Christmas Eve 2012

Luke 2:1-20

Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

Except that in my experience, as much as we might like it to be otherwise, the night before Christmas can be just as noisy as any other. Last minute preparations for Christmas dinner, the wrapping or even buying of gifts, or even the last minute getting things ready for Christmas Eve worship. Minds and bodies racing trying to fit in family visits and time at church. Young people and the youngest parts of ourselves are perhaps bursting with excitement. The stores begin to close, and the traffic quiets down a bit, and some of you perhaps are able to bring about a bit of quiet for the evening, but mostly I think Christmas Eve still feels a little bit noisy.

But then the first Christmas Eve was anything but quiet. Twas the night before Christmas in Bethlehem, and all through the house it seemed that every creature was stirring, even the mice! Mary and Joseph arrive in their hometown where there are so many people back in town that there isn’t a space for them in the homes of their family and friends or even in the guest house of a neighbor. Not even a fold-out cot available on the living room floor. Thanks to the census, the first while Quirinius was governor of Syria, Bethlehem was not experiencing a quiet evening in peace. Not much about the rule of the Romans felt particularly peaceful to those in Judea.

And on top that, Mary and Joseph had to put up with the cattle lowing. They were spending the night in a noisy, dirty corner reserved for animals. Unlike perhaps many of our homes that have gotten at least a few things put away and cleaned up for the visits of friends and family, the first Christmas Eve was in a still-dirty shelter alongside animals keeping out of the cold.

And if the animals weren’t enough, very few birthing experiences happen in a controlled and quiet way. Young Mary would be longing for quiet and peace, but first she would have to bear the Christ child into the world with all the accompanying pain and probably in her time fear and worry for her life and the life of her child. I imagine that was enough to stir even the sleeping mice in the stable.

The shepherds in their fields having a quiet enough night, away from the overcrowded town, until an angel messenger broke in on their attempts to get some rest and then the whole company of angels showed up singing “Gloria in excelsis!” until the shepherds got themselves up to go see what all the fuss was all about. But apart from a few shepherds, the rest of the world went on about its hectic, noisy, busy life.

And into all of that noisy mess, is exactly where God entered the world in human form. God did not wait for a quiet moment; God did not wait for just the right upper-middle-class woman to come along to bear Jesus; God did not wait for a clean, private birthing room to be available; God did not wait til we on earth had everything together.

Because God could not wait. Because God’s breaking into our lives cannot be stopped. It cannot be stopped by our tendency for holiday consumerism or by our inability to purchase anything at all. It cannot be stopped by the violence that happens around the world or in communities not so far from here. It cannot be stopped by a lack of faith or an inability to muster the so-called right feelings on Christmas Eve. It cannot be stopped by our failure to live up to the people God calls us to be.

Our Christmas celebration is not merely a remembrance of God coming into our world as a baby in a manger. It is a celebration that God breaks into our world all the time. It is a celebration that God is breaking into our noisy, busy world today, right now, in this place, on this night and every night. Christmas is a celebration that God cannot be kept out of our world.

God comes to us to stand with us in our pain and rejoice with us in our triumphs. God comes to us in the quiet moments and God breaks into our noisiest nights. God comes to us and to our neighbor and to our enemy. God comes to us in ordinary ways – in word and song and bread and wine.

On this night before Christmas, whether your night is quiet and peaceful or restless and noisy, God comes to you. Just as surely as God came to us as a baby in manger, God comes to be for you joy that fills you up, for you the peace that calms despite the world, and for you the light that no darkness can overcome. Thanks be to God!

 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Fourth Sunday in Advent
December 23, 2012

³⁹In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴²and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
⁴⁶And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.
⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
to Abraham and to his descendants forever.”    -Luke 1:39-55

Nobel Peace Prize winner Leymah Gbowee was not expecting a call from God. Before she began the movement that brought about a peaceful end to the civil war in Liberia and later earned her the peace prize, she was not looking to start a movement. She was not the kind of person who receives calls from God. Those are reserved for pious people who can handle the task. She describes a dream in which she heard a voice out of the darkness commanding her to “Gather the women to pray for peace.” She knew how to pray because he had practiced with her Lutheran church community. She sang daily the prayer, “Order my steps in your way, dear Lord.” But she did not expect a call from God. In her own words, “It was like hearing the voice of God, yes, but that wasn’t possible! I drank too much, I fornicated! I was sleeping with a man who wasn’t my husband, who in fact was still legally married to someone else. If God was going to speak to someone in Liberia, it wouldn’t be me.”*

God’s call came to a young woman, who by her own estimation was nothing special, and out of that, God’s reign of peace came into being in the world. Sound familiar? Now I’m not saying Mary wasn’t an upstanding young woman. But she was a young girl in a society where she probably didn’t mean a whole lot outside her immediate family. She certainly wasn’t the one anyone would have expected to receive a call from God. And I don’t imagine she was expecting it either.

I have never been able to wrap my mind around how it is that Mary said yes to the angelic messenger sent to tell her she was to give birth to the Son of God. Or how someone like Leymah said yes to God’s call in the face of a seemingly impossible task. Or how anyone does the kind of extraordinary things that God calls him or her to do.

But perhaps part of the answer is in the song Mary sings when she races to her cousin Elizabeth to share the news of what has happened to her. This song of Mary, which we call by its Latin name, the Magnificat, is a surprising and challenging song. It talks of a whole new world order, a whole new way of life. Everything gets turned on its end. Tyrants are thrown down, the lowly lifted up. The hungry are fed and the rich leave empty. Oppression is ended. Which, of course, is good news if you’re the oppressed, but not so good news if you’re the oppressor.

There is no indication of how Mary sings this song about the upending of the world order. Does she sing it with wonder? Does she sing it trembling with a healthy fear of what lies ahead for her and for the world around her? Does she sing it with hope or joy or expectation?

However it is that she sings it, it is not the first time that song has been given voice. We call it Mary’s song, but she is not the first to sing it. A thousand or so years in the past another mother sang that song. Hannah, the one who gave birth to Samuel, the one who was barren so long despite her faithful prayers, the one who dedicated her son to be a priest and prophet, the mother of the one who would anoint Saul as first king of Israel and later King David the second. When she left her son in the service of the temple, barely weaned from her breast, Hannah sang a song strangely similar to the one Mary sang at the expectation of this new member of the house and line of David.

Hannah sang glorifying God. She sang of the defeat of her foes, she sang of the destruction of the violent, the hungry fed while the full beg for bread, the poor and needy lifted onto the thrones of the powerful. And all because of a little child who belonged to God.

Perhaps Mary was able and ready to take on this call from God because she had practiced doing so. Never had she dreamed that she would need it, but she practiced anyway. Perhaps she had many times over sung this song of Hannah with her family or with her community of faith. She was prepared by her singing of that song, by the traditions of her people, for the unusual things God would do in her life. At the very least, it was those practiced words that sprang forth from her mouth when she finally reached Elizabeth that day. It was those practiced words that she used when she encountered the Holy One in her midst, inside her very being.

And that is what we do as the people of God when we gather together. We practice Mary’s song and the songs of others who have born God’s word into our world. We pray and recite words that Christians have spoken long before us and will continue to recite long after we are gone. Many of them have roots that reach farther into history than the birth of Jesus.

Mary is rightfully honored for her particular role in bearing the Christ child into the world. But all of us are Marys in our own right. All of us have God alive within us and are called to carry that into the world. All of us are called in baptism to bear God’s creative and redeeming word to all the world. That is why we gather week after week to practice. We practice the songs that will come to mind when joyful moments come our way. We practice the songs that will echo in our ears when we experience pain and tragedy. We practice together in worship the words and songs that we will sing at the graves of our loved ones, and which will one day be sung at the side of our own graves. We practice the words that we will speak and sing in response to God’s surprising call.

It was hymnody learned in the church that ran through my head all of last week in the wake of the tragedy in Connecticut, and it was Mary’s song sung in a modern adaptation at our Wednesday evening prayer that reminded me that the world is about to turn on its end in the face of all the terrifying things happening around us.

Mary was not the first, nor was Hannah for that matter, to bear the word of God to a people longing to hear it. And Mary was not the last, nor was Leymah Gbowee for that matter, to bear the word of God to a people longing to hear it. As we have watched and waited together for God’s breaking into our midst this Advent, we have seen God at work. You have written it down on blue slips of paper.** We have seen Christ brought to life in those around us showing us grace as we struggle with exams and illnesses; we have seen Christ brought to life in those who have unexpectedly helped friends and strangers in need; we have seen Christ brought to life in the beauty around us and in the energy of young people in our community. We have, even if unknowingly, been practicing to be Mary, bearing Christ’s body in the world for others.

If you fear that your time will not come, or that you don’t have what it takes, or that you aren’t good enough for this calling, just wait. Keep practicing. You may just find yourself suddenly and unexpectedly filled with the fullness of God bursting into the world through you.

We, today, in this place, join the company of Hannah and Mary and Leymah bearing God’s love to this hurting and broken world. As we sing and pray and act we are being transformed by the call of God to bear Christ’s body in the world. As we finally turn tomorrow to our celebration of the Christ child’s arrival, we will sing and pray together again the familiar carols, and hear the familiar story. And once again the story itself will shape us anew to be God’s people in the world. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

*Quoted from “To tell the truth,” by Amy Frykholm in The Christian Century, November 29, 2011, p. 32-36.
**Throughout Advent our congregation has been writing down where they see Christ’s body in the world and posting them on a display in our entryway.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Second Sunday in Advent
December 9, 2012

Luke 3:1-6:
In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, ²during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. ³He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
⁵Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
⁶and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.'”

On my way to our pastor’s text study group every week I drive down Rte. 116 past Atkins market and through the newly re-constructed intersection of Bay Road and 116. It has been interesting to watch the progress of that reconstruction that started shortly after I moved here. In my weekly trip I’ve gotten to observe the weekly progress of the construction – the clearing of land, the pushing of dirt back and forth to level the path, the paving, the landscaping. And now, though it appears they are still putting finishing touches on, it’s looking near the end and there is a satisfyingly smooth road surface to drive on.

I’ve heard mixed reviews on the new double-traffic-circle setup and I’ve heard grumbling along the way, but in theory this construction improves traffic flow and increases safety. But I’ll admit that I got annoyed during the process when I had to stop and wait, when I had to drive on dirt roadway, when I had to watch out for manholes above the road surface, and most of all when I had to take a detour. I’m not saying I had any right to be, but I was very annoyed. I don’t think most of us like road construction very much because it disrupts our lives. But sometimes when it’s all done, it seems like it was all worth it.

With these Advent readings about John the Baptist, the hymn Prepare the Royal Highway always plays in my head. But I tend to think of it as a quick rolling out of the red carpet for the King of Kings. Sprucing up the sanctuary with some greenery and lighting a few candles. Lining the way with trumpets. Singing beautiful advent hymns. Royal highway, done. But making a road in the wilderness is a much more difficult process. Making a way for God in our lives is much more complicated and often more painful than all of that. It’s a process that requires a lot of construction, and let’s be honest, nobody really likes to have to deal with that. And there are lots of highways still to be opened.

Luke situates the coming of John the Baptist in the list of rulers of the time. A lone voice in the wilderness against powerful political and religious leaders. A highway through the politics of the day must be opened, and the leaders are going to have to get out of the way. The leveling of the high and raising up of the low applies to people and nations, too. One could, perhaps, repeat the opening lines in our present context. In the year when Barack Obama was reelected and the Democrats controlled the Senate and the Republicans the house, when Patrick was governor of Massachusetts and the Rev. Jim Hazelwood began serving as bishop of the New England Synod…there was a voice crying out in the wilderness, a path being made, hills leveled and valleys raised. It challenges us to see the the back and forth political wrestling as road construction, because when it’s done, sooner or later, and probably through no doing of our own, God will make a way through our mess. The construction along the way may seem never-ending, but somehow, someway, God is making a highway.

In Israel and Palestine today they are planning to build more highways into the very wilderness where John the Baptist was preaching 2000 years ago. But these are highways that will divide. Highways opened to marginalize some and clear the way for others. Highways that will in the end make bigger hills and deeper valleys. But maybe there is hope there, too. Perhaps under the noise of rockets, below the radar of international politics, the word of God has come down to one who will make a pathway for God’s work in the midst of it and all this noise is somehow the construction work of a new opening for God to come down.

And before John the Baptist there was Malachi, who uses a different image to the same end in our first reading. He speaks of a refiner’s fire and fuller’s soap. No one likes to have anything burned away from them, and no one likes to be cleaned with caustic soap. No one likes to hear they haven’t loved God with their whole heart or loved their neighbor as themselves. We’re hard working people who try our best and do good things, and still we find parts of ourselves that stand in the way of loving God and neighbor. We still find hills and valleys in our life of faith. But there, too, God will open a highway, a path in our wilderness with all the muck burned off and the construction debris one day cleared away to know the satisfaction of a God who stops at nothing to come to us. We have a God who loves us as we are and leads to discover new highways in our lives.

And maybe God is planning other highways in new places. What construction work might be required to make a way for new people and new ideas to enter into our midst as a congregation? What construction work might need to happen to make room in our national and local budgets and even in our church and personal budgets for the care of the poor, the orphan, and the vulnerable? What construction work might need to happen for us to loosen our grip on our lives in order to trust God to be God for us?

As we continue this advent looking for signs, searching for God’s presence among us, some of what we will discover is God’s construction work. Because some of the signs of God at work will be painful and challenging for us. I’m not saying God sends bad stuff our way to make us pay attention. But sometimes we cling to things that we are convinced are best for us, and God’s work forces us to learn to let go of those things. God’s work forces us to make room.

This is difficult, no doubt about it. And sometimes we will simply live with an old road filled with deep potholes and dangerous intersections rather than put up with the construction of a new one. But the promise of what awaits us is truly incredible. Zechariah sings of it at the birth of John the Baptist. This child, Zechariah sings, is called to prepare the way “to give God’s people the knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins.” He is called to prepare the way for the one who will break upon us with tender compassion “to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

The construction may be painful, but God is not stopping until that beautiful vision is upon us in its fullness. God will not stop until the promise we receive each week in bread and wine is the way our world operates – forgiveness, love, and grace offered freely with enough for all. God will not stop until the power of baptism washes away all that blocks us from seeing God’s love for us. Even as we struggle to make room in our busy Advent lives, God is busy preparing a royal highway to bring to us the fullness of who we are as children of God.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 2012

²⁵There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. ²⁶People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. ²⁷Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. ²⁸Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
²⁹Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; ³⁰as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. ³¹So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. ³²Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. ³³Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
³⁴Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day does not catch you unexpectedly, ³⁵like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. ³⁶Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
-Luke 21:25-36 

It’s inescapable, it’s seemingly omnipresent, it’s taking over. Christmas music is everywhere. It’s in the stores, it’s in the coffee shop where I like to sit and work on my sermon, it’s on two of my regular 6 radio station presets in the car. I like Christmas music, I really do. And even though in the church we are in a season of waiting and anticipation, not yet in the full celebration of Christ’s incarnation, I’m all for listening to Christmas music at home as soon as Thanksgiving is over. But sometimes the music I hear on popular stations just isn’t the kind I’m most longing to hear.

But one that I happen to like is “Do you hear what I hear?” And what always strikes me about that song is that it’s pretty clear we aren’t all hearing the same things. Some of us hear Christmas music come on the radio and we are reminded of the abounding love of God come down to earth for us. Some of us hear the same songs and think of family and warm feelings. For others it brings up painful memories and anxious anticipation. The same song is playing, but we aren’t all hearing the same thing.

The song, I learned this week, was actually written in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The promise of peace come through a little child in a manger was a very real and present hope for the songwriters at the time. The fact that we are still in a world in which nuclear war is a possibility is evidence that not everyone was hearing the same thing. Not everyone heard the voice of the wind, the lamb, the shepherd in the song. Not everyone saw the star and the promise of God brought to fullness in a little child.

Jesus himself seems concerned about this as he talks to those gathered around him in the Gospel reading. He warns them – “There will be signs, terrible signs, in the sun, the moon, and the stars. And on the earth distress among nations. Confusion made worse by the roaring of the sea and the waves. The powers of the heavens will be shaken.”

It’s not as subtle as a little child and the quiet voice of the song. This will be pretty hard to miss, it seems. It will be more obvious even than Christmas music in December. But not everyone will hear it the same way. Not everyone will see the signs and interpret them in the same way. Some will faint from fear and foreboding. (That sounds like a good response to me.) But Jesus instructs us to do something very different. “Stand up!” Jesus cries. When you see these things that seem terrifying, stand up!

This seems like crazy advice. When the heavens are shaking, or hurricanes are coming, or when wars are starting, it doesn’t make sense to stand up. But to make his point Jesus reminds them of the fig tree. When you see the buds on the tree after a cold winter staring at barren plants, you know for yourself that spring is coming again. Life is coming back to a tree that had appeared dead. You know how to interpret that sign. Experience tells you what will happen as a result of that sign. You know that sign is a reminder of promise, a sign of God’s resurrection, a sign that all will not be cold and dead forever. That’s a sign that points you forward to hope and to promise.

But Jesus points us also to all the signs that seem terrible, the signs that seem foreboding and instill fear. When you see storms and famine and war and pain and poverty, these too are signs. But if when we see and hear these signs, we do not see God’s coming in the midst of them… If we do not hear God’s promise to redeem us… If instead we hear judgment and condemnation. If instead we fear it is God’s punishment coming for us. We will surely faint. We will curl in on ourselves and forget who we are. We will forget that we are called to proclaim the good news and instead we will find ways to protect ourselves from the impending doom.

But what if we see what Jesus sees in these signs? If we hear God’s words of hope and promise… If we hear God’s call to us above the roaring of the waves… If we see Jesus himself coming in the midst of the worries of this life, we can follow Jesus’ command to us to stand up and raise our heads at these signs. We can open our eyes and our ears and our hearts to the world. We can bear the good and the bad that is sure to come because we see in everything a sign of God’s coming among us, coming to us, redeeming us.

That is what Advent is all about – learning to see the signs for what they are. Some of them are big – the life-changing or even world-changing events that shake the earth or at least our perspective on the earth. In those times we cry out for God’s coming in the midst of it. We cry out for God to shake the heavens in response to defeat the powers the terrify. But other signs are subtle and commonplace like the sprouting of the fig tree. They remind us, if we even remember to notice them, of God’s presence among us every day.

I invite us together as a community this Advent season to pay particular attention to the signs of God at work among us. As you go about your life in the week ahead, look for signs. Take heed of God’s call to be alert and awake for God’s coming on earth. To help you with that I have a homework assignment for you. On the table in the entryway there is a display with a poem by Teresa of Avila, which you will also hear the choir sing today. It’s a poem that reminds us of our call to be Christ’s eyes and feet and hands in this world. I’m challenging all of us when we observe the signs around us this Advent season to write them down. When you come to church next week and in the weeks after, write that sign down on a blue piece of paper and attach it to the display. No sign is too big or too small. If it points you to God’s presence among us it’s a sign. If it reminds you of the expansiveness of God’s love, it’s a sign. I think that if we open our hearts and minds to the signs around us, by Christmas that we have a visible display of the many ways Christ is already present for us. A display of all the signs that point us to God’s love at work among us.

Perhaps we can even ask each other, at the risk of getting the song stuck in our heads, “Do you hear what I hear?” “Have you seen the presence of God come among us?” And as we open our hearts and minds to see God’s action, I trust that it will reveal to us that God is here, because God has promised that it will be so. As we watch and wait and as we see around us the wonderful and terrible signs, may we learn and grow together in our journey of faith and hope.

 -Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

Christ the King Sunday – November 25, 2012
John 18:33-37; Revelation 1:4b-8
With thanks to David Lose and workingpreacher.org for the idea for the arc of this sermon and the reminder that we are enough for God.  

Pilate asked him, “Are you the king of the Jews?”

Today we are supposed to celebrate Christ the King. In this time of the church year we hear readings that remind us of God’s future for us and the world and we remember that Christ is enthroned forever, we need not fear the trials ahead, and that the kingdom of God will come. But I’m feeling a little skeptical after this Gospel reading.

Because Jesus himself refuses to answer the question, “Are you the king of the Jews?” And I don’t think it’s just because he wants to have a philosophical debate with Pontius Pilate about kingship and whose kingdom is where. Jesus specifically refuses the category of kingship. At the risk of challenging a long-held tradition of the church that one of Jesus’ primary roles is that of ruler, let’s look at what Jesus does say about the reign of God.

Perhaps first and foremost, Jesus says my kingdom is. Not my kingdom will be or my kingdom is coming or you need to do something to make it happen, but my kingdom is. In the midst of this crazy political scheming and oppression by the Romans, my kingdom is. In the midst of Black Friday craziness, and the rush of the American holiday season, my kingdom is. In the midst of wars and rumors of wars, and nations and peoples that resort too quickly to violence, my kingdom is.

What Pilate wants, and what we want, is a clear answer. We want a time and place when the kingdom will start. We want a timeframe for when our anxiety and cares and pain and sadness will end. We want a promised land that is waiting for us when we can let go and forget our cares and go back to the Garden of Eden. But what we get instead is a God whose reign happens in the midst of it all. We get an undefined, unclear picture of God at work around us all the time. A king would want to establish a boundary and make clear his intentions, make promises to those in the kingdom, defend them against the enemies. But this kingdom isn’t like that – it’s happening around us, in our time right now. Is that enough of a king for us?

And Jesus says that the he comes to testify to the truth. What that means in this situation isn’t exactly clear. What truth? The least Jesus could do in this situation is speak in plain English about what truth he has come to espouse. A king would declare the truth for the land and command that it be followed. A king would tell us what we should do, give us clear directions as a church to know what step to take next, where to expand our mission, what to believe, what’s right and wrong in every situation. But instead somehow the truth resides in Jesus himself and those who listen to his voice are in relationship with the truth. This kingdom is relationship focused and the truth does not reside in simple edicts from the king, but rather in the eating and drinking with friends and the setting free of the oppressed. Is that enough of a king for us?

In the reading from Revelation, this kingdom is made up of us. It is not decreed from an all-powerful ruler, but gathered together by the sacrifice of the one who is and who was and who is come. As Jesus points out, his band of followers doesn’t even attempt to save him. A king would choose the best and brightest. He would weed out the weak and the simple. He would choose the smartest and strongest. A king would avoid including the poor and the powerless. But Jesus makes a kingdom out of us, instead. No offense meant to any of us and our wisdom, strength, and wealth, but there are smarter, stronger, wealthier people out there. But here we are with the promise that we have been made into a kingdom – that same ambiguous, boundary-less, timeless kingdom that Jesus is trying hopelessly to describe to Pilate.

So where does having this kind of king leave us as we face the challenges of this world? When we are downtrodden, sick, in despair and grief, worried about the future for ourselves, our country, and our world, it would be nice to hear a clear declaration of kingship from God. It would be nice to have the best and brightest surrounding us. It would be nice to be able to go to church and say a prayer and have an answer. It would be nice, at least, to have a clear-cut description of what is in store for us beyond life on earth with pearly gates and golden streets, or whatever your favorite vision of heaven is like. But we don’t get that. Will what we do get be enough?

Instead of a glorious and commanding kingship, we get pointed back to a community of imperfect people and we receive a promise of God’s presence. We get pointed back to a table of bread and wine that isn’t even enough for a meal. So is that enough?

That’s perhaps the question we ought to ask ourselves as this church year comes to an end and we begin to turn our thoughts to what we know is coming – the baby in the manger. Is it enough for us? Is it enough for us that Jesus comes in weakness to eat with us, to love us, to forgive us? Is it enough for us that Jesus gives us this ambiguous, everywhere yet nowhere, now but not yet kind of kingdom? Is it enough?

My fear is that at least some days it is not enough for us. There are days when the world crashes in on us, when darkness seems to win. There are days when the news overwhelms. There are days when we need a king who steps in and fixes everything.

But while we are busy asking our questions and puzzling over this kingdom, God is holding us and our questions and fears, and holding our friends and enemies, and this fragile planet, all of it now and forever beginning to end. Without demanding the same answers of us that we demand of God, God welcomes us into this crazy, upside-down, boundary-less kingdom. God says to us – you are enough.

When you fail to live up to the person you were created to be, you are enough, you belong in this kingdom. When you run up against powers of this world that you cannot defeat, you are still enough and you belong in this kingdom. When you question whether God’s promises are enough, God offers you bread and wine with the words “for you” – you are enough.

This kingdom is not always what we want it to be. The king does not always exercise power in the way we think it ought to be done. Sometimes the one who holds all things from beginning to end, Alpha to Omega, the one who is and who was and who is to come doesn’t seem like enough. But today and forever you are welcomed into that exciting kingdom. For God, you are enough.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

24th Sunday after Pentecost – November 11, 2012

³⁸As [Jesus] taught, he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, ³⁹and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! ⁴⁰They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”
⁴¹He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. ⁴²A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny.⁴³Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. ⁴⁴For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” – Mark 12:38-44  (also see the first reading for the day, 1 Kings 17:8-16)

Have you ever seen one of those pictures where you’re supposed to find in a seemingly normal picture the one absurdly out of place element? They can be frustrating because we’re trained to take in information as a whole and not look at every single detail.  It’s really bad when everyone else around you gets it, and the harder you stare all you see is the same ordinary picture. One of my favorites is a nice family photo of a couple with their children sitting on a couch in their living room. Until all of a sudden you notice, barely visible, a face peeking out, and you realize that the whole family is sitting on top of what is presumably another member of the family. But this is common – it’s the premise of many a magic trick. We can be directed to see what we expect to see and thereby miss what is most important.

That’s what is happening in the gospel reading today. Jesus has taken a seat opposite the temple treasury, and they are all happily resting as they observe what must have been a fairly ordinary line of people depositing various amounts, some a lot, others a little. Nothing out of the ordinary. But Jesus pays particular attention to one that no one else seems to notice. What everyone else sees is a woman contributing what she can to the temple. What Jesus sees is a widow who has just sacrificed everything.

What isn’t clear is what anyone is supposed to do about it. Because let’s be honest, this is not a smart move on the widow’s part. There is no promise that her extreme generosity will cause a heavenly windfall of blessings for her to live on. It is quite clear that given Jesus’ scathing review of the temple scribes in the preceding verses that her help is not going to come from temple treasury where those with more have contributed out of their wealth but where scribes devour widow’s houses. Perhaps she is about to go, like the widow in the old testament story, to prepare a final meal and then to die, though in this case there is no promise of never-ending jars of oil and flour.

What is wrong with this picture is that no one notices her. She is of no consequence to anyone but Jesus. No one notices her tremendously reckless act of faith, and no one notices the injustice that has been done to her by those scribes who devour widow’s houses. No one will even remember she was there. It is deeply painful to be the one ignored and forgotten.

I see over and over again in these days following the election Christians raising the concern that in an election cycle that lasted seemingly forever and cost an estimated almost 6 billion dollars that we only saw what we wanted to see. We as a nation did not even talk about the poor, in favor of appealing to the middle class. We did not talk about climate change. We did not talk about gun violence. Even the discussion about the impending fiscal cliff doesn’t really talk much about those at the bottom.

I see myself choosing to ignore some of the same things when the issues become too overwhelming. We cannot notice them all, we cannot take in every detail from the world around us. We could, like the nameless widow, open our hearts and wallets til everything was gone and these problems would still be there. It doesn’t mean that our generosity does not go a long way, but it does mean that we face a difficult world, where if we believe Jesus’ words, we can’t even trust the religious establishment to be trustworthy.

In this stewardship season as we look to discover how we together can give more of our resources away to help others and to learn a deeper trust in God, I don’t see how even doubling or tripling or quadrupling our giving can solve poverty or end distress for widows and orphans and all the vulnerable in our modern world. It doesn’t mean those resources aren’t vitally important, they just aren’t going to save us or the world.

I’m honestly a little angry at Jesus for not proposing a solution to all of this. He does not stop the widow, he does not tell her she has been noticed, he does not even yell at the scribes. He certainly doesn’t instruct the disciples to do anything about it.

What he does instead is to become the widow. He takes her path of giving everything up. Jesus throws his last two coins in and gives himself up. Like her trip to the temple treasury, no one much notices when Jesus goes to the cross to give himself up, except for a faithful few who watch from a distance and a few strangers charged with his execution. Jesus himself cries out feeling forsaken by God. The Holy One is on a cross dying for the world and no one much notices. There is certainly something wrong with that picture.

But that’s the kind of God we have. We have a God who shows up as a recklessly generous widow. We have a God who looks at a meager offering of two coins or a little bit of meal and oil and sees abundance and generosity. We have a God who notices us, who gives up everything to be “all in” with us. There is something wrong with that picture, but something wonderfully, ridiculously, delightfully wrong with it.

Through baptism we, too, are “all in” with Jesus. We have thrown our two last coins in with the one who came to give everything up to us. It’s absurd recklessness. But that’s what a life of faith is all about. It’s about trusting that God walks with us when we do not know it. It’s trusting that there will be enough for us when all we see around us is scarcity and fear. It’s learning that the never-ending jar of meal and jug of oil are just as real as the fiscal cliff. It’s about learning to see and care for the vulnerable. It’s about finding a way to let go of the things we hold onto that burden our lives. It’s about learning to live into life with a God who has given everything up for us. We have a God who loves us beyond our wildest imagination. That love begins to free us to let go of ourselves, to begin to take the crazy, reckless journey of faith.

So today we take notice. We take notice of the widow who has nothing. We take notice of a God who gave up everything. We take notice that the world is not always as it seems. Because everywhere around us, if we could only see it, God is giving God’s self up to us and for us, here and now. Do you see it?

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

All Saints Sunday – November 4, 2012

 

³²When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” ³³When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. ³⁴He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” ³⁵Jesus began to weep. ³⁶So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” ³⁷But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?”

 

³⁸Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴²I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

-John 11:32-44 (NRSV)

 

Since we’re talking about saints today, I think we should have a definition to work with. Perhaps one you’re familiar with is that we are all made saints through baptism. Each of us is fully a sinner by our nature and fully a saint by God’s grace. That’s a good Lutheran definition, but Reformation Day was last week. Based on our readings today I’d like to focus on another aspect of sainthood. I wonder if we might define a saint as one who is acquainted with death.

Think of the names of the dead we will read in our prayers today as we observe All Saints Sunday. To some of you, they are just a list, names that refer to people you do not know. For others, one or more of those names represents perhaps a lifetime or at least a significant part of a lifetime of shared memories. Those names represent the pain of grief and the promise of God’s resurrection for us in a very real way. But even if we don’t know the names on the list probably most of us will think on someone dear to us who have died. Dear saints, I suspect that each of you is acquainted with death.

Each of us has to face death – the death of people we love, the signs of our own mortality – the reminders that we too one day will die. Though we were relatively spared in this part of Massachusetts, many of our neighbors on the East Coast have been devastated by Hurricane Sandy – a reminder that the things we hold dear and even our very lives are vulnerable to the power of nature. And we have to face all the little deaths along the way – disappointments and failures, things that are not as they ought to be. Some of us face in our own bodies or in the bodies of our loved ones prolonged illness that seems like death itself come to reside within us.

This is a heavy weight on us, but we are in good company in the communion of saints. In the gospel reading Lazarus has died and his family and friends have gathered to grieve. They called Jesus when Lazarus got sick and Jesus did not come. And now Lazarus has been dead for 4 days. According the customs of at least some of the Jewish people of the time, the soul remained near the body for 3 days. But at 4 days Lazarus is not just dead, he is the really lost-forever kind of dead.

Mary does not hold back the power of grief she is feeling; she does not try to hide her anger from Lord or phrase it in pious words. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother – my brother – would not have died.” This is not a lack of faith. This is the behavior of a saint who is all too familiar with death. She has come again to stare death in the face and her words are rightfully angry. If only Jesus had not taken so long… If Jesus had prioritized Lazarus’s illness on his understandably long to do list… She makes it known that she is not happy with Jesus for this. Call it grief talking if you want, but I think this is the life of a saint – facing death once again and crying out to God to make it stop.

If only you had been here, Jesus, the devastation from the hurricane would not have been so bad. If only you had been here, Jesus, this illness would not be eating away at me. If only you had been here Jesus, my brother, my sister, my friend would not have died. These are the cries of the saints.

But something very important happens here before the raising of Lazarus. Jesus becomes for a moment not the teacher but the disciple. He has come into the world to experience human life and experiencing the pain of death is a part of that. So he asks them to guide him in this very human experience, “Where have you laid him?” And Mary, and Martha, and the crowd, they become his teacher, “Lord, come and see.” And when Jesus faces it, he, too, begins to weep. He joins the company of saints who are acquainted with death. He stands at the side of the devastation caused by death of every kind, weeping.

If that was it, if that was all we had, it would be a profound and moving image of a God who stands alongside us in our pain. But that is not yet the end of the story. Because Jesus, through his tears, asks that the stone be rolled away. But these are saints, they are acquainted with death and they know that someone who has been dead four days smells really bad. If they are here to help Jesus learn about the pain of death, this is one of the important lessons.

But realizing they cannot reason with him, they roll the stone back becoming physically sick at the smell and experiencing once more the reality of death that they live with. But out of his firsthand experience as a grieving friend, Jesus raises his voice. “Lazarus, come out!”

Jesus calls him by name from the place of death. Jesus calls his name into a place from which he should not be able to hear it. With a loud and commanding voice he speaks the name of his friend.

But these words are not just for Lazarus, who does hear them and who does respond by coming forth from the tomb, still bound up in the graveclothes. These are words for all the saints who are acquainted with death. These are words shouted at the mourners grieving around the tomb. These are words shouted at all the times we have grieved for loved ones and have wondered about our own mortality. These are words of life for those acquainted with death. This is Jesus calling your name, “Come out and live!”

And that is what we do when we gather together as the people of God for worship. On this All Saints Sunday it will be particularly poignant as we call out the names of those who have died trusting that it is God’s voice who calls their names and brings them forth from the tomb. But we do this every Sunday when we call out names in our prayers, calling them forth from the graves of illness, grief, and fear. We do this every Sunday when we gather around the table united with the great communion of saints alive and dead, and there life is offered to us one by one. The body of Christ given for you. Come out from your tomb and live!

We still face moments of suffering as saints. We are people acquainted with death. And sometimes we dwell longer than we want with Mary in those grief-filled moments crying out to God. But God does not leave our side. And sometimes when we do finally hear our name called out it feels as if we have been dead four days and are still bound up in our graveclothes.

But all of you and all who are no longer with us for one reason or another – the great communion of saints is here to unbind us – to echo God’s calling out of our names. We are here together to remind each other that though we are well-acquainted with death, God’s call to us brings us to life again. To be a saint is to be acquainted with death, but it is also to be acquainted with the voice of the one who calls us forth from death into life. Thanks be to our God who came among us to learn our world of death and who called forth life from it again.

 

 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Reformation Sunday – October 28, 2012

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Romans 3:19-28; and John 8:31-36

³¹Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³²and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” ³³They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?” 

³⁴Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. ³⁶So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:31-36, NRSV)

I was a stubborn child, and so my parents learned early on that arguing with me wasn’t very productive and that it would require some creative parenting. One time when I was 3, I decided that I did not want to wear a coat on a chilly day. Rather than argue, my mom told me that I was old enough to make up my own mind, but that she needed to finish getting ready and I should wait for her on the porch. I went out to wait, very proud of myself for being an independent and grown up young man, confident in my own decision-making ability. My mom waited just on the other side of the front door. When she finally joined me on the porch I had decided that maybe I did want a coat after all, and she had one at the ready. I think, at least for a while, that I didn’t argue about wearing a coat when it was suggested.

But then it’s not just three year olds who are sometimes stubborn about things they don’t know much about. Jesus’ conversation partners in the gospel reading today are adamant that they are independent people. “WE are children of Abraham,” they said. “WE have never been slaves to anyone. And we don’t have to wear a coat if we don’t want to!” Jesus is offering life to them, a message of God’s ever-present forgiveness and grace but they are convinced they have everything under control. They already have the truth and don’t appreciate anyone saying otherwise. The verses we just read are only a portion of a much larger back-and-forth argument about the finer points of Jesus’ teaching about himself. Jesus is over and over again pointing them to the ways in which their desperate attempts to win God’s love are not necessary, and all they want to do is tell him that they have it figured out already. This is going to require some creative parenting on God’s part.

We, too, are more like stubborn children than we’d sometimes like to admit. There was a time in not-too-distant history when this last-Sunday-in-October celebration of the Reformation was a time for reveling in our own rightness. We are Lutherans! We have never been slaves to anyone! WE know the truth.

Sometimes New Englanders have a reputation for the same kind of attitude, having a corner on the way things ought to be. We have a historic commitment to freedom, a commitment to progressive values that let people be who they are, so “what do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”

And at the risk of further bombarding you with thoughts of the upcoming election, how often do we hear political statements that talk about freedom and truth? But how often are they really trying to cover up the underlying premise, “We are democrats, or we are republicans, or we are independents, we have never been slaves to anyone or anything! And WE can set you free!”

How would you fill in the blank for yourself? I am ______ and I have never been a slave to anyone.

The problem is, that like the descendants of Abraham, our perception of freedom is skewed. The Hebrew people had been subject to the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and the Romans, just to name the major ones prior to Jesus’ time. We construct for ourselves a reality in which our individual selves or the groups to which we belong have it all figured out. We have constructed a reality in which we control our own destiny. Like the Jewish leaders talking to Jesus, and like every group that has broken the covenant with God before and since, we have been more interested in our independence than in our life. We are like children standing outside waiting in the cold, and realizing that all our freedom has gotten us is discomfort.

If we were slaves in God’s kingdom and not children, or if we had a God who treated us fairly in response, we would freeze to death in our own freedom. But what we celebrate on Reformation Sunday is that we don’t have a God who treats us fairly. We have a stubborn God who will not stop loving us, who will not stop holding out a lifeline to us until we are safely in God’s arms for good. We have a God who does not wait until we are lost, but who stands ready with a warm coat grieving that it could not have started keeping us warm sooner, and yet also loving us enough to respect our misguided willfulness. We have a God who employs creative parenting.

In the language of Jeremiah, God will forget all the we have done wrong. God will forget that we have ignored the covenant and mistreated one another. God will forget that we have stubbornly insisted on our own way of living. And then God will write a new covenant on our hearts such that we will not forget who we are and to whom we belong.

In Paul’s language we are justified by grace as a gift through Christ. We are set free from the burden that none of us is without sin because God has chosen to ignore the evidence against us and declare us righteous.

And in Jesus’ language in the gospel of John, God will set us free. Not the kind of freedom to do whatever we please, not the kind of freedom to become the most successful person we can be, but the kind of freedom to discover who we are: to discover that we have not been as free and independent as we think and to discover that God has already made us children of God in spite of it all.

And so God calls us together in these broken assemblies of people we call churches, churches that are always in need of being reformed, always needing God’s grace. God calls us together so that we can hear the words of the new covenant and the promise that through baptism we are made new. God calls us together to be fed with bread and wine, to experience together another reminder of God’s constant care for us despite our resistance.

And Today we welcome new members to Immanuel – people that God has called to be among us in this time and place. We invite them to join with us in sharing that good news of God with the world. We invite them to share with us their gifts and ideas, their wisdom and experiences, that together we might stumble forward as the church, reminding each other of God’s stubbornness to declare us members of God’s household no matter how much we might mess it up.

Because every time we forget the ways in which God has cared for us over and over again, and when we forget that sometimes our own will does not get us very far, God is still there waiting for us, already having forgotten our stubbornness and desperately wanting to wrap us in a coat and set us along our way again.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

21st Sunday after Pentecost
October 21, 2012
Isaiah 53:4-12, Mark 10:35-45

I’d like to begin with a poem by a well-known theologian. You might not categorize him as such, but I think Shel Silverstein has a lot to say about theology. This poem is called God’s Wheel:

God says to me with a kind of smile,
“Hey how would you like to be God awhile
And steer the world?”
“Okay,” says I, “I’ll give it a try.
Where do I set?
How much do I get?
What time is lunch?
When can I quit?”
“Gimme back that wheel,” says God.
“I don’t think you’re quite ready yet.”

I think that pretty well captures the gospel reading for today. Jesus has invited James and John into his inner circle. They have given up much to follow Jesus. They are grappling with what is about to happen to Jesus as he describes again that his glory will come by dying on the cross. And whether it’s from fear or from a very human desire to sort out one’s place in the power scheme, they want to sit at his right and left. And lest we only blame James and John, let’s remember that when the other disciples heard it they started their own argument, perhaps because they hadn’t thought to ask first.

So Jesus takes this opportunity to explain what taking leadership in God’s kingdom is about. It’s about servanthood. All well and good, right? We like service projects. We like to do good things. We like to help people, we like to see that we’ve made a difference, however small, in someone’s life. Sometimes even a small kindness can mean literally the difference between life and death for someone. We can be servant leaders. But to be honest, what that usually means for us is that we lead from the world’s model of power and enjoy that we are able, from that place of power, to do good for others. We focus more on the leader part than the service part.

When we are kids, we try to imagine ourselves in adult roles, real or imagined. We dream of being a teacher or a doctor or a lawyer. We dream of being kings and queens and knights in shining armor. But most kids don’t pretend to be servants. And if they did we’d probably send them to the school psychologist. Perhaps there is something wrong with us if we don’t aspire to the highest positions of power?

Even pastors who are supposed to be models of servant leadership, we’re often times more like James and John or like the one who takes God’s wheel. We fall again and again in the trap of wanting to follow the world’s way of power, wanting direct reward for work accomplished. I spent the better part of two days this week interacting with pastors and heard on both occasions admissions of not being able to follow Jesus’ command in this week’s gospel passage. Admissions that we pastors aren’t any better than anyone else at being the kind of servant leaders Jesus talks about.

James and John they want to, at least they say they do. They want to drink the cup and experience the baptism, they want to be able to do what Jesus is asking of them, and Jesus concedes that they will. They will face hardship and persecution, and James ends up killed for his following Jesus. But all of the disciples fall short of what Jesus is really asking. He is not asking them simply to put themselves at the service of others. He is not asking them to be nice people who care for others, though that would be a good start. He is asking them to change their whole mindset and give up their entire lives in service.

Last week Jesus told the young man to give away all his possessions to the poor. This week he asks the disciples not just to serve others but to become slaves. That’s not to say be a doormat for others, but it is to say forget the way the world thinks about power. Forget that the goal is to come out ahead, to rank oneself according to how much you’ve served or how humble you are or how much you’ve given up. The point isn’t to gain a more advantageous position through serving others. The point is change the goal from power to service.

However, if we take Isaiah’s description of the suffering servant as an indication, this path not appealing in the least. Despite the slight comfort of a vaguely promised redemption for giving up his very life, the picture is mostly suffering, diseases, oppression, affliction, and injustice. No wonder we so often revert to the world’s view of how to become great. Or we try to tame this passage by assuming that it describes Jesus, thereby letting us off the hook. It does describe Jesus. Even a scholar of Hebrew scriptures who normally avoids jumping to Jesus as the answer for every Old Testament promise agrees, yes, this is about Jesus. But not just about Jesus. It’s not a prophecy that foretells exactly what will happen to God incarnate in 1^st century Palestine. It’s a prophetic word that names what happens when servant leaders in God’s kingdom emerge in a world that refuses to give up its comfortable hold on power. It’s a call to us to embody the upside down way of being that puts others first and where power doesn’t even come into play.

But when God sees and feels the pain of those suffering servants over generations and when God sees ultimately our failure to transform our whole lives to live as servants in God’s kingdom, God does not give up and walk away. God comes to us, not just to serve us but to embody service for us. And it is not service that makes us indebted servants in return, but rather it is service that makes us whole again as people called to serve alongside one another.

Jesus does not turn James and John out of the band of the disciples, or even smack them upside the head for not understanding what Jesus has said over and over again so plainly. Instead Jesus invites them into the redemption promised by Isaiah. Invites them to see the way God has given up the realm of power to become the one who bears all our infirmities. Jesus invites them to the reality that when we fail, even before we fail, God gives up for us any power that is claimed at the expense of others. God gives up the chance to sit in the comfortable throne of power surrounded by the best and brightest disciples. God gives up that seat for the cross surrounded by criminals. The places to the right and left, at least according to Marks’ account are reserved for criminals who only mock God’s model of leadership. God’s power, in fact God’s very being, refuses to be God without us and without the criminals to the right and left.

God’s holiness, God’s otherness, is wrapped up in this profound reversal for our sake. In a moment we will sing a hymn* that names God as Holy. But unlike many hymns that do that, it does not tell of gilded heavenly thrones and seats of glory. It names God’s incarnation, God’s service to us, and ultimately that most profound reversal of the world’s power, God’s transformation of death into life.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

*Hymn of the Day: Holy God, Holy and Glorious (found in Evangelical Lutheran Worship #637, Text by Susan R. Briehl and Tune by Robert Buckley Farlee)