Tag Archives: Isaiah

Christ Crucified—Both Foolishness and Wisdom

Posted on by
Reply

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

+ + +

Readings

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

+ + +

Prayer

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

+ + +

Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

The Third Word

Posted on by
Reply

This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 22, 2010.

+ + +

Readings

Isaiah 58:9b–14
Psalm 103:1–8 (antiphon v. 4)
Hebrews 12:18–29
Luke 13:10–17

+ + +

Prayer

Father in heaven, by your Spirit turn us to you and fill us with a desire to worship you and to keep your day holy; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.

+ + +

Message

A few months ago,
I was using Google to research
the Beatrice Ministerial Association.
I don’t remember what I was trying to find.

But in the course of the search,
I uncovered an old article from Boxoffice magazine
from sometime in the 1940s, I believe.

Written from a pro-movie theatre position,
the article chronicles the efforts
by Beatrice business owners and ministers
to prevent the repeal of this town’s Blue Laws.

Blue Laws have a long history in this country
as a means for enforcing public morality.
They’ve traditionally prevented citizens from engaging
in an array of activities on Sundays:
shopping, purchasing liquor, hunting, watching movies, and buying cars.

According to the article,
the American Legion was leading an effort
to repeal Beatrice’s Blue Law forbidding
the screening of movies on Sundays.

The issue had been the subject
of a special election ending in a tie vote,
leading to court appeals over disputed ballots
and questions about a voter’s residency
and whether ballots given to ten railroad men
had received the proper official signatures.
According to the article,
local business men opposed the repeal
as an effort to block the Fox and Rivoli movie theatre chain
from opening a new theatre in town.

In the meantime, F.H. Hollingworth,
who owned the Rialto theatre here in Beatrice,
was making a lot of money
at his other theatre in Wymore,
which had no Blue Law forbidding movies on Sundays.

The article stated,
“Arrayed with the business men
is the Beatrice Ministerial association,
the most militantly potent crusading pastoral organization in Nebraska.”

I never found a follow-up article
to discover how the appeal turned out.
But today the theatres in Beatrice have Sunday show times,
so I guess, in the end, the Blue Law was repealed.

That’s a bit of a rambling detour through some local history.
But I think it helps,
because it gives us a sense
of how mixed up we can become
in asking and answering questions
about how we honor the Sabbath, the day of rest,
Sunday, the Lord’s Day.
It shows that we easily can confuse money and morality,
commerce and church,
politics and piety.

Here’s another bit of older history.
When God brought Moses to Mount Sinai,
he gave Moses the Decalogue, the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments.
The Third Word goes like this:
“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.
Six days you shall labor and do all your work.
But the seventh day is a sabbath to the LORD your God;
you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter,
you male or female slave, your livestock,
or the alien resident in your towns.
For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them,
but rested the seventh day;
therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day
and consecrated it.” (Exodus 20:8–11)

And like good Lutherans, we might ask,
“What does this mean for us?”
In the Small Catechism, Luther writes a response:

We are to fear and love God
so that we do not neglect his Word
and the preaching of it,
but regard it as holy
and gladly hear and learn it. (i>Small Catechism, I)

Luther’s explanation leans a little bit
toward understanding the Sabbath
as a day dedicated to worship—
and it is.
Sunday, for Christians, is the day
we hear and respond to God’s call to come together,
to gather in his triune name,
to raise our voices in praise,
to hear his Word,
to confess our faith,
to lift up our prayers,
to give our offerings,
to share in his Holy Meal,
to depart for service—refreshed and restored.

This is the core, the center of our life on this day.
This is what God calls us to do,
what he inspires us to embrace as our way of life,
what he expects us to give him as our joyful sacrifice.

But the Third Word also tells us
that the Sabbath is God’s gift for us
as much as it is a time for us to give our lives to God.
The Sabbath is a day of rest,
blessed and consecrated by the Lord,
given to us as a free and undeserved gift.

This helps us to understand
what happened when Jesus got into a dispute
with the leader of the synagogue
over the Blue Law of their day:
“Do not work on the Sabbath.
Healing is a work.
Therefore don’t perform healings on the Sabbath.”

The leader had his logic down pat.
But our Lord saw the confusion
that had arisen in the wake of this approach.
The Blue Laws would allow
a farmer to lead his ox to water for a drink,
meeting its need for life,
but then they forbade the healing of a woman,
preventing her from receiving what she needed for life.

Basically, Jesus made the observation,
“If God’s people could work for six days
and then rest on the seventh as a gift from his almighty hand,
could not this woman receive a Sabbath rest through God’s gift of healing,
after working her way through eighteen years of life
under the load of a crippling possession by a spirit?”

That’s why,
“When Jesus saw her,
he called her over and said,
‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’
When he laid his hands upon her,
immediately she stood up straight
and began praising God,” (Luke 13:12–13, NRSV)
worshiping on the Sabbath.

And again, “What does this mean for us?”
How can we live by faith?
How can hear with clarity God’s Word for us?
How may we distinguish with wisdom and humility
between the courses of action that honor the Sabbath—
and therefore God himself—
and paths that wind their ways away from God
and lead us down the road to honoring other gods?

It’s a challenge to know—to anticipate—
all of the circumstances and the details
that can arise when we seek to obey God’s law,
to live in ways that honor him and his Sabbath.

But here are some questions to guide us.

First question.
When I arise on the Sabbath,
and look ahead at my day,
can I, in all honesty, ask myself,
“Do my choices say clearly to others,
‘God is my Lord; I have dedicated this day to him?’”
And then, can I answer,
“Yes. As completely as I can, as fully as I am able,
I will spend the time God has given me this day
in such a way that others who see me
will know that Jesus Christ is the Lord of my life.”
In a nutshell, ask yourself,
“Does my day say Jesus is Lord?”

Second question.
When I reach this day’s end,
and prepare to go to bed,
can I look back on the day’s happenings,
and say, in all honesty,
“Thank you, God, for this Sabbath day.
I have appreciated your generosity.
You have restored and renewed me through this gift of rest.
It has helped me to embrace your grace.
And now I give back to you”?
In a nutshell, ask yourself,
“Have I rested in the grace of God?”

That his how we honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.
And when we do,
then we will live the way the prophet Isaiah
calls across the centuries for us to follow:
“If you refrain from trampling the sabbath,
from pursuing your own interests on my holy day;
if you call the sabbath a delight
and the holy day of the LORD honorable;
if you honor it, not going your own ways,
serving your own interests,
or pursuing your own affairs;
then you shall take delight in the LORD….” (Isaiah 58:13–14a, NRSV)

And now, on this Sabbath, our LORD calls us to his Holy Table,
to honor him on his day and to rest with him in the delight of his blessed Meal. Amen.

Lambs Amid Wolves

Posted on by
Reply

This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 4, 2010.

+ + +

Readings

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

+ + +

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.

+ + +

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.

Possessed by the Truth

Posted on by
Reply

This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 20, 2010.

+ + +

Readings

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

+ + +

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.

+ + +

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.

Healing and Forgiveness

Posted on by
Reply

This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for a Service of the Word for Healing on Thursday, April 22, 2010.

+ + +

Readings

Isaiah 35:1–10
Psalm 103
Acts 3:1–10
Matthew 9:2–8

+ + +

Prayer

Send your Holy Spirit upon us, Father in heaven, so that we may know the healing and forgiveness that come to us in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

+ + +

Message

It doesn’t take much to remind us
that there are really no walls separating
our bodies and souls from one another.

Just remember the last time
you found yourself close to bursting
with anticipation at telling a loved one
about a surprise you just knew would bring
joy and happiness.

Or recall the nauseating churning
in the pit of your stomach
when you realized that you’d just done something
so incredibly insensitive,
some act so thoughtless
that brought pointless heartache
to a loved one undeserving of that pain.

It doesn’t take much to remind us
that we are embodied spirits
or enspirited bodies,
depending upon how you look at it.

So it makes all the sense in the world
to hear Jesus’ seemingly out-of-left-field
comment to a paralyzed man
being borne on a bed carried by friends.
He says, “Take heart, son; your sins are forgiven.”

The paralyzed man suffers from a debilitating condition;
he cannot get around on his own;
he must depend upon the kindness of others;
he is not free to go where he wants.

It looks like what he really needs
is to be healed of his paralysis,
to be liberated so he can depend upon himself
rather than rely upon others.

But Jesus’ first word to him is not,
“Rise and walk.”
Instead, Jesus recognizes the faith of the man’s companions,
and in response says to the man,
“Take heart, son, your sins are forgiven.”

Jesus sees that the real, deep, true debility
in this man’s life is not his paralysis,
his inability to move,
but the man’s personal brokenness,
his inability to live a life whole and pleasing to God.

And so he forgives the man his sins.
This creates a controversy within the crowd
over healing and forgiveness.
People see Jesus as presumptious,
as one who overreaches in his bold action to pronounce forgiveness.
But Jesus responds by healing the man as well.

The blessing for us is to know and to trust
that our Lord comes into our lives
both to heal and to forgive.
In fact, just as body and soul
are two aspects of the one person
God has made each of us to be,
the gifts of healing and forgiveness
are expressions of one reality:
Jesus comes to us to make us whole.

When we find our lives in turmoil,
our days filled with pain, both physical and spiritual,
it helps to remember that Jesus desires
for us to be whole—to be healed and forgiven.
He has the desire and the power
to take away the paralysis in our hearts,
the debilities in our minds,
the aches in our souls,
the dis-ease in our spirits,
just as much as he longs
for us to know his healing from whatever ails us.
And beyond that,
he promises to make us share
in the redeemed and restored life
that awaits us in heaven.

And so we have a gift to share together.
We have this tradition of gathering
to hear God’s Word,
his message that diagnoses our pain
and prescribes the medicine of his grace.

And in this tradition,
we turn to the age-old practice of healing.
Here, in the touching of hands on heads,
the anointing with oil,
the offering of prayers,
we express our trust
that Jesus Christ is present
here and now both to forgive sins and to heal our brokenness.

And when we see this grace,
we, too, can be filled with awe,
and respond to God with thanks,
giving him glory for his precious gifts,
poured out and impressed upon us
in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ. Amen.

We Have Seen the Lord

Posted on by
Reply

This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Easter Vigil, Saturday, April 3, 2010.

+ + +

Readings

Genesis 1:1–2:2
Exodus 14:10–15:1a
Ezekiel 37:1–14
Isaiah 4:2–6
Romans 6:3–11
John 20:1–18

+ + +

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

It reads like testimony,
because that is what it is.
Our Gospel is the account of the Passion’s witnesses,
those who had lived through the events of this Holy Week.
It is their testimony and telling
of what they knew to be the truth.

Listen to what this evening’s Gospel says:
+ Mary Magdalene sees that the stone has been removed.
+ The disciple who outruns Peter sees the linen wrappings lying in the tomb.
+ Peter sees those same wrappings and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, rolled up in a place by itself.
+ The swift disciple sees and believes.
+ Then Mary sees two angels.
+ Mary sees Jesus, but mistakes him for the gardener.
This is the testimony of the eyewitnesses of the resurrection.

And then, as Jesus talks with Mary,
he calls her by name,
and her eyes, that had seen only a man,
are opened to see who he really is,
to see that he is Jesus, her Teacher, and her Lord,
to see that he is not dead, but alive.

And then he sends her to tell his brothers—
his companions, his disciples—
the good news that he is risen.

This is the moment the mission begins.
Our risen Lord sends his believers
to tell others the good news,
to announce the defeat of death,
to proclaim the victory of God,
to testify to what they had seen and heard.

So Mary goes from the garden,
returns to the disciples’ homes, and tells them,
“I have seen the Lord.” (John 20:18, NRSV)
And from this eyewitness testimony of one woman,
the message spreads and grows
across cultures and lands and ages
until today one third of the world’s people,
two billion believers,
say along with Mary, “We have seen the Lord.”

Our risen Lord Jesus Christ comes to us,
just as he came to Mary.
He gives us the same mission,
to go and to tell what we know to be true:
We have seen the Lord.

We have seen him, our Lord, the Word of God,
hidden, but working, in the creation of this world.
We have seen him, our mighty Lord,
in the powerful presence of the angel of God
who stood guard over Israel in its escape from Egypt.
We have seen him, along with our ancestors in the faith,
in the words of the LORD God that bring life to dry bones.
We have seen him, the branch of the LORD,
making Mount Zion a garden for all of God’s people.

And we see him here and now.

We see him in the baptismal washing and the Word that give us life.
We see him before us in the reading and proclaiming of his Scriptures.
We see him in the bread of heaven and the cup of salvation.

He is here. He is risen. He speaks to us.
He calls us by name. He sends us with a message.

And so we say to all people, “We have seen the Lord.” Amen.

Blood and Water

Posted on by
Reply

This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for Good Friday, April 2, 2010.

+ + +

Readings

Isaiah 52:13–53:12
Hebrews 10:16–25
John 18:1–19:42

+ + +

Prayer

Pour out upon us your Holy Spirit, gracious Father, so that we may contemplate in faith your great mercy in giving up your only Son to conquer death and to grant us the promise of eternal life through his resurrection. Amen.

+ + +

Message

He died with the weight of the world’s sin
bearing down upon him.
He died as one of us—bruised, beaten, broken—
suffering the most terrible punishment on our behalf.
He died at a loss, a terrible loss, a most grievous loss,
cut off from his Father from all eternity,
yet perfectly united with you and me
and all who come before and after us,
united in our sin—our original sin and in our all our daily sins.

There on his flogged and bloody shoulders
hang the secret thoughts and twisted desires
we hold most dear in the recesses
of the dark corners of our quiet desperation.

When we prefer to chase after our own little gods
rather than to bend our knee and worship the God who made us,
we place that sin of idolatry upon our Lord’s shoulders.

When we ignore the command to keep a day of rest,
to hallow that time because God himself rested from his labors,
then we add our sin of shunning the Sabbath
to the load our Lord Christ bears upon those wounded shoulders.

When we find within ourselves
the words that cut like knives and the actions that wound by design,
and then wield them as weapons against our parents, our children,
our husbands and wives, our neighbors, and even our enemies,
we gather up these sins borne of violence and disrespect,
of dishonor and violation,
and heap them upon on the pile that rises high upon our Savior’s cross.

We know in the depths of our hearts
what we have done to be mean, and what we failed to do out of spite,
what we have said in anger, and when we have loosed our tongues to punish others,
what we have thought in arrogance,
and how we dwell upon the ill and malice and malevolence and ignorance
that well up without end inside of us.

We know these things,
we know them in the deep dark corners of our lives,
we know what in means to be “in bondage to sin.”

But by the grace of God,
our Lord Jesus Christ knows all of this too.
He knows us and he knows in himself all that we are.
He knows the breadth and the depth of our sin.
And on the cross, he took on that burden
and he endured the awful wrenching hell
that is nothing more
than existence apart from his Father and our Father.
And with that awful knowledge, he died.

But by the grace of his Father,
and the love of their Spirit,
the sacrifice of the Son rescues us from the same fate.

And we know this because we have received a sign.
As St. John tells us in his account of the Passion:

…one of the solders pierced his side with a spear,
and at once blood and water came out. (John 19:34, NRSV)

These are the fluids that remind us
that Jesus was a man, born of Mary,
human like you and me,
as fragile in the end as any one of us.

Blood and water.
But not just water and blood.
This is the blood of the Lamb
sacrificed on our behalf to give us life,
as the writer of Hebrews reminds us:

Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence
to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus,
by the new and living way that he opened for us
through the curtain (that is, through his flesh),
and since we have a great priest
over the house of God,
let us approach with a true heart
in full assurance of faith,
with our heart sprinkled clean
from an evil conscience and our bodies
washed in pure water. (Hebrews 10:19–22, NRSV)

Blood and water.
Signs and seals and sacraments.
Through them,
through Baptism and Communion,
God gives us life and faith,
the guarantees of new clean hearts,
of consciences cleansed of evil,
and of bodies washed and made pure.

And just as we each have entered the world,
born of our mothers,
born in pain and with cries,
born amid blood and water,
we in the Church are reborn
from the spear-pierced side of our Lord.

His wounds have become our womb,
his labor gives us life,
his cries announce our delivery,
his blood of the sacrifice nourishes us
and his water of rebirth cleanses us.

St. John begins his Gospel with a hymn to the Word,
whose words we treasure on the day of our Lord’s birth.
Today they strike us anew:

…to all who received him,
who believed in his name,
he gave power to become the children of God,
who were born,
not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man,
but of God,”
of the life-giving blood and water
flowing from his Son. Amen. (John 1:12–13, NRSV)

At the Crossroads

Posted on by
Reply

This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, March 27–28, 2010, for the Passion Sunday.

+ + +

Readings

Luke 19:28–40 (Procession with Palms)
Isaiah 50:4–9a
Psalm 31:9–16 (antiphon v. 5)
Philippians 2:5–11
Luke 23:1–49

+ + +

Prayer

Pour out upon us your Holy Spirit, gracious Father, so that we may contemplate in faith your great mercy in giving up your only Son to conquer death and to grant us the promise of eternal life through his resurrection. Amen.

+ + +

Message

As he stretches his arms wide upon the cross,
our Lord Jesus Christ finds himself transfixed.
He is pinned at the intersection of life and death.
On one axis, the perfect love he and his Father and their Spirit
hold for us and for the whole world
comes flowing down out of heaven in a torrent.

And on the other axis,
our Lord open his hands to the nails of our sins,
and through his pain and suffering,
pours out that love like a living stream in the desert of our dying.

No one but God could give himself away
in perfect love and total obedience,
making the ultimate sacrifice
to overcome the chasm that sin and death
have opened between us and the God who made us.

And so, the Father sends his Son,
announced by the angel Gabriel,
born of the Spirit and Mary, his human mother,
raised in a loving family,
taught by learned rabbis,
revered by throngs,
believed by people poor and hungry,
plotted against by the elites,
betrayed by Judas,
forsaken by his disciples,
vilified by the crowds,
sentenced by Pontius Pilate,
scourged by soldiers,
and crucified by the state.

And so he died,
not for himself,
but for you and for me and for all humanity.

He paid the price on our behalf,
he atoned for our sins,
he bore the guilt for our wrongdoing,
he became temple, priest, and sacrifice,
he vanquished sin and death and the devil,
he ascended his throne,
he gained the crown,
he, the shepherd, laid down his life for the sheep,
he, the lamb, went willingly to the slaughter,
he died that we might live.

This is the good news—dreadful yet sublime.
And as we begin this Holy Week,
we come together to gather at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ
and to turn our gaze upward
and to meditate upon our Lord’s gift for us and for the whole world.

And as the Father’s gift of love in his Son
flows out from those outstretched hands
and, by the Spirit, seeps into our dry and desiccated lives,
we will find ourselves refreshed and renewed,
made soft and supple,
open and obedient to their will.

This posture of faith—
the inclination of body and spirit—
is what God almighty bestows upon us
through his Word in St. Paul’s letter to the Church at Philippi:

Let this same mind be in you
that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:5–8, NRSV)

This is the moment in which we now find ourselves.
We stand at the crossroads between death and life.
And as we witness our Lord’s self-emptying,
his humility and obedience,
and then his death,
we find ourselves taking to our knees in gratitude,
becoming obedient and humble ourselves.

This is our place.
This is our destiny.
This is our calling.

And in the days to come,
we will hear and know
our Lord’s exaltation and naming by his Father,

…so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:10–11, NRSV)

Amen.

The mystery … is great

Posted on by
Reply

This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Feast of the Annunciation of Our Lord on Thursday, March 25, 2010.

+ + +

Readings

Isaiah 7:10–14
Psalm 40:1–11
1 Timothy 3:16
Luke 1:26–38

+ + +

Prayer

Send your Holy Spirit upon us, Father in heaven, just as you blessed Mary, your servant, with that same divine gift, so that we may hear and heed your will for our lives; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

+ + +

Message

One of the new television shows returning for its spring season
is a science fiction drama called FlashForward.

Like any good work of speculative fiction,
it contains a creative premise
that places its characters into a situation with challenges
and then invites us to share their struggles to make sense
of their new and bewildering reality.

FlashForward’s hook
is that everyone in the world experiences a two-minute, seventeen-second blackout.
Then they wake up with vivid memories
of their lives six months in the future.
The question plaguing the characters
is whether the visions are suggestion or sentence.

Tonight we have gathered to celebrate
our own kind of flash-forward.
We set aside Lent,
our season of penitence and preparation,
and for these few brief moments,
we experience a glimpse of the Christmas season.

This festival, the Annunciation of our Lord,
reminds us, by a strange entwining of time,
that our Lord, who now makes his way to the cross,
is the same Lord whose birth we will celebrate in nine months.

And so, this feast,
marking the Angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary
that God the Father had chosen her
to become the mother of the Son of God,
is a time to look back into history
as history itself looks forward.

And we do all of this while we observe Lent
and prepare to turn our attention to the events of Holy Week:
Christ’s triumphal entry;
his gift of the Holy Meal;
his betrayal, arrest, sentencing, suffering, and crucifixion;
his death, his descent into hell;
and his rising in vindication and victory.

It can get a little complicated as past and present and future
all wrap themselves around one another.
But it helps to remember that the future is the key.
The future helps us to make sense of the past,
to know how to live in the present,
and to anticipate in the future in trust and hope.

The only reason we celebrate the announcement
of Mary’s calling as the bearer of God—the theotokos—
is that her pregnancy and birth take on cosmic significance
because of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We stand with Mary in this evening’s feast
but we look to her son’s future
to make sense of her present.

And then we see that
Christ’s death and resurrection
again only reveal their true meaning
when we look at them from the future,
from the vantage of God’s kingdom.
It’s only because we pray, “thy kingdom come,”
and trust that the Father will make it so,
and that he began to bring in his kingdom
by raising his Son from death,
that the cross and the tomb and that blessed morning
matter at all to us and to the whole world.

We gather at the cross to witness Christ’s sacrifice,
but we look to his future as our victorious Lord
to make sense of his past.

And then, we turn to the kingdom
and realize that while it is good for God’s kingdom to come,
we wonder whether it will ever come to us.
That redirect us to reflect upon our baptisms.

Once again, we look back into history,
and we see that somewhen and somewhere—
whether we recall it or not—
at some font or pool or stream,
with a splash or a dunking,
God poured out the water of life flowing from his kingdom
into the dark and sinful recesses of our lives.

We were raised from the water,
lifted struggling into new life,
into a lifetime of discipleship,
living as though God’s kingdom has come,
because it indeed has come to us.

Then with the water,
God our Father poured out upon us the Spirit of his Son and his resurrection.
And that is the same Spirit that Gabriel announced to Mary
would overshadow her and bless her with bearing the life of the Son.

The flash-forward for us is this:
we have been made and redeemed and blessed
by the Father whose kingdom is coming,
by the Son who brings that kingdom by dying and rising,
by the Spirit who gathers us into that kingdom.

This is true for us now.
For now, we trust God in hope that this truth is our reality.
But one day, we will know the truth of God in its fullness,
deep in the recesses of our hearts,
fully in the thoughts of our minds,
totally with all our strength of our bodies,
completely with every inclination of our spirits.

Then, we will join with Mary and all the saints and angels,
and sing Timothy’s song about this great mystery:

He was revealed in flesh,
vindicated in spirit,
seen by angels,
proclaimed among Gentiles,
believed in throughout the world,
taken up in glory. (1 Timothy 3:16, NRSV) Amen.

Thoughtful Extravagance

Posted on by
Reply

This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, March 20–21, 2010, for the Fifth Sunday in Lent.

+ + +

Readings

Isaiah 43:16–21
Psalm 126 (antiphon v.5)
Philippians 3:4b–14
John 12:1–8

+ + +

Prayer

You call us to return to you, Lord God, and to leave behind all things that keep us from giving ourselves fully to serve you. Speak to us through your Word, so that we may turn to face you and to give you glory; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

+ + +

Message

Close your eyes for a few seconds
and picture all of the clocks in your home. (Pause)
If you are like many people,
you’ll find it hard to remember
just how many clocks lie scattered around your house.

While we’re on the go, wristwatches, cell phones, iPods, and cars
all offer features to show us the time.
At home, ovens, microwaves,
coffee makers, thermostats, televisions, DVD players,
computers, printers, gaming systems, and so on
bear little glowing numbers to remind us
what time it is here and now.

What we gain in precision and accuracy
we, most likely, have more than surrendered
in freedom and time for reflection
and the simple sense of the organic ebb and flow
of days and seasons.

Our watches tell us it might be 6:20 p.m. CDT or 9:25 a.m. CDT,
but now is also the time of the vernal equinox,
the first days of Spring,
after a long and cold and grey winter.
And without watches, the snow geese know it is time to migrate,
and so they gather and travel in gigantic flocks
that trail like ribbons across the sky.

They have no sense of time getting diced into digits
that flash upon a screen.
We can learn from them
that when we turn our gaze to the sky—
whether in wonder or in silent prayer to God—
we find that time is more relaxed, fluid, supple.

It has a way of speeding up and slowing down
to match the moment and its import in our lives.
That’s why we find those fleeting times of ecstasy—
when we realize how amazing this world is
and what a gift from God it is to be alive in it—
that time hovers and flutters over that moment,
helping us to preserve a mystical memory of it.

But then, that’s what happens too when we encounter
those times that lurk in the depths of our despair.
We find the passing of an instant strangely elongated,
as if the moment stretches and thins itself
so it can fit through the tight crack that breaks open in us
when we learn of a spouse’s disease,
when we face the scorn of relative we have hurt,
when we balance the checkbook and find it doesn’t,
when we hear those leaden words that end a job,
when we catch the images of towers tumbling into dust.

With these reminders of time’s elasticity fresh in our minds,
we easily can sympathize with Mary of Bethany
in St. John’s account of a dinner gathering
at the home of her brother, Lazarus.

She had mourned his death
and had shared her sorrow with Jesus.
He too, wept, over the death of his friend.
But then Jesus had called Lazarus forth from the tomb,
granting him a return to this life,
a reprieve from death,
and new beginning.

No doubt this miracle,
this episode of the power of God
at work in her family’s life,
had been, for Mary,
one of those moments when time slowed to a crawl.

And now again, as the forces arrayed against Jesus
made their moves, rehearsed their plans,
sealed their deals, made their traps,
the pall of foreboding would have settled once again
upon Mary and Martha and Lazarus,
and upon Jesus and his disciples.

And in the midst of that thickening of plots,
Mary found within herself
the capacity to pour out her love for her Lord,
just as she poured upon his feet
a pound of costly perfume.

Judas Iscariot, the disciple who soon would betray Jesus,
made a comment that judged Mary thoughtless and wasteful.
He pointed out she had frittered away a worker’s yearly wage
on the impractical waste of this perfume.

He was clearheaded, rational, precise, measuring the value of the gesture.
But Mary, caught in the swirl of events slipping away from her,
acted out of devotion and generosity,
showing her care and commitment to Jesus.

He, in turn, told Judas to back off, in so many words,
reminding him that Mary had bought the perfume
“so that she might keep it for the day of [his] burial.” (John 12:7, NRSV)

And then, Jesus made an observation
that seems a little callous and somewhat troubling.
“You always have the poor with you,
but you do not always have me.” (John 12:8, NRSV)

When we hear Jesus’ comment,
it sounds to our ears a little selfish,
somewhat dismissive of the needs of people who are poor.
How can it be a good thing
to lavish a year’s work on some perfume for anointing Jesus’ feet?

One commentary notes that the rabbis of Jesus’ time—
and he was one himself—
debated among themselves
which was the greater act of mercy, of charity,
to give alms to the poor,
or to properly bury the dead.

And among those who sided with burial
the belief was that the dead must be properly buried
in order that they might share in the resurrection.

Jesus knew he had to die
in order that death would be vanquished by his Father’s triumph
and so that he might fulfill the promise we know so well,
“… that everyone who believes in him
may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16b, NRSV)

So it seems that because of the eternal good
that would come from his resurrection,
Jesus defended Mary’s act of thoughtful extravagance,
preparing him for a proper burial,
even if it meant that some poor people
did not receive alms from Mary’s charity.

And so, as the moment pressed down upon her,
as the sense of impending death drew near,
she lowered her head, dropping her tresses,
pouring out the perfume,
rubbing it into Jesus’ dusty and calloused feet,
wiping the excess with her hair,
as the room’s air grew heady with the sweetness
of the pound of perfume of nard.

We know in our gut what it’s like to feel those moments
when all we know is that our loved one is right here before us
—and we can trust that we have this moment—
but when it ends, we don’t know what will come next.

And so, we give all we have to show our love
in the instant of time we have to share
with our husband, our wife, our son, our daughter.
We know how to do this,
how to practice thoughtful extravagance
when those moments come,
and we ache with the knowledge that this time is priceless
because this person is precious to us.

And it is no different when we stand before our Lord.
There is no moment more dear to us
than the instant in which
the oil and the hands and the cross and the words of healing join together
and we hear afresh that our Lord
fills us with his grace and heals us by his gift of love.

There is no time more memorable
than when we realize
that we cradle our Lord
in the bread that rests in the palms of our hands,
that his blood passes our lips and satisfies our thirst
as we drink the wine from the cup.

These are the moments
when clocks do not matter,
when time stands still,
not as a way to torment us,
but as a gift of grace to enable us
to turn our attention fully, totally
to the one we love who stands before us.

These are the moments
when we find ourselves in fellowship
with Mary and Martha and Lazarus,
when we receive the grace and love of our Lord
so that we may face the times
of joy and pain that come to us—inevitably—
in our lives with one another. Amen.