'Worthiness' is irrelevant

1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43
Then Solomon stood before the altar of the LORD in the presence of all the assembly of Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven. He said, “O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and steadfast love for your servants who walk before you with all their heart. Likewise when a foreigner, who is not of your people Israel, comes from a distant land because of your name - for they shall hear of your great name, your mighty hand, and your outstretched arm - when a foreigner comes and prays toward this house, then hear in heaven your dwelling place, and do according to all that the foreigner calls to you, so that all the peoples of the earth may know your name and fear you, as do your people Israel, and so that they may know that your name has been invoked on this house that I have built.”

Psalm 96:1-9
Sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, bless the name of the LORD; proclaim God’s salvation from day to day. Declare God’s glory among the nations and God’s wonders among all peoples. For great is the LORD and greatly to be praised, more to be feared than all gods. As for all the gods of the nations, they are but idols; but you, O LORD, have made the heavens. Majesty and magnificence are in your presence; power and splendor are in your sanctuary. Ascribe to the LORD, you families of the peoples, ascribe to the LORD honor and power. Ascribe to the LORD the honor due the holy name; bring offerings and enter the courts of the LORD. Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness; tremble before the LORD, all the earth.

Galatians 1:1-12
Paul an apostle - sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead - and all the members of God’s family who are with me, to the churches of Galatia: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel - not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ. But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed! Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant of Christ. For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

Luke 7:1-10
After Jesus had finished all his sayings in the hearing of the people, he enters Capernaum. A centurion there had a slave whom he valued highly, and who was ill and close to death. When he heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to him, asking him to come and heal his slave. When they came to Jesus, they appealed to him earnestly, saying, “He is worthy of having you do this for him, for he loves our people, and it is he who built our synagogue for us.” And Jesus went with them, but when he was not far from the house, the centurion sent friends to say to him, “Lord, do not trouble yourself, for I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; therefore I did not presume to come to you. But only speak the word, and let my servant be healed. For I also am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my slave, ‘Do this,’ and the slave does it.” When Jesus heard this he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd that followed him, he said, “I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.” When those who had been sent returned to the house, they found the slave in good health.

*******

There are a lot of different ways to read this Gospel story. Mostly, on account of the slave in it. We’re not clear if the slave of the centurion is so dear to the man because of his value as a piece of property, or if he is so dear because he might be a younger lover, or if he is so dear because they have simply been through a lot together. Slavery in Jesus’ day was in many ways different than when we decided to steal people from other parts of the world and force them into increasing our wealth, but the power dynamic of ownership was still there. Granted, slavery early on was more easily escaped, once debts were repaid through indentured servitude, but that’s comparing one terribly abusive situation with another terribly abusive situation, so I point it out mostly to say there was a bit of a cultural difference. We are still wrestling with our baggage around slavery here, with incarceration rates the highest in the world, and most of those bodies in prison for our profit are black and brown. We can’t forget that racially charged violence is still a big part of our current events, that white folks can open carry with a lot less risk to their own lives in this country than if minorities exercise that same right, and that it was good church-going people who would make a party out of lynching, recently enough in our history that there are smiling group photographs we took, as souvenirs of a good old American pastime.

But what was meant by this soldier, one with power over a hundred other soldiers, a Gentile outsider to the Jewish faith, who sent to Jesus to ask for the healing of his slave? Perhaps it wasn’t what we think of when we think of slavery. Perhaps it was more like an unpaid internship, or a mentorship of one younger man without any other family to care for him. Because of the centurion’s assumed character traits, we can soften the relationship a bit, though they might be simply making the best of a rotten system. In any case, when we read this story, it’s the story of an outsider who has gotten wind of Jesus’ reputation as a healer. When we read this story, Jesus has just finished the sermon on the plain, with those Beatitudes, the teaching about loving our enemies, teaching about knowing a tree by its fruits. This was a hard teaching for many who were in positions of religious power, because there were strict rules about who was in and who was out, rules about how to believe and how to behave, rules about even who to love and who to hate. We know what that’s like, all of those rules to follow in order to be accepted and acceptable. Loving our enemies in a world that makes headlines teaching us how to hate our differences is an uphill battle in many ways. We can’t even love our veterans properly, leaving too many of them homeless when they return from war, leaving too many untreated for PTSD, leaving too many first responders to die without treatment from the fumes and dust inhaled when they ran into the crumbling World Trade Center - so how are we to learn to love our enemies if we can’t even properly love those whom we publicly call our heroes?

It seems we have a worthiness problem. Who is worthy of care? Who is really worth fighting for? Whose lives matter? Slaves? Veterans? Strangers? Enemies? Trans kids in school trying to use a bathroom without getting beaten up? Refugees escaping situations of extreme violence? Men? Women? Children? And who says we get to decide?

When the centurion sends to Jesus to ask healing for his dear slave, whatever that relationship really is, those who come on his behalf to the Rabbi insist that he is worth the trouble, that he deserves Jesus’ time. Why? Well, he’s a good man, with money, who uses his money to support the Jewish worshiping community. He even made a major donation for the building fund! Of course he’s good enough, worthy enough, of course he should be rewarded for his gift! Come on, Jesus, there’s the soldier’s name on a bronzed plaque, right under the stained glass window, or on the pulpit, or on the front door! We’ve got to do well by him, because he certainly deserves it, because one hand washes the other, because he scratched our back it’s time for us to scratch his. We know this well, too. So many churches with their own cemeteries have the argument time and again over who deserves to be buried in their sacred ground, as though a final resting place can be earned or deserved based on perfect attendance or major donations made or years served on council.

There’s a great film my mother showed many times for our Christian Education when I was growing up, called “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” with too many good quotes and powerful scenes to go through them all in a single sermon. But let me set up the plot for you before I tell you of the one which fits best here:

The movie was released in 1947, and Gregory Peck plays a journalist who moves to New York City and writes a six month piece about anti-semitism. He gets his material by pretending to be Jewish and watching what happens to the way people treat him, how suddenly housing becomes scarce, parties get awkward, his kid gets bullied at school. All he has to do to make his own life easier is to stop telling people he’s Jewish, but he continues for half a year to live under an assumed name so that he can have a small window into the experience of anti-Jewish prejudice. A childhood friend of his who has served in the military tries to move into the neighborhood but can’t find housing because nobody wants to rent to a Jew, and his fiancé has a cottage she could rent, except she doesn’t want to offend her Christian neighbors. So one day his kid comes home from school having had names and rocks thrown at him, and his fiancé tries to make it better for the kid by telling him ‘but you’re not a Jew,’ as though to be Jewish is more of a sin than to be the kid throwing rocks.  Who deserves what kind of treatment and why?

So this centurion hears that Jesus is coming to his house, a Gentile house, which will technically make Jesus unclean if he enters that space, not that he has ever seemed to care about being deemed unclean. But the soldier sends another group of friends to Jesus to tell him not to go out of his way, please don’t come by the house, he’s not as worthy as the first delegation said he was. He only wanted a word, just the barest of bare bones, simply the command for healing, not a big deal. You know, we’ve gotten too busy to clean the house and it’s too much a mess for company, please, we’re not ready for other people to visit just yet. While the first group of folks who came to Jesus tell him all about how much the centurion deserves what he asks for, the centurion himself denies he deserves anything. He only wants his slave whole and healthy again. He tells Jesus he isn’t worthy to have him under his roof. And that’s huge. Because legally he’s in a position of some power here, this soldier. Rome is the occupying power, Rome says jump and we ask only ‘how high’? Rome decides whose life is worth what, decided who gets nailed up to a cross as a piece of public shame and political bullying. This centurion, though, swimming in the system of oppression as they all are, understands authority and recognizes that power in Jesus to ‘say the word and my servant will be healed.’

Who else around him at the time even has the slightest idea about Jesus having that kind of position of authority? He’s just a carpenter’s kid, just a small town wandering teacher, just a regular guy, isn’t he? But he’s also the God by whose word the world first came into being, he’s also the one casting out demons and feeding the multitudes and crossing the borders between insider and outsider.

See, it isn’t about who deserves what kind of treatment. It isn’t about who is deemed worthy, or who has earned a place at the table. It never has been and it never will be. Jew or Gentile, rich or poor, black or white, veteran or civilian, slave or free, all belong to the kingdom of God simply by virtue of who God is. That’s what Paul is yelling at the Galatians about, because they’ve lost track of the good news of Jesus Christ and started preaching that Gentiles need to be circumcised before they’re welcome, just as the law holds for Jews. The Galatians have been trying to make everyone live by the same law before welcoming them into the fold, and that’s missing the point of Jesus! The point is that we don’t earn the welcome, we don’t keep score about who deserves to be loved, the point is that Jesus has leveled the playing field and replaced the game entirely by the power of his love, which cost him his life.

We know we have a lot of work to do to realize this reality in our here and now. We have a lot of reconciling, a lot of research and learning, a lot of stories to listen to and stories to share, to see one another as the Sacred sees us. But that does not change the fact that we, each and all, bear the divine image; that we, each and all, belong to a God of love and new life; that we, each and all, are welcome at God’s table of mercies. Always.

(some of) God's Ways of Loving Us Beyond Fears

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights, beside the way, at the crossroads she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries out: “To you, O people, I call, and my cry is to all that live. The LORD created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth - when he had not yet made earth and fields, or the world’s first bits of soil. When he established the heaven, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master worker; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.

Psalm 8

O LORD our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! - you whose glory is chanted above the heavens out of the mouths of infants and children; you have set up a fortress against your enemies, to silence the foe and avenger. When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what are mere mortals that you should be mindful of them, human beings that you should care for them? Yet you have made them little less than divine; with glory and honor you crown them. You have made them rule over the works of your hands; you have put all things under their feet: all flocks and cattle, even the wild beasts of the field, the birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatever passes along the paths of the sea. O LORD our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Romans 5:1-5

Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

John 16:12-15

Jesus said, “I still have many thing to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”

*******

Have you ever felt like you don’t believe enough, or don’t believe in the ‘right’ thing in the ‘right’ way? Either because somebody told you one way to do what you’re supposed to do, or because you’ve learned that to belong someplace you’ve got to buy into the wholesale everything about it, hook, line, and sinker? Ever been afraid that you’ve gotten it wrong, or that maybe you never had it to begin with? 

It’s Holy Trinity Sunday today, which some of us jokingly call ‘holy heresy Sunday.’ We make light of it now, that none of us can really understand or fully explain what we mean by describing our One God as a Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, but for hundreds of years we killed one another over words about God. In many ways and places, if we are honest, we still do that today. The winners of an argument would of course slander the losers in the way history gets written, and heresy in many places is a serious enough charge for not only excommunication, being thrown out of a faith community, but for execution. We have always been quick to kill one another over fear, especially when we can name it as a killing to defend God’s honor and reputation. If that’s not irony, I’m not sure what is.

Way back at the beginning, the Creeds were a way of knowing who the insiders were, for our own protection, because many rumors going around about Christians put our lives at danger. So if you knew the Creed at the point in the worship service where it was proclaimed, you knew enough to understand that Christians aren’t incestuous cannibals, but if you didn’t know the Creed, that’s when you would be shown out and taught the basics while the rest of us continued with communion. But when the church fathers, of course only the educated men of privilege, put the creeds together, there was much name calling and fighting over getting this exactly right, lest we say something wrong about God that might steer someone in the wrong direction and lead to their destruction. We were so afraid of getting it wrong that we would not allow people to think differently… What kind of God were we really thinking of, to live in that kind of fear?

We in this time and place are far from that sort of persecution today, having become the dominant culture under Constantine back in the 300s, conquering and colonizing all over the world in the name of Jesus. It’s more than a little tragic, the way Christians have historically taken the name of God as a tool to abuse the world God created, to erase the cultures of the people Jesus came to save, and to attempt to put the Holy Spirit’s work into boxes we can control and measure.

And yet.

And yet God still wants to be known, for the sake of life and of love. God still shows up and creates and re-creates and renews and even through and in us and our fumblings offers hope and grace and peace to the world.

When we teach the Creed in confirmation, we take it one part at a time, Father/Mother Creator for an hour, Jesus and his saving work for an hour, the Holy Spirit for an hour. Of course each of these ways of encountering God show up in all of our other classes, too, from the commandments to the Lord’s prayer to the Eucharist. But the way I see it, the Trinity is a way of talking about God’s self-revelation to the world which is only sometimes tangible, only sometimes terrifying, only sometimes a comfort, only sometimes translatable into language. 

Because God is a mystery, but we lose track of mystery when we get comfortable in our language, we have this Trinity idea to remind us of how little we can actually put God in a box of our own definitions. Even in the historical attempts to do so, to define and control holiness, God wiggles around in our words and slips through the cracks into unconquerable spaces. 

We have an idea of God as Father, yet with many mothering attributes, the womb of creation, the one who knits us together, the one who brings up the mountains and scatters the stars and plays with sea monsters, who is revealed to us in the ongoing work of creation all around us. This is probably the most universally known face of God, considering how we cannot ever truly get away from our natural environment. We know that if we do not connect with the earth we get sick at heart and sick physically, we’ve even scientifically proven the value of taking a walk in the woods, as though we need an academic study to prove what children are born knowing innately. And the stories we tell of the beginning of creation place us firmly in the garden as ground keepers, as stewards of this creation while also deeply part of it, as connected to something which is ordered for thriving, which is at its core very good. This is one basic, major way that God is revealed to us.

As Christians, and as Lutheran Christians in particular, we focus a lot of our understanding of God in the person of Jesus Christ, and even more specifically, in his willing death on the cross. It’s a big sticking point, and that’s okay, to say that Jesus is not just a good man but also God enfleshed. There are so many fights, historically and currently, over whether God could so limit God’s Self as to wear skin and bone, to weep and to bleed and have indigestion. But even as we wrestle with what it means, we confess Jesus crucified as the clearest, most solid revelation of God’s will and love for the cosmos. - Not that God wills us to kill one another, but that God would rather die with us than live condemning us to perpetuate our violence. - When we look at Scripture for discernment on who God is and how to live these lives we have been given, we always go back to the way that Jesus lived and died and rose again as the lens by which to read the rest. We go back to the Beatitudes and the last words and the commissioning before his ascension. We don’t even get the same accounts of his life across the four Gospels in our canon, not exactly, but if ever we have questions about how to interpret the rest of the Bible, we start with Jesus. And when we suffer, because suffering is universal, and wonder where God is in our pain, we look to Jesus for comfort and strength.

Then comes the rest of stuff, the things we can not explain, the dark matter on which everything else hangs, the space between our cells and the gut feelings and the work of living together in community and the little reminders of the power of life over death. The Holy Spirit has been called many things by many people, and we tend to say we know Her by Her fruits. She has been called sneaky, disturbing, comforting, Advocate, catalyst, instigator, lover, fire, wind, Wisdom, breath, spark, and we still fight many fights over where She is supposed to show up and where we don’t think She is allowed. Can the Spirit work through women? Through gay people? Through refugees? Through drug addicts? Through people we disagree with? Through the poor? Through the dead? But that doesn’t stop Her from doing Her work in the world, stirring us to justice and mercy, connecting people across the various boundaries we erect between differences. We hope to understand and recognize Her work when and where it comes, but so often She surprises us, in hard conversations and difficult people no less than in those things we quickly and readily call miracles. 

So this Trinity Sunday, we have much to grieve in the ways we historically and currently appropriate God-talk to control others, the ways that God-talk has been used even against us when we could live more fully, and we also have much to celebrate in the ways God-talk has inspired hearts and minds and relationships of courage and love and renewal. This Trinity Sunday we gather together some small part of the complexity of what it means that we are part of a world with so much messiness and mystery and hope, and that we are not ever alone in that wondering. That when we confess that we believe, believing does not mean checking off a list, because the God of whom we seek to speak is continuously loving and challenging and confronting and healing and moving as we grow and fall and fail and are forgiven and are lifted up again and again. Sometimes when we confess, we confess mostly that we are still trying, still trying to let love win over fear in the natural world, in our relationships, in the way we build community and explore our creativity. And in the stories we tell, over and over again, we confess that God is still loving us stronger than our fears, in all of those places and all of those ways where we fear falling short, with a love that will surprise us, a love which will not ever let us go.

How do you hear?

Acts 2:1-21

When the day of Pentecost had come, the apostles were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs - in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: “In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.””

Psalm 104:24-34, 35b

How manifold are your works, O LORD! In wisdom you have made them all; the earth is full of your creatures. Yonder is the sea, great and wide, with its swarms too many to number, living things both small and great. There go the ships to and fro, and Leviathan, which you made for the sport of it. All of them look to you to give them their food in due season. You give it to them; they gather it; you open your hand, and they are filled with good things. When you hide your face, they are terrified; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. You sent forth your Spirit, and they are created; and so you renew the face of the earth. May the glory of the LORD endure forever; O LORD, rejoice in all your works. You look at the earth and it trembles; you touch the mountains and they smoke. I will sing to the LORD as long as I live; I will praise my God while I have my being. May these words of mine please God. I will rejoice in the LORD. Bless the LORD, O my soul. Hallelujah!

Romans 8:14-17

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ - if in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

John 14:8-27

Philip said to Jesus, “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it. If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him not knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

*******

Last Monday, I gave the council and myself some homework. I went to Target and got a bunch of little neon notebooks from the dollar bin for a prayer practice called “examen,” where you take a moment at the end of each day to think about where you’ve been most aware of God during the day. It seemed good that we start being more intentional about keeping an eye out for God in our day-to-day living. And I find that knowing I’m going to have to write about it later helps me keep on the lookout. I met with a spiritual director in seminary for a couple of months, and that was all we talked about, paying attention to where life felt most holy, and knowing I’d have to sit with her for an hour-long conversation about God in my life changed the way I paid attention to each day.

So when Philip tells Jesus he wants to see the Father, I have to wonder how well he’s been paying attention. What was he expecting, that he didn’t find, in those three years of walking with Jesus as they fed the hungry, welcomed the outcasts, healed the sick, and cast out demons? Did he expect the Father would rain down brimstone on the occupying Romans or come and make them all kings? What kind of God do we look for, and how does God disappoint or challenge our expectations? When we look back on days like we’ve had lately, it’s easy to see the beauty of Spring, the new flowers, children at play after school, as signs of God, and they are. 

But the Father is also present in the little, the mundane, even the uncomfortable. Jesus stepped on a lot of toes, made a lot of people unhappy even while he was saving lives and bringing hope, and sometimes that’s a sign of the Kingdom coming, too. Sometimes that’s the sign we most need in order to hear the Gospel.

I don’t really like sharing personal stories as sermon illustrations, but I think this one fits what I’m getting at:

I grew up in the Lutheran church in the American midwest. We went to every worship service available to us, Sundays and midweek, all the time. I had the liturgy memorized before I could read, loved the hymns, really enjoyed all of the learning in Sunday School, went to Vacation Bible School every summer, was in the choir in high school and did all of the youth group things and was in Fellowship of Christian Athletes. I went to a Lutheran college where I was always at every worship service and on the worship team right away. I grew up in a house that prayed before every meal and every night before bed we got a blessing from Dad. I know this cultural language of how we do church as Lutherans, I know backwards and forwards what we say and when… and for the first twenty-five years of my life I had no problem whatsoever telling random strangers that Jesus loves them. My problem was in hearing it for myself. Jesus was my buddy, but I disappointed him a lot growing up, I knew I did, and it was really uncomfortable, really hard, to hear and believe that God loved me. I didn’t even know I was gay at that point, not consciously anyhow. But I always had that sense that I needed to do more, to be better. I spent twenty five years as the good church kid who was still never good enough to earn what God had already promised and delivered on. I could not hear the Good News.

It wasn’t until I was almost through my first year of seminary, questioning my call, wrestling with dropping out and starting over in a theater program or getting a factory job until I knew what to do next, it wasn’t until I discovered I was gay, that I could hear and receive the unconditional love of God. And here’s where it struck me the hardest: I came out to myself at the end of that first year, and my first instinct was that by virtue of my sexuality I was no longer welcome in the church that raised me and would no longer be welcome among my own family. My first instinct when I came out was that I no longer had a place to belong or a people to belong to or even really a future ahead of me. It was quick, this feeling, and it didn’t last long thanks to the amazing community of LGBTQ classmates at my seminary, but when I was in that instant feeling completely isolated and lost, that’s the moment I was able to hear that God loves me. When I felt that I didn’t even have church any more, that I was going to have to start over from scratch someplace else, that my entire childhood was going to have to be buried and put away, when I felt most isolated and empty, that was when I could hear it, that I could believe it for the first time. Twenty five years in a loving, supportive community, twenty five years in the church, and I didn’t understand the Gospel’s basic message until I felt most outcast from it.

My mother used to comment on the spiteful, angry Christians in the media or in the pews, that they clearly still didn’t ‘get it,’ and needed just a whole lot more love to calm down, but when we’re talking about Pentecost and the Holy Spirit, we’re not talking about something we can control. There’s a reason the Spirit is compared to fire and to wind, but when She shows up, in a sunset or at someone’s death bed or on the picket line or in a dance club, we can’t contain Her. All we can do when it comes to the Spirit of God is to be amazed, to be challenged, to try and fight even though we know we will lose. The miracle of our Pentecost is that the people all heard in their own language, in their own way, their own culture, according to their own needs, and we don’t have the power or authority or even the call to change the culture of a people before we tell them they are loved.

There's a great movement happening in the Lutheran church right now called “Decolonize Lutheranism.” It’s moving against the old jokes about Scandinavian Lutherans, Sven and Ole and Lena and potlucks with tater tot casserole, because we’ve gotten our identity warped by one culture which is only one of the many cultures where people have become Lutheran. This movement is exciting and rich and energizing and more than a little unsettling to many of us who still equate being Lutheran with being white. And sometimes hearing the Gospel means hearing news that moves us away from the center and off into the margins, means hearing the call to bring other experiences to the forefront so we can all be richer for it. 

I was having dinner with the Bishop earlier this week, and one of the things we talked about was this whole church decline mess that has so many people anxious about our future. We know the culture of joining church is changing, and has been for ages, and we know there are a lot of arguments out there about who really belongs and who doesn’t, but there are whole crowds of people wanting a connection and looking at church as a way to connect, who are being actively kept out, if not being run off with fire and pitchforks, depending on the part of the world you’re in.  What have they heard, what have they seen, that we who have always belonged are missing?  How have they heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ that we haven’t? How can we hear it from them, I wonder?

Because if we are on the lookout for God in our daily living, we are going to be challenged as much as comforted. God is not an easy God to live with, and that’s not even getting started on living with God’s people. Philip was looking for the Father in a way that would satisfy his sensibility, and Jesus was right there standing with him, just as we so easily miss the holiness right in front of us. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there, in the beauty and in the mess.

That's what our Lutheran faith is centered on, after all. The cross is not beautiful, it is an institutional, political, abusive tool of death and shame and fear. But the cross is where God meets us. It’s completely foolish to think that God is found in such weakness, in such brokenness. We want a Joel Osteen God, who is all car salesman smiles and promises for a good and comfortable ‘best life now.’ Instead, what we have is the story of a God who embraces lepers, gives sight to the blind, eats with sinners, flips tables at the temple, and does not strike back when he is struck and spit on and killed like a common thug.

And because our story centers on that Story, we find God also in every low and dark place in our lives. Every loss gives way to new birth, every tragedy to rebuilding, every death to new life. We find God loving us in the languages we might not even have words for: tears and laughter, food and fellowship, peacemaking and justice, even conflict and emptiness. We find God loving us in the people we don’t expect: annoying coworkers, political opponents, Muslims and Atheists and Pagans. God will not be contained by our expectations, by our culture, by our timetables and semantics, by our wanting. But God will be active in our world in ways and places we won’t hear of or recognize, God will be bigger than we would like and closer than we are comfortable with. The disciples at our first Pentecost heard God as a rush of wind, and the world has been buzzing with God since it all began. And if you haven’t yet been able to hear how deeply you are loved, that doesn’t make it any less true. God has all of eternity to love you, and will never give up on loving you. This love is a fire that never goes out.

Set Free

Acts 16:16-34

One day, as we were going to a place of prayer, we met a slave girl who had a spirit of divination and brought her owners a great deal of money by fortune telling. While she followed Paul and us, she would cry out, “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.” She kept doing this for many days. But Paul, very much annoyed, turned and said to the spirit, “I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.” And it came out that very hour. But when her owners saw that their hope of making money was gone, they seized Paul and Silas and dragged them into the marketplace before the authorities. When they had brought them before the magistrates, they said, “These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe.” The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks. About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was an earthquake, so violent that the foundations of the prison were shaken; and immediately all the doors were opened and everyone’s chains were unfastened. When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in t aloud voice, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.” The jailer called for lights, and rising in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They answered, “Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.” They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God.

Psalm 97

The LORD reigns; let the earth rejoice; let the multitude of the isles be glad. Clouds and darkness surround the LORD, righteousness and justice are the foundations of God’s throne. Fire goes before the LORD, burning up enemies on every side. Lightnings light up the world; the earth sees and trembles. The mountains melt like wax before the Lord of all the earth. The heavens declare your righteousness, O LORD, and all the peoples see your glory. Confounded be all who worship carved images and delight in false gods. Bow down before the LORD, all you gods. Zion hears and is glad, and the cities of Judah rejoice, because of your judgments, O LORD. For you are the LORD, most high over all the earth; you are exalted far above all gods. You who love the LORD, hate evil! God guards the lives of the saints and rescues them from the  hand of the wicked. Light dawns for the righteous, and joy for the honest of heart. Rejoice in the LORD, you righteous, and give thanks to God’s holy name.

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

“See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. “It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift. The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.

John 17:20-26

[Jesus prayed:] “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world. Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. I make your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.”

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Have you ever seen a mob in action? There are days when I am afraid of this thing that Jesus prays for, that all who believe in him shall be one. Days when I look at the way those who claim our faith band together to bully and shun and shame and kill others, for whatever reason they decide to justify, based on a verse or two taken out of context. Days when I see the mob of Christians re-enacting the crucifixion against one another, and I wish more of us would think for ourselves instead of following the high anxiety crowd rising up yet again to crush another minority group, feeding fear of anyone else who has dared to say they also are created in the image of holiness.

And we are in the time between Ascension and Pentecost, the ten days where we wait for the promised Holy Spirit because the risen Jesus has returned to the Father. How are we to decide what to do, who to follow in the meantime? Waiting can be so uncomfortable, not knowing, anxious, wondering. Was the promise true? Will life really be different now? Can we trust this new thing or would it be better to return to what we knew before all this nonsense got started?

So these are the days we wrestle. These are the days we make decisions, and learn, and pray, and change, again and again. It would sure be easier to just sit back and fit ourselves into a pre-defined box, follow the crowd, whichever one we feel is least dangerous for us at the moment, but sometimes the crowd is wrong. We were in the crowd almost fifty days ago when we sent Jesus to the cross, after all. From Palm Sunday to Good Friday we went from shouting “Hosanna!” to  making ourselves hoarse yelling “Crucify!” If we’ve learned nothing else from that week just over a month ago, it’s that crowds are fickle. Not only are crowds fickle, but they take away our individual responsibility and power - consider how stoning works, for example. If everybody takes up a rock, like a firing squad where only one gun is really loaded, nobody can claim to have thrown the stone which delivered the death blow, right? If society is a mess, it’s sure not my fault.

But that’s also the power we have as a community when we stand together in love. None of us can know which smile, which vote, which word of encouragement or public stand in support of human dignity tips the scales toward the Kingdom of God.  Consider the story we’re given from the book of Acts this morning - it starts with one ridiculously annoying slave girl, caught in a system of human ownership which is all kinds of complicated and abusive. Yet once Paul loses his patience and shuts her up - not because he thinks slavery is wrong but because he has gotten sick of listening to her - the series of events which follows had a pretty big impact they probably couldn’t see coming.

I love this story from Acts. I’m only a bit biased, since I got to play that slave girl in a dramatic reading back in college, and there are still folks in Illinois who know me as “the possessed girl from church.” But it’s such a fun story, exciting and active, and even though it technically takes place after Pentecost, we have it in our lectionary now, in the in-between time, while we’re still (liturgically) waiting for the promised Holy Spirit. Because waiting doesn’t mean only sitting silent. Waiting is a combination of remembering and looking forward. There is contemplation, to be sure, but waiting is also dreaming, and building, and preparing. We may have thought Easter was the culmination, but there’s even more to come now that we’re living in a world that’s been touched by Resurrection. Resurrection means we don’t have to be afraid of what might kill us if we try to live like Jesus, because even death isn’t the end of things. I mean, how much do we steer away from because it makes us afraid, even though it’s the right thing?

And here’s the hope behind our waiting - Jesus prays for his disciples before he is killed, and that prayer is the only time in the entire Gospel of John where Jesus tells God what he wants. All throughout the rest of John’s Gospel Jesus is talking about doing the Father’s will, and here in this prayer Jesus tells God what his will is, what he wants: he wants us. He wants us, and he wants us all, and he wants all of us. See, that guard in the Acts reading was technically Paul’s enemy. The slave owners whose livelihoods were ruined when Paul set that girl free, they were pretty much against Paul all the way after that. But those social classes, those distinctions between Jew and Gentile, between jailer and prisoner, those did not change the far-reaching love of God, the love which at the end of the day unlocked the chains of more than just Paul and his companions. 

This is why God’s claim on us is so important. We are both jailer and prisoner, back and forth, now and again. We have suffered, and we have inflicted suffering, we have been silent and we have been pestered to the point of losing our tempers. The center that makes us one, through all of our soaring highs and crashing lows, is that Jesus wants us, loves us, all of us and all there is to us. It isn’t that we all vote one party or have one way of making coffee or even that we all speak the same cultural language. Our unity as the Body of Christ depends not on what battles we fight or ignore, but on the love which took on flesh to live with us so we wouldn’t live or die alone. “Let everyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift,” says the reading from Revelation today. It’s not something we earn by living according to any set of rules, it’s not something we deserve because we checked all the right boxes on a secret list somewhere, it’s a gift, pure and simple and freely given.

We may not see our unity in the news or even when we open a can of worms at work among friends. We may not know our unity in the fights and silences. We may forget our unity when we are hurt or angry. But the love which unites us is not the love we have for one another, if it were it would never come to pass. Instead, the love which unites us is the love which God has for us, the love by which Jesus prayed for us in the hours leading up to his public execution by the religious and political authorities. The love which stared death in the face for our sake and still did not let go of us but carried us through that hell, carries us still, and sets us free whether we are in chains or holding the key to someone else’s chains.

This is the way of salvation, kindred: you are loved. Entirely and eternally.

Healing can be messy

Acts 16:9-15

During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them.

We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.

Psalm 67

May God be merciful to us and bless us; may the light of God’s face shine upon us. Let your way be known upon earth, your saving health among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide all the nations on earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. The earth has brought forth its increase; God, our own God, has blessed us. May God give us blessing, and may all the ends of the earth stand in awe.

Revelation 21:10,22-22:5

And in the spirit one of the angels carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.

I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day - and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life. 

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit in each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

John 5:1-9

After this there was a festival of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 

Now in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate there is a pool, called in Hebrew Beth-zatha, which has five porticoes. In these lay many invalids - blind, lame, and paralyzed. One man was there who had been ill for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me.” Jesus said to him, “Stand up, take your mat and walk.” At once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk.

Now that day was a sabbath.

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Thirty-eight years. The man had been ill longer than I have been alive. Thirty eight years is a lifetime, more than a lifetime in some places, and two years shy of forty, which is an oft-used biblical number for a very long time. We don’t know how long he had been lying at the Sheep Gate waiting for his miracle, we don’t know how many others there had been lying there for how long, but this particular man gets singled out for some reason, and thanks to Jesus his life is completely ruined.

We don’t get the rest of his story in today’s reading from John 5, but what follows is just a mess. Sick for thirty-eight years, without any help to get into the pool, finally able to walk again, and what’s the first thing the church says to him now that they see him again? Well, let’s read on, beginning with verse 8: Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.” And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath. So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.” - Yep, that’s right, the first thing the church says to him after ignoring him for thirty-eight years was that he wasn’t living righteously. I wonder if he was ever able to reintegrate into his synagogue after that.

But the lectionary didn’t give us that part of the story today, not officially. So what we’ve got is everything leading up to the congregation of major disappointments. What we’ve got is simply the encounter between Jesus and this man, which is really the point, the main thing, the most important part anyway.

Even as far as that goes, though, did anyone else notice that the man didn’t actually answer Jesus’ question? Jesus asks if he wants to be made well, and instead he tells a story he has probably been telling for ages, since he’s probably by now only identified by his illness. I wonder if he had any hope of healing left at all, or only fear of it by this point. Thirty eight years is a long habit to break, and even habits that are destructive, once they become habits, are incredibly hard to let go of. Thirty eight years of being sick, maybe even sitting by that pool of miracles for the whole time, I wonder if he remembered any more what it was like to live any other kind of life, if he had ever imagined something different, really, or if by now he was so resigned to his position he couldn’t imagine anything else.  Then again, he does say that he tries, that he makes his way to the pool when the waters are stirred up, and we have no way of knowing how strong his heart is by this point, if he still has the energy to even hope he can make it there after missing the miracle time after time with no one - no one - bothering to offer him help.

Then I look around and I wonder how many of us even know we are sick, let alone want to be made well? I know I get easily caught up in the snippet of story that follows, in the way the church welcomes people or doesn’t, in the way we build community, but the lectionary points us to the main theme that isn’t how the community lives, the main theme that is, much as the language has some sketchy connotations in society today, the man’s personal relationship with Jesus.

Because I can read all sorts of books about church growth and community building, study after study about outreach and evangelism, but when it comes down to it, what’s really central is Jesus. Our relationship with the one we call God with skin on. The one who comes to us and disrupts our habits, who skips over stirring the waters and re-writing even our healing narratives, and in a strangely unpredictable way is still forever reliable and faithful even when we don’t receive him in ways we expect.

Have you ever known this in your own life? In so many ways we have expectations for what a faith life is supposed to look like, what life as a mother or father is supposed to look like, and when we find the thing that makes us tick, if it doesn’t fit that narrative we stifle ourselves and stick with the status quo just to keep from stirring up the waters. But this is what Jesus did. All. The. Time. All the time. 

Think about it: who makes a habit out of talking with the street beggars and keeping company with them? Who offers healing to the faithful servant of a sworn enemy? Who talks openly to a woman who is not only treated like an alien but who is also breaking every expectation about marriage under the sun by living with a fifth man after being married four times? Who picks up the high school dropouts and the IRS agents and the betrayers as his closest companions for an intimate  religious community?

Jesus does. 

And it’s a good thing, too, because we are so often those dropouts and hidden ones. And when we aren’t in the gutter, we have gotten really good at keeping other people there. Our faith tradition has a long history of behaving just like those leaders who yelled at the man for carrying his mat on the Sabbath. We are known publicly most often for the ways we deny access, the ways we encourage shame, the ways we shun and fear people who don’t look or speak or act like us. Look at the press coverage, and the ones most loudly claiming our Christian faith are the ones demonizing the differences between us.  We could be using our power and privilege for advocating for unity and healing and supporting diverse and wholistic community, but that doesn’t sell media coverage. And yet as much as we disagree with and misunderstand and fear one another, Jesus still somehow loves me just as much as Jesus loves Ted Cruz and Hilary Clinton, even though Cruz would probably take away my right to use a public bathroom. 

There are so many ways we need healing, and so many ways healing would completely ruin our lives as we know them. Addicts returning from recovery programs need to completely restructure their social time and daily routines to put themselves in situations where they aren’t surrounded by alcohol or television or whatever else they might be recovering from. Can you imagine re-working your entire schedule to avoid the one thing your life used to revolve around?

Lots of new converts find themselves in this sort of struggle once they come to faith. A high school friend of mine gave up almost his entire DVD collection because some videos contained violence and strong language and he had to walk the pure and narrow road now that he’d found Jesus. And there are dozens upon dozens of stories of deathbed conversions where folks are questioned about the things they “got away with” in life before they dedicated themselves to Christ just before their last breath. But this isn’t the healing we’re talking about, either, not exactly.

Life isn’t that cut and dry, that black and white, that easy to sort out. We all need healing of one sort or another, all throughout our lives, again and again. What that healing looks like for us is hardly the same person to person, but it does lead us through some stuff maybe we would rather not deal with. It does take us to places we would maybe rather not go. Sometimes that’s the small stuff we’ve gotten used to, the little jabs we put up with at work and the racist jokes we tell offhanded like they’re not really a problem. Sometimes it’s the bigger stuff we know isn’t leading anyone to wholeness, like the body dysmorphia and control issues around eating disorders. Sometimes we don’t even know what we don’t even know and have to be uncomfortable when someone we love shares their pain at something we weren’t even aware we were doing.

It’s about the relationship behind the healing. It’s about the ongoing work Jesus is doing with us and for us and through us. It’s about God coming to us wherever we are, however we are stuck, and rather than waiting for us to decide the time is right, Jesus moves us, lifts us up, changes our perspective, brings us healing we may have even forgotten how to hope for.

Kindred in Christ, we are a diverse people, we are a complicated and beautiful people with a complicated and painful and long history, and we are a people to whom God has come in the person of Jesus Christ. Wherever God has found you, God will keep on following you and leading you and stirring you up to more complete wholeness for the sake of your own relationship with God and for the sake of the world. Wherever you might be. Whoever you might believe yourself to be. You don’t even have to have the strength to get up and greet him, Jesus will find you and love you and keep on loving you until the day every nation is healed and whole, until all the ends of the earth stand in awe of the love which created and claimed the cosmos. Even me. Even you. Thanks be to God.