20th Sunday after Pentecost
Reformation Sunday

⁹Jesus also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ ¹³But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” – Luke 18:9-14

Outside on the street every Sunday evening in Northampton, Massachusetts, rain or sun, wind or snow, blazing hot or blistering cold, there is a worship service and meal. It’s called Cathedral in the Night, and it’s one of our synod’s mission starts that has been going for 9 years in collaboration with the United Church of Christ and the Episcopal Church. It is a church without walls, which gives it a particular capacity to welcome people who haven’t found a home in traditionally walled churches for one reason or another.

Most weeks the worshipping assembly includes some regulars, some newcomers, some who hang around the edges with varying degrees of curiosity, people of varying socioeconomic status and varying degrees of sobriety, and some folks from a church with walls who help bring the food and join in worship. There are a number of folks experiencing homelessness or on the edge economically, but that’s just part of the community. It’s a broad tent (metaphorically speaking – they only bring out the literal tents when it’s raining). Maybe it’s because there is no defined inside and outside they have the ability to hold more than a lot of congregations can manage to hold.

I imagine you can find both the Pharisee and the tax collector in that gathering every week, and a lot of people in between. Because I’ve been enough times to talk with some folks and learn a few of their stories, I know there are some people who look like they aren’t very engaged. They are not by their exterior appearances engaging in worship. But they have a profound understanding of God’s grace, a deep appreciation for what is taking place in worship, and a deep capacity to do God’s work in the world. These are sometimes folk that have complicated histories. These are sometimes folks, like the tax collector in the parable, that other people don’t expect to see in church.

And I know that sometimes folks show up with food in hand and explicitly or implicitly pray the prayer of the Pharisee. Sometimes it’s with a tone of arrogance. And perhaps that’s how we imagine the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable – one who thinks himself better than others. Maybe. But often the folks I know who pray that kind of prayer offer it simply as an expression of gratitude that their life is easier in some capacities than it is for others. It’s still distancing. It still sets up us and them. But the intention isn’t nasty or exclusive. They have done and are doing good things. Andtheir faith and love of neighbor has room to grow.

And maybe it’s easier to see in a church without walls, but I think every worshipping assembly has some mix of folks praying all sorts of prayers. People who, like the tax collector, are complicit in exploitation and empire but who grieve their wrongs honestly, whether they have the capacity to change or not. And people who, like the Pharisee, have a genuinely admirable history of following God and living out God’s love, but who perhaps sometimes forget to make room for other experiences. And people who carry all kinds of pasts, and all kinds of prayers, all kinds of hopes and all kinds of regrets. And each of us finds ourselves falling into one or another of those categories sooner or later. If not the overly-religious one, then certainly the repentant one who comes back longing for transformation whether we name the prayer to God or not.

And God absolutely welcomes the prayers of regret from those of us who have sinned, that is, from all of us. That’s what we do in proclaiming absolution every Sunday, proclaiming the forgiveness God has already enacted for us in Christ. But if this parable leaves us walking away praying a prayer that goes anything like, “Thank God I’m not like that Pharisee,” then we’ve missed the point haven’t we? A lot of interpretations of this parable leave us critical of others – the self-righteous ones, perhaps the overly religious ones. With these texts falling on Reformation Day we could easily fall into some kind of celebration that we aren’t like those other Christians, whichever ones we want to choose today, and pray that thankfully we are the ones who understand grace and forgiveness properly. And we’d get Jesus’ parable, and the whole of Jesus’ message all wrong in doing so.

Some scholars have suggested that there is an ambiguity in translating this parable. Most translations say that the tax collector “went home justified rather than the other.” Perhaps the Pharisee’s pejorative prayer did not leave him justified that day despite his upright life. But the ambiguity in translation is that it might well also read that the tax collector “went home justified alongside the other.” What if this isn’t about one person being better than the other, one prayer better than the other, one religious practice better than the other. What if this passage isn’t about trying to be right or holy or justified by who we are or what we do. What if instead this passage is about the wide tent that God spreads to hold our diverse and complicated worshipping assemblies? What if the point is that bothworshippers are flawed yet bothfind themselves standing in the temple and whether they realize it or not, whether they understand why or not, God’s big tent of grace spreads over them just the same.

At Cathedral in the Night there’s this phenomenon in which every once in a while someone who’s been hanging out on the fringes slowly starts physically moving closer to the communion table. Over time some folks gravitate closer or farther from the center table, and somehow they all find a place because God’s grace isn’t defined by walls or border or geographical distance buy by this expansive tent that is always stretching farther and wider to encompass all our human flaws and foibles. And it’s a tent that somehow gives a little shelter to those who aren’t quite sure they’re ready for a full embrace from the divine, respecting when people need a little space even from that grace-filled invitation from God.

And in the big, wide scope of God’s church on earth we have many different denominations, many different ways of worshipping and gathering and calling ourselves church. And some of us are more like the tax collector and others more like the Pharisee and others some other flawed figure unnamed in this parable. And somehow God’s big tent of grace spreads over it all. That’s what Reformation Day needs to celebrate – that the Re-formation of the church isn’t all about correction and division but the ever-expanding way in which God’s grace covers us. It’s about a church that has no walls and the capacity to expand ever-larger.

Because in the end it isn’t about their prayers. It isn’t about their good deeds or bad ones. It isn’t even about their having come to stand in God’s temple on earth. It’s about the grace of God that stretches and yields to accommodate every last one of God’s creation. It’s about the welcome that churches have the capacity to extend and the capacity to receive as we go about the work of God, as we go about our beautiful and imperfect life of prayer. Because God has already done all that needs doing, and we’ve been invited to find joy and rest in our place in God’s tent.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

 

 

 

19th Sunday after Pentecost 
October 20, 2019

²²The same night Jacob got up and took his two wives, his two female slaves, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. ²³He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. ²⁴Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. ²⁵When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. ²⁶Then the man said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” ²⁷So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” ²⁸Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” ²⁹Then Jacob asked the man, “Please tell me your name.” But the man said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there the man blessed Jacob. ³⁰So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” ³¹The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. – Genesis 32:22-31

There comes a time sooner or later when all our scheming and all our striving and all our holding it together just doesn’t work anymore. A time when we stare down the future and it looks bleak or at least more than we feel like we can handle. Plagued by our past and daunted by our future, we wonder where God is, what God is up to, and whether we can go on from here.

This is Jacob. A trickster literally from birth, he’s been through a lot. He stole his brother’s blessing and had to flee from home. He wanted to marry someone whose father made him work seven years only to trick him into marrying the sister, instead. So he worked another seven years for the one he wanted to marry. Jacob then tricked the father-in-law back over some sheep, and so he’d been on the run again. Now he’s approaching his estranged brother who has an army of 400, perhaps ready to enact vengeance for past wrongs. He sends his family and flocks ahead and is alone by the river as night falls in a place that is in between places. He is neither here nor there geographically, emotionally, relationally. It is a dark night of the soul for Jacob if ever there was one.

Our own stories may or may not be quite as convoluted. Our own trickery may be more subtle. Our own dark nights less clearly defined. But we know what it is to be awake at night and wrestling with God. Maybe our wrestling looks like wild pounding on God’s door to demand we get our way. Maybe it looks like beating oneself up for past wrongs or questioning one’s decisions. Maybe it looks like planning out the argument you’re going to have or want to have with the person who is your enemy. But whether of our own making or of forces beyond our control, or more often some combination of the two, we all know what it is like to look at what is behind and what is ahead and feel lost, alone, afraid, to be unable to see a way forward.

It would be nice to say that God always swoops in with answers, with comfort, with the ability to teleport out of our sticky situations. It would be nice to say that being in relationship with God made all that easier, simpler. But sometimes what being in relationship with God means is a late night partner who will wrestle right along with us. Jacob, alone and in the place-that-isn’t-yet-a-place, finds a man who wrestles with him all night. Neither seeming to gain ground, neither giving up. As dawn approaches, Jacob demands a blessing before they let one another go.

And there is where faith makes a difference – not a release from the struggle, not a removal of the problems that still have to be faced, but the conviction that there is a blessing to be had somehow in it all. I don’t think the blessing is some sort of prize for having struggled and won. That would make for a somewhat manipulative and sadistic kind of God. It is not that we must struggle to earn a prize at the end, whether that’s a blessing, or joy, or eternal life, or whatever. I think it’s more that in wrestling with God in the midst of our most troubled nights, there is blessing that happens in the process of the struggle.

Jacob limps away from this night of wrestling with the divine marked not just with a blessing but with a limp and a new name. He walks perhaps the rest of his life with a limp from this encounter, a reminder of what it is to wrestle with God. It is not to come away unscathed, but to have striven with the one who can instill blessing and then to carry that struggle out with us into the world. Wounded and blessed, we are made healers for other wounded ones in need of blessing in the world.

But Jacob also walks away with a new name, a name that becomes a stand-in name for all of God’s people for generation after generation – Israel – God contends, or, perhaps, one who struggles with God. This is a name we have come to associate with a country and all the geopolitical struggles that surround it and that are embedded in its complicated history. But if we can set that aside for a moment, it is an incredible name for the people of God, isn’t it? Ones who struggle with God. The ones God engages in the struggle. There are times I’d rather rest from the struggle, yet it’s a name I resonate with – not “one who has all the answers about God,” not “one who does all the things God said we’re supposed to do,” not “one who is always strong and brave and fearless,” but “one who struggles with God.”

What an invitation to us! We are invited to struggle with God. We are invited to question and ponder. We are invited even to push back. We are invited to make demands of God. We are invited to make peace with the struggle and with the assurance of blessing somehow mixed up with it. And we are invited to go out again into the world to mend relationships, to live anew, to experience life all over again.

And what’s more, we are invited to do that together, in community. Today we are celebrating the culmination of a process to think about our “WHY” as a congregation. And it’s full of wonderful words, like “welcome” and “God’s love” and “community.” But sometimes we have to wrestle out what that’s all about. Sometimes a wide welcome makes us uncomfortable. Sometimes being in community is challenging. Sometimes we lose track of what it means to experience God’s love. Sometimes this congregation will not live up to its “why.” But the promise to us is blessing in the midst of it.

In a few moments, as always, you are invited to this table. We will take bread, bless it, break it, and give it away. You are invited to hold out your hands, to open your mouths to receive Christ’s body into yours. And in doing so we together become the body of Christ. And then just like God did with Jacob, God takes us, blesses us, breaks us open, and uses us to feed the world, to welcome our neighbors, to be the ones in our blessedness and in our brokenness to help others experience God’s love in community. This is the life of faith, the life lived in baptismal promises, the life of wrestling with God. And we are invited to demand that blessing and to discover it emerging in the midst of our most challenging struggles and our most difficult journeys.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Commemoration of Michael and All Angels
September 29, 2019

First Reading: Daniel 10:10-14; 12:1-3

Second Reading: Revelation 12:7-12

Gospel: Luke 10:17-20

Some of our favorite story lines in movies and literature are those classic good versus evil plot line. We are fascinated by the struggle in our world, often overcome with despair at injustice, violence, and cruelty, and we crave a good story that gives us hope that good will one day prevail. Batman, Superman, Spiderman, The Incredibles, Star Wars, the Chronicles of Narnia, Harry Potter, Dorothy vs. the Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz.

In the story world we can draw clear lines. These people over here, even if they have some notable flaws, are the good ones. Those people over there on the other side are the bad ones. They will fight. And as long as you stay in mainstream popular stories, for the most part you can count on the good prevailing.

As we commemorate today Michael and All Angels, the day and the texts that are chosen to honor it might at first seem to lull us into that simple division and the comforting story line in which good prevails, evil is destroyed, and we can rest at night knowing all is well. And yes, today is in part about the triumph of God, the triumph of love, the eventual end of all the forces that defy God and defy that love. But part of this day is also a healthy recognition that there is something going on in our world that is more than we comprehend and more than we are equipped to handle.

When most of us think of angels, we probably can’t help but picture either a winged, stately, white-robed, halo-clad, conventionally attractive, human-like figure or a cute, chubby cherub. Perhaps we think of guardian angels, a concept that floats about in popular culture – the idea that we have a personal protector who will guide us through life and protect us from all manner of problems. Maybe we picture an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, manifestations of our conscience fighting against our impulses. But none of that is what the Bible is talking about when it talks about angels.

Biblical angels, at least some of them, are part serpent. Some of them have 6 wings. When they appear to human beings they consistently spend the first several minutes of the encounter trying to calm the person down: “Fear not!” they cry, trying perhaps unconvincingly to suggest that they are not to be feared. For someone in crisis, for someone who is oppressed, for someone who is longing for someone strong on their side, this is a comfort. When we are the ones facing evil, facing forces beyond our control, facing forces that threaten our existence, we don’t want a graceful song or a cute baby angel, we want a battle cry and an intimidating force to strike out on our behalf.

Both the reading from Daniel this morning and the reading from Revelation are from the parts of the Bible we call apocalyptic literature. It is highly poetic, highly symbolic speech written primarily to communities who were threatened or persecuted. They were meant to be messages of hope to people experiencing a sense of powerlessness, people who needed to know that God was not abandoning them. They needed an account, like all of us do from time to time, that reminded them despite every scrap of evidence to the contrary that good still had the power to overcome evil, that life still had the power to overcome death.

The story of a heavenly battle in which Michael the archangel defeats the dragon is written to a community of Christians whose lives are literally at stake as a result of their faith, a people who experience daily political oppression, daily fear for their lives. The promise of deliverance through Michael the angel from a time of anguish and a day of reckoning was written to people in the midst of actual war, people who lived in their own days of anguish.    Though we might be reeling from all manner of social change and even upheaval, from all manner of personal ills and fears, these communities even more so needed a story of forces beyond what they had yet been able to muster to stand firm against those who wished them harm. They needed courage to continue, hope when they lost loved ones, when they faced their own deaths. They needed the reassurance of God’s power that would one day be revealed as having the ultimate victory.

But I hate to be the one to break this to you, but in the real world the dividing line between good and evil is not always as clear-cut as it is in stories, movies, and even in the apocalyptic literature of the scriptures. If we are going to call on these fierce defenders of good to come to our aid in time of trouble, we better also be ready to face them when the evil is within us. Most of us would like to think about ourselves as the people on the side of good, or at least of good intentions. But evil isn’t so easy to push away. We know this, deep down, even if in moments we forget. We know the struggles against our own personal demons. We know the feeling of being trapped in a larger system that perpetuates the evils of racism, sexism, xenophobia. We know the ways in which we contribute to the brokenness of the world, even if only in ways that seem small to us. The grand battle against evil is not against “them” but also within us.

This cosmic battle, which God and the forces of love will win – which God in Christ has already won, will require this heavenly host of angels not only to comfort us and lend us courage, but also to come at us battle ready to drive out the things in us which stand in the way of God’s love for all creatures. In fact, as soon as we start to tell ourselves a story in which we are the heroes, we have crossed into questionable territory. As soon as we have labeled enemies we hope our guardian angel will defend us from, we have divided ourselves from other human beings

This is the gist of Jesus’ response to the excited disciples in our brief reading from the gospel of Luke. They have returned from their assignment to go out into the world preaching, teaching, and healing. They report with excitement that they have stood in the fight and won. They have called out the demons and sent them running. Jesus kindly indulges their rejoicing, for there is a time and place for celebration when together we take a step toward a kingdom of love and grace. But ultimately, Jesus reminds them, it is not their power, it is not about their having won the day. It’s not ultimately about them, not even about the victory. It’s really about the world that God is already establishing and the way in which the evil within them and around them hold no power to prevail against that world that God is already ushering in.

The glory of this day is not that angels are on our side, or that angels will always protect us from harm and danger. It’s that God is working in ways that are beyond our comprehension to fight the battles we can’t fight alone. The battles, yes, against those who want to oppress or harm, the battles against us when we are the ones oppressing and harming, but also the battles within ourselves, the ones we find ourselves unable to keep fighting. God is at work through principalities and powers, to use some ancient language, through angels, and yes through you and me, too, to bring to fruition in our time the victory that has already been won of good over evil, love over hate, and life over death.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 15th Sunday after Pentecost
September 22, 2019

¹Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. ²So the rich man summoned the manager and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ ³Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. ⁴I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ ⁵So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶The debtor answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ ⁷Then the manager asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ That debtor replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ ⁸And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. ⁹And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
  ¹⁰“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. ¹¹If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? ¹²And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? ¹³No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”- Luke 16:1-13

I love Legos. As a kid I had a whole Lego empire that dominated a full one-half of my parents’ unfinished basement. I am rediscovering my love of the iconic plastic building blocks now as a parent, one who is sometimes far more interested in building with them than my child.

But it is in building with her that I have been reminded of one of the basic tenets of building with Legos – or building with anything, really. When I first started building with Legos, like many kids I tried to build walls by stacking up blocks in a pillar and then making another stack of blocks next to it. I would get frustrated that the walls would be so easily knocked down. It seemed logical, at least to me, that you could just stack them up this way. But as most of us know, you have to interlock the pieces in order to have a strong and stable structure. It simply doesn’t work as well to have individual pillars next to each other, even if they are connected at the top.  Look at any brick wall and you’ll see the classic pattern – not straight columns but bricks alternating their position in each row.

Of course, there are all manner of intricate ways to create a stable structure, which the engineers in the room this morning could articulate far better than I, but with Legos, simply speaking, it’s best to interlock the pieces in an alternating pattern. A single tower built straight up will easily topple even on the flattest and stablest of surfaces.

That’s what the manager realizes part-way through the confusing and confounding parable that Jesus tells. In this parable, the rich owner confronts the manager for having squandered his property. The manager it seems has had neither the interests of the owner, nor the interests of the community at heart in his work, for he quickly realizes that he is alone. Not only has he wasted the rich owner’s wealth, if he gets fired he’s not got a friend out there to lean on, no couch to crash on til he gets on his feet, no sympathetic friend to hire him for an odd job here and there to get by. He’s somehow managed to build a very solitary kind of life, perhaps enjoying the benefits of some of the owner’s money at the expense of others. Perhaps surrounded by people but existing entirely dependent on himself, maybe even quite proud of his independence.

But that’s the problem with a life built on one’s own, a life that relies on one’s own strengths, one’s own actions, one’s own wealth, and one’s own abilities. Like a Lego tower built without interlocking the pieces, it is easily toppled. Maybe you’ll get by for a while, maybe even most of a lifetime, but not only will it surely topple eventually, it’s an awful lot of work to keep it balancing all along.

However we label this steward, whether shrewd or dishonest, he realizes he’s got to start making some connections with other people if he’s going to survive. He’s been playing fast and loose with the owner’s money himself, but now he realizes it’s time at least to do that in a way that helps him connect with other people. And in the bizarre way of parables, the owner in a surprise move commends the manager for his shrewdness. The owner has presumably lost more money, but he is struck by the sudden increase in wisdom in the manager. Maybe it’s not actually that surprising, as parables go, the characters in Jesus’ parables are usually just throwing out the books anyway.

Over and over again, Jesus reminds us that the kingdom of God – the world in which the parables take place – is a realm which does not value accurate bookkeeping. Never in the parables is there a bookkeeper – whether of rights and wrongs, or of wealth and poverty, or of anything, really – who sticks to the books in the end. If there’s been recordkeeping of any kind it gets ignored, thrown out, or upended.

It’s not that all money is bad or that power is all fundamentally corrupt or that independence and self-sufficiency in some ways isn’t essential. But whatever exactly this parable is intended to say, Jesus does say you have to choose whether you are serving God or serving wealth. One has to choose whether one trusts in oneself, one’s money, one’s power, one’s own ability to make it in the end or whether one trusts God. The only thing you can serve at the same time as serving God is your neighbor. But just about everything else, at least anything else that causes us to build our own individual tower, becomes a choice between serving that and serving God.

Individuals do it, trusting in their own wealth and education and power and ideology, forgetting that eventually death claims all of it, if it doesn’t all crumble before then. And all of us end up trusting our own power at least a little bit. Maybe trusting in our own power more than we’d like to admit to ourselves. And our North American context is constantly reinforcing it, encouraging us toward individualism, self-sufficiency, and independence.

Nations do it, too – promoting the idea that we can develop our own well-being at the expense and disregard of others. We get caught up in what’s best for us, forgetting that we are always strongest when we strengthen the relationships with others around us. There are a lot of different ways we might achieve that, but we aren’t going to succeed in isolation.

And, not surprisingly, churches do it, too. We may celebrate the ministries we share in common, but we are often quick to focus in on the needs of our own congregations. We get wrapped up in the things that have to happen to keep things running and we get focused on the things that will boost our numbers or our budgets. Sometimes I suspect we even, intentionally or not, end up squandering some of the resources entrusted to us. And it’s when steeples end up crumbling, when numbers start dwindling, and we feel the sense of urgency that the steward felt in Jesus’ parable that suddenly we realize we can’t go it alone and that we have to do some rebuilding that involves connecting us with community partners, synodical partners, and ecumenical partners. Whatever the new rebuilding looks like, it means being more connected to others.

The grace in all this is that God, the only one who canstand alone, chooses not to build wealth, power, and love alone but instead to become interconnected to us. In taking flesh in Jesus, God proclaims to us that we never have to stand alone and that God is not only building us into interconnected communities, but building God’s very self into our lives. Not only are we made stronger together, by God’s choosing us we are forever interconnected to God, such that even when we fail to build the kind of relationships that strengthen us and our communities, even when we feel our lives toppling, our foundation is connected to God and we are held in that relationship through everything that comes, death included, until the resurrection day when we are all raised – not separately, but together – in God’s incredible kingdom.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

13th Sunday after Pentecost
September 8, 2019

[Moses said to the people:] ¹⁵See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. ¹⁶If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in the Lord’s ways, and by observing God’s commandments, decrees, and ordinances, then you shall live and become numerous, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to possess. ¹⁷But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, but are led astray to bow down to other deities and serve them, ¹⁸I declare to you today that you shall perish; you shall not live long in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. ¹⁹I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, ²⁰loving the Lord your God, obeying the Lord, and holding fast to your God; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the Lord swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. – Deuteronomy 30:15-20

²⁵Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, ²⁶“Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, spouse and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. ²⁷Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. ²⁸For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether there is enough to complete it? ²⁹Otherwise, when a foundation has been laid and the builder is not able to finish the building, all who see it will begin to ridicule the builder, ³⁰saying, ‘This person began to build and was not able to finish.’ ³¹Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³²If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. ³³So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. – Luke 14:25-33

Choose life. That’s what Moses tells the Hebrew people about to enter the promised land. I am setting before you life and prosperity or death and adversity. Choose life.

Obvious choice, right? Presented that way, who doesn’t want to choose life and prosperity. Cue angelic choirs, abundant harvests, pearly gates and golden streets – if not on earth now at least in the life to come. Sure, give me life and prosperity.

But Moses’ point is that we are offered that choice not in one, grand, obvious moment but in thousands of little, subtle moments. Thousands of ways to choose abundant life every day. And all too often we choose the way of death and adversity.

Sometimes we know what we’re choosing – we know we’re choosing something that doesn’t fulfill us, doesn’t lead to life. We choose to let our temper fly rather than react with grace. We choose to busy ourselves with the easy tasks and not the things that will ultimately satisfy us. We eat that second dessert. We linger longer than is healthy on Facebook or Candy Crush or whatever helps us numb our minds to get through the day. Perhaps less innocent and more destructive we choose to remain silent in the face of injustice. In tons of little moments we choose things that lead us away from life.

And sometimes we think we are choosing life and prosperity but fail to realize what real life and real prosperity look like. We buy in to the definitions of success and prosperity around us – the idea that we can choose life by getting rich or at least by getting financially comfortable, or that we can choose life by gaining power and influence, by climbing the social or corporate ladder, by getting our bodies into the form of someone else’s idea of perfection, or even by earning ourselves a lifetime merit badge in good deeds. And all that can pass for a while, maybe even most of our lives. Some of it actually can bring life and prosperity along the way. But how many little choices do we make every day in what we buy and how we spend our time that are subtly influenced by the desire to get ahead? How often do we do things based on what other people will think? Maybe some of us more than others, but no doubt all of us at least some of the time.

What Jesus is getting at today is that none of this really leads to life. None of you can become my disciples unless you give up all your possessions. It’s hard for us to imagine a life without at least some of our basic comforts, at least the essentials that keep us alive and safe. And yet Jesus insists that those possessions, even those ties to family and allegiances outside of our following Jesus – they are choices that lead us away from discipleship. They are things that demand our lives from us.

I don’t know how to choose that kind of life. I really don’t. My responsibilities to my family, my comfort with my way of life…I don’t know how to give that up. At the very least this passage ought to make us reconsider our commitment to our possessions and the way in which we think about generosity and the choices we make on a daily basis. Discipleship – following Jesus – makes a claim on all of our lives, every last choice. Commitments to other things, no matter how good, ultimately draw us away from that life that really is life. Choosing life isn’t always as simple as it seems. Not just because in our brokenness we all make poor choices, choices that go against God’s call to live in community with one another, but also because the way to life, according to Jesus, is through death.

And that’s where we’re stuck. We could dedicate our focus day in and day out to making the choices that best align with what God has asked of us and we would, in so doing, make the world a better place and perhaps find a deeper connection to God and neighbor. Maybe we can start there. We have to start there. The world is hurting – from devastation in The Bahamas to communities picking up the shattered pieces after mass shootings, from the halls of detox units to the long lines at community health clinics, from children separated from parents at the border to families torn apart by excessive incarceration. And somehow we have to muster the energy, the courage, the commitment to make different choices. Choices that mean life for us and life for the hurting world. It’s what God calls us to do. And I trust that it will not help our bottom line but will deepen our faith and open us to the life that really is life. But we won’t do it perfectly, and even if we did it would not save the world or ourselves.

We could even radically alter our lives, do exactly what Jesus says: sever the connections that hold us back, give away all we have and live into a radical new way of life. And if we do, the world will do to us what it always does to those who reject the dominant social order – it will silence us, or try to. There won’t be a literally cross these days, but I suspect we’d find ourselves subject to all manner of torture and death if we did exactly what Jesus is asking us to do. Even that will not save us or the world.

Either way, even our best efforts to choose life lead us down the path to death. Either way, we are stuck longing for the promised land, the promised life of abundance and prosperity. Moses responds to the situation of being stuck with options that lead to death by issuing a plea: keep choosing life! Keep doing it. Moses knows they haven’t and can’t. Moses knows he didn’t and couldn’t. At least not enough to save themselves. And to some extent that’s the best we can do – keep pleading with one another to choose life.

But God does something different. God does plead with us to choose life. And God recognizes that we haven’t and can’t. But then God does something utterly absurd, something absolutely universe altering. After pleading with us to choose life, God chooses the way of death. In Christ, God takes on human flesh and lives among us. In Christ, God walks the difficult journey of choice after choice in a broken and hurting world, experiencing pain himself and pain on behalf of those he meets, suffering with all manner of life-defeating pain. And Jesus refuses to give in. He gives up everything and chooses the way of death. And in so doing God makes holy our existence in the world just as it is. God reminds us of God’s presence infusing our life even as it is stuck between choices that lead only, in the end, to death. And in joining us there, in choosing death, God chooses life for the world, chooses not to live without drawing all things into new creation and resurrection.

And so, dear ones, choose life. Please, choose life. But when you find yourself again dead and dying, Christ is there. That is, Christ is here. Now. Today. Choosing to join us in a world of death until all things find life again in him.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

12th Sunday after Pentecost
September 1, 2019

⁶Do not put yourself forward in the presence of a monarch
  or stand in the place of the great;
 ⁷for it is better to be told, “Come up here,”
  than to be put lower in the presence of a noble. – Proverbs 25:6-7

¹On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. ⁷When he noticed how the guests chose the places of honor, he told them a parable. ⁸“When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, do not sit down at the place of honor, in case someone more distinguished than you has been invited by your host; ⁹and the host who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give this person your place,’ and then in disgrace you would start to take the lowest place. ¹⁰But when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, your host may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you. ¹¹For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
  ¹²Jesus said also to the one who had invited him, “When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. ¹³But when you give a banquet, invite those who are poor, crippled, lame, and blind. ¹⁴And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” – Luke 14:1, 7-14

Here at CTK, we just finished an 8-week series on Wednesday nights thinking about being in community together. When we planned the whole thing out we had a vision for a theme about community that would be accessible to visitors and also draw the participants together into a kind of community. So we laid out some texts that we thought might help us do that, but then the whole thing kind of evolved week-to-week. We kept coming back to community, we kept practicing community, but I’m not so sure it was exactly the kind of feel-good way we thought about it when we planned it. In the end I felt it was more about the down and dirty challenges of living in community than it was about the happy ideal that often mean by that word.

We talked about Zaccheus and all the other unseen ones in our world that Jesus recognizes – but Zaccheus cut his wealth in half in response to the call of Jesus – not exactly an easy model to follow. We read the parable of the Good Samaritan, who gets a lot of praise but he ends the story delayed on his journey, less comfortable, more tired, and out quite a sum of money. We read the Pentecost story, and the people at Pentecost had a tremendous encounter with the Holy Spirit, but their call wasn’t exactly to a life of comfort. And the woman at the well, Joseph abandoned by his brothers, and the three friends who managed to survive the fiery furnace with God’s deliverance – their stories end well, but it wasn’t exactly rosy all the way along. Being in community – enacting forgiveness, recognizing the unseen, celebrating diversity, serving your neighbor, standing together in adversity, breaking down dividing walls – that isn’t always the kind of thing that wins you a lot of comfort, wealth, power, or even lots of friends. Our series was wonderful, but it also challenged us to think about some difficult things.

So it is that this Sunday Jesus invites us again to the kind of community that doesn’t earn us much in the way of social status. At first Jesus is simply repeating common wisdom, the kind of practical nuggets of advice that Proverbs so often has to offer in pithy sayings. He admonishes them not to take too high a place at the banquet table lest they overestimate their standing and get asked to move lower. This was something people thought a great deal about in Jesus’ day – who got to eat with whom and who got to sit where. It was part of the strict social codes that separated some people from others.

But if you think we don’t do this today, just ask anyone who has eats in a school cafeteria what happens if you plant yourselves down at the cool kids’ table. Or really any other group’s table besides your own. Or ask anyone who ends up at the kids’ table at Thanksgiving dinner. Or the pity invite at the wedding reception. Or ask anyone who’s ever been through a soup kitchen line whether they feel like they’re free to sit down at the same tables as the people on the other side of the serving table. It’s often a little more subtle than in Jesus’ day, but we have our rules about who gets to sit where and who gets to eat with whom.

And so Jesus gives some practical advice that might actually win you some points. You get to look humble and maybe even get invited up from your lowly place. But all that really is just a lead in to what else Jesus has to say. If you want to walk away today with good advice to climb the world’s ladders, now is the time to leave.

Because what else Jesus says is this: When youhost a banquet, don’t invite your friends, don’t invite people who can pay you back or invite you out to dinner in return. Invite the people who have nothing to offer you. Invite the people whose presence will inconvenience you. Invite the people who will embarrass you. Invite the people that will make your friends and family eat elsewhere from now on.

We could take this story to mean an invitation to make sure that soup kitchen lines are staffed and food is donated to people in need. And absolutely, those are essential services that fill gaps as we continue to fight a larger battle against hunger and poverty. But this story isn’t about that. It’s about inviting people in need to our actually dinner table. Picture the table where you eat at home – your dining room or kitchen or TV trays in the living room. Now picture that table filled with people who don’t typically sit down there – someone who smells a little bit because she doesn’t have a home to shower in, someone whose mental health concerns make conversation nearly impossible, someone who is coming down off a high. Picture having made a pathway to your table that is accessible for someone who can’t get up from their motorized wheelchair.

I know some of my friends and family would gladly set aside their discomfort to sit down at that table, too. Others wouldn’t. Some days I might be able to muster up the courage to do just that. Many days I shy away from it. Either way, it’s not a recipe for social advancement.

Now look around at the group that has gathered at this communion table today. Among us there are many differences, many things that might potentially divide us, many things that might potentially make sitting down at a typical dinner table difficult. And yet something about this table, something about this community, makes it possible for us to gather not just for communion but for coffee hour and the occasional meal together, too. Jesus makes this messy, imperfect community possible.

At the same time I invite you to look around the room and think about who is notrepresented here. Who isn’t yet at this table? How might Jesus’ words today be inviting us to think about invitations not just to our friends and neighbors to be here, though surely they, too, have a place at our table, but also the people we don’t normally interact with or the people we usually keep at a distance? What would it look like if they came and sat at this table?

That’s the kind of table Jesus is setting for us and for all the world. Not just a table where we can play the social games and get ahead – or fall behind, as the case may be – but rather the kind of table where there is literally a seat for everyone. Jesus enacts this by the tables at which he chooses to eat. It wins him a few crazy followers and a few friends perhaps, but mostly enemies. It’s part of what gets him killed in the end – his refusal to play the game but instead open the table to every last broken person in the world.

And that’s where we’re likely to end up if we follow Jesus’ invitation, if we create the kind of community we’ve been talking about. If we work really hard in our own lives and in our church community to set this banquet table, we end up on the outside of power, with absolutely nothing left but our lives, and sooner or later, we will lose those, too. But that’s when we find ourselves most in the company of Jesus and that’s when we become the very Jesus is making sure get included in the feast. Come, the banquet is ready.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 25, 2019

¹⁰Now Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. ¹¹And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. ¹²When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” ¹³When Jesus laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. ¹⁴But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” ¹⁵But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie your ox or your donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? ¹⁶And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” ¹⁷When Jesus said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing. -Luke 13:10-17

Eighteen years is a long time. It’s a long time for anything, but especially for a debilitating illness. A long time to feel pain, to worry about one’s body, to wonder whether you have any future at all. We too often write off those who have disabilities and diseases in our own culture, but I dare say it was worse in first century Palestine. For the woman in the gospel reading who has been bent over for these eighteen long years it might as well have been forever.

To her the very idea of Sabbath rest must have seemed a cruel joke. There was no rest from her crippling ailment. There was no rest from the likely poverty that often accompanied long illnesses then and even still today. There was no rest from her isolation, no rest from her pain, no rest from her gaze being fixed down at the earth. There hadn’t been a Sabbath for her in eighteen years. Maybe that’s why she wanders into the synagogue a little late to hang at the back of the crowd, to stand at the fringes wondering if these people have any idea what she is going through.

We, too, have our own long-term ailments, things that have been going on so long that it seems like forever. If not ourselves, I think all of us know someone who lives with a chronic mental or physical illness, or someone who whether in recovery or not lives with a lifelong addiction, or someone who bears a wound of grief that will always be a part of their life. There is no Sabbath rest from that, no day that goes by that it isn’t at least in the back of our minds.

The weight of the world bends us over, too. Daily wars have been raging, in some places far longer than 18 years. But soldiers and civilians traumatized by violence rarely get a Sabbath from their trauma. The faith community has been addressing hunger for centuries in one way or another, yet people live bent over by food insecurity for years and years. Hunger and poverty and homelessness do not take a day off even when meal programs and housing authorities do. Fires are burning through Brazil, threatening to accelerate an already fragile global climate. No rest for our hurting earth. Fears about the economy are beginning to pervade the news again. The push to work and work, to consume and consume without rest is leading us into a place where we are being bent over, a place from which we may not be able to find rest even if we want to.

As Christians, I think we live with a certain tension as we gather for worship Sunday after Sunday. We gather to proclaim Sabbath, not just a day of rest from work and a day for religious observance, but we proclaim the possibility of healing, the power of transformation, the end of oppression, the freedom from captivity and the beating of swords into plowshares. In fact every Sunday we proclaim resurrection – we proclaim that Christ has already conquered the things that weigh us down, bend us over, even the things that threaten to end our lives. But the tension is that while we take a moment to rest in that vision, so many hurting people stand at the edges and call that proclamation into question. If we do not gather for worship, I do not know how else we can stay connected to that message of hope and freedom. But when we worship, we must also acknowledge our long-hurting world and our own deep personal pain, so that this hour together does not ignore the hurt and pain that take no Sabbath rest.

If worship embodied in this local assembly does not connect us to the world, if it does not send us out again for service, if the very real needs of the world are not woven throughout our liturgical practice, then we risk this hour becoming a cruel joke to those who have not seen relief from their suffering in so many years that it might as well be forever.

This is the essential tension of this gospel story. It would be easy to demonize the synagogue leader for his chastising of Jesus. What kind of person gets cranky at miraculous healing? What kind of person stands right in front of completely renewed woman and demands it all should have waited another day? For a moment, though, let us consider what he’s standing up for. He is standing up for all that the Sabbath means. He’s standing up for maintaining the gift of rest built into their understanding of the created world, that day in the poem of creation in Genesis 1 where God has looked at all things, called them very good, and rests in the glory of it all. This leader sees the Sabbath as the proclamation that the world can once again be very good, whole and at peace. This leader is holding on to the gift that day of rest was to their ancestors who lived under slavery in Egypt, who once worked day after day without a rest. The leader is holding on not to some arcane law but the incredible gift that God had invited them into that they might take rest even when they lived as they did again in Jesus’ time under oppression and occupation. And this Sabbath rest, a promise of the Sabbath rest for all creation, is bigger than this one woman and her ailment. To compromise the Sabbath day was perhaps for him to let go of the vision of new life for all the world.

I wonder if this man had simply become so accustomed to speaking of this hope and seeing it unrealized despite their gathering week after week that he failed to make room in his Sabbath observance for God to actually fulfill the promise he was trying so desperately to proclaim. Perhaps he was so accustomed to proclaiming the transformative power of God in religious services and going back to the “real” world where cycles of violence and disease and pain repeat with no Sabbath rest, that he simply could not make room in his mind in this moment for the encounter with Jesus making Sabbath rest where there was none.  So focused on the big picture of the way the world is that he failed to see God bringing it about before his very eyes.

And so it is that Jesus comes to us. In our gathering of bodies bent over and minds emptied of hope, in our gathering of people who have proclaimed God’s kingdom for so long in a world that has yet to know a true Sabbath full of peace and justice, in our gathering of people who sometimes forget to expect God to change anything at all, Jesus appears and dwells among us. The redeeming one comes to stand in that tension between our hope for a new creation and the reality of the broken ones in our midst. And with Jesus our words and our sometimes empty hopes become something more. Our objections and our disbelief are met by the making of Sabbath rest before our very eyes. And our worship becomes about more than proclaiming hope, more than an imagined reality against some “real” world, it becomes instead God’s making us whole again. In the work we do together as a worshipping assembly, Jesus comes among us and makes us into the beginning of Sabbath rest for the whole world. This hour together isn’t a break from the world’s deep pain but an hour set aside to be transformed again into Sabbath people.

We do not have to believe every word of it. We do not even have to like it. But here in water, bread, and wine, we are transformed, despite the very real pain that continues within and around us, into God’s people, into Sabbath people, people created for rest and created to invite others into rest. And from here God leads us out not just to speak about that future healing, but to be that very rest for the world. Bent-over ones and skeptics and curmudgeons alike, what God does for us here in this our community’s Sabbath rest, makes us again the people of God, healed, redeemed, restored, and sent again to be God’s hands in healing the world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco (updated/adapted from a sermon I preached on these texts in 2016)

10th Sunday after Pentecost
August 18, 2019

[Jesus said:] ⁴⁹“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! ⁵⁰I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! ⁵¹Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! ⁵²From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; ⁵³they will be divided:
 father against son
  and son against father,
 mother against daughter
  and daughter against mother,
 and in-laws against one another.”
  ⁵⁴Jesus also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. ⁵⁵And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. ⁵⁶You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” – Luke 12:49-56

Are you on fire for Jesus?

Because today Jesus has come to bring fire on earth. He comes wishing things were already burning. And I’m not sure I’m really on fire for Jesus.

That’s not to say I’m not on fire sometimes. I’ve got all kinds of emotions kindled inside me. Some of them are good. I get fired up talking about my favorite podcasts. Given the opportunity I’ll start extolling the virtues of the podcasts I consistently listen to every week about race, economics, storytelling, and a humorous weekly news summary. I’ll say things like “If you’re interested in that, you absolutely mustlisten to this podcast.” I start sentences frequently by saying, “I heard last week on a podcast…” But Jesus? I’ve learned, not for the better, to be more cautious talking about Jesus. People might think me a little nerdy for my podcast choices, but a lot of people will back away these days if you start talking excitedly about Jesus.

And I can sure get fired up about a whole lot less noble things than podcasts. Get me stuck behind a slow driver, stuck in traffic, stuck waiting in line because of a clearly inefficient system, or stuck waiting for someone who clearly has no awareness of the others around them, and I’ll get fired up in no time. Sometimes I politely keep it to myself, but if I’m worn out and my filters are off, I’ve been known to let barbed comments slip or shout not so nice things from inside the confines of my own car. I can get fired up about all manner of inconveniences in ways that you would think my life depended on it. But Jesus? I’m more likely to say nice things about Jesus and tone down the harsh edges than get fired up for good or bad about what he has to say.

And I do get fired up about injustice. I have a lot to learn, and I have to keep working on opening my eyes to the kinds of injustice that our culture teaches us to be blind to. But when I see it, I do get fired up. I get fired up if I think someone is getting the short end of the stick, if they’ve been unfairly ignored, if they’ve been targeted, oppressed, wronged, or just had really bad luck. But sometimes the kind of fired up I get doesn’t get channeled into action, or it does get channeled into action but in the wrong direction or with unnecessary anger at the wrong people. Sometimes the wrong things or, worse, the wrong people get burned even when I’m fired up for a worthy cause.

But it’s that kind of anger at injustice that maybe gets us a little closer to what Jesus is talking about in the gospel reading today. Jesus has come to kindle the fire of a new way of life, a resurrection kind of life in which all people have a place and all people are treated with dignity and grace. It’s perhaps the kind of fire that is used to refine precious metals, to burn away the impurities and reveal our deep and abiding value. But the thing about this kind of fire, the kind of fire that Jesus wants to kindle on earth, the kind of fire that Jesus wants to kindle in us, is that it’s good news for those who experience oppression and a different, more challenging kind of good news for those who hold a great deal of privilege. Fire is powerful, but it isn’t always pleasant.

The kind of fire Jesus brings causes division rather than mending it. It riles things up rather than calming them down. It even divides families one from another. And yet, Jesus longs for the world to be kindled, even sends in his stead, after his death and resurrection, the Holy Spirit to literally set fire to the disciples with the message of the gospel.

But I wonder, how do we know when we’re on fire for the right things? How do we know when our burning passion is from Jesus? It’s easy to dismiss my road rage as on fire for the wrong reason. But what about when I think I’ve been listening to the Holy Spirit’s fire and you think you’ve been listening to the Holy Spirit’s fire, and we aren’t in agreement, or even in outright opposition? Certainly there are a handful of things that I’m willing to go out on a limb and claim are not the work of the Holy Spirit. If you’re on fire for white supremacy or violence for it’s own sake or outright hatred of things God has created, I’m willing to say that’s not Jesus kindling your fire. But there are a whole lot of other things that I’m willing to take a pretty strong stand on, but not sure I’d say with 100% certainty I’ve got it right.

It’s not as often anymore that I have conversations with people who question the church’s welcome of the LGBTQIA+ community, but when I do, after talking with people about my careful study of scripture, about trying to wrestle with church tradition, with understanding differences in culture today versus several millennia ago, about my own sense of call that has been affirmed by the church, the question often comes, “But how can you be absolutely sure?”And my response is honest. I’m not 100% sure. I’ve done my absolute best to listen to scripture and at the end of the day I’m going to err on the side of love and welcome and trust God’s grace for the pieces I haven’t gotten right. For surely there and elsewhere I have misinterpreted something, whether big or small.

Many of you know that I spent the first week in August at our church’s national churchwide assembly, held every three years. It was intense, as it always is. Some big things were talked about – racism, sexism, immigration, and inter-religious relationships. Some decisions were made which, while they were passed by at least a majority and in some cases a large majority, were controversial in the public sphere and the larger community of the ELCA. People of faith, people who have listened to the Holy Spirit, to the fire Jesus is kindling in them, still disagree. It doesn’t mean that Jesus is neutral, or that God doesn’t take positions for the sake of kindling into being a new reign of justice and peace beyond what we can imagine. It doesn’t mean we can just sit by and wait for certainty. It does mean that we take even our strongest positions with a dose of humility and that we leave ourselves open to the refining fire, to the possibility that God has things to burn away in all of us in order to bring us into the beloved community.

Every Wednesday this summer we’ve been singing This Little Light of Mine as the closing song for worship. It has the potential to feel like a kids’ song, a cute ditty that reminds us of our Sunday school days. But if we let it, it has the power to speak a deeper truth. That Jesus is kindling within each of us a fire that has the power to transform the world, a fire that will sometimes stir up division in the process of bringing about the new heaven and new earth that has a place for all, a fire that may even burn parts of ourselves away in the process, drive us into the midst of endeavors we never dreamed of, and light others on fire for Jesus in ways we never expected.

So come to the table again today. Come with all the fires burning within you. Come to receive grace for the fires you’ve started in error, whether known or unknown. Come to be ignited with fierce love and powerful justice that might just create some turmoil in you and in the community. Come to be set on fire for Jesus. Because one of the things I am willing to state with 100% certainty is that Jesus is present here for you in this bread and wine and in this gathered community. For he has promised it to be so.

 -Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

7th Sunday after Pentecost
July 28, 2019

¹Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” ²Jesus said to them, “When you pray, say:
 Father, hallowed be your name.
  Let your dominion come.
  ³Give us each day our daily bread.
  ⁴And forgive us our sins,
   for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
  And do not bring us to the time of trial.”
  ⁵And Jesus said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to that friend at midnight and say, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; ⁶for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set out.’ ⁷And the friend answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ ⁸I tell you, even though the friend will not get up and provide anything because of the friendship, at least because of the neighbor’s persistence the friend will get up and provide whatever is needed.
  ⁹“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. ¹⁰For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. ¹¹Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? ¹²Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? ¹³If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask!” – Luke 11:1-13

“Teach us to pray.” A simple request from Jesus’ disciples. John taught his disciples, now teach us. Tell us what to do. Our #2 pencils are sharpened, we have extra paper at the ready. What’s step 1?

In one sense Jesus gives them what they are looking for. A script that prays a mostly timeless and expansive prayer. One that is both deeply intimate and yet includes all of creation in its scope. Whether Jesus intended it to become the kind of shared, global, ecumenical prayer that it quickly became or not, it was a pretty good start to a lesson on prayer. Pray as a child to a loving parent. Pray for God’s will, God’s heaven, God’s reign to become real in us and on earth. Today’s needs met today and tomorrow’s not worried about until then. Forgiveness that is reciprocal and live-giving for everyone. Power to live in a complex world full of forces beyond our understanding. It’s sometimes hard to imagine a better prayer. Sometimes it’s the solace of repeating the familiar that draws me in to God. Sometimes a line I’ve said 10,000 times will startle me with new insight. Jesus has more than answered the question.

But then Jesus goes on. Prayer is like an unprepared and slightly obnoxious friend who comes pounding on your door in the middle of the night waking up your whole family for a few loaves of bread to feed a guest arrived in the middle of the night. Pounding, pounding, pounding until at last you get up and get the bread just to stop the pounding and shouting. This is not neat and simple prayer. This is prayer that is messy and loud, prayer an inopportune times, prayer that wakes up the neighbors. It’s prayer that leaves us a little unsettled, like we’ve been woken from sleep by the pounding, because we aren’t quite sure what it’s like. Jesus gave us a rich, deep prayer we can repeat for a lifetime and still find new meaning. And Jesus gave us an image of frantic pounding.

Just this tiny glimpse at the breadth of prayer has invited me to wonder this week what images for prayer we operate under today. What prayer would you recite or what story would you tell to describe what prayer is like with God?

Sometimes I wonder if we pray like two people who just met at a dinner party, strangers seated next to each other, struggling to find common ground to speak about. The conversation is interesting at moments, but often formulaic. What do you do for work? Where are you from? Oh, how’s the weather there? How’s the sports team from there doing? We ask and answer these questions, sometimes out of genuine interest in relationship, sometimes out of obligation to talk to someone right in front of us. Best case scenario it evolves into something more. Worst case scenario there is a misunderstanding and lingering feelings of ill-will. Or maybe sometimes it’s that way but between two people who used to have a connection, used to share so much in common, but who are reconnecting after an absence only to find paths that have diverged too drastically and the rekindling of friendship too difficult. I know we sometimes pray like this, saying the words because we know we are supposed to say them, sometimes hoping they will become more and other times hoping it will just keep us occupied in an awkward moment.

But what if prayer is also sometimes like the person you just met whose life is radically different yet seemingly so perfectly intersecting with your own that the conversation grows until hours have passed in deep back and forth listening. Or the long-ago friend that you see again and discover that the years apart and the diverging paths have only made the conversation richer. Time disappears. Minds, voices, bodies relax into an easy rhythm of sharing and listening. Silence is not awkward but full of meaning and connection. The conversation varies from calm and informative to wildly exciting to the sharing of deep sadness. And all of it feels right. What if conversation with God was like that?

Sometimes I wonder if we pray like a couple who has lost the spark in their relationship. The texts that go back and forth are about what groceries need to be picked up, reminders about the day’s schedule, questions about the bills that need to be paid. It fills the pantry, gets the house cleaned, and life functions on the proscribed schedule. There is love and affection, gratitude and kindness, but the communication is often a matter of what is functional. It’s pleasant, comfortable, even good. I know we sometimes pray like that – we ask for what is needed, maybe we even talk a little about our lives, we listen respectfully, but the spark of energy and excitement is rarely felt.

But what if prayer is also sometimes like a couple in the throes of romantic passion? Moments where just a look or a word can stir up intense feelings of connection and longing. People who throw off obligation to be with one another. People who put everything else on hold, who are consumed in heart, mind, soul, and body, who pull the other close, who open up their deepest selves. What if God’s invitation to prayer was at least some of the time to enter that kind of deep, romantic, even erotic relationship with God?

Sometimes I wonder if we pray like the tired parent and worn-out child at the grocery store checkout line. Some of us have been that parent, many of us if we remember back have been that child. It is almost nap time. The errands today have been longer than expected. No one is feeling at their best. The child asks again and again for the candy just within their grasp. Maybe the parent declines for the umpteenth time. And maybe the child feels sad and defeated, or throws a fit of anger, or takes what is wanted, or just sighs and moves on. Or the parent gives in out of pity, exhaustion, defeat, or out of just wanting finally to be able to say “yes” to something for the child they love. And the child is excited or confused or first thrilled then ultimately disappointed that what was desired did not fulfill in any lasting way. I know we sometimes pray like this. We ask, maybe even bargain, for what we want. Maybe we expect a “yes” or maybe we just feel compelled to ask again even if we only expect to hear “no” or “not right now.” Maybe we know it’s something that won’t fulfill us, but we still in our hearts hope it will. Maybe we are simply not yet able to understand why we hear “no.” Maybe we get what we ask for but have no sense in the moment of the love behind what is given. But the feeling is overwhelmingly of the tiredness felt all around.

But what if prayer is also sometimes like the parent who plans for weeks to surprise a child with a day full of interactive and fulfilling activities. When the child wakes up, an unexpected note leads her to the kitchen where she gets to help make chocolate chip pancakes. She discovers a new book to be read together and an adventure to a favorite museum awaits for parent and child. A carefree romp in the sprinkler on a hot summer afternoon. At some point the child sneaks off to create a song or dance or work of art to honor the day or honor the parent, and the parent takes delight both in sneaking a glance at the creative process and the final product, whatever it is. A simultaneously indulgent and nutritious dinner is served and enjoyed. A long snuggle together as the day’s memories of joy and love sink deep before finding rest for the night. There has been asking and receiving in both directions, but the relationship has been renewed instead of depleted. What if prayer were like that?

What if we are the sleeping ones, stuck sometimes in prayer with God that has lost its energy and joy, lost its playfulness and romance, its creative and adventurous expression. What if God is the friend pounding on the door, rousing us from tired prayer, calling us to welcome the guest of grace, calling us to unexpected moments of encounter with the holy?

Maybe your prayer is rich and full already. And maybe today or some days it isn’t. But here in a moment, at the response of God’s knocking, we will bring out the bread we have to share. And here at this table God breaks into our sometimes sleepy spirits and the midnight guest of grace who arrived already while we were asleep, invites us to eat of the bread we have offered. And there, in the joy-filled feast, God enters us in body and blood, bread and wine. And that connection is rekindled. The possibility of joy and playfulness, romance and creativity is sparked again. And God prays into us a persistent and never-dying love that is forever and ever. Amen.

Pastor Steven Wilco

6th Sunday after Pentecost
July, 21, 2019

³⁸Now as Jesus and his disciples went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. ³⁹She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. ⁴⁰But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” ⁴¹But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; ⁴²there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.” – Luke 10:38-42

Nearly 20 years ago, some researchers set up an experiment to test something about people’s ability to pay attention. They filmed two teams of people, one in all white and one in all black, passing basketballs back and forth. People were then invited to watch the short one-minute film and asked to count carefully the number of times the team in white passed the ball. But the point of the experiment was notto see whether participants could pay attention enough to accurately count the number of passes. The point of the experiment was to see whether the participants noticed the person in the gorilla suit walking through the middle of the players. Something like half the people who watched the video didn’t notice the person in the gorilla suit walking right through the middle of the game!

If you’ve never seen it you can watch it for yourself, though now I’ve just ruined it for you – you’ll see the gorilla no problem because I’ve told you to look for it. You’ll wonder how anybody could be so obtuse as to miss it. But of course, we actually do this all the time – we focus our attention on some things and fail to notice other things entirely.

Some of this is necessary for life – we could never take in the sheer amount of information that comes our way in a given moment in sights and sounds and other stimuli. It’s a critical part of brain development at an early age to sort out what to pay attention to and what to screen out. But sometimes we have been trained to focus our attention in the entirely wrong direction.

Like some grand and twisted version of the gorilla experiment, our world asks us to focus on power, wealth, and productivity. It asks us to pay more attention to people whose physical features conform to a socially constructed understanding of what is beautiful and attractive. We are trained by embedded and systemic racism and sexism to see the default “norm” as male and lighter skinned. Though we can begin to train ourselves to see things differently, the broader society in which we live tends to keep trying to orient our attention back to all those other things. Even when we try to focus on something else, our attention is often short-lived.

And today’s gospel is at least in part about attention. Jesus has come as a guest to Martha’s home. Every guest is an honored guest, but they seem aware of just how important this particular guest is. But one gets the sense that Martha is too consumed with tasks to give her full attention to Jesus. In fact, as the story is told, I’m not sure she’s even giving her full attention to the tasks of hospitality. Her real attention is on resenting her sister, Mary, sitting quietly at Jesus’ feet. I wonder whether her busyness is more of a defense – a response to her own anxiety and worry, or a way to keep her hands busy because she doesn’t know how to be still. Or maybe I just assume that because that’s how I am. I look for projects and tangible tasks, feeling the need to be busy or at least look busy. Because being present, really present to others, to oneself, to God – that’s hard, and frankly kind of intimidating. And in my worst moments I direct my anxiety and worry outward in the form of resentment of others.

When we sit with the present moment, with Jesus, we may very well find ourselves challenged in ways we’d rather not be. It may bring into focus neighbors in need we have failed to consider. It may bring into focus things about ourselves we wish were not true. It may cause us to confront the deeper worries and anxieties that drive our energy. But maybe most of all, we busy ourselves when Jesus shows up, because unconditional love is actually a little bit frightening. To stand and truly absorb the profound and uncompromising love of God for us, to realize that nothing we do, nothing we are can change that love, that strips us down in a way that makes us feel vulnerable and even out of control. Much easier to focus on doing the dishes for Jesus.

Which is not to say that Mary gets it all either. One can sit quietly at the feet of Jesus one’s whole life and miss the point of it all, miss the opportunities to step up to serve and care for others, miss the joys of living, and most sadly of all, even sitting at Jesus’ feet, one can still miss the profound, unconditional love of Jesus. I suspect we do that to some extent every Sunday. Every Sunday, we sit here in the presence of Jesus. And mostly we sit pretty attentively, some of us are busy with tasks – tasks that absolutely need to be done and are in service to God and neighbor – but tasks nonetheless. But if we truly absorbed that radical love to its fullest extent every week, if every week we were fully attentive to the presences of Jesus, I can’t imagine the power of love that would be unleashed in the world. I can’t imagine the way in which we and the community would be radically changed. But sometimes we are busy counting basketball passes.

It’s a whole lot easier for churches to focus on metrics of success influenced by the things the world has trained us to look for – things like attendance numbers, the size of our budgets, the sense of success that looks like something we remember from the past. And I wonder how often we miss the presence of Jesus walking right through it all. How often do we really focus our attention on what God is doing here? How often do we take in the sheer grace of God that abounds in all the little interactions we have, in the moments of worship that connect us to grace, in the care that is shown to members, in the hospitality that is shown at our tables, in the outreach that is shared with our neighbors?

It’s not so much that sitting contemplatively is better than doing tasks, though probably many of us are more prone to err on the side of doing and could learn to slow down a bit. I think instead it’s that we often fail to train our attention on the presence of God in it all, whatever we’re doing. And I’m sure that sometimes it’s out of not wanting to let God in to see the stuff we are ashamed of. But so often I think what we really miss in redirecting our attention is the love that is more powerful than all of it. The love that knows our deepest selves and loves us without question. I think Jesus’s words to Martha are not so much scolding as sympathetic. Martha, Martha, if only I could find a way right in this moment for you to know deep inside the love of God sitting before you. If only you could rest in that love as you so graciously provide for my hospitality.

Eventually Jesus does find a way to get through to Martha. Jesus shows up when her brother dies. He weeps with her. And he raises her brother from the dead before her very eyes. It may be that it took until resurrection to focus her attention fully, to finally allow the full extent of God’s love to cut through to her core. And Jesus does this for you, too. In our busyness or idleness, in our misattention and our inattention, in this life and in death, Jesus meets us as a humble guest to share with us that never-ending, all-powerful love. In fact it’s walking among us now, it’s hiding in plain sight, it’s boldly walking into the midst of our lives and calling our name, and inviting us to rest in that love.

-Pastor Steven Wilco