Welcome

I’m a 90s kid. I grew up on Nickelodeon, Toys R US, Blockbuster Video, TGIF, CDs, the looming threat of Y2K. Many of the cultural touchstones of my teens have passed into the dustbin of history. I recently saw an episode of Antiques Roadshow where a young woman had brought in a binder full of Pokemon cards to have them appraised. And I thought, so this is middle age, huh? The toys of my youth are now valuable collectors’ items. Do you remember Magic Eye posters? I used to love these optical illusions. “Magic Eye” is a brand name. In fact, if you’re feeling nostalgic, magiceye.com is still a functioning website, with the original, 90’s era internet aesthetic, and many examples of their work. The site feels like a time capsule. These images, technically called stereograms, are created of many overlapping pixels in bright colors. But their ‘magic’ isn’t obvious at first glance. Often folks have to be thought how to see the ‘magic’ image hidden in the obscuring chaos. If you stand at a medium distance, relax your focus, so that you’re seeing kind of through the image and refocusing beyond it, suddenly the two-dimensional jumble becomes a three-dimensional image. This optical illusion was all the rage when I was a teenager. Posters, advertisements, t-shirts, virtually anywhere you could plaster a 2D image these digital creations, a testament to computer age technology and human artistry, became the hallmark of an era. But not everyone could see this phenomenon. Some folks couldn’t quite see beyond the two-dimensional chaos to the image within. Some folks could only get there by practice, but then, once they ‘got it,’ it was kind of like having to explain a joke, it just doesn’t have the same impact. I wonder if this Christmas story lands like that sometimes. We tend to live in a world of two-dimensional chaos, pitting us against each other, each side vying for dominance. We are awash in pixelated images, fragmentary information, loose relations, and advertising, private propaganda hoping to narrow our focus even more. And all of this draws us in so close or pushes us away so far, we cannot see the deeper picture, the message beyond, the image obscured by the chaos. So, we come here, and I have the great fortune of being the one to stand up here and try to ‘explain the joke,’ so to speak, to explain how, if you tilt your head just right, and stand a little closer, but not too close, and relax your eyes, you can see a miracle. And then we all leave underwhelmed, coming down from a sugar high, and dreading how early everything is going to start tomorrow. But if you’ll indulge me, I think the invitation in this Christmas story is to something much deeper, more hopeful, and anything but an illusion. Like those magic eye posters, the Kingdom of God is about perception. You have to be taught how to see it, and then you have to practice seeing it, and then you cannot un-see it. It is not obvious to anyone in the story that Mary and Joseph are parents to God in the Flesh, otherwise, I am certain that someone would have found some room somewhere for Mary to give birth. It is not immediately obvious to the shepherds abiding in the fields by night where they should look for this great news for all people, until the angels tell them where to look and that they are looking for a baby in a barn, wrapped in strips of cloth, and lying in a trough of hay. That is not first place I would have looked for Christ the Lord. When this baby grows up, he will tell us that we enter the kingdom of God by repentance, a really churchy word that literally means a change of heart and mind— that is, a change of perspective. And then this grown-up baby will give us the sacraments so we can keep practicing this kind of perspective change. We bring our beautiful, perfect, totally innocent little babies to this font, only to find out that baptism begins with an exorcism and a ritual death. When our conscience condemns us as vile and depraved sinners, enemies of God, we are taught we should come to the same font to remember our baptism and that God claimed us there as beloved saints, pure and guiltless. We bring bread and wine as an offering to this table and it is given back to us as the Body and Blood of Jesus. A bite of bread and a sip of wine become a feast of celebration. And when we begin to perceive the sacred, ineffable mystery, it is transfigured again into a vision of bread on every table, blessed, broken, and given for all to eat. And the whole point of the practice of these holy mysteries is to teach us how to see through and beyond a flattened-out reality to the depth within the obscuring chaos. We can see in the vulnerable babe of Bethlehem that God has drawn near to us. Paula D’Arcy says, “God comes to us disguised as our lives.” And this is the Good News of Great Joy for all people. God comes to us in every hurt and disappointment, in every joy and exclamation; in every sigh and every sorrow; in every baby and every meal; in matter and in spirit. And that is how stereograms work. Two 2D images at slightly differing angles are placed side-by-side, and when the eyes relax and focus beyond the images they merge into one image with new depth, they reveal reality in all its dimensions. That is the story of Christmas; the merging of two images from slightly differing angles to reveal what is real, and that this reality includes us, with all our joy and sorrow. So, as the shepherds came to the manger, come to the altar. You will find there the flesh and blood of Christ. Ponder these things in your hearts. Come and worship, then go and tell. This is good news of great joy for all people. And when you can see it, you will not be able to un-see it. Amen.

To most of us in this room, a “Hail Mary” is an idiom for a last-ditch effort, a long shot, a fingers-crossed, eyes-closed, hold-your-breath attempt to win the game, sav e the day, avoid a dreaded outcome in the last possible second. You don’t have to be a sports historian or an Oxford theologian to understand where the name “Hail Mary” comes from. The idea being that, as the player throws that final pass toward the in zone, the player is asking Mary to make intercession to Jesus to make the play successful before the clock runs out. It comes obviously from the prayer to Mary, the mother of Jesus, that begins “Hail Mary, full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.” If you learned this prayer in a Catholic school or in a Catholic confirmation setting, you might not realize that it is almost a direct quote from the archangel Gabriel in Luke 1, when the archangel announces that Mary will conceive and bear a son. The angel’s greeting in the King James version is “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.” All of this makes us Protestant types a bit uncomfortable. We don’t pray to Mary or the saints, taking our intercessions directly to Jesus himself. “We don’t need no intercessor!” Mary belongs to the Catholics and the Orthodox, even the Anglicans and their American progeny, the Episcopalians. But not the Lutherans. Mary is a bit player in our minds, a plot devise, a supporting actress since Jesus can’t give birth to himself, since babies need a mama, and little boys need their booboos kissed, and preteens need to be reminded to bathe, and teens need someone to fret over their whereabouts. But then we tend to grant an honorary, sentimental status to our mothers, like dowager queens, we might still call her Mama, but we can wipe our own faces now, thank you. And yes, this is what I’m wearing! Like our own Mama’s we make it a point to spend time with Mary at Christmas, but most of the rest of the year, we need some reminders to reach out, and even then we put off calling on her because, well, we know it has been a while, if we have called at all, and frankly, I just can’t deal with all of that right now. If the Catholics have a better relationship with Mama Mary, the Orthodox are Mama’s favorites. While the Hail Mary is mostly comprised of language taken from the Gospel of Luke, the Orthodox heap praise and honor on Mary that makes us Lutherans cast each other a side eye and theorize that maybe this relationship is a little unnatural; like Norman Bates keeping Mama in the house. They even have a special name for her, Theotokos, the God-bearer, the Mother of God. A portion of one hymn of praise to Mary, the God-bearer, is as follows: An Angel, and the chiefest among them, was sent from heaven to cry, “Rejoice! to the Mother of God!” And beholding you, O Lord, taking bodily form, he stood in awe and with his bodiless voice he cried aloud to her such things as these: Rejoice! You through whom joy shall shine forth! Rejoice! You through whom the curse shall be blotted out! Rejoice! You, the restoration of fallen Adam! Rejoice! You, the redemption of the tears of Eve! Rejoice! Height hard to climb for human thought! Rejoice! Depth hard to explore even for the eyes of angels! Rejoice! For you are the throne of the king! Rejoice! For you sustain the Sustainer of all! Rejoice! Star that causes the sun to appear! Rejoice! Womb of the divine incarnation! Rejoice! You through whom creation is renewed! Rejoice! You through whom the creator becomes a babe! Rejoice! Thou bride unwedded! I mean, we all love our Mama’s, but this seems like a complex. If all this talk, and prayer to and adoration of Mary is just some ancient infatuation, some foreign cultural familial obligation in which we are too well-educated to participate, then we are off the hook. We can visit at Christmas, and other than that, keep her packed away is bubble wrap with the rest of the nativity set. But then, I think today’s gospel lesson invites us to something more. Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit at the sound of her voice, greets Mary with praise as the prenatal John summersaults in joy. Elizabeth repeats the words of the angel, “blessed are you among women.” Elizabeth calls her “the mother of my Lord,” which in the Greek is very close to the word Theotokos, the Mother of God. As we look back to the moment of the angel’s announcement, the angel says the Spirit of the Lord will “overshadow” Mary, the same language used to describe the power and presence of God resting on the ark of the Covenant in the Holy of Holies, the innermost room of the temple, a place so holy that only the high priest could enter, and only once per year. Maybe, instead of thinking the Catholics have overstepped and the Orthodox have a mommy issues, maybe we Lutherans could reconsider our position. Maybe instead of seeing ourselves as more theologically evolved than these ancient traditions, we see ourselves as teenagers who think we are too old to be asking Mama for help or advise. Maybe we can hear her story again, not as the supporting actress, but as our own family history, as the story of our own flesh and blood. The blood that won our salvation, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, first flowed in her veins. Before Jesus would feed us with his body Mary fed Jesus with hers. Maybe a change of perspective could lead us to see Mary not as an authority we have outgrown but as a wise, elder friend. Maybe we see that the Catholics and the Orthodox aren’t kiss-ups or weirdos but older siblings who found a friendship with this wise, elder friend when they each realized that they too were called to be God bearers. Overshadowed and overwhelmed, Mary sought out Elizabeth, a wise, elder friend who could guide her through what it means to be a miracle mother, to understand what she must endure, to prepare herself for the labor to come. And as Elizabeth blesses Mary for believing what the angel had promised, the Gospel continues with one of the most famous passages in the New Testament. But the English translation hides an ambiguity in the original language. The English says, “And Mary said,” presuming, as the Church generally has, that what follows is Mary’s song of praise. But the original Greek reads “And she said.” And since Elizabeth was the one just speaking, it is somewhat unclear whose song this is. One the one hand, that uncertainty could breed some anxiety, even entrenched camps arguing for one side or the other. Instead, I believe it invites some room to wonder— if this is Elizabeth’s song, then the coming of the God-bearer brings the rejoicing of a weary world. If we too are called to bear Christ into this weary world, what rejoicing there will be when we have shared in this labor! Mary is not a supporting actress. She is a wise, elder friend, a miracle mother, a guide to help us understand what we must endure, to prepare us for the labor to come. She is an archetype for the Church, the ark of the new covenant, the first among the redeemed, the new Eve, mother of a new humanity. When we have gone out with haste to bear this Christ into all the weary world, then maybe this no-longer-weary world will sing praises of gratitude to the Bearers of God even as they worship God; maybe their souls will magnify the Lord because of those who labored to deliver the good news. Maybe the no-longer-weary world will rejoice in the restoration of fallen Adam and the redemption of the tears of Eve because of the new creation conceived and delivered in us by our baptism. When we learn from Mama Mary how to live lives overshadowed by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit surely all generations will call us blessed and worship the God of Israel because the strength of God’s arm has been revealed though our work for justice; because the powerful among us have stepped down to make room for the lowly; because the rich among us have divested their wealth to fill the hungry with good things. Hail, Beloved, full of Grace, the Lord is with us! Blessed are we among the Children of God and blessed is the fruit of our sacred yes. Holy Beloved, bearers of God, pray with us sinners, now and in the hour of our liberation. Amen. 

This is the third Sunday of Advent, Gaudete Sunday, A day of rejoicing Set inside a penitential season. Our first reading begins Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! We go from Zephaniah to Isaiah: Sing praises to the LORD, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. And Paul picks up from there with this letter to the Philippian church: Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. So, by the time we have reached the Gospel for this jubilant day of rejoicing, we are expecting at least a similar amount of exuberance from the Gospel text for this Sunday. If we think back to last week’s readings, This week’s reading picks up where that one left off. John the Baptizer has appeared on the scene. His father burst into song at his birth, And Luke uses the language of Isaiah, Both to tell us how this John will be the forerunner of the Messiah. So, After all this build up, And all this talk of rejoicing at the coming of the Salvation of Israel, we finally get to hear John in his own words: "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” It kind of reminds you of that old Sesame Street bit, Which one of these is not like the others, Which one of these just isn’t the same? John is the voice of the one crying out in the wilderness. John is the leveler of mountains, And the straightener of paths. John is the bringer of the good news. So, why does John sound more like a crazed bible thumper Preaching destruction and unquenchable fire? And how are we supposed to rejoice in this dire warning? I think we can begin to draw a closer connection Between John’s preaching and John’s commissioning If we look at the response to John’s preaching. John goes into all the region around the Jordan Preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John’s message is that the ax is already at the root of the tree, Ready to fell every tree that does not bear fruit And throw it into the fire. The crowds ask, What then should we do? John tells the crowds "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise." Tax collectors ask John, “Teacher, what should we do?” John tells the tax collectors, "Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you." Soldiers ask John, “And we, what should we do?” John tells the soldiers, "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages." John imagines the community of the baptized looks different than those who have not been baptized. This is John’s mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. The community of the baptized will prepare the way of the Lord by repentance. Now, On the surface this may not sound super “Lutheran.” We don’t often talk of doing things, And we often lean on a definition of repentance That means more of a change of mind and heart Than on the change of one’s behavior. But this repentance To which John calls the community of the baptized Is mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. One notable Lutheran spoke of repentance in this way. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, In his book The Cost of Discipleship Spoke of cheap grace. Cheap grace is an understanding of the grace of God That leads a person to believe that the life of discipleship Requires nothing of them. Back when I was a fundamentalist, We would have called this fire insurance, A “Get Out of Hell Free” card That allows a person to escape eternal damnation And then go about their merry way. In contrast, Bonhoeffer speaks of costly grace, The sort of understanding of the grace of God that elicits a grateful response. The kind of gratitude that asks And we , what should we do? It was this kind of costly grace That led Bonhoeffer in his day To resist the Third Reich And ultimately led to his execution At the hand of the Nazi regime. In John’s day His message or repentance and forgiveness Came to the people of Israel, And John warns, “Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” John warns that their access to the history, To the covenants, To the promises Does not preclude them from call to repentance, From the call to be about the mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. John says, God is able from these stones to raise up children for Abraham. John says, Don’t fool yourself into thinking That God’s faithfulness Depends on you. God’s faithfulness Is your salvation. The call to repentance Is not a call for your help But an invitation For your cooperation. John says, Bear fruits worthy of repentance, Because the ax is already at the root of those trees That do not bear fruit. And those fruitless trees will be cast into the fire. This sounds like terrible news, Until you read that Jesus is the bringer of the fire. John says, "I baptize you with water; 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 .” Jesus is coming, Says John, And he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit And with fire. Luke mixes his metaphors a bit here Telling us through John, That Jesus comes with a pitchfork To gather the grain into the barn And throw the chaff into an unquenchable fire. It would be easy here To overlook John’s warning And presume ourselves to be insured against the coming fire by the waters of our baptism. But this would be a very cheap grace. We won’t be saved from the fire to come, but through it. Jesus will burn up the chaff of us and gather up our grain. Jesus will transform our fruitlessness into firewood. And, having been saved through the fire we, like the crowd, like the tax collectors, like the soldiers, ought to ask, “And we , what must we do?” The Spirit is inviting us To be about the same, mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening ministry that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. We, like the crowd, can give away our second coat and share our food. We, Like the tax collectors, Can refuse to consume more than we must. We, Like the soldier, Must decline to abuse our privilege. We must work for the peace that is not the absence of conflict But the presence of justice. We must live without covetousness. This season of Advent, While the rest of the world Is overcome with consumption And deludes itself With a bland sentimentality It calls the “Christmas spirit,” We must be about the mountain-leveling, Valley-filling, Way-making, Path-straightening work that will bring all flesh to see the salvation of God. This is the Christmas spirit. In fact, This is the Christian Spirit. So, Rejoice, you brood of vipers! Shout aloud, Sing for Joy. One is coming who will baptize us with fire and the Spirit and all flesh shall see the salvation of God! Amen. 

Often musicals get a lot of flak. People scoff at how unrealistic it is that characters would simply burst into song in perfectly choreographed routines and no one else in the story seems to be put out by just how odd it must be to witness something like this. A more recent phenomena is the flash mob. This is where a group of people get together, rehearse a routine, complete with song and dance, and then preform this routine in a public space, like an outdoor plaza, college campus, or a shopping mall. Naturally, these events become a YouTube sensation, reaching viral status quickly, as the videos focus not only on the routine itself, but on the slack-jawed confusion of the standers-by. I saw one video of a choir who clandestinely took their seats in a mall food court. With no warning or introduction, a soprano rose to her feet, and began to sing, “Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” By the third Hallelujah, she was joined by a tenor, who also rose to his feet and began singing. Shortly an alto and a bass joined in. Eventually, entire sections joined in until almost one third of the people in the food court were on their feet, singing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. The video pans the crowd, capturing stunned and confused reactions. People break out their cell phones and cameras and begin to record the sudden jubilation with huge smiles. One woman wipes a tear from her eye as she videos. And one small boy, who has taken to standing in his chair to investigate this heavenly sound, never breaks his enraptured gaze as his mother slips her hand into his. By the final Hallelujah, The food court erupts in thunderous applause. Then everyone retakes their seats. And everything returns to normal. One lady returns to her newspaper. A couple gets up to return their tray. The little boy who was standing in his chair lets go his mother’s hand and sits down to finish his French fries. These first few chapters of the Gospel of Luke Can feel a bit like a musical Or a flash mob. In just the first two chapters, Mary, Zechariah, A host of angels, And Simeon All break into spontaneous singing. Their songs are all about how the promise of God has been fulfilled. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, sings of how the redemption of Israel has been accomplished, how God has raised up a savior from the house of David. But then, Everything seems to go back to normal. After Zechariah sings of a savior from the house of David, John’s ministry begins with someone else on the throne. Tiberius is emperor. Pontus Pilate is governor. Herod is ruler of Judea, Philip and Lysanias each rule their respective realms, And Annas and Caiaphas are in charge of the temple in Jerusalem. Somehow, The day of the Lord has come, And also not yet. John is to proclaim a baptism of repentance, a rite of washing the body to mark a change of mind and heart. John’s ministry is to shave down the mountains, And fill in the valleys; To straighten out the crooked paths, And make the rough places smooth. Despite Zechariah’s song the mountains are still in the way, the valleys are still empty, the paths are all still crooked, and the rough places are still rough. We Lutherans talk about a theology of glory, A cheap grace. The TV-preacher kind of theology where God wants to give out cars and fortune-cookie advise like some cosmic Oprah. “You get a blessing! And you get a blessing! EVERYONE gets a blessing!!!” And meanwhile, wars rage, children die of cancer, fires and floods destroy whole communities. At first glance, all this talk of God’s blessing Like its already here, Can sound a lot like this TV-preacher theology, a shiny, pleasing distraction, but little more than a good parking space as a consolation prize for some very real pain. As though, the Good News broke upon us like a flash mob singing the Hallelujah Chorus while we were just trying to eat our French fries, and then everything went back to normal. We Lutherans also tend to counter the theology of glory with the theology of the Cross. The theology of the cross is a lot less attractive than the theology of glory. Especially in the short-term, where it forces us to look directly at all the pain and suffering of the world. But in the long-term, the theology of the cross deals with the world as it is, with all its mountainous obstacles, gaping emotional valleys, hair-pin paths that snake a 180-degree turn when you’re not looking, and rough patches that seem to rub us raw before they leave us callus and numb. The theology of the cross tells us that the day of the Lord comes like a refining fire and fuller’s soap. The theology of the cross proclaims the baptism of repentance and the forgiveness of sins; that is, the theology of the cross reveals and confronts us with the world as it really is, persuades us to change our minds because of this reality, and it gives us a means to cope with our sense of guilt and a path to making amends. The theology of the cross recognizes that the breaking of the dawn of the tender mercy of God is only good news to those who first sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. And like the dawn, he light has come, and yet, the darkness remains. This leveling of the mountains and the elevation of the valleys is the promise that John has come to preach in the twilight of this new day, to pierce the long silence with the sound of joy, to sing a song of reveille, “Wake up! The Lord is coming, and there is work to do.” John is sent to level the path to the good news, to call sinners to repentance, and to proclaim the forgiveness of sin. John is sent to proclaim the coming of justice which is very good news in the ears of the oppressed, and feels like bad news in the ears of the oppressors. In this season of Advent we are called to heed the message of John, to level the path of the Lord by our repentance, being confronted and persuaded by reality as it really is to change our perception and our way of living in the world. We should neither look for God in seats of political power or high holy places, nor fear that we will be abandoned in the depths of our despair, because in reality, there are no holy mountains and there are no God-forsaken valleys. There is only Zechariah’s song in the reign of emperor Tiberius. There is only Hallelujah in the food court, and “the kingdoms of this earth are the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ!” The Lord lives on the level ground at the foot of the Cross. The level path of the Lord is like the breaking of the dawn, a gentle light that lives alongside the darkness. The level path of the Lord is like the voice crying out in the wilderness, like a single soprano in the food court, awaiting the growing chorus to flood the mundane with wonder. The level path of the Lord is everything seeming to go back to normal, as our eyes strain to adjust to the growing light, and our hearts hum a tune for which we can’t seem to remember all of the words, and our bodies long for just a moment’s more rest. This is our Advent discipline; to level the path between the sacred and the mundane, to sing the song of reveille and wake a sleeping world to the breaking of the dawn of the tender mercy of God. The Lord is coming, and there is work to do! Amen. 

My great-great grandfather on my mother’s father’s side was a man named William Riley Johnson. When I was in high school, my mom became very interested in genealogy. S he spent hours researching in libraries, archives and databases; reading books and attending workshops. She interviewed relatives and recoded lineages. On her mother’s side, she could trace her family back to colonial Virginia before the trail ran cold, and if she had been able to link a man named John Shelton to a man by the same name in the same county one generation earlier, she would have been able to trace that line through the barony of Shelton to the time of its creation by Edward II in the 14 th century. But on her father’s side, she knows his father, Hobart, and his father, William Riley, and beyond that, nothing. In fact, save for the census and a newspaper article about his death, Mom could barely prove William Riley ever existed. Through some of these interviews, and deciphering some family lore, Mom came to believe all the answers and missing pieces lay in William Riley’s Bible, now in the custody a cousin, a cantankerous old haint who not only knew all of its secrets, but guarded them like a dragon’s hoard. She believed that she had been charged with obscuring some stain on the family’s honor and not with preserving and passing on family history. She insisted, “you don’t want to know.” And that made my mom crazy. Not only did she really, really want to know, well, now she HAD to know. But we don’t. We lost track of this ogress of a cousin, and therefore the chain of custody of the Bible. William Riley was a Baptist preacher at the time of his death in 1950, and he is buried in the church yard of his last congregation, in a place called Caney Ridge. What could a Baptist preacher have written in his Bible that would make a woman so ashamed that she would prevent even the rest of the family from knowing? We have devised all sorts of theories. Given the sensibilities of the day, and his dark hair, dark eyes, and year-round tan— in a coal mine— we speculated that perhaps he was half black, or half indigenous. We speculated that maybe he had a second family. We wondered if he was a fugitive, if had confessed to some crime or to the love of another man; or if we were all just beholden to some Appalachian cultural peculiarity that would inflame the sensibilities of an old woman but wouldn’t even register in the 21 st century. We still have no idea. The people have all passed, the book itself is lost, and with them the keys to this mystery. And that is precisely were we find ourselves in the scriptures today. We have a Bible, and we have just heard its contents, and yet the foreboding mystery remains. Daniel speaks of a white-robed, snow-haired, ancient judge, seated on some kind of flaming wheelchair attended by thousands upon thousands, opening a book and giving some human-like something everlasting dominion over the whole of creation. Revelation opens by blessing the reader with grace and peace from “the one who was, who is, and who is to come,” along with “the seven spirits” and has Jesus coming back with the clouds, all the nations of the earth wailing at his appearing. Then even Jesus seems to speak in riddles. He stands before Pilate, and says, “Hey, you’re the one who called me a king. But I do have a kingdom.” Pilate says, “Gotcha! You are a king!” To which Jesus replies, “No, I am the truth.” And Pilate says, “Whatever ‘truth’ means.” It sure feels like this Bible holds as many secrets as my lost family Bible. But the stakes seem higher here. My family lost information about our collective past. These passages seem to talk about the future, and missing information about the future seems a lot scarier. I mean, what good is a wet floor sign if you’re already lying in the puddle. The future is scary enough without warnings about it that do little more than communicate, “you don’t want to know.” We are inundated with information but we are starving for wisdom. There are so many news channels, and websites, magazines, newspapers, and social media outlets, all vying for our attention and our allegiance, that we tend to echo Pilate’s question, “What is truth?” We are exhausted from this overload and wish that someone would come along and just fix it, stop all the noise and fighting, tell us what to believe so we don’t have to try to figure it out anymore, and we can finally have some peace. We wouldn’t have to worry about the future if someone else was in charge of it. Throughout history, this has been the response of an overwhelmed and exhausted people. Dictators have seized this opportunity to get and keep power. Preachers have seized this opportunity to win converts. Each promise that a time of retribution is coming when everything will be instantly overhauled and from which loyal followers will be immune. Daniel writes of a coming king one like a human, who will be given all power and dominion. Revelation speaks of the coming of the King of kings, when nations will wail, and Jesus will be revealed as the be-all/end-all of time and space. Each write under duress. Daniel is in exile under Nebuchadnezzar. John the Revelator is in exile on the Isle of Patmos. They cannot write openly about their distaste for the current regime or promise their readers that God is the ultimate arbiter of Justice and not the king or emperor; and even if the current regime kills or represses you, God still loves you and asks you to remain faithful. The same goes for Jesus, who is bound as a prisoner, standing before the Roman governor, being questioned about sedition for alluding to some king who isn’t Caesar. So these writers use a literary style called apocalypse, or revelation. This style is like turning over a rock and being horrified to discover all the creepy and terrifying things it had sheltered. These empires insist “you don’t want to know.” Jesus promises “You can know the truth because you can know me.” Sometimes knowing the truth means leaving no stone unturned. Knowing the truth takes work, because knowing the truth is a relationship to reality, and relationships take work. To know the truth, we will have to push through our exhaustion and our desire for someone to just tell us what to believe. We will have to be persuadable, we will have to be able to change our minds; this is literally the definition of repentance. If we are incapable of changing our minds we are incapable of repentance. There are three things we can do to overcome our exhaustion and become acquainted with the truth. First, Turn off the TV, walk away from the computer, and put down the phone. These are the source of your exhaustion. Second, Learn to feel lonely and under stimulated, because trying not to feel these things has made us more lonely and overstimulated. We use TV and the internet to feel informed, entertained, and less alone, and they have made us the loneliest and most misinformed generation in the history of the world. When you are lonely, make a visit, make a call, send a text, write a letter or email. When you need information, find trusted sources in the real world, that hold to journalistic standards of practice and ethics. Subscribe to a reputable newspaper or magazine. Go to the library and ask for assistance. You will never be able to eliminate bias, but you can account for it with professional standards. Lastly, the third thing we can do to overcome our exhaustion and become acquainted with the truth is pray. Having a daily practice of prayer that fits your lifestyle and brain chemistry, and supports your spiritual growth is becoming acquainted with the truth precisely because it is becoming acquainted with Jesus who is the truth. Meditation, contemplation, mindfulness; walking, sitting, writing; breathing, speaking, singing; Anything that builds, maintains, and expands your intimate knowledge of Jesus is prayer. Then ordering your life, your daily or weekly schedule, to account for this regular practice becomes a tether to reality as it is and severs any ties to virtual reality the empire wants to sell you. If you need information about these practices, I am happy to help you find the right one for you. Deacon Intern Sue will also be holding office hours here at the church beginning in Advent to offer spiritual direction in developing these practices. This is the reign of Christ: That we would make room in our hearts and lives for the truth, for “reality with a personality,” for Christ. It means leaving no stone unturned and confronting all the creepy, terrifying things we find underneath— and especially all the things we hid there ourselves. The Bible can feel like one of those stones, an ancient, opaque object sheltering unsettling and unseemly secrets. But our hope is not in the object of the Bible, but the Subject of the Bible, that is Christ, come to reign over a kingdom of hearts as the truth, as reality with a personality. So, come, and live your apocalypse, by a practice of media fasting and prayer, make your life a revelation of the lies of strongmen and corporations. Then Jesus will reign in your hearts and the whole world will know who is the Truth. Amen. 

I heard a story on the radio yesterday that asked the question “what was the worst year to be alive on the earth in recorded human history?” The story originally aired in January of 2022, right on the heels of the pandemic, and the question had been spurred by the hosts trying to decide which year had been worse, 2020 or 2021. The host then wondered which was the worst year of all years, the year it would have been the worst to be alive. After some research, he came to the conclusion that the worst year to be alive on earth was approximately 536 CE. Quoting research done by a team who had discovered concurrent phenomena in about the year 536, and then expanding the research to other civilizations around the globe to see if they were experiencing the same thing. Their research discovered that, in fact, there was a nearly global and simultaneously occurring experience that made 536, along with the rest of that decade, arguably the worst time to be alive in human history. It seems that a chain of volcanic explosions coupled with debris in the stratosphere leftover from Haley’s comet the year before, made the sun appear bluish in color, preventing its warmth, and plunging the planet into perpetual winter from February of 536 to June of 537. Yellow ash fell over China like alien snow. Crops failed from Scandinavia, to Syria, to Korea. The Mayan Empire, in what historians call the classic period, has a smaller documented period called the ‘classic period hiatus’ where in the Mayans stopped keeping records for roughly the same period of time. The world over, crops failed and famine ensued. As fields lay fallow, rodent moved closer to human populations. Without the sun, already malnourished humans produced less Vitamin D, and their weakened immune systems succumbed to diseases. Those who didn’t die of starvation, died of disease. Entire Swedish villages were abandoned en mass. Ireland recorded a “failure of bread.” A Roman official recounts being unable to see shadows at midday. A Syrian writer recounts that the birds died from the prolonged winter and lack of food. Desperate for food, people began to butcher corpses for meat in China. To date, the 530s CE is the coldest decade in the last 2300 years. A time without warmth or shadow, without food or birds, with blue sun and yellow snow. Honestly, is there anything we take for granted more than the sun? A vail of dust which caused a temperature drop between 1.5 and 2.5 degrees Celsius was enough to cause mass death across the planet in just 15 months, with ripples that spanned the reminder of the decade. The sun is a constant, to the point that the likelihood of the sunrise tomorrow is a euphemism for certainty. With the exception of that one decade 1500 years ago, of course. The pharaohs would rule forever until they didn’t. The Roman Empire would last for eternity, until it collapsed. Pompeii counted on Mt. Vesuvius to be a silent constant of the idyllic scenery, until it exploded and killed everyone. The Library at Alexandria was a wonder of the world, until it burned. And the Jewish people would offer sacrifices in the temple in Jerusalem, until both Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed. The Gospel of Mark is most likely written in the immediate aftermath of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 CE. The Jewish people, already scattered across the Roman Empire, would have to find a new way to worship, to make atonement, to orient themselves in the world. Jewish followers of Jesus, already differentiating themselves from Jewish worship practices, weren’t sure what to make of this development. Non-Jewish followers of Jesus were likely even less sure what to make of this. Mark is writing his gospel to the gentile followers of Jesus, who are trying to make sense of following this Jewish guy who is the son of the Jewish God, whose house was just destroyed. The gentile gods of the Roman pantheon would never let something like that happen. Seems pretty weak sauce for a deity. So as Mark writes, presuming that Jesus must have known what would happen in Jerusalem, he records a conversation to that effect between Jesus and the disciples. This gives Jesus the chance to address the fears and concerns of Mark’s audience directly. What are they to make of the destruction of the house of God? Well, stuff happens, to paraphrase another famous saying. Institutions fail, temples crumble, empires rise and fall, kingdoms rise against kingdoms, there will be wars and rumors of wars, there will be famines and earthquakes, blue sunlight and yellow snow. But this is not the end. If you are even a passive observer of the news, you may be able to relate to the disciples’ sense of tectonic shift in the institutions and individuals they once took for granted. We see in our churches a decline in influence and attendance. We see dysfunction and chaos in our government. We see our children gunned down in school. We see monster hurricanes, devastating wildfires earthquakes from fracking, lead-poisoned municipal water supplies, domestic terrorism, the threat of global nuclear war, and a thousand personal tragedies that never make headlines, but tear our lives apart, nonetheless. When, Lord, will the treatments start to work? When, Lord, will these pews be full again? When, Lord, will my daughter come home? What does it look like, Lord, to pay all of my bills every month? What does it look like, Lord, to be free from addiction? What does it look like, Lord, to live without fear? It is in exactly this uncertainty, Precisely this anxiety, Specifically this foreboding, That Jesus meets the disciples With hope and honesty. Jesus teaches the disciples that stuff happens, and no matter how terrible things look, no matter how much things hurt, no matter how dire their circumstances become, this is not the end. False messiahs will come, This is not the end. Many will be led astray, This is not the end. Wars, and natural disaster, and hunger will all threaten to kill them. This is not the end. In fact, Jesus himself Would be betrayed, and arrested, and wrongly convicted, and beaten, and humiliated, and killed, and buried. This is not the end. No, what feels like death, what looks like destruction, and what hurts like. Hell. Itself, is just. the beginning. Birth pangs, Jesus says, As though he’s trying to tell them The pain means it’s time to push, Because there’s new life on the other side. The promise hidden in this text Is that when the temple is destroyed God is set loose. No stone can hold the God of the Universe. And, In just 6 days from this conversation, the disciples would find that no stone could hold Jesus either. Beloved, when we find ourselves in the grip of fear, when we struggle to find hope in the headlines, when we can’t see past the diagnosis, can’t muster confidence in our institutions, can’t wait for this time, this season, this struggle to Just. Be. Over. Jesus meets us in exactly this uncertainty, precisely this anxiety, specifically this foreboding, and teaches us that no matter how terrible things look, no matter how much things hurt, no matter how dire our circumstances become, this is not the end. Illness may come, But it is not the end. Our system of government may crumble and fail. But this is not the end. Wars, and natural disaster, and hunger will all threaten to kill you, But this is not the end. Beloved, God is redeeming our pain, bringing new life and new creation through Jesus. God remakes us in the waters of baptism, And nourishes us in the Eucharist to remind us that though we are spiritually stillborn and continually given to sin, we are reborn and redeemed from our self-destruction by the self-sacrifice of Christ. We are called to live this life, with all its pain and heartache, in the confidence that for every death we die there is a resurrection. Jesus invites us to be midwives of this new creation, bearing witness to each other’s pain, holding each other’s hands, reminding each other to breathe, and promising that even if this kill us, This is not the end. Birth pangs are the beginning of our work, not the ending. We are the descendants of survivors, resilient men and women who endured the vail of dust and the cold, blue sun. We are the inheritors of the apostles and martyrs, who weathered the collapse of sacred institutions and followed the Holy Spirit from the ruble of the temple to the rock on which Christ would found his church. I have no idea what the future will bring. Likely, we will have no idea just what we are taking for granted until we are standing in the cold, blue sunlight of some terrifying tomorrow. In that day without food or birds or shadows, remember you are midwives of a new reality and the time has come. There is work to do to get to the new life on the other side. Amen.

It has been very difficult to watch TV, to peruse social media, to listen to the radio to have a conversation with a friend, or the person behind us in the check-out lin e, that doesn’t turn to the news. What a week it has been. A community divided, swirling rumors, some locked in their homes from fear, others giddy with delight. In case you haven’t heard,… 43 monkeys escaped the Alpha Genesis research facility in Yemassee, South Carolina, and are still on the loose. [1] The facility says all the monkeys are healthy females, bred for use in research facilities across the country. An employee left a door unlocked during feeding time, and eventually the whole family group escaped into the surrounding canopy. The facility assures the public that they are not a danger, but highly skittish, and will flee if approached, making them harder to catch. The Associated Press quotes a long-time researcher from the University of Colorado Boulder who begs to differ. She says these monkeys, rhesus macaques, are dangerous in groups and will turn violent to defend their family group. The facility has been fined by the USDA several times, partly for previous escapes of 26 monkeys in 2014 and 19 more in 2019. For that matter, the facility is home to some 6700 rhesus macaques while the town of Yamassee is home to only 1100 people. The AP characterized a conversation with University of Chicago behavioral scientist Dario Maestriperi, author of Macachiavellian Intelligence: How Rhesus Macaques and Humans Have Conquered the World, as follows: “The animals are very family oriented, siding with relatives when fights break out. And they’re adept at building political alliances in the face of threats from other monkeys. But they can be painful to watch. Monkeys with lower status in the hierarchy live in a constant state of fear and intimidation.” “In some ways,” Maestripieri said, “they kind of represent some of the worst aspects of human nature.” This is likely because we share 93% of our DNA with the rhesus macaque. It is only the other 7% that separates the human from the beast. And it’s in that 7% where things get messy. When we hear reports of desperate men, women, and children fleeing their own country to seek asylum in the United States, on the one hand, we are moved with pity that these people are fleeing such terrible circumstances, and on the other we are scared of what this will mean for us, for our country. We tend to be inundated with these types of heart-wrenching stories and moral conundrums to a point of emotional fatigue. This is where that 7% kicks in. Compassion fatigue affects healthcare workers, and social workers, and counselors, and the clergy; all of the “helping professions.” Meeting wave after wave of terrible stories and inconceivable circumstances can cause a person to sort of go numb to their own emotion and it becomes much harder to empathize, to see the people and not just their situation. Then the other 93% kicks in, and we become inseparable from the beast. Perhaps, you have found yourselves there. It is terribly easy to shut off one’s emotions, to become invulnerable, or, at least to convince ourselves that we are invulnerable. We seal the boarders. We buy more guns. We convince ourselves that the poor are not our fault and not our problem. But then, lest we be thought heartless beasts, we send our thoughts and prayers, we bow our heads for a moment of silence, and then we go about our business of making sure we are safe and secure. We spiritualize the teachings of Jesus and convince ourselves that, somehow, we can leave our secular selves at the sanctuary door and put on our church selves for an hour like Mister Rogers’ cardigan and sneakers, and somehow fool Jesus— if not ourselves— into thinking we love our neighbors with a simple costume change. So, when we hear passages like this one today, we glide right over Jesus’ warning to the scribes, thinking that, clearly, Jesus is talking to someone else. I know in my own head I think of the Creflo Dollars and the Kenneth Copelands and the Jesse Duplantises who prey on the economically depressed and promise that if they will help pay for a new jet then God will reward them. These folks have covered themselves not with robes, but with self-assumed titles, as though calling oneself Reverend makes one deserving of reverence. But we tend not to examine our own lives, and the ways in which we have spiritualized the words of Jesus in order to avoid self-sacrifice. In today’s gospel, Jesus warns his hearers of those scribes who would use boisterous displays of public piety to cover up their greed and self-aggrandizement. These scribes would use their religious authority as a pretext for the exploitation of the most vulnerable members of their society. As this passage continues, we see Jesus sit down “Opposite the treasury” drawing a contrast between the contributions made by the wealthy and the contribution made by a poor widow. Jesus says the widow gave “all she had to live on,” whereas the wealthy had only given out of their abundance. At a first read, This passage probably feels all too familiar. Jesus says, “Your religion is neither a status symbol nor a free pass to do as you please.” Jesus says, “These rich folks gave their leftovers, but this widow gave everything she had.” It’s really easy to think, “this doesn’t apply to me.” It’s really easy to intellectualize this into a theological maxim, or over-spiritualize the passage until it has no bearing on how I live my everyday life. Jesus sits down in the middle of this passage And invites us to sit with him. Jesus sat down “opposite the treasury” This is probably better translated “in opposition to the treasury.” Jesus opposes and exposes the system that allows the scribes to “devour widow’s houses” while widows are left with nothing to eat. Jesus points out that these “religious folks” are little more that macaques in Mr. Rogers’ cardigans. Jesus is opposed to the temple treasury, having spent the entire day prior preventing anyone from buying or selling in the temple and follows this teaching in the temple with a teaching about the temple, telling his disciples it will be destroyed, stone by stone. Jesus is opposed to the system that made the scribes wealthy and well-respected without caring for the widows. Our first reading tells us how God cared for the widow of Zarephath, her son, and Elijah, by calling all three to trust that God will provide. The appointed Psalm for this morning, Psalm 146, tells us directly, “Do not put your trust in princes,… the LORD… gives justice to those who are oppressed, And food to those who are hungry. … the LORD sustains the orphan and the widow.” Beloved, This is the good news for us this day, too. Just as Jesus did not extol the system that asked the woman to give all she had, Jesus lifts up the faith of this woman whose desperate dependence on God for her “daily bread” freed this woman to give all she had. Jesus is calling us by his own self-sacrifice, by his body and blood on the table to pour out our lives for the most vulnerable among us. This means we must examine the way we participate in our political and economic systems, asking, ‘Does this politician or this party support caring for the most vulnerable among us?’ ‘Does this politician claim to be a Christian as a pretext for taking the food out of the mouths of the most vulnerable in our society?’ It means examining our investments. ‘Is my money tied to systems that profit from foreclosing homes? ‘Use of prison labor? ‘Abuse of the environment? ‘Propagate mistrust and anxiety? ‘Rob my neighbors of dignity and bodily autonomy?’ It means asking ourselves ‘Am I practicing a desperate dependence on God, Or am I giving God my leftovers?’ By our baptism, God has swept us up in God’s plan to care for our neighbors. We are practicing an intellectual dishonesty if we presume we can love God without loving our neighbors, or that we can love our neighbors and bear no responsibility for their well-being. Further, we, like those scribes, are risking the greater condemnation, by participating in systems that marginalize or commodify people for profit. We are like macaques in Mr. Rogers’ cardigan, hoping we can make up that 7% difference by at least appearing to be human. Beloved, we are called by our baptism to share in the humanity of Christ and our neighbors by devoting everything we have in service to the solidarity of God to give justice to those who are oppressed, food to those who hunger, freedom to captives, and care for the most vulnerable among us. This is what separates us from the beasts; a common humanity, shared with Christ and neighbor, and which transcends any familial or political bonds. It is animals, common apes, who will follow a misguided leader toward what feels like freedom without knowing the danger ahead. But we have the good fortune of that other 7%, the good fortune of a humanity shared with Christ, if we will only use it. Amen. [1] https://apnews.com/article/monkeys-escape-alpha-genesis-south-carolina-640eb78119c66b88a418ccd1e361318e 

When our family moved to South Carolina to begin seminary in 2016, we made the decision to send Zion to a Catholic school rather than the school across the street fro m the seminary. We had been advised by the spouse of a fellow seminarian who had taught there the year before that we should NOT send our son there. Her experience was so terrible that she left the profession of teaching altogether. One of the things about this arrangement is that Zion took religion classes from a Catholic perspective, and then he would leave third grade, and come and sit with us in a master’s level course studying the Gospels in Greek at a Lutheran seminary. For the most part this is a wonderful thing, and when there is a disagreement, Jennifer and I have the opportunity to have a conversation about the nuanced differences between Lutherans and Roman Catholics. This is good for Zion, too. He is still in Catholic school, and being the son of not one, but TWO seminary educated pastors, Zion is kind of a rock star in religion class. How many adults do you know who could articulate the difference between the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation and the Lutheran doctrine of ‘real presence’ in the Eucharist? Well, our 11-year-old could! Once in the 4 th grade, during a school assembly, the principal made an off-handed comment about her Lutheran roommate in college, telling the students that Lutherans don’t believe that Jesus is really present in the bread and wine at communion. After the assembly, Zion told his teacher that he needed to speak to the principal. Zion took his hall pass, sat down in the principal’s office, and proceeded to explain what Lutherans believe about Christ’s presence in the Eucharist, and how, by and large, we actually believe the same thing as Catholics, we just articulate it slightly differently. As you might imagine, this raises the bar for the kind of questions Jennifer and I get at home. We missed the sort of questions that children normally ask about faith and the Bible, like, ‘Can God make a rock so big that God can’t lift it?’ Instead, Zion once asked, “Dad, if Jesus died for our sins so that we could have eternal life, why do we still have to die?” Good question, Buddy. We hear some very similar words in today’s Gospel— and maybe even in the depths our own hearts. Mary, repeating exactly Martha’s words from a few verses earlier, says: “Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” Those standing nearby, seeing Jesus weeping, ask, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man have kept this man from dying?” Who can’t relate to these huge questions? Who has experienced the death of a loved one and hasn’t wondered why Jesus didn’t show up on time? Who hasn’t borne in their soul Martha’s accusation, Or Mary’s lamentation, Or the bystanders’ consternation At the graveside of one gone too soon. Jesus’s response to Mary, To those grieving with Mary and Martha, Is compassion. Jesus is moved not only to tears, But to anger at the death of his friend. The NRSV says Jesus was “greatly disturbed,” But this word in the original Greek actually means That Jesus was enraged at the death of his friend. Jesus’ tears are not just sadness for his friend but condensing steam from a boiling rage at what death has done, not only to Lazarus, but to Mary and Martha and to the whole community. Perhaps Jesus is even angry at what death has done to humankind. Perhaps he is overwhelmed by the knowledge of his own death, which is coming all too soon. Whatever the source of these tears, This anger, Jesus enters it willingly. There is an old spiritual That goes Rock-a my soul in the bosom of Abraham, Rock-a my soul in the bosom of Abraham, Rock-a my soul in the bosom of Abraham, Lord, rock-a my soul. So high you can’t get over it, So low you can’t get under it, So wide you can’t go ‘round it, You must go in at the door. This slave song speaks a truth about death. The bosom of Abraham is the grave, death, sheol, Hades, and the song teaches us that the only way out is through— through the anxiety, through the anger, through the sadness, through wishing things had turned out differently. God has been bringing God’s people to these thresholds from the beginning. God led creation through the flood. God led the Hebrews through the Red Sea. God led the Israelites through the wilderness. and through the Jordan. God led God’s people through captivity, Though the fiery furnace, Through the lion’s den. And here, at the opening to this cave, Jesus does not go over, under, or around his grief; Jesus does not avoid his anger or try to blunt it; Jesus does not tell Martha to buck up and get over it, nor does he make space for Mary to wallow in her despair. Jesus walks right into the stinking reality of it. Jesus knows what he will do. Jesus knows that Lazarus will live again. Jesus knows that he will raise Lazarus from the dead. But Jesus does not tell Mary not to weep. Jesus weeps with her. Jesus does not tell the crowd not to be angry. Jesus gets angry, too. Jesus is not repulsed by the stench of death, put off by their tears, put out by their anger, Or hindered by their ideas about what was possible. Jesus enters willingly into their grief shakes a defiant fist in the face of death and shouts his name into the darkness. LAZARUS, COME OUT!!! Beloved, The good news for us today is that this same God who saved creation in the flood, brought the Hebrews through the Red Sea, and the Israelites through the Jordan; this same God who brought Daniel through the lions’ den and stood with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace; this same Jesus who cried with Mary and raged with Martha, and woke the dead by calling his name, is the exact same God who speaks into our deepest, darkest tombs and call us out by name. Jesus is not repulsed by the stench of death, put off by our tears, put out by our anger, Or hindered by our ideas about what is possible. Jesus enters willingly into our grief shakes a defiant fist in the face of death and shouts our name into the darkness. BELOVED, COME OUT!!! Our hope is not that God will lead us over, under, or around our grief and anger at all the changes and loss we will endure. Our hope is that God will bring us through it; Through the waters of baptism to new life now, And through the darkness of death to new life at the resurrection. So let us be unbound by the shroud of death and set free to love our neighbors as Jesus loves us. May we refuse to be repulsed by the stench of death, may we enter willingly into the grief of our neighbors, may we shake a defiant fist in the face of death and may we call out to a world entombed in anger and fear, NEIGHBOR, COME OUT!! Let us wipe away your tears, let us unbind you. Death has been swallowed up forever! Let us share the Feast. Amen. 

Reformation Sunday is one of those times when we read virtually the same texts, if not exactly the same texts, every time the observation rolls around. I would most oft en rather preach on the 23 rd Sunday after Pentecost on some rather obscure text from the Gospels than I would on Easter or Christmas Eve. I preach about the resurrection and the incarnation all the time. I am running out of new things to say. And now we have been commemorating the Protestant Reformation and the remarkable legacy of Martin Luther for 508 years. We have been in talks with the Roman Catholic Church for more than 50 years— which is why we are calling this a ‘commemoration’ and not a ‘celebration’— and we have found in that time that we have such wide theological agreement that a joint statement by both churches declaring our agreement on the doctrine of Justification, the primary point of division at the time of the Reformation, is now 25 years old. So, what exactly are we commemorating? For a lot of us, our heritage. Afterall, we are immigrants to this land, and when our forebears landed here, and set up homes and raised crops and families, institutions and livelihoods, they also brought their uniquely German, or Swedish, or Norwegian, or Finnish, or Icelandic, or Danish, faith with them. Some of us were confirmed in our great-grandparents’ language, celebrating with lefsa, or lutefisk, or a potluck, or copious amounts of beer and sausages, or whatever Icelandic people eat. We throw huge Oktoberfest celebrations, we sing old German hymns and Swedish tunes, even if the words are now in English. We memorize Luther’s words in the Small Catechism, even if all we remember 20, 30, 50 years later is ‘Sin boldly.’ We break out the red shirts, sweaters, sport coats, socks; We don our Luther roses and will spend most of the rest of today singing “a bulwark never failing” and maybe Googling “What is a bulwark?” Dr. Lisa Miller, in her book The Awakened Brain, tells us that her research has concluded that religion is 100% environmentally received, meaning that religion and culture are virtually synonymous. To practice our religion is to practice our culture. We receive from our ancestors and we pass on to our progeny these cultural exercises, expressing where we come from and who we are. Dr. Miller contrasts this religious expression against spirituality, an innate sense of transcendent connectedness to something or someone who loves us, holds us, and guides us through this life. While religion and spirituality overlap to a large degree, they are not the same thing. And I think this is Jesus’ point in our Gospel reading. Jesus is speaking to the Jews, and that word itself would be better translated as ‘Judeans,’ because it is referring to people from the region of Judea who expressed their cultural identity by being from this place and worshiping the One God in the Temple in Jerusalem. Only later, once these people from this place who worshiped in this way, were no long in this place and the temple was destroyed so they could no longer worship in this way, did the term come to mean anyone of this common ancestry and religious heritage. Jesus is speaking to these people, who are from this place, and who worship in this way— and even though he is also from this place and worships in this way, he tells them they might have missed the point entirely. Jesus explains “If you continue in my word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” And these people, who have been practicing a yearly ritual where they reenact God’s deliverance of their ancestors from slavery in Egypt, say to Jesus, “We are children of Abraham, we have never been slaves to anyone.” A lot of good all those Passover’s have done? It’s almost as if the seder begins “What makes this night different from other nights?” and the reply came back, “I have no idea. Pass the lambchops.” Were I to ask you, “How has being a Lutheran had an impact on your experience of God?” What would you say? Would you point to the lefsa or the Luther rose? Would you point to the altar or the font? Or would you say, “I have no idea. Pour me another beer.” Jesus doesn’t disparage their place or heritage, but Jesus calls them to see through it to an experience at the heart of this reality shared by all places, cultures, religions. The freedom that Jesus was bringing was larger than any one place or any one time, any one religion or culture. And these Judeans who believed in Jesus were not being called to set aside their Judaism but to include their Judaism in a bigger universe than the one they had been invited to imagine. Jesus was inviting them into relationship with the One God of the Temple who transcends culture and place. I believe that this is the calling of the reformation. If we are beholden to a culture, or a single expression of religion, we too are likely to miss the invitation to relationship with the God who transcends our culture and place. I was not born to Lutheran parents, or grandparents, or great-grandparents. In fact, to my knowledge, I have zero Scandinavian blood, and you have to go back several generations to find a German relative. I learned of Martin Luther in my World History class memorizing the date of the Reformation alongside Johannes Guttenberg and the printing press. I grew up in church, hearing of God’s hatred of sin, of God’s jealousy and vengeance, of God’s wrath and terrible recompense. I sang “Jesus Loves Me,” and as soon as I could read, sounded out the tiny plaque on my grandmother’s wall, that promised me “God is Love.” But I also being taught that while God may love me, that love is conditional. If I didn’t accept that Jesus had received on the cross the punishment that I deserved, and if I didn’t ask for forgiveness, if I didn’t ask Jesus to come and live in my heart to shield me from sin and God’s judgement, that this God would righteously and justly damn me to an eternity of conscious torment in the literal flames of Hell. Weighty stuff for a 7-year-old. But the older I got, and the more of the scriptures I could read for myself, the more I learned of this God who is Love, the more I experienced of this God who is Love. Eventually this experience of God’s unconditional Love led me to a break with the church of my upbringing, and I began to search for a tradition that resonated with my experience. When as an adult I read of Martin Luther’s experience of rediscovering the Grace of God hidden in plain sight in the very passage from Romans we read here today, I knew that this was my spiritual home, even though I am not German or Scandinavian. There is a whole movement of folks out there deconstructing their faith of their childhood, unlearning the God who is mad and vengeful. I was lucky that I John 4:8, “God is Love,” was written as plainly on my Grandmother’s life as it was on her walls. I was lucky to have found Luther’s writings online, to have wanted to reform my faith and not abandon it. But so many of our Lutheran churches are far more concerned with maintaining a cultural heritage that by and large, Lutheran evangelism has looked more like colonization. We have not invited people into a relationship with the God of Love and Grace so much as we have invited folks to be German. But until our experience of God’s Love and Grace transcends time and place we will be as bound up in the trappings of our culture and place as these Judeans who thought they were the only ones who knew where to find God. So, what might the Lutheranism of the Future look like if it isn’t all lefse and lutefisk, beer and potlucks, or whatever Icelandic people eat? I believe it will be a spirituality that leads people to a language they can use to express their experience. Lutheran Spirituality will begin in what I like to call “Paradoxy.” Lutherans excel at non-dual thinking. We are simultaneously saints and sinners, bound and freed. We are beholden to both the law and the gospel. Jesus is both God and Human. The Eucharist is both bread and wine AND body and blood. So we can abandon language about what is right and wrong, in favor of what is helpful and unhelpful. God both includes everything and transcends everything. So a Lutheran Spirituality will have to unlearn unhelpful pictures of God and relearn the God Who Is. For this we will need the Cross. Martin Luther says that Theologians of the Cross call a thing what it is, while Theologians of Glory call good evil and evil good. Jesus said that you will know the truth and the truth will set you free. The Cross becomes for us the new tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil, and we eat its fruit in the Eucharist. Then knowing the difference between what is good and what is evil, we can trust God to reconcile both, first in us as saints and sinners, and then in all the world, including all things and transcending them. The truth can only have its fullest impact in relationship, because only relationship can handle the vulnerability, accountability, and transformative power of truth without imposition or colonization. God Loves us by becoming us; that is, in relationship with God we are being transformed into the Love that God is. Grace, then, is the way that Love behaves. We become this Love by practicing this Grace, through Hospitality, Generosity, and Solidarity, by making space in ourselves for our neighbors as God has made space within God’s self for us. We Love our neighbors by becoming neighbors. Luther said, “God doesn’t need your good works, but your neighbor does.” We need long, slow, loving relationships with folks who disagree with us, without canceling, scolding, or chiding each other. We need church. We need communities were we can walk along the path until the path becomes clear. We also need the church because we cannot do the work of Justice, wrestle with the scriptures, come to faith, or even live our lives alone. We need access to doctors, lawyers, teachers, community helpers in relationship and not just behind a pay wall. We need access to mothers and aunts, to fathers and uncles, to elders and sages, to brothers, sisters, siblings when we have had to escape the culture and place of our birth to survive. We need meaningful work and a place to do it, especially if and when we cannot do what we love for a living. The Lutheranism of the Future cannot be a cultural heritage project, inviting folks to be German, to come and sing our songs or observe our festivals. The Lutheranism of the Future will require us to know the truth through the lens of the Cross and to be set free from all the mighty fortresses we have constructed to prevent change. The Lutheranism of the Future will be a common spirituality more than a common religious expression. So, what are we commemorating here today? What new thing might a preacher find to say? Luther experienced the truth and it set him free. Lutherans of the Future won’t be born, so much as freed— by the truth that the God they feared doesn’t exist and the God Who Is Loves them already. Amen.