Sixth Sunday of Easter Series B

May 13, 2006 St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran

Keith Olstad

The texts:

The first reading: Acts 10:44-48 NRSV

Psalm 47 ELW

The second reading: 1 John 5:1-6 NRSV

The gospel: John 15:9-17 NRSV

The children’s lesson:

Good morning! I’m so glad to see you. I look forward to this time with you all week long.

(Hold packet of “Friendship” signs that look like one sheet.)

I have something that I’d like to give to you. I’d like you to give you my friendship. There, now you’ve got my friendship. Isn’t that cool?

But wait, now that I’ve given you this wonderful gift of friendship, I don’t have any! Wait a minute, you can keep your friendship, but you could give some back to me. Then we’d both have it.

In fact, you have so much there that you could give some to some other people, too, and if you give them enough of it, they could give some back to you and still have enough left to give to some other people.

If we kept doing this for a long time, we’d have lots of friends. Our friends could have lots of friends, too, and maybe everyone could have more than enough friends!

I want you listen to our lessons this morning in terms of what Jesus says about love and friendship. Jesus doesn’t just make us Jesus’ friends. Jesus expects that when we become his friends, his love and friendship will make us want to make other friends as well, and to love them just as he loves you.

The sermon:

Alleluia! Christ is risen! (response: Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!)

Friends, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our risen Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Yeah, tough day today,” says one person to another. “I fell over forty feet this morning.”

“Really!” says the other. “Did you get hurt?”

“No, but the bus was so crowded, so I fell over forty feet getting to an empty seat in back.”

OK, so falling over feet may not mean you fell out of a tree or window, but what does it mean, in our first reading, that “the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word?”1 It’s a strange phrase, isn’t it? You may have heard that an army patrol laid an ambush and then “fell upon” their enemy, or that some robbers “fell upon” a traveler and robbed the poor soul of everything. Used this way, the phrase usually refers to something planned—something very intentional—and it usually carries an element of surprise and being overwhelmed.

So does it make sense to you that God’s Holy Spirit “fell upon” the people to whom Peter was speaking, and sort of ambushed them: surprised and over-whelmed them with the power of what Peter was saying? Does it make sense to say that’s exactly what God intended to happen, so that’s why the author of Acts, Luke, uses that particular strange phrase?

Actually, that’s basically what I think happened to Pastor Anita. I was there when people from Lutherans Concerned/North America asked her to leave her work with St. Paul-Ref and go to work for LC/NA, working to defeat the marriage amendment next November. Pastor Anita’s immediate response was, “No!” She hadn’t seen it coming, so it was a big surprise to her and it wasn’t what she had planned for her life. Then she went home and talked to Janelle, and the two of them prayed about it. It was as though the Holy Spirit “fell upon” her. She came back the next morning all excited about this new opportunity in her life. She recognized what God wanted from her, and she responded to the Spirit’s call.

When Pastor Anita told me about her conversion experience, I immediately felt deeply sad and disappointed. Her response to God’s call would dramatically change our work relationship and her relationship to this congregation. Many of you may have felt that same way when you first got word that she was leaving us, and some of you may still be feeling that sadness and grief. Someone who has been that important to us for that long doesn’t simply step out of our lives without leaving deep and nagging sadness and disappointment.

But God called her, and in Pastor Anita accepting that call is both a grand opportunity for new ministry on her part, and a grand opportunity for new ministry for us here at St. Paul-Ref. That’s the way things work in our first reading as well.

To fully appreciate this, remember that Jews were the first followers of the resurrected Jesus. The first community of believers in Jerusalem—the community upon whom the Holy Spirit came blowing with flames of fire in the first Pentecost—that early church was virtually all Jewish Christians. Then synagogue leaders, with tacit consent of Roman authorities, began to persecute Jewish Christians. So they moved out of Jerusalem and into areas where people who were not Jewish heard about Jesus. All their lives, Jewish Christians had looked down on gentiles. But today’s reading comes right after Peter had been called by God to visit a gentile man, a non-Jew named Cornelius. Peter preached powerfully to Cornelius and to all the people in his house about Jesus.

That’s when the Holy Spirit “fell upon all who heard the word.” In other words, the Holy Spirit did not fall upon people who were already in the church, true and tried believers, the group that considered itself the chosen people of God. No, what happened here was that people who were outside the circle of God’s chosen people, veritable interlopers, heard about Jesus for the first time and were fallen upon by the Holy Spirit. That’s when Peter, realizing what God’s Spirit was doing, ordered that these newcomers be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.

After that, in a gesture of friendship found in freshly shared faith, the newly baptized gentiles invited Peter “to stay for several days.”2 That apparently is the point! Sharing faith offers a new possibility for deep friendship. In John’s gospel this morning, Jesus says, “I do not call you servants any longer,…but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”3 Just as Jesus made known to his disciples all he knew about God, so also Peter made known to Cornelius and his gentile friends and neighbors all he knew about Jesus. In that sharing, a new and deeper relationship was formed, a

relationship that Jesus in the gospel lesson calls “friendship.”

Friendship of that kind is not static or stationary. There is a point to my love, says Jesus, a dynamic urgency. Not only have I loved you, he says, but “I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last,…I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.”4 Love, Jesus says, births a certain response. I love you so that you will love one another. I choose to love you, so that you will follow me by loving others. I befriend you, so that you will befriend others.

But befriending others who are different than us is a hard sell in our day. There are so many dynamics that separate us in our society. Not just Jew or gentile, but what school do you go to, or what job do you have? Where do you live? What do you drive? What color is your skin? Are you male or female, gay or straight, bi- or trans? Are you in the stock room, or sales, or management? Are you union? Are you vested or tenured? Are you a visitor or a member, lay or ordained?

In today’s world a multitude of divisions and hierarchies are inserted into virtually every dimension of life. Yet there is something in the drive of the gospel that addresses a new word, a new ethic, to all differences in status and state. God—in the face of all that divides and separates us—insists that every person, everyone everywhere, is a child of God. As a child of God—as someone loved and cherished by God—each of us becomes a participant, a friend, in the community of grace and salvation where we are all friends.

In our second lesson, John’s community is reminded that Jesus comes to be our friend, who makes us able to be friends. But Jesus, according to our lesson, “is the one who came by water and blood,…not with the water only but with the water and the blood.”5 Precisely here is our most direct connection to Mother’s Day. Each and every one of us has been born of a mother, and in that life-giving fact is pure blessing. To give that fact a holy luster, just as every human birth involves blood and water and usually great pain, so God in Jesus joined us on earth. God blessed birth by being born. Then in the water of his baptism in the Jordan and in the blood of his death on the cross, Jesus gave birth to a new possibility for friendship. Through Jesus, God provided a new understanding of grace, and a new capacity for justice and reconciliation in our world. Not with ease and quickly, but through water and blood, facing pain, as every mother knows!

Our texts this morning however focus on the virtue of friendship, not on its cost. Jesus offers each of us—mother, father and child alike—the profoundly gracious and valuable gift of friendship. Jesus’ words have a personal sweetness to them, an inviting quality that refreshes and comforts us. To hear these words as personal invitation and reassurance is good and right, for they are meant for each of us, just as they were meant for the early church.

God’s gracious love indeed confirms for each of us that you are loved. It does that, but God’s love also urges you—even empowers you—to be loving as well—broadly, inclusively loving. We are called not simply to love those we already love, but to love those we do not yet know. We are to befriend strangers. We are to serve those we do not know. We are to be open even to those who are closed to us. Through God’s love, we are graced for reconciliation throughout the world.

So be it. Amen.

1 Acts 10:44b NRSV

2 Ibid. v.48b

3 John 15:15 NRSV

4 Ibid. vv. 16b, 17

5 1 John 5:6 NRSV

Fifth Sunday of Easter Series B

May 6, 2012  St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran, St. Paul

Keith Olstad

The texts:

The first lesson: Acts 8:26-40 NRSV

Psalm 22:24-30 ELW

The second lesson: 1 John 4:7-21 NRSV

The gospel: John 15:1-8 NRSV

The children’s lesson:

Good morning! I’m glad to see you again. I sure enjoy being here with you.

How do you know if someone loves you? Yes, they might say so. Yes, they may do things with you. Yes, they may take you shopping, or go to a game with you, or do all sorts of things with you. If you’re feeling sad, they might do something to cheer you up. If you are hungry, they might do something to get you food.

This morning, I want to propose that if someone finds out that they can do something to keep you from getting sick, and they love you, then they will do all they can for you. That is true for us this morning. We know that many of people in our partner parish in Nigeria are exposed to a very dangerous disease called malaria. Malaria is caused by bites from certain kinds of mosquitoes, so if people sleep in beds covered with nets, they can avoid getting malaria. If they have certain kinds of medicine, then if they get a mosquito bite, they can be treated and healed before the malaria gets serious. So because we love our brothers and sisters in Pella, Nigeria, we want to do something to help them get the bed nets and medicine that will keep them from getting sick.

We’ll hear more about this from some of our members later in our service. For now, we want to be ready to listen especially to our second lesson this morning. There we learn that God is love, and God wants us to love all our brothers and sisters. We’ll also hear that love needs to be real, so we want to do what we can to support our brothers and sisters in Nigeria.

The sermon:

Alleluia! Christ is risen! (response: Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!)

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our risen Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

“When Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch came up out of the water,” we hear at the end of our first lesson, “the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing.”1

Well, the Ethiopian eunuch may have gone on his way rejoicing, but I haven’t been able to get to that point regarding the Spirit of the Lord snatching Pastor Anita away. Not yet, I haven’t. I miss her. Oh, I rejoice that she has such excitement and energy for her new call. I’m very glad for her that she has this opportunity.

But that’s quite different from me going on my way rejoicing. This is our first Sunday of worshipping together without Anita as one of our co-pastors. I am very aware of her absence. For me personally, she was both an inspiring colleague and a dear friend. Her absence feels like a hole in my soul. Some of you probably feel it as I do. Others may not feel it quite so sharply, but for each of us—and certainly for us as a congregation—her absence makes a big difference.

Fortunately, today’s second lesson from First John gives us a way to think about all this. Pastor Anita’s absence is felt so deeply precisely because she so very much loved this congregation and personally loved so many of you. You—both as a congregation and many of you individually—had very caring relationships with her.

Opportunely, that is what John wants to discuss. “Love is from God;” writes John, “everyone who loves is born of God and knows God…, for God is love.”2 “Beloved, since God loved us so much,” John continues, “we also ought to love one another.”3 God called Pastor Anita to love us, and called us to love her in return.

But John is quick to point out that this love to which God calls us is not sentimental mush. “Love has been perfected among us in this:” writes John, “that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as God is, so are we in this world.”4

In other words, our loving each other has a dual purpose. Not only do we love each other because that builds us up. We also love each other in order to be a community, a Lutheran congregation, that makes a difference in the world. That is what our relationship with Pastor Anita was most centrally about: that our love for her and from her enabled us to do powerful ministry together. Our loving led to great and effective work together.

When loving relationships reign, says John, there is no fear, because God’s

judgment is fair, and because forgiveness is absolute. There is no fear in love. “…Perfect love casts out fear;” John goes on to say, “for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”5 So in a loving community—where relationships are real and love is strong—there is no fear of stepping out, of responding to God’s call, of being the people and congregation that God is calling us to be.

Said another way, the relationship we had with Pastor Anita enabled us to develop and embrace our congregational mission statement, which you find on the first page of your bulletin every Sunday: St Paul-Reformation’s mission is to welcome YOU(capital letters!!) to worship God, build community, practice mercy and pursue justice for all people without exception. This is our congregational mission statement. In a very real way, embracing that mission statement is the best possible way we could honor Pastor Anita’s legacy here. So this morning we baptize Hudson Webster-Sprunger, and welcome her into our congregation with open arms. We want to welcome others as well. We want to be so welcoming because that is what God calls us to be in this time and place.

We encounter that call in our first reading. An influential, wealthy foreigner is travelling through the wilderness to his home in Ethiopia. He is an Ethiopian African, probably black-skinned. Race, as we think of it today, is virtually a non-issue in those days, but social status is. So Philip, a leader in the early Jewish Christian community in Jerusalem—but otherwise a social nobody—would be well advised to mind his own business.

The Ethiopian is not only upper-crust, so to speak, but also a eunuch. It was an unfortunate practice among some religions in those days to mutilate the genitals of selected young males as part of dedicating them to service of pagan gods. We don’t know today exactly why they were castrated—whether to keep their voices high for temple chanting, or to make them safe to keep with temple prostitutes, or whatever—but we do know that they were categorically repulsive to Jews. Jews thought eunuchs bizarre, and avoided them like the plague.

(Outburst from Sharon/Dan:

(Sharon) Enough! All this talk about eunuchs & mutilated genitals—It’s one thing to think fondly about Pr. Anita, but why get into all this strange stuff about outsiders and social misfits? Is this a respectable Christian church or not?!?!?

(Dan) Yeah, for crying out loud: I’ve got young children here!! I want to be part of a family-oriented church!!!

Right!!! That’s exactly what the early Jewish Christian church must have said! These texts should shock us as much as they shocked that early Jewish Christian community. Welcoming an Ethiopian eunuch into the Christian fellowship was too radical a step for much of that early Jewish Christian community. It was outrageous and shocking!

Remember that Philip was fleeing Jerusalem because Stephen had just been stoned to death. Synagogue leaders were coming down on Christian Jews because they were messing with the good order of the synagogue and irritating the Roman authorities. The last thing the Christian movement needed was something that riled people up. It’s a bit like our own situation here at St. Paul-Ref: when our feelings are sensitive and confused, why go back to talking about the most radical push of our mission statement?

We go there precisely because it is God’s Spirit who tells Philip: “Go over to this chariot and join it!”6 Philip is dumbfounded, but God’s spirit is speaking, so he obeys. The eunuch is reading from the prophet Isaiah and asks Philip to help him understand a passage. So, says our first lesson, Philip proclaims “to him the good news about Jesus.”7 The Ethiopian eunuch is so swept up in faith that when he sees water, he wants to be baptized. And Philip complies. It is one thing to baptize sweet little Hudson Webster-Sprunger, but Philip baptizes this complete misfit: this mutilated, out-of-place outsider!!!

We cannot overstate how upsetting this story must have been for the early Jewish Christian community. Distressed, persecuted, struggling to comprehend what is happening, they now hear that God is welcoming into their company even foreigners who are eunuchs. But that early Jewish Christian community would also remember that the book of Isaiah offers as a sign of God’s deliverance—of God’s salvation—that foreigners and eunuchs who embrace the faith will be welcomed into God’s company. Absolutely all are welcome! Turn to the top of the front page of your bulletin, and read our own mission statement again. It applies to “…all people without exception!”

“The commandment we have from God is this:” says our second lesson,

“those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”8 This is not a harsh rule or a cold law, for God has already engaged us in God’s own love. “I am the vine, you are the branches,” Jesus tells us in the gospel lesson. “Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit,…”9 That fruit will yield the justice and love that God so desperately longs for. That justice and love must include everyone, all of God’s children, and must be known as real love, known in action that makes a difference. Our second lesson summarizes it so simply: “We love because God first loved us.”10

And when all is said and done, that will be our fullest and best way to honor our missing and dearly loved Pastor Anita: embracing the mission that we shared, and to which God calls us.

So be it. Amen.

 1 Acts 8:39 NRSV

2 Ibid. vv. 7b,8

3 Ibid. v. 11

4 Ibid. vv. 17-18a 

5 Ibid. v. 18b,c

6 Acts 8:29 NRSV

7 Acts 8:35b NRSV

8 Ibid. v. 21

9 John 15:5a

10 Ibid. v. 19

Third Sunday of Easter: April 22, 2012

St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church

Anita C. Hill, Co-Pastor

Called to Witness

Luke 24:36b-48

“You are witnesses of these things.” Luke 24:48

What do you get when you cross a Jehovah’s Witness with a Lutheran? You get someone who knocks on the door and then just stands there.

As Lutheran Christians, we really don’t talk much about witnessing to people in the world. But we do know that we look back to the witnesses in Scripture, as we look to our own families, especially elders, who have shared their witness of faith with us. Parents and grand-parents witness all the time, they just don’t think of it as witnessing.

Who taught you about faith? Who brought you to church? Someone did. And they are Christian witnesses and have made an impact on our lives.

Some of you were witnesses when St. Paul and Reformation Lutheran Churches consolidated. Some of you were witnesses when this congregation resettled 70 Ethiopian refugees. Some of you witnessed the baptism of 30 members of an extended Hmong family here at this font. Some of you held your own children for the water and word that brought them into this community. Some of you were married in this chancel. Some of you were there when Wingspan Ministry and St. Paul-Reformation marched in the Pride Parade for the first time. Some of you witnessed extraordinary ordinations and ELCA policy change. Some of you remember loved ones whose funerals were held here.

You are witnesses of these things.

Jesus calls his disciples, both then and now, to be witnesses to the resurrection, to the living Christ. We are called to witness to the places where we see God at work in the world, to the times when we have felt the presence of Jesus with us in times of trial.

Yesterday’s mail brought this word of witness:

“When I came to St. Paul-Reformation, I didn’t know I was coming to a place that would change so much of my life. I knew that it felt inexplicably like coming home. It had never occurred to me that places exist where I could have an equal share in the life of the church, where the wideness in God’s mercy is as near as the coffee in little paper cups.”

Now that’s a witness. A witness of the presence of Christ in the midst of liturgy and prayers; in the midst of music and quiet. A witness to the difference a welcoming word at coffee hour can bring. A witness of what it is like to come home to God in this community. I wonder if that’s how the disciples felt when Jesus was made known among the disciples, asking his friends “Have you anything to eat?”

Saturday morning, the SPR volunteer clean-up crew took a break to drink coffee and eat homemade coffee-cake on the front steps of the church. Lutheran communion on the front steps. Did they know Jesus was present there? Christ was hungry and eating, sharing coffee, offering peace, and sending them out as witnesses in the world when they took a truckload of leaves to compost.

Witnessing sounds tough. Witnessing sounds like it belongs to some other denomination. Lutherans witnessing is the stuff of Garrison Keillor humor every Saturday night.

But really, dear people, it is not that hard. We don’t have to knock on doors to witness. It may seem scary, but it’s what we do every day. We bear witness to things that are important to us all the time. We tell others when we’ve seen a good play or movie. Do you share with some excitement when your favorite sports team wins a game? Do you talk about the fun you had playing softball with your pals? Do you post pictures of places you’ve been?

That’s bearing witness. It’s as simple as sharing with someone where we’ve seen the shadow of God, the light of Christ in our lives. Witness is as simple as sharing what we feel about God in this community.

Every day during the 40 days of Lent, one church member posted a new photgraph on Face Book. His pictures showed glorious sunsets, clouds reflected in lakes, the newness of early greening and flowers. It doesn’t take much of a stretch for me to call that a witness to God’s creation.

Some of you are witnesses of these things.

Witnessing does not mean we have to push our ways or beliefs on others. We are called by Jesus to tell others (that’s the same as witnessing) where we have sensed God at work.

What might change in how we see the world, see each other, view the scenery and activity around us if we start wondering where we might see God at work?

Some of you have witnessed the hunger of people who come to the food shelf. Hunger in a physical sense, yes, but also a hungering to be known, welcomed, received. There are many ways to feed people.

Some of you have witnessed the Spirit of God at work in the poor communities of Nigeria, El Salvador, and other global settings. Some of you experience faith as a mixture of joy and doubt and wonder. And each of you is called to be Christ’s witness in whatever ways you sense God’s presence around you.

As I move to the work of Lutherans Concerned/North America, I know I will be witnessing to God’s presence in the stories I tell about you. Stories of St. Paul-Reformation will soon be told across Minnesota and the Dakotas. I’ll be witnessing to the presence of Christ among you. You are an amazing community. As much as I grieve the loss of being present with you day by day and Sunday by Sunday, I am eager to tell your story to help other congregations become more welcoming. You have led the way, been the light in the darkness, and extended welcome warmly to the people at the margins. There’s a lot of life at the margins. Keep moving in that direction and you’ll see God at work.

St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church – I mean you, you, you, all of you, “all ya’ll” as I’d say in my Southern dialect – have been about Lutheran witness for as long as anyone can remember. You and I have stories to share, people to invite, and congregations to shepherd into embracing what full participation of LGBT people means. We can witness to the blessings of differently-abled folks singing and reading lessons. We can witness to the blessings that came from racial integration 60 years ago.

We can witness to the presence of Christ with us when we are scared or uncertain. We can enter new chapters of ministry knowing that we will witness God at work in new ways. Then we will have even more ways to witness to the love of God in Christ Jesus.

The resurrected Christ stood among the disciples. They were startled, even terrified. He brought peace and shared food with them. That fish calls to mind the feeding of the thousands. Where have we seen Christ? In the scriptures. In the faces of the people around us. In the mirror. We’ve seen God in the beauty and power of creation. In the blessings of newborn babies. In the wrinkled hands of elders. In the human longing to be touched and loved. We have seen.

We are witnesses to all these things.

Make no mistake. You are already witnesses. You are Lutheran Christians, so the term Lutheran witnesses fits here. You have stories to tell. Tell where you’ve sensed God is active. Tell about your prayer that was answered. Tell about how Christ was made known in the breaking of bread at the table Jesus set.

Here’s the witness I want to leave you with this morning: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.” (1 John 3:2)

What we do know is this: We are witnesses to these things.

Amen

Second Sunday of Easter Series B

April 15, 2012 St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran

Keith Olstad

The texts:

The first reading: Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

The second reading: 1 John 1:1-2:2

The gospel: John 20:19-30

The children’s lesson:

Good morning. It’s so good to see you this morning. I go through my week looking forward to this time with you.

How many of you looked for Easter eggs last weekend? Did you find any? What did you say when you found one: (flat monotone) oh, whoopy, here’s an Easter egg. Or did you shout out, (loudly & animatedly) Oh, yeah, I found one; I found one!!!

Yeah, when you find something great, who wants to sound like a party pooper, huh!?!

So our tradition says that when the women came back from the tomb to tell the disciples that Christ was raised from the dead, that Jesus’ tomb was empty, they said, (loudly & animatedly) “Alleluia, Christ is risen!” They didn’t say, (flat monotone) “Oh, whoopy, Christ is risen.” They said, (loudly & animatedly) “Alleluia, Christ is risen!”

That’s what “alleluia” means. It means, basically, “Wow, whoopy, yabba dabba do and jumpin’ Jehosephat” all in one word: Alleluia!

So when someone says, Alleluia, Christ is risen, let’s all respond like it is the great news that it is! Let’s say it like we just found the best Easter egg ever! (loudly & animatedly) Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

So let’s do it now: I’ll say: Alleluia, Christ is risen! And you shout out: Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!

The sermon:

Alleluia! Christ is risen! (response: Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!)

Grace to you and peace from God our Creator and from our risen Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

As some of you know, I am an avid bird watcher. I should also admit that I get a kick out of watching other bird watchers!

For example, a few bird watchers put together a digital “listserve” so that a person who sees a Eurasian widgeon in Rochester can send an email announcing what she’s seen. Immediately, news goes out all over the world. Anyone anywhere remotely interested gets a notice about the rare bird in Rochester. Then people from all over the place drop what they’re doing to go see the Eurasian widgeon for themselves. They could look up the bird in their field guide or read about it on the internet. But still they have to go see it for themselves. The recent movie, “The Big Year,” poked great fun at this crazy dynamic.

Well, say the authors of our second reading, we’re letting you know that we saw Jesus. We were there! We’re telling you, the authors say, what we heard with our own ears, and saw with our own eyes, and even touched with our own hands.

That’s what the disciples told Thomas after Jesus appeared to them in a locked room.1 But Thomas was like some of my birding friends. The disciples may have given Thomas a reliable report, but Thomas had to see the risen Christ for himself. When he saw, he believed. He didn’t even need to follow up with touching. Simply seeing, he believed.

The authors of 1 John wrote this letter somewhere around fifty-five to sixty-five years after Jesus had ascended into heaven. We’re reading this over 1900 years later. So for the first readers of 1 John or for us to go and see, hear and touch Jesus in the same way the writers did is no longer an option. We can’t just go to see the rare bird for ourselves.

So 1 John describes a different way people experience the reality of the risen Christ. We are telling you this, they say—we are declaring it to you—so that together we can experience the community of faith. We want to share our experience with you so that it becomes your experience, too. Then—when we all know and believe what we call the word of life—then we will have complete fellowship, genuine community, not only with each other, but even with God and with God’s Son, the risen Christ.

Many of us will experience essentially that same dynamic in today’s forum between services in Tidemann Hall. A month ago, two different delegations involving twenty-three of us went to El Salvador to spend immensely rich time with our partners in Nahualapa. We would love to take each and every one of you—every single member of St. Paul-Ref—to El Salvador to have that same kind of rich experience. But for many—for a multitude of reasons—making that trip simply isn’t an option. Many of you will never be able to go and see, touch, taste and feel the experiences we had in El Salvador.

But you can join us while we tell you in passionate terms what we experienced, and what it meant to us and to our partners. As you hear our testimony, we want you to experience what the authors of 1 John also want: “that you also may have fellowship with us…” But it’s not just about what we saw and heard, they argue. Rather, the truly remarkable dimension of such deep sharing is that: “truly our fellowship is with the Father and with God’s Son Jesus Christ.” What we share, they say, is a holy fellowship, a sacred connection with God. In our sharing, in our deepening of this community we share, our joy is made full and complete.

The writers of 1 John then go on to develop fresh imagery. When you come to know what we have seen, they say, you will see the light. When you know what we know, you know that God is light. God’s very self is light. “If we walk in the light,” they say “as God in god’s own self is in the light, we have fellowship with one another…”2

For the writers of 1 John, God as light is not just a symbol. To the contrary, the light of God, as Garrison Keillor would say, is efficacious. It makes a difference. The light of God creates a community of those who live by the light. In a very real way, those of us who could not be there when the writers of 1 John heard, saw and touched Jesus—we will be able to see and know the risen Christ in the strength and caring of our own community. In the same way, through our testimony you can participate in our solidarity with our Salvadoran partners. Together, we will know Christ in the reality of our own community.

Pastor Anita preached exactly this point powerfully in her Easter sermon. Jesus died an individual, she proclaimed, but Christ was raised as a community! In the community of the risen Christ, we find God powerfully and truly present among us. In this light of the risen Christ, we find our God being fully, lovingly gracious and present with us in every moment!

For us here at St. Paul-Ref, there is poignant irony in these words. In just two weeks, our community will experience a loss, a separation, that will be grievously sad for us. In the very same breath, we also have to say that we will rejoice in the opportunities that lie ahead for Pastor Anita, and eventually, for us as a congregation. Pastor Anita’s transition to a new ministry represents both sorrow and joy. All of these dynamics come together in one moving event.

In this paradox of sorrow and joy, we hear the frequently misunderstood affirmation in the 1 John reading: “If we say that we have no sin,” says 1 John, “we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, God who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”3

Our society delights in reducing sin to personal acts, sins, as though everything were about you and me as individuals. But the writers of 1 John are talking about life as a congregation. From the perspective of life in community, sin is best understood as separation from God and from one another. When any of us separate from each other, there is grief and loss. In this sense, there will always be brokenness and separation. Sin is inevitable and unavoidable. To say that we have no sin, in this sense, is truly to deceive ourselves, and we are not facing the truth of what is happening, nor are we allowing the light of Christ to shine for us.

In this sense, then, claiming the light of Christ and the power of God’s reconciling love, we can commit ourselves to saying a fond and deep farewell to Pastor Anita for all she has done for and with us, and we can receive her own words of appreciation and deep love. This is what it means to face the separations that happen in life, and to do so with the grace and love of Christ. This is true reconciliation, and this is living in the light.

In today’s Gospel lesson, twice we hear Jesus coming to his disciples. Both

times his first words to them are, “Peace be with you.”4 Peace be with you. The phrase Jesus used was: “shalom,” which actually means much more than mere peace. It has to do with wholeness and well-being, with completeness and fulfillment. It means everything becomes the way it should be. In other words, the risen Christ brings completeness, healing and shalom in communities of faith.

In the terms of our 1 John lesson, living in the light of God with the fellowship of the faithful is precisely an experience of shalom, of God’s peace. In such a bright community of shalom, we don’t need to go to our email to learn about the latest sighting. We need only look around at the community of faith—ordinary people of God living faithfully in the light of Christ.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! (response: Christ is risen indeed. Alleluia!)

So be it. Amen.

1 John 20:19ff.

2 1 John 1:7

3 1 John 1:8-9

4 John 20:19c and 26c

Easter Sunday – April 8, 2012

Anita C. Hill, Co-Pastor, St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church

Jesus died an individual; Christ arose a community.

John 20:1-18

Grace and peace to you from our Creator God, the Risen Christ, and the Holy Spirit. Amen

Their mood was somber; their grief palpable; their tears visible. He was so young. How could it be that he was dead? Thousands gathered for a vigil at the University of Minnesota to remember Trayvon Martin, a young man they knew only through death. Trayvon’s death changed the conversations about racism in this country in a big way.

It seems nearly every friend on FaceBook has recently posted a picture of themselves wearing a hoodie pulled over their heads. Several posted a painting of Jesus as the original hoodie wearer.

Our gospel reading opened with a solitary figure walking through the darkness. Her grief was palpable. Her mood was somber. How could it be that Jesus was dead? He was always so alive, so powerful yet gentle. He was a healer, yet they had killed him and now he was in a tomb.

But Mary found the stone rolled away and the tomb empty. She was scared. What had they done with Jesus? She ran to tell Peter and John. And they ran to the tomb, where they found nothing and then returned to their homes.

Mary stayed on. Holding vigil maybe. She was crying as she looked in the tomb. She saw two angels there who asked her why she was crying. She wanted to know what had happened to Jesus. Then she was startled to see a gardener, whom she did not recognize.

This gardener was Jesus. Think of the connection with Christ who was with God from the beginning. Jesus was there at the first garden – at the dawn of creation. Jesus was there, but Mary did not recognize until he spoke her name.

Jesus was there! Mary went to announce Jesus’ news to the disciples. He was alive! This surely changed their conversations about Jesus death. It changed our conversations about faith and life ever since.

Gardens are surely places of resurrection, where new life springs up out of ground that not long ago was frozen. Grasses growing again, flowers blooming. Seeds that fell to the ground and died have come alive again. Gardens are a good place to seek resurrection. Death and new life are regulars there.

So this morning we have Jesus as gardener.

We have Jesus, the one who died.

We have Jesus, the resurrected one.

We have Jesus, who died an individual and was raised a community that continues on more than 2,000 years later.

We remember Trayvon, who died an individual and whose death has raised a community. Our Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson urges us to become “a community of mutual conversation, mutual correction, and mutual consolation.”1

We remember Martin Luther King, Jr., who died an individual and who lives on in community. King had a dream we share and it lives on.

Our members who just got back from El Salvador visited the home of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who stood up for the poor and was assassinated while he celebrated communion. Romero knew he was at risk. Just weeks before he said: “If You Kill Me, I Will Rise Again in My People!” Do you hear the echo of Jesus in those words? Resurrection lives in community. Christ lives in community; a spark of the divine in each one of you.

Many of you here this morning could tell of resurrection in your own lives. Lives turned around from drugs and alcohol, health restored when it was thought impossible, wholeness while facing death, recovery from the grief of a loved one’s death. St. Paul-Reformation can tell of resurrection life after an extraordinary ordination 11 years ago. We can tell of resurrection life after policy change in the ELCA. We now anticipate new life and new leadership here at St. Paul-Ref.

You see, God meets us in death and loss. God meets us at our points of brokenness. God meets us in times of change and transition, not just to be with us, which is awesome enough. God meets us to do something amazing: to bring new life. We may not always understand it, but God is here. Christ is here. “Because Christ is risen, you can embrace life’s complexities and uncertainties with a living, daring confidence in God’s grace.”2

Resurrection is about Jesus and it is about us. Easter required death. Make no mistake, Jesus died, and became the cosmic game changer. Even death is about life now. Resurrection is about life everlasting. But that is not all. Resurrection is here and now.

It is new life. Resurrection lives in community. Jesus died an individual; Christ arose in community. And that resurrection means opportunity and possibility. It brings hope and wholeness here and now. New life comes in the midst of change and beyond it. New life comes when it is least expected.

St. Paul-Reformation – the community as it is now embodied in 2012 – reaches back to the original church planted in 1883. For 129 years, this church community has renewed itself, held onto faith and trusted in the promises of God. New life begins here and now; not only in the great by-and- by somewhere in the sky.

Jesus died three days ago. It happens every Good Friday. Death happens more often than that.

Resurrection happens every Easter. Resurrection also happens way more often than that.

Resurrection is alive and well when communities come together to do what God calls them to do. Resurrection is the punch line of history in which God entered as Jesus, who died on a cross, and became our Christ, risen from an empty tomb. God wants us to live the resurrection now, not spend our time waiting for resurrection to happen after we die.

What does it mean to live the resurrection now?

David Weiss, a writer and lyricist in our community, put it this way:

Picture Jesus standing up here in the midst of the flowers growing out of the cross this Easter morning, “declaring:

‘From now on, I want the hungry fed, the naked clothed, the sick cared for. (Yes, I mean every last one of them!)

I want you to see me – Christ alive – in the face of every person, especially the poor, and even your enemies.

I want you to cross boundaries and welcome the outcasts home.

I want you to challenge and break down the systems and structures that keep my children and all of creation from flourishing.

‘And by the way, I don’t want you to worry anymore about the death thing.

I’ve got that covered.’” 3

Jesus died an individual. Christ rose in community.

Christ is here; alive in the hearts of people.

Resurrection lives in every community that follows Jesus.

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!

Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed!



ⁱ ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson, ELCA News Release, March 27, 2012.

ⁱⁱ ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson. 2012 Easter message.

ⁱⁱⁱ David Weiss, “Taking Issue with Easter Lillies” April 2, 2010

SPR Palm/Passion Dialogue Reflection by Co-pastors

April 1, 2012

Pastor Anita: I hope you each received my letter in the mail announcing my resignation as one of your co-pastors. On May 1st, I will begin my new role as Midwest Region Director for LC/NA, with my first assignment being the defeat of the marriage amendment in November. So during April, I will focus on saying good bye to this dear congregation-to each and all of you-and on celebrating what we have been for each other. As part of that, I grieve that I need to say good bye to you and also to Pastor Keith, my colleague and friend.

Pastor Keith: Yes, and as much as I am delighted by your energy and enthusiasm for the new work you are called to do, I am deeply grieving my loss of you as my co-pastor and partner in this ministry. In a way that may seem at first a bit ironic to some, I am glad that we face these emotions on this particular day. For on this Palm/Passion Sunday, we move from the celebration of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem to the grief and sadness of what happens to Jesus in the later days of the coming week.

Pastor Anita: I know that when we hear the Passion story read in a few minutes, I will be thinking about it in light of the journey we at SPR will take this month as we say good-bye to one another as well as we can. It seems fitting to enter Holy Week aware that an era of ministry here is coming to a close. With all the sadness, confusion, anxiety or distress an ending brings, we can be open to the goodness and possibility that God can bring on the other side of major change. Leaving St. Paul-Ref brings grief for me and maybe for all of us. May it be for the sake of new life in this Body of Christ.

Pastor Keith: Whether we are talking about our month of transition as you prepare to leave our ministry or Jesus’ own entry into Jerusalem and his departure from his confused and struggling disciples, emotions in this time are intense and even contradictory, and rational implications can be hard to sort out. So let’s propose that we hear the Passion story now with our ears well-tuned and our hearts wide open to know our own truth in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, as well as the heart-ache and pain of the trial and the grief and sadness in the loss. Let’s listen now to the story, knowing it is our story. With God accompanying us, we are ready faithfully to embrace all that comes our way.

Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. (John 12:25)

You may have heard this story before. Some of you may have lived it. Years ago, when the Betty Crocker company first began selling their cake mixes, they offered a product which only needed water. All you had to do was add water to the mix which came in the box, and you would get a perfect, delicious cake every time.

But it bombed. No one bought it and the company couldn’t understand why, so they commissioned a study which brought back a surprising answer. People weren’t buying the cake mix because it was too easy. They didn’t want to be totally excluded from the work of preparing a cake; they wanted to feel that they were contributing something to it. So, Betty Crocker changed the formula and required the customer to add an egg in addition to water. Immediately, the new cake mix was a huge success. It has been said that many people make the same mistake when it comes to “packaging” or presenting the Christian religion. They try to make the call of Jesus Christ as easy as possible because they’re afraid people won’t “buy” it if it seems too hard.

You hear it expressed often in popular religion, from well-known gospel songs and best-selling books to earnest televangelists. “Do you feel that something is missing in your life? Do you feel that your worldly ambitions and material rewards aren’t enough – do you have all that and still feel empty inside? Well, all you have to do is turn to Jesus! All you have to do is let Jesus into your life! Well, there is some truth to that, but I would suggest that whenever you hear someone say “All you have to do” in relation to Christian faith, all you have to do is walk away as fast as you can! You don’t want to buy a religion where you don’t even have to break an egg, where it’s all pre-mixed for you in the box. That kind of faith has an immediate appeal, but it lacks the depth to sustain you over the long haul of Christian living.

Jesus did not “package” Himself in this way. Jesus said a lot of things about the blessings of faith and He talked about asking in order to receive, but He never presented the overall Christian life as being particularly easy. Jesus talked a lot about what God can do and does for you, but He talked even more about God’s love for you and how it is reflected in your life of love toward God and others. And that’s the part which is often overlooked in the profit-seeking business of popular religion.

Here in our text for this morning, Jesus describes the cost of Christian living and He clearly is not watering it down to make it seem palatable or “easy.” First, He describes His own fate by saying that the hour has come for Him to be glorified, but He doesn’t use that word as most people understand it – by “glorified,” Jesus means “crucified.” Here in this Lenten season, the hour is coming for Jesus to be crucified. Then He compares Himself to a grain of wheat. If the grain of wheat doesn’t die and lie buried in the earth, it can’t yield anything and remains alone. So, too, with Jesus: if He is preserved, safe and secure, He will remain alone. But if He is crucified, dead and buried, then He can rise to bear much fruit, drawing all people to Himself. The Son of God must die if He is to bring to the world the gift of eternal life.

Then Jesus applies the same message to the rest of us. He says that we, too, must die in order to live. This is no easy, pre-packaged “cake mix” religion – Jesus says that if we are to be a Christian, we have to die. He literally says we have to lose our life! The cost of faith is too high. If we are to receive the ultimate joy, we are to be willing to pay the ultimate price.

At this point, many are quite willing to back away. “No thanks,” we say, “it’s too expensive. I love my life too much to lose it and I’m not quite ready to die as yet. I think I’ll find something to believe in which is a little less demanding.” Or, “I think I’ll wait for the clearance sale after Easter, I’ll wait until the cost of Christian faith comes down to a level I can live with.”

Yet when you think about it, we are fully used to the idea of dying in order to live. We are used to the idea of losing something and sacrificing ourselves in order to gain. In fact, we do it all the time in life. Certainly, the people who are flocking to gyms and health clubs to put themselves through punishing workouts are making a sacrifice, yet they do it willingly. They try to lose their old bodies in order to gain new ones. In the same way, many people have struggled and suffered to lose their addictions to cocaine or alcohol or nicotine, in order to gain their health. Then there are the gamblers and speculators, from Wall Street to the race track, who are willing to lose enormous sums of money in the hope of winning even more.

Many of us are parents and what is parenthood but a whole slew of sacrifices? You sacrifice all of your privacy and a piece of your sanity. You sacrifice a neat, orderly environment in which to live, where things stay just where you left them. You make a huge financial sacrifice – between children and taxes, you’re lucky to have a dollar in your pocket at the end of the day – but you do it all for the sake of something which money can’t buy. In these and in many other ways, we are perfectly used to the idea of losing one thing in order to gain something else.

It all makes me wonder: if we are so willing to sacrifice and even suffer for things which matter for us in our worldly lives, why shouldn’t we do even more for the sake of our spiritual lives? Why should we shy away away from the full meaning of what Jesus said: “If you love your life you will lose it, but if you hate your life in this world, you will gain it for eternal life.”

What have we got to lose? Don’t be deceived by watered down, “cake mix” gospels which make the call to Christian living seem too easy. We’ve got to die to ourselves in order to live with Christ! We’ve got to sacrifice and give up to gain! So what about it? What have we got to lose? What about selfishness? Shouldn’t we lose that narrow-minded little love which only extends to family and friends? Shouldn’t we know the joy of living in God’s larger world of caring and compassion, where everyone is our neighbor and we love our neighbor as ourselves? To live with Christ, shouldn’t the selfish self within us die in order that a new, more moral self can live?

What about fear? Shouldn’t we also lose our fears, the fears which keep us separated from God? Shouldn’t we lose our fear of loneliness and our fear of love, our anxieties about status or prestige, our fear of aging or illness, even our fear of death? To live with Christ, shouldn’t the fearful self within us die, so that a new, more faithful self can live?

What about doubt? Shouldn’t we lose the doubts which plague us, which say that God has abandoned us and no longer cares for us? To live with Christ, shouldn’t these doubts within us die, so that a new self which believes in God’s unending love can live?

And what about our willful pride, the empty conceit which tells us we don’t need God to be our anchor amid the swirling currents of life’s raging sea? Shouldn’t we lose this frail independence which keeps us from depending on God? To live with Christ, shouldn’t the overweening trust in self within us die, so that a new self which trusts in God can live?

A lot of people are looking for the path to faith and spiritual fulfillment, but many of them aren’t finding it. Perhaps they are looking for it in the wrong way. They are looking to gain something they don’t yet have. Maybe they should be looking to lose something which is already theirs.

Jesus says in our text this morning, “Whoever serves Me must follow Me.” This is the path we are looking for, but we lose our way amid the easy answers of “cake mix” religion. Faith isn’t something to be pre-packaged and cooked up in an instant. Faith is something to be practiced and prepared for eternity.

Serve Jesus this Lenten season by following Him. Follow Him all the way to the cross, where He dies as a grain of wheat in order to be buried and bear much fruit. He says that like Him, we must lose our life in order to keep it, so ask yourself in the weeks ahead – what have you got to lose? What part of you should die, so that a more faithful part may live?

When we use this expression, we are usually being flip and saying that nothing really is at stake. “Go ahead and buy that lottery ticket! Go ahead and ask her for a date! Go ahead and order the chef’s special! What have you got to lose? But today the question resonates with meaning, because everything that truly matters is at stake. We called to work hard to lose those parts of our lives which keep us from the love of Christ, because when it comes to living with Christ, the things we give up count as nothing compared to what we gain. So really now, what have we got to lose?

And so, as we approach the climax of Lent and are soon to be confronted by the Cross and the Tomb, we take up the hymn which begins and ends with a refrain:  

Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim Till all the world adore his sacred name. And the invitation is sounded in song:  Come, Christians, follow where our captain trod, Our king victorious, Christ, the Son of God.  Led on our way by this victorious sign, The hosts of God in conqu’ring ranks combine.  Finally, we lift our prayer:  O Lord, once lifted on the glorious tree, As thou hast promised, draw us all to thee.  So shall our song of triumph ever be: Praise to the Crucified for victory!  

Now, Holy Week may soon begin. And we will approach it and enter into the reliving of those last days in the life of Jesus Christ, singing,  Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim Till all the world adore his sacred name.  What have we got to lose? Amen.

Fourth Sunday in Lent – March 18, 2012

St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran Church Co-Pastor Anita Hill

Lift Up Your Eyes

Numbers 21:4-9, John 3:14-21

Grace and peace to you from God—Creator, Christ, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Are any of you scared of snakes? As a kid in the deep South, I remember picking blackberries with my cousins, when we saw a big snake. The oldest cousin took a whack at it with a big stick. And then we all ran away, screaming at the top of our lungs, our berry pails left behind. Out of breath, we lifted our eyes to the heavens and thanked God we were safe.

Do you recall Harry Potter’s fight with that huge snake deep in the bowels of Hogwarts? Or Indiana Jones being lowered into a room full of writhing snakes? It’s enough to make my skin crawl. How about you?

If someone had told me God said to put a snake on a pole to be healed of my fear, I don’t know if I could have made any sense of that. Still, some people see the snake as a sign of wisdom, and even healing – like the two snakes that entwine the symbol of medical physicians still today.

In our lesson this morning, Moses is still leading the Israelites in the wilderness. But the people are impatient, tired of traveling, weary and worn down. They demand answers of Moses: Why have you led us out here to die in the wilderness? Why don’t we have food and water? And they spoke against God who provided the manna they now called miserable food.

So God sends a response—poisonous serpents. The Israelites are surrounded by poisonous snakes and many people died. That’s a tough response! I don’t know what to make of it. Those who survived confessed their sins against God and Moses. They asked Moses to pray that Yahweh would take the snakes away.

And God sends a remedy when the people admit their crankiness and mistrust. But God does not always answer prayer in the way we want or expect. God did not remove the snakes. God tells Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. Yahweh instructed that when someone was bitten by a snake, they were to look at the bronze serpent lifted up on the pole and they would live.

Now that is a hard story! It seems God sends consequences when we are not faithful. Sometimes the consequences stay even when God provides a remedy. It is paradoxical that the symbol of suffering should bring healing; that a poisonous snake could be the means of helping—but it happens.

This story made a long lasting impression on the people of Israel. Their rabbis explained the healing of the people in this way: “It was not the serpent that gave life. It was not the sight of the bronze snake that healed them. When they looked at the symbol God appointed, it was God that healed them.” The bronze snake lifted up became a symbol of their trust in God.

Let’s go back to the snakes in the story. They take on symbolic meaning. Humanity has a long tradition of looking down at the hardships, the dangers that are the snakes in life. It’s hard to look past the things we fear, beyond the guilt we feel when we do something wrong. The snakes at our feet include the ways we judge ourselves and others as “less than”, as not strong enough, not beautiful enough, not smart enough, as not….You fill in the blanks—What are your snakes? What are the things that we fear most? What are the horrors that snake up on us? Think of the things that bring alienation, injustice, and death.

Our gospel reading says: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. (John 3:14) The one works like the other.

The Israelites had forgotten that the journey through the wilderness was God’s deliverance. All they saw was their own misery and discomfort.

When the people looked on that bronze snake, it symbolized God’s grace for them. When they believed they would be healed by looking at the snake, they were healed.

Faith is a special way of seeing—of looking for God’s presence even in the midst of hardship. We experience God’s healing by grace through faith. When we see Jesus lifted up on the cross as a sign of God’s great love, we get grace. We get healing. We get mercy. We get a life that will not end.

Lifting our eyes to Christ on the cross, we see God. We see a sign of grace. We receive mercy and healing. We get a life that will not end with death. We lift our eyes to Jesus as our savior and we are saved. We see God as loving and gracious and we get love and grace.

John 3:16 says: “For God so loved the world that he sent his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.” And let’s not overlook the verses that follow: “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in Christ Jesus are not condemned. (John 3:17-18a)”

In the face of the horrors of life, we receive radical love. Love is lifted up. Love beyond our comprehension. Jesus’ love for us saves us; our love for Jesus helps us receive it. Jesus offers us the choice to look at his life and his death, and be lifted up now and in eternity. Following God in Christ is an invitation to community. Christ brings the choice to relate to one another as beloved sisters and brothers.

God is in the business of saving, reconciling, and healing; transforming life in the most holistic sense of the term. The cross and the serpent are signs of transformation lifted up for us. What makes the Good News real are the signs of transformation in the lives of Jesus’ followers moving from horror to healing, brokenness to wholeness, fear to courage, despair to hope, from death to life. Christ brings us the opportunity to lift up our eyes to see life’s hardships in a different light.

We can face what we fear and be healed. Transformation is possible. God has provided the remedy and lifted up Christ. Let us rejoice in the wholeness that comes from God. Let us lift up our fears and concerns in prayer. Let us lift up our eyes to the Holy. Amen

Sundays and Seasons, March 26, 2006; Process and Faith Lectionary Commentary, and other TextWeek.com resources.

Third Sunday in Lent Series B

March 11, 2012 St. Paul-Reformation Lutheran, St. Paul

Keith Olstad

The texts:

First reading: Exodus 20:1-17 NRSV

Psalm 19:1-4, 7-9,14 ELW

Second reading: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 NRSV

The Gospel: John 2:13-22 NRSV

The children’s lesson:

Good morning. I’m glad you’re here and willing to come up to visit with me. I so enjoy being with you.

I have a little game to play with you this morning. I think it’s a game that God is playing with us, too, but I’ll tell you more about that in a minute.

Here’s the game: when I say one thing, I want you to say the opposite. For example, if I say that something is bad, what would you say? That’s it’s good, right!?! Or if I say that something is under the pew, you could say that it’s on top of the pew!

OK, here we go. Don’t steal! What are you going to say?

Here’s another one: Don’t kill people! What’s the opposite?

Here’s another one: Don’t tell lies!

Here’s another one: Don’t be jealous or greedy!

In a minute, we’re going to hear a reading from Exodus in which there are a lot of statements about what not to do. I think those are there because God wants us to think and do the opposite, and wants us to be creative and gracious in doing the opposite.

But now the game is over, so when I say, “let’s pray,” you don’t have to do the opposite. You can pray with me!

The sermon:

Friends, grace to you and peace from God, our creator, and from our loving savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

“Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!”1 demands Jesus in John’s gospel. The translation of the original Greek statement is a bit problematic here. Jesus may actually have meant something closer to: stop making my Father’s dwelling place or abode an all-purpose shopping mall.

Jesus, we learn from Luke’s gospel, was born in a Bethlehem stable2 and was raised in Nazareth,3 although we know nothing about his life there. What we do know is that by the time Jesus was twelve, he felt at home in the synagogue. After the Passover celebration, when finally—after three days of searching—his parents found him, “he said to them, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’”4 There’s that phrase again, “my Father’s house,” or perhaps more accurately, my Father’s dwelling place, or abode.

Actually, I suspect that the key meaning here is that Jesus—as a boy and as a man in the prime of his life entering Jerusalem—feels at home with God, and wants others to feel similarly at home. His words are not about a structure, a building, but about a relationship, and a community of relationships. Jesus wants people to know that when they relate to each other faithfully and well, they are in communion with God. They are living, quite literally, where God dwells, where God resides, among the people.

When Jesus drives the money changers and animal venders from the temple grounds, he’s not purging the temple of “bad” activity. His actions do not imply a problem with buying and selling things. Instead, he is making clear that the central purpose of God’s dwelling place, of God’s home, is a relationship with God and with God’s people. That’s something that can’t be bought or sold.

One of the strongest images for Jesus’ engagement with God is as family, but here family is meant in the broadest sense. What is at stake in this family is not whether the adults are grandparents, a single parent or two parents, same gender or two-gender. It can even mean family in a less formal or legal sense. What makes a family is deep knowing and deep caring. In this sense of family, gifts are lovingly given—given because of the relationship—not because they are earned or purchased. It is a set of relationships that makes a synagogue or a church God’s home.

This way of talking about home makes sense to me in my own life. I was raised in the city of Manitowoc, Wisconsin, where with their own hands my parents literally built our house from the foundation up. Although they invested tremendous time and energy in that house, our family vocabulary was that the five of us—two parents and three kids—we were what made the house a home. Home was not the house; home was the family!

When I was in college, my family left that Manitowoc house and moved to a new house in Menomonie, Wisconsin. I was already on my own, so I never lived in that new Menomonie house. But throughout my adult years when I went “home,” I went to stay with family in Menomonie. I didn’t go to be in the house. I went home, to my family.

As far as we know, Jesus never lived in the Jerusalem synagogue, but he always felt at home with YAHWEH, his dear “abba,” his Father there, and with his brothers and sisters in the faith. He developed a keen sense that his home was that community of faith. So in this morning’s gospel, when the Judeans, the temple sect, want a sign from him, “Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’”5 When they challenged Jesus about how he would raise up in three days a building that had been under construction for forty-six years, John reports cryptically that Jesus “was speaking of the temple of his body.”6 What does that mean? Does it mean that Jesus would perform his own resurrection—as though his body were the new temple, or does it suggest that the community that has gathered around Jesus will become his body? Will Jesus’ resurrection create a new body of Christ?

This morning’s first lesson reinforces this understanding of how we encounter God. Our first reading contains what confirmation students know are the ten commandments. In this translation from the original Hebrew text, the phrase “shall not” occurs ten times. No wonder some people see these commandments as merely a set of prohibitions, a list of things that are banned. But what if something else quite different lies behind these restrictions and pronouncements? Could we allow that perhaps these ten commandments say more about God than they do about us?

I’m told that Professor Rolf Jacobson, who teaches at Luther Seminary, is fond of saying that God doesn’t give me commandments to make me a better me. Rather because God loves my neighbor, God gives me commandments. And because God loves me, God gave the same commandments to my neighbor. In other words, the commandments from the get-go are meant to be transactional, and they have a whole lot to do with who God is and how God relates to us.

Here’s another way of saying it. The fountain from which the command-ments flow is God’s heart. It is God’s love for your neighbor and also for you that leads God to outline what can create a community in which there is safe space for everyone. Honoring these commandments makes it possible for people to live well together, to honor and care for each other. Martin Luther picked up on this very notion when he fashioned the Small Catechism so that it has less to do with what to avoid than with what to do. Luther, in his explanations for the Ten Commandments, focused primarily on what the commandments require of us in order for a strong community to thrive.

In other words, if we are going to live at home with God, we need to find a way to be at home with each other. We need a social space in which we trust and are trusted, in which we give care and are cared for, in which we offer ourselves to others and find that others are offering themselves to us. It has very little to do with building or physical structure. It has everything to do with being the body of Christ.

By God’s grace, this is how we can understand ourselves as we welcome new members this morning. Perhaps we would be most faithful to this morning’s texts if what we each said to each new member were: welcome home! Welcome to this community of faithful people, to this set of people who have few rules and much love, who are less focused on ourselves than we are on each other. And we can say that—we should remind ourselves—because that is how we find ourselves at home with God.

In a world full of narcissism and greed, God enables us to be a community of faithful people who are focused on each other, and who give to each other for the sake of the whole congregation. We give not only for the sake of the congregation, but we both give and act on behalf of the whole community around us. In so doing, we find ourselves fully blessed and at home. We are at home with God here, because it is here, among us, within our humble and caring community, that God is also at home.

So be it. Amen.