Faith – Page 36 – Pocket Sized Pastor*

A Reflection on Philippians 2: Knowing Our Own Authority

Following Jesus (i.e. faith) takes work. Now as Lutherans, we are (rightly!) always suspicious when the words faith and work are next to each other. Faith is always a gift from God. We cannot, through our own effort, ever say “I believe” and mean it as much as we should. Instead, it’s the Spirit that reveals Jesus’ love and care for us and the world. This gift changes us. We are different and it takes work to live a different kind of life.

I believe Jesus expects, and knows, we can do this. God provides ways for us to grow. The Spirit guides us, Jesus’ presence holds us, and the Scriptures help reveal who God is and what a relationship with God looks like. Part of our work is being interpreters. We read Scripture. We analyze the world we live in. We reflect on our own experiences. A faith-filled life is a life of interpretation and a life that knows change. We know life isn’t constant. Situations change. Relationships change. Our own bodies change. Our faith can change. But Jesus’ love doesn’t change. Faith isn’t easy but if we wanted easy, we wouldn’t follow Jesus Christ.

Today’s reading from Philippians 2:1-13 includes the earliest Christian hymn we know. Verses 6 through 11 are a song. The song is more than a description of Jesus. It’s lyrics put to music because Jesus is an experience. And part of that experience is reflecting on who Jesus is, what Jesus did, and how that makes a difference to them. Jesus knew he was God but emptied himself of his power, authority, and freedom to be human. He chose to be like a slave, one who had no control over the violence inflicted on his body. He lived out loud what God’s kingdom looks like. And the government and spiritual authorities killed him for it.

Jesus is an experience and a model for our lives. This way of life puts the interests of others before ourselves. And this isn’t easy. To put others first means we need to know who we are and what our interests are. We need to know people different from us and what their interests are too. We need to know what experiences are foundational to who we are. We need to learn about experiences we don’t have but other people do. We might not think we have any power or authority but our gender, race, social class, and wealth give us different kinds of authority that explicitly and implicitly impacts the people around us. This kind of reflection, observation, and interpretation will make us uncomfortable. But Jesus knows we can handle it. Jesus knows we can live a different kind of life because we are not doing this work on our own. We have the Spirit. We have each other. We have Jesus. And even when we are uncomfortable, we are still called to love.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 17th Sunday After Pentecost, 10/01/2017.

Children’s Sermon: God’s Bunch o’ Love

Bring a Banana Bunch.
This is just from Dollar Store Children’s Sermons. Click that link and watch it!

I’m so happy you’re here today!

So I brought something with me today. What is it? A bunch of bananas. Right bananas. I bought these on Friday during my weekly trip to Costco. They were pretty green when I got them so I left them out to turn yellow. I don’t eat bananas a lot but my kids enjoy them. Do you like them? Yes. No. Accept answers.

Let’s pretend today that we love bananas. Like love them. Like need to eat them every day or it feels like something was missing in our day. So we love, love, love bananas!

Now let’s look at these bananas. Now we all know they’re bananas because this is what they look like. But are they all the same? No! Some are different sizes. Describe the bananas and he they are different. Different sizes, colors, shapes, and some will make us fill more full than the others. Each one of these bananas is different! But they’re all bananas and we love bananas so after we eat just one, no matter its size or shape or color, we’re going to feel happy, and whole, and satisfied.

Jesus tells a story today that reminded me about these bananas. In the story, someone has a large field and needs people to spend the day picking food off it. Some people start at the beginning of the day, some start after lunch, and some start right before dinner time. All the workers work a different amount. Some worked all day and some worked for only an hour. But the person who owns the field pays everyone the same generous amount. And the owner pays them all the same, regardless of who did what, because the owner wants to be generous. And that generosity is a picture of God’s love for us. No matter who we are, how tall we are, how old we are, or what we do – God keeps loving us. God keeps helping us. God keeps being with us. God’s love is generous and God keeps giving that love to us, showing us how we’re supposed to love the people around us. So like these bananas, it doesn’t matter who we are or what we look like, God keeps loving us because that’s just what God does.

Thank you for being up here and I hope you have a blessed week!

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 16th Sunday After Pentecost, 9/24/2017.

Eraser: Jonah is more than a whale.

When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city, and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city. The Lord God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?”

Jonah 3:10-4:11

My sermon from the 16th Sunday after Pentecost (September 24, 2017) on Jonah 3:10-4:11. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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A couple of miles up the road from here, in Park Ridge, is a big cemetery on the right hand side of the road. Opposite the cemetery is Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church so everyone thinks the graveyard belongs to them, but it doesn’t. Instead, the cemetery belongs to Pascack Reformed Church which has been in the area for a long long time. This graveyard, like all active graveyards, is both new and old. Located inside its property lines are the remains of people who were buried this year and also those from the earliest farm families who first colonized the area. In the 1830s, free blacks started to be entombed there and they were followed years later by African-American veterans of the Civil War. Since the cemetery is old, some of the grave markers have toppled over, been buried, or had their markings rubbed away. But, overall, we know most of the people who were buried there. Yet there’s one section in that cemetery that’s a little mysterious. Behind the parsonage is a hollow in the trees that extends down the hill and to the creek below. There are no grave markers there. Only bushes, grass, and leaves. It looks almost empty…except it’s not. Instead, it’s an old section of the graveyard that might even pre-date the graves we know about from the 1740s. According to word of mouth, that hollow is where Native Americans were buried. Now there’s a debate among local historical societies about who is really there. The hollow has never been scientifically studied and there are no gravestones, of any kind, marking where a body might be. But the words of this graveyard’s existence are still in the air. And the tribes and people that buried their dead there – are, at this point, merely whispers…their names and identities lost to history. In a sense, these Native Americans are still around. We name our roads, towns, and high school mascots after them. But that’s about it. The families that might have remembered the names of those buried in that hollow were replaced by Dutch and Brits, Swedes and Germans, people who took over the land and passed it down to us. The native people who used to call this area home have been forgotten and it’s almost like they never existed. The hollow in that graveyard is the final resting place for a culture, a tribe, and a people that is no more. And that feeling, that reality of a people lost to history, is why Jonah, in our first reading today, is…so upset. As we see in these last verses from his story, Jonah watched as God did a completely ridiculous and unfair thing. God saved the people of Nineveh from destruction even though Nineveh had wiped ten tribes of Israel off the face of the earth.

Nineveh is the capital of the Assyrians, the center of an empire that, in 722 BCE, destroyed the Northern Kingdom of Israel. Its capital city, Samaria, was burned. It’s population, ten of the twelve tribes that made up the Israelite people, were deported from their homes. They were forced at spear point to move to cities and villages on the other side of the Assyrian empire. Over time, they lost their traditions. They lost their identity. In short, those ten tribes were lost to history and almost forgotten. Only Jonah, and the remaining Jews around Jerusalem, remembered who they were.

Now, when we remember the story of Jonah, we usually remember the whale. We remember Jonah running away from God’s call. But we usually forget why Jonah refused to go. He didn’t want to bring God’s word to the people who tried to wipe his people off the face the earth. He didn’t want to share God to those he didn’t think were redeemable. Jonah didn’t want the people of Nineveh to hear from God because if God actually spoke to them, then Jonah’s feelings of anger might be undone. Jonah had every right to be angry. And in the system of justice that make sense to us, where retribution is central and people are punished in response to the harm they caused, Nineveh should be destroyed. Jonah should not have to go there. But Jonah, in the end, cannot outrun God. He goes to Nineveh. He spends day and night preaching the same one sentence sermon, telling them to repent. And then….they do. They actually listen. They shouldn’t but they do which makes me think that the Holy Spirit gave them the ears to hear what this prophet from a people they tried to destroy, had to say. And Jonah can’t stand it. Nineveh isn’t supposed to be saved. But God, in the end, is bigger than Jonah. God’s grace and mercy and love are greater than the feelings of hatred and exclusion and violence that cause us to think we can decide who God cares about and who God doesn’t. We want to make our love the limit to God’s love. We want to make the grace we give be the limit to what God can do. We want to decide who gets to exist, who gets to be remembered, and who is finally lost to history. Jonah wanted nothing to do with God’s love. He wanted to erase Nineveh from the world. But the grace of God wanted to do something more. It…loved. God loved the enemy. God loved the ones Jonah thought didn’t deserve mercy, but God gave them mercy anyways. In the end, God loved because Jonah could not. And God showed him and all of us, the only kind of love that can truly change the world.

Amen.

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A Reflection on the Workers in the Vineyard

What does “the kingdom of heaven” bring up? Do you see a vision of clouds, deep blue sky, and angels flying around with wings? Does “the kingdom of heaven” inspire questions about the afterlife or does it cause you to think about life right now? Those first four words are the key to our interpretation of today’s reading from the gospel of Matthew 20:1-16. If the kingdom of heaven is only about heaven, today’s parable is a parable only about faith and belief. But if the kingdom of heaven is about the world right now, today’s parable is about living a faith-filled life.

Matthew is the only gospel that uses the phrase “the kingdom of heaven.” Mark, Luke, and John instead use the “kingdom of God.” We can read these two phrases, I think, interchangeably. “The kingdom of heaven” shows us how God is more than just our personal experience of the world. “The kingdom of God” reminds us how God interacts and cares about the world we live in. God’s kingdom includes the entire world. God’s kingdom has something to say to every kingdom, nation, and even home we create. God’s vision for our life is a vision that stretches from heaven to the earth and back again.

I like Richard Lischer’s description of why parables matter. “The implication of the parables is clear: if one cannot meet the kingdom of God amid the pots and pans of daily life, of what earthly use is the kingdom?”* There are parts of today’s parable that are hard. Why does the landowner get to chose who works and who doesn’t? In the world this story takes place in, what happens to those who are willing to work but are not hired? Do we want God to really be like this choosy landowner? And why does God’s vision of justice seem to punish, or at least be unfair, to those who worked the whole day? But the heart of this story is also a vision of radical equality and grace. And this vision matters right now. The workers’ worth isn’t defined by what they do. They are valued because God says they are. And this vision of justice isn’t something we are asked to wait to experience in the world to come. This justice is something God wants in the world today.

*Richard Lischer, Reading the Parables, 2014. Page 11.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 16th Sunday After Pentecost, 9/24/2017.

500 Plus. From Pastor Marc – My Message for the Messenger, October 2017 Edition

On Sunday, October 29, we’re doing something new . . .

This October marks the 500th birthday of the Reformation. Legend has it that Martin Luther wrote 95 thoughts about faith, Jesus and the church (The 95 Theses) and posted them to a church in Wittenberg, Germany on October 31, 1517. Scholars debate if this posting actually happened, but we know his words didn’t stay local. His writings spread like wildfire. In a few short years, a new church movement took root, launching new Christian traditions. As Lutherans, the Sunday before October 31st is our annual “birthday party” where we celebrate this Lutheran flavor of the Christian faith that God gifted to us. But our experience of the Christian faith is not the only tradition out there. We are surrounded by Baptists, Calvinists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Reformed, Church of Christ and more. Each one can trace their start and growth to these 95 thoughts about faith and God. For almost 500 years, the story of Christianity has been reflected in the ways we split apart. As individuals and communities who experience God in different ways, we sometimes separate from each other. Christian history can be described as a history of division. But there’s also a history of unity and coming together. On October 29th, heirs to the Reformation will worship at Christ Lutheran Church.

Pascack Reformed Church and First Congregational Church (United Church of Christ) will join us for worship at our church at 10:00 am. A joint choir will sing, and we’ll give thanks for the variety of gifts God gives each of our communities. We’ll celebrate our shared history and also our joint witness as churches who are different but united in Jesus Christ. As communities of faith, we are grateful for the different identities the Holy Spirit has given to each of us. As part of the body of Christ, we are grateful that our differences do not divide us from Jesus. I invite you to be at this joint worship service at 10:00 am on Sunday, October 29th. And let’s discover where the Spirit is leading us in the next 500 years.

See you in church!
Pastor Marc

Who Are You: Food Fight Edition

Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God. We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living. Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.” So then, each of us will be accountable to God.

Romans 14:1-12

My sermon from the 15th Sunday after Pentecost (September 17, 2017) on Romans 14:1-12. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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This September, for me, is a month filled with weddings. Over Labor Day weekend, I officiated the wedding of my sister-in-law and her fiancée. Two days ago, I was in Beacon, NY, standing next to a roaring waterfall as two people committed themselves to each other. And in less than two weeks, I’ll be in the foothills of Colorado, officiating the wedding of one of my good friends from high school. Each one of these weddings is different. Each one is unique. And each one is filled with rituals. From the ceremony to the reception, each couple has its own vision of how their wedding day will go. The music will be done in a certain way and the DJ will play specific songs at the right time. The center pieces on the table during the reception will be big…or small…full of flowers or with candles floating in water. The ceremony will include traditional vows that are repeated, or vows written by the couple themselves, or I’ll recite the words and wait for the very simple but very powerful “I do.” For the couple and their families, each part of the wedding event is a ritual that requires careful consideration, time, and attention. But there are other rituals at weddings too. And one of my favorite is, as a guest, the ritual of standing at a table, looking at a sea of name cards, trying to find the table I’ll be sitting at during the reception. There’s usually a table at the entrance covered in name tags or a poster with the seating chart printed on. And once I find my name, I then scan all the other names, trying to see who is sitting at the table with me. This ritual of finding our table mates can be nerve wracking. We want to sit with people we know but…what if we don’t? Are the people who will be sitting with us going to be like us or will they be totally weird? Or maybe we’re the weird one and we just don’t know it yet? These and countless other concerns and fears zip through our heads when we’re standing at the seating chart, trying to figure out who we are eating with. And these same feelings and anxieties about who is sitting at our table was right there, in the city of Rome, when Paul wrote his letter 2,000 years ago.

Today’s reading from the letter to the Romans is our last selection from that book for awhile. We spent this whole summer discovering how this community of non-Jews struggled connecting their culture to their faith. The Romans hoped the teachings from this Jew named Jesus would help them master their passions – those feelings and emotions that stop them from being their best selves. The rules and rituals and methods they saw in Jesus’ teaching seemed to provide a way to turn these Romans be into the best Romans they could possibly be. Yet, the rules weren’t so simple to understand. Different people interpreted the rules in different ways. Even when this small community of believers ate together at the 1st century version of coffee hour, conflict happened. Now, this wasn’t a battle between vegetarians and omnivores even though verse 2 sort of sounds like it is. The problem was really about where the meat came from. Meat, in the ancient world, was very expensive. Few people could afford to eat meat on any kind of regular basis. Instead, people waited for these animals to be given out after they were used in a sacrifice. The animals would led into a temple dedicated to some god or goddess. They were prayed over, blessed, and then ritually slaughtered. Once the ceremony was over, the meat was served to anyone who needed it. For some in the Roman community, this meat was free and anyone could eat it because, well, those gods and goddesses didn’t exist. But others felt eating such meat would violate the food laws that even Jesus might have followed. The act of sacrifice made the meat unclean and, in the eyes of God, would harm anyone who ate it. So, at the same table and during the same meal, there would be those who ate meat and those who didn’t – and each side, at a minimum, would see the others are being totally weird.

Yet Paul’s vision of Jesus broke the Romans’ expectations. The meat wasn’t really important; rather, it was the people at the table who mattered the most. Since their baptism put them in a public relationship with Jesus, their relationship with each other mattered too. They were no longer just individual Romans trying to live their best lives. They had put on Jesus and are now the hands and feet, arms and legs, of God’s Son. Even though their bodies might feel like they did before and they might still struggle with their thoughts, emotions, and passions that caused them to sometimes hurt those around them, these Romans were no longer just themselves. They’re Jesus too. They carry with them all the promises God makes to all of us – a promise of love, presence, and fidelity. Jesus gave himself fully over to the task of reconciling the world to its Creator; to the task of showing love to those shouldn’t be loved; and saying that everyone, including you, has value. Jesus devoted himself to his neighbors. He gave himself to a world that didn’t fully understand him and who killed him for sharing his table with people he wasn’t supposed to. We can imagine Jesus, at that wedding in Cana, finding his name on a little card, seeing his table number, and refusing to scope out who he might be sitting with. Instead, he would be the first at the table, ready to welcome and care for all who sit by him, whether they realized he was Jesus or not. Our ritual of trying to foresee or maybe even control who we sit with is replaced by a Jesus who is already at the table, ready to eat and share and love whoever shows up. This kind of ritual isn’t a ritual that is easy. It’s an approach to life that is downright scary. It means we have to talk to people, to all kinds of people, and learn who they are and what their story is. We need to know who at the table eats meat, who doesn’t, and why. We need to know ourselves well, to discover the side eyes of judgement we’re throwing at those around us. And we need to be flexible in our own way of life so that we can adjust to the needs of whoever God puts in our path. Living this kind of life takes work. It does takes effort. It takes an imagination and a faith that knows we won’t be doing this work on our own. Instead we get to live this kind of life because Jesus has already given his life for each of us. We get to serve our neighbor, to bear their burdens, to share their tables, and to help them thrive because the Lord, each and every day, helps us stand gracefully, faithfully, and wonderfully, tall.

Amen.

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Children’s Sermon: Forgive 77 times

Bring 52 marbles in a bag.
This is just from Dollar Store Children’s Sermons. Click that link and watch it!

I’m so happy you’re here today!

So I want to talk today a little about the story we’re going to hear about Jesus today and we’re going to use this: a bag of marbles. There’s a lot of marbles in here and we’re going to pretend that each marble counts as one time when we forgive someone. So this is a bag full of forgiveness marbles.

Now Peter, one of Jesus’ friends, asks Jesus “how many times am I supposed to forgive someone? If Someone breaks a promise to me or my trust, and it hurts, as long as I’m safe – should I forgive the other person more than once? Should I forgive them like…7 times?” So we have this bag of forgiveness – so let’s count out 7 marbles. Have the kids count out with you seven marbles. Phew! We did it. 7 is something we can do.

But Jesus doesn’t tell Peter to forgive someone 7 times. He says forgive them 77 times. 77! That’s a big number! So okay….let’s see if we can use this bag of marbles to count out 77 times forgiving someone. Count the marbles. As you go higher, get tired and talk about it being hard. And then…run out. Oh my gosh. We’re out of forgiveness. And we didn’t make it to 77! So what can we do? What can we do when we run out of forgiveness? Ask kids. Accept answers. What we need is God’s help. God invites us to forgive and love like Jesus does and that’s usually more than we can do. So we ask God to help us love and love and love. Because God and Jesus forgives us all the time. That isn’t hard for God. But it’s sometimes hard for us. When a friend breaks a promise, that’s hard. There are sometimes things that happen to us that we might not be able to forgive right away or for awhile. So we ask God to help us forgive like God does. To help us be safe so we can forgive those who might hurt us and also ask God to help those we might have hurt. And we ask by saying our prayers and praying – something I do all the time and something we’ll do later in this worship service. We ask help God always to help us love like God loves – so that this world can be a kinder, gentler, and more forgiving place.

Thank you for being up here and I hope you have a blessed week!

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 15th Sunday After Pentecost, 9/17/2017.

Conflict in the Community Part 2

Today’s reading from the gospel according to Matthew 18:21-35 continues last week’s reading and is about conflict. My reflection last week showed how the bible knew conflicts within churches would happen. Communities are made of people and people will disagree with each other. But conflict isn’t a sign of the community being broken. As long as we commit ourselves to love and serve each other with grace, we will be strong. And we can serve each other with love and grace because our community includes someone important. Jesus is here and Jesus inspires us to serve one another.

Peter asked Jesus how many times we should forgive each other. Jesus’ answer is surprising because he says to forgive an unlimited amount of times. Jesus focused on what we can do. We cannot control other people but we can control our own response. When we are safe, we can forgive. When we are loved and allowed a life to live, forgiveness helps us break the bonds holding us back. Forgiveness is not forgetting. Forgiveness is ending the hurt inflicted on us to continue to limit who we are. When we forgive, we are loving ourselves by not letting hurt hold us back.

So how can we forgive like Jesus says we should? We start by first knowing who we are. In May, the Church Council voted to start a process to figure out who we are as a community. The process we are using is called Appreciative Inquiry. Appreciative Inquiry focuses on what we do well as a community. It identifies our gifts. When we focus on our strengths, we discover who we are and where we come from. When we know who we are, our disagreements stay rooted in our shared identity as a community. As a community of faith, Jesus invites us to have difficult conversations. He wants us to ask how we can serve our neighbors in new ways and what that might mean for our identity as a community. We need to ask difficult questions. We need to see how our faith and shared identity as followers of Jesus address issues like same-gender weddings, gender identity, racism, politics, and more. These conversations are hard but they can go well when we know ourselves.

The council is putting together a team who will start this process within the next few months. You will be invited to meet with a fellow church member for a one-on-one conversation. You’ll be invited to share your story. Once everyone in the church is interviewed, we will move into developing a shared vision of who we are and where we believe God is taking us. This process will take time and you’ll hear more about it in our next issue of the Messenger. I’m excited about what this process will uncover and look forward to seeing how the Spirit inspires us in new and exciting ways. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Each week, I write a reflection on one of our scripture readings for the week. This is from Christ Lutheran Church’s Worship Bulletin for 15th Sunday After Pentecost, 9/17/2017.

Nearer: Distracted From God

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery; You shall not murder; You shall not steal; You shall not covet”; and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.

Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near. Let us then lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.

Romans 13:8-14

My sermon from the 14th Sunday after Pentecost (September 10, 2017) on Romans 13:8-1. Listen to the recording at the bottom of the page or read my manuscript below.

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What made it hard for you to come to church today?

Now, if it was easy to get to church this morning – awesome. That’s great. I hope whatever is working for you today stays that way for as many Sundays as possible. But I know not every Sunday is easy. Sometimes, your car doesn’t start or you might wake up feeling sick or maybe, just maybe, today is the day when the Run the Reservoir half-marathon, starting at the Oradell Reservoir and going through Emerson, is literally running outside your house at the moment you need to leave to make it to church on time. Sometimes the road to church on Sunday is literally blocked off. But sometimes that road is mentally, emotionally, and spiritually blocked off too. Even when we make it into this building, we’re still not really here. Our thoughts, maybe even our soul, is somewhere else. And if I’m honest, my mind right now is where it was last week, with my in-laws and extended family in Tampa and the rest of Florida. I was blessed and honored to officiate the wedding of my sister-in-law and the amazing person she’s going to spend her life with. The night before the wedding, we drove to the rehearsal in a downpour that flooded the streets, made the trees bend sideways, and reduced visibility to almost nothing. That storm didn’t last long but Hurricane Irma will. Maybe a pastor shouldn’t admit when they’re distracted on a Sunday morning but today, I am. So what can we do with scripture, with faith, and with Jesus, when we’re not as present as we want to be?

In Paul’s Letter to the Romans, a letter we’ve been walking through over the last several months, we’re now in the middle of what some scholars see as Paul’s vision of the activated Christian life. I like to call this the “now what?” of the gospel – the how-does-this-Jesus-thing-matter-for-our-lives right now. For the first 2/3rds of this letter, Paul laid out his argument about why Jesus, why his death and crucifixion, mattered to these Romans who lived hundreds of miles away from where Jesus grew up. Unlike Paul, we have no record of Jesus taking a cruise around the Mediterranean Sea. Egypt and some parts of modern Syria was about as far as Jesus got and he wasn’t there for very long. Jesus was just this young guy who grew up in a province that was considered a backwater part of the Roman Empire. And after stirring up things by eating meals with people he shouldn’t, the Roman Empire killed Jesus in the most scandalous way possible. As a modern day faith community preaching and teaching about how awesome Jesus is and how a relationship with Jesus matters – it’s sometimes hard for us to remember that, in Paul’s day, Jesus’ story wasn’t really an asset. Jesus never raised an army, he never defeated a foe, he never secured some great victlory, he never won – and most of the people who followed him were the least of the least: women, slaves, Gentiles, tax collectors, and fishermen. From a Roman perspective, Jesus’ whole story was a distraction from who God truly is. The creator of everything couldn’t be defeated so there’s no way God and Jesus could be the same. Jesus’s story, Jesus’s cross, is a distraction from what we want God to be. We don’t want a God who dies; we want a God who can’t lose. We want a God who can turn away the storms – rather than a God who lives with us through them. The Romans wanted a god who overcomes – who displays power in ways that we can copy and helps us overcome our own faults, fears, and problems, forming us into who we think we want to be. That kind of god is a god who wins but the god we get is the God who loves.

And that love…can be weird. We sometimes take the words Paul uses here, words that come from the Old Testament and that Jesus himself uses, as some version of the golden rule: if we want other people to treat us well, then we should treat them well to. But that rule depends on what it means to be treated well and who gets to decide what that looks like. Every culture and society has rules about who gets treated in what way; which kind of people are owed certain honors and privileges and respect and which ones aren’t. A janitor doesn’t have the status a CEO has which means culturally, that janitor is lower on the being treated well ladder. We can say that the janitor deserves respect. We don’t give the janitor a red carpet arrival. We save that for the CEO who makes 4000 times that janitor’s salary. We carry this culturally defined list of who is owed what – inside of us. It’s something we are given because we live here. And the Romans had their version of this list too. So when Paul talked about love, the Romans thought they knew what he meant. The Emperor, the rich, the person who wasn’t a slave, is owed a different kind of love because their status is different from the poor, and the slave, and the sick. But the “now what?” of the gospel, of Jesus’ life and death and resurrection means, that the rules of what we think others are owed is undone. Everyone is worthy of love. Everyone is owed love. And every other rule that causes us to treat others differently in ways that are not life giving – those rules are a distraction from what being with Jesus is all about. Love is love is love which is given to us by a God who knows that the walls we build between each other can only come down if the grace of God comes straight into us. And that grace changes us into living, and breathing, and being who God wants us to be rather than into who we think we ought to be.

That grace knows that, sometimes, we’re going to be distracted. Some Sundays, it’s going to be hard to get to church. It’s going to be hard to hear and sing and pray because our soul feels like it’s a million miles away. Yet even when we are distracted from Jesus, Jesus isn’t distracted from us. He’s still in the words, even when we can’t hear them. He’s still in the bread, still in the drink, still in the prayers we might need the people around us to speak on our behalf. He’s here because he promises to be. And there’s nothing we can do to break the promises Jesus makes. Because the Jesus who lived like us, who loved all of us, and who died for us is the same Jesus showing us how we can live for everyone else. In the words of a colleague of mine who is working in Texas and whose church spent all this week clearing out homes damaged and flooded by Hurricane Harvey, “a loved people serve people.” And there is nothing that can distract Jesus from loving us.

Amen.

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