A Declaration of Dependence

A sermon for June 28, 2015:          Mark 5: 21- 43

It has been a stunning couple of weeks in the news.  So much to take in, and a dizzying roller-coaster range of reactions to the Supreme Court rulings and to the events connected to the murder of the Charleston nine as they were gathered together for Bible study.  We ask the tough questions “who are we as a nation, who are we as the people of God, and where is God in all of this?”  As we approach the Fourth of July holiday, we remember the Declaration of Independence, our nation’s affirmation that the rights of the colonies were of equal importance to the rights of the colonizers.  But today in this place, we do something different –something that runs a bit counter to our American celebration of our independence.  Gathered here as God’s own people, we make a Declaration of Dependence –  we rely on God, we depend on God’s grace and compassion to give us  healing and hope.

In today’s Gospel lesson, two very unequal people call on Jesus to help restore their life and liberty, and bring them a renewed hope for happiness. What really matters for their life is not their independence, but a trust that depends on God, a hanging-on that hopes in God. That faith in God when all else has failed conquers fear and hopelessness, even death itself. Jesus responds with compassion to the pleas of a desperate father and a rejected woman. They discover that with God’s amazing grace, nothing is impossible.

Jairus, a leader of the Synagogue– a dignified Very Important Person — is panicked by a parent’s worst nightmare, a dying child. As he frantically elbows his way through the great crowd surrounding Jesus, he falls down on his knees, and begs Jesus to come with him. Now, please!  My daughter is sick, she’s about to die!  Hurry Jesus, you have to come right away.

Does Jesus then quickly elbow his way through the mob of people pressing in on them?  Well, no, and this is what’s so surprising about Jesus, sometimes so frustrating and always so amazing.  Jairus has to wait for Jesus; someone else is also desperate for his help. Instead of boldly running right up to him and begging him for healing, a woman, a nobody, reaches out from among the crowd, hoping just to touch the hem of Jesus’ robe so she might be healed and receive her life back.

This woman is not an important person like Jairus.  In her culture, she was barely a person at all.  Her twelve years of bleeding had made her an outcast. According to the religious laws in her society, every bed she lies on, every seat she sits on becomes “unclean,” – and, what’s worse, it’s contagious. So whoever touches her or these things is also cut off from the community. She is barred from the synagogue, kept out even from the separated “women’s section.” Because she was constantly bleeding, she was not able to bear children. Her husband had every right to take off his sandal and hand it to her. That was the way a man divorced a wife in those days. She would be the cast-off relative no one will talk about, bankrupted by the doctors who did her no good, and left to fend for herself, by herself.  Independent —but not by choice.

She hides her shame among the crowd.  Her heart is pounding as she makes her way closer to Jesus. She thinks to herself . . . “I’ll just touch his robe. He won’t even notice me.  I know I’m not even supposed to be here, out in the crowd.  I won’t embarrass him by asking for anything.  Nobody will ever know.” But, Jesus knows. He halts in his tracks.  He wants to connect with this outcast, and makes it a point to speak with her. “Who touched my clothes?” he asked. Well, then his disciples think he’s crazy. “Uh, Jesus, it’s like Times Square on New Year’s Eve out here – the place is mobbed, and you want to know who touched you?” Afraid and ashamed, yet the woman identifies herself, falls down before him and tells him the whole truth.

Can you understand why this woman might be reluctant to depend on Jesus?  This was risky. Other people treated her as if her very presence would somehow contaminate them all in God’s eyes.  Maybe the rabbi Jesus would think this about her too. Could she trust this man when so many others in her world had rejected her?  She found her answer: “Daughter,” he called her, compassion in his voice. Recognizing the miracle of healing that had taken place in silence, Jesus then blessed her out loud, for all to hear: “Go in peace.”  In doing so, he challenged the taboos of the culture around him. She depended on God to work through Jesus, and she was healed and restored to her life.

But, meanwhile,  . . .  remember Jairus? Certainly no peace there!  How do you suppose he felt when Jesus was busy making a fuss, dawdling over a random healing that had already happened? Taking up precious time making a fuss over a woman, an outcast who had wanted more than anything to simply hide out in the crowd. Anyway, surely she could have waited. 12 years sick –what’s a few more days for her?  12 years: that’s my daughter’s whole life, and she’s about to die.  No peace there.

What was Jesus doing?  Here was a panicked parent, an important person put on hold while his world was falling apart. While Jesus was still chatting with that woman, the frantic father got the terrible news, the worst heart-rending news ever:  Forget asking for healing; it was too late, his daughter was dead.  If only Jesus had stuck with him, if only he had hurried, maybe then. . . If only.

Now, Jesus reaches out to the bereft and brokenhearted father with improbable words of hope: You can depend on me, in spite of what things look like for you now. Don’t be afraid.  Don’t turn away in anger and bitterness. Don’t give up.  Stick with me. You can rely on God, even when you are at the bottom, and can’t see your way up.  You can depend on God’s grace.  We saw that this week among the families in Charleston who gave witness to God’s amazing power as they simply refused to let hate rule the day.

Jesus went with the grieving Jairus to his house, and what a scene there!  Jairus might have been a leader of the Synagogue, but that didn’t protect him from his daughter’s death. The mourners were gathered, weeping and wailing. Then, they laughed at Jesus when he said the dead child was merely sleeping. Can you blame them? They knew all about death, and this girl was dead. Death was at least something they could depend on!  But yet from Jesus we hear the most unexpected word: “Little girl, get up.”  “Do not fear, only believe.” You can depend on God.

We can depend on God to act in love toward us. We just can’t tell God how and when to do it. Jesus invites us to declare our dependence on him, and in doing so, begin to let go of our anxieties and fears, and keep our eyes and ears open to what God might be doing in and around us. When in fear we grab for security, Jesus invites us to a grace-powered transforming faith that can risk forgiving even our enemies. If we strive to protect ourselves from all those things that might make us feel vulnerable to shame and pain or failure, we just might be short-changing God’s amazing grace.  Jesus encourages us to discover that those things, those unbearable painful wretched things, can serve as God’s invitation to depend on the healing grace we have come to know through Jesus.

Jesus allowed himself to be vulnerable to shame and pain and failure.  Reaching out with a healing touch, he broke the rules. Jesus becomes “unclean” when he touches, heals and welcomes the outcast woman.  Jesus violates a taboo when he touches the dead child to give her life.  But Jesus takes on our shame and unspeakable pain and bewildering failures most powerfully on the cross.  He took it on, all of it, for our healing, to extend to us the bridge to hope and wholeness and new life.  Jesus keeps on touching this world with healing in ways that break through our barriers.  Jesus challenges us to trust, to work with God to welcome those who have been kept on the outside, even when this pushes us beyond the boundaries of our own comfort level.  Jesus invites us to rely on God’s timing, even when it means that we wait, as Jairus waited, while God reaches out to heal the other people who haven’t come onto our own radar screen.

Today we have come together to hear Jesus’ words of hope and healing to each of us.  We come together to encourage each other to trust God. Jesus reaches out to YOU today to say, “Don’t be afraid, depend on me, because I intend to still be there for you.”  Whatever makes you anxious about the future, whatever cuts you off from those you love – Jesus invites us to put ourselves in God’s hands, to help each other to make ourselves available as God’s hands.  Whatever cuts you off from caring for the stranger, God challenges you follow Jesus beyond the boundaries.  Let his life‑giving words comfort you and give you hope and courage to change and grow, as you consider a call into a new chapter of your life as a congregation. I invite you to declare your dependence on that God, the God who gives patient and hopeful strength to wait when we must, comforting grace to be healed where we are broken, and bold courage to reach out when it isn’t easy – or when it may even seem impossible.  For we know that the “steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.  God’s mercies are new every morning.”  We can depend on that.

In the Boat All Along

A sermon for June 21,  2015:   Mark 4: 35 – 41

On this day that we honor fathers, the Gospel lesson reminds me of a story about my Dad. He loved to go fishing, and although we lived right in the heart of Minnesota lake country, for him, the real fishing happened way up north in Canada. He was there, fishing in a boat along with another boat, two guys in each one.  They saw a fierce storm building, and the boats headed for the dock, but before they made it, the storm hit with full fury. Suddenly, my dad’s boat swamped; the other boat was nowhere to be seen.  So my Dad tied himself to the gas-can as a float, and managed to tie his now unconscious fishing mate to the overturned boat.  And he waited.

That’s the sort of thing that the disciples were afraid of in today’s lesson. They were frantic, desperate. And more than that, they were angry.  THEY are about to go under in the storm and Jesus doesn’t even bother to wake up. “Doesn’t he care about us? Jesus, do something! Can’t you see we’re in trouble here?”

When they shook him awake, did they expect that Jesus would just help them bail out the boat?  I don’t think they doubted that he could be of some help, somehow. What they question is whether he cares enough to help.  Well, Jesus does more than grab a bucket.  He scolds the fierce wind and he tells the sea to shut up.  And, amazingly, it does.

The disciples called out to Jesus, and even if it was more in anger than in trusting, more in fear than in faith, the storm shut up and the sea was calm.  They were rescued.

Ah rescue — so, here’s the rest of my Dad’s story.  The storm was still whipping up the waves in the lake as he waited. The other boat made it to the dock, but when they saw that they were alone, they headed straight out again into the stormy lake, unable to see very much.  My Dad heard and felt the thunk on his overturned boat before he could see his rescuers, who had also not seen them until they literally ran into their boat.  All got to the shore, and, after some medical treatment, returned home safe.

Faced with a fearful storm, the disciples had to ask Jesus for help in order to receive it.  When the storms come, the overwhelming crisis crashes in and we know that we cannot control the chaos, Jesus is still in the boat.  When the old answers don’t fit anymore and we wonder if God’s gone napping, we often forget that Jesus says, “I’m here, trust me.”

When we remember to ask for the help we need, this helps us to recognize the answer when it comes. Sometimes we have to wait to get help until it seems like all is lost.  When I first headed down to St. Louis for seminary in 1974, Concordia Seminary in Exile was a school in its first full year of exile from the Missouri Synod seminary campus it had walked away from.  Classes were held in borrowed spaces, and everyone, professors and students alike, had to scramble to scrape together housing arrangements of various kinds.

I had lined up a place to stay when I got to St. Louis, but it turned out that it would not work for me to stay longer than a couple of weeks.  One after another, possibilities for housing fell through.  Finally—uh, finally—I put out a plea for help, and one of the few other women students already at the seminary told me that a family in her church had been looking for a student to live with them – not to be in an apartment in their house, but to live as part of their family.  No one had agreed to that.  So I took a name and phone number, but had only been able to leave a phone message.

Later that afternoon, I got a phone call.  “Hi, this is Valerie [and she gave a last name that I recognized.]  A friend of mine at church said you were looking for a place to stay.”  Valerie had been a couple of years ahead of me in my hometown high school.  She was an active member of the church I grew up in, and our parents were good friends.  My ears definitely perked up at that, but told her that I needed to talk with a family which had really been hoping for a student. There was a pause, and Valerie asked “what was the number you called?”  I told her. “That’s us.  We’re the family.”  At that moment, I realized that Jesus had been in my boat all along.

What keeps us from asking for help when we need it? Indeed, what keeps us from connecting with God even when we aren’t being tossed around in the storm? Our pride is a big part of it. We don’t want to admit we need help. Maybe we think, “I should be able to cope with this on my own.”  Perhaps it isn’t pride that keeps us from asking, but that shadow side of pride: our shame.  We are afraid that, deep down, we are not worth being saved from the storm.  Not good enough to tug on God’s sleeve, and trust being vulnerable and open with our fears and failures.  Maybe we just wonder, angry or bewildered, where in the world has God gotten to, when things around us are such a brokenhearted mess.  When the old demons of racial hatred rise up again to invade the sanctuary of “God’s people gathered in prayer,” cutting down nine of the faithful in cold blood.  What Word could calm this raging sea?  Does God care enough about us to save us from the storms that rage around us?  Does it even matter if we ask the question?

It can matter to us because Jesus knows all about our storms. There would come a time when Jesus faced his own killer storm. “Please Father,” he prayed on Good Friday, “Take this cup from me.” The storm of the cross and the tidal wave of death, these were not stilled for Jesus on that fearful day, but even in his storm, he trusted that God was in his boat.  “Father, forgive them.”  “Into your hands, I commend my Spirit.”

Jesus challenges his boat mates, “Why did you think I forgot you?  Trust me: I was with you the whole time.” Jesus called them to go on this journey.  Jesus would care for them, just as Jesus cares for us in the storms which threaten to do us in, physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  When we discover that we are not in control, as the wind and waves roar all around us.  As we head out into uncharted and uncertain territory, as we risk and are challenged to grow into new ventures and venues to which the Spirit is leading.

After the plea for help, waiting with the waves breaking over us, our trust is tested. Will God find us there in the night, just holding on and hoping?  Being vulnerable requires courage and faith enough to risk living into the kind of trust that God’s Spirit promises to nurture in us.  Together, living into the kinds of spiritual resources which we can find and use if we open our eyes and hands and hearts to them. When we call out in fear and find God’s faithfulness, we experience God’s amazing grace, and that grace can see us through our storms.  We discover that, although we are not in control, we don’t need to be, because God is.  We can reclaim that we are creatures who rely on God. Creatures for whom God risked everything, beloved creatures promised and given new Easter life in Jesus that can never die.  Creatures who have a purpose and a mission to live out the news of God’s love that we encounter in the cross. Disciples who know we can ride out the waves because Jesus is in the boat with us.

It’s not just the storm that is raging out there on the Sea of Galilee that Jesus needs to stop, but the storm within the disciples which needs the calming peace of Christ. Just like the disciples in that boat, Jesus wants to speak to our stormy fears, and to help us hear and trust the voice of God within the storm.

Listen to the voices that shout at you when the storms rage in your life. What do you tend to find yourself thinking when things go wrong? What really pulls you down in times of trouble?  These are the storms that Jesus invites us to turn over to him, to turn in confession and to trust the word of forgiveness. Open your ears to hear God’s words to those storms in your life.  Share with each other and with those you meet in your life, the firm, clear “Peace, be still!” from Jesus which tells us not just that he can help, but that he wants to, indeed longs to.

Just like the disciples in that boat, Jesus wants to speak to the fears we carry with us now, to still the voice of the storms in our lives, and to help us hear the voice of God within the storm.  The voice of God speaks to us, stronger than the storms of life, to change us now, to teach us now the things we need when the winds of the world beat upon us, to invite us to a deeper trust in the power and guidance of the Spirit.  We are gathered here by God’s Spirit, as we affirm the promises of our baptismal covenant, and as we share in the promised presence of Jesus at the Communion table. As you move toward your congregational call meeting next week, remember this: God has been in the boat all along, and will continue to be there.

        

A Picture of God

A sermon for May 31, 2015     Trinity Sunday    John 3:1 – 17

A little Sunday school girl was very busy drawing with her crayons.  Her teacher asked her what she was making. “I am drawing a picture of God,” she said. Her teacher replied, “But nobody knows what God looks like.” To which the little girl replied – without missing a beat– “They will when I am finished.”

We can’t draw a picture of God, or really explain God either.  On this Holy Trinity Sunday, we reflect on our one God whom we meet in three “faces”: God the Creator, Jesus of Nazareth, and the Holy Spirit. The teaching of the Trinity does attempt to help us understand God more fully. But at the root of things, we have a mystery, a God more to be worshipped than understood, more to be experienced than to be explained.

Over the years, images have been used to try to picture the “three in one and one in three.”  St. Patrick, fifth century missionary in Ireland (of St. Patrick’s Day fame) used a classic: three parts of a shamrock, or clover leaf, are still one leaf.  The Trinity may also be like the Mercedes Benz symbol; the circle symbolized the unity, and each arm of the three is one face of God, (the word “person” is used for this. In Latin, the word “persona” refers to the masks that actors wore on stage.)  Or maybe like an egg, with the shell, the yoke and the white.  Ice, liquid water and steam — each one form of water. I suppose these images might help, but they really don’t solve that unsolvable mystery of the Trinity.

It’s possible to separate an egg, throw the shell on the compost heap, make meringue with the white, and put the yolk in the pie filling.  Water isn’t ice and steam at the same time. These images have their limits. The Trinity may be more like fire: heat, light, and fuel.  With fire, if there is no fuel, there is no fire.  If there is a fire, there will be light, and if it is a fire, the light will be accompanied by heat.  Like a fire, we cannot divide the oneness of God into three separate and isolated parts.

Jesus didn’t divide up the divine.  He never made claims for himself separate from his connection with the God who sent him.  Jesus confessed that God was “one God.”  That one God acted through him, and when we see Jesus, we do see a picture of God.  Likewise, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Jesus Christ we meet in the Bible.  Martin Luther’s explanation to the Apostle’s Creed states that we “cannot by our own reason or strength come to Jesus, but that the Holy Spirit calls, gathers and enlightens us.”  The Spirit has called Gwendolyn to the waters of Baptism, and gathered this community around her and her family.  Today, we will hear the blessing and the promise given to her, and to each of us:  “you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.”

We are, each one of us and all of us together, connected to this mysterious and complicated “God in three persons.”  Our lesson from Romans reminds us: we are God’s sons and daughters, invited to trust God’s goodness and love, freed to live without fear.  And how did we become the children of God?  In our Gospel text, Jesus told Nicodemus he needed to be born “from above” or born “again.” (The word in Greek has both meanings). A new birth of baptism assures us that we are God’s adopted children through the Holy Spirit. That same Spirit of God keeps us in relationship, connected to the one God, reminding us that we are God’s own children.  The Holy Spirit assures us of God’s forgiveness and love, which restores our relationships when they are wounded and shattered, and frees us from fear and slavery to those powerful forces that threaten to cut us off from God, from each other, and from our own self. The Spirit delights in leading us to discover our gifts for serving and sharing together now, in this place.

When we confess that God is “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” we echo the language of the Bible, and we pass along the tradition of the Church in its first several centuries.  Does such an ancient and complicated way of talking about God speak to the twenty-first century?

The teaching of the Trinity can help point us toward a richer view of God.  These days, lots of folks will say they believe in God; but what kind of God?  “The Man Upstairs?” Does God carry a cell phone, and sound a whole lot like Morgan Freeman, or maybe George Burns? Is God a left-over, not quite discarded, but no longer fitting into a new view of the world? God as Trinity, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” reminds us to always return to this key question:  Is our God the kind of God we see at work in Jesus?

The doctrine of the Trinity encourages us to open up and look for a God at work in the whole world, among all people, including us, here and now. The Trinity points us toward a role as agents of the Creator in acting as caring stewards of the Creation.

Remembering that God is a Trinity can help us keep God’s love in Jesus at the center of our spiritual life, which is what the Holy Spirit – the here and now God – works at doing among us, helping to keep us spiritually focused outward, rooted in the real, difficult, complicated and needy world. The God that Jesus called “Abba, daddy” sends us a Spirit which is at work coaxing us to step out past fear and fatigue, showing us how to adapt to new challenges, and bringing people together to worship and work for God.

The doctrine of the Trinity may help us to see using the language of theology some of what twentieth century physics discovered through science.  Whether it be the Hubble Telescope peering through the universe into the beginning of time, or the latest miracle microscope uncovering the tiniest particle of matter, the discoveries of science show again and again:  Relatedness stand at the heart of the universe. Atoms do not exist unless they are in relationship with other atoms. The doctrine of the Trinity shows us that even God exists in relationship–Father, Son, Spirit. As with God, so also with us, for we are made in the image of God. Babies die without attentive interaction with loving adults, who establish a caring connection that makes it possible to relate to others. True parenting is not defined by DNA, nor by the name on the birth certificate or the adoption papers. It unfolds through relationships of love with the child. As she is baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Gwendolyn receives the “spirit of adoption” as a child of God.

We exist as God’s people in relationship with others, the body of Christ relating to God, each other, those around us. We discover the truth of our Christian God in our relationships of trust and love shaped by the Good News of God’s love in Jesus.

When we follow the lead of God’s Holy Spirit, who shapes the Good News of Jesus for our time and place, we are pushed into action as God’s agents for loving the whole creation.  We bring God’s Holy Fire into a World Wide Web of connectedness.  Family, friends, neighbors, co-workers— connections nearby that we can see. Events of the past and the future, relationship with people and contexts far away from us— these other connections that are difficult or impossible for us to see.  This Web of connectedness is where our mysterious, complicated, glorious, loving triune God calls us and equips us to use our gifts, and stands by us as daily we live out the promises of our baptismal covenant.

Reflecting on the Trinity, and on our calling as the baptized children of God, we see that our mission is not to draw a picture of God, but to be a picture of God’s love, bearing that love to others. So, as you go out this week into your own Web of relationships, “may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”