The Pastor's Sermon - the Festival of Pentecost - 27 May, 2012

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

• How much do you notice your own breath?
• How much do you notice the beating of your own heart? We only usually hear it when we lay awake at night, worried about something. THEN we hear that heart beat, but otherwise?
• How much then do we take note of the presence of the Spirit? In Acts, the Spirit aids and propels the spread of the Gospel. In Paul's letter to the Romans, the Spirit prays within Christians when they don't know how to pray. In John's Gospel, the Spirit is called the “Advocate” (Paracletos in Greek, which means defence attorney – more or less) who will lead the Faithful to all truth and will speak as Jesus speaks.
• It seems that Christians rely on the Spirit for their life in Christ. What about the rest of their lives... as if we could separate our life on earth from our lives in Christ. In Genesis 1, we are told that the Spirit of God hovered over the waters of chaos as everything was created. (In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Genesis 1) It is good to note that Wind and Spirit and Breath are the same word in Hebrew – “Ruach”.
• So we are created from the breath of God. Are we at all aware of the breath of God within us? It might be something we take for granted and don't consider. It is so common to us and our everyday lives that we don't take any time to think of it... like the breath that enters and leaves our bodies with such regularity.
• There is an interesting strain of the theology of the Holy Spirit that holds that the Spirit is the very life of God and to be in the Spirit is to have the life of God in you. This is an interesting notion for it means that as we live we participate in both creation as creatures created by God and in the life of God as those who share God's life because of his gift. This is also another way of looking at grace.
• As one breath leads to another and another, so the breath of God within us leads us to more life and to an even more intimate relationship with God.
• This is our life, each of us and all of us together. This has become our new ordinary, something so common to our experience that we hardly take note of it. Still, it remains wonderful, powerful, profound, and amazing.
• When you think about it so is our breath and our heartbeat. Wonderful... powerful... profound... amazing.
• As has been said before, the Spirit moves where it wills and changes everything. Imagine if you will, not breathing for a time. Try it when you go home; how long can we hold your breath? Eventually we will NEED to breathe. In that moment, when the need to breathe the good air around and we realize the value of the that good air, then we can take the next step and know the need we have for the Spirit and for grace and how the Spirit and grace surrounds us.
• At that moment, if the Spirit is with us, we can realize that what we consider normal and ordinary is anything but, and the life of the Spirit within us has changed everything we know and experience and live for.
• There is an ancient prayer I'd like to close with today. It is based in part on the 104^th Psalm and it calls down the Spirit on ourselves, on all the faithful, and on the entire world that God has created.
• “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created and you shall renew the face of the earth.” (Ps. 104:30)

The Pastor's Sermon - Easter VII - 20 May, 2012

{Due to time constraints and out-right neglect, This sermon is being posted far too late.}

I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. ...As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.

• Let's talk about the world for a few moments. The world is where we live and work. The Book of Genesis says that God looked at all God had created and found it “very good.” So the world is not a bad place in and of itself. The problem comes in when we add sin, but sin is not part of the world itself. It's been added and it has infiltrated (for lack of a better word) the entire creation. Well, nobody likes to talk about sin, unless it's someone else's sin; then we make movies about it.
• So we can't escape the world and we are part of it. Some Christians talk about not being part of the world. That was how the early monks described themselves, saying at times “When I was in the world...”. One of my seminary professors – herself a religious sister - responded to a young friar who said exactly this by asking him: “So where do you think you've been recently?”
• There are Christians who declare themselves separate from the world and become a society apart, with more or less success. Their aim is remove themselves from all that the world is filled with. It is quite difficult, however, to remove a person from themselves and all the baggage they each carry.
• What Jesus says in John's Gospel is that his disciples do not belong to the world, which is quite different than saying the disciples are not in the world. In fact, he says we are sent into the world.
• Lutherans in general do not have a difficulty with this. Lutheran theology and practise includes engagement with the world. We take part in what the world around us is doing. We find our holiness in the everyday Gospel of living our lives in grace right here and right now. We trust in God's promises regarding what is to come.
• In the world, our role is to be the presence of the Gospel here and now. it can be inspiring and compelling even while it is difficult and troubling.
• We are in the world because there is no where else to live. We are body creatures, created to live in this world. This is the reason we rejoice in the promise of the 'resurrection of the dead' as our Creeds confirm; We are not meant spend eternity as disembodied spirits.
• Still, we all know the tension between being “in” the world and 'belonging' to the world. Belonging to the world brings with it an acceptance of all that the world holds as important - power, riches, status, acclaim, and all those other idols that can be sins against the First Commandment.
• What Jesus calls us to is a very radical life style. Now radicals often have a bad name, since they often make extraordinary demands based on their beliefs. “Radical” comes from the Latins word for “root”, as in the bottom of the plant, the part that holds it to the soil and draws nourishment for the rest of the growth.
• So if we are to be Christians, we are to be rooted in Jesus Christ and draw our lives from his grace. The fruit we bear is this: to love one another. We've been hearing this for weeks (for years actually) and we need to hear it again and again. And we need to know that it is really hard work.
• Last Sunday, we heard Jesus telling his disciples that he has chosen them to bear fruit that will last. Put that together with this Sunday's reading, we see we have been chosen by Jesus to be sent into the world. We are to love one another and witness to the truth of God.
• We might protest that we are not the best people for the job, but that doesn't matter, because it isn't about us. It is about Jesus and the Good News we have been chosen and sent to share.
• Chosen from the world and sent to the world. The circle is complete. Blessed be God forever.

The Pastor’s Sermon - 6th Sunday of Easter - 12 May 2012

You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last...

• Today we baptize two young people. Today we see the action of grace in a number of lives and in fact, in the lives of every one of us. When we see these two young people baptized, we renew our baptism with them.
• We are reminded of Jesus' message of grace, namely You did not choose me but I chose you.
• It is not a case of our choice or our work but the choice and the work of Jesus. It is truly all grace. And that is what we celebrate here, now and always.
• It is not a case of being worthy of this choice or of being chosen because of some particular skill or ability or virtue. At the bottom of it all, it is a choice made out of love.
• Someone may ask “So why doesn't Jesus choose everybody?” The best response that could be given to that question is “How do we know he doesn't?” It could be that Jesus has chosen everyone and that there are some who do not know it. And it could be that they don't know it because no one has told them.
• If Jesus has chosen us, what are we chosen to be? That answer is simple and the simple answer is found in John's Gospel today: “I have called you friends...” Each of us has been called to nothing less than friendship with Jesus Christ and all that it means.
• Because of this friendship, we know of and experience the love of God for all that God has created.
• Because of this friendship, we know of the promises of God and we know they apply to us.
• Because of this friendship, we know that Jesus' words call us to service in his name.
• Choosing goes far beyond that. We've discussed what we are all chosen to be, but what are these two young people and each and every one of us chosen for? Again, the words of Jesus tell us this: I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last...
• We have been chosen to bear fruit, and again the fruit is not of our own choosing and it might not be in the place of our own choosing. Honestly, it is quite often a surprise.
• Last week, the reading from John's Gospel spoke of the well-known and easily-imagined “Vine and branches” illustration, showing how each of us only bears fruit if we are attached and nourished by the vine that is Jesus. We can do nothing apart from the life of Jesus, but with Jesus' own life in us, we can do far more than we could imagine.
• Maybe the fruit we would bear is showing others the love of Jesus and his choosing by what we say and do. We might do this as a parent of a child, teaching them their first lessons on prayer and faith. We might do it as a teacher, enlightening minds to the wonders of creation or history or human thought. We might bear fruit by feeding people and in that, witnessing the value of sharing what we have with the poor and suffering. We might bear fruit in ways we might never imagine or realize until we look back and see the growth in the crop we'd planted and nurtured.
• All of this might not be for us to choose. As disciples and friends of Jesus, we might accept the Word and plant it, trusting in the Father's grace to see to the growth, a growth we might never see in its fullness.
• Even this we might be assured in one very special thing: the fruit of love we bear -whatever it might be- puts us in a direct line to the love Jesus bears for the world and even further to the love of the Father that formed and sustained the world.
• It's amazing, isn't it, what a little seed of the Gospel can do. Not that we choose, but that we've been chosen. Not that we love but that God has loved us. Not that we've sought out God, but that God has searched for us and found us, each of us.
• Let us continue to celebrate this choosing in how we live and how we continue to serve and bear fruit... and, as today, in how we baptize.

You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last...



The Pastor's Sermon - 6 May 2012 - 5th Sunday of Easter

{Due to circumstances probably well within my control, I didn't post my sermon for last Sunday. In fact, I FORGOT to take it to church last Sunday, and had to deliver it from memory. That's also known as "faking it" in jazz. Still my congregation was very tolerant and actually quite complementary.}

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us... Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.

...We love because he first loved us. Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.

• There is the ancient story of Moses, a shepherd, and a fox, a story not found in the scripture but true nonetheless. Have you heard it?
• Moses finds a shepherd in the desert. He spends the day with the shepherd and helps him milk his ewes, and at the end of the day he sees that the shepherd puts the best milk he has in a wooden bowl, which he places on a flat stone some distance away.
• So Moses asks him what it is for, and the shepherd replies “This is God’s milk.” Moses is puzzled and asks him what he means. The shepherd says, “I always take the best milk I possess, and I bring it as an offering to God.”
• Moses, who is much more sophisticated than the shepherd with his naive faith, asks, “And does God drink it?”
• “Yes,” replies the shepherd.”He does.”
• Then Moses feels compelled to enlighten the poor shepherd, and he explains that God, being pure spirit, does not drink milk. Yet the shepherd is sure that He does, and so they have a short argument, which ends with Moses telling the shepherd to hide behind the bushes to find out whether in fact God does come to drink the milk. Moses then goes out to pray in the desert.
• The shepherd hides, the night comes, and in the moonlight the shepherd sees a little fox that comes trotting from the desert, looks right, looks left and heads straight towards the milk, which he laps up and disappears into the desert again.
• The next morning Moses finds the shepherd quite depressed and downcast. “What’s the matter?” he asks.
• The shepherd says, “You were right. God is pure spirit and He doesn’t want my milk.”
• Moses is surprised. He says, “You should be happy. You know more about God than you did before.”
• “Yes, I do,” says the shepherd, “but the only thing I could do to express my love for Him has been taken away from me.”
• Moses sees the point. He retires into the desert and prays hard. In the night, in a vision, God speaks to him and says, “Moses, you were wrong. It is true that I am pure spirit. Nevertheless, I always accepted with gratitude the milk which the shepherd offered me, as the expression of his love, but since, being pure spirit, I do not need the milk, I shared it with this little fox, who is very fond of milk.”
• So how do we show that we love God?
• First of all, let's start with love. John says God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. This is a verse often used at weddings that has nothing to do with weddings! It has to do with how a Christian lives his or her life each and every day. John also says We love because he first loved us. It is the love of God that precedes anything and everything that we might do. The love of God is still present even if we do not feel it and even if we do not spread it.
• John expresses the truth of the Gospel to his readers in the simplest terms: In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us... This holds just as true for our day and circumstances as it did to John's day and time.
• God's love is always before all else and his love precedes ours. Our love is a response to the love of God, given to us without any prerequisites or conditions. The requirements and conditions are our doing. We are the ones who have set limits on God, saying who is or is not worthy, who is or is not good enough, or how far God may go.
• And we might well say “Thank God” that God ignores the limitations we set and loves all of us anyway, without limits, with a wild abandon that is shown to us in the the Cross and in the Resurrection.
• Still, the love of God lays requirements on us. John lays it out for his readers in no uncertain terms: ...We love because he first loved us. Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.
• We don't know what exactly prompted John to write this. There is evidence of conflict in the churches John was writing to, evidence of some sort of problems that would lead him to write in such a way as to call some of his readers “liars.” Whatever it was, John expressed his love for the congregations he was writing to by doing what might have been a painful thing – calling them on their lack of love for one another.
• Love is a hard way to live. Love can be the tender feeling we know for a child or a loved one. It can be the warm glow when we remember a loved one and the pang of separation when we are away from them.
• Love can also be fierce, angry, self-denying, and even dying. That is why the cross is the symbol of such tremendous love. In truth, can we ever do enough to satisfy what love asks?
• No matter what, we live in the love of God and we take our lives from the love of God. What we have to give and to share flows from the love of God for us and it is expressed in our love for one another and for all the world, without a thought to the worthiness, acceptability, grace, beauty, or usefulness of those we are to love... for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen.
• Does this seem odd to you? Does it seem strange that this is what the love of God would have us do? Maybe it's a case of what God gives and receives, God shares with others... like that simple bowl of milk in the desert... shared with a fox.