll use it wisely or foolishly. He laments the futility of being righteous: righteous people and wicked people both suffer and die (Eccles. 3:16-22). In the end, what can we control, what can we enjoy, what meaning can we make? “Vanity of vanities. All is vanity!”

(Those of you who like to read the Bible first thing in the morning, let me warn you from experience: Ecclesiastes is not a good way to start your day.)

Grace is many things. As I meditated on Ecclesiastes this week, I began to think of grace as the gift of meaning in the midst of all that meaninglessness. For instance: the point of Jesus’s parable is not “The man did all that work, and it was all for nothing. Isn’t life meaningless? All is vanity!” That’s how the Teacher from Ecclesiastes might sum up the story, but Jesus did it differently. Jesus ended his parable by pointing toward another way of living, a truer source of meaning in life: here, he called it being “rich toward God.” At other times he talked about living in the Kingdom of God, or following him, or taking up our cross.

All these phrases describe a life that is lived from a different perspective. Christian faith does not —or should not — mean denying all those unfair results and surprising tragedies that sometimes make life seem meaningless. That our main symbol is the cross — and that “taking up our cross” is one way of describing discipleship — ought to remind us to pay attention to the hard facts of mortal life. Our history is full of martyrs. Our scriptures call over and over again for us to pay attention to injustice: to poverty, to those in pain, to widows and orphans and social outcasts. Christian ethics ask us to sacrifice, to give of our blessings and the fruits of our labor, even beyond what is fair or reasonable. The cross reminds us that life necessarily involves letting go, suffering, unfairness, and, yes, death. But the cross also reminds us of grace, and moments of grace help us see all this in a different light.

The first gift of grace is the gift of acceptance — a gift in which God is rich toward us. It says, “Yes, life treats you unfairly. And yes, you do wrong sometimes. And yes, you will die. But there is Someone beyond all this that says you are loved, you are forgiven, and you are meaningful — and that Someone wants better for you.” This gift of grace gives us “the courage to be,” the courage to stand against a world that seems like its trying to make us feel small and meaningless and afraid, the courage to find meaning in our lives, to feel hope and joy and love. We have the courage to see all those things — to take hold of all those things as they come — because God says they belong to us; God has given them to us. Grace gives us the faith to see that our lives do have meaning.¹

The second gift of grace is the gift of vocation, of a calling; this is where we are rich toward God. Grace takes us beyond ourselves and gives us a purpose as part of God’s mission in the world. We get beyond those questions of “what will happen to us if…” We get beyond trying to control the way life will go when we — as Pastor Lippard said in last week’s children’s sermon — “just do it,” when we are rich toward God, when we love our neighbor. And then when we look back at a moment helping someone, or using our talents well, or just spending time with a friend, and think: now that was a good use of my time. That was meaningful. And these moments of grace remind us that life does have meaning.

I call these moments of grace because I know how easy it is to slip into that Ecclesiastes mindset. I know that I need to be pulled back to faith and meaning over and over again. But I also know that God comes to us in moments: moments where that still, small voice says, “You are accepted,” and helps us believe it; moments where we lose ourselves in meaningful work or in the experience of joy; moments where the company of a good friend seems to give us all we need; moments where we can focus on the good things in our lives and let the negatives fade into the background. In Ecclesiastes we see how wisdom and realism can show us a bigger picture, where life seems meaningless; but moments of grace take us one step further, beyond our usual measures of meaning. These moments of grace help us find meaning not through logic, but through a pure experience of meaning, meaningfulness, of being loved and loving others.

In moments of grace we find ourselves confessing: yes, this is meaningful, this is what life is all about. Thanks be to God.

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^{1. [Paul Tillich, The Courage to Be, (New Haven): Yale University Press, 2nd edition: 2000); Tillich, “You are Accepted,” (sermon) online at http://www.areopagus.co.uk/2012/05/you-are-accepted-paul-tillichs-famous.html]↩}