Pocket Sized Pastor* – Page 20 – *opinions, I haz them.

Community: Unity in the Valley – PV Smoke Signal

Unity in the Valley is comprised of a group of community leaders in the Pascack Valley of Bergen County, New Jersey, united in their opposition to all forms of hate and aggression towards any group or individual. Its mission is to help build tolerance and understanding for all through education in order to foster a safer, more accepting community.

Created in 2018 by local municipal leaders from Hillsdale, Montvale, River Vale and Woodcliff Lake, along with support from the Superintendent of Schools for the Pascack Valley Regional High School District, Unity in the Valley has grown to include a cross-section of religious leaders, student groups, law enforcement and volunteer organizations.

I was one of the faith leaders who spoke at a gathering on March 19, 2019 at Pascack Valley High School. Below is a copy of the article written by Rachel Cohen and Madison Gallo for Pascack Valley’s Smoke Signal: PVRHSD holds Unity in the Valley event at PV.

New Jersey’s 61st Attorney General Gurbir Grewal is the first Sikh in the U.S. to become an attorney general. Gurbir gave a keynote presentation, along with prominent community members, students, faith leaders, and a message from New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer at the Unity in the Valley event that took place at 7 p.m. in the Pascack Valley auditorium on Tuesday, March 19.

“We’re gathering together to say that we’re not going to let someone else change who were are,” said Pastor Marc Stutzel of the Christ Lutheran Church.

Grewal, a Bergen County native who grew up in Westwood and Washington Township, shared anecdotes of times when he was faced with hate. He was sworn in twice as a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, New York, and Bergen County. Grewal was appointed by New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy as the New Jersey Attorney General around 14 months ago.

“As our state’s chief law enforcement officer, I am committed to using all of the tools of this office to protect those in danger,” Grewal said. “We must treat an act of hate against any one of our communities as an act of hate against all of our communities. We must also push back when the federal government fails to protect all of its residents or when it pursues half baked policies that do nothing to make us safer. It’s not just the federal government — we must also hold our local governments accountable.”“

Grewal is a Sikh, which means he practices Sikhism, a religion founded in the Northern Indian region of Punjab. As a Sikh, Grewal covers his head with a turban. He is the first Sikh Attorney General in the nation.

Grewal said children have approached him asking for three wishes or if he was Osama Bin Laden while their parents stood by and did nothing. While Grewal was the Chief Law Enforcement Officer of New Jersey, he was stopped at a security gate because the guard claimed he “wasn’t on the list” to speak to young professionals at a corporation in New Jersey; ironically, he was giving a presentation about diversity and inclusivity.

“I have been told to go back home so many times and in such impolite terms, but I know they don’t mean go back to Bergen County,” Grewal said. “I have been called at times a towel head, a rag head, a terrorist. Sometimes, I endure these experiences alone, but unfortunately other times, I’ve experienced them as my three young daughters have watched.”

“[Hateful comments] are no longer being confined to the dark corners of the internet,” Grewal said. “They are now being said in our public squares. We have seen recent acts of vandalism across this county and across the state where individuals have painted the walls of schools, synagogues, and homes of words that we thought long disappeared from our memories. It happened right here at Pascack Valley, and it happened more than once. Just one week after finding those swastikas, officials found racist and homophobic slurs etched onto plaques of the baseball field.”

Personal ties to hate influence Mayor of Montvale

Michael Ghassali, the mayor of Montvale and the president of the Pascack Valley Mayors Association, said that hate is “a crime, an offense like murder, arson, and vandalism with bias against race, color, religion, disabilities, sexual orientation, gender, and nationality” while he was discussing experiences of hate in his personal life.“

One of the instances he spoke about was the murder of his cousin in May of 2015 at the hands of terrorists from ISIS.

“In 1915, 1.5 million Armenians and 600 Syrians were killed because of their faith and their nationality, and between 1941 to 1945, 6 million Jewish people were killed because of their faith and millions suffered,” Ghassali said. “As recent as the last few years, 500,000 Muslims and Christians were killed in Iraq and Syria because of their beliefs. We stand here today to declare that we will not stand for hate in any form and towards anyone.”

Ghassali said that students and children can become “wonders” to the world to make society an accepting place.

“They can cure cancer, they can build bridges and highways to make our lives better, and I promise you,” Ghassali said, “we are here to cheer you on.”

‘The wound is still blistering’

PV seniors and co-presidents of PV’s Human Rights League Bianca Belmonte and Samantha Nicklas spoke about the need for individuals to act in order to make a difference.

“We became infamous for publishing an opinion piece on [The Smoke Signal] that addressed the racism and bigotry going on in our school,” Belmonte said. “It was the Human Rights League that ripped the bandaid off the wound and acknowledged what was happening. But unfortunately, that wound is still blistering.”

Belmonte and Nicklas said they want to encourage students to be someone who makes a change by being “proactive rather than reactive.”“

“We didn’t want to say that we’ve moved on and everything’s in the past and that it’s all better now,” Nicklas said. “We wanted to be as real as possible and address what is really going on in the school.”

Belmonte and Nicklas wanted to place an emphasis on depicting the school’s climate genuinely during their presentation, and according to Belmonte, “even the students who aren’t in the Human Rights League know that the [PV] is not in the best shape right now.”

“We understand that the work we do is hard and often unpopular,” Nicklas said. “The Human Rights League is a small group that continues to work tirelessly, and sadly, often times singularly, without as much support from the school or community as we would like. Unfortunately, we cannot force members of the school community to participate. We cannot force people to care.”

PVRHSD Superintendent Erik Gundersen recaps the event

Unity in the Valley, according to Pascack Valley Regional High School District Superintendent Erik Gundersen, is not really an organization. Instead, he refers to it as a concept: “It’s the message, it’s the mission, it’s the symbol.” He intends for Unity in the Valley to be a “larger and louder” message to the symbols of hate.

The organizers of this event are comprised of one city council member from each of the four towns in the PVRHSD: Hillsdale, Montvale, River Vale, and and Woodcliff Lake.

“If we can get the 99.9 percent of our community to rally around Unity in the Valley, that will drown out the 0.1 percent of the individuals that are spreading the wrong message,” Gundersen said. “The student speakers were phenomenal, the faith leaders really have a perspective and an angle that we weren’t able to replicate as a school district, and I thought the representatives from the Anti-Defamation league and certainly the Attorney General just had fantastic and meaningful messages for all of us.”

Sermon: What It Means

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”
Luke 13:1-9

My sermon from the Third Sunday in Lent (March 24, 2019) on Luke 13:1-9.

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“What does this mean?” is a pretty Lutheran question. If you opened up your copy of The Small Catechism, Martin Luther’s booklet to help parents teach their children what faith is all about, you would see a version of that question all over. Luther used the Apostle’s Creed, the 10 commandments, and the Lord’s prayer as tools to show everyone why Jesus matters. Now, if you grew up Lutheran, hearing that question might make you a bit uncomfortable. Because for generations, we traumatized 13 year olds at the end of their Confirmation programs by making them stand in front of the entire congregation and recite, from memory, Luther’s answers to that question. In the Confirmation program I teach, I no longer make kids do that. But we do spend a lot of time with the question: what does this mean? In fact, that’s pretty much the standard question we all ask whenever we are face-to-face with the Bible and with Jesus. When we discover terms, ideas, or stories that confuse us, that question helps us to find meaning in the things we don’t understand. But the search for meaning is more than a search for understanding. We also want to make this encounter with faith useful for our everyday life. That usefulness can be as simple as finding a moral argument we can use in our decision making or, when we’re confronted by a text that makes us a uncomfortable, we might want to find way to explain it away so we can ignore it. In the words of Diane Jacobson, we sometimes approach the bible, looking to “…[boil it] down to its core essentials.” We want every verse to have a obvious meaning, every paragraph to be a statement of faith, and every story about Jesus condensable into 140 characters or less. If we can strip down faith, we can then insert that faith into the things we already do, think, and feel. The question, “what does this mean?” is one of the ways we try to turn an encounter with faith into an actual faith that’s lived out in our lives.

But that question doesn’t show up only in our encounter with the Bible. Because how many times have you starred in the mirror, looking at your current life, and wonder, “what does this mean?” How many times have you reflected on your family, your community, and maybe the entire world and found yourself praying, “what does this mean?” Our search for meaning isn’t limited to only our engagement with the Bible. Our search for meaning shows up in every moment of our lives. When we have a chance to catch our breath while living through a whirlwind of joy, despair, tears, and sorrow – “what does this mean?” is the right question. It’s a faithful question and one I believe God wants us to ask. But the simple, quick, and easy answer we want might not be the actual answer God’s telling us to hold on to.

In our reading today from the gospel according to Luke, “what does this mean?” is a question the people around Jesus knew very well. We find ourselves dropped into the climax of a conversation Jesus began in chapter 12 while surrounded by a crowd of thousands. Jesus switched back and forth between talking to his disciples and to the crowd. He told those who followed him to be ready; to live confidently, trusting God, and encouraging them to remain faithful to what God was already doing. But that faithfulness wasn’t a call to wait and see what God was up to. Rather, since Jesus was with them, God had already made the first move. Everyone was invited to participate in what was already happening. People were being fed; the sick were being healed; the demons that drove people apart were being casted out; and those society chose to ignore were being seen, noticed, and restored to the community by Jesus himself. God was literally on the move and they were told to join in. The answer to the question of “what does this mean” when Jesus showed up was to get behind him so that God could take you where God knew you needed to go.

Now, it’s at that moment when some in the crowd asked Jesus a “what does this mean” question of their own. They had watched the government brutally murder a group of people who had gathered for worship and they knew of a building disaster in Jerusalem that had killed 18 people. Neither of those groups had the opportunity to jump on board with what God was currently doing. The crowd wanted to know what does it mean since they missed Jesus. Did they die because they were worse than others? Was their suffering, pain, and sorrow caused by their sin and does God, somehow, love them less? Jesus answered: no. Violence, pain, suffering, and the things we don’t understand are not a sign that God loves us less. Nor are those kinds of experiences an example of God abandoning us in our hour of need. I honestly believe God’s heart breaks everytime ours does and we have a Jesus who knows exactly what it’s like to weep. Jesus’ divinity does not overwrite his humanity and his love for us cannot be overwritten by our brokenness, sorrow, or sin.

Yet we will not always receive a simple, clear, or exact answer to the question, “what does this mean?” Pilate, the Roman governor, was wrapped up in an ideology and way of life that had no problem killing those who didn’t believe, act, or serve Rome like he did. His behavior seems like something we might understand or, at least, see other examples of in the world around us. But when the tower of Siloam collapsed…that’s just what it did. We would like to know what it all means. We would like to know how we can take reality, mix in a little faith, and come out on the other side with an answer protecting us from what comes next. Yet the reality of our being alive means that we also need to come to grips with the mystery of meaning and the uncertainty of not knowing. And that kind of uncertainty is at the heart of parable Jesus used about the fig tree and the gardener.

In the words of Eric D. Barreto, “Many of Jesus’ stories leave us with uncertainty…. we do not know if manure and a gardener’s touch ends up making any difference whatsoever. Does the gardener just delay the inevitable? Does the gardener hold off for one year the fig tree’s destiny of serving as compost for another, more productive tree?” Jesus’ parable ended before it could reach any kind of resolution. We are left with that tree, in the uncertainty of “one more year.” We find given the opportunity to notice what God is doing while realizing the urgency of what such a call truly means. Following Jesus isn’t something we’re asked to do tomorrow. Following Jesus is something we get to do today. In your baptism and in your faith, you are wrapped up by Jesus who isn’t waiting for you to be perfect before he called you to follow him. Instead, he came to you as you are so that you, through Him, can become exactly who God knows you can be. But, if we’re honest, we’re not always sure exactly what that means. A life with faith is a life that will sometimes be uncertain. A life with faith is a life that’s often doubting. A life with faith is a life that will often ask “what does this mean?” Yet, even when we don’t know the answer and we’re at a loss of what to do next – that doesn’t mean we’re alone or that God loves us less. When we find ourselves not being able to see the way forward, that’s when we’re called to get behind Jesus, because he’s already leading the way.

Amen.

Sermon: Join In

Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us. For many live as enemies of the cross of Christ; I have often told you of them, and now I tell you even with tears. Their end is destruction; their god is the belly; and their glory is in their shame; their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.
Philippians 3:17-4:1

My sermon from the Second Sunday in Lent (March 17, 2019) on Philippians 3:17-4:1

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Everything we do on Sunday morning had to be invented. The type of prayers we say, the kind of music we sing, and the special vestments I wear – all of it comes from somewhere. Some items are pretty easy to explain, like my alb, the robe that I wear. It’s colored white as a reminder of our baptism and it resembles the kind of basic, everyday clothing, that people actually wore in the Roman world 2000 years ago. But not everything we do on Sundays is so easy to explain or so old. In the mid 1890s, the New York Times and other newspapers reported on a new trend in holy communion that had gone viral. Some of the more “hip” churches in Brooklyn were starting to use, for the very first time, individual communion cups. This trend was so compelling that reporters went to church to see how the people would react. Yet the energy behind this new movement in communion didn’t come from theology or some rediscovery of an ancient church practice. No, individual communion cups were all the rage because by the 1890s, the world had finally discovered germs.

Now, it’s sort of amazing to imagine a time when we didn’t know about germs. Pretty much every cleaning item today brags about how many viruses and bacteria it can kill. But before the 1870s, germ theory and the dangers of microorganisms were not widely accepted. Yet as the science matured, people discovered how diseases could be transferred from person to person and how hygiene mattered. Hospitals began, for the first time, sterilizing their equipment and cities worked on the problem of sanitation. Dozens of new scientific journals dedicated to the wonders of hygiene started being published. And as indoor plumbing started to become more widespread, taking baths more than once a month became part of our cultural standard. A certain kind of cleanliness, once reserved for the very rich, was now available to many people, including the new “middle class.” It wasn’t enough to just own a large house. Your home, your body, and your entire life needed to be cared for, maintained, and “cleaned.” In other words, you needed to match society’s new definition of what was hygienic and everything that didn’t match this new spirit of “clean” was pushed away.

Entrepreneurs, caught up in this moment in history, noticed how all kinds of people drank out of the same cup when sharing holy communion. A new technology needed to be invented to bring the spirit of hygiene to the practice of holy communion. Many different people, all at the same time, filed patents for individual communion glasses as a way to combat the supposed scourge of unhygienic holy communion. By the time individual communion cups finally reached New York City, the buzz had been brewing for so long that a Brooklyn church advertising their use was standing room only on Sunday mornings. Soon after, religious newspapers and theological journals were full of letters and articles debating the new practice. Some challenged it on theological grounds while others advocated for the individual cups as a way to make Sunday morning as clean as Jesus wanted it to be. The debate over individual communion glasses lasted decades with the question of hygiene dominating every argument. Science, not theology, was now the go-to for the how-to of holy communion.

Yet in the dozens of articles, letters, and minutes from Lutheran churches who argued about this issue that I’ve read, it seems that the idea of hygiene rather than any scientific evidence was the real driving force behind the debate. Rarely did anyone show bacteria growing on chalices or give evidence showing how one communion cup spread some infectious disease. Instead, that conclusion was assumed to be true. Communion chalices had to be, according to advocates for the new practice, covered in germs. But that wasn’t the chalice’s fault. Rather, the real problem was the kind of people who drank from that chalice. And if you weren’t careful, the wrong kind of people would have touched that cup before you and they would make you sick.

Over and over again, early advocates for individual communion cups moved from a general statement about hygiene to detailed arguments designed to make you afraid. They weren’t worried about people who dressed like you, looked like you, or lived in the same economic class as you. Instead, they were concerned about that other person who happened to be kneeling next to you at the communion rail. And since the authors couldn’t use science to diagnosis that fictional person, they vilified them instead. Using every ethnic, racial, and economic dog whistle they could, the authors of these writings tried to frighten so-called “respectable people” from being contaminated by what the “other” might have touched. Actual science and facts didn’t matter. Consciously or unconsciously, the early advocates for the individual communion glasses gave in to, and promoted, fear. It wasn’t germs they were worried about. Rather, they were concerned about who God might want them to share communion with. They had no problem communing with someone who fit into their ‘clean’ world but if someone didn’t dress like them, talk like them, shop in the same places like them, live in the same economic class as them, or look like them, then holy communion was literally off the table. Their claim as citizens of their so-called hygienic world was only available to a select few and that opportunity for citizenship was denied to anyone who they didn’t already pre-approve.

Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, made a claim about citizenship that’s almost easy to miss. He was, as he wrote this letter, probably in prison writing to one of the many church communities he founded. That community, like all early church communities, struggled in the face of persecution, challenge, and internal conflict. Paul wanted to offer the two dozen or so followers of Jesus in Philippi some hope. The community there was surrounded by thousands of people who didn’t believe. Many of these early followers of Jesus probably didn’t grow up Jewish and they came from a variety of social and ethnic backgrounds. A few were probably even slaves. We can assume that a sizable portion of the church in Philippi were not Roman citizens and that they never expected to be granted that status. It wasn’t easy for them to keep the faith since so many other people were against them. So Paul wrote to strengthen them, encourage them, and remind them whose they are. No matter where they came from, what they used to believe, what language they spoke, what status they had, or what their personal hygiene actually was – they, because of the gift of faith and the gift of their baptism, belonged to God. Their citizenship in God’s kingdom, as they were, was already secure. Even in the midst of fear, terror, and conflict, they were Christ’s and Christ was already there’s. By standing firm in the Lord, they could live into a hope that would transform them into something brand new. They were no longer merely what they once were or limited by what the citizenship of the world could offer them. They were citizens of God’s eternal kingdom and that, to Paul, changed everything.

But that citizenship isn’t a citizenship that’s only to come. Rather, for all who follow Jesus, that citizenship is here, right now. Jesus’ own ministry was a sign of God’s kingdom come near and as citizens of God’s kingdom, our very lives are called to do the same. We are rooted in an identity that will not let he worlds we create for ourselves hold us back from fully embracing the diverse world that God not only created but, through Christ, God truly loved. We are called to dismantle, uproot, and undo any worldview that aims to do the opposite of what Jesus did. We are not here to deny citizenship of others; rather, we are called to live as if our citizenship actually matters. In the face of hate, evil, extremism, violence, and the very small worlds that we too, try to create and maintain, we are reminded that we are, first and foremost, citizens of heaven. And as citizens of heaven, the only thing we can do is to be like Jesus and that means, no matter the cost, we’re here to just love.

Amen.

Reflection: It’s a Mystery

When Stephen Hawking died last year, I noticed a debate surrounding depictions of him in the afterlife. Regardless of his personal beliefs, people chose to depict him walking in heaven. Since Professor Hawking used a wheelchair due to ALS (otherwise known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), he was now, in death, shown walking again. It’s a normal instinct, I think, to imagine the afterlife in this way. Even the book Heaven is for Real (which was popular a few years ago), imagined heaven being the place where we are our “best self.” This “best” is usually described as meaning we’re physically on point while in the afterlife. If we wear glasses on earth, then heaven should be a place where we all receive the best laser-eye corrective surgery. If we suffer physical ailments today, heaven is the place where those ailments no longer limit us. And if we are confined, disabled, or struggling in this life, eternal life should be the opposite of that. We imagine heaven being the place where we are physically whole and this wholeness, we say, cannot include the limitations of our human life.

Paul, in today’s reading from 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50, was addressing questions about the nature of the Resurrection. In last week’s reading, Paul wrote that our faith and hope rested in the reality of Christ’s Resurrection. Without it, the followers of Jesus might be following a great guy but they are not following a savior. Today’s reading continues by expanding on why the Resurrection should matter to each of us. Through our baptism and faith, we have been united with the new thing that God has started in the world. As I often say in funeral liturgies, we have not only been baptized into his death but we also have been united into Jesus’ Resurrection. Our experience of the human story is no longer the limit. God has another chapter planned for each of us. And that chapter is rooted in the Resurrection that involves, on some level, an actual body. No one really knows what Paul meant by “spiritual body.” Paul did not believe or teach that we have an immortal soul that is separate from our human body. Paul, instead, believed that our identity as human beings is always embodied. We are who we are because of all our thoughts and experiences. And these experiences are generated, recorded, and handled by a real body.
The Resurrection, to Paul, wasn’t about gaining a new body that is perfect. Rather, Paul wrote that the next chapter of our story will be a brand new reality. Paul had no idea what we’ll look like in the afterlife or during the Resurrection (the only model we have is Jesus as described in the gospels who is still wounded). But Paul knew that we will be living eternally as only God can imagine us to be. Heaven, the afterlife, and the Resurrection isn’t about living as our best selves. Instead, it’s about becoming fully who we are because we will be experiencing Christ’s love fully face-to-face.

This is a reflection published in Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, 2/24/2019.

Sermon: Who We Are

¹⁴Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. ¹⁵He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
¹⁶When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” ²²All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?”
²³He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” ²⁴And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. ²⁵But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, ²⁶yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. ²⁷There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” ²⁸When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. ²⁹They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. ³⁰But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
Luke 4:14-30

My sermon from the 4th Sunday after Epiphany (February 3, 2019) on Luke 4:14-30.

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One of the difficult things about reading scripture is knowing when to pause. Our translations try to help by including periods and commas and other kinds of punctuation. But that doesn’t mean we always get it right. In fact our experience of Scripture can sometimes get in its own way. When Luke, with the work of the Holy Spirit, compiled his version of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, he expected people to interact with his words via their ears. The Christian community, at that time, was only two or three generations removed from Jesus’ public ministry. And small assemblies, of maybe a few dozen people, were scattered around the Mediterranean sea. On Sunday mornings, these groups would meet in a private house to pray, to talk about Jesus, and to eat. When they worshipped, someone was usually elected to read a piece of text from either a book or a letter or a scroll – out loud. No one else, in that gathering, would have those words in front of them. Instead, everyone would listen. Now, this pattern for worship is something we continue to this day. But our context has changed. We, in this church, pretty much expect everyone around us to know how to read. We print everything we need for worship in our bulletin, in a font size we hope you can see. And when someone at our church reads Scripture out loud, we can physically see each others’ heads and eyes bounce from one word to the next as we follow along. Our experience of Scripture in this place, and in other areas of our lives, happens via reading. And we have, as a community, become somewhat bound to how we read this written word. When we come to the end of a sentence, we hurry to the start of the next. And if we don’t run into a paragraph break, one where we have to physically shift our eyes down and to the left, we end up zooming through pauses that we’re not supposed to miss. When we read through Scripture, trying to get to the end of the text, we sometimes miss seeing those gaps of drama where we discover the long pause of new life that Jesus gives to all of us.

Now I already gave a hint of where I think the pauses matter in our gospel reading today. And those pauses bookend the second half of Jesus’ sermon. As we heard last week, this text is Luke’s version of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. After gaining a positive reputation while preaching around Galilee, Jesus headed back to his hometown of Nazareth and visited the synagogue he grew up in. While there, he was handed a scroll from the book of Isaiah to read out loud. So Jesus unrolled it, found a few verses from different chapters in Isaiah, merged the texts together, and summed everything up with a one sentence declaration. Everyone in the synagaoe was pretty impressed and they started to say really good things about him. But after a few moments, at the end of the verse 22, there’s this odd little pause and what the people thought they heard started to change. It’s as if the weight of Jesus’ words, after having a moment to linger in the ears of those who heard them, started to work on them in a different sort of way. No longer did they only hear the good things they thought they were entitled to. Instead, they realized that Jesus’ words were also convictng them. Jesus kept that energy going, upending their unspoken desire for him to make good on everything he said since he was the hometown kid. Instead, he pointed to examples in Scripture where God’s love went to places it wasn’t expected. Jesus brought up the prophet Elijah who traveled across the border, into a hostile and non-Jewish land, to bring healing to a non-Jewish woman and her family while the rest of the people of Israel suffered. And then, Jesus named another prophet, Elisha, who met up with Naamen the Syrian, a successful general who regularly won battles against the people of Israel and Judah. Neither the widow nor the general were seen as the ones who should receive the Lord’s favor. And yet that widow was fed in a time of famine and that general was restored to wholeness. Each of them were given a new opportunity to thrive while still participating in a non-Jewish way of life that challenged God. The king Naamen served and the kingdom where the widow lived would be a thorn in the side of the Israelites for generations to come. And yet God’s love went out to them, to a place and to a people where God’s love wasn’t supposed to be found.

So the community got mad because they felt entitled to a promise that Jesus knew was bigger than them. They heard about captives being freed, the oppressed being liberated, and good news being given to the poor but they missed how these promises undercut any sense of entitlement they thought they had. These promises weren’t theirs only because of who they imagined themselves to be. Instead, God’s promises always begin, and end, in what God does. And what God does is love which means the sense of entitlement found in Jesus’ hometown and the sense of entitlement found even in the church cannot limit what’s possible with God. When Jesus said, “today this scripture has been fulfilled,” he meant it. And a promise of good news for the poor does not mean that the financially secure will somehow get off scot free. Jesus isn’t interested in defining his life by what we think we, or others, deserve. He, instead, is our Savior which means the entitlements we articulate and those we silently hold onto don’t stand a chance. When we define our relationships to each other, our neighbors, and our world by what we think we deserve because of what we’ve done or because of whatever opinion we happen to hold, we suddenly find Jesus on the other side of that border we created, serving the widow we refused to see. Everytime we believe we are entitled to Jesus, Jesus pauses, giving us the space to get out of our own way so that we can see what God’s unentitled love actually does.

And that, I think, is what the second pause in our text gives us. At the end of verse 29, the crowd should have thrown Jesus off the clift. But they don’t. Instead, there’s this pause where, I think, the full weight of Jesus’ words became real to them. Because even though good news for the poor isn’t, initially, good news for the rich, Jesus’ words challenge all of us towards a way of life where even those who don’t expect God’s love actually receive it. Jesus isn’t bound to whatever entitlements, words, or experiences we find ourselves wrapped up in. Instead, we, through our baptism and through our faith, are offered a pause from our way of life and, instead, gifted his. Through his words, his presence, and his story, we discover a Savior who isn’t interested in what we think we’re entitled to. But rather, he’s much more interested in giving us a new way of love where the poor are entitled to good news, where the oppressed are entitled to freedom, and where all people, including a widow, a general, a member of his hometown synagogue, and even you and me are gifted a new life that finds its fullness, when we, like God, just love.

Amen.

Sermon: Missing the Big Things

¹⁴Then Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding region. ¹⁵He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
¹⁶When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, ¹⁷and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
¹⁸“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to set free those who are oppressed,
¹⁹to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
²⁰And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. ²¹Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
Luke 4:14-21

My sermon from the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany (January 27, 2019) on Luke 4:14-21.

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It takes about three or four cold spells to hit our area before I start dressing correctly for the weather. Now, to be sure, I’ve never been the kind of guy who wears shorts when it’s snowing out but it takes time for me to adjust my wardrobe once the temperature drops below freezing. What I do first is switch out my summer newscap for my winter one, pretending that I’ll be warmer even though my ears, face, and neck are still totally exposed. I then put on a thin hoodie under my fake leather jacket so that when I’m standing outside my kids’ school in the middle of December, I can tell myself I’m “feeling fine.” But when the temperature finally gets cold enough to freeze the pipes in my house, I just give up and I start layering my shirts and my pants correctly. After each weather event, it takes time to adjust to the new climate we’re in. We might try to hold onto the weather we’re about to lose, acting as if our fashion choices are powerful enough to change mother nature itself. Or we might be so wrapped up in our own lives that we miss seeing the pattern each individual weather event is pointing to. When we don’t step back and re-adjust our perspective, we end up mistaking the weather for the climate. And this mistake ends up giving us a false picture of the world. So, for example, our experience of the cold caused by a polar vortex might blind us to the reality of climate change. As we busily wrap ourselves up in our down winter jackets, we might miss seeing how, over the last fifty years, our warming climate has caused trees to literally move, shifting their natural habitat further north. We might complain about having to wear heavy wool socks while sitting in our homes yet we don’t realize that our homes were never designed for the new climate were already in. Camp Koinonia, an outdoor ministry that we’ve supported for almost sixty years, had to temporarily close last summer because a wetter and warming climate their buildings were never designed for left them with a ton of mold. We can be so wrapped up in our personal moments that we end up missing the bigger picture we’re already in. When we mistake the weather for the climate, when we act as if our personal perspective is the only perspective worth having, and when we start saying that our opinions are really the only true facts there are, we end up placing ourselves at the center of the universe. And when we put ourselves at the center of it all, we do more than just fail to see the climate we’re already in. We end up missing Jesus, who came to upend our climate once and for all.

So as a way to keep Jesus at the center of it all, we’re going to do something different for the next two weeks. Our lectionary, the three-year cycle of Bible readings we read in worship every Sunday, decided to turn this climatic moment from the gospel according to Luke into two smaller events. The first part sets the stage, which takes place in Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. Jesus, according to Luke, began his public ministry there. After gaining some reputation as a teacher while visiting the surrounding communities, Jesus returned to Nazareth and, as was his custom, went to worship. He attended the synagogue he grew up in which means he was surrounded by people who thought they knew exactly who he was. Jesus, as worship got underway, volunteered to be a lector, a reader of scripture, and so they gave him a scroll to read outloud. After unrolling the scroll of Isaiah, Jesus found the specific pieces of scripture he wanted to share. He read those verses outloud, rolled the scroll back up, and handed everything back to the attendant. Jesus, then, sat down, signalling to everyone that he was about to teach. Everyone in that synagogue turned their eyes towards him because they expected him to speak. And so, after reading about bringing good news to the poor and letting the oppressed go free, the lectionary chose to end this first part with Jesus’ one line sermon at verse 21: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Now, that verse is really at the middle of the story. There’s still a lot of text that follows. But if we chose to limit our story to what took place between verses 14 and 21, we could imagine this moment as a happy one. Jesus is at his hometown synagogue, he’s got a good reputation, and he seems to be saying that God is about to bring the community good things. The people in that synagogue heard Jesus say that the blind will see, captives will be released, the oppressed will go free, and that Jesus will bring good news to the poor. Jesus’ words here are very specific, not only implying that these things will happen in the future; he says they’re going to happen in the here and now as well. Nothing in Jesus’ scripture reading and short sermon, on the surface, imply that he might be doing anything that upsets or challenges the people around him. And at first glance, Jesus’ words don’t seem as if they are going to cost those in the synagogue practically anything. And yet, when we go through the whole story, finally grasping the full climate of what’s going on, we see everyone filling with rage and trying to throw Jesus off a cliff.

When we focus on the weather and miss the climate, we end up with an incomplete picture of what is going on. We let ourselves get wrapped up in smaller stories that end up derailing the wider narratives that demand our attention. We find ourselves chomping at the bit whenever some event dominates our short national attention span, choosing to fight over the details of that story instead of addressing the systematic and social realities that allowed such an event to happen in the first place. We see this lived out whenever a discriminatory act is described as fake news or whenever an ugly act of hate is downplayed as an act of “a lone wolf” or “someone who didn’t know better.” Our fights about the weather are our way of ignoring the climate we live in yet the more we ignore this climate, the more unpredictable and scary our weather becomes. The people listening to Jesus in that synagogue assumed they knew what weather Jesus was living in. What they didn’t expect was that Jesus was here to change the climate that impacted everyone. No longer would we be bogged down in whatever weather we are caught up in. Instead, Jesus promised a new reality where restoration, care, and justice was the focus of us all. That kind of climate is a one that knows we can’t decenter ourselves from our universes on our own. So Jesus, at the Cross, did that for us. Through his life, death, and resurrection, God made all of us the center of God’s universe so that we, through our baptism and faith, could make God the center of ours. That new center, rooted in a God who anoints; a God who sets free; a God who restores; and a God who brings good news to the poor; grants to us a new climate where the weather of love, hope, and mercy rules. And since we are part of God’s climate, we can live as if God’s climate truly matters, helping ourselves, our neighbors, and our world change into the place where God’s weather always reigns.

Amen.

Prepare: God and the Wilderness

In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’”

Luke 3:1-6

My sermon from the Second Sunday of Advent (December 9, 2018) on Luke 3:1-6. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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I’d like to start my sermon today by inviting you to forget something we just did. We heard a tiny bit of Jesus’ story from the gospel according to Luke which is one of the four gospels that contain the theological insights that serve as a foundation for our faith. Every Sunday morning, I introduce our reading from the gospels by inviting you to stand if you are able and then I say something like, “The gospel according to Luke, the Third Chapter.” This introduction prepares us for what comes next. We know we’re going to hear Luke’s version of Jesus’ story and since we’re in the third chapter, we’re already moving through the story God wanted to tell. In fact, we know exactly where we are in God’s story, including chapter and verse, because, at Christ Lutheran Church, everything is printed in our bulletin. But what if it wasn’t? What if there was no introduction to this text at all? I imagine it might sound different. So let’s try it. Let’s forget everything we just heard, including where this text appears in God’s story, and let’s listen to the first two verses as if we’ve never really heard them before: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

If we didn’t know better, those two verses sounded like the beginning of an epic story. We met an Emperor, a governor, two rulers, two high priests, God, and some guy named John who was hanging out in the wilderness. The text begins at a specific time, in the fifteenth year of some Roman emperor’s rule, and it’s okay if you don’t have the years of the reigns of all the Roman Emperors memorized. What matters is that these verses are focused on a specific time and on a specific place where everything is defined by who was in control. The Emperor Tiberius was on top. He’s the one who appointed the governor and he allowed Herod and Philip and Lysanias to rule as kings subordinate to him. Even the religious authorities were under the Emperor’s control because no high priest could assume their office unless Roman power let it be so. So we received seven names, showing us the complete picture of who had power when this part of Jesus’ story took place. And that’s when the word of God, God’s voice, God’s energy, God’s point of view, and God’s power, came to a guy named John who was hanging out in the wilderness.

Now, the wilderness John was in was overseen by one of the rulers the Roman emperor put in place. But being a ruler of a place and actually ruling it are two different things. In the Bible, a wilderness was always a strange, mysterious, and untamed place. We might imagine John wandering into ancient Israel’s version of the Alaskan frontier, a place where wild animals ruled and where the necessities for human life were hard to come by. A wilderness, especially in the Bible, was a place of desolation and scarcity. But a wilderness was also, at the same time, an experience of God’s provision and protection. During the story of the Exodus, the ancient Israelites complained constantly about spending 40 years in a place without enough food and water. But that wilderness was also where God provided them manna and its desolation shielded them from being re-enslaved by their former Egyptian rulers. Later, the young David who eventually became king and the prophet Elijah both fled into the wilderness for safety and, while there, they were sustained and protected by God. The wilderness, according to Scripture, is more than just a desert or an untamed mountain range. The wilderness is also an experience where our normal sense of who’s in charge and who’s in control is undone. Our wildernesses are those moments, places, and even years where the control we assumed we had over our lives is turned around. John wasn’t only hanging out in a desolate and untamed place. He was also living into an experience where he had limited control. The structure of order and power proclaimed by the first seven names that started this passage wasn’t where John was living. Instead, John was in the middle of his wilderness, in the middle of nowhere; a nowhere that fully embodied the isolation, the fear, and the anxiety we all experience when we are in our “nowheres” too.

Yet it’s in that “nowhere” where the word of God comes. It’s in those untamed and uncontrolled moments when God shows up. The word of God skipped over the seven names of those who had control and instead went to an eighth name living in the wilderness. We sometimes act as if John, the son of Zechariah, appeared in the wilderness suddenly, only when the word of God showed up. But John wasn’t only passing through the wilderness when God’s word came. Instead, he had been in the wilderness for a very long time. The fifteen years of the reign of Tiberius was also a signal to us that John’s life in the wilderness lasted longer. John’s faith, personal growth, and spiritual strength developed in that place where scarcity, isolation, desolation, fear, and lack of control was all he knew. God formed John to be the one who could prepare the way for Jesus, not in spite of his wilderness experiences but because of them. John knew that, when we’re living in the wilderness, it’s only by trusting God that we can be carried through.

Our wildernesses might not fully match up with John’s. There’s a good chance we won’t find ourselves near the Jordan River, deep in a deserted desert. Our wildernesses, instead, might be located in a doctor’s office, a school, at work, or even in our homes. Our wilderness might, instead, be something we carry with us as we live our life with grief, or sadness, or a lack of knowing who, exactly, we’re supposed to be. The wildernesses we live in might last a day, a week, a year, or even a lifetime. Yet our personal wilderness does not mean that we are far from God. Our wilderness cannot separate us from the One who skipped over those who thought they were in control and instead visited John who knew how little control he actually had. God doesn’t wait for us to have our lives together before God shows up. God makes a commitment to each of us that there is no wilderness we find ourselves in that God won’t go into too. The structures we put into place to try and figure out where we are in God’s story will always miss seeing the ways God provides, nourishes, and sustains. And when we believe that our wilderness is hiding us from God, trust that God is already there with you, and that you will find your way through.

Amen.

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Children’s Sermon: R E P E N T

REPENT. This is from Worshipping With Children. Today’s candle is “Peace.”

Hi everyone!

I’m very glad to see you today.

We’re going to me a guy in our story about Jesus today who goes by the name John. And we call him John the Baptist. John the Baptist was, according to the gospel according to Luke, was Jesus’ cousin. John the Baptist was kind of a wild guy. He liked to dress like an outdoorsman who lived off the land, wearing camel hair clothes, and eating bugs for his lunch. He was hanging out in the country, in the wilderness, in the places where there were not cities or farms or villages. He was in a wild place – and he was there because he knew that God would meet him there.

While John was in the wilderness, God spoke to him and gave John the words he should use. And one of his favorite words is…this one Show the word It’s…Repent. Let’s say it together. Repent! This is a word that John uses again and again. Repent – Repent – Repent! Repent is a word we don’t usually use a lot. It’s one of those church words – words that we use in church but that we don’t always hear at school. But “Repent” is a word that we should all use. And what it means is…turn the page over…it means “sorry.” Being sorry is feeling bad that you did something wrong or your hurt someone. And being sorry is something we all have experienced.

But did you notice something different about these two words? They’re different sizes. Repent is big and sorry is small! Right! I wrote R E P E N T in very big letters and sorry in small because they’re different. When we’re sorry, we feel bad that we did something wrong. We might apologize, we might feel sick in our stomach, we might even get upset because we’re feeling so bad. Feeling sorry is a good, normal, and an important emotion we shouldn’t run away from.

But Repenting is different. Repenting – Repent – is doing something to make sure that we never do the thing that hurt someone again. Repenting is about changing our behavior so that we don’t create the circumstances or situations where we feel sorry like we did. So if we didn’t share a toy with our friend, we make sure to share the next time. When we say an unkind word about someone, maybe because of what they looked like or how they dressed, we ask why we did that – why we thought they looked different – and we change our thoughts so we don’t do that again. When we see someone who doesn’t have as much as us, who can’t enjoy the things we do, we don’t treat them differently or poorly because of that. Instead, we ask why they don’t have what we have, we step into their shoes, and then we change our behavior so they can experience the joy that God wants for them.

Now, repenting is a lot harder than just feeling sorry. John wasn’t interested in people feeling sorry about the bad things they were doing. He wanted them to change. And he knew, with God’s help, we can all admit what we do wrong, how we harm others, and we can ask God to help change us so that everyone can live the life God wants them to: a life full of love, a life full of helping each other, a life being kind, and a life of loving each other – and even strangers – as much as we love ourselves. And when we repent, with God’s help, we can create a world where everyone gets to live in peace.

So today, for the Advent wreath, we’re going to light two candles. The first one, if we remember, was about Hope. Today, it’s about peace. So let us pray: Advent Lighting Words – from “worshipping With Children:”
God, we know that we are not all you created us to be. You call us to repent, to make changes. So, we light the first candle knowing that you are with us in all the shadow of the world and we light this second candle promising to make the changes we need to make to be your people. Be with us, show us what to do, and give us the courage and energy we need to change

Amen.

Thank you for being here! And I hope you have a blessed week!

Each week, I share a reflection for all children of God. The written manuscript serves as a springboard for what I do. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship on the Second Sunday of Advent, 12/9/2018.

Reflection: Being Refined

Have you ever refined gold? I haven’t but our passage from Malachi 3:1-4 assumes we have. In the ancient world, there was only one way to extract gold from the rock it was found in. A worker would light a fire and place a crucible (usually a bowl made out of rock that can withstand hot temperatures) over it. Rocks containing pieces of gold would be placed into the crucible and everything would heat up. But the fire couldn’t be merely a campfire. The fire would need to be hot. The worker wanted the rocks to melt, allowing the impurities to float to the surface while the gold settled into the bottom. They would do all they could to make the fire heat up until it approached 1,800 degrees. The mixture would melt and the worker would stand there, using a special tool to scoop out anything that floated to the top. Over and over again, the rocks containing the gold would be melted until all the impurities had been removed and melted gold was all that was left. This process created the blocks of gold that would eventually be turned into statues, jewelry and coins. Gold is one of the world’s “precious” metals but the process to refine that gold was anything but.

If we were approaching a fire burning at 1800 degrees, we would do our best to stay safe. We would stand a safe distance away, put on the world’s best oven mitts, and make sure we knew where the closest air conditioned room was. We might be able to protect ourselves from the full blast of that heat. But workers in the ancient world were not so lucky. Refining gold was a hot and dangerous business. Everyone wanted the gold the workers produced but very few, I think, wanted their actual job. Yet Malachi, when he described the messenger who will announce the coming of God into the world, predicted this messenger would burn like a refiner’s fire. And this fire wouldn’t come to only those who didn’t know God. Rather, the fire would refine all of God’s people. Those who believe in God, worship God, and follow God are the ones who will be refined by God. And this refining will not be easy. We will be exposed to a spiritual heat that we cannot protect ourselves from. Unlike the worker standing next to the fire, we will be embraced by the fire itself. And that fire will refine us over and over again, helping us become the people God knows we can be.

When we talk about trying to grow our faith, we rarely talk about a refining fire. We imagine, instead, that a few minor changes in our life will help us become the people we think God wants us to be. Yet there will be moments in our life when the foundations of our world will break. There will be times when our expectations for God will be unmet. There will be moments when we will wonder if the God we grew up with is the God who is with us now. There will be times when we will feel as if we are being melted into something we don’t want to be. And it’s at those moments when we see how Jesus is already standing there with us, in the fire. We are precious to Jesus. We are worth God’s love. And when we feel as if our world is burning up, he will be beside us, helping us become something brand new.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week (or about our liturgy). This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for the Second Sunday of Advent, 12/09/2018.