15^th Sunday after Pentecost
September 5, 2021
St. Paul Lutheran, Terryville, CT

²⁴[Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice,²⁵but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
  ³¹Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³²They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” – Mark 7:24-37

            You cannot step into the same river twice. Along with a related saying, “Nothing is permanent except change,” this quote is attributed to ancient Greek philosophers going back at least to Plato and probably back to Heraclitus some 2500 years ago. 

            These last centuries taught us the potential for the quickening pace of change as the world grew at once larger and smaller with industrialization and travel. These last decades taught us the quickening pace of change as computer technology reshaped our daily existence. These last months have reminded us that viruses and other things far beyond our control have the power to change whole societies in a matter of days.

            And here you are at St. Paul, experiencing yet another change. The pastor who has served you and walked with you for the last few years has left and the future is once again uncertain. You have a core community here, you have a lot of gifts, you have interest in serving the community. And at the same time we’ve learned that nothing is certain and discerning how you will move forward into the future isn’t always clear, especially when you are between pastors. It would certainly be easier to manage all the other change that comes our way if church were a place that didn’t change either. 

            It seems like even Jesus changes if we read our gospel text this morning. On a tour healing and preaching, Jesus is in territory of the supposed “other,” someone who isn’t from Jesus’ tribe or faith. There he is approached by a woman in need, a woman begging for the healing of her daughter. If we read most of the other healing stories, it should go like this: Jesus says, oh dear one, your faith is great, your daughter is healed, go on your way. But instead Jesus insists that he has not come to help her people, comparing them to dogs begging at the table. 

            This is appalling. A comment like that today could and should get one at least on probation if not fired. So, what do we make of it? Is Jesus testing her? Perhaps, though I find little evidence of that as a consistent strategy of Jesus. Why her? Why now? Why not the deaf man who comes after her? 

            Is Jesus, or perhaps the gospel writer in retrospect, trying to make a point to the reader to highlight the dissonance, putting the words of the crowds in Jesus’ own mouth in order to highlight the contrast of God’s universal mercy? Again, perhaps. But this point is made elsewhere without this device used. 

            Or, does a change actually occur in this encounter? The more I read this passage over the years the more I am strangely comforted by the idea that Jesus is actually learning his mission along the way. Not just here, but starting out with a small, rag-tag group of disciples. Taking them with him on the road in his home territory, first preaching then adding miracles and healing. A following develops and he seems to wrestle with when and how to engage people. At this juncture he is beginning to journey outside his comfort zone into territory of the “other,” where here and elsewhere he discovers the breadth of his mission beyond his own people. Before long he realizes it is not enough to preach and teach and heal, but he brings his message to seat of power. There even some of the gospel writers hint that Jesus’ human side comes out and he wrestles with the emerging reality that he is headed to the cross. 

            We believe Jesus is human and divine. Could it be that his human side is learning here? Could it be that Holy Spirit words are spoken to Jesus from this begging woman from outside his own territory? 

            I am not a systematic theologian, and we could discuss trinitarian and Christological mental gymnastics all day. But if Jesus is fully human there is perhaps some part of him that is struggling to catch up to the profound divine love that is also fully embodied in him. Could Jesus change? Could Jesus be changed as he encounters person after person, many of them the ones on the margin, the ones in desperate need, the ones mostly forgotten by history? Perhaps Jesus mission, God’s mission emerges and develops in conversation with those voices over time. 

            I am fully committed to the belief that God is always on the side of love, grace, liberation, and joy. But I am also firmly committed to the belief that God is fully alive. And living things? They change. They have to. For better and worse, living things grow, change, and shift. When they cease to change we call that death. 

            Sometimes I think we look for God to be the thing for us that doesn’t change. And I am so grateful for boatloads of biblical imagery that highlights God as our rock and stronghold, the one whose love is more than we can imagine. That is all true. God’s love is promised to you forever, no ifs, ands, or buts. And yet, God cannot and does not remain static, at least as we view God through the lens of time. To be in genuine relationship with someone is to open oneself to their life and gifts and experience and ultimately to be changed by that relationship. That means not only are we changed in relationship to God, but so is God changed by relationship with us. 

            So what does that mean for a church in relationship with this living, changing God? Like God’s steadfast love it means embrace for all people whether or not we first view them as “other” or “stranger.” It means radical welcome of all people, not just a friendly greeting, but willingness to be changed in relationship with newcomers. 

            But it also means being a church that embraces change as a sign of life and health. Change still is not easy, beloved people of God. Pastoral transition is hard – it puts a strain on your leaders, it can feel like you are unmoored. Be kind and gentle with one another, especially your leadership. That said, change is a holy opportunity to listen more deeply to the Holy Spirit, to listen more deeply to one another, and to consider where it is God might be calling you to transformation. If it’s true that you can’t step into the same river twice, that’s also true of the baptismal river. The flow of water, the sign of love and grace – that’s always there. But each moment it is manifesting in a new way. 

            I can’t imagine it was easy on Jesus to be challenged by this woman in need of his help. But his openness to her wisdom further opens the door to our understanding of the breadth and depth of God’s transformative love. So, people of St. Paul’s, this might be a hard time for you. It might just be a hard time in your own life as you face your own paths of change and growth. When those moments come, don’t push it away. Honor your experience. And know that God has felt that, too. Know that God is with you. And remember that hard as it is, that change is a sign of life and a gift of the Spirit. 

Pastor Steven Wilco

14th Sunday after Pentecost
August 29, 2021
Zion Lutheran Church, Pittsfield, MA
Installation of Pr. Joel Bergeland

First Reading: Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9

¹So now, Israel, give heed to the statutes and ordinances that I am teaching you to observe, so that you may live to enter and occupy the land that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, is giving you. ²You must neither add anything to what I command you nor take away anything from it, but keep the commandments of the Lord your God with which I am charging you.
  ⁶You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” ⁷For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? ⁸And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?
  ⁹But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children.

Second Reading: James 1:17-27

.¹⁷Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. ¹⁸In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.

  ¹⁹You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; ²⁰for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. ²¹Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.
  ²²But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
  ²⁶If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Gospel: Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

.¹Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around [Jesus], ²they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. ³(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; ⁴and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) ⁵So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” ⁶He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, 
 ‘This people honors me with their lips,
  but their hearts are far from me;
 ⁷in vain do they worship me,
  teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
⁸You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
  ¹⁴Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
  ²¹For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, ²²adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

Dear people of God at Zion, ponder for a moment what makes your heart sing? What makes your body and your being full of joy? What makes your life and work come alive like a resonant song? 

Making music, making something come alive with song is challenging. I played the viola growing up, all the way through college. I was so-so at it – I took lessons but didn’t invest as deeply in practice as I could have. In my case I was too focused on trying to get all the notes in that I never quite got to the place of really making music. The closest I came was sitting in the midst of an orchestra as together there was that spark of harmony and real music-making. 

I’ve known musicians who became extremely technically proficient, they could hit each note in tune with exactly the right timing, but they never quite seemed to find the spark that really made music. I have deep admiration for their skill and yet can feel that something is missing. And I’ve known musicians who had no formal training, who might not be able to play the hardest pieces out there, who might very well not even read music, but whose song resonated deep in their soul and in mine as I listened or even joined in. I’d listen to the one who song resonates in their soul over the technically proficient one any day. 

Our texts today are not explicitly about singing. And I checked, yes I did use a music analogy the last time I preached here at Zion – it’s been exactly that long since I used one. And yet, as I read them together this week I kept coming back to this question of what makes our hearts sing. The people who approach Jesus are experts in what people are supposed to do and not do. They are supposed to wash their hands before eating. (Which, by the way, 21^st century listeners who understand the science of germs, is a good idea!). And let’s give them the benefit of the doubt here that they are seeking some kind of genuine dialogue with Jesus. Why, they ask, disregard this perfectly fine rule that we share? It’s a legitimate question. And the role of the Jewish laws were always being interpreted and reinterpreted and lived out in different ways at different times by different people (much like any living religion including our own). 

And Jesus for his blunt, scripture-quoting answer, doesn’t say there is anything wrong with the rule. He does say that maybe they’ve missed the point of the rules altogether. The point of the rules isn’t to set up things that people have to do, the point of the rules is to invite people more deeply into their faith. That is, in fact, one of the goals of the Pharisees’ movement – to reconnect people with the daily rituals that help make daily life sing with grace and faith. But at least some of them – the ones who go around looking for others to critique – I wonder that they’ve gotten so focused on the rules that they have forgotten how to make them come alive. They can read all the notes on the page and somehow fail to make music. 

What if, instead, they took James’ advice (admittedly written well after their time) and were quick to listen but slow to speech and anger. Would they begin to open a dialogue and in it hear a way to rekindle their faith whether or not they stuck to their practice of handwashing? Would they find in the dialogue with someone who lives differently the song of faith that had escaped them for a moment? 

James, too, is wrestling with this question. What is our faith and how do we live it out? How do we know which things are right and which are wrong? Like Jesus, the prophets, their ancestors in faith, and, well, like so many other societies and religions, they have a list of things to avoid – envy, greed, violence, sordidness and rank growth of wickedness. And he does say that pure religion is this – to care for the distressed. He says that faith is about doing, not just about words. But how do we know? Outside of some rare extremes that have a clearer answer, how do we know to do this but not that when it comes to living out our faith? How do we make faithful decisions in a world that is ever changing? It can’t be to do everything as we’ve always done it, nor can it be to just throw everything out and start over. What do we keep and what do we let go of when it comes to the ways we practice our faith. 

What I hear in these scriptures is people who have a deep passion for their faith. Some who have lost sight of the deeper meaning in their day-to-day rituals, and others who are finding it again. I imagine Jesus not wanting to argue with the people who come to argue with him. Because Jesus doesn’t really care about whether they’re doing it right or doing it wrong, I’d like to think somehow in this exchange he’s calling them with some version of that question – what makes your heart sing? If it’s washing your hands before meals, praise God! If not, I imagine Jesus saying, then find the meaning in it again or find something new! 

Here at Zion you are blessed with the gift of a new pastor and he with you. You are still getting to know one another and yet you are rightly already asking the big questions – what is next for us? How do we discern the things we’ll do and not do as a faith community? Where is God calling us next? 

I wish I could give you easy answers, hand you a step-by-step plan, tell you the 10 best practices and trust that you’d come out on the other side with thriving ministry, deepening faith, and transform your community. I’ll bet he probably wishes he could do the same for you. But you know that neither of us, and none of you, can provide anything quite so easy. At best, those ideas, programs, plans, and practices would just be notes on a page. It will be up to you, pastor and people, to figure out how to make music with your ministry here. It will be up to you to listen for that harmonization made by one another tuning in together to God’s Spirit. And maybe this question is the best I can offer you – what makes your heart sing? 

You are making these decisions about how to be church in an increasingly polarized world, in a global pandemic that drags on with no clear end in sight. Tension is high everywhere. You will at times be slow to listen and quick to speech and anger. Me too. Find grace for one another to regroup and try again when that happens. You know this. You do this. But it never hurts to remember it again, especially at the start of a new relationship with a pastor. 

You are making these decisions in which there are more people in distress than we can name – people living in poverty in your own community, people of color facing racism that exists in our communities and, yes, in our churches; people in Haiti already suffering and devastated by another earthquake, people desperate to flee a war-torn Afghanistan with the hope of living free of certain restrictions and the possibility of violence they fear is coming, climate change contributing to the burning up of forests and towns. The list goes on and on. Your call to serve those who are distressed does not mean you need to address all of that, just that you are invited to figure out where serving others makes your heart sing. 

You are making these decisions in a time when the church is undergoing a major shift in how it operates. Church is going to look very different going forward than it did a generation ago or two generations ago. It might look, I don’t know, like turning a historic sanctuary into a flexible worship space that becomes open to serve the community the rest of the week. And it might look like a whole lot of other things, too – things you haven’t yet dreamed of but which God has in store for you. And like the work on your building it’s going to take some letting go, some learning, and a lot of hard work. 

            You know what it means to find the music in your congregational life. Trust that. Even for a very healthy, flexible congregation like Zion, there will be moments you’ll want to cling to what you’ve known. There will be moments you’ll need to put aside for a moment the thing that makes you sing in order to listen to someone else’s song, until together you find the harmony you crave. Even for a wonderful, energetic, faithful pastor there will be moments you’ll be a little afraid to step forward or when you’ll have trouble hearing the music. But you have each other. And more than that, far more than that, you have a God who walks with you. 

            We have a God who finds a way through our stuckness to breathe life and music back into our sometimes too rigid mindset. We have a God whose life is bigger than our rules, our congregation, our synod, our denomination, bigger than any category or box we could put it in. And the possibilities for new life to blossom in our midst are endless. 

            Together, Pastor Joel and people of Zion, I hope that in all the many questions to come about how it is you will live out your faith together, that you will give one another grace and that you will listen to when your heart sings, because that may very well be the Spirit leading you into your next adventure together.  

-Pastor Steven Wilco

13th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, August 22, 2021
Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, South Hadley, MA

The full worship service that includes this sermon is available here: https://youtu.be/vJqYrjw9jjk

¹⁰Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. ¹¹Put on the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. ¹²For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. ¹³Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. ¹⁴Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness. ¹⁵As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace. ¹⁶With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one. ¹⁷Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.
  ¹⁸Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication. To that end keep alert and always persevere in supplication for all the saints. ¹⁹Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel, ²⁰for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it boldly, as I must speak. – Ephesians 6:10-20

[Jesus said,] ⁵⁶“Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.” ⁵⁹He said these things while he was teaching in the synagogue at Capernaum.
  ⁶⁰When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?” ⁶¹But Jesus, being aware that his disciples were complaining about it, said to them, “Does this offend you? ⁶²Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? ⁶³It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. ⁶⁴But among you there are some who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the first who were the ones that did not believe, and who was the one that would betray him. ⁶⁵And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted by the Father.”
  ⁶⁶Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. ⁶⁷So Jesus asked the twelve, “Do you also wish to go away?” ⁶⁸Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. ⁶⁹We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” – John 6:56-69

My alma mater, Valparaiso University, is one among many schools and sports teams that has been in conversation for some time about changing its problematic mascot. They’ve been talking about it since before I was a student there (which though I’m not that old, is a significant length of time to be having the same conversation). You see, they were, until just some months ago, the Crusaders. They tried to make it into something cute, a little guy innocent but feisty. Then they remained the crusaders but rebranded with a shield logo – the shield of faith a la the Ephesians reading, or the shield of honor or truth or wisdom – they played around with it. 

But the university clung to many an excuse not to jettison the crusader altogether for years. Finally, I think they could no longer deny the reality the crusader harkened back to a ruthless invasion of other lands under the name of Christianity: looting, pillaging, killing in the name of God whole groups of people who didn’t look like them and speak like them and worship like them. The crusaders justified it by ignoring the parts of the Bible that call us recognize, care for, and love our neighbor and focusing on the parts where God helps the people win military victories. They believed God was on their side. 

Despite that history, people clung to that image as a mascot. Surely there was some simple nostalgia. But I wonder if there isn’t some piece of it, maybe not even conscious, that has to do with our own desire to be the powerful ones with God on our side. And, I think I sort of get it. Right now, worn down by the pandemic, desperate to help our synod congregations live into a new reality of church, committed to daily anti-racism action, worried about the climate crisis, and always conscious of poverty, hunger, and need for shelter in our communities, I didn’t know how to process it when just over two weeks ago almost at the same time it seemed another devastating earthquake shook Haiti and the balance tipped decidedly in Afghanistan. Two more things that feel beyond our control in which people’s lives are ripped from them violently. 

            I might want to do it in the name of humanitarian aid, peacekeeping, and care, rather than killing and pillaging but I’d like to suit up and go on the offense. I’d like to claim God on my side and charge forward demanding justice and equity, and for God’s sake, literally, for God’s sake feeding people and educating people of all genders and caring for our veterans who served and all those other things that our world seems to so desperately need. 

            In the face of a threat to the people of Afghanistan, one that I fear has a tendency to distort Islam in ways not unlike the crusaders who distorted Christianity, it’s tempting to take Paul’s letter to the Ephesians about the cosmic battle between good and evil and place ourselves firmly in the line of God’s truth and righteousness. Wouldn’t it be nice to dwell in a world where our cause is right and our victory assured? To put on the armor of God and rest in our protectedness? 

            Of course, that’s not really the point Paul is making. Paul is speaking to people who are a small religious minority in an unfriendly empire, speaking words of encouragement not words of military victory. He does identify the strong force of evil in the world, but he goes out of his way not to place that force of evil squarely in rulers and authorities in the world. Not because he doesn’t see the ways those evil forces act in and through empire and violence, but because he knows all too well that they dwell just the same in his own heart and in his own history. To put on the armor of God is not to set up a barrier between ourselves and the evil of the world, but to transform us into people who can recognize the gospel and live it despite the evil being within us. 

            This is the mystery of the gospel, and, I think, a bit of what is going on in the conversations Jesus is having with the disciples and the crowds. For some time now, those who have been following along the lectionary the last few weeks know, Jesus has been going on and on about being the bread of life. This week, someone interrupts and says “Ummm…excuse me, but I’m confused?!” Actually the Bible says that they said “This teaching is difficult,” but I take that not as a calm statement of fact but an interruption to say “Hey! This can’t be right.” What’s difficult about it? Perhaps for John’s readers and for us it calls to mind attempts to understand the mystery of God’s presence in our communal meal of bread and wine in worship. That is indeed difficult to understand. Luther himself, who wrote about it extensively, said essentially “I don’t get how, I just know it happens.” 

            But I think there’s a whole other layer here in the puzzled reaction to Jesus. I think they are struggling that Jesus’s mission is being lifted up in bread – bread broken and shared with anyone and everyone. So far in John Jesus’s ministry of signs and miracles have been supplying wine for a party, discussing theology in the middle of the night, chatting with an outsider at a well, healing a child and a man who couldn’t walk, and now feeding lots of people. And Jesus keeps saying in a way – “this is it! This is what I have come to do.” The only bigger thing he points to is the cross, his own death labeled as a criminal. But that’s only the boldest sign of this new world where armor is made of out of peace and the instrument of change is bread. Can you accept this, he asks his disciples? Can you accept that we are not charging the world’s powers by storm? Are you still in if this isn’t about winning? 

            Some give up. Some are not willing to let go of their hold on the world, their sense of power and privilege, their commitment to what they have known. I’m not even clear what it is that makes these people turn away, except that deep in my heart I know there are ways I respond to Jesus’ question by turning and walking away. And yet, too, for reasons I can’t always explain I know Peter’s response deep in my heart, too, “Where else can we go? It is with you that there is infinite life.” 

I want to win. I want to be right. I want things to go my way. I want teaching I understand and can manage and control. I want a church that follows the rules of logic. I want to impose on the world what I think is Jesus’ vision for it. AND…

And…I long for the bread that feeds me for new life. I long for a world that is transformed by bread and not weaponry. I long for a world in which the people I label as other join me at the table to feast on divine love and grace. Both are true. Both are in my heart and soul and being. And Jesus knows that. The text reminds us right here that Jesus knows the betrayals before they happen and the professions of faith before they are on our lips. And Jesus just offers himself to us again. 

Incidentally, we, that is the community of Valparaiso University, are now the Beacons with a lighthouse logo in honor of our longtime motto “In your light, we see light” from Psalm 36. I like it. We’re living into it, trying it on like a much improved but still new pair of shoes. And it makes me wonder, what would our mascot be if we had one for the church? After 5 weeks in the lectionary about the bread of life, I wonder what it would be like to be “The Bread of Life.” Not very intimidating on the sports field, I suppose. But, in fact, dear people of God, that is who you are. When we share the one loaf, we receive what we are and become what we receive, the body of Christ, broken and shared for the life of the world. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

“Welcoming the Stranger”
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Messiah Lutheran, Amherst, NH

The following sermon was preached as part of a thematic series, and the theme for this Sunday’s service and sermon was “Welcoming the Stranger.”

¹The LORD appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. ²He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. ³He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. ⁴Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. ⁵Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on — since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” ⁶And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” ⁷Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. ⁸Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate.
⁹They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” ¹⁰Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.” And Sarah was listening at the tent entrance behind him. ¹¹Now Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age; it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women. ¹²So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” ¹³The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ ¹⁴Is anything too wonderful for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” ¹⁵But Sarah denied, saying, “I did not laugh”; for she was afraid. He said, “Oh yes, you did laugh.” – Genesis 18:1-15

¹Let mutual love continue. ²Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. – Hebrews 13:1-2

Water to wash their tired, dusty feet. Cakes of bread made from choice flour to revive them as they rest. A calf, tender and good, taken from the herd, prepared for a feast. Curds and milk brought to accompany it. This is the finest in mid-Bronze Age hospitality.

Abraham knows what is expected of him and how that expectation makes it possible to survive in a world where travel was difficult and dangerous. He is eager to greet the guests who appear – perhaps they bring news from elsewhere, perhaps they will be good company, but more than anything he knows he is called to do. He would hope for the same if he were the one on a journey. To this day some communities and cultures hold particularly strict obligations of hospitality to guests. The details differ, of course. The particulars of hospitality change with time and place, though food, drink, and a comfortable place to sit are a pretty good place to start in any place. 

I think as church we’re usually pretty good at this kind of hospitality. I know COVID has thrown us all for a loop and we’ve had to adapt, jettisoning many of our communal meals the ways we’ve welcomed people in the past. But outside of COVID most of our congregations, and I’m guessing this is true of the people here at Messiah, are pretty good at setting out some goodies after worship and making sure the coffee pot is brewing when people gather. Most of us know what it means to hold a church potluck or a nice church dinner – foods shared from the heart in good company, invitations to seconds and thirds, leftovers in abundance. 

In COVID, hospitality became more about making sure people were safe. As many of our congregations have, you wrestled with how to do that, and you took important measures to welcome people in ways that tried not to welcome the virus. You have moved online, adjusted to outside worship, thought about what it means to gather safely. This is a new form of hospitality – the logistics of welcome are different than they were before.

There are exceptions, of course, to our good hospitality – none of us gets it right all of the time. But we at least more or less have figured out this part of hospitality – the logistics of what to do. But I didn’t choose this reading from Genesis because of what Abraham and Sarah get right about welcoming the stranger. I chose it for the way it highlights what they get wrong – and what we sometimes get wrong – about hospitality. They wash the feet of the guests, they lay out the meal, but they fail to welcome the message the strangers bring to them. It’s Sarah who laughs out loud at their reiteration of God’s promise to them, but the broader story shows Abraham is just as skeptical about the whole business as Sarah is. They have done the right tasks to welcome the stranger, but they haven’t made space in their own reality to be changed by what the strangers bring to them.    

Even though they have heard this promise before, they haven’t quite believed it and when it comes from the mouths of these guests it is no different. That’s not to say we’re to believe anything a guest tells us, just that perhaps we focus too much on setting the table without making sure we really make room in our lives for God’s message to come in unexpected ways from unexpected people. That’s the deeper, more important part of hospitality. 

We’ve all probably experienced the difference between someone who says “make yourself at home” and the experience of really feeling free to be yourself in someone else’s home. The difference between being served a snack and knowing you’re free to raid the fridge when you feel like it. The difference between being polite and being real. And that’s ultimately the point of welcoming the stranger – not so that the one we identify as stranger feels welcomed to the space we call our own, but so that all of us feel at home together.

In my role I get to work with lots of churches. What I see over and over again is a deep desire to connect to the community and welcome people into the congregation set alongside a desire for things to stay largely the same. I get it – change is unsettling at the least and deeply painful at the worst. And whether we’re pretty flexible about change or whether we’re less adaptable, at least some of the time we are going to laugh off the message we need to hear from God that comes through the voice of a stranger. A voice that may challenge us to change, a voice that may ask something of us that makes us uncomfortable.

What welcome means is more than coffee and juice and the best cookies or brownies or cheese platter you can offer. It’s more than a comfortable place to sit or even a kind greeting and friendly conversation. Real welcome is making room for someone who is different from yourself to be themselves.       

I know that here at Messiah you are wrestling with what it might mean to coordinate the welcome of a refugee or asylum-seeking family. Welcoming the stranger is unequivocally  always part of our call as people of faith – really our call just as human beings. Just as Abraham responded without hesitation, that, too, is our call. Only you together with partners you engage can answer whether that particular action of hosting a family is how you will answer that broader call in this moment and in this place – whether you have the right gifts to provide the needed welcome to those particular guests to your community. But whether you choose to pursue that or whether you choose to live out that call to hospitality in some other way, be prepared not just to set out clean water, delicious food, and a place to rest. Be prepared to receive the gifts of the strangers you welcome. Be prepared to learn something new. Be prepared to be changed in unexpected ways. Those guests need what you have to offer. But you need their voice, their presence, their experience – because every new voice in our lives broadens our sense of the reign of God come near. 

The author of Hebrews reminds us that by providing hospitality – that is be enacting mutual love for one another – some have entertained angels without knowing it. I would quibble with that just a little. Since every one of us is made in the image of God, every one of us a bearer of divine love, then every time we welcome a stranger every one of us has entertained a messenger of God, whether we recognized it or not. 

And the thing is that God is going to keep showing up that way. This was far from the only time God sent the same message of blessing to Sarah and Abraham. This was far from the only time they got the response only partly right. And God just keeps showing up. What if we took on an attitude of learning, recognizing that we both try to deepen our welcome and that we’ll mess it up from time to time? Because God will show up every time we gather. God will show up in you, and in particular God will show up in the people we might at first label as strangers. And week after week we keep setting out the welcome table. Not just putting out bread and wine for eucharist. Not just setting out coffee hour goodies – when it’s safe to do that again! Not just making room in our pew (or the lawn). Not just serving our neighbor with shelter and food. All of that, yes. AND setting out the welcome table and sitting at the welcome table means being ready to be transformed from who we are now more fully into the reign of God come down to earth. It means being ready to learn a new story from new people. It means being open to the transformation of God come into our midst as one we do not yet fully know, ready to deliver surprising, challenging, even unsettling grace until there is truly room at the table for everyone. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

11th Sunday after Pentecost
August 8, 2021
St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Bristol, CT

⁴[Elijah] went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”⁵Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” ⁶He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. ⁷The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” ⁸He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God. – 1 Kings 19:4-8

³⁵Jesus said to [the crowd,] “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. ⁴¹Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” ⁴²They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” ⁴³Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. ⁴⁴No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. ⁴⁵It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. ⁴⁶Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” – John 6:35, 41-51

            I very easily get “hangry.” If you’re not familiar with this term, it’s hungry-angry, irritability from hunger. We all are susceptible but my family knows especially not to mess with me when I’m feeling hungry. If I don’t start the day with a protein-rich breakfast and my cup of coffee you do not want to be around me. If I’ve been distracted or busy and it’s time for a meal, I am liable to snap at my family, have difficulty making decisions, and blame everyone else for the world being just wrong. 

            Though there was a period of time in childhood when my family was food insecure, that is, on a tight enough budget that the adults had to worry about grocery money, I’ve never gone hungry. I consider that a tremendous privilege and a reason to be generous so that no one in our world has to go hungry. Because when we don’t have enough to eat we cannot function. We cannot carry on. We cannot live without food. 

            That’s where we find Elijah as he lies down to die under the broom tree. Physical hunger is not his sole problem, clearly, but it’s not exactly helping the bigger picture. He has been God’s voice and presence in a hostile world over and over again. The authorities are out to get him, and the people have no interest in God’s message or his delivery of it. So he says, “That’s it. I’m done. It is enough. I’m not doing anymore of this. I quit. I quit this job. I quit this life.” 

            Many of us have experienced this level of exhaustion. Whether we give it a clinical diagnosis like major depression, whether we look at the complex social factors that created it, whether it was transitory and situational or a long-term struggle, most of us knows something of what Elijah is feeling. This is for us a glimpse of a Bible hero being real, sharing his very real, very raw struggle with us. 

            Unfortunately many of the responses that we’re conditioned to give in response often sound something like, “What’s wrong with you? Buck up! You can do this! Just give it a little more!” But this is not God’s response. God’s response is to send a messenger. Not with words of encouragement, not with a pep talk, but with a snack. 

            No really, Elijah is exhausted and burned out – he doesn’t need a pep talk, coaching, a 5-point success plan. He needs food and rest. The angel comes not once but twice, to allow for rest and ensure that Elijah eats and drinks, “otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” Now of course we understand this is more than ordinary bread – it sustains him for forty days. And yet, it is also actual bread. God could have waved a magic hand or carried him along. God could even have magically plopped the meal down for him to find. But instead God sends a tangible caretaker with actual water and actual bread. God is the one who sends us one to another with simple but powerful means of care, tending not just to our minds and our spirits but to our tired and aching bodies. Generations right through to today have lived out this care cooking meals for the sick and the grieving, providing water for those traveling in desperation through the desert, lending their homes and congregations so that those without a place to lay their heads have a safe place to rest. God, sending messengers to enfold those exhausted and in need with tender care. 

            It is this care that enables Elijah to carry forward. It’s a bit of food to satisfy his body and clear his mind and spirit. It does not change the circumstances that led him there; it does not make his future easy. But it allows him to stand again, to walk to the next place in his journey. And it’s there that God adds to the care a connection to community. It is after he has walked to meet God on Mt. Horeb that he is told there are others out there who share in his work, who appreciate his message. It’s there he is promised Elisha, one to share with him the burden of the work. It’s there he finds out he is not only cared for but not alone. It’s the same when we provide that tangible care for one another – not just food and drink but the restorative connection to community that makes it more than mere food, but something that has the capacity to carry us forward on the journey. 

            This is the bread of life that Jesus offers in his very self in today’s gospel reading. Rooted, yes, in real, tangible bread – bread that feeds the five thousand, the bread of the eucharist. In the earliest church the bread and wine of the feast in worship was just that – a part of a larger feast, the sacrament rooted in real human nourishment with a full meal of food shared especially with those in need. And at the same time so much more than mere food for the body. It is nourishment for the soul and connection to community. 

            That’s part of what made it so challenging to think about eucharist through the pandemic – anyone could eat bread and drink wine. And though for good order we limit it to pastors, there is nothing magical about our saying the words of institution. But it’s the gathered community that is inherently part of the meal – the gathering together of the lost and broken, the distressed and tired, the longing and hurting. It’s the sharing with those in need as an extension of the feast, the caring for one another through food and community. We figured out how to do that in the pandemic, but it took some creative shifts from “the way we’ve always done it before.” 

            We collectively are hangry for this kind of nourishment. Worldwide and next door in our communities people are literally going hungry. The pandemic has exacerbated inequality and put economically vulnerable families further on the edge. It’s exhausted our mental and emotional resources whatever our income bracket, and it seems the pandemic is far from over yet. We are politically polarized perhaps more so than ever before, people alienated one from another. In it we are too often lashing out at one another. Studies show that for all our advances we have become less socially connected in recent years. Too often we live under the idea that we need to buck up, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, and find the markers of success. Even in our churches we hear the call of numbers as success and worry about the shifting landscape of religious engagement – feeling as if perhaps we are out of ideas for how to move forward. All of it makes us cranky, isolated, and exhausted. 

            So, dear people of God, come and eat. Eat the nourishment of this communion meal we share. It is God come near to you when you feel you cannot take the next step forward, when you think there is nothing more that can be done, when you feel alone and afraid. It is more than mere bread, and yet it is not magical. It will not transport you away from the struggle. It will not even transport you forty days without other food as it did Elijah. But it will remind you of what is always true – that God comes alongside you every step, offering care and love and grace at every turn. It will reconnect you with the communion of saints who become the hands and feet of God for one another and for the world. And – beware! – it will spur you on to do the hard work of serving the world for the sake of liberation, healing, restoration, and even resurrection. By knitting you again into the communion of saints this meal will awaken you to the needs of the community and inspire your response, just as it will tie you to others who will support you. It is the living bread and it will bring you fully alive in Christ now and always. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

It’s been a minute. Haven’t posted in quite a while. Hoping to get more sermons up here as we emerge from the pandemic and I’m doing a bit more preaching around the New England Synod. This sermon from July 4, 2021 was for Immanuel Lutheran, Oxford, CT. The service, including the sermon, can be viewed here: https://fb.watch/v/Jn2UF9nS/

¹[Jesus] came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him.²On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, “Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! ³Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?” And they took offense at him. ⁴Then Jesus said to them, “Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.” ⁵And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. ⁶And he was amazed at their unbelief. 
  Then he went about among the villages teaching. ⁷He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. ⁸He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; ⁹but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. ¹⁰He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. ¹¹If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” ¹²So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. ¹³They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. – Mark 6:1-13

            I’ve often heard people wish that we had more stories of Jesus as a child. Aside from the birth story, a brief glimpse of infant Jesus, and pre-teen Jesus in the temple impressing the religious authorities but a little snarky with his mom when she finally finds him after he’s been missing for days, we don’t get much. Probably what we’re looking for is some fun miracle stories – like the joking comics or memes that come through every once in a while, like Mary trying to give Jesus a bath but he insists on walking on the water. Something like that, maybe. 

            What we do get is today’s strange and in some ways disturbing story of Jesus as an adult but seen by his hometown friends and family only as the child he once was. In some ways this is probably more realistic than our imaginations – a town that went about its business. They knew Jesus and he knew them. They shared daily chores, they sat by one another in the synagogue, they shared meals and holidays. And they thought of him as the ordinary kid he was. In fact, most of them would always think of Jesus as the little kid he once was. Is not this the carpenter? The son of Mary?! Who does he think he is? 

            In one sense this is just the innocent failure to make logical leaps in our brains about the age of people we know. People we know well but don’t see very often tend to live in our minds exactly as they were when we last saw them. It’s most noticeable when we see young people we haven’t seen in a while, but it’s true of adults, too. 

            But in another sense, a more serious sense, it’s a dangerous and crippling fear of letting in new information, new realities. It’s a failure to welcome change. Jesus has some hard things to say. He has power that is more than they are used to. Even though we’re talking about healing and feeding and bringing peace, it’s a change. Not only this not the little kid they know and can boss around, he’s bringing into their midst something that disrupts the order of things. Even if it’s for the better, they’re not so sure they welcome the change. 

            And it’s tempting, perhaps, to scoff at them. How could they not welcome Jesus and his miraculous work? I don’t know about you, but I know sometimes I’m comfortable with the way things are. Sometimes I want a Jesus, a church, a world I can control. Ok…maybe most of the time. Maybe that’s part of our longing for more stories about a sweet child Jesus. That Jesus might be easier for us to wrap our human minds around. That Jesus might not push us so hard to get out of our comfort zones. That Jesus might just let us get by with staying just as we are. But here’s the thing – Jesus grows, and not just grows up from a child into an adult. Jesus’s ministry expands and changes as it moves through his years of ministry toward the cross, and certainly after resurrection as the reality of Jesus upends all of reality as we know it by upending death and unleashing that victory into the world. That’s a Jesus we can’t always pin down and use how we’d like.  

Yesterday my daughter and I were at a wildlife encounter show, and as an introduction to one of the animals the presenter reminded us that the best scientists are ones who recognize and seek out new information, even if it contradicts what we think we know about the world. It stuck with me the way he put it, and I think that’s what makes for some of the best church folks, too – the ability to recognize and seek out when God is doing something new. 

But when people present me with new information that forces me to rethink how I’ve been doing things, how I’ve been thinking about things – I don’t always welcome it. Even when the new information helps me learn and grow, even when it helps me live more fully into my own values. As I do my own anti-racism work, confronting places where I have upheld systems and policies that exclude and discriminate is not easy. I’m afraid to misstep and sometimes fail to take a step forward for justice. But taking on an attitude of learning and growing is helping me keep learning and keep doing better in my community and in the church.          

            Sometimes we get like this as a church, too. I’m sure no one here at Immanuel has ever said the words “We’ve never done it that way before.” Right? Maybe you’ve heard it somewhere though… As a church sometimes we want to look back on those “good old days” that actually weren’t always as good as we remember and weren’t always good for everyone. Instead the church is growing and changing. Maybe it’s growing into something we aren’t comfortable with yet. Maybe the form will look different. Maybe some of the things we hold beloved will be less available. But if we as a church don’t grow and change it means we die – that’s the simple fact that living things are always changing and developing. I wonder when we’ve failed to listen to the voice of Jesus in our midst because it didn’t sound to us like what Jesus said a few years ago. I know I sometimes failed to listen to Jesus’s nudging to push me out of my comfort zone around worship and outreach that was different from what I was taught, what I knew. 

            Today we mark the declaration of the independence of the United States 245 years ago. There will perhaps be picnics and fireworks, patriotic displays and parades – though probably still curtailed by lingering COVID cautions and iffy weather. I wonder if in our celebrations we will make room to listen to the prophets who in every age are calling us to be a better country – those who call us to racial equity in a country founded on slavery and racism, those who call us to welcome the stranger instead of building walls, those who call us to care for the land on which live and the peoples who first tended it before a modern nation-state was created on it by European settlers. Do we make room for prophets of peace who despite the realities of a violent world help us see a vision of a day where there is no more war and no more bloodshed? Do we celebrate today a fixed idea of what America once was or do we celebrate an America that has the space to listen to prophets and which has the capacity to change for the good of all? If we want to be a living nation, then we have to be a growing, changing, adapting one, and, I pray, one that learns better to repent of the wrongs we have perpetrated alongside the good that has come in our history and that seek the kind of change that makes for a new reality. 

            Whatever the arena, change and growth are difficult. They are not without pains and losses. They involve hard work and willingness to see something new. Sometimes we manage it well enough, other times we become like the stubborn people of Nazareth. 

            Jesus may have picked up and moved on from Nazareth after his inability to do many deeds of power, but his work didn’t stop. Just because the people didn’t recognize or respond to the true power of God made flesh in front of them didn’t stop God’s life from being unleashed on a hurting and dying world. Their unbelief did not change that God was working among them. They certainly missed out in the moment, but they did not miss on the life of God for all the world. 

            I leave you today with the words of Debie Thomas, an Episcopal lay minister who blogs weekly about the lectionary. She captures what I think is behind this text so perfectly: 

“[There] are questions to ask ourselves as individuals and as communities, but also as the church.  Whose voices have we sidelined across history?  Whose perspectives do we still deem unworthy of prophetic authority?  Where has our love of tradition hardened us against new perspectives?  How has our fear of the new made us obsolete and lifeless?

“The scandal of the Incarnation is precisely that Jesus doesn’t stay in his lane.  God doesn’t limit God’s self to our small and stingy notions of the sacred.  God exceeds, God abounds, God transgresses, God transcends.  The lowly carpenter reveals himself as Lord.  The guy with the tainted birth story offers us salvation.  The hometown prophet tells us truths we’d rather not hear.  We might be scandalized by his lane-crossing, but he’s not.  We might put limits on his deeds of power, but those limits won’t confine him for long. We might amaze him with our unbelief, but he will call out to us, nevertheless, daring us always to see and experience him anew.”

Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Second Sunday of Advent
December 6, 2020
Zion Luthern Church, Pittsfield, MA

Comfort, O comfort my people,
   says your God. 
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
   and cry to her
that she has served her term,
   that her penalty is paid,
that she has received from the Lord’s hand
   double for all her sins. 
A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
   make straight in the desert a highway for our God. 
Every valley shall be lifted up,
   and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
   and the rough places a plain. 
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
   and all people shall see it together,
   for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ 
A voice says, ‘Cry out!’
   And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’
All people are grass,
   their constancy is like the flower of the field. 
The grass withers, the flower fades,
   when the breath of the Lord blows upon it;
   surely the people are grass. 
The grass withers, the flower fades;
   but the word of our God will stand for ever. 
Get you up to a high mountain,
   O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
   O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
   lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
   ‘Here is your God!’ 
See, the Lord God comes with might,
   and his arm rules for him;
his reward is with him,
   and his recompense before him. 
He will feed his flock like a shepherd;
   he will gather the lambs in his arms,
and carry them in his bosom,
   and gently lead the mother sheep. – Isaiah 40:1-11

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
   who will prepare your way; 
the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
   “Prepare the way of the Lord,
   make his paths straight” ’, 
John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’ – Mark 1: 1-8

            If you’ve ever been in an orchestra or attended a live rehearsal or concert of one, you may have experienced before the concert or rehearsal starts the onstage warmup of the musicians. This might happen less in some of the most professional orchestras, but even they sometimes warm up on stage. Over the dull roar of the crowd you might hear the musicians, each doing their own warmup – some are running scales, arpeggios, or etudes to warm up their fingers and instruments. Some are chatting with neighboring musicians joining their voices to the din of the crowd. Others are flipping through music running tricky passages one more time. Even if each one is perfectly in tune, no one is playing together and it’s more a cacophonous roar than anything resembling music. But then, when the time is right, perhaps following applause or a quickly gathered silence, or perhaps less often straight from the cacophony: a single, loud, persistent concert A sounds from the oboe – piercing the room with its clarity. A call to tune. The cacophony fades. The instruments begin again, this time bringing their instruments in tune with that solitary pitch piercing the room before breaking into the overlapping harmonies and melodies that bring orchestral music alive. In the wilderness, a voice. 

            When we think of John the Baptist out in the wilderness, perhaps we picture the rocky, arid desert that surrounds the Jordan River, a land not so far from bigger cities – in John’s time and ours – but which is a challenging place to make a living – at least without irrigation, imported goods, and other external supports to live in the dry, dust, conditions. There, eating locusts and wild honey, both one with and standing out from the wilderness surrounding him. A curious crowd gathers to hear. In the wilderness, a voice. 

            But wilderness isn’t found only in dry deserts – wilderness is anywhere that is disorienting. In fact, for us, in the modern world I think our wilderness sometimes looks like so many voices competing for our attention, so much stuff demanding our time and energy that we lose our direction and even our identity. Maybe it’s just me, but I find myself doomscrolling before I go to bed and when I wake up in the morning – reading post after post, article after article trying to grasp at some kind of control or understanding of the world we are living in. Trying to find the words that will pierce me with clarity about the way forward through COVID, through the transformation of systemic racism, through the climate disaster. I find myself wandering around a wilderness of endless words – a cacophony of voices screaming for my attention. And if I get overwhelmed by words the next app over on my phone will take me to another kind of cacophony – a world of endless goods, where I can seek some thing or things which will, I falsely hope, lead me out of this wilderness of desire for consumption of goods, a wilderness in which I start to lose touch with my identity. In this wilderness, is there a singular voice? 

            Sometimes I do find clarity and take my first tentative steps toward what I think is the way I’m supposed to live out God’s baptismal call to work for justice and peace in all the earth. And I misstep. Or I fail. Or I get tired. The work is long and hard and frustrating, and I never seem to get it all right all the time. As a white person I’ve committed to being an ongoing-learner about systemic racism, as I know some of you have. I’ve committed to engaging the work of dismantling racism where I can and pushing toward deeper work. And like so many other arenas in which I have committed to personal and communal change, the work doesn’t bear fruit in all the ways I want it to, in the timely way I want it to. Besides the fact that my own ideas about the path forward are not even close to 100% right all the time, the work is hard and ongoing, no matter where you are following that baptismal call to work for justice and peace. It can be exhausting and never-ending work. Somewhere in this wilderness, is there a voice?  

            And sometimes, despite the busyness of the world around us, our internal experience is barren. Exhaustion, depression, trauma, anxiety, all of which have become more common in this strange and challenging year – they leave us sometimes without words. Without hope. Without a discernable path forward. Disorienting wilderness. Longing for the abundant life we know God wants for us and all creation, but unable to connect to the possibility of that as a reality. “Cry out? What shall I cry out?” says Isaiah. Sometimes we don’t even know how to name the pain or grief or shame within, much less how to name the hope or promise. In this wilderness, is there a voice? 

            In Advent, we are waiting, expecting, not just for Christmas but for the incarnate reality of God’s kin-dom to be real among us. In the northern hemisphere we are in the time of the least daylight and we feel the cold settling in for winter. But we also feel the deep longing and groaning of creation and the deep longing and groaning within our souls. Whether from silence or from a cacophony of voices that leave us disoriented, Advent is a time of getting in touch with our deepest longing for wholeness. In this wilderness, do you hear a voice? 

            What we get in Advent is not yet the baby in the manger. It is not yet the thing we can touch and hold and grab onto. It is not yet the reality of what it is promised. But it is the promise. It is a voice piercing our wilderness. It is a voice that begins to tune the world into harmony. Comfort, comfort my people. In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. Promise. Hope. In the wilderness, a voice. 

            If we return to the aural image of an orchestra moving from cacophony to tuning to polished harmony, advent is not yet the beginning of the concert. Advent is more like the moment when the dissonant sounds are still echoing in the room and the first hint of that tuning note from the oboe starts to ring. And the thing is that we hover in that tuning moment all of our lives. We live in perpetual advent, amidst the disorienting wilderness of the world. Sometimes we are the first to hear the note and quick to bring our own song in line with the tuning note. Other times we are distracted or not ready, failing to catch up in time and letting our voice fall out of tune with the center. Our Christian faith lived in that in-between advent time, always listening, waiting, learning how to bring our lives in line with the coming promised kin-dom of justice, and our advent waiting takes on the character of the one for whom we wait. Other times totally losing the voice in the midst of the noise or too tired to engage it if we do, and our advent waiting seems hopeless, even pointless. Either way it is a hard place to live. It is not the soaring harmonies of the angel chorus at Christmas. It is the single voice piercing, preparing, tuning. And sometimes I just want to get there, be there, skip ahead. But for now, in this wilderness, a voice. 

            A voice that speaks of water and words, a voice that invites and washes, a voice that calls and challenges, a voice that names you beloved. Comfort, comfort. Not a voice that makes us comfortable, no – Advent is anything but. The voice makes us recognize the dissonance and draws us in as beloved children of God, naming us, claiming us, tuning us. That’s the comfort. Because hear it or not, the concert is coming. There will be a time, there is now in God’s time outside of time, the reality of God’s reign of justice and peace singing into our longing, hoping, hurting world. In the wilderness, a voice. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

November 22, 2020
St. John’s Lutheran Church, Stamford, CT
Stewardship Sunday

Psalm 23

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. 
   He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters; 
   he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
   for his name’s sake. 
Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
   I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
   your rod and your staff—
   they comfort me. 
You prepare a table before me
   in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
   my cup overflows. 
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
   all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
   my whole life long.

            I’m so glad your pastor called in an expert to preach this week on your stewardship theme. Not that I’m a stewardship expert – though that is a passion of mine in ministry and part of my portfolio as a synod staff person. I’m not a preaching expert, though I love the task of preaching. Nor am I an expert in the psalms from which comes your theme verse – “My Cup Overflows.” No, you see I’m the parent of a preschooler: I am an expert in what happens when cups overflow. I also know what happens when tubes of toothpaste overflow, when bottles of ketchup overflow, when bathtubs overflow, and when sandboxes and rice tables overflow. 

            Just in case you’ve never seen a preschooler pour juice into a cup, let me explain. The fridge is left standing open. The cup is placed dangerously close to the edge of the table, more or less at eye level of said preschooler. The cap comes off the juice before it is carried to the cup, sloshing sticky liquid onto the floor. Then reaching up over her head with the heavy bottle of juice, the pouring begins. With a combination of still-developing motor skills and a lack of concern about making a mess, the cup quickly fills but the pouring doesn’t stop until well after the juice is pouring onto the floor. Then the sloshing cup is carried off across the room. The mess…oh! the mess…but also the look of pride at having poured her own juice. 

            My cup overflows.

            You see, when I read the 23^rd psalm and get to that line, I’m imagining that beautiful banquet set up, yes in the face of enemies, but somehow abundant and protected all the same. And there beside each plate is a goblet comfortably full, maybe even bottomless in the sense that it doesn’t run out. But actually that’s not what it says, is it? My cup overflows.  

            I don’t know about you, but that’s not my prayer. I want to be comfortably filled. I want to have enough to be comfortable and satisfied. I want things to be neat and tidy. I want things to be familiar and predictable. I want that in my personal life, in my financial life, in my church life. Pour me a never-ending cup, sure, but not an overflowing one. That’s a bit too disruptive for my taste – too much mess. 

            Maybe, in part, it’s because I don’t always fully trust the source – the pitcher from which this cup of blessing is filled. If my cup is full, I can pick it up and carry it off, contained, controlled – maybe even in a tightly sealed travel mug. If it’s neat and tidy I can decide how much to drink and when to make it last. I can pretend I have control over the blessings in my life. Otherwise I have to trust that God will keep pouring when I need it. I have to let go of control.

            On the other hand, I know a lot of things that are out of my control for sure: living through a global pandemic, living with persistent and systemic racism, facing a climate crisis, experiencing disease and loss, death itself. That feels never-ending, the kind of thing that is just overflowing all over the place, making a mess of everything we love and cherish. I tend not to question the overflow of that kind of stuff in our lives. That I have no trouble picturing as an overflowing cup. But blessings? Grace? Mercy? Maybe it’s just me, but I find that sometimes harder to trust. 

            What struck me in watching all the stewardship videos of people from your congregation was that each one named in some way the disruption of this time, some of the really hard stuff that has occupied our hearts and minds, AND they discovered in it, through it, or in spite of it, an abundance of blessing – for some it was time, others family, nature, awareness of gratitude for basic needs. For some it was a slow shift, for others a sudden realization. But in the competing flood of trouble and blessing, tuning in to the blessing opens our eyes to abundance in striking ways. It does not solve or negate the trouble. We are still in the midst of a terrible pandemic, still in the midst of a society full of inequity, still in a world of violence. But there is also still blessing to be found. 

            Some of the people who spoke in your congregation’s stewardship videos shared a part of their practice for recognizing that overflowing blessing in their lives – for some it was meal time together with family, others meditation, others a walk in nature. Let me share a practice that helps me open my eyes to God’s blessing, one that helps me start to trust the source that makes our cups overflow. From the time I began giving my own monetary offerings in church as a preteen confirmand, I prayed a prayer as I put the money into the plate that in doing so I might learn to recognize that all I had comes from God and that I might learn to let go, offering my money and my self, trusting that God would use it and me as needed. In these modern days when my tithe goes directly and automatically once a month to my home congregation and in these COVID days when physical offering plates aren’t passed, I’m trying to find other ways to have that moment of prayer. Something over and above what I have carefully planned to give as a percentage of my income. Because in case you haven’t picked that up already, I’m really good at planning. I’m really good at doing a budget and marking out exactly how generous I want to be, sending my pledge card on time to church. But what I still struggle with is to trust that the cup is not just full, it’s not just as I have planned it, but in fact the cup is overflowing with abundance I can’t control. 

            Let me be clear that giving money to the church or to anywhere isn’t going to literally produce an overflowing bank account. Nor does giving time to church and other worthy causes create more hours in the day. And yet. And yet we have a God who can create from nothing, who can feed thousands with a few loaves and fish, we have a God who can resurrect the dead. When we engage these practices of gratitude and generosity, we start to tune into the abundance and begin to see that overflowing cup. 

            But here’s the thing about that overflowing cup – the juice (or the blessings) gets EVERYWHERE. I mean it splashes on the table and the floor and probably soaks into the rug where you immediately try to soak it up. It splashes on your arm when you reach to avert disaster. Sticky fingers carry it to the banister. Hours later, when you’ve long forgotten about the incident you notice a splatter on the kitchen cabinet. That evening your bare foot sticks to a missed spot on the floor. 

            This is God’s cup of overflowing blessing. That’s the grace in this. Yes, we can develop practices of gratitude and generosity to tune in better. Yes, we should plan thoughtfully personally and communally for the realities we face, including planning to be generous with what we have. 

            But God pours blessings like a preschooler – pleased as punch to be spilling it all over the place. When God pours your cup, expect it to get all over you. Expect it to surprise you long after your moment of practicing gratitude when you are elbow deep in frustration or pain about something in the world. Expect it to splash and splatter onto the people around you. 

            When God pours the cup in your congregation expect it not to stay neatly contained inside your building or neatly contained inside your neighborhood. Expect it to splash onto people that challenge you and take you beyond your comfort zone. Expect it to splash into the streets and the public square. Expect it to splash into new experiments and surprising new ways to be the church together. COVID has certainly proven that it’s possible to be the church in ways we didn’t think we could. The cup overflows. 

            And trust, dear friends in Christ, that the source really is endless. The creator of the universe is pouring your cup and your neighbor’s cup and your enemy’s cup and there’s enough to just keep splashing grace and blessing til beyond the end of time. Amen. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

27th Sunday after Pentecost
November 15, 2020
Grace Lutheran Church, Plainville, CT

[Jesus said to the disciples:] ¹⁴“For it is as if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; ¹⁵to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. ¹⁶The one who had received the five talents went off at once and traded with them, and made five more talents. ¹⁷In the same way, the one who had the two talents made two more talents. ¹⁸But the one who had received the one talent went off and dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money. ¹⁹After a long time the master of those slaves came and settled accounts with them. ²⁰Then the one who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five more talents, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me five talents; see, I have made five more talents.’ ²¹His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ ²²And the one with the two talents also came forward, saying, ‘Master, you handed over to me two talents; see, I have made two more talents.’ ²³His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and trustworthy slave; you have been trustworthy in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ ²⁴Then the one who had received the one talent also came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; ²⁵so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.’ ²⁶But his master replied, ‘You wicked and lazy slave! You knew, did you, that I reap where I did not sow, and gather where I did not scatter? ²⁷Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have received what was my own with interest. ²⁸So take the talent from him, and give it to the one with the ten talents. ²⁹For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. ³⁰As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’ ” – Matthew 25:14-30

            Collectively we have just lived through a challenging national election. I, like perhaps many of you, have struggled to understand exactly what is going on in our country and how it is that we begin to move forward from here. I do not, by any means, have all the answers to that question. But I’ll share with you one of the things that I’m thinking about as I try to make sense of it. 

            I think this election – in fact perhaps this is true of many elections here and around the world – was at least in large part about fear. Fear is a powerful emotion. It triggers not the part of our brain we share with other higher order mammals but the part we have in common with reptiles. The fight or flight, all or nothing, adrenaline-producing parts of our brain. Fear can trigger responses that help us stay alive – for that we thank God. But fear can also trigger responses that get in the way of careful problem-solving, deep cooperation, and thoughtful planning. Either way the fear is a very real, very physical thing. 

            What I felt and what I saw from others – those who voted the same way I did and those who didn’t – was fear. Fear for safety. Fear of losing what we have. Fear of losing power, money, status, dignity. Fear, for many, of losing their very lives. Those with wealth fear losing what they have. Those with nothing fear for their survival. People of color fear ongoing oppression. Fear of the effects of climate change. Fear of loss of freedom. Fear of the coronavirus. Fear of change. Fear of not changing. Fear. When I listen to myself and when I try to listen to others, I’m hearing tremendous fear. I am afraid for the future of our divided country. The person who is elected to the top leadership position in our country matters. It matters deeply. And yet whoever is elected does not alone save us from any of these things. 

            Which brings us to the parable of the talents. The master is going on a journey. He entrusts his wealth to three servants. Vast sums. These are not just a few coins, but true riches. 5 talents to one, 2 talents to another, and 1 talent to yet another. Even the last, the single talent, is more than an average laborer might hope to see in years of work. As the parable opens, generosity and joy abound. We don’t know what the first two did with the riches to double them in the time the master was away. We don’t know if it enriched the world or exploited others. We don’t know if they cooked the books or toiled alongside others to develop their share of the wealth, but they went and lived. Enter into the joy of the master. I’m not saying it doesn’t matter how they earned their wealth – surely I hope it was honest and life-giving to themselves, to others, and to creation. But that’s not what this particular parable is about. 

            This parable, I think, is really about the third who buried his talent in the ground. He was afraid – that’s how he defends his actions to his master. He lived in fear. The thought of loss, the thought of risk, the worry over how to use it – he couldn’t move past those questions. He lived from a place of fear. So he dug down into the soil, tucked the master’s treasure away, and sat down to wait. For all intents and purposes he buried himself with the talent. Whether he sat nearby in constant worry or went off to mind his own business, what he doesn’t do is enjoy the gift, share the gift, or multiply the gift. Maybe he even looked to be living a normal life to those around him, not making waves and not taking chances. Yet his fear keeps him from the joy of the master both while the master is gone and when the master returns. 

            It’s like he can’t even see the possibilities, he can’t find abundance, he can’t find joy. He’s already been cast out to the weeping and gnashing of teeth  because of fear. The master gave him something to use, something to celebrate, something to risk, something to share – and he buried it. He’s missed out. 

            When the master returns, we modern readers get very uncomfortable. Rightly so – I don’t like being thrown out into weeping and gnashing of teeth any more than you do. But I think the point of the parable is that the master can’t seem to do any more to help the one who can’t seem to recognize a good party when he sees one. It’s as if he says to the third, “Fine! If you don’t like generous gifts and abundant life, take a hike.” And, this is not in the parable, but I’d like to think it comes with another line that reads something like, “But do come back when you finally come to your senses.”  

            You see, I think all of us live with fear to one degree or another. Fear of failure, fear of the other, fear of change, fear of success, fear of loss. Whether the fear is of something reality based or not, the feeling of fear is very, very real. It causes us, yes sometimes to fight, but more often to freeze or flee like the third servant in the parable. Fear closes us up and closes us in and closes us off. 

And some people– people in our own communities, perhaps some of you listening right now –  live in fear for their very lives from hunger, from violence in our homes or in our neighborhoods, from systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia. This is fear from real threats that are driving some people in our communities underground, burying them. We as a community are burying some of our best assets, our best neighbors in the ground and going on as if everything is fine, afraid, perhaps of what will happen if we speak up or speak out.     

What this parable says to us this day, in this time of very real fear for the future of our country, the future of our world, our own always-tenuous futures, is that God’s kingdom is one of joy and abundance and not one of fear and suppression. God’s hope for us is not that we bury what we have and most certainly not that we let others be buried under the fear that comes from systemic oppression. God’s hope is that we might see the abundance of the gift of life we are given and the incredible gift of life in each one of our neighbors so that we might enter now into the joy of the master.  

            What would it look like to let go of all our fear? Would it look like doing that thing you always wanted to do? Would it look like having bold conversations about race, even though we don’t have all the answers and will probably mess up at some point? Would it look like letting go of some part of our personal finances for the sake of the abundant life of others in our communities? Would it look like trusting a bold future for your congregation even in the midst of a global pandemic on the rise? Would it look like getting more deeply engaged in civic life no matter how we feel about the election so that we really put some skin in the game when it comes to living and voting our values? The alternative is to bury it behind us and try to move on as if everything is fine. The alternative is to let fear take hold of us and squelch our joy of living. 

            I wonder what gifts God has given you to help you live in that place of joy and abundance. I want to be clear that sometimes, in this world that is not yet as God calls it to be, there are very real things that stand in the way of expressing that joy and living in that abundance. But even so, even if fear of very real concerns has you in hiding, God has still given you you, given you gifts, given you breath, given you the promise of love and resurrection and invited you to let that flourish in the world. God’s desire for you is freedom to flourish in the world with boldness and abundance.

            And if you find yourself unable to get free of your fear – or I should say when you find yourself unable to get free of your fear, for it happens to all of us sooner or later – when you find yourself cast out into a weeping and gnashing world of fear, it’s there that Jesus finds you anyway. For shortly after the telling of this parable, Jesus goes to the cross – cast out of the city, cast out of the land of the living. And there, where everything has been stripped from you, when you have absolutely nothing left to fear, not even fear itself, that’s when Jesus scoops you up and brings you to life again with him. That’s when Jesus hands you back the gift of life beyond all imagination and you get another chance to live in the joy the master had planned for you all along. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

October 4, 2020
Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, Bristol, CT

Gloria Dei is in the middle of a sermon series called “Unraveled” – Biblical stories that show the ways God’s people are often unraveled into something new.

A video of worship can be found here: https://youtu.be/PLoBG3vQhWA

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. ² A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. ³ He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. ⁵ When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. ⁷ All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” ⁸ Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” ⁹ Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” – Luke 19:1-10

           I am a volunteer facilitator for my county’s restorative justice probation program. It’s our role to meet in a circle of trained community members with people who have been charged with a crime and referred to the program. We meet monthly for several months to figure out together what harm has been done, who is responsible for that harm, and how to begin to repair relationships broken by that harm. 

            When people come to the program, in addition to any harm they may have caused, often their own lives have unraveled. An aspiring lawyer is facing a charge that could put his career plans in jeopardy, someone with a substance addiction has hit rock bottom, someone has lost their housing as a result of one thing or another related to the charge. Often they can’t stop thinking about the harm they’ve done. They regret their actions, but haven’t been able to put them right or find a way to stop beating themselves up over it. What we know and tease out in the conversations is that the person before us is often also the receiver of harm, often in some way disconnected from the community, and we have a chance as the community to begin to repair that disconnection. One of our tasks is almost always to help the person move from “I am a bad person because I did this thing,” to “I am worthy and gifted human being who has done something wrong.” It’s a surprisingly difficult shift to facilitate. It’s a shift I find hard to make in myself when I realize I’ve done things wrong. But the unraveling that happens when we recognize our brokenness, painful though it is, can be a tremendous opportunity to discover the love of God and the support of our neighbor, whatever boundaries and consequences must still come as a result. It’s an unraveling that leads to something new.

            Which brings us to the unraveling of Zaccheus. The old Sunday school song makes an easy hero out of the short man who climbs a tree to see Jesus. But the text reminds us that Zaccheus is not exactly an easy hero. He’s a tax collector. Which makes him, in the eyes of most folks, a collaborator of empire, an extortionist, a cheat. Tax collecting in Jesus’ day wasn’t exactly an exact science, and whether they were more or less honest or not, they represented the oppressive force that hang over the heads of Judeans in Jesus’ time. And Zaccheus had made himself a small fortune in that work. For all the crowd was concerned, he was a bad guy and persona non grata at their dinner tables. 

            In the story he wants to see Jesus and no one is likely to help the not-so-poor guy out by making room in the crowd. He wants to seeJesus, but what happens instead is that he is seenbyJesus. He’s seen not as tax collector, not as sinner, not as bad guy. He’s not defined by the bad things he’s done. Or by any good things he’s done for that matter! Jesus sees him solely as Zaccheus, child of God, and Jesus, unlike the man’s neighbors, wants to eat at his table. Jesus knows exactly what he’s doing. The crowd can’t believe it – because they can’t see past Zaccheus’s profession to his humanity. At the risk of psychoanalyzing, that’s probably because they too often can’t see past their own faults and failures to the child of God they are. Which I say because I know that’s true for me. Maybe it’s true for you, too, that sometimes we define ourselves by our worst moments. 

            All this and we haven’t even quite gotten to Zaccheus’s unraveling. This being seen, this encounter with Jesus, this recognition that he, too, is a child of God – it unravels his life. He gives up his profession and half his wealth. He has participated in some way in the subjugation and oppression of his neighbors and he makes financial reparations to them when he realizes the way in which his lifestyle, his privilege, his power has stripped others of theirs. His personal conversion, his personal realization has very real public implications for economic and political justice. Jesus’ seeing him, him seeing himself as a valued human being, as an integral part of the community, that’s the prerequisite for a change of life – a change that reconnects him to his community. 

            But wow! Is it hard! Imagine giving up your profession and half your wealth tonight at the dinner table. How would that feel? What would you do? What radical changes would come to your life? The life of your family? This is hard work, risky work, and yet somehow I think we sense that in Zaccheus’s sake it’s done with joy and with a recognition of deeper connections in the community going forward. His hope, our hope, is that despite his past he’s now going to live more fully himself and more fully connected to others. But it doesn’t just happen at the snap of a finger. It takes work, relationship building, real change. 

            Where do you see yourself in this story today? Are you Zaccheus – longing to see and be seen for who you are? Longing to claim that identity as beloved child of God? Afraid of the changes that might be required of you, afraid of the unraveling that might occur but open to the overwhelming transformation of relationship with Jesus? In a lot of ways we are people complicit in empire, complicit in systemic racism, complicit in a changing global climate, complicit in the dysfunction in our political system. Our part may seem small, but what would it look like to stand in our identity as children of God and not first in our citizenship, our power, our political affiliation? What would unravel for us into something more life giving? 

            Or maybe you see yourself in the crowd, wondering whether “those” people – whoever “those” people are for you – can be in relationship with Jesus. What unraveling would it take for us see not only ourselves but every single other human being, no exceptions, as first and foremost beloved children of God? What unraveling will happen in us when suddenly we see that Jesus is already sitting down to eat with the people we despise the most?  

            All of us are somewhere on that journey of recognizing our belovedness and living out the radical call to reorient our lives for the sake of our beloved neighbor, our beloved communities, and our beloved world. Maybe we’ve had that encounter like Zaccheus and we have been overcome by grace to the point of radical generosity. Maybe we’re still climbing the tree looking and searching. Maybe we’ve made a promise in a moment of conversion but have fallen short of the promise we sincerely made. Maybe we are one of those people who can’t let go of wrong things we’ve done, or who can’t see past the wrong actions of others. But wherever you are, wherever your neighbor is on that journey, Jesus sees you! It may unravel your life into something new, but Jesus sees you, beloved child of God. And nothing in all the earth can strip that away. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco