Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on December 8, 2024

[sermon begins after two Bible readings]

Luke 3:1-6 In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, ² during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. ³ He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, ⁴ as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah,
“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.
⁵ Every valley shall be filled,
and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
and the crooked shall be made straight,
and the rough ways made smooth;
⁶ and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ”

Luke 1:67-79 Then [John’s] father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy:
⁶⁸“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
⁶⁹He has raised up a mighty savior for us
in the house of his servant David,
⁷⁰as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
⁷¹that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
⁷²Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
and has remembered his holy covenant,
⁷³the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
to grant us ⁷⁴that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
might serve him without fear, ⁷⁵in holiness and righteousness
before him all our days.
⁷⁶And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
⁷⁷to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
⁷⁸By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
⁷⁹to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

[sermon begins]

“Are you ready?” My fellow gym rats and I are questioned about this on the regular. When Coach asks, “Are you ready,” they mean is everyone in place with the gear that we need and the weights that we’re going to start lifting because that clock is gonna start, and we’re supposed to start moving along with it. Whenever I hear that question at the gym, the answer in my mind is, “As we’ll ever be.” Some days I even say it out loud, “As we’ll ever be, Coach!” That answer reminds me that I’m ready enough to at least start moving even if I’m not sure how much energy is in the tank. Our reaction to the readiness question depends entirely on the circumstances.

Over the past year, Sue Ann, our Faith Community Nurse, has been asking herself whether she’s ready to retire. Summer had her celebrating a BIG birthday, almost exactly five years from when Sue Ann started as the nurse of our congregation in 2019. Many of you have received her visits in the hospital or at home, shared communion, or sang your favorite hymn with her or listened as she sang to you. Some of you told her your story of loss in the Grief Support Groups that she led. Some of you have sat in her office with a health issue that needed a referral to heal your body, mind, or spirit. Others of you have served with her on E4 Mental Health or Knitters ministry.

After months of deliberation, Sue Ann decided that her summer birthday was a time on the clock that made retirement make sense. She set the date for Sunday, December 15^th. Next Sunday, we’re going to celebrate her career as a nurse and her time with our congregation. We’ll say prayers of gratitude and blessing during both worship services. Health Ministry and 60 + Ministry, with whom Sue Ann worked so closely, are hosting a brunch for all of us between worship services. Please fill out the worship slip and let us know you can be there to celebrate her faithful compassion and professionalism among us. Is Sue Ann ready? Are we ready? As we’ll ever be.

In the Luke reading, John the Baptist calls on people to be ready using the words of the prophet Isaiah. John said:

“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

We Coloradans may not like the sound of lowering the mountains or filling valleys. We like our trails steep, crooked, and rocky, thank you very much. Or we may see the magnitude of the metaphor and think preparation is futile. But John is talking about a clear sight line to God for everyone. All flesh. All people seeing what God has done – the saving that God is doing in our transformation by God through the power of the Holy Spirit. The first three chapters of Luke’s Gospel are full of people who are full of the Holy Spirit and ready as they’ll ever be.

You may have noticed that our psalm today in worship is actually from Luke’s first chapter. Psalms are a form of song and poetry in the Bible. They aren’t only a location in one book of the Bible. In our psalm today, Zechariah prophecies by the power of the Holy Spirit. The opening verse to the psalm, verse 67, goes like this, “Then [John’s] father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy…” Zechariah then speaks the psalm we chanted in worship today. Zechariah prophecies while filled with the Holy Spirit.

On the fourth Sunday in Advent, two weeks from today, we’ll hear about John’s mother, Elizabeth – “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed with a loud cry [to Mary], ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.’” On that same Sunday, we’ll hear Mary’s consent to God’s will by the power of the Holy Spirit. Then there’s John the Baptist himself, “…even before his birth he will be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Two of my favorite Bible characters are Simeon and Anna – both elderly prophets in the Jerusalem Temple. Also in Luke’s second chapter, the Holy Spirit rested on Simeon, and he was guided by the Spirit to prophecy as Anna praised God and talked about Jesus to everyone in earshot. They were as ready to see God as they would ever be, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit is a major actor in the Gospel of Luke. The Holy Spirit opened sight lines to God and the people had a lot to say about what God was doing for an oblivious world. The Holy Spirit prepared each one of those people and then they said something about God. It wasn’t always tidy or easy though. Zechariah, our psalmist and John the Baptist’s father, had a tough time on the way to his prophecy by the power of the Holy Spirit. He didn’t believe that he and Elizabeth would have the baby John at their advanced age. The angel Gabriel pushed the mute button on him and Zechariah couldn’t make a peep until John was born. His first words after John’s birth are found in his psalm.

Why does any of this matter? Because this is the selfsame Spirit that empowers and refines us through the water of baptism. The selfsame Spirit who feeds us holiness through bread and wine. The selfsame Spirit who opens our eyes to God’s action on our behalf so that we see, talk, and act in the world differently. The selfsame Spirit who prepares us, who fills valleys, flattens mountains, and who straightens and levels the way – the way of God to us through Jesus. Are we ready? As we’ll ever be.

On Friday, the Welcome 150 Workgroup and a few of us stragglers went on a field trip to Risen Christ Catholic Church over on South Monaco. The congregation of Risen Christ just completed a Sanctuary renovation that includes ramp accessibility to the newly redesigned altar and ADA restrooms. Sound familiar? The architect, project manager, and Father Scott gave us the tour and talked about their multi-year process and an almost equivalent capital campaign goal. I asked Father Scott if there was anything that he wished he knew ahead of time going into their construction project. He couldn’t answer me right away but emailed me later that afternoon. He said he wished that he’d known how long the pre-building process would take – schematic drawings, building diagrams, construction documents, and city approval all took longer than he thought.

We have a little taste of that timeline watching construction of the affordable housing of Augustana Homes. Thankfully, our Welcome 150 Workgroup has experience with construction timelines through their various professions, so they’ll be helping the rest of us understand these things. While our capital campaign thus far allows us to commit to the Priority 1 projects. It strikes me that it’s our own Advent story of sorts. Each step of Welcome 150 preparing the way, preparing us as the people, to more clearly tell OUR congregation’s experience of the gospel – connecting us more deeply with God, each other, and our community so that God’s welcome is our welcome. And we are guided by the selfsame Spirit who opens our eyes to God’s action on our behalf so that we see, speak, and act faithfully in the world. Are we ready? As we’ll ever be.

Preparation by the Spirit who also opens our eyes to see as Zechariah saw. He described it like this:

“By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Zechariah prophesied in the temple about God’s promises that fill us, transforming our lives by the power of the Holy Spirit. The promises of God’s mercy, redemption, holiness, and peace in Jesus. Zechariah reminds us that as the world gets loud and busy, time together in sacred space allows us to pause together and be prepared by the One for whom we wait.

The Holy Spirit prepares us to see light in the darkness and in the shadow of death as our feet are guided into the way of peace. By the power of the Holy Spirit, we are given eyes to see and ears to listen to Jesus who prepares us by his Spirit whether we’re old and faithful like Simeon and Anna, young and fierce like Mary, joyful and diligent like Elizabeth, dubious and dunderheaded like Zechariah, or wild and outspoken like John. Are we ready? As we’ll ever be. Because Jesus prepares us during this time and across time with the power of the Holy Spirit. Thanks be to God. And amen.

Preaching, Sermons

What is Truth? [OR Christian Nationalism is Neither Faithful nor Patriotic]

November 24, 2024 caitlin121608

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on November 24, 2024 – Christ the King Sunday

[sermon begins after the Bible reading]

John 18:33-38 Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, “Are you the King of the Jews?” ³⁴Jesus answered, “Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?” ³⁵Pilate replied, “I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?” ³⁶Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” ³⁷Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.” ³⁸Pilate asked him, “What is truth?”

[sermon begins]

Jesus, Jesus, he’s our man, if he can’t do it, no one can! These high holy Jesus days like Christ the King have an odd quality to them because Jesus can become a super-Jesus only vaguely resembling Jesus’ biblical ministry. This means it’s a good day to take a good, close look at Jesus in the Gospel of John. We can still cheer on Jesus, but it may sound differently when we do.

Jesus stood before Pontius Pilate in court. They debated truth as time stood oddly still. It mattered how Jesus answered Pilate because there were religious leaders who’d had it with him and simply wanted him to go away. Here’s a sampling of the accusations against him in the Gospel of John…

…Jesus attended a wedding, irritated by his mom but does what she says anyway – turning water into the finest wine as the first of his signs. [1]

…Jesus wielded a whip, clearing the temple of vendors who swindled those who lived in poverty. [2]

…Jesus talked about new life with a fearful Pharisee in the middle of the night. [3]

…Jesus met a shady woman in the light of the noonday sun, breaking gender rules in his tradition. [4]

…Jesus healed many and fed over 5,000; walked on water and was alternately called the Word made flesh, the lamb of God, the Son of God, the King of the Jews, the bread of life, the good shepherd, the light of the world, and the truth.

…Jesus quietly forgave then saved the woman caught in adultery from being executed by stoning and sent her on her way while indicting her accusers. [5]

…Jesus cried with his friends Mary and Martha then raised Lazarus from the dead. [6]

… Jesus’ feet dripped with oil poured by Mary, anointing him both as king and as one soon to die. [7]

…Jesus rode on a donkey into Jerusalem, then stripped down to his skivvies to wash his friends’ feet, before praying for his disciples.[8]

Jesus was criminalized for vulnerable acts so powerful that he threatened the status quo of the most powerful. Jesus found himself standing in front Pontius Pilate arguing about truth before he was sentenced to death by crucifixion as the King of the Jews.

There were a number of problems with Jesus being and doing any ONE of those things, much less ALL of them. The time had come to face the music. He stood in front of Pontius Pilate. Pilate was on the emperor’s payroll. He was not much interested in the petty, internal squabbles of the Jewish religious leaders. He was, however, very interested in keeping the peace. Uprisings were costly and Pilate would pay the piper for upsetting emperor. Sacrificing Jesus was a lesser of the evils in his book and his self-interest was staying alive. What did it matter that the Truth was standing right in front of Pilate as he asked, “What is truth?”

We tend to think of truth as telling a story accurately. We don’t tend to think of truth as the story itself. We rarely think of truth in terms of a person. If each of us IS a “truth” claim, then what is that truth? In other words, each moment of my life reveals what I think is important in terms of other people, myself, time, money, and God. What would that look like? What could you learn about the truth that is me or the truth that is you? We’re all invested in different things. We could even say we’re ruled by different things, justifying our choices until we make some kind of sense to ourselves. Reflection of this kind reveals what runs and rules our lives, revealing our actual king.

I’d like to pause and point out what just happened here because I think it happens a lot. We start out talking about Jesus and we end up talking about ourselves. The sermon began with parts of Jesus’ story from the Gospel of John and how he ended up in front of Pilate. Talking about Pilate turns us toward the topic of self. Naturally. Pilate is a classic human example of what not to do in the name of self-interest. It’s hard to resist distancing ourselves from him even as we ask in our own day, “What is truth?”

Adoration is part of Christ the King Sunday but it’s not the whole story. The Feast of Christ the King is young in the church calendar. Begun in 1925 by Pope Pius XI, its purpose is to compel our hearts, minds, and lives into the reign of God on earth, over and above the pull of power in the world. [9] Not a bad idea in the 1920s given the devastation of World War I as fascism was on the rise in Germany and Italy. Not a bad idea given the timeless appeal of trading grace and love of neighbor for power. Lutherans waited until the 1970s to celebrate it. Christ the King Sunday is to the church calendar a bit like New Year’s Eve is to the Common Era Gregorian calendar that we use every day.

And just like New Year’s Eve, we can be tempted to put on a happy face and look away from the things that make us uncomfortable. Or, in times of division we can be tempted to confront others in ways that demean and degrade our shared humanity. We either mute ourselves or we scream back. Things have gotten even more complicated these days as some other Christian denominations are the face of public Christianity, believing that Jesus is only on our country’s side and NOT on the side of the whole world so loved by God. [10] The desire to distance from those Christians and to go quiet is understandable. But Christianity has always been practiced by a wide variety of people.

In the United States, our Founders separated the church and state with the belief that King George wasn’t any more divine than anyone else. Because of the Founders’ efforts, we are free to speak our minds and free to practice any religion in this country we call home. The first Amendment to the United States Constitution protects freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition. As Jesus’ followers and as United States’ citizens, we are two things at once. It’s helpful that Christian theology makes space for being two things at once – saint and sinner, bound and free, fearful and courageous, weak and strong, wise and foolish. Being a faithful citizen fits nicely into the Founder’s framework, too. Things go awry when faithful people decide that the country must be a theocracy, that it must be Christian under divine authority. This is called Christian Nationalism and its neither faithful nor patriotic.

Our Christian church year ends with a day to remind us that we have a king, one who ended up on trial as a threat to power. Like Pilate, we are challenged by the question of Jesus’ kingship while he awaits judgment. Let’s assume for the moment that we’re all cool with the idea of Jesus as king, as Christ the King. By his own admission to Pilate, Jesus’ kingdom is not from this world. It’s not about power or prestige. It’s a kingship that’s obedient as he listens to his mother at a wedding; it’s a kingship that’s grace-full as he hangs out with the shady woman at high noon; it’s a kingship that forgives unforgiveable human failing; it’s a kingship that cries with compassion at the pain of loss; it’s a kingship that’s non-violent through trial and execution, raising not one hand in violence against the people who inflict it; and, ultimately, it’s a kingship emptied out in self-sacrifice on a cross revealing the breadth of divine power in the depth of divine love. [11]

Christ’s kingship is the exact opposite of earthly power, calling us to obedience through the command to love our neighbors as ourselves when it does NOT serve our own self-interest, and to testify before governors and kings on behalf of people without power (see last week’s sermon). A different reason to cheer on Jesus, indeed! Jesus, Jesus he’s our king, has a different kind of ring.

John’s gospel proclaims that Christ’s kingship was born in skin and solidarity, as the Word made flesh, which means that Jesus is God and God is Jesus. [12] On this Christian New Year’s Eve, we are on the cusp of a new church year that begins next Sunday with Advent. During Advent, we await the sweet baby Jesus’ birth. A child who would grow up to stand trial in front of Pontius Pilate as embodied truth and hope for a weary world. Thanks be to God and amen.

____________________________________________

[1] John 2:1-11

[2] John 2:13-25

[3] John 3:1-21

[4] John 4:1-42

[5] John 8:1-11

[6] John 11:1-57

[7] John 12:1-8

[8] John 12:12-13:11

[9] Lucy Lind Hogan, Hugh Latimer Elderdice Professor of Preaching and Worship, Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington D.C. Commentary on John 18:33-37 for November 25, 2018. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3885 AND Frank C. Senn, 2007. The Not-So-Ancient Origins of Christ the King Sunday — Lutheran Forum

[10] John 3:16-17

[11] Koester, course notes, 12/1/2010. For further study see: Craig R. Koester, The Word of Life: A Theology of John’s Gospel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008).

[12] John 1:1-5, 14-18

Preaching, Sermons

Inflection Points and Intention Sunday [OR May God’s Welcome Be Our Welcome] Mark 13:1-8[9-10]

November 17, 2024 caitlin121608

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on November 17, 2024

[sermon begins after two Bible readings; Titus and Psalm readings are at the end of the sermon]

Mark 13:1-8[9-10] As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!” ²Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”
³When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John, and Andrew asked him privately, ⁴Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign that all these things are about to be accomplished? ⁵Then Jesus began to say to them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁶Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray. ⁷When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. ⁸For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs.
⁹As for yourselves, beware; for they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues; and you will stand before governors and kings because of me, as a testimony to them. ¹⁰And the good news must first be proclaimed to all nations.

Hebrews 10:19-25 Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, ²⁰by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), ²¹and since we have a great priest over the house of God, ²²let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. ²³Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. ²⁴And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, ²⁵not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.

[sermon begins]

Did anyone else note the irony of a gospel reading about the destruction of the temple on Intention Sunday? Intention Sunday, the very same day that we’re stating our intentions to give towards sustaining Augustana’s ministries AND renewing our building. Believe you me, I thought long and hard about changing this reading to something with more pizazz. But the more I sat with it, the more it became the perfect reading for today because we’re living at an inflection point in the human story – an inflection point of rapid change. An inflection point that defies predictable outcomes. While our moment in time is unique, we share similarities with Jesus followers across time who experienced other historic inflection points. Other contentious and confusing times. Other simultaneous death-and-life moments when there are endings and beginnings all over the place.

Mark’s gospel was written around the time the temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome, about 35 years after Jesus died. In the Bible story itself, Jesus’ disciples were reacting to his teachings about the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. Whether Jesus was looking ahead to an inevitable outcome or Mark was situating Jesus’ teachings for his readers isn’t knowable. But for first century Jesus followers, the destruction of the temple was an inflection point. Rome was on the rampage, annihilating Jews and the earliest Gentile and Jewish Christians. It’s truly a wonder that the early church lived through Rome’s campaign against them. It was a contentious time of confusion and fear. A simultaneous death-and-life moment right before the crescendo of Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection on Easter morning. And what did Jesus tell his disciples to do at that inflection point? Verse 9 – give testimony to governors and kings. Verse 10 – and the good news must be proclaimed to all nations. Give testimony and proclaim the gospel.

In the midst of our inflection point, what’s our task? Testimony and proclamation. Why do we exist as a church? Testimony and proclamation of the good news of Jesus. What does our worship do? Proclaim the good news. What does the Chancel Choir’s singing do? Proclaims the good news. What does our Human Dignity Delegate ministry do? Give testimony about the good news. What does generosity towards a building renewal campaign and sustaining ministries with our offerings do? Stewards our church of proclamation and testimony about the good news of Jesus.

Welcome 150 is more than a convenient chance to celebrate Augustana’s 150^th birthday and make the floors shiny by 2028.[1] Welcome 150 connects us to God, each other, and our community. Welcome 150 is about Jesus and a world deeply in need of God’s unconditional love. A love so powerful that darkness is transformed into light.[2] A love so powerful that hate is driven out and hope is welcomed in. This is not a syrupy sentiment. Unconditional Love fuels courage and is the only power that inspires transformation resembling Jesus and his ever-expanding circle of welcome into the love of God. The power of that love is why Jesus was so dangerous to Rome and the local religious leaders. The power of that love is ultimately why he was hung on that cross. Jesus, his love and his teachings, were just too threatening.

Jesus’ teaching gave his followers an assignment during an inflection point. Testimony and proclamation. Jesus’ teaching also gives us, his followers today, something to do during an inflection point. Testimony and proclamation of the good news of Jesus in our day-to-day lives. The reading from Hebrews also suggests a thing or two for the Jesus follower to do during an inflection point. Listen to these verses from Hebrews once more:

“Approach [God] with a true heart in assurance of faith;

Hold fast to the confession of our hope;

And provoke one another to love and good deeds.

not neglecting to meet together…but encouraging one another.”[3]

Hmmm….faith, hope, and love…the trifecta of what remains as God makes all things new.[4] In Hebrews, faith in what God is doing on our behalf and on behalf of all creation, opens up our approach to God with confidence won through Jesus Christ. We’re invited into the bold, humble confidence of Jesus’ ministry and Christ’s victory. These glimpses of God through the window of Christ inspire us to what the Hebrews preacher calls “holding fast to the confession of our hope while we provoke one another to love and good deeds.”

Six weeks ago, Welcome 150 launched with a capital campaign and 2025 giving appeal. Some of you were provoked to deliver inspiration bags to other members while others of you were provoked to open your door to them. (No small things for the introverts among us.) Some of you were provoked to write generosity stories that ended up in those bags. Here’s one story about those inspiration bag deliveries. Pastor Kent had preached that morning and was delivering bags that afternoon. At one apartment address, the woman who answered the door exclaimed, “I just saw you preach on the livestream!” She’s had a difficult time getting to worship and is able to stay connected with the proclamation. This conversation and connection would not have happened had we not been provoked by our campaign consultant.

When it comes to provocations, we tend to align ourselves with the role of provocateur who provokes love and good deeds. We generally like to be the sender rather than the receiver who is provoked. Here’s the deal though, the preacher of Hebrews is provoking us to regularly meet together, encouraging each other. One reason to meet together is that it’s tough to provoke and be provoked outside of ongoing relationships. It’s easy to forget that the One ultimately provoking us is the One who’s promising the radical healing of creation. The assurance of faith and the confession of hope comes to us through the Love of this One who provokes us to love – Jesus the Christ.

Last Sunday at the All-Congregation Brunch, Katrina Crook spoke. She chairs the Welcome 150 Steering Team. She is also part of a multigenerational Augustana family. Katrina provoked us to good deeds through Welcome 150 and our 2025 offerings by saying, “We know the outcome for Augustana if we do nothing; Now is the time to renew our building so that our ministry momentum may continue for future generations.” She has the authority to provoke us because we all regularly meet together and encourage one another.

In this inflection point that defies predictable outcomes, we’re called into testimony and proclamation of the good news of Jesus. Good news in which Jesus teaches us to love God, love our neighbors as ourselves, care for orphans and widows, welcome strangers, share resources, free the oppressed, feed the hungry, and pray for our enemies.[5] Our Augustana congregation has named our latest response to God’s grace and Jesus’ call, Welcome 150, as we ask for the courage to let God’s welcome be our welcome for children and adults of all ages, abilities, and attributes; and for the sake of those longing for unconditional love and the provocation to good deeds.

In a moment we’ll sing a hymn together. While we sing, you’re invited to bring forward your Statement of Intent cards, placing them in a basket with other cards to symbolize the impact of combining our gifts. Each verse will end with a few measures of organ music before the next verse begins allowing time for walking, for praying, and for singing our testimony and proclamation.

As church, we try to heed God’s call and hope we’re following God’s imagination over and above the management of our own fears. The world is rapidly changing, and the worldwide church is changing right along with it. No one knows what the outcome of any of those changes will be. Augustana has emerged from the pandemic with the momentum to live anew, so we’re going to err on the side of aligning with that momentum. As church, we’re called by the gospel to proclaim the gospel and give our testimony in the ways we’ve been gifted by the Holy Spirit to do so. By that same Spirit, we’re reassured of God’s love and grace as our efforts and our offerings unite to renew Augustana for God’s purposes now and in the generations to come.

________________________________________________

[1] Read more about Welcome 150 here: augustanadenver.org/welcome-150/

[2] John 1:5

[3] Hebrews 10:22-25

[4] 1 Corinthians 13:12-13

[5] This list is a compilation of Jesus’ teachings in the Bible.

_________________________________________________

Titus 3:4-5 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, ⁵he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.

Psalm 16:5-11 The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
⁶The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
I have a goodly heritage.
⁷I bless the LORD who gives me counsel;
in the night also my heart instructs me.
⁸I keep the LORD always before me;
because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
⁹Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also rests secure.
¹⁰For you do not give me up to Sheol,
or let your faithful one see the Pit.
¹¹You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Preaching, Sermons

Free Indeed! (OR A Sermon for Reformation Sunday) John 8:31-36, Romans 3:19-28, Psalm 46 (a.k.a. A Mighty Fortress is Our God)

October 27, 2024 caitlin121608

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on October 27, 2024

[sermon begins after two Bible readings Psalm are at the end of the sermon]

John 8:31-36 Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³² and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” ³³ They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”
³⁴ Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. ³⁵ The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. ³⁶ So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

Romans 3:19-28 Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. ²⁰ For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.
²¹ But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, ²³ since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; ²⁴ they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; ²⁶ it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.
²⁷ Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. By what law? By that of works? No, but by the law of faith. ²⁸ For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law.

[sermon begins]

When we say we’re doing something “for the sake of the gospel,” what do we mean? There are fancy ways to give answers to this question and there are simple ways. None of them are easy. Jesus tried it this way, “So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” Free indeed. I like the sound of that. He’s not talking about political freedom or financial freedom. Two big topics in the world right now. He’s talking about the freedom that he offers through himself. Some people describe Jesus’ freedom like this, “There is nothing you can do or not do to make God love you any more or any less.” That’s simple. Freeing. “There is nothing you can do or not do to make God love you any more or any less.” That is good news in a world that pressurizes the human experience in almost every conceivable way. God’s unconditional love can be a difficult message to trust, in part because the Bible can be compared to peeling layers of an onion and never arriving at the center. People want to make what God offers contingent on a human action, what Jesus calls “the law,” rather than focusing on God’s actions that bring the freedom Jesus describes. We tend to overestimate our own power and underestimate God’s. Free indeed.

“So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” Free. Most people want to be free and we’re at a point in the United States’ election process when the word is bandied about willy nilly. At this time of year, we tend to think of freedom as political in terms of who has governing authority. Our government’s democracy wouldn’t compute for people back in Jesus’ day during the Roman Empire. That didn’t stop Jesus from weighing in on troubling aspects of life, religion, and politics in the 1^st century. And it certainly didn’t stop Martin Luther in the 16^th century from pushing on the regional princes to do right by their people especially related to hunger and livelihood. As we vote, it’s easy to forget that we Jesus followers already have a savior. Candidates for elected office argue that their way is the only way. But Christians through the centuries realize that the subversive way of Jesus commands us to love God, and to love our neighbor as ourselves – both of which do freely in response to God’s love for us, no matter who holds elected office. Free indeed.

Our Reformation celebration today in worship is one specific to Lutheran Christians. Lutheran Christians get our name from a 16^th century German Catholic priest named Martin Luther – an ornery academic priest. His writings ignited the people’s imagination like wildfire. Luther started with his own crisis of faith. He was never certain that God forgave him enough to be received by God. He stumbled into the meaning of grace in a dark night of the soul. Luther confronted the Bible again and again, finally discovering that God’s grace must be utterly unconditional because otherwise we could never trust that we’d received it. And if God’s grace is unconditional, then no one controls it – not me, not you, not politicians, not the church. No one. Since no one controls it, the radical grace of Jesus is subversive and unpredictable. Free indeed.

Martin Luther was the Reformer who lived to tell the tale of grace. Others before him were put to death. Luther survived because he was hidden away by a sympathetic prince who protected him. His story survived because of printing press inventors and his bestie Melancthon who negotiated the theology of grace with other pastors in wider church circles. Otherwise, Luther could have been just another pastor who posted good ideas on a church bulletin board that no one ever read – his ideas swallowed up by the 300,000 revolutionaries fighting the German Peasants’ War in 1525. But his ideas lived on in pamphlets, catechisms, and Bibles in the common language. Local pastors, sly politicians, and faithful parents joined the sweeping history in real-time that pulsed with new life and grace. There are Protestants in Christianity because there were meddling Lutherans who held the church of Rome accountable to its theology and the people hurt by it. In fairness to our Catholic siblings in faith, many of Luther’s reforms have long since been put into place by the Roman Catholic Church. Remember, a little subversive grace goes a long way over the course of time. Love God. Love your neighbor as yourself. Free indeed.

Digging into the back-story of the Reformation is similar detective work to digging into the Bible like Luther did. The Bible includes many people and their stories pulsing together into the larger one. The highs and lows of our ancient Jewish cousins in the faith swooping into the 1^st Century story of Jesus, a Jewish rabbi from a backwater town, and the ragtag men and women who followed him as disciples. It would take many lifetimes to exhaust the riches of God’s love story for the world, through Jesus who called himself the “truth” in the Bible reading from John. Which brings us to today. This moment. Us. And especially you who are affirming the promises of baptism in the milestone that we call Confirmation.

Just last week, our Confirmation youth and I talked about unconditional grace. Grace is the opposite of how things work with grades in school. There’s no A+ that brings us closer to God because God is already with us. We don’t earn our way to God. There is peace in realizing that God is present with us regardless of how we’re doing as disciples. If there’s any doubt, read the Bible stories about disciples getting Jesus’ way wrong time and again. Luther was convinced that there is much we can disagree about in the Bible. Those permissible disagreements are called adiaphora. Christian theologians love arguing about whether something is adiaphora or not. Sounds simple, but try this one. What we say about Jesus isn’t Jesus. Only Jesus is Jesus. That’s why faith in Jesus is more like trust than it is an intellectual belief. Free indeed.

One of Luther’s gifts to the church is that Jesus’ grace is at the heart of faith. This grace doesn’t birth just any old freedom and it’s more than poetry. It is freedom through the love and grace of Jesus. When Jesus says that sin enslaves us and he sets us free, it’s difficult to understand what that means. We have a harder time admitting that we sin much less confessing it and our need for the very freedom Jesus offers through grace. But we know this much, we are free to ask questions for the sake of the gospel. Free to ask questions about the Bible, about history, about the church, about Jesus, about our faith and our doubt, about the mystery of God. You name it and we are free to ask it. No one, not even you with your questions, controls the radical grace of the God who is love. Free indeed!

____________________________

Song after the sermon:

_____________________________

Psalm 46 (a.k.a. A Mighty Fortress is Our God)

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
²Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
³though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.
Selah
⁴There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy habitation of the Most High.
⁵God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
God will help it when the morning dawns.
⁶The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
he utters his voice, the earth melts.
⁷The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.
Selah
⁸Come, behold the works of the LORD;
see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
⁹He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
¹⁰“Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
I am exalted in the earth.”
¹¹The LORD of hosts is with us;
the God of Jacob is our refuge.

Preaching, Sermons

From Managing to Imagining [OR Children Can See What Grownups Can’t] Mark 10:17-31 and Titus 3:4-5

October 13, 2024 caitlin121608

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on October 13, 2024

[sermon begins after two Bible readings]

Mark 10:17-31 As [Jesus] was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” ¹⁸Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. ¹⁹You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’ ” ²⁰He said to him, “Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth.” ²¹Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” ²²When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. ²³Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” ²⁴And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! ²⁵It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” ²⁶They were greatly astounded and said to one another, “Then who can be saved?” ²⁷Jesus looked at them and said, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” ²⁸Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” ²⁹Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, ³⁰who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. ³¹But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.”

[sermon begins]

Children are storytellers. It’s one of my favorite things about talking with kids. Conversations can range from their morning cereal to a favorite picture book to a fairy tale that they’ve made up in their head. What I can tell you from hanging out with them as a pediatric oncology nurse, as a parent, and as a pastor, is that children believe in possibility more than grownups do. They spend a lot less time managing their fears and expectations, and more time imagining what could happen. Of course, there are a million developmental reasons why that’s true. But it’s worth wondering what Jesus is saying about children in the verses leading up to todays’ Bible story of the rich man. Children had a lesser social status in the 1^st century than they do in the 21^st.Regardless, Jesus taught his disciples that welcoming children in his name meant welcoming God (Mark 9:36-37). He cautioned against putting stumbling blocks in front of children’s faith (Mark 9:42). And he taught them to receive the kingdom as a child and ended that teaching by taking the children up in his arms and blessing them (Mark 10:13-16). We’ve heard these stories over the past three Sundays.

One verse later, we come to the rich man and Jesus. Jesus had put the children down and was going on a journey when the man ran up to him, knelt, and asked him about what he must do to inherit eternal life. The man thought he knew the answer to his own question. He had kept the 10 commandments. Jesus shattered him when he told the man to sell everything and give it to the poor. The man left grieving. It was a step too far. We end up managing this story in all kinds of ways trying to figure out how we’re not like the man.[1] But let’s cut to the chase and save ourselves a heap ton of self-justification. We are ALL that man.

Being human is hard as often, or maybe more often, than it’s easy. There are limits and blind spots that we try to ignore, explain, and control. They cannot be managed individually. They can only be grieved as the man grieved walking away from Jesus. We’re never told what happens to this man. Whether or not he had a changed heart, or followed Jesus to the cross, or was at the birth of the church at Pentecost. We’re left with his grief. But we’re also left with something else.

The rich man is the only person in Mark’s Gospel who is described as “loved” by Jesus.[2] The only other place in Mark that love is used is in chapter 12 when Jesus passed the scribe’s test about the greatest commandment based on Old Testament Levitical law and Deuteronomic code.[3] Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God; the second is to love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus’ love for the rich man is as much a declaration as it is a relief. The man couldn’t manage Jesus’ demand. And the disciples couldn’t manage to understand it.

I have to admit that when I saw that this Bible story coincided with the launch of our Welcome 150 Capital Campaign and 2025 Annual Ministry Appeal it took a lot not to change the gospel reading to something easier. Preachers are not locked into the assigned lectionary readings. We can change them. But this story of command, money, love, grief, human limitations, and God’s imagination was ultimately too good to pass up.

Last fall, our congregation’s Council voted to investigate the possibility of a Capital Campaign. Our Property Committee had been keeping a list of needed projects for this beautiful 1959 mid-century modern building – Augustana’s third church building and location. Our Transition Team had been collecting and synthesizing many of your comments about who we think God is calling us to be and how our building, staff, and members fit into God’s call to welcome children and adults of all ages, abilities, and attributes.

Our mission statement developed a few years ago celebrates God’s grace and WELCOMES everyone to worship Jesus. It’s been almost 150 years since Swedish immigrants founded this congregation in 1878. With all those things coming together, Council caught the vision of what might be possible. While Welcome 150 is launching with a capital campaign, the Welcome 150 vision is “to deepen our relationships with God and each other, foster new relationships in the wider community, and intentionally renovate our facilities to create a welcoming and enduring space.”

Last January, church members with a range of personal skills and professional expertise started a methodical process of meeting, and talking, and dreaming, agreeing and disagreeing (remember: we celebrate unity, not uniformity), and imagining what might be possible both by way of projects and priorities and by way of raising the money to do them. Rather than relocating to a fourth church building, we are renewing our campus with projects related to energy efficiency, hospitality, accessibility, flexibility, theology, and more, in keeping with its mid-century modern form. Many people in our congregation are working on Welcome 150 from a variety of angles as we move forward together to each next right step. It’s inspiring to witness their faithful imagination as the momentum builds.

When our campaign consultant asked me a few weeks ago to write a prayer and choose a Bible verse that would reflect Welcome 150, I spent a lot of time in the Bible. It’s weird to dive into the Bible looking for something like that. I kept coming back to the language of renewal and who’s in charge of ours, eventually stumbling into the book of Titus. A letter likely written by one of Paul’s students a few decades after Paul’s first century ministry ended with his execution. Titus is a letter focused on the good works and structure of the church centered around God’s grace. A little like the book of James we just finished – similar in its intense demands from Jesus followers but oh so much more filled with grace.

Titus 3:4-5 reads this way:

“When the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.”

These verses in Titus remind us that any good works we attempt are anchored and inspired by what God has first done for us by God’s mercy. Even though the church is called “the risen body of Christ in the world,” we need to take great care to remember that the only one who is actually Jesus IS Jesus.

As church, we try to heed God’s call and hope we’re following God’s imagination over and above the management of our own fears. The world is rapidly changing, and the church is changing right along with it. No one knows what the outcome of any of those changes will be. As church, we’re called by the gospel to proclaim the gospel in the ways we’ve been gifted by the Holy Spirit to do so. With Welcome 150, our congregation is committing to the faithful witness built by a few Swedish immigrants and seeing what’s possible much like they did. They started a church to welcome arriving immigrants and would be stunned to see this congregation now. We are waaaay beyond welcoming Swedes as we build on their foundation of faith and “we welcome everyone to worship Jesus.”

Jesus reminded his disciples that the limits of human management are no match for God’s imagination. Jesus called the disciples “children” as he taught them, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” Perhaps Jesus was inviting his disciples to imagine the possibilities as only children can. In that spirit, we’re reassured of God’s love and mercy as our efforts and our offerings unite to renew Augustana for God’s purposes now and in the generations to come. We hope and pray for the courage to let our welcome be God’s welcome. Thanks be to God, and amen.

__________________________________________________

[1] Sarah Hinlicky Wilson, Pastor, Tokyo Lutheran Church, Tokyo, Japan. Commentary on Mark 10:17-31 for October 13, 2024. Commentary on Mark 10:17-31 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

Preaching, Sermons

A Sermon for Mental Illness Awareness Week – Mark 9:38-50, James 5:13-20, and Psalm 19:7-14

September 29, 2024 caitlin121608

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church, September 29, 2024

[sermon begins after the Bible reading; the other two readings follow the sermon]

Mark 9:38-50 ohn said to [Jesus], “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” ³⁹But Jesus said, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. ⁴⁰Whoever is not against us is for us. ⁴¹For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
⁴²“If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. ⁴³If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. ⁴⁵And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell. ⁴⁷And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, ⁴⁸where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
⁴⁹“For everyone will be salted with fire. ⁵⁰Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”

[sermon begins]

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

Kids are silly and playful and smart. They inspire songs that get faster each time we sing them and one of them ends like this [wait just a sec, I have to show you this one], “Hip-hip-hip-o-potamus…hip hip hooray, God made all of us; hip-hip-hip-o-potamus…hip hip hooray, God made all of us!”

Every Wednesday here on the front floor in our Sanctuary, the kiddos of our (Augustana) Early Learning Center are led through Chapel by Deacon Shanna, Sue Ann, Pastor Karen, Andy, and me. We take turns week to week telling Bible stories, singing songs, and praying with the kids who have lots of their own stories to tell and questions to ask. Affordable and quality early childhood education and care are tough to come by in Denver and becoming tougher every day. But you all are a part of making it happen. The kids in chapel are adorable and challenging and they can be somewhat invisible on the protected first floor of the downhill hill side of our building – a full two stories below the level we’re on now. And yet they’re one of our congregation’s most significant outreaches to our community.

Last Sunday, in the verses just before our Mark reading this Sunday, Jesus took a child into his arms to teach his disciples that to be the greatest you must aspire to be the least and the last. In verse 37, Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.” Jesus made the claim that children are sacramental, they are God among us.[1] He includes these vulnerable littles in God’s protection while he’s likely still holding that child.

He taught his disciples that it’s better to amputate, drown, or die than to put a stumbling block in between Jesus and the littles. By the way, those are not ways for us to hurt others. Jesus is commanding self-examination, not capital punishment. But that’s a whole other sermon. Equally as important, Jesus is not commanding self-mutilation or self-harm. That doesn’t jive with his teachings to love our neighbors as ourselves. This teaching, lit up with judgment, demands compassion from us – active compassion that shapes a world towards God’s vision of abundant life for vulnerable children and people. Children and people who are easily forgotten because they may not be in our line of sight, or we perceive them to be on a different level, or more to the point, on a lower level. Invisible in our day-to-day reality.

Invisibility brings me to the main point of the day as we spotlight Mental Illness Awareness Week coming up in the first week of October. Today our E4 Mental Health Team helps our congregation make the invisible visible. We light candles, pray, preach, and sing to focus on our loved ones’ and our own struggles with mental health. Next Sunday, our Health Ministry is inviting teens 14 years old and older, their parents, and other caring adults to watch My Sister Liv, a movie that spotlights one family’s story that includes Liv’s death by suicide. Research shows that talking about suicide reduces suicidal ideation which reduces attempts which reduces deaths. Subjects that end up off limits or taboo make healthy conversations about them more difficult. This is as true about mental illness as it is about money, sex, and politics. Healthy conversations start with at least being willing to raise the topic. It’s free to adult and teens over 14 years old. There will be childcare for those too young to be there. Come. Let Liv and her family teach us how to do things differently.

The movie will be followed by a short panel discussion that I’m on alongside mental health professionals. Why include a pastor in a panel about mental health? Because church has done a poor job on the issue of mental health. Some of that is because the culture hasn’t understood it either so there are Christians telling each other that all they have to do to get better is to have more faith or pray harder. Maybe even worse, Christians telling non-Christians that if only they had faith, then they wouldn’t be in the mental mess they’re in. Faith isn’t protective against mental illness. However, we do know that being part of a faith community offers relationships that strengthen our capacity to connect with each other about hard things like being mentally ill.

As church, we’re called to be a peculiar people who live a little differently into the future hope to which we’ve been called. God’s call into community is in stark opposition to the cultural value of rugged individualism that tells us we can fix ourselves through self-help. Which brings us to the fifth and final week of Bible readings from the book of James. James wrote about faith that makes demands of us. He was worried that if grace is too easy and too free, then the people most affected by our sin will be the powerless, the invisible.[2] There’s a reason why Lutheran Christians are partial to being saved by grace through faith. It’s because grace is God’s unconditional claim on us. We don’t make our way to God by any amount of do-goodery. If that were the case, how would we ever know if we’d been good enough? Trusting God’s grace IS the option. But James says, “Oh, so you have faith, good, nice, how about you show me.”[3] In our verses today, he’s done a solid job showing what faithful behavior looks like in the church. Pray for those who suffer. Sing with those who are happy. Anoint those who are sick. Forgive those who sin. Welcome back those who left.

None of us can do all the good things we’re called to do all of the time – to argue that we can is just absurd. But the beauty of the church is that we are a people who can take turns praying, singing, anointing, forgiving, and welcoming. This is as true for mental illness as it is for everything else. Opening up taboo topics acknowledges our whole selves before God and that God’s grace is enough to contain us. Talking about things that we’d rather didn’t exist reassures our children that we can talk about things that are true even if they’re hard. Our courage in talking about hard things means that our children don’t feel that they have to protect the grown-ups around them.

In the same breath, it’s also important that we help each other see the fullness of life. Sharing the events, relationships, and wonders that delight us and make us feel lucky to be alive are just as important to our well-being and the well-being of our children. The delight and wonder are an antidote to the overwhelming news from just about every part of the globe including here in the States. Delight and wonder don’t erase the challenges or the pain but they do remind us that life is a gift. They’re not rose-colored glasses. Delight and wonder are life illuminating glasses that reveal the goodness of life alongside the sorrow. The Hippo Song alongside the lament. The laughter of the small child embedded in the complexity of adulting.

We’re each differently equipped to offer help and support to those of us experiencing the lament of illness. If you yourself are struggling with mental illness, even still you can offer solidarity to someone else in a similar struggle – the laughter over a shared reality that is not at all funny is utterly priceless – a shared song that reminds us God is with us in the darkness and in the light.

In a minute, we’re going to sing a song not quite as silly as the Hippo Song but just as reassuring of God’s presence and love of us in the darkness and the light. During our song we have the choice to light candles that illuminate our prayers for the people we know who struggle with mental illness.

Our song reminds us that they are not alone, and neither are we. We are together and God is with us. Thanks be to God, and amen.

_____________________________________________________

[1] Philip Ruge-Jones, Associate Pastor, Grace Lutheran Church, Eau Claire, WI. Commentary on Mark 9:38-50 for September 29, 2024. Commentary on Mark 9:38-50 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[2] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Discussion about Bible readings for September 29, 2024. Working Preacher’s Sermon Brainwave: #984: Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 26B) – September 29, 2024 (libsyn.com)

[3] Ibid.

________________________________________________________

James 5:13-20 Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. ¹⁴Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. ¹⁵The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. ¹⁶Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. ¹⁷Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. ¹⁸Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.
¹⁹My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, ²⁰you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner’s soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.

Psalm 19:7-14

The teaching of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom to the simple.
⁸The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes.
⁹The fear of the Lord is clean and endures forever;
the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.
¹⁰More to be desired are they than gold, more than much fine gold,
sweeter far than honey, than honey in the comb.
¹¹By them also is your servant enlightened,
and in keeping them there is great reward.
¹²Who can detect one’s own offenses?
Cleanse me from my secret faults.
¹³Above all, keep your servant from presumptuous sins; let them not get dominion over me;
then shall I be whole and sound, and innocent of a great offense.
¹⁴Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.

Preaching, Sermons

Pure Gospel Comfort and Held Accountable by Love (Yup, both) Mark 7:24-37 and James 7:1-10, 14-17

September 8, 2024 caitlin121608

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on September 8, 2024

[sermon begins after two Bible readings]

Mark 7:24-37 [Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice,²⁵but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. ²⁶Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ²⁷He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” ²⁸But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” ²⁹Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” ³⁰So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
³¹Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. ³²They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. ³³He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. ³⁴Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” ³⁵And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. ³⁶Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. ³⁷They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

James 7:1-10, 14-17 My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? ²For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, ³and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, “Have a seat here, please,” while to the one who is poor you say, “Stand there,” or, “Sit at my feet,” ⁴have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? ⁵Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? ⁶But you have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? ⁷Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
⁸You do well if you really fulfill the royal law according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” ⁹But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it.
¹⁴What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? ¹⁵If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, ¹⁶and 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? ¹⁷So faith by itself, if it has no

[sermon begins]

A couple Sundays ago, we sang to Charlie after her baptism:

♫ Raindrops, oceans, lakes, and rivers, welcome child of God.

Mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, welcome child of God.

When the world feels wide around you, when the dark of night surrounds you,

We are here to tend and guide you, welcome child of God. ♫

Pure gospel comfort. Those words. The lullaby-esque tune. The sweet sweet sound of so many of us singing together to the newly baptized. Whether 9 days or 99 years old, baptism is a powerful moment. We hear our truest name – child of God. “Child of God, you have been sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” Child of God claimed and named by the God who is Love.[1]

Children of God grouped together are called the church. Ooof, that’s a bumpy landing The church, God’s utterly imperfect instrument of God’s movement in the world. Not God’s only instrument. There are lots of Bible stories about God working and moving wherever God wills, through whomever God calls. The church is never the only way God works. Phew, thanks be to God. But the church is a primary way that God works. Celebrating the grace of God, we are set apart for God’s purposes and called the church. One of those purposes is to comfort. To hold other people in God’s tender mercies. To be a people healed by Jesus at the soul level. To be compassionate and self-sacrificing.

Healed by the light of Christ way deep down in our darkest places, we become able to shine God’s loving light. A loving light that fills us with hope Sunday to Sunday, sustaining us through the pain in our own lives and the pain in the world. A loving light that we can share with other people in pain who may never again darken the door of a church. People whose church experiences haven’t gone well. Those of us who still go to church or have returned to the church have friends and family who resemble this remark. Their stories are difficult. Pain inflicted by well-intended Jesus-people is bad enough. Pain inflicted by malicious people in the name of Jesus is anathema to the way of Jesus. Our experience and example as church people, as Jesus’ people, mean hope for a hurting world. Especially in a world struggling with division, pain, and suffering.

“God’s work. Our hands.” Sunday implicates our church hands whether at work or school or hanging out with friends or repackaging rice and beans for Metro Caring’s grocery shelves.[2] It doesn’t get much more “God’s work. Our hands.” than Jesus’ second greatest commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus’ second greatest commandment, found in the Bible’s gospel books of Matthew, Mark, AND Luke, is quoted in the James’ reading today.[3] Except, here in James, it’s called “the royal law.” And goes on to say that “faith without works is dead.” This is a harsh teaching. Like I said last Sunday, if you were handed the book of James as your introduction to the Bible, it might give you pause. Even Martin Luther rejected James for its lack of explicit grace.

Regardless of Luther’s frustration with it, the book of James has its place in the Bible. It has its place when the need around us becomes too much, and the pressure collapses us inward towards despair – immobilizing the church in fear. The book of James has its place when our faith becomes a wall, blocking out other people for any reason. James is the persuasion that we sometimes need to keep going on behalf of our neighbor. It holds our faith accountable. James brooks no argument and accepts no excuses about faith revealed in good works. The implicit grace in James is that God’s law must be about love because other books in the Bible say that “God is love.” God’s love embedded in God’s law curbs the worst of our behavior and calls us into God’s good work of love in the world. Active, meaningful tasks are the very antidote for despair.[4] They don’t have to be grand gestures although those are cool. Augustana Homes being built down the street as affordable homes for families probably fit that category, as do rice and beans repackaging.[5] Mostly, God’s work is quiet, behind-the-scenes stuff – showing up for a friend in crisis, welcoming a stranger, feeding someone who’s hungry, donating blood to save a life…

Like our ancestors in the faith who wrote the Bible, today’s Christians often disagree about what God’s work in the world looks like. Interpretations of parables and stories vary wildly. Take James’ high standards for faithful good works and Mark’s story about Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman. To hear James tell it, the only way to live out Jesus’ call to us is by the purest good works on behalf of the neighbor in Jesus’ name. But the story in Mark argues that God’s purposes are manifested in the actions of unexpected people without a confession of faith.

The Syrophoenician woman was a Greek by religion and language who lived at the seashore miles away from Galilee where Jesus and his disciples were from. The Gospel of Matthew says she was a Canaanite but we’re not going to get hung up on that discrepancy.[6] (Although, it’d be fun to argue whether or not that’s an important distinction.) The woman was a Gentile, a non-Jew, desperate for Jesus’ help to heal of her critically ill daughter. Jesus knew just what to say to draw this woman into speaking her mind.

Some people, including me, find it difficult to think that Jesus needed to learn anything and prefer thinking that Jesus had the whole interaction figured out as a teaching moment for his disciples. After all, he is the embodiment of a loving God and the way he calls her a dog sounds incredibly offensive. Regardless, she didn’t confess Jesus as Lord. She bowed to him and then argued that even dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the kids’ table. That was it. Does her faithful act of challenging Jesus qualify as a good work according to James? Jesus healed her daughter because of what she said. It’s such an odd and offensive story that theologians will likely debate it until kingdom come. Theology debates are fun and intense. But if all we do is talk, our neighbors, the ones we’re called to love, become obscured in the dust and debris of debate and help for them never sees the light of day much less the light of God.

One thing seems clear though. Jesus had an ever-expanding ministry that included unlikely people. It’s why some of us respond to the royal law in James, to love your neighbor as yourself, as the cross-laden hill we’re willing to die on. It’s the work we think Jesus calls us into through stories like the desperate Syrophoenician woman and her demon afflicted daughter.

There is going to be occasional conflict about what being a Jesus follower means or how we as the church work together to be God’s hands in the world or if it’s even right for us to try. Some of us may be more comfortable working with our neighbors in poverty. Some of us may be ready to dive into advocacy and legislative efforts. Some of us may have gifts for showing up for people in crisis. The list goes on and on. Regardless of specific tasks, it’s worth walking with the question as a church. Jesus is bigger than our arguments about what God’s work looks like and greater than our limited capacity to live it out in Christ-shaped lives. Which brings us back to love.

The wonder of this small, revolving planet that sustains our lives makes it hard to fathom how much God must love us. Us. Broken, misbehaving wonders of creation. Created good yet challenged to be good. Beloved yet disbelieving just how much we are loved. Our identity as baptized children of God means daily dying to the way we hurt ourselves and each other and rising into the way of Jesus who was the embodiment of God’s love. The world can feel way too wide and nights oh so terribly dark. We, the church, are called to tend and guild in faith, hope, and love. “God’s work. Our hands.” Sunday reminds us to look to Jesus’ ways of loving our neighbors as ourselves wherever we encounter each other because we have been loved first by God.

Thanks be to God and amen.

_________________________________________________

[1] 1 John 4:16a.

[2] www.metrocaring.org

[3] Jesus’ second greatest commandment can be found in Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, and Luke 10:27.

[4] Adam Grant. “There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing. New York Times: April 19, 2021. Feeling Blah During the Pandemic? It’s Called Languishing – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[5] www.augustanadenver.org/augustana-homes/

[6] Matthew 15:22

Preaching, Sermons

Bodies Made for Delight – [OR Let’s Get Real – Real Bodies, Real Benediction] Song of Songs (Solomon)

September 1, 2024 caitlin121608

**sermon art: The Song of Songs by Elena Kotliarker

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on September 1, 2024

[sermon begins after two Bible readings; the James reading is at the end of the sermon]

Song of Songs (Solomon) 7:8-13

⁸The voice of my beloved!
Look, he comes,
leaping upon the mountains,
bounding over the hills.
⁹My beloved is like a gazelle
or a young stag.
Look, there he stands
behind our wall,
gazing in at the windows,
looking through the lattice.
¹⁰My beloved speaks and says to me:
“Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
¹¹for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
¹²The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
is heard in our land.
¹³The fig tree puts forth its figs,
and the vines are in blossom;
they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away.”

Mark 7:1-7, 14-16, 20-23 Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around [Jesus], ²they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. ³(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; ⁴and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) ⁵So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” ⁶He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
⁷in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
⁸You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
¹⁴Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: ¹⁵there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.
²¹“For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, ²²adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. ²³All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

[sermon begins]

“We give you thanks, O God, for in the beginning your Spirit moved over the waters and by your Word you created the world, calling forth life in which you took delight.”

Delight! There’s a happy thought. God’s delight. We hear that line regularly in worship at Augustana during a baptismal prayer in which we celebrate God’s delight in created life. Through the waters of baptism God draws us into God’s delight. It’s easy to miss that message because we the church often focus on the sin that draws us from God. We open worship with confessions about how we fall short. Rightly so. God’s grace is to be celebrated in the face of the darkness we inflict on each other and on ourselves. We would be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge our individual and collective contributions to the world’s chaos and take action to make amends and try not only to not hurt people but help them. But today’s Song of Solomon reading reminds us that delight is part of the human experience. Give it a read. It’s short. The book’s title is better translated Song of Songs. Think of it as a best of the best, like King of Kings or Lord of Lords or holiest of holies.[1] The G.O.A.T. – the Greatest of All Time – Song.

Song of Songs is erotic poetry that delights in life, love and bodies. The church over time has tried to shift from the personal ardor of the song by applying the book as a metaphor for God’s love and delight in the Jewish people (named the people Israel in the Older Testament) or Jesus as the bridegroom in mystical union with the bride of the church. That’s all well and good. Metaphor away. Good poetry is perfect for metaphoric use. But let’s take the song at its word for a moment. What would the world look like without the church’s long practice of shame when it comes to bodies and sexuality? What would it look like if the Puritans who colonized America hadn’t held the power of the pulpit and the town square, laying the foundation for a culture of shame about bodies that prevails today. A culture simultaneously suspicious of real beauty while creating impossible ideals AND fearful of bestowing a benediction on anything that might be contrary to God’s delight. Almost like we’re afraid that God’s grace isn’t powerful or unconditional enough to forgive the relational sins that Jesus lists – “fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.” This list is what happens when we lose ourselves in self-absorption over and against loving our neighbor as ourselves.

These hurtful behaviors are what happens when the commandments aren’t followed, and we break our relational obligations to each other. As Christians, we hear Paul’s letters in the Bible separating the law from salvation to the point that we forget that the law’s intention is life-giving. Christian scripture often reminds us that God’s relationship with us does not depend on tallying up points in our favor by following the law. God’s relationship with us depends on God’s goodness first and not our own achievements of obedience.

Lists like these are supposed to help us figure out where our behavior is going sideways. They help us take stock of how we’re living the way of Jesus. But rather than turning them inward to shine a light into our own darkness, church types throughout the centuries have turned them outward to shame other people and expel them from the very faith communities in which we try and fail and try again. Jesus’ list helps to take stock of our relationship with God and each other. There’s no doubt that our baptism in Christ calls us to an obedient life that shuns sin and shines love.

Song of Songs, the whole book, may help us take a step closer to healing the damage done when religion treats sexuality and spirituality as if they are mutually exclusive.[2] Too much of a good thing can obviously be a bad thing – see Jesus’ list again as a reference. But as the one who turned water into wine at a wedding, Jesus is clearly NOT anti-fun.[3] We even have this book in the Bible – Song of Songs – that spotlights the delight of our embodied humanity. God created us to reflect God’s sheer delight into the world.[4]

It’s easy to see how puritanical pontificating became a thing. All we have to do is look at the book of James. We’re in the first of five weeks of James’ readings during Sunday worship. Go ahead and read that book, too. It’s five brief chapters that are kind of like the book of Proverbs or wisdom literature in the Old Testament. Be advised, these blurbs about right living are delivered with strong words and consequences. If you were handed the book of James as your introduction to the Bible, you might pause to wonder who could possibly attain the pure life it demands. Lutheran Christians can struggle with James because it leads with action, calling for obedient action as evidence of a living faith. Martin Luther even called it the “epistle of straw” for its lack of emphasis on grace.

It’s not clear who James was written for, but it seems to be written as encouragement for a group of Jesus followers who are at risk from a hostile ruling class.[5] And the encouragement towards obedience and action seems intended to connect thoughts about faith with living the faith. It’s easier to be quiet than to live out our faith with courage. The book of James challenges us to be more than hearers of the word by becoming doers of the word. We know from experience that our hearts contain more than the sins listed in Mark. Humans are creatures capable of great compassion, courage, and care.

James connects those positive actions of the heart with God when he writes that, “Every generous act of giving, with every gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” We’ll be talking more about that next week on “God’s work. Our hands.” Sunday, and we’ll be doing more about that when we repackage rice and beans for MetroCaring’s grocery store.[6]

Echoing Jesus in the gospels, James has similar concerns about justice and about what comes from the heart.[7] James is not wrong. It is often the longing of our hearts that misdirects us. It DOES take spiritual discipline and often some arguably miserable mistakes to change our hearts. Baptism assures us that we daily die and rise into the way of Jesus and his unconditional grace. Surrendering to the God who delights in life, in our lives, may be a place to start over Labor Day weekend when it’s easy to create a false choice between work and rest. We Christians can take anything and everything, especially ourselves, so seriously. It’s good to be reminded that God delights in life and that the Bible’s complexity includes assurance that our bodies are created for good and even for delight. Blessed assurance, indeed.

Song after the Sermon

Blessed Assurance (ELW 638)

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!
Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!
Heir of salvation, purchase of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.
- Refrain:
  This is my story, this is my song,
  Praising my Savior all the day long;
  This is my story, this is my song,
  Praising my Savior all the day long.
Perfect submission, perfect delight,
Visions of rapture now burst on my sight;
Angels, descending, bring from above
Echoes of mercy, whispers of love.
Perfect submission, all is at rest,
I in my Savior am happy and blest,
Watching and waiting, looking above,
Filled with His goodness, lost in His love.

__________________________________________________

[1] Joy J. Moore, Professor of Biblical Preaching, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Discussion of Bible readings for Sunday, September 1, 2024. Working Preacher’s Sermon Brainwave: #980: Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 22B) – September 1, 2024 (libsyn.com)

[2] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Discussion of Bible readings for Sunday, September 1, 2024. Working Preacher’s Sermon Brainwave: #980: Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 22B) – September 1, 2024 (libsyn.com)

[3] John 2:1-11

[4] Skinner, Ibid.

[5] Matthew Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Sermon Brainwave Podcast for Lectionary Texts for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost on August 29, 2021. https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/799-14th-sunday-after-pentecost-ord-22b-aug-29-2021

[6] MetroCaring.org

[7] Moore, Ibid.

___________________________________________________

James 1:17-27 Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. ¹⁸In fulfillment of his own purpose he gave us birth by the word of truth, so that we would become a kind of first fruits of his creatures.
¹⁹You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; ²⁰for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness. ²¹Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.
²²But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. ²³For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; ²⁴for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like. ²⁵But those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being not hearers who forget but doers who act—they will be blessed in their doing.
²⁶If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. ²⁷Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.

Preaching, Sermons

Wisdom Sets Her Table for the Senseless [Proverbs 9:1-6 and John 6:51-58]

August 18, 2024 caitlin121608

**Sermon Art: Family Dinner, Yuri Andreevich Kovalenko (1979)

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on August 18, 2024

[sermon begins after two Bible readings]

Proverbs 9:1-6

¹Wisdom has built her house,
she has hewn her seven pillars.
²She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
she has also set her table.
³She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls
from the highest places in the town,
⁴“You that are simple, turn in here!”
To those without sense she says,
⁵“Come, eat of my bread
and drink of the wine I have mixed.
⁶Lay aside immaturity, and live,
and walk in the way of insight.”

John 6:51-58

[Jesus said,] ⁵¹“I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
⁵²The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” ⁵³So Jesus said to them, “Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. ⁵⁴Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; ⁵⁵for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. ⁵⁶Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. ⁵⁷Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me. ⁵⁸This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But the one who eats this bread will live forever.”

[sermon begins]

Wisdom sets her table. Her house is decked out down to the twinkle lights on the pillars. There’s meat in the smoker, sangria by the pool, and a table setting so full of Pinterest pins it’s downright holey. Wisdom is ready to party. No one can accuse her of holding a party only for people equal to her eternal, creative power. She flings wide the doors and shouts from the rooftops. She calls for simple and senseless people. Wisdom’s table is ready, dear friends, and it’s our simple, senseless ears that are listening. Listening through the many voices competing for airspace. Listening for how Wisdom, in her eternal glory, makes sense to the senseless.

Regarding our simple and senseless ears, Wisdom doesn’t seem to be inviting us into a new opinion. Opinions are everywhere these days. It seems like everyone should be ready to weigh in about all things at all times. We confuse wisdom with the social tool of opinion. A tool that we use at parties, in the hallways at work, via text with our friends, on social media, in the car on the way home from church – you name the location and we’re wielding our opinions like clubs. To be clear, opinions actually ARE important. They affect real lives in real time. Opinions decide where food ends up, where people live, how we drive our cars, and who gets elected. Opinions guide our choices in each moment of each day. Opinions matter. However, today’s Proverbs reading invites us to consider the difference between opinion and Wisdom. Not the least of which is that opinions decide who gets to be at a party, by contrast, anyone and everyone is invited when Wisdom calls us to the table.

A few weeks ago, I attended a preaching retreat at Ghost Ranch in New Mexico. The hosts were professors from Luther Seminary. Professors who record the Sermon Brainwave podcast that I often listen to as part of sermon prep. During the retreat, I was excited to listen to preaching by the professors as part of our worship time together. Every preacher needs a preacher. I’m grateful to hear the good news proclaimed and for the faith that is sustained by the Word. I was excited to talk preaching with other preachers from all over the world, listening to their experience of preaching and wildly different congregations. And I was excited to learn more techniques, tips, and theology of preaching. Go ahead, ask me whether or not preachers should tell personal stories in sermons or the pros and cons of manuscript versus extemporaneous preaching. Or guess my opinion about whether or not to weave together scripture readings in the course of one sermon.

The point is, we all have opinions on all kinds of topics. Opinions can be widely held (of COURSE, Billy Joel is the Piano Man!). Opinions can also rightly hold people and institutions accountable for misbehavior – from employers exploiting employees…to our schools’ support of teachers in classrooms full of priceless children…to our government’s accountability to the people. We know that opinions can be limited, biased, uninformed, and misleading. We also know that opinions can be wise and insightful. We know all of these things and, still, our opinions are challenged by Wisdom’s invitation. Come hungry to the table because Wisdom is preparing food.

Ahhhh, food. I love food which for me means a love of cooking that includes cooking shows, movies about cooking, pictures of food, recipes, and foodie restaurants. But the best part of cooking is actually cooking. In the past year, cooking has taken on a different quality. It’s a simple pleasure that feels like life. It’s sensory in a way that settles my spirit. Slicing, dicing, sautéing, smelling, tasting, serving, chewing, swallowing…you get the idea. It’s not much of a stretch to envision Wisdom’s invitation that includes food, wine, and people sharing supper. Although it’s quite a stretch across space and time from Wisdom’s table to Jesus’ invitation to eat flesh and blood in wine and bread. Wisdom sets the table and Jesus keeps it weird. There’s a bumper sticker for you – Wisdom sets the table, and Jesus keeps it weird.

Jesus doesn’t speak the classic words of communion in the Gospel of John. The classic words of communion, what we call the Words of Institution, begin with the words, “On the night in which he was betrayed, Jesus took the bread…” Jesus’ Bread of Life Discourse in the sixth chapter is what he throws down. And what Jesus gives us in these verses is weird – flesh, blood, bread, and wine weird. The weirdness moves the crowd around Jesus from complaining to outright arguing with each other as they start forming their opinions about what he’s said.

At this level, Jesus doesn’t seem interested in the opinions. Nor does Jesus seem interested in being taken into our hearts. Jesus seems interested in our mouths, gullets and bellies, in what’s digested and becomes part of bodies, in what he calls true food and true drink. This word “true” in the Greek, alēthēs (ἀληθὴς), is literally translated as “what can’t be hidden.”[1] Another way we say this in the church is that Jesus is truly present in, with, and under the bread and wine.

Jesus tells us that eating this true food IS abiding in him and he in us. This abiding is happening at the gut level – digestion and nourishment. Jesus abides in our very selves at the cellular level. Literally, in our flesh. The infinite God contained in the finite. The divine mystery in bread and wine and in our very bodies. This is insight from the inside out. Talk of insight brings us full circle back to Wisdom’s table. In the Proverbs reading, walking in the way of insight is defined as knowledge of the Holy One. This is not meant as insight forming yet one more opinion to be explained and understood. Rather this insight is a relationship with the Holy One who is Jesus. The living Jesus sent by a living God.[2]

The Jesus in John’s gospel throws down communion words about flesh, blood, bread, and wine while he’s living his life early in his ministry. In the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke as well as for Paul in First Corinthians, communion words are spoken at a Passover meal on the eve of his death.[3] In the gospel of John, Jesus’ words about flesh, blood, bread, and wine draw life into focus – bringing the eternal in the flesh, into the now of living.[4] Jesus IS life. More than that, Jesus is life now, today, as the eternal, infinite God meets us in bread and wine. Neither just a crusty remembrance of life ended on a cross in the past, nor a golden ticket into a future life to be postponed as long as possible. Jesus promises life today – the abundant life of God in real relationship with us here and now.[5]

God’s source and norm of life brings hope to a world choking on opinions that end relationships and that hope is good news for our simple, senseless ears.

And we embody hope and life in the world as we abide in Jesus and he in us.

Welcome to table and Wisdom’s feast.

______________________________________________________

Song After the Sermon ELW 518: We Eat the Bread of Teaching

Refrain:

We eat the bread of teaching, drink wine of wisdom, are given here a taste of the kingdom. Together joined, the greatest and the least, we all are one at Wisdom’s holy feast.

Wisdom calls throughout the city, knows our hunger, and in pity gives her loving invitation to the banquet of salvation.

Simple ones whose hearts are yearning, come and gain from Wisdom’s learning; bread and wine she is preparing, know her loving in the sharing.

Enter with delight and singing, for her richness now is bringing us this joyous celebration; eat and drink in jubilation.

Text: Omer Westendorf, 1916-1997; Music: Jerry Ray Brubaker, b. 1946

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[1] ἀληθὴς as interpreted by HELPS Word-studies at https://biblehub.com/greek/227.htm.

[2] John 6:57

[3] Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:15-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26

[4] Karoline Lewis, Luther Seminary, Associate Professor of Preaching and the Marbury E. Anderson Chair of Biblical Preaching. “A Living Bread” (John 6:51-58) on Dear Working Preacher for August 19, 2018. https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3667

[5] John 10:10 [Jesus said,] I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

Preaching, Sermons

Everyone Eats at Jesus’ Table [OR Last Supper? Bacchanalia? Does it Matter?] John 6:35, 41-51

August 11, 2024 caitlin121608

**sermon photo: X user @kylenabecker

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on August 11, 2024

[sermon begins after two Bible readings; Ephesians reading is at the end of the sermon]

1 Kings 19:4-8 [Elijah] went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.”⁵Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, “Get up and eat.” ⁶He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. ⁷The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, “Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.” ⁸He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God.

John 6:35, 41-51 Jesus said to [the crowd,] “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”
⁴¹Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” ⁴²They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” ⁴³Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. ⁴⁴No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day. ⁴⁵It is written in the prophets, ‘And they shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. ⁴⁶Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷Very truly, I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸I am the bread of life. ⁴⁹Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. ⁵⁰This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. ⁵¹I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

[sermon begins]

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” He didn’t just say it once. He kept saying it. (Hence why this sixth chapter of John is often called The Bread of Life Discourse.)[1] Adding fuel to his carb-loaded speech, Jesus also said that that he was “living bread from heaven.” The crowd couldn’t understand. Generations of Jews recite a daily prayer in good faith that only God is God and God is One.[2] For Jesus to self-identify using THE divine “I AM” statement, the same “I AM” name used by God with Moses. Moses was to tell the people of Israel that, “I AM has sent me to you.”[3] When Jesus was feeding 5,000 of them a few verses ago in this same sixth chapter of John, the crowd of Jews were ready to enthrone Jesus as king. But calling himself “I AM?!!” That crossed the line. No wonder they were complaining. This was tough stuff. They couldn’t accept it from Jesus. But not because God wasn’t already a sustaining God in scripture.

The crowd knew the ancestral stories from past generations like God’s provision of manna from heaven for Moses and the people Israel, and like God’s provision for Elijah when he fell into despair after fleeing Queen Jezebel who wanted to kill him. He was full of fear and more than ready to die under that broom tree. He preferred a quiet death over the one that the Queen would inflict. God’s angels woke Elijah up from his nap and fed him cake baked on desert stones. Elijah’s story is a good reminder to sleep and snack when things seem at their most bleak. More importantly, it’s a reminder that God has long been a sustaining God through the covenant given to the Jews that expanded to become the covenant given through Jesus to Gentiles, non-Jews.

It’s the new covenant that is the sticking point for the crowds around Jesus. Three Sundays ago, the sixth chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus met their 5,000 immediate needs and quieted their hunger pangs. Last Sunday, Jesus and the people talked about their ongoing need for food and the security it brings. It’s well known that you must feed people before anything else can happen. If people are hungry, they cannot absorb information. The arc of the Bread of Life Discourse started with their immediate needs and then moved towards their ongoing needs.[4] The third move from Jesus is about eternal life. In John’s gospel, eternal life is layered with abiding which is layered with believing which is layered with relationship. Jesus uses all these words – eternal life, abiding, believing, and relationship – to convey the intimate relationship that Jesus has with the Father who is the eternal One.[5] It’s their abiding relationship, their oneness, that we are also drawn into because of Jesus, the bread of life from heaven.

Some of you may know about a particular controversy during the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris.[6] It was a raucous scene of colorful, flamboyant people sitting behind a long table. The central figure wore a crown and was the D.J. for a dance party. When I saw it, I thought, huh, the Last Supper, that’s a different take on it. I know enough to be dangerous when it comes to serious art and my mind connected the Opening Ceremony scene to Da Vinci’s painting, “Last Supper.”[7] Turns out, that wasn’t the intention of the producers of that scene. Their goal was an homage to the original Roman Bacchanalia festivals celebrating the Greek God Bacchus. But at the end of the day, it didn’t matter what their intention was because some Christians reacted strongly against the scene. Things got ugly across the social medias. The complaining was loud. The reaction that followed was neither patient nor kind. But I’d like to pause, two weeks after the Opening Ceremony, and wonder about the collective Christian imagination that did see the Lord’s Supper taking place on that Paris bridge. That colorful, joyous scene and all that followed was a missed opportunity to talk about what the Lord’s Supper does and why the bread of life is holy to those of us who receive it and are transformed by it, and that everyone is welcome at Jesus’ table.

Jesus said, “I AM the bread of life.” The same Jesus who came into the world that God so loved and explicitly said that he didn’t come to condemn the world.[8] But it didn’t take long for Jesus followers to begin condemning the world rather than loving it. I’m curious about what that means in terms of the people we can’t imagine he would include in his promises and how we justify our words and behavior condemning them. Our Savior is the bread of life, the “I AM” who abides with us, bringing us into full communion with the eternal One, transforming our hearts to love the world with his heart. Now that’s a promise to rest in, hope for, and act upon.

How then should we act? The Ephesians reading offers us life-giving actions to practice. Apparently, the Ephesian church needed a lot of practice to live in unity across their different perspectives. Perhaps they are a good example for our times, our nation, and our world, especially when some Christian siblings and sometimes even we think that defending the faith means holding people in contempt rather than compassion. This sounds incredibly appealing for what ails us. Hear my paraphrase of the reading:

Be angry but don’t sin. Work honestly to have something to share with those in need. Speak no evil. Speak only grace-filled words that build up. Put away bitterness, wrath, anger, wrangling, slander, and all malice. Be kind, tenderhearted, and forgive as Christ forgives you. Imitate God, you beloved children, and live in love as Christ loved us – Christ who gave himself up for us.

Those words make a wonderful world sound possible. It also sounds a little like a kindergarten lesson that never quite stuck in our time of cheap talk and online bullying at every level of society including political discourse.[9] It’s one thing to talk theoretically about Paris and it’s quite another to practice what we’re called to be as Jesus followers. The practice starts here. In our congregation. With each other. Saying things that we need to say across our differences. Speaking truth from each perspective and hearing each other in love. Our Augustana congregation is a kind one. The welcome people experience here is real. People comment on it. It’s observable. But kindness serves truth, not the other way around. The goal isn’t to avoid conflict. The goal is to consider different perspectives as information so that anger doesn’t win the moment. That takes practice.

Righteous anger feels so good that it’s hard to know when the line crosses into condemnation and evil. It’s why Christianity is a group project across many denominations. We’re bound to each other but also freed by Christ to faithfully fail, forgive ourselves and each other, and faithfully try again as we practice speaking truth in love.[10] God doesn’t need defending. God’s big enough to handle whatever the world throws around when we know not what we do.[11]

We need God’s love just like the rest of the world.

Thank God that Jesus IS the bread of life, abiding and eternal, and there IS plenty enough to share.

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[1] Karoline Lewis, Professor and the Marbury E. Anderson Chair of Biblical Preaching, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Sermon Brainwave podcast about Bible readings for Sunday, August 11, 2024. #977: Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 19B) – Aug. 11, 2024 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[2] The Shema: An affirmation of God’s singularity, its daily recitation is regarded by traditionally observant Jews as a Biblical commandment. myjewishlearning.com/article/the-shema/

[3] Exodus 3:14

[4] Matt Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Sermon Brainwave podcast about Bible readings for Sunday, August 11, 2024. #977: Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 19B) – Aug. 11, 2024 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[5] Ibid., Lewis

[6] Jack Izzo, 7/30/2024, Olympic Opening Ceremony Featured da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’? (msn.com)

[7] Isabella Mayer, Art in Context: The Last Supper Da Vinci – A Glimpse into The Last Supper Painting, August 1, 2023. The Last Supper Da Vinci – A Glimpse into The Last Supper Painting (artincontext.org)

[8] John 3:16-17

[9] Ibid, Skinner.

[10] Ephesians 4:15

[11] Luke 23:34 [Jesus from the cross] “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

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Ephesians 4:25-5:2 So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another. ²⁶Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, ²⁷and do not make room for the devil. ²⁸Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy. ²⁹Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear. ³⁰And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. ³¹Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, ³²and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. ^5:¹Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, ²and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Caitlin Trussell

Are You Ready? As We’ll Ever Be. [OR Thank God for the Holy Spirit!] Luke 1 and 3 and in between

What is Truth? [OR Christian Nationalism is Neither Faithful nor Patriotic]

Inflection Points and Intention Sunday [OR May God’s Welcome Be Our Welcome] Mark 13:1-8[9-10]

Free Indeed! (OR A Sermon for Reformation Sunday) John 8:31-36, Romans 3:19-28, Psalm 46 (a.k.a. A Mighty Fortress is Our God)

From Managing to Imagining [OR Children Can See What Grownups Can’t] Mark 10:17-31 and Titus 3:4-5

A Sermon for Mental Illness Awareness Week – Mark 9:38-50, James 5:13-20, and Psalm 19:7-14

Pure Gospel Comfort and Held Accountable by Love (Yup, both) Mark 7:24-37 and James 7:1-10, 14-17

Bodies Made for Delight – [OR Let’s Get Real – Real Bodies, Real Benediction] Song of Songs (Solomon)

Wisdom Sets Her Table for the Senseless [Proverbs 9:1-6 and John 6:51-58]

Everyone Eats at Jesus’ Table [OR Last Supper? Bacchanalia? Does it Matter?] John 6:35, 41-51

Pastor, Preacher, Speaker