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.