Sunday, May 5th, 2024 – I Know Your Name, a sermon on Genesis 35:1-15

Genesis 35:1-15
God said to Jacob, “Arise, go up to Bethel, and settle there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.” ²So Jacob said to his household and to all who were with him, “Put away the foreign gods that are among you, and purify yourselves, and change your clothes; ³then come, let us go up to Bethel, that I may make an altar there to the God who answered me in the day of my distress and has been with me wherever I have gone.” ⁴So they gave to Jacob all the foreign gods that they had, and the rings that were in their ears; and Jacob hid them under the oak that was near Shechem.⁵As they journeyed, a terror from God fell upon the cities all around them, so that no one pursued them.

⁶Jacob came to Luz (that is, Bethel), which is in the land of Canaan, he and all the people who were with him, ⁷and there he built an altar and called the place El-bethel, because it was there that God had revealed himself to him when he fled from his brother. ⁸And Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died, and she was buried under an oak below Bethel. So it was called Allon-bacuth.

⁹God appeared to Jacob again when he came from Paddan-aram, and he blessed him. ¹⁰God said to him, “Your name is Jacob; no longer shall you be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name.” So he was called Israel. ¹¹God said to him, “I am God Almighty: be fruitful and multiply; a nation and a company of nations shall come from you, and kings shall spring from you. ¹²The land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you, and I will give the land to your offspring after you.” ¹³Then God went up from him at the place where he had spoken with him. ¹⁴Jacob set up a pillar in the place where he had spoken with him, a pillar of stone; and he poured out a drink offering on it, and poured oil on it. ¹⁵So Jacob called the place where God had spoken with him Bethel.

Dear beloved people of God, grace, peace, and mercy are yours in the name of Christ. Amen. 

I’m guessing for most of us here, we have that one movie, that one scene that always makes us cry. Years ago I would have pointed to a scene from Good Will Hunting. Before that probably a clip from Dead Poets Society. But more recently, that one movie, that one scene that captures all the truth and horror and beauty of life for me comes from the animated film Moana. It gets me every time. 

Briefly, the story is set in ancient Polynesia. It’s about a young and brave Polynesian girl, Moana, who has been chosen by the ocean to set out on a journey that confronts good and evil, to restore life back to her islander people. As their ancient story goes, the goddess of nature –Te Fiti, was this living island. At the very heart of Te Fiti was this precious stone – which was the source of her creational, life-giving power. But one day, Maui – a shape-shifting demigod steals this stone from Te Fiti to give humanity the power of creation. As a result, Te Fiti disintegrates. Then suddenly, a volcanic demon named Te Ka shows up. Te Ka is this terrifying lava monster, consumed with flames, and smoke and ash, destroying anything that gets in the way. Te Ka attacks Maui for that precious stone (the heart of Te Fiti), but ends up sending it deep into the depths of the ocean and lost. 

So you have Te Fiti – the creational Goddess who has lost her heart and faded away, and you have Te Ka, the volcanic villain. 

Fast forward a thousand years, Moana and her Polynesian people are living on their island, when a terrible blight comes across the land, ruining and destroying all the plant life and vegetation, threatening everyone’s existence. 

This is when Moana is chosen and sent off on her journey to confront the evil Te Ka, to find that precious stone and restore it to Te Fiti, and save her people. On this journey, Moana finds new friends and faces new challenges, but in the end she finds that precious stone and heads straight to that island where Te Fiti used to be. She will give back the stone – to restore Te Fiti, and to destroy Te Ka. As she gets closer and closer to the island, with Te Ka right at her heels, chasing her and thrashing around all kinds of destruction, all of a sudden Moana stops and looks closer at Te Ka…and she sees right at the center of this monster, a hole, an empty space shaped just like the stone that was stolen from Te Fiti. 

Quickly Moana realizes what’s happened.…and she asks the ocean to let Te Ka come to her. In this almost biblical moment, the sea parts, creating a path between Moana and Te Ka. Te Ka lunges after her, meanwhile Moana slowly walks towards Te Ka, and starts to sing to the creature…

I have crossed the horizon to find you,
I know your name…
They have stolen the heart from inside you
But this does not define you
This is not who you are.
You know who you are. 

In this tender moment, Moana places that precious stone into the heart of Te Ka…and all of the hardened ash and lava crack and crumbles to reveal that Te Ka is Te Fiti, just called by a different name, one who lived by a different way after her heart was taken from her. 

Suddenly, life starts to bloom again – within Te Fiti and on the islands all around. 

I find it to be such a profound and moving moment when Moana moves towards Te Ka and says, “I know your name – this is not who you are.” I know your name. We call you Te Ka, the volcanic monster, but that’s not your name. I know your name. Your name is Te Fiti. The one who brings life to the world, but who has lost herself. Let me show you who you are again. 

Names are a powerful thing – aren’t they? Our names play a huge role in identifying who we are. I mean, it is the first thing we do when we get a new dog or when a child is born. We name them. I can remember months before Elliot or Henry was born, scouring through books and books of baby names and what each one of them meant. It felt like this sacred task. To name our child. To give them the thing that would forever be their identifier. It is such defining moment.

I have a dear, dear person in my life…who has never liked their name. And they always wished they could have gone by their middle name, but now, in many ways for them it feels too late. 

Names are such a powerful thing. And sometimes a painful thing. I mean, one of the most hurtful things we can do is call someone a name…no name calling we say to students, but should also say to adults. 

Our names, or the names that people call us, carry with them so much meaning and weight. There is a way in which it can represent the whole of who we are. 

In scripture, especially in the Old Testament, this is a strong and recurring theme – that names really matter. They speak to and in many ways give us our identity. 

There may be no better example of this than in the biblical character, Jacob. Jacob is the son of Isaac and Rebekah and the twin brother of Esau. Jacob’s name means “the heel-grabber, the cheat” because that’s how he was born – holding on to his brother’s heel, like he was trying to pull Esau back in the womb, so that he, Jacob, could be born first. But no luck – Jacob was second in line. Not liking this, but living up to his name, Jacob then cheated Esau out of his birthright and blessing by swindling his old, blind father into giving Jacob what was not his. Esau was furious and promised to kill his brother one day. After that, Jacob didn’t stick around –  he fled the scene of the crime – ran off far into the woods, towards his uncle’s house. 

But in those woods, something happened to Jacob the Cheat that you think would have changed his life forever. One night, when Jacob had no place to lay his head except the forest floor and a stone for a pillow, Jacob had a dream like no other dream.

In it, Jacob dreamed of a massive ladder that both touched the earth and crawled all the way up to heaven. On that ladder were angels, ascending and descending, and standing right beside Jacob – the Cheat – was God. God said, “I am going to bless you…and all the families of the earth will be blessed by you. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go.” 

Jacob woke up immediately – I mean, what a dream. Jacob then said to himself and the creatures, “Surely God is in this place.” And so he took a stone, built an altar, and called that place Bethel – the house of God. God clearly sees something in Jacob that is hidden from the rest of us. What looked to Jacob like nowhere in the beginning turned out to be somewhere – the very house of God. What looked like a nobody to the rest of the world turned out to be somebody in the eyes of God.

You would think that a dream like that might change your life in an instant – but Jacob is just like the rest of us and he carried on with his wayward self. He headed off to his uncle’s house and continued a life of swindling and being swindled. 

Fast forward a couple of decades and Jacob has been on the run for 20 years now, and yet inside him, something says it’s time to return home. Not an easy task, seeing how last time Jacob saw his brother Esau, Esau wanted to kill him. And for all Jacob knows, nothing’s changed. On the road home, this possibility seems to be coming true, as Jacob receives word that his brother…and an army of 400 men… are coming out to meet him. Jacob is terrified.

Still living up to his name yet again, Jacob decides to try and bribe his brother off, by sending gifts, and livestock, and money up ahead of him. He even put his own family between him and his warring brother, leaving himself all alone to consider how he could get himself out of this one. 

And then when it happens. Jacob finds himself all alone. With nothing and no one to protect him. So often, it is when we are alone that we finally have to look in the mirror to face who we really are. The shadow parts of our life. The disappointments. The guilt and the shame. All alone and in the dark of night, Jacob must face the reality of who he is.

It’s then that Jacob has another late-night encounter, only this time it isn’t a dream. Or is it? All Jacob knows is that when night fell, he was in a battle – with himself, or another person, or angel. Whoever it was, it was the wrestling match of his life. 

All night they battled – Jacob wasn’t going to give up. Which is so human – we fight so hard against the changes that need to happen within us. And that’s what Jacob did – he fought. 

When the sun rose and they were still fighting, the stranger begs to be let go, but Jacob won’t let go. “I will not let you go until you bless me,” Jacob says. He is always trying to squeeze more out of people. 

But then, this stranger makes an unexpected request. He asks Jacob, “What’s your name?” The man didn’t ask because he wanted to know Jacob’s name. He asked because he wanted Jacob to know Jacob’s name. 

What’s your name? Who are you? Do you know who you are? And Jacob, in an out-of-character moment, tells the truth.

“I am Jacob”, he says, knowing full well the meaning of his name. The cheat. The heel-grabber. In this dark night of the soul, Jacob finally comes face to face with his own self and he must speak his own name. I am Jacob. I am the cheat. I am a liar. I am…a fraud.  This stranger has pulled out of Jacob nothing less than a confession about who he really is. To speak that kind of truth – to see who you really are – can feel like death. Now that Jacob has been exposed, revealed, he’s got nothing left.

But then. But then, when Jacob has nothing left, this man gives him just what he needs. This stranger in the night says to Jacob, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob. You shall be Israel, for you have struggled and wrestled with God and humans, and you have prevailed.” You shall no longer be Jacob, the cheat. But you are Israel, the one who wrestles with God. Suddenly, Jacob is given an entirely new identity. A new name. A new story by which to live. And that can feel a lot like resurrection. Which must be why Jacob can only assume that stranger in the night was God. For who else can give such a painfully beautiful blessing, an entirely new identity? Who else can raise the dead to new life?

This is not who you are, God sings. You know who you are – and so do I. You are Israel – for you have wrestled with God…and lived. 

In an simple world, we could leave it there, having traversed the whole horizon of Jacob’s story. Except God doesn’t leave it there. Not with Jacob anyways. 

Everything I’ve told you so far happened before our reading for today. What’s easy to miss about today’s reading is that it isn’t a summary of Jacob biggest moments – the dream and the dark night. It’s a return to them.

I’m not sure if you caught it but our reading began with, “God said to Jacob, ‘Arise, go up to Bethel, and settle there. Make an altar there to the God who appeared to you when you fled from your brother Esau.’” Go back, God says. Go back to that place where your life changed for the first time.

Have you ever gone back, or maybe had to go back, to somewhere, some place that changed your life? 

Last week I got a front row seat as middle schoolers went back to their elementary school, where it’s the tradition for alumni to come back for a May Day celebration. The sixth graders had only been gone for 12 months, but were very vocal about how different everything was. Everything is so…small, they said, with a hint of big kid pride and maturity. And yet, in nearly the very same breath, they said, “I wish I could come back here. I really miss this place.” The place may have felt small and part of the past to them, but it’s clear that the love they received there still felt so big and so real. I wonder if that’s how it was for Jacob when he went back to Bethel – that place of dreams. The altar he built 20 years ago still standing there maybe felt so small to him. And yet the promises that God gave him there – so big.

From the very beginning Jacob had been scarred by his own name – the cheat. All because he had his hand on his twin brother’s foot at the moment of birth. Everyone thinks he was pulling Esau back and trying to get ahead, but what if newborn Jacob was pushing Esau forward, helping him to get out there and live. One different interpretation and his name could have been Ezra – the helper. But Jacob it was – and he lived his way down to that name for much of his life. Now wonder he needed to return to Bethel once again – not only to be reminded of the big promises God made to him there – “I will bless you and be with you” – but also to hear once again that God calls him by a different name than everyone else does. 

He was Israel – the One who wrestled with God, who held on and did not let go, and the One whom God would never let go of either. In the end, God gives him all the things you can’t swindle out of someone – promises, presence, friendship. Someone to walk beside you. A whole new name; a whole new life. And God doesn’t just give it to him once. But over and over and over again. 

I don’t know about you, but if we are anything like Jacob, than we know it’s going to take a couple of rounds of blessing and renaming to get it to really sink in that God sees us differently than we see ourselves. Which is I guess the main reason why we keep returning to this house of God, over and over again. To be reminded of who we are and who God calls us to be. To wash off all the false names and false-identities that have attached and hitch-hiked their way with us all week long, and to be washed once again in the promises of God, who calls us by a new name.

I’m tempted to tell your new name, your new identity in the eyes of God – but how could I?  As if there is just one name that could be draped plainly over a gathering of such unique individuals. How could I know the name that God whispers to you in the dark of night? Only you can know that. I just know that the name whispered to you comes from a God whose name is Love.

“I know your name,” God says, and in doing so, promises to never let us go.

Amen.  

Second Reading: 1 John 3:16-24

¹⁶We know love by this, that [Jesus Christ] laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. ¹⁷How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?
 ¹⁸Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. ¹⁹And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him ²⁰whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. ²¹Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; ²²and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.
 ²³And this is his commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. ²⁴All who obey his commandments abide in him, and he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that he has given us.

Gospel: John 10:11-18

[Jesus said:] ¹¹“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ¹²The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. ¹³The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. ¹⁴I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, ¹⁵just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. ¹⁶I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. ¹⁷For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. ¹⁸No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”

Happy Easter!

As we continue through this Easter season, this season of resurrection, this morning I want to turn our attention to the first letter of John that we just heard, and have been hearing for the past few weeks. For three Sundays now we have been hearing passages from the first letter of John. It is part of a collection of three letters that reside at the back of the Bible. This is different from the gospel of John (which we have also been reading from). And while ancient tradition says that these letters were written by the same person who wrote the gospel of John, no one can say for sure who wrote these letters. 

Now from this first letter of John, we get what for me is one of the most foundational, immoveable passages of Scripture. God is love. Love is from God and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.

But I confess that while this letter contains one of the most important phrases in all of the bible, I have not known a whole lot about the letter itself. I’ve never really zoomed out and taken a look at the letter as whole. So that’s what I want to try to do today with you all, but first I have to tell you about something that happened last week. 

As some of you heard last week, this past Wednesday, we had the joy participating in an intergenerational service project called Rays of Life, where youth and adults together build solar panel boxes, which are able to provide light and charge a cell phone for people without any electricity. These 30 boxes that we built will then be shipped and hand delivered to people living in war-torn Ukraine. 

Towards the end of the project, the person who was leading this service project, Dave, invited each person to grab a sharpie marker and in a big blank space on the box to write a message to the person who would receive this box. Someone none of us would ever know. In this brief but heartfelt moment – Dave said to the group, “If you could send any message to a stranger in Ukraine right now….what would you say?”

What would you say? 

You could feel the weight of that moment in the room. Assembling the boxes was fun and interesting and meaningful, but there was something about that moment which seemed to deepen the experience. To hold in your hand a marker, and a blank space to write a message to a real person living through something unimaginable to most of us. 

One person wrote – “God bless you.”

Another drew a heart. 

And another wrote, “Don’t give up. Better days are coming.”

If you could send a message to a stranger living in times of trouble, a message that conveyed something you really wanted them to know and to hear, what would you say?

I share this because I think that’s what is happening in the first letter of John. The author has something really important, a message, to share with someone whom they probably don’t know and may never meet. 

At the very start of the letter, John writes, “I have something amazing to tell you. It’s the most important thing in the world. We have seen it with our own eyes, we have touched it with our own hands. We want to tell you so that we might be in fellowship together. We want to tell you, so that our joy may be complete.” 

So that our joy may be complete. 

So you can see how important this message is to John. As you work your way through this letter – which you can do quite quickly, word-for-word it’s about the length of a sermon – throughout it, you can feel John’s passion and conviction. 

In many ways, it is a letter that is full of promises. Particularly around the topic of sin and God’s power over it. And I know sin is one of those words that can sometimes get us to shut down, or check out, because it sounds like another lecture to sinners in the hands of angry God. But if we are honest and truthful, we know that sin exists in each every one of our lives. Sin being that which disconnects us from God and from each other. In little and big ways, we participate in ways of life that alienate ourselves or others, distorting who we are and called to be, and losing sight of our shared humanity and the image of God that exists in every human being.

We know we sin – against ourselves and against others.

So stay with me. Or stay with John, I should say.  Listen to what John says – from what he has seen with his own eyes, touched with his own hands, what he knows deep within his soul. 

He writes this promise, “Jesus cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, Jesus who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness…I’m writing to you so that you may not sin, BUT if you do sin, Jesus is our advocate…not only for our sins but for the sins of the entire world.” 

I’m writing to you to say that your sins are forgiven by Jesus. He’s telling this stranger that this forgiveness comes first. That should we sin, God’s forgiveness is right there – free, forever, for all.^[1]

He starts with the promise of forgiveness and then goes on with all of these powerful phrases of promise…

• I am writing to you because you have conquered the evil one
• I am writing to you because you are strong and the word of God abides in you
• You have been anointed by the Holy One and you have the knowledge you need
• See what love God has given us, that we would be called children of God
• Beloved (the author calls them beloved)…beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. But what we do know is this: when Jesus is revealed to us, we will be like him

Can you feel the volume of promises, the passion, and conviction sprinkled throughout, with which this letter is written? What a message to send to a stranger…

John starts with promises, but then the tone changes a bit. See if you can catch it…

• Everyone who commits sin is guilty of lawlessness
• In Jesus, there is no sin. No one who abides in him sins. 
• No one who sins has either seen or knows Jesus
• Everyone who commits sin is a child of the devil. 
• Those who are born of God do not sin. 

Can you hear how different that sounds from the other parts of the letter? At first, we are told that if we sin – we have Jesus as our advocate. But then we are told that if we DO sin, we know nothing of Jesus and we are children of the devil. If we are born of God we should never sin. It’s quite confusing and off-putting really. I didn’t really want to read the rest of the letter.

But if when I did continue reading, I discovered that I think… I think what the author is trying to do is to connect our faith with God to our actual lives with each other. And I think he is using language and way of writing that was perhaps more meaningful back then than it is to us today. You see deep within the context of this letter, it appears that there is some conflict going on in the background. In this letter, John warns about false prophets, who appeared to be teaching that Jesus was only about spiritual thing, and was not concerned with flesh and body and real life thing, which then – if you think about it – could lead to a disconnect between our spiritual life and the rest of our life. As if what we do here on Sundays with spirituality has nothing to do with how we live out there – therefore separating our relationship with God from our relationship with each other.  Who cares if we sin against our neighbor – it doesn’t affect our spiritual life. And John’s letter is here to say, “No!”

What I think this letter is trying to do is to re-connect, or re-root our relationship with God as directly connected to our relationship with our neighbor. Or what some might call the vertical dimension (our relationship with God) and the horizontal dimension (our relationship with each other). That the primary way we live out our faith and relationship with God is in the ways we live out our faith and relationship with each other. The two can’t be separated. 

Which is why John later on says things like:

• How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a sibling in need and yet refuses help? We know love by this, that Jesus laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.
• Little children, let us love. Not in word or in speech, but in truth and in action.
• Let us love one another because love is from God, everyone who loves is born of God and knows God

What John is saying is, yes, we all sin. Let’s not lie about that. And God forgives our sin. Which is an amazing gift. 

And…don’t sin! It hurts and impacts your neighbor. 

I know that sounds easier said than done. And I know this can send us into a guilt spiral – which is not my, nor John’s, intention. This is hope for a stranger. That how we love reveals God’s love to the world. That how you live matters to the world. To your neighbor. For John, this is to bring us from death to life. “We pass from death to life when we love one another,” John writes.

Every single person who loves is of God. This isn’t to say that love is easy. But it is to say that anyone who struggles with love is struggling with God. Wrestling with love is wrestling with God. Which is a good thing – it means that God is deeply connected to every part of our life. John grounds our relationship with God in with our relationship with our neighbor.^[2]John wants our spiritual life (our vertical life with God) and life with others (our horizontal life) to be in alignment. Or put another way, John is giving us the wisdom that our spiritual life and our live with others are interconnected, fused together. How we love – faith active in love – is directly connected to our relationship with God. 

A number of years ago, I heard an interview with Megan Phelps-Roper. Megan grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church – which is well-known for staging public protests against the LGBTQ community or protesting soldier’s funerals. They believed that people were sinning against God and it was their duty to communicate this sin through hateful rhetoric and hateful acts, through signs and shouts and messages that are not worth repeating here. She grew up in this. She said that they were especially cruel to people during funerals and said that she would say and do things at those protests that she would never ever do in another context. 

Megan even was on Twitter to spread Westboro’s message. Spreading hateful messages in the name of God. But then, it was in those online conversations that people, some from the very communities she was condemning, started to see past her hatred of them and saw her humanity. They were curious about her. Saying things like, “People really don’t like you. That must be so hard.” Suddenly these online friendships began – with the very people she proclaimed God hated. They didn’t fight back with her and hate her. They showed her love.   suddenly she started to see the disconnect between her life of faith and how she was treating others. And for awhile she lived in this in-between space, the space of mid-transformation, because she would go from loving and compassionate conversations with people online in the morning to protesting the very same people and situations in the afternoon. Her vertical life and her horizontal life were entirely disconnected and misaligned. And she didn’t discover this disconnection from people who tried to shame her, but by people who struggled to love her. Who showed curiosity and wonder and care for her – someone who could be so cruel to people. 

And if it wasn’t for those people online, she believes she would still be a member of the Westboro Baptist church. But thankfully, she was transformed by those who were willing to love her and she left Westboro.^[3]

I wonder if you have ever experienced something like that – where your faith life seemed completely disconnected from how you lived the rest of your life. I wonder if you have ever been loved like Megan was loved – by people who were willing to struggle to love you and in doing so, showed you the greatest kind of love that exists – the love of God. 

Not only was there a disconnect between Megan’s vertical and horizontal alignment, but there was a deep connection between the love of others towards her and it’s connection to God. Their love towards her became the experience of God’s love towards her. 

Whoever loves a brother or a sister lives in the light of God, , John says. We might add that not only do they live in the light of God, but they bring the one they’ve loved into the light of God as well. But whoever hates another person lives outside the light.

I think this entire letter is meant to wake us up. Wake us up to the ways we have not been loving as our faith calls us to love. Or to the ways we have been struggling to love and to teach us that this struggle is a sacred struggle because it is to struggle with God. Don’t give up on the struggle, John would say. 

This can wake us up and remind us of the promise that the ways we have been loving has been the very presence of God in the world. That the love you give, which sometimes never feels like enough, is the love of God. 

This is Easter season, the season of resurrection. May the first letter of John resurrect the connection between our life of faith and our life out in the world. Our vertical life and our horizontal life.

Our vertical life…

Our horizontal life …

When our vertical life and a horizontal life are connected, they form a cross.

I know not all of us have the spiritual practice of crossing ourselves, but if you do or are willing to try, this can be our prayer. That our life with God and our life with each other would be in alignment. Connected. 

We know love by this, that Jesus laid down his life for us – so we ought to lay down our lives for each other.

Beloved, God’s love abides in you. May this very same love flow out into our lives with each other and our neighbors beyond these walls. 

In the words of Teresa of Avila…
“Christ has no body but yours,
No hands and feet on earth but yours, 
Yours are the eyes with which he looks compassion on this world.
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, 
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours.”

Amen. 

---

^[1] Alan Storey

^[2] Alan Storey

^[3] https://nadiabolzweber.com/101-megan-phelps-roper/

Sunday, April 7th, 2024 – Whispering Sunday, a sermon on John 20:19-31

Gospel: John 20:19-31
¹⁹When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Judeans, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”²⁴But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”
 ²⁶A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” ²⁷Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” ²⁸Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” ²⁹Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” ³⁰Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Prayer – Deep prayerful breath

Happy Easter! Does that feel weird to say a week later? 

What about two weeks from now? Would it feel a little strange then? You see Easter is whole season – 50 days leading us all the way up to Pentecost. But we often think of or treat Easter like it is one day. I just can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard in the past week, “You’ve made it through Easter” or “Now that Easter is over…” And I’ve been the one saying it… I’m not trying to be liturgically self-righteous with you all.  It’s pretty normal during the season of Lent for people to ask me, “How’s Lent going?” But I can’t think of a time when I’ve asked, “How’s the season of Easter going?” 

It’s been stated recently how interesting it is that the two most important seasons of the church – Christmas and Easter – have this huge lead up, with seasons of preparation. Advent for Christmas; Lent for Easter. But then right as we get to high point, the season of Christmas or the season of Easter – well that’s when a lot of us step back and take a break from church.

And understandably so. Staff and volunteers work very hard and long hours during Lent and Easter weekend – and so a break is needed and warranted. It’s just interesting, intriguing, and a little ironic that the seasons of Advent and Lent almost seem more important than the seasons of Christmas and Easter. So much so that the Sunday after Easter or as the Second Sunday of Easter is nicknamed “Low Sunday”.  Did you know that?

Now, in youth ministry, I was taught to never walk into the youth room, see how few people are there and then say, “Where is everyone?” It’s an easy mistake to make – one that I am guilty of. But it is a rather subtle way of saying, “Where is everyone? You who are here…You are not enough. Where is everyone else? We need more – others – for this moment to carry any value.” That’s the subtle implication.

And when we refer to the Second Sunday of Easter as “Low Sunday” – I think it can have the same effect. A subtle indication that this gathering of people is somehow not enough. Which just isn’t true. You’re here. We’re here. And that’s amazing. A pastor friend of mine says that when anyone shows up, it’s a miracle. And here we are. We are enough, as individuals and as the church, just as we are today. We have just what we need and the abundance of God is among us. 

On this Second Sunday of Easter, this season of Resurrection, we always, every year have the same gospel story we just heard. The story of the risen Christ visiting the disciples locked behind doors of fear. But I’ll admit that I have a love/hate relationship with this text, because every year, when it comes around, usually my first thought – “Ugh. That text again.” I feel like I’ve watched this movie a hundred times. 

I am not a movie re-watcher. Members of my family are. Is anyone here? Do you love to watch the same movies over and over again? That’s not me. And yet I feel like I’ve watched this movie a hundred times.

Now, preacher Anna Carter Florence say that the job of the preacher is to fall in love with the text and then, hopefully, to help the congregation fall in love with it too. 

But for me, it can be hard to figure out what I’m falling in love with with this text, year after year. That’s the struggle. That’s the part that I hate. 

And yet – what I love about this text is… eventually, I find that there still is so much to fall in love with. I hope you can see what I see today

Here is the scene: It is Sunday night, a good twelve hours after Jesus’ resurrection and the disciples are hiding out in a locked-up house, paralyzed by fear not knowing what to do next. Will the ones who came for Jesus come for them too? Now just a couple of hours earlier, Jesus met up with Mary near the tomb, and called her by name – Mary. And then Mary came running back to camp, yelling to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord, I have seen the Lord.”  Only that wasn’t enough for these disciples. They didn’t see Jesus, they didn’t hear him call them by name. They didn’t sense the tone of love in his voice. They still packed up their stuff and headed for the house on the hill with lockable doors, where they think they might be safe. I mean, if you deny and betray and abandon your leader unto his death and then you find out he’s alive….that might strike fear in all of us. What’s he gonna do? What’s he gonna say? Is he coming back to (gulp) get us?

And Jesus does come back to get them. Only not to punish. To rescue them from their fear and their trembling.

And when Jesus comes to them, the first thing he says isn’t, “Where is everyone?” I mean they are not all there – Judas is gone; Thomas is missing. But Jesus doesn’t ask, “Where is everyone?” as if they are not enough as they are. As if they are a fracture and failed, hopeless set of disciples. 

No, Jesus shows up and says to those who betrayed, and denied, and abandoned him – “Peace be with you.” Peace be with you.

And then he does one of the most remarkable things in all of scripture – he breathes on them. 

He breathed on them. Think about that. Think about the intimacy of that moment. Think about how close you have to be to someone to breathe on them. It’s not something you can do from a distance. In fact, turn to a neighbor right now and…no, I’m just kidding. 

A number of years ago, when my son Elliot was almost 3, I was putting him to bed, and I had to keep moving my legs because they were sore. And Elliot noticed this and he asked me, “Why do you keep moving your legs, Daddy?” And so I told him that my legs hurt. And then he said, “Oh, I can help you…” and so he got up and breathed on my legs. Haaaaaaaa…..haaaaaaaaaaaa.

There was something wonderfully cute and child-like about it, but on another level, there was something entirely profound and divine about it. Like he instinctively knew the healing power of breath. Think about the trust there. Think about the relationship. 

Just last week, I got to watch from afar on Wednesday night as young person asked a friendly adult (whom they clearly trusted) to smell the flavor of the gum in their mouth. And the adult, without hesitation, bent down and the young person breathed right on to their nose. And the adult said, “Oh, yeah, it really does smell like cherries.” Think about the trust. Think about the relationship there.

In 2010, during the Final Four of Men’s NCAA basketball tournament, West Virginia is playing Duke. And in this remarkable moment, West Virginia’s star player Da’Sean Butler drives to the basket for a jumping layup, only to come down hard on his knee and ankle, and collapses to the floor. He is lying there writhing in pain for his torn ankle, and in sorrow for what is clearly the end of his college career. Medical staff rush on to the court to tend to him, while he is screaming in pain. But then the coach, Bob Huggins, comes out on to the court. He gets down on the floor, nearly on top of Da’Sean, puts his arms on both sides of his head, almost cradling it. And then with hundreds of cameras and thousands of fans watching, the coach puts his face almost right on top of Da’Sean’s – nose to nose. He was whispering to him, for what felt like a really long time. But to everyone else, it was more like he was breathing on him. Like breathing life back into him. It was so beautiful. Think about the trust there. Think about the relationship. 

On Easter evening, when the disciples were locked in their own tomb of fear and uncertainty, Jesus comes to them, finds them, shows up with a word of peace and breathes on them.

On the cross, the gospel’s say that Jesus breathed his last. But the good news of Easter is that it wasn’t his last. He breathes on the disciples, breathes into them new life. 

Remember what breath means in the Bible. It’s the same word for wind and spirit. And in the Old Testament – the rather simple metaphor of God’s presence was the readily availability of breath. Think of creation and how the Spirit of God, the breath of God, moved over the waters. Think of when God first created the human out of the dust of the earth, God crawled up close and breathed life and the name and the spirit of God into the human. Think of Ezekiel and the valley of dry bones and the breath that comes to bring them life.  And ancient rabbi’s believed that the name of God – Yahweh – was the sound of breathing. 

Yaw…weh…yah…weh. 

The name of God is in the breath of every living thing. 

Yah-weh, yah-weh.

When Jesus breathed on the disciples, this is new creation, re-creation.  I can’t help but wonder what that moment looked and felt like. Did he breathe on them like a 3-year-old roaring a lion’s breath to heal their aching soul? Was it more gentle invitation to smell the sweet scent of grace up close. Or was it like the huddled-up whisper of a coach and companion, encouraging you, building you up, and bring you back to life? 

I learned something interesting about whispering recently. When you whisper, your vocal cords don’t vibrate. It’s just that the air is moving at a velocity we can hear. Or in other words, when we whisper – it’s all breath. All wind. It’s all spirit. 

Last Sunday, on Easter Sunday, right after worship, a person pulled me aside and told me that they were afraid they were losing God. They couldn’t feel God anywhere close to them. And you could see from the look in their eye that they were terrified God wasn’t coming back. And a fear like that – it will take your breath away.

What an incredibly awful and isolating feeling on Easter Sunday. With the brass and choir bursting with joy, with shouts of resurrection and alleluias and “Christ is risen!”, there is an overwhelming sense that… you are missing out on something. And you must be the only one. But the truth is, they aren’t the only one. It’s many of us too. 

But also Jesus’ disciples.

I think Jesus’ disciples know that feeling really well. It’s Easter evening. 48 hours earlier they watched from afar as their friend died on the cross, along with all their hopes and their dreams. Sure, the tomb is empty. And there have been rumors he is risen, but nothing concrete for them. For them? It felt like they were missing out. They too felt like they were losing God. Couldn’t feel God anywhere close to them. And they were terrified God wasn’t coming back. And a fear like that – it will take your breath away. 

But God does come back.  God comes back and whispers to them, breathed on them – “Peace be with you. Receive the Holy Spirit. The Holy Breath. You carry it with you. Just as God sent me – now I send you.” Think about the trust. Think about the relationship.

We might be screaming in pain, in fear, isolation, grief, anger – all torn up inside, but God is whispering new life into us with every breath we take. The Good News of Easter is that you cannot lose God. On Easter Sunday, it is shouted– but today it is whispered. Christ is risen.  God has come back. God will always come back. God won’t lose you. For Love is stronger than death. 

So, I invite you to close your eyes. And take a slow deep breath. Risen Christ, breathe into us. Enter us. Fill us once again – with your spirit, your love, your presence, so that we may be sent out into the world to embody your love – a love that is stronger than death. May we trust this and have life in your name. Amen.

Friday, March 29th, 2024 – A Place So Quiet, a sermon on Good Friday.

Gospel: John 19:17- 42
  So they took Jesus; ¹⁷and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. ¹⁸There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. ¹⁹Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” ²⁰Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. ²¹Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’ ” ²²Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” ²³When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his clothes and divided them into four parts, one for each soldier. They also took his tunic; now the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from the top. ²⁴So they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see who will get it.” This was to fulfill what the scripture says,
 “They divided my clothes among themselves,
  and for my clothing they cast lots.”
²⁵And that is what the soldiers did.
  Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. ²⁶When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” ²⁷Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
 ²⁸After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), “I am thirsty.” ²⁹A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. ³⁰When Jesus had received the wine, he said, “It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
 ³¹Since it was the day of Preparation, the Jews did not want the bodies left on the cross during the sabbath, especially because that sabbath was a day of great solemnity. So they asked Pilate to have the legs of the crucified men broken and the bodies removed. ³²Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who had been crucified with him. ³³But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. ³⁴Instead, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out. ³⁵(He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth.) ³⁶These things occurred so that the scripture might be fulfilled, “None of his bones shall be broken.” ³⁷And again another passage of scripture says, “They will look on the one whom they have pierced.”
 ³⁸After these things, Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, though a secret one because of his fear of the Jews, asked Pilate to let him take away the body of Jesus. Pilate gave him permission; so he came and removed his body. ³⁹Nicodemus, who had at first come to Jesus by night, also came, bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. ⁴⁰They took the body of Jesus and wrapped it with the spices in linen cloths, according to the burial custom of the Jews. ⁴¹Now there was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb in which no one had ever been laid. ⁴²And so, because it was the Jewish day of Preparation, and the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.

The quietest place on earth is closer than any of us could have realized.

About 40 miles north of here, in Minneapolis, there is a place called Orfield Laboratories. It used to be the home of a music studio. Prince and Bob Dylan would go there to record songs. But now inside this lab, there is a room which according to the Guinness Book of World records is the quietest place on earth. It is what’s known as an anechoic chamber – meaning it is designed to eliminate echoes and to deaden all sound. 

This might sound nice, like a retreat from the noisy world. But for those who have had a chance to sit in this room for an hour – it is anything but peaceful and calm. In fact, it can be horrifying. 

In a place so quiet, people experience hearing their own heartbeat, and even the sound of blood rushing through their veins. As you move around, you become aware of the sound of your bones and joints brushing against each other. People with hearing loss experience a loud ringing in their ears, and one person felt like their ears were rushing upwards while their body was falling downwards. 

People could hear their eyelids when they blinked, the sound of their hair moving became very loud, and many experienced things like visions or hallucinations. 

You wouldn’t think that a place so quiet would be horrifying and scary, but many say that it is. 

I know people who love Good Friday because, in many ways, it is the quietest service of the year. We just don’t do much in this service. We sit more and stand less. We listen more and say less. We gather in silence. We leave in silence. 

I find that even my own demeanor is subdued on this day, from the tone of my voice to the way I move my body, leaning towards softer subtleties, rather than something more dynamic and active.  

It’s not that the story of Good Friday itself is quiet. In fact, when you step into the passion story, you realize just how noisy it is. 

When Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane, an entire Roman cohort of soldiers show up to arrest him. That’s around 500 soldiers. And when Jesus says that he is Jesus of Nazareth, the one they are looking for, the gospel of John says that they all fall to the ground. Think of the sound of 500 soldiers falling to the ground. 

Later on, there is the noise of interrogation and the slap across Jesus’ face for how he spoke to the high priest. 

There is the sound of the cock crowing at Peter’s denial of even knowing Jesus. 

There is the roar of the crowd gathered outside Pilate’s window and the clomp-clomp-clomp of Pilates feet as he paces back and forth, back and forth between Jesus and the people. 

There is the pounding of nails into human flesh, the snapping of leg bones so that this doesn’t go on all day, and the slurp of one last drink for the Son of God – vinegar in a sponge.

And then there is the sound of creaking and tearing wood, as Joseph of Arimathea pries the nails out of Jesus’ hands and feet, and the grunt as the full weight of Jesus’ body slumps into Joseph’s arms. 

On this quiet day, there is plenty of noise in this gospel if you are up close. 

But what if you aren’t up close? What if you are far off in the distance watching? 

I’m guessing most of us saw some clip of the bridge in Baltimore collapsing this past week. What stood out to me as I watched it happen a couple times over, was how nearly all the video footage was both from a distance and just how quiet it was. From a distance, a far-off and safe place, a wide-angled livestreaming camera meant to watch boats caught the whole thing. There’s no doubt that up close, the tragic event was loud. Grinding metal. Cement exploding. Construction equipment plunging. But from a distance – nearly silent. Even a journalist reporting on the story spoke about how “eerie and deathly silent” it was just before the collapse. 

That’s how I imagine it was for the disciples who deserted Jesus during his crucifixion. In my holy imagination, I picture them – like us – watching from a far off place. They can see Jesus dragging his cross, they can view the swing of the whip that strikes his body, they watch the nails plunge into his hands and feet, and the spear piercing him. They can even notice him open his mouth to speak or drink. 

And yet to their ears, so far away, it’s entirely quiet. No sound, except maybe the sound of their own heart beating inside their sorrow-filled chest. 

And in that silence is complete and utter horror. Their whole world comes crashing down around them. 

That’s what the cross and Good Friday is – a horror. 

Imagine a place so quiet as the moment when the King of Love is dead. When the Word of God falls silent. When the heart of all creation stops. And the small group of committed disciples, who totally disintegrated into betrayal, snoring, flight, and denial, watch at a distance in complete silence. 

No one knows what happens next. The political theater of Palm Sunday has peaked, sending Jesus into the valley of the shadow of death, seemingly forsaken, abandoned. 

This is a disaster. This was in no one’s plan. And from a far-off, safe, but fearfully distant place, the disciples long for something to echo in their unknown future’s ear. But there is nothing. It’s just silence. 

That’s the quiet horror of this day. As one person has put it, “This is the day when the highest political authority washed its hands, the exalted religious leaders connived and manipulated, the common people turned accusers and haters, the circle of close friends fled, the right-hand man betrayed, the self-styled best friend forever denied. This is as awful as it gets, for faith, government, friendship, loyalty, love. It’s not Good Friday. It’s terrible Friday, the worst day of all time, when we see the absolute horror of who we are, and the absolute finality of death, not just for the clumsy, the fragile and the foolish, like us, but even for our greatest hope, the good, the beautiful, the true – Jesus.”^[1]

The quietest place on earth is closer than any of us could have realized.

It’s right here. On Good Friday. As we watch as the whole world comes crashing down. The unthinkable has happened. Jesus – the King of Love, the God drawn near to us – has died. 

And those words we heard up close last night, we now can see from a distance– “He loved us to the end.” 

Let’s be quiet. 

---

^[1] Sam Wells, Hanging by a Thread, location 408 on ebook. 

Sunday, March 24th, 2024 – Palm Sunday Homily Intro to the Passion Story, Mark 11:1-11

Processional Gospel: Mark 11:1-11
¹When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, [Jesus] sent two of his disciples ²and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. ³If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’ ” ⁴They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, ⁵some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” ⁶They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. ⁷Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. ⁸Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. ⁹Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,
 “Hosanna!
  Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
  ¹⁰Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
 Hosanna in the highest heaven!”
 ¹¹Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

First Reading: Isaiah 50:4-9a
The image of the servant of God is one of the notable motifs in the book of Isaiah. Today’s reading describes the mission of the servant, whom early Christians associated with Jesus. Like Jesus, the servant does not strike back at his detractors but trusts in God’s steadfast love.

 ⁴The Lord God has given me
  the tongue of a teacher,
 that I may know how to sustain
  the weary with a word.
 Morning by morning he wakens—
  wakens my ear
  to listen as those who are taught.
 ⁵The Lord God has opened my ear,
  and I was not rebellious,
  I did not turn backward.
 ⁶I gave my back to those who struck me,
  and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
 I did not hide my face
  from insult and spitting.

 ⁷The Lord God helps me;
  therefore I have not been disgraced;
 therefore I have set my face like flint,
  and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
  ⁸he who vindicates me is near.
 Who will contend with me?
  Let us stand up together.
 Who are my adversaries?
  Let them confront me.
 ^9aIt is the Lord God who helps me;
  who will declare me guilty?

There were two processions that day, when Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem.

From the east, there was one with a donkey.
From the west, one with a warhorse.

One rode in meekness and humility. 
The other marched in military might and power.

One had shouts of hosanna, meaning “save us…save us now.”
The other – shouts of silence and obedience. 

One carried symbols of peace and hope.
The other – symbols of victory and intimidation.

The story and staging of Palm Sunday and Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem is packed full of symbolism and story, it’s easy to miss what it all means. 

But for Jesus, and other Jews, it was the beginning of the week of Passover – the most sacred week of the Jewish year. It was a time when Jews traveled to Jerusalem to celebrate their people’s liberation from the empire of Egypt. Remember the story of Moses saying to the Pharaoh, “Let my people go!” Jews would gather in Jerusalem that week to celebrate that story – their freedom from slavery.

But what we often don’t hear is that during this festival of freedom, the government would also show up. On one side of the city, the governor, Pontius Pilate, would always have a procession into town. It was the empire’s procession. Alongside Pilate would be soldiers and drums, weapons and armor. This was the Roman military marching into town. Their one goal: intimidate and subdue. They were there to make sure nothing got out of control, because when a community of people within your empire has a celebration about being freed from an earlier empire, well… you have to remind the people that you are still the one in charge. It’s to make sure there isn’t any trouble. “Sure, have your festival about freedom…but don’t get any ideas.” It was keeping peace through a show of force.

And now, at the same time, on the other side of town Jesus comes riding into the city on a donkey. It was a counter procession, an alternate parade. Roman Empire on one side; Jesus on the other. The kingdom of Rome and the kingdom of God. 

At first glance, Jesus’ procession can feel a bit like a victory parade for the World Series champions, down main street of their home town. Crowds gather and shout and cheer just to catch a glimpse of the glory and celebration of the celebrities returned home. 

But consider the words of prophet Zechariah, written 500 years earlier: Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey… He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be broken, and he shall command peace to the nations. 

Pilate enters on a warhorse, but Jesus on a donkey. The Jews gathered in Jerusalem would have caught the symbolism. They knew Zechariah’s image of a king riding into Jerusalem on a donkey. The meek and humble king of Zechariah, who would bring peace. And the message from Jesus is clear. He is the one commanding true peace – not through intimidation or force.

This alternate parade, this counter procession is intentional. It’s thought out. It’s political theater. Jesus is sending a message. 

This is Colin Kaepernick kneeling on the football field during the National Anthem. This is women in congress all dressed in white at the State of the Union. This is the person standing in front of tanks at Tiananmen Square.  

While Pontius Pilate is driving a tank into Jerusalem, Jesus is riding in on a tractor. Political theater, indeed. He knows what he’s doing.

In a way, like the prophet Isaiah, Jesus asks, “Who will contend with me? Who will struggle alongside me?” And in response, as people of faith, we pray it will be us. That we will be the ones to boldly declare, “Let us stand together.” We pray that we will walk with and stand with Jesus as best we can, for as long as we can…while knowing that in the end we all flee to a safe distance.  

The confrontation, the collision of these opposing forces is inevitable. Like the prophet Isaiah says, Jesus has set his face like flint for Jerusalem. He will walk into the heart of the beast, the Roman Empire, to bring peace in love for the world, placing his own body in the gears of this monstrous machine. Nothing is going to stop this now. He won’t back down. 

It’s a tragic story. But it is also a good story. A story about God’s unflinching commitment to be with us. 

And good stories are worth repeating.

Listen…

Sunday, March 17th, 2024 – The Reset Button, a sermon on Jeremiah 31:31-34

First Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34
³¹The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. ³²It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. ³³But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. ³⁴No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Psalm 51
¹Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.
²Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.
³For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.
⁴Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.
⁵Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me.
⁶You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
⁷Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
⁸Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
⁹Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities.
¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.
¹¹Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me.
¹²Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

I grew up in the Nintendo generation, which came out about 40 years ago now.

While I grew up in the age of the Nintendo, I never had a Nintendo gaming system. This meant that nearly every weekend, my friends and I would figure out who had a Nintendo, along with parents that would let us spend hours playing together on it. We would play Super Mario Bros, Excitebike, Zelda, Contra, Street Fighter…all the classic games.

Now that the Nintendo is a bit of a relic, I sometimes hear people from this generation trying to impress each other with how much they remember – about characters, the secret passages, trick moves, and even cheat codes on the 8 button controller. 

I don’t remember much of that. But what I do distinctively remember is the fact that there are only two buttons on the machine itself. Only two. 

The power button and the reset button.

It’s just two buttons. So simple. But as I think back on those days – I think that there was a sort underlying, unspoken, even unconscious psychological and relational dynamic with those two buttons. 

You see, the Power Button is for when you start playing – you gotta turn the thing on. Or it’s for when you are done playing – you gotta turn it off. But sometimes the power button functioned as an “I quit” button. This usually happened in a huff – one person is mad because they are losing the game, and so, in a split second decision, they quickly push the power button, everything goes blank, and they storm away. They quit. That’s the aptly named power button. That’s a power move.

But the reset button – that’s for when nothing is going right, but you don’t want to leave your friends and you want to keep playing. That’s when you look at each other in the eyes, agree that everything is wrong, this game is in the gutter and it has to stop, but you want to keep trying. So you lean over to hit the reset button. And try again. 

Do you ever wish you could hit the reset button? On life? Or maybe just a moment in life? 

Do you ever wish you could not quit – but just start over? Wish that you could go back to the beginning and try again? Maybe with that conversation that didn’t go as you had hoped. Maybe so that you could make a different decision at a turning point in your life. Maybe so that you could have appreciated more the time you had with a loved one who is now gone. Maybe so that you could have chosen a different career, or told that person how you felt about them before they went away. Do you ever just wish there was a reset button?

You don’t want to storm out of the relationship or the friendship or the job or the hard conversation, hit the power button and walk away – you just want to…to start again. Just to reset. 

I don’t know about you but when I read and sing the words of Psalm 51, I hear the ache of someone longing for a reset button. 

Have mercy on me, O God.
Wash me, cleanse me – through and through
With your steadfast love and your compassion.

I know I have sinned, I can see the damage to my own life and the life of those I love, including you, O God. Give me a clean heart, a whole new spirit within me. 

And please, don’t cast me away from you – don’t hit the power button, don’t turn off the game. But just restore me. Reset me, reset us, O God, with your bountiful spirit. 

Can you hear the complete and utter desperation and plea within those words? The confession that life has become entirely unmanageable, gone completely off the rails, and the deep need to start again please. 

Or take the words we confessed just a few minutes ago. I’m not sure how much those words sunk into your spirit, but together we said,

We are caught in cycles of sin and cannot break free. 
Cycles of sin – we just keep spinning our wheels and nothing is changing. 
We hoard resources, we silence others, we withdraw from one another.
We let hurt grow…grow into hatred.

I’m guessing if we slow down, we see these cycles of sin – everywhere. In our addictions and our all-consuming guilt or shame. We see this in our marriages or friendships. In our relationships with our children or our work.  Sometimes you’re just at a complete stand still. Stuck. Both parties are hurt. No one is wrong, but no one can muster up the courage to say “I’m sorry” first either. The cycle of sin and disconnection just spins along and sometimes you just long for a button to press that will reset everything. To try again from a new beginning. 

The good news for us this morning, is that when it comes to God – there is a reset button – one that the Psalmist and we long for. We get to hear it. We get to receive it. In the book of Jeremiah chapter 31, which is known as the “tiny book of consolation” – we get to hear clearly articulated the reset button, when God says, “I will make a new covenant with you.”

In Jeremiah 31, God speaks through the prophet to the Israelites who have been traumatized by the destruction of their homeland in Jerusalem and sent off to live a discarded life in exile in Babylon. Part of the problem is that they had a hand in their own self-destruction. They had not followed God’s guiding ways; they had broken the covenant God had made with them. They had made a mess of things and they knew it. And now after having lived in an all-consuming despair, it’s possible they might get to return home soon and they are desperate for a way to hit the reset button. 

Responding to their cries of terror, pain, and grief, God offers God’s people a flood of grace. God speaks into that hopeless space saying that this exile and despair, this living as an outcast, this broken covenant will no longer define them. God says, “This is a mess. You’ve broken the covenant I made with you. You haven’t lived as I want you to live. Something needs to change. It’s needs to be different now.” And then God says, “I’ll go first. I’ll make a new covenant with you. An unbreakable covenant this time that’s linked to all the other covenants. In hopes that my unbreakable love and commitment to you will give you the courage and the trust to change. To start over. But this one doesn’t depend on your faithfulness, it will depend on mine. You can rely on it. It will always be there. Like a reset button when everything has gone wrong. It sounds like this – I will be your God. You will be my people. No matter what. And when everything falls apart again – you will know where to turn. To turn to me. Because I’ll be right beside you ready to say, ‘Let’s hit the reset button. Let’s begin again.” 

In the words of Walter Brueggemann, he says that in this moment God, through Jeremiah, promises that there is newness for us outside the vicious cycles.^[1]

Or in the words of Kathleen O’Conner, “Jeremiah’s words of comfort in these chapters disrupt the harsh, clamped-down life of people who live in the persistent grip of trauma and disaster. Hope’s abrupt appearance wakes them up to visions of an alternative world.” A promise, as a call to bring the people back to life.^[2]

I will make a new covenant with you, God says.

Depending on your perspective, new can mean either good or bad. When someone is just starting out at a job and they make a classic beginners mistake, we might say, “Oh well – they’re new. They’ll get the hang of it.” Or more often than not we hear the word new and we think better. It’s the new iphone or the new research on a particular disease. 

But it would be a distortion and a shame to think that God’s new covenant is a better covenant or a replacement for the old covenant. In fact, regrettably, throughout Christian history this new covenant has been seen as the person of Jesus, God’s son. Implying that our Jewish siblings disobeyed God’s covenant, and so God had to make a new covenant with a new people, notably those who follow God’s son Jesus. Such false and damaging and dangerous rhetoric has not only led us to misunderstanding who God is, but has also been the foundational thinking behind such atrocities as the holocaust and other violence against our Jewish siblings.

A more faithful to the text and story of God in Jeremiah 31 is to see the new covenant that is spoke is a continuation, a re-articulation of God’s covenant that has always been. Think of it as a new season of your favorite tv show. The new season isn’t a replacement for other seasons, it’s a continuation of a long story of unbreakable relationship. 

God has loved us with an everlasting love, Jeremiah says elsewhere.

It had always been true but needed to be spoken and learned again. 

I will be your God; you will be my people. 

And this new covenant will be written on our hearts, God says.

You see laws, treaties, and covenants back then were written on clay or stone – which could be easily broken.^[3] But for God’s law, God’s covenant to be written on the heart makes it as natural and innate to you from the day you were born. It’s on your heart. It is protected and guarded by your body, not easily broken. I will be your God and you will be my people. It is written on our hearts. 

I confess I wasn’t the best seminary student. I liked to read about the bible more than I liked to read the bible. And so I never knew Jeremiah 31. But I can remember exactly where I was 16 years ago now when I heard this promise given to me. A mentor of mine, who also knew the spiritual clutter and trash that can clog up our pathways to God and the gospel, one day he told our group during a devotion time this most foundational part of God’s covenant with God’s people. That when everything feels like it has gone wrong, when you aren’t sure what you think about Jesus and the language of the cross and the dying for our sins, when the words of salvation and eternal life sound so out of touch with reality and real life here in this place, we could turn to this covenantal promise. This word from God. I will be your god. And you will be my people. No matter what. 

When I heard that, I felt like I had been given a gift I would carry with me the rest of my life, like it was written on my heart in that very moment. 

I will be your God; you will be my people. That’s the new covenant; that’s the reset button. Something we can always come back to when we need to start again.

As Christians, what we hear and will see in Jesus is not that Jesus is the new covenant, but that Jesus is the embodiment of this covenant that God has always made with God’s people. All people. A covenant, a promise that God, in the end, would die for. 

What we learn in Jesus is just how far God is willing to go for this promise. God would give up God’s life for it. Jesus shows us that God stands by God’s covenant – to be our God and for us to be God’s people. Forever. God promises to never press the power button and turn the game off. God promises to never stand up and walk away from us. 

Instead, God will say, “All right. This is a mess. Something needs to change. But we’ve been here before.” And with a flood of grace, God looks us in the eye and leans over, and hits the reset button – ready to begin with us once again. 

Amen.

---

^[1] Brueggemann, Walter. The Collected Sermons of Walter Brueggemann (p. 352). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

^[2] Kathleen O’Conner, Jeremiah: Pain and Promise. 

^[3] Margaret Odell, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/reformation-day/commentary-on-jeremiah-3131-34-14

Sunday, March 3rd, 2024 – Encanto, Generational Trauma, and the 10 Commandments, a sermon Exodus 20:1-17

First Reading: Exodus 20:1-17
¹God spoke all these words:
 ²I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; ³you shall have no other gods before me.
 ⁴You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. ⁵You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, ⁶but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.
 ⁷You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.
 ⁸Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. ⁹Six days you shall labor and do all your work. ¹⁰But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. ¹¹For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.
 ¹²Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
 ¹³You shall not murder.
 ¹⁴You shall not commit adultery.
 ¹⁵You shall not steal.
 ¹⁶You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
 ¹⁷You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

The relatively new Disney Movie, Encanto, opens with a halting story. A young married couple, the Madrigals, are fleeing their home in Columbia due to armed conflict. With candles and torches to light the way, they are moving in a caravan of people in the middle of the night with their three triplet children – Julieta, Pepa, and Bruno. Eventually, the armed soldiers chasing after them catch up, and the father of the Madrigal family puts himself between the soldiers and everyone else, sacrificing himself, so that the others can get away. 

Then in that very place, in that very moment of tragedy, the candle they carried with them filled with light and magic, creating this safe and protected haven for everyone, a new village, a place called Encanto. Fast-forward 50 years, and the large and extended Madrigal family lives in this magical village that thrives under the protection of a magical candle that gave them a magical house. Over those fifty years, every member of the Madrigal family was given their own magical gift. Luisa has superhuman strength, Antonio can talk with animals, Julieta can heal people with the food she makes for them. Isabela can make plants and flowers bloom whenever and however she wants. Bruno was given the gift of seeing the future – but 10 years ago, he was demonized and scapegoated for this gift, and he hasn’t been seen since.  

Everyone in the magical family in the magical house in the magical village receives a magical gift. Everyone except – Mirabel, one of the grandchildren.

No one knows why she doesn’t get a gift. 

But one moment – when the family is celebrating another person receiving their magical gift – Mirabel starts to see the walls of their perfect and magical house start to crack and the magical flame flickering…quickly, Mirabel tries to shows the family – “Look! Look what’s happening!” but the house heals itself too quickly for anyone to see. 

On the outside, everything looks perfect. But in reality, Mirabel knows and can see something is going wrong. 

Mirabel goes on a search – to figure out what’s breaking down her family. She goes to the forbidden tower in the house. You know the forbidden tower – it’s that place no family conversation can go to – that thing that no one talks about in the family. The secret, the moment, the event that is off limits and we just pretend it isn’t there. 

In Encanto, the forbidden tower is Bruno’s room because no one talks about Bruno. You see, Bruno was the one who could see that something was going wrong years ago. In some ways, Bruno was the embodiment of what could go wrong in the family. But when he tried to speak out, he got shut out. He became the very dark secret, that no one talks about. We do not talk about Bruno – the family sings.

But in her search to figure out what’s going on, Mirabel ends up finding Bruno. He’s been gone for 10 years, but he never left. He’s been living in the walls of the house. Even eating dinner with the family each night, just on the other of the kitchen wall. And when Mirabel helps to bring him and all the problems of the family he represents out into the light – there is a big collision. Mirabel discovers members of the family who are unhappy. Louisa is tired of being the strong one that everyone relies on. Isabella is tired of needing to be perfect. But no one will say anything because of grandma’s out of reach expectations. 

So this all comes to light and Mirabel and her grandmother have a big fight. And as they fight, a big crack snaps through the center of their house, collapsing the whole thing, and that magical candle that protected them all these years goes out (which means the magic is gone) and Mirabel runs away. 

Unknown to Mirabel, she runs away to a spot in the woods alongside a river that no one in her family has been to in a long time. She runs to the place where her grandfather was killed so many years earlier. 

That’s where her grandmother finds her. Her grandmother confesses that she had never be able to come back to this place. As she relives what she thought her life would be like, with her beloved by her side, and then relieves the tragedy her life became, Mirabel’s grandmother confesses that fear of losing anything more had consumed her life and she had lost sight of what mattered most and how to live. 

In a tender moment by the river, Mirabel and her grandmother looked at each other, looked at their family pain together, and together knew they had to learn to live again. 

When this movie came out two years ago, what caught people’s attention is how it was ultimately about generational trauma.

Generational trauma is when the impact of something traumatic (going off to war, tragically losing a loved one, violence of any kind) then gets passed down from generation to generation. If I experience a car accident, and then become afraid of cars, and then raise my children to be afraid of cars, and my grandchildren…that becomes generational trauma. Think about abuse and addiction and the ways the impact and effects of abuse can be passed down, generation to generation. If someone experiences a natural disaster (like a tornado or a flood), the trauma and fears that go all the way down to the biological level can be passed down to the next generation in ways that are hard to see. For example, a lot of people are wondering about the long-term effects of COVID pandemic on future generations. What impact does it have when at 5 years old, you learned that every person could be carry a virus that makes you and your loved ones sick. 

Mirabel’s grandmother – understandably – lived with so much fear and trauma and pain, going through such a tragedy. But when that pain solidified into a particular kind of perfect life for her and her family – that unresolved pain sometimes came out as controlling and cruel. Which sent cracks down through the generations. That’s generational trauma.

I’ve been thinking about this movie and generation trauma this week as I’ve been living with the reading from Exodus this morning – the 10 Commandments. It’s easy to miss, but when the 10 Commandments were just read a few moments ago – they too open with a halting story. 

God spoke all these words: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…

When most of us think about the 10 Commandments, I’m guessing most of us hear a list of rules that God gave to the people to obey. In a previous congregation I served, some people heard them as a threatening list of rules that could get you sent to hell if you didn’t obey them. What’s interesting is that the passage doesn’t call them commandments – it says, “And God spoke these words.” These words. They aren’t called the 10 Commandments, they are the 10 Words. The 10 statements.

But we don’t typically hear them like that and we don’t tend to hear them as words from God spoken to a traumatized people. But imagine the ongoing and generationally passed down trauma of living in slavery for 400 years. 

Imagine being told you are worthless and only good for meaningless labor. 
Imagine being forced to work 7 days a week, not worthy of rest or enjoyment. 
Imagine the pile up of loss upon loss upon loss, generation after generation.

When this happens, life becomes entirely distorted and the whole community forgets how to live outside of just survival. 

This is the experience of refugees, asylum seekers, and people fleeing war. But it can also be the experience of the average looking person in the pew next to you. As my mother used to tell me – “You never know what someone has gone through or is living through right now.” And sometimes that’s the worst part – when no one else knows the hell of you’ve been through.

The Hebrew people have been living for generations in slavery in Egypt. When Moses, Miriam, and Aaron come along as God’s agents to rescue the people out of Pharaoh’s grip, it was truly a good thing to be set free – but wandering in the wilderness wasn’t a walk in the park. As the Hebrew people said, “At least in Egypt we had enough food and we knew how to live a life, even if it was a life of slavery.” But freedom – how do we live together in freedom? What does that look like? How do we covenant with and treat each other when all we have seen and learned is mistreatment? 

And so God says to God’s people, “Okay, I’ll show you how to live again.”

Actually, I was wrong earlier –  the 10 commandments don’t begin with the halting reminder of slavery. When God shows the people how to live again, God begins with a promise. 

I am the Lord your God. The One who rescued you. The One who was with you.

God begins by announcing who God is. And not just who God is but who God is to you. God’s people. I am your God. You are my people. I am the liberating God who sets people free, who opposes and defeats systems of slavery and oppression that dismiss and discard that which God sees as precious.

As Christians we may have missed the boat a bit on this one. We say that the first commandment is “you shall have no others Gods”. In the Jewish tradition, that’s the second commandment because in the Jewish tradition…the first commandment – the first word – from God is one of promise. I am the Lord your God, the One who rescued you.

I am your God. You are my people. You are accepted. You are claimed. You are known. You are loved. When you feel like you don’t belong anywhere remember that you belong here. You belong with me. That’s the beginning of these 10 words – words of binding relationship. 

And in naming God as a liberating God, God reminds God’s people of where they’ve been and what they’ve been through. To go that place of loss and pain, like Mirabel did with her grandmother, not to inflict more pain, but to confront the pain that has lived in them for a long time. And to invite them to live differently now. 

The thing about unresolved trauma in the past is that it can feel like it is still happening in the present. Trauma disorders our timelines. But therapy and care for trauma helps people put their timeline back in order. That happened – back then. I am free from that now.

And God’s opening word can have a similar effect. God says, “I rescued you out of slavery. Back then. It’s over. And here’s how we are going to live now. This is who we will be now. Together.” 

In the end of Encanto, it turns out, Mirabel did have a gift – the gift of courage to talk about Bruno, and the problems in the family, and to call for a new way to live together. 

Despite our preconceived notions – the 10 Commandments are not designed to be a burdening, threatening set of cemented rules. They didn’t float down from the sky as God’s requirements for entrance into the kingdom of Heaven. The 10 Commandments are attached to a story. A painful story. Of loss. Of mistreatment. Of suffering. From generation to generation. And it’s time for that pain and suffering to stop being passed down. In the end, God offers the 10 commandments as a gift to God’s people. A gift which, as one theologian puts it, can be called – the Ten Best Ways to Live Now. A better way to live when all you’ve known is mistreatment.

I wonder if we can begin again to see the 10 Commandments as a gift. Not because they are perfect and easily applicable to our life, but because of what they are born out of and what they call us to. I know that many of us have a lot questions and concerns and even long held anger at the 10 Commandments. I probably get asked the most about the commandment to honor your parents – because what if your parents didn’t honor you? What if you were mistreated by your parents, what then, Pastor? 

And that’s the right kind of question we need to be asking and wrestling with. Because surely the commandment doesn’t mean honor someone’s mistreatment of you or ignore their mistreatment. No – the 10 commandments are supposed to prevent our mistreatment of each other, so that we can love our neighbors and ourselves again – as God loves us. 

We have a lot of work to do, when it comes to how we see and feel about the 10 Commandments, but I wonder if we can just see them with new eyes again…to redeem them…to restore them to their original purpose…to be a gift for people in pain…

The 10 Commandments give us wisdom and guidance on who we are and how we are called to live in service and love toward our neighbor and ourselves. And the 10 Commandments – in the very first words – also give a glimpse of who our God is. A God who seeks to bring liberation, freedom, life…new life…to you, God’s beloved people. 

Take this gift, dear people of God. Write it on your hearts – may it always be a blessing and never a burden. Amen. 

Wednesday, February 14th, 2024 – A Heart that Works, a sermon on Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day

Second Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:20b–6:10
^20bWe entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. ²¹For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
 ^6:1As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. ²For he says,
 “At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
  and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! ³We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, ⁴but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, ⁵beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; ⁶by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, ⁷truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; ⁸in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; ⁹as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; ¹⁰as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Gospel: Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
[Jesus said to the disciples:] ¹“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
 ²“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ³But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
 ⁵“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ⁶But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
 ¹⁶“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. ¹⁷But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, ¹⁸so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
 ¹⁹“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; ²⁰but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. ²¹For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Dear treasured people of God – grace and peace, mercy and love are yours in the name of Christ. Amen.

Please pray with me. Spirit of the living God, come now and grow our faith. Come and deepen our hope. Come and strengthen our love. Come and water within each of us the desire to be your faithful friends forever. Amen. 

Stand-up comedians have long been appreciated for their ability to speak the truth, tell the truth in a way that we can hear and in a format that we can handle. Really good stand-up comedy is not simply about humor and being funny. It’s about honesty and vulnerability and telling the truth about this life.

As one person put it recently, “there is just something about (a comedian’s) ability to be unsparingly, sometimes painfully, honest, that just destroys the cultural scripts we get about what being nice or polite looks like. And it’s the kind of truth-telling … that so many of us crave. We don’t want the niceties. We don’t want the platitudes. We want honesty and maybe a second to laugh about how ridiculous our lives have become. We want the kind of truth from people who have the eyes to see…(those who) get it. They get the joy, they get the absurdity, and they get the kind of tenderness underneath about what makes us all human.”^[1]

Rob Delaney is a British comedian and an actor, and in the memoir he released last year, he really tries to speak the truth. 

In his memoir, Rob tells the unsparing and devastating story of losing his son just before the age of three. After his son died, he thought that the best thing he could do was not try to protect people from it.  He said the impulse to protect people from your own pain is so strong; you want to protect people from your crazy and heart breaking story. But he also knew that if he told the truth, if he told his devastating story, not only might it help people confront their own pain, but it also might prepare people for when tragedy enters their life. 

He named his memoir A Heart that Works. It’s based on a song lyric that says, “A heart that hurts is a heart that works.”

A heart that works. 

Shortly after his son died, Rob’s wife gave birth to another child – their fourth. At first, Rob’s grief and sadness were so overwhelming that he was worried he wouldn’t be able to love this child. “I don’t love anymore,” he thought, “because my heart is destroyed.” But that turned out not to be true. When that baby was born, he was overwhelmed with love and overwhelmed that new kid with love, placing his face next to his newborn son’s face – over and over again. 

His heart worked just fine. It still loved deeply – it just also still hurt so badly. 

A heart that hurts is a heart that works. 

I know there are a lot of people who, for good reason, would say that the church has too often not told the truth. That the church has been a place of niceties and platitudes…

But then there is Ash Wednesday. On Ash Wednesday, not only do we tell the truth but we mark ourselves with it. 

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

On Ash Wednesday, we gather as a church to do something that much of the rest of society thinks is pretty strange. We gather around the truth of our mortality. That we are dying. That we are fragile, breakable creatures that will not and cannot last forever on this side of creation. Ash Wednesday is not so much a near-death experience, but rather a death-is-near experience. We gather around the painful truth that one day our hearts will stop working. 

But as I remembered Rob’s memoir, I realized that on this Ash Wednesday, in this very act of confronting and not protecting ourselves from the painful reality of death, we are at the very same time given a heart that does work. On this Ash Wednesday, it’s not just that one day our hearts will stop working – it’s about keeping them working now. Cracked open to the love and grief around us. To the fragile and precious life before us. Reminded not only that we are dust, but also reminded of what God can do with dust. What amazing and beautiful and treasured creations God can form out of the dust of the earth. And reminded of what we can still do with the heart that beats within us. 

We can still love, we can still seek to repair, we can still ache for the suffering of the world that feels so far out of reach. 

It’s not lost on me the complexity of this day also being Valentine’s Day. Maybe I just hang around weird people but I know people who are more excited that today is Ash Wednesday than Valentine’s Day. Maybe because the reminder that our bodies will wither and fade is less scary and less painful than the reminder of love that has withered and faded. 

But when I see soccer-themed Valentines packed in a grocery bag, or hand-carved and printed and painted Valentines, or much-too-small boxes of nerds candy valentines heading off to school classrooms, or paper hearts decorating building windows, I’m reminded that Valentine’s day is not all about the LOVE one feels for some romantic partner. It’s about tuning in once again to love that is always around us. It’s about remembering that you can once again share love – with family and friends and strangers. It’s about letting ourselves be loved. 

Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day – the way I see it – make sure we have a heart that still works. A heart that can still love, that can still break in love; a heart that love can still break into. As the apostle Paul says in the Corinthians readings, “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!…We are treated as dying, and yet…we are alive. As sorrowful, and yet we rejoice. As having nothing…and yet we have everything.” We have everything we need.

It’s about having a heart that works.

As you walked into worship, you were invited to take an olivewood heart for your home. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to hold that heart in your hands. To pass it among your family. Hold that heart in your hands. Roll it around, feel it’s smoothness. Think of the rough edges of our own hearts being sanded down by the truth spoken in love this day. 

These olive hearts were made by Palestinian artisans in memory of the thousands of children who have already been killed in the ongoing war in Gaza. These hearts are a small way for us to both support local artisans and to pray in solidarity with the thousands of people who have been killed, wounded, held hostage, displaced and traumatized by war.

When I hold this heart in my hand, I am confident it was created by someone whose heart still works…even in the midst of war and trouble. By a heart that still pulsed with Love and Hope, despite the evidence around them. Born out of Love that still shows up in the midst of all that suffering…doctors who continue to serve even after returning from brutal imprisonment, teachers and others determined to calm the children’s fears through singing and games, chefs who build ovens from the rubble to continue to feed the people and journalists who stick around to tell such stories.

That heart that you hold in your hands – is a reminder of hearts that work.  

Some of you don’t need the reminder. Some of you make sure your own heart works every morning you still go to work or love your kids or forgive yourself or others over and over again. 

Ash Wednesday tells us the truth. That we are mortal. That we are dying. And in telling that truth – awakens our hearts, opens our hearts, stirs up our hearts to this fragile and beautiful and fleeting and precious life to be treasured. In ourselves and in others. 

It’s about having a heart that works. 

In the sermon on the mount, Jesus says where your treasure is there your heart will be also. The truth of Ash Wednesday – and everyday – is that where God’s treasures are, God longs for our hearts to be also. And from what I can see, God’s treasures are all around us – marked with the Cross of Christ – and longing for the presence of our hearts. 

It’s about having a heart that works.

To re-align our hearts with the things that God treasures…this life, each other, second and fourth and more chances, small-acts-of-love that are just right, the failed-acts-of-love where it’s the thought that counts, and big-foolish-embarrassing-acts-of-love, and so much more.

It’s about having a heart that works…that treasures what God treasures.

And so I pray today…

• That the softness of these ashes might soften the places where our hearts have been hardened. 
• That the heat that once burned these ashes would warm the part of our hearts that have grown cold to the world and the stranger around us. 
• That the truth hidden within these ashes, that we belong to God forever, might reveal just how precious we are. 

It’s Ash Wednesday – and yes…we’re dying. But also…before then…we are alive. 

Thanks be to God. Amen. 

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^[1] Kate Bowler, Everything Happens Podcast, https://katebowler.com/podcasts/a-heart-that-works-is-a-heart-that-hurts/

Sunday, February 4th, 2024 – It’s About the Search, a sermon on Mark 1:29-39

First Reading: Isaiah 40:21-31
²¹Have you not known? Have you not heard?
  Has it not been told you from the beginning?
  Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
 ²²It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
  and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
 who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
  and spreads them like a tent to live in;
 ²³who brings princes to naught,
  and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.

 ²⁴Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
  scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
 when he blows upon them, and they wither,
  and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

 ²⁵To whom then will you compare me,
  or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
 ²⁶Lift up your eyes on high and see:
  Who created these?
 He who brings out their host and numbers them,
  calling them all by name;
 because he is great in strength,
  mighty in power,
  not one is missing.

 ²⁷Why do you say, O Jacob,
  and speak, O Israel,
 “My way is hidden from the Lord,
  and my right is disregarded by my God”?
 ²⁸Have you not known? Have you not heard?
 The Lord is the everlasting God,
  the Creator of the ends of the earth.
 He does not faint or grow weary;
  his understanding is unsearchable.
 ²⁹He gives power to the faint,
  and strengthens the powerless.
 ³⁰Even youths will faint and be weary,
  and the young will fall exhausted;
 ³¹but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
  they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
 they shall run and not be weary,
  they shall walk and not faint.

Gospel: Mark 1:29-39
²⁹As soon as [Jesus and the disciples] left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. ³⁰Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. ³¹He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
 ³²That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. ³³And the whole city was gathered around the door. ³⁴And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
 ³⁵In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. ³⁶And Simon and his companions hunted for him. ³⁷When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” ³⁸He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” ³⁹And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons.

Sermon

Dear people of God, grace and peace, mercy and love are yours in the name of Christ. Amen. 

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. ³⁶And Simon and his companions hunted for him. ³⁷When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 

Pastor Lillian Daniel is a well-known preacher and author who has written some great books about callings, and being a pastor, and serving the church. She has also been a highly sought after speaker at pastor conferences. My wife, Lauren, and I have appreciated her work for years and have often jumped at the opportunity to hear her speak. 

A couple of years ago, she was one of the main presenters at a preaching conference up in the Twin Cities, slotted for the keynote just after lunch. Well – that day, it was about 12:30pm in the afternoon, people were still milling around the church and the nearby restaurants. Coming back from lunch myself, I was headed straight to the sanctuary of this large church to get a good seat for the keynote. And as I was weaving and finding my way through the unfamiliar hallways, I see up ahead, tucked in a side corner, just out of sight…was Lillian Daniel. She was hunched over what was pretty clearly her manuscript for her talk, which she seemed to be hurriedly editing. I’ll admit, a little fanboy excitement grew in me – “There she is. This person whose books I have read, who was one of the reason we came to this conference. She is right there. And no one else is around bugging her, I could totally stop and have a whole conversation with her…” But instead, I decided to play it cool, give her the respect and privacy she needed to prepare for her keynote that started in about 30 minutes. 

Fast-forward 28 minutes…I’m sitting there in my pretty good seat in this massive sanctuary with hundreds of my other closest preacher friends. The Host/MC of the conference gets up and says to everyone, “Welcome back from lunch. We hope you found a nice place to eat in our beautiful city. And now to start off the afternoon, we are really excited to introduce the Reverend Lillian Daniel…if we can find her. Conference staff are looking for her, trying to get a hold of her, so if you can all just sit tight that would be great. Thanks for your patience.”

Now, no one was all that worried, but there was a slight commotion among the people. You could see conference staff with fancy names tag moving around at quick pace, talking to a lot of people. Everyone was searching for Lillian Daniel. No one knew where she was…except me. I knew where she was. 

So, I quietly left my seat, traced my steps through the snaking hallways of this church, and sure enough, there was Lillian – still tucked in the hidden corner and crouched over her manuscript. 

Trying to be mindful of all the feelings that could flood the moment one realizes they are lost and late to their own keynote speech, I said as gently as I could, “Hey, Lillian…”

She looked up at me with these sort-of worried but knowing eyes and said, “It’s time isn’t it? Is everyone looking for me?” To which, I said, “Yeah, everyone is looking for you. It’s time.” 

And then with a sense of acceptance, but also with grace and poise, she gathered her things, followed the hallways back…and stepped into the sanctuary to speak. 

In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. ³⁶And Simon and his companions hunted for him. ³⁷When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 

I wonder how that felt for Jesus – to be found in his own deserted hallway, tucked away from everything and everyone for just a moment and to hear that “everyone is searching for you.”

Everyone is searching for you. It’s the kind of bible verse that has resonance and can leap right off the page and speak into the deepest parts of our own listening hearts. I imagine the gospel of Mark being read to its community nearly 2,000 years ago, and when the reader/story-teller says, “Everyone is searching for you,” I imagine all the people gathered to listen in nodding along. Because they know it’s true for them too. They are too are searching for Jesus. Searching for God, for something more… more meaning in their life. 

I know a lot of people think of worship as a time in the week to come and praise and give thanks to God, but I can’t help but wonder how many of us come to worship not to praise God but rather simply in search of God. Of a god worthy to be praised. In search of something more in their life. In our life. 

I imagine this passage from the gospel of Mark having a similar kind resonance for Mark’s community 2,000 years as U2’s song, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” still does today. 

It’s a 35-year-old song that resonates and reaches in even still today.

I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you

I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
Only to be with you.

But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.

A few years ago, NPR’s All Things Considered did a story on this song that has withstood a long test of time, calling it a rock-and-roll hymn. U2’s lead singer and songwriter Bono called it a “gospel song with a restless spirit.”

While U2 is not exactly categorized as a Christian band, three of the members were part of a Christian fellowship. And just as they were on the cusp of major success, they went to tell their manager that they wanted to quit. They thought they should be doing something more useful and meaningful with their lives than music, as if music isn’t one of the primary ways the gospel finds us. 

Obviously, they stuck with the music, choosing instead to write songs that they said were a kind of prayer. 

“I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” is this anthem, this hymn of doubt more than faith, Bono says. It is a song about searching for meaning but the most interesting thing in the song, one journalist said, is that you don’t find it. It’s about the search.”^[1] It’s about that little word that Bono holds and lingers on. That word still.

And I stiiiiiiiiiiiiiill haven’t found what I’m looking for. 

That little word reveals that he’s been looking for a long time – and he still is.  And yet the beautiful paradox is that a powerful song about searching for and not finding God can make us feel so connected to God. Like we’ve found God. Or more truthfully, like God has found us.

It’s about the search. 

In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. ³⁶And Simon and his companions hunted for him. “When they found Jesus, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” 

It’s like the gospel of Mark is a “gospel song with a restless spirit.” Everyone is searching for Jesus.

I can’t help but find it interesting that that’s the moment he leaves. Just as everyone is searching for Jesus, he turns and leaves. They don’t find him. Which is maybe less about Jesus’ rebellious, you-can’t-control-me-I-go-where-I-choose-attitude but is more about the spiritual truth that…it’s about the search. It’s about the searching for God. We’ve been searching for a long time and still are.

I mean what happens if Jesus just goes back to Capernaum to where the whole town is? They stop searching.

But maybe in story form, Mark is trying to tell us that part of being of a follower of Jesus is the search. The searching. The waiting. 

Which is why I love the title of our hymn of the day. O Christ, the Healer, We have come.

That’s all. O Christ – we’ve come. You’re here. I’m here. We’re here. Sometimes that’s all we can do – is show up. For the search. Show up at church and sit and search and wait. 

I wonder what you are searching for? What you are really searching for here – in this place? 

May we have the courage to be honest about our searching. May we have the strength to keep searching, trusting not that in the end we will find God but that God will find us. 

To close, I offer you a favorite prayer of mine right now. These are not my words, but they are becoming my words. And perhaps now, can become yours too.

Let’s pray.

O my Beloved Friend,
I seek you in the center of my being,
I know that you are there.
Awaken your presence and qualities in me.
Awaken patience and compassion, courage and wisdom, love and grace.
I know that you seek me even more than I am seeking you.
I know that to open in this way is to open myself to myself.
I am grateful that I am learning to find you.
Reveal yourself, beloved friend. 

Amen. 

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^[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/07/26/743620996/u2-i-still-havent-found-what-im-looking-for-american-anthem

Sunday, January 21st, 2024 – Called For, a sermon on callings and Jonah 3 and Mark 1:14-20

First Reading: Jonah 3:1-5, 10
¹The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying, ²“Get up, go to Nineveh, that great city, and proclaim to it the message that I tell you.” ³So Jonah set out and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly large city, a three days’ walk across. ⁴Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s walk. And he cried out, “Forty days more, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” ⁵And the people of Nineveh believed God; they proclaimed a fast, and everyone, great and small, put on sackcloth.
 ¹⁰When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

Gospel: Mark 1:14-20
¹⁴Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
¹⁶As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁷And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” ¹⁸And immediately they left their nets and followed him. ¹⁹As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. ²⁰Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

Grace, peace, mercy and love are yours in the name of Christ. Amen.

I have been thinking a lot about callings lately and the spiritual language of being called by God. Partly because of Pastor Pam’s sermon last week, but also because it’s just sort found its way into my life and interactions recently. People wondering if they are being called to a particular and sometimes difficult task. Or to a particular way of life. 

I wonder if you would say you’ve had a calling in your life or that you have been called to do something. 

In this season of Epiphany, we have these back-to-back Sundays that are centered around callings. Last week, we heard the call of Samuel in the Old Testament, along with the calling of Philip and Nathaniel as disciples in the gospel of John. 

What I appreciated so much about Pastor Pam’s sermon was that she sort of named a mythabout callings. She named that God’s call in our life is not always where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need (to quote Frederick Buechner). 

Our callings don’t always make us shine with joy or come from deep gladness. They can– but don’t always. God can also call us, Pastor Pam said, through our deep wounds and pain to tend to the deep needs of the world. There is not always gladness in our callings.

Today, we get the calling of Jonah to go to Nineveh and the calling of four disciples to follow Jesus in the gospel of Mark. And I wonder what else we can learn this morning about God’s calling in our lives from these call stories. 

I think many of us have been given too narrow, too limited of a frame for what counts as a call story. I imagine there are a lot of call stories in this room alone that have never been told or understood as a calling. 

One of the first things we learn is that God doesn’t call upon people in exactly the same way. 

There are some calls stories in the bible – like Samuel and Jonah – where it feels like God really takes God times with someone – to really speak to them and shape and move their heart and prepare them over time for the calling that is before them. 

But then there is the call of the disciples in the gospel of Mark, where it seems like Jesus is just walking down Sea of Galilee boulevard, calling upon anyone who will lock eyes with him.

“Okay – uh…you, you, you and you. C’mon. Follow me,” he says. 

There is this urgency in the gospel of Mark, where the calling happens quickly, before you can even think about it.

A couple of weeks ago, many of the St. John’s staff went through CPR training. If you’ve ever been through that kind training, you know that run through a lot of scenarios in ordere to practice together. And what stood out to me and what I thought was interesting is that you practice calling on other people. 

If I come across a person in need of CPR, one of the first things I do is call out to others. I’d say, “You – call 911. You – go get the AED by my office. You – come over here and help me.”

And there is something powerful and nerve-racking about that. It’s powerful because you are putting a call on someone’s life to step into this crucial situation. And it can be nerve-racking because you might not know who this person is you are calling upon for such a crucial moment. Are they up to it?

Then we would flip the scenario around and I would be the bystander who is called upon. And it is a wild experience to be called upon in an instance. You – Jonathan, come and help me. You feel like just an ordinary person – who am I to be given a job in this life-saving moment? Am I up to it?

Which made me think about this calling of the disciples in the gospel of Mark. Where there is this is urgency and where Jesus appears to be calling upon ordinary people out of the blue. People like Simon and his brother Andrew, or James and his brother John, mending their nets and who just happened to be around. 

Ordinary people, called to be Jesus’ disciples. His closest friends, part of the inner circle, at the heart of this movement to change the world and to proclaim that the radical, world-saving, life-altering kingdom of God is near. Ordinary people called to extraordinary things. And many of us wonder – am I up to it? And so we learn that when God calls upon people, it can happen over time or it can happen in an instant. And it can happen to someone who especially trained and prepared for such a moment, or it can happen to the ordinary person, who don’t think they are ready.

But I wonder – are we only called to extraordinary things? Can ordinary people be called to ordinary things? 

Whenever I hear this call story of the disciples, I’m always a little haunted by one person – Zebedee. The father of James and John. Here James and John are called to follow Jesus – which is great. But what does that mean for Zebedee? Is he not supposed to follow Jesus? Is he not part of the club but now has to work shorthanded and for more hours in the day? Is this good news for James and John… actually bad news for Zebedee – who isn’t called?

I don’t think so. Or at least I hope not. My sense is that in his ordinary life and his day-in and day-out life as a fisherman, Zebedee too is called by God and a crucial part of the kingdom of God that has come near. Just as he is in that moment. He doesn’t have to do something new to be caught up in the life and ministry of God.

What we learn from Zebedee is that God’s call isn’t always a call out of this world or the life we have, but a call to thinking and seeing God’s world and the life we have a little differently. As one preacher puts it, “For some of us God’s call will come as a call to leave our nets, our books, our desks, our homes. For others it will come as a call to mend our nets more carefully, read our books more thoroughly, mind our desks more faithfully, live in our homes more lovingly.”^[1]

Years ago, a seminary professor of mine was once working with a group of congregation members, trying to help them to reflect on how God has called them and is at work in their life. So this professor asked the group what God is calling on them to do on Monday morning at 9am. One man raised his hand and said, “Well on Monday at 9am, I will be balancing the books for the business I work at. But I don’t have a clue what God is calling me to do at that time.”  My professor asked him, “What type of business do you work for?” The man said, “A grain mill.”  “And where does your grain go?” “To bread companies.” “And where does their bread go?” “Mostly Southern Chicago.” My professor paused and thought for a moment.  “So if you don’t balance the books correctly, you might end up selling grain at too high of a price.  Which means the bread makers would need to raise the cost of their bread. Which means the stores on the South side of Chicago would have to increase their price of the bread. Which means the bread might become too expensive for the single parent with two children who needs it.  But if you do your job well, the cost of bread will be accurate and more affordable.  It sounds like to me, on Monday morning at 9am, God is calling you to feed families on the South side of Chicago.” Called not out of your life to something extraordinary, but called deeper into the ordinary beauty, kingdom-of-God-ness of your life, right now.

So we’ve learned that calling is not just about our deep gladness finding the world’s deep need.

We’ve learned that there is not one way that God calls us. It can over a long period of time, or can be in an instant and with urgency.

We’ve learned that God calls ordinary people. Sometimes God calls ordinary people to extraordinary, unthinkable things. And sometimes God calls us to the ordinary, everyday things in our life – whether we realize it or not. 

And God doesn’t just call once in our life. I don’t know if you noticed it – but it says that the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time. We learn here that God calls us throughout our life, multiple times. Sometimes even for the very same calling. To make sure we can still hear it.

In seminary, there is a lot of talk about one’s “call story” – your one call story – how you were called in the beginning into ministry. And you end up telling that story over and over and over again. Which is fun at first, but it can’t get a little tired and worn out and even start to lose meaning. Which is why it was such a relief years ago to hear Preacher Anna Carter Florence preach about still being called in the middle of things. Mid-life. Mid-career. Mid-semester. In the middle of marriage. In the middle of transition. And she asked a simple but profound question. She said, “I don’t want to know how you were called into ministry years ago. I want to know how you are still being called into ministry today. What’s your call story right now? In the middle of it.” How God has called not the first time, but the second or third or tenth throughout your life. 

No matter who you are – how old you are, how much education you have, or whatever state your life is in right now, I believe and trust that God calls each one of us to something, many things – throughout our life. And when God calls throughout our life – sometimes it is to a vocation, a job, a relationship, a ministry that lasts a long time. And sometimes we are called to something for just a moment in time. 

Years ago, St. John’s member Jeff Damm was camping with his family on the Northshore near the Baptism River. And one morning, they see a young person (maybe 16 years old) and his grandfather kayaking separately down the river. They think nothing of it. But then a little while later, Jeff and his family are down at the mouth of the river, on the shore of Lake Superior, when they hear this faint and distant cry for help. And there, far out from shore, on the lake is this young person clinging to his kayak that is tipped over and it looks like he doesn’t have a life jacket on. Immediately, Jeff’s wife Amber looks at him and says, “You have to go out there. You have to go help him.” And Jeff says, “What?! I can’t go out there. I’m not trained for this!” 

Now, people had started to gather on the shore wondering what to do. There is a lot of commotion. Someone had called 911 and the Park Rangers, and help was on the way, but it seemed pretty clear time was running out. Amber was still telling Jeff he should go. Meanwhile others are telling him it’s foolish to go out there. “The water is too cold, the wind is too strong. We don’t need two emergencies in this one situation.”

In the midst of this back and forth about what to do, all of sudden a young kid comes running up to Jeff – and hands him a life ring. 

And it was in that moment that Jeff thought, “I guess I’m doing this.”

So he put the ring across his chest and ran out into lake superior. And through a long and exhausting journey out to the swamped kayak and back, Jeff was able to bring this young person (who turned out to be 12 by the way) safely into shore. 

Not all call stories end so nicely. And, you can agree or disagree with Jeff’s decision – but in that moment, for just that moment, it felt like there was a call on his life. “I guess I’m doing this.”

According to Scripture and our human experiences, God calls God’s people in so many different ways. Sometimes God calls us through that which brings us deep gladness and makes our heart sing, and sometimes call us through places of deep pain in our life. 

Sometimes God’s call happens slowly over a long period of time, and sometimes it can happen in an instant and with urgency and change your life forever. 

Sometimes God calls us to do extraordinary things, and often God calls us to a steady faithfulness through ordinary, easily missed day-to-day actions that care for the people of God.

Sometimes God calls us over and over again to something meant to be life-long. And sometimes God calls us for a particular purpose in a brief moment of time. 

Have you ever been called by God? I wonder how you are still being called today? 

The promise is this: you are called. You are called for by God in this life. It is not always easy to know for what, or when or how, but I believe with all my soul that you are called. Called for something. 

In this life we might talk about things that are uncalled for, things that are not necessary, unwanted, things that don’t belong in a given situation. Someone might says, “That’s uncalled for!” But you – that is not you. You are not uncalled for in this life. You are called for…called for by God – to be good news for God’s world. 

Let us pray. Gracious and loving God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 

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^[1] [1] Tom Long, Shepherds and Bathrobes, pg. 81-81.