OUCH! Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, St Louis, October 13, 2024

This is the third of three sermons I preached in St Louis between internship and my first call at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, a church discerning its future. Its Holy Closure came in spring 2025.

Grace and Peace to you from our loving God, whose Word challenges us, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who is our Christ. Amen.

Ouch. Perhaps you, too, find today’s words pinch and scratch.

Today’s texts point to a bleak world. A world filled with trouble, with danger, with disappointment, with head-scratching truths. And the common denominator – well, that would be people. While the people in our lives can be our greatest joy, people also can disappoint us. Deeply.

The prophet Amos is warning the people that they are not caring for the poor among them in the way that they should. So their own preparations for the good life will go to waste.

“You have built houses of hewn stone, but you shall not live in them;

you have planted pleasant vineyards, but you shall not drink their wine.”

Amos covered the world they lived in with a gross generality: it’s an EVIL time. The Psalmist could have used the same words, asking God for joy and mercy in the midst of evil and unrelenting pain, most likely while on the way to the promised land. “Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants!” The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews warned of the judgment to come, but that Jesus Christ, the great high priest, was filled with grace.

And Jesus in today’s gospel? Somehow, that grace didn’t seem so obvious in his encounter with the rich man – although I assure you it was there. Somehow, with all of his possessions, this rich man was concerned about his future – certainly not his earthly future, but his eternal future.

The man ran to Jesus and knelt before him. “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus’ response to him is puzzling. “No one is good but God alone.” What? Haven’t we recently come to know Jesus, through Peter’s declaration, as the Messiah, as one with God? Yeah, I’m sure of it – I preached on that text the last time I was here!

Thousands of sermons have covered this topic. Why exactly would Jesus reply to this man’s respectful question with this denial and more questions? We don’t know anything more about the rich man from Mark’s account. Was he dressed in a specific way, or was he known to the community as rich? No idea.

Was Jesus speaking to him personally, or using him as a lesson to a crowd? Again, we have no idea.

Was Jesus trying to figure out what kind of spiritual sin was troubling him? Perhaps it was pride – since he stated he fulfilled ALL of the 613 commandments in the Jewish law to the letter, since he was a child. Or perhaps it was greed – was he in love with his possessions?

Did Jesus understand that if he pushed hard enough, this rich man would walk away? <Shrug>

I wish Jesus’ explanation to his disciples afterward shed more light on the situation. But I think it only muddies the water:

“How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!” And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Cue the awkward silence. The glances from one disciple to another. Each of the disciples must have been going through their own mental checklists. What had they left? What did they still own? Finally, Peter, never the shy disciple, speaks what all of them must have been thinking: “Look,” he said, “we’ve all left it all behind to follow you.” So, where do we stand?

I’ll admit, it’s a troubling text. This story has created fear among Christians almost from the beginning. It was texts like this that made the desert fathers and mothers leave everything behind to go listen closely to God’s voice in the wilderness. And it is these texts that make serious Christians wonder how much is too much. “I’m doing well in my job. I’m being offered a promotion. I’ve been able to invest a little, buy a nice home for my family. But Jesus said, ‘How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God.’ What if our comforts keep me or my family from eternal life?” The story puts our focus on possessions, rather than directing our attention to God’s goodness and care for us.

* * * * *

I have to confess two more discomforts with this story, and I’ll end with a promise.

The first discomfort is where it lands in the lectionary. This story comes up every third year in October, about the time most leaders are guiding their congregations to discuss finances for the following year. Stewardship campaigns, if your congregation is on a calendar-year budget, have started. So the story of the rich man often becomes simply an object lesson of someone who doesn’t put God before his wealth. “Don’t be like him.”

Second, we never hear another word in the gospel about this rich man, and we assume that Jesus’ words never landed with him. We think the worst, that he chose his wealth over following Jesus. But all we know is that this man was shocked and went away grieving. We don’t know for certain whether Jesus’ words worked on his heart. Don’t forget, the text says, “Jesus loved him,” and he spoke the words that shocked and grieved him in love. We have no way to know if those words, with time and reflection, caused the man to change his priorities, no more than I know, any time I preach a sermon, whether my words work on people’s hearts and minds days and years afterward. We trust the Spirit to guide people into the truth.

* * * * *

So, finally, we come to the promise. Perhaps, like the disciples, we are left shaking our heads, perplexed, when Jesus said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

Are we rich? While not many of us are millionaires or billionaires, by global standards, we in the United States are rich. Most of us know where our next meal is coming from and have enough to share with a neighbor in need. We shop at grocery stores with 25,000 items, perhaps twice that if you shop in a large mega store. While not everyone has a gold plus health care plan, in a medical crisis, we know an emergency room will treat us. Jesus certainly would have thought of us as rich.

So, like the rich man, Jesus speaks these words to us in love: “'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.' They were greatly astounded and said to one another, 'Then who can be saved?' Jesus looked at them and said, 'For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.'”

Friends, eternal life doesn’t come from wealth or from the lack of it. From our status or lack of it. From our good deeds or lack of them. Everlasting life comes from God’s grace. As Paul will later explain, “By grace through faith, which is a gift.” God’s grace. Thanks be to God.

Amen

What Are You Going to Do About It? Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, St Louis, September 15, 2024

This is the second of three sermons I preached in St Louis between internship and my first call at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, a church discerning its future. Its Holy Closure came in spring 2025.

Grace to you and peace from God, who is with us every step of this challenging walk of discipleship, and from Jesus, who is the Christ, our Messiah. Amen.

In north central Arizona, where my husband and I lived for three decades, Granite Mountain has the best view in western Yavapai County. The Granite Mountain trail comes up the backside of the mountain, and you climb up the switchbacks until you near the top, then you hike along a rim trail another half mile to the summit, where the panorama opens up in front of you.

Today’s gospel reading takes place at the midpoint of Mark’s gospel. It’s as if we’ve been climbing up the switchbacks, and soon, we’ll be able to see everything that’s ahead. Today, we’re hiking around that bend.

It’s been a strenuous journey to this point: Jesus calling the disciples, teaching them, meeting people and healing them, and then five long weeks of the bread of life discourse. If we read the actual next passage in Mark’s gospel, it’s the Transfiguration, the revelation of Jesus on the top of the mountain, then the slow descent toward Jerusalem and the Cross.

So, after more than two years of spending time with the disciples, today, Jesus wonders whether it’s sinking in.

“Who do people say that I am?"

Are the people who have come out to be healed, to be taught getting it? Do they know who I am? It’s almost as if Jesus is asking the disciples to check in. What have you been hearing?

And the disciples sound a lot like managers who are hesitant to tell the CEO bad news. “Well, a few people are connecting you with some big names. I heard Elijah. I heard John the Baptist, and I think some other prophet names were mentioned.”

And Jesus cuts through the smoke pretty quickly:

“Who do YOU think I am?”

The silence must have been palpable. “Who ARE you? We KNOW who you are. Jesus. The guy from Nazareth. We met your mother and kid brothers. Of course we know who you are.” But suddenly, Peter UNDERSTANDS.

“You are the Messiah.”

It’s as if Peter finally connected all the dots. The teaching. The healing. The lack of concern with Jewish law. Multiplying the food, calming the sea. His knowledge of God’s will.

“You are the Messiah.”

But there was no gold star for Peter. No “Wow, you got it!” Instead, Jesus tells them not to tell anyone. He started talking about what comes next – suffering, a trial before the religious and governmental authorities, and eventually his death.

Just for a second, let’s try something. If I say a word -- like “father,” all of you will have a picture in your mind. Perhaps it’s an amazing person who was at all your school concerts and sporting events. Maybe it is someone who taught you to ride a bike or drive a car, or who walked you down the aisle.

But other people have different pictures. Maybe their father was abusive, distant, or even absent. Maybe he died before you were born. So if we started talking about “fathers,” we wouldn’t be on the same page.

And I think the same thing happened between Peter and Jesus. Peter got it right – Jesus indeed was the Messiah. But what Peter thought the Messiah should be, and what Jesus was describing were two different pictures of Messiah. Peter thought the Messiah would come in glory and power and release the captives from their Roman rulers. It would be a new day for the people who were barely getting by. He imagined a somewhat elevated Moses.

Jesus, however, knew what the Messiah’s future was. He knew what was ahead. He was already a threat to the powers-that-be. Healing people, providing them with food, telling them they didn’t need to follow all the laws and rules, and eventually asserting that he was one with God: that threatened the status quo. That was not only blasphemy, it threatened the cozy deal-brokering between the Jewish high priests and Pilate, the governor.

Without that foresight, Peter wasn’t on the same page. He just heard Jesus agree he was the Messiah. How did suffering and dying fit with that? Peter begins to push back on his teacher, and Jesus rebukes him with “Get behind me, Satan.” It crushes my heart to hear Peter be so right one moment, and so wrong the next, because those words hurt. 

“Get behind me” sounds like he wanted Peter out of his sight. Perhaps a better translation of the Greek would be “get in line,” or “follow along.” Peter just declared Jesus as the Messiah – now Jesus was asking him to act like it. To understand him differently.

Which reminds me – If Jesus came today, I don’t think he’d be asking who the people say he is. We have the advantage of 2,000 years of Christianity on this side of the cross. Much of the world knows who Jesus Christ is.

I think Jesus would ask us two questions:

First one is the same one he asked the disciples: “Who do YOU say I am?”

And the second, “What does that mean for you?” Or, put a little differently, “What are you going to do about it?”

It’s one thing to profess Jesus as Lord and Savior.

It’s quite a different thing to live as though that makes a difference.

Both James and Jesus today tell us how hard it is to live out our faith. Jesus said, “If any wish to come after me, 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, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

I don’t think Jesus expected every one of his disciples to die on a cross, but many of them died while sharing the good news. Being an evangelist in the First Century was not for the faint of heart.

James wrote that it’s hard to follow Christ and speak with gentleness and self-control. “No one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison” James said. “With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse people, people made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth comes a blessing and a curse. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.” 

I’m not sure it’s a lot easier to follow – really follow Jesus – in THIS age. This divided and intolerant age. For one thing, speaking the truth about the gospel in this day is challenging. As a pastoral candidate, I don’t have to look far to find a mentor pastor who has been cornered by a member after Sunday worship about preaching forgiveness, non-violence, or inclusiveness. And when the surprised pastor says he or she wasn’t making it up – that the words came directly from the Gospel, the member says something like, “Maybe, but that doesn’t work today, in 2024. That’s weak.”

There’s a church that is advertising for a pastor, that wants a pastor to bring their Bible, but “We don’t need nor want political and/or fashionable cultural views.” Let’s be clear – it would be nearly impossible to be a preacher of the gospel in that church. The Bible is political. Not partisan, but definitely political. Jesus was political. And cultural? If we don’t speak a word of caution and a word of encouragement to each other, the people who are trying to follow Jesus will be eaten alive by this culture. Instead of being peace-makers, they will imitate others and spew words of violence. Instead of working for unity, they will do and say things that divide.

Jesus knew how difficult it would be hard to be counter-cultural. I think that’s the cross that Jesus asked us to take up. The life that Jesus wants us to leave behind for the sake of the gospel is a life that looks like everyone else’s. We’re going to falter sometimes. We’re going to struggle. And we’re going to turn to one another for hope and forgiveness when we do.

The season is beginning to turn, both outside and for the church. And as Jesus continues to lead his disciples around the rim, over the rocky terrain that leads to the summit, on the way to Jerusalem, he knew he was asking a lot of his followers that day. It’s one thing to know who Jesus is, as Peter proclaimed: “You are the Messiah.” It’s quite another to decide what we’re going to do about that.

Amen

For the Life of the World, Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, St Louis, August 18 2024

This is the first of three sermons I preached in St Louis between internship and my first call at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, a church discerning its future. Its Holy Closure came in spring 2025.

Grace and peace to you from God, the source of all love, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who is our Christ. Amen.

“The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Today’s reading from the sixth chapter of John is as close as we get to John’s presentation of the Sacrament of the Table. The words we hear every week during the meal are found in the Synoptic Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and are repeated by Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians. John, as you know, is the unconventional gospel. It’s filled with signs that point us to Jesus as Messiah. And John is seasoned with seven “I am” statements Jesus used to equate himself with THE “I AM,” God.

After introducing himself as the Bread of Life in last week’s Gospel passage, Jesus continues to break it out, to riff, as it were, on that “I am” statement. “I am the living bread from heaven.”

Jesus knows his crowd. These Jewish followers knew their Torah. They would have known that the “living bread from heaven” was manna, the daily bread that sustained the Israelites in the wilderness. By referring to himself as living bread, the astonished onlookers would hear that Jesus was saying he was not only “God-sent” but “life-giving.”

Jesus was manna for a hungry world: He had their attention.

Jesus was manna for a lost people: He had their hearts.

And then, Jesus told them something was about to happen. Unlike the manna that disappeared when the Israelites reached the promised land, this manna would remain. HE was becoming their manna. For Always.

“The bread I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

How many of us seriously wonder about the Life of THIS world? Listen to the news for just 10 minutes, scroll through your social media feed, or just go to any gathering. Without being the least bit political, people from every walk of life worry about how they will afford the basic things they need to live. They wonder why people don’t seem to care that what they do affects others. They see some folks getting rich off others’ poverty.

And I don’t think I’d be going out on a limb too far to say that our world isn’t all that different in those respects from the First Century world in which Jesus lived. When Jesus told the crowd the parable of the woman who lost a coin and searched diligently until she found it, they understood people who were barely getting by and needed every coin they had. When Jesus stopped and spoke with Zaccheus the tax collector, they knew Jesus was challenging him to think about the people of his community and collect taxes fairly and equitably. When Jesus pointed out the widow who was dropping two small coins—everything she had—into the temple collection box, he wasn’t applauding her faith. He was criticizing a system and a faith community that should be taking care of her, not taking everything she had

“The bread I will give for the life of the world” is my flesh.” Jesus was foreshadowing that he would eventually lay down his life for this world. He would be the catalyst, the change agent for a different way of living. His followers, and those who would follow those followers, including you and me, would be baptized into a new way of living. Today, our baptismal commitment to be “bread for life of the world” sounds like this: 

• To live among God’s faithful people,
• To hear the word of God and share in the Lord’s supper,
• To proclaim the good news of God in Christ through word and deed
• To serve ALL people, following the example of Jesus,
• And To strive for justice and peace in all the earth.

Sometimes, I think those are the words we need to display and remind ourselves of, all the time. Because that’s the essence of following Jesus. To serve people like Jesus did, to work continually for justice and peace – now there’s a place to set our focus. To be the bread for the life of this world. 

Holy Trinity, you know about that. Watering the butterfly garden. Shopping and dropping off extra food or sundries for one of your missions. Joining together for fellowship or to assemble a quilt – Holy Trinity, that’s being bread for the life of this world.

But so is showing up to care for your next-door neighbor. Being kind to the person in front of you at the store who is fumbling to find their debit card. Encouraging the parent whose little one is having a melt-down in the restaurant. In all those ways and so many more, every day, you are the manna this world needs.

Did you notice the direction of travel though? It begins inside, living among God’s faithful people, and sharing this meal together. Experiencing Jesus’ presence with us every Sunday as we come together to feast on this simple meal of bread and wine. Hearing the gospel proclaimed. And then we are sent out, to do the work of Christ out there. To be grace and God’s hands and feet to a world in need out there.

So tell me, Holy Trinity, how have you been the manna this world needs recently? Manna – not full loaves of bread – just tiny little flakes of bread that were gathered together daily to sustain God’s people. What little acts of love and grace have been your manna to the world?

(Take comments… Repeat them on mic.)

I know this congregation is in a season of discernment right now. You are talking and praying about your next steps. You are thinking about your 65-plus years of loving and serving and being the bread for the life of the world here in South County. And I pray as Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus that you would be wise, and together you would come to understand what is the will of God for your future.

I want to assure you that as you abide in the love of Christ, sharing that love with the world in great and small ways, that you ARE that bread for a hungry world. People hungry for kindness. For justice. For compassion. For healing. No matter what the next step looks like, Holy Trinity. No matter how the Spirit guides your way. Your baptismal vows lead you out there. To people who are starving for that kind of community. Just as Jesus was bread for the life of the world, now as the Body of Christ, that role has passed to you.

And the people of God said… AMEN.