The End

25th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 33), Year B
Text: Jer 20.7-13; Rom 6.1b-11; Matt 10.24-39

This story begins the section in the synoptic gospels that is known as the “Little Apocalypse.” Maybe you can see why. Jesus starts talking about wars and rumors of wars, nation rising against nation, the temple itself being thrown down. In the verses to follow, he’ll foretell persecution of his disciples, the arrival of false messiahs, and the signs and portents that will accompany his own return, omens such as the sun being darkened and the falling of the stars from the sky. Seems pretty apocalyptic, doesn’t it?

Looking Forward with the Saints

All Saints’ Sunday, Year B
Text: Isa 25:6-9; Rev 21:1-6; Jn 11:32-44

There is a rich tradition surrounding the life of St. Lazarus of Bethany. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, tradition states that he fled Judea because of plots against his life (which St. John the Evangelist mentions later in his gospel narrative) and comes to the island of Cyprus. There, he is appointed the bishop of a town called Kirion by St. Paul and St. Barnabas. He lived there for 30 years before being buried for the second and final time.

In Kirion (now called Larnaka), a tomb which was discovered in 890 with the inscription “Lazarus the friend of Christ.” The saint’s remains were transferred to Constantinople by Emperor Leo VI, who built the Church of St. Lazarus over the tomb for the people of Larnaka. There is also a St. Lazarus Chapel in Pskov in Northwestern Russia where a Russian monk returned with relics from the church in Larnaka in the 16^th century.

In the Western Church, the tradition holds that Lazarus, along with his sisters, St. Mary and St. Martha, were put in a boat by hostile Judeans with no sails, oars or helm and that, after a miraculous voyage, they landed near Provence in France. Supposedly, the family all went different ways, preaching throughout Gaul. Lazarus went to Marseille, where he became the bishop. During the persecutions under the reign of the emperor Domitian, he was beheaded. His body was laid to rest in Autun, in central France, under the Autun Cathedral, but in Marseille, they still claim possession of his head, which is, of course, venerated.

Pandentecost

Pentecost Sunday (8th Sunday in Easter), Year B
Texts: Acts 2:1-21; 24-34, 35b; Romans 8:22-27; John 15:26-27,4b-15

14 months ago, when we first all retreated into our homes, I remember thinking how this pandemic was like a time of Lent. There were things we had to give up or from which we must fast for a while—shopping in grocery stores, eating in restaurants, shaking hands with strangers—but which we would eventually take up again. I remember thinking that the time without would make us that much more grateful for the things we would someday have back.

As the lockdown was extended from two weeks to four, then to six, and then again, as Lent gave way to Holy Week and Easter, I remember thinking how this pandemic was like a death. Our old lives have passed away; there is nothing left of them. Our old way of being is gone, lost forever. The way we’ve always done it, the only way we’ve ever known, is dead. What will rise in its place? Now that what is old has died, what new thing is springing forth in God, waiting for us to notice?

Reflecting on how things have changed over this last year, it’s begun to occur to me that this pandemic is also like Pentecost. On the first Pentecost, the believers were gathered together in one place. When the Holy Spirit arrived, the doors and windows were flung wide and they poured out into the streets. This pandemic Pentecost—Pandentecost? Pentademic?—is kind of the opposite: it drove us from the streets into our own little places. But as I’ve watched how the Church has responded in this year, I see the movement of the Spirit.

The House of God

Delivered at Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church, Benson, MN. Proper NL 8/Pentecost 23/Reformation Sunday
Texts: 1 Kgs 5.1-5, 8.1-13; Jn 2.19-21

King David had a dream. With the kingdom of Israel established and his own power consolidated, he wanted to build a house where God’s people could worship. He would not see this dream accomplished, but his son Solomon would. Today we get the beginning and the end of that story. Solomon, having taken the throne after David his father, sends word to King Hiram of Tyre that he is beginning work on a temple. He orders men and materials, and after years of work the temple is complete. Gathering all the leaders of Israel together to worship and celebrate, the temple is consecrated, and God makes an appearance like a great cloud, as if the very pillar of cloud that led the Hebrews through the wilderness of Sinai had itself settled in God’s temple.

The temple Solomon constructed would become the focal point for the worship of God throughout the Old Testament. It was so important that, though it was destroyed by war, it was rebuilt under the Roman Empire by Herod. We read in John’s gospel that it took 46 years to complete the second temple. Even today, the one remaining wall of Herod’s temple is the holiest site in Jewish culture.

We Protestants will never quite understand just how important the temple was to Solomon and those who came after him. It was God’s house; unlike our myriads of church buildings from dozens of different denominations, Solomon’s temple was the one place in all the earth where God was sure to be. Solomon himself says that God is not restricted to the temple, but the temple is the one place where a person could go and be sure to find God.

It is important for us to have a place where we can go and know that God is there. That’s why Solomon built the temple. Today as we gather to celebrate the affirmation of baptism, we are celebrating a building of a different kind of temple. Instead of cedar and marble, this temple is made out of the living stones of the members of our community.

The reason we have a confirmation program here is to help the community accompany our younger members as they grow into their faith. Historically, we have done this by teaching the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostles’ Creed and the 10 Commandments. We’ve expected our confirmands to memorize parts of the bible or Luther’s Small Catechism, or we’ve expected them to pass tests, serve in worship or any number of other requirements. These things have served us well in the past. The times, however, are changing.

When our current practice of confirmation first began, it was an outgrowth of Sunday School, a way to ‘prepare’ children for adulthood in the Church before they finished school in the 8th grade and went to work in the fields. Confirmation became like a graduation from Sunday School. We can still see that tradition in how we observe confirmation day. Confirmands, like graduates, wear gowns, receive certificates, have parties thrown in their honor where they receive gifts and cards full of money. The message that is sent is that once they are confirmed, they are ‘done,’ they have finished being ‘prepared’ to be mature Christians.

But this is not our understanding of confirmation. Luther believed, as do we, that confirmation is a life-long process. We are never fully ‘done’ growing in our faith, at no point in our lives have we been fully ‘prepared’ for a mature faith. Real faith is always growing; unlike the temple, there is no endpoint at which we can say our faith is “complete.”

Not only is our Church always growing as the living stones that comprise it change and multiply, but the way we form the faith of those living stones is growing, too. For many years, we considered knowledge and information the most important part of faith: it was most important to be able to memorize and learn and recite and list. But now, we live in an age of information, when everything we could want to know about anything is literally at our fingertips. Having information in our heads is so much less important now because it is in our hands. Now, far more important is learning how to sift through that information, how to put it to use for us, and how to engage that information as a community.

Our confirmation curriculum is changing to reflect this reality. We are focusing less on teaching kids about faith, and more and helping them grow faith. Gone are the days of memorizing the Bible and the catechism, but now we are focusing more on teaching them how to use the Bible and the catechism. We are focusing on building relationships with people in our congregation—friends, parents, relatives and mentors—who can help kids continue to grow and shape their faith beyond just the 8th grade.

This new model of confirmation extends beyond just middle school. It will someday encompass all of us sitting here. “Confirmation” will be a time when all of us together will reaffirm our baptisms every year, every week, every day, always remembering that none of us are “done” learning and growing in Christ. That is what we are celebrating today: that the Holy Spirit is always at work in us, moving us to grow beyond where we are.

If the Solomon’s temple was worth the cost in years and money and even human lives that it took to build, how much more time is the Church of Christ, built of the living stones of the lives of Christians? If the Bible teaches us anything, it teaches us that when we reach the place in our faith where we think we are “done,” it is time to knock everything down and start over.

When Jesus entered the temple, he drove out the money-changers, disrupting the established system of religion and worship; and when he was asked why he had done it, he responded with the words we read today: “Destroy this temple…” The temple had come to stand for an act of commerce, a business transaction between God and the people, and so Jesus symbolically destroyed it by ruining its function. John is sure to tell us, though, that he was speaking not of the temple of Herod, but of the temple of his body.

John uses this story of Jesus’ destruction of the temple and his death and resurrection to teach us about God’s work in the Church. When something has been established and institutionalized, it can sometimes become corrupt or outdated. When that happens, God’s Holy Spirit is at work, disrupting and destroying the brokenness of our human works to make way for the work of God. We see this in the life of Christ, we see this in the Protestant Reformation and the work of Luther, Zwingli, Melanchthon and Calvin, and we see this borne out in our churches today.

God is still speaking, still leading and guiding us in a new age and with new people. The story of scripture is full of God raising up prophets, teachers, kings and leaders to renew people’s relationship with God. God certainly promises to do the same in this time as God has always done.

We have a wonderful opportunity in the gift of confirmation to participate in the growth and formation of our Church today and into the future. We have the opportunity to be on the front lines of God at work in the world. Too often we hang back, we figure that we’ve ‘put in our time,’ that there’s nothing new for us to learn. We believe that we are incapable of teaching our children and leave it to the professionals, forgetting that there is much our children can teach us. We have been treating confirmation like a fraternity induction, where young people are brought into ‘our’ club, rather than seeing in it the chance for all Christians, young and old, male and female, old-fashion and new-fangled to rediscover God speaking to us together.

Today as we reaffirm the promises of our baptism—both ours and God’s—let’s begin to imagine the new ways that God is using to form and confirm this entire community, not just our 9th graders.