Category: Sermons

Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

John 8:31-36

My sermon from the 500th Anniversary of the Reformation (October 29, 2017) on John 8:31-36. We were thrilled to worship together with Pascack Reformed Church and First Congregational United Church of Christ! Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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In New York City near the Empire State Building, there’s an entire city block that’s one of my favorite places to go. 32nd street, between 5th Ave and Madison Avenue, is filled with karaoke bars, beauty shops, and bbq restaurants that let you grill seafood, meat, and vegetables right at your table. This block is the heart of Koreatown, a cultural hub for the 200,000 Koreans and Korean-Americans who call the City and the surrounding area – home. When I lived in New York City, I had an old roommate who introduced me to this place. She was born and raised in South Korea so when we went out, we’d let her order for everyone at the table. She’d look at the menu, pick a few dishes, and switch seamlessly between English and Korean as she ordered our meal. And then, once the food arrived, her stories would start. She’d introduce us to a new vegetable, telling us where it grew, how it was used, and when it was harvested. We learned what foods were served on holidays and which dishes her grandmother made to mark special occasions. In her stories, we met extended family members, visited distant villages, and reveled in the old legends and myths that make a culture what they are. The more we ate, the more we experienced the history, culture, and personal stories that made my roommate who she was. Events that I could read about in my history books – like the occupation of Korea by Japan prior to World War 2, the Korean War in the early 1950s, and the dictatorships and the struggle for democracy afterwards, were fleshed out as my roommate told these same stories but with the names of her family members baked in. One of the dishes she introduced to me is Budae Jjigae, known in english as Army Base Stew. After the cease-fire between North and South Korea was signed, food was in short supply. Processed meats from US military bases were smuggled and sold on the local black markets. Spam, Hot Dogs, and various kinds of ham were mixed with Kimchi, Baked Beans, scallions, and whatever else was lying around. Army Base Stew is one of those dishes where literally everything is thrown into a pot – and you have no idea what you’re eating – but it’s delicious – so you just keep on eating. This dish was invented because people were hungry. Families created Army Base Stew to feed each other and their neighbors. This dish tells a story and when eat it, especially if we’re not Korean or we don’t need food pantries or SNAP benefits to survive, this dish moves us to experience something new. This, I think, is one of the amazing things that happens when we mix meals with stories. When we eat together, every story spoken around the table connects, mixes, and forms something new. Instead of learning about someone else’s history and culture, we encounter it, discovering a history and an identity that’s filled with real people with real names. When we listen to these stories over steaming stews, plates of food, and when we’re surrounded by bread and drink – the chewing on the food and the chewing on the words – changes us. We are no longer what we were before. The story and its storyteller have left their mark.

So, it might be a little strange to begin this sermon on the 500th anniversary of a movement that started in Germany by describing a Korean dish that was invented in the 1950s and that I consumed in a city that didn’t even exist when Martin Luther posted his 95 thoughts about Jesus, faith, and the church on a big old church door in Wittenberg on Oct 31, 1517. But if we’re honest, all of us are doing something a little strange today too. At this very moment, we’re supposed to be in our different church buildings using our different liturgical and theological traditions to feed, grow, and reflect on our faith. Each one of our communities can trace their origin to what Luther started 500 years ago but every one of us, including the Lutherans, have traditions and experiences and expectations that put distance between us. We have a long history of using our arguments about God, Jesus, and the Christian faith to keep us from sitting at the same table. During these last 500 years, our churches are not used to coming together. What we’re doing now is still a new thing. We are, as churches, changing our own spaces to become places where we can tell our stories to each other. And one way we do that is, I think, by following, something Martin Luther knew very well. We share ourselves and our Jesus while eating a meal.

A few years after the Reformation started, Luther was given an old monastery as a home. His wife, Katie Luther, had gifts and abilities Martin didn’t. She was the one who could manage the household, oversee their ten employees, keep track of their finances, and she made sure that their 50 person table was open to anyone who stopped by. Luther had a habit of inviting everyone to dinner. Locals and visitors, university professors and students, the rich and the poor, men and women, boys and girls would gather at that table. These dinners were more than just an opportunity to eat delicious food and enjoy a beer that Katie herself brew. Like our own dining room tables, the meal was a place to talk. We know a bit of what was shared around Luther’s table because people would take notes about what was said. Most of the time, students and theologians were trying to pick Luther’s brain, to get him to share a special insight about Jesus and the Christian faith. But for every question about Jesus, there was a story or a confession or a prayer rooted in an encounter with Jesus himself. Someone would admit feeling depressed or sad, sharing some personal demon that kept them awake at night. Another would ask about a piece of dogma or a rule of the church that was causing them some unbearable pain. Over the clatter of dinner plates and the clanging of glasses, the conversation didn’t stay in the “about stages” for very long. Instead, it dug deep into just how hard the faith of everyday life can be. Painful decisions, long periods of living in shadow, the joy of weddings, and even a father changing their child’s diaper – nothing was off limits at that table because, for Luther, nothing about our lives was off limits to God. It wasn’t enough to just know about Jesus. Jesus wanted to be encountered and experienced in the places God revealed him to be. Jesus didn’t want to wait for us to come to him. Instead, he chose to be with us in our everyday, even in those time and places when we are just living our life and don’t see Jesus right there with us. He is there when we shed tears of sorrow and tears of joy. He is there when we cry out in fear or in hope. He’s there when we have a decision to make that we just don’t want to or when everything right now seems easy and carefree. Our encounters with Jesus are not limited to moments that only feel super religiously. Even when we share a meal and tell stories with people who we don’t usually eat with, Jesus makes himself known to each of us. What matters to Jesus isn’t what we know about him. What he wants is for us to know him because he already knows us. When we came into this world, Jesus knew our name before we did. When we were baptized, we were publically acknowledged as belonging to His holy family. And as we grew up in our own families, cultures, traditions, and congregations, we learned stories that made us who we are and we were met by a Jesus telling us how his story, his life, his Cross, and his resurrection makes us into something new. As we celebrate this 500th anniversary of the Reformation and look forward to the years to come, we will keep doing something that is new and is old, all at the same time. We will keep sharing the stories that make us who we are; we will keep opening up our personal spaces so that we can listen to stories that are not our own; we will share bread and drink with all whom God puts in our path; and we will keep holding close to the One who encounters us with a gift of love, a gift of hope, and a gift of faith that frees us to live as Jesus’ people each and everyday.

Amen.

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Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.​

Matthew 22:15-22

My sermon from the 20th Sunday after Pentecost (October 22, 2017) on Matthew 22:15-22. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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One of the “fun” questions my wife and I ask each other, usually as we’re coming home from a night out and there’s babysitter waiting at our house, is the question “do you have money?” And that’s a great question because I usually don’t. I don’t really carry cash. Instead, I’m a little old skool and I carry plastic. I came of age when credit card companies would literally throw cards at you during your first week in college. Over time, I discovered which cards gave me the most reward points and which restaurants didn’t overtly complain when my friends and I plopped down a pile of credit cards to pay for a meal. I’ll admit I didn’t always use credit cards the way I should. And there were times when paying the minimum balance was the only thing I could do. But I’m now at a place in my life where a piece of plastic, or an app on my phone connected to that piece of plastic, is how I physically pay for almost everything. And this credit is how I get to live my life. I’m a homeowner because of credit. I drive my mini-van because of credit. And I’m a pastor because credit let me figure out how to pay (and still pay) for seminary. Credit, to me, is a kind of promise. But it’s also more than that because credit creates relationships. I recently learned that credit and the rating agencies that support what credit can do came into being because people with money to lend and people who wanted that money needed a way to trust one another. That trust became a bond, a kind of faith, between people, moneylenders, and more. But this kind of faith comes with a lot of fine print. There are, in theory, rules everyone needs to follow. And when we borrow, we agree to be rated, to have the details of our life sniffed out so that we can be assigned a score, a number, that tells others our worth. Each credit card transaction is really an agreement, establishing a relationship, and using generations of legalese and case law to describe, in theory, how that relationship should work out. So last night, when I used my credit card to pay $1.89 for 2 cans of blacks beans, I entered into a faith-based relationship with Stop’N Shop and VISA – where the terms and conditions of that relationship were laid out in long bit of fineprint that I’ll never read. My regular, everyday life, needed those two cans of beans so I bound myself to an odd kind of faith that generates relationships and assigns value. I didn’t really think of the implications this all means when I inserted my credit card into a machine. But in light of today’s reading from Matthew, maybe I should.

Jesus’ words here are pretty famous. Even my non-Christian friends quote about what to give to the emperor and what to give to God. When we take Jesus’ words out of context, we can make these words mean whatever we want them too. But if we want to listen to what Jesus is saying, I think we should copy Jesus and do what he does in this passage. He doesn’t just talk to the Pharisees and Herodians, these religious and political groups trying to get Jesus into trouble. He asked them for a coin. And when they dig that coin out of their pockets to show him, I imagine Jesus actually taking that coin and holding it in his hand. A denarius is a Roman coin. And like our coins, it’s covered in symbols and images telling a story. We don’t know exactly what coin it was that Jesus held in his hands but it probably looked like one of our quarters. On one side was a picture of the head of Tiberius, the Roman Emperor, and it’s surrounded by words. The words tell us that Tiberius’ dad is Augustus and that Augustus was a god. On the other side of the coin was a picture of a woman, the Roman goddess of peace, holding an olive branch and a spectre. This peace would be a peace Rome would bring to the entire world… once it conquered it. The coin was more than just a piece of metal used to buy things. The coin was making a statement and a promise. The world, it said, belonged to Rome and the son of a god was sitting on its throne. The Roman war machine, it’s way of life, and it’s beliefs were the source of peace, prosperity, and hope in the world. These coins were worth something because Rome, with all it’s power, was worth everything. The worth of everyone in that crowd, according to that coin, was centered on Rome and nothing else. The people gathered around Jesus mattered because Rome defined their worth.

Now, I’ve never used a denarius to pay for anything. I’ve never called myself a Pharisee or a Herodian and I’m sure you haven’t either. We could, if we wanted to, leave Jesus’ words on the page. But what if we didn’t? What if listened to Jesus, took out our dollars, our checkbooks, our credit cards, and actually looked at the claim they make on our lives? My favorite credit card is dark steel gray, with a chip, two foil logos, and my name on the front. On the back is a magnetic strip, another foil logo, my name again, the credit card number, a few phone numbers, a website, and a statement that says “use of this card is subject to the cardmember agreement.” And then right there in the middle, is the place where I signed; where I agreed, in theory, to everything that card represents. I agreed to use it and let companies collect my information. I agreed to let them make judgments based on the information they collect. I agreed to support this even though their judgments about who is worthy of credit and who isn’t is still impacted by the legacy of racism, sexism, ageism, and predatory practices that sometimes help me and sometimes don’t. I even agreed, in some ways, to not even complain when I go through my yearly ritual of canceling my card and getting a new one because it’s number was stolen from me. To live the life I want to live, I am caught up in a system of credit that, because it’s created by humans, is never far from sin. We didn’t create credit or the sin of greed and racism and other systemic issues that infect the idea of credit or our use of it. And I don’t think any of us really asked to have our worth defined on an arbitrary scale from 300 to 850. Yet the value this system gives us can, through our participation in it, end up defining who we value…and who we don’t. Any faith, any tradition, any idea that gives us value impacts how we view the world and our neighbors. The coin the crowd brought to Jesus claimed that their value depended on Rome. But Jesus asked for this coin during the last week of his life while he was teaching in the Temple. Jesus is, at this very moment in the gospel according to Matthew, standing in the place God promised to dwell and he’s already in the shadow of the Cross. Our ultimate worth isn’t defined by our credit rating, or by our wealth, or by the systems of power and authority that we, as human beings, create, maintain, and reinforce without even thinking about them. Our ultimate worth is defined by the One standing there with that coin in his hand and who faces everything that coin represents: our false trust in power and might, our false belief that violence will bring us peace, and our complicity in the ways our life denies what’s life giving for those around us. Jesus takes all of that and heads to the Cross. He dies because of the things we value, but rises to show what God values instead. In our baptism [and even in the baptism of a young child like —-], our old value system, our old way of life, our old way of seeing who is important and who isn’t, is replaced by a faith that has no fineprint. This faith is a gift that says we’re loved. It’s a statement that we matter more than our credit score. Jesus gives us this gift knowing we won’t always know what to do in every situation and that we will, without thinking, participate in systems and a way of life that impacts others in negative way. Yet the gift he gives us is grounded in the choices God makes and the relationship God chooses. Jesus is loyal to us not because we will always be loyal to him – but because Jesus never gives up on those he loves. He loves us. He loves you. He loves this world [And he already loves —-]. We are given a faith that calls us to lean on God, to lean on Jesus, and lean on love even when our life going forward feels unsure, unsafe, and unknown. Jesus’ love is one credit card we can never max out and it will never be canceled on us, no matter what our credit score becomes. And when we lean on Jesus, we can finally discover how much Jesus value’s us and we will stop seeing ourselves and our neighbors as people only worth their 3 number score. We will see ourselves and our neighbors as Jesus sees us – as people worthy of a love that never stops giving.

Amen.

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“Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country. When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce. But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another. Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way. Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’ But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.” So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him. Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?” They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.” Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’? Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom. The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.” When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them. They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.

Matthew 21:33-46

My sermon from the 18th Sunday after Pentecost (October 8, 2017) on Matthew 21:33-46. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below. Note: the manuscript isn’t perfect. It could have used another going through.

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Growing up, I had a friend who bragged that his dad was the very first person in Colorado to buy a red minivan. This “state changing” event took place in the late 80s and was as a point of personal pride for my friend. Before this, roadways in Colorado were blah – filled with tan, beige, and dull people movers. But once his dad made the bold and visionary choice to buy a bright red Dodge Caravan, the streets of Colorado were never the same. Now, if I’m honest, I never really believed my friend. His dad was a nice guy but he was never a trend setter. I couldn’t see him somehow convincing the entire mini-van buying population of Colorado to change. Instead, I thought my friend never saw the red minivans on the road before because until his dad bought one, he didn’t have to. Minivans are usually boring vehicles to look at. They’re not designed to be seen or paid attention to. But once a red minivan was sitting in my friend’s driveway, once he had to ride in one to and from school everyday, his eyes were finally opened and he saw the red minivan truth that was all around him. He thought the world had suddenly changed once his dad bought a red minivan but it hadn’t. My friend just had no reason to see any red minivans until his dad came home with one. This phenomenon of not noticing what’s really around you until it becomes personal is something that’s been in the back of my head these last few days. I think this phenomenon shows up regularly when we read and hear scripture. We can read the same text from the Bible over and over again but then something changes and we see something we haven’t seen before. We might hear the words spoken by a different voice, experience them in a new place, or just be at a point in our life when these words impact us in a very different way. And sometimes, there are events, events outside our control that just seem to keep happening. And then the words we hear on Sunday take on a new meaning.

For me, in light of last Sunday’s mass shooting in Las Vegas, I wish we didn’t have these scripture passages today. I wish the passage from Isaiah didn’t say bloodshed. I wish the parable Jesus shared in Matthew didn’t talk about people being violently killed. And I wish Jesus didn’t describe himself as a cornerstone that somehow bashes and breaks the people it encounters. Couldn’t this be a Sunday where Jesus welcomed little children? Couldn’t it be a Sunday where Jesus healed someone? If I picked the Bible passages for each Sunday, something more…comforting…would be on our agenda today. But today’s readings were assigned by our lectionary, a three year cycle of texts a team of scholars from many different Christian traditions put together years ago. When they crafted this cycle, they didn’t know Las Vegas would happen. They didn’t know that another record breaking hurricane would be hitting the gulf or that 88% of Puerto Rico would still be out of power after hurricane Maria hit 18 days ago. They didn’t know that the threat of war might be keeping us up at night. They didn’t know about the countless things dominating our news cycle right now. And those crafters of the lectionary also didn’t know what our personal lives would be like, right now. They didn’t know about the fears or anxieties or worries we brought with us into church today. They didn’t know about our broken hearts, our financial concerns, or the hard choices we’re being asked to make. Those scholars didn’t know the personal prayers we repeat every night, those secrets that we hold and wished we could share, and the tears we shed for our loved ones who seem to find a new rock bottom everyday.

Now I believe that the lectionary was inspired by the Holy Spirit. I believe God was personally involved in making sure we hear the words God knows we need. But that’s also a bit of a problem because we, sadly, aren’t God. As much as we would like to tell God how we want God to make us feel, God wants more than being reduced to some kind of feel-good magician in our lives. God wants us to know honest-to-goodness love. God wants us to experience true mercy. God wants us to expect unbelievable hope. And God wants us to live, right now, knowing that God made a bold choice by saying “you are worth living and dying for.” That kind of life isn’t going to always feel good or comfortable because that kind of life requires us to see the world as it truly is. We can’t act as if our personal perspectives and our personal experiences are the one true reality. We live in the world God made and tends. We are not the center of the world. The words Jesus shares with us are not always peaceful because we are not as peaceful as God made us to be. Jesus talked about violent tenants, killings, and other acts of violence because these are images and experiences we are all familiar with. We might never personally experience a mass shooting but if we can hear about it, imagine it, and feel that kind of terror in our souls, then we are never as distant from the kind of violence as we might like to imagine ourselves to be. We can’t just shrug our shoulders and pretend that this is normal, that this is just the way things are meant to be, and that there is nothing we can do change it. That way of thinking assumes that violence is part of what God’s reality is all about. But when we see Jesus, and pay attention to his story, that thought is re-written. When Jesus was arrested and threatened by clubs and swords, he did not lash out. When he was tortured, interrogated, and sentenced to the most violent and shameful death known in the ancient Roman world, he called for no army from above to save him. And when the same crowd that inspired fear in the Pharisees and sadducees today demanded Jesus crucifixion just a few days later, Jesus prayed for those who killed him. And then when he rose on that first Easter morning, he sent his followers to preach, teach, serve, and heal. The violence we inflict on each other is not part of God’s normal. It’s not part of the kingdom of God that Jesus talked constantly about. When violence happens, we mourn, we shed tears, we cry out, we protect each other, and we ask why. And then we move forward, living into a reality where the pain we inflict on each other is not treated like it’s some kind of natural disaster, some kind of act of God that we are helpless to do something against. Instead we notice the true acts of God, the acts of Jesus himself, who did not let our violence win and who promised that no matter what may come, the violence in this world will never overwhelm the eternal love, mercy, and grace God gives to you. Because you are still worth living, dying, and rising for. You are worth living in God’s eternal reality where violence is no more. And since you are worth all of that, we are invited to see experience a foretaste of that reality right now.

Amen.

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When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Jonah 3:10-4:11

My sermon from the 16th Sunday after Pentecost (September 24, 2017) on Jonah 3:10-4:11. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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A couple of miles up the road from here, in Park Ridge, is a big cemetery on the right hand side of the road. Opposite the cemetery is Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church so everyone thinks the graveyard belongs to them, but it doesn’t. Instead, the cemetery belongs to Pascack Reformed Church which has been in the area for a long long time. This graveyard, like all active graveyards, is both new and old. Located inside its property lines are the remains of people who were buried this year and also those from the earliest farm families who first colonized the area. In the 1830s, free blacks started to be entombed there and they were followed years later by African-American veterans of the Civil War. Since the cemetery is old, some of the grave markers have toppled over, been buried, or had their markings rubbed away. But, overall, we know most of the people who were buried there. Yet there’s one section in that cemetery that’s a little mysterious. Behind the parsonage is a hollow in the trees that extends down the hill and to the creek below. There are no grave markers there. Only bushes, grass, and leaves. It looks almost empty…except it’s not. Instead, it’s an old section of the graveyard that might even pre-date the graves we know about from the 1740s. According to word of mouth, that hollow is where Native Americans were buried. Now there’s a debate among local historical societies about who is really there. The hollow has never been scientifically studied and there are no gravestones, of any kind, marking where a body might be. But the words of this graveyard’s existence are still in the air. And the tribes and people that buried their dead there – are, at this point, merely whispers…their names and identities lost to history. In a sense, these Native Americans are still around. We name our roads, towns, and high school mascots after them. But that’s about it. The families that might have remembered the names of those buried in that hollow were replaced by Dutch and Brits, Swedes and Germans, people who took over the land and passed it down to us. The native people who used to call this area home have been forgotten and it’s almost like they never existed. The hollow in that graveyard is the final resting place for a culture, a tribe, and a people that is no more. And that feeling, that reality of a people lost to history, is why Jonah, in our first reading today, is…so upset. As we see in these last verses from his story, Jonah watched as God did a completely ridiculous and unfair thing. God saved the people of Nineveh from destruction even though Nineveh had wiped ten tribes of Israel off the face of the earth.

Nineveh is the capital of the Assyrians, the center of an empire that, in 722 BCE, destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Its capital city, Samaria, was burned. It’s population, ten of the twelve tribes that made up the Israelite people, were deported from their homes. They were forced at spear point to move to cities and villages on the other side of the Assyrian empire. Over time, they lost their traditions. They lost their identity. In short, those ten tribes were lost to history and almost forgotten. Only Jonah, and the remaining Jews around Jerusalem, remembered who they were.

Now, when we remember the story of Jonah, we usually remember the whale. We remember Jonah running away from God’s call. But we usually forget why Jonah refused to go. He didn’t want to bring God’s word to the people who tried to wipe his people off the face the earth. He didn’t want to share God to those he didn’t think were redeemable. Jonah didn’t want the people of Nineveh to hear from God because if God actually spoke to them, then Jonah’s feelings of anger might be undone. Jonah had every right to be angry. And in the system of justice that make sense to us, where retribution is central and people are punished in response to the harm they caused, Nineveh should be destroyed. Jonah should not have to go there. But Jonah, in the end, cannot outrun God. He goes to Nineveh. He spends day and night preaching the same one sentence sermon, telling them to repent. And then….they do. They actually listen. They shouldn’t but they do which makes me think that the Holy Spirit gave them the ears to hear what this prophet from a people they tried to destroy, had to say. And Jonah can’t stand it. Nineveh isn’t supposed to be saved. But God, in the end, is bigger than Jonah. God’s grace and mercy and love are greater than the feelings of hatred and exclusion and violence that cause us to think we can decide who God cares about and who God doesn’t. We want to make our love the limit to God’s love. We want to make the grace we give be the limit to what God can do. We want to decide who gets to exist, who gets to be remembered, and who is finally lost to history. Jonah wanted nothing to do with God’s love. He wanted to erase Nineveh from the world. But the grace of God wanted to do something more. It…loved. God loved the enemy. God loved the ones Jonah thought didn’t deserve mercy, but God gave them mercy anyways. In the end, God loved because Jonah could not. And God showed him and all of us, the only kind of love that can truly change the world.

Amen.

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I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect. For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned. For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Romans 12:1-8

My sermon from the 12th Sunday after Pentecost (August 27, 2017) on Romans 12:1-8. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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I can’t imagine 46” of rain in just a few days. When it rains an inch here in New Jersey, my backyard starts to look like a pool. So if we had 46”, I’m sure my house would just float away. It’s hard to imagine that much rain falling from the sky but that was the forecast I saw yesterday morning as Hurricane Harvey stalled over the southeastern coast of Texas. When the Hurricane made landfall on Friday night, I watched online as a hurricane-chaser was broadcasting the storm coming ashore. I couldn’t actually see anything. It was too dark and too stormy. I could only see these white pixelated blobs, being blown around violently. The stormchaser narrated what he was experiencing which, as the hurricane eye came ashore, was only fear and terror. Even though they were surrounded by thick concrete blocks while taking shelter in the stall of an automated car wash, their car shook back and forth. Once the storm passed, these broadcasters posted pictures of the damage. Houses were blown apart, lakes now exist in what used to be farmer fields, and boats are inland, far from shore. Harvey has weakened into a tropical storm but its threat has skyrocketed. Cities and towns, including Houston, are flooding. They will receive as much rain in a few days as they get in a year. This morning, I saw reports that Houston received 20” of rain overnight and in only 3 hours, broke all their projected once-in-500 years rainfall amounts. People are in danger because not everyone evacuated. Some stayed because that’s what they were going to do. But others were stuck because of health issues, age, or immigration status. The storm is still there. The rain is still falling and falling and falling. It’s hard to even imagine what will happen next.

Now, those of us who lived in this area when Sandy hit, know what storms can do. It’s been years but youth groups from Lutheran churches across the country still come to New Jersey to rebuild and repair homes. These once-in-a-lifetime kind of storms now seem to happen every few years. And the damage they cause can’t be fixed overnight. Once the homes are repaired, the rebuilding of people’s lives begins. And many will never have the kind of life they used to because these kinds of moments, these kinds of storms, change everything. Storms like Harvey, where forecasters don’t even have enough colors in their map legends to show just how much rain will actually fall, disrupt lives, change the physical landscape, and leave lasting wounds on the physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being of everyone who lives through it. The damage from storms like Harvey lingers. Time can’t make this new reality fade away. Instead, the world and our lives become different when we experience a storm like Harvey, or Sandy, or experience a personal hardship that we know we will never get over. Instead, we keep on living because that’s all we can do.

But what does living look like? Paul, in our reading from Romans today, calls us to be a living sacrifice which is a weird phrase to begin with. We mostly think of sacrifices as something we give up or it’s some kind of mental exercise that stays in our head and remains abstract. But in Paul’s day, sacrifices were an everyday reality. Rome was a city full of temples dedicated to various gods who needed real sacrifices. Cows, goats, birds, vegetables, and all sorts of living, breathing, things were regularly killed, burnt up, and sprinkled on altars everywhere. Sacrifices were not abstract to Paul, because he could walk out his front door and see an animal being offered to a god. A sacrifice in Paul’s day meant that a very real thing had to die. This kind of sacrifice asked a god to do something for you or for the nation. Some gods demanded a regular sacrifice as a way of maintaining this human and divine relationship while other sacrifices were one time deals, like buying a lotto ticket and hoping for the best. Sacrifices were also something even God accepted and encouraged at the temple in Jerusalem. People in Paul’s day knew what sacrifices were and what they meant. Something had to die so that others could live. The thing be sacrificed didn’t actually benefit from what happened because it didn’t keep on living. But it was hoped this sacrifice would make a difference for others.
So Paul, writing to these Romans who understood sacrifices and who, as I shared at the start of this journey through Romans weeks ago, were trying to figure out what they needed to do to master their passions and feelings and become the best Romans they could possibly be, Paul knows that these Romans want to know what a Christian life looks like. And he tells them to live a life for others and be that living sacrifice that makes a difference for others instead of themselves. “A living sacrifice” is a ridiculous phrase that doesn’t make any sense but it’s a phrase that shows us what living with Jesus actually looks like. This is Paul taking Jesus’ “love your neighbor as yourself” and fleshing it out. Our relationship with God isn’t just about the big G and me. It’s about you and I and the person sitting next to us being for everyone else. Love, as Paul and Jesus both knew, isn’t just an emotion. Love is a life lived for others.

And that kind of love is…hard. It isn’t easy. And it’s the kind of love that doesn’t always know what to do when we see our friends, neighbors, or even strangers suffering. When we watch as storms uproot and change people’s lives forever, it’s easy to be overwhelmed because we don’t always know exactly what others need. When we ourselves are undergoing our own storms, this call to live for others becomes almost impossible because we are barely keeping our own heads above water. When we can’t help, we need others to step in and when they need help, we need to take a hard step, a difficult step, a step that might cost us something very real and get involved. It’s not easy, as an individual, to be a living sacrifice but Jesus doesn’t ask us to live this Christian life alone because being a Christian isn’t something we can do alone. Storms happen. Floods come. And even if we discover how to turn back climate change, there is still going to be some natural or man-made disaster or war or personal tragedy that is going to make this life hard. We need each other and Paul knows we do because the “you” in this passage isn’t singular. It’s plural. It’s about…all of us…right now. When we were baptized, we were drafted onto Jesus’ team. We were connected with a savior who knew what humans can do, who faced the evil we do to each other, and still went straight to the cross for all of us. We are united with those followers of Jesus in all times and in all places who just lived…and loved..and made a difference even when their hope was just a flicker that only a few people could see. We get to be a living sacrifice because Jesus was, and is, a living sacrifice for us. And we are connected to a community of individuals called to live for each other, no matter what. Our Christian life needs others and is lived most fully when we are in a community because it’s by being in a community that we can get through the storm.

Amen.

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