Sunday, August 17, 2014

²¹Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. ²²Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.” ²³But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” ²⁴He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” ²⁵But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” ²⁶He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁷She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” ²⁸Then Jesus answered her, “Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.” And her daughter was healed instantly. – Matthew 15:21-28

Jesus is human and divine. We learn that in Sunday school, we confess it in our creeds. People actually lost their lives over this in the early years of Christianity when it became a sport to hunt down heretics who leaned a little too far toward Jesus’ humanity or a little too far toward Jesus’ divinity. Today’s gospel story forces us to revisit that intensely complex tension and in doing so we’ll do our best to walk the tightrope between one heresy or the other.

You see, if we read this text as Jesus testing a woman in order to demonstrate a faith he already knows she has, then we risk seeing the incarnate word as an all-powerful, all-knowing divine being who is frankly, if we follow this approach to the text, a somewhat arrogant and manipulative divine being. That’s the more common interpretation at least in the last few centuries, perhaps because we are still uncomfortable with Jesus really being a human being.

But if you lean a little in the other direction on this heresy tightrope, perhaps we can see the more human side of Jesus. The side that is supported by other stories in at least the synoptic gospels, in which Jesus does not operate with a full knowledge of God’s plan for th world. This is a Jesus who, like us, is learning as he navigates a complicated and complex world in which God is sometimes at work in unusual ways.

Leaning that direction, what I think we see is a Jesus who is exhausted from the blossoming of his ministry. He can no longer go anywhere in his home region without thousands tagging along asking for things. And he goes to a somewhat unusual location outside the bounds of his people. To a region that belongs to the Canaanites – of all people! Maybe there he can get a little peace and quiet. After all, these aren’t his people, he can have a vacation without the responsibilities of being on with the crowds.

But this woman finds him even there. A woman in a culture where there were many more boundaries between genders that we see in our culture today. And a Canaanite – someone outside of the promise, pestering and pestering until the disciples demanded he do something to get rid of her. The human Jesus, tired and cranky, says, “I do not have enough for her, too.” But she will not relent, not even after Jesus puts her in a category with the dogs.

She says to Jesus, fine. If you want to call me a dog, go right ahead. But that still gives me a place at the table. You can give me crumbs, but even your crumbs are enough.

Here I think we find a fundamental quality of both the human and divine in Jesus. He listens to her. He actually listens to her and thinks about what she has to say. God is listening and thinking about what she has to say. A man crosses the first-century Israel boundaries to listen to a woman. A person of another race and culture realizes someone from another race and culture not only has something worth saying, but is the one to remind him of his own tradition. The words of the God of Israel spoken long before and long after Jesus about the breadth and depth of the Holy One’s love for all people.

And this, this listening, is the moment of healing, not just for the woman’s demon-possessed daughter, but for Jesus, and the woman herself, and the disciples who listen to the conversation. And dare I say a moment of healing for the world. A moment when a boundary is crossed in such a way that it has the power to transform a thousand-year-old division between peoples? This hugely transformative moment in the life of this woman and in the ministry of Jesus is a small crack in the wall that separates the Arab from the Israeli.

So as the body of Christ in the world today, where and to whom are we called to listen, that these moments of transformation for ourselves and cracks in the walls that divide us might grow larger and more in number?

I know this story calls us to listen to people of other races. When Ferguson, MO, erupted this past week in protests, many were quick to tune out the voice of the other. The whites and blacks in that town were talking past one another. What would it take to listen to the experience of those with darker skin who live day-in and day-out with the fear that they will be singled out by those who are supposed to protect us. What would it take to listen to that in such a way that it didn’t just wash over us and allow us to go back to our lives as they were but to transform the way we see the world. What would it take to listen in such a way as to bring healing for the world.

And I know this story calls us especially as the church to listen to the voices outside our congregation. This boundary-crossing listening on the part of Jesus calls us to make decisions about our congregation in dialogue with those who are not yet part of our community. And not just to guess about what people need and what kind of church they’d like to see, but actually to go out and listen to the cries of people in this community who are reaching out and asking for crumbs from the table.

And it calls us to listen deeply to one another. To hear one another’s stories of joy and pain, stories of hope and despair, stories of fear and courage. This story calls us to listen when another speaks – with the assumption that we have something to learn, with the assumption that despite our convictions we do not have it all figured out ourselves.

So you are invited during the time of communion to come to the side for prayers for healing. Come with the hope of healing. Come with the burdens you carry. And know that they are heard. I will listen, but more importantly this story reminds us that God is listening, whether you come forward or not, listening to the concerns you bring, the burdens you bear. Listening not just in order to slap the appropriate band-aid on the wound, but listening deeply in such a way as to take on that burden with you and in such a way that it has the power to move God to ever deeper compassion and to ever broader love and mercy.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
August 10, 2014

⁹At that place he came to a cave, and spent the night there.
Then the word of the LORD came to him, saying, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” ¹⁰He answered, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”
¹¹He said, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.” Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; ¹²and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. ¹³When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. Then there came a voice to him that said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” ¹⁴He answered, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.” ¹⁵Then the LORD said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. ¹⁶Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel; and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. ¹⁷Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill; and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. ¹⁸Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.” – 1 Kings 19:9-18

²²Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. ²³And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, ²⁴but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. ²⁵And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. ²⁶But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. ²⁷But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
²⁸Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” ²⁹He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. ³⁰But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” ³¹Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”³²When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.” – Matthew 14:22-33

When God comes to you, how do you know it’s God? I think that’s one of the fundamental questions behind today’s readings. Elijah stands on a mountaintop waiting for God to appear and a whole series of things come by before finally Elijah seems to recognize God’s presence in the sound of silence. In the Gospel reading, the disciples are busy managing their boat in a strong but typical storm on the Sea of Galilee when they see Jesus walking toward them on the water. At first they do not recognize him, and even when they do, Peter demands some proof. How do they…how do we identify God when God enters into our life?

I think it’s a really good question. How do you know who God is? Many of you are probably here because at one point or another you’ve looked at something in your life experience and said that’s a power beyond myself. How do we know?

In an age of certainty about identity we are not comfortable with the ambiguity of a God who is not visible and who does not follow hard and fast rules about when and where God will show up in our lives. When it comes to other people, if we can’t verify someone’s identity with a quick visual recognition or by the sound of the person’s voice, we have all kinds of other means at our disposal to establish identity. DNA tests, fingerprinting, retinal scans, and all kinds of other means of identifying people for who they are at least beyond a reasonable doubt. But God is not so easily pinned down.

For instance, say you face a difficult life decision. How many people have wished for a sign from God to make such a decision a little easier? If only God would literally turn on a light bulb over the right choice. Decisions which are between that which is life-giving and that which is clearly not are easier, but most decisions are not so clear-cut. How do we find God in those moments?

Or how about when we are waiting for healing or restoration? When we are in pain from grief? How do we recognize the presence of God with us? Is it only when we start to heal? Or is it when we start to come to terms with our situation as it is? Or is God present in some other way? Say I start to feel better and even have a warm, fuzzy feeling of God’s presence, how do I recognize God and not a physical, psychological response? Or are the two related somehow?

How do we know when God is really present in our work as the people of God? How do we recognize who God is and what God wants for us? We all know people who have abused that – slapped God’s name on their personal agenda to stop all argument going forward. But how do we wrestle with the tension of the belief in the divine action in the world and also with the ways in which God grants us gifts of wisdom and discernment to use with one another.

Unfortunately I don’t have an answer for you. And I’m not sure the texts have a clear answer either. The author of 1 Kings doesn’t offer much in the way of explanation about why God is in the silence and not the earthquake, fire, or wind. Not that I’m not grateful for a God who comes in that way – that’s a little more my style. But there is an element of surprise. The suspense builds, even briefly as natural phenomenon one after another comes whirling through and God is not there. We might expect a cataclysmic event to top all that has come before, and what we get is silence. A God who speaks to Elijah in the midst of nothing. God comes in an unexpected way.

And Jesus on the water, the disciples, who in Matthew’s account do not indicate fear at the storm, but only at the figure of a person walking on water, don’t quite know how to identify Jesus. They have just seen Jesus do a miraculous thing with 5 loaves and 2 fish to feed thousands, but they are not prepared for this bizarre use of Jesus’ divine capabilities. They may have expected Jesus to pray from the shore. They may have expected his sympathy as they shared the story of the storm the next morning. They might even have considered the possibility of his borrowing another boat and joining them on the sea that way. But they were not prepared for God to act in a way that hadn’t occurred to them before.

And maybe that’s the most we can say about how we will recognize God. That God will continue to do the unexpected thing in our midst. That when we think we have God figured out, God is already doing something new. When things happen that we do not understand we look for the cross – that is we look for God to be doing something incredible with something we thought was the most ungodly thing we knew.

And perhaps, too, in these stories the deepest recognition of God is when people join in God’s work. Elijah is called back to the work of ministry with the assurance that despite the challenges he is not alone. Called to engage in the work he knows how to do in the world. And Peter, bless his heart, wants to get out of the boat and walk on the water, too. It’s there that he really discovers who God is. And not, I think when he takes a step on the water, but when he starts to fall in. For whatever impulsive reason he wanted to join Jesus on the waves: in doing something to engage the work of God, he discovers that God is the one who invites us to impossible things and pulls us up when we fail.

And maybe all we can do is join the disciples in the boat crying out in fear at the unrecognized presence of God entering our midst. And maybe all we can do is join Elijah in the cave waiting for God’s presence to be clear and the words to call us to work. Maybe all we can do is keep asking the question. Fundamentally, asking that question is what the Christian life is all about. And in asking we might start to discover that God always finds a way of being made known. A way of transforming us unawares. A way of surprising us with more than we can ask or imagine.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

From The Irrational Season
 by Madeleine L’Engle

But ultimately there comes a moment when a decision must be made. Ultimately two people who love each other must ask themselves how much they hope for as their love grows and deepens, and how much risk they are willing to take. It is indeed a fearful gamble. Because it is the nature of love to create, a marriage itself is something which has to be created, so that, together we become a new creature.

To marry is the biggest risk in human relations that a person can take.If we commit ourselves to one person for life this is not, as many people think, a rejection of freedom; rather it demands the courage to move into all the risks of freedom, and the risk of love which is permanent; into that love which is not possession, but participation. It takes a lifetime to learn another person. When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.

 

From Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis

“Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling. Now no feeling can be relied on to last in its full intensity, or even to last at all. Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go. And in fact, whatever people say, the state called “being in love” usually does not last. If the old fairytale ending “They lived happily ever after” is taken to mean “They felt for the next fifty years exactly as they felt the day before they were married,” then it says what probably never was nor ever could be true, and would be highly undesirable if it were. Who could bear to live in that excitement for even five years? What would become of your work, your appetite, your sleep, your friendships? But, of course, ceasing to be “in love” need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense-love as distinct from “being in love” is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God. They can have this love for each other even at those moments when they do not like each other; as you love yourself even when you do not like yourself. They can retain this love even when each would easily, if they allowed themselves, be “in love” with someone else. “Being in love” first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”

Making music is a risky business. Greg and Mary have both put it at the center of their life’s work – singing, playing, conducting, composing, and teaching. They both make incredibly great music themselves and lead others in making great music, too. But I imagine it’s probably hard for those of us who aren’t full-time music people to grasp the amount of work that goes into the final product. The hours of practice before a big performance, the rehearsals that fall apart before it all comes together, the lines of music scrapped before the composition comes out right. But in all the hard work, there is incredible joy to be discovered and to be shared with others in the music-making that leads up to the big performance.

The thing about weddings, though, is that it takes things a bit out of order. Unlike music, it puts the polished performance ahead of most of the practice time.  You’ve had time together to get to know one another. You’ve begun building a life together, and you’ve planned a beautiful day to celebrate that with your family and friends. But you know, too, that there is much practice time ahead. The reading that Valerie just read was one you chose quickly for this day, and it ends with this: “When love is not possession, but participation, then it is part of that co-creation which is our human calling, and which implies such risk that it is often rejected.”

You know what it is to take that risk in music, to be a part of the co-creative process with other musicians. And now you enter into that same co-creative calling with one another in marriage.

All of us take that risk being in relationship with others. None of us are perfect people, and love demands an acknowledgement of our own and others’ imperfections. You risk making a commitment knowing that your relationship will not be perfect. Like good music-making, relationships require baring a part of ourselves to the other, opening ourselves to love but also to pain and sadness. Just as you would in the practice room, don’t forget to make room for mistakes, creating a safe space for one another to be yourselves with lots of room for forgiveness as you risk relationship together.

Each of you knows what it means to bring to life notes from a page and even to create those notes on the page. The way that each incarnation is a little bit different from the last in a new space with different other musicians. That the music, even your own music is not your own to possess, even though it is something that you hold close to your heart. In relationship, too, you are learning already to hold one another close without possessing too tightly. That you have given each other time to bring closure to the parts of your lives lived in different cities before coming together here in the Pioneer Valley, is a testament to that holding closely and loosely. Not possession, but participation. In your relationship together, trust that it will grow and change. Hold it close but not too tight. As you practice in your life together, you will have daily opportunity to let go and come close together again, knowing you have a lifetime to keep practicing.

But thankfully it is not all hard work. The delight of meeting one another at a gathering of friends after a concert that you both admit to having considered skipping. The unexpected grace of discovering one another as you grew in relationship together. The joy you’ve found being a couple. In the reading Jason just read from C.S. Lewis reminds all of us that in the work of relationship together the excitement of this day and these first years of your relationship will grow deeper and richer. Like music that you love quickly but as you practice it you grow to learn it and slowly make it more and more a part of your being, learning what each note feels like and how it fits with the next. As you practice together, take time to savor your relationship that you may have opportunity to experience not only the joy you have now but also a deepening of that gift for years to come: joy and excitement which grows and changes in such a way that you enjoy one another more and more and find ways to share that joy and excitement with the community of family and friends that surround you this day and in the days ahead.

And so you come today to make this commitment to one another, you do so not because you’ve had enough time to practice, and not because you’re ready for the big performance, but because you see a lifetime of practicing ahead that will give you the opportunity to create something together. And you do so with the promise of support from all of these people here. May your lives of practicing together create beautiful music that brings life and joy to you and all you encounter.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

¹³Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. ¹⁴When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. ¹⁵When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” ¹⁶Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”¹⁷They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” ¹⁸And he said, “Bring them here to me.” ¹⁹Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. ²⁰And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. ²¹And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. – Matthew 14:13-21

“Nothing” is possibly one of the most overused words in our everyday speech. How often do you hear someone talk about “nothing”? We say to one another, “It’s nothing,” as a way of dismissing a kindness or excusing an inconvenience. Do we mean that? Is it really nothing? Or when you find someone doing something suspicious and ask them what’s going on. “Oh…nothing.” Or when asked what’s new, or what we’ve been up to lately, we respond “Nothing much.” I’m guilty of that one – as soon as someone asks what’s new, I usually can’t think of a single thing. We often say “nothing” but we don’t always really mean absolutely nothing.

That’s the disciples’ response to Jesus when he asks them to feed the crowd. It has been a long day at the end of a long week. Did you catch the beginning of the reading? Jesus has received news that his cousin and friend John the Baptist is dead and he tries to find some quiet space to himself. Instead he is confronted by a crowd of people in need, a crowd on which he has great compassion and cannot turn away. But if Jesus still has any energy left, the disciples are ready for a break. At dinner time they are ready to call it quits and send the rest of the crowd away. When Jesus tells them to feed the crowd they respond, probably out of exhaustion, “We have nothing…but a few loaves and a couple of fish.”
Nothing. Well, almost nothing, they say as an afterthought, dismissive of what they see as a meager offering in comparison to the need. And it doesn’t really matter so much how you understand the miracle that follows. Whether Jesus makes more molecules of bread and fish appear – after all, as Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber is fond of saying, “Nothing” is God’s favorite material to work with – or whether in another more recently popular interpretation you see the miracle in the possibility that sharing those first loaves and fish that then others began to share what they had until there was more than enough for all. Because the “how” isn’t so important here. What matters is that God saw a possibility where the disciples did not. The disciples looked at 5 loaves and 2 fish and saw nothing. God looked at it and saw a feast.

Now I think we can make come pretty quick comparisons to our modern lives. When it comes to money, who hasn’t at one point or another looked at his or her finances and saw what amounted to nothing. To be fair, sometimes that’s pretty close to the truth. But for others of us, it’s really a matter of how we see what we have, a matter of rejecting the societal impulse to always want a little more than we have.  Even in the church, we look at what we have and wish we had more of it, forgetting what God has promised to do to transform all we have. That God has promised to lay out the most expensive offerings for us who have no money to buy food and drink.

And we could make some quick comparisons to our efforts to combat hunger. When we look at the little bit we give in food and money to the Survival Center, the area food bank, and our church’s global hunger ministries, it can seem like 5 loaves and 2 fish in a crowd of thousands compared to the actual need that exists. And yet God uses it in ways that begin to transform. These small things begin to take on a life of their own making dents in the need that is indeed still great. God sees our meager offerings and sets the table for a feast. Those are some of the more obvious connections to our lives, but I think there’s more in the story that the disciples call “nothing.”

Before they even identify the loaves and fish, the disciples look out at a crowd of hungry people and they see a problem. They see nothing good coming from a hungry mob. But Jesus’ invitation to feed them rather than send them away indicates that he looks at the same crowd and sees the possibility of a celebration. Thousands of hungry people are not a problem but an opportunity for God to work.

We look again this week at a world in turmoil, with more conflicts that we can remember all at once and we see nothing, no hope for peace. Many days it seems like we are staring down a hungry crowd with nothing but 5 loaves and two fish. But somehow with all of it we trust that God sees fighting people and helpless bystanders and activists who go unheard and sees yet the possibility of peace and justice. Where we see nothing, God is already planning the feast that will host Israelis next to Palestinians, and Ukrainians next to Russians, and Syrians from both sides next to one another.

And how often do we look at people and see nothing, people who are not enough? It happens most often with people at the margins. People we see as too young or too old, people we label as disabled. We forget that infants have something to teach us about God. That people in nursing home beds who can’t always remember what day it is and people in ICU beds who can’t speak for the breathing tubes, they have something to teach us about God. We forget that people whose abilities are different from our own teach us about God, too. God invites us to see not another problem but another person to join the feast.

This “nothing” thinking has been true of every congregation I’ve ever experienced. People in churches at one time or another, including pastors, look around and see the equivalent of the disciples’ “nothing.” Too small, too big, too many programs or not enough. The people are too old, or too young, overly-friendly or not friendly enough. Too much this or not enough that. Have you said it or thought it about our congregation? If only we had more people… or more of a certain kind of person…or more energy or…you get the idea. The problem is that every church is imperfect. In every church there’s a way to look at the crowd of people and see not enough. But when God looks at it, God says “Look at these people! Let’s have a feast!”

And let’s not forget the leftovers at the end of the story. Who hasn’t looked at a pile of leftovers and thought – now what are we going to do with all that!? In this case it’s the opposite of nothing. But sometimes we have the potential to see that as a problem, too. It’s the end of a long day and a long week for Jesus and the disciples. If it were me, I’d be tempted to leave the leftovers on the ground and head off to bed. But they take the time to gather them, yes, as a sign of the abundance of the feast, but also perhaps as a sign that there is more abundance for the next crowd – that there is more to be shared another day. God’s bounty is more than a single feast can hold.

All this seems like a foreshadowing of what is to come. Because at the end of the gospel of Matthew, the disciples will again see nothing. They will look at the crucified Jesus and see nothing but a dead body. And three days later they will stare bewildered at the empty tomb shocked by the sheer abundance of what it represents. A reminder for us, that all the moments when we see our “nothings” transformed into “somethings” beyond our belief that it is a promise to us that when some day we stare into the future and see nothing but death, that even there, God is transforming it into something new.

When we see nothing, or almost nothing, God gives us a new set of eyes to see that nothing as something. So whatever we don’t see enough of today, God still sees something and with a little bread and wine, nothing really, God invites us again with the hungry crowd, that in our nothingness we might become the body of Christ. Let’s have a feast!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

 

 

³¹He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; ³²it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”
³³He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
⁴⁴The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
⁴⁵Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls; ⁴⁶on finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
⁴⁷Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind; ⁴⁸when it was full, they drew it ashore, sat down, and put the good into baskets but threw out the bad. ⁴⁹So it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous ⁵⁰and throw them into the furnace of fire, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
⁵¹Have you understood all this? They answered, “Yes.” ⁵²And he said to them, “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.” – Matthew 13:31–33, 44–52

Jesus tells us today what the kingdom of heaven is like, and when he’s done he asks the disciples if they understand all of it. Their answer is “Yes.” Now whether it’s because they have super-human imaginations to understand the complexity of one parable after another and translate it into an understanding the kingdom of heaven that means something for them in their lives, or whether they say “Yes” because they simply have no other response if they have any hope of getting to lunch on time, that seems to be pretty much the end of the discussion. What would it take for us to have any chance of getting what Jesus is saying, as the disciples claim they do?

The biggest problem, I think, is that we are simply too familiar with our own human kingdoms to think about something totally outside of that existence. These past few weeks have only made it more difficult to see beyond the mess we have created for ourselves.

The kingdom of earth is like when Israel and Gaza are fighting with rockets. When hundreds of people are dying in Gaza and the international community lines up to take sides and the peace process is negotiated with ulterior motives in mind.

The kingdom of earth is like when children flee their home country because of excessive poverty and violence and they receive little welcome or help from their neighbors.

The kingdom of earth is like when nation-states devolve into feuding neighbors and airliners full of civilians get caught in the middle.

The kingdom of earth is like when people who are different or not up to our standards are turned away at the door because it makes us uncomfortable.

The kingdom of earth is like when sickness and injury and death take hold in our loved ones with slow agonizing disease or swift accidents that seem to come out of nowhere.

Do you understand all this? Sadly, this time, I’m afraid the answer really is a whole-hearted, “Yes.” Yes, we do understand the way the world works. Sometimes it surprises us with its cruelty. Sometimes we are surprised by how fragile the earth and its people are. But we know all too well what our kingdoms are like. We’d need more than Solomon’s wisdom to solve just one of those world issues today. We certainly need the promise in Romans that the Spirit turns our wordless cries into prayers.

But that is exactly why we need to pay even more attention to Jesus’ parables today. Because this is a presentation by Jesus, using the everyday stuff of the kingdom of earth, to hint at the way that God sees the world. The way that God plans for things to end up. This is an invitation to holy imagination in the face of all that we bear from our human kingdoms.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. One tiny seed and this invasive species will run rampant in your fields. The kudzu of 1^st century Israel, it will keep growing and growing, annoying the heck out of you until you can no longer fight it and God’s love finally takes over all you have and all you are. Until you can no longer do anything but rest in the arms of God.

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast mixed into an enormous quantity of flour, infusing the whole dough such that it cannot be separated out. God’s grace transforming every last inch of the world forever. Upending the things that are to transform them into something new. Bringing life to things that are dead.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure or a pearl, for which a person would sell all just to possess it. A kingdom that invites us to relinquish our whole selves to the one who is our life and breath. Better yet, a kingdom where God’s very self goes all in for the treasure of our broken earth. The kingdom of heaven is one that scoops up the rotten messes we cannot solve in Ukraine and Syria, in Gaza, and the US/Mexican border, one that scoops up our sick and dying bodies and says this is it. This mess is worth everything to me.

The kingdom of heaven is like a net that drags in every last thing in its path and lays it before the one who has the power to grant life. The one who promises mercy and stops at nothing to create this kingdom we can only begin to imagine.

Jesus’ description of the kingdom of heaven does not answer word for word the problems that we face. It does not, at least in our present moment, end all earthly wars and find homes for all who need them. It does not heal the brokenness within or our fear of all that is beyond our control. It does not speed the healing of our loved ones.

But maybe. Maybe it will start to instill us with a holy imagination. The possibility that in the face of situations we cannot fathom and pain that we can no longer bear that there is hope. That there is another reality. That we might begin to see this broken world through God’s eyes.

And so we are offered one more parable today, as if the first five weren’t plenty already. A gift from Jesus to explain to us the possibility of something different. A gift that uses the broken things of this earth to help us see the world as God sees it. To help us see the kingdom of heaven coming to birth in our world. The kingdom of heaven is like “the night when Jesus was betrayed, when he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to his disciples saying take and eat. This is my body. And when he took the cup, gave thanks and gave it for all to drink. This is my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.”

We eat and drink and the kingdom becomes reality. Here and now. With violence continuing around the world, with people being sent back to homes of violence and poverty, with our hearts breaking, a moment when hope and possibility become reality. When we experience what before we only imagined. When we get a glimpse of understanding, that we, too, with the disciples might give a wholehearted, “Yes” to Jesus. Yes to the expansive, all-inclusive, transformative kingdom. Yes to Jesus’ call to begin to live there now, to live as if it is already fully realized. Yes to stand in vigil with the sick and dying. Yes to make sacrifices to welcome refugees from violence and poverty. Yes to pray and speak out for peace. Yes to being transformed in big and small ways by God’s love and grace given first to us.

Because existing in, with, and under our broken and hurting world, is this mustard seedy, yeast-infused, buried treasure, perfect pearl, expansive net kingdom, the one, as we are about to sing, “not in some heaven, light years away— but here in this place the new light is shining, now is the kingdom, and now is the day.”[1]

¹⁵I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. ¹⁶Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. ¹⁷But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. ¹⁸For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. ²⁰Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.
²¹So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. ²²For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, ²³but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. ²⁴Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! – Romans 7:15-25a

¹⁶But to what will I compare this generation? It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,
¹⁷‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
¹⁸For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, ‘He has a demon’; ¹⁹the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’ Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.” 
²⁵At that time Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants; ²⁶yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. ²⁷All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.
²⁸Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

“Take my yoke upon you,” Jesus says. We humans are not a people who take kindly to being controlled, even if the yoke is easy and the burden is light. Many of us have heard this passage over and over again, as a go-to passage for a needed reminder about the promised rest that is ours in God. But along with the promised rest comes the gift of a yoke, that is a bar across the shoulders to harness the power of an animal for work. A yoke that is controlled by someone else, a yoke that is designed to use us for work. It just doesn’t sound very restful.

It’s not that we are entirely averse to hard work – you can read any number of reports about how we are in our country working harder and longer than before, how expectations of productivity rise while wages remain stagnant, and work-related stress is getting to us. So it’s not that we don’t want to work, but my shoulders start to get uncomfortable just thinking about the idea of being fitted with a yoke, even an easy one with a light burden. I’m uncomfortable with the idea of being controlled by someone else. So how does Jesus’ beautiful invitation to lay down our heavy burdens and find rest fit together with being yoked for service?

I wonder in part if we don’t often misunderstand what exactly it is that makes us weary. In previous years when we’ve returned from youth mission trips, as we just did this week, people often assume I must be exhausted. While I genuinely appreciate the care and concern, I am also a little confused. Because, honestly, apart from needing a decent nap, I come back pretty full of energy. It’s true that I get less sleep than usual, and do a lot more physical work than usual, and that I don’t take lightly the responsibility of keeping young people safe on a trip like this. But weary I am not! I am full of the excitement of the week, having enjoyed good theological conversations, having been invited to learn and grow in faith, having served others and been made more aware of the ways we are served by others every day. It seems like the kind of work that Jesus’ yoke might be all about.

So what is it about other kinds of work that makes us long for Jesus’ invitation to rest? What are the heavy burdens we carry?  We carry the burdens of society’s expectation to have it all – all the stuff we want, all the opportunities we want, all the success we want. We easily, even those of us who might be more aware, buy in to the image that advertisers put forward to us subtly and not-so-subtly all the time. We buy into the idea that airbrushed images of physical perfection are the normative expectation and adjust our lives accordingly. I’m getting weary just talking about it.

And what about when we pour our energy into arguing with others, jockeying for position as we try to win the title of the one who is right. Or to reverse the language of the serenity prayer, we make ourselves weary when we simply accept what we have the power to change and try to change the things we cannot. Comparing ourselves to others and what we think we should be or have or do based on someone else’s life.

Paul, who writes the passage we read for our second reading, knows this struggle well. He had spent a lifetime figuring out how to be the best and most zealous of them all, pouring energy into violent persecution. And even after his conversion he describes the war raging within him, fighting the impulses to do what he does not want and not doing that which he knows he should. It’s an exhausting battle.

The problem is that we get mixed up sometimes imagining that God is reinforcing all those unreasonable expectations that we place on our lives. We imagine that Jesus’ yoke is about doing more, being more, about somehow resolving the quest for perfection that our culture puts forward. I heard it expressed this past week in people who felt guilt and shame for not spending enough time with Jesus, as if Jesus could be kept out of our lives by our lack of interest. I hear it when people worry that they have let God down by not living up to the expectations they’ve set for themselves. I hear it come out of my own mouth sometimes.

But this passage is a reminder for us that not all the burdens we carry are from God. I wonder if in the moments when we find ourselves longing for the lifting of a burden, when our work feels as if we are running into a brick wall over and over again, if it’s time to rethink whose expectations we are trying to fulfill.

United Methodist pastor, artist, and lectionary blogger Jan Richardson describes her simple search for a picture of a yoke to get a visual representation of what this passage was about. While there are single yokes out there, the vast majority of pictures are of double yokes, designed to keep animals working in tandem. What if we imagine Jesus talking about this kind of yoke, one designed not just to lead us in work but to unite us to the one who has the power to create, redeem, and sustain the universe?  That power sharing the work to which we have been called.

You see, maybe our burdens and our weariness come when we fight against the direction that God is trying to help us work. God desperately trying to support the work to which we are called but we still pressing away toward work that does not fulfill. Perhaps weariness comes from fighting against the yoke. Or perhaps from our attempts to yoke ourselves to another master whose burdens are heavy.

We have a challenging job to sort out the difference. But I think Paul’s words are helpful here – naming for us the struggle between what we want to do and what we actually do, normalizing that very human difficulty and at the same time reminding us that God’s expectation is not perfection in following the law. God’s expectation is not that we figure it all out or get it all right or that we attain whatever version of success we have created in our own minds. God’s expectation is that we will need to be rescued, to use Paul’s language, from our bodies of death. God’s expectation to be the one who lifts our burdens and guides us into life abundant. God’s expectation is that we need Jesus.

And as our burdens are lifted we are again invited into the work. There are neighbors to serve and injustices to be righted, people to be welcomed and pain to be healed. In that work we may get tired, but grounded in God’s gracious love, our weariness and our self-imposed burdens are lifted. So come, here, to this table, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and you will find rest. And you will be sent out again to go in peace, for Christ is with you, and his yoke is easy and his burden is light.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sermon for the Commemoration of Peter and Paul, Apostles
Sunday, June 29, 2013

¹⁵When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” ¹⁶A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” ¹⁷He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. ¹⁸Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” ¹⁹(He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.” – John 21:15-19

Peter and Paul, who share this day of commemoration because of a long-standing tradition that they were martyred on the same date in the year 64, couldn’t have been more different from one another. Peter was a fisherman from the country; Paul a religious scholar traveling in more elite circles. Peter was impulsive and a little rough around the edges; Paul was something more of a planner with a long-term strategy and prose that could put a poet to shame. Peter jumps at the chance to follow Jesus, but later has a number of peaks and valleys in his relationship; Paul is a zealous persecutor of Jesus-followers until he is converted by an encounter with Jesus on the road and ever-after he seems unwavering in his faith.

But both Peter and Paul had experiences they later regretted. Paul was confronted on the road to Damascus and spent the rest of his life in awe that God could forgive his violence and hatred to the extent that he would be called to be an apostle, a leader in the early church. But since the readings appointed for this day focus more on Peter, in particular Jesus’ words to Peter after the resurrection, let’s look more closely at his experience.

One of the many things Peter is known for is his three-fold denial that he was a companion of Jesus as the events in Jerusalem unfolded toward the crucifixion of Jesus. Three times he answered inquiries, and three times he lied to save his own skin. It wasn’t his only mistake, and frankly in the scheme of mistakes, it’s one of the more understandable. But you know how when events unfold a certain way a small mistake can suddenly take on greater significance.

In my book, Peter could be excused for being distraught, confused, and afraid in a bad situation turning worse. It’s not like there’s a manual for what to do when your friend and teacher is arrested and sentenced to death and you’re next on the list. But I imagine that he carried that burden with him in those days that followed. Even in the joy of the resurrection, I imagine him brooding over that particular mistake, feeling as if that were the moment. That was the one that mattered and he didn’t get it right.

Maybe I imagine that because I talk to so many people who worry about having messed up when they thought it counted the most. Maybe because I worry about the times I failed when it counted the most. The moments that come to mind sometimes when your head hits the pillow, keeping you from falling asleep, reliving what we wish we had done instead. The wrong words spoken in anger or shame. The opportunity missed. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Maybe some do this more than others, but I know all of us have known moments of regret.

And so we make up this story to tell ourselves that we aren’t good enough to be people of God. Sometimes it’s that blunt but more often it’s something more subtle. Like the assumption that I’m not as good as so-and-so who can do that thing. Or that I shouldn’t do that because I know someone else must be better at it. But we do that forgetting that each of us is called to something, and each of us contributes to the work of God in our community. It frankly doesn’t matter what you’ve done, you have a witness to God’s love to share.

I know whole communities that adopt this story, too, held back by a sense that we haven’t been as good as we ought to be. Sometimes I even catch a glimpse of that here at Immanuel. Not sure we’re together enough to try a bold new step. Remembering something that didn’t work in the past, afraid that it defines who we are as the people of God – branded like Peter for being the ones who let the ball drop, maybe when we think it mattered most.

But you see, that’s not the story we read on this day of commemoration. Instead we read the story about what Jesus does next. Because this day of commemoration, any day when we remember the saints of God, is not actually about what Peter or Paul did. It’s about what God did.

Standing on the shore where Jesus first met Peter, having had a breakfast of fish and bread, Jesus takes Peter aside. And maybe Peter is thinking, “Oh man, this is it, the moment where Jesus is going to tell me what I already know, that I’m a failure, that I’m done for.” And Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” Peter replies, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” And Jesus again, “Feed my lambs.”

And if I’m Peter, I’m at once relieved and a little bit afraid. Relieved not to receive a verbal lashing from Jesus, but a little afraid it might be too good to be true. Or maybe more accurately a little afraid that I won’t be able to get past the failure.

So Jesus asked again, “Do you love me?” “Yes.” “Tend my sheep.” And a third time, for each word of denial another opportunity, another commissioning. “Do you love me?” “Yes.” “Feed my sheep.”

The past acknowledged and the future laid out. With Peter we are people whose failures do not define us. For all our many moments that could have been better, when we wished we had been able to muster something we couldn’t. For all the moments we think have been lost forever, Jesus lays out a new possibility.

And it’s for a future filled with purpose. Forgiven in order that we might go forth to do the work of God. For everyone who thinks he or she doesn’t have the skills to be a witness, we have Peter and Paul as examples. By Paul’s own admission, one of the least likely candidates for ministry God has ever seen. People who might have easily been consumed by their past are thrust forward as leaders for the newly emerging church of God.

As we prepare this week to travel to Albany with our young people, we are not the likeliest bunch to do the kind of ministry that is needed. We are not rich by our country’s standards. Though we go to fix homes, none of us are master carpenters. Some might look at us and say we’re too young. Some might look and think we are small in number to make much difference. But having been on these trips before, I challenge anyone who might think such a thing to spend a week with us. To see the ways that God uses each person’s gifts to make the whole thing work. The way that the right people step up in the right ways to build healing relationships with the community and with each other. The way things fall into place so that ministry can happen.

We may not become as famous as Peter and Paul, but each person in this room has ministry to do. Each one has a call from God to be who we are in the places to which we have been called. We have made mistakes. Some of them big ones. Others small ones we’ve blown out of proportion. But none of that defines who we are in God’s world. That is determined by the mission of the God who wipes the slate clean over and over again and calls us each time anew to the work of God in our everyday lives.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

²⁴A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master; ²⁵it is enough for the disciple to be like the teacher, and the slave like the master. If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household!
²⁶So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known. ²⁷What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. ²⁸Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. ²⁹Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. ³⁰And even the hairs of your head are all counted. ³¹So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.
³²Everyone therefore who acknowledges me before others, I also will acknowledge before my Father in heaven; ³³but whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.
³⁴Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
³⁵For I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
³⁶and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.
³⁷Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; ³⁸and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. ³⁹Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. – Matthew 10:24-39

It’s summer time, so it seems appropriate to start with a summery kind of image: swimming lessons. I suspect many of you have experienced such a thing, and those who haven’t can probably imagine well enough. Swimming lessons usually take place at the pool or perhaps some other calm body of water. That seems obvious, right? I would assume no one is going to suggest that taking an online course in swimming or reading a biography of Michael Phelps would constitute swimming lessons. One would certainly not want to hire a lifeguard who said he or she only learned how to swim by reading about it. Learning that way might be a lot more comfortable and perhaps safer in the short-term. No worry about accidental drowning, water in your nose, swimmer’s ear, sunburn, and the like. But learning from the sidelines is not going to get you very far if eventually you want to go in the deep end.

This is Jesus’ philosophy in Matthew chapter 10, except he’s talking about discipleship instead of swimming. What we’ve missed by the way the lectionary readings fall when Easter comes late in the calendar year, is the beginning of this somewhat uncomfortable speech by Jesus. All of this is part Jesus’ instruction to the twelve disciples as he sends them out on their own, presumably for the first time. It’s some advice before jumping into the water.

We tend to think of the disciples as this bunch that hung around following Jesus from place to place, soaking up all they could learn, then only after Jesus’ death and the coming of the Spirit did they go out and put into practice what they’ve learned. But this passage is a reminder to us that perhaps much more than we think the disciples were already out on their own a bit in the earliest parts of Jesus’ ministry. To continue our analogy, their lessons involved getting into the pool pretty quickly, not just learning on the sidelines.

I wonder if in practice, we as Christians react with confusion and consternation to Jesus’ seemingly harsh words in this passage because we’re sometimes a little too used to trying to be disciples from the sidelines, waiting til we have it all figured out before we jump in. If following Jesus means joining a nice group of people and singing some nice music, if it means being nice and learning some good stories, if it means doing some volunteer work and going home, then today’s reading makes absolutely no sense. None of that is likely to spur family divisions, the uncovering of darkness, the scorn and ridicule of your neighbors, or the loss of your life. It’s much safer, but it just isn’t going to teach you how to be a follower of Jesus. That’s going to involve actually getting into the water.

The problem is that usually we wait until something drastic forces us to leap in with abandon.

On a big scale, we might think about an ever-growing problem in our country. Wealth and income inequality = was one of the many issues highlighted recently at our synod assembly. Not just a healthy capitalist discrepancy between income levels, but a gap so wide that nearly no one thinks it’s an ideal distribution. To change it would topple some important structures in our society. It would have the potential to upend a lot of things. I see why very few at the top are jumping to fix the problem. I don’t know what it will take to trigger the kind of risks by those at the top that it will take to make a change. But if we trust Jesus’ words, those who hold onto their lives as they are now are risking the loss of everything.

In our personal lives maybe it’s something else that triggers us to risk something. The death of a loved one, the death of a relationship, the loss of a job, the diagnosis of a life-threatening illness, or just about any major life change. But it usually takes something to push us off the deck and into the pool. Something to push us to pull that long-forgotten dream out of our memory and take a chance on it. Something to push us to enter a process of self-discovery that we have been avoiding. Something to push us to let go of something we’ve been holding on to for too long.

In the church it’s usually lack of money that forces us to take the kind of risks we’re talking about – the threat that we won’t survive unless we risk what is for the sake of what might be. Campus ministry in the New England Synod, for instance, is experiencing the decrease in funding that inevitably came with less money flowing from congregational mission support dollars. While this doesn’t affect our congregation significantly in terms of dollars, we are part of the conversation about how we redevelop the model of campus ministry for the synod. There has been incredible resistance to change because of the risk to current positions and ministries, but now that some of those are on the edge financially, we’re thinking about jumping in – realizing what it means to trust God and risk something new – something that might upset things as they are and threaten some of what is for the sake of what could be.

I wonder what we haven’t been willing to risk? In what ways have we been hanging back from Jesus’ invitation to leap in and risk what we know for the sake of what might be? What might God be calling us to in our daily lives or in our life as a church community that will require us to trust not in ourselves but in God? What kind of radical hospitality, illogical generosity, profound forgiveness, or challenging justice-work is asking us to take a risk for the sake of what might be?

That’s part of why we are joining together in a visioning process, one which you will be hearing more about in the coming weeks. We have lots of great things going that we’ll continue doing. But we check-in intentionally sometimes because we need some reminders, a little push from time to time, to help us step out of our comfort zone and risk something new. A nudge to let go of something that is for what might be.

But despite all of Jesus’ challenging words here, there is also a strong reminder that no matter the challenges and the hardships that come when we engage in following Jesus, we are held by the one who will not let a sparrow fall without noticing. The one who asks us to take a risk with our lives is the one who holds body and soul. Jesus’ fair warning about hardship when we take a risk actually seems like reassurance to me that we can trust him. One who promises everything will be just fine is a fool. But one who promises never to forsake us in trouble, not even unto death, seems like a worthy one to follow. There is not a path we can take that does not land us in the hands of God. There is not a risk we can take whose failures and successes aren’t both held in the hands of God.

There’s a lyric from a song by the Lutheran rock band Lost and Found – “You can choose what you want to choose, but you can’t choose the cost.” So you can choose to stand by the sidelines. You can choose always to play it safe. But that has its cost, too – for one, you’ll never fully be a part of the fun happening in the water. Or you can jump into the water with Jesus and trust that as we learn to swim it will cost us some nosefuls of water and some flailing around, moments of fear and uncertainty and frankly, some ridicule from those still on the sidelines who think we look a little ridiculous. Really engaging with the hard things our faith asks of us day in and day out is risky, terrifying even. But the one holding us will not let us drown.

So are you ready to go swimming?

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Holy Trinity Sunday
June 15, 2014

¹⁶Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. ¹⁷When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. ¹⁹Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:16-20

[Note: This sermon was inspired by a line that stuck with me from a sermon at our New England Synod Assembly preached on the Vigil of Pentecost by high school student Bethany Keyl. In her sermon she was reminding us that God has entrusted us with responsibilities to serve in God’s world, and she used the line “God believes in you.” That embedded itself in my mind and came to the forefront as I wrote this sermon. Thanks, Bethany, for your boldness and wisdom!]

As we gather today to celebrate Holy Trinity and as we just a few moments ago celebrated the baptism of Logan Jaxon, it might seem like today is all about what we believe. In the baptismal rite that we now know pretty well, I asked you to renounce evil three times, then I asked you three times to make a statement of belief. You all dutifully responded with the words of the Apostles’ Creed, with those ancient words that tie us to the faith of those who went before us, the ones who passed our faith down generation to generation and eventually to us. But on a day like today, when we highlight belief statements that most if not all of us struggle with and complex doctrines that have been the source of heated if not violent debate for the entire history of Christianity, it can start to seem like today is all about what we believe.

Some people will tell you that we can be saved as long as we believe the right thing. It sounds good at first – all you have to do is believe. But it’s actually rather problematic. Believe what exactly? Which theory of atonement? Which doctrine of sin? How much doubt is too much to disqualify you? When you come up against a situation that pulls the rug out from underneath your belief system, does it all fall apart?

Did you notice in our gospel reading today that even some of Jesus’ disciples, the ones who just saw graves opened and who have been walking around with the risen Christ beside them, even some of them still doubted? And Jesus does not chide them for it, instead he commissions them along with all the rest to go and make disciples and baptize the nations.

That’s part of why the Lutheran church remains committed to baptizing people of any age, including infants. Because we believe no matter how old you get you can’t fully understand what’s happening at baptism. That each of us is as unprepared as Logan to understand the profound grace of God. There are valid reasons that some other denominations wait until adulthood, but at the heart of it for all of us is that it’s not about our getting up the right amount of certainty about God. Baptism is about God’s action done for us and to us. It’s about God’s raising us up from death to life. So it’s not actually about what we believe.

But if it’s not about what we believe, perhaps it’s about what we do! That’s the popular alternative in our culture and many others past and present. It’s particularly pervasive now as we live into a culture that is more and more apt to question belief in an ongoing way. Being a good person could be a religion all its own these days.

Today we asked Logan’s parents to promise, and in truth we asked all of you to promise, to help him live into his baptismal faith. And if you want to get all the way to the bottom of it, it was an opportunity for all of us, myself included, to be reminded of the things we are expected to do as baptized people of God: to live among God’s faithful people, come to the word of God and the holy supper, learn the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, place in our hands the holy scriptures, and nurture ourselves in faith and prayer, so that we may learn to trust God, proclaim Christ through word and deed, care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace.

It’s a hefty list and far more than just being a good person. It’s a list that we would do better to remember more often. But if you have any illusion of doing all those things or any of those things perfectly, I’m going to tell you it’s impossible. Our service projects and donations, our study and reflection, our sharing and giving, our advocacy and justice work, those are ways that God is at work in and through us. And yet, when will it be enough. When we have worked all day and sometimes all night and the world still seems to be falling apart… when our voice is gone from shouting out against gun violence…when our arms are worked to exhaustion creating homes for people without shelter…when our hearts cannot hold any more pain and suffering…has it been enough?

Do keep working, God knows the work is not yet done, and the call of Jesus in our text today to go and make disciples of all nations is going to involve some serious work of service to the world around us. But also go to bed at night knowing that your work has not been in vain. Go to bed at night seeking forgiveness for the missed opportunities to share God’s love, but rest assured those missed opportunities make you no less a child of God. Go to bed at night commending the work into God’s hands, that it might continue while we rest and that we might be renewed to join with God again in it the next morning.

But if today isn’t about what we believe, or about what we do, what is it about? I would propose that every Sunday, and especially this day of Trinitarian celebration and this day of baptism in our midst, is really about what God believes and what God does. That God believes in us.

Though we honor the significance of baptism by our promise and we trust that God is present in our confession of faith, the water and words are not mine, and not even ours, but God’s. God’s water, God’s word, God’s action, God’s love. This day is about a God who believes we are worth the effort to join us in the drowning and raise us from the water to new life.

And I’m not suggesting we throw out the creeds – they connect us to the faith of the whole church past and present and they give us a tether from which to question and struggle – but what if when we said them, we thought alongside our statements of belief, some statements about what God believes.

God the creating one believes that we, along with the plants and animals, soil and water are good, indeed very good, and that we are worthy of sharing in stewardship of the abundance in the created world.

God the redeeming one believes that our flesh and bone is worthy of the presence of God, that even the most despised among us is worthy of table fellowship, that our injustices can be overcome, that death can be defeated, that life is stronger than death.

God the sustaining one believes that our broken selves are worthy of being called into community with one another and communion with God. That God believes our whole selves are worth redemption.

God believes in us.

That’s what our faith is all about – the outline not of what we do but of what God does among us.  God chooses us against all logic and reason. God creates the world, creates us, and then invites us to be creative in tandem with God’s work, giving us opportunities to be recreated over and over again.

God lives among us in the earthiness of our lives. Reminding us that our reality in all its ugliness and beauty, strength and fragility, fear and hope is infused with God’s very being, carrying us to the grave and to new life.

God makes us community by bread and wine at this table and by water and word at that font. God gives us a mission in the world to proclaim and serve.

So as you follow God’s command to go forth into the world, as we together join in the work of God along with the newest baptized child of God among us, remember that when you struggle to believe, when you fail and forget, that God believes in you. And there is nothing that you can believe or do to change that it is so.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sermon for Pentecost – Sunday, June 8, 2014

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. ²And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. ³Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. ⁴All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.
⁵Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. ⁶And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.⁷Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? ⁸And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? ⁹Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, ¹⁰Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, ¹¹Cretans and Arabs — in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” ¹²All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” ¹³But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.” 
¹⁴But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. ¹⁵Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. ¹⁶No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:
¹⁷‘In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
¹⁸Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;and they shall prophesy.
¹⁹And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below,blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
²⁰The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
²¹Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ – Acts 2:1-21

¹⁹When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”²⁰After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” ²²When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” – John 20:19-23

Alleluia! The Spirit is here!
The Spirit is here indeed! Alleluia!

We read these same verses from John’s gospel a few weeks ago as part of a larger reading. On that Sunday I asked the young people to do something, and now I’m going to ask you to do the same things. I’m going to ask you to hold your breath – just for 10 seconds. Notice how you feel when you’re holding your breath. Ready? Go…What did you notice? Did you start to get anxious and count the seconds? Can you still feel it in your chest? Is your body still constricted?

On the first Pentecost the disciples were holding their breath. It doesn’t matter which of the two Pentecost stories you read – the one from John’s gospel or the one from Luke’s book of Acts. It’s a little more explicit in John. The disciples are waiting, holding their breath. The doors are locked out of fear, and they do not know what is coming next. They are reeling with the events of Good Friday and the reports of a resurrection. Waiting there when Jesus breaks down their door to breathe the Spirit into them. In Luke’s version, they are still waiting 50 days later, the doors aren’t locked but they are huddled inside in prayer and discernment. Waiting. Holding their breath. What is coming next? And that’s when the wind blows and the flames appear and the Spirit shakes things up. I can’t fault the disciples for holding their breath. They were living into a brand new reality. In Luke’s account, Jesus even told them to hold their breath until the gift of the Spirit arrived.

The problem is that we are a post-Pentecost people. And we are still holding our breath. Sometimes we do it literally. Have you ever noticed how your breathing becomes shallow when you get stressed, anxious, or afraid? And that only makes the stress, anxiety, fear worse. But we hold our breath in other ways, too:

-When we fail to speak up about injustice around us. When we wait too long or fail to speak at all, our communities suffer. We suffer.

-When we suppress ourselves. Whether it’s thoughts and feelings that need to be shared or whether we suppress whole parts of ourselves because we imagine, rightly or wrongly, that the world does not accept that part of us.

-When we retain sins. Did you notice that last line in the Gospel reading? As soon as Jesus breathes the Spirit into them, he offers them the power to hold onto sins or to let them go. If you hold on to them, Jesus says, you are simply stuck holding your breath.

-When we hold on too tightly to our loved ones. When we hold on too tightly to the idols we make for ourselves – our money, our success, our pride.

-When we lock ourselves inside. Whether it’s a church that is stuck inside its own walls or a person afraid and alone afraid to leave the house. The fear of failure preventing us from living.

Holding our breath is eating away at us. Impacting our physical bodies and our communities, the body of Christ. Can you feel it? How are you holding your breath in these days?

Now I want you to try something with me. It’s a very abbreviated spiritual practice of breathing. We’re going to take three deep breaths together. I’m going to say something in between so please feel free to take shorter breaths in between. Get comfortable, or as comfortable as you can in your wooden pews.

In your first deep breath, consciously let go of the past, the residue of the day, whatever tension, fatigue or preoccupation you may be carrying with you. Let us breathe together…

In a second deep breath, arrive more fully in this present moment – really land in the here and now and become more fully present. Let us breathe together…

In a third deep breath, open to what comes next—open body, heart, mind, and Spirit to what God has for you in this moment. Let us breathe together…

Now how do you feel? Can you still feel that in your body?

In a quick Google search I learned that even a few deep breaths can impact pH levels in blood, lower blood pressure, counteract the fight or flight response. Deep breathing affects heart, brain, digestion, and the immune system. We all know, some of you from experience, that we tell women in labor to breathe. Anyone who’s practiced yoga probably remembers learning that our tendency is to breathe less in hard poses, but that the only way to do them is to breathe more the harder the pose. Breathing loosens us up, drives away fear, gives us courage to go forward. If you get nothing else from this sermon, at least take away a reminder to breathe deeply the next time you get anxious or stressed. It may sound new age-y to some, but to grow in connection with one’s body and breath is to grow deeper in connection with God’s creation. To participate in the cycle of respiration between plants and animals.

You see, we usually think of the Spirit as the least physical and most abstract part of God. But what if Spirit were the most embodied part of God? What if every breath, every cellular process that engages that breath, were the Spirit of God in us?

There is a Jewish custom that one does not fully write or pronounce the name of God given to Moses at the burning bush. It is written by the hebrew letters yod-hay-vav-hay. In English we would write it as YHWH. Go ahead – try to pronounce that. And yet we do pronounce it with every breath. Rabbi Lawrence Kushner, the Reform Jewish scholar, writes, “…in truth [these four letters] are unutterable. Not because of the holiness they evoke, but because they are all vowels and you cannot pronounce all the vowels at once without risking respiratory injury. The word is the sound of breathing. The holiest name in the world, the Name of the Creator, is the sound of your own breathing.”

That is the breath given to us at birth and the breath that is among the last things to go at death. And every breath in between is the proclamation of God’s holy name. Every breath a witness to the ends of the earth.

That’s where the Acts reading ends up – words about all people – women and men, young and old, slave and free – proclaiming the word of God to the world. Dear sisters and brothers, we certainly do this in our words and song – which require our breath – and with our actions. But sometimes we do it simply by still being alive. By having faced the adversity that all of us in one way or another face and having overcome, we witness – breathing in the breath of God and breathing it back to the world. A witness to the ends of the earth.

And as we breathe the name of God moment after moment after moment. Things start to happen. We might find ourselves letting go of the sins that we hold on to. We might find a way to be more forthright and honest about who we are and what we need to speak up about changing in our world. We might find in letting go of breath and trusting that there will be more air for our next we learn more and more how to trust generosity and abundance for us.

And when our breath gets shallow, when our doors are locked, when the weight of what we carry is too much. When, one day, our breath stops. That’s when the wind starts to blow and the doors get knocked down and people start wondering what the heck is going on, because the breath of God is moving in. Moving in to be our breath when we cannot breathe on our own. To be the breath of a broken and hurting world.

Pentecost is not just a birthday but a rebirth with new breath. Not just an undoing of the divisions created at the Tower of Babel but a recreation of who we were created to be. Every year we come to celebrate that it happens to us, to our church, in our lives, today. The breath of God coming in and going out again. The name of God proclaimed among us. The Spirit of God among us today, tomorrow, forever. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco