What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, June 26, 2011

Second Sunday After Pentecost
Jeremiah 28:5-9 • Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18 • Romans 6:12-23 • Matthew 10:40-42

Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“Winners” can seem to be the ones who get all the glory. Several summers ago there was a wonderful film called Little Miss Sunshine, in which a father, Richard, was trying to get a self-help book published that was called The Refuse-to-Lose Program. His career as a “success” coach drove him and his entire family with their old VW bus all the way across the American southwest in order for his daughter to compete and win in a “Little Miss Sunshine” dance competition. To Richard, this appears to be the only possible way that his daughter could feel good about herself by being a winner—by refusing to lose.

Richard is in a lot of ways a “template” character, whose values are exaggerated in order to get the story’s point across. But his “success at any cost” approach to life illustrates the false notion that being a slave to success will provide us with freedom.

If we can just win, and come out on top, we can be free set from rules and even not have to play by the rules--or at least that’s the way that those in power often try to define freedom. Obligations, commitments, responsibilities, even maintaining sexual boundaries—these have no bearing within the ideal American definition of freedom: “I can do what I want, when I want, how I want, and when I want it.”

Christian freedom, however, looks much different than that. Winning to gain free reign over our lives was challenged this past week by someone who would appear to have all the fame, notoriety and “success” that would warrant embracing such freedom. Stephen Colbert, host of the popular TV news satire show “The Colbert Report”, addressed the graduates of Northwestern University last week with a surprisingly different address than anyone could have expected:

“If you do get your dream, you are not a winner.

After I graduated from [Northwestern], I moved down to Chicago and did improv[ised comedy]. Now there are very few rules to improvisation, but one of the things I was taught early on is that you are not the most important person in the scene. Everybody else is. And if they are the most important people in the scene, you will naturally pay attention to them and serve them . . . . You cannot ‘win’ improv.

And life is an improvisation. You have no idea what's going to happen next, and you are mostly just making things up as you go along. And like improv, you cannot win your life.”

By the same token, we can’t “win” at the improvisation of being the church, or “win” at the improvised life of being a disciple. And we cannot “win” our freedom. Freedom is a gift. It is a gift of grace given to us by God, won already for us on the cross by Jesus. God’s promised Word of Life to us, Jesus Christ, comes to us to set us free. In him we are free from being enslaved to a life of separation from God and from one another. We are free to no longer have to strive to fill a self-serving hunger to come out on top.

The apostle Paul in his message to the Roman Christian community helps us to see that Christian freedom is defined quite differently from our wider culture—it is something for us to give back in obedience to God. “But thanks be to God that you,” he writes, “having once been slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.” (6:17-18) Paul is saying that life lived in the gospel is not a life of doing whatever we want regardless of the consequenses, of striving to win above all things, but rather a life lived in righteousness—in service—service to God, and service to others.

“Freed to serve.” This will be the theme of the 2011 ELCA Churchwide Assembly coming up in August in Orlando, Florida. Jesus frees us for service so that we can freely keep our promises, our responsibilities, our obligations and our callings. This is not a glamorous, popular or heroic path. It's not a path of instant gratification, or a path to “success.” But it is the path that follows in Jesus’ footsteps. It is a path that leads out into the world and into all of the relationships in our lives. Service, the life of righteousness, is the path that freely joins us to the pains of this world, as inexplicable as they are, to reveal that freedom finds its fulfillment in serving God and others.

Colbert concluded his address by making a connection between the servant life and a life of integrity. I think the apostle Paul would say that such life can reflect the steadfast love of God. “In my experience, you will truly serve only what you love, because, as the prophet says, service is love made visible. If you love friends, you will serve your friends. If you love community, you will serve your community. If you love money, you will serve your money. And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself. And you will have only yourself. So no more winning. Instead, try to love others and serve others.”

So for a moment let’s think about an obligation or commitment that you have freely chosen to serve, because fulfilling these obligations is not easy. Perhaps it is a commitment that you may be struggling with, or need support to continue living into: it could be to a friend, a partner, your children, to you parents, to your work, to this congregation, a commitment to the poor, or someone or something else. Write one down or just think about one for a moment... Let’s pray for them: God, today we invite your Holy Spirit to help us embrace obedient service, a joyful obligation we get to be a part of. Come and help us embrace your freeing Word of life spoken to us this day, that we do not have to win yours or anyone else's favor. Give us faith to share the freedom you have already won for us in the holy obligations we have been entrusted with. Help us to serve others, rather than our fleeting desires. May we freely follow in Jesus' footsteps of making your love visible, both this day and all our days, that finding our fulfillment in service, that you may be given glory, honor and praise...in Jesus name we pray. Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, June 19, 2011

The Holy Trinity
Genesis 1:1-2:4a • Psalm 8 • 2 Corinthians 13:11-13 • Matthew 28:16-20

Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

Can you remember the last time you tried to learn something new--a skill, a hobby, a household chore, a musical instrument, or a new language? As an adult it can and most often is one of the most completely humiliating things that’s ever happened to us. I can remember taking dancing classes with my wife before we got married a few years ago, and how scared I was to do the waltz as our first dance in front of a room full of our closest friends and family members. That night, as I counted “one, two, three...one, two, three” while we danced, I could probably be heard in the whole room, even all the way into the kitchen, maybe, and I know even I could barely hear the bluegrass band’s beat that was playing the music to that first dance. I was so scared of stepping on this beautiful bride’s shoes and embarrassing myself that I was willing to do anything to avoid looking incompetent.

Perhaps that fear is why learning a new life skill is so challenging for adults. We build up so much of our identity in the areas of our lives where we are competent--our work, our home life, our volunteer activities and hobbies. So when we find ourselves in situations where we do not feel competent, our anxiety level goes through the roof!

And perhaps this is why, for many of us today, I am guessing that Jesus’ the words of the Great Commission to “Go and make disciples” doesn’t exactly serve to inspire us a great deal with confidence. More of us than not, I am guessing, hear this command and are reminded of our guilt, as I am, for not having done more to make more disciples...guilt for for not knowing how to...guilt for feeling powerless to...and guilt for simply never having done it. It’s not that we don’t want to go and make disciples. It’s that we don’t feel any competency to make disciples whatsoever. Maybe we’ve never had a chance to learn about it, practice it, reflect on it, or integrate it into a regular part of our own lives of faith and discipleship, and so we’ve never developed confidence in ourselves to follow through on this great co-mission that Jesus has entrusted to us.

But maybe that is to some extent Jesus’ point. After all the task of discipling that Jesus gives his disciples and us sounds nothing less than completely impossible! To make a disciple—followers of the way of Jesus?! The eleven remaining disciples don’t even have a very good or lengthy track record of being competent at doing it! And not even that, but Jesus gives us the command to make disciples of all nations, bringing the good news of Jesus’ power and love to peoples and cultures completely different from our own! This task may be so unbelievably impossible, in fact, that there is no way for us to fulfill it...except, that is, to completely and utterly throw ourselves into God’s mercy and strength. Making disciples in fact may be one of the few things that does not rest on the authority of our own competence, but rather rests upon Jesus, our Lord, who prefaces the Great Commission by declaring that all authority rests with him--not with the church, with our resources, or our abilities, but with the crucified and risen Jesus, to whom “all authority on heaven and on earth has been given.” (Mt. 28:18) (Long)

Could it be possible, then, for us to move out of our comfort zone of what we are competent in, to fulfill our purpose to witness and proclaim the gospel? It is possible, because God has given us all the competency we need, when God got out of God’s own comfort zone to send Jesus to redeem us. God got out of God’s comfort zone with the wildest of investments in, of all people, us--an investment that even went as far as Jesus being willing to promise he would always be present to us through the Spirit. It’s possible for us to move out of our comfort zones for the sake of sharing Jesus’ love and power because grace never comes to meet us and simply leave us where we are at. As spiritual memoirist Anne Lamott defines it, grace always meets us exactly where we are at in our lives with the life-changing graciousness of God in Jesus...but it never leaves us there. Grace, as the reality that God has chosen to believe in us, challenges us to grow--not just to consume grace, but to be strengthened by it so we can go and feed the world with God that it is so hungry to receive.

As we go into the world to follow the Great Commission, we go marked with the cross of Christ given to us in baptism. We go to make disciples as people clear about what kind of difference being a disciple makes for us. How can we expect to invite others to be disciples, after all, when we do not know how our lives have been transformed by God’s grace in Jesus Christ? See if any of these statements describes the difference God leaving God’s comfort zone to love us has made in your life. These could be examples of how you could talk to someone else about the difference Christ makes in your life:

I used to strive for everything...now I’m grateful.
I used to live so confused...now I have direction and purpose.
I was angry...now I’m grateful.
I was striving to prove myself...now I’m accepting of my limits.
I used to be self-destructive...now I’m making healthy choices.
I used to struggle with the meaning of my life...now it all seems to make sense.
When I’m in despair...faith is what keeps me going.

Start small. Try practicing talking about what difference being a disciple makes for you with those you love, and care about. Gradually, you will find you will build confidence, and be able to step out and say those words to someone you don’t know as well--someone who may hunger to hear about a gracious God; someone who is searching, lost, disconnected, alone or afraid. And you will be ready to move out of your comfort zone to bring God’s comfort to someone else’s life. You will be ready to “make disciples.”

There’s also an element of “going and making disciples” that has to do with our style of sharing our faith. Typically Lutherans are most comfortable with evangelism in the serving style of self-giving service, and in the invitational style of inviting someone to worship, a service project or class. Both of these styles can be effective, but both of them can also easily happen without our telling of the story of God’s love in Jesus. We don’t have to be restricted to one or two styles of making disciples, however. We can get out of our Lutheran “comfort zones” to share the good news in a variety of ways. There’s the confrontational style that speaks the truth of the gospel with love; there’s an intellectual style for the analytical, inquisitive type; there’s a testimonial style for those who are clear communicators who can connect their own story of faith to the life experiences of others; and there’s the interpersonal style for those of us oriented towards friendships, and who can share the truth of our faith even when it may put those friendships at risk. (Hybels) Sharing in these ways may be uncomfortable at first; but the more we move beyond our comfort zones, the more we will see that God’s grace is more than competent enough to work through our hands, heads and hearts to fulfill the Great Commission.

When Jesus meets the disciples on the mountaintop and gives this commission, it says that some of the disciples “doubted.” (28:17) They hesitated. It’s not all too unlike the disciples who see Jesus walking on water hesitating to believe that it’s Jesus. Jesus’ response to the disciples in the boat echoes his promise made on that post-resurrection mountaintop in Galilee to be with us to the end of the age. “Take heart,” Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid.” (Mt. 14:27) In handing over the Great Commission to us, Jesus gives us all the skills we need to fulfill our purpose as evangelists. We have his promise that we have a message to share, a world to love, and a faith that can’t be kept hidden. Like the disciples, Jesus will perceive our fulfillment of his commission not only by whether we recognize it is Jesus who gets out of his cozy Godliness to come walk on water to find us...but also by whether we have the courage to get out of the comfort of our boat, share the good news, and to trust his promise that the Spirit will always, always, go with us. Amen.

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, July 12, 2011

Day of Pentecost
Acts 2:1-21
Psalm 104:24-34, 35b
1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
John 20:19-23

No one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit. Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--Jews or Greeks, slaves or free--and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

I know that some of you know of my fondness for the game of football--or “soccer”, as we Americans tend to call it, even though it has everything to do with feet. One of the things that I find so gorgeous about soccer is how much of a team sport it truly is. There can be no superstar on a team--while someone needs to put the ball in the net, a team has no chance without a goalie, defenders, midfielders, wingers, and strikers, all working together in concert. Soccer does not have the scoring that, say, basketball or American football does. But truly, when a team is playing in harmony--like, say, the Barcelona club that won the trophy for best European club team two weeks ago--and everyone is playing their role and complimenting one another, we can see why so many call it “the beautiful game”, and compare it to watching more art than sport.

But as fluid and impecable as soccer can be played, there are, of course, those who are beginners. Many of you may have had children who, at a young age or who even still play soccer. Some may have seen matches of children playing soccer as young as 5 or 6 years old. When one watches such games of extremely young players, it ends up looking more like an amoeba cell collecting more and more cells as a glob of even more and more kids huddle around together, all running after the ball. As soon as the ball goes to one corner, a mob of nearly everyone on the field runs as fast as they can over to crowd around the ball. There it gets bounced around between that group, until the ball pops out like a piece of popcorn down to the other end of the field, and the whole mob of players runs after it, and it all starts over again! The strange phenomenon at work in this kind of endless grou pursuit of the ball is that everyone thinks they have to pass, dribble, defend, attack, run, walk, yell, scream...and of course, don’t forget scoring! Everyone thinks they have to do everything.

In many ways I think this can describe our lives and even the church sometimes. This scene can illustrate how we order our lives by this approach, which is: hurling ourselves fully and completely towards this problem, and then reacting to then that one; surrendering our whole lives to doing everything possible to resolve this conflict, and then escaping into another one; or in the church, we can lurch from this volunteer ministry, to that activity...from doing this ministry for the poor, to being that volunteer for worship, Sunday School, altar guild, this committee and that one... As any doctor will tell us, our bodies can only handle so much activity until our defenses weaken, and before we know it our immunity system can no longer protect us. We can begin to wonder...is it all up to me? Can we do it all on our own?

For wearied soccer players, harried parents, overwhelmed high school graduates, and depleted church volunteers alike, the apostle Paul has good news for us. “There are varieties of gifts,” (1 Cor. 12:4) he tells the Corinthian church. No one has to do everything, be everything, or fix everything. Rather, everyone has a role to play, and gifts to share in the body of Christ. Paul was writing to a Christian community in Corinth that was beginning to believe that the only players on their “team”--in their church--who mattered, were those with the gift of speaking in tongues. But it is not just those with the most popularity or who can do the most who have gifts to share. “To each”, Paul says, “To each is given the manfestation of the Spirit for the common good.” The Holy Spirit will not let us say, “I am not gifted.” The Holy Spirit will not let us say, “I have to do everything.” The Holy Spirit puts on our lips the words “Jesus is Lord”. Jesus is Lord frees us from the role of trying to be Lords of our own lives—that job description has already been filled. Jesus being Lord frees us free us from being someone God did not create us to be, but to be who God created us to be. Jesus being Lord gives us freedom to join our gifts to the common purpose of God's mission, working in us to be an interdependent community, loving, blessing and reconciling the whole world.

But wait, “Jesus is Lord”--how can we say those words, “Jesus is Lord”, in a culture that does not make it comfortable or natural or easy for us to say we believe that? That must be crazy! How can it be possible for us to not deny but rather affirm that in Jesus’ name those who appear to be the poorest, least talented and spiritually un-gifted people among us surprise us with the gifts that only they can share? That must be crazy! How can the descending of the Holy Spirit to people of every nation and tribe nearly 2000 years ago possibly bear a promise for us that every single disciple participating in the life of this congregation has value? That must be crazy! How can it possibly be that God levels the playing field, energizing and activating all of our gifts together for the sake of giving glory to Jesus, who is Lord? That must be crazy!

Being filled with the Holy Spirit, as God promises us this Day of Pentecost, indeed does make us crazy. The Holy Spirit makes us look crazy to the world that is especially so resistant to those parts of the body of Christ which appear at first glance to be tiny, insignificant, and un-“successful.” But the Holy Spirit is a renewable resource, fellow crazy-people! In fact it is one of the things I love about this congregation—that despite how much responsibility people may have in their daily lives, people here are empowered by the Spirit to give in ways that the world may see as “crazy”--but that build us together to be the living, breathing body of Christ.

If you don't believe you have spiritual gifts, or if you need some help clarifying what your gifts are, I'd like to invite you, before you leave today, to take something with you that is given to everyone who becomes a member of this church, called a “Spiritual Gifts Inventory.” It’s a personal assessment, and helps you to see the gifts that God has given you can flow out as a natural expression of the Holy Spirit. Take one home, fill it out, and if you don’t want to score it, turn it in to me and I’ll score it fore you, and help you to discern the specific gifts that don’t just give life to the church, but that also give life to the world—and give life back to you. (Complete the “Spiritual Gifts Inventory” online by clicking here. The link will also be in the Midweek Moments weekly email this Wednesday.)

When the Spirit was poured out at the first Pentecost, people said, “They must be filled with new wine” (Acts 2:13) “They must be crazy!” But that’s what the Holy Spirit does to us. The Spirit makes us get crazy. Crazy with wisdom, crazy with healing, crazy with prophecy, crazy with giving, dilligence, compassion and cheerfulness. In what way is God calling you, today, to step out and be crazy with the Spirit? Being Spirit-crazy may not seem like the way to ward of sickness and illness for a healthy body of Christ. But in the end, getting crazy with the Spirit in the ways we have been particularly gifted may in fact be just about the sanest thing that we can do to become the Spirit-filled body of Christ that God has gifted us to be. So let's get crazy with the Spirit! And in so doing we will find ourselves formed into a team that looks less like a wandering ameoba, and more like God's beautiful work of art. Amen!

What Pastor Jon Preached on Sunday, June 12, 2011

Vision Sunday
Exodus 14:10-31, 15:20-21 + John 17:1-11

Today’s service is briefer than normal (in case you hadn’t already noticed!). This is to allow time for everyone to gather after worship to discuss the very important challenges and opportunities facing United Lutheran Church. Thank you for your flexibility!

What biblical story could be better for us on this Vision Sunday than a story that at its heart wrestles with the tensions of oppression and liberation, change and risk, fear and freedom? The story of the Exodus has inspired visions of hope for over three thousand years, and hopefully once again, today, this story can offer us guidance as we seek to uncover what the way forward is for us.

We heard this story told at the Vigil of Easter this year--it is one of the twelve possible readings that are appointed for that wonderful service. And this year I as I heard it again I was struck by the questioning fear of the Israelites as they approached the Red Sea. Here they are, finally free from the system of slavery that placed them at the bottom and that kept them powerless--and what do they do? They complain! They want to go back to slavery! They say, now we are in the wilderness—with no direction, with nothing in sight that looks like a new home. Back in Egypt, even though it was slavery, at least we knew to expect. At least we were safe. At least we could depend on nothing changing. “What have you done to us [Moses], bringing us out of Egypt?!” (Ex. 14:10-12)

In many ways this is the point at which ULC stands. We stand at a liminal place—a place where we know we cannot go back. We cannot go back to the glory days. We cannot go back to the days when the institutional church was at the center of American life and culture. We cannot worship nostalgia. I can’t imagine what it has been like for each of you over the past ten to twenty years to see this church go through the challenges it’s been through, especially with declines in membership, participation and now with severe financial hardship.

But I think God says something to Moses that offers us hope. God does hear our cries, and our yearnings, and our questions. God says to Moses, “Why do you cry out to me?” as if to say, “Do not doubt that I have called you here for a purpose. Do not cry out to me without also trusting that what I have said I will accomplish through you, I will do.” We can have doubts about the future of this church, dear people. But we need not doubt that God can do amazing things through us. Like the Israelites, we do not know what the path before us to freedom looks like exactly. But we do know this: the possibility of change, of being the church that God is calling us to be, here and now, and into the future, is possible. I do not doubt for a second that you all have the imagination, the gifts and the skills to dream God’s dream for United Lutheran’s future. In all my time with all of you I have never doubted that you have that desire to listen for and follow God's vision that is wiser than our own vision. God wants something both for this congregation and for the people we serve in this community and in the world...and God will communicate those desires...if we take the time to listen—listen to one another, and to the Holy Spirit. We will also need to wrestle with the questions of how we will live out what God desires for us. But I have no doubt that as we step out in faith into the wilderness, that God will not let our hearts turn to stone, but that God's promise of deliverance will keep our hearts open to God's future for us. God is ready once again to deliver God's people from fear to hope.

Jesus, in the night he was betrayed, prayed a prayer to God on our behalf that he prays for us when we cry out. It's a prayer from today's Gospel text: “Protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:11b) As we now enter a time of walking in the wilderness together as United Lutheran Church, discerning our future, Jesus will keep us one. We have many voices, but Jesus intercedes on our behalf to make us into one people—one people whom whom he will deliver, in the same way that God kept the Israelites as one when God delivered them through the Red Sea. As Jesus makes us one with God, Jesus promises: even as we take those risky steps into the wilderness, he will keep us one with himself, with God, and each other.

I, for one, am excited to see the future vision God has in store for us! I hope you are too. Amen.