Tag Archives: apostles

What’s Pride Got to Do with It? [OR To Love Jesus Means to Love People]

**sermon art: Rainbow Jesus by Tony Rubino, 2020, acrylic on canvas

Caitlin Trussell with Augustana Lutheran Church on June 29, 2025, on the feast day honoring the Apostles Peter and Paul

[sermon begins after two Bible readings – the third reading is at the end of the sermon]

John 21:15-19 When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my lambs.” 16 A second time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Tend my sheep.” 17 He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep. 18 Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” 19 (He said this to indicate the kind of death by which he would glorify God.) After this he said to him, “Follow me.”

2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18 As for me, I am already being poured out as a libation, and the time of my departure has come. 7 I have fought the good fight; I have finished the race; I have kept the faith. 8 From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.
17 But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. 18 The Lord will rescue me from every evil attack and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

[sermon begins]

It was a stunning, bluebird day in Colorado. Hope was in the air. My long hair was pony-tailed under a white hard hat with my name taped to the front of it. T-shirt and overalls were donned as I prepared to paint at a “clergy Habitat build” back in the day. Both of my internship pastors from Bethany were there, as were clergy from many faiths including Christian denominations across the Metro Denver area. (Although, unleashing clergy en masse on a project is questionable.) We muddled through our morning of good deeds and broke for lunch. Sitting down on a curb with my sandwich and bag of chips felt well-earned. A pastor about 20 years my senior sat down next to me, and he started a get-to-know-you conversation that included our denominational affiliation. This bit of information changed the tone. He asked what I thought about the ELCA’s vote to call gay clergy and bless same-sex partners.[1] (The ELCA is our flavor of Lutherans.) It would be another six years until the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage across the country on June 26, 2015.[2]

In August 2009, a few months before my lunch chat with that pastor, the ELCA Churchwide Assembly had just lifted its ban to call LGBTQ+ pastors and deacons, and I was thrilled for my LGBTQ seminary peers and friends even as the weirdness of voting about a group of people rankled me. I had exactly three years of seminary under my belt (after being a nurse for many years) and was a few months into my pastoral internship before graduating. Turns out that the pastor eating his sandwich next to me at that Habitat build was not interested in having a conversational exchange of ideas. He wanted to tell me that I was wrong and that the ELCA was wrong, and he used scripture to do it.

These days, I’m better equipped to talk about the 7 verses in the whole Bible that allegedly address LGBTQ concerns, the 50 Bible verses in which Jesus talks about love, the 250 Bible verses in which Jesus talks about money, and the ZERO Bible verses in which Jesus has anything to say on the topic of LGBTQ folks. ZERO. More about scriptural authority and LGBTQ folks are in my June 1st sermon at the beginning of Pride Month. At that clergy build in 2009, I was ill-prepared. After many long minutes of going back-and-forth, here’s what I finally said to that pastor. “I hang my hat on Jesus’ teaching when he said that greater love hath no one than to lay one’s life down for one’s friends—so I’m going to err on the side of love and go get another sandwich.”[3] I stood up and did just that while internally I was shaking like a leaf.

Looking back, it was but a small moment of courage. Nothing even close to the martyrdom of the Apostles Peter and Paul whose ministries we’re honoring today. The Bible readings include Peter’s prisonbreak aided by the angel, Paul’s summary in his letter to Timothy as he nods to the end of his ministry AND his life, and Jesus’ questioning Peter about his love.

Paul was reflecting on his proclamation of the message to all the Gentiles. Paul was a Jew who proclaimed an expansion of God’s love given through the Jewish people by way of Jesus to everyone else. It was a radical message of who belonged to God. When Paul talked about being poured out, he likely meant that he was being poured out like a drink offering. [4] The Greek verb spendo, which means to pour out, is used in only one other place and that’s in Paul’s letter to the Philippians.[5] Paul’s meaning is that his life and his death had been an offering to God. The authorities might indeed kill him, but Paul uses this language to say that he offers his life back to God who carries his life through this death.[6] By Paul’s example, we learn that living as a gospel people means that our lives are an offering to God.

By Peter’s example, we learn that the love of Jesus means that we love Jesus’ people as Jesus renews Peter’s call to follow him. Three times, Jesus asks Peter if he loves him. Three times, Peter says, “Yes.” Three times, Jesus tells Peter to feed his sheep. Not Peter’s sheep. Jesus’ sheep. No one belongs to us. We all belong to God through Jesus’ death and resurrection, through Jesus pouring out of himself.

Years ago, during my first interview with Augustana, the Call Committee asked what I would fight for. I answered that I would fight for the gospel. The gospel means the good news of Jesus is for everyone. The good news that there’s nothing you can do or not do to make God love you any more or any less is expressed with words like grace, forgiveness, freedom, and hope. There are times when the gospel for everyone means that we turn to particular groups of people to say that the gospel is for them, too. Today’s celebration of the Apostles, Peter and Paul, is a nod towards exactly that. They risked everything, including their lives, to preach the good news of Jesus to Gentiles. Gentile means non-Jew. The earliest Jesus followers were Jews. Jesus was a Jew. Jesus began the Gentile movement that expanded their inclusion in his Way of hope and freedom. He was ultimately killed for it by the Roman Empire and Jewish religious leaders. Peter and Paul continued the Gentile movement, and they were also martyred as threats to the empire. God’s grace and freedom are just that powerful when you’re no longer dividing people as insiders and outsiders and pitting them against each other.

Pitting people against each other is the worst of identity politics. No one wins when we’re riled up by the differences that are used to divide us. The best of identity politics happens when people work together to solve a cultural challenge with groups of people who have been treated as “less than,” and whose lives are made more difficult because who they are doesn’t fit into accepted cultural norms.[7] Examples of productive identity politics are the Women’s Suffrage movement of the 19th century that lasted 80 years and led to women being able to vote in this country and the Civil Rights movement of the 20th century that lasted 15 years and gained equal rights under the law for Black Americans. In the early church, Peter and Paul made sure that the Gentiles knew they were included in God’s love through the cross of Christ—arguably one of the earliest identity politics movements. Augustana in Denver is a Christian church today because Jesus and his earliest Jewish followers like Peter and Paul fully proclaimed the gospel to all the Gentiles. Us. Let’s take good care not to throw the baby out with the baptismal water when we declare that all identity politics are bad for humanity. The argument for identity politics is more nuanced than that.

Last Sunday, we had a teacher here from The Center on Colfax who instructed us in LGBTQ+ basics.[8] She was utterly grace-filled while responding to our questions and teaching us to use the acronym LGBTQ+. We learned what those letters mean to people who use them to identify themselves. We learned again that we can’t know all the things as she encouraged us to keep learning so that we can better affirm LGBTQ+ members, friends, family, and communities. The wider church has work to do in this regard and our small corner of the church does too.

Which brings me to the difference between acceptance versus affirmation. Acceptance is an ambiguous live-and-let-live posture. Whereas affirmation celebrates LGBTQ+ folks as created by God to be themselves in the world. Just as same sex behavior exists throughout the animal kingdom across species, it exists in humans, too.[9] You can check out the footnote in my sermon or do a web search. Seek to understand. There’s so much to know and affirm. Pride weekend is a good time to be curious as we celebrate and affirm LGBTQ+ folks.

Jesus’ call to love involves risk. Peter and Paul embodied the risk of love taken to the extreme. Most of us are called by Jesus’ love to smaller acts of courage. When we err, we err boldly on the side of love, fueled by God’s grace that dares us to live into the promise of God’s unconditional love for the sake of the world God so loves. Amen.

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[1] John Dart. “Study process aided ELCA breakthrough: Third denomination to accept gay clergy. September 22, 2009.  Study process aided ELCA gay breakthrough: Third denomination to accept gay clergy | The Christian Century

[2] Same-sex marriage is made legal nationwide with Obergefell v. Hodges decision | June 26, 2015 | HISTORY

[3] John 15:13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

[4] Stephen Fowl, President and Dean, Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley, CA. Commentary on 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18. October 23, 2022. Commentary on 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 – Working Preacher from Luther Seminary

[5] Ibid. (Philippians 2:17)

[6] Ibid.

[7] Karen Dienst. “Gutmann examines ‘the good, the bad, and the ugly” of identity politics. Princeton – Weekly Bulletin 3/24/03 – Gutmann examines ‘the good, the bad and the ugly’ of identity politics

[8] The Center on Colfax – LGBTQ Colorado

[9] Karen A. Anderson et al, PLOS One, 19(6), June 20, 2024.  Same-sex sexual behaviour among mammals is widely observed, yet seldomly reported: Evidence from an online expert survey – PMC

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Acts 12:1-11 About that time King Herod laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. 2 He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword. 3 After he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also. (This was during the Festival of Unleavened Bread.) 4 When he had seized him, he put him in prison and handed him over to four squads of soldiers to guard him, intending to bring him out to the people after the Passover. 5 While Peter was kept in prison, the church prayed fervently to God for him.

6 The very night before Herod was going to bring him out, Peter, bound with two chains, was sleeping between two soldiers, while guards in front of the door were keeping watch over the prison. 7 Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared, and a light shone in the cell. He tapped Peter on the side and woke him, saying, “Get up quickly.” And the chains fell off his wrists. 8 The angel said to him, “Fasten your belt and put on your sandals.” He did so. Then he said to him, “Wrap your cloak around you and follow me.” 9 Peter went out and followed him; he did not realize that what was happening with the angel’s help was real; he thought he was seeing a vision. 10 After they had passed the first and the second guard, they came before the iron gate leading into the city. It opened for them of its own accord, and they went outside and walked along a lane, when suddenly the angel left him. 11 Then Peter came to himself and said, “Now I am sure that the Lord has sent his angel and rescued me from the hands of Herod and from all that the Jewish people were expecting.”

Luke 6:20-31; Part of a Larger Remembering [All Saints’ Sunday] …and Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149; Ephesians 1:11-23

Luke 6:20-31 “Part of a Larger Remembering” [All Saints’ Sunday] …and Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18; Psalm 149; Ephesians 1:11-23

November 3, 2013 – Caitlin Trussell

Augustana Lutheran Church, Denver, CO

 

Luke 6:20-31   Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. 21 “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. 22 “Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. 23 Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. 24 “But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. 25 “Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. 26 “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets. 27 “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.

 

Today we sing with the saints.  After all, it IS All Saints’ Sunday – a day that comes around every year and is celebrated in the wider church in all kinds of ways.  Here is this place, with these people, we accompany the saints with our own singing as part of a larger remembering.

Today we sing with the saints.  We sing with the prophets of times gone by like Daniel – prophets who dream dreams and see visions during times when chaos seems to have free reign around the world; prophets who bring a God-drenched word of hope in confusing times with uncertain outcomes.[1]  But saints such as Daniel do more than bring a word of hope in the face of despair.  It is their word but it is also their action in the power struggles of their times that move our minds but also our bodies into the struggle.[2] Today we sing with the prophets – Daniel, Anna, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Theresa and so many more who not only spoke but took their bodies into the struggle, and who inspire us to do the same.

Today we sing with the saints.  We sing with those saints described in the Psalm today – saints who carried the two-edged sword.  We sing even as we wonder about the dangers of thinking ourselves on the faithful, and therefore on the right, side of any war.  Today we sing with the saints of the two-edged sword – Joan of Arc, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and so many others who lived and died as warriors and as faithful saints.

Today we sing the saints.  We sing with the apostles of times gone by like Paul who wrote the Ephesians reading we heard today – apostles who encountered the risen Christ and were sent away from that encounter to speak the good news of Jesus.  The good news that tells the truth about our flaws, our sin, and where Jesus meets us in all that flawed, flailing around.  Or as Paul puts it in the reading today, “with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.”   Today we sing with the apostles – Paul, Thomas, Peter, Mary Magdalene and so many more whose stories of the risen Christ draw us into the hope of faith.

Today we sing with the saints – the poor, the hungry, the crying, the lonely – these saints among us whose existence afflicts the more comfortable among us.  The comfortable are afflicted by the people who reveal the Kingdom of God without qualification or contingency.  The saints among us who bear almost all the weight of the most painful life experiences and who leave the others of us wondering what part we play in that poverty, benefiting from structures of power that create pain for others.  Today we sing with the nameless saints who are poor, hungry, crying, and lonely even when our song should be silenced so that we can hear the suffering and do something about it.

Today we sing with the saints – those people we know and love who died within the last year – saints who were part of this baptized community and saints who were connected to this baptized community in many other ways.   We sing through tears of loss and grief as we mourn those who were with us for the briefest of days to the longest of lives.  Today we sing with the beloved saints whom we name as we remember their time with us and as we cling to the promise of joining them when we too will die and pass from this life to the next.

Today we sing with the saints next to us in the pew – family, stranger, or friend.  You heard me right.  You, me, them…saints.  We ourselves and those people sitting next to us are deeply flawed people, sinful people, who by the very grace of God in Christ Jesus are at the same time beloved saints.  Right here and right now we are one hundred percent saint and, at the same time, one hundred percent sinner.  This is the radical calculus given and revealed in each one of us.  And I can say with clarity that is not I who live but Christ who lives in me and it is not you who live but Christ who lives in you.  It is this Christ who presents us as saints to the eternal God and as saints to each other in the here and now.

Today we sing with the saints.  Thanks be to God.



[1] Steed Davidson, Working Preacher Commentary: Daniel 7:1-3, 15-18 for November 3, 2013.  http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1842

[2] Ibid.

 

Daniel 7:1-3; 15-18   In the first year of King Belshazzar of Babylon, Daniel had a dream and visions of his head as he lay in bed. Then he wrote down the dream: 2 I, Daniel, saw in my vision by night the four winds of heaven stirring up the great sea, 3 and four great beasts came up out of the sea, different from one another. 
15 As for me, Daniel, my spirit was troubled within me, and the visions of my head terrified me. 16 I approached one of the attendants to ask him the truth concerning all this. So he said that he would disclose to me the interpretation of the matter: 17 “As for these four great beasts, four kings shall arise out of the earth. 18 But the holy ones of the Most High shall receive the kingdom and possess the kingdom forever—forever and ever.”

Psalm 149   Praise the Lord! Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise in the assembly of the faithful. 2 Let Israel be glad in its Maker; let the children of Zion rejoice in their King. 3 Let them praise his name with dancing, making melody to him with tambourine and lyre. 4 For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with victory. 5 Let the faithful exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their couches. 6 Let the high praises of God be in their throats and two-edged swords in their hands, 7 to execute vengeance on the nations and punishment on the peoples, 8 to bind their kings with fetters and their nobles with chains of iron, 9 to execute on them the judgment decreed. This is glory for all his faithful ones. Praise the Lord!

Ephesians 1:11-23   In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, 12 so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you had heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and had believed in him, were marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit; 14 this is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of his glory. 15 I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. 17 I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, 18 so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power. 20 God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. 22 And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.

Luke 17:5-10 What Faith is Not [or Holding God to God’s Promises]

Luke 17:5-10 What Faith Is Not [or Holding God to God’s Promises]

October 6, 2013 – Caitlin Trussell

Augustana Lutheran Church, Denver, CO

 

Luke 17:5-10  The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!”   The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you. 7“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? 10 So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’”

 

Some of us make this faith thing really hard.  And pretty much by “some of us”, I mean at least me and maybe some of you too.  Those of us who make faith hard complicate it with a lot of stuff that makes no sense in the conversation about faith.  Take the disciples in our story who demand that Jesus increase their faith.  What does that even mean?!  “Increase our faith!”  It’s kind of a desperate request, isn’t it?  It sounds like they think they don’t have enough for what this life has in store.

Jesus’ answer is great.  He basically tells them that they have enough.  After all, who actually needs to make a mulberry bush jump in the ocean?   (I imagine him telling them this while secretly wishing he could send them into the sea along with the mulberry bush.)

After Jesus tells them that they have enough faith, he launches into the slavery comparison to tell them that they have all the faith they need to simply show up and do what needs to be done.[1]  A lot of us are just trying to make it through the day.   Our lives move along in ordinary ways – work and play, highs and lows, are all the stuff of our mostly ordinary lives.  And we are given enough faith to make it through the days.

Which begs the question of what is expected of faith?  The disciples are worried because Jesus has been talking about things like forgiveness, giving money to the poor, and picking up crosses and following him.  This is a big to-do list that seems to require some big help to get through.  It’s no wonder the disciples were asking for an extra sprinkle or two of faith.  How could they possibly have enough to get it all done?  And if they think they don’t have enough faith with Jesus right in front of them, how could we?

One of the wrinkles in this text is that faith doesn’t seem to be a measurable thing.  And yet we tend to think that faith equals agreement to each point on a checklist about God.  Like if we intellectually agree 100% with each statement of the Apostle’s Creed then we have a lot.  As if faith can be boiled down to some kind of mathematical proof that has form and measure and only then we can trust in it.  The problem comes when we try to explain how this all adds up to enough faith in the right things.  The problem comes when we think we can measure it at all.

Last week I had a chance to hang out with the 9th graders who are participating in the ritual of Confirmation in a few weeks.  I asked them to explain the scientific method to me.  They did this as easy as 1-2-3.  First you make a hypothesis about something being true, then you set out to collect the data to prove your hypothesis, and you make a conclusion that proves or disproves the truth of your hypothesis.  I then told them that we are not teaching them to argue the faith by way of the scientific method.  We are not making statements about Jesus and proving them.  Rather, the ritual of Confirmation is yet one more point in the baptized life where we are able to pause and take stock of what faith means in our everyday lives.  This is the place where our brains show up.  After all, we don’t leave our minds at the church door.  Plenty of brilliant scientists and gifted minds spend their lifetimes figuring out how to talk about the faith, the meaning and the mystery of it, in their own lives.

Like Timothy, in the second reading, whose faith moves through his grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice to him, the Christian faith lives, in part, through what our ancestors of the faith have been moved to confess about God.  It is a confessing faith that is both in tension with the ordinary things of our ordinary days and woven through them.  Like Paul writing to Timothy, faith rests in trusting God to be God “in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.”[2]  This confession of faith allows us to hold God accountable to God’s promises made in baptism.

God’s promises in baptism are this…[3]

God promises in baptism to be in relationship with you.  God’s presence is true even, and maybe especially, if you don’t think it is or feel like it is.  And because God is the God of today, tomorrow, and forever, these promises are eternal.  And so, trusting God to keep God’s promises, we confess the life everlasting.

God promises in baptism to always be reconciled with you, always open to your return to God.  And so, trusting God to keep God’s promises, we confess the forgiveness of sins.

God promises in baptism to draw you into a deeper relationship with God, into discipleship.  And so, trusting God to keep God’s promises, we confess the holy catholic church and the communion of saints – the community of people in which our lives as disciples are nurtured.

 

The disciples have one thing right.  Faith does come from Jesus.  This is a faith that rests on the promises of God made to us in our baptism; a faith that moves within our lives no matter what the outcome or how we think it gets measured.

May Christ Jesus gift you faith for today, tomorrow, and all of your days.  Amen.

 



[1] David Lose in “Dear Working Preacher…” on WorkingPreacher.com for Sunday, October 6, 2013. http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2773

[2] 2 Timothy 1:12-13.

[3] John Pederson, personal conversation about the promises of baptism.