Refined and Purified

Second Sunday of Advent, Year C, December 9, 2021

Malachi 3:1-4
Luke 1:68-79
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

In the secular world, December is about adding things. More lights! More presents! More parties! More concerts! More decorations! More family gatherings! Everything has to look nice, everything has to be friendly and warm and inviting, even if only on a surface level. There will be guests coming, so everything has to look good, even if nothing substantial has really changed. For some, the spirit of the holidays is deep and true and they experience all the love and joy that we’re supposed to, but for many people, it’s just an illusion. Skin deep. Make believe. Let’s paper over the cracks and hide the stains. We don’t have time to really change things, we don’t have time to fix the fundamental flaws in the foundation of our lives, so let’s ignore them and hope nobody notices. Let’s pretend everything’s good, let’s pretend our relationships are stronger than they are, let’s pretend that everything is as happy and loving as we wish it were. If we’re busy enough, if there are enough presents and cookies and carols on the radio, maybe we won’t notice the problems underneath.

Our readings tell a different story. As we look forward to the coming of the Day of the Lord, the coming of Christ, Malachi tells us that God will remove things. Malachi likens God to a silversmith, who takes rock containing silver ore and crushing it and burning it until the silver is left and the rock has been discarded. We are that ore, and we are filled with both good things—the silver—and bad things—the rock. We are children of God, created in God’s image; we have so much good in us, love and generosity and kindness and joy and hope and creativity and many other things. Even the worst human beings have some of these good things in them. But we are also broken by the sin and death of the world, and so we have things like greed and hate and jealousy and cruelty and selfishness and apathy and so many other things. Even the best human beings have these bad things in them.

And the thing is, those bad things cause us pain, and they cause the people around us pain, and they cause the world pain, and they cause God pain, because God knows our potential and God knows the true cost of our thoughts, words, and actions. We can lie to ourselves, justify every bit of vitriol and vindictiveness, every petty act of selfishness, every moment of indifference to the suffering of our fellow human beings. We can fool ourselves into thinking ourselves perfectly righteous even as we make the world more broken through our actions and inactions. But we cannot fool God. We cannot lie to God. Like a smith, God can tell the difference between raw ore and pure silver. And God can and does work to refine the silver and remove the impurities. Some of that refining work happens now, in our lives in this world. Some of it will happen later, when Christ comes again. Because the thing is, those impurities, those bad things in our hearts and minds, they can’t enter God’s kingdom. All those little evils and self-justifications are the product of this world. They cannot survive into the next. Only the good parts—love and wisdom and generosity and joy and all the rest—can come with us into God’s kingdom. We need to be purified. We need to be healed. We need to be refined.

We need to repent. But when I say repent, I don’t mean the self-righteous and condemning way most people understand that word. It’s not about feeling guilty, it’s not about beating yourself up for all the problems, it’s not about punishment. When a silversmith is smelting ore to get the silver out of it, he’s not doing it because he wants to punish the rocky bits. He’s not putting it in the fire to make the silver feel bad about having impurities in it. The silversmith is removing all the stuff that’s keeping the silver from being most truly itself. The point is not what the silver was, it’s what the silver will be. Likewise, when you’re cleaning something, you’re not doing it to hurt the thing your cleaning, or make it feel bad about being dirty. You clean to get the dirt out, so that it can be good and useful and right. That’s what repentance is: it’s one of the steps of cleaning and purifying your soul and life, so that you can be good and loving and most truly the person God created you to be.

You’ve probably heard pastors say this before, but “repent” literally means “to turn around.” To change. To set yourself on a new path. It’s about recognizing that things are wrong, and figuring out what you need to do and say and think differently so that things can be better. So that you can be better. It’s about acknowledging your own responsibility for doing and saying and thinking bad things, but it’s also about taking responsibility for doing things differently next time. And it’s not easy! Nobody likes admitting they were wrong. Nobody likes admitting when they have hurt people, nobody likes realizing that they have caused suffering, whether that’s their own pain or the pain of others. But if you want to stop doing those things, you have to first realize what you’re doing, and why they’re a problem. It hurts, it doesn’t feel good, but it’s a necessary first step.

The thing is, it’s only the first step. It’s not the end goal! The end goal is a better life filled with love and all the fruits of the Spirit. The end goal is to follow Christ more closely, to be the people God created us to be. The point of acknowledging guilt and sin is not to wallow in it, but to identify what needs to change and why, so that you can throw out the trash and build something better. We tend to get stuck in this step, a lot, because it’s hard to throw things out even when you know they’re bad. So we confess our sins, and we feel bad for them, but we don’t actually do anything to change because that would be hard and we’re comfortable as we are. A textbook example of this is white guilt, where white people who want to look like they care about racism will talk about all the awful things white society has done and continues to do to Black people, Native Americans, and other people of color, but they don’t actually work to change things, or support people of color who are working for change. Another example is someone who cheats on their spouse, and confesses and asks for forgiveness … but still keeps on flirting with coworkers. The point is not to feel bad about what you did wrong, it’s to step onto a new path, a better path. To change, so that you can grow in faith and love.

Change is hard. Growth is hard. Growing pains are no joke. But it’s still better than the alternative. And the thing is, we don’t have to do it alone. We do not have to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Because the Lord is with us. In the prophet Malachi’s words, we are not the smith purifying the silver, we are the silver being purified. We are not the one doing the cleaning, we are the thing being cleaned. God is the one doing the purifying, the cleaning. God is the one taking away sins and making people better. God is the one who began good work in us and among us. We are called to participate in the work! We are called to repent and turn around and ask forgiveness and share in God’s grace and let the love of God overflow in us and around us. We are not called to paper over the cracks, we are called to fix them. And, when they are too big for us to fix, we are called to give them into God’s hands for God to fix.

The true spirit of Christmas is not about pasting a smile over our hurts, and using lights and presents and food to pretend things are great when they’re not. The true spirit of Christmas is about doing the hard work to heal what is broken and clean what needs cleansing so that the love of God can flow freely in us and among us. It’s about placing ourselves in God’s hands and allowing God to make the changes that are to big for us to make ourselves. It’s about turning around, and letting God put us on the right path, the path towards love and wisdom and justice and hope, even when it’s hard, even when it requires us to grow and change. May we have the courage and strength to follow the way of the Lord.

Amen.

He Is Coming

All Saints Sunday, Year B, November 7, 2021

Isaiah 25:6-9
Psalm 24
Revelation 21:1-6
John 11:32-44

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

A lot of our common assumptions about heaven and hell don’t actually come from the Bible. The Bible spends a lot less time talking about death and the afterlife than we tend to assume. Christians are obsessed with the afterlife, but people in Biblical times really weren’t. They spent a lot more time thinking about how to live a good, faithful life than they did about what happened after you died. So they didn’t write much about the afterlife, and when heaven and hell do show up in the Bible, they’re pretty much always in dreams and visions and parables, meant to be evocative, rather than a textbook laying out the details. Christians, on the other hand, are really obsessed with life after death. We have centuries of stories and popular culture about heaven and hell, and most people can’t actually tell the difference between stuff that’s floating around in our culture and the things the Bible actually tells us. Most of our understanding of heaven and hell actually come from Dante’s Inferno, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Pilgrim’s Progress, and Saturday morning cartoons.

One of those pop culture beliefs is the idea that heaven is distant, far away from real life, otherworldly. Full of disembodied souls sitting on clouds and playing the harp. We think of heaven and earth as completely separate, and the goal of the Christian life is to get out of the earthly life and into heaven. But, as today’s readings show, that’s not the case. Both our reading from Isaiah and our reading from Revelation talk about God coming to Earth, about God’s holy mountain (Mount Zion, in Jerusalem, which the Temple sits atop of) being the center of God’s dominion on Earth.

Both Revelation and this passage from Isaiah are talking about the Day of the Lord, when God comes to Earth and destroys evil and saves the good. But you’ll notice that the faithful are not whisked away somewhere else. Rather, God comes to us. God remakes the world, yes, taking away the shroud of sin and death, creating a new heaven and a new earth. And the former things have passed away. But that doesn’t mean that there’s no connection between the world now and the world to come. Quite the opposite. The world to come is the world now as it should have been. The world to come is the world remade so that things are better, the way they should always have been. Evil is cast out (even from our own hearts), and sin is no more, and pain is healed, and brokenness fixed, and all our tears are wiped away.

You’ll notice that both Isaiah and Revelation include that detail, of God wiping away our tears. Our grief matters, our pain matters. It isn’t forgotten about and shoved under the rug. Instead, God consoles us and supports us and helps us heal. Even in this life, when something bad happens, part of healing from it usually involves learning and growing. We are all the product of the things we have experienced, both good and bad. Heaven is not about forgetting, or erasing, what has happened to us. It’s about healing in a place where we are truly safe and supported and loved, and the pain is taken away.

This world we live in now, our lives now, they matter. God created this world, and though it is broken and marred by sin and death, though it has become very different from the good place God created it to be, there is still goodness in it. This is still God’s creation. The kingdom of God, as described in the Bible, is an earthy place. There are fields to be tilled and vines to be grown. There is joy, and laughter, and music, and dancing. In fact, the single most common metaphor or vision of heaven is a party. A banquet, filled with rich foods and good wine, as our reading from Isaiah puts it. All the good things in the world made better, and here for us to enjoy. There is food that nourishes us body and soul, and tastes good. There is work to do, but work that enriches our lives, instead of draining us physically and mentally. There is rest, and time to play and rejoice together. And in the middle of all of it is God, here, with us. Not far away on some cloud somewhere. God is present in the midst of the celebration. See, the home of God is among mortals, he will dwell with them and they will be his people.

Likewise, although we are marred by sin and death, although we are very different from the good people God created us to be, there is still goodness in us. We are still God’s people. The Day of the Lord, Judgment Day, Kingdom Come, whatever you want to call it, the coming of the Lord is not about God destroying the world and us going to some far away place. It is about God making this world—and us—what we should always have been. In the same way that God will create a new heaven and a new earth, God will re-create us. That is what resurrection is. It’s not just resuscitation, where you get shocked back to life but still have all of the problems that caused death in the first place. No, resurrection is about being made new, whole, healed, better than you were before. God’s promise of resurrection through Jesus Christ isn’t just a return to the same-old, same-old. It’s a promise of being made better and yet still truly ourselves.

When we look around at the world, and when we look at the worst that people can do, it’s easy to think that there is nothing salvageable, nothing worth saving. The world is on fire, society is crumbling, people do terrible things to one another, natural disasters kill people and ruin lives. There is so much suffering in the world. Every one of us here has lost people we deeply care about. Every one of us here knows that there is evil, that there is suffering, in the world. When we look at how many people are suffering, sick, dying, abused, homeless, hungry, when we look at how many things are screwed up in the world and how often things seem to go from bad to worse, it’s easy to imagine that the only thing left to do is wipe the slate clean and start over.

And yet, just because there are things we can’t fix doesn’t mean that God can’t fix them. The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who dwell therein. The king of Glory created this world, and he is coming. He is coming to destroy the shroud of death that is cast over all peoples, he is coming to gather up all people to himself. He is coming to raise the dead from their graves and make all people whole. He is coming to unbind us from the chains that hold us down, the chains others have put on us and the chains we make for ourselves. He is coming to purify our hearts and minds and bodies and make us new. He is coming to wipe away every tear from our eyes. It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Not Alone

Twenty-First Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 29, Year B, October 17, 2021

Job 38:1-7 [34-41]
Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35b
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

One of my favorite television shows is called Babylon 5, a sci-fi television show from the 90s. In one episode, the captain of an exploration ship gets a vague warning about danger at her next stop. She goes anyway, and when she gets there something happens. Something is there, something powerful and mysterious that her sensors just can’t figure out. It doesn’t even notice her, but the wake from its passing almost destroys her ship. After she gets rescued, the captain goes to the person who gave her the warning and asks him what it was. He shrugs, and tries to explain it this way: he picks up an ant crawling on some flowers in a display next to them. He shows the ant to her, and then puts it back on the flower. “If that ant were to point to the sky and ask another ant, “what was that?”” he asks, “what could it say? How could that ant explain what happened to it? I can’t explain what happened to you any more than that ant can explain what happened to it. There are some things out there greater than us that we just don’t understand.”

This passage from Job reminds me of that scene. God takes Job on a whirlwind tour of the cosmos, all of creation, all the things that God has done and is continuing to do. From setting the stars in their courses to ordering the weather to maintaining the ecological balance, God is very busy. This is not a God who created things and set them in motion at the beginning of time and then stood back to watch. This is a God who is active and present in the very big things and the very small things. This is a God who is vast beyond knowing, pulling back the curtain to let the mere mortal—Job—see just a tiny fraction of what it is God does. And while humans tend to focus on the things God does for us, God is not just the God of humanity. God is the God of all creation. God is great, and we are very small, and the universe that God creates and maintains is greater than we could ever understand.

Up to this point, everyone in the book of Job—Job’s wife, Job’s friends, Job himself—all thought that God’s biggest and most important job was to make sure that human beings experienced a fair life. That God’s main job was to make sure that the righteous get good things in life and the unrighteous get bad things. They want to believe that everything happens for a reason, that God plans everything and the consequences of every action are simple and predictable. They want to believe that the universe is simple and controllable. It’s a very attractive way of seeing the world: if everything happens for a reason, if the righteous are always rewarded and the sinful are always punished, then we can control what happens to us. All we have to do is be righteous, and we never have to worry, because we’ll be safe. Modern Americans believe this, too, even atheists; this is why we put such emphasis on healthy lifestyles. We have this delusion that if you eat the right foods and exercise in the right way and take the right vitamins or supplements, we’ll be healthy. That we can control what happens to us. And, certainly, eating a healthy diet and exercising will help, but there are a ton of other factors, many of which we have no control over. In the same way, being good and kind and righteous will help us live a good life but it won’t guarantee that everything will go well for us. The world is very, very complicated and we are only a tiny part of it. But we want control, so we tell ourselves that we can control things, that if we do the right things and say the right things we’ll be safe and healthy and happy.

 This is why Job’s wife and friends are so sure that Job must have done something to deserve all the bad things that happened to him. They believe that everything happens for a reason, and that everything that happens is God either punishing the guilty or rewarding the righteous. They believe this because it gives them a feeling of control over the world, and even over God: God will do what they want if they say and do the right things. And Job agrees with them! Like his friends, Job believes that God’s biggest job is to reward the righteous and punish the guilty, and he knows that he is righteous, therefore he believes that God is falling down on the job. And so he complains that God is not present, and not doing a good job.

Today’s reading from Job is God’s answer. And according to God, Job is wrong. Making sure humans get what they deserve is a tiny, tiny part of God’s responsibility. Job doesn’t know enough about the world to know whether God is doing a good job or not. And the world is not run on a simple tit-for-tat mechanical basis! The universe is not a clockwork mechanism that God just sets in motion and then observes from a distance. God is actively involved. But neither is God controlling each and every aspect of the universe in minute details. God sets the boundaries, the parameters; God creates, and allows God’s creatures freedom within the bounds of that creation. The universe is a place of mutual relationship, not a place where God has dictated every power and enslaved every creature’s will. This allows for a great deal of complexity in the world that neither Job nor Job’s friends nor Job’s wife understand. God is at work, but God does not control every action and every consequence. Humans have free will; so do many animals. And there are other factors and forces, besides, that we don’t understand. God could not make the mechanistic tit-for-tat everything-happens-for-a-reason world that Job wants without destroying the freedoms that God has given us. So the fact that the righteous suffer is not because God doesn’t care, and it’s not because God is not present.

Problem is, none of this is a very satisfying answer to Job’s cry for help. Job is in pain. Job has suffered deeply and is still suffering deeply. He was right to cry out to God for help; he was right to grieve all that he had lost and suffered; he was right to come to God with everything on his heart and call for help. Job was wrong about the structure of the universe and God’s work in it, but he was right to call on God for help, and right to bring his pain and burdens to God. And greater insight into the workings of the universe are interesting on a theological level, but they are not very comforting or helpful when you are in pain. Many people read this passage and conclude that God is an arrogant jerk who doesn’t care about Job’s pain, just cares about putting him back in his place. And it’s easy to see why people read this passage and go away upset.

But the thing is, if God didn’t care about Job, God didn’t have to answer him. God could have just ignored him. Like all humans Job is so insignificant compared to God that in cold hard logic, it doesn’t matter what Job thinks about God. But God comes to Job anyway, because God cares about Job. Job is tiny and insignificant, and God loves him. And so God comes to Job when Job is upset and pulls back the curtain to give him a peek at the nature of the universe. God isn’t going to remake the universe to force it to work the way humans think it should, but God will be there for us and with us no matter what.

God, that great and indescribable being who is beyond human comprehension, who created all that is, seen and unseen, whose power and understanding is far beyond anything the wisest human could ever understand, loves us so much that he became human for our sake. He became flesh and blood, he suffered as humans suffer, he knows what we are going through even in the worst moments of our lives, and he is with us through it all. He knows, and he cares. The universe is vast and we are small and very little is under our control, and we understand far less than we think we do, but we are not alone. We are never alone. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Hard-Heartedness and Divorce

Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 27, Year B, October 3, 2021

Job 1:1, 2:1-10
Psalm 26
Hebrews 1:1-4, 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-16

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

A group of religious leaders asked Jesus a legal question about divorce to test him. What answer they were looking for we don’t know, but it may have been merely to see where he stood on the issue. Jewish society in Jesus’ day was diverse and vibrant, with a lot of different groups who all had very different answers to legal questions and social questions. Divorce was the type of question there were many opinions on. Some believed divorce should be easily available; some thought it should be restricted; some thought it should be available only to men; some thought that women should be able to choose to divorce their husbands. By asking Jesus about the legal requirements for divorce, they’re asking Jesus for a legal opinion, but also about which group he belongs to, which eminent authority he will lift up.

The thing is, though, that Jesus isn’t really interested in the question of legality; he isn’t interested in setting forth questions of precedent and circumstances to present the proper procedure for deciding what circumstances qualify as being worthy of divorce and who gets to file for it. Jesus isn’t interested in the question of which particular faction or sect or authority has the right answer. He’s interested in relationships. He’s interested in what marriage and divorce mean for the people involved.

Marriage was created because it’s not good for human beings to be alone. We are created in the image of God, and God’s very nature is relational. God is a trinity—three who are one, Father, Son, and Spirit. None of the three is God alone, but only when they are together. In the same way, humans need each other. Being known and loved by others is one of the deepest needs of the human soul and the human brain. Marriage is not the only relationship humans need, of course—we need parents, we need friends, we need family, and the more healthy relationships we have the healthier we are, as a general rule. But marriage is one of the main relationships, and it’s a very important one. It’s supposed to be a stable foundation in our lives. It’s supposed to be a partnership of mutual aid and support so that both spouses have someone to help them get through the bad times and enjoy the good times. It’s supposed to be an emotional support system. It’s supposed to provide support and care for the raising of children, if you are blessed with them. Marriage is supposed to be a sure foundation you can build a good life on.

Sadly, there is often a gap between what marriage is supposed to be and what marriage is. Sometimes a marriage has problems that simply can’t be solved. Abuse, a spouse who only takes and never gives back, adultery, a spouse who just isn’t willing to put in the work that a successful relationship requires, there are a lot of marriages with problems. And, usually, those problems are caused by a hardness of heart in one or both spouses. Jesus is absolutely correct when he says that divorce exists because of a problem with our hearts. Selfishness, manipulation, disregard, there are a lot of ways that hard-heartedness can manifest. And, if left unchecked, that hard-heartedness can turn marriage into a mockery of what it’s supposed to be. We’ve all seen it: cases where a marriage doesn’t support, only drains one or both spouses. Cases where a marriage is a millstone dragging one or both spouses down, instead of a foundation helping them grow. Cases where a marriage endangers children instead of providing care and support for them. Sometimes, if you catch problems early enough and both spouses are willing to do the hard work of working on their issues together and growing, you can fix things and build a relationship that is more stable and secure than when you started out. Sometimes, people can learn to soften their hard hearts and repent and start on a new path together. And that is a great blessing when it happens.

But the sad truth is, it doesn’t always happen. It doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes people would rather be hard hearted. Sometimes people just aren’t willing to put in the hard work required to change their behavior. Sometimes people aren’t willing to admit that they have a problem. Sometimes people care more about winning than about finding fair and workable solutions to disagreements. Sometimes a person is so trapped in their own issues and problems they can’t see how their behavior is hurting their spouse or kids. Sometimes a person likes the suffering they’re causing their spouse, or at least benefits from it. A marriage requires both spouses working together to be successful. If one spouse isn’t willing to do that … then you’re going to have problems. Sometimes really big ones. And in those situations, if they go on long enough without change or healing, a marriage can turn into something which actively goes against what God created marriage to be. A marriage which makes a mockery of God’s good gift.

This hard-heartedness causes damage, and that’s why God allows divorce, why God told Moses to put it in the law. Divorce is never a good thing, but it is sometimes a necessary thing. Sometimes it’s the least possible evil. Sometimes, because of human sin and stubbornness, there are no better options. Sometimes divorce is the least bad option available. You will note that Jesus does not forbid divorce. He doesn’t say the law is wrong to allow it. He talks about the brokenness and pain that it causes, that it keeps causing even after the divorce itself is over. He talks about how it shouldn’t be necessary. But he never forbids it. Because human beings were no less hard-hearted in Jesus’ day than they were in Moses’ day, and they are no less hard-hearted in our time than they were in Jesus’ day. Divorce is bad, but a bad marriage can be worse. It’s not about the legalities, about what criteria have to be met to qualify for divorce, it’s about the people in the relationship and whether they can build a healthy marriage together or not.

Jesus compares remarriage to adultery. But let’s remember his reaction to the woman caught in adultery. He forgave her, and shamed the ones who would have punished her for her sin. Because we are all sinners, we have all fallen short of the glory of God, we have all done things that we knew were wrong. We all bear scars from times we have hurt ourselves, or been hurt by others. Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but to save it. Jesus responds to sin not with condemnation, but with compassion, with healing. Divorce is not a good thing, and it should never be an easy thing to decide to do, but it is sometimes a necessary thing, and God knows that. And even when it isn’t really necessary, when the people in the marriage could have made a good and healthy relationship if they’d only been willing to put in the work, even then, divorce separates us from one another but it does not separate us from God. There is nothing that will separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

I am not a lawyer. When it comes to issues of marriage and divorce, the law is not my first and foremost concern. Laws are important! But like Jesus, my first concern is for the relationship, and for the people in that relationship, and for the community that surrounds them. My concern is to help people who are considering relationships to have reasonable expectations and make good choices. My concern is to help people have good examples of healthy relationships around them. My concern is to provide support and resources when things are going wrong in a relationship. And, when sometimes a marriage ends, to provide support in helping people deal with the pain and grief and anger and hurt, so that they can heal and grow. And I think that is what God calls all of us to do as communities of faith: to nurture and support healthy relationships, to provide good examples of what healthy relationships look like, to help people heal their marriages when possible, and to help them heal from the damage caused by divorce when saving the marriage isn’t possible.

Amen.

Pyramid Scheme

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 25, Year B, September 19, 2021

Proverbs 31:10-31
Psalm 1
James 3:13—4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

There’s a book about the Bible called Manna and Mercy by Daniel Erlander. It combines a paraphrase of the Bible with cartoon illustrations that dramatize not just stories, but theological ideas that are important and recur throughout the Bible. One of these ideas is the contrast between society as a hierarchical pyramid, and society based on God’s principles of love. So, while the Hebrew people are enslaved in Egypt, there is a picture of Egyptian society as a pyramid. Pharaoh is the very top of the pyramid, of course, with the royal court just below him, and the priests and bureaucrats below them, and then the large landowners, the merchants and tradespeople, the small landowners, the day laborers, and finally, down at the bottom, the enslaved people. The higher up a group is in the pyramid, the more power and wealth they have, but the fewer there are of them. The lower you are in the pyramid, the less power and wealth you have, and the more of you there are. The ones up top have awesome lives. The ones on the bottom have horrible lives. Where you are in the pyramid determines how your life will go, what opportunities you will have, and your identity. And all of this is contrary to God’s desire for us. We are all created in God’s image, and God shows no partiality. In God’s eyes, nobody is inherently worth more or worth less than any other human; nobody is inherently more deserving or less deserving.

That pyramid of haves and have-nots is a human thing, not a thing of God. But that pyramid keeps cropping back up! When the Hebrew people settle in the Promised Land, they have no king, there is no concentration of wealth and power. But eventually they want a king, so they get one, and Hebrew society becomes a pyramid shape similar to that of the Egypt they left behind, with the powerful and wealthy up top and the oppressed masses at the bottom. Injustice reigns, instead of God’s good commands. God has given us a world of abundance, where there is enough for all, yet we have turned it into a world of scarcity where there are haves and have-nots. Over and over, throughout the Bible and human history, we see this. All people are created equal by God, with the right to live good lives free from exploitation and abuse, and yet humans continually concentrate wealth and power so that a few people have great lives and many suffer.

And then we tell ourselves that the reason people suffer is because they deserve it, and the reason people are on top the pyramid is because they deserve it, and that God approves of the whole structure, and that our goal in life should be to work hard and climb to a higher level on the pyramid so we can have more wealth and power and an easier life. Because we assume that the pyramid is normal and right and good, and therefore anything we do to climb the ladder of success is normal and right and good. If you’re not climbing the pyramid—if you’re not hustling to earn a better life and a bigger house and a nicer car—then there is something morally wrong with you. That’s an assumption so deep it’s hard to shake.

That’s why the disciples are arguing about which one of them is the greatest. Life is a pyramid, right? Most of the Disciples started out as working-class people. Fishermen. But now they’re students of a rabbi, they’re moving up in the world! And Jesus is just an itinerant rabbi now, but they probably hope for more. Given the crowds he’s drawing, he could probably get a position at a prestigious synagogue, which would probably also mean good positions for his students, i.e. the disciples, which would be another step up for them. And, hey, he’s a miracle worker who talks about the coming kingdom of God! Maybe he’s going to lead a rebellion and kick out the Romans and make himself king, or high priest! That would put them at the very top of the pyramid, below only Jesus! But the question is, which one of them is going to benefit the most from all they hope Jesus will do? Which one is going to be his right-hand man? It’s not enough to climb the pyramid, you also want to climb it better and faster than your friends and colleagues, right? I mean, you want them to succeed, you just want to succeed more than them. Somebody’s gotta be the best, and it might as well be you, right? We all know how this works; we’ve all seen it. In the 2,000 years since, not much has changed. The specific criteria we use to sort people into haves and have-nots is different but the general structure of the pyramid (lucky few at the top, some in the middle, unlucky many at the bottom) has not.

But God’s kingdom is not structured like a pyramid. It simply isn’t. In God’s kingdom, everyone receives enough and no one receives too much. There is no scarcity and no gluttony. In God’s kingdom, everyone receives both justice and mercy. There is no privilege for some and disadvantage for others. In God’s kingdom, there is no discrimination and no partiality. No one suffers or benefits because of class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, education, ability, or any other human category that we have ever used to justify valuing some people more than others.

So when the disciples start arguing about who’s the greatest, they’re missing the point. And it’s the same point we miss, again and again. All those things we use to decide who matters and who doesn’t? God doesn’t care. But God does care how we treat people. And the more we focus on climbing the ladder, the worse we treat the people at the bottom of the ladder. And unlike all those human-made categories, how we treat one another is part of how God judges us. God cares about how we treat those who are different (especially those who are vulnerable) far more than he cares about what those differences are. Which is why Jesus tells the disciples that not only do they need to stop trying to be the best and greatest, they need to start serving the people who are the least and the last. You want to be great in God’s eyes? Well, God could not care less about all the things society cares about. God doesn’t care about your wealth or power or influence or what kind of car you drive. God does care about how you treat people in need, people who are vulnerable. You want to be great in God’s eyes, you better get down off your high horse and start at the bottom, because that’s where the greatest need is. Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.

God cares more about the suffering of the oppressed and poor and vulnerable than he does about the cares of the comfortable. And it’s not because the oppressed have some special virtue, or because the poor are morally better than the rich. It’s because the people at the bottom of the pyramid, the people who have been kicked around their whole lives, who have suffered and struggled and never gotten anything to show for it need more help than the people who are doing fine. It’s like in an emergency room. If there’s a busy night with a lot of people coming in injured, they treat the people in the most danger first. If you’re in danger of dying, you go to the head of the line. If you just need a couple of stitches, you’re gonna have to wait until they’ve saved the people who are hurt worse than you. The people who are in the most danger, who need the most healing, come first. That’s the way God operates, too. The people who need God the most—the people who have suffered, who are suffering, who are the most vulnerable, they get special care because they need it. The last—the ones who have been dealt a rotten hand, who have been through hell—will be first, because they need it. The first—the ones who’ve had awesome lives with everything they need at their fingertips—will be last because their needs are less pressing.

Some Christians try to have it both ways. They try to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to be first, to take everything the top of the social ladder has to offer, while still getting credit for being last, or advocating for the last. They give money to charity, but don’t actually try to love their neighbor. Or they talk about issues but don’t actually do anything about them. People are quick to cry “think of the children!” as a political rallying cry, but seldom do they actually advocate policies meant to safeguard child welfare in any meaningful way. Children are just a convenient prop to justify their beliefs and actions. The Christians in question want to look good, to look moral and right, without ever saying or doing anything uncomfortable, anything that might disrupt their lives or their social position. They love their neighbor, they serve the least of God’s children … but only when it’s convenient. When there’s a conflict between their climb up the social ladder, and God’s call to love and serve the neighbor … they choose the world, while trying to look like they love their neighbor.

If we are going to follow God, and live the lives God wishes for us … we can’t be focused on climbing the ladder. Because power and influence and popularity and wealth do not matter to God. Jesus did not die to save the world’s power structures; Jesus died to save the people. Us, and all the rest. And the kingdom that Jesus is building among us is not based on the world’s perceptions, but on God’s perceptions.

Amen.

Virtue Signalling

Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 22, Year B, August 29, 2021

Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Psalm 45:1-2, 6-9
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

When Mark tells us about the Jewish practice of washing things as a form of spiritual cleanliness, he’s a bit misleading. It is true that Jews do have lots of rituals about washing things; they call that “mikvah.” And it’s commanded in Scripture, not as a germ thing but as an identity thing. I mean, it helps keep you from getting sick, too, but that’s only part of the reason for the rites surrounding washing in Judaism. You see, Jews are supposed to be the light of the world, the example that the rest of the world can look at and see how awesome God is. So, there are some practices they keep (some of which are commanded in scripture, some of which aren’t) that are there in order to make a distinction between who is Jewish and who is not, who is a part of the group and who is outside it. But the thing is, different groups of Jews have always interpreted things differently. So, for example, in the case of washing things for ritual cleanliness, there are questions like: how often do you have to wash them? What exactly do you have to wash? Do you have to wash things every day, or only when preparing for Sabbath? Can you wash things together, or do you have to have separate basins to wash different types of things in? Etc, etc. Different groups of Jews answer these questions differently, and they always have.

Now, if you’re sitting there thinking that those sound like pretty weird and nitpicky things to get fixated on, consider groups you’ve been a part of. I bet you’ve been part of a lot of groups where you can tell who the insiders and outsiders are by the way they do things, and a lot of the time “the way we do things” has very little purpose beyond “that’s how we do things in this group.” For example, I once worked at a church in Pennsylvania that had a free hot meal every Wednesday at lunch for anybody who showed up. They fed a lot of people every week, and they went through a lot of dishes and silverware. They had three different silverware patterns, and each pattern had its own drawer with sections for knives, spoons, and forks. They all got used every week, so they all had to get washed and put away. And woe betide you if you put a piece in a drawer that was meant to house a different set! They never had meals fancy enough that it mattered whether or not the silverware matched, and it was all going to get jumbled together again the next week anyway, but when it was washed and put away it had to be sorted into separate sets. It was just the way they did things, and for the people who’d been doing it for years it was obvious. But it also made clear, to anyone new who wanted to volunteer, that you were an outsider who needed to learn their ways before you’d be accepted in.

Now, it’s good for a group to have an identity, a sense of camaraderie, distinctive things that set them apart. Especially when, like Jews and Christians, we’re supposed to be an example to the people around us of what faithfulness and the love of God look like. But it’s also possible to get so caught up in maintaining the boundaries between who’s on the inside and who’s on the outside that you forget why. It’s possible—easy!—for your group’s practices to turn into virtue signaling. Virtue signaling is when your words and actions are chosen not because they’re right or good, but so they’ll look good to people in your group. The right phrases and actions to prove that you’re one of the Good Guys. But when you focus more on looking good than on doing good, that’s a problem. When you focus more on keeping people in their place and separating out insiders from outsiders than you do on following God’s word … that’s a problem. And that’s what these Pharisees and scribes from the big city of Jerusalem are doing.

Remember, everyone present was Jewish. Jesus and his disciples were Jewish, the crowds were Jewish, the Pharisees and the scribes were Jewish. Jesus and his disciples are from a podunk town in the middle of nowhere, but Jesus has made such a stir that people are travelling out from Jerusalem to see him. And these nice religious people from the capital get to Galilee to see this great teacher they’ve heard so much about … and their first reaction isn’t to explore his teachings, it’s to say “you don’t do things the way we do them, therefore you’re not doing them right. Why aren’t you doing them right?” With the subtext that if Jesus were really a wise teacher he’d know that their way of performing the washing rituals was the right way to do it that of course everyone should follow.

There’s a bit of a class angle here, too; Pharisees and scribes tended to be middle class and sometimes even upper class. Jesus and his disciples were working class. In the days before indoor plumbing, it was a lot easier to wash frequently if you had other people hauling water for you. So they’re being a bit snobby. Oh, and rude, too—they’re the guests, the visitors, and they’re grumbling about the way their hosts do things. Now, being generous, they might not realize they’re being snobbish and rude; there have been times in my life where I’ve just assumed that the way I was raised is obviously the best way to do things, and taken it for granted, only to find out that other people do things differently and their reasons for how they do things is just as good as mine. If these Pharises and scribes have spent all their life in their own group, they might not have realized that their particular take on the washing commandments is not universal. Or, they might just be trying to start an argument to prove that their way is best. Or maybe they just want to let everyone know that they do it the right way, not like these country bumpkins.

Either way, they’re missing the point. They’re focusing so much on how to do things the right way that they’re forgetting why they’re there in the first place: to listen to the teacher and learn from him. And the first lesson that Jesus has for them is that they’re focused on the wrong things. Traditions and cultural matters and habits of how to do things are all well and good, but they’re not a useful way to measure whether a person’s actions are good, and they certainly don’t tell you whether someone’s heart is good. They are external matters. Surface things. You want to know a person’s character and actions, you have to look at the core of what they say and do. Are they loving God and loving their neighbor, and putting that love into word and deed? Then the rest doesn’t really matter. Are they acting out of greed, malice, or pride? Are they lying, cheating, stealing, hurting people? Then all the surface stuff still doesn’t matter.

This is something modern Christians have a lot of trouble with. Our whole society has become saturated with this idea that the ends justify the means. If your goal is good, then anything you do to accomplish it is okay. And we are increasingly tribal: either you are part of my group, or you are not, and if you are not, then you’re not really a person. And if your group is at odds with my group, or even just disagrees with them, then you’re evil and a monster, and thus any treatment is justified. This is how you get people who will harass those they don’t like and send them death threats while still believing that they’re a good person and doing the right thing. This is how you get bullies who make life hell for their victims while swearing up and down that bullying is a terrible thing they’d never do—because in their mind cruelty doesn’t count if the person deserves it. These things happen on social media, they happen in person, and Christians are just as guilty of them as anyone else. We honor God with our lips while our hearts are far from God.

But even if you say you’re doing it for Jesus’ sake, it’s still wrong. The Bible says lying is bad, period, even if you’re lying to get people to do and think what you think Christians should do. The Bible’s ethical teachings don’t have an asterisk saying you can forget them if you’re dealing with people you don’t like. If you harbor malice in your heart towards someone, that’s wrong. Period. If you act with cruelty or selfishness, if you purposefully hurt people, that’s wrong. Period.

That’s what God judges us on: how we treat people, and whether we love them or not. God doesn’t judge the surface stuff, like the habits and traditions we live by or the things we put in our bodies or the bumper stickers or the virtue signaling or whether we say the right things or are part of the right group. May we follow God with our hearts and our actions, not just our words.

Amen.

Abide in Christ

Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 20, Year B, August 15, 2021

1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

One of the important things to remember, when reading the Gospel of John, is that the first chapter, which we call the prologue, is the key to everything. The prologue—that lyrical poem that starts with, “in the beginning was the Word”—lays out the theology of the book. It gives you the distilled heart, the message, the essence of everything that is to follow. Which is why it’s often useful to look back to that prologue to see how it can illumine other chapters in the book. What perspective it can give. Reading the Gospel of John through the lens of the prologue often helps the reader to focus in on key points. And for this passage we read today, the key verse from the prologue is this: “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” In this short phrase are two key concepts that should shape our understanding of this chapter and of the whole Gospel.

The first is an obvious connection: flesh and flesh. The prologue tells us that the Word became flesh, and here Jesus is telling us that we should eat his flesh and drink his blood, and that if we eat his flesh and drink his blood we will be raised up on the last day and will have eternal life. We shouldn’t ignore the literal meaning; as Lutherans, we believe and teach that the bread and wine we share in worship do literally become Jesus’ flesh and blood during Communion. When we join together in the meal, we are consuming Jesus. It’s not just a memory of a long-ago dinner Jesus had once, it’s not just symbolic, it’s not just a metaphor, Jesus is really present in, with, and under the bread and the wine. We may only see the bread and wine, but Jesus is really and truly present within it. The bread is his flesh and the wine is his blood. In eating and drinking it, he becomes part of us and we become part of him. You are what you eat.

And yes, it sounds weird and a little creepy and a little bit like cannibalism. Jesus told the crowd this knowing that they would find it off-putting, knowing that this would be a challenge to people. But physical reality is important. There is a tendency, and always has been, to spiritualize things. To think about the sweet by-and-by instead of the real physical world we live in now. We separate out the eternal from the present, the spiritual from the mundane, the physical from the mental. But God cannot be separated from the present, mundane, ordinary physical world. God created this world; God is always present in it. God is at work in this world, even through ordinary things like bread and wine. And in God’s hands, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. When we gather together around God’s table, ordinary bread becomes Jesus’ flesh. In this ordinary loaf of bread that anybody could make, Jesus becomes a real, physical presence in our lives, nourishing us body and soul.

But there’s another level to this, as well. Who is Jesus? As the prologue tells us, Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. Therefore, if we are eating the flesh of Jesus, we are eating the Word of God. Now, in some ways, this sounds even odder than the idea of eating Jesus’ flesh and blood; flesh and blood are, at least, physical things that can be eaten, and words are not. But it reminds me of how the prophet Ezekiel, when God called him to be a prophet, was given a sacred scroll to eat, as a symbol of how the words he would speak came from God. You are what you eat. The things that you put into your body will inevitably come out of your body in one form or another. By eating the Word of God, we aren’t just hearing it and having it go in one ear and out the other. We have to chew on it, digest it. It stays with us.

But it’s not enough to eat it once. With any meal, no matter how good it is, no matter how much you eat, you’re going to get hungry again. You can’t just eat once and then never again, that’s not how nourishment works. You have to come to the table again and again to be filled. In the same way, God’s Word is not something to read or hear once and then you’re good. God’s Word is not a textbook where you memorize the correct answer and then forget about it once the test is over. God’s Word is given to nourish us continually, and food for our soul is like food for our body, in that you need to eat regularly in order to be healthy. Christ sets the table before us, a table of his flesh and blood, a table where we can be nourished by his body and by the Word of God. That table is open to all. And we should come often and regularly to receive the nourishment our souls need.

That brings me to the second connection this passage has with the prologue to the Gospel of John. Remember that verse from the prologue, “the Word became flesh and lived among us”? The second connection between that verse and our Gospel reading is hard to spot in English, because the word gets translated differently in different places. There really isn’t an English word that captures it perfectly. The word in Greek is ‘μενω’ and the closest English word is “abide.” It can also be translated “live,” or “stay,” or “remain,” or “dwell.” But those are more passive than the word is. Μενω is an old word to describe nomads who were part of the same band or group. It means you’re pitching your tent together. And the thing about nomads is they move! So it’s not like you just happen to buy a house next to somebody and then your neighbors because neither of you has chosen to move elsewhere. It’s not a passive thing. To abide with someone requires effort and work and choice. With a nomadic group, you have to actively choose to stay together. You have to choose to travel together, pitch your tent together, look after your flocks together, move on together. For two nomads to stay together, they have to actively build and maintain a relationship, and choose to make that relationship the basis of where they go and what they do. That’s what “abide” means in the Bible. The Word became flesh and abided among us. God’s Son became human and pitched his tent with us, choosing to form a relationship with us, a community, to stay with us always and invite us to stay with him.

And that’s what Jesus is talking about when he says in our Gospel reading, “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them.” Jesus is dwelling with us, abiding with us, pitching his tent in our midst. Jesus is initiating a relationship with us that will guide the course of our lives. And Jesus invites us to participate in that relationship, to respond to it, to grow in it, to choose over and over again to pitch our tents with Jesus no matter where we go or what happens to us or anything else. Jesus will abide with us, Jesus will never forsake us or abandon us. Jesus will pitch his tent where we are. And we are called and invited to return that loyalty and love, to abide with Jesus as Jesus abides in us. And that relationship, that abiding, is nurtured and nourished by feasting on the Word. We feast on the Word made flesh, and that Word lives in us and with us and keeps us with Christ just as Christ is in us.

Jesus said, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh. Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. Just as the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats me will live because of me.” May we always eat of this meal, and abide in Christ forever.

Amen.

Quid Pro Quo?

Tenth Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 18, Year B, August 1, 2021

2 Samuel 11:26—12:13a
Psalm 51:1-12
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

The people said to Jesus, “What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing?” This is, of course, just the day after he fed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish. And he’s also been healing people. That’s why they’re seeking him out—they want him to continue to feed and heal them. Free food! That’s a pretty great deal, especially for poor people in a time when to be poor meant being constantly on the edge of starvation and/or slavery. Greco-Roman society was designed to exploit the lower classes. Under Roman rule, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer and a lot of people starved, or had to sell themselves into slavery to avoid starving. They need food—desperately!—and Jesus has shown he can provide it. Food is one of the deepest needs of all living things. The fact that they are turning to God for help is not a problem. God is always concerned with the bodily needs of all creatures. This is why God provided manna in the wilderness to the Hebrews as he led them from slavery into freedom. This is why “providing for the hungry” has been one of the most basic commands God has had for God’s people since the very beginning. Indeed, one of the ways you can tell there was a problem with society in Jesus’ day was the number of people in dire poverty, the number of people who were starving. The prophets tell us repeatedly that “how are poor people faring” is one of the most important criteria God uses to judge a society. Food is important, and God’s desire is for all people to have a share in the abundance God gives.

So the fact that they are asking for food is not a problem—far from it, under the circumstances, they should be turning to Jesus for help. The problem is their attitude. Food? Great. Healing? Awesome. They’ll take all of that they can get. Any sort of deeper relationship? Not interested. What have you done for us lately, Jesus? Can you do something even more spectacularly miraculous than you’ve already done? If so, maybe we’ll follow you. As long as we don’t get a better offer. Give us what we want, and we’ll follow you—as long as it’s on our terms, as long as the rewards keep flowing.

I like to call this the “vending machine in the sky” theory of God. All relationships in this model are strictly transactional. Pray the right prayer, say the right words, get the right miracle in response. Just like a vending machine. Put in the money, punch the button, get the candy bar you want. And on the surface, it looks fine! People are praying, they’re asking God for help, and those are things we should be doing. Except there’s nothing deeper, no greater relationship, no growth in faith and love, no deep roots in God’s love and in the community of faith. Everything looks very pious, as long as you don’t notice that the relationship only exists for the believer to get something. As if the point of spirituality is a quantifiable benefit. As if God’s only relevance is to dispense the thing you want when you want it and how you want it.

Now, if you’re sitting there wondering, “but shouldn’t we turn to God for help?” you’re missing the point. Consider other relationships in your life: friendships, marriages, relationships with your parents and children, relationships with your co-workers. Were any of those relationships on a strictly quid-pro-quo basis? Where everything depended on the exchange of favors and what you could do for one another? Think about those relationships: were they very strong? Did they last long? What happened when you or that other person had major problems to deal with? That relationship probably crashed and burned pretty quickly. Because that sort of relationship based an exchange of favors only works when both sides have favors to exchange. When one or both people have problems in their lives, that relationship is going to fall apart. And it probably only lasted as long as you happened to be in proximity to that person, too—as soon as you weren’t seeing them every day, it probably ended fairly quickly. Yes, we should turn to God for help, as we should be able to turn to all our other relationships for help when we need it. But if that’s the only basis for the relationship, it’s not going to be strong enough and resilient enough to depend on when we need it most. In order for a relationship to stand up to stress and strain and changes in your life, it has to be based on something more than “what can I get out of this?” It has to be based on mutual affection and trust and care.

Our relationship with God is no different. If your spirituality is based on “what has God done for me lately?” it will inevitably fail when you need it most. It will not last through troubles; it will probably not even last through a major life change. It will not be that interdependence Paul describes in our second reading, where we are one body with many members, united in truth and love. Each body part is different, but together they are much greater than any of them can be alone. Each part has a different role, and in fact if they were all the same it wouldn’t work. The way the Christian life is supposed to work, we believers are the body together, and Christ is the head. And what brings us together in baptism and faith is not the hope of material blessings, or even spiritual blessings. The strongest faith is not based on “God will give me material blessings if I serve him” or even “God will give me spiritual blessings such as salvation if I serve him” but rather, “God loves me, and I love God, and I love God’s people and creation as God loves me.” That is the foundation that will endure, no matter what. That is the good soil that will help us grow in faith and love. That is the relationship the God is calling us into. That is the bread of life that will sustain us, body and soul, through the best and the worst that life has to give. And if we treat God as a vending machine, if we base our relationship with God on a quid pro quo of calculation, we will not have that bread of life, even if we look pious on the outside, and even if God supplies all our material needs.

I think this is one reason why our churches today are so empty and shrinking. Our society is built on the premise of quid pro quo. Of return on investment. Of figuring out what the smartest and most efficient way to get what you want and need is, and then doing it. That’s what consumerism is. That’s what we base our economy on, our education system, our political system, all of it. And it can be very practical and efficient, financially. But if you apply it to spirituality, it is dead and stifling and lifeless. But that’s how our society shapes us and trains us to think. So it’s how people approach God, and the church, and their spirituality. What’s the return on investment of a morning spent in church, or an evening spent reading the Bible? Will it make me measurably happier the next day? Will it be more entertaining than other things I could be doing with that time? Will it do more for my social life or my kid’s college applications than a morning spent playing on a sports team?

The thing is, if you think of your faith life like that, there will always be something that has a greater immediate measurable impact. There will always be something you can do that will be more likely to help your career, or your hobbies, or your kids’ or grandkids’ college applications, or your social life. Problem is, while those other things you do instead might be good, what they won’t do is feed your soul. And your soul needs feeding just like your body does. Your relationship with God needs tending, just like your relationships with others do. God provides abundantly, but we don’t follow God for the miracles or because he’s got something we want. We follow God because God loves us, and wants a relationship with us, and wants to nourish us body and soul and help us grow in faith and love. We follow God because there are things deeper and more important than the world around us acknowledges. We follow Jesus because he is the bread of life, which feeds us and sustains us and gives us a sure foundation and helps us grow. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Lying To Ourselves

Seventh Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 15, Year B, July 11, 2021

2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

I remember lying to my mother when I was a small child. It was evening, and she was getting me ready to take my shower; I was too young to shower by myself. And I had done something I wasn’t supposed to do—I don’t remember what it was, I just remember the feeling of knowing Mom wasn’t going to be happy when she knew about it. But I didn’t understand why the thing was bad, so I didn’t feel bad about it. I just wanted to not get punished for it. I wanted to cover it up. So I tried to lie! But, because I was still a small child and small children are not very good at lying, Mom figured it out, and I got in trouble not just for doing the bad thing, but for lying about it.

Unfortunately, as we grow older, we get better at lying to hide our sins. Not just lying to others, but lying to ourselves. Have you ever noticed that human beings only like the truth when it tells us what we want to hear? This is especially true of the rich and powerful. The more money you have, the more connections you have, the more friends you have, the easier it is to just … make unpleasant truths go away. The very rich can lean on politicians or public servants they’ve given money to, to silence those who trouble them. Or they can hire lawyers. On a lower level, pillars of the community can call on friends and allies within the community to block or punish those who say things they don’t want to hear. Sometimes, we’ll enact laws to prevent uncomfortable truths from being said. In the last year, several states have enacted laws which allow protesters to be charged as terrorists, even if the protester in question has committed no crime. We don’t like to hear the cries of those who have been treated unjustly—not if it would require us to change our ways. We don’t like to admit our sin, our guilt. We don’t like to admit the ways our society is flawed and broken—and we especially don’t like to admit it when we benefit from those flaws, at the expense of others.

There is an idyllic little town in Montana, remote and rural, that is much beloved by its residents … at least by its white residents. But things were much worse for local Native Americans, who were constantly harassed in a wide variety of ways. A few years ago, a Montana newspaper wrote an article about this, sharing many true stories about the racism in the town. It wasn’t that every white person did racist things, but those who didn’t do racist things turned a blind eye to the actions of those who did. When the story was published, pretty much every white resident of town was furious, and many harassed or attacked the reporter and the newspaper in question. Not because the article was wrong, but because it was right, and they didn’t want to face the truth about themselves.

And while this tendency to ignore or silence inconvenient truths is easy to see in our opponents and hard to see in ourselves, it is a universal human tendency. So, for example, Evangelical leaders rage against the slightest hint of immorality in Democrats and excuse it in Republicans. At the same time, feminists rush to condemn conservatives who harass women, while keeping silence about liberals who do the same. It’s not that every uncomfortable or unpleasant accusation anyone could make is always true. It’s that whether or not we are willing to listen depends more on who the target is than the truth of the matter. Someone or something we like? Can’t be true, and only a terrible person would believe it. Someone or something we dislike? Must be true, and only an idiot would disbelieve it.

Herod, in our Gospel reading, is a prime example. Note, this is not the same Herod who tried to kill Jesus as a baby; that Herod, called Herod the Great, was dead by this point. This is his son, Herod Antipas. The whole family was messed up. Assassination plots were common, as were various other forms of dangerous intrigue. Herodias was first married to another one of the original Herod’s sons, and had a child by him. Then she divorced that guy and married Herod Antipas, the current ruler of Gallilee. Her first husband’s brother. Oh, and did I mention that Herodias was a granddaughter of Herod the Great? That’s why she’s called Herodias! She was the niece of both her first husband and her second husband, Herod Antipas. The whole thing is really skeevy on multiple levels. And John the Baptist said so. This is not any great moral insight, or complex social matter. It is pretty simple. The family of the Herods was messed up, and did terrible things to one another, and Herodias’s marriages were a part of that, and anybody could see this plain truth.

Herod Antipas knew it was the truth. Herodias knew it was the truth. Everyone knew it was the truth! But Herod was the ruler, and so he could silence people who said things he didn’t want to hear. And so John the Baptist was thrown in jail for telling the truth. Now, Herod was conflicted about this, because he knew it was wrong, and he knew John the Baptist was a prophet, and he even liked John the Baptist on a personal level! He could have admitted that he had done something wrong. And if he didn’t want to admit his guilt, he could have just ignored the whole issue. After all, it’s not like a backwoods preacher like John could seriously threaten a ruler appointed by the Roman Empire. But no, he chose to arrest John to prevent him from telling the truth.

And then Herodias got involved. Herodias didn’t care who was telling the truth, she cared that John was an inconvenience, and she wanted him out of the way. I suspect she may also have resented that her husband listened to a guy who condemned their marriage. And so she plotted to have John the Baptist killed. She used her daughter, Herod Antipas’ niece-and-stepdaughter, to abuse a promise Herod had made. Now, at this point, Herod had two choices: keep his promise and kill an innocent man, or break his promise and not kill an innocent man. And he chose to kill an innocent man! I’m sure he had a ton of reasons to justify his decision. I mean, it’s important to keep your word, especially when you’re a powerful man, and it would make him look strong to his court, to execute someone who challenged him, and a bunch of other justifications. But it was still wrong. I wish I could tell you that this sort of behavior is rare, but it isn’t. It is as common as dirt. And while I doubt anyone in this room has ever had anyone killed to cover up their own sin, we are all of us guilty of lesser forms of this same crime.

And it’s wrong. This tendency of humans to sin, to attack those who confront us with evidence of our sin, to use every power we have to silence those who tell us things we don’t want to hear, is wrong. It’s what lets evil grow, as people escape the consequences of their sin and prosper despite it. If we could change human nature so that we didn’t do this any more, our world would be a much better place. But we can’t. There is only one who has the power to change us, and that is God, through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is why our worship services start with a confession. Because we need it. Because we sin, and we justify and cover up our sin, and even with the power of God, we can’t change if we don’t acknowledge that we need to change. If we just cover up our sin and keep going, everything will stay the same: the sin, the brokenness it causes, our separation from God and one another. May we learn to confess, so that God can change our hearts and minds.

Amen.

Great King David

5th Sunday After Pentecost, Lectionary 13, Year B

July 4, 2021

2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10

Psalm 48

2 Corinthians 12:2-10

Mark 6:1-13

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen,

Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

Humans have a tendency to look at the past with rose-tinted glasses. We often remember the stuff we liked, while glossing over the stuff we didn’t. “Back in my day” is a common refrain in conversations about modern problems. Sometimes, if things are perceived to be particularly bad, this nostalgia will focus on historical time periods that we never experienced ourselves. And this is a fairly universal tendency, one you can find in most cultures around the world today and in most historical periods. In the Bible, the period that tends to be the focus of this nostalgic adoration is the reign of King David, because he was the best king Israel and Judah ever had. But, let’s face it, that’s not saying much. David had moments of brilliance when his faith and devotion to God helped him work great deeds and lead God’s people well, but he also had times when he was truly terrible. It’s just that his successors had all or most of the terribleness without any of the good parts. So people lift David up as this perfect paragon. They ignore or gloss over the bad parts, and turn the good ones into these shining mythic moments of awesome. But David wasn’t perfect; David was human, just like you and me. He had good points and he had bad points, times he succeeded and times he failed, just like anyone else. He started off so well, and then couldn’t maintain that great height of faithfulness. Our first reading today is the hinge, the turning point. The greatest of David’s deeds and faithfulness are behind him. His greatest failures are all yet to come. And what happens in todays reading? David becomes king of all the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

Let’s recap a bit. When God brought his people out of slavery into the promised land, they didn’t have kings. They had leaders appointed by God known as judges, and they had priests like Eli and Samuel who heard God’s word. But that wasn’t enough to keep people living good and faithful lives, and there were a lot of problems and violence and sinfulness. So the people asked for a king instead, and God reluctantly gave it to them. Saul, the first king, had some problems and didn’t listen to God or God’s prophets, so God anointed David instead. David started out with a bang, killing the giant Goliath who menaced the people of Israel. Saul got jealous, and David had to flee. While he was in exile, he still kept faith with both God and his people, doing the right thing even when it was extremely difficult and nobody would blame him for taking a more expedient route. As Saul became more and more paranoid, David gained supporters, and eventually there was a civil war, in which Saul and his son Jonathan died. David became king of Judah, the southern kingdom, and ruled it for seven years, and then the northern kingdom, Israel, asked him to become their king, as well. The two halves were united. And David started out as a good ruler. (This is the bit in our second reading today.) But by the end of his reign, he had committed crimes of rape and murder and other evils, and was such a bad father that his son Absalom started a literal civil war against him.

So what was the difference? What turned the great, faithful, moral young man into someone who did such terrible things? Yes, power corrupts, but why does it corrupt, and why was David so corruptible? And what protected him from such corruption in his youth? Our reading gives us the answer: young David was a shepherd. That is, his highest duty was to protect and guide and keep safe the ones under his care. That was true when he was a literal shepherd, keeping his father’s sheep while his father and older brothers went off to war. And it was also true when he was first made king, and treated the whole nation as his flock, to be protected and guided and kept safe and cared for. That’s what God called David to do: to be a shepherd over Israel and Judah. That’s why the leaders of Israel asked him to be their king—they saw that he was a shepherd, a good one, chosen by God, to lead them faithfully and well. A man who would choose to be faithful even when that meant doing things the hard way. A man who would choose what was good for his people instead of his own self-interest. A man who would do what was right instead of what was easy. As a young man, David did all of that and more. And that’s why God made him king.

Problem was, the longer David was king, the more he forgot his roots. The longer he was king, the less he acted like a shepherd and the more he acted like a dictator. Instead of trusting God, he trusted political maneuvering. Instead of asking God for guidance, he learned to play the games of the powerful. He started to care more about his wealth, comfort, power, and pleasure than about anything else. Instead of doing the right thing, he did the convenient thing. Instead of acting like a shepherd, caring for his people and protecting them, he started thinking that he had the right to use and abuse them for his own pleasure and convenience. He thought that being anointed by God meant that anything he wanted to do was right, instead of realizing that being anointed by God meant he had special duty to follow God’s commands even more closely than ordinary people. Instead of shaping the royal court to be faithful to God, David allowed the royal court to shape him to be less faithful.

When God blesses people, it’s not for their own sake. God blesses people so they can share that blessing with others. When God frees people it’s not so that they can do whatever they want, it’s so that they can live good and faithful lives. As God’s people, we have more responsibilities, not fewer; a greater call to act with justice and mercy, not a lesser one. We are not called to be selfish; we are called to be generous. We are not called to be suspicious, we are called to be compassionate. We are not called to tear one another down, we are called to build one another up. We are not called to be expedient, we are called to be faithful. We are not called to be tyrants, we are called to be shepherds. When David remembered that, he was an incredible king and leader. When he forgot that, when he let pride and selfishness and expediency and favoritism rule, he was a terrible king who did terrible things.

I think that’s an important thing to remember as we celebrate the Fourth of July. We have a tendency to treat American history like we do the stories of David: ignoring the bad parts and heightening the good parts, instead of looking fairly and honestly at all of it. Even worse, we tend to follow David’s lead in how we think about power and influence and politics in our country. We don’t have a king, but we do have elected leaders. We’re the ones who choose them! And we have a responsibility to choose people who will be good shepherds, and replace them if they stop being good shepherds. And that means good shepherds to all Americans, not just good to us and those like us. God has given us many blessings, and with those blessings, we have a responsibility to share those blessings and use them wisely for the benefit of all God’s children. One of those blessings is democracy. In a democracy, every one of us has a measure of political and social power that we exercise every time we vote, whether on a local or national level, and through other means like contacting our representatives.

Like David, we have power in the world, though on a lesser scale. Like David, we can use it for good or for evil. Like David, we are called to use our power for the good of all God’s people, instead of for our own selfish gain. And like David, it is very easy to let ourselves be shaped by the world around us instead of by God’s call. May we learn to be faithful to God’s call.

Amen.

The Perfect Christian Community

Second Sunday of Easter, Year B

April 11, 2021

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

1 John 1:1—2:2

John 20:19-31

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen,

Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

Whenever I’m in a Bible study and today’s reading from Acts pops up, I always know that sooner or later someone is going to bring up communism. Despite the fact that this passage was written 1800 years before communism was created, the idea of communal sharing of resources is so fraught in our culture that most Americans can’t really hear what this passage is saying until they’ve been reassured that it isn’t advocating for communism. Which is a worrying statement about the relative importance people place on Biblical teachings vs. their own political beliefs. But, anyway, communism is about government control of resources, and this is more about making sure that everyone in the community has enough to live on. If you read into the next chapter, which is where this perfect sharing falls apart, Peter affirms that those who own property have a right to it, and to the proceeds from selling it; the problem is lying about how much they got, so they look more generous than they really are.

This perfect community based on grace and sharing and the word of God in Christ Jesus didn’t last long; selfishness and dishonesty came in soon enough. Humans can’t maintain perfection, or at least we won’t be able to until God’s kingdom comes and all the dead are raised and all creation is made anew. But there’s still a lot we can learn from this one brief shining moment where, for a short time, Jesus’ followers were actually able to live completely as God calls us to.

First, it’s a reminder that all the economic laws in the Hebrew Bible, what we call the “Old Testament,” are there for a reason. To quote Deuteronomy 15, “Give generously, and do not let your heart be grieved when you do so. And because of this the LORD your God will bless you in all your work and in everything to which you put your hand. For there will never cease to be poor in the land; that is why I am commanding you to open wide your hand to your brother and to the poor and needy in your land.” There are all kinds of laws in the Old Testament about making sure that everyone has enough to live on and being generous to those in need. For example, farmers are forbidden from harvesting their entire crop; some must be left for poor people and animals to glean. For another example, every seven years there was supposed to be a complete forgiveness of all debt, so that those who had fallen into hard times could make a fresh start. For another example, in addition to allowing the poor to glean, everyone was supposed to bring ten percent of their harvest—and the best ten percent, at that—to the Temple, where it would pay for both the running of the temple but would also be given to the poor and needy in a sort of welfare system.

And there are many more provisions in the Hebrew Bible to ensure that those who have little do not have too little, and those who have much do not have too much. It’s not about making everyone the same, it’s about making sure that everyone has enough to live and thrive on. And, crucially, none of this depends on whether or not you liked or approved of any particular poor person; it’s not dependent on the moral state of the needy. It’s also not dependent on rich and middle-class people feeling generous. Rather, it was set up to be a system that everyone in society followed so that no one fell through the cracks. This was such an important spiritual and social factor that for several of the prophets, the economic state of the poor was a crucial indicator of how well Israel and Judah were doing. If poor people are oppressed, if they are crushed by debt and hunger, if rich people cheat those with whom they do business, if the courts do not uphold the rights of the lowest people in society, then something is very wrong. Today’s reading from Acts is a reminder that while we don’t follow the laws of the Hebrew Bible, the underlying ethics of caring for the poor are absolutely still part of our call as followers of Jesus Christ.

Second, this passage shows us how that perfect community came about. It shows us what the necessary preconditions were for it, however brief a time that it lasted. And there are two conditions: testimony to the resurrection of Jesus, and grace. Those are the two things that allow the community to exist together.

 Let’s talk about what testimony means. Testimony means you tell what you have seen and heard. It’s not about being eloquent, or having the best arguments, or knowing all the deep theological points. It’s pretty simple: tell people what you have seen and heard. In this case, tell people what you have seen and heard about Jesus’ resurrection. Now, I have a master’s degree in divinity, and Lutherans tend to prize education, especially for pastors. There are a lot of things that formal study of theology are important for. But to build a Christian community, the most important thing is not how learned your theology is, but rather how often you tell the story of Jesus. Those first Christians had eye-witness views of the Resurrection and Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearances, which we don’t; but we do have their testimony written down, in the Gospels. And we have testimony of our own to give; we are witnesses to the power of God in our lives and in the world. One of the things our conservative siblings do better than us is emphasize the testimony of ordinary Christians, teaching people to see and talk about how they have experienced the presence of God. Such testimony builds faith within the community, and is a good witness to the people outside the community. It makes a difference. It reminds us who we are, and whose we are. It helps us see ourselves as part of the larger story of God’s work in the world. We are not just here because we like each other, and we’re not just here for charity, and we’re not just here because we like music, and we’re not just here because we have nothing better to do on a Sunday morning than show up. We are here because we have experienced God’s power in Christ Jesus. And we should talk about that! We should share the stories of what God has done for us and for all of creation!

The other thing they had, those first Christians, is grace. Great grace. Lots of grace. The grace of God, and grace for one another. Grace as both a gift from God, but also as a truth and reality that they lived by. Grace is love, freely given and freely accepted. It’s compassion for weakness, and generosity towards need. It’s a free gift that is worth more than anything you could ever possibly buy. We receive grace from God, through the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus, and are supposed to extend it to one another. It’s about assuming the best, instead of the worst. It’s about letting our love and hope and joy take the lead instead of our annoyance and fear and jealousy and anger and selfishness.

God is full of grace, and shows no partiality with it, but humans are a different story. How much compassion and love we are willing to extend varies with a lot of factors: how much we like someone, what we gain or lose from it, how much like us they are, how tired we are, and many other factors. We tell ourselves that being suspicious is a good thing, that judging people is what God would want us to do. Yet we are told time and again that the most important thing about how we treat one another is not how we judge others—judgment belongs to God—but how we love others. How much we let the grace of God shine through us, overflow from our lives into the lives of others.

And it’s witness and grace together that bring the believers into such an amazing fellowship with one another. Without love, the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection is just a story, with no weight in our lives. Without the witness of the Resurrection, love is nice but insufficient against all the evils in the world. Only with witness and love together is transformation possible. Only with witness and love together could the first community of believers live in the sort of harmony and generosity as we see in our reading from Acts. And no, it doesn’t last; the peak they reached was not sustainable. But it mattered, and it made a difference.

Amen.

Surprised by Life

Easter, Year B, April 1, 2021

Acts 10:34-43,
Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24,
1 Corinthians 15:1-11,
Mark 16:1-8

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

The Gospel of Mark originally ended in a really weird place. The women find the empty tomb, and are told that Jesus has risen. It’s a miracle so great they couldn’t even imagine it well enough to hope for it. They are told to share the good news of what they have seen, and to tell the disciples that Jesus is going ahead of them back to Galilee. And, in the wake of this overwhelmingly good news, in the wake of this miracle, in the wake of joy and hope breaking in to their world … they flee in terror. They were fine with death. They didn’t like death, they hated it, but they knew how to deal with it. New life? Resurrection? An empty tomb? That sent them home in fear and confusion. And that’s where the Gospel of Mark originally ended, in the place where our reading today ends: with the women fleeing in fear, not telling anyone the good news they can’t bring themselves to trust. It wasn’t until a century or two after the Gospel was written that a happier ending was tacked on, with Jesus appearing to the disciples and them beginning to spread the word of the Resurrection.

But I think there is something to learn from the original ending. It’s easy to say, from the outside, that of course the women should have been joyful. Of course they should have been able to react immediately to the new reality. Of course they should have been able to turn on a dime from the deepest grief of their lives to the greatest joy. Of course they should have immediately begun spreading the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection far and wide. The thing is, most humans can’t change like that on a dime. When you experience a massive change in your life, it takes time to figure out how to respond, how to think and feel about it.

Human beings can get used to just about anything. If you experience it long enough, anything—even the worst things—can become normal. Pain, abuse, grief, fear, suffering … if they go on long enough, your body and mind adjust to it and you stop being able to really imagine what life would be like without those burdens. And then when that burden is lifted, you have to figure out how to live without it. And it’s good! It’s wonderful! But it’s weird, and it takes time. For example, we’re not through to the end of the pandemic just yet, and we won’t be until most of the population is vaccinated and people aren’t dying of covid any longer. But even when everyone is vaccinated, there are going to be a lot of people who don’t take simple things like going to the store or to a restaurant for granted any longer, people who will feel uncomfortable being in public in a crowd even after it’s completely safe. A year of isolation takes a toll and will leave a mark. The women at the empty tomb—they were used to death. They were used to grief. They were used to pain, and sin, and death, and broken lives and broken people. They knew how to deal with death! They came prepared!

And they were surprised by life, instead. They were surprised that the massive stone had been lifted away, the grave-clothes cast aside, the body that should be decaying and rotten transformed into new life. They were surprised to find that what they had thought was the end of the story was, in fact, the beginning. They were surprised to find that evil had been defeated and the kingdom of God was near. They were surprised by hope, by joy, by possibility, by old certainties being overthrown and new possibilities blossoming around them. And so they ran away in fear, and didn’t tell anyone just yet.

Which begs the question: what burdens are we prepared for? What burdens do we take for granted? What does the resurrection and empty tomb look like in our lives? Now, this may look different for everyone; in some cases it might be very personal. Take a moment and think about what burdens you’re bearing. Think about the burdens and fears that weigh heavy on your heart and your body. What problems and evils you just accept because they seem inevitable. And then imagine those burdens gone. Because that’s what resurrection does; that’s what the empty tomb promises. Jesus’ resurrection is the first part of it, and that would be miraculous on its own. But wait, there’s more.

Jesus is resurrected, but Jesus’ resurrection is the first step in the larger resurrection of the world. Just as Jesus rose from the grave, one day all those who have died will rise. The powers of sin and death have been broken, and they will be utterly destroyed. All sin and evil will be banished, all the pain and grief and brokenness and loss will be healed, the entire cosmos and everyone in it will be made new in Christ Jesus our Lord. His tomb is the first to be emptied, but it will not be the last. That’s what the resurrection means! All the old certainties, all the painful, horrible things we’re used to—their power over us is broken. And there is work to do. The messenger in the empty tomb told Jesus’ followers to go home, that Jesus would be with them, and that there would be things to do, because the empty tomb promised God’s victory over sin and death, but the fullness of God’s kingdom is not quite here yet.

We are living, right now, in that empty tomb. We know that Jesus is risen. We know that while sin and death and evil seem really powerful right now, they have already been defeated. Their days are numbered. God has won, bringing life out of death and forgiveness and reconciliation out of sin and healing out of hurt and hope out of fear. God has won, and God’s kingdom is near. It’s not here quite yet, but the seeds have been planted in us and around us, and God will keep growing them and planting new seeds until that day when the harvest comes and all the dead are raised and the living and the dead will be judged.

Like those first women at the tomb, we have been told that there is hope. We have been told that there is new life. We have been told that the power of death has been broken. And yet, a lot of the time we find it just as hard to believe as they did. We are used to injustice. We are used to death. We are used to pain and grief. We are used to fear. And we don’t know how to deal with resurrection. And so we say ‘he is risen’ and continue to live our lives as if sin and death and brokenness are the ultimate powers in the world. We say ‘he is risen’ and go back to our ordinary lives as if the resurrection makes no difference. We see that the tomb is empty, and we don’t understand. We are afraid because we are so used to the burdens we bear that we can’t imagine what it would be like if those burdens were lifted. We are a lot more like those women than we would like to think.

And yet, even in our fear and disbelief, there is hope. Because the women fled in terror, and told nobody what they experienced … but that fear didn’t last. Their silence didn’t last, either. That’s how we know the story, two thousand years later. They worked through their fear and terror and disbelief, they opened themselves up to the power of God, they let the new life of Christ into their hearts, and they told the story. And that story spread, and was handed down, and written down, and treasured throughout the generations. Over and over again, through the centuries, people have experienced the power of the risen Christ, and the new life he brings. There is death in the world, but death is not the final word. There is sin, but the power of sin has been broken. There is fear, but the love and faith and hope of God is stronger. We will all die, but we will be raised as Christ has been raised. The tomb is empty; the kingdom of God is near; Christ is risen, and he is with us, and he is at work in us and in the world around us. Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Loving All

Maundy Thursday, Year B, April 1, 2021

Exodus 12:1-14,
Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19,
1 Corinthians 11:23-26,
John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

Our Gospel reading has a chunk taken out of the middle of it. This is done for practical reasons; the Gospel of John is very, very long, and there are often times when a whole story is simply too long to read in worship in its entirety. In the Gospel of John, the Last Supper takes up five whole chapters, not including Jesus’ arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. So we condense, we take the important parts, and leave the rest of the story for other worship services and Bible studies. We’ll hear more from Jesus’ Maundy Thursday message in Easter and at Pentecost. But tonight, we focus in on two things: the foot-washing, when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, and the commandment to love one another. After all, the commandment to love one another is what the day is named for. “Maundy” comes from the Latin word “Mandatum,” which means commandment. Jesus commands us to love one another.

The thing is, Judas Iscariot, the one who betrayed Jesus? He’s included in the footwashing. He’s there, and Jesus knows that he is about to betray him. He gets his feet washed, and Jesus tells him to leave, and night falls, and then Jesus tells his disciples to love one another. Knowing that one of them is a traitor, knowing that one of them has left their fellowship, knowing that death is going to result from Judas’ choices, Jesus still tells his followers to love one another. Jesus doesn’t say “love one another, except for Judas, that rat.” Jesus doesn’t say “love one another, except for enemies and people who betray you.” Jesus says ‘I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.’

And Jesus doesn’t mean just saying they love others, either; Jesus expects them to put that love into action. Jesus gave them an example of what that love looks like when he washed their feet. It’s a love that means that when you see something you can do to help people, you do it. Even when it’s kinda icky, like washing feet. Loving is not just a think you feel, it’s a thing you do. And Jesus, crucially, tells them to love as he has loved them. Jesus loves them enough to empty himself of pride and wash their feet. Jesus loves them enough to be born in human flesh and become truly human. Jesus loves them enough to suffer and die for them.

And, crucially, Judas is included in that love. Judas does something terrible, something evil. Judas knowingly chooses to leave the community and align himself with their enemies. Judas knowingly participates in the machineries of an unjust and cruel empire. Jesus knows that this is wrong, Jesus says that Judas is wrong. This is not a case of pretending Judas’ actions don’t matter, or sweeping them under the rug, or excusing them. Judas was wrong, period, end of story, and there will be consequences for him and for everyone else. And Judas still gets his feet washed like everyone else. Judas is still part of Jesus’ love … and if the disciples are supposed to love as Jesus does, that means the disciples are supposed to love Judas, too.

What does it mean to love your enemies? What does it mean to love people who have hurt you, betrayed you? To love people who still have the power to hurt and betray you, people who have not repented, as Judas has not yet repented at this point? A lot of times when people say we should love or forgive those who hurt us, what they really mean is that we should allow those people to keep hurting us, or we should just sweep their bad deeds under the rug and pretend it never happened. That is not what Jesus is commanding, here. Judas is wrong, tragically wrong, and it is a deep and total betrayal. Jesus isn’t excusing his actions. But at the same time, Judas is part of the sinful world Jesus has come to redeem.

This is a hard thing for us to grasp. How do we love people who have genuinely done bad things? How do we love people who have hurt us? How do we hold people accountable while loving them? How do we put that love into action in a world which is more prone to hatred and violence and retaliation than to love?

Jesus came to save the cosmos, to save all people. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. Jesus came to usher in the kingdom, to show us what life in God is like. God is love; God is truth; God is justice and mercy both. God is a peace that the world can’t give and doesn’t understand. And my God, the world needs that peace, now more than ever. And the way we get that peace, the way we participate in the kingdom of heaven, the way we live out the salvation that is Jesus’ gift to us, is to love one another as Jesus loved us.

The human instinct when we are hurt is to lash out, to take our pain out on other people, to hurt people as we have been hurt. To hurt people more than they have hurt us. To respond to pain by making more of it. But that will not bring in God’s kingdom. That won’t bring the peace and justice and mercy of God. That won’t give us abundant life. You can’t hurt people into being better; you can’t punish people into making the right choices. Fear of punishment won’t make people good and it won’t make the world a better place. The only thing that will do that is love. Love of God; love of neighbor. Love that looks all the evil in the world straight in the face and says “You do not get a free pass, and you don’t get to rule me, and I am not going to react to you by becoming like you. I am not going to hurt you as you have hurt me. I am going to make a better choice; I am going to make the choice that Jesus commands us to make. I am going to love even when it is hard; I am going to choose to participate in the healing of the world rather than in making more hurt.”

That choice is not easy. And it looks different in different circumstances. You can’t just choose to love someone by rote; you can’t just make the choice once and then never think about it again. You have to ask the question constantly and consistently: what is the loving response to this? How do I love this person even when I don’t want to? How do we receive the blessing of God’s love in Christ Jesus, and then love one another so that the whole world can see it and be transformed by it?

May God fill us with his love, and may we live out that love so that all the world will know that we are his disciples.

Amen.

Repent!

First Sunday after Lent, Year B, February 21, 2021

Genesis 9:8-17
Psalm 25:1-10
1 Peter 3:18-22
Mark 1:9-15

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

Jesus said, “the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” To a modern ear, it sounds exactly like something we would expect a religious leader to say. Very churchy, not political at all. But in Jesus’ day, it would have been shocking, a subversion of the political order. The sort of thing that would have had Jewish people looking over their shoulders to see if a Roman soldier was in earshot. The Kingdom of God—the word Jesus used that is translated as ‘kingdom’ is the exact same word the Roman Empire used to describe itself. To people in Jesus’ day, the ‘kingdom’ meant the Roman Empire which had conquered them. And Jesus is talking about the Kingdom of God, a higher kingdom, a better kingdom … and the kingdom which should have their full allegiance, instead of the Roman Empire. To talk about God’s kingdom being near was to say that the kingdom that held your first allegiance was not the Roman Empire, but God’s empire. That the Emperor you served was God, and not Caesar. Even if you only meant it metaphorically, it was a challenge to Roman authority, Roman law, Roman power. And a Roman hearing it might decide that you weren’t speaking metaphorically, that you were trying to start a rebellion to establish an earthly kingdom that you would then call God’s kingdom. And that would then get you into all sorts of trouble.

And the next phrase was just as politically fraught. ‘Good News’ to us is the Gospel, the Good News of God. The Greek word for Good News is “euangelion”, from which we get the words Evangelism and Evangelical. Side note, while “evangelical” is a term that is most often used in the US to describe a religious and political movement of Christians descended from the Fundamentalists, in a broader sense it simply means any Christian who centers themself around the Gospel, the Good News as taught by Jesus Christ. And it is in that broader sense that the word is in both the name of our congregation and the name of our denomination. It is a reminder and a signal of what we should be: centered around the Good News of God in Christ Jesus.

But the thing is, all of those religious terms developed after Jesus started talking about the Good News. His original hearers wouldn’t have understood those words in the same way we do today. Because, you see, “good news” was a term the Roman Empire used. The Roman Empire was constantly expanding, conquering new lands and adding them to the Empire. And also, people who didn’t like being conquered subjects of the Roman Empire sometimes rose up in rebellion to try and save themselves from Roman occupation. And when the Roman Army won the day—as it almost always did—the commander of the army would send a letter to the Roman Senate and Emperor that would be copied and sent to all corners of the Empire, telling about the glorious victory and how they had crushed any who had dared to defy Rome. And those letters of military might and bragging always started the same way: “Good news!” Because the ‘good news’ that the Roman Empire wanted everyone to believe was that their earthly power was invincible, that the might of their army was always right, that it was futile to challenge them in any way. That was the Gospel of Rome. That was what the kingdom they lived in wanted them to think and live: the Empire of Rome is the greatest power in the world, the arbiter of right and wrong. The Empire of Rome is all-powerful and cannot be challenged or overthrown, and you should conform your hearts and minds to the Empire’s way.

And into the middle of this, Jesus began his ministry, saying “the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” There is a greater kingdom than any worldly kingdom, and it is coming; it is here; it is all around us. Repent—turn away from your sins and be transformed—and believe in the Good News that comes from God, not from any worldly ruler. Live into the reality of God’s kingdom, and use that as a measuring stick and guide for your beliefs and behaviors, instead of the world’s way of thinking.

Now, if you’re thinking to yourself, “what does this mean to us? We live in a Christian nation, so surely we don’t have to worry about challenging the political and cultural world around us,” I have some bad news for you. Even if Christianity still had all the political and cultural weight it used to fifty years ago, Christians being the majority—or even the sum total—of the population has never meant that the society’s beliefs matched what the Bible teaches. Rather, it usually means that the Bible gets twisted to justify what the society already believes. For example, during the Middle Ages, they believed in the Divine Right of Kings. Which basically meant that if you had power and wealth it was because God gave it to you, and if you were poor that was because God had made you poor. So if you were at the bottom of the social pile and you objected to this or tried to make your life better, you were challenging God’s plan for the world. Poor people had to exist, they taught, so that rich people could get spiritual benefit from performing acts of charity. And if you disagreed, if you dreamed of a world in which people were not trapped in the same roles and lives their great-grandparents had been trapped in, you were rebelling against God.

This, by the way, was one of the religious arguments against the American Revolution—the very idea of democracy, of overthrowing the King, was a challenge to God’s authority on Earth, which of course was expressed through the monarch. The American colonists quite rightly dismissed this argument as utterly false and unbiblical … but America had its own false and unbiblical justifications. For centuries, we used Scripture to excuse and even promote slavery. Slavery was big business, very profitable; you won a lot more friends and got a lot more donations if you said it was right and good. So they did. And in the process, constructed a pseudo-Christian ideology of racial purity to claim that white people were inherently superior than Black people, and this was official doctrine in a lot of White Christian churches up through the middle of the 20^th Century—and there are still churches that teach it today. There are a ton of examples, throughout Christian history and our present era, across the political spectrum, of Christians twisting the Bible and Jesus’ teachings to support and justify the culture around them and calling that the Good News, rather than believing in the actual Gospel that Jesus taught.

And Jesus comes, saying “the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The kingdom of God—not a kingdom like the earthly ones you live in. Not a kingdom beset by political winds and social evils, not a kingdom dependent on wealth or power or social rank, not a kingdom built on human culture, but a kingdom built by God, with God’s justice and mercy and love and steadfast faithfulness as its foundation. That kingdom is near, it is here, it is all around us. God is planting the seeds of that kingdom in our hearts and minds; God is turning us around and transforming us so that we can conform ourselves to God instead of to the world’s point of view. Repent: turn around, take God’s hand, let God live in you and through you, let the Holy Spirit guide you through wilderness and temptation and all the evils and problems of the world. Believe in the Good News, that God is here, that God loves us, that God saves and redeems us through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

An Ethic Based On Love

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, January 31, 2021

Deuteronomy 18:15-20
Psalm 111
1 Corinthians 8:1-13
Mark 1:21-28

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

There are places in the Bible that look, on first glance, really irrelevant to modern life, but when you look closer, are actually really important, and our second reading today is one of them. On the surface, it looks like Paul is merely dealing with a question specific to Christians living as a minority in Greco-Roman cities: is it permissible to eat meat sacrificed to an idol? Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had to deal with this question. I’ve never been anywhere that it’s even possible to eat meat sacrificed to idols. I don’t think it’s a common practice in any Native American traditions, and if it was, it probably would not be a rite open to outsiders. While it’s possible that some Asian or African religions include selling meat that came from animals sacrificed in a religious ritual, the chances of my ever going there are pretty small. I am fairly confident that nobody in any congregation I’ve ever been in has ever had to decide whether or not to eat meat sacrificed to idols. The important thing about this passage, however, is not the surface issue, but the logic Paul uses to make his decision. Because that is a logic that we can and should apply to every decision we make. So let’s explore what was at stake, for Paul and for the community of Corinth.

In Greco-Roman cities, only extremely rich people slaughtered their own animals. Animals were expensive; so was meat. So what happened was, people (especially rich people) would give animals to the pagan temples to be sacrificed to various gods, usually trying to get Apollo or Zeus or Athena or whoever to look favorably on them and give them good luck. Or to apologize for having done something that might have offended the god. The animal would be sacrificed by the priests, and they would eat some of the meat themselves, and sell the rest of it as a way of funding the Temple. Or they would offer it to the people worshipping in the temple to eat. In many Greek cities, Corinth among them, the only place an ordinary person could get meat to eat was buying meat from one of the various temples scattered throughout the city dedicated to one god or another. You had a choice: you could eat meat sacrificed to the Greek gods, or you could be a vegetarian. Those were your two options.

Now, the Christian community in Corinth had many factions. People had all sorts of opinions on all sorts of things. Some of them believed that the God of Jesus Christ was the only god in existence, and that all other so-called gods were mere superstition. They didn’t really exist, except as statues. Therefore, it didn’t matter if the animal your meat came from had died by being sacrificed to them; you weren’t worshipping those gods by eating the animal because those gods didn’t even exist. No harm, no foul. There’s no need to go vegetarian, you are not showing disloyalty to Jesus by eating meat, because there’s no worship of the idol involved even if the pagans around you think you’re participating in their worship by eating that lamb chop or mutton or whatever.

Then there are the other Christians. The ones who had only recently come to Christ. The ones who believed that Zeus and Apollo and Athena and all the rest really existed and really were powerful. Most of that group would have been happiest if you could worship Jesus and other gods simultaneously. That way, they didn’t have to stop going to pagan temples with their family and friends, and they didn’t have to worry about offending Zeus or Apollo or Athena by not worshipping them any longer. Who see their fellow Christians buying meat at the Temple and think to themselves, “Oh, so I can worship Jesus and Zeus at the same time!” and go back to worshipping idols, because they think their fellow Christians are doing it.

The Christians who bought meat at the pagan temples had a better theology, a better knowledge of God, than the ones who believed that Apollo and Zeus actually existed. If you knew and believed fully that the Greek gods didn’t really exist and you weren’t worshipping them, buying meat in the pagan temples was not idol worship. They were right! They were free to eat meat sacrificed to idols without it being idolatry! But, as Paul pointed out, whether they were right or wrong was irrelevant. Whether they were free to do it or not was irrelevant. It didn’t matter. Their knowledge and freedom was not the question at hand. The most important question was not “were they right?” or “were they free to do so?” The most important question at hand was “how were their actions affecting their neighbor?” And the answer to that question was, their actions were leading their neighbors into sin and idolatry. And therefore, out of love for their neighbor, they should refrain. They should not do the thing they want—the thing that is, on its own, perfectly fine—because doing it will hurt other people. And Christians are called to love their neighbors, and you cannot claim to love someone while doing something that hurts them.

Martin Luther, founder of Lutheranism, put it this way: “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.” In other words, we are all free in Christ, nobody but God has the authority to tell us what to do or force us to do things against our will. BUT. At the same time, we are called and commanded by God to love and serve our neighbor. All our neighbors, every one of them. Nobody but God can force us to do things, but God tells us to serve others. And that means choosing to sacrifice for the good of others. “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.” We are freed in Christ, and we are supposed to use that freedom to serve. Our goal as Christians is not perfect irresponsibility, but perfect love in service.

Here’s an example for you. For anyone who is not an alcoholic, drinking alcohol in moderation is perfectly fine. It’s not a crime or a sin, there is no moral problem with drinking responsibly. But if someone who is not an alcoholic drinks around someone with an addiction problem, they’re a jerk at best. And if their example tempts the alcoholic to drink and break their sobriety, they’ve done something horrible. They have used their freedom to hurt someone, to do damage to their life and heart and soul and body. They have used their freedom selfishly, and that is not why God gives us freedom.

I’m sure you can think of many other examples. The ones that come to mind most vividly right now are things that have happened over the last year. Take masks and basic social distancing precautions. There are so many people whose response to them has been “Yeah, but you can’t make me! I’m free, nobody can force me to do anything!” So they don’t wear masks, or they have large parties indoors, or whatever, and then people get sick and the disease spreads and maybe people even die because of it. The most important question is not “are you free to do it?” but “what is the loving thing to do?”

Then there’s issues of racism and sexism and discrimination based on disabilities or other factors. And I’m not talking about the big in-your-face stuff like name calling and hate speech, I’m talking about the more subtle stuff of minorities being less likely to get hired for positions they’re qualified for because they just don’t fit in as well. Or getting labelled as “difficult” and “humorless” because they don’t laugh at jokes meant to belittle them. Or being more likely to get the cops called on them for minor things. If you don’t face such discrimination yourself, the easiest thing is to just accept the system the way it is. You have the freedom to turn a blind eye to injustice that doesn’t affect you. But that is not what God calls us to do, siblings in Christ; God calls us to love one another and see that all people receive justice and mercy. “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject of all, subject to all.” We are freed in Christ, and we are supposed to use that freedom to serve. Our goal as Christians is not perfect irresponsibility, but perfect love in service.

Sometimes the most loving thing to do is to give up something that you would enjoy for the sake of others. For the Corinthians, that meant giving up meat. For people with friends who are alcoholic, that means not throwing parties with alcohol. For people during a pandemic, that means wearing a mask and taking proper precautions even when you don’t want to. For people living in a society where injustice exists, that means being aware of injustice and taking a stand against it even when that’s hard. May we use our Christian freedom in Christ’s service, and in service to our neighbor.

Amen.

The True Miracle

Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, January 24, 2021

Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:5-12
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

The thing most people remember about the story of Jonah is the big fish part, but that’s not actually the point of the story. Let’s start with some background: the story of Jonah takes place in the middle period of the Old Testament, when they were living in the Holy Land as two nations, Israel in the North and Judah in the South. Now, during this period, the people of Israel and Judah would regularly go astray and stop living as God intended for them. They would let society become unjust and cruel, oppressing those on the bottom of society for the enrichment of those on the top of it. They would choose selfishness and violence over love and cooperation and harmony. The prophets would come and warn them that if they did not return to the Lord—if they did not begin to live in the way God called them to live—then God would be angry and there would be consequences. When their sin was pointed out to them, God’s people closed their ears and justified themselves instead of confessing and repenting. And so, in 722 BC, the empire of Assyria conquered Israel, carried off much of its population into exile, replacing them with foreigners. Those who went into exile at that time never returned; the ancient nation of Israel was gone forever. In 587, Judah was conquered by the Babylonian Empire, and some people did return from that exile. The Old Testament as we know it took shape during and after the Babylonian exile, as sacred writings were adapted and edited and sacred stories written down and collected. The book of Judah was written during this time, after the end of the Babylonian Exile, but it takes place centuries earlier, before the Assyrian Empire conquered Israel.

That’s very important to remember. The book of Jonah takes place before either exile, before either Israel or Judah had ever been conquered. But it was written down after the exiles. Everyone who heard or read the story knew about them. They knew, in explicit, excruciating detail, just how terrible conquest and exile was. They knew just how bad the Assyrian Empire was. And that matters, because the city of Nineveh that Jonah was commanded to go preach to? That huge city? Yeah. Nineveh was the capital of the Assyrian Empire. Israel hadn’t been conquered yet when the story of Jonah took place, but Assyria was expanding in their direction and the writing was on the wall. The only thing that would stop Assyria from conquering Israel eventually would be if God intervened … and God’s people were not listening to God’s commands for how to live their lives.

Put yourself in Jonah’s shoes. Your nation is under threat. Partly because they are too stupid and too corrupt to do the right thing. And then God asks you to go to the people who are threatening your home and family, and minister to them. To bring them God’s Word—the word that God’s own people are ignoring. To go to a people you hate, and give them an opportunity to save themselves. Would you do it? Seriously. Think about that for a minute. The easy, pious thing to do is to say “well, of course I would follow God’s command!” but would you really do it? It’s easy to say we’d do the right thing when it’s someone else; when we ourselves get called by God to do something difficult, or something we don’t want to do, it’s a lot harder, and it’s really easy to find justifications for ignoring God’s call.

And that’s what Jonah did. He ran. He got on a boat heading away from Nineveh, instead of towards it. And so God sent a storm, and Jonah got thrown overboard, and swallowed by the fish, and repented, and got vomited up on the beach. And that’s where today’s first lesson starts: Jonah’s second call, after he’s tried to run away and failed. God says to him, “go to Nineveh” and he goes. But not happily; he goes and does what God commands in the most minimal way possible. He marches into Nineveh, gives the shortest and worst sermon ever, probably hoping that they won’t listen to him. Because Jonah doesn’t want them to listen. Jonah wants them to keep on being terrible so that God will destroy them. Jonah is all in favor of hellfire and brimstone. Jonah wants to see Nineveh burn. After all, don’t they deserve it? Hasn’t their Empire done enough evil things to warrant their whole capital being burnt off the map? Won’t that spare God’s own people, Israel, from having to deal with the consequences of their own sins?

But the people of Nineveh repent, from the Emperor on down to the cattle in their fields. They stop, they turn from their evil, and they are spared. And Jonah is furious. Jonah is so angry at God, he is angry because God is merciful. He is angry because God cares about Nineveh. He is angry because his enemies have repented and received God’s mercy, while his own people have not. But God tells Jonah that the people of Nineveh are God’s people too: yes, even the enemies of Israel are God’s people, and he cares about all of them. God doesn’t desire for anyone to sin; God doesn’t desire for anyone to be punished for their sins. God desires for all people to repent, to change their hearts and minds, to turn away from the path to destruction and start down the path of life. God desires for all people to live lives filled with God’s abundant justice and mercy and love. God desires that abundant life for us … and God also desires that abundant life for our enemies.

This story was written down after the end of the Babylonian Exile. Everyone who read it knew what happened afterwards; the repentance of Nineveh was only temporary. They went back to their violent ways, and eventually conquered and destroyed Israel. They were destroyed, in turn, by the Babylonian Empire; but it was too late for Israel. Israel was wiped off the map. And all of the people involved were God’s people, in one way or another, even the ones who didn’t know God’s name or worship him. All of the people involved had choices, whether to act with justice and mercy, or to act with selfishness and cruelty, and all too often they chose selfishness. God did not desire anyone to suffer. God did not desire destruction or defeat or conquest or exile or any sort of pain and suffering. Those things happened because human repentance was too brief, because humans chose the path of death instead of life.

As I think about this story, in our divided, hostile world, some things jump out at me. First, Jonah’s anger was justified. The people of Nineveh had done and would later continue to do things that brought evil and suffering to a lot of people, including the people of Israel. Of course Jonah was angry at them; anyone would be. But when you hold on to anger too long, you get in the way of repentance. Jonah’s resentment and anger almost prevented Nineveh from hearing God’s word, and that would have been a great tragedy. His anger was justified, but letting it control him was wrong.

Second, would Nineveh’s repentance have lasted longer if Jonah had actually preached God’s word to the best of his ability? He was skating by doing the absolute minimum God had asked of him, and no more. What would have happened if he’d stayed in the city? If he’d pointed out specific things that needed to be fixed, specific practices that needed changing? The people of Nineveh were ripe for change, ripe for repentance, ripe for transformation. They repented … and then eventually went right back to their old ways. If the person God sent to share God’s Word had stayed among them, might that change have lasted longer?

And third, what about us? What about our great society? What would happen if we repented? If we turned away from racism and intolerance? If we listened to and cared for our neighbors, even the ones who are different from us? If we built bridges across community divides, instead of walls? If we stopped assuming the worst of those we disagree with, and instead began looking for ways to build a society with more justice and mercy for all people? If we remembered that all human beings are God’s children just as much as we are? If we put all our principles and all our hopes into action, instead of dwelling on our fears and anxieties? What would it look like? Nineveh repented; Nineveh changed. It didn’t last, but it happened, and that’s the greatest miracle of the story of Jonah, not the fish. The entire society listened to God and repented. May we do the same, and experience that same miracle.

Amen.

What Mary Knew

Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B, December 20, 2020

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Luke 1:46b-55
Romans 16:25-27
Luke 1:26-38

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

There is a Christmas song that drives me up the wall. It’s a very beautiful song, and I can see why so many people absolutely love it, and I’m not trying to shame those of you who love it. It’s just … It’s asking the wrong question. And that bugs me. The song, of course, is “Mary Did You Know” which keeps asking Mary if she knew that her son was going to be the savior. Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water? Mary, did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters? From later in the song: Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations? And the answer is, of course, yes! Yes, Mary did know all that. Or, in cases where she didn’t know the specifics, such as the walking on water bit, those specific details mostly fell within the category of “things you could expect from a miraculous child sent by God to overturn the world and bring God’s heavenly reign to earth.” And the reason that Mary knew all of that was because the angel Gabriel told her all of that, in our Gospel reading. The question is not “Mary, did you know?” but “Mary, what are you going to do in response to that knowledge?”

Because the thing is, she could have said no. She could have told the angel Gabriel to go away and ask God to use some other poor girl. And even once she conceived, the ancient world did have medications that would cause abortions. Such medicines weren’t particularly safe, but it was probably safer than being known to have a child out of wedlock. Even leaving aside the risks of pregnancy and childbirth (no small thing, in the days before modern medicine, when 5-10% of women died giving birth), women who had children out of wedlock were shunned and ostracized at best. At worst, they could be killed. Now, Joseph, Mary’s fiancé, was a righteous man who wouldn’t do that even before he learned that the baby came from God, but still: this is not a small thing God is asking of her. This is going to change her life. This is going to make her life materially worse, especially in the short run. This could literally ruin her life. She had probably seen examples of what happened to girls who got pregnant without being married.

And let’s say that she’s okay with all of that. Let’s say she figured Joseph was a nice enough guy he’d claim the baby as his own, let’s say she figured God would take care of all of that. The angel told her this baby was going to be the new king, the one who inherited David’s throne. The problem is, Israel didn’t have a throne at this point. They hadn’t been an independent nation in centuries. Their current occupying overlords were the Romans; before them had been the Greeks. And while there was, technically, a King in Jerusalem, Herod was not Jewish. He was from a neighboring tribe, the Idumeans, and he was king of parts of Israel because the Romans liked him and used him as a puppet to enforce their will without having to rule directly. In order for this baby God is giving her to become King and inherit David’s throne, this baby is going to have to overthrow not just Herod, but drive out the entire might of the Roman Empire. Even assuming that God gave the Jewish people such a victory, it would be bloody and harsh and there would be a very good chance that Mary and all her family would feel the crushing might of the Roman Empire before it was all done. So when the angel comes to her and tells her what God wants, this isn’t just some nice, sweet, heartwarming scene. If Mary does what God wants, there is going to be pain and suffering along the way. It will take courage, and strength, and a willingness to keep going when the entire world is against you. That’s what Mary knew, from what the angel told her.

So the question we should be asking is not “Mary, did you know?” but “Mary, what are you going to do in response to that knowledge?” Because that’s an important question, and it’s one that we, too face. God hasn’t exactly been quiet and mysterious about how God wants us to live and relate to one another. “Love God with all your heart and soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” When Jesus said that, he was quoting from the Old Testament. This is not something new or groundbreaking. It is not complicated. It is not mysterious. We know what God wants of us. And it is repeated throughout the Bible in a variety of ways. I particularly like the way the prophet Micah puts it: “And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Or we can look at the parable of the sheep and the goats to see the criteria on which we will be judged, which is “how we treat the people in need around us, such as the hungry and sick and the prisoners.” Or we can look at the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus is giving instructions for living and it’s big on things like “love your enemies.” These are all very simple things that a child can understand. They’re hard to do, but very easy to understand.

Like Mary, we know what God wants of us. We may not have as specific a view of God’s call for our own individual life as Mary did, but we know at least the basic outlines. The question we should be asking is, knowing the cost, are we going to be faithful to that call? Because it isn’t easy! Humans like loving people who are similar to us, people that we already know and care about. It’s a lot harder to love people who are different than us, people who belong to different political parties or who have a different skin color. It’s a lot harder to love people that society tells us are bad and wrong. It’s a lot harder to love people who are scary, or people who are kind of disgusting, or people who we would rather pretend simply don’t exist. It’s easy to love your neighbor in the abstract. It’s hard to love your neighbor when you’re talking specifically about the homeless person who gets drunk and leaves a mess all over your doorstep. It’s hard to love your neighbor when you’re talking specifically about the person who says terrible things on social media. It’s hard to love your neighbor when you’re talking specifically about the person who’s in jail for doing something terrible. It’s easy to love your neighbor when you can pretend that loving your neighbor requires no sacrifice, no change, no hard work, when loving your neighbor simply means letting life continue on as it has always done in the same comfortable patterns.

Letting God work in you and through you will disrupt all the safe, comfortable patterns that you are used to. Mary knew that. Letting God work through you has a very high risk of changing the world around you, and Mary knew that, also. Listen to Mary’s song of praise, which was our psalm today: God scatters the proud and lifts up the lowly, God feeds the hungry and sends the rich away. God remembers God’s promises. God turns the whole world upside down. And even if you pray desperately for the hungry to be fed, for the proud to be torn from their thrones, for all those who are abused and oppressed to be freed and healed and lifted up, even if you think that all those things would be good … it’s still a bit scary to think of a world that is so different from what we’re used to. Change is hard, change is scary. Even if we ardently desire the end result, the process—the things that will be required of us in the meantime—are things we often don’t want to do. And so a lot of people give lip service to following God, while simply continuing on in the old familiar patterns the world teaches us.

Mary knew that. Mary lived that. Mary had a choice to continue on, or to take part in God’s saving work in the world. And Mary chose to follow God’s call, even though it was going to be dangerous. Even though it was guaranteed to be hard, and painful. Because Mary knew, as we should know, that God would be with her through it all. Mary knew, as we should know, that all her pain would be worth it in the end. Mary knew, as we should know, that God’s coming kingdom of love, peace, joy, and hope beats the world we live in now all hollow. May we have the courage and faith of Mary, to follow God’s call in this and every season.

Amen.

Back to Normal?

Third Sunday of Advent, Year B, December 13, 2020

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
Psalm 126
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

The book of Isaiah contains three parts: the first part, roughly chapters 1-39, takes place during the last few decades before the nation of Judah was conquered by Babylon. The second part, roughly chapters 40-54, takes place during the Babylonian Exile, when many of the people were forced to live in Babylon for over four decades. The third part, roughly chapters 55-66, takes place after the exile, as those who had been captives and those who had remained behind struggled to figure out how to be faithful to God in the new reality. How to rebuild a good and godly society amid the rubble, chaos, poverty, and trauma left by conquest, imprisonment, and the purposeful destruction of their society. Our first reading today comes from this third section of Isaiah.

During the exile, the people had had all sorts of dreams about what returning home might be like. The time before the conquest and destruction took on a rosy hue in their memories. Everything was wonderful! They’d been God’s faithful people! The cities of Judah had been gorgeous, their culture had been flourishing, everything had been perfect, just as it should be. They dreamed of God saving them from exile and returning them to this perfect place, untouched by the Babylonian Army, where everything could be just as wonderful as they remembered it being.

There were three problems with that: first, their memories of the time before the exile were extremely idealized. There was a reason that God had stopped protecting them from their enemies and allowed them to be conquered, and that reason was that they had been ignoring God’s commands for economic justice for generations. Second, when the Babylonians had conquered them, they’d reduced the major cities to rubble, so a lot of the stuff they remembered simply wasn’t there any longer. And third, change is inevitable, even when you don’t want things to change and are trying to keep things as much the same as possible. The ones who had been taken into exile weren’t the same people they’d been decades earlier, and the people who’d been left behind to build new lives among the ruins had also changed and adapted to their new reality. So there was no way, on God’s green earth, that the exiles could just return home and just settle into the world of their hopes and dreams. That ideal world had never existed, and even if it had, it would have been destroyed by the Babylonians and the passage of time, and they themselves had changed too much to fit into it even if it still existed. They’d spent forty years telling themselves that if they could just hang on until the exile ended, if they could just get back to their homeland, everything would be perfect and wonderful again.

And then, in the year 539 BC, Cyrus the Great of Persia conquered Babylon and made a decree allowing all the peoples that the Babylonians had forced into exile to return home. And immediately things started going sideways. First, after forty years of building new lives away from Judah, not all of the exiles even wanted to return home. After all, Judah had been a provincial backwater even before it was destroyed. Most of them either stayed in Babylon (which is now Iraq) or moved to what is today Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Georgia, or Turkey.

The ones who went home found that things had changed a lot. Jerusalem and the other major cities had been destroyed; most importantly, the Temple itself would need to be completely rebuilt. But also, the people who had been living there for forty years—both the old Judeans and those the Babylonians had brought in to resettle the region—were not happy with these snobs who’d been gone for forty years suddenly coming in and trying to take over everything.

And also, like I said, they’d never actually dealt with any of the problems that had caused the exile in the first place. Instead of God’s reign of justice, equity, peace, and love, the old kingdom of Judah had been a place of corruption, classism, and economic oppression. The reason God had allowed them to be conquered was because they had ignored God’s wishes for their society, ignored the warnings of the prophets God had sent, all the while holding themselves up as paragons of faithfulness and virtue. When you add all of these factors together, the end of the exile wasn’t this wonderful perfect easy fix for all their problems. It was a chance to build something new, and it was the hardest time they’d had yet.

This whole time we’ve been in lockdown, ever since March, I’ve heard so many people talk about getting back to normal. About how as soon as we have a vaccine, everything will be back exactly the way it was and everything will be perfect and awesome and everything will be magically okay. And I wonder if we’re going to find that, just like those ancient Judeans, there is no going back to the way things were and the real work is going to be building something new. Because let’s face it. Our country had problems even before the pandemic, and those problems have only gotten worse.

We have economic problems. For the last forty years in America, the rich have gotten richer while the poor have gotten poorer and more and more families have fallen from the middle class into poverty. This last year, that trend has been amped up to eleven. The stock market has boomed. So has the percentage of the US population who are homeless. And lest you think this is not a problem for the church to care about, I remind you that the Bible spends a lot of time talking about economic justice and making sure that even the poorest people have what they need. And part of the reason God allowed Judah to be conquered was because they had decided that as long as rich people were happy, it didn’t matter what was happening to poor people. Or, as the letter of James puts it, God calls us to love one another, and if you say you love someone but don’t try to help when they are suffering, you don’t actually love them.

But economic problems are not our only problems. Our political divisions have only deepened. We already knew we are not capable of dealing with ordinary day-to-day issues without spewing hate and vitriol at those who disagree, but the pandemic has shown that we can’t even set that aside and come together during a time of crisis. And we can’t claim to love our brothers and sisters on Sunday and then call them evil people trying to destroy everything good about America the rest of the week.

And then there are racial issues. We white people had gotten pretty good at pretending that everything was fixed during the Civil Rights era, that the only problems were a few bad apples here and there. But if that were the case, we would not have had mass protests lasting for months. Sure, people with small grievances may protest now and then, but you don’t get months of protests with hundreds of thousands of people unless there is a very deep and long-standing problem that can’t be addressed any other way. So, yeah, we have problems that a vaccine is not going to help with. Normal—even if we could get back to it, I don’t think God is calling us to get back to normal. I think God is calling us to do something new.

The good news is twofold: first, we are not called to do that work of building something new alone, and second, that something better is possible. That is, after all, the message of our reading from Isaiah. Yes, their dreams and hopes were in ruins. Yes, there was a huge amount of work to be done. But that work was possible, and God would be with them, and with God’s help they would make something better than their imaginings. Why would you want to go back to the way things were, if you had the choice and the chance to build something better, something more in line with God’s will?

God has good news, and that good news is not just for the people who are already okay. That good news is for the people who are poor, who are lost, who are alone, who are suffering, who are grieving. And we are part of that good news. We have a job to do. The Holy Spirit calls us “to bring good news to the poor, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim release for captives, and liberation for prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and a day of vindication for our God, to comfort all who mourn, to give them a crown in place of ashes, oil of joy in place of mourning, a mantle of praise in place of discouragement. They will be called Oaks of Righteousness, planted by the LORD to glorify himself. They will rebuild the ancient ruins; they will restore formerly deserted places; they will renew ruined cities, places deserted in generations past.”

Something new is possible. Something better is possible. A place where God’s justice and honesty and mercy are the norm, not the exception. A place where people don’t just pay lip service to loving their neighbor, but actually do it. Even when that neighbor is different than they are; even when that neighbor is someone they disagree with. If we’re looking for normal, we’re only going to get disappointment; but if we listen for the Spirit’s call, if we look with God’s eyes and not the eyes of the world, we can grow in grace and righteousness for all the world to see. I hope and pray that we will do so.

Amen.

Low Barrier/Zero Tolerance

Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, Lectionary 28, October 11, 2020

Exodus 32:1-14,
Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

In our Gospel reading, Jesus uses a parable to describe the kingdom of God. A banquet is one of the oldest metaphors for the kingdom of God; you can see that all through Scripture, and this parable is no different. In this parable, a king throws a banquet and invites everyone. Yes, everyone. Some turn away; some have excuses. But the banquet hall must be filled, and so everyone is invited in no matter who they are or where they come from or whether they are rich or poor, good or bad, everyone who accepts the invitation is welcome. So the king is at the banquet, enjoying the party, and he sees someone not wearing appropriate attire, and throws him out. It’s a great contradiction: everyone is invited! But at the same time, someone gets thrown out for not having the right clothes.

This is something that Christians have struggled with. The version of this parable in Luke, where nobody gets thrown out, is much more popular. As Lutherans, especially, we don’t like to have to worry about whether or not we’re saved, especially if we’re talking about what you need to do or be to be saved. We like to focus on the grace of God, and not on human actions. And there are a lot of really good reasons for that, but then we come up against this parable and other bits of the Gospel which talk about how God’s grace is absolutely necessary, but so is a human response. The king invites everyone: all are welcome. This is absolutely true. In fact, the king goes further than that and sends out his soldiers to bring people in to the great banquet. There is nothing that can disqualify anyone from getting a seat at the table. Not your social status, not even whether or not you’re a good person. All these factors are irrelevant. Everyone is welcome.

But not all behaviors are welcome. If you show up and you don’t treat it like a great honor and act appropriately, you get thrown out. You don’t show up in just any old schleppy clothes that you happen to throw on that morning; you wear your best because it’s a feast and that’s what people do at feasts. If you do not show honor to the king who invited you, you do not get to remain.

This reminds me of the rules at the Astoria Warming Center where I volunteer. The Warming Center is a low-barrier, zero tolerance shelter. By “low barrier” I mean that we accept people that other homeless shelters turn away. Most shelters have rules and procedures that keep a great many homeless people from being able to use them. For example, they don’t allow pets—and if your dog is the one bright spot in a really terrible life, you’d probably rather sleep outside with your dog than abandon them just so you could sleep in a shelter. For another, most shelters do not allow people in who are visibly intoxicated. And most shelters are segregated by gender not just during quiet hours but the entire time. So going to those shelters means breaking up your family or your relationship. And, again, a lot of people would rather sleep out in the cold and wet than do that.

Now, at the Warming Center, we think that everyone deserves a safe and dry and warm place to sleep at night. So you can bring your pet in to the Warming Center. You can come in and spend the night even if you are visibly intoxicated. And while we have separate rooms for men and women to sleep in, only the bathrooms and the sleeping rooms are gender segregated so families and couples can stay together the entire time they’re awake. All are welcome. We do not discriminate, we do not judge.

However. We do have a very strict code of conduct, and if you don’t follow it, you’re out. Nobody is allowed to bring drugs or alcohol into the building or consume them once you’ve checked in for the night. If you have a pet, you have to keep them under control and keep them from bothering the other guests. Nobody is allowed to harass anybody, or start a fight. Nobody is allowed to vandalize anything. And once lights are out, you have to lie on your cot and be quiet even if you can’t sleep. If you violate these rules, you’re out. That’s it, we’re sorry, we don’t like doing it because we genuinely want everyone to be safe and warm and dry, but we have to enforce a code of conduct while you’re in our shelter.

And the reason for that is, that if you don’t enforce a code of conduct, pretty soon the only people who are safe are the jerks and the bullies. If we let people harass others, then the people who are getting harassed will leave … and then they’ll be the ones sleeping out in the cold and wet. If it’s a choice between the people getting bullied and the ones doing the bullying, we have to choose the ones getting bullied. If we don’t, then we are siding with the bullies by default. By holding people accountable, by requiring a minimum standard of behavior, we are making the Warming Center safe for everyone. We want to welcome everyone. And that means that everyone has to be safe, which means that there has to be a basic minimum standard of behavior that is clearly and consistently enforced. We’re not doing it to punish people or because we like throwing people out into the cold night. We’re doing it to protect people and keep the Warming Center true to its purpose of being welcoming for all.

So back to the parable. The king invites everyone in, and then throws out the one dude who didn’t show up wearing his best. It can’t be that his best wasn’t nice enough; all the other poor people would also have been in garments that are, well, poor. It’s something about this one person, specifically. Now, this is a parable; it’s not meant to be taken literally. It’s a metaphor, a fable, a story designed to make you think. There may not be a simple answer, like “the robe stands for this!” There are a lot of things that Jesus might mean by describing this guy as not having a wedding robe. But when we talk about garments and the kingdom of heaven, the thing that comes to my mind is Paul’s words in Romans that we should “put on Christ” as if Christ were a garment. Is that what this is about? Is this guy wanting to participate while at the same time rejecting the one whose feast this is?

Or is it about wanting the benefits of the feast without being bound by the feast’s rules? Is it like the Warming Center, where all are welcome, but in order for that to be really true there have to be rules for how the guests act? Let’s remember that the whole feast is a metaphor for the kingdom of God. Now, the kingdom of God is, among other things, the place where God’s will is done and God’s love prevails. But in order for God’s love to prevail, people have to live according to that love, and love God and one another. And not just in word, but in deed as well. And in order for God’s will to be done, people have to be willing to follow it and abide by it. If you’re not willing to do that … you can’t stay in the kingdom. You don’t get the benefits of God’s kingdom if you’re not willing to be a part of that kingdom. And God will absolutely help with that, God can and does transform us and wipe away our sins and break our hearts of stone and help us grow in faith and love … but we’ve got to be willing to accept God’s help. We’ve got to be willing to let God’s love grow in us. We’ve got to be willing to be transformed. We’ve got to be willing to be a part of God’s kingdom. If we’re not willing to be transformed by God, if we’re not willing to follow God’s will and love God and our neighbor … we don’t get to experience the great feast of God’s abundant generosity.

God loves everyone, and God welcomes everyone to the great feast which is God’s kingdom. But we are called to respond to that love. May we follow that call, now and forever.

Amen.

By Whose Authority?

Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, Lectionary 26, September 27, 2020

Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16
Philippians 2:1-13
Matthew 21:23-32

Preached by Pastor Anna C. Haugen, Chinook and Naselle Lutheran Churches, WA

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

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

The thing about the religious leaders in today’s Gospel is that when Jesus asks them a question, they never once consider what the faithful answer might be. Jesus asks them whether John’s ministry of baptism was something God was doing, or something humans just came up with. And they completely ignore the theological and faithful dimensions of the question. Their considerations are purely political: what answer can they give that will satisfy the crowds without allowing Jesus to score points off them? What answer will justify and uphold their established order and ways of doing things without ticking off the crowd too badly? Jesus asks them a question about ministry, and their main concern is “how can we avoid looking bad or opening ourselves up to change?” Their main concern is not “is Jesus right to do this?” but rather, “how dare Jesus challenge our authority?” It is no wonder that Jesus does not like their answer.

Unfortunately, that’s an attitude I see a lot in the church, at every level from bishops to pastors to council members to ordinary laypeople in the pew. Sometimes it’s pastors trying to lead their people into new ministry, and the council or congregation absolutely shutting it down. Sometimes it’s a member of the congregation getting inspired by God to do something new and getting shut down by the pastor or other congregation members. That kind of self-centered focus—valuing existing power structures over God’s call, or valuing comfort and security over ministry—can be found in just about every Christian group I’m aware of. And it is really easy to see when other people are doing it, and really hard to see when we ourselves are doing it, because of course we believe our own justifications.

Do you think those priests and elders were aware that they were being unfaithful? Do you think they chided themselves for judging by every criteria available except faithfulness? They may have; sometimes people do understand when they are being hypocritical and do it anyway. But most of the time, we are not that self-aware. I bet their thinking went like this: we are the leaders of God’s people, therefore we are right, therefore if this person is challenging us or wanting to change things they are going against God, therefore they are wrong, therefore the most faithful response is to shut them up so that nobody can be led astray by them. Therefore, we don’t need to think about what the faithful response would be, because we already know what the faithful response would be. The faithful response is to uphold all the things we’ve always done and maintain order.

It’s a beautiful line of self-justification, but there are several crucial flaws. Namely, it assumes that we already know what God’s will is without having to ask or pray about it. And then it assumes that, since we know what God’s will is, we are doing it … without ever taking the time to contemplate whether our words and actions are really aligned with God’s will or not.

And the thing is, doing God’s will is scary and hard. Loving your neighbor as yourself—and putting that love into action—is easy when you define neighbor in the smallest sense, the people you already know and care about. It gets a lot harder when you define “neighbor” in the larger sense that Jesus does, as “everyone who is created by God, especially the ones you don’t already know and like.” And so we try to get around that by doing the minimum possible. Like tossing our spare change at a homeless shelter instead of volunteering for a shift to help run it. Or posting a Facebook message in support of the cause du jour without actually building relationships with the people we’re supposedly supporting. We are all willing to talk the talk, but if walking the walk requires us to change the way we’ve always done things, or move outside our comfort zone, or let others use our buildings, or build relationships outside our own social circle, or really listen to the stories of people who are different from us, or, worst of all, requires us to change? Forget about it! We’ll find a reason to convince ourselves that Jesus didn’t really want us to do that, or we’ll just conveniently fail to ask ourselves what Jesus would want.

Who is really doing the will of the Father? The people who have perfect, beautiful theology, who know the correct answers to every question and always go to church, or the people who don’t think about God at all, but pitch in whenever they see there is a need? The people who say “yes, yes!” to God all day long, but don’t actually put any of that into action? Or the people who curse God, who ignore God, who run away from God, but when push comes to shove jump in and get their hands dirty? I think from Jesus’ parable today, from the way he interprets it, doing the will of the father has very little to do with what we say we believe, and everything to do with what we do.

It’s not a question of salvation; the political collaborators and sex workers and other sinners will get into heaven ahead of the religious elite, but Jesus doesn’t say in this parable that the religious leaders aren’t going into the Kingdom of Heaven, just that the ones who actually end up putting the Father’s will into action instead of just talking about it are going to be first. The last will be first, and the ones who think they’re going to be first, will be last. Because it’s not about who has power here on earth, it’s about living faithfully. And, obviously, it’s best to have both the faith and theological understanding, and put it into action, but having good theological understanding is not the only thing that matters. Especially when we use our theological understanding to get in the way of actually following God, as those priests and elders did.

Paul gives us another perspective on this in his letter to the Philippians. “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” Imitate Christ, who was willing to give up everything in order to follow God. It’s about obedience and love, and putting that obedience and love into action. There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable, but if our desire for comfort leads us to ignore the suffering of others or God’s call to ministry, that’s bad. There’s nothing wrong with maintaining our congregation and our building is good, but if that leads us to shut down calls to ministry, that’s bad. There are all kinds of things that are fine by themselves, but which we use as excuses not to do the hard, necessary work of following Christ.

What authority does Jesus have to do things? What authority does anyone have to do things? What authority matters, and what authority only gets in the way of God’s will? Because as faithful people, ultimately the most important question is “are we following God’s will and putting God’s call into practice?” Because those old priests and elders are not the only ones who are tempted to value safety and security and comfort and tradition and power as more important than God’s call to ministry. It is very easy to let our own fears and hopes and prejudices and ways of doing things blind us to God’s call, instead of following the cross of Christ. May we follow where God calls.

Amen.