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The Courage to Sustain Wonder

Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.

I love that line.  It sticks in my ears and captivates my imagination.

On the night of nativity after the angel and heavenly host made a grand and sweeping pronouncement to the shepherds and headed back to heaven; the shepherds came up into Bethlehem from their fields, smelling of sheep and their feet stained by grass, telling everyone what they had been told: that the Savior was born for us, the Messiah, the Lord. All who heard responded with great amazement.  The world just turned.   

But Mary, who had just given birth to the Messiah, the Savior, the Lord, God in the flesh, Jesus Christ (Greek word for Messiah)...Mary said nothing, did nothing, asked for nothing, but rather she treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.

Something colossal had just happened, something so massive that thoughts took new shapes and words took on new meanings.  A great, big God was born into the tiny body of an infant named Jesus, wrapped in cloth and placed in a manger, a place where cattle are fed.  Almighty God became small and vulnerable.  Up was down and left was right, before was after and black was white. 

And Mary treasured these things and pondered them in her heart.

Our New Testament, where this story is found, was originally written in Greek.  The word ponder in Greek is sumballousa, which gives me great joy.  Try it with me: sumballousa...

To give you an idea of the definition, I’ll first tell you what it is not.  sumballousa is not knowing, as if Mary understood everything that had just happened, as if she had gained full knowledge or awareness or comprehension.

sumballousa is also not belief.  It is not a quiet submitting, as if she simply agreed with what had been told to her, blindly accepting it on the spot.

sumballousa is an internal contemplation.  It is an inner discussion. sumballousa tells us that she conversed within herself and wrestled with these things in her heart. 

Now the heart used to be the seat of knowledge, today we would place her pondering in the mind.  Using all the logic she could locate and reason she could recruit, Mary beheld what had just happened and could not wrap her head or heart around it.  She didn’t blindly accept it.  She didn’t fully grasp it.  She held it in wonder.

sumballousa is faith that is fired by wonder.

Wonder exists beyond our ability to know and believe, between facts and faith, and it is never fully captured by either.  It is stitched with threads of doubt and skepticism and yet holds on to that which it cannot deny.  Like a new mother who cannot believe that her baby has finally come.  Unto us a child has been born. The Savior.  The Messiah.  The Lord.   

How can this be?

After all, such a birth is a scandal.  God choosing to be born in human flesh, taking on humanity, assuming all that we encounter in order to save all that he would encounter.  God is supposed to be big and judgmental and distant and all-knowing and wise, not vulnerable, not poor, not a baby.  Not one who needs a mother to feed him.  Not one who will rely on the work of his father.  Such an event is absurd.  Beyond belief.  Irrational.  Illogical. Unlikely.   

And yet, on that night of nativity over 2,000 years ago, God entered our human story as one of us, God with us, Jesus Christ, our Savior.  Our Messiah.  Our Lord.

This story, this event, this recorded historical happening that changed how we keep time and mark our years, this story is retold every year, stirring our hearts and minds around the marvel of the manger scene.  God arrives in the flesh and we can only behold him in awe.  A great reversal of a God who has previously arrived in awe and our ability to behold God only within our flesh.

Such beholding isn’t easy.  Since Christianity has become normal rather than illegal, passed on rather than taken up, the absurdity and the scandal have been removed from the incarnation to make it more palatable, easier to swallow and logical.  Such editing has actually taken its toll on the Christian story rather than making it more acceptable.  We have muted the power of vulnerability.  We have lost our wonder.  We have lost our awe.  And yet we still have this little baby Jesus in whom God has arrived in the flesh.

It takes courage to sustain wonder.  But then again, it takes courage to be.  This time of year more than any other it seems.  We write cards and wrap gifts and wear our best garments as we shuffle the family to all the different parties to show that we have it all together.  But it’s darker out there, and colder too.  The slowing down of work and school and activity reveals our loneliness.  It is this time of year when we remember our losses.  “The past inserts its finger into the slit of the present and pulls.”  Darkness creeps in at every turn.  The bottom line is higher than we can ever reach.  The brokenness of our everyday lives and relationships can no longer be hidden.  

 

It is precisely at this time of year when we need to hear about the absurdity and the scandal of the incarnation, of God taking on flesh, taking on all that we have experienced. God takes on not just the good of life, but all of it, the bad and the ugly included.  And God meets you and comes to you and takes you as you are.  

 

That is the great wonder of it all, that God would come for us and to us in Christ Jesus, unashamed and not unmoved by our pain, loss, suffering or brokenness.  We can’t know why, and we may not fully believe it, but we can behold God as Mary did, with wonder, and hold onto God as Mary did, as a the little baby Jesus in her arms, born for us, the Savior.  The Messiah.  The Lord.

 

the messiness of the kingdom

Last week we learned about the economy of God and how cost benefit analysis cannot account for the kingdom of God where only a full house will do.  In this economy, a foolhardy God seeks out the lost—one out of 99—to bring him or her back to the fold.  In finding the lost, God rejoices and celebrates.

This week we will learn that God’s economy extends beyond people and into all of creation; that nothing is separate from God’s creating and nothing is outside of God’s realm.

Today we encounter a rich man, his manager and a very strange parable.  Keep in mind that a parable, by design, is meant to make you confused, turn meaning and understanding on its ear and help us to see in a new and different light. 

Perhaps your head is still reeling from the Gospel reading in which we heard Jesus say this:

And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd with dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.  And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

How many of us missed the Sunday School lesson in which Jesus told us to be a liar; to use that which did not belong to us to gain salvation; to act shrewdly or craftily, adverbs attached to the snake in the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3 :: “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made…” The master praised the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly and Jesus says, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth…” 

How many of us would have been pulled out or would pull out our children if that lesson was taught? 

Yet, here we are. 

Should I tell you the ending, the meaning I have found and studied this week, talking to other preachers and teachers, or should I let this awkwardness play itself out?

Yeah, okay.

The point of it, I think, is that the dishonest manager knows how to use his money for mutual benefit in order to create relationships of mutual responsibility.  He helps people out in order be helped out at a later time.  The parable teaches us that we too, can use our gifts and money and in fact here we are called to use them.  But for good purposes.  Money is not something to be avoided as inherently sinful, but is something to be used for good purposes and is to be put into its place.  We do not serve money, but money can serve us—and God’s kingdom—where we “have the confidence of an eternal security that no amount of money or economic dealing can purchase” (Matt Skinner).

That is, in the kingdom of God we will neither own nor owe.  Jesus has wiped away our debts completely.  Jesus has wiped away the debts of others completely.  It is what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our debts, trespasses, sins…as we forgive those who debt, trespass and sin against us.”

Nice and clean, makes sense and Jesus does not praise dishonest dealings.  We do the right thing and things work out ok.  A nice explanation of a messy parable. 

But I don’t think we’re safe from the mess.  I don’t think it is as simple as doing the right thing, because it has never been harder to do the right thing.  There is enough hurt to keep us from forgiving, enough need to keep us from being honest and enough death to keep us from embracing life.  It is a messy world out there and nice and clean, neat and tidy answers to parables and personal problems just don’t cut it.

If anything, this parable prepares us for life in this world by being honest about shrewdness or the way the world gives.  Life is hard, it is complicated and it is messy.  Use your skills and smarts to survive.  Being a good person and having enough left over to give to others at the end of the day is a luxury.

It is for this reason that we are not called good people but rather child of light and or as we say it, Christian.  I recently heard this and had to pass it on:

“If being a Christian is about how we act, then it is impossible to be one.  But that’s not what being a Christian is about.  Being a Christian is about daily receiving grace and mercy and forgiveness and being raised from the dead to serve the neighbor” (Rolf Jacobson). 

We must acknowledge at some point that being Christian is not synonymous with being good, though there is certainly room for that; being Christian is to be shaped in the image of Christ who for our sake took on our hurt, our need and our death in order to give us his peace and abundance and life. 

Being Christian is to be shaped in the image of Christ, to use what we have: our wealth of time, love, money and service—things first given to us—to serve our neighbor and live into the everlasting home of God’s kingdom where we neither own nor owe and where we “have the confidence of an eternal security that no amount of money or economic dealing can purchase.”

Such giving doesn’t just make us good people but points to a deeper confession in our hearts and souls and lives that what we see presently isn’t all that we get in Christ Jesus.  That there is life beyond death; love beyond fear; health beyond hurt.  That this present age, all of its struggle and pain, scarcity and problems isn’t it.  Such giving is not just here today and gone tomorrow but plants the future—the kingdom of God—into our lives and world today.  Such giving is a confession of faith in the God who makes all things new, who brings life through death, who has given us more than we could ever give and calls us to live the future—the kingdom of God—into today.  It’s messy business but it does not belong to us alone, after all, it is God who gives us what we have and God who sustains us in our giving, and God who has blessed you to be a blessing in and for this world, to and with your neighbors, here and now, now and forever.

God's Economy :: Only a Full House

If you ask an economist to look at this week’s text in which a shepherd leaves the 99 sheep to find the one lost sheep, they would run a cost benefit analysis and tell you that it would be better to leave the one lost sheep, cut your losses and stay with the 99. “Which one of you,” Jesus says, “having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” Um, Jesus, none of us.

I asked my brother-in-law, who is an economist, and he told me, maybe it's like the Vikings: leaving behind 99 quarterbacks for Brett Favre. And, well, we can see how good that has been so far this season.

This isn’t the first time and it certainly won’t be the last that Jesus tells us a parable that causes us to tilt our faces and scratch our heads and say, ahh, I don’t get it. Who would leave 99 sheep in the wilderness, where predators and danger lurk around every dark corner, to find one lost, probably stupid and confused solitary sheep?

What’s more, who would go through the lengths of searching high and low, far and wide, over hills and through valleys, through briars and thorns and then, upon finding the lost sheep, carry it back on his or her own shoulders? Again, no one.

And, which one of you, if you lose one coin, which is worth a day’s wage, would spend a whole day to light a lamp, sweep the house, and turn over every cushion to find it, thus wasting a whole day’s work. And then, which one of you wouldn’t then throw a party at possibly twice the cost of the coin you have found in order to celebrate what was found. Again, no one.

Nevertheless, when the lost are found, rejoicing—not harshness, judgment or punishment—is the appropriate reaction. It is God’s delight to show compassion and mercy, to rejoice at the repentance of one who was lost.

Such a venture—leaving the whole flock to find the one and then calling your friends together to celebrate—is foolhardy, to be sure, inefficient at best, and what’s worse, it’s just plain bad economics. But in the economy of God, it is the only way.

In the economy of God, efficiency and cost benefit analysis cannot exist. If they did, none of us would be found. The 99 would be safe in their pen with their shepherd and the 9 coins would just have to make do. None of us would be found if left to our own devices. God must go out and seek because all of us have been lost and we would be lost without God.

All of us have been the lost. While we are neither sheep nor coins, God has sought us out and still seeks us out. Yet we still wonder, if God is willing to search so hard to find the lost, why hasn’t God found me? Why hasn’t God gone through the effort to search out my son or my mother or all the other lost people wandering the earth, seeking a home?

I don’t know the answer to this hard question—if anyone did, it wouldn’t satisfy us. Some might say that some people are just lost and have not correctly repented. Or maybe that some people have just chosen to stay lost. But in this text, neither the sheep nor the coin find their own way home. They are always found. Even when we dip into the next text, the famous one about the prodigal son, we learn that repentance is just to be lost and to know it. And even so, there is rejoicing in that awareness.

I don’t know the answer to the hard question, but what I do know is that for God, only a full house is going to have a prayer. Though some people stay lost to us and though some people have lost God, no one is ever lost to God. Only a full herd and a full purse will satisfy God who will go and has gone through great lengths to find us: the cross.

In the cross Jesus became the lost in order to find and restore all of creation. On the cross Jesus cries, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When we stand and affirm our faith, we stand and say, “He was crucified, died and was buried, he descended into hell.” We confess our faith in the Christ who isn’t afraid of lostness, death or the grave and will continue to go to great lengths and widths and heights and depths to find the lost. And there will be great rejoicing: a feast; celebration; resurrection.

But now, where there may not be much to feast on or celebrate, we who have been lost but now are found are called to buy into God’s economy, seeking out the one while we leave the comfort of the 99 behind, and then, when we have found them, to bring them back to a place of celebration—not judgment—a place of welcome and belonging. Because the truth of it is, we can’t be found unless we have a full flock. We are lost unless all our found. We are not complete without the other; the missing; the lost. For God, and truthfully for us, only a full house will do.

“This fellow,” say the Pharisees and scribes, “welcomes sinners and eats with them.” And we, joining at his table say, Amen, come Lord Jesus.

The will of God (to give you the kingdom), a Sermon

As in weeks past, our text today continues to tell us God’s desire to give us everything.  Which is so nice, of course.  Then, we’re told that since God has given us everything that we should give alms and give away everything we have to everyone else.  Which is also so nice because it is good to give and share what we’ve been given by God.  Receiving from God requires a community to accept and share what we’ve been given. 

What’s more, in today’s text, Jesus tells us this: have no fear, little flock.  While there is much reason to fear we know that our beginnings and our ends are in Christ in whom we’ve been baptized and already brought through death to life.  Which is also so nice, of course.  But we can notice that Jesus doesn’t address just one person but a whole flock, a whole host of people, a community.  The practice of not fearing as well as receiving from God takes place within a community, with the support of other people.  What we have here is the original “it takes a village” speech.

It takes a community—one throughout history’s length and breadth and one here and now—to discern what we hear from the book of Hebrews concerning faith.  “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  Did you catch that?  Faith is a promise of a future even when at present you can’t see it.   I like how Eugene Peterson translates it in The Message: “The fundamental fact of existence is that this trust in God, this faith, is the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living. It's our handle on what we can't see.”  I also like how musician and Lutheran Josh Ritter puts it, “You need faith for the same reasons that it’s so hard to find.” 

Faith is not an activity that belongs to us.  It is given by God and requires community to sustain.  Faith is also, by its nature, not something we can see.  And what is this promise, this assurance that God gives in which we wait and hope? 

We hear a part of it today.  God wants to give you the kingdom.  That is, God wants to give you all that God has.  God wants to give you Jesus and all of his benefits: forgiveness, grace, wisdom, life and life beyond death.  God is on the side of life and here Jesus tells us that God wants to give us everything.

But we know from experience that it is often only by faith that we receive this promise.  Don’t get me wrong, the promise is true and real, but sometimes we need faith for the same reasons that it’s so hard to find.  Because what God promises is so far from reality.  God is on the side of life, but we encounter death and the threat of death almost on a daily basis.  When our families are harmed and threatened with violence; when someone steals a job because of who they know not what they know; when cancer keeps striking your home, or disease or depression or death haunt you, we know that we cannot see what God has promised us, but that it is still real and still for us. (pause)

So often we want an answer to life's happenings.  We try and find an answer for when bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.  We'd like to strike that and reverse it so that this world would have justice: good things happening to good people and bad things happening to bad people.  All would be right and it would be much easier to be a good person.  This system of belief is called karma.  

It is tempting to turn God’s promise into something we earn and therefore control as if we could entice God into throwing something good our way.  It is comforting to think that that which happens in life is produced and controlled by God; that God can give and take away as God sees fit.  We want this kind of God, because this kind of God seems fair.  But when bad things happen all we’re left to say is this:  "I just don't understand the will of God." 

Sometimes what we perceive as God’s will can feel a lot like judgment.  And it would be so easy to call it that.  We can almost hear the hecklers say, “too bad, you must have done something wrong to merit this kind of judgment.  You should have believed this instead.” 

In this way of seeing God, as one with puppet strings causing every good and bad thing to happen, we either make excuses for God or excuse God from our lives.  In this system, the one where we say that God is all-powerful, God comes out as all-powerless because things are what they are and there is no changing it.  Children are still hungry, violence still occurs, there is no justice.  And we hang our heads as we hang our hat on the will of God, which we can't understand.  

Have no fear little flock, God wants to give you the kingdom.  God is on the side of life.  It is not God's will that you encounter violence, death, cancer, disease, injustice, etc.  God is on the side of life and it is God's will to give you the kingdom and its benefits, that is: forgiveness, grace, wisdom, life and life beyond death. 

God is powerful, but perhaps not in a way that we can easily understand.  God’s power is made perfect in weakness, Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12.  God chooses to be found in suffering because that is where God know he will find us; we don’t have to go searching because God is already there.  God is on the side of life and wills to give you the kingdom.  God also has the power and control to allow us and all of creation to do what we were created to do: have good dominion and stewardship over the earth; for plants and animals to bring forth vegetation and life (Genesis 1).  God allows us to do that which we would have God do.  My friend Kate, a pastor in Atlanta says this, “we must do that which we would have God do.” Tend to creation, feed the hungry, consol the prisoner, watch over the widow and the orphan, give what we have received away to the last, the least, the lost.  God shows God’s power through us, broken and sinful and selfish as we may be.

What then is God up to in the world?

“Though you intended it for evil,” Joseph said to his brothers, “God intended it for good” (Genesis 50:20). God takes even the deepest, darkest, most death-like strands of existence and weaves them into something new, something with life and vitality.  Though death was intended through sin, God chose and chooses to give us life in Jesus, in his cross.  Though we encounter the deep and painful experience of depression, those who have gone through it have found a deep and real vitality on the other side.  God is on the side of life and is at work in you and in the world to give you the kingdom. 

Karma says that we earn whatever we receive.  It is how this world often gives.  Grace says that we are given what we do not deserve and receive it without earning it.  It is how God gives. 

Our system of belief is called grace.  It is a system that says that God is with us through all of life, the good, the bad, the ugly and that God suffers with us just as God in Christ has suffered for us.  God is with us in everything that we face.  Grace is the system that I can believe in even though, like faith, I can’t see it but I can experience it.  It is something I must return to and receive over and over again in the community and presence of other believers, in the breaking of the bread and body of our Lord Jesus, faith and grace promises that God will never leave or forsake me or you or all of creation for God is on the side of life and God wants and wills to give you the kingdom.

May the peace of God which passes all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

________________

I preached this sermon with my amazing friend Erin Nelson in mind. Credit due to her for seeing this as a word to a flock, a group of people and not just individuals.  When we can't believe the community believes for us.

Chasing After the Wind, a sermon

Strike a match and a flame is born.  You can see its light flicker and burn down the stick leaving a blackened curve of a remnant.  Blow it out and smell and see a waft of sulfur and smoke stream in the air.  But the smoke will not remain, it being without any real substance or anything you can grasp onto. 

            The Hebrew word for smoke in the bible is hevel; it means breath, vapor, cloud of steam, puff of smoke and points to two deeper meanings: 1) it is without substance. You can't grab onto it; and 2) It is not lasting. Now we see the puff of smoke; in a few seconds we will no longer be able to detect it.

            Whether you detected it or not, this word hevel or smoke or here translated as vanity comes 9 times in the short Old Testament reading. Vanity is fleeting and transient; without substance or permanence.  Vanity is the perspective from whence the author sees life. 

Perspective is when an experience provides a moment of clarity and visual acuity in which we are able to see what is important in life.

Vanity of Vanities!  All is Vanity.  A chasing after the wind. Our reading jumped us all over the first couple of chapters of the book perhaps to give us an overview of the writer’s honest, albeit cynical, assessment of life. 

            To further summarize: life is work, work is toil, wisdom is futile and death is inevitable.  (ROLL EYES) Would somebody please tell the guy that he is writing for generations of faithful people who would like to have a little more hope and meaning in their lives, thank you very much?!  I mean, we’re supposed to be preaching good news, not what we already know and experience.  The life of faith is supposed to offer us an alternative for the way things are with death and war and hunger and poverty and disease and all of those things about which we feel so powerless! (PAUSE)

Perspective is when an experience provides a moment of clarity and visual acuity in which we are able to see what is important in life.

The first time I preached on this text was the first time I ever preached.  I was a senior at Augsburg College, just returned from an educational trip to Mexico and pondering the wise sayings of Ecclesiastes, especially meaninglessness and the powerlessness of doing anything in the world. Life is short and filled with toil and that which we endeavor to do: work, study, encountering the world seemed to end up in the same place: with nothing changed.  There is nothing new under the sun, so the writer says.  “The sun rises and the sun goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises. The wind blows to the south, and goes around to the north; round and round goes the wind, and on its circuits the wind returns. All streams run to the sea, but the sea is not full; to the place where the streams flow, there they continue to flow.  All things are wearisome; more than one can express.”

The point of the sermon was that although life may seem meaningless, we are not meaningless to God and while there is nothing new under the sun, Jesus is a new thing, and gives us new life. While I had good and thoughtful help from Phil Quanbeck II and had a good sermon in hand, the perspective of it seemed a little dark and sobering.

But it happened that day that my niece, who was about 2 years old at the time, was in the audience and once she saw me up front and not sitting with her, she wrestled her way out of her dad's arms and came, crawling and crying up to the place where I was sitting.  In a second I bent down and scooped her up and there she sat in my arms through the hymn, the reading and finally the sermon.  While I was testifying to the meaninglessness of life, I had to admit that, at that point, nothing seemed meaningless. 

Perspective is when an experience provides a moment of clarity and visual acuity in which we are able to see what is important in life.

On Monday Evening I received a phone call telling me that the 6 youth and 3 chaperones, who were on their way home from their mission trip and great work in Kokomo, Indiana, were in a serious van accident.  Everyone walked away with generally minor bumps and bruises, cuts and contusions.  Everyone walked away.  What happened was that the rear passenger tire blew while they were in the passing lane.  Kris dutifully and masterfully slowed the vehicle down, keeping it from hitting the semi-truck in the next lane.  With the blown tire, the van went right into the ditch, where the van rolled one and a quarter times.  It is amazing and some have said a miracle that no one was hurt too badly and that all walked away. (PAUSE)

It is a fearful thing to be on the cusp of a tragedy. It is hard not to think about what might have happened.  We stare blankly and start to see how wide the valley of the shadow of death really is.  In such events, life seems much more as fragile and as short and as fleeting as a breath or vapor or cloud of steam or puff of smoke.  Annie Dillard, my favorite author says it this way, “That it’s rough out there and chancy is no surprise.  Every live thing is a survivor on a kind of extended emergency bivouac.  But at the same time we are also created.”

Talking to the kids and parents afterwards and hearing Kris’ reports on the day, two themes I heard over and over again were: 1) God kept us safe—it is a miracle we all survived—God was with us in that ditch; and 2) Life means so much more now.

One parent told the kids, “Well, go out now and serve because you were saved for a reason.” Which was a rich paraphrasing of what God told Abraham: “You are blessed to be a blessing.”  Life was seen for what it is: a gift and a fragile thing and it has taken a new meaning and purpose and focus.  Perspective is when an experience provides a moment of clarity and visual acuity in which we are able to see what is important in life.  (PAUSE)

While we may give the writer of Ecclesiastes a hard time for his honesty and cynicism, we must read the rest of the story and hear his perspective: to eat and drink and be merry—that is, to live your life, live it fully, live it while you still can and give thanks to God who both gives life and cares for life and is with you throughout life, even through death.  Or, as the poet Mary Oliver says, “Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?  Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one, wild and precious life?”

Dig in, spend time, don’t save it. You can’t take it with you.  Invest in your kids, invest in yourself, invest in your community.  This is not smoke.  This is not vanity.  These are good gifts given by God who has created us, giving us life.  These are good gifts given by God who saw it fit to send his Son to encounter life in this world and redeem its brokenness through death and resurrection.  These are good gifts given by God who sends to us the Holy Spirit to be our guide and comforter and perspective.  A perspective that what we receive in God gives us a vision not of smoke that is here today and gone tomorrow, but a vision of what is invested here and now in faith is harvested fully in God’s kingdom.  What we do here and now matters, what we do here and now has a future in God, our vision, wisdom and ruler of all.

Amen.

_________________

Sources:

James Limburg Encountering Ecclesiastes, A Book for Our Time

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day"

honest prayer

Sermon preached 7/25/2010 at Glyndon Lutheran Church. Note, I usually try to avoid gender specific language for God (viz. "him" or "his" but went with it on account of the relational aspect of the text, most notably: Father).

Text: Luke 11:1-13

_____________________

Let’s be honest.  Prayer is confusing.  It is foreign and strange and a bit counter-cultural. There is hardly time to sit and eat our daily bread during our days let alone to stop and ask for it.  It is an odd and curious habit to pause and pray in order to give thanks and thought for things that seem to come even when we forget to ask.  What’s more, the mechanics of it leave us in a tailspin.  We think that we don’t have the right skill set, or have studied our faith enough, or are good enough.

Let me say this: There is no right or wrong way to pray.  Just to pray is to do it right.  Pray with the words given to you today in our Gospel reading, what we call the Lord’s Prayer.  Pray as if you were having a conversation with a friend, telling what is happening in your life, what you’re afraid of and excited for.  Pray with tools in your hand or as you hang the laundry or mow the lawn.  Sit in silence.  Breathe.  Read the Psalms, the prayers of the whole people of God.  However you do it, it’s right.  And it’s better to do it than not, even if you’re distracted.  God takes you as you are.

Jesus instructs us further: Ask God for things with the same boldness and shamelessness of a daughter who asks her father for a hug or a son who asks his mother for a fire truck. What’s more, Jesus tells us that if we only ask, seek and knock we will be given everything we ask for just as a parent who is asked for fish will not give a snake. Jesus opens up prayer as a relationship between God our Father and us, God’s children.

Now, imagery for God as parent runs beautifully through the breadth and width of the Bible.  It is a popular metaphor because people often encounter God as a parent.  Take Hosea, the prophet who described God as a parent who tends to children, teaching them how to walk, taking them into his arms, dandling them on his leg, even bending down to feed them, and, my favorite, God is like "those who lift infants to their cheeks."  Prayer is our end of the relationship with God.  We pray to a God who lifts us to his cheeks; while we may babble like infants, God hears us and gives us what we need. 

Imagery of God as parent is deeply understood by parents who know about tough love.  Though God may be upset or angry with a situation, God still deeply loves God’s children.  Listen again to Hosea: How could I give you up, how could I hand you over?  My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender.  I will not execute my fierce anger.

You can almost hear the tears getting caught in God’s throat. Even in judgment, God comes in love, sits us in his lap, consuls us and wipes away every tear; his own included. 

Now, these are all beautiful images for the way that God loves us and they help us to see God as Father.  But here’s where we need to be honest once again: one image we often encounter and never expect in God as parent is God’s absence or hiddenness, though some of us do know our own parents in this way. We feel God’s absence especially when prayers for healing seem to go unanswered; or prayers to end abuse; to stop addiction; for the right path to be taken; for work to be found; for this month’s check to last; we feel hurt and can feel our fists start to clench as we begin to beat on God’s chest as screams of WHY burst from our guts.

It may be easy for some to look at this Gospel reading today and assign blame to the one praying: you are not praying enough, hard enough, right enough, long enough.  Feelings of guilt and inadequacy tend to surface when we’re given a simple direction only to get lost.  But it seems to me that Jesus is indicating that any way we pray is the right way.  To pray is to be in a relationship with God in the ups and downs ordinary and extraordinary moments of our lives.  It’s a relationship cultivated over time.

What’s more, we’re not alone in feeling like we haven’t had our prayers answered.  It doesn’t happen to just you or just that poor guy down the street.  The Book of Psalms is a collection of 150 prayers and song written by folks who were close to God’s heart who spoke openly and honestly about how they felt about God and their life situation.  60 of the Psalms are lament psalms, prayers asking God’s help, prayers demanding God’s attention in the presence of God’s supposed and felt absence.

Like the Psalmist we could say, “How long, O Lord, Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long?” (PS 13) Or, “Rouse yourself!  Why do you sleep, O Lord?  Awake, do not cast us off forever!  Why do you hide your face?  Why do you forget our affliction and oppression?  For we sink down to the dust; our bodies cling to the ground.  Rise up, come to our help.  Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.” (PS 44)

Scripture shows us that such honesty is appropriate and faithful and, what’s more, that God can handle it. The Psalms show us that honesty, above all else, is invited into the relationship that is prayer. It should also be noted that most—but certainly not all lament Psalms—end in praise, recalling to mind the way that God has been faithful in the past, which leads to a future hope despite present circumstances.

This week I had the honor and pleasure to start making visits to people in their homes.  In one visit I met a woman from this congregation who has breast cancer and is waiting to hear her options for treatment.  The subject of prayer was brought up.  Prayer has been a large part of her sustenance.  She said, “I used to feel so cliché when I would tell someone: ‘I’ll pray for you,’ but what else can you say…Now, I can actually feel the prayers that people are praying.”  She herself has found her own way to pray, on walks in the early morning stillness; in the car on her way to work; in silence.  I was humbled and awe-filled.  She tended to the holy ground that was around her as a practice, one that nourishes her in this time of uncertainty and waiting and hoping.

God does listen and hear our prayers, whatever they may be.  Jesus tells us this much.  Jesus could have told us so much more.  In truth Jesus should have told us that some prayers go painfully unanswered; that some prayers just can’t be answered in the way we would like; and that some prayers require so much energy and wrestling that in the end—though we come out with a blessing—we are forever wounded, walking limp. 

Jesus knew all of this, in the end, of course.  Painfully all too well…Father if this cup could pass from me.  And quoting the psalm, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In all honesty I don’t know why some prayers are answered but not others.  But I do know that God is listening and hears us when we pray.  I don’t know why things are the way they are. But I do know that God is with us in whatever we face.  God’s relationship to us is so tightly woven that it is actually God who meets us in the darkest, hardest, most painful moments of our lives. God knows pain and suffering, fear and loss first hand. In Jesus God took on our life and our lot and died so that we might know there is no where we can go that Christ hasn't already gone, and that there is nothing we can do – or have done to us – that God cannot love and forgive, redeem and save. (David Lose)

That is the promise God gives us today in our reading, and that’s the promise that we’ll invite K into today in his baptism. 

In the waters of baptism God brings us through death to new life in him.  God claims us as children and binds himself to us, promising to be with us and for us, a promise we take in each week at Communion.  These promises are not nullified by life’s situations and can still be trusted even when life doesn’t go the way we would like and hope.  Nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, our savior, friend and redeemer.  Amen.

Sources:

Roberta Bondi, To Pray and To Love

David Lose, WorkingPreacher.org

 

Playlist for Elijah

Usually when I am preaching I find one or maybe two songs that become my dialogue partners for the week(s).  Last week I preached on the Elijah story out of 1 Kings 19. Here is my playlist:

 

1) Monster Ballads :: Josh Ritter :: The Animal Years

"ones and zeros bleeding Mesa noise//when you're empty there's so much space for them//turn it off fall down a still small voice//comes in blazin' from some vast horizon."

2) The Weight of Lies :: The Avett Brothers :: Emotionalism

"the weight of lies will bring you down//and follow you from town to town cause//nothing happens here that doesn't happen there//so when you run make sure you run//to something and not away from cause//lies don't need an aeroplane to chase you down//mmm mmm mmm mmm mmmm...."

This one might need a more explaining.  Elijah runs out of fear (not lies) but nevertheless he runs away from his work hoping to escape his reality and responsibility.

3) Jezebel :: Iron & Wine :: Woman King EP

First, if you have time, read this critique and review of Jezebel (both the historical person and the song) by Pitchfork Media. Iron & Wine offer a love song to the woman behind the king, Jezebel.  She, of course, is in the shadows of this text, threatening Elijah from beyond reach.

4) Swing Low, Sweet Chariot :: She & Him :: Volume One

The classic, covered by the rich and mellifluous vocal of Zooey Deschanel (there, I said something nice).  This song goes more with the account of the end of Elijah's life on this earth from 2 Kings 2. 

5) The Sound of Silence :: Simon & Garfunkel :: The Definitive Simon & Garfunkel (Original: Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.)

God was not in the wind, the earthquake OR the fire, but there was a sheer silence//still small voice//quiet whimper...  this song was written in the aftermath of JFK's assassination, when words were hard to find to express the tragedy.  Certainly different circumstances for Elijah, but still that uncertainty abounded.

6) Roll Away Your Stone :: Mumford & Sons :: Sigh No More

Best album of the year so far.  The line "darkness is a harsh term don't you think" played in the back of my mind as I thought about Elijah and the soul in depression.

7) Heart with No Companion :: Leonard Cohen :: Various Positions

I found this song thanks to Cheryl Lawrie over at [hold this space].  "For the heart with no companion...Now I greet you on the other side//of heartache and despair//with a love so vast and shattered//it will reach you anywhere".  Again, this was keeping with the theme of the sermon.

8) The Cave :: Mumford & Sons :: Sigh No More

"It's empty in the valley of your tears//The sun, it rises slowly as you walk//away from all the fears//and all the faults you left behind..."

9) Head Full of Doubt//Road Full of Promise :: The Avett Brothers :: I and Love and You

"There's a darkness upon me that's flooded in light..."

The Soul in Depression :: A Landscape of Elijah's Journey to Horeb

I preached today in my home congregation at Mt. Olive in Minneapolis.  I used the alternative reading from 1 Kings 19.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, + and the Holy Spirit.

            By night, the wilderness of Beersheba at the northern entrance to the Negev Desert, is quiet.  There is not a soul to stir the peace.  Darkness hides the shadows that creep during the day.  The moon, if it has waxed to its fullest, burns through the clouds and lights the white sand making the journey visible. 

            Negev comes from the Semitic word for dry. Parched is more like it. The ground is busted open by cracks as the earth turns itself inside out searching for water. It is cold & hard; all of the daytime heat has escaped & now, thin dew begins to cover the ground & the rocks & the bushes.  But the sun will burn that away. But now, a damp chill permeates so that, mixed with the sweat from the heat of the day, clothing will cling & stick & stink. 

            Though there is no noise, sound is still heard—the breath as it enters and then leaves the body; the scrape of the sandal against sand and rock; the paranoia that though there is no one for miles and days, someone is following behind, threatening life.

            Anxiety creeps in and the mind turns events over and over again until it wears itself out and fatigues the whole body. Short gasps of regret pass through pursed lips and Elijah begins to wonder, "what just happened?"

            As the sun rises, Elijah knows that he cannot escape the heat of the sun or the despair of his heart. We encounter Elijah, the great prophet, a man of God, depressed and in deep despair. 

            A slight caveat.  I am not a clinician.  I am not a licensed doctor who can speak with authority or proper fluency about depression. If you are experiencing depression, seek help, talk to somebody, and please, do not feel ashamed.  Now, I cannot offer an expert's opinion or prognosis.  What I can do and what I want to do here is to explore the biblical witness of the soul in depression.

            Back to Elijah. Elijah has left the heights of Mt. Carmel and the heights of his success and enters the valley of the Negev Desert and the throes of depression. The landscape of the Negev is more than a description of the wilderness, it is a metaphor for the soul in depression.

            At the very point of his ascent into greatness; at the very point when he finally proved the existence and power of his God to the shame of all the rest; at that very point, something takes him out at the legs so that he can no longer stand.  Something knocks the breath out of him.  Something replaces the bold and brazen bravado and replaces it with anxiety, fear and despair.             

             We encounter in today's text the prophet Elijah, a man of God who, because of circumstances, enters into depression and even plots to end his life.  What is the event that breaks open his heart and fears and pushes him to this point, this point of fleeing to the desert where no people can live or sustain themselves, where danger and death lurk around every corner?  What is it that drives Elijah to leave himself alone and under a tree, exposed to the elements and the harshness of nature and asks that God would take his life?

            Very succinctly, Elijah threatened the hubris of the empire and is sent a messenger who threatens to do to Elijah what he had done to its false prophets, vis-à-vis, take his life and kill him by the sword.

            And there was no word from God to provide life and protection.  All of his gusto, all of his faith, all of his courage drained through his toes and froze his life to the ground.  Abandoned. No response.  No word.  The prophet is left alone. Caught in the crosshairs, unsure of what to do, Elijah has to decide. Fight or flight? 

Elijah flees for his life, the Hebrew is one of those charged words: nephesh, meaning his soul, his body, his being, his person, his desire, passion, appetite and emotion. It is more than just the physical, but also the psychical, relating to mind and soul.  Elijah flees for his life and he encounters all of his nephesh, his whole being, in a new and profound way: through depression.

Into the wilderness, into the uninhabited places where people do not live or go, Elijah is tired, sad, he won’t eat or drink and he has thoughts of death.  "I am no better than my ancestors," Elijah says, "God, it is enough, take my life." He seems to be content to die alone with no sign from God.  He lived and moved and had his being in God’s presence and now he was going to sleep and die in God’s absence.  Cold, alone, vulnerable and threatened. 

Jezebel sent a messenger of death, God sends a messenger of life: “Get up and eat,” says the angel—or as the Hebrew points out, a messenger—not once but twice, “get up and eat or else the journey will be too much for you.”

The text tells us only that he ate and drank and with the strength given to him from that meal he got up and went for a forty-day journey to Horeb, the Mountain of God.  He was neither sent to nor driven to Horeb, he chose to go there.  Now, Horeb is known by another name: Sinai, the place where Moses encountered God and lived; the place where Moses was re-equipped and re-energized and re-motivated to do what was necessary in and for Israel. 

Perhaps Elijah was seeking out the same thing.  It is clear that he is desperately grasping and seeking something, anything that resembled the tangible God that had accompanied him throughout his journey.  The text wants to suggest that Elijah is retracing Moses’ steps backwards from freedom into the slavery of Sinai; from life into death.  Regardless of his intentions, finally the word of the Lord came to him:  “Elijah,” it said, “what are you doing here?”

God knows what we too know: that Elijah was not called to come to Horeb; it was his decision, his plan, his chosen journey.  But Elijah’s mind and heart and life—his nephesh—is far from his vocation and obligation.  He cannot see farther than himself and offers a complaint:

“I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.  I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

God knows something is wrong with Elijah and though God openly asks Elijah what he is doing so far from where he is supposed to be, God does not leave Elijah on his own or reject Elijah in his depression.  The voice tells Elijah, “Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”  God is about to draw near to Elijah.

First there was a great wind so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces.

àBut God was not in the wind.

àAfter the wind there was an earthquake.

àBut God was not in the earthquake.

àAnd after the earthquake there was a fire.

àBut God was not in the fire.

Now, these were ways that people expected God to show up: thunder and lightning, fire and darkness; whirlwind and storm; earthquakes and downpours.  Note well: these are signs not of God’s wrath but of God’s presence.

But after all of these signs in which God was not, there was the sound of a quiet whimper.  And Elijah knew that God—had—just—shown—up.  Elijah leaves his cave and wraps his mantle, his cloak, around his face for one cannot see God face-to-face and live.

God comes in a quiet whimper; a still, small voice.  God comes weakly and with neither pomp nor circumstance.  Finally, Elijah is empty enough to hear God, and feel God not in loud signs or visible crashes, but in a new way—a way not previously opened up to him.  The soul in depression encounters God in a way that was not previously available.

Before, God spoke to Elijah through clear words and messy signs.  But now, God would speak to Elijah in a new way. Elijah would have a new understanding of himself and the way in which God is at work in and through him.  Maybe he couldn’t see it at the time.  Maybe it took him the rest of his life to see it.  Maybe he never realized it, but God did not shy away in Elijah’s doubt, despair and depression, but came even closer and Elijah came to know himself more fully through his experience. 

After this encounter, God asks once more: “Elijah, what are you doing here?” 

As we see and hear, Elijah’s complaint doesn't change.  Elijah isn’t changed or saved through spiritual encounter.  Hope is not in Elijah’s vocabulary.  While his journey through depression is marked with God’s presence and activity, it is not the quick fix that our culture and society might hope it to be.  God knows what we often learn through experience: that depression and anxiety are not cured by spiritual songs or simple fixes but through our own journey, wherever that might lead us.

God knows what some find out: the opposite of depression is not happiness but human vitality (Andrew Solomon The Noonday Demon via Speaking of Faith "The Soul in Depression"). The biblical witness shows us there is vitality on the other side of depression, life out from death—on this side of eternity.

For Elijah, life takes on a new shape and direction. He is set out on the same road he came in on, but he is given a new task, new skills and new people in his life to help him along the way. His life will take a new meaning.  He is not left to wallow in despair. And at the end of it all, when Elijah’s journey had run its course, God took the prophet back into God’s self. Elijah is never cut off from the love and care of God.

The biblical witness knows that no one is protected from the veil of depression.  It comes to men and women of God alike.  To those who reside in the landscape of depression know this, whether you see it or feel it or not, God has not left you.  God is not ashamed of you.  God is showing God’s self to you in a different way.  God is showing you to yourself in a different way.  All is not lost.  Yours is a journey worth taking.

Practice Resurrection :: A Sermon

The best part about Easter, you know, except Jesus, was probably the bacon. We knew it was coming.  Kathy brought 12 or 13 pounds of the stuff through customs and Susanne saved it until Easter, for the big feast after worship.  We were each allowed 3 pieces, which was really one piece cut up into three smaller parts.  Miraculously it was more than enough.  I can still smell it. 

The second best part about Easter was being with the community up on the Mount of Olives that night for another famous potluck. I’m not too sure how it happened, but Mark ended up playing for us his selection of Easter songs.  I’ll spare you the details, but I will tell you that I’ll never hear the Doors “Break on Through [to the other side]” the same way again.

I have my own Easter playlist.  The first song comes from a lesser-known band of misfits, The Hold Steady.  They tell a story of a girl named Hallelujah.  Of course her friends just called her Holly and Holly was a hoodrat, she had been disappeared for years and lost to the streets.  But then one day she finally came back.  You see, she reappeared one day at Easter Mass, hair done up with broken glass.  Limping left on broken heels she said, “Excuse me father, can I tell your congregation how a resurrection really feels?” 

Another person who might be able to speak to how a resurrection really feels, another story that carries with it a chorus of resurrection is the story of Tabitha.

We don't know much about Tabitha. She was an ordinary saint, a woman who cared for the vulnerable and poor with good works and charity. We know that she was a talented seamstress, spending her life making sure that widows and other people in her neighborhood were clothed and covered.

We know she lived in Jaffa and probably saw a beautiful sunset or two over the Mediterranean Sea; she probably knew what it felt like to have the wind and sand whip through her hair as she smelled the warm and salty water ebb and flow as the tide washed over the beach.

We know that she died. We know the ordinary grief that was shared by her friends and neighbors as people ordinarily do.  We are, after all, ordinary people who have grieved in our own ways and in our own lives. 

This ordinary saint is remembered in an extraordinary way.  It has been recorded that she was “matheria,” a woman disciple of Jesus, the only person in the whole of the New Testament who gets that particular designation. We read that her name was translated from Aramaic into the Greek, that the writer of this text took care and attention to translate Tabitha to Dorcas so that the readers and hearers of the Greek text would know that her name means gazelle, a metaphor for beloved.   

Tabitha is God’s beloved but she is also the beloved member of a community. A community that grieved her death; a community that gathered to wash her body and make preparations her for burial; a community that sent for Peter to come and be with them.

Peter saw visiting her grief-filled community as part and parcel of his mission to bring the gospel to all nations and to the ends of the earth.  God’s mission does not skip over the reality and implicationsof the promise of Christ’s resurrection for the pain and suffering of individual lives.  We know that this is an extraordinary story. 

Peter came to her home, into the room where they had laid her, the upper room—not unlike the room where the disciples hid themselves after Jesus’ death and before they heard and saw his resurrection—and, after excusing everyone and everything from the room, Peter told Tabitha to get up. 

And she did.

Life came springing forth from death. Peter raised Tabitha from the dead.  Perhaps an Alleluia is in order.  Tabitha is risen, Alleluia!?

But there’s something lurking in the corner that we just can’t escape.  No matter how much we’d like to be, we are not Peter.  We can’t put ourselves into this text.  At our words the dead do not come back to life. We grieve ordinary saints with the same ferocity, saints that were as sweet and pleasant and beloved as Tabitha, saints with the same spirit of extraordinary compassion for the poor and vulnerable. The life-giving story turns and slaps us in the face because all we see is death.  We experience enough Good Fridays with no Easter Sundays.  When we experience the death of someone that we love, no matter how much we try, how hard we believe or how eloquent our words, we cannot bring the dead back to life. We can’t even scream our powerlessness away. 

A Manifesto:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of the everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window into your head. Not even your future will be a mystery anymore. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer.  When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.

So friends, everyday do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance for what man has not discovered he has not destroyed.

Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias. Sat that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such results.  Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.  Practice Resurrection.

So goes the manifesto known as Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry.  I think he’s on to something.  Despite what the world expects from you and gives to you, choose instead to practice resurrection.

Practicing resurrection is perhaps first a failing, a recognition that the lions and the lambs are not sleeping yet.  That there are still tears that we cry.  That there are still hungry people.  That the poor are still with us.  That wars rage on.  That death does sting.  That this very list goes on and on.

Practice doesn’t make perfect, but practice does make permanent, in your memory, in your bodies and in your souls the promise of God’s faithfulness: to a redemption that gives birth to a new creation; to peace that will end all wars; to a banquet to welcome and feed the multitude of people; to life on the other side of death.

Practicing resurrection means learning what resurrection is and is not.  Resurrection is new life.  Resurrection isn’t reversal. Resurrection means first that some sort of death has taken place.  By its very nature, practicing resurrection is not living backwards, as if we could turn back the clock, but resurrection is living the future into the present.  It is preparation of a future event with full anticipation despite present circumstances.  It is engaging the present realities to bring about a new and different possibility.  Life in spite of death.  Love instead of fear.  Peace in the face of violence and war.  The lifeline instead of the bottom line. 

To practice resurrection is to perform an action now in faith and hope while waiting for the not yet of the resurrection.  Now there are tears to cry.  Then, God will wipe away every tear. Now there is death, then there will be life.  Even now we live knowing that there is life on the other side of death.

One last song,  Alleluia.  St. Augustine says: We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

The St. Olaf Choir once sang a text whose only word was Alleluia, sung over and over again.  The director at the time, Kenneth Jennings, told the choir to think about it this way: “from the dawn of creation, from the beginning of time there has been a song of Alleluia sung continuously.  We don’t always hear it; it is often drowned out by the noises around us and in us, but this song of Alleluia is going on even now and will continue to the end of time.  All we’re doing is making the Alleluias audible.” To practice resurrection is to make the Alleluias audible.

That’s our task as well.  Living in this new life, living as an Easter people, surrounded by death as we may be, we gather as a community just as the disciples did around the table of the Lord and we make the Alleluias audible.  We make the Alleluias audible by working against everything that is death-dealing in us and in the world. 

We make the Alleluias audible by helping those with whom we work, to see where God is at work in the world.  We make the Alleluias audible sometimes, if truth be told, under our breath, sometimes through tears, death still has a sting, death still deals strong blows and at times the Alleluias are all but drowned out, but we continue to sing because God continues to raise us through death to new life.  We sing because we are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song.[1]

We are not Peter. We cannot raise people from the dead, but we can and do practice resurrection when we welcome new life, new life that has had a past, new life that has come from death and deadly circumstances.  We practice resurrection not by looking at the dead and whispering, life, life, but in working life where death has already made a claim.  We are not Peter, but we stand in the same resurrection hope and future together as God’s beloved.

You are God’s beloved.  You are the sheep in God’s fold whether you have heard his voice in shouts or whispers, praise or lament, or in sheer silence.  You are not alone.  No one and no thing can snatch you from the palm of God’s hand.  And God will wipe away every tear.

And for that reason we as an Easter people can say

Christ is Risen, Alleluia! 

---

[1] This paragraph and the two before it come from Dr. Kathryn Schifferdecker in the best sermon I’ve ever heard.  Sermon delivered at Luther Seminary Chapel, Spring 2007.

Jeremiah 20:7-13

God’s people are not exempt from tough times.  Today’s texts are designed for those who are drowning in sorrows and troubles.  We hear in Psalm 69:
1 Save me, O God,
   for the waters have come up to my neck.
2 I sink in deep mire,
   where there is no foothold;
I have come into deep waters,
   and the flood sweeps over me.
3 I am weary with my crying;
   my throat is parched.
My eyes grow dim
   with waiting for my God.
This lament captures one’s insult by both enemies and relatives:
7 It is for your sake that I have borne reproach,
   that shame has covered my face.
8 I have become a stranger to my kindred,
   an alien to my mother’s children.
It captures one’s lament at being the subject of gossip:
12I am the subject of gossip for those who sit in the gate,
   and the drunkards make songs about me.

And it involves a cry to God for help:
13But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord.
   At an acceptable time, O God,
   in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me.
With your faithful help
14rescue me from sinking in the mire;
let me be delivered from my enemies
   and from the deep waters.
15Do not let the flood sweep over me,
   or the deep swallow me up,
   or the Pit close its mouth over me.
16Answer me, O Lord, for your steadfast love is good;
   according to your abundant mercy, turn to me.
17Do not hide your face from your servant,
   for I am in distress—make haste to answer me.
18Draw near to me, redeem me,
   set me free because of my enemies.

Likewise, in the gospel, we hear that Jesus’ followers would face death:
28Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. 
Jesus assumes that those who follow Jesus will face strong opposition:
34 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.
Even more harsh, Jesus declares that following him comes with a cost, with one’s own cross:
37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; 38and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.
Jeremiah fits well into these dark and dreary words.
Jeremiah was a prophet by God’s own calling, formed by God in his mother’s womb (1:4-5).  While outwardly the prophet appeared as a fortified city and as a wall of bronze (1:18; 15:20), what we hear today reveals the turmoil within.
One would wonder what it would be like if all of our laments were written down and saved for posterity.   Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet, in his witness and his laments, he lets us know that he didn’t want the job in the first place (1:6); he claims that he was not only enticed but seduced into the job, overpowered by God (20:7). 
He notes that his own family and his own friends turned against him, leaving him alone and unable to enjoy anything good (11:19, 21; 15:17).  He goes so far as to wish he had never been born (20:14-18). 
In his laments we hear that Jeremiah isn’t afraid to hold God responsible for his predicament.  In fact, the word of the Lord that we read and for which we gave thanks is thought of to be the most blasphemous in all of scripture. 
A little background.
Jeremiah was the son of a priest and a priest himself.  God called upon him to preach a word of judgment in the land of Judah, whose political leaders formed alliances with other countries and other gods for their safety.  Bad political choices led to bad political moves, which led to misplaced trust and downright idolatry.  The people of Judah had broken not only their own future, but also God’s own heart.
Into this was Jeremiah called.  Called to speak not a word of repentance, but of pure judgment:
I will give all Judah into the hand of the king of Babylon; he shall carry them captive to Babylon, and shall kill them with the sword. 5I will give all the wealth of this city, all its gains, all its prized belongings, and all the treasures of the kings of Judah into the hand of their enemies, who shall plunder them, and seize them, and carry them to Babylon. 6And you, Pashhur, and all who live in your house, shall go into captivity, and to Babylon you shall go; there you shall die, and there you shall be buried, you and all your friends, to whom you have prophesied falsely (20:4b-6).
Who could speak such a word?  But Jeremiah could not keep this word to himself:
For whenever I speak, I must cry out,
   I must shout, ‘Violence and destruction!’
For the word of the Lord has become for me
   a reproach and derision all day long.
9If I say, ‘I will not mention him,
 or speak any more in his name’,
then within me there is something like a burning fire
   shut up in my bones;
I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot.

The word caused him great anguish, but he had to speak it.  Abraham Heschel tells us:

Jeremiah’s soul was in pain, stern with gloom.  To his wistful eye the city’s walls seemed to reel.  The days that were to come would be dreadful.  He called, he urged his people to repent—and he failed.  He screamed, wept, moaned—and was left with a terror in his soul. …This was the root of his anguish.  Those whom he loved he was called upon to condemn.  When the catastrophe came, and the enemy mercilessly killed men, women and children, the prophet must have discovered that the agony was greater than the heart could feel, that his grief was more than his soul could weep for.” AJH 133-134, 153-154.

“His grief was more than his soul could weep for.”  Makes you think twice about discerning a call to being a prophet and it makes you think hard about those who seem to be able to easily flaunt their supposed understanding of the will and working of the Lord.
“His grief was more than his soul could weep for.”  Where do we find a gracious God in this?  If God is love and grace abounds, what is God up to in Jerusalem in the time of Jeremiah?  What is God doing to Jeremiah?
    The better question is why.  Why is God destroying his chosen people?  For what purpose, to what end is this an act of our God who is good?
    Could it be that God was destroying, in order to build back up?  That God was breaking their bodies to give them a new heart, on that beat for him alone?  You see, I Jeremiah’s time, the Jerusalem man was busy destroying, yet God was building.
    This isn’t so hard for us to grasp.  Think about the times when you’ve had to destroy something to make it better: remodeling a bathroom or kitchen…Think about a time when you’ve experienced despair only to receive faith and trust…Think about a time when you’ve had to rebuke someone you loved more closely than you love yourself…
•    When your child picked up a drug habit, or started selling, or became an addict…
•    When your mom or your dad became so sick, took a bad fall, and was found no longer to be able to care for him or herself.  The time when you had to discuss care options that served their best interests, but all the same put them into a place that was not their home.
•    When you’ve found that your partner has strayed, broken a vow or 2
•    Or when we’ve had it with God:
•    One too many diagnoses of cancer
•    One too many unexpected Heart Attacks
•    One too many a child dies because of disease, or abuse, or accident.
•    When floods destroy our land, our crops, our future.  When fire sweeps across the hills, destroying homes and hearts and plans. 
•    Or just when life is harder on you than it should be on anybody…
There is a heartbreak in speaking a word of truth, when the words you need to speak for the sake of love are within you like a burning fire, shut up in your bones; and when you are weary with holding it in, and you just cannot. 
The prophet teaches us about the nature of life in God, within the life of faith.  It's not roses and sunshine.  It's not the daily lottery or mountain-top experiences.  Sometimes, and more often than not, our lives in God lead us to the absurd, defy rationality and call us do things we would rather not do.  In Jeremiah's case, tell Judah, his beloved, God's beloved, that they were headed towards death.  But he would also be the one to tell them that God was at work for their redemption.  That, though their actions caused much pain and anguish, only God could save them from their predicament and that God would save them. ()
Life out of death, new creation out of the destruction of the old.  Jeremiah offers another echo of God’s redemption song.
The prophet's complaints against God were grounded in trust and faith.  Blasphemous as they were, they were honest and they were real and they were accepted by God; the same God who had formed Jeremiah in the womb, the same God who knew Jeremiah since before he was born, this God accepted Jeremiah's complaint, just as God accepts our laments and our complaints.
It is out of trust in God that we can come to God with whatever is on our heart and it is out of this trust that we can praise even amidst our sorrows.  Jeremiah says it this way:
Sing to the Lord; praise the Lord!  For he has delivered the life of the needy from the hand of evildoers (20:13).
A lyric from a beloved song says it perfectly: “Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”
I think that is the heart of faith.  When the chips are up or the chips are down, that a word of praise still comes forth.  Faith and trust are not a matter of superstition, that, if you only believe, you will achieve, but that faith in God trusts that God is with you, for you and will never forget you. 
“Love is not a victory march, it’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah.”  That's the song of Jeremiah and that's the song of our hearts from time to time, hopefully not too often, but it's so true. Whatever life brings us, however cold the sentiment, however broken our voices, Hallelujah.