Christmas Eve :: Dec 24, 2012 :: Luke 2:1-14

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

As much as we’d like them to be, beginnings are rarely marked with the kind of lavish extravagance we imagine and hope for.

Think about it, that first day of school when we were gearing up all summer for a new year begins with the bell ringing, attendance taken, and homework sent home. Hardly the kind of lavish beginning we expected all summer.

Or how about when we begin a new job. In anticipation of the new beginning we go and buy a new set of cloths, we get up and ready extra early, and we show up about 15 minutes before we are supposed to. And then when it is time to clock out for the day, the flourish is gone, the work to do has piled up on the desk, the phone calls have been endless, and the sense of accomplishment is no where to be found.

Or how about the first snow fall. With anticipation we look forward to the moisture, the pristinely white cover of all that is brown and dead, the feeling of a white Christmas soon. And then there is the shoveling, and the cold, and the slippery ice.

Beginnings are strange. With all of the anxiety and anticipation we put into them, they rarely are marked with the lavish extravagance we imagine they should have.

Our story this evening is a beginning, too. So much history, so many stories have built up this moment that we’d expect a grand, lavish extravagance would mark its occasion as well. The story of this beginning, the birth of Christ, should be marked with lavish extravagance, too.

And yet this story is like every other story of beginning that we know. Just like the first day of school or the first day of a new job, or the first snowfall, the story begins with humility and ordinary occasion. In fact, this story begins with the complete opposite of lavish extravagance. A young child, born in a stable, the animal bedding pushed aside for the young mother, a feeding trough for a crib, a dark night lit only by a single, bright star in the sky.

This is an ordinary beginning for the birth of God in Jesus Christ. As far as beginnings go, this one is about as plain as it can get; maybe even downright crude given the barn, the feeding trough, and the cold, darkness.

As much as we celebrate this birth and build it up in our Christmas Eve worship; as much as we like wearing our best to church, doing our hair so it looks just right, singing louder than we normally do, lighting candles, putting on an impressive display of devotion and honor for the birth of this little baby, this beginning is quite ordinary, quite crude even.

A young woman, her terrified fiancé, a few animals, some straw, a feeding trough, and a dark, cold night; hardly an extravagant beginning for the birth of Christ our king.

As if that all weren’t enough, we are told even more about the beginning; a group of shepherds, living in the fields, keeping watch at night, show up at the stable, there to witness this ordinary beginning. If you can’t quite imagine the scene, thinking about the children in our Christmas program should help. Imagine our kids after they’ve been with the sheep for weeks at a time, no shower or change of clothes, wandering into the stable that dark, cold night to see the baby boy lying in the manger.

Shepherds themselves were not quite known for their reputations, often crass and dirty folk, unfit to even testify in court because of their lowly existence in the fields. And here they are, unable to witness in court, but the first to witness Jesus, the Messiah, a small baby in the arms of his mother.

An ordinary, humble beginning for the Son of God. And yet, we have a God who wouldn’t have it any other way. This God of ours is renowned in the world for this kind of humility. For caring for the widow and the orphan, for feeding the hungry and healing the sick, even raising the dead to life. We have a God whose favorite material to work with is nothing. In the beginning, out of a dark and formless void came all of creation, out of dirt and wind came the life and breath of man. Our God, the one, true God of heaven and earth, likes to begin with nothing. Fallow, unworked soil is the blank canvas of a God who takes the lowliest, most humble beginnings and does something remarkable in the end.

Tonight is a celebration of humble beginnings; so humble that God can actually begin the kind of work God prefers to do: forgiving and welcoming home God’s children. God’s favorite material is a humble and contrite heart, ready for planting and tending and reaping; God’s favorite material is you. Your life, whether it is full of sorrow and pain, full of pride and prejudice, full of sickness and sadness, or full of joy and hope, your life is a good beginning for a God who likes to take nothing and make it something.

This incredible God we have begins incarnated life as a young baby, born to an unwed mother, in a dark, cold stable, on a bed of straw, lay in a feeding trough, and visited by lowly shepherds straight from the field. He lives and does his work in all the wrong places, eating with tax collectors and sinners, healing the sick on the Sabbath, touching the untouchable, and raising the dead to life.

And not only that, this incredible God we have begins life anew in life’s most humble and lowly point of death. In this dark and formless void of death on a cross Christ is resurrected for your sake, to take your life and make something completely new.

This Christmas, celebrate humble and lowly beginnings. Celebrate ordinary. Celebrate the dark and the formless. From these things God brings the grand, the extravagant, the extraordinary, the light and the well-formed life of his new kingdom. In Christ, the baby born in the dark, the light of God shines in all the world and we see that humble and lowly are, in the end, grand and extravagant.

May God bless all your ordinary, your humble, and your lowly beginnings and may God do something as grand as he did in the birth of Christ for you.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Advent 2 :: Dec 9, 2012 :: Joel 2:12-13, 28-29

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The prophet Joel continues to prepare us by heralding the coming of Christ way back in Old Testament times. Joel’s prophecy proclaims the God who is both goodness and mercy, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.

In this Advent season, as we prepare ourselves for celebrating God-with-us, or Emmanuel, we are bombarded with busy-ness. We are rushing, huffing and puffing through our days, barely taking the chance to slow down, to savor the season of expectation and hopefulness.

We rush, we dash, we even sprint through our days, busily preparing for the annual Christmas family get together, wrapping the presents for under the tree, putting the Christmas lights on the house. With breathtaking pace we ask our neighbors, “So, are you ready for Christmas yet?” or, “How are your Christmas preparations coming along?”

And yet, as we remember the story of Christ’s birth, we forget that this season in the church year, this season of Advent, is not about being busy, but about slowing down. This season is about waiting, along with Mary and Joseph, for the birth of Christ. Imagine if Advent were nine whole months of waiting, of expecting, of hoping!

This waiting and expecting and hoping is not always pleasant, however. Some of us do not look forward to this holiday season. Some of us dread getting together with our family while others of us dread being alone for the first time during the holidays. Christmas preparation can be very hard for some of us.

And yet, there is hope. The words from the prophet Joel for this morning point to something far beyond all of our rushing and our dread. Joel proclaims to the people of God, who are dreading a tough time ahead.

Joel proclaims these words, “Yet even now, says the Lord, return to me with all your heart.” God is after you, God is seeking you, looking for you to return to him with all your heart. Even for those of us who do not look forward to the Christmas-time homecoming can return to the Lord. This is a different kind of homecoming, a homecoming to the Lord. Joel proclaims that God desires our whole heart, not just the parts of our heart that are not busy, not just the parts of our heart that our happy for the season; God wants our busy and dreading hearts. God wants all of us this Advent season.

Returning to the Lord is like doing a 180 degree turn. Turning to the Lord and facing him when we wander off and struggle to find our way. Rend your hearts, tear your hearts, God says, not your clothing. When the Israelites wanted to repent, when they wanted to return to the Lord, they would tear their cloths to show their repentant hearts. But now God wants them to tear not their cloths, but their hearts. God wants their hearts.

And it is because of God’s mercy and goodness, it is because of God’s slow-to-anger nature, it is because of God’s steadfast love for his people. God knows what you desperately need this Advent season: you need a heart that has returned to the Lord.

But you will not do this on your own. That is the promise of Jesus Christ. God will have to come to you, born a little babe, in a cold and dirty stable, in a world that was in chaos. He was born for you, he died for you, he was raised on the third day for you. Your hearts are torn in two.

And he does this because, as Joel says, “Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh.” God will send his Holy Spirit to mend your torn hearts. You will return to God with a clean heart. Your hearts will be stitched together again and God will give you a clean heart; a heart that is ready to love and serve the Lord and your neighbor. You will not look with dread on this season of Christmas, you will not rush and huff and puff your way through Advent. You will look forward with a holy expectation, a hopefulness like you’ve never had before.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Advent 1 :: Dec 2, 2012 :: Daniel 6:6-27

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Let me set the stage for this book of Daniel. No doubt many of you know the story of Daniel in the lion’s den from your Sunday School classes, but there is some interesting back story that’s good to know.

Daniel was a prophet in an unsteady time. God’s people, the Israelites, whom he had blessed to be a blessing to the whole world, were being tossed around between the ruling nations of the time. Like a game of four player ping-pong, they were tossed from the Assyrians, to the Babylonians, to the Persians and finally to the Romans.

Daniel lived at the time of Israel bouncing from the Babylonians to the Persians. His calling from God was to be a spokesperson for God in the middle of the reign of some of the most ruthless kings of all time. The Babylonian kings were notorious for their ruthlessness; at times dragging around their slaves, including the Israelites, on large hooks placed deeply in their chins and strung together by long chains. This was no ordinary slavery, as if there was such a thing.

Daniel’s people, especially Daniel and his friends, were in a bit of a pickle. You see, the law of the day was that worship meant bowing to the king. Refusing to worship the king and instead worshiping God meant sure and certain death.

You might remember some of the other stories about Daniel and his friends. Three guys named Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were some of Daniel’s friend who were thrown into a fiery furnace because they refused to worship the King Nebuchadnezzar. In their faith they would not worship anyone but God alone. And you might also remember that the three guys were kept safe from the fire by the God whom they worshiped. When they were released from the furnace, they came out unharmed.

Or maybe you remember the dreams of King Nebuchadnezzar and how Daniel interpreted the dreams to mean that God would crush the king because he forced everyone to worship himself? Or how about the strange story of the floating hand that appeared out of nowhere, writing on the wall of the palace after King Nebuchadnezzar died and his son followed in his footsteps. Daniel interpreted the writing to mean that God, too, would crush this king.

After so much warning, you would think the kings would get that Daniel was right about God crushing them. And yet, the king’s officials plotted against Daniel and God. They wanted to have Daniel killed. And so King Darius was forced into a law that said if anyone worshiped a god besides the king that person would be put to death.

Daniel worshiped God. He did not worship the king. And so Daniel was thrown into the lion’s den. Our story today tells of Daniel’s incredible faith as he spends the night with the lions but emerges the next day, completely unharmed.

The Israelite people, especially people like Daniel and his friends, were faithful people. They looked to God to save them. God would deliver them from the evil kings. In fact, all that waiting for God to deliver them is why the Jewish people were always waiting for a Messiah. They wanted someone who would deliver them from the evil kings. Daniel’s people were anxiously awaiting deliverance from the Babylonians and the Persians. They were waiting for the King of all to come and set them free from their slavery.

And this, of course, leads us into thinking about Advent, and teaches us about the people who were anxiously awaiting the Messiah. As we are led toward Christmas, the day we celebrate Christ finally coming to God’s people to set them free, it is good for us to remember these stories, stories like Daniel and his friends having patient and yet anxious hope for God to deliver them.

Except the Messiah that God’s people were given was not what they had expected. In a manger, in a stable, behind an old dusty motel, together with the animals and the cold, a baby was born; a King to end all kings, a Messiah like no one expected. And yet, he was the Messiah. Christ was born, he lived, he died and he was raised to set God’s people free. Not from evil kings, but from the power of evil itself. 

In Christ, we are set free from the power of sin, death and the devil and we anxiously await the coming of Christ again, a second Advent. We are a hopeful and anxious people once again, waiting for the Messiah each and every day.

This is what baptism is for. Christ sets us free, once and for all time, in baptism. Our anxious wait is over when Christ arrives with his word of grace and hope and promise; and we pray that Christ arrives daily and abundantly. One day Christ will have his final triumph. But now were are like Daniel and his friends, anxiously awaiting amidst the rulers of our own time, waiting to be set free once again from sin, death and the power of the devil.

As we pour water over the head of little Macy Mae this morning, as we proclaim that her a child of God in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, our Messiah arrives. He shows up unexpectedly in simple water and word. Here is Christ for us, the Advent of our God and king.

In the name of Jesus. Amen. 

All Saints Sunday - Nov 4

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

What does it mean to be alive? What keeps us alive? What’s necessary for life? Most of us know that the essentials of human life are simple, basic things; things like oxygen, food, water, fire, shelter, clothing, We also know that without these things, human life has a difficult time flourishing. Life seems to hang on these things.

Living happens in breathing in and exhaling, eating and drinking, cooking and clothing. In these things, life finds support, life clings to these things. And yet, as we are so bluntly confronted this morning, the reality of life is that it must end someday. Life cannot cling to these things forever. They will only support life until life’s end.

So, we can easily see that life doesn’t really hang on these things. We can see that life must really hang somewhere else; life must cling not things like oxygen, food, water, and the rest.

In our story this morning, we are met with a couple of interesting characters. First, is the prophet Elijah. Elijah was on his way to learning how to be a prophet of God. But his road wasn’t easy. The prophet was learning to be a prophet while King Ahab was in charge. And there were very few good things to say about this king. Worst of all was the king’s constant worship of other gods.

So, God thought Elijah needed some training if he was going to be a man of God in this kind of time. And what did God do but send him straight into enemy territory, during a great drought, where the evil king was ruling. And God sent him to a poor widow and her dying son. And God told Elijah that the widow and her dying son were going to feed him and give him something to drink. They were going to support his life with the scare and few things they still had left.

When he arrived, the widow, hearing that Elijah wanted her to feed him, laughed in his face and told him to go away so that she could take her last little morsels of flour and oil, cook them up, eat the cakes, go, and die with her son. The widow knew that the little stuff of life was running low and they didn’t have much to cling to anymore.

But if Elijah was going to possibly make it as a prophet in the time of the evil King Ahab, Elijah had to speak God’s Word of promise in the middle of the poor widow’s despair; and not only did he have to speak it, he had to live by it as well.

And so Elijah announces, for the widow and himself, “Thus says the LORD the God of Israel. The jar of meal will not be emptied and the jug of oil will not fail til the day that the Lord sends rain on the earth.” And, as the story proclaims, “the jar of meal was not emptied, either did the jug of oil fail, according to the word to the LORD that he spoke by Elijah.”

Both Elijah and the widow learned at that very moment that real life does not cling to the things of life, but the things of life cling to the word of the Lord. That little word, “according,” means that life clings to the word of the Lord. By God’s promise, made through the mouth of Elijah, the meal in the jar did not run out, and neither did the oil.

But, of course, the things of life were not able to keep the widow’s dying son alive. And when he died, the widow yelled at Elijah. She said, “have you come to cause the death of my son?!” Elijah, finally learning to be a prophet of God, took the widows son, prayed over him, prayed to God and said, “O LORD my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” Elijah knew all too well that life clings to the word of God. And God heard Elijah and listened to him and the child lived again.

In dying, there is living. And living is made possible because life actually clings not to the stuff of life, but the very word of God. For Christians, this word of God goes by another name, and his name is Jesus Christ. The word of God is a person. Christians live by the word of God, we have life in his name.

This is what it means to be a saint. A saint is not some spiritual superstar, but a person who lives by the very word of God, Jesus Christ. A saint is one who clings to life only in the promise. We know that right now is the time for our lives to cling both to the stuff of life and the word of God. But the time is coming when we will live only by the word of the Lord.

And we celebrate the lives of those saints who have gone before us who now have life only by the word of God. These brothers and sisters who we remember today are simply clinging to the word of God. We live in communion with these saints, we share in the kind of life they have because we have been baptized by the word of God. As the apostle Paul writes, “Now we see in the mirror dimly, but then we shall see face to face.” We will someday see the very face of the word of God, but now we only glimpse and strain to see.

Now is the time for the word of God to be found stuffed deep in the things of life: things like water and bread and wine, these are ordinary things that hold and carry the very promise of God for eternal life, real life much further beyond the kind of life that clings to the stuff.

As we share in Holy Communion today, we join together with all of God’s saints who have gone before us, God’s saints who are now clinging only to the word of God. We receive the word of God, hidden and revealed in bread and wine, and it comes in the form of a promise: this is the body of Christ, given for you; this is the blood of Christ, shed for you.

Our churches architecture even proclaims our communion of the saints as we gather in this half circle shape at the alter railing, we look across the table and are joined in a full circle of God’s saints who have gone before us. The other half of the circle are our brothers and sisters in Christ, who see God face to face. Our loved ones, our friends, our enemies, our neighbors, all gathered at the table with God at the center. We sing with them, “Holy, holy, holy.” We join their prayers, we eat with them, we commune with all the saints in heaven. We live by the very word of God in our midst.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

"...we were together"

There is a saying around here. It's an odd one for me, one that I had never heard before this place. It's the kind of saying that makes my mind wander away from a conversation, imagining the many layers of meaning in it. (I'll admit, my mind wanders easily, anyway).

The saying goes like this, "...we were together." From what I can gather, it is a saying about friendship. But it's more than that. It is about friendship and proximity. It means something along the lines of, "we were friends and we spent a lot of time with each other."

And yet, the saying seems to be even more than simply friendship and proximity. There is a particular quality about it that is hard to put into words. "...we were together," has a sense of longing, a sense of leaning into a complex history; it has a quality to it that I don't encounter when someone says, "we were friends," or, "we used to hang out." There is a past-tense quality about the saying that seamlessly transitions into a longing for the past.

I have only heard the saying spoken by some of the older members that I visit. So this leads me to think it might be more of a generational saying than regional or cultural peculiarity (it could be a combination of all of these).

In any case, I like it. Let me give you a sense of how it sounds when it is used. "I had a very good friend in seminary; his name was Nathaneil and 'we were together.'"

The saying is a turn of phrase that gives a weightiness to a friendship in the past that is now somehow different because either, 1) the two friends are separated by a distance or 2) one of the two friends has died and joined the Church Triumphant. In most of my conversations, I encounter the latter of the two connotations. A friend is longing for someone who has died. (*note* Nathaneil and I are still good friends and he is still very much alive; only, now we are separated by a few thousand miles).

For this All Saints Sunday, I have really been thinking a lot about this turn of phrase. It is such a unique  and beautiful way of talking about a relationship that is both very meaningful, but now somehow different than it was before.

It gets me thinking about the saints of God who have gone before us, who are leaning forward into the gates of eternal life. And then it gets me thinking, what if those of us who have victory in Christ, because of God's gift of forgiveness and salvation, are simply only standing a little bit straighter, a little bit more upright than those who are leaning forward into the gates of eternal life?

Perhaps the saying, "...we were together," is simply a way of longing for a future together, not longing for the past. Perhaps there is a quality about the phrase that leans not backward into a complex history and longing for a past like I thought, but leans forward into the unknown future of God. And perhaps those who have died and gone before us are simply leaning a little bit more than those of us who are still living now.

When we say, "...we were together," about a relationship we had with someone who has now died, we are not saying that the relationship is over, but that it is different; and the difference is in the angle of our bodies as we lean into the future that God has in store for us. Perhaps, "...we were together," is a way of talking about believing in the, "communion of saints," both those who have died and gone before us, and saints/sinners who are still now living in the present. Perhaps, "...we were together," simply remembers the angle of our bodies and the angle of the bodies of those who have gone before us as we all lean toward the future God has for us.

Or, I have had too much tea and it is a Friday afternoon! :oP

Reformation Sunday - Oct 28

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

This morning in the ongoing saga of what God continues to do among God’s people, we have the story of King Solomon. Solomon was King David’s son. If you’ll remember, last week we talked about how King David was this flawed, very complex character. One of his more interesting complexities was his affair with the general’s wife, Bathsheba.

Well, Bathsheba and David had a son together and his name was Solomon. Solomon grew older and became Israel’s king after David died. Solomon was a very wise king, one of the few kings of Israel who God was very proud of. Solomon was so wise, that almost the entire book of Proverbs in the Bible is dedicated to the wise king. Scripture says, “He [Solomon] composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five.” That’s more than Gandhi and Jesus put together!

However, Solomon was known for other things besides his great wisdom. Solomon was also the first king of Israel to build a temple in Jerusalem. The temple for the ancient Israelites was an important place of worship. It was built in the land that God had promised to Abraham and Sarah and it was the first time in the history of Israel that a place of worship was permanently built.

As with any building project, Solomon needed a lot of help. And he needed supplies. So he asked one of his father’s good friends for the lumber to build the temple. This friend, King Hiram, gave him the lumber and even some workers to build the temple. Solomon forced into slavery some 30,000 Israelite people to build the temple. They cut stone from the quarry, built walls and doors and rafters from the lumber and worked tirelessly to build the temple. It was a massive undertaking.

While they were building the temple, God talked with Solomon about what he was building. God said, “Now about this house you’re building for me, if you will follow my laws, obey my commandments, then I will keep the same promise that I made with your father King David, to give you a son to carry on your kingship.”

When the temple was finished, Solomon had to hold a dedication ceremony at the temple. So Solomon called together all of his leaders and elders. They gathered all the people and got the priests together for the ceremony.

Solomon’s dedication speech and prayer was a remarkable one. Because instead of taking great pride in the temple that he had built, the wise king began asking God some questions about what they had built. Solomon said, “Will God dwell here on earth? Will God fit in the temple that we have built?” Solomon knew that God could not be boxed in the temple.

“Even heaven could not contain you, God,” Solomon prayed.  “So listen to my prayer, God. Hear me out. I know that you won’t fit into this box of a temple, but please let our temple be a place where you will hear our prayers. Always let our temple be a place where you will hear your name spoken. Here us and forgive us when we pray to you’re here. God, let this temple be a place of prayer, not a box to keep you in.”

And Solomon didn’t stop there. Not only did he not want the temple to box God up, but he wanted to the temple to be a place where strangers were welcomed, a place were foreigners and people who were from many foreign countries, people who were not Israelites, would be welcomed and called to experience the presence of God. This wise king knew that it could not be only the people of this one church who were welcome there, but ALL people, even if they didn’t believe in God before they came. ALL were welcome!

This wise king Solomon knew the many blessings of God, and he knew that God could not be boxed up, but that God would hear their prayers in that place and God would call and welcome all to the Lord’s house.

On this Sunday, we celebrate the Reformation of the church, a reformation that was begun by a stubborn old German monk by the name of Martin Luther. Many, many, many thousands of years after Solomon had built a temple, Martin Luther was fighting hard to stop the building of another kind of temple, a temple that was not a house of prayer, but a house of deception. The temple was a church, the old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome to be exact.

As the story of the Reformation goes, this church was financed by selling something called indulgences. The indulgences were sold to the common people in the church as a way for the people to buy their way out of purgatory, that place between hell and heaven were one could work their way from the bottom to the top. In fact, you could even buy indulgences to get your loved ones out of purgatory.

This, as the young monk Martin Luther saw it, was contrary to the gospel of Christ. A person could not earn or buy their way to heaven; eternal life was a pure gift from God. So, when Martin saw this temple of the Lord being built with lies, he wrote a series of debates against the church. These were the 95 theses and he nailed them to the door of the church in the town where he was the priest.

Martin’s 95 theses were a direct attack on the idea that a person could earn their way to heaven. Martin knew that the pope was in the wrong and so did many other pastors and bishops in the church. This temple was no house of prayer for these pastors and bishops. This was a house of deception and went against the good news of the Gospel.

Unlike king Solomon, the pope was not acting wisely. His temple project was not dedicated as a place where God would hear the prayers of his people, but a place funded by the fear and guilt of the poor people of the church.

History should be our teacher, here. The wise will seek to build houses of worship that always serve the good news of God, houses of worship that always offer thanks and praise to God alone. The foolish ignore the good news of God in Christ and seek to build houses that only serve the desires of people.

The wise king Solomon is our example. Our house of worship should always be a place where God is honored, a place where God is prayed to, a place where we can count on God to hear our prayers and forgive our sins.

And speaking of forgiveness, both Solomon and the rebel monk Martin Luther knew what the good news of God really is. The good news of God is forgiveness in God’s name. Our forgiveness cannot be bought. God will not be bought or boxed up. God will come to us; God will forgive us. This whole business about being God’s people is about God being God. God will forgive us, God will bless us, and God will call us to life in his name. God is the actor; God is the one who will do all of this. Our attempts to build a house to God almost always end up like the pope’s and almost never end up like king Solomon’s. Unless that is God breaks into our sinful lives and does what he promises.

So, this Reformation Sunday, remember that it is God who forgives you and this house is a house of prayer and forgiveness in God’s name. Receive his forgiveness with thanksgiving. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Pentecost 21 - Oct 21

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

I wish I had time to read to you and tell you the whole story of David. You probably know many parts of the story. David’s growing up years in 1 Samuel 17, when he fought the Philistine warrior named Goliath with just a sling and five smooth stones. Or how about later on in David’s life, 2 Samuel 11 after he is made a king, and he begins to have an affair with his general’s wife, Bathsheba? But there are even more great stories about David in the Bible. Stories of David’s anointing in 1 Samuel 16, stories of David and Saul gunning for each other’s lives in 1 Samuel 18-35, stories of David and his son Absalom in 2 Samuel 14-15.

I wish I had time to tell you all of the details of David’s stories, too. Details like how David was probably about 12-14 years old when he fought Goliath. Or how Saul had first dressed David in armor to fight Goliath, but the armor was too heavy and bulky, so David went in just his shepherd’s clothes. Or how David’s slingshot wasn’t really like a slingshot like we know it, but like a long strip of fabric that David swung in circles above his head and released one end of to throw the smooth stone. I would also like to take you into imagining the many mighty giants of our own time, and considering what five smooth stones God has given us to do battle with.

I wish I had time to tell you the darker details of the stories of David. Details like how he had Bathsheba’s husband sent to the front of the battlefield with the Philistines, so that his death would look like a courageous death at war, but in reality it was because of a gutless king David who couldn’t stand that someone else was married to the woman he lusted after.

I wish I had time to tell you that this same, complex, sinner/saint of a man is the ancestor of God’s only Son, Jesus. And not only an ancestor, but the Messiah, the Savior that God promised. 

I wish I had time to read you all of the stories of Scripture. I wish it for a lot of reasons, but one main reason is because we have flattened the Bible’s stories. We know so few details about so few stories of the Bible that we assume that all the characters that are Godly people are good and moral and upright people. But if you take David as one, small example of the many characters of Scripture, you soon begin to realize that the stories of Scripture are just about as complex as our own lives.

David was no perfectly moral saint. Even with his many wives, David still had to go out and take another man’s wife and have the man killed to satisfy his desires. To me, this sounds like something straight out of daytime TV, or one of the dysfunctional family’s I happen to descend from.

These stories are not flat. They have dimensions, they have shape, they have character. And they are completely fascinating stories to spend our time with.

Today’s story is another in the saga of King David. It happens just before David’s adulterous affair with Bathsheba and it is the story of God making a covenant with David.

As God was slowly leading the Israelite people into the land that he had promised to Abraham and Sarah, it was like scenes straight from the old, Wild West of America. Rogue, tough guys from the people began to emerge as leaders among the people. But they couldn’t hold those Israelite tribes together as a nation. And so Israel started to demand a king.

Hannah, the woman whose song we talked about last week from 1 Samuel 2, gave birth to a son named Samuel and this little boy grew up to become the Israelite leader. He was the first to have the Israelite people complain to him about not having a king. The people said to Samuel, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” This was upsetting to Samuel, because the Israelites already had a king and his name was God. God was always with them. They carried around a little box, called the Ark of the Covenant, that had stored inside it God’s promise to always be their God in the form of the Ten Commandments. But, God said, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.” So Samuel gave them a king named Saul, and Saul would later give his kingship over to David.

Without an earthly king, the Israelites had God and God was always with them, surrounding them with safety and protection. When King David came along, he lived a great big house of beautiful cedar, but God, David thought, lived in a tiny little box. So David talked to his trusty sidekick and court prophet Nathan and told him that he wanted to build God a house. And Nathan said, “Sure! Go ahead; that’s a great idea!”

But God had other plans, as God always does. David had forgotten that God told the Israelites to build that box. God did that so they could carry God’s commands and promise around with them. God had designed the box even, telling them exactly how to build it. (If you want that story you can look in Exodus, chapter 25). The Israelites forgot, too. As they spent so much time worrying about whether or not they had a king, God was always their king and was always with them as he told them he would be.

This story really comes to life when God comes to Nathan and says, “Now wait a minute Nathan. I never said it was okay to build me a house. Go remind David about how I used to travel all around in that Ark of the Covenant. I was the one who was with them. They didn’t do anything for me. I was the one who was keeping them safe, who was protecting them from harm. I was their God and they were my people.

“Go and tell David about all of that. And then tell him this: David, you want to build me a house? No, no, no. I am going to make you a house. And this will not be a house of cedar, or a house of stone. I am going to make a house like you’ve never even heard of before. I am going to give you an heir. I am going to give you offspring, a person. And he is going to build a house for my name. He is going to make a bigger kingdom, not built with human hands. He will be your ancestor. Though there is punishment for sin, my love and promise will never be taken away from this ancestor of yours. I will always love the kingdom that he makes.”

And this is the beginning of God’s promise for a Messiah; a man from the house of David, a man promised by God. As Christians, we know this man to be Jesus Christ, who built a house for God’s name by dying on a cross and raising on the third day for our sake. God has made us his people by this man whom God promised to David.

God did not want a house for himself, he wanted to make a house for his people. An eternal house, a kingdom bigger and better than anything David could ever dream up. And God wants the same for us.

How many times have we tried to build a house for God? How many times have we poured our hearts and souls into a building, or a program? God doesn’t want buildings or programs. God was to build us a house. And he is doing it even today. God is building a name for himself, not with bricks and mortar, but with human hearts and hands and feet. God is calling you to a life of service in the kingdom that he is building. So get out there and get to work.

In the name of Jesus. Amen. 

Pentecost 20 - Oct 14

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Women are rarely given names in the Bible, but when they are we should perk up our ears and listen. Today’s story is the story of Hannah. What is so awesome about these stories of women in the Bible, at least to me, is that whenever something incredible happens to one of these women, the first thing they do is to pray about it.

Hannah is barren. She and her husband Elkanah cannot conceive a child. And so Hannah prays to God, promising God that if she given the gift of a child she will make him a servant of the Lord forever.

And so God blesses her with a child.  What Hannah does next is she sings this song of praise to God. It is a song of thanksgiving, but it is also a song about what God does, a song about the kind of God that we have.

She says, there is no one like God, there is no Rock like our God. He breaks the bows of the mighty; which means he takes away the power of those who think they are in power. And then he makes the weak, strong. God takes those who are fat and happy full and sends them away hungry. And God takes the hungry and makes them fat with spoil. The Lord raises up the poor and he humbles the rich.

We have the kind of God who flips the world on its head. Hannah’s God and our God is the kind of God who casts the mighty down from their thrones and uplifts the humble of heart. God is the kind of God that turns the world around. Just when we think that the world is getting out of control, God flips it and does something different with it.

We have the kind of God who sends makes the rich and makes the poor, and loves them both enough to know that what the need is not to be rich and not to be poor, but to be completely dependent upon God.

In one of my favorite verses of all of Scripture, Hannah says, “The Lord kills and the Lord brings to life.” The Lord doesn’t just kill everything. As Hannah sings: Lord kills everything that is contrary to the way the world is supposed to be. Sorrow, suffering, shame, fear, loneliness, doubt, hunger, thirst, and pain, each of these the Lord kills. And the Lord makes life where there was only death before. God flips that which leads to death into that which leads to life.

In what is the ultimate act of God, he sent his only Son, Jesus Christ, to die on the cross and be raised for you sake. God flipped the world on its head, sending is very own Son to die for our sake. God takes your fear, your doubt, your loneliness, your sorrow, your suffering, your shame, your hungry, your thirst, and your pain, and on the cross God put them all to rest. And he raised up his Son on third day for you sake, so that you could have life, and hope, and peace where there was only death before.

We have the kind of God who takes a cruel instrument of torture and pain and turns it into the power of our salvation. We have the kind of God who has flipped the world around, taken everything we know to lead to death and turned it all into our life. And we have no one to look at but Christ for this salvation.

And for Hannah, God took her barren womb and gave her the gift of a child. And so when Hannah sings of life in the empty places, she knows what she is talking about.

Giving life in the empty places is what God does. It is the kind of God we have. When God took my empty faith as a young teenager and called me to be a pastor, God was doing the same thing. When I continued to tell God that he didn’t exist, God continued to place people in my life that pointed me to him and called me into faith again.

This is one of the big threads throughout the fabric of Scripture. God begins in Genesis, calling forth something out of nothing. God continues in making the promise of a great nation to Sarah and Abraham. God goes further in turning the young boy Joseph into the hero of the day. God takes the Israelites and leads them out of slavery in Egypt into the Promised Land. God will go on to take a young shepherd boy David and make him a great king and an ancestor of Jesus the Messiah.

We have a God who makes something out of nothing. We have a God who creates life were there is only death and destruction. He brings hope to the hopeless, sight to the blind, release to the prisoners.

So put aside your fear, your loneliness, and your doubt; put aside your suffering, your sorrow, and your shame; put aside your hunger, your thirst, and your pain. God is turning the whole world upside down and is filling you with the power of his salvation. God is flipping this old, dying world around and bringing life were there was only death before.

With Hannah we give you our praise, O God.

In Jesus name. Amen.

Pentecost 19 - Oct 7

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

People always say, “don’t love anything that can’t love you back.” Well, I have a confession. I’ve got an unnatural love…of books. Call me a nerd, but if there is one thing that you could accuse me of worshiping other than God, it is a good book.

And let’s be clear about this, I’m not just talking about any quick love affair with books. I’m talking about full-blown, over the top obsession. If you’ve ever been in my office here at church, you’ll see an entire wall full of books. And that’s only about half of the books that I own. Big books, small books, old books, new books, I love them all. And I love to read them.

There are days when you can’t get my attention because I’m lost in the pages of a paperback. And don’t even get me started on when the books I’m reading happen to be not just one book, but a series of books.

Books are my golden calf, like the Israelites in today’s lesson I have my very own, self-made miniature god of my own design. For some, it’s the Vikings; for others it’s the next latest and greatest technology. For me, it’s books.

When God led the Israelites out of slavery and sent Moses down to them with the Ten Commandments, the Israelites thought God’s laws were good for a while. But then Moses went back to God and the Israelites got worried he wasn’t coming back. So, they decided they’d better make their own god: a golden statue of a little calf; something to worship, something other than God.

The Israelite’s very first commandment, to not have any other gods except the one, true God, was broken in the first 20 minutes after God gave them the commandments. This is the story of humanity. We won’t let God be our God. Instead, we have to make our own.

And we love to design our own gods. Americans especially love this. We live in a Burger King culture: “have it your way,” is the slogan. We design, we create, we shape everything to our own purposes, our own designs. We’re so good at it, in fact, that we start to create little golden calves, little gods, out of the very things we create. Human ingenuity is great for a lot of things, especially when that ingenuity is put toward serving the good of others. But, we also like to put a whole lot of energy into things that serve only us and suit our own fancy: iPhone, iPad, iPod. We like things especially we they are me, my, and mine.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about how my life would completely implode if I lost my iPhone. My life depends on my iPhone. At least that is the lie I like to tell myself.

You see, instead of letting God tell me whole my God is, I like to tell God what my gods are. The first commandment first comes is a pretty big promise, God says,, “I am the LORD your God.” With that first promise, God promises to be our God, even when we go about making our own. It’s only after the promise that God gives the first commandment, “You shall have no other gods.”

And how many of us has made a god out of a human tradition? Jesus called out the Pharisees when he said in Mark chapter 7, “You ignore God’s commandment while holding on to rules created by humans and handed down to you…clearly you are experts at rejecting God’s commandment in order to establish these rules.”

One of the greatest sins of the church today is that it looks at its human traditions and rules and forgets that these are not God’s rules, but our own. We’ve created them. We hold on to them. We worship them. It is a sorry state of affairs when we do so, too, because God has given us the commandments, and he put the first one first for a reason.

So this whole business about creating other gods or designing gods to suit our own fancy is an important one. We are addicted to it, we think it will save us, we try desperately to cling to all these other false gods that we hope will give us what we want. But what we want is never what we need.

In our lesson for today, Moses was going up to have another chat with God, just after God led the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt and then sent Moses down from the mountaintop with the Ten Commandments. As Moses did so, his trusty sidekick Aaron was stuck with the grumbling Israelite people, he was the man in charge. But as any good pastor knows, you’re never in charge when you’re the pastor J

Aaron watched the people as they quickly turned from their one, true God and worshiped some other god that they could design. They pulled off all their gold jewelry and told Aaron to make them a little statue of a calf. After all, that’s what all the cool kids in town worshiped. They should worship something like that, too.

The people turned to something they could see. Forget this invisible God who sends us laws to follow, we want a god who we can see; we want something we can touch, something that we can make with our own two hands and with our own gold. We don’t want God, we want a god; a god among many gods who we can manipulate.

And when God finds out about the Israelites and their little golden calf he calls up Moses and does what any frustrated parent of an unruly bunch of teenagers would do. God says, Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!'"

This is how it works in our house, too. When we get frustrated with the kids, Katie or I will call each other up and say, “come and see what your kids have done!” You can’t hardly blame God for the reaction.

But thankfully the Israelites have someone who can stand between themselves and the wrath of God. Moses himself steps in and reminds God that it was God’s people that God brought up out of the land of Egypt. Moses intercedes for the people. He makes a plea on their behalf, that God would not be angry, but instead remember his promise to make them a great nation.

And just as Moses interceded on behalf of the Israelites, so we too have our own intercessor. In all our golden calf making, in all of our attempts to have it our way, we have someone who intercedes for us, who pleads for our lives before a God who has every right to be angry with us. We have God’s only Son, Jesus Christ who pleads for our lives.

And not only does he plea for our lives, Jesus Christ has actually wiped clean our sinfulness. It is as though God has never seen us as people who worship other gods.

Of course, this is what baptism is for. As we hear over and over and over again, Jesus Christ has come to us, forgiven us our sins, and welcomes us into eternal life with a promise. A promise that God will not deal with us by his wrath, but by his love. And he will be gracious to us and grant us a gift. In baptism, we first receive this gift and this morning little Brooklyn is given that great gift of forgiveness and welcome. 

Thanks be to God. Amen!

Pentecost 18 - Sept 30

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

A new Pharaoh arose "who did not know Joseph" (1:8). If you’ll remember from last week, the little dreamer boy Joseph and Pharaoh rescued the Egyptian people and the people of Israel from a severe drought and a food shortage. Joseph’s brothers were angry with him at first because he was the little brother and daddy’s favorite, but he had all this power and prestige because he had saved Egypt and the Israelites.

But now, at the beginning of the book of Exodus, we have a new Pharaoh in the land, and he could care less about any old Israelite guy named Joseph. This new Pharaoh forced the Israelite foreigners into slavery because he was afraid of their increasing numbers (1:8-14). After many years of slavery, the LORD called a man named Moses to lead the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt (3:1-10). The LORD sent plague after plague upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians to persuade Pharaoh to let the Israelites go free, but Pharaoh kept refusing time after time (chapters 7-10).

And that is where our narrative picks up for this morning. The LORD God is sending the tenth and final plague on the land of Egypt. The tenth plague is, quite simply, a terrifying one: the LORD, “will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and [he] will kill every firstborn in the land of Egypt, both human beings and animals…” (12:12). Old men, old women, young men, young women, children, animals; every firstborn.

How unfair. It was the Pharaoh who had forgotten about Joseph and the God he served. It wasn’t the Egyptian people, but their lord and ruler the Pharaoh who’d forgotten.

Yet, God reminds them, “on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.” What God had done through his servant Joseph was quickly lost on the memory of the Pharaoh and the Egyptians. God had fed the people and saved them from the food shortage. When Joseph’s brothers bowed down to him, Joseph quickly pointed to God as the savior of the people, telling them to bow down to God instead.

And here is this new Pharaoh in the land and his short memory had quickly led the people of Egypt to worship other gods. And so God says, “on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord.”

What we have here is the classic story of Scripture. It’s like a common thread that has been weaving itself through our stories over and over and over again as we’ve been following this narrative lectionary. First, Adam and Eve want to know like God what is good and evil; next Abraham and Sarah want to pretend as if God could not do the impossible and give them a child; next Joseph’s brothers forget that it was God who saved them from starvation in Egypt; and now it is Pharaoh and the Egyptian people who have forgotten what God did to save them from starvation in Egypt.

The common thread in all of these stories is that human beings, over and over and over and over and over and over again, will simply not let God be God. God is God and we are not. And our memory is about as long as our nose. We forget who we are and whose we are; and that is what happened to the Egyptian people.

But God has a plan; and in these early stories of the bible, God’s plan begins with his chosen people of Israel. Eventually God will get around to realizing that even the Israelites have a pretty bad memory about who they are and whose they are, but for now, God continues to use them.

So, God tells all the Israelites that he is going to deliver them out of slavery in Egypt, into that land that he had promised to Abraham and Sarah and their children.

But God knows the memory problems of his people and so he gives them a ritual, something linked with food; like a strange thanksgiving supper. Take a lamb, God says, slaughter it, put the blood on the outside of the door so I’ll know not to kill your firstborn and pass over your house, then eat the lamb and some bread that you’ve made quickly and leave the house. Do it all quickly. And remember that I am your God and I am delivering you out of slavery in Egypt.

God knows that the human memory is not really in the brain but in the stomach. And so God tells them to have a meal, and remember that with that meal God passed over the houses of all the Israelites and then led them out of slavery. God is their deliverer and uses the Passover meal to help them remember and celebrate what God has done for them.

Passover is a big deal in the Jewish faith. It is primarily about deliverance. It is about being set free from bondage. It is about freedom at the most basic sense. And God is the one who sets us free. It’s no wonder then that when Jesus had that last meal with his disciples, the night he took the bread and broke it and gave it to eat; and the night he took the cup and gave it to drink, he was talking about freedom.

Passover is about deliverance, freedom from bondage. We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.

And today we share in another rich feast of freedom. Another sacrament of deliverance; a sign together with a promise of freedom. We celebrate baptism and the baptism of Andie Jo. Today is rich feast of God’s Word, made clear and tangible together with the water so that we cannot forget that God delivers us. Just like a meal at Passover gives a tangible sign of God’s deliverance, the water of baptism gives us a tangible sign of God’s deliverance as well. God washes us, makes us clean, makes us whole, and gives us the promise of forgiveness and eternal life.

One of the most beautiful parts about the celebration of Passover to me is how it is celebrated. It should serve as an example for us to follow. Passover was and still is celebrated in the home, around a meal, with the story of God delivering the people from their bondage. Families sit together and tell the old, old stories of Scripture and how God works in their lives. Imagine what it would be like instead of going to church on Easter, I told you all to stay home, to have a meal with your family, to tell the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, of setting us free from the bondage to sin and death, and then reminding each other that you are baptized into this promise and made part of God’s family for all of time? Imagine how strong your memory for this amazing gift would become. Imagine how the story of who God is for you would take shape in your life.

This story of Passover is the story of all of Scripture. A forgetful people remember who God is because God chooses to act in their lives and gives them a promise. God is God and we are not. And God will always be our God because of the promises that God makes and keeps for us.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Pentecost 17 - Sept 23

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

“Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he [Joseph] was the son of his old age; and he had made him [Joseph] a long robe with sleeves.” Or a Technicolor dream coat as many of you know the story.

You all know the type: the youngest of a bunch of siblings who snaps their fingers and gets everything they want; daddy’s little baby. [Can you tell I’m an oldest???]

Joseph’s brothers hated him because his dad loved him so much. And then one day, little baby Joseph had a dream and when this snotty little dreamer told his brothers about his dream, they hated him even more. His dream pictured his brothers bowing down to him. And so the story goes. His brothers plot to get rid of him, hoping to sell him into slavery and never see him again.

Except there’s a problem with this plan; and its kind of a big problem. The little dreamer boy Joseph is an instrument of God and has only just begun to understand what God will do with his life.

To make a really great, but long story short, Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery, Joseph grows up, Joseph eventually rises to the top of the Egyptian government because of another dream which foreshadowed a drought in the entire country and allowed the Pharaoh to store up enough grain to feed all the people.

In it all, Joseph’s brothers lose contact with their brother and never realize that the very grain that is saving them from starvation was a gift because of their brother. When they eventually do find out, Joseph’s brothers have a lot of explaining to do, especially to their father who is overjoyed that Joseph was not dead, but had only gone missing.

Knowing full well that their father was the only person keeping them alive, the brothers are terrified with their father finally dies. They are terrified because little baby Joseph is now all grown up, very powerful, and good possibly be looking for some revenge now that their father is not around to protect them.

There are a million different directions we could take this story. We could talk about how families are constantly torn apart by jealously and anger. We could talk about how God provides for God’s people abundantly, even in times of drought. Any number of things come up in this story.

But perhaps the most important one of all is the difference between our plans and the purposes of God. You see, Joseph’s brothers were schemers. They plotted to get rid of their brother because their little brother constantly took the spotlight with daddy. Their little brother got everything he wanted, including the cherished robe. And when the little dreamer boy had a dream about his brothers bowing down to him it was enough to send them over the edge.

Actually killing him was a bit much, but if they could convince their dad that he’d been attacked by wild animals, they’d be golden. They’d sell him into slavery instead of killing him. And they’d wipe their hands clean.

They were schemers, conniving their way into daddy’s favor by getting rid of their brother. But their little plan was soon to be overthrown by a big, big problem. God had another big plan for little dreamer boy Joseph. It was in his dreams that God would direct that little boy into a national hero and Joseph would eventually credit his God for the gift of the grain in a time of drought.

Just like the story of Abraham last week and the story of Adam and Eve the week before that, we have another story in which human beings fail to let God be God. Joseph’s brothers need to get rid of their brother instead of trusting the God of Joseph’s dreams.

God somehow seems to be a threat for human beings, especially when we so desperately to earn our favor. Little dreamer boy Joseph has the favor of not only his father Israel, but God himself. And his brothers are angry because Joseph has done nothing to earn the favor; he is simply daddy’s favorite because he was the baby.

Human beings have this nasty tendency to want to earn favor. We are bound to sin, Luther said. And God has this unpleasant tendency to choose the last, the lost, and the least of these. The poor, the blind, the sick, the demon possessed, the sinners, the unclean, the unrighteous, the Gentiles, the list could go on and on and on. Societies outcast are the favored ones of God. Even the young Virgin Mary sang when she heard that God was going to grow his very own son in her womb. And her song proclaimed, “you have cast the mighty down from their thrones and uplifted the humble of heart. You have filled the hungry with wondrous things and left the wealthy no part.”

God has this tendency to favor those who are lowly, those who are the last, those who are the least, those whom the proud have trudged and kicked. And we humans want no part of a God like this. We are bound to sin. We make our own plans and scheme our own way to the top. Our plans include deception, lies, forced promotions, perhaps even selling our own siblings into slavery, as in the case of Joseph.

And, as scripture reminds us, God has other plans. Remember the words of Isaiah, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.” Or the words of Jeremiah, “For I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

If ever God had a plan, it is this: to love the unlovable, to care for those in need, and to forgive the sinner.

And Joseph knew that because of his dreams. In his dreams, God had placed with Joseph the job of caring for whole nations who would starve and forgive his sinful brothers. Joseph had a remarkable gift to dream and see God’s plan and purpose, which is to care for those who are hungry and to forgive those who sin.

And so, when Joseph’s brothers come crying at his feet, sorry for ever selling him into slavery, Joseph knows how to do only one thing: to forgive them. “But Joseph said to them, ‘Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.’”

At our worst, we hung God’s only Son on a cross. But even though we intended it for harm, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today for you. Yes, you. You who sit and scheme, you who plan and purpose. God’s ways are not your ways, nor your thoughts his. He has a plan for you, plans for your welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. And he has fulfilled his plan in his Son Jesus for your sake. So, dear people of God, rest, assured of God’s plan and purpose for your welfare and good.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Pentecost 16 - Sept 16

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

“Father Abraham, had many sons, many sons had father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, so let’s all praise the Lord.”

I hope that many of you know that old Sunday School song. It was one I learned when in Sunday School as a kid, but I had forgotten it in my many years of being outside of the church.

Today’s Scripture is just one small, but very, very important part of God’s great big story of the bible. Today we hear about the faith of father Abraham and the God who gave him his gift of faith.

To catch you up, last week were heard the opening story of Scripture: God in the garden with Adam and Eve. They did not trust God, they trusted in their own ability to know good from evil. And so God sent them out of the garden. The story of Adam and Eve is a template for all of Scripture: God gives a gift, humans misuse it, God has mercy and deals with them somehow.

This week we have probably the most important story about faith in all of Scripture. This is the story of Abraham and Sarah, or Abram and Sarai as they are known at first. It wasn’t until the 90 year old Sarai and Abram were given the gift of a son, Isaac, that they got their new names. Sarai and Abram laughed a big “ah ha!” at the thought of being pregnant at 90 years old and God stuck a big old “ah ha” in their names to remind them that God can do the impossible.

Abraham and Sarah were barren. Genesis 11:32, “Now Sarai was barren; she had no child.” Just after we hear about the barren womb of Sarai, God makes a promise to Abram and Sarai and says that they will be given the gift of a bunch of land and that his children and their children and their children and their children, and so on and so on, will be a great nation.

As many of you well know, when you are unable to have kids, the idea of actually having kids someday seems pretty far off. So, when God promises a great nation Abraham and Sarah are naturally a little skeptical.

Getting to our reading for today, God again promises a great reward for Abraham’s faithfulness. But, Abraham reminds God, “I don’t have any children. I’ve got this boy here who is my servant; do you want him to be my child? Do you want to give all that land to him and his children?”

“No,” God says, “You’ll have your own kids someday. And it will be you and Sarah, your wife who can’t conceive. I am making my promise to the two of you.”

God makes the promise in that first sentence of our reading for today; take a look at it again. “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward will be very great.” And then after Abraham complains and mistrusts God, God makes the promise again, but this time he grabs him by the shoulder and drags him outside in the middle of the night to give him a sign.

God drags him out to look at the stars and says, “Look, Abram! You see all those stars? The ones you can’t even count? That’s how many children I will give you and Sarah. You’ll have all kinds of little rug rats, from now until the end of time.” And Abraham believed the LORD, the reading says, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness. God declared him righteous. In other words, God made him faithful, created him new. God gave him faith in that moment.

Wow! What a gift! One Bible scholar says the stars were like a sacrament for Abraham: a sign with a promise from God. Like bread and wine are a sign with a promise from God for forgiveness. And God gives us the gift of faith in a sacrament. God blesses us with faith; he declares us righteous. He makes us whole. He makes us his people.

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul starts talking about this a little bit. Romans 4 is a whole speech from the apostle about how Abraham is the father of our faith, not because we are his flesh and blood, but because God make a promise to him to give him many nations. God made that promise before Abraham and Sarah had a child so that we would know that it’s not flesh and blood that make us God’s children, but God’s promises made to us.

With a barren womb, Abraham and Sarah were given the gift of God’s promise. God pointed to the stars in the sky and said, “Look! I am making you my children. You are mine and I promise that you’ll always be mine.”

And that promise is for you all. God has reached down in the flesh and blood of his only Son, Jesus Christ and given you his promise. That you are his and you always will be. You are a child of God, and heir of the promise. “For I am convinced,” says the apostle Paul in Romans 8, “that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

And God declares you his children. You are children of the promise.

In the name of Jesus. Amen. 

Pentecost 15 - Sept 9 - Genesis 2 & 3

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

I suppose we should start off with a little bit of an introduction. Welcome to what is called the Narrative Lectionary. A sweeping look at the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, in worship, every Sunday, for one year.

Because of the great response I have been getting from reading through the whole Bible in our women’s Bible study, I thought I’d give this style of Scripture reading a shot. Getting to read through the major stories of the Bible, learning about the characters, and hearing God’s Word from the beginning to the end.

Why are we doing this? The first reason is because God’s Word is our guide. Psalm 119 verse 105, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” The second reason is that I believe we can no longer assume any of us really knows the stories of Scripture. This is not an insult on your intelligence. All of us are capable of knowing Scripture, but when do we ever read big chunks of Scripture anymore? When do we ever get taught the Bible from beginning to end? It is very rare.

So, we’re going to give it a shot. My hope is that you will fall in love with Scripture. That God’s Word will jump out and surprise you. I hope it captivates you and motivates you to want to know and learn more. I hope that you will hear the good news of the Gospel, and not just from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. I hope that when God was making promises to our ancestors in faith way back in the Old Testament times you’ll hear good news there, too. And I have a secret hope that as we get going you won’t want to miss out on church because you’ll be so excited by hearing the Bible this way in worship that you can’t wait until next week; but I’ll leave that up to God. So, invite your friends to church so they can share in this journey, too.

With all of that said, we have to start somewhere. The best place to start is at the beginning. But actually there are two beginnings, or two stories of beginning anyway. Genesis 1 has the story of the creation of all that exists. And Genesis 2 zooms in and talks about the creation of human beings in the Garden of Eden and how God cares for this silly, but special part of creation.

“On the day the LORD God made earth and sky—the LORD God formed the human from the topsoil of the fertile land and blew life’s breath into his nostrils. The human came to life.”

Now, I wish I could teach you all Hebrew so you could catch the beautiful word play happening in those two verses. I’ll do my best to explain it to you without being boring. The word for “land” in Hebrew is adamah; and the word for human is adam. We call the first human “Adam” from the Hebrew word for human being, adam. So, from the very beginning human beings are connected with the soil.

In a farming community, you should know all about this, right? We farm the land here and we somehow become deeply connected to it. Every thing that happens, weather, pest, moisture, all of those things tie us to the land we farm.

At the very beginning of Genesis 2, the connection is much deeper than farming. Farming doesn’t come until verse 15. The connection first is that God formed the man from the dust of the earth, from the topsoil of the fertile land. Remember on Ash Wednesday, when we draw the ashes on your forehead and we proclaim that you are dust and to dust you shall return? Well, here it is. Genesis 2:7. Man and soil, adam and adamah, connected more deeply than we’ll ever quite know.

So, God forms, fashions, creates the man from the topsoil of the fertile land. But the man doesn’t have life yet. Life is something that must come from outside of ourselves. We get life, we’re given life, life is a gift. So God breaths life’s breathe into Adam’s nostrils. And Adam comes to life. With the breath of God, God’s Spirit, comes life. Life is God’s gift…and as we’ll find out in Easter, new life is God’s gift as well. But we’ll have to wait awhile for that.

Now that Adam has life, he’ll have to have some work. Working, or vocation as we should really call it, is God’s second gift to human beings. Life first; work second. But we are not talking just any work; we’re talking real, meaningful work, work that is rooted in the gifts of creation. Work that is joyful and expected.

When God has finished giving Adam life and work, he moves on to giving Adam a commandment, actually two of them if we listen closely. These laws are God’s third gift in this series of events. The first commandment is to eat his fill from all of the garden’s trees. The second commandment is to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The second commandment comes with a consequence: eat of that tree and you will die.

Our reading skips another, precious gift of God, a partner for Adam in the garden, and moves us straight to one of the major themes of all of Scripture: sin. And we are talking about sin with a capital “I.” Most of us know the story, but we should point out some details. The snake was an intelligent animal, and he spoke. Or at least the snake spoke in the garden.

What happens next could be the entire outline of all of Scripture: the snake speaks, the humans listen to the snake’s words, and God deals with the humans mercifully.

What we should notice especially is what the snakes says. Chapter 3, verse 4, “The snake said to the woman, “You won’t die!” But just up in chapter 2, verse 17 God said, “…you will die!” Who will you listen to? Do you listen to God’s Word, or some other word? This is the outline for all of Scripture and the constant human problem; humanity’s original sin. Listen to God or listen to someone or something else?

The woman already seems to know a good thing when she sees one, “The woman saw that the tree was beautiful with delicious food.” But now, listening to the snake, she takes some of the fruit, eats it, and gives some to, “…her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.” Enough of the blame game, we’re all guilty.

Human beings, male or female, choose to listen to all the other voices in the garden other than God. It’s our fallen nature. It’s our dis-grace. We have wandering ears and wandering hearts.

Our reading for today ends with what human beings would rather do when God discovers that they have listened to someone other than him: we like to hide. We are ashamed. Our wandering ears and hearts are discovered by our God who gave us the gift of life, and work, and companionship, and the law. And when we break the law, we’d rather hide than face the good and gracious God who made us.

In our confession and forgiveness at the beginning of worship, we seek not to hide from God, but to confess our sins before God our creator. And then we receive with grateful hands the grace of God’s forgiveness. In this Christian service of worship we do not act as the first human beings, hiding from God. But facing God knowing that Jesus Christ has died so we can have forgiveness in his name.

And so we’ll have to see what God is up to next week when he starts making big promises to some of Adam and Eve’s descendants, Abraham and Sarah. 

Amen.