Just When You Think You're Settled, Trips, Travels and Journeys, SOJ, July 2, 2023

In the middle of a move to Missouri for internship, I received an email from Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church Pastor Sharon Brown in Clarkdale, AZ. She was doing a service of travels, trips and journeys for the weekend of July 4, 2023, and who better to talk about journeys than their seminarian, in the middle of yet another one! I recorded the sermon for them for their weekend services.

Grace and Peace to you, from God our Creator, and from Jesus, who is our Christ.

On the move. How fitting that Pastor Sharon asked me to give the reflection to you at Spirit of Joy this week about journeys, when so many things are in flux. As you hear these words Sunday, I bring you greetings from Chesterfield, Missouri, where Mike and I have landed for the next year as I begin my final year of seminary as an intern pastor, a vicar, at Trinity Lutheran Church. I also bring you greetings from my seminary community, the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, which just completed its move after 55 years on Hyde Park’s East 55th Street to co-locate with Catholic Theological Union near Chicago’s lakefront. So much change! So many endings and new beginnings!

So, just when you think you’re set and settled in, don’t be surprised if God has other plans. I’m sure Abram and Sarai could relate to that. A child-free couple in their 70s, living on the land, accompanied by their nephew, servants, and all the livestock they could handle. I’m sure they expected to live out their days that way. Then, God approached Abram with a call – THE CALL. You, Abram and Sarai. You, childless ones. You, with no particular claim to fame. You will now be called Abraham and Sarah. I have chosen YOU to be the beginning of an entire chosen people.

“Go. To the land that I will show you.” Go out, to a new and unknown place. Following a call requires a lot of trust.

In 2016, I was working as a vocational specialist at West Yavapai Guidance Clinic, helping people with mental illnesses find jobs. Not an easy job. It often takes a couple of tries before these clients find the right fit. I was no one special. Our son Michael had moved to Portland, Oregon, and we were empty-nesters. I expected to work there until I retired, perhaps in another 10 or 12 years. But God had other plans. A year later, I was submitting my candidacy paperwork to the Grand Canyon Synod office, starting the process to become an ordained pastor.

Last year we sold our home in Prescott Valley and moved to Chicago. And this spring, we prayed for God to prepare the place where we would go for internship and start preparing the place that would be my first call a year later. And as God called Abraham and Sarah, God still is calling old and young people to “Go. To the land that I will show you.”

* * *

You do realize that some churches have existed 50 or even 100 years and have never had anyone experience a call to rostered ministry? While Mike and I are members of Emmanuel Lutheran across the hill, the experience of chartering Spirit of Joy was another milepost on my way to recognizing my call. Along with Pastor Bruce Lerum, Spirit of Joy has been instrumental in the calling of TWO pastors so far. There is something special happening here. The Spirit is at work, giving people a vocation, a direction, a call. And God is not just calling ordained pastors. Each one of you. God has gathered you here, is preparing you, and is sending you out to serve, Gather. Prepare. Serve – G.P.S. The original GPS.

* * *

Do you listen for God’s direction in your life? Many years ago, my brother was stuck. He and his family were faithful worshipers, active in Bible study. He had opened a business, but it wasn’t lucrative enough to support his family. He didn’t know what God had in mind for him next. And that was the conversation he had with some men from his congregation: What am I to do now? I feel like I’m drifting. I’m waiting for direction from God, and I’m not hearing anything. One of these men told my brother “God can’t steer a parked car.” God can use whatever you do for good. God can even direct your steps as you go. Just keep moving.

I think the Psalmist understood that thought. Listen to those words from Psalm 139:

“You know when I sit down and when I rise up; 
you discern my thoughts from far away. 
You search out my path and my lying down 
and are acquainted with all my ways…” 
And then the Psalmist continues: 
“If I take the wings of the morning 
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 
even there your hand shall lead me, 
and your right hand shall hold me fast.” 

If we are walking with God, those steps are being directed. God knows what we are thinking, the roads we are traveling, what we are doing. No matter the path we take, God’s hand is guiding us. In my own life, even the roads that looked like dead-ends to me at the time, or were difficult or painful episodes, in retrospect were occasions that I learned something I needed for the future.

* * *

In the short passage that we heard from Mark’s gospel, Jesus gives Simon and his colleagues a training in a handful of words. In just five verses, Jesus guides his followers in the rhythm of living as disciples. First, he goes off to pray. We should begin our days and our work in prayer. It’s important! Second, the disciples searched for him. We need to actively discern what Jesus is calling us to do. And third, they went off into the neighboring towns, where Jesus proclaimed the message and healed. We need to get outside of our walls and serve in whatever ways we determine we are being called to act.

Take heart, Spirit of Joy. God is with you as you journey, as you seek to determine how God is calling you to do ministry here at this place and throughout the entire Verde Valley. God’s Spirit is up to something in the people gathered, prepared, and serving here. Stay in prayer, seek our Christ’s purpose, and get out into the community to serve out that purpose. I am praying that God, who began good work in you, and in this place, will grow and perfect it in the years ahead. Until I can be with you again and Mike as well, trust in God’s call and keep moving ahead! Amen.

Honest Questions, Real Faith, SOJ Easter 2, April 24, 2022

I preached this sermon at Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church in Clarkdale, AZ, the Sunday after Easter, my final sermon in person at the church Mike and I helped charter in the 1990s.

Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, who is our Christ. Amen

St. Thomas shares the spotlight with the Risen Savior this weekend, not just in this church, but in most churches around the country.

In churches that use the Revised Common Lectionary, this is the traditional Sunday-after-Easter gospel every year. We hear about Thomas, who was not with the other disciples Easter night, who is present a week later. And for churches using the narrative lectionary, like Spirit of Joy, this passage is appointed for the Sunday after Easter this year, and every fourth year. So, countless sermons have been preached about this text over the years, and probably tens of thousands more will be preached this weekend.

Thomas always seems to get a bad rap in this passage. Those of us who grew up in the church have always heard a certain label applied to Thomas, because of the words Jesus speaks to him. Labels matter in how we read and respond to this story. Let’s take apart this familiar encounter and look at a few pieces in detail.

At the start of the gospel, the disciples are gathered in an upper room, locked in, for fear of “the Jews.” Or in other translations, “the Jewish leaders.” I don’t think anyone can fault them for locking themselves away, for being afraid. They’ve seen their teacher taken away, tried, scourged nearly to death, and then crucified. It makes sense that they expect to be next, and they are terrified.

Aside from that, they are grieving. They knew that Jesus died three days earlier, his lifeless body washed and wrapped and placed in a donated tomb. They heard the stories that the stone was rolled away and he was not there when the women went to the tomb at dawn. Whether his body was stolen or he is risen, they don’t know. They aren’t sure whether to go back to their former lives or proclaim the risen Savior, so they are stuck: fearful and questioning.

I’m sure many of us can empathize with the disciples. We’ve just lived with a global pandemic for two years, and 6 million deaths later, it’s still not over. My congregation in Prescott Valley is not meeting in person this week and next due to a Covid outbreak during Holy Week. Many of us have spent so much time behind our own locked doors, fearful and questioning. Is it safe to gather, to go back to work or school or church? Should we get another booster? Should we keep wearing masks? So many questions, honest questions. And the first truth of today’s story: It is the human response to ask questions.

Second, none of the gospels explain where Thomas was on Easter night. But he was not with the others. I think his absence points to the second truth: People are different and people come to faith differently, and that’s OK. For starters, not everyone handles grief the same way. A group of disciples locked themselves in an upper room on Resurrection Sunday to grieve, maybe to be safe, perhaps to share the wild hope that Jesus had risen from the dead. But not everyone was there. Perhaps Thomas just wanted to be alone to process his grief, ponder his questions. Maybe he didn’t want to lock himself away from the world. Or it’s possible that his was not the popular opinion – he couldn’t bear to start believing in a resurrected Jesus only to have his hopes dashed again. Remember, the disciple Peter wasn’t the only passionate one. Earlier, when Jesus said he was returning to Judea, as Lazarus had fallen ill, the disciples tried to talk him out of it, since some Jewish folks wanted to kill him. Thomas, however, knew what was at stake, but was all in with Jesus. “Let us also go, that we may die with him,” he told his fellow disciples.

During the six weeks of Lent, a group from Spirit of Joy gathered to study “The Difficult Words of Jesus.” In this study, we talked about six gospel texts that have vexed Jesus followers and theologians for two centuries. Not every word Jesus uttered was graceful and compassionate. We reflected on Jesus’ instructions to the rich young man to sell everything he owned, and to his disciples to go nowhere among the Gentiles. We heard passages that suggested Jesus wanted to divide families, and others that seem to suggest Jesus sanctioned slavery. We talked about heaven and hell, and scriptures that vilify Jewish people. Vanderbilt Divinity School theologian A.J. Levine provided some guiding thoughts, but at the end of the day, we didn’t walk out in complete accord. And that’s OK. We don’t have to live this Christian faith in lockstep. Our God is big enough for our questions and doubts.

The story is told of a self-proclaimed, self-assured atheist who would take great pleasure in publicly denying the existence of God. He would constantly tell anyone who would listen what was wrong with a God who would allow cruelty and injustice to continue. One day the great Hassidic master Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, Ukraine, approached this man and said, “You know what, I don't believe in the same God that you don't believe in.”

Faith is not a once-and-done proposition. It’s not like learning to read or do multiplication. We don’t go to Sunday School and confirmation, or an Alpha class or Diakonia, or a new member class, and walk out the door understanding it all. Perhaps the father of the boy that Jesus healed in Mark 9 uttered the most honest words in scripture when he said, “I believe; help my unbelief.” The third truth for today: We can live in the paradox of faith and unknowing. The opposite of faith is not doubt. Doubt is part of faith. The opposite of faith is certainty.

And that brings us back to the disciples in today’s passage. Look closely at the story. On Resurrection Sunday, Jesus suddenly is with the remaining disciples, without Thomas. They were terrified, and now they think they are all having a communal apparition – this must be a ghost. What else appears despite a locked door? But Jesus tells them to be at peace, allows them to see his wounds and touch his flesh, and they rejoice. It IS Jesus!!

Then a week later, same time and place, Jesus appears again and tells them to be at peace. Jesus, sensing Thomas’s uncertainty, invites him to do just as his fellow disciples had done the previous week – see and touch his wounds and prove to his senses that he is their resurrected teacher. Jesus’s words are not a rebuke, but an invitation. “Do not doubt, but believe.”

And Thomas does not disappoint. As soon as he touches the wounds in Jesus’ hands and side, any uncertainty he may have had is gone. His words surpass simple knowing, or even the joyful recognition of the disciples a week earlier. His response is the ultimate faith statement of the Gospels in five words, as he exclaims: “My Lord and My God.”

And the fourth and final truth: Jesus addresses his last comment in the passage not to Thomas, not to the other disciples, but to his followers not in the room that night, the ones who would not be able to place their hands in his nail holes and his side. “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

Blessed are those who have not seen. Not Mary who meets the risen Jesus in the garden. Not the followers on the road to Emmaus, who meets the risen Lord in the breaking of the bread. Jesus is talking to those who would become Christ-followers from the disciples who couldn’t stop telling others about the resurrected Jesus. First, in Jerusalem, and then throughout the world. From Peter, who spread the good news to Pontus and Galatia and Cappadocia and beyond. From Philip, who met the Ethiopian eunuch and began the spread of the gospel to Africa. From John who preached through Asia, and from Thomas, whose witness of “My Lord and My God” traveled to Persia, beginning faith communities that now are the rock-solid Christian congregations throughout India.

Jesus is talking to Christians in Corinth and Ephesus and Thessalonica who would hear about Jesus from Paul, and to the followers around the globe who were inspired by the 3,000 people infused by the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem on Pentecost.

And Jesus is talking to you and me, and the people we tell, a continuing story of faith brought to life by “those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

It is a wild and almost unbelievable story, about God who stopped at nothing to keep loving God’s people, God who loved creation enough to be born as one of us, about a Savior so in love with humanity that he laid down his life. But if you open your heart to be touched by those wounds, and see the risen Christ, perhaps you, too, proclaim with Thomas, “My Lord and My God.” Or maybe you have your questions, but you showed up, and are here to worship our God who is big enough and loves you enough so you can live into your questions, now and always. Blessed and beloved are you, either way.

Amen

 

Wrestling with God

Wrestling with God (based on Genesis 32:[9-13] 22-30)

September 22, 2019

Spirit of Joy Lutheran Church, Clarkdale, AZ

Grace and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus, the Christ.” Amen.

The year was 1986, and I had recently moved to Arizona from Wisconsin for a news reporting job. Originally, Mike and I were bound for Bullhead City, but in my great fortune, the company decided I should go to Cottonwood to work for the Verde Independent, while another reporter would go to Bullhead City.

My areas of coverage for the next eight years, the formative years of my reporting career, were education and sports. I had experience covering education issues, less experience covering sports. But I had played and watched sports, and had every confidence I could cover whatever local sports came my way.

So, when I arrived in the fall, it was football, golf and volleyball season. I was familiar with those sports, and could knowledgeably write about them. Then the seasons changed and winter sports arrived. Again, basketball and soccer – no problem. But then I went to talk to the Camp Verde wrestling coach to preview his team’s season, and was CLUELESS where to start. I ended up asking him to be merciful to someone who had never SEEN a high school wrestling match.

Thankfully, that coach was Dennis Sterrett, and if anyone embodied grace and breathes wrestling, Dennis was the man. He explained weight classes – wrestling bouts match people of similar size. He described the challenges of a wrestler’s training: mental toughness and physical strength and agility.  And probably most important, he explained the moves and how wrestlers score points. Takedowns, escapes, reversals and penalties.

Key to winning was keeping the superior position, avoiding being taken down or pinned to the mat, reversing or escaping when on one’s back. A match was six minutes, broken into three two-minute periods, but it was all-out action for all six minutes. No time outs, no stalling, no leaving the circle.

That experience puts a different take on this reading of Jacob’s wrestling match. Jacob’s bout wasn’t wrestling at all, but a no-holds-barred free-for-all. Jacob prayed, took his family across the river and returned. His opponent attacked him in the dark, without warning. There were no rules, no referee, no timed periods.

To understand how Jacob got here, we need to back up and pay close attention to three names. For the first name, we go back into Jacob’s history, as far as we can go. Back to his birth to Isaac and Rebekah. Jacob was a twin, and his brother Esau was born first. Jacob came out grasping his brother’s heel. And one meaning for the name “Jacob “was “to follow at the heel.” Jacob also can mean “deceiver,” or trickster, and that would be what Jacob would become. Names matter.

Today, one would think that twins would be equally important to their parents. But not so in Isaac’s day. Esau, who was born first, would not only inherit a large share of the family’s wealth, but also the blessing – he would be head of the household when Isaac died. By being born just seconds later, Jacob would be subservient to his brother for the rest of his life. So Jacob turned to deception not once, but twice, to gain both Esau’s birthright and his Isaac’s blessing. After hearing his father had blessed his brother over him, Esau was so angry he wanted to kill Jacob. So Rebekah sent Jacob out of the country, to her side of the family, until Esau cooled off. He would work for his uncle, Laban, for many years.

The next episode would make a great Biblical soap opera. Jacob fell in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel. But Laban wanted both of his daughters to marry. So after seven years of work, Jacob, the deceiver, was himself deceived by Laban into marrying older sister Leah rather than Rachel. He would have to work another seven years to marry Rachel. At that point, Jacob made another enemy by taking Leah, Rachel, their sons, their servants, and all their livestock, and leaving Laban. Eventually, Jacob and Laban settled their score, and Jacob knew it was time to make amends with Esau.

Jabbock, the river that was the scene of the wrestling match, is the second name. Jabbok means “to empty out,” and it does empty into the Jordan River just a little ways to the west. But this is the place where God chooses to empty Jacob of himself. Throughout his life, Jacob was chosen by God. But instead of letting God work out God’s plan, Jacob takes matters into his own hands. He gets the birthright and blessing by trickery. He runs from Esau. He gets Leah and Rachel and leaves Laban. And now, headed back to the brother who wanted to kill him so many years ago, he sends for information, and learns that Esau has 600 men and they were coming for him.

Jacob is distressed and frightened and prays to God. Then he comes up with yet another scheme. He would send livestock as gifts to his brother. After a couple of waves of cattle, goats and sheep, perhaps Esau would be appeased. But as he and his wives and family approach the river, he hears that Esau still is waiting for him. So he sends Leah with part of the family and part of his herd, then has Rachel and the rest of the family and herd cross over, perhaps hoping that if Esau wanted to kill him, he might spare his family, or at least part of it. Then Jacob went back across the Jabbok.

And here’s where we pick up the story. Jacob is attacked by the unknown man, and it’s a dead heat all night. Jacob keeps struggling into the superior position, and gets taken down and reversed, nearly pinned, again and again. And close to daybreak, Jacob realizes that he isn’t wrestling just any man, but God.

“What a fool I am, to think I could be superior to God,” Jacob must have realized. “Isn’t that what I’ve been doing my whole life? Why didn’t I just trust God all these years to make things right?” And finally submitting, Jacob lay there exhausted, clinging to God.

Ending the match, God dislocated Jacob’s hip, but Jacob kept holding on, asking for a blessing. And God asked him his name – not because God didn’t know him, but in saying his name, Jacob had to own it. Confession time. “Yep, I’m Jacob—deceiver. I’ve schemed, and plotted, and done things my way instead of trusting you.”

And God gave him a new name. Not just a new name, but a new life, a second chance, a way to live into God’s promise. “The old Jacob is gone. You are now Israel, for you have strived with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”

And finally, name No. 3: Jacob names the land on the edge of the Jabbok “Peniel,” meaning “For I have come face-to-face with God, and yet my life is preserved.”

Eventually, Jacob, now Israel, does meet Esau, but instead of trying to kill him, Esau had gotten the word, and had come to embrace him. Esau has been blessed – not with his father’s blessing – but with family and livestock and land. He was ready to mend their rift. That’s where this story ends.

But what if Jacob never wrestled with an unknown man at all, but spent the night terrified, his sleepless, agitated mind wrestling with his history, his deceptive ways, and his brother’s wrath? What if his wrestling was a metaphor for painfully struggling with the person he had become, the person he was not proud to be? Some scholars think Jacob fought with himself all night to daybreak, emptying himself, laying it all out before God, and that’s when God appeared to Jacob and renamed him Israel.

There’s a part of me that wants to picture Jacob physically wrestling with God, God matching him move for move until Jacob realizes he’s been fighting God for control all along, then submits, holding on to God for dear life.

But the other part of me relates to an all-night emotional struggle. I’ve been there more than a few nights, a standoff between this child of God and my shadow side -- that part of me that I deny wanting to stay in control, and the rest of me wanting to give it all over to God -- praying, pleading, gut-wrenched sobbing, falling asleep still on my knees. Finally worn down and holding onto God with everything I have left, discovering that God has been there at rock bottom, waiting for me to arrive.  Perhaps that’s a place you’ve been as well.

More than a few of God’s people have lived that struggle, pitting their own control against submission to God. Abraham and Sarah had to stop trying to control God’s promise. Moses spent many dark nights of the soul in the wilderness. Even Jesus wept in the Garden of Gethsemane, pleading with God for another way, but then submitting to God’s plan.

And I’m certain I will be back there, another night at my Peniel, wrestling, meeting God face-to-face, still practicing that hard-fought lesson: to empty myself and hold on onto God until the blessing comes.

Amen.