Twenty-Fifth Sunday After Pentecost

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 15th of November, the 25th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B.  The Gospel reading for the day was Mark 13:1-8.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

I don’t know about you all, but it seems like this past week or so has been rough.  I mean, personally I had four people come to me with potential cancer diagnoses, the news was filled with stories of terrorist attacks on a plane in Egypt, bombings in Beirut, war, the plight of refugees fleeing war, and then Friday night happened and I think we all were suddenly assaulted with images from Paris of shootings and bombings and the chaos and confusion that comes in the immediate aftermath.  And it was scary; it was frightening to think that these people had gone to a concert, or to dinner, or to see a football game.  And now they are gone.  Over 100 people dead and over 300 people injured and the numbers keep rising.  And that is in addition to the almost 50 people killed in Beirut just one day prior.  A seemingly neverending tide of destruction. 

And I mean, if we look around us, we see, as Jesus put it, ‘wars and rumours of wars’ each and every day.  We are looking for certainty, for control, and all we see is pain and death.

The situation that we see in events like what happened in Paris and the fear that it causes could have easily been understood by the community that the author of the gospel of Mark lived in.  They had experienced years of rebellion against the Roman Empire which culminated in the Roman Empire tearing down the very same temple that Jesus and the disciples had just walked out of.  The same temple which seemed like it was so massive it would never fall, had fallen.  The Jewish people had been robbed of the physical center of their faith. 

And so there was fear, there was concern.  People wanted to know if this was the end?  Are we living in the ‘end times’?  And I think that, if you haven’t already, you will likely hear people start to ask that same question in the coming days. 

But instead of answering the direct question of the disciples about specific signs, Jesus instead suggests that until the fullness of the Kingdom of God has been brought into being, we will continue to experience the remnants of sin and death in our lives.   These are then made manifest through things like wars and rumours of wars; through famine, through disasters and illness.  Things that, quite frankly, usually make us afraid.

But it’s the next words of Christ to the disciples that I keep coming back to.  Jesus says, ‘Do not be alarmed.’  And this mimics a pattern in scripture.  There is a pattern of people encountering what would normally be a frightening situation and having God, or God’s messenger, tell them ‘Fear not!’ or ‘Do not be afraid!’ or, as in the reading today, ‘Do not be alarmed.’ 

So when we see death and destruction all around us, Jesus tells us don’t be afraid. 

And my first reaction is, really?  Don’t be afraid?  Senseless murder and death and Jesus basically says, ‘eh, don’t worry about it.’  Seriously, Jesus, I keep going over that in my head and it’s a really challenging thing.  It’s hard to comprehend. 

But what I’ve come to realize is that when we are confronted by the forces of sin and death, when we have our friends and loved ones facing frightening diagnoses, when we see children attacked and mutilated, when we see murder and destruction and we wonder if it’s going to happen in our city or our home next, we can do one of two things.

We can let fear win or we can have faith. 

Fear or faith.  That is our basic choice.

That was the choice of the disciples and the early Christians.  They could be afraid and hide and not proclaim the gospel or they could have faith and proclaim the crucified and risen Christ, even when doing so meant death.  Luther could have been afraid of Rome and not challenged the system of corruption that had overtaken the church or he could have faith and trust that God was continuing to create and reform and reveal Godself to the church, even if it meant excommunication and the threat of death.

The leaders of the civil rights movement could have been afraid and not challenged a system of oppression or they could have faith and trust that God is a God of liberation who is constantly working to free us from bondage and to deliver us into new life. 

So we can see that throughout history we are faced with this choice of fear or faith and today we are again standing on the edge and we can choose to either be afraid or to have faith in God and to trust that God is working for us in this world and is constantly creating, constantly making us new and constantly making this world new.

And again we can either let our fear control us or we can have faith that the same God who created us, the same God who died on the cross for us, the same God who is always with us is working in this world on our behalf. 

So when Jesus tells the disciples to not be alarmed when they see wars and terror and other signs of sin and death, what he is saying is have faith that God is working in the midst of the pain.

Sadly though we are already seeing people choosing fear.  Just watching the news we see people crying out for vengeance, as if murder has somehow become sanctioned, we see people expressing hatred towards the refugees from Syria and blaming them, but the refugees are running from the same people who committed the atrocities in Paris.  We even see people blaming the French as if anybody could ever deserve such an atrocity.  What we are seeing is the result of fear.

And I keep thinking about a quote, and while it is from Star Wars, I think it has great relevance to the situation.  Many of you may know it.  In talking about what leads to the dark side, Yoda tells us, ‘Fear is the path to the dark side.  Fear leads anger.  Anger leads to hate.  Hate leads to suffering.’ 

When we respond with fear, we respond, in essence, with sin.  We create more suffering in this world and we separate ourselves from God.  And that’s what these initial response that so many people are having does.  They separate us from the God who loves us.

But if we have faith, things are different.  There is a quote by Frederick Buechner, a renowned theologian, that says, ‘Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen.  Don’t be afraid.’ 

What Beuchner is saying is just what Jesus told us.  God is with us throughout all of the things we might experience.  And we should rely on faith.

But what does it mean to have faith in the face of terrorism?  What does it mean to have faith in the face of death and destruction?  Having faith means loving.  God’s faithfulness is made manifest in God’s enduring love for us, in spite of our sin.  Our faithfulness then, is made manifest in our love for God and in our love for each other.

Our faithfulness means that we are called to love all of God’s creation, even those who seek to do us harm.  Our faithfulness means that we combat actions born out fear through love.  If fear ultimately leads to suffering, then faithfulness, love, ultimately leads to liberation and unity.

God defeats sin and death not with violence, but with love.  It was Christ’s love that won the day.  What will defeat the forces in the world that arrayed against, the forces of fear and hate like ISIS and Boko Harum isn’t the use of military power and creating more death and destruction.  It is through our acts of love and compassion, of our faithful prayer, that we will be part of God’s work and it is through that the God’s love will win the day.  The song isn’t ‘they will know we are Christian’s by our massive military force and our bombing of civilians’  it is ‘they will know we are Christians by our love.’

Brothers and sisters, God is active and present among us, daily baptizing us and forgiving, daily making us new and in the same way God is constantly working against the forces of sin and death in this world, bringing peace, bringing God’s kingdom here. Share God’s love with each other, share it with your neighbor, share it with a world in need of the hope that God brings us in the face of adversity. And because of that hope, because of that love, we can truly say, thanks be to God. Amen.

All Saints Day 2015

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 1st of November, All Saints Day.  The Gospel reading for the day was John 11:32-44.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

I remember the first time I got called to a death when I was a chaplain.  It was a gentleman who I had visited a week or so earlier when he had first been admitted and I had spent 30 minutes or so talking to and praying with his wife.  As I walked into the room where the man’s wife and her daughter were sitting, there was just a sense of tragedy.  As she talked to me and shared memories of her husband, I found out that she and her husband would have been celebrating their 2^nd anniversary that day.  She told me how they had met and how one evening they were talking on the phone and she mentioned that she didn’t know how she was going to get to her doctor’s appointment the next day.   He commiserated with her, but then the next day he showed up at her doorstep having driven 8 hours from his house to get there. 

This man was the love of her life.  They had met later in life and she was grief-stricken.  Her best friend was gone and she was left alone.  But as she spoke more and more, the thing she kept coming back to was her certainty that God was with her now and that God would never abandon her in her grief.  Her faith was strong and it was seeing her through.

There is no way to soften the loss of a loved one, nothing we can do to take away that pain.  And as we read in the gospel today, the pain that death brings also affected Jesus.  In the story of Lazarus, word had been sent to Jesus that his friend Lazarus, a man who is described as being ‘one who Jesus loved,’ was ill, he was near death.  Yet Jesus waited two days before traveling to the home of Lazarus.  And when he arrived, he was informed that Lazarus had died four days earlier.

Mary, Martha, and others had waited patiently for Jesus.  They held onto faith that the Lord would be there.  Yet Lazarus died anyway and they grieved for him.  And they held firm in their faith that God would be with them through the pain.  And when Jesus arrived we see his reaction.  We are told a couple of things.  First, we are told that he was disturbed, though a better way to describe it would be to suggest that he was angered at the fact of death, Christ was angered that death occurs.  And second, we are told that Jesus wept.  If there was ever a moment that demonstrated the humanity of Jesus, it is this.  Jesus’ friend was dead and Jesus mourned.  God mourned this death.  God mourned this death just like God mourned the death of that woman’s husband at the hospital.  God mourned the death of Lazarus just like God mourned when you lost a friend, or a parent, or a grandparent. 

So often we hear people tell us when a person dies that it was part of God’s plan.  But I don’t think death is part of God’s plan.  The pain that death causes is not part of God’s plan.  God is disturbed by the pain the death causes.  God is grieved by the pain that death brings to God’s beloved children.

But what we see in the story of Lazarus is that God is not going to sit idly by in the face death.  God is disturbed and God is going to act on our behalf.  And what we start to see in the story of Lazarus is that God is doing something that is costly.  Jesus calls out Lazarus from the tomb, but that act is, ultimately, costly for Jesus.  Immediately after telling us about the resurrection of Lazarus, the author the gospel of John tells us that the opponents of Jesus began to plot against Jesus.  Ultimately, what we see is that it is the act of bringing Lazarus out of the tomb that helps lead Jesus onto the cross and into the tomb.  It is in confronting death directly and raising Lazarus that is the straw the breaks the camels back for the opponents of Jesus.  It is what helps set the path that leads to the cross.

God is disturbed by the presence of death in this world; God is so disturbed at the pain that death causes us, and causes God, that Jesus takes on death; Jesus takes on sin; and on the cross Jesus defeats them.

God’s love for us is so great that God is willing to suffer on our behalf in order that the sting of death might never touch us.  God is moved by our grief and through the cross, God defeats death so that we might have life and have it with abundance.

But the other thing that happens in the cross Jesus brings the living and the dead together so that we are all unified in Christ.  Because of Jesus’ actions on the cross, we are assured that we will not be separated from God.  As Paul reminds us, there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ.  We have no need to fear death or to see the death as some tragic end because God has defeated it.

You see, God has freed us from the fear of death and because of that, we are now freed to truly live.  We are freed to be part of God’s work in the world because we don’t have to be consumed by a fear of death. 

And today, on All Saints Day, we don’t mourn those who have died, we celebrate them because we know that we are still united with them through Christ. We recall the fact that God has promised to bring us all together in a new creation and we celebrate the fact that God is always at work in this world.

Now I have to admit that I used to always think that All Saints day was about some so-called great people, these Saints, and it seemed like something that not everybody got to be.  But as I’ve grown, I’ve learned a bit more about these people we call saints and I know they were far from perfect.  I mean, St Francis partied so hard before committing his life to God, he could have put the Kardashians to shame.  And Augustine very famously said, ‘Lord, make me holy; just not yet!’.  I mean, these saints were people just like you and I.  Just like you and I. 

What we are celebrating is the presence of God in their lives.  It is God that made them holy and it is God that makes us holy.  I didn’t understand that growing up.  I hoped that one day I would be a saint too, but I missed the point.  You see, we are ALL saints in the eyes of God! We are all beautifully created and loved just as we are, without regard to gender, sex, race or sexual orientation.  We are all the saints of God, patient, and brave and true (as the Episcopalian hymn goes).

And so today we celebrate the saints who have lived before us and who remain united with us through Christ, as someday we will each be celebrated, but ultimately, what we are really celebrating is not our own goodness or the goodness of our deceased friends and family, but we are celebrating what God did in their lives and we are giving thanks for what God is doing in our lives. 

Ultimately, we are celebrating and worshipping the God who pulls back the shroud;

Who wipes away our tears

Who declares to us that there is nothing that can separate us from Christ’s love;

The God who defeats death;

Who defeats sin;

Who saves us;

Who frees us;

Who calls us to new life;

Who reminds us that we, each and every one of us, is a beloved child of God.

That each and every one of us is a saint in the eyes of God.

And it is through Christ that we are brought together as one, and we are united now and forever with those who have died before us, with our loved ones, so that through Christ, they are never absent, but are part of the body of Christ that transcends time and space.

And so each and every time we come to the table, we are reminded of God’s constant presence through the Eucharist, through the bread and the wine, the body and blood of Christ that blesses us, sustains us, and strengthens our bodies and souls.  That presence of God in our lives that binds us together with the saints across the ages and that same presence of God that makes all of us Saints.  And because of that, we can truly say, thanks be to God.

A Wedding Sermon for Amelia and Philip

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at the wedding of Amelia Bower and Philip West in Asheville, North Carolina on the 24th of October 2015. The reading for the day was Colossians 3:12-15.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

While I have known Amelia for many, many years, I remember very well that when I first met Philip, I was struck by how comfortable he and Amelia were with each other.  I remember we had all been playing in the pool at her parents house and we were sitting out on the balcony and just in watching how they interacted, it was obvious that there was real love between them.  It was a sense of connection and a sense of being at ease with each other that you don’t see very often, even in couples who have been married for years, and it was, and remains, a beautiful thing.

And in thinking more about it, especially in light of the chosen readings, I realized that there really was an added ‘something’ present with Amelia and Philip.  It was the presence of God in their relationship that enabled them to be so at ease.  Many of you may be familiar with the term ‘Namaste’ from a yoga class you may have taken, but what that terms means is that, and this a rough translation, ‘the piece of God that exists in me recognizes the piece of God that exists in you.’  We are brought together by the living God who exists with each one of us.  For Philip and Amelia, I think that they realize that, deep down, there is something larger that is bringing them together, and that is, the love of God.

In the letter to the Colossians, Paul is writing to a group of gentile Christians and explaining to them what it means for them to be a part of this new movement and to be a follower of Christ.  He is providing both practical advice for living, you know, don’t do these things, always do these things, and behave in this manner, and he is giving them a bit of theology on how it’s all done. 

We are called to clothe ourselves in compassion and kindness, to be humble and gentle with each other and to be patient, to forgive each other and to ‘put on love’ so that we might be bound together.  What St Paul understood is that on our own we can’t do any of this.  But through Christ we are transformed and made new and we are clothed in Christ’s love so that we can truly recognize the presence of God in each other.   We can love each other because of Christ’s love for us. 

Amelia and Philip, marriage is truly a blessing.  But it isn’t easy.  Even the best marriages have spots where things get weird.  But so often it is the virtues that Paul is talking about that see us through.  Patience, humility (‘Yes, dear.  You are absolutely right’ will get you through so many things, even when you know the opposite to be true), and forgiveness are important, but ultimately it is love that sees us through.  I think that Lennon and McCartney were truly preaching the gospel when they told us that all you need is love.

Love, true love, brings all of these virtues together and as Paul reminds us, it is ultimately God’s love for us that frees us to love each other.  God’s love casts out fear, it casts out anger and it unites us. 

Simply put, love wins.  Love always wins.  And to be more precise, love won.  In Christ’s death and resurrection, the love of God brought defeat to sin and death and we are now brought together in love. 

Philip and Amelia, you are living into this new reality of love.  The new reality is one of a world that is given to hope, to love, to humility and to kindness.  Our prayer going forward is that your life together might increasingly reflect this new reality and that you would always be strengthened and always brought together as one through the living God who strengthens all of us and binds us all together.  And because of that, we can truly say, thanks be to God. Amen.

Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 18th of October, the 21st Sunday after Pentecost, Year B.  The Gospel reading for the day was Mark 10:35-45, though I added in verses 32-34.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

If you watch any TV, you’ve probably seen the commercials where there is this older woman who is trying really hard to understand and be a part of modern technology, but in spite of all of her efforts, it’s just not right.  She invites her friends over to her house to show the various pictures that she has taped, or posted, to her wall.  She sits at her kitchen table smashing hard candy with a hammer while shouting the various exhortations from the game Candy Crush and at the end of each commercial is one of her friends getting exasperated and saying ‘That’s not how this works!  That’s not how any of this works!’

And over the past month or so we have heard three different tales of how the disciples hear from Jesus what it means to be the Messiah and how following Jesus means following Jesus to the cross and all of the trials that entails.  Yet in spite of however many times the disciples hear this story, they just don’t get it.  I keep expecting Jesus to start saying, ‘that’s not how discipleship works!  That’s not how any of this works!’

In today’s reading, we hear the third instance where Jesus is telling the disciples about what it means to be the Messiah, and subsequently what it means to the be followers of the Messiah.  This is pretty serious stuff that Jesus is talking about.  This is talk of being dominated and humiliated by the powers that reign in this world.  Yet through this, Jesus also promises to not only endure, but to rise again.

And then later Jesus better describes what it means to be a follower of Jesus in terms of being a servant.  And make no mistake, what Jesus is describing completely flies in the face of the Roman assertion of what power looks like.  For the Romans, to assert power was to not just defeat an opponent, but to utterly humiliate them.  This is part of what crucifixion was all about.  It wasn’t just to signify the defeat of a person, but to hang them naked on a tree to suffer and die was done in order to humiliate the person and demonstrate the power of the empire over the individual.  It was a means to assert dominance.

But Jesus tells us something very different.  Jesus tells us that real power comes not in dominance, but in service, and often in the suffering.  As a friend of a mine said, suffering is not just a byproduct, but is an inherent and crucial part of being the Messiah and thus of being a follower of the Messiah. 

And I think that even for us to day this is some pretty hard stuff to hear.  But it’s the reaction of the disciples that still baffles me.  I mean, immediately after hearing, ‘they will condemn him to death and hand him over to the gentiles.  They will ridicule him, spit on him, torture him, and kill him.  After three days, he will rise up’, James and John step up to say, ‘Teacher will you do whatever we ask of you?’ 

Seriously?  This is your response?  Again, I say, that’s not how this works!  That’s not how any of this works.

James and John are looking at power in Roman terms.  They come from a place of oppression and they want to dominate those who are oppressing them now.  They are asking for the same type of power that they see the Romans exercising. 

And this notion of what power is is something that we still see all around us.  We so often seek power in dominating and humiliating our enemies.  Look at a lot of the recent controversy around Kim Davis in Kentucky when she wouldn’t fulfill her constitutional duties to issue marriage licenses.  Her supporters resorted to ugly homophobic language and her opposition took up nasty language about her appearance.  Both were inconsequential to the debate, but they all exhibited the symptoms of thinking that real power came from humiliating an opponent. 

But Jesus is telling us something different about what real power is and where it comes from…

True power is not about entitlement; it’s not about lording over people; it’s not about domination; it’s not about humiliation. 

True power is about servanthood. 

And the disciples then had a problem understanding that and we still have a problem understanding that today.  We read this scripture and we still seek out power, we still desire it.  We still think that the path to true power is to crush all who are in out path.  But that’s not real power.  That’s just fear and anger being made manifest in this world.  What Jesus is saying is that power doesn’t come from fear and anger, but that power, real and true power, comes from love.

Yet we still seek power through violence, through subjugation and humiliation.  We still call those voices that seek to find peace ‘weak’ and ‘cowardly’.  We miss the point of Jesus and yet we still feel entitled to have wealth and power as if somehow the teaching of Christ doesn’t apply to us in the same manner.

We are all modern day James ‘s and John’s. 

But even when after all of this misunderstanding, when presented with this crazy request, Jesus doesn’t respond with utter disbelief like I, and probably many of us, would have.  I mean, I think that by then my grace tank would have been on empty.

And it is to our own benefit that Jesus didn’t respond like we would because God is grace-filled and merciful and when we don’t get it.  God keeps coming back to us as many times as it take for us to finally understand. 

When the disciples ask to sit at Christ’s right and left hands, Christ denies this request.  As we know, it is his fellow inmates who hang on their own crosses who are granted seats at Christ’s side.  Yet Jesus asks them if they can drink of his cup and receive his baptism.  And when the disciples say, yes, Lord, we can!  Jesus doesn’t cast them aside, but grants them their desire.   Jesus takes these messed up disciples and changes them for a life a service. 

God doesn’t dismiss the claim, the desire, the unmitigated ego, of the disciples.  In stead God hears them out!  Jesus says, ok. And grants them to drink of the same cup and to receive the same baptism. God chooses all of these disciples who just don’t know how it all works or what it all means and God entrusts the beginning of the church to them! 

What is striking about this is that Jesus reminds them of what power looks like in the world, but then says something very striking, and this is verse 43 for those following along, ‘But that’s not the way it will be with you.’

See, what God has done here is to promise that these disciples who are so lost and confused will, eventually, get it.  And they get it because God keeps walking with them.  God keeps seeking that relationship with them and gives them the strength and the ability to share in Christ’s ministry. 

And it means that God is doing the same thing with us.  God doesn’t wait for us to ‘get right’, God comes to us as the messed up folks we are and God changes us and God keeps changing us.  And because of that, we too can share in Christ’s ministry of healing and reconciliation and love.

In the cross God transforms what true power is so that true power is shown to be service.  It is shown to be love and not dominance. 

Because Jesus died for us we can live for each other.

That’s what this all means.  We are freed from the ways of the world, we are liberated so that rather than being self serving, we can serve others.  And understand that by serving, Jesus isn’t talking about acts of charity that require little of us.  Jesus is talking about entering into relationships that can be costly.  Caring about people that others have said aren’t worth caring for.  Inviting in people that others have rejected.

So last weekend, I had the opportunity to be part of Atlanta’s Pride celebration and to be a clergy representative at the ‘Georgia Lutherans Welcome You’ booth, the pro-lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender group in our synod.  It was actually my fourth time at the booth and it is always a beautiful experience because we are there to be with people, to hear their stories and to remind them that God loves us just as we are, just like God loved James and John and all the other disciples. 

It is, sadly, a message that not many of them have heard, but like so many of us, it’s a message that the people I spoke to were craving.  People opened their hearts to us and when they said they were seeking a faith a home, we told them about the congregations in the Atlanta-area that would welcome them with love.

Christ died so that we might be liberated and Christ called us into God’s continuing work of liberation in this world.  Part of that work is being a welcoming place.  Part of being a servant is opening our doors to people who many in the world say we shouldn’t open our doors to.  We risk being shunned by the world so that we can share the gospel with those who need to hear it.

And the beautiful thing is that Emmanuel is a welcoming congregation.  Emmanuel is a congregation that has broken barriers in the past and stood fast, empowered by God to be a place of reconciliation and of love.  A place of refuge and of hope. 

So Pastor William and I have had a lot of conversation about this and we want to begin a conversation as a congregation about how we are feeling called to continue moving forward as a welcoming congregation.  We want to talk about how we all see ourselves called to be servants in light of the ELCA statement of human sexuality.  As our bishops have said, we are open to the conversation about welcoming our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender brothers and sisters that needs to take place and we are open to hear the different voices within the congregation. 

And we want to have this conversation because we believe that the same God that chose the disciples; the same God that used them to start the church, is the same God that chooses us to be a part of God’s kingdom here and now, part of God’s ongoing work of love and liberation for all people; because God never gives up on us and God’s love is bigger and wider than we can imagine.

Will you pray with me?

God of grace, we give you thanks for taking us in, for caring for us, for loving us in spite of the numerous times when we just don’t get it.  You always welcome us and you always love us.  Be with us as we begin to look at what it means to be a reconciling congregation.  Open our hearts to hear each other and to respect that we might find ourselves in different places.  Lord, you invite us all and you love us all.  Help us to love each other and to serve each other, through Jesus Christ, who taught us what true servanthood looks like.  Amen.