First Sunday in Advent

O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…

So, I have good news today: according to the venerable Stephen Hawking, there is a perfect solution to all the worlds’ problems. A perfect solution to pollution, pornography, poverty, and possibly even war: and, best of all, it’s easy!

Get off the planet.

I’m serious! Isn’t that foolproof? Why waste time and money trying to fix our society’s problems, when we can simply get out of Dodge and make everything better? As the Huffington Post article quoted him saying:

"Our population and our use of the finite resources of planet Earth are growing exponentially, along with our technical ability to change the environment for good or ill. But our genetic code still carries the selfish and aggressive instincts that were of survival advantage in the past. It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million.

"Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain lurking on planet Earth, but to spread out into space."

Now, that is the best solution that I’ve heard all day – why bother working together for a solution? Why bother with this obviously misguided talk of “peace on earth”, when our genetic code means it will never happen. And Stephen Hawking should know, right? I mean, this is the physicist who said “religion is bunk” and made national headlines. The last time I said, “theoretical physics is a bunch of hooey”, people just said “he’s a theologian, what does he know?”

All right. So maybe I’ve picked on this subject enough for today – but its frustrating to think that we’re to the point that this is regarded as a viable solution to our problems – of course, it has been since Ray Bradbury wrote his first book in the 1960s. Any fans of science fiction here? What’s worse, is that we seem willing, as a society, to spend the hundreds of billions of dollars on these programs, rather than investing in, say, education, the environment, and healthcare, which could perhaps fix those problems from the bottom up.

We’re not the first people to look at the world around us and think that it’s too broke to fix. You don’t have to look very far to find that people have often, if not always, looked at the world around them and wished that someone – or something – could fix the mess they’re in.

“O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…” is there a more plaintive cry from Isaiah than what we heard today? His people have been in exile. They have lost touch with the God, they have sinned and fallen short of the covenant they made with God. The only solution that Isaiah can see is that God must come, now if not sooner, and set things right.

And Isaiah argues with God! “because you hid yourself we transgressed!” Isaiah shouts. And maybe, just maybe, Isaiah is right. God can be maddeningly silent and remote at times; especially at times when we feel we need God the most.

At times like that, we most often have one of two responses, and neither is particularly helpful: one, is to throw up our hands and say “that’s it, we’re in this for ourselves!”; and the second, is to start feeling like we’re responsible for God’s remoteness – and then the thought of God with us becomes a frightening possibility, fraught with judgement and ruled by terror. God’s perceived aloofness must be someone’s fault; it may even my fault.

Somehow, though, it’s not like that for Isaiah. Isaiah sees hope in God’s presence with God’s people; he sees the presence of the God who created all things as a good thing, a blessed thing, something that should be looked forward to with hope.

But we don’t, do we? At least, not for the most part. There’s a huge amount of baggage that we associate with our cultural conceptions of the day of Christ’s return. If you’re familiar with the Left Behind series of books you know that there’s a lot of fuss made about who’s going to be ‘the elect’ that Mark mentions in his gospel; a lot of speculation; no, a lot of “fact” about the signs that are supposed to accompany the return of Christ.

There are several Christian denominations that focus much of their energy and attention on what is imagined will happen on that day – judgement, hellfire, and damnation. The only way to avoid it, they say, is to make the right decisions for yourself, choose Jesus, and be prepared to watch everyone who hasn’t face the consequences of those decisions.

In that way, then, people are saved through their own actions – which, really, is what Stephen Hawking is saying. A lot of Christians, I think, would agree with Hawking that the world is headed to hell (though not necessarily in a handbasket). And, although they’d disagree with means, their solution remains the same – focus all of our attentions on the few, so that the cream of the crop can rise to the top.

In both scenarios – either Hawking’s colonization of space, or a fundamentalists’ judgement on the last day – only a few, the deserving, are saved. The vast majority of people are condemned, either to hellfire, or life on a planet from which all life has been driven.

Does either of those scenarios give you hope? I don’t find a lot of hope in the return of a Christ of judgement – I am too aware of my sins. And I don’t find hope at all in Hawking’s idea of colonization, because I know that neither myself nor anyone I know or love would ever be on the ‘list’ of people who would be moving off-planet. Both scenarios are for the elite; for the powerful. In one scenario it’s the genetically superior who are saved; in the other, it’s the spiritually perfect.

But this day, this season of Advent, is about hope. It’s about hope that God truly does “so love the world;” hope that Christ will return, not to judge the world to hellfire, but to judge the world in righteousness; because in Christ we share that righteousness – we are given, as Paul writes, the grace of God…in Christ Jesus.

O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…down to a manger, down to a world full of sin and hopelessness, bringing the promise of hope, peace, joy, and love. God tore open the heavens and came down, bringing the promise of light that shines in the darkness; light that the darkness cannot overcome.

We are an Advent people; we wait for the coming of Christ. We wait for the birth of a baby – a baby we know has already been born, has already lived out his mortal life, and reigns forever as Christ the King. But at the same time, there is a very real longing – and maybe you feel it. Maybe you feel in yourself the deep-seated wish that the baby would be real this year – that rather than commemorating an event, we would have a real celebration.

We are an Advent people; we prepare for Christ’s return. We keep awake, we watch with longing for the coming of a Saviour – not a wrathful judge, but the deepest longing of our hearts that grace, and mercy, and love will one day reign in this world, will one day replace the grim grey reality of hatred, hostility, and helplessness that seeps into the core of our being and stiffens and cracks our compassion for each other.

We are an Advent people; we wait for the master of the house to come, we wait for the chance to rejoice at his presence. If you look for a picture of an announcing angel, or in particular see a statue of one as part of a religious structure, you will see that they face east; they look to the rising sun in anticipation of the king who comes with the dawn.

Beloved of God, look east, and wait with hope. Wait with hope that Christ comes to free from suffering, not cause more. Prepare for his return by caring for his body, the Church; and wait with peace because the king returns in power, and in glory, to end all suffering, and to redeem all those who trust in him.

Look east, and watch with hope. For the child is coming; the child is coming for you, for the whole people of God.

Let the people of God say amen.

All Saints' Sunday

I have an announcement to make: I’m going to start a movement.

(And no, I don’t mean that I’m going to eat lots of fibre and lock myself away for the rest of the service with the latest issue of the Examiner.)

I’ve been keeping track, over the news and internet, of the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. You’ve probably heard of it: around the rallying cry of “we are the 99%!” people created a tent city in New York to try to raise awareness of the growing gap between the rich and the poor. The movement spread, to other American cities and recently to Canadian ones, too. If you’ve been through downtown Edmonton lately, you’ve seen the little tents at Churchhill square. I kind of think, though, that a tent city has a slightly great chance of staying up in protest in California or Vancouver through the winter than it does in Edmonton.

That cry of “we are the 99%” is a reference to the economic reality that 1% of the world’s population are billionaires and thus disproportionately influence the lives of the rest of the population. And the protestors blog about it on their iPads and text each other on their iPhones and enjoy the close proximity to Starbucks.

And they call us hypocrites?

As I said, I’m going to start my own movement. I’m going to call it “Occupy Church Street,” and we’ll rally around the cry of “we are the 1%!”

And we are the 1%. Seriously; it’s not that we’re billionaires, but the population of Spruce Grove is around 23000 people; there are probably 250 people today worshipping here and at St. Augustine’s down the road. So, we really are 1% of the population.

So come on, and Occupy Church Street! Come for All Saints’ Sunday!

Flesh out that figure a little bit more to include the other churches in the city, and I think we could say that between 2500 and 3000 people are in churches here this morning – that’s a little better, more like 10% of the population.

And that’s really not all that bad. I read somewhere that on an average Sunday about quarter of any given churches’ membership comes to worship. So, 40% of people in our city would be members of some church in the area. How does that sound?

You’re either an optimist or a pessimist: either you thought hey, that’s not bad, or oh my goodness we need to do more evangelism!

But you know what? I think both are all right. After all, today is All Saints’ Sunday – a day when we remember that we take seriously that line in the creed about believing in the “communion of saints.” Today we are reminded by John’s letter that we should look and, “see what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God.”

Yup. Children of God, because God loves us. That should be enough, right? Then, we shouldn’t be spending too much time thinking about the 99% or the 1%, because we are truly all in this, together. This great work of life that will end when Christ returns again and bring peace and order to this troubled world…why can’t we all just get along?

Except…you all know that I’m not that naïve. And I know that you’re not. The world doesn’t work like that – we have rules, and boundaries, and we know that we have to work for what we have. We know that there are some people – some saints – who will have it better when Jesus comes again. And we may know who those people will be.

Certainly us. We, who are the 10%. And from that point, the list varies depending on who you talk to. But rest assured, there will be a list! There will be a list of ‘us’ and ‘them’. The ‘us’ go to heaven, and the ‘them’ go to hell. That’s something everyone can agree on.

Even the OWS people. Looking through pictures of the movement, I have seen some people bearing signs that say ‘blessed are the poor’, even some that say ‘the rich man went to hell’, referencing the parable Jesus tells about a rich man and a poor beggar.

Then, there are the people who protest the protestors, and they have signs decrying the behaviour and beliefs of those: “repent, or burn”, “Jesus can save you from hell”. You’ve seen some of those signs, yourself. Hell is a useful tool. It can cut through the chit-chat; it can end arguments quickly. It’s also a oddly comforting idea: knowing that hell exists means that those people who harm or oppress others, or believe differently than us are going to get their just desserts.

And today I’m certainly not going to debate the existence of hell. It’s in the creed; Jesus descended into it. I don’t think that Jesus descended into a metaphor; hell is a fact.

You can go to it, burn in it, roast in it, drive like it, preach like it, endure it, walk though it…like hell you will, like hell you won’t; like hell you could, but simply don’t. There’s a lot of hell out there.

In fact, there’s so much hell it’s a bit of a wonder that we can actually set aside a day and call it All Saints. Is there anyone left who may actually enjoy the pleasures of the resurrection? If it were up to us to judge, do you ever get the feeling that the list of saints would be a pretty short list?

But on all Saints’ Sunday, we need to reimagine our conception of hell. Yes, it exists. Yes, it is a frightening place. But our Saviour went there. And let me ask you this: have you ever looked at the creed, and wondered why, in fact, we confess that Jesus descended to the dead, or in the old language that he descended into hell? After all, what did Jesus do in his life that he deserved that?

The problem with thinking like that is that you imagine that Jesus descended to the dead as a victim. Jesus didn’t. Jesus descended to the dead as a conquerer, to drive open the very gates of the law and condemnation and preach to those souls that could never save themselves. Christ went to the dead for you; that death would have no dominion over you. For you, Christ damned death; for all the saints that have lived and will ever live Christ endured the cross and grave so that you may know what it is to be children of God.

To be children of God.

To be, children of God. See what great love the Father has for us, that we should be so-called.

Are you saved? I don’t know. I’ll tell you what a good Lutheran answer probably should be: Not yet. You have no need to fear hell; Christ has been there for you. But you are not in heaven, yet. Today we celebrate and remember the lives that have touched ours, however briefly, and who now rest. We know they rest with their Lord and Saviour, because of his great love for us.

Blessed are we. Blessed are those who mourn, who cry, who are poor in spirit, who are reviled, who are persecuted, who fear. Blessed are you, because now you are free. Free to live as a child of God, free to know that you are one of the multitude at the throne of the lamb, knowing that there is a day when mourning and crying will cease, that hatred and war will end, that persecution and struggle will be no more. Blessed are you.

Live like that’s true. Our Saviour tells us to rejoice, and be glad. There is no fear of death, no sting of hell. Rejoice, and be glad.

There’s a story told about a man who went swimming in the ocean with his two young children. They were laughing and splashing, and it wasn’t until it was too late that he noticed they’d gotten caught in a current that had pulled them far, far away from shore.

And the man began to panic, because he knew that he wasn’t strong enough to save both his children; he couldn’t swim to shore with both on his back, and by the time he made it back to shore with one, the other would be too far out to sea.

But he didn’t let his panic show. He said to his daughter, who was older: “sweetie, do you remember when daddy taught you that starfish float? You do? Good. Now here’s what I want you to do: I want you to float here, while daddy takes little brother back to shore. I’ll come back for you quick, you understand? Now go ahead, and float.” And the little girl said okay, and did just that.

And the man let his son grab onto his back and he struck out for shore, which seemed so very far away. And no matter how hard or fast he swam, it kept getting farther, and he was getting weaker. Finally, he reached the shore, and collapsed on the beach. He couldn’t rest, though, and he began to run down the beach yelling, “someone, help me! My daughter’s back out there on the water!”

And finally he found someone with a boat who was willing to help, but by this time his daughter was so far out to sea he desperately feared that he wouldn’t be able to find her. But they kept looking until, between the swells, he saw his little girl, still floating. And they moved to boat to her, and he swept her up in his arms and cried “my girl! Daddy’s so proud of you!” And she looked at him as said, “well daddy, I was just doing what you asked me to do, and when my arms got tired and I didn’t want to float anymore, I just remembered that you were coming.”

Blessed are you, children of God, for your Father is coming.

Let the people of God say amen.

Reformation Sunday

Grace, and peace to you from God our heavenly Father and our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Martin was at a loss. You see, Martin was the kind of person that we’d all like to be: a perfect student since kindergarten, he’d received numerous accolades for his academic work: a Rutherford scholarship and several other highly competitive scholarships funded his undergraduate education. He majored in business, because he understood that he had what it took to succeed in such a competitive field.

And succeed he did. Again, he received rewards and awards for his performance. Promotion followed promotion; he was invited to be guest speaker at his firm’s annual general meeting. He was everything that everybody was told they wanted to be.

More than that, he knew he was. After all, he had the yardstick against which he could measure everybody else. He’d always had one. When he was getting his education, he knew that if he worked hard enough and got good marks, he was better than those around him. When he began working, if he worked hard enough he got the promotions and the glory. It was the way the world worked: you could achieve anything, as long as you worked hard enough for it.

Do you know Martin? Of course, you can’t know the Martin in the story, since he doesn’t really exist. But I’d be willing to be that you know someone like him. Or maybe, you ARE Martin. It’s not a bad thing to be like Martin. The world likes people like Martin: they’re the most successful, in our eyes.

Yet sometimes being like Martin is problematic. You see, Martin had a secret. He had a secret so dark, so deep, that he knew that if it ever got out, it would destroy him and everything he’d worked so hard to achieve.

Martin suffered from depression. A depression sometimes so dark, so debilitating, that some mornings he could not get out of bed. His company offered psychological support and a good benefits package; but Martin chose to pay for a therapist and anti-depressive medication out of his own pocket, because the risk of what he would lose if anyone found out was too great.

He couldn’t understand why he was depressed; he had everything he’d been told was important. But he was also puzzled by the first question his counsellor asked him each day: how do you feel? Martin couldn’t actually answer that. He didn’t have anyone he could compare his feelings to – everyone around him looked just as happy and high-functioning as he was.

In a very real way, our lives are governed by the law that Paul speaks about today, that kept Martin trapped. They are controlled by it; it gauges our actions, lays out our motivations, and judges our worth. It’s a system that we are raised in – we judge ourselves and others by performance, dedication, and adherence to a set of rules. We hold those rules pretty highly; when we know what they are, it seems that we can figure out the secret of life and get on with business.

You know the expression, “wake up and smell the coffee?” it means that we’re supposed to be able to open our sees, and see the reality of how the world works around us. When we ‘wake up,’ life is supposed to be better.

Jesus and those who believe in him stand talking. They know the law; they want to ‘wake up and smell the coffee’. Jesus has been talking about love, justice, and God’s idea of fairness, which isn’t the same kind of fairness that the religious leaders of the day want to see. So they’re puzzled, especially when Jesus says, “if you continue in my word…you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

Because in their minds, they’ve never been slaves to anyone. At least, not where it counts. There’s the slavery of the Egyptian kind that they remember at Passover, but that’s so far ago in the past that it might as well be an empty story. They believe that they are in control of their lives and destinies, what does Jesus mean that they “can be free?”

So Jesus lays it on the line: “anyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household, the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

The people to whom Jesus speaks have received the word; they bear the word to others. But in a way the lack the ability to really know the word, in the way Jeremiah talks about. Jeremiah tells the story of a new covenant, when people will no longer say to each other “know the Lord” (in the same tone my mother used to say “wake up and smell the coffee!”), because they will all know God. Because God will place God’s word directly into their hearts; it will stop being a yardstick to measure themselves against others.

Today is Reformation Sunday, the only Sunday of the church year that is set aside to commemorate a historical event, that began with the nailing of 95 Theses to the door of Castle Church in Wittenburg, Germany. The first of those little discussion points should stand out for us: “when our Lord Jesus Christ called us to repent, he called for the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”

Those of us today who believe in Jesus Christ and his saving word are often confronted with the same sense of ‘huh?’ as those early believers. That’s because God’s word and work does not work the same as the culture we grow up in.

How many people here today would agree with the statement “I don’t know the bible very well, so I don’t know if I’m a good Christian – but I do my best to live a good life, so I think that God is happy with me”? You live a good life?

Welcome to the law. Because if it’s up to you, you will never live a life good enough to earn your salvation. You are slaves to an idea that is not your own.

But take confidence in this: you are loved by God because of who you are. Not because of what you’ve done. You are loved because of who you are. That was the original idea of Reformation that set fire to the world. That you do not work for your own salvation.

In our culture, ‘repentance’ is too often poorly understood as a one-shot deal. If that were true, then we should abandon all hope right now – or aim for the ‘deathbed confession’ system of belief. But we are called to live lives of repentance: lives that are marked by the word dwelling within us.

The theme of today is “knowing the word” – and you know the word when you are set free. When someone comes to you with the word ‘if’, then the word they bear is the law. “If you just do _____; then _______ will happen.” Have you ever read a self-help book? That’s a refrain in that kind of literature. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, and make your own way in the world. Then, look behind you at the unfortunate souls who have fallen behind, and grace them with your knowledge.

But you can know the word of God when it comes to you as a statement that sets you free: “because you are loved by God, therefore you live a life that is testimony to your freedom.” For God, there is no ‘if’. There is God speaking, and God acting, not out of sovereignty but out of mercy.

Do you ever feel like you’re on a journey, and you don’t have a map? Have you ever wondered if you can actually make it to your destination? That’s a very real fear, one that is deeply rooted in our culture, one that makes the gospel of Christ into a competition. Yet you shouldn’t worry.

The freedom that comes from knowing the word of God is the freedom to know that the end of the journey is assured; Christ will see you home.

But it also means knowing that, in fact, you may be on the wrong road. It means knowing that all roads may not, in fact, lead to Christ.

It means that there is no road, no trail, no rut, you will travel in this life that Christ will not walk down, to find you.

And you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

Let the people of God say ‘amen’.

Sunday October 02

“Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.”

Every wonder just how closely we listen when God speaks? Or even, if God still speaks at all? It seems like almost every day I find someone who will lament to me the loss of public prayer in schools, or the perception of a ‘liberal’ agenda that wants to – and I use their word – eliminate Christianity from the public sphere. But really, is public prayer and using the government to push a socially conservative agenda really what “listening to God” looks and sounds like?

It should be easy to hear God speaking, right? I mean, most of you have seen the movie The 10 Commandments with Charleton Heston: I always remember this one line: guns don’t kill people; apes with guns kill people!

Sorry, wrong movie.

Yet one thing we can generally agree on as Christians: when God speaks, we should be listening. And I mean, actively listening.

You have to wonder, though…what are all the words that God speaks? How can we know?

Probably, a good rule of thumb is that we know God’s word by anticipating the exact opposite of what we are thinking.

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery…

The 10 Commandments are, without a doubt, an integral part of the religious life of at least three of the world’s great religions. Certainly, they are central to our lives as Christians, and as they form the first part of Luther’s Small Catechism, they are foundational to our Lutheran theological tradition. Sometimes they’re written in stone, - as they were on the tablets that Moses received – and maybe sometimes they’re written on the rock of our hearts.

And even though God reminded the Israelites that God brought them OUT of the land of slavery, we can turn a perceived obedience to the 10 commandments into just another kind of slavery.

Like clockwork someone can be counted on to refer to the 10 Commandments as justifying grounds for their own judgement of an issue: the 10 Commandments say…I remember once struggling to speak with someone who insisted that the 10 commandments included rules that forbade women pastors and said that homosexuals should be put to death.

On their surface, the 10 commandments are negative imperatives: you shall not…but in reality the ‘don’t’ part is only a little piece of what they mean. Taken as a whole, the 10 commandments are good, they’re comforting, and for the Israelites they form an identity, a purpose, and even a sense of security.

For Christians in the Lutheran tradition, our understanding of the 10 commandments is – or should be, rather – irreversibly tied to a juxtaposition: “we are to fear and love God so that we do not…but instead…” Fundamentally, the 10 commandments become about commitment to God and compassion for our neighbour. Rather than tying us down, they free us to be in relationship with each other and affirm God’s relationship to us.

To a people wandering in the wilderness when God speaks, God gives an identity, a rule, and words of comfort, life, and hope.

Then God spoke all these words: I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt…

God speaks often, even continuously. At the beginning of Genesis, it’s written that God spoke, and the world came into being. God is always speaking, and we try – try – to listen.

But what do we hear?

Most often, we hear the message that our sinful and self-centred hearts want us to hear: that the privilege of being spoken to is our right; rather than the responsibility of listening to the call to form a community.

In the gospel lesson today, Jesus is still answering the Pharisee’s question from last week: “by what authority do you do the things you do?” Having used the example of the two sons, Jesus today turns to a metaphor that his listeners would know: a vineyard. In particular, Jesus relates this vineyard to a song that the prophet Isaiah sings of another vineyard, one that bore bitter fruit.

The Pharisees know the story that Jesus refers to, but in his telling there’s something not-quite-right about it. Both parties in the story seem equally ludicrous – the folly of the owner, who twice sends slaves and once, his son. Having his slaves beaten, killed, and stoned, the owner reasons that the tenants will respect his son. The tenants themselves are right out of a comic opera: having beaten the servants, they believe that if they kill the son they will gain his inheritance. To the tenants, the vineyard has become their privilege rather than their responsibility.

When Jesus asks, “what will the owner do when he returns?” the Pharisees respond in a way that shows they understand themselves to be the owners of the vineyard: “he will put those wretches to a miserable death and put in responsible tenants!” Their response is to cry out for the death of the first tenants, and to give the vineyard to others.

Like us, they hear what they want to: what is going to give us power, or self-righteousness. The power of judgement, they believe, is theirs.

In the 10 commandments, we can’t ever really get past the first one: you shall have no other gods before me. We always know what’s best, or better, for everyone else. They just need to listen to us, right? We like to be the judge in God’s place.

But how does Jesus respond to his own question?

Then God spoke all these words…

Instead of answering his own question, Jesus turns instead to talking about architecture. It’s a bit of a tangent; but at other places Jesus refers to himself as the Temple, and reminds his listeners that the temple will be destroyed; but that it will be rebuilt in three days. To this end, Jesus refers to himself as “the cornerstone” of the temple, but not just any cornerstone: this cornerstone is so hard that any other rock that falls upon it will shatter, and any stone upon which it falls will be crushed.

The cornerstone – the incarnate Word of God – is far harder than the rock of our hearts. The Pharisees response (and ours) to the story of the tenants of the vineyard reveals their own hardness of heart. The Pharisees are aghast at the mercy of the landowner; so are we.

Because, beloved, the tenants are right: they will kill the Son, and collect his inheritance.

God will break our hearts until we see God’s own stubborn insistence on being merciful to us; because if the landowner condemns the tenants and puts them to death – after previously showing mercy – then the landowner becomes no different than the tenants, and their way of interacting with the world wins.

We are the tenants of the vineyard; we have received the inheritance of the son. We believe that we can keep the fruits of our lives and God’s gifts to ourselves. We reject those who may come to us in God’s name and ask us to share a portion of the vineyard’s harvest – to open our hearts. When the Son comes, we reject him, too.

We are dying for forgiveness. We are ready to kill others – to kill with words, with our actions in our communities, and even with weapons of war – we are ready to kill to show God how ready we are for forgiveness, for righteousness. What we miss is that forgiveness and life are offered freely, the whole time we are trying to gain it for ourselves.

And what does God say?

Then God spoke all these words:

“This is my body, given for you. This is my life, poured out for you.”

God’s word reveals God’s own stubborn insistence to show mercy to God’s chosen people. The word is not always good; too often it reveals what we thought to be right and good as wrong, and evil. It cracks and breaks the rock of our hearts, crushes our self-righteousness and self-centredness, stands in the midst of our brokenness as a model of what is whole – and holy.

The 10 commandments are some of the most enduring words given to us by God – but they also are a means of mercy to guide and direct us to a life centred on a radical commitment to God and lived out in compassion for those around us.

In the beginning, God spoke. And God still speaks, and the creative power of God’s word will bring about the new creation in our hearts and all around us. In our midst, God speaks to us, calls us to live lives that are centred around God’s healing and renewing mercy that breaks the rock of our hearts – but gives us life, and salvation.

Let the people of God say amen.

Sunday September 25

nb: with a big shout-out to Kevin over at The Word Proclaimed. I use a story he tells as a example today. I remembered hearing the original sermon when he preached it. If you want to learn from a master, go check him out.

So, over the past year or so, you’ve probably gotten used to me asking the question during my messages each Sunday – what do you think about the gospel lesson that is read?

And today, Jesus asks the same question of the educated Pharisees – what do you think? They’ve been pestering him with questions, trying to trick or trap him into committing blasphemy by equating himself with God, or saying that he’s the messiah – really, they’ll take anything as an admission of guilt. The thing is, they know the right answers to their questions.

One of the problems of the Pharisees is that they took God’s truth and boiled it down to a series of legalistic requirements. Have a religious question? They have an answer to it. Have a question that stretches the boundaries of what they know is their good doctrine? Not happening. The problem isn’t their doctrine, they believe – in that case, the problem is asking a question that doesn’t fit the answers they have.

They want to know by what authority Jesus does the things he does. His way of interacting – or acting – with God is foreign to their way of thinking. So they want to trap him outright in an admission that he is wrong.

So Jesus asks them a question designed to make them think – did John’s baptism come from heaven, or was it of human origin? We’re given a glimpse into their thought process – if we say, ‘from heaven,’ he’ll say, then why don’t you believe him; but if we say ‘of human origin,’ this crowd will tear us apart because they believed he was a prophet”.

So, they’re pretty shrewd thinkers. Politically astute, we might say. But they’re unwilling to open their thinking to something that might change their minds about what they believe. But Jesus comes to shake their nicely laid-out faith to its foundations.

I’ve said before that faith isn’t about getting the right answers, but about learning good questions. Jesus is a master question-asker, and his questions stretch the simple answers that the Pharisees and the crowd have come to believe.

In the end, the crowd turns on him, enraged that his questions expose their faith for what it is – hollow dogma, memorized and regulated. It’s a faith that brings great comfort, and self-satisfaction in no small measure, but it can also leave people feeling empty.

And the empty tomb raises still more questions.

A friend of mine tells a story about his time as a pastor in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The week after the US invaded Iraq, a local TV station sent a reporter to his church, looking for a faith-related sound bite for the six o’clock news. My friends’ church had been holding weekly prayer services in the weeks leading up to the war and some reporters had already done pieces on the church.

But this time was different. The reporter who came was known for his confrontational interview style. And as my friend tells the story, it was clear he had an axe to grind.

As my friend tells it, the reporter

“knew that I and most of the congregation were opposed to the war and he tried to get me to say on camera that any Christian who supported the war was going to hell. Saying that high profile Christians were destined for damnation would have sounded great on TV.

I tried to convince him that reconciliation was at the heart of the Christian faith and that was one of the reasons why I opposed the invasion of Iraq. He kept needling me, pushing me, asking leading questions. Frustrated, he turned the question around on me and snapped,

“Where then, is this ‘reconciling God,’ when children are being maimed, lives destroyed, innocent people killed, all in the name of so-called freedom?”

I fumbled around for words, very aware that any bonehead comment I’d make would be broadcast across the country.

The only response I could think of was, “God is present when people suffer unjustly. When a child is maimed, God is maimed; when innocent people die, God shares their death.”

As my friend admitted, he wasn’t entirely satisfied with his answer. And from the disappointed look on the reporter’s face, neither was he. While my friend had offered as thought-out a response as he could in a short period of time, a quick, hard-and-fast condemnation would have made a much better soundbite.

Usually, we only think as much as is needed to form an opinion about something – and then we stop. As with the Pharisees, though, Jesus challenges us on that. So he goes on to tell the story of two brothers.

A fathers asks his two sons to go to work. The first son says ‘no,’ but then goes to the fields. The second son said, “sure I will!” and then didn’t go. Which one did the will of his father?

Now, before you give the short answer, think a little about it. You have two children: you ask them both to do something. One says ‘no’ outright; the other says ‘absolutely!’. You don’t stick around to see the results. Who is doing your will?

What we think about something influences what we do – regardless of what we say. The first son answered honestly when his father asked him to go and work in the vineyard: he didn’t want to. But he changed his thinking and went to work that day. The second son answered dishonestly – he told his father, “yes, I’ll do it!” but then didn’t. His actions showed what he was thinking all along.

Where does our thinking lead us as Christians? Does it stop at the altar: “I’m righteous, so I’m good. I don’t have to change anything, because I’m better than other people”? Or does it extend out into the good Lord’s vineyard – “all right, I have this tremendous gift of salvation from Jesus. What do I do with it now – how do I live in ways that show other people that they can have the same gift?”

The problem with fundamentalism of any persuasion is that it proclaims thinking to be the enemy – fundamentalism accepts no truth other than a narrowly defined legalism. On the opposite end of the spectrum there are people who label themselves as “free thinkers”, who reject religion outright usually in favour of something of their own devising.

What both groups have in common is that they’re the people who urge you to ‘have an open mind’ when confronted with some of their ideas.

But they don’t really want you to have an open mind – they want you to have an empty one - that they can fill with their own ideas.

So God doesn’t call us to give lip service to a prayer and then go home Sunday afternoon to our comfortable chair. Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.

So we strive to do the work of God who is with us – sharing the message of the gift of the kingdom of God, showing the world how we live – not as people who are burdened and defined by dogma or doctrine, but as a living, thinking people serving a living, thinking God. The doctrine that we learn in Sunday school, confirmation, and through preaching isn’t intended to be the stuff you have faith in; its purpose is to help you define what you believe, and help you to find clearer ways to live out your faith.

And why is it so important that God calls us to be ‘thinking’ people?

Look around you. It’s a nice contrast to the rest of the world.

Let the people of God say amen.

September 18

nb: with a shoutout to David Lose, and an apology to Daniel Erlander for appropriating the idea of God's "manna way."

Think about this question for a bit: the parable of the workers in the vineyard is about ____________________?

There’s lots of good things we can say about it: it’s about love, about God’s fairness, God’s mercy. There are probably as many different interpretations as there are people here today. here are a couple of things that it’s not about: the parable is not about being just, or fair, or working hard for a living and reaping the rewards of a good life.

Some deeply cynical part of me points out that this parable is also about the workers who are in the vineyard. If the kingdom of heaven is like the landowner, then the landowner has to continually deal with people who are a bunch of whiners. So, in another way, the parable of the workers in the vineyard is a story about how we usually feel that we could do a better (or at least more fair) job of running the universe than God can.

On some level that’s true, isn’t it? It was true for the Israelites: they are brought out of slavery – and bear in mind that slavery for the Israelites was something they’d chosen to avoid a famine; it was only after a Pharoah arose who didn’t know Joseph that it became a burden to them. They’d seen the parting of the sea, the great pillar of fire that led them by night, and the cloud by day. They were familiar; intimately familiar with the works of God.

Out in the wilderness, though, it was something else entirely. Out of the familiar confines of Egypt, there arose some problems with management: “you have brought us into this wilderness to kill us with hunger!” What is Moses doing, what is God doing that they are now in the wilderness, with little food?

We know how God provides for the Israelites: he sends quails at night and bread in the morning. This bread, called manna, covers the ground and the Israelites are to take what they need for the day, and nothing more – except on the sixth day, when they are told to gather enough to last them for the Sabbath.

There’s another interesting human factor to the story, as well: it’s what the Israelites call the stuff on the ground: manna. The word manna means…well, it means what they say, the same thing that your children, and mine, say when confronted with the intolerable reality of a Brussels sprout for the first time: “What is this?”

“What is this that you’re trying to feed us?”

“What is this that God is doing?”

“What is this stuff that we’re given?”

What is this? is our reaction to God’s grace in our lives. It doesn’t look like we think it should. It certainly isn’t fair – partly because our gratitude to God’s presence in our lives is always tainted with self-interest: what do we get from God in exchange for being ‘good’ people? But what God gives, thought unexpected, is good, and it is gift, all the same.

The secret of manna is that God gives out what everybody needs – and only what we need. You can’t ‘store up’ God’s grace; you can share it with others, but not store it up. That’s God’s manna way – that grace is more than just a simple prayer before a meal.

We can live out a manna way of our own – because when we know that grace isn’t just a simple prayer; it becomes a way to live.

Yet that way is kind of hard. The manna way doesn’t make sense in our lives – I’ve worked as a manager, and I know that many of you own your own businesses and farms. Look at the parable of the owner of the vineyard: does that make sense?

In a word, no. It makes us ask, what is this? All over again.

But as I often ask you: who are you in this parable? Are you the landowner? (if you think you are, you may have delusions of grandeur).

Are you among the first hired? Or the middle, or the last? Do we really have a ‘heirarchy’ of believers in the faith? I sometimes think we do – certainly, there seems a certain amount of respect accorded to people who have lived in the faith for longer.

Let me share with you something that all those workers have in common, though. Why are they in the marketplace at all? They are there because they are the dregs of their society. They are the people who do not have regular work, do not have a business of their own or a fishing boat, or a plot of land to farm. They are the desperate, the destitute, and maybe even the damned.

And the landowner goes out looking for them. Four times during the day, the landowner goes out seeking them. He doesn’t ask for applications, doesn’t check references, doesn’t interview and then do callbacks. He’s looking for labourers for his vineyard, and not just anyone will do – he needs everyone.

But at the end of the day, he calls those hired last – those who had given up all hope of hire, but who remained because they had literally no where else to go – and gives them the usual daily wage. And those hired first see it, and begin to do some mental arithmetic. This could be the greatest payday they’ve ever seen.

And they receive the exact same pay. One day’s wage. Not a weeks; nor a months; nor a lifetimes; but one day’s wage. And they take it, not as grace, but as insult. Instead of rejoicing at the poor who were helped on that day, they assigned a worth to each group, and they were at the top of the heap.

And as preacher David Lose points out,

Jesus tells [this parable] to illustrate the hardness of heart with which those who deemed themselves righteous considered those who by almost any standards were not, begrudging them the grace and mercy of God and the attention of God's Son. But there's also an existential dimension that speaks as truly to our own day, time, and lives as it ever did to Jesus' original audience. Because this parable lays before each and all of us a choice as clear as can be. When we look at our lives, do we count our blessings or our misfortunes? Do we pay attention to the areas of plenty in our lives or what we perceive we lack? Do we live by gratitude or envy? Do we look to others in solidarity and compassion or see them only as competition? The killer thing about this choice is that it really is a choice as unavoidable as it is simple -- you just can't be grateful and envious at the same time. So which is it going to be?

Jesus is eventually killed precisely because he offers this choice. That is, Jesus is crucified not just because he proclaimed that the grace, and mercy of God was available to all, even to those deemed so incredibly unworthy, but also because his declaration revealed the hardness of heart, the stone-cold entrenchment of spirit, that is part and parcel of the human condition. His boundary-breaking generosity revealed the envy and competitiveness of those in power. His vision of another way of being in the world -- he called it the kingdom of God -- betrayed the lie told by the protectors of the status quo that theirs was the only way. Shamed by such a vision, and unable to embrace it, they put the visionary to death.

Yet God’s manna way continued, as the darkness of death faded to reveal a new bread from heaven broken for all people; fruit of the vine that brings to all people new and everlasting life.

Today is our stewardship Sunday – and maybe I think we need to rename it. In fact, I’m going to suggest it right now: instead of calling this stewardship Sunday, let’s call it ‘celebration Sunday’. Let’s call it “grace Sunday;” let’s call it “manna Sunday.” This is a day when we celebrate that we, who are hired last, who journey through the wilderness, we who are not worthy of the smallest tidbit of the grace of God, are given ALL.

This day is not a day when I’m going to flog you to open your wallets and “give”. This is not a day when we’re going to put a chart and graph, and say “this is where we need to be.” This is not the day when I raise up the ministries of the congregation and ask you to staff them.

I’m not going to do that because I already see your hearts open, and giving. I’m not going to do that because I know that when I tell you at the end of the service to “go in peace and serve the Lord” that you DO that; that you go out into the vineyard and work from sunup to dusk.

I want you to know that this is the morning we wake up and find God’s grace scattered on the ground so that we can live. I want you to celebrate God’s faithfulness and gifts to this community – and I ask you to celebrate the future we share together, because of that faithfulness and gift.

Today we will talk about a new initiative for our congregation’s future; we’ll talk about our hopes and dreams and visions. Most of all, today I want you to talk about you; we have shared in our labours together, and now we rejoice at the end of the day.

And for anyone who doubts that the Church lives like this parable of the workers in the vineyard, that the Church models the landowner who welcomes every labourer and gives to them freely, remember this: even if this is your first day in our home – or even if this is your fifty thousandth – you are welcome to join our celebration.

God has sought you out; you have been brought home. Join us, celebrate with us the great miracle of God’s manna way: that grace isn’t just a simple prayer before meal; that it isn’t a philosophical condition; that it isn’t a theological concept –

Brothers and sisters, grace is a way to live. Be at peace, for you serve the Lord and your reward is certain. Go out and find those who are desperately seeking; look for those who have given up hope. Bring them into the Lord’s vineyard and know that they, too, will receive all that they hope for – and just what they need.

Let the people of God say amen.

September 4 - Pentecost 12A

Did you know that, here in the church, we practice ‘tough love?’ It’s true! Of course, tough love looks different from different perspectives.

I have a friend who left a church that practiced ‘tough love’ – if you did something that the pastor and church leadership thought was wrong, you got a visit from them. At that visit, you were told that you had to repent, but that you were going to be shunned from the community for at least some suitable amount of time before you could come back to church some Sunday and in front of the entire congregation confess the sin that had been pointed out to you and symbolically ask the forgiveness of Jesus. The pastor and elders of the church would confer, and after some uncomfortable silence would usually let you back in, noting at the same time that they were being lenient – lenient -- out of Christian love.

That was their tough love. But is that really the love that Paul talks about? “Owe no one anything, except to love one another.” As Paul writes – and he echoes the words of Jesus and other, even more well-respected Jewish rabbis – that the commandments are summed up in the words “love your neighbour as yourself.”

And that seems really, really, easy. In fact, some aspect of that is usually cited by people who describe themselves as ‘I’m-not-religious-I’m-spiritual’. If we’re not religious, but we’re spiritual, we can tell ourselves that ‘I love my neighbour as myself, so I must be good, then.” And honestly, that seems a lot easier of a way to live. It’s easier simply because then I can choose who my neighbour is.

But the difference between being spiritual and being religious is that when your are religious, you don’t get to pick and chose things based on how uncomfortable they make you.

You may find your neighbour in the homeless woman who sits outside of Safeway and asks for change,

You may find your neighbour in the person of little education but strong opinion who comes to talk with you because you’re “good church-going folk.”

You may find your neighbour in the young unmarried couple next door when they come over to ask if they can borrow some milk. They need to borrow the milk because he got laid off because of a DUI (which was SO not his fault), and they can’t get to the store to buy food for their kids. They become your neighbour when you load them down with food from your pantry, and grit your teeth instead of pointing out the huge party they had last week.

When you’re Christian, your neighbours choose you. And then you find what ‘tough love’ is really about.

It’s about loving when you really don’t want to. And finding that love and forgiveness are really, really, hard pills to swallow.

Today Jesus talks about what to do when your brother or sister ‘sins’ against you. It’s interesting that Jesus uses that word; in Greek, the word means “to miss the mark.” So, when someone else ‘misses the mark’ with you, Jesus provides a means of recourse. At first reading, it seems to be the kind of ‘tough love’ that we understand.

But think very carefully about what Jesus is actually saying in this text when he says’ “let such a one be to you as a tax collector and a Gentile”.

In classes at Seminary, I was always up for a good argument – I mean, class discussion. If a professor wanted someone to throw something out for the class to chew on, I was often the first to open my mouth.

One day, we were talking about this text, and how we are provided with this model in Matthew 18. I tossed out the example of the church that my friend attended, and then said that, apparently, it was after all ‘biblically sound.”

And my professor looked at me and said, “really? That’s biblically sound? Then answer me this: who wrote this gospel?”

And I said, “Matthew.”

And she said back to me, “and what did he do?”

I said: “he was a disciple.” “And what was his profession?” “He was…a tax collector.”

And she reminded me of the gospel story of a few weeks ago, of the woman who came to beg Jesus that her daughter would be healed. “Where was she from?” my teacher asked. And the light slowly dawned as I said, “she was a gentile.”

That was the beginning of my realization that ‘bible study’ meant more than just memorizing dogmatic answers to tradition texts. ‘Bible study’ means letting the text speak to its own understanding, not the meaning we want.

Jesus says, ‘and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.”

Bring them into your community and love them. Bind them to the love of God in Christ, and they will be bound in heaven. Loose them, and you will lose them.

Now that’s ‘tough love’.

I’ve said before that I think there was unity in the church for maybe fifteen minutes at the foot of the cross. Conflict is natural in any situation where culture, values, and mixed experiences are present, and Jesus knew that. There are a couple of stories in the gospels that begin “now the disciples argued among themselves…”

If you live by the law, your entire life will be lost, because the Law is hungry: it’s easy, really easy, to point out the flaws and sins of everyone around you. You can, in fact, make a church around that kind of idea. But Paul reminds us to live by love: love that poured out for us in the cross of Jesus Christ.

Being Christian means acknowledging that Christ died for your sins: but honestly being Lutheran means admitting you drove the nails in, while at the same time Christ says to you: Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.

Tough love is not destroying someone utterly so that we can feel righteous in ourselves.

Tough love means loving the unlovable – and maybe even admitting that that includes ourselves. Paul reminds us, “salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers,” possibly because when we come to understand and know the love that Christ has for us we can come to understand a bit better what it means to both be saved from and saved for.

Saved from death, and sin.

Freed for love, for community – because Jesus never, ever, uses an example of just one person. Where two or three are gathered, there will always be conflict. Yet it’s funny that it’s in this place that Jesus also promises us, “I am with you.”

Maybe that’s because Jesus knows that we will always sin – we will always ‘miss the mark’. We will always fall short as a community because, well, we’re not Jesus – but we bear his name to the world, despite our failing, despite our sins. And then, together, we move forward as a community of two, or three, or thirty, or three hundred, knowing that as we are gathered in the name of Jesus Christ here is here among us, that we owe each other nothing, other than to love one another, as Christ first loved us.

And there is nothing that can ever separate us from that love.

Let the people of God say ‘amen.’