"Let Your Heart Take Courage" - Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost

Let Your Heart Take Courage
Pentecost 3 – Narrative Lectionary Summer Series
June 30, 2019
Redeemer, Good Thunder, MN
Psalm 27

In March of 2000, after serving in Central Illinois for four years, I began a call to Central Lutheran Church in Winona, Minnesota. We were excited to be closer to our families and for the opportunities Winona would provide us. Even so, it was a time of disorientation for us. The housing market was very tight, so it took a while to buy a house. Furthermore, we agreed that Cindy and the girls would finish out the school year in Illinois, meaning we were apart for several months. With the separation, our family dynamics shifted and the house buying process created even more anxiety. Sometime during this period, Psalm 27 became very important to me, especially verses 13-14:

“I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 

Wait for the Lord; be strong, let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.”

This is the third installment in a four-part sermon series on the Psalms. At the beginning of the series two weeks ago I mentioned Walter Bruggemann’s typology for classifying Psalms: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of reorientation. That first week we had a psalm of orientation, or praise and thanksgiving. Last we week you heard a psalm of disorientation, also called a lament or psalm of need. Today’s psalm can be seen as either “disorientation part 2” or “reorientation part 1.” It’s disorienting because, on the one hand, the psalm is spoken in a crisis. But it’s reorienting because it speaks more a “note of trust than terror.”

One thing I appreciate about the Bible is that it is honest about our human condition, often brutally so. The psalms are no exception. They are very clear that life in our world is not safe at all. The old film actress, Bette Davis, famously said: “Old age ain’t no place for sissies.” The psalmist might add that “Life in general ain’t no place for sissies. There’s a lot to be afraid of in this world: hunger, cancer, Alzheimer’s, climate change, crime, drugs, the sudden death of a loved one, etc. Added to all of these and more is a government that seems incapable of putting aside partisanship to address the problems of our day and media that ramps up the vitriol at the drop of a Facebook or Twitter post.

Not much has changed since the psalmist’s days, especially fear of humiliation and disgrace. As a child, we experienced bullying, though it wasn’t called that. In some ways, it was given that someone would call you names and try to push you around. But, in response to the name-calling we’d chant, “Sticks and stones may break our bones, but names will never hurt us.” Of course, it was a brave, if not futile attempt to deflect the shame we felt; being called a name really did hurt. Several years ago we took a trip to Orlando that included attending a mystery dinner theater. We were very excited because we love mysteries, theater and eating. But my experience was crushed when, in response to some of my queries one of the actors looked at me and placed on “L” on his forehead with his thumb and forefinger. This, of course, was the sign for “Loser.” He was trying to be funny, but I left shamed and humiliated, something I still feel to this day.

In the midst of this kind of shameful experience, how can the psalmist sing songs of trust? The psalmist can do so because this isn’t the first time s/he has called to the Lord for help. The psalmist has weathered previous crises by calling to the Lord and having been answered by the Lord. When we go through crises we learn to trust that God will answer our call for help. In the midst of our move almost twenty years ago, I was able to hang in there because I knew God was going to hang in there with me. And as I reflect on the name-calling, I remember that I am a baptized child of God; I know I am not a “Loser.”

What are you afraid of today? What is causing you disorientation in your life right now? Can you remember a time when something similar happened and how God got you through it? If so, draw on the strength of that experience that God will get you through this again. If not, know that you are surrounded by people who are living testimonies to God’s faithfulness to us. For all of us, let us remember these words and commit them to our hearts:

“The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? …

I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. 

Wait for the Lord; be strong, let your heart take courage; wait for the Lord.”

Amen.

"Lost Words" - Sermon for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

Lost Words
Pentecost 2 – Summer Series
June 23, 2019
Sibley Park, Mankato, MN
Jeremiah 31.31-34; Acts 2.1-13; John 1.1-5, 14

Today is the second installment of our summer series, “Brushes with God.” In this series we are looking at the Bible through the eyes of artists, something I’ve wanted to do for several years.  Artists bring unique perspectives to the biblical narrative and help us to see with fresh eyes. Today’s piece Lost Words, by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, is itself unique. It’s not a painting or statue. It is a piece that is assembled and installed on site in a particular place for a limited time and then removed. Lost Words only exists now in pictures and viewers’ memories.

If you look carefully at the picture, you can see that Shiota has filled Berlin’s oldest church, St. Nikolai Kirche, with black yarn threaded through the space to create webbed tunnels. Tangled throughout the woven net are thousands of sheets of paper. But these are just any sheets of paper; they are pages of the Bible in 100 different languages. They are placed throughout the net as if they had been blown by the wind. At the center of Shiota’s work are pages describing the Decalogue, also known as The Ten Commandments. People were able to literally immerse themselves in the piece by walking through the tunnels and viewing the artwork all around them.

In preparation for this message, I asked Jason Glaser why he chose this piece. (Jason took suggestions for subjects from our Worship and Music Team and put them together into the series.) I also asked two pastors who gathered for our text study this week for their interpretations. Among the three people I got at least five interpretations. Now, before I tell you any more about the piece, I’d like you to turn to one or two other people and discuss what you think Shiota is describing. However, I will tell you this Lost Words was commissioned for the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation two years ago on October 31, 2017. … So, what did you come up with? Does anyone want to share what this piece means to you?

Shiota told an interviewer that she wanted to link the piece to the history of Christianity in Japan. The Portuguese brought Christianity there in the 16th century but it was banned by the emperor shortly thereafter. Japanese Christians had to practice their religion in hiding and, because the Bible was also banned, the religion went underground. So an oral tradition developed in Japan where people would tell each other the stories of the Bible. Shiota was interested in how this oral tradition made the stories themselves migrate, how the meanings shifted in the retelling.  So, the passages in her artwork all pertain to immigration.

To Jason, Lost Words evoked images of our connections to the larger church around the world in general and to one of our missionaries, Edith White, in particular. Edith White works with Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL International to teach people in Togo and Benin West Africa to read so that they can read the Bible in their native language. The two pastors talked about the Word speaking order out of chaos; the light shining in the darkness; and the mystery of different languages yet one central message of God’s love for humanity. For me, the yarn also represents our connections with one another, but how that emphasizes that—just as the Bible was formed in and by community—it is also meant to be read in community.

Which of these interpretations is correct? Or is one of yours correct? If my Confirmation students were here they would say, “Yes!” The wonderful thing about art is that it both draws us in and opens us up to new ways of looking. Lost Words invites us to take the Bible off our coffee tables or out of our nightstand drawers and plumb the depths of the Word made flesh while entering that mystery that enfolds and sustains us. Even Shiota, whose parents are Buddhist and isn’t religious herself, understands the power these stories contain for us. I hope you will continue to engage the artwork we’ve selected this summer and have your own “Brushes with God.” Amen.

"Praise the Lord!" - Sermon for Trinity Sunday

Praise the Lord!
Holy Trinity – Narrative Lectionary Summer Series
June 16, 2019
Redeemer, Good Thunder, MN
Psalm 113

Have you ever wondered what heaven will be like? I did as a young boy, so much so that I considered killing myself so that I could find out. Fortunately, I quickly came to my senses and realized that if I killed myself I’d be dead and didn’t want that to happen. I’m hoping I won’t find out for quite some time yet. Even so, one of the more popular ideas is that we’ll all be standing around the throne of God, praising God for all eternity. This is no doubt due to the imagery we hear in the book of Revelation. Psalm 113 seems to support that claim, that we are to praise God’s name “from this time on and for evermore, from the rising of the sun to its setting the name of the Lord is to be praised.” Frankly, that would seem to get boring after a while, even for God. And, even though God is due our praise and, quite honestly, I would hope that God has more imagination about heaven than that.

I think there’s a better way into the text—and all of Scripture for that matter—that’s more helpful for us today. A few months ago I led a Bible study on the Bible, where it came from and how to read it. One thing we talked about was how the Bible is like a scrapbook containing a variety of materials. Each of the items in the “scrapbook” contains stories of peoples’ experiences with God. These experiences were so powerful they had to be retold and then eventually written down. Psalm 113 is just such a retelling of an experience. In fact, it was so powerful that they had to write a song about it, because that’s what psalms are, the people’s songs.

Today begins a four-week sermon series on the Psalms. As in introduction, it’s helpful to use Walter Brueggemann’s classification. There are three different types of psalms: psalms of orientation, psalms of disorientation, and psalms of reorientation. Psalms of orientation are how we are oriented God when life is good. Psalms of disorientation describe our attitude to God when life goes south and it’s hard to believe in God anymore. And psalms of reorientation talk about what our faith looks like on the other side of disruption, when we can believe again. Clearly, Psalm 113 is a psalm of orientation, one that confesses this God we worship has done some things that are so amazing we declare no other god even comes close to this one. No god can compare to our God.

As a psalm of orientation, Psalm 113 is the first of six Hallel Psalms sung at joyous Jewish celebrations. Furthermore, it would be the first psalm sung at the beginning of the Passover meal, the celebration of remembrance about how the God liberated the Jewish people from slavery and oppression in Egypt. You can hear the language of reversal, how God raised them up out of the ashes and dust to bring them to their own land. It expresses how this God who is above everything else is also the God who stoops down and gets involved in our lives. Going backward, we can also hear echoes of men and women who, after being childless for years, are suddenly blessed with a child, one that will do great things. We think of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, Jacob and Rachel. Going forward we hear Mary’s song, the Magnificat, which proclaims the “greatness of the Lord.”

Now, I’m aware that there may be some here today who don’t particularly feel like praising God. Maybe you are not in a good place right now and your heart aches for some very good reason. That’s okay. On the one hand, please come back next week when we hear Psalm 69, a song of lament (or disorientation). But on the other hand, can you—all of you, for that matter—think of an experience of God that is so memorable that you’d sing about it? What kind of a praise psalm would you write today, based on your experiences with God? You might not sing it throughout all eternity in heaven, but it would be worth retelling now. Praise the Lord! Amen.

"Not Even Death, Not Even Us" - Sermon for Pentecost Sunday

Not Even Death, Not Even Us
Pentecost – Narrative Lectionary 1
June 9, 2016
Grace, Mankato, MN
Acts 2.1-4; Romans 8.26-39

We all have our faith biographies and you’ve heard some of mine in previous sermons. I’ve told you about leaving the church after Confirmation and returning as a young adult. I came by the “leaving” part honestly. My mom grew up in a strong Christian family. My grandfather was a very strong Christian and would do evening devotions with us when he visited, which wasn’t very often since he lived so far away. Evening devotions was not part of our practice. Even so, my mom had drifted, attending church maybe once a month.

My dad’s mom toyed with Christian Science of which there is very little Christian or Science. But there must have been some Lutheran in his heritage because somewhere along the line when we tried to join a church he was rejected for being the “wrong” kind of Lutheran. So he left, although he would come on Christmas and Easter. Even so, both of them would make sure my siblings and I would go to church, even though they rarely attended.

When my mom died in 1983 at age 57, I had already been back in the church for five years and her pastor, the one who married Cindy and me, told me that my mom had recently taken Communion. He knew that would be a comfort to me. Maybe it was my mom’s early death or maybe it was a deep concern for my dad’s soul, but although it took me almost six years, I wrote a letter to my dad, hoping he’d make peace with Christ. I’d tried to talk to my dad over the years, but that wasn’t something you talked with Dad about. So, it was around Easter and I sent him a card with at letter. Unfortunately, he never read it because he was hospitalized for pneumonia and died soon after.

For years I anguished over my dad’s soul, even when I became a pastor, wondering if I could have done anything more. But, as I did countless funerals that included these words from Romans 8 and reading Rob Bell’s book, Love Wins, I was struck by this incredible claim. Paul says …“nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The Apostle Paul has spent almost eight chapters laying out our need for Jesus Christ. He has reminded us that we are a fallen humanity, that we fall short of what God has created us to be and we can’t make it good on our own. All of us, including the whole of creation, depend on Jesus’ healing work to bring new life.

As an end to this theological tour de force, Paul finishes with some of the most powerful words found anywhere is scripture. “What are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us?” Now, as a side note, the word “if” should be translated “since.” Paul’s statement is not as much conditional as declaratory. (We see this in the temptation story when Satan tests Jesus by saying, “If you are the Son of God…” It should be translated, “Since you are the Son of God…”) “Since God is for us, who will be against us?” Then he piles up all sorts of things that might keep us from God’s love but don’t. Mot even death. I’ve come to realize that this “deadline” we place on ourselves, that we have to accept Christ before we die or we go to hell, is an artificial deadline that Jesus nowhere places upon us. There is no place where God’s love cannot reach, not even the grave. God will never, ever give up on any of us.

I’ve said before that I occasionally get asked by someone who is dying if they are good enough to get into heaven. I hear that as a need for assurance, but I’ve also realized they may be asking a different question. I think they might be asking is, “Is it possible that I have done something so bad God won’t love me?” If I have my wits about me, I’ll share with them these words of Paul’s, that nothing in all of creation will separate us from God’s love. Furthermore, I’ll add, not even death, not even us.


I am convinced that anybody is ever outside of God’s love. I believe that God will keep after us until all of us are safe and secure in God’s loving embrace. Frankly, if that makes me a Universalist, so be it. But perhaps I’m in good company. Today is Pentecost, when we remember the Holy Spirit being poured out on the new church, resulting in the gospel being heard by everyone in their own language. It’s a good reminder that God is a God of inclusion, not exclusion.

It is a day to remember that everyone needs to hear that nothing separates us from God’s love. But it’s also a day to ask ourselves this: “What languages are we to use to tell this good news?” Is it the language of Service? Is it the language of Inclusion? What about the language of Acceptance? Can we speak “Single Parent,” “Mentally Ill,” “Immigrant” or “Hipster?” Maybe it’s just the language of “Worried Grandparent” or “Concerned Son.” Whatever the language we must speak the message is the same: nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus, “Not even death, not even us.” Thanks be to God! Amen.

"Dying to Live" - Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

Dying to Live
Easter 7 – Narrative Lectionary 1
June 1, 2019
Grace, Mankato, MN
Romans 6.1-14

Do you not know that all of us have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

I always meet with parents before a baptism and I always enjoy doing so. We have great conversation together. It’s an opportunity to get to know them, to hear their faith stories and do a little education about baptism besides. Quite a number of years ago and during my previous call, I met with mom, dad and baby daughter. We talked about the many aspects to baptism, one of which presents itself in our reading today. At one point in our time I looked at them rather dramatically, and said, “We’re going to kill your daughter.” Of course, I unpacked that in good Pauline fashion, but I learned later dad had all he could do to come across the desk and kill me.

Paul, the writer of this letter, has just spent a great deal of time reminding the congregation in Rome about the need that all of us have for God’s salvation in Jesus Christ. This is true whether we are Jew or Gentile, Paul’s way of saying everyone. And he’s made the case that the salvation wrought in Christ’s death and resurrection is freely given to us. We cannot earn it no matter how hard we try. We cannot heal the breach that sin created between God and humanity. Only God can do it. Then just before our reading, he compares how sin came in through one man Adam (and Eve!) with how grace came through one man, Christ. Paul says that no matter how much sin there is the grace coming through Christ is far greater. Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more.

But then Paul can just hear the wheels turning in some of the Roman heads. Does that mean it doesn’t matter what we do, that we can keep on sinning because God’s grace covers it all? As someone once said, “I love to sin and God loves to forgive. What could be better? We’re made for each other!” Paul’s response to that unspoken question is, “God forbid!” here translated rather tamely as “By no means!” He goes on to tell the Romans (and us) that through our baptisms we have been baptized into Christ’s death and because Christ has been resurrected from the dead that we will share in the newness of life as well. We are dead to sin and alive in Christ.

Though it doesn’t seem like it sometimes, Paul wants us to know that we stand in a new reality. This reality is one where, in Christ, we have the capacity to live the life that God intends for us. I’ve been watching Marvel superhero movies with interest lately and thoroughly enjoyed one of the more recent films, Captain Marvel. As I watched this film about someone who discovers what she is capable of, I was reminded of the DC film, Wonder Woman. Diana, Wonder Woman’s alter ego, was shown as a young Amazonian girl being trained by her aunt. At one point in the training, the aunt says to Diana, “You are more powerful than you know.” As the film goes on Wonder Woman discovers that she is indeed more powerful that she knew. Paul might say the same to us, that because we are in Christ Jesus we are able to live more powerfully than we think we are capable of.

Now, Paul is no Pollyanna and understands full well the power of sin, death and evil still present in the world. And we know that there are some situations that no amount of faith can change, at least in our time. But even in the midst of those circumstances and for most of us, Paul encourages us to live as who God has made us in Jesus Christ. We are dead to sin and alive in Christ. Maybe, if I’d taken that next step with that new dad, telling him how because of dying to Christ his daughter is more powerful that he or she could imagine, and how he will help her live into that reality, just maybe he would have been less angry and more hopeful for his daughter’s life. In Christ we have new life as one dying to live. Thanks be to God. Amen.