Category: Faith

Children’s Message: Showing Your Work

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And most of the time when I bring you up to these steps, I show you something cool and then we talk about it. But instead of this show and tell, what if we did something first? What if we played a bit of a game? 

Now my three year old loves playing a game called “Monkey Around.” We pick up a card and do whatever it says on it. So let’s do that together. Let’s pick some cards from the game and do the actions it describes. 

You all did an awesome job playing this game with me. And did you happen to notice that it’s a game without a winner? We didn’t have to raise money or fight anyone or take our game pieces from one place to the other before anyone else. All we had to do was play and move to the best of our abilities. Moving and sharing and participating is how we play the game. And that idea of being able to do something is part of our reading about Jesus today. It’s a reading we usually hear right before Easter – during the celebration of Maundy Thursday when we remember Jesus giving us the Lord’s supper. In John’s version of that story, Jesus gives his followers a commandment – something to do. He tells us to love one another. And that word love – isn’t just about how we feel. Love is always an action. When you say you love someone, that love is expressed through the ways you care and support them. Jesus wants us to love everyone – to support everyone – to help everyone – even if we don’t feel like it. It’s hard to know how love other people but one way we can do that is through our prayers. When we pray, we’re talking to God and telling God wat we’re thinking about. It’s a conversation that can feel one-sided – as if God’s isn’t listening to us. But I promise that God is and so one way we love is by praying for each other. That’s something anyone at any age and any physical ability can do. We can tell God who we’re thinking about, what we’re worried about, and the kind of help other people need. And if you can’t come up with something to pray about, use the prayers we say in worship. Save a copy of the bulletin and, every day, repeat those prayers. When we pray, we love. And the more we love, the easier it is for us to pray. 

Each week, I share a reflection for all children of God. The written manuscript serves as a springboard for what I do. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship on the Fifth Sunday of Easter, 5/15/2022.

Children’s Message: What to do With the Unexpected

So it’s my tradition after the prayer of the day to bring a message to all of God’s children. And today I want to start with using our imaginations. Lets imagine we’re going to the grocery store. Where’s the first place you usually go? For me, I usually visit the fruits and vegetables – making sure to pick up some strawberries, apples, and other goodies. Where would you go next? I then, depending on the store, either get some milk or go pick up cereal that is full of too much sugar. When I go to the grocery store, I usually go with a list and I usually have the same things on the list every week. I might add a new thing every once in a while – but it’s always the same fruits, cereals, pastas, and snacks I pickup each week. My visits to the grocery store are pretty much the same week-to-week. And when I go from aisle to aisle, I tend to be focused on my shopping. But every once in a while, something unexpected happens – and I run into someone I didn’t think who would be there. 

For example, when I was a kid, I might see my teacher at the grocery store. That always felt really weird to me because teachers were supposed to be at school – not at grocery stores! That’s where I saw them, interacted with them, and that’s where I expected them to be. I didn’t expect to see a teacher in a place other than school. Have you ever run into a teacher outside of school? How did it make you feel? It usually made me feel a bit shy, awkward, and I didn’t always know what to say. Those feelings are perfectly normal. When we run into something unexpected – like seeing our teacher outside of school – we might not know how to react to it. It might make us feel surprised or anxious or excited or confused. And when I get that way, I’ve learned that I don’t have to ignore those feelings. I can, instead, just pause and be in that moment with all those feelings. I can be patient, say hello, and go with the flow to see what happens next. 

Today in our story about Jesus, we’re going to listen to someone do something unexpected to Jesus [John 12:1-8 – Mary’s anointing of Jesus]. Often our stories in church tell about how Jesus kept doing unexpected things – like eating meals with people he shouldn’t, or including people others want to exclude, or by healing those who needed help. But this story is about a friend of Jesus, named Mary, doing something unexpected to him. She is going to offer him a gift that some of Jesus’ disciples said she shouldn’t have. It was unexpected – yet Jesus shows us one way we can live with that unexpected thing. We can pause. We can ponder. We can accept the gift of the unexpected because it might impact us in small ways. We might, for example, remember that teachers are people with their own families, lives, and things they like to do. We can celebrate teachers for being more than just one thing – just like we, as kids and students and beloved children of God – are more than one thing too. And we can do that because, as we’ll see in two weeks at Maundy Thursday worship, this unexpected gift invites Jesus to keep doing unexpected things too. 

Each week, I share a reflection for all children of God. The written manuscript serves as a springboard for what I do. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, 4/3/2022.

Every Nook and Cranny: How Smell Reveals Jesus

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

John 12:1-8

My sermon from the Fifth Sunday in Lent (April 3, 2022) on John 12:1-8.

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A couple weeks ago, the Paris Review of Books, published a conversation between three scholars about how to choose a perfume. They talked about the power of gimmicks, how weird perfume commercials actually are, and how not everyone gets to choose their smells. Our sense of smell is the most sensitive of our senses and its one we process almost spontaneously. When we smell, the odor enters into our bodies which we then respond to in a very embodied way. Smells do more than just tell us if something is sweet or stinky. They also remind us we don’t live in a void or a vacuum. In the words of Jude Stewart even, “air’s existence… becomes palpable because smells ride on air.” Smells extend our environment, connecting us to a world that’s much bigger than what’s in front of us. Smells also have the power to collapse time, transporting us into the past while keeping us rooted in the present. A sniff of a cherry pie, the scent of an ocean breeze, and even the fragrance of a flower in bloom can connect us to those moments and the people that changed us. Smells can announce our arrival before we enter the room and they grow, change, and evolve depending on what other smells they run into. And overtime the intensity of a smell drops off unless it was cause by a 3 year old who emptied an entire bottle of perfume in her room one spray at a time. We know how powerful our sense of smell can be because when we lose it, either through age or accident or an illness like COVID-19, our engagement with our lives fundamentally changes. It’s difficult to put into words the totality of smells and our sense of smell. Yet we know how smells soak into every nook and cranny around us. Smells have their own potent kind of power which might be why the gospel of John was very specific in our reading today about the kind of smell that interrupted a dinner party for Jesus. 

Now the story about Jesus being anointed with perfume appears in all four gospels. Jesus, while at a dinner, ends up being interrupted by a woman with a jar of expensive perfume. After she pours it on him, the disciples and other guests in the room tend to get a bit ornery. Jesus, in response, simply says to leave her alone. Jesus, while very much alive, experienced a ritual typically reserved for a person after death. This general outline fits every version of this story. Yet I’ve often found that it’s in the difference where we discover a bit of what this story might mean. Three of the gospels place this story in the village of Bethany, 2 miles outside of Jerusalem. The dinner party was held in either the home of an unnamed Pharisee, a leper named Simon, or in the home of Lazarus and his sisters. The perfume, typically identified as nard, is always described as expensive but only John says it was worth nearly a year’s worth of wages. Both Matthew and Mark describe the woman pouring the perfume over Jesus’ head, soaking his entire body, while Luke and John limit the action to only his feet. In the other three gospels, the woman is never named. But John, however, chose to give us a name. With that name, he also gave us an entire story. And so the Mary we meet is a sister who just a chapter before sent word to Jesus that her brother was ill. 

By the time Jesus arrived at their home, Lazarus had already died. He stood outside the tomb and cried. He wept for his friend, showing us that grief, tears, and sadness aren’t things unknown to God. And after expressing with his body just how much Lazarus meant to him, Jesus then told him to come out. Jesus didn’t stick around very long with Lazarus’ family and soon headed towards a village far away. But when the holiday of Passover drew near, Jesus turned and returned to Jerusalem. When he neared the city, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus invited him over for dinner to do all the things we do when we share a meal with a beloved family friend. As the meal stretched on, Mary left the table to retrieve a very expensive bottle of nard. And when she returned, she did for Jesus that one thing she had actually done for her brother just mere weeks before. 

Now imagine what that moment must have felt like for everyone in that room. The smell would have reminded them of one of those most awful experiences they had lived through. The grief and sorrow that filled their soul while they watched their brother grow ill would have been mimicked by how that scent seemed to fill every nook and cranny in the room. Martha and Mary would have remembered pouring the perfume over their brother’s body and how its smell changed as it gradually soaked into his skin. Once Lazarus was sealed in this tomb, the smells had nowhere else to go. Everything would have lingered in the air with the expectation no one would sniff that specific combination of smells ever again. But when Jesus told Lazarus to come out, the first thing Lazarus’ body would have processed was the smell. From that point on, the smell of nard would have been permanently connected to that moment in his story. Lazarus knew what that smell was used for. Yet he also experienced a new promise where, in the words of Rev. Karoline Lewis, “the life that God provides will be present even in the reality of death.” Later, while gathered around a shared table, that promise sat with them too. The smell of nard still represented what it was typically used for. Yet because Jesus was there, it reaffirmed their connection to love that would never end. 

We might not have a story like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus where the promise given by God was made palpable in a way others could see. We might feel as if our life exists in its own kind of void – one empty of connection, healing, wholeness, and a sense that all of this has meaning. I’ll admit that I sometimes feel lost, especially when the horrors of war, violence, anger, and fear reveal how talented we are at being as unloving and hurtful as possible. I wish we all had the opportunity to sit at a table with Jesus to let his presence soak into every nook and cranny in our world. We need his love and grace to be more than something hanging in the air. We need it to be palpable, tangible, and real – like a smell reminding us what’s always around us. And that’s one reason why we have baptism and faith. It’s why we were given the ability to pray; to worship; and to belong to the community that God knows can’t be what it’s supposed to be without us. We need reminders, especially when we doubt, or question, or find ourselves overwhelmed by what’s around us, how God’s love is what truly holds us through. It’s why we have a table – the Lord’s table – where we are welcomed and fed not because we are perfect or because we know everything the Lord’s supper is about. We are included because we are loved. It’s a love we haven’t earned or one we’re entitled to. It is, instead, a love freely given because that’s who God is. At this table – one that extends to wherever and whenever you are – you are gifted a promise that makes you brand new as it soaks into every nook and cranny of your imperfect, but fully known, life.

Amen. 

Sermon: The Monty Hall Problem

Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus]. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” 

Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”’ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’”

Luke 15:1-3,11b-32

My sermon from the Fourth Sunday in Lent (March 27, 2022) on uke 15:1-3,11b-32.

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There’s a brain teaser, a kind of probability puzzle, known as the Monty Hall problem. It’s named after the former host of the old game show Let’s Make a Deal. The puzzle begins by imagining there’s three doors in front of you. Behind one of the doors is a new car and behind the others are goats. You don’t know where the car or the goats are but a game show host does. The first thing you get to do is pick a door you think the car is behind. The host then opens a different door to reveal a goat behind it. You’re left with two doors – one you picked and one you didn’t. The host then asks you a question: do you want to stick with the door you’ve picked or do you want to switch? 

I was thinking about this puzzle while reflecting on our reading today from the gospel according to Luke. It’s a story you might have heard before and it’s usually known as the parable of the prodigal son. Prodigal is one of those words we don’t use very often. It means “to be wasteful and recklessly extravagant.” That’s a pretty good description for the younger son because he’s reckless throughout the story. At the very beginning, he asked his very alive father to pretend he was dead and give the younger son an inheritance. The younger son then traveled to a far off country and spent every penny they had. We get the sense the younger son didn’t care about their future or, at least, chose not to be prepared for whatever might come next. And so, when the money ran out during a crisis he couldn’t control, he survived by working with animals the Jewish community considered unclean. This is a kind of parable that invites us to add our own personal motivations into the story because we can be just as reckless. The dopamine hit we receive through pleasure, entertainment, and what we think success looks like, is often easier to deal with than the sadness, struggle, anger, and frustration that comes through the relationships that make up everyday life. The more we chase after the things we think will make us happy, the more we lose touch with what might actually bring us joy. We soon find ourselves trying to fill a kind of emptiness that no amount of recklessness can ever truly fill.

But the prodigal son isn’t the only person in the story. There’s also two other main characters we could focus on. There is, for example, the generous parent who kept looking towards the horizon, waiting for their child to return. In fact, Jesus sort of makes this the title of the story by opening it with the line “there was a man who had two sons.” We know nothing about his relationship with his children before the story began. Yet it’s not hard to realize how difficult it must have been when his child asked for him to be dead. The father didn’t have to honor his request but he chose to do so, which isn’t typically how the story goes. Usually, the first born son was the one who received most of everything for their inheritance since it was their responsibility to maintain the family’s story into the future. But our Bible has a habit of making the unexpected child favored. Younger siblings such as Jacob, Joseph, David, and those who weren’t even sons, like the daughters of Zelophehad, help us expand our vision of what God’s kingdom is all about. Maybe the father knew these stories and that’s why he fulfilled the unexpected request from his son. Yet I wonder if there’s more to the story because there’s a moment in it when the father wasn’t really as loving as they could have possibly been. When the younger son returned, the father didn’t immediately send someone to tell his older brother what happened. Instead, the older son found out when he came home to a party he wasn’t originally invited to. This older brother is the third character we could focus on. And his response to everything is very relatable because it’s full of anger, frustration, and a kind of exhaustion that comes when you’re the responsible one while everyone else acts up. When the younger son returned, the father organized a giant wedding feast that caused everyone else’s work to stop. But the older brother only learned of it when he came to the other side of the door. I imagine his mind raced through all the things he had already picked as part of his life story. He had never acted like his father was dead and he had lived with his family as they dealt with the emotional, spiritual, and financial consequences that came with a brother who decided their family wasn’t family anymore. These three characters give us three choices on what we could focus on. But for me, at least, I’m drawn to the older brother who ends the story standing outside that door. He has the opportunity to switch away from his previous choice and do the one thing he hasn’t yet done in the story. He could open the door, see his brother, interact with them, and enter into a new future big enough to transform all of them into something more. 

Now the solution to the Monty Hall problem can be full of math but, at its simplest form, the answer is a bit counterintuitive.  Our instinct is that, once the host revealed a goat, we have a 1 in 2 chance of finding the car because there’s two doors unopened. Switching, we think, won’t improve our odds. But the truth is that we should switch because, by revealing a goat, the host has changed the story. When we first picked a door, we created two subsets with one holding the door we picked and the other the doors we didn’t pick. There’s a 1 in 3 chance the car is in the subset of doors we picked but there’s a 2 in 3 chance it’s in the other group. When the host revealed a goat, they added new information into the subset of doors we didn’t pick. The 2 in 3 chance for those 2 doors didn’t change but we suddenly know which one of them doesn’t hold the car. Your best bet is to switch because a new story has already begun. We can choose to be like the older brother – sticking with the choices we’ve already made because that’s how we want our life to be. But when he got to that door, the party was already raging. That party didn’t come into being because the family was perfect with a father who always knew how to love in every possible situation. The family in our story is a bit dysfunctional which means they couldn’t have pulled this off on their own. What they needed was a gift of grace that would remind them of the generosity at the heart of love. This grace is a gift given to us through baptism and through faith. It helps us do basic things like waking up in the morning and worshiping in any way that we can. This grace brings us through the everyday bits of our everyday lives. And it also welcomes us back even when we, through recklessness or apathy, ignore the God who has already claimed us as God’s own. The story of the prodigal son is a story of embracing grace. This grace is big enough to help us confess our sins, seek forgiveness, and keep us ready to welcome the unexpected people God will bring into our midst. This grace helps us get over ourselves even when we feel we’ve done everything right. And this grace is what helps us grow in love because generosity isn’t for us alone. We get to make a choice to switch away from acting as if grace is only for those we deem worthy and we can, instead, open a new door where the grace we’re given becomes the grace we share. 

Amen. 

Sermon: A Fig Tree in a Vineyard

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. He asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”

Luke 13:1-9

My sermon from the Third Sunday in Lent (March 20, 2022) on Luke 13:1-9.

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Why was a fig tree in a vineyard? 

Now that might not have been the first question that came to mind while you listened to today’s reading from the gospel according to Luke. This text is difficult because it begins with suffering. A group of people came to Jesus with news about the Roman governor slaughtering Galileans during a recent religious ritual. Jesus responded by reminding them of another recent event when a tower collapsed, possibly during an earthquake. We don’t know much about these two events because these are the only words we have about them. Yet we’re not unfamiliar with this kind of suffering because we see it whenever we turn on the tv or look at our phones. It’s not always easy making sense of suffering. And figuring out why suffering happens is really hard. When we try to make meaning out of that kind of misery, we sometimes focus on those who were harmed. We act as if suffering cannot be meaningless and so those impacted by it must have contributed to it in some way. When the people came to Jesus with news about the slaughter of those who were worshiping God, their attempt at making sense of what made no sense led them to act as if the victims caused God to remove God’s love from them. Jesus listened to the news they brought and heard the anxiety, worry, and fear in their words. They wanted  something to help make sense of the world. So Jesus shared with them a parable – a short story – that doesn’t really make much sense on its own. 

Now I’ve never grown a fig tree but an old friend of mine in Astoria, Queens had one in the backyard of their building. The yard wasn’t very large but it had a little patio, some grass, and a lone fig tree all by itself. The tree had been there for a long time and every year, my friend would invite us over to pick fresh figs. The whole yard wasn’t well maintained and I don’t think the owner bothered to take care of it. Yet fresh figs came every year and it seemed strange to have this one plant all by itself. But I recently learned fig trees tend to be loners. They’re self-pollinating which means they don’t need multiple plants right next to each other for them to form fruit. A few versions of fig trees have really aggressive roots which means they don’t play well with others. They need a lot of sun and elbow room so that they can breathe. Fig trees are fairly robust, only needing a few inches of compost, a tiny bit of fertilizer, and rainwater from the sky to grow to their full potential. And when their environment is halfway decent, it can take anywhere from three to five years for a fig tree to mature and grow ripe fruit. We don’t see many fig trees here in Northern New Jersey but the people who first heard this story saw them everyday. They knew fig trees were loners and that it was normal for a tree to need more than 3 years to mature. A vineyard full of grapes and fig trees flourishing in a field were completely normal things. But a fig tree in the center of a vineyard wasn’t. Something about this parable wasn’t quite right. So how do we make sense out of a story that makes no sense? 

Now one thing we might try to do is figure out which character in Jesus’ story we’re supposed to relate to. But I wonder if we could, instead, simply pause and let the whole scene sink in. We have in front of us a vineyard where life was meant to grow. Not everything in the vineyard made complete sense but that doesn’t mean life wasn’t possible. Everything is owned by a landowner who’s impatient, anxious, worried, and consumed by an unmet expectation. And the fig tree at the center of it all still needed time to fully mature. Yet when the landowner came to see the tree, their first response was to let it burn. The fig tree, in a sense, shouldn’t be there but I wonder if maybe that fig tree had some other purpose that the landowner couldn’t see. Maybe it was meant to grow, to endure, and to provide shade for those who worked in the vineyard. Maybe it wasn’t there to be consumed by others and just needed an opportunity to live. In a vineyard that doesn’t always make sense and that others sometimes want to burn, here was a fig tree with a chance to become something new. And while there was a landowner threatening violence, there was also a gardener willing to nurture everything into more. 

One of my issues with life is that it doesn’t always make sense. We exist in a world where things happen and we sometimes never know the reasons why. We live in an interconnected world filled with people who have their own stories and histories. We often act as if we move through the world on our own but we’re not actually isolated from one another. We live in our own version of a vineyard that is often off kilter and with more than one thing amiss. We do the best we can to control what we can yet no amount of fertilizer or compost can make everything grow the way we wish. There’s always a storm brewing over the horizon and the rain, sun, and so many other things remain outside our control. Life is full of mysteries and it doesn’t always make sense. And while our desire to make meaning out of the misery might encourage us to blame victims for the violence that happened to them, we can choose to do something else. We can take a step back, look at the entire picture, and name those who choose violence rather than mercy. We can identify the real victims instead of those who embrace their own kind of victimhood. We can choose to not let people, including ourselves, off the hook for the suffering we cause. And when we are victims, we can know that it wasn’t our fault. There are moments in our lives when others choose to cause us fear but there are other times when something like an earthquake will cause us to wonder if God’s love is real. I wish we lived in a world without suffering and I think God wants that too. Yet when God saw the suffering that is part of our story, God chose to live through that suffering too. We, in Christ and with Christ, do not go through our lives alone. We have with us a gardener, who is here to nurture us through. That doesn’t mean things won’t be hard or that we won’t suffer. But it does mean that the story of suffering doesn’t have to be the limit to all there is. In a world full of vineyards and fig trees growing together, we can step back and embrace a different kind of life that does not ask us to lie, or fear, or harm each other. We can, instead, see how we are nurtured; notice how we are loved; pay attention to the suffering of others; and let their pain break open our hearts. We can cry and mourn and rage and wonder why God and ourselves let these kinds of things happen. We can notice how this mystery is a part of our lives and how the gift of grace, through word, prayers, song, kindness, support, reconciliation, repentance, and even the Lord’s supper, promises to carry us through. We can look at the moment we’re in and simply live because we have with us the One who will make us more. 

Amen.

Sermon: Don’t Outfox the Fox

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.” He said to them, “Go and tell that fox for me, ‘Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside of Jerusalem.’ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Luke 13:31-35

My sermon from the Second Sunday in Lent (March 13, 2022) on Luke 13:31-35.

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A couple of years ago, I was leaving the church office through the door facing Pascack Road when I noticed something through the window. I had already pushed the push bar all the way down but I stopped before I opened the door. Sitting at the top of the steps was something small and fuzzy. It had two large pointy ears, a small pointed black nose, two deep eyes, and fur colored red, gray, and orange. I stopped in my tracks and stayed perfectly still. And when the little baby fox started to sniff around, I knew it had no idea I was there. The little guy – or gal – looked like a stuffed animal that had come to life. It was small, fluffy, adorable, and just waiting to be hugged. The fox explored the area for about ten minutes before walking away. And while I almost went “awww,” I also knew one of its parents had to be nearby. The next day, at about the same time, I was heading out the same door when I spotted something that made me stop. Sitting at the top of the steps was an adult fox staring at me. We don’t see many foxes out here in suburban New Jersey but the reservoir across the street provides a place for them to live. Foxes are predators, spending their days hunting rabbits, birds, and mice. But every once in a while, a fox will attack a pet or even a person. Foxes can be quite handsome but they’re also sly, cunning, clever, and we imagine them to be pretty untrustworthy. We even have a proverb about not letting the fox guard the henhouse. Foxes hunt and kill because that’s what they’re designed to do. And in our reading from the gospel according to Luke, a group of Pharisees go out of their way to tell Jesus that a “fox is after you.” 

Now we might wonder why the Pharisees told Jesus that King Herod was after him. Our Bible often describes the relationship between the Pharisees and Jesus to be pretty conflicted. In the decades after Jesus’ death, the writers of scripture used the Pharisees as a foil to Jesus. Yet the Pharisees were, when Jesus began his public ministry, just one of the many different flavors of Judaism. Their religious leaders were known as Rabbis which is what Jesus’ followers called him too. Jesus was engaged in an active conversation with other faithful Jewish people about God’s call for their lives. The Pharisees weren’t the ones who had political power and while they might have disagreed with Jesus about certain things, we also have plenty of stories where Jesus and the Pharisees shared a meal with each other. The motivation behind those meals is sometimes up for debate but I wonder if their relationship to each other is similar to our relationships with different flavors of Christianity. Being a Lutheran Christian is a bit different than, say, being a Roman Catholic Christian or a Coptic Christian. And while we do have a history of fighting against each other – using an unholy amount of war, oppression, and violence – there are moments when we chose to be for each other. Today’s story seems, to me at least, to be a moment when a group of Pharisees chose to be “for” Jesus. That doesn’t mean they followed him or that Jesus followed them. But I think they saw in each other a kind of faithfulness that, while different, could be respected. The Pharisees weren’t big fans of King Herod because he helped oppress the Jewish community. He had political power because Rome gave him that power. He, and the rest of his family, used force and violence to stay in control. And even when he was glitzed out in the finest clothing and following the religious traditions of his people, Herod often chose to rule by fear. He was a fox, always ready to hunt. 

So when the Pharisees said “Herod was near,” they were, I think, truly afraid. They were afraid for Jesus, for those who followed Jesus, and for themselves. Herod wouldn’t discriminate against who got caught up in the violence he caused. The Pharisees knew Heord could attack at any time and for any reason. Herod wanted those around him to feel as if there was a fox sitting on their front steps watching everything they do. And when you live in that kind of environment, it’s difficult to live life to the fullest because there’s this fear overshadowing you. It’s a fear that makes us second guess who we are, what we say, and what we do. It’s a fear that doesn’t let us be authentically who we are because we’re scared everything could be taken away. It’s a fear that makes every moment uncomfortable, drawing our focus and energy away from the life God wants us to live. This kind of fear is a powerful motivator which is why some create their own fake fear to further their own agenda. Yet there are those who spend every moment of every day making sure what they say and do doesn’t lead to violence. That kind of life is exhausting because you never know exactly when the fear will be realized. It’s a fear that is sometimes hidden within families that no one else sees and it’s a fear I see lived out among my friends and colleagues with kids who are trans as they gather together piles and piles of documents to show that their kid is really their kid. At any time, their greatest fear can become realized because of the choices others make. Foxes can be anywhere but I’m not sure if God designed us to cause others that kind of fear. 

Which is why, I think, Jesus responded in the way he did. He didn’t tell the Pharisees they shouldn’t be afraid or that they should choose faith over fear. He didn’t brush aside what Herod could do or invite everyone to run and hide. Instead, he named Herod as the fox he was and gave them a message to share. Jesus told them to tell his story and the life he chose to live. He was going to keep being Jesus: casting out demons, curing the sick, and bringing wholeness to those in need. He was going to center the stories of those who lived in fear because of the actions of others. Jesus was going to bring good news to everyone in harm’s way even though he was well aware of what we do when God’s love shows up. He wasn’t going to let the lies we tell and the fears we spread limit his story. Instead, in the words of Rev. Jennifer Moland-Kovash, Jesus said: “Go and tell that fox that I’m busy – bringing good news to those who need it, being the hands and feet of God in this world. Go and tell that fox that I’ve got better things to do in this world than huddle in the corner waiting to die. God and tell that fox we’re busy living, but when the time comes, we’ll [always] be under the wings of Jesus.” Jesus doesn’t let the fox center their story at the expense of those longing for God’s love. And that’s because, through baptism and faith, we all have a new story to tell. We live in a world full of foxes yet we don’t have to be one or let foxes tell us who we are. Instead, we get to live into the promises of God and do the living God wants us to do. The good news we bring into the world is that something other than this is possible. That doesn’t mean things won’t be hard or we’ll never be afraid. But we can, together, decenter our fears and embrace the new life we’ve already been given. Jesus has already gathered us under his wings so we, with him and through him, get to do the living God wants us to do. 

Amen. 

What Does it Mean to Gather?: The Pastor’s Message for the February 2022 Messenger

A few Sundays ago, everything was cold. When I drove to church, the thermometer gauge on my car read zero, and the engine whined because it didn’t want to be working. When I walked into the sanctuary, it was a toasty sixty degrees, and I quickly got setup for worship. David Scance soon arrived and got ready to use music to share the gospel. Together, we readied ourselves to hang out with Jesus and you. When the clock hit 9:00 am, David and I were the only ones in the building. No one was in the pews, yet I noticed that roughly a dozen households were watching online.

Prior to our livestream days, worshipping in the sanctuary on cold mornings was
pretty lonely. Yet, because you made the commitment to gather using your
smartphone, TV, computer, or even by calling in – we didn’t feel alone. Instead,
we felt like the body of Christ gathering in a new way so that we can all keep
following the Way. Prior to the pandemic, I often said the easiest way to grow the church is to be at church. We connect best to a faith community when we see the life happening in that place. For a first time visitor, seeing people of all ages gathered with each other means a great deal. It isn’t always easy to share our faith, but we can show up for our faith. Yet this pandemic has shown how the idea of “gathering” has changed. We have taken care of each other while worshipping with each other in a variety of ways. I lament I didn’t do enough before this point to better engage those who have been worshipping at home for years. And I have had to grow in my own
understanding of what it means to show up for your faith. Yet, I’m hopeful we are finally putting into practice at our church a clearer expression of how expansive and inclusive is the body of Christ.

Over the next few months, we’re going to learn how to share the vitality of CLC even though our gathering together is more decentralized than it was in the past. I’m not exactly sure how to do that, but I know that we, together, can make the body of Christ visible in new ways. When Jesus said “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them,” we invested our energy in the “where.” It’s now time to focus on the “gathered” because no matter how we gather, it is Jesus himself who is uniting us as one.

Blessed to be the church with you,
Pastor Marc

Sermon: In Groups vs Last Minute Field Goals

21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” 23 He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” 24 And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months and there was a severe famine over all the land, 26 yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27 There were also many with a skin disease in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28 When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30 But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.

Luke 4:21-30

My sermon from the 4th Sunday after Epiphany (January 30, 2022) on Luke 4:21-30.

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So last weekend was a really amazing weekend for football. Every game was close, exciting, and required a last minute field goal. My favorite articles this week were full of quotes from Kansas City Chiefs fans who chose to leave Arrowhead stadium when there was only 13 seconds left in the fourth quarter. If you’re a fan of one of those teams that played or will play today, I’m happy for you. But if you’re a fan of another team, you might have spent this last week wondering how yours will stack up twice a year against Patrick Mahomes now that he’s entered his final form. As a devoted fan of the Denver Broncos, I have no idea how we’re going to win in the future. But I’m hopeful the team can figure it out and they started that process this week by hiring a new coach. Now, I’m getting used to the fact that, every two or three years, the Broncos fire their head coach and go find a new one. A good coach is hard to find and I don’t know all the details of what it takes for that to happen. But the whole process, from the outside, can be a bit frustrating because it feels like the same small group of people are interviewed every year. It seems like most have been a coach on each other’s staff and the whole adage – it’s not what you know but who you know – is on full display. On some level, it makes sense to hire people you already know because, in theory, you understand their strengths, weaknesses, and how they work. Yet when the same group of people keep hiring each other, a kind of bubble forms where their conversations, thoughts, expectations, and points of view reinforce the status quo. And once we’re in a bubble, our world becomes really small. This kind of network of relationships can be a life-giving place where we experience love, care, wholeness, and a sense of purpose. But when our network stays small, we end up limiting who we are because we act as if we already know what we can become. 

Today’s reading from the gospel according to Luke is a continuation of what we heard last week. Jesus had just started his ministry and was wandering in and out of the towns around the sea of Galilee. He made a pit stop in the town he grew up in, taking the opportunity to see his folks, do his laundry, and eat his mother’s food. He wasn’t in Nazareth for very long but Jesus, being Jewish, made sure to head to the synagogue on the sabbath day. When he walked through the door, I imagine people nodded their heads and came over to say hello. The community knew about his travels and they wanted to ask about his mom, his siblings, and what life was like being on the road. He was among the people he grew up with and that included his friends, his classmates, his neighbors, and everyone who had their own story about interacting with Jesus. They had, over the years, attended each other’s weddings, helped build each other’s homes, and brought their version of a 1st century casserole when a neighbor was in need. As neighbors in a small town, they created their own small network of people who had invested time, energy, and care for each other. They were their own kind of community and Jesus was a part of them. So when they handed him a scroll containing words from the Prophet Isaiah, Jesus was simply their Jesus. And after he announced he would be the one who’d make the oppressed go free, give sight to the blind, help all captives be released, and bring good news specifically to the poor, the community was amazed. Their Jesus was becoming a big deal and they turned to each other to speak. 

Now our story  records one thing they shared but I imagine that wasn’t the only thing they said. They already knew Jesus was doing new things and they got excited about what that might mean for them. In a world where who you know matters a lot, having a miracle worker in your in-group would be pretty awesome. We don’t know exactly what the community thought Jesus might do but they were excited about the possibilities. Their minds raced because they knew Jesus before he was cool. They assumed he would stay close to his friends and offer them the good news they specifically wanted. Yet what Jesus had in mind was a bit bigger than anything they expected. The good news he was bringing into the world wasn’t meant only for them. It was meant for everyone – which meant his words and his ministry were going to be a bit complicated. The good news one group wants to hear might not be the good news others need. Yet God’s love is always God’s love – and it works to constantly expand our imaginations about what is possible in our world. It moves us to break through the bubbles we build because the limitations we place on our relationships will not limit the work of our God. When we stay primarily focused only on the people around us, our imagination becomes a bit stagnant since the stories we share, the situations we find ourselves in, and our assumptions about what it means to live well in the world remains the same. It’s difficult to be new when we can’t see new and we sometimes don’t even realize how limited we are. We need a gentle or not so gentle nudge from Jesus to show our bubbles are not the limit of what it means to be with God. There is always more and that more is going to build bridges through, around, and over the walls we build that keep our relationships small. 

Now those kinds of relationships are never easy because what works among one group of people might not work with someone else. We have to grow in how we communicate with each other and that requires learning each other’s history, values, hopes, and dreams. This work invites us to listen to stories that might challenge who we know ourselves to be. And it expands our sense of what good news actually is because what’s good for a Bronco fan might not be what the Rams need when they take the field this afternoon. The good news of God is a very particular kind of news because it speaks to who we are right now. It challenges us in ways that require us to love and serve and see the world differently while giving us hope that God’s promises are actually true. The limits we place on what’s possible with God are limits that God will always break through. And that’s because by the very nature of our baptism – of our being brought into this body of Christ that includes people from all places, all walks of life, all genders, all nationalities, and even from different time periods – we are already connected to a web of relationships that can never be small. We are part of an inclusive and expansive in-group that breaks through every smaller in-group we set up that invites us to do one one hardest and yet most essential things we can do in our lives. And that’s to just love. Love the people we’re with. Love the people who know us and who claim us as their own. Love the people we don’t know and those who God brings into our lives. And when we feel the urge to keep our network of relationships small, we need to let the limitlessness of God’s love show us how big God’s kingdom actually is. Now we’re always going to have our own in-groups. And it’s okay to have our own network of people that nourishes our body, mind, and spirit. Yet these networks are not meant to be the limit of our relationships because the Son of God connects us to so much more. We can, through love, keep ourselves and our communities open to the possibility we can change and grow. And even though we can’t fully know what that growth will look like, the Jesus who has made us part of his network of relationships will be there to carry us through. 

Amen. 

Sermon: Weeping with/in God

1All the people [of Israel] gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. 2Accordingly, Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. 3He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. 5And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people, and when he opened it, all the people stood up. 6Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. 8So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.

9And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. 

10Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”


Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

My sermon from the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany (January 23, 2022) on Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10.

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One of the neat things, I think, about the incarnation – about God’s decision to enter the entirety of our human story by being a real human being – is how it invites us to pay attention to the physical nature of our lives and our world. We are not just a series of thoughts floating around in our heads. We are embodied, moving through a world filled with things to touch, smell, taste, see, and hear. This  physicalness is a big part of our lived story and it’s also a big part of God’s story too. One way we engage deeper with our Bible is by remembering how these stories happened in places filled with dirt, buildings, trees, grass, sand, rocks, animals, and people. The words in our Bible are more than just bits of ink on a piece of paper or shaded pixels on a screen. They show us where God’s story is lived out. 

And that physicalness, I think, is a big part of our first reading from the book of Nehemiah. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah were originally one story that was eventually split in two. And they give us a kind of spiritual reflection unpacking what happened in Jerusalem once the Jewish community returned. In the year 586 BCE, the Babylonian empire destroyed Jerusalem and forced most of its surviving population to live hundreds of miles away along the banks of the Euphrates river. For roughly 70 years the community lived in exile and had to learn what it meant to be Jewish without access to their promised land. During their time away, they began to give the Hebrew Bible its shape. Their story – from the book of Genesis through the Prophets – was collected, edited, and written down on scrolls. This process involved a lot of listening, reading, reflecting, prayer, and negotiations over what to include. They clung tightly to promises given to Abraham and to how God rescued them from slavery in Egypt. They celebrated every commandment, every covenant, and the glory they saw in the Davidic kingdom. And when things went wrong, they noticed their God was with them even when their hope was gone. 

Now when the Persians destroyed the Babylonian Empire, they allowed the Jewish community to return to Jerusalem. Some chose to stay where they were while others packed up their belongings and headed west. When they arrived in their former capital city, what they found was a lot of work. Jerusalem was in ruins and the Temple – the place God promised to be – was a pile of rubble. The old rules about who lived where and who owned what no longer applied because those who weren’t exiled had made new lives for themselves in the place where the kings of Judea once ruled. Those who returned knew things had changed but after spending an entire lifetime listening to stories of the city’s greatness, they had a vision in their heads of what the city of Jerusalem was all about. Yet when what remained of the city first came into view, their expectations ran headfirst into their reality. Everything had changed and their hard work had just begun. 

So when the community gathered at the Water Gate, they were doing two things. First, they were celebrating the holy day that would eventually become known as Rosh Hashanah. Second, they chose to also acknowledge that, roughly 65 years since their initial return from exile, the city walls were finally complete. Jerusalem was beginning to look like the city they held within their hearts and they could, in a tangible way, express their faith through an early version of the Torah in their City of David. I can’t help but think that, while standing and listening to God’s story in that physical place, some felt as if things were finally returning to normal. As they closed their eyes, it seemed as if they had gone back to that moment before all this stuff happened. But when they opened their eyes and truly saw what was all around them, they wept because they realized they couldn’t go back. Change had happened. And in the words of Rev. Katie Hines-Shah, “maybe… [they couldn’t] return to [their] normal after all.” 

Now Nehemiah doesn’t tell us exactly why the people wept. But on this Sunday as we return to in-person worship after a few weeks away, I see their weeping as a response to the loss of our so-called normal. We all had our vision of what the church and our lives would be like when this pandemic was finally over. And last summer and fall, it looked like our normal might finally return. But then the uncertainty of this pandemic required us to step away from in-person worship again. And while each of us has been impacted by this current stage of the pandemic in different ways, what I saw and heard and personally experienced was a kind of exhaustion manifesting itself as sadness, tears, anger, frustration, and a desire to just pretend as if we’re already moved on. It’s hard to not be really tired right now. And it’s exhausting being a parent or a grandparent or a caregiver or a teacher or nurse or a doctor or just a plain human being in this moment. Many of our actions and in-actions have been shaped by a longing and a grief for this return to normal. Yet there are days when our weeping and mourning seem to be the entirety of what this new normal is all about. We still don’t know what the future will bring but we do know there’s no going back to the way things were. Everything has changed and it’s okay to stop pretending that it hasn’t. 

Yet, as we hear in our words from Nehemiah, “this day is holy to the Lord your God.” This day – not the one that happened in the past or the one we hope for the future – is holy. And that’s because God doesn’t wait for the city to be rebuilt, repaired, and returned to its former glory before God chooses to re-enter the story. God didn’t despise the Jewish community because things had changed. God didn’t shy away from them because they were gathering and celebrating and doing things a bit differently than before. God was with them in their new ways of being in the world because God had always been with them – even when they were exiled to a place far from their physical and spiritual home. And when it came time to hear God’s story, the bits that were shared came from the Torah – the first five books of the Bible that do not focus on the community’s time in the promised land. It’s a story that’s a little incomplete because it ends before they get to the place where they are going. The story ends with the community still wandering but trusting that God was about to carry them into a new kind of future. The narrative within the Torah wraps up long before the story of the community ends. And that’s because God knew that they had a future and had way more life to live. 

So that means, that even during this time which will never again look like our past, we get to celebrate the goodness of our God because God has already declared we belong. Our story is still not complete but we are completely in our God because, through baptism and faith, we are part of God’s future. That doesn’t mean that today won’t be hard. But it does invite us to trust that what’s changed won’t change the promises of our God. We can, together, use this moment to make sure that our worship, our prayers, and our lives embody the physical presence of the God who is always with us. We will move into God’s future because God’s future is already moving through us. 

Amen.