Merry Christmas

A couple of weeks ago, on the first Saturday in December, I had the opportunity to do something rather strange. I, along with about 50 others, drove up to Scandia, about 40 minutes north, and spent the day in the first church built in Minnesota. It is a little one-room log building, built in 1852, about 15 ft x 20, and it seated the 50 or so of us just about perfectly. Though it was one of those days where the temperatures start out at a high of 15 and drop throughout the day, the building was surprisingly warm – it’s amazing how logs block out cold and hold in warmth.
So, what were we doing there in that little one-room Swedish Lutheran church on the first Saturday in Advent? Why, celebrating Easter, of course! As part of the seminary course on worship that I was taking, my class spent that Saturday afternoon and evening worshipping together, praying together, feasting together, and huddling together to stay warm, as we went through the entire Triduum, that is, the Three days of Easter: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil.
When I first heard about doing this, I thought it seemed weird and contrived. For one thing, I didn’t want to give up a Saturday in Advent, when I could have been spending the day playing with my kids in the snow or baking Christmas cookies. But I also felt like we would all be play-acting – pretending to celebrate Easter when we really were in an Advent and Christmas frame of mind. Even the weather was conspiring against us – it is hard to imagine singing “Now the Green Blade rises,” when there isn’t a scrap of green to be seen in the landscape and the snow is blowing across a solid frozen lake. It is hard to get your head around the symbols of new life that we associate with Easter when the world around us is going ever deeper into a winter slumber.
So I went to this day not exactly in the spirit of the thing, but determined to make the best of it, if I could. But as the day unfolded, as I heard the readings and lamentations and sang the songs and prayers, I began to feel that it was just as fitting to do this in the midst of Advent and winter as at the end of Lent at the coming of spring. After all, when it comes right down to it, the point of Advent and Christmas, is the same as the point of Lent and Easter. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.”
I have always been drawn to that line from the introduction to the book of John. The image is one that is so deep, so primal, an image that touches the very depths of what it is to be human. Light in darkness, light that cannot be overcome by darkness, gets to the heart of our longings. It takes us back to our beginnings, our ancestors gathered around a fire, with the darkness and wild animals threatening. Though most of us don’t live that way anymore, it is still easy to find darkness. We are confronted daily with darkness. The power went out at our apartment this past Sunday afternoon. We pulled out candles and blankets, covered the windows and doors to keep the heat in, and hunkered down. As the sun went down, it started to get dark, and we lit all our candles, so that it was bright enough to read a book in our living room. We were okay for the evening, and eventually we went out to a friend’s house for dinner. The power still wasn’t on when we came home and piled into one big bed covered in blankets to sleep. And it still wasn’t on when we woke up the next morning. I started to worry: what if it was still out that night, or the next? I don’t have enough blankets and candles to overcome the darkness and cold that was threatening at that moment.
Fortunately, the power came back on by mid-afternoon Monday, while Grace and I were taking refuge at Pastor Carlson’s house. We had a warm place to sleep that night, and the lights on our Christmas tree are twinkling today. But it left me thinking about light in dark places again. We were confronted with literal darkness on Sunday night, and with other kinds of darkness as well: cold, fear, worry. There are other darknesses that threaten to close in on us: money worries, unemployment, loneliness, illness, death. And we have lights, candles that we light to ward off those darknesses: savings accounts, 401ks, insurance, television, books, knowledge, technology of all sorts. But eventually, no matter how we shore up the defenses, those things fail. Sometimes they even become the darkness, as has happened this year with so many people’s 401ks. The stock market, which was the security blanket of so many, has become the source of worry and worse. Eventually, the power goes out, and we are left confronted by darkness.
In those moments, when we are confronted by darkness, we have one light left. At the darkest moments, when the darkness threatens to overcome us, a light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it. On the darkest night of the year, a baby is born, the Son of God, in the darkest place, a manger in a stable. At the worst moment, when there is no room in the inn, when we are alone in the world, and all the lights that we have placed as defenses against the darknesses have failed us, one light remains, Jesus the Christ, God incarnate. God incarnate! God, who has been born into the world in the same messy and difficult way that each of us has. God, who has been born into the world to experience the darknesses: worry, loneliness, illness, death. God, who has been born into the world to bring new life through death and resurrection!
Perhaps it’s not so hard after all to imagine singing Easter songs as Christmas carols. In the manger we have new life, God who surprises us by choosing to be here with us. And in the cross we have new life, God who surprises us by choosing to die here for us. And in the resurrection, we have new life, God who surprises us by overcoming death and the grave, by being the light shining even in that, the ultimate darkness, the light that even the darkness of death cannot overcome. I guess the words of “Now the Green Blade Rises” do fit as a Christmas carol. Open your hymnbook to song #379. Can we sing the last verse together? “When our hearts are wintry, grieving or in pain, Your touch can call us back to life again. Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been: love is come again like wheat arising green.”
Love is come again, born in the manger, to die on the cross, to overcome the darkness and bring good news of salvation to all people. Amen.

Advent 3 - Isaiah 61

Most of you know by now that I was not raised as a Christian. The exception was Christmas. Once a year, starting right after Thanksgiving, our home began to transform. Lights went up, the tree was decorated, cookies flowed like water, my dad set up a little village of ceramic houses on a cotton snow field. We looked forward to Christmas. Really, we started celebrating Christmas before December 1, and stretched it out as long as we could. It was bad luck to take the tree down before New Year’s. We didn’t talk a whole lot about God or Jesus during that time, though they were mentioned. But we talked a lot about joy, about mystery, about light coming into dark places. To understand Christmas in my childhood, you have to understand Christmas in my father’s childhood.
My dad grew up in an alcoholic home. His father was a binge drinker who was often abusive, mostly emotionally, but sometimes physically as well. His mother, though loving, was not able to shield her six children from her husband’s abuse. Eleven months out of the year, my father spent time ducking and hiding, developing coping mechanisms and figuring out how to get out of the way. One of his favorite ways to escape, once he was old enough, was to get on his bike and ride. It was on these rides, he says now, that he most experienced grace, in the ability to find out who he was beyond the confines of the family’s dysfunction.
The only other time that things let up was Christmas. Though there was still drinking, there were also lots of people around. The number of grown-ups in the house around the holidays meant that there were buffers to my grandfather’s moods. There were aunts and cousins and friends whom he wanted to impress, and who could distract him. For the time around Christmas, their father was on his best behavior, and my dad could relax and enjoy an almost normal family life.
One consequence of life in that household was that for about 11 months a year, it was pretty difficult for my dad to believe in God. The family went to church, where he heard about God, but he didn’t really see much evidence of God in his day-to-day life. And unfortunately the church he attended did not do much to help. But for about a month each year, and when he was able to get away on his bike, my dad could hear the words of Isaiah and believe that there was such a thing as a God who would send “good news to the oppressed, bind up the brokenhearted, proclaim liberty to the captives, release to the prisoners, and comfort those who mourn.” At those times, my dad could imagine what it would mean to “greatly rejoice, to exult, to be clothed in the garment of salvation, covered in the robe of righteousness.”
Many in the world today are skeptical of what we confess: that our God chose to be born into the world, chose to live here among sinners, and then chose to die on the cross for the sake of each and every one of those sinners. Given the condition of the world, I can understand their skepticism. Some days, I even share it. But at this time of year, as darkness closes in around us, we have some time to reflect on how mystery touches the world, as the year begins to turn, and the earth begins to tilt back toward the light. In this time of the year, we have the opportunity to speak to one another, and even to the skeptics, about mystery, about light coming into dark places, about joy. We have the opportunity to arise, greatly rejoicing in the Lord, and in so doing, share a bit of the good news ourselves.
In 1983, a friend asked my dad to help find a bike for her son for Christmas. She couldn’t afford a new one, so my dad pulled together some parts he found, and fixed them up. By the time he was done he had a handful of new bikes, including one for his friend’s son. Since then, he has delivered nearly 5000 bikes, including about 1000 to Africa and South America. He now has a workshop space downtown, and coordinates with local and international agencies and organizations. The Christmas bikes have become a ministry of his church, with organized work parties and donations throughout the year. When he talks about this ministry, he says that this is his way of sharing with others the moments of God that he experienced in his childhood. To put words in his mouth, this is his way of rising up and rejoicing, of exulting God, by sharing with others a foretaste of the feast to come, by allowing the kingdom some room to break in.
I see in my father’s life an example of how God works. Obviously things were hard for my dad growing up. And he still deals with the results of that broken family, as do his siblings, and even some of us in my generation. But that is not proof, as the skeptics would say, that God is not present. Rather the moments of escape, of finding ourselves in spite of the world around us, are proof that God is present, even in our darkest moments. In those moments, God is at work in us to redeem the world, one life at a time, by making room for light to come into dark places. And then God moves us, one life at a time, to share that light with others.
The words we hear today from Isaiah are the very words that Jesus spoke in the synagogue in Nazareth. God, who spoke through the prophets, who was born to us in a stable, and who comes to us again and again, year after year, and day after day, spoke these very words, and claimed their purpose as God’s own. And year after year, day after day, God works in us and in our lives, renewing us through our baptism, forgiving our sins and offering us a moment of grace, a time of joy, a touch of mystery, and a glimpse of light coming into dark places. Each of us has experienced it. And for each of us God finds a way to move us so that we too may rejoice in it, may share it with others, may arise to meet God in the light.

Advent 2 - Isaiah 40

I don’t know about you, but I have nights when I lie awake, unable to sleep for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s because of something outside myself, like the night I sat up all night with Holden because he was sick and couldn’t sleep. But usually my wakeful nights come from inside my own head. At one point, when we lived in Seattle, I realized I wasn’t sleeping because I was lying awake trying to remember everything that I had to do for the rest of the week. I solved that problem by getting myself a date-book so I could keep my calendar and make lists of things that needed my attention. For a while after that I slept really well. But more often than that, I have found myself lying awake thinking. Well, thinking isn’t really the best word for it, more like stewing, or as Nelson calls it, “perseverating.” Sometimes I’m worrying about what to say in a paper or sermon that I’m working on. But more often I’m worrying about something I said or did that I wish I hadn’t, or something I didn’t say or do that I wish I had, or how I can mess up on something that I’m going to say or do. Stewing about these things can’t actually change them, I know, but that doesn’t stop me from stewing. And it always seems like I do the worst of my fretting in the darkest hours of the night.
In the season of Advent it is easy to fall into stewing. Here in the darkest hours of the year, we are inclined to look back at the things that we have done over the past year. Though our culture likes to focus this yearly review around New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, the church year has already started, and the readings that are set for the season of Advent invite us to take some time to look back and consider where we have been. Indeed, we are invited to stew a bit in the darkest days of the year. But this is stewing with a purpose. We are stewing now in anticipation, as we prepare for the arrival of our God, whose incarnation we will celebrate in just two weeks. In the meantime, we are invited, especially in this week’s readings, to think about how to prepare ourselves for that arrival.
Today’s Isaiah reading reminds us of John the Baptist’s call to repentance and our preparation for Christ’s arrival. The problem is, in our culture, and sometimes even in the church, we tend to confuse stewing with repentance. We shy away from the word “repent” because we think it means that we should sit and think about all of the things we messed up, and focus our energy on how we’ve gone wrong. And frankly, that’s a real downer, so why would we want to do it? Why would we want to repent, if it means we are going to spend our time focusing on everything that’s wrong, rather than those few things that we get right?
But that is not the kind of call that we hear from our God through Isaiah. Instead of harsh condemnation or a focus on our sins, the first words from God’s mouth are “Comfort, O comfort my people…speak tenderly to Jerusalem.” Yes, Isaiah acknowledges the sins of Israel, and indeed that Israel has paid for those sins. And Isaiah stews a bit on these sins. When God calls on him to preach to the people, to cry out, Isaiah responds, “What shall I cry? All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades…surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades.” That sounds a lot like what is going through my mind when I lie awake at 3am, going over and over my failings. Isaiah is perseverating as surely as ever I do.
Yet in contrast to condemnation, to wallowing in our wrongs, what we hear next is God’s promise: “the word of our God will stand forever.” Here in the darkest night of the year, as we stew over all that we might have done differently, all that we didn’t do that we wish we had, all that we imagine we will do wrong in the coming year, Isaiah reminds us that even here God’s word stands. And knowing that, we might actually be able to rest. We might actually find our rest and dream about God’s promises through the night.
Because there is where repentance really happens. Not in the hours that we lie awake and play over and over our worst moments. But later , after the hours of rest, when we finally allow ourselves to fall asleep and rest in the dreams of God’s promises. We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves. Why then, would God want us to lie awake beating ourselves up for something that we can’t fix? Instead, God invites us to rest, to turn ourselves over to the dream, the vision that God has for our lives, the promises that God has set before us. The stewing has its place, but that is not the work that God has set for us.
Having planted the dreams of God’s promises here in our rest, God now nudges us awake. In the light of the new day, those worries of the wee hours always seem strange, overblown, out-of-place. In the light of the new day, we can compare our stewing to God’s promises, and we can see that God’s promises win. And then we are able to repent. In Hebrew, the word that we translate as repent means to turn back, to return. It is a word that is about remembering what God sees in us, what God has promised us, and then trying to align our lives with that vision. It is the moment when we awake and make our plans for a new day, a day that will be different from the ones that left us stewing. Of course we’ll still get it wrong, but in those moments we can remember what God has promised: Comfort and constancy.
This week we are stewing, lying awake, waiting for the rest that is to come. But we can see it, not far off. Soon we will meet God’s promises face to face, in the form of a newborn baby, God born into the world for our sake. It is the promise of Jesus Christ that we can rest in. It is the promise of Christ that gives us the strength to face the new day, the new year, and to repent, to return to what God has promised. God invites us now to rest, to dream, so that we can awaken to the reality of God’s promises in the light of Jesus Christ, and arise to meet God in the light.

Advent 1: Isaiah 64

Last year, my family and I left Seattle, where we had lived for almost 14 years, and moved to St. Paul so that I could attend seminary. It was exciting and stressful all at once. Though we were looking forward to our time at Luther Seminary, we were also leaving behind our first house, our neighbors, our dearest friends and most of Nelson’s family. We had to say goodbye to the church where we both came to faith, where we were married and where both of our children had been baptized. We drove out of a city that was our first home together, a city that we know by heart and adore, heading east toward a much larger and completely unknown metropolis. Once we arrived, we had the distractions of housing problems, moving twice, unpacking, getting Grace registered for and started in Kindergarten, finding a job for Nelson, getting childcare for Holden, who was too young for the seminary daycare, and of course, getting me started on my seminary coursework. By the time the dust settled, it was Thanksgiving, starting to get cold. We weren’t quite sure what to expect of our first winter in Minnesota.
One day in early December, I hiked up the hill for class, through the cold morning air, contemplating how to deal with the coming colder weather. On the way, I passed a few people wrapped up in winter scarves and hats, so that only their eyes showed. I figured I probably knew them, but I couldn’t tell who they were all wrapped up like that, so I just nodded, and kept going. In class, I saw and spoke to a few people, talked about coursework and the coming holidays, but there were no deep conversations. As I left and headed home at the end of the day, the sky was darkening and snow was beginning to fall. I suddenly felt lonely. A deep, heavy, sinking feeling, longing to hear the voice of my best friend, to hold her kids and have dinner with her and her husband, wishing to drive to my mother-in-law’s house, where we are always welcomed with warmth, food, drink, good conversation, and games. It was such a strong longing, it was physical, visceral. I had to stop for a moment. I found my phone and called Amy, by best friend, just to hear her voice, and it helped, but the feeling lingered. It was a desire to be with the people who know me as well as anyone can know me, and who love me anyway. It was a very Advent sort of feeling.
This is a time of year when we can’t help but feel a little out-of-sorts, even surrounded by loved ones. The whole world is going to sleep, and our natural instinct is to take a nap, too – to snuggle down and wait, and dream. On a practical level, we’re dreaming of the return of warmth, the sun, green things growing. We’re dreaming of the renewal of life in the natural world, and so we surround ourselves with candles and lights and evergreens. But on another level, a more difficult-to-explain level, we’re dreaming of the renewal of life in ourselves. And so we long – my longing for my loved ones was an echo of this longing, of the dreaming we do during the Advent season. We long for God, and as the world goes to sleep around us, we may feel God’s absence more often than we feel God’s presence. Certainly as we look at the difficult times in the world, as words like recession and unemployment, terrorism and chaos are thrown around in the media, as we anticipate the coming change of government, no matter your political leanings, we have reason to feel anxious. Times of change are always difficult, and as the dust settles, we may be left wondering where we fit in, just as I did on that day last December.
The prophet Isaiah speaks about that pain in the section we just read. This was written in the time when Israel had returned to Jerusalem after years of exile. They had been expecting that everything would be perfect after their return, and they found instead that things were still difficult. There were obstacles yet to overcome, and they found themselves wondering where God was in all of this. Isaiah says that God has hidden from Israel, because of their sins. Even their righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. Things are so bad that even when they do right, they do wrong, and are left feeling that God is missing. The consequences of decisions we make, even good ones, can be painful, and we can be left wondering, “where is God in this?”
As we ask ourselves “where is God?” we also must ask ourselves, “what kind of God are we looking for? What kind of God do we long for in this dark and troubled time? What kind of God is it that we are dreaming of in this season?” Are we, like Isaiah, dreaming of a warrior God, who “would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake…so that nations might tremble”? We may feel that this is who we’re seeking – a God who will come and set things right, clear up the troubles that we have caused, set the markets right, clean up the seas and the air, put our adversaries in their place. Indeed, that may be the God we dream of in our darkest moments, as it seems that we are at our loneliest. We, like our psalmist, may pray,

O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
9But those who seek to destroy my life
shall go down into the depths of the earth;
10they shall be given over to the power of the sword,
they shall be prey for jackals.

Yet Isaiah reminds us, God is our Father, our potter, our Creator. God comes to us, yes. God comes to us to support us and be with us in our darkest moment. Just when the nights are longest, just when we are at our coldest, and our most lonely, just when we are sure that we will have nothing before us ever again but our dreams, God comes to us. But God comes, not as a warrior, bent on destruction. No, God comes to us as a baby, a little vulnerable human being, bent on reconciliation and relation. At our darkest moment, when we long for those who know us as well as anyone can and who love us anyway, God comes to us in human form, and says to us, “I know you better even than you know yourself. And I love you enough to live in the broken world alongside you. And I love you enough to own everything that you are and everything that you have done.” And the light begins to shine, and our dreams begin to fade, and we begin to awake to the reality of God’s promises.

Thanksgiving Day (Luke 17:11-19)

Five blocks north of the University of Washington in Seattle, near the corner of 50th and University, there was a little storefront painted Mediterranean blue. The sign, blue letters on a white background, read “Sahara” and had little camels painted on it. Frankly, it was not very promising-looking, had little street-appeal. Inside, there were 15 small tables with white tablecloths and glass tops. The walls were decorated with paintings done on white ceramic tiles, portraying the heroes of the owners, including Dwight D. Eisenhower, though the place of honor and largest painting showed the “Mahmoud grandparents,” the parents of Gus, the owner. Gus and his family were from Lebanon, and they ran the restaurant themselves, with their one employee, a gracious waiter from Morocco. Gus and his wife did the cooking, including the handmade baklava. Their son and his wife helped with the cooking and serving, and the grandkids were often to be found playing or doing homework or helping out. The food was wonderful – I still dream of their lemon chicken and shish kebabs. But what made it a truly memorable restaurant, one that we went back to over and over, was that Gus made it his business to invite everyone who walked through the door into this family, if only for a few minutes. When you walked in the door, he greeted you at the door with a huge smile and wide arms, and showed you to a seat. If it was your second or seventieth time there he remembered you. As he showed you to your seat, he asked about your health, your family, your life, and pulled the chair out for you. Whenever you thanked him, whether for seating you or for bringing water, he responded in a huge booming voice, “You are welcome!” And you knew that you were indeed welcome, in every sense of the word. And it was Gus’ great pleasure to be the source of that welcome for the time that you spent in his restaurant.
It is God’s great pleasure to be the source of that welcome for you in the world. And, like Gus, God wants to offer that welcome directly to you. So much did God want to offer that welcome directly, “in person” so to speak, that God came into the world as a human being, as Jesus Christ. In today’s story, we see an example of the welcome that God came to share. Jesus, walking along the road, enters a village and is approached by ten lepers. These are the last people to expect any welcome from Jesus, since they receive no welcome from anyone else they meet. Yet they approach him and ask him for mercy. And Jesus gives it to them. He tells them to go to the priests, and on the way they were made clean. Jesus doesn’t require anything of them, he simply sends them to the priests. It seems that they don’t even have to go there, since they are made well on their way to the priests. We don’t really know what happened to nine of them from that point on. They may have done exactly what Jesus told them to – gone to the priests. They have obeyed Jesus’ command, and they are anxious to have the priests restore them to society now that they are clean. They can’t be blamed for that.
But one, a Samaritan, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. But Jesus looked around for the other nine, “where are they?” We often hear Jesus’ remark here as scolding. Like when someone gives my daughter Grace a gift, and I nag, “Say thank you!” Read one way, Jesus says, “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God?” But read another way we might hear the longing in Jesus’ voice, the desire to know where they are, so that he can go and find them, and know them and be their friend. “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God?” In that reading, we hear Jesus’ desire to say “You are welcome!” He has said it to the one who came back, but he still wants to share the welcome of God with those other nine. Jesus wants more than a healing, Jesus wants wholeness. Jesus wants more than a quick encounter in the street, Jesus wants a relationship. God wants a relationship.
It was for relationship that God came to us, that God continues to come to us. Over and over, God tells us, “You are welcome!” We first hear that message in the promises of baptism, when we are welcomed into the body of Christ, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross. “You are welcome!” We hear it each week when we join in the Eucharist, a word that comes from the Greek for thanksgiving or grateful. While we give thanks for God’s willing sacrifice for our sake, God again offers God’s own self to us in bread and wine. “You are welcome!” And we hear it from one another, in so many ways, when we offer friendship, support, prayers, fellowship, and love. “You are welcome!” Our friend Gus chose to carry out his calling from God by opening a restaurant and sharing God’s welcome with all who entered. Each of us is called to offer God’s loving welcome to one another. Christ Church Lutheran practices hospitality and welcome with one another, and is intentionally working to turn that hospitality outward to our neighbors. It is a challenge, but it is also a joy. Gus has retired now, and the Sahara has closed. But I will always remember the hospitality that Gus offered me and so many others. It was genuine, it was a joy. It was an inspiration to learn how to share the same joy that Gus always took in saying to each person he hosted, “You are welcome!”
We are called to receive that welcome as well. God desires relationship with us so much that God came to earth in human form, as a tiny baby. God desires relationship with us so much that the Father gave His only Son to die for us. And for that, we give our thanks, not only today, but every day. God wants our thanks, not because God needs it, but because God wants the chance to say to us, “You are welcome!”

Parable of the Talents

In the movie Babette’s Feast, Babette, a French woman living in a remote part of northern Denmark, spends every penny of her lottery winnings preparing an elaborate meal. She serves it to the two sisters she works for and their small congregation, in celebration of their father and founder’s 100th birthday. But this community worries more about the dangers of good food and wine, and fails to recognize the incredible gift that Babette has offered. As it turns out, she was once a renowned chef, and in preparing this meal, she is not only offering her money, but also her extraordinary abilities. Yet when a visiting general comments on the soup, the man next to him replies, “I think it will probably snow all day tomorrow!”
In my short time here at Christ Church Lutheran, I have met some incredibly gifted people. Not only are they gifted in their abilities, from music to leadership, from hospitality to fix-it-ness, and a huge variety of others, but, like Babette, they are gifted in their desire to share those abilities. I should say, you are gifted in the desire to share your abilities. And I see a desire not only to share your gifts with one another, but with the community. This congregation has made a decision to be a transforming congregation, to be a transformed congregation, not for your own sake, but for the sake of the community and for the glory of God.
I am blessed to be at Christ Church at a very special time in the life of this congregation. In Greek, it is called a kairos time. A time of receptivity, a time of openness to what God is up to, a time of pausing to listen and to see what is stirring. It is often translated as opportunity, or right time. Kairos is a word that is about the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. When Jesus begins his ministry in the book of Mark, he says “The time is fulfilled, the kairos is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near.” This is the context into which you offer your gifts, whether they are gifts of money or gifts of time or gifts of ability. The in-breaking Kingdom of God, here at Christ Church Lutheran, in the company of the Body of Christ, is where you bring and share your gifts.
But it’s scary to offer our gifts nonetheless. We see that fear in the words of the third slave in today’s gospel reading. “I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground.” Even if we do not believe that God is as the slave described the master, “harsh, reaping where you did not sow, gathering where you did not scatter seed,” we may experience community that way. Though we would hope that the church would be different, we are human, we are sinners as well as saints, and we fall short of the call that we have, to receive one another graciously. And so, it is often with fear that people meet us, the church community, and it is often with fear that we meet one another. We fear rejection, we fear humiliation, we fear being taken advantage of, and so we hide our talents in the ground. We fear that, like Babette, our gifts will go unrecognized, and while we pour ourselves out for them, people will talk about the weather.
But there is another word that is spoken in today’s text. Twice the master says, “enter into the joy of your master!” The Greek word for “joy” is chara. It is not actually related to kairos time, but the words echo one another. Chara means joy, and its relative chairo means rejoice. It is what the Magi did when the star stopped over the stable where the baby Jesus lay. They chairo-ed with great chara. They rejoiced with great joy. As we talked about in the adult forum Bible study a couple weeks ago, the magi were overwhelmed with joy. They were struck by an almost external wave of joy that washed over them and overwhelmed them. And then “they knelt down and paid him homage.” They worshipped.
In today’s text, that word comes again – enter into the chara, enter into the joy, of your master. It is a joy that is already there, and an invitation that is already there, no matter how, or even if, we choose to use our gifts. And it is a joy that is already there, no matter how, or even if, those gifts are received as we might hope. In spite of their selves, the dinner guests find themselves transformed by Babette’s feast. They find old jealousies and rivalries melting away, and they end the evening holding hands, dancing around the well in the center of the village, singing a song of worship and service. The Spirit moves through Babette’s gift, in spite of those who would ignore it.
And that is our calling: setting aside our fear, trusting that the Spirit will take care of how our gifts are used and received, we are called to enter the space where kairos time, God’s opportune moment, meets chara, the joy of our master, meets indeed the joy of our own hearts. We are called to hear what God is up to in this moment and to enter into that with our own passions and our own gifts. We are called to transform and to be transformed by the intersection of God’s kairos time and chara joy. In this way, our offering of time, of money, of ability, becomes something more than mere volunteerism. It becomes the mission of the Body of Christ in the world. It becomes the overwhelming joy that moves us to worship. It becomes worship.
What is the passion, the joy, the chara, of Christ Church Lutheran? What are the needs of our community, both inside this building and out, that our passion might serve? That is the question that this kairos time has set before us. As we listen, we will surely hear God’s answer, and God’s kairos time, God’s in-breaking kingdom, will collide with our God-given chara and passion. And the results will be spectacular!

All Saints Day

For All Saints Day today, we took all of the names of those who had died in the history of the congregation and hung them around the sanctuary. Our inspiration came from Hebrews 12, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us..." We also collected names of loved ones outside the congregation. At the end of the day, we had over a thousand names hung on individual slips of paper, in chronological order by date of death. You can see the installation, and a few of our family's saints by clicking here.

Matt 22:15-22 and Isaiah 45: a sermon

What is it like to live in exile? Or in an occupied country? Happily, for most of us here, that question is only speculation. Most of us live where we want to live, in a country where we are more or less free. Whether you agree with the current political administration, whether you think we should vote for McCain or Obama next month, most of us here have the right to vote, to help in the decision-making process, and to live where we want. We have some obligations that come along with those rights, but we are neither in exile, nor occupied.
The people that we read about in today’s gospel text are in a very different position from us. The principle actors in the gospel text, Pharisees and Herodians, the crowd watching, and Jesus himself, are all living under occupation. This nation has been occupied or in exile for nearly all of its history. They managed to hold their own for a short time after they conquered Canaan, but throughout their history, Israel have been fighting off one empire after another, they have been exiled to Babylon and brought home, and now they are under the rule of the Romans. How does this nation make any sense of the world around them? How can this nation understand what God is up to?
One way they have made sense of history is to realize that God is God of all, not just of Israel. In the first reading, Isaiah calls Cyrus the Lord’s anointed. In the original Hebrew is says that Cyrus is the Lord’s messiah. In Greek it says that Cyrus is the Lord’s Christ. Scandalous! How can this title be applied to Cyrus, the king of Persia, a gentile who does not even know the Lord? But it was this Cyrus who ended Israel’s exile, who returned them to their homeland and helped them to rebuild their temple. So Isaiah teaches that God can choose to work for Israel’s good through someone outside Israel, even through someone who rules over Israel.
This is where the Pharisees and Jesus and the crowds are living. On the one hand, they are occupied, and often brutalized by their occupiers. On the other hand, they know that God can work through this situation. In today’s story, they are each trying to make sense of how God is at work in this occupation. They are each trying to determine how they are called to act next. The coin at the center of the conversation is far more than a coin. This coin, imprinted with the emperor’s face, is a symbol of authority. The question at the center of the conversation is not, should we pay our taxes, even if we don’t like our government? If that were the question, Jesus has sidestepped it better than the best politician. We do not get an answer to that question at all. The question at the center of the conversation, rather, is “who has authority?”
Jesus’ opposition have laid a clever trap for him here. They come to him, flattering him with their insincere praise, and then ask him, “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” Since there is nothing in Scripture that forbids paying taxes to a ruling government, and as I said, the Hebrews have had plenty of time to test that under previous empires, you can bet that these guys already know the answer to their own question. Jesus knows, as we do, that this is a trap. If he answers “no, don’t pay taxes,” they can turn him over to the Romans for sedition. If he answers, “yes, pay taxes,” the crowds watching will lose their zeal for Jesus and turn against him. Those who are plotting against him have laid the perfect trap. Either Jesus is a rebel and a traitor, or he is a collaborator and a patsy.
Rather than answer their question, Jesus asks to see the coin with which the tax is paid. This census tax can only be paid with a Roman coin, imprinted with the face of Tiberius Caesar. When his questioners produce it, Jesus asks them, “whose image is on this coin, and whose inscription?” They answer him, “Caesar’s, the emperor’s.”
In that short interaction, Jesus shows the crowd who the real collaborators are. They all know that there should not be any coins with the image of Caesar on them anywhere in the Temple compound. The moneychangers that Jesus kicked out the day before were in the Temple precisely because these Roman coins were not allowed. Furthermore, since they bear the image of Caesar, and an inscription claiming Caesar’s godhood, no good Jew should carry one, certainly not a Jew so righteous as a Pharisee claims to be. By asking them to produce the coin, Jesus has shown the crowd that the Pharisees are in fact collaborating with the Romans. He has demonstrated that, for the Pharisees, authority lies with the Romans.
In truth, this is a sensible position. The Pharisees know their history. They trust in God’s promises, and believe that God will act for the good of Israel in order to fulfill those promises. “If we are oppressed, if we are occupied,” figure the Pharisees, “God must have a reason. Until that reason is revealed, therefore, we should respect the earthly authority of the Romans, through which God has chosen to act.” Though they are not exactly thrilled with Roman rule, the Pharisees are not going to out-and-out rebel, either. They’re in the go-along-to-get-along camp. A very sensible position for those who have been under one empire or another for centuries.
The crowd, too, were waiting for God’s promises to be fulfilled. They, too, believed that God would act for the good of Israel. And they, too, looked to a governmental authority to carry it out. But the crowd were looking for the Messiah, who would reestablish the Davidic kingship. The Messiah, as God’s anointed, would overthrow Roman rule, and authority would once again rest with the nation of Israel, through its earthly ruler. For both the Pharisees and the crowds, the kingdom of God would be ushered in by the authority of some earthly governmental body.
Jesus, however, rejects both of these scenarios. When Jesus says, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” he calls attention to the image of Caesar on the coin, the symbol of authority that the government circulates. That image is posted throughout the Roman Empire, on coins, statues, temples, everywhere that someone needs to be reminded of Caesar’s authority. But Jesus does not stop with Caesar. Caesar’s is not the final word. Jesus continues, “render unto God the things that are God’s,” and calls attention to the image of God that is everywhere around him. Each face that he sees, the faces of the Pharisees, the faces of the crowd, Jesus reminds them, bears the image of God, as Genesis 1 says. It is there, in the place of God’s image, that authority rests on earth. “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” Give Caesar his place, he has his proper authority. But that is not the authority that brings in the kingdom.
“And unto God the things that are God’s.” We are each created in God’s image, and God’s is the authority that brings in the kingdom. John the Baptist proclaimed that the kingdom had drawn near, and Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom. In our baptism, we are each sealed with the cross of Christ, and given the authority that is ours in the freedom that Christ has won for us. Jesus took his own words seriously, rendering himself up to both Caesar and God, dying on the cross as a rebel and a criminal, bearing all of the sins of the world. In the conversation about the coin, Jesus reminded the Pharisees and the crowd that they had authority to act freely as children of God, no matter who their government was, oppressed or exiled or ruling their own kingdom. And baptized into his death and resurrection, we now bear Christ’s authority and freedom to usher in the kingdom. We don’t have to wait for the government to act, or to see who will win the election and what economic policies they will employ. As the Body of Christ, we have all authority in heaven and on earth, to draw the kingdom near today, for the sake of our neighbor. Amen

Sermon on Matt 20:1-16

     I’ve been keeping a log of the things that happen in my house that aren’t fair. With a 6-year old daughter, I am kept constantly updated on them. “It’s not fair,” she says, at least four times a day. Here is a sampling of this week’s unfair things: You can't have dessert yet, you haven't finished your dinner. "But Holden is eating his dessert - it's not fair!" Time to come in and get ready for bed. "But we're not done playing - it's not fair!" Time for bed. "But I didn't get to watch a movie today. It's not fair." Holden is watching a movie. “I don’t want to watch this movie! It’s not fair!” A woman I met at Holden Village this summer gave me a great solution to this last one. When her daughter complained that her younger brother got to pick the movie, and they should take turns, this mother said, “Well, you got to pick for 4 years before he was born, so let’s have him pick for the next 4 years, and then you can start taking turns.” How’s that for fair?
     Of course, what Grace means by fair does not match the dictionary definition. That’s always the problem with “fair.” Each of us has an idea of what fair is and they rarely match. In the Gospel reading today, we hear another “No fair!” story. Jesus tells a parable about the landowner who goes again and again to the marketplace looking for workers. Some come and work a full day, from sun-up to sundown. The man agrees to pay them the usual daily wage. Some only work a couple hours. When he hires these, he just says, “I will pay you whatever is right.” At the end of the day, when it comes time to pay them, he pays all of them the same amount, no matter how long they worked. Those who worked all day grumble about it, and cry “no fair!” And I have to agree with them. What would the world come to if everyone behaved like that landowner? How many people lined up to work for him the next day at dawn? How many at 5pm? This is no way to run a business! Is that what we are supposed to do with this parable? Figure out what is right in our economic dealings? It can certainly be applied that way.
     Maria worked for a church, 6 hours a week, at $12 an hour, cleaning the building. She cobbled together her living through several similar arrangements. Her English wasn’t good, and she often communicated through notes written by her son. Once, when she was in a car accident, she spent 24 hours in the hospital, and then came straight to work, since it was her regular day. She brought her son with to help. She didn’t want to go over the agreed-upon 6 hours, but she was moving a bit slow from her injuries. She had an aging father who lived abroad, and when he got sick, she wanted to go be with him. She asked the pastor, through her son’s translation, whether she could have two weeks of paid time off. The pastor, not knowing quite how to answer, turned to the stewardship team. “What should we do? Do we have a policy on this?” At first, they came back with the expected answers. They seemed to be in agreement: “We would love to give her the paid time off, but that’s just not done! People who work 6 hours a week don’t get that. If that was the norm, of course we would do it, but we just don’t do that here in America.” Then one of them, the treasurer, took the question to prayer. And he remembered this parable. What was it that the grumblers said, the ones who started first and were paid last? What was their complaint? Not that those who came late got paid the same. It was “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us…” In his prayers, he asked, what is God calling us to do as a Church? How can we allow the kingdom to break in here? How can this parable give us some sense of that kingdom; how can we make Maria, who works only 6 hours, equal to those who work full time? It seemed like offering her paid time off would be one simple way to “make her equal.” So he sent an email. The response was overwhelmingly different this time. Of course! We are in charge here. We can decide to do things differently. They gave Maria her time off, paid in full.
     Well, that is certainly a practical application of this parable. And a good one. But is this a parable about economics? Are we to apply it to the stock market? Are we to reduce Jesus to a professor at a business school? No. There is a lot more going on in this story. What we learn from this story is that God is not interested in economics. At least not in the way we are. God is interested in people. God is interested in economics only insomuch as economics affect people. When Maria received her paid time off, it was not about the money – it was what, $150? It was about seeing Maria as equal in dignity and deservedness to someone who works 40 hours a week. In fact, Maria probably works far more than 40 hours a week, just not all for one employer. Regardless, by setting aside the conventions, the relationship between Maria and the church changed. The stewardship team’s focus shifted, from seeing Maria as an employee, a means of getting the building cleaned, to seeing her as an individual, someone living her own story, a valued child of God. God calls us to relationship, both with God and with one another. And relationship, true relationship, is not an economic arrangement. True relationship is not about what is fair.
     This is the point that Jonah missed. After all of his running away from God’s call to go to Nineveh, being thrown overboard, swallowed by a “great fish,” and spit up on the shore, Jonah finally gets to Nineveh and tells them God’s message, in the most cursory fashion possible. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” he told them. Unlike most of the prophetic speeches in the Old Testament, there is no call to repentance, no listing of crimes. Jonah doesn’t want to be here, doesn’t want Nineveh to be spared, and so does not give them anything more than the bare minimum. “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” But God works through this unwilling prophet anyway! God moves the people of Nineveh to repent – and not just the people, but the animals too. All of Nineveh repents, and “God renounced the punishment He had planned to bring upon them, and did not carry it out.” And how does Jonah’s react? “No fair! See God, this is what I said in the first place! I just knew you were going to be merciful, once you and Nineveh got to know each other! And I didn’t want mercy for Nineveh! That’s why I didn’t want to come here! That’s why I didn’t want to introduce you!” Jonah is so indignant; he would rather die than see God’s mercy for a place like Nineveh. But God is not interested in what’s fair. God is interested in relationship. The people, and even the animals, of Nineveh have turned “back from evil ways and injustice,” and they are “crying mightily to God,” (as chapter 3 says). These are people who want a relationship with God. Should God strike them down just at the hour of their desire to know God? If Jonah has his way, yes. If fairness has its way, yes. But God is not interested in fairness. God is interested in relationship.
     Jonah and the workers in the vineyard see the world in terms of reward and punishment, in terms of equal exchange in economic arrangements. And so do we, most of the time. But of course, at the beginning of the day, all of the workers were unemployed, standing idle in the marketplace. It is not until the landowner comes to them that they have any hope of receiving anything at all that day. And that is the real moment of grace. It is not at the end of the day, when all are made equal by being given equal pay. The real reward is in the landowner who repeatedly comes to the marketplace and invites the workers into the vineyard. Isn’t it funny how our first instinct is to identify with those workers who were there the longest, and “deserved” more than the ones who started late? But really, if I’m honest with myself, I know that I’m more like the one who started at the end of the day. I’m desperate, and I’m willing to take whatever I get. And when I get it, and it’s better than I deserve, I rejoice. I keep my mouth shut and hope that no one notices the mistake! I forget that I’ve already received the real moment of God’s grace. In my baptism, and even before my baptism, God came to me and invited me into relationship. 2000 years ago, Christ came and invited the world into relationship. 21 years ago, at my baptism, Christ came and invited me into relationship. Today, in their baptism, Christ invites Cordell Richard and Elizabeth into relationship. The work that we do in the vineyard is in response to that generous gift. The work that we do in our lives is in response to that invitation. The work that we offer to God is our response to our relationship with God. At the end of the day, the true reward is not in some equal exchange to preserve the rules of fairness, “I give you this, you give me that.” The true reward is in the gift of God’s love, that moved God to come to us, to die for us, and to give us everlasting life. Christ comes to again and again, offering us relationship again and again. We see that in the meal that we share together today, Christ coming to us in the bread and the wine, renewing and strengthening that relationship. And we respond, and are gladly sent forth into service, not for the reward we will receive, but because of the reward we have already received. Amen.

A Sermon on Matt 16:13-20

“Who do you say that I am?” Could we find a more fitting question for our society? We spend so much of our lives asking this very question. We ask it of ourselves, and we ask it of one another. “Who do you say that I am?” It starts early, and we take the answer seriously. When I was 5, I had a short little haircut like Dorothy Hamill, the Olympic figure skater. Unfortunately, the haircut was where the resemblance ended. I was a little stick straight girl, with a deep voice. Some kids in my class teased me after I got my hair cut and told me I looked like a boy. I was devastated. I wore pink for a year after that, just to prove to everyone I was a girl. When my dad asked me what color I wanted to have my new room painted, I said pink. And when he painted the ceiling white, I got upset. “No! You said I could have the whole room pink!” I was determined to prove my femininity through the use of the color pink. That is how much I was affected by who people said I was.
As I got older, I got more sophisticated about constructing an identity that allowed me to decide who people would say that I am. In fact, as a society we have gotten more sophisticated about this. Once upon a time, you were what you did, more or less. You were a farmer, or a butcher, or a merchant; you were what your parents were. You knew who others were because everyone from the same class wore the same clothes, and most towns were small enough that you had a pretty good idea who was who. As society got more complicated, people from all these different backgrounds came together and it was harder to tell one class from another. We began to have more control over who people say we are. Today, we decide by what we wear, what music we listen to, what tattoos we have, what car we drive, where we live. We can spend hours setting our Facebook page up just right, with just the right picture on it, trying to control the answer to “who do people say that I am?”
But we don’t control the answer. Just as we are not books for someone else to read, others are not computers for us to control input and output. Relationships are messy, people are messy, and we never entirely get one another, no matter how hard we try. And no matter how much we might like to think that it doesn’t matter to us, it still hurts when someone answers wrong. One commentary I read suggested that we “moderns” are more concerned with the question “who am I?” than with “who do others say I am?” I don’t think that’s quite true. We care what others say about us. We care a lot. There’s a lot at stake when it comes to who others say we are.
Veronica was a woman in her mid-60s who had recently had surgery for lung cancer. The nurses on the unit where I was serving as chaplain told me that she was depressed, but that she refused to take her medications. She was, as they say, “noncompliant.” They asked me to speak to her – maybe a visit from a chaplain could convince her to be “compliant.” I don’t know if they expected me to put the fear of God into her or what, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt for her to visit with someone different, in any case. What I found was a friendly, rather mischievous woman. She sat in a chair near the door, watching everything that happened, a sly grin on her face as she sized up each person who passed by. “That guy keeps stealing my popcicles,” she said. “That woman has it worse than me.” She shared with me that this had been her 41st surgery – she had been through everything from open heart surgery to a mastectomy. She was sick of being in the hospital, and just wanted to get back to her regular care facility. At least there, she said, she could stand the food.
I visited with her for about an hour. During that time, she was talkative and open with me, but that changed, depending on who was in the room. With the lab technician who checked her blood sugar, she was friendly and inquisitive. “Hey,” she said, “did you have open heart surgery, too?” Her sharp eyes didn’t miss much, and she had noticed the scar just at the opening of the young woman’s V-neck scrubs. “Yes, when I was 5,” replied the tech. “Well, then, we match!” said Veronica, with an air of satisfaction. With the young Hispanic woman who changed the linens, she was positively beaming and bubbly. They shared a hug before the woman left. But all of this changed when the doctor came into the room. Suddenly, Veronica’s face became flat, drawn, completely unreadable. She kept her eyes down and to the side, almost never looking him in the face. As he tried to convince her to take anti-depressants, she tried to convince him that she was not depressed. If I had not seen her just a few moments before, I might have sided with him. But now, I was not so sure. Who was I going to say that she was?
Who do people say that I am? “Elijah, John the Baptist, Jeremiah.” The disciples answers make good sense. Jesus works miracles, he proclaims the word of God and the coming of the kingdom. He scolds those in power and calls attention to the marginalized. Jesus’ ministry reminded the disciples, and us, that God has sent messengers before. These answers give a quick history lesson – God has tried time and again to get people to pay attention; God has sided with the poor and the outcast before; God has spent a lot of time trying to get the powerful to listen to what God calls them to be – God cares what people say about one another. But Jeremiah was brutally persecuted, to the point where he begged God to leave him alone; and John the Baptist just died at the hands of Herod. Not only do these answers remind us what God has been up to in the past, but we’re given a foreshadowing of what is to come for Jesus.
After their answer, Jesus doesn’t say whether they are right or wrong, but he changes the question. “Who do you say that I am?” He is now asking the disciples what they think. The “you” in this sentence is plural – he is asking all of them, but only one of them responds. Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” With this answer, Peter gets it right. But even then, does he really know who Jesus is? Does he really understand? The very next passage, which we’ll read next week, shows Peter misunderstanding the meaning of this declaration so badly that Jesus calls him Satan! Poor Peter, even when he gets it right, he gets it wrong. And Jesus cares about what Peter thinks of him. He cares enough to correct it, not only with words, but with actions.
Jesus knows that Peter speaks truly when he says “you are the Son of the living God,” and he knows that Peter doesn’t entirely know what he’s saying – “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven.” And then Jesus turns the whole scene around. No longer is he asking who others say he is, suddenly he is telling them who they are. Simon, you are now Peter, the rock. Jesus names him Peter, gives him a new identity borne out of this faith, bound up in his confession, in his naming Jesus as God. But that confession is not Peter’s doing – it is God who has worked this faith in him. God cares what people say – God cares enough to send the Son into the world, to live with us and to die with us. God cares enough to send the Spirit into the world, to guide us to faith.
After the doctor left, I asked Veronica what had happened there? Why had her demeanor changed so much with him? “He doesn’t listen to me. I tell him I’m not depressed, but he just doesn’t listen. Maybe he’s right, maybe I am depressed. But I don’t think so.” She looked at me, “What do you think?” “Well,” I said, “I’m not an expert. But I’ll tell you one thing I hear from you that I can name is frustration.” She seized on the word like a life preserver. “That’s it! That’s the word! I’m frustrated! I’ve been here for weeks and I’m not getting better. I’m frustrated!” She seemed so relieved to have a different word, one that didn’t require medication to treat. Once she had a name for it, she began to get power over it. Once she had a name for it, she could assert it, use it, make the doctor see it as the right name.
This is the point in the sermon where I’m supposed to tell you not to worry about what others label you. I’m supposed to say that it’s not about who you are, but about whose you are. And of course, that is true. You are a child of God, first and foremost. Like Peter, God works faith in you. And just like Peter, your identity comes from God. In your baptism, you are named and claimed by Christ. When you come to the table and share communion, Christ is saying to you, “Child of God, I name you. On you I am building my church.”
But it’s also not that simple, is it? It matters what others think of us. It matters that the doctor was calling Veronica depressed. It matters a great deal – once that’s on your medical records, it affects how every single doctor you see from now on treats you. Of course, if someone is depressed, then it’s best to get the medical help for it. But whether it’s the right name or not, it matters! It matters a lot! The next time the doctor came in, he said, “Veronica, I think you’re depressed.” And she said, “I’m not depressed, I’m frustrated! And here’s why! Now, if you have a medication for frustration, let’s talk about it. Otherwise, we’re done with this conversation!” Veronica had something to hold onto in that conversation, and she found that it gave her power, even some freedom, that she hadn’t known she had before.
God cares about this question. “Who do people say that I am?” God wants us to know who God is. God wants us to know so much that God came into the world, became human, lived a human life, and died a human death. God did all of this because God loves us so much, enough to care who we say God is. God did this because he loves you so much, enough to care who you say God is. And in doing so, God gives you a name to cling to. Like Veronica, asserting herself as “frustrated” not “depressed,” you have a life preserver. Like Peter, Jesus has called you by name – a new name, borne out of your relationship with God. Even if you turn around the next moment and screw it up, that name is still yours, and you can cling to it, and you can use it to counter whatever other names are thrown your way.
We have to live in the world, and we are going to care what others say about us. In Christ, we have been given a new name, a new word for ourselves that we can use. We can care what others say, but we can also know that they do not know the whole story. Only God knows the whole story about me, about you. Only God knows what it means that I have been called be a new name. Whatever else they say, I have a name that I cling to. Jesus has spoken to me in my baptism, “blessed are you, Aimee Appell! You are indeed a child of God!”

Hagar and Ishmael - A Sermon from the Hospital

Tell me a story. My daughter asks me all the time for stories, and she wants them to be interesting. What makes a good story? They need to have plot twists and they need to keep her attention. Whether it’s Winnie-the-Pooh, or other, lesser literature, it is the unexpected part of the story that keeps us interested. It is the unexpected twists and turns that keep our attention, make us laugh or cry, that make us care what happens to the characters. What’s your favorite story? I love the classics – Jane Austin and Charles Dickens are two of my favorites. I also love TV – I’ve been following Lost since it first came on – and movies like Indiana Jones. I love to follow their characters as they make mistakes and get surprised by life. It is deliciously frustrating to see pitfalls coming and to watch them fall into them in spite of their best intentions. And it is gratifying, after all of that frustration and trouble, to finally see them reach their happy ending – the kind ones receive kindness, the mean ones receive just rewards, and those who deserve to, live happily ever after. Tell me a story.

But of course, in real life, it is never so much fun to receive plot twists. It is never so delicious to follow frustrations and pitfalls. No, in real life these surprises are often painful and all too costly. Even when they are of our own making, they often lead us to unexpected and unwelcome journeys. It is difficult to see how anyone gets what they truly deserve in life. It is difficult to see how anyone ever expects to live happily ever after. But that is just when God says, “Tell me a story,” just as in the reading today he said to Hagar, “What troubles you?” God is not asking an idle question here. God is not toying with Hagar. He truly wants to know her story – what brought her here, what frightens her, what she expects of the future. And then God pulls that story to God’s self, and makes her story his own.

In the story that we read today from Genesis, Hagar and Sarah and Abraham are three people who got caught up in the twists and turns of their story. Sometimes these twists are of their own making. Sarah and Abraham had received a promise from God, the promise that they would be the parents of a great nation, and their offspring would be as numerous as the stars. But they misunderstood the promise. Believing that the promise was only for Abraham, Sarah insisted that he have a child with Hagar, her maid. Of course, anyone who knows anything about stories knows that this will only lead to trouble. Abraham is a good man, and he treats his first-born son as a good man should. Perhaps he also treats his son’s mother well; perhaps he even loves her. Whatever the case, Sarah is going to be jealous. We know it before it even happens, because this is what happens in stories. Already, Sarah has brought trouble on herself. She now has to adjust to a future in which she is no longer the only woman in Abraham’s life. Worse, she has to adjust to Abraham’s first-born son, by tradition his heir and possibly his favorite, being the son of another woman. Whether or not she bears the promised son, we know that there will be trouble. Luckily for Sarah, she already knows the promises God has made for Isaac’s future. She just doesn’t want to share them. Now Sarah must adjust to a new and different future, one of her own making.

Abraham must adjust to a new and different future as well. He had gotten used to being childless, and God informs him that this will change. He has gotten used to having Sarah for his wife, and Sarah informs him that he must take another woman into his bed. When at last he has not one but two sons to inherit the promises, he is informed that he must part with one of them. He must send his first-born son, Ishmael, and the boy’s mother out into the wilderness. We know that he loves Isaac, the child of Sarah. And we also know that he cares for Hagar and her son, that he was distressed on account of them. He had likely been looking forward to an old age watching the boys grow up together, enjoying their company, and being the patriarch of a large household. Now he must adjust to a new and different future, one in which the jealousies of the women and the rivalries of his sons are the deciding factors. Luckily for Abraham, he already knows that both boys will receive God’s favor, that God will take care of Ishmael as well as Isaac. Now, though he is assured of their future, he must adjust to his own.

Hagar has to adjust to a new and different future as well, one which, as far as she knows, holds nothing for her and her son but fear, probably even death. She is completely at the mercy of others. As a slave, a handmaid, she has no choice but to leave when she is cast out. No one defends her claim, and she must leave. Friendless, defenseless, forced first to lay with a man not her husband, then to bear his child, now she is being forced to leave his camp, going to certain death in the wilderness. She must adjust, not so much to a new and different future, as to a lack of a future, both for herself and for her son. She has been forced into it by others’ meanness and jealousies, by others’ lack of trust. She has not heard any word of promise or assurance from God, as Sarah and Abraham have. What kind of story can she look forward to? What troubles you, Hagar?

What troubles you? What kind of story do you look forward to? Hagar has a story in her mind that is primarily about death for herself and her son. That is the story that many of us here at Abbot Northwestern are familiar with. And there are many other stories going on here today – stories of loss, pain, anxiety, even some stories of celebration. Despair is just one of the thousands of stories held in these walls. What troubles you? God is asking. God really wants to know. When we have given up on happy endings or just desserts, God is asking, “what troubles you?” It is easy to miss God’s question. When we are hurting, or when we are watching loved ones hurting, our focus closes in, and all we can see is this moment, this time, this story. All we hear is this moment, this time, this story. It is easy to block out God’s question, to miss God’s gently urging to share, “what troubles you?”

Like the rest of us, Hagar’s focus has closed in to the story in front of her, and she is not hearing or seeing what God has put before her. What Hagar forgets in her moment of despair, what she perhaps never knew, is that hers is not the only story at work. Her story is part of a larger story, the story of God’s work in the world. Even as she despairs over the end of the story, God is at work making this story God’s own. Sarah had heard God’s promises for Isaac, and Abraham had heard God’s promises for both of his sons, but it is not until here, in the desert, when things are at their very worst that Hagar is assured of God’s promises for her own son. Finally, when she is most uncertain of her story’s end, God assures her that her story is also God’s story. And suddenly, her focus opens up! Her eyes are opened and she sees the well of water. Her focus expands, and she finds refreshment and a future. “She went and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink.”

“What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid, for God has heard.” It seems odd that all throughout this story, Hagar’s son has been called “the boy” or “her son.” Nowhere in the story is he called by his name, Ishmael. But when read in Hebrew, something wonderful appears. The name Ishmael means “God heard,” and so verse 17, “And God heard the voice of the boy,” when read in Hebrew, (Vayishma Elohim) says “Ishmael.” In hearing the boy’s cries, God names the boy. In naming him, God claims him, drawing Ishmael’s story, and therefore Hagar’s story, into God’s story, making them God’s own.

We also are named and claimed by God. Though I am not named Ishmael, Ishmael is a promise to me that God hears, even and especially when I feel lost and in the wilderness. As Paul reminds us in his letter to the Romans, in baptism we are united with Christ. Our story is joined to the story of our crucified and resurrected Lord, who names and claims us in our baptism. For Christians, Jesus is God come into the world, and we know that God has claimed us. God went to death on a cross in order to join each of us where we are, in our suffering, in our despair. God went to death on a cross in order to join each of our stories to God’s. When we say, tell me a story, this is the story that we are told. This is the story: that my life, and your life, each one, is joined to the life of Christ, to the death of Christ, and to the resurrection of Christ. This is the story: that my story, your story, each one, is joined to God’s story. Knowing that, we know that God hears, and that God responds. Just like Hagar, we will receive refreshment, and comfort in knowing that God holds us, and hears us, even when we feel alone. That is our new and different future. That is our happy ending.

Weeds & Wheat - sermon on Matthew 13

Are you a weed or are you wheat? That’s the first place our minds go when we hear this parable – will I end up in the fire or the barn? Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a handy little quiz to help us figure it out? I actually had a quiz planned for you – I was working up this really clever little sermon, full of wit and punch, based on a magazine quiz that would tell you at the end which you were. But as I wrote it, it sounded trite. It sounded insincere. It sounded like I wasn’t quite serious. Also, it just wouldn’t work. My quiz kept coming up inconclusive, and I couldn’t make it work. Every question just proved the point I hoped to make at the end, which is that you just don’t know. I can’t tell which I am by looking at me, much less which you are. So that’s definitely one level of this story, one place that we can carry the metaphor. That’s where I was headed with the terribly clever sermon that I was going to write. But then I started writing this one and it went a whole new place, one that surprised me as I wrote it. So I left off of the sermon I was planning and went with the one that came out. Here it is.

Jesus told parables like this because he was trying to make a point in a way that people could get their brains around. Most of the people listening to this parable would have known a lot about raising wheat – it was an agrarian society, and they spent a lot of time in and around wheat fields. They relied heavily on the harvest to get them through the year. If the harvest were to come up short, they could be certain that there were going to be hard times ahead. As for me, I know very little about raising wheat. If I want bread, I go to the store. The closest I come to wheat is buying flour and baking my own bread… with a bread machine. I might see a little bit of a change in the price if the harvest is bad one year, but not by much.

However, I have been doing some gardening in the past few years, and I’ve learned a few things about it. I’ve learned that weeds usually come up in the best soil, where you’ve tilled and amended and fertilized. They also tend to plant themselves right next to another, better established plant. They take advantage of the work that other plants to breaking up the soil and reaching for nutrients, and then they follow. That means that their roots can get wrapped up with those of the more desirable plants. If you pull one, you often pull both. Another thing I’ve noticed is that weeds have developed over time to look like the plants they cozy up to. That’s what happened in this parable.

The weed that Jesus is talking about is known as “darnell.” When it’s young, it looks just like wheat. If the workers were to go out into the field then and start trying to pull up the weeds, they wouldn’t have much idea which one they were pulling. If they pulled half of what was there, they would be just as likely to pull all wheat as they would be to pull all weeds. Better to leave it at that point. Of course, as it gets older, you can tell the difference, and you could go out and pull all of the darnell out. But by then, the wheat and the weeds have grown up so close together, that you would pull both out by their intertwined roots. Either way you’d be left with half a harvest at best.

So what if you leave it, what are the consequences? Well, having weeds in the field means that there will be a lower yield. The weeds will suck up some of the nutrients and water that would otherwise go to the wheat. This means a lower yield at the harvest. Also, darnell is a poisonous plant, so if any of it is left in at the harvest, there will be poison mixed in with the wheat that goes into the barn. The harvesters will have to be extra careful, and the harvest will take more energy this year than normal. But overall, they will probably get closer to a full harvest by leaving the weeds where they are than they will by pulling them, either early in the season or later. So that’s the background of the parable. We can look at Jesus’ time and see how there were a lot of people that were being left out of the religious and political systems, people that Jesus spent more time talking to than most. We can imagine that Jesus was trying to encourage society not to judge others too quickly, that he was telling the Pharisees to lay off with their strict purity laws, or that he was telling the Romans to ease up on their persecution. We can also imagine that Matthew, who wrote this all down, was dealing with a church full of Gentiles and Jews, and that he was trying to get both groups to chill out and live together in some kind of truce. We can all imagine, and apply lessons learned to today’s community. But there’s something else about this that was bugging me as I was trying to write that sermon, where I ended with those lessons about how we can’t judge better than God.

I think one reason that I couldn’t go with the cheeky magazine quiz sermon is that I’ve been spending this summer serving as a chaplain at Abbott Northwestern hospital. Every day, I meet someone new, who is certain beyond certain that he or she is nothing but a weed in a field of wheat. When I walked into Rosa’s room, the shades were drawn and the lights were off. Rosa was lying on her side, curled up in a ball. The nurses had told me that I could go in and see her, but they didn’t expect I’d get much out of her. Her speech was slurred, they said, and she was barely coherent. Her chart seemed to have written her off as a hopeless alcoholic. Get her sober enough to get well, and get her out of here. When my eyes had adjusted, I saw that Rosa was wearing a hospital gown, no makeup, and her glasses were on the nightstand. She was ready enough to talk to me. When I told her I was a chaplain, she sat up a little, tried to adjust herself to be more presentable. She started to tell me about herself. Her speech was clear enough, though she had a central American accent, and a slight lisp. Of course, she had been stung in the face by a bee, and her tongue had swollen up, so that was to be expected, I guess. She told me that she had been trying for some time to overcome alcoholism, and had even had periods of sobriety. She had been sober for several months before this last bender. But she had to go back to his house, back to get her belongings and her immigration papers. He talked her back in the door, and she thought she could stay sober. He started drinking around her, and she thought she could have just one drink. He started beating her, and she numbed the pain. When she came to the hospital for this allergic reaction to a bee sting she had been drunk for several weeks straight. She desperately wanted to get better and to turn her life around. At the moment that I met her, she was awash in shame. Unfortunately, that was not helped by the attitude of the doctor who came in during our visit and patronizingly told her that she needed to get sober. It was obvious that he was thinking, “this is never going to happen, but I have to say it anyway.” I asked Rosa if she ever prayed. She responded, ““How can I pray, when I am so ashamed to talk to God? How can I pray when I have been living like this?”

Rosa has bought the messages that have been given to her for years. She has absorbed enough of the attitude of the doctor and others like him that she believes it herself. She has been beaten by her fiancée, sexually assaulted, verbally abused by her mother, and God only knows what else. And she drinks. She knows she shouldn’t drink but she can’t help it. She knows she shouldn’t love her fiancée, but she can’t help that either. And worst, she thinks that because she does these other things that she shouldn’t do, she shouldn’t pray either. How can she pray, when she is so ashamed? As far as she can tell, she has let her whole patch go. She’s given up fighting them, and she’s ready to raise a weed garden. But she also senses that there are other options. She senses that there might yet be beauty and fruit to be harvested. Rosa, like the rest of creation, is longing for redemption. Rosa, like the rest of creation, waits with eager longing. Rosa, like each of us, groans inwardly while waiting for adoption, and the redemption of her body.

But Paul tells us in today’s reading from Romans, “you have received a spirit of adoption… we are children of God.” This is an already-done thing. Even though we continue to long for redemption, the promise that we have from God, the promise to which we are heirs, is that the judgment has already happened. Christ is God’s judgment on us, and that judgment is that, in spite of all that we have done, in spite of all the weeds in our patch, we are adopted, we are children of God, and we are heirs to God’s promise of freedom. God’s judgment is that while we were yet sinners, God loved us, just as we are, weeds and all. God’s judgment is that God came to earth to be with us, and in Christ took all of our alcohol and abuse, our shame and pain, and everything else that we carry. Acting in Christ, God took it all with him up on the cross, and died for it, not to deepen our shame, but to remove it, to carry it away from us, and set it aside once and for all.

Each week we come in here and confess our sins and receive the assurance of forgiveness. Each week we come to the table and receive the promise of forgiveness and redemption in Christ’s body broken and blood poured out. Each day we wake up and try to live in the freedom that Christ has won for us. But every day, new weeds sneak in. Daily, then, we are tending this field, with God’s help. And daily God sends harvest workers, and helps us to gather up the weeds and discard them; helps us to gather up the wheat and shine like the sun in the kingdom. That’s why a community garden is such a good thing. We can’t do this alone. If we do, we wind up seeing nothing but the weeds. We wind up like me the time that I pulled a whole bed of forgotten seedlings, thinking they were weeds. We wind up focusing on the weeds, forgetting about the good plants. We focus on all that we’ve done wrong, and we begin to hide ourselves from God, too ashamed to even speak to God.

It is only in community, only through the others that God has sent into our lives, that we can recognize the gifts that we have, the freedom that we have received. It is only through the others that God has sent into our lives that we can recognize ourselves as heirs according to the promise, children of God who have already received a spirit of adoption. It is a community garden that we tend. Though we each have our own patch, we help one another out, with support, encouragement, some watering, even some weeding and harvesting. And then we share the fruits of our work with one another. If I’ve got too many tomatoes, I give them to my neighbors. If they’ve got too many zucchinis, they share them with me. But we are free to work together in this garden because we are already children of God; we have already been adopted, or gathered into the barn, or whatever metaphor works for you at this point in the story. However you want to put it, it’s a done deal.

I saw Rosa again. A couple of weeks ago, I was out taking a walk at lunch time. I don’t usually take walks at lunch – it’s not like there’s a beautiful park or garden there, just hot, dirty, often smelly and noisy, city streets. But this was a nice day, and I thought I could maybe make a phone call while I walked, so I went out. I was almost back to the hospital entrance, and I had put my phone away, when a woman stopped me to ask directions. She was smoking a cigarette, and she seemed to be harried, in a hurry. I stopped to offer the best directions I could, though I don’t really know the area well. At first I didn’t recognize her. She was wearing makeup and glasses; she was dressed up and had her hair done. But then I said, “aren’t you Rosa?” She was startled that I should know her name, but said, “yes, I’m Rosa.” “I’m the chaplain who visited you when you were in the hospital here.” She grabbed me, and pulled me into a hug, and kissed my cheek. Tears began to come to her eyes, and she said, “this address is the alcohol counseling center, and I’m late and I’m lost. I overslept, and I almost didn’t come because I was afraid that I would be late, and then I stop someone for directions, and it’s you! You are a sign from God that I need to go. God sent you to make sure that I get there.” I told her that she still had almost 5 minutes and she was only 2 blocks away. She hugged me again, and went on her way, swearing that God had sent me. I think she might have been right. God sent me, as he sends all of us, to tend the community garden.

Wee

Kissing Crosses

“When a 92-year old woman looks at you and tells you she wants to make peace with God, you don’t argue.” That’s what the bedside nurse told me when I arrived. Gertie was lying facing away from the door when I came in, and when I told who I was, she said, “Bless you, thank you for coming.”
I sat down and she asked me to pray for some peace. She was anxious about misunderstandings with God, and she couldn’t rest. There was a prayer, she said, that had brought her peace, and she wanted to hear it again. But she couldn’t remember it. I prayed with her, and then I read the 23rd Psalm. “Such a beautiful, peaceful psalm,” she said. “I almost know it by heart.” “Shall I read it again?” “Always,” she said, “Always read it again.” So I did. By the time I left, I must have read it a dozen times.
As I read and prayed with her, I noticed that her hands wandered a lot. They could come up to her chest, where her gown was open at the neck, and they would stroke the skin there. Then they would move to her stomach and feel her belly. I wondered if she was thinking about leaving her earthly body behind – this body that had borne children, nourished and comforted them. She kept asking where her kids were. I wondered what year it was for her. Were her kids still grown, or babies in her mind? She continued to run her hands over her body, preparing, I thought, to leave it behind, to say good-bye to it.
The hardest moment for me was when she asked to pray the Our Father. I just spend the spring teaching Grace this prayer, and as Gertie and I prayed together, I prayed, too, for Grace. I gave thanks that I had taught her a prayer that she will carry with her all her life, and use when she doesn’t have words for prayer. I was grateful that the prayer we teach at the beginning of life sustains until the end of life.
I continued to think of Grace throughout the time I spent with Gertie. Gertie’s anxiousness and restlessness were keeping her from sleeping. “I just want to lie down and rest,” she kept saying, “why can’t I rest? Why can’t I just go over there and lie down?” I read the psalm again, and then stroked her forehead as she tried to sleep, making the sign of the cross on her brow and stroking her hair back from her head. I do this for Grace as she sleeps, sometimes, or when she’s tired and resting on my lap. Gertie’s mother used to do this for her, when she was a little girl, and Gertie did this for her own daughter, and probably granddaughter. I thought of them, and I thought of Grace, and I was moved by the circle of care that we are part of, the comfort that we give each other from cradle to grave. I was glad to have been a part of Gertie’s circle of comfort.
That night, as I tucked Grace into bed, we read a story from her children’s Bible. Then I asked her if she wanted to pray with me. Together we said the Our Father, call and response, one line at a time. Then I brushed the hair back from her face and gave her our special kiss. One cheek, then the other, then chin, nose, forehead, then the corner of her right eye, ending at the corner of her left eye, making the sign of the cross in kisses all over her face.