Ask the Complicated Questions [OR A Sermon for Reformation Day] John 8:31-36

**sermon photo: Nerina Fielding, Starling Mumeration [still captured from recording], Natomas, Sacramentao, California.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8Prw9AZ9jw

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on October 31, 2021

[sermon begins after the Bible reading]

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; 32and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” 33They 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’?”
34Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. 35The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. 36So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.”

[sermon begins]

Mr. Mack sported a silver crew cut with his serious demeanor. He was retired military – United States Marine Corps. He commanded respect without demanding it. You could have heard a pin drop when he walked into the room, through the straight rows of desks. We were already hard at work copying his notes from the chalk board onto notebook paper, double-spacing them to leave room for notes from his lecture. He took his seat at his desk waiting until precisely 15 minutes after the bell. Then he stood and began his 10th grade history lecture on life, politics, and war while we scribbled wildly. We studied the notes and took the tests and moved on to 11th grade history. In Mr. Mack’s class, it was easy to believe that history was an ordered account of the facts – the lecture followed the notes that followed the textbook. In part, this was true. There are undeniable events that have dates and key historical figures to go with them. But what we know about history is that it’s less like a straight line and more like a murmuration of starlings.[1] Maybe you’ve seen these birds flying together in the hundreds of thousands –twisting and turning, pulsing together toward an unknown endpoint. The videos are mesmerizing. The only thing linear about history is the time that passes. Otherwise, there are hundreds of thousands of voices that give us a different perspective of the same story.

Our celebration today is one such many-voiced story. Reformation 500 years ago is often told in a way that makes Martin Luther, that ornery academic priest, out to be a lone wolf of faith and theology. (Although, in fairness to us, we’re repeatedly exposed to lone wolf storytelling in film and T.V.)  But Luther was the one who lived to tell the tale. Reformers 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 grace can go a long way.)

Digging into the back-story of the Reformation is similar detective work to digging into the Bible. 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 1st 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 guys who are affirming the promises of baptism in the milestone that we call Confirmation.

Confirmation is a rite of passage, a ritual that marks a moment into what came before and what comes after. A ritual that shifts the promises made at baptism from your parents to you. I’m just going to slip in the reminder that God’s promises are complete while our promises are fallible and imperfect even when they’re faithful. Confirmation is a big moment but it’s not a lone wolf moment. It’s a church-alive moment. You’re surrounded by people who are asking similar complicated questions that you ask:

  • Was the earth, the world, the universe really just created for humans?
  • How was the creation story written down if God was the only being at the beginning of the world?
  • How did our faith/this church start and evolve and do you think it will continue to change? If so, in what way?
  • How do we know that God is really there? Is it okay to doubt God?

These are complicated questions that many faithful Christians have asked at different times in their lives but especially at times of faithful ritual and often in times of struggle.

Last week I led a Bible Study at the women’s prison with 12 women on the Inside Council of New Beginnings Worshipping Community. We worked through the Bible readings and questions that their Pastor Terry had given us. It’s been a couple years or so since I’ve been with them and a few of the women I’ve known since I started volunteering there. Laughter and tears mix with some serious deep thinking.  I asked the women if they had any thoughts about doubt and faith that I could share with our youth at church who were going through the rite of Confirmation and affirming their baptisms. They want you to know that faith can feel hard but that it is also freedom – freedom to be who God made you to be, freedom to ask God to show you God’s presence, and freedom to ask to have an open heart. It’s really something to hear women in prison talking about freedom. Most of them will return to community alongside us at some point but for others it will be many years living within those walls.

The women are not talking about any old freedom and for them it’s more than poetry. They have found that freedom through the love and grace of Jesus. When Jesus says that sin enslaves us and he sets us free, these women deeply understand what that means. Those of us who live outside of prisons 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. 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.

Lutheran Christians have a 500-year history of asking, “What does this mean?” Literally, that question, “What does this mean?” (Although it was originally asked in German and now in most every known language – there are A LOT of Lutherans around the world.) The disciples in the Bible asked similar questions. The Jews living before the 1st century, through our Jewish neighbors today still ask questions about God, their history, and each other. We are part of this robust history of asking questions into our present-day moment of grace through faith.

Grace is God’s unconditional love for you.

Grace is God’s promises flowing over you in baptismal water – the promise to always be present, to always take you back, to make your life Christ-shaped, and to keep these promises forever.

Grace is this moment in time. Each one of us with a story of our own, drawn together by the Holy Spirit into God’s story. For this and for all that God is doing, we can say, thanks be to God, and amen.

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Song after the Sermon

All Creation Sings (hymnal): #1005 “Ask the Complicated Questions”

1          Ask the complicated questions.

Do not fear to be found out;

for our God makes strong our weakness,

forging faith in fires of doubt.

 

2          Seek the disconcerting answers,

follow where the Spirit blows;

test competing truths for wisdom,

for in tension new life grows.

 

3          Knock on doors of new ideas,

test assumptions long grown stale,

for Christ calls from shores of wonder,

daring us to try and fail.

 

4          For in struggle we discover

truth both simple and profound;

in the knocking, asking, seeking,

we are opened, answered, found.

 

Text: David Bjorlin, b. 1984

Text © 2018 GIA Publications, Inc., giamusic.com.

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[1] https://www.wonderopolis.org/wonder/what-is-a-murmuration

A Sermon for Mental Health Sunday – Mark 10:[32-34]35-45

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on October 16, 2021

[sermon begins after Bible reading]

Mark 10:[32-34] 35-35  [They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, 33saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; 34they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.”]

35James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.” 36And he said to them, “What is it you want me to do for you?” 37And they said to him, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.” 38But Jesus said to them, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” 39They replied, “We are able.” Then Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized; 40but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.”

41When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. 42So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”

[sermon begins]

“Mommy, Daddy’s crazy.” I don’t remember saying those words when I was very little, but my mother tells this story as an example of my father’s decline into mental illness. We were in the car. Dad was driving and talking about becoming President of the United States. I piped up from the back seat while Mom cried. There’s a lot of stories that follow that moment. Dad ended up dissociating from reality almost completely. He self-medicated with alcohol and ultimately became homeless and died when he was 50. Mom and her brothers were able to relocate her and the five of us kids to safety. In the years that followed, my mother gave us a gift by telling us that, “Dad was sick,” while also reminding us that he was brilliant and loving before his illness took over. Back in that day, there was little that could help him get better even if he was able to commit to treatment. Mom also gave us the gift of knowing that counselors could help us. We went to family counseling once things stabilized a bit and she regularly encouraged us to get help when things don’t feel right – something my siblings and I have done over time to look in the rearview mirror on Dad’s and our experiences.

Fast-forwarding 40 years, our niece encountered similar but different struggles with mental illness. Fortunately, my sister’s a doctor and she found experimental treatment at a research university that was able to help. We believe that the treatment saved my niece’s life, and we hope and pray that that research launches healing treatment for many. I called her the other day to ask her if I could share her story in the sermon. To which she gave an excited, “Yes!” We talked about how she’s doing. Her still daily challenges with mental illness – although it’s way better that it was. And her upcoming wedding in November. There’s a lot to celebrate after those scary times even if the healing is incomplete. And she’s grateful that our church is talking openly about mental illness. She “wants people to know that more people struggle with mental illness than we know, battling with their minds on a daily basis.” And that, “It’s an invisible illness needing more community education.”

Untreated mental illness, and the suffering of the one who’s sick and those who love them, creates panic. And panic doesn’t help us think well. We often ask the wrong questions. Not unlike James and John who panicked when Jesus talked about his upcoming death sentence as the Son of Man being mocked, spit upon, flogged, and killed.[1] (This happens in the verses in Mark just before the ones we read today.) James and John’s response is out of touch with what Jesus just said but the panic is understandable. They asked to be at Jesus’ right and left hand in his glory. Jesus didn’t say no. He just told them that they don’t know what they’re asking. Spoiler alert: At the end of Mark’s gospel, Jesus is crucified with a bandit on his right and a bandit on his left.[2]  James and John, confronted with Jesus’ Son of Man claim of impending death, think that the solution is power over the situation. They’re living in a time of chaos – Rome’s military is executing revolutionaries, there’s a civil war in Judea killing hundreds of thousands, and Jerusalem is being destroyed along with the temple.[3] Suffering is everywhere. Jesus reminds James and John that the response to suffering isn’t more power and tyranny. The response to suffering is to serve. This is the same verb in Greek when the angels serve Jesus in the wilderness and when Simon Peter’s mother-in-law serves after she is healed.[4] The doctor who came up with our niece’s treatment was similarly a servant. God rest his soul.

Corporations can also be such a servant. The Indianapolis Colts’ “Kicking the Stigma” campaign is one example.[5] During NFL games, the Colts’ ads feature players and owners talking about mental illness. Linebacker Darius Leonard, wearing a t-shirt that says, “It’s okay to not be okay,” while he talks about his own mental illness is powerful.

In 2012, our denomination – the ELCA – published a social message called “The Body of Christ and Mental Illness.”[6] Social messages are published after a lengthy process of study, reflection, critique, rewrites, and discussions with many people. The messages are informed by scripture, tradition, science, and experience. The one about mental illness encourages actions that can be taken by and with people who are mentally ill. One of my favorite parts of the social message is the research that mental illness often has genetic and biological causes at their root, while “many still believe sufferers just need to ‘think positive’ or work harder to ‘snap out of it’ when what they really need is treatment, therapy, and support.”[7] Here at Augustana, our Faith Community Nurse Sue Ann and the Health Ministry Team has started the E4 ministry to Enlighten, Encourage, Educate, and Empower individuals and families about mental health in a faith community. If you or anyone you work or live with has mental illness or symptoms of mental illness, please consider attending Augustana’s E4 meetings on the second Thursday of each month.

It’s tempting to think that people like my dad, with his Ph.D. in Leadership, could have used those smarts to outsmart mental illness. It just doesn’t work that way. If he could have healed himself, he would have. As a child, it took some time for me to talk about the trauma. And as an adult, it’s taken some time to heal from that trauma and find helpful ways to talk about suffering especially when there is really no explanation for it. My mother’s gift to us in both naming his mental illness and making it an acceptable topic of conversation gave us a way forward without shame.

Jesus exposes shame for the lie that it is from his humiliation on the cross. Shame is a lie that isolates and destroys us as individuals by separating us from community when connection and community are the very things we need the most to counter shame. In our Gathering Song, we sang:

Will you let me be your servant, let me be as Christ to you,

pray that I may have the grace to let you be my servant, too.

I will hold the Christ light for you, in the nighttime of your fear.

I will hold my hand out to you, speak the peace you long to hear.[8]

In that spirit, you can choose to come forward while we’re singing our next song if you would like to light a candle in prayer for someone with mental illness and their family or for yourself. We’ll hold the Christ-light for each other as we sing and pray.

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[1] Mark 10:32-34 – These are the verses just before James and John ask to be at his left and right hand.

[2] Mark 15:27

[3] Matthew L. Skinner, Professor of New Testament, Luther Seminary, St. Paul. MN. Sermon Brainwave Podcast on Mark 10:35-45 for preaching October 17, 2021. https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/806-21st-sunday-after-pentecost-ord-29b-oct-17-2021

[4] Ibid. Karoline Lewis, Professor of Homiletics and Preaching, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN.

[5] https://www.colts.com/community/kicking-the-stigma. There’s a lot to critique about the National Football League but this one falls in plus column.

[6] http://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Mental_IllnessSM.pdf

[7] Ibid., The Body of Christ and Mental Illness, page 17.

[8] Richard Gellard. The Servant Song. Text and music © 1977 Scripture in Song/ASCAP