St. John’s Lutheran Church

One of my seminary professors shared this story with my class a few years ago.  Her seminary professor, Ann Herbert, wrote this parody about our human instinct for knowledge and competition.  I refer to it in my October 31 sermon and so I share it here for all to enjoy:

In the Beginning…

In the beginning, God didn’t make just two people; he made a bunch of us. Because he wanted us to have a lot of fun, and he said you can’t really have fun unless there’s a whole gang of you. He put us in Eden which was a combination garden and playground and park and told us to have fun.

At first we did have fun just like he expected. We rolled down the hills, waded in the streams, climbed on the trees, swung on the vines, ran in the meadows, frolicked in the woods, hid in the forest, and acted silly. We laughed a lot. Then one day this snake told us that we weren’t having real fun because we weren’t keeping score. Back then, we didn’t know what score was. When he explained it, we still couldn’t see the fun. But he said we should give an apple to the person who was best at all the games and we’d never know who was best without keeping score. We could all see the fun of that, of course, because we were all sure we were best.
It was different after that. We yelled a lot. We had to make up new scoring rules for most of the games. Others, like frolicking, we stopped playing because they were too hard to score.

By the time God found out what had happened we were spending about 45 minutes a day actually playing and the rest of the time working out scoring. God was wroth about that—very, very wroth. He said we couldn’t use his garden anymore because we weren’t having fun. We told him were having lots of fun. He was just being narrow minded because it wasn’t exactly the kind of fun he originally thought of. He wouldn’t listen.

He kicked us out, and he said we couldn’t come back until we stopped keeping score. To rub it in (to get our attention, he said), he told us we were all going to die and our scores wouldn’t mean anything anyway.
He was wrong. My cumulative, all-game score now is 16,548 and that means a lot to me. If I can raise it to 20,000 before I die, I’ll know I’ve accomplished something. Even if I can’t, my life has a great deal of meaning because I’ve taught my children to score high and they’ll be able to reach 20,000 or even 30,000.
Really, it was life in the garden that didn’t mean anything. Fun is great in its place but without scoring there’s no reason for it. God actually has a very superficial view of life and I’m certainly glad my children are being raised away from his influence. We were lucky. We’re all very grateful to the snake.

Ann Herbert taught in the Capital University English department during the 1970s. I do not have her permission to post this; I have tried to find her and cannot. - Dr. Mary Hinkle Shore, Luther Seminary

We just finished a three week series on hunger.  Our lectionary readings cried for justice.  We took a noisy offering of loose change in coffee cans, raising $335.96 for Second Harvest Heartland ministries.  We decorated grocery shopping bags with our prayer partners and then invited everyone to take one home and fill it to the brim with healthy food.  We brought the bags back and they filled the chancel.  It was a feast.

With stewardship season fast approaching, my favorite part of these services was the closing hymn.  Scott Prescott would invite kids to join him up front with percussion instruments of every kind.  We closed each week with the hymn Let Us Talents and Tongues Employ (ELW 674) and the kids went wild making noise and shaking things up.

People loved it.  Heads were up out of the hymnals and we were all smiling, dancing a bit to the rhythm of their excitement as leaders.  It was the most startling but subtle stewardship message I’ve seen in awhile.

You see, kids say YES to stuff before they have time to really think about it.  They joined Scott up front because it sounded fun.  They didn’t wait to consider whether they had any rhythm or stage fright or knew how to play the tambourine well enough.  And in doing so - in being totally willing to serve and lead - they reminded all of us how fun it is to share our gifts.  Even the really simple gifts we almost forget to call gifts.

We are known for our bulletins.  We have a history of printing everything so you don’t have to flip back and forth between your hymnal and the bulletin.  There are literary introductions to each of the texts and prayers the pastors led are spelled out for everyone to read.

But these little novels take a lot of energy to make each week.  They use a lot of paper.  And they keep us from getting to know our hymnals and the liturgy printed there.

So during the summer months, we have printed only a core liturgy.  Certain optional elements of our worship rite have been retired for these weeks so we can focus on the core of what we come together to do - hear the word and receive the meal.

Some of us have been stretched by this summer ritual.  We fumble to find the Psalms listed in the front of the hymn section and miss having the scripture inserts.  But wandering through the front part of the hymnal is teaching us new things about our order of worship - when and why we do what we do.

This fall we’ll return to a more robust bulletin, but the worship committee will continue to find ways to pull us out of those pages to look up, trusting what we know well.  The Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, the Gospel Acclamation and other parts of the liturgy live deeply within us.  When words serve as prayers and proclamation and song time and again, we get attached.  We get tangled up in their meaning and memory so we don’t have to look down or print it all out.

If we learn anything this summer, may it be to trust the faithful words we already know.

Many people subscribe to the fasting tradition during the season of Lent.  Do you give something up for the 40 days of reflection and wandering?  Do you know why you give something up?  How do you fill that space during Lent?  May you find new ways to slow down in preparation and contemplation this season.  Perhaps this piece by William Arthur Ward will guide you.

Fast from judging others; feast on the Christ indwelling them.

Fast from emphasis on differences; feast on the unity of all life.

Fast from apparent darkness; feast on the reality of light.

Fast from thoughts of illness; feast on the healing power of God.

Fast from words that pollute; feast on phrases that purify.

Fast from discontent; feast on gratitude.

Fast from anger; feast on patience.

Fast from pessimism; feast on optimism.

Fast from worry; feast on divine order.

Fast from complaining; feast on appreciation.

Fast from negatives; feast on affirmatives.

Fast from unrelenting pressures; feast on unceasing prayer.

Fast from hostility; feast on non-resistance.

Fast from bitterness; feast on forgiveness.

Fast from self-concerns; feast on compassion for others.

Fast from personal anxiety; feast on eternal Truth.

Fast from discouragement; feast on hope.

Fast from facts that depress; feast on truths that uplift.

Fast from lethargy; feast on enthusiasm.

Fast from suspicion; feast on truth.

Fast from thoughts that weaken; feast on promises that inspire.

Fast from shadows of sorrow; feast on the sunlight of serenity.

Fast from idle gossip; feast on purposeful silence.

Fast from problems that overwhelm; feast on prayer that undergirds.

Blessings on your Lenten journey.

In the deep darkness of winter, we celebrate the coming of a small light.  Christ has been born among us.  The days are getting longer.  There is cause for rejoicing even in the chilly quiet of a sleepy world.

The weeks of Epiphany bring us highlights from Jesus’ ministry.  He is baptized in the River Jordan and God’s voice tears through the clouds announcing God’s pleasure and blessing - and Jesus hasn’t even done anything yet!  He turns water into wine, his first miracle among friends and strangers at a wedding reception.  He is tested by the devil in the wilderness - his wit and strength prevail.  Jesus has the audacity to enter his home synagogue and unroll the scroll of Isaiah, proclaiming that he stands before them fulfilling scripture as the anointed one.  He calls the disciples, who leave the catch of a lifetime to follow him.  And then we celebrate the Transfiguration.  For a moment, the disciples see Jesus in shining light, chatting with Elijah and Moses.  They see him in all his divine glory before he heads down to Jerusalem to suffer as both faithful God and simple man.

This speedy journey through the ups and downs of Jesus’ ministry also celebrate the days Wise Men spent traveling to see the newborn king from faraway lands.  For this reason, many congregations highlight global mission work, sister congregations abroad or international music during Epiphany.

Here at St. John’s we are welcoming a global liturgy.  The Hymn of Praise, Gospel Acclamation, Offering Response, Sanctus and Agnus Dei challenge us to learn new words and tunes from a variety of Christian cultures.  Sometimes the darkness of winter can make our world feel small and sleepy, but these songs are bringing light and life to worship each week.

Come join us and may the light of Christ among us shine brightly in your life this winter.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time, I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David; and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. And it will be called The Lord is our righteousness. - Jeremiah 33

In the midst of despair, exile and faith shattered, he speaks these words of God’s time and truth: I remain among you because divine law has been written on your heart and I have wrestled with you, Jacob, in the desert. The temple building has been destroyed, but not the temple in your hearts and certainly not the promises that have carried you thus far. I have a plan. I have a time. I am just getting started and my covenant with you – the vast tree of David - is more resilient than you can imagine. You are that tree and the branch I will cause to spring up will be enough. He will be more than enough.

A broken temple and a broken people is cause enough for an identity crisis - the grappling for origin, meaning and a place to belong. In the midst of all that haunts and defeats his people, Jeremiah speaks words that call for creativity and hope. Into this national confusion, God’s words breathe the promise: I am still here. You are still mine. I am not done yet. In fact, I’m just getting started.

It may seem strange to begin the season in Jeremiah’s prophecy of comfort today, but it is the reality check we need as we begin a new year and reclaim the season. Jeremiah helps us to widen our scope beyond the nativity scene and the season we think we know too well. May this holy identity and divine promise guide you through Advent. The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting colder. When the winter overwhelms or despair creeps in, trust that God lives right there, causing light and warmth to pierce the places we least expect to find grace and forgiveness.

And when the temple you once built to house the God you knew and understood seems to shatter, leaving you alone and afraid, trust that God goes with you into exile. Our God cannot be house and kept, boxed and stored, destroyed or conquered. When the promises seem to fail and the case for hope withers, God will cause a righteous branch to spring forth. The shoot of green life will remind us of God’s Advent promise:

I am still here. You are still mine. I am not done yet. In fact, I’m just getting started.

Today our prayers are open hands and words of thanks.

We ask for nothing.  Today is about all that God has already done.

Instead, we praise God simply for being God.

The hymns are old favorites.  The readings are filled with gratitude.

Come worship with thankful hearts and joyful song!

The phrase “that’s enough” is spoken in all kinds of situations. We say it to rowdy children or when a friend worries too much. “That’s enough” might mean it’s finally time to retire or it’s the right time to quit smoking. “That’s enough” might mean you’ve done all you can do or that you’re ready for whatever comes next.

While these words can mark a concrete transition and a new beginning, they can also describe an abstract or unattainable goal. Enough money might not be an actual number but the status just beyond wherever we find ourselves. Enough time or clothes or house or security or career might always be out of our reach, daring us to long for more and to feel dissatisfied with what we do have.

And what we do have is magnificent. That’s the whole truth that advertisements and cable news anchors have yet to proclaim. Today’s scripture calls us to celebrate our deepest values and our responsibility to reflect God’s generosity in our own lives and faith. It’s an opportunity to give thanks and support for the ministries God has called us into and trusts us with. Today is a day of “that’s enough” and a new, abundant beginning.

You have waded through a world all week that proclaims “not enough, never enough” and you’ve come to God’s house to hear the truth about who you are, whose you are and what that means. So here it is:

In your baptism, you were named a child of God, entrusted with the gifts of his kingdom and called a steward to care for all good things. God has showered your life with unique and useful gifts meant to make a big difference.

Though the world tells you to rush, that being busy is cool and that there is less than you need, the time you have been given is enough. Do good with it.

Though you may think your talents for listening and helping and sharing are slim or ordinary, they are completely invaluable to God and your neighbor, so be generous with them for the sake of the world.

And though it is much more comfortable not to talk about money in church, we have a God who hangs out at the temple treasury and talks about money all the time because he knows as well as we do: money and possessions are tangled up in our values and our identity, for better and for worse. Believe that the ways you decide to save, spend and share your treasure can transform your heart and change the world.

So trust that God is right here providing enough. The myth of scarcity is loud, but it does not have the final word in our lives or God’s world. May God embolden each of us with true generosity that loosens our grip, opens our hands and invites us to celebrate the truth: that there is more than enough.

Today is our second of five consecutive readings from the book of James.  These epistle snapshots call us to action and dare us to live our faith out loud.  Martin Luther would cringe whenever the book of James came up in biblical conversation and he called it “the book of straw”.  He lived in a time and place when works righteousness was running rampant.

He was surrounded by poor people paying to save their souls and the souls of their loved ones.  He watched people think they could earn God’s love or that they had to be good enough to escape damnation.  He heard the fear in people’s faith and Luther worried that an emphasis on works as proof of faith would further diminish the free gift of new life in Jesus.  It’s not bad theology in and of itself, but Luther was right to be nervous about the way this book could be warped and misused.  He knew how natural it is for each of us to want a starring role in our own salvation story and to do good works for all the wrong reasons.

The book of James calls us to live out the gospel. Its short pages are filled with talk about faith and works, daring us to walk the walk instead of theorizing the big, abstract issues in from within our comfort zones. James is challenging the way we express our faith in God to be both internal and external, personal and communal. He’s fired up by the end of our epistle reading, proving that defining faith without works might be too narrow to change the world – that it might be too small a faith for such a big, bold God.

What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith nourish you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?

What is the good of that?  James is preaching to a group of believers who have found quiet contentment in the good news and neglect to share it with the world.  They hear scripture and sit unmoved, worship and then head home, believe in a radical and miraculous God and forget to tell people what it means for their lives.  James is preaching the true call to unleash our faith - to live loyally and fearlessly because we are already safe and sound in the arms of Christ.

We are called to hold faith and works in tension, each good thing we do as a reaction to the gratitude and new life we have in Jesus.  But it is easy to become private and complacent in faith.  And it is also easy to become fervently pious for the sake of oneself instead of responding generously for the sake of one’s neighbor.

He calls us to live beyond well wishes and good intentions as though what we believe and confess is actually real.  May James and Luther remind us that faith without works is dead, but that these works are not for our own resumes or because God needs them in order to love us.  May our faith trust solely in the free gift of Jesus that has already been given.  And may that freedom send us out boldly speaking and serving Christ for the sake of all others.

Our Old Testament reading on August 23, the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, is a portion of Joshua 24, but I encourage you to read the whole chapter…or even the whole book of Joshua, which culminates here.

It is with blind and hopeful confidence the Israelites promise their faithfulness to God in our Old Testament reading from Joshua. And although Joshua warns them that truly serving and worshipping God is not an extra curricular activity or a half hearted decision, the Israelites are certain they can be impressively faithful.

God appointed Joshua the leader of Israel after Moses died. He has spent his whole life serving God as a warrior, prophet and politician. God spoke through him to designate territories and cities for each of the twelve tribes. Joshua was like an interim pastor, caring for the people in transition as they left years of wandering to discover who they were meant to become as a nation, a land and a people.

So here we are in the last chapter of the book of Joshua, which is also the last chapter of Joshua’s life. Here he calls the people of Israel together to consider the ways they have been blessed. God has literally pushed other nations away, clearing a place for the descendants of Abraham and Isaac. And God has literally fought for them, teaching them what it means to have a faithful and ferocious God who loves unconditionally.

Joshua begins this great announcement by evoking God’s voice and a list of the ways God has kept his promises:

Thus says the Lord: I took your father Abraham to a new land and gave him a son, Isaac. And then I gave Isaac Esau and Jacob, men of great nations. I brought you out of Egypt with great miracles and mocked Pharaoh with my deliverance of his slaves, proving that I am master. You came safely into wilderness and then I made kings who cursed you bless you. I gave you land you did not labor for and cities you did not build. I have made you what you are, Israel.

This reminder of who they are and where they come from has been Joshua’s lifelong sermon to the people of Israel and this last speech calls them into the promises they’ve been freely given by God. Joshua looks into the faces of people who have received plenty – people who know victory and safety and prosperity. In his final address, Joshua tells them what it really means to be God’s people:

Revere this God, the Lord who has fought for you and is faithful to you. Put away everything that distracts you and tempts you to love something else with the same faithfulness He deserves. There are many things in life that cause us to waver or multi-task, but this service and worship is not one of them. This is about being transformed by the radical way God promises to always be faithful to you. It’s about being inspired by that love and living in a joyful and loyal response to it all the time.

Today is as good a day as any to move from mediocre and convenient love for God into an intense and perennial faithfulness. I ask you Israel, right here, to declare your true God and what that service and worship means for your lives.

At first, it sounds like Joshua is issuing Israel’s first altar call, asking them to make a decision for God and to jump on the salvation bandwagon. But after a closer look, it’s clear that the kingdom of heaven is not dependent upon their response. God has already delivered them countless times and has promised to do so again and again. In fact, this appeal has more to do with God’s faithfulness and the reaction it can inspire than Israel’s impending success or failure. Joshua is simply asking Israel to examine the magnitude of God’s covenant and in response, Go Big or Go Home. He invites them to do whatever they will, but declares his most memorable line in scripture: “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

Joshua has seen the cheap imitations of reverence. He has watched them forget to praise God when life is grand and quickly blame God when life gets tough. Joshua knows they are caught in the cycle of sin we all know and live:

• We promise to live faithfully
• We sin
• We smell punishment
• We apologize
• We receive forgiveness
• We vow to live faithfully again…

This cycle permeates the way we live in a broken world, in both the tame and harsh reality of our imperfect response to God’s perfect love. We are caught in the swirl and twirl. We are caught squeezing our serving and worshiping in between dinner dates and the evening news, carpool duty and worrying about monthly expenses. We are rarely caught Going Big, more often Going Home.

And yet the Israelites respond before Joshua and God, reading to declare their faithfulness and loyalty right then and there. They have heard the wonders of their God, they ways they are loved and the promises they have inherited. They choose to follow the Lord with their whole heart, soul, mind and strength because they cannot imagine another option, another being who deserves their intentional service and worship and reverence. In fact, they answer with the same confidence the disciples express in our gospel reading. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

Where else would we go, God? Who else claims all of us just we are – saints and sinners who long to be faithful, but so often fail? You are the one who delivers us faithfully.

If you read on in Joshua 24, the old prophet can hardly bear their confident optimism – their promise to Go Big, though they rarely do. Joshua hears their bold and hopeful confession, but sighs knowingly, admitting that he cannot watch them try and he cannot be the witness to their promise. He knows they will fail…and he’s right.

This is not the first time Israel has declared its faithfulness to God alone and it’s not the last time this chosen nation will lose sight of that promise and betray God’s trust. But unlike wobbly Israel and the rickety saints of St. John’s and the shaky Church on earth, God’s vows live on, founded on the promises God made to Abraham, Sarah, Isaac and David.

And here’s the really good news: The promises God made to Israel are cracked wide open for all people in the gift of Jesus Christ – a promise that has come into this life and bread and wine to ferment inside us, forgiving our unfaithful nooks and saving our forgetful crannies. It is God who Goes Big and then calls us home, whose faithfulness leads us to confess the greatest truth of all:

Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Amen.