God Brings Us Along

Sermon preached Saturday, July 10, and Sunday, July 11, 2021, the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, at Grace Lutheran Church in Westminster, Maryland. 

Well, there’s nothing like a beheading to start off preaching in a new congregation, am I right?

It’s definitely one of those stories that you finish reading and say, “The Gospel of the Lord…I think? I think there’s good news in there somewhere?”

And, truthfully, when this lectionary text comes up, it’s mostly this part about the beheading of John is the part that tends to draw our focus. That’s the headline. That’s the big take away. But, I don’t know, this time, it hit differently. I meet for text study with a few other pastors and all of us, for maybe the first time, were drawn to the other part of the reading—the part that’s actually happening in real time.

We get a flashback, triggered by the buzz happening around Jesus and his disciples. Herod hears about all these things that the disciples are doing and you can almost imagine the old sitcom blur-out as he remembers John and that night at his birthday banquet. He had John arrested, but was “protecting him,” as the text tells us because he apparently liked listening to him, despite not always understanding.

But, of course, his wife did not. And when push came to shove, Herod’s care for John only went so far. When push came to shove, Herod needed to keep the peace in his home, at this party, and in his kingdom, no matter the cost. And so Herod, deeply grieved, we’re told, but without protest, has John killed and his head brought out.

Yet even in the midst of this violence, John’s disciples were not deterred. They came and retrieved his body and continued his work. The mission continued, despite the efforts of Herod and Herodia.

A similar story is told in Amos. We only hear a snippet of it this morning, but Amos is called to be a prophet, to speak the word of the Lord to a kingdom who doesn’t want to hear it. After many attempts to make people hear this proclamation, he is expelled and exiled and, according to apocryphal accounts, eventually killed by the ones he confronted.

Today’s readings give us just two examples of the ways in which, time and time again, people are called to share the word of God and others reject them because it is too hard a Word. A Word that challenges norms and expectations. A Word that calls for sacrifice and selfless acts. A Word that requires humbling oneself and risking power and influence.

Amos.

John the Baptist.

And, we know, in time, Jesus.

Most of the time, we identify with these prophetic voices—or at least we want to, right? We want to be the ones on the front lines proclaiming God’s Word! We want to believe that we are taking the risks, that we are being vulnerable, that we are on the right side!

…but I think it’s more accurate to say that sometimes that’s us. And sometimes, too often, we are like these folks who run scared, who react defensively or violently, who only believe that something is God’s work if it already aligns with what we believe to be true. I’m not saying that any of us have had someone beheaded, but it’s not always that extreme. When we are faced with something new or something that confronts our own weaknesses or that challenges us to look at something differently, we push back.

How many times to we reject something because it would upset our status quo? And before we get our defenses up, let’s talk about some of the ways in which this plays out, particularly in congregation life. Some might ring true for Grace. Some might not.

How many times do we say, “Well, we tried doing that once fifteen years ago, but it didn’t work, so we shouldn’t try it again.”?

Or, “This is way music has always been done here.”?

Or, “We can’t use that space for that new ministry because it’s always been used for this other ministry, even though this other ministry hasn’t really been very active in recent years.”?

Or, “We’re already welcoming, why do we have to be explicit about who is welcome here?”

Or, here’s a big one for us right now, “As long as they don’t change my worship time, it’s fine!”?

Did any of that resonate with you?

Now, let me be clear, not everything new or different or disruptive is automatically God’s will. That would be unfair and untrue to say. But it would also be unfair and untrue to say that it is God’s will that things be constant forever, that they grow stagnant and stale and that we clutch on to them to the detriment of where the Spirit might be calling us.

No, our God is a moving God, a changing God, a God who is always in conversation with what has been to shepherd us into the remarkable possibility of what could be.

We need look no further than scripture, where we are shown account after account of God leading God’s people into something bold, something new, while never fully abandoning what God has called good in the past.

Even God’s most destructive action, the flood, did not fully wipe out what had been! Humanity and every living creature was carried in safety on the ark.

When it’s put this way, it might be easy for us to get on board, because we know that, in the end, it works out: the dry land reappears after the flood. The Israelites make it to the promised land. The exiled people of God return and are restored. Jesus rises from the dead. The early church and the message of Jesus spreads quickly and takes hold in pockets far and wide.

But we cannot pretend that these things all happened in a vacuum, in a tidy, sanitized bubble that did not require sacrifice and bravery and trust in God. We can’t forget that the flood happened. We can’t forget the wandering in the wilderness and the desire to return to the known quantity of Egypt. We can’t forget that before the disciples began sharing the good news of Jesus’ resurrection, they huddled together in a locked room because they were afraid.

Because there will always be resistance, from within as well as from without.

There will be people who are not part of our community who might deride our efforts, or mock our beliefs or say that we’re overstepping into things a church shouldn’t be involved in and that we should “stay in our lane.”

And there will be people within our community who will worry about how much it will cost. Or who we might offend as we seek to include more in the mission of God. Or who will be more concerned about losing their perceived position of power than with whatever the Holy Spirit has in store.

Yes, there will be resistance, as there has always been.

But we know that we have a faithful God who doesn’t give up on us and who is with us every step of the way—even when we are like Herod, seeking to keep our peace and power at any cost. God will challenge us, comfort us, cajole us, and care for us wherever we find ourselves on this path.

God is always moving forward to new life and renewal and toward the fulfillment of God’s mission—and God desires to bring us along. Sometimes joyfully, sometimes dragging our feet or kicking and screaming.

God is faithful and is there every step of the way.

Amen.

Continuing in Christ’s Word.

Sermon preached Sunday, October 28, 2018, Reformation Sunday, at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Littlestown, PA. Audio can be found here. 

Today is Reformation Sunday. When I worked on my sermon this week, I planned to focus on the ways the church continues to reform. That is still the main focus of my message today, but before I get to that, I feel compelled to say something about our church’s past and the damaging effects the Church has been complicit in.

By now, most of you have probably heard about the shooting in a synagogue in Pittsburg yesterday. Yesterday, as faithful Jews gathering for their shabbat service, a gunman entered and opened fire. This hate crime resulted in multiple fatalities, although as I prepared these words, the final number was not known yet.

The reason I feel the need to say this and bring this story up is because our namesake, Martin Luther, wrote some horrifically anti-semitic things, especially the words found in his treatise, “On the Jews and Their Lies.” These words stoked oppression and violence against Jewish people and were heralded by Hitler and Nazis as some of the justification for genocide. The Lutheran church in Germany, for the most part, did not resist and in many cases embraced the Nazi ideology.

This is part of our heritage and we can’t ignore it. In 1994, the ELCA issued a statement regarding this unflattering aspect of our past. It reads, in part:

“The Lutheran communion of faith is linked by name and heritage to the memory of Martin Luther, teacher and reformer. Honoring his name in our own, we recall his bold stand for truth, his earthy and sublime words of wisdom, and above all his witness to God’s saving Word. Luther proclaimed a gospel for people as we really are, bidding us to trust a grace sufficient to reach our deepest shames and address the most tragic truths.
In the spirit of that truth-telling, we who bear his name and heritage must with pain acknowledge also Luther’s anti-Judaic diatribes and the violent recommendations of his later writings against the Jews. As did many of Luther’s own companions in the sixteenth century, we reject this violent invective, and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations. In concert with the Lutheran World Federation, we particularly deplore the appropriation of Luther’s words by modern anti-Semites for the teaching of hatred toward Judaism or toward the Jewish people in our day.

Grieving the complicity of our own tradition within this history of hatred, moreover, we express our urgent desire to live out our faith in Jesus Christ with love and respect for the Jewish people. We recognize in anti-Semitism a contradiction and an affront to the Gospel, a violation of our hope and calling, and we pledge this church to oppose the deadly working of such bigotry, both within our own circles and in the society around us. Finally, we pray for the continued blessing of the Blessed One upon the increasing cooperation and understanding between Lutheran Christians and the Jewish community.”

These words are important for us to hear and remember and commit to because today is Reformation Sunday—a day that all to often becomes a time to cheerlead ourselves for being so much better and so much more enlightened to the rest of the church. In fact, that tendency has led some to call for an abolition of this liturgical holiday all together.

The question becomes: why do we continue to celebrate this occasion?

We believe that God was working through Luther, revealing more of God’s grace and will for humanity. We celebrate today because we believe that God acted and that God continues to act.

We remembered what happened in 1517, when some of Luther’s writings and words sparked the broad protestant reformation, but we are also looking forward. That is, after all, part of the reason why we use the color red to commemorate this day.

Do you know what other Sundays we wear red? Can you remember? (wait for responses)

We also wear red on Pentecost. Pentecost, the day when we remember the God giving the Holy Spirit to the early church and inspiring those early believers to come out of hiding and spread the Gospel. We also wear red at ordinations and consecrations, the day when we ask the Spirit to bless those who commit themselves to the ministry of Word and Sacrament or Word and Service.

So why red? What does the red represent? (Holy Spirit)

Red is the color we give the Holy Spirit. Red, to remind us of the tongues of fire that appeared over the heads of the early disciples. Red to help us remember the vibrancy of our faith, of the Holy Spirit’s action in our faith.

Red to remind us that, although the Protestant Reformation happened nearly 1500 years after the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was still working in the Church—and the Holy Spirit still is working in the church.

The Holy Spirit is a constant in the Church. The Holy Spirit is a constant from the beginning of creation! When the earth was a formless void, nothing but chaos, the book of Genesis tells us that “a wind from God,” the breath of God, the Spirit, moved over the face of the waters.

Jesus says today, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

“If you continue…” Continue. This word itself has the connotation of moving forward, doesn’t it? To continue means to keep going in the direction already begun. I mention this because sometimes we see this as more permanent; sometimes we hear these words and want to build something out of concrete and brick and refuse to move at all. But “continue” doesn’t mean never move, but rather move forward in the same vein.

What I mean to say is that sometimes we get so tied to what has always been done that we forget to look forward. We lock ourselves into a box or back ourselves into a corner and forget that God has called us on a journey, not simply to a destination.

If we are to continue in Christ’s work, we must constantly try to evaluate and discern what God’s will is for the world—what God’s will is for the world today. Through prayer and faithful interpretation of scripture, we can try to read and hear what God is doing in our world and how God wants us to participate in it.  It might look slightly different than it did in the past, but the basics are the same. God’s greatest desire is to be reconciled with all of creation. God wants to be in relationship with us. God loves us, forgives us, offers us grace and longs for us to do the same for others.

But the specifics might look different. The way we do worship might change. The way we engage our neighbors might change. The people we will be asked to welcome might be very different than in the past.

The biggest question for us, then, is “Is this really what we want?” We say that we want to continue in Jesus’ word, but that might take us to a place that makes uncomfortable. It is easier to pour concrete over our feet and stay right where we are than to branch out.

This isn’t a new phenomenon.

The early churches were different than the synagogues they grew out of. They welcomed gentiles, which some people found offensive and contrary to God’s will. They worshipped God in a different way. The lived a radical way of life that made them seem strange.

And then the church changed from the persecuted minority to the religion in power. The Church took on the pageantry of the empire. Some believed that the Church was tainted, ruined by its new association with the empire. Others were unhappy that the faith was becoming codified with the making of creeds and finalization of our Bible. People were upset because it left some believers outside of the “official” Church.

The Church continued to grow and change until another great shift happened with Martin Luther. The mass went from Latin to German and people called it heresy. Luther gave the Bible to Germans in their own language, which some felt could be damaging to their very souls. Luther was separated from Rome and many believed that also meant he was separated from God.

If we continue on through history, the Church is always changing, still changing. Our own nostalgia leads us back to the time when Sunday Schools were full, businesses were closed on Sundays and Christians were in charge! …isn’t that what we sometimes long for? I’m young and so don’t know much of this first hand, but sometimes I wish that pastors were still offered the free lunch or haircut I’ve heard so much about, or that maybe my collar could get me out of a ticket if I got pulled over.

…but nostalgia is also dangerous. After all, if the church still looked the same as it did fifty years ago, I wouldn’t be up here. I wouldn’t be a pastor. I would be in some other career, fighting to ignore a calling God had given me.

When we compare the church of the past to the church of the present, it is tempting to name one as “bad” and the other as “good.” This really isn’t helpful. There was good then and there is good now. There was bad then and there is bad now.

What we have, then, is a simple recognition that the world changes. Culture changes. The church changes. But there’s one thing that doesn’t. In a reality full of change, the one constant is God.

We have a God of the living, not the dead—God’s Word always speaks to us today in our world and culture, not only those who came before us. So even if our society looks different, God will still speak. God’s word is living, breathing, moving through us and doing incredible things.

We can look at the past and see a time when the Church was a power broker, when Christians monopolized the economy, politics, entertainment, etc. We can look at those times and be wistful for what was. But here’s something important to think about: Christianity almost always does its best work when it is working from the underside. Some of the greatest moments of our faith have happened when believers have been working against the dominant power and for the oppressed.

The early church was a group of persecuted outsiders.

Martin Luther was excommunicated and separated from the greatest religious power of the day.

The faithful witnesses in the civil rights movement of the 1960’s came either from the marginalized African-American churches and the courageous individuals who represented them or from those white pastors and leaders who had to put their job security and physical safety to fight for the justice God promises.

The church today is up to some pretty neat things, too. While the loudest voices in our culture seem focused on arguing and fighting over every little thing, God is working through individuals and organizations to get things done: people are fed, clothes are given out, strangers are given warm welcome, justice and freedom are proclaimed.

So today, we celebrate. We don’t celebrate because things have changed—we celebrate because we know that God is always up to something. Change means that God is at work.

Jesus’ words are a promise: “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”

If we continue in Christ’s word. Not continue in our aspirations of the past, or attempts to do whatever is popular at the moment: both are dangerous pitfalls. If we continue in Christ’s word. The word of love. Forgiveness. Grace. Hope. Freedom. Life.

This is God’s word for us. Then—and now.

Amen.