Reverence and Awe
“Therefore, we who are receiving the unshakable kingdom should have gratitude, with which we should offer worship pleasing to God in reverence and awe.” (Hebrews 12:28, NAB)
Archive for March, 2010
Peaceful Fruit
“At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” (Hebrews 12:11, NAB)
In the Meantime … Promises Kept
Introduction
This article is the April 2010 installment of my monthly message in the parish newsletter for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb.
Law and Promise
One of the marks of our relationships—when they are at their best—is for us to say to one another, “I promise,” and to mean it. And when a relationship weathers the years, as many marriages do, it becomes clear how powerful and loving and self-sacrificial a promise can become, especially when that promise is the one we intend to keep “until death do us part.”
But that’s just it. No matter how much we love one another, no matter the depth of our commitment and the intensity of our striving to honor our word, in the end, we find our promises reach their limits. We die, and that is the end of the promise.
This means that a little bit of what our tradition calls law tinges and compromises our promise. We may make a promise with the best of intentions, but the death that lies in our future prevents us from keeping that promise unconditionally.
Death and Life
But there is One who now can make and keep his promise. Jesus Christ, our risen Lord and Savior, no longer has death in his future. For him, death lies in his past. When the Father raised him from the dead by the power of their Spirit on that first Easter morning, then the Triune God became the One who can make and keep all of his promises. Leo the Great once said in a sermon, “Christ did away with the everlasting character of death so as to make death a thing of time, not eternity.” This reminds us that while death may thwart us now, God himself, and not death, has the last word about us and all creation.
This is why the Church lifts its voice as one in the ancient cry of the Day of Resurrection, inviting us to join together with our brothers and sisters of every time and place, saying, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
In one of his letters, St. Peter proclaims to us and to the whole Church:
Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead … . (1 Peter 1:3, NRSV)
Remembrance and Celebration
We gather on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday to hear the whole story of Christ’s Passion and Triumph.
On Maundy Thursday, we hear how Jesus Christ gave us the gift of his Holy Meal and the command to love one another as we make a corporate confession of our sins, receive forgiveness, remember his act of submission, and celebrate his the Holy Communion.
Then on Good Friday we return to hear the account of our Lord’s Passion, his suffering and sacrifice on the cross to conquer death. We meditate upon his ultimate gift, his love, and the promise of victory that God makes to us.
Holy Saturday evening brings us to the Vigil of Easter, when we will gather in the fading light of day to give God thanks for Jesus Christ, the light who cannot be overcome by darkness and death. We will hear several biblical stories that foreshadow the triumph of Easter and then we will ring in Easter as we celebrate God’s victory over death, shared with us in Holy Communion.
On Easter we will offer two celebrations of the resurrection, giving God praise and glory for his death-defeating love shown to us and to the whole world through Jesus Christ. This is a time to be glad, to sing our praises, and to be jubilant because of the Good News.
Blessing
As we enter this holy time in our life together, we can pray in confidence for the Father to bless us in our worship, so that we may celebrate the rising of his Son with the faith that comes to us through their Holy Spirit.
Unless a Grain…
Introduction
One of the opportunities I have as the interim pastor at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., is to prepare a short column for a feature called “The Pastor’s Pen,” appearing in the Beatrice Daily Sun on Thursday, April 1, 2010.
Scripture
“… unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (John 12:24)
Meditation
When Jesus shared these words with his followers, he knew he faced the final days of his journey on earth. The cross with its promise of suffering and death stood before him. The love and trust he bore for his Father in the power of their Spirit sustained him. He was the grain of wheat that prepared to fall to the ground and die. By his death and resurrection, his Father would produce much fruit.
All people whom God has made his children and gathered into his Church are the fruit of the harvest that grows from the seed that Jesus planted on that Good Friday so long ago. This is the Good News that Christians gather to hear and to meditate upon during Holy Week. It began this past Sunday by recalling Christ’s triumphal and palm-strewn entry into Jerusalem and by looking ahead to his Passion and death. Then today, Maundy Thursday, the Church celebrates Jesus’ gifts: the great commandment to love one another as he has loved us; and the holy Meal of his body and blood.
Tomorrow on Good Friday the Church gathers again in subdued reverence to contemplate the mystery of the cross and Christ’s redemption of the world through his holy cross. Saturday evening brings a time of waiting with expectation and anticipation as the Church comes together to keep a vigil for the coming of Easter. Christians hear the great stories of the faith and embrace the history of God’s mighty acts to create, sustain, and redeem his people. And then, whether in the night or at sunrise, Christians will burst into sounds of joy and gladness as they raise their voices, shouting, “Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!”
Easter is the central celebration of the Christian faith. The Church throughout the world and across the pages of history has looked to this day as God’s triumph of the new creation over chaos, of grace over sin, of life over death. It is the day whose dawn holds out a promise. Because Christ has been raised from the dead, his Father will harvest the fruit that springs from the seed of his death on the cross.
There are times when we may not feel triumphant or victorious, when the burdens of life grind us down and bend us over double with their load. When you feel this way, remember our Father’s promise to share the life of the resurrection with you, to bless you with faith in his promises, and to raise you up for a harvest growing from his Son, the seed planted in the fertile ground of the holy cross and the empty tomb.
Hearts Sprinkled Clean
“… let us approach with a sincere heart and absolute trust, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed in pure water.” (Hebrews 10:22, NAB)
At the Crossroads
This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, March 27–28, 2010, for the Passion Sunday.
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Readings
Luke 19:28–40 (Procession with Palms)
Isaiah 50:4–9a
Psalm 31:9–16 (antiphon v. 5)
Philippians 2:5–11
Luke 23:1–49
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Prayer
Pour out upon us your Holy Spirit, gracious Father, so that we may contemplate in faith your great mercy in giving up your only Son to conquer death and to grant us the promise of eternal life through his resurrection. Amen.
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Message
As he stretches his arms wide upon the cross,
our Lord Jesus Christ finds himself transfixed.
He is pinned at the intersection of life and death.
On one axis, the perfect love he and his Father and their Spirit
hold for us and for the whole world
comes flowing down out of heaven in a torrent.
And on the other axis,
our Lord open his hands to the nails of our sins,
and through his pain and suffering,
pours out that love like a living stream in the desert of our dying.
No one but God could give himself away
in perfect love and total obedience,
making the ultimate sacrifice
to overcome the chasm that sin and death
have opened between us and the God who made us.
And so, the Father sends his Son,
announced by the angel Gabriel,
born of the Spirit and Mary, his human mother,
raised in a loving family,
taught by learned rabbis,
revered by throngs,
believed by people poor and hungry,
plotted against by the elites,
betrayed by Judas,
forsaken by his disciples,
vilified by the crowds,
sentenced by Pontius Pilate,
scourged by soldiers,
and crucified by the state.
And so he died,
not for himself,
but for you and for me and for all humanity.
He paid the price on our behalf,
he atoned for our sins,
he bore the guilt for our wrongdoing,
he became temple, priest, and sacrifice,
he vanquished sin and death and the devil,
he ascended his throne,
he gained the crown,
he, the shepherd, laid down his life for the sheep,
he, the lamb, went willingly to the slaughter,
he died that we might live.
This is the good news—dreadful yet sublime.
And as we begin this Holy Week,
we come together to gather at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ
and to turn our gaze upward
and to meditate upon our Lord’s gift for us and for the whole world.
And as the Father’s gift of love in his Son
flows out from those outstretched hands
and, by the Spirit, seeps into our dry and desiccated lives,
we will find ourselves refreshed and renewed,
made soft and supple,
open and obedient to their will.
This posture of faith—
the inclination of body and spirit—
is what God almighty bestows upon us
through his Word in St. Paul’s letter to the Church at Philippi:
Let this same mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5–8, NRSV)
This is the moment in which we now find ourselves.
We stand at the crossroads between death and life.
And as we witness our Lord’s self-emptying,
his humility and obedience,
and then his death,
we find ourselves taking to our knees in gratitude,
becoming obedient and humble ourselves.
This is our place.
This is our destiny.
This is our calling.
And in the days to come,
we will hear and know
our Lord’s exaltation and naming by his Father,
…so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10–11, NRSV)
Amen.
One Sacrifice
“But this one offered one sacrifice for sins, and took his seat forever at the right hand of God ….” (Hebrews 10:12, NAB)
At the Right Hand
“… we have such a high priest, who has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in heaven ….” (Hebrews 8:1b, NAB)
Perfect Forever
“For the law appoints men subject to weakness to be high priests, but the word of the oath, which was taken after the law, appoints a son, who has been made perfect forever.” (Hebrews 7:28, NAB)
The mystery … is great
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord on Thursday, March 25, 2010.
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Readings
Isaiah 7:10–14
Psalm 40:1–11
1 Timothy 3:16
Luke 1:26–38
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Prayer
Send your Holy Spirit upon us, Father in heaven, just as you blessed Mary, your servant, with that same divine gift, so that we may hear and heed your will for our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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Message
One of the new television shows returning for its spring season
is a science fiction drama called FlashForward.
Like any good work of speculative fiction,
it contains a creative premise
that places its characters into a situation with challenges
and then invites us to share their struggles to make sense
of their new and bewildering reality.
FlashForward’s hook
is that everyone in the world experiences a two-minute, seventeen-second blackout.
Then they wake up with vivid memories
of their lives six months in the future.
The question plaguing the characters
is whether the visions are suggestion or sentence.
Tonight we have gathered to celebrate
our own kind of flash-forward.
We set aside Lent,
our season of penitence and preparation,
and for these few brief moments,
we experience a glimpse of the Christmas season.
This festival, the Annunciation of our Lord,
reminds us, by a strange entwining of time,
that our Lord, who now makes his way to the cross,
is the same Lord whose birth we will celebrate in nine months.
And so, this feast,
marking the Angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary
that God the Father had chosen her
to become the mother of the Son of God,
is a time to look back into history
as history itself looks forward.
And we do all of this while we observe Lent
and prepare to turn our attention to the events of Holy Week:
Christ’s triumphal entry;
his gift of the Holy Meal;
his betrayal, arrest, sentencing, suffering, and crucifixion;
his death, his descent into hell;
and his rising in vindication and victory.
It can get a little complicated as past and present and future
all wrap themselves around one another.
But it helps to remember that the future is the key.
The future helps us to make sense of the past,
to know how to live in the present,
and to anticipate in the future in trust and hope.
The only reason we celebrate the announcement
of Mary’s calling as the bearer of God—the theotokos—
is that her pregnancy and birth take on cosmic significance
because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We stand with Mary in this evening’s feast
but we look to her son’s future
to make sense of her present.
And then we see that
Christ’s death and resurrection
again only reveal their true meaning
when we look at them from the future,
from the vantage of God’s kingdom.
It’s only because we pray, “thy kingdom come,”
and trust that the Father will make it so,
and that he began to bring in his kingdom
by raising his Son from death,
that the cross and the tomb and that blessed morning
matter at all to us and to the whole world.
We gather at the cross to witness Christ’s sacrifice,
but we look to his future as our victorious Lord
to make sense of his past.
And then, we turn to the kingdom
and realize that while it is good for God’s kingdom to come,
we wonder whether it will ever come to us.
That redirect us to reflect upon our baptisms.
Once again, we look back into history,
and we see that somewhen and somewhere—
whether we recall it or not—
at some font or pool or stream,
with a splash or a dunking,
God poured out the water of life flowing from his kingdom
into the dark and sinful recesses of our lives.
We were raised from the water,
lifted struggling into new life,
into a lifetime of discipleship,
living as though God’s kingdom has come,
because it indeed has come to us.
Then with the water,
God our Father poured out upon us the Spirit of his Son and his resurrection.
And that is the same Spirit that Gabriel announced to Mary
would overshadow her and bless her with bearing the life of the Son.
The flash-forward for us is this:
we have been made and redeemed and blessed
by the Father whose kingdom is coming,
by the Son who brings that kingdom by dying and rising,
by the Spirit who gathers us into that kingdom.
This is true for us now.
For now, we trust God in hope that this truth is our reality.
But one day, we will know the truth of God in its fullness,
deep in the recesses of our hearts,
fully in the thoughts of our minds,
totally with all our strength of our bodies,
completely with every inclination of our spirits.
Then, we will join with Mary and all the saints and angels,
and sing Timothy’s song about this great mystery:
He was revealed in flesh,
vindicated in spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among Gentiles,
believed in throughout the world,
taken up in glory. (1 Timothy 3:16, NRSV) Amen.
