Category: Faith

My sermon from the 21st Sunday after Pentecost (October 13, 2024) on Mark 10:17-31.

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So as the candidacy coordinator of the New Jersey Synod. I, along with the Bishop and the Candidacy committee, journey with people discerning if God wants them to serve as a pastor or deacon in the church. My primary responsibility is to keep track of the paperwork as they move through a process that can take up to six years. It’s always exciting to be with these diverse individuals from many different backgrounds who believe that Jesus matters. And once they’re granted entrance into the process, each candidate takes a unique path that involves earning a graduate degree, working as a chaplain, and serving as an intern in a congregation, while also living out their vocations as parents, spouses, grandparents, employees, and more. The work they do is often difficult since they need to unwind their prior thoughts about God and discover a more fuller picture of what the life of faith is all about. So one of the metaphors I’ve used to describe this work is by inviting each candidate to build a kind of spiritual house that informs their identity as an ordained leader in the church. But every once in a while, the person entering the candidacy process has already been ordained in another flavor of Christianity. Rather than asking them to build their spiritual home from scratch, these leaders tend to go through a kind of renovation that involves putting up a metaphorical and spiritual scaffolding around the life they’ve already lived. These temporary and imaginary structures of wood and metal provide a platform for these folks to futz, fix, and reshape their own assumptions, expectations, and views of Christian faith so they are better rooted in what makes Lutheran Christianity distinctive and cool. It would be easy to act as if only those ordained or who had grown up in other flavors of Christianity should do this kind of work. But I think all of us would benefit from a little time recognizing how our spiritual homes need some renovation too. Not everything we consider to be part of the faith is truly faithful. And when we listen to Jesus loving people by telling them to give all their wealth and money to those without enough, we’re not always sure how to integrate Jesus’ words into the homes we’ve already built. 

Now when Jesus says something hard, I like to climb up my own spiritual scaffolding to find the spot where my thoughts, fears, anxiety, and worry about money and faith meet. I tend to think that at this point in my life, I approach the concept and reality of wealth in a rational and constructive way. But the truth is that regardless of how wise, common-sense, or intelligent we think we are, wealth is something we don’t handle in a spiritually healthy way. Wealth is defined through the experiences we had growing up as well as influenced by a culture where the display of all kinds of financial excess are very important. In Jesus’ day, more than 90% of all people lived at a subsistence level which meant that having a comfortable place to lay your head and knowing where your next meal was coming from was basically an incredible wealth in itself. But here in Woodcliff Lake, surrounded by million dollar homes that some purchased this week while others bought those same homes for a fraction of the price decades ago, we don’t always realize how wealthy we truly are. It’s much easier for us to recognize what we don’t have since there’s always that one neighbor posting on social media pictures of their new car, their new vacation home, or their next over-the-top vacation. It’s also become almost second nature to complain about how expensive things are rather than admitting we’re keeping up with everything or maybe even doing better than we did in the past. We’re very good at not recognizing our own spending while, at the same time, paying way too much attention to what others do. That’s why, I think, so much of our Christian tradition has spent their energy managing Jesus’ words rather than fully integrating them into what a life of faith can be. Rather than hearing Jesus, we act as if the young man couldn’t possibly be good so Jesus was simply calling his bluff. Or since there’s always someone who is richer, we pretend as if Jesus’ words were really only meant for those who we don’t think deserve their wealth in the first place. And if we’re feeling a bit more spirited, we might partner with Peter and name all we’ve given up to receive some kind of material or spiritual payoff from the divine. Now – I want to be clear that I’m not trying to minimize how devastating not having access to money or wealth can be. Losing a job, receiving a life-changing medical diagnosis, losing ourselves to addiction, or having to feed our family with the help of a food pantry can not only derail our lives; it can also fill us with incredible shame. Some of us know exactly what that is like and we shouldn’t let potential fears and worries dismiss those very real experiences. But when we choose to manage Jesus’ words rather than carry them up onto our spiritual scaffolding, then our view of Jesus and faith becomes distorted. Wealth has a habit, for better or worse, of being how we define who wins and who doesn’t. We can, in the same breath, demonize those who we think have too much while praising others who have much since we think they’re on our side. We use wealth as a kind of tool to validate who wins since money pulling yourself up by your bootstraps is limited to whatever money someone makes. And even though we say God is impartial towards all, we assume God is obsessed with winning as we are. The young man has to be some kind of loser or Jesus wouldn’t have said what he said. So we do our best to give the problem of Jesus’ words a faithless answer rather than taking them up our spiritual scaffolding to reflect, wonder, and sit with what it all might mean. 

Leaving Jesus’ words in today’s reading as an open-ended story can make us feel pretty uncomfortable. Yet Rev. Sarah Wilson, in a commentary about this passage, noted how the open-endedness might be the point of it all. “We have no idea what became of the rich young man [since he] simply vanished from the scene. Maybe he got more tight-fisted as he aged. Maybe he even gave up trying to keep the law since it was all rendered useless in the face of his greed. Or maybe he was in the crowd at the foot of the cross, or a hearer on the day of Pentecost; [or[ maybe he became an unsung evangelist” that this church in Woodcliff Lake could trace its ancestry to. Letting the rich young man’s story stay open reminds us how renovating our spiritual home is what a life with faith looks like. Each of us knows how much – or how little – we give. We carry our own histories with wealth, poverty, wants, and needs informing what we trust as being enough. Our time with Jesus – in worship, through His story in the Bible, and with His presence in every aspect of our daily life – is the foundation and what we use to reform the life we get to live. And when we recognize how our faith isn’t already finished and complete, we aren’t downplaying the life and peace and struggle and work that comes with following Christ. We are, instead, living with the One who the world tried to put last but who, through the Cross, made everyone first. Struggling with wealth, money, what to give, and how to live in a world where wealth defines so much of who we are is something we’ll always struggle with. But when we trust that Jesus is on our spiritual scaffolding with us, the limits of this life will be overcomed by the limitless of the One who knows how priceless you already are. 

Amen.

My sermon from the 20th Sunday after Pentecost (October 6, 2024) on Mark 10:1-16.

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A few weeks ago, a thread on comic book twitter wondered why we read superhero comics in the first place. Superheroes have been around since the 1930s and spending time with these fictional characters in spandex can be a fun mental escape from a world where life can feel very complicated and small. For some comic book fans, superheroes remind them of how they felt as kids – with a bit of nostalgia providing fuel for an imagination where everything is possible. Others, however, form such an intense relationship with these characters that they feel a sense of ownership over these characters they didn’t create. For these kinds of fans, the time, energy, and money they invested in these characters give them say over what these cape wearing drawings say and do. They have, over time, created a certain kind of lore and mythology for these characters in their heads that become the only box they’re allowed to operate in. If a creator or publisher tries to take these fictional characters in a different direction or act as if new people might want to read these comics too, these fans don’t simply move on and accept that not everything is made for them. They, instead, post, rage, and bully these creators that can include physical threats. Those who act this way claim they’re saying these characters from those who don’t know or respect them like they should. But the truth is that these fans lack the courage, imagination, or care to trust these characters as being more than the boxes they’d put them in. Trying to box things or people in isn’t something people only do with pop culture media we consume. It’s also something we often try to do to the people around us. Today’s reading from the gospel according to Mark is one of those moments when people tried to box Jesus in and he, in response, simply told them: “no.” 

Now before we get into the meat of Jesus’ words, we need to remember where we are in the story. We know, based on what we heard last week, that the disciples were struggling finding a box to put the Messiah in. Jesus, realizing their struggle as well as their own doubts about their place within the kingdom of God, invited a little child to be at the center of their conversation. This child, who could give them nothing of material or social value, was just as important to what Jesus was up to as these disciples who had been present at every miracle Jesus had done. Those following Jesus had a responsibility to notice who God is for and how God is for them too. So after pushing against the ways the disciples were trying to box Jesus in, Jesus’ next stop across the Jordan River involved someone in the crowd attempting to box him in too. We’re told that he was asked a question by someone trying to test him. But I don’t think this test was, necessarily, only about trying to get Jesus to share the so-called right answer. It was, rather, an attempt to see which box Jesus fit in since the different flavors of Judaism at the time thought about divorce in diverse ways. Those around Jesus were aware of what he could do and how some of what taught agreed with some while upsetting others. He was a religious leader people, including the disciples, struggled to connect to their own thoughts and expectations about God, faith, and life in the world. They had created their own kinds of spiritual boxes full of different teachings, sayings, and theological reflections that gave them a sense of ownership over what living faithfully might mean. These mental boxes not only made them feel like they got God but also gave them tools they could use to engage with whatever Jesus said and did. Their understandings would serve as a way to celebrate or push back against what Jesus was up to. But when we’ve already decided what God will say, it’s nearly impossible to truly listen to what God actually says. Jesus refused to be put into the boxes created by those who followed and challenged him. Instead, he shaped his words about divorce through the lens of what immediately happened before – and after this section. If we pull Jesus’ words out of context, we’re left with a saying that we then try to fit into whatever boxes about marriage and love and relationships we’ve created. But when we leave scripture in scripture, we see how Jesus’ care for the vulnerable was at the heart of what he shared. In the ancient world, and even today, divorce can disproportionately impact some more than others. Women, and often children, are left without the financial, social, and cultural security they need to thrive. Men, in Jesus’ time, were the ones who decided how long a marriage would be. And when we see the people next to us as expendable in any way, then their humanity becomes lost in whatever value we try to extract from them. Jesus’ throwback to the Genesis story isn’t focusing on the length of the relationships we have but rather that our identity rests in the image of God we were made in. Jesus is not interested in hypothetical conversations about the relationships we dream in our head. He cares about real people living lives that are often complicated, joyful, difficult, full of sadness, and bliss. The relationships we have aren’t usually easy to box into any single mold or experience. But when we see one another as those who bear the image of God – we do more than simply treat each other with a little more respect. We also begin to see just how big, inclusive, loving, supportive, and caring we – because of Jesus – get to be. 

Relationships, though, are hard and they won’t always last. Choosing to be with – and for – one another rarely resembles whatever Romcom, Hallmark Movie, comic book, or fantasy we try to box everyone of our relationships into. Relationships often require us to be vulnerable, to admit our mistakes, to own our failings, and to journey with people who will never fit every one of our expectations. Being together requires us to let go of those boxes we put all our trust in so we can really connect to the person we’re actually with. This kind of work is difficult and there are times when the most holy thing we can do is to end a relationship that is not letting us – or the one we’re with – be who God has made them to be. This doesn’t mean, however, that relationships should be seen as expendable since no person, in Jesus’ eyes, ever are. We should be committed to one another – in our marriages, friendships, and communities as Jesus is committed to us. We are called to see one another as Jesus sees us – worthy of love, connection, and life that includes those around us since we all carry with us the image of God. And when we find ourselves trying to box people into our own expectations or letting their, or our, vulnerabilities serve as a reason for us to push them aside, Jesus reminds us of our commitment to those who can’t give us anything of value since he, immediately after these words about relationships, included and blessed the little children around them. When we recognize the image of God within those around us and that people are more than simply what they give or create, we begin to discover how Jesus always pushes us beyond whatever box we try to put faith in. We won’t get every relationship right and even when divorce is the most life-giving thing to do, what happens next can be complicated and complex. Yet the One who sees you, values you, and is with you  promises that the boxes we try to put ourselves, our loved ones, and our God in – won’t be the limit of who we, through Jesus, get to be.

Amen. 

My sermon from the 19th Sunday after Pentecost (September 29, 2024) on Mark 9:38-50.

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So it’s the fourth week of the new NFL season and football fans all over the country are wondering: what went wrong? Teams that were supposed to be at the top of their divisions look terrible while the teams that were written off are full of new life. The headlines I read this week included words such as “awful,” “terrible,” “hopeless,” and even “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Now as a life-long Denver Bronco fan, I’m very much a “Bo-liever,” hoping this season will reverse all the heartbreak we’ve recently gone through. But being a fan isn’t easy since fandom is full of all kinds of incredible highs, sad lows, and way too many cultural expectations. Fans are, it seems, required to complain about their teams with way more passion and energy than they’re ever allowed to use when their teams win. And so-called real fans can only call themselves that when they lived through times when everything went horribly wrong. Every fandom comes with its own subculture, history, in-jokes, and memes that take way too long to learn. But once we’re in – we gain, in return, an incredible sense of connection and belonging. Fandom, though, isn’t always healthy since far too many of us let wins and losses influence how we treat one another. We let these people who we will, most likely, never meet, shape how we care in the world. Being a fan can draw us into a community that will encourage us to cry in public with either tears of joy or sadness. Yet fans can also be very particular about is allowed to be a part of the community. We, who have no personal stake in what happens on the field, will publicly debate who is, and who isn’t, allowed to wear the overpriced jersey we bought at the mall. Using our own experiences and our own ego as the decider for who is, and who isn’t, a fan has been around since sports were invented thousands of years ago. And in our reading today from the gospel according to Mark, Jesus told the disciples that when it comes to the body of Christ, we’re not the ones who get to gatekeep what God is doing in the world. 

Now before we dive into what we just heard, we need to remember what happened at the start of chapter 9. This section began with Jesus’ transfiguration – when stood on a mountain top with a few of his disciples and looked exactly like the Messiah his disciples expected him to be. Then, after being lit up with all the special effects the Son of God should have, Jesus came down the mountain to heal a child possessed by some kind of evil power. To the disciples, it looked like Jesus was claiming who they imagined him to be. But he kept talking about a Cross they didn’t think could possibly come. This disconnect between what they saw and what they heard filled the disciples with all kinds of wonder and doubt. But rather than talking to Jesus about what was stirring in their hearts, they decided to argue among themselves about which one of them was the greatest. On one level, this argument was very silly since the original GOAT (greatest of all time) was literally in front of them. Yet the disconnect they felt made them question their own place within the kingdom of God. They were, by this point, already known as “the Twelve:” those who had been with Jesus since the beginning. They had seen him cast out demons, cured the sick, and fed thousands of people with a few loaves of bread. The Twelve were the ones who stayed even when Jesus’ words were hard and assumed their place among the hierarchy of Jesus’ community was relatively secure. But as the number of folks following Jesus began to grow, they were worried their status within the community might diminish. Jesus, I think, recognized the insecurity at the heart of their argument. And so, while they talked, he invited a little child to join them in the center of the room. Jesus picked the child up, held the little one in his arms, and told the disciples that His community included even little kids like these. This pronouncement caught the disciples off guard since children, in Jesus’ day, weren’t valued very much. Kids were loved by their parents and their families – but their status in the wider culture was very different. Being a child in the ancient world was hard since kids were vulnerable, needed to be taken care of, and didn’t always survive. And when archeologists survey tombstones across the Mediterranean Sea, some depict kids as young as four engaged in hard labor like mining and farming. People were often defined by their economic and social value which meant kids, except for those in the ruling elite, were treated as a kind of drain on the wider society. And it’s in this cultural context when Jesus told the disciples that the one who was vulnerable; who needed to be cared for; and who couldn’t give them anything of value – that one mattered just as much as they did. This, I think, triggered something in John, revealing his insecurity about his own place within the kingdom of God. If Jesus let those we push aside as well as random people who didn’t follow them be like Him in word and deed, then the Twelve felt as if they had no real identity within the community of God. They assumed the only way they would stay special is if they served as the gatekeepers for who was, and who wasn’t, allowed to follow them. And so Jesus, after listening and while still holding that little child, look at the disciples and, in a very firm way, simply told them: “no.”

His words, at first glance, might make us feel a bit uncomfortable since “hell” and “unquenchable fire” don’t feel very Jesusy. But the disciples were so worried about their place within the hierarchy of God, they weren’t able to see how God’s power isn’t for its own sake. Using our status, our wealth, or our perceived importance to further our own position in the world rather than to help the vulnerable and forgotten is antithetical to the kingdom of God. God’s community isn’t defined by the powerful miracles we see. Rather, God chooses to define Jesus’ family by the people who offer even strangers something as small as a cup of water. A cup of water isn’t as flashy as casting out demons or turning water into wine. Yet that small gift is also an essential gift to the one who is in need of care and love. It’s not the cup that Jesus is trying to highlight. Rather, his focus was on how we are called to learn each other’s story, history, wants, and needs. We get to see each other as God sees us and to bring relief to those we might not see in the first place. This power is something all of us, at any age, can do because we are already part of God’s holy family too. Jesus has chosen us to reflect his welcoming and hope-filled love through the lives we live. We are called to do more than create stumbling blocks for those around us. We get to listen; to heal; to care; to realize all the ways we get this Jesus thing wrong and to accept accountability when we hurt those around us. Instead of making this Jesus thing all about us, we get to embrace the opportunity God has given us to pray, sing, worship, serve, and love not only those who we are fans of but also those who God connects us to. And we do this not because we are called to be the gatekeepers of the divine but because Jesus is our gate – the one who has already opened the way to what God’s love has, can, and will do in our lives and in our world. 

Amen.

My sermon from the 18th Sunday after Pentecost (September 22, 2024) on James 3:13-4:3,7-8a.

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One of the things I did while living in New York City that I had never done before, nor done since, was join a gym. I am not the most athletic person in the world so I knew I needed a little help to make sure I actually used my membership. So I chose to make myself attend a weekly fitness class but one that wouldn’t ask me to do too much. The class I picked was pilates – specifically the version that doesn’t use any machines. We would use our own bodies to be the resistance that could increase our flexibility, balance, and stability. Pilates was invented in the 1930s by a guy literally named Joseph Pilates. He came up with a series of movements and breathing exercises that feels a lot like yoga. I attended the class for a while but none of the so-called health benefits stuck with me. However, one idea from that class that still lingers is how it taught me how to pay attention to my core. Growing up, coaches, gym teachers, and even the director for my high school marching band would tell me to focus on my core. Yet exactly what that was – and how to tend to it – wasn’t always described. My core seemed to constantly change depending on whatever sport or activity I was doing. As a kid, I focused on what I could see results from – such as marching in formation across a football field or trying to get a lacrosse ball into a goal. But now that I’m older, paying attention to my core – the foundation that supports how I live in the world – is something I take a bit more seriously. Wondering, pondering, and recognizing the core of who we are isn’t only about what is physical; it also includes our emotional, mental, and spiritual health too. And in our reading today from the letter of James, we’re given a kind of Jesus-centric routine we can use to discover the God who is already with you. 

Now over the last few weeks, James’ answer to the question – what does a faithful person look like, act like, and be like? – hasn’t been the most positive. His focus has mostly been on what it shouldn’t look like instead. For James, our fears, insecurities, the mistakes we make, the words we use, and how others experience us often reveals what we truly believe. And this belief isn’t merely merely bits of information we keep in our head or a series of religious statements we choose to agree with. Rather belief is what we trust when everything else comes undone. Belief, then, is at the center – the core – of who we are. And I like to imagine this core as containing all the thoughts, feelings, experiences, history, and those bits about ourselves we understand and even those parts that we do. It’s all of this that fuels what we do in the world and why we talk before we listen or remain silent when we should speak up. It’s our core that shows partiality towards those who we want to be rather than caring for those who need the gifts God has first given us. And while it would be one thing if our core only impacted ourselves, James knows that what we do, say, and even post makes a difference to those around us. James names this kind of core identity as the “wisdom of the world” which uses our own understanding of power, generosity, abundance, and our fears as the fuel for what we do. This kind of wisdom is, on its own, pretty small – choosing to see things as we want them to be rather than as what God knows they can be. What we need is something outside of us which can stretch us away from our ways and into Gods. 

And that thing, for James, is known as “wisdom from above.” It’s a word, a voice, a grace, an experience from the divine that makes an impact in our here and now. James described this wisdom with several attributes, identifying this wisdom as pure which – as imperfect people – ends up being hard for us to describe and see. Yet James, in an unexpected way, also sees God’s wisdom as being very gentle. I often experience wisdom as a kind of corrective, countering what we imagine to be right and true. Wisdom reminds us of the fullness of our story, using our traditions as a way to ground us through whatever change might come. Wisdom, then, can be fiery and harsh, especially if it uses fear as a way to hold us to what it believes to be true. But the kind of wisdom James imagines is bigger than a word to constrain us. Wisdom from above will, and does, change our core. It is a kind of outside presence that, in the words of Pastor Casey Sigmon, is a “nodding, listening, [and] asking those self-awakening questions that help [us] to hear the wisdom of God [already at] the core of [our] being.” This presence isn’t coercive, manipulative, nor does it bully us. Rather, it opens us to see how we get to make peace, beauty, and abundance real in our world. It’s this wisdom that allows us to yield, to pause, and to listen with a kind of non-judgmental curiosity that sees the image of God in those around us. The wisdom from above is full of mercy – showing others what love, joy, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control can look like in the world. And it’s this wisdom we get to listen to since, because of our baptism and through the gift of faith, the God who lived like us to show us what life can be – is already at the core of who we are. 

Now knowing how to care for our core isn’t always easy which is why James hints at a routine anyone can follow. We are invited to draw near to the God who has already drawn near to us. It’s natural to think that since Jesus has made us a part of his body, his family, and his community through baptism and faith – we shouldn’t need to draw near to him since he’s already here. Yet we also know that Jesus’ presence doesn’t mean we get to be anything but human. We’ll never, in this life, fully expand our imagination to see what our life with our God can truly be about. We will regularly speak before we listen; rage before we accept responsibility; and ask others to forgive us before we forgive them. What we need is something outside of us – like a community of like minded imperfect people who, with a word, a Spirit, and a bit of time and energy – to help all of us strengthen the core of love that’s already here. This is one of the reasons why we are connected by something more than simply the bonds of friendship, family, or even physical proximity. It’s why we worship, pray, sing, confess the truth of who we are and how our God is so much bigger than we can possibly be. When we draw near to each other we are drawn near to God since Jesus is already in the core of the person next to us. By making the time and the commitment to support one another through the good times and the bad, we are doing more than exercising who we get to be. We’re also exorcizing from ourselves and our community the anger, the hatred, the selfishness, and lack of imagination that keeps us away from each other and our God. 

Amen.

My sermon from the 17th Sunday after Pentecost (September 15, 2024) on James 3:1-12.

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So I want to start today’s sermon with a question: what’s a verse from our Bible that you return to over and over again when you need to refresh your soul? Now this isn’t meant to be some kind of pop quiz that, if you fail, is going to get you kicked out of worship. But I’m curious about the words from our Bible that have been deeply imprinted on your heart. I, personally, am not very good at memorizing anything so I tend to let stories, rather than verses, feed my faith. Yet if I had to pick a verse to answer this question, I might – depending on what’s going on in my life at that particular moment, share with others the first part of James, chapter 3, verse 2. On days when a typo appears in the bulletin or in our weekly email newsletter or when I forget to make a call I promised to make – it’s comforting to know that our Bible realizes how we all make mistakes. Some mistakes, of course, are bigger than others. Yet all of us – regardless of how holy or faithful or good we imagine ourselves to be – will screw up. This verse isn’t meant to be read as giving ourselves an excuse for the ways we harm others and ourselves. It is, rather, an invitation to be honest about who we are. Each one of us is simply one person surrounded by other people too. None of us are the default of what it means to be a human being since we all have our own unique thoughts, experiences, and stories. And while we, on one level, know this to be true – we are limited when it comes to recognizing how there really are other people in our world. Most days, we don’t always have the energy, patience, or expansive imagination necessary to embrace how others, like us, are their own people too. The mistakes we make can be more than simply poor or wrong choices. They can also reveal how limited we imagine our God to be. 

Now today is the 3rd Sunday in a row listening to this letter that is wondering “what does a faithful person look like, act like, [and] be like?” We are, because of baptism, more than simply a part of the body of Christ. We are also one of the ways through whom others experience what God’s love is all about. This, like I said last week, is a terrifying responsibility because we are very human. We, like James said, are prone to making mistakes because we don’t always believe we truly are beloved children of God and that everyone around us is made in the same image of God too. This forgetfulness is often expressed in who we show partiality too. We bend over backwards to celebrate the celebrity, the rich, the comfortable – that person we want to be – because showing the same kind of care to the one who has been harmed or is hurting or is poor is the reality we’re trying to run away from. Our hope is to become the kind of person who doesn’t need help. And our actions towards others often reflect the fears and insecurities that we allow to shape our lives. This truth within us is something we don’t often want others to see. So we mask it through words and actions blaming and demonizing others  instead of taking responsibility for our own vulnerability and the help we’ll always need. We are not mistakes but we make a lot of mistakes. And James, in a very intentional way, wants us to notice how we often fail to integrate into our own choices, actions, and way of life what Jesus, through the Cross, has already done for all. 

Yet it’s not just actions that shape our life. James also highlighted how the words coming out of our mouth can reveal what we hold within us. Like how a large horse is guided by the small bit of metal resting in its mouth; or how a large ship is guided by the littlest rudder in the back; so does our mouth steer our being in the world. And if we needed something other than our own lives to show how this can be true, today’s reading from the gospel according to Mark shows just how human the followers of Jesus always are. Peter, while approaching a city named after the Roman Emperor that also sat next to a religious site where the Emperor was worshiped as a god himself, used his mouth to proclaim that Jesus is the Messiah – the One who will shape, refine, and change our relationship with the true God who never gives up on us. Now it’s probably reasonable to expect Peter, after such a powerful statement, might wait a day or two before questioning what Jesus was up to. But after Jesus responded by sharing just how far God’s love will go, Peter immediately told Jesus that can’t be true. He, in that moment, showed that the image of God he carried within himself was much smaller than what God’s hope, generosity, and grace was up to. His words – like our words – weren’t merely a mistake; they revealed how his expectations for God run against the love God chooses to share. That lack of imagination and care shows up not only in our words about God but also in the words we share with family, spouses, children, and friends during the arguments about big – and small things – we regularly have. In the heat of the moment, the mistake we make isn’t only the harmful words we share. It’s also the failure to internalize, accept, and repent how each one of us, in our own ways, act like a brackish spring while thinking we’re only full of water that is refreshing and clear. We have a responsibility to not only build one another up in love but to also learn how to listen, reflect, ponder, question, say we’re sorry, and expand our imagination of who our God – and who we – can be in our world. And while this work isn’t easy, what we do in worship models what this work truly is. We choose to be connected to each other and, through worship, confess publicly our need for a God who will connect us to something bigger than ourselves. We listen to experiences other people have had with the divine and before we answer, we pray for the needs of others as well as ourselves. And then, as we embrace this call to be the body of Christ in the world, we sing – using music and words to reflect a little of the hope, peace, and comfort that comes with God’s presence in our midst. We will, in worship and in this church, make many mistakes. Yet the Jesus who could have kicked us and Peter out after failing the pop quiz of what God’s story is all about – promises, instead, to feed us, to nurture us, to hold us accountable for what we’ve done and what we’ve left undone, and to expand our vision of what God’s love is all about. As beloved children of God, we are invited to be mindful of what our words and our actions reveal. We get to embrace the responsibility – and the gift that it is – to be the body of Christ in the world. We can choose to let love, rather than our ego, be at the heart of who we are. And we do this not because we’ll ever be as perfect as we want to be. But because we have a Jesus who, through the Cross, refused to let our lack of love, our lack of mercy, and our lack of generosity be the limit of who we – through him and with him – get to be too. 

Amen.

My sermon from the 16th Sunday after Pentecost (September 8, 2024) on James 2:1-10,14-17.

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So in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the San Francisco Giants were trying to build a new baseball stadium in Northern California. They ran several political campaigns asking voters to approve a few new taxes to fund the project. The team wasn’t making much progress with these campaigns and so eventually asked towns on the outer edge of the Bay area if they would like to host the stadium instead. Larry Tramutola, in his book “Sidewalk Strategies: a practical guide for candidates, causes, and communities,” wrote about what happened when the Giants approached the city of San Jose. At the start of the campaign, “everything looked positive. The mayor, the city council, the business community, organized labor, and the newspapers all supported the measure.” People seemed really excited about having a Major League Baseball team in that part of the Bay Area and the movement had “more volunteers than they could handle.” It seemed that the drive for a new stadium might finally work out. What they needed to do, though, was decide what kind of message to bring to the voters. And so, after a series of meetings and conversations, the team thought voters would become as enthusiastic about this endeavor as they were “once they knew [all] the facts.” Their message, then, was a lot: full of all sorts of messages about how the stadium would help the community. Volunteers, when they knocked on people’s doors, talked about the economic benefits of the proposed ballpark; mentioned all the new jobs that would be created; and highlighted the money tourists would bring to the city. The Giants “sent mailer after mailer” with all kinds of endorsements and even sent out “a thick, forty-two page booklet of facts, including testimonials from local school superintendents and a detailed actuarial report on the economic benefits to the community.” The campaign “called every voter and” knocked on every door, bringing with them a flood of words all about new life a stadium might bring. Their opponents, on the other hand, only had the energy – and money – to send one small piece of mail to voters a week before the election. When election day finally came and after all the votes were counted, the campaign for a new stadium in San Jose – lost. Their message – with all its words – couldn’t overcome a smaller, and much more personal message, their opponents sent out. We often imagine, I think, that people simply need more information, education, and to hear a lot more words before coming on board to whatever we’re passionate about. Yet it’s often a much smaller, more concise, and more personal experience that reveals a truth we don’t always see. We hope a big message can offset the smaller message delivered by people who aren’t always the most effective messengers of whatever they hope to bring. But James reminds us that what we do – rather than what we say – often reveals the message we truly believe. 

Now this is our second week listening to the book of James – which is really a letter traditionally associated with either Jesus’ brother or one of the apostles. It’s a writing we don’t often include in our personal Bible-within-the-Bible – those writings, verses, and stories we return to over and over again as we live our life with faith. James is a text that often meanders from point to point which can make it difficult to follow. But it’s also full of very strong opinions as it asks the question: “what does a faithful person look like, act like, [and] be like?” For James, the answer to that question is revealed when we see ourselves, and others, as beloved children of God who chose to listen. We are, according to James, the body of Christ, and people should experience – through us – the same love and grace Jesus gives us everyday. And so after laying out in chapter 1 what that might look like, James used chapter 2 to highlight a few scenarios when we, as a community, fail to live that out. First, we’re asked to imagine two people showing up at our door – one who is obviously very wealthy and the other who is obviously very poor. If we, through our words and actions, treat the rich person well while ignoring the one who doesn’t have very much, we reveal how we let our personal preferences, fears, hopes, and insecurities be the judge over every aspect of our lives. We might claim our behavior is simply loving our neighbors as ourselves. But when we display this kind of partiality, we show others what we are truly putting our hope – and our trust – in. Our acts of welcome, hospitality, and inclusion towards those who have – and are – enough reveals the kind of people we want to be. We want to be comfortable, rich, and always right while receiving, from others, the kind of praise and attention we give to those with wealth. Being the one who needs help; who isn’t enough; and who is vulnerable to the life-choices other people make – isn’t the kind of life we want for ourselves. The person we choose to welcome often proclaims to the world what we truly put our trust in. And finally, when we run into that person who we do not want to be and offer them our thoughts and prayers, we reveal how we believe this Jesus thing is only meant for ourselves.We act as if Jesus is for us rather than realizing how this also means that we, through Jesus, get to be for everyone else too. A life of faith that has not been challenged, transformed, and changed by that faith, is a life choosing to trust in something other than what Jesus has already done. 

When the Giants lost their bid to build a baseball stadium in San Jose, the message their opposition used was simple. Their mailer pointed out how the owner of the Giants was already rich and wondered why everyone else should spend their money to make him even richer. The campaign for the stadium wasn’t, I think, necessarily wrong about what a stadium might do for the city. But their decision to focus on a lot rather than on realizing the primary experience a voter might have, caused them to lose their way. James, I think, invites us to realize how we – as members of the body of Christ – are often the faithful experience other people have. We, for better or worse, are the message of what God’s love actually looks like. That, I realize, is an incredible responsibility and also a bit terrifying because we are often better at being sinners rather than saints. Yet I also wonder if God doesn’t trust that we – because of our baptism and through grace, mercy, prayer, worship, scripture, and the neighbors God connects us to – that we can truly be who God imagines we can be. This trust is one we did nothing to earn but was given to us by a God who refuses to do anything less. That doesn’t mean, however, God needs us to become some kind of superhumans to make a difference in the world. God knows that life is hard and so we can cry, get upset, struggle, wonder, dream, and ask others for the help we truly need. When we are honest about who we are – while letting ourselves be there for the neighbors who need what we get to give – then the Jesus we reveal is the One who offers everyone hope, mercy, and love. 

Amen.