Tag Archives: Abraham

Who has been Jesus for you? John 3:14-21 [OR Would Someone Please Put John 3:17 on the Poster, Too?]

**sermon art: Jesus Washes the Disciples Feet by Luke Allsbrook, oil on canvas (2018)

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on March 10, 2024

Ugh, you know, the thing I don’t like about Jesus is that he was always telling his followers to get their revenge, to trash talk, to really stick it to people. He was super mean all the time. He didn’t like weddings. And little children really got under his skin. I should probably stop there on the slight chance that anyone thinks I’m serious. Obviously, Jesus was none of those things. The stories we have about Jesus and the things he said reveal an incredible human. Non-Christians say how great life would be if Christians actually lived like Jesus lived. Many people who aren’t Christians try to live their lives as Jesus lived. Just as those of us who say we follow Jesus try to follow his example.

When we welcome new members into Lutheran churches like this one, we call it affirmation of baptism. There are promises we make as part of the affirmation of baptism when we join a church. The last few weeks we’ve covered a few of our promises: to live among God’s faithful people, to hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper, and to proclaim God in Christ through word and deed. Today, we’re highlighting our promise, “to serve all people, following the example of Jesus.” Our Bible readings today help us remember a very important part of this promise. Jesus is Jesus and we are not, even if we are called to follow his example.

Verse 17 of the John reading takes that one step further. If Jesus didn’t come into the world to condemn the world, then why would any Jesus follower think it’s their job to condemn people? I shared at Evening Prayer last Wednesday that I was raised in two denominations that painted the scariest portrait of God you could imagine, and that God sent Jesus to police the planet for evil deeds of any size. When I left home, I left Jesus behind. Why take him to the party if he was just going to frown away? And then I married a Lutheran Christian. We baptized our babies and made the promises to them that you hear me ask parents or baptized adults to make at our baptismal font. What changed? God didn’t. I did.

John 3:16 and 17 were written as a continuous thought in the original Greek.[1] “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

God’s love for the world revealed in Jesus is good news because it reveals God’s goodness and light. Jesus was not sent to condemn the world but to save it. Salvation in John’s gospel is focused on life. Eternal life today because God is eternal, and God abides with us right now as we abide with God right now. How would it change Jesus’ message for you to think about salvation that way rather than a dividing line at death? Why would a God whose love for the world, who draws all people to God, suddenly turn against people when they die? Have we projected our own fear about dying onto God?

These questions are relevant to today’s reading because people have used verse 16 over the centuries to blast people beyond God’s love. It’s what happens when verse 16 is separated from verse 17. It’s what happens when belief is set as the highest power above even God’s grace, as if the power of God’s grace could be limited by our beliefs and doubts which is, of course, ludicrous. In case we think too highly of our own power, hear the reminder from Ephesians – “For by grace you have been saved through faith, this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” Faith as a gift from God, by definition, means that belief cannot be a work. We don’t dredge belief and faith up in ourselves. That’s a real mind bender, isn’t it?

We haven’t focused on the Hebrew Bible’s stories of the Old Testament much over the last few weeks. Those readings in worship have emphasized the covenants that God makes to God’s people. Each covenant God made is evidence that the promise to some was for the benefit of many. From God’s covenant with Abraham would come blessing for the whole world.[2] From God’s covenant with the Hebrews led by Moses, would come life-giving commandments that brought peace among neighbors.[3] And from God’s covenant with the whole world through Jesus, would come a love so powerful that it transforms hearts and minds.[4]

Which brings us back to the baptismal promise we make “to serve all people, following the example of Jesus.” We don’t make this promise to serve in order to grow the church or to win souls for God or to prove how cool our theology is. We serve following the example of Jesus because as the Ephesians reading tell us, “…we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

I’d like you think for a minute about the people who have served you like you imagine Jesus served people in the Bible stories. Call to mind names and faces and what happened. It may be someone who prayed for you.[5] It may be someone who healed you like a chiropractor or physician or counselor.[6] It may be someone who didn’t let a past harm define you.[7] It may be someone who has more grace for your flaws than you ever could for yourself and doesn’t condemn you.[8] It may be someone who stayed up with you late at night, talking when you needed it most.[9] It may be someone who fed you when you had no way to pay them back.[10] As I prepared this sermon, so many faces and names swam through my mind.

Most recently, it was my friend, Lee McNeil. Lee and I worked on human dignity policies and legislation with Together Colorado especially related to race and justice. I called her Sister Lee as did many others who knew her. It was an honorary title of respect for a beloved and wise elder. As the great granddaughter of an enslaved person, and the triple-great granddaughter of someone who owned African people, our friendship evolved over the ten years of working together. A few weeks ago, we were asked to write an opinion piece together supporting the Racial Equity Study bill moving through the Colorado legislature that will increase understanding of the generational impact of law and policy on Black Coloradans. Sister Lee and I wrote it in my office here at the church. First we reminisced over people we knew because we hadn’t talked in over a year. Then we kept right on talking while I typed and read out loud and we talked more and edited the letter together.

At the end of our conversation that day, I told her how grateful I am for our friendship and for her grace while I learned things I could never have learned without her loving instruction and willingness to just talk. We hugged. She told me she loved me and I told her back. There were a flurry of emails back and forth with final edits and I submitted our letter to the paper. A week later I found out that Lee died suddenly. A long life well lived. I was stunned and heartbroken and incredibly grateful to know her and unbelievably grateful to have seen her right before she died. Sister Lee was kind and thoughtful and fierce. She loved Jesus and she served people following the example of Jesus.

I’ve watched many of you love each other similarly. Oh sure, there are disappointments, disagreements, and sometimes frayed nerves. We are human after all. But we’re reminded time and again how much God loves us and we’re reminded that Jesus commanded us to love each other and then showed us how to do it. The list of things that Jesus did for people is long. If there’s not someone coming to mind at the moment who has been Jesus to you, take this question out of worship with you today. Who has served you as Jesus served and, in some small way, helped you understand just how much God must love you? Because that’s what our service to other people does, it reminds them that God loves them too. This reminder is no small thing in a world that is in desperately in need of Jesus’ transforming love.

Thanks be to God and amen.

_____________________________________________

[1] Joy J. Moore, Professor of Biblical Preaching, Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN. Sermon Brainwave podcast for Bible readings on Sunday, March 10, 2024. www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/952-fourth-sunday-in-lent-mar-10-2024

[2] Genesis 12:1-5 The Call of Abram

[3] Exodus 20:1-17 The Ten Commandments

[4] Acts 9:1-22 The Conversation of Saul/Paul

[5] John 17:1-26 Jesus’ Prays for his disciples.

[6] See all of Jesus’ healing stories.

[7] John 8:1-11 Woman caught in adultery.

[8] Luke 22:54-62 Peter denies Jesus.

[9] John 3:1-21 Nicodemus visits Jesus by night.

[10] Mark 6:30-44

Dinner Disrupted [OR Let’s Try the Mary and Martha Thing Again, Shall We?] Genesis 18:1-10a and Luke 10:38-42

**sermon art: All Are Welcome by Sieger Koder (1925-2015) German priest, writer, and artist

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on July 21, 2019

[sermon begins after two Bible readings]

Genesis 18:1-10a The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. 2 He looked up and saw three men standing near him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground. 3 He said, “My lord, if I find favor with you, do not pass by your servant. 4 Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree. 5 Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.” So they said, “Do as you have said.” 6 And Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Make ready quickly three measures of choice flour, knead it, and make cakes.” 7 Abraham ran to the herd, and took a calf, tender and good, and gave it to the servant, who hastened to prepare it. 8 Then he took curds and milk and the calf that he had prepared, and set it before them; and he stood by them under the tree while they ate. 9 They said to him, “Where is your wife Sarah?” And he said, “There, in the tent.” 10 Then one said, “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.”

Luke 10:38-42 Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; 42 there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

[sermon begins]

 

Imagine your travel being dependent on who would welcome you into their home when you arrived in a new town.  No hotels exist.  You arrive hot and dusty at a random house and hope to high heaven that whoever lives there is having a good day.  The ancient world depended on this kind of hospitality.  When the three men showed up at Abraham’s, there was not a doubt that Abraham would feed them.  Now that could be because he saw the Lord in the three men. Regardless, hospitality was the first order of the day when strangers arrived.  Abraham and Sarah pulled out all the stops too – special cakes, tender veal, soothing milk, cool shade, and a warm welcome.  Just as everyone gets comfortable.  Something happens.  An announcement disrupts dinner.  It’s not the first time this announcement happens.  Sarah and Abraham are promised that they’ll have a child in their old age.  Dinner was disrupted by God’s promise that they’d heard before, that they wondered if it would ever happen, and that they didn’t control one single bit. Revelation over a meal is as commonplace now as it was then.  People are gathered already so why not make an announcement.

Growing up, my parents hosted weekly Sunday dinners for us and my adult step siblings.  As we aged, these were a little less than weekly but they still happened regularly.  I was living at home and going to Pasadena City College at the time of one such dinner.  There was the general chatter that accompanied those meals.  Then, there came the moment when everything changed.  Mom and Pops announced that they were moving to Australia with my younger sister Izzy.  Pops had found actuarial work down under in Sydney.  The house that I’d called home since 9 years old was to be rented.  The immediate thought in my head was, what about me?  After a bit of conversation passed while I remained silent, Mom looked at me and reported that Carl and Sharon were willing to have me rent the tiny home behind the their house when it was ready and that I would bunk with my stepsister Carol in her apartment in the meantime.  Such a strange thing to wonder what was going to happen, to have people tell you what was going to happen, and to not control a single thing about any of it.  Talk about dinner disrupted by a stunning revelation. So many of our lives changed after that announcement in more ways than we could imagine.

And, finally, we come to Martha’s moment of dinner hospitality disrupted by her own distraction and worry.  She welcomed Jesus and friends into her home in the ways of her ancestors in the faith, Abraham and Sarah.  Her moment of welcome gets it right, by the way, in contrast to earlier in Luke when Jesus was asked to leave by the Gerasene gentiles and not received by the Samaritans.[1] From Martha’s welcome and other Bible stories, we know that the movement of the early church was solely dependent on the hospitality of local people in the places visited by Jesus and the disciples.[2] Not to mention much of the Apostle Paul’s travel as evidenced in his letters that made it into the Bible.  Hospitality was key to spreading the good news of Jesus, and Martha was spot on with her welcome from the get go.[3]  Let’s give her some credit where it’s due.

It’s what happened next that has busy, welcoming hosts everywhere beat up by unhelpful interpretations that leave the value of Martha’s work in question.  For those of you in that crowd, let’s agree that the role of the people who do welcoming work is critical.  Scripture tells us that there are many gifts of the Spirit when it comes to discipleship vocations.[4] The thing in question in this story is not about Martha’s work.  The question raised in this story is about Martha’s worry and distraction stirred up by Mary’s radical behavior in the other room that disrupts getting dinner ready.  The Gospel of Luke has an ongoing concern with worry.[5] Here again the question raised is about worry and about how Martha handles her aggravation by going to Jesus – creating a classic, unhelpful triangle to try and control the situation.  Who of us here today hasn’t done that very same thing?  Overwhelmed by our many tasks, we identify our problem as someone else rather than ourselves, and then we rope a third person into the mix and create an unhelpful triangle to get someone on our side and blow off steam.  Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me.”

Jesus doesn’t complete the triangle with her.  He keeps the focus on Martha rather than siding with her against Mary.  I hear so much compassion for Martha in his challenge to her.  Perhaps this lens of compassion is because of the Good Samaritan story that comes just before it, in which Jesus commands neighborly compassion.[6]  Jesus says, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing…Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

It’s difficult for us to fully appreciate Mary’s radical action.  First century rabbis did not teach women.[7]  Mary’s posture likely mimics that of the men around her who were also listening to Jesus teach in postures of recognition, adoration, and submission.[8] Jesus is referred to as Lord three times in these four verses, highlighting his lordship.  Similarly to Sarah and Abraham, Martha’s dinner is disrupted by the Lord’s divine revelation. In both situations, the revelation disrupts social norms and promises something more than any of them can imagine.  For Sarah and Abraham, the promise of a child in their older age is inconceivable to them, both physically and intellectually, and is not something within their control.  For Martha and Mary, the promise that the Lord’s teaching is also for them and not something controlled by other people who would prevent it for reasons of gender or anything else.

Notice that Martha ends up receiving direct teaching from Jesus, too, differently than Mary, to be sure, but receives Jesus teaching nonetheless.  Jesus meets Martha where she is in her worry and distraction and offers her the “better part” too.  Both of these disciples are worth our reflection but NOT as a zero sum game where one wins and one loses.[9]  Both disciples receive the teaching they need to hear in the time and way they need to hear it.  Both receive the “better part” as they submit to Jesus’ lordship in word and deed. Martha welcomes him into her home and calls him Lord.  Mary sits at his feet, listens and learns. Both experience his direct teaching. Not only do they experience his teaching as a challenge to social norms of the day.  They experience a word from him that is directly for them – drawing them more deeply into discipleship, transforming their lives into ones that are ever more Christ-shaped.

Jesus also disrupts our shared dinner at the communion table with his word today – challenging the limited, critical view that we have of ourselves and others, transforming our hearts with compassion and for compassion, and focusing us on the better part.  For this and for all that God is doing, we can say, amen, and thanks be to God!

__________________________________________________________

Hymn of the Day following the Sermon.

ELW #770 Give Me Jesus (African American Spiritual)

1 In the morning when I rise,
in the morning when I rise,
in the morning when I rise,
give me Jesus.

Refrain:
Give me Jesus,
give me Jesus.
You may have all the rest,
give me Jesus.

2 Dark midnight was my cry,
dark midnight was my cry,
dark midnight was my cry,
give me Jesus. [Refrain]

3 Just about the break of day,
just about the break of day,
just about the break of day,
give me Jesus. [Refrain]

4 Oh, when I come to die,
oh, when I come to die,
oh, when I come to die,
give me Jesus. [Refrain]

5 And when I want to sing,
and when I want to sing,
and when I want to sing,
give me Jesus. [Refrain]

_____________________________________________________________

[1] Luke 8:37 and 9:53 as noted in ProgressiveInvolvement.org “Luke 10:38-42” for July 21, 2019. https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/lectionary/

[2] Luke 8:1-3

[3] Matthew Skinner, Professor of New Testament at Lutheran Seminary. Luke 10:38-42. Sermon Brainwave podcast for July 21, 2019. https://www.workingpreacher.org/brainwave.aspx?podcast_id=1165

[4] Ephesians 4:11-16 and 1 Corinthians 12 (the whole chapter but especially vv27-31)

[5] Luke 12:22-34

[6] Luke 10:25-37

[7] Progressive Involvement Lectionary Study on Luke 10:38-42 for July 21, 2019. https://www.progressiveinvolvement.com/progressive_involvement/lectionary/

[8] Ibid.

[9] Matthew Skinner, ibid.

 

Disruptive Love with an Indulgent Dash of Lyle Lovett [Acts 10:44-48, John 15:9-17, 1 John 5:1-6]

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on May 6, 2018

[sermon begins after three Bible readings. If you only have patience for one, read the Acts reading.]

Acts 10:44-48 While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. 45 The circumcised believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, 46 for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, 47 “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” 48 So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

John 15:9-17 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

1 John 5:1-6 Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For the love of God is this, that we obey his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome, 4 for whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. 5 Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? 6 This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the water only but with the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one that testifies, for the Spirit is the truth.

[sermon begins]

In a hilarious song called “Church,” there’s a preacher whose sermon is running waaayy long and

“…everyone was getting so hungry

that the old ones started feeling ill

and the weak ones started passing out

and the young ones they could not sit still.”[1]

Lyle Lovett sings from the viewpoint of a child whose stomach is growling for the potluck but the preacher keeps on preaching. At one point…

“…the preacher he stopped preaching

and a hush the church did fill

and then a great white dove from up above

landed on the window sill.”[2]

You’ll have to listen to the song to hear what happens next but suffice it say that everyone gets to go eat soon after getting disrupted by a great white dove and the preacher’s own hunger pangs.  Apparently that preacher isn’t the only preacher ever disrupted by the Holy Spirit from saying more.

Peter’s sermon in the reading from Acts gets shut down too. Except he hasn’t been preaching all that long – maybe a minute or two by the word count. He had been summoned by a man named Cornelius who “had called together his relatives and close friends” to hear about God.[3] Cornelius is “a centurion of the Italian cohort,”[4] NOT a circumcised Jew like the disciples with Peter. Peter’s sermon starts in the verses before our reading today with these words, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality…”[5]  He continues preaching BUT, “While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word.”[6]  Confusion and chaos ensued. Into that disruption Peter asks the disciples with him, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? So [Peter] ordered [Cornelius, his family, and his friends] to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.”[7]  Wait a minute, did the Holy Spirit come on those people before baptism?  Don’t we usually say the Holy Spirit is given in baptism?  Which is it?  Before?  After?  Both?  You may wonder who the heck cares about such things but there are Christian denominations that were started on less vexing questions.

Let’s do a quick review to catch us up along with the disciples with Peter. Way, way, way back in Genesis 12, near the very beginning of the Bible, God makes promises to man named Abrahm, later re-named Abraham. God told Abraham that, “…in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”[8]  God’s promises to Abraham are called the Abrahamic covenant.[9]  Circumcision was given at that time as a sign of God’s covenant.  Fast-forward through Moses and the 10 Commandments, through the prophets, and through Jesus’ birth, death, and resurrection, to the baptism of Cornelius and his Gentile family and friends.  This is the moment that the larger Biblical story is careening toward.  This is the moment that God’s life in Jesus disrupts into the wild abandon of the Holy Spirit.  This is THE moment.  It’s not the only moment though.  We know that, of course.  But this moment is easy to miss because we don’t hang around in the book of Acts very often.

Disruptive love sees other people as equally beloved.  This can be tough because it reframes a lot of our interactions.  Small example. I was in the middle of drafting this sermon about disruptive love during the last few days at the Rocky Mountain Synod Assembly. I was taking my suitcase to the car and trying to get to breakfast and, most importantly, to that first cup of coffee. As I was winging through the hotel door, a gentleman saw my tell-tale green name tag.  He stopped me and asked me how I was enjoying the “conference.”  He then went on to tell me his church history and asked me about the Lutheran church.  Even in that moment, I found it ironic that I had just come from writing about the disruption of the Spirit and there I was, salivating at the thought of coffee, and obstructed in a doorway by someone who wanted to talk about faith and church.  That wily Holy Spirit has some sense of humor.

But there are other times that are more frustrating than humorous.  There are some of us who know disruptive love very well.  Parents in the pews who are worshiping with their little kiddos, for the sake of their kiddos, while they themselves are only catching every 5th word of the liturgy.  Others of us struggle to encounter other people with vulnerability and connection. The Gospel of John and the First John reading lead us into the even harder moments.  Jesus says, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”[10]  Seems to me that death is the ultimate disruption – both for the dead and the living.  Jesus commands us to love out of his own self-sacrificing love.  Disruptive love is risk.  Risking reputation, comfort, and safety for people besides ourselves.

Peter gets a taste of these side effects of disruptive love – risking his reputation, comfort, and safety on behalf of the newly baptized Gentiles.  Peter and the disciples baptize Cornelius, his family, and friends and the newly baptized invite Peter “to stay for several days.”  Then Peter heads back to Jerusalem.  Criticism from his friends welcomes him.  Apparently it’s all fun and games until you start baptizing Gentiles and eating with them.  I invite you into a little homework for the week.  Read the chapters of Acts 10 and 11.  Go ahead and grab a pen from the pew pocket in front of you. Write it down – Acts chapters 10 and 11. Think about who you believe belongs in the church and who doesn’t.  Also think about who you believe is worthy of attention by the church and who isn’t.  The Holy Spirit not only disrupts our ideas about good order; the Spirit also disrupts our biases. While you’re reading Acts 10 and 11, think about what God is doing through faithful people to disrupt what other faithful people think and do.

It’s tough to know the difference between sheer human agenda with a hefty dose of ego versus what might be the God thing. Chances are good that the God thing of disruptive love is incredibly uncomfortable for the people doing the God thing.  Remember, Jesus said, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  That’s a pretty hefty amount of personal discomfort if you’re the ones laying your lives down.  Pick a word, any word, to describe the discomfort. Here’s a few…weird, nauseous, uncomfortable, scary, exposed, patronized, compromised, denied, betrayed, beaten, abandoned, assassinated…  Quite a list. Because when you do the self-sacrificing thing and not the self-protective thing, it’s not often that cozy warm-fuzzies await you.  That’s not the way it works. It’s not the way any of this works.  Although, let’s remember that it’s also not simply disruption for disruption’s sake.

Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love.” Jesus reminds us that this love shatters orthodoxy or creeds.  Much blood has been spilled over the centuries as various groups of Christians go after each other about right teaching and good order.  Jesus invites you into the love of the Father by loving you.  This is anti-orthodoxy.  It moves you beyond the attempt at right thinking and pulls you into the love of the God and love of Jesus, sending you to be what you’ve received by abiding in their love.  Your flesh and bone born of water and blood embodies the faith of Jesus for the sake of the world.[11]  You did not choose.  You, beloved of God, have been chosen.[12]  Thanks be to God for this indescribable gift.  Amen.

_______________________________________________

[1] Lyle Lovett. “Church” in Joshua Judges Ruth (MCA/Curb, 1992). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZI0zO2TS1Y

[2] Ibid.

[3] Acts 10:24

[4] Acts 10:1

[5] Acts 10:34

[6] Acts 10:44

[7] Acts 10:47-48

[8] Genesis 12:1-3

[9] Genesis 15 includes more promises and the ritual of the covenant.

[10] John 15:13

[11] 1 John 5:6

[12] John 15:16

 

My Young Friend the Bat Mitzvah [OR Jesus Argues Torah, Not Promise to Abraham]

Painting credit: “Reading the Torah” (ink and acrylic) by Martina Shapiro

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on August 21, 2016

[sermon begins after Bible reading]

Luke 13:10-17 Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

[sermon begins]

Two weeks ago, on a blue-skied, puffy-white-clouded Saturday morning, Rob and I drove up to Congregation Beth Evergreen to celebrate a longtime friends’ daughter becoming a Bat Mitzvah. Between my brother’s Jewish family and these longtime Jewish friends of ours, I’ve been to several such services.  After many months of preparation, the 13 year old Bat Mitzvah helps to lead the Shabbat service – chanting prayers and scripture in Hebrew. They are joyous and reverent services. Family and friends come together to celebrate her as she comes of age.

The prayers bounce around in my head for  days and days afterwards:

[chanting] Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’Olam…

This prayer means, “Praised are You, the Eternal One our God.”[1]  It’s sung throughout Shabbat services and leads into a variety of other prayers and scripture readings. I’m ask for forgiveness from our Jewish cousins in the faith for any clumsy moves here.

Shabbat means Sabbath, literally in Hebrew a “rest” or “ceasing.”  Many times during the Shabbat service we are greeted with “Shabbat shalom” and the response together is, “Shabbat shalom.”  Shalom is Hebrew for “peace.”[2]  More specifically it means the peace of God.  The greeting exchange of “Shabbat Shalom” hopes for each other the peace of God on the day of rest.

In Leviticus 23, is the command to recognize the Sabbath:  “For six days shall work be done; but the seventh day is a sabbath of complete rest, a holy convocation; you shall do no work: it is a sabbath to the Lord throughout your settlements.”[3]

“A holy convocation.” A holy gathering.  It is in a holy gathering on the Sabbath that we enter the story with Jesus. He is teaching in one of the synagogues – a Jewish teacher’s weekly ritual.  In walks the woman as she’s been doing for 18 years – bent over, quite unable to stand up straight.[4]  Jesus calls her over.  Notice that she doesn’t approach him.  She’s on her way to do her usual thing.  He is teaching and calls her over.  One could argue that in calling her over to his location that he is continuing his teaching or, at the very least, redirecting his teaching to include her.  The woman becomes a living, breathing teaching story.

There is someone there who argues with Jesus.  Arguing over teaching of the Torah is a robust tradition in synagogues. Torah are the Five Books of Moses that include Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  Christians call these five books of the Bible the Pentateuch.

Back to argument that’s brewing in the Bible story.  The argument is about the essence of what Jesus does by healing the woman.  The leader of the synagogue starts it.  Another teacher.  The argument from the synagogue leader’s point of view is that healing is work and that work belongs on the other six days of the week.  “There are six days on which the work ought to be done.”[5]  This word “ought” is translated from a verb that indicates divine necessity – a command.[6]  So the synagogue leader is arguing that work happens the other six days by divine necessity.

Jesus counters the argument. Jesus argues that freedom from bondage is the higher divine necessity with that same word – “ought.”  “…ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham…be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”[7]  By calling her a daughter of Abraham, Jesus is identifying the woman as part of God’s covenant with Abraham.  He is also identifying her as a part of the holy gathering on the Sabbath.  She is part of her community as they gather and healed within it.

Professor David Jacobsen of Boston University says that this is evidence that Jewishness is not being superseded by Jesus.[8]  Rather, Jesus is expanding the circle of God’s promises to Abraham.  God’s promise to the Jewish people remains.  Jesus does not negate God promise to them.  Also by healing the woman, Jesus shows that God doesn’t separate us from each other within holy gatherings but deepens us into those connections.

My young friend, the Bat Mitzvah, gave her prepared speech toward the end of leading the Shabbat service.  She talked about being a difficult student as she thanked her Hebrew teacher.  The same Hebrew teacher who bestowed the Bat Mitzvah certificate while congratulating her on accomplishing the impossible.

My young friend talked about her own significant issue that affects the people around her and the way her family and her congregation loves her while challenging her to grow through her issue.  I was struck, not for the first time, how communities of faith form us and heal us.  Like the woman in the Bible story who was bent over or my young friend the Bat Mitzvah, we are changed by the people drawn into these holy gatherings.  Sometimes this can take a long time.  Often, it takes a long time.

I remember telling my kids from time-to-time that they were taking advantage of how much their church people love them.  My kids, now 17 and 19 years old, are who they are today, in part, because of the love shared as part of the holy gathering of church people of all ages.  It hasn’t always been easy but it has been part of forming them into the young adults they are today.

The formation and healing through community isn’t reserved for the young.  All of us, at any age, can find ourselves loved and challenged through our issues.  It’s that paradox of being made free by God’s promises in the holy gathering and also made free for each other.  In the freedom for each other we are formed and healed by each other.  Straightened from being curved in on ourselves.

As the Body of Christ called Augustana, there are ways we bring this healing to each other.  Last Sunday, I met with the Sunday worship Prayer Leaders who pray weekly in worship for the concerns of the world and the congregation.  The leaders’ faith and prayers are a gift to this congregation because it’s an example of faith to strengthen our own.  The Sunday prayers are continued into Monday morning Chapel Prayer and even further into the weekly e-mailed Prayer Chain.  We pray for hope and healing for so many people for so many reasons – illness, mental health, job loss, etc.  It’s one more way that we’re honest about our frail human bodies and fragile lives.  It’s one more way that we bring healing to each other through our challenges.

By way of Christ, we are drawn into a holy gathering in worship this morning.  Trusting that Jesus is here.  Like the synagogue in the Bible story, we are not an echo chamber of agreement.  There are challenges to work through just as there are causes for celebration.  And still, God brings healing through the holy gathering.  We are challenged and we celebrate as we, along with the crowd in the Bible story rejoice in all that [Jesus] is doing through the holy gathering for the sake of the world:[9]

Baruch Atah Adonai, Eloheinu Melech Ha’Olam…  Amen.

Praised are You, the Eternal One our God…  Amen.

 

[1] Jill Suzanne Jacobs. A Basic Blessing in Hebrew part of Hebrew for Dummies® Cheatsheet. http://www.dummies.com/languages/hebrew/a-basic-blessing-in-hebrew/

[2] Karol Thonton-Remiszewski, translator. “What Does Shabbat Shalom mean?” https://www.quora.com/What-does-Shabbat-Shalom-mean

[3] Leviticus 23:3

[4] Luke 13:11

[5] Luke 13:14

[6] David Schnasa Jacobsen, Professor of the Practice of Homiletics and Director of the Homiletical Theology Project, Boston University School of Theology, Boston, Mass..  Commentary on Luke 13:10-17 for August 21, 2016 at WorkingPreacher.org. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2956

[7] Luke 13:16

[8] Jacobsen, ibid.

[9] Luke 13:17 – paraphrased to conclude the sermon

Esther: Fate? Luck? A Story for Our Time – Esther 4:12-17, Romans 14:7-10, and John 14:25-27

Pastor Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on July 17, 2016

[sermon begins after 3 short Bible readings]

Esther 4:12-17 When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, 13 Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. 14 For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.” 15 Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, 16 “Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish.” 17 Mordecai then went away and did everything as Esther had ordered him.

Romans 14:7-10 We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. 8 If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. 9 For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.

John 14:25-27 [Jesus said to his disciples]  “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. 27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

[sermon begins]

I went to a play called “Sweet and Lucky” about a month ago.[1]  Not your usual play in which you walk into a theater, sit down, and watch the actors on a stage.  “Sweet and Lucky” guides the audience in small groups, out of sequence from each other, across many rooms and sets as it tackles the idea of memory and how it works.

A relevant aside, I just found out last week that the show’s New York director, Zach Morris, is a confirmed son of the Augustana congregation. I mean that in the ritual sense.  Years ago, he affirmed his baptism in the rite of Confirmation here. His mother Maggie and sister Katelynn continue to worship here regularly.  Maggie handed me an article last Sunday about the play.  Funny how things happen like that and a connection can be seen only in hindsight.

And that takes us back to the play and why it may be at least loosely relevant to the sermon today.  At one point, an actor asked me if I believe in luck.  I said, “No.” She then asked if I believe in fate.  I said, “No…I think there’s an option that we aren’t able to understand.”  Just her luck that she got to talk with me, eh?  But her questions are onto something.  We are meaning-making beings.  Things need to mean something. If they don’t mean something, we’re stymied.  If they mean something terrifying, we’re still stymied.  We throw everything we can at situations to find some kind of answer to feel better about them. Whether it’s luck, fate, karma, God’s will, free will, or something else I can’t think of at the moment. Things happen and we start asking “why?” We want answers.  We are answer mongers and meaning makers.  When things happen, either we find answers or we make them up.

This reasoning out the “why” is the surface appeal of the Book of Esther.  Esther is an orphan 500 years before Jesus.  Not just any orphan, she’s descended a few generations from the Jewish people who were rounded up in Jerusalem and carted off into Persia by the king of Babylon. Esther is adopted by her cousin Mordecai and raised as his own daughter.[2]

Through a series of circumstances, Esther becomes the Queen of Persia, married to King Ahasuerus.[3]  She remains a Jew but this secret is kept from even the king himself.  Then comes Haman, second in power only to the king.  Mordecai refuses to bow down to Haman so Haman plots to murder Mordecai, and I quote the Bible story here, “by giving orders to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all Jews…”[4]

Mordecai catches wind of Haman’s orders to kill the Jews. What follows are a number of servant delivered messages between Mordecai and Esther.[5]  Mordecai challenges Esther to save her people. Esther argues back that the king could have her put to death if she shows up uninvited.  And then comes Mordecai’s message back to her, “Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews…Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.”

Even Mordecai is looking for an answer to the “why” question while he’s looking for an answer to help his people.  The way he asks Esther to help implies that it is either her fate or God’s will or some combination of the two.  In the end, she resolves to help even through it could mean her death and she says, “…if I perish, I perish.”[6]

Esther’s story is cleaned up quite a bit for the G-rated worship musical the kids are preaching through this morning’s 10:30 worship. To get the full story takes reading this Bible book laced with dark humor and questionable outcomes. While reading, it’s engaging to wonder about your own life as reflected in Esther’s self-sacrificial courage, Mordecai’s righteous determination, Haman’s fearful self-preservation, and King Ahasuerus’ detached ignorance.

Esther’s story is meaningful and relevant to the current moment in the world. She begins in the royal court, a place of comfort tainted by episodic fear and indifference. Rattled by Mordecai’s truth, her acceptance of risking death has a self-sacrificial purpose – neither fatalistic nor nihilistic. She listens to him, formulates a dubious plan, and goes into action on behalf of her people.  And the parts of the story you just heard happen in only four short chapters with a little over half the book to go.

Mark George, my Hebrew Bible professor was asked why the stories in these earliest writings are the ones that remain.  Dr. George resisted pious or academic answers.  He said with high intensity, “Because they’re GOOD stories!”  He might have even had a fist in the air when he said it.  There was that much emphasis.  “Because they’re GOOD stories!”

They’re good partly because the stories they tell are about complicated people. Trusty Noah?  Read what happens after the flood when he builds a vineyard and makes wine.[7]  Faithful Abraham?  Lied about Sarah being his sister to save his own skin not once but twice![8] Biblical heroes are often as flawed as they are faithful.  That makes for good story.

It also makes for something more than a good story.  It means that we have a shot at seeing our particular iteration of flawed and faithful in the pages of the Good Book.

Esther is no exception to Dr. George’s “GOOD story” category.  In the face of Haman’s treachery and King Ahasuerus’ indifference, Esther is challenged to save her Jewish people, putting her life at risk to do so.  But the reality is that while we aspire to Esther, we’re regularly caught in moves that smack of King Ahasuerus’ ignorance or Haman’s power grab.  Comparing Esther’s self-sacrificial resolve to Christ’s self-sacrifice may get us a little further.  Today’s reading from the Gospel of John is good for this comparison.

In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ death on the cross is the inevitable outcome to his life-giving ministry.  Inevitable because the life he offers is one of mercy, freedom, and peace which is perceived as a threat by the people around him.  In his death no hand is raised against the people God so loves. Rather, Jesus is resolved to see it through. Resolve that ends in self-sacrifice on a cross.

Jesus’ resolute self-sacrifice means that Christians are neither nihilists nor fatalists.  Nihilists argue that life is meaningless. Fatalists argue that life is determined by an impersonal fate.  Paul’s words from his letter to the Romans reflect a Christian’s take on life – “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living.”

Paul’s words are a confession of faith.  Not a faith that protects us against the struggles of life and death.  Rather, a faith that confesses Jesus’ resolve to make redemption and healing known even from the most difficult situation.[9]  And still we may not see the redemption and healing except for time passing and hindsight, if we get to see it at all.

The readings today from Esther, Romans, and John, offer slightly different perspectives on fear, death, and peace.  In John, Jesus promises peace as the One whose ultimate self-sacrifice on the cross is purposeful rather than nihilistic – gathering us around the tree of the cross, transforming death into life as well as our self-preservation and indifference into action for the sake of the world God so loves.

________________________________________

[1] Zach Morris. Sweet and Lucky, a collaboration between Third Rail Projects and Denver Center for Performing Arts Off-Center.

[2] Esther 2:7

[3] Esther, chapters 1 and 2

[4] Esther, chapter 3. Direct quote is from verse 13.

[5] Esther, chapter 4

[6] Esther 4:16

[7] Genesis 9:20-27

[8] See Genesis chapters 12 and 20.

[9] David Lose. “Faith, Forgiveness, and 9-11.”  Dear Working Preacher… September 4, 2011. https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=1595

To Do or Not To Do [OR Whose List Is This Anyway?!] Exodus 20:1-17 and John 2:13-22

To Do or Not To Do [OR Whose List Is This Anyway?]  Exodus 20:1-17 and John 2:13-22

Pastor Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on March 8, 2015

 

[sermon begins after these two Bible readings]

Exodus 20:1-17 Then God spoke all these words: 2 I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; 3 you shall have no other gods before me. 4 You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, 6 but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7 You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name. 8 Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. 9 Six days you shall labor and do all your work. 10 But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work–you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. 11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it. 12 Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. 13 You shall not murder. 14 You shall not commit adultery. 15 You shall not steal. 16 You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17 You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

John 2:13-22 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. 15 Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!” 17 His disciples remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” 18 The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking of the temple of his body. 22 After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this; and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.

 

[sermon begins]

I was early to the Worship Committee meeting this past Tuesday evening.  A couple other people were already there.  Typical of pre-meeting conversations, we meandered through each other’s lives, getting updates on home and work until stumbling into a conversation about calendars.  I was feeling thankful for having a cloud version on what I like to call my not-so-smart-phone.  If I need to put something on the calendar, it’s right there with me. This morphed into a virtues of electronic and paper calendars and then moved into the various ways we keep to-do lists.  One of us is all-electronic, one is all-paper, and one a hybrid of the two.

This conversation has me thinking about why we make lists at all.  In my world, there is one continuous list that I simply add to over time.  Things get marked off as done and added on to be done.  People get contacted, visits get made, articles get written, meetings get scheduled, and errands get run.  Lists are practical.  Things need to get done.  And lists are emotional.  People need to be remembered.

One of the all-time classic lists is The Ten Commandments.  Like many of our own lists, The Ten Commandments reflect something already in play long before the list itself was put together.  Different than our own lists, though, these are not 10 new things given to the people of Israel as if they have never heard them before or done them before.  Rather, they are a list of convenience. The Ten Commandments are practical.   A way to make the law handy to remember it.[1]   And The Ten Commandments are emotional.  These people in the desert need to remember God and for God to remember them.

Here’s where things get murky.  Remembering the list somehow turns into memorializing the list.  And memorializing the list cements it into a to-do list.  Not just any old to-list, but one given to us from an unpredictable, high-maintenance God.  And when we turn it into that kind of to-do list, the list turns on us.  Pretty soon, the list becomes more than a handy reminder.  The list itself becomes the very kind of idol we are warned about in the list.  Ironic.

For a little help, let’s back up to Genesis, the first book in the Bible just before Exodus.  In the very first chapter of the creation story in Genesis, the very first command is given in the pre-sin Garden.[2]  Law was not an original idea first conceived for The Ten Commandments.  Law came before those commandments.  Furthermore, The Ten Commandments are listed again with a slight variation a few books later in the Bible in Deuteronomy.[3]  Terence Fretheim argues that The Ten Commandments seem “to require adaptation in view of new times and places.”

The quick summary in list form?

1)      Law came before The Ten Commandments in Exodus.

2)      The Ten Commandments started changing after they were written in Exodus.

Why does any of this matter?  It matters because we are in the 21st century trying to be faithful Christians alongside people from all walks of life, some of whom are fellow Christians.  And The Ten Commandments turn into an occasion of sin against God and neighbor as if their use keeps the high-maintenance God-of-our-imagination happy.  We sorely miss the point when we beat each other up using the Ten Commandments or, for that matter, beat each other up using Jesus or a bad decision or socio-political differences or religious commitments.

One way to keep The Ten Commandments in perspective is to see the larger story.  Two weeks ago, we were regaled with the covenant God made with Noah; last week, we heard about God’s covenant with Abraham; and this week we are treated to epic Moses moment of God’s covenant with the Israelites.  Each covenant God makes builds upon and includes the covenant that came before.  Do we ever once hear from God, “Okay, scratch that covenant, let’s make a new one that erases the old one.”  No, we don’t.  In fact, we hear reminders from God: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt.”  This history, these relationships, are an important part of each covenant God makes.  Not erasing the past and people.  Rather expanding to make room for the people here now.  With each new covenant, God ups the ante

Look at our Gospel reading from John today.  Look closely at it.  Who gets booted from the temple?  “Both the sheep and the cattle.”  That’s it.  “The sheep and the cattle.” The domesticated animals get booted.  Left in the temple are the undomesticated Jesus and the people.  This is no accident in the Gospel of John.  The sacrificial system is disrupted with the sending of the animals.  Jesus is the disrupter, anticipating the time when his death and resurrection would expand God’s covenant through Abraham and Moses to all people.  A covenant atoning for us today through the crucified and risen one.  One more time, God ups the ante again, this time with God’s very self in the person of Jesus.  When we sing in worship about the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”, this is who we’re singing about.[4]  The one who lets the sheep and cattle live another day, is also the one who gives us life through his very death.

Just a moment ago, I talked about The Ten Commandments being turned into an occasion of sin for us when we imagine a high-maintenance God that we’re making happy with us by following the commandments as God’s to-do list.  Here’s the twist.  WE are the high-maintenance ones.  To paraphrase an old movie – we’re the worst kind; we’re high maintenance but we think we’re low maintenance.[5]   God comes through time and again, with covenant after covenant.  The Ten Commandments is a short-hand list about loving our God more and loving other people more.  Really, God?!  We need to be reminded to stay faithful to our partners?  Yes.  We need to be reminded to explain each other’s actions in the kindest of ways?  Yes.  We need to be reminded to love you, God?  Yes.

People often ask me what I think God’s will is in many kinds of situations.  Here’s what I know for sure.  God wants us to love God and love each other.  That’s our to-do list.  To love God in spite our high-maintenance need to be certain and to love each other in spite of our high-maintenance need to be right.

The first words in the reading from Exodus today are words of redemption… “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” [6]

God’s to-do list?  To be your God.

To be your God in spite of all the ways you run away, hide from, ignore, and make fun of God.

To be your God by slipping into skin and disrupting the status quo through loving and healing you.

To be your God by dying because all of that loving and healing threatens your own to-do lists.

To be your God by living again and living in you.



[1] Terence Fretheim.  Commentary: Exodus 20:1-17 for March 8, 2015 at WorkingPreacher.org

[2] Genesis 1:28 “Be fruitful and multiply…”

[3] Deuteronomy 5:6-21.  More from Fretheim: Verse 21 – “(W)ife is exchanged with house and given her own commandment, perhaps reflecting a changing role for women in that culture.”

[4] Craig R. Koester.  Symbolism in the Fourth Gospel: Meaning, Mystery, Community.  (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 84.

[5] When Harry Met Sally (1989).  Quotes from the movie:  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0098635/quotes

[6] Exodus 20:2 – More from Fretheim: “God’s own introduction to these words is important for an appropriate understanding: “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.” The Ten Commandments are not a law code, a body of laws that are meant to float free of their narrative context. This introductory line [is] about redemption…”

Go Ahead, Laugh…A Lot! [OR Laughter Is A Lenten Discipline] Mark 8:31-38 and Genesis 17:1-7, 15-17[1]

Go Ahead, Laugh…A Lot!  [OR Laughter Is A Lenten Discipline]  Mark 8:31-38 and Genesis 17:1-7, 15-17[1]

Caitlin Trussell with New Beginnings Church at Denver Women’s Correctional Facility on February 27, 2015

 

[sermons begins after the two Bible readings]

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-17 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. 2 And I will make my covenant between me and you, and will make you exceedingly numerous.” 3 Then Abram fell on his face; and God said to him, 4 “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham; for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful; and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.
15 God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.” 17 Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a aman who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?”

Mark 8:31-38 Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” 34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

 

What kinds of things make you laugh?  Really, truly laugh.  The whole breathless, belly, can’t breathe, let go kind of laughter.  For me it’s often the general silliness that comes along with being a human on the planet.  Think Kim Wayans, Jimmy Fallon, Lucille Ball, Cheech and Chong bust-a-gut silly.  A good friend of mine (who shall remain nameless) was recently in a grocery store the day before the big snow of a few weeks ago.  Some were calling it Snowmageddon, some were rolling their eyes, some hunkered down to wait and see.  Many were in the grocery store.  It was packed with slow-moving carts, people pondering produce, precipitation, panic, and Lord only knows what else.

My friend left her cart over by the bakery so that she would take up less room in the busy bacon section.  When she came back to her cart, someone else’s cart was in its place.  She stood there, likely looking confused.  The woman in the bakery came out and asked her if something was wrong and if she needed help.  My friend explained the cart-napping.  The bakery woman then made a store-wide announcement sounding something like this, “With so many people in the store today, please take a minute to look down and make sure you have your cart and not someone else’s.”

In the meantime, a man came up to my friend, and told her that he thought she had his cart.  In those split seconds between the overhead announcement and the man’s cart-confusion, it dawned on my friend that she was the one who had stolen someone else’s cart.  After many apologies, she looped back and found her abandoned cart waiting peacefully among the fruits and veggies.  She called to tell me the story and we both laughed ourselves breathless.  For me, the overhead announcement was the punchline.  Even as I write this I can feel the laughter start to bubble up in my chest.  For her, laughing at herself was the punchline.

And then there’s Abraham in the Bible story from Genesis.  His big moment with the Lord.  During which God makes a promise, a promise so huge that it’s given the name of covenant.  When God makes a covenant with people it is an ‘unbreakable vow’ of sorts.[2]  A promise of epic proportions that affects generations of people.  Such is the case with Abraham.  Abraham knows this and his response is to fall on his face.

In the Hebrew Bible, falling on your face is no slap-stick move.  Rather it is a position of obedience.[3]  Abraham is aligning himself with the covenant.  Just a few sentences later in the story, Abraham falls on his face again, this time while laughing.  The Lord has just told him that he and his very old wife are going to have a baby.  Abraham makes the obedient move with his body, by falling on his face, but his mind hasn’t caught up, he laughs at the silliness of the plan, God’s plan.[4]  For Abraham, laughing at God is the punchline.  That’s Abraham, mind you, a paragon of faith who can’t keep his amused confusion bottled up.

As Abraham busts a gut, his obedience is still in play.  What plays out of it?  Well, Sarah and Abraham deny themselves a life that is safe, autonomous, secure, a life that is only about the two of them.[5]  They deny themselves that life, and are drawn into a life of big relationship with God, each other, their children, their children’s children…you get the picture.  A life uncontained is a life that necessarily gets messy – that messes with your self-ness, maybe even your alone-ness.

Might this be some of what Jesus means in his rant to the crowd about denying self.  Self-denial is a common catch-phrase for the pre-Easter season of Lent.  For Abraham and Sarah, self-denial carried with it a new relationship with God and a bunch of other people.  For the crowd and disciples listening to Jesus, self-denial means taking up crosses and following Jesus, getting drawn into God’s ludicrous plan with a bunch of other people who are following Jesus too.

Self-denial and taking up crosses looks a lot like what Karoline Lewis describes as “God choosing human relationships.”[6]  This shapes out first as God choosing human relationship with us through the humanity of Jesus.  Then it shapes out as we’re thrown against each other as people in the world, compelled to reconsider what the priorities are in those relationships.

In the Bible Story from Mark’s book, Peter gets protective.  Call it worry, care, concern.  Call it whatever you want.  But Peter gets protective of Jesus.  Jesus is talking foolishness about his upcoming death and Peter can’t take it.  So, he does what any good friend would do.  He tells Jesus he’s wrong.  No belly laughs here as Jesus then calls Peter “Satan”, tells him to step aside, and then tells everyone there to get on board the self-denial train and depart toward the cross.

This moment for Peter and Jesus is like so many of our moments.  Things are going along pretty well, and then?  They’re not.  Peter’s is driven by protectiveness likely complicated by a dash of worry and a pinch of disagreement about the plan.  After all, what might it mean for Peter if Jesus’ suffering and execution actually happen.  Peter seems to want to save Jesus from his inevitable end.  But how much of Peter’s drive comes from wanting to save himself by saving his own ideas, his own timing, his own way.

How often do we do these kinds of things in our own relationships?  Resenting another person’s infringement on our ideas, our timing, our way by throwing a wrench into them with their own.  Suddenly this other person intrudes and requires negotiation, time, and an adjustment to our own plan.

You’ll hear me talk about the cross from time-to-time as something that pushes against our own ideas of the world and shatters them, as something that pushes against us and puts things to death in us so that other things have room to live.  This doesn’t happen in a vacuum.  It’s not something that I can do all by myself.  Being pushed comes from being in relationships with other people.  Some of those we get to choose – like partners, best friends, counselors.  Others, we don’t get to choose – children, co-workers, church people, total strangers.  All of these people infringe on the notion that we get to do things our way.  There are moments when these people unravel us in utter frustration, not a punchline in sight.

Then there are other moments, those rare moments, those cross moments, when something in us simply crumbles, something dies.  Any investment we had in a particular outcome at the expense of a relationship is pushed into oblivion.   The recognition dawns that, more often than not, we’re with someone who is simply trying to be human just like we’re simply trying to be human.  The laughter coming a little more easily.

Jesus’ teaching in our story today teases us with the resurrection of Easter but also “reminds us that the way to Easter is through the cross.”[7]  As Jesus instructs the disciples to take up their cross, he’s saying in part that the way to new life is through the cross.  I had a preaching professor who would boil down this Christian good news in her glorious southern accent by saying, “It’s all about Liiife-Death-Liiife.”  And she would flash her hands opened and closed as she said it just like that, “Liiife-Death-Liiife.”

 

The cross is the way through to the new thing, the new life.  The cross invites honesty about what is dying and curiosity about what new life will look like.  So much so that it then becomes possible to stay in relationship with God and with other people.  Staying in relationship with the people closest to us rather than lashing out in fear or frustration and destroying those relationships.  With maybe even the freedom to laugh at ourselves as the punchline.

 

As we try to make some sense of the cross this Lenten season…

May grace run wild through Jesus’ life-death-life and through other people to shine light in your own dark places making space for new life.

 

And may Abraham’s laughter through obedience mirror your own as your mind is blown by the foolishness of the cross.[8]  Amen.

 



[1] This adds verse 17 to the Revised Common Lectionary verses for this week…because Abraham laughs, of course.

[2] A nod to the Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling.  An Unbreakable Vow is a binding spell sealing an oath so that they both parties die if the oath is broken.

[3] Cameron B.R. Howard.  Commentary on Genesis 17:1-7, 15-17 for March 1, 2015 at WorkingPreacher.org. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2384

[4] Ibid.

[5] Karoline Lewis. Commentary on the Revised Common Lectionary texts for March 1, 2015 at WorkingPreacher.org. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3542

[6] Ibid.

[7] Arland Hultren, Working Preaching Website, Luther Seminary, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?tab=1#

[8] Referencing 1 Corinthians 1:25 – “For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom…”

John 1:1-14 “The Birth, Our Birth”

John 1:1-14  “The Birth, Our Birth”

December 25, 2013 – Caitlin Trussell

Augustana Lutheran Church, Denver, CO

John 1:1-14  In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. 8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. 9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. 12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

 

This morning we come to celebrate a birth.  Not just any birth…but a birth that shines light into the darkness, a birth that changes the world.  God has been active in history before the birth of Jesus. Connecting the moment of this birth to all of God’s history, the gospel writer uses those powerful words, “In the beginning…”  These words that John uses to introduce the Word can also be heard in the very first verse of Genesis. [1] This connection draws a huge arc through time, space, and place, between the birth of creation to the birth of Jesus.

So while Luke spends time on the human details of shepherds and a manger, John spends time on the cosmic ones.  Where Luke’s words are a simple story, John’s words elevate us into poetic mystery.  We could leave it there, in those mysterious heights.  We could keep at a distance this mysterious poetry that many discard as too heady or inaccessible.  Many theologians do.  Except…except…John doesn’t leave it dangling out in the mystery of the cosmos, untouchable or inaccessible.

John brings the Word straight to the ground.  “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”  This God who created…who made promises through Abraham, who brought freedom through Moses, who instigated challenge through the prophets, who gave guidance through kings…this God became flesh.  A mysterious, inaccessible, cosmic God becomes a God that is part of our common humanity, through common flesh.  God taking on flesh to join us in our humanity is the birth we celebrate this morning.  It is why some people call today the Festival of the Incarnation rather than Christmas.  God incarnate simply means God in a body – or as John likes to put it, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

God living among us in Jesus is a cause for celebration this Christmas.  Not simply because God showed up but because God immerses in the struggle of humanity.  As John writes, “The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”  Light moving in the dark; day against night.  This language may be poetic but we get it when someone talks about their darkness:

The darkness of someone we love living with a mental illness that is difficult to treat.

                The darkness of grief and the confusion it brings to daily life.

                The darkness of disease, acute or chronic, that seems to take up more space than anything else.

If we could sit and talk about the darkness, each one of us could name a way that it affects our lives or the life of someone we love.  It is into this real struggle, this darkness, that Jesus is born.  Jesus who continues to bring light that reveals God in the midst of the worst that life brings – a light that brings hope as we are born children of God.

Our birth as children of God is ‘not of blood.’  This birth gives us hope that “we will not be subject to the frailties of human flesh forever.”[2]  Our birth as children of God is “not of the will of the flesh”.  This birth gives us hope that “we are more than our desires.”[3]  Our birth as children of God is not “of the will of humans.”[4]   This birth gives us hope that “we will not always be subject to the whim and will of others.”  As children of God, our lives have meaning over against anything we can come up with to say they don’t

Our birth as children of God allows us to see the transcendent, cosmic God up close and personal in the person of Jesus.  So that when we celebrate Emmanuel (God with us) we celebrate the hope that is given to us as we are born children of God.  To this and to all God is doing we can say, “Merry Christmas!”

“The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



[1] Genesis is the first book of the Bible’s 66 books. Genesis 1:1 – “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth…”

[2] David Lose on Working Preacher, December 25, 2010.  http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=857

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

Luke 13:10-17 – “Freed Into Rest [or Jewish Patriarchs through Moses in 2 Minutes or Less]”

Luke 13:10-17 –  “Freed Into Rest [or Jewish Patriarchs through Moses in 2 Minutes or Less]”

August 25, 2013 – Caitlin Trussell

Augustana Lutheran Church, Denver, CO

 

Luke 13:10-17   Now he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath. 11 And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. 12 When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” 13 When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God. 14 But the leader of the synagogue, indignant because Jesus had cured on the sabbath, kept saying to the crowd, “There are six days on which work ought to be done; come on those days and be cured, and not on the sabbath day.” 15 But the Lord answered him and said, “You hypocrites! Does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger, and lead it away to give it water? 16 And ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the sabbath day?” 17 When he said this, all his opponents were put to shame; and the entire crowd was rejoicing at all the wonderful things that he was doing.

 

I’m going to show my hand and let you know straight out of the gate that my sympathies lie with the leader of the synagogue.[1]  Not because there are parallels between his position and my own as pastor – that would be way too easy  of a target; plus it would leave you all out of it which basically means I’d be preaching to only myself which I can do on any old day without you sitting here while I do it.

To give us some understanding of the leader of the synagogue, think with me for a bit about the history of our Jewish cousins and our common ancestors of faith.  The story of Abraham and Sarah gives us the courageous travelers, uprooted by God and sent to a land far away.[2]  We can appreciate the romantic adventure of their tale from beginning to end; or we could read it through the hard lens of being migrants and immigrants.  Regardless, they were free people.

Sarah and Abraham’s son Isaac and the shenanigans of Isaac’s sons Jacob and Esau lead us right into the Joseph story.[3]  Joseph, the favorite son sold into slavery by his jealous brothers, ends up second-in-command of Egypt – saving his band of brothers as the sun sets dreamily in Egypt over the happy family reunion.  Okay, that last part smacks of Hollywood cinematography but you get the picture.  We get to end of the book of Genesis on a high as Joseph, with his dying breath, tells his brothers once more about God’s promises.[4]  So far, these are great stories of deeply flawed people but wildly free people.

We can literally turn the page to the book of Exodus and all manner of hell has broken loose.  Hundreds of years have passed, the new king does not know Joseph, and has no appreciation for the numerous descendents of Joseph and his eleven brothers.  “The Egyptians came to dread the Israelites…and became ruthless in imposing tasks on [them], and made their lives bitter with hard service.”[5]  These were hard times that lead to harder times that led to Moses’ leading the Israelites out of slavery to the Egyptians into…well, the wilderness.  But they were a free people there!  They were a free people who were given laws – laws given by God to preserve life and protect people’s relationships with God and each other.

Some of you could likely come up with the ten big laws, a.k.a. the Ten Commandments.  The one I’m really interested in this morning is the third one.[6]  After being told to have no other gods and to not misuse the name of God, comes commandment number three to:

“Remember the Sabbath day, and keep it holy. For six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and consecrated it.”[7]

Just sit for a moment with this and think about how huge it must have sounded to a newly freed people who were freed from ruthlessly imposed tasks and bitter lives of hard service.  Just imagine that.  It’s difficult at best to understand the magnitude of the freedom given by this law.  At worst, our understanding of it becomes blasé in our current context of labor laws, workers’ rights, and weekends off.  But for the Jewish people of the 1st century, keeping Sabbath meant to be freed into rest by the law of God!  Freed into rest.  Take a breath on that one for a minute.   Freed into rest….

The leader of the synagogue would have worked very hard to make sure that the people followed this law because it was for their good and for their God.  This doesn’t mean he had pure motives when confronted by Jesus’ healing the woman.  It’s a given that he didn’t.  But it does mean that the Sabbath being held up by the leader of the synagogue is a good thing.  So then where does it go awry for the synagogue leader?

Listen again to the beginning of the story:

“ Now [Jesus] was teaching in one of the synagogues on the Sabbath. And just then there appeared a woman with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years. She was bent over and was quite unable to stand up straight. When Jesus saw her, he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are set free from your ailment.’ When he laid his hands on her, immediately she stood up straight and began praising God.”

Jesus is teaching away, he sees this woman who he can help and so he does.  The problem is that Jesus does this on a day when there is a rule of law about work; a rule of law that has the big history and current meaning of being freed into rest.  And the leader of the synagogue becomes indignant on behalf of this law, starts talking to the people about coming to be cured on any other day but the Sabbath, and gets an earful from Jesus.  Not just any old earful, but a shaming earful.

Jesus clearly did not get the current parenting advice about public shaming.  You may have heard some of this advice.  If your child or grandchild or someone else’s child is up to no good, you are to talk to the child privately to preserve their dignity and create a safe space.  It’s good advice.  It’s even wise advice.  It’s advice that applies well to adults too.  Jesus didn’t get the memo.  While I feel for the leader of the synagogue, I’m grateful for what comes next in the story because then Jesus makes an interesting move that actually isn’t about shaming.  It’s an exegetical move – a move that interprets scriptural law as it has been handed down through the centuries and lived out in that synagogue, a move that breathes new life into the law.

The leader of the synagogue had become so bound into the law, the law was no longer doing its job of preserving life and people’s relationships with God and each other.  Jesus’ interpretation of the law frees the law so that, at least the woman, could be freed by the law.  I like to think that the leader of the synagogue took some time later to ponder the moves that Jesus makes in the synagogue – first freeing the woman from that which binds her, then freeing the law from the person who would try to bind it, and, maybe, just maybe, freeing the lead of the synagogue, the very one who would bind the law.

My sympathies lie with the leader of the synagogue because we can get curved in on ourselves and the law in the same way.  We are given a law to preserve life and protect people’s relationships with God and with each other.  And then we bind up that law, playing a kind of keep-away game between Jesus and law, wondering what will happen to that which we hold dear if we are compelled to a different interpretation of the law – slavery and the role of women in the church are two recent historical examples.  It is into this bound up, curled up mess that Jesus saves by the power of the Spirit.  Calling us on all the ways in which we bind ourselves and each other into the law and freeing us back into the law as a place of rest.

For this and for all that Jesus has done and is doing, thanks be to God!



[1] David Lose, “Dear Working Preacher” for Sunday, August 25, 2013.   http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=2699

[2] Genesis 12-20.

[3] Genesis 21-34.

[4] Genesis 35-50.

[5] Exodus 1:12-13, New Revised Standard Version.

[6] In Jewish tradition, the commandment to keep the Sabbath is number four.  Luther’s Small Catechism lists it third.

[7] Exodus 20:8-11, New Revised Standard Version.