First Sunday of Advent
November 28, 2021
St. Paul Lutheran Church, East Longmeadow, MA

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

The world is always ending somewhere. 

But when it’s your world ending, your loved one dying, your community torn by violence, your divorce, your job lost, your church facing hard decisions about its future – it’s different. We know in the abstract that these things happen hundreds of thousand of times over in the world every day. But when it hits us, we feel it. We feel the power of it. We feel the loss of control. We feel the devastation. We feel it ripping us apart. Or maybe, too, at times, the relief, the letting go, the acceptance.

And the world is always beginning somewhere, too. 

But when it’s your new beginning, your new child or grandchild born, your new job, your wedding, your fresh start after a life change, your move to a new place – it’s different. We know in the abstract that these things, too, happen hundreds of thousands of times over in the world every day. But when it’s us, we feel the joy and excitement, the fear and anxiety, the hope and possibility, the challenges and hardships. 

These endings and beginnings often exist side-by-side. Hospitals are places that bring new life into the world and where life ends for others. As we in the northern hemisphere approach the darkest time of the year the southern hemisphere is coming into the fullness of bright summer days. But we know that, too, in our own lives. Both the side-by-side when endings and beginnings happen in the same short span of time – a birth in the family the same week as a death. But also we know the way in which endings can be beginnings and beginning their own kind of endings. A graduation is both a culmination and a launching – a transition that brings both grief and hope. A move can be both an exciting new start and a great loss of what has been. 

Look to the fig tree, Jesus says, when the leaves sprout you know that summer is near, and just so you will know the kingdom of God is near. But trees exist because other trees bore fruit that fell to the ground and rotted open or got chewed up by animals or torn apart by human hands. That allowed seeds to be planted and grow. Every year here in New England we are keenly aware of the leaves that come in spring and go out in a blaze of glory in the fall, with the long weary barren span of winter before they sprout again. We may welcome or grieve the change, but we understand inherently that it is part of an ongoing cycle, year to year, generation to generation. 

Today, too, we observe the start of a new church year. The last weeks have brought us apocalyptic texts warning of the ending, but here we are at a new beginning, eagerly anticipating a very particular newborn baby in a manger, and the texts have us back at the end. That is, of course, intentional. We are not starting Advent just to wait for Christmas, not to pretend Jesus hasn’t been born yet, but because we are always waiting to be saved from one calamity or another. Jesus was born into a world of chaos and violence, and we pray that Jesus would come again – and again, and again – to our world of chaos and violence. We are not on a linear journey but one that cycles around and around with all its ups and downs. 

On the one hand, that feels devastating. I, for one, would really appreciate moving toward something better every day. Every day a little effort, a little progress. Personal progress, a better community, a better world. Every day the past behind us and hope ahead. That would be nice, but it’s not our reality. 

On the other hand there’s comfort in that. It doesn’t take away the pain of the endings we experience. It doesn’t make new beginnings for us any easier. But it does somehow relieve the push always to make everything better, the idea that perhaps we’ve failed if tomorrow isn’t better than today. 

            Look, Jesus says. To the signs in the world, but also in nature. Look at the rythyms. Things come and go. Endings and beginnings tied up together. Be alert that when the day comes, when the devastation or the radical shift hits your life, that you may be ready to stand firm. Not to prevent the world from ending, not to alter the course of what is in motion. But simply to stand before God. 

            To stand, not for judgment perhaps, at least not only for judgment, but to be aware and alert, too, for God’s presence in every pulse of that cycle, every ending and beginning. To look at the barren trees around us and remember that spring will come. To look at trees in summer and know they will again be barren. And to know that God is in it all. 

            To stand in the midst of big, terrifying world events and know that they will end and others will take their place. To know that pain and challenge will come to others and eventually to us. And to know, in every breath that God is there, sharing our fear and pain and grief. 

            To stand in the midst of joyful new beginnings and recognize the endings that have made them possible and to stand with the knowledge that they, too, will have their endings. And to know that God is there, holding it all. Holding us always. 

            Here at St. Paul you’re at a point in the life of your congregation when you are asking some questions about where to go from here. To some all the choices might feel like endings. I’d like to think there’s some new beginning down each road, too. I wonder how it is for you to stand alert to the presence of God here in the midst of that – not as one who necessarily will reverse the course of the congregation but as one who will be fully present at every step along the way into whatever future you discern together with the help of the Holy Spirit. 

And as we cycle through the years, one after another, returning again and again to the biblical texts that speak of apocalyptic signs and to the texts that reveal to us God born into our midst, in this lectionary year in particular we are moving these next few weeks to the culmination of Advent in Mary’s Song. Perhaps you remember the one – where empires fall and the lowly are raised, justice reigns, and the hungry are fed while the rich go away empty. And there we will remember that somehow God is, too, part of all the turmoil we experience, upending our lives so that in the end justice is proclaimed and the final empire of death is also thrown over. 

And that is at the heart of our faith – that in the end God will turn the world as it is upside down in ways that begin to grow in our midst long before we realize them. We wait, we hope this Advent season, not as if we don’t know Christ is coming, but as ones who are called to be alert to the signs for surely Christ is already born among us, growing in our time and our community as he once did in Bethlehem, Egypt, and Nazareth. Perhaps as near and familiar as the trees that mark the seasons, already righting wrongs and bringing us to life even as some things crash down around us. New life beginning in the midst of it all. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

25th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 33B)
November 14, 2021
St. Paul Lutheran Church, Proctor, VT

¹As [Jesus] came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” ²Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
  ³When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴“Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished?” ⁵Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁶Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. ⁷When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. ⁸For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.” – Mark 13:1-8

There’s a song refrain from a few years ago that goes like this: 

How long can a world go on under such a subtle God?
How long can a world go on with no new word from God?
See the plod of the flawed individual looking for a nod from God
Trodding the sod of the visible with no new word from God*

            I heard these lyrics this week from the presenter at the New England Synod Convocation. He shared them as we talked together about what it means to live as people of faith in our current cultural reality. It is a reality in which organized religion no longer holds prominent place in most of our communities. It is a reality in which scientific and rational explanations are primary over mystical ones. But honestly, it’s a heartfelt cry of every age. It’s the cry of the psalmists who often both acknowledge the presence and faithfulness of God while crying out to be heard, to be held, to be saved by that God they know is there.

            Maybe we don’t look for signs from God in quite the same way as our ancestors might have. Most of us don’t look to astronomical events, natural disasters, and patterns in tea leaves to get a sign from the divine. Yet most of us would still probably like to have something a little more concrete, a little more defined as a sign from God. 

            A sign, perhaps of how to organize church in this time when it’s harder and harder to maintain an institutional church in the ways we did in the last few generations. People ask me all the time for an easy answer, a program, the one thing they can do to grow their church. They want a sign. There isn’t one. The work is hard and even if you engage it the growth may not look numerical. 

            A sign, perhaps of God’s presence despite the incredible challenges we face. I looked back in my folder and when this text came up 6 years ago, it was followed just a day after terrible terrorist attacks in Paris consumed global attention and concern. But it could come up any Sunday and somewhere in the world people have experienced tragic violence. Wars and rumors of wars, Jesus says. Nation will rise against nation, kingdom against kingdom. Earthquakes. Famine. He might as well have mentioned global pandemics, cancer, and all manner of other terrible pain, illness, injustice, and tragedy. And that is just the beginning, he says.

            A sign, perhaps of what I’m supposed to do in this crazy world. Jesus is strangely cryptic at times in giving direction to the disciples and to us. And each of us faces moments of critical decisions in our lives and aren’t always sure how to proceed. What our faith has to say about decisions in our lives is never as simple as opening the Bible and reading a customized life plan. If only Jesus would be a little more obvious, and require a little less interpretation. 

            Because here’s the thing – Jesus is saying in the gospel reading, and our experience verifies this – the signs in the world are awfully bold. All those terrible disasters, all the voices we hear from the media telling us how and what to think about everything from the shape and look of our bodies to our political affiliation to who is powerful and successful. Those signs? They speak pretty clearly. 

            And it can seem like God – our God – is sometimes far too subtle. It can feel some days as if we haven’t heard anything new from God. Sure we read the old stories and find new meaning. Sure we come to know the presence of the Spirit working in our lives at times. Sure we find grace here in worship each and every week. But it’s rarely as big and bold as some of the challenges we face. 

            The disciples seem to be ready and willing to face the challenges Jesus implies are on their way. But they want to know when. When will it be? How can we be prepared? How will we know that it’s the sign we’re supposed to look for an not just one more disaster? 

            These are people whose history includes enslavement, desert wandering, previous destruction of the their home and temple, occupation by multiple empires. These are people who for the most part are not people of power or privilege. They can handle some more if only they know it’s the sign of what is to come. If they are going to face one more tragedy, one more terrible sign, they want to know it will usher in a change in their fortunes once and for all. 

            And Jesus says these things – wars, famine, earthquakes and the like – are but the beginning. The beginning of birth pangs, the beginning of something new. And, yet, not the end of the signs that might very well terrify us. 

            I know you here at St. Paul’s have faced what all of us have in terms of managing through a global pandemic, the challenges we all face in terms of illness and grief over the course of our lives. And I don’t yet know you well enough to know all the details of your challenges. But I do know you have struggled to figure out what it means to be a visible, tangible sign of God’s love here in your little corner of the world. It’s not an easy task. It can seem like our work and our lives are too subtle, too quiet, that we are the flawed individuals from the song, plodding along, looking for a nod from God, trodding the sod of the visible with no new word from God. 

            Dear friends, it’s true that there is much in the world more powerful than we are, much that is out of our control, much that we might wish was different. But I think exactly what that world needs, what we need. Is a subtle God who reminds us again of the hiddenness of grace. 

            Jesus speaks the words of today’s readings to the disciples as he is about to go to the cross. It is there that God throw’s in God’s lot with us, with our suffering, our violence, our cruelty, our grief, our distress. It is there that divine love shows its true power, not in conquering, for that would violate the depth of the love God has for all things, but its power in persisting through anything, even death itself. It is there on a cross, in a death as a criminal mostly unnoticed by the powers of the world, that God’s crowning moment is hidden. 

            So I think exactly what we need is a subtle God who reminds us gently week after week in water, word, bread, and wine, of that never-dying love even unto death. A God who doesn’t always do the newest, latest thing but persists in that same steady word of love for us day after day, year after year, generation after generation. It’s in that steadiness that God brings something new to birth among us. Sometimes, but certainly not always, some sign that wows us, redirects us, re-invigorates our faith. But much more often taking each subtle step with us through long and difficult days. 

            So let us return again to those lyrics, which I think the singer-songwriter thought to be a sign for despair, but I wonder if they might instead speak to us of a profound God who walks each step with us. 

How long can a world go on under such a subtle God?
How long can a world go on with no new word from God?
See the plod of the flawed individual looking for a nod from God
Trodding the sod of the visible with no new word from God

            Perhaps God is subtle and says very little walking the way with us, except to whisper every step of the way that we are loved beyond measure now and forever. Amen. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

*Lyrics from “Margaritas at the Mall” by David Berman; thanks to Dr. Andrew Root for sharing them with us at the New England Synod Convocation.

All Saints Sunday
November 7, 2021
Trinity Lutheran Church, Shelton, CT
On the day of their congregational vote to pursue a merger or closure of their ministry

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

  ³⁸Then Jesus, again greatly disturbed, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it. ³⁹Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, already there is a stench because he has been dead four days.” ⁴⁰Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” ⁴¹So they took away the stone. And Jesus looked upward and said, “Father, I thank you for having heard me. ⁴²I knew that you always hear me, but I have said this for the sake of the crowd standing here, so that they may believe that you sent me.” ⁴³When he had said this, he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴The dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth, and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” – John 11:32-44

            Who was Lazarus? 

            We know just the tiniest details – less than you’d get in a short obituary in modern times. Friend of Jesus, brother of Mary and Martha. Hospitable host. Otherwise we know him as the one who died and the one Jesus subsequently raised. 

            But like your loved ones and mine who have died, Lazarus is not just a statistic on a list of souls, not just any person who died, not just another person in the great host of resurrected human beings. He’s a person with a story, with a history, with a hundred daily interactions that were missed when he died, with friends and family whose hearts would break forever at his loss. 

            That’s what All Saints Day is really about. We often talk on this day about the whole heavenly host. We will read a list of names, which will bring tears of renewed grief to some while others may not even know a piece of their story. Maybe it’s a way of protecting our hearts, every one of which bears grief of one kind or another that we so rarely delve into their stories on this day. 

On this day I remember those closest to me who are no longer here. Those whose deaths felt especially tragic at the time because of age or circumstance. I long to tell their stories, to make sure they are remembered. Scott who died since last All Saints. From years past Bill, Peter, Nicole, Catherine, a host of those whose funerals I presided over in my nine years of parish ministry who were not only dear to their loved ones but to me as their pastor. You have your own names, I know, people whose stories I don’t know but you do. People who were imperfect, surely, but part of our lives in beautiful and complex ways. People whose life and death have shaped our own.

Their stories, their past, their relationships have shaped who we are today. And we stand today as if outside their tombs. Perhaps we even still want to cry out with Mary, “Lord, if you had been here! If you had been here, my dear ones would not have died.” Jesus has, of course, healed many diseases, brought people back from the brink of death. He has even, in the other gospel accounts, raised a few back to life. But when you are standing at the grave of a loved one, none of that matters. What matters is this loved one, in this tomb, in this moment. And though some experience the closeness of God in grief, most of us know, too, the sense of divine abandonment at least in moments if not for long stretches of time. 

Despite his healing power, Jesus doesn’t generally stop death from happening. Out of the billions who have lived, even the tens of thousands he must have encountered in person in his life, only a few are healed back from the brink of death and even they live only to die another day. Jesus doesn’t even stop his own death from happening. That’s not what Jesus does. 

But Jesus does two other really important things. First, he grieves. He stands with the other grieving loved ones at the tomb and he weeps. Lazarus is not just a statistic to Jesus. Jesus knows his story, his life, the ways he touched others’ lives. Jesus recognizes the fullness of this loss – what it means to the world. Jesus’ grief is not lessened by any faith, hope, or promise of resurrection. He utters no platitudes, no “there, there, everything will be alright.” He stands at the tomb and weeps.  

We may want him to fix it, to stop death before it happens, but I can’t underestimate the power of this weeping, this being present. I hope that every one of us has experienced a friend or family member who sits beside us in a time when there are no words needed and cried alongside us. Held us or kept their distance depending on what we needed. Said what little needed to be said and nothing else. At least for me that is worth more than a hundred heartfelt, well-meaning but abstract and wordy offers of prayers and comfort. And, like a dear friend, Jesus knows the story of the one we lost. Not maybe in the way we know it, but in a deep and abiding way. Jesus’ tears are real, both for our loss and his loss when death comes into our lives. 

It’s here that I want to pause and say, too, that in addition to the death of loved ones we mark this All Saints Sunday, that we are here together today bearing another kind of grief. Through difficult conversation, you here at Trinity have come to understand that your congregation cannot continue forward in the way that it has. It is a kind of death and it comes with deep grief. 

But let me remind you that Jesus knows you and your story and every one of the 122 years of history of this congregation. Not just as one of millions of churches out there, just one more place where scriptures are read and bread is broken, where newcomers are washed in baptism and beloved saints are sung to the graves. No, Jesus knows the deep grief of loss for all the little particulars that have made the gospel message of this place something special and unique. God loves it dearly and weeps with you today and in the days to come. 

And, Jesus does something else. Returning to our gospel again, in this moment a foreshadowing of what is to come not only for himself but for all people. He resurrects Lazarus. He calls him forth from the tomb where his physical body has already begun to decompose. He calls him forth from lifelessness and invites him to stand again, to draw breath again. It is often noted that from what we know, Lazarus did later die a second time, in the hope of resurrection but not in quite the same way, on quite the same timetable as his first resurrection. And in that way, Lazarus is like all the rest of us, waiting for the resurrection of all things in God’s future. 

God does not stop death from happening. But God will resurrect the saints we remember today. God will resurrect us when we, too, go down to the dust. 

And God has a plan to bring new life out of the death of Trinity Lutheran Church as we have known it. Today you will make some decisions about that. You get to be partners with God in this resurrection endeavor. It will not look like a return to what was. That’s not was resurrection is. But whether through a new intimate partnership with another congregation or whether through a process of gifting this congregation’s legacy to ministry in the community and the wider church, the ministry here at Trinity will not be consigned to death or forgotten. It will be resurrected in a new way to live on in service of God’s love and grace poured out for the world. 

Today we honor the saints who have gone before us today. We honor our own loved ones. We honor the saints who have shaped and loved this congregation. We honor the saints whose lives are unknown to us but who nonetheless shaped our lives and our world, whose lives are nonetheless held in God’s deep and abiding love. We honor them not be clinging to attempts to relive their stories, and not be fearing death. But rather by seeking to carry forth their light and energy, their values and faith in new ways in new places. We honor them by our grief and by our living into something new. We honor them by proclaiming God’s deep grief alongside ours and the power of God’s resurrection for them, for us, for this congregation, for all the world.     

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Reformation Sunday, Lectionary 31B
October 31, 2021
St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church, Ridgefield, CT

[Moses said to the people,] ¹Now this is the commandment—the statutes and the ordinances—that the Lord your God charged me to teach you to observe in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, ²so that you and your children and your children’s children may fear the Lord your God all the days of your life, and keep all his decrees and his commandments that I am commanding you, so that your days may be long. ³Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe them diligently, so that it may go well with you, and so that you may multiply greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has promised you.
  ⁴Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. ⁵You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. ⁷Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, ⁹and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. – Deuteronomy 6:1-9

²⁸One of the scribes came near and heard [Jesus and the Sadducees] disputing with one another, and seeing that [Jesus] answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?” ²⁹Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; ³⁰you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ ³¹The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” ³²Then the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘he is one, and besides him there is no other’; ³³and ‘to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” ³⁴When Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” After that no one dared to ask him any question. – Mark 12:28-34

         Some years ago there was a congregation struggling because neighborhood people would come and graffiti the outside walls of their church building – not targeting the church, just making use of their wall as they might any other building. The church members would regularly paint over it, only to have more artists return with their spray paint. Motivated no doubt by a deep love for the church and a particular sense of how the church of God should look, they painted over it again and again, hoping their deep love for their church would show and people would stop spray painting it. 

At some point, though, they made a shift in their perspective. Instead of painting over it, they decided to embrace it. They invited it. They made the wall of their church an intentional space for people to express themselves in art – not in a carefully planned mural but in a regular invitation to ongoing graffiti art from local neighborhood folks. It was bold, and I’m sure controversial within and beyond the congregation. Some surely argued that the wall should be protected and remain painted a solid color. But others saw an opportunity. They weren’t just throwing up their hands because they couldn’t compete. They were shifting their understanding of what was happening and inviting relationship with the people making art on the church’s walls. They began to realize that people were looking for a place to express themselves, many of whom had been marginalized by the community and the world. The move so startled local neighborhood youth that they started inquiring what was going on inside. And church members began hanging out outside. It was the start of a transformation – a reformation – of the ministry and the neighborhood. Instead of enforcing the existing social rules, they started living from a different rule. One that started first from curiosity and then love of neighbor. 

            I read about this some years ago, and I admit that I can’t track down the details now or find anything about how things are going now, though I know other churches have explored similar projects since. But the story has stayed with me. Maybe it’s because I personally am too easily caught up in the supposed rules and forget to make room for people, for love. Maybe it’s because I know how easily the church can do the same – opting for neat, orderly, and predictable over beautiful and maybe a little more chaotic and spontaneous.

            As the Hebrew people are about to enter the land promised to them after a generation-long desert journey, they hear this command: “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” 

            Some beautiful Jewish traditions still today include physically wearing scripture on one’s body and literally posting scripture to their doorposts, and they do that as a way to bring that reality of God’s love and call to love others constantly to their mind. But many a Christian has tried to live this out by hanging bible verses on their walls, tattooing verses on their bodies, holding up John 3:16 signs at sporting events. If that’s your thing, go for it. But the command is much deeper than that. I wonder that the graffiti wall is actually a better image for what it means to write God’s way on our doorposts – because it wasn’t just words but the symbol of a deep relationship with neighbor that was ultimately painted on their doorposts. 

            And it seems like a good metaphor for what God does for us. In baptism, God graffities a promise on our hearts. An artfully, passionately painted promise to love unconditionally, a promise to accompany always, a promise to carry us through life and death. A cross is graffitied with oil on our foreheads, a sign that we can return to again and again to remember that promise. Which we need to do. Because I don’t know about you, but sometimes that promise of God is hard and messy. It asks me to step out of my comfort zone, to love without boundaries, to let go of my own ideas of right and wrong and live into the messiness of community with other broken and beloved people of God. And I want to paint over it with something much more tame. And other times it just seems too powerful, too awesome, too wonderful and I try my best to paint it over with something much less bold. 

            Like that church as it kept painting over the graffiti on its wall, I find myself intentionally and unintentionally trying to cover up God’s artistry on me. Trying to tame it, water it down, make it something nice and neat and within my control. But God will have none of that. God will keep coming back to write that promise on us until one day, one way or another we embrace the power and challenge of that unfailing love. 

            Until then, we keep coming back to this place – to our local communities of faith – to remember and renew. It’s what we celebrate today in welcoming Emma and Thomas to God’s table, that place where we come again week after week to receive into our bodies the rewriting of that promise of God. For all the moments we forget and resist that promise, the communion table is a place where we have a fresh start with the promise, letting it work on us as we grow into God’s beautiful and life-changing promise and baptismal call.

That return again to the promises of God is what we celebrate today in AJ’s affirmation of baptism – confirmation. God painted that promise on his heart in creating him. God painted that promise on his heart at baptism. God paints that promise anew every morning. Today is one of many markers on a lifelong journey of faith in which we can surround and support AJ, and join, too, in affirming that promise God makes to all of us. 

This is the ongoing reformation – re-formation – of the church. Not just the passing of faith from one generation to another, but the daily renewal of God’s promise to us and the daily opportunity for us to live into it in new ways. When we stop trying to paint our own ideas about church over God’s marking of us, that’s when a beautiful thing begins to emerge. When we stop trying to paint over the beautiful ways God has created us, that’s when our inherent beauty begins to transform others. When we stop trying to paint over God’s abundant and life-giving liberation with our own rules and practices, we risk missing out on the real reformation God is doing among us. 

That’s what today is about – reformation, first communion, confirmation. That’s what every Sunday is about. God’s breaking open something new not to create something neatly wrapped up with a bow, but something that will liberate us for love in the world. And it’s about a God who just keeps coming back to paint that beautiful love over us when forget. Then…then we then get to carry it forward to the world as AJ will promise to do today, as we promise to do every day:

to live among God’s faithful people, to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper, to proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, to serve all people, following the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth? 

And, phew! That is a lot. And they aren’t things that can be done with simple checklists or even in a nice, neat orderly fashion. It’s hard, messy, beautiful work to write love all over our neighborhood, to bind justice and peace to the doorposts of our neighborhood, to re-form our communities in ways that honor one another and honor God. Like the wall of that church, it’s not something we can do alone and not something we can even really plan for. It’s something that will emerge as God continues to write that powerful love on our hearts. Amen.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

22nd Sunday after Pentecost
October 24, 2021
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Hanover, NH

⁴⁶As [Jesus] and his disciples and a large crowd were leaving Jericho, Bartimaeus son of Timaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by the roadside. ⁴⁷When he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout out and say, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁸Many sternly ordered him to be quiet, but he cried out even more loudly, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” ⁴⁹Jesus stood still and said, “Call him here.” And they called the blind man, saying to him, “Take heart; get up, he is calling you.” ⁵⁰So throwing off his cloak, he sprang up and came to Jesus. ⁵¹Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” ⁵²Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way. – Mark 10:46-52

            I’m starting today by posing a question, not one you need to answer out loud, but one I am going to invite you to really ponder for a moment. You can close your eyes to reflect on it if that feels comfortable for you. The question is this: What do you want Jesus to do for you? Take a moment to reflect before we continue. What do you want Jesus to do for you?

            That question always stands out to me every time I hear this particular healing story. I can’t help but find it a tender moment of connection between Jesus and this stranger. Maybe it’s because so often in our world we assume what other people need. So often our models of charity have resulted in dynamics in which those who have give things to those who don’t have them, without the relationship building implied in this question. 

            We might very well assume that a man identified in the text as a blind beggar might very well want his sight restored in a world that even more than our own pushes those without eyesight to the margins. We might well assume he would want to be restored to community in a way that he could earn a living and build relationships again. Whatever the complex causes he is here on the side of the road, left to sit and cry out for help. I imagine Jesus and his disciples are not the first to hear his cry, “have mercy on me!” They are probably not the first to stop and offer their assistance even, to chuck some coins in his cup, or whatever the practice of the time was for those who beg on the side of the road. But I’ll bet that almost no one has stopped to ask the question that Jesus asks: “What do you want me to do for you?” 

            I wonder how often we pause to hear Jesus’ same question to us. He asked the disciples just last week. I’m not sure I read that one with the same tender tone since Jesus seems to have known they were arguing about who is greatest and that they wanted to sit beside him in his glory. But nonetheless the repetition is striking. Jesus asking, “What do you want me to do for you?” 

            I don’t know what thoughts were in your head, but my mind jumps in with all manner of things, everything from material things that I know are not really what Jesus’s question is all about and which I know are not really the answers to my deepest desires to big and vague ideas like peace in our hearts, peace in our homes, peace in our communities, and peace throughout the world and maybe, Jesus, a sweeping end to poverty, while you’re at it. I do genuinely want all those things – both the less healthy impulses like greed and envy and the altruistic ones that I really do want for every living thing. 

            And yet neither of those ends of the spectrum nor much of what is in between really get at what’s at the heart of Jesus’ question to Bartimaeus: What do you want me to do for you? Because Jesus is neither a magic genie granting us wishes nor the kind of God who waves a hand to fix all the problems of the world. However much we might wish for one or both of those at any given moment, Jesus is the one who stops his own movement, the one who listens for the cry of the one in need, the one who silences the detractors who would have him ignore this man, and the one who invites deep relationship with this question. It’s as if Jesus stops to cut to the core of who Bartimaeus is. What do you want me to do for you? 

            If I’m really honest, and a willing to be a little bit vulnerable, my deepest desire is to be known and loved for who I am just as I am, and for those around me to know that same deep love. In the abstract, I want that for the whole world, but when I sit with Jesus’ question and let it really work on me that’s what rises deep in my soul. And maybe, in some ways, what I most need is simply to have a God who asks that question and then takes the time to listen deeply. That is, Jesus answers my deepest need by just asking the question. 

            When he asks the disciples in last week’s reading, he doesn’t grant them what they ask, but he responds with genuine thoughtfulness, posing follow up questions and walking them through what is a challenging and ultimately true prediction of his own suffering which they will some day soon enough experience, too. When he asks Bartimaeus the question this week he does grant the straightforward request, but one senses that this is not about seeing and not seeing, but rather about the transformative encounter that results in Bartimaeus’s leaving behind what he knows to follow Jesus on the way. At least for now, perhaps all the way to the cross and grave, and beyond. What happens here is not just a physical change, but a relationship building encounter that creates a disciple. 

            In a way this question is creating and shaping what we now call church – a group of people following, or at the very least trying to follow, Jesus. They become not a group just there to meet the human need that is all around them. Though clearly Jesus cares very much about that, spends his time doing that, and calls his followers to do the same. And they are not just a group about big ideas that sit back from the fray and try to solve the world’s problems. They, these early disciples like Bartimaeus, are in it for the relationship with Jesus, the one who stops to ask and to know him through and through. 

            So I wonder how we might as a church, as modern-day disciples of Jesus, answer his question, a question I very much believe he is still asking us: What do you want me to do for you, church? In my synod work, I hear a lot of answers to this question. Maybe the most common is “we want more families with young children.” Shortly thereafter, or often implied in the first, is “we want more people to fill the pews and balance the budget.” Maybe not phrased this way, but I hear some version of “we want really innovative ministry to transform our community.” It’s all well and good. Our desires are what they are, and God hears them. And I wonder that we don’t really sit with the question long enough. What is our deepest desire behind those first answers, the ones that perhaps inadvertently treat people as commodities and those that are too broad to nail down? I wonder that it isn’t some version of the deeper answer we give as individuals. You can think about your own answers and how they might fit for the community, but I think what I want for the church, deep down, beyond all my own personal likes and dislikes, my own big ideas about what the church could be and do, is the deep desire that all the people who encounter the church would know that they are loved for who they are just as they are. 

            Beloved of God, Jesus is here among us – in water, word, bread and wine, in the gathered community. And Jesus is drawing near to ask you, What do you want me to do for you? In asking it, Jesus is entering into deep and abiding relationship with us just as we are. And, perhaps, as we settle into that deep knowing of God’s unquestioning love, there is a call to us also in that question. A call perhaps to throw down our metaphorical cloak and follow Jesus out into the world and begin asking our neighbor – our neighbor next door, our neighbor at work, our neighbor in need, “What do you want me to do for you?” and then to sit and listen deeply to the answer. Maybe we can meet the need and maybe not. Even Jesus redirected when needed. But either way we will have sat down and seen the face of God in our fellow human being. Through that Jesus will bring healing and wholeness to all the world. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

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