Sermons

Part of being a pastor is spending a lot of time with people around health care issues.  I have been to a lot of doctor’s offices and chemo floors and a full spectrum of waiting rooms.  I remember holding Lori Jones’s prematurely born twins, each in the palm of a hand, and being overwhelmed with how tiny they were.  (Now they are young adults.) I remember accompanying Barb Mortimer to chemo and hearing the man sitting next to us as he called his wife and told her that the good news was that he was only going to lose part of his leg.  I remember sitting on several occasions in hospital rooms and hearing that there were no choices left, that it was time to live as fully as possible in the time that remained or, simply, that it was time to turn off the machines and wait for the end.

I’m terrible at “selling” religion.  Think about it.  I’ve told you for years that God’s going to love you, whether you come to church or not.  What kind of a marketing strategy is that right?  I’m not going to shame you or guilt you or try to scare you into becoming a member of “my team.” If you don’t want to be here, you don’t have to be here.  When I say that, I’m defying centuries of messaging from organized religion which mostly boils down to, “You better be here…or else!” (It’s the institutional version of “mothering” decades ago when the message was, “You just wait until your father gets home!”  Dad would get home and have no idea why the children looked so terrified!)

Last week, we stood together and looked at this “mountaintop moment” for Jesus.  He heard his calling and responded.  He left what he loved behind and headed to the River Jordan to see John.  He did his “trademark” thing—he went last, waiting until everyone else was baptized to be baptized himself.  He put himself in John’s hands and was baptized in that chilly water, which, interestingly, for Luke is not the culminating moment.  Instead, it is only post-baptism, when Jesus prays, that the fireworks start. Jesus prays, the Spirit descends on him like a dove, and a voice speaks:  “You are my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”

One of the biggest challenges in life is dealing with uncertainty.    The old adage is that the only certainties in life are death and taxes.  There’s truth in those words. There is only so much that we can know ahead of time.

There are a lot of pastors who spend no time at all on Jesus’ infancy and childhood and growth into adulthood.  You can make a case for this.  After all, two of the four Gospels never mention Jesus’ birth at all.  (I have yet to meet a pastor who just skipped over Advent and Christmas.) I’m afraid you all have been cursed for thirty years with someone who is on the other end of the spectrum.  It is really central to me that Jesus was born like us and grew up like us and got lost as a child and was a little sassy about it, like us, and eventually became an adult.  We often quote scripture saying that, “God so loved the world.” I believe that Jesus so loved the world, too.  In fact, I believe that he fell in love with life just like us—a day at a time, a person at a time, a sunset at a time.  I think it’s only when we learn to so love this life that the world ends up being worth fighting for, maybe even dying for.

A couple of weeks ago, Tracy and I led a women’s retreat for the church up in Racine, Wisconsin.  Thirty of our women made a real sacrifice and put their lives on hold for a day to gather there.  In the very first moment, I announced our two goals.  First, we wanted everyone to get to know each other better.  In part, the retreat was about creating and renewing connections, connections that will be crucial in the transition days ahead for our church family.

So far during Epiphany, we have tracked Matthew’s account of Jesus’ earliest days (wise men, the flight to Egypt, the return to Israel and settling in Nazareth) and Luke’s account (the family following the cultural and religious customs and the surprising things that occurred with unexpected people.) The accounts are fundamentally different.  However, they each serve as prologues for the Gospel’s to come.  Knowing that their audiences are aware of things that happened in Jesus’ ministry, both Matthew and Luke say to their audiences, “Look…those things were already happening.”

Thirty years ago, when I started here, the church was stuck with me.  If you needed a pastor, I was your only option.  So, when Kitty Kuhlman died a few weeks after I started, I led her memorial service.  I’m sure some long term members were shaking their heads and thinking to themselves, “Well, this ought to be interesting…”. Maybe some of those same people, after the service, thought to themselves, “You know…that was okay.”  You have to start somewhere, right?

One of the biggest struggles for people at the end of Jesus’ ministry was that, in so many ways, he wasn’t what people expected.  (After all, isn’t it God’s job to do what we expect God to do?). Jesus wasn’t a trained rabbi or a religious authority.  In fact, he was in trouble with those people from the start.  Most people who heard him didn’t follow him.  He ended up in trouble with the law.  His “case” was reviewed by a host of authorities.  And, when given the chance, the crowd—the people who were right there looking at him with their own two eyes—rejected him and chose, instead to free a common criminal—Barabus.  The people expected a great king, a charismatic leader, someone who would make the nation great again.  What kind of Messiah is that?

When Jesus is crucified in the Gospel of Matthew, the Roman soldiers put a plaque above his head that reads, “King of the Jews.” During Holy Week, we may note this in passing. There’s so much going on. Earlier that week, Pilate accuses Jesus of claiming to be the “King of the Jews,” himself.  Again, mostly, the reference tends to fly right past us.  This morning, though, I want to pause and put this accusation in context.  According to Matthew, who were the Magi looking for when they got to Herod’s court?  They were asking for the newborn King of the Jews.  That question was enough to drive Herod crazy. 

I had a professor in college, Dr. Gerry Thorson, who was a sacred person in my life and a key figure in my growth as a thinker.  Dr. Thorson was an English professor who loved 19th and 20th century American literature.  Over a number of courses, we moved from the literature of a very agrarian America—people like Willa Cather and Ole Rolvaag—to the literature of the great wars—William Styron and the like.  He was an unassuming presence in class—humble and smiling most of the time, but in his own subtle way, he helped us not only become readers but grow as writers, ourselves.

Have you ever had an epiphany? An epiphany is a sudden insight into the nature of something, usually in a simple and striking way.  What I discover as true has been true all along.  What makes my discovery an epiphany is that all of a sudden, I “get it.”  “Wow,” I think to myself, “how did I not see that before?”