“Rides Upon the Storm”

For some reason I, along with the church of this age, keep getting drawn into the book of Revelation. That is a fine book. Unlike many who have gone rabid over the centuries wishing to deny its place in the canon, I find lots of comfort in the book. Christ wins. His victory is given to the saints. It is not without struggle, but nothing worthwhile ever is. And the sight of the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven is worth it. But the older I get, and the more readings I have done in the Scriptures, the more I agree with another friend. He’s a philosopher and was quipping off the old joke that all philosophy is a footnote to Plato. At the bottom of the cups one day he said, “the entire scriptures are footnotes to Genesis.” Now the Gospels would be pretty significant footnotes, but in the Joseph story in Genesis it is all there. Joseph’s brothers reject him. He descends into the pit. Is declared dead, but is alive. Suffers greatly at the hands of many. Longs for his father and to do his father’s will. And ultimately forgives his brothers while reigning.

Our Old Testament lesson for today (Genesis 45:3-15) captures a scene toward the end of that story where Joseph shares an amazing line. Joseph has revealed himself to his brothers and asked after Jacob his father. And understandably the brothers “were dismayed at his presence.” Having sold him into slavery and long considered him dead, here he stands before them as ruler and savior. Surely now they will get the judgement they deserve. Surely Joseph will turn the tables. At the very least deny them the food they need in the midst of famine. Maybe just kill them directly after toying with them a bit. And while some of that may have played on Joseph’s mind earlier. Read the full story. Joseph has come to a different decision. “Do not be distressed…because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. Genesis 45:5).” He refines this a bit as the story of his entire life. “It was not you who sent me here, but God. (Genesis 45:8).”

Saying something like that about our lives is easy for the good stuff. Giving God credit for our victories is easy stuff. When we are winners feeling the love of God comes naturally. Reference every athlete after winning the big game thanking God. And this takes nothing away from that witness. For God certainly provides the victory. Joseph is “lord of all Egypt”, the only one anywhere who has any food, the one who holds his brother’s lives in the palm of his hands. But giving God credit when we are down in the pit is a test of faith. When we are battered and bruised, black and blued, can God be there? And can we extend the grace of God to those who placed us there?

This is the witness. “If I make my bed in sheol, you are there. (Psalm 139:8).” He descended into hell. And when he returned it was not to exact vengeance against all who had thrown him there. Which would be all of us. He descended into hell, into sheol, the pit, to start the triumph. “God sent me before you to preserve a remnant (Genesis 45:7).” The absolute worst that Satan, the World and even death can throw at us, it threw at Christ. And it wasn’t enough. He descended to the pit, and set the captives free.

God leads us into all types of places. This is so that we might come to know that anywhere we are, he’s already been there, and he remains with us. This is so that we might learn to trust him for the victory. This is so that we might learn to live by grace. Do not be dismayed at his presence, for his presence is for our good.

Hold Fast

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Biblical Text: 1 Corinthians 15:1-20

Our Congregation this past week had a shock. Two wonderful members were killed in a car accident. One immediately and the other on the way to the hospital. It happened Wednesday morning and word started getting around by the evening and the following morning. The Pastor’s corner from this week, just below, directly mentions that. But I couldn’t ask for a better text for a sermon at such a time. We believe in the resurrection. Set everything else aside. This is the defining belief that Christians Hold Fast. Jesus is risen. And you will arise. Paul and all apostolic preachers proclaim that fact. The text also examines what would make that faith in vain.

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A Sudden and Evil Death…

We don’t use it all that often. Ash Wednesday. Maybe the odd Sunday in Lent or Advent. The Litany (LSB 288) is a highly stylized and formal call and response prayer. Technically our “Prayers of the Church” are a litany. They are petitionary in that they ask God for something. There is a call and response form to them. The difference is that the call, the petition, is usually changeable and specific week to week, while the congregational response is fixed in one of two forms: “Hear our prayer” or “In you mercy.” The formal litany is contemplative in both call and response. The petitions are general: “from all sin, error and evil…deliver us good Lord.” As a contemplative prayer, we individually supply our sin, error and evil. And collectively we offer them up to Christ seeking deliverance. A litany in English has just become a synonym for an overly long list. But if that word was still grounded in the world of contemplative prayer, it is a list of things important enough to bring to Almighty God. It is a list of things common enough that we all fear the things in it. We don’t like to contemplate them, but we need to. And turn them over to Christ who alone grants us peace.

The line that plays on my memory today is one that I don’t think we tend to share with most Christians of most times and places as a trouble. “From sudden and evil death…good Lord deliver us.” Every time I intone that line, my contemplation is that I think most of us would prefer that, a sudden if not evil death. Don’t let me suffer or linger or be a burden. Let my death be fast and if not fast then easy. Our entire end of life system these days is built towards giving that. Although I am not sure if that is for the comfort of those remaining or of those leaving. But that petition was important enough for most Christians to make it into the litany. Sudden death for most of history was all around. Sudden death could be an evil death for multiple reasons, but primarily two. A sudden death might “capture us unawares.” Like the 5 virgins who fell asleep without oil, the day came, and they were not ready. The second thing a sudden death precluded was reconciliation. We tend to keep grudges, and if not grudges, there are all kinds of minor things, each a brick in a wall that builds up between us and our family or neighbor. And if not a full wall, a stumbling stone that makes interaction in anything but gentle pleasantries uncomfortable. The time before death was the time to clear away any of those hindrances. In our sufferings, to fill up the sufferings of Christ, and be reconciled to all. A sudden death would rob that.

Of course, I’m reflecting just on the fact of the sudden death of Dale and Marge. None of us knows our day, hour or minute. And neither of those two concerns were a problem with Dale or Marge. They were not caught unaware by the day. They both had a solid and fervent faith in Jesus. And in living out that faith I saw no evidence of stumbling blocks placed or walls that needed to come down. Dale and Marge lived the faith day by day. And in that they are examples of the saints we are to hold up for our instruction. We can pray that God would grant us the time to be in earnest, that sudden and evil death would not catch us, so that we might be reconciled at the last. Or we can recognize that now is that time. Today is the day of grace. Today is the day to strengthen our faith toward God and our fervent love toward one another. Today is the day to check the oil for our lamps.

Go Fish

020925 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 5:1-11

The text is Luke’s version of the call of the first disciples. And the emphasis of Luke’s version is unique in my reading. Matthew and Mark emphasize the immediate authority of the call. But as we’ve been reading Luke 4 and Luke 5 we have been experiencing Simon’s encounter with Jesus. The end of these encounters is the call. That call comes after Simon recognition that Jesus was not just a teacher or a guru but LORD. And when you’ve encountered the living God there are some things that need to be sorted out. We in the church call this entire process discipleship. This sermon thinks about that.

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Vocation Nitty Gritty

Last week’s old testament reading was from Jeremiah 1, which was Jeremiah’s call. This week we have Isaiah 6, which is Isaiah’s call. That is paired up with the gospel reading which is Luke’s telling of the call of Peter, which is slightly different than the Matthew and Mark versions. Not different in any “that one has to be false’ way, Luke is just more expansive of what lead up to the call itself. Matthew and Mark simple have, “Peter, follow me…and he dropped his nets.” Which always makes you wonder at the immediacy. Luke tells you what happened before that.

I’m usually one who is arguing for leaving room for the mystical. As Shakespeare wrote, “There are more things on earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” But if there is one place where I tend to think we don’t ground things enough it is when we are talking about calls. The fancier and more expansive word is vocation. And unlike the Roman Catholic tradition that reserves that word for specifically religious vocations, the Lutheran understanding of vocation covers both the kingdom of the law and of the gospel.

We all have vocations. We probably have multiple overlapping vocations. In Luther’s Small Catechism he introduces this idea in a section that gets skipped in many of our catechism classes. (Why? I don’t know.) That section is called the Table of Duties. The vocations that Luther works through in outline there are: Bishops, Pastors, Laity, Civil Magistrates, Citizens, Husbands, Wives, Parents, Children, Workers, Employers, Youth and Widows. He ends with “everyone” so that you can grasp the basic idea that the number of vocations is practically limitless. Everyone of us can apply the rule “love you neighbor as yourself” to our specific place in life. And that is the Lutheran idea of vocation at its simplest.

As we move through life there are many roles in which we have the duty or responsibility of love. Vocation is primarily how God tends for his creation. Adam and Eve were created to care for the Garden. God could do lots of things directly. He could speak and it would be done. He could snap his fingers and things would happen. But in his wisdom God typically does things like say to someone “follow me” or “take care of this one.” When you have a child that is God saying “take care of this one.” When you have a job that is God saying “take care of those who need this good or service.” These same vocations are how God takes care of us. None of us are completely self-reliant, as much as that might be the American ideal. We are bound to each other by our vocations which should be and are bonds of love.

Some of the complexity is that our vocations sometimes contradict each other. The most simple form of that contradiction is when we just don’t have the time/money/energy to meet everything those bonds of love demand from us. Take it to God in prayer. Part of his promise is providence. That we shall have what we need for this body and life. If we don’t have it, there is someone who does.

The tougher complexities come from our sinful nature and a fallen world. Many of our vocations have turned inward on themselves. Instead of being opportunities to love those given to us, those vocations become honors or means of extracting from others. We desire the trappings of the call, but not the duties. We might know we have a call but run from it. We might also just neglect it growing weary in love. Because love is costly.

When Jesus called Peter to be a fisher of men, it was a call to the cross. In Peter’s case a literal cross. All vocations in this world, being calls to love, are calls to the cross. But it is through these that the love of God is made manifest in this world. It is through your vocations that God’s love is made known to call creation.

Rightly Ordered Love

020225 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 4:31-44

Having VP JD Vance quote the theological concept ordo amoris was at first just refreshing. But the more I looked at the texts for the week, which also included Paul’s song to love in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13, it became something that the texts themselves spoke about. So this sermon attempts to talk about “rightly ordered love” or “the order of caring.” It also attempts to preach it from a specifically Lutheran law and gospel understanding. I wish I could summarize it for this better, but all I can really do is ask for 15 mins of your time. Give it a listen or a read.

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The Object of Love

Don Draper, the symbolic ad man from the TV series Mad Men, professionally hated using love. Across seven seasons his various underlings would pitch him an ad based on love and he would crinkle up his nose and dismiss the idea. His reasoning would alternate between “nobody knows what that word means” and “the product is SPAM, are you sure you want to use love.” The character Don Draper was an unreliable narrator making his story up on the fly. But the Ad Man Don Draper was a genius.

Don’s first complaint was that the word “love” was too vague. The character, a charming womanizing drunk with flashes of deep humanity, was pulling from his life experience of a variety of things people called love, none of those things meaningful. Maybe the one thing Don loved was the work. In the end he would give up everything for the work. Which when the work is advertising is a commentary in itself, but that might have been his epiphany – “Do the work.” Which at the time included being demoted and reporting to his protégé. But in the Apostle Paul’s list it was an interesting picture of “love is not arrogant (1 Corinthians 13:4).” For as rich as the English language is in almost every area. We have words for everything, English being this great sink of the world collecting peoples and words from millennia. We only have one word called love. The biblical languages have a spectrum. You might be familiar with C.S.Lewis’ “The Four Loves.” That is based on the Greek words (roughly transliterated): eros, philia, storge, and agape. Each of those Greek words gets translated as love in English. But you would not mistake eros – sexual desire – for philia – how you love your brother or a friend. It’s not an original insight, but maybe our problems with friendship today are because it always gets coded homoerotically. Even Hebrew, a word poor language, has at least two words: Ahavah and Chesed. Ahavah is used first when Abraham gives Isaac as an offering. Love rooted in giving. Chesed is often translated “steadfast love.” It is rooted in enduring faithfulness. All of these concepts – sexuality, friendship, faithfulness, giving, graciousness, desire – in English get dumped into “love.” No wonder Don held “nobody knows what that word means.”

Don’s second complaint was about the object we attached “love” to. What are we doing attaching such a word meaning all those deep things to objects like SPAM. Can you really love donuts? Or cheap flights to New York? When we are profligate with our words, over time it is not the products or common things that get elevated. We lose the ability to label and recognize the true thing.

Paul’s song to Love – 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 our Epistle Reading – addresses both of Don’s complaints. Paul makes clear what “love” is in his poetic way. He also would make clear the appropriate objects of love. But the first thing I think Paul addresses is the non-performative nature of love. In our day and age it seems that everything we do ends up on YouTube. There is always a reflexive nature of our actions or emotions. We think we are doing something for someone else, but we secretly hope that it also rebounds for our fame, wealth, or other good. “If I speak in the tongues of men and angels” – things which would quickly get you millions of views – “but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” Paul even addresses virtuous things. “If I give away all that I have.” Today we do all kinds of such virtuous acts, to record them and be known as being such a person. The phrase used to be doing well by doing good. If I do this, “but have not love, I gain nothing (1 Corinthians 13:3).” Love is not performative. It is not reflexive. You can’t do it and expect payback. And if that is what you are doing, you have already received the reward, but it is not love.

Instead “love is patient and kind…”. And you should know the rest. If you don’t go read it. Meditate on it. Write those words on your heart. Memorize them. For what the Apostle is really talking about is you as the object of God’s love. “Love never ends (1 Corithians 13:8).” Love has a worthy object. And you are a worthy object of God’s love. Today we only know that dimly, but tomorrow, face to face. And because we have been the object of the true love of Christ, we likewise are able to know love and to give love. Give that love back to the Father as worship and adoration. And give that love to our neighbor. Because those are the only worthy objects of such a transcendent thing as love.

Jubilee

012625 Sermon Download

Biblical Text: Luke 4:16-30

The text is Jesus preaching to his hometown at the start of his ministry. His sermon ends with their attempt to toss him off the cliff, so it is safe to say Jesus offended them. It’s a really tough text, especially for Americans, because it goes after the cult of fairness. God isn’t fair. God is graceful. And his grace comes where and when he wills it. So you get the fact of Jesus declaring “the year of the Lord’s favor” a Jubilee. And you get the fact that it goes to everyone. And you get the fact that the miracles and apostles and all the shiny things might not be for you. Because the deep fact is that God owes us nothing. And the more we might claim standing the worse we get. The God is gracious. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Part of that is the call to celebrate the grace received by others. The sermon explores that space. The space between grace and anger that mine doesn’t seem a much.

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Knowing

The mega-themes of the seasons of the church year are rather tight. Lent is primarily a penitential season, a season of confession. Easter is the season of fulfillment. Advent is hopeful longing. Christmas is the incarnation, the fulfillment of the hope of God’s promises. The long season of Pentecost is the life of the church in the world. Which leaves Epiphany, stuck between Christmas and Lent. Epiphany is tougher to apply an over riding theme. It isn’t the more practical Pentecost, even though the paraments are green and it is occasionally called Ordinary Time. There is a temptation to make it about knowledge, growing in wisdom as Luke often says about Jesus. But to we modern westerners knowledge is about technique. “I know how to do this.” Whatever this is. Knowledge is something you can regurgitate on a test. And given the rapidly emerging ability of AI, the returns to such knowledge in the future might be greatly limited. The same way we all have adapted to “you don’t need to know that, you can always just google it” we might be adapting to AI knowledge. You don’t need to know how to do that. When you need it done, ask the AI. But Knowledge was not always attained only through technique. Knowledge could be given through revelation. Knowledge could be a deeper understanding. The problem is what do we mean by that deeper understanding.

Understanding doesn’t really capture it because it is still too much in the head. We can know things in the head that we don’t do. Likewise we can know things emotionally or in our gut that we do nothing about. Epiphany is a heart knowledge. It is a coming near to God in a way that changes how we live. Our Old Testament reading (Nehemiah 8) has an Epiphany in full. There is an increase in head knowledge. Gathered Israel hears the Law read to them for the first time in a long time. ‘The ears for all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law (Nehemiah 8:3).” There is an Emotional knowing. “For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law (Nehemiah 8:9).” Unfortunately that is where are reading cuts off. In the rest of Nehemiah though, those gathered people do change how they live. They complete the walls of Jerusalem and they reestablish Temple service. They keep the feast which had been forgotten, commit to Sabbaths and resupply the Levites. There are some questionable things that get swept up into their zeal, like the treatment of Jews married to non-Jews (“and they confronted them, and cursed them, and beat them (Nehemiah 13:25)”. But the overall picture of Israel’s Epiphany, or you could call it a revival, is understandably human. Even in knowing God better, we still remain far away in this life.

We come to church to hear and receive the Word. Prayerfully that enters receptive ears. Maybe it churns our gut whether in sorrow for how we have acted or in compassion for others – in faith toward God and in love toward one another. We come to church to hear that Word, and then we are sent to live it. We are sent to live it in the midst of this world. Unlike Israel who decided they needed to cleanse themselves by their own actions and kick out the world. God has made us clean in Jesus Christ. It is by living out what we have heard in the midst of the world that we keep the Epiphany. As Peter writes, “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Pet. 2:12 ESV)” When our hearts have been changed so that we live it in front of the World, that is when the world has its own Epiphany.

Cana’s Beauty

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Biblical Text: John 2:1-11

I love this text – the Wedding at Cana – “the First of the Signs.” But I don’t find it easy to preach on. In some ways it is too deep. It captures the entirety of the biblical witness in one scene. It tells us everything we need to know about God in eleven verses. But it is exactly the beauty that adding words just takes away from. So this is something of a short list. As a Sign it tells us something about the heart and purpose of the God we have. 1) Just as marriage was the first thing instituted post creation in Genesis, so the first sign of the new covenant is an honoring of marriage. 2) Celebration and beauty have their place. Don’t let someone shame you out of them. 3) Grow in faith. Your God knows your lack and will certainly meet it. Let him know at be ready to do what he says. 4) With this God the best is always yet to come.

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