Sermons

Vacation in Ely this summer was unique.  Tracy had just retired.    On the first Wednesday of the vacation, my friend, Joe, a physician, retired.  Looming on the horizon was today—August 17th—and my retirement.  We’d been through so many other changes together—getting married, having children, losing parents, you name it.  Why not retire together, too?

People who don’t have freedom long to be free.  They think of all the things that they would do if only they had the freedom to choose.  They’d do this or that. They’d go here or there.  They’d create this or write that.  They’d make the world a better place. It all sounds so good until the moment when they suddenly find themselves free.  They find themselves overwhelmed with choices and possibilities.  They make decisions in “fits and starts,” doubting the choices they’ve made and doubting other choices even before they make them.  Freedom turns out to be nauseating and paralyzing, the kind of feelings that can make a person ready to surrender their freedom or at least decide that rather than bear the burden of making their own choices, they’ll just let others decide for them.  Boredom becomes the enemy.  Our phones and our televisions anesthetize us for the fight.

In the past two weeks, we have been looking at how far Jesus would go to help someone else.  We watched as he ran into the bent over woman on the Sabbath and felt her pain.  How far would Jesus go to help her?  He was willing to break the sabbath laws with the sabbath “police” standing there and watching him.  It was more important to relieve the woman’s pain than it was to appease the authorities.  I basically tried to ask you, “Does your understanding of Jesus include the notion that Jesus was a rule breaker?”

Forty-three years ago, the very first class that I had in seminary was an intensive Greek course.  We covered a semester’s worth of ancient Greek in three weeks. There were 5 hours of class each day, Monday through Friday.  There was a quiz every day, Monday through Thursday.  Each Friday, there was a major exam.  So, when you weren’t in class, you just buried yourself in homework and preparation for the next quiz.  To top things off, the course was taught by a terrifyingly brilliant New Testament scholar from the University of Chicago, Larry Welborn, who seemed utterly stunned that we all were not as terrifyingly brilliant as him.  Mostly, we were just terrified.

Have you ever been in pain?  Of course, the answer for all of us is that we have.  We have all had accidents that led to an instant of acute pain.  It may only last for a moment but it is such an overwhelming experience when it happens.  I remember when I was playing a game of pickup basketball.  I drove to the basket and was hit from behind in a spot that I never knew existed.  That blow hurt so badly that I can remember it now, decades later, as if it just happened.  That pain not only got my attention, it etched itself into my memory.

One of my favorite jobs that I had was at a camp in Wisconsin.  I worked there for two summers, first as a counselor and then, the second season, as the program director for the camp.  The camp was owned by a Lutheran church in Milwaukee.  The camp focused on bringing inner city kids—often gang members—out away from the city.  The hope was to just give them a chance to be kids for a little while.

So, back in the day, one of my favorite things to do at the old Lake Forest Hospital was to stop by the hospital’s nursery and check out the babies.  They were behind glass so you could look but you could not touch.  Still, you can stand there and marvel at new life.  I was especially likely to do this if what had brought me to the hospital was the end of a life.  Often, in the midst of caring for that person, I would here the lullaby song that a new baby had been born.  It felt like life, itself, were calling to me.

Years ago, I went with three members of our church to Rio De Janeiro to visit a woman named Barb DeSouza.  Barb had been a member of the church, too.  Prior to my arrival, she had gone with her husband to Rio on a business transfer for his job.  When he left her and her children, she made the amazingly brave decision to stay and continue her medical work with some of the poorest people in the world.  Ultimately, she built a clinic that provided medical care, physical therapy, family counseling and support, and any number of other things.  The church had supported Barb’s work for years.  We went not only to meet her but to smuggle medical supplies through customs for the clinic.

As a Christian, there are three pathways to experience God’s presence.

Today is Ascension Sunday.  This is the day in the church calendar when we remember that in two of the four Gospels, Jesus leaves.  Where does he go?  He goes up.  What does he do when he goes up?  The answer I learned as a confirmand was that, “He sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.”  What’s the plan?  The plan, according to many of the very earliest Christians and a few Christians still today is that he’s going to come back down again. 

The first thing that I want to say to you confirmands this morning is, “Congratulations!” The first milestone moment for you was when your parents and the church baptized you.  The commitments made on that day were made by your parents and by the community of faith:  to welcome you into the church family; to care for you in your growing years; to give you the chance to learn about the life of faith that we are called to live, loving God and loving our neighbors.  At that point, given how young you were, you were just along for the ride.  Then, across a lot of Sundays, your parents and your church family fulfilled those promises.  You found a home filled with friends, some your own age or younger, some 10 times older than you.  They cared for you and about you and you learned to care for and about them, too.

Forty-three years ago, when I went to seminary, I knew two things for sure.  First, I was never going to date anyone in seminary.  They’d be a little crazy and want to talk about Jesus all the time.  One month in, I was dating the person whom I would spend the rest of my life with.  The second thing that I knew for sure was that I would never, ever be interested in Biblical studies.  After all, as a pastor’s kid, I had suffered through years of Sunday School, hearing the same stories over and over again.  Today, I’m standing here and telling you that after preaching pretty much every Sunday for 30 years, the book still fascinates me and almost every time I run into a text, I hear something entirely new.