12th Sunday after Pentecost
August 12, 2018

Note: This was the last Sunday of Pastor Steven’s ministry at Immanuel before moving to a new call at Christ the King Lutheran Church in Windsor, CT.

³⁵Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
  ⁴¹Then the Judeans began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” ⁴²They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, “I have come down from heaven’?” ⁴³Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. ⁴⁴No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. ⁴⁵It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. ⁴⁶Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; this one has seen the Father. ⁴⁷“Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” – John 6:35, 41-51

Most of the Sundays for the last seven-and-a-half years, I have stood before you, held up bread and repeated for all of us the words of Jesus: “In the night in which he was betrayed, our Lord Jesus took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and gave it to his disciples.” When I hold that bread up week-after-week, I see you and the bread in the same line of vision. I see the body of Christ – in wheat and in human flesh.

A lot else happens in this community. We serve side-by-side for the sake of our neighbors. We visit the sick and grieving. We seek to learn and grow in faith and our awareness of God’s activity in scripture and in the world. We share coffee and refreshments with one another. We manage a building and a budget. But for me, as someone who hears and tastes and knows grace more powerfully and reliably at the Eucharistic table than nearly anywhere else, it is this moment every week that defines church for me – seeing the bread and seeing you.

It is this moment that somehow captures the mystery of what it means to be church together as pastor and congregation, as all of us saints of God. I am never sure how God turns our bread into something more than bread. Treatises have been written about it, but no one really understands how the power of this sacrament comes to be. As a pastor it is a holy privilege to stand at the table, hold the bread, and proclaim on behalf of all of us the words of Jesus. I have no special powers, I do no magic trick. Truth be told sometimes stray thoughts about other unrelated things float through my mind while I pray the Eucharistic prayer. But in that moment something mysterious and holy is happening by God’s power active in our having gathered together. And we are fed the bread that keeps us alive, keeps us truly living.

But no less mysterious is the way in which God gathers people together and calls them a church, transforms them into the body of Christ, makes them bread for the world. No less mysterious or holy is the ministry we do together in this community. I wish sometimes that I could gather you all in my arms and lift you up like the bread, so that you and I both might know more fully that God is doing something miraculous with us; that God is taking, blessing, breaking, and giving us; that in ways we do not understand, in ways that are beyond our doing, in ways that are beyond our abilities, God is making us church together and in doing so making love and grace known in the depth of our being and to the ends of the world.

You called me here to this place to lead you in the work of stewarding these very mysteries. And so often I have wished you could know, hoped you do know, the power of God at work in the things you have called me here to do, the power of God at work in gathered community. All of those things somehow a facet of this same mystery we meet at the table            :

-There are the moments when hands are laid on the still-dripping head of the baptized to pray for the Holy Spirit, and it feels as if the pulse of God is pouring into the room.

-There are the moments when oil is traced over the cross of Christ on our foreheads with the words “receive this oil as a sign of healing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” and it is as if something profound is opened and released.

-There are the moments at the end of the funeral rite when a hand is laid on the casket or urn and we commend our loved ones back to God and it is as if one can feel the embrace of God holding them close.

I remind you of these mysteries and the many, many more we have experienced together because this is the power of God exercised not by me but through all of us together. This is at least part of what Jesus means by living bread, the bread that feeds us into eternal life. God has pulled us into a great communion of saints, into a single, holy loaf which is time and time again held up to receive the blessing of God and shared for the sake of the world.

But as we talk about these beautiful images, we are aware that our hunger does return and we do face death even though we have shared the living bread. Like the Judeans who grumble against Jesus and like their ancestors before them who grumbled about miraculous bread provided daily each morning in the wilderness, we, too, are skeptical. We are skeptical perhaps that we are capable of bearing the divine. We are skeptical perhaps that despite our own faults and those of our neighbors that we can still be church together. We are skeptical that in the face of all the pain in the world these moments of grace are enough. We are skeptical that God can hold us together through change and through conflict and through fear and through pain. We need the bread again and again to renew us and resurrect us.

I think too often we forget – I forget – what a blessed miracle happens here every Sunday. Yes bread is made for us the body of Christ. Water becomes a womb for rebirth. But before the first note is played or the first word is spoken, God is gathering us up, preparing to lift us high and proclaim us holy and make us food for the world.

And it is not our perfection, but rather our brokenness which allows us to become food for one another and bread for the life of the world. It is the ways in which we allow our humanity to be laid out for one another, the ways in which we come to terms with our failings as much as our successes, the ways in which we name our pain, illness, and grief which God uses in this holy mystery. It is the persistence of God’s feeding through times of exhaustion and pain, anxiety and fear, anger and hardship, through death itself that makes this bread the one that feeds us into eternal life.

And so one more time among you I will hold up bread, and I will behold all of you gathered around the table,  and I invite you to see in that bread yourselves gathered up, blessed, broken and given for the sake of the life of the world.

We give thanks for the meals we have shared together and we trust in the God who keeps feeding us again and again. There will be more meals at this table, more moments of holy mystery. There will be more meals at other tables in the years to come. But it is this one meal that connects us, bound together, one body, one bread, made holy by God’s love.

Wherever you find the bread of life in years to come, do not forget this: that you are God’s beloved. That you are precious to God. That no matter what the world says and no matter what you say to yourself, you are a valued child of God. I pray that you know that life-giving truth deep within you when you touch the water, when you eat the bread, when you gather in community together in this place. And I trust that God will keep feeding you with that truth and ushering you into eternal life, now and forever.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 5, 2018 

²⁴When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were beside the sea, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
  ²⁵When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ ²⁶Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. ²⁷Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is the Son of Man that God, the Father, has sealed.” ²⁸ Then they said to Jesus, “What must we do to perform the works of God?” ²⁹Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one whom God has sent.” ³⁰So they said to him, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? ³¹Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ” ³²Then Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” ³⁴They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
  ³⁵Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” -John 6:24-35

**With thanks to Lauren Winner and her fantastic book Wearing God. The list copied in my sermon below and some of the inspiration for this sermon come from that book on pages 94-95.

What kind of bread is Jesus? As Jesus begins to explain the miracle of feeding a large crowd with only a few loaves and fish, he makes a rather startling claim, the first of the “I am” statements in the gospel of John. Before he proclaims “I am the light of the world, the good shepherd, the true vine, the resurrection and the life, the way, the truth, the life,” Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.”

Which makes us wonder just what kind of bread Jesus might be. Pastor and author Lauren Winner wondered just that and posed the question to a group of people she was meeting with regularly. And they came up with this list, which she records almost as if it is a poem:

A bagel

Rye

Toast with jam

Morning glory muffins

Chocolate tea bread

Rosemary ciabatta

My grandmother’s sourdough

My grandmother’s challah

French toast

A crusty baguette

 

What do you think the bread of life tastes like? What bread do you crave right now?

We make a lot of the fact that Jesus identifies himself with an essential food that more or less exists in every culture around the world. From naan to tortillas to injera to mantou, the list goes on. It’s a basic staple, in many cases one of the most affordable and available forms of sustenance. Jesus identifies with the basic food that helps us survive. It’s the bread we need to exist. We cannot live without it. It’s part of the reason we don’t generally just grab any old food to share at the communion table – we are remembering the essential, life-giving Jesus.

But we also remember that life is more than sustenance. The kind of life that Jesus brings is more than just enough, more than getting by, more than just the basics. If Jesus comes to bring abundant life, than daily bread, the bread of life, is about more than just keeping us alive.

For those who have been ill, hardly able to eat, sometimes the bread of life is just a saltine cracker, something so easy on the stomach that it can be tolerated by those who can’t keep anything else down.

For those who have been lonely the bread of life might be a loaf of banana bread baked by someone just for them, brought over and shared along with conversations.

For those who are grieving, perhaps it is the family dinner roll recipe that has been passed down to a new generation that brings both comfort and tears to the surface when eaten around a holiday table at which some of our loved ones no longer sit.

For those who have denied themselves food out of shame or anxiety, the bread of life might be a rich pastry finally eaten with joy instead of fear.

For those who have just run a long-distance, a stale bagel at the finish line can feel like the bread of life.

Sometimes the bread of life tastes like freedom after years of oppression, like truth-telling in the midst of secrets, like a moment of relief from chronic pain, like a word of grace to someone bearing the weight of guilt. Maybe, as in the first reading today, for someone like Bathsheba, assaulted and widowed by a powerful man, the bread of life is that God notices and cares, even though real justice is never achieved. The bread of life tastes like life offered even in death.

Whatever the bread of life tastes like for you today, I can imagine God standing in the kitchen, apron on, kneading the dough or carefully layering butter into a pastry crust, flour drifting up to God’s hair and dough sticking to holy fingers, preparing just what we need for the day and all the while singing a little tune and remembering each of us, the memories of who we are and how God has taken delight in us.

Jesus’ claim in today’s gospel is more than just bland sustenance, and more even than making sure each person is fed. The claim Jesus makes is about the kind of abundant life we all hope for and the way in which God is working to make it happen.

But, too, we remember that we do not ask God to give me mydaily bread, that instead God teaches us to enjoy the bread of life in community with one another and that in offering us this bread of life God invites us to become bread for the world ourselves. Fed and nourished, we are sent out again. We are empowered to serve so that all might have their daily bread. And like the bread that Jesus provides, we are not all just the same. Each of us is formed and shaped and flavored differently. Each of us has particular gifts that that help feed others, both literally and metaphorically. Each of us has something the world needs. Each has a gift to offer.

And this, too, is part of how God responds to our pleas to “give us today our daily bread.” God calls us together into communities where we become bread for one another. This is who we are as church, called to offer ourselves and our gifts for the sake of feeding others even as we are fed. That’s the gift of church. That’s a gift I cherish as a pastor – the ways in which we have been for one another the bread that keeps us going, the bread that shows us abundant life. This congregation has always needed the many and varied gifts of all the people who are a part of this community, of all the people who have been here and helped sustain this ministry over many decades and of all the people who come even for a brief moment to worship in this place. That is always true, and yet this time of pastoral transition is a time that will make it more clear the ways in which everyone is needed to help the ministry continue to thrive and to serve and to share the love of God with one another and the world.

This community will continue to feast together. And God will continue to feed you the bread of life. But in feeding you, God will also use you to feed others. So as you receive communion today, it will be the same wonderful, homemade bread baked just for this assembly that we share every week. But imagine as you taste it that it takes on the flavor of just the bread you need to receive today. And then as you go from the table, begin to imagine what flavor you might offer to this community and this world, that you may also begin to realize the ways in which God has called you to be part of feeding the hungry world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

9th Sunday after Pentecost
July 22, 2018

¹¹Remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—¹²remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. ¹³But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. ¹⁴For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. ¹⁵He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. ¹⁷So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; ¹⁸for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. ¹⁹So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, ²⁰built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. ²¹In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; ²²in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God. – Ephesians 2:11-22

¹Now when the king was settled in his house, and the Lord had given him rest from all his enemies around him, ²the king said to the prophet Nathan, “See now, I am living in a house of cedar, but the ark of God stays in a tent.” ³Nathan said to the king, “Go, do all that you have in mind; for the Lord is with you.”
  ⁴But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan: ⁵Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? ⁶I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle. ⁷Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel, did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not built me a house of cedar?” ⁸Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David: Thus says the Lord of hosts: I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep to be prince over my people Israel; ⁹and I have been with you wherever you went, and have cut off all your enemies from before you; and I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones of the earth. ¹⁰And I will appoint a place for my people Israel and will plant them, so that they may live in their own place, and be disturbed no more; and evildoers shall afflict them no more, as formerly, ¹¹from the time that I appointed judges over my people Israel; and I will give you rest from all your enemies. Moreover the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house. ¹²When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. ¹³He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. ^14aI will be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me. – 2 Samuel 7:1-14a

When I was 6, we moved to a newly constructed house, and throughout the process of building we visited, sometimes sneaking into the construction site – fascinating for kid and adult alike to see how the house was coming together. To imagine a home first on top of a big hole in the red clay dirt. Then to imagine it on top of a concrete foundation. Then to imagine walls where there was only framing, then to imagine what things would look like once it was all finished even though it was still a drafty construction site. Finally, after what seemed a very long time to a six-year-old, the house was finished and we could move in. But the neighborhood wasn’t yet finished, so for a year or so after we moved in I had a construction site just beyond our backyard – lots of fun to be had even by bookish 6-year-old who wasn’t overly fond of playing outdoors. There is something exciting about the process of building – of watching something come together, of imagining how it will look when it is finished, of the dramatic changes that happen, perhaps even the possibility that it could still be significantly altered and changed as the process evolves.

Of course much that was exciting happened in that house as I grew up there, and there certainly was work my parents had to do to keep the house maintained throughout the years we lived there. But the house itself was basically done, and the upkeep was mostly about sprucing up a room or adjusting the garden here, fixing something broken over there. Those projects lacked the excitement of the building process.

Today we read about King David, now settled in his own house, one we might presume has been built rather well and richly. But he’s itching to build again. Maybe it’s out of genuine love for God, or maybe he just misses the excitement of a good building project, but he tells God it’s time to build God’s house. Even the prophet, the religious advisor to the king, the one who speaks God’s message, even he thinks it’s a grand idea: honor God with a proper temple.

But, as is often the case when we make decisions about what God wants and what we will do for God, God has other plans in mind. God speaks in a vision to the prophet to say that it is not for David to build God a house. God kicks that can down the road at least to the next generation. God seems to be in no real hurry to settle down. God takes the role not of the one who dwells in a house but the role of one who builds one. The Holy Construction Worker promises instead to build David himself into a house, a promise extended and opened up to all the nations in our reading from Ephesians:

“So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, ²⁰built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. ²¹In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; ²²in whom you also are being built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.”

God’s house will be the one God builds out of David and his descendants and all the people that are welcomed into that ever-growing house over the generations. There is a sense in the original language if not in the particular translation we read today that the building is not a finished project. I think it’s because God likes the excitement, possibility, and playfulness of the construction. God, after all, built a world and then continued to tinker with it, co-creating with us new things all the time. God called a single family to bless and be a blessing and then kept opening that family up to wider and wider circles. God assured the world of new life through Jesus but also invited us into the ongoing work of sharing that life with the world.

But we are too often King David, ready to settle down in a finished house. Don’t we like to think of ourselves as finished products? As if we do, or at least should, have everything figured out. We sometimes hold ourselves and others accountable to standards that expect us to be finished houses instead of works in progress. We are, I think, too often afraid of learning the really hard lessons, engaging the really deep work, of changing as we grow, admitting we still have work to be done on ourselves. We ask young people what they want to be when they grow up but we expect adults to have it all figured out. If we began to think of ourselves and those around us as ongoing construction projects, might we find more gentleness in ourselves when we judge our actions and experiences andthose of others?  Would that give us permission to be learning together all the time?

And if we do it to ourselves, we do it with our institutions, too. We tend to want, even when we talk about growth and mission, a stable church. One that has been builtrather than one that is being built. A built church is one that is safe and comfortable. A built church is one that doesn’t require ongoing effort to maintain. A built church allows one to enjoy the fruits of the labor of those who have gone before us without expending the same level of effort. It’s nice to be in a built church, or so I would imagine. I’ve never been in one. I’ve only ever attended, visited, and studied about churches that are being built. Of course there are plenty of well established churches with built buildings and even big churches that run more programs than you can imagine like a well-oiled machine. But I don’t know of one that’s done growing and changing. There are only churches that are in the process of becoming.

As this community experiences continued changes as we look to hire new staff and as I prepare to begin a new call and you prepare to welcome new pastoral leadership, we are reminded that we are not a built church. We are not a church that is finished, but rather one that is always being built, always learning, growing, changing. That requires investment of resources – time, money, energy. It requires teamwork and imagination. It requires attention to the structure that holds the community and vision for what might yet be. And as wonderfully fun as that can be, it can also be tiring, unsettling, and just plain hard.

But know this: the foundation is Jesus Christ. Whatever evolves in this living, breathing, growing, unfinished church is built on as solid a foundation as one can find. I don’t know what the finished project looks like, and none of us will till the whole creation is resurrected and renewed. But what we can do is take delight in the building process. To live into the twists and turns that emerge, the things that have to be dismantled and reassembled to make way for some new part of the design. And we are set free to be gracious with one another as we do that, because we know the foundation and we know the builder. We know them to be faithful. We know them to be wise and strong and compassionate. We know our God to be building us in ways that bring forth a home for all life in our living, breathing, growing, unfinished world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

8th Sunday after Pentecost
July 15, 2018

¹⁴King Herod heard of [the disciples’ preaching,] for Jesus’ name had become known. Some were saying, “John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.” ¹⁵But others said, “It is Elijah.” And others said, “It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.” ¹⁶But when Herod heard of it, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”
  ¹⁷For Herod himself had sent men who arrested John, bound him, and put him in prison on account of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because Herod had married her. ¹⁸For John had been telling Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” ¹⁹And Herodias had a grudge against him, and wanted to kill him. But she could not, ²⁰for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him. ²¹But an opportunity came when Herod on his birthday gave a banquet for his courtiers and officers and for the leaders of Galilee. ²²When his daughter Herodias came in and danced, she pleased Herod and his guests; and the king said to the girl, “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” ²³And he solemnly swore to her, “Whatever you ask me, I will give you, even half of my kingdom.” ²⁴She went out and said to her mother, “What should I ask for?” She replied, “The head of John the baptizer.” ²⁵Immediately she rushed back to the king and requested, “I want you to give me at once the head of John the Baptist on a platter.” ²⁶The king was deeply grieved; yet out of regard for his oaths and for the guests, he did not want to refuse her. ²⁷Immediately the king sent a soldier of the guard with orders to bring John’s head. He went and beheaded him in the prison, ²⁸brought his head on a platter, and gave it to the girl. Then the girl gave it to her mother. ²⁹When his disciples heard about it, they came and took his body, and laid it in a tomb. – Mark 6:14-29

It’s easy to paint Herod as the enemy for this party he throws. Here’s a political ruler who employs violence and the power of the state at the whims of a family member bearing a grudge. A ruler who clamps down on someone at least tryingto speak the truth in a world that desperately needs to hear it. A ruler whose power is threatened by the success of a few itinerant preachers who have something to say about his ethical standards.

He throws a party for himself. It seems a lavish affair with excess of food and wine. Children are employed for the entertainment of adults. Herod, drunk or foolish or both, promises anything his daughter wants. Her mother employs for her own violent purposes the child, who becomes again a pawn in a twisted game of the adults. But Herod must please and entertain the guests, so against his better judgment (which is admittedly not that great to begin with) he serves up John the Baptist’s head on a platter. And so the party continues.

It’s easy to point fingers at Herod and his gang. But let’s consider for a moment that there might be parallels that we have come to accept. Rulers in our own country and abroad whose sense of power is easily threatened by truth- tellers. Public debauchery normalized and even celebrated. Parents and others who exploit their children. Children used as political pawns and in the process exposed to violence that shapes and scars them. Those who speak out and those who live on the margins silenced and too often killed. This is the party we are forced to attend.

And it is also the party we chooseto attend and sometimes even the one we choose to throw for others. Our inner demons well up violence of word and deed in us. Our greed and our fear too often shape our decisions. We settle for voices that feel powerful even if they are not truthful. We choose to please others even when it silences our own voices and the voices of others. We use others for the accomplishing of our own ends. We participate in the manipulation of the vulnerable through systems that oppress and marginalize, and sometimes we do it directly.

The thing is, most of us don’t really want to be at this party. We recognize at least some of the problems for what they are. We know it and regret it when we discover ourselves taking the lead. We simply don’t know how to find a different kind of celebration. It takes a great deal of courage to make a new path.

Perhaps it’s because in this party we all seem stuck in, people aren’t valued as human beings. Their inherent worth isn’t taken for granted. It’s easy to see that in the egregious violations Herod makes, but the longer we stay at this party, the more we become accustomed to the devaluing of human lives, the more we start to doubt our own belovedness, the more we lose touch with our own inherent value. The disregard for human life calls our own sense of self into question.

Curiously for a gospel reading in worship, Jesus does not appear in this part of the text. Jesus is not at this party. Jesus is off somewhere else at a different party. He’s in farming and fishing territory teaching and preaching and healing and welcoming. He’s sharing his power with twelve rag-tag disciples, who, miraculously, go out to teach and preach and heal and welcome, too. This is a party Jesus is throwing for everybody else. It’s a party at which the broken and sick are given first priority. It’s a party at which violence – that done by people and that done by disease and poverty – is healed. It’s a party in which the promises made are about love and compassion.

But it can be hard to go join Jesus’ party when we have too long believed ourselves only worthy of the violence and destruction of Herod’s. It can be hard to find the courage to join that new kind of celebration. And even more courage to start that kind of celebration on our own. And this story reminds us that even when we do start Jesus’ kind of party, the Herods are likely to serve our heads up on a platter before too long because this other way of being, this other way of valuing human beings, this other way of transforming the world threatens the power and stability of Herod’s way of life.

And yet this is exactly the calling of the church – to keep throwing a Jesus party Sunday after Sunday and then to take it out into the streets in between.To serve at an open table the very life of Jesus. To invite all people in toward the life-giving center. To sing, and, yes, Lutherans, maybe even clap and dance, not as those at Herod’s party but in ways that respond with joy and gratitude for God and for one another. To listen to hard truths that have the capacity to reshape us to be more open, more welcoming, more affirming of our own value as human beings and to recognize that value and belovedness in every other human being. It’s a challenging task, one we sometimes meet and sometime fail to meet.

But Jesus does not just sit around waiting for people to realize which party is ultimately more life-giving. As Herod’s revelry carries on Jesus is busy with the disciples teaching and healing and driving out the things that are robbing the community of its life and livelihood. And then he takes the party right into the center of Herod’s celebration. Not in this scene, but soon enough, Jesus leads the way into Jerusalem. Jesus goes to the seat of the local political and military power, the outpost of the empire. He doesn’t wait for them to catch on; he goes right into the middle of it. Into the exploitation, the violence, the greed and corruption. And they do to him what they do to John the Baptist. They kill him off.

But that won’t stop Jesus’ party. Because when they kill Jesus he just goes to round up the dead to join the ranks of partygoers and comes back, alive, along with them right there in the middle of Herod’s celebration. And then the Jesus party keeps marching on. Right down to you and me. Right here, where Jesus has promised to show up – in the word and water, in the bread and wine. Jesus has come into the midst of our hurt and hurting, into the midst of our empires and corruption, into the midst of all the things we’ve done and left undone. And throws us that party all over again, until we feel deep inside us the worthiness God bestows on all life, until we are so overflowing with that love and compassion that we can’t help joining the party after all, and throwing open our doors till all the world can join us.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

6th Sunday after Pentecost
July 1, 2018

Some days it’s all we can do just to keep it all together. Trying to keep the plates spinning in the air while juggling some flaming arrows and doing an Irish jig. Sometimes it’s the normal stuff of life. Sometimes it’s the world that seems to be falling apart around us. Sometimes it’s really terrible, life-changing stuff that is simply beyond our control. But our culture tends to prioritize keeping it all together. At least look like you’re doing ok. Keep your honest emotions to yourself, and don’t ask for too much help.

Jesus’ time wasn’t really that different in some respects. They lived, as we do, in a fairly ordered society. Separated social classes with different privileges. Different rules and social roles for people of different genders. In a sense, keep within your assigned boundaries. Don’t go transgressing beyond your place. Keep it all together.

Imagine then this respected elder, the leader of a synagogue, come to put himself in the position of beggar at Jesus’ feet. The sense of desperation, the sense that he can no longer hold it together watching his daughter suffer to the point of death. He comes desperate for a miracle to the man who is already starting to draw the disdain of the established religious community. But the boundaries that governed his daily life were set aside when it got to the point where he could no longer hold it together.

But on the way to heal the daughter, Jesus encounters another in need of healing. And here we should note that in Jesus’ time they had another boundary about certain illnesses and even natural bodily functions. Basically, the rule was keep your insides inside. Skin conditions like leprosy, anything with oozing sores or oozing anything could make you ritually unclean in religious and social terms. Anything where the boundary between inside and outside seemed to get blurred. Women were unclean for a set number of days on a monthly basis, so imagine this woman with uncontrolled hemorrhaging for twelve years. She is desperate. Her body is literally unable to hold itself together in ways that society deemed normal and appropriate. And the social consequences have her falling apart. So she throws out the boundaries between ritually clean and unclean and between women and men in order to approach Jesus with the faith that just touching him could heal her.

Two stories of Jesus being approached by boundary crossers, people whose lives are falling apart, people who can no longer keep up the charade of everything being ok. People whose mess is spilling out all over the place. And Jesus’ response? If you’ve been following along in the gospel of Mark to this point, it will come as no surprise: Jesus transgresses the boundaries to bring healing and wholeness. Jesus goes to the sick child to lay hands on a little one who is not of social importance despite her father’s position. And on the way, when he is touched by the woman of deep faith, he not only seeks her out to speak with her transgressing the gender boundaries, but even more deeply, his own healing power flows out of him uncontrolled. He becomes, if only for a moment, like the woman who for 12 years had no control over what was going on with her body. He is unable to keep his insides inside. God’s healing flows out of him, uncontrolled. Jesus takes on the same kind of boundary transgression the woman has been experiencing, and healing occurs.

God refuses to keep it all together for the sake of a dying child and a suffering woman. Neither of their names are recorded for history. Yet in their own way they both draw out from Jesus not just the power of healing and not just the power of crossing boundaries, but also the power of letting compassion flow freely. Jesus lets himself be interrupted. And beyond even his own control his healing power flows from him.

So what word does this speak to us, to people who too often try to keep it all together? I wonder that it might be a challenge for us to let our boundaries be a little more permeable, to let a bit more of our insides out, metaphorically at least. Because it is in doing so that the opportunity to be healed and the opportunity to offer healing emerges.

Maybe we could start in our church communities. I’ve said this before, but I know I still struggle with it myself: what if our church communities were places we really let ourselves fall apart, or at least a place where we stopped having to pretend we’re keeping it all together? I see it happen sometimes – tears that begin to flow, fears and worries that can no longer be kept silent, even anger that bubbles up. But all too often I worry we’re trying to hold it in. Keeping that boundary for self-protection is one thing, but keeping the boundary so that others aren’t uncomfortable isn’t what Christian community is really about.

But maybe we could start doing it other places, too. Like at our national borders. What if we began to see those borders not as impermeable boundaries, but rather a marking line that helps us organize laws and governing structures for the flourishing of all people but which allowed people to come and go with more ease? How might our current news cycles be different if we considered the ways in which God’s very body in Jesus refused to keep a firm barrier to the flow of healing and compassion.

Or maybe we can just try to cut ourselves some slack when we just can’t keep it all together and remember that Jesus couldn’t either. And it took a ritually unclean woman, a desperate father, and a dying girl to help us see it, to help Jesussee it. When we are falling apart, when the world is falling apart, when we don’t even know anymore whether our insides are in or out, God’s compassion cannot stay contained. God doesn’t keep it all together either. And it’s in that, in God poured out, flowing out for us and for all people, where we find healing and grace. It’s in letting ourselves fall apart into God’s mercy and love that we find ourselves made whole again.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

5th Sunday after Pentecost
June 24, 2018

³⁵When evening had come, [Jesus said to the disciples,] “Let us go across to the other side.” ³⁶And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. ³⁷A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. ³⁸But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” ³⁹He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. ⁴⁰He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” ⁴¹And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” -Mark 4:35-41

For years as a kid I simply refused to get on roller coasters. I was too afraid. It was too high. It would not be fun to plummet at high speeds toward the ground only to be flung back up again. Until one day I finally got up the courage to try one. I remember nervously standing in line, and then once strapped in the fear built and built and built as the car ticked slowly up the track. And then the moment of pause between up and down, as if even the air stopped moving around us for a moment. And then the rush of the descent. At once terrifying and exhilarating, disorienting and thrilling. And for years I rode them every chance I could get. Every time that fear building, the pause between up and down, and the rush of the ride that followed. The fact that one is always a little afraid when hurtling along a track crashing toward the earth only to be flung up again is part of the excitement. If there wasn’t a little fear it wouldn’t be that thrilling.

It seems to me that the disciples have a similar experience on the sea. This is still early enough in the story that they have a healthy fear and awe of Jesus, and they aren’t quite sure about his request to suddenly cross the sea (lake really) of Galilee. Jesus falls asleep on them and a storm suddenly begins to churn the water. The boat is about to be swamped. The fear is building and building, terrified of what might come. Stuck in a place they cannot get out of. When they wake Jesus, he rebukes the sea, and the wind ceases immediately. It is as if there is not a single particle of air moving, not a person makes a move. Not calm, but a heightened awareness of a moment of great power. Does that moment between up and down last a split second or several minutes, no one is quite sure. And then, though the wind and sea remain calm, the disciples are suddenly flung into a new reality. This rabbi they have chosen to follow commands the very forces of nature. Healing people is one thing, commanding the spirits another, but speaking a word to the sea and it obeys, they have realized they are on a much wilder and perhaps more thrilling ride than they had signed up for.

We often tell this story of the disciples on the sea as one that moves from fear to faith. As if before the disciples didn’t trust Jesus to keep them safe and afterward they did. As if things were rough but then Jesus made things calm and comfortable and nice. But I don’t think that’s what this story is about at all. This is a story about the way in which Jesus has the power to transform both our fear and our faith. When the storm suddenly blows in they are afraid. Afraid for their lives. But they also believe Jesus can do something about it. They have faith. Like most of us who consider ourselves people of faith they probably didn’t really know how they wanted Jesus to fix what was threatening them, they just cried out in desperate hope that he could do something. And after the first moment of stillness, comes a new kind of faith, not just in a distant God but a God infused in the wind and water, the very elements of daily life. And a new kind of fear, not of drowning in the sea but a holy awe, a thrilling yet terrifying realization of the God who has called them into this adventure. Bringing them across the seas to new shores, to new places where God’s grace will bring healing and life through them.

So maybe this isn’t a story about getting faith, but about the ways in which God moves us from a kind of paralyzing fear to the thrilling and sometimes terrifying awe of God’s peace-infusing mission in the world. Perhaps it’s a story of the ways in which God calls us to cross the barriers that keep us and the whole world from that exhilarating if scary opportunity to live into God’s call. Jesus saves them from the storm but sends them careening toward the cross and to opportunity after opportunity to throw themselves into the fray for the sake of God’s healing and restorative work in the world.

It’s the story that some people tell of entering recovery as addicts. Drowning not only in the storm of substance use, but in the internal storms that rage underneath. Hitting a moment of clarity or despair, and then the awesome fear of living into that new-found freedom, and that ongoing, difficult work of living into a new life of recovery. A new life of trusting a God who can silence even the wind and the waves.

It’s the story of some people who finally find their true calling after drowning in work they couldn’t find meaning in but were terrified to leave behind. And then finding the possibility of living into some new direction, some new hope, some new source of meaning. And it’s terrifying to start over, to try something untried, but exhilarating to live into that kind of holy fear of trusting in a God who can silence even the wind and the waves.

It’s the story of some people who have came out of the closet as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Not all, but some have found themselves drowning in societal shame, in fear of losing those that love them, afraid to be put out of their families, their workplaces, and their homes. And thank to many communities that provide safe haven and welcome, they have found a new life, not always easy, sometimes a bit frightening, but as a bold witness to their trust in a God who can silence even the wind and the waves.

I wonder, then where we today find ourselves beset by storms, beset by wind and waves that hold us in paralyzing fear. Our nation is drowning under policies that tear children from families at the border. We all are at risk of drowning, in some cases literal drowning, from climate change. All of us are in danger from the endless storm of racism and xenophobia that shapes our world. We are in danger of being torn apart, of being lost in the storm. It overwhelms us. We beg for Jesus to wake up.

But when that moment of calm comes in the midst of the storm, when we finally find ourselves in stillness, when that fear is momentarily silenced and we see with greater clarity, we best be prepared for the way in which that moment of stillness is about to launch us into a new kind of holy awe and a new kind of working for peace and calm for all people and all creatures and all things. And we ought to be prepared for the ways in which it will bring us more deeply into relationship with the one who is powerful enough to command even the forces of nature.

That is the prayer we speak and the prayer we sing and the prayer we eat and drink today. A prayer for peace, for calm, for an end to the storm. And a prayer that we might be sent, held safely by the God of the cosmos, into storm-defying work in the world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

4th Sunday after Pentecost
June 17, 2018

³⁴Samuel went to Ramah; and Saul went up to his house in Gibeah of Saul. ³⁵Samuel did not see Saul again until the day of his death, but Samuel grieved over Saul. And the Lord was sorry that he had made Saul king over Israel.
 ^16:1The Lord said to Samuel, “How long will you grieve over Saul? I have rejected him from being king over Israel. Fill your horn with oil and set out; I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.” ²Samuel said, “How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me.” And the Lord said, “Take a heifer with you, and say, ‘I have come to sacrifice to the Lord.’ ³Invite Jesse to the sacrifice, and I will show you what you shall do; and you shall anoint for me the one whom I name to you.” ⁴Samuel did what the Lord commanded, and came to Bethlehem. The elders of the city came to meet him trembling, and said, “Do you come peaceably?” ⁵He said, “Peaceably; I have come to sacrifice to the Lord; sanctify yourselves and come with me to the sacrifice.” And he sanctified Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice.
  ⁶When they came, he looked on Eliab and thought, “Surely the Lord‘s anointed is now before the Lord.” ⁷But the Lord said to Samuel, “Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” ⁸Then Jesse called Abinadab, and made him pass before Samuel. He said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” ⁹Then Jesse made Shammah pass by. And he said, “Neither has the Lord chosen this one.” ¹⁰Jesse made seven of his sons pass before Samuel, and Samuel said to Jesse, “The Lord has not chosen any of these.” ¹¹Samuel said to Jesse, “Are all your sons here?” And he said, “There remains yet the youngest, but he is keeping the sheep.” And Samuel said to Jesse, “Send and bring him; for we will not sit down until he comes here.” ¹²He sent and brought him in. Now he was ruddy, and had beautiful eyes, and was handsome. The Lordsaid, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” ¹³Then Samuel took the horn of oil, and anointed him in the presence of his brothers; and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward. Samuel then set out and went to Ramah. – 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13

²⁶[Jesus] said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground,²⁷and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. ²⁸The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. ²⁹But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”
  ³⁰He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? ³¹It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; ³²yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”
  ³³With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; ³⁴he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. – Mark 4:26-34

 

The reign of God isn’t about you. And, also, the reign of God is all about you.

It’s not about what we want or what we accomplish. It’s not about our success, even in important matters. It’s not brought closer or accomplished faster by our wit, our power, our money, our committees, or our will. We pray “Yourkingdom come. Yourwill be done.” We pray that because at the end of the day it’s not really about what we want, which is just as well since sometimes what we want isn’t so great.

And yet the reign of God is all about us. Not just because God welcomes us all into the new creation God is establishing and not just because God loves us allinto resurrection. It’s all about us because despite the fact that we don’t have the power or even a pure desire for the reign of God, over and over again God chooses us to be the ones who bring in that very reign. God chooses to work out that new creation using ordinary, flawed people.

We are reading this summer about the kings of the Hebrew people long ago.  Kings God advised them wouldn’t work out very well, but Kings God nonetheless called and walked beside and used for the work of God. They certainly weren’t perfect, and yet God used every one to shape and mold the trajectory of salvation. King David, anointed in our first reading today, was an overlooked youngest son, too young at the time to even be considered as part of the process. And he didn’t turn out to always be the most moral man in the world – more of those stories to come in future weeks of lectionary readings. Yet he became famous in the history of the Hebrew people and the archetype for prophets and kings to come, Jesus included. God chose David, I think, not so much because David had it all together, had all the right skills, or was the most righteous, but because he was the one – the forgotten and ignored one – through whom God wanted to do that particular part of bringing in the reign of God.

That’s what Jesus’ farming parables are about this week, too. The first is simply about how seeds grow into plants. The sower puts down the seeds. Perhaps normally there would be some tending and watering. But the growth of the seed into a plant does not require the sower to be present. Even the best gardeners can only support and tend, setting up the best conditions for growth. They do not technically make something grow. To you who have poured your lives into tending the work of God’s reign of justice and peace in one way or another, in your professional or personal arenas, and who long to see that work grow into its fullness, take heart: God is responsible for bringing in the new creation and God is using your work in that bigger endeavor. And all of us might take heart that the fullness of the harvest is promised and it will be enough to feed the world. It’s about God’s work. And it’s about God giving you a part in that work.

And the mustard seed, too. The kind of mustard shrub that grew prolifically like a weed in Jesus’ time, was not a magnificent sight to behold. It was not one of the cedars of Lebanon with a mighty trunk that loomed over everything below it. It was a mess of different stems and branches. A messy and overgrown thing, with no clear central trunk and no particularly grand display to the world. Which made it a perfect shelter for all manner of living things. This, Jesus says, is the reign of God. No one twig or leaf and not even a single stem or trunk if you could even call it that on a mustard plant, sheltered anything, but as each piece grew as part of the whole shrub, homes were made for birds and rodents and insects, and who knows what else. It’s not about any one part of the plant, and yet each part of it contributes to the whole which creates the shelter – all gardened not by a farmer but by God.

This is what God is doing – calling us, employing us, leading us in the work of bringing in the new creation, and yet reminding us that no oneof us can bring in the kingdom and none of us can do it by our own power.

I think this speaks to the disturbing news that has been ongoing but finally seemed to capture national attention this week about the separation of more than 11,000 children from their parents at the border, sometimes in violent, rough, and sudden ways. These are in many cases people exercising their international right to seek asylum. They have committed the equivalent of a misdemeanor offense and often they are looking to turn themselves in for protection. And the leaders of our country are using the Christian scriptures to justify it, much to bafflement of many of us who are reading those same scriptures. Every major denomination, including our own, has condemned the practice and yet it continues. Ultimately it’s God’s work to bring the world beyond the conditions that create refugees and to create a world without national borders and without racism and tribalism and whatever else is at play here. And at the same time each of us has a role to play in that work. God chooses to work through small things and small actions and through people who don’t seem all that powerful to create the reign of God. I hear in our readings today the prodding to open our ears to the calling of God that we might figure out what our part might be in changing even just this one devastating barrier to the reign of God. Your phone call, your protest, your prayer will not alone change the course of this atrocity, but the work God is doing to transform this situation needs all of us to be a part of the work.

But beyond this moment, beyond this very important but specific issue, we struggle with this tension all the time. We hope and pray for God’s will to be done and trust that one way or another it will be. That sometimes leads us to throw ourselves into the work and other times to become complacent trusting someone else will do it. Churches, including our own, wrestle with that all the time. How can we be the kind of church that grows from a tiny seed into shelter for many? It’s God’s work, and yet each one of us is essential to the way in which God chooses to bring that work about. Each one of us has gifts that God chooses to use, and we are all the better for it when we try to listen for that call to use them.

The seeds for the growing reign of God have been planted in us. They are sown in us in all manner of ways, and God will bring them to fruition. The harvest will be abundant. In the growth there will be shelter for those who need it. And we, tiny seeds or tiny branches that we may be, are made part of this grand and sprawling reign that is already sprouting among us.

– Pastor Steven Wilco