Recent Sermons

“Where is Your Nation?” 8/20/10 Matthew 28:16-20 Acts 1:1-11

(children’s sermon is the communion rail)

“Does Jesus really mean all nations? Does he really want us to go that far away from home?” These are questions I can imagine the disciples asking each other in today’s Scriptures from Matthew and Acts. In both passages Jesus is sending out his followers. In both passages Jesus appears to his disciples after he has been raised from the dead and is in a sense passing on the torch of faith to his followers. He tells them to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” and that they will be his “witnesses to the ends of the earth”.

I can imagine the disciples at this point feeling a little like Jonah. You remember Jonah, right? He was that Old Testament prophet who God told to go to Nineveh. But Jonah didn’t want to go. He knew the Ninevites were cruel. They had oppressed his people. They were foreigners and enemies. Jonah may have been afraid of what might happen if he were to go and preach in their capital city. It was a people and a culture very different from his own.

Perhaps the disciples felt something similar when they are sent out by Jesus. He told them he was sending them to Samaria. Historically, there was a lot of bad blood between Judea and Samaria. The Jews looked down on the Samaritans as people who did not worship in the right way. They were seen as having strayed from the true path of Judaism. Jesus wanted them to go there and share the good news? Then Jesus was saying they should go to the nations beyond Samaria. That would include the Greeks and the Romans. The people from these cultures would have been considered unclean foreigners. They worshipped other gods and were morally corrupt. Moreover, the Romans were the Jews. Their military occupied where the disciples lived. Did Jesus really want them to go there too? There is a good chance that the disciples might have felt a little afraid about what they were being called to do. There is a good chance they might have been a little hesitant to go in the direction that Jesus was sending them.

I don’t blame them if they did feel this way. Going to another nation means experiencing a different culture. It might mean encountering different belief systems, different foods, and different languages. It might mean interacting with people who don’t like your nation. But Jesus doesn’t say to only go to those places that are friendly towards you. He doesn’t say just go to those nations where they speak the same language that you do, or only go to those places where they think like you do. No, Jesus says go to all nations. This means being called to go outside our comfort zones---to set aside for a moment all the ways that we see the world and to try for a moment to see the world through someone else’s eyes. It means being willing to walk with a variety of people through a variety of situations in order that they too might become disciples of Jesus.

One way that we do this is through the missionaries that we send out in partnership with the larger church. This is one of the benefits of being a part of the ELCA. On our own we might not be able to support full-time missionaries, but by pooling our resources with other Lutheran churches we can send people to be witnesses to the ends of the earth. Currently our national church invests around $30 million dollars a year in support of Global missions including supporting 240 missionaries in 48 different countries. Earlier this summer you heard Pastor John talk about Rob and Vishnee, two missionaries we support in Nambia. Another missionary couple that we support are Christa von Zychlin and Wayne Nieminen. Currently, we support this couple with a gift from our Endowment Fund. This year we committed $900 to them and we are hoping to do more in the future.

Christa and Wayne are both ordained pastors. Their assignment is to serve in Hong Kong helping to teach in the Lutheran seminary that is located there. While on assignment they also help to serve in the local Hong Kong churches assisting with Sunday School as well as leading worship and preaching. Pastor Christa writes a blog on the internet called “Marathon Angel”. In one of her entries she reflects on an experience where she decided to go outside her comfort zone and try doing some of the worship service in the local Cantonese language. She writes:

This was the week I took a deep breath and finally did part of the liturgy in Cantonese. It was the words before Communion, the Words of Institution and the Benediction. My face burned hot as I did it, because I knew I was stumbling and bumbling with these words, even after months of practice.
But I got at least a dozen comments telling me "very good!" on the Cantonese liturgy, and I suddenly got warmer smiles from people of the parish than I've ever gotten before (I've been going there once a month for five months, now). It was clear to me that my attempt at speaking Cantonese was more important to everybody than my well-crafted sermon -- which had, of course, been given in English.

It goes to show you how important it is for people to hear God's word in their own language, even if (in my case) that language is very poorly spoken. Another lesson in humility for me. I guess that's exactly what's behind God humbling Himself & sending his Son into the world as a baby -- the incarnation. There is no more universal language among human beings, than that of a baby, looking with big eyes on a brand new world, and that of a family, celebrating the birth of a child.

When God chose to make some disciples and start a new movement upon the earth, God didn’t just speak from the sky. No, God became incarnate—that is, God became flesh in the person of Jesus Christ. This is the good news that we believe as Christians. God became human to not only tell us the way to a life lived more deeply and eternally, but to show us the way and make a way. Jesus not only taught his followers in a language that they could understand, but he walked with them so that they might experience what the kingdom of God’s love was like.

This is the same model that we are called to as Jesus sends us out to make disciples. It is important to preach and teach. The good news needs to be spoken. But perhaps even more importantly, the good news needs to be lived. We need to incarnate God’s word by putting flesh on it so that others might see what God’s love looks like. We need to be willing to humble ourselves like Jesus did in order to meet others on their terms and walk with them as they experience the struggles of life. This is lesson that Pastor Christa learned. It didn’t matter so much that she could not speak fluent Cantonese, what mattered to the people in that local church in Hong Kong was she was making a effort to meet them where they were at. What mattered was that she was making an attempt to walk with them in their culture and in this way a genuine relationship could begin to develop where God’s love could be revealed.

The interesting thing is that when we humble ourselves and are willing to meet people where they are at we too are often blessed with experiencing the presence of Christ. This summer we had some folks from Mount Cross go to another nation to serve. I want to invite forward Matt Johnson at this time to share something about how he and the group he was with shared God’s love and experienced the presence of Christ during their time in Guatemala.

This summer Matt was called to served in the nation of Guatemala. The question now is: so where is your nation? Where is God calling you to serve? Maybe you have a special connection to another country through a friend or relative or through some of your travels. Maybe you are being called to help us as a church financially support our missionaries. But maybe you are also being called to be a missionary to the nation across the street from your house.

What do I mean? Take a look back at verse eight in the reading from the book of Acts. As Jesus is listing off all the places where he is sending his followers he begins by saying that they will be his witnesses in Jerusalem. Before they go out to the ends of the earth, Jesus wants his followers to start where they are at. Before we go out to the ends of the earth, we need to also take a look around us at the “nations” right here in our backyard. There are plenty of people right here in our own town who come from different cultures---who think differently, act differently, and maybe even speak differently than us. Maybe you’re white and your neighbor is Hispanic. Maybe you consider yourself conservative and your neighbor seems more liberal. Maybe you’re a fan of the NFL and your neighbor is a fan of Nascar. Maybe you have a lot in common with your neighbor except for one thing, you attend church and they don’t.

Whatever the difference, we are called to go and be a witness. This doesn’t mean lambasting our neighbors with our preaching. It means listening to our neighbors with an open mind. It means creating a dialogue and building a relationship. It means not only sharing what we believe, but also showing what we believe by making God’s love real to them in the things that we do.

One concrete way that you might be a witness in the coming weeks is by inviting one of your neighbors or someone you know to our Neighborhood block party on Sept. 11^th from 4:00-7:00pm. Invite that person to join you for some free food, and live music whether it is for an hour or fifteen minutes. They might see that church isn’t such a strange place after all and it might open the door for them coming back sometime.

Reaching out isn’t always an easy thing to do. It can be a little scary approaching those neighbors who we don’t know so well. It means going outside of our comfort zones. It takes energy and effort and it’s hard because sometimes we would rather just close our doors and avoid having to interact with the neighbors. But we can find strength in knowing that Jesus doesn’t send us out spiritually empty-handed. Instead, he sends us out with two very important promises. In Matthew he tells us that he will be with us always. In Acts he tells us that he will give us the power of the Holy Spirit. His presence and His power—these are the gifts we have been given to do the work we are call to do and with these gifts we can have the courage to be the witnesses we are called to be.

Whether we stand or kneel, whether we receive bread and wine or a blessing the really cool thing about coming forward to this table and this communion rail is up here we are all family.

Prayer: Gracious God, thanks for giving us a place where we can come and meet you around this communion rail. Thanks for gathering us here so that we can all be your family. Amen.

“A Place For The Homeless”

12^th Sunday after Pentecost, August 15, 2010

1^st Peter 2:4-10 & Matthew 7:24-29

Servants Who Build

Psalm 104:1-2

O LORD my God, you are very great.

You are clothed with honor and majesty,

wrapped in light as with a garment.

+ + +

Some of you may remember that at the end of July, on the Sunday when the theme was Servants To Our Neighbors, I put out a display with some ideas for how to make useful kits to give homeless people you might happen to see outside your car window. [Pastor John walks out of pulpit and hands one of the kits to someone in the pew.]

I’m sorry I didn’t make two or three hundred, or I’d give you each one of these. Because, you see, you are homeless. And so are you, and you and you. All of us. We are all homeless. Not in the earthly sense. I’m pretty sure all of you have a place to call home when you go to bed at night. I’m speaking of the eternal sense.

Our God lives in a light house, but I don’t mean light house in the sense of the kind of structure you see standing tall near the coast. I’m referring to God’s own self. As we’re told in 1^st John: “God is light, and in God there is no darkness at all.”

Imagine an all-white wall as representing God and God’s pure light. If heaven is God’s house, then heaven is full of nothing but light (“And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light.” ^{Revelation 21:23}

And if God is going to remain God, then there cannot be anything but light in God. And if God’s house is to remain pure, there cannot be a single speck of darkness there. This is where the news turns not so good.

If I were to place a tiny dot in the middle of the all-white wall, would you be able to see the difference? Probably not. Nevertheless, you cannot say that this wall is 100% pure any longer.

If it were possible to me assess the relative darkness of the sins committed by the people in this room, so that we could determine who among us has the smallest amount of darkness in our lives, it would not matter one bit. Even the smallest dot, even if I could print a dot 1/1,000,000 of an inch across, it would still be the same. No entry. Home lost. Homeless.

Finding no way back, some have made their own kind of peace with the situation. “And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” ^{John 3:19}

But those who are aware of where they are and where they know they should be and have not given in to the despair of those who choose to embrace the darkness, sooner or later we come to know what the first work of God’s Word all about. God’s word works first by telling us, showing us, forcing us to confront the fact that we are homeless and no matter what we try, we can’t find our way home. The only remedy, the only hope, the only way is the one who calls himself the way, the one we call the Light of the World.

If God is “wrapped in light as with a garment,” that is exactly what faith causes to happen. Jesus is the garment that wraps us up and makes us fit for heaven and allows us to find our way home.

The way I think of the word ‘Christian’ reminds me of what Christ does for us. I break the word apart: Christ – in. Then I move the ‘in’ to the front and remember that a Christian is someone who is in Christ. And if I am in him, wrapped in his light as with a garment, I’m no longer homeless. The purity of his light has covered the ugliness of my darkness.

I hope you sense a deep sigh of relief at the change in your status. But that is not where it ends.

The other day I was talking to someone about baptism, explaining that baptism is like being rescued from the deep end of a swimming pool by a lifeguard. What would you say to the lifeguard as soon as you could? Thanks. And you’d be grateful for the rest of your (new) life, your restored and rescued life. I hope!

One of the ways we say thanks for the building of a heavenly home and the restoration of a way back to that home is by trying to imitate - on an earthly scale - what has been done for us on a heavenly, eternal scale. And so God’s grace-full people serve by building.

“We love because God first loved us” can be tweaked slightly to read “We build because God first built a home for us.” And this building can happens in lots of ways…

Habitat for Humanity is a familiar name. Many have worked on Habitat for Humanity projects. Gordon Henry tells me that Mount Cross people, through efforts especially organized through this church as well as times and places MC members served elsewhere (like the recent build in Guatemala) have worked on as many as 70 projects! And we’ll add one more to that number this afternoon as some of us head over to Thousand Oaks to work on a house there.

Another way we’ve said thanks by building is by working with Lutheran Border Concerns Ministry to build homes in Tijuana. Now, when I say ‘home’ you understand that they are sheds by our standards. 12 by 12 simple shelters, but such a step up! Back in the 1990s, when Pete Johnson was youth director, a group went to Mexico and built two houses, and since then, we’ve gone ever year since maybe 2003 or so, and built about 18 houses.

Grace-full people serve. Grace-full people build. But you don’t need a hammer to build a safe place for someone. You can do it by pulling up a chair and turning it so that you face another person directly, sending the message, “I’m here for you, right now. It is safe. I’ll listen to whatever’s on your mind and heart.”

Stephen Ministers do this all the time. But you don’t have to be a Stephen Minister to build that kind of safe place for someone who needs it.

Together we’ve built this safe place up on this hill. But it’s not just for us. We want our neighbors, your neighbors to know that this is a house built for them, too. So again, you don’t need a hammer to build a house. You can lend your support in a variety of ways, including simply showing up and saying, “Hi. I’m glad you came this afternoon. This is my church. Can I show you around?”

In some of the most comforting words he ever spoke, Jesus reminded us of the Father’s house in which there are many rooms. And in that house Jesus built a room for you. And when you lift a hammer or pull over a chair, you’re showing what that room means to you. Amen.

How Close Is Not Far?

9^th Sunday after Pentecost, July 25, 2010

G.P.S. - Servants Of Our Neighbors

Mark 12:28–34

Psalm 123:2

As the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master,

as the eyes of a maid to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the LORD our God,

until God has mercy upon us.

+ + +

Ball One [Pastor places a tennis ball marked GOD on the altar rail]. I read something this week about a park in Europe. Apparently there is a beautiful flower bed in the park. And next to the flowers there is a sign written in three languages: In German the sign says: Picking flowers is prohibited. In English it says: Please do not pick the flowers. And in French it says: Those who love flowers will not pick them.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.”  What is your motivation for doing God's will, for trying to obey God's commands?  Fear of authority?  A desire for God's approval?  The approval of others? Or love?

Ball Two [Pastor places a tennis ball marked YOU on the altar rail]. A thoughtful, curious young man went to the desert to visit an elderly man, a monk, who had lived in the desert for many years. Arriving at the holy man's cave, the young man encountered the monk, who was sitting out enjoying the sun, his dog lying lazily at his side. This spiritual seeker asked, "Why is it, teacher, that some who seek God come to the desert and are zealous in prayer, but leave after a year or so, while others, like you, remain faithful to the quest for a lifetime?" The old man smiled and replied, "Let me tell you a story.

“One day I was sitting here quietly in the sun with my dog. Suddenly a large, white rabbit ran across in front of us. Well, my dog jumped up, barking loudly, and took off after that big rabbit. He chased the rabbit over the hills with a passion. Soon other dogs ran barking across the creeks, up stony embankments, and through thickets and thorns! Gradually, however, one by one, the other dogs dropped out of the pursuit, discouraged by the course and frustrated by the chase. Only my dog continued to hotly pursue the white rabbit. In that story, young man, is the answer to your question.

“The young man sat in confused silence. Finally, he said, Teacher, I don't understand. What is the connection between the rabbit chase and the quest for God?" "You fail to understand," answered the old hermit, "because you failed to ask the obvious question. The question is, why didn't the other dogs continue the chase? And the answer to that question is that the other dogs had not seen the rabbit. They were attracted by the barking of my dog. But once you see the rabbit, you will never give up the chase. Seeing the rabbit, not following the commotion, is what keeps me in the desert."

Are you chasing the rabbit or simply following the commotion?

Ball Three [Pastor places a tennis ball marked ME on the altar rail]. Two people were sitting on a park bench in heaven. Suddenly a new arrival was seated on the bench across from them. One of the veterans was chatting with the newcomer and learned that he had made a death bed confession of faith and here he was. The newby was somewhat shocked but quite joyful at this turn of events. The veteran quizzed the new guy a bit about his previous lifestyle and heard sordid tales. And then, up and off went one of the newest citizens of the heavenly realm.

When he had gone, the veteran who had been engaged with the rookie turned to his friend on the bench, who had remained silent through the previous conversation and said, “It’s happened again. Another one of those. I don’t it’s fair. All our lives we were Christians. We went to church. We had to do the right thing. And this guy lives a wild life – you heard him – and he gets in without having to do all that.” His silent partner remained silent awhile longer, a slight grin spreading on his face. Finally he spoke.

“I hope you get this straight pretty soon. It will make your eternity much more peaceful. We didn’t have to do any of what you say. It was never have to. It was get to. We got to be of service to others. You were given the opportunity to serve God by caring for your neighbor. Remember Many Meals,* when you and others from your church gathered one night a month to serve a nice dinner to those who needed either the food or the fellowship – or both? Remember the homeless kit** you made to keep in your car, so that you would have something useful to give to someone in need? You took advantage of those opportunities. You didn’t have to. You got to. You got to do so much. And when that sinks in, you will realize that if it is allowed up here, he may end up being envious of all you got to do that he never did.”

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” The scribe who was in dialogue with Jesus knew this. He knew it like you can see there are three balls there on the altar. He knew it up here – in his head. He saw that it makes sense to summarize all of God’s commandments this way. And there is nothing more important than knowing that. Jesus says so.

And knowing that brings one close. “You’re not far from the Kingdom of God.” But how close is not far? I think that Jesus would say, “It is great that you’ve got your mind around the concepts. But I didn’t make you as just minds to sit around and think great and important thoughts. I gave you bodies so you could do something with those thoughts. Bodies with hands… So grab hold of the commandments and live them!

[Pastor John goes over to the altar rail and picks up the tennis ball marked GOD...]

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.”

One approach some people consider is to approach the words of Jesus sequentially. Start by trying to do your best to love God with everything you’ve got. Once you attained a sufficient level of skill at loving God, then move on to the next part of his command and [picks up the ball marked YOU] seek to attain a similar level of skill at loving my neighbor. And then, if I have any life and energy left [picks up the ME ball] you might try to love yourself as you love your neighbor.

But you know that is not what he meant. He meant to do all of them at the same time. [Pastor juggles the three balls.]

The three-fold, loving lifestyle Jesus describes is a lot like juggling. And when you do, your love for God, your love of the neighbor, your love for yourself all blend together into a grace-full life.

I know you understand the concept. I know you’ve got your mind around it. Now get your fingers around these and start juggling!

Amen!

* Mount Cross is joining with other churches in town to serve a weekly meal to those in need.

** People are encouraged to create a simple kit containing some non-perishable food items, restaurant/fast food gift cards, phone cards, toothbrush, etc. The kit is kept in the car and available to give to homeless individuals they encounter as they are driving. To learn more, visit www.mountcross.com/kit.htm

“Not Secret Service”

8^th Sunday after Pentecost, July 18, 2010

Acts 6:1-8 & Matthew 14:13-21

G.P.S. – Servants Who Care For Others

“… we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God

and joint heirs with Christ -- if, in fact, we suffer with him

so that we may also be glorified with him. ^{Romans 8:16-17}

+ + + +

“…suffer with him…” There’s a word for that.

You heard people say, “I feel your pain.” But they cannot. Not really. But they can feel with you. Everybody’s different. Maybe when you see someone getting a shot, you wince, too. Maybe when someone else rips off a band aid from a cut, you feel it, too. And often, when you feel it, too, you feel it in a certain place.

Back in the days when you had to go up to the window at the gas station to pay for your gas before you pumped it yourself, and back in the days when Jason was still in a car seat, it was a bit of a hassle to unbuckle him, take him with me, put him back, and then pump the gas. But when I simply imagined leaving him there, paying for the gas, and coming back to find his car seat empty… My stomach did a flip.

There’s a word for that. There’s a word for that flip. It comes from the word for that region where that flip often comes. In the Greek New Testament, the word is virtually unpronounceable: splangchnidzomai. In Latin, it comes closer to a word you might recognize: conpassi. You know the word for that in English: compassion. To suffer with someone.

There’s a word for that. It was the gut feeling of care for the crowds that led to him taking care of a mass of people – over 5000. He hurt with them and did not allow that feeling to remain just an uncomfortable sensation that was allowed to pass, but he modeled how it can become the inspiration for action for the sake of others.

There’s a word for that. Baptism. When we baptize we celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the risen Christ, “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence.”

There’s a few words for that: “the spirit of understanding.” In your baptism Jesus not only shared with you his past; when he went to the grave and took with him the sins of the world. In your baptism Jesus not only shared with you his future; life in the Kingdom of God. But he also shared with you his compassion; his understanding of how many there are who need care. He shared with you this gift of grace to be put to use in the present.

There’s a word for that: Stephen. In today’s first reading we see compassion at work again. The disciples Jesus called were doing double duty: preaching and taking care of what you could call the social service needs of the growing community, too. There was concern that not all who needed care were getting it. So the decision was made to delegate. Some would take the lead in preaching. Others would be set aside to tend to the needs of the hungry. And while it did turn out that Stephen ended up having pretty good preaching skills, it is his leadership in this first century caring ministry that inspired the borrowing of his name for an important 20^th and 21^st century caring ministry.

There’s a couple of words for that: Stephen Ministry. Once a translator of the Bible was labouring in a tribe in Mexico, finding it hard to get the specific word for the word 'comforter' in the passage where Jesus says, “…the Father…shall give you another Comforter…” One day his helper came to him asking for a week's leave, explaining that his uncle had died and he wanted some days off to visit his bereaved aunt. He said, “I want to help her heart around the corner.” The translator had his word. And we see someone motivated by compassion to go and comfort someone in need.

That’s what Stephen Ministers do. They care. I’ve often described them as people who bring ears with heart attached. They listen. They care. In fact, we call them care givers, recognizing all the time that God is the cure giver. If you are or ever have served as a Stephen Minister or Stephen Leader, would you wave your hand around for a moment so others can see these servants who care for others. By the way, one new leader will be added soon: Marion Cole will fly to Pittsburgh to become the 19^th Stephen Leader trained from Mount Cross.

There’s a word for that: Special K. This is not a short hand way of referring, not to a breakfast cereal, but to a couple who are living a life of compassion. You know this couple – directly or indirectly. You may have met Larry & Joy Goehner on one of their occasional visits to Camarillo. If the name sounds familiar, they are Pastor Erik’s parents. You’ve probably heard about the ranch. Pastor Erik includes ranch stories from time to time in his sermons. And some of you have sent your children there. Just this morning the High School youth group from Mount Cross left the ranch to start their journey home after working and playing there for the past three days.

But even if we were not personally connected to the ranch through Pastor Erik, I think I would want you to see in a bit more detail what compassion for others can lead to. [A short video was shown that describes the vision of the ranch: a place developmentally disabled adults can call home for the rest of their lives. On the web at www.specialkranch.org ]

Let us pray a prayer I borrowed from Mother Teresa:

Lord, open our eyes that we may see you in our brothers and sisters. Lord, open our ears that we may hear the cries of the hungry, the cold, the frightened, the oppressed. Lord, open our hearts that we may love each other as you love us. Renew in us your spirit. Lord, free us and make us one. Amen.

Prayer Is The Answer

5^th Sunday after Pentecost, June 27, 2010

Mark 14:-32-42, 2^nd Corinthians 12:7b-9,

2^nd Samuel 12:15b-23 and 1^st Samuel 1:1-18

Let us pray: Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

- - - - -

That prayer has been part of our tradition for at least fifty years. It is in the red hymnal we have now. It was in the green one before that. It was in the red one before that. And it was probably in at least one or two before that…whatever their color. And whether or not it is a familiar prayer, do you hear it as a gift? Not everyone has.

There have been times when the dominant image of the God to whom that prayer is directed was of an angry judge, seated on a throne with a sharp, two-edged sword coming out of his mouth. The thought of such an angry God seeing everything in my heart, knowing all my desires and all my secrets! That would scare the pants off of many. If God should come to know that about me, that knowledge could only lead to judgment and punishment and condemnation.

But the death of Jesus on the cross tore down the curtain that hid God’s true face so that we could realize the God to whom we pray is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And what a gift to be able to turn toward such a God with openness, vulnerability and trust.

I hope this is not new information to you. It certainly was not new information to many of those who we can see and hear praying in the Bible. Over and over again we can hear trust and openness, even brutal honesty. Total honesty in their prayers. And if we listen carefully we may discover in a new way that prayer is the answer.

Let me start with one of the most famous prayer moments in all of the Bible. The prayer Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before he was crucified. “They went to a place called Gethsemane and Jesus threw himself on the ground and prayed.” ^{Mark 14:-32-42} And what was his prayer? "Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me…” The ‘cup’ was his impending death on the cross. A very human and very understandable request – to be spared that terrible pain. So after he prayed, what happened? Soldiers came and arrested him and he was eventually crucified.

Another famous prayer is contained in 2^nd Corinthians, Paul said, “Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me…” ^{2nd
Corinthians 12:7b-9}For what did Paul pray no less than three times? That God would remove what he called a “thorn in the flesh.” We don’t know what it was, but we know it was enough of a bother that Paul chose to pray about it three times – not to mention writing about his praying about it. And what happened after all that praying? He still had his thorn in the flesh.

A lot of people know the story of King David and how he had an affair with the wife of one of his generals. After he arranged to have the guy killed in battle, the woman, Bathsheba, gave birth to a child. But the child became very ill. So David prayed for the life of the child: “David therefore pleaded with God for the child; David fasted, and went in and lay all night on the ground...” ^{2nd
Samuel 12:15b-23}And what happened after all that praying? The child died.

So let me get this straight. Three prayers. By three very well known, big name characters in the Bible. And none of them answered! I’m almost afraid to continue.

But let’s take a look at one more prayer. The prayer of Hannah. “Hannah rose and presented herself before the LORD. She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD, and wept bitterly.” ^{1st Samuel 1:1-18}

If the Bible hadn’t made it clear for what Hannah was praying, this prayer would accurately portray some of the things she might want:

“Dear God, would you please tell that witch Peninah to get out of my face about having so many kids. She’s like a copy machine! And why, God, have you put so many bonehead men in my life. My husband, he means well, but really? He tries to make me feel better by asking if he’s not more of a gift than ten sons. Oy! Trying to fix a problem of quality with quantity. And this priest, Eli. Mistaking my earnest prayer for being drunk. Oy, again, Lord!”

But we know her prayer was for the gift of a son. A son she was even willing to give back to God so that he could serve God all his life. Surely that little ending part might have sweetened the pot and coaxed God into granting her prayer?

But when the prayer was ended and she left the house of the Lord, there was no answer yet. There was later. If you read on, in Chapter One you will see that Hannah does finally get pregnant. So it seems that at least one prayer of the four is answered.

But wait a minute. Before you read ahead to verses 19 & 20 where the pregnancy occurs, look at the end of this passage, verse 18, and the way it ends: “Then the woman went to her quarters, ate and drank with her husband, and her countenance was sad no longer.”

Her countenance was sad no longer. This is not the virgin Mary. The Holy Spirit didn’t come upon her in that hour of prayer so that she left “with child.” But if the eyes are the windows into the soul, hers had new light in them. Peace and comfort are now seen where before there was provocation and irritations and weeping and sadness and bitterness.

“Her countenance was sad no longer.” How can you explain this except to say Prayer is the answer. Prayer was its own answer for Hannah. To open her heart to God, to know that God knew all her desires, that God knew all her secrets… To be in relationship with such a God, a relationship of faith (it takes great faith to send a prayer), a relationship of trust and hope and love. To be able to send such a prayer to such a trustworthy God – that was answer enough. The rest was gravy! Whatever else might happen, that will be nice. But the answer to that prayer came in the praying.

And looking back on those other praying people…same thing.

· Jesus didn’t get what he wanted. But he became what the Father needed: someone willing to be a means by which the will of God might be done.

· Paul didn’t get what he wanted, but he became what the Father needed: someone who could serve as a living illustration of how the amazing and powerful and transforming love of God can be present in a weak and thorn-poked guy.

· David didn’t get what he wanted, but he became what the Father needed: someone who would leave his life open to the grace of God.

· And Hannah? She got what she wanted. But not before she became what the Father needed: someone to demonstrate to the rest of us that Prayer is the answer.

There is a lot of praying that goes on around Mount Cross. There are the prayers that happen at our altar. There are the prayers, that happen out there where you are sitting as your hearts and minds engage the prayers that are prayed at the altar. In addition, you open your mouths to pray the names of those whom you know to be in need. And then there’s the prayers prayed by our Stephen Ministers, our Communion Ministers as they visit. There are the prayers many of you pray, near your phone or in front of your computer screen when another prayer chain call or email comes.

In all these ways we are following the counsel of Saint Paul, when he says in “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone…” ^{1st Timothy 2:1}

And we are obeying Jesus, when he says, “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.” ^{John 14:14}

But no matter what you pray for, or for whom you pray, never forget that sending a prayer in the first place presupposes someone waiting to receive your prayer. That is the gift that prayer really is. Prayer is its own answer. Amen.

“Words Within The Word”*

4^th Sunday after Pentecost, Sunday, June 20, 2010

2^nd in Summer Series: “GPS – Grace-full People Serve

Servants Who Show Hospitality

Hebrews 13:2

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers,

for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

+ + +

There was once a little film. You may have heard of it. It is called ‘Casablanca.’ A classic love story against the backdrop of the struggle of good vs. evil. Lots of memorable lines, like “Here’s looking at you, kid.” Lots of memorable characters – like Rick and Ilsa. Speaking of characters, what if Dooley Wilson had not been in the film? You know him as Sam, the one who was told to play “As Time Goes By.” If he had not been in the film, Rick still might have said, "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." And the plane carrying Ilsa and Victor Laszlo might still fly off into the night sky. But would it be “Casablanca” without “You must remember this, a kiss is just a kiss…”?

I’ll leave that as a rhetorical question and move on to one I think I know the answer to. Our God is currently directing an epic that at one and the same time is finished and unfinished. The working title is LIFE. We know the ending. The Bible describes the ending of this epic in a variety of ways. Ephesians 1:10 describes this project as a “plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” So by faith we know the ending already.

What is still unfinished is the work of assembling the cast and hearing all the lines the many characters in this drama will speak.

At least once in your life I am sure you have been to a party that was announced with an invitation? But have you ever heard of an ‘univite’? We all received one, an uninvite to the party in heaven. That’s what our sin caused to happen. And how not hospitable!

There’s good news, however. When Jesus went to the grave he took all of our uninvites with him and left them there so that when he was raised from the dead be could become the host who welcomes all who will accept his hospitality into that glorious ending God planned from the beginning.

In so many ways Jesus makes it clear that his mission is to extend this heavenly hospitality to everyone. One time he says, “When I am lifted up I will draw all people to myself…” In another he tells how the good shepherd looks for the lost sheep until it is found. In another he tells of the joy there is in heaven when the prodigal returns home. In another, there are scenes of wonderful banquets to which all are invited.

His mission continues. That is why we are the body of Christ. And as his body, his mission is our mission. And it is a huge job, to be sure, making sure everyone knows their uninvite has been torn up and they are welcome at the table after all.

But because it is such a huge job, and some of us are a bit shy, we may resist our role in that mission. One way to do this is to interpret Acts 1:8 in a certain way. In Acts 1:8 Jesus says to his disciples, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Think of Jerusalem as Mount Cross, Judea as Camarillo, Samaria as that place you’d rather not go, and the ends of the earth as the rest of the world. How easy to try to persuade yourself that Jesus meant this sequentially. In other words, when we’ve finished the mission in here at Mount Cross, we’ll move on to the rest of the city, and so on. I don’t think he will let us get away with that.

Another problem may come when one tries to tackle too much hospitality at one time. There are some in our country who speak of the presence of illegal immigrants in our country as an issue of hospitality. I’m not going to go there except to say that such a huge issue as this is not a wise place to start trying how to figure out how to do hospitality. You’ve got to start on a smaller scale, not with trying to get your head around whether or not we should show hospitality to 12 million people. Begin with a smaller number.

You have already done that. I’m thinking of the hundreds of people who came to our church last month to be a part of the service for Kayla Gucciardo. I don’t know how many people spoke to me to share how impressed they were with the hospitality shown them in so many ways, including the many of you who gave up your usual seat in the sanctuary to be a part of the service in Luther Hall or on the patio. Because of your hospitality, their presence became part of that event, a celebration of life. Their words, even if they were silent words spoken as a prayer that God would watch over Kayla’s family as God is surely watching over her, those words became part of the Word (capital W) that day, and that word was LIFE.

Maybe thinking about hospitality has to start on a still smaller scale. Jesus understood this, so he told the parable of the Good Samaritan in which we see hospitality on a small scale – one to one, but with really huge implications.

Maybe the writer of today’s first reading was thinking the same as we are shown how Abraham and Sarah showed hospitality by welcoming just three guests to their tent. Oh yes, and one of them turned out to be God!

When I was in college I shared a small house with my room mate. We each had two rooms on either side of the house and we share the common kitchen, living area and bathroom in the middle. Everything was fine until one day he invited his girlfriend to move in with him. I was not consulted. And I guess he could tell I was a little bothered. I wasn’t prepared to share my space with a female quite yet. I probably sulked or in some way showed how I felt without talking about it.

The two of us had a tradition of posting interesting quotes on the bathroom wall. Philosophical graffiti, you might say. One day I saw a paper he had posted with these words of Soren Kierkegaard: Where heart room is, there house room is always to be found. He still should have asked first. But that quote has stayed with me my whole life.

We have many hospitality ministries here at Mount Cross: CDC Back-To-School barbecue; Sponsor a new member; Serve at Funeral; Sunday Morning Hospitality; Bread Breakers; Cook's Club, to name a few. But they will be nothing more than programs – in the driest and most business-like sense of that word - and not extensions of the heart of Jesus unless we have heart room, too. That’s the key. Heart room.

With heart room, every ministry - Softball teams, church choirs, Stephen Ministry, Sunday School or VBS staff - is really a hospitality ministry, because it is a place to welcome someone in and hear their story.

And the stories told by the characters in this epic are really what it is all about.

God tore up your uninvite the day Jesus died on the cross because God wants your story to be part of the big story. God wants your words to be part of the Word, the word of life, the word that is LIFE.

Casablanca rates very high on most lists of all time great and favorite films, and one reason for this has to be because of the characters. If we were going to do our own version, there are some parts I would not care to play. I would not want to be Major Strasser, the Nazi. I’d rather be Sam.

The point is, the story is what it is, rich, exciting, intriguing, suspenseful because of the richness all the characters bring. Not all behave as honorably as they know they should. Not all tell the truth when they know they should. But without Sam, you can call the film anything you want, but it is no longer Casablanca.

God feels the same way about the cast of LIFE. Each and every story belongs in the production. Your words bring a richness to the dialogue that no one else can bring. And the same goes for the cast members who have yet to be gathered. The lives, the stories of all of us are the words within the Word.

Amen.

* Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Hymn No. 641 – “All Are Welcome”

“You Give Them Something to Eat” Mark 6:3044

6/11/10 Summer series

I never had swimming lessons as a child—at least not from an official teacher. My dad was the one who taught me how to swim. Maybe that is why I was a little older when I finally learned. I think I was 7 or 8 when I finally got it. But I can’t really blame my dad for a lack of trying. Whenever we had the opportunity to be at a pool he would do his best to encourage me, to push me, to invite me, to help me hold onto the edge of the pool, to kick my feet, to practice putting my head underwater. Even now I can remember him holding me in the water, supporting my weight as I moved my arms and legs.

“You can do it, Erik! That’s it! Keep moving those arms!” Then I can remember him beginning to move his hands away from body—testing to see if I could really do it on my own. That’s when the panic would set it.

“No! No! Don’t let go! Hold me! Hold me!” My arms and legs would begin to flail, ironically making it harder for my dad to do the very thing I wanted him to do.

“Calm down! Calm down!” I would hear him say, his voice rising in frustration. “I’m right here! I’m not going to let you drown! But you need to try it on your own. Trust me. I still be right here.”

Trust me. Therein laid the problem. If someone were to have asked me if I trusted my dad I would have said sure. But put me in water over my head and suddenly I wasn’t so sure. I became afraid that I swimming wasn’t really possible. That I would sink. I didn’t want to try it on my own. Instead, I just wanted out of the pool. But my dad kept inviting me to try again. “You do it, Erik.” “No I can’t! “ “Yes you can. Let go of the side. Jump in. I’m right here.”

I knew my dad would be there. The problem wasn’t him. It was me. It took some time, but I finally came to the point where I stopped panicking when his hands moved away. I began to let go. Time and again my dad had caught me when I started to sink. Those hands would be there if needed. I didn’t have to be so afraid. I calmed down. I kept moving my arms and legs. It was then that I started to swim, and not long after I dove into the deep water.

I have heard it said that the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear. It is fear which keeps us from letting go. It is fear which keeps us from believing that eternal hands are there to catch us when we feel like we are sinking.

Jesus was constantly trying to teach his followers to overcome this fear. He didn’t miss a moment to encourage his disciples to step out a little into deeper water. He was constantly inviting them into faith.

Today’s story from the Gospel of Mark is no exception. Jesus has invited his followers to come away and rest for awhile. They get a boat and go off to a deserted place. But some people have spotted where they are going. They alert others and once again a crowd begins to form in the vicinity of Jesus. Even though he is tired Jesus has compassion on them and begins to teach again. Then it starts to get late. His disciples who were already weary are now exhausted. They know the crowd must be hungry and tired too and they don’t want to have to deal with a bunch of hungry and tired people. So what they suggest makes sense. They tell Jesus, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat.”

It sounds like a logical thing to do, but Jesus doesn’t let them off the hook that easily. He sees a teachable moment and seizes it. Instead of sending the people away he tells his followers, “You give them something to eat.” Now I can begin to hear the panic set in. “Are we to go and buy two hundred denarii woth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” What Jesus is asking of his disciples seems impossible. It would take an extraordinary amount of money to feed so many people! The disciples don’t have that kind of cash. You can understand why the disciples might be getting a little afraid at this point. When people get hungry they get cranky. If the disciples try to start feeding the people with only their own meager resources they are sure to run out. What happens then? They could have a riot on their hands.

But Jesus continues to invite them into a new way of seeing things. He wants them to look beyond the impossible so they can see what can happen with God. He encourages them to calm down and see what is available. “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” To their credit the disciples are willing to go along with Jesus. They assess their resources and discover there are five loaves and two fish. They hand them over to Jesus and that is when the miracle begins. Jesus blesses the bread, breaks it and asks the disciples to pass it out. Somehow there is enough for the thousands of people gathered. Everyone eats their fill and there are even leftovers.

Jesus tells his followers, “You give them something to eat” not because he is trying to pass the buck. He doesn’t tell them “You give them something to eat” because he wants them just to do everything on their own. He tells them this because he wants them to learn to swim in the deep waters of faith. He wants them to see what can happen when they stop being afraid. He wants them to see what can happen when they are willing to let go and share their resources. He wants them to see what can happen when they really trust that God will provide. It isn’t about Jesus teaching his followers to become independent. The reality is they could not do it on their own. Rather, it is about teaching them they are dependent on God and interdependent with each other. It is about showing them that they can take that leap of faith precisely because they are not alone. God is right there. When they give over their resources and place them in the hands of Jesus, God blesses those resources and multiples them in amazing ways.

Letting go in this way is not an easy thing to do. Instead of moving our arms and legs in order to reach out to those around us we want Jesus to hold us in our little comfortable place. Instead we might want to say, “Jesus, can’t you just hold me here? Do I really have to share this pool with others? Do you really want me to swim out into the deep waters—the places of deep hurt and deep hunger?” It is hard to face the hunger of the crowd. The statistics can be staggering. There are not just several thousand people who are hungry in our world, but several million. When faced with such overwhelming numbers we can feel overwhelmed. What can we possibly do? Like the disciples we would rather just send the hungry away and let them fend for themselves.

But Jesus tells us, “You give them something to eat.” Jesus knows the problem is not that isn’t enough for everyone. The problem is that so few have so much, when so many have so little. The problem is that we are not willing to entrust ourselves and our resources fully into the hands of God. The problem is that we let our fear get in the way of our faith and this lead us to cling to more than we need. It drives us to accumulate at the expense of others even though in the end we know it only spoils our souls just like the manna spoiled in the wilderness. So Jesus challenges us with the words, “You give them something to eat.” It is a challenge but also an invitation—an invitation not so we can see how great we are, but so that we can see how great God is.

Perhaps we can begin to respond to this invitation right here at home in our own community. This is precisely what some folks from Padre Serra and Mary Magdalene Catholic churches heard God calling them to last spring. They looked around and saw people struggling in Camarillo because of the economic down-turn. They saw people losing homes and having trouble feeding their families. They could have just ignored what they were seeing. They could have said, “Let’s just send them somewhere else.” But instead they heard Jesus’ invitation to give them something to eat and that is what they did. They started with just a few volunteers in the parish hall at Mary Magdalene’s on the corner of Las Posas and Crestview. They took on the name “Many Meals” and began by serving just 30 to 40 people. The word has spread, however, and they have become more organized. This last week they had 137 guests that were served by 50 volunteers. Taking on such a task can seem a little scary, but this group called Many Meals continues to put on the invitation to those who are in need and they are inviting other churches to do so as well.

We at Mount Cross are one of the churches who are responding. Our schedule has changed slightly. We are no longer starting in July. We will instead be starting in September. In preparation for taking on a Thursday night once a month we are going to be helping two times this summer with the Monday night group. Our church is responding. The question is, will you join us?

As a father myself, I now know what my dad went through in teaching my how to swim. Even though our kids have had swimming lessons, even though I’ve seen them jump into the deep end and make it across the pool on their own, they still have difficulty letting go. When we go to a pool they still want to stay on the side. When I invite them to swim beside me they still want to hold on. Each time in the water I have to keep reminding them that they can do it and I’ll still be there if they need me. Eventually, they start to let go.

When we are baptized as Christians we have experienced what it is light to sink into the deep waters and be caught by the hands of God’s grace. But we so quickly forget that God is there. We so easily let our fear get in the way of our faith. That is why it is so important we gather as a church every week, because we need to be reminded that as people of God we are not called to just cling to our comfortable place on the side of the pool. We are called to swim out into the deep water. We are called to swim out into the deep hurts the deep hungers of this world trusting that when we have given ourselves fully to God there will be enough—more than enough—to sustain us

How Do You Describe God?

Holy Trinity Sunday John 16:12-15 5/30/10

Pastor Erik Goehner

I want to begin this morning by asking a question: how would you describe God in three words or less? Would you use words like mighty, awesome, or incredible? Would you use words like judgmental, vengeful, or angry? Would you say comforting, friend, or full of mercy? What language would you use? What nouns, verbs, and adjectives would you feel were important to mention? The words you use to describe God might depend on your perspective. They would depend on your tradition—on what you grew up with and what you have experienced in your faith and the stories you have heard of other’s lives of faith.

For the early Christian church the three words that came to be seen as very important for describing God were Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These words became so important in fact, that they became a kind of name for God. The formula came from Matthew 28:19 where Jesus tells his followers to “..go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. “ This three-word name of God came to be called the Holy Trinity and for almost two thousand years has been the way Christians have called upon God in the context of worship.

But the idea of using a name to describe what God is like goes back even further than that. Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament we hear many different names that the Jewish people used for God. Each of these names highlighted an important aspect of who God is what God does for God’s people. You’ll have to pardon my Hebrew pronunciation, but I wanted to share with you some of the names the Jewish people used to describe God:

Adonai Tsuri v'goali.
"The LORD my Rock and my Redeemer" (Psalm 19:14[5h]).

Adonai Roph'ekha.
The LORD who heals you; The LORD your healer; (Ex. 15:26).

Adonai Ro'i. (ro-ee)
The LORD my Shepherd (Ps. 23:1, Ez. 34:2).

Adonai Osenu.
The LORD our Maker (Ps. 95:6).

Adonai Nissi.
The LORD my Miracle, or The LORD my Banner; (Ex. 17:15)

Adonai Yir'eh.
The LORD who sees; Gen. 22:14; Adonai sees all and knows our needs intimately

Adonai Avinu.
The LORD our Father (Isa. 64:8).

There are more, but you get the idea. Each name focuses on a different aspect of God and emphasizes a different characteristic of God that arose out of the experience of the Jewish people. If we only had one of these names to go on we wouldn’t be getting the full picture of what God is like, but by knowing all these different names we get a richer and a deeper understanding of who God is and how God relates to us.

This is why the Trinity is so important. It gives us a broader and deeper picture of who God is. Like their Jewish ancestors, the early Christians were trying to describe their relationship with God. But they were now trying to describe that relationship in the context of their experience of Jesus. They believed in a divine being that was the creator of the universe, and yet they had also had come to know this Jesus who had said he was one with the Father—he was one with God and had been so since the foundations of the world. We have been hearing Jesus say things like this since Easter Sunday as we have been reading the Gospel of John in church. I love what C.S. Lewis writes about these sometimes cryptic and confusing passages from John where Jesus talks about being like God. C.S. Lewis argues that either Jesus is who is says he is or he is crazy. Certainly, we might think someone who is claiming to be God is insane. Yet those who knew Jesus knew he wasn’t crazy. And those who came to know Jesus after his death came to believe that his resurrection validated all he had claimed before. There was something special about Jesus. He was both fully human and fully divine.

Then you have today’s passage of Scripture from the book of John. Here Jesus talks about the Spirit of truth—a Holy Spirit—who will guide us into all truth. Apparently, all that Jesus has also belongs to the Spirit and all that the Father has belongs to Jesus. In other parts of the Gospel of John Jesus talks about being one with the Spirit as he and the Father are one. So there is God the Father who is the almighty creator of the universe, God the Son who comes to earth to become like one of us and save us from our sins, and there is God the Holy Spirit who is God’s presence among us to be our comforter, advocate and guide. Rather than talk about three different gods, however, the early church believed that God was still a unified being and if God was all-powerful God could certainly be different and yet together at the same time. So we Christians believe that God is three in one, and one in three, that’s the doctrine of the Trinity.

Now don’t feel bad if you still don’t totally get this. Theologians and professors of the church have been exploring the meaning of the Trinity for centuries and there is something about it that will always remain a mystery. Yet there is also something about it that really makes sense. I think this is seen in a memorable childhood experience the author Mary W. Anderson writes about in regards to the Trinity:

I was watching my grandmother sleep during her afternoon nap. As I contemplated her existence, I thought wisely. "That's Grandmama, Mamma, and Odell." She smiled in her sleep as I called her by the names used for her by her grandchildren, her daughter, and her husband. Three names, three relationships -- and yet the same person. Amazing!

We know that even humans cannot be defined by just one characteristic. People are complex creatures who are made up of a whole web of relationships. We are known as child, parent, grandparent, husband, wife, employee, manager, teacher, student, and friend. If you want to describe someone then you need to use language that honors all those different perspectives. If this is true for humans wouldn’t it be more so when it came to God?

Another way to think about this is through a story many of you may have heard of in one form or another. It is called, “The Elephant and the Blind Men”.

ELEPHANT AND THE BLIND MEN

Once upon a time, there lived six blind men in a village. One day the villagers told them, "Hey, there is an elephant in the village today."

They had no idea what an elephant is. They decided, "Even though we would not be able to see it, let us go and feel it anyway." All of them went where the elephant was. Everyone of them touched the elephant.

"Hey, the elephant is a pillar," said the first man who touched his leg.

"Oh, no! it is like a rope," said the second man who touched the tail.

"Oh, no! it is like a thick branch of a tree," said the third man who touched the trunk of the elephant.

"It is like a big hand fan" said the fourth man who touched the ear of the elephant.

"It is like a huge wall," said the fifth man who touched the belly of the elephant.

"It is like a solid pipe," Said the sixth man who touched the tusk of the elephant.

They began to argue about the elephant and everyone of them insisted that he was right. It looked like they were getting agitated. A wise man was passing by and he saw this. He stopped and asked them, "What is the matter?"

They said, "We cannot agree to what the elephant is like." Each one of them told what he thought the elephant was like. The wise man calmly explained to them, "All of you are right. The reason every one of you is telling it differently because each one of you touched the different part of the elephant. So, actually the elephant has all those features of what you all said."

"Oh!" everyone said. There was no more fight. They felt happy that they were all right.

God is much bigger than our imagination. When it comes to describing the creator of universe we are like the blind men describing an elephant. We cannot get the whole picture of what God is like on our own. That’s why we have to be careful not to use language that would try and put God in a box as if we as humans could ever fully define who God is. That’s why I love the doctrine of the Trinity because it creates a way of talking about God that defies definition. It maintains the mystery of God while at the same time giving us some practical ways to think about what God is like. It reveals that there are multiple perspectives of viewing who God is and all them are important for sometimes we need a God who is awesome and mighty and other times we need a God who is a comforting friend. So we can be thankful that we worship One who comes to us through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. Amen

If We Are to Become One, We Must Act Like One

John 17:20-26 May 16, 2010

Imagine for a moment if you could get a window into the secret prayer life of Jesus. Wouldn’t you be curious as to what he prayed for? Wouldn’t you want to know what kind of requests he made of God? Now imagine that Jesus is praying for you. Wouldn’t you want to pay careful attention to his every word? As a Christian, wouldn’t you want to be sure to listen so that you could get some clue or guidance as to what life is really all about?

Well imagine no more, for that is exactly what happens in todays text from the Gospel of John. We get special insight into a long prayer that Jesus prays just before he is arrested. The part that we read today is at the end of the prayer. Jesus began by praying for himself, that he would have the courage to complete his missions. He then prays for close disciples. Finally, he prays for all those who will believe in him through the message his disciples will share. This is where our ears should perk up. Jesus is praying for all who will become believers. This includes us. So what is it that Jesus prays for? What is it that he desires for us so much that he is calling upon God to make it happen?

The thing that Jesus prays for is that all of us would be one. Wow. Cool, Jesus! I’m all for unity! Peace, love and harmony! But wait a minute. That person across the aisle at church is a dodger fan. I like the angels. And that person a few rows back, I think they voted democrat in the last election. I’m a republican. I’m not so sure I would want to be considered one with him. And did you say all those who believe in you Jesus? Does that include the other churches in town? You mean to tell me you want us to be one with those Episcopalians? You want us to be one with those folks from Calvary Chapel? Don’t they do that hand-raising thing when they worship? And what about that church where the worship is still in Greek? Or that church where the songs sound like mariachi music and the preaching is all in Spanish? Did Jesus really mean we were to be one with them? And that’s just the churches in Camarillo! What about those Christians in Iraq, Palestine, and Tanzania? What about those Christians living in the Vatican City? Did Jesus really want us to be one with them?

Jesus’ prayer definitely seems like one that is still waiting to be answered. Sunday morning has been called the most segregated hour during the week. With its history of inner conflicts and fractured denominations, the church has often seemed like more of a witness to divisive human nature than holy unity.

I think a big part of the problem is that we confuse uniformity with unity. We believe we have to all think and act the same way if we are to be considered “one”. This confusion makes for exclusivity when a group does not allow anyone who appears to be different to join. The church falls into this trap just as much as any organization. So the unfortunate truth is the church has often been more of an example of exclusivity and judgment over the years as opposed to welcome and one-ness.

This is especially sad because it has the very opposite effect of what Jesus was praying for. It has the effect of turning people away from the church when in fact what Jesus was praying for was that believers would come together so others would be attracted to the message of the Gospel. Jesus prayed that we would become completely one so that the world would know that he was sent by God and has loved the world even as he was loved by God. Our primary purpose as the church is not to be an enclave of like-minded people. It is not to be a club where every has the same hobby. It is not be a place where everyone looks the same or comes from the same background. No, our primary purpose is to gather for the sake of accomplishing the common mission to which we are called—the mission of sharing how God’s love was revealed to the world through Jesus Christ. It is this mission which unifies us as people of the Christian faith, not our similarities.

If are to help answer Jesus prayer then and become one, we must first begin to act like we are one. I don’t know mean that we are to pretend as if we just all get along and don’t have any differences. Rather, I mean that we are to press on towards our goal and work together to accomplish our mission in spite of our differences. Becoming one is not just about hanging out together, it is first of all about reaching out together.

I learned about this first-hand on a mission trip to Nepal which I had the opportunity to go on during my second year at seminary. I traveled to Katmandu with three other students and stayed for a month with a medical missionary. We had many incredible experiences while we were there. We were able to visit many interesting sites and witness the work of the doctor with whom we were staying. Our main job, however, was to help put on two weeks of Vacation Bible School for children from the local church and neighborhood. To accomplish this goal the four of us were teamed up with four other people. Two of them were young men who were students at a Christian seminary outside of Katmandu. One was from the city, one was from a rural area of Nepal and had recently converted from Hinduism. The other two were young women from the northern part of India who had come to Katmandu as missionaries.

The eight of us were very different. We had different genders, different skin colors, different cultural backgrounds. We grew up in different families, spoke different languages, cam from different places. We probably would have never met each other or hung out together if in had not been the fact that we had been brought together and were unified in our common mission of wanting to share God’s love with some local kids in a neighborhood in Katmandu. Because of this common mission, over the course of several weeks we did hang out together and became close as we planned and led the vacation Bible School. As a result close to 50 young children heard and experienced something of God’s love for them. By acting with one purpose for that brief period of time, we had a glimpse of what it was like to be one.

But you don’t have to travel to Nepal to get this kind of glimpse being one. Last year while on sabbatical I attended a church service at Camarillo High School called the “one” worship. Something like seven or eight different churches gathered to worship together at the High School instead of at their own buildings. What was impressive was not so much the kind of churches that gathered. From what I know most of them probably had fairly similar theological and even political viewpoints. No, what was impressive to me was the fact that they had all been willing to close the doors to their own churches for the sake of coming together. This not only was a sacrifice in terms of their attendance, but as one of the pastors mentioned it was also a sacrifice in terms of their finances since they would be collecting an offering for their own churches. Instead, all the offering collected that day went to local missions. What a witness to any non-believers who were visiting the service that day! What a witness to everyone who read about the service in the paper! That is the kind of being one Jesus is talking about in his prayer.

This is why I am so excited about a new ministry Mount Cross is becoming involved in where we will be joining in a common mission with other local churches each month providing dinner for those who are in need. The program is called “Many Meals” and you may have already heard something about it from the church newsletter. It began with a group from Mary Magdalene’s Catholic church who wanted to do something to help those in our town affected by the downturn in our nation’s economy. They started serving dinner every Monday night since last summer and their goal was to inspire other churches to get involved and take on a second night. Since then, Mount Cross, Peace Lutheran, Trinity Presbyterian and Crossroads community church have come together to take on the ministry for Thursday nights starting in July. Though it seemed too big a task for any one of our churches, by joining together and taking turns each church felt like it was something they could commit to. We will be teamed up with Peace Lutheran for the third Thursday of each month. We already have good list of volunteers developing, and you will be hearing more about this ministry in the weeks to come. But if you think you are interested now in serving in some capacity, be it cooking a dish, helping to serve or helping to clean up, please give me a call or drop me an e-mail.

Jesus’ desire for his followers to become one seems like daunting task. There is so much that can divide us and it is so easy to let our differences keep us apart. But the first step in becoming one in the way Jesus means is not so much about being the same, rather it is about doing the same—it is about having the same mission. By stepping out in action together around the common purpose of showing others God’s love we will begin to catch a vision of what it is like to be one, and when moments like that happen then Jesus’ prayer is answered.

“We’ve Been Given A Mandate”

5^th Sunday of Easter, May 2, 2010

First read John 13:31–35

CHILDREN’S MESSAGE

Did you notice anything different at the start of today’s service? The candles. The acolyte didn’t light the two altar candles.

Why do we have two up there? One reason is probably for balance. It might look odd to have just one. But here is what I think of when I see the two candles in our church.

When we light the first one I am reminded of the words of Jesus when he says, "I am the light of the world." John 8:12

That is one of the great “I AM” sayings of Jesus. There are some other times when Jesus says, “I am…” I am the Bread of life, the Good Shepherd, the resurrection and the life, the way the truth and the life, the vine. But there is only one of these that Jesus turns around and uses on us, too.

He doesn’t say “I am the Good Shepherd and you are good shepherds, too.” He doesn’t say, “I am the way, and so are you.” But he does say, “I am the light of the world,” and “You are the light of the world.”

So now I will ask our acolyte to come over and light the two candles. The first one reminding us that Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

And the second one remind us that Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others so that they see your good works and give glory to God.”

PRAYER: Dear God, thank you for the confidence you have in us, that you ask us to shine as light in the world like Jesus, the light of the world. In his name. Amen.

SERMON

I am writing you a new commandment that is true in him and in you,

because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.^{1st John 2:8}

+ + +

[Pastor John walks to the baptism font, which has been placed in front of the altar.]

When we join a life to the death and resurrection of Jesus by baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, we give a candle, because…

[sings] ♪ ♫ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Jesus calls on us to shine…

To shine is another way of saying love, I guess. When we shine we bring light, we bring warmth, we bring compassion, we bring confidence, we bring a sense of direction, a sense of purpose…

He doesn’t ask, either. He commands us. He’s given us a mandate, really. When it comes to this loving, this shining, there are no volunteers, either. We’re under orders. We’re commissioned, like officers in the service.

♪ ♫ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Jesus calls on us to shine. Easy for him to say.

Come on. It is Jesus who has issued this call: love one another as I have loved you. But he is Jesus. He is the Son of God. He is the Light of the World.

But me? I’m just a little candle. And it’s windy. Doesn’t it seem like the winds of intolerance and hatred and racism and us-vs.-themism are blowing as hard as ever. Does not the world seem as polarized and dangerous as ever? Someone could easily blow out my little light. Or break it. So…

♪ ♫ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

Hide it in its little box; Don’t want to use it up.

What makes more sense is to be judicious in the use of this little candle. To take it out when I feel the time it right for me. When it is safe. When it convenient. When I can devote my time and energy and focus to it. If I am expected to love on someone else’s schedule, how will that work. I won’t be able to concentrate.

And besides, when Jesus spoke those words, he was speaking to the disciples in the upper room during the Last Supper, right. So it was kind of like church. So when he says “Love one another,” he means the people in my church, right? That seems pretty safe. I can do that. On Sundays. What’s that? There’s another verse:

♪ ♫ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

That is not how Jesus lived; He gave himself away.

The first person we called to preside over the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America once spoke of his dream for our denomination. It is a dream that we could choose as a theme for this church. It is a theme each of us could choose for our own lives. He said, we are to be “so deeply and confidently rooted in the Gospel of God’s grace that we are free to give our life joyfully in witness and service" (former Presiding Bishop Herbert Chilstrom).

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that when a vine bears fruit, the vine itself does not eat that fruit, it is for the sake of another.

It is also clear that whatever light and warmth, whatever compassion and confidence, whatever sense of direction and purpose we bring to the life of another when we shine, it comes at a cost.

There is no light giving device – camp fire, oil lamp, electric light – that is able to shine without some kind of cost, without something being lost, something being burned up in the process. And there is no love giving person who is able to truly love another without there being some cost.

There used to be signs in the old busses that take people up and down the mountain to Holden Village in north central Washington State. I don’t know if the signs are still there (but I think they are). The signs read:

The Ride Up Is Free

The Ride Down Is Costly

When we realize – maybe for the first time, maybe for the hundredth time – that the call to “love one another” comes from the one who gave himself away completely on the cross… When we consider that Jesus gave of his life, he allowed his candle to burn all the way down until it went out, maybe we will experience realization transformed into motivation. Maybe you will be coaxed to take at least one step

out of your comfort zone. How might that look. Oh, I don’t know.

· Maybe you’ll serve dinner with other Lutherans in the Many Meals program…

· Maybe you’ll commit to serve as a Stephen Leader or Stephen Minister…

· Maybe you’ll call that friend you haven’t seen in church for awhile and make sure they know they are missed…

· Or you’ll lean over the fence – if people still do that – and find out if your neighbor might accept an invitation to play softball, or work on a Habitat House, or come to church.

♪ ♫ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

This little Gospel light of mine: I’m gonna let it shine!

There’s important news in that line. Most important of all is that we’re talking about the Gospel, the good news that…

· when Jesus gave every last bit of the candle he was given…

· when he loved others with the love with which he was loved by the Father…

· when he loved others with a love which put his own agenda aside and didn’t worry about whether it was a good time for him to love…

· when he loved others with a love that was only motivated by whether there was a need in the other for love…

When the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ looked down in the grave and saw the candle that had been burned totally because of that unconditional giving: God relit the candle. God brought forth a new candle, a new light, a new dawn, a new creation. For the first time. But not for the last. The biggest way. But not the only way.

In small ways the big light of Easter dawn is kindled in people like you. Just ask those who give a little time to the knitting of a prayer shawl about the renewal they felt as they acted to bring physical and spiritual warmth to another…

Just ask those who worked in Tijuana last weekend who saw the tears of joy in the eyes of a young woman, wife and mother when she realized she would have a new home by the time another Lord’s day came around, even it was only 12’ by 12’ and quite meager by our standards.

Just ask… “Where have you had the sense that you or your group was living out a bit of the new creation, living life for other’s sake, the way it was meant to be?” [solicit contributions]

Also remember: while the song says “This little Gospel light of mine,” it is not really mine. We give out candles at baptism, but we should give out mirrors, because the light that we shine is only the light of Christ; we humbly reflect that light whenever and wherever we can.

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” [takes candle out of the box, relights it from the large Christ candle and leads the congregation in the singing …]

Amen!

“What Word is Your Life Saying?”

John 10:22-30 April 25, 2010

Pastor Erik Goehner

If you were to use one word to describe your life what would it be? (let words flash by for a couple seconds) Maybe a more important question is what word would others use to describe your life? What word would other members of your family use? What word would your friends use? Your business associates? Co-workers? Neighbors? The person behind the check-out counter where you buy your groceries? Even if we are not aware of it our actions often speak louder than our words. But how many times do we stop to think about this? How often do we reflect on whether or not what we say we believe actually lines up with the way we are living our life?

Certain people in today’s Gospel are concerned about a word used to describe Jesus. In verse 24 we hear that, “The Jews gathered around him saying, ‘How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ,’ tell us plainly.” The word Christ is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah. For many of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus the word messiah or Christ was a term full of meaning that carried with it all kinds of potential political and spiritual ramifications. It was a word full of history and tradition. It was a word full of hope and expectation.

The word Christ literally means “the anointed one”. It comes from the tradition of pouring oil on someone when they were picked to be a king. Having the oil poured on them was a tangible sign that they had been chosen by God. In the history of the Jewish people the term came to take on a much larger meaning, however, then the simple election of a new leader. It had come to be associated with a moment in time when God would send a special leader to Israel. The person might be like a king, but he would be like no other king who had come before. This leader would restore Israel to its former glory. He would liberate the people from all foreign oppression. The Jewish people would no longer feel like second class citizens in their own country. Maybe they would even establish their own little empire. Others believed that when the Christ came God’s reign of peace would finally come to earth. There would be harmony between the nations and God would draw all people onto God’s holy mountain where even the wolf and the lamb lie down together.

With all this political and spiritual expectation associated with the word Christ or Messiah—with all the different perceptions of what that title might mean—one might understand why Jesus doesn’t quite give a straight answer to those who are wondering if he might be the Christ. When the people say “if you are the Christ tell us plainly”, Jesus responds by saying, “I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father’s name speak for me…”

Jesus is telling the people “look, you might not get what my mouth is saying, but look at what my life is saying.” He is telling them that his actions speak for themselves. He seems to be saying, “Look at what I’ve done. That should tell you who I am.” Jesus isn’t so concerned about arguing about titles, what he is concerned about is changing lives.

One life he has changed is the life of a man born blind. The story takes place in chapter nine of the Gospel of John and is one of those rare moments when we get to see what happens after a person has been healed by Jesus. It is an interesting scene. In a sense, the man who had been blind is put on trial by the Pharisees who are trying to determine if the healing from Jesus was really from God or not. The Pharisees were religious leaders and they were concerned about keeping the religious laws. Apparently Jesus had healed the man on the Sabbath which was frowned upon because the Sabbath was meant to be a day of rest and healing was considered work. So in the story some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.”

But others asked, “How can a sinner do such miraculous signs?” The debate begins to get more heated as the Pharisees continue their interrogation and question the man who was blind again,

“How did this Jesus open your eyes?” The man who had been blind was getting exasperated as he answered,

“I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?” The Pharisees became angry at the insinuation that they would want to be students of Jesus. They hurled insults at the man who had been blind and said,

“You are this fellow’s disciples! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.” The man who had been blind answered back,

“Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man was not from God, he could do nothing.”

Thinking about how the man who had been blind was questioned in this story makes me wonder what kind of testimony we would give if we asked about who this Jesus is. What kind of testimony would we give when asked if we believed in him? Would we say “I’m a good person. I haven’t done anything too bad. “ Or would we say, “Jesus changed my life. I once was blind but now I see”?

Maybe what is more important, however is not so much what we would say about ourselves, but what others might say. This last week I came across a little short story called “Whom shall I ask?” It is about an Amish man was once asked by an enthusiastic young evangelist whether he had been saved, and whether he had accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior.

The gentleman replied, "Why do you ask me such a thing? I could tell you anything. Here are the names of my banker, my grocer, and my farm workers. Ask them if I've been saved."

For those of us who haven’t forsaken modern technology like the Amish have, I would want to add the names of the people with whom we interact on-line as well as those with whom we have face to face interactions. What would the people say who receive our e-mails, text messages, and with whom we Twitter? What would our Facebook friends say? Would they describe us as Followers of Jesus? I think there is a weird phenomenon out there where people believe how they act in cyberspace doesn’t really matter. That they can just be anonymous or that it is all just a game. But our interactions on-line do matter. They send a message. What is the message we are sending?

We who are in the church call ourselves “Christians”. When you think about it is kind of presumptuous to give ourselves such a title. It is like calling ourselves, “Messiahs”. We are claiming that we have been anointed—we have been chosen—for a special purpose. But do our lives really show it?

The author Shane Claiborne writes how he and a friend once prepared a video clip for a worship service. Their goal was capture people’s response to the word, “Christian”. They took a video camera and hit the streets, from the trendy arts district to the suburbs. They asked people to say the first word that came to their mind in response to another word they said. They started with words like, “snow,” and “teenagers”. Then finally they threw in the word, “Christian”. When people heard the word Christian they stopped in their tracks. The author says that he will never forget their responses. They said words like, “fake,” “hypocrites,” “church”, “boring”. One guy even said, “used-to-be-one” like it was one word. Shane Claiborne also writes that he will never forget what they didn’t say. Not one of the people they asked that day said, “love”. No one said, “grace”. No one said, “community”. (pp. 260-270, The Irresistable Revolution, by Shane Claiborne)

Such an experience is a sad commentary on the image of Christianity. Many of us probably are not too surprised, though, that this kind of image is out there. If we are honest with ourselves we are aware of the many ways that the church has failed to be Christ-like. Maybe part of the problem is that people over the ages have been too quick to call themselves Christian without really thinking about what that means.

In a sense, someone claiming, "I am a Christian" is invalid phrase to use. Being a Christian really isn’t about our self-declaration, and it also really isn’t about what other people think. It is about what God thinks about us. It is about what God declares about us.

Jesus says at one point to his disciples, “you didn’t choose me, I chose you”. We believe that through our baptism God declares us to be children of God. We have been forgiven. We are freed from sin to live a new life. Jesus was God’s word in flesh and if there is one word that we Lutherans would use to describe Jesus it would be grace.

So the next time someone asks if we are a Christian perhaps what we could say is, “No, actually, I am often not very Christ-like, but I believe that God still loves me and has chosen me anyway for a special purpose.” Imagine how people might react to such honest humility that is yet laced with hope. Imagine the witness we would be if we really lived our lives as if we had been grasped in such unconditional love. This is the kind of witness we are called to be, for we send a message not just with the words our mouths are saying, but also with the words our lives are saying.

“It Takes The Whole Church To Save The World”

(Title in worship folder: “It Takes A Church To Save A Soul”)

Third Sunday of Easter, April 18, 2010

First read John 21: 1-14

Psalm 71:15

My mouth will tell of your righteous acts,

of your deeds of salvation all day long,

though their number is past my knowledge.

+ + + + +

For some reason I’ve got a numbers theme going today. But it’s not just me, it’s the Bible, too. In the first reading, Saul could not see for three days. In the second reading there are the thousands upon thousands singing with full voice and the four living creatures surrounding the throne. I’ve talked about a few interesting numbers already. Here’s one more to test you: after the feeding of the five thousand, do you remember how many baskets full of broken pieces of bread did they collect? 12. The Bible lists a lot of numbers, some of them very intriguing.

God keeps track of a lot of numbers. Like when Jesus says, “even the hairs of your head are all counted.” ^{Luke 12:7} But there are some numbers that God does not keep track of, as Saint Paul reminds us when he says, “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them…” ^{2nd Corinthians 5:19}

There are two interesting numbers in this morning’s Gospel. One is clearly stated. The other is there but you have to look for it.

The first number is 153. The net that is drawn into the shore is full of 153 large fish. Why did John feel it important to share this precise detail. Apparently it was believed back in the day that there were exactly 153 different species of fish in the world. In other words, the net contained one of each. This is a symbolic way of saying that God plans to have one of every kind in the net…one of each unique individual that God created.

I once backpacked in the Golden Trout Wilderness, and camped next to the Cottonwood Lakes. These lakes are the natural habitat of the California Golden Trout. That is all you can catch there (I am told) and to do so you are allowed to fish only with a single, un-barbed hook. Those lakes are nestled in the high Sierra at nearly 10,000 feet elevation. It is a beautiful, majestic spot. But God would never fish there. Not if only one kind of fish could be caught. God doesn’t fish that way. God wants one of each and won’t rest, won’t stop searching, until all are found.

If you’ve got a really good memory you may remember one of the first episodes of the Andy Griffith Show. Soon after the death of his wife, Sheriff Andy Taylor decides to invite his Aunt Bee to come and live with him and Opie, to give their lives the missing feminine touch. Opie isn’t too pleased with the plan. He isn’t interested in having someone come in and “replace” his mother. So Andy tries to help the situation by inviting Aunt Bee to go out with them fishing and frog catching, thinking maybe that way Opie would become attached to her. Instead she fails miserably at fishing and at frogging and later at football, too. Late that night, Aunt Bee talks Andy into taking her to the bus station. Opie hears her crying beneath the bedroom window and guesses she is leaving. He runs down the stairs and out to the truck, exclaiming, “We can’t let her go, Pa. She needs us. She can’t even catch frogs, take fish off the hook, or throw a football. We’ve got to take care of her or she’ll never make it.”

Opie could be talking about all of the fish in the net that Jesus asks his followers to pull ashore. In it is one of each. In that net is the world, with all the unique people the world contains. And we can’t let even one of them go. There is so much they don’t know. They don’t know about grace. They don’t know about forgiveness. They don’t know about what it means to be strong when you’re weak. We’ve got to take care of them or they’ll never make it.

If the number 153 suggests one of each, then our task is huge. And that is why we all need together to be pulling on that net. It takes the whole church to pull in the net with the whole world in it.

That brings us to the other number in the passage: 7. There were seven disciples who were fishing that day. Why 7? What happened to the others? I don’t know, but I have a guess. We all know how important the number 12 is for Israel and for the church. It is a number that brings to mind the whole family of God called Israel, that was counted in 12 tribes. To remind people that God continues to be interested in the whole family, Jesus gathered a new Israel through the efforts of 12 disciples. We know that.

But John also liked the number 7. Just read one of his other works, called the Book of Revelation, and you will see 7s flying all over the place. The number 7 represents completeness. Ever since God took seven days to do the work of creating and the work of resting, 7 has represented to God’s people a number that represents the complete.

So in the Book of Revelation, how many bowls of God’s wrath are poured out: 7. God’s anger is completely emptied. How many seals sealed up the scroll no one but the lamb as worthy to take and open: 7. It was completely sealed. And most important for today, to how many churches was John told to write: 7. Meaning to the complete church, the whole church.

So if there are seven disciples pulling this net to shore, I take this to be another way of saying, The Whole Church.

This challenges us to pull together, no matter who we are. As disciples, we all have to be pulling on the net. Because the fish in the net, the people in the world won’t make it if the whole church doesn’t pull together. The whole church has to be about the business of rescuing the whole world, together.

And the greatest obstacles to fulfilling God’s vision of the whole church living and acting out Christ’s promise to draw the whole world to himself will be our lack of energy and lack of vision.

Two little boys were talking and one said, ”You’ve been trying out all the churches in town. Which one did your family choose to join?” The other answered, “My mother likes the Lutheran lethargy best.” We are all guilty. We are all like Peter. He received a three-fold commissioning for the three-fold denials he’d earlier spoken. And forgiveness is ours again today as we receive him, both host and meal, whether we are guilty of the sins of commission or omission, like our Lutheran ‘lethargy.’

Today you stand at the shore and he invites you to come and have breakfast (it is like he knew we’d most often be celebrating the Eucharist in the morning) and taste forgiveness. Then let us not be lethargic. For we’ve been charged up with the taste of the resurrection.

In the early 1870s, the church of the United Brethren in Indiana were having their annual conference at a church college and the president of that college addressed the delegates, speaking of the exciting times he saw ahead. When asked by Bishop Wright to explain, the president said, “I believe we are coming into a time of great inventions. I believe, for example, that men will fly through the air like birds.” To which the Bishop replied, “This is heresy. The Bible says that flight is reserved for the angels. We will have no such talk here.” After the conference, Bishop Wright went home to his two small sons. Orville and Wilbur.

Let us never say that the net is too heavy for us, and have our children prove us wrong. It takes the whole church to save the world. Let us say that we see a time of great fishing at hand, and teach our children how to fish with us. Amen.

“A Place For Doubters”

Easter 2, April 11, 2010

John 20:19-31

P The Holy Gospel according to John, the 20^th chapter

C Glory to you, O Lord.

Before I begin reading this passage – one in which we meet a man who earned himself a rather dubious nickname – let me briefly place his doubt in the context of the ways the Easter story is told in the other Gospels.

In Matthew 28, when the disciples meet the risen Jesus in Galilee, we are told that when they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.

In Mark 16, the women who go to the tomb are told to tell the disciples to meet him, but they “went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

In Luke 24, when the women – who have been to the empty tomb and seen two figures in dazzling clothes – tell the other disciples, their “words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

When Jesus meets them a little while after the famous Road to Emmaus story, he asks them, "Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?

Even so, as they see his scarred hands and feet, “in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering…”

So what John is about to do in his telling of the Easter story is do what the other three Evangelists do not do: give doubt a name. And that name happens to be Thomas.

GOSPEL

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." ²⁰ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. ²¹ Jesus said to them again, "Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you." ²² When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit. ²³ If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

²⁴ But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. ²⁵ So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe."

²⁶ A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." ²⁷ Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe." ²⁸ Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!" ²⁹ Jesus said to him, "Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe."

³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. ³¹ But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

P The Gospel of the Lord.

C Praise to you, O Christ.

I want to climb inside of Thomas’ head to listen to the thinking going in there on while all this happened. I can imagine him saying: “I know how life works. It is as simple as 1-2-3. 1 – You’re born, 2 – you live, and 3 – you die. It is the same for all of us. Even Jesus. For his life, you can describe it with more points: 1 - The word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14); 2 - The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve (Mark 10:45); 3 - When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem (Luke 9:51); 4 - So the soldiers arrested Jesus (John 18:12); 5 - "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." Having said this, he breathed his last (Luke 23:46); 6 - There was a garden in the place where he was crucified, and in the garden there was a new tomb. And so, they laid Jesus there (John 19:41-42).

“It is simple extrapolation. With three points you can plot a pretty clear course, but with Jesus, they all pointed in one direction. His death. But now I’m told there is one more point. It begins with a report of an empty tomb! It includes the rumor that we now have to add a new word to our working vocabulary: resurrection! And it ends with you telling me that you have seen the Lord.

“ It doesn’t fit on my graph. I’ve run out of points. I’ve got no place to put this new information. What am I supposed to do with this?”

If you look up doubt in dictionaries, encyclopedias, Bible resource books you’ll read pages and pages. But a simple approach is simply to consider the original words used in the Easter stories that get translated doubt. One simply means ‘to have a divided mind.’ Another roughly translates ‘to have a dialogue with yourself about the choices before you.’

There was Thomas. Staring at a fork in the road of his life, pondering the choices. With his mind divided between two choices, I can hear the dialogue he’s having with himself:

“One the one hand - I’ve been over the evidence. Death is the last stop. There isn’t any room for anything else. Based on the evidence, that’s what logic and reason tell me to believe. The dead don’t rise. No matter that they hoped for a different outcome. And unless I am given new evidence, that has got to be my path…

“But on the other hand – these guys I’ve been hanging out with for the last three years. I know them pretty well. And while some of them can be a little impetuous – like Peter and the ear with his sword. And sometimes we can all be a little slow to catch on… Nevertheless, I have no reason not to trust these guys, who tell me they have seen Jesus alive, do I?”

“On that first hand again, there would be a certain freedom if I choose not to believe this unbelievable report. I wouldn’t have to deal any longer with talk about a God of love who seems to be very choosy who gets that love. Sometimes it seems the bad guys make out okay and the good guys suffer. Like on Friday. Who gets nailed to a tree. I’d be happy to be done with a God who can stand by and watch the very young die and allow the evil to flourish.

“But on that other hand again, even though the evidence is wanting, that Jesus is alive. And even though the evidence is plentiful suggesting that God has no control of things, this other road, this other choice has something the other one is lacking: hope.”

I really appreciate Thomas. He’s the voice for so many and each year he helps us to remember something important. If the resurrection happened in the year A.D. 30, then this is about the 1, 980^th anniversary of the first telling of this story. And it is easy to forget that when it first happened, no one knew how it was going to turn out.

The other day we had some fun at Crossbeams talking about computers and the internet and such. It may be hard for some of us to remember there used to be a time when there were no computers, and they were so new and novel that some pretty amazing things were said, based on the evidence and experience of some in the field.

"I think there is a world market for may be five computers."
– Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
– Ken Olson, President, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp.,1977.

When these words were spoken, computers were so new and the frontier they would open up so unexplored, that based on the evidence these seemed logical and rational expectations of the future.

You can read a variety of opinions about doubt, too. Some will quote Tennyson:

“There lives more faith in honest doubt,

Believe me, than in half the creeds.”

There are others who would maintain to the death that there is no place for doubt within the Christianity.

I say Thomas is not a bad guy. Thomas is cool. He did what he had to do. He did what the other disciples were busy doing after the women talked to them before Jesus showed up and removed all of their doubts.

Doubt can be the prelude to faith.

The capacity to doubt is one of our greatest powers. Look around you and see the beliefs and practices that ought to be doubted. The great servants have been distinguished by the fact that in the face of universally accepted falsehood they dare to stand up and cry, "I doubt that!" Without the capacity to doubt there could be no progress, only the unquestioning acceptance of the status quo and its established dogmatisms.

There was a time when just about everyone knew that the earth was flat and that the sun circled around it. But then a few brave souls bravely dared to doubt that theory. We talk about the strong faith and affirmative belief of scientific pioneers, but deeper examination shows that every scientific advance started with doubt. Galileo was right when he called doubt the father of discovery.

But an even greater doubter than Thomas was Jesus himself. He looked at the world around him and said, I doubt that violence is the way,” and said, “How about we try forgiving one another instead." He doubted that the long prayers and rigid dietary laws were essential to faith. So he talked about the simple faith. He doubted that Samaritans were an inferior race. He told the parable about the Good Samaritan. And Jesus doubted that ultimate meaning in life was found in living for one’s self. So he gave his life away. There was no hard evidence to prove this was the right path, the right choice. He simply trusted.

And then God simply raised Jesus from the dead. And in so doing, God tore up the old chart and its report of all the evidence and replaced with it a new creation.

Both of those paths are still open. Jesus’ resurrection did not close one of them. The fork in the road is still there. But through Thomas, Jesus shows us the one to choose.

So for being the one who inspired Jesus to bless all of us who have not seen and yet believe, thank you Thomas! Amen.

“Passing the Test Together”

1 Cor. 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9

March 7, 2010

Pastor Erik Goehner

My first experience with a ropes course was at a church camp in Wisconsin. A ropes course is a series of challenges that test a person’s ability to trust and take risks. It’s called a ropes course because at one point there are challenges that take place high above the ground on ropes which are actually steel cables, and during these challenges a person is connected by a rope to a belayer on the ground who holds onto the rope to make sure the person does not fall.

Before a group gets to the high ropes, however, they have to go through a low ropes course. This course involves activities like falling backwards off a table and letting your group catch you, or working together to get over a wall. None of the challenges can be completed be someone alone. They have to be done as a group. Each activity tests the group’s ability to trust each other as well as their ability to work together as a team.

After a day on the low ropes course, a group is then ready to go to the high ropes. These activities involve things like walking across a log suspended forty feet above the ground or climbing a 30-foot telephone pole and then jumping off to try and catch a trapeze bar. It is very intentional that the group has worked on building trust the day before, because even though these activities involve more of an individual challenge, to be able to overcome your fear and accomplish the task it takes a lot of trust in the person who is holding your rope and will catch you if you fall. Moreover, the whole team spirit that was built the day before is a big part of what gives a person the strength to try these crazy challenges in the first place. With the rest of the group encouraging you and cheering you on, you are able to step out and overcome a difficult challenge that you would not otherwise have done on by yourself.

I hope almost all of us at one time or another have had this experience of accomplishing something with a group that we probably could not have accomplished on our own. I know there were many times in college and seminary that I had the strength to pass a test because I had a good study group to work with. I think almost all of us realize that having a good support group behind you can make all the difference in being willing to step out and try new things and being able to endure any challenge that might come our way.

St. Paul talks about enduring challenges and being tested in today’s Scripture from the book of First Corinthians. He says, “so if you are standing, watch out that you do not fall. No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” I would wager that next to John 3:16 this is one of the most quoted passages of Scripture. Usually when it is quoted by someone it is when something bad has happened to them or they are going through a hard time. The quote is then often followed with something like, “I know God said this, but I have a tough time believing it. I’m just feeling so overwhelmed. I’m not sure how I’m going to get through this.”

It is certainly true that on our own we can feel overwhelmed when we are challenged by difficulties in our lives. That is why it is so important to remember we are not called to walk through life’s challenges alone. We are called to be in is together. Something that Pastor John has said over the years which I think is really helpful in interpreting passages like these is that “you” in the text is “you” plural. I know it is one of Pastor John’s passions to one day maybe help with a translation of the Bible that would take all of the plural “you’s” in Scripture and make them “you all” in English so that the plural aspect would be more obvious. I hope he gets that chance someday because it is so easy for us to forget the importance of community. When Paul is writing his letter, he is writing it to a church in the city of Corinth. He is saying, “you all will not be tested beyond your strength. You together will have the strength to endure.”

There is no doubt that as we travel through life our faith will be tested. Things happen that we can’t explain. Great suffering occurs and we wonder why. The other day as I was driving home I heard about three different tragic situations from around the world on the radio within a space of about twenty minutes. Last weekend another devastating earthquake occurred in Chile just a couple of months after the one in Haiti. Now thousands of more people are homeless and more people have lost loved ones. When tragedies like this occur it tests our faith.

Such tragedies are nothing new. They have been going on for centuries. In today’s Gospel story some people come to Jesus with some of the same questions that we might have when it comes to tragic situations. “Jesus, have you heard about that awful thing that happened a little while back? Some Jews were worshipping in the temple and they were massacred by the Romans. Not only that, but Pilate mingled their blood with their sacrifices! Why would God let this happen to people who were trying to worship him? Were they worse sinners than rest of us? What did they do to deserve this? Or what about those folks who were just walking by the construction site and that huge tower fell on them? Was God trying to punish them for something?”

Jesus does not answer with the theological explanation we might like him to give us. He does not answer all the questions of why things like this happen. But he does clearly eliminate one of the reasons. He says it is not because they were somehow worse sinners than anyone else. Jesus refutes the bad theology that blames the victim. He refutes the theology that says that bad things happened to someone because they or their parents or their grandparents sinned in a way that was worse than others.

I think it is so important that Jesus refuted this kind of bad theology because this kind of thinking tends to separate us from the two things that can give us the strength to endure the tragedies of life that would test our faith. This kind of thinking can distance us from God and distance us from the human community that we need to sustain us through difficult times.

What do I mean? Well, If we think that somehow God is punishing us when something bad happens or that we are a worse sinner we can be overwhelmed by guilt and can slip into despair. It can also cause us to feel angry at God. These feelings are not wrong to have, but if we only dwell in that place of anger or despair then we distance ourselves from God. We distance ourselves from the very one who can give us the strength to keep going.

Likewise, when we blame the victim for whatever awful thing happened to them, we distance ourselves from their humanity. We put them in a lower place by saying that they somehow deserve it. This kind of thinking is almost a kind of psychological defense mechanism because to admit that we are all a part of the same human community is to admit that the same kind of tragedy could happen to us. But Jesus reminds his listeners that they are all in this together. He says, “those eighteen who died when the tower fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you all repent, you too will all perish.”

Jesus seems to be saying that the lesson to be learned from tragedies is not who is a worse sinner. The point is we are all sinners in need of God. The point is we need to wake up and turn away from these theologies that would distance us from God and distance us from the human community. We need each other if we are going to make it through. We need a community that can remind us that even when hard times come God loves us and is walking beside us. Life is fragile. Life is short. So don’t waste your time judging yourself or judging others. Instead, get busy bearing fruit. And to do this you are going to need each other—you are going to need each other to sustain your faith and bear the fruit of love, peace, patience and kindness.

I had a seminary professor who talked about why we need each other in terms of a worshipping community. He said that for him it was so important to come to worship because there were times when life seemed so difficult that he had a hard time believing. There were times when he just couldn’t confess the Apostle’s Creed. That’s why he needed to be in worship. He needed to stand in midst of the congregation and have his faith sustained, for even though he might not be able to say the words of the creed, the people around him could say them for him. And he knew that he needed to be worship as well because there might be times when that person next to him could not say those words and it would be his turn to sustain their faith by saying, “I believe…”

As I looked up at that high ropes course at that church camp in Wisconsin I had a hard time believing that I could overcome my fear of heights and make it through the challenge. I had a hard time believing that I could overcome inability to balance on those thin wires. But with the encouragement and support of the group around me and by trusting the person who was holding the other end of my rope I had the courage to keep going.

The good news for us as Christians is that we believe the person on the other end of our rope in Jesus. We are not in this thing alone. Jesus has already passed the test and thrown us the rope of grace so that we might make it through as well. We also have a community of believers around us who we really need to keep reminding us that indeed it is Christ who holds us and no matter even if we fall—even if fall into the valley of the shadow of death—we will not be crushed because the lifeline that holds us connects us to eternity.

“Great Expectations”

Lent 2, February 28, 2010

Luke 13:31–35

Isaiah 66:13

Thus says the LORD:

As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you.

+ + + +

I imagined that I was in heaven and one day they announced there would be a field trip. They were having an Open House in the other place (if you know what I mean). Those who were interested could go and see what it was like down there. I was curious so I signed up. On the tour I kept seeing strange little rooms. One was filled with small kitchen appliances like toasters and electric can openers. Another was filled with auto parts like carburetors and brakes. I did not ask for an explanation until I saw the room that was filled with hammers and thumbs.

I was told that these rooms were filled with items that their former owners had asked God to send here. "I beg your pardon." "Well, for example, the owner of every one of these thumbs, when he or she hit it with a hammer, in language that is quite appropriate down here but which I won't repeat since you’re not from around here, they demanded that God send it down here. Same thing happened for each item you've seen in all these rooms.”

What do you expect of God?

Is anyone here this morning because of the free throw you made in the final seconds of a championship game, when you said, "Oh God, please let me make this one shot and I'll be in church every week from now on!" Or maybe it was some really deep trouble you got yourself into, and you made the same kind of deal.

What do you expect of God?

While waiting for a deli sandwich I saw the shamrocks acknowledging money donated to Muscular Dystrophy. On each one was written the name of the donor. But on one someone had written, “If God answered prayer, there wouldn't be a need for these shamrocks and the money collected to fight this disease.”

What do you expect of God?

Some people use God's name all the time, asking God to condemn this thing or that person or a particular situation. Some people think of God as the cosmic Monty Hall, hoping God is always ready to make a deal. And some people figure since God can't or won't make all the world's problems disappear, that equals proof there isn't a God anyway.

What do you expect of God?

We are on our annual pilgrimage toward the cross, a journey we call Lent. Before we get any closer to the cross, today’s passage from Luke helps us clarify some of our expectations of God.

Christ journeyed toward Good Friday and his death on the cross. It was a death he didn't deserve. It was also a death we believe sets us free from the ability of death to be the last word about us. We call the one who will go to the cross by the name ‘Christ.’ But what do we expect of this messiah?

One of my favorite hymns is "Rise, Shine, You People!" The second verse begins,

"See how he sends the powers of evil reeling..."

“Powers of evil reeling!” Don’t you see Superman in those words? Can’t you see Christ standing toe to toe with Satan and when that right hook nails the devil on the chin, you see the big word BOOM! across the screen. And we win!

But wait! What about his cross…and grave? Hey, that's nothing to fear. It is just like in the movie, when Lex Luthor drapes Superman with the kryptonite chain and pushes him into the pool. Ooooohh! It looks bad, alright. But you know that some how, some way, that Superman will get free and save the day. And he does.

Same for Jesus, right? Jesus is just a heavenly superman in meek and mild earthly disguise, right? So it is no surprise that just in the nick of time, when it looks like all is lost, Jesus bursts the chains of kryptonite and rises from the pool… I mean bursts the chains of death and rises from the grave. Same thing, right?

No, not right. And not the Gospel. Superman didn’t die. Jesus did. Jesus was in the grave three days. And what was he doing during those three days? Trusting.

When we sense trouble on the prowl, what image of God do we want? We want a God who is like Superman. We want to think of God in strong and muscular terms like a rock, a shield, a castle, or a warrior, right? And God knows our hearts very well. God knows what scares us and what we need to soothe our fears, so what image does Jesus give to comfort us and bolster our trust? A mother hen.

[Sings to the tune: A Mighty Fortress:] “A squawking chicken is our God…” I don’t think that’s what we’re looking for.

The Bible presents many images for God, but a mother hen? How undignified and uninspiring! The image of a mother hen scuttling and squawking in her awkward attempt to nurture and protect an unruly brood of squawking and scrawny little chicks? This is the God you are called to trust?

Jesus has set his course for Jerusalem. A city he knows has a violent history. A city that calls to mind all those who have experienced violence and vulnerability. He knows himself to be on a mission to wrestle control away from sin, death and the power of evil so that no one will have to live in fear ever again. He sees himself on a mission that will be a battle to end all battles. A battle he will wage for you. A battle he will fight…as a chicken?

Does it have to be a chicken? If it can’t be Superman, how about an eagle? But a mother hen? How does that inspire confidence? Chickens are not exactly the go-to animal when you need bravery. And isn’t that what we need? Especially when there is a fox on the prowl.

It is no accident that Jesus calls Herod a fox. Herod symbolizes all the people and forces that terrorize us. And what stands between us, the vulnerable little chicks, and that crafty fox? Only a mother hen.

What do you expect of God?

Does this image fit with what you expect your God to be like? Probably not. It may fit very well with how you have felt at times. When trouble was approaching, or when trouble has already overtaken you, have there been times when God seemed unable to be of help?

The long journey of Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross is not just his story. It is also a model for our own lives. Do not expect to make your life’s journey in the company of a God who is always king of the jungle. Jesus' journey ends in Jerusalem, but the city does not provide him a safe haven. There is a fox on the loose, ravaging helpless chickens at will. And it seems that even the mother hen – our messiah, our savior – is destroyed.

When Jesus reached the end of his journey, God did not keep him from dying. And with his death, what little control Jesus may have had over his own destiny was taken away. All that was left was his trust. He died in faith, faith that God would not abandon him.

This is the season when some people give up stuff. One reason for doing so is that we might discover those things that have control over us. Am I a slave to chocolate, to video games, to gambling, to crossword puzzles. Then I’ll show them who’s in control. We may or may not discover how much control we actually have. But no matter what we give up for Lent, we can’t give up the fact of our mortality. In the end, things are not within our full control, and we too, will be left with nothing but our faith.

May this journey to Jerusalem helps you shed Superman expectations of God. May this journey shows you a God who acts through weakness. May you see more clearly than ever the vulnerability and frailty of even God's chosen one. And may you even catch a glimpse of the divine wisdom, when God sends the chicken to do battle with the fox.

Amen.

“Testing 1, 2, 3”

1^st Sunday in Lent, February 21, 2010

Luke 4:1-13

Psalm 139:23-24

Search me, O God, and know my heart;

test me and know my thoughts.

See if there is any wicked way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

+ + + + +

We’re in such a rut! We always start the season of Lent the same way: the first Sunday in Lent we always tell the story of the temptation of Jesus. I should say temptations, for there are three, aren’t there? #1 – the temptation to turn stones into bread. #2 – the temptation to turn trade worship for power. #3 – and the temptation to let the angels catch him.

There is at least one more. It is tempting to look at this event as part of the biography of Jesus. If you read it and hear it that way, what have you got? An inspiring story of his ability to overcome temptation. But what is implied is that you should do the same and somehow reach down for our bootstraps and pull yourself up to the level set by the Son of God. This is a grim mandate.

But the definition of “gospel” is not “biography.” The definition of “gospel” is “living word.” As in Word of God, a word that has power to save you and has the power to defeat the temptation to believe a lie…or two…or three.

You may not be able to remember your own baptism, but think about where you've been since then: whisked away into the trouble-free zone, where you became immune from the stresses and strains of life, thanks to the holy water that splashed over you. Yeah right! Since your baptism you have been facing tough decisions, rocky roads, and times of trial and testing and temptation. We all have. And so did Jesus.

The event in Jesus’ life that happens immediately before his temptation is his baptism. He’s still wet when he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to face the devil. This is a bit disappointing and ominous, wouldn’t you say? If given the choice, wouldn’t you prefer a Spirit who would lead us as far away from the devil as possible?

The devil is practical and sensitive, so he says, "Use your power to transform these useless stones into fresh bread." Why not? Isn’t making bread from stones what we demand of our elected leaders? We expect them to lower taxes, reduce the deficit, and cut nothing essential. To be fair, our leaders give us a chance to do the same, through the state lottery and other forms of legalized gambling.

Jesus says No! to the lie that you can have something that satisfies without growth. Bread comes from grain, which has to be grown. Much of what is advertised as spiritual, social, or personal ‘bread’ is not grown but concocted, and has no more protein than a rock. Jesus says No! to the temptation to believe the lie that we can quickly or effortlessly obtain that which is of lasting value. Will you say No! to that temptation?

Next he’s on a mountain high enough to overlook the whole world, and the devil becomes a cosmic real estate agent: "All this can be yours. Here’s the deal: power in exchange for allegiance. No one’s watching. A single small bow will suffice. And think of all the good you could do with that power, Jesus!”

Power is not necessarily evil. But Jesus says No! to the lie that the commitments we make to achieve power are all equal. Jesus' is challenging you to examine your allegiances and entanglements, the bargains, deals, and compromises you make. What do they say about your commitments, your greed, your lust, your shortsightedness?

The devil gives it one more try and sets Jesus on the tip-top of the Temple and invites him to jump, with the encouragement a seductive verse from Scripture. What he proposes is the best sort of Lenten journey, an exhilarating leap in which there is an absolute guarantee of no pain. Gain without pain is the lie Jesus is tempted to believe.

What about us? Are we prepared to take a rigorous spiritual journey so long as God provides an airbag? Or will we take seriously the example of Jesus and regard life as a journey that may require some risk taking and may result in an occasional sore foot?

Taken together, these three temptations are really just one: the temptation to look for the easy way.

There is at least one more. When Jesus came up out of the water of his baptism, God affirmed him with the words: "You are my beloved son, with you I am well pleased." But did you notice how the devil begins and ends his temptations of Jesus? "If you are the Son of God..." Insinuating, “Maybe you’re not!”

While you were still wet from your own baptism, the family and congregation that surrounded you thanked God in prayer for freeing you from the power of sin and death. But every day since, the voice of the devil has tried to slip the same wedge of doubt into your mind and heart that he tried to wedge into Jesus. Are you one of God’s daughters? Are you a son of God? Has anyone seen a demonstration of this lately? Has anyone seen and felt your gifts of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might and knowledge that you were told you received at your baptism? Huh!? Have they? And have you seen any real proof that God is with you, keeping you from harm? If you are a son of God, if you are one of God's daughters, won't that be true of you? Wouldn't more people see this? Hmmmmm?

This is another temptation, another lie. To allow anything to cause us to doubt the Word of our acceptance that was spoken by God at our baptism. A word of acceptance that will never change.

There is at least one more. On the cross Jesus dies rejected because he said No! to the devil's offers. Jesus said No! to calls to come down from the cross to prove that he was the Son of God. Jesus said No! to the use of his power to change bitter gall and vinegar to become refreshing wine to ease the pain of his ordeal. Jesus said No! a lot.

But Jesus did not just say No! to the devil. Jesus said Yes! to God so that God might say Yes! to us. In each of the temptations he is offered, Jesus says No! to the devil but also says a resounding Yes! to God.

#1 – No! I will not change a rock into bread because I am going to say Yes! to finding my live in the bread of the word of God.

#2 – No! I will not trade worship of you for power because I am going to say yes to a life of worship of and service to God.

#3 – And I will say No! to your offer to test God and instead say Yes! to a live of obedience to the will of God.

Perhaps them most insidious temptation of the devil is the temptation to believe that it is enough just to say No! Saying No! is sometimes important. Sometimes vitally important. Sometimes saying No! is life-and-death important. But don't believe the most insidious lie of all the lies that are offered by the devil in this passage. Don't believe the lie that you can define who you are simply by what you say No! to.

You might work very hard saying, "I'm not this and I'm not that.” But when you're done reminding yourself what you are not, what are you? Let the Spirit guide you in saying Yes! Say Yes! to who you are. Say Yes! to who God says you are. Say Yes! to God’s will. Say Yes!

A former member of Mount Cross once told me about his mother who taught English at a very upper class high school which had many children of the rich and famous as students. But rich and famous parents don’t guarantee academic success; some of these kids were way behind when it came to reading. So she found an out of the way room and went to work teaching them the basics using an elementary school reading text.

She was also sensitive to their self-esteem. She issued them college prep textbooks to carry around campus. Their friends would see this book and say, "Wow! I thought you were an air head. I guess you're smarter than I thought!" If anyone had asked them to actually read something from the book, there might have been trouble. But the teacher's sensitivity and care gave the students a goal toward which to strive.

1^st John 3:1 says, "See what love the Father has for us, that we should be called children of God, and so we are." God has given you a name that is little like a college prep book: “Child of God.” When people ask you to "read" your part, you may not always do the job you should. But that doesn't take away from your identity. You are a child of God. Because God says so. Say Yes! to this truth.

Let me borrow a line from our service of baptism: Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God? If so, answer together:

“I renounce them!”

Yes!

“Transfigured by Prayer”

Luke 9:28-43 2/14/10

Pastor Erik Goehner

Clothes that are dazzling white—one translation says as bright as a flash of lightning—a mysterious appearance of two men long since dead, Moses and Elijah, suddenly standing in radiant glory conversing with Jesus—all taking place on a high mountain—the scene is one that any movie director would love to depict. I can just see a George Lucas or a James Cameron going wild with the special effects in an attempt to capture what it may have looked like to have been there at the transfiguration of Jesus. The heavenly light show in today’s story seems to be the part that grabs our attention and appears to be the focal point in that amazing event where the disciples caught a glimpse of the glory of Jesus.

But I want to take a step back from the light show this morning and look at what Jesus was doing before the transfiguration occurred. It is a detail that may be easy to miss in the midst of dazzling apparel and heavenly splendor. Why did Jesus go the mountain in the first place? What was he doing when he miraculously changed? Look back at verses 28 and 29. It says …he took Peter, John and James with him and went up onto the mountain to pray. As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed… Why did Jesus take his disciples up to the mountain? To pray. What was he doing when he was changed and the glory of the Lord appeared? He was praying.

The Jesus we see in the Gospel of Luke is a Jesus who prays. Oh, Jesus prays in all the Gospels, but Luke takes care to mention Jesus praying in several stories in ways that the other Gospel writers do not. Today’s story is one of those examples. Matthew and Mark both have Jesus going up the mountain with his disciples, but only Luke specifically says that he went there to pray. The same is true in Luke in the story of Jesus’ baptism. Like Matthew and Mark, Luke says that a dove came down and there was a voice from heaven at the baptism of Jesus, but in Luke it happens after Jesus has been baptized—it happens after while Jesus is praying. In Luke 3:22 we read, and as he was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Imagine what it must have felt like for Jesus to hear these powerful words of affirmation from God! Imagine what it would have been like for him to see heaven opened and to have such a tangible encounter with the Holy Spirit! Surely it would have given him comfort and strength. If he had any doubts about his identity and mission this event surely would have changed his perspective and given him a renewed sense of who he was and what he was meant to do. It would have come at a good time too for just after his baptism Jesus will face temptation in the wilderness and he will need all the comfort, strength and re-assurance he can get. But would any of this had happened if Jesus had not taken the time to pray? The way Luke tells the story one has to wonder if Jesus would have heard the voice of God or experienced the Holy Spirit if he had not been praying.

We could ask this same question of today’s story about the transfiguration. Would Jesus have gone through this miraculous change and experienced the glory of God if he had not been praying? Contrast the way Jesus is aware and attentive to the presence of God to how the disciples are in the story. In verse 23 it says that “Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men standing with him.” I can understand how the disciples might have been a little tired. After all, they had just been climbing up a mountain. But how could they have almost missed the flashing bright lights of the glory of God descending before their very eyes? Was it because they weren’t paying attention? Was it because the disciples were not as deep in prayer as Jesus was?

Although it took some time, the disciples do become fully awake and witness the glory around them. They also hear the voice of God from the cloud which tells them, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” This voice reveals then that aspect of prayer which we so often neglect, which is, listening. Asking God for things in prayer is not wrong. The Bible clearly says we are to bring our requests to God in prayer. Making such requests can be a way of beginning to open our eyes to God’s presence, for in doing so we are acknowledging that God is the source of life. But if we really want to be fully awake so we don’t miss out on God’s glory we need to listen. We need to pay attention. Prayer is a powerful gift from God. It is a gift that Jesus used extensively during his ministry. It has the power to change things. But in order to realize this power we can’t be afraid to use it. We can’t be afraid to slow down for a moment and be still and allow the gift of prayer to work its way in us. We can’t be afraid of being open to the idea that the biggest thing prayer might change is us.

The author Kathleen Norris writes: “Sometimes people will say things like, ‘Your prayers didn’t work, but thanks [anyway]’ as if a person could be praying for only one thing. A miracle. A cure. But in the hardest situations, all one can do is to ask for God’s mercy: Let my friend die at home, Lord, and not in the hospital. Let her go quickly, God, and with her loved ones present. One Benedictine friend, a gentle, thoughtful man who has been in constant physical pain for years and is now confined to a wheelchair, says of prayer, “Often all I can do is to ask God, “Lord, what is it you want of me?’ From him I have learned that prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine. To be made more grateful, more able to see the good in what you have been given instead of always grieving for what might have been. People who are in the habit of praying know that when a prayer is answer it is never in a way that you expect.” (Kathleen Norris, Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith, pp. 60-61)

It is true that our prayers are not always answered in the way we might want. This shouldn’t surprise us since even the prayers of Jesus were not always answered he the way he might like them to be answered.

At the end of the Gospel of Luke Jesus has come to Jerusalem. He knows his path is leading him to the cross, but he is struggling with it. So what does he do? He prays. In chapter 22 we read that, “Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, “Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” Jesus withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” Jesus is not afraid to make a direct request to God. He does not want to go through the suffering that is ahead. The bible says he is in anguish and is praying so hard that his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. But at the same time he is not afraid to continue to listen—to place himself fully in the hands of God and to trust, no matter what the answer to his prayer might be.

Jesus doesn’t seem to get the answer he might want for we know that he is arrested and eventually executed. But he does the answer he needs, for after he has prayed the Scripture says that an angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. Jesus’ mission might not have changed, but he was changed. He was given a renewed sense of strength and resolve that gave him the power to continue to the cross to take on the suffering and sin of the world so that we might know God’s grace.

Exactly how prayer works is mystery. But it is clear from Scripture and the life of Jesus that prayer is a powerful gift which can connect us to God. It can open the heavens so that we become more aware of the glorious presence of God all around us and it can strengthen our spirits in ways we could not have imagined. Before I end today I want to share with you a poem I found this week called,

Does Prayer Change Things ?
by: Teressa Vowell, Source Unknown

They say that prayer changes things, but does it REALLY change anything? Yes, it really does!

Does prayer change your present situation or sudden circumstances?
No, not always, but it does change the way you look at those events.

Does prayer change your financial future?
No, not always, but it does change who you look to for meeting your daily needs.

Does prayer change shattered hearts or broken bodies?
No, not always, but it will change your source of strength and comfort.

Does prayer change your wants and desires?
No, not always, but it will change your wants into what God desires!

Does prayer change how you view the world?
No, not always, but it will change whose eyes you see the world through.

Does prayer change your regrets from the past?
No, not always, but it will change your hopes for the future!

Does prayer change the people around you?
No, not always, but it will change you~ the problem isn't always in others.

Does prayer change your life in ways you can't explain?
Oh, yes, always! And it will change you from the inside out!

So does prayer REALLY change ANYTHING?
Yes! It REALLY does change EVERYTHING!

“A Huddle In A Boat”

5th Sunday after Epiphany, February 7, 2010

First read Luke 5:1-11

From Psalm 130

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice!

Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications!

If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?

But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered.

+ + + + +

Had enough rain? When the water is rising past the hubcaps, you may begin to wonder whether you might be in trouble. When the engine stops and you have to abandon your car, you’re pretty sure you’re in trouble. And if it takes a helicopter to see you safely home, then you know you’re in deep trouble.

It is probably safe to say that all of us have had at least one moment when we felt we were in over our heads. I imagine Peter had such a feeling when Jesus said to him, “Put out into the deep water...” But that is what Jesus just loves to do: move us from the shallow water of the trivial to explore the deep water of our lives.

One of my favorite questions is, What is your greatest fear? If the person I ask replies, “That the NBA season will end without the Clippers making the playoffs,” then I know we do not have enough trust built up yet so we are going to operate at a superficial level, at least for now. But if the answer is, “I am really afraid that I will die before I can reconcile with my sister,” I take that to mean they are willing to go much deeper.

Don’t we usually operate on the surface? When someone asks, “How are you doing?” isn’t the usual reply, “Fine!” even when everything is not fine. Most people accept this and move on. But occasionally you will hear, “No, really, how are you?” And you know that someone wants to go deeper.

It would be easy to do church on the surface and avoid the challenges of the deep. I could do my part to help. Imagine this for a sermon:

Dear friends, never forget the importance of the little things in life. For example, the little word not was left out of the printing of a Bible back in 1631. No big deal, you say? It was left out of the 6th Commandment: “You shall commit adultery.” The publisher was fined $15,000 and the edition became known as the Black Bible. Not was also missing from a Bible printed in 1653, so in 1^st Corinthians they read: “…the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God.” It became known as, you guessed it, the Unrighteous Bible. The even smaller word no was omitted from a Bible in the 1600s making Psalm 14 read: “The fool has said in his heart, there is God.” And no was omitted from another one in 1716 , making Jesus say to one who has just been healed: “See, you are well. Sin more.” So, good people, never forget the importance of the little things in life. Amen.

Ugh! Shallow! Heaven forbid I should ever preach such a sermon. That sermon might inspire a chuckle but little more. If I preached something like that, Peter and friends would not be the only ones with empty nets.

Jesus finds the disciples after they have worked all night in shallow water, but there is no sign of any fish. When Jesus challenges them to go out into the deep, there is no indication they had ever been there before.

It is easy to keep things on the surface. When you start to know a person more deeply you may quickly discover they are complicated and that their life is not as neat and tidy and organized as it may appear on the surface. Do you know anyone really well who has everything neatly arranged in all parts of their lives so that everything is simple and neat when you get involved with them? Yeah, right!

There is always the temptation not to go to those complicated, messy, deep parts of another’s life. There is also the temptation not to invite anyone in to your own deep places because you don’t want them learning how great the difference is between your organized surface and your possibly chaotic deeper waters. “So let’s agree to keep it shallow and trivial, shall we? Isn’t that what polite people do?”

This passage from Luke 5 is a fishing story, to be sure. A fishing for people story, ultimately. But before it is that it is a story about how Jesus probes the depths of a person like Peter, and a person like you.

When Jesus says, “Put out into the deep water,” he wants to know how it really is with Peter. When Peter says, “We have worked all night long but have caught nothing...” that is Peter’s way of saying, “Hey, I’m fine!” But there is something compelling about Jesus that causes Peter to immediately say, “Okay...” and he lets down his net into the deep.

There is a great scene in the film Forrest Gump when he is just starting out as a shrimp boat captain. The first net he pulls out of the sea opens onto the deck of the ship and out drops about three shrimp along with a bunch of other junk, including a toilet seat.

!!That is why we don’t want to go deep! Because we know the kind of junk that we are going to bring up. There is stuff down there no one needs to see, no one should see. That is why I want to keep things superficial. Not only is it untidy down there, it is ugly. And it is not the kind of stuff I want on display in front of you, and especially in front of the ruler of the universe.

You can believe if you want to that when Peter and company pulled those loaded nets into their boats that the contained only fish. I don’t think so. I am sure there were old sandals and broken pottery and maybe even a toilet seat. I imagine Peter ignoring all the fish and looking instead at the toilet seat and saying, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man. You don’t want to be near me right now. You’ve taken me into the deep waters of my life, and now what is coming up isn’t pretty.”

But Jesus does not spend any time with the garbage. He does care that it is there. He does want it out. He cares deeply about your greatest fear. And your greatest weakness. He cares how untidy things are down there in the depths where you cry.

But the presence of all that junk doesn’t deter him from finding what is really down there that interests him: you. Down there in the deep is the you that God wants you to be. A you that gets bumped and bruised by life, and in an effort to be protected is sometimes surrounded by walls and a complicated web of defense mechanisms.

Jesus wants to go into the deep waters because he really wants to know and see and nurture that deeply buried you that he created. He wants to bring that you to the surface, to the light of day. He wants Peter to look at what did come up: more than two boat loads of fish.

Forrest Gump’s first net may have contained only about three shrimp. But he went back and later was bringing up a lot more shrimp than toilet seats.

Jesus knows how life can bury us. He’s been there; buried.

Jesus knows how scary it can be in the depths. He’s been really, really deep; all the way to hell for us.

The Father brought him back from the depths to life, full life, eternal life. And Jesus is the way the Father will do the same for you and for all of the people who are afraid of their deep places, all of the people who would rather live on the surface.

Jesus does this so you will not miss out on the deepest joys of life.

Amen.

“How Will We Start This New Year?”

Pastor John W. Soyster

Epiphany 3, January 24, 2010

First read: 1 Corinthians 12:12-31 and Luke 4:14-21

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,

and do not return there until they have watered the earth,

making it bring forth and sprout,

giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;

it shall not return to me empty,

but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,

and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. Isaiah 55:10-11

By the end of the day we will know which two teams will face each other in the Super Bowl. When they get there, the Saints and the Jets will have the same objective: to cross the goal line more often than the other team. Passing, running, kicking field goals, whatever it takes. Reaching the goal is why each team will be on the field.

You are the body of Christ, and individually members of the same team. Our team has been organized for the purpose of reaching goals. There are many ways to set goals. Here’s a story that describes the one way:

A soldier was returning home from war and rode into a small town on his horse. He was looking for a place to stop and get a meal when he noticed a fence. The fence was covered with small chalk circles, and dead in the center of each circle was a bullet hole. Being a soldier and a rifleman himself, he was impressed so he started asking around as to who it was had done that sharp-shooting. He finally met up with the boy who was responsible. The soldier said to the young boy, “I am mighty impressed wit your marksmanship, lad. I’ve never seen such accurate shooting. Maybe you can teach me a few things.” To this the boy answered, “Well, it is really not all that hard. You see, first you shoot at the fence. The, afterward, you take a piece of chalk and draw a circle around the hole you made.” In other words, “Shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.”

Here is an account that describes a second approach to setting goals:

One Sabbath day a young man of about 30 went to the synagogue in his home town. He was given a turn at reading from one of the scrolls, the Isaiah scroll. And from it he read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Do you see the difference? Jesus did not wander around doing random acts of kindness and uttering memorable statements and afterward saying, “I meant to do that.” This is Jesus’ first public act and he clearly states his objectives up front. He sets up his targets first. And when he left the synagogue that day, his work was simply to hit those targets over and over again.

His target has five bulls eyes: bring good news to the poor; proclaim release to the captives; recovery of sight to the blind; let the oppressed go free; proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

There is Jesus’ mission statement. He lived and served, he died and rose again for the sake of the people represented by those five bulls eyes – the poor, the captive, the blind. And since we are the body of Christ, those are our targets, too. His mission statement is our mission statement.

Look again at Jesus’ list of targets. They are in today’s Gospel from Luke, on page 8 of the worship folder, starting in verse 18. Each target represents a lot of people. He aims at the poor, the blind, the oppressed with the news that God is on their side.

Bring good news to the poor. The poor in many people’s thoughts today are the people of Haiti. For them, good news simply means relief: water, shelter, food, clothing, rebuilding. And you are bringing this good news. Our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, through its partnership with Lutheran World Relief is committing millions of dollars to relief efforts and coordinating with a network of hundreds of people on the ground to ensure that the people of Haiti get immediate access to water, food, and shelter.

And you are one of the reasons that those millions of dollars are available. Last week alone Mount Cross contributed just about $3,000 to this relief effort. And by the way, you may not know it but late last year, through the Gifts of Hope program to benefit AIDS orphans in Africa – you gave over $8,000!

Proclaim release to the captives. Personally, I don’t believe Jesus meant we should unlock the jail cells containing Charles Manson, the Unabomber, or any other notorious criminal. But there are many people behind bars that are not made of iron. People who are emotionally imprisoned by bad decisions, bad choices, or the bad influence of someone else. People who are spiritually imprisoned by a view of God that has nothing whatsoever to do with the God we have come to know in Jesus Christ. Setting those captives free was the goal Jesus set twenty centuries ago. It remains the goal for the body of Christ today.

Take some time with this list of goals. There are many people who live inside of those phrases. Maybe someone you know lives there. Jesus set up the target first. Now the goal remains for the church, the body of Christ, to hit that target.

I hope you will notice the location Jesus chose for announcing his goals, for setting up his targets:

Jesus could have booked a ship – like Saint Paul – and staged, not a million man march on Washington but a one man march on Rome. Why not go to the seat of the world’s political power to make this inaugural address. Perhaps he could have found a way to speak to the senate or at least stood in the most public place available to make this landmark announcement.

Or again, like Paul, why not take a slightly shorter boat ride and speak to the center of intellectual power: Greece. Why not stand in the middle of Athens and let the world hear of his plans.

One answer is sufficient to explain why not Rome or Athens. At least for a time, Jesus understood his mission to be one who was “sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matthew 15:24). So why not go to the center of religious power for that people. Why not stand on any of the many steps available in the Temple in Jerusalem and make this bold announcement.

Another answer is sufficient to explain away Rome, Athens and Jerusalem. God-in-Christ does not work from the top down. Ours is not a God in love with hierarchy. Look at the manger, look at the cross. In those places Jesus is saying, “I work from the bottom up.”

So instead of Rome, Athens or Jerusalem, Jesus went to the ‘hood! He went to his home town, his own neighborhood. He went to the people closest to him, the people who knew him the best and whom he also probably knew the best. He started where there were bridges of relationship already in place. There perhaps more than any other place the bulls eyes had familiar human faces on them.

“Now you are the body of Christ…” (1^st Corinthians 12:27). We are to aim at the same targets. And as this challenge is placed before us anew today, let me put it in context, a context that the author named Saint Luke helps us see.

How does Jesus public life and ministry begin? With his baptism. But Jesus is still dripping wet from that experience when he is drawn into a time of temptation. And from that time of testing he moves into this first public act.

The Gospel of Luke is volume one of a two volume set. Volume two is the Book of Acts in which the church lives out the life of Jesus we just read about in Luke. When is the church baptized? On the day of Pentecost. And there follows a series of temptations. Over and over again the disciples are arrested and warned “to speak no more to anyone in this name" (Acts 4:17). The disciples could have said, “You know, I think we’ll take the easy road and go back to fishing or tax collecting and forget about making trouble in Jesus’ name.” But they didn’t. And the rest of the Book of Acts is the next part of the story.

That story continues with you and me. Our baptism marks our welcome into the family of God and is also our orientation to the job we now have 24/7/365 as ministers of the Gospel, to let our light shine. Before I mention the temptation, let me jump to the house next door to yours, or across the street from yours. Is there a chance someone on your block, someone in your neighborhood is one of those who are poor, captive, blind, oppressed? But between the call to shine that was given to you in your baptism and the opportunity to shine into the life of someone who needs the light… Comes the temptation to say… “Oh, I’m sure they go to church already… I’m sure they have all the help the need… I’m sure they’d feel I was butting in… I am afraid of looking ‘holier than thou.” Or… Or… Or…

But I know that you know how to overcome this temptation. Not all of you in this church today were here when I arrived. I know that many of you are here today because someone you already knew invited you here. They walked over a bridge of relationship that was already there. You were a neighbor, a friend, a co-worker, a fellow student.

Keep walking over those bridges that lead you right into your own neighborhood.

How will we start this new year?

Knowing we are sent first into our neighborhood.