Transfiguration Sunday

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 7th of February, 2016, Transfiguration Sunday.  The Gospel reading for the day was Luke 9:28-43.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors

Today is called ‘Transfiguration Sunday’ because the traditional way that the word in greek is translated is ‘transfigured’, but it can just as easily be understood as meaning changed or transformed.  And I can’t lie, when I think about the word transform, my mind immediately goes to old Transformers toys.  What’s interesting about it, is that on the outside, they appeared to be one thing, a car, a truck, a boom box, etc, but then they were changed, they got transformed and their true identity appeared, their real self became apparent. 

And think that’s a lot of what the text today is talking about.  It’s telling us about transformation, it’s telling us about changed, it’s telling us about being recognized for what and who we truly are.  And I think the question for us to consider is to what are being transformed and for what reason are we being transformed.

I have to admit that the Transfiguration as an event seems kind of odd.  It has a very mystical and supernatural feel to it, but I think it speak some kind of truth to us.  In this experience we have the full glory of Jesus revealed to Peter, James and John, and it is awe inspiring and glorious.  Peter is ready to just stay on the mountaintop, to constantly revel in the glory of the revealed Jesus. 

And I think that deep down, we are all just like Peter.  Deep down we all desire the experiences of glory.  We all long for those ‘mountaintop moments’ for those times when everything seems great.  When you feel like the pressures of reality have been pushed aside and you don’t have any worries and you can just be in the moment. 

And I think that more than just being the type of mountaintop moment that we desire, this Gospel reading tells us about the Jesus that we desire.  We desire the Jesus of glory, of power, we desire the God who feels like the conquering hero.  We want the Jesus who, to quote a pastor friend, ‘is lit up like the Las Vegas Strip.’  We want the glitz and the glamour.

But the reality is that the Jesus revealed on the mountain is not the Jesus that we get.  We get the Jesus who continues on the way to Jerusalem.  We get the Jesus who is betrayed, tried and convicted.  We get the Jesus who is beaten, humiliated, and murdered on the cross.  We may think we want the Jesus who is wholly divine, but we get the Jesus who is also fully human.

But we also get the Jesus who is fully present with us through all things and who fully understands both our joys and our sorrows.  We get the Jesus who may understand our mountaintop moments, but we also get the Jesus who understands what it is to be in the depths of despair.

And that’s an important thing because it reminds us that, like Jesus, we aren’t called to stay on the mountain, we aren’t called to revel in glory.  Jesus’ revelatory transformation is not for Jesus’ own personal glory.  The act of the transformation, the transfiguration, is done for our sake, so that we would understand the oneness of the Father and the Son.  Jesus does not have power for his own sake.  Jesus has power for the sake of others.  And so Jesus doesn’t stay on top of the mountain, but Jesus leads the disciples back down the mountain.  Jesus leads them back into the crowds, Jesus leads them back into the midst of the pain of the world.

So rather than seeking experiences of glory, the disciples are reminded that they are called to seek out those in need and to be present with them.  I tend to think that this was probably challenging for the disciples because I know it’s challenging for me.  I mean, mountaintop moments are pretty great.  It feels great to experience those moments.  And I think that we search for moments of glory more than just in our own lives.  I think we seek out those moments of glory in our own church.  I mean, we want the big, fancy church, with all the nice gold adornments, and the fancy altarware, the nice robes.  We want a rich church, lots of programs that make us feel good.  We want worldly success and riches.   We want a church of glory.

But again, we don’t get a church of glory.  We get Jesus on the cross.  We get a savior who forsakes glory and instead suffers on our behalf.  A savior who takes on sin so that sin and death might be ended.  A savior who forsakes glory and instead chooses us.

We get the savior who came back down the mountain to heal a child.  Jesus and the disciples came back down to carry out the gospel and to be with those in need.

And that tells us about who we are called to be.  That tells us about what we are called to do.  We are not called into glory, but we are called into servanthood.  If we are part of Christ’s church we should not be seeking personal power and glory, but we should be seeking to serve.  And that doesn’t always happen.  We can look around see brokenness and see the pain that happens when people seek to help themselves and not help others. 

But we know that we are transformed through our baptism not for ourselves, but we are transformed for God and for each other. 

So I think about where we are as a church, I think about where Emmanuel is now and where we are capable of going.  I think about the uncertainty that many of us feel and the sense of agitation that is present on many of our hearts.  And I get it, I understand.  We have concerns about where we are right now and where we are going.  But if we keep our focus on how we use the gifts with which we have been blessed and how we can use them to serve others, I promise you that this church will become a light that will attract other to it.  It will see growth.   If we reject the desire to be a church of glory and instead embrace the call to be a servant church, we will see growth.

We are stepping forward into an uncertain future.  We are stepping forward despite concerns about budgets, despite concerns about programs, and for some of us, we are stepping forward despite concerns about our very future. 

And while we may be uncertain about some things, there are some things which I am very certain about. 

First, I am certain that God is not done with us here at Emmanuel.  We still have a lot of work that we are called to be part of as God’s kingdom continues to be made manifest.  There are still people in need of hearing the good news of Christ.  There are people who still need to hear that they are beloved children of God.

Second, we are not, as Martin Luther reminds us, we are not theologians of glory.  We are theologians of the cross.  We recognize that it is at the cross where we truly are closest to God and we recognize that our calling is not to look for own personal betterment, our calling is not to create our own personal fiefdoms, but our calling is break down those empires that oppress and our calling is be alongside those who are in need, even those in need are our fellow congregation members or students who are concerned about their future.  These are the people we are called to serve too.  Servanthood can reach inside the doors of this church as well as outside.  Where there is suffering or need, the church is called to be there.

We are being transformed.  We are being transformed as individuals and as a congregation.  We are not being transformed for glory or to sew division amongst us, but we are being transformed so that can come together in love, so that we can support each other.  God has called each and every person to be part of God’s work in this world, to follow the path of Jesus and to make ourselves servants to all and through our baptism our old self has perished and we have been resurrected as children of God.  As we go out, let us cast aside our egos, our desires, our pride and let us instead walk humbly along the path that Jesus walked. 

And we know that though the path is challenging, we know that being transformed into the people of God is not easy, but we also know that just like Jesus walked with the disciples back down the mountain and out into the crowds, so too does Jesus  walk with us during this time of transition, guiding us along the way.  And because of that constant presence and that enduring love for us, we can truly say, thanks be to God.  Amen.

Second Sunday After Epiphany

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 17th of January, 2016, the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany.  The Gospel reading for the day was John 2:1-11.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors

So there is a long held tradition that in a crisis, we see a person’s true self come out.  I can vouch for this.  It’s amazing the number of times when, while working at CDC, we’ve been faced with a building on fire or an emergency in a lab and the people you thought would be great in an emergency, completely failed you, but the people who you would never expect, stood up and revealed their true nature.  And in today’s gospel reading, we see Jesus faced with a crisis, or a least a crisis for the host whose wedding party is about to be ruined because of poor planning (or else because of very thirsty guests!).  And since a great of the deal of the readings in Epiphany help reveal something about the nature of Christ, it’s appropriate that today’s text reveals something about the nature of God.  But more than that, through Mary it reveals to us what our relationship with God ought to be like.

There’s a pastor named Rob Bell, who in one of his books talks three words that kind of help us think about who God is.   The words he uses are ‘with’, ‘for’, and ‘ahead’.  And I think that the text today truly helps us understand how God is with us, for us, and also ahead of us.  So let’s unpack that a little bit in light of John’s story of Jesus at the wedding of Cana.

God is with us.  We know that God is present with us through our times of joy and trouble.  But what we are reminded of in the reading is that God has chosen us, God has chosen to be present in our lives and has promised to stay with us, this what is revealed to us through the entirety of scripture.  But we are reminded that we have been chosen because we are reminded that Jesus chose to be at the wedding.  Jesus was an invited guest here, he was not the host.  He was there because of his love for these people and was there to share in their joy and to be part of all aspects of their life. 

But then Mary points out that we have a problem, that they are all out of wine.  Jesus’ initial reaction is one of skepticism, and I think it’s a reaction that most of us would have, or if we did do something, we might run down to the store and pick a bottle just to say we tried to help.  Or we might just say, well, the party’s over.  I’m headed out now.

But Jesus doesn’t do either of those things.  Jesus stays at the party and doesn’t run away from the people when they begin to experience challenges, God stays with them (there’s that ‘with’ word again).  But it isn’t just a ministry of presence that Jesus provides, Jesus acts on behalf of the afflicted.  Jesus acts for the hosts of the party.

And there is that second descriptive word, ‘for’.  God is for us.  God wants to see us do well and wants to see us happy.  God delights in our pleasure and because of that, God works for us, God is active on our behalf. 

What we are also reminded of here is that God is not just active on our behalf in a token way, God doesn’t do the bare minimum.  Instead, God responds to the need of the wedding guests with abundance.  Jesus doesn’t come with just a bottle of three buck chuck from Trader Joe’s, it’s 180 gallons of the best wine that the guests had ever tasted.  Where we see scarcity, God sees abundance. 

In being a God of abundance, God sees potential.  God sees the potential of the large stones to all hold wine, even they aren’t currently being used for that.  And in our lives, God sees the potential for each of us to grow and to become more and just like God was active in transforming the water into wine, so too is God active in our lives transforming us into something more, guiding towards greater acts of love and compassion, transforming us daily.  Working on our behalf because God operates in our lives with abundance because God loves us abundantly.

I think that last think that we come to know about who God is in this reading is that God is out ahead of us, working on our behalf, making a way for us, anticipating our needs.  It’s quite possible that the host of the party never even knew that they had run out of wine.  I mean, in the flow of events, it can take a moment before information gets to who it needs to go to. It can be a minute before the host ever realizes the problem that they face.  But Jesus didn’t wait to be asked by the host of the party to help out.  And Mary never actually asks Jesus to make more wine.  Instead Jesus sees the need that is present and acts proactively on behalf of the host. 

And it isn’t so often the case that so many things happen in our lives and it is only later that we can look back and realize that God was present with us and active in our lives throughout everything.  If you watched the webcast last week with Bishop Eaton dealing with racism, this was a point of discussion for them as the panelists shared their stories of life in various aspects of the criminal justice system and both a former officer and a former felon, now both seminary students, shared how in looking back, they could see where God had guided them along their path and in fact had worked to create that path to bring them to where they are today.

In a similar way, the hosts of the party never saw Jesus perform the miracle and turn water in wine, but in seeing the result, in seeing 180 gallons of wine, they could recognize that God had been present in the midst of their lives; that God was present in their daily activities and working on their behalf.

So we are presented in this gospel reading with a vision of a God who is with us, who is for us and who is ahead of us.  A God who loves us, cares for us, and makes a way for us through all things.  A God of amazing love who cares deeply and profoundly for each of us. 

But more than just telling us about God, the gospel reading tells us about ourselves and what it means to be a disciple of Christ.  It is through the actions of Mary that we see discipleship portrayed. 

What Mary exhibits here, is faith; complete and utter faith in God.  Despite the protestations of Jesus about the wine, Mary has faith that Jesus will see the problems here and because of Jesus’ own nature, she has faith that Jesus will intercede on behalf of the people in need.

Deep down, Mary understands the nature of God so she has faith.  But what is remarkable here is what Mary doesn’t do.  Mary doesn’t tell Jesus what to do.  Mary doesn’t try to control God.  She doesn’t try and steer God.  She simply says to the servants, ‘do whatever he asks’ and then leaves the scene.  She is content to know that God is present and that whatever solution God has will be the right one. 

And this what our own prayers should look like, we ask for God’s help with our problems, but we don’t tell God how to solve them.  We just trust that if we pray to God for help, that God will provide help, even if it’s not through the means which we might have hoped.   I think that a lot of us are praying for this congregation right now after seeing our budget sheets last week.  But maybe we shouldn’t be asking God to give us more money (telling God what to do), but we should be asking God to help us continue to be a visible proclamation of the word of God in this community and then trust that God will provide the means for that to occur abundantly.

In the text today, God doesn’t act just to give wine to his mother (though that would make him a very nice son to do that for his mother), instead God acts not just for the benefit of one person, not just for Mary, not just for the hosts, but God acts to the benefit of all of the people at the wedding.  I firmly believe that God is active in this place, not just for our own benefit, but for the benefit of the entire community.

And in the first act of Jesus’ public ministry we are given a picture of a God who loves us enough to be present with us in all things, who loves us enough to want the best for us, and who loves us enough to go out ahead of us, and work proactively on our behalf.

This is also the first public miracle of Jesus, the first public miracle of the God who came down and dwelt amongst us.  And when we gather together we remember that God still comes down.  The same God who performed miracles with water and wine is present with us at the table in the bread and wine; present with us each and every day, providing us life and providing it abundantly.

And it is because of that enduring presence, that consistent action on our behalf, because of the love that was shown to the wedding guests and is shown to us; because of the God who is with us, and for us and ahead of us, that we can truly say, thanks be to God.  Amen.

First Sunday of Christmas

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 27th of December, 2015, the 1st Sunday of Christmas.  The Gospel reading for the day was Luke 2:41-52.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

When I hear this story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in Jerusalem and the ensuing confusion that occurs I can’t help but think that this is a parent’s worst nightmare, at least it’s one of mine.  I mean, TJ is with me and then suddenly he’s gone!  And now to some degree the situation that is presented by the author of Luke seems pretty unlikely, but I’m here to tell you that I have seen this happen. 

So my father and grandfather were Shriners and generally our summer vacations would be to some Shrine convention in the southeast.  There was one family who would travel with us who had, like, eight kids.  We had all stopped for breakfast one morning and when we went to leave, they realized that two of their kids weren’t with them, but figured that they had just ridden with another member of our group.  So about an hour and a half later, we stop for gas or something and they realize that, oops, they left their kids at the Denny’s about 100 miles back. 

Now this portion of Luke is not meant to be representative of parenting failures throughout the centuries, but it does show us that Jesus experienced things that could happen to any kid.  Kids get left behind in the rush and chaos of traveling.  Parent’s get frustrated with their kids for driving them crazy, and really, after three days of searching, I have a feeling that the exact words used by Mary have been slightly edited for younger ears.

Jesus was a teenager who was trying to assert his independence.  Jesus was acting, in many ways, like any other teenager.  This story about Jesus reminds us of two things, first that Jesus really was human, and second, that Jesus was very grounded in the Jewish scriptures. 

Let’s look at the humanness of Jesus first.  It may seem obvious that Jesus was human, I mean, we confess it every week when we recite the creed, and when you read or recite the Nicene Creed, it becomes even more obvious that this dual nature of Jesus is a core component of our Christian belief.  Yet, I think it’s easy to succumb to thinking of Jesus as perfect and godlike and to forget that this same person who healed the sick and raised the dead also had to eat food and drink water.  This is same person who on the cross cried out, ‘I thirst!’  This story about Jesus, which is really the only one in the gospel’s about Jesus that takes place between his infancy and the beginning of his ministry almost twenty years after this invites us to open up our imagination, our theological imagination, and wonder about the person of Jesus and what he experienced, how he lived his life, what that life was like for him and others around him during the time leading up to his, very brief public ministry, which was anywhere from one to three years depending on how you read the various gospels.

What were his friends like?  Did he have a girlfriend?  What was it like to be Jesus and experience hunger?  Did he ever experience unemployment?  We know that he experienced grief.  What was his reaction to the constant oppression of the Roman Empire?

I ask these questions not be disrespectful or sacreligious but because as we think about how Jesus, entirely human, experienced the same pains and challenges of everyday life that we do, it starts to make us think about the miracle of the incarnation.  And that’s really what the Christmas season is about.  It’s about the God who became flesh and dwelt amongst us, experienced the same things we dod, suffered like we suffer, laughed like we laugh, hungered like we hunger.  I heard somebody the other day suggest how crazy God’s choice to become human really is considering all the junk that we have to deal with in this life.   To chose to become human in a situation where Jesus is part of an oppressed minority group that is marginalized and abused.  Where poverty and hunger are a way of life.  That God became incarnate amongst these people tells us about the nature of God, about a God who cares for the oppressed and marginalized, a God who cares for the poor, and sick, and hungry.  A God whose love is abounding.

The simple humanness of this story, that it is something that we can all in some way relate to, either as the teenager struggling for independence or the worried parent only serves to remind us that this Jesus who would go on to be revealed as the savior of the world, as God incarnate, was also human just like us. 

In addition to displaying the humanness of Jesus, the author of Luke is reminding us of just how truly Jewish Jesus really is.  It’s something that can be somewhat easy to forget.  I mean, I don’t think any of use define ourselves as being Jewish today despite the fact that Christianity grew out of a sect of Judiaism. 

But the more important thing about Jesus’s Jewish identify is that it if fundamentally links the Christ of the New Testament with the God of the Hebrew Bible.  Through Christ we see a continuation of the story that is first revealed to us through the Torah and then through the remainder of the books of the Hebrew Bible.  I think that if we are honest, we will all admit to at some point or another saying, yeah, I love Jesus, but I have a lot of problems with the ‘Old Testament God’ and all that ‘anger and wrath.’

A lot of times we tend to misread the Hebrew Bible and we start to think of there being two separate God’s.  And there is a word for this, and it is Marcionism.  And we all are, at times, a little bit like a man who lived in the second century named Marcion who rejected the God of the Hebrew Bible and believed the Jesus was sent by the true God to save us from the evil God of the Israelites.  Now I’m not suggesting that we’ve gone that far in our thinking, but there is a bit of ‘minor’ Marcionism in all of us. 

I bring that up not just to give a history lesson, but to say that reminder of Jesus as being so firmly rooted in Jewish life and practices, making the pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem during Passover ever year, possessing such wisdom and insight about the Torah that even the priests of the Temple were amazed reminds us that Jesus was not just culturally Jewish, but that he was fully and completely Jewish.

And because of that completeness, we begin to understand that the incarnation that we celebrate, that radical notion that God would become human, is not something crazy and new, but that it is a continuation of the story of the relationship between God and creation.

In Christ we are reminded that the same God that created the heavens and the earth, the mountains and the seas, the birds and the fish is the same God who made a covenant with Abraham, and a promise that all people would be blessed through the people of Abraham.  Jesus is the continuation of this story, the bringing of salvation to all people, a fulfillment of the promises of God.  It’s not something new, it’s part of the way God had always acted and it’s part of the way that God still is active in each of our lives today. 

The God of the Hebrew Bible is revealed as a God of abundant love, mercy and grace who chose the people of Israel and in doing so chose all of creation.  So the incarnation of Jesus as the appearance of the grace of God in this world is exactly the kind of thing that a wildly loving and all-forgiving God would do. 

So as read of a 12 year old Jesus, hanging behind in Jerusalem, driving his parents crazy, we remember that the Jesus that would later die on the cross is not just God incarnate, but is also very much human.  Jesus’s suffering at the cross is a reminder that God truly understands our own suffering and that when we are filled with grief or sorrow or loneliness or pain, that God is fully present with us at the moment, holding us and comforting us because God knows that pain and has experienced that pain. 

All throughout Advent we would sing ‘o come, o come emmanuel’  o come, o come God with us.  And in Christ, the fully human, fully divine Jesus, who is the continuation of the sotry of God’s relationship with us, we are reminded that God is truly with us, through all parts of our lives, bringing comfort, shining a light in our darkness, making a way for us when it seems as if all is lost.  Because of that love, because of that grace, we can truly say, thanks be to God.  Amen.

Christmas Eve

This is the rough text of a sermon preached at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Atlanta, Georgia on the 24th of December, 2015, Christmas Eve.  The text for this sermon came from Titus 2:4-11.   Please note that these are not exact transcriptions and that there may be some spelling and grammatical errors.

So I made the mistake the other day of watching some of the news coverage of the upcoming presidential election.  And I was, and I remain, astonished at the way that the campaigns have become so full of divisive rhetoric.  I mean if it isn’t about Christians versus Muslims, it’s citizens versus immigrants, or it’s about some other false division that the candidates have created to try and scare people into voting for them and not the other person. 

And it’s into just such a divisive scene that we find Paul writing to Titus, who Paul left in his stead on Crete.  The division facing Titus is one of Jewish followers of Christ versus non-Jewish followers of Christ and the way that many of the Jewish followers are trying to impose restrictions and requirements on the gentile converts so that they can be ‘real’ followers of Christ.  It’s a sense that one group is superior to the rest of the people and that as a result of that superiority they can impose certain things on the others.  So these divisions that we see being created today are nothing new, but have, in fact, been with us for a very long time.

And it’s in the midst of a world dividing itself up that Paul reminds us that the birth of Christ, that our celebration this Christmas, is a celebration of the appearance of God bringing grace and salvation to all people.  No if’s, no but’s, no hierarchy, no division, Christ brings salvation to all people.

It’s in the birth of Christ that we find this unifying event that is for all creation.  We are reminded that we are all children of God, that the divisions that we have created, be they based on race, gender, country of origin, sexuality, occupation of socio-economic status are all false and that the birth of Christ was a moment of hope and love for all people.  Paul also reminds us that this event has real implications for each of us.  This is not just a theoretical conversation about God’s love, but it is a recognition of how God’s grace changes us and reorients us to be part of that work of love that was revealed through the birth of Christ.  The former Pope, Pope Benedict reminds us that, ‘Salvation, then, like everything Christ does, is not a finish-line, but a new beginning, the ordination of a particular man into a being-for-others, the breaking-open and turning-out of the soul to the world.’

Paul talks about ‘good deeds’ to Titus, but I think that in the context of this reading, what Paul is talking about is a call to show love to all people; to care for those in need, to welcome those who are seeking refuge and a better life; to speak a word of peace to those feel rejected and broken.

God made no distinction with the saving actions of Christ and likewise as we go out into the world, we are called to remember how big God’s table is.  And this is something I keep coming back to because it’s something that is both humbling to me because God’s grace is so abundant and it’s what gives me hope. 

If we were to be given a test to be able to sit at God’s table, we would all fail because of our sinful nature.  But because God’s grace and love defeat that sin, because through Christ we have had a place set for us at God’s table so that we might eat and drink with other as brothers and sisters, with our differences cast aside.  At God’s table we are reminded of our unity through Christ, whose birth we remember tonight, and who brought hope and love to all creation.  And it’s because of that persistent hope and love that speaks into all of our lives that we can truly say, thanks be to God.  Amen.