Category Archives: Homilies

Majesty and Grace

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Introduction

St. Mark’s on the Campus Episcopal Church, Lincoln, Neb., celebrates the Holy Eucharist on Tuesdays at 12:30 p.m. The parish’s practice is to observe commemorations at this service.
The parish’s rector, Father Jerry Thompson, asked me to lead worship on Tuesday, March 22, 2011. This date is also the day on which Jonathan Edwards, Teacher and Missionary to the Native Americans, died in 1758.

Readings

Isaiah 6:1–8
Psalm 119: 89–96
John 17:6–10

Homily

Born in East Windsor, Connecticut in 1703, Jonathan Edwards was the fifth of eleven children. He had ten sisters. His father was a pastor in the Congregational Church. Jonathan was homeschooled, enrolled at Yale when he was thirteen, and graduated when he was seventeen. He studied theology, earning a master’s degree when he twenty, and was ordained when he was twenty-three. He got married five months later, and he and his wife had eleven children.

He was what we would call an intellectual, working in epistemology and psychology and theology. He also underwent mystical experiences as an adult.

His preaching inspired waves of revivals of the faith in New England that led to the Great Awakening of 1740 to 1742. He grew famous and that led to strains with his congregation. Eventually he was dismissed in 1750. He moved to the frontier, way out west in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and became a missionary to the Native Americans. He continued to write treatises on the freedom of the will and original sin. In 1757 he became president of the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University. He was inoculated against smallpox during an outbreak, but succumbed to a secondary infection in 1758, and died on March 22.

What strikes me about his life isn’t so much all of the academics, but the fact that he was open and receptive to the mystical side of the faith. It reminds me a little of Isaiah’s experience from our first reading (Isaiah 6:1–8). We can get so bogged down by the grinding details of our daily lives that we forget the wonder and mystery—even the strangeness—of God and how he changes our lives when we are open to him.

Jonathan Edwards wrote a Personal Narrative. In it, he said,

As I was walking [in my father’s pasture] and looking up on the sky and clouds, there came to my mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction; majesty and meekness joined together; it was a gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; a high, great, and holy gentleness. (From New Book of Festivals and Commemorations, Phillip Pfatteicher, Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2008 p. 137)

Majesty and grace in sweet conjunction. That’s not a bad way to speak of Jesus Christ, God himself in our midst. He’s gentle and holy, majestic and meek.

And the great gift is that he comes to us in the Bread of Heaven and the Cup of Salvation. Wine becomes blood and bread becomes flesh. That is grace and majesty in sweet conjunction, given for you and for me, given to forgive our sins, to strengthen us for daily living, and to preserve us until the day we gather around the LORD’s “high and lofty throne” an join with the seraphim and sing, “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts! All the earth is filled with his glory” (Isaiah 6:1,3, NAB). Amen.

Listen to the Angel of the Lord

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Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., celebrated the Fourth Sunday of Advent, Dec. 19, 2010. This is my last Sunday serving as the congregation’s interim pastor.

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Readings

Isaiah 7:10–16
Psalm 80:1–7, 17–19
Romans 1:1–7
Matthew 1:18–25

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Prayer

Come, Lord Jesus, and dwell with us. Ask your Father to stir up in our midst the Holy Spirit, so that we may be with one with you, that we may trust you in all things, and that we may listen when you speak to us. We pray, Emmanuel, in your name. Amen.

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Message

As the light of dawn slowly climbed
the ladder of clouds in the east,
glowing scarlet then turning gold,
he found the details of the dream
growing grey and dim.
His memory wrestled with the sun’s heat,
and wrapped the dream in a fog,
hiding its vivid hues and feelings.

Soon, all he could recall was a voice,
the voice of one speaking to him
from his memory’s sea of silence.
He was known, known by name,
known by his family, his lineage,
known for his misgivings,
his fears of ridicule,
his desires to avoid shame and disgrace,
his quandary over what to do,
what to say and how to act
to the woman given to him
to be is partner, his fit helper.

In the ear of his mind he could hear the voice.
“Joseph, Son of David,
do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife….” (Matthew 1:20, NRSV)
Do not be afraid.
What did the voice—
the voice in his dream,
the voice that spoke a message,
the voice of a messenger, an angel—
what did the voice know of his fear?

But as he pondered that voice,
holding the memory in his heart,
he heard that message again and again,
and in the lapping of that message
upon the shore of his heart,
it wore away the jagged edges of fear,
it washed away the doubt,
and left him cleansed and refreshed,
his trust restored, his faith clarified.

“Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife,
for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” (Matthew 1:20, NRSV)
The memory gave him strength,
the angel’s voice brought him peace,
the message renewed his faith.
This child, a child conceived amid concern and scandal,
a son of uncertain lineage,
a boy to be born in troubled times,
this child was “from the Holy Spirit.”

He grasped the truth, and not rumor.
He felt awe, not fear.
He knew faith, not doubt.
And the voice told him what to do.
“…take Mary as your wife.”
“…name the son Jesus.” (Matthew 1:21–21, NRSV)
Hear the words of the prophet.
Find their fulfillment in your holy family.
Trust that the son is Emmanuel,
that he is God with us.

And now, fully awake,
aware of the day’s dawn
and of the unfolding grace of God,
the ear of his heart attuned
to the voice of the messenger,
the angel of the Lord,
this man, Joseph, rose from his bed.
He resolved to do as the messenger had commanded him.
He listened to the angel of the Lord.
He took Mary as his wife.
He shouldered the mantle of fatherhood.
He named their son Jesus,
“…for he would save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:21, NRSV)

Joseph listened.
The God of angels and mortals
gave him the ears to hear,
the heart to trust,
the faith to believe,
the resolve to act,
the power to serve,
the will to persevere,
the courage to embrace the unknown.

Be still. Be quiet.
Listen for the voices of the angels.
They are the messengers of God.
They come to bear the news, the good news.
They come down from heaven
and walk in our midst.
They speak the words of hope and promise.
They say to us, “He is coming.
He, the Son of the Father, is coming.
He is coming soon.”

And so we sing with the angel choirs,
“Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.” Amen.

We Wait with Patience

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Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., celebrated the Third Sunday of Advent, Dec. 12, 2010.

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Readings

Isaiah 35:1–10
Luke 1:46b–55 (antiphon v. 47)
James 5:7–10
Matthew 11:2–11

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Prayer

Lord God, from your servant, Mary, we learn how to wait and to watch and listen with patience and faith for your Holy Spirit to move in our lives. Fill us with the grace to follow her example and to wait with patience; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Message

Quick!
How many words and phrases can we name
that remind of us speed?
Quick, instant, now, immediate,
just-in-time, ready-to-go, no prep,
swift, prompt, on-the-spot.

We have microwaves to zap our portable soup.
Deep in their circuits somewhere, our televisions are always “on,”
so that we don’t need to wait anymore for them to warm up.
We can get instant approval for new credit cards
while we’re standing in line to buy
microwave popcorn, frozen green beans,
pre-peeled carrots, and potato salad.

The morning after last month’s midterm elections
all of the talking heads, the pundits, and the wags
were speculating about the jockeying and hopefuls
for the 2012 presidential election.

The joke, that’s not far from true,
is that many people think that odd symbol
on the altar in churches,
the one that’s really iota-eta-sigma,
the first three letters of “Jesus” in Greek,
actually stands for one-hour-service.

That’s the goal, because as soon as we’re done here,
we can mark off worship on our checklists
and get on with tackling the pile of projects, errands,
events, gatherings, and sundry to-dos
that crowd our calendars
until the little boxes bulge from the sheer volume
of our frenzied and frantic schedules.

Or look at our country’s attempts to conduct
a thoughtful and reasoned debate about federal spending.
The political climate of poll-watching
and the instant feedback that office-holders get from their constituents
by e-mailing, texting, twittering, and telephoning
make it almost impossible, at least so far,
for us to look carefully at the ramifications of what we do today
in the lives of our children and grandchildren.

And so we hang on to our hodgepodge of policies and programs,
initiatives and incentives,
taxes and tariffs,
entitlements and equalizations.
As a people, we want results now,
and we’ll do just about anything to get that outcome,
without paying attention to the mess we bequeath to our children,
to the size of the hole we’re digging at this very moment.

Did you see the news article about Jaguar’s newest prototype?
It’s a car with turbine engines
that goes from 0 to 62 miles per hour in 3.4 seconds.
What destination could be so important to reach so quickly?

All of the speed we crave, for some reason,
can leave us a little breathless and harried,
with our lives feeling full and stuffed,
but not in a good way.
Maybe it’s a little like that churning
we get in our guts when we’ve eaten
too much rich food,
dishes we know are not good for us,
but we put them away anyway.

And in many ways,
this time, of all seasons, is the worst part of the year.
Take the regular chaos we navigate almost daily,
and then throw in all of the preparations for Christmas—
the decorating, the parties, the shopping,
the wrapping, the cooking, and the traveling.

Who has time for much of anything?
It takes all we have in us just to show up,
maybe a little late, but at least we made the appearance.

At this point, you might be saying to yourself,
“Well, I’ve heard this sermon before.
Every pastor has this one in him or her.
I knew it. Eventually we were going to get
the ‘let’s put the true spirit of Christmas
back into the holidays’ sermon.’
They must keep this one in a file.

Well, you’re right.
Most every pastor has preached this sermon.
Probably more than once.
Most likely at least once in each parish he or she serves.

But the truth is that while the details may change
as the years go by and we refresh our cultural references,
the reason that we have all heard this message before
is simply because it’s true and we need to hear it.

It’s just natural for us,
every one of us,
you and me,
to want what we want and to want it now.
Immediately, no waiting.

That’s the reality of our human lives.
We cannot hide from this truth
and we cannot hide that truth from God.
He knows that we desire for our wants to be met,
that we want results now and satisfaction right away.

This is probably why Advent
as a liturgical season, as a devotional discipline,
as a time of waiting and preparing,
fights with the secular observances of the holidays
for our time and our attention.

It really is counter-cultural to say,
“Waiting and watching and wondering
are spiritual disciplines worth cultivating.”

But then, the Church is counter-cultural.
It lives under the lordship of Jesus Christ
and not the rule of the powers of this present time.

So listen, again, to the first part of that short reading
we heard from the epistle of James:
“Be patient, therefore, beloved,
until the coming of the Lord.
The farmer waits for the precious crop from the earth,
being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains.
You also must be patient.
Strengthen your hearts,
for the coming of the Lord is near.” (James 5:7–8, NRSV)

Twice in just two verses
James says to the Church,
“Be patient.”
And between those times
he illustrates patience
with the little picture of the farmer
waiting for the crops to grow,
waiting for the rains to come,
waiting for the harvest to arrive in its time.

Be patient.
“Be strong, do not fear!
Here is your God.” (Isaiah 35:4, NRSV)

Wait.
“A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way.” (Isaiah 35:8, NRSV)

Slow down.
“…sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” (Isaiah 35:10, NRSV)

Listen.
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.” (Luke 1:45b, NRSV)

Pray.
“…for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.” (Luke 1:49, NRSV)

Watch.
“He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly.” (Luke 1:52, NRSV)

Ponder.
“Are you the one who is to come,
or are we to wait for another?” (Matthew 11:3b, NRSV)

Wonder.
“…the blind receive their sight, the lame walk,
the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised,
and the poor have good news brought to them.” (Matthew 11:5, NRSV)

Confess.
“For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven….” (Nicene Creed, LBW, p. 64)

Eat.
“…this is my body, broken for you.” (Eucharistic Prayer IV, LBW MDE, p. 262)

Drink.
“This is my blood poured out for you.” (Eucharistic Prayer IV, LBW MDE, p. 262)

Live.
“Go in peace. Serve the Lord.” (LBW, p. 74)

Be patient.
He is coming. He is coming soon.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Baptized with Spirit and Fire

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Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., celebrated the Second Sunday of Advent, Dec. 5, 2010.

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Readings

Isaiah 11:1–10
Psalm 72:1–7, 18–19 (antiphon v.7)
Romans 15:4–13
Matthew 3:1–12

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Prayer

Cleanse us with your fire, O Lord, and stir up your Holy Spirit in us, so that we may abandon the ways of sin and return to the faith you have given to us in our baptism into your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Message

Isaiah left us a whole book—sixty-six chapters long—
filled with passages both peaceful and painful.

Today we hear one of his prophecies
about the coming of the Messiah, God’s anointed one.
It begins with those familiar words,
“A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” (Isaiah 11:1, NRSV)

We hear that verse, and the words remind us
that David was the youngest son of Jesse.
God had promised David that his descendents
would sit on the throne in Jerusalem in perpetuity.

But Assyria, a great power in the Middle East,
went on a rampage and laid waste to Judah,
and God’s promise seemed broken and bankrupt.

That’s why these words from Isaiah bring hope,
why they speak of promise in the midst of pain.
For us, as we listen to them as a great song of expectation,
we hear them accompanied by the angel choirs
singing about God’s glory in the highest
on a cold night above a hilltop flocked with sheep.

But these words from Isaiah are just a clip,
a snippet from a longer song.
Just before our reading Isaiah tells us
how the LORD will deal with Assyria, Israel’s oppressor:
“He will hack down the thickets of the forest with an ax,
and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall.” (Isaiah 10:34, NRSV)

That verse is not so familiar,
but it tells us how God works in the world.
When there are forces that oppose him,
when his people are oppressed and burdened,
then his judgment comes down upon the oppressor,
his strong arms lift the burdens laid on his people.
He swings his ax and hacks down the forest.
Nothing stands in the way of his judgment,
his mighty power to protect and to save his people.

Centuries later, another prophet, the last one, arose in Israel.
Named John, he was the cousin of the Son of David,
the same David, son of Jesse and onetime king of Israel.
A hymn by Thomas H. Troeger, describes John this way:
Wild the man and wild the place,
Wild his dress and wild his face,
Wilder still his words that trace
Paths that lead from sin to grace.

He was wild and he was strange,
but like Isaiah, he was a man possessed by the Spirit,
a man bound to see what God envisioned
and to speak to all who would listen
with “the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’” (Matthew 3:3b, NRSV)

John’s signature gesture is a simple one.
He points beyond himself,
showing us the way to the Christ, the Messiah,
turning our gaze to the coming Lord.

And before we can go too far astray
and picture our Lord coming to us
only as a sweet and charming baby,
John reminds us that the Lord who comes
is the same Lord whom Isaiah foretold would come,
sprouting from the stump of Jesse.

Remember, this Lord is King,
and he comes to issue in his kingdom;
his reign over us and the whole world.

And as our King and Lord, he doesn’t let us rest in the security
of anything we have within ourselves.
There is no safety in echoing the crowds’ words to John,
in claiming a special pedigree, that we belong to the right family,
in saying, in our case, “We have Luther as our ancestor in the faith.”
Instead, John calls us to turn from our old ways,
to give up our false security,
to let go of anything that we hold onto that is not God.

Only when we do this,
by the power of the Spirit at work in us,
does God give us the grace we need
to “bear fruit worthy of repentance.” (Matthew 3:8, NRSV)

He can do this, no doubt about it,
because he is the one with the power to make new children
for himself out of cold and lifeless stones.

But he wants us to be his children,
he wants us to live in his kingdom,
and so he sends his Son,
to show, to tell, to preach, to teach,
to heal, to exorcise, to pray,
to suffer, to die, and to be raised.

All of this is our Father’s way of bringing about his kingdom.
Through this obedience in life and death,
his Son, the Messiah, the shoot from the stump of Jesse,
serves his Father in the power of their Spirit.

And it all comes down upon us
when Christ comes into our lives.
He comes as that “infant holy, infant lowly,”
but he also comes to us as our Lord and King,
as the one with water and fire,
with ax and winnowing fork.

As John tells us so vividly,
“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.
His winnowing fork is in his hand,
and he will clear his threshing floor
and will gather his wheat into the granary;
but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” (Matthew 3:11b–12)

It’s a disturbing message.
It’s not the picture of Jesus we like to hold in our hearts.
He is not meek and mild;
wildness runs in his family.
But, in the end, by faith,
we can find comfort in our Lord’s water and Spirit
his purifying fire,
his ax and winnowing fork.

Remember what the angel told Joseph in his dream:
Mary “will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus,
for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew, 1:21, NRSV)

He will save us…
His mission is built into his name, into who he is.
And Jesus carries out that mission as our Savior,
not the ways we might dream up for him,
but in the ways that he knows we need:
with water and fire,
with winnowing fork and ax.

Look into your heart and be honest with yourself and God.
Search out all of the parts of your life that,
in the secret places of your own thoughts,
bring your shame and remorse,
that remind you of the ways you have strayed from God.
This is the thicket in the forest of our sins
that our Lord Christ hacks down with his ax.

This is his judgment, his way of judging us,
not to condemn and to banish us,
but to purify and to purge and to make new.
He hacks away at the thickets of our sins,
and he gathers all the brambles and branches,
a jagged and snarled tangle of debris,
and puts it into a huge pile
and burns it with his unquenchable fire.

And then he washes the ash and the dust
from our soiled and tear-stained faces.
He renews us and refreshes us.
He gives us new birth through his Baptism
and forgiveness through our penitent return to the waters of the font.

If God in Christ can raise up children of Abraham from stones,
then surely he can redeem us from our sins.
He will rescue us from the death sentence of our daily lives
and make us new and whole, fresh and forgiven,
cleansed and restored to live as his people.

We can trust that we will be redeemed and gathered to our Lord,
so that what Isaiah prophesied will come to pass:
“…the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the people;
the nations shall enquire of him,
and his dwelling shall be glorious.” Amen. (Isaiah 11:9b–10, NRSV)

The Day is Coming

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Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., marked the beginning of the Church year on the First Sunday of Advent, Nov. 28, 2010.

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Readings

Isaiah 2:1–5
Psalm 122 (antiphon v. 1)
Romans 13:11–14
Matthew 24:36–44

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Prayer

Prepare us, heavenly Father, for the day that is coming, so that we may stand ready to welcome your Son when he comes in glory and the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

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Message

I wonder, sometimes,
where I will be, what I’ll be doing,
when the Lord comes.
I even wonder whether I will live to see that day.
Of the hundreds of generations, the billions who have lived and died
in the last two millennia
since the days of our Lord’s earthly ministry,
Could we be the ones to see him
“come again in glory to judge the living and the dead?” (Nicene Creed, LBW, p. 84)

But to be honest with you,
I only really ever give Christ’s coming some serious thought
when I read passages from the Scriptures
like the ones we have heard today,
or if life’s circumstances remind me
of the inconvenient and inescapable truth of our deaths.

Most days, most of the times,
I just go about my life,
acting as if the river of days will flow on and on—
predictable, dependable, plannable.

But then someone I know dies,
maybe old and full of years,
or perhaps not so old, not quite so full as we had hoped.
Someone I know and love dies,
with places still to go and people yet to see.

Those are the hardest,
because then death leads me to stewing,
to thinking, “That could have been me.
What would I have done then?”

But even such thoughts about dying
don’t really lead me to giving my full attention
to the kinds of messages that God shares
with his people—both Israel and the Church—
in the readings for today.

Listen to a few verses from the lectionary.
Isaiah prophesies to the people:
“In days to come the mountain of the LORD’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains….
Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD….” (Isaiah 2:2a, 3b, NRSV)

The Psalmist sings out:
“I was glad when they said to me,
‘Let us go to the house of the LORD!’” (Psalm 122:1, NRSV)

St. Paul writes to the Church at Rome:
“Besides this, you know what time it is,
how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep.” (Romans 13:11a, NRSV)

And finally, Jesus speaks to his disciples
in this passage from Matthew’s Gospel:
“Keep awake, therefore, for you do not know
on what day the Lord is coming. …
Therefore you also must be ready,
for the Son of Man is coming
at an unexpected hour.” (Matthew 24:42, 44, NRSV)

Well, that’s pretty clear.
The LORD calls his faithful people to gather around him,
to climb his holy mountain,
to come to his house.
And he blesses us with admonitions,
words to remind us of our task to watch and to wait:
after all, now’s the time to wake up;
now is the moment to be ready,
because the day is coming.

I remember, as a little child,
how much wonderful, aching anticipation I felt
as the season of Advent slowly made its way into our lives.

We lighted one candle, just one, that first week
and saw the Christmas decorations go up,
at home, throughout the neighborhood, and across town.
My brothers and I suspected secrets might kept from us.
But we weren’t sure.
We did know, though, that the waiting would be worth it
when we would finally celebrate Christmas.

Maybe we were just naïve, innocent, and inexperienced children,
but the simple things that filled us with awe and expectation
as little boys don’t seem, really, to work anymore when we are grown up.

I don’t want to be so jaded,
so worn and faded,
so stuck in the ruts of my routine
that I cannot feel that gnawing hunger
to have the wait be over
so that I can celebrate the day of joy.

Of course, as kids we all had those feelings about Christmas.
But what would it take for us
to feel the same way about the invitation
to go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to enter his house with cries of wonder and joy on our lips,
with our hearts just bursting within us,
filled so full of anticipation of that day
that we can not contain ourselves,
that we just exclaim uncontrollably,
“O my God, my LORD, Hallelujah!
Thank you for bringing me to your house.
It’s so good to be at home with you!”?

What would it take?
What could give us that faith like a child’s simple trust?

Partly that gift comes to us
when we get ready for it to come.
That’s why Saint Paul reminds the Church at Rome,
and through it, the whole Church, you and me,
that salvation is coming, and coming soon:
“The night is far gone, the day is near.”

And so he counsels us to get ready,
to be dressed for the day of the Lord,
to be busy doing our Lord’s work,
to be living in ways that please him:
“…put on the armor of light…
live honorably…
put on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and make no provisions for the flesh,
to gratify its desires.” (Romans 13:12–14, NRSV)

That helps.
Because if I dress myself in the Lord each day when I wake up,
and make no provisions for the flesh,
then my days will go altogether differently.

If I am clothed in him,
then the goal of my life
is not the perpetuation of my existence no matter what.
The point of our living is not, at all costs, to postpone dying,
to live as if we can perpetually sidestep our own God-given mortality.

No, but rather, the calling we hear
is to embrace the promise of life eternal,
to take on the task of getting ready for the Lord’s day.
After all, he reminds us,
“Keep awake therefore,
for you do not know on what day
your Lord is coming.” (Matthew 24:42, NRSV)

There’s still time. It’s early.
He may bless us yet today with his coming.
And if he does, then we shall know
that he has heard and answered
the prayer we offer to him in his Meal:
“Maranatha. Come, Lord Jesus.” Amen.

The First of the Fruit

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Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., celebrated our nation’s Day of Thanksgiving on Wednesday evening, November 24, 2010.

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Readings

Deuteronomy 26:1–11
Psalm 100
Philippians 4:4–9
John 6:25–35

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Prayer

We come to you, Holy God, and give to you what you have first given us: our lives, our talents, and the abundance of your creation. Help us by your Spirit’s guidance, to live with gratitude for your generosity and commitment to sharing your blessings with others; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Message

Thanksgiving is an odd national holiday.
It doesn’t have the same civic and patriotic flavor
of our other days of celebration:
Independence Day and Memorial Day and Veterans’ Day.

We don’t much talk about it anymore,
but there’s something deep in the bones
of Thanksgiving that aspires to reach out,
to reach up, to turn our gaze to God.

If even we get to the point of saying that,
we don’t really, as a people,
find much agreement on what we mean by “God.”
Our money says, “In God We Trust,”
but which God we mean by that is an open and unsettled question.

And yet, if we dig down into the rich soil of our history,
we can uncover the roots of Thanksgiving.
And here is what we find.

Throughout our nation’s history,
people celebrated days of Thanksgiving.
We all remember learning about the Pilgrims
and their feasting with the Abnaki Indians
in 1621 to celebrate surviving cruel winter weather
and living to gather a bountiful harvest.

Communities and colonies and then states
held similar observances over the years.
But it wasn’t until the dark days in the midst of the Civil War
that our nation—at least the Union part—
observed a national Day of Thanksgiving.

In his proclamation of October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln noted,

The year that is drawing towards its close has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed
that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added,
which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

He then went on at some length to describe the ravages of war
and the richness of the country’s wealth, despite that war.
Then the proclamation concluded:

They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.

President Lincoln defines the holiday
as “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise
to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens.”

It’s a blessing to be reminded that Thanksgiving
is a day for giving thanks
and for giving that thanks to God our Father,
the One who has given us all good things in the first place.

So, underneath the trappings of football and parades,
tables laden with traditional foods,
newspapers thick with Black Friday advertisements,
there hides this simple idea
that for one day each year,
we set apart a time as a nation, a people, to give God thanks.

It’s not a new idea.
In Deuteronomy, we hear the instruction,
“you shall take some of the first of all the fruit of the ground”
and bring it to the house of worship
and give it to the LORD our God. (Deuteronomy 26:2, NRSV)

And when we give that “first of all the fruit,”
we tell God the story of how he has blessed our lives.

LORD God,
you have watched over us and guided us
this last year and a half in our search for a pastor.
You have led Pastor Linda Walz to us.
You have blessed us with the possibilities
that come with new beginnings.

In the meantime, you have raised up
so many individuals in this congregation
who have used the talents you have given them
to serve your mission and to show your love to others.

You have comforted us in times of loss.
So many have died,
and we have commended them to your care
and we have asked you to receive them into your blessed rest
and to console us while we mourn their absence from our lives.

Some of us have seen dark days this past year.
We have lost jobs, known pain in our families,
felt betrayed by the institutions we had grown to trust,
wandered about in confusion about our callings as disciples.
In the midst of this turmoil,
you have been our rock and our fortress.

With prayer of thanksgiving like these,
we offer our gratitude to God Almighty.

And then, with the people of Israel,
we follow the instructions in Deuteronomy:
“You shall set [your gifts] down before the LORD your God
and bow down before the LORD your God.
Then you, together with the Levites
and the aliens who reside among you,
shall celebrate with all the bounty
that the LORD your God has given to you and to your house.”
(Deuteronomy 26:11, NRSV)

This whole passage lays out worship
that contains old and familiar parts:
Offerings, Prayers, and a Meal.
It’s what we do each Sunday
and what we will do together in a few minutes.

So, while our nation celebrates its Day of Thanksgiving,
we, as Christians, observe our Thanksgiving
each and every time we come together
to hear the Word of God,
to offer him praises and prayers,
to place our gifts before him upon his altar,
and to join him at his Table in the Meal.

And if we think about it that way,
if we look at all that we have as a blessing from God,
and if we look at all that we give to him
as our act of returning the first of the fruit,
and if we look at the Eucharist
as the meal of celebration and thanksgiving,
then things look and sound a little different.

Let’s listen, one more time,
to St. Paul’s little declaration from his letter
to the Christians at Philippi.

He writes,
“Rejoice in the Lord always;
again I will say, Rejoice.
Let your gentleness be known to everyone.
The LORD is near.
Do not worry about anything,
but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your request be made known to God.
And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”
(Philippians 4:4–7, NRSV) Amen.

Message

Rescued, Transferred, Redeemed

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Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., marked the end of the Church year on Christ the King Sunday, Nov. 21, 2010.

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Readings

Jeremiah 23:1–6
Psalm 46 (antiphon v.10)
Colossians 1:11–20
Luke 23:33–43

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Prayer

Gracious Father, you sacrificed your Son to cleanse the world of sin, to conquer the power of death, and to counteract the forces of the Devil. By your Holy Spirit make us live with joy in this victory and walk in obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

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Message

This past week in Confirmation class,
we got into a conversation about the Bible.
We talked a little about how long it is,
and so we checked the number of pages
in different translations.

We won’t read the whole book in class,
but we’re making good progress
in our study of the central passages
of the Old Testament.
We began with Exodus,
which doesn’t seem like the normal or natural choice,
because it’s the second book of the Bible and not the first.

But we had a reason.
Exodus tells us about what’s behind its own title:
the dramatic and mighty work of God
to liberate his chosen and precious people
from their centuries of bondage in slavery to the Egyptians.

We started with the birth of Moses
and his mother’s plan to hide him
in a basket floating in the bulrushes,
saving him from Pharaoh’s slaughter
of the young Hebrew boys.

And we read and talked about Moses’ murdering the Egyptian,
his sojourn to Midian to escape arrest,
his strange encounter with the burning bush,
and his life changing conversations with the God of his ancestors,
That God spoke to him from the flaming bush growing on holy ground,
revealing both his name and his plan for his people.

Then we made our way through Moses’ confrontations with Pharaoh,
the ten plagues and the preparations for flight,
the final exodus from Egypt,
the parting of the Red Sea,
the deliverance of the Hebrew people through the waters on dry ground,
and the drowning of Pharaoh’s army in the sea’s churning waves.

And then we heard how God called Moses to come to him,
to climb Mount Sinai and to receive the Ten Commandments.

And right there is where we encountered
one of the key sentences in the whole Bible,
one that we all ought to know well,
even if we do not have it committed to memory.
In Exodus 20:1–3, we read:
“Then God spoke all these words:
I am the LORD your God,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery;
you shall have no other gods before me.”

We hear three crucial messages in this one sentence.
First, God gives us his name,
the one he first shared with Moses from the bush.
When we look at the verses in print
we see that the word “LORD” is printed in capital letters.
That’s not because we should emphasize it when we read it,
but because it’s a way of representing four characters in Hebrew.

These are sometimes transliterated as YHWH.
And because Hebrew is written with no vowels,
those four consonants simply represent the name of God.
On occasion, we see them referred to
as the Tetragrammaton—the four letters.
The practice of the Jewish people is not to speak this name,
because it is holy, and so they replace it in conversation and worship
with the phrase, “The Name.”

So first, we hear God tell us his name:
“I am the LORD—the Name—your God.”
And then he tells us his history,
so that we can be sure who he is.
Which god, from among all the gods that people worship,
whether in Moses’ day or ours, is he?
He is the one “who brought [Israel] out of the land of Egypt,
out of the house of slavery.”

That’s the second part, God’s unique history with his people.
No other god has this history—
The LORD alone is the one who rescued Israel.
And then right on the heels of this gospel of grace
comes the third crucial part of these verses.
God gives the people the first and central commandment:
“You shall have no other gods before me.”

In a way, all the rest of the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments,
is just commentary on this first command.
And the other 603 laws and rules in the Old Testament
merely work out the details of this first and great commandment.

So, remember what God tells us:
I am the LORD who rescued Israel from slavery.
No pretenders shall take my place as God.
This Name and the history together tell us who is our God.
The commandment proclaims his place in our lives.

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Today is [the eve of] Christ the King Sunday,
the last Sunday in the church year.
And while the world begins to gear up
for the holiday season with all its lights and festivities,
we come face-to-face with the cross of Christ.

There’s no easing into it, no sugar-coating it.
Two criminals flank Jesus on the road to Golgotha.
The Roman centurions nail him to the cross,
lifting him up to die a cruel and slow death.
Almost everyone mocks him,
taunting and ridiculing him.

And in the face of these final pathetic acts of defiance,
thrown at him by people not so different from you and me,
Jesus has two brief conversations.
One is a short prayer offered up to his Father in heaven:
“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34, NRSV)

The second is a brief encounter with one of thieves crucified with him.
The thief says,
“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
And Jesus replies,
“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Luke 23:42–43, NRSV)

Together, these sayings tell us what kind of king Christ is.
He is not a king with a golden throne in a great and vaulted palace.
He does not wear a crown encrusted with jewels.
No crowd bedecked in fine clothes surrounds him.
He does not feast upon the exotic abundance of field and forest.

Instead, he is the king because he is the Son of the Father.
He is a king whose throne is the cross,
whose crown is plaited of thorns,
whose robe is simply a dirty and bloodied loincloth,
whose retinue numbers only a few scared followers, mostly women,
whose feast is the sacrifice of his own body and blood.

And yet, the thief recognizes him
and asks the Lord for grace, for redemption, for rescue.
He says, “remember me,” using the word
we use in the Eucharist,
the word that means not only to recall, to recollect,
but to recall in the way that makes
the past come alive, literally, and to share in the present moment.

This is remembrance—the theological term is anamnesis—
that conquers death through the Lord’s power
to make one reality present and alive to another.
By remembering the thief,
our Lord will make him to live even though he dies.
That is true rescue from death:
life after death and not life that merely postpones death.

And that gets us to the connection
between God’s word from Mount Sinai in Exodus
and our Lord’s word from the cross on Golgotha in Luke.

The LORD God rescued his people from bondage to slavery
and the Lord Jesus Christ rescues his people from sentence to death.

The Exodus of God in the Old Testament
and the Passion of Christ in the New Testament
are the two central parts of God’s history with us, his creatures.
This history tells us who he is and what he does for us.

In a compact and powerful way,
St. Paul summarizes for us this good news in his letter to the Colossians,
chapter 1, verses 13 and 14:
“[The Father] has rescued us from the power of darkness
and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son,
in whom we have redemption,
the forgiveness of sins.” (Colossians 1:13–14, NRSV)

It’s all right there in one sentence:
Rescued, transferred, redeemed.
The Father breaks the bonds of our slavery
and brings us to his Son, Christ the King,
who forgives us our sins,
even though we do not know what we have done to him.

This is what we celebrate today.
This is the kind of king before whom we bow.
This is the nature of his kingdom.
This is the gift he gives to us:
we have been rescued, transferred, and redeemed.

By his grace, we can live peacefully under his rule;
we can bend the knee to Christ the King.
As St. Paul reminds us,
“For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven,
by making peace through the blood of his cross.” Amen. (Colossians 1:19–20, NRSV)

We Are God’s Servants

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Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., celebrated its Mission Festival and its Thankoffering for the Women of the ELCA on Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 13–14, 2010, the Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost. I prepared this homily for the Saturday evening service. The readings are selected from the options for the Thankoffering liturgy.

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Readings

1 Kings 17:1–16
Psalm 145
1 Corinthians 3:1–11
John 6:25–35

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Prayer

Heavenly Father, with open arms we receive the gifts you have given to us through your Church. We thank you for the work of all who have labored before us. Strengthen us, by your Holy Spirit, to build upon that work, to the glory of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Message

This past May, on a day trip from Parma in Italy,
my family and I had the chance to see how a winery
makes balsamic vinegar from wine.

The chosen wine starts out in a big cask
with a little hole cut in the top.
A square of cheesecloth is draped over the hole
to keep out the bugs, but to let the wine evaporate slowly.

After some months, the wine, now a little more concentrated,
is placed into a slightly smaller cask, and the process repeats.
This goes on for years, up to twenty-five for the finest vinegars.

As we heard the story of how the vintner makes the vinegar,
it struck me that eventually the vintners reach an age
when they know the vinegar they have begun to make
will be ready only after they have retired or died.

But they begin a batch anyway as a kind of act of faith,
knowing full well they must trust the care of the vinegar
to another person yet to come.

That’s a good picture of our work to serve God through his Church.
We have received the Tradition of the Church
as a gift from the labors of Christians who have gone before us.
Then we tend and care, nurture and cultivate the life of the Church.
And like the vintner, we begin what we will not finish.
Instead, we hand it on as our Tradition,
entrusting it to the hands and hearts of others who come after us.

It’s not different at all from what St. Paul shares with the Church at Corinth.
He writes to the Christians there, saying,
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth…” (1 Corinthians 3:6, NRSV)
He also says, “According to the grace of God given to me,
like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation,
and someone else is building on it” (1 Corinthians 3:10, NRSV)

Our Church today is like balsamic vinegar.
It began with the apostles, with Paul and Apollos and the people of Corinth.
They planted and others watered,
they laid the foundations, and others built, and so on and so on,
until today, until you and I now have received the responsibility
to care for the Church and to pass it on in faith.

That’s what lies at the root of the work
of the Women of the ELCA, of the missionaries from Southwood Church,
and all of the groups and ministries throughout the whole Church,
including what we do here in God’s name at Holy Cross.

We have learned the Church’s teachings,
we have been raised in the faith by our elders,
and now we teach our children and guide them to become disciples.
They in turn will teach and guide their children.
We have heard the Word preached by pastors
whose faith was nurtured by the Word they heard.
We give to the food pantry and we serve at Warren’s Table.
We support ministries begun by people
who gave their time and talents and treasures before us.
We trust that the Lord’s work will continue when we are gone.

In all of these projects and tasks,
we work together, guided by the Holy Spirit,
to carry out the mission of our Father in heaven
to make the good news of his Son known to the world.
It’s like what we sang with the rest of God’s people in today’s Psalm:
“One generation shall laud your works to another,
and shall declare your mighty acts” (Psalm 145:4, NRSV).

God calls us to be his servants in this ministry
and to be a blessing to all who will come after us. Amen.

“Only Small Things with Great Love”

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This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Festival of All Saints’ Sunday, Nov. 7, 2010.

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Readings

Daniel 7:1–3, 15–18
Psalm 149
Ephesians 1:11–23
Luke 6:20–31

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Prayer

Loving Father in heaven, bless us with faith through your Holy Spirit, so that we may follow the example of your saints in living and loving obediently; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Message

Sometimes we imagine the company of saints
as a kind of pantheon of Christian heroes.
We see it like a Justice League of martyrs, witnesses, and apostles,
replacing Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman,
our favorite superheroes with special powers.

We don’t imagine that we could ever match
the holiness of the saints in that company,
attaining the heights of spiritual purity and discipline,
performing the works of extreme charity and devotion,
and offering up prayers of sublime piety and eloquence.

And so we throw in the towel.
We say to ourselves, “I’ll never be a saint.”
We grow content with our lives just as they are.
We keep our heads down
and our eyes on the ground right in front of us.
We lock our spiritual lives on autopilot
and we go through the motions.
We avoid the worst pitfalls that come from straying,
but we also steer clear of the great heights that come from striving.

There are saints whom God our Father has blessed
with almost unimaginable courage and conviction,
strength and stamina, faith and fervor.

I am awed and humbled by the witness of those saints.
One, for example, sticks in my memory.
Our Church commemorates St. Ignatius of Antioch
each year on October 17.
He was born around AD 35,
lived as a pagan, and then was baptized into the Christian faith.
He became the bishop of Antioch in Syria.
Along with others, he was condemned to death
during the persecutions of Emperor Trajan in the early 100s.

While he waited in prison for his execution,
he authored and sent letters.
Copies have survived to this day.
In one letter to the Church at Rome, he wrote,
“Let me be food for the wild beasts,
for that is how I can get to God.
I am God’s wheat and shall be ground
by the teeth of the wild beasts
so that I may become Christ’s pure bread. …

“Even now as a prisoner I am learning to forego my own desires.
All the way from Syria to Rome, by land and sea,
by night and day, I am chained to ten leopards
(I mean the detachment of soldiers)
who only get worse the better I treat them.
By their injustices I am becoming a better disciple….

“May nothing, seen or unseen,
begrudge me making my way to Jesus Christ.
Come fire, cross, fighting with wild beasts,
wrenching of bones, mangling of limbs,
crushing of my entire body,
cruel tortures of the devil—
only let me get to Jesus Christ.…

“My desire is to belong to God.
Do not, then, hand me back to the world.
Do not try to tempt me with material things.
Let me attain pure light,
for only on my arrival there
can I be fully human.
Let me imitate the passion of my God.”
(From a letter to the Romans by St. Ignatius)

This witness raises all kinds of questions in our hearts.
Does that inspire me?
Does it frighten me?
Do I find it even a little bit beguiling?
Could I surrender myself so completely to God
that I would trust him and face death for my faith?

I don’t know the answers for myself or for you.
Probably our responses depend upon the day,
the waxing and waning of our confidence and convictions.

But even so, we can learn from this saint’s witness,
from his faith in the face of martyrdom.

He desired to belong to God
and he wanted to imitate the Lord’s passion.
No one can conjure up from within
the strength to do these things.
The power of the Holy Spirit
to make us our Father’s possession
comes from him and him alone.
It’s the same with the will and the resolve
to imitate the obedience and sacrifice of his Son, Jesus Christ.

God begins working in our lives in small steps,
with tiny acts of discipleship,
with the just the hints of the glimmers of great sacrifice.

That’s what inspires Jesus’s words to us in today’s Gospel.
They come to us from St. Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Plain.
Jesus announces blessings and woes,
the gracious judgments and reversals
that pour out from his Father’s hands
upon all who live, regardless of their circumstances.

The poor shall be blessed, but the rich will receive woe.
The hungry shall be filled, and the sated will know want.
Those who mourn will come to laugh, while those who laugh will know loss.

This is God’s way, the way it shall be.
So what we do? How do we live?
What’s the shape of life of a saint?
What’s it look like to be one who, like Ignatius,
wants to belong to God and to imitate his Son?

Jesus tells us how to follow him:
“But I say to you that listen,
Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you,
bless those who curse you,
pray for those who abuse you.
If anyone strikes you on the cheek,
offer the other also;
and from anyone who takes away your coat
do not withhold even your shirt.
Give to everyone who begs from you;
and if anyone takes away your goods,
do not ask for them again.
Do to others as you would have them do to you.” (Luke 6:27–31, NRSV)

There are no great programs or initiatives
hiding within that list of admonitions.
There are no ten easy steps,
no seven effective habits,
no secret keys to the life of faith,
no shortcuts to the path and no inside track to the calling of the saints.

Instead, the Christian life, the way of sainthood,
lies totally in the way of the small things.
We love the unlovable.
We do good with no thought of return.
We surrender what we own.
In the end, we even give up our own lives.

But this is not loss. It is no defeat.
It is our calling, the path set before us
as people baptized into the death and resurrection
of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He has given us the strength of spirit
and the discipline of will
and the power of prayer
that we need to imitate him,
to shoulder the cross daily,
to follow him in obedience.

Along that path, we have guides and mentors,
people who have gone before us in the faith.
One of them, Mother Teresa of Calcutta,
offers us some wisdom to guide and encourage us.
She said many times,
“We can do no great things;
we can do only small things with great love.”
This is how God works in us,
how he makes our lives holy
and turns us into his saints for others. Amen.

Love and Obedience

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Introduction

This is a wedding homily I preached for a couple in, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday, Nov. 6, 2010.

Readings

Deuteronomy 28:1–2
1 Corinthians 12:31–13:13

Message

In “Beautiful Boy,” John Lennon sang,
“Life is just what happens to you
while you’re busy making other plans.”
When we stop to think about all the twists and turns
that have brought us together here today
to celebrate your marriage, Beatrice and John,
we could fill a book.
It would tell the story of the lives that have happened to us,
the plans that we made in hope
and then have set aside
when reality came knocking on our doors.

John was a great musician,
but he was not much of a man of faith.
And so he really missed out on something we all share.
Life has happened to us—
both the joyful and the painful—
but underneath all of our lives
we find the strong and compassionate arms of God.

He watches over us and cares for us.
He knows when we are filled with joy
and when we are weighed down by grief.
He is patient with us when we stray from him,
and he is relentless in finding ways
to draw us back, closer to him.

And so we could change what John wrote,
and we could sing instead,
“God is who watches over us
while we’re busy making other plans.”

That’s true and it’s a comfort,
but there’s more to our faith than that.
God not only watches over us and cares for us,
he desires for us to love and to follow him
and to love and to care for one another.

He blesses us with the gifts to do just that.
In today’s world, in our common culture,
we don’t much like the word “obedience.”
We don’t want anyone telling us what to do.
But obedience to God is not a burden;
it’s a privilege and a joy.

That’s what lies behind
that passage from Deuteronomy we just heard.
Obedience and blessing go hand-in-hand.
God gives us the faith to trust him.
And when we trust, we naturally love and obey him.
And when we obey him, he pours out his blessings upon us.

That’s one half of what Jesus tells us
lies at the center of living by faith.
He says we ought to love God with all that is in us
and love our neighbors as ourselves.

The other half is what Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians.
This is the love we share with others,
most especially with our spouses.
In marriage God blesses us with a partner
and he calls us to give ourselves in love.

And together, John and Beatrice,
you share a love given to you by God,
one that “bears all things, believes all things,
hopes all things, endures all things.” (1 Corinthians 13:7, NRSV)

And that is enough,
enough to celebrate this day,
enough to sustain you each and every day,
so that you may abide confidently, obediently,
in the “faith, hope, and love” of God our heavenly Father. Amen.