"Avoiding the Edifice Complex": Sermon for Reformation Sunday

“Avoiding the Edifice Complex”

Reformation Sunday

October 28, 2012

1 Kings 5.1-5; 8.27-30, 41-43

 “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times …” These words from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens foreshadow the paradoxical nature of the French Revolution. The “best of times” is the joy of freedom from tyranny imposed by the nobility over the peasant class. The “worst of times” is the reign of terror experienced by the violence that was unleashed following, mostly through the agency of the guillotine. Life often works that way, rarely is it all good or all bad. The election season that pollutes our airwaves is an economic boon for the media and a field day for political junkies and commentators. Our most exalted heroes seem to come with equally deep flaws, witness Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor, winner of seven “Tours de France,” and consummate cheater. Even our cherished institutions aren’t immune, witness the Boy Scouts of America, molder of boys and young men that also failed to protect them.

One of the blessings of the Bible is that it doesn’t sugarcoat life. It is often brutally honest about the human condition in all its splendor and in all its brokenness. David, a man after God’s own heart, the greatest king of Israel, and writer of psalms commits adultery with another man’s wife and has him killed when he finds out she is pregnant. Even Solomon, David’s second son by that same woman, Bathsheba, asking for and receiving wisdom that becomes legendary, bringing peace to Israel and the builder of the temple, falters by going after other gods. It is not only people that exhibit both greatness and corruption, its beloved institutions that do so, too.

Today’s reading gives some snippets about what was promised last week, the building of the temple. Solomon accomplishes what God both denied to his father David yet promised as well. The temple took seven years to build and was magnificent. It housed the Ark of the Covenant, the place where the tablets bearing the Ten Commandments were housed and God’s holy seat. Solomon, in a wonderful prayer of dedication, of which we only get a glimpse, acknowledges that God is way beyond residing in the temple yet also promises that any and all that come to the temple will be heard, including non-Jews.

However, the biblical narrative also describes in lurid detail decadent and corrupt priests, heavy temple taxes on those who could least afford it, and a sacrificial system that had Jesus going on a rampage. Yet, even today, with only the Western Wall remaining of a temple that has been destroyed three times and rebuilt twice, the Temple Mount and Wall draw thousands of pilgrims daily. It is the best of places and the worst of places.

It is providential that we celebrate the Reformation today, remembering how Martin Luther began the great conversation by nailing 95 theses, or points of discussion, on the doors of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. He did it to protest the sale of indulgences that would finance the renovations of a temple of sorts, St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Indulgence promised special grace, for a price, and Luther objected that we should not have to pay for something that Christ gives us freely. However, before we get too carried away by Protestant pride, we need to remember that the Reformation, too, was “the best of times and the worst of times.” We need to remember that our forebears in the faith and our institutions are also both heroes and flawed. In Luther’s parlance, we are simul iustus et peccator, both saint and sinner.

The rallying cry of the Reformation has become, in another Latin phrase, "Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda," the church of the Reformation is always reforming. This slogan challenges us to ask several questions. What is God doing in this place? What is God calling us to do in response? Is this a place where all are truly welcome or have we constructed barriers that prevent access to God’s presence? The good news is that God has not given up on us and continues to work in, with, and through the most deeply flawed people and institutions. In other words, God is working in, with, and through you, me, and this place. Through Christ’s grace, we will reform the broken places and strengthen grace-filled places. Thanks be to God. Amen.

"God's House" Sermon Pentecost 21 (Narrative Lectionary 3 - David)

“God’s House”

Pentecost 21 (NL3 David)

October 21, 2012

2 Samuel 7.1-17

Growing up I had a cat named Frick which, against our better judgment, we’d let outside periodically. Invariably, she would come back with an unwanted and unwelcome gift, most often a bird or a worm. In Frick’s mind, she was paying us the ultimate compliment, giving us what she thought we wanted. In our mind, her offerings were inappropriate, especially when she tried to bring them inside. I wonder if God felt the same way when David wanted to build God a temple. Though God’s reaction may not be as shrill as my mother’s screams, it bears unpacking further.

On the surface, David wants to do something nice for God, to give God some place nice to lodge.

After all, what kind of God would want to live in an ark inside a tent when s/he could have a temple? That’s what kings did for their gods, especially after they have come to power. However, what appears to be a gracious act of religious piety on David’s part is also a political power grab born of fear. By bringing the ark and the tabernacle to Jerusalem, his new capital, David moves to consolidate his power base. Furthermore, by building a house, a temple, for God, David lessens the danger that God will leave him high and dry.

Yet, this God is having none of it. This God is a living God who is totally free and cannot be contained by anyone or anything. This God refuses to be pinned down or constrained by anyone, even his chosen king. We can understand David’s fear and not just for his political future; we want our God to be with us. Even so, this desire to have God present with us in a real and tangible way can be perverted. Frankly, the idea of a free, dynamic, and ever-moving God scares us immensely, so we try to pin him down somewhere. We try to contain God with our own pre-conceived notions and prejudices that serve our own particular ideas about what our God should be like, who God should love or not love.

This past Wednesday evening, I asked those at worship to talk about ways we try to contain God. I received some wonderful answers, and I think we only scratched the surface. One sharp young man said we could try to contain God through our prayers. We do that when we only come to God when we want something or when we try to manipulate God to doing what we want. Another person said that denominationalism is another way to limit God. This happens when we believe in our own corner of the church that we are the only ones who have the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. To combat this idea, one of my former pastors and colleagues, Wollom Jensen, used to say, “I believe we have the truth in the Lutheran Church, but I don’t believe we have all of it.” She went on to add this is especially destructive when we believe we know who God is going to save and who God is going to damn to hell, even suggesting that Christianity limits God by declaring that no other religions have access to God.

Even so, God understands our fear and, in spite of our attempts to limit him, God assures us with his presence. David wanted to do something for God, but as God often does, turns it around and does something for us. In a wonderful play on words, David lives in a house and wants to build God a house, a temple. But it is God who is going to build a house, that is, a dynasty for David and his heirs. The insecurity of God’s freedom is eased by God’s promise of his presence with David’s line. What’s more, God promises never to remove his steadfast love no matter what, no matter whom.

Those who were with Jesus of Nazareth saw in him fulfillment of this promise. Jesus, Immanuel, God With Us, promises to never leave us or forsake us. But, he also refuses to be constrained by our narrow ideas of what kind of God he will be, insisting to love all of us without restrictions. The Spirit blows wherever and whenever it wills, and Jesus can be anywhere he chooses to be, but he has promised to meet us in particular places. He meets us in the spoken and sung word. He is found in the waters of baptism, just as they washed over Ellie this morning. In a few moments, he will meet us in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. In so doing, he has freed us from fear to live for others. The Giver is also the Gift, and the living God is on the loose, inviting us to be on the loose, too. Amen.

"Hannah's Song" Sermon Pentecost 20

“Hannah’s Song”

Pentecost 20 (NL3 Judges)

October 14, 2012

1 Samuel 1.9-11, 19-20; 2.1-10

Hannah’s story, of a barren woman who longs to have a child, is a compelling one that draws us in. Most of us know those for whom this is a tender and painful story. Hannah’s grief is compounded by her husband’s second wife, Penninah, who cannot only have babies at will, but who mocks her and throws it in Hannah’s face. Her husband, Elkanah, is sympathetic and even overly generous but, while trying to mitigate her pain, is clueless. “Am I not worth more than ten sons? he says.” Her story is also compelling because it is told in the context of a much larger but similar story of hopelessness and despair. The 12 tribes of Israel are besieged by other powers from without and by their own corruption and faithlessness from within. Both Hannah and Israel don’t seem to have any future.

However, the birth of a child changes everything. Even so, the key to understanding what this means comes within Hannah’s Song, the psalm of thanksgiving Hannah sings in praise of God’s gracious gift of a son. This is important because we might be tempted to ask more of Hannah’s story than we should. It is natural, but misguided, to pore over her story looking for a procedure for getting what we want from God. Hannah’s Song reminds us that it is not about us; rather, it is about what God does in, with, and through us. It is about us only to the extent that God has a special place in his heart for the hurting and helpless.

What does Hannah’s Song tell us what we need to hear today as we make our way through the story? First, the story shows again how God meets each of us in midst of our pain, despair, and hopelessness. Wherever we struggle, whoever persecutes us, whatever we lament, God is there with us. Hannah trusted in that promise, which is why she poured out her soul to God in the shrine at Shiloh. The tribes of Israel, as they suffered at the hands of other nations, some of it their own doing, cried out to God for a deliverer. God raised up judges for them and will eventually raise up a king as well.

That God meets us where we are leads us to the second important takeaway today: God is working even though we can’t see it. The miraculous birth of Samuel is the back-story to another back-story, which ultimately tells the story of how David became the greatest king of Israel, uniting the tribes into one formidable people. Getting there is not a smooth ride and it takes all of 1 Samuel and much of 2 Samuel to tell it. Hannah’s Song reminds us that God is acting in, with, and through the world on our behalf. By the way, I think that it is precisely those times when we think God is absent from us that God is working the hardest.

The third and last point our text makes today is that God turns life upside down from what we expect. God does not only reverse the fortunes of the lowly, the downtrodden, and the marginalized. God also works in, with, and through the most unlikely of people and circumstances. Who would think that Hannah would have a child, let alone a kingmaker and king-breaker? Who would have thought that it would be the eighth son of Jesse who would become king? For that matter, who would have imagined that the Savior of the world would be born in a humble stable to a carpenter and his ordinary wife, a woman who sings a similar song of her own after his birth? A side note: it seems to me that God’s preferential option for the poor and marginalized ought to inform our political choices.

When I was doing coursework for my doctorate, I had the opportunity to do an intentional analysis of the events that led up to this point in my life as a pastor. It was amazing to see how the people I met and the experiences I had shaped me in ways I couldn’t dream of at the time. The opening of Hannah’s womb reminds us that our lives and our futures are continually being reopened. The birth of Samuel reminds us that God does new things in amazing ways. Hannah’s Song is our song and we join our voices to hers, for God meets us at the places of our deepest need, works in ways that we can’t always see, in ways that we can never expect. Thanks be to God! Amen.

"Bold Humility" Sermon Pentecost 19

“Bold Humility”

Pentecost 19 (Narrative Lectionary 3 – Law & Wilderness)

Exodus 32.1-14

October 7, 2012

It’s been a wild ride for the Israelites. In response to the people’s cry of oppression, Moses showing up as God’s mouthpiece to lead them out of Egypt and back to the land they have only heard rumors about. He does so through a series of dramatic plagues ending with the Passover, the angel of death killing the unprotected firstborn male people and animals. On their way out, they plunder the Egyptians and have a narrow escape at the Red Sea where Moses parts the waters. God gets them organized in the wilderness, providing quail and manna for them to eat. Flush from this exhilarating adventure and the anticipation of the Promised Land, they pledge themselves to each other. Furthermore, the Israelites agree to follow God’s rules for living.

But they haven’t had a lot of experience with Yahweh, the God of their ancestors, so they get nervous when they haven’t heard from him in a while. Moses has been in conference with God 40 days and the Israelites get restless. Has Moses met with some disaster? Did God leave them again? Will it be another 400 years before God shows up again? What should they do? They need a god they can rely on, one that can lead them, and so they make their own god in the form of a golden calf. As Rolf Jacobson notes, this is not an image of a false god, but a false image of the True God. A charitable view says that they simply wanted a god with whom they could connect. Uncharitably, they made up a god they were trying to control.

Yet, in a remarkable twist to the story, the True God cannot be controlled, but he can be persuaded. Moses, the one that God called to lead his people, who didn’t even want the job in the first place, intercedes on their behalf. Daring to talk to God in the midst of God’s righteous anger and denying any self-interest no matter how tempting, Moses advocates for others who don’t deserve it and may not appreciate it. But Moses did something even bolder: Moses reminded God of his promises and who he claimed to be. Then, in one of the most incredible lines in Scripture, we hear that “God changed his mind about the disaster he planned to bring upon his people.”

The idea that God can change his mind may make some of us a bit nervous, just like the Israelites were nervous when Yahweh seemed absent. Indeed, we have to admit that many of us have tried to make God into our own golden calves in one way or another. We wonder if God is being unpredictable, not to mention somewhat fickle and subject to being shamed. However, I believe that this story shows a God who is dynamic, not static, who makes himself vulnerable to us and open to conversation with us so that we might be vulnerable and open to him. We also see in this story a God who justly hates sin and brokenness, but tempers justice with mercy. God is both just and merciful. Thank goodness God is more merciful than just.

I have said before how grateful I am that Grace embraces and practices prayer so faithfully. This story of Moses and God shows us that prayer is important, but it goes way beyond that. God invites us into a relationship where we can pour out not only our hurts to him but also our hearts.

As we come to God in bold humility, addressing him as the God of our ancestors, we not only remind ourselves of who God is and what God is promised; we remind God of that as well. One thing I mention to the Saved By Grace (Confirmation) students as well as to parents of babies being baptized is that baptism is not as much for God as it is for us. I tell them that when we doubt God’s promises (or think God has forgotten us), we can wave our baptism in God’s face and say, “You promised!”

The story doesn’t end here and when Moses gets down the mountain, it turns pretty ugly. They are not destroyed, but they do suffer the consequences of their sin. We have more stories after this one about how God continually puts up with people who turn away from him, about how God takes them back because he loves us so very much. Then when we get to final story about Jesus, we can’t help but think of the one who in bold humility gave himself for us, interceding on our behalf. Jesus is the final reason we have the bold humility to enter into conversations with God, asking for God’s blessing on others, denying our own self-interests, trusting in God’s grace and mercy. God not only invites us into just such a relationship, but also makes it possible. Thanks be to God! Amen.

"Responsibly Free" Sermon Pentecost 18B (Narrative Lectionary 3 - Exodus/Passover)

“Responsibly Free”

Pentecost 18B (NL3 Exodus/Passover)

September 30, 2012

Exodus 12.1-14; 13.1-10

We usually encounter the Passover story in the context of Maundy Thursday, the commemoration of Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples. Three out of the four gospels make this last meal that Jesus has a Passover meal. John’s gospel, interestingly, has Jesus dying on the night of the Passover. Looking back through the story of Jesus to the Passover event makes obvious connections between the two stories. Unfortunately, doing so robs the Passover story of its power and its rightful place in God’s story. So far in God’s story we have heard how God creates humanity in God’s image as male and female, and how these human beings disobeyed God’s good intentions for them. We have heard how Abraham and Sarah were promised numerous descendants like the stars in the sky as well as a land for them to occupy. Last week heard the Joseph story and how the beginnings of the 12 tribes found themselves in Egypt.

In narrative time, it has been 400 years since Joseph saved both Egypt and his people and the Israelites have become numerous. They are indeed many, but they are still in Egypt without a land of their own and it gets worse. They are a threat to the Egyptians, Joseph has been forgotten, and in an attempt to hold them back, the Egyptians are forcing the Israelites into hard manual labor. It doesn’t work, so Pharaoh has the Egyptian midwives are told to kill male Jewish babies as they are born. The Israelites cry out to God for deliverance, God raises up Moses to act has an agent of freedom, loosing a series of plagues to convince Pharaoh to let them go. The tenth and final plague is the harshest, the killing of the firstborn male in unprotected households where lamb’s blood has not been smeared on the thresholds.

So, when we talk about celebrating Passover, the event God uses to liberate the Jewish people, we would do well to mute our celebration, knowing that many innocent children died, on both sides. The commemoration is also subdued because, as awful a place Egypt was, the Israelites were going into the unknown, what will be long, wilderness wandering before they get to the Promised Land. Furthermore, as wonderful a place as that will be, it will bring its own challenges and difficulties. Yet, this is such a singular part of Jewish history and so basic to their identity that God demands they not only remember each year what God has done for them, but also essentially reenact it as well.

This reenactment goes further: children are not only to be told over and over about this singular act of deliverance from slavery and oppression by God, they and the family are an important part of it. The mother lights the candles and a child asks a series of questions beginning with, “Why is this night different from all other nights? Why on this night do we eat only unleavened bread?” Then the father or mother tells the story of oppression and freedom and then there are more questions and more stories. All the while, they eat as their ancestors ate, lamb, bitter herbs, and unleavened bread, hastily with their feet pointed toward the door. Each year they are reminded who they are, whose they are, and what they have been freed for.

It is significant that the Passover event resets the Jewish calendar to the beginning of the year. The Israelites are leaving Egypt behind and all that means, making a new start to a new land. This new stage in their journey with God, along with the importance of teaching their children, can inform an important, yearly rite that we are celebrating here today, the Affirmation of Baptism. No, there won’t be any lambs sacrificed or bitter herbs eaten, but there will be unleavened bread in the form of Communion wafers. Yet, as exciting as it was for Izabel and Linsey to affirm what their parents did for them, this celebration should be a bit muted too, because you two have been freed for something today.

Izzy and Linsey, by your words and actions today you have been set free from your parents’ authority, but you have also been set free for taking responsibility for your own faith journey. You have promised to continue on that journey your parents set you on, a journey of regular worship, Bible study, prayer, service, and giving, and you did it in front of many witnesses. Yet, remember this, that the setting free has been accomplished not by you, but rather by the God who set free the Israelites and who journey with them through the wilderness to the Promised Land. That’s a powerful story; it’s the Israelite’s story, it’s our story, and it’s your story; don’t ever forget it. Amen.

"Good God!" Sermon for Pentecost 17B

“Good God!”

Pentecost 17B

September 23, 2012

Genesis 37.4-8, 26-34; 50.15-21

NCIS is a fictional TV show about a team of federal agents working for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, doing exactly what the name implies, investigating crime in or against the Navy and Marine Corps. In a past episode, two of the team, Tony and McGee, believe they have located another member of their team, Ziva, who has been missing and believed to be in the hands of a foreign terrorist in an unfriendly foreign country. Because the government is unwilling to extract her without proof, Tony and McGee allow themselves to be captured by the terrorists on the slim hope that the government would rescue them.

Indeed, Ziva is there, beaten to a pulp and almost dead, but Tony and McGee are also subjected to torture. During his interrogation, Tony repeatedly asks the terrorist leader when he is going to surrender, warning the man that he is about to die if he doesn’t do so. Understandably, the terrorist laughs. At a critical time, the small window behind Tony shatters and a bullet kills the terrorist. The bullet has been fired by their team leader, Gibbs, a former sniper, from several hundred yards away. Against all odds, a squad of rescuers overruns the terrorist compound and all three are rescued.

Today we enter the Joseph narrative and Jana did a nice job summarizing what has happened since last week’s reading about Abraham and the highlights of what is happening in our story today. On a literary level, the Joseph story bridges the gap between promises God makes to the ancestors that they would be a numerous people and story in Exodus of oppression and liberation. On a theological level, the Joseph story asserts that—evidence to the contrary—God is at work in, with, and under the circumstances of life and the action of people working to make things good.

What Joseph and his brothers now realize at the end that they were unable to see in the middle was that God was working both through them and in spite of them to bring about God’s purposes. One significant lesson from this story is the assurance that God is present in the most horrific and ugly parts of our lives and the world even though it is not always possible to see it. God is with us. There are two important dimensions lesson must be held together on our journeys of faith if we are to make sense of this lesson.

First, we must have a healthy sense of realism about our dangerous world and our human brokenness. Without a realistic view of the world, we dissolve into a romantic piety about our life circumstances. Too many of us have been on the receiving end of well-meaning but obnoxious platitudes such as, “God doesn’t give us more than we can handled,” or “You can always have more children.” Second, we also need a healthy sense of certainty that God is faithful and will somehow bring some kind of good out of the direst of circumstances. Without certainly, realism leads to despair.

There is another significant lesson that the Joseph narrative has for us today that takes us beyond it. The assurance that God works in, with, and through even the darkest places in the world gives us the courage we need to enter those places intentionally as God’s partners in healing and redemption. Tony and McGee had no delusions about the danger they were entering in trying to rescue Ziva. And, although they had no guarantee, they believed that Gibbs and others were working on their behalf. They didn’t leave it all up to Gibbs, but neither did they think it all depended upon them.

We read the Joseph story through the lens of another story: Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. The Romans, the civil authorities, and some religious leaders intended to do great harm to Jesus. Yet, God was working in, with, and through the most horrific death possible to bring new life. The cross of Jesus gives us the assurance that we can enter any uncertain circumstance with the assurance that God will be with us, often working in ways we cannot see until much later. It is why the apostle Paul is able to say in Romans 8 that, “All things work together for good for those who love God and are the called according to his purpose.”

Because of this assurance of God’s presence, we walk with people who are facing terminal illness and death. We are able to join the world of the poor and hungry even in the most overwhelming of circumstances. We enter the worlds of people different from us, with different cultures and religious beliefs, not to convert them, but simply to get to know them as fellow travelers in this world. Had Tony and McGee not been rescued and died with Ziva, she still would have known that there were people willing to enter her darkness and be with her through it.

This week I invite you to look back over your life and see where God has been working to bring about God’s good although you may not have seen it at the time. I then invite you to look around to where God might be calling you to enter, places of uncertainty and even frightening. God is working in, with, and through us in the world so that all may know and live God’s love. God is with you. Thanks be to our good and gracious God! Amen.

"Promises, Promises" Sermon Pentecost 16B

“Promises, Promises”

Pentecost 16B

September 16, 2012

Genesis 15.1-6           

When my dad passed away in 1989 the pastor shared with us Psalm 121, which begins, “I lift up my eyes to the hills – from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth.” I have since learned that hills were not a source of comfort for travelers in the psalmist’s time. Rather, they were sources of fear, from which bandits would come to attack them. That’s why people travelled in caravans. Yet, the psalmist turns that source of fear on its head and declares that, because of God’s promises, hills are comforting, not fearful. These are verses that I share with grieving families, inviting them to do the same. I thought about it this week as I had the opportunity to visit my dad’s grave, on a small hill at Ft. Snelling National Cemetery. Both the marker and the hill, which obviously speak of death, are because of God’s promises, also signs of life.

Today we enter the story of Abraham, which is foundational for the Jewish people. Stretching from chapters 11-25, the story says that beginning with one very old couple, God was going to build a nation and through that nation, God was going to bless all nations of the earth. Specifically, God promised Abram and Sarai—soon to be Abraham and Sarah—, past childbearing years at 75 and 66 years old respectively, they would have their own son. This is a promise God would repeat over and over again. It is a promise that won’t be fulfilled for 25 years and through many conversations between Abram, Sarai, and God, conversations that are often pained, strained, and difficult for all of them. That’s how the life of faith is, not always gracious back and forth dialogue between God and us. Interestingly, it’s these painful conversations that keep the relationships alive in difficult times.

Beside God’s willingness to hang in there with us even when we doubt, yell, scream, or cry, God also gives us what we need to keep going, to move forward in faith even when we doubt. I wonder how many times in those 25 years between the promise and the beginning of fulfillment, the birth of Isaac, that Abram stands outside his tent looking up at the stars in the sky. I imagine that as I look to the hills around me in general and at my dad’s gravestone in particular, Abraham also held onto those stars as God’s promise to him that he would have a son. By the way, remember that Abraham will never see the total fulfillment of that promise, only its beginning. Those stars were not proof that God would fulfill his promise, but they were a not so subtle reminder that the One who created those very stars is capable of giving a child to an old couple.

God knows that we need to be reminded of the promises and God knows we need more than promises to hang on to as we wait for the fulfillment of the promises. That’s why God give us his Word in the scriptures, the story of the Word made flesh living with us. That’s why God’s Word is attached to the waters that pour over us, so that every time we get wet we are reminded that we are a child of God and that nothing will separate us from God’s love. It is why God continues to come to us and give himself to us, his body and blood, in the bread and wine of Holy Communion, to remind us that we are forgiven and that we have new life in him. Finally, it is why God makes himself present in this and other communities of faith, the Body of Christ.

God gives us what we need to move ahead in life, to step out in faith, not to earn the promise but rather to live into the promise, to take the plunge in life trusting God to be there. I don’t think the biggest miracle is that Abraham and Sarah had a son, or that a numerous people sprung from them. I think the most amazing thing is that for 25 years, past the age when they should not have children, they continued to do what people do who want to have a baby. Now, that’s faith! What is it that God has promised you? What has God given you as a sign to hang on to as you wait? How might you step out in faith, knowing that God will fulfill his promises to you? Look to the hills, the stars, a grave marker, or an empty tomb. For, in Jesus Christ’s life, death, and resurrection we have the assurance of God’s promise always. Amen.