Christmas Eve 2013

In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ²This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
⁸In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: ¹¹to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹²This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
¹⁵When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. ¹⁷When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child;¹⁸and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. – Luke 2:1-20

Many of us have been taught that a good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. By that definition, the Christmas story doesn’t hold up. Have you ever noticed how much is missing from story? That is just doesn’t really quite have an ending? Of course, many of us could recite the details we know by heart, the story we’ve pieced together from the gospels of Luke and Matthew, filling in a few things here and there from our traditions, like the donkey that carried Mary who isn’t actually mentioned in the narrative. We know about the long journey of a pregnant girl to Bethlehem where she and her betrothed find the guest rooms already bursting full. We know about the shepherds and angels, the star and the Magi journeying from the east.

But so much remains a mystery. What happens to the shepherds after they have seen everything just as the angels have told them? Luke tells us that they share their story to the amazement of others, but no indication of exactly what they think of it all. Is their life somehow different when they return to the fields?

We never hear the results of the census, that the Emperor Augustus ordered while Quirinius was governor of Syria. For tonight we leave the holy family in the midst of a city still bustling with visitors who have come to be taxed, but who have no idea what has occurred in an out-of-the-way corner of town. Do any of them ever figure it out?

Even Isaiah’s prophecy is left unfulfilled. The promised Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace who would break the oppressor’s rod and the yoke of their oppression, is still lying helpless in a bed of hay. We know there is more to the story but tonight we are left to wonder about what comes next. Is this really the fulfillment of the promise?

What exactly does all of this mean that God has come as an infant? What does it mean that God is with us in this way? What will come of this infant king? Does this story have an ending?

But actually I kind of like that we are left with some questions, that the story feels a little unfinished. Doesn’t it parallel our own unfinished stories? How many of you tonight still have something left on you holiday to-do list? Food to prepare, gifts to wrap, bags to pack, guest rooms to make ready, maybe a few Christmas cards left to send? It seems that just about everyone was feeling especially rushed in the lead-up to Christmas this year. Perhaps you are one of the many this year with something else still to do when you get home.

Or maybe you are aware of the other unfinished things in your life. Maybe there are unresolved conflicts that will come up again around the Christmas visits to family and friends. Maybe this Christmas is a reminder of another year passing with a goal left unfulfilled. Even though Advent is now officially over, maybe you are still waiting, hoping, longing for something that has not yet come into your life.

Or maybe we are aware of the unfinished things around the world. We are aware of modern day Nazareth and Bethlehem separated by walls, a peace process that has no apparent ending. We are aware of wars that have yet to be finished in Syria and Sudan and so many other places around the world. We are aware that hunger and disease continue to grow seemingly unchecked without hope of a solution to bring it to an end.

And so it is that God enters into our unfinished stories tonight. Willing to become the vulnerable infant in the midst of unfinished chaos. We sing our familiar carols tonight not because a baby was born, and not because of Mary and Joseph, or the shepherds or the star, or even the heavenly choir of angels who appeared singing “Glory in the highest,” but we sing because God comes into our unfinished lives and our unpolished homes and our weak and vulnerable places. God comes to us who are still in some ways as helpless as infants.  We sing because God is not yet finished coming into our lives.

And we feast together at this table, on bread and wine, God come down in the ordinary for us. It does not end our hunger. It does not answer all our questions, but it is God’s sign for us that our story is linked with God’s story. A promise to us that the good news of Christmas is only the beginning of much more to come. The way in which God’s coming down to earth transforms us is still an unfinished story. God still has more in store for you.

So we are gathered tonight as a reminder of what has been, a baby in a manger in Bethlehem, the sign of all that is now and is yet to come, the Christ breaking forth into our ordinary unfinished lives. What that incarnation means for our lives is yet to be fully answered. So as we go from here this night, warmed by the song of the community and transformed once again in this meal to be the body of Christ in the world, we become beacons of this good news to be shared with all the world. Our unfinished stories become God’s means of breaking into this world over and over again, surprising us then, now, and always with a love that simply has no end. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

A reflection for evening prayer in Advent based on Isaiah 9:2-7 and John 1:1-18.

The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

This is the season for sitting by the light. Sitting by the fireplace on a cold, snowy day. Singing together by candlelight in a darkened church. Candles in the windows, lights on the trees. It recalls for us, perhaps, memories real or imagined of peace, calm, and quiet. It has the power to transport us out of the busyness of the season to a place away. Maybe, for some of us, the quiet and candlelight even give us permission to drift off to sleep, a perfectly valid form of meditation from time to time.

These are wonderful things, but I fear that our temptation is to stop there. To read Isaiah and John as they talk about Jesus, the light of the world, and think only of a calming light that transports us to dream-like world. I think instead the light they speak about is something a bit different. More like someone who has walked a long way in the dark and the cold who finally manages to get a fire going just before her fingers go numb. Light and warmth that is life or death survival. The kind of light that shines into dark corners of our lives that we’d rather keep in the shadows – things about our past or present, dangers we don’t want to address, or fears we cannot name. The kind of light that shines so brightly that it blinds us, causing us to stop in our tracks to pay attention. The kind of light that can be focused into a laser to cut through the hardest of metal and the hardest of hearts. This light may provide some comfort, but it does not come easy and without a bit of trembling at its power.

This light is the answer to the cosmic battle against the darkness. It’s here to break the yoke of slavery and the rod of the oppressor. It’s here to establish justice and righteousness. It’s here to be the life and light of all people. It will enlighten all and at the same time confuse most of us. This is a fighting light, a light that cannot be overcome.

So we sit lit our candles tonight, against what is almost the longest night of the year, to point us back to this powerful light. Like Isaiah and like John the Baptist calling out to us from the wilderness, our lights points us back to the one who overcomes our deepest darknesses. We look to a mere reflection of what is to come as a sign not only of peace and comfort but of the incredible power to transform us and our world.

As we take time for one more period of silence, I leave you with this question to guide your thinking, should you find it helpful. Where do you find yourself fighting against the darkness, and what happens when the light of Christ shines there?

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
²The spirit of the LORD shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD.
³His delight shall be in the fear of the LORD.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
⁴but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth;
he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth,
and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked.
⁵Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
and faithfulness the belt around his loins.
⁶The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
⁷The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
⁸The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
⁹They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
¹⁰On that day the root of Jesse shall stand as a signal to the peoples; the nations shall inquire of him, and his dwelling shall be glorious. – Isaiah 11:1-10

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, ²“Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” ³This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.'”
⁴Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. ⁵Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, ⁶and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.
⁷But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?⁸Bear fruit worthy of repentance. ⁹Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. ¹⁰Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.
¹¹I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹²His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” – Matthew 3:1-12

Today we are presented with two visions of what is to come. Two messianic visions. Two visions of what we wait for this Advent. Let’s start with the nicer one in Isaiah. This is one of Isaiah’s “On God’s Holy Mountain” images. Wouldn’t it be nice, we think, if we didn’t have to confront the reality of cute animals being part of the food chain? The wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the lion will eat straw like the ox, children playing with poisonous snakes. Safety and security for all. It sounds nice, but it’s actually pretty disturbing. The world order as we know it ceases to be. If you really try to picture what’s going on there, it become outright absurd. And if that weren’t absurd enough, a political figure emerges in this vision, too. One who will stand up for the righteous, who will fight for justice, who will work always with God’s vision over his own self-interest, a rarity in our time. But despite its absurdity, it’s a beautiful vision. Something we can hope for, and wait for and long for.

Ok, all well and good. But the gospel reading takes us to a different kind of vision. It is first of all a vision presented by a man wearing itchy clothing, with a nasty diet, living in an utterly barren wilderness. So the messenger doesn’t exactly present as a good news kind of guy. He starts his proclamation with name calling – you brood of vipers! You slithering, worthless harbingers of doom. And his vision is one of fire and brimstone. Winnowing forks to separate and unquenchable fires to burn the chaff away. Thanks, but I’ll take Isaiah’s absurd vision any day over that.

We want to dwell in the happy vision, the one that makes everything ok. But our experience calls us again and again into the wilderness. Our experience of injustice and brokenness, our experience of longing and fear and darkness. And so our church year every advent calls us back to an awareness of this wilderness, to dwell with John in his camel-hair clothes and diet of bugs, in an utterly barren place beside a less than ideal stream. Every year at this time we are called back to remember the wilderness in which we live and fires of repentance that burn among us. We live as an advent people all the time, caught between promise and reality, experiencing the winnowing and the burning yet hoping for transformation of our fundamental realities.

We could do what many of us do during most holidays, especially this Thanksgiving to Christmas season, and try to force the perfect picture into existence. How many of us haven’t tried in one way or another to make the Christmas holiday, or any holiday, a postcard perfect image of family or friends. The perfectly cooked meal to hide the conflicts around the table. The perfectly chosen gifts to make up for what has been a rough year of pain or loss. The beautiful decorations to cover the less than attractive things about our lives. None of those things are bad, but we put so much pressure on ourselves to make these picture-perfect visions come true.

You see, that’s where we run into problems with Isaiah’s beautiful vision. We start getting frustrated when we can’t make it happen. We get frustrated when we can’t make it come out right. We give up on the possibility of it ever happening when we can’t make the wolf lie down with the lamb. When we can’t get our concern for the poor into our global political sphere. When we can’t be at peace with our neighbors and ourselves.

Which is why we need to return to John the Baptist every Advent season. We return to John the Baptist to be reminded that we are not alone in the wilderness. There are others with us, searching, wondering, needing the waters of baptism to refresh us and call us again and again to reorient to the new vision.

But there is something about John that just doesn’t quite tell the whole story. He’s not wrong about the need to repent, to reorient our lives toward something different. He’s not wrong about the painful process of things in our lives being burned away and refined. But John himself admits it, that one more powerful is yet to come. John’s reality is not the full story.

But John does hint at it in his words. Even from stones, John says, is God able to raise up children of Abraham. And well, if that’s possible, then maybe new life will come from the ashes of the fire, as well. That’s what Jesus ultimately does for us. After a life in the wilderness, in our wilderness with us. After a life of planting shoots to spring up and begin Isaiah’s vision of God’s holy mountain wherever he could, he got burned up, too, by unquenchable death. With his very life, death, and resurrection, he reminds us that new life is possible anywhere, anytime. And so he lives among us now. A shoot growing in the wilderness. New life in barrenness. In the middle of John’s crazy ranting, in the middle of nowhere and out of nothing, from the stones, and from the ashes, and from us, from our wilderness lives, new life is springing.

-Pastor Steven Wilco, with a particular thanks to Professor Fred Niedner, whose 2004 commentary from The Christian Century was particularly helpful for this week’s sermon, and whose wisdom shared as my first formal preaching professor informs all my preaching.

The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem.
²In days to come
the mountain of the LORD’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
³Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
to the house of the God of Jacob;
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth instruction,
and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
⁴He shall judge between the nations,
and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.
⁵O house of Jacob,
come, let us walk
in the light of the LORD! – Isaiah 2:1-5

³⁶But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. ³⁷For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. ³⁸For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, ³⁹and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. ⁴⁰Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. ⁴¹Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. ⁴²Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. ⁴³But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁴Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour. – Matthew 24:36-44

I have found myself thinking a great deal about Israel and Palestine again lately. In part it’s from seeing pictures of the trip that some fellow pastors and church members from around the New England Synod took these past two weeks to visit our companion synod, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jordan and the Holy Land. Pictures that capture the beauty of the land, the sites of our faith’s key historical moments, and pictures that capture the pain of the violence and divisions that continue day after day between Israelis and Palestinians.

In part I’ve been thinking about Israel and Palestine again because as our church year begins, we return to the stories where place plays such an important role. Soon John the Baptist will be crying out by the Jordan, preparing a way in the wilderness. Soon the angel will visit Mary and Joseph at Nazareth. Soon they will travel to Bethlehem. Stories that crisscross the modern day separation walls and checkpoints. Stories that connect us to roots that go deep into that land that is in so much pain then and now.

And today, as advent begins and we prepare for those stories set in the Holy Land, the psalmist implores us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem. It’s a plea that is as poignant today as it was when it was written thousands of years ago. Today it is a city divided, living in constant tension sometimes erupting into physical violence. People continue to live as refugees in their own country, fearful not just of their enemies but of their friends.

And of course that is only one place among many that needs praying for. Syria has fallen to the bottom of the news, but terrible things continue. It has become another Iraq or Afghanistan or Somalia or Sudan, where the news of bombings, and violence and death are so frequent that we tune them out. We stop hoping for anything to change.

But in the face of such a world, Isaiah presents a magnificent vision of a world made whole, with this well-known verse about the day when people will bead swords into plowshares, where the energy once put into violence is used to serve one another. It’s a glorious vision that I think we can agree we’d like to see made a reality. And yet with so much going on in the world, with conflicts that drag on for what seems like eternity, we fall asleep. We fall asleep to our visions of a peaceful future. We close our eyes, knowing that the world will be the same when we wake the next morning, Isaiah’s words a mere dream.

And yet, Jesus’ calls to us in the Gospel reading as we enter a season of waiting to keep awake. For the day and the hour no one knows. Like a thief in the night will God’s coming down surprise us. Therefore keep awake. Keep awake to the vision that Isaiah and others have proclaimed. In this Advent season, be a people of hope.

The problem is that we can only stay awake for so long. We can only sustain hope for so long. It surprises me how quickly we forget. How quickly we move on after wars and disasters make splashy headlines before falling to the back pages of the newspapers. If I’m honest, I’ve stopped really believing most days that peace is possible. The vision of Isaiah where swords are beaten into plowshares seems too far off to think realistically about.

And while we try to be people of hope in this violent world, sometimes the dreams we have for our own lives seem far off, too. Maybe there are hopes we haven’t even brought to voice because it seems like too much to ask, something that will never happen. Maybe we’ve learned to cope too well with the world around us as it is, forgetting the possibility of anything being different. Maybe our brokenness has become a constant companion to us in a way that we have come to depend on.

So how do we keep awake this advent season? How in the face of all that needs to be done in our own lives during this busy season and in the face of the needs of the whole world that weigh down on us, how will we keep awake.

One way that a group of Palestinians found to keep awake, was to create art. I have no idea if this exact project is still happening, but just over 10 years ago in the middle of the second intifada in Israel and Palestine, a group of artists gathered in their workshop in Bethlehem. The compound run by the Lutheran church there had suffered significant damage in the ongoing violence. In particular there was broken glass everywhere.

They didn’t know how to stop the violence. But they did start picking up the pieces. And they discovered that the broken glass did a wonderful job of reflecting sunlight. The broken glass was a better reflector of light than something they would manufacture. So they began picking up all the broken glass they could find and turning them into suncatchers. Turning the destruction into something that reflected light and hope. It wasn’t quite beating swords into plowshares, not yet, but it was a sign of hope, of possibility, and of promise.

We can certainly keep working to beat swords into plowshares. But in the meantime maybe we can keep awake to the vision of a world made whole by picking up the broken pieces. The things that the swords and missiles have shattered. The things that death has robbed from us. The pieces left after our hopes have been shattered. Because the cross reminds us that brokenness itself can be the most brilliant reflector of light. In learning to look for the reflections of God’s light emerging from our broken world, we learn to keep awake to the visions of what becomes possible with God.

God picks up our broken selves and shapes us into a people, a church, a body, that reflects God’s light. A people who, even in brokenness, or especially in brokenness, have an incredible capacity to be a beacon of God’s vision of a world made whole. We gather to be kept awake by the sometimes small but always persistent signs of what is yet to come. We gather to help one another see God’s light in brokenness. And we gather at the table again today to receive broken pieces of bread into our broken bodies, that God would form us into something new as a sign of the world to come. And once formed, this body of Christ, this gathering of people, will again be broken and sent. Sent out to reflect light in our brokenness. To be an advent people filled with hope, pointing to the light in the darkness, reminding ourselves, each other, and the whole world, that Christ is among us, then, now, and forever.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

³³When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. [[ ³⁴Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”]] And they cast lots to divide his clothing. ³⁵And the people stood by, watching; but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” ³⁶The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, ³⁷and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” ³⁸There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”
³⁹One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” ⁴⁰But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? ⁴¹And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” ⁴²Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” ⁴³He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.” -Luke 23:33-43

Below is an abbreviated version of the sermon preached on Christ the King Sunday at Immanuel on November 24, 2013:

If you came here today expecting a celebratory worship service for Christ the King and the end of the church year, I hope that you experienced that celebration in the opening hymn and the special choir music we had today. Because I’m guessing you didn’t hear it in the gospel reading we just read.

Instead of a celebratory text, we come back at this culmination of the church year to Jesus on the cross. And it’s not even John’s version where Jesus stays in command even as he is crucified. This is Luke’s telling of that event where the emphasis at least in this part of the story is on Jesus’ place among common criminals.

The people of Judea had been looking for a king. Someone with power and might, preferably with an army or three, or at least some political influence. What they got instead is a kingdom ruled from a cross. And worse yet, a mocking sign hung there on that “throne”: “This, people of Judea, is your king. Take that!” And people mocking him. “Save yourself, Save yourself!” And finally the criminal beside him, “Save yourself and us!” They wanted someone who could not only demonstrate power but who could share that power with us in our need.

The idea of monarchies may be falling by the wayside in our modern geopolitical sphere, but we all still look for a king or queen. We look for leaders who can wield their power for us. Leaders who will do what we need and want. We want a leader who can fix everything. A political leadership that can solve hunger without breaking the budget, fix the national healthcare crisis (in whatever way your political leanings would suggest that should be done), and solve the crisis in the middle east. The problem with the kind of leaders we expect is that they have to make hard decisions about whose will is done. Who gets to decide what is changed, and how, and when? Inevitably in that exercise of power there are winners and losers. And Jesus simply refuses to accept that model.

But in the absence of that kind of leadership, we inevitably seek out someone who will tell us what we want to hear. Inevitably we seek to become our own kings and queens, exerting our power and influence over someone or something, somewhere. But today we get none of that from Jesus.

So what is Jesus’ response to our pleas for power and might?

His verbal response to the second criminal who defends him is “Today you will be with me in paradise.” All well and good except that the ruler of this paradise is hanging on a cross. It leaves me with what kind of paradise that would be.

I think Jesus’ real response isn’t verbal. It’s what he does all afternoon with his body. To BOTH criminals he says, with arms outstretched, “Here, this is my body, given for you.” And to the Roman soldiers who crucify him and deride him, “This is my body, given for you.” To the people who stand and mock and to the people who have long since fled the scene, Jesus’ kingly response is “This is my body, given for you.”

And so to us, in our pleas for signs and wonders and demonstrations of power, “This is my body, given for you.”  To our hopes and dreams for change in the world, an end to sickness, pain, death, conflict, wars, environmental degradation, “This is my body, given for you.”

And that’s the kind of paradise we are invited into today by Christ’s death on the cross. We are invited to join this kingdom. We pray for it every week: “…thy kingdom come, thy will be done…for yours is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” That’s the kind of kingdom to which we offer back our gifts of time, money, and our very selves as we did together last week on our stewardship Sunday. What incredible gifts you pledged to share with the community – a sign that in God’s love enacted through you, this community is being transformed into this kingdom where power is turned upside down.

So today we remember this Holy God, as we will sing in just a moment, whose glory is in incarnation, whose power is in weakness, whose wisdom is in folly, and in whom death itself is life. That is the God we worship today. That is the God who calls us into relationship. That is the the kingdom we pray to come. And for that Jesus strengthens us by his ultimate act as king and his repeated statement to us with bread and wine, offered today, for you. “This is my body. Take and eat.”

-Pastor Steven Wilco

⁵When some were speaking about the temple, how it was adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, he said, ⁶“As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”
⁷They asked him, “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” ⁸And he said, “Beware that you are not led astray; for many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and, ‘The time is near!’ Do not go after them.
⁹“When you hear of wars and insurrections, do not be terrified; for these things must take place first, but the end will not follow immediately.” ¹⁰Then he said to them, “Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; ¹¹there will be great earthquakes, and in various places famines and plagues; and there will be dreadful portents and great signs from heaven.
¹²“But before all this occurs, they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. ¹³This will give you an opportunity to testify. ¹⁴So make up your minds not to prepare your defense in advance; ¹⁵for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict. ¹⁶You will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, by relatives and friends; and they will put some of you to death. ¹⁷You will be hated by all because of my name. ¹⁸But not a hair of your head will perish. ¹⁹By your endurance you will gain your souls.” – Luke 21:5-19

When was the last time you built a sandcastle? Now, a question that might seem strange: Why did you build that sandcastle? By their very nature they are vulnerable to wind and water and even the vengeful strike of a jealous sibling. They do not last.

So why build one. I think it’s because there is something so delightful about it. Seeing what shapes one can make. How high or how wide will it be? The delight of searching for seaweed and seashell embellishments. How long until the tide reaches it? The fun of building a bigger and bigger moat to keep the approaching water at bay, knowing that your efforts will not save it, but delighting in the effort. Play. Or in the case of major sandcastle competitions, a highly developed form of art, requiring great skill, patience, and vision for the purpose of delighting others.

We build sandcastles knowing they are impermanent. They will crumble. Their purpose would seem to be in the work of building and in the delight of observing the creation.

But when the other castles in our lives show signs of crumbling we seem genuinely surprised. We expect permanence in our other efforts. When we build cities we don’t expect them to be destroyed. We have typhoons like the one that has so recently struck the Philippines and hurricanes that have claimed houses and lives closer to home. When they wipe away people and buildings in alarming devastation, we rightfully are terrified and devastated, fearful and grieving. Cities we thought permanent are wiped away.

When our bodies begin to show signs of decay we panic. When an ache or pain, a wrinkle in our skin, or a gray hair reminds us that we will not live forever, we look for a fix to keep from aging or at least for a way to hide the reminders for ourselves.

When the successes we have worked hard for begin to change or worse, fall apart, we wonder why we ever bothered. Maybe your successor isn’t doing things the way you would have, or the culture has shifted the way your treasured institution functions. We are reminded of the impermanence of the things we work for with so much of our time, money, and energy.

Why do we build towers that can fall and cities that can be swept away and relationships that cannot last?

That’s what our gospel text addresses. Jesus takes an opportunity created by the admiration for the grand temple in Jerusalem for a harsh-sounding warning. This temple, the one you admire so, adorned with beautiful stones and gifts dedicated to God, “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” Your castles are made of sand.

The immediate reaction is one of fear. The disciples worry about how they will know the signs. How will they know how and when to prepare, as if perhaps they can do something to stop it. Even as Jesus redirects their questions, he lays on a longer list of things to worry about, nation will rise against nation, earthquakes, famines, plagues, dreadful portents and great signs from heaven. These things will happen, and they are not in your control, he reminds them. Your castles are made of sand.

I can imagine two extremes of reaction within that fear. One is to be simply paralyzed, unable to function with the powers at work in the world that seem so overwhelming. I certainly have moments like that. Moments where all the things that need fixing are too much for any work to matter. It seems that was the struggle for the Thessalonians, whom Paul urges to keep working, to stay in the moment rather than becoming so preoccupied with what is yet to come that nothing happens here and now.

Or one might take the opposite approach, working to the point of exhaustion, working to the point of nothing being effective anymore. Digging a deeper and deeper moat, utterly convinced that it can keep the tide from destroying our castle. Busyness to keep from feeling, busyness to keep from acknowledging. This is how the disciples react with their need to know what is to come and how to handle it.

Jesus’ acknowledgement of the potential for our carefully constructed lives to crumble at a moment’s notice seems like a radical unveiling of the truth of our reality. It is terrifying to realize that our lives are mere sandcastles and that we, too, are sand-people. It cuts to our core to challenge the belief that we can construct for ourselves something lasting and permanent.

But what if we imagine God as a sandcastle builder? Imangine that we are God’s incredible delight. We are the result of God at joyful play. We are the result of God’s being in the moment. We are God’s sand-people. We have a God who makes a perishable world and calls it good. We have a God who takes on our sandiness to be with us. We have a God who is here with us now, fully present in the moment without worry about what is to come. Because of that we are set free to play – to take delight in our life’s work for its own sake and not for the façade that it creates of our ability to hold back the tide; to take delight in one another for the joy of it and not for an end goal beyond that.

When real lives, and real homes are destroyed by wind and water, maybe sandcastle building looks like solidarity with the people of the Philippines and sending money that addresses the needs that are arising in the moment. Or it looks like prayers and grief alongside them. Because no matter how much money we spend or work we put in, disasters will come again, somewhere, somehow. And we have to trust that God will be just as present in that future now as God has been in our past and present nows.

When we offer to share with others what was have from God – our money, our time, our food, our very lives – we do so not because we have to or because any of that will fix the church or the world. None of it will keep the temple from falling. We offer those things because in doing so we find ourselves taking part in the sandcastle building, sharing the gifts of the one who takes delight in us.

When we care for ourselves and for one another we do so not because it will keep us from one day returning to scattered sand, but because in the moment, in the now, there is delight and joy in doing so.

Maybe we can begin to see our faith and our whole lives with the sheer joy and delight of a sandcastle builder. Seeking the ways in which we can play and search for beauty, and laugh at ourselves for our attempts to keep the tide from crashing in on us. Seeking partnerships to share in our delight. Experimenting with new things and letting them crumble when they will to make room for new experiments. And maybe in all of that, as we continue to create and shape the world around us, we can begin to find a way to tap into that delight God takes in shaping us.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

²³“O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!
²⁴O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!
²⁵For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;
²⁶and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,
²⁷whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another. – Job 19:23-27a

²⁷Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to him ²⁸and asked him a question, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. ²⁹Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless; ³⁰then the second ³¹and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. ³²Finally the woman also died. ³³In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”
³⁴Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; ³⁵but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. ³⁶Indeed they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. ³⁷And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. ³⁸Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” – Luke 20:27-38  

A Pentecostal preacher, a Roman Catholic Nun, a devout Muslim, a Jewish Rabbi, and an atheist philosopher walked into a bar. Well, ok, not really. They all walked into the studios of NPR’s All Things Considered. About a month ago, they featured one of these individuals each night on a series entitled “Conversations on the Afterlife.” It’s such a common part of our culture from books and movies and TV shows about thing like ghosts, vampires, and zombies – all things back from the dead – to endless jokes about what St. Peter asks at the pearly gates. So this NPR series was nice for a change to have some thoughtful conversation about it. I encourage you to check it out. I didn’t agree with everything that was said, but I found all of them thoughtfully wrestling not so much with defining the specifics of the afterlife, but with what our concepts of the afterlife do to us now. What does the narrative we construct about what happens when we die say about our lives now?

It would be unfair to categorize the conversation that happens in our gospel reading as a similarly civil dialogue about the meaning of the afterlife, but it does raise some similar questions about how what we think happens after we die affects how we live today. The Sadducees are trying to trip Jesus up. So they present their story. They don’t believe in a resurrection and they’re trying to point out how impossible it would be for one to exist.

The story they tell is about a woman, widowed seven times. It’s a fairly absurd hypothetical even given the life expectancy in their time. The practice upon which the Sadducee’s question was based was designed to take care of a childless widow, an attempt at compassion in a world that was not based on equal opportunity. It was about providing a way for a woman to bear sons, to create the legacy that was needed to live beyond her own death, to carry on the people of Israel. But no one seems concerned with the pain of this woman. Their story is about living within the rules. It’s a story mostly about death. And it’s a story that adds insult to injury, treating this woman as unworthy of standing on her own.

But Jesus has a different story in mind for them. Try this story instead, Jesus says. Imagine instead that God is the God of the living and not the dead. Imagine that this woman is not defined by the shame of her barrenness or by the pain of her grief. Imagine that there is world where the rules don’t apply with such rigidity. Imagine that there is a world in which people are defined by the living God who claims them rather than by the roles and expectations society has created for them. Remember, he tells them, what God said to Moses at the burning bush – God is the God Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. They are long since gone from the earth, their flesh wasted to nothing. But God is still their God and they are still God’s people.

Ok. Fair enough, but that doesn’t answer our questions. Where are they alive? How are their bodies alive, as Jesus seems to assert? How do we explain the bodies that have long since returned to dust being reformed with any consistency of personhood? Do people appear as the children their parents remember or as the parents as their children remember? Are there some sort of family groupings and how could that work in any possible way with the interweaving of families? Do we eat and drink and get tired and… The questions go on. It would seem so much easier to ignore this embodied resurrection. It would be an easier answer the Sadducee’s questions to talk about spirits, or to deny the resurrection altogether.

Despite the complications of it, Job even seems convinced in our first reading in a bodily resurrection despite that fact that as he affirms that he will rise to see God in the flesh his own current flesh is painfully blistering and falling away from his frame. How can we who exist in such a broken world with bodies vulnerable to disease and death, find any hope in a bodily resurrection?

But then that’s what Jesus is all about, entering into the embodied mess we find ourselves in now. That’s why we celebrate incarnation. Christ coming to us in the form of a body that can hurt and break and be killed. God coming to demonstrate what death and resurrection is all about in the middle of our earthly stories.

We, like the Sadducees, get caught up in our rules and our questions and our inability to see new possibilities, an inability to imagine anything that doesn’t stem from our experience of barrenness and death. We cease to hope and dream. We cease to imagine that our bodies are capable of new life.

The story that Jesus gives us instead is one full of mystery. A story that doesn’t leave us with the answers to our questions about an afterlife and what that might entail. Jesus simply tells our story in relationship to the God who is God of the living, past, present, and future.

Jesus points us to the dying and rising that happens here and now. The person who emerges from pain, trauma, abuse, and despair to a life of healing. The terminally ill patient who moves from anger and despair to acceptance and wholeness in the face of death. Broken relationships that are transformed into something new. Those who were marginalized and forgotten given voice and honored by the community. The war-torn or disaster-stricken country rebuilt and thriving again.

That’s not to say every story has a happy ending. But it does point us to the ways in which the God of the living promises us resurrection, not just in an afterlife, but also now, in the midst of the messy mystery of our embodied lives. It points us to the way in which God claims us in life and in death, in our messy bodies and our messy lives.

So our questions remain. They are a natural normal response to our finite humanness. And I think the Bible leaves plenty of room for us to find comfort in a variety of understandings about what happens after we die, given that both life and death are in God’s gracious grasp. So I think it’s true what those experts of a sort were saying in their NPR interviews about the afterlife. What our faith does, and what our hope of resurrection does, is points us back to the God who lives among us, is embodied among us, is risen among us, the God who call us to rise, the God who invites us into mystery and faith and new life, today, tomorrow, and forever.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sermon for the Installation of Pr. John Marquis at Grace Lutheran Church in West Springfield
October 20, 2013

⁷How beautiful upon the mountains
are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
who announces salvation,
who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”
⁸Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,
together they sing for joy;
for in plain sight they see
the return of the LORD to Zion.
⁹Break forth together into singing,
you ruins of Jerusalem;
for the LORD has comforted his people,
he has redeemed Jerusalem.
¹⁰The LORD has bared his holy arm
before the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God. – Isaiah 52:7-10

¹³For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
¹⁴But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? ¹⁵And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” ¹⁶But not all have obeyed the good news; for Isaiah says, “Lord, who has believed our message?” ¹⁷So faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ. – Romans 10:13-17

After this the Lord appointed seventyothers and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. ²He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. ³Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. ⁴Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. ⁵Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ ⁶And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. ⁷Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. ⁸Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; ⁹cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ ¹⁰But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ¹¹‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’ ¹²I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town.
¹⁶Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.
¹⁷The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” ¹⁸He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. ¹⁹See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. ²⁰Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” – Luke 10:1-12, 16-20

All of our passages today talk about feet. I’ll admit I honestly didn’t catch this when Pastor John and I talked about which scriptures to choose. But we were thinking about the mission of the church. And feet are important to that mission; if not practically, then at least symbolically as a reminder of God’s command to Go!

First, Isaiah says, “How beautiful are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, good news, and salvation.” And then in Romans an explanation of why those feet are so important to Isaiah. It’s because, Paul says, people need to hear the good news and they can’t hear unless someone speaks. Since shouting doesn’t do very well for communicating grace and since modern communication technology was nearly 2000 years in the future, Paul assumes we’re going to need feet to get ourselves from place to place to proclaim this great God we have. And finally in the Gospel, Jesus’ commands seventy of his follower to GO! Go out and cure the sick and proclaim that the kingdom of God is near. These seventy are sent walking with not much more than their feet to carry them. If the town does not welcome them, Jesus instructs, they are to wipe the very dust of that town from their feet.

And yet we just don’t think much about feet in church. Our focus is often on what we say with our mouths or what we do with our hands and not where we go with our feet. When we baptize people we tend to focus more on getting the head wet than we do getting the feet wet. But maybe Jesus has something in this mission on foot, something that might speak to this new partnership between Pastor John and the people of Grace. Jesus sends out seventy of his followers, just average people like you and me on this very important mission. And Jesus has some very specific instructions.

First, go in pairs. This is not a solitary mission. You know this. That’s why you went through the long process to call a pastor. You need a partner to go out into the world. You need someone to go out into the community with you. It’s worth noting that Jesus doesn’t give a lot of specifics about what they are to do and say. They are first supposed to go and be in relationship with one another and the community in Jesus’ name and then see what happens. Pastor John hasn’t come here to bring you God, to fix all your problems, or to do ministry for you. He’s come here to partner with you. He’s come here to put his feet in step with yours, going out together to see what God is already doing.

The next instruction that Jesus gives is to take nothing with you. Be light on those feet that carry you into mission. Now this is a difficult one. I don’t know about you but I rarely leave the house without a bag of stuff. I like to have a water bottle and my travel mug with tea, a book to read just in case I get stuck somewhere, and my phone with access to most of the world’s knowledge at the touch of a screen. Maybe you do, too. But Jesus sends us out on this important mission with nothing in hand! That’s to say to us, leave your baggage behind. Things that didn’t work in the past, the way things were in a different era, sometimes even the things that work in the church down the street –  carrying those things with us will cause us to get distracted. Jesus calls us to go out in mission to our communities and be fully present with them in the here and now. Listen to them and to each other with open hearts and minds not weighed down by all sorts of other distractions and expectations. Use this time as you are still getting to know your new pastor to have a fresh start and listen to one another about where you might go forward from here.

And then what is maybe the most important instruction of all. Actually it’s more of a warning. Jesus tells them that this is a rough assignment. Jesus sends them out as sheep among wolves. Sometimes it will be great. Sometimes the seventy will encounter hospitality. Sometimes as you move together in mission in this congregation and this community you will be bowled over by the power of God at work among you. There will be powerful encounters with God through one another. You will feel the Spirit moving. And other times it won’t be so great. Sometimes you will go out in the community and be rejected. You will discover your weak spots. Sometimes you will try something new and it just won’t work. And hopefully this isn’t news to you, but at some point your new pastor will make a mistake. And at some point you will make a mistake, too. And when that happens, I urge you to wipe the dust from your feet, not in protest, but as a way to keep moving forward. To keep letting your feet carry you forward into mission.

But here is the good news. Jesus’ feet have already walked ahead of you. Jesus is with you now and already waiting for you in the places to which you are being called. God was continuing to walk among you as you prepared for a new pastor. God was walking with Pastor John on a long journey to reach you here. A journey of ministry in other places, a journey of ministry through his work in schools, a journey of preparation to return to congregational ministry. And now that journey brought him here to this community, where he puts his feet in step with yours following in the footsteps of the one who called each of you through baptism.

When you get tired or discouraged. When your feet ache from the work – literally or figuratively. When they feel dry or caked with the dust of inhospitable places. I hope you’ll feel the waters of baptism refreshing you. I’ll wager a guess that most of us only got our heads wet when we were baptized while our feet probably stayed dry. But we know that the baptismal water and the word of God together with it have reached us from the top of our heads down to our very toes, inside and out. That baptismal water has claimed us – all of us, our feet included, to be the people of God. So go forth boldly in this new partnership. Let God lead your baptized feet into new and exciting ministry together, confident that God washes you and claims you. And my prayer is that all of you – pastor and people and community – would return like the seventy who were sent out, full of rejoicing at the sheer wonder of the God we share.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

22nd Sunday after Pentecost
October 20, 2013

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

            We’d like to think of Jacob as a great hero of the faith. He is the first, after all, to receive the name of Israel, the name that persists to this day as a name of God’s people. He is one of the great patriarchs of the Bible. But like most heroes of the faith, he’s not all we make him out to be. Let’s recap his story for a moment.

He’s born not first but second, holding on to the heel of his twin brother Esau. He is named Jacob which means literally the one who grabs the heel, but idiomatically it means the one who deceives. He is the smaller of the two, the less adept at the task of hunting and providing. He is the one who deceived his aging father, tricking him with a grand plan to receive the blessing of the firstborn instead of Esau. Then he flees in fear. When he ends up at a well far from home and falls in love with an attractive girl, he follows Rachel home and works for years to earn the right to marry her. After being deceived and overworked by his father-in-law, and after he’s tricked into marrying Rachel’s older sister Leah before he can marry Rachel, he manages to deceive his father-in-law in return, working out a long-term scheme to defraud him of his best property. And then he flees there, too. When we meet Jacob again in today’s story, he is about to face his brother again for the first time since they parted under the threat of murder. Still it seems he is conniving a way to make himself look more sympathetic. Not exactly a hero of the faith, yet clearly the chosen one of God.

Does his story sound familiar? Do you know anyone who has messed up royally in his life? Do you know anyone who let self-interest guide her thoughts and actions? Do you know anyone who has a broken relationship with his own family? How about someone who would rather run away from her problems than turn and face them? Do any of those people you know who remind you of Jacob call themselves Christians? Are any of those people who remind you of Jacob actually yourself at one point or another in your life?

Maybe we haven’t done exactly what Jacob did – his story is what we might call a soap opera today. But I think we can relate to the complexity of his life and the frequent choice between bad and worse options. The desire to have the place of blessing when we see it going to others. The desire to be in a new place free from the problems that plague us in the moment. I think that all of us can find ourselves in Jacob’s story at one time or another. I hope you’ve heard me or someone say before that the characters we like to hold up as heroes from the Bible are often not the perfect people we imagine them to be. But they are called to be the people of God.

And that calling to be the people of God means a call to wrestle. It means a call that pulls those faithful women and men up out of where they were and plants them somewhere new. It means a call that will involve hard choices and difficult questions. It means a call that will draw them into situations way over their heads, like every faithful person called by God before and after them. This encounter that Jacob has in wrestling with this physical manifestation of God is no more difficult or bizarre than the way in which he has already been wrestling with God his whole life. Wrestling with his place in the community of  faith emerging from Abraham’s line and with all that came with it.

I know that some of you already understand this, but I don’t think we can say it enough, that faith is more about wrestling with questions, with engaging a relationship with God and God’s call to us, than it is about doctrines and beliefs. I don’t meet many people who believe every line in the creeds we say every Sunday every time they same them. But I meet a lot of people for whom that statement of faith ties them to a community of people past and present wrestling with who God is and what God calls us to be. A community of faith holding one another through difficulty and mistakes and fearful times.

But sometimes we are afraid to wrestle, scared to make demands of God, to take our open honest feelings to God. Sometimes we are hesitant to insist that God listen to us. Not just our happy joys and our deep concerns, but also our daily frustrations and our moments of weakness, anger, pride, and fear. All those things we try to shoulder on our own. You see, it is mighty difficult to wrestle with God or to pound relentlessly on the door like the widow if your hands are still trying to hold all those things yourself. It is hard to engage in that struggle when we try to bear even the little things we hold onto in our lives.

But even when we are able to free ourselves for the struggle, we do not walk away unscathed. When Jacob wrestles, he is struck in the hip. He is marked by God, perhaps for the rest of his life. With every step he will be reminded of what it means to wrestle with God. With every step he will bear the visible mark of the one who has loved him through all his errors, through all his striving, through all his hurts and disappointments, through all the trials that still lie ahead, marked with the reminder that he is one who wrestles with God.

But Jacob does not leave with only a limp because he demands from the wrestling a blessing. And the blessing that he is given comes with a new name. A name that wipes clean all the dark past that lies behind him. His first name described his struggling from his very birth – the one who grabs the heel. His new name does not change who Jacob is, but it gives him a name that communicates not his own weakness but God’s power. Jacob becomes Israel – one who prevails with God – a name that puts him in constant relationship with the one who struggles with him.

Jacob isn’t the perfect hero. And neither are most of the Biblical characters. Jacob’s renaming is a reminder for him and for us that the real hero of Jacob’s story and your story is the one with whom we wrestle. The hero is the one who has the power to call us, name us, bless us, and struggle alongside us.

For you have been called, and marked, and blessed and sent to be the people of God. You have been washed by the waters of baptism and marked with the cross of Christ forever. You have been given new names as the children of God and welcomed into the struggle. May you, like Jacob, come to know even more fully this one with whom we wrestle, that you might continue to live more deeply in the wonder and grace of that intimate relationship with God.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Sermon for October 13, 2013

¹¹On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. ¹²As he entered a village, ten lepers approached him. Keeping their distance, ¹³they called out, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” ¹⁴When he saw them, he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were made clean. ¹⁵Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. ¹⁶He prostrated himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. ¹⁷Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? ¹⁸Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” ¹⁹Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” – Luke 17:11-19

I’ll be honest. I don’t like this passage very much. Something just doesn’t sit right with me about it. And it’s because it feels like more of a moral tale than the kind of kingdom of God story that Luke has been so fond of in our lectionary readings of late. As hard as the kingdom of God stories can be, there’s a kind of excitement there. A hope of things that could be different.

But we tend to read this story as some kind of finger wagging. Be like the one and not like the other nine. Don’t forget to say please and thank you. Don’t forget to come back to God every once in while. Don’t be like those people who clearly weren’t raised with proper manners. Jesus likes those who come back and say thank you. As if maybe Jesus will move you up in line if you remember to come back. An extra jewel in your heavenly crown, whatever exactly that means.

And maybe I’m uncomfortable because I know I need that reminder. I know that I am not as grateful as I ought to be for all the blessings in my life. Every day there are things I take for granted. Sure sometimes I’m overwhelmed in a good way by some of them. And I pause and give thanks. But probably it’s a lot less than one out of ten times that I stop  and give thanks when I ought to. It’s probably less than 10 percent of the time that I am as aware as that one Samaritan of what it is that God has done for me. So we could end this sermon right here with a reminder to be thankful.

But I’m not sure I’m willing to leave the story there. And maybe it has to do with the little detail in this story about where this one man who gives thanks comes from. Luke writes his gospel in the midst of an ongoing church struggle to figure out who is accepted and who isn’t. He tells several stories about Samaritans, these people considered second class at best for their different way of worshipping, for their cultural and historical differences. In all of these stories, this included, Luke seems to be reminding us that it’s often the outsider who gets it first. It’s this man who is doubly an outsider, ostracized for his cultural-religious heritage first and his leprosy second. It’s that one who comes back to give thanks.

You see, it’s often the outsiders who are most aware of what there is to celebrate. Newly naturalized citizens of this country, take the rights and responsibilities of citizenship a lot more seriously than the average person born into citizenship here. New converts, no matter the religion, are usually among the most zealous of followers. Every time a new state extends marriage rights to same-gender couples, people line up in droves to take a legal step that had been previously denied them, often celebrating in the midst of long lines. At our own denomination’s recent installation of our first female presiding bishop, the celebration was visibly more than just the celebration of an individual called to that office. It was a celebration of all the pioneers who made breaking that glass ceiling possible.

So I wonder if some of the reason that we forget so often to give thanks is that we forget so often that we were once outsiders who have been brought in. Sometimes we miss the power of what God is doing to restore us over and over again. We miss that we are the Samaritans, the ones not worthy to be called inside. Yet Jesus calls to us and welcomes us in.

And it’s easy because there is so much that stands in the way. Our government is caught in a political battle that leaves innocent people hanging in the balance. People continue to abuse the earth despite ever-rising concern about the effects of our actions on our world. People are sick and dying all around us. Or we’re just caught up in being busy with lives filled with schedules and meetings and responsibilities.

Perhaps that’s what was on the minds of the other 9. They were, after all, only doing as they were told, going to demonstrate their newfound ritual cleanness in order to jump back into daily life that they had been missing for so long. Perhaps as their skin cleared on their walk to the temple, they begin to imagine all the wonderful things they had been missing. A good home cooked meal, the job they used to dread but have come to miss, all the things they would get to do again. Things that would be life-giving and God-pleasing. And well they should. But already they had leapt over the dividing wall from outsider to insider. Already they were in the midst of their daily lives again before they had even begun. They forgot to stop and celebrate what was happening. They forgot to pause and live in the moment.

I don’t know what made it different for the Samaritan, whether it was his status as a double-outsider, or whether it was a personality predisposed to contemplation, or if he just didn’t get caught up in the crowd and their excitement. But something stopped him in his tracks to help him revel in what it was that was happening to him. Something at least for moment made him realize an opportunity for relationship with Jesus apart from all that he could now go and do.

And that’s what God wants for us – the kind of wonderful recognition that for all we try to do things to please ourselves and each other and God, for all we try to be and do, we are loved and cherished by God every moment just as we are. Insider or outsider, sick or well, we are blessed by the healing relationship that God extends to us. We are called out of our corners and our isolation to be cleansed and set free. And 9 times out of ten or more we leap ahead without even realizing it. And perhaps God smiles and watches us leap.

But hear also the invitation that whenever blessings come as they surely will, we are invited to celebrate with God. And to help us we come here to remind one another of what it is that is really going on. We come to the table in worship with a dialogue. I say to you, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.” And you say, “It is right to give our thanks and praise.” We remind each other to pause and give thanks, and whether we feel much like it or not we pray and sing together in thanksgiving. We remind each other of the ways in which the bread and wine we are about to receive are an incredible gift to heal us, to set us free, and to make us part of the community again. Thanks be to God!

-Pastor Steven Wilco