Memorial Service for Richard Bachtold
February 22, 2015

¹⁷For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
¹⁸But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
¹⁹I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
²⁰No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, 
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.
²¹They shall build houses and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
²²They shall not build and another inhabit;
they shall not plant and another eat;
for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be,
and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.
²³They shall not labor in vain,
or bear children for calamity; 
for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD — 
and their descendants as well.
²⁴Before they call I will answer,
while they are yet speaking I will hear.
²⁵The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox;
but the serpent — its food shall be dust!
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the LORD. – Isaiah 65:17-25

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb  ²through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.  ³Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him;  ⁴they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.  ⁵And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.- Revelation 22:1-5

It is not many places outside of moments like these that we see death and life present together. We gather to remember Richard, to remember death: its swiftness and cruelty. And we the living stand grieving together. We acknowledge what death has stolen and yet we proclaim resurrection. We cannot stop death and yet we offer the hope of God’s new life poured out for Richard, for us, and for all creation.

But maybe there are more places in our world where death and life come together than we realize at first. Having had these last few weeks to begin reading some of Richard’s poetry, I’ve come to realize how deeply he saw the two intertwined. With a poetic view of the world around him he wrestled with the presence of life and death in all creation, an awareness of the divine infusing and connecting all life even through change and decay. As we struggle to come to terms with death once again come too close to us, we cling to the promise that Christ’s resurrection is real and that Christ’s resurrection is now, mingled among us in life and in death.

But we struggle to see it. We struggle to see Isaiah’s vision of God’s holy mountain. We cannot imagine a place where death does not suddenly cut lives short. A place of peace and justice for all living things.  A vision that is still so far from being realized. A vision of creation restored to wholeness, something Richard was deeply committed in his life and which we continue to strive toward. And yet in the first of his poems we read, Richard’s own words transform every step of life, every twist and turn and change, purposeful or wandering, forward or backward, as a step toward this final, holy transformation. In the everyday world where things change and eventually turn back to dust, there in the very changes taking place is God’s work of bringing all of us toward that holy mountain home, where life is restored and grief is no more. In every difficult moment when things are different now without the one we love, his words remind us of the power of God to make each of those difficult moments a part of our journey, a step toward the holy mountain that Richard is now fully a part of – the promise that resurrection is real and resurrection is now.

And we struggle to see the vision of God laid out in Revelation. A vision of a crystal-clear river feeding a city at peace and a tree of life whose leaves hold forth the healing of the nations. When death destroys our daily life it seems too far off to be real. When nations continue to rage against each other, it seems impossible that this tree of life could exist. And yet again in poetry Richard pointed to the old apple tree, which like the tree of life is rooted in earth and stretching to heaven. Reminding us that every tree becomes for us a tree of life proclaiming with its branches the coming resurrection. Whether it’s the old apple tree now gone, or the new one in its place, or the beautiful tree in front of their house that will be a resting place some of these ashes – each tree, rooted in the soil and stretching to the heavens, becomes a reminder that even in our world of death, resurrection is real and resurrection is now.

And in the feast we share of bread and wine, we have one more reminder that in the face of death, God offers a feast of life. In this meal of ordinary bread and ordinary wine, the promise of life is held forth. At this table and every table where bread is shared, God joins us the living to those who live now at the feast of life. And here again, life and death are present together, Christ’s promise of life shared by us who only get a taste and by those who now feast in full. Resurrection is real, proclaims the bread and wine, and resurrection is now.

So maybe it is that death and resurrection are always mingled together, not just when we gather to mourn but in the world around us all the time, refreshing us at every turn with the hope of God’s promise of life to us. All around us there is the power of Christ’s love poured out for us in our sadness and confusion, in struggle and pain, in life and in death. And so these words of another of Richard’s poems as one more reminder for us who mourn that resurrection is real and resurrection is now:

“I Have Faith” by Richard Bachtold

that the guiding light in a faithful poet’s living words
will prevail in their daily struggle with death,
that just one drop of water’s life will eventually revive
all dying oceans,
that one wild white rose will bloom forever beside
an abandoned grave,
that one blade of grass will sing a holy song comparable
to hymns chorused by a thousand angels,
that one poetic word of forgiveness will redeem all that is dying
in a vast sea of raging death,
that one unknown voice of sacred Silence will prayerfully
proclaim the advent of an everlasting Light during
the darkest night
that one compassionate deed will sustain all dying strangers
seeking a final Home,
that each year the last oak leaf will find a Heavenly Home
in the waiting earth as winter approaches,
and that a creative vision of the Unknown will reveal
a thousand resurrections for all that have sung
the Song of Life.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

 

 

First Sunday in Lent
February 22, 2015

⁸Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him,  ⁹“As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you,  ¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark.  ¹¹I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.”  ¹²God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations:  ¹³I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.  ¹⁴When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds,  ¹⁵I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh.  ¹⁶When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”  ¹⁷God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.” – Genesis 9:8-17

¹²And the Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness.  ¹³He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him. – Mark 1:12-13

https://embed-ssl.ted.com/talks/daniel_goldstein_the_battle_between_your_present_and_future_self.html

In Homer’s Odyssey, there is a brief story about Odysseus and the Sirens. The hero, long delayed on his journey home to his waiting family, heads toward the legendary island of the sirens. These beautiful women sing enchanting songs that lure in sailors who will be so long drawn in that they will die transfixed by the glory of their song. But Odysseus decides that he must hear a song that is so enchanting. He must know what it is like.

So he creates what researchers call a commitment device. Having filled the ears of all his sailors with wax he has some trusted men tie him firmly to the mast of the ship so that he cannot then be drawn in or guide his sailors to their deaths either, so that he will not give in to temptation. He gives up his position of captain, giving himself limitations that he might experience their song without fear of giving in to temptation.

That is what we humans do with temptation. Two competing voices within us – what we want now and what we want for our future selves. The present-minded self wants to hear the song; the future-minded self wants to get home in one piece. And they argue with one another. So our future-minded self sets up these commitment devices – a reward or punishment or safeguard for the sake of the future self. Not that our present-minded self doesn’t find ways to weasel out of it.

We give in to all kinds of temptations. We eat the donut despite our plan for healthy eating. We skip our exercise to get an extra 30 minutes of sleep in on a cold morning. We put aside a paper, a lesson, a work task that needs our attention to go out for a fun evening. Giving in to our short term pleasure over our long-term goals. But those are the easy ones. Things that aren’t really bad as long as they aren’t all the time.

Real temptations are much more complicated. The temptation to make life choices to please someone else or gain notoriety or popularity. The temptation to sacrifice relationships for career or career for relationships when what we really want is the other. The temptation to save money to the point that we forget to live in the present. Or the temptation to live so much in the present that we never consider saving for the future. These are the things that are more challenging to come up with commitment devices for. How can we ensure that we don’t give in to these temptations?

And they get more serious still. What about when things fall apart and the situation is so far gone that we encounter the temptation to throw it all away. To walk away from my job, my partner, my community, my life, rather than stay and work through the challenge. Sometimes the temptation is too much and we need the community around us. A community that is committed to helping bind us against our temptations.

According to Mark’s gospel, we don’t know which of these temptations haunt Jesus in his forty days in the wilderness. Was he tempted to acts of glory and fame? To claim power for himself? To lead a political revolution? To achieve his work at the cost of others around him? To give up and walk away from the whole thing?

But Jesus’ sojourn in the wilderness is not God’s first introduction to temptation. In the Genesis flood story, God gives in to temptation to wipe away the mess that has emerged on the planet. Frankly it doesn’t take much paying attention to the news to realize that a lot of things in our world are at that point. Prolonged periods of war and violence? Planetary destruction? Nuclear warfare? There are days when it seems the only solution is to wipe it all out and start over. If you were in God’s place and could wipe it all away, would you be tempted to decide that’s better than the suffering that will otherwise continue? But what we read today is the story of what God does after the flood. Looking at the destruction, God decides it wasn’t worth it after all. As awful as things were there was still something to love in the midst of it. There was still a joy in all living things that could not be removed by the brokenness of those same living things. And so God employs a commitment device, not a mast but a bow in the clouds. “This is it. I hereby bind myself to this sign in the clouds that there will be no flood of total destruction again.” God’s reminder, tighter and more secure than any rope could be, the reminder not to give in to that impulse again.

But why? Why promise this, knowing that things will only repeat themselves? Why promise this, knowing that the future will bring suffering for people and for the planet? I have to think that it’s like Odysseus who so longed to hear the sirens and their beautiful song that it was worth the suffering that he had to endure to do it, worth the self-imposed limitation. In the aftermath of the flood, the temptation for God to experience the song of human life was simply too good to pass up. God had to know what it was like. For all the pain it might bring, it was worth God binding God’s self to this promise. Out of great love for all things living, God promises to put up with the self-imposed limitations, to put up with the pain and violence we create in order that God might see us live and love us through it.

This Lent our readings will take us week-by-week through some of the ways that God does this over-and-over again binding God’s self for the sake of a people who will not, who cannot respond in turn, until we come to the story where God does literally bind God’s self, not to a mast, but to the cross, where God does not give in to the temptation to escape, that even death might be bound up in God’s promise.

And then one more binding. In baptism, we are bound to the cross. With the cross traced on our foreheads, God says to each of us, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set the sign of the cross on your foreheads just as I set the bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I see it, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again overwhelm you.”

And so we begin this Lenten journey together bound by God, bearing the sign of the covenant on our brow, that we too might know the beauty of the song of life in the midst of the chaos around us, and that we might live and be loved through every trial and temptation we face.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Ash Wedensday 2015

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

Just who does God think he is? Does God think she can just come in here and tell us what to do? Sometimes that’s how I react to the readings for Ash Wednesday. It can feel as if God the all-powerful, God the one who supposedly doesn’t need anything from us, is laying out rules about how we’re supposed to do things. Give alms, but be careful to do it just so and in secret. Pray, but don’t do it the way you usually try to do it with your big words and long sentences and certainly not on the street corners. Fast, and don’t bother with all that disfiguring your face business because we all see right through that anyway. Keep it a secret. And if you get into the Joel reading –  God wants fasting, weeping, mourning, the rending of hearts. It’s a lot to get right.

I’m not saying I don’t want to be a good person or that I don’t want to engage in spiritual practices, but sometimes Lent feels like a burden – one more thing to add to the list. One more thing that gets lived out in a far-from-perfect manner. One more set of external expectations. And I’m just a little uncomfortable with the sense of secrecy around it all. Can’t God just be satisfied that I showed up and tried to be nice today? Do I have to add a Lenten discipline? And sure people talk about alternative Lenten disciplines like adding something instead of giving something up. They make it sound like it’ll be fun. And maybe they can be, but I’m not convinced.

Too many of us, semi-consciously perhaps, imagine God demanding these things of us like a tyrant, or at best like a parent dishing out bad-tasting medicine for our sinful nature. We imagine God just longing for us to get ourselves together and get it right for once. Or God laying out the qualifications for relationship with God. Do this and you get to be part of the in-crowd. And in an attempt to please God we do our best to engage in these practices of almsgiving, fasting, and prayer, and carry the burden of trying, unsuccessfully, to be good enough. It seems like God has awfully high expectations of people who are, after all, made of dust and ashes. And I say this as someone who generally understands God as gracious and loving, pouring out blessing in abundance. It’s just that we’re so used to that other model in our world. We are too used to treating ourselves and each other with harshness. We are used to having to live up to standards to get anywhere in life.

As we enter the season of Lent together, perhaps we can find a different way to hear these readings. Perhaps in them we might find the words of life that we long to hear when we come to the scriptures. I wonder if tonight we might hear them spoken by God not as all-powerful creator, or even all-knowing parent, but spoken by God as lover or best friend. How might we hear them differently if they come, as I believe they do, from one whose heart aches to be near to us.

Jesus pleads with us to open ourselves to generous living for the sake of others, to find the freeing openness to relationship that comes with letting go of the things we hold onto. Jesus pleads with us to drop the pretense and be honest in our relationship with God and with others. Jesus invites us to strip away the things we too easily give our energy and attention to that we might be closer in relationship with the one who yearns for us. Not a rule book for wayward children, but a love letter longing for deeper connection.

And the whole secrecy business? I think God wants us to slow down and experience God’s response of love and blessing rather than to be so filled with the response of the world’s all-too-often-false praise and flattery – attention that inevitably fails us. This is not a call to the kind of secrecy that hides in dark corners, but to the kind of intimacy shared between a young couple falling in love.

The thing is that on Ash Wednesday we remember that God yearns for us even though we are dust creatures, even though we are bound to return to the dust from which we came. God yearns for us even though it will mean that God is always the one left caring for us in our pain, always the one aching for us when we are unfaithful, and always the one grieving for us when we die.

On Ash Wednesday we proclaim that we are mortal and broken, dying and too often unfaithful and that God still throws a wedding banquet for us anyway. For ashes and dust God lays out a feast. The body of Christ for you. The blood of Christ for you. God’s offer of love and faithfulness to creatures who will not last.

May this Lenten call to almsgiving, prayer, and fasting be a for us a message of love, a message of invitation, an offer for a deep and abiding relationship filled with richness and blessing from ashes to ashes, from dust to dust, and forevermore.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

²Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them,  ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them.  ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus.  ⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.  ⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved listen to him!”  ⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
⁹As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. -Mark 9:2-9     

Today’s reading ought to stop us in our tracks. Jesus is transfigured into a brilliantly shining figure before three chosen disciples. Two men long since dead are standing with Jesus conversing as if it is the most ordinary thing in the world. And perhaps in the timeless sort of space that these kind of events tend to occupy, the event feels both long and full and at the same time too brief and fleeting. Two of the disciples stand silent and the other tries – unsuccessfully  it seems – to make some sense of the whole thing. But it seems all they can do in the end, especially with Jesus’ injunction never to speak of it until after the resurrection, is stop and experience it. To revel in what God has just revealed to them. And our reading of the text today invites us to stop, stare, and revel in this scene.

But so many other things clamor for our attention and cause us to stop short in a different way. Events in our lives interrupt our normal day-to-day progression of plodding along, one foot in front of the other. Some of those can be positive – things like additions to the family, kids moving on to new stages in life, or big milestones to celebrate. It’s as if everything else stops, or at least we want to make it stop, so that we can focus our time, energy, and attention on the task at hand.

And sometimes what stops us short is not so positive. A reminder of our mortality and how swiftly we can come to face it. When we learned this week of Richard’s death less than a week after a formal diagnosis, what does one do but stand speechless for a moment. Or another story about violence in our news this week, like the one about the three young Muslim students in North Carolina shot and killed over a parking dispute. After all the conversation about gun violence and about inclusion of minority groups, we face one more to add to the growing list. What can we do but stand speechless for a moment. Or maybe it’s nothing so dramatic, but simply the mounding stress of all the little things that pile up – long hours, never-ending lists of tasks – that stop us from being able to carry on as normal.

Sometimes it starts to seem that in our day-to-day lives, all we have to stop and stare at is filled with pain or suffering, tragedy and loss, fear and anxiety. Our untransfigured, unbleached world all too often leaves us staring and speechless. Let me be clear, though, that I don’t mean to criticize us for that. It’s simply part of our reality. It’s what leaves us longing for today’s wondrous image, vision fair. It seems to me that we who are so often stopped short by life, are desperately in need of this little vision of the coming Easter before we enter Lent, this vision of God’s reality as we continue to live mired in the reality of our world.

And so it seems to me that at least as much as Peter, James, and John, we are in need of something else to stop us short. In the face of all these things that consume our attention, we need Jesus to show up and transfigure before us. We are in need of God’s pulling back the veil just for a moment to see the reality of what God is doing, to see God with us now, to see the presence of God with us, which is all too often hidden. And sometimes, sometimes we get glimpse of it.

At yesterday’s council retreat we together mapped out the leadership for the ministries at Immanuel to better understand what is going on, and it felt like a pulling back of the curtain to see God doing some really amazing things through all the individuals, working hard in the congregation. Something that is easy for us to lose sight of when we get bogged down in dealing with things that aren’t coming together or working hard to keep the momentum going. God’s shining presence is among us

Even in the midst of the illness and grieving, there is an awareness of the presence of the holy. It is a gift that those who are sick and who are dying give to the rest of us – an  invitation to a holy space and an awareness of God at work. Maybe I get to see more of that on a more regular basis in my role than some of you, but I trust it happens for you, too. Not just in ministry with those who are seriously ill, but also in all the places you minister in your daily lives. I trust that in the work God has called you to – caring for your families, caring for your neighbors, your friends, your co-workers, your students or clients or patients or whoever else it is that you minister to – I trust that in that holy work there are those moments, too, when what had at first seemed ordinary is transfigured in the moment forcing you to stop and notice the power of God working in and through you. God’s shining presence is among us.

And here today we celebrate this meal together. And some days despite all we believe it seems like just bread and wine. And yet for me, and I pray and hope that for you as well, there are times when the power of that simple meal demands my full and complete attention and all I can do is stand speechless at what God is doing. Whether it’s the realization of the connection with others physically present at the table, or the connection with others who feast with us at the heavenly table, or a word of grace made real by the offer of the bread and wine – Jesus is transfigured before us here. God’s glory shines among us.

So rather than trying to understand it or explain it, let’s leave that for another time and instead let us gather on the mountain with Peter, James, and John. Let us put aside for a moment all the other things that demand our attention, and let us rest in the beaming glory of God shining among us. Whether in silent awe with James and John or in rambling praise with Peter take the time to soak in the power of God revealed to us. Let us take the time to enjoy this glimpse of Easter before our sojourn together in the wilderness of Lent. For God is always among us, but sometimes, sometimes we get the full glorious view of it laid out before our eyes.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

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

The snow is getting deep. I’m stating the obvious, of course. Berut have you ever stopped to think about how many individual snowflakes make up the mounds of snow that have accumulated by this time in the winter? Take one individual snowflake away and you haven’t made a tremendous difference, and yet you cannot have a pile of snow without individual snowflakes that together comprise the whole. And together those individual flakes can create avalanches powerful enough to destroy everything in their path or glaciers capable of moving mountains, if only slowly, bit by bit.

            In today’s gospel we see both an individual and the masses in need of healing. As Jesus’ ministry is emerging in Galilee and fresh off of last week’s healing of the man with the unclean spirit, he comes with his disciples to the house of Simon’s mother-in-law, who is in bed with a fever. So far Jesus has healed one man, and now he is presented with a single woman, the mother-in-law of one he has chosen as a close companion for his ministry. And so Jesus does what he does – he is moved to compassion and raises this woman up – not insignificant wording that will later be used to describe what happens to him on Easter morning, having been raised up from the tomb. And she is healed and restored that she might once again resume her place to serve those around her – as we are all called to do.

But it does not take long for this news to get around. Depending on who you think “they” refers to, perhaps it is the disciples themselves who go out and begin to gather those in need of healing. Or maybe it’s simply the nosy neighbors who spread the word. Either way, before long Jesus’ healing ministry has gone from two individuals to snowballing out of control as the crowds gather at the door. The whole city is gathered at the door of the woman who has just herself gotten out of her sickbed. And Jesus has compassion on them, too. He cured many and drove out demons til long into the night.

But in the morning he went off to pray. And when the disciples interrupt his prayer, they have already got people lined up waiting to be healed. And here is where Jesus’ response may not be what we want or expect. Because his response is not to rush back to begin a day full of healings, or even to remain in prayer a while first and then return. No, it is time, Jesus says, to move on to the next town to proclaim the message, for that is what he came to do.

Well of course the message is important! But there are people here who need healing, who need their lives transformed. There are people standing outside who are sick, who are dying, who are hurting, grieving, confused, anxious, stressed, alienated, in broken relationships, in poverty, hungry, without shelter. What does the message have to say about that, Jesus?

As we as a congregation become aware this week of serious illness affecting members of our community and death once again beating down our doors, it’s not too much of a stretch to see ourselves pleading with Jesus, lining up that which needs healing before the presence of Christ here among us now. What does the message of the kingdom have to say to us, Jesus? What does it say to our bodies – our selves – who are in need of raising up?

The thing is that Jesus could sit and heal them one-by-one until everyone in the world was lined up outside his door. And even with a much smaller world population, he’d have died at a ripe old age without having healed the world. Especially because one figures that Simon’s mother-in-law wasn’t healed once and for all, but would be back in line herself one day. Jesus’ work was simply not to heal the world one person at a time. It was about something much larger.

And yet, I’m not sure Jesus’ work was complete without the compassion that moves him to heal the ones he can in the moment. As if the coming of the kingdom of God is an avalanche waiting to happen. With each healing the kingdom accelerates, already rolling unstoppably forward. Without the snow accumulating flake by flake, there is no kingdom, and yet at a certain point the whole thing begins to shift, and then a force that cannot be stopped rolls over anything and everything in its path.

This story is only the beginning of what will become Jesus’ total transformation of the world as it is into the kingdom of God. And it is not the kingdom without compassion and healing, but it’s also not the kingdom if it doesn’t start rolling more and more powerfully into the world.

What Jesus leaves behind, however, is a community of people transformed. People healed and people who have witnessed the power of healing. This is now a community of people in Capernaum-by-the-Sea who have seen the power of the gospel. This is a community that might now have the kind of renewed hope that will turn them toward ministry with one another, finding ways to reach out with healing touch to their neighbors. They will be there to remind one another not just of the power of the healing, but the power of the coming kingdom of which that healing is only a tiny snowflake in the sea of winter snow. Because when they experience brokenness of every kind – injustice, fear, hatred, sickness, death – they will need to gather together both to be healers for one another in grief but also to be proclaimers of the coming kingdom.

Because what Jesus moves on to the next village to proclaim is that the kingdom is hurtling forward with a force that cannot be stopped. The gospel is in motion to such a degree that it is even now, sweeping up all those before and since who have not experienced healing in this life in the way we want into the resurrection of the cosmos. And each one, healed now or not, is vitally important. Because the resurrection of the cosmos is not possible without them.

So we as the people of God are here to remind one another that the kingdom is coming. We are called by the healing power each of us has experienced both to reach out to heal one another in our grief and to proclaim for one another the unstoppable coming of this kingdom. We are the community into which Jesus has already come to bring healing and wholeness, and we are the people who are still longing for healing, in either case we are the very people for whom Jesus moves on in order that the resurrection of all things might be made known to the farthest reaches of time and to the ends of earth.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

4th Sunday after Pentecost
February 1, 2015

²¹They went to Capernaum; and when the sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught.  ²²They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.  ²³Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit,  ²⁴and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”  ²⁵But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent, and come out of him!”  ²⁶And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him.  ²⁷They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching — with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”  ²⁸At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee. – Mark 1:21-28

It would be easy to talk about today’s gospel reading as an exorcism and the man in the story as demon-possessed. That may have been the gospel writer’s intention, and I do not want to deny the forces of evil that exist that we sometimes have trouble naming. But I’m not convinced that this story is about the exorcism of a demon-possessed man.

I think this might actually be closer to home for us, because Mark identifies this man as someone with an unclean spirit. Someone in the local community of faith no less. And I suspect we are all familiar with people of unclean spirit who show up at church, by which I mean all of us, myself included.

We are Lutherans after all. And we so often begin our worship with a confession that names in broad strokes the ways in which we come to the community of faith carrying the burden of our own brokenness – things we can control and things beyond our control, things we do and don’t do, systems we participate in that perpetuate injustice.

Like the unnamed man who encounters Jesus in the synagogue we are broken people. We find ways to hurt one another if not physically, then with our words. We find ways to hurt ourselves with our anxiety, worry, fear, and self-loathing, telling ourselves things we would not dare say to someone else. We find ways to hurt our world from failure to engage in efforts for change to outright harm done to the world around us. And that’s just the things loosely and possibly somewhat in our control. For we also have bodies that are broken with illnesses that cannot be cured. We come grieving the losses in our lives – these pews were filled at a funeral just yesterday. We are people who are broken. People who come with an unclean spirit stirring within us.

And so we gather in church, as they did in the synagogue, and our unclean spirits have two questions for Jesus, who comes into our midst.

The first is “What have you to do with us?” It sets up a division right away. We are here and you are there. You are clean we are unclean. We do not have anything to do with one another. We have our own ways of doing that. When we tell ourselves or each other that we are not holy enough to have a place here, or that we are too broken to be healed. Or we say something like, “The problems in our world are so large, where is God?” God is there and we are here dealing with the mess. Or we do it in our communities when we set up an “us” and a “them.” Whichever side we put ourselves on, we like to have categories for clean and unclean just as much as the people of Jesus’ time did. Jesus, “What do you have to do with us?”

And the second question: “Have you come to destroy us?” The only way the unclean spirit knows how to resolve the tension of difference is to annihilate the other. The presence of the Holy One appears at first as a threat to his existence. And so, too, do we try to eliminate difference and division by eliminating the other. Even as we acknowledge the ways in which many in our world are too quick to end lives – whether on the streets, within our homes, in the midst of war, or by state-sponsored killing – we also have to acknowledge the ways in which we tend to write people off when they disagree with us. Even families sometimes cut off members of their own for reasons that we have trouble understanding. Or the way we try to annihilate ourselves by suppressing who we are to make it by in the community, as if we must destroy ourselves to resolve the difference we see between us and the world around us. In the presence of the Holy One, “Have you come to destroy us?”

But Jesus refuses to play the unclean spirit’s game. What seems to strike the crowd is that they do not enter into some kind of cosmic battle right then and there. Instead it is the authority that Jesus claims that everyone is talking about on the way home. From the beginning it is no question in anyone’s mind who’s in charge, least of all for the unclean spirit. Jesus makes it clear that he has everything to do with the unclean spirit. Jesus is not going to run away, give up, or set himself against this man and his spirit. He will refuse to be set up as clean apart from the spirit’s uncleanness. Jesus is simply going to command it with the authority that is his. Jesus refuses to acknowledge a division between himself and our mess.

AND Jesus makes it clear that he has not come to destroy the unclean spirit, but to release it. The greek word for unclean is a-katharto, that is, to jump languages back to modern English, not having had a catharsis. It seems to me that what happens here is not so much exorcism as catharsis. The presence of the Holy One carries the kind of strong authority that provides a safe and strong container for all that needs to be named and brought out into the open, including but not limited to the challenge of that very authority.

This is a story about God coming into the world to remind us that all that has been, is, and will be are held by God, including the things we label unclean. That is the essence of what we do here in worship – our unclean spirits longing for catharsis come into the presence of God in the bread and wine, in word, in gathered assembly. And we argue, and wrestle, and push back, and cry out. We try to set ourselves against it and cry out to be spared. We let difference divide us. And still God holds us – a container for all that we are and all that we wrestle with.

And the same goes for when we leave these doors – when our unclean spirits go out and encounter the divine there, too. And we kick and scream and cry out. We try to set up our labels of us and them, we seek to destroy or be destroyed. And God holds us there too, including the darkness within and the darkness we see around us.

And as we are held, we are transformed by the presence of that strong authority. Not all at once, and not always in the ways we want or expect. But in the arms of God we are at once released from the unclean spirits that bind us and at the same time held so strongly and so tightly in God’s love that we will never be let go.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

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

Also referenced briefly below is today’s gospel reading about Jesus calling fishermen as disciples.

We so rarely get an opportunity to hear the whole story of Jonah, that I’d like to take a few minutes to retell it from beginning to end.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Jonah. Now Jonah might just as easily have been a young woman, but for the sake of our story we’ll say he was a young man. He was living his life quite happily for the most part, tending to his daily work. He got up and got himself ready in the morning, he went to work, went out with his friends, came home to bed. Day in, day out. Until one day he got a call from God.

Now Jonah knew this meant trouble, or at least a deviation from his comfortable daily life. God asked him to go to Ninevah, that is to modern-day Mosul Iraq. Now he would have had about the same reaction, though perhaps for slightly different reasons, as if God called you up and asked you to go prophecy to the people in Iraq. This was not exactly a safe assignment.

So Jonah did the only logical thing he could think to do, which is flee to Tarshish, in modern day Spain, trying to get as far away from God as he could. But, as many of you know, a great storm arose while he was on the ship, and Jonah confessed that he was fleeing his God and his shipmates promptly threw him overboard, that they might be saved. But God had already decided Jonah was going to Ninevah, so he sent a giant fish to swallow him up. And after three days and three nights, the fish spit him back up on dry ground.

At this point, Jonah didn’t want to know what God would do if he tried to flee again, so he went dragging his feet to Ninevah, where he half heartedly proclaimed, “Forty days more and Ninevah shall be overthrown.” Despite his lackluster proclamation, he didn’t even make it a third of the way through the city before people’s hearts were turned and they started repenting and putting on sackcloth and sitting in ashes. They even dressed up their livestock in clothing of repentance as if that might somehow help matters. And this, this changed God’s mind. The destruction did not come.

But now Jonah was really ticked off. He railed against God saying, “I knew you’d do this, spreading your stupid mercy all over the place. Why did I have to bother to get out of bed and travel all this way just to have you spare them anyway? For all my trouble you could have at least shown a little fire and brimstone!” God asks if he has a right to be angry about the salvation of people he did not know and for whom he had not labored and in one of my favorite lines of the Bible Jonah responds, “Yes. Angry enough to die.” And God reminds Jonah that all people are people that God cares for, and that God is just going to keep being merciful despite Jonah’s objections. And Jonah lived begrudgingly ever after. The end.

Now lots of people ask if this story is true. To which I respond, what could be truer than the way that God calls ordinary people, the way we struggle and resist God’s call, the way God’s love and mercy pours out anyway, and the way we often begrudgingly respond? It’s a story that’s honest about how most of us engage discipleship. I somehow find that Jonah’s story rings more true for me than Jesus’ calling of the disciples who at two words from Jesus drop everything they’ve ever known to wander off with a stranger. Maybe you, too, take comfort in knowing that not every disciple was quite so willing.

Today we have witnessed another new disciple being called. Finley, despite being a wonderful 6 month-old, is, like Jonah, not particularly qualified to be a disciple of Jesus, much less a prophet to the nations. And yet this morning God claims him and calls him to a life of proclaiming God’s love in word and deed and working for justice and peace in all the earth, starting today, or maybe more accurately starting even earlier. Today he becomes a prophet. Unlike Jonah he’s not old enough to run in the other direction. Though any of us who really stopped and thought about what baptism calls us to do might consider it. He will have opportunity to love and serve others and he, like all of us, will face challenges and sometimes falter. But today’s promise is that God will equip him for what he must face and love him no matter what. And that God will lead him and that God’s love will shine through him even in the moments when he has trouble understanding the grace the God pours out for him and for all.

Today we as the church have a great opportunity to surround him and his whole family with our love, prayers, and support. And we who are gathered today have an opportunity to remember, too the ways in which we are called. To acknowledge the ways we try to run from our call. We let ourselves stay comfortable when our baptism calls us to go out of our way to work for justice in our community. We let ourselves be distracted by things that are not important. We sometimes even let ourselves resent it when God’s grace is made abundant. And yet we are called over and over again to love and serve Christ in the world, despite our sometimes inadequate skills and unwilling hearts.

It’s easy to forget that we are a church full of Jonahs. As we at this particular time of year worry over annual reports and budgets and the vision for our congregation. It’s easy for us to get caught up in those conversations, by which I mean it’s easy for me to get caught up in those conversations, and forget that the church has been surviving for two thousand years of God calling unqualified, reluctant, and sometimes resentful people, including infants and backwards fishermen and Jonahs of every kind. So while we do our due diligence in administering our resources – human, financial, and otherwise – (that is, yes, you should come to our annual meeting next week) we do well to remember that it is not by our own doing that the church survives or by our own enthusiasm and zeal that the message of life and transformation by God’s gospel gets out to change the world. But rather that it’s by God’s having called us through baptism that the church survives and the message of God’s love goes out to all.

And all because we are welcomed into the body of Christ, the one who went boldly forth for us. The one whose journey was not away from his call but into it. Into the belly of death for three days to be spit back up again among us, not with resentment but with greater love and the hope of life for all. Whether we find ourselves eager and ready like the fisherman called by Jesus or running the other direction or even a little cranky and begrudging like Jonah, we proclaim in water and word today that God’s love for us is forever. That God will go to the greatest lengths to keep us safe, and that God will find a way to use us, broken and imperfect, to be the messengers of God’s never-ending mercy and salvation for all the world. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany
January 18, 2015

¹LORD, you have ^| searched me out;
   O LORD, ^| you have known me.
²You know my sitting down and my ^| rising up;
 you discern my thoughts ^| from afar.
³You trace my journeys and my ^| resting-places
and are acquainted with ^| all my ways.
⁴Indeed, there is not a word ^| on my lips,
 but you, O LORD, know it ^| altogether.
⁵You encompass me, behind ^| and before,
    and lay your ^| hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonder- ^| ful for me;
     it is so high that I cannot at- ^| tain to it.
¹³For you yourself created my ^| inmost parts,
    you knit me together in my ^| mother’s womb.
¹⁴I will thank you because I am mar- ^| velously made;
your works are wonderful, and I ^| know it well.
¹⁵My body was not hid- ^| den from you,
   while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths ^| of the earth.
¹⁶Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb; all of them were written ^| in your book;
     my days were fashioned before they ^| came to be.
¹⁷How deep I find your ^| thoughts, O God!
How great is the ^| sum of them!
¹⁸If I were to count them, they would be more in number ^| than the sand;
     to count them all, my life span would need to ^| be like yours.   -Psalm 139, selected verses

⁴³The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, “Follow me.”  ⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.” ⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”  ⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!”  ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”  ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”  ⁵⁰Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.”  ⁵¹And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” -John 1:43-51

See also 1 Corinthians 6:12-20. This passage is part of a larger context. Be forewarned that this passage and others like it have been misused to shame individuals and to perpetuate abusive and controlling behaviors.Because we read it aloud in worship as part of our schedule of readings, it is commented on in the text below.

 

I’m going to start with a story that has me rather disturbed. I share it at the risk of also deeply disturbing you. There’s something about today’s texts taken together that has the power to both reach deep places of brokenness but also deep places of God’s power active within us.

I learned this week about a news story from Florida. Apparently the North Miami Beach Police department has been regularly training their snipers by using actual mugshots of real people arrested by the department for target practice. This was discovered when the sister of a man who had been arrested 15 years ago was using the firing range for her own professional retraining after the police department and she saw a photo of her brother riddled with bullet holes. Her brother did commit a crime, served his time, and now lives a productive life as a father and husband. (Not that it should make a difference here, but just to give you a picture that this guy is still walking around that community.) Apparently his mugshot was part of a photo lineup of entirely young, black males being used by the department regularly for target practice. When discovered they defended the practice despite other law enforcement agencies not backing them up.

This story gets at the question for me of how we see one another. It strikes me that the officers being trained saw these photos. They stared intently at them. Maybe so much that they could recognize them on the street. But did they really see them? Did they see them in such a way as to understand them as human beings? I hope that some of the individuals did, but at the same time I’m concerned that the whole setup discouraged that. Discouraged those individuals and all of us from seeing them as real people with real lives and real stories. Hundreds of Lutheran pastors are sending photos of themselves to the police department to encourage them to stop and think about how every photo of a person is a photo of a valuable human being.

Today’s texts are about seeing and being seen. Philip is excited having just been called to follow Jesus. He’s on to something really incredible and wants to share it with Nathanael. He runs to him, I imagine, and says we’ve found him – the one! But Nathanael is skeptical – can anything good come out of Nazareth? Can anything good come out of some rural village, some backwards place? And Philip repeats the words the Jesus spoke just a few verses earlier, “Come and see.” Words are not enough this time, seeing will be required. This is God in human form, you really have to come and see it to believe it.

So Nathanael does and when meets Jesus he is welcomed with the words “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael is curious how Jesus would know a thing about him, but Jesus informs him that he has already been seen. Sitting under the fig tree, Jesus has already seen him. But I suspect it is not simply this awareness of where Nathanael had been physically sitting when Philip found him, but rather the deeper kind of seeing. Somehow in this exchange Nathanael becomes aware of being known, of being seen deeply.

Perhaps Psalm 139 comes to mind for him. A song perhaps he had sung many times, one that we sang together today. “Lord, you have searched me out; O Lord, you have known me…For you yourself created my inmost parts and knit me together in my mother’s womb.” Somehow in this moment, in this encounter, he is seen. Maybe for the first time in his life. Perhaps, like so many other in our world, he was used to being ignored. Perhaps he was one of those people who blended in better than he wanted, who longed to be noticed. Or someone who stood out as a loner who desperately wants to be seen.

Because those people are all too common. People who are living on the streets who get ignored as if they are invisible, as if we could will them and their problems away by ignoring them. People who think that they are not worthy of a place in the community. People whose photos end up on police firing ranges. And sometimes people hiding in plain sight go unnoticed and unknown. Perhaps you know someone who puts up a front that says everything is ok, everything is fine, when really it isn’t. Who do you see superficially that might be longing to be really deeply seen. Perhaps that someone is you.

And because I don’t think we can read today’s second reading from Corinthians without a word of comment, let me mention another group of people that go unseen and unnoticed. In the reading Paul is trying to make a larger point about the way in which God honors our whole selves, both physical and spiritual together in one. But to our modern ears the words may conjures up the ways the church at large has all too often shamed people with a disproportionate strictness in sexual morality while at the same time refusing to see or stand up for victims of sexual assault. Too often sexual assault goes unreported or is dismissed when it is. Our own community is one of many around the country that is struggling to address this problem to make it a safe place for people to come forward and safe place for all people, men and women, to live. This passage calls us to deep way of seeing one another as human beings. It calls us to respect one another and ourselves as holy beings, to see each other deeply, in every encounter with other people from a casual wave on the street to more intimate encounters. [Note to internet readers: If you have experienced sexual assault or abuse, there are resources available to help. Locally the Center for Women and Community is available. The national domestic violence hotline is 1-800-799-7233. A 24-hour crisis hotline for victims and survivors of sexual abuse and physical violence is available: 413-545-0800 (Local Western Mass #) or 888-337-0800 (toll-free long distance).]

We have a deep call to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, not just to tell others to come and see what church is about, not just to go and see ourselves what God is doing in the world, but to come and see one another as full human beings. We have a call to refuse the ways that our culture encourages us to ignore certain people and allows us to fail to see all people as people who matter. We have a call to stand up and shout from the rooftops “Come and see all people as one knit together in God’s love.” And we can start by making sure that no one goes unnoticed or uncared for in our own church community.

Because we have first been known. Marvelously made and intimately known. When the world cannot or will not see us for who we are, there is still one who sees us and knows us. We, like the skeptical Nathanael, may be reluctant at first to be known so intimately. We may at first resist the call to follow. We may have trouble ourselves seeing God’s breaking in among us. But over and over again God calls to us, “Come and see!” Come and see in water and word. Come and see in bread and wine. Come and see God in the people drawn together around this table and in the people who have not yet heard the invitation to this table. Come, see, and be seen and loved for who you are.

Because we are known before we realize it, before we get it together, before we slow down enough to contemplate it, before we feel it and know it deep in our bones, we have a God who sees us – our lives for all that they are. The secrets we are ashamed to admit, the vulnerabilities we have been trained to keep to ourselves, the longings and dreams we have for the future. Our whole lives are known, which gives us the courage to take another step. The faith to see ourselves in God’s eyes. And the power to live as God’s people made holy by God’s seeing.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sermon for Baptism of Our Lord
Sunday, January 11, 2014

⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.  ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.  ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey.  ⁷He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals.  ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
⁹In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan.  ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” – Mark 1:4-11

See also the other texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; and Acts 19:1-7

Have you ever heard the voice of God?

What do you think it sounds like?

Hollywood, of course, has taken a crack at giving God a voice. Some memorable ones include, of course, Charlton Heston. Morgan Freeman gives voice to a genial God in Bruce Almighty. In Dogma, God is played by Alanis Morisette who doesn’t speak. By the way, I confess to not having seen ALL these movies. Groucho Marx plays a lethargic stoner God in Skidoo, George Burns a crabby God in Oh, God. And my personal favorite casting choice, Whoopi Goldberg in A Little Bit of Heaven.

I’m sure many of those called to mind a certain voice and presence that you could identify. But how would you know if you heard God’s voice speaking to you?

The voice of God is all over our readings today. In Genesis the voice of God creates the world. By speaking “light,” light is. It begins more than half the verses in our psalm this morning: “The voice of God…is upon the waters, is a powerful voice, is a voice of splendor. [It] breaks the cedar trees, bursts forth in lightning flashes, shakes the wilderness, makes the oak trees writhe and strips the forests bare. And all are crying, ‘Glory!’” In the second reading, Paul baptizes 12 disciples in Ephesus and the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they begin speaking in tongues – something I know makes us sometimems-staid Lutherans a little uneasy – the voice of God coming from their own lips. And finally at the baptism of Jesus the heavens are torn apart and God speaks Jesus’ sonship into being: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

But we have so many voices in our world today, it’s easy for God’s voice to get lost. How do we discern what we listen to amid all the other voices competing for our attention. We live in a digital world where anyone and everyone can have a voice on the internet or an obscure cable channel. It gives a platform for many important voices to be heard that otherwise wouldn’t be, but it also forces us to sort out a good bit of garbage to find the things worth listening to.

At one time we were taught to rely on voices in positions of authority, but in a postmodern world we have come to question authority. In the information age we can fact-check anyone’s comments and almost always find another authority to refute that which we disagree with. Some of this is good. For too long we gave too much power to some voices in positions of authority. The church is no exception. We’ve all heard the stories about clergy abuse of one kind or another. And just this week I heard voices claiming to speak for Christianity denying climate change and a pastor railing against a community food bank for providing a shelf of halal food for their Somali Muslim neighbors. The voice of the church is NOT always the voice of God.

This week we heard the news from France – an attempt to silence certain voices. In the terrible attack the voice of violence attempted to drown out the voice of God.

And nothing in our talk about voices this morning is meant to make light of or minimize the experience of those who hear audible voices, which make it difficult for them to live in the world.

But perhaps more than anything else, the hardest place to discern the voice of God is among all the things we say to ourselves. Too often I hear people confuse the things they say to themselves with the voice of God. Too often I hear people say that they aren’t enough – not a good enough body, not a good enough house, not a good enough career. We tell ourselves we have to get it together. Do more. Be more. We tell ourselves we cannot be forgiven, that we’re worthless, that it’s all your fault, that everything is hopeless, that you can’t and never will. Not the voice of God.

But then how do we know when it is God speaking? How do we recognize the earth-creating, wilderness-shaking, prophecy-inducing, heaven-tearing voice of God amidst all the others?

Lutherans have a way of naming the way God speaks to us through the Word. We call it Law and Gospel, and perhaps that’s the way to begin to discern God’s voice in our lives.

The law is this: the voice that tells us that we are dying. The power of God’s voice makes us aware of our smallness and our dependence on God. It reminds us that we are fragile and broken people. This is not to be confused with things that we tell our ourselves about being worthless, hopeless, or unforgivable. That’s not law, that’s just nonsense. But this voice that reminds us of our humanity is at the heart of baptism. Calling us to drown in the water and die to ourselves over and over again. This voice is also at the heart of who we are as a church. As we discussed in our forum this morning, there are many voices out there claiming that the church is dying. But of course the church is always dying, following the pattern of its Lord, that it might be refreshed, renewed, and more than that, resurrected. But that voice of God speaks with honesty and clarity about who we are.

But we know it’s the voice of God when in the same breath that voice recreates us, fragile and broken as we are, as God’s beloved daughters and sons. You see, in Mark’s gospel there is no Christmas story, no birth narrative, no origin or explanation of Jesus. He simply comes from Nazareth of Galilee to be baptized by John in the Jordan. There the voice from God not only speaks what is so, but creates the reality by speaking it: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased. That same voice creates us, gives birth to us, as beloved children of God. If the voice is not claiming us as God’s beloved, it’s not God’s voice.

In the midst of the many voices in our world, those are the things today’s texts invite us to listen to. Listen for God’s voice reminding us honestly and openly that we are finite and fallible. Listen for God’s voice reminding us directly and without question that we have been made God’s beloved. That’s the voice of God recreating the world, shaking the wilderness, instilling prophecy, and tearing open the heavens to come down to claim us. To claim you!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Second Sunday of Christmas
January 4, 2015

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  ²He was in the beginning with God.  ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being  ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.  ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.  ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
¹⁰He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,  ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
¹⁴And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  ¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”)  ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. – John 1:1-18

What does it mean to go camping?

That depends a great deal on who you ask. For instance, if you ask my father it means finding a clean, designated campground with lots of concrete pads you can drive your car up to and plenty of facilities with indoor plumbing. It means putting up a tent, going to the campground swimming pool, and then getting in the car to drive to McDonalds for dinner. It’s an experience for sure, and more roughing it than actually being indoors, but it isn’t exactly communing with nature.

But then there’s another kind of camping. The kind where someone with skill and experience packs a bag with essential survival items and treks off into uncharted wilderness for days or weeks or months at a time. The person camping does so in such a way as to become one with the natural world around. The shelter is just enough for survival against the harsher elements and not a barrier to being a part of the surroundings. Perhaps someone who really knows what she’s doing can eat from the land itself, taking in the natural world to her body. After days in the wilderness dirt and grime accumulate and this camper takes on the smell of nature. This is about as close as humans can come to being one with nature.

My question is what kind of camping God prefers to do. Because in the Christmas text from John’s gospel that we read every second Sunday of Christmas is the line: “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” The Greek word is most directly translated the Word put up his tent among us. The Word made flesh is God’s camping excursion in the world.

But I wonder if we are sometimes too quick to assume that God’s camping is more like my father’s, staying a separate as possible from the world as it really is. There are, of course, any number of ancient church heresies that lean this direction, those that claimed that God only appeared in human form rather than actually being an embodied human being. Though that’s still a thought I hear from time to time, we have more subtle ways of living out that heresy.

When we assume that God is most clearly revealed in perfectly orchestrated words and music and liturgy, we’ve cleaned up God’s camping in our midst. I’m certainly guilty of it myself – it’s tempting to find words and phrases for worship that sound beautiful and transport us away from our troubles. It feels odd to me sometimes to use language that’s too grounded in our experience, too ordinary. We tried out that kind of language a bit in our midweek Advent services this year and it took me a while to get used to it.            We also clean up God’s camping when we expect church to easily fit into our mold of what it should be, or expect it to be there primarily to serve what we need. Church should enrich our spiritual lives, it should provide community, and it should support one another in joy and hardship. But sometimes we forget that it also serves us by challenging us and inviting us to engage in hard work, even sometimes work we don’t always want to do. We sometimes consciously or unconsciously expect the church to shield us from our reality or allow us to remain unchanged. Camping in sterile environment.

We also clean up God’s camping when we look out at the world and refuse to see God in other people. I know that you know as well as I do that we are expected to see God in the poor, the outcast, and the stranger. And it’s hard enough to engage those people in really genuine, unselfish ways. But if you’re anything like me, it’s even harder to see God in enemies, however you want to define that. It’s easier sometimes to see God in the poor, starving people far away than it is to see God in your next-door neighbor, in the person with whom we have to share an actual lived reality – hard to admit that the person you don’t really like has God in them and something to say to us about God. It’s our own way of keeping God clean and comfortably in a box.

But despite John’s beautifully poetic language and his tendency to highlight Jesus’ divine nature, in all the stories about Jesus it becomes clear that God’s putting up a tent in our midst is the kind of camping where God expects to get dirty. You know the stories, the ones where Jesus is born among the animals, washes in the muddy Jordan, eats with sinners, touches the unclean, calls the lowly and despised as disciples, and ultimately submits to torture and death. From dirty 1^st century diapers to a bloody and gory death, Jesus comes to dwell among us fully. Emerging from the time tenting among us covered in the dirt and grime of our earthly lives. Emerging from camping having taken in the reality of our world. Emerging from the wilderness journey transformed forever by communion with this world, our world, in all its disgusting mess.

Frederick Buechner, whom I quote often, says of this passage, “One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God.” God didn’t come down with plans for giant cathedrals and nice groups of people, but rather to dwell in our daily existence in such a way as to experience fully what this world is about, to get inside creation, inside us in such a way that not only are we transformed, but also God is forever changed by the encounter.

As we reluctantly leave behind this Christmas season, turning our minds to the season after Epiphany and the quick leap to the start of Jesus’ adult ministry, we take an opportunity to wonder at the mystery of Christmas, that God would come so fully into our midst as to be transformed by the experience. And that God, experiencing the worst creation has to offer, would be so moved with love for us that we are transformed, that we are invited to be heirs of all that God has to offer. And even more than that, we are invited to participate in the work. That we are invited to live into our messy, embodied lives. That we might find God waiting for us in our mess and the times we cannot get ourselves together. That we might find God in the things that are hard and challenging for us. That we might find God is deep service to one another. That we might find God in one another not when we become the same or when we meet each others’ expectations, but in the reality of who we are now in the present moment, failures and all.

Because the Word became flesh, and put up a tent among us. By dwelling in us and among us, God lifts us up if not out of our mess, lifts us up with all our mess together. Because if God can be covered with the grime of our world, then maybe we can come to terms with who we are as people of God now covered in our dirt, in this moment now, no matter who we are or where we’ve come from or where we think we’re going. Because God is always dwelling among us, setting up camp in the middle of wherever we are and ready to pick up and move along with us wherever we are going next.

-Pastor Steven Wilco