The Pastor's Sermon - March 25, 2012 - the Fifth Sunday in Lent

Disclaimer: At the request of a few of the congregation, I’m ‘publishing’ the text of my sermon ‘as written.’ I cannot guarantee that I will deliver the sermon ‘as written.’

Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.

• You may remember the well-know cartoonist, Charles Schultz and his famous comic strip, Peanuts. Do you remember one of the major characters in Peanuts? The little kid with the security blanket?
• (Linus van Pelt) Linus was the comic strip's resident theologian. He often pointed out the strange things the other characters did, even if they rarely noticed for themselves. Mr. Schultz put these words in Linus' mouth: “I love mankind... it's people I can't stand!” Here Linus shows us the danger of a generalized Christian love. He can't see the trees for the forest.
• It'd be best if we do things differently. The spiritual discipline in the spotlight today is “Serve.” In Bishop Susan's view of things, service here is not simply service to the congregation or to the church in general. It is service in a personal way to the folks around us. It is more than setting up a way for the church to help the needy; it is personal involvement in service and help to our neighbors.
• As before and as always, Jesus is our example and model for this sort of service. Our Savior served others out of love for them. Bishop Susan puts it this way: “Jesus didn’t shy away from those who were sick or poor or in need of any kind. He reached out with hands of compassion to love and serve his many neighbours.“ There are plenty of examples in the Gospels of Jesus serving others and asking his disciples to do the same. He healed the sick, especially lepers. He stood with and comforted the sorrowing. He fed the multitudes and did it twice if you hold to the Gospel account. In his final act, he gave up his life that all people could be free.
• “Why?” we may ask. The simple answer was in last weeks Gospel reading from John: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...”
• The love we're speaking of here is a grounded, down-to-earth love. It is not a head trip or an only spiritual activity. With this in mind, I remember what a professor of mine in seminary once said. His name was Augustine Donegan, and in class he said this: “Jesus doesn't save souls; he saves people!”
• Jesus' service was not general and faceless. Jesus couldn't see the forest for the trees. his service to those around him was face-to-face. He didn't set up charities or service organizations (even as good and as necessary as those might be.) His service to others was literally hands-on, even to the point of touching lepers, public sinners, and others considered beyond the limits of righteousness and ritual cleanliness. Jesus did not shy away from that.
• Our service will be personal as in person-to-person. To be real Christian service, it will be as personal as Jesus' was.
• Whether we like it or not, we will constantly encounter people as they are – messy, selfish, confused, cranky, sleepy, sick... just like us... for that's how Jesus encounters us.
• We may well ask why this service is to be to people outside the fold of the Church. Surely all these needs can be found with in the congregations that make up the Church of Jesus Christ.
• There really can be no denying that. Every sin and failure, every trouble and pain, every need and loss in found in the human condition may be found within the Church of Christ, and we are not exempted from service to one another. But the call of Christ and the community of Jesus Christ exists for the world. It is not for self-congratulation and self-witness. The church is constantly called to look beyond itself, even beyond it's own need.
• It could be said that the church is most the Church of Christ when it is suffering and in need. Under those conditions, the reality of discipleship is driven home. In those conditions, the Christian community often comes forward to serve those who are also in need. It could be said that the Church of Christ is most itself when it pours out the riches that it has received from God upon the whole of the world – namely the love and concern that the Church has received from God. It is this sharing that will change lives and make salvation known to the world around.
• It may sound a bit trite, but it is true that one can only give what one has. What the church has is the love of God, and that may be all we have to give, even in the most simple of ways.

So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you

The Pastor's Sermon - Lent IV - 18 March, 2012

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

• Our word from Bishop Johnson today is... Study.
• Faced with the quandary of something we don't understand, we have at least four choices:
• Make the time to look into it; Dig and dig and dig until we understand or come close to understanding.
• Realize we don't understand, stare at it, and come to a place of peace with our lack of understanding; in other words, live with the mystery.
• Ignore it and walk away as if not knowing or understanding didn't matter.
• Pretend we understand and go on with our day.
• In truth, there are some things we'll never understand and we must simply contemplate, like the nature of love, why my pie crust isn't as flaky as yours, the infield fly rule in baseball, and why God permits evil to happen.
• I'll never understand the pie crust thing, but I'll contemplate the mystery by eating your wonderful pie! I really don't care about the infield fly rule, so I don't sweat it. I don't understand love, but I'd rather experience it anyway. As to why a good God permits evil... that's a forever argument, one that the Book of Job handles better than I and still comes to no completely satisfying conclusion. This question is also seen in the “lifting up” of Jesus on the cross, where Jesus confronts evil in the world in his own flesh.
• This passage from John's Gospel is a very good example of the value of study. When it come to the Scripture. If we take the reading at face value only, we are left with questions. Moses? Serpent? Wilderness? Son of Man? Eternal life? World? The name of the Son of God? Light? Darkness? Who is Jesus talking to? And that's just 8 verses in one of the more hard-to-comprehend books of the Bible.
• Now study doesn't require years in the Scriptorium or a Doctorate. It requires curiosity and the thirst to know. It also requires a respect for the limits of the human mind, especially of our own human minds. The human desire to know leads us on, all the while understanding that we may come to the limit of what we can know and of what can be known.
• Sounds complex, I know, but it's really quite simple. We all want to know. To live without knowing is not satisfying unless an effort is made to subdue curiosity or a decision is made to accept what is not known. To follow curiosity takes what is know as study. Study can be a formal class. In our case, it can be a simple Bible study. It can be the reading of a book. It can be a continued series of questions that any of us might list and take the time to ask someone about. What is most important is the desire to know and the willingness to go and find answers.
• Take this portion of John's Gospel. Jesus is talking to Nicodemus, an important member of the Pharisees, who has come to Jesus in the dark of night – a symbol for his lack of knowledge. Both he and Jesus speak the same words, but Jesus uses the words to mean something other than what Nicodemus expects. Light, darkness, “born again”, “lifted up” - all have unexpected meanings and only study on our part will help us decode what John the Evangelist has Jesus saying.
• To understand how John writes takes some study. To hear what Jesus says in John's Gospel takes some study. To see where Nicodemus reappears in John's Gospel takes a little study, but the meaning of his reappearance takes a bit more study. In John's Gospel, things often mean more than they seem.
• If we look at Jesus' insistence that he will be lifted up, we find that he is making a reference to Moses' lifting up the bronze serpent in the desert to counteract the bites of the poisonous snakes the infest the camp. (They used to be called 'seraph serpents' in older Bible translations because of their fiery bite, Seraphs being angels of fire.) This was our first reading today, and if we were reading this by ourselves, it would be a simple matter to look at the notes in our Bible to see this. That too falls under the heading of study.
• Now, is study required for our salvation? The simple answer is “no” for study doesn't necessarily lead to faith. Having said that, our desire to follow Christ in faith may lead us to want to know more and to know Jesus and what Jesus taught more deeply.
• In Lutheran congregations, there is a deep respect for study and education. We can see this in the respect for the Small Catechism of Martin Luther that congregations have. There is also a deep aversion to both study and education, as if they were reserved for theologians. We'd all best remember that we are all theologians, interpreting the teaching of Christ to our own setting, homes, family,and selves, and study on some level will aid us in that.
• Study doesn't end with Confirmation. Confirmation is a public affirmation of faith that means entry into adult membership and a renewal of our commitment to being members of the church and of this congregation in particular. It doesn't mean “graduation from study.” So we involve ourselves in Bible study' We ask questions; we read books and magazine articles. And we do it all for a very simple and very profound reason – to know Jesus better and to better tell others of his meaning in our lives.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

The Pastor's Sermon - Lent III, March 11, 2012

Disclaimer: At the request of a few of the congregation, I’m ‘publishing’ the text of my sermon ‘as written.’ I cannot guarantee that I will deliver the sermon ‘as written.’

• I am the LORD your God
• Worship... worship is the topic of the day. In our brief look at the seven spiritual words put forward by our National Bishop, Susan Johnson, we separate prayer from worship as being two different things. Not everyone sees it that way.
• To many worship is not a necessity. That goes first and foremost for God. That's right; our worship is not necessary to God. God does not need our praise, like some insecure leader who requires “yes-men” and sycophants around all the time to remind him of his importance. God is sufficient in God-self and does not need this.
• Worship is something WE need. Worship fulfills a deep-seated desire in the human person to recognize and acknowledge that there is something or someone beyond us or greater than ourselves.
• This is a quote from the Christian writer, Eugene Peterson:
• We are surrounded by a way of life in which betterment is understood as expansion, as acquisition, as fame. Everyone wants to get more – to be on top – no matter what it is the top of that’s admired. There’s nothing recent about the temptation. It’s the oldest sin in the book. The one that got Adam tossed out of the garden and Lucifer tossed out of heaven. What is new about it is the general admiration and approval it receives.
• True worship drives home the point that we are not the be-all-and-end-all of the universe. Note once again what is the first commandment of the Ten:
• I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them...
• I submit to you this idea, one I received from a Jewish rabbi of my acquaintance: the primal sin of humanity, of every last human being, is not so much finding other gods to worship but making of ourselves a god whose will must be obeyed and who must be praised at all times.
• Worship works against this. We are not the center of worship. In worship, we look beyond ourselves.
• In Bishop Susan's letters, she emphasizes the communal nature of worship. Worship includes prayer, but it has at it's base a communal understanding both of the nature of worship and the nature of the worshipers.
• Communal worship reflects the communal nature of the Christian life. We are not individuals without a connection, but we are a people joined together by the grace of God.
• At worship, we often pray by joining ourselves to others at prayer, praying through them, joining their words to our silence and using their words in our silence.
• Even in situations where a Christian is by him-or-her-self because of some necessity while the community worships, they may be by themselves, but they are never alone. They are still joined to the entire Body of Christ, because they are not separated from the grace of God in Christ.
• The communal nature of the Church is nothing new. It is, in fact, as old as the history of the Church. From the very beginning, the Church has understood itself as a community of people in Christ. The Jewish people, our ancestors in the faith knew this to be true for themselves and as the Church grew out of the earliest people of God, we inherited this understanding and we hold it to this day. It is opposed by attitudes and the individualism of our contemporary world, but it still holds true.
• This community understanding in worship and in theology -which we won't go into today- in one of the things that set Christians apart from what is around them. We are always a part of a people, so we live as a people in Christ and we worship as a people in Christ, even if we find ourselves alone. Worship then is deepened by an attitude telling us that we pray as a part of a larger whole, even if we find ourselves alone, for somewhere, right at that time – like even now – Christians are at prayer.
• In her editorial regarding worship, Bishop Susan asks and recommends that every person make a commitment to worship. It seems rather silly to speak to you about that; It really is “preaching to the choir.” Everyone here is committed to worship on some level or another. No one would be here otherwise. Still we need to take her recommendation to heart. There are ways to participate even more fully. Increased attendance might be one way. Going from worshiping one Sunday a month to two Sundays a month, from attending only on the biggest festivals to attending monthly would be a commitment to worship.
• Increased involvement, such as taking part in more ministries or more frequently. is another way. One could read at worship or serve as usher, sing one more hymn at worship, or read over the readings before coming to worship. (That's quite easy to do since the upcoming week's reading from scripture are all listed on the back pace of the Celebrate sheet.) Helping to prepare the altar or the space inside the church and even making coffee and bringing goodies for the coffee hour all enhance the entire congregation's experience of worship.
• Even something as simple as a commitment to pay better attention at worship makes for better worship.
• No matter what we commit to do in our worship, it is sure that our God is with us, simply in remembering what Jesus said: 'For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.’
• I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol,.. You shall not bow down to them or worship them

OOPS!!

Please forgive your pastor for misleading you. For some reason, I got confused. Of course, we turn our clocks FORWARD an hour on Saturday evening.

That's forward... as in we loose an hour sleep.

Pr. John the Cronologically Impaired

Don't forget!

Don't forget, folks... Daylight Savings Time begins this Sunday morning. We turn our clocks back an hour... and loose an hour's sleep. (That way you won't miss worship at church and miss my sermon on Worship!)

Pr. John

The Pastor's Sermon - the Second Sunday in Lent, 4 March, 2012

Disclaimer: At the request of a few of the congregation, I’m ‘publishing’ the text of my sermon ‘as written.’ I cannot guarantee that I will deliver the sermon ‘as written.’

“Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."

• We continue our Lenten journey with the seven words of Spiritual Renewal. The Spiritual word for today is “read.”

• I don't think that any of us here could dispute the value of reading, whether it is the reading of a book, of a newspaper, of letters, or even articles on the Internet. Reading allows us to enter into realities we have never personally experienced, either historical or fictitious, whether that is Huckleberry Finn on the Mississippi, Hamlet at Elsinore, Sherlock Holmes in his study, Anne of Green Gables, or Faust in his study.
• Still this is not all there is to reading. Bishop Susan was first and foremost recommending that we read the Scripture, far more than telling us to join a book club. The opportunity to read the Holy Scriptures is one that should be dear to Lutherans. After all, the first major translation of the Bible into a vernacular language was credited to Luther... though other translations that predate his. His translation would be seen as the most popular and the most accessible, aided of course by the invention of that wonderful contemporary invention, the Gutenberg printing press with movable type.
• Prior to this time, the Scriptures were the domain of the scholar and the priest. The scholar could read and study the text, often in the original languages. Interpretations were put forth, most of which were so very subtle and complex that the average person could in no way understand them. The priest could read the Scriptures to the people, even if he did not understand them himself. The average person could neither afford a copy of the Bible nor could they understand the language it was written in; they were even forbidden at times to read it for themselves. Can you imagine the joy that met the first translations of the Bible in the languages of the people?
• Now, versions of the Bible in our own languages and even our own style of speech abound. Sometimes we take this for granted, although I know many here endured a separation from reading the Bible.
• So why read the Bible? The simple answer would be to say that the Bible contains the Word of God itself. It tells the story of God's relationship with God's people over a broad scope of time. It is something we as disciples need to know; not because not knowing would lead to condemnation, but knowing can lead us to better know the mind of God and the mercy of God.
• So what would we tell someone who want to start to read the Bible? How do we keep them from getting confused and frustrated?
• Well, choosing a readable Bible is an excellent place to start. At one time, someone asked “which is the best Bible for me to get a hold of?” Leaving aside any and all questions of proper translation or theology, the answer is quite simple - “The best one is the one you'll read.”
• We might encourage the new reader to ask questions and read the Bible with a notepad near by. It would also pay to have a Bible that you're not afraid to write in as well as a Bible with notes and explanations. (That's called a “study” Bible.)
• A person starting to read the Bible should start with one of the more readable books, like the Acts of the Apostles. Starting with Deuteronomy or Revelation would be an invitation to frustration and end of reading.
• How would a first time reader of Mark's Gospel react to today's reading? It is not an easy thing to read "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” That can be pretty daunting for a new reader, although someone with years of Christian teachings behind them may comprehend it better while still finding it troubling. This is one of the passages that needs... no, REQUIRES reading and rereading, year in and year out. Each re-reading might have nothing new for us, until someday something new shows itself to us. Then we'll want to dig into it.
• We live in a literate culture and are surrounded by the written word, both positive and negative. We all know that paper won't refuse ink. Still, the only way we have to know in our day and time how God dealt with our spiritual ancestors, the Hebrew people, is to read the books of the Bible, The only way we have to know now the words of Jesus carried to us by his earliest followers is to read the Scriptures. The one way we have to feed our spirit with the revelation of the love and concern of God is to read it, often bit by bit, and digest it, morsel by morsel.
• We have the privilege of reading the Scriptures in our own language at our own pace. We can choose any version we'd like and read at our leisure. To avoid reading it would deprives us of both God's true communication of the proclamation of salvation and the rule by which we live. It is in the Word that we come to know the one who is called The Word.
• “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels."