Sermon for November 7th - All Saints Sunday

Focus: God redeems his saints.

Part of the Lutheran communion service for All Saints’ Day says, “By the witness of your saints you show us the hope of our calling and strengthen us to run the race set before us, that we may delight in your mercy and rejoice with them in glory.” Why does God give us saints? Because saints show us hope.

There is no better example of hope than the story of Ruth, a saint who started with nothing: in a short time, she had lost her husband, she was living as a foreigner in a foreign land, she had no way to provide, nothing but her widowed mother-in-law Naomi to cling to. And God who keeps his promises. Ruth is a story of love, new life, faith, but above all, it is a story of redemption. 

Today, we hear what that redemption looks like. Last week, Ruth agreed to give Naomi’s daring plan a shot: to try to win over Naomi’s kinsman Boaz, a wealthy, righteous landowner, by showing up alone at the threshing floor after he had eaten and drunk and was going to sleep and basically to seduce him. If this sounds risqué, all I can say is it’s the Bible, and the Bible isn’t afraid to be real: even get a bit risqué. But risqué or not, this plan is most definitely risky. Boaz might question what kind of woman she is who comes to him in the night like this. 

But today we hear the resolution of the story. And it works, as the knowing mother-in-law Naomi knew it would and as Ruth hoped it would. But there’s still one problem before the Happily Ever After: the question of redemption. 

Redemption has deep theological meanings that we will get to in a couple minutes, but the way to understand it in this story has less to do with what we do in church than what we do in Meijer. What do I mean by that? Have you ever “redeemed” pop cans for 10 cents? Have you ever “redeemed” a coupon or voucher? Then you know how this works. Redeem means “to buy back.” It’s an economic system from when marriage was a very economic reality. Remember the whole reason Ruth really needs to find a husband is so that she and Naomi will have enough to eat to stave off starvation.

In Leviticus 25, redemption is described as a way when someone falls on hard times that the next-of-kin can redeem, buy back the person’s land and support their family. It is a law designed to keep the person’s land, family, and good name intact. Here’s where Ruth and Naomi come in. Naomi needs to sell her deceased husband Elimelech’s land to survive, and according to the law, her widowed daughter-in-law Ruth is attached to the land. The land and Ruth are a package deal. This may sound like an odd system to our ears today, but in the time, it actually functioned to help women who had been widowed find a husband to start their married lives over again. 

Through this economic system of redemption, Boaz can restore Elimelech’s land to his family, marry Ruth, and provide a living for both Ruth and Naomi. The Happily Ever After is in sight! But there’s one problem. Boaz is not the next-of-kin. There’s one guy closer. We’re never told his name other than “Next-of-Kin.” I guess it’s like when you’re buying a house you never learn who’s selling. But from the story’s perspective, the reason’s clear: His name doesn’t matter other than that he’s a threat to our Happily Ever After. Will Elimelech’s family land be sold off to this nameless Next-of-Kin; will Ruth be married off to him instead of Boaz? And that’s where we leave our story this week. No, just kidding. Wouldn’t do that to you twice in a row. No, this time it is Boaz who has a plan.

He meets the next-of-kin the next day and explains the situation. He tells him about the parcel of land. And he tells him to make up his mind. “If you will redeem it, redeem it.” And Mr. Next- of-Kin says he will. And everyone’s heart sinks. But this is where Boaz drops the other news that he had been holding back for just the right moment. “You will also be marrying Ruth, who is attached to the land.” Well here’s the problem. Mr. Next-of-Kin already has an inheritance promised to a son, and Ruth marrying into the family threatens to break that up. The man backs off. This time, it’s Boaz’s plan that works. 

The story ends with everyone redeemed, economically and otherwise. Ruth has found a husband who will support her. Boaz has found a faithful, loyal, hesed wife. Even though Elimelech is dead, his name and land will go on. His widowed wife Naomi has found a new life and a new purpose. At the end of the story, she is so constantly with her new grandson Obed, Ruth’s son, that the villagers joke, “A son has been born to Naomi”—the type of idea Naomi might have laughed at earlier in the story. And not only that. The people of Israel are redeemed. We are told that Obed was the grandfather of the great king David, David of course the ancestor of Jesus. That means that from this foreign woman who seemed so hopeless, so outside the bounds of what was expected, God worked his redemption literally for everyone in the world.  

Saints show us the hope of our calling. Ruth is one such saint. Ruth shows us the power of redemption, of being bought back. Maybe it seems weird to think of things like life and death and eternal life and salvation in such economic terms. But try thinking about it this way: At the start of the story, we met characters who others better off, better connected might have described as hopeless, even worthless; maybe our heroes felt the same way about themselves on their worst days. But redemption says otherwise: Redemption teaches us that every single person even in the hardest circumstances has value. Where others saw only an alien Moabite woman, God saw the most valuable person of all, the essential ancestor of David and indeed Jesus.  

And it is the same for you. Maybe on this All Saints’ Day, you think, “I could never be a saint. Those are the special people like St. Francis or Mother Teresa with halos on their heads.” But being a saint is not about what we do. From beginning to end, it is about God’s redeeming acts for us in Jesus Christ. Buying us back from sin, death, the devil, and whatever evil we have seen in our life or will see in the future. As St. Paul reminds us, we were bought with a price (1 Cor 6:20). Redemption shows us that none of us is valueless. In God’s eyes, each and every one of us is worth Jesus. From beginning to end, being a saint is about the value God puts on our lives. 

How do we use that amazing gift? That’s where faith comes in. The Ruth type of faith of everyday life, stepping forward even when we can’t see the whole staircase. On this day when we remember not only biblical or historical saints, but saints in our lives, you and I can think of plenty of those types of saints in our family, in our church. Some saints who are now at rest, and some saints who still walk among us as yet by faith. In our everyday lives, they and we will all run different races, take different courses, but we begin and end in the same place: in the redemption of God who places an inestimable value on our lives. Amen. 

Sermon for October 17th - Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: God delivers from evil.

This is the hardest conversation of Esther’s life. At the urging of her adopted father Mordecai, Esther goes to a banquet with her husband the king. Her goal is simple: nothing less than pleading for the life of herself and her people against the wicked scheme of the king’s right-hand man Haman. She needs her husband to reconsider his consent to Haman’s plot to wipe out all the Jews in Persia. This is a difficult matter for a guy with a huge ego to change his mind. Moreover, we are told that in Persia, according to an ancient tradition, the king was NOT ALLOWED to change his mind once the law went forth. And we think Congress is dysfunctional! And all the while that this conversation is going on, who is at the king’s right hand looking over his shoulder: Haman, the one who came up with this plot, the one who has prepared gallows to put to death Esther’s adopted father Mordecai. 

To say the least, this is a fraught conversation. All of us have had those conversations where we’d rather be anywhere else at the moment, but we know we have to stick it out. The wrong words, the pause at the wrong moment, the wrong tone, the wrong glance, the wrong timing could be lethally disastrous for Esther and for all the Jewish people. If Esther is going to get this right, every syllable counts.

Of course, Esther comes through. Gloriously so. She waits a whole day until King Ahasuerus is “merry with wine”—seems to be a habit with this guy, eh? And once she gets him in a good mood, he himself says: “Ask me for anything—even up to half my kingdom—and it shall be granted!” And Esther slowly, deliberately, humbly walks him right into the situation. She explains that her people have been sold to be killed! And then she lays on the flattery just how the king likes it: thick. She says, had they just been sold as slaves, she would have remained silent—but really, she is only speaking up because of the damage this will do to his majesty the king: the loss of his reputation, quite possibly even the loss of his wife Esther! And with dramatic suspense, she doesn’t say whose fault it is until the king asks, “Who is he and where is he who has presumed to do this!?” “HOW DARE HE?!” 

And only then, only when the timing is just so, does Esther blurt out, “A foe and enemy, the wicked Haman!” The rest of the story works out with satisfying, even humorous justice. The king storms out in a rage. Haman lies down on a couch, trying to plead with Esther. Unfortunately for Haman, at exactly that moment, the king walks in and thinks Haman is trying to have his way with his wife in his own house—a much bigger offense it seems to our pompous blowhard king than merely attempted genocide!—and it’s at this that the king will not allow anymore. A eunuch serving the king looks out the window, and what’s the first thing he sees? The gallows Haman had put up to hang Mordecai on. And so the story ends with complete poetic justice: the Jewish people rescued at the last minute, Haman hanging from the gallows he had meant for Mordecai—hoisted on his own petard we might say—and, since we are in the book of Esther, much feasting—more on that in a minute!  

Returning to our game of detective the last few weeks, where is God in this story? Well, we might imagine that our heroes Mordecai, Esther, the Jewish people lamented, mourned, prayed to God. We might look at the timing of certain events—the conversation at the feast, the king’s words, the king walking through the door while Haman prostrates himself on the couch next to Esther, even the eunuch looking through the window and seeing the gallows. Are they luck, coincidence, or something more? We could debate all day.

But one thing that is beyond debate is this: We can see God in Esther. Remember Mordecai’s words last week: “If you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this (Est 4:14).” Notice that Mordecai never comes right out and says: “God has made you queen for exactly this moment.” The truth is we never know whether we are put in a particular situation by luck, by chance, or by something more. Only God knows that. But we choose how we use the situation given to us: to be obedient to God or to our own wishes, to takes risks for others or to look after #1, to save others’ lives or to look after our own critter comforts.  

Esther chooses to act bravely. She chooses to act with love and compassion on behalf of others. She has an opportunity to do good, and she chooses not to shrink from it.  

There’s an old story perhaps you’ve heard before of a person looking at the latest human tragedy and saying to God, “Why don’t you do something about this?” And God responds to the person and says: “Funny, I was about to ask you the same question.”

Esther is a model of this. And in that way she can be a model for all of us, too. Of love in action. Of allowing God to use her life to answer the prayer of her people. There’s nothing about Esther that was loudly more pious or holy than anyone else; again the word “God” hardly comes up in this story. In Esther’s everyday life, she lived out her everyday faith even in the most extraordinary circumstances. But God as love, God as action, God as living in trust and being trustworthy colors every scene of the book. Esther is a saint for the rest of us.  

And that is why to this day, Esther is still celebrated, through telling the story and of course through feasting on the Jewish holiday of Purim. But the feasting is a little different than the bacchanalia of Ahasuerus; notice the directions Mordecai gives? “That they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.” What a legacy! Where is God in this story? That in Esther’s name, to this day, faithful Jews still send food and presents to the poor. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if this winter instead of talking loudly and piously about KEEPING CHRIST IN CHRISTMAS, we kept our feasts the same way Esther and her friends did: remembering one another and most of all the poor. And inviting others to an exciting game of detective that they might find God in our lives and our stories. Amen.

Sermon for August 15th - Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: God gives us wisdom.

“There are two ways, one of life and one of death…and there is a great difference between these two ways.”

So opens the Didache or “Teaching” of the Apostles, a Christian book so ancient that it predates some of the New Testament. 

For the early Christians, being a Christian was not belonging to a church or a part of your biography: “I’m a teacher, a Michigan fan, a Pisces, and a Christian.” It was about the many choices we have to make throughout the course of our lives and the day. The early Christians insisted that being a Christian, choosing the way of life made a real difference in your daily life. 

And what was the way of life? The Didache tells us, “Now this is the way of life: First, you shall love God, who made you. Second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself: but whatever you do not wish to happen to you, do not do to another.” 

In other words: love God our maker and love your neighbor: live by the Golden Rule. That is it. That is the way of life. It sounds simple enough. 

But what I want to say today is that this is not something that just happens without our attention to it. Most of the loudest voices in our world are not telling us to love God and our neighbors.  

King Solomon knew this well. Most biblical scholars think he would have been a teenager during this prayer today. His father David has died, and now it his turn to rule the kingdom. And he quickly realizes he is nowhere near up to the job. We notice right away then that the first part of Solomon’s legendary “wisdom” is humility. “God, I can’t do this by myself. This job is too big for me. This nation is too great for me.” For some of us, it may take years to reach that humility. But Solomon gets it right away. 

And God asks him what he wants. 

What would you ask for? Well, the options that come to mind are mentioned in our text: long life—health, riches, the life of your enemies. There would have been no shame in asking for these things. They were what every king would ask for. And let’s be honest. We still want health and wealth for ourselves—and while don’t usually pray, “Smite mine enemies,” (at least not in church!) we certainly still take smug satisfaction in seeing “what goes around come around” when someone has wronged us.

But Solomon doesn’t ask for any of these things. “Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this your great people?”

God gave Solomon a blank check. The young king could have asked for anything. And he asked for wisdom. 

And God loves this prayer. “ 12 I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. 13 I give you also what you have not asked, both riches and honor all your life; no other king shall compare with you. 14 If you will walk in my ways, keeping my statutes and my commandments, as your father David walked, then I will lengthen your life.”

We might ask why God loves this prayer for wisdom so much. After-all, in asking for wisdom instead of health, wealth, vindication over his enemies, Solomon shows us he already has some wisdom. But what God loves most is what Solomon is going to do with that wisdom. Notice how he ends his request, “for who can govern this your great people?” 

Solomon asks for wisdom so that he can govern the lives of God’s people. In other words, his prayer is not for himself at all. It is a prayer for the wellbeing of others. “Help me, God, so that I can do some good with this position and these people you have trusted to my care.” In other words, for all the talk of “Wise” King Solomon, it is Solomon’s heart more than his head that matters to God.

It is a wonderful story, not only about Solomon, but about us, too. We are not called to be kings like Solomon, but we are called to true wisdom. What the Lord requires of us is not head knowledge, not even folksy wisdom, but a heart that loves God and our neighbors first. That is what the Didache called the way of life. 

And how different the way of life is from the way of death, the way of the world. In this world, no one will blame you for seeking your own interests, your own security, your own wellbeing first. Indeed, it seems like everyone from commercials on TV to politicians is telling us to do just that. For certain individuals, it might even work out well. But look where it’s gotten us. 

Look around at the division, the anger, and, yes, the outright death we see every day. It seems every day we see the proverb fulfilled, “an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.” Does this look like the way of life? 

The apostle Paul tells us that Christ on the cross made foolish the wisdom of the world. On the cross, we see a man deprived of wealth, riches, and triumph over his enemies—everything the world values—who somehow rises from the dead. God’s way of life is different from what we supposed. The way of life goes through faith, love, self-sacrifice. 

Every day through our words and actions, we have a choice to make: life or death, me or my neighbors, the world or the cross. And what a great difference our choices will make for ourselves and for our neighbors. Together may we pray for the grace to choose wisely.

Amen.

Sermon for August 8th - Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: Christ gives us forgiveness.

Last week, the prophet Nathan ominously warned King David: “ 10 Now therefore the sword shall never depart from your house, for you have despised me, and have taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be your wife. 11 Thus says the LORD: I will raise up trouble against you from within your own house; and I will take your wives before your eyes, and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this very sun. 12 For you did it secretly; but I will do this thing before all Israel, and before the sun.” 

This prophecy is fulfilled in the tragic story of David and his son Absalom. Trouble in David’s own house. Sexual exploitation. Violence. Revolution. 

It all begins with a terrible scene. One of David’s sons Amnon rapes his sister Tamar. When confronted with this fact, David is angry with his son, but does nothing. We don’t know why he doesn’t act. It could be love for his son Amnon. But it also could be cowardice in confronting him. It even could be that he feels it’s hypocritical for punishing his son for the types of licentiousness David himself has just engaged in. 

But whatever the case, it is Amnon’s brother Absalom who is outraged by this and takes the law into his own hands and puts his brother to death by the sword.   

As the story develops, we see all the chickens coming home to roost for David. He’s lost control of his kingdom: the king’s main job is to ensure justice and safety for his people. He has lost control of his family: raping and killing each other. Finally, it all culminates when Absalom fulfills Nathan’s prophecy against David. He foments a popular following and uprising, sleeps with David’s wives and concubines, openly proclaims himself king, and leads a rival army.  

This is an action-packed story, the Bible “for adults.” And there will not be a fairytale ending. David whose life had been under God’s blessing now sees things from the other side. He has to get his hands dirty in the world of politics and war. David’s only option to keep his throne is to raise an army. “The men of Israel were defeated there by the servants of David, and the slaughter there was great on that day, twenty thousand men.” Notice what the writer says? “The men of Israel,” were defeated “by the servants of David.” In other words, David’s sword has turned against his own people. David has gone from being a national hero to a villain. His kingship remains intact, but only by the tip of the sword. And the worst part: His son Absalom slain in battle. In some ways, you could say by this point that it could not end any other way. But for David, well, just listen to these some of the most heartbreaking words of the Bible: “The king was deeply moved, and went up to the chamber over the gate, and wept; and as he went, he said, ‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!’” 

Can you imagine the scene of this great man openly weeping for a son he cannot have back?  

This story is hard to preach on for a couple reasons. One is because there is nothing deeper I can say than what David himself has said. Second, because this has all the marks of King Arthur’s Camelot or maybe even the Kennedys’ Camelot. How can we possibly relate to this type of story? 

But I think there are a few sober takeaways: One, for those of us who are parents, or especially fathers, there’s a lesson here about what our children learn from watching us. Exploitation of women, violence, is there any question where Amnon and Absalom learned these things? Second, we learn something about the role of justice. David was afraid of doing the hard but right thing, but so often in life we can’t outrun the hard decisions. They catch up to us eventually and ten times worse for having festered for so long.  

But for me, most of all I come back to the heart-wrenching ending: “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!” There is no question Absalom did some terrible things. Adultery, murder, usurpation, shaming his father in front of the kingdom. And perhaps we can even hear some guilt in David’s voice that it has come to this. But at the end of the day, what is really going to last? 

It’s this, isn’t it—that there will always be one empty seat at the table. There will always be one empty place in David’s heart. There will always be incompletion, an unfinished part of their relationship.  

And this is where David’s family really isn’t so different from our own families. I would be willing to bet that for almost every one of our families present today, there is some strangement, some anger, some unresolved tension, some sorrow, some separation with at least someone close to us.   

Ephesians tells us, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil.” “Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” My mom has always passed that on to me; she in turn received it from her father.   

I am not naïve enough to say that it’s always so easy. For many of us, there may be legitimate reasons for the separation. And for plenty of others of us, it may be that we would love nothing more than to have the person back and they won’t come.   

That is why forgiveness is something we pray for. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiveness is not natural. It is hard. In this lifetime, it may always be a work in progress. 

But it is Christ’s work. Forgiveness allows us to see the person instead of the wrong, the future instead of the past. Forgiveness is where we all kneel before the cross beneath the arms of the man who refused to give up on even those who crucified him.  

When we hear the story of David and Absalom, we hear a hard story, but one that tells us very clearly what is at stake. When we hear the story of Jesus, we hear a hard story but with a message of hope. The message of Christ and his forgiveness is also the Bible for adults if we can receive it and live by it.

Amen.

Sermon for August 1st - Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: Jesus makes the world right through confession and forgiveness.

Most merciful God,

we confess that we have sinned against you

in thought, word, and deed,

by what we have done,

and by what we have left undone.

We have not loved you with our whole heart;

we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ,

have mercy on us and forgive us;

that we may delight in your will,

and walk in your ways,

to the glory of your Name. Amen.

Many of us have said those words weekly our entire lives. But what is really behind them? 

Well, we know what was behind them today when King David was confronted by the prophet Nathan and confessed. We continue our story from last week of David’s taking of Bathsheba, Uriah the Hittite’s wife. A close reading of that story tallies up a whole list of sins: Neglect of his duties, lust, covetousness, lying, adultery, sexual exploitation, finally murder. And we could go on. David says simply, “I have sinned against the Lord.” 

But wait a minute, David! What about everybody else? David certainly sinned against Bathsheba by having his way with her and killing her husband. He sinned against his family and several wives by cheating on them. He sinned against Uriah when he broke faith and had him killed. His cover-up scheme, having the other troops fall back and expose Uriah, had the byproduct of exposing his general Joab and Israel’s army to needless loss of life, to military and national disaster. He sinned against his subjects by putting his own needs ahead of the kingdom. Honestly, you and I might be tempted to turn back to David and say, “God is the least of your worries.”

But Nathan doesn’t do that. Notice he does not spare David entirely. Sin has consequences. Next week, we will hear of the troubles in David’s family and kingdom that come from his neglect of his vocations as king, husband, father. A king who does not keep justice cannot expect his house to escape the sword. But on the other hand, unlike Saul who sinned without confession, without repentance, David will live to see his kingdom pass on to his son Solomon. Confession of his sin against God is not the end, but it is the right beginning.  

Why is that? Why does it matter? At St. John’s/in a few minutes, we will sing: “We give thee but thine own, whate’er the gift may be; all that we have is thine alone, a trust, O Lord, from thee.” David’s troubles begin when he tries to take what is not his. God has trusted David with so much: with a kingdom, with the land of Israel, most of all with his people.  

How much do people mean to God? Look to the cross. God gave his own Son Jesus so that people, people as flawed and imperfect as David and all of us, could live. Bathsheba, Uriah, an unnamed child: these may have seemed like nameless pawns to David, but to God, each one was loved and precious. By his choices and actions, David betrayed the trust of so many. But more than anything, in his callous disregard for his fellow human beings, he betrayed the trust of God.  

So how to make it right? Confession is David’s beginning. It may not seem like much, but I want to point out a couple big things that happen here. 

First, Nathan in his ingenious parable: notice how he begins with a hypothetical third person, sort of a version of “asking for a friend…?” Nathan draws out David’s latent sense of morality. Even at his lowest, David can still tell right from wrong. He is still able to be outraged by human cruelty. Second, when Nathan drives the hammer home, “You are the man!” David does not have Nathan quietly removed or even “put away,” but takes a look in the mirror. Owning up to an offense, especially a really big one, most of all when you might get away with it otherwise, that takes moral courage. 

This is where we fit in to this story. Why do we say confession and forgiveness every week? We sometimes think that confession is for bad people, for guilty people. That’s certainly the way it’s always portrayed in the movies with the stern Catholic priest. But the truth is confession is for all of us who want to do better. It is for all of us who want to be better than our worst moments. Confession allows us to name and deal with the big gap between our calling as Christians, the things and people God has trusted us to care for, and how we actually live. Confession is taking that kernel of morality, humanity, righteousness that is still in us even and especially when we are at our lowest, and trusting that God will make it grow and bear fruit.

In recent years, the sacrament of penance in Roman Catholicism has been renamed the sacrament of reconciliation. What’s in a new name? Well, before it was often thought that if you went to confession, said 20 Hail Marys, chipped in a little money to the church, you were good to go with God.

But the new word reconciliation is bigger than that. Reconciliation ties God back to his people and sends us back to them to set things right. When we confess, God forgives us, no questions asked. That’s the end of the matter. But that end is also a new beginning. In our lives and among those whom we have hurt, there is still a rift. Sin is always against God, but it’s also against those God loves, our neighbors. Once trust is broken, it rarely just restores itself. Part of confession is recommitting ourselves to the work of what our Jewish neighbors call “tikkun olam,” repairing the world. As Christians, we believe Christ is the one who will ultimately do this, but we are what Paul calls “ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-21),” called to take part in this work here and now.  

Because whatever happened in the past, David still has a kingdom to rule. For our part, we still have lives to live, callings to answer, neighbors to love and care for. In our daily lives, God has trusted us with so much. Can we trust him every day to help us start anew? Amen.

Sermon for July 25th - Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: God works through sin to bring healing and new life.

Despite how it’s been portrayed, there is nothing romantic, nothing sexy, nothing good about this story about David and Bathsheba. 1Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann writes that it is “more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.” 

At the time of year when we are told kings go out to battle, David is AWOL, lounging about at home at his palace instead of doing his job. And while there, he spies a woman bathing on her housetop. This is where women were supposed to bathe. It was supposed to be a place of privacy and safety. There’s no sign of exhibitionism in the biblical story, just a bored David leering at a woman who’s not his wife. 

All we know about her is she’s beautiful, and she is “Bathsheba—daughter of Eliam—the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” The Hittites were a foreign ethnicity, often at war with Israel, but here Uriah is one of David’s soldiers. The only details David knows about her are ironically that he can’t have her. This doesn’t stop David. She has become merely an object of his desire. The prophet Samuel warned us several weeks ago that “kings take, take, take,” and this is the first of many examples in this story of David taking. 

He takes her without any words, and then he sends her back to her house. And after a little bit, we get the only words Bathsheba speaks in the entire story, “I am pregnant.” In David’s time, as in our own, these words are heard in all different sorts of ways, but for David right now, his reaction is pure fear. He has been caught taking what’s not his. And so begins act 2: David’s elaborate cover-up scheme:

 David calls Uriah the Hittite, a foreigner who is fighting David’s war out of battle and tells him to “go home and wash his feet.” In Hebrew, this is a euphemism for going home and “making love” to his wife. David’s idea is simple: everyone will think the kid is Uriah’s, and he has nothing to worry about.

He has one problem: Uriah. “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.” This foreigner Uriah the Hittite is too loyal to Israel, too loyal to God, too loyal to David for David’s scheming to work. While David is at his palace, Uriah the Hittite refuses to leave the battlefield. Tragically, it turns out Uriah is too loyal for his own good. 

On the next day, David tries a new tack and invites Uriah to his table. He shows all the signs of hospitality. He feeds him good food, he gives him good wine, he treats him as a friend. Again, he’s hoping that Uriah will go home and make love to his wife. But we are told “Uriah did not go down to his house.” Time and again, Uriah the Hittite’s loyalty to Israel, God, and David puts David’s kingship to shame. 

Finally, in the most stunning act of betrayal, after breaking bread with him, David sends out Uriah with a letter to his field general Joab. The letter gives instructions to send Uriah straight to the frontline—and then instructs all the other troops to fall back, exposing Uriah to combat. David, who has taken everything from Bathsheba, who has taken everything from Uriah: his wife, his respect, his friendship, now takes Uriah’s very life—even requiring Uriah to carry his own death warrant.

This story is indeed more than we want to know about David. Why would the author of 2 Samuel include this story? Why would we be told this gruesome story about “good King David,” who we have been told before is “a man after God’s own heart?” 

I think it is because of the second part of Brueggemann’s quote: “[This story tells us] more than we want to know about David and more than we can bear to understand about ourselves.” I’ve often talked about the positive things we can learn from David: faith, joy, love, loyalty. But there’s another side we can learn, too. For all the awful details in this morning’s story, we are still familiar with the temptations, moral failings, and tragedies of this story in our own day. If good King David could succumb to them, so do Christians such as ourselves. For this story to truly matter in our lives, we need to understand it not just as a story about David, but as a story about ourselves.

In this story, we are faced with questions: 

• David spent his time as king in leisure rather than doing his job to lead the people. When are we bad stewards of the authority that has been given to us? 

• David turned Bathsheba into an object of desire without even hearing her speak. When do we objectify people and treat them as less than human? 

• David looked at Uriah as a problem that needed to be dealt with. When do we use people? 

• Uriah trusted David after he invited him under his roof for a meal. David betrayed that trust. How do we respect the trust others give us?

• David, the man who had been given so much by God, by Jonathan, by the people, was never happy. He needed to take even more. When do we forget our blessings and take? 

• Finally, throughout this story, from Bathsheba to Uriah, from Joab to the soldiers on the field, all the way to his unborn child, David treats so many people as pawns. When do we forget other people’s human dignity?

This story is hard, and our lives are hard. Somehow despite it all, despite David’s failings and ours, despite all the pain, God still works. Somehow at the end of this story, Bathsheba has a child: King Solomon. Several generations later, Jesus would be born from this line, from these people, from this story. At the end of this story, there is still a quiet hopefulness: God is always capable of bringing healing and new life out of even the worst situations.

But part of that is that God will not, and cannot, let situations like this stand. God loves us too much; unlike in these dark days of David’s rule, in God’s kingdom every person has inestimable worth and dignity. In the church, we call this reckoning confession and forgiveness. And it’s to that topic we will return as our story continues next week.

1 Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1990).

Sermon for July 18th - Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: God builds his house with us.

This past week and in the week to come, our prayer breakfast has been wrestling with the question, “Is prayer a conversation?” What does that mean anyway? Well, in a conversation you need two sides, and sometimes when we pray, it can be hard to hear when God responds. It can even be like we are doing all the talking!

That is a bit like what is going on in today’s story from 2 Samuel. King David and the prophet Nathan are having a wonderful conversation about what God wants. David is grateful that he’s settled in a palace, that God has given him rest from his enemies, and that things are ok for him, but he feels bad that God is traveling around the countryside in a tent, seated on the ark of the covenant that moves all around without his own house to stay in. So David tells Nathan about his plan to build God a house—the temple. Nathan responds, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you!”

Wonderful, good talk, we are done here, right!? Order the lumber while the prices are plummeting again! Except for one thing…David and Nathan with all their wonderful little plans forgot to consult one party in this conversation: a very important party…God! Oopsie-Do!

Well, that very night God speaks to Nathan very directly—don’t we wish God would do that—but he says that this plan is not what he has in mind. God points out, “Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’” And for once, Nathan is so quiet he can hear the crickets chirping outside the window. God makes his point: “You want to build me a house? I’ll build you a house!”

David wanted to build God a fancy temple, a church, a “house.” But God wanted to build David a house: a royal line that would last forever, a house that culminates in the birth of God’s Son and our eternal king Jesus. As the John the Baptist’s father Zechariah sings during the Nativity story, “You have raised up for us a mighty savior, born of the house of your servant David.” That’s the kind of house God has in mind. If only anyone had thought to ask him!

Sometimes we think we know what God wants. And God wants something different. Often God wants something better.

I don’t know about you, but I grew up thinking that the church was God’s house. Maybe my parents just told me that to be quiet; now that I have a kid I have to say I can kind of understand that. Well, the church is God’s house. But as Paul tells us in the letter to the Ephesians, the church is a special kind of house: the kind of house that God was talking about to David. A spiritual house. A living house. Whose bricks and mortar are, guess what, all of us. Or as he says more eloquently, the church is “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

Notice that we are a part of this house, but we are not the owner. This house is “a dwelling place for God.” Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “Your house, your rules.”

It can be easy for us to fall into the David trap, especially when it comes to the church. We all love the church. Some of us come from families who have been part of the congregation for generations. Others of us are newer, but sure spend a lot of time and energy here. We are passionate. We have good intentions. We think we know what is best.

Maybe today’s story is a chance to reflect. What does God want for us at Trinity/St. John’s? Who is invited to be a part of this conversation when decisions are made? Is God “in the room where it happens?” Has God got something bigger and better planned for us than we had in mind?

For all that Nathan got wrong when he told David to go ahead with his building project, he got one thing marvelously right. “The Lord is with you.” Today’s lessons compare God to the shepherd of Israel: shepherding them out of slavery in Egypt, feeding them in the wilderness, leading them to the green pastures of the Promised Land. Finally, in the fullness of time, God sent Jesus the Good Shepherd, who Mark tells us has compassion for the sheep, feeding thousands, teaching, even laying down his life for the sheep. Jesus will not leave us aimless, wandering, shepherdless, lost sheep but promises to send us his Spirit. This is, after-all, his house. But when the time comes to listen, will we hear his voice?

Amen.

Sermon for July 11th - Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: God celebrates our gifts and joys.

A few years ago, the country singer Lee Ann Womack had a smash hit with the song “I Hope You Dance (2000).” The song took on new meaning for me and my family when my parents, who were rarely overtly sentimental and NEVER country music fans, sat teenage me down with my three younger siblings and played this song for us on the stereo. 

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder,

You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger,

May you never take one single breath for granted,

God forbid love ever leave you empty handed,

I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean,

Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens,

Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance,

And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance.

I hope you dance... I hope you dance... 1

What did it all mean? As a kid of about 14-years-old, I am not sure I knew. Literally speaking, I guess my parents failed. At school dances, I remained a wallflower. But hearing today’s story from 2 Samuel about the return of the lost ark to Jerusalem, I think I understand better.  

There’s a kids’ book out right now called Giraffes Can’t Dance. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but one thing I do know is that kings don’t dance. Outside of stately ballrooms at least. And when they do, well, look at all the trouble King Herod gets himself into in today’s Gospel lesson. But no, kings are reserved, stately, regal. They process. And yet, when the ark returns, all decorum is thrown aside. David dances. Not nakedly as we sometimes think; he’s wearing a priestly ephod; I guess there is a line—but he dances nonetheless. He moves, he jumps around, he creates a scene. He dances as if nobody is watching. 

But of course they are watching. He’s the king. And we’re told that “Saul’s daughter Michal” sees him dancing and despises him. The narrator has hidden an important point from us here. Michal is not just Saul’s daughter; she is David’s wife. Have any of you wives ever been embarrassed by your husband in public? Yeah, that’s what’s going on here. 

But I think the reason we’re told that she is Saul’s daughter is because she represents the old line, the old way of thinking. This is not how one should act. One should not make a scene. Be joyful if you must, but all in good order! This is the ark of covenant, where the God himself is seated, this is worship for crying out loud. People are watching! Rein it in! 

…which is all a way of saying Michal if she were alive today might make a very good Episcopalian or Lutheran. 

Every week we come here, and what do we think is going on? If God himself is present in the bread and the wine, in the word, here among us, do we believe it? Do we act like it? Do we dance? 

Don’t worry. I’m not going to do a dance number right now, but I do sometimes wonder whether we give God reverence—which we often misconstrue as boredom (sit in place until called forward, don’t sing too loud—people might hear you) when God wants our joy. 

It is a wonderful thing to be a Christian. David celebrated when the ark of the covenant came back meaning, he hoped, that God would be with him in battle. But every day of our lives, we celebrate that Christ has given his life for us, risen from the dead, called us by name, claimed us in holy baptism, forgiven our sins, fed us with his own body and blood, given us his Spirit, and is remaking the world in the image of his love. It is truly a joy to be alive—to be alive in Christ and with all of you.

Friends, this calls for dancing. Maybe not literally—although if that’s your gift, maybe. But dancing by how we live our lives. Dancing by sharing our gifts with the world. Dancing by sharing our joy with the world.

What is the worst that could happen? We might lose our veneer of respectability. People might stare or look at us like “what the heck are they doing?” But wait just a minute. Isn’t that what we want? Look around us: the “witness of respectability” really hasn’t gotten the church anywhere. From the very beginning in Acts until now, it’s always when people look from the outside and they say, “What is going on over there?” when they sneer as at Pentecost “they must be filled with new wine (Acts 2:13)!” THAT’S when we get people’s attention, that’s when we can share our joy, why this matters to us. That’s when we can take them to the best covenant: the new covenant in Christ’s blood, and we know where it’s found.

All of us have different gifts, different talents, different ways of sharing joy. Not just here in worship, but every day of our lives. When you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope we dance. Amen.

1 https://genius.com/Lee-ann-womack-i-hope-you-dance-lyrics, accessed July 6, 2021

Sermon for July 4th - Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

On Sunday, July 4th , the readings give us a story of a nation’s founding—but not our own: Today’s story from 2 Samuel is the founding of the kingdom of David and the city of Jerusalem as the capital. David has already been anointed by Samuel on behalf of God, as we heard a couple weeks ago. But what really cinches the deal is these elders of the tribes of Israel who come and confirm him as their king. And why? Merit. “For some time, while Saul was king over us, it was you who led out Israel and brought it in.” “Lead out; bring in”—this is the vocabulary for the time to say that David was their military leader, even though Saul was king. The basis for David’s rule is not that he was born that way, but that he was chosen by God AND was a leader, earning the respect, trust, and love of his neighbors.

Afterward, David does something smart. He takes what was then a small town of Jerusalem and makes it the capital. Sometimes we don’t think of Israel’s kings this way, but it was a politically savvy move. Jerusalem was both close to Bethlehem where David was from and more importantly, it was in the center of the country, so it was easy to keep an eye on things and for people to arrive from the hinterlands. You might even think of Jerusalem as the Lansing of its time: smackdab in the middle.

It all works. We’re told David reigned over 40 years. But the secret ingredient turned out not to be military might or political savvy: “And David became greater and greater, for the Lord, the God of hosts was with him.”

It is said Abraham Lincoln was once asked if God was on his side. He responded, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

What does it mean to be on God’s side? As Pr. Chris Laughlin mentioned last week, our New Testament professor Mark Vitalis-Hoffman was fond of saying that the parables of Jesus always talk about the kingdom of God being Good News for those who are “last, lost, least, little, and lifeless.” Think of our stories the last few weeks. Think of David, the last of Jesse’s children marched out before Samuel and then chosen king. The lost: David mourning over his rival Saul who had lost his call, throne, and life. Or for least. How about Jonathan’s son with disabilities whom David cared for. Little? Can’t do better than the poor shepherd boy David with only a slingshot against the might Goliath. Or lifeless: David showing love for Jonathan by caring for his child even after Jonathan had died. When David’s kingdom was at its best, it was exactly because it matched these traits of the kingdom of God Jesus describes in the New Testament. For David to be on God’s side meant valuing the things and people God values…and acting. We call that love.

What does it mean for us in America in the 21st century to be “on God’s side?” An America that is great is an America that is first and foremost good: good for the last, lost, least, little, and the lifeless among us. A kingdom of heaven perspective can help America live up to her ideals. And being American citizens gives us Christians a chance to answer the call to “love our neighbors.”

As one of the members of our book club said Tuesday, “That all sounds nice, but how???” Great question!

First: Pray. Praying involves both giving thanks and supplication. We can give thanks for the many freedoms we have: to speak, write, and even worship the way we want, something many people throughout world history and even now have not been able to enjoy. Supplication involves praying for our country: for our servicemen and women, for our first responders, for all our citizens, and, yes, for our leaders, even and especially when we disagree with them. Most of all, we can pray for an America that is good for all: for the last, lost, least, little, and lifeless. 

Second: Serve. Prayer always leads to action. Christians can best serve our country by serving God first. When we spend our time doing those things that give love to our neighbors, the whole country benefits. Service obviously includes those who serve in our armed forces and show love by keeping us safe. But it also includes those in many other occupations who educate our children, heal the sick, keep our neighborhoods clean and beautiful, make scientific breakthroughs that improve our everyday lives, and so many more. Service includes volunteering at soup kitchens, libraries, schools, elections, animal shelters, and all the other ways we pitch in. Service even includes those ways we use our voice to make the country better: letters to the editor and to our elected officials, serving on city/town councils, voting. No act of love is wasted. Any small act that helps the last, lost, least, little, and lifeless makes a difference for our neighbors and our country. These acts of love are the bricks and mortar of the kingdom of God.

Many of us are familiar with the opening verse of “America the Beautiful,” words of thanksgiving for the beautiful land we enjoy. But do you know the last verse? 

O beautiful for patriot dream that sees beyond the years 

Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears: 

America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw, 

Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law. 

The song that starts out in thanksgiving ends in a prayer. “God mend thine ev’ry flaw.” It’s no surprise. America is human. And we know that we as humans have flaws. But that’s never a cause for denial or despair. Instead, it is a call for repentance: a chance to show our love for God and our fellow Americans by how we live. Or as Pres. Kennedy ended his inaugural address:

“With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” 1 That is not just a pie-in-the-sky “patriot dream,” but a plan for Christian action today in the country we love and the world God loves.

Amen 

1 John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address (Washington, DC: January 20, 1961), https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/inaugural-address-19610120, accessed 6/30/2021.

Sermon for June 27th - Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: God values the heart. 

I am a sucker for stories about unlikely friendships. Search the Internet and you can find pictures of cats and dogs, dogs and ducks, cats and rats, Wolverines and Buckeyes—ok, I made that one up. My favorite story recently is about the unlikely friendship between former President George W. Bush and former First Lady Michele Obama. A couple moments have gone viral between them, whether it’s their big hug at President Biden’s inauguration or Pres. Bush’s favorite: him reaching over to give Michelle Obama an Altoid at Sen. John McCain’s funeral. “It shocked me,” Pres. Bush said. “We got in the car and I think Barbara or Jenna [Bush, the president’s daughters] said, “Hey, you’re trending!” The American people were so surprised that Michelle Obama and I could be friends.” Obama said, “He’s my partner in crime at every major thing where all the ‘formers’ gather. So we’re together all the time. I love him to death. He’s a wonderful man, he’s a funny man.” The former president wrapped it up: “I think it’s a problem that Americans are so polarized in their thinking that they can’t imagine a George W. Bush and a Michelle Obama being friends.”  

As surprising as that friendship is, it has nothing on the most unlikely friendship in the Bible: Jonathan and David. We heard last week that “Jonathan loved David as his own soul (1 Sam18:3).” 

There was one obvious test to this relationship. Jonathan is the son of the current King Saul. In a nutshell, this is what makes the friendship so unlikely: Saul wants to kill David who he sees as a threat to the throne. And if David’s a threat to Saul, he’s even more a threat to Jonathan who is Saul’s heir. From a political standpoint, from a career standpoint, from a popularity standpoint, this should be a zero-sum game. The worse the news for Jonathan, the better the news for David, and vice versa. 

And that’s why David’s reaction is so surprising when he gets the news today that Saul and Jonathan have been killed in battle. You might think David would be happy: at the very least, no one will try to kill him anymore; he can go home. And more than that, there’s now no real obstacle in his way to the throne that was promised to him by Samuel several chapters ago. The messenger who delivers the news expects that a jubilant David will reward him. And yet, exactly the opposite happens: David sings this long lament and tells all of Israel to do the same. 

Why? Because David isn’t going to rejoice at the death of Israel’s king or at the death of a friend. How the mighty have fallen in the midst of the battle! Jonathan lies slain upon your high places. I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; greatly beloved were you to me; your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women. How the mighty have fallen, and the weapons of war perished!” 

A few weeks ago, we were told, “Do not judge by appearance or heigh of stature, for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”  

Whatever his flaws—and there are many that we’ll hear about in the coming weeks—on the first day of his reign, David shows the kingdom of Israel and us today his heart—the heart that God saw all the way back at the beginning. David’s heart values empathy over victory, loyalty over power, human friendship over earthly achievement. Empathy, loyalty, friendship, these are the things that matter to David. These are the things that matter to God. Do they matter to us?

Biblical scholar Eugene Peterson writes about this story, “Friendship is a much-underestimated aspect of spirituality. It’s every bit as significant as prayer and fasting. Like the sacramental use of water and bread and wine, friendship takes what’s common in human experience and turns it into something holy.”

Friendship is that kind of everyday miracle that often goes unnoticed, unappreciated, even taken for granted. If you asked David and Jonathan why they were friends, probably they couldn’t have told you why. But those bonds that they built sustained them through war, rivalry, and the cruelty of King Saul.

Amen

Sermon for June 20th - Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

The sermon this week is an imagined press conference with King Saul immediately after the events described in today’s readings….

Saul: Hello, hello, welcome to the press conference. I’m King Saul. Yes, the first and only king of Israel.

But don’t be fooled by the dashing good looks and boyish charm, I do know what I’m doing here. So let’s get to the reason we’re all here. 

I suppose you’ve all seen the news: 

DAVID DEFEATS GOLIATH 

Philistines Go Home 

Yes, yes, yes, we’re all very happy for him. It’s a great day for us, a great day for Israel. I have nothing else to add. Any questions? Perhaps about how I am taller from the shoulders to the head than any man in Israel? Or about my exploits on the battlefield against the Ammonites back in the day?

Yes, you sir, there: 

Reporter: Umm… no. Not about that. I actually wanted to ask about Goliath. There are reports coming out that when Goliath came out to challenge you, you cowered in fear. Any truth to that?

Saul: Well, I don’t know about cowering. But was I a little… “uneasy?” Sure. Look, we were all uneasy. Have you seen this Philistine Goliath? The guy’s like Shaquille O’Neal with a sword. So yeah, I wasn’t excited to try to take him on. And uh…yeah then David came out and said he’d take him on. And I said, “Sure. Why the heck not?” It’s not like we had any better options. Better Goliath takes out his rage on some poor shepherd boy than the one and only king of Israel.  

And by the way, this is what you reporters aren’t covering. I tried to help him. I gave him my best armor: my best helmet, my best sword.  

Reporter: Yeah, but it didn’t fit.  

Saul: Not my department. “It didn’t fit.” What is this: a Macy’s? Look, this is 1000 BC, people, you take what you can get.  

Reporter: Fair enough. But then he killed him with a slingshot!  

Saul: I know. We’ve all read the papers. What’s your question?  

Reporter: Well, I guess my question is how?  

Saul: Look, I don’t know. Maybe he got lucky. Or maybe…  

Reporter: Maybe what?  

Saul: Well, maybe there was more to it. I remember back in the day, it sure seemed like there was a lot more to my victories than my swordplay or dashing good looks or height. You know, people are saying God is on David’s side. And that it’s really David’s trust in God that allowed him to beat Goliath.

Reporter: What do you think about all that?  

Saul: Well, I don’t know what to think. Obviously that scares me.  

Reporter: Why?  

Saul: Well, because if God’s on David’s side then, I, Saul, Israel’s one and only king, might be in some trouble! There’s even a rumor that that annoying old fogey, that self-proclaimed prophet-priest Samuel went out to David’s house a couple weeks ago and anointed him as a new king! The nerve!

Reporter: …Yeah, there are some ugly rumors out there that you tried to kill him with a spear.  

Saul: You can’t believe everything you read, Guy. Is this still a free country or not? Isn’t a guy allowed to throw around his own spear in his own house and if it just happens to hit his main rival for the throne, then them’s the breaks. 

Reporter: Uh huh….  

Saul: Look, you seem like a nice enough guy, so I’m gonna level with you. I’ve had enough of this David. I set him over my army. I mean, isn’t that enough? But noooooooooo. You listen to the people. And it’s “David this,” and “David that.” It’s like they forgot all about those Ammonites I took care of back in the day. Remember that? Oh those were the days. But now, no, none of it. David, David, David. Even my own son Jonathan’s gone after him. 

Reporter: Yeah, David and Jonathan seem to be really close friends.  

Saul: Close? They’re always together! And let me tell you: it’s NUTS. N-U-T-S. NUTS. If David ever becomes king like the people want, you know who no longer is next-in-line for the throne: Jonathan. I thought I raised this boy better than that. 

Reporter: Yeah, why do you think that is? 

Saul: Well, I don’t know that Jonathan’s head is screwed on right. But maybe…  

Reporter: Maybe what?  

Saul: Well I guess it could be that Jonathan understands something that I don’t. That maybe God’s calling David to be the king and God’s calling Jonathan to do something different with his life. Not “less than” but different.  

Reporter: Why would that be?  

Saul: Well sometimes I can’t help but think that God calls each of us to play different roles in life and serve him in different ways. I’m a reflective guy, buddy. But then when it gets to be too deep, I just go back and look at the mirror and see Israel’s one and only king with the dashing good looks and all those victories over the Ammonites. It’s good to be king.  

Reporter: Right. Well, what did you learn out there watching all this happen the last few days?  

Saul: Hey, remember, you’re never too old to learn new tricks. Even this remarkably well- preserved boyishly charming King Saul. But what did I learn? From that shepherd boy David?  

Yuck.  

Alright, I’ll give it a go. 

The thing that most impressed me was when David chose not to wear my armor. It was like he was saying he didn’t need all those fancy weapons. And more than that, he didn’t need to try to pretend to be someone rich, famous, (and did I mention dashing and charming and handsome) like myself. He needed to be himself. And trust that even though he was facing something scary, God would be with him. 

And let me jump into the future for a minute. All of us in a way are like David. We are all different. We have different personalities, different gifts, different callings, and different Goliaths we face in our everyday lives. But if David could trust in God, maybe we can too. Maybe we can trust in David’s descendant Jesus who was so powerful he calmed the storm, even rose from the grave. 

Anyway, you’ve asked a lot of questions; let me ask you and everyone here a couple of my own: 

How can we be the people God is calling us? Can we trust that God will equip us when we face

giants in our lives? 

No more questions for today; thanks for listening in.

Sermon for June 13th - Third Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: God judges the heart.

One of my favorite Internet posts going around right now shows a bunch of college students posing for pictures hanging off this impressive looking cliff hundreds of feet above the island below. The caption says: “In Brazil, people take pictures tempting fate by hanging from this famous rock. No photo-shops. These are real pictures. Make sure you check out the last one.” 1

I could not believe these kids! My first thought was, “They are all going to die.” The comments went much the same way, including one who just said, “NOT ME” ALL CAPS. But then as I read more comments, I saw, “You miss the part where there is ground 4 feet underneath them.” And another, “You guys obviously didn’t look at the last photo.” I turned to the last photo, and sure enough, with a wider view, they were all close enough their feet could touch the ground. 

What can we learn from this? As the post itself says, “All that is required is the proper perspective!... Sometimes, the truth is a lot different than what it appears.”

Perspective is all over our reading from 1 Samuel. After losing the great debate last week, Samuel went on looking to find the king the people demanded. Now keep in mind, a king back then was basically someone who fought your battles and collected your taxes. So you wanted someone strong, and in this young man Saul, Samuel thinks he’s found him. We’re told Saul was “a handsome young man. There was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he; he stood head and shoulders above everyone else (1 Sam 9:2).” In other words, Saul could fill out a suit or a suit of armor. Good enough. Samuel anoints him king.  

And it’s a disaster. For all the things that Saul does well—and he is genuinely loved at least at first and even wins some battles!—he has one big problem, he doesn’t listen. In Saul, we meet someone who is self-reliant…to the exclusion of the voice of Israel’s real king: God.  

So God tells Samuel to go to the house of Jesse and anoint another king. This is a dangerous mission. Saul is still king! He is not going to be happy about this idea! God basically tells Samuel to tell a white lie and go and anoint a new king anyway.  

So Samuel goes and one by one these impressive young men that could also fill out a suit or sell a pair of jeans come by, and each time Samuel thinks, “Aha! This must be the man!” And each time, God tells him, “Nope! Not yet!”  

Samuel is still judging by appearance. By strength. By height. By confidence. By all the things that the world values. Samuel still hasn’t learned the lesson from the failure of Saul. And God reminds him with words that are so important then and in our day, too, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”  

And God chooses David. David, who was an afterthought; even his dad forgot him. David, who was out in the fields. David, the youngest. David, who as biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann puts it, “is one of the marginal people. He is uncredentialled and has no social claim to make.” 2 And yet, it is David who God will make an unbreakable covenant with, David whose line will finally culminate in the birth of God’s Messiah Jesus. 

Why does God choose people like David: the small, the uncredentialled, the seemingly unimportant? Why does Jesus compare the kingdom of heaven to a mustard seed, “the smallest of all seeds,” which even when it germinates grows into… “the greatest of all shrubs.” Not exactly awe-inspiring.

Because it turns out God isn’t looking for the things we are looking for. Fame. Money. Title. Strength. Smarts. Looks. Charm. 

Unlike ourselves who spend our entire lives worrying about these fleeting things and chasing after them, God could have any of those things right now if he wanted. But when God was born, we knew him as Jesus: friend of sinners, among the poor and suffering, born in a manger, died on the cross. A man, whom as Isaiah prophesies, “had no form or majesty that we should look at him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him…and we held him of no account (Isaiah 53:2-3).” 

We held him of no account, but God who sees the heart did. Jesus’s heart that listened to the word of God his Father and that was always being given in love to others. That’s what matters to God.  

And Paul in his letter to the Corinthians says this changes everything, not just for God, but for us! “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way.” A human point of view. It’s not like we should necessarily be blamed for this. We’re human after-all! But the thing about a human point of view, is, like that Internet post, we humans often tend to think we see the full picture when we don’t. We often see things from our own backgrounds or upbringings. We don’t see the small seeds germinating deep underground. Only God can. And that’s not even counting that cloud that always fogs our judgment: sin. It’s almost like Paul is saying, “if we were wrong when we saw Christ, and God was right, what else might God’s perspective have to teach us?” 

And the answer is twofold: humility and faith. God didn’t pick David in spite of the fact he didn’t have all the answers. God picked David because David and God both knew darn well David didn’t have all the answers. The less room we take up for ourselves, the more room we give God to work. And when God works, God does amazing things, things in David’s life that we’ll hear about the next few weeks.

 And faith. We know as a church we can’t work without faith. And yet so often, we try to do it by sight anyway. We look to the people who give the most, do the most, speak the loudest to, or just have been here the longest to make our decisions. We think our own opinions speak for everyone. We miss people who are quiet or from different backgrounds or slower to speak or young people or folks newer to our church family. That’s natural. That’s human, all too human.  

But faith is taking a step back, looking and listening not in the obvious places, but getting to know each other on a not just face-to-face, but heart-to-heart level, and trusting that the God of David, the mustard seed, and Jesus will raise up the people to do the work the kingdom needs here and now in our day.

Amen.

1.https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=10158655802087545&set=pcb.10158655804527545

2 Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990), 124.

Sermon for June 6th - Second Sunday after Pentecost

Focus: Jesus gives himself out of love.

Writing to a friend in 1789, Ben Franklin penned the famous line, “In this world nothing can be certain except death and taxes.” At the time he was writing about the constitution which had just passed Congress. But he could just as well have been writing about our story from 1 Samuel today. This summer, we’ll be getting to know some of Israel’s kings: the good (like David), the bad (like Ahab), and the ugly (actually, I don’t know what any of them looked like). But the first decision was whether to have a king at all. Since they escaped their old bad king Pharaoh in Egypt and arrived in the Promised Land, the Israelites had never had a king. They relied on God. 

But now a group wants God’s prophet Samuel to anoint a king for them. And Samuel is having none of it. As in any debate, he tries to persuade the people by telling them what the king will do. And it all boils down to one word he uses 5 times: take. “He will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and his horsemen; he will take your male and female slaves”—and that’s not even counting the verses 12-15 our reading left out where he will take: commanders, implements of war, chariots, daughters, perfumers, cooks, bakers, the best of your fields, vineyards, orchards, grain, flocks.” It’s all quite a list! Welcome to the world of “death and taxes,” people! And finally, “you shall be [the king’s] slaves.” In other words, Samuel is telling the people: “Your ancestors just escaped slavery to Pharaoh in Egypt, and now you’re going to willingly go into slavery to a king here. Don’t do it.”

But the people persist. And it’s their answer that is the most troubling to Samuel and to God: “No! But we are determined to have a king over us so that we can be like other nations.”  

This is a rejection of their calling. The people of Israel were God’s chosen people, set apart, holy. The last thing God wants is for them to be like other nations. And what are the other nations doing? Fighting battles, taxing, oppressing. The question as Samuel and God see it is not just a political one: are you going to have a king, but instead it goes to the very soul of the nation of Israel. Who are you called to be? What does it mean to be chosen? How are you supposed to live?

As the church, three thousand years and an ocean away from Israel, our situation’s different. We choose our elected leaders, but we don’t get to choose whether we’ll have a king, or a president in our case. That’s a given. But those questions still speak to us. 

As we’re reminded every April 15, our government takes a lot from us. Hopefully in return we get security, roads, bridges, healthcare, and a reasonable standard of living. But as Christians there are some things we can’t let our government or political leaders take from us. 

Abraham Lincoln once quoted today’s Gospel reading and said, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” Let’s be honest: the house is pretty shaky in America right now. Both sides of the political divide are asking of us something more than votes or even taxes. They are asking for our loyalty, for our identity, for who we are, for our soul. When politics defines whether we get a vaccine, what sports or TV we watch, which news we consume, who we’re friends with, even as so sadly often happens which church we go to, it is taking from us. We’ve seen the disastrous consequences of this taking on a national level, but even in the divisions in many of our own families. It’s what happens when we give something or someone the ultimate importance or authority that belongs to God alone.  

Unfortunately, it’s become all too common whether in our country or in our neighborhoods, but as the church, like Israel before us: we are not called to be just like everybody else. We are called to put our trust in God and not in humans. 

The truth is God has already given us a radically different way to live. In Jesus Christ, we see someone who took only our sin and death, and has given us life, forgiveness, love, resurrection, hope, and so much more.

Following Jesus doesn’t mean opting out of society or government, and, yes, we still all have to pay our taxes. (Render unto Caesar and all that; sorry about that one.) Quite the opposite. After the people of Israel demanded a king, God did not give up on them, but eventually sent good kings like David, Hezekiah, Josiah, and finally the best king his Son Jesus. We don’t control our times or our circumstances, but we do control how we choose to live and participate in this country we share. What would it look like for us to live like Jesus here and now: to follow his way of giving instead of taking?

Love, kindness, forgiveness, servanthood. These are not cliches. They are a way of undermining all the fear, hatred, and division we’ve been soaking in for years. Responding with love or kindness, forgiving a wrong, choosing to serve rather than playing the power game, these are like glitches that jam up the system. Jesus knew that. The Roman Empire had faced thousands of would-be-revolutionaries, but what finally toppled their culture on its head was a man who died on the cross forgiving his enemies.

 The prophet Isaiah once called us to be “repairers of the breach.” I like that. If the house is divided, maybe the role of Christians is to be the people who repair the foundation, who stabilize the house. To provide an alternative message, reality, lifestyle to what people are being offered. Because, with apologies to Ben Franklin, as Christians we believe that death and taxes come and go, but the words and ways of Jesus will stand forever. Amen.

Sermon for May 30th - The Holy Trinity

Focus: Love changes God’s relationship with himself and with us.

My favorite parable is the prodigal son. You know the story well enough. A father has two sons. The younger of the two comes to him and asks for his inheritance early. He goes off and “squanders it all in dissolute living.” He realizes he’s out of money, goes back with his hat in hand, but “while he is still far off,” his father sees him, runs out, and embraces him. Before he can give his prepared apology, his father gives him a ring and throws a feast. At the end of the story, the elder son, who’s resentful and maybe rightfully(!) about his father taking his son back with all this fanfare is invited to join the feast, and the question is whether he will. 

Usually the story is told that the father is God, the prodigal son is the sinner who returns, and the elder son is the good church-going folk. That’s certainly one way to tell it. But a couple years ago, I read a book that we’ve since done for our book club: Henri Nouwen’s The Return of the Prodigal Son. Nouwen was inspired by his love of this beautiful painting by Rembrandt.

Nouwen writes that the first time he saw the painting, 

My eyes fell on a large poster pinned on [a] door. I saw a man in a great red cloak tenderly touching the shoulders of a disheveled boy kneeling before him. I could not take my eyes away. I felt drawn by the intimacy between the two figures, the warm red of the man’s cloak, the golden yellow of the boy’s tunic, and the mysterious light engulfing them both. But most of all, it was the hands—the old man’s hands—as they touched the boy’s shoulders that reached me in a place where I had never been before. 1

What do you see when you look at this painting? For me, I see a deep love between a father and a son, a love that somehow sends the message of calm, “everything is ok,” a message of home. 

Maybe that’s why, after suggesting several different ways to look at the parable of the prodigal son, Nouwen comes to his most controversial take of all. That the father in the story is God, but the son…is Jesus. What does it mean, after-all, that “God so loved the world that he sent his only son,” other than that he left his home? Nouwen writes, 

Jesus himself became the prodigal son for our sake. He left the house of his heavenly Father, came to a foreign country, gave away all that he had, and returned through his cross to his Father’s home. All of this he did, not as a rebellious son, but as the obedient son, sent out to bring home all the lost children of God. Jesus, who told the story to those who criticized him for associating with sinners, himself lived the long and painful journey that he describes. 2

Maybe that take is unusual, controversial, or you name it, but when you look at this picture, isn’t that what it is? Today is Trinity Sunday. The Trinity is not a math problem. It is this picture. It is a Father who sends his only Son into the world for us sinners and in the resurrection and ascension welcomes him home in tenderness and joy. In this picture, we experience and realize something we lose when we just read holy scripture: that those words father and son are not just placeholders or empty titles. They say something about who God is. Anyone who has ever been a parent knows that, as a member told me at the baby shower last year, it changes your entire world. Not just what you do: diapers, cleaning up baby spit-up before the cats eat it, and so many more other joys, but who you are, what your priorities are, what your identity is, what matters to you. In this picture you see what matters to God the Father is welcoming home his beloved son.

Ah, PJ, but you said this is the Trinity. It may not be about math, but it still has to be more than 2! Where’s the Holy Spirit!? The Holy Spirit, as Jesus says, is like wind. It blows where it chooses. You hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from or where it goes. And I would add this. We can see the Spirit’s effects. 

Effects like a warm embrace for two who have been separated. Effects like two age-worn hands, reaching down to rub a prematurely worn back. Effects like sighs too deep for words. Effects like forgiveness. The Holy Spirit is hiding in plain sight. The Holy Spirit is the Love between the Father and the Son.

You can tell where the Holy Spirit is by when people come together. The Holy Spirit brought together the father and the prodigal son, just as the Holy Spirit raised Jesus’s lifeless body on Easter Sunday and brought him back to the Father. 

There is one more character in this story: the elder son. You can see him in this picture looking on, unsure whether to join in or not. Even in Jesus’s parable in Luke, we are never told whether he decides to join or not. But we want him to.

Because the elder son stands for all of us.

Life in this world is not always kind to prodigal sons: people who are strangers, people who mess up, people who squander their money or opportunities. I don’t know about you, but I am longing to feel like the son in this picture: loved, forgiven, at home. I am longing to feel God’s embrace, God’s welcome, God’s love.

The Good News is that this is exactly what God wants to give us. Like the elder son in the picture, we are welcome to not just look on, but join in the embrace. The choice of what happens next is ours. Through Jesus’s death on the cross all has been forgiven. Through the Holy Spirit and water, in baptism we are reborn as children of God. Children who as Paul says, cry out, “Abba!” Daddy!

The Holy Spirit is not just the love that brings the Father and the Son together, but the love that brings us together with God our Father and with Christ our brother. And with all of our brothers and sisters here in this church and in the world. The question for us on Trinity Sunday is not just who God is. But how God loves the world. And are we willing by our faith and by how we live our lives to join his embrace for the world he loves so much? Amen.

1 Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4.

2 Ibid., 55.

Sermon for May 9th - Sixth Sunday of Easter

Focus: The Holy Spirit chooses who belongs.

One of my friends in the area is the Rev. Maria Rutland who is a Presbyterian pastor. She recently shared with our group of ministers the story of her friend Howard who a few decades ago enrolled at the Gammon School of Theology at Atlanta University Complex. Howard was second career, seeking ordination in North Georgia Conference of the Presbyterian Church-USA in 1970. He chose Gammon over Candler, wishing to understand ministry from an African American perspective. His first day was awkward! As an older white man, he was immediately aware that his presence caused his classmates to drop their jaws and cease their conversations! After his morning classes, Howard retreated to the student lounge to eat lunch and read rather than go to the dining hall. As he entered, the students in the lounge fell silent and looked away. He slouched into a chair, trying to become invisible, wondering if he had made a mistake by choosing Gammon.

About 10 minutes later, the dean of the seminary appeared in the doorway. He looked around the lounge, and spotted Howard. He looked Howard in the eye, and asked loudly: “Mr. Griffin, who do you think you are, coming here to learn the art of ministry?” Howard was speechless! Without skipping a beat, the dean then turned to another student and asked, “And you, Mr. Andrews, who do you think you are to come here to learn the art of ministry?” He did this to several students, all of whom were now terrified and intimidated. Then the dean broke out into a beautiful smile and said, “You are all God’s children, and by the grace of Christ you are here to learn how to minister. Welcome to Gammon!” He hugged them all and shook their hands. And Howard was accepted from that point forward.

“You did not choose me, but I chose you.” That’s what Jesus says in the Gospel of John.

It’s what Peter found out. Poor Peter. They say there are two ways to learn things: the easy way and the hard way. And it always seems like Peter has to learn the hard way.

This week he is responding to a house-call from a man named Cornelius. Last week, I quoted biblical scholars Will Willimon who said Christians who are obedient to the Holy Spirit will find ourselves in the oddest situations with the strangest sorts of people. And boy is that the truth!

The first thing to know about Cornelius is he is a God-fearer. We talked about those people briefly last week; not Jewish, but do believe in the God of Israel. Well he’s praying, and God says that his prayer has been heard; go send for a man named Peter. Well, he does, and it’s immediately clear that the only thing Cornelius and Peter have in common is their faith in God!  

Start with this: Cornelius is a Gentile. And he’s not just like a Gentile-Lite, he and his whole family are Gentile XL. Cornelius is a centurion—or a military officer—for the Roman army. What’s the big deal? Well, the Roman army are the same ones who are occupying Peter’s homeland and keeping them under foreign rule and foreign taxes. In America, we haven’t been militarily occupied in 250 years, so let me explain what that means with a simple question: Who executed Jesus? Who picked him up, nailed him to the cross, mocked him, and watched him until he died and then guarded the tomb? Roman soldiers! Roman soldiers just like Cornelius; heck he may have been there himself! So Peter’s not exactly eager when he gets this house-call. He may be thinking, “This is the same type of guy who killed my friend.” He may be thinking, “I wonder what he’s going to do to me.” (Remember that Peter’s already annoyed a lot of powerful people.) And at the very least, we know he’s thinking—because he tells Cornelius straight-out earlier in the chapter—“You yourselves know that it is unlawful [according to the Torah] for a Jew to associate with or to visit a Gentile (Acts 10:27).” Peter must be thinking: Man, what am I even doing here?

The answer, he’s being obedient to the Spirit. The Spirit who had just told him in a vision to follow three men searching for him who have led him right to this super-Gentile Cornelius.  

And so Peters preaches, and as he preaches, the Holy Spirit falls on Cornelius and all his household. And these Gentiles Peter never would have talked to before, never would have given a second thought to, start speaking in tongues and glorifying God. And Peter says, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” In other words: is anyone going to get in the way of what God is doing? Please understand: 5 minutes ago, Peter would have raised his hand yes! God is doing something new. God is bringing in people who never would have been brought in before, God is bringing together people who would have never been brought together before, God is taking a great, big old chasm, and building a huge bridge. A bridge that is crossed by baptism, by this new thing called the church of every race, origin, ethnicity, background, language, in every tongue glorifying God. And miraculously enough, this man Peter who did not want to, could not legally go to Cornelius’s house, stays several days: eats his Gentile food, gets to know Cornelius’s Gentile family, not as Jews vs. Gentiles, but as neighbors and companions and brothers and sisters in Christ.

This is a pretty darn inspiring story, people. And if it could happen in the first century in Palestine or in 1970 in Atlanta—which seems almost as long ago to me—it can still happen today in our church, town, and country. Some people say it can’t. Some people say that Democrats/Republicans BLM folks/Blue Line folks, and so many other cultural divides can’t be brought into one people. And maybe some of us don’t want it that way. It really is a lot easier to worship with people who already agree with you on politics or on faith or on culture than to try something new. But that’s why it’s Jesus who gets to choose who belongs and not us.  

Being faithful for us means letting the Spirit do her work among us. It means being willing to allow ourselves to be surprised by the odd situations we find ourselves in and the strange people we meet and call brothers and sisters. That may be unusual in today’s world; it may not be normal. Faith is not about believing in the normal things. It’s about believing in the God who raises the dead. It’s about believing in the God who can build a bridge between Peter and Cornelius. It’s about believing in the God who gives us his Spirit here and now. Can we be like Peter and take that first step out? This much we do know: we’ll be surprised by where and to whom the Spirit takes us. Amen.

Sermon for May 2nd - Fifth Sunday of Easter

Focus: The Holy Spirits gathers us from all places and walks of life.

What does a Christian look like? 

There’s a great little cartoon going around Facebook that shows a big, burly, tattooed guy in a biker jacket sitting on a bench. On either side of him are well-dressed people holding their  Bibles. The woman, leaning away, says, “He thinks he is Christian,” while two men on the other side think, “You aren’t a true follower like us.” But as you look at the picture, what you notice is the man in the middle is praying “Christ, my heart is yours.” He is also the only one of the four people who actually has his Bible open. The cartoon is a blunt reminder of Mother Teresa’s famous quote, “If you judge people, you have no time to love them.”

So what does a Christian look like? That’s the question in today’s reading from Acts. We last met Philip in Acts 6, when he and six other men, including Stephen, were ordained as deacons, set apart for the distribution of food, so that the apostles (such as Peter and John) would have time to focus on prayer and preaching. 

…which is why it may seem odd that Philip, a deacon, and not one of the apostles, is sent by the Holy Spirit into this bizarre situation where he is going to preach, teach, baptize, and, no doubt, pray a little bit along the way. Whatever the case, Philip has never seen anything like this before, and I don’t just mean the angel who appears to him.

At first, the juxtaposition in this story is comical. Philip, who we imagine is an average Joe, finds himself in the middle of a royal caravan in the wilderness! Imagine if you showed up in your pick-up truck in the middle of a presidential motorcade. And he hears this Ethiopian man reading out-loud. Ethiopia back then for a simple kid from Palestine was at the edge of the known universe: different country, different government, different language, different skin color—and not only that—this guy is the treasurer to the Queen. He is exotic, he is powerful, he is nowhere in Philip’s league, he is…a eunuch.

In general, eunuchs were respected, trusted to guard the Queen. But when it came to religion, it was “complicated,” as we might say today. Acts doesn’t tell us this particular man’s religion. He’s clearly not an Israelite. He may be what was called a “God-fearer,” someone who’s not Jewish, but believes in the God of Israel; he’s coming from Jerusalem and reading the prophet Isaiah, after-all. But what we can say is this: as a rule, eunuchs were prohibited by the Torah, Jewish law, from entering the assembly (Dt 23:1), from gathering with people at the Temple.  

So what do you do with this man if you’re Philip? On the one hand: respected, even powerful! On the other: foreign, ritually unclean! We now have our answer as to why God sent Philip. If “when you judge people, you have no time to love them,” we have in the deacon Philip a man who has spent his entire Christian “career,” giving away food, helping the needy, loving people. In him, we see the opposite of that statement: “When you love people, you have no time to judge them.” 

And Philip wastes no time. The Holy Spirit tells him, “Go! Join this man! Jump in this chariot! Join this motorcade!”—if you will. And, no doubt shocking all the dignitaries, he runs there, beside the eunuch. What does a Christian look like? Philip answers this question with his feet.  

The rest of the story is beautiful. We meet in this man who’s unfortunately for all-time known simply as “the Ethiopian eunuch” a man who is so much more, who shows his character. He is humble, saying he doesn’t understand the reading without Philip’s teaching and preaching. And yet, he is bold. This man who would have been barred from worship in the Temple asserts his right to join the church. “Look, here is water. What’s to prevent me from being baptized?” Almost as if to say: “Are you going to stand in my way?” And Philip doesn’t.  

What does a Christian look like? The man is a great portrait: Someone who reads the word of God, who prays, who asks questions, who has faith, who is baptized in Christ. The rest of those details that seem so important to the world: social status, wealth, race, national origin, power, they simply don’t matter.

Not to the Holy Spirit anyway. I said last week that the story of Acts is the story of the church of all-times, a story that we find ourselves in, too. Let’s be honest. The church has not always been so good at this. Congregations are still often separated by socioeconomic status. Race: Well, it took 200 years to get the Norwegian-American Lutherans and German-American Lutherans to worship together, for crying out loud. Martin Luther King’s words that “Eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America,” still ring true to our great shame. 

But instead of focusing on the negative, I want to focus on the positive. When we get out of the way and let the Holy Spirit do her work, awesome things happen. Biblical scholar Will Willimon puts it this way: “In being obedient to the Spirit, [Christians] like Philip find

themselves in the oddest of situations with the most surprising sorts of people.” 1 That may sound like a pretty hollow endorsement: “oddest situations,” “most surprising sorts of people,” but, you know, often that’s how we grow—when we get to know people who see things differently from how we do, when we meet people who seem to have nothing in common with us, when we allow ourselves to be surprised by someone else’s gifts or perspective.

My favorite prayer in the Book of Common Prayer is for All Saints Day: “Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your Son Christ our Lord.” Knitting. I’m not much of a knitter (some have accused me perhaps of being a nitpicker), but I know beauty when I see it: different fabrics, different colors, all being brought together to create something beautiful.

When I look at the church, that’s what I see. We are all here from different backgrounds, maybe we grew up singing out of different hymnals or no hymnal, we are here in the Spirit with Christians from across the town and across the world. And we all have different gifts and voices that are being knit together. Not by ourselves, but by the same knitter who brought together Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch that strange day two thousand years ago, the same knitter who sowed Jesus’s resurrected life together after the grave: the Holy Spirit. We Christians don’t always have much in common, except for one thing: we are baptized into Jesus’s name, we are joined into his death and resurrection, we trust in his promises. And that has always been and always will be enough.

What does a Christian look like? Let’s be like Philip, let’s answer the question with our feet, and find out. Amen.

1 William H. Willimon, Acts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 72.

Sermon for April 25th - Fourth Sunday of Easter

Focus: The Holy Spirit empowers us to witness to Christ.

What kind of church do you want to belong to? Some people want to be members of the family church. Others want to be members of the program church. Still others want to be members of the traditional church. Me?

I want to be a member of the annoying church.

I’m serious!—Mostly! Of all the words used to describe the early church in Acts, one that rings in your ear like a mosquito this morning is annoyed. “While Peter and John were speaking to the people, the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came to them, 2 much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead. 3 So they arrested them and put them in custody.”

But you say—what could possibly be so annoying about teaching the people and proclaiming the resurrection of the dead? Certainly, arresting them seems like an over-reaction! Doctrinal questions aside, the rulers, elders, scribes, and all the high-priestly family put all their cards on the table when the first question they ask is not, “What do you believe about the resurrection?” or even “What in blue blazes are you doing healing this man”? but instead, “By what power or by what name did you do this?”

Their issue is all about authority. By what power? By what name? Who gave you lowly, uneducated fishermen permission to do this—because it certainly wasn’t us!

Now, believe me, I am not kneejerk anti-authority. The scriptures tell us to obey and pray for our leaders (Rom 13:1; 1 Tim 1:2), but ultimately, even the best authorities may need to be annoyed time and again. Sometimes the church has to be the voice of conscience, that annoying pebble in the shoe that makes those in charge pause, stop what they’re doing, even…repent.  

And the particular authorities in today’s reading were no exception. You may remember the names Caiaphas and Annas from our Good Friday readings. These were the same cast of characters, who along with Pilate and King Herod, had Jesus put to death on the cross. Peter knows there’s at least a chance that they might do the same thing to him. Annoying these guys is no small stakes game. How do we get from Peter the thrice-denier to Peter the bold witness we meet here?  

The answer is that there is a new sheriff in town. On Good Friday, Pontius Pilate implored Jesus, “Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you (Jn 19:10)?”  

Pilate’s authority, like the authority of every worldly ruler, is ultimately backed by the power of force. Even in our day, when authority derives from the people, it is still ultimately backed by the threat or use of military and police power. At the end of the day, Pilate, Herod and the chief priests knew as well as we do: authority is having power over someone’s life.  

This gets to the bottom of why resurrection is so darn annoying to worldly authorities. It flips on its head where true power lies. On Good Friday, Peter and the disciples thought death was the end. “Sorry Jesus, but we gotta scram before they get us, too.” It’s only Easter that shows just how wrong the world is. Power does not belong to the one who can release or crucify, but to the God who raises the dead.  

A church that reminds the world of this is going to annoy people. What do I mean? David Maraniss’s Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story recounts the story of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s June 1963 “Walk to Freedom” in Detroit. It came right after dogs were set on the protesters in Birmingham, Alabama and drew 125,000 people which made it the nation’s largest civil rights demonstration up to that time. Today, we remember Martin Luther King, Jr., as a modern-day saint—and it’s not a bad perk that many of us get the 3 rd Monday of January off in honor of his birthday. But back then, he was, well, annoying—and not just to segregationists either. King spoke to other leaders about the march, which was “not exactly endorsed by JFK.”

“The president solicited our support of his legislation. He wants Negroes to mobilize to help pass the bill,” King said. “The president told me some congressmen feel this would be more harmful than helpful. I insisted it would not be harmful. He expressed concern over the fact that some demonstrations have led to violence. I told him the demonstrations have been amazingly nonviolent and it was spectators and others who were violent.” 1

Had MLK listened to the president, the march would not have happened. He would have annoyed far fewer people. He probably would have lived to a ripe old age quietly pastoring his congregation instead of being assassinated. Of course, had he done all that, the civil rights legislation of the ‘60s probably would’ve taken years longer to pass. He had a choice to make in his life: lie low and live a quietly good life, or with his words and his feet witness to the Gospel of Jesus: love, equality, justice, knowing full well that he was going to annoy a few powerful folks along the way. Thank God that Dr. King in his day made the hard choice.

Acts says that Peter spoke because he was filled with the Holy Spirit. Looking back today, we can clearly see that MLK was filled with that same Spirit. Many others in their shoes might have been filled with fear. But being filled with the Holy Spirit reminded them that they lived first and foremost under the name of Jesus, and that name means salvation no matter what anyone on earth could do to them. They spoke, healed, marched, acted under that name, and let the chips fall where they may.

But Acts is not a story about great Christians in the past. It is the story of Christians of all times and places filled with the Holy Spirit. And that means, it is our story, too. You and I were all baptized in whose name? Jesus’s name. We too are a Spirit-filled people. We live in the same promise of resurrection, under the same power not of death but of life. It may seem a simple—even a silly question—Who are you willing to annoy for the Gospel? But really it’s a question that means: Whose name has power over my life? Whose name has power over our congregation? When push comes to shove, are we willing to be the annoying church? Because in the end, petty tyrants like Herod and Pilate, jealous big fish in a small pond like Caiphas and Annas, even celebrated presidents come and go, but Christ our cornerstone endures forever. It is in his name we entrust our salvation. Can we trust him with our lives, too? Amen.

1https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/books/2015/09/14/detroit-story-excerpt/72290698/, accessed on 4/20/2021.

Sermon for April 18th - Third Sunday of Easter

Focus: Jesus’s resurrection creates forgiveness.

When you hear a ghost story, what does the ghost say when it jumps out? Boo!, right? Well, apparently if you talked to Peter and the gang, they thought the ghost would say something even more terrifying… “Peace be with you.” Because that’s how Jesus, risen from the dead, greets his disciples, and Luke tells us, “They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost.” 

Why might that be?! What is so terrifying about a ghost…if that ghost is their friend Jesus? 

Bishop Craig Satterlee in his weekly video1 suggests that the disciples are frightened because if Jesus is a ghost, he has come to haunt them. The idea of Jesus haunting you like something out of Poltergeist might seem funny…to us…two thousand years later. But it didn’t to the disciples.

 No less a theological authority than the critically acclaimed film from 1995 Casper tells us that the reason that ghosts cannot “cross over to the other side” (i.e. die dead once-and-for-all) is because they have “unfinished business.”2 The movie, which is one of those kids’ movies that isn’t really just for kids, is about the characters, ghostly and fleshly, finishing the unfinished business in their lives.

Say what you want about fiction or ghost stories or movies that did strange things to me as a kid, but when we think about what haunts us, isn’t it our unfinished business? The opportunity that we let slip away, the goodbye that we didn’t get to say, the hurt we’ve done to each other, not telling someone that we love them while we still can, the painful memory we’ve avoided talking about or processing. One of the worst things about death is that it forecloses our ability as humans to finish our unfinished business.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but Jesus? Come on. Why would Jesus haunt anyone? Well, frankly, there’s a lot of unfinished business between him and the disciples. Some of his last words to the group were “All of you will desert me (Mk 14:27)”—and they did. He asked his closest friends James and John and Peter to stay awake and pray with him on the last night of his life—and they fell asleep at the wheel. Peter—well, he must feel the most squeamish of all—you see, he denied knowing Jesus three times while Jesus was about to be crucified. Maybe the disciples fear Jesus is going to haunt them by chasing them right out of their locked room! (And…spoiler alert: they wouldn’t be wrong.) But I think they are haunted by Jesus’s ghostly reminder that the dreams they had on Palm Sunday that are no longer possible, haunted by their lack of courage, haunted most of all by how they deserted their friend in an hour of need and let him die hanging beside two criminals. To the disciples, Jesus is not a “friendly ghost.”  

But this is the plot twist of the Gospel: Jesus is not a ghost at all. He shows them his wounds, he eats a piece of fish in their presence all to prove that he is bodily resurrected. Ghost or body, you say, what’s the big deal? The big deal is that by raising Jesus from the dead, God has done something new. Ghosts the disciples knew about; they were used to hauntings, memories, death. 

But by raising Jesus from the dead, God has “finished Jesus’s business.” Not only has God defeated all the people that put Jesus to death, but he has erased the score between the disciples and Jesus. Jesus is no longer dead but alive. Jesus is no longer abandoned by the disciples, but he has rejoined them. Jesus is no longer denied but glorified. Jesus can no longer thought to be holding a grudge or haunting anybody, but he is there with what words? “Peace be with you”—in a word, forgiveness. By overcoming death, resurrection makes forgiveness eternally possible.

Notice: Jesus himself connects resurrection and forgiveness. “Thus it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.” 

…which brings us to our story from Acts, where Peter is doing just that: preaching about Jesus in Jerusalem to a Jewish crowd.

But this sermon, well, let me tell you, it’s pretty harsh. He would not collect a pension reaching like this to a congregation today. “The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.” Yikes!

Not only is he harsh, but, hey, wait, wasn’t Peter the guy who just denied Jesus three times? In fact, that word he accuses the Jews of “you rejected him”—it’s the same word in Greek that means deny—just the thing Peter was busy doing all day Good Friday! Peter and the Jews in Jerusalem are fundamentally guilty of the same sin! And now he’s talking to them like this? Jeez-o-Pete, get off your high horse!

But, you know, maybe Peter isn’t so dense. My hunch is Peter is well aware of his kinship, of his co-guilt with the crowd. In fact, I think that’s why the Holy Spirit sent Peter to preach this sermon. Think about it: God could have sent Mary Magdalene who more or less got it right to preach this sermon—or, well, anybody but Peter! But God sent that denier, that sinner Peter to preach to this group. Why Peter?

Because that’s resurrection. Lutheran theologian Paul Hinlicky is fond of saying that we get evangelism wrong when we make it about selling a product or trying to force someone to believe. He says it’s better to think of evangelism as “one beggar telling another where to find bread.”

Peter has found bread. He has found forgiveness. He has found a new calling. Buried is the ghost of Peter the right-hand man of Jesus the political messiah. Buried also is Peter the denier. Risen and alive, resurrected is Peter the forgiven one, Peter God’s witness.  

In this sermon Peter preaches, he’s not berating them. He’s doing what we talked about last week. He’s naming the sin—and he can do this in a fundamentally authentic way because unlike the worst Christian evangelists who preach to “those people” thinking that they’re better than everyone else—Peter preaches as a fellow sinner who has found forgiveness, as a fellow beggar who has found bread, as a fellow haunted one who’s heard something better than a ghost story. “And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out.”

“You acted in ignorance.” And if those aren’t words for our world today, for our own lives, I don’t know what are. But the Good News is, like Peter, we don’t have to wallow in the ghost stories of our own actions or inactions.

Jesus is risen, and we are witnesses. Jesus forgives us, and we are sent. It turns out there is still unfinished business in this world; there are still ghosts to be dealt with. So many of us are still haunted by shame, hatred, bigotry, selfishness, and the list goes on. And the witnesses Jesus sends are not super-sterilized saints: they are beggars who have found bread, Peters who have been revitalized, sinners who have been forgiven: Jesus’s witnesses are all of us. Instead of more ghost stories, can we, by our words and lives, welcome our neighbors into the arms of the risen Jesus? Amen.

 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHozaKgqpF4

2 https://casper.fandom.com/wiki/Casper_McFadden_(Film_Version)

Sermon for April 11th - Second Sunday of Easter

Focus: Jesus glues our community together with forgiveness.

In his book Love is the Way, PB Michael Curry writes

When I was bishop of North Carolina, a reporter asked me what the biggest challenge facing the church was. I answered him, “We’re wrestling with sexuality now, we know that. But I think the greater challenge is this: How do we make e pluribus unum—out of many, one—real, without obliterating anybody? 1

E pluribus unum—out of many, one—is one of our national creeds. It is printed on our currency. And yet, we know, it’s easy to say unity, but it’s a lot harder to actually pull it off. What is it that allows a diverse community with different views about important things and with “complicated” histories to live together, to work together, not only to coexist, but to thrive? Over the next few weeks during the Easter season, we’ll be hearing stories from Acts, the early church, and hear how the spirit of the risen Christ worked in their time and is still working in ours.

And today’s reading shows that they absolutely nailed e pluribus unum! Listen to this:

Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

I don’t know about you, but I have never been part of a church quite like that! Biblical scholar Will Willimon explains why the power of the early church’s example was so important. He says,

The most eloquent testimony to the reality of the resurrection is not an empty tomb or a well-orchestrated pageant on Easter Sunday but rather a group of people whose life together is so radically different, so completely changed from the way the world builds a community, that there can be no explanation other than that something decisive has happened in history. 2

What was the most radical thing that they did? They as the members of the church gave up all their property and redistributed it to the poor. The result? There was not a needy person among them! This is not an argument about economics so much as what it is possible when people trust each other, when everyone is “of one heart and soul,” in other words when e pluribus unum—out of many, one—becomes a present reality.

End of story, right? Well, our reading would have us believe so. But a funny thing happened along the way to the kingdom of heaven on earth. In the very next chapter, it all falls apart. You might guess what the fight is about. Money. We’re told that a husband and wife Ananias and Sapphira sold some land and held back the funds from the church but then said they donated everything. This does not end up going well for them; I’ll save you the gory details which you can read in Acts 5.

Obviously folks in the church are upset. You might expect them to say, “I gave up all my money—and you’re hiding some away in a Christian version of a tax shelter!? I don’t think so!”

But actually what breaks up the whole project is not the money. That’s just the issue it plays out in. It’s the lack of trust. Peter tells them, “You have not lied to us, but to God.”

So often if you’ve served on a vestry or a council or been to an annual meeting, or even listened to our leaders in Washington, you find out the issue’s not really the money. Churches, countries, individuals for centuries have always found a way to “make-do” with what we have. No, it’s the lack of trust. It’s when people lie to each other, deceive each other, insult each other, don’t level with each other. That’s when e pluribus unum is lost. And you can’t fix that by writing a check.

Titus and I were recently reading a story from the library called Oopsie-Do! by Tim Kubart. 3 It begins,

Oopsies can happen and get in your way, But that doesn’t mean they should ruin your day.

Forget all the flub-ups and mess-ups you make. No reason to fret if you make a mistake!

Just say… Oopsie-Do!

Over the remainder of the story, we will spill fish food on the floor, our backpacks will fall and dump our favorite snacks, and our spaghetti will land on our teddy. All to be solved with the same liturgical response: Oopsie-Do!

Now this is a children’s story. I can’t remember the last time spaghetti’s landed on my teddy—but I can remember the last time I’ve said words that hurt someone, the time I’ve held onto a prejudice, the time I’ve refused to release a grudge. Those things don’t just “ruin your day.” They erode trust between individuals, they break bonds, they destroy community, they obliterate e pluribus unum.

If only there were something as easy we could say as a church as “Oopsie-Do!” right? Well, there is something we can say, but I can’t promise it’s easy. It goes like this:

“If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us, but if we confess our sin, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Naming sin. Being honest. Dealing with the issue. Not just with God but with each other. This is risky business, and it involves faith and trust. Faith that Jesus is always willing to forgive my sins. Trust that my neighbor will be willing to forgive my sins. Faith that I am more to God, my neighbor, and myself than my worst moment. Confession and forgiveness is always a risk, but it’s what makes new life together possible. 1 John says that when we do this, we have fellowship, we have e pluribus unum, with each other. We are restored to that one heart, one soul that we were called to be.

Forgiveness. It is so important that notice it’s the first thing the resurrected Jesus does when he appears to his disciples: “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven. If you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

Retaining sins is easy. We do that all the time. But what is unusual, what is almost unheard of is forgiveness.

Henri Nouwen writes, “Community is not possible without the willingness to forgive one another ‘seventy-seven times.’ Forgiveness is the cement of community life. Forgiveness holds us together through good and bad times, and it allows us to grow in mutual love.” 4

Forgiveness is the cement, the glue that holds us together past the poorly chosen word, past the heated disagreement, past our fallen humanity and broken relationships. Forgiveness centers on the fact that each of us in this church is a sinner, one who sees through a glass darkly. Forgiveness is what brings us to Christ, and it’s what brings our neighbor to Christ, too. And in that way, forgiveness brings us together.

Forgiveness is the promise of resurrection and the reality of resurrection. What better testimony to the resurrected Christ could there be than a group of people with differences in worldviews and differences in their history burying the past and coming together with one heart and one soul to proclaim the present reality that Christ is risen?

Bp. Curry writes, “To love, my brothers and sisters, does not mean we have to agree. But maybe agreeing to love is the greatest agreement. And the only one that ultimately matters, because it makes a future follow.” 5 Forgiveness and love: now that is a recipe for the early church and for our church in the 21 st century. Amen.

1 Michael Curry, Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times (New York: Penguin Random House, 2020), 185.

2 William H. Willimon, Acts (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1988), 51.

3 Tim Kubart, Oopsie-Do! (New York: HarperCollins, 2018).

4 Henri J.M. Nouwen, Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith (New York: HarperOne, 1997), January 21.

5 Michael Curry, Love is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times (New York: Penguin Random House, 2020), 185.

Sermon for April 4th - Easter Sunday

Focus: Christ turns suffering and death into art.

Since we last met for Easter two years ago, the world has changed so much for all of us. For my part, I have learned so many skills; well, okay, at least a few:

How to bake 5 different breads from The Great British Baking Show on NETFLIX.

And how not to bake 50 different breads.

How to change a diaper.

And how not to change a diaper.

How to run a Zoom worship service.

And how not to run a Zoom worship service. Amen?

But one of the things I’m most grateful for is a friend I have made along the way: Al Caldwell. Many of you have met Al, the retired pastor and professor who joins our book club and occasionally our online worship service. One of the things in particular I am grateful for is a phrase that was passed onto him from another friend. What do you do when life gives you hardship? When you don’t know how to express your emotions? When there’s so much pain? His friend’s answer:

Turn it into art.

For Al, that often means poetry. For his friend, it could apply to all aspects of life, down to trying to make 100 free throws in a row (some of us are lucky to hit 2 in a row). Turn it into art.

Easter morning is God’s artwork. Easter is about taking the cold hard reality of this world: that is Death—and turning it into art in a way that only the Master Artist could. 

In the Book of Common Prayer burial rite, there is a prayer: “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.” Turn it into art.

When the women followed cold hard reality to the foot of the cross:

God led them to the empty tomb. Alleluia!

When the cold hard reality was Peter denied Jesus three times:

God sent an angel bearing Good News for him. Alleluia!

When the cold hard reality left God’s people a crucified Messiah:

God raised his Son. Alleluia!

And when the cold hard reality blocked hope for the future:

God rolled away the stone from the tomb

showing that for God all things are possible. Alleluia!

Easter tells us who God is, what and who we mean when we say those three letters: G-O-D. God is the one who raised his Son Jesus from the dead. God is the one who takes the sin, suffering, and death of this world and turns it into a beautiful masterpiece.

And that means God can do this for you and in your life, too. As Ephesians (2:10) tells us, you, too are God’s handiwork.

Brothers and sisters, it has been a tough year, no question, and the cold hard reality is it’s not over. But in the midst of this and every hardship we endure, every pain we feel, every death that stings, God is here. And as he raised his Son, he will raise us into something new, beloved, and beautiful. Alleluia! Amen.