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!

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.”

Long-Distance Relationship

Audio recording of “Long-Distance Relationship” recorded during worship. (14:51)
Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA. Lent 5, Year B.
Texts: Jer 31.31-34; Heb 5.5-10; John 12.20-33

As many of you know, I am engaged to a woman named Stephanie, and she’s now living in Wisconsin which, if you are not up on your US geography, is just a little ways from Pennsylvania. I mention this because as I read today’s scriptures, this is what it brings to mind. Stephanie and I have been in a long-distance relationship for most of the time that we’ve known one another, and it’s been very hard on both of us. I was very excited when I came to Pottsville because she was only two hours away, and that is the closest we’ve been since we met—and then she goes and moves to Wisconsin. You can imagine that neither of us was very happy about that, but that’s where the Spirit sent her.

In the midst of this long-distance relationship, we have a variety of ways that we try to maintain a connection and be close to one another. We talk on the cell phone many times a day—I’m sure Verizon is very happy to have me as a customer, we send emails back and forth to each other, and sometimes we can even use webcams over the internet to see one another. It’s a real treat because sometimes I forget what she looks like!

But no matter what we do to try to stay close to each other, it never makes up for having her here. When she comes to visit after Easter, it will have been three months since I’ve seen her. That’s an awfully long time. It is very, very hard to be in a long distance relationship, and that is what the prophet Jeremiah is saying about today. As he speaks, he speaks to a people who are in a long-distance relationship with God. He is specifically writing to a people who have been exiled by the Babylonians. But even to the people still in Jerusalem, there was this gulf that they felt between them and God. It was very hard for them: they were God’s chosen people, and yet their God seemed so far away.

Today, we find ourselves in much the same situation, though we may not be in exile. There are days when we feel closer to God than others, but by and large, God seems so far away, so distant. And so to make up for that, we try many and various ways to maintain a relationship with God. We talk to God in prayer. We come experience God’s presence in worship every weekend. We reach out to our Brothers and sisters in ministry to participate in God’s work. Even though these things do help, they still cannot make up for having God present with us.

One of the other ways that we humans often try to feel closer to God is through following the law. I’m not talking about only crossing the street at the crosswalk and only when the little man is blinking, I’m talking about Torah, the Law of the Bible. When God gave Torah to the Jews, it was out of love. As Christians, we think of Torah as very restrictive and binding, something that doesn’t fit very well. But to the Jews, it is God’s love letter. When they were lost in the wilderness, freed from slavery only—they thought— to die in the middle of a desert, God gave them Torah to save them from anarchy, to give them a social structure and to teach them how to be in relationship with one another. Torah gave them something to trust it, something that proved God’s love for them. It gave them assurance that they had a future, because God wouldn’t give them this law if God had just brought them out there to die.

Not only that, but Torah helped establish a connection between God and the people, because it helped them to know what God wanted from them. Torah is a wonderful thing. It guides us in our lives and helps us to know God’s will for us. But when we get too wrapped up in the laws of the Bible, we risk falling into legalism. We risk turning he Bible into our idol. This is what happened to the people to whom Jeremiah is speaking. They got so good and following the Law and manipulating it to get what they wanted from it, that somewhere in the mix over the hundreds of years since they were brought out of slavery they started to forget who gave them the Law. They cut God out of the picture and began instead to worship the Law. They cut God out of the equation, and it broke God’s heart.

Listen to this line again: “‘…A covenant they broke, though I was their husband,’ says the Lord.” It doesn’t quite come across in black and white, but when you listen to it, you can almost feel the pain, the anger, the heartache in God’s voice. When these people fell in love with God’s Law and forgot about God, it hurt God. To fall in love with the Law, then or now, is as ridiculous as if I were to fall in love with my cell phone or my computer because that is where I see and hear Stephanie; and yet, that is the very thing we do. We almost forget that the Law cannot save us: the Law can only condemn us. Try as we might, it cannot bring us any closer to God, it can only keep us from being any further away from God. But, we will inevitably fail, and so it only serves to point out our failings. One can follow the Law perfectly from the day they were born until their dying breath and it would not put them in any better standing before God. We forget that the Law is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. It is meant to help us be in relationship with God, to help us to know what God wants of us, but it is not something to be followed “just because.”

All this happens because we miss God. We are in this long-distance relationship with God and we want to feel closer. But hearing these words of Jeremiah, we also remember that God misses us. That is why Jeremiah is writing, why God gave Jeremiah these words, because God wanted to tell the people that God is establishing a new covenant, one that doesn’t rely on how well we follow Torah, because God will write the Law on our hearts. This means that when we want to know God’s will for us, no longer will we have to look it up in the Bible and find a chapter and verse, we don’t have to ask “what does the Bible say?” because we will know “what does God say.” We will be able to know this because, as Jeremiah writes, we will all know God, from the least to the greatest, from the youngest to the oldest, from the richest to the poorest, from the most sinful, to the most righteous.

And when God says, “they will all know me,” God doesn’t just mean in a familiar sense. Remember that these words are in the Old Testament, where the phrase “to know” is frequently used as a euphemism for something else. That is the kind of knowledge that God wants us to have, that God wants of us. God wants to KNOW us. As anybody who is married will tell you, when you know somebody like that, you know them more deeply and fully than you do anybody else. It is a special kind of knowledge and that is the knowledge that God wants with us. When I worked at summer camp, we used to sing a song that referred to God as the lover of our souls. That’s not a metaphor: God is the lover of our souls.

When we are able to KNOW God, we will find that what God says is completely consistent with the Bible. I don’t mean the literal words, chapter and verse, but the entire Bible as a whole. This is because God is steadfast and faithful.

How can we know God apart from looking it up in a book? We can know God because God is present with us. Jesus is Immanuel, which literally means “God-with-us.” God gave us Torah to teach us how to love one another, to tell us how to do it. But then, God sent christ, not to tell us, but to show us, to live God’s love to us. Christ shows us how to love on another as we see how Christ loved us, and we also are shown God’s love for us in the lengths to which Christ was willing to go for us, and for God. As Jesus says, “when you see the me, you see the Father.” When we know Christ, we know God. In being lifted up on the cross, Christ gave us the ultimate act of love. That love writes Torah on our hearts. Christ said, “A grain of wheat, unless it dies, remains a single grain, but when it dies, it bears much fruit.” With his death, Christ proved to us how much God loves us and that love bears fruit in us.

In that single act of devotion on the cross, Jesus draws all people to himself and to the Father. And that word “draw” is a loaded word. It doesn’t mean just, “come here.” It’s the same word that describes the flow of a river or the pull of a tide: it’s inescapable. Jesus draws us all to himself in that love. And though we are all waiting to know what it is like to fully KNOW God, we do have Christ with us, present here in our worship where two or three are gathered in his name, but we also have the promise that the days are surely coming.

Even though for Stephanie and me some days are really hard, even though there are days when I feel like just turning off the alarm clock and going back to bed and waiting for the next one, days when I am counting down the hours until I get to talk to her again, even though days don’t seem quite so vibrant when she’s not around, we have that promise that the days are surely coming when we will be together, when we will be married, and we won’t ever have to leave each other again. We will KNOW one another, and we will be one flesh, and it is that promise that keeps the two of us going.

That is the kind of relationship that God has promised to have with us. God says, “The days are surely coming when all people will KNOW me.” Because we have that promise, and because we have Christ, we can keep going. God promises us this relationship, and until we have that completely fulfilled, for each of us and for all humanity, until that love becomes perfect and takes away all of the sin in the world, we can trust our hearts, filled with Christ’s love, in conversation with the entire Bible, not chapter and verse citations, to tell us what God says. Do not trust ink on a page. Do not trust dead, black-and-white words. Trust the living Spirit of Scripture. Trust the love that we see modeled there, because that is how we can KNOW God.

The Best is Yet to Come

Delivered at Trinity Lutheran Church, Pottsville, PA, Advent 2, Year B
Texts: Isa 40.1-11; 2 Pet 3.8-15a; Mk 1.1-8

These are dark times in which we live. I’m not just talking about the economy, the war, terrorism and all the bad news that’s in the papers now. I mean the entire state of the world. Even in the best of times, we live in a world full of greed and opportunism, hunger, poverty, injustice and genocide. Even in times of prosperity and peace, millions of people suffer for lack of clean water and sufficient food.

Perhaps the worst part of it is that it is entirely too easy for us in our prosperity and good fortune to forget that regardless of how well our economy is doing or how good we may have it, men, women and children die in droves every day because they had the poor judgment to be born in the time and place where they were.

It’s human nature. It’s human nature to take advantage of one another, to put our own desires above the needs of others, to exploit others for our own safety and comfort. It’s human nature that causes so much of the evil in the world. We do this to ourselves. We are our own worst enemy. We take and we expect and we feel entitled to, and all the while our comfort shields us from and sometimes even causes other people’s pain.

In order to live in this world we must tell ourselves that there is nothing we can do. We resign ourselves to the fact that a handful of people cannot change the world, that human nature simply is the way it is and nothing will change it. Some of us even work hard to oppose these oppressive systems that our culture has created; some of us spend entire lifetimes fighting against and eventually dying for beliefs and convictions that all people are created equal and deserve a fair share of the resources and wealth that the world has to offer, and these men and women are called heroes and remembered with respect and gratitude, but still the work they devoted their lives to remains.

This is the burden of sin. This world in which we live is not the world which God intended for us, not the world which God created for us in God’s good pleasure. That world was good. God looked out and saw what God had created and called it good. This world is not good. This world is broken and stricken with sin. Our sin. This world is afflicted on account of us. Yet, we are not without hope.

The prophet Isaiah spoke to a hopeless people, a people who were living as exiles in a foreign land. Isaiah proclaimed to these hopeless and broken people that God was on the way. In spite of their sin and iniquity which had brought God’s judgment down on them, God was still with them. They had served their sentence, God told them, and now it was time to go home. They had resigned themselves to being resident aliens, a people without a home, but now, Isaiah promised, God was coming to lead them back to their home. These people had felt abandoned by God, felt that God had left them to suffer in punishment for their terrible ways. But God had not left them. No; instead God was coming back to take them home.

A voice cries out, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level and the rough places a plain.” God was bringing this people home, and nothing would stand in their way: no mountain would keep them from their destination, no valley would delay them on their journey, no uneven ground or rough places would deter them or wear them out as they went. God was making a way for them to go home, and no obstacle was too great for God to overcome, whether it be the king of Babylon or even a mountain in their path.

God brought those people home. God fulfilled God’s promise in spite of insurmountable odds. And now, God makes the same promise to us. For you see, that sin that has so terribly ravaged our world, which has stained our race and everything we touch, even that terrible, dreadful sin is no obstacle to God. That sin is what separates us from God, it is what we have separated ourselves from God with, and yet, even that horrible sin, as powerful and as vast as it is cannot keep God from coming to us. We have pulled away from God, but in the end, God has made a way through the desert to us, God will bring us back home to that world which God intended for us, where, Peter writes, righteousness is at home.

God sent God’s only Son, Jesus, to teach us God’s ways, to prepare a way for God’s coming. Jesus has cleared the path in the wilderness, Jesus has made the way in the desert, because through Jesus, God has removed the obstacle of sin which kept us apart from God. Thanks to Jesus’ teaching, we know what God wants of us, and we know that God loves us enough to do whatever is necessary to be with us, even to the point of dying like a criminal and rising again to remove the last obstructions on the way to the kingdom of heaven.

But listen again to the opening words of Mark’s gospel: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” What is the beginning? Mark might be talking about the first chapter of this book, but listen to the last verse of Mark’s gospel: “So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.” Does that sound like the end of a story to you? What if Mark’s entire gospel is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God? Think about it: the entire life of Jesus is only a prelude to what comes next. Everything that Jesus did, all that he taught and lived for, his death and resurrection, these things are only the appetizer to the great feast of God’s kingdom. Jesus promised that he was coming back, and that when he does, God will set everything right, God will finish the work of creation begun on the first day, God will accomplish the healing of the entire world.

This is what we are now waiting for. This final work of creation and healing is what we now long for with all that we are. We know that our world is broken, but during this season of Advent we remember that God is coming again, just as God came to earth one night many years ago in a little baby called Immanuel: “God with us.” Jesus’ life, death and resurrection are just the beginning. We now are called to be a part of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, to participate in Jesus’ work until he comes again. The best is yet to come. Are you ready?