Epiphany 4 :: Jan 27, 2013 :: Luke 6:1-16

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

So let’s begin with a bold statement for you this morning: the church is falling apart because we do not know what it means to take Sabbath rest.

Let’s face it, we live in a world where the ONLY measure of success is if we work harder and have more. Without us even knowing it, this plague is wiping out both the church and our very lives. If this sounds like too strong of a statement for you, you’d better look around.

The people sitting in the pews next to you are part of a steadily shrinking population, now less than 50% of Americans, who gather together to worship the Lord of the Sabbath. But let’s not get confused about what Sabbath is. Sabbath is not sitting in church on Sunday morning for an hour. Sabbath is a way of life; Sabbath is setting aside time for God to work on your heart. Sabbath is time for you to rest and play, knowing that God is working, even when you are not. Sabbath is time for us to remember that God is God and we are not.

The insidious thought that we can do better, be better, live better if we just work harder and harder and harder, is killing us. And the answer to it all is staring us right in the face: the answer is God. Letting God be God, not playing the hero, not playing the savior, letting a Sabbath way of life have its way with us, is the only answer to our own self-destruction.

Our constant work is actually counterproductive to having a life that is full. A full life includes intentional time for God’s Word, time for rest, and time for play.

Most of us know the third commandment: “Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the LORD your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, to the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you. Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”

But Sabbath goes so much deeper than this commandment. Built into the DNA of God’s beautiful and good creation is keeping Sabbath. In the beginning, God created all that exists and on the seventh day, even GOD rested! Ordained since the beginning, keeping Sabbath is a way of life for all of creation. Time to rest, time to play, time to bask in the goodness of God’s good creation.

Until the Jewish laws came along that tried to protect the Sabbath from being broken, Sabbath was built into creation itself.

With all of this in the back of your mind, think about the lesson from this morning again. Jesus was walking in the fields, plucking grain and eating it. This was a Sabbath law meant to keep God’s people from harvesting on the Sabbath. And then there is Jesus in the synagogue, healing on the Sabbath. This was a Sabbath law meant to keep doctors and other healers from working on the Sabbath.

Here is God’s only Son, breaking Sabbath law, right before our eyes. Our first thought is to say that Jesus is just like us, breaking Sabbath laws and instead of resting! But, as Jesus reminds us, “The Son of Man is lord of the sabbath.”

Jesus reminds the Pharisees and the congregation that Sabbath is about what gives life, “I ask you,” Jesus says,”is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the Sabbath, to save life or to destroy it?”

Sabbath is about life, what gives life, what leads to life. Eating and healing are Sabbath ways of life. And so are the other things of life, things like rest and play and relaxation. Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath, we are not. We must not think that life only happens if we work hard enough. God is the giver of life, he is Lord, he has it all in his hands.

Today, remember to rest. Remember to play. Remember to relax in the word of God and let him care for you. You belong to God and God is caring for your even when you are at rest.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Epiphany 3 :: Jan 20, 2013 (and pastor's conference) :: Luke 5:1-11

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

When I was a kid I used to push myself to swim past the buoy. On hot and humid summer days in South Dakota, the lake called to us with the promise of clear, cool water. And the further you swam from shore, the deeper the lake was, and the deeper the lake was, the cooler the water.

Into my late teens, and sometimes even now, the deep water of a lake terrified me. The water was cool and it felt so good, but my imagination was drenched with images of slimy, long-bodied fish slowly slipping past my leg. It gets worse. I’d get imagines running through my head ranging from the simple walleye to the simply ridiculous sea-monster…Leviathan, lurking in the depths of Wall Lake, South Dakota. [PAUSE]

Job, chapter 41,

“¹ Can you pull in the leviathan with a fishhook or tie down his tongue with a rope?

¹⁴ Who dares open the doors of his mouth, ringed about with his fearsome teeth?

¹⁸ His snorting throws out flashes of light; his eyes are like the rays of dawn.

¹⁹ Firebrands stream from his mouth; sparks of fire shoot out.

²⁰ Smoke pours from his nostrils as from a boiling pot over a fire of reeds.

²¹ His breath sets coals ablaze, and flames dart from his mouth.

²⁵ When he rises up, the mighty are terrified; they retreat before his thrashing.

²⁶ The sword that reaches him has no effect, nor does the spear or the dart or the javelin.

²⁷ Iron he treats like straw and bronze like rotten wood.

²⁸ Arrows do not make him flee, sling stones are like chaff to him.

²⁹ A club seems to him but a piece of straw, he laughs at the rattling of the lance.

³⁰ His undersides are jagged potsherds, leaving a trail in the mud like a threshing-sledge.

³¹ He makes the depths churn like a boiling cauldron and stirs up the sea like a pot of ointment.

³² Behind him he leaves a glistening wake; one would think the deep had white hair.

³³ Nothing on earth is his equal— a creature without fear.

³⁴ He looks down on all that are haughty; he is king over all that are proud.”

Deep water is terrifying to me. Well, if I let my imagination run too long and start wondering what’s down there it is. Just what is down there in the deep water? What would we find if we let our feet dangle a little bit further into the cool depths?

In Scripture, deep water is full of chaos, churning and mysterious. Only God knows what we’d find down there in the deep. And yet, fishermen have drug nets on the bottom of the sea floor for thousands of years. Among other things, there must be fish down there.

When Jesus tells Simon Peter to put out into the deep and let down the nets for a catch, Simon Peter, confesses. “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing.” Simon Peter has some experience with casting his net into the deep sea, some very recent experience. Fishing hasn’t been good. In fact, it’s downright discouraging. All night long; Simon Peter and the others are no doubt exhausted, frustrated, sick, and tired and sick and tired of being sick and tired. Sometimes fishing in the deep can be discouraging. [LONG PAUSE]

I am learning that this work of Christian ministry is at times terrifying and at other times deeply discouraging, (sometimes especially when your call is pastor). The empty nets after days and nights of hard, grueling work are more frequent than not. And who can forget the times when you dangle your toes in deep water, terrified about what you’ll find.

For all of us (and even those in our pews on Sunday morning) the deep waters of life are both terrifying and discouraging. Life seems troubling. You don’t have to look much further than the front page of the newspaper to see the churning of deep water everywhere you go. It is both terrifying and discouraging to think that God has called us as Christian people into this deep water. And yet, God has.

We are called into water so deep we cannot see the bottom. In fact, when we stick our heads below the surface it is simply dark and murky. A life in service to God and the world is murky, muddy, deep, and churning.

[As pastors, we run ourselves ragged doing the young adult program, teaching confirmation, administrating the office, fixing the Sunday bulletins, visiting the 10 people having surgery on their knees at one of the three hospitals, each a two hour drive from the church we serve, we are constantly hearing the complaints about the new carpet color. And that is all on a Wednesday]

This life of service is terrifyingly deep and discouraging. And yet this is precisely where Jesus told Simon Peter to drop his nets and start fishing. In the terrifying and discouraging waters, Jesus teaches Simon Peter where to fish. And as the nets stretch and strain to pull in the catch, Simon Peter is confronted with his own sin, doubting the deep and discouraging. The abundance is overwhelming. And instead of scolding Simon Peter, Jesus calls him into a life of service.

In what seems to be a parable playing out in Simon Peter’s own life, Jesus teaches him what fishing in terrifying and discouraging waters can produce. Fishing in these waters produces abundance. It’s just what God does.

Scripture testifies over and over and over again to a God who takes nothing and makes something, a God who takes soil and plants and tends and reaps a great harvest, a God who takes the death of his only Son and turns it into the life-giving Gospel for you.

We have a God whose favorite thing to do is take the deep, chaotic waters of the world and produce from them an abundant creation. Our God moves from nothing to something, from death to life. And in baptism, so do you.

It seems so strangely ironic to me that God has used water and a promise to call us to into this deep, chaotic water of life. In your baptism, water was poured over your head, giving you something tangible, something graspable, to call you into a life of service to God in the deep waters of life.

When Jesus called his first disciples, especially Simon Peter, he had them put out into deep water and let down the nets there. When he hauled the nets up, to everyone’s amazement, the nets were full, teaming with fish, in an incredible abundance. God’s call into the terrifying and discouraging promises abundance because God is at work there.

And, in hearing, the Scripture has been fulfilled. God has done this for you: in confession and absolution, in water together with God’s Word, in bread and in wine. God is at work in you, calling you to a life of service in the terrifying and the discouraging. Thanks be to God, who puts us out in deep, terrifying and discouraging water and calls us to a life of abundance with him.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Epiphany 2 :: Jan 13, 2013 :: Luke 4:14-30

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Jesus knows how to make an entrance! In his first day of work, he just about gets himself thrown off the cliff! Thankfully, Jesus plays it cool, passes right through the angry crowd as they push him toward the cliff, and goes on his way.

Today’s lesson is often called the inaugural speech of Jesus and his ministry. It’s almost like a speech a new president of the United States would give as he begins his presidency. And Jesus is a master in speech. He’s got all of the great quotes of the day memorized and he uses them to his advantage.

So let me set the stage for you a little bit. Jesus is traveling around Nazareth, just after he’s been baptized by John in the Jordan river, if you’ll remember the lesson from last week. It happens to be the Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest and focus on God’s Word. The people are gathered in a local church and Jesus gathers with them, because he’s a good Jewish man who wouldn’t miss the Sabbath.

On this particular Friday evening, the good folks in the church, hoping to hear the wonderful teaching of this new Rabbi, hand him the scroll with the prophets. He unrolled the scroll and turned to an old prophet, a guy named Isaiah.

In the words of this prophet, Jesus proclaims that God’s Spirit is upon him and given him a task. Here is where Jesus begins his inaugural speech. His task, he proclaims, is to preach good news to the poor, proclaim release to the captives, recover the sight of the blind, and let the oppressed go free. All of this stuff, good news, release, recovery and freedom, are part of a unique and very underused cultural custom called the Year of the Lord’s Favor. This was a real custom, even though it was rarely practiced.

The Year of the Lord’s Favor, or the Jubilee Year as it was sometimes called, required all of the Israelite people to forgive any debt that was owed to them, let all of their slaves go free, let their land lay fallow, and release to anyone who’d been held in prison. Now, you can imagine, if you were the one who owed all the debt, or if you were the slave, or if you were the criminal behind bars, this Year of Jubilee is good news, or maybe even GREAT news! But if you are the one who is waiting for the loans to be repaid or relying on the slaves to work the fields, or if you were the judge who sentenced the criminal to hard time, this would be very bad news.

Lots of times, whether the Word of God sounds like good news or bad news depends on where you’re sitting. And the folks in the pews in that little church in Nazareth, in Jesus’ hometown no less, are hearing this and wondering, “Is he talking about me?”

In his opening speech, in his home town, reading from an old prophet, Jesus proclaims that this year, this year, is a Year of Jubilee, a year of forgiving debts, of freeing slaves, of letting fields lay fallow, of releasing prisoners. This is a year of freedom.

Stunned, shocked, speechless. The congregation, with mouths gaping, stare at Jesus as he rolls up the scroll and calmly sits down and says, “Today this scripture is coming true. This scripture is being fulfilled. The poor will have good news preached to them, the blind will see, the captives will be freed and the oppressed will be freed from their burdens.”

The congregation begins to murmur. Is this Joseph’s son? Isn’t this that little kid from down the street who used to play tee ball with our boys? Isn’t this that son of the carpenter who made our kitchen table? Isn’t this that little same little boy who we had over for supper, who played in our backyard, who went to school with our kids? Is this not Joseph’s son?

And before they could get too far, Jesus had to tell them exactly what side of the fence they were sitting on. In this quiet little town, in his home church, Jesus continued his opening speech, the speech that would define his ministry forever.

“No one is ever accepted in his hometown,” Jesus said. “And not only that, I’m not even here to preach the good news to you, my neighbors and my friends. Just like Elijah helped a widow not from his own people, but from the neighboring religion; or just like Elisha who healed the skin disease, not of the guy from his own people, but the guy from another region and religion all together.”

“I’m not here to proclaim freedom to you, but to the very people whom you hold in slavery. I’m here to proclaim release to those who owe you debt. I’m here for them, not for you.”

And with that, Jesus let his little congregation, in his hometown of Nazareth, know right there in his opening speech, exactly what he had come for. His ministry was to those far off, his ministry was to the Gentiles, not to the Jews. Jesus’ ministry was to those who weren’t in church, sitting in the pews, but to those who spent their Sunday mornings sleeping in, watching football, shopping at the mall.

It’d be like me, on my first Sunday here, coming in and tell you, “I’m here to proclaim freedom,” but don’t get too comfortable, because I won’t be here on Sunday’s. I’ll be out there, proclaiming freedom of all of those people who sit on the outside of the church. I’m here for all of the people who have been hurt, disillusioned, miffed, stunned, oppressed and shunned by the church.”

And just like that, the congregation gets up and seething with anger, begin shoving Jesus out the door and to the edge of the cliff so that they can throw him over and finally put all of the nonsense to rest.

Yet there is more to this story than just what is told. What the Jews and the Gentiles find out is that Jesus has actually come for both of them. The beauty of Jesus’ sermon in church that day is that that good little congregation gathered there for church got exactly what they needed. And so did the Gentiles.

You see, freedom comes in many forms. The freedom that that little congregation needed was the freedom from their self-righteousness. They needed freedom from their sin of pride and arrogance and prejudice. That little congregation, even though it made them want to hurl Jesus off the cliff, got precisely the kind of Word from God that they needed to hear. It was a Word of judgment from God, God telling them to forget their self-righteous piety and remember that there is a whole world full of people out there that God has made and God loves them just as much. Freedom, for that little congregation, meant freedom from their sin.

And freedom for the Gentiles, those who’d been on the outside of the church walls for so many years, was coming, too. God was ushering them into the kingdom just as quickly as their Jewish brothers and sisters. You see, the funny thing about freedom and God is that God has no sense of who’s in and who’s out. God forgives and calls the whole world; God so loved the whole world. So, hear this dear friends, this is the year of the Lord’s favor. God is bringing good news to you. He is releasing you from your sin and captivity. God is ushering you into his kingdom. No matter where you’re sitting.

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Epiphany 1 :: Jan 6, 2013 :: Luke 3:1-22

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance.”

I am so tempted to give you a ‘fire and brimstone’ sermon this morning. With a proclamation like John the Baptist gives, who could resist? After all, are we not the same crowd of unlikely sinners, gathered around baptismal waters?

I sometimes think that church should be just like this scene we read this morning: a group of unlikely sinners gathered around baptismal waters. We should think of ourselves as that group tax collectors and soldiers trying hard to serve God, yet slaves to a Roman lord telling them to steal and kill from God’s own people.

And then we should hear those words of rebuke and they should make our ears tingle, “you brood of vipers!” In the middle of a world of sin, tempted and giving in to temptation, we are that brood of vipers, guilty of stealing and killing and wanting more that we deserve all the while.

And let’s not be confused, John the Baptist is not talking about stealing and killing in some metaphorical sense, but real stealing and killing that hurts the neighbor, that spreads the sin around.

This lazy crowd gathered around him has begun to think that their heritage, being an ancestor of Abraham has saved them. That if they just had the right type of blood, the correct skin color, the right kind of hair, the proper traditions, if they ate enough lutefisk, and spoke Norwegian until the day they died, they were children of Abraham. But God can make children of Abraham out of the rocks, John the Baptist proclaims. Your salvation, your being a child of Abraham, your being a child of God, is not whether you’ve been born into the right family, but if God has been at work in your life.

And when God is at work in your life the fruits of that work look like sharing one of your two coats with one who has none, sharing your food with one who has none, not extorting money from someone, being content and satisfied with what you’ve been blessed with. In other words, the fruits worthy of repentance look a lot like when you follow God’s commandments. When God is at work in your life, when you have been given the gift of salvation, your good works follow.

Salvation belongs to our God and the fruits of salvation look like caring for one another. Which is why John proclaims his message to a lazy bunch of sinners gathered around the waters of baptism. He does this because Christ is about to do a new thing. “I baptize you with water,” John says, “but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

One is coming, John says, who will clear the chaff and gather in the grain, one is coming who will sort the corn from the husk; and this one who is coming will keep that which is pleasing in his sight. Prepare his way, make his paths straight. He will come to fill every valley and make low every mountain, he will make the crooked straight, and the rough smooth. He is bringing salvation to all flesh.

This poor crowd of sinners gathered around the baptismal waters had no idea what was coming. In fact, they didn’t even know that they needed the kind of salvation Christ was bringing them. Much like us. None of us, I think, know how much we truly need the kind of salvation Christ brings. None of us hardly have a clue that the salvation which belongs to our God is the forgiveness of sin.

We like to think we’re relatively good people, with relatively good lifestyles and that we make moral, righteous decisions as much as we can. And yet, those prideful thoughts get us stuck in the same laziness of the crowd who thinks they are just fine because they are children of Abraham by blood.

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath that is to come! Nothing you do can make you righteous. In fact, you are a lazy bunch of sinners just like the rest of ‘em! This fire and brimstone sermon is going pretty well so far, don’t you think?

While the fire and brimstone is a very appealing way to preach, it doesn’t quite do the job. Because not only will you hate me by the time you walk out the doors this morning, but you won’t do what I tell you anyway. It’s just the way we sinners work.

So, that is why John the Baptist says there is one more powerful coming. There is someone coming who will do what he cannot: he will forgive sins and judge his people by his own righteousness, not by their unrighteousness. It is why the voice from heaven responds to Jesus being baptized, saying, “You are my Son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

God looks at the world of lazy sinners and only sees his beloved Son. God’s view of the world is the view that Christ gives, a world that he died for. It is the world that he loves and cares for by being born, living, dying and being raised for your sake. God’s eyes see differently than our own. There is work to be done, sinners to be saved, needy people to care for.

God looks at each one of you and instead of the fire and brimstone, he gives you his only, beloved Son. He hands him over on the cross so that you might know the depths and the heights and the lengths of God’s love for you. God hands Christ over in the waters of your own baptism; you remember that one? The one were water dripped on your forehead and God said, “you are mine, you belong to me.” God hands Christ over in bread and wine, too; and in confession and absolution. And sometimes God hands over Christ in all the places you’d never expect, but are there, charged like electricity with the beauty and grace of a God who loves this sinful world so darn much that he gave his Son to save you.

Thanks be to God, in the name of Jesus. Amen.