Pentecost
June 5, 2022
St. Michael’s Lutheran Church, New Canaan, CT

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

⁸Philip said to [Jesus,] “Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” ⁹Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still do not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? ¹⁰Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. ¹¹Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. ¹²Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. ¹³I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. ¹⁴If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.
 ¹⁵“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. [
 ²⁵“I have said these things to you while I am still with you. ²⁶But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. ²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”] – John 14:8-27

            It may be Pentecost today, but our gospel reading takes us back to the hours before Jesus heads to the cross. Imagine the disciples. They feel things closing in. Jesus is talking about leaving them. They understand the gravity if not the specifics of what is about to happen. They are losing their friend and teacher. They are potentially in danger of dying themselves. Lost, alone, afraid. 

            Actually, dear siblings in Christ, you probably don’t have to imagine the way they are feeling. If you pay attention at all to the news you know the pain of death that touches our world. Gun violence, always prevalent in our nation, is once again in the forefront of our daily thoughts. You know the crisis of climate change threatening lives. You know the racism that persists in our communities and institutions. You know the ways in which our division enflames problems rather than solving them. You know your own personal griefs, and perhaps, like many of us haven’t had the time and space to fully own the loss of the last two years of pandemic life. And if all that weren’t enough, now your pastor is retiring, and though I’m sure you wish him well, it means transition and uncertainty for you. How are you feeling? Is it at least in part lost, alone, and afraid. 

            So Jesus is speaking to you today in the words he speaks to the disciples: “God will send you the Spirit of Truth – an advocate, one called to walk alongside – You already know that one, because that Spirit of God, your advocate, abide in you, dwells in you, breathes in you, and will remain with you.”

            As usual, no magic wand to solve our problems, no heavenly revelation. Just the presence of God in you, with you, closer than you know, already part of you before you even recognize it. God. In you. Always. That is the promise. God is with you in fear and pain and loss. God is with you in shame and guilt. God is with you in questions and doubts. God is with you in death. Forever. 

            I don’t always know how to make that come alive in words – at least not with the same vibrancy I can call to mind our grief and pain. For me it’s a feeling I experience in my body. It’s tied to moments of memory and moments I cannot explain. Do you remember the last time you felt the Spirit in your body? Maybe you can even call that to mind. I wonder if you would pause with me for a moment. Close your eyes if you feel comfortable. Take a few deep breaths. And remember that God, the Holy Comforter, is in you, deep within you. Where do you feel it? How do you feel it? Rest there for a moment. 

            You may open your eyes again if they were closed. Maybe you could feel it in this moment and maybe not, but at the very least you got a quiet moment to check in with your body and your breath and ponder the question of where God might be for you right now in the midst of whatever weighs most heavily on your mind. Because feel it or not, it’s true. Jesus promised. And that’s the gift of this day. 

            And much as I would love to dwell there, as amazing and wonderful as it is, that’s also not the whole story. Here’s the thing, it’s not just you and the Holy Spirit. It’s you, the Holy Spirit, and everyone else on the planet with the Holy Spirit. 

            When the disciples gathered on the Jewish festival of Pentecost, they were still, by the way, lost, alone, and afraid. Waiting for guidance. Uncertain where to go in the future. Asking, “what now?” and “What’s next?” And this magnificent event takes place that we now celebrate as the Christian festival of Pentecost. Wind, flames, the arrival of the Spirit. And, what often captivates me most about the story, everyone hears the message of what God has done in their own language. Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus, and Asia. Phyrgia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, visitors from Rome, Cretans and Arabs. Like simultaneous translation at a meeting of the United Nations, each hears in their own language. They each hear what is needed for them to understand, for them to connect, for them to know the Holy Spirit calling to them. 

            But if you’ve ever translated anything or tried to learn another language, you know that translating from one language to another is never a straightforward task. Every language has its own idiosyncracies. Each word its own nuance. Much can be learned but the most intricate nuances are known only by the native speaker or the most fluent of translators. Even within the same language we have a phrase when miscommunication happens: “something got lost in translation.” One translator, Carmen Avecedo Butcher, says that translation is “embodied mysticism.” What better word for Pentecost and the presence of the Holy Spirit in each one of us than that? 

            And these people – the ones who speak different languages, the ones who have different experiences, the ones who hear different nuances on God’s central message? They are all the church. And so, too, each one of you. If each of you has the presence of the Spirit, then there are at least as many understandings in this room right now as there are people. And yet, you are called into community together. The particular community of St. Michael’s, but also this larger community of greater New Canaan. And beyond that a member of the global society and the great communion of saints across time and space. That’s a lot of individual experiences of the Spirit, a lot of different – and valid! – ways of understanding the Spirit. Which sounds really lovely until you try to do something together and you realize that to be in relationship, to be in community, is to give and take, to bring your whole self while also finding a way for others to bring their whole self. It’s not easy. It’s better, and we have God to thank for that! But it’s not easy.

            One thing Pentecost demonstrates for us is that God cannot be contained in one way of being. Not one language, not one way of worshipping, not one visual image, not one way of serving. God is bigger than Lutheran, bigger than Christian. If our worship is always calm and reserved and never dancing, then we have missed a part of God. If our worship is always song and never silence, we have missed something. If our worship is always any particular way and never another, we have missed something.                         

            I’m here today in part to get to know you better here at St. Michael’s. I don’t yet know all the particular ways you as a community live out your faith. I’m here today in part to talk about the transition ahead – the ways in which you will be invited to talk together 

            But I’m also here today to speak to the bigger picture of moving forward as a church. And there is no one way. The way forward is through partnership and collaboration. The way forward is in trying new things – not so that we lose what was and become something different but so that we learn lots of ways to experience church. The way forward is through deeper conversation with each other – one challenge of any church’s pastoral transition is for people to talk and share and make space for each other, learning who you are together in this moment. It’s in that dialogue between the Spirit in me and the Spirit in you that the church comes alive.

            Friends, Pentecost is messy. And if we take it seriously we should approach it with a bit of trepidation. It will inspire us to do hard things. It will ask us to open up to one another in vulnerable ways. It will call us to a place of deep listening as we engage the experience of the Spirit in the world and in our neighbor. And yet, I think, that, too is a deep comfort – to know that God isn’t just comforting us but doing something with us, calling us – together – into the life of the church, assured of God coming alongside every step of the way.  

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 29, 2022
St. John’s Lutheran Church, New Britain, CT

[Jesus prayed:] ²⁰“I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me. ²⁴Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.
 ²⁵“Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you have sent me. ²⁶I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” – John 17:20-26

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

            It’s always been my practice to say that all through this long Easter season, but I feel I need it even more today. It’s been a hard week. Though gun violence has become commonplace in our country, and school shootings don’t even always make national news, the one this week in Uvalde, Texas, was particularly brutal, particularly deadly. Children and adults were killed and injured. A whole community experienced trauma. Parents across the nation wept as they dropped their children off at school the next morning, asking the question, “What if my child is next?” 

            It comes on the heels of a racially motivated shooting in Buffalo, New York. Black and brown folks working and shopping in a supermarket, gunned down by a white supremacist. Racism is pervasive and it costs lives. Some violently like in Buffalo and many more with slow, painful discrimination and oppression. 

            It comes as a war continues in Ukraine, famine continues in East Africa, refugees continue to seek homes from the Congo, migrants are pleading for life at our borders. This weekend we pause to remember those who have given lives in violent war. We live in a world in which we have knowledge of tremendous hurt and pain, so much of it inflicted by one human against another. I think it wears on our souls. 

            I don’t know how it is that you are holding all this in your mind. I find myself often numb or in denial, perhaps out of self-protection as a parent of a school-aged child. But also at times angry and deeply sad. I am frustrated at what is beyond my ability to influence or control. These nationally recognized tragedies and traumas tap into some of our greatest fears. Fear of death, fear of pain, fear of not having control over our lives and our surroundings. They remind us of the transience and fragility of life. 

            Perhaps we are asking, “Where is God in all this?” The Christian church observed this past Thursday, in the midst of all this tragedy, the festival of the Ascension. This is the day we remember the resurrected Jesus returning to heaven. Having walked the earth in a resurrection body 40 days, Jesus floats to the clouds. The disciples are left staring heavenward and wondering, “What now?” “Where is God now?”

            And today’s gospel reading, for all of John’s complex language is trying to answer that question: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, ²³I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” 

            It’s tempting to read that quickly, the repetitive and circular words that make our heads hurt trying to understand the nature of the Trinity and the relationship between the first and second persons of the Trinity. But at the core is God’s deep desire for oneness. Not sameness, but oneness. That the persons of the Trinity are one. And, importantly, that we and God are one. 

            Let that sink in for a moment. God desires that we are folded into God’s very being – that we are invited into oneness with God. That’s where God is. With Jesus’ body ascended, we are invited again to recognize God’s presence in us. God’s being one with us in our bodies. 

            Where is God in all this tragedy? God is in those children in Uvalde, Texas. God is in those shoppers in Buffalo, those hungry people in East Africa, those destroyed in Ukraine. That is God’s body hurt, dying, crying out. That is God’s body hungry, afraid, and without a place to call home. That is God’s body feeling our despair, our fear, our anger, our longing. 

            If we take Jesus’s words in John’s gospel seriously, it is Good Friday again, even in this Easter season. It is the cross all over again in our day, in our time. 

            If we take seriously Jesus’s words in John’s gospel, then we, too, are one with those who have experienced these terrible atrocities. God is deeply present in us, just in a nice sitting next to us kind of way, but deep in our bones, feeling our full experience and connecting us body and soul to all of the places God’s body is deeply hurting or afraid. Resurrection, too, then is part of the story, but we live still in that in-between moment, waiting for the fullness of that to come alive in our world. And so, never alone, we sit in the pain and lament. 

            Beloved at St. John’s, there are big and terrible things we are tending to in the world, but we each have our own griefs, too. Our own illnesses and griefs, our own stresses and pain. God feels that deeply, too. God walks it with you, not just as a companion but as one who knows the fullness of your experience from within. 

            And I want to speak for a moment to the decisions you are facing as a congregation. Like so many of our faith communities, things are different than they once were. You are not alone. We are living into a new time of being church that in many ways will look different from what we have known. This is not all bad, but it is hard. You have faced some hard realities together. You have some finances, but they are dropping slowly – you will vote to make necessary repairs to your roof today. You have steady supply coverage and a pastoral coach, but you are not served by a full-time pastoral leader. You have carried the burdens of church leadership among a small and shrinking group for too many years. You are asking the hard questions. It coincides will all kinds of other losses and grief. What’s next? 

            I’m not here to provide the answers to you, though I can tell you more later about where things are across the church and what the trajectory of the church in a broad sense looks like right now. No path forward is without struggle, pain, grief, and change. God feels that, too. God grieves that with you. God feels the pain of losing what has been and the struggle of the path forward. God is with you in the pain, the lament, the fear, the questions, and the struggle. You are never alone. 

            Today, I’ll be honest, that’s where I feel things sit. We lament. We grieve. We feel pain. We know death. And we are not alone. Dear ones, there is resurrection hope. We are a people who believe that death, whether it’s the death of people, the death of institutions, the death of what we have known to be true, that death is not the last or worst thing. We believe that new life is possible after the world is turned upside down. We are an Easter people who know the story of God’s body, killed in horrific violence. It’s the story of oppression, of the failure of institutions, the refusal to resort to violence. It’s the story of a God who takes on a body, a broken, vulnerable body to know pain, hunger, loss, and death. It’s the story of God going to hell and back for the sake of the world. It’s the story of the once-and-for-all defeat of death, not by eliminating it but by being willing to enter through it into a new resurrection reality. 

            There are hopeful signs, certainly, but in the large sense it is difficult to see resurrection from the deep wounds that have been made through these terrible tragedies. It is difficult sometimes to figure out what resurrection will look like in our lives from our own losses. I wish I knew how to paint that picture with the same clarity that I can of our loss. But our story tells us the way is forward, through it. Through death, through grief, through pain into new life. We say again, trusting it even when it is hard to see: 

Alleluia! Christ is risen! 

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

6th Sunday of Easter
May 22, 2022
Gethsemane Lutheran Church, Manchester, NH

¹⁰And in the spirit [one of the angels] carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.
 ²²I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. ²³And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. ²⁴The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. ²⁵Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. ²⁶People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. ²⁷But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life.
 ^22:1Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb ²through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. ³Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; ⁴they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. ⁵And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever. – Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5

Alleluia! Christ is risen! 
Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

            As the book of Revelation draws to a close, after all the imagery of heavenly battles, holy warfare, and the like, these images emerge, literally from the heavens, of a beautiful city. A new city. A holy city. A place where all peoples from every tribe and nation can live at peace with one another. A city whose light comes directly from God’s presence. A city with a clear and bright river to bring the waters of life. A tree bearing fruit year-round whose leaves bring healing to the nations. It’s as if finally after all the trials and tribulation, the pain and grief, the waiting and yearning, peace descends whole and complete. I’ve always pictured this as some kind of final fix to all that is wrong in the world, all that is wrong in us. If we just wait long enough, God will finally drop in the fix and all will be well. 

            And God will somehow bring this to the kind of completion that we can only begin to imagine. But as I read this passage from Revelation again this week I started thinking about the natural imagery in the vision of the holy city. We do believe in a God who can create from nothing, but we also believe in a God who works in and among us. And I wondered: 

How did this river come to flow in this city? Did it just start rushing or did it begin from little springs here and there until they all began to run together into this clear, life-giving flood? 

When did this tree start to grow from a seed into a sapling, year after year, until it becomes this massive tree of healing and nourishment? Did it just appear, or has God perhaps been planting seeds, nourishing roots among us? 

            These questions cut to the heart of how we live as Easter people in the world – are we stuck in the trial and tribulation waiting for everything to shift all at once at God’s command, or is God nurturing this holy city among us now? If we were to look around us, open our hearts and minds, might we find ourselves already by the springs of water that will form that river? Already nurturing the saplings that will grow into this massive tree of life? 

            The imagery here is certainly a city coming down out of heaven. But let us remember what else has already come down out of heaven onto earth. The voice of God to call Abram and Sarai to a new life to bless the nations. The manna and quail which appeared to sustain the Hebrew people wandering in the desert. The miraculous sustenance Elijah finds in the desert and shares with the widow. The Christ child, God made flesh. The spirit of God descending at Jesus’ baptism. The flame of the Spirit at Pentecost. God is always coming down out of heaven to us in these intensely embodied ways. Are these the seeds, the roots, the springs, that begin to shape this holy city among us now? What else might we be missing about the tree of life taking root in our midst? 

            I know, in fact, that the tree of life has roots here at Gethsemane. God is raising up shoots of new life, watering seeds of good news here in your midst. You committed together to feed your neighbors. In some ways it is only a beginning. It does not solve hunger in your community – not yet. But it is an extension of the eucharistic feast into the neighborhood, a place where over food you are beginning to meet people where they are and build a renewed sense of community.

            You have affirmed the Reconciling in Christ process – naming boldly and proudly your welcome for LGBTQIA+ folx as well as a commitment to anti-racism. In that God is beginning to raise up shoots of new life that speak of the day when there really will be a tree to feed and nourish all peoples, celebrating their differences in holy community. 

            There is so much more – though those are two things you all have lifted up to me over and over again as we’ve worked together this last year. And I know you have a lot more work to do ahead. But there are seeds planted already that God is still raising up. You haven’t ever had a perfect pastor here at Gethsemane because there isn’t such a thing. You haven’t ever had perfect leadership here because there isn’t such a thing. And yet, each phase of ministry, each leader among you lay or ordained has been a part of planting seeds for what is to come. A community that is committed to ministry in Manchester, a community committed to working together toward what is next. 

            Ministry now and in the coming years doesn’t look at all like it did three years ago, 10 years ago, and definitely not what it looked like 50 years ago. That’s true for every congregation. And it’s hard to change and shift and discover new models. But somehow this, too, is part of the growth of that holy city, the tree of life growing in new directions in order to bring that vision of true peace into being. 

            There is so much going on in our world and in our communities that it feels like this holy city is far away, the distant dream that if we’re lucky we’ll see in some distant resurrection future. Inequality continues. Economic instability looms across the world. The war in Ukraine continues, with civilians and soldiers dying, lives and cities being destroyed. I am particularly worried for our black and brown siblings who were again targeted last week in Buffalo, where white supremacist ideology took more lives. Check on your neighbors, your fellow faith communities who are predominantly of color along with our Jewish and Muslim neighbors. Many of them are frightened – their lives are at risk. There is much to make us worry. There is much to face in a troubled world. 

            And yet, I see God over and over again coming down into the midst of that, not with sword and flame to vanquish but with seeds to sow of new life. That is the story of Jesus – God come down in the midst of empire and oppression, racism and xenophobia, poverty and disease to live and grow and help God’s love take root more deeply in us. That Jesus goes to the cross over choosing to fight is a promise of this tree taking root in the midst of our trouble and growing into the vision of the holy city. 

            Every baptism, yours and mine and every one around the world is God come down to cause a spring to well up with water, to well up with expansive love and justice. It is small, each individual spring, but important. For that, dear ones is what flows eventually into this holy river in God’s grand vision. Each of us is part of that water flowing even now into the river of eternal life. 

            It’s my challenge to us this week – and honestly I desperately need to see this more clearly, too – my challenge to us is to look around in the midst of the trouble and despair and ask the question of where God’s tree of life is taking root. We don’t yet need to see the healing of the nations, the fruit in every season, the gushing river of life. Just to ask, where are the shoots coming up? Where is something new taking root? Where is God using me to bring that vision to life?   

            Because I really believe we do not have to wait for the end of all time to see the resurrection city among us. God is bringing it here, now in ways we can taste and touch and live. 

Alleluia! Christ is risen! 

Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Easter 5C
May 15, 2022
Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Kensington, CT

¹Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. ²So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, ³saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” ⁴Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, ⁵“I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. ⁶As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. ⁷I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ ⁸But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ ⁹But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ ¹⁰This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. ¹¹At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. ¹²The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. ¹³He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; ¹⁴he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ ¹⁵And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. ¹⁶And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ ¹⁷If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” ¹⁸When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.” – Acts 11:1-18

³¹When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. ³²If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. ³³Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ ³⁴I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. ³⁵By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” – John 13:31-35

            Heavenly visions would be nice, don’t you think? I don’t really know – I can’t say I’ve ever had one. A gut sense of call, a community of fellow people of faith to discern with, a retrospective sense of God having led me through life – yes. But no grand heavenly visions which open up the church of Jesus in new and profound ways. At least sometimes I’d like the kind of clarity that Peter gets with the vision from God in today’s first reading: Here. Do this. You’ve been wrong, and that’s ok, but going forward do this instead. This and not that. I just long for that clarity sometimes. 

            Peter has been faithfully following Jewish practices of the time – keeping kosher, attending festivals, reading the scriptures. At this point in the story there isn’t really yet something we’d call Christianity, at least in any modern sense – it’s still a Jesus movement emerging in the midst of first century Judaism. And there is this persistent question, despite all of Jesus’s boundary pushing and openness, about whether people have to become Jewish and follow Jewish custom in order to follow Jesus. This is not some sort of legalism as if Judaism has strict rules and what emerges as Christianity doesn’t, but rather it’s a matter of how people practice their faith. Those Jewish food customs and other ritual ways they oriented their life are as dear to these folks as our favorite hymns and liturgies, our potluck suppers and candlelit Christmas Eves – these are the ways they have practiced their faith. With this new thing emerging, will what has been still be part of where we are going? Will what has been continue to be part of who we are going forward? 

            It’s a question we ask a lot these days as our church both in the big, broad sense of church, and in our individual congregations. Things are shifting, changing. But if nothing else the story of Peter’s vision about how the Jesus movement will go forward should remind us that people of faith are always asking this questions. Faith is embodied – embodied in people, embodied in living institutions which by nature change, evolve, move, and, yes, even die. But what will remain and what will change? What new things will emerge? What old things will be lost.

            For Peter it’s about what foods are lawful to eat – though, really, as I’ve already hinted, it’s bigger than that. It’s about who gets to be in and who gets to be out. This vision – the blanket with the food and God’s pronouncement – it’s toward greater openness. If God’s said it once God’s said it a hundred times – all are welcome. So, Peter, here’s your vision – go forth and live it out. Leave this behind. Do this instead. If only God helped us sort out our deep questions about our lives of faith and the life of our church in such straightforward terms. 

            You have a decision before you here today at Prince of Peace. That decision is about whether you are ready, after much discernment, to officially vote to pursue Holy Closure. You’ve talked about the options available to you and you’ve come to some consensus already about where you are leaning. And though your anxiety about this decision may have made it into your dreams, I’m guessing at least most of you haven’t gotten the kind of clarity that Peter got, no grand visions of God saying this way and not that way. 

            Here’s the thing, though, these grand pronouncements from God, these visions that provide clarity of direction and unambiguous theological dicta – they are actually pretty challenging. I can’t think of a single bold vision from God that doesn’t result in upending life changes for the recipient. Abram is called to wander to a new land. Moses to upend the society where he was raised. Hannah to give over her child to God’s service. Esther to defy authority and advocate for her people. Every prophet ever to go do and say hard things to people in power. Mary to birth the Christ child. God’s visions don’t ever result in just keeping things the way they are, sailing along comfortably along doing what you’ve always been doing. 

            It may seem trivial to us looking back after 20 centuries, but God’s vision to Peter is a setting of a new direction for the emerging church. And it means loosening his grip on his own traditions and customs. It means being willing to stand and face the opposition of those who think otherwise. 

            I want to pause here and give a disclaimer – God does not interrupt people’s lives with visions that say “What you did before was wrong. Now you’re going to do what’s right.” God simply says, we’re doing a new thing together, come join me. It does not invalidate the beautiful traditions – in Peter’s case the beautiful tradition of keeping kosher which carries forward in beautiful and ever-evolving ways in our sibling religion, rabbinic Judaism. But this vision and God’s other visions don’t shame anyone for what has been or imply that something wasn’t right. It’s that something else is happening now, too. 

            And that’s how I hope you think of your decision today. Prince of Peace has lived out its mission. It has been a place for God’s people to gather, experience grace, serve neighbors, deepen faith, and be God’s hands in the world. It has come to a time to make critical decisions about what that mission looks like now. And in some form or fashion God is going to do something new. It will be hard, no matter what choices you make, but then, so is every call from God. 

            So perhaps we ought to be careful what we wish for, what we pray for, because a clear vision from God is both gift and challenge. It is a transformation that often means losing something of what you have known as new things emerge. It means, as we continue here in the Easter season, death and resurrection. 

            And, in fact, we do, my siblings in Christ, have a clear call, a clear vision from God in our gospel reading today. No, it will not tell you what to do about the life of your congregation – not in the sense of congregational votes and legal decisions. Jesus gives a new commandment as he prepares for his glory – for his death that destroys death – and that commandment, that clarity of vision is this: Love one another. It is as simple and complicated as that. 

            This is the definition of the Christian church, the definition of discipleship, the way in which we are known: by our love for others – all others. 

            I know and cherish the ways in which our individual faith communities shape us and form our identities. We are embodied people and it means something to gather week after week in a particular space like this one. It means something to go through life events alongside others in your community of faith – particular people who stand beside us in joy and grief and everything in between. It means something to identify with a congregation, a denomination, a way of worship, a particular pathway of service. Those are all deep identities. And when they change, when congregations close or rethink their mission, there is deep pain and grief. 

            And yet those identities are not primary for Jesus. Not primary for our life of faith. The call to love one another is not defined by church buildings, congregational identities, denominational affiliation. It isn’t even defined by baptism – that call supersedes even the most fundamental of our welcome rites as Christians. Your call here at Prince of Peace has been to love one another. Your call in the coming months at Prince of Peace, whatever decisions you make today, is to love one another. Your call wherever you go, wherever you worship, wherever you find community is to love one another. 

            Because love is stronger than death. More than anything, I think that’s what Easter is really about. That God is willing to put God’s very body on the line for the sake of love. That love defeats the grave. That love simply can’t be held back – not by our failures to love in individual moments, not by institutions that change or close, not by the power of death to rip our beloved ones away from us. Love will prevail. 

            That is God’s vision for you this day, every day. Love prevails. God’s love for you. God’s love for your neighbor. God’s love for your enemy. God’s love for all creation to the end of all things. God’s love prevails. 

Pastor Steven Wilco

Third Sunday of Easter, Year C
May 1, 2022
Christ the King Lutheran Church, Nashua, NH

¹After [he appeared to his followers in Jerusalem,] Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. ²Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. ³Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.
 ⁴Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. ⁵Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” ⁶He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. ⁷That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. ⁸But the other disciples came in the boat, dragging the net full of fish, for they were not far from the land, only about a hundred yards off.
 ⁹When they had gone ashore, they saw a charcoal fire there, with fish on it, and bread. ¹⁰Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish that you have just caught.” ¹¹So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn. ¹²Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.” Now none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who are you?” because they knew it was the Lord. ¹³Jesus came and took the bread and gave it to them, and did the same with the fish. ¹⁴This was now the third time that Jesus appeared to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.
 ¹⁵When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” ¹⁶A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” ¹⁷He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. ¹⁸Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” ¹⁹(He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.” – John 21:1-19

This sermon is inspired by the sermon of the Rev. Dr. Frederick Niedner at the 2022 Institute of Liturgical Studies. My first formal professor of preaching and a beloved mentor, he taught us that once something is preached it goes out into the world, giving permission not to plagiarize but to borrow and build anew for your context, for that is what carries the message generation to generation. So the arc of the sermon and a few of the the phrases are his, while the sermon is my own writing.

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

            Oh, Peter. The disciple we love because of not in spite of his imperfections. 

            In John’s gospel, the only one to capture this resurrection breakfast on the beach with Jesus, the disciple Peter is not the star. When Jesus calls the disciples it does not start with Peter, but rather Andrew who in turn comes to tell Peter, “We have found the messiah, come and see.” 

            Jesus has a different favorite in the gospel of John – the beloved disciple, he’s called. Never identified except that he’s not Peter, because he appears alongside Peter. Peter who has bold statements of faith and brash words. When Jesus talks of eating – chewing even – his body, crowds begin to fall away, Jesus asks if the disciples also want to leave. It is Peter who says, “To whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life.” 

Peter who is too embarrassed to allow Jesus wash his feet, but then at Jesus’ insistence demands a whole bath. Peter who when Judas appears in the garden to arrest Jesus with an army of at least 200 soldiers, he boldly steps forward with a little sword ready to defend Jesus despite the absurd odds. He manages to cut off an ear before Jesus reminds him that’s not how we do this and he sheepishly sheaths his sword. 

            Peter who in all four gospels denies Jesus three times in the courtyard after Jesus’ arrest. Peter who on Easter morning at the testimony of the women come from the tomb takes off running with the beloved disciple, only to be outrun – Peter doesn’t come in first. And yet he’s the one to duck into the empty tomb. 

            Peter, who after all that has nothing left to do but to go out fishing. And when Jesus appears on the shore it’s the beloved disciple who recognizes Jesus, not Peter. Yet Peter is the one who can’t wait for the boat to row the short distance back to shore, so he puts his garment back on, leaps into the water, and splashes with abandon to the shore. 

            “Peter,” Jesus asks, “Do you love me?” 

            And maybe today you hear yourself in Peter’s journey with Jesus. Maybe you, like me, hear Jesus ask you today, “Do you love me?”

            We like Peter know the response, we practice the response. Yes, Lord. We love you. 

We practice it in words. I believe in God the Father almighty…in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son. In Jesus’ name we pray. For thine is the kingdom. 

We practice it in song. I love you Jesus, deep down in my heart… Beautiful savior… Lord, thee I love with all my heart…Worthy is Christ…

We practice it with our bodies. Making the sign of the cross, splashing in the waters of baptism, consuming the bread and wine of communion. 

We practice it in deeds. Showing up to pray in support of Ukraine. Participating with community partners to feed those who are hungry. Speaking up for policies that serve the whole of God’s people. I know you do those things here at CTK.  

And yet, whether it’s a global pandemic, or the challenges of the church as a human institution, life changes, illness and death. Whether it’s our own errors, failures, doubts. Maybe we stop short, not sure if our words really ring true. Because we are much like Peter – not always first, not always right, not always quite getting it even when we move ahead with boldness. 

When Jesus asks Peter, something about the text makes we wonder if Peter hesitates just a moment. If you’ve been around preachers long enough to hear this text preached a few times, you might know that in this text Jesus uses one Greek word for love and Peter responds with a lesser or at least different word for love. Is Peter wondering whether in this moment his journey alongside Jesus has really been enough? After all, he is not the beloved disciple. He’s the brash one, the one who sticks his foot in his mouth, the one, after all, who denied Jesus in his most difficult hour. The thing is, standing here on this beach, he knows that Jesus knows. Jesus knows the answer. Jesus knows not just Peter’s words but his wild walk, his boldness and brashness, his successes and failures. Jesus does not need to ask. Jesus knows Peter’s love and Peter’s imperfect discipleship. And yet here Peter stands, an answer expected.     

What can Peter do, but place himself again before the one he knows so well. The one who walked alongside him. The one who has returned to him even from the grave. Perhaps he remembers his own earlier words “To whom shall we go? You, Jesus, have the words of eternal life.” And despite knowing better than to think he will be a perfect disciple, he has speaks again, “Yes, Lord, I love you. Yes, Lord, I am with you.” 

To me that’s resurrection. Not just Jesus’ body standing present to the fearful and lost disciples, but the capacity of Jesus to know our every challenge and welcome us anyway. To call us again and again…and again. To come back around after our worst moments, our worst failures and say, “I need you.” Jesus is here to say to Peter, “I have given everything for our cause. I have given my very body for the sake of my love for the world. That’s it. That’s all I had left to give. Well, except you. You and the other disciples who deep down I know believe in the power of God’s love to transform the world. And now I’m calling you. Not because you’re perfect. Not because you’re the best. Not because the sacrifices I’m warning you about now will save the world. But because you’re what I have left to give for this cause, for the love of the world. Do you love me? Are you with me?” 

I don’t know about you, friends, but I’m tired. We have experienced a collective disruption to the world as we know it. It’s not just two years of viruses and distancing and learning the gifts and challenges of online everything and the uncertainty of planning anything these days and the economy roller-coastering and wars erupting. I mean – any of those things is really enough. It’s that the whole story we tell ourselves about who we are as a people, as a church, as a nation, as a world – it has fractured. We are trying to piece together a new story. It is exhausting. I don’t know, church, I don’t know what will come of it. I don’t know how we will piece together a new story. I suspect whatever your piece of the larger narrative is, you’re doing the same. Trying to piece together a new story of what things will be like going forward. And we’re tired. It may be Easter, but we, like the disciples are lost and afraid. We, like the disciples, are toiling and seemingly coming up empty-handed. We, like the disciples come with all our own baggage and failure. And yet, here we are. Jesus is alive. The table is set. And the invitation is made. “Do you love me? Are you with me?” 

You can say the words you know are expected. Or you can pause and ponder if you need to. You can even tell Jesus to hang on, that you haven’t had time to make sense of your reality again. Because, like Peter, I do know this. Jesus will keep coming back, offering nourishment and love. Jesus is resurrected and one day, in God’s way and time, the whole world will be resurrected, too. In the meantime, Jesus is here. Jesus knows you inside and out and calls you, not because of your greatness, but because that’s how God has decided to work in the world – with tired, broken, imperfect people. And that’s enough. Because that’s all God has now that God has given everything. Us. Broken and shared for the sake of God’s love for all the world. So come now, to the feast which Jesus has set for us. Recognize him here in our midst. And hear anew God’s call for you. 

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Christ is risen, indeed! Alleluia!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

5^th Sunday in Lent

April 3, 2022

Ascension Lutheran, South Burlington, VT

¹Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. ²There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. ³Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. ⁴But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, ⁵“Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” ⁶(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) ⁷Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. ⁸You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” – John 12:1-8

           Hope. What does it smell like? What does hope taste like? What does hope feel like? 

            I don’t think it’s just me, but these days I’m finding it especially difficult to connect with a sense of hope. I know the world is always in chaos, plagued by violence, death, and disease. That is nothing new in this time. But the layer upon layer of crisis, our global awareness, and our fatigue from COVID have made it seem especially difficult to connect with hope. Racism, climate change, crisis in Ukraine, immigration and refugee challenges, uncertain economy, political division, new COVID variants. The list goes on and on.  

            The church in the broad sense is undergoing deep change. I actually find some hope in that, but the church as it is and has been may not be exactly what the church will be in the near future and that shift is challenging and comes with grief and pain, anxiety and conflict. And in that sense it can be hard to connect with the hope there, too. 

            So I’m desperate for embodied hope – something I can see and touch, smell and taste. 

            From that place we get to join today at the dinner table with Mary and Martha, Lazarus and Jesus, and some of the disciples. An intimate meal of family and friends. But it is no ordinary meal. Death is in the air. Jesus has just in the last chapter of John raised Lazarus from the tomb after 4 long days of decay. We aren’t privy to the details, but there is not indication that Jesus undoes the decay when he resurrects Lazarus. His own resurrected body will still bear the wounds of his crucifixion after all. Perhaps Lazarus still physically bears the marks of death on his body. Even if he is fully restored, death must still be hanging in the air, more real to them than usual, a presence sitting with them at the table. 

            And though it’s not entirely clear how much Mary understands about what is about to happen to Jesus, how much Jesus himself understands, it is clear that something is shifting, changing. The tensions are high, the festival is near. Jesus has been circling the center of power and he’s about to enter it the following day in an oddly grand fashion, in grand challenge to the empire. It is around Lazarus’s resurrection that the plot against Jesus solidifies. The next verses remind us of the plot of the leaders to kill not only Jesus but to return Lazarus to death as well. 

            The tensions are high. They hang in the air at this dinner. It is its own kind of last supper and somehow it seems they all feel it. What does one do when so much death hangs in the air, when the tension of empire and oppression is palpable? It’s such an embodied feeling, that tension. You know how you hold your body when things get stressful, when you’re a little on edge. A bit of adrenaline racing, heart beating faster. Shoulders tense. Focus is heightened. The body is ready for fight, flight, or freeze. In Hebrew, the word for distress is actually the same root word as narrowness – things tighten and close in when we get distress. Have you been holding your body this way lately alongside Jesus, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus? Ready for the next shoe to drop? The body is designed to tune in to possible threats. 

            Somehow it seems harder to retune the body to hope. 

            But enter Mary. In an incredible act of generosity, she pours extravagantly expensive ointment on Jesus’s feet. The overpowering smell fills the room. The gentle, caring touch is both welcomed by Jesus and startling to his disciples. Suddenly they are all transfixed by this act of generosity and love, the scent of death hanging in the air has gone from their minds. Hope. They do not understand it. It’s not even clear that Mary herself understands it. It is not something they know in their heads, but something they experience in their bodies. As it might well have been used to cover up the scent of a decaying body, so now it covers up the death that hangs in the air. Hope. 

            Let us not forget Martha, too. Perhaps she is still the one to prepare the meal, the practical one who tends to details. She has prepared this meal, too, in the face of death. Perhaps the scent of roasting meat or baking bread has drifted into the space where they gathered. They paused in their conversation to enjoy the taste of the meal. She, too, has provided a sensory experience in the face of death. A simple meal for family and friends. Not enough to stave off death entirely and forever, not enough to counter the empire. But nourishment, sustenance. A promise of hope in the face of death. Despite what hangs palpable in the room she will provide a meal. 

In this story it is Mary and Martha who reveal to us who God is. For what they do is what God does, in fact, to save the world. God opens the almighty arms and compassionate heart to release God’s very self in the person of Jesus. Jesus who lives a life of open grace, free healing, gracious welcome, and who, in the end, dies in an open armed gesture of ultimate love on the cross, giving himself away in the face of violence, hatred, oppression and death. Not in theory but in God’s very body. Whereas the Hebrew word for distress means narrowness, the Hebrew word for salvation, the root of the name Jesus, also means openness. 

            I am one of those people who feels like I want to try to solve the problems of the world. Or at least one problem of the world. But saving the world is God’s job. Our call is to open our hearts to the world, to engage in acts of generosity of spirit and of resources and of relationship. In these times of distress, in all times of distress, our opportunity is to practice openness and generosity. To be present to one another. 

            That looks like a congregation in transition opening itself to new possibilities, people, gifts, and opportunities. It looks like a pastor willing to strike out on a call to care for creation with an open and generous spirit. It looks like emerging from a pandemic and finding ways to reconnect as embodied people. It looks like setting a feast at this eucharistic table, at our dinner tables, at the tables of those in need. It looks like opening our hearts to listen deeply to one another across division. It looks like finding ways to still be generous even as economic uncertainty hits home for all of us. 

            The thing is that hope is not found in solving problems but in opening our hearts to the presence of God who is always pouring out love generously. Tending to our bodies, washing us in the waters of baptism, feeding us at this rich feast of bread and wine, anointing us with oil. God is breathing the Spirit into us with every deep breath, soaking deep into the cells of our bodies with every inhale. God is drawing us together in human community where our touch and care for one another reminds us the holy gift of life in the midst of death. 

            May you, beloved of God, may all of us together, experience today and always the presence of God’s powerful scent and taste and touch of hope for us and all the world. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Third Sunday in Lent, Year C

Sunday, March 20, 2022

St. John’s Lutheran Church, Stamford, CT

 ¹Ho, everyone who thirsts,
  come to the waters;
 and you that have no money,
  come, buy and eat!
 Come, buy wine and milk
  without money and without price.
 ²Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
  and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
 Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
  and delight yourselves in rich food.
 ³Incline your ear, and come to me;
  listen, so that you may live.
 I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
  my steadfast, sure love for David.
 ⁴See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
  a leader and commander for the peoples.
 ⁵See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
  and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
 because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,
  for he has glorified you.

 ⁶Seek the Lord while he may be found,
  call upon him while he is near;
 ⁷let the wicked forsake their way,
  and the unrighteous their thoughts;
 let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
  and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
 ⁸For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
  nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
 ⁹For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
  so are my ways higher than your ways
  and my thoughts than your thoughts. – Isaiah 55:1-9

¹At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.²[Jesus] asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?³No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. ⁴Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? ⁵No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
 ⁶Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. ⁷So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ ⁸He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. ⁹If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ” – Luke 13:1-9

            My question for you this morning is this: How many figs? How many figs would be enough? If the tree in Jesus’s parable produced one half-withered fig, is that enough? One really good fig – is that enough? Need it be a more reasonable amount, say at least 20 per year – the low end of average for a mature fig tree? 

            And how many years? How many one-more-years can go by with no figs before the tree is cut down and thrown into the fire? How many years is it worth the effort to keep digging and pruning and watering and whatever else a fig tree needs? How much work is it worth to eke out a fig? 

            I think Jesus tells this strange little parable because he knows we are fig-counters. That is, we’re always asking what’s enough? This many good deeds? This many acts of charity? This much money given away? This much kindness, goodness, purity? This much prayer? Am I doing it right yet, Jesus?

            Or how many one-more-years do I have left? How much time? How long should I work before I can rest? How much effort is worth the produce? Is my work worth it? Am I worth it? 

            The people speaking to Jesus want to know how much goodness will protect them from terrible fates. Those Galileans, the ones Pilate brutally killed – were they worse than the other Galileans? C’mon, Jesus, we know you know, you must have access to the heavenly accounting sheet, you can tell us. Surely it was because they did something wrong, something we haven’t done or something we can stop doing. Or the eighteen who had a tower fall on them? What did they do to deserve it? Those people surely did something! Because if they did, then surely we can worry less about something bad happening to us.

We twenty-first century mainline Christians might look down on their thinking. We may abstractly ponder why bad things happen to good people, but generally, I hope, we don’t assign blame to those who fall victim to disasters and disease. But we ask the same questions in other ways. 

Did you notice that at least before the Delta and Omicron variants came along there was this stigma around getting COVID? Like unless you were a frontline worker maybe you just hadn’t been careful enough. I know when my family got COVID almost a year into the pandemic I was actually a little embarrassed to admit it. 

Or what about cancer? Did the person smoke? Or heart disease – we may not say it aloud but we wonder about lifestyle choices. Body doesn’t look like the magazines say it’s supposed to? Probably something they’re doing or not doing. Mental health challenges – maybe it was their environment in childhood. Maybe – hopefully – we aren’t going to say it out loud, but we think it sometimes, don’t we? Congregation membership or finances dwindling? Surely if we or they just did the right thing we’d have averted the decline? Distancing ourselves from something bad, so that maybe, just maybe, we can maintain a sense of control over our lives, control over what happens to us. We want to be able to dosomething to fend off disaster, to hold off death, to hold off ill fortune. And part of what Jesus is saying is both that no one deserves the awful fate that befalls them and also that no one escapes death in the end either. 

Ultimately it comes down to deeper questions: Are we good enough? Can we hold off the worst by doing enough? Do we have enough time? Have we born enough fruit? Enough to save us in the end from whatever demons pursue us? Enough to save us from death, from damnation, from shame? We’re fig counters. And counting figs makes us impatient with the tree. 

            And so Jesus presents us with this strange little parable and it probably unsettles us. Jesus means to unsettle us. The whole story sets us up to be outraged at the tree, ready with the landowner to throw it out, start over. That’s what I do with plants that don’t seem to be doing what they’re supposed to. Don’t you? We’re supposed to be all in with the landowner as Jesus tells the little vignette. 

            And then Jesus, as he is wont to do, drops in this twist, this strange plea from the one we expect both to obey the landowner and to know how to take care of fruitless trees. The gardener says “one more year.” There is no logical, rational reason for this. No likelihood that it will work. No reason for the extra effort involved here. It’s not the decision of a fig-counter. 

            I don’t think this parable is meant to be a one-to-one allegory. I’m hesitant to say too definitively who is God and who we are. But I will say that I too often act like the landowner ready to judge based on results, and God is generally one to say “one more year,” the one to give a bit more attention, a bit more love and care without stopping to count costs. 

            In Lent especially, but throughout our lives of faith we might be tempted to draw up an account of our own fruit-bearing. And that is absolutely part of our call to bear fruit in the world. To be doers of justice, bringers of peace, love self and neighbor, deepen our connection to God, serve others. Those are the things that bring life to us and to the world. 

            But too often we think that’s tied to God’s love for us. Too often we think God is just as much a bookkeeper of deeds, a counter of figs, as we are. The loving tender care of the farmer isn’t about producing the most fruit, earning the most money, working in the most efficient way, but about cultivating enough for everyone to live and thrive. God calls us to bear fruit not so that we can be the best trees or so that we can earn love, acceptance, or live ever after. God calls us to bear fruit so that the whole world is nourished and fed. So that the whole world together might feast and live and thrive. God’s not out to get fruitless trees, but out to set a feast for all. 

            What Lent is really about is God getting down in the dirt with us. Kneeling down, digging, watering. Jesus goes to the cross not because we don’t bear fruit but because God’s great love for us calls God into our lives, messy and sometimes without fruit though they may be. So come now, wherever you find yourself in this strange little parable. Come you who get caught up in trying to keep accounts. Come you who are quick to judge. Come you who feel barren. Come you who toil and sometimes can’t find anything to show for it. Come you who call out for mercy. Come, all, for God’s feast is waiting for you here at this table. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

7th Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)
February 20, 2022
Good Shepherd Lutheran/St. James Episcopal, Laconia, NH

³Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.
  ⁴Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. ⁵And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. ⁶For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. ⁷God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. ⁸So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. ⁹Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. ¹⁰You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. ¹¹I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ ” ¹⁵And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him. -Genesis 45, selected verses

[Jesus said:] ²⁷“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.
  ³²“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. ³⁵But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. ³⁶Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
  ³⁷“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; ³⁸give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” – Luke 6:27-38

         Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” 

            Father Gregory Boyle is a Jesuit priest in Los Angeles. He has spent his ministry building relationships in the neighborhood of his parish. In that neighborhood are a great many folks living on the edges of poverty. It’s a neighborhood in which gang violence is a reality – too few opportunities, too few resources, young people are sometimes caught in cycles which promote toxic masculinity, inviting kids to grow up beyond their years and seek a sense of power, control, and belonging in sometimes destructive ways. 

            Father Boyle has built relationships with all the folks in the neighborhood – the young people active in violence, the young people caught up in it unwillingly or trying to get out of it, the mothers and fathers and siblings, the business owners, the retirees. Somehow he manages to befriend them all in one way or another. He is part of some transformative community action, but more importantly he loves the people in his community. More than once that love has been challenged. 

            He tells the story of being called to the hospital to sit with a grandmother as her 12-year-old grandson dies of a bullet wound from a shooting in which the boy was an innocent bystander. Fr. Boyle knows this boy, deeply cares for and pastorally loves this boy. By morning he is gone. Days later the shooters are found and arrested. It turns out Fr. Boyle knows and loves them, too. He has relationships with them, too. How does one love their two children when one brutally hurts or kills the other? How does one find God-level compassion to hold that? 

Fr. Boyle says “I will admit that the degree of difficulty here is very high. Kids I love killing kids I love. There is nothing neat in carving space for both in our compassion.” And “If we long to be in the world who God is, then, somehow, our compassion has to find its way to vastness.” 

            Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” 

            In an increasingly polarized political realm, it has become easier and easier to vilify our political opponents. Those people are wrong, misguided, even evil. But like perhaps many of you, there are members of my extended family who have very different political views than I do. Family gatherings have occasionally erupted in heated and often unproductive arguments, but more often things get said and people cringe or seethe quietly or talk about it with some behind the backs of others. You know how this goes whether it’s your family, your workplace, or your community. I’m not saying it’s healthy, but it’s what happens more often than it should. 

            I’m not one to go spewing all those thoughts at others, but I can be pretty judgey, pretty convinced I’m right and they’re wrong. But something in me clicked a couple of years ago, realizing that those family members with whom I vehemently disagree about politics and worldview, loved me pretty unconditionally. I wondered whether I was sometimes letting politics get in the way of fully loving the person in front of me. It shifted something in me, opened something in me, calling forth both deeper relationship and love but also deeper learning about them and about myself.

            I’m not suggesting we compromise on vital, deeply held beliefs. Our worldview and politics matter and have real life implications for people. I’m not suggesting we let hurtful speech continue without speaking up about it. I’m not suggesting we live in a fantasy land where whatever you think is just fine. And yet, where have we failed to love the ones we label enemies who in fact are closest to us? 

            Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” 

            Joseph, of our Hebrew Scripture reading this morning, was literally left in a ditch by his brothers so that he would end up in slavery. Through a long, painful, convoluted journey Joseph ends up in a position of great power in Egypt. Decades later his brothers come to Egypt, literally starving and seeking refuge and food. They don’t recognize the brother they left behind, but he recognizes them. In a moment of superhuman capacity for reconciliation Joseph welcomes them for the sake of their family bond and offers forgiveness. He crosses the chasms created by abuse, enslavement, alienation, and oppression. It’s possible because Joseph did, eventually, and with no certainty of position, find himself in a place of power. He chooses from that place of power not to perpetuate the same ills against his brothers that they did to him. I don’t think I could have done it. 

            And the whole story makes me reflect on the question of addressing systemic racism in our day. Not because this story is about that, though it contains dynamics of power and oppression, but because I fear in reading this through our 21^st century lens that it could mistakenly encourage us to expect those who have been enslaved and whose ancestors have been enslaved and who continue to experience abuse, discrimination, and oppression to welcome with open arms those responsible for their enslavement in some sort of hug-until-it-feels-better moment. 

We live in a world shaped by racism, in a country founded on centuries of racialized slavery with well over a century more of racialized oppression which continues in our own time. The chasms created by that are far wider, far deeper than what Joseph crossed. They are not so easily bridged when every one of us, not unlike Joseph, is caught up in the systems that oppress and divide. The enemy is not even so much one another, as the systems that create oppression. In this case loving our enemies isn’t about making up and moving on but about naming the racism and the systems that perpetuate it as our enemy. Not to embrace racism, certainly not to love racism, but to tell the truth about it in order to dismantle it. Love isn’t just nice and caring, but transformative and just. 

            Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” 

            Every last one of us has something within us that keeps us from thriving at our best. Addiction, fear of failure, anxiety, pride, perfectionism…we are never perfect, and often we are our own worst enemies. Literally. And sometimes we ignore those less than helpful parts of ourselves, sometimes we hate them and try to scrub them from our lives, sometimes we give in and let them run things for a while. How might we love ourselves fully, warts and all. Our bodies, our spirits, our pasts, presents, and futures. Without naive ideas of being all good or debilitating ideas about being all bad, how can we honor who we are right now, in this moment? How can we love the enemy within? How can we honor that baptism has claimed all of us, promised God’s love over all of who we are? 

            Jesus says, “Love your enemies.”

Beloved of God, I don’t know how to love my enemies in the ways in which we are called to do that. I try. I do. I have Thich Nhat Hanh’s 6 mantras of loving speech posted next to my desk to remind me of our shared humanity when I’m struggling with an interpersonal conflict. I practice deep breaths and conflict mediation and crucial conversations. But I have a long way to go before I can really love my enemies fully. 

            But I do know that God has that figured out. God loves Ukranians and Russians, Israelis and Palestinians. God loves Republicans and Democrats. God loves shooters and victims. God loves pro-lifers and pro-choicers. God loves climate change activists and climate change deniers. God loves across border walls of every kind. God loves you and me and your enemies and mine. God is love. 

            Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” 

I know I can never find within myself the expansive love of God. But maybe I can learn to live in God’s expansive love for me, for you. And maybe there will be a chance to open my heart to someone new today. And another tomorrow. Until all the world reflects that expansive, transformative love that is already real and true for every living thing. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Fr. Gregory Boyle’s story and quotations from Tattoos on the Heart by Gregory Boyle (Free Press: New York, 2010).

Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year C
December 19, 21

Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Newington, NH

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

            If you’ve ever seen musical theater – live or on screen – you have probably thought at least once, even if just for a fleeting moment, “This is soooo unrealistic! People don’t just break into song and dance every time something happens!” Some musicals are better than others at this, but you realize when you listen to the soundtrack that very little of the plot is actually contained in the songs. 

            I have a pastor friend [thanks, Pr. Stephanie Pope!] who is also a trained opera singer. She reminded some of us at a recent text study that in opera, the star moments of the show are the big solos, but almost never do they advance the plot. They aren’t there to do that. In order to advance the plot they use a recitative – an often almost chant-like way to get a good bit of text in without tons of melody in the way. No, the big solos, the arias perhaps especially, are there to express a universal truth or a deep emotion that we can connect to. 

            No, most of us don’t break into song and dance in the midst of a conversation, although…I have known a few who did…but we do have big and profound emotions that need voicing. We are impacted by and long for deep universal truths. 

            In this Advent, in the third of our three-year lectionary cycle, we read Luke’s Gospel in which the characters act as if in musical theater – they pause in the action and they sing. Mary runs to Elizabeth and Mary responds to Elizabeth’s greeting in song. When John the Baptist is born and Zechariah’s tongue is finally freed from his months of silence he sings. It is in Luke that we hear the detail of the heavenly host breaking into song for the shepherds. When Jesus is presented in the temple Simeon breaks into song. Cue the soundtrack, the dance numbers, the quizzical expressions of onlookers – the birth narrative of Jesus is a full-on musical production. 

            On the one hand that might make it seem like pie-in-the-sky, fanciful nonsense or a quaint historical narrative. Only in a musical…right?…would a teenage girl bear the son of God and sing to her cousin about the toppling of empire and the poor being fed. Here in the real world we know poverty is a problem in every country in every generation. We know people use power to oppress others based on money, skin color, gender, or just because. In this view, which even we people of faith sometime ascribe to implicitly, the Jesus narrative is a nice story that gives us a break from our troubled world. 

            On the other hand, if we remember that we come to a production not just to hear a story but to resonate with deep truths about ourselves and our world, to connect with something larger…and that the hit numbers, the big arias – those are the points that express the most universal truths and connect us to the deepest parts of ourselves…then maybe this burst of song could be at the heart of our faith and life. 

            Mary sings of things already accomplished despite the fact that Jesus is but a fetus in her womb. This is both because God has already done this. The empire toppling care for the poor and lowly, the choosing of the younger, less expected one – that’s all embedded in the history of Mary’s people. God liberated the Hebrews from the Egyptian pharaoh. King David was chosen despite being the youngest, least likely of his brothers. Queen Esther emerged as a hero to save her people through an unusual series of events. These things have already happened. And yet she sings this clearly also to indicate the meaning of the child within her. What he will do. But more than that, she sings in the past tense to indicate the completeness, the completedness of God’s rule and reign in opposition to the earthly powers and the forces of oppression that plague us still. This is a song that gives hope to the hopeless in every time and place. It is a song that is true then, now, and always. How might we sing it in our time and place? 

            Christians who pray the daily offices have literally sung these exact songs for centuries – punctuated their everyday lives with these songs. Monastics especially in the daily rhythm of simple daily chores, care for the poor, care for the land, they burst into song – Zechariah’s song every morning at Matins, Mary’s song every evening at Vespers, Simeon’s song every night at Compline, and the psalms scattered healthily throughout. It’s what we do in our worship. We’re so used to the rhythm, those of us familiar with liturgical patterns, that we often fail to realize how radical it is that we pause throughout our worship to connect in that deep way, to sing, to embody the universal truths that demand the power of song to be expressed. 

            I certainly commend to you the singing of these and other sacred songs not just in worship but in your daily life. There are times I have lived in communities that had regular opportunity to pray the daily offices and it is a beautiful thing. I sing my daughter to bed several nights a week with Compline including Simeon’s song, and it has a way of working its universal meaning into one’s soul with that regularity. But what I want us to ponder this morning is how we might sing these songs, sing the song of our faith in ways that are bold and passionate, to break out in metaphorical song in ways that make people who are watching pause and wonder if maybe we’ve lost our minds. 

            What would it mean for us to be so bursting with the message of good news for the world, with hope, with love, with grace, with justice, that we simply could not contain ourselves? Would it push us to bold and beautiful welcome as you have done in thoughtfully engaging the Reconciling in Christ process? You sing to the world Mary’s Song with your commitment to welcome. Would it push us to roll out welcome to refugees with thoughtful planning but without regard to cost? Might our song look like speaking the truth the racism embedded in our communities and our churches and committing to pushing back against the entrenched systems that keep people with lighter skin in power? Might our song look like radical feeding of our neighbor? Might our song look like providing services for young people emerging from foster care at 18 with no one to care for them? I don’t know what your part is in this bigger number we’re all trying to sing and dance to together. But I do know that you have a part, that God is doing something in you, that God has given you and me the kind of grace that God gave to Mary to bear God’s word into this world despite our being not fully up to the task. 

            Part of your transition work will be to identify what part of the song your congregation carries now in this time and place. Yes, to listen to who you are as a congregation, to think about what kind of pastoral leadership can best serve with you at this moment in your life as a congregation. But more than anything to visit again the question we must always ask, which is “What is it that brings you full to bursting with God’s love? And how is it that you are being called to blurt that out to the world?” 

            Mary’s song is so powerful that it has been banned by governments for the ways it has inspired challenge to those in power – British-ruled India, Guatemala, and Argentina all at some point literally banned people from singing this song lest it inspire people to rise up for justice. How can you as God’s people at Holy Trinity sing so boldly that people sit up and take notice? How can we reclaim the profoundly countercultural movement that Mary sings? Maybe it isn’t standing up to government, though there is a place there for the church. But maybe it’s being so generous that people in your community can’t help but wonder what kind of God inspired that! Or being so absolutely accepting of others that people start to think this God of ours might just be worth checking out. Whatever it is, Mary invites us now to join the song (and maybe even the dance!) of this God who loves this world literally to death. Mary invites us to burst forth in song at the God who comes to us and all the world. Mary invites us be join her in being God-bearers, chosen ones, holy messengers for the sake of the world. May it be so! Amen!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 ⁷John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? ⁸Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin 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. ⁹Even 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.”
  ¹⁰And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” ¹¹In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” ¹²Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” ¹³He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” ¹⁴Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”
  ¹⁵As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, ¹⁶John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
  ¹⁸So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.

– Luke 3:7-18

           Pastor Austin Shelley, a presbyterian minister, tells a story about growing up with her frugal grandparents. They were people who made do with very little. They were generous with what they had, particularly to their church; they lived simply; and her grandfather in particular watched every last dollar. The one place, she says, that her grandfather didn’t scrutinize finances was with grocery shopping, which her grandmother did. 

            Austin would tag along with her grandmother and as they went along, two of every item went into the cart – two boxes of cereal, two jars of peanut butter, two bags of flour – til, as she describes it, it looked like “an abstract rendering of Noah’s Ark with its produce and non-perishable food items arranged two-by-two.” They would check out using lots of coupons, pack the groceries in the car and stop at the town food bank on their way home to drop off exactly half of their groceries. Every week the grandmother would buy her granddaughter’s silence about the extra food with a candy bar, which was not immune to the rule of two – one went every week to the food bank. 

            When one day 8 or 9 year-old Austin asked for name-brand cereal, which the grandmother said they couldn’t afford. Austin predictably responded “We can if we don’t buy two of them!” Her grandmother paused, looked her in the eye and spoke calmly and clearly, “If we can’t afford two, we can’t afford one.” 

            When in response to his fire and brimstone preaching the crowds ask John the Baptist, “What then should we do?” he responds, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 

            Pastor Shelley’s story convicts me. Because honestly, I tend to breeze right over John’s fiery words and his call to action that isn’t just a flowery speech or a metaphor but an actual call to do something. Yes, yes, the ax is at the root of the tree, burning the chaff with unquenchable fire, something about being generous… But it’s ok! Baby Jesus is coming!! Nevermind the fact that Jesus is also a fully grown adult by the time John speaks these words, we always read them in Advent and Christmas is just around the corner. Angels sing, we sing. Silent Night, all is calm, all is bright. 

            But we return year after year to John’s words in the wilderness not because they announce something good and wonderful, but because they convict us. They remind us that God’s call to us is not something gentle and calming, but something that does actually invite us to do something. Something that reminds us that all is not right in our world, that all is not right in us. 

            I don’t know about you, but my list of things I’ve done and left undone, the things we confess when we gather for worship – it’s longer than it should be. I know there are things I do that are self-destructive, things that hurt others, things that fail to bring about the peace and justice I say I want. I believe whole-heartedly in grace. God’s love is steadfast. I do not worry that my list or yours will keep me from God’s love or from the reign of heaven. But the world is hurting and in need. We are hurting and in need. And much as God’s love for us is steadfast, God’s love for every last ounce of creation means God is also terribly persistent in agitating us to action. 

            To jump too quickly past John’s harsh and challenging words is to risk slipping into an overly sweet idea of God’s love. It’s to risk putting my own experience of God, of faith at the expense of the whole community. It’s to say, “Come on, let’s just buy the good cereal and skip the second box this time.”  

            I don’t want to suggest we beat ourselves up over our failures or start shaming one another with name calling – you brood of vipers, you! But I do want to suggest that this call, this sometimes harsh-sounding fire and brimstone, this demand for difficult and sacrificial action – this is God’s way of saying to us, despite the ways we fail to live up to the call over and over again, I’m not done with you. I’m not giving up on you. 

            That’s God’s message in John the Baptist for his hearers and for us today – you may have messed up a lot of stuff along the way, but I’m not done with you yet. I still believe you have something in you that can serve the world. We may sometimes lose faith in the idea that maybe we still have something to offer the world, but God has faith in us that we still have something to give, some way to bring the gifts and skills and energy we have to make a difference. God’s not done with you yet. 

            When I think about Pastor Shelley’s grandmother, I know she didn’t end hunger, not even in their small rural town. She didn’t change the world, but week-in and week-out she did a difficult and sacrificial thing. And maybe my call or yours isn’t double groceries every week, though there is hunger and need in every community. Maybe it’s accompanying a refugee family, maybe it’s giving our time for transformative community work on justice issues, maybe its, caring for kids or seniors. Some days for some of us, it’s work enough just to honor that we ourselves are beloved of God and deserving of care. But I know that God is not done with you and has a call to bring your passions, gifts, and skills to the world. 

            And God is not done with this congregation either. I know you’ve had some good questions about what this shift of pastoral leadership means for you. We’ll talk together in more detail after worship about your questions. But I want you to hear that I know that God is not done with you yet! I’ll be honest that what church looks like going forward may very well not be what many of us have known in previous decades. The pandemic has accelerated cultural shifts that were well on their way already, and the church is shifting and changing faster than any of us quite know what to do with. But God is not done with us yet – not Grace Lutheran in Plainville, not Lutherans in New England, not the beautifully diverse body of Christ spread through all the earth. 

            But it won’t all be sunshine and roses. It won’t all be silent nights and angel songs. It won’t always be comfortable or easy. John the Baptist warns us of that. Even Mary warns us of that in her song that we’ll read or sing next Sunday – Jesus brings the toppling of kingdoms and the upending of what we have known for the sake of everyone having enough. 

            And maybe instead of dwelling on what we’ve gotten wrong or messed up in the past, instead of wracking our brains trying to make sense of and plan for the future of the church, maybe we can wonder with God is up to with us. What mission might God have just around the corner? What way might we have a sneaky mission to discover? Maybe it’s something as simple and powerful as giving away everything we have two of. Maybe it will give us more joy than we thought possible. And maybe, probably even, that’s how Christ will be born among us. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

With thanks to Pr. Austin Shelley who shared this story in The Christian Century in 2018. If you missed the link in the text above, here it is again: https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/december-16-advent-3c-luke-37-18