Category Archives: Homilies

Blessed and in the Book

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Introduction

This is a funeral homily I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Thursday, Nov. 4, 2010.

Readings

Isaiah 66:10–14
Psalm 61
Revelation 21:22–27
Luke 6:17–21

Message

Every nurse knows that each patient is a whole person,
with a history and a story,
with unique needs and joys and fears.
And the good nurses, the compassionate nurses,
know that care for a person is always care for the whole person,
and even that person’s family.

For many years, Janet served others as a nurse.
She lived out her faith, becoming the hands and voice of our Lord.
She touched frail and fragile bodies;
she spoke words of comfort and consolation.

And then, in these last years,
she came to a place where she was touched,
where she and Doug were comforted and consoled.
And in those days, others served
as the voice and hands of the Lord in their lives, in the midst of their pain.

That’s how we live in God’s community, how we believe he works among us.
But such belief, no matter how strong,
does not take away the questions we ask, the fears that gnaw upon us.

And that is why we turn in times of pain and suffering,
in moments of mourning and loss,
to the treasures of our tradition in the faith.

The people of God are no strangers to suffering.
That’s why we find power and encouragement
in the message of Isaiah to his people of faith:
“You shall see, and your heart shall rejoice;
your bodies shall flourish like the grass….” (Isaiah 66:14a-b)

This is a word that promise us
that God’s power to restore all things
will even make our bodies— our bones in Hebrew—
to flourish like the grass.
What a comfort when we truly know the frailty of our bodies.

Those moments when we confront our weakness
can lead us to despair, but by faith, we pray with the Psalmist:
“Hear my cry, O God;
listen to my prayer.
From the end of the earth I call to you,
when my heart is faint.” (Psalm 61:1–2)

The ears of God are keen;
he hears us when our voices fade to a whisper,
and even when we only can call to him in our hearts.
He hears and he answers and he assures us
that he keeps us in his care, now and forever.

That is why John’s Revelation offers the Church
the encouragement of the vision of heaven,
where God gathers his people into his everlasting glory,
and welcomes into his eternal city
“those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” (Rev. 21:27)
Since Janet had a passion for books and for libraries,
it is comforting to know that her name is recorded in that great book.

Until the day comes when we join Janet
and all our family and friends who have preceded us in death,
we remain here, in this life, with all its joys and sorrows.
We are not left alone to depend upon our own strength.
Our Father in heaven has sent his Son to live among us,
and like a nurse, he cares for each of us, body and soul.

As Luke tells us in his Gospel,
“They had come to hear [Jesus] and to be healed of their diseases;
and those who were troubled
with unclean spirits were cured….
Then he looked up at his disciples and said:
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.’” (Luke 6:18,20–21)
Now, for the time being, we may be poor and hungry and weeping.
But we will come to the kingdom and then we will be filled and we’ll laugh
with Janet and all the faithful and the Lord our God. Amen.

So Great a Cloud

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Introduction

This is a funeral homily I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Monday, Nov. 1, 2010.

Readings

Revelation 7:9–17
Psalm 34:1–10
1 John 3:1–3
Matthew 6:25–34

Message

They are here.
They are all around us.
Alvina and Fred, husband and wife.
Clara Bell, Freida, and Evelyn, her sisters.
Ernest and Arnold, her brothers.
All the saints we know,
the saints who have come before us,
here in Beatrice and Pickrell.

But also the saints of God’s Church,
the saints great and small,
recent and ancient.
They are all here,
because whenever the Church gathers,
it gathers one and all,
as the Apostle reminds us in Hebrews,
“…we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses….” (Heb. 12:1)

These are not the spirits of Halloween.
They are, instead, the spirits of all who are hallowed,
made holy, wholly by God in his grace,
made holy, like Alvina, in her baptism,
when the Holy Spirit poured itself upon her.

And so it is fitting and good and comforting
for us to gather here, today, on All Saints’ Day,
to give God our Father thanks and praise
for the gift of life and the promise of eternal life
won for us through the death and rising of his Son
in the power and mystery of their Holy Spirit.

We are here, in a place, God’s house,
that stands today as a testament to the faith of the saints
who have gone before us.
Alvina is one of those saints.
She was a charter member of this parish.
No history we recall can tell fully
the breadth and depth of her service
both to God and to the work of this parish.

We all know that when we have our sleeves rolled up,
and we find ourselves hard at work, the Lord’s work,
we can sometimes wonder whether it matters,
whether what we do will last.
And it’s true—this building, any building, may crumble.
Any congregation we hold dear may pass into history.
Yet the people whose lives Alvina and you and I touch
outlast any building, any institution, anything we make.

We join the cloud of witnesses that will never die.
It is always only a growing cloud,
as John saw in his Revelation:
“After this I looked, and there was a great multitude
that no one could count, from every nation,
from all tribes and peoples and languages,
standing before the throne and before the Lamb,
robed in white, with palm branches in their hands.” (Rev. 7:9)

And now Alvina has joined that multitude,
that gathering in the kingdom of God.
This is a fitting end to her life,
one shaped and guided by the wisdom
of her confirmation verse, Matthew 6:33:
“But strive first for the kingdom of God
and his righteousness,
and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matt. 6:33)

Or, as she probably heard it and learned it at Zion Lutheran Church:
“Trachet am ersten nach dem Reich Gottes
und nach seiner Gerechtigkeit,
so wird euch solches alles zufallen.” Amen.

Under the Hands of God

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This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Festival of the Reformation with the Rite of Confirmation, Oct. 31, 2010.

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Readings

Jeremiah 31:31–34
Psalm 46
Romans 3:19–28
John 8:31–36

+ + +

Prayer

Place the hands of your Holy Spirit upon us, O Father, and guide us to follow your Son in faith, so that our lives may witness to your grace and bring you glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

+ + +

Message

Our hands say so much about us.
They tell who we are and how we have lived.
Here is the scar on my thumb.
It reminds me of a time when I was in third grade.
I was cutting out Mark Trail comic strips
from the newspaper to take to school
to give to Mrs. Harris, my teacher.

For some reason, I’d decided a scissors wasn’t the right tool for me.
So I used the paper cutter in my Dad’s darkroom.
I had the strip all lined up with the cutter’s grid.
I held it in place with my left hand
as I brought the cutter down onto my thumb.
These were the days before paper cutters had safety guards.

+ + +

There’s a hand in a photograph of a quilt
in this year’s Thrivent calendar.
It’s posted on the bulletin board in the hallway.
The hand has a distinctive shape to the wrist.
That tells us the hand belongs to Grace Otto,
a faithful member of Holy Cross Church
who has given so many hours
making quilts for people in need all over the world.

+ + +

We use our hands to serve meals at Warren’s Table.
We pull the weeds in the church’s flower beds.
We make blankets, assemble newsletters,
carry food to people confined to their homes,
pass the peace of our Lord, hold hands to offer comfort,
play the drums and the guitar and the organ,
and receive the bread of heaven and lift the cup of salvation.

+ + +

Our hands say so much about us,
just as the hands of our Lord speak eloquently about him.
They show us how he cares for his people.

His steady hands opened the scroll of the prophet Isaiah
as he announced his ministry in the synagogue.
His soothing hands reached out to a leper and wiped away his disease.
His healing hands touched the eyes of a blind man and gave him sight.
His giving hands took, blessed, and broke loaves and fish to feed the five thousand.
His artistic hands drew in the dust
as he waited for a woman’s stone-wielding accusers to disperse.
His strong hands carried his heavy cross to the hill of crucifixion.
His wounded hands embraced the nails hammered into him on that cross.
His raised hands blessed the disciples as he ascended into heaven.

These are glimpses of the stories, the true stories of our Lord.
Our forebears have handed them down to us.
Then we hand them on to our children.
That is the definition of a living Tradition.
But as the years go by,
these stories can become familiar and rote.
Before we know it,
we have lost touch with the ways our Lord reaches out to us.

It becomes hard for us to feel our Lord’s hands
in so much of our life together in his Church today.
We have lost a sense of those strong carpenter’s hands—
hands that embraced the broad shoulders
of young and burly fishermen.
And yet, beneath the committees and the papers,
behind the meetings and the announcements,
beyond the controversies and the contentions,
the hands of our Lord are at work.

We might be tempted to say,
“Oh, that’s just a figure of speech.
We like to say our Lord touches us with his hands.
But he doesn’t really have hands.
He doesn’t really have a body
that we can touch or that can touch us.”

It’s tempting, but it’s wrong.
Our Lord is embodied in this world as truly as are you and I.
He has hands with which he touches us,
just as surely as we touch one another
when we exchange his peace.

Where are they?
They are here, at the ends of your arms and mine.
The Church is our Lord’s body in the world,
and that makes our hands his hands.
That means that when we touch others,
and in turn are touched by them,
in the name of our Lord,
then he touches us through these hands,
young and old hands,
smooth and rough hands,
strong and shaky hands.

Our Lord always has worked among us,
using his hands naturally as a manual laborer.
We just tend not to notice how he touches us.
Jeremiah, for example, reminds us in our reading,
that our Lord says to his people that things soon would be different,
not like the days when he “took them by the hand
to bring them out of the land of Egypt.” (Jeremiah 31:32, NRSV).
That reminds us of how fathers and mothers
lead their children by the hand to guide them and keep them safe.

Then the Lord promises to touch his people—
Israel and the Church—in a new way.
“I will put my law within them,
and I will write it on their hearts;
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.” (Jeremiah 31:33, NRSV)
His hands inscribe his law upon the hearts of Israel and the Church,
upon your heart and mine.

And when we read Psalm 46,
we pray together these words:
“He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.” (Psalm 46:9, NRSV)
His almighty hands destroy our feeble weapons.
He imposes a ceasefire in which his peace can appear,
a peace that passes all understanding.

In the Gospel of John,
Jesus tells his disciples and us,
that “if the Son makes you free,
you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36, NRSV)
His hands break the bonds of our captivity,
liberating us from slavery to sin
just as he liberated Israel from bondage to slavery in Egypt.

+ + +

The hands of our Lord say so much about him.
His hands touch us, leading us along the path to new lives,
giving us his blessed peace, freeing us from the bondage of our sins.

This morning, in just a few minutes,
we will see hands at work once again—
both our hands and our Lord’s hands.
When Dillon and Kyler and Cutter
stand before God and in our midst,
they will make a commitment.
Their promise is one we all share,
one in which we all lend our hands,
joining in common labor and service.

To bind themselves to their commitment, their promise,
they will say, “I do, and I ask God to help and guide me.”
At the same time, we can all recommitment ourselves
to the work of our Lord’s manual labor,
the hands-on tasks of the Church our liturgy outlines for us:
+ We promise “to live among God’s faithful people,”
touching one another with our Lord’s love.
+ We commit “to hear his Word and share in his supper,”
holding the Scriptures and breaking the bread and tipping the cup.
+ We vow “to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed,”
using our hands to show and tell others about our Lord.
+ We resolve “to serve all people, following the example of our Lord Jesus,”
giving food to the hungry, bandaging the wounded, and consoling the lonely.
+ And we pledge “to strive for justice and peace in all the earth,”
breaking down barriers and turning swords into plowshares.

After they make their commitment,
Cutter and Kyler and Dillon will kneel here before God
and in the presence of you and me, their sisters and brothers.
Then these hands will rest upon their heads.
And just as your hands are the hands of the Lord in your labors,
these hands will become for them our Lord’s hands,
touching them as we pray,
“Father in heaven, for Jesus’ sake,
stir up in them the gift of your Holy Spirit;
confirm their faith, guide their lives,
empower them in their serving,
give them patience in their suffering,
and bring them to everlasting life.”

This is our hands-on prayer for confirmation.
But it is also our prayer for the Church,
here and throughout the world,
embodied in these three young men and in you and in me.
It is our prayer for reformation, for re-formation,
for a renewal in the faith,
for a new life lived out together under the hands of our God. Amen.

Reversals

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This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, Oct. 24, 2010.

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Readings

Jeremiah 14:7–10, 19–22
Psalm 84:1–7 (antiphon v. 5)
2 Timothy 4:6–8, 16–18
Luke 18:9–14

+ + +

Prayer

Hear us, O Father, as we pray to you. By your Spirit, forgive us our sins, so that we may know the joy of your grace, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Message

We all love a good story about the underdog.
We enjoy the tales that tell how the lowly upset the mighty,
the weak outwit the strong,
and the humble supplant the proud.

A two-bit southpaw brawler from Philadelphia
gets a shot at the heavyweight title.
His opponent, the champion,
sees it as a great publicity stunt.

But Rocky runs the streets of Philly,
trains in the musty gym with Mick,
flies up the steps at the art museum,
finally makes it to the top and raises his arms.
Then he goes the full fifteen rounds against the champ,
leaning more on willpower than technique.

Remember the 1991 World Series?
Two teams, the Twins and the Braves,
both going from worst to first.
They battle for seven games,
until Jack Morris pitches ten shutout innings
and the Twins defeat the Braves in seven.
No matter who won, the underdog triumphed.

Then there’s the history of an army
cobbled together from rough regiments
of poorly armed farmers and merchants.
It was a citizens’ militia, ill-clad, undertrained,
spending almost as much time
getting away from the British army
as actually engaging in combat.

But then, after years of struggle,
that militia wears down the greatest empire in the world
and gains the freedom of thirteen sparsely populated colonies
strung out along the coast between ocean and wilderness.

These are the stories we love.
They are tales, both imagined and true,
of underdogs clawing their way to the top.

What we love is the reversal of fortune,
the exchange of status and power at the end.
We love these stories because we identify
with the underdog, with the unexpected hero.

Nobody reads or watches or listens to these stories
because he or she enjoys the feeling
of being taken down a notch or two.
No one likes having one’s power and privilege snatched away
at the last moment, the final page, the closing scene.

This is just the way we are.
We simply and innately identify
with the upstart, the outsider, the underdog.
And so, when we hear this day’s Gospel,
and if we are honest with ourselves,
the first character we imagine ourselves to be
is the humble, penitent tax collector.

He is the one who, in the end,
is blessed with the reversal of fortune.
He receives the word that grants him God’s grace.
That’s the unexpected outcome,
because, after all, he was the tax collector,
despised and ostracized by his community.
And the other man was the Pharisee,
the respected and religious pillar of that same community,
the one who prayed proudly that he was better than the rest.

It’s clear who was the underdog
and who thought a little too highly of himself.

But the catch is that while we imagine ourselves
in the humble and penitent position of the tax collector,
we are—because of our attitudes—
most of the time, in most cases,
really most like the Pharisee.

We come to church regularly.
We give our offerings consistently.
We volunteer our time gladly.
We say our prayers daily.
We wear our crosses faithfully.

We try to give God glory and honor.
We make space for him in our lives.
We want others to know we are Christians.
We do all these things with good intentions.

We begin with acts of humble obedience.
But, almost without fail,
we find them turning, ever so gradually,
into our causes for pride.
We end up saying to God,
“I thank you that I am not like other people:
celebrities and politicians,
the inactives and the unchurched,
hoarders and addicts.
You know, God, how faithful I have been,
how I how shared my time prudently,
how I have lent my talents carefully,
and how I have given offerings moderately.”

But, the real truth does not quite line up
with our version of the way we see things.
God our Father executes his great reversals,
upending all our comfortable arrangements.

Early on, Luke’s Gospel gives us a hint of the reversals to come.
Mary, our Lord’s Mother, breaks into song,
responding to Gabriel’s announcement that she will give birth.
Mary sang,
“[The Mighty One] has thrown down rulers from their thrones
but lifted up the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things;
the rich he has sent away empty.” (Luke 1:52–53, NAB)

And later, when Jesus announced his ministry,
he read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah:
“The spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me,
because the LORD has anointed me;
He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the lowly,
to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
and release to the prisoners,
To announce a year of favor from the LORD
and a day of vindication by our God,
to comfort all who mourn….” (Isaiah 61:1–2, NAB)

And then, today’s parable tells us again
how our Father’s judgment and mercy
turn the tables on us.
The parable teaches how he executes his great reversals.
As Jesus said, when he finished telling his parable,
“…all who exalt themselves will be humbled,
but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14b, NRSV)

So, where do we see ourselves in the parable?
Our instinct is to identify with the tax collector.
After all, we like the way the story turns out when the underdog triumphs.
The truth of our lives, however, is that we are proud,
puffed up with our accomplishments,
and we have more than a little of the Pharisee’s attitudes in us.

But the real, good news is that our first instinct was right—
if not for the right reason.
We are truly the other people;
we huddle amid the thieves and rogues.
With the tax collector, we stand at a distance,
we beat our breasts, and we each cry out,
“God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13b, NRSV)

His judgment drives us to make that confession,
humbling us, lowering us to our knees.
As Jeremiah said on our Lord’s behalf:
“Truly they have loved to wander,
they have not restrained their feet….” (Jeremiah 14:10a, NRSV)

And then his mercy raises us up,
exalting us, lifting us to our feet.
His grace responds to the confidence
the people placed in the LORD through the prophet,
“We set our hope on you,
for it is you who do all this.” (Jeremiahs 14:22b, NRSV)

This is how the reversal works.
In the end, we go “to [our] home[s] justified…;
for all who exalt themselves will be humbled,
but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:14, NRSV) Amen.

When Gratitude is Only Skin-Deep

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This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Oct. 10, 2010.

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Readings

2 Kings 5:1–3, 7–15c
Psalm 111 (antiphon v.1)
2 Timothy 2:8–15
Luke 17:11–19

+ + +

Prayer

Father in heaven, open our hearts to embrace your grace shown to us through your Son, Jesus Christ, and by your Holy Spirit, move us to gratitude for your gifts. Amen.

+ + +

Message

I had no idea.
So I was surprised
when I read the Wikipedia article on leprosy.
It claims that the World Health Organization
estimated that two to three million people worldwide
were permanently afflicted with leprosy in 1995.
And since then, over fifteen million people
have been cured of the disease.

I learned that leprosy is actually an upper respiratory infection.
One of its symptoms shows itself through skin lesions.
It does not make body parts fall off.
It is treatable with medication,
and once treatment begins, the individual is no long contagious.

Even so, in some countries, leper colonies still persist.
People with leprosy are feared and ostracized
both because of irrational worries about infection
and because of the stigma attached to their appearance.

We might want to believe we live
in a progressive, enlightened era and culture,
but just as with beauty, when we behold disfigurement,
we make judgments that only go skin-deep.

And that’s true of so many conditions
in which people find themselves,
whether we look at fitness, finances, or philosophies,
politics, morals, or faith.

It’s true.
We may not speak of our skin-deep judgments,
but when we pay attention to that flicker of thought
that flashes across our consciousness
when we see someone
who embodies difference from ourselves,
who speaks of strange thoughts,
who lives in unusual ways,
then we know that we judge others…quickly.

For the sake of decorum and decency,
if not for the cause of truth and honesty,
we censor ourselves on most occasions,
and do not bring to voice
those flashes of instant judgment.

So it’s easy enough for us to get inside the heads
of the people in today’s Gospel from Luke
who lived in that region
between Samaria and Galilee.

Like in any borderland, any country on the crossroads,
the people living there were a mixed multitude,
claiming a variety of ethnicities,
practicing various faiths,
and living in diverse ways.

And on the outside of that rich ferment of cultures
lived the lepers,
discarded and disregarded by all,
whether Jew or Samaritan.

But then Jesus, in his travels, came near to a village.
We can imagine the buzz that preceded him.
He was the one who rebuked a fever (Luke 4:39, NRSV),
exorcised demons from the possessed (Luke 4:41, NRSV),
cured a leper of his disease (Luke 5:13, NRSV),
raised a widow’s son from death (Luke 7:15, NRSV),
healed a boy with epilepsy (Luke 9:42, NRSV),
and made well a crippled woman (Luke 13:13, NRSV).

The rumors and the stories and the wonderment
passed like a wildfire through dry grass,
as only word-of-mouth can
when it gets started in a small town.

So, before he even crossed the border to enter the village,
ten lepers, banished beyond the edge of town,
called out to him from a distance,
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” (Luke 17:13, NRSV)

He looked at them; he saw them from a distance.
Their disease and disfigurement were obvious.
And strangely to us, perhaps,
he did not go to them,
he didn’t lay his hands on them,
he didn’t tell them to go and bathe in special water,
or make mud with dust and spit
and wipe it on their sores.

He said only one thing:
“Go and show yourselves to the priests.” (Luke 17:14, NRSV)
Why? Why did he tell them to do that?

As a faithful Jew, Jesus knew the Law of God.
And in Leviticus, the great Holiness Code
describes how people with skin diseases
must show themselves to the priests.
And the details of the Law outline
the procedures for inspecting the lesions,
for watching and waiting for sores to get better or worse,
and the ways to decide whether someone was clean or not.

That was the Law Jesus followed.
He sent the ten to the priests
for them to determine whether the lepers were clean or not.

In obedience to Jesus,
the ten went on their way to the priests;
they were made clean.

That is how grace can work in human life—
freely, at the command of the Lord,
even at a distance, poured out on all who need it,
showered upon people on the margins.

What is the response to grace?
For the ten, the first response was out of their hands.
They did nothing to be made clean,
to be healed of their leprosy.
Jesus healed them as a gift.

But of the ten, one responded differently to that gift of grace.
He “…turned back,
praising God with a loud voice.
He prostrated himself as Jesus’ feet and thanked him.” (Luke 17:15–16, NRSV)

Maybe the nine had feelings of gratitude
for the miracle of healing Jesus had worked in them.
Maybe, but their gratitude was only skin-deep.

For this one, gratitude ran much deeper,
going all the way to his heart, his spirit.
The passage says he praised God.
The Greek has him “doxologizing God.”
And the man also thanked Jesus.
In the Greek he “eucharistized Jesus.”

Those words of worship don’t show up by accident.
It’s clear that Jesus’ gift of grace
lead this marginalized man,
the one judged unclean by his community,
to throw himself on his face before his Savior
and to worship him as God.

And the kicker?
He was the one Samaritan among the ten.
That meant he was despised and distrusted
by the people of Israel, God’s people.
The Law said he unclean because of his leprosy.
But worse than that, he ultimately was uncleanable,
not because he had leprosy
but because of who he was,
because of his identity.

He could be cured of his disease,
his healing verified by the priests,
but he could not be rid of his own self,
his Samaritanness, his otherness,
and still be the man he was.

And in the face of that fact,
Jesus said to him,
“Get up and go on your way;
your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19, NRSV)
And there the Greek word for “well” also means “saved.”

And then the questions come, to you and to me.
Am I one among the nine?
Do I take Jesus’ words of grace for granted, or at least too lightly?
Yes, I do.

Do I follow his instructions, like the ten,
and discover he has made me clean,
but then continue on my way?
Yes, much of the time.

When do I not see that he has had mercy upon me,
speaking a word of grace
that makes me clean and whole?
Most of the time, regrettably.

And so let’s go back to the beginning.
We see Jesus come down the road toward us.
He approaches our small group.
He is here in our midst, in the flesh.
We cry out to him from a distance,
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” (Luke 17:13, NRSV)

And he speaks to us.
By this water and Word our Father adopts you.
Your sins are forgiven.
Listen; this is the Word of God.
Take and eat; this is my body.
Drink this, for it is my blood.
Go and witness to me, for I am with you.

And this time, as we pray for his grace,
may it be said of you and me,
“When they saw that they had been made whole,
they turned back from the way they had gone,
singing doxologies to God with loud voices.
They bowed down at the feet of their Lord
and made their sacrifices of thanksgiving.”
And our Lord Jesus Christ said,
“Your faith has made you well and saved you.” Amen.

Living by Faith

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This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Oct. 3, 2010.

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Readings

Habakkuk 1:1–4; 2:1–4
Psalm 37:1–9
2 Timothy 1:1–14
Luke 17:5–10

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Prayer

Almighty Father, by your Holy Spirit you bless us with faith in your Son, Jesus Christ. Help us to trust in you in all ways and for all things. Amen.

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Message

Faith is one of those words we all use.
It’s easy to slip it into our conversations,
and believe that we all mean the same thing
when we say it.

But I’m not sure that is true.
Sometimes we make statements like this:
“It doesn’t really matter what you believe,
just so long as you have faith in something.”

Well, it does matter.
Because if we believe in other gods,
valuing self or possessions
more than the Lord God of Israel and the Church,
then we have placed our trust in an idol.
That runs us aground on the first Commandment.

That’s half of the problem with our conversations,
when statements like that come up.

The other half is the soft and comfortable idea
afloat in so many conversations in our culture today
that what really matters
is not that we have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ
and his Father and their Holy Spirit,
but rather that we just having faith in something.

When we say that,
then we trim faith down to make it fit
into our little box of nice things,
like good manners and diligent personal hygiene
and a well-kept and weed-free yard.

Faith becomes just a soft and vaguely admirable virtue,
a quality that nice people display,
a trait we admire—in moderation—in others.

But in truth, that’s not at all what faith is.

Lutherans are famous for a saying,
one that has become almost a slogan.
We proclaim that Christians
are “justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.”
This is not a saying that we can find verbatim in the Bible,
but it’s one that helps to summarize
what the Church teaches and preaches,
based upon the Scriptures.

And like many things,
this gets a little more complicated
before it becomes clear.
So it helps to look at the terms in the saying.

Justification means to be put right with God.
It’s not something we can do.
Rather, God does it to us.
It’s his work, not ours.

Grace is the gift the Father gives
to make us right with him
for the sake of Jesus Christ
through the power of their Spirit.

Faith then is our trust
that we are in fact made right
through that gift.
Basically faith is clinging to God our Father,
holding on to him for dear life.

We can never do this by our own strength,
under our own power,
by any act of our own wills.

Instead, by that gift of grace,
given through the Holy Spirit,
God our Father joins us
to the faith of his Son, Jesus Christ,
so that our clinging is his work and not ours.

This is why our Small Catechism,
when it looks at the Third Article of the Apostles’ Creed—
the one about the Holy Spirit—
begins by asking, “What does this mean?”
Then it offers the answer,
“I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength
believe in Jesus Christ my Lord, or come to Him;
but the Holy Spirit has called me through the Gospel,
enlightened me by His gifts,
and sanctified and preserved me in the true faith….” (Small Catechism, Part II, Third Article)

These words by Martin Luther echo what the apostle writes in Ephesians 2:
“For by grace you have been saved through faith,
and this is not your own doing;
it is the gift of God—not the result of works,
so that no one may boast.” (Ephesians 2:8–9, NRSV)

And, as St. Paul writes in Romans 3:
“For there is no distinction,
since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
they are now justified by his grace as a gift,
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
whom God put forward
as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood,
effective through faith. “ (Romans 3:22b–25a, NRSV)

So, what does this mean?
What does this mean for us
as we get up each morning
and face responsibilities and demands
that seem to pile up higher
with each passing week,
no matter how hard we work?

First of all,
the good news is that living by faith
is not just one more chore or task
on the long lists we keep for ourselves.
We do not conjure up faith from within.
We don’t whip it up like enthusiasm or community pride.

Faith is God’s gift to us,
it comes by the Father’s grace poured out by the Holy Spirit
through his Son, our Lord.

He gave us faith when we were baptized.
That’s why we speak of baptism as adoption into his family.
We cannot choose to make God our Father;
he chooses to make us his sons and daughters,
siblings of our Lord and Savior.
As his children, we live by faith;
we trust that he will keep us and protect us.

Second, because we live by faith,
we can put those long lists into their proper order.
We can look at life’s threats with a new perspective.
Since we receive faith as a gift,
our destiny does not depend upon our hard work.
It does not match up with our successes.
It cannot be thwarted by our setbacks.

Our future rests securely in God our Father,
so that by the faith he gives us,
we can trust that we will live eternally
with his Son, Jesus Christ, and worship them
in the community of their Holy Spirit.

This is no cause to fill us with pride,
because our faith is God’s gift, not a our work.
That’s why we can trust
the divine promise the prophet Habakkuk shares:
“Look at the proud!
Their spirit is not right in them,
but the righteous live by their faith.” Amen. (Habakkuk 2:4, NRSV)

A Good Four-Letter Word

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Introduction

This is a funeral homily I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Monday, Sept. 27, 2010, for the husband of the woman whose funeral I conducted a little over a year ago. Her funeral homily was entitled Second Birth.

Readings

Ezekiel 37:1–14
Psalm 23
2 Corinthians 5:1–10
John 14:18–24

Message

One of the good four-letter words is “home.”
This word was often on the lips of Harry Gartner.
Towards the end of his life,
he spoke many times of wanting to go home, to be at home.

And in one sense, because of his hospice care,
he realized that desire,
as he was able to spend his final days
in the comfort of his own home,
receiving Janet’s care and support,
surrounded by the love of family and friends,
amid his familiar belongings,
under the same roof as his beloved Studebaker.

But in the deeper, more profound, spiritual sense,
Harry was already and always at home,
not because of where he was,
but simply because of whose he was.

Harry was a Christian,
a man baptized into the body of Christ, the Church.
And so it was for him as it is for you and me:
We are at home because our Lord makes his home with us.
As Jesus told his disciple, the other Judas,
“Those who love me will keep my word,
and my Father will love them,
and we will come to them and make our home with them.”
(John 14:23, NRSV)
This gives us great freedom, because we are not tied down.
Whether, like Harry, we live in town,
or serve our country in distant lands,
or travel for work,
or vacation in the land of winter sunshine,
we are always at home, even when we are on the road,
because our Lord is with us, no matter where we are.

And when the journeys of our lives run long,
and confront us with their bumps and detours,
including illness and disease,
then the Lord who makes his home with us
reminds us of our ultimate home security,
his loving and protecting arms.

That’s why St. Paul can tell the Corinthians and us,
“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed,
we have a building from God,
a house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.” (2 Corinthians 5:1, NRSV)

This is our sure and certain hope,
the promise God our Father has made with us,
sealed by the resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ,
poured out upon us through their Holy Spirit.

There are days when our trust in this promise
may seem vain and fragile,
our faith troubled and tenuous.
But truly, because our Lord makes his home with us,
we know the answer to the question
the Lord GOD posed to Elijah in the valley of the bones.
He asked, “Mortal, can these bones live?” (Ezekiel 37:3, NRSV)

His own answer calls forth from the empty tomb of his Son,
from the promise of a homecoming he has given to Harry,
and from the assurance his servant, St. Paul, shares with us:
“He who has prepared us for this very thing is God,
who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.” Amen. (2 Corinthians 5:5, NRSV)

Ruin and Righteousness

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This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Sept. 26, 2010.

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Readings

Amos 6:1a, 4–7
Psalm 146 (antiphon v. 7)
1 Timothy 6:6–19
Luke 16:19–31

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Prayer

Gracious Father, by your Holy Spirit open our ears to hear your calling to faithful service and empower us to respond to that calling, following your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Message

Most little children just love it
when parents toss them
up into the air and then catch them
gently in their arms.

If they can talk,
they’ll exclaim, “Again! Do it again!”
When you’ve played this way with a child,
you know that your arms will tire out
long before your child’s enthusiasm wanes.

Eventually, though, we hope,
they grow too big, too heavy,
to be tossed into the air.

But fortunately, that comes about the age
when they have grown big enough
to sit safely on a swing.

And then the fun begins anew.
We discover, to our relief,
that pushing a swing is easier
than tossing a boy or a girl into the air.
Little, gentle pushes made at the just right time
will launch them much higher
and let them swing much faster
than we could ever accomplish
by tossing them straight up.

Today’s four readings are like a swing,
and we are the children riding upon it,
and God our Father is the one
standing patiently behind us,
pushing gently, again and again,
at just the right time,
to launch us, seated upon these readings
higher and further and faster
than might happen if he used brute force.

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Amos pronounces God’s judgment
on all who are not troubled
by the calamities facing his people.
He announces that God will judge them
because they place their faith in their wealth,
depending upon themselves and their possessions
rather than relying upon the God
who in fact gave them everything they have:

“Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory…
but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph.
Therefore they shall now be the first
to go into exile….” (Amos 6:4a,6b,7a, NRSV)

Do you feel the first push on the swing?
God judges those who tend to their own comfort
rather than grieving over the ruin facing his people.

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In Psalm 146, we sing together with Israel,
reminding ourselves not to place our ultimate trust
in people who come and go in our lives,
but to seek help from God.
He is the LORD who gives his all for those who are weak,
but who executes his judgment upon the wicked:

“Do not put your trust…in mortals,
in whom there is no help.
Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob….
The LORD loves the righteous…
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.” (Psalm 146:3,5a,8c,9c, NRSV)

And our Father in heaven pushes on the swing once again.
He judges the wicked—those who ignore the weak—
but showers his love upon the weak and those who aid them.

+ + +

St. Paul offers wise spiritual guidance
to his companion, Timothy,
advising him on how to live a good and godly life.
At the root, the question for Timothy
is whether he will live under and witness to and serve fully
the God of Israel and the Church
or bow down to some other god, some false god, some idol.
The choice is clear and the outcome is eternal:

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil,
and in their eagerness to be rich
some have wandered away from the faith
and pierced themselves with many pains. …
As for those who in the present age are rich,
command them not to be haughty,
or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches,
but rather on God who richly provides us
with everything for our enjoyment.” (1 Timothy 6:10,17, NRSV)

And with another push, God sends us higher and faster.
When we love money more than him,
then we have forsaken him and have placed our faith in an idol.
He gives us everything, not only for need, but also for enjoyment.
But in return, we often commit idolatry, breaking the first commandment.

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And finally, in the Gospel from Luke,
Jesus tells the parable
of Father Abraham, the rich man, and poor Lazarus.
We learn that the rich enjoy their fleeting reward,
but that the poor may hope for eternal comfort.
Jesus reminds us through the words of Father Abraham
that this judgment from God ought not catch us by surprise:

“They have Moses and the prophets;
they should listen to them. …
If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets,
neither will they be convinced
even if someone rises from the dead.” (Luke 16:29,31, NRSV)

And with a last push, we swing high and fast,
knowing that God our Father stands behind us,
pushing, reminding, pushing, rebuking, pushing, reassuring.

He doesn’t throw us up into the air abruptly,
sending us flying aloft by brute force.
Instead, with patience and gentleness,
he firmly, insistently, repeatedly, inexorably
tells us again and again,
first this way and then that way,
through the prophets, by the psalmist,
in the gospel, by the apostles,
what is his will and his way and his word.

He judges and he saves.
He unmasks our idols and he invites our worship.
He rebukes all who trust in wealth
and reassures all who tolerate want.

Perhaps now we are squirming in our swing,
a little uncomfortable with the height and the speed,
a little unsure about whether we want God pushing us.

Maybe his warnings about wealth are not for us.
Maybe.
But then the facts confront us.

Americans make up five percent of the world’s population,
but we consume twenty-four percent of its energy,
where access to energy is the clearest measure of affluence.
The average American uses as much energy
as 307 Tanzanians or 370 Ethiopians,
just to pick out the citizens of two countries
where our fellow Lutherans outnumber the membership of the ELCA.

We could pick other measures,
other ways to assess wealth and poverty.
But in the end, the truth remains.
Despite the differences among us in this nation,
the discrepancies between the wealth of Warren Buffet
and the poverty of our permanent underclass,
we Americans are among the world’s wealthy.

And so, today’s Word of judgment is for us,
just as surely as God extends his promise of salvation
to all who turn to him.
As Father Abraham reminds us,
we have heard Moses and the prophets.
But then, God be praised,
we also have witnessed one who has risen from the dead.
We have felt him splash upon us,
we have heard him in teaching and preaching,
and we have tasted him in the bread and the wine.

We have received the grace of God in many and various ways,
so that we can take to heart
St. Paul’s admonition to Timothy, his friend and companion:

“But as for you, man of God,
shun all this;
pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love,
endurance, gentleness.
Fight the good fight of the faith;
take hold of the eternal life to which you were called
and for which you made the good confession
in the presence of many witnesses.” (1 Timothy 6:11–12, NRSV)

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Get back on the swing.
Grab the chains with both hands.
Call out over your shoulder to God our Father,
“Again! Higher! Faster! Do it again!” Amen.

One Mediator, One People

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This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Sept. 19, 2010.

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Readings

Amos 8:4–7
Psalm 113 (antiphon v. 7)
1 Timothy 2:1–7
Luke 16:1–13

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Prayer

Gracious Father, we thank you for sending your only Son, Jesus Christ, to reveal yourself to us and to gather us into your family. Bless us, by your Holy Spirit, so that we may live faithfully in your Church. Amen.

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Message

Jacob sat at his all-in-one chair and desk
and nervously fingered his yellow number-2 pencil.
The point was worn down, blunted,
the eraser worked over into a rounded hemisphere,
because he had just finished writing
the most difficult note of his young life.

His best friend, Joshua,
had agreed to be his courier, his messenger.
He’d given Josh the folded-into-a-wad note
during recess that morning,
along with explicit instructions.

Take the note to Elizabeth.
Wait while she reads it.
Then bring me her answer.

Jacob knew these things took time.
The ways of girls were a great unknown.
Their timing was a mystery.
But still, the waiting was agony.

He wanted to know what she thought of him,
whether they might become friends,
if she would talk to him after school.

And so, Jacob waited for a reply
to come to him through his mediator, Joshua.
Soon, he thought, soon I will know.

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We grow up with the idea
that sometimes we need a go-between,
a negotiator, a mediator, a messenger,
someone who can speak to both parties
at the delicate beginnings of a relationship,
or in the midst of careful and formal talks—
someone who can be trusted to be honest,
to speak the truth to both people in the relationship.

And so, since we know how this works
in our daily lives and relationships,
it is no surprise to discover
that our normal, mundane images of mediators
find their source, their inspiration,
as well as their fulfillment, their completion
in the life of our God.

In our reading from 1 Timothy,
St. Paul shares a fragment of an ancient hymn:
“There is one God;
there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
Christ Jesus, himself human,
who gave himself a ransom for all.” (1 Timothy 2:5, NRSV)

Our Lord is our go-between, our mediator,
he is like Jacob and Elizabeth’s friend, Joshua:
trustworthy, honest, a man of integrity.
He’s like Joshua, but he is also much more.

Jesus Christ is the one mediator
between his Father and us
because he is both God and man.
He is the Son of the Father,
sharing for all eternity in the community of their Spirit.
And he is the son of Mary, the mother of our Lord,
born a Jew in Palestine two millennia ago.

He does not carry a message between God and people,
or between people and God,
written on a wadded up scrap of tablet paper.
Instead, he is the message,
he is the Word made flesh,
he is God incarnate,
he is the One who is both God and man.

And that is what makes him the One
who can serve his Father and us as mediator.
Only he can give himself up,
only he can die on our behalf,
only he can be the ransom for all.

He is the greatest gift the Father could ever give,
the most generous gift we could ever receive,
because he is the Triune God’s gift of himself
to us, to all, and to the whole world.

We don’t need to wait and to worry
like Jacob did at his desk,
wondering whether we will get word,
agonizing over whether there is a future for us.

Jesus Christ is the One who comes to us,
the One who speaks the Word he is,
the One who makes us to be God’s people.

There is another well-known passage
from St. Paul that offers us the assurance
that Jesus Christ, our mediator, is the One for us.
In Ephesians 4, the apostle writes,
“There is one body and one Spirit,
just as you were called to the one hope of your calling,
one Lord, one faith, one baptism,
one God and Father of all,
who is above and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:4–6, NRSV).

[Tomorrow morning/Today] we will gather
around our baptismal font
to witness the birth of a new Christian.
When November is washed
in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
the water and Word together
become the presence of our Lord
in her life and in our midst,
just as surely as he comes to us
in the Meal we share at his Holy Table.

He comes in Holy Baptism
as the one mediator
between God and humankind,
because he himself is both human and divine.
And so he is the only one
who can give himself as a ransom for all,
and in our midst, as a ransom for November.

For her, this is the first day of her new life.
For us, it serves to remind us,
no matter how long ago we rose dripping from the font,
we were born on that day to a new life,
we had that moment of grace that made us a people
ransomed, redeemed, restored, reconciled, and renewed.

So, no matter how divided we now find ourselves,
no matter how deep the splits and fissures of dissension
over politics and religion,
social issues and public policy,
church administration and direction,
congregational priorities and goals,
no matter what may leave us
sitting nervously at our desks,
fingers twiddling our pencils,
our minds spinning madly with worry
about whether our plans will succeed—
no matter what—
there is One who is our Mediator.

He comes into our midst,
just as he promises.
He shares his message that he embodies as both God and man,
that he is God with us, among us, for us,
and that he has given himself a ransom for all. Amen.

Christ Crucified—Both Foolishness and Wisdom

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This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for Holy Cross Day Vespers, September 14, 2010.

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Readings

Isaiah 45:21–25
1 Corinthians 1:18–25
John 12:20–33

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Prayer

Gracious Father, bless us with your Spirit, so that we may keep our gaze fixed upon your Son’s victory on the cross and may find that cross a reminder of your gift of life eternal. Amen.

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Message

We can easily imagine ourselves
slipping into the crowd of Greeks
who come to Philip and say to him,
“We wish to see Jesus.”

After all, he is famous, renowned,
known for his profound teachings,
his working of wonders.
We’ve heard great things about this man.

And then we hear what he says,
and we realize that he is much different than we thought.
He talks about glory,
but not glory like we are accustomed to celebrating.
What is it that he says?
“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies,
it remains just a single grain;
but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24, NRSV)

Who is the grain of wheat?
Does he mean himself?
Does he mean us?
This talk of dying does not speak of the glory
we thought he would bring to us.

And then he really takes a turn to the serious.
“Those who love their life will lose it,
and those who hate their life in this world
will keep it for eternal life.” (John 12:25, NRSV)

We thought he was going to make us happy, keep us safe.
We hoped he would throw a party with fat loaves and full cups.
But listen to what he says;
he’s talking about losing the life we love,
about hating our lives, so that we keep them…
somewhere, somehow, maybe.

It all sounds so strange,
so bizarre, so turned inside-out and upside-down.
It doesn’t make any sense.

It’s true.
Jesus Christ, the man, the message, and the mission,
do not make sense at all,
the way the world reckons wisdom.

But God’s great gift in your life and mine
is that we are no longer a part of that Greek crowd.
We don’t find ourselves milling about,
wondering whether we can get past
some burly disciples and gain access
to Jesus’ inner circle
to catch a glimpse of him, to hear a few sound bites.

Instead, the truth of our lives is vastly different.
We are adopted children of the Father.
We are members of the Church, the body of Jesus Christ his Son.
We are filled with their Holy Spirit.

We may have days when the power of the Spirit seems weak,
when we don’t sense the unity we share in the body,
when we find ourselves feeling orphaned.

But we really can cling to the assurance
St. Paul offers up on our behalf:
“For the message about the cross is foolishness
to those who are perishing,
but to us who are being saved
it is the power of God.” (1 Corinthians 1:18, NRSV)

Listen to what he says.
The message about the cross is the power of God
to us who are being saved.

I hadn’t caught the gist of that phrase until just yesterday.
In this passage, St. Paul doesn’t say that we were saved—past tense.
He says that we are being saved.
We are God’s work in progress.

It’s like Jesus Christ has thrown his cross
into the churning waters of our lives
so that we can cling to it as a kind of life raft
and float and paddle our way to safety.

We are being saved by him.
We are being saved from death by his death.
We are being saved for living through his dying.

He saves us with strength that looks like weakness,
with an ultimate victory that appears so much to be a final defeat,
with wisdom that sounds to worldly ears like foolishness.

But, as St. Paul tells us,
“For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom,
and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Corinthians 1:25, NRSV)

So when we look at this cross—this holy cross—
the Holy Spirit reminds us that Jesus Christ,
the Son of God our Father,
suffered so that we might know release from our pain.
He died in our place; he died to give us life.

The cross is an instrument of cruel torture and a horrible death.
But at the same time God has made it the supreme symbol of life.
It is a reminder we can see whenever we look at this cross,
or any cross we have in our homes,
any cross we wear around our necks or upon our lapels.

And whenever we see lines crossing,
whether they are jet trails in the sky,
or joints in the sidewalks,
or muntins in a window,
we can remember that Christ has been crucified,
and that we are being saved.

We can be reminded by touch as well as by sight.
This is why many Christians
make the sign of the cross,
touching head and heart and shoulders
in a cruciform, a cross-shaped pattern,
in the name of the God who gives us life through death.

And whether we see a cross, simple or ornate,
when we see a shape that recalls a cross,
or if we make a cross as a reminder,
we can take these occasions to say a prayer to God.

A little hymn suggests a prayer for us,
a prayer that reminds us of our Lord’s death and life:

On my heart imprint your image,
Blessed Jesus, king of grace,
That life’s troubles nor its pleasures
Ever may your work erase;
Let the clear inscription be:
Jesus, crucified for me,
Is my life, my hope’s foundation,
All my glory and salvation. (Lutheran Book of Worship 102).

Amen.