Tag Archives: Psalms

Rescued, Transferred, Redeemed

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

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Readings

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

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Prayer

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

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Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We Are God’s Servants

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

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Readings

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

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Prayer

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

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Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Praising, Proclaiming, and Pondering the Lord

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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 November 2010 meeting. The Psalm is the one appointed for the Thankoffering Service of the Women of the ELCA, which we’re observing the weekend of Nov. 13–14, 2010. The council read it antiphonally in choirs.

Invocation

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

Reading

Psalm 145:1–9

1I will extol you, my God and King,
and bless your name forever and ever.
2Every day I will bless you,
and praise your name forever and ever.
3Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
4One generation shall laud your works to another,
and shall declare your mighty acts.
5On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and on your marvelous works, I will meditate.
6The might of your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed,
and I will declare your greatness.
7They shall celebrate the fame of your abundant goodness,
and shall sing aloud of your righteousness.
8The LORD is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9The LORD is good to all,
and his compassion is over all that he has made.

Devotion

In this psalm of praise, there’s a powerful progression from verses three to five. In verse three, we sing about how God is worthy to receive our praise: “Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised….” Then in verse four we sing to God about how the praises we offer him we also pass between the generations: “One generation shall laud your works to another, and shall declare your mighty acts.” Then, finally, in verse five, we meditate upon God’s praiseworthiness in our own hearts.

These few verses tell us at least a few wonderful and amazing things:
+ God’s praises can’t be contained; we must share them
+ We share them with him, with others, and with ourselves
+ God himself is the focus of our worship where we praise him, our proclamation where we tell others about him, and our meditation when we ponder his splendor.

And then, a little further on, the psalm tells us what makes God worthy of such far-reaching praise: “The LORD is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love” (Psalm 145:8). This is such a moving and inspiring way to talk about God’s presence in our lives that it appears, almost verbatim, in Psalm 103:8 (here it is “merciful and gracious”) and in Joel 2:13. In that passage, God’s qualities motivate his people to repent. It’s part of a passage we use each Ash Wednesday, when we hear the prophet say, “Return to the LORD, your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing” (Joel 2:13). It’s also our Lenten Verse before the Gospel.

These divine gifts touch us each day and inspire us to praise, proclaim, and ponder the LORD as he works in our lives.

Discussion

+ How have you seen God’s grace, mercy, patience, and love in your life? In our congregation’s life?

+ What have your heard about the Lord from your elders? What have you said about the Lord to the younger generation?

+ What can we do, as a congregation, to encourage praising, proclaiming, and pondering the Lord and his great gifts?

Prayer

Our God and King, we praise you for your love and grace and we ask you to help us to proclaim your awesome deeds to others. In the quiet moments of our lives, lead us to ponder your mercy; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

“Only Small Things with Great Love”

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

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Readings

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

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Prayer

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

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Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Blessed and in the Book

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Introduction

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

Readings

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

Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So Great a Cloud

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Introduction

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

Readings

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

Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Under the Hands of God

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

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Readings

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

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Prayer

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

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Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reversals

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

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Readings

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

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Prayer

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

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Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There Is Our Help

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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 October 2010 meeting. The Psalm is the one appointed for Sunday, Oct. 17, the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost. The council reads it antiphonally in choirs.

Invocation

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

Reading

Psalm 121

1I lift up my eyes to the hills—
from where will my help come?
2My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.
3He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
4He who keeps Israel
will never slumber nor sleep.
5The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade at your right hand.
6The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
7The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep you safe.
8The LORD will keep your going out and your coming
in from this time on and forevermore.

Devotion

So many times over the past year and a half, this has been one of the psalms that members of our congregation and I have shared. We’ve listened to these comforting words in hospital rooms before and after surgery and when facing troubling diagnoses. Sometimes, before funerals, we’ve heard these verses during devotions with families. Other times, we’ve heard this psalm within a loved one’s funeral or by the grace.

These times in our lives, when we face the hurt and the pain that afflict us bodily and the loss and the sadness that come when we mourn a loved one’s death, are times when we run up against our own mortality, the frailty of our own bodies.

On the one hand, we are grateful to God for making us and for placing us in the midst of his world. Yet, as we remember on Ash Wednesday, we are dust and to dust we shall return. Illness and death are the reminders of our dustiness.

But that’s where this psalm speaks so clearly of God’s hope and grace. When we are bowed down with pain and sadness, the psalm calls us to “lift up [our] eyes.” When we find ourselves stumbling under the burdens of illness and death, then we receive the comfort, “He will not let your foot be moved.” When we wither under the scorching heat of the desert times in our lives, then we remember, “The LORD is [our] shade at [our] right hand.”

And finally, from the cradle to the grave, from our first cry to our last breath, “The LORD will keep [us] from all evil; he will keep [us] safe.” This is the comfort and the assurance and the promise of grace that God gives to us, “from this time on and forevermore.”

Discussion

+ When have you felt God’s protection at work in your life?

+ Do we live as if we really trust that the LORD will keep us from all evil?

+ What can we, as a congregation, do to share the message that our Lord protects us, even in the face of disease and death?

Prayer

LORD, our keeper and shade, watch over us and protect us from all that threatens us. When we are tempted to despair, renew our hope in your grace and love. Fill us with the assurance that you will keep watch over us and remain with us both now and forever; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

When Gratitude is Only Skin-Deep

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

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Readings

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

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Prayer

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

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Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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