What Pastor Jon Preached on August 28, 2011

Eleventh Sunday After Pentecost
Jeremiah 15:15-21 • Psalm 26:1-8 • Romans 12:9-21 • Matthew 16:21-28

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you." But he turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things." Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? "For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

Have you ever gone from feeling sky high to rock bottom in a matter of seconds? That is what Peter’s experience is with Jesus as Jesus begins orienting his ministry towards Jerusalem. As we heard in last week’s gospel reading, Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”, and he heralded Peter’s confession that Jesus is “the Messiah”. Jesus declared Peter's confession fully worthy of building the whole church on. No doubt, he was on cloud nine. Here is God’s own Son, giving a pop quiz, and Peter is the only disciple who dared answer--and he got it right! He’s standing 10 feet tall.

But as quickly as he ascends, he falls just as quickly. Jesus starts to talk about undergoing great suffering, about being killed and being raised on the third day. Peter thinks this does not sound like what a Messiah ought to be about. He thought the Messiah, of all people, would be making the proud, the greedy, the power-hungry to suffer and die...but choosing himself to undergo suffering and death? God would never let that happen to the Messiah! No sooner does Peter cry out in protest--“No! God forbid your dying! It must never happen”--than Jesus turns to Peter and cuts him down to size: “Get behind me Satan!” Jesus had just given Peter his name, which means Rock, when he gave his confession. Now, he is given another name by Jesus: “You are a stumbling block to me.” Scripture does not record Peter saying anything back to Jesus, but given how far he’d fallen in a matter of moments, I think Peter wouldn’t have anything to say...except...for stunned...cold...disbelieving...silence.

Silence, after all, is about the only thing we can usually muster when we’ve been put in our place. Peter’s own words had not saved him. He had said everything right. He’d thought he had Jesus figured out. Until his words confessed what he’d thought was his notion about how God operates--that not God, nor God’s Son could ever go through our agony of death. Peter’s words did not save him.

In our lives and in our life of faith, we believe that our words will save us. That if we can just put the right words on the resume, and say just what they want to hear in the interview...that job will be mine. That if we can just explain our side of the story of how we betrayed that friend or spouse or family member...they will finally understand what happened. If we can just say the right words to our children, we can finally get through to them. If I can just say the right words to this person...then just maybe...they’ll want to come church. Like Peter, we just want to get the words right to get ourselves out of the challenges we face.

But as Peter exposes in Jesus’ rebuke, even Peter, who spoke all the right words, cannot speak for Jesus. Jesus’ promises, Jesus’ identity as Messiah, Jesus’ way of self-giving sacrifice, cannot be spoken to us by anyone except Jesus himself.

As Peter is silenced, so are we. We are not just silenced at our inability to grasp the Son of God...we come to the end of words to describe the violence, the destruction and the death we see around us. We are silenced when we have no words to describe the catastrophies humanity is capable of carrying out. Still, almost 10 years later, the tragedy of 9/11 has the power to bring us...to silence.

Even as we try to break the silence of suffering, what can we say? In a world now filled with so much media, technology and commercialism, do we even have the space anymore to hear the words Jesus says to us? The average American subjected to 6,000 messages a day. Can we cultivate an openness to listening for a God who could still possibly be speaking to us?

The word Jesus speaks to Peter and to us is a word that chooses not to avoid being spoken in the midst of the unspeakable that brings us to silence. His word for us is a word that is more trustworthy than all the words that come at us to confuse and turn us in on ourselves. Jesus speaks his word from the path that leads through Jerusalem, through whatever suffering silences us...to his cross. His word meets us there at the intersection of where our deepest fears meet God’s great promise of hope. Jesus Word for us...is an embrace of the truth. The word spoken to us on the cross...is LIFE in his name. This is a Word spoken to us when we have no words left to say—when we become ambivalent to having faith in anyone or anything else. It turns out God chooses to bring speech out of silence through one who remained silent before his accusers....whose death was so irrelevant that it was not even recorded by the authorities. (Lischer)

It is in the places of silence where God’s Word of the suffering, saving Christ echo with the promise of presence. In his work about his time at the Auschwitz concentration camp in World War II, Elie Wiesel writes in his book Night about seeing the hanging of a child, and hearing someone ask, “Where is God? Where is he?” The boy was not heavy enough for the weight of his body to break his neck, so the boy died slowly and in agony. Wiesel filed past him, saw his tongue still pink and his eyes clear, and wept. “Behind me,” he writes, “I heard the same man asking: Where is God now? And I heard a voice within me answer him: ... Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.”

So it is on such a cross that the Word of Life is spoken to us, which we cannot speak for ourselves: Jesus will have the final word. His word will not shy away from all who hunger for compassion that fills us beyond measure. We respond as does the prophet Jeremiah who received a promise of return home from exile: “Your words were found, [God], and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart: for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts.” (Jer. 15:16)

The Jesus of the cross speaks his word that paves the way for us to follow him. Thankfully we do not have to blaze that trail on our own. It has been paved for us already by Jesus, the Word, who offers forgiveness, who clears a way for us straight into God’s heart for the world.

We as the church gathered today hear this word, and it is that word that we then go and proclaim to all the ends of the earth, speaking the name that is above all other names, that runs deeper than any pain, into the silence: Jesus... Emmanuel... God is with us.

As United Lutheran continues its visioning process, what are those places of silence in this community and in our world that we feel God calling us to speak Jesus’ word of life to? Is it to assist with refugee resettlement? Is it to those without affordable housing? Is it to those who don’t feel welcome anywhere? This word, Jesus, is a word that matters, and that can change lives. I believe this church has the faith and courage to speak the word Jesus with boldness, even when the world would rather cover its ears.

So in the crazed world of our lives filled with so many words, let us now take a minute of silence to actually listen to God, who speaks a single Word of Life into our lives today, the self-giving...Jesus...who comes even in the silence of our frailty...to still our fears and fill us with his resounding YES to us spoken from the cross. ...And at the end that minute or so of silence I will say... Word of God, word of life, to which all will respond, Thanks be to God.

Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, August 21, 2011

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 51:1-6 • Psalm 138 • Romans 12:1-8 • Matthew 16:13-20

Preached at Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Oak Park, IL as part of a “Pulpit Swap” Sunday with their Pastor, Rev. Kathy Nolte, who preached today at United Lutheran Church in Oak Park, IL.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Thank you so much for the honor of being with you in worship this morning. It is good to be with you as an ELCA partner congregation in this community. My wife Stacey, who is also here this morning, is expecting our child in October, and one of the many things we have been doing to get ready is cleaning out clutter, which means...lots of empty boxes. I've been thinking a lot about boxes the last few days. I've been thinking about those times in our life or someone else's life that feel like this... [put box over head]. Have you ever been put in a box? No, I’m not talking about when you were five and your older brother played with you by putting you in a box. I’m talking about being labeled something that did not truly identify by who you really are. Maybe it is assuming that just because you are at a White Sox or Cubs game doesn’t necessarily mean you are a fan of the home team. Maybe it is the bully at school who called you weak. Maybe it was the boss who called your work style uncooperative. Maybe it is the extended family member who assumes a political label of liberal or conservative for you on every possible social issue. Maybe it is the doctor who gave a diagnosis that now will labels you, or at least your medical chart, for the rest of your life: depressed, disabled, high-risk...

Boxes and labels, we have been taught, are unhelpful. But it seems in our culture these days that labeling others, putting them in boxes and drawing lines in the sand are becoming more a sign of courage than of weakness. The labels that are being thrown around so casually today are coming out of our preoccupation with economic indicators and political in- fighting and seem to be a way for us to try and hold on to something secure amidst all the change and conflict happening around us.

Once I was at a seminary--that shall remain nameless--and saw the student newspaper sitting outside of the bookstore, and the main headline article was something like “What About Thinking Inside of the Box for Once”. With all the forces trying to change the church this student was trying to advocate closing the church off from the world, in order to preserve the “purity” of the church—trying to keep it in a “box.”

The disciples of Jesus were confronted with this very challenge we face—of labeling, categorizing, and making idols--as Jesus began to turn his ministry towards Jerusalem, and towards the cross. As Jesus asked them “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” he asks them to give him the labels--the boxes--that others would give to him. And they name them: John the Baptist, Elijah, a prophet. But then Jesus asks them the tough question: “But who do you say that I am?” The disciples could pick one of the boxes they had just said and put Jesus in it. They could borrow someone else’s testimony about how Jesus had impacted their lives.

But Peter realizes quickly that Jesus does not fit into a box. He defies categorization. There is only one name that he could be given that comes close to describing who this healing, teaching, preaching, friend of sinners, anti- imperial man was: Messiah. Jesus transcended any human category, because in Jesus, Peter experienced and touched God’s very presence among us. “You are the Messiah, Jesus, the Son of the living God.”

When Jesus comes to us, God’s promise of mercy is made real in flesh and in blood. Jesus defies the category of any other relationship we have ever known or will have in our lives. In him, the living breathing flesh of God comes to us, and it’s personal, it’s real, it’s life-giving, it draws us into an all-encompassing relationship with every single aspect of our lives...that there is no other name we can give him, than Savior and Messiah. When Jesus comes to us, we find we can’t put that experience into a box...it cannot be contained...it cannot be bottled up...it cannot fit into a tidy compartment of our lives...but Jesus envelops and transforms every part of us into something we could not be, apart from Jesus. In him we are given a gift that is bigger than any box, label or name: the gift of being made a new creation, a whole human being, a beloved child of God.

We are posed this question today by Jesus: who do we say that he is? What is the gift that he is to us? Will we box this gift of Jesus into a corner of our lives--to a tidy hour on Sunday? Or can we open ourselves to him walking with us every single hour and day of our lives? Will we draw on another’s testimony, borrowing a box of someone else’s words about how Jesus changed their life, or use those “buzz” words we Lutherans so often like to say—grace, justification, gospel--but maybe don’t know how they actually touch our own lives? Or can we tell our truth, beyond the boxes, of how Jesus love has worked through our weakness to reveal God to us? Who do we say Jesus is?

ELCA Presiding Bishop Mark Hanson challenged the ELCA in his report at this week’s churchwide assembly in Orlando, to look to Jesus as our reconciling Lord who brings us into relationship with each other, not inside any boxes, but beyond them, across our differences. Our Messiah, our Lord, reigns from a cross, transforming our whole lives, and also transforming our relationships with those who differ from us. This Messiah chisels and chips away at us with divine love, love that shape us together into a people who care for each other and for God’s whole world. That love that unites us stands bigger and more powerful than any box, than any difference or than any ideology that may try to divide us.

Eboo Patel, one of my most inspiring seminary professors, is a Muslim. He started an interfaith youth organization in Chicago that equips youth from different religions to do joint service projects, and then reflect on what is it about their faith tradition that inspires them to take action for a better world. Eboo sees that the boxes of religious identity cannot separate us from working together on matters that concern us all. He used to say, look at an average daily newspaper, and cut out all the articles that have the perspective of two different religions or ideologies clashing, fighting or causing violence. See how little of that newspaper is left. The Messiah that Peter and that we testify to today transforms us to into people who work together out of a different story line, across the lines and boxes that the world would put us in, to discover that God is present there, in those relationships we had not even imagined possible.

And so the church is built on this Messiah, not on any strength or coercion or manipulation on our part, but on the box-transcending Jesus. Jesus unites us even beyond the twenty Oak Park blocks that separate United Lutheran Church and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. The church, just like Christ, cannot be contained with the box of a building, and so it is for us to celebrate our unity, especially the unity of our two ELCA congregations in this community. Pastor Kathy and I are deeply committed to seeing our congregations work together, outside of our respective boxes, to collaborate as church partners--to whatever extent God may be calling us to do so, from sharing educational and youth ministries, to joint worship services...the possibilities are endless. We can together proclaim the Messiah who lifts the world out of the boxes of fear and isolation and bullying and poverty...and who places us into the arms of his own gracious, freeing and merciful embrace.

There are many whom we will encounter in our daily life who live with this as how they view the world--trapped in a box-- whether it’s the literal box of sleeping in one on the street, or what can feel like one when there seems like no place to belong. Jesus breaks these boxes down so we can proclaim to all that are trapped by them, that what traps us no longer has power. Jesus gives Peter and us that power and authority to loose those living bound to the boxes placed on them, and that is the power Jesus can make possible through we as the church. We have been given his power, as Theresa of Avila once said:

“Christ has no body now on earth but yours no hands but yours, no feet but yours. Yours are the eyes through which to look out Christ’s compassion to the world. Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. Yours are the hands through which he is to bless.”

Who do we say Jesus is? Go into the world, brothers and sisters, as proclaimers of our Messiah, as ones set free to share the transforming gift that does not come in a box: he has named us all as his beloved.

Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, August 7, 2011

Eighth Sunday After Pentecost
1 Kings 19:9-18 • Psalm 85:8-13 • Romans 10:5-15 • Matthew 14:22-33

Immediately [Jesus] made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, "It is a ghost!" And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, "Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." Peter answered him, "Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water." He said, "Come." So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, "Lord, save me!" Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, "You of little faith, why did you doubt?" When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, "Truly you are the Son of God."

I am sure many of us know of someone who is always the first person to raise their hands, or speak up when a question is asked. A “brown noser,” we often call them. I don’t think the disciple Peter was necessarily trying to earn a better grade or be at the top of the class called “Discipleship 101.” He was acting like that when he eagerly shouted out to Jesus to tell him to walk on water. But he did have a certain eager initiative and risk-taking streak that none of the other disciples had. In some ways Peter is the overachiever disciple. After all, it took more gumption for Peter to call out to a mysterious figure taking a stroll on top of a lake and say, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water,” than the courage it took for the coyote in the Looney Tunes cartoon to choose to run over an empty canyon yet again to catch the roadrunner.

For a few moments, Peter pulls it off. This ghost tells him to come, and he does it. He’s walking on water...for a moment. But then...holy mole...the wind starts to pick up. He wonders if he can do it. He realizes this is a scarier and harder task than he’d thought. He wonders, if he starts to sink, whether he’ll be able to save himself, and whether he’s really cut out for this or not. Soon, he’s sinking like a rock.

But it’s not Peter’s fault that he sinks. He’s not supposed to be walking on water. None of us is! None of us, no matter how eager, excited, enthused, or talented we are, could possibly do that! But somehow we think that that is our job—that that is what is expected of us...that we can achieve unbelievably high expectations that we set for ourselves—or others set for us—that we have no way of keeping them.

On top of that, when we try walk on water and struggle to do so, ourselves and others often see it as a lack of character or lack of faith. “If I could just have more faith in myself, then my job wouldn’t be so demanding.” “If I could just believe in myself, this marriage would stop from going down the tubes.” “If I just believed I could make it through, this sickness would go away.”

But no increase in faith will fix these nor any crisis we face. It is not our business to be in the business of walking on water, of being in control of outcomes that are beyond our power. That is Jesus’ business. As the Lord of life and death, it is Jesus’ job to be our lifeboat. It’s his job to save us. It’s his job to walk on water—to do the impossible, go to any length necessary—to come and rescue us, we who are in the boat being tossed about on the ups and downs of our lives. It is Jesus’ job to stand in the midst of our chaos, our struggles and and our fears and reach out a hand to us that pulls us all together into his boat that directs us all to his new life. That is the Jesus we meet who saves us from drowning, and that is the Jesus we meet on the cross.

Once I met a bishop whose ego challenged him to zealously believe that his job was to save the church. He shared that a very wise spiritual director told him to keep a cross in his pocket at all times. Anytime that he began to think that he was the one in control—the savior—he could reach in his pocket for that cross, and remember who he was, and whose he was. He wasn’t God. He wasn’t the Messiah. He was a sinner, rescued by the hands of Christ to proclaim the one who is Lord of life and death to the world.

Just as Peter’s failure to walk on water plunged him into the water, so too can our failures draw us deeper into the grace of God who rescues us in Jesus. For much of the first part of Quaker writer Parker Palmer’s adult life, the God he believed in was a God of abstract peace and justice ideals that he could never manage to live up to. Finally thrown into the darkness of a clinical depression, Parker struggled more than ever with the shadow side of himself that he had denied existed for years and years. In the midst of what was an excruciatingly lifeless time in his life, he came to see that God not just in abstract theology, principles or beliefs. In coming closer to his own inability to walk on water, Parker recounts that he grew to trust that God is also found in our experiences—of our suffering as well as our joy.

In one interview, Parker recounts a way that he experienced God’s presence even in the throes of some of his worst days of depression: “After asking permission to do so, every afternoon about four o'clock, [this friend] sat me down in a chair in the living room, took off my shoes and socks and massaged my feet. He hardly ever said anything. He was a Quaker elder. And yet out of his intuitive sense, from time to time would say a very brief word like, 'I can feel your struggle today,' or farther down the road, 'I feel that you're a little stronger at this moment, and I'm glad for that.' But beyond that, he would say hardly anything. He would give no advice. He would simply report from time to time what he was sort of intuiting about my condition. Somehow he found the one place in my body, namely the soles of my feet, where I could experience some sort of connection to another human being. And the act of massaging just, you know, in a way that I really don't have words for, kept me connected with the human race.” (“Speaking of Faith”, 11/16/2006)

Those massaging hands were the hands of Jesus, reaching out to rescue Parker from his depths. They were hands that could only come from one who chose not to dwell in the heavens but to come down and hold up arms to grab us, support us and set us up straight again—not having to walk on water, but to join with him and those he rescues on his boat.

Those hands are the hands of Christ that rescued Peter, and that rescue us—hands that cling to us and that will never let us go. Jesus’ hands are the ones that reach down and pull us up in our baptism, saving us from drowning in death, raising us to new life.

What storms, what chaos, are we seeking rescue from today? We don’t have to deny that they are there, but we also don’t have to deny that somehow, someway, Jesus comes to kneel at each one of our feet and touch our lives with his life this day. We can open our hands and together go and be a community that does not walk on water, but that stays connected to each other, and goes to share that connection in the world, both in our brokenness as well as our joy, all in the name of the one holds us up in his love. Amen.