In the Flesh

Have you ever noticed that when Jesus appears to people after the Resurrection, there’s usually a fleshy part of his visitation?  His followers touch Jesus  (Matthew 28:9, Luke 24:37-40, John 20:20, 27-28) or Jesus eats with his followers (Luke 24:30, 24:41-43, John21:12-13).  Almost every time he appears, there’s some proof that this is not just a “ghost” or “spirit”–this is a real, flesh-and-blood person coming among them.

What does this mean?  Why does it matter?

Well, first, it means that resurrection isn’t just about the soul–the body gets resurrected, too.  The whole package deal, body and soul, is redeemed and re-created and resurrected.  We don’t leave our bodies behind.  Instead, our whole being is taken by God and made holy and pure.  We like to think of the world as dualistic, flesh=bad and spirit=good.  We like to think of the physical world as evil, corrupted, temporary, something that will be destroyed when Christ comes again, while the spirit is pure and holy and eternal, merely waiting to be freed from the evils of the material world.  This is not the case, as Jesus showed us in his appearances after the Resurrection.  The body is just as involved as the spirit.

Remember that in Genesis, when God creates the world he calls it good, repeatedly.  It has been corrupted by sin, yes, but was created good, and ultimately belongs to God.  Our souls, as well, were created good but were corrupted by sin.  Both are alike, that way.  Both need to be cleansed of sin and death.  Both depend on the mercy and grace of God.

Again, what does this mean?  What effect does it have on our daily life?  It means we can’t just ignore the world around us.  Too often, Christians try to withdraw from the world and concern themselves only with “spiritual” matters.  Or we separate “spiritual” concerns from “worldly” concerns, as if they have nothing to do with one another, as if God has no use in the everyday world.  But God is the Creator of all, God is the Redeemer of all, God is the Sanctifyer of all.  We are called to live as God’s people in the world, to spread the light of God, to spread God’s Word, to work for God’s kingdom.  And we can’t do that if we try to separate the physical from the spiritual.

Christ came to his disciples, and ate with them.  He let them feel his flesh.  He was truly among them.  Let us, as his disciples, follow his example.

The Light of Christ

Hello all!  It’s been a while since I posted, for which I apologize; personal struggles have gotten between me and my blog.

Last Saturday night, I participated in an Easter Vigil service at my home congregation.  For those of you who don’t know, the Easter Vigil is a worship service that takes place the night before Easter, celebrating all of God’s creative and redeeming activity from the creation of the world through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Since it takes place after dark, by the Jewish calendar which Christ and the early disciples used it’s already Easter.  Although it will not be announced to the world until morning, Jesus Christ is risen and the tomb is  empty.

Easter Vigil starts off with a fire, outside.  The Paschal/Christ Candle for the coming year is lit from the flame and the pastor holds it up, chanting “The Light of Christ!”  The congregation responds “The Light of Christ!”  Each holds a candle.  The Christ Candle lights a few, and those light the flames of others in turn.  As the flame is passed from person to person, the one giving the flame says “The light of Christ!” and the one receiving the flame says “Thanks be to God!”

The congregation then processes to the church and inside.  Now, this year there was a bit of a wind that night, and so peoples’ candles kept blowing out.  But every time a candle blew out, the person next to them gave them a new flame.  “The Light of Christ!”  “Thanks be to God!”

It struck me that this is a metaphor for the Christian life.  We don’t create our own fire, our own light, our own faith.  It is given as a gift from God, often through the care and attention of those around us–parents, friends, mentors.  Christian means “little Christ.”  As part of our Christian lives we are called to be “little Christs” to our neighbors.  As we have been given light, so we are to share that light with all around us.  So far, everything seems great, right?  But as wonderful as it is to have the light of Christ in us, to be light for the world, we can’t sustain that light on our own.  The trials of life sometimes blow it out.  But through God’s grace, those around us can share their light with us, and help rekindle the flame of faith within us.  As we are called to be “little Christs” to them, so they are called to be “little Christs” to us.  This is most certainly true within the community of faith, but also outside of it.  Many times, it is the ones outside our communities of faith that are most in need of Christ’s light.  And many times, the light of Christ comes to us from people and places that we least expect.

Now, I realize that the world is a broken, sinful place, and because of that sin Christ’s light doesn’t always seem to work like that.  Sometimes, there isn’t anyone around when we need help the most.  (Sometimes, the ones around us who should be the ones to help kindle that flame are the very ones causing the winds that blow it out.)  But for the most part, it works pretty well.  It’s one of the reasons that we have congregations and other communities of faith, why participating in the faith life of a group of fellow believers is so important.  So that when you feel the light of Christ in you and around you is dimming or has gone out, you already know who you can go to for spiritual renewal and support.  We form communities so that you can be renewed by Christ working through those around us, and when others need help we can be a “little Christ” to our neighbors in turn.

Becoming Disciples

When I was in high school, I decided to start giving up chocolate for Lent.  “Chocolate?” my aunt said when she heard.  “Aren’t you supposed to give up something a bit more … penitential?”

“What could be more penitential than giving up chocolate?” I asked.  “I’ll certainly be thinking about it all the time!”

In many Christian traditions, it is traditional to fast from something, to give it up, during the season of Lent, particularly delicious or sweet foods.  That’s where Mardi Gras comes from, and why we have pancakes right before lent–the idea was to have a big party where you used up all the stuff in the house that you would be fasting from, particularly forms of fat such as butter, shortening, lard, etc which were used in the making of pancakes.  That way nothing was wasted and you wouldn’t be tempted to break your fast.  Many of these traditions are still practiced today, but we don’t always think about why we’re doing it.

So why do we fast?  And why do we do it in Lent, specifically?  Well, Lent is a time of preparation for Holy Week and Easter.  It’s supposed to get us ready for crucifixion and resurrection.  It’s a time to remember what Christ did for us.  It’s a time to remember that we are sinners, and that our sins are so great that Christ had to die to save us from them.  It’s a time to take a good, hard look at one’s own life and the life of the community and acknowledge the things that are broken and ask for God’s help in restoring them.  It’s a time to build your relationships with God and with your fellow human beings.  It’s a time to practice spiritual disciplines–fasting, praying, meditation, etc.–that help us grow spiritually.

Fasting, giving things up for Lent, shouldn’t be about being ostentatiously pious or just doing things because it’s traditional.  It should be a way of taking stock of your life and paring back the things that you don’t need, that distract you from God.  It can be a way of reminding yourself what the season is all about–for example, every time I was presented with the opportunity to each chocolate when I gave it up, it was a time for me to remember not only what I was giving up, but why I was doing it.  Fasting is not automatically a way to good spiritual health.  It should be accompanied by an attitude of prayer and a focus on what God has done for us and in us and continues to do for us and in us.  From my own experience, when I focused on what I was missing while I was fasting and not on God, I didn’t get any spiritual growth or blessing from it, I just felt deprived.  When I focused on God’s love for me, on my repentance for my sins and the grace of God’s forgiveness through Jesus Christ, then fasting became the catalyst to spiritual growth and health.

Fasting is one of the spiritual disciplines.  Disciplines–that’s from the same root word that disciple comes from.  Spiritual disciplines are tools we can use to help us become better disciples when used regularly and intentionally.  They can help us stay on our path following our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  They can help us break down the barriers that we put up to the work of God in our lives.  There are internal spiritual disciplines–prayer, fasting, meditation, study–and external spiritual disciplines–simplicity, stewardship, evangelism, and others.  All have the potential to help us as disciples.  This Lent, consider regularly practicing some form of spiritual discipline as we prepare for the death and resurrection of our Lord.

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany

Sunday, February 15 2009

2 Kings 5:1-14

Psalm 30
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Mark 1:40-45

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

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

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

I knew a girl in college who would never allow a guy to pay for anything, particularly if they were out on a date.  She didn’t want to be vulnerable, didn’t ever want to feel obligated, so she used her money as a shield to keep herself in control of whatever they did together.  She liked knowing that she didn’t have to depend on anyone else.  When dealing with guys, she was a control freak.  Money is a potent form of power, and she knew how to use it.

Naaman wanted to use his riches to be in control, too.  Being told of a prophet of God who might be able to cure his disease, Naaman’s first action wasn’t to go to the prophet and ask for healing.  No, Naaman wanted healing on his own terms.  So he went to his king, and got a huge sum of money to bribe the king of Israel into helping.  Naaman also got a letter from his king to the king of Israel that was harsh enough to panic the king of Israel, and a powerful military escort.  Chariots were the tanks of their day, the most effective way of projecting power on a battlefield, requiring much money and skill to maintain and use.  It was the old carrot and stick approach: if you do what I want and heal me, Naaman said, you get a king’s ransom in gold, silver, and costly garments.  If you don’t heal me, my king-who is more powerful than you, with a larger and better equipped army-will be very unhappy.  So you’d better do what I want.  Naaman demanded a miracle of healing, rather than ask for God’s grace.  He wanted God to work by his rules, rather than try to work by God’s rules.

The prophet Elisha heard about it, and called Naaman to be cured, telling him simply to wash in the Jordan river.  Naaman should have been happy, right?  He got what he wanted: to be cured from a horrible, disfiguring, wasting disease.  But no.  Instead of being grateful, Naaman was insulted that the prophet’s instructions were so simple.  Naaman was a powerful man, a rich man, come with a huge entourage and lavish bribes to demand a huge miracle.  He wanted a big show, something worthy of his status, something that he could do to heal himself.  He wanted something that acknowledged his power and that of the king he served.  Aram, what we now call Syria, was mighty and rich, much more so than the piddling little country of Israel.  Coming to puny Israel for help, admitting that they had something Aram didn’t, was already an affront to Naaman’s pride.  Then to have the prophet of God refuse to deal with him directly, refuse to play to Naaman’s pride, refuse to give him some Herculean task and showy ritual to mark the importance of the occasion-that was intolerable.  To have come all that way, just to be told to bathe in a river, something he could have done at home?  Naaman wasn’t going to put up with that.  He turned away and almost rejected the miraculous healing God was offering him.  He had to be convinced to allow God to help him!  It seems incredible to us, almost unbelievable, that anyone would reject God’s help and healing because their pride was offended.  It seems incredible that anyone would turn away from God with the gift they so desperately need right there in front of them.  And yet, we do it all the time.

Nobody likes feeling vulnerable.  We like to feel we have control over our own destinies.  Think about how much respect we give to “self-made men,” those who take a bad situation and use their own abilities and ambition to rise above it, creating a better life for themselves.  We Americans also tend to take a lot of pride in being self-reliant, take care of ourselves.  Think about how much time we spend planning out our futures.  Think about how afraid people have been lately about the economy, about the threat of lost jobs and pay cuts.  Is it really about money, at the heart of it?  Or is it about something deeper, about knowing that one of the foundations of our society is shaky and unpredictable?  Even those people with relatively secure jobs are afraid and unsure.  People who have already been laid off, whose lives have been completely changed by forces beyond their control-I can only imagine what they must be feeling.

I know when I feel vulnerable, I try not to show it, try to pretend everything’s going fine, try to take control of the things that are most important to me.  Like Naaman, when I’m weak I try to look strong, try to keep the situation in terms that are familiar to me, on my own home turf.  For Naaman, the home turf was wealth and military posturing.  For me, the home turf is academic debate and nitpicking.  There are many defense mechanisms, ways to try to compensate for feeling weak and vulnerable, but everyone has them.  Sometimes, we don’t even realize we’re using them.  What are yours?

Admitting that someone or something else has power over you means that you are not in control.  It means that you are vulnerable to them.  It can be very scary.  But here’s the thing: no matter what we do, no matter how much power we have, we are not in control of the world.  God is.  God is the one who created the world, who redeemed it through death on a cross, who brings us out of the pit of sin and despair and makes us whole.  None of that is our own doing.  All of it belongs to God and is done by God.  It is not our will that determines the course of our lives, but God’s will.

But do we really believe that God is in control?  We say it all the time in worship, in hymns, we read it in the Bible and hear it preached.  We pray it in the Lord’s Prayer, asking for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.  But all too often, we don’t mean what we say.  When things go right, we look back at all the little things that happened, everything we did, that helped make things turn out the way we wanted them to.  We attribute things to chance, luck, other people, everyone but God.  We don’t look for all the little ways God has intervened to help and guide us, the ways God has shaped events.  When things go wrong, we want God to step into our lives and fix everything, but fix it on our terms.  God gets the blame for tragedies-children dying, jobs lost, homes destroyed-but we don’t often give God the credit for all the things that go well.  Like Naaman, we try to keep control of our lives by keeping God’s presence within boundaries of what we consider acceptable.  And it’s a lot easier for us than for Naaman; we don’t have a prophet of God like Elisha to point out our mistake and make us relate to God on God’s terms rather than our own.

We live in a world broken by sin.  I don’t mean just individual sins, bad things done by individuals.  Sin has invaded every aspect of our lives.  Each individual sin takes us further away from how God wants us to live our lives.  All those little-and big-things we do wrong add together to create ever larger problems.  Because we are flawed and sinful people, the things we create-like institutions, groups, and cultures-are also flawed and sinful.  Just as our bodies get sick because of diseases and germs, our minds and souls get sick because of sin.  But while our bodies can fight off minor ailments and doctors can cure us of many serious illnesses, the only one who can save us from sin is God.  Like leprosy, sin is a long-term wasting disease that affects our entire life, something we can’t cure ourselves.  Like Naaman, our only hope is the grace of God, a miracle of healing given for us.  Like Naaman, we need to be washed clean.

But like Naaman, we want to be in control.  We don’t want to admit we have a problem, don’t want to admit we can’t fix it ourselves, don’t want to admit we’re vulnerable.  We come up with reasons why we don’t need God’s help.  We convince ourselves we’re not doing that badly, that we’re no worse off than anyone else.  We worship God on Sundays and try to leave him safely in church behind us when we leave instead of looking for his influence and guidance in our daily lives, until something bad happens and we want God to fix it just the way we prefer.  We turn away from the love and salvation God offers us through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, just like Naaman turned away from the healing he was offered in the waters of the Jordan river.

It’s hard to be vulnerable, to put our trust in God to take care of us and heal us.  It’s hard to admit that we need God’s grace so desperately.  But here’s the good news: we have been washed clean by the waters of baptism and redeemed out of the hands of sin and death by our Lord’s sacrifice.  Even living in a world broken by sin, even when we turn away from God, God never turns away from us.  Baptism isn’t just a matter of splashing a bit of water on a baby’s head.  Baptism is a fundamental cleansing, a drowning of the old, sinful self.  Each day of our lives as baptized children of God, we die to sin and rise to new life in Christ Jesus.  We are sinners, yes, but we are also saints claimed and made holy and whole by God.  This is why for the last few weeks we’ve been using the Remembrance of Baptism in place of the Confession of Sins we normally use.  It’s a reminder that baptism isn’t just a once-in-a-lifetime event but a daily reality, a way of living in God’s grace our whole life long.

We don’t need to be afraid to let God work within our lives.  We don’t need to be afraid to admit we need God’s help.  We don’t need defense mechanisms to try and prove we have control or hide our own fears.  We don’t need to control God’s actions, because God loves us and cares for us and won’t abandon us.  Even when things aren’t going the way we want them to, even when we’re afraid of the way things are going, God is still with us, still healing us from our sin and working to make us whole.  God washes us clean from the illness of sin in the waters of baptism.  All we need do is open our hearts and minds to God’s work in our lives and stop turning away.

The Beginning of Wisdom

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” (Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 9:10)

That never made sense to me.  It’s a common theme in the bible, occuring twice in those words and many, many times in other variations.  And it’s one of those pithy statements that I heard occasionally growing up from elderly Christians of my aquaintance.  But I was taught in Sunday School about a God whose greatest characteristic is love for all creation, especially his children.  God was a loving father, we were taught, who saves us and heals us and takes care of us.  Why should we be afraid of him?

I know some Christians believe in a terribly wrathful God just looking for excuses tocondemn and smite people and send them to Hell, but that’s never been part of my personal piety.  After all, no matter how angry God sometimes gets, no matter what we do, he still loves us.  17“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:16-17).  Or, in the words of Jesus Loves Me (verse two), “Jesus loves me when I’m good/When I do the things I should/Jesus loves me when I’m bad/Even though it makes him sad.”  Another favorite hymn growing up was “What a Friend We Have in Jesus.”  Why should I fear my friend, my father, the one who created me and loves me and takes care of me, even when it costs him?

Why is the fear of the Lord the beginning of wisdom?  Psalm 111 was the Psalm of the week last Sunday, and it got me thinking about this.

Yes, God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.  Yes, Jesus loves us, and loves us so much that he died to save us.  Yes, the Holy Spirit surrounds us and guides us in love all the days of our lives.   But the problem with focusing on our loving relationship–God our Father, Jesus our dear friend–is that it’s easy to lose track of the fact that God is not just a nice person living up in the sky.  He’s not just a human who really likes us.  God is greater than that.   God is greater than we know, greater than we can know.

Consider the mystery of the Trinity–Father, Son, Spirit, three distinct persons who yet make up one indivisible God.  When Saint Augustine, one of the greatest theologians ever, tried to understand this mystery, he was given a vision of a little boy digging a hole on the beach and trying to fill it with water from the ocean.  Of course the water all drained out through the sand, and the sand kept filling in the hole as the edges of the hole collapsed.  “You have set yourself a difficult task,” Augustine said.  “No more difficult than your self-appointed task of trying to understand the Trinity,” the boy replied.  If we can’t even understand the form of God, how can we understand deeper things about him?

Familiarity breeds contempt.  When all we remember about God is that he loves us, when we think we understand him, it’s too easy to think of God only as God fits into our own needs and desires.  But God can’t be limited that way.  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  It doesn’t mean that we have to be afraid that God will abuse or abandon us.  It means, instead, that we need to remember that God is beyond our understanding.  We see through a glass, dimly; God sees all.  We cannot know what God intends for our lives and the whole world.  We can’t control God’s power.  If a little awe at God’s greatness helps us remember this, that’s a good thing.

Being the Body of Christ

I’ve talked before about the importance of sacraments and why we come together to experience and celebrate them, and also about why we take the time to worship God.  I think today is a good time to talk about another reason why coming together as a community of believers is important.  We are all members of the body of Christ.

1 Corinthians 12:14-31.  Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. ¹⁵If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁶And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. ¹⁷If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? ¹⁸But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. ¹⁹If all were a single member, where would the body be? ²⁰As it is, there are many members, yet one body. ²¹The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’, nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ ²²On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, ²³and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; ²⁴whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, ²⁵that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. ²⁶If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honoured, all rejoice together with it.

27 Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. ²⁸And God has appointed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers; then deeds of power, then gifts of healing, forms of assistance, forms of leadership, various kinds of tongues. ²⁹Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? ³⁰Do all possess gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues? Do all interpret? ³¹But strive for the greater gifts. And I will show you a still more excellent way.

We in the modern world tend to put all the emphasis on the importance of the individual, rather than the group.  As a result, much of our spirituality is aimed at the individual.  Yet when our spiritual experiences are individually-focused, we miss something.  Each of us has been given talents and gifts by God.  No one person has it all; therefore we must work together for the fullness of God’s gifts to be known.  Paul uses the metaphor of the body of Christ to express this: just as a body needs hands, ears, eyes, and many other organs and parts to work together, so we need other people with other gifts to work together.

Humans were created to be social creatures, working together in mutual love and support, from the very beginning.  Adam and Eve were created as partners; Adam by himself would have been lonely and incomplete, and I believe that Eve by herself would have been as well.  I do not mean to say that humans must be married to be fulfilled, but that we were created to need relationships.  Whether those are the relationships of spouses, friends, family, colleagues, we need others both for companionship and encouragement and help in times of trouble.  And as we are supported in our time of need, so we support others in their crises.  But such connections don’t happen by accident.  They must be carefully nurtured and sought out.

Church is not the only place such relationships can be found.  But it is the best place to find a Christian community.  Now, I’m not being unrealistic here.  I know there are many churches who fall far short of this ideal, where the body of Christ is torn by disagreements, faction, and cliques.  Christians, like all other people, are flawed and sinful.  But we are still called to community, to trust in God’s grace, to forgive others as we hope to be forgiven, to share our gifts for the enrichment of all, and to support one another in times of need.  It is not always easy, and it is not always fun.  In fact, it’s frequently hard work.  But it can bring joy and comfort, and a renewed sense of faith as we learn to truly be the body of Christ in reality as well as in theory.

Don’t worry: Recession and the God of Abundance

Matthew 6:25-34. ‘Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? ²⁷And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? ²⁸And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, ²⁹yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. ³⁰But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? ³¹Therefore do not worry, saying, “What will we eat?” or “What will we drink?” or “What will we wear?” ³²For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. ³³But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 ‘So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.’

In the novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, one of the reasons the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” referred to in the text is so useful a book is because it has inscribed on its cover in large letters the words “DON’T PANIC.”  It seems to me that these words are useful to remember in more times and places than just the book, and now is one of them.

Let’s be honest: the economy is in the tank, and won’t be bouncing back in the next couple of years.

Let’s be even more honest: We have been and are still incredibly blessed by God.  If you have access to a computer and the internet to read this post, you have access to more resources than most people on this planet have ever had, no matter how hard you have been hit by the recession.  If you live in the “first world,” then you almost certainly have a safety net of social programs (both secular and religious) to help when things are at their worst.  They may not be ideal or as good as they should be, but they are still better than the majority of the world’s population has ever had access to.  God has given us many blessings, and he gives them abundantly.

In some ways, we’ve been too blessed.  We are used to having so much that as a society we’ve forgotten how to tell the difference between wants and needs, between things that are handy and cool and things that truly sustain our bodies and souls.  The world around us tells us that we need the newest iPhone, the hottest car, the biggest TV, the fastest computer, the biggest house, the latest tech toy, trendy clothes, to go out to eat all the time.  Thinking like that gets people into financial trouble, by encouraging them to spend more than they can afford, leaving them no savings to fall back on in times of trouble.  But even worse than that, it causes spiritual trouble in both good times and bad.

In good times, our cultural addiction with spending money encourages people to turn away from God by promising happiness through material things.  We take the abundance God has given us and depend on it without ever thinking about the one who gave it to us.

When things turn bad, our response is even worse.  Because we’re convinced that the abundance God has given us is the minimum necessary for survival, we panic at the idea of having to get by on less.  And in our panic, we turn even further from God, grasping at anything that might keep us in the style we have become accustomed to.  I’ve seen a lot of that lately, both within and outside of the church.

DON’T PANIC.  Or, as Jesus puts it in our Gospel today, don’t worry.  Don’t bury your head under the sand, either, but don’t worry about all the things that might go wrong.  Remember how much abundance you have been given.  Then take a good hard look at how you have used the abundance God has given you–your time, your talents, your posessions.  Have you used God’s gifts as a faithful Christian, or have you used that abundance selfishly?  Have you fallen into the trap of thinking material posessions lead to happiness?  If so, what can you do to change your thinking and your way of life to be more faithful and wholesome?

DON’T WORRY.  You are in God’s hands.  You have been in God’s hands all your life.  God knows what you need.  Many people in this world will need to change their spending habits because of the financial crisis, or take other actions to deal with the situation.  But don’t do so out of panic or worry over all the bad things that might happen, over the fact that you might not be able to do and have all the things you wanted.  Do so in faith that God will help you meet your needs–your true needs, not your wishes.  Know that God loves you, and will never abandon you.

No one can lengthen their life or affect the world’s economy by worrying about it.  No one can make themselves happier by worrying.  The world and we ourselves are where we have always been: in the hands of a God who loves us, and loves us abundantly, and has given us many gifts.  And who will never abandon us, no matter how much we despair.  So don’t worry.

Sin and Spirituality

Second Sunday after Epiphany

Sunday, January 18 2009

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Psalm 139
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
John 1:43-51

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

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

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

This weekend was the council retreat at St. Emma’s retreat center, just outside of town.  It was the first time I’d ever seen a nun in a full black habit in person and not on TV, which was interesting.  I admit I was a bit freaked out by the crucifix in my room-instead of having Jesus flat against the cross like on most crucifixes, the one in my room had a Jesus who was hanging forward off the cross, head hanging down.  Given the position and size of the crucifix and the position of the bed, Jesus was staring right down at the pillow.  I slept on the other side of the bed.  I was glad I went.  It was a productive meeting, both in terms of what got accomplished and as a way of helping us come together as a group, so that the next year can continue to be productive.

What happens in Corinth, stays in Corinth.  It was the Las Vegas of the ancient world, the sin city of its day.  Everything was available in Corinth, one way or another, no matter how immoral or unethical it was.  And everyone knew it.  It’s no wonder that Paul had more problems with the Corinthians than any other church he founded.  Paul preached the Gospel of Jesus Christ to them.  He told them that as Christians, all of our sins are forgiven and we have been saved by the cross of our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus.  The power of the law and sin and death have been broken, and we are free.  This is good news, indeed.

The Corinthians took this to mean that they could do whatever they wanted, and take advantage of all the things that Corinth had to offer.  They didn’t have to answer to the Law, any more; no worrying about consequences, it’s all been taken care of.  After all, God would forgive anything.  They wanted to do whatever they wanted, do what felt good and satisfied their cravings, what titillated them, and leave the mess and the consequences to God.  They wanted to be able to ignore God all week, come in for an hour Sunday morning, and go right back to ignoring everything that God was doing.  Surely, they said, it wasn’t like they were being that bad, was it?  Everyone ate meat sacrificed to idols, it was everywhere.  So were prostitutes.  So were a lot of other ways to sin.

I can just hear them saying it: everyone does it.  It’s not that big a deal.  It’s not that bad.  I enjoy it, so it must be good.  God doesn’t really mind that much.  God loves me anyway, so why should I care?  A thousand justifications for doing things all the things they knew they shouldn’t do.  It’s not so different from today, really.  There are so many things out there that we know we shouldn’t do, that seem so tempting.  Doing drugs, having affairs, cheating … it seems like everywhere we look, people are doing sinful things.  It makes it very easy to find excuses for our own behavior.  We are God’s people, but God seems very far away sometimes.  With all the terrible things happening in the world today, surely God has more important things to do than keep track of every little sin.  So why worry about it?

Paul didn’t accept those excuses, and neither should we.  The thing about sin is, it makes us focus in on ourselves to the exclusion of all else.  That’s what all sin has in common, at its heart-sin makes us concentrate on our own fears and pleasures, makes us concentrate so much on ourselves that we can’t truly see the people around us.  Sin blinds us to the pain we cause ourselves and others with our actions.  God wants us to be healthy, and happy, and whole, in right relationships with him and all of our fellow human beings.  Sin gets in the way.  Even little sins like jealousy can fray our relationships with those around us.

Our bodies were created as gifts from God.  God the Father created them, Jesus Christ redeemed them through his life, death, and resurrection, and the Holy Spirit sanctifies us this day and always.  But like all of God’s gifts, our bodies can be used in sinful ways.  Addictions focus us inward, to the exclusion of all the people around us, harming our relationships with them and destroying the body God has given and redeemed.  Adultery exchanges momentary pleasure for a long-lasting breakdown of our relationships with those we are closest to while cheapening the gift God gave us.

There are so many ways to sin, so many ways to take God’s gifts and turn them to wrong uses.  Christ Jesus redeemed us from our sins, broke the power of sin, and still like the Corinthians we slip back into old habits, needing Christ’s presence and renewing forgiveness constantly in our lives.  Why do we do it?  What makes us unable to walk the straight and narrow path all our lives?  What makes us stumble, and choose to go astray?

Humans need God in our lives.  Every culture in history has had religion in one form or another.  We have a hunger to connect with the divine.  We want to be truly known and accepted, we want to feel transcendent joy.  We are afraid of being alone and depressed.  In seminary I read a book written in the 1950’s in which the author predicted that modernism and rationalism would mean the end of religion.  Boy, was he ever wrong.  In America today, many people are turning away from Christianity … but they’re turning towards psychics and paganism and new-age mysticism and other alternatives; some even make science into a religion.  They’re still looking for God, even if they don’t want Christianity.

Have you ever heard that song, “Looking for love in all the wrong places”?  When that hunger for the divine goes unfulfilled, that’s what we do.  We look for God in all the wrong places.  When we can’t see God where we look for him, when building relationships with God and our fellow human beings is too much effort, when we don’t want to put in the effort or don’t think it’s worth it, we turn to other things that we think can make us happy.  Sex, intoxicants, music, food, television and movies, anything that can entertain us, draw us out of ourselves, make us feel good, and distract ourselves from what’s really wrong, even if only for a little while.  We pursue them even at the cost of true and lasting relationships with our friends and family, even at the cost of the relationship with God we truly crave.  And so we tell ourselves comforting lies that it’s not really that bad, and everybody does it, and it doesn’t really matter anyway, and turn away from God’s love and salvation.  There are other reasons to sin, of course, but trying to fill the deep need for God’s grace is one of the main reasons.  And the problem is, nothing we do on our own to seek God or to distract ourselves from our spiritual emptiness can ever work.

You see, God is the one who searches us out, not the other way around.  Our Lord is the one who came to Samuel as he lay sleeping, to wake him up and give him the Word.  Our Lord is the one who found Phillip and commanded him to follow, who saw Nathaniel under the fig tree.  Our Lord is the one who searches us out and knows us, our sitting down and our rising up, our journeys and our resting places.  Our Lord is the one who created us, and knew us from conception to this moment now to all points in the future.  Our Lord is the one who knows all our deepest thoughts, who loves us even when we sin, and handed himself over to death on a cross to save us and make us clean and renewed.  Our Lord is the one who empties himself, that we might be filled.  Our Lord is the one who chose to manifest his grace through pain, and suffering.

The cross through which Christ comes to us is not a pretty sight.  It’s not glorious.  It’s not sweet and gentle.  It’s not comfortable.  It is, in fact, pretty freaky and disturbing when we really think about it.  At St. Emma’s two nights ago, I tried to avoid that big crucifix as best I could because it made me uncomfortable.  In a less literal way, we don’t want to have to think about what it means that God seeks us out, that God uses things like the cross to do his work, so we try and go out and find what God does that’s more comfortable to us, more appealing.

The problem is, when we go out looking for God, we sometimes get so caught up in what we think we want that we miss Christ’s presence and power in our lives.  We can’t see the God who created us and redeems us and knows us on the deepest level because we’re too busy looking for a God that looks like we want him to.  We turn inward to our own hopes and fears and try to find a god who matches them.  And we fill up the emptiness we feel by doing all the destructive things we know we shouldn’t, distracting ourselves with pleasures that bring a short time of enjoyment at the cost of our relationships with God and one another.

Yes, we have been freed from sin by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  Yes, he forgives us all our sins.  But that doesn’t mean we have free reign to go out there and do whatever we want.  When Christ saved us, he made us whole at the cost of his own life.  That’s a precious, awesome gift, and one we shouldn’t take for granted.  We have been called to follow Christ.  We should do so in ways that glorify God, not our own appetites, trusting in Christ to catch us when we fall.

Why worship?

I apologize for the long delay between updates–there were travel woes and a mission trip and computer problems all working together to prevent my weekly updates.

Why do we worship God?  I’m not asking why we believe in God; that’s a different question.  Why do we worship God?  Why go to church?  Why repeat ceremonies every week, why put so much importance on once-in-a-lifetime rituals such as Baptism?  Why follow the same rituals that our ancestors did, when the world seems to be changing so much so fast?  Christianity, after all, is not an “orthoprax” religion; righteousness is not based on performing the correct rituals.  Christianity is “orthodox”–righteousness and salvation depend on correct belief.  Although our faith should be acted out in our lives, the focus is on right belief rather than right action.  So why do we go to church?

This question struck me with particular force the Sunday after Christmas.  On Christmas Eve, the church is filled to the rafters.  But the Sunday afterwards, less than half the people who were there for Christmas attend services.  Many people only come to church twice a year, on Christmas and Easter.  These days the only churches that seem to be growing are the ones where worship is an entertainment experience, with praise bands and multimedia presentations and nothing more required of their members than to sit back and enjoy the show.  People complain that worship in mainline churches is boring, that it’s the same thing every week, that there’s not enough excitement.  We have been conditioned to expect things to come in sound bites, and become impatient when they’re not served up to us easily.  They’re not looking for worship, they’re looking for entertainment.  But what is the difference, and why is it important?

I think the fundamental difference is in the focus.  When we truly worship God, we are focused on God and God’s desires, not our own.  When we are entertained, we are focusing on our own wishes.  But the more we focus on our own wishes, our own desires, the more we turn in on ourselves.  We stop looking outward at other people, and so become selfish and isolated.  When all we search for is our own gratification, we have no time or attention to build true and lasting relationships with anyone, whether that is with God or with with other people.  With so much focus on ourselves and our desires in our culture today, worship is a regular time to build up our relationship with God, to remember that God is working in our lives, and that God’s plans are deeper and wider than our own convenience and petty wants.  Yes, our faith in God is more important than ritual; but the rituals help us see in concrete ways that we are a part of God’s family, and that God is a part of our life.  It is our faith that makes us Christian, not our actions, but it is our actions that show that faith is more than mere words.  It is our actions that remind us, in a tangible form, that our faith matters, to us and to the world around us.  Our relationship with God is not academic, not based only in our thoughts.  It’s not something to be put off to the future, it’s something that sustains us and guides us through good times and bad.  Worship is one of the ways we remember and enact this.

If you have any topics or questions you would like me  to address, please comment.

Sermon: Christ the King

Sorry for posting this a week late, but I was a bit busy with Thanksgiving last week.

Christ the King

Sunday, November 23 2008

Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24

Psalm 95
Ephesians 1:15-23
Matthew 25:31-46

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

MP3 of Sermon.  Bulletin.

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

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

Today is the last Sunday of the church year; next week is the first Sunday of Advent, when we begin preparations for the coming of our Lord.  Today, we celebrate the fact that Jesus Christ is our King, ruler of heaven and earth.  We are citizens of two worlds, of this world we live in now and of the world to come, when Christ will come again to judge the living and the dead.  Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  Jesus Christ is the king of both heaven and earth.  It’s easy to imagine Christ as King of heaven, where he reigns in glory with angels and pearly gates and all that.  It’s a lot harder to imagine Christ as king of this world we live in today.

What does it mean that Christ is King?  What kind of a King is he?  When I think of kings in this world, I think of grand castles and historic wars and riches and crown jewels locked safely behind glass.  Most kings in the world today are ceremonial figureheads, like Queen Elizabeth of England.  She comes out, she waves at crowds, she makes speeches, she travels the world, but in the end the country she rules is actually governed by elected officials in Parliament.  Then there are all the kings in history, who actually did rule their people.  Some were good, some were bad, but all had flaws when you take a close look at them.  They favored the rights of the rich and powerful and ignored the needs of the poor, they played favorites, they started stupid and tragic wars, they lived in lavish palaces while the majority of their people lived in squalor and filth, they had so much power and wealth and used it to get more power and wealth.  Even David and Solomon, the two greatest kings in the Bible, had significant problems.  David’s adultery and poor parenting skills caused a vicious civil war, and his son Solomon the Wise raised taxes and forced labor levies so high to pay for his building projects that on his death the kingdom of Israel-God’s chosen people-were permanently split in two.  That split never healed because a few centuries of rule by bad kings later, the Northern Kingdom was conquered by Assyria and taken off as captives and was never heard from again.  If that’s the legacy of a good king, well, I can see why our forefathers rebelled and threw out the English king in favor of a democratic government.  It’s hard to imagine a king being a good thing, hard to think of Christ as a king, when you think of all the bad things kings have done.

Except our democratically-elected political leaders don’t have that great a track record, either.  Washington, Jefferson, and the rest of the founding fathers owned slaves and left in place a system of slavery that was horribly unjust and cruel and caused a massive civil war for their children and grandchildren to fight.  Lincoln had no plans for the future besides winning the Civil War, and his lack of planning led to problems with Reconstruction after his death.  Our presidents have a better track run over the long term than the kings and queens of many other nations, but that’s not saying much.  All leaders of nations, whatever they call themselves and however they came to power, have fallen short of their promises and caused problems for their people.  Yet they keep making new promises about what they’re going to accomplish as leaders, each promise more lavish than the rest.  And we follow them, hoping they’ll fix all the things that are wrong with the world, all the mistakes their predecessors made.  We hope they’ll make things better for us, make a better world, fix the wrongs and injustices that affect our daily lives and prevent new ones from occurring.

On November 5, the day after the recent election, I visited a few shut-ins, and the conversation naturally turned to politics.  The Obama supporters spoke as if Obama was a savior who would right all the wrongs in America and in the world.  The McCain supporters spoke as if America was doomed and would crumble and fall within the next four years.  Now, politics is a touchy and dangerous subject for any pastor to discuss with parishioners, and I’m not quite comfortable yet with where the boundaries are.  But one thing I know for sure is that no matter which political party won this or any election, no matter which candidate is installed in office, the world is in God’s hands and will always be in God’s hands, difficult as that can be to remember at times.  And so we come back to the question: what does it mean that Christ is King of this world as well as the next?

In the first lesson, the leaders of the world-particularly the kings of Israel and Judah-have failed at their task as leaders and shepherds of their people.  The people are scattered and divided, the rich have gotten greedy and the poor have gotten trampled.  There is no justice anywhere.  The ones with God-given gifts to take care of and protect others have used those gifts to make themselves even richer and stronger at the expense of the ones they’re supposed to be protecting.  It’s not their riches God objects to-it’s the way they’ve used those riches to do the exact opposite of what they should be doing.  The result?  Everyone has suffered.  The nation has been conquered by foreigners and everyone-rich and poor alike-has been carried off into exile.  God sent the prophet Ezekiel to bring comfort: exile is not permanent.  The injustices that plague Israel will be redressed, and a new shepherd, a new king, will be given to lead them.  This king, however, will not be like their old leaders who brought them to this low point.  This new David will be a true shepherd-he will take care of the people with justice, and both rich and poor will be fed and protected and cared for.  This new David is Christ, the Messiah, king of heaven and earth.  What does it mean that Christ is King?  Christ is not just a ceremonial king, there to be brought out for rituals and holidays and ignored the rest of the time.  He has true power of both judgment and protection.  Christ’s kingship means that the old way of doing things, the way of life in which value is calculated by riches and power, will come to an end.  In its place will come a world in which all people are valued, in which everyone gets a fair chance and all will be cared for.  Christ’s kingship means that justice isn’t about who’s got the biggest army or the most money, and it means that no matter how bad things seem to be now, this world is not the end.

But justice can’t happen without judgment, and that means that injustices can’t be swept away under the rug or excused as simply the way things are.  People need to be held accountable for the things they’ve done, good and bad.  God’s justice can’t be bribed, or swayed by politics, or biased in any way.  God knows what is in our hearts and minds, God knows what we’ve done even better than we do, and God will judge everyone with greater justice than any human court could ever hope to do.  Let me repeat that: God will judge.  Not us, God.

In the second lesson, Jesus talks about the judgment that will happen when he comes again.  The story is simple: everyone will be judged and sorted into two groups.  The ones who are righteous-the sheep-will go into the Kingdom of heaven, and those who are not righteous-the goats-will be sent away to eternal punishment.  This parable is pretty well known.  It’s a common subject of sermons and Bible study classes.  It’s an excellent way to show what God’s justice looks like: when we see someone in trouble, and we have the power to help, we should do it.  We see the face of God not in the kings and rulers and powerful and wealthy of this world, but in those who are the most vulnerable.  We see the face of God in people who are hungry, thirsty, alone, naked, sick, imprisoned.  We have been given many gifts, not just of money but of time and talents as well, and we should use them to take care of those who honestly cannot take care of themselves.  This is what Christ our King commands.  This is the standard against which he will judge us.

And again I point out: the standard against which Christ will judge us, not the standard we will use to judge others.  Here’s what most people miss when they read this parable: the sheep don’t think they’re sheep and the goats don’t think they’re goats.  The sheep are honestly surprised to hear that they’ve been serving Christ in their daily lives, and the goats honestly can’t think of a time when they haven’t served.  The problem is that the goats were serving the wrong things-and didn’t know it.  They got so caught up in what they thought needed to be done, they forgot to ask what God thought needed to be done, and how God wanted them to go about doing it.

It’s kind of like when I was a kid and I would take care of my younger brother on Saturdays while Mom and Dad were at work.  We had a list of chores to accomplish, and it was my responsibility to see to it the chores got done and that we both did our fair share.  Now, I was a fairly bossy girl, and my brother has always been laid back, and so normally he’d just go along with whatever I told him to do, and normally I tried to divide things relatively equally.  But sometimes I’d get so caught up in the fact that I was in charge that I would try to make my brother do a lot more than his fair share-and then try and micromanage how he did it.  Well, I never got away with it for very long-eventually, even my laid-back brother would call Mom and Dad to complain, and I would get in trouble.  Even if the chores got done like Mom and Dad wanted, they didn’t get done how Mom and Dad wanted when I made my brother do most of the work, and they got done in ways that harmed the relationship between myself and my brother.  Just as it was easy for me to think I was doing what my parents wanted by bossing my brother around and making him do most of the work, it’s easy for us to arrange things the way we want them and justify it by thinking we’re doing what God wants.  It’s easy to fall back into the habits of power-seeking, of seeing things through the eyes of this world instead of through the eyes of Christ, and not even realize we’re doing it.

That’s a scary thought.  If it’s that easy to forget about the true justice of Christ, if we can honestly think we’re serving God when we really aren’t, what’s to stop us from being goats?  How can we make sure we’re headed for eternal life rather than eternal punishment?  We do our best, but what if that isn’t enough?  Well, the bad news is, our best isn’t enough and there’s no way we can make sure we’re sheep and not goats.  We can’t judge anyone, not ourselves, not others.  The power of judgment belongs exclusively to Christ our King, who isn’t blinded by power and money and all the things we use to decide status.  But the good news is that Christ exercises that judgment along with mercy, in grace and love.  Christ uses his kingship for protection and care.  As sinners, we stand condemned before the throne.  But Christ loves us still.  And that is where we place our trust and our hope of salvation, not in our deeds that often go wrong, but in the grace of God.

Jesus Christ is our king both in this world and the next.  Doing good things isn’t just about salvation.  We do good works because our God and King desires justice in this world, and mercy, and he wants to work through us to accomplish it.  We do good works because our God cares just as much about the weak as he does the strong.  Christ can be seen in the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the sick, the dying.  The world may have forgotten them, but God hasn’t.  And neither should we.

Jesus Christ is Lord of all.  The rulers of this world have the power of laws and armies and bureaucracy in their control, but Christ is still the one in ultimate control.  Things may seem grim or depressing when we see all that’s wrong with the world, all the things that we as human beings have done wrong.  But Christ doesn’t exercise that power through a show of riches and might.  He rules by bringing justice and grace to the world, to those who need it the most.  He rules by gathering up the lost and forsaken, by being a good shepherd to his people.  Thanks be to God.