Category: Commentary

This morning’s gospel (John 1:43-51) reading is unexpected. We are in the year where we focus on the gospel according to Mark but today we detour to the gospel according to John. In John’s narrative, this scene takes place after Jesus meets John the baptism. Jesus begins to find his disciples. Peter and his brother Andrew are two of the first disciples Jesus calls. And then Jesus goes to Galilee to find Philip. Exactly where Philip was, scripture doesn’t tell us. In fact, scripture doesn’t tell us much about Philip at all. We really don’t know who Philip is or what he was doing when he met Jesus. We don’t know if Philip was religious or if he attended synagogue every week. We don’t know if Philip was seeking the Messiah or if faith was important to him at all. All the gospel according to John tells us is that Jesus went to Galilee and found Philip. For John, what Jesus does here and what Philip does next is what being a follower of Jesus is all about.

If we want to follow Jesus, we need to trust that we cannot follow Jesus unless Jesus comes to us. And that visit by Jesus happens in a variety of ways. Jesus comes to us in the moment of our baptism, when we gather to worship in church, when we sing together as a community, and when we share Jesus’ body and blood in communion. Jesus also comes to us when we are praying for a friend, when we are hiking far from civilization, and when we are stuck on a crowded subway car. Jesus makes himself known to us by by sending us a feeling of peace when peace feels impossible. He sometimes speaks words of hope that only we can hear. And he shows up by pushing us to love our neighbors even when we don’t want to. There’s no “right” way that Jesus comes to us. Rather, Jesus comes to us over and over again wherever we are. Jesus finds us because we are worth being found.

And once we are found, we are sent to find others. As we see in this text, following Jesus means living like Jesus does. Jesus finds Philip and so Philip finds Nathaniel. Our faith isn’t a commodity only for ourselves. Our faith, instead, compels us to share it with others. We are called to invite folks to know Jesus. We are called to invite folks to church. We are called to listen to the questions others have, to answer them as best we can, to be honest if we don’t know the answer, and still to be brave enough to tell them to “come and see.” We are called to be like Jesus and to be like Philip. Because when Jesus finds us, we become more than just ourselves; we become part of Jesus himself (aka the body of Christ). And when we find others, God is using us to love the world (John 3:16).

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for the 2nd Sunday After Epiphany, 1/14/2018.

In the beginning, a lot of things were called good. The motion of the sun and moon, the monsters in the sea, and the critters on the land are all called good in the first verses in the book of Genesis. God does more than just create; God also gives everything in the universe worth and value. Water, land, animals, and people are created by a God who loves and values them. And since God, without prompting, has decided that everything in creation has value, we are called live lives that value everything. Much of what God creates in the book of Genesis are orders: systems of relationships where everything has a place and everything takes care of everything else in the system. But there is one thing, standing on its own, that God called good. We discover that goodness in our reading from Genesis 1:1-5 today. God created light and calls light, in itself, good.

Genesis, I think, invites us to play around with light. We don’t have to, at first, immediately place light in competition with its opposite. Even before darkness is created, God called the light good. Light does not need to be defined as the opposite of darkness. Instead light, on it’s own, has value and worth. We should explore what light is and does before we try to see what light struggls against.

So what does light do? Light illuminates. Light exposes. Light uncovers what we try to hide. Light, above all, shines. There is a reason why so many of our hymns and songs talk about light. When we focus on the light, we learn how we can act like the light. What, in our own lives, is God’s light trying to expose? What, in our world, is God’s light trying to uncover? How can our community let God’s light shine?

The light God called good is a light that is still in our universe and in our lives. And God gives us that light at different moments in our lives. When we were baptized, we were united with the light that was there at the beginning of creation – God’s true light – God’s Son, Jesus Christ. This light is a light we all carry. This light that God called God is a light that leads us. And we are invited to be just like this light to everyone we meet.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for the Baptism of Jesus, 1/07/2018.

This year, I spent each day helping my family countdown to Christmas using three different Advent calendars. One calendar told a part of Jesus’ story each day through scripture, hymns, and stories. Our second calendar was all about Santa. Each window in the calendar opened to reveal Santa doing different things to get ready for Christmas Eve. Our last calendar was a bit different. Instead of opening a piece of the calendar to reveal Jesus’ story, we instead added something to a nativity scene. Geese, cows, cattle, camels, angels, stars, and more needed to be placed on that nativity scene. And we could put those characters wherever we wanted. On some days, a cow ended up in the sky. Mary had to spend time on the roof. Joseph slept in a tree. This kind of calendar was a lot of fun because it invited my family and I to make God’s story our own. And when we play with God’s story, we discover how much that story makes a difference for us.

An Advent calendar isn’t the only way to countdown to Christmas. We can also cross names off our “to buy” list, put x’s through all the holiday parties we attended, or count the moments we sat in silence as moments of sadness and mourning flow through us. Christmas can be a difficult holiday because we expect so much out of it. We expect joy, comfort, happiness, and snow. We struggle when Christmas doesn’t match what we want it to be. Yet, as we will hear tonight, Christmas isn’t a moment where God meets our expectations. Instead, God does something brand new. No one in Bethlehem expected God to show up in a barn behind the inn. Only Mary and Joseph knew what God was up to and even they were unaware of what Jesus’ story was all about. The angels told the shepherds but the rest of the townsfolk, city dwellers, local farmers, and even the distant Roman Emperor were not even looking for God to show up, in the flesh, on that first Christmas night. All of us countdown to Christmas in different ways. We expect Christmas to show up and a “good” Christmas will match whatever our expectations will be. May this season invite all of us to discover the God who doesn’t let our expectations be the limit to what God will do.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for Christmas Eve, 12/24/2017.

If you look at the readings today, you’ll notice we’re doing something different. On a normal Sunday, we hear one or two scripture readings before I read a piece from the gospels. The lectionary, the 3 year cycle of readings we use every Sunday, gives us three readings and one psalm (or a poem) to look at every Sunday. Some churches read all four pieces of scripture every Sunday. It’s the tradition at CLC to share the gospel and one or two more readings. We rarely read the psalm or poem. But today we’re breaking our local tradition by singing that poem out loud.

Today’s second piece of scripture is a sung version of the Magnificant, aka Mary’s song. In the gospel according to Luke, Mary is pregnant and she visits her cousin Elizabeth. When Elizabeth sees Mary, the child in Elizabeth’s womb (aka John the Baptist) leaps for joy. Elizabeth celebrates and tells Mary what just happened. Mary responds to this amazing moment with a song.

Mary’s words are powerful. She celebrates God, God’s relationship with her, and the way God moves in the world. God, according to Mary, reverses our expectations. The powerful, rich, and proud lose their status. It’s the hungry who God feeds. God lifts up the poor and protects the vulnerable. God, according to Mary, fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away. In our culture and context, we routinely separate people into groups and we decide who should be listened to and who shouldn’t. As human beings, we are very good at choosing sides and giving power to the privileged. According to Mary’s song, God chooses sides too. And the side God chooses might not be one we expect.

Mary’s song is a song of celebration. But it’s also a song that gives us pause. The journey Mary is going on will be difficult. She is pregnant but she has no prenatal care. She is going to give birth in a time and place where women routinely died during childbirth. Her son will grow up, challenge the religious and governing authorities, and they will respond by sending Jesus to the cross. Mary will see her son up there. She, as a parent, will see God act in ways she doesn’t expect. There will be much for her not to celebrate. She will have to live through a difficult story. But maybe that is part of the hope that is a big part of Mary’s song. The God she will give birth to is the same God who will help her live through whatever comes next.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for the 4th Sunday of Advent, 12/24/2017.

One of the neat things about the incarnation is how messy it is. The incarnation, if you don’t know term, is what Jesus does on Christmas day: Jesus is born. In his birth, Jesus decided to become a human being. But Jesus doesn’t lose his divine identity when he does this. Instead, Jesus becomes a paradox. He is both 100% human and 100% divine. This is something that shouldn’t be possible because someone who is 100% divine cannot be 100% human (i.e. someone who can die, someone who needs to eat, someone who needs to sleep) at the same time. The incarnation (Jesus becoming human; God being born) is messy because our lives, from the beginning, are messy events. We enter the world covered in goo. We spend time in the dirt and in the grass. We eat, sweat, and sometimes stink. Jesus chose to be messy which, if we think about it, is a surprising thing for God to do.

Yet this messiness is also an invitation brining us closer to God. Instead of viewing the incarnation only as a moment when God comes to us, our reading from Isaiah invites us to wonder what it would be like to go towards God. If we were on God’s home turf, hanging out in God’s kingdom, what would it look like? What would be happening? Isaiah answers those questions with his words here. God does more than just accompany us on our journey. God is also an activate participate in whatever God created. God empowers people to bring good news to the oppress, to heal the broken, and to free prisoners. God’s kingdom is a world filled with justice and peace. God kingdom is, in the end, the place where the vulnerable are made whole, no matter what.

These words from Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11 are words that are central to Jesus’ public ministry. In the gospel according to Luke, Jesus quotes these passages and the crowd almost throws him off a cliff. The crowd could see that Jesus’ words were powerful because they knew what Jesus’ words meant. The passage from Isaiah proclaims a promise that God’s kingdom is a kingdom where a great reversal takes place. The situation in our world will be reversed by a God who desires life, love, and peace to all people, regardless of where they were born or what advantages they gained in life. The incarnation isn’t only about Jesus being born. The incarnation is also an invitation for us to realize that a part of our Christian life is to follow Jesus by being Jesus-like to all our neighbors in need

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for Third Sunday of Advent, 12/17/2017.

Does God need us to prepare the way of the Lord?

Today’s reading from Isaiah 40:1-11 is a text Christians see as pointing to the ministry John the Baptist did. God called a person to bring God’s word of comfort and challenge to all of God’s people. But this text is more than just a prediction of something that happened 600 years after it was written. It’s a passage that also tells the story of a prophet preaching to the Jewish community in Exile. The Babylonian empire had destroyed Jerusalem, burned God’s Temple, and forcibly relocated the survivors to what is now Iraq. The people felt abandoned because the war destroyed their homeland. They wondered where God was because it seemed as if God broke all of God’s promises. Their faith, identity, and sense of self are in turmoil. And that’s when God brings all of them a word of comfort and hope. At first, this new prophet wondered why they should preach at all. The people, the prophet proclaimed, are like grass and flowers – they might pay attention to God’s word when it suits them but, eventually, they will turn away. God, however, responded by reminding the prophet of who God is. The value and worth of God’s word does not depend on what people do once they hear it. Instead, God’s word matters because it comes from God. And even in our moments when we feel abandoned and all alone, God is still with us and will never let us go.

There are times in our lives when we think we can convince God to something on our behalf. We bargain with God, making promises of our own. We tell God we’ll go to church each week, hoping that we will be blessed. We promise to pray every night, and hope God will make a health crisis pass. We see a preacher on tv and send him money because he promises that God will reward us with more money than we give to him. And we sometimes act as if we can force Jesus’ return if we make some kind of political or religious event happen. But does God, the creator of the universe, need us to do that? Can we truly bargain with the one who is the past, the present, and the future all at once? Our God isn’t a God who believes in “pay-to-play” kind of realities. Our God, instead, just loves. Our God, instead, keeps God’s promises. We worship, study, pray, and live generous lives because, in Christ, we discover that is exactly who God is. Jesus knows what it’s like to feel abandoned. He knows what it’s like when people don’t believe the stories he shares. He knows what it’s like when the powerful try to shut him down, refusing to listen to his experiences. He knows what it is like to cry out to God in pain, suffering, and hope. Jesus knows what it’s like to be like us. The story of God isn’t a story where people someone convince God to be on our side. God’s story is about discovering how God is with us, no matter what. When we know Jesus, we see God more clearly. And when we live a Jesus-like life, we discover who God wants us to be.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for Second Sunday of Advent, 12/10/2017.

When God shows up, what do we expect will happen? Today’s reading from Isaiah 64:1-9 is asking this kind of question. This section of Isaiah was probably recorded immediately after Israel’s captivity in Babylon ended. For almost 70 years, many of the people from Jerusalem lived in exile in Babylon. They built new homes and created new communities in the heart of the empire that defeated them. When the Persian empire destroy Babylon, the people of Jerusalem were invited to return home. Most decided to stay home in Babylon but some moved to Jerusalem, a city they never knew. The city was in rubble and God’s Temple was gone. Food was scarce. Conflict was everywhere. As the community started to rebuild, they lamented and prayed to God. They wanted to God to be God and cause the world to tremble.

I’ll admit that this image of God is a powerful one. Wouldn’t it be great to have this kind of experience of God? Imagine the heavens opening up and God landing in Northern New Jersey. The hills would quake and move. The Pascack Valley would rock and roll. God would show up and everyone would know God is here. A God who does this is a God who is easy to see, experience, and share with others. It’s a God who expresses strength and might. A God who shakes mountains is a God we want on our side because nothing on earth can compare.

And yet this is the first reading from scripture we hear this Advent season. We are in a period of waiting until Christmas, a story about God coming down, finally comes. But when God finally does come, the mountains do not quake like we expect. Instead, God enters the world as a baby named Jesus. The cries of this baby do not shake buildings. Instead, his cries bring his mother and father to his side. In Jesus, God chooses to live a human life, from birth to death and beyond, because that’s the awesome deed no one would reasonably expect.

As Christians, we are invited to lament like the prophet in Isaiah does here. God wants us to call God out, telling God to be a promise keeper. But we are also invited to open our eyes and see the ways God is already here. Sometimes the most powerful experience we need is a whisper of hope, a shoulder to cry on, a person who says they care about us, or a baby who spends his first night in a manger.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for First Sunday of Advent, 12/3/2017.

You did it! You survived another church year. Today is Christ the King Sunday. It’s a new holiday in the church calendar, established less than 100 years ago. In 1925, Pope Pius XI established this day to encourage Roman Catholics to recognize Christ’s authority in our lives. Christ the King was originally scheduled for the last Sunday in October (which might have been a way to push back against Lutherans and their Reformation Sunday) but was moved to the last Sunday in the church year in 1970. Many different protestant churches (including Lutherans) adopted this feast day because its central question is important for all Christians. We know Jesus is important and we commit ourselves to follow him. We celebrate his presence in our lives and sing hymns calling him the “king of kings.” Jesus matters – but does our everyday life act like he does?

Over the last few decades, a debate about name of this Sunday has emerged. Should we call this Sunday Christ the King when the word “king” is so problematic? There are plenty of kings in scripture that give the word “king” a bad name. In 1 Samuel 8, the prophet Samuel describes what kings actually do. They value power more than anything. They want to keep everything for themselves. They oppress the poor, fight wars, and bring ruin to entire communities. They demand the obedience of others while filling their bank accounts with other people’s wealth. Kings in scripture are not a good thing. Even the kings we celebrate (like King David), have immense personality flaws that lead to their downfall and destruction. All of us think we know what a good king looks like. They are full of power and majesty. They are wise, caring, and give hope to others. They live lives worthy of being in a Disney animated film. And they are a king that looks nothing like Jesus did when, broken and battered, he died on the Cross.

I still call today Christ the King Sunday because that’s a name other people use. But, in my own devotion, I prefer to call today: “Reign of Christ Sunday.” Because that’s what we’re really celebrating. We are, through out baptism, called to live as if Jesus really matters. We are to recognize his love for us and love others just as much. We are to celebrate service rather than power and to always cling to hope. We are to live as if Christ truly rules over our lives because, through the Cross, we know he already does.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for Christ the King Sunday, 11/26/2017.

This reading from Zephaniah 1:7,12-18 is terrifying.

It begins with a command from God demanding silence. This phrase lets us put this text in context. This command is used when something is taking place in the Temple. In ancient Israel, the Temple was where heaven and earth meet. It’s where God truly is. By demanding our silence, the prophet Zephaniah tells us that these words are spoken in the place where God is present and where God is being worshipped. These words take place as people gather to pray and celebrate God. The people are participating in rituals, telling stories, and experiencing God. As we will discover, the people expect to be blessed when they worship God. Instead, they are challenged and undone.

We don’t worship in the Temple but but we do worship in our church. Within these eight walls, we pray, sing, and experience Jesus’ presence in a holy community. We gather here on Sunday morning because this is where Jesus promises to be. In the stories we share and in the rituals we participate in, we experience a vision of what God’s community of welcome, love, and hope actually looks like. We are living and expressing what God’s reality truly is. Our rituals are both ancient and new. They are designed to help us experience the presence of God. We are invited guests, brought here to find comfort and joy at God’s table.

But imagine Jesus speaking these words to you. What do you hear? What do you feel? The metaphors in the passage are centered around vines, vineyards, and wine. God, in the verses around this passage, is the tender of a vineyard, making fine wines and drinks. This drink is designed to be life-giving to all who consume it. In this metaphor, God’s people are not drinking the wine God created. Rather, the people are the wine itself. God stored us, tending us carefully, and waiting for us to mature. Yet the wine grew complacent in dealing with God and each other. The wine sought out its own comfort at the expense of others. The wine went bad. And so, in the presence of the God, the wine is destroyed. The people trusted their strength as a nation and a culture so that is the first thing God takes. They did not see God living in their community, so God takes their sight. They did not live lives believing that God will do both good and harm. They didn’t believe that God keeps God’s promises. The people just lived, assuming they were good people, and that’s all they need.

When we are in God’s house, we expect God to brings comfort and joy. But this text doesn’t do that. This is not a text meant for other people. It’s a text spoken to the people God claims as God’s own. It’s a text meant for us. Prophets bring us words that are harsh. Their words challenge us and terrify us. They can turn us defensive but they are here to change us into the people God wants us to be. Zephaniah wants to know, when it comes to daily life, do we live as if the vision of welcome, love, and hope that God proclaims is what we strive to be or do we pretend that our point of view, expectations, and perspective is the only thing God actually wants?

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 24th Sunday after Pentecost, 11/19/2017.