Nothing Can Seperate

Sermon preached Friday, April 19, 2019, Good Friday, at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Littlestown, PA. 

If there is one thing you take out of the Passion Story this year, I hope it is the knowledge that nothing can separate you from God.

In the story of the Passion, there are so many characters who fail to do what they should. There are the disciples who fall asleep in the garden and who resort to violence when Jesus calls for peace. There is Judas, who leads the authorities directly to Jesus to arrest him. There are the religious leaders who compel Pilate to punish him. There is the crowd that calls for Barabbas to be released and for Jesus to be crucified. There is Pilate, who finally hands Jesus over for torture and execution and all of the people who carry out the sentence and mock Jesus along the way.

None of these people are doing what God would prefer of them. None of them are faithful and all of them are falling short in different ways.

There are also the characters who do stay with Jesus, who watch and wait at the foot of the cross, like Jesus’ mother, Mary Magdalene, and the disciple whom Jesus loved. There is Joseph of Arimathea who was a secret follower until it really counted and he took a risk and asked Pilate for Jesus’ body. And there are all the woman who readied the spices and ointments for Jesus’ body, even though they never got the chance to use them.

Both groups, those who struggled and those who remained steadfast, are equally valued and equally loved and equally held in relationship with God.

Again, I’ll say, nothing can separate you from God—that is what the cross tells us.

Your own sin cannot keep you from God: no matter what you may have done, small sin or big sin, God is still with you. No matter what you may have failed to do, God is still with you. Like Judas, who Jesus still welcomed to the table or the criminal who Jesus promises to see in Paradise, or the soldiers who Jesus forgives from the cross, God is with you always.

Your own sin cannot keep you from God and whatever hardship or oppression or difficulty of life you might face can’t either. No one’s words or actions—not one thing you might suffer at the hands of others can keep God away.

And how to we know this? Because of the cross. Because of this story. Christ has been there, Christ is there, and Christ is by our side, regardless of the circumstances. Through the cross, we know that God has already felt the full extent of grief, pain, and death and so knows how to be with us through our own trials.

Through the cross, Christ reconciles all people to himself and through the cross God brings salvation to the whole world. Everyone, saint and sinner and all of us who fall somewhere in between are brought back into reconciled relationship with the one who first created us.

Although we use the cross to remind us of this, although the cross is a symbol of our faith, we know that it is not the cross that does this, but the self-sacrificing love of God that can somehow bring life out of an instrument of torture and death.

In a little bit, a cross will be processed in and laid here in front of the altar. During the procession, it is proclaimed: “Behold the life-giving cross on which was hung the savior of the whole world,” and you all as the assembly will respond “O Come, let us worship him.”

You’ll then be invited to come up and reverence the cross in whatever way is meaningful for you. Again, it’s not about worshipping the cross—it’s not divine, only God is. Rather, it is about recognizing how our incredible God can manage to work even in the darkest circumstances and turn even this scandalous, terror inducing thing into a symbol of hope and love and life—life in God and with God, now and forever.

Amen.

Who Was, Who Is, Who Is to Come

Sermon preached Sunday, November 25, 2018, Reign of Christ Sunday, at St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Littlestown, PA. Audio may be found here. 

Today is Christ the King Sunday, or, as some now call it, Reign of Christ Sunday. It is a relatively new liturgical holiday, instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925. It was originally conceived as a response to rising fascist and nationalist movements in Europe. As more and more people began to identify their preferred political leader as the ultimate hero of the people, the church pushed back and proclaimed, loudly, that only Christ is king and our allegiance is appropriately given to God alone. While this feast day had particular implications in the 20s and, especially, the 30s, it still is a valuable observance today.

Today is the day that we remember that Christ is the true sovereign of our lives, not any government or political party or individual leader, regardless of how inspiring or charismatic we might find them. Instead, our king displays power and strength through sacrifice and vulnerability. Today is the day we remember the one who was, who is, and who is to come: our King.

If you remember anything about humanity’s history before Christ, you know that our history with kings is fraught with disaster. When Moses led the Israelites in the wilderness, they wondered if they would have a king. When they entered the promised land, they begged God to give them a king. The new peoples they encountered all had kings and they wanted to be like them. They wanted to be the same. God resisted, reminding them that they were not the same as all the other peoples and that God would be the only king they would ever need. They insisted, but God instead put judges in place to guide them.

The judges lasted for a while, but it wasn’t long before the cry went up again from the people for a king. God warned them that a human king would exploit them, take their property, treat them poorly, and lead to destruction. The Israelites didn’t care. Finally, like an exasperated parent tired of the questions and demands, God relented. Saul was crowned king, then David and then Solomon, and then a long line of kings, some of which were faithful to God, but many of whom lost their way and abandoned God’s word. It turned out exactly as God had warned.

The people knew their history, so it is even more curious how ready the people were to crown Jesus as their next king—a human king, that is, not understanding who Jesus really was. At the beginning of the Gospel of John, Jesus meets Nathaniel, who he will call as a disciple and Nathaniel identifies Jesus as the new king. When Jesus feeds the five thousand, the people clamor after him, hoping to make him their king. When Jesus enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the crowds call out, praising him as their king. …but none of them get it. None of them understand what Jesus being our king means.

That brings us to the text for today, when Jesus is being questioned by Pilate, who has surely heard stories of Jesus’ ministry. He asks Jesus if he is a king and Jesus doesn’t answer yes or no. He is King, but not in the way anyone expects. He is the King who was, who is, who is to come.

“Who was, who is, who is to come.”

That phrase is one of the places we can get a little lost. “Who was, who is, who is to come.” It’s a bit outside of outside of time, a bit outside of space, a bit outside of our understanding. The reign of Christ has already broken into the world and we see glimpse of it…but we also understand that it has not yet reached its fulfillment.

“Who was, who is, who is to come.” This struggle to understand can lead us into despair. It’s like a recent episode of the sitcom, “The Good Place.” Has anyone watched it? It’s like a crash course in philosophy with really clever and funny writing. If you’re not familiar with the show, or aren’t caught up to this season, I promise, no spoilers. But in this particular episode, the main characters learn that time is not linear, like they believed it to be, with events happening one after the other in a nice, orderly fashion that moves distinctly from the past through the present and on to the future. Instead, they are told that time is more like “Jeremy Bearimy”—time actually looks like what the name Jeremy Bearimy looks like when written out in cursive, doubling back on itself and full of loops. (You can watch this scene here. SPOILERS!)

The responses from the characters to this new information are phrases like, “I’m sorry. My brain is melting,” and “This broke me.” It’s impossible for them to comprehend and makes them frustrated and confused and throw their hands up in frustration. That’s how it can feel when we try to really wrap our minds around what it means for us to have a God who was, who is, and who is come—for God’s reign to have been, to be, and to be coming in the future.

The other option, though, is not despair, but wonderment. When we embrace the knowledge that we can never really understand any of it, we embrace the mystery and embrace all the ways in which God works in ways beyond human imagination.

The full reign of Christ, the reign of the one who was, who is, and who is to come, is full of beautiful and incredible things we can’t explain.

God, the One who was: The one who created the universe and called forth order out of chaos. The one who led the Israelites through the Red Sea and into the promised land. The one who took on our flesh and lived among us. The one who was arrested and tortured and executed. The one who died and rose again. The one who ascended into heaven. The one who came upon the disciples at Pentecost.

The One who is: the one who encourages and continues to reform the church. The one who forgives us. The one who loves us. The one who claims us as beloved children in baptism. The one who meets us at the table and feeds us with bread and wine, body and blood. The one who gathers us into community with each other as the Body of Christ.

The One who is to come: the one who will reconcile all of creation once again. The one who will raise us to eternal life. The one who will reign into eternity.

The One who was, who is, and who is to come. Amen.