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. 

---

^[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.

Sunday, January 7th, 2024 – Inquisitive Magi, a sermon on Matthew 2:1-12.

Gospel: Matthew 2:1-12
¹In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, ²asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” ³When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; ⁴and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
 ⁶‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
  are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
 for from you shall come a ruler
  who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ”
 ⁷Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. ⁸Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” ⁹When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹²And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.

I have this foggy memory from my childhood. I was young, elementary school age, maybe 8 years old? And I think I had a homework assignment, but I remember needing to ask my mom for words that describe me. 

And while I’m sure there were lots of options of words available to her, I was not expecting her to say… “Ummm…let’s see…how shall I put this…you’re…inquisitive.” 

I didn’t know what that word meant, so I had to ask her. 

“What does inquisitive mean, mom?”

“It means you ask a lot of questions, dear.”

And I can remember hearing the sort of subtle parental smirk/exhaustion/annoyance in that. And before you all turn on my mother – let me say that I totally get her. I get why she said it and where it came from in her. I did and do ask a lot of questions. I have people in my own life who I love dearly and admire, who also ask a lot of questions. And sometimes it’s wonderful and sometimes it’s exhausting or invasive, but also amazing and courageous.

And so I do not fault my mom one bit for gifting me with that word at such a young age – because over time, as I am learning to love my inquisitiveness and the inquisitiveness of others, I am so grateful for that moment. 

But I do think about that moment a lot. Because it took a long time to love that moment. Not because of what she said but because…I think we have a complicated relationship with asking questions in our society, in our culture. 

I know so many people who are afraid or ashamed or are actively discouraged to ask questions. I think we live in a time when it can be very hard to slow down and ask questions before you take a stand or raise your voice on something. Because we are afraid of being shouted or laughed out of the room for not knowing enough or not having the right acceptable opinion with those near you. 

Many of us grew up in environments where questions weren’t okay. Especially in this place – in church, in a place where many of us long to have faith but wrestle with so many questions. People whisper questions and curiosities about God and faith and the bible to me, as if it’s dangerous or foolish to ask out loud or in public. And I think it has such a harden and isolating effect on our life together and connections to each other.

As I was working on this sermon, I remembered the villain in the Batman TV shows and movies - the Riddler. Do you remember him? What did he have all over his suit or costume? QUESTION MARKS. It was his villainous symbol. And I just thought that was…interesting…impactful…shaping even for how we think about feel about questions. 

And so you can imagine how moved and delighted I was when a preacher first opened up and pointed out to me that our story for this morning – the epiphany story with King Herod and the Magi and Mary and Joseph and Jesus – it all begins with a question. 

“Where is the child…where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?”

That’s the question that starts it all. Where is Jesus? 

The Magi saw this new star in the sky and they got curious. They followed it…they wondered what it meant. And they started asking questions…

We don’t know a lot about the Magi – these so-called wise ones. We don’t know if there were three of them or where they came from. They probably weren’t kings but rather ancient astrologers who watched the skies. 

All we really know is that these unknown people enter the scene from an unknown place carry a question – where is Jesus? Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?

And there is so much in that simple, little question. It is a powerful question. The Magi perhaps didn’t realize what they were doing – asking that question in that place– in the home office, the palace of the current king of the Jews – King Herod. 

King Herod, who was not living up to the biblical job description of what a king should be, like we heard in Psalm 72. King Herod did not defend those in need, or rescue the poor or destroy oppression. He did not deliver those who cried out in distress or have compassion on those seen as lowly. He may have had the title, but he was no real king to God’s people. 

And so it is no surprise at all that Herod didn’t ask any questions. Not really. King of the Jews and not curious at all about what God might be up to with these Magi, that star, and this new born king. He just knew that he had to stay in power and he knew exactly what he was going to do to this threat to his throne.

It all started with a question that the inquisitive Magi carried with them– where is Jesus? A question that frightens people in power and challenges the status quo. A question of threat to King Herod and question of hope to the people beneath his boot. A question that proclaimed in it’s simplicity that the Herod’s of this world… are temporary. 

“Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews?” the Magi ask. Where is Jesus? It was a powerful question then. And it is a powerful question now. A question I imagine many of us have asked along the way on our faithful journey. 

Where is Jesus? Where is Jesus in this god-forsaken world? Where is Jesus in the ruins of my own life? Where is he already? A question that perhaps feels like it pushes you away from faith and away from this place when in fact, like the Magi, that is the question we are called to ask in this place. If you have the courage to ask that question – perhaps you are the Magi for our faith community, leading the way. 

Following Jesus doesn’t always mean you have the answer, but that you ask the question. The wise ones weren’t wise because they knew the answer, they were wise because they asked the question. They didn’t know they answer, but they knew what the answer was not. It wasn’t Herod. 

I don’t know about you but I have found myself asking a lot of questions lately. Questions around the atrocities and violence in Gaza and the conflict between Israeli government and Hamas. The parallels between the epiphany story and king Herod and what’s happening today is Gaza are staggering. Haunting actually, considering that it is Herod’s slaughter of the innocence being the very next story born out of this epiphany story and considering the number of children who have died in Gaza. The Magi invites us to ask, “Where is Jesus? Where is the child born to save us?” and our Palestinian Christians siblings cry out, “He’s in Gaza. He’s in the rubble. That’s where Jesus is. If Jesus were born today, he would be born in the rubble from bombs bursting in air,” our Christian siblings in Palestine shout to the world to get us to stop and to question. And I have so many questions. So many questions as I also hear the cries of those who suffered unthinkable acts in the Hamas attacks on Israel and through increase antisemitism around the world. I’m left with so many questions. 

What do I understand and believe about this situation and what does my faith compel me to do? What is my own complicity in our country’s involvement and what is my responsibility as a pastor? How do we stand with our Palestinian and Jewish siblings suffering at the hands of the powers that be? What should happen to stop this violence? I don’t have an answer, but I know what the answer is not. It’s not 22,000 people killed and likely more.

And then it isn’t long before I find myself asking why I am more concerned about this violence in the Middle East than I am about violence in Sudan and other parts of the world, as if Christ is not born there as well. 

Last week, we all were jolted back into questions about guns and school shooting. 

As of tomorrow, we are a week out from presidential primary season and I have all kinds of questions. 

And then, as if that wasn’t enough, I find myself asking how I ought to feel and respond not only to the tragedies of the world but also to the claim made by Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times that in the midst of it all, 2023 might have been the best year for humanity. In terms of global mortality and poverty being at an all-time low, two diseases almost eradicated, and a massive increase in literacy.

And when it all feels so overwhelming and I think I should know more and have more answers and have more faith, I’m comforted by the Magi who bless our questions.

So let’s ask the questions that are alive in us. What does God ask of us in this time of war? Ask that question.

How do I engage my faith and my life and my politics. How do I align them and live them. Ask that question.

How do I not lose hope in the midst of such paralyzing despair? Ask that question. 

What questions is alive in your right now? Ask that question.

In thinking about this epiphany story and how it all begins with a question, I started remembering some of the great questions of scripture. I realized if you go back through the bible, there are all these other powerful questions in scripture that punctuate our story of faith along the way like a needle sewing thread.

Questions like:

• Where are you? God asks of Adam and Eve, when they hid themselves from God. Reminding us of God’s desire to find us and be near us even when we have lost the way.
• Am I my brother’s keeper? Cain asks God, confronting our responsibility to each other.
• Whom shall I send? God asks Isaiah. Who will go for us? – showing us that God calls and sends and depends on ordinary people to bring light to the world. 
• The Magi ask, “Where is Jesus?” reminding us that we have to look for Jesus in the world because he will show up in unexpected places. 
• Jesus confronts his disciples and us, by asking, “What good is it for someone to gain the whole world but forfeit their soul?”
• My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus asks from the cross, as a sign of God’s solidarity with those who suffer. 
• The angels ask the women at the empty tomb, Why do you look for the living among the dead?, proclaiming that you cannot kill and destroy God’s kind of Love in the world.
• And the Apostle Paul asks, “If God is for us…who is against us?” reminding us that nothing can separate us from or get in the away of God.

The Bible, it turns out, is full of questions. In fact, the whole gospel can be told from and is born out of those questions. 

This epiphany season, I thank God for those Magi who are willing ask, “Where is Jesus?”, reminding us of the power of a question that can move us to wonder and to walk in faith in search of God among us. 

Dear people of God, I beg of you – ask your questions this year. And make room for the questions of others. Follow the star that leads you to wonder and ask your question. The whole gospel can be born out of a question. 

Amen. 

Monday, December 25th, 2023 – A Wonder-Full Song, a Christmas sermon on John 1:1-14

Gospel: John 1:1-14
¹In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. ²He was in the beginning with God. ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
 ⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
 ¹⁰He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
 ¹⁴And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

Merry Christmas! 

It’s so nice to be together with you all this morning. 

I see trees of green,
Red roses too. 
I see them bloom…for me and you.
And I think to myself…
What a wonderful world. 

You can sing along with me if you know it…

I see skies of blue 
And clouds of white
The bright blessed day
The dark sacred night
And I think to myself 
What a wonderful world

When I was in high school, falling in love with all things jazz and trumpet, it wasn’t long before Louis Armstrong was on constant repeat in the cd player as I worked on my math homework. I became a bit obsessed – scouring every cd store (remember those?) I came across for a new album or volume of his music. 

From “I Still Get Jealous” to “That Lucky Old Son” to “Blueberry Hill,” I knew every beat and note by heart. 

But of course, among my favorites was “What a Wonderful World.” I know I’m not alone in that. This song has become “one of the most widely recorded, performed, licensed, and celebrated pieces of music of all time.” It’s even been turned into a children’s book. 

As the story goes, it was 1967. Jazz had fallen out of favor. But Louis Armstrong had just had a huge chart-topping hit, “Hello Dolly”, which had knocked the Beatles out of the #1 slot, making Louis Armstrong the oldest musician to achieve such success at the age of 62. 

But even with this achievement, people in the profession sensed that Louis’ best years were behind him and his career was sunsetting. 

Now it was also 1967 – there was racial violence and unrest across the United States, there were cries for a ceasefire in Israel and the middle-east, and there were ongoing protests against the Vietnam war. 

That was the backdrop when two songwriters were given the chance to write and work with Louis Armstrong on a new album. They “looked at the social and political upheaval around them. They looked at Louis. They looked at the state of things and saw this as an opportunity to meet the moment with beauty.” Something that could bring hope and bring people together. Something that Louis could sing from his soul with that distinctive voice of his. 

So they wrote a song – “What a Wonderful World.” 

They loved it. Louis loved it.

But there was a problem. The president of the record company hated it. 

He wanted another hit – like “Hello, Dolly.” Something more pop-y. Something fun. This was slow and sentimental. It was the exact opposite of what he was hoping for.

He told them to drop the project. But they didn’t. They couldn’t. They loved it too much. Needed it too much.

So they carried on – recording the song, even though the president of the company flew to the recording studio to put a stop to it. It’s been said that they had to lock the door and keep him out in order to get this song made. 

But it did get made. And it was an instant success?

No. 

It kind of flopped in the United States. Because the record company wouldn’t promote it and it only sold around 1,000 copies. 

The song went rather quiet for a long time…until 1987, when the movie Good Morning, Vietnam came out. And in a startling scene that can only leave one speechless, this beautiful song is played over images of war and tragedy, explosions and bullets bursting, protest and desperation. Depicting the very world into which this song was written 20 years earlier. A song of hope in a desperate and awful time.

And that’s when the song took off. People didn’t really know this song….but when it was no longer hidden but placed into the real world from which it was born, it became the source of beauty and hope that the world needed.^[1]

It’s not a song of rampant optimism, with heads in the clouds, suggesting everything is okay, when everything is not okay. But it is a song sent out into a weary world that grounds us and guides us when the world is not as it should be. It reminds us of what the world could and can be…

Here we are on Christmas morning, and the world isn’t all that different from 1967. And we need a song to sing.

And if you ask me, this morning, when we hear the music, the song of John 1 on Christmas day, my first reaction sometimes is that we are catapulted into the clouds of poetry and out-of-reach theology – with no real access to the world we actually live in. The lives we actually have. 

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

I feel a little bit like that president of the record company who wants to put a stop to it… “Ugh…is this really what we need? It’s so slow and…what does it even mean??”

For 9 verses, we get complicated poetry with a little John-the-Baptist interlude in the middle – poetry that this year has felt a little numbing and non-descript, too flimsy to stand on. That is until verse 10… The Word was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 

A world that did not know the song of God’s love, a world that did not accept God? That resonates. 

Not in a scathing critique and judgmental way, but just as…truth. 

In the fog of war and rumors of wars, in sea of grief and loss this past year, in a political and cultural landscape that just feels like walking on broken glass, where any movement feels like a risk – there is a deep longing I have (and maybe you too) to find and to know God, in my own world and life… that does not know God and has not accepted the God who comes to me. 

Suddenly, the gospel of John is speaking right into my life. 

It’s easy to forget, but the gospel of John knew of a world like Louis Armstrong did in 1967 or like we do in 2023. A world of kings and tyrants, political strife, war and heartache. A world where suffering was an everyday reality, with hope faded and just out of reach. The Word of God, John says, the promise of God, the Love of God was in that world, but the world didn’t know it. The world didn’t accept it. 

I get that. I understand that.

And yet…the Word of God, the Love of God came anyways. God was a stranger to God’s own creation, overlooked by the ones God loves…and yet God still showed up. 

The Word shows up not as a temporary visitor to the world, but the Word becomes flesh in the world. To be in relationship with this world. Forever. It comes as a stranger to be no longer estranged. As a friend to no longer be a foe. 

God’s love for the world is not new, God’s desire to be with the world is not new. But, as the Gospel of John says, has been there from the very foundations of creation. From the very beginning. 

At Christmas, that Word of God, that Love, we say, becomes flesh. It is when the song written becomes the song sung from the soul. The hope held back becomes the hope held up. When a repeated promise becomes a real reality; when a longing for becomes an embracing with. 

I wonder if at Christmas, when family or friends come together, you have ever had that awkward moment of greeting each other. It happens in the driveway, or at the front door or perhaps the kitchen. And you’re just not sure how to greet someone. You don’t know if you are on hugging terms with your sister’s new boyfriend yet; it’s not clear if you and Mom are still fighting from the stiff conversation a few days earlier. But either way, there you are with little time to think about how to greet each other. Often, you both hesitate and awkwardly rush through the moment to get it over with, through a quick formal handshake or a cold half-hearted hug. 

But sometimes, for the person you haven’t seen in 4 years, or whom you’ve been fighting with, or maybe even the stranger who is new to the family…there is no hesitation. You get out of the car, or you step into the doorway, and before you know it or can think about it– your fully embraced. Hugged. Accepted. Overwhelmed by a Love that was bigger than you both. 

And that is a kind of incarnation, I think. Love in theory becomes love in the flesh. Grace that is waiting becomes grace among us. Hearts unseen become seen to each other face to face. 

We don’t always know how to greet and love God, and sometimes it’s awkward – but God doesn’t hesitate and embraces us anyways. 

In the gospel of John, God’s word of Love is in the world but the world doesn’t know it. And in not knowing it, can’t accept it. This Love is a stranger in a weary world and the distance is palpable. But this Love draws near anyways. Born in the flesh to bridge the gap and repair the breach between us. 

A Love that says I will be with you anyways. I will embrace you even still. I will hold us together when it all falls apart. That is God’s Love incarnate and born into this world. 

God knows the world, even though the world that doesn’t know God. God knows the world that isn’t always loving but is still loveable. God knows the world that isn’t always wonderful but is still a wonder. God steps into a room where no one knows them and offers….Love. Relationship. Grace. True presents – all the things that really make for peace.

And I think that is what today is about – we come to church on Christmas day…well aware of the backdrop behind us today. With all the things that wait for us outside this moment, things we feel powerless to or unsure about how to be or what to think, but right now we are invited to stand in wonder and awe for a Love that finds us still. And to share that Love with each another. 

Today, we hear a promise of the divine becoming human, which sanctifies every human life. And we get to bear this promise in our human bodies. As we, at this Communion table, take this promise of God with us into our bodies, we who might be strangers together become Christ’s body, no longer estranged. We become one body of Christ. And that carries over to the many Communion tables across the hall at the Christmas Day meal or any other table you find yourself at today, another kind of eucharist and thanksgiving, where once again we get to be together the body of Christ in a weary world. As strangers and friends meet and break bread, laugh and weep, embrace and share in the unshakable joy of God within us and among us. A hope for the days ahead of how the world can be. 

The colors of the rainbow 
So pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces 
Of people going by
I see friends shaking hands
Saying, “How do you do?”
They’re really saying
I love you

I hear babies cry,
I watch them grow.
They’ll learn much more 
Than I’ll ever know.
And I think to myself,
What a wonderful world.

Dear People of God, the Word become flesh, Christ born in Bethlehem is God’s song for a broken and wonderful world. A song of love and comfort, hope and truth in the midst and mess of reality…God’s love come to us here in this time and place, saying, “I love you.”

And we get to sing that song from our soul today. And together. 

Come all ye faithful and sing… Love has come.

Amen.

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^[1] https://bradmontague.substack.com/p/the-true-story-of-what-a-wonderful

Sunday, December 10th, 2023 – Speak Tenderly and Turn Up the Volume, a sermon on Isaiah 40:1-11

First Reading: Isaiah 40:1-11

 ¹Comfort, O comfort my people,
  says your God.
 ²Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
  and cry to her
 that she has served her term,
  that her penalty is paid,
 that she has received from the Lord’s hand
  double for all her sins.

 ³A voice cries out:
 “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
  make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
 ⁴Every valley shall be lifted up,
  and every mountain and hill be made low;
 the uneven ground shall become level,
  and the rough places a plain.
 ⁵Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
  and all people shall see it together,
  for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

 ⁶A voice says, “Cry out!”
  And I said, “What shall I cry?”
 All people are grass,
  their constancy is like the flower of the field.
 ⁷The grass withers, the flower fades,
  when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
  surely the people are grass.
 ⁸The grass withers, the flower fades;
  but the word of our God will stand forever.
 ⁹Get you up to a high mountain,
  O Zion, herald of good tidings;
 lift up your voice with strength,
  O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
  lift it up, do not fear;
 say to the cities of Judah,
  “Here is your God!”
 ¹⁰See, the Lord God comes with might,
  and his arm rules for him;
 his reward is with him,
  and his recompense before him.
 ¹¹He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
  he will gather the lambs in his arms,
 and carry them in his bosom,
  and gently lead the mother sheep.

In the movie Shawshank Redemption, Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) is sent to prison to serve two life sentences for unspeakable crimes. While he is there, he makes friends with another prisoner known as Red (played by Morgan Freeman). Red is also serving a life sentence.

Like all prisons, some people are there because they did something wrong. Others did nothing wrong but are there because they are collateral damage of a broken system. Either way, it’s not hard to imagine or surprising to know just how awful life in prison can be for every single person. Life at Shawshank is filled with desperate people just trying to survive the degradation, assault, and despair of each day. 

In his previous life, Andy had been a banker and so is good with finances. And so while he is in prison, Andy finds a way to help the warden and guards with their taxes, and in return, he gets some favors and benefits. As a result, he becomes the sort of default librarian of the prison. The library is in bad shape and so Andy starts a letter writing campaign, asking the State for funds to improve the prison’s library. 

Finally, after six-years of writing letters, he receives from the state $200 and a collection of old books and a box of used records. The box arrives and is placed in the warden’s office. Andy is told to go there and bring it to the library to organize things. But once he is in the office, he starts looking through everything. And he’s thumbing through the records, passing each one by until he lands on one and this look of recognition comes across his face – like a kid who has just found an old friend. He gently lifts a record out of its sleeve like a priceless treasure, and he starts to play it on the record player, right there in the Warden’s office. All of a sudden the beautiful sounds of Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro begins to play. 

The gentle sounds of a female duet echoes out and Andy has an idea. He locks all the doors of the Warden’s office, turns on all the loud speakers, and sends this music throughout the entire prison. As the music plays, the camera cuts to the prison yard, where the prisoners are stopped in their tracks, we see prisoners in the infirmary getting out of bed to listen to what’s going on, and we see prisoners on work-duty staring at the speaker system. A place that had only previously barked commands and warnings now resonated with beauty and tenderness. Were their ears deceiving them? Was this coming from inside the prison? The prisoners were stunned. It’s like they never believed something beautiful could exist in such an awful place. It’s like a tenderness that had been dead for a very long time was coming alive again in each one of them.

In that moment, we hear the voice of Andy’s friend, Red. “To this day,” he said, “I have no idea what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are best left unsaid. I like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can’t be expressed in words and makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you those voices soared higher and farther than anybody in a grey place dares to dream. It was like some beautiful bird flapped into our drab little cage and made these walls dissolve away. For the briefest moment every last man in Shawshank felt free.”

When we read from the book of Isaiah this morning, it is easy to miss a crucial part of the story. The people of God have been living for a very long time in a prison – a prison we call Babylon.

In Isaiah chapter 39, just a page or two before today’s reading, we learn that the prophet warned of the empire of Babylon swooping in to destroy Jerusalem and carrying the people of God away into exile. But then what was a warning… became a reality.

What happens between Isaiah 39 and 40 is what scholar Walter Brueggemann calls the Long Pause. We can’t see it on the page, but there between Isaiah 39 and 40 is a long pause – 160 years. In that time, that space between, Babylon rises as the new superpower, there is corruption in the leadership of God’s people, and the people of God are dragged into Babylon. The people were taken from their homes, from their families with nothing but a burning Jerusalem and a destroyed temple – the very place where God could be found – left behind in their rearview mirror. Images that feel all too familiar in the Holy Land today. 

In fact, the people of God had everything taken away from them such that they didn’t even have a song to sing. We hear in Psalm 137 these words, “By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and there we wept….we hung up our harps on the willow trees. How could we sing the Lord’s song in this land…this exile…this wilderness?” There was no music to be found in such an awful place. 

Now the Israelites are no strangers to exile. They’ve lived in this land of loss before – when they were taken into slavery in Egypt. But this time it was different.

This time – according to Isaiah –  they had it coming to them. They had broken the covenant with God. They had mistreated those who were in need. They had turned their backs on the way of God that leads to life. In short, they had just made a mess of everything.

I wonder – have you ever made a mess of everything? And caused damage in someone’s life? Perhaps you know a taste of exile too. 

But remember the space between Isaiah 39 and Isaiah 40 is 160 years. While some had made a mess of everything, leading to this disastrous situation, in the end many had not. They were simply born into this mess and were the collateral damage of a world gone wrong. And now… it’s been 160 years and according to Isaiah, no one has heard a word from God because God too seemed to be left behind and lost in the ruins of Jerusalem and the temple. 

The book of Lamentations speaks of this time in exile for God’s people – Jerusalem – like this: “She weeps bitterly in the night with tears on her cheeks…she has no one to comfort her…Her downfall was appalling, with no one to comfort her…she stretches out her hands, but there is no one to comfort her.”

That’s what the Long Pause in Babylon was like. No comfort to be found; no word from God to be heard. 

But then. At long last – the pause is over. Isaiah 40 arrives and God speaks.

Comfort…comfort, now, my people, says your God. 
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and tell her that it’s over. 
The penalty is paid, the sentence is complete. It’s over. 

Speak tenderly – God says. Speak tenderly to my people, even though they’ve made a mess of things. Speak tenderly.

Jesuit priest, Father Greg Boyle calls God the Tender One and says that we need to fan the flames of tenderness in each other, because once we are reached by tenderness, we become tenderness.^[1]

I wonder if anyone has ever spoken tenderly to you when you’ve made a mess of things. Perhaps you know a taste of the comfort too.

Speak tenderly, God says. 

But what should I say? the prophet replies.

“Tell them I am coming,” God says. “Prepare the way, put no obstacle between me and my people. Bring down the mountains, lift up the valleys. Make the rough places smooth. Nothing will stop me from coming to all people. Get to a high mountain, lift up your voice, and say to the people, ‘Here is your God.’”

Here. Here is your God. Here is your God. Here in this place….Just tell them that their God is here.

From inside Babylon – the voice of God came. From inside the prison of exile, the presence of God arrived. This had never happened before. No one knew it could. This land and time was such a god-forsaken place created by the Babylonians that the people of God thought God had been expelled from that place like all other shreds of hope. 

But here it was – the voice and presence of God inside the land of loss. Something beautiful at a time when nothing was beautiful. New music when no one thought music could ever be played again. And suddenly, like a new beginning for the people of God, something, some hope, that had been dead for a very long time came alive again in each one of them.

When Andy Dufresne is sitting in the warden’s office with Mozart’s opera playing through the loud speakers – all the powerful people move into high gear. Racing to the place where the music is comgin from. Finally, the warden gets to his office, and he screams at Dufresne through the locked door – “Turn it off! Turn that music off!”

In that moment, Andy looks him in the eye through the window of the door, and with a prophetic smile, he slowly and gently reaches over and turns up the volume of the speaker. 

Lift up your voice, God says. Turn up the volume.^[2] Tell the people, “Your God is here.”

Last week, Pastor Pam memorably invited us to ruthlessly remove hurry from our life. Today, we are invited to speak tenderly and turn up the volume. Through the prophet Isaiah, we hear that God, the Tender One, is with us and coming to us – even in the awful places of life. God will not be exiled from the places where we hurt and hide the most. But rather that God will move mountains to get to us and to whisper a tender word – I am here. 

And once that tenderness reaches us – we become the tenderness. 

The wisdom of Advent is that we get to slow down and to turn up the volume. Turn up the volume of tenderness – to drown out all the others voices that shatter and shake us. We get to shout with a tender whisper – God is here. 

So walk slowly, dear people of God, and speak tenderly. For God is with us in this place. 

Amen. 

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^[1] Greg Boyle, The Whole Language, pg. XVI. 

^[2] I’m grateful to Rev. Alan Storey for this insight.