A different kind of “success” story

The Sixth Sunday After Easter, Year C, May 5, 2013

Acts 16:6-15, Psalm 67, Revelation 21:10, 22-22:6, John 14:23-31

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Augustana and Birka Lutheran Churches, Underwood, ND

 

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, my rock and my redeemer.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

We have this picture in our heads of what a successful life following Jesus will look like.  We have this picture in our heads of what a faithful ministry looks like.  And it goes something like this: because we are faithful to Jesus, and Jesus blesses us, everything should go right.  All ministries undertaken in Jesus’ name should prosper, and prosper immediately, or else something is wrong.  If we are unsuccessful, either in our ministry to others, or in our ordinary life, something must be badly wrong.  If there are arguments within the congregation, something is badly wrong.  Either Jesus is not with us, or we are not being truly faithful.  And if something is that badly wrong, well, you might as well give up.  We often think that the opposite is true, too: if a church has lots of members and lots of money, then they must be truly good followers of Christ.

And then we come to today’s reading from Acts.  Now, most of Acts tells the kinds of stories one might expect: awesome preaching, crowds of thousands converted to Christianity at a time, heroic saints suffering trials and persecution for their faith and being vindicated by God.  The sort of grand, larger than life things that we don’t often see in our daily life, the kind of thing we feel should always be the result of good ministry and the preaching of the Gospel.  Today’s reading, however, tells a different story.  In the midst of all this success, in the midst of grand deeds and epic stories, Paul and Timothy have a few setbacks.

Just before today’s reading, Paul had been at Jerusalem with Barnabus, pleading with the elders of the faith to allow Gentiles to become Christians.  Up to that point, Gentiles—that is, non-Jews—had only been allowed to be followers of Christ if they converted to Judaism and adhered to the entire Jewish law in addition to the teachings of Christ.  This made sense to the first Christians; after all, Jesus and all his early followers had been Jewish, and followed those laws, so surely Jesus would want all his followers to do the same?  But those laws included a requirement that all males be circumcised, and also included stringent laws about what you could and couldn’t eat, and how your meat had to be slaughtered and how all your food had to be cooked.  For people who didn’t grow up with such laws, who lived in places where there weren’t many Jewish butchers and stores, such requirements were a burden that prevented them from following Jesus.  Paul had gone to Jerusalem to request that those who weren’t Jewish be spared such a burden, that they might find it easier to come to Christ.  The Council of Jerusalem had, with the help of the Holy Spirit, agreed to Paul’s reasoning.  So he travelled around to Gentile Christian communities to let them know the good news.

But things weren’t all rosy.  Paul had a sharp disagreement with one of his fellow missionaries, Barnabus, which resulted in the two of them parting ways.  They’d been together for some time at that point; Barnabus and Paul had been through a lot together, and had been very successful.  But they had an argument, a big enough one that the two went their separate ways.  Paul chose two other companions, Silas and Timothy, and tried to continue on with his missionary work.  But almost immediately, they faced setbacks.

They were in the Syrian region and travelled through what is now Turkey, but the Holy Spirit forbade them to speak the word in Asia.  We don’t know how the Spirit did that; maybe they tried and failed.  Maybe they couldn’t muster up anything to say.  Maybe they had a bad feeling about it.  We do know that prohibition from speaking the Word in Asia wasn’t permanent, because several of the churches that Paul founded and wrote to were in that region of Asia—including the Ephesians, the Colossians, the Galatians.  In fact, Paul had planted some congregations there before heading to Jerusalem for the Council meeting.  Asia had proved to be a fertile mission ground in the past, but it just wasn’t working now.  So they tried to go north to Bythinia, on the northern edge of what is now Turkey, and again God prevented them.  Having crossed Turkey from South to North, they head West, hoping that something will change and they can achieve the same successes Paul had had on previous missionary journeys.

When we look at it on a map, it doesn’t look like much.  By modern standards, Turkey is not that big a country.  A few hour’s drive in a car will get you pretty much anywhere you want to go.  But they didn’t have cars, back then.  They didn’t have police to keep the roads safe.  If you wanted to get anywhere, either you rode a horse or a donkey or you walked.  And Paul would not have been able to afford a horse or a donkey, and there wasn’t really a central church body that could have bought him one.  So Paul and Timothy and Silas would have been walking with everything they owned on their backs.  What takes us hours of relative comfort would have taken them days.  And unlike modern missionaries, Paul was not a professional church leader.  He did not get paid any kind of money to spread the Gospel; he was a tent-maker, who supported himself by his work.  He’d set up shop in a town, working and talking about Jesus with his customers, and on the Sabbath he’d preach, and between the contact he made while working his day job and the people who listened to him preach, he would soon have a new congregation meeting in somebody’s house.  Then, once the congregation was going strong, he’d move on to another city.  But if the Spirit was telling him to keep moving, he wasn’t going to be doing much work.  Money would have been getting tight.

So imagine what it would have been like.  Think of how frustrating that must have been for all of them.  They’d been on the road, walking, for such a long time.  They’d been trying to do God’s will and spread God’s Word, and had been stymied at every turn.  They were a long way from home among people who didn’t speak the same language or eat the same food.  Tired, hungry, low on money, far from home.  And they had nothing to show for it.  Not one thing.  Not one person given the gift of faith in Christ Jesus.  Not one community brought together around the love of God.  Nobody saved, nobody healed, nothing at all in reward for their efforts.

And then something strange happens.  Paul had a vision that they were called to Macedonia, which is in the Northern part of Greece.  Now, Greece isn’t part of Asia, as Turkey is; it’s part of Europe.  Paul and his companions hadn’t intended to go to Europe.  They were trying to do God’s work in Asia, where God had called them before, where they’d had such great success.  But that wasn’t where God wanted them anymore, and it took some wandering around to figure out what God was calling them to do next.  Once they got there, things didn’t go according to plan, either.  Usually, Paul would set up a booth and start working in the market-place, and go preach in the synagogues or wherever people gathered in the city.  This time, something drew him and his companions someplace else: outside of the city of Phillipi, to a group of women gathered for prayer.  God was calling them there, because there was a businesswoman named Lydia there, who heard the message and was baptized, along with her household.  And she helped them in their mission, giving them a place to stay and other resources they needed for ministry.

Paul’s mission to the Gentiles in Europe was not a perfect success story.  It started out with failure: the failure of their preaching in Asia.  It started out with conflict, as Paul broke from his long-term partner in the Gospel, Barnabus.  It started out in confusion, as they wandered around trying to figure out where God was calling them to go.  It wasn’t perfect.  It wasn’t an overnight success.  And I would bet you anything you please that Paul and Silas and Timothy were discouraged and disheartened as they tried to figure out what to do next.  But even in that confusion and discouragement, through failure and conflict, God was with them, calling them to where he wanted them.  It wasn’t anywhere they’d planned to go; it wasn’t anything like what they’d done before.  And if you took a look at them wandering around aimlessly trying to figure out what God was calling them to do, they would have seemed like the opposite of the success stories we associate with following Christ.  But following God through that period of wandering brought them to a new place, a good place for ministry, a place hungry for the Good News of God in Christ Jesus.

God calls people in all kinds of ways, and God calls people and communities to do all kinds of things that they wouldn’t have dreamed up on their own.  Sometimes there are failures along the way; sometimes there are periods of aimless wandering.  Something that looks barren and fruitless on the surface can lead eventually to new life in Christ—if we follow Christ through the disappointments and failures to the goodness he promises us.  That can be so difficult; it’s a lot easier just to live on past glories and continue doing the same thing we’ve always done; it’s even easier to fall into doom and gloom and spend all our time wondering what’s wrong.  But imagine what would have happened if Paul and his friends had given up and gone home.  Imagine what would have happened if they’d stayed in Asia because that was where they’d had good success in the past.  Imagine what would have happened if they’d stuck to their standard pattern of mission-work in the city center instead of going outside to meet Lydia and the women with her.  Imagine what would have happened if they hadn’t been open to the Holy Spirit calling them to do something new.  May God grant us the strength to follow their example.

Amen.

Commanded to Love

The Fifth Sunday After Easter, Year C, April 28, 2013

Acts 11:1-8, Psalm 148, Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Augustana and Birka Lutheran Churches, Underwood, ND

 

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, my rock and my redeemer.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Three weeks ago, the Confirmands and I read this text during our class.  I hadn’t looked far enough ahead to see that this was the text they would hear on the day they were Confirmed; I wasn’t that organized.  We were reviewing the Ten Commandments, as part of the wrap up of everything they have studied these past two years.  I wanted to discuss why we follow them, what kind of life they’re designed to help us live.  So we looked up and read many passages throughout scripture, Old and New Testament, where it talks about commandments.  And in both Old and New Testaments, we noticed a curious thing.  Most of the time, the writer will mention love almost in the same breath.  The Bible doesn’t always mention “love” when talking about specific commandments, but when talking about the Commandments as a whole, there is almost always a reference to love in the same passage.

You hear it again in this passage from the thirteenth chapter of John.  Jesus is talking to his disciples in the days before his death, and he’s giving them instructions for the kind of life he wants them to live.  You’ll notice that he doesn’t spend much time on specifics.  There are no “Thou shalt nots” buried in the text.  No rules and regulations to quibble over.  Just one blanket pronouncement: Love one another as I have loved you.  This is how you’ll know someone’s a Christian, if they love their fellow human beings.  When I was growing up, my mother used to sing a song she’d learned as a girl.  The chorus went like this: “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love.  Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

In our Gospel for today Jesus calls this a new commandment, but it really isn’t.  You see, earlier in his ministry, a lawyer had asked him which of the Commandments was the greatest.  This was quite a question, because in addition to the Ten Commandments that we follow, there are over six hundred commands in the Old Testament, mostly found in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  Plus, there were by that time centuries of legal wrangling over how to interpret them, and other commandments that were regarded as given by God orally instead of written down by Moses.  Just like today, devout followers of God wanted to live good lives in accordance with God’s will, and so they studied the Biblical law.  There were whole schools devoted to answering questions like “what happens if your donkey falls into a pit on the Sabbath?”  Getting the donkey out of the pit is work, and working on a Sabbath is forbidden by one of the Ten Commandments.  Yet letting the donkey die would not be right or just, and another commandment instructs us to preserve life.  So which one should you follow?  When there’s a conflict between commandments, which one should you choose?  That’s why the lawyer asked Jesus which commandment was the most important.

Jesus didn’t respond by quoting particular commandments.  Instead, he summarized the whole law with two statements: Love the lord your God with all your heart, soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.  All of the law—from the Ten Commandments through all the other 600+ ordinances in the Bible plus all the legal judgments that followed, all of it is based on a principle of love.  Love God, and love your neighbor.

This seems fairly simple, and yet it’s something that we seem to have difficulty with.  Loving one another.  Sure, we say we love people, but too often we act without regard for them—especially people we don’t like.  Sure, we say we love God, but all too often we forget about God as we go through our daily lives.  And so we make decisions based on fear, or hate, or greed, or indifference, and don’t even notice.  Our actions and our words are about as far from loving as can be, and we don’t even notice the harm we cause to others.

This isn’t a new problem.  After all, like I said, throughout both the Old and New Testaments, there are constant connections between love and the commandments.  Yet people fall short.  God had to lay out what kinds of things are definitely not ever done in love: killing one another, lying, cheating, stealing.  All sorts of things.  These commandments lay down the bare minimum of what is necessary to be a decent human being.  They are things that should be obvious, but all too often are not.  And the problem with them is that all too often we focus on following the letter of the law instead of the spirit.  We think that if we hate our neighbors but stop short of lying to their faces, stealing from them, and killing them, we’re doing just fine.  No, says God, you’re missing the point.  Living a faithful life is not about following all the right rules.  It’s about loving one another, even if that means stepping outside of your comfort zone.  Living a faithful life means responding with love even to people you don’t like.  And when you don’t know how to handle something—or any time something you don’t expect comes up—our guiding principle should always be love for God and for one another.

We try to teach our children and young people many things, and they are all important.  We teach them the stories of our ancestors in the faith, and the ways our ancestors experienced God working in their lives.  We teach them the songs and worship patterns that have nourished our own faith and that we hope will continue to nourish theirs.  We teach them the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, which have been the foundations of the faith since the very beginning.  We teach them about Jesus.  But the most important thing to teach them, to show them in everything we say and do, is love.

Since the very beginning, the Christian life has been about love.  Without that love, our sin and disobedience would have made God wash his hands of us long ago.  Instead, he keeps coming to us, calling us to him, guiding back to his paths.  Christ came to earth and became truly human because he loves us and wanted to save us from our sin.  He showed us what love looks like in a human life, by welcoming everyone who came to him and seeking out those who did not.  Jesus showed us what love is by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and teaching everyone about God.  And Jesus loved us so much that he was willing to die for us, for all of creation, so that we might have abundant life.  Through his love we are made whole, washed clean, redeemed, and set free.  Through that love, we learn to love God and we learn to love other people.  That’s what new life in Christ is: a life of love.

Our culture today is a very divided one.  Too many people believe that the best defense is a good offense, and so they attack anything they think is wrong or anything that might threaten them.  Too many people, both inside and outside the church, try to win arguments by demonizing their opponents.  Yet if we are truly serious about following Jesus, we can’t fall into such patterns.  If we want to follow Jesus, that means letting go of our suspicions and our hatreds, our pettiness and our fears.  Following Jesus means opening ourselves up to the love of God, and letting that love pour through us and into the world around us.

The students who are being confirmed today are not graduating from anything.  Confirmation is not the end of their journey of faith, nor is it the end of their learning about God.  We never stop learning about God; as he comes to us throughout our lives, we grow in faith and understanding.  If you will note in your hymnals, the formal name of the rite of Confirmation is “Affirmation of Baptism.”  Affirmation means to say yes.  When these young people are Confirmed, what they are really doing is saying yes to their baptisms.  They are saying yes to the love that God has given to them, and yes to the saving work of Christ Jesus our Lord.  They are saying that yes, they will take their place in the community of believers, loving one another in word and in deed.  They are saying that yes, they will love God with all their heart and all their soul and all their strength, and love their neighbors as ourselves.  Confirmation is not the end of anything, it is the beginning of a new chapter in their faith journey.  I hope and pray that they have learned about our faith, but even more I pray that they have learned to love God and one another.  And I pray that their journey of faith will keep them growing in God’s love and the love of their neighbors.  May our Lord Jesus Christ, who redeemed us all from sin and death, guide them in all their paths and show them his love, that they may learn to better love God and all people.  I pray that for all of us who are gathered here today, that we may all follow Christ and grow in love towards God and one another.

Amen.

Pain in the Light of Resurrection

Just realized I never posted last week’s sermon!

The Fourth Sunday After Easter, Year C, April 21, 2013

Acts 9:36-43, Psalm 23, Revelation 7:9-17, John 10:22-30

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Augustana and Birka Lutheran Churches, Underwood, ND

 

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, my rock and my redeemer.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

It’s been quite a week, hasn’t it?  The Boston Marathon was bombed, triggering a city-wide manhunt.  Someone tried to poison the President.  A factory in Texas exploded.  High tempers and harsh rhetoric over a gun-control.  Floodwaters rising in the Mississippi River.  And America is not the only place in the world having a tough time.  Yesterday there was a deadly earthquake in China.  This last week, there was a coup in the Central African Republic, and so the people of our companion synod there are endangered.  A child was viciously raped and held captive in India, and police tried to bribe her parents into not filing charges, triggering massive protests.

Of course, horrible things have happened before, but they don’t usually come this close together.  And we’ve never been as instantly connected as we are now.  When the Twin Towers were attacked, I spent most of the day wondering what had happened, knowing only bits and pieces.  Even turning on the news gave little information, compared to today.  A few clips of the towers collapsing, the same speculation repeated over and over.  And if those few images got to be too much, it was easy to escape them: just turn off the television.  Today, you don’t have to seek out pictures and information on such tragedies.  Today, you have to work hard to escape, because they’re everywhere.  Not just on television, but online, on Facebook and Twitter and spread by email.  The computer age has given us many, many more ways to communicate, but that comes at a cost.  And one of the costs is that when evil things happen, they are shoved in our faces in ways they never were before.

How do you deal with the problem of evil?  Why does God let such horrible things happen?  Why do the innocent suffer?  What happens to people to cause them to do such things, and how can we prevent it?  Why are things so bad these days?  Are things worse than they used to be, or is it just that we are more aware of suffering in the world, and that victims of horrors are more likely to speak up and demand justice?

We are not alone in asking such questions.  People have been trying to figure out how to deal with evil since the world began.  People have suffered from injustice and natural disasters since the first human beings.  And people have suffered from all manner of physical and mental and emotional problems since there have been human beings on this Earth.  I don’t think people treat one another worse today than they did two thousand years ago, though I do think we are more likely to see and be haunted by the evils that happen to other people in the world.  But all these questions, important as they are, are not the most important ones to ask.  The question we as Christians must ask is this: what does God have to say in response to such horrors?

First of all, we are not alone.  We are not abandoned to muddle through in a world falling to pieces.  God came to us in the person of Jesus Christ, who lived a human life and who suffered just as we have suffered.  Jesus was no stranger to pain or grief.  He wept when his friend Lazarus died, and he himself ministered to those in grief.  Jesus spent his time with those who were sick, injured, dying, outcasts, sinners—all who suffered.  He brought hope and healing to all he met.

And we are not alone because we are called to minister to one another in pain and grief.  We see an example of this in our first lesson.  A woman named Tabitha died.  We aren’t told how or why, but medical care was almost non-existent at the time, and what little there was probably wouldn’t have been used for a woman.  She seems to have been of no particular merit or value in society—except to her friends and those she helped.  And when she died, her friends grieved, but the town probably didn’t pay much attention.  Unlike today’s world, where social media shoves tragedy in our face and there are funds and campaigns to send help to those who need it, Tabitha’s life and death were not something the larger society cared much about.

But the family of faith cared.  The family of faith cared even about this woman that society said wasn’t worth worrying about.  Tabitha’s friends cared, and so did Peter, and so did God.  Tabitha’s friends, both those who were within the Christian community and those who weren’t gathered to mourn her.  They let their grief at her passing come out and be seen and heard.  They told stories about her.  They told of the people she had helped, the things she had made.  They cried together.  And when Peter heard that someone had died, he went.  He joined them in their grief.

Now, Peter had a power I don’t have, and neither does anyone here that I’m aware of: God worked through Peter to raise Tabitha from the dead.  Such things have only happened a bare handful of times, and we can’t pin our hopes on an apostle like Peter happening by at the right time.  The victims of the bombs in Boston probably aren’t going to sit up out of their coffins at the funeral.

But Peter points to something greater than just one faithful woman being raised: Peter points to the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  You see, Jesus Christ lived and died in a world just as messed up, as violent, and as unjust as the one we live in.  Jesus Christ lived in a world of casual brutality and callous disregard for people outside one’s own group that we can’t even begin to imagine.  And Jesus Christ stood up to that brutality, that violence, and that evil and said NO.  No, evil does not get the final say.  No, Jesus says, you can’t just ignore people you don’t like because even the greatest sinner is one of my flock.  No, you can’t use “they’re not like me” as justification for hatred and violence, for discrimination and abuse.  No, Jesus says, you can’t just shove aside those weaker than you, because they are mine, all of them.  No, Jesus says, the pain you have suffered is not an excuse to go out and inflict suffering on others.  But most importantly, Jesus says no—death doesn’t get the final victory.  Jesus’ NO was so loud that it scared people.  Jesus’ refusal to go along with a corrupt and callous society threatened those in power, and so they reacted as scared, callous people do in a violent world: they killed him.  And they thought they’d won.

But Jesus was not done.  Jesus was greater than that, and when Jesus said “no” to the evils of the world, that “no” was stronger than anyone could possibly imagine.  And when Jesus rose from the grave, he broke the powers of darkness.  He burst the gates of Hell so that it could not keep anyone imprisoned.  From that second on to this very day, evil and violence and brutality and callousness and abuse and injustice are on the defensive, fighting a losing battle.  They may seem as powerful as ever—and God knows that this week, they’ve seemed to loom over everything—but we are people of the Resurrection, and we know that in the end, they will be destroyed.  In the end, the Risen Christ will come again and all people will be raised from the dead.  Not just a faithful few like Tabitha, but everyone, from every time and every place.  Evil will be purged, and in its place will be only goodness and love.  In place of hunger and thirst, there will be good food and drink.  In place of hatred, there will be love.  In place of mourning, there will be joy.  God himself will wipe away every tear from every eye.

And while we wait for Christ to come again, while we wait for the general Resurrection, while we wait for the world to be made new, Christ calls us to join him in ministry.  Christ calls us to grieve for the dead, and for what has been lost.  They rest secure in Jesus’ care, but we will miss them and we are less because they are not with us.  Christ calls us to support those who grieve, just as the faithful in Joppa did, telling stories and crying together and simply being there.

Jesus Christ calls us to stand up in a world full of death and destruction, and proclaim the Good News.  Jesus Christ calls us to stand up in a world of violence and proclaim the coming of the Prince of Peace.  Jesus Christ calls us to stand up in a world of injustice and hatred and proclaim the coming of the Lord of Love.  And we are called to do that not just in word, but in deed.  We are called to live out our faith in the light of the Resurrection, to let every action, however small, and every word, however insignificant it may seem, proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.  We are called to let God’s love flow through us and in us and around us.  We are called to bring healing and hope to those who walk in darkness, whether that is the darkness of what has been done to them or the darkness of their own hate and fear.  We are called to tell the whole world what it means for all people that Jesus Christ is risen.

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

Unexpected Calls

The Third Sunday After Easter, Year C, April 7, 2013

Acts 9:1-20, Psalm 30, Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Augustana and Birka Lutheran Churches, Underwood, ND

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, my rock and my redeemer.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

In today’s readings, we have three “call” stories.  Now, a call story is a story about God calling you to do something.  The most obvious people in a community with a call from God are pastors.  After all, like most churches, the ELCA will not ordain anyone a pastor unless they genuinely believe that you have been called by God to the ordained ministry.  But pastors aren’t the only ones God calls.  In fact, God calls all kinds of people to all kinds of work.  And sometimes that work is something that lasts a lifetime, and sometimes that call is just for one thing, right then, right now.  It’s often something we wouldn’t have chosen, and from the outside it can look kind of strange.  God works in ways we don’t understand, ways we would never have chosen, and sometimes God calls us to do things we would never have imagined.

Our first lesson tells the story of the conversion of Saul.  You’re probably more familiar with him under a different name: Paul.  You see, “Paul” is a more Greek-sounding name, so it’s what Saul called himself when dealing with Gentiles.  So, since we are the spiritual descendants of the Gentiles that Paul brought to the faith—and because most of our knowledge of Paul comes from the letters he wrote to those Gentiles, which have been included in the New Testament—we call him St. Paul.  It’s easy to think of Paul as a wise church leader, an apostle sent by God to preach the faith and guide new believers.  It’s not so easy to remember that before he was a believer in Jesus Christ, Paul persecuted the church.  He was a devout Jew who believed that the teachings of Jesus were leading his people astray from the true word of God, and so he sought out followers of Jesus and prosecuted them.  At least one of those trials, that of a deacon named Stephen, resulted in an execution.  And after Stephen’s death, Paul travelled to Damascus to seek out other followers of Christ to bring to trial.  Paul was a devout man who genuinely, honestly believed that he was a righteous man following God’s will … except what he was doing was directly against God’s will!

Now, if it was you or me, we would not say that this guy would make a good follower of Christ.  If it was you or me, we’d look at this man who was responsible for the death of a faithful Christian and was seeking others to persecute, and we’d say “this guy deserves what he gets—he doesn’t deserve salvation!  He doesn’t deserve God’s love!  Get rid of him.  But that’s not what God did.  God did not attack Paul.  God did not think Paul was beyond redemption—God knew better.  God came to Paul and showed him the error of his ways.  God called Paul to a better and truer and deeper understanding of God’s Word.  Imagine what it must have been like for Paul: God turned his entire world upside down.  Everything Paul thought he knew was wrong.  God did have work for Paul, but it wasn’t what Paul was expecting.  When he started out for Damascus, neither Paul nor anyone else could have imagined where that journey would lead him.  God called him out of his comfortable certainties, his narrow righteousness, into a fuller understanding of God’s love that demanded to be shared with the world.  The call that God gave Paul, which began on that road to Damascus, would last Paul’s whole life long and transform the fledgling movement known then only as “the Way”, which would eventually be called the Christian Church.

The second call story in today’s lessons is that of Ananias.  Unlike Paul, we don’t know much about Ananias.  He seems to have been an ordinary follower of Jesus Christ, nothing special about him that anybody can see.  The only other time he’s mentioned in the Bible is later in Acts when Paul tells the story of his roadside experience, referring to Ananias as a “devout follower” of God.  There was nothing special about Ananias … except that when God called him to do something, he did it.  Put yourself in Ananias’ shoes.  He knew darn good and well who this Saul of Tarsus that God was sending him to was.  He knew that Paul had been persecuting the followers of Jesus.  He knew that Paul was responsible for the death of Stephen, and had come specifically to attack followers of Jesus—like Ananias himself!  Paul was a clear and present threat to his continued life and livelihood.  If you were him, would you have wanted to go heal Paul?  No!  If it were me, there’s a good chance that I’d look upon Paul’s blinding as the least of what he deserved, and take pleasure in his misfortune.  So it’s no wonder that, when God called Ananias to heal Paul’s blindness, Ananias questioned God.

And yet, when it came down to it … Ananias went.  He followed God’s call to heal and teach Paul, and in so doing he participated in something he could never have imagined.  By healing Paul and teaching him the basics of the Christian faith, Ananias helped start Paul’s mission to the Gentiles.  Without Ananias’ healing and witness, Paul could not have learned about Jesus, he could not have travelled throughout Greece and Turkey spreading the Gospel, and he could not have written the letters that have added so much depth and richness to our understanding of the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Ananias’ call to heal and teach Paul lasted only for a short time, and yet it enabled a spread of the Gospel beyond anything anybody had seen yet.

Then, in the Gospel, we have a call for Simon, who was nicknamed Peter.  Peter, by the way, means “Rock,” and I’ve always wondered if that was a reference to how hard his head was.  Peter was not the brightest of the disciples.  If there was a way to misunderstand, Peter would do it.  If there was a way to screw up, Peter would find it.  Peter had some of the best moments of any of the disciples, where he “got” who Jesus was better than anyone else … and each time he immediately followed it up by proving he was still missing the boat.  You may have noticed, in today’s reading, the funny thing he does: he’d taken off his clothes to fish, presumably so as not to get fish guts and stuff on them.  Seeing Jesus on the shore, he is overwhelmed with joy!  He’s going to swim ashore to meet Jesus because he can’t even wait for the boat to get there!  And before he jumps in the water and gets soaking wet, he put all his clothes on.  Usually, people take their clothes off before they go swimming, but not our Rock.  Not the brightest crayon in the box, our Peter.  If I were interviewing for a church leadership position and someone like Peter was one of the applicants, I would hesitate.  If I were to pick a disciple to be the backbone of the early church, without knowing Peter’s later role, I would have picked a different one.  Yet Jesus singled Peter out, calling him to “feed Jesus’ sheep,” to care for all of God’s children, and telling him that this call would end with Peter suffering for Jesus’ sake.

And Peter answered Jesus’ call, knowing it would lead him into danger and hard times.  He didn’t miraculously become a different person, he didn’t miraculously become suave and sophisticated.  He never stopped being a bit dense.  Yet God used him to bring many others to the faith.  Peter never managed the sophisticated theological arguments that Paul did, but that was okay.  That wasn’t what Peter was called to do.  Peter was called by God to tell the story, to tell how he had experienced the love of God in Christ Jesus, to tell the story simply and honestly.  And, when disputes among the followers of Christ came up, Peter was called to give common-sense answers and pass on what God told him.  Nothing fancy, nothing complicated.  Through his honesty, his openness, his willingness to follow God even when he didn’t understand what God wanted him to do, Peter had a profound impact on the early Christians.  He helped them see God’s work in their midst, even when it went against what they expected God would want.  Peter fed God’s sheep with simple, wholesome Good News.

In all three of these call stories, God called people we wouldn’t expect to do things we wouldn’t expect.  He picked the enemy of the faith, the ordinary follower of Jesus, the dimmest of the disciples.  And he didn’t call them to do what they expected God would want them to do.  Paul never imagined that he would join the very group he had been persecuting in God’s name.  Ananias never expected he would heal and mentor a man who had been the enemy of his people.  Peter never expected he would be the heart of the followers of Jesus, one of their great leaders.  Yet through their actions, faith in Jesus Christ was spread throughout the world.  We would not be here today without them.

And we shouldn’t be surprised that God calls unusual people to do unusual things.  After all, God is one who does the unexpected.  God is the one who chose to save the world through his own death.  God is the one who came to earth not in a palace, but in a humble stable.  God is the one who came to challenge the forces of evil not like a lion, but like a tiny lamb.  Our God is always turning the world upside down and right side up.  We worship the lamb that was slain, who loved the whole world so much that he could not bear to see any part of it suffer.  We worship a God who calls all of creation to himself, not just the big and might and good but the small, and stupid, and wrong, and bad as well, every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, calls them to new life with the risen Christ.

God calls all of creation to rejoice in the Resurrection, and to participate in Christ’s saving work in the world.  God calls us, too, every single one of us.  We all have our part in the choir of all creation.  We all have our part to play in the Good News.  It may be big, it may be small, but in everything we say and do we are called to proclaim the good news that comes through Jesus Christ.  The question is, will we answer God’s call?  Will we follow where God leads us, even if it’s not what we would have chosen or anticipated?  Will we let the love of God shine through our words and our deeds?

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

We Have Seen the Empty Tomb

The Resurrection of Our Lord, Year C, March 31^st, 2013

Isaiah 65:17-25, Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24, 1 Corinthians 15:19-26, Luke 24:1-12

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Augustana and Birka Lutheran Churches, Underwood, ND

 

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, my rock and my redeemer.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

A few months ago, after a funeral, I was asked to explain death to two children.  They were confused—why had we put their great-grandmother in a box, and left her out in the snow and ice far from home?  But while children don’t understand death, adults understand it all too well.  It is one of the few facts of life that is the same no matter where you go or what time period you live in.  Everyone and everything dies, eventually.  Some die young, some die old, some die quickly and others slowly.  Every animal, every plant, every fish, every insect, every person, will eventually die.  Even stars die.  Death and decay is part of the natural order of the universe.  We don’t like to remember this, but we know it in our bones.  Benjamin Franklin put it this way: nothing in life is certain except death and taxes.

Well.  He was half right, anyway.  Because we are here today to testify to the fact that death itself has been defeated.  Death is not the end of the story.  It doesn’t get the last word, and it doesn’t get the most important word.  The “natural” order of things has been turned on its ear.  The things we think we know about life are shown to be wrong in the most dramatic way imaginable.  Because the tomb is empty.  Jesus is not dead, not any more.  He is risen!

When we hear the Easter story, it’s easy to scoff at the women and the disciples, who didn’t believe Jesus when he told them he would rise from the grave.  As the angel points out, Jesus had told them what was going to happen!  Yet there they are, three days after his death, going to his tomb to embalm his body.  They saw the empty tomb, and didn’t understand.  In fact, their first response to the angels was fear and perplexity.  They didn’t get what had happened until someone explained it to them.  But after they knew, when they realized that Jesus had risen, they were filled with joy and went to tell everyone what they’d seen.  But the other followers of Jesus didn’t believe them at first—they thought those women were crazy.  Why didn’t the disciples believe their witness?  After all, the women were long-standing followers and students of Jesus, too—they’d been there from the beginning, and stayed through the crucifixion.  They’d been there, learning at Jesus’ feet, the whole time.  These are women the disciples knew and trusted, just as they had all known Jesus.  And they had all heard him talk about what was going to happen to him.  But none of them seem to have believed his words, or understood them.  Sitting here in church, knowing the story, it’s easy to roll our eyes at how blind they were.

And yet.  Put yourself in the shoes of those women.  Yes, Jesus had done many great things … but everyone dies.  Yes, they believe in the resurrection … but they haven’t seen it yet.  And after all, Jesus was fond of using parables and metaphors and figures of speech.  He rarely said anything that was intended to be interpreted literally.  So I can see how they might have assumed he meant something metaphorical, something spiritual, something that would be easier to fit into their experience of the world.

If the general Resurrection happened today, would we be as surprised as they were?  Yes, we say we believe in the Resurrection.  But it’s been two thousand years since Jesus rose, and nobody’s risen from the grave since.  Yes, we might sincerely believe it’ll happen someday, but in a vague, general way.  We’ve never seen an empty tomb.  We’ve never seen the dead rise, except maybe in zombie movies.  But we’ve seen death.  We’ve seen friends and loved ones die.  We’ve seen pets die.  We’ve seen in the news and on TV all the horrible things that people can do to one another.  Death is very real to us.  New life, the kind that Jesus has, the kind of life that is so powerful that even death itself can’t keep it down for long, that’s harder to accept.

But all our worldly wisdom is wrong.  Our knowledge of death is wrong.  All the experience that tells us that might makes right is wrong.  All the sayings telling us that it’s a dog eat dog world are wrong.  Because the tomb is empty.  Jesus Christ is doing a new thing, and through his death and resurrection God is doing a new thing for the entire world.  Listen again to the words God spoke through the prophet: “I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind.  But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.  I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress…. They shall not labor in vain, or bear children for calamity; for they shall be offspring blessed by the LORD– and their descendants as well.  Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.  The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox.”

Imagine that.  A world with no pain, no grief.  A world without bigotry, without fear, without hate, without jealousy, without callousness, without arrogance, without bullying, without grief, without suffering.  A world where everyone chooses to do good, instead of evil.  A world where predators, whether animal or human, don’t prey on those weaker than they are.  A world where there is enough for all.  A world where love and joy are the strongest emotions, the ones that guide people.  That’s the way God created the world to be.  That’s what life was like until sin and death broke in.  That’s the life God wants for us.  And that’s the life that Jesus died to give us, to give the whole universe.

When we were baptized, we were baptized into Christ’s death.  We share in Christ’s death so that we may also share in his life—the life of the Resurrection, the life of joy and peace and love.  In baptism our old sinful self, the self that is trapped by sin and death, is drowned.  The old self that, like Adam, chooses to disobey God, go astray, and then blame others, is killed.  What rises up out of the water is something new, something that has the seeds of God’s new heaven and new earth within it.  When we come up out of the waters of baptism, we are united with Christ in a bond that nothing can ever break.  In our baptisms, we are started on the path towards the new life, towards resurrection and joy.

We have not yet seen the fullness of that life.  Christ is the first fruit of the dead, in Paul’s words, but the harvest has not yet come.  We have not yet seen all of creation transformed into the new heaven and the new earth that God has promised is coming.  And yet we have felt it.  We have heard God’s promises.  We can see a glimmer, in Christ, of what that life will be like.  We have experienced the love of God through our baptisms, through every moment of grace and goodness in our lives.  It’s true, the forces of sin and death are fighting a desperate rear-guard action to keep us mired in darkness, but we have seen the light.  We have seen life come out of things that look dead and barren.  We have seen the empty tomb.

We have seen the empty tomb.  We stand outside it with Jesus’ first followers and hear the words of God’s messenger: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.”  The old certainties of the world—that death is final, that decay is simply the way things go, that pain and grief and hate and fear and selfishness win—those old certainties are turned upside down.  Jesus is not dead; he has risen, and we will rise with him.

Yes, there is still pain in the world.  Yes, sin and death still drag people down.  But not forever.  Their power is broken.  New life is here.  Resurrection is here.  Joy is here.  Christ is here.

He is risen!  He is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

On This Night

It’s a few days late, but here is my Maundy Thursday sermon.

Maundy Thursday, Year C, March 28^th, 2013

Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14, Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19, John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Augustana and Birka Lutheran Churches, Underwood, ND

 

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, my rock and my redeemer.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Over three thousand years ago, the Hebrew people gathered together.  They were slaves in Egypt, and God had heard their cries for freedom.  Despite the stubbornness of the Egyptian Pharaoh, God freed them.  On their last night in slavery, in between packing everything they owned to flee the land of their captivity, they ate one last meal.  A meal of lamb, and wine, and unleavened bread, and bitter herbs.  They called it Pesach—the Passover.  God commanded them to remember and celebrate that meal every year, to gather and eat the bread and wine and lamb and bitter herbs.  So every year to this day, faithful Jews celebrate the festival of Passover.  And Jesus and his disciples, being faithful Jews, celebrated the festival as well.  In fact, Jesus’ Last Supper, which we celebrate tonight, was during Passover.

Many things have changed over the three thousand years since the first Passover meal, but some things about the meal remain the same.  It isn’t a memorial, a remembrance of God’s actions.  When Jews celebrate the Passover, they are participating in God’s saving act.  They are participating in the same Passover meal shared by their ancestors.  To symbolize this, they ask a question: How is this night different from all other nights?  On this night, God led us out of slavery into freedom.  Not our ancestors; us.  On this night, all Jews, past, present, and future, gather around the table.  It’s not just a history lesson; for Jews, Passover is a present reality.

We are gathered here as Christians.  Our Lord was Jewish, but we are not.  So why do we remember Passover tonight?  Why was our first lesson the story of the first Passover meal?  Because tonight is not just a history lesson.  Tonight is not just a ritual meal.  Our Lord’s Supper is a present reality for us, just as Passover is a present reality for Jews.  How is this night different from all other nights?  On this night, our Lord Jesus took bread, broke it, and gave it for all.  On this night, our Lord Jesus took the cup, blessed it, and gave it for all to drink, saying “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people.”  On this night, and every time we celebrate communion, all Christians past, present, and future gather around our Lord’s Table.

Think about that, for a second.  When we celebrate Communion, when we gather here at the altar rail, there are more people present than we can see.  The Disciples are here—Peter, James, John, and all the rest.  Our ancestors in the faith are here with us, too, from the very earliest church fathers and mothers to the ones who taught us to pray and read the Bible.  We gather here at the altar rail with all Christians throughout the world, who become our brothers and sisters in Christ, and members with us in Christ’s body.  And all those people out there who aren’t yet Christians but will become Christians, they’re here too, along with all those who have yet to be born.  Our great-great-grandparents and our great-great-grandchildren receive Jesus’ body and blood together with us.  We may not see them, but they are here with us tonight and every time we gather around the table to worship and receive the gift of Christ’s body and blood.

Even more than that, Jesus Christ is present every time we eat the bread and drink from the cup in his name.  This bread becomes Christ’s body, and this wine becomes Christ’s blood, just as Jesus said.  It might not physically change form in any way science can measure, but Jesus Christ is truly present in it, and Jesus Christ becomes truly present in us.  Jesus is here, now, Immanuel, God With Us, in every bite that we eat and drink tonight and every time we receive the Lord’s Supper.  We eat and drink the body and blood of our Lord.  Jesus is the meal we are gathered here to share.

Jesus is the meal, but Jesus is also our host for this meal, too.  The altar we gather around is not our table, but God’s table.  Jesus is the host who invites us to the heavenly banquet.  Jesus is the one who brings us in, welcomes us, and makes us his own.  Jesus is the one who includes us, even when we are not worthy.  In the time of Jesus, it was customary for a host to offer his guests the chance to wash the dust of the road off their feet.  It was a sign that you were welcome to stay, take off your shoes and put up your feet, be comfortable and at home.  In a poor household, the host would offer his guests a bowl of water for them to wash their own feet.  In a rich household, a servant would do it.  You see, washing someone else’s feet was considered a demeaning task, fit only for a servant or a slave.  It’s not hard to understand why—feet are dirty, smelly things, particularly when you’ve been walking in the hot, dusty sun.  Clean feet may be a relief, but washing someone else’s feet is gross.  So a host would offer hospitality, but not at the expense of his own dignity and pride.  Not at the expense of his own comfort and repuation.  Yet Jesus himself takes the bowl and the towel and washed his disciples’ feet.    He washes their feet to show them the greatest hospitality possible: that he put their comfort and well-being above his dignity and pride.  He does it to show that his love for them—his love for us—is more important than his status.

And then he commands us to do the same for others.  Jesus tells his disciples to welcome others in with extravagant hospitality, to care for their needs and show them God’s love in word and deed.  A teacher’s students should follow his or her lead.  So if the teacher serves others, so to should the students.  And we, too, are Jesus’ disciples; we are students and followers of Jesus.  If Jesus, who was God in human flesh, would stoop so low as to wash our feet, we, too, should be willing to show hospitality and love to others even when it pulls us out of our comfort zone, even when it isn’t nice, or pleasant, or easy.  Even when it means putting our own reputation on the line.

How is this night different from all other nights?  On this night, we begin to see just how great and transforming God’s love for us is.  On this night, the God who brought our ancestors from slavery in Egypt into the freedom of the Promised Land begins to lead us from the slavery of sin to the freedom of forgiveness.  On this night, we begin to see how far Jesus is willing to go to save us, to make us clean and whole, to show us that he loves us.  On this night, Jesus invites us in, makes us welcome no matter how dirty we are, and feeds us with his own body and blood.  And on this night, after the meal, Jesus will go to the Garden of Gethsemane to pray, where he will be arrested.  Tomorrow, he will be tried and executed, and on Sunday he will rise from the grave.  And all of that—Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection—will be for our sake.  Jesus does all of this because he loves us, because he would rather die than see us broken by sin and death.

On this night, Jesus gives us as an example for how we are to live our lives.  On this night, Jesus gives us one last command: to love as we have been loved.  Jesus shows us what love truly means, in his life, in his last actions, and in his death.  Love does not depend on being found worthy, for surely nothing we could ever do would make us worthy of what God has done for us.  Love is a gift we have been given by God, a gift freely given, with no strings.  And as we have been given that gift, so we should give to others what we have received.  Because we live in the light of God’s love, we should love others.  Because we have been fed with this heavenly food, we should feed those who are hungry in body or soul.  Because we have been welcomed and forgiven in Jesus’ name, we should love and forgive others.

As we gather around the table tonight, with all Christians past, present, and yet to come, may we experience the love that God gives us so abundantly, and may we be inspired to go and do the same.  Amen.

It Starts Out With A Parade

Palm Sunday, March 24^th, 2013

Luke 19:28-40, Isaiah 50:4-9a, Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29, Philippians 2:5-11, Luke 23:1-49

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Augustana and Birka Lutheran Churches, Underwood, ND

May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, my rock and my redeemer.

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

It starts out with a parade.  Crowds cheer, people wave, everyone has turned out to see Jesus, the one they hope will be the good king, the Messiah, that God has promised them.  They hope he will throw out the Romans.  They hope he will throw out the Roman occupying army.  They hope he will feed them.  They hope he will heal them.  The disciples hope they will see more deeds of power from Jesus—a show, to prove they’ve picked the right teacher to follow.  We’ve all been to parades.  We’ve all had fun at them, watching the spectacle, and afterwards we often have some kind of celebration afterwards to keep the excitement going.  It’s a party!  It’s a break from normal, boring life!  In Jesus’ day, in a world without sports teams, movies and television, the internet, a parade would have been a huge thing.  A holiday, even if only for an hour, from the workaday world.  But this parade is different.  This parade doesn’t lead to a barbeque, or a picnic, or a Thanksgiving dinner.  This parade leads to the cross.

Our modern parades take a lot of stage management: closing off streets, setting up the order entries move in, regulating the people who sell food and water, and, for larger parades, television coverage.  Individual parade entries take lots of effort to arrange—costumes, vehicles, music, prizes to give away.  This parade took stage management, too.  Notice how carefully Jesus sets the whole thing up.  He tells his disciples where and how to get the donkey he’s going to ride, right down to the words they say.  This parade was not an accident.

None of the things that happened to Jesus in his last week were an accident.  Not the parade on Sunday, not the last supper with his disciples where he instituted Communion and commanded them to love one another, not his arrest in the garden nor his trial nor his execution.  At each step along the way, Jesus knew what was coming.  He prayed to be spared, in the Garden of Gethsemane, but he went forward to his death anyway.

Other people were managing things, too.  Notice how deftly the authorities arranged things.  Jesus was a threat to their power, an agitator who stirred up the crowds and threatened the status quo, so they got rid of him.  They knew he was innocent of the charges laid against him; everyone from Pilate to the centurion at the foot of the cross to the criminals who were crucified with Jesus knew that he was innocent, that this was a miscarriage of justice.  Yet still they went forward, more concerned with preserving their own power and authority and privilege than they were in seeing justice done.

Such injustice is still found in our world, today.  Turn on the news and you will hear stories of corruption and injustice all around the world, from political and religious leaders.  You’ll find it in small local groups, and in nations, in corporations and in churches.  All too often we put our own interests above doing the right thing.  This world is broken by sin and death.  Check any news source, and you’ll find it.  Listen to children talk about being bullied at school, and you’ll hear it.  Watch adults jockey for power and position and you’ll see it.  People put a lot of time and effort into running things for their own advantage, and all too often they don’t see or care what consequences those actions have for others.

Thank God that we’re not the only ones planning things.  Thank God we’re not the only ones at work in the world.  Thank God that our sinfulness, our brokenness, is not the end of the story.  God is at work in the world.  God chose to send Jesus into this world, knowing the cost and the consequences.  And so when Jesus came to Jerusalem one last time, when he told his disciples to go fetch a colt for him to ride, he knew what would happen.  He knew that the crowds that followed him would be the final straw for the leaders who saw him as a threat.  He knew that they would not rest until he was dead.  And he knew that, through his death, he would bring life to all people, healing for our brokenness and forgiveness for our sins.

Let us pray.  Everlasting God, in your endless love for the world you sent our Lord Jesus Christ to take on our nature and to suffer death on the cross.  In your mercy enable us to share in his obedience to your will and in the glorious victory of his resurrection, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.

Amen.