St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church SermonsSt. Paul Reformation Lutheran Church is a welcoming, diverse and inclusive congregation, centered in Christ and enlightened by the gospel, that invites you to experience God’s grace.
Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The first reaction to our Gospel story about Martha and Mary from our Bible Matters Group on Wednesday was this: “I’ve never liked this story and wish we could throw it out of the assigned readings.” You won’t be surprised to hear that this was said by a woman. A woman tired of the way this story has been interpreted to “scold” women like herself who were taught to be the consummate hosts to their guests, taught that every little thing should be just right in order for hospitality to be “just right.” Is it any wonder that one of the biggest names in the business of home and hospitality today is Martha…Stewart?
And what do we make of Jesus being such a bossy guest? Does his response seem just a bit cranky to you? It’s clear in this stained glass window depiction that Martha was feeling a bit cranky, too, first because she was upset her sister was not helping; and later because Jesus scolded her. I imagine that Mary was feeling a bit vindicated.
The story brings to my mind my older sister, Martha. But she was not a “Martha” of the kind depicted in our Gospel reading. My Martha was not a homemaker. She disliked cleaning and was a great collector of things that grew dusty and out of date.. But that didn’t matter to her. She was one to sit with people, to listen to stories, to engage neighbors with her questions, and with her funny ways of recounting her life experiences.
My sister Martha sat at Jesus’ feet throughout her long illness. She had a drawing of Jesus that she hung on the wall as close to the ceiling as possible. When we talked about the cancer and her shortened life, she’d say: “I talk with Jesus all the time and we’ve got things worked out. I’m not worried.”
Do you have family members or friends that come to mind as you hear this lesson from Luke?
In order to explore this short lesson of only five verses, let’s consider the context in which it comes. Jesus has “set his face toward Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51) He’s told some to let the dead bury their own dead. What is needful is to follow him.
In last Sunday’s gospel story, Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan in response to a young lawyer who asked what he must do to inherit eternal life. First Jesus asked him what the law commands, to which he replied that we are to love God with our whole heart and soul and mind, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. Jesus says that the answer is right. “Do this and you will live.”
Jesus told the story of how a Samaritan, one who would have been reviled by the Israelites, showed compassion for a stranger, for a neighbor he didn’t even know. And that is the context for our two sisters today. These stories are about offering hospitality, about attentiveness and action.
Our reading from Genesis lifts up hospitality, an important value in the culture of the Old Testament. In that story, Abraham greets strangers who come near his home. With his wife, Sarah, they offer hospitality to them. She prepared the little cakes for them. Abraham had a calf prepared for a feast. He also stayed with the visitors while they ate.
Hospitality requires both acts of service, and attentiveness. Sarah and Martha both made preparations. Abraham attended the guests. And Mary sat that the feet of Jesus listening and learning. If anything, I believe these stories are about offering hospitality both through taking action and through attentiveness.
The Good Samaritan was attentive to the stranger who was hurt and abandoned on the side of the road. This was contrasted with several people who walked by but did nothing. It was the Samaritan who took action to care for the man.
Abraham went out to greet the strangers and invited them to rest and eat. He asked his wife, Sarah, to make some bread for them. He was attentive to the needs of the travelers and took steps to serve them bread and meat. And at the end of the story, Abraham was blessed with a foretelling that he would indeed have a child as God had promised.
Martha was attentive to the physical needs of Jesus when she invited him into her home. She worked hard to get every thing ready. Mary was attentive to Jesus’ presence with them and she sat at Jesus’ feet to listen and learn.
Think about the many women and men who work in the fellowship halls and kitchens of churches today. What would we do without them? What would happen at potlucks like we will have next Sunday morning at Como Park? What would become of the Hallie Q. Brown food shelf without the men and women who not only bring food and clothing items but also pick up food from Trader Joes, and offer coffee, conversation, and connection with the guests who come?
What would we do without the crew of volunteers who keep the grounds of our church looking lovely for all who pass by? What about the volunteers who usher, serve treats, prepare communion, sing and make music? There are many roles involved in offering hospitality.
Where would we be if we didn’t have the women and men who teach Sunday School? Or the people who organize adult forums? They are attentive to our need to learn about God and how we can serve others.
All these roles are important to the well being of our community. A preacher would be crazy to suggest that the only way of interpreting these stories is to say that “sitting and listening, praying and learning are more important than serving or laying out the welcome mat. I don’t think that is what Jesus is saying either.
At the same time, it is important in the busyness of life to take time to sit at the feet of Jesus. To listen for the still small voice of God within us. To talk with Jesus about what worries us, about what we need. To ask for the wisdom and the grace to be attentive to the needs of others and creative about how to serve them.
These stories tell us more about the realm of God here and now. They tell us that hospitality requires both action and attentiveness to our neighbors. Hospitality calls for relationship. And when we take time for relationship with others and with God, we are doing what is needful.
We are told that when we serve the least among us we are serving Jesus himself. St. Paul-Reformation has long focused on justice making in the world. We’ve got some things down in the realm of acting on behalf of our neighbor.
What are the ways we sit at the feet of Jesus? When we leave space to listen and to learn, we pay attention to Jesus and open ourselves to be changed. When we worship, we hear the Word of God and come to the table Jesus prepares with the simple things of bread and wine. When we are silent in community, we listen to the presence of God among us.
What you are attentive to says a lot about what you worship. This story of Martha and Mary is an invitation. It’s an invitation to sit at the feet of Jesus, to let go of our busyness, to release our anxieties. Attentiveness to Jesus lets us enter a relationship in which we can glimpse the extraordinary in the mundane. Attentiveness to Jesus opens us to experience the holiness present in each moment.
When Jesus told Martha there is need of only one thing, perhaps that one thing was to serve bread instead of an elaborate meal. Jesus wants to be in relationship with us. We are offered a relationship so intimate that we receive Jesus in our very selves. Jesus loves each of us just as we are. God loves you so much that each of you carry Christ within you.
The God of the universe is attentive to us when we sit at God’s feet in prayer. What matters most is not so much what you are doing, but that you are attentive to God’s presence and purpose in each experience. When we glimpse that, we are sitting at the feet of Jesus, who points us to God. Amen.
Seventh Sunday after Pentecost Lectionary 15; Proper 10; Series C
July 11, 2010 St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran, St. Paul
Keith Olstad
The texts:
The first lesson: Deuteronomy 30:9-14 NRSV
Psalm 25:1-10 NRSV
The second lesson: Colossians 1:1-14 NRSV
The Gospel: Luke 10:25-37 NRSV
The Children’s lesson:
Good morning. How good to see you again. I’m so glad that you’re here.
In a few minutes I’m going to read the gospel lesson in which Jesus tells a story that has come to be known as the parable of the Good Samaritan. Jesus considers it a very important story for us when we wonder who are neighbor is, and how we should respond to people in need.
So this morning, I want to tell you a version of the Good Samaritan story in terms of something that has happened in our day, not two thousand years ago, and happened to someone in our midst.
Some of you have met Patricia Mokoena and her son, Thabiso. Patricia has lived through an experience quite a bit like the experience of the man who is helped by the Good Samaritan. I want you to move with me as I tell you about the story.
Patricia, where were you born and grow up? In Zimbabwe. And where were you living two years ago with your husband? In South Africa. A mob of angry South Africans attacked your community of immigrant workers and killed your brother-in-law and almost killed you and your husband, including your unborn baby.
Skipping way ahead, you escaped and in airport in El Salvador—like the victim lying next to the road in the parable—you had your baby, Thabiso.
Again skipping ahead, you met members of our church, including Pastor Anita, at the bishop’s compound in El Salvador, and eventually tried to take you baby in the United States or Canada. But like the victim in the parable, the coyote who took you across the US border abandoned you, and when you were picked up by the border patrol, a judge couldn’t take time to confirm that you had experienced such violence in South Africa and denied your petition for asylum.
It was then that Pastor Anita and others from our congregation, like the Samaritan in the parable, responded to your situation, helped you get a reversal of the judge’s rejection of your petition for asylum, and brought you here to Minnesota, where you and Thabiso have been living with Pastor Anita and Janelle for over a year now, and where you have been working both to obtain your asylum and arrange for the immigration of your husband, who is still in South Africa.
Thank you, Patricia, for letting us know your story and participate in your life. Your very hard and dangerous experience helps us to know that the parable of the Good Samaritan is as important today as it has ever been.
The sermon:
Friends, grace to you and peace from God, our Creator, and from our loving Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Pastor Anita and I, along with a good many of you, spent much of the past several days at “Let Justice Roll,” the Lutherans Concerned conference. With orderly euphoria, we celebrated the decision for ELCA policy change made last August. We delighted that at the large number of first-timers participating in the conference, and at the large overall registration. The high-energy participation confirmed that Lutherans committed to LGBT justice did not go to sleep after last August’s church wide assembly. In fact, the movement has a new surge of energy, a renewed passion for a more inclusive justice in the church and God’s world. In the context of that bright passion for God’s justice, I read this morning’s texts.
“…We have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God’s will…,” writes Paul in his letter to the Christians at Colossae, “so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord,…”1 Paul’s phrase is tricky to translate from the original Greek. What we have here translated: “lead lives worthy of the Lord” is expressed in other translations as “live a manner of life worthy of the Lord”2 or “are able to live as the Lord wants.”3 The Greek verb, “peripateo,” should be literally translated as: “to walk together with, to walk in union with, or live together with.” This is what Paul wants to talk over with us: how can Christians best live walking in union with—hand in hand with—Christ.
Jesus addresses the issue directly in today’s gospel lesson: “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,…soul,…strength, and…mind; and your neighbor as yourself.”4 Jesus then illustrates his meaning with the parable of the Good Samaritan, an inspiring example of mercy and justice.
As though cued from the parable, the “Let Justice Roll” assembly pressed over and over for a more inclusive understanding of justice. In language that most Lutherans never hear in church, one speaker proposed that heterosexuality has become an oppressively dominant dogma about how everyone should be in orientation and in practice. Rather than being simply one of the ways God makes some people, it has become a violently enforced mould into which everyone should fit. We need to challenge that oppression. In another session we talked about what it might mean to allow that God has in some sense created everyone to be queer. That means: not just a bit different—but truly distinctive, individual and unique. It means together we seek ways to free people to be who God created each to be.
This is pretty radical stuff. It needs a lot more conversation than any sermon can offer. Like the Good Samaritan parable in its day, these ideas challenge categories we too glibly use for each other. They invite us into deep and probing conversation about the justice God seeks for each of God’s people.
For Jews in Jesus’ day, the Good Samaritan parable was deeply offensive: claiming a lowly Samaritan could teach Jews about the broad embrace of God’s mercy and justice. So how does it sound to us in our day? In today’s society, where racial profiling, sexual abuse, and even simple assault and robbery are altogether too real, it can be just plain dangerous to welcome and help just anyone. I cannot responsibly tell kids to step forward and talk to people they don’t know. I cannot not counsel vulnerable older adults to invite strangers into their homes. Yet somehow, in some concrete way, this timeless story challenges us about what it means for us to walk with Christ.
A number of years ago, I visited a remote Mexican evangelical mission among Mazahua Indians. I was out watching birds at one point when I encountered three mission workers. They were instantly intrigued by my binoculars, so I offered them a look. They literally jumped with surprise when—looking through those binoculars—a tiny bird in the distance suddenly loomed large in their eyes. They laughed and teased each other as they passed the binoculars back and forth. In their delight, I felt a certain bond develop between us.
Then they asked how much the binoculars cost. “Oh,” I said unthinkingly,
“a couple hundred dollars.” Their faces fell, and quickly they handed the binoculars back. Only then the implication struck me. For me the price of those binoculars had been a stretch, but I use them a lot and take care of them. For many Mazahua Indians, that amount of money was almost a year’s earnings. To spend a couple hundred dollars to see birds up close would be worse than sinful: it would be a family disaster. The beauty of the shared moment collapsed into an abyss between us.
You see, those Mexican Christians knew the words we heard this morning: “The Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous…YAHWEH will…take delight in prospering you,…”5 Those native Mexican Christians knew my prosperity was not theirs. They knew that what little they could make would not sell for much. They knew their bodies were malnourished; and their children were under-educated. Their cattle were tired and gaunt. Even their ground was dry and lifeless.
Nonetheless, for these folks, the commandments were not so difficult to follow. They understood Moses’ lines in our first lesson: “this commandment that I am commanding you today is not too hard for you,…the word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.”6 These Mazahua people knew the word of the Lord intimately, and they sought to do it in their lives daily. But prosperity was a long way off. Prosperity as I know it seemed to them as far off as heaven, or at least beyond the Rio Grande.
Throughout “Let Justice Roll,” keynote speakers and workshop leaders pressed that what LC/NA has learned in the previous decade now inspire us to work now in other arenas of life that so desperately need passionate, effective work for justice in all forms. Sexual justice informs gender justice, immigration justice and racial justice, economic justice and more. Effectively addressing our needs as LGBT persons and allies equips us to address the circumstances of others, if we have faith and are willing to risk.
The day after my encounter with those Mazahua mission workers, I took a walk with another mission worker, Efraím. I told him how badly I felt about the incident with my binoculars. I told him how distressed I was by the differences in our economies, and that my wealth was based in part on his country being kept so poor. I bemoaned the injustice of the whole situation.
Efraím smiled knowingly. The previous evening, he said, the mission workers had talked among themselves about the experience with the binoculars and me. They talked about how wonderful it would be to have things like that. But then they talked about how people who have lots of things seem to lose sight of important things in life. Wealthy, prosperous people seem to get caught up in protecting what they have and risk little. They share only a portion of what they have. Wealthy people, they realized, have a hard time being good Samaritans.
“We have very little,” said Efraím, “Often we do not have enough food, but what we have, we share. We believe that this is how Jesus wants us to live.” Efraím was not romanticizing a difficult situation. He was confessing his faith. For him, life was hard. Prosperity in things was something people experienced in another part of the world. But for him, faith had less to do with personal belongings than it did with his neighbor’s well-being.
In that Mazahua mission, the parable of the Good Samaritan was a way of living, not a wonderful story nor a rule. The parable was a reflection of what people did daily. It was a way to walk with the Lord, to “peripateo” with Jesus and with God’s people. It meant responding to people’s needs as they are encountered. It meant valuing a person’s life more than belongings. It even meant reaching out to a gringo in spite of his insensitive, clumsy ways.
This past year, as a result of decades of organizing and risk taking, graceful engagement and tireless work, major policy changes have occurred in the ELCA, inviting changes in other churches and in society. While the policy has changed, there is still so very much to do before something approaching justice for LGBT people is accomplished in our church, let alone the world.
But we have learned something about what is possible through faithful work. We have experienced a taste of God’s promise to “prosper” that work. Now, as we strategize to accomplish the justice that the policy change offers, as we contemplate other arenas for our justice work, we pause to come to a simple table of bread and wine, and know that here, Jesus, our Christ, offers each of us his hand. At this table, the hand of Christ extends to each of us—to each and every one of us, as we are and as we are becoming, as it has so many times before. Christ meets us here to encourage and nurture us, each of us, and then to walk with us, to accompany us together, to prosper our faithful work. So come to the table, be blessed for the gift that God has made of you, for the sake of a full justice for all in God’s whole world.
I am here this morning to share with you the word of God about how we do mission in Nigeria and how you also can do mission in African way in America. Let me begin by saying that if you are a Christian, you are a missionary.
Who is a Christian? A Christian is someone who has the mark of cross on his forehead and chest, baptized in the name of the Father Son and the Holy Spirit, and a follower of Jesus that bears his name (Acts 11:26)
A follower of Jesus then is to carry on the great commission in Matthew 28. This is what interests Christ the most. (A dying African father shares with his children the most important thing in his heart and what he thinks is the most important LAST to share before his death. Jesus shares with his disciples what he thinks is the most important before been taken up to heaven).
He says, until all will hear the gospel, the end will not come. If we don’t rise to the task, then Christ will continue to tarry. We might think that all have heard the gospel; this is not true (Missionary Crusaders Ministries shared with us this story. A missionary went to a riverine area to preach. While he was been paddled to his supposed guest house, he asked the boy that was paddling him whether he knew Jesus. He said to him I am a missionary and have come to preach. The boy thought for a while and said to the missionary that there is no one called Jesus in their village. If he wants to meet Jesus, then he should probably check the next village, maybe he lives in the next village. This gives the missionary an idea that the people have not heard of Jesus).
We need not just to make people believe in something, we need to make people believe in Jesus, not just to know the name of Jesus, but to believe in him, this is because he is the way, the truth and the life, no one goes to the Father except through him (John 14:6).
Christ has called us to witness for him. He says “Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38).
He has never promised that the task was going to be an easy one. He said to his disciples if they hated me they will also hate you. He said in this text that I am sending you like sheep among wolfs. What a task!! A Christian after hearing the message of Jesus wants to share the good news out of excitement, his first mission was to tell a young lady how God loved her and sent Jesus for her sake, she hit him on the nose with her fist and he bled badly, that was his first mission trip, but he went on still because he felt like Paul “Woe unto me if I do not preach the gospel (1 Cor. 9:16).
Some have heard the opportunity but have thrown them down. Chorazin and Bethsaida V12-15. Why should someone hear the gospel twice when someone has not heard even once? That is why for someone like me, evangelistic mission is a drug!! I am addicted to it. I work with a group of youth call “Go…” Evangelical Team. Our task is to preach and we do that passionately.
The Lutheran Church of Christ in Nigeria and many sub groups in the church like the women fellowship called Zumuntan Mata, the youth fellowship, gospel singers and others engage in week-long missions, associated with many dangers. The youth fellowship lost two of its members during their trip to Serti in Taraba Mission field in 2002. After hard trek for more than five hours with loads of cloths and things to donate to people in their mission field, they finally found a river to cross before reaching their mission field; they also thought it will be refreshing as they wait for others that are still behind. During the refreshing moment, two of the members of the fellowship drown and so lost their lives.
LCCN has Fulani centre which is a school that shelters Muslim converts to Christianity because their family members will seek to kill them because according to them, they betrayed Allah and so they don’t deserve to live.
Back to the text.
Seventy, some gospel writers have seventy two and interpreters say that each of the twelve disciples won six other disciples and that makes it seventy two. This is how mission started with Christ: 1>12>72>120>3120>Judea>Samaria>rest of the world and we are to take it on. It is like a relay, if the baton falls in our time, what a shame!
The harvest is plenty, even at the time of Jesus, what more of now? When Jesus talks of harvest he meant the task of preaching the good news. He said in John 4 the fields are white and ready for harvest, in Matthew, he saw people as sheep without shepherd and made similar comment-The laborers are few.
What needs to be done?
Ask-pray to the Lord of the harvest.
That he might SEND laborers, someone has to actually go. (How can they hear unless they are sent…?).
Give for the support of mission work, the disciples were to go without money, cloths and food. It is assumed that someone will provide for the need of the mission. Unto every mission, there is a provision for it.
He has never promised that it was going to be an easy task. They may/may not listen to you.
Cure the sick and say the kingdom of God has come near you.
They returned with joy as of pride “the demons bow to us…” Yes you feel fulfilled after success in evangelistic mission trip. When I went home at Christmas I organized 4 evangelistic outreaches and all was a success and I really felt like the disciples because people’s lives were touched with the word of God. An elderly woman asked us not to leave their village again because according to her, she felt the presence of God in her life the days we were there.
Christ says he saw Satan fall, he is the one who has given them the power and nothing will hurt them, thus returning to the theme of care and nurture of God to us in Isaiah and Psalms.
Above all rejoice because your names are written in heaven. As we rejoice that our labor is yielding results, as we rejoice that demons are bowing to us, as we rejoice that our names are in heaven, we should know that there are others who do not have their names written yet, it is our responsibility to preach Christ to them so they get to believe in him and have their names in the book of life.
Reading: An adaptation of 1 Corinthians 12 & 13 by David Weiss
Reader 1: Now, concerning the good spiritual gifts of sexuality, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed.
Reader 2: There are varieties of sexual gifts but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of loving, but the same Divine Lover;
Reader 3: and there are varieties of creating, but it is the same Joyful Creator who inspires them all in every one.
Congregation:All are inspired to love by one and the same Spirit, who bestows such gifts according to Wisdom and Mystery.
Reader 1: For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with the community of God’s children.
Reader 2: For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—lesbian and straight, gay and bisexual, transgendered and celibate—and all were bathed in the joy and grace of one Spirit.
Reader 3: For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If one should say, “Because I am not straight, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make her or him less a part of the body.
Congregation:But as it is, God has arranged the orientations in the body, each one of them, as Divine Wisdom saw fit.
Reader 1: The parts of the body which seem less important are indeed indispensable, and it is those parts of the body which are most vulnerable that we invest with the greatest care, care which our less vulnerable parts may not require.
Reader 2: For God has so composed the body that we should offer the greatest consideration to those members most exposed to peril, that there should be neither discord nor damage within the body, but that the members might mutually care for one another.
Congregation:If one member is marginalized, let all lament together; if one member is fulfilled, let all rejoice.
Reader 3: Now you are altogether the body of God’s presence in the world, and each one of you individually is a member of it. Are all gay? Are all lesbian? Are all straight? Are all celibate? Are all bisexual? Are all transgendered? Of course not!
Reader 1: But desire earnestly to discern the gift that is yours.
Reader 2: And I will show you a still more excellent way, one which unites all these gifts unto the glory of God.
Reader 3: If I can woo with the sweetness of my words, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I draw all persons unto me, but have not love, I am nothing. If I have not love, I offer nothing and gain nothing for myself.
Congregation:Love is patient and kind; it cares for the needs and celebrates the joys of the other in good cheer.
Reader 1: Love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude, irritable or resentful. Love does not insist on its own way, but revels in the intricate mysteries that make the other unique.
Reader 2: Love takes its deepest joy in knowing the other as an irreplaceable and unmistakable child of God. It does not rejoice at wrong, even when wrong benefits the self. It rejoices in the right, in the consummation of mutual care between any of God’s creatures.
Congregation:Love bears all things—with transforming perseverance. Love believes all things—with prophetic passion. Love hopes all things—confident in God’s good care. Love endures all things—firm in solidarity when change does not come soon.
Reader 3: Love never ends; as for physical beauty, it will fade with years yet to live; as for wit, it will dim with age; as for confidence, it will falter with infirmity.
Reader 1: For our beauty and our wit and our confidence are all incomplete in this life; but when God’s final Wisdom holds sway such incompleteness will give way to that which is Complete.
Reader 2: When I was a youth I spoke and thought and reasoned like a youth—and it was well with me. But when I grew up I saw all things quite differently, and I perceived how incomplete were my youthful ways.
Reader 3: For now, our joy, however rich, is still only a dim reflection of what it shall be like when we see our beloved face to face. Now we know those to whom we pledge our deepest fidelity—even in our best moments we know them only in part; then, by the astonishing grace of God we shall know them fully, even as we find ourselves fully and graciously known.
Congregation:So the varieties of gifts run as wide as the Spirit’s whimsy, but uniting each particular gift with its beloved, and with the community, and with God, is this singular gift: love.
The Gospel: Luke 9:51-62 NRSV
The children’s lesson
Good morning! I’m so glad you are here. I always look forward to this time with you.
This morning we talk about ways in which people are unique and distinctive from each other and yet, even though different, still need to know that we are meant to live together and to love each other. That is true in every part of our lives, and today we look at how it is true about how we are attracted to each other.
Some men are attracted to women and some women are attracted to men. For many years now, those people have been called, “straight.” And there are also women who are attracted to women, and they have often been called, “lesbian.” And there are also men who are attracted to men, and they have often been called, “gay.” And so on and so on.
I have a good friend named Ray Makeever who is a song writer and poet. A few years ago he confessed to a big audience at one of his concerts that he hated the label: “straight.” It sounds so boring, he said, so rigid and so brittle. So he decided that he never again wanted anyone to say that he was straight. Instead, he wanted to create a new category for himself. He wanted to be called: “glad.”
Then, when someone came up to him and said, “Hi, I’m lesbian” or “I’m gay,” Ray could say, “Cool, I’m glad!”
That’s how I suspect God would like us to treat each other: to be interested in how other people see and know themselves, and then to be glad about what God is doing in them.
The sermon:
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God, our Creator, and from our loving Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
“Go,” says Jesus in our gospel reading, “and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
“Son,” my mother would say to me as a child, “never be proud.” But she, like so many of those around me in those years, operated in a small world where people were very much alike, with an emphasis on sameness. We were all supposed to be alike: white, middle class, nice and polite—oh, and straight. The only allowable way to be different, it seemed—the only way to be distinctive—was to be exceptionally white, middle class, nice and polite—and straight. You know: be the same as everyone else, just a little bit better at it!
I recall that upbringing when I hear the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians say: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”
David Weiss, paraphrasing Paul, puts it this way: “When I was a youth I spoke and thought and reasoned like a youth…But when I grew up I saw all things quite differently, and I perceived how incomplete were my youthful ways.”
How incomplete were my youthful ways…
“Go,” says Jesus, “and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
In his adaptation of Paul’s message to the Corinthians, David begins as Paul did: “Now, concerning the good spiritual gifts of sexuality, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. There are varieties of sexual gifts but the same Spirit;…and there are varieties of creating, but…the same Joyful Creator…inspires them all in everyone.”
Some of you know that I am an avid birder, and that I will be out looking for and listening to birds whenever I can. As I develop my skills for watching and listening, I get perplexed by another lie I learned early in life. You see, I was taught not only that there sparrows and eagles, ducks and hummingbirds, but that every mallard is like every other mallard, and that every cardinal is like every other cardinal.
Well, a couple of weeks ago I sat on cliffs in Alaska, looking at thousands of nesting murres and auklets, gulls and cormorants. Eight species were nesting on those cliffs. But that, too, is quite misleading, because every single bird, every individual within each species, was different from the others. Each of them had distinctive plumage, distinctive flight patterns, distinctive calls. And each and every one of them was simply beautiful!
In whatever way an artist’s work expresses something about the artist her or himself, those wild and lively cliffs full of birds suggest that the one who created that whole environment is one who delights in diversity and distinctiveness. In the word’s of the Apostle Paul, so well reflected in David’s adaptation: “…there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and…varieties…and varieties…[and varieties], but it is the same God who activates all of them…”
I have struggled over the years with this conviction. It was once a big step for me to move beyond that childhood lie that everyone is straight. But it was an even bigger step to affirm that not everyone is gay or straight. Even that two dimensional world—gay or straight—is a lie that denies what God creates. We here at St. Paul-Ref in ourown language too often project that two dimensional world. On the other hand, if we’re paying any attention, we know that even the categories of gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender and even queer are still partial and inadequate. It doesn’t work to force all birds into species categories—or insects or flowers—and it certainly doesn’t work to jam all people into a few categories. But don’t we do it all the time!
“Go,” says Jesus, “and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Rather than using nature’s diversity, the Apostle Paul made his next point using the human body as his metaphor. We heard it this morning like this: “…just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with the community of God’s children.”
Not only are we all distinctive, but we all belong to each other, and are even part of each other. Even in our diversity—which is myriad and manifold—we are interconnected and interdependent, just as is every part of every one of our bodies. God creates us not only to be distinctive, but also to be interrelated, inter-reliant, each a part of the whole body of Christ.
This point Pastor Anita and colleagues made in responding this week to the outing of Pastor Tom Brock. For years, many of us grieved over the abuse Brock heaped on people who claim and are proud of their God-given sexuality, and frankly we questioned his sexual orientation. But even his years of abusiveness did not justify the means used to “out” him.
Lavender, Minnesota’s LGBT magazine, this past week published an article “outing” Brock for his attraction to men. But the article is based on an investigative reporter going undercover to a confidential twelve-step group and then publishing what he learned there without permission. Pastor Anita wrote a letter, signed by almost two dozen colleagues and published in yesterday’s StarTribune, decrying that treatment of Brock and of confidential counseling programs.
Claiming the interdependence of all members of the body and paraphrasing Paul, this morning’s text says: “If one should say, ‘Because I am not straight, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make her or him less a part of the body.” For us today—and especially in the face of Brock’s vitriolic preaching—this is a central affirmation: being and actively living as one who is not “straight” does not and cannot disqualify one from the body of Christ. But in the same way—in the sameway—if someone like Brock says, “because there are GLBT people in the body, I am not part of the body,” that does not make him any less a part of the body. For that reason—and because we want all confidential environments to be respected for the health of the whole community—we criticized the means used to out Pastor Brock.
“Go,” says Jesus, “and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Pay close attention, then, to how Paul moves from insisting that God has created us each to be unique and uniquely gifted, and then talks about our also each being inextricably woven into a community, and then moves to talking about the crucial necessity of love. We hear in our lesson this morning, closely following Paul’s words: “Love takes its deepest joy in knowing the other as an irreplaceable and unmistakable child of God…It rejoices in the…mutual care between any of God’s creatures.”
It is not enough that we are each finely and distinctively made. It is not even enough that we are each made to be part of a community, of a body interdependent and holy. We must also recognize the powerful force of our loving each in our distinctiveness, in our relatedness, in our Godliness.
As the Apostle Paul claims in several passages,
this is where our pride rightly belongs: that each of us—gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, queer and straight—is God-made and holy; that each of us belongs to God’s holy body, this community that we call church where God wants us welcomed and affirmed; and that as gifted people of the community of Christ, we are empowered to be loving, and gracious, and utterly full of life! Of that we ought to be fully and completely proud!
“Go,” says Jesus, “and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Anita C. Hill, Co-Pastor of St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church
Clothed with Christ
Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 8:26-39
Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I’m really glad to be standing here in a city this morning. I imagine it’s not a good day to be a preaching to farmers whose livelihood depends on selling hogs in the market, not with this reading about the death of a whole herd of pigs.
Truth be told, I have a bigger problem in this text: I’m just not comfortable talking about demons. We just don’t talk much about the work of Satan and his minions anymore. I don’t know what these invading demons of this biblical story are. Other than watching the old movie called “The Exorcist,” I’ve haven’t experienced them, and I hope no one in this room ever will. Furthermore, I’m not comfortable on this Father’s Day, talking about this person , the Gerasene demoniac, as anything other than a man who is a troubled human being. This man could be a father, a man who is troubled, a man having difficulties. He was a man his community had no idea what to do with. So they chained him in the cemetery among the tombs. It was a lonely place. Pretty soon, he’d break loose, and then the whole problem would start all over again.
Perhaps we need to contrast this story about demons with it’s exact opposite: the verse in Galatians that talks about being clothed with Christ. Because in our Gospel lesson, Jesus finds a man who is not clothed at all. A man who is so overtaken by fear and difficulty that he sits in his nakedness as an expression of his brokenness in mind, body and spirit.
One of the surprising things about the story is how calm Jesus remains in the face of this man who bows before him crying out loudly. Jesus works with the man and asks his name. We find out the man is so lost he no longer has a recognizable name. He or they respond that their name is Legion. Legion means a whole lot of them.
This week when our Wednesday Bible Matters group met, I asked what it means to clothe yourself with Christ? One person said: “It means you wear love all over.” Another suggested that when you are clothed with Christ, “You embrace the world as it is, and are not put off by anything.” Another said, “Coming at it from a place of depression and ill health in my life, I’ve thought about putting on the robe of righteousness as putting on Christ. And when I put on that robe, I’m healed.”
So, borrowing a phrase from a blog, what I want this sermon to be about is naming the demons and reclaiming the Godly in us. It’s about clothing ourselves with Christ to protect us from the evil forces that we know are present in the world and inside us. It’s about taking on the armor of Christ to do spiritual warfare against the powers and principalities that we have to admit are strong enemies of goodness, love and justice.
There are times when we feel haunted by things we’ve not done or something we’ve done for which we need forgiveness. There are things that take our energy and wreck our relationships like addiction to drugs or alcohol, addiction to work, addiction to television, to computer games, Facebook, e-mail, food, or you name your own. There are the demons that have hold of our culture, demons of greed, racism, war, prejudice and discrimination. There are addictions to oil, to power, to a myriad of false idols that stand in the way of God. There are psychological demons of low self esteem, of a quest for always being right, of a lack of feeling loved, the feeling of being abandoned. These are monkeys on our backs that could well be called demons today.
I’m not at all sure what to make of the part of this story that tells us about the pigs rushing down the steep embankment to drown in the water. But I’m moved by the man who’s tormented but ends up clean and clothed and sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus, listening and learning. He is no longer tormented. It doesn’t surprise me in the least that the people there, when they found out about what Jesus had done, were afraid and concerned.
Jesus’ answer to him is this: He says, go back to your home and declare how much God has done for you. And the next line it says the man went away, proclaiming how much Jesus had done for him. It’s a curious thing that in the Gospel of Luke the ones who recognize Jesus as the Son of God are not human beings; they’re spirits, good and bad. And it is this man, whose demons have been dealt with, who makes the connection that in order to tell what God has done, he has to proclaim the good news about what Jesus has done.
So there’s a question that remains for us. What are the things in our lives that are demonizing us, that keep us from our full potential as children of God? What are the things that are blocking our ability to wear the love of God, and to experience it fully in our relationships and in our psyches?
An offshoot of this troubling question in this text is whether the demons are as manageable as this story would suggest. Can we get rid of them? Some of our psychological demons are so entrenched in our behavior – how can we ever have hope and faith that Jesus can really send them out of our lives? Can we wake up one morning and be healed, let go of our nagging self-doubts, our selfish desires, our vulnerabilities and fears, our raw wounds that don’t seem to heal?
Can we have enough faith to put on the clothes of Christ in the ways that will heal us of these difficulties? Can the prayer shawls that folks here croquet and knit really help us to find healing and comfort in the midst of pain? Can putting on the clothes of Christ really mean that we can be victorious in the battle with our troubles? Can we let go of our suffering?
Jesus’ said to his disciples that they would do greater things than he did, and, of course, with Jesus’ spirit, they did do incredible deeds of love and compassion. We are given the hope in this story that incredible things can happen with the power and love of Jesus. When we wrap ourselves in the spiritual clothes of Jesus Christ, we can be agents of warding off evil in the world, which is our incredible vocation as Christians. One theologian said it something like this; “All it takes for evil to exist is for good people to do nothing.” We can sit on our duff and let the demons run the world, or we can do what we can to send them packing. Where they go, nobody knows, and when they will return, no one can tell, but we can do our best to be on guard and be ready, with the clothes of Jesus, to face them when they return again.
It may not feel like we can throw our demons into the garbage can and watch them leave our lives like watching the garbage taken away every week in the garbage truck. It may not often feel like we are victorious against our individual or societal demons. It may seem too simplistic for me to stand up here and say, “All you have to do is trust in Jesus and wrap yourself in his clothing and everything will be fine. Your demons will just disappear.” But I do know this, with Jesus’ spirit, you have more power in your spiritual struggle than you realize, and with Christ’s power, you can conquer many problems that plague you and that plague our world. In the struggles of life, God is with you as the clothes of Christ. Amen.
Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Have you ever been at a party when someone showed up uninvited? An unwanted guest? The woman who came into Simon’s house was one of those people. She risks being ostracized and humiliated, even being thrown out. She’s walked into a banquet room filled with men and begins to cry as she stands behind Jesus.
We won’t ever know this woman’s history, but I’ve got to think that she had already experienced the grace that Jesus brings, the deep grace of being recognized and acknowledged as a child of God. Whatever the reason, we can assume this woman felt such a close connection to Jesus that she came into Simon’s house uninvited. She tasted grace and walked the gauntlet to reach that grace again. This woman showed up because she couldn’t stop herself.
Crying, she bathed Jesus’ feet with her tears. She dried his feet with his hair. Simon was sure he knew what kind of woman this was. He’d judged her from the time she arrived. And he judged Jesus for seemingly not knowing, or at least not responding in the way Simon expected.
This is a woman whose sin has been set apart, whose sin has been sexualized. No matter that the same Greek word for sin is used 45 other times in reference to men. Only one reference to a woman and her sin has become synonymous with “woman of ill repute,” “woman of the streets,” or simply “woman.”
The story might as well have said: She was one of “those people.” As I thought about this reading and its focus hospitality and the grace of forgiveness, I wondered if this was a sermon in which to name the many ways that people have been labeled. On this day of commemoration of Juneteenth, I think especially of any who are descended from slaves. I think of women in a world that seems made for men. Of people of color in a world dominated by white people. Of GLBT people. Of differently-abled people. Of poor people. People living with mental illness. Immigrant people. Anyone not considered “majority,” whatever that is. Any who have felt the pain of being thought of as “those people.”
I want to read excerpts from a poem this morning. It’s a poem written by Julia Dinsmore, a local woman. I heard her give it years ago on an open microphone night at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.
My Name is not “Those People” by Julia Dinsmore
My name is not “Those People.”
I am a loving woman, a mother in pain,
giving birth to the future,
where my babies have the same chance to thrive as anyone.
My name is not “Inadequate.”
I did not make my husband leave – he chose to,
and chooses not to pay child support.
Truth is though; there isn’t a job base for all fathers to support their families.
While society turns its head, my children pay the price.
My name is not “Problem Case to Be Managed.”
I am a capable human being and citizen, not a client.
My name is not “Lazy, Dependent Welfare Mother.”
If the unwaged work of parenting, homemaking and community building was factored into the Gross National Product, my work would have untold value.
My name is not “Ignorant, Dumb or Uneducated.”
I live with an income of $621 with $169 in food stamps.
Rent is $585… That leaves $36 a month to live on. I am such a genius at surviving that I could balance the state budget in an hour.
Never mind that there is a lack of living-wage jobs. Never mind that it is impossible to be the sole emotional, social and economic support to a family.
My name is not “Lay Down and Die Quietly.”
My love is powerful and my urge to keep my children alive will never stop. All children need homes and people who love them. They need safety and the chance to be the people they were born to be.
The wind will stop before I let my children become a statistic.
Before you give in to the urge to blame me,
the blame that lets us go blind and unknowing into the isolation that disconnects us,
Take another look. Don’t go away.
For I am not the problem, but the solution.
And. . .I am not “those people.”
And we are not “those people” this morning, either, no matter what our circumstances. No matter if we see ourselves in the story as the woman or as Simon or some other guest who judges another. We are not the problem, but the solution.
Julia Dinsmore has a book published by Augsburg Books the printing house associated with the ELCA. She’s become a part of the movement begun by Bishop Rogness and other church leaders to bring an end to poverty in Minnesota by 2020. Her book provides a first person look at poverty and is titled: My Name is Child of God…Not “Those People.”
She writes in a poetry, song infused, wild and witty way about what it’s been like to get to know Lutherans, whom she says she was afraid of because we can be so still and not show any emotions whatsoever. If you get the chance, she’s worth hearing in person.
The message I want to leave you with is the message of grace that Jesus delivered. No, not just delivered. It’s the message Jesus embodied then and embodies now. It’s the message that you are a child of God. Beloved of God. You are of infinite worth in the eyes of God no matter what society may think of you.
It’s a message of grace and forgiveness. God loves and forgives. God invites us to hospitality and compassion. God is not fond of the judgments and categories we use to box each other in. Jesus invites us to faith because of grace and forgiveness.
We have the opportunity to welcome one another with the embrace of promise. The promise of lives in which absolution becomes self-forgiveness even for the things we think no one will forgive.
Dinsmore has been learning about the deep connections to grace in Lutheran faith. She writes of grace.
Grace is “powerful and restorative. . .I like it very much. . .and would like to keep company with it.
I enjoy being in the presence, or near the proximity of grace.
Grace makes me feel good and deeply satisfied. . . .There has been so much new grace on the loose in the realms of me.
Grace is gentle. . .came on tippy toes. . .and caught me by surprise.”
Grace caught the woman whose tears washed Jesus feet. Grace caught her by surprise. Grace comes from being received. It comes by way of forgiveness. May grace catch you, too. May grace come in the conversations you have as you greet each other this morning. May grace come in the faces of people you meet in elevators or pass on the street. May grace come in surprising places – like your own mirror in the morning. You’ll see there a Child of God. Your name is grace. Amen.
Sharon Neufer Emswiler, The Ongoing Journey: Women and the Bible.Women’s Division, United Methodist Church, 1977, page 87.
Julia K. Dinsmore, My Name is Child of God…Not “Those People” – A first person look at poverty. Augsburg Books, 2007, pages 20-21.
Good morning! I’m so glad you are here. I always look forward to this time with you.
Look up at the ceiling. Do you see that light that is out. I think we should change it, don’t you? How can we do that? Can you reach it? May I could toss you up in the air and you could just change it quickly in mid-air! Or should we get a ladder? Will you climb up a ladder that long, with nothing to brace it against? Do you think you might be just a little bit afraid to be up there on a thin, wiggly ladder?
Actually, we have some people who go up there to change the lights. I think that’s really impressive, don’t you. I couldn’t do it. Pastor Anita used to do it, but I’m not sure that even she still could do it. But they do it by crawling through a tiny little door way up in the top floor, and then they crawl on their tummies all the way to where the lights are, and then they have to reach in to unscrew the old bulbs and screw in the new ones, with hardly any space to work in and without dropping anything. I’d be scared still about being up there, and I’m REALLY impressed by anyone who does!
Those two feelings, being afraid and feeling awe, are sometimes two sides of the same thing. I feel in awe of anyone who can crawl through the tiny spaces to get to those lights, and I would be really afraid if I had to do it.
In our lessons today, we’re going to hear about some miracles. When people experience miracles, we’re going to hear that that feel both of these things. They are going to be very afraid of what happens, and they are also going to feel great awe, and that will make them want to praise and thank God.
So listen for these things, and know that sometimes to be afraid can teach us what can impress us—give us awe—and show us what to appreciate, so that we can thank and praise God.
The sermon:
Dear friends, grace to you and peace from God, our Creator, and from our loving Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our first lesson tells us that “the son of…the mistress of the house became ill;” so severely “that there was no breath left in him.”
A common conviction in Biblical times was that things go bad because someone has been bad. Injury is a consequence of foolishness. Sickness is the result of guilt. Death is brought on by sin. The logic has a nice cadence to it. Whatever happens is someone’s fault, and if we can locate the fault quite precisely—especially if we can put the blame on someone else—then we can avoid being implicated or being vulnerable to the same result. Or so folks thought in ancient times.
That’s what happened with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. We cherish this ancient fable for explaining how things went wrong with the world. We explain sin in light of Adam’s temptation. The guy wanted God’s knowledge and power, and the snake said it was available in the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge. There you have it. He was the start of everything that’s gone wrong.
What doesn’t work in that ancient story—what doesn’t quite fit—is why an all powerful, loving and wise God would respond to so common and human a longing for wisdom and power by inflicting unspeakable suffering and tragedy on the whole human race. The fable of the Fall proposes, basically, that all bad things happen because originally one person did something bad. Frankly, when you get down to it, that proposal reflects badly on God.
Yet is also seems somewhat intuitive—sort of naturally right. After all, we do it all the time. When we experience bad things—things we have a hard time accepting—we want to figure out why they are happening. We want to have a reason for our suffering.
In this morning’s first lesson, a widow’s son dies, and this desperately grieving woman blames herself. Her first guess is that her son’s death has come about because of some unresolved sin she committed in the past. “You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance,” she wails. But taking responsibility all by one’s self is a tough thing to swallow. She quickly decides that can’t be the whole answer.
So her second guess is really familiar. Because blaming herself is too much for the woman to bear, she goes after someone else, and Elijah is an easy target. Let me explain. This morning’s text is actually the second half of a truly intriguing tale. Elijah has been fleeing from the henchmen of the wicked queen, Jezebel. God tells him to go to a poor gentile widow in the remote town of Zarephath. The widow is a single parent with only one meal left, but she shares what little she has with the prophet. To her amazement, by sharing what she has, she finds that she never runs out. So when we meet her today, though the widow of Zarephath has in her house a total stranger—a Jew and a foreigner—she also knows that something miraculous has been going on.
Nevertheless, the widow’s son dies. So she blames the stranger, the foreigner, the illegal immigrant. She blames Elijah. “What have you against me, O man of God?” she cries at him. “You have come to bring my sin to remembrance.” You, you did this. It’s your fault!
Frankly, I find her blaming Elijah totally typical. After all, even in that ancient fable about how sin began, Adam blamed Eve for making him eat the forbidden fruit, and Eve blamed the snake. And isn’t that our temptation too? It’s always someone else’s fault! Surely it is!
So it is in our first lesson. The widow begins by blaming herself. Then she blames Elijah. Then Elijah, in turn, blames God. Elijah cries out to our God, “O YAHWEH my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow…?”
Then comes the turn. Elijah prays to God to make things better. He prays that God let people live, that God restore thing to the way they truly should be. Elijah takes the dead boy from the widow’s bosom and carries him up into his own room, stretches out across the boy with his own live and breathing body, and prays to God, “O YAHWEH my God, let this child’s life come into him again.”
Isn’t that the way it should be. When a family learns that a son or daughter has been killed or wounded in Afghanistan or Iraq, wouldn’t they long to go back to the way things were before? When a child playing in a neighbor’s yard is terrorized by neighborhood bullies, wouldn’t her family ache to have her free of such trauma? When my wife and I almost lost our second son during the first hours after his birth, I would have given anything—anything at all—to have him survive.
And so would God! This morning, we come face to face with God’s desire that people and all creation be the way God wants things to be. God wants children to live, and families to thrive, and all that is broken and lost and dead to be restored. When we consider goals for our congregation’s ministry in the year ahead, perhaps these criteria are the most important measures of our faithfulness.
So, our lesson says, “YAHWEH listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came into him again, and he revived.” God’s interest is not in unpacking the events that led to the tragedy, or in pinpointing blame on culprits. Rather, YAHWEH restored the life of the widow’s son, and that poor Gentile widow was able to say that the word of the Lord is true.
In the same way, we find Jesus in our gospel lesson encountering a widow grieving the death of her son. Only in this account, there is no prior relationship between Jesus and the woman—no explanation for the poor boy’s death, no guilt and no blame. All we have is a clear statement about Jesus being moved with compassion for the poor widow’s loss, and his holy desire to put things right.
Both of these accounts are miracle stories, and miracles of the highest order. Both stories involve dead people being brought back to life. Not only are they stories about miracles, but about miracle being done for the least of the least important people of that day and age—for the undervalued children of even more worthless widows. But the point, I propose, is not whether these miracles can be explained or whether they are even truly miracles. Nor, in the end, is the point about who was affected by the miracles. Rather, I believe, these stories come together today to tell us something about God, and about God’s desire for our lives and for God’s whole world.
In our version of the psalm this morning, we repeat the psalmist’s words: “I cried to you, O YAHWEH, I pleaded with my Lord, saying, ‘What profit is there in my blood…? Will the dust praise you or declare your faithfulness?’ Hear, O YAHWEH, and have mercy upon me; O YAHWEH, be my helper.”
When God responds with life-giving help, the psalmist sings, “You have turned my wailing into dancing; you have…clothed me with joy. Therefore my heart sings to you without ceasing; O YAHWEH my God, I will give you thanks forever.”
So dedicated is God to making life good—to turning sadness into joy, to turning defeat into celebration—that God will confront even death and return the widows’ sons to life. The truth about God, to paraphrase the widow of Zarephath, is that God’s delight is in abundant living, in joyful praise, and in wholeness and health for even the least of God’s people.
That is God’s delight. It is not in casting aspersions, or in fixing blame, or disparaging those who make mistakes. Rather, God’s longing is that—like Elijah—we use the capacities of our own beings, that we share our own living and breathing, that we take our own responsibility for what can be done for life. God’s call to us and God’s eager longing is that we and all our neighbors live long and well in the fullness of God’s good creation.
Anita C. Hill, Co-Pastor, St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church
CHILDREN’S SERMON
Today is a special day in our church’s season. It is called Holy Trinity Sunday. Trinity means three. Sometimes we speak about God in three ways: God our Creator…Jesus Christ God’s Son…and God the Holy Spirit.
I want to teach you about one way we do this…by making the Sign of the Cross. Sometimes you see people making this sign during worship. Does anybody know what sign it is?
The sign of the cross was first made upon you when you were baptized. The Pastor poured water over you and made the sign of the cross over you in the name of the Holy Trinity.
Show them how to touch their forehead with the fingers of their right hand, then to touch their chest, then their left shoulder, their right, and their chest again with the words: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Or Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit.
Or my favorite: God above me, God inside me, God all around me.
When we hear these words during our worship service we can make the sign of the cross over ourselves as a way to remind ourselves that we belong to God.
In a little while, after we sing another song, we are all going to say an Affirmation of Faith together. At the end of it, we will say: Glory be to God—Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit—now and always.
Ask your folks to show you where that is so you can make the sign of the cross. They can show you when to make the sign of the cross again at the end of the service, too.
Let’s pray before you go to your seats: Dear God, we thank you for the sign of the cross you have given us to remember you by. Amen.
Festival of the Holy Trinity May 30, 2010
Anita C. Hill, Co-Pastor, St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church
Lady Wisdom on the Trinity
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31; John 16:12-15
Grace and peace to you from God –Mother, Christ, and Spirit. Amen
It’s Holy Trinity Sunday. There are many ways to name the relationship of the Trinity. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are used often. A poke at this more traditional side is to say it refers to Daddy, Laddie, and the Ghost! And a poke at the inclusive language side: Parent, Offspring, and Special Effects!
Luther Seminary Professor David Lose wonders if “doctrine dead? Dead in the sense of being a dead symbol – a symbol that no longer communicates” the meaning it seeks to bear? Lose also says: “Truth be told, no one really understands the Trinity.”
As Dorothy Sayers wrote a generation ago that to the average churchgoer, the mystery of the Holy Trinity means: “The Father is incomprehensible, the Son in incomprehensible, and the whole thing is incomprehensible.”
Some say Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Theologian Letty Russell conceives the Trinity as “Creator, Liberator, and Advocate who calls human beings into partnership with divine care for the world.” Hildegard of Bingen, a twelfth century mystic, spoke of the Trinity as “a brightness, a flashing forth, and a fire, and these three are one.”
For some people, using anything other than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit tears their universe in two; tears asunder the cloth hanging in the temple in such a way that their faith cannot bear it. For others, using multifaceted imagery for God is central to a faith which searches to see through the long tear in the temple cloth on Good Friday and into the promise of Easter. Inclusive language helps us find our place in God’s story as children of God.
In this season of Pentecost, launched last week by a festival service in which we heard the reading from Acts being simultaneously read in nine different languages, we heard ways in which each one heard in the language they needed to understand God’s word. It is true today that we sometimes can only understand concepts when different words are used, words our ears can hear, words our hearts can feel.
There is a longing among many for references to God that are not exclusively male. But more than responding to a longing, we can reference Biblical imagery such as God as Mother Eagle, as El Shaddai the breasted one, as the Rose of Sharon, as Mystery, as the woman who looked for the lost coins. There are many. The many Biblical images of God weave together the AGod out there@ and the AGod with us.@ It is important that there be many ways of talking about who God is.
Today we have a reading from Proverbs that uses feminine pronouns for Wisdom. The Hebrew word for Wisdom is a feminine word: Hochma, and also in Greek, the word Sophia is feminine. Lady Wisdom, Sophia, raises her voice. She takes her stand at the crossroads. She stands at the gates and cries out. She was there since before the beginning. She was beside God enjoying creation. She saw the heavens established, the sea contained, and the earth founded. This Wisdom Sophia, is a biblical figure reflecting the roles of all three persons of the Trinity. Sophia creates like a skilled worker alongside God in bringing all creation. Sophia liberates and graces human beings in various strands of Biblical writing. She is Spirit.
Sophia was there with God “before the beginning.” References to “the beginning” take us to the creation stories in Genesis and the opening words of the Gospel of John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus has been referred to as Jesus-Sophia, the incarnation of wisdom in the world. Most often, teaching about the feminine aspects of God have been suppressed.
Listen to our gospel lesson from John if we take seriously the word Spirit, which in Greek is the feminine word pneuma:
When the Spirit of truth comes, she will guide you into all the truth; for she will not speak on her own, but will speak whatever she hears, and she will declare to you the things that are to come. She will glorify me, because she will take what is mine and declare it to you.
Elizabeth Johnson, in her book, She Who Is, writes: Athe Holy Spirit is wisdom proceeding from wisdom.” She notes that even Augustine said: The Trinity should “be called love, and together one love, just as Father and Son and Holy Spirit are called wisdom, and all together not three but one Wisdom.@
We have loved our choir’s presentation of the 23rd Psalm interpreted by Bobby McFerrin, in which the Shepherd is our Mother. “She makes me lie down in green meadows, beside the still waters she will lead. . .Even though I walk through a dark and weary land, there is no other that can shake me. She has said she won’t forsake me. I am in her hand.” I can rest in that wisdom.
At St. Paul-Reformation, we consistently begin the Lord’s Prayer with “Our Father/Mother God, in heaven.” It can be a surprise or shock for newcomers to worship here. Our scripture readings this morning point to such uses of feminine references to God.
One way of conceptualizing the Trinity=s mystery of “three in one and one in three” is to assume that all three parts of the Trinity transcend the categories of male and female. God is One. Unique. Enigmatic. God is larger than we can imagine, more indescribable. We often refer to God in gendered terms, but perhaps God would better be reflected as transgendered or “omni-gendered”.
The good news of the Trinity is that we know God is a relational being. And we, created in God=s image, are created in the same relationality. It is in the ways we relate to each other and the ways we relate to God that God is known in our world.
I’ve recommended the book The Shack to you before as one that holds some interesting ways of representing the relationship between the Trinity in ways that are accessible for many. Jesus says to the main character: “It’s simple, Mack. It’s all about relationships and simply sharing life. What we are doing right now is being open and available to others around us. Life is all about relationships.”
On this Festival of the Holy Trinity, we are reminded whose we are: God’s, to whom we belong: Christ, how we have come to this place: Spirit. We are aware of who has guided us, who fills us, who is our being: God revealed to us in the three persons of the Trinity.
Through the Trinity, Wisdom calls us from our ordinary places—from the roads we have been traveling—and cries out for us to see…to hear…to taste…to feel…to know the wonder of God, Creator of all from the beginning, whose love has been poured into our hearts.
This is who we are called to be: relational people whose hearts are filled with God’s love; embraced by the presence of Christ; given the breath of the Spirit with which to make a difference in our world. Amen.
David Lose, Luther Seminary HYPERLINK “http://www.workingpreacher.org” www.workingpreacher.org “Resurrecting the Trinity,” posted 5/23/2010
Dorothy Sayers, Pulpit Helps, 1978
Lynne Lorenzen, The College Student’s Introduction to the Trinity, Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN, 1999, page 72.
NRSV, Proverbs 8:23
NRSV, John 1:1
NRSV, John 16:12-15
Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: the Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse, Crossroad, New York, 1995, page 212.
Bobby McFerrin Lyrics of 23rd Psalm, excerpts
Virginia Ramey Mollenkott, Omnigender: A Trans-Religious Approach, Pilgrim Press, Cleveland, 2001.
, Wm. Paul Young, The Shack, Windblown Media, Newbu ry Park, CA, 2007.
In just a moment, our reader is going to take us through a story about Jesus’ disciples and friends experiencing a strong and terrible wind that makes a loud noise, and tongues of fire on people’s heads. And people realize that in that wind and fire is God’s Holy Spirit.
So here’s what I want to know: can you see the wind? How do you know the wind is blowing? What do you actually see? If I light a candle, how could you tell that the wind is blowing? You could make some wind by blowing, couldn’t you? You couldn’t see the breath, but you could see what difference the blowing air is making to the candle.
In the story we’re about to hear, people can not only feel the effect of the wind, they can hear it. And it’s a powerful, mighty sound.
In the story, I find it pretty interesting that flames were on their heads and wind was blowing, and they know that it’s the Holy Spirit. They can’t see the Spirit, any more than they can see the wind, but they can see the fire moving, and they can hear the wind, and they know that God’s spirit is present among them, and that the Spirit has real power and can do incredible things.
Let’s give God thanks for God’s powerful presence with us through the Holy Spirit…
The sermon:
On this last Sunday of the Easter season, we announce one last time: Alleluia! Christ is risen! (response: Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!)
Friends, grace to you and peace from God, our Creator, and from our loving Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Shortly after I was ordained, my church sent me to Florida to observe ministry being done among migrant farm workers. There I was taken into a migrant worker camp and introduced to a family that hosted me to sleep with them in their shack for three nights. I attended meetings elsewhere each day.
This Mexican family had about a dozen members, including father and mother, several kids and several aunts, uncles and cousins. Frankly, I was never sure who actually lived there because several had to stay elsewhere in order for me to have a small bed to myself. Much of this I had to figure out for myself, because I spoke less Spanish than the adults spoke English, and none of us had ever had this kind of relationship before.
I remember those first moments being terribly awkward as family members anxiously spoke in Spanish with the Puerto Rican program organizer who dropped me off. When he left, shrugging his shoulders beneath his big smile, family members and I stood facing each other outside their hovel. Then awkwardly they showed me my bed in the crowded main room, showed me the pitiful bathroom and the woefully inadequate kitchen. It seemed to me at that point that my stay would be stiff and strange.
Then the mother gestured for me to sit at the table, and the whole family gathered. They asked me to pray a blessing for them, for the food and for their people. I did—though in English—but with that, everything changed.
Their “amen” was loud and heartfelt, and we began to talk as we ate, slowly and carefully at first, then faster and more animatedly. The kids—who knew more English from their occasional school experiences—offered their interpretations of what the adults were saying, and tried to translate what I said, but I was never sure what actually got through. Soon though we were laughing, and at least temporarily became friends.
I never saw them again after those three nights in the temporary hovel they rented from the grower. As happens to migrant workers, they simply disappeared on the road, the program organizer said later. But we shared faith and an interest in each other, and a certain friendship developed, a genuine affection.
I do not pretend that my all-too-brief encounter with that family re-created Pentecost. But I think it was related to the Pentecost experience described in our first lesson.
That first Pentecost was a dramatic scene. People who believed in Jesus—presumably disciples and friends—were gathered in a public area when a terrifically loud and violent wind filled the area. The next verses are somewhat ambiguous, but apparently the sound drew a large crowd. The Acts account suggests that although the people in the crowd were from all over the world, they were also all Jews, many probably converts to Judaism. So though they hailed from countries that spoke very different languages, they apparently all shared the same faith. In other words, they probably all spoke at least some basic Greek and possibly some Hebrew. They could already communicate in very basic ways. After all, they lived together in Jerusalem. Like students after a semester or two of a foreign language, those Jerusalem Jews from all over the world used what little of what they knew to transact business, to worship, to get along. Though the lowest common denominator might have been fairly low, at least they were able to get by.
Perhaps the miracle of this Pentecost event, then, is not that people could communicate for the first time. Rather, on this fiftieth days after Jesus’ resurrection, God’s Spirit moved into this assembly of people who were simply making do, and incredible things began to happen.
Wind was turned into breath, fire became inspiration, and people began to be themselves, to speak in their own languages. People began to communicate across their differences, expressing their own distinctiveness. They communicated not fractionated to the lowest common denominator—if you will—but as whole numbers, as complete persons. They began to talk about
their own experiences of, as the text says, “God’s deeds of power.”
Most incredibly of all, not simply did they express their wholeness to each other, they began to understand each other. Across their differences, they began to accept each other.
Ten years ago I spent Holy Week with the Lutheran congregation in Geneva, Switzerland. Geneva is the site of the Lutheran World Federation offices, Lutheran World Relief, several United Nations agencies, and many other international organizations. The old Lutheran church in downtown Geneva is stunningly diverse in its membership, probably containing thirty or more nationalities and language groups. At each worship service, whenever it was time to say the Lord’s Prayer, the pastor asked us to pray it together in the language in which we learned it. Then, in an instant, the entire sanctuary filled with reverent voices reciting in thirty or more different languages what we all understood: the prayer that Jesus taught us. Most of us could understand very little of what the others were saying, but all of us understand exactly what each of us meant. That experience has become for me my strongest image of what the original Pentecost was probably like.
It was, after all, an astounding experience. In that first Pentecost, Peter, speaking to the crowd, recalled a prophecy from the prophet Joel: “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, (said YAHWEH, our God) and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit;…”
It may not be apparent right off the bat, but this is a phenomenal prophecy, turning inside out long revered patterns and institutions of Hebrew culture. First of all, God’s Old Testament promises were for the people of Israel, yet through the prophet, Joel, YAHWEH, our God, declares a pouring out of God’s Spirit on all flesh, not just the Israelites. Secondly, prophesying, (though known among women) is primarily an activity for men, and certainly not for young sons and daughters. Joel’s prophecy seems to have it backwards. But the reversals get even more dramatic: young men will see the visions that are typically expected from old men, and the old men will have the fantastic dreams of young men. Finally, not only your families will receive God’s Spirit, but even the slaves of the land, and not just the male slaves, but the female as well. God’s Spirit, says the prophet Joel, will come upon all flesh, and all will know God, and in knowing God, will see and understand each other in new light.
By recalling Joel’s prophecy, Peter established on that first Pentecost that Jesus Christ, who walked the earth as Immanuel—as “God with us”—became for the whole church throughout all time: “God with us.” In that first Pentecost a new witness was created for the whole world. That new testimony is the pouring out of God’s Spirit for every person, for every nation, for the whole universe. Its scope knows no bounds. The Pentecost miracle is new community in the midst of old divisions, a new capacity for communication in the midst of familiar differences, a gathering precisely of what used to be separate.
That first Pentecost makes possible our being here together today to worship God. That fire and wind called and empowered our ancestors to reach out, and now similarly calls us into a global community. Through that Pentecost miracle we are able to know God even as God has revealed God’s self to us, and we are in community with the whole earth. God moves in the air we breathe, blowing in the wind outside our doors, calling us into a new community of grace, hope and love—calling us into a new community of shared grace, of mutual hope and of universal love.
“When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple with a red hat.” Now that’s a Mother’s Day vision that can catch our attention. It’s the opening line of a poem that ends with the woman saying: “But maybe I ought to practice a little now? So people are not too shocked and surprised when suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.”
The poem has been around since the 1980s and has spawned many a “Red Hat Ladies group. It seemed fitting to begin with it on this Mother’s Day when our first reading from Acts introduces us to Lydia, a respected dealer of purple cloth, a wealthy business woman with a network of connections and the head of her household. The text tells us Lydia was from Thyatira, which is in Europe. The story doesn’t say if she wore a red hat.
Our reading begins with Paul having a vision that caused him to set sail immediately for Macedonia. Walter Bruggemann says Paul was seeking a new way of ministry. That new way arrived ‘in a vision’ – a perception of ministry ‘out of no way’ or outside the box.
In our reading from Acts, we have Lydia as a woman outside the box. She was a foreigner. And as surely “as we see our own culture made up of haves and have-nots, insiders and outsiders, those in the mainstream and on the margins, Lydia represents Them all.
It could be said that Lydia was an immigrant merchant in Philippi, a seller of purple cloth. Lydia had to be a risk taker. Her clientele would have been rich people, since she sold purple cloth, the color of royalty. Lydia’s listening to Paul and opening herself to the Spirit would have been unpopular and certainly risky for her. Yet, she not only asked to be baptized along with her household, but also to ask Paul and his crew to risk receiving her hospitality if they “judged her to be faithful.”
Paul’s respect for Lydia even to the point of going to her home, which presumably became a center for the church’s growth, speaks volumes about her faithfulness.
“Lydia gave truth to Jesus’ beautiful promise: “Those who love me will keep my word, and God my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them (John 14:23). They beckon us to follow their example, offering hearts and homes for faith.”
Our faith is about living in relationship with Jesus. “Those who love me will keep my word, and God my Father and Mother will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.” It is about loving Jesus and keeping his word. It is about God loving us, and dwelling with us through the Spirit!
Loving Jesus, keeping his word, dwelling with Jesus – is about living in a vibrant grace filled relationship with God. It is where God’s grace flows into and through us as we go about our daily lives. Jesus promises and the Spirit will remind us of all that he taught.
Jesus calls us to be disciples. Jesus calls us to live in loving relationship as we keep God’s word close in our hearts and actions. It is a grace filled calling to love and serve others and thereby to love and serve God with all our heart and mind and spirit.
Today, we recognize mothers and the ways women work to nurture and sustain relationships and family. Mother’s Day is a time to celebrate and be thankful for the love Mothers have shown us, to appreciate the sacrifices they’ve made, and to acknowledge the witness that women make regarding matters of faith and caring, peace and love. Jesus said, “Those who love me will keep my word.”
What does it mean to “keep” Jesus’ word? The basic meanings of the Greek word are: to keep watch over, to guard; to hold, reserve; to preserve someone or something; to observe, and pay attention to; and to protect and not lose. Doesn’t that sound like a list of what a Mother does? We have heard that Jesus’ word to his disciples is to “love one another.”
The temptation for us is to hear “Love one another” and to pat ourselves on the back because there is a great feeling of community here. We have fun together. We’ve put ourselves on the line for justice. We are doing lots of things—health care reform, supporting the food shelf, ELCA World Hunger and Disaster Relief, going global with Sister Parishes in two countries, helping the ELCA live into a deeper inclusiveness. Our church members are working with Isaiah on racial and economic justice, including transportation and affordable housing. Even with all this, we still have room to grow in loving as Jesus loved.
Pastor Keith and I recently attended the Gamaliel Foundation’s national training for clergy. Much of the focus was about the need for comprehensive immigration reform in our country. We heard stories from undocumented immigrants, including two who were small children when they came to this country with their parents. As young adults who have known only life in the United States, they are unable to get a job legally. College loans are out of the question.
Last fall we welcomed a mother and child seeking asylum, and immigration concerns are close to my heart. Given recent actions in Arizona, I know I am being called to get involved so our state doesn’t go the way of legislating cruel inhospitality in our immigration laws. Most families here have roots that go back to immigrants. Will you take the role of mothering immigrants in Jesus’ name?
God is like a Mother who brings us face to face with the reality that every human being is family to us and that we are to love them. Jesus commanded us to love one another, especially the foreigners who sojourn here. Like the woman who intends to wear purple with a red hat, there is no need to wait. We can offer mothering love to our immigrant neighbors right now. Amen.
