Questions and Reflections

March 2018

A Maundy Thursday Reflection

One of the stories I love to tell is about my wife’s grandfather. He grew up in England and moved to the United States after World War II. His dad was a preacher so he grew up in a variety of church communities. Many of his congregations practiced communion that might surprise us. Instead of serving bread and wine every week, they washed each other’s feet. And they did so because of this passage from the Gospel According to John.

When I tell this story, people react the same way: disbelief. The idea of washing each other’s feet every week is shocking in our context. Our feet are very personal and we don’t want to touch a stranger’s feet. But I think our real struggle is having someone touch ours. When Peter cried out to Jesus, we understand the raw emotion he displayed. When he tells Jesus to wash his entire body, we instinctively feel like Peter is right. Peter knew that Jesus was doing something problematic. In his culture, only slaves washed people’s feet. It was the person who had no control over their own body that was forced to clean other people’s feet. The feeling of discomfort was outsourced to the one who could not say no. And the one having their feet washed would know, even if it made them feel uncomfortable, that at least they weren’t a slave. By the simple act of washing feet, Jesus showed just how intimately connected we are to God. And Jesus modeled how God will always care for us.

I know that foot washing makes us uncomfortable. And some of us can’t easily remove our socks, tights, and shoes during church. That’s why tonight we are offering an additional option. There is a place in tonight’s service where you will be invited to wash each other’s hands. The simple act of pouring water on each other’s hands and drying them will be a sign of your commitment to one another. And we are called to that commitment because Jesus will always be committed to us.



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The Off Season. From Pastor Marc - My Message for the Messenger, April 2018 Edition

Have you ever been some place “off-season?” The times I’ve visited places before they get busy, I’ve always been struck how the energy in the air feels different. There’s a quietness that seems to fill much of the space. This quiet never feels unpleasant. Instead, it feels like the deep calming breath the entire community takes before the large number of people arrive. That deep calming breath requires a peace and simplicity that gives everyone time to prepare for what’s to come. Restaurants and shops have shorter hours and smaller menus. Artisans and entertainers rehearse their craft in an intentional but gentle way. The few visitors that find themselves in these “off-season” places are invited to embody the slower pace, quieting their soul and mind in preparation for the busyness to come. The “off-season” is a perfect time to refresh, recharge and experience familiar places in new ways. And when we engage with places during their off-season, we sometimes surprise ourselves by learning something new about what refreshes our heart, mind and soul.
 
The Sundays after Easter can sometimes feel like an “Off-Season” for the church. After all the busyness and excitement of Lent, Holy Week and Easter, many of us feel like we could use a break. Lent sometimes feels like a long inhale preparing us for the exhale of Palm Sunday, Good Friday and Easter. When the Sunday after Easter comes along, we feel worn out and just tired. But Easter is more than just one day. As a faith community, we experience Easter as an entire season. The Sundays after Easter invite us to re-experience the risen Jesus in our lives. When Jesus’ earliest disciples discovered the empty tomb, their faith wasn’t all figured out. They still needed time to discover what living with a resurrected Jesus was all about. The time they spent with Jesus after the Resurrection was an opportunity to connect with the Jesus they always knew but who they now encountered in a new way. They needed to see Jesus in the garden, meet him in a locked room, break bread with him while meeting him on the road, and eating brunch with him on the beach. The season of Easter invites us to refresh and recharge with a Jesus who is always with us, even when we feel like we could use a break.
 
And this season at CLC will be filled with a baptism, hymn sing and a joint worship service with First Congregational Church and Pascack Reformed Church. See Jesus in this “off-season” and discover new ways to be recharged.
 
See you in church!
Pastor Marc


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Something New to Learn: A Palm Sunday Reflection

There's always something new to discover in every biblical story.

For the longest time, I've never asked an important question about today's passage from Mark 11:1-11: what does hosanna actually mean? I've always assumed that hosanna was a word about rejoicing, sort of like a biblical version of the word "hooray!" That words seems to fit this context. Jesus arrives in Jerusalem and there is a crowd (of uncertain size) following him. They are waving branches and shouting as he rode into the city. They keep shouting that this whole scene and event is blessed. Hooray is the right word for this context. But hosanna isn't just a shout of joy. It's actually a prayer. And it's saying, "Lord, save!" 

Another translation, using the Hebrew words the greek words in this passage are based on, might be "I beg you to save" or "deliver us!" This are pretty forceful prayers. They are the prayers we say when we are under extreme duress. When we are suffering from anxiety, fear, oppression, or illness, we want to be saved. We pray that God will show up immediately. The crowd is doing more than just celebrating Jesus showing up. They are praying, and expecting, Jesus to save and deliver them. They expected Jesus to act. 

But what did they expect him to do? Jesus is entering the city around the time of the Passover. The city of Jerusalem might have double or tripled in size with tourists and pilgrims. The Roman governors would re-establish their physical presence in the city. Religious and civil authorities would do whatever they could to keep the crowds under control. And as the story of Passover was retold, and the people re-experienced their release from the oppressive role of the Pharaoh, many wanted to make that story a reality by overthrowing the oppressive rule of Rome. On one level, everyone was expecting some kind of action to take place. What they didn't expect was for someone to just be acted on. 

But being acted on is exactly what happened to Jesus. He was arrested. He was put on trial. He was convicted. He was hung on the Cross. A prayer for saving is a prayer asking for God to act. Yet it was the Jesus who refused to act in the ways we expect that ended up saving everyone. 



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Humility as life: Stumbling into Jesus' Parade [ Manuscript]

When they were approaching Jerusalem, at Bethphage and Bethany, near the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately as you enter it, you will find tied there a colt that has never been ridden; untie it and bring it. If anyone says to you, ‘Why are you doing this?’ just say this, ‘The Lord needs it and will send it back here immediately.’” They went away and found a colt tied near a door, outside in the street. As they were untying it, some of the bystanders said to them, “What are you doing, untying the colt?” They told them what Jesus had said; and they allowed them to take it. Then they brought the colt to Jesus and threw their cloaks on it; and he sat on it. Many people spread their cloaks on the road, and others spread leafy branches that they had cut in the fields. Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting,

“Hosanna!
Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!
Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!
Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

Then he entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.

Mark 11:1-11

My sermon from the Sixth Sunday of Lent (March 25, 2018) on Mark 11:1-11. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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When was the last time you stumbled onto a parade?

Since I moved to New Jersey, the number of parades I’ve randomly run into is zero. But when I was living in New York City, I wandered into parades all the time. In fact, I can’t even count how many times I left my apartment in the Washington Heights neighbor of Upper Manhattan and ended up in the middle of something like the Dominican Day Parade. I would suddenly find myself stuck between a giant float blaring reggaeton music and dozens of traditional male Dominicans dancers wearing full body beaded costumes with the head of a bill. All I wanted to do was to get to the other side of Broadway but police barriers, bachata dancers, and sidewalks full of people waving tiny American and Dominican flags always stopped me in my tracks. My first response to this little setback was usually the normal New Yorker and New Jerseyan response when someone or something gets in our way. But when you run into a parade with tens of thousands of participants and parade-watchers, getting mad never changed anything. I would just refocus, look for a break in the parade and an open police barrier, and then try to dash to the other side. Yet in that process of wiggling and squeezing and maneuvering my way through the crowds, I found myself actually watching the parade. The bright colors on the floats, the grace of the dancers, and the boisterous wordplay from every single float based entertainer, enticed me. I would always end up stopping, usually at the front of the crowd, and watch everything just go by. Someone near me would hand me a tiny Dominican and American flag, and I would wave them to beat of every song from every float that went by. Then, after a bit, the alarm bells of my internal to-do list would remind me that I was super late - and I’d dash across the street, getting to the otherside. My time table for that day was usually shattered. I would be late to everything that day. But, for all intents and purposes, that’s the only thing about my day that would change. My to-do list still got done. I’d still get to where I needed to be. And as much as I was enthralled by the parade, I always left it pretty much as the same kind of person I was before. That unexpected parade ended up changing very little of my everyday-kind-of-life.

When I hear Mark’s version of Jesus’ journey into Jerusalem, I often wonder about that person who unexpectedly stumbled onto his parade. Imagine for a moment being a shopkeeper, or a farmer, or a beggar, or a pilgrim, visiting the city for the great religious festival of Passover. You’d try to cross a busy city street but you couldn’t because of this man riding a colt. In front of him would be people waving palm branches and putting their clothes on the ground to minimize the people kicking up all dust. Others around them would be shouting a very odd kind of phrase: saying Hosanna - which could mean “rejoice” but also means “save us.” On first glance, this parade would appear like it was pretending to be something bigger. Unlike Matthew and Luke’s version of this story, Jesus’ parade isn’t really puffed up. No where in Mark’s text does it talk about a large crowd being there. And Jesus doesn’t make any grand statements about prophets or judgments against the city. Mark keeps Jesus’ parade small because, in some ways, that’s who Jesus appears to be in this moment. He isn’t, like a great general or king, riding a big and powerful horse. He’s surrounded by followers who are waving palm branches and who don’t own swords or weapons or armor. And when Jesus’ parade is finally finished, Jesus does a small thing. He does teach or speak or tell a story. He takes a tour of the Temple, sees everything, and then immediately leaves the city. The grandness of this moment is very tempered in the gospel according to Mark. For the traveler or begger or city-dweller watching this “pretend-parade,” I imagine they would be annoyed that they were being delayed. But that, to them, would be all this parade was. They would still get to do everything they needed to do. And this vision of a man on a colt would shortly fade, barely registering as a memory the following day. The smallness of this Jesus moment would be, for the person interrupted by it, just a tiny blip in the story of their everyday life.

Now, as a church, we tend to treat this Palm & Passion Sunday as an opportunity to highlight a truth about who we are. We are, as human beings, the same people who shout with joy when God shows up, and then respond with “crucify!” the minute God’s values suddenly clash with our own. By holding together these two events that are separated in Mark by several chapters, we imagine that Mark is making a statement about the one kind of person that exists in the world. Yet the smallness of Mark’s parade introduces to us another option. We are the ones who shout “crucify” but we are also that person in the crowd going about their daily life. We are living in the only way that they can and we barely notice the parade that interrupted our day. We saw a man on the colt but since he didn’t seem important, we didn’t ask for his name. We saw the others waving of branches but didn’t ask what was it those people hoped for. We heard the cries of “Hosanna!,” of people asking to be “saved,” but we didn’t care enough to ask what they wanted to be saved from. We were there instead, on the sidelines, possibly intrigued by what we saw - but not enough to ask who this Jesus is. Rather, we were so caught up in our everyday life, that we didn’t even notice when Jesus rode in.

 

But even though we didn’t see Jesus, Jesus saw us.

 

Because Mark’s gospel, on this Palm Sunday, created something that Rev. Benjamin Dueholm calls a “null moment.” A “null moment,” to me, are those moments in Jesus’ story when a “lukewarm” or “inattentive” experience of Jesus is something that we can totally have. I don’t know anyone who can spend every second of every moment of their life focused on God alone. Instead, we live daily lives full of experiences, struggles, and joys where when we don’t intentionally engage with our faith at all. All of us are caught up in the everyday busy of everyday living. And when some random parade unexpectedly crosses our path, that doesn’t always change what comes next. But just because we have these “null moments” with Jesus, doesn’t mean that Jesus has “null moments” with us. Because as we hear in today’s story, Jesus looked around at everything. He saw what was in God’s Temple. He knew where that colt would be. He saw the people in the crowd who responded to him and those who’s daily life was barely interrupted by his presence. Jesus saw all of us in all the ways we can possibly be - from the fervent disciple waving palm branches to the member of the crowd shouting “crucify” and even being that indifferent person hanging out on the sidelines. Jesus saw all that we can possibly be - and he still loved us anyways.

Because, as we will shortly hear, the God who knows all the different ways we will react to God’s presence is the same God who will react to us in the way only God can: with a love that will meet every cross we build, with mercy for every violent act we embrace, with a hope that will overcome every injustice that we ignore, and an offering of peace for every broken part of our body, soul, and spirit. Jesus is here, not letting our reaction to him end up being the limit to how he will love and serve us. Instead, he will march us through, into a new reality, where our everyday kind of living will be totally changed.


 

Amen.

 



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A Life that Trusts God

Where does faith happen? For Luther, faith happens in us. Faith is not an abstract concept or an idea detached from everything. Faith is a gift from God and that gift is given to people. We have a tendency to talk about faith as if it's separate from actual people. We act as if there's some kind of "true" or "pure" faith that we could store it in a bottle. We would point to that bottle of faith to show others what true faith looks like. But that's not how my faith works. Faith is for people which means faith needs people. We can't reasonably separate faith from the people who experience it. So faith is more than something we have. Faith is, above all, lied. 

And that lived faith is, for Luther, expressed in our relationships to one another. As we heard earlier in his writing, faith is the source of who we are. Faith is a deep seeded trust in God and God's care for you. And how do we know that God cares about us? Because, through faith, we discover that God sent Jesus not only for the world; but for you too. Faith is a gift that trusts in God's promises. And that trust is makes us free. There is nothing we can do to earn God's love or God's attention. There's nothing we can think up that might  bring us closer to God. Rather God comes to us, freeing us from the need to cross the uncrossable chasm separating us from God. So God, through Christ, builds a bridge across the gap we cannot cross. 

Since we are free from trying to get God's attention, we are then freed to live a life that trusts God. And that life, as we see in our reading today, is one that looks to our neighbor's needs first. This life lives for other people before it lives for ourself. As Lutherans, we know that a Christian is more than someone who accepts a certain kind of belief. A Christian is also someone who lives the faith out loud. This kind of living is not easy and it does ask us to do difficult things. But being a Christian means we have a new name that invites us into a new way of living. "Without a doubt we are named after Christ - not absent from us but dwelling in us; in other words: provided that we believe in him and that, in turn and mutually, we are a second Christ to one another, doing for our neighbors as Christ does for us." pg 525.  



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Last Time Forever: What If You've Already Changed? [ Manuscript]

Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus. Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honor.

“Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” The crowd standing there heard it and said that it was thunder. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.” Jesus answered, “This voice has come for your sake, not for mine. Now is the judgment of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” He said this to indicate the kind of death he was to die.

John 12:20-33

My sermon from the Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 18, 2018) on John 12:20-33. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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How far would you go to change who you are?

Now, that sort of change needs clarification. I’m sure there are parts of ourselves that we are fine with but we might want to change something. Maybe we want more patience or a slower temper. There could be an experience in our past that’s still affecting us and we don’t know how to move forward. We might need a new sense of purpose and meaning, hoping that a new job, new career, or a new perspective on life might give us what we’re missing. Each of us might have these bits and pieces of our personality and our mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical well-being that we would like to change. Luckily, we live in a world where we can take that kind of change on. We’re surrounded by therapists, psychologists, medical professionals, spiritual directors, life coaches, self-help books, and more. Each one of these resources can be an amazing gift from God that helps us grow into who we want to be. But there are parts of ourselves that feel like it’s too had for us to change. And then there’s biology. All of us are made up of DNA - the biological blueprint that determines a bit of who we are. And DNA, this core part of who we are, is something none of us can really change...or at least that’s what I thought until a bunch of headlines flashed by me earlier this week. Changing our DNA, according to these reports, might be possible. But it would take a little work. All we would need to do is jump on a rocket ship, head into space, and live on the International Space Station for nearly a year.

Now, living in space might not be something you can do. But an astronaut by the name of Scott Kelly did exactly that. He lived in space for nearly a year and when he came back, he was a little different. Scientists ran all sorts of tests, trying to see how he changed. They took those test results and compared them to the same tests that they ran on his identical twin brother, Mark, who stayed here on earth. The test results were published and articles, earlier this week, said that Scott Kelly’s blueprint, his DNA, had changed. They said that the test results showed that Scott’s DNA was now 7% different than his twin brother’s. Now 7% doesn’t sound like a lot. But when it comes to DNA, that’s...huge. When Scott Kelly first went up, he had an identical twin. There was someone on earth just like him. But if these articles were right, when Scott came back to earth, he was no longer a twin and instead was a brand new person.

Going into space seems like a pretty far journey for us to take to change who we are. It’s probably easier to change what we eat, sign up for a community college class, or visit a therapist to grow in the little ways we want to. But there are times, I think, when going to space feels like it’s the only thing we can do to make that big change we need. There are times when everything in our life seems to be going wrong. There are moments when brokenness is all we feel. There are periods in our life when we don’t know what to do next so we keep doing the same old thing even though we know we need to make a change. Some of that hesitation to change comes from an anxious kind of fear. It’s hard and scary taking that first step, not knowing exactly how everything will turn out. And that first step might ask us to do something hard, like ending a bad relationship or moving to some place new. We might need to quit our job even though we don’t have our next one lined up. Or maybe commit ourselves to spending the next few years talking to someone, maybe even taking some medication, so that we can see and engage our world in a different way. All of this is hard. And going to space might seem, in comparison, like it might be easier. We would head up, into the sky, stay there a year, and when we came back down, we would be 7% different. That difference, we tell ourselves, would be all we would need to finally take the hard first steps. We would come back to earth as a that brand new person who could finally become the person we’ve always wanted to be.

But it turns, those initial articles were wrong. They misinterpreted what the test results actually said. Scott Kelly’s DNA didn’t change. What changed was his genes, those little biological components made up of DNA. And we expect genes to change when someone is in a highly stressful environment. Scott’s core - his blueprint - his DNA didn’t change. So we can’t just hop on a rocketship, head up to space, and become that new person who can live out the change we want. We’re stuck with who we are. But that doesn’t mean that our limits, our lack of change, is the end of our story. Because our story and our lives have already changed.

But that change is sometimes too simple or too small for us to think it’s really the change we need in our lives. We imagine that a brand new person needs something big and over the top, like living in space for a year, to finally grow. We can’t imagine that our newness could be, instead, something that is already given to us. We can’t always trust that our baptism, our faith, and Jesus on that Cross has already made us into something new.

Today’s story in the gospel of John is dense. It crams a lot into a very small space. We have Greeks, disciples, and a moment where Jesus claims his heart is troubled but he then shows a God-like amount of self-confidence, There’s a lot going on in this passage - but there’s also a lot that isn’t. And it’s what the Greeks don’t do that jumped out at me this week. Because if we look closely at the text, it doesn’t tell us if they actually meet Jesus. These Greeks went to the disciples, asked to see Jesus, and when the disciples go to tell Jesus about them, Jesus launched into a sermon about his death. When he was approached, Jesus talked about what he was going to do for them.  The hard work of seeing God, the hard work of knowing that God is with us, and the hard work of trusting that God will experience everything we do - including death itself - is what God finally does. Jesus, in a surprising way, doesn’t make his journey to the cross conditional on us changing who we are. Instead, Jesus goes to the cross so that we can, through him, discover who God is calling us to be. We’re invited to lose that life, I think, that doesn’t take seriously how we, through Christ, have already been changed. We are now part of a new story; we are part of Jesus’ story; and that’s story already a new and different ending. When we live into that change that Jesus has already offered to us, every aspect of our life becomes different. Our blueprint might be the same. We might feel like the person we’ve always been. And we will live through situations and experiences that will break our heart and God’s. Yet the new life God gives us is not about being more of who we think we should be. Instead, we can grow into the person God knows we can become. We are here, through Christ, to live into a brand new reality that sees ourselves, our neighbors, and our world differently. We are here to change where we look; to look beyond ourselves and instead to keep our focus on the Jesus who is lifted up; and who - through love - draws you, and me, and everyone else into a new world, a new reality, and a new humanity that will, in the end, change.

Amen.

 



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Labelled With Love: A Life of Owning Our Mistakes

[Jesus said:] "And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God."

John 3:14-21

My sermon from the Fourth Sunday in Lent (March 11, 2018) on John 3:14-21. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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I never knew that Batman was a member of one of my favorite neighborhoods. But earlier this week, there he was, hosting a special on PBS about a man who lived in his own magical neighborhood. Michael Keaton, the actor who played Batman in the late 80s and early 90s, spent this week honoring the 50th anniversary of the national broadcast of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. That neighborhood, filmed in Pittsburgh, is where Michael got his start so it was fun watching him narrate the world Mister Rogers created. Together, we remembered all the guest stars who appeared on the show, including the amazing musicians who showed kids that the cello was pretty neat. We reconnected with Lady Elaine Fairchilde, Queen Sara Saturday, and Prince Tuesday by taking a trolley into the land of make believe. And we wondered if we could ever look as cool as Mr Rogers did in those brightly colored cardigan sweaters. My favorite moment from the PBS special was when Mr Rogers was learning how to play Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes. That game, if you’ve never played it before, is exactly what it sounds like. You touch your head, shoulders, knees, and then your toes. It’s the perfect game to teach toddlers where their different body parts are. And it’s also a fun game to watch adults, with their sore knees, bad backs, and lack of flexibility, try to play too. Now Mr Rogers, in this segment, couldn’t keep up. He kept messing up the order. And when his guest did something new, Mr. Rogers made a ton of mistakes. The director wanted to refill the scene so that Mr Roger could get the game right. But Mr Rogers said no. He wanted kids to see him get the game wrong. He wanted everyone to watch him make mistakes but also see him keep trying. Mr Rogers did what so many of us don’t do. Mr Rogers wanted everyone to see him own his mistakes.

Which, if you think about it, is really hard. Because who wants to show their mistakes? We usually don’t mind telling other people what they got wrong. But not many of us enjoy admitting when we messed up. I don’t know many kids who brag about doing poorly on a test. And when we shrink our spouses’ favorite sweater in the dryer, we sometimes hide it and hope they forget that they ever owned it. Even professional athletes, who are some of the most hardworking and talented people in the world, rarely celebrate their mistakes because they know that mistake will be broadcasted a million times on ESPN sportscenter. Even when we learn how to use our mistakes to help us grow, we don’t usually want to do that in public. It’s scary admitting our mistakes because we know what mistakes can do. They can be silly and meaningless, like touching our toes before our knees. But our mistakes can also be very serious. And the consequences of those mistakes can hurt ourselves or the people around us. Being honest about our mistakes, even the ones we made in the past, asks us to do something we usually refuse to do: and that’s admit we were wrong. So we run away from being honest about our mistakes. We avoid facing the consequences that come up when we admit we messed up. And we hide the vulnerability we need to show when we own the mistake we’ve made. In a world where we’re supposed to present our very best, owning our mistakes is a terrifying thing to do.

But what would our lives look like if we admitted everything we got wrong? What if we owned the mistakes we made to our spouses, friends, and each other before we tried to hide them? What if we lived a life that proclaimed that our mistakes are supposed to be seen in the light? But not in a way that tried to avoid the consequences of our mistakes. But a life that acted like those consequences actually mattered? What would that kind of life look like? Well, in some ways, that life might look a bit like John chapter 3.

Because even though these verses are some of the most famous verses in all of the New Testament, their context is usually unknown. We forget that these verses came from a conversation that Jesus had with a man named Nicodemus. Nicodemus, in the middle of the night, found Jesus alone. He showed up, unannounced, and didn’t even knock on the door asking for Jesus’ permission to visit. Instead, Nicodemus just walked in and found Jesus already there. The two of them talk and there’s no one else in the room. And when we get to verse 3:16, we usually interpret this passage as if Jesus is offering Nicodemus a choice. Believe in me, make that right choice, and you’ll have eternal life. We focus on the last part of 3:16 and we assume Nicodemus understood these words the same way. But if he did understand what Jesus said, then Nicodemus made a mistake. Because the Bible doesn’t record him saying anything back to Jesus. Instead, the Bible lets us assume that Nicodemus, after he heard these words, just left. This guy, who literally saw Jesus face to face, walked away, into the night. That feels, on some level, like it would be a mistake. If the point of this passage is to help us choose Jesus, than Nicodemus messed up. He vanishes from the story and we never expect to hear from him again. And we don’t...until two years later. But this time, Nicodemus doesn’t say a word. Instead, with the help of Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus takes Jesus down from the cross and the two of them, almost silently, bury Jesus in a tomb.

Nicodemus came back near the end of the gospel according to John story. So it seems that he did choose Jesus at some point. But scripture never shows us that moment. We actually have no idea when Nicodemus chooses Jesus. All we get is this “mistake” and then the burial. And I wonder why that is. Why keep this mistake in? Because, according to John, only Jesus and Nicodemus we’re in the room when John 3 happened. Now Jesus might have told others what happened that night but what if Nicodemus was the one who shared the story? Would we expect him to keep it just as it was? Most of us, i think, if we were in Nicodemus’ sandals, would act differently. We would tell our friends and family that we followed Jesus way before it was cool. We would try to cover up whatever mistakes we made. And we would make sure that everyone knew when we made our choice. But if Nicodemus is the one who shared this story, he doesn’t do any of that. He doesn’t hide his “mistake.”

Nicodemus, like Mr Rogers, owned his mistake. And I think he did that because it was the second part of John 3:16 that mattered to him. It was the first. What made all the difference was that when he came out of the dark, he saw that Jesus was already there. And when Nicodemus finally saw Jesus, he was scolded or condemned or belittled by him. Instead, Jesus listened. He answered the questions Nicodemus asked. And he let Nicodemus be exactly who he is. Jesus didn’t force anything on Nicodemus and he didn’t ask for Nicodemus to make a choice right then and there. Instead, Jesus showed that God isn’t focused only on the moment that it might take for us to declare a choice we made. Our God, instead, is a God for every one of our moments, including when it feels like all we can do is make mistakes. The Jesus who met Nicodemus in the middle of the night is the same Jesus who meets us, right now, as we are. And that Jesus is here to carry us into a future where we don’t have to hide the truth of who we are; a future where we can admit the mistakes we’ve made and we can live into the consequences honestly and faithfully; and this same Jesus promises to give us a new life where we will, through his love, grow and become the person who God wants made us to be.

 

Amen.

 


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What Preaching Should Be

The holiest time of the church year is in three weeks. We will start that week by waving palm fronds in the air, remembering the crowds who welcomed Jesus into the city of Jerusalem. And then, on Good Friday, we will see Jesus on the cross. Holy Week is an emotional week. We discover who we are. We see how we respond to the love and grace Jesus brought. We see first hand how consumed we are by our desire for control, selfishness, and greed. Holy Week is a mirror to our need to be our own god. And it's also a week that has, historically and even today, been a week full of antisemitism. 
 
Luther, in this passage from On Christian Freedom, called out antisemitic preaching. In his era, crowds during Holy Week attacked Jewish homes and synagogues. Passion plays (reenactments of Jesus' crucifixion) would be so theatrical and emotional that church-goers responded with violence. Much of this violence relied on people's pre-existing hatreds, support of local governments, and (what I would call) heretical understandings of Jesus' story. Luther, who wrote many antisemitic statements and documents during his lifetime, wasn't forceful enough in his denouncement of this kind of Holy Week preaching. Yet he was knew what preaching wasn't supposed to do: encourage any kind of violence against marginalized groups. 
 
Preaching, for Luther, is not a lesson about Jesus. Preaching is an event. It's seeing who we are and how Jesus comes to us anyways. Preaching isn't a series of moral lessons to help us become our best self. Preaching is about Jesus being 100% for you right now. Jesus isn't for you as you might become. He isn't waiting for you to make yourself right before he shows up. He's here now. and that grace changes everything. 
 
The grace is something we can't earn. It's also something we struggle to trust. As people, we're used to wanting to do something to make us "better." But Luther is firm that the grace God gives you is free. And it's through that grace and love that you are made into something new. 
 
Luther is an example of how the grace Jesus gives us helps us see more clearly. Luther saw the antisemitism in the preaching he heard during Holy Week. But he still failed to see his own antisemitic ideas and beliefs. Our prayers should always ask for Jesus' grace to refine our sight so we can know ourselves better. And as that grace shines a light into our own darkness, it also forms us to be the followers of Christ we are called to be. 


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Hourglass: Your Body is a Temple and Where We Meet God

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.”The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?”Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.​

John 2:13-22

My sermon from Third Sunday in Lent (March 4, 2018) on John 2:13-22. Listen to the recording here or read my manuscript below. 

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What’s the largest animal you’ve ever transported?

I don’t have an interesting answer to this question. The only “large” animals I’ve ever transported were cats. When I first moved to New York City, I lived with a 20 lb cat named Indiana Jones. He hated car rides and wasn’t thrilled leaving Ithaca, New York at 2 am in the morning for the 5 hour drive into Manhattan. He was mad during the entire journey. But I didn’t need to do anything special to transport him the 230 miles to his new home. I don’t know how to transport a large animal but I can imagine what it might be like. Today, when I think about moving a large animal, my mind dreams up horse trailers. As I drive behind them, it seems like the horses in that metal tin can are always a bit content.  Their tails swish back and forth as they stand in their metal enclosure zooming down the highway at sixty five miles an hour. I imagine this kind of setup could be used to move all sorts of animals like cattle, cows, and sheep. If all of us were farmers and we raised our own animals, we would know exactly what it takes to move animals over a large distance. But if we were living 2000 years ago, without trucks, highways, and any modern equipment, we might have a different kind of experience trying to move cattle, cows, and lambs. It would take days or weeks to travel even 60 miles. We would need to carry all the food and water we, and the animals, would need on our journey. We would also need to make sure we followed a route that was safe, free of any bandits and robbers, or end up paying for armed guards to protect us as we traveled. And we would finally need to say a lot of prayers, hoping that no storms, floods, or broken legs caused by stepping in potholes would hurt, break, or damage our animals. Moving animals in the ancient world was probably a big pain. And if we only needed to bring a few with us, we would want a system where we didn’t need to bring any animals at all. Instead, we would want to just show up and have the animals right there. This kind of setup would be helpful for farmers who had to travel long distances and would also work for those of us who aren’t farmers at all. Instead of spending all that time, energy, and resources to bring a large animal with us, we could just buy one and save ourselves the trouble. And that also would be helpful, maybe even grace filled, if the animal we needed was there to help our relationship with God. Through the special use of certain animals in the place God declared as holy, the system of sacrifices used in the Temple in Jerusalem was, I think, focused on showing how God actually cares about us. The sacrifices were about more than just trying to cover up any of our sins; they were a sign of our committed to God who is committed to us. A room full of animals ready to offer to God, as described in the gospel according, could easily seen as a holy gift. So if someone walked in with a whip, and drove the cattle, sheep, and everyone out into the street, we might be annoyed, shocked, and angry at what that person just did.

Jesus is a bit of a punk in our scene from the gospel today. He’s angry, aggressive, and violent. He scared the people and animals; disrupted everything in the Temple, and sent the cattle and sheep to go rampage in the city streets. We tend to, I think, downplay the emotion displayed in this scene. We highlight the corruption, pointing to the money lenders who were converting Roman coins into the money the Temple used, and were over charging and skimming off the top. We take that corruption, combine it with our belief in Jesus’ meek-and-mild manner, and claim that this scene wasn’t that upsetting. Jesus is angry but not that angry. He doesn’t, we imagine, get as upset as people do. But I’d like to invite all of us to stay in this scene as John described it. It’s supposed to feel emotional. It’s supposed to make us cringe. We need to be shocked by the wildness of Jesus in this moment. Jesus isn’t, I think, flying off the handle. He knew exactly what he was doing. But he’s still disruptive. He’s still emotional. He’s still human. And he clears out the Temple being as angry as any of us can be.

Jesus, in this moment, is very human. And he showcased his humanity with his words. He poked those around him by saying he would raise up a temple, restore one of God’s gifts, in only 3 days. The people in that room didn’t see Jesus’ point of view. They focused on the gifts from God they knew. They knew the Temple, its system of sacrifices, and how God made the Temple the place where the divine world and the human world met. The Temple was more than just a fancy building; it was where God promised to be. You might not see or sense or experience God in your life. But everyone knew that when you entered the Temple, when you brought your gifts of an animal or food or even money, you knew God was right there. The Temple was a gift because it was the place where God’s realness could be experienced and seen. The Jewish people around Jesus knew what God’s gifts looked like. And those gifts for them are still, even today, very real. But Jesus was announcing that for the rest of us, a new gift was being offered. And that gift’s Temple, this new and holy place, was a very human body.

Which is odd because bodies are weird. They grow and change and never really stay the same. We can workout and train and get our bodies to do amazing things. But they can also wear out. Or break. Or get sick. It’s difficult, even today, to believe that a body, unique but similar to ours, could be a new and holy place. Jesus, who ate, and sweat, and got tired, and probably even smelled just like we do is the place where God decided to make the divine real. It’s through real hands and real feet that Jesus chose to make himself known. Scripture never tells us if Jesus’ body was perfect. And I believe that we make a mistake if we act as if Jesus never had an upset stomach, or acne, or a stubbed toe. God declared, in Jesus, that the human body, Jesus’ body, and your body - as it is - is a beautiful and divine thing. And it’s through this very human body, with very human needs, and very human emotions, that God chooses to use to adore, cherish, and love the world.

I’ve never transported a large animal. I’ve never had to figure out how to carry and move any kind of large body. But I do know that Jesus came to show that God cares about all of us - including our body. Because it’s through bodies that we experience God’s gifts. Our body is how we hear and see and notice the love that God gives us. It’s through our humanness that we notice and live in those places where God comes down to meet us. Our bodies are the place where we experience God’s blessings. And it's through these bodies, as they are right now, that God uses to bless those around us. Our bodies are not perfect but they are, through our connection with Jesus, a holy place where we feel God and where those around us discover how much God loves them. Because the Jesus who showed the holiness of his body in the Temple, has made each of us, through our baptism, into our own kind of holy place where people can, and will, and must - meet him.

Amen.

 



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Faith of the Heart

It's easy to get stuck in our heads. If a problem comes up, we spend a lot of time and energy dwelling on it. If we have an issue with another person, we might even role play entire conversations with them during long car rides. Sometimes these conversations are helpful. The words we say help us gather our thoughts and plot a plan of action. But if these pretend conversations are connected to a deep feeling of anxiety, we might end up lost in our own heads. We end up overthinking the situation. We are consumed by thoughts and end up lost in inaction. Your mind is powerful, complex, and unique. But even a healthy mind can be caught in a feedback loop that traps it. 

I like how Martin Luther in our selection from The Freedom of a Christian talks about "faith of the heart." We tend to talk and imagine that faith is mostly in our minds. We need to "believe" certain ideas and accept a certain vision of reality. Belief is about what you choose to accept or say yes to. This kind of faith feels very much like something we might learn in school. We need teachers and classes to grow in our faith and, hopefully, a few special graduation events a long the way. This kind of faith is a faith of the mind.

But Luther doesn't experience faith in this way. For him, faith is the center of his reality. In scripture, the heart was always the place where faith lived and breathed. And in ancient times, the heart was the center of everything about us. The heart was where thoughts were created and where the soul lived. The heart was the center of what made a person who they were. For Luther, our faith isn't about what we believe. Our faith is really about what is the center of who we are. Faith isn't something only located in our head. Faith is part of everything that makes us who we are. 

This kind of faith is a faith that can live through those moments when we lose ourselves in our head. It's a faith that can handle those moments in our lives when doubt is all we have. A faith that is at the core of who we are is faith that we can rediscover when we haven't felt Jesus in our life for awhile. This kind of faith is something we cannot earn or create on our own. It's a deep faith that only God can give. And God grants us this faith through baptism, worship, communion, and daily interactions with the Holy Spirit. We might not sense God in our life. But God continues to grant us the faith we need to know that we are God's. And this kind of faith, this faith of the heart, is the only faith that can help us live through every part of our lives. 



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