May 2, 2010 at 5:19 am · Filed under Homilies
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Fifth Sunday of Easter, April 25, 2010.
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Readings
Acts 11:1–18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1–6
John 13:31–35
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Prayer
Stir up in us, O Father, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may see your Son, risen and reigning as Lord of all. Amen.
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Message
Saying just this one word—love—
brings to mind so many beloved lyrics:
+ What the world needs now is love, sweet love.
+ Love, love me do. You know I love you.
+ All you need is love.
+ Love is a many-splendored thing.
+ Love is a rose, so you better not pick it.
And that’s just a quick sample to remind us
about how pervasive is this emotion, this feeling
in our popular culture and its art and music.
When we mention these sentiments
we find our minds filled with images:
candy and flowers, dreamy-eyed stares,
the old and familiar stories of boy meets girl,
girl and boy struggle, then separate,
but finally find one another and live happily ever after.
We listen to song after song,
watch movie upon movie,
read books and go to plays
to see and hear this same story
told again and again
for the simple reason
that we have a need and a desire
to know that feeling,
to trust that somewhere there is someone
who loves us deeply and wholeheartedly.
We call this feeling “love,” and it is.
But it is really more precise to call it romantic love.
And when we properly focus this love in fidelity and honor
to our husband or wife
or the person we contemplate
asking to be wife or husband,
then our romantic love is a reflection of and a testimony
to God’s love and care for us.
And then there is the love
we share a little more broadly
and spread a little more widely:
our love of neighbor.
Especially as Christians,
we believe God has called us to share this love
with those around us.
We trust he wants us to help people in need,
to offer from our abundance the support that others require
when they suffer from scarcity and want.
We call this action “love” as well, and it is.
But it might be more helpful to use the old-fashioned term “charity.”
And not in the sense of distributing a hand-out to people in need,
but in the more classic sense of expressing “care for humanity.”
This love—charity—is also an echo, an extension
of God’s love and care for us.
We’ve learned this from St. Paul’s hymn to love in 1 Corinthians 13:
“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three;
and the greatest of these is love (or charity),”
depending upon the translation. (1 Corinthians 13:13, NRSV)
With these two kinds of love
in our hearts and minds,
we do not come to today’s Gospel
as blank slates, as empty baskets.
We arrive at the reading
with these forms of love and our personal histories
swirling around us.
They shape and color our perceptions.
They predispose us to certain feelings and thoughts.
We cannot change that about ourselves,
but now we are more aware of our make-up,
we are more conscious of how we hear talk of love.
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On the evening of his betrayal by Judas,
his arrest at the hands of his fellow Jews,
his abandonment by his disciples,
his denial by Peter, his trusted disciple,
Jesus said to his gathered followers:
I give you a new commandment,
that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you,
you also should love one another.
By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,
if you have love for one another. (John 13:34–35, NRSV)
Why was the commandment new?
There’s nothing new about love.
Since Adam found in Eve
bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh,
husbands and wives have loved one another deeply and faithfully.
Since God rescued Israel from Egypt
and then called his people to a task—
because they themselves had been landless and lost—
to care for the widows, orphans, and sojourners in their midst,
God’s people have practiced charity.
So what was new about this commandment?
What was new was Jesus himself.
He told his disciples and he tells us to love others the way he has loved us.
And that way is new.
Jesus’ love for us is the love of Immanuel, God with us,
lived out by sacrificing himself,
by dying on the cross,
by giving up everything he is for one purpose:
“Now the Son of Man has been glorified,
and God has glorified him.” (John 13:31, NRSV)
In John’s Gospel, glory comes when Jesus reveals himself.
That’s why the beginning of the Gospel tells us:
“And the Word became flesh and lived among us,
and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son,
full and of grace and truth.” (John 1:14, NRSV)
And Jesus, the Son, received that glory from his Father,
as Jesus himself prays to his Father in John 17:
“I glorified you on earth
by finishing the work that you gave me to do.
So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence
with the glory that I had in your presence
before the world existed.” (John 17:4–5, NRSV)
Glory and love combine
upon the cross of Jesus Christ.
This is what is new.
This is why the command is a new one.
This is what makes our love shared in obedience
new and different from the love that goes on outside the Church,
that merely echoes and emulates the love that God in Jesus Christ has for us.
When we love others the way Jesus loves us,
we give ourselves away,
we give up all that we are,
we give ourselves over to death.
And we can do this without real fear,
not because death is not scary.
It is, whether it means we sacrifice our lives,
or if it means we give up something important to us and die a little death along the way.
Death can be scary, but in the end, it is not worthy of our fear.
Because in the end,
it is not death that speaks the final word about you or me.
The last word comes from the Word
who was and is and always shall be the first Word,
who was with God and who is God.
And in John’s Revelation
Christ the Word speaks to us in love from his throne of glory, saying,
“Death will be no more;
mourning and crying and pain will be no more,
for the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:4b, NRSV)
With this promise, nothing stands between us
and our living by the new command:
“Love one another.” Amen.
April 25, 2010 at 5:11 am · Filed under Homilies
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 25, 2010.
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Readings
Acts 9:36–43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9–17
John 10:22–30
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Prayer
Stir up in us, O Father, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may see your Son, risen and reigning as Lord of all. Amen.
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Message
Have you ever woken up from a dream
and you can’t remember exactly what happened.
You ask, “Who was that? Where was I? What did that mean?”
It’s as if the shapes of things kept changing
and the appearances of people were fluid.
Things were familiar, and yet strange,
known, and yet mysterious.
It’s a hard experience to describe.
But at the root is the feeling that lingers when we slowly awaken—
the sensation of images full of meaning,
fading away just beyond our fingertips,
slipping away past our understanding.
Sometimes the Bible is a little dreamy in this way—
especially in some of its books.
Two of them appear in our readings today:
the Revelation of John and the Gospel According to John.
The early church fathers were divided in their judgment
about whether the same John wrote both books.
And two thousand years of scholarship hasn’t settled the issue.
But even if the identities of these Johns are a question to us,
the author or authors share a vision, a kind of a dream of truth,
that involves shepherds and lambs and sheep,
Jesus Christ crucified and enthroned,
the Church saved and gathered.
In his vision of heaven and its blessings,
John the Seer tells us of an uncountable multitude
gathered in worship and praise before the Lamb.
Those in the throng are “robed in white”
and “have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”
And this Lamb, our Lord Jesus Christ,
sits “at the center of the throne [and is] their shepherd.” (Revelation 7:9–17, NRSV)
Jesus is the Lamb and he is the shepherd.
So in way that makes the Church triumphant the flock of sheep.
And that means that you and I,
who have been washed and named in the waters of Holy Baptism,
hope and trust one day
to wear those heavenly robes washed white in the blood of the Lamb
and to flock around his throne.
Our worship here and now is practice for that blessed day.
That’s why we call this a congregation.
That word comes from the Latin for flock, gregis,
and it means, “those who flock together.”
And then in the Gospel,
Jesus tangles with his fellow Jews
who wonder whether he really is the Messiah—
God’s anointed one who will save the people.
But sadly they question him in a spirit of confrontation
and in the vain hope that he will be the Messiah as they define it,
not as he reveals it to them.
And so, Jesus speaks a word of judgment:
“… you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep.” (John 10:26, NRSV)
Belonging—both for the Jews and for us—
does not come from holding Jesus in our grasp,
from binding him to an idea that we dream up
about how he ought to be the Messiah and Savior of us all
according to our plans and designs.
Instead, belonging comes from listening to him.
He says, “My sheep hear my voice.
I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27, NRSV)
And here the language of the dream shifts a little bit.
Jesus was the Lamb in Revelation,
but now in John he is the shepherd.
All along, we are his sheep, his flock.
In the vision of heaven, we are shouting and singing praises.
But here in the Gospel we are quiet and attentive.
And instead of gathering around him,
we follow behind him as he leads us.
The wonderful and amazing thing about dreams and symbols
that compare Jesus and his people
with lambs and sheep and shepherds and flocks
is that these shifting, flowing images can all be true at the same time,
even if they are different from one another.
Despite those differences,
God shares a few basic truths across these visions.
We can hold on to them.
Jesus Christ, our Messiah, is the Leader of his people.
Sometimes he may appear to us as the Lamb on the throne
encircled by the throng of tribes and peoples.
And sometimes he comes to us as the Shepherd
leading his flock to green pastures and still waters.
But no matter what, as Psalm 100 tells us,
we “know that the LORD is God.
It is he that made us, and we are his;
we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture.” (Psalm 100:3, NRSV)
We can trust him,
we can follow him,
because he leads us along the right path,
even when we have strayed into the dark valleys.
He calls us by name
and gathers us around him.
And in his goodness,
he prepares a table for us
and gives us his body and blood for forgiveness and peace and unity.
He anoints our heads with oil for healing and wholeness and strength.
Listen, the Shepherd is calling to us.
Come, let us flock together around his table, his throne. Amen.
April 18, 2010 at 6:10 am · Filed under Homilies
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Third Sunday of Easter, April 18, 2010.
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Readings
Acts 9:1–20
Psalm 30 (antiphon v. 11)
Revelation 5:11–14
John 21:1–19
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Prayer
Stir up in us, O Father, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may see your Son, risen and reigning as Lord of all. Amen.
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Message
One of the quiet joys of camping
comes after night has fallen
or before the sun has returned for the day.
We instinctively kindle a fire
for warmth and security.
The fire’s flickering light draws us together,
our backs to the darkness and the dangers
that may lie unknown beyond the fire’s light.
We hold up our hands to the its warmth
and turn our faces to the flicker of the flames.
We know this primal feeling,
this bond that unites all who gather
in that circle and share that time together.
And so it’s not too hard for us
to walk up quietly to the circle of fishermen and their friend—
the gathering of seven disciples and their risen Lord—
and to take our place in that circle.
We squat or sit cross-legged on the shore of the lake
as the mist rises in the early morning.
Fish roast on sticks over the coals.
Flat bread bakes on hot rocks.
And like any gathering around a fire,
this one naturally turns to conversation.
We only know a small part of what they said.
But what we do know is that this time together
changed the lives of these fishermen forever.
And their changed lives have, in turn, changed ours.
These were young, tough men,
outdoorsmen who had worked with their hands.
They made and fixed their own nets,
kept their own boats lake-worthy,
rowed and sailed out onto that lake,
threw out their own nets and hauled in their catches.
Everything by hand.
It had been their way of life and the family’s livelihood.
And so, after the heart-wrenching events of Passover week—
their Lord’s arrest and mockery of a trial,
his scourging and crucifixion,
his suffering and death,
and his victorious resurrection—
they had returned to a familiar place,
to the security of the old routines,
and to work they knew well.
Simon Peter, their leader,
said, “I am going fishing,”
and the others went along.
After a long night of frustration,
they took the advice of their risen Lord,
standing unrecognized on the shore in the grey light of dawn.
Casting their nets to the starboard,
they caught a boatload of fish and brought the catch to shore.
Jesus had started a fire to ward off the cold
and had prepared a hot breakfast for his friends.
And so we sit with them around the fire.
After all that had happened among them,
the time had come for them to face and speak the truth.
Jesus asked Simon Peter three times
if he loved his Lord.
Three times—echoing the three denials
Peter had made on the night of Jesus’ arrest.
We don’t have a record of what Peter felt
when he faced the Lord and his questions.
But we can easily imagine his feelings.
The memory of his denials churned in his mind.
There he was, standing in the courtyard of the high priest,
warming himself around another charcoal fire,
and hearing the questions,
“You aren’t also one of this man’s disciples, are you?”
“I am not. I am not.” And a third time, “No.”
And now the Lord whom Peter had denied
asked him three times, “Do you love me?”
And after each of Peter’s responses, “Yes, Lord, I love you,”
Jesus gives Peter a mission: “Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep.”
This mission becomes Peter’s life.
From this moment on,
he was on fire himself with the task he had received from the Lord.
As far as we know, he never picked up a net again,
never took his boat out on the lake,
never went fishing for anything but people.
Despite his denials,
and maybe because of them,
and surely because of the gifts he received from Jesus,
Simon Peter became the leader of the apostles,
the fearless and outspoken messenger
of the risen Lord,
the head of the community of the faithful.
And his mission has become the mission of the Church,
and so it is now our calling as well.
You and I are not only the sheep and lambs
fed and tended by those who have come before us in the Church,
we have been gathered into the warmth and light
of the fire our Lord prepares in our midst.
In our preparation for Holy Baptism,
we have made our three denials—
not of the Lord,
but of the lordship of sin and death and the devil.
And, like Peter, we make our three-fold confession of faith:
“I love you, Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit.”
And so, the questions come to us.
Do we still deny our Lord?
Are we afraid to associate with him?
Do we fear the consequences of being known as his followers?
Where and when does our Lord come to us
in the dim light of early dawn and call to us,
guiding us to change the direction of our lives?
When we gather in his presence,
in the light and heat of the fire of worship,
what is the truth he speaks to us?
Do we hear him ask us whether we love him?
How will we answer?
Who are the sheep and the lambs he calls us to feed and tend?
What does that work look like?
How are we at risk, in danger, when we take on this task?
And when we accept this calling to ministry,
what will we leave behind?
What nets and boats and lakes do we abandon?
And last of all, the ultimate question comes to us.
Jesus told Peter he would lose everything in service to God.
“When you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt
and to go wherever you wished.
But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands,
and someone else will fasten a belt around you
and take you where you do not wish to go.” (John 21:18, NRSV)
We are told that Jesus said this to Peter to let him know
“the kind of death by which he would glorify God.”
And then, Jesus said, “Follow me.” (John 21:19, NRSV)
And he says to us, too, “Follow me.”
This means Jesus calls us to be his disciples,
to take our place as his followers,
to drop our nets and walk away from them,
and to turn our lives over to him.
He calls us to go where he sends us,
to tell others the message he gives us,
to surrender control of our lives to him,
and to embrace his calling to tend the sheep.
He comes to us and prepares a meal for us
so way may face him when he tells us the thruth by the fire,
and may know, without a doubt,
that when it is time for us to die,
we can do so,
assured that he is our risen Lord,
and that our dying in faith will glorify God,
just as our Lord’s death brought glory to his Father
and life to us and to the world. Amen.
April 17, 2010 at 6:13 am · Filed under Daily Words
“Do not weep. The lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has triumphed ….” (Revelation 5:5, NAB)
April 16, 2010 at 6:12 am · Filed under Daily Words
“Worthy are you, Lord our God,
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things;
because of your will
they came to be and were created.” (Revelation 4:11, NAB)
April 15, 2010 at 6:09 am · Filed under Daily Words
“Those whom I love, I reprove and chastise. Be earnest, therefore, and repent.” (Revelation 3:19, NAB)
April 14, 2010 at 10:13 am · Filed under Daily Words
“Whoever has ears ought to hear what the Spirit says to the churches.” (Revelation 2:29, NAB)
April 13, 2010 at 5:28 am · Filed under Daily Words
“Do not be afraid of anything that you are going to suffer. … Remain faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life.” (Revelation 2:10a,c, NAB)
April 12, 2010 at 6:33 am · Filed under Daily Words
“‘I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, ‘the one who is and who is to come, the almighty.’” (Revelation 1:8, NAB)
April 11, 2010 at 5:48 am · Filed under Homilies
This is the sermon I prepared for Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., for the Second Sunday of Easter, April 11, 2010.
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Readings
Acts 5:27–32
Psalm 118:14–29
Revelation 1:4–8
John 20:19–31
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Prayer
Stir up in us, O Father, the gift of your Holy Spirit, so that we may see your Son, risen and reigning as Lord of all. Amen.
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Message
Soon enough we will have finished the last of the ham,
bitten off all the ears from the chocolate bunnies,
peeled and eaten the last of the colored eggs,
and planted the lilies, now past their prime, in the garden.
And with those simple actions,
we will turn our attention
away from the dazzling and awe-inspiring events
of Holy Week and Easter.
We will fix our gaze, once again,
on the mundane, the grind,
the tasks and burdens that pile up in daily life.
Taxes are due this week.
Maybe the lawn mower needs servicing.
The windows are streaked and dusty with winter’s dirt.
Homework deadlines are approaching.
It’s been too long since the last load of laundry.
The car needs an oil change and a tire rotation.
That’s the picture of our lives—death by a thousand paper cuts.
And when the lists and piles and loads
surround us and rise around us
and come up to our necks,
we drop our uplifted eyes from the heights of Easter
to the rough and winding road before us
and we take the next weary step.
Maybe that’s not how you feel today.
Perhaps you still are blessed
with that heart-achingly full feeling of joy
that comes with praising God
from your toes to the top of your head
and reminding yourself, “Yes, he is risen. Alleluia!”
And if that is how you feel at this moment,
you are blessed by God.
Offer a silent prayer of thanksgiving to him,
and ask how you can share that joy with others.
But maybe the luster of Easter morning
has faded in the week just past.
And you are left remembering an echo of joy,
recalling how you once felt,
but wondering whether you can rekindle that feeling.
And the truth is that when we enter these cloudy days of the soul,
when we rely simply on our human strength,
when we lean on our own powers of memory,
when we cling to passing feelings of enthusiasm,
it is inevitable that our joy will fade.
Why? Because anything that we make from within ourselves,
whether it’s a feeling or a thought or an action—
any project or program—
will inevitably wind down, diminish, and fade away.
That’s just the way it is in a world broken by sin.
But, in truth, the Good News of Easter
is not like that at all.
The Good News is not the same as our feelings about it.
It is not equal to our thoughts in reflection upon it
or to our intentions to live in new ways because of it.
Because if this Good News, this message, this proclamation
about Jesus Christ and his victory over death
were just one more human project—
even a really attractive and engaging one—
it would have long ago faded away.
In fact, it might have never made it past the first week
after Jesus’ death on the cross.
His small band of followers was scattered and scared.
They went into hiding, for fear of persecution and death.
So it would have been no surprise if the disciples and the others
had just slowly slipped away,
finding their away out of Jerusalem and back to Galilee,
escaping from history into the pages of anonymity.
But instead, the Holy Spirit of God,
the same triune person who raised the Son of the Father from death,
moved among those followers,
breathed strength and power into them,
inspired them to action, to witness, to proclamation.
And so, as Acts recounts for us
just before the passage we heard today,
the apostles went about doing “many signs and wonders.”
People were still afraid to join them,
but “[they] held them in high esteem.”
And as Acts tells us,
“Yet more than ever
believers were added to the Lord,
great numbers of both men and women,
so that they even carried out the sick into the streets,
and laid them on cots and mats,
in order that Peter’s shadow
might fall on them as he came by.” (Acts 5:12–15, NRSV).
This disturbed the authorities.
So the high priests had the apostles arrested.
But an angel of the Lord opened the prison doors
and told Peter and the others to go free
and to continue proclaiming the Good News.
The authorities arrested the apostles again,
and brought them before the council.
And that’s where today’s reading tells us
that Peter and the apostles refused to follow
the ruling of the authorities.
They would not stop teaching the people about Jesus Christ.
And they said,
“We must obey God rather than any human authority.” (Acts 5:29, NRSV)
To our modern ears,
accustomed to the allure of our culture,
to its accent on autonomy—
where I decide what I will do with what is mine—
the whole way of life wrapped up in a phrase like this,
“We must obey God,”
strikes us as alien and authoritarian.
We don’t like to be told what to do.
We don’t want to obedient to others.
We don’t need anyone lording himself or herself over us.
But the Good News saves us from this arrogance,
it rescues from the tyranny of our selfishness.
It reminds us that the God
who seeks our obedience,
who probably expects it,
and who certainly deserves it,
is the God and Father who raised Jesus from the dead
by the power of their Spirit.
And if he can do that—and he did—
then he can fortify a fearful band of disciples
and give them the power
to perform signs, to work wonders,
to proclaim the Good News with power and conviction,
and to face down the authorities.
God can give them this strength of faith,
and he can bless them with the humility to be obedient,
and he can inspire them to distinguish
between the authority of God
and the rulings of humanity that do not submit to his will.
Thus they can say with full courage and conviction,
“We must obey God rather than any human authority.” (Luke 5:29, NRSV)
And what about us?
Well, the Holy Spirit works in our lives too.
We have received from God the gift of faith.
He sustains us by his Word and his sacred gifts.
He gathers us into a global community of faith.
He promises us his abundant mercy when we die.
And that is why we too can say,
“We must obey God rather than any human authority.” (Luke 5:29, NRSV)
And that includes any authority
that would seek to prevent us
from sharing the Good News,
and any authority that would seek to punish us
for living by the standards God sets,
and any authority, whether political or social,
whether by law or by custom
or even just by our own personal habits,
that would tempt and beguile us to live
as if God the Father had not raised the Son by the Spirit.
This is what really empowers and energizes us.
It’s not the Easter flowers, as beautiful as they were,
the music, as sweet-sounding as it was,
the food, as wonderful as the meals may have been.
It is purely and simply
that the Holy Spirit,
breathed out by the Father,
blows into us the breath of life,
so that you and I may rise each day
and serve God in obedience.
And with this gift
this daily resurrection,
we can join with Peter and the other apostles
and proclaim to all around us,
“And we are witnesses to these things,
and so is the Holy Spirit
whom God has given to those who obey him.” Amen. (Luke 5:32, NRSV)
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