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Readings

Genesis 18:20–32
Psalm 138 (antiphon v.8)
Colossians 2:6–19
Luke 11:1–13

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Prayer

We ask you, heavenly Father, to give us your Holy Spirit, so we may pray to you in faith and may trust that you will meet our needs through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

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Message

Sometimes you get more than you ask for.

Today’s Gospel begins simply,
with Jesus praying,
and one of his disciples asking for guidance:
“Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” (Luke 11:1b, NRSV)

So Jesus gives his gathered disciples a prayer,
a prayer deceptively simple,
a prayer we have come to know as the Lord’s Prayer, the Our Father.

The form of this prayer in Luke’s Gospel
is a little different from the one in Matthew’s account,
and the version we use in worship and devotions,
but we still can recognize our most familiar prayer in its ancient form.

We call God our Father.
We hallow his name and look for his reign to come.
We ask for our daily sustenance.
We plea for reconciliation.
We seek deliverance from trials that test our faith.

It’s a prayer we know so well that—if we are not careful—
we can find ourselves shifting into autopilot
as we begin to mouth the words
and then waking up somewhere
amid “the kingdom and the power and the glory”
without remembering exactly how we got there.

But here’s the curious thing about this Gospel.
It’s almost as if Jesus anticipated that this simple prayer would,
in human hands and on limited lips,
inevitably devolve into a nearly rote incantation.

Because as soon as he finishes sharing the prayer,
responding to the disciple’s simple request,
Jesus goes beyond the question.
He digs into the wisdom surrounding and supporting the prayer,
the motivations of those who pray,
the expectations we might have of the God who hears us.

The first thing Jesus does
is to compare praying to God
with bugging a friend in the middle of the night for a favor.
Even though our friend might want to close the door,
turn off the light, and go back to sleep,
our persistence wins out,
and our friend gives us whatever we need.

I don’t think the point of Jesus’ teaching
is that God is easily annoyed,
or that we are merely pests,
or that he answers prayers just to get us to go away.

Instead, the focus of the image is on persistence.
The wisdom Jesus offers
is that for us to pray faithfully as he has taught us
is for us to pray persistently,
to come to God our Father over and over again,
telling him what we need
and asking for him to respond.

That means that while we can grow overly accustomed
to the words of the Lord’s Prayer,
we never exhaust their power to share with God our Father
the praise and petititions,
the needs and requests
we bring daily to him.

Why should we bother with repetition?
Doesn’t God hear us the first time?
Doesn’t he have a memory big enough
to listen once and then to know what we need?

Part of the power of the Lord’s Prayer
comes in the patterns of repetition.
When we pray as our Lord has taught us,
we submit ourselves to God our Father,
we are being trained to adopt holy habits.

Not only are we asking him for daily bread, for example,
but by asking him each day for that bread,
we are learning the truth that the bread is his to give.
When we pray for remission of our sins, debts, and trespasses,
we acknowledge that only God can pardon us
and only by his grace can we forgive one another.
When we plea for our Father to rescue us from trials,
we are reminding ourselves that—left to our own devices—
we can only imperil and never deliver ourselves from threats.

This is the value of persistence.
This is why Jesus raises it up as a virtue.
It’s like we are a knife and the prayer is whetstone
and the repetition is God’s way of honing the edge of our blade.

And what happens when we are persistent?
Our practice of the virtue bears fruit,
as Jesus then tells his followers:
“‘So I say to you, Ask and it will be given you;
search, and you will find;
knock, and the door will be opened for you.
For everyone who asks receives,
and everyone who searches finds,
and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.’” (Luke 11:9–10, NRSV)

This is why we don’t retire the Lord’s Prayer from worship and devotions.
We pray it persistently, repeatedly, daily even,
because each new day brings fresh opportunities
in which to hallow the name of our Father
and new moments in which to acknowledge our need for his graces.

And for the sake of practicing the virtue of persistence,
for training ourselves to turn to God for grace,
we pray every week for all who are sick,
for peace in our world and our families,
for the Spirit to refresh the Church,
for our Father to guide our search for a pastor,
for our Lord to receive our joys and pains.

And finally, Jesus takes his last step in going beyond
what the disciples had asked to receive from him.
He jolts his followers with some strange questions.

“…if your child asks for a fish,
will [you] give a snake instead of fish?
Or if the child asks for an egg,
will you give a scorpion?” (Luke 11:11–12, NRSV)

Instinctively we join our voices with the disciples and say,
“No, of course not. Absolutely not!”

And then, finally, Jesus brings us all the way around,
back to the first question about prayer.
In his wisdom, he has led us along a path
through prayer offered with persistence to God our Father
to the absurdity of imagining mothers and fathers
who would feed their children snakes and scorpions.

And because we cannot imagine that,
because even we who are frail, who fail daily,
who find ourselves so dreadfully flawed,
will give our children fish and eggs,
will give our offspring what we know they need,
“…how much more will the heavenly Father
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13, NRSV)

How much more?
How much more?
More than we can comprehend,
more than we can put into words,
more than we either can expect or deserve,
but not more than God freely chooses.

And so, all we do is ask for daily bread and fish and eggs.
And then, give God thanks and praise,
because we do receive more than we ask for:
the gift of love from God our Father,
the blessings of grace from his Son Jesus Christ,
and life in communion with their Holy Spirit. Amen.

+ + +

Readings

Genesis 18:1–10a
Psalm 15 (antiphon v.1)
Colossians 1:15–28
Luke 10:38–42

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Prayer

Loving Father, lead us by your Holy Spirit to welcome your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, into our lives. Amen.

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Message

One of my friends in college was named Mustafa.
He came to Pennsylvania from Iran in the late 1970s
as a student and enrolled at Lebanon Valley College.
In 1979, the Iranian Revolution that led to the Shah’s exile
and to the return of the Ayatollah Khomeini
also stranded Mustafa in the states.

He found himself suddently cut off from his family back in Iran
and left without the pipeline of their support for his education.
A variety of churches in Annville pitched in
to help him out with an apartment,
giving him the most basic furniture and household items.

He didn’t have much,
but what has always stuck with me
was the overwhelming sense of welcome
he lavished on me every time I visited his apartment.

He would invite me—almost make me—sit in the best chair.
He would go to the fridge,
open the door to nearly empty shelves,
and get me a drink.
If there was only one, he gave it to me,
while he would drink water from the tap.

He said, in so many words to go with his actions,
“What I have is yours.”
This has rested in my memory all these years
as the epitome of hospitality.
He gave joyfully because—as a faithful Muslim—
he trusted that Allah would judge him by his obedience
to the command to practice this hospitality.
Mustafa’s obedience did not take away from the grace I felt
in his home in that small apartment in Annville.

I don’t know what part of Iran Mustafa came from,
but it was clear to me that he had learned and embraced
the wonderful practice of Middle Eastern hospitality.
It’s a tradition that crosses the fractures of religion and history
that divide Jews and Christians and Moslems from one another.

Who knows the roots from which it grows,
the foundations upon which it is built?
It’s genesis is lost in the dust and whispers of history.

But we could do worse than to trace back the roots of hospitality
at least to our common father and mother in the faith—
Abraham and Sarah.

We heard today in our first reading
the account of the visit the three strangers make
to Abraham and Sarah’s tent
pitched by the oaks of Mamre.

Listen to what Abraham and Sarah did
when the strangers approached.
Abraham ran from the tent when he saw the strangers drawing near.
He met them and bowed down to the ground.
He offered water to wash their feet,
bread to fill their stomachs.
Sarah baked cakes while Abraham prepared a calf.
They served curds and milk
along with the bread and meat.

By their actions,
they said to the strangers,
“What we have is yours.”
This was hospitality,
a Middle Eastern welcome,
a gracious embrace extended to strangers by people of faith.

And what dawned upon Abraham in the course of their visit together
was that he had welcomed
not a trio of traveling men,
but the LORD, Yahweh himself.

We know this because we read,
“The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre
as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day.” (Genesis 18:1, NRSV)

At the end of our reading
we hear that one of the strangers reminded Abraham,
“I will surely return to you in due season,
and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” (Genesis 18:10a, NRSV)

And that word opens Abraham’s eyes.
This was God’s promise of grace,
Yahweh’s word of hope for the future,
his vow to make of Abraham and Sarah’s descendants a great nation.
Abraham had heard it at least four times before,
when he and God walked together and talked.

And so, when he opened his tent to the strangers,
when he gave them food and drink,
rest and refreshment,
he had, in fact, opened his heart and his home to God himself.

That is the ultimate hospitality.
And we give thanks
that Abraham and Sarah,
our spiritual father and mother,
offer this example of faithful obedience for their offspring to follow.

And so now we know the motivation
that drove Martha to welcome Jesus into her home
and to go all out to provide for his comfort.
She was practicing the hospitality of Sarah and Abraham,
welcoming the Lord the same way they had welcomed Yahweh.

And Mary, for her part, by sitting and listening at her Lord’s feet,
followed in the footsteps of Abraham,
who had walked and talked and listened to Yahweh.

In its own way, Mary’s embrace of the gift of time with Jesus—
her willingness to rest and to sit and to listen—
was her practice of hospitality,
welcoming the Lord into her heart,
just as her sister had welcomed him into her home.

The beauty of this story comes alive in us
when we realize that true hospitality
comes not in being constantly busy,
or in relaxing endlessly,
but in being open, attentive, ready to listen, willing to receive
both the words of our Lord and his gift of his presence in our lives.

Hospitality is openness of the heart.
When we truly welcome our Lord,
he comes into our heart and homes
and rests with us, dwells with us.

Sometimes Jesus Christ may send his messengers to us in disguise,
like the strangers who came to the tent at Mamre.
That’s why the book of Hebrews reminds us,
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,
for by doing that
some have entertained angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2, NRSV)

And if we recall our Lord’s words
from the vision of the Great Judgment,
we remember how he promises
that he will come to us through others,
the hungry person we feed,
the thirsty person to whom we offer a drink,
the stranger we welcome,
the person whom we clothe:
“Truly I tell you,
just as you did it to one of the least of these
who are members of my family,
you did it to me.” (Matthew 25:40, NRSV)

So where do we go to welcome our Lord,
to extend hospitality to him?
We can find him sitting down to dinner at Warren’s Table.
There he is, standing in line at the Community Food Pantry at St. John Lutheran Church.
Maybe he’s gathering here in the basement with Narcotics Anonymous.
He might be dwelling in the person sitting beside you in the pew right now.

So, let’s follow the example of Abraham and Sarah.
Let’s run from the entrance of our tent to meet the Lord.
Let’s bow down to the ground and welcome him.
Let’s invite him to stay and to rest with us.
Let’s make sure he can wash up and have some dinner and a drink.
Let’s say to him, “What I have is yours.”

And the most amazing thing happens to us.
As we show hospitality to him,
our Lord Jesus Christ shows hospitality to us.
He invites us to his table in his house.
We stretch out our hands and open our palms
to give him a place to rest his body in bread.
We open our mouths and drink,
inviting his blood in wine to enter us.

And when we do,
then he says to you and to me,
“What I have is yours.” Amen.

+ + +

Readings

Deuteronomy 30:9–14
Psalm 25:1–10 (antiphon v. 4)
Colossians 1:1–14
Luke 10:25–37

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Prayer

Gracious Father, pour out upon us the Holy Spirit, that we may keep your Law in our hearts and minds and actions, showing your Love to you and to all people, through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Message

Listen to a few little pictures in words,
and pick one that speaks to you.

You have some sandpaper in your hand
and you rub it back and forth
over the curves of a piece of pine
you have shaped into a toy for your grandchild.
To give the wood a smooth finish and feel,
you need to use sandpaper with a fine grit
and only take away a little wood at a time.

It’s a hot and humid morning,
but even so your family would enjoy
some homemade pancakes from your scratch recipe.
You don’t have the quantities written down,
but as you mix the flour and milk,
the eggs and butter and baking powder,
you make little adjustments in proportions
so that the batter flows just right,
not too thick or too thin.

Your favorite knife is a little dull,
so you pick up the sharpening stone
and the oil and get to work.
The best edge comes with patient honing,
using even, rhythmic motions,
gradually working away the tiny flaws in the blade.

You love your dog and you enjoy the walks
in the cool of the morning
almost as much as your best friend enjoys the smells
only it can find in the tall and dewy grass.
When you get home, you turn on the outdoor faucet
and run the hose gently over those gritty paws.
Today, your dog seems to know what’s coming,
and for the first time lifts a paw for you to wash.

I hope one of these pictures speaks to you.
But whichever one you might pick,
look for the little common thread
winding through that illustration
and entwining itself with the threads
coming from the other pictures.

They all have something in common.
It’s a simple thing, almost invisible.
But it’s there and we know it,
even though we may not be aware of what we know.

The changes that matter,
that make our days better,
are often the ones that build up slowly, over time.
They can begin like a whisper in the dark,
like small drops of rain kicking up dust on dry ground.

But then, as time passes,
the small changes accumulate,
they grow like whispers rising into conversations,
like raindrops falling and forming into puddles.

This is the kind of change that God often works
—imperceptibly, invisibly, incrementally—
through almost ignorable little actions in our lives.

But just as we gently rub on wood to make it smooth,
and subtly tweak a recipe to make fluffy pancakes,
and carefully hone a blade to make it sharp,
and gradually train a dog to make it obedient,
God trains and hones and tweaks and rubs us
with his Law, his Word.
That’s how he makes our will match his will.

This is not to say that God can never work drastic changes in our lives.
Sometimes he does,
and we encounter changes both sudden and sharp,
like flipping a switch to bring light into a dark room.

That’s what Jesus did when he called fishermen
who dropped their nets, left their boats, and followed him.
That’s what the risen Christ did
when he struck Saul blind on the road to Damascus
and blessed him with the calling
to serve as Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles.

And maybe God has worked a sudden change in your life.
Perhaps you treasure a moment in your memory
when God touched you with his power,
and your life divides neatly into “before” and “after.”
That is a great gift,
one for which to give God thanks and praise.

But for many of us,
and for most us much of the time,
God works almost secretly in those small ways,
where we are like wood and batter,
blade and dog,
and he makes us attentive and sharp,
fluid and smooth
through the quiet and irresistible power of his Law.

This is the only way we can grow into our calling
to live as God’s people,
to serve him with joy,
to touch others with his love,
to give ourselves up for his glory.

And so, when we overhear the lawyer and Jesus
in conversation about love and the Law,
we shouldn’t feel confused by what they say.
It’s really true that for us to live as God intends
and for us to love others selflessly,
we must keep the Law.
That’s why Jesus agreed when the lawyer said,
“You shall love the Lord your God,
with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your strength,
and with all your mind;
and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27, NRSV)

Our Lord doesn’t mean for us to be confused or overwhelmed
by his desire for us to live and love by the Law.
But we can easily feel that way.
How can we find the strength, the resolve,
to go all in and to love God without limits and conditions,
with our whole mind and strength and soul and heart?

Jesus knows that we wonder about this,
that we fear what will happen if we live totally for God.
He knows we have those feelings,
just as the lawyer did when he tried to put limits on the Law,
on God’s calling for all people to love him and neighbor alike.

That is why the lawyer asked,
“And who is my neighbor?”
Because it we can define neighbor a litle more narrowly,
leaving out some people out there on the fringes,
then we can contain the calling of God’s Law,
we can build in some safeguards, put some limits,
manage our expectations and responsibilities.

God wants us to love him and to love others just the same,
but if there are reasonable limits on who those others might be,
then the demands of loving and living by the Law
only go so far and then they stop,
leaving a little energy and life just for us.

And so Jesus tells that familiar story
of the Samaritan and the man beaten by thieves,
who watched through his pain
as religious people passed him by twice.
They were the ones who knew
what were the reasonable limits when asking, “Who is my neighbor?”

But the story paints a vivid picture of neighborhood as God sees it.
Even two strangers—
one a man, presumably and Israelite,
and one a Samaritan despised by the people of Israel—
are neighbors in the eyes of God.

And to be a neighbor,
to show love without reserve,
to live by the Law,
to give God our whole lives without holding anything back,
does not require us to make great and grand gestures,
to take dramatic and earthshattering actions.

It’s the small things:
to be moved by pity;
to bandage another’s wounds;
to give someone a ride;
to take care of a stranger;
to give some money;
to make good arrangements;
and to meet the needs that arise.

It’s the simple acts of service:
to comfort someone who grieves;
to share your food with someone who is hungry;
to make peace with your adversary;
to pull up your pride by the roots and plant humility;
to squash your prejudice and disdain for others;
to seek out times for acts of kindness;
to respect each person as brother, as sister.

These are the simple, small acts
that work together to fulfill the Law,
to fill our lives with love for others and God,
to help us submit to his will.

Through these everyday tasks,
God trains and hones and tweaks and rubs us,
conforming us to his will,
so that in his good time,
we will rise refreshed at the dawn of his bright and glorious day,
greeting one another as neighbors who live by the Law.
On that day, we will love God our Father
with everything that is in us,
with heart and soul and strength and mind.
And we will love one another as brothers and sisters
of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

One of the opportunities I have as the interim pastor at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., is to prepare a short column for a feature called “The Pastor’s Pen.” This installment appeared in the Beatrice Daily Sun on Thursday, July 8, 2010.

Scripture

“May my instruction soak in like the rain,
and my discourse permeate like the dew,
Like a downpour upon the grass,
like a shower upon the crops ….” (Deuteronomy 32:2, NAB)

Meditation

Maybe you can date yourself by remembering whose voice you hear in your mind’s ear when you recall the lyrics to “Rhythm of the Rain.” When you sing to yourself, “Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain / Telling me just what a fool I’ve been,” do you hear the Cascades from 1962 or Jacky Ward from 1978 or Dan Fogelberg from 1990? But no matter whose voice you hear, which era’s singer you recall, it’s easy to imagine listening to that rhythm as the rain falls, especially with the weather we’ve had the past several months.

For some of us, rain, at worst, inconveniences us. A passing shower means getting wet going from car to office. Sometimes the rains might mean the cookout gets moved to the garage. For others, though, the rain and the hail and the wind have poured out heartbreaking damage upon crops and brought challenging loss of livelihood. So it’s natural to want the rain to come conveniently, in just the right quantities in the right places at the right times. But listen! The falling rain tells us we are foolish to think we can control its coming and going.

Rain also speaks other messages and gives us other reminders. The Scriptures are full to the brim with references to rain and to water. That’s not surprising, given the arid climate of the lands where God’s people lived in the times recorded in the Bible. Look at one verse from Deuteronomy, which comes from a passage known as the Song of Moses. In this section, the leader who brought Israel out of bondage in Egypt, through the wilderness, and to the promised land, sings a song that is really a poetic sermon. He begins by asking God to make his words flow into the people’s lives like rain and dew, downpour and shower. He sings a kind of prayer asking God to drench his people, to soak them to the skin with the divine Word.

This is an image of blessing and abundant grace. God sends the showers of his instruction upon his people. He pours out his will upon them as inescapably as he sends the rains. As Christians, when we hear Moses’ words, we cannot help but be reminded of the waters of Holy Baptism. With this holy and life-giving water, God cleanses and renews us so that his instruction soaks into us like the rain.

So when the next storm blows in from the west and the next downpour falls upon us from the sky, the rains can remind us to give God thanks for his blessings and to wash our ears of faith so we may hear his instruction. In these ways, God refreshes us to live for his purposes. He permeates our lives like dew upon the ground, so that we may recall his blessings and give him thanks in all things.

The Congregation Council at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., where I am serving as interim pastor, opens its monthly meetings with devotions. These are the thoughts for the July 2010 meeting. The Psalm is the one appointed for the seventh Sunday after Pentecost. The council read it in choirs—men and women.

Invocation

In the name of the Father, and of the + Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Reading

Psalm 25:1–10

¹To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul.
²O my God, in you I trust;
do not let me be put to shame;
do not let my enemies exult over me.

³Do not let those who wait for you be put to shame;
let them be ashamed who are wantonly treacherous.

⁴Make me to know your ways, O LORD;
teach me your paths.

⁵Lead me in your truth and teach me,
for you are the God of my salvation;
for you I wait all day long.

⁶Be mindful of your mercy, O LORD, and of your steadfast love,
for they have been from of old.

⁷Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions;
according to your steadfast love remember me,
for your goodness’ sake, O LORD!

⁸Good and upright is the LORD;
therefore he instructs sinners in the way.

⁹He leads the humble in what is right,
and teaches the humble his way.

¹⁰All the paths of the LORD are steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.

Devotion

When I was young, I was a member of Troop 45, Boy Scouts of America.
Scouting was big in those days.
There were probably forty or so boys in the troop,
organized into four patrols of ten.
A bunch of dads served as scoutmaster and assistant scoutmasters.

What I loved most about scouting was camping.
We had a camping trip scheduled every month.
Sometimes we went to a campground,
but other times we went backpacking.
The Appalachian Trail ran along the ridges and valleys of the Appalachians in Lebanon County.
This is where we hiked.

We learned to stay on the trail, to check the feet of the scout ahead of us.
We did this for safety, because you could see loose rocks or fallen limbs.
We also did it out of respect for the environment;
it’s better for twenty-five people to walk on one trail,
then to tear through the woods and make new paths.
We learned the wisdom and safety
in following the path of an experienced and trusted leader.

The Psalmist invites us to follow the path of our Lord.
Our God marks his path in our lives with his truth and love and mercy.
He instructs us in the way we should go.
He leads us in humility to take the right path;
he teaches us his way.
He promises us that his paths are “steadfast love and faithfulness,
for those who keep his covenant and his decrees.”

We’re invited to join our voices with the psalmist’s voice and pray,
“Make me to know your ways, O LORD; teach me your paths.”

Discussion

+ What do you see on the path ahead of us as a congregation?
+ What are the loose rocks and the fallen limbs?
+ Where have we wandered from the path?
+ What can we do as leaders to help our fellow members to follow on the path the Lord points out to us?
+ Which verse speaks to you personally? Can you share why?

Prayer

We want to follow you, Lord God, along the path you have chosen for us. Lead us to follow you in humility. When we stray from the trail, bring us back onto the path of your truth. Raise up in us a spirit of gratitude for your steadfast love and faithfulness. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son and our Savior. Amen.

One of the opportunities I have as the interim pastor at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., is to prepare a short column for a feature called “The Pastor’s Pen.” This installment comes from the Beatrice Daily Sun on Thursday, July 8, 2010.

Scripture

“May my instruction soak in like the rain,
and my discourse permeate like the dew,
Like a downpour upon the grass,
like a shower upon the crops ….” (Deuteronomy 32:2, NAB)

Meditation

Maybe you can date yourself by remembering whose voice you hear in your mind’s ear when you recall the lyrics to “Rhythm of the Rain.” When you sing to yourself, “Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain / Telling me just what a fool I’ve been,” do you hear the Cascades from 1962 or Jacky Ward from 1978 or Dan Fogelberg from 1990? But no matter whose voice you hear, which era’s singer you recall, it’s easy to imagine listening to that rhythm as the rain falls, especially with the weather we’ve had the past several months.

For some of us, rain, at worst, inconveniences us. A passing shower means getting wet going from car to office. Sometimes the rains might mean the cookout gets moved to the garage. For others, though, the rain and the hail and the wind have poured out heartbreaking damage upon crops and brought challenging loss of livelihood. So it’s natural to want the rain to come conveniently, in just the right quantities in the right places at the right times. But listen! The falling rain tells us we are foolish to think we can control its coming and going.

Rain also speaks other messages and gives us other reminders. The Scriptures are full to the brim with references to rain and to water. That’s not surprising, given the arid climate of the lands where God’s people lived in the times recorded in the Bible. Look at one verse from Deuteronomy, which comes from a passage known as the Song of Moses. In this section, the leader who brought Israel out of bondage in Egypt, through the wilderness, and to the promised land, sings a song that is really a poetic sermon. He begins by asking God to make his words flow into the people’s lives like rain and dew, downpour and shower. He sings a kind of prayer asking God to drench his people, to soak them to the skin with the divine Word.

This is an image of blessing and abundant grace. God sends the showers of his instruction upon his people. He pours out his will upon them as inescapably as he sends the rains. As Christians, when we hear Moses’ words, we cannot help but be reminded of the waters of Holy Baptism. With this holy and life-giving water, God cleanses and renews us so that his instruction soaks into us like the rain.

So when the next storm blows in from the west and the next downpour falls upon us from the sky, the rains can remind us to give God thanks for his blessings and to wash our ears of faith so we may hear his instruction. In these ways, God refreshes us to live for his purposes. He permeates our lives like dew upon the ground, so that we may recall his blessings and give him thanks in all things.

+ + +

Readings

Isaiah 66:10–14
Psalm 66:1–9 (antiphon v.4)
Galatians 6:1–16
Luke 10:1–11, 16–20

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Prayer

Bless us with the strength of your Holy Spirit, gracious Father, as we journey like lambs amid wolves, telling others that the kingdom of God comes to us all in Jesus Christ, your Son and our Savior. Amen.

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Message

We have an innate sense—
a vestige of our animal selves—
that alerts us to danger.

It’s the tingle that runs up our spines when we hear a shuffling in the dark.
It’s the primal fear of danger
that filmmakers and novelists plumb with abandon
when they create horrors seen and unseen—
forces with blade and muscle,
both machine and beast.

Perhaps the experts might trace this sense
to the survival instincts of our ancestors
who huddled—naked and hairless—
in caves and crooks of trees,
while greater, stronger creatures ruled the night.

But whatever the sources of our fears,
the wellspring from which flows our sense of threats,
we know the truth of this world that the strong vanquish the weak,
that the powerful overwhelm the impotent.

And it really doesn’t matter whether we are talking about
animals running wild on the prairie or in the woods
or about people running wild on the streets of our cities
or on the sidewalks of villages.

In both cases, the law of the jungle seems to hold.
That’s why the phrase, “red in tooth and claw,”
resonates with our fear of injury and death
at the hands of beasts, both human and animal.
The author of that phrase, Alfred Lord Tennyson,
captured the bloody struggle when he wrote:
Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creation’s final law—
Tho’ Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriek’d against his creed—
Who loved, who suffer’d countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seal’d within the iron hills? (In Memoriam A.H.H., Canto LVI)

It is a struggle between love and hate,
between order and chaos,
between good and evil.

And in the midst of it all,
we can find ourselves driven to despair,
which means to live disspiritedly, without hope.
We can come to believe that the best we can do
in this life—this “nasty, brutish, and short” life—
is to hold on as long we can,
to ward off the forces arrayed against us,
to postpone inevitable.

Something will get us, in the end,
something surely will claw at us, drag us down,
whether it’s disease or old age,
violence or drugs,
guns or random accidents,
terrorists or crazed vigilantes.

And with the world as scary and as threatening as we know it to be,
the last thing we normally and sanely would want to do
is to place ourselves in danger,
to put our lives at risk.

That’s just natural and normal.
This makes Jesus’ saying in today’s Gospel
all the more difficult for us to overhear
and to embrace as his word to us.
He tells the Seventy—
and by extension,
all who follow in the footsteps of the Seventy,
meaning you and me and every other Christian—
“See, I am sending you out like lambs
into the midst of wolves.” (Luke 10:3b, NRSV)

As lambs amid wolves,
we are the prey, not the predators.
We do not go with weapons, with tooth and claw,
but instead we head out on our mission
as a flock, gentle and meak, gathered and sent.

We go out only because our Lord sends us.
He sends to be witnesses to the world.
He sends us out to tell others,
“The kingdom of God has come near you.” (Luke 10:9, NRSV)

Some will hear our message,
experience our testimony,
come to know our witness,
and they, too, will join the flock.
They will become lambs with us.

When this happens to others,
as it has happened already to us,
then God rejoices,
and we celebrate along with him.
We give thanks that his kingdom has grown,
that his flock has expanded.

This is the work of the Spirit in us and through us.
This is the power of the Word
spoken both as summons and promise,
enacted both as discipline and comfort.
This is the ministry of the Father
embodied in people,
poured out in service,
and suffered in extremes of personal sacrifice.

It’s no coincidence that the Greek word
often translated as “witness” is “martyria,”
from which we get the English word “martyr.”
This reminds us that when we become God’s witneses,
we very well may also become his martyrs,
his lambs amid wolves.

But this is not the final word.
We are not doomed to die pointlessly,
torn apart by inhuman forces “red in tooth and claw.”
That’s not to say that we, as lambs amid wolves,
will escape all threats and dangers,
that we will end our days unscarred,
that we will necessarily live as unbloodied martyrs.

Instead, we can live as courageously as witnesses,
knowing that we are on our Father’s mission,
that he has sent us out in Christ’s name,
that he blesses us with the Holy Spirit,
just as he promised the Seventy:
“See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions,
and over all the power of the enemy;
and nothing will hurt you.” (Luke 10:19, NRSV)

So, does this mean that Jesus Christ gives us some sort of body armor,
that we cannot be hurt in the course of our witness?
It helps to know what Jesus means by “hurt.”
In Matthew’s Gospel, he says,
“Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” (Matthew 10:28, NRSV)

To me that means that while our witness may lead us into times and places
where we are hurt, and perhaps even die as martyrs,
we need not fear those forces,
because all they have done is “kill the body.”

At the end of the day,
we find protection in God and in him alone.
As St. Paul encourages us in Ephesians,
“Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power.
Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand
against the wiles of the devil.
For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh,
but against the rulers, against the authorities,
against the cosmic powers of this present darkness,
against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
Therefore take up the whole armor of God,
so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day,
and having done everything, to stand firm.” (Ephesians 6:10–13). Amen.

This article is the July 2010 installment of my monthly message in the parish newsletter for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb.

Daily Witness

The other day I stopped at the Beatrice Post Office to buy stamps for the Lincoln Stamp Club’s July newsletter. A few months ago I agreed to add the creation of this newsletter to my other responsibilities as the Club’s secretary. Because the newsletter goes to stamp collectors, they appreciate when the stamp on the newsletter is a commemorative and not a common issue.

I’d recently seen that the Postal Service had released a Kathryn Hepburn commemorative, and thought—given the ages of most of the members of the Club—that this would be a good choice. I found out from Bob, the clerk at the post office, that he was almost sold out of the Hepburn stamp and didn’t have the fifty I needed. But then he suggested a roll of Flags of Our Nation, featuring the Nebraska flag. That was the choice I made.

Somehow in the course of our brief conversation I mentioned the newsletter. Bob said, “Oh, I’m in a stamp club too.” It took only a moment for us to discover he was a member of the same club and actually receives the newsletter I write. This led to us comparing notes on our specialty collections and me asking whether he would ever consider presenting a talk on his collection at one of the Club’s meetings.

At this point, you might be asking yourself, “Where is he going with this rambling story?” That’s a good question. And the answer is that I was struck by how easily and how energetically I could engage in a conversation with a complete stranger when the topic touched on our shared passions. You have probably had a similar experience, whether it involves sports or antique cars or the latest best seller or ….

No, Not That!

But now envision yourself running into someone and somehow—through the twists and turns of the conversation—bumping up against your faith. Certainly we are passionate about our Lord Jesus Christ, about the new life we share in the Holy Spirit, and about the trust we have in coming, upon our deaths, to the endless day we will enjoy with the Father in heaven. But to talk about that with a stranger is an almost unimaginable scenario for most of us. In fact, we often find it hard enough to talk about our faith in church or even at home with a spouse or other relative. When we picture ourselves treading perilously close to the topic of our faith, we find ourselves pulling back, raising our hands in defense, and crying soundlessly, “No, not that!”

Beyond Fear

We typically fear what we cannot control, so it is natural, in one sense, to fear a conversation about faith. Once that topic arises, then God—without a doubt—is present and active and alive in the conversation. And we do not control him.

But while fear is natural, fear that shows we do not trust God to guide us is the kind of fear that we know to be the absence of faith. St. Paul reminds us:

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, [emphasis added] but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:15–17, NRSV)

This helps, because it reminds us that the Spirit bears witness with us when we share our faith with others. And really, of what or whom need we be afraid if God is our ally standing at our side? With him as our companion, we are free—free of fear of embarrassment, ridicule, injury, even death—to witness daily to others of our faith with the same intense passion we bring to our hobbies and pastimes.

Blessings!

Holy Cross Lutheran Church began offering individuals the chance to ask questions about the Church, faith, theology, and the Bible by putting their queries into a Question Box. A question and answer appears in each month’s newsletter. This is the July 2010 installment.

Question

Is Jesus the only way to eternal life, and if so, what happens to people who do not believe in him? Please use the Scriptures in the answer.

Answer

St. Paul’s hymn in Philippians says, “Therefore God also highly exalted [Christ Jesus] and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9–11, NRSV) This tells us that God desires for all people to say, “Jesus Christ is Lord.” We trust that he will work this out in his own time and according to his own plan, revealed to us when Jesus said, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6, NRSV) So, yes, Jesus is the only way to eternal life with the Triune God.

But in the meantime, we are left with the reality that not all people confess that Jesus is Lord or come to the Father through him. Some people doubt or deny that God exists. Others may say, “He may be your God, but I have made my own religion.” Still others follow the tenets of the world’s major religions, such as Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism.

We believe that God has made us with the capacity to respond to him, which includes the ability to say “yes” to his love, but also to say “no,” even if that answer will cause lasting separation, a gulf between us and God, and pain because of that estrangement.

This “what happens” question can cause us great anguish if we have a loved one who professes doubt or denial of the Christian faith. In such circumstances, we are called to pray, not so much that they “snap out of it,” but that God will live up to his promise to relentlessly pursue his children, no matter how far they may stray. As Jesus said, “The Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” (Luke 19:10, NRSV)

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Readings

1 Kings 19:15–16, 19–21
Psalm 16
Galatians 5:1, 13–25
Luke 9:51–62

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Prayer

By your Spirit, gracious Father, empower us to follow your Son in faith, that we may keep our sights fixed on him throughout our days. Amen.

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Message

One of the cliches you can hear repeated
in news reports about politics and government
is that public officials have just pivoted
to focus attention on a new issue or problem.

The sense behind the visual image of pivoting
is that the officials now have set their sights
on a complex issue requiring full attention.

The problem, though, is that they run the danger
of pivoting so often—in response to so many polls—
that they create the opposite impression.
They are not resolute, but fickle,
and perhaps they are just turning in circles
like a centerpivot in a cornfield.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus himself reaches a true pivot point in his ministry.
In Luke’s Gospel,
up to the point just before today’s reading,
Jesus had devoted himself to his Galilean ministry.

But, with the opening sentence of the reading,
we hear a change in focus and attention:
“When the days drew near for him to be taken up,
he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:51, NRSV)

“The days [drawing] near” refers to the coming days of his passion—
his trial, sentencing, torture, crucifixion, and death.
And in response to those days drawing near,
Jesus “set[s] his face to go to Jerusalem.”

The word “set” is the translation
of a form of the Greek word στηριζω (stérizó, pronounced “stay-rid’-zo”).
It means “to set fast, to turn resolutely in a certain direction, to determine.”

It has a seriousness to it,
a strong sense of will,
a heft and weight and force
that will not be diverted or dissuaded.

We get the feeling that Jesus displays energy and drive,
that he leans into the task before him
in a way that would overcome any obstacle,
overmatch any force arrayed against him.

And for Jesus, his task is to carry out the will of his Father
by the power of the Spirit they share,
no matter the personal cost to them.

We know what he had only recently told his disciples in Luke 9:22–24 (NRSV):

“The Son of Man must undergo great suffering,
and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes,
and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Then he said to them all,
“If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves
and take up their cross daily and follow me.
For those who want to save their life will lose it,
and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”

This is his ministry
and it is the path of the cross
that all who follow him must take.

It’s not a time for pivoting too and fro.
It’s a time for setting one’s face,
for determining to take the cross and to bear it,
and to follow the Lord along the path he takes before us.

Today’s text tells us how hard this is
for people to witness and to embrace.
The people of Samaria,
who shared a longstanding rivalry with the people of Israel,
did not welcome Jesus,
because “his face was set toward Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:53, NRSV)

James and John, two of Jesus’ disciples,
want to call down the fire of God
to wipe out the Samaritans
the way Elijah called down fire on the prophets of Baal.
But that is not the way of Jesus,
the way of the cross.

And then he encounters people
who come up to him as he travels along.
They see him walking with purpose.
Perhaps they see something of the passion in his face
as he makes his way to Jerusalem.
They sense, maybe, his determination,
and they want to be a part of the movement.

But he reminds them, at every step,
how hard this way will be.
Animals have places to call home,
safe places, restful places,
but not the Son of Man
and certainly not those who follow him resolutely.

The way of the cross demands that God
and service to him be first in our lives.
And so, in a seemingly harsh saying,
Jesus counsels a would-be disciple
to leave behind family commitments
and to “go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:60, NRSV)
Finally, one person wants to follow Jesus,
but first desires to say goodbye to family.
The response from Jesus?
“No one who puts a hand to the plow
and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:62, NRSV)

Who does that leave?
Do you feel fit for the kingdom?
I know I look back,
I try to make a start down this path,
but then, like a politician,
I convince myself of the goodness of an easier path.
I pivot and get distracted while my hand is on the plow.

I’ve never plowed a field,
but I get the impression from Jesus’ saying
that plowing straight and true for the kingdom
involves setting one’s face.
It’s like orienteering,
something I learned in Boy Scouts.
You get a list of compass directions and distances
and you set off through the woods and meadows.

The secret is to take a reading,
get your bearings,
know the length of your stride,
pick a landmark out ahead,
and then set your face, your gaze, on that landmark.

If you look back or watch your own feet
or pivot too much this way and that
to avoid rocks and fallen trees,
you can easily lose your bearings
and end off far removed from the mark.

Plowing for the kingdom,
proclaiming God’s good news,
taking up one’s cross and following Jesus
is like orienteering in the wilderness.

But what hope do we have?
Is there any chance we can follow him?
Are there any among us
who would deny themselves,
who would face lives with no holes or dens,
nowhere to lay their heads,
who would leave behind family
to become cross-bearing disciples of Jesus?

Well, on our own,
left to our own devices,
under our own power,
depending upon our own wills,
we would pivot away from suffering,
drop the cross from our shoulders,
and plow crooked and meandering furrows.

But the grace that comes to us
as a gift from God
saves us from living on our own,
by our own devices,
facing life under our own power
and depending upon our own wills.

Our Lord has plowed our lives with his cross.
He has planted in us the seeds of faith.
He moistens those seeds with baptismal waters.
He weeds the sin from our lives through confession.
He prunes us and cuts us back through trials
so that we can grow to bear the fruits of faith.
He fertilizes us with his body and blood in communion.

These are the gifts of God for us, the people of God.
They are what empower us
to step into the footprints of our Lord,
to follow behind him in faith,
to set our faces upon him in obedience,
and so to follow him with determination. Amen.

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Readings

Isaiah 65:1–9
Psalm 22:19–28
Galatians 3:23–29
Luke 8:26–39

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Prayer

Open our eyes, Lord God, to the forces that turn us away from you, and by your Spirit restore our trust in your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

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Message

The demons are Legion
and they possess each one of us.

We don’t want anyone telling us what to do.
The only authority we want to recognize is the one in here,
the one that knows what is best for ourselves and for others.
And so we say to ourselves,
“I’ll be the judge of that,”
whatever that may be.

Maybe we think the speed limits are a little low,
or perhaps our employers’ rules are inane or insane.
We make the judgments, bend the rules,
find the grey areas, the ambiguities
and then we decide for ourselves what is right,
or at least defensible.

Let’s call this demon Autonomy.
It’s the demon that possesses us
when we decide to become a law unto ourselves
and to ignore the truth that the Law
is truly the Word of God come into our lives.

The demons are Legion
and they possess each one of us.

I’ve worked for what is mine
and I’ll decide what to do with it.
I may not be rich, but I am the lord of my domain,
the master of my house.
And so we say to ourselves,
“This money is mine to do with as I please,”
whatever may please me.

Then we give God the remainder,
the leftovers, whatever remains unspent
at the end of the month, the day before the next paycheck.
We set the priorities, rank the needs, make the allocations,
and decide for ourselves what is worthy,
or—at the least—attractive.

Let’s call this demon Avarice.
It’s the demon that possesses us
when we delude ourselves into believing
that we create and sustain our own well-being,
that the size of our pile is a measure of our worth,
that our wealth results from our own efforts
and not from the unmerited blessings of God.

The demons are Legion
and they possess each one of us.

I will decide what parts of the Church’s faith
work for me and just embrace those.
That’s what each of us is prone to say.
That’s what congregations are apt to believe.
And that’s what denominations can come to practice.
What matters is what makes me comfortable,
what I judge to work here and now,
what I do not find threatening.
And so we say to ourselves,
“This is my faith and this is my church.”

Then we fit God into the box we have built.
We cobble together our own set of beliefs.
We ignore the truth that God’s Church
is one and holy and catholic and apostolic.

Let’s call this demon Idolatry.
It’s the demon that possesses us
when we convince ourselves
that our own comfort is the arbiter of the standards by which we live,
that what must be best is what works for me,
that the satisfaction of my desires
is the measure of the Church’s life.

The demons are Legion
and they possess each one of us.

The demons are many,
and we have named but a few
to remind us of their pervasiveness and power.
Their ways are subtle
as they insinuate themselves into our lives,
slipping into the crevices and the corners of our hearts and souls.

It is like an infestation.
It begins with one.
And that’s not so bad, we tell ourselves.
Then comes another and another,
and before we are really aware of what has happened,
the infestation—the possession—is complete.

Call them demons, temptations, sins.
Whatever term you choose,
the patterns are the same.
Eventually we get to the point
where we come to believe
that we direct our own lives,
when in fact,
we have invited forces beyond our control—
forces in opposition to God—
to enter our lives and to entertain us,
only to discover that they have taken possession of us
and now rule over us.

We may not run naked among the tombs,
break the bonds placed upon us for our own safety,
and cry at strangers with loud voices.
But even so, in our own ways,
we have become demoniacs.

And then, when Jesus Christ walks into our lives,
we find those voices inside us, voices we cannot master,
calling out to him and saying,
“What have you to do with me, Jesus,
Son of the Most High God?
I beg you, do not torment me.” (Luke 8:28, NRSV)

And the strange and poignant and touching thing
about the pitiful cry of these voices
is that they recognize who Jesus is
at the same time they see his challenge to them.

Do you know that in your own heart?
Do you see our Lord Jesus through the haze of your possession?
Can you make our his shadowy form
at the limits of your gaze gone dark from sin?

Jesus is the Son of the Most High God.
And that makes him your Lord and mine.
That makes him Master of our lives,
the Ruler of all our days,
the One who can speak a Word of power and healing,
who can say to the Legion inside of you and me,
“Be gone. Leave this child of mine.”

And off Legion goes,
washed away from us by the waters of our baptism,
banished from our lives by our confession and absolution,
purged from us by nourishment
of Christ’s own body and blood
in the bread and wine of communion.

And in the place of Legion,
Jesus Christ sends his own Spirit,
the Spirit he shares with his Father,
the Spirit that gives life, reveals the divine will,
makes tender our hearts,
and empowers our service and sacrifice.

Then our Lord sends us away, sends us out, saying,
“Return to your home
and declare how much God has done for you.” (Luke 8:39, NRSV)

And like the Gerasene demoniac,
we depart—in our right minds—
possessed not by Legion, but by the Truth,
the Truth we know because he first knows us,
the Truth that sets us free. Amen.

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Readings

2 Samuel 11:26–12:10, 13–15
Psalm 32
Galatians 2:15–21
Luke 7:36–8:3

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Prayer

Lead us, Father in heaven, to confess our sins to you, so that we may grow in the love of your Son, Jesus Christ, through your Spirit’s gift of forgiveness. Amen.

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Message

When I was in high school,
I went on a field trip to New York City
with the German Club.
One of our stops was the United Nations Headquarters.

Since I wanted a souvenir of the trip,
I went to the gift shop
and ended up buying this set of Matryoshka dolls.

What’s curious about these dolls
is that each one opens up
to reveal another doll,
and so on, until you get to the smallest one.

This is a small set, only three deep,
but bigger ones may have more,
some up to nine dolls.

In a way, these dolls are like onions,
because you can peel off one layer of an onion
to reveal another, smaller onion inside of it,
and so on until you get to the center.

I thought maybe this image of the dolls or an onion
would help us to make some sense
of today’s Gospel from Luke.

This is a rather long reading
with a lot going on in it.
But if we go at it like we are taking apart a set of dolls,
or peeling back the layers of an onion,
that might help us make sense of the message.

The background for this passage
is the paragraph just before it
that tells us how Jesus critiqued the people’s reactions
to his ministry and the work of John the Baptist before him.
He said,

For John the Baptist has come
eating no bread and drinking no wine,
and you say, “He has a demon”;
the Son of Man (Jesus’ title for himself) has come eating and drinking,
and you say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard,
a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” (Luke 7:33–34, NRSV)

There is no reasoning behind the public’s reaction;
they criticized John for his lean asceticism
and Jesus for his reputed hedonism.
And so what did Jesus do?
He went to dinner at a Pharisee’s home.

We know that some of the Pharisees had warmed up to Jesus’ teaching,
while others remained critical and skeptical.
But whatever Simon the Pharisee thought of Jesus,
he at least welcomed him into his home.

And that brings us to the first layer of the story:
the account of the dinner and Jesus’ conversation with Simon.
Simon showed Jesus the customary hospitality, to a point.
He invited him into his home.
They reclined at the table together to eat.

But then we come to second doll, the second layer of the story:
the arrival of the woman with the alabaster jar of ointment.
As was the custom in that day,
she could enter Simon’s house.
She sat at Jesus’ feet, washed them with her tears,
and dried them with her hair.
Then she kissed his feet and rubbed ointment into them.
In these simple and humble acts,
she extended to Jesus a more profound act of hospitality
that he had received from Simon, his host.

This irritated Simon,
raising the big unspoken issue,
the one the crowds had complained about
in accusing Jesus of loose living.

Simon said, “If this man were a prophet,
he would have known who and what kind of woman this is
who is touching him—that she is a sinner.” (Luke 7:39b, NRSV)

And then Jesus spoke to Simon,
and Luke’s account moves inward to the third doll:
Jesus’ parable of the creditor and two debtors,
where one owed more than the other.
The gracious creditor forgives both debts
because the debtors could not pay what they owed.
And then Jesus’ question for Simon was simple:
“Now which of them will love the creditor more?” (Luke 7:42, NRSV)

Simon gave the right answer—
the debtor who owed more loves more when forgiven.
And then Jesus tied together these two layers of the onion,
these two dolls nesting together in the passage:
his parable of the creditor and debtors
and the hospitality extended by Simon and the woman.

They are the debtors who cannot pay what they owe.
They show their gratitude, their love by their hospitality.
So a greater act of hospitality means a greater love
that flows from forgiveness of a greater debt.

That’s why Jesus commented on his parable, saying,

…her sins, which were many,
have been forgiven;
hence she has shown great love.
But the one to whom little is forgiven,
loves little. (Luke 7:47, NRSV)

And then he spoke to the woman
who had been kneeling silently at his feet:

Your sins are forgiven….
You faith has saved you; go in peace.” (Luke 7:48, 50, NRSV)

And that is the final doll,
the deepest layer of the onion,
the great treasure lying at the center of this Gospel,
the word of life for us.

When we come to Jesus Christ,
kneel at his feet,
and shed our tears,
we give up our burden of sin and we turn our lives over to him.

The greater the sins we confess at his feet,
the greater the forgiveness Christ extends to us,
and the more we love him in return.

This is the tiny doll, the pearl of an onion at the center,
the simple, yet profound and powerful message of grace,
the word that can change our lives.

This message helps us to know how to look at ourselves.
If we honestly examine our hearts,
and we see that we do not love God as much as we ought,
as fully as we might,
as deeply as he desires of us,
then we can take that insight as a call to confess our sins,
to come to the feet of our Lord,
and to bathe them with our tears
of repentence and contrition.

This is the moment of honesty and truth,
the time when we may join our voices—
choked though they may be by our sorrow—
with the voice of the Psalmist
and the echoes of our forebears in the faith
who used his words in the old Common Service:
“Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not hide my iniquity.
I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.’” (Psalm 32:5, NRSV)

And when we do,
we can wait in confidence for our Lord to say:
“Your sins are forgiven.”
After all, he is the one who eats and drinks with sinners
and now invites us to come and to recline at his Table. Amen.

The Congregation Council at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., where I am serving as interim pastor, opens its monthly meetings with devotions. These are the thoughts for the June 2010 meeting. The Psalm is the one appointed for the third Sunday after Pentecost. The council read it in choirs—men and women.

Reading

Happy are those whose transgression is forgiven,
whose sin is covered.

Happy are those to whom the LORD imputes no iniquity,
and in whose spirit there is no deceit.

While I kept silence, my body wasted away
through my groaning all day long.

For day and night your hand was heavy upon me;
my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer.

Then I acknowledged my sin to you,
and I did not hide my iniquity;
I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,”
and you forgave the guilt of my sin.

Therefore let all who are faithful offer prayer to you;
at a time of distress, the rush of mighty waters shall not reach them.
You are a hiding place for me;
you preserve me from trouble;
you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.

I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go;
I will counsel you with my eye upon you.
Do not be like a horse or mule,
without understanding,
whose temper must be curbed
with bit and bridle,
else it will not stay near you.

Many are the torments of the wicked,
but steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the LORD.
Be glad in the LORD and rejoice, O righteous,
and shout for joy, all you upright in heart.

Devotion

There’s a famous scene in the movie, The Mission, where a 18th-century Spanish mercenary, played by Robert DeNiro, decides to give us his violent ways and to become a monk. He decides he needs to atone for his sins, so he drags a bag containing his armor and weapons through the South American jungle, up into the mountains, to the headwaters of a river where the mission is located.

In a wordless scene at the end of this ardous journey, a boy cuts the rope binding the bag to Rodrigo, and the former killer breaks down into tears of deliverance, forgiveness, and release.

Can you think of a time in your life when you have recognized your sin and asked God and those whom you had hurt for forgiveness? What a great release it is when we receive that word of grace, “I forgive you.”

This is exactly what the psalmist invites us to experience. We can feel the weight of a burden of sin in the words, “While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long.” (Psalm 32:3, NRSV) But at the same time, we can feel the relief that comes when we finally can say, “I will confess my transgressions to the LORD.” (Psalm 32:5)

Forgiveness is a great gift from God. We can trust that he forgives us and gives us a new lease on life when we confess our sins to him.

Discussion

+ How have you responded when someone has come to you to confess having wronged you in some way?
+ If you have something to confess, what keeps you from making that confession either to God or to someone else?
+ Are there any sins that our congregation has committed as a community for which we should ask forgiveness?
+ What can we do as leaders to encourage confession?

Prayer

Help us, O God, to turn to you and to tell you our sins. When we have sinned against others, give us the courage and the humility to confess our wrongdoing. Give us new life by the Spirit of your Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

+ + +

Readings

1 Kings 17:17–24
Psalm 30 (antiphon v. 2)
Galatians 1:11–24
Luke 7:11–17

+ + +

Prayer

Hear us, Father, when we lift our hearts and voices to you in prayer, so that your Spirit may move in our lives, through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

+ + +

Message

Do you have memories
of times in your childhood
when you gathered with family
and shared a prayer together?

Maybe you prayed before meals at holidays,
seated around a big table full of food.
You heard the voice of your grandfather
rumbling from one end of the table
as you bowed your head and folded your hands,
perhaps sneaking a glance across platters of fod
to check to see if your brothers had their heads bowed
or if they, too, were checking on you.

I don’t recall exactly what my grandfather said,
but he always ended his table prayers the same way:
“Bless the hearts and hands that have prepared the same.
These blessings and favors we ask in Jesus’ name.”
And then, half-breathing, half-speaking, he concluded, “Amen.”

My parents also taught me to pray before bed.
I learned the traditional prayer:
“Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”

But then we veered from tradition,
reminding God of a list of relatives
who needed his care,
“Bless Mommy and Daddy,
David and Jonathan and Christopher,
Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma Frye.”

At some point when I was growing up—
I don’t remember when—
my parents stopped praying those words with me,
releasing me to pray on my own, following my own patterns.

As we get older,
there may be times when we decide to make prayer a habit,
to set aside a specific moment and place each day
to pray to God.

Maybe we keep lists of people we know
along with reminders of the heartaches and triumphs of their lives.
Maybe we reserve our prayers
for the table, for the family meal,
or to a time when we just have awakened
or are nearly ready to fade into sleep.

You know your habits, your tendencies, your patterns.
You know if your life of prayer is vibrant and alive,
or atrophied and faded.

In many ways, the ups and downs of our praying
mimic the ebb and flow of our relations with loved ones.
There are times, for example, when we feel connected to a spouse.
and our conversations together blossom with ease.
We are attuned to one another,
aware of the history we bring to the conversation,
the passions that animate our deep commitments,
the aches of the depths and the joys of the heights of lives together.

And then we find the dialogue between us to be electric, resonant,
to be like a song that we sing in harmony.

But there are also the times when we cannot find the right words,
when we do not listen well to one another,
when we rant about our own issues
and do not attend to the needs our spouses try to express.

Prayer is just like that,
because we are the same people when we talk to God,
and because prayer is really just our conversation with God.

Of all the creatures in this world,
we are the ones he has made to talk with him.
When it comes to the animals,
God made them, saying, “Let there be….”
But when he made humans,
he spoke to us, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply….”

We’re the only creatures God makes for conversation.
In fact, that’s what it means to be made in his image.
It means to be made for conversation with God,
to be made to share in his life—
the divine and triune conversation
that Father and Son and Spirit
share with one another from all eternity.

Sometimes we find it easy to talk with God,
but other times it’s not easy at all;
it’s hard, stilted, disjointed.

Maybe praying seems awkward
because we are afraid we won’t say the right thing,
that we won’t use the proper form, the correct words,
that our prayer will not be eloquent or expressive.

That’s not what God desires for us.
That’s not the reaction he intends for us to have.
And that’s why he has inspired our ancestors
to pray with honesty and humility
and why he has guided his people to preserve those prayers
so that they can inspire us, so that we can learn how to pray.

Today’s Psalm is a great example of a faithful prayer.
Just listen to what the psalmist says
about how he acts in his relationship with God.
“I will exalt you, O LORD….” (Psalm 30:1a, LBW)
This tells us that praising God can be part of our prayers.

“O LORD my God, I cried out to you….” (Psalm 30:2a, LBW)
This reminds us that we can call upon God when we are hurting.

“Sing to the LORD, you servant of his;
give thanks for the remembrance of his holiness.” (Psalm 30:4, LBW)
This shows us that we can share our joy and gratitude with God.

“I cried to you, O LORD;
I pleaded with the Lord….” (Psalm 30:9, LBW)
Here we see that its alright to beg for mercy, asking God to save us.

“O LORD my God,
I will give you thanks forever.” (Psalm 30:13, LBW)
And finally, we have an example of how to show our gratitude to God.

And there’s nothing really very unusual about Psalm 30.
It’s just one of many psalms filled with faithful expressions
of praising and thanking,
of pleading and bargaining,
of reminding and recounting
before our God who has promised
to listen to us when we talk with him.

The blessing for us is that he does not get distracted,
that he does not background us
the way we sometimes do with one another.
Instead, we can trust that when we call to him,
saying “God” or “Lord” or “Father,”
“Jesus” or “Spirit,”
he inclines his head,
turns his ear to us,
and listens with love and patience
to all that we have to say,
whether aloud with words or silently with sighs too deep for words.

I hope this helps you if you have wondered how to pray,
that this reminds you of the great freedom we have,
as God’s children, to come to him
and to speak in honesty and humility,
and trust that he will hear and embrace us in love. Amen.

Holy Cross Lutheran Church began offering individuals the chance to ask questions about the Church, faith, theology, and the Bible by putting their queries into a Question Box. A question and answer appears in each month’s newsletter. This is the June 2010 installment.

Question

What does the Bible say about practices that alter our bodies, like
+ wearing make-up
+ having tattoos
+ getting body piercing
+ undergoing plastic surgery?

Answer

Some of the questions that come to us are the same questions our ancestors in the faith asked. But many other questions stem from the times in which we live, so we may not find precise and direct answers to each question we may think to ask. This question, though, falls somewhere in the middle.

Genesis starts out by telling us that human creatures are God’s possession and that he made us as embodied spirits or enspirited bodies: “…then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.” (Genesis 2:7, NRSV). This tells us that we cannot separate ourselves into parts and say we do something to our bodies alone. When we alter ourselves physically, we cannot help but alter ourselves spiritually, and the other way around as well.

So then the question becomes, what is the intention of any alteration? Paul helps us to know the proper goal of any change we attempt to make in ourselves: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:19–20, NRSV).

This means that part of the answer to the question comes from examining the goal of the practice: does it glorify God? Some of the practices are easier to examine this way. Many tattoos feature symbols or texts. Do these forms of communication glorify God, witnessing to others that he is the Lord of our lives? At least one form of plastic surgery—circumcision—traces its roots to a sign of the covenant God made with Abraham and his offspring (Genesis 17:10–14). But since the first Council of the Church, held in Jerusalem, decided that Gentiles did not need to become circumcised to become Christian, this practice is not required (Acts 15). Reconstructive surgery has as its goal the restoration of one’s shape as made by God. Other kinds of plastic surgery may have as their goal the refashioning of one’s shape according to one’s own ideals rather than accepting and rejoicing in the distinctive way one has been fashioned by God’s creative hand.

Perhaps the most helpful passage in responding to this question is 1 Corinthians 8:1–13, where Paul discusses whether or not to eat meat that had been sacrificed to idols. He comes to the point of saying there is no rule one way or the other, “But take care that this liberty of your does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.” (1 Corinthians 8:9, NRSV). This would apply to the questions of altering our appearances by helping each of us to ask, “Does this change bring attention to me or does it help others turn to God?”

Background

What is the Question Box?

It’s actually several boxes. We will have a box in the narthex at church. The church’s mailbox is the second box. The third box is Pastor Frye’s e-mail inbox.

What goes into the box?

Briefly, your questions. You may use any of these boxes to ask Pastor Frye a question about faith and daily life, the Bible, our Lutheran background, events in the life of the whole Church, and practices at Holy Cross Lutheran Church.

What happens with the questions?

Depending upon the questions, Pastor Frye will respond to one or more questions in the newsletter each month.

What else can we expect?

Well, some questions about the faith do not have answers in this life. As one seminary professor once said, “Put that one in your hip pocket and ask God when you get to heaven!” Pastor Frye will not “fake” his answers. He will respect your confidentiality.

What do we do now?

Go ahead and ask your questions. Please sign your name, but indicate whether you wish your name to remain confidential or not.

What are the ways to share questions?

+ Use the box in the narthex and fill out one of the slips nearby.
+ Second, mail your questions to the church office:
Question Box
Holy Cross Lutheran Church
1918 Garfield St.
Beatrice, NE 68310.
+ Or send your question by e-mail, placing “Question Box” in the subject field:
pastorfrye (at) windstream.net.

This article is the June 2010 installment of my monthly message in the parish newsletter for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb.

A Change of Seasons

Flipping the calendar’s pages from May to June brings several changes of seasons—school ends and summer begins; the church year moves from the Easter season through Holy Trinity Sunday and then to ordinary time, the many Sundays after Pentecost; our parish’s ministries move into their summer patterns.

In a way, it’s a little like the change from December to January. That’s the traditional time for taking stock of one’s life, of making new beginnings. This month can work the same way for us. As we move into the season after Pentecost, we enter the time traditionally dedicated to focusing on the spreading of God’s Word, the growth of the Church, and on our maturation in the faith.

A Chance for Questions

So it’s a good time to take a step back from our lives and to ask some questions. Here are a few questions to guide your personal reflection. You can use these however works best for you. Some may find writing in a journal is a helpful way to focus. Others may find a partner in conversation. Others might make each question a beginning for a time of prayer.

+ Where have I felt God at work in my life?
+ What gifts have I received from God?
+ How is God calling me to use those gifts?
+ Whom do I know who does not believe in God?
+ How can I share my faith with others?
+ What cross is God calling me to carry?
+ Where does my faith lead to sacrifice?
+ What do I need to lift up to God in prayer?
+ Is God at the center or the edges of my life?

A Time for Reflection

One of the most powerful ways to help focus one’s spiritual life is through daily devotions. In many ways, making devotions a daily part of one’s life is a task of establishing a habit. This takes some discipline, some resolve to make a change in patterns to open up space in one’s life for a new action in the daily routine. This means that when and how devotions fit into life varies with each person.

I found that placing my devotions between two other firmly established habits helped me to make devotions part of my routine. I wake up every morning and I drink coffee each day as well. So two years ago, I tried spending some time in devotions after I woke up, but before I made that first cup of coffee. This has worked well for me. I’m not suggesting that everyone should do this, but that the notion of finding a way to commit to the discipline of devotions will bear fruit in your life.

A Pattern for Prayer

Once you decide to dedicate time in your life for devotions, the options for resources can overwhelm you. For the Christian, the Bible is the essential resource. A great place to start is with the Psalms. These texts have served as the prayerbook and the hymnal of God’s people for thousands of years. They will touch you with their tenderness, inspire you with their praise, shock you with their brutal honesty, and remind you of God’s lordship over every moment of life.

Our congregation provides several devotional booklets available quarterly on the rack in the narthex. Our hymnal, Lutheran Book of Worship, includes a variety of aids for devotions, including a schedule of daily Bible readings on p. 179. If you have access to the Internet, the options are just about endless. You can find out what readings are coming up in worship at www.elca.org/lectionary. And for example, another site, www.journeywithjesus.net, offers a mix of essays, book reviews, poetry, and reflections on the arts tied to the lectionary, our schedule for Sunday readings.
Please consider this message an invitation to start a habit or to renew an existing discipline. If you find a practice that works, let me know. I can gather and share the suggestions and wisdom of our congregation so that we all may grow together in our life of faith.

Blessings!

Pastor David Frye

+ + +

Readings

Proverbs 8:1–4, 22–31
Psalm 8 (antiphon v.2)
Romans 5:1–5
John 16:12–15

+ + +

Prayer

Stir up in us, O Father, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may trust and obey Jesus Christ, your Son, in whose name we pray. Amen.

+ + +

Message

Everybody knows how a good fairy tale begins:
Once upon a time.
And then we get to the details that pull us in:
there were three little pigs;
there was an orphan girl with a wicked step-mother;
there was a man who traded his cow for some magic beans.

These are the fairy tales, the tall tales,
the legends and epics and fables
that fill the imaginations and memories
of people all over the world.

When we hear them,
we learn about the big bad wolf and his taste for pork,
the true love of Cinderella and Prince Charming,
the cunning and bravery of Jack in the land of giants.

These stories never grow old.
We can hear them time and again.
We can remake them, recast them into different periods.
They are timeless, and attractive to us,
because they fit anywhere, anytime.
And that’s the case because they are not history.

The stories we tell about history
and the figures that we remember
can be just as enchanting, mesmerizing, and exciting.
But they start out differently.

We don’t say,
“Once upon a time there was a man of troubled spirit,
thrown from his horse in a thunderstorm,
who vowed to become a monk,
and came to lead a revolution in the Church.”

Instead, we recount,
“In 1483, Martin Luther was born of middle-class parents.
He became an Augustinian monk.
And on October 31, 1517, he posted 95 topics for debate
upon the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.”

We never say,
“Once upon a time there was a man born in a log cabin,
who wrote his lessons with charcoal on a shovel.
He grew up to wear a stovepipe hat,
and even though he was lanky and homely,
was chosen to be the leader of his country.”

Instead, we begin,
“Abraham Lincoln was born in 1809 in a log cabin in Kentucky.”

History is story, but it is story with detail,
with specifics that help us to know
that we are hearing about real people in real places.

We tell one another stories of history all the time.
When’s the last conversation you had that went something like this:
“Did you hear about Alice?”
“Which Alice was that?”
“You know, Alice who married Bob.
She works at the insurance agency on the corner.
They live over on Main Street.”
“Oh, yeah, I know who you’re talking about.”

What happens is that we mention people by name
and then we go on to identify them
by telling enough of their history
until we can all say, “Yes, I know who we’re talking about.”

The Bible is like that kind of conversation.
Its stories were told and retold
and then eventually committed to writing.
Its main character is God.

But that’s such a generic name.
Many people use that name,
but they don’t all mean to refer to the same God.

Maybe God is Baal,
who brings fertility to land and animals and people,
so long as he receives the proper offerings.

Maybe God is the golden calf,
cast from the melted-down jewelry of the people of Israel
who grew impatient waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain.

Maybe God is a statue in the Agora of Athens,
one of the sculptures Paul passed
as he prepared for his conversation with the people.

We know that none of those gods are God.
Just as we know in our hearts
that all of the little gods we worship
are not really God.
Not our possessions, not our families,
not our most absorbing pastimes,
or even the flag or this country.

We know that God is none of these, then or now.
We know that.
But which god is our God?

The answer to that question comes as a story.

God is the one who made the first people, Adam and Eve.
He put them into a garden and gave them everything they needed.
But when they rebelled, he cast them out,
but watched over them as they raised their family.

He is the God who saved Noah and his family,
along with pairs of animals,
while he sent a great flood to wipe clean the earth.

He is the God who called Abram and Sarai
to leave their land in Ur of Chaldees—now Iraq—
and to journey to a promised land, sight unseen.

He is the God who gave Abraham and Sarah their son, Isaac.
He guided the family, leading Jacob and then his sons,
protecting them when they journeyed to Egypt.

He raised up Moses and used him to lead the people out of Egypt.
He delivered them from the hand of Pharaoh
and led them through the wilderness for forty years.
He gave them his Law, fed them, defended them,
and then brought them into the land of promise.

And on we go through the rest of the Old Testament.
And then we come to the New Testament,
and we tell how God is the Father who sent his Son, Jesus,
born of a virgin, Mary.
He rescued Jesus from the slaughter of the innocents,
raised him to manhood,
guided him into the wilderness for forty days,
then poured out the Holy Spirit at Jesus’ baptism
under the hand of his cousin, John.

This Jesus is the God who gave himself up to the forces of this world,
who went willingly and humbly to the cross,
who suffered the most unimaginable pain,
who bore the weight of all human sin, the sin of all humanity,
who died by crucifixion,
who descended to the dead.

And we go on to tell the rest of the story.
On the third day, the Father raised the Son from death by power of their Spirit.
And then we proclaim, “Christ is risen. He is risen indeed!”

This risen Son sends his Spirit,
so that all who believe may join with him in faith,
as children of the heavenly Father,
and in the end, bend the knee to the God and Father of us all.

This is no fairy tale, no story about once upon a time.
This is the sacred history of God.
In fact, the word “God” is just shorthand for this history,
because when we say “God,” we mean all of this,
from the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth
until the end when his Son says, “I am coming soon.”

And for us who bear the Son’s name as Christians,
who have been baptized in the name of God— Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit—
that triune name is God’s proper name.

When we use it, there is no confusion about which God we mean.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not the vague and false god of prosperity
or the idolotrous god of good times
or the make-believe god we can satisfy with empty gestures.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
is the name of the God with a real and specific history
of dealings with Israel and the Church
from before the first word of creation
to his coming to us as Immanuel
and beyond the final judgment at the end.

God has been Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
from the beginning, and in fact, from all eternity.
His name tells the whole story.

The Father created the world through his Son, the Word, and by the power of the Spirit.
The Father blessed his people with Wisdom and led them along his Way.
The Father gave his prophets his Message and guided them to speak with Power.
The Father sent his Son to be born of Mary, who conceived him by the gift of the Spirit.
The Father raised is Son from death by the power of the love they shared in their Spirit.
The Father made the Church to be the bride of his Son and filled it with the Spirit of truth.

This is why we confess that God is Father, Son, and Spirit.
We confess that our God is one God because the three are one.

In every way, in every action,
God reveals himself as one,
where Father and Son and Spirit
each act in relation to one another
so that the perfect community they share
is never broken or divided or in conflict.

This is why the divine math does not follow the rules of human arithmetic.
One plus one plus one is one and not three.

And the blessing for us
is that our God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—
calls us to share in this divine unity,
gathering us to himself in our Baptism
and nourishing us by our Communion with him. Amen.

+ + +

Readings

Acts 11:1–18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1–6
John 13:31–35

+ + +

Prayer

Stir up in us, O Father, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may see your Son, risen and reigning as Lord of all. Amen.

+ + +

Message

Saying just this one word—love—
brings to mind so many beloved lyrics:
+ What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
+ Love, love me do. You know I love you.
+ All you need is love.
+ Love is a many-splendored thing.
+ Love is a rose, so you better not pick it.

And that’s just a quick sample to remind us
about how pervasive is this emotion, this feeling
in our popular culture and its art and music.
When we mention these sentiments
we find our minds filled with images:
candy and flowers, dreamy-eyed stares,
the old and familiar stories of boy meets girl,
girl and boy struggle, then separate,
but finally find one another and live happily ever after.

We listen to song after song,
watch movie upon movie,
read books and go to plays
to see and hear this same story
told again and again
for the simple reason
that we have a need and a desire
to know that feeling,
to trust that somewhere there is someone
who loves us deeply and wholeheartedly.

We call this feeling “love,” and it is.
But it is really more precise to call it romantic love.
And when we properly focus this love in fidelity and honor
to our husband or wife
or the person we contemplate
asking to be wife or husband,
then our romantic love is a reflection of and a testimony
to God’s love and care for us.

And then there is the love
we share a little more broadly
and spread a little more widely:
our love of neighbor.

Especially as Christians,
we believe God has called us to share this love
with those around us.
We trust he wants us to help people in need,
to offer from our abundance the support that others require
when they suffer from scarcity and want.

We call this action “love” as well, and it is.
But it might be more helpful to use the old-fashioned term “charity.”
And not in the sense of distributing a hand-out to people in need,
but in the more classic sense of expressing “care for humanity.”

This love—charity—is also an echo, an extension
of God’s love and care for us.
We’ve learned this from St. Paul’s hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13:
“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
and the greatest of these is love (or charity),”
depending upon the translation. (1 Corinthians 13:13, NRSV)

With these two kinds of love
in our hearts and minds,
we do not come to today’s Gospel
as blank slates, as empty baskets.
We arrive at the reading
with these forms of love and our personal histories
swirling around us.
They shape and color our perceptions.
They predispose us to certain feelings and thoughts.
We cannot change that about ourselves,
but now we are more aware of our make-up,
we are more conscious of how we hear talk of love.

+ + +

On the evening of his betrayal by Judas,
his arrest at the hands of his fellow Jews,
his abandonment by his disciples,
his denial by Peter, his trusted disciple,
Jesus said to his gathered followers:

I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you,
you also should love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35, NRSV)

Why was the commandment new?
There’s nothing new about love.
Since Adam found in Eve
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh,
husbands and wives have loved one another deeply and faithfully.

Since God rescued Israel from Egypt
and then called his people to a task—
because they themselves had been landless and lost—
to care for the widows, orphans, and sojourners in their midst,
God’s people have practiced charity.

So what was new about this commandment?
What was new was Jesus himself.
He told his disciples and he tells us to love others the way he has loved us.
And that way is new.
Jesus’ love for us is the love of Immanuel, God with us,
lived out by sacrificing himself,
by dying on the cross,
by giving up everything he is for one purpose:
“Now the Son of Man has been glorified,
and God has glorified him.” (John 13:31, NRSV)

In John’s Gospel, glory comes when Jesus reveals himself.
That’s why the beginning of the Gospel tells us:
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,
full and of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, NRSV)

And Jesus, the Son, received that glory from his Father,
as Jesus himself prays to his Father in John 17:
“I glorified you on earth
by finishing the work that you gave me to do.
So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence
with the glory that I had in your presence
before the world existed.” (John 17:4–5, NRSV)

Glory and love combine
upon the cross of Jesus Christ.
This is what is new.
This is why the command is a new one.
This is what makes our love shared in obedience
new and different from the love that goes on outside the Church,
that merely echoes and emulates the love that God in Jesus Christ has for us.

When we love others the way Jesus loves us,
we give ourselves away,
we give up all that we are,
we give ourselves over to death.

And we can do this without real fear,
not because death is not scary.
It is, whether it means we sacrifice our lives,
or if it means we give up something important to us and die a little death along the way.

Death can be scary, but in the end, it is not worthy of our fear.
Because in the end,
it is not death that speaks the final word about you or me.
The last word comes from the Word
who was and is and always shall be the first Word,
who was with God and who is God.

And in John’s Revelation
Christ the Word speaks to us in love from his throne of glory, saying,
“Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4b, NRSV)

With this promise, nothing stands between us
and our living by the new command:
“Love one another.” Amen.

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Readings

Acts 9:36–43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9–17
John 10:22–30

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Prayer

Stir up in us, O Father, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may see your Son, risen and reigning as Lord of all. Amen.

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Message

Have you ever woken up from a dream
and you can’t remember exactly what happened.
You ask, “Who was that? Where was I? What did that mean?”
It’s as if the shapes of things kept changing
and the appearances of people were fluid.
Things were familiar, and yet strange,
known, and yet mysterious.

It’s a hard experience to describe.
But at the root is the feeling that lingers when we slowly awaken—
the sensation of images full of meaning,
fading away just beyond our fingertips,
slipping away past our understanding.

Sometimes the Bible is a little dreamy in this way—
especially in some of its books.
Two of them appear in our readings today:
the Revelation of John and the Gospel According to John.
The early church fathers were divided in their judgment
about whether the same John wrote both books.
And two thousand years of scholarship hasn’t settled the issue.

But even if the identities of these Johns are a question to us,
the author or authors share a vision, a kind of a dream of truth,
that involves shepherds and lambs and sheep,
Jesus Christ crucified and enthroned,
the Church saved and gathered.

In his vision of heaven and its blessings,
John the Seer tells us of an uncountable multitude
gathered in worship and praise before the Lamb.
Those in the throng are “robed in white”
and “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
And this Lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ,
sits “at the center of the throne [and is] their shepherd.” (Revelation 7:9–17, NRSV)

Jesus is the Lamb and he is the shepherd.
So in way that makes the Church triumphant the flock of sheep.
And that means that you and I,
who have been washed and named in the waters of Holy Baptism,
hope and trust one day
to wear those heavenly robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb
and to flock around his throne.

Our worship here and now is practice for that blessed day.
That’s why we call this a congregation.
That word comes from the Latin for flock, gregis,
and it means, “those who flock together.”

And then in the Gospel,
Jesus tangles with his fellow Jews
who wonder whether he really is the Messiah—
God’s anointed one who will save the people.
But sadly they question him in a spirit of confrontation
and in the vain hope that he will be the Messiah as they define it,
not as he reveals it to them.

And so, Jesus speaks a word of judgment:
“… you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.” (John 10:26, NRSV)
Belonging—both for the Jews and for us—
does not come from holding Jesus in our grasp,
from binding him to an idea that we dream up
about how he ought to be the Messiah and Savior of us all
according to our plans and designs.

Instead, belonging comes from listening to him.
He says, “My sheep hear my voice.
I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27, NRSV)

And here the language of the dream shifts a little bit.
Jesus was the Lamb in Revelation,
but now in John he is the shepherd.
All along, we are his sheep, his flock.
In the vision of heaven, we are shouting and singing praises.
But here in the Gospel we are quiet and attentive.
And instead of gathering around him,
we follow behind him as he leads us.

The wonderful and amazing thing about dreams and symbols
that compare Jesus and his people
with lambs and sheep and shepherds and flocks
is that these shifting, flowing images can all be true at the same time,
even if they are different from one another.

Despite those differences,
God shares a few basic truths across these visions.
We can hold on to them.
Jesus Christ, our Messiah, is the Leader of his people.
Sometimes he may appear to us as the Lamb on the throne
encircled by the throng of tribes and peoples.
And sometimes he comes to us as the Shepherd
leading his flock to green pastures and still waters.

But no matter what, as Psalm 100 tells us,
we “know that the LORD is God.
It is he that made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” (Psalm 100:3, NRSV)

We can trust him,
we can follow him,
because he leads us along the right path,
even when we have strayed into the dark valleys.

He calls us by name
and gathers us around him.
And in his goodness,
he prepares a table for us
and gives us his body and blood for forgiveness and peace and unity.
He anoints our heads with oil for healing and wholeness and strength.

Listen, the Shepherd is calling to us.
Come, let us flock together around his table, his throne. Amen.