How to Lay Down a Life

Delivered at Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church in Benson, MN. Easter 4B – “Good Shepherd” Sunday
Texts: Ac 4.5-12; Ps 23; 1 Jn 3.16-24; Jn 10.11-18

I once heard a story of a father and his two children who were hiking in the mountains late one autumn. They were caught in a sudden storm and were forced to seek shelter in a small cave. With no way to make a fire and the temperature falling rapidly outside, the man knew they would all freeze to death if he could not find a way to keep his children warm.

The wind was howling and the mouth of the cave, though small, was letting out precious heat. So, the man curled himself up in the opening to block the wind and the rain. The two children slept through the night, and in the morning, the family was discovered by a search and rescue team, but during the night, the father had frozen to death protecting his children from the fury of the storm outside.

As Christians, we are accustomed to talk of sacrifice. We are very familiar with the idea of giving one’s life for the benefit of another out of love. This is the primary narrative that we use to understand Jesus’ action on the cross: Jesus took the punishment that should have been ours for our sinfulness and died so that we might live. Just like the story of the father and his children caught in the storm, this story stirs in us the image of a God who will stop at nothing to love us and save us, even to the point of dying for us.

What’s really interesting is that this is not in our reading today. Nowhere in John’s gospel does Jesus talk of being punished on our behalf or of dying so that we might live. What he does say is that “God so loved the world that God sent the Son so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3.16) and “The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.”

I think it is important that we ask ourselves just what it does mean to lay down one’s life. Jesus talks about laying down his life four times in this short section of John we read today, and our reading from the first letter of John mentions it again. We hear that Jesus lays down his life for us, and that this is why God loves him. Jesus says later that there is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends (John 15.13), and we hear that we, too, ought to follow his example and lay down our lives for one another.

Clearly, I cannot forgive anybody’s sins or grant everlasting life if I die for somebody else, and yet the authors of John’s gospel and letters writes that we ought to lay down our lives just out of love as he did. Our actions imitate Christ’s.

The community that wrote, collected and recorded John’s gospel and letters did not regard Jesus’ death as what saves us. Jesus himself refers to his crucifixion as his glorification, not our salvation. In John, it is Jesus’ life that saves us, not his death. Did you hear what Jesus just said? “I lay down my life in order to take it up again.” Jesus died so that he could come back from the grave, and in so doing, prove that even death is no match for God’s saving love and power. Easter morning is God’s definitive answer to our question, “Where is God?” God is right here next to us, breathing on us, eating with us, being mistaken for the gardener or the store clerk or the window washer. God is alive, and because God lives, so is our hope, and so are we.

This is the power of Easter. This is the extent of God’s love. The amazing thing is not that Jesus died for us, but that he lives for us. This is why we celebrate Easter! Instead of dying for our sins and leaving it at that, Jesus came back for us. He broke the lock and smashed the door of death, leaving it hanging askew on its hinges waiting for us to follow him through.

So, in light of Jesus’ resurrection, just what does it mean then for Jesus to lay down his life for us, and for us to lay down our lives to one another? Normally, we have taken these words to mean that our lives should be lives of sacrifice, lives lived for the good of others, even when it means suffering for ourselves. Certainly, this is true, at least to a point. Christ himself endured shame, suffering, and death on the cross to rise for us. But this idea has justified wars and violence as we strive to assert our will over others “for their own good,” has been used to condone abuse and shame as we believe that our suffering is how we “take up our cross and follow.”

There is so much more to the idea of laying down one’s life than simply dying. When we are encouraged to lay down our lives for one another, we are being asked not to die for one another, but to live for on another, just as Christ did. Sometimes, this means following in Christ’s path, suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune for the sake of proclaiming the gospel, being willing to die for what is good and right.

But sometimes, it means recognizing when God is calling us to stand up  and refuse to be somebody else’s doormat. Sometimes love requires us to deny others instead of enabling them. Sometimes, we are called to care for ourselves because nobody else will.
You see, we all have moments when we need to put our own desires aside and help those in need, times when we need to empty ourselves to fill somebody else. In those moments, we embrace hardship to promote peace and fullness. But there are also moments when we are the empty ones, when others take away our power and our dignity either willingly or unconsciously for their own benefit. There are times when we are victims, when we are the lost sheep.

It is in these moments of powerlessness when the gospel of Christ and the joy of Easter are a message of empowerment. With Jesus, we proclaim that nobody else has the right to take our lives from us. When we suffer from a loved one’s addiction, when we bear the brunt of an abusive relationship, Christ bids us not to come and die, but to drink and live.

“I came that they might have life,” Jesus says, “and have it abundantly.” (John 10.10) The love Jesus commands us to have for one another—God’s love—always seeks this abundant life, and always strives to change us for the better. Sometimes that love calls us to endure pain and suffering in order to bear out that love to another, but sometimes that love calls us to rise up and take power for our lives back from those who have taken it from us. Jesus, our Good Shepherd, has done both of these. He has proven the extent of his love for us in his resurrection, not his death; he has laid down his life in service to us, not in suffering.

So how are we to know when “laying down our lives” means suffering and when it means refusing to suffer? Listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd, seek after Jesus’ example. When love brings abundant life and changes us and others for the better, that love is worth dying for; more than that, it is worth living for! But love that offers no abundant life but only pain and shame instead is no substitute for the love of God. To those who know this kind of destructive love, Jesus himself opens for us a way back to God’s love that is not blocked even by death itself.

Jesus is the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. In calling us to lay down our lives for one another, he asks no more than he himself has done, which is to abide in the love of the Father. “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly,” Jesus says, “I am the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. I lay it down—nobody takes it from me—and I take it up again.”

Left Hanging

Delivered at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Swift Falls, MN. Easter Morning, Year B.
Texts: Acts 10.34-43; 1 Cor 15.1-11; Mk 16.1-8

The end of Mark’s gospel is kind of anti-climactic, isn’t it? We are used to hearing the Easter story from Matthew, where Jesus appears to the disciples and sends them out to “make disciples of every nation, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” or Luke’s account where Jesus meets Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus. John’s report is more exciting still: a weeping Mary Magdalene mistakes the risen Jesus for a gardener and doesn’t recognize him until he speaks her name. But Mark’s gospel just stops, almost mid-sentence: The women see the empty tomb, then run off, too afraid to say anything to anyone.

We are left wanting to hear the end of the story, like in the other gospels. We hate to be left hanging in suspense. That’s why all the blockbuster movies have a love interest and a happy ending, and all the best-selling novels have a climax and a resolution. In our culture, we are used to being filled up. When we feel like something is missing, somebody is there to fill in the blanks, or there is something we can buy or a specialist we can see who will fix the problem.

We are a culture of neatly wrapped up narratives, a culture of holes filled by money, possessions, power or activities. Our society tries to sell us on the idea that this one more gadget will make us happy, that all we need to do to be successful is to know “the secret.” There is an answer for every question, a pill for every ill. Yet here we are, on the highest, holiest day of the year, left with only an empty tomb, three scared women and a lot of unanswered questions.

Mark’s is the first gospel written. If you look in your Bibles, you’ll notice that there are three endings to the book of Mark. First is the one we just heard. Then there’s a shorter ending that describes the women telling the disciples and how Jesus himself sent out the gospel through the apostles to the ends of the earth.

Finally, there is a longer ending in which Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and then to all the disciples and sends them out to preach the gospel before ascending to heaven. These longer endings were added by early Christians who, just like us, wanted to know the rest of the story, so they took details from the other gospels and filled in the holes. However, most scholars agree that Mark’s gospel in its original form, ends here at verse 8, with the women running terrified and silent.

Mark’s abrupt ending reflects the world as it really is. We may live in a culture that praises and encourages fullness, but it does so because so often life leaves us empty. The empty tomb is recognition that the boy doesn’t always get the girl, that sometimes the villain gets away, that we don’t always get our fairy tale ending; that sometimes we are left hanging. Across the world, people suffer and die, people face oppression and violence, wives are abused by their husbands and children are conscripted to fight in wars.
Many of us in this country are able to insulate ourselves from the ugliness and emptiness of the world. Here in Swift Falls, MN, we do not worry about war or famine or oppression. We know that regardless of who wins the Republican nomination to run for President, our lives will mostly go on as before. Our main concerns here are paying the bills and making sure the fields get seeded on time.

But even here, tucked away snugly from the perils of the great, wide world, we sometimes catch tiny glimpses of that emptiness. We see it when one of our friends is sick and there’s nothing we can do, when we end up in a traffic accident, when a crop fails or a payment gets missed, we see it when a loved one dies. Even here, we try to seal ourselves away from the emptiness. If we only get the crops planted, if we only get that raise at work, if we only get the new thing, everything will be better.

But the truth is that there is nothing that can fill the emptiness. Because of that fact, it is so appropriate that Mark’s gospel ends with an empty tomb and no risen Christ to reassure us. Today we gather to with these women at the tomb and we are faced with the emptiness and the unanswered questions, and we see our selves and our lives reflected in that vacant cave; yet somehow, instead of despair or sorrow or sadness, instead of the terror and fear that the women felt, we experience instead a rising warmth in our hearts; because along with that empty tomb, we hear the good news: Alleluia! Christ is Risen! [He is risen indeed! Alleluia!]

This is the good news of Easter: even that emptiness, even the desolation of our lives is not beyond the reach of God’s love. In Christ, even the bleakness of a hole in the ground becomes a wondrous miracle, a cause for celebration! This is not just good news for Jesus’ friends and disciples who mourned his death. This is good news for everyone out there who has stared that vast emptiness in the face and drawn back in fear. The empty tomb is a sign that even when there is nothing else, there is God. Even in life’s darkest, filthiest, meanest, craziest, barrenest moments, God is somehow present, somehow alive and moving and creating something from nothing.

Those of us gathered here know what it means that Christ rose from the dead. We know that it means forgiveness of sins, reconciliation to God, and the promise of eternal life. But there are some who do not know these things, who know only the sorrow and pain that life has to offer. Some of them have never heard about Jesus. Some of them simply can’t believe that a loving God exists when there is so much evil in the world. Some of them think that religion is nothing more than superstitious nonsense that drives people to commit horrible acts in the name of God. These are the people who stare at the empty tomb and see bare rock and nothing else. No body, no message, no belief.

This morning we, too, see what isn’t there, but this story reminds us that sometimes it’s what isn’t there that matters most. What isn’t there is the dead, defeated, rotting corpse of God’s Son, lying silent with the untold story of God’s love. What isn’t there is the fact that evil wins over good. What isn’t there is proof that nobody cares about you.

If you look in your Bibles again, way back to the first chapter of Mark, you see that the first words of the book are “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” These words aren’t referring to Mark, chapter 1 verse 1. This whole book, all of Mark’s gospel, is just the beginning—that’s why it cuts off mid-thought. When the women leave the tomb that Sunday morning, the story isn’t over, it’s just begun. We know that, because here we are today, listening to this old familiar story. Today as you hear these words, remember that just like that day at the empty tomb, the story isn’t over.

The wondrous acts of God transforming this broken world into a place of dignity, harmony and justice only began with a man walking out of a mausoleum. Alleluia! Christ is Risen! [He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!] and God is just warming up. The story is not over, and so we give thanks for an empty tomb and a missing Christ and unanswered questions, because it means this story of God’s love is just beginning.

Life is full of emptiness and empty people, but the resurrection is the first word of God’s promise to bring fullness—real fullness, the kind you can’t buy online or find in a bottle—to all humanity, to all of creation. Alleluia! Christ is Risen! [He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!] If you believe that, if you know it in your bones to be true, if it gives you joy and hope that you cannot explain and that cannot be overcome by the worst life has to offer, then don’t run home and say nothing to anyone and leave the world hanging. This story is just beginning.

God’s Audacious Love

Delivered at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Swift Falls, MN. Lent 5, Year B.
Texts: Jer 31:31-34; Ps 51:1-12; Heb 5:5-10; Jn 12:20-33

Have you been keeping up with the news lately? In Toulouse, France, a terrorist named Mohamed Merah killed three soldiers, a rabbi and three Jewish school children in a series of shootings which he hoped would, in his own words, “bring France to its knees.” He himself was killed in a police standoff on Thursday. There is still violence in Syria where President Assad is waging war against his own citizens while the international community dithers about if and how and when to intervene. On March 11, a US soldier in Afghanistan killed 16 civilians, including women and children; and just this week, in our own country, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was gunned down in Florida by an over-zealous neighbor just for being black and looking “suspicious.”

And the saddest part? This has been a fairly typical news week. Such atrocities are common place in our world; headlines like this fill our newspapers and search engines every day. I have to confess that each time I sit down to write a sermon about the love of God and the salvation that comes through the cross and the grace of Jesus Christ, I can’t help but think about the state of world around us and I begin to wonder, “So what?”

Where is God in all this nonsense? What good news does the Church have to offer a world in such dire need of deliverance from this meaningless violence? Sometimes I think that the Church offers no answer to this question. I think that is why people, especially young people, are leaving: because even while we claim that Christ is our savior, sent to rescue us from sin and death, the world continues to crumble around us. To the rest of the world, we look like a bunch of deluded idiots. The world isn’t looking for a savior who promises us residence in some kingdom in the clouds with streets of gold; the world is looking for a savior who can stop the madness that meets us on the streets and in the headlines day after day after day.

Throughout the season of Lent, we have been reminded that this madness is the result of Sin. Not our sins—the misdeeds and failings that we commit every day despite our best efforts—but Sin. Sin is the corruption of humanity that spoils our best intentions and twists all our actions towards evil. We call it many different things—human nature, evil, Murphy’s law—but whenever we say, “nobody’s perfect,” or “the road to Hell is paved with good intentions,” we’re talking about Sin, that pervasive force for evil we simply cannot overcome.

This is what the Psalmist meant when he cried out, “For I know my transgressions, and my Sin is ever before me… Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.” Sin is the source of all our trouble, the origin of poverty, bigotry, hunger and hatred. He knew that Sin is what separates us from God and causes us to harm one another. He knew that from the moment you were a twinkle in your mother’s eye, Sin had its claws in you. Even the best among us, the most noble and valiant and kind, are as trapped by Sin as the Hitlers and the Bin Ladens of the world.

This Sin permeates us, down to the very core of our being. It infests us from the inside out, and there is only one cure: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”  This is the good news: “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;” the Psalmist writes, “wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” Because of Sin, we are powerless to fix ourselves, but God is not. Only a total overhaul from the inside out can get rid of Sin at its root, and only the God who created us has the power to replace what is inside us. If God takes away our Sin, it will truly be gone. That is where Jesus comes in.

What if I told you that Jesus Christ was not sent here to die? One way we understand Christ’s death on the cross is that he was punished for our sins so we would not be. This is a helpful metaphor, certainly borne out in scripture, one that is rich and meaningful to many of us, but it is not how St. John explains Jesus’ death. According to John’s gospel, Jesus died not because he was taking our whipping, but because he loved us.

“For God loved the whole world so much that God sent God’s only child, so that everyone who trusts him and believes what he says will not die, but live forever.” God’s love is so radical, so extreme, that it has the power to change the world, to overcome this idiocy that threatens to swallow us up. God’s love has the power to cut out that old, rotten and stinking heart tainted by Sin and replace it with a new heart, a clean heart, a heart made only for love, inscribed with God’s law.

God doesn’t accomplish this through surgery. Unlike Adam, we will not fall asleep and wake up to find a hole closed up by flesh. Instead, God accomplishes this Sin-ectomy through the sheer, brute force of God’s love, the love that created the world, that brought the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt, the love that saved David from Saul and rescued Israel from the exile in Babylon.

That love was written on our hearts when Jesus willingly gave up his honor, his ministry and his life in obedience to God and for the sake of God’s kingdom. Knowing that the cross lay ahead, he did not pray “Father, save me from this hour,” but instead trusted in God’s love to accomplish its goal, regardless of the cost to himself. This is why he says, “Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

When we seek after our own benefit, when we run the show how we think it ought to be run, when we strive to get ahead, Sin causes us to fail. So, Jesus says, instead of looking out for number one, you should disregard, even despise, your own gain, your own reputation, your own well-being, even your own life for the sake of the gospel and God’s love, and in doing that, you will find death; but see, death is no longer in control—God’s love shown in Jesus’ death on the cross conforms even death itself to God’s will, transforms death into life. Just like a grain of wheat that must first die in order to sprout, our lives corrupted and consumed by Sin must first end before we can experience life in God’s love.

So what does this have to do with the headlines, with Merah and Martin and Assad and all those murdered Afghans? They are the result of Sin, the result of people and governments and organizations and factions all acting out of self-certainty, self-reliance, and self-interest. All these sins are committed by people doing what is right in their eyes, but their sight is infected by Sin, blind to true goodness.

God’s love cuts through the murk of Sin and greed and selfishness, allowing us to love with reckless abandon like God loves, even though it may cost us our livelihood, our respect, our friends and family, even our lives. When we survey the wondrous cross and see the amazing love of God poured out for us, mindless of the cost to both Father and Son, we see the truth—that love conquers all, even Sin and death.

Sin is the disease, and Love is the cure. God’s love promises that those victims of violence and oppression are not neglected by the creator of the universe, and that same love stirs us to respond, spurs us to audacious action in the name of Christ to protect and to comfort and to heal, mindless of the cost to ourselves. In the love of God poured out on the cross, we are transformed into God’s lovers of the world, a force to contend with Sin itself. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but when it dies, it bears much fruit. This is how the death of one man in the shame and misery of the cross can change the whole world, one heart at a time.

A Wafer of Bread, A Drop of Wine

Audio recording of “A Wafer of Bread, A Drop of Wine” recorded during worship. (12:39)
Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Easter 3, Year A. Mother’s Day
Texts: Acts 2.4, 36-41; 1 Pet 1.17-23; Lk 24.13-35

As we listen to these scripture readings today, we notice that there is a theme that runs through the lessons. It is a theme of separation, of isolation, of division. In the reading from Acts, we hear about Peter preaching to the people of Jerusalem about the death of Christ. They realize their own part in Christ’s death, and they are “cut to the heart,” they feel separated from God so that they ask Peter, “What should we do?” In Peter’s letter, he writes to a group of people who have been separated from their families and their society. They are still living in their own land, but they live there as exiles, foreigners. And, of course, we hear the story of the two disciples sadly making their way to Emmaus as they grieve the death of Jesus.

In this story of the road to Emmaus, only one of the disciples, Cleopas, is named. Some scholars believe that his traveling companion remains unidentified so that we when we hear the story might put ourselves in the shoes of that unnamed disciple, walking sadly along, grieving the crucified Lord, feeling alienated from and abandoned by God. I know that I have seen myself in that disciple. Like so many of you, I have my own story of isolation from God.

In 1991, my mother was diagnosed with cancer. She struggled with the disease for two years before she died. I was 10, and my sister was 7. Since we were so young, we had trouble making sense of where God was in that tragedy. Why hadn’t God answered our prayers? If God loved us, why did this terrible thing happen? My father found himself suddenly a single parent, trying to cope with his own grief and to also comfort to two young children.

During that time, we walked with Cleopas on the road to Emmaus. We felt that loneliness that comes from God being so far away, wondering where God is and if God had any power to help us. Each one of us has been walking with Cleopas at some time in our lives and have felt that separation. When we look at our world now, we see division, separation, disunity. We see the chaos in Libya, the destruction in Haiti, the stalemate in Palestine, the contention in Washington and Madison.

We are a people defined by what separates us. Republicans versus Democrats, Pro-Life versus Pro-Choice, Left versus Right, we all feel that separation from one another and from God. Week after week, we come to this place and we hear the words of Scripture and we confess that Christ is risen, but then we go back out there and we ask, “Where is God’s promise? Where is the resurrection?” The death that separated Jesus from us on Good Friday continues to reign in our world and separates us even now from that promise of God’s kingdom.

But here is the good news in that story for us today. While Cleopas and the other disciple were walking, Jesus came and walked with them, even though they didn’t recognize him. Even though they didn’t understand as he explained to them about all that had happened, he kept talking. Even though they didn’t know who they were inviting into their house, he came and stayed with them. Even when we cannot see where God is on the road, God is still with us. Jesus doesn’t wait for us to find him or invite him into our hearts or accept him as our personal Lord and Savior. Even when we can’t see him, even when we don’t know who to look for, Jesus comes and walks with us.

They didn’t recognize him when they saw him, they didn’t recognize him when he explained that the Messiah was supposed to die and then rise again, they didn’t even recognize him in the waning light as they invited him into the house. When those disciples saw Jesus, really saw him for who he was, was when he took the bread, blessed it and broke it, and gave it for them to eat. Likewise it is in that same meal that we recognize Jesus today.

It feels strange to talk about Holy Communion because on this morning we are not sharing the meal. However, in a way, that emphasizes the point. Today, as we talk about the meal, we notice its absence, just as in the Eucharist itself, we celebrate Christ’s presence, but we notice his absence. As soon as Jesus broke the bread and the disciples saw him, he was gone again. And again, they felt his absence. When we eat the bread and drink the wine, we too notice his absence. We believe that he is truly here in, with, and under the bread and wine, but he is not here how we would like him to be. He is not here to heal our pains, to encourage us with his words, or to take us in his arms.

This absence is painful. It is the same absence we feel at the loss of loved ones, like my mother. We know that there is this promise that we will see them again, that Christ’s resurrection paves the way for us to meet again in the kingdom, but though it is a nice hope for the future, that promise is not strong enough to move our lives today. Our liturgy calls the Holy Communion “a foretaste of the feast to come.” The meal is not enough to fill us, but it is enough to remind us of God’s unfailing presence.

When Jesus broke the bread in Emmaus, his disciples finally saw him, even though he had been there the whole time. It took me many years to see where God had been when my mother died. I couldn’t see at the time because death and division can cloud out hope, but looking back now, I see Jesus in my friends at school who shared their sympathies with me. I see Jesus in all those people from our church who prayed for us, who babysat for my parents, who cooked meals for us. I see Jesus in my dad and my sister and the way we consoled and supported one another. I see Jesus in my mother and her faith and love for God and her devotion to us in spite of her illness. I see Jesus in my stepmother, who became a part of our family and loved us as her own. I could not see Jesus then, just like Cleopas could not see him on the road, but in the time since, I have come to see that, without my realizing, he was there just as surely as he walked to Emmaus, wearing many different faces and speaking in many voices.

Holy Communion is a physical, tangible sign that even when we are blind to his presence, Jesus is Immanuel, God-with-us that we can taste and touch, a promise that we can hold on our tongue. Because Jesus is God-with-us in the meal, that same meal unites all of us with him and with one another. The miracle of Communion is that somehow, God gathers us all up like grains of wheat scattered on the hill gathered into one loaf of bread. God crosses all the lines and walls that divide us, crosses even death itself, and brings us together for one brief moment.

When I eat the meal, I am sharing the body and blood of Christ with my mother. I share it with my ancestors, with my descendants, with all people across time and space and with Jesus Christ in the kingdom. With all that divides us, with all that separates us from God and one another, somehow God is able to reach out and give  us union, give us com-union, in this simple gathering and these simple gifts: a wafer of bread, a drop of wine.

When God feels far away, when the resurrection seems distant and abstract, when we fail to see God in our pain, in our conflict, in our struggling, this bread, this wine, becomes for us the risen Jesus Immanuel. The meal is God’s sure and certain promise of life that God is always with us, that God walks and struggles and lives and dies with us even when we are unable to see God walking alongside us. And in this world of death and division, that is a promise that you can taste.

Porch Light

Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Easter Morning (Sunrise), Year A
Texts: Acts 10.34-43; Col 3.1-4; Matt 28.1-10

This week, we have walked with the disciples of Jesus as they went from Sunday’s joyful entry into Jerusalem, through the anxiety of Maundy Thursday and the fear and anguish of Good Friday into the despair of Saturday. Jesus, sent to be Immanuel, God-with-us, had been killed and sealed in a tomb. Even as the disciples have sunk into despair over the loss of God-with-us, we, too, grieve the absence of God and God’s promise in our lives.

Too often, our world is a dark and lonely place. Every day we face trials and difficulties: addiction, contention, disappointment, abuse, scandal, shame, death, and grief are part of our lives. The situation in the rest of the world is much worse. Life is poverty, oppression, genocide, exploitation, war, famine, and unrest. It is easy to wonder where God is in all of this. We cry out to God for an answer, and We long to see God’s promise of reconciliation and healing fulfilled. We begin to wonder if God can see what is going on.

I remember when I was a kid and we used to go visit my grandma. We’d be all packed and ready to go as soon as Mom got off work on Friday evening. The four of us would pile into the car and drive the five hours from our home in Great Falls to Grandma’s farm outside of Nashua, MT. Northeastern Montana is kind of like northern Wisconsin, only without the trees. If you are not in a town, it’s a pretty empty, desolate place. There are no people for miles at a stretch, nothing to remind you of civilization except the highway and the barbed-wire fences that run alongside it. Because we left so late and had to drive so far, it was always dark when we got there. Because there are no people around, if the stars and the moon were not out, it could be absolutely pitch black.
Grandma had this single, sunflower yellow light bulb on her porch. Most of the time, it wasn’t lit, but when company was coming, she would always leave it on. As we traveled, we’d drive through the darkness until we turned down the quarter-mile driveway to the farmhouse. Once we got close enough, we could see that porch light. In the midst of the emptiness of the Montana plains, amid the darkness all around us, when we saw that unmistakable yellow light, it was a sign. It was the promise of love and hospitality and cheerfulness inside that tiny little farmhouse alone on the giant prairie.

This is what the resurrection is for us: a porch light, a reminder of God’s presence with us and love for us. As we travel through the darkness of this world, this small light pokes a hole in the blackness and the emptiness to remind us that there is a real place and real love that lives there.

For most of our lives, this tiny light is far off and distant. We remember God’s promise only in terms of a distant future when we will be with God in heaven. But on Easter, this small, yellow light explodes into brilliance and warmth, fills our being and for a moment, all of Heaven stoops to kiss the earth and we find ourselves in the presence of the real, living, God.

When the disciples needed Jesus the most, when they were at their lowest and had no idea where to go or what to do next, he left the tomb and found them, gave them a message and a mission. He told them to go back to their home, to Galilee, and that he would be waiting there for them. And that’s exactly where he was.  Christ’s resurrection is living, breathing, walking, talking proof that our God is not a dead God sealed in a stone building, locked up in a musty book or even trapped in a distant paradise. On Easter, in the midst of the darkness around us, Christ breaks into our world and gives us the living promise that we can see and hold onto, that we can taste and eat.

On Easter morning, Jesus is once again Immanuel, God-with-us, both in death and in life. The empty tomb is proof that we do not have to wait until we die to see God, that God is with us here, waiting for us at our homes. In the resurrection, Jesus finds us, greets us, and sends us with a mission. In midst of the despair and suffering of life, Jesus invites us to be light for the world, invites us to be God’s porch lights to a people in need of hope and healing. Jesus is the living promise that God has heard the cries of the people, just as God heard the cries of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt. God has heard, and God is acting.

The resurrection is not a one-time event. Jesus’ walking out of the tomb was only the beginning of God’s continuing action of renewal in our broken world. Just as on that first Easter morning, God is still with us, beside us and within us. We celebrate today because Immanuel is here, because God has sent healing and rescue to this place, because Jesus Christ lives and breathes, and God is at work.

Peter says in Acts that “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power;” that “he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.” (Acts 10:38) This is how we know that Jesus is Immanuel, and how we know that God is still with us. Jesus Christ still goes about doing good and healing all who are oppressed by the forces of evil in this world. In our baptism, we have been buried with Christ, and this is the morning in which we are resurrected with him. The living, moving God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob and of Jesus is living and moving in us, to do good, and to heal the oppressed.
Last weekend, we lifted our voices with the crowds of Jerusalem, with people all over the world as we cried out, “Hosanna!” which means, “Lord, save us!” Save us from danger, save us from hopelessness and despair, save us from complacency while others suffer, save us from oppression and war and famine, save us from genocide and poverty. As much as we need that blessed assurance of a future in God’s presence, God’s people need rescue from death in our world today even more.

Today, as the risen Christ meets our eyes, our cries of “Hosanna” become shouts of “Alleluia!” which means, “Let us praise the Lord!” We say this word in our worship nearly every week, and it has little meaning to us, another Greek word that is foreign to us. We speak it, and it is grey, it has no color. But today on Easter, of all days, we truly see the color of “Alleluia.” It is the color of the tears that rolled down the women’s cheeks when they saw their Lord on the road. It is the color of the sunrise on the morning of the third day. It is the sunflower yellow of that porch light. Let us not just speak, but shout and feel and dance with Alleluia today, for our God is alive, our God is with us, and our God has come to rescue us. Jesus Christ as emerged from the grave to be light for the world, a light in the darkness, a light which the darkness cannot over come. Christ is Risen! (He is risen indeed!) Alleluia!

This is the Night

Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Easter Vigil, Year A
Texts: Gen 1.1-2.4a; Gen 7.1-5, 11-18, 8.6-18, 9.8-13; Ex 14.10-31; Ezek 36.24-28; Zeph 3.14-20; Rom 6.3-11; John 20.1-18

Tonight we gather in solemness as we reflect on the crucifixion of our Lord.  With Jesus in the grave, the evil and sin of the world seem to press down on us more than ever, tonight we feel the weight of death on our shoulders. And so we come together in the evening, huddling together as in a tomb, and we share stories with one another about how God has been with our ancestors and has saved our people throughout history.

We share these stories to remember that even as we gather in fear and sadness, God has proven God’s love and faithfulness for us. God has saved us time and time again from whatever threatens to destroy us. Through the waters of the flood, God blotted out evil in the world. When Israel was hard pressed by the armies of Egypt and about to be slaughtered, God led them through the waters to safety and swallowed up the might of Pharaoh behind them. As God’s people languished in exile, God once again promised through the prophet Ezekiel to purify the people with water so that they would be clean in God’s sight, free from idols and evil.

Tonight as we gather in fear to mourn the death and defeat of our Lord Jesus, we recall the promise made at our baptism, the promise that we have been baptized into his death. Tonight we gather in the tomb with Christ, and we recall God’s power to rescue us from every kind of evil and danger and hardship. Tonight we gather and we recall that God’s promise is to rescue us even from this grave. For, as Paul writes, if we have been united with Christ in a death like his, we shall surely be united with him in a life like his.

Yesterday, Jesus hung forsaken on the cross. But his promise remains that on the third day he will rise again. It is for this reason we come here tonight, even in the midst of sadness and grief, we have a glimmer of hope. As God has delivered us before, we trust in God to deliver us again through the resurrection of Christ.

Tonight, we recall God’s mighty deeds of power, of God’s saving love, of God’s all-transforming goodness: the goodness that can transform the waters of chaos and uncertainty at the beginning of time into all of creation, which God saw was very good indeed; the goodness that can transform a terrible and destructive flood into the purification and sanctification of the whole world; the goodness that can transform an sea into a path and a terrible army into a harmless puddle; the goodness that can take simple water and words and make them into the seal of Gods’ promised salvation in baptism.

Tonight, we hear these stories and we gather in anticipation of God’s saving action in the world. God has promised that in the morning, Christ will rise, opening the way for all of us to new life, abundant life in the Kingdom of Heaven. Tonight, we recall God’s glory in times past and we trust, we expect, we yearn for God’s glory to be shone on this world again in the promised resurrection. Tonight, we sit in the tomb with Christ, and in the morning we rise with him. This is the passover of God from death in to life. This is the night!

God’s Promise in the Valley of Dry Bones

Audio recording of “God’s Promise in the Valley of Dry Bones” recorded during worship. (16:12)
Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Lent 5, Year A
Texts: Ezek 37.1-14; Rom 8.6-11; John 11.1-45

The valley of dry bones. When you think of the book of Ezekiel, this is probably the image that comes to mind, this or that crazy “wheel within the wheel” schtick. The book of Ezekiel is 48 chapters long, but these are the only two stories most people know from the whole book.

That’s because Ezekiel is dark. It’s macabre. It’s morose. Ezekiel was not a happy man. Most of the stories and images in Ezekiel are frightening or depressing. He is writing as a prophet in exile with Israel in Babylon. Ezekiel and his people had been dragged away from their homes and forced to live subjugated in a foreign land under an enemy king.
Babylon laid siege to the city of Jerusalem for two years before it fell. During those two years, thousands of people were trapped within the walls of the city. Food was scarce, space was limited, and sanitation was terrible. The people were safe from the invading army outside, but starvation and sickness skulked in the streets. Many people died before the army outside could kill them.

When Jerusalem did finally fall, the invaders destroyed houses, ransacked the city, and leveled the temple, the House of God. For the Jews, there was nothing left. “Our bones are dried up and our hope is lost—” they cried, “we are cut off completely.” Cut off from their home, from God, from their identity. Next they were lined up and marched out of their homeland to some strange place far away.

For these exiles, the ones who died in the siege and fell in battle, the ones with their bones scattered over the valley floor around Jerusalem, these were the lucky ones. This is the valley of dry bones Ezekiel calls to mind. God brings him to this place of desolation and asks a question: “Mortal, can these bones live?”

Each of our lives is like this valley. There are places that are beautiful and verdant, places were rivers flow and trees provide shade, happy places that give us joy and comfort. But there are also these places of desolation, places where the earth is scorched by pain and loss and the carcasses of dreams and relationships rot in the sun. God knows this about us. God knows that for all of the beauty and wonder life brings, it is also full of equal amounts of horror and sadness. It is in these grim landscapes of our lives that God meets us and asks us, “Mortal, can these bones live?”

When Jesus’ friend Lazarus died, Jesus arrives to mourn with his sisters Mary and Martha. Both women say to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Doesn’t this sound familiar? At one time or another, we have all come before God and cried, “If you had been here, if you had done something, this wouldn’t have happened!” As they struggle to make sense of their grief, Martha turns to her faith, “I know he will rise again on the last day.” Mary simply weeps. When we suffer, we have a deep need to know why. Maybe God has a plan. Maybe God is punishing us for something. We wonder why God allows evil to happen, wonder why God does nothing, even wonder if God is really good. We are left with questions. Questions, and bones.

Our lives are littered with these bones. Bones of personal tragedy. Bones of regret. Bones of sacrifice. Bones which are constant, painful reminders of death. Death is a part of our lives, woven into the fabric of our being. Death is part of what makes us who we are. We want desperately for these bones to have some meaning, to have some purpose. Mary and Martha asked Jesus why he didn’t come earlier. Israel asked why God had allowed another nation to come and ransack their homes and leave nothing but a valley of dried bones. We want there to be an reason for the bones, an answer, but all we get is God’s question, “Mortal, can these bones live?”

Death is inescapable. It is inevitable. It is as much a part of our life as our birth. The simple fact is that sometimes death just happens. It is random, chaotic, and meaningless. Sometimes, bones are just bones. This is why we fear it: we spend our lives striving after goals and laying plans, but death comes and makes everything pointless in the end. Life is structure, order, and progress; death is just death, just a pile of dried bones.

“Mortal, can these bones live?” God asks this like a professor asking a question he knows the class can’t answer. God is asking, “Mortal, does all this death have meaning? Is all this destruction worth anything? Or is it just a tragic accident of history?” As much as we want the bones strewn across the valleys of our lives to mean something, in the end, they are simply random misfortune. Bones are bones are bones, dead, dried and bleached: lifeless, meaningless.

We cannot deny that life is full of pain. But, it is in the valley of dry bones, the valley of senseless pain that God meets us, that God must meet us. How are we to greet God on the mountaintop of joy if God cannot be just as present in the valley of sorrow? In this valley, God performs God’s greatest miracle. It is here that God takes these lifeless bones and brings them together, bone to its bone, lays flesh and muscle on them, breathes life into them, and transforms a collection of scattered, bleached bones into living, breathing human beings again.

Tragedy is random. Death is inevitable. The power of God is not to stop death and tragedy, not to somehow lock us away safely from harm. Instead, God takes the chaos of destruction and gives it meaning. “Mortal, can these bones live? Can this senselessness make sense?” God transforms the chaotic mess of death that threatens to destroy us and transforms it into a force for structure, for growth, for order: for life. What begins as meaningless suffering God transforms into God’s own work in the world. God makes the worthless worth something, makes the unholy holy.

When tragedy strikes, and it will, in the midst of the pain, we rely on God’s promise. The promise is not that “things will get better” or that “this is for your own good” or even “God is in control.” The promise is that the tragedy of life, instead being the end, God claims and consecrates and transforms into a new beginning. In spite of the atrocity the Israelites suffered at the hands of the Babylonians, God transforms that violence and wretchedness into new life. God says, “I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel… I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, have spoken and will act.” (Ezek 37. 12-14)

This is what Jesus means when he says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.” Yes, Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead that day, but he died again. Yes, God raised up the valley of dried bones, but that was a vision, an illustration to make a point. The point that God was making in that valley, that Jesus was making at the tomb, is that the chaos, death, sin, and evil we encounter in this life will continue to scar us, but it cannot and will not destroy us. On the contrary, God claims what is most evil and redeems it, making it a force for good. As St. Paul writes, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.” (2 Cor 4.8-10)

Jesus is God’s promise of new life in the flesh. God took the crucifixion, our ultimate betrayal and rejection of God and God’s promise, and turned what should have been our last chance into our first hope. God transformed humanity’s rejection into God’s acceptance, humanity’s selfishness into God’s selflessness. God redeemed the worst evil and used it as God’s greatest good. God’s ultimate defeat became God’s most glorious victory. Jesus is God’s promise in action. No matter what happens to us, no matter what we do to ourselves and one another, nothing is so evil that God cannot redeem it and transform it into God’s own work.

In this life, we will still experience despair, sorrow, anguish, terror, and grief.  The promise of God, the promise of Lazarus and the valley of dry bones, is that these things will not end us, and that God dwells with us in them. When all is said and done, God will heal us. We will stand up like Lazarus and walk out of the tomb, rise like the slain in the valley and live again, both now in this life, and on the last day when the trumpet sounds. Through God’s power, we flourish in all things, even that which might otherwise destroy us. That power is love; the love of God for us, the love God gives us for one another. “In all these things,” Paul writes, “we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Rom 8.37)

Worst Fantasy Football Team Ever

Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Epiphany 4, Year A.
Texts: Mic 6.1-8; 1 Cor 1.18-31; Matt 5.1-12

Have any of you ever participated in a fantasy football league? I never have. My first encounter with this activity came in seminary when several of my classmates started a league. Though I don’t follow sports much and don’t know too much about it, I do know that the point of fantasy football teams is to put together your ideal team from all the players in the NFL. You imagine that you have this entire pool of talent to draw from, and you get to make a team of all the best players you can imagine. Every week during the season, one keeps track of the statistics for all of their individual players, and the team with the best outcome wins. So, the point is to pick out all the best players: the ones who run the most yards, score the most touchdowns, make the most field goals. Every week, one must constantly administer their roster, moving in players that are doing well, moving out players who are injured or who are not performing according to expectations. This becomes an exercise in keeping track of players’ successes and failures and judging them accordingly in order to garner the best outcome for one’s fantasy team.

Imagine for a moment a very competitive fantasy football league. Most of the group members spend hours managing and planning their rosters each week, and the effort shows in their stats. One participant’s team, however, is beyond disappointing. The quarterback has not completed a pass all season, the kicker can’t seem to get the ball off the ground, let alone through the goal posts, and the defensive tight end is not even a football player, but a guy from the neighborhood. In short, the team is a bunch of losers. What is truly surprising though, is the owner of this fantasy team; the team belongs to God. As we watch the other teams climb the ranks and God’s team continue to fail, we start to wonder, does God know how this works? Is God a fool?

Jesus’ words today are familiar ones. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” The beginning of his “sermon on the mount” is one of the most recognized sections of scripture in the Bible. We’ve heard these beatitudes dozens, perhaps hundreds of times before, but how well do we actually understand them? The poor in spirit, are the people who are so cynical and jaded that they don’t believe in anything, especially not a God who loves them. The mourners are paralyzed by their grief over the state of our world, inconsolable over this evil or that injustice; they’re whiners. The meek are the doormats of the world, the little people who everybody steps on on their way to the top and who won’t even stand up and demand what is rightfully theirs. Like God’s terrible fantasy football team, Jesus here is pronouncing blessings on losers!

We sometimes read these beatitudes and try to understand them as imperatives, like Jesus is telling us how we should be. But the qualities Jesus lists here are not qualities anyone should have to endure. They are the qualities that the Christian Church is constantly working to fix. We want to live in a world where nobody is poor in spirit, where nobody has to cry over injustice, where even the meek get their fair share. Yet here Jesus praises these losers and chooses them to be the models for the rest of us. To be one of the people on this list is to be a failure. The merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, they are all failing to accomplish anything. The poor, the mourning, the meek, they have failed at life and failed at faith.

By rights, Jesus should be holding up the people who are good at being faithful. The active churchgoers, the top givers, the model citizens. Those are the people we should emulate, the kind of people we want to be. Those are the people who help God get things done in this world. And that is who we are always striving to be. We want to be better for God, not worse. Instead, like the fantasy football team, God has chosen the rejects to be the poster children. And once again, we are left asking, does God know how this works? Is God a fool?

And God replies, “Yes! I am a fool! I am a fool for you!” God’s love for us is so great that God calls to us and loves us even while we are still broken and shameful and nothing. Instead of choosing the Most Valuable Players for the fantasy team, God chooses the people who most need to know that they matter, that they are important to someone. God chooses God’s team not based on who has the best skills or the most money to give or the best attendance record at Sunday School. Instead, God calls the people who most need to be called. Even the poor in spirit, the people who have no faith in God, hear Jesus call to them and say, “God has faith in you.”

And this doesn’t make any sense to us. We expect God to choose the most successful and the most visible people to set up as examples for us, but God the fool chooses the people we can hardly stand to look at, because God loves them, and because God loves us. When God blesses the bottom of the barrel and makes the lowest of the low the model disciples, God reminds us that God’s love is not contingent on our good behavior or good works or tithing or talent or anything of ours; instead, God’s love in contingent only on God. God reaches down and lifts us up to be disciples. God’s furious and foolish love fills up the holes that we have in our lives and seals the cracks in our foundation. God reminds us that no matter how we have been hurt, no matter how damaged we may be, we are still God’s children, that God loves us unconditionally and that God will still use us to do ministry.

Filled up and warmed up by the love of God, then, we go out into the world. We know that God asks for as much from us as God gives, but we are unafraid to fail because even in our failure God is with us.

A Word that Sticks to our Ribs

Delivered at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Mt. Horeb, WI. Christmas 2
Texts: Jer 31.7-14; Eph 1.3-14; John 1.1-18

I was 12, and we were about to begin confirmation classes at my church. As a way to introduce the program to the new students and parents, our pastor, an interim at the time, gathered everybody together for a potluck dinner the week before the first class. He talked about what confirmation was, what we would be covering, all the normal stuff. I don’t really remember what he said at all that night, except for one thing. After dinner at some point, he and I were talking and I shared some small bit of Biblical trivia with him that I had read in a footnote, and he asked me, “Have you ever thought of becoming a pastor?”

This was absolutely the farthest thing from my mind, and so I wrote it off. I had other plans, other directions in which I was headed. However, almost against my will, those words he spoke to me stuck with me, I unwillingly carried them around for almost ten years before I even considered them again, and now, here I am. There are some words that just stick with us, words that we take with us wherever we go. Sometimes we are not even aware that we are bringing them along, but they are there just the same. These words, like the words spoken my my pastor so long ago, have the power to shape us, to change the direction we are headed in life, to directly or indirectly affect decisions we make. These may be words from a parent or mentor, a friend, or an authority, words spoken off the cuff or with profound intent; words of advice, of praise, of discipline, or of news, both good or bad.

As we celebrate Christmas, we remember that just as there are words in our own lives that we carry with us, God’s Word is also with us. John writes that “the Word became flesh and lived among us;” literally translated, the Word “pitched his tent among us.” In our modern age of apartments and houses and condos, this sounds temporary and unimpressive, but John writes of a more significant tent.

After God brought the Israelites out of the land of Egypt, while they were traveling through the wilderness, God traveled with the people in the tabernacle. The tabernacle was the tent that contained the Ark of the Covenant, the box constructed to house the stone tablets containing the ten commandments which Moses brought down from the mountain. As God’s people slowly wandered through the desert away from the mountain where God had spoken to them and towards the unknown land which God had promised them, the tabernacle was always in their midst. Where their tents were pitched, so was the tabernacle pitched. In this way, the people could see God’s presence with them.

After they reached God’s promised land, King Solomon built a majestic temple to hold the Ark, a grand and royal house suitable for God’s dwelling place among God’s people. The temple was thought to be the place where heaven and earth met, the “navel of the world,” it was called, connecting God and humanity like an umbilical cord connects mother and child. Inside the temple, people were as physically close as it was possible to be to heaven and to God. It was in this temple that Isaiah had his sublime vision of the LORD seated on the throne of heaven, with the hem of God’s robe filling the temple, and he was surrounded by six-winged seraphim crying out “HOLY HOLY HOLY IS THE LORD OF HOSTS! THE WHOLE EARTH IS FULL OF HIS GLORY!”

Then came the Exile. An invading army destroyed their home and carried God’s people off to live in a foreign land. That army destroyed the temple, and the Ark of the Covenant was lost forever. In this dark time, God’s people lamented and wept because, with no temple and no Ark, they no longer saw the presence of God with them. Now, it seemed, the place where heaven stooped to meet earth, the place where God lived among the people, was desecrated and desolate. Yet, out of the darkness of their exile, God spoke words of comfort through the prophets. Jeremiah writes, “He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd a flock.” In spite of God’s anger and punishment, in spite of the destruction of the temple and the loss of the Ark, God reminded Israel that God had not abandoned them. God gave them a promise of great joy, that they would return to their homeland and that God would once again dwell in their midst, just as in the days of old with the tabernacle, with the temple.

This promise of God’s eternal presence with God’s people came to pass on Christmas, when Jesus, the Word of God, took on flesh “pitched his tent” among us, just like the Lord of Hosts traveling through the wilderness with Israel in the tabernacle. On Christmas, the Word of God became Immanuel—God With Us. Unlike the temple which was destroyed, Jesus remains with us always. Even after his death, even after his ascension into heaven, Jesus is with us here and now in this place just as truly as he was present in the manger on that first Christmas morning, just as truly as he was present on the cross on Good Friday. Jesus is here among us in the bread and the wine—his body and blood. We eat him up and drink him in and he becomes a part of us, Immanuel—God Within Us, God who cannot be separated from us. We come together in this place to praise and worship God and to be reminded that in this gathering, in this meal of the Flesh and Blood of the Word of God, we have been transformed into the living, breathing, moving, being Body of Christ.

Jesus Christ is Immanuel—God Still With Us. He is present in, with and under us. To see the face of Jesus we need look only as far as our brothers and sisters seated here with us. Jesus Christ, the living Word of God sent to embody God’s love for us, to give us the power to become children of God, lives and moves and has his being in this holy catholic and apostolic Church, in us. Jesus Christ, God’s living promise of salvation and of hope for the whole world is alive in us. In the waters of baptism, in the bread and the wine, God has transformed us into God’s Word of promise for the world.

And the world needs us now more than ever. We see every day the darkness that still lurks in our world. War and poverty threaten our lives and the lives of our brothers and sisters. Polarizing politics, apathy for those who suffer around the world, ignorance and hatred threaten our community. Financial hardship and natural disasters drag people into poverty and sickness. The darkness of evil and human sin touches and taints this world, and because of it, we grow sicker and weaker. It is into this darkness that God enters at Christmas. We, the Church, the living Body of Jesus Christ, are God’s incarnate promise of healing to a broken world. On Christmas, we remember not just a day 2000 years ago when a baby was born, we remember that that baby boy, fully God and fully human, lives with us today, lives in us today. Jesus, Immanuel, God Forever With Us.

Some words stick with us and change us in ways that we can’t always see. Jesus is the Word of God that pitches his tent with us as we journey through life. He is the Word of God that sticks to our ribs when we feast on his flesh and becomes ever a part of us, inseparable. This is the mystery of God, that the light of a single flame, of Jesus Christ, might shine in this wretched darkness for thousands of years, and through all of that time, the oily and pernicious darkness that creeps over this world of ours might not overcome that light. The light shines in the darkness, as it has shone from the beginning of creation, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Jesus is the light of creation, Immanuel—God With Us in the Dark. To us who have received him, he gives the power to become children of God, the power to bear God’s creative and redeeming light, God’s living and loving Word, to a world in need. When we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the presence of God, a presence that has never left us. We celebrate God’s hopeful and powerful Word of promise to our world, not meant for a day far off in some distant future, but a Word for today, for this very hour and minute. We celebrate the light which continues to shine in the darkness. We celebrate Immanuel, “God With Us, Even to the End of the Age.” We go forth from this place today, fed by the body and blood of the Word, out into the world with a simple message, with the words “Merry Christmas.” But these words stick with us, they follow us around and remind us of John’s words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and now the Word has become flesh and lives among us.”

The Jesus Club

Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA. Easter 3, Year B.
Texts: Acts 3.12-19; 1 John 3.1-7; Lk 24.36b-48

After Jesus died, his disciples locked themselves in a room apart where they felt they could be safe from a world which was very hostile towards them. This was the first official meeting of the “Jesus Club.” These eleven men had been hand-picked by Jesus to shake up the world, to help their teacher proclaim that in the kingdom of God, the last would be first and the first would be last, that the kingdom was like a mustard seed.

After their rabbi’s death, what these men needed most was consolation. They were understandably devastated, stricken with grief at Jesus’ death and depression at what must have seemed like the loss of the kingdom. This gave them consolation, a chance to grieve and to comfort one another; but can you imagine what history would record of the Jesus Club if this were the end of the story?

I can imagine that they would continue to meet on a regular basis to remember the “good old days,” the times when they went out with Jesus to preach and teach. They would share meals and probably go visit old friends like Mary and Martha, and they would probably even try to keep some of Jesus’ spirit alive by taking up food collections and going out to minister to the poor like they used to.

I suspect they would have continued to meet in that same room, unless they got some money together and bought a building of their own. I’m sure it’d be a very nice place to gather, with space for prayer and ample room to share meals. They might even gain a few members over time, people who had heard Jesus preach or who really just needed a place to go be with friends, but over time, as members moved or died, their numbers would continue to shrink until there was no one left.

Thankfully, that was not where the story ended up. Instead, during that first meeting of the Jesus Club, while they were gathered together in sorrow and fear of the outside world, Jesus came and stood among them. Jesus, the one whose loss they mourned and whom they missed so much came back to see them. At first, of course, they thought it was a hallucination, a vision brought on by grief, or even a ghost, but no, he had real flesh and bones like any of them, even an appetite for broiled fish.

And when he came to stand among them, the first thing he said was, “Peace be with you, don’t be afraid. Calm down, it’s me.” The second thing he said to them was to explain why everything had happened and that God had planned even for that when God sent him. The third thing he said, perhaps the most important, was, “You are witnesses of these things. You know the whole story now, and it’s a story that needs to get out. You need to proclaim to everyone that repentance brings forgiveness of sins.”

Proverbs 29:18 tells us that “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” It was this appearance of Jesus which gave the disciples their vision, so that they would not perish. It was this appearance which began the transformation of this group from the Jesus Club to the Church. Easter is not just about the resurrection of Christ, it is also about Christ’s resurrection of God’s vision, a vision that could have been lost had his disciples remained locked in that room.

After Good Friday, they were hopeless and broken. In time, they would have ceased their grieving, but they could never have regained their sense of mission. It was at this, their weakest and most vulnerable point, that Christ rose from the dead and resurrected their calling, their motivation, their vision, and their mission: to preach the good news of the Kingdom of God, to proclaim to all nations repentance bringing about the forgiveness of sins.

In these days now, nearly 2000 years after Christ’s resurrection, the church often struggles with its identity. There are many who come to be a part of the Jesus Club, a social organization that involves food and fellowship and, once in a while, some community service. I’ve even heard people talk about paying their “dues” to the church, as if offering were a membership fee. Any congregation that is a Jesus Club will die. Just like the first Jesus Club, members will move away and die, and eventually there will be no one left, because there is no guiding principle: only a common interest in “the good old days” and in having a place to meet with friends on Sunday morning.

However, in any congregation which is truly Church, the members come to worship each weekend and find Christ standing in their midst, in the flesh and blood. Christ’s presence with us here, in the Word rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered, opens the scriptures to us and bestows upon us the responsibility to proclaim the gospel to all nations, starting from this town, right here. Christ reminds us that we are not called for our own good, but for the good of everyone else.

We come here not to be social or to bemoan the direction in which the world is headed; we come here to be fed with the bread of life, with God’s message and with Jesus’ body and blood, and to be sent out of this shut-up room. As Martin Luther says in his treatise on the Freedom of a Christian, A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none, but is also a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all. We are not here for us, we are here for them. We are here because they need us, they need Christ, and so we gather here for Christ to send us out to them.

Each and every one of us needs to look deep inside ourselves and ask why it is that we come to worship, or why we call ourselves Christian: is it because we enjoy the people and the fellowship? Is it out of a sense of obligation? Is it because we want to appear righteous before our friends and family? Or is it because we want God to empower us to change the world, to be the movers and shakers, led by Christ’s example? Is it because God has work for us to do which is as yet unfinished, and we need the strength of community to accomplish it? This question will help us determine whether we are gathered here as members of the Body of Christ or as members of a social organization.

But even if we are just members of the Jesus Club right now, even if we are locked away from the world in our little room by ourselves, we have this message from Jesus, which is both a promise and a warning: I will find you. I am coming to take you to myself, to make you my church. Locked doors cannot keep me out, death cannot stop me, and stone hearts cannot withstand my living presence. I will make you my church.

In a day and age when many churches are losing members and closing doors, it is easy to be afraid of what lies ahead and concern ourselves with how we might survive. That is exactly what the disciples did, exactly why they were locked away for fear of the people. If we allow that fear and uncertainty to fuel our mission, if we allow sustenance to become our chief goal, we become just another chapter of the Jesus Club, and our days are numbered. But, if we focus ourselves on Christ and on his mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God, no matter how many feathers might be ruffled or how many members might leave, the church will thrive because it will be fed and fueled by God’s mission, not our own. God does not want us to survive, but to live; as Christ himself said, “I came that you might have life and have it abundantly.”

As we celebrate Easter and Jesus’ nullification of death, we also remember that this power extends beyond our own deaths to the death of the church, a force which will never die so long as Christ is present in it and in us. Let us forever seek to be the Body of Christ and never a chapter of the Jesus Club. Amen.