Sermon June 28: Mark 5:21-43

In Steven King’s novel The Green Mile,and the subsequent movie of the same name, the green mile is the stretch of hallway which leads to the electric chair and the prison cells of death row which line that hallway. John Coffey is an inmate of Cold Mountain Penitentiary, a tall, strong black man, on the green mile for the brutal murder of two young white girls.

But, as the story progresses, Paul Edgecombe, his prison guard, sees things that leads him to doubt John’s guilt. How could such a gentle, even childlike man have committed such a terrible crime? Moreover, how can someone who has the power to heal as John does be evil?

For at John’s touch, Paul’s stubborn urinary tract infection is healed; a mouse crushed by a sadistic guard is restored; and in a haunting scene, John heals a dying woman of cancer. In each case, it is as if John breathes the disease into himself and then expels it.  It is an irony not lost on his guard that though John brings life to the dying, he is known as a murderer and condemned to die, destined to walk the green mile.

How can this be? It is like this verse of a hymn we sometimes sing on Passion Sunday: “Why, what hath my Lord done? What makes this rage and spite? He healed the deaf and dumb, he gave the blind their sight. Sweet injuries! Yet they at these, themselves displease, and gainst him rise, themselves displease, and gainst him rise.” “My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love to me, love to the loveless shown, that I might lovely be.” Jesus, the giver of life and healing, himself was condemned as a blasphemer – someone who brings death by cursing God’s name – and walked his own green mile which we know as the Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrows.

This fifth chapter of Mark begins to open us to the mystery. In the opening of the fifth chapter, St. Mark relates the story of the Gerasene demoniac. Jesus frees a man from the possession of demons, and expels them into pigs who immediately stampede and hurl themselves like lemming over the cliff. (Incidentally I should mention that the mass suicide of lemmings is another one of those things which was once taught as absolutely true in science class but has since been proven to be false.)

Then, in the stories which we have just heard proclaimed, Jesus heals the flow of blood of an old woman, and raises a young girl from the dead. In all three cases, we see the healing power of Jesus. But perhaps it is what we do not see which might awe us more.  We do not see that in each of these two cases, Jesus is exchanging his holiness for our sinfulness, his life for our death.

I always think the Gospel of Mark is unintentionally funny right here. The woman with the unending flow of menstrual blood had spent “all that she had on many physicians.”  Don’t we do the same thing? Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying anything about the state of or cost of medical care. Nor am I making a theological judgment about the healing arts. We are rightly grateful for the gifts of medicine and for doctors and nurses.  But at the same time we recognize medicine’s limitations. It serves to preserve life for a longer time, not to abolish the possibility of death. The sign of healing can be a sign of God’s grace in the midst of life. But we run from death, the look of death, the feel of death, we spend our money not only on physicians, but on treatments to make us look younger, so that we may accepted in a society that idolizes youth, on treatments that make us feel younger, so that we may continue to act young. And there is something about us still, even in this “enlightened” age, that does not want to spend time around the dying. Perhaps it is too much a reminder of our own mortality, that someday the keys will unlock our cell and we too will walk the green mile.

These days, many people read the story about the woman and say simply this, “Jesus was breaking down barriers of prejudice.” After all, a woman with an unending menstrual flow was unclean in the Jewish religion of the day, and could not participate with the worshiping community. In this reading of the story, Jesus is saying, “She’s OK after all. It’s you who exclude her who have the problem.” There is always something to be learned about prejudice. In Stephen King’s novel, American racism certainly plays a role in John Coffey being on the Green Mile. But the Gospel of Mark says that power came forth from Jesus. Jesus didn’t hold a discussion group, but simply by touching Jesus’ cloak, the woman was physically healed. Jesus did not say about the little girl, “it’s OK that she is dead,” but taking her hand Jesus raised her from the dead.

These two stories bracketed together tell us that the same thing is happening in both cases. And the earlier story in Mark 5 helps us understand it too – Jesus comes to his people to set them free from all that would keep them in bondage – the powers of sin which plague us, the disease which is living death, and the death which would cast us back into chaos.

But don’t think there is not a cost. There is always a cost. The cost is this: Jesus, in taking our uncleanness and sin from us, takes it upon himself. In taking death from us, he receives it himself. Think about it this way. Those of Jesus’ time practiced a religion strictly divided between clean and unclean. You could not touch a person with a flow of blood, for that was an extension of the power of death. If you did do so, you needed to be ritually cleansed. You could not touch a dead person, and if you did, you needed to be ritually cleansed. Jesus does these things, and giving his life to those in bondage,he takes on the uncleanness associated with death, in fact, he takes on death itself. It is on the cross that he bears our uncleanness, sin and death to the end, so that our sin and death may no longer separate us from God. Though we are still plagued by sin, and are subject to its consequences in this world, even our sin cannot separate us from God, for Jesus has taken on that separation in his own flesh. Though we die, death cannot separate us utterly from God, for Jesus has taken our death into himself.

So, then, what do the healing of this woman afflicted for twelve years and the raising from the dead of a twelve-year-old girl mean for us? It would be a terrible thing if the lesson we got from this story was that chronic disease and death in childhood is a sign of God’s disfavor, that if the Father really loved us he would always heal in this way. There will be chronic disease and untimely death as long as this world rolls. God sees it and God mourns with us and in Jesus makes a way through it.

We always want to remember that the healing that we see in the Gospels points us to the living Jesus in our lives. The new life which the two women experience through Jesus is both perfect and yet to be completed. Perfect because it is new life given by Jesus, yet to be completed because they are not yet free from the cares of the world or the threat of death. It is the same way with us. We may live confidently, knowing in Christ, God comes to us still, speaking words of healing, grace and forgiveness, offering us his holiness and life in exchange for our sin and death. We may experience the joy of being healed of physical and spiritual disease in this life, while knowing that one day we too will walk that green mile, trusting that on the other side of death we will hear those words, “I say to you, arise.”

Sermon Easter 5B

How did we get to this point in the life of the Church
where the people who are supposed to be teaching people how to pray
are being encouraged to take the drastic step of taking time for prayer?
I think it is because we have absorbed so uncritically the message of our culture
that we are justified by what we do and how much we do
that we have to be reminded to pray.
And I think it is because we have forgotten that in all things
we are dependent upon God and our neighbor
that so many Christians, not just pastors, but Christians, burn out.

Sermon 4 Lent – March 22, 2009

Why would you turn away from the light?
Why would you walk again into the darkness?
There is only one reason.
To walk into the light means to become visible.
It means to reveal yourself to the gathering, in the light of the bonfire.
It means to give up your anonymity and become part of the community
that works and plays together and keeps the fire going.

Sermon Lent 1 – Mar 1, 2009

Often people who joke about a lightning bolt striking them
for doing something bad
really do think that that’s what God does to bad sinners.
When a lightning bolt doesn’t strike them,
they think that either what they’ve done isn’t so bad,
or that there isn’t a God up there to zap them.
But what if that’s not God’s sign at all?

Sermon Feb 22, 2009 – The Transfiguration of our Lord

If Jesus of Nazareth were to walk down that red carpet tonight,
if he were to take his place among the famous people;
or if he were to be present at Tuesday’s State of the Union address,
with President Obama and the powerful people of the government;
or if he had been the halftime show at the Super Bowl,
with millions and millions of people watching all over the world,
what would we see?

Sermon February 15, 2009

Mark 1:40-45

What does God hate?
I asked the Youth Group this question a few years ago.
We were starting a curriculum called The Justice Mission.
The purpose of the curriculum was to awaken Christian teenagers in America,
only a little removed from their childhood years,
to the injustices perpetrated upon children in many parts of the world,
from girls as young as nine or ten being sold as sex workers
to very young children who are given the mind-and-body numbing task
of hand-rolling cigarettes ten to twelve hours per day.
But when I asked, What does God hate?
the response I got was, “God doesn’t hate.”
The question didn’t make any sense to them.
We have done a good job catechizing our young people
and drumming into their brains that God is a God of love –
perhaps too good a job.
For love that does not want what is best for the beloved is no love at all,
and a love that does not hate what keeps the beloved in bondage is meaningless.

Why do I bring this up?
Well, biblical scholars make their translations of the Bible
from old hand-copied parchments which scribes made long, long ago.
Many copies of the Gospel according to St. Mark exist.
And many of the manuscripts read just as I read today, that Jesus, “moved with pity,”
reached out to the man with leprosy and healed him.
But some of the manuscripts have something different.
Some of them say that Jesus was not moved with “pity,”
but that he was moved with “anger.”
Scholars, of course, have no idea which is original.
Some think that because more manuscripts have “pity,”
that this is the original intent of Mark.
But others say that “anger” is more probably authentic,
because it is a harder reading.
It’s more likely, they say, that someone who was painstakingly copying
the Gospel according to Mark
would have the same reaction to the word “anger” as the emotion of Jesus
that our Youth Group had to the word “hate” as the emotion of God.
It didn’t make any sense to them.
And so they changed it to something that did make sense to them.

We have absolutely no way of knowing for certain which word should be there.
So I’m not going to stand up here and tell you that I know for certain
that “Jesus was moved with pity”
or “Jesus was moved with anger.”
But I do know this.
Jesus was moved.
By pity, by anger, or by both.
It might have been better had the curriculum asked the youth,
“What moves God’s heart?”
As surely as the God of Israel looked upon the children of Israel
as slaves in Egypt and was moved by their plight –
to take pity on them, or to become angry at their oppressors –
so was Jesus moved by the plight of this leprous man,
wearing the chains of his own bondage.
For leprosy made one ritually unclean
so that one could not be part of the worshipping community of God’s people.
To be a leper was to be an outcast in every way,
for to infect others with leprosy was not simply to threaten their physical health
but also their relationship to God.
“Cleanliness is next to godliness” used to be a phrase in common usage,
but in Jesus’ day, cleanliness literally was godliness.
And so lepers were isolated in their own ghettos
or driven to the outskirts of the cities,
to live alone, away from those who were clean,
without friends, without family, without God.

Being alone.
It’s one of the scariest things we can imagine.
Children, in the darkness, awake in the middle of the night, the minutes creeping by;
Teenagers, hunched over phones with tiny screens and pressing impossibly small buttons
to be-in-touch every second of every day;
Adults, searching for true love the second or third time around
or turning to drugs or alcohol to mask the pain;
the aged, mourning the empty house and waiting for the visit at the nursing home;
the imprisoned, kept locked away in environments of power
devoid of family or community relationships;
the secretive, ashamed of a dark part of their lives
or frightened lest they be rejected by God or others;
those who are used at the convenience of others,
like the children who suffer injustice all around the world:
Jesus, the Son of God, is moved.
With pity for us?
or with anger at what keeps us from him?
He is moved, and he moves –
reaching out to us, he cleanses us from our fear and shame
and makes us able to stand in his presence.

“If you are willing,” says the man, “you can make me clean.”
We often wonder what God’s will is –
for us, for others, for the world.
In his Small Catechism Martin Luther, whose commemoration we celebrate
this Wednesday, writes this about God’s will:
(God’s will comes about) when God breaks and hinders every evil scheme
and will of the devil, the world, and our flesh
that would not allow us to hallow God’s name
and would prevent the coming of his kingdom.
And God’s will comes about
whenever God strengthens us and keeps us steadfast in his Word
and in faith until the end of our lives.
This is God’s gracious and good will.
God is moved by the plight of human beings in bondage to whatever –
disease, sin, ignorance, poverty, oppression, death:
and he moves in response to it –
to free us from our bondage
by promising us a future in community –
not alone, but together with him and with all his people.

Jesus reaches out his hand,
and restores the man to physical health,
and not only to physical health,
but to restored relationship with God and the community.
He stretches out his hands upon the cross,
and in dying without sin,
he breaks the power of both sin and death for us.
By the hands of the church he washes us in baptism and feeds us with the Word of life
and the bread and wine of his presence.
God’s heart is open to us.
As our hearts become open to God,
we too become part of his willing action for the world,
reaching out our hands to others,
moved by their plight,
bringing them into community with us and with God.
In the end, when your heart is moved and you are stirred to action
on behalf of one who is suffering or oppressed or alone,
then it is the God who was moved by your plight
continuing his work in the world,
willing still that all might be healed.

Amen.

Sermon: The Baptism of our Lord

Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan is the confirmation of his identity; the voice of the Father and the dove of the Spirit do not “make” him who he is, but they witness to who he has been from eternity. When we are baptized into Jesus, however, something different happens. We are given a new identity, one which we did not have before we were brought to the water. We are put into the place of the Lord Jesus, into the water, and the dove of the Spirit descends upon us, the voice of the Father is heard speaking about us, calling us by name, “You are my child, you are my servant.”

Advent 2 – December 7, 2008

We begin at the beginning – in the wilderness.

“John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a Gospel of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

Our Advent journey takes us to the wilderness to hear John’s message anew.

Last week we began with need. We spoke of our need for God in a world where God seems absent. The prophet Isaiah spoke with passionate fervor, begging God to make himself known in the world. To become Advent people is to uncover that longing in our lives for God’s unadulterated presence, to refuse to get used to life as it is, for us, or for the world.

Sermon 11/16/2008: Proper 28A

Matthew 25:14-30

This week’s Gospel lesson is the second of three parables that make up Matthew 25.  In them, Jesus speaks about the time when God’s kingdom will be revealed.

I spoke last week about our Christian assertion that now, God’s kingdom is present, but hidden, and at some point will be revealed to all.  But it is not only the kingdom of God which is to be revealed.  In some strange way, everything is to be revealed, so that the thoughts of our hearts, the meaning of our actions in the present time, will be laid bare as well for all to see.

If the message of last week’s lesson could be summed up, “Live expectantly,” and the next week’s Gospel lesson can be summed up, “Live compassionately,” then perhaps this week’s Gospel would be: “Live responsibly.”

Responsibility.  Such a boring word.  Such a kill-joy.  As a satirical magazine has pointed out, there is a reason they’re called “Fun-yuns,” and not “Responsibility-yuns.”

“Live responsibly.”  That’s a phrase that those advertising beer use to remind you not to use so much of their product that you drive under the influence (or do something similarly if not so catastrophically stupid, like post pictures of yourself drunk on the Internet).

How can such a phrase be rehabilitated?  You see, it was more than mere responsibility that moved the first two slaves to imrove their master’s property and that moved the third slave to bury that large amount of money in a hole in the ground.  It was relationship.  It was the quality and the content of relationship that determined the action of the three slaves.  We might be able to say that it is relationship that determines responsibility.

Think of the one who asks Jesus in Luke 10:25-37, “Who is my neighbor?”  Who am I responsible to love?  With whom am I in relationship?

In response to that question, Jesus tells the story of a man who falls victim to thieves and is left for dead, who is saved not by those who are related to him by blood or religion, but by the one who feels in his guts the common relationship of humanity and who is therefore moved to take responsibility for him.  Jesus urges that we take the Samaritan for a model when asking “with whom am I in relationship?”

In this parable, Jesus speaks not of relationships among human beings, but of relationships with God.  We are urged to model our relationship with God in the here in now upon Jesus’ relationship with the Father, exemplified in the story by the relationship of the first two slaves with their master.  We are urged to avoid the relationship of the third slave, which is a relationship of fear and not of love.

If I were to ask, “What is the opposite of love,” most would answer “hate.”  But it is actually fear that is the opposite of love.  1 John 4:18 tells us:  “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.”  The words may have been written with the third slave in mind.  His every word and action is an excuse for his inaction.  He comes right out and says, “I was afraid.”

He has no relationship with the master except that of fear of punishment.  Fear is related to hatred in that it gives rise to hatred.  It would have been better, thinks the third slave, to have been given nothing at all, for then there would be no opportunity to be punished.  He resents the opportunity he has been given, the responsibility given, and indeed begins to hate the master.  And he receives nothing less from the master than what he expected of him – punishment.

By contrast, there is much love and joy in the actions of the first two slaves.  When they come into the presence of the master who has returned, it is like Christmas morning.  Aren’t you excited when you can give a gift to someone you love?  Don’t you lie awake at night thinking of her face when she receives the surprise?  Is not the joy multiplied abundantly when the one who receives rejoices with the one who gives?

Sometimes we might look upon the first two slaves as presenting the doubling of income in self-satisfied assumption of a reward.  But what actually happens?  They don’t get a share of the earnings, like a CEO might get a bonus in the good old days; instead, they get more responsibility!  “You have been faithful in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things!”  The reward is to have a deeper relationship with the master.  The reward is the joy.

Jesus tells this parable not to teach us how to be good servants to masters, or good children to parents, or even good workers for employers.  Jesus tells this parable to show us how to be children of God in the present, how to be in relationship to God.  God establishes that relationship with us.  He creates us and washes us by water and the Word in Holy Baptism.  He gives us a unique, unrepeatable life to life; one that has never been before and will never be again.  And he calls us to live it for him.

Enter into his joy.  Live your life responsibly, because when you’re in relationship, you respond to the one with whom you are in relationship.  And don’t worry about losing it all.  Sometimes when we look at this parable, we worry: “What if I blow it?  What if it all disappears?”  No life lived for God is ever a waste.

Perhaps we are now overwhelmed with the magnitude of the task before us.  Let us close with words of Mother Teresa, who said, “There are no great things, only small things with great love.”  She said of the day of judgment, “I am not sure exactly what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die and it comes time for God to judge us, he will NOT ask, ‘How many good things have you done in your life?,’ rather he will ask, ‘How much LOVE did you put into what you did?’”

Sermon 7/13/2008 – The Seed is the Word of the Kingdom

Proper 10A (Pentecost 9)

Messiah Lutheran Church

13 July 2008

 

Green is the liturgical color for the season after Pentecost.

It represents growth,

the growth of God’s life within us

as we are nourished in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

We are reminded of our Lord’s parable of the sower,

where he speaks of the seed which fell on good soil,

that grew and produced a great harvest,

an abundant crop.

 

Of course, our Lord is not intending to give us gardening tips.

His original audience would have known quite well

that seed that falls on a hard, stony path

does not produce and is bird feed,

that plants can dry out quickly without deep roots to reach underground water,

that weeds can choke out and starve other growing things.

Jesus speaks about seeds, and birds, and plants, and the green things of the world

to speak about something that is not so visible –

how the Word of God

produces the life of the Spirit within human beings –

and even sometimes why it doesn’t.

I’m sure his disciples wondered

why it was that the one whom they had followed

couldn’t get some others to follow him.

Was it some deficiency on his part?  Was he having an off day preaching?

Was it that the Word was not as effective as they thought?

Or was it something else?

 

Jesus identifies three causes of spiritual crop failure:

the first, when people don’t understand the word.

The Greek word is actually more like “putting it together.”

I like that.

When people hear God’s Word but they don’t put it together in their head,

it is of no use to them.

When we say “understand,” we often think of it like a flash of insight,

as if it comes automatically.

But if we say, “putting it together,” that’s a little bit more intentional,

a little bit more of a long-term process.

It involves a little activity on our part.

So that’s the one reason for spiritual crop failure:

a failure to put the Word together.

 

 

But there’s a second reason:

The second reason for spiritual crop failure

is that when God speaks his Word to us,

we become accountable to it,

and that can lead us into situations where we are asked to choose

between easy living without the Word

and harder living with it.

These choices can be as simple as

“Am I going to get up this morning and go to church?”

For me, I have to get up on Sunday morning and go to church –

you’d miss me if I didn’t.

Maybe I miss you when you are not in church,

or maybe someone else misses you –

or maybe God misses you because he longs to speak the Word to you,

because he wants you to come to the table and receive the body and blood of Christ.

But we have to choose sometimes, if we don’t have a job at church,

whether or not we are going to show up

because we might miss something in the world if we do –

like sleep, or the opportunity to get some other stuff done, or something fun.

Now I don’t have that choice because I have to show up on Sunday,

but I do have a choice other times,

when I choose whether or not I am going to do the routine of my daily prayers.

There are all sorts of choices I have:

I could be reading a book, or surfing the Internet,

or getting some stuff done that I need to get done,

or sleeping a little longer

And sometimes I choose those.

I don’t want it to seem like I’m a good person for always showing up at church.

Like I said, I have to be here.

But we all have that struggle,

and of course when Christ talks about persecution,

he’s talking about a lot more than this.

Isn’t this the same thing, though,

that life is harder and difficult if we’re taking God’s Word seriously

than if we are not?

And if we can’t make the so-called easy decisions like encountering the Word

and coming to listen when God wants us to hear,

how would we ever stand up under real persecution?

 

The third reason for spiritual crop failure is the cares of the world

and the lure of wealth.

If we don’t consider ourselves particularly rich,

and most of us don’t,

we might think we’re immune to this particular blight.

But let’s be careful.

A life that revolves around the problems and possibilities of money,

no matter how much or how little the actual amount is,

is a life that risks failure of the crop.

 

So we’ve identified three reasons for spiritual crop failure,

and one of course for success:

hearing the Word and understanding it.

But we haven’t even considered these questions:

Where do we hear God speaking,

and what is the Word which he wants us to hear?

 

The simple answer is that the Bible is the Word of God,

and that answer has the advantage of being true.

But there’s a little more to it than that.

Just to belabor the obvious,

when Jesus was talking about the Word,

there was no such thing as the Gospel of Matthew or the New Testament.

So it cannot be just that.

 

Lutherans have always said that we hear the word of God in preaching.

But not just any preaching, as if I could stand up here and say anything

and it would be the Word of God.

It is the preaching of the Gospel which is God’s Word,

the sending forth of the good news

that though we are sinners, God rescues us in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection.

It is preaching like in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans,

“There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

The Bible contains that message,

therefore it is the written Word of God.

 

But there is yet more.

What does the Bible tell us in the first chapter of John?

In the beginning was the Word,

and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God…

And the Word became flesh and lived among us,

and we have seen his glory,

the glory as of a father’s only son,

full of grace and truth.

Jesus himself is the Word of God.

When God the Father wished to speak once-and-for-all

to humankind,

he clothed his Son Christ Jesus in flesh

so that his life would be the speech of God to us and to all people.

The Bible, the written Word, brings us Jesus, the living Word, the Word-made-flesh.

 

 

That is why it is so important for us as Christians to read and understand the Bible,

because it holds Christ, like the manger held him in Bethlehem,

and Christ is the living Word we need to hear.

You may have heard that we ELCA Lutherans

are trying a nationwide initiative called “Book of Faith.”

This has come about partially because we have lost our biblical literacy as a church.

About two-thirds of Lutheran youth come to confirmation classes and are confirmed.

Thereafter, only about one-fifth of us participate in Christian education.

We’re a lot better at doing things when we’re expected to show up.

So we have decided, as a church,

that we need to read the Bible.

But immediately, the excuses come, even from pastors:

“It’s too hard to understand,”

and, “What if people think I’m strange,”

and, “There are so many other things in my life, I’m too busy.”

Sounds like a recipe for spiritual crop failure.

Sounds like Jesus knew a thing or two about what keeps us

from growing and thriving in the life of the Spirit.

 

But for those who take the time

to “put things together,”

to stand under the Word until they understand it,

to clear away all that would choke it,

and allow God to root the Word deep within the self,

God promises a harvest,

a growth that will come in his time

and by his good pleasure.

May God grant us the grace

now and always to hear his Word and understand it,

that we might be an abundant harvest in his name and for his glory. 

 

Amen