Sunday, August 25, 2019 – Pentecost 11

Isaiah 58:9b-14

Luke 13:10-17

This morning our first reading is from Isaiah; specifically the reading is a portion of what is read on Yom Kippur, a religious holiday also known as the Jewish Day of Atonement.

The history of Yom Kippur dates back to the days when the Lord spoke to Moses and his brother Aaron, as recorded in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. In Leviticus, specifically in chapter 16, the Lord told Moses and Aaron how the people of Israel were to “atone” for their sins. In chapter 16 verse 5, the Lord said Aaron should “take from the congregation of the people of Israel two male goats for a sin offering…”

“He shall take the two goats and set them before the Lord at the
entrance of the tent of meeting; and Aaron shall cast lots on the two
goats, one lot for the Lord and the other lot for Azazel. (Leviticus 16:7-8)

Hence our young peoples’ message. The goat for the Lord was sacrificed as a sin offering, the goat for Azazel was sent into the wilderness as an atonement.

Atonement. It is derived from the phrase “at one.” “To be at one with someone is to be in harmonious personal relationship with” the person (“Atonement” in The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible, volume 1, p. 309).

Rabbi Shai Held, president of the Hadar Institute in New York, wrote

On the Jewish Day of Atonement, the prophetic reading lands
like a stick of dynamite upon the congregation. By late morning,
when Isaiah is read, most of us are hungry and thirsty and perhaps
a little irritable from fasting. We’re right smack in the middle of
the holiest day of the year, a day centered on the hard work of
repentance and the joyous possibility of forgiveness, when the
words of the prophet come thundering at us, questioning just
what it is we think we’re doing in God’s house”

(“Living the Word: August 25” in Christian Century August 14, 2019 p. 18)

Just what is it we think we’re doing in God’s house?

The question sounds a little like the religious leader who challenged Jesus when Jesus healed the woman who had been unable to stand upright. The leader said

to the crowd who saw the cure: “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” (Luke 13:14). In essence, the leader was asking “Just what does he (Jesus) think he’s doing?”

How did Jesus answer the question?

Jesus answered with a question of his own: don’t you untie your donkey or your ox to lead them to water, on the Sabbath? If you can do that, why can’t I free this woman from her bondage in order that she might live?

Really, what Jesus is talking about is a matter of the heart. As is Rabbi Hart in the Rabbi’s commentary on our reading from Isaiah. The Rabbi explained this when the Rabbi wrote:

“Self-awareness can be hard to come by. We may believe ourselves
entirely sincere. Yet the prophet [Isaiah] has his doubts, so he offers
a kind of test: if our fasting comes coupled with a passion for justice
and a heart full of kindness, then our religious lives have integrity (source
cited above). If, on the other hand, our fasting convinces us that God is
in our pocket, then our religious lives are a scam, and God wants no
part of them.” (source cited above).

God cares about the burdens people carry, burdens that weigh people down, burdens that bind people, preventing them from living freely.

God wants us, as God’s followers, to care about the burdens people carry. God wants us to feed the hungry because hunger is a burden than weighs people down. God wants us to help heal peoples’ wounds because those wounds prevent them from living freely.

Jesus healed the bent over woman on the Sabbath because she was crippled, she was bound; her life was diminished. Her freedom and dignity was of much higher value than the need to keep order by properly observing the Sabbath. Jesus atoned for the sins of the world when he died and rose again, proclaiming victory making us “at one” with God.

Do we have a passion for justice? Are our hearts filled with kindness?

God promised the Hebrew people that

If you remove the yoke from among you,
the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
¹if you offer your food to the hungry
and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
then your light shall rise in the darkness
and your gloom be like the noonday.
          God will guide you continually,
and satisfy your needs in parched places,
and make your bones strong;
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water,
whose waters never fail.

May this blessing fall on our hearts; that our lights rise in the dark and shine, bright as the sun at noonday. Amen.

 

Sunday, August 18, 2019 – Pentecost 10

Pentecost 10 2019

Luke 12:49-56

Jeremiah 23:23-29

Hebrews 11:29-12:2

 

“Am I a God nearby, says God, and not a God far off? Who can hide in secret places so that I cannot see them?” (Jeremiah 23:23-24a).

 “Is not my word like fire, says God, and like a hammer that breaks a rock in pieces?” (Jeremiah 23:29)

 Jesus said: “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled.” (Luke 12:49)

 

When you know, really know, the power of God that power can be terrifying, terrifying enough to want to hide from it.

I don’t mean terrifying as in “I’m afraid I’m going to get hurt.”

I mean terrifying as in “I’m afraid of being overwhelmed.”

God’s word is like a hammer that breaks a rock into pieces.

Jesus came to bring fire to the earth.

 

During our ELCA’s Churchwide Assembly some incredible decisions were made. The Assembly approved a Social Statement on Faith, Sexism and Justice which names patriarchy and sexism as sins.

The Assembly adopted a Declaration of Inter-religious Commitment, witnessed by 39 ecumenical guests from around the world.

The Assembly authorized ELCA World Hunger to spend $21.5 million in the year 2020.

The Assembly adopted a Strategy Toward Authentic Diversity in the ELCA.

The Assembly presented a Declaration of the ELCA to People of African Descent.

The Assembly adopted 26 memorials on subjects ranging from gender identity to seminary tuition.

The Assembly adopted a memorial calling the church to create a Social Statement of the relationship of church and state.

The Assembly Adopted a memorial encouraging congregations to celebrate the upcoming 50^th anniversary of the ordination of women, the 40^th anniversary of the ordination of women of color, and the 10^th anniversary of the decision to remove barriers to ordination for people in same-gender relationships.

The Assembly moved to support the vision and goals of the Poor Peoples’ Campaign.

The Assembly adopted a memorial that affirms the ELCA’s long-standing commitment to migrants and refugees and declared the ELCA a sanctuary church body.

That’s a lot of decision-making. Those are a lot of commitments. Our Church is on fire, carrying the fire Jesus kindled into the streets and the homes and the communities we live in.

There are those who might wish we could hide from these things. There are those who fear those things we do as a church will cause great division. There are those, perhaps some of you, who disagree with the decisions made and who feel distanced by them.

Jesus was not kidding when he asked “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth?” And then answered his own question, saying: “No, I tell you, but rather division.” (Luke 12:51).

Jesus said “From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided father against son…mother against daughter… (Luke 12:52-53).

And just so, households have been divided for centuries, not agreeing on the meaning of Jesus for the world and the power of the Word in the world.

“Is not my word like fire?” God asked (Jeremiah 23:29).

How do we live when our “house” is divided?

A few years ago there was a division in my immediate family.

My older brother believed I had done something that would have had a significant effect on one of his daughters. He was livid. He believed in his heart I had done this thing. He accused me in a phone call, angry and hurt.

I didn’t do what he thought I did, I couldn’t have; I didn’t have the power to do what he thought I did. But he was so hurt and so angry, he wouldn’t listen to me.

My other siblings heard about his accusations and some believed him. Some stayed neutral. My parents tried to heal the hurt.

Our division broke their hearts.

It lasted over a year.

My first inclination was to constantly defend myself. That didn’t work. So I put up healthy boundaries, kept a distance, trusting that time would prove I hadn’t done what I was accused of doing. Which it did. Eventually my brother apologized. And my parents rejoiced.

Divisions need not destroy families, they need not destroy communities, they need not destroy congregations, they need not destroy God’s Church on earth.

If we model the gifts God has given us: patience, kindness, respect and love—even if we never agree on the meaning of Jesus for the world and the power of the Word in the world… we will be ok.

We will be ok if we

“Lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely”

And we

“run with perseverance the race that is set before us,

looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Amen.

Sunday, August 11, 2019 – Pentecost 9

Pentecost 9 2019

Luke 12:22-34

Our Savior’s La Crosse

From Blossoms
(…as if death were nowhere in the background…)

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Li-Young Lee

 

A “brown paper bag of peaches” “bought from the boy at the bend of the road.”

(from the poem “Blossoms” by Li-Young Lee).

How many times have you bought a peach, or a bag of peaches, imagining the jubilance of your first bite?

Summertime is time for peaches, time for watermelon, time for corn on the cob from the yellow truck, time for luscious raspberries and giant juicy tomatoes.

The days are hot and sometimes humid but these hot days bear fruit. Luscious, gorgeous fruit.

As our cover poem states: “There are days we live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom” (Li-Young Lee).

Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;

yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.

But if God so clothes the grass of the field,

which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,

how much more will God clothe you?

And do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink

and do not keep worrying.

Instead, strive for God’s kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.

(Luke 12:27-31 excerpts)

 

We worry.

Violence fills the world. Death comes to children or their parents as their parents attempt to protect them. Families are separated. Immigrants are called invaders.

Black people, brown people are thought of as “less” not as equal. There is fear of those who are “other.”

And we worry.

Our worries and our fears stand in bold contradiction to the luscious days of summer when we hope to, when we want to live from “joy to joy to joy” (Li-Young Lee).

As followers of Jesus Christ we must show the world the truths Jesus taught us.

Now, in these days of anxiety and fear and violence and death, if we are to recover life’s joys we must show the world, we must proclaim to the world the truths Jesus taught us.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Luke 12:34).

Scripture is clear:

Jesus taught us the most important law written upon our hearts, is the law to love one another.

In John 15:12 Jesus said “This is my commandment, that you love one another, even as I have loved you.”

In John 15:17 Jesus is said to have said “These things I command you, that you love one another.”

Love lies at the heart of our faith. If we live the love Jesus calls us to love, we must speak out against violence, we must speak out against injustice, we must speak out against inequalities…

I asked a few weeks ago “Where is the love?”

My answer today: God’s love lives in us; we must allow God’s love to live through us. God’s love will bear fruit in us and through us if we allow God’s love to live and to thrive.

Today we pray as Christians have prayed Sunday after Sunday, year after year, generation after generation “deliver us from evil” (Lord’s Prayer).

The violence that lives in our world is evil. Domestic terrorism is evil. Separating children from their parents is evil. Closing our borders to brown people is evil. Racism is evil. These are evil acts that turn us away from God.

The love of Jesus Christ conquers evil. The love of Jesus Christ opens hearts. The love of Jesus Christ brings people together. The love of Jesus Christ cannot and it will not divide us.

We must be bringers of that love.

We must live God’s love in all that we say and all that we do and all that we are.

God’s love brings to the world days when we can “live as if death were nowhere in the background; from joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to blossom to impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom” (Li-Young Lee).

We must not fear the happenings in our world. We must trust in God and in God’s gift of love for the world. And then we must share our trust in the power of God’s love with all people.

This is our call. We are not alone in this call. God is with us, guiding us.

Have no fear.

In all things God works with us and through us.

And then there is joy. There is “joy to joy to joy, from wing to wing, from blossom to impossible blossom” (Li-Young Lee).

Amen.

Sunday, August 4, 2019 – Pentecost 8

Pentecost 8 2019

Luke 12:13-21

Our Savior’s La Crosse

 

God needs us.

Last week I began my sermon saying “We need God.”

This week I want to flip the coin: God needs us.

Our need for God is corporate and it is personal.

God’s need for us is the same.

God needs each of us to commit ourselves to being God’s disciples, God’s workers here on earth.

And God needs us, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, to serve God as a community even as we witness to God in our community.

When we looked at the Lord’s Prayer last week, I pointed out that, as a community we ask for three things in the prayer:

That God give us each day our daily bread (Luke 11:3).

That God forgive us our sins (Luke 11:4)

That God not bring us to the time of trial (Luke 11:4) aka lead us not into             temptation.

Looking at our gospel reading this week, it is clear that, even as we ask God for food, for forgiveness, for deliverance from evil, God asks us to be God’s servants in those things for which we ask.

For example:

Give us each day our daily bread.

This prayer petition voices a global need: in order to live we need to eat. Not just we humans, all species need to eat. So, what are we asking for when we pray “give us each day our daily bread”?

Literally, we are asking for enough for this day. Give us each day…

Today’s gospel reading makes this clear when Jesus tells the story of the rich man. The man was a farmer whose farm produced food in abundance. The man’s farm produced so much food the man had no place to store it all. So, what did the man do? The man decided to build bigger barns so he could keep all of the grain for himself. He wanted, maybe needed to have enough grain to feel secure enough to be able to sit back and say to his soul “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry” (Luke 12:19). According to Jesus, in his story God spoke to the rich man and said to him “‘You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God” (Luke 12:20-21).

The rich man had no thought of his neighbors or of their needs. The rich man was only thinking of himself. He had no thought of sharing with others that which he had in abundance.

The moral of the story for us is this: We cannot just ask God for our daily bread, we need to work with God so that all people have daily bread. This means that, for those who have in abundance, our obligation is to give from our abundance to others, because we have been given much. For those not living in abundance, when our needs are met, we can work with those who have much to give, ensuring there are laborers in abundance who can provide for those who needs have not yet been met.

Another example from the Lord’s Prayer:

Forgive us our sins.

As baptized children of God, God’s grace overflows in our lives. Waters of baptism have cleansed and redeemed us. Each and every day we are promised we can rise to the day confident in the knowledge God has forgiven us. There can be no doubt. Our sins are forgiven.

Knowing God has forgiven us our sins, knowing that we have been washed by the waters of baptism, we are called as God’s children to love others as God loves us. Our call to love obligates us to forgive those who have sinned against us. Forgiveness does not imply we are to forget the hurts they may have inflicted. Forgiveness does not mean we cannot protect ourselves from ever being sinned against again. Forgiveness calls us to right relationship with those who have sinned against us. Forgiveness calls us to know that every person is a beloved child of God, forgiven their sins just as we have been forgiven ours. The forgiveness of our sins calls us to forgive those who have sinned against us.

Our final example:

Lead us not into temptation.

Temptation toward evil is prevalent, it is prominent, and it is powerful. The whole reason we need forgiveness in abundance is because of the power of evil, it is because of the power of all that is evil that tempts us. We must not fool ourselves. Everything that turns us away from God, everything that is sin, is there tempting us. And we so often give into temptation.

Our call as children of God who choose to follow Jesus is to reject sin, and to join hands with others who are equally as tempted by evil, that they too reject the sins that turn them from God.

This morning we hear, as we receive God’s word, a call to give even as we are given. To give food. To offer forgiveness. To protect others from evil.

Our call is to offer to others that which we ourselves receive from God.

Amen.