What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, October 23, 2011

Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost
(Lectionary 25A)
Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 • Psalm 1 • 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 • Matthew 22:34-46

When the Pharisees heard that [Jesus] had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." He said to them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying, 'The Lord said to my Lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'? If David thus calls him Lord, how can he be his son?" No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions.

When we’re looking for what more we can do to fill our plentiful free time, when we’re looking for what we can add on top of our already full to-do lists, when we’ve got nothing better to do...who do we turn to? Is it Jesus? When we’re looking for help with keeping God’s commandments, who do we turn to? Is it Jesus? When we’ve done a pretty good job at getting in trouble for not playing by the rules, whom do we turn to then? Is it Jesus?

Jesus isn’t someone we readily associate with what we call “the law”--the things we are expected to do, the commandments God has given us to keep, the obligations we are responsible to fulfill. Jesus' graceful, forgiving love for us can create the disillusion that we no longer need to-do’s, commandments and rules. The grace of Jesus, however, does not come to abolish the law. He comes to fulfill the law.

Jesus shows his affirmation of God’s laws when the Pharisees try and challenge Jesus one last time. They question him about the 613 religious laws in the first five books of the Bible, otherwise known as the Torah. One of them asks him, “Which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus answers with the law of love: “Love the Lord your God will all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind...and love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus says every law revolves around these two commandments: that without our neighbor we cannot love God, and without God we cannot love our neighbor. Jesus’ law of love is not a replacement of the old--it builds on it, putting together two laws taken directly from the Torah.

How do we keep this law of love without reducing it to a legalistic, controlling, score-keeping commandment? How do we live out the law of love that is given to us not out of a sense of a burden that’s meant to weigh us down, but so that our relationships with each other are transformed into ones of care, love and mutual respect?

One arena where we ask these “law of love”questions most is in our home and family life. As an impending father—not yet! but any day now—I’ve been thinking about fatherhood and what I observed of my parents “keeping the law” as a way of looking out for my well-being. One example sticks out in particular.

Once when I was in about third or fourth grade, my mom started to buy vitamins from Shaklee for me. I absolutely hated those vitamins. Could not stand them. They tasted like chalk, and had to be chewed up in order to get them down. Rather than go through this dreadful process, I decided to hide them. Each morning in my robe pocket, I would put the vitamin there, and then drop it in my wastebasket--and because I was also the one in charge of taking out the trash, nobody knew I wasn’t taking my vitamins.

Until one day...when I got a call downstairs to the laundry room. My dad had found my robe in the washing machine...with a whole bunch of smushed vitamins in the pockets. I had forgotten to put them in the trash! My dad asked me, “What’s this Jon?” I couldn’t hide my secret any longer.

After that, my parents asked me to do two things. First was to admit that I had lied, or as the commandments put it, that I had born false witness. I had given the appearance I was doing something they had asked me, when I had not, and I admitted to it. The second was to turn off the television for one whole week. I couldn’t believe what they were asking of me, but I did it. This “law of love” seemed way too harsh at the time, but I was grateful for it by the end of the week.

That whole week, it turned out, was a time when one of those terrible Chicago snow storms had hit, and a crust of ice had formed on the top of the soft snow. Each day after school that week, when I had normally gone inside to watch cartoons, had become a fort-building time in the backyard with these icy snow blocks. The “law of love” had opened up a space for creativity and new interests to blossom and flourish. And, I did end up taking those vitamins, though usually with a huge gulp of orange juice, which my parents said was OK.

That is what Jesus’ law of love is all about: it’s about God’s desire for the flourishing of human life, and human relationships. As parents, it can be hard for the “law of love” to rule our home life, for example, when we want to give our children all the things they see their friends have but that we can’t always give them. It can be hard for the “law of love” to rule at home when parents’ expectations for grades are set so high that no room is left for flourishing of life beyond the classroom.

What it comes down to is that Jesus’ law of love goes beyond emotions. It is more than a feeling. In our culture, love has been so sentimentalized that it has become a feeling towards something that we really “like”. We believe love is a passive feeling in response to something outside of us, such as, “I love chocolate”, or “I love that movie”. Love in the biblical sense is love that is active. It’s love that is just as loving regardless of how emotionally close we are to someone else or not. It’s love that acts on another’s behalf for their well-being. Love in the biblical sense is something we do, regardless of how we feel for them. When Jesus gives the “law of love”, to love God and neighbor, he doesn’t command an emotion. He commands an action.

We have to look no further for a picture of what that looks love like than Jesus himself. God gives us the ultimate love action of all, of raising Jesus from the dead, so that we may live forgiven, all in the name of love. We will not always keep the law of love perfectly. We will fail God and God knows we will fail one another. But Jesus’ cross of mercy picks us up, dusts us off, and enables us to live in restored relationship. The kind of relationships God cares enough to ask of us, are not ones bound by keeping rules, or being right with God, or being on the right side, but that are bound by the active love of God in Jesus Christ that is at work in us for the good of all.

What are some concrete ways I can show that love to God and neighbor, you wonder? Here is one challenge for you for this week. In his book The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapman talks about five ways we express love for each other: quality time, gifts, acts of service, words of affirmation and physical touch. What’s hard is that each of us tend to give love in only a few of these ways that we are most comfortable with. But fulfilling the law of love calls us beyond our comfort zones to love God’s world in ways that aren’t easy for us, but that make God and others know that God's love is in our hearts. Try stretching yourself this week, and perhaps each successive week, to grow in one of these five languages that do not come quite as naturally: spending quality time, giving gifts, performing acts of service, speaking words of affirmation and offering (appropriate) physical touch. We may not feel any different for doing it--but Jesus law of love will have been made real for the other person. And when we fail at living up to this law, we will find God’s love is enough to continue giving us back to each other and to God so we may live in the live we've been asked to share: to love God with heart, mind and soul, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, October 16, 2011

Eighteenth Sunday After Pentecost
(Lectionary 24A)
Isaiah 45:1-7 • Psalm 96:1-9, (10-13) • 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 • Matthew 22:15-22

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, "Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, "Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax." And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, "Whose head is this, and whose title?" They answered, "The emperor's." Then he said to them, "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, and to God the things that are God's." When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away.


“Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Is there anything that does not belong to God? (repeat) It seems that is the question that Jesus’ words have for us.

It turns out also that his actions as much as his words here pose this question of whether anything does not belong to God. The coin that is given to Jesus by disciples of the Jewish authorities and the followers of King Herod does not just show a picture of the emperor. It would have had this inscription on it: “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Augustus.” Here is Jesus, the Son of God, holding a coin that says Caesar is the Son of God! How much more ironic can Jesus get?! Jesus sets up a choice between who will be our God: the empire's god, or Jesus' God? He makes the distinction very clear for us: nothing can truly “belong” to Caesar...there is only one God of all, only one to whom all things belong, and that is above all earthly powers, and that is Jesus' God. The emperor, the president, the CEO, the boss...whomever the most powerful person is we can think of...this God is bigger...and Jesus asks us to live as if everything belongs to God.

The strategy that these opponents of Jesus try to use is to put him on the defensive. If they can just get him to admit he does not support that charged five letter word—taxes—they would have what they needed to execute him for treason to the empire. But Jesus refuses to fall for their paranoid, self-justifying bait. He calls out their malice, and recognizes it is these questioners who are themselves caught between the God they worshiped and the “god” the empire demanded they worship.

Why is it that we too find our sense of stewardship--our sense of what belongs to God--coming up short? Why does our practice of stewardship come out of this same defensive place as these questioners of Jesus? Perhaps our caring for and serving all the various aspects of our lives comes out of a belief that what we give to God can appease God. We think, “if I can just give x amount of time, or money or energy to this...then God will be satisfied.” “If I can just give x amount of time, or money or energy to this...then I can be done with it, and God won’t have to bother with these other parts of my life.” Or, we give of our selves out of obligation--because we’re supposed to. No matter what kind of defensive posture it is, it’s all the same underlying motivation: it’s giving out of an obligation that believes our stewardship is a transaction giving us permission to retreat from God.

Why do we get so defensive with God? We can become pretty good at it. It can become so hard for us believe...our whole lives, and our whole world...are all truly a gift. Maybe it is because there are some things we don’t want to belong to God. We don’t want God to have everything. We protect what is scary or shameful for us. We would rather have our own mess, our own stuff for ourselves rather than to let God have God’s way with us, our loved ones, our church and our world.

What can help us in this real struggle to be faithful to God who asks for our all--who wants not just to connect with one part of our lives, but every part of us? What guides us out of this barrier called defensiveness and into the life of generosity that God intends for us? This fence we put around parts of our lives looks different for each one of us, but we’re all trying to protect something that’s keeping us from giving to God what belongs to God.

What breaks that fence is the gospel of Jesus--the same gospel of Jesus--the gospel that he embodies in this encounter with these scheming questioners, and the gospel he embodies in his encounter with each one of us. He takes our defenses away. Jesus takes our resistance away and lets in God’s compassionate , forgiving and redeeming generosity into every part of us and our world. Jesus takes away any consequenses that could threaten fences being torn down between us and God. He shows us that behind the fences we put up is the heart of God...that does not beat with demands and manipulations...but with freely given love that’s better, and more powerful, that’s more inspiring than anything we’ve ever been given. Jesus doesn’t divide, carve and slice up our lives. Jesus makes our lives whole. His love gives every ounce of himself...to redeem every single aspect of our lives. Jesus shows we cannot divide the world into sacred and secular, Ceasar and not Caesar’s, public and private, ours and God’s. The reach of Jesus’ redemption runs through straight through these fences, through his cross, into the whole world.

We have been imprinted...not with an image of a leader on a coin...but the name that is above all names...of the one who is our God. We've been imprinted by Jesus, whose gospel comes to our whole selves and gives us

eyes...to see his vision of justice

hearts...to feel his love

ears...to hear ourselves called by our true names

hands...that we can open to receive and give his blessing and care

feet...that take us to places we didn’t believe God’s compassion could reign.

With our defenses down, we no longer have an obstacle blocking our eyes, hearts, ears, hands and feet from belonging to the generous life God wants us to have...the life of giving to God what belongs to God. With our defenses down, we’ve been given such good news that it is now our job to exercise that love by sharing it... With no reason to defend ourselves from God...we see that God is bigger than any power or superpower, bigger than any government...bigger than any one political party...and yet more gracious than all of them combined. Without our defenses, we can no longer contain God into a God of our own making...an idol who gives according to our ways...

Without defenses at our side, we are left weak, and open to attack, however. There is much malice, violence and greed that threatens a defenseless, generous life. But vulnerability and risk are where Jesus’ gospel meets us most...it’s in those places where Jesus met and redeemed us on the cross, and it’s there where he protects his children—and we as his church--to stand for what he stood for: generosity, charity, justice, speaking truth to power, and mercy. God comes in Jesus to stand with us rather than against us, to walk beside us as his brothers and sisters who belong to God.

What of God’s things have we been holding back from giving to God in our lives? What broken relationship, what time, talent or treasure, what commitment are we willing to break open and give over to the generous compassion of God working through us? Imprinted with Jesus’ compassion, what will we render unto God? It’s not easy to to. Our defenses will surely try to come up. But Jesus’ life, death and resurrection destroy those defense’s power over us. That’s why we will never stop witnessing to such generosity, and advocating for it with our every breath. It’s the only way our lives can give back to God the things that belong to God.

Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, October 9, 2011

Seventeeth Sunday After Pentecost
(Lectionary 23A)
Isaiah 25:1-9 • Psalm 23 • Philippians 4:1-9 • Matthew 22:1-14

Once more Jesus spoke to them in parables, saying: "The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a wedding banquet for his son. He sent his slaves to call those who had been invited to the wedding banquet, but they would not come. Again he sent other slaves, saying, 'Tell those who have been invited: Look, I have prepared my dinner, my oxen and my fat calves have been slaughtered, and everything is ready; come to the wedding banquet.' But they made light of it and went away, one to his farm, another to his business, while the rest seized his slaves, mistreated them, and killed them. The king was enraged. He sent his troops, destroyed those murderers, and burned their city. Then he said to his slaves, 'The wedding is ready, but those invited were not worthy. Go therefore into the main streets, and invite everyone you find to the wedding banquet.' Those slaves went out into the streets and gathered all whom they found, both good and bad; so the wedding hall was filled with guests. "But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing a wedding robe, and he said to him, 'Friend, how did you get in here without a wedding robe?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the attendants, 'Bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' For many are called, but few are chosen."

What a doozy of a Gospel text we have before us this morning. How are we to make sense of this? As we take the lectionary readings back up again into our weekly worship, we enter into a series of very divisive and heated parables in Matthew that Jesus tells the Pharisees the week before his death. What are we to make of the people too busy to accept a king’s invitation to his son’s wedding banquet? Does this represent people turning away from the invitation to return to God? What are we to make of the king burning the city of those who do not accept his invitation? Perhaps the hardest question of all about this parable comes in the ending, which is unique to Matthew’s Gospel: how can a king who goes to great lengths to have his servants invite everyone, the common people, to fill up his wedding banquet hall--“the good and the bad”--and then, throw one of the guests into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, all just for not wearing the right clothing?

Let’s focus on this last question, because it is one that I think most convicts us but also offers us an invitation into God’s promises. To start with, the king’s actions of inviting “everyone [that his servants] find” is nothing short of miraculous. Normally the guests who were invited for such royal festival occasions were the most honorable, elite and powerful in society, so that their status could match the social honor of the host king. But this parable's gracious king welcomes all who are out on the streets, “the good and the bad”, the people who would have brought shame upon the elite in society....but on this occasion, they brought the king honor, by not leaving his son alone at such a festive occasion.

Kings in that day and age would have provided everything for the guests at these events, including the appropriate attire of robes. When the king, then, notices a man not wearing one of the provided robes, he wonders why this man will not put on the clothing that marks the joyful nature of this occasion. Yes, we could say that the king lowered his standards when he opened the door to let everyone come to the banquet...but that did not mean that there were no more standards to be kept at this banquet. The king still had expectations of his guests.

Could Jesus’ parable somehow be holding a mirror up to ourselves? Does this story not connect with our own hypocrisy to claim to be members of the banquet feast of God’s grace...but yet our lives all too often reflect our resistance to living as a part of that feast, and our unwillingness to being changed by God? In baptism it has been customary throughout the church’s history for the baptized to wear a white garment—like what this story’s wedding guests wore. We have been clothed, therefore, in our baptism, with the right attire. We have been welcomed by God—but can we profess to have lived up to the honor of such grace as has been poured out upon us?

The jarring conclusion of Jesus’ story asks us to look at where we wish to stand in this story: do we want to be a part of the feast of love given to us by God, or do we wish not to join the celebration on God’s terms but on our own? Do we want to push God’s invitation to us aside, because leaving our old life of isolation, shame and aimlessness for a new life of purpose, community and grace involves letting go of too much? Or can we dare to bring all that God asks of us—our whole lives—to God’s banquet where God gives everyone the clothes to wear that take away the nakedness of our shame—the clothes that take away the power of brokenness, the clothes that transform lives with love stronger than death, the clothes that don’t just turn us from bad people into good people but that put Jesus on us and lead us from death into life, the clothes that make us his followers? Can we dare to be seen with the clothing of Christ on?

As much as God wants to clothe us with honor, and cover up our greed, our pride, and our cynicism with the robes of righteousness, God desires a response from us. God wants us to live with the robe of Christ on! God desires for us to come and join the feast we are all privileged to be invited to, to be drawn in and forever intertwined and interconnected with the justified saints and sinners of God’s people. The joy of God's banquet came at a great cost, the cost of Jesus whose self-sacrifice included his own robes and garments being stripped from him, before he went to the cross. With such a high cost, God’s grace does not come to us cheaply. But it does come...it comes to we who are not the hosts but the guests at God' banquet...and the invitation remains extended...to the good and the bad...to join in the celebration...the celebration that death is no more...that there is enough for all...that God’s love does get the final word.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the most well-known Lutheran theologian of the 20th century, a German who died in the underground resistance to Hitler, believed that our lives cannot be let off the hook by self-congratulating ourselves for just showing up at God's banquet. Bonhoeffer said, "Cheap grace means the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner. Grace alone does everything they say, and so everything can remain as it was before. . . . Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves.. . . . Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate." Bonhoeffer contrasted “cheap grace” with “costly grace”, grace that changes us forever, that bears fruit in our lives...that invites others to see the goodness of the Lord that has been opened to us by Jesus. We are always the guests at God’s invitation—it's up to us what we will do with it.

Perhaps what we need, and what this guest who chose not to put on the robe of God’s gift needed, is the promise that although grace is costly, there is more than enough of it to go around. Maybe what kept the person in Jesus’ parable from joining the banquet was disbelief that a king could be as just as to truly invite the dishonored to be guests of honor. Perhaps they disbelieved that they were truly worthy of being there. Perhaps they believed they had to be a more “pure” person to deserve such a feast.

Thankfully we don’t deal with a God who sees any of these things as obstacles to dressing us for receiving and living in the gift of grace. All it takes to join in this feast, is just enough faith to realize we are naked but for the love God clothes us with. All it takes to participate in God's banquet is a heart that we are willing to throw over any barrier thrown in our path...trusting there is room enough in this world for God’s abundant mercy to catch us...and sustain us.

The robe of the righteousness of Christ is not the flashiest piece of clothing out there—it’s nothing that would ever even get considered for display on a fashion runway—but that's not what it is for. It’s not bestowed on us to make us popular. This robe of Christ has the power to to clothe our insides—our hearts—with joy and celebration, with passion for all who are dis-honored because God has set us free...free from justifying ourselves, free from wearing the tattered clothes of our fallen nature...free to set others free by inviting all to the party where the king has more than enough garments of grace to go around.

It's time to don our robes. Put on Christ. Come to the celebration of shame turned to honor. God has made us worthy. Extend this host's invitation. Come to the banquet, for all is now ready.

Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, October 2, 2011

"Marked by Christ" Sunday
Joshua 1:1-9
Acts 2:37-47
Mark 7:31-37

As much as today is a day about community, it is really a day about what each one of us values most in community. Community is one of those things that we find both appealing and repelling. We love the benefits of being a part of a community. Yet when it doesn’t give us what we want...it can be easy to want to run away. One of the things that I hear so often about Oak Park and other towns and neighborhoods in Chicago is, “I like the sense of community here.” But at the same time, we could all probably come up with a “top 10 complaints” list about our communities off the top of our heads--too many laws, too many regulations, not enough local businesses, too much development, too little development, too high property taxes. We love the benefits community gives us: friends, neighbors, schools, nature. But that love can turn quickly to indifference and pulling away as the challenges of being in community bump up against us: responsibilities, resolving disagreements, and responding to changes. (Skinner)

The early church shared these same feelings towards being a community. The picture painted in Acts 2--a passage we studied in Koinonia Conversations this past summer--shows a church drawn together by the joy of the Spirit, unified in its heart and its soul (2:32)...excited to be the church of Jesus Christ. But it does not take long for this joyful bunch of believers to bump up against the reality of human brokenness at work in this community. No sooner than Acts describes the church community members as having everything they owned held in common and given to any who were in need, it soon describes a man named Ananias and his wife Sapphira withholding sharing their proceeds from land they sold--and then lying about it to the apostles. (5:1-11) But the arc of Acts shows that these tensions were not too much to break the early church. The arc of the story of Acts is a story of the early church moving from unity, to disagreements, to escalating tension, to working through the inclusion of different kinds of people, to ultimately saying it could define itself as a church of both Greeks and Gentiles.

It is natural for us to not want to deal with tension in community, let alone in church. 10 days ago, the CEO of online social network Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, spoke at a conference where he announced new ways that the online communal experience would become “frictionless”. He said social “applications” would create even more sharing of information about our lives online--more than even whatever we choose to share--like what books we are currently reading, what movies we are watching, and what songs we are listening to. This shift towards even more sharing of personal information without our awareness has many concerned that personal privacy could be breached illegally, and further expansion of these “applications” may continue to grow if it is not stopped. These concerns raise the importance of a myth that we give credence to all too often, whether to online or in-person communities: that with no privacy, with enough information about each other, we can create a frictionless utopia void of personal differences. But, as interconnected as such things can make our lives, the story of early church in Acts shows us that without borders, without the opportunity for self-reflfection and mutual conversation—without the capacity to self-differentiate—a “frictionless” group will be created, but it will no longer be a community.

This is the gift of this “Marked by Christ” Sunday. We take time today to each individually continue to re-set the borders of what matters most to us as we look to God’s future for our community, to discern our sense of what is our communal identity, and to continue to get a sense of what we believe is vital to the mission and ministry of United Lutheran Church as we look forwards. We are gifted with this opportunity as the church because we’ve all been marked--we’ve been marked by Christ. God marks each and every one of us uniquely with the hands of Jesus--hands that open up our ears to hear and our mouths to proclaim his good news of new life; hands that opened the blind and the mute, and drew them into relationship with him and his community.

God has marked us so that we can give the love and power of Jesus traction in the world. The only way to traction can happen is if there is friction. Not friction in the sense of being attacked, blamed or victimized. The mark of Christ on us creates friction by defining us...as blessed, redeemed and made whole...when there are forces at work that do everything they can to define us otherwise. Despite these forces, God marks us in Christ, even though there’s more than enough layers of friction between God and us to give God the right not to mark us...as “forgiven.”

We are marked by Christ to give the power of the Spirit traction in the world. Being marked may cause differences...but Jesus stands in the midst of those differences, still keeping us connected to one another as a diverse community—even connected with those whom we may have the farthest thing from a “frictionless” relationship with, whether in the community of our family, our neighborhood, our country...or even this church.

It takes courage to be in community. There’s no doubt about that. But like the Israelites who stood together as a community at the River Jordan, with the promised land on the other side, after a long journey in the wilderness, they heard God say “I will be with you wherever you go...I will not fail you or forsake you...be strong and courageous” We too are called to be the community God has marked us to be even when there are differences with each other, and with the world...that friction can make us grow because it is Christ who holds us together and binds us together as ones marked by his cross. His love is more powerful than anything that could divide us. For once we’ve been marked by Christ, his hold on us all is forever sure. He will never let us go.

Amen.