June 20, 2010 at 5:40 am · Filed under Homilies
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 20, 2010.
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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.
June 13, 2010 at 4:57 am · Filed under Homilies
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, June 13, 2010.
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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.
June 10, 2010 at 5:05 am · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
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.
June 6, 2010 at 5:21 am · Filed under Homilies
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Second Sunday after Pentecost (the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ), June 6, 2010.
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Readings
1 Kings 17:17–24
Psalm 30 (antiphon v. 2)
Galatians 1:11–24
Luke 7:11–17
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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.
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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.
June 1, 2010 at 5:36 am · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
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.
June 1, 2010 at 5:29 am · Filed under Ephemera
Introduction
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
May 30, 2010 at 5:45 am · Filed under Homilies
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, May 30, 2010.
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Readings
Proverbs 8:1–4, 22–31
Psalm 8 (antiphon v.2)
Romans 5:1–5
John 16:12–15
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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.
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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.
May 2, 2010 at 5:19 am · Filed under Homilies
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, April 25, 2010.
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Readings
Acts 11:1–18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1–6
John 13:31–35
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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.
+ + +
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.
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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.
April 30, 2010 at 5:25 am · Filed under Daily Words
“Clear out the old yeast, so that you may become a fresh batch of dough inasmuch as you are unleavened.” (1 Corinthians 5:7, NAB)
April 29, 2010 at 5:25 am · Filed under Daily Words
“Deep waters cannot quench love,
nor floods sweep it away.
Were one to offer all he owns to purchase love,
he would be roundly mocked.” (Song of Songs 8:7, NAB)
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