Pastor Ron Jansen

God who speaks and lives

Pentecost 9, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Genesis 45:1-15

There was a time when we went to a movie theater that after we bought a ticket we could just walk into the theater.  Sometimes we came in near the end of the movie, and saw the ending before we saw the beginning.  Today, we come in near the end of the movie featuring Joseph and his brothers.

The sons of Jacob stand before the man whom Pharaoh had named, “the god who speaks and lives.”  Pharaoh had given Zaphenath-paneah  all authority to administrate the affairs of the empire.  The sons of Jacob came, hat in hand, from Israel at a time of famine, looking for food. They are beggars for their lives and that of whole clan of Jacob.

We came this morning before God who speaks and lives.  We who cannot feed ourselves except that God give us our daily bread, and how often we eat it without a thought or word of thanks.  Why should God give us that which we need to support this body and life?  Did we not also come confessing our wayward ways that we have sinned in thought, word and deed against God?  We have not loved neighbors as ourselves.  There is much good that we have failed to do.  There are things done that haunt the edges of our minds, or ought to. 

On the edges of minds of Jacob’s sons was the reason they believed they had fallen into such a beggarly state.  Fifteen years ago they had sold their brother Joseph, their father’s favorite son, the one who wore the colored garment, the one who tattled on them, the one who told them his dreams that one day he would rule over them, the one who drove them fury and hatred, into slavery.  The last they had seen of him was in the possession Ishmaelites, headed south for the North African slave market.  He was almost certainly dead by now, certainly lost.  What they had done could not be undone.  Now God was giving them what they deserved.

We said as much about ourselves this morning, “We justly deserve your present and eternal punishment.”  Such was our plight as we stood before the almighty God, beggars for a stay of the execution of our deserved present and eternal punishment.

Back in the chambers of, “the god who speaks and lives,” he cleared the room of all his staff and advisors and interpreters.  Now it was only the all-powerful  servant of Pharaoh, and the sons of Jacob, bent and bowed by age and impending starvation.

The Egyptian did not speak to them in Egyptian.  He spoke in plain, simple Hebrew, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?”  Suddenly the world of the sons of Jacob was shattered.  The one who was dead was alive.  The one whom they had abandoned had returned with power and might.  Their very life was at stake.   Their brother held their lives in the palm of his hand.  In that moment, they were astonished and terrified.  Numbed minds could think of no way out of a situation in which there was no way out.  Their chests ached and there was a knot of fear in their stomachs.  Flight or fight was not options.  They could do neither.

Listen to how the Gospeler Mark describes the reaction of the new Israel to the news that the One who was dead was alive.  The One whom they had abandoned was back with power and authority.  Very early in the morning the women went to the tomb. “They saw a young man sitting on the right side…and they were alarmed, and he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed, you seek Jesus of Nazareth…He is risen.’ And they went out and fled from the tomb, for trembling and astonishment had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Part of our problem is that we take for granted that the forgiveness of our sins will be pronounced following our confession, whether we meant it or not.

Part of our problem is that the prospect of standing before Jesus and being told that he is God, whom we have crucified and now is raised, no longer astonishes nor causes us to tremble. Remember what Jesus said to the foreign woman, in the gospel reading who came crying to him for help?  Jesus told her, that he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.  We aren’t among the lost sheep of Israel.  We are foreigners to God’s kingdom.  We are Gentiles.  When Jesus says, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs,” he is speaking to you and me.

            When the sons of Jacob stood before Joseph, in that moment between Joseph identifying himself and his next words, the future of Israel, and the future of the world, including us hung in the balance.  Would he call out, “Guards, take these and throw them into prison?”    Joseph said, “Come near to me, please…do not be distressed or angry with yourselves.” With those words, the good news of salvation broke the tension in the room.  They could breathe again.  The knot in the stomach eased.  Muscles relaxed.  They, who faced death, now were given life.

            The author of Hebrews wrote, “Let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”  The One whom we know as Jesus is also “the God who speaks and lives.”

The word God speaks to us is a gracious word.  His word removes the threat of God’s judgment.  You see, there was another Joseph who lived much later.  He too had a dream, not a dream in which he ruled over his brothers, but a dream in which an angel of the Lord told him that the child his betrothed was carrying was conceived of the Holy Spirit.  The son she would bear would be named Jesus.    He would save his people from their sins.  In his death on the cross, in his abandonment in the tomb, in his resurrection to new life, we who could neither flee from God nor win a fight with God, are given the new life of Jesus resurrection, and the peace.  Today he says to us again, “Come near to me please.  Come near, eat and drink of me, my body and my blood, for the forgiveness of all your sins, for the strengthening of your faith and for your eternal salvation.”      

 

        

 

     

  

        

 

 

Lord, Save Me.

Pentecost 8, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Matthew 14:22-33

A week ago we were eye witnesses to the glory of the Lord displayed in a desolate place.   Jesus strengthened weak hands and restored feeble knees.  The blind brought to him could see and deaf ears could hear.  Lame people leaped.  The mute tongue sang for joy.  The prophet Isaiah’s signs of the coming Christ had been fulfilled in the sight of His people.  Starting with next to nothing, Jesus had fed a multitude in the wilderness.  Then, and only then, did he do what the disciples suggested hours before, He sent the people home healed and with full stomachs.  They had tasted of the Lord and saw that it was good.

 Immediately, Jesus commanded his disciples to get into the boat and begin to start across to the other side of the sea.  What do disciples do when Jesus commands?  They obey.   Then Jesus went up in the mountain to pray; while the disciples rowed away.

 Jesus had bigger fish to fry than those he fed to the hungry multitude.  He had more devastating wounds to heal than faltering hearts, arthritic limbs and lungs that are no longer limber. He needed to fulfill one more sign from Isaiah.  That would happen in the crowded desolation of the high priest’s and Pontius Pilate’s courtyards.  It would lead to the place of the skull, the cruel cross and cold crypt.  It was for our transgressions that he was wounded.  His stripes healed us of our sin sickness and made us whole. 

The image of a boat was often used to describe the church.  Our worship center is called a nave.  The pulpit likened to the prow of a ship. Through the water of baptism Jesus gave us a boarding pass on the ship of his church.  When we left this nave last week, this ark of salvation, we, “The people of God from His dwelling (took) leave.”  We went filled, having tasted the Lord’s good Supper.   We went strengthened in faith and blessed by the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,  “To work for God’s kingdom and answer his call.”

So how did our week go?  Let me tell you how things went for the disciples after they launched their boat into the sea.  Jesus, on the shore, soon receded from their view.  Then, they ran into a headwind.  For hours in the dark, wind and wave tormented them. 

Did you have any moments, minutes or hours this past week, where you headed into a contrary wind from which there seemed no relief?  Or perhaps you had smooth sailing this week.  No ill wind blew your way.  No argument with your spouse.  No, need to set things straight with your kids.  No need to have patience with your parents.  Work was a breeze.  Your job is secure for life.  Doctors only gave reassuring diagnoses.  Congress and the president inspired confidence in their ability to lead.    Every thought of your mind and word from your mouth was good and godly, filled with joy and praise.  You had a sense that the angel of the Lord encamped around you ready to deliver you from all your troubles.  Perhaps that is how your week went or perhaps not.  Perhaps Jesus was an ever present help in time of trouble or perhaps he was a figure watching from shore while the wind and waves beat against you.

There was nothing “perhaps” about it for the disciples who still were struggling on the sea past midnight.  Then “He came to them walking on the sea.”  You see, the Lord who healed the sick and fed the hungry from next to nothing is also the Lord of wind and wave.  It was he who brought order out of chaos when the earth, the darkness and the waters of the deep were all a surging void.  It was he who had parted the waters allowing Israel to walk through their midst to freedom from slavery.  Now the Lord of wind and wave came walking to them on the waters.

When the disciples saw him they cried out in fear, ”It’s a phantasm.”  Immediately, Jesus said, “Be courageous.” He clarified his identity, “It is I.” “Fear not.”  The One walking on the water is God who revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush, telling him “I am.” “I am he,” Jesus said to the woman at the well, who rushed back into town inviting people to come and see, “Can this be the Christ?”    “I am the bread of life.”  “Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall not thirst.”  To the scribes and Pharisees he said, “I am the light of the world.”  “Before Abraham, I am.”  “I am the Good Shepherd.  I know my own and my own know me.” When his friend Lazarus died he said to his sisters, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  “I am the way, the truth and the life.”

To the mob who came to arrest him in the garden of Gethsemane he said, “I am he.”

All of this is in that statement, “It is I”   Therefore, “Fear not.”  Do you see?  In the midst of the contrary winds and waves that harass us in our life, Jesus does come to us.

And Peter did take courage.  He asked the Lord to give him another command “to come to you on the water.”  Peter wanted to be like Jesus, courageous and fearless.  But he wanted it on his own terms.  Jesus said, “Come!”

Christ has also to us, “Come.”  Come not to a comfortable ministry of doing the same old thing.   Come to do the thing to which he sent his church long ago.  “Go, make disciples of all nations.”   The Lord has said to us, “Be courageous. It is I, fear not. Come”   

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Peter had to leave the ship---in order to learn both his own weakness and the almighty power of his Lord.” At the point where we are overwhelmed and sinking in doubt, in moment of dire need our only cry is ”Lord, save me,” for there is only one source of salvation. 

The Lord who healed the sick and filled the hungry and is Lord of wind and we is also the Lord of our salvation.  The reason for Jesus coming is given at time of his birth into the world, “he will save his people from their sins.”  God, in Christ has reached down and pulled us out of the deep waters. 

We can do no other than those first disciples did.  They made a church of their boat and worshiped him, “Truly you are the Son of God.”       

 

                           

Counting Our Resources

Matt. 14:13-21 Immanuel Chapel 2011

My name is James, brother of John, friend of fellow fishermen and disciples Peter and Andrew. I want to tell you about the day Jesus fed more than 5,000 people.

The story begins with the death, the beheading death, of Jesus’ cousin John the Baptizer. We heard his head was presented to a girl as a birthday present.

We were stunned and devastated. This news came on the heels of Jesus hometown of Nazareth rejecting him. He needed to get away from people for awhile, to think and to talk with God. Of course, Jesus had more on his mind than we knew. We didn’t have a clue about the cross and his awful death and awe filled resurrection.

We took a boat to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. When we arrived on the other side a huge crowd was waiting. Furthermore, many had brought sick family members. When Jesus saw what lay before him his heart went out to them. Despite his great personal grief, Jesus spent the rest of the day teaching people and healing the infirm.

The concern he showed to those people, is the same compassion he showed the world when he died on the cross. He healed people who had no strength because for Jesus there is no difference between sin and sickness. Sin is the sickness that shows itself not only in evil thoughts, words and deeds, but is finally the cause of our physical weaknesses. He heals us of our sin sickness and will heal us of our infirmities of the body in the resurrection

However, as the day wore on, we became concerned. Sometimes Jesus wasn’t very practical. Now don’t get me wrong. We felt sorry for those people too. But what were they thinking in bringing their sick to this desolate place? They apparently hadn’t even thought about bringing something to eat. The day was coming to an end and we had over 5,000 hungry people on our hands. “Jesus,” we said, “This place is desolate. Send the crowds away so they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said, “They don’t need to go away; you give them something to eat.” What? We’re not only disciples but we’re to be caterers too? See what I mean about being impractical? We said, “We haven’t anything here except these five loaves and two fish.” How were we to feed more than 5,000 with five little thin cakes of bread and a couple of fish?

Well, what would you have done? You must face reality once in awhile, don’t you? You gotta live within your means. And the only means we had were five half-inch-thick cakes of bread and two fish.

Then Jesus said, ‘Bring them here to me.” He commanded that everyone recline on the grass as if they were at a banquet back home. Taking the loaves and the fish and holding them in his outstretched hands he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. He broke the bread and began handing the loaves and fish to us and we distributed them to the crowd.

It seemed to flow out of his hand He just kept on handing out the food. He took a bit of ordinary bread and fish, said the ordinary table prayer and the food multiplied in his hands. We disciples knew how to count to seven, five loaves and two fish. We forgot to count to eight. We short counted on our resources. What we had was five loaves, two fish and Jesus.

As I worked, I began to think of how the Lord provided Moses and my ancestors with bread and the quail in the wilderness. Here we were in the wilderness and Jesus was providing the food. I thought of the prophet Elijah who multiplied a poor widows flour and oil supply to feed herself and son and Elijah too. All according to the word of the Lord. With our penchant to be realistic we had discounted what the word of the Lord could do. Now we were participating in an event, which out did the prophets. Indeed a greater one than Moses was here.

Does this sort of thing happen in your day? Think of the bread and wine you provide for Holy Communion. Jesus makes it a meal of his body and blood which strengthens faith, and gives eternal life and salvation. Today, he feeds millions with his body and blood. I also thought of how we pray that he would give us our daily bread. As one of your own has written, our Lord provides for “everything that belongs to the support and wants of the body.”

When the 5000 banqueters on the beach couldn’t eat another bite, we took our little wicker baskets and picked up twelve baskets of leftovers; one for each of us disciples. There was more food leftover than we started with.

As we sat down to eat our fill, we noticed that Jesus didn’t have a basket. Jesus had provided all this food but now depended on us to share some of what we had with him. Our Lord gives us so much to support our body and life and now we had an opportunity to give a bit back to him. We give him a bit of bread and wine to make his body and blood for our blessing. We give him a bit of our income that he might take it, bless it and help us call the world to believe in him. And there are so many more hungry people in the world today, than 5,000. There are millions. God would fill them too with his good things through our gifts. What grace, both physical and spiritual flows from him to us and through us to those in need.

What incredible patience Jesus has with us disciples. I was there and I saw that too. We grumbled. We doubted. We thought we knew best. Still he used us serve those in need. Then he used us to serve his needs.

Now you know my story. I wasn’t a perfect disciple. I discovered I never would be. Still God continued to forgive me. Still God continued to use me. Still God continued to provide for my daily needs. You too are witnesses to his great compassion. You too can give him the glory as he sends you out to be his servants, just as he used me. You too will continue to receive his bountiful grace, both physical and spiritual. Just as I was witness to his great works so are you. I give God the glory. Will you do the same?

 

You are Highly Prized

Pentecost 6, 2011 Deuteronomy 7:6-9

When the kids chose sides for a ballgame, Dale was always picked last.  Dale always batted ninth.  Dale always played right field.  One day a new kid, named Josh showed up.  Josh could hit, throw and field better than anyone else.  The next day the kids made Josh a captain.  With his first pick he said, “Dale.”  When Dale started out for right field, Josh said, “Dale, where you going?  You’re pitching.”  When they came in from the field, Josh said, “Better grab a bat Dale, you’re leading off.”  Though he was now number one, Dale’s athletic skills had not improved one bit.  He was first because Josh chose him to be first.

  According to our Old Testament lesson, we are all Dales, whom God chose to be His number one. God said, “You are a people holy to the Lord your God.”  “Holy”, imagine that.  Usually we think of holy as perfect.  We’ll get to that in a minute.  Holy’s first meaning is to be set apart.   In cowboy movies during the spring round up the cowhand on his horse and twirling his lasso would cut out one of the calves from the herd, rope it and put the owner’s brand on it.  God has cut us out from all the people on this crowded world for himself.  He marked us as His own in Baptism.

 God did not separate us out from the madding crowd because we were prize winners.     Yet God, who can’t have a bunch of rejects in his kingdom, chose us anyway.  Our great God sent his Son Jesus to purify us through His perfect and pure life and death.  He made us fit to be his own prized possession.  It’s not that God didn’t have other choices.  As it says elsewhere in Deuteronomy, “To the Lord your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it.”

Our response should be that we are completely surprised and overjoyed.  However, unlike people on Antiques Road show who discover that some item is worth thousands of dollars, our tendency is to think, surely under all the grime and grit we’ve accumulated on ourselves there is something in us for God to love.

Well, God soon disabuses us of our delusions. He says in our text, “It was not because you were more in number than any other people…for you were the fewest of all peoples.”  Think of God choosing Abraham to be the Father of Israel.  Physically, Abraham,” was as good as dead (being 100 years old)” and his wife Sarah’s womb was barren.”  Consider Israel in Egypt, he chose them to be his prized possession, a kingdom of priests, when they were slaves.  He chose Moses, an octogenarian, to be leader of that freedom movement.  We had nothing in us except trespasses, sin and the approaching smell of death. We had nothing which would commend ourselves to God.  We wert h perennial Dale.  The last picked who couldn’t run, throw or hit a lick.

 Yet, He set his love upon us.  In the Hebrew, that’s a phrase which indicates a strong physical desire for someone.  We have an example in the book of Deuteronomy.  When God gave Israel victory in a war and they took captives.    God said, “And you see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you desire to take her to be your wife.”   There were provisions set in place to protect the woman.  The woman should shave her head and cut her nails.  She would remove the clothes in which she was captured.  Then she would spend a full month lamenting the loss of her father and mother.  Then, after a month of seeing her at her most unattractive, if the man still had his love set upon her, he could marry the woman.  Let me paraphrase Isaiah 53, “We had no form or majesty that God should look at us, and no beauty that he should desire us.”  It all comes down to this; God chose to love us because He chose to love us.  It’s as simple as that.

  He chose us by grace alone fulfilling the promise given in Genesis that one of Eve’s offspring would crush the head of the serpent, but in the process the serpent would bruise his heal inflicting the poison of death.  God desired us to be his own and in love gave himself into death through His son Jesus Christ.  Martin Luther puts it this way, “all this He did out of fatherly divine goodness, without any merit or worthiness in us.”

When God makes a promise, he keeps his promise for the Lord your God is the faithful God.  The word faithful means steady.  It’s also the basis of our word “Amen.”   When we say “Amen” we are confessing that we can count on God to answer our petition.  God is the God of steadfast love.  He is loyal to us.   St. Paul writes, “If God is for us, who can be against us? If God didn’t even spare his own son, won’t he also graciously give us all he has promised?  Since God is the one who justifies, who can bring any charge against one whom God has chosen as his own and redeemed from sin and death?  Who is to condemn?  Christ Jesus who has died and risen again is at the right hand of God interceding for us.”  What do we have to fear when two members of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ, are interceding with the other third for us?  God talking to himself on our behalf.  God putting in a good word for us with himself.  We’re conquerors through God’s love for us shown in Jesus Christ.  Therefore there isn’t anything, anywhere or anyone who can separate us from the Love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  There are no limits here to God’s grace and love.

 Therefore, I pose two questions for each of us and as Immanuel congregation to consider.  How can we do anything other than give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name and make known his deeds among the peoples?  How can we do anything else but be zealous for good works?  Today we are calling on his name.  This week we will have opportunity to make known his deeds and to be zealous in good works.  May the Lord bless our words and our works.              

      

 

Living in God's Field

Pentecost 5, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

            A sign in a Garden center read, “Weeds are plants that haven’t learned to grow in rows.”

            Each spring I plant a few rows of seeds and a tomato plant or two in the newly worked soil of my little garden plot.  I like God, planted good seed.  Mine were from Burpees.  But now weeds have taken over.  Morning Glories vine around steel posts and reach out to engulf the air conditioner unit.  Though it happens every year, I am dismayed. Where did this bad seed come from when I planted only Burpees best?

            Today Jesus puts before us a sequel to the parable of the Sower we heard last week.  These parables teach us about God’s kingdom.  

            We prayed earlier, “O God, rule and govern our hearts and minds by your Holy Spirit.”  Later we will pray, “Thy kingdom come.”  God’s rule and governance, God’s kingdom comes with Jesus and the preaching and teaching of the word of His cross and his resurrection.   Jesus says, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears for they hear.”  If our eyes of faith grow dim and our ears become stopped up, even then the Holy Spirit witnesses with our spirit that the gospel of God’s rule in Jesus Christ is still rooted in our lives.  It is growing toward an anticipated bumper crop for the Lord’s harvest on the day he returns.

In the parable this morning a man sows good seed in his field.   However, during the night, his enemy comes and sows weeds.  The enemy does not broadcast his weed seeds on the trodden path, nor in the rocky soil nor among the thorns along the edge of the field.  No, the enemy sows its bad seed in the good soil among the wheat seeds.  When the farmhands see the weeds growing with the wheat they want to yank them out by the roots.  The farmer cooled their eagerness, warning that they could damage the harvest by also uprooting the wheat plants.  The harvesting crew will take care of the weeds.  The grain will be taken into the grain bin and the weeds will be burned.

In this parable Jesus is the man sowing the wheat seed.  The wheat seed are Christians planted in the field of the world.  The enemy is the Evil One who sows sons of evil.

You and I live in the time of growing, between the planting and the harvest.   Just because we are good seed doesn’t now mean that life is all good.   Now our natural tendency is to look out there in the world and identify the children of the Evil One.  Yes, the children of the Evil One are out there.  But the text says, “His enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat.”  Christ is directing us to look at the children of the kingdom bundled together in our pews this morning.  Now we could start glancing sideways at one another and begin to think, “Hmmm, I wonder about so and so.  Could that person be a weed disguised as wheat?”  Now the church, throughout the ages,   has spent a lot of time trying to weed out the weeds from its midst.  One would think that this parable of Jesus hasn’t been around for nearly 2,000 years.  But Jesus says, “No, no.  That’s not your job nor are you equipped to carry out that kind of judgment.”   Because the weeds have also been planted among us is also planted within us.  One person writes about it this way, the sons of the Evil One “may be so expertly leafed and disguised that you would never guess that he’s a weed, and that he’s –dear God-penetrated the aorta, for heaven’s sake.  How do you cut back a weed that’s inextricably intertwined with your lifeblood?”  We don’t.  In other words, the evil things of this earth can be so intertwined with the good things of this earth that to uproot one would uproot the other.   Not only will we never be able remove all the evil from the world, we are not able to do so from the church, nor from ourselves. 

A story that comes from the Jewish community speaks to us.

The Evil Spirit once came before God dejected and wailed, “Almighty God—I want you to know that I am bored—bored to tears.  I go around doing nothing all day long.  There isn’t a stitch of work for me to do!”

“I can’t understand you,” god replied.  “There’s plenty of work to be done only you’ve got to have more initiative.  Why don’t you try to lead people into sin?  That’s your job.” 

“Lead people into sin!” muttered the Evil Spirit contemptuously.  “Why Lord, even before I can get a chance to say a blessed word to anyone he has already gone and sinned!”

The harvest at the close of the age will not be done by you and me but by the angels of God.  The angels will gather out of his kingdom “all causes of sin and all lawbreakers.”Until the harvest the wheat and weeds are allowed to grow side by side.

Then how do we live now as fruit-bearing wheat in a weed-infested world?  We persevere.  Jesus has sown a whole field of wheat, so that each individual stalk can lean on another when the weeds bear down.  We persevere alongside others who are persevering alongside us.

It starts with God.  God is three in one.  God is a community.  In his creation He placed us in community with himself and one another.  In the church he has placed us into the community of Christ.  Christ waters us with grace in our baptism each and every day, with the forgiveness of our sins and rescue from death and the Evil One.  Daily, he gives eternal salvation to all who believe this.  Daily he drowns our old weed infested person.  Daily a new weed free stalk of wheat emerges and grows toward producing fruit of right living, waiting for the day of the great harvest of God’s kingdom.  Then his harvest will shine like the golden sun in the kingdom of God.  Truly, “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear” the goodness of the Lord.            

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

      

Got Ears? Hear!

Pentecost 4, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

            In the book, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Kyrie Statmis went to Dr. Iannis, the village physician, complaining of an ear ache.  Dr. Iannis extracted a pea from Kyrie’s ear that he had stuck there when he small child.  Soon after, Kyrie returned to the village doctor and asked him if he could put the pea back in his ear.  “It’s my wife” Kyrie explained. Before, her constant getting after him to get out of his chair and do something was a kind of steady murmuring, putting him to sleep.  But now, with his ear canal cleared he could hear every word she spoke. 

            Jesus says, “Got ears? Hear!”   What is it that blocks our ears and causes the Word of the Lord to sound like a soothing murmur to us?  What is going through the pathways of our minds that hinder us from really hearing the word of the Lord? C.S Lewis book The Screwtape Letters, is a correspondence between Wormwood, a devil in training, and his uncle Screwtape.  Wormwood’s assignment is a new Christian.  Screwtape advises his nephew not to attack his subject’s faith directly.  Rather divert the person’s mind away from God and his word.  For instance, when his subject is in church, Wormwood should call attention to a bug crawling on another person’s collar.  As a result, the word of the Lord has planted stays on the surface and is easily plucked away by the Evil One.

            In some people the word does take root and spring up causing joy.  However, when some tribulation or someone reacts negatively to his new found joy in Christ or disappointment arises when he sees how Christians often fail to live what they confess, he loses his joy and his faith begins to dry up.

            When I was writing the history of Holy Cross, in Collinsville for its 150^th anniversary, a couple people asked if I found the work inspiring.  I replied, “If you want to study church history, you better start with a strong faith.”  There were times when I wanted to reach back a hundred or more years, grab someone by the lapels and ask, “Do you know what you are doing?”  One day I met Karen on the sidewalk outside church.  She had been translating some of the congregational minutes.  Karen said, “I don’t think there is any point continuing.  I’ve come to 1911 and they’ve voted to give back the money donated to build a new church.”  I replied, “Do you see that church building there?  That was dedicated in 1915.  Don’t give up yet.”  What the study of church history gives is a stronger certainty in the amazing patience and loving forbearance of the Lord that he continues to give us his grace through His word and sacraments.

            As Jesus continues to speak in our text he says that in some who hear, the word the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke out the word.  Certainly we have enough going on in the world to fill us with care over the future.  And the prospect of riches is held out with every casino built and lottery ticket bought.

While I was serving in Albert Lea, MN the Ministerial Association met at the Episcopal Church.  It was a beautiful church set alongside Fountain Lake.  Someone asked whether the view of the lake was a distraction during worship.  Not only that, the Rector answered, but I can watch my parishioners waterskiing on Sunday morning.

The way Jesus is telling his parable it seems the whole enterprise of spreading the seed of the gospel is pretty much a failure, what with it having to contend with the Evil One, the tribulation, disappointment and the cares of the world along with the deceitful promise of riches that choke out what has sprouted.

However, Isaiah promises that the Word of the Lord will accomplish the Lord’s purpose and shall succeed in the thing for which God sends it.  The word defies and defeats the Evil One.  It’s the word that turns hearts of stone to hearts that receive and welcome the word of God’s love and salvation in Jesus Christ.  It’s the word that out grows and thwarts the cares and deceitful enticement of the world.  Despite the failures the end harvest of the word will be abundant.

It was none other than our Lord Jesus Christ who on his head carried a crown of thorns that he might offer to us the crown of life.  The word made flesh allowed his life to be choked out of him as he hung on the cross gasping for breath.  It was Jesus himself, word of God become human being, who tackled the Evil One.  He defeated him that day quoting scripture and telling his adversary that we humans do not live alone by what the world has to offer.  The word that proceeds from the mouth of God overcomes the world’s deceitful promises.  It was the Word made flesh that cared so much for you and me who invites us to cast our cares upon him.  He has already borne them on the cross and buried them in his grave.

But what of all the failures?  Martin Franzmann wrote a hymn that answers that question.  Let us join in singing hymn 586 stanzas 1, 4, 5,

1. Preach you the Word and plant it home

To men who like or like it not,

The word that shall endure and stand

When flow’rs and men shall be forgot.

4. Though some be snatched and some be scorched

And some be choked and matted flat,

The sower sows; his heart cries out,

“Oh, what of that, Lord, what of that?”

5. Of all his scattered plenteousness

One-fourth waves ripe on hill and flat,

 and bears a harvest hundredfold;

“Ah, what of that, Lord, what of that!     
                         

         

 

 

 

 

      
                         

         

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

Make Yourself at Home

Independence Day Sunday, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Jeremiah 29:4-14

            It would have been helpful if Jeremiah had included a subscription to Better Homes and Gardens in his letter to the exiles in Babylon.  According to the Lord’s directives, they were to, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat of their produce.”  Jeremiah advised them to seek the welfare of Babylon and “pray to the Lord on its behalf.”  These exiles were the Lord’s own chosen people.  Moses had predicted centuries before they would provoke the Lord to anger by turning away from their Creator and Savior.  Now the result of their action was upon them. God sent his own people far from their homes.

            We are all descendants of people who turned away from the Lord.  Thus he sent Adam and Eve into exile from their blessed and happy homeland, the Garden of Eden, the perfect Paradise.  But God’s blessing of fruitfulness and our responsibility to care for the earth was not withdrawn.  Though we now toil to make the soil produce, we have within us the urge to make our patch of planet a pleasant place to live.  On the other hand, sin makes us imperfect caretakers of a world which itself groans under the burden of humanity’s rebellion.  When you leave today, look to the west where acres of vacant asphalt covered parking lots prevent the earth from producing and reproducing according the blessing of God.  On the other hand, east and north we see homes and a striving to gain a bit of Paradise and Eden.

            On this Independence Day Sunday we are reminded that the Lord has placed us exiles from Eden in a good and pleasant land.  Oh, I know not the land is “America the Beautiful.”  I have a photo of my immigrant grandparents standing on either side of a huge boulder which thousands of years ago was deposited by a glacier.  There it rested in the middle of a field with countless smaller stones defying the efforts of August and Johanna to farm the land they homesteaded.  Nevertheless, others saw our continent as a slice of paradise.  Minnesota boasts both Eden Prairie and Eden Valley.  Arizona and California each have a Paradise Valley while New Mexico claims Paradise Hills.  Seven other states from Maryland to Utah have either a Paradise or an Eden.

            Our forebears came to this land in numerous ways for numerous reasons. The   forced march which the captives of Judah faced in being driven into exile in Babylon, finds a counterpart in those whose ancestors were forced into exile from home and homeland.  Out of that experience the African American spiritual proclaimed that we do believe we shall overcome; therefore we are not afraid, because God is on our side today.  So whether we have come as my grandfather did, with six other young men from Berlin, to adventure into their future in a new land, or as my grandmother did to escape a society in Pomerania mired in the middle ages or we are among more recent immigrants to find a life in this country, we celebrate its 235^th birthday tomorrow.  As we make our home in this blessed land of freedom and opportunity, we are called to seek its welfare, “for in its welfare” is our welfare.

 God promised the exiles in Babylon, “I will visit you,… and bring you back to this place.”   Later the Lord says, “In those days I will cause a righteous branch to spring up…(you) will be saved… and the name by which it will be called (is) ‘The Lord is my righteousness.’”  We hear those words with ears which tell of a hope beyond our earthly life.   They are words of a promise of being made right with God, despite our sins placing us on the wrong side of God.  We are unable to put ourselves right with God.  God, in Jesus Christ, does it for us.  In Jesus Christ, God  fulfilled his promise given before the founding of our United States, yes, given before the founding of all creation, to come and visit us.

            That visitation was set into motion when, God sent an angel to visit a young maiden named Mary and announce to her that through her God was preparing to bring the human race from its exile from paradise.  In Jesus, God became flesh and visited his creation.  He did not come to inspect our lives to see whether we were living up to the responsibility he had given us to be caretakers of his creation and of one another.   Not at all, that inspection had been done through the ages and we came up short of his expectations every time.  Rather, he came to put into action the plans he had for us.  Not plans to do us evil, for the evil we have done, but a plan to make us whole once again, to give us a hope and a future.  “I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.”  God’s decision to drive us into exile from paradise is reversed on the cross.  There Jesus asks His heavenly Father to forgive our ignorant actions.  He says to the repentant thief, “Today you shall be with me in paradise.”  He did this for us, that when we pray to him, he hears, when we seek him, he will be found.

            While we occupy this blessed land with all its freedoms, we await that time when he will restore us to Paradise again.  Then when he has gathered all his scattered believers from around the world, our exile will be over and we will live in the land of the living forever.  In the meantime, we make ourselves at home in the land he has given us, where grow amber waves of grain, and purple mountain majesties rise above the fruitful plain.           

      

                   

        

How to be the Church

Pentecost 2, Proper 8, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Matthew 10: 34-42

            A painting in our oldest son’s high school textbook has stuck with me for more than twenty years.  A flock of sheep is crowding to the edge of a precipice.  Two sheep have already fallen onto a ledge several feet below.  They have no way up.  Others of the flock peer down on them.  More sheep are pressing in from behind, intent on grazing.  Disaster is in progress.  There is no shepherd in sight.

            When Jesus looked upon the crowds, ‘they were like sheep without a shepherd.”  He called to himself his little church of twelve apostles. Jesus gave them his authority over every affliction. He sent them that, as they were going, they should proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom.   God’s kingdom is nothing other than Jesus’ life and his dying on the cross. Therein, he established the rule of grace and mercy.  He saved the harassed and helpless from oppression.  Jesus’ commission to be in mission is valid in our time as well.

In Jesus’ time a synagogue stood in every town and village.   Still, the populace was lost, harassed by Satan, disease and the task of attaining enough bread for today.  Every day they and their lives missed the mark of what God intended for them.   Some recognized their plight; others did not. Few knew there was a way out.

Within a three mile radius of Immanuel Chapel there are more churches than you can shake a stick at.  Yet, consider the crowds within that radius, so many going, going, going they know not where.  Think of the cars rushing by on Old Halls Ferry.  Some carry their occupants to worship to hear the good news of God’s mercy and grace in Jesus Christ.  But many passing by are simply going, to Home Depot, or IHOP or to Shop N’ Save.  They are intent on making their way through another day.  Some, go to work for their daily bread, some are weary of struggling from one week to another, some see no way out.

There is a way out and we know the way.  His name is Jesus. This  Jesus called us to himself.  The result being, that through His Spirit we have heard and received the good news of salvation.  We have been enlivened to new life in baptism.  We dine on the most powerful food available in the entire universe, His crucified and resurrected body and blood in the bread and wine of Holy Communion.  These blessings are ours, not that we may rest comfortably in the comforting and sometimes contentious company of fellow disciples.  Fortified and refreshed through his word and sacrament Christ sends us out.   As we go on our way we are the church. There is simply no other way to be the church.  For the kingdom of God is near, in our hearts and on our lips.  We carry the news of God’s peace within ourselves.  When we speak, as opportunity arises, it is not we who are speaking but the Spirit of our heavenly Father speaking through us.

            But Jesus wants us to be aware that following him brings with it the risk of  bearing  a cross just as he did.  When the weather report predicts the meeting of cold northern air with warm gulf air, we can expect turbulence and storm along the front.  We are often warned to be ready to take cover.  When the warmth of the gospel meets the cold reality of sin, spiritual storms may erupt along that front.  We may believe that we are wise to take cover and keep the gospel’s warming atmosphere to ourselves.  Better to allow the arctic air of spiritual hearts gone cold to have the day, than run the risk of the turbulence that might result in our lives and in theirs.  Though Jesus came declaring peace between God and humanity, though we are given that peaceful word, the result may be a loss of peace for ourselves and for those who are led by the Spirit to believe in the good news of God’s presence and power in Christ through our word of invitation.

            But the situation in God’s kingdom is ever the opposite of that in the world of our daily life.  It is in taking the cross that comes with following him, that we are worthy of him.  It’s in losing our lives in his service that we are keepers of life.

            For Christ identifies himself us.  He promises that there will be those among the hopelessly lost sheep who will receive our word.  When we his disciples pronounce peace; that peace will find a home in their hearts and lives.  Jesus promises, whoever welcomes us welcomes him and whoever welcomes him receives the blessing of the heavenly Father.  Whoever gives one of his disciples a cup of water because they are his disciples; that person will not lose his reward.  For in the last day Jesus will say, “Come, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from before the foundation of the world,…for I was thirsty and you gave me drink…whatever you did for the least of these my brethren you did for me.”

            As we scatter today to go on our way we may discover as one person did through simply talking with a bagger at her local grocery store.  She had been talking with the woman on and off for a year.  Upon hearing that the woman no longer worked on Sundays, she invited her to come to her church, to their casual, outdoor, come-as-you-are service.  Much to her surprise the woman responded by giving her a hug.  When we take the risk of reaching out we may be surprised at how ready many are to receive our most humble efforts.  Lest we forget, Jesus promises, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me.”                           

             

I am taking a Sunday off.  I won't have a sermon to post this week.

in a Forest of gods

Easter Six, 2011 Immanuel Chapel, Acts 17:16, 22-23

            Several years ago my nephew and I, now a pastor in Michigan, were squirrel hunting on the farm where we both grew up.  We made a wide arc through the woods emerging on a ridge overlooking an alder filled swamp.  A farmstead sat on the crest of a hill a ways off.  We thought we knew where we were, but did not recognize the farm.  Had we gotten turned around as we made our way through the woods?  Then it came to us.  It was our home farm.  Sometimes become lost, even in familiar surroundings. 

            In our day we are all walking through a forest, not of trees, but ideas about religion and God.  We too may get lost in this forest populated by so many ideas, some of which seem attractive, like the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden.

            When St. Paul entered the city of Athens he was confronted by a forest of stone, marble and medal statues.  A gold and ivory statue of Athena holding a spear with a gleaming point could be seen reflecting the sun from 40 miles away.  Statues to Apollo, Jupiter, Venus, Mercury, Bacchus, Neptune and Diana were only a part of the forest.  Athens prided itself as an intellectual center.  It had been home to Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus and Zeno.  These men sought to provide direction on life and how to live it.

            St. Paul was petrified as he viewed the dead forest of idols. It wasn’t that people worshiped the idols themselves. They were symbols of what stood behind the Greek ideas about gods and humanity’s place in the universe.  On the Sabbath he spoke with the Jewish community about Jesus.    During the week he discussed Jesus Christ in the public square with the Epicureans who thought the gods were so far removed that they didn’t matter, therefore, enjoy life.  He talked with the Stoics, who thought the gods were involved in their lives, determining their fate so they might just well try making the best of life.  Paul was well educated and knew Greek philosophy.  However he was an apostle of God’s Son, Jesus Christ who became a real human being.  He lived among us.  He suffered in his flesh.  He died for us. Through his resurrection has given us new and eternal life.  Jesus was the way, truth and life.  The Gospel of Jesus and the salvation he brought through faith was his chief interest.  

Paul noted that the Athenians were “very religious.”  American culture too has a number of “very religious trappings.”  “In God we trust,” is on our coins.   “Under God” was inserted into the pledge in 1954.  However, is being religious the same as being Christian?   That the Athenians were religious had not led them to Christ.  They had simply gone on in their lost groping among a forest of gods and philosophical ideas about the universe and life.  As we follow Jesus, we find people all around us groping to find some basis for their life. 

The “There-is-no-truth” god is popular today.  Jesus was sent into the world as the truth himself, to reveal God’s faithfulness to his promise to free us from sin and the result of sin, death.  Jesus, God’s Son, went to the cross and his own death that he would carry out God’s instruction to love everyone to the end, his own end.  Just before dying, Jesus announced, “It is finished.” His resurrection freed us from death, that we might receive his abundant life which is ours by believing in his name, which has the power to save us. 

But those who worship the “There-is-no-truth” god are in tune with Pontius Pilate’s question to Jesus, “What is truth?”  Many is our society would answer, “There is no one truth.”  Whether it’s Oprah Winfrey’s truth, Gandhi’s, the Dalai Lama, your neighbor who lives across the street or Jesus, it doesn’t matter. One opinion is as good as another.  The only truth is that you dare not try to foist your truth onto someone else.

Lying in back of the forest of gods through which we walk day by day, is also a three in one god in the flesh which has about 7 billion variations, but one name “Me, Myself and I.”  We are something like Jacob of old, who when he escaped from his uncle Laban, stole Laban’s household gods hiding them under the skirts of his wives.  Israel was never quite able to get rid of those gods.   “Me, Myself, and I” is always close at hand, as near as I am to myself.  In the comic strip Lola the pastor greets Lola at church, pastor john says, “I think you should pay particular attention to the sermon this morning.”  Lola asks, “Yeah? What’s it about?”  “Putting God first,” the pastor replies.  Lola, now seen wearing golf shows and carrying her bag of clubs, “Not sure how that applies to me, but whatever.”  

Let’s not forget another popular god which is proclaimed today.  It’s the candy machine god proclaimed by some on TV and in some of the largest churches in our country.  Sometimes it’s known as the “Prosperity Gospel.”  This god wants to sweeten your life.  His sole purpose is to help you improve yourself, reduce your stress, and offer Scripture based coping skills with satisfaction guaranteed.  The question is not, “How can I be saved?” Rather, its, “Am I satisfied?”  Does it feel right to me?  God wants to fill your goody bag with anything your appetite desires.  To gain the bonanza god has in store for you, you must banish defeatist thinking and replace it with a positive attitude.  To the Sweetener of Life god and those who preach it, sin is a bad word, a negative word.  This god looms large and enticing in the forest of religion.  After all why would god have invented Malls and on line shopping if god did not want you to fulfill your every whim for a beautiful life.

However, what is passed over is the reality that when Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden, they landed in a swamp, not in a pot of gold or in the fountain of youth.  Jesus came to get us out of the swamp.  Before shouting the Alleluia of Easter we pass through Jesus on the cross in the darkness and death of Good Friday.  Jesus asked the heavenly father to forgive those who crucified him, not to give them a change of attitude so he could bless them with wide screen TV’s and the latest in cyber space communication.

This Thursday we celebrate Jesus ascension to the right hand of the heavenly Father.  Before he removed his visible presence from this world he promised to a helper, the Spirit of truth.  As we walk through the forest of religious and spiritual offerings Christ has not left us as orphans.  He has sent his Holy Spirit to us to lead us into the truth, that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.  Anyone offering anything or anyone different is offering much less than the riches we have in Christ, in his mercy, forgiveness and grace leading to life and salvation.