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!