William Willimon, Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, tells of getting a telephone call from an irate parent:

“I hold you personally responsible for this,” the father told him.

“Me?” the campus minister asked.

“Yes, you. I send my daughter off to college to get a good education. Now she tells me she wants to throw it all away, and go off to Haiti as a Presbyterian mission volunteer! Isn’t that absurd? A B.S. in mechanical engineering from Duke, and she’s going off to dig ditches in Haiti.”

“Well,” said Willimon, in a feeble attempt at humor, “I doubt the engineering department taught her much about that line of work, but she’s a fast learner; she’ll probably get the hang of ditch-digging in a few months.”

“Look,” interrupted the father, “this is no laughing matter. I hold you completely responsible for her decision. She likes you. You’ve filled her head with all those pie-in-the-sky ideas!”

“Now look,” said Willimon, trying to keep his ministerial composure. “Weren’t you the one who had her baptized?”

“Why, yes,” the father replied.

“And didn’t you read her Bible stories, take her to Sunday school, send her off on ski trips with the Presbyterian Youth Fellowship?”

“Well, yes, but …”

“Don’t ‘but’ me. It’s your fault she believed all that stuff, that she’s gone and thrown it all away on Jesus — not mine. You’re the one who introduced her to Jesus, not me.”

“But all we ever wanted was for her to be a Presbyterian,” said the father, meekly.

“Sorry. You messed up. You made a disciple.”

Quoted from http://www.sermonsuite.com/free.php?i=788028710&key=Qnwtmy4zd5shlppQ.  Googling revealed a few variations on the story, but I liked this one the best.

Genesis 1:1-5, Psalm 29, Acts 19:1-7, Mark 1:4-11

Preached by Anna C. Haugen, Trinity Lutheran Church, Somerset, PA

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

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

As you may know, I went home for the week after Christmas.  On December 30^th, my mother and I went shopping in the mall near my home, and they already had the Valentines candy and Easter outfits on display.  The tinsel and lights and presents of the December holiday season were already packed away in their boxes to await next year’s sales.  And yet, we here in this church are still in a season of gifts.

No, it’s not still Christmas, even here—the twelfth and last day of Christmas was January 5^th—but now we are in the season of Epiphany.  The festival of Epiphany is January 6^th and celebrates Jesus Christ as the light of the world.  It also celebrates the coming of the Magi following the light of a star to lead them to Christ.  And what do the magi bring?  Presents!  So it’s no surprise that the readings of the season of Epiphany usually focus on either light, or gifts.  And today is a day of celebrating gifts—in this case, the gifts God has given us.

Specifically, we are remembering the gift of the Holy Spirit, given to us through water and God’s Word, in baptism.  If ever there was a gift that kept on giving, there it is.  We start off the readings with the breath of God—the Spirit—sweeping over the face of the waters at the dawn of creation.  You see, the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.  God created it out of nothingness.  Everything in this world, from the tiniest subatomic particle to the largest galaxy, from the smallest microbe to you and me, was and is created by God.  Everything that we have and everything that we are comes from the creative work of God.  Our existence and every good thing in our lives is a gift from God.

In the beginning, the Holy Spirit was there, moving through it and working with the Father.  One thing I notice is that whenever I come across references to the Holy Spirit in scripture, it’s always moving, or doing something.  The Spirit never stands still.  The Spirit is never stagnant.  And it was moving in Creation, as the world was called into being.  The Spirit was moving in the primordial chaos of the formless void, and the Spirit was part of the Father’s creative work.

The Holy Spirit is still moving in the world.  But the Holy Spirit is also moving in us, specifically and uniquely.  That gift was given to us in our baptisms, as we are united with Christ in his baptism, and the Father claims us as his beloved children.  What greater gift can there be than for God to claim us as God’s own?

John the Baptist knew that.  “I baptize with water,” he said, “but there is one coming after me who baptizes with fire and the Holy Spirit.”  You see, John’s baptism was a form of ritual bathing common in Jewish religious life.  When you committed a sin, one of the ways to purify yourself and make yourself right with God was to symbolically wash the sin away.  It was a public statement that you understood that you had done wrong, and a promise to do better next time, to turn away from the thing that made you unclean and separated you from God and from other people.  But it wasn’t permanent.  Everyone sins, and so then you would have to go back and be cleansed again.  It was a never-ending cycle.

Jesus’ baptism is not like that.  Jesus’ baptism is not about our commitment to do the right thing, and it’s not something we can fail at and redo.  When Jesus came to the Jordan River and was baptized, the heavens were torn apart and the Spirit came down on him.  And God said “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”  Jesus baptism is God’s public declaration of love and relationship.  And that’s the baptism that we are baptized with.

When we are baptized, we are claimed by God.  The Holy Spirit comes to us and begins moving in us.  And God our creator speaks those same words he spoke to Jesus in the Jordan River: “you are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.”  There is nothing we can do to break that relationship; God will love us no matter what.  The Holy Spirit will move in us no matter what.  No matter how far we go astray, no matter how much we mess up, God is with us, claiming us as God’s own and leading us back to wholeness and goodness.  Think about that, for a second.  God is with us no matter what.  God loves us no matter what.  And through us, God is doing amazing things.  What greater gift could we possibly receive?

As everyone knows, some gifts are better than others.  And I’m not talking about how expensive they are.  When I was a child, there were some gifts that I loved and played with for years, and others that I thanked the giver politely for and promptly put on a shelf and forgot about.  Probably the single best gift I ever got was my oboe, a very high quality instrument.  My grandparents gave it to me in High School, and if you were here for the second service on Christmas Eve you heard probably heard me play it in the prelude.  Fifteen years after they gave it to me, it is still a cherished possession that I regularly use.  Most of the other gifts I received then have long since been outgrown or worn out.  But the Holy Spirit is a gift that doesn’t just gather dust on a shelf, and it can never be outgrown or worn out.

Remember earlier I mentioned that whenever the Spirit is mentioned in the Bible, it’s doing something.  The Spirit moves, it dances, it inspires people to participate in God’s saving work in the world.  The problem is, so often we don’t listen.  We get so caught up in our busy lives and our daily worries that we ignore the movement of the Spirit in us and around us.  We get so used to our ordinary world that we miss the extraordinary presence of God in our midst.  The Spirit invites us to join in God’s work in the world, to participate in the Kingdom of Heaven, and most of the time we don’t even realize it.  When we do hear the Spirit’s call, all too often we find reasons to ignore it: I’m too busy, it’ll never work, I’ve never done it before, what will the neighbors think, let someone else do it.  We treat the Holy Spirit as if it were an ill-fitting sweater given us by some well-meaning relative, that we can exchange for something we like better.

And yet, the Spirit will not be silenced, and the Spirit will not be still.  God has done marvelous things, from the creation of the world to the present day, and God is still doing marvelous things.  God has given us our very lives, everything that we have and are, and God has given us the gift of God’s own presence.  I wonder, what would the world be like if we let the Spirit stir us?  What would Somerset be like, if we let the Spirit call us into wholehearted and joyful participation in God’s work?  What would this congregation be like if we opened ourselves up to the presence of the Holy Spirit moving in us and around us?

As we come forward for communion, you will notice that there is a box, wrapped up as a gift, sitting at the font.  In that box we are asked to place our commitments of time, talent, and treasure.  In this way we give back just a small portion of the many blessings God has given us.  This is not just about money.  This is not just about keeping the lights on and paying salaries.  Through our gifts of our time, our abilities, and our treasures, we participate in God’s work.  We come together to minister to one another, to our community, and to our world.  We share the Word of God and all the gifts God has given us with all creation.  I hope that you have been praying about how God is calling you to participate in this congregation’s ministry, and I pray that you have reflected that call in your commitments.

But these commitments are not the end of our participation in God’s work.  Answering the call of the Holy Spirit is not just something we do once a year and then put it back on the shelf and forget about.  Following the Spirit’s call is the lifelong vocation of a Christian.  As the Spirit is always moving, always calling, we should always be listening and responding.  As you go through the year to come (and all the years to come), don’t let yourself forget that God is with you.  Keep praying for the Spirit’s guidance, keep responding to God’s word.  May God open our hearts and minds to the Spirit’s call.

Amen.

Here’s an excerpt:

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Preached by Anna C. Haugen, Trinity Lutheran Church, Somerset, PA

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

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

When I read the lesson from Second Samuel on Tuesday, I was struck by something kind of odd in the first three verses.  David makes a plan.  He tells the prophet Nathan about it.  Neither of them pray.  And Nathan, without praying to God for guidance, tells David to go ahead with his plan because it’s what God wants.  They both assumed they knew what God wanted.  But as it happened, they were wrong.

Here’s some background.  David, with God’s help and guidance, had just finished a civil war against Saul’s son.  David was newly crowned king and was no doubt looking to establish his prestige and position, and what better way to prove his piety and his riches than to build God a temple, a place for God’s people to worship him?  A temple building would help all the day-to-day work of the priests and people in God’s name.  Building a temple would be good for the religious establishment, and it would be good for David’s political career.  Everyone benefits!  So David talks to Nathan, who was the most powerful prophet in Israel, and (without actually asking God if this is what God wants) Nathan gives him the green light to build a temple.

Just about anyone living today would agree.  After all, of course God needs a house!  Building or purchasing a church building is one of the first things new congregations do, once they’re stable and self-supporting.  It’s the expected thing to do, the normal thing to do.  Buildings are very useful things—just look at all the ways Trinity’s building contributes to God’s mission!  It’s a place for worship and study, a place for Christian fellowship, a place to host the Food Pantry and the Toy Drive, a place to care for children and teach them about God.  It’s a tangible symbol that the LORD is with us, a place where we know we can encounter God.  We come here Sunday morning and we hear God’s word, we are taught and inspired, we are strengthened by God’s holy supper and we are sent out into the world.  This building, this house of God, helps us do all that.

So why didn’t God want David to build him a temple, a house of cedar?  It can’t be that God doesn’t like temples in general; a generation later, God told David’s son Solomon to build a temple.  I think it has to do with Nathan and David’s attitude.  They don’t think they need to ask God what God wants them to do; they don’t think they need to pray; they think they already know.  They think that God’s priorities are the same as theirs.  God has given David the kingship, and thus the king’s great and expensive house to live in; now David plans to return the favor.  He’s going to take care of God and build God a big expensive house to live in.  They are so focused on the expected thing, the normal thing, that they can’t see what God actually wants them to be doing.

God points out the error of that attitude.  “Are you the one to build me a house to live in?”  God doesn’t need David or anyone else to take care of him; God can take care of God’s own self, thank you very much.  In fact, things are the exact opposite.  God is the one who takes care of us.  God is the one who guides us.

Like David and Nathan, it’s very easy to assume that we know what God wants us to do, the plans God has for us.  After all, we are God’s people.  We are doing God’s work.  We study God’s word.  Surely, if anyone can figure out God’s plans, it should be us.  And yet, the Bible is filled with stories of faithful people who didn’t understand what God was doing until after it was already done, and explained to them.  Take David, for example: God promised David that his house and his kingdom would be “made sure forever before [God]; [his] throne established forever.”  Do you think David, hearing that, understood that God wasn’t just talking about an earthly kingship over one nation?  God was telling David that the salvation of all the world from the sin and brokenness would come from one of David’s descendants.

God was telling David about a heavenly kingship that is better and greater than any mortal country could hope to be.  And yet David probably only considered God’s words in relation to his and his descendants’ reign over the kingdom of Israel.  He could understand part of God’s plan, that God had claimed Israel as God’s people, and David and his children to play a special role.  But he probably didn’t understand just how special.  How could he?  Even centuries later, after many prophets had spoken, when Jesus came people still didn’t understand his ministry.  Not until after Jesus’ death and resurrection did people look back at all that had been said by the prophets and by Jesus and realize what they had meant.

David and Nathan’s plan to build God a temple wasn’t necessarily a bad plan, it just wasn’t God’s plan.  But they didn’t know that because they didn’t ask.  They didn’t pray.  They just went on about their business as usual, doing the expected thing, the normal thing.  But God wasn’t doing the normal, expected thing.  God was doing something extraordinary, and God wanted David and Nathan to help with God’s work.  As followers of God, we should take note of this lesson: we should never just assume we know what God wants us to do.  Instead, we should be open to what God is calling us to do, even if we don’t exactly know how it’s going to turn out in the end.  Instead of being like David, we should be more like Mary.

God does surprising things all the time.  God does things we wouldn’t expect.  We’re so used to the story of Jesus that we don’t often realize just how strange it would have seemed to the people living it.  They didn’t know how it was going to turn out.  They didn’t understand what God was in the process of doing.  Mary certainly didn’t expect what God called her to do!  And yet, despite not knowing what was going to happen, she followed God’s will for her.

Just imagine being Mary: nobody special, from a backwater region.  Getting ready to live a very ordinary, mundane, predictable life.  And then an angel visited her.  Can you imagine an angel coming to visit you and telling you that the Lord is with you?  It’s no wonder she was afraid and perplexed.  Who wouldn’t be?  Yes, God is with us, we know that … but there’s a difference between knowing God is with us and having divine confirmation of it in the form of an angel telling you directly.

And what God was asking her to do wasn’t something anyone would expect God to do.  After all, in that time and place an unmarried woman found to be pregnant, or any woman found pregnant by someone other than her husband could legally be put to death by stoning, which is a pretty brutal way to go.  At the very least she and her entire family would be shamed, humiliated, in the eyes of their friends and neighbors.  Any plans she had for her life would pretty much be out the window.  After all, how many people would believe that God was the father of her child?  If this happened in our community, would you believe it?  It doesn’t fit into our nice, neat categories.  It doesn’t fit into our expectations.  What God called Mary to do wasn’t easy.  Mary had no way of knowing, then, what this thing God was asking her would lead to.  But the one thing she knew was that life would never be normal again.  Her life would never follow the safe, ordinary, normal pattern she had expected.  But God would be with her, and God would guide her.

Mary chose to listen.  She chose to follow God’s call, even though it would be hard, even though God was calling her to do something out of the ordinary.  Mary trusted God to guide her, even though it would disrupt the plans she had for her own life.  And God used her to bless the whole world through the coming of Jesus Christ our savior.

It’s not always easy to hear God’s call.  Few of us get angelic messengers, and the cares of the world—our own fears and desires—can easily distract us from listening to God.  And yet, God is still speaking to us, calling us to do God’s work in the world.  The question is, are we listening?  Are we praying for guidance?  Are we open to God’s call, even if it’s not easy, or safe, or expected?  Are we willing to let God use us to do extraordinary things?  I hope and pray that we will follow Mary’s example.  Let it be with us according to God’s Word.

Amen.

There’s a problem with building houses for God, churches and temples, no matter how useful they are.  Buildings stay in one place.  They don’t move.  It’s easy to see that God is there, in them, but if you always think of God as living in the church building it’s pretty easy to miss the ways God is moving among us.  For the first few generations in the Promised Land, the ark of the covenant moved around from place to place.  It was obvious to everyone that all the land was God’s, and they were God’s people.  They could see God working among them.  Permanent buildings are more useful and grander than a tent, but they can also be limiting.  God is in the church, yes, as God was in the tent and the tabernacle, and in the temple that Solomon eventually built.  But God is also out in the world, in homes and businesses and schools and fields and mountains and valleys.  Most of all, God lives in people.  God lives in us.  God works through us.  God cares for us.  God takes care of us.  Not just on Sunday mornings when we gather here, but every day of the week in all the places where we go.

Preached by Anna C. Haugen, Trinity Lutheran Church, Somerset, PA

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

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

“With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day.”

Time is very important to us as modern Americans.  Our lives are ruled by clocks and calendars.  Time is measured, weighed, accounted for.  Time is money.  Time is saved and filled and well-spent.  We kill time.  We waste time.  There’s no time like the present.  As children, time seems to drag on.  As adults, time flies.  Whether old or young, time is something we think we can understand, predict, and manipulate.  But as St. Peter points out, God’s understanding of time is not like our understanding of time.  It’s not about hours or minutes or days or years.  God’s time is about what God is doing, and God’s time is about relationships.

Our understanding of time is tied to our understanding of the world.  It’s hard to understand God’s time because we are so caught up in our daily cares and concerns.  We’re particularly aware of time now, in winter, when the days are short and the holidays are close.  The end of the calendar year is coming soon, and Christmas will be here even sooner.  There are, after all, only twenty more shopping days until Christmas.  And there’s a lot to do in those twenty days!  Parties, presents, cleaning, travel—it’s a lot to pack in to a month!  Yes, we want the day of the LORD to come, we want God to make all things new … but we’ve got other things to worry about.

Today is the second Sunday of Advent.  That in itself is a reminder of how different God’s time is from the world’s time.  As the calendar year is fast drawing to a close, the church year—which begins on the first Sunday of Advent—has only just begun.  While the world prepares for presents and parties, we are preparing for the coming of God.  And when the world turns off the Christmas music and packs up the tinsel on the 26^th, we will still be celebrating Christmas, and the presence of God with us.

We live now in the between-times.  Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ was born as a child in Bethlehem, in Judea.  And Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, creating a new heaven and a new earth.  Advent is a time of preparation both for celebrating Christ’s coming, both as a child and at the end of the ages.  This is not just a time for remembering and singing beloved favorite songs.  This is a time for looking forward and preparing for the day of the LORD.  As Isaiah and John the Baptist thundered, “Prepare the way of the LORD, make his paths straight!”

Being a Christian is not easy.  We live in the in-between times.  The first Christians expected Jesus to return soon, within months or years of his resurrection and ascension.  And yet, here we are, two thousand years later, still waiting, still caught between the already and the not yet.  Our salvation has been accomplished through the death and resurrection of Christ, and yet the fullness of that salvation will not be known until Christ comes again.  “In accordance with Christ’s promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home.”  The first Christians that St. Peter wrote to needed to know how to live in the in-between times, and so do we.  The question is not what must we do to be saved.  We are saved.  The question Peter wants us to ask is this: now that we have been saved, how should we live?

And that’s the question we face today.  We are saved by the grace of God in Christ Jesus.  So how should we live?  Should we retreat into our homes and our churches to wait?  Should we go with the flow of what the world around us does, forgetting that Christ will come again when we least expect him?

No, says Peter.  No, say John the Baptist and Isaiah.  Now that we are saved, we are called to action!  We are called to live in the knowledge that Christ will come.  We are called to let God guide us in doing his will. Comfort my people!  Prepare the way of the LORD!  Make a highway for our God!  Straighten the things that are crooked and level the obstacles, within ourselves and throughout the world.  Open up to the possibility that God wants to use us.  We are called to be God’s hands in the world.  We are called to be Christ’s body, working together for the building up of God’s kingdom.  We wait, but we know the glory of the LORD is coming, and that we are God’s people.

So how do we open ourselves up to God so that he can use us to prepare his way?  Anyone who’s driven the turnpike through the Alleghenies knows that making a straight and level path is no easy task.  There was a lot of rock moved, filled in, and tunneled through to make that road.  It didn’t happen by accident, it took a lot of work and a lot of people working together.  Making a straight road isn’t any easier on a spiritual level.  Physical roads are made with bulldozers, jackhammers, dump trucks, rollers, and a whole host of other tools.  And the crew has a map that tells them where to go and what to do.  If a road crew came out to work with no tools and no map, they wouldn’t get very far and would almost certainly end up in the wrong place.  So what tools and maps has God given us for our spiritual road-building?

You probably know what most of them are already.  And yet, particularly in today’s busy world we so often choose to fill our time and our attention with other things that distract us from the work God has called us to do.  The tools of the Christian trade—the foundations of Christian life—are sometimes called spiritual disciplines, because they’re not always the easiest or most entertaining thing to do.  They are a habit or regular pattern in your life that repeatedly brings you back to God and opens you up to what God is saying to you so that you can follow God’s call.  Spiritual disciplines take time and attention, which is hard to find in today’s busy world.  But without them, we’re like a road crew standing empty-handed on the side of the road.

Prayer is the first of the tools God has given us.  Regular prayer, every day, in good times and in bad.  St. Paul tells us to pray without ceasing.  And scientists tell us that regular prayer can reshape our brain and the way we think.  Through regular prayer we lift our concerns to God and receive God’s inspiration and guidance.  What are the obstacles in our lives?  What are the things in the world around us that we should be aware of?  Who around us needs prayer?  Where does God want us to build his road?  Who does God want us to comfort?  Prayer can be closely linked to meditation, a focused attention on communing with God.  Without regular prayer, any roads we build will only be of our own making.

Study is another important spiritual discipline, and a foundation of many others.  God gave us our brains for a reason.  God gave us the Scriptures for a reason.  I know this may come as a shock to quite a number of people in America today, but God did not give us the Scriptures so that they could sit on a shelf and look important.  The Bible is the story of God’s work in the world and in his people from the creation of this world to the beginning of the next.  When we read the Bible, together in groups and on our own, God uses the stories of our ancestors to speak to us today.

Worship is our response to who God is.  Worship is how we come together to respond to God’s blessings.  Worship is coming together to remember who we are, and whose we are.  In worship we come together as a community, and remember that we aren’t alone, that we are all brothers and sisters in Christ.  Then we hear God’s word preached, and are fed with Christ’s body and blood and strengthened for the work to which we have been called.  Then we are sent out into the world again, renewed and refreshed for the new week.  Through worship, God helps us to hear what he calls us to do and equips us to go out and do it.

Fasting is probably the least practiced spiritual discipline in America.  It doesn’t mean punishing yourself or deprivation.  Fasting is about simplicity.  What in your life is adding to the clutter and minutia that fills your days?  What in your life do you take for granted?  What in your life is distracting you from God?  It seems we are so hungry these days, for money, for attractiveness, for the latest gadget and gizmo. Fasting is about renewing our hunger for God.  When we fast, whether from food or television or cell phones or watches, we take a break from the normal everyday world.  When we fast, we take time to go back to the essentials, filling time and money we would waste with time for building our relationship with God and one another.

Service is another important spiritual discipline.  Americans volunteer a lot, more than most people in the world.  And yet, as Christians we are called to a special kind of volunteering.  We are called to be Christ’s body in the world.  In fact, the ELCA motto is “God’s work, our hands.”  Service is faith in action.  Christian service is about connecting the Gospel with our actions, and letting God use us to do God’s will.

We are waiting for the day of the LORD, for the coming of Christ.  We have been saved, and yet we are still waiting.  But while we wait God has called us to live lives that show that salvation to the world.  We are called to comfort God’s children.  We are called to prepare God’s way, to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ in our words and in our actions.  We don’t do this on our own, but with the tools and guidance God gives us.  May we hear and follow God’s Word.

Amen.

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

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

What cheerful readings we have today!  The prophet Zephaniah starts us off with a passage about the day of the Lord—a day when the Lord will come in wrath and destruction.  “That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness.”  Zephaniah’s words are pretty harsh: blood shall be poured out like dust, and flesh like dung.  One might expect that with such harsh penalties, God would be moving against the really wicked people: murderers, rapists, pedophiles, idolaters, and the like.  But that’s not the case.

The ones God is condemning in today’s reading haven’t done much of anything bad … but they haven’t done much good, either.  They’re the ones who rest on their dregs—the people who are complacent, who coast through life, who do the minimum and play it safe.  God is condemning those who say in their hearts, “The LORD will not do good, nor will he do harm.”  In other words, what those people were saying was that they didn’t believe God could—or would—act in the world.  They didn’t believe God really mattered in how they lived their day to day lives.  “The LORD will not do good, nor will he do harm.”  That’s something people might say today!  Let’s be honest with ourselves: how many of us know people who think like that?  How many of us have thought things like that ourselves?

It’s pretty easy to go through life like that.  Comforting.  You can coast through life, get by with resting on your dregs, and doing the minimum.  After all, if God doesn’t care enough to act, why should you?  Why spend the extra effort to do something awesome instead of something ordinary?  Why take the risk of standing up and pointing out the evil and broken things in the world?  Why not just go along to get along?  Why not just take the easy way out and let someone else do the hard work?

The Parable of the Talents is also about someone taking the easy way out.  This parable is told in the middle of a group of four parables about the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven.  So, again, we’re talking about the coming of the day of the Lord.  And again, the Parable of the Talents has a harsh condemnation of someone who takes the easy way out.

A master entrusted his servants with money before leaving for a long time.  A ‘talent’ was an amount of money worth somewhere between 15 and 20 years worth of wages for an ordinary person.  That was a huge gift—extravagant, awesome, and far beyond anything the servants could earn.  Now, in those days they didn’t have much of a financial system.  They didn’t have reliable banks, or a stock market.  In fact, the prudent thing to do with money was to bury it—that way, it wouldn’t get stolen and you’d have it when you needed it.  And that’s just what the servant who was given one talent did: he buried it.  Nothing bad was going to happen to that money—but nothing good could be done with it, either.  The servant was safe, he thought—he’d done the minimum.  He could rest comfortably in the knowledge that he’d done his part.  The master’s angry response seems a little harsh.  After all, the servant didn’t lose or damage the gift; he didn’t do anything really bad, he just didn’t do much good, either.

In the last few days, we’ve seen a graphic real-world example of the consequences of that attitude.  Jerry Sandusky, a respected and influential member of the Penn State athletic faculty and a leader in a great charity, allegedly raped several boys over the course of several years.  I am sure we are all praying for the health and well-being of his victims.  But Sandusky could only commit his crimes because the people who knew or suspected what was going on, did little or nothing to stop it.  Joe Paterno heard the allegations back in 2002; others witnessed abuse starting (as far as we know) in 1998.  We all know that Coach Paterno is a good man, who has done many great things both on and off the field.  But in this case, he, like several others, did the minimum he was required to do by law: he reported it to his superiors at Penn State.  When the school administrators did nothing, he didn’t pursue the matter.  It was someone else’s problem.  And because all of the people who knew about or suspected the abuse took the easy way out and did the minimum, it went on for years.

Taking the easy way out can be very tempting, and there are so many excuses.  The people in Zephaniah’s day took the easy way out because they didn’t believe God cared.  The servant in the Parable of the Talents took the easy way out because he was afraid of failing.  And a wide variety of excuses and explanations have been offered for the people who knew or suspected about Sandusky’s actions.  We look at the excuses other people give and we see them for the flimsy things they are.  But what about ourselves?  Are we just coasting through life, making excuses for resting on our dregs?

In the Parable of the Talents, there were two other slaves.  They also received extravagant gifts from the master, but instead of taking the easy way out they used those gifts the master had given them.  They took those talents out into the world rather than hiding them away.  Our translation calls them “good and trustworthy,” but that phrase could also be translated “happy and faithful.”  They lived their lives in hope and joy, rather than in apathy, fear, or cynicism.  What would our lives be like if we did the same?  What would our world be like?

God has given us many blessings.  The Lord God Almighty created us, and the whole world around us, everything that is, seen and unseen.  All the good things that we have come from God.  Jesus Christ came to save us from our sin, giving us the gift of salvation which we could never have earned.  Jesus lived, taught, suffered, died, and rose again that we might have life, and have it abundantly.  He came that we might become children of the light, rather than children of darkness.  The Holy Spirit is our comforter, our advocate.  The Spirit is with us always, inspiring us with God’s wisdom and grace.

God didn’t give us all these things so that we could bury them in the ground, take the easy way out and do the minimum.  God gives us these gifts so that we can enter into God’s joy.  God gives us these gifts so that we could use the blessings we have received to bless others.  God gives us these gifts so that we can be the body of Christ in the world.  May we receive God’s gifts with joy and faithfulness, and use them for the building up of God’s kingdom and the blessing of God’s people.

Amen.

Consider the following quote by Marianne Williamson from her book A Return to Love:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light , not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We were born to make and manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

As I study the Parable of the Talents for Sunday’s sermon, I am meditating on this passage.

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

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

“They answered him, ‘We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.’”  Really?  They’ve never been slaves to anyone?  Are they joking?  I seem to recall—you may remember this, too—that before they came to the Promised Land, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah were slaves in Egypt who had to be liberated by God’s saving power.  And then, after they were in the promised land, the Assyrians conquered and enslaved Israel, and then the Babylonians conquered the Assyrian Empire and enslaved both Israel and Judah.  After the Babylonians, they were independent for a while before the Greeks conquered them; and after the Greeks came the Romans, who were oppressive foreign overlords at the very time today’s reading took place.  While the Romans didn’t technically enslave the Jews, they certainly weren’t what anyone would have considered “free.”  And yet, despite a long history of slavery and oppression, when Jesus tells them they will be freed, they indignantly insist that they have never been slaves to anyone!  Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.

One of my favorite authors is Terry Pratchett.  He writes fantasies that are satires of modern life.  In a book called Feet of Clay, Pratchett tells the story of Dorfl, a golem.  Golems are people made out of clay, brought to life by written words stuck into their heads.  The words make them alive and tell them what to do—and the words tell them to be slaves.  A golem works twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, at the most degrading and dangerous jobs there are.  If you order a golem to do something, the golem will do it, because the words in their head make them obey.  Towards the end of the book, Dorfl is freed—his head is opened up and new words are put into him, words that say he belongs to himself.  Dorfl is transformed by this gift, something he couldn’t have imagined on his own.  He goes out and tries to free others—golems, humans, animals, everyone.  He opens the doors to the sweatshops and the slaughterhouses, breaks the machinery the golems use, and yet despite all the chaos he causes the humans and golems just try to fix it and go on exactly as they did before.  This puzzles Dorfl—his freedom was such a wonderful thing, literally giving him new life, so why are people trying to go back to the things that hold them captive?

He says to Sam Vimes, the head of the City Watch, ‘You Say To People “Throw Off Your Chains” And They Make New Chains For Themselves?’

‘Seems to be a major human activity, yes,’ Vimes said.

Dorfl rumbled as he thought about this. ‘Yes,’ he said eventually. ‘I Can See Why. Freedom Is Like Having The Top Of Your Head Opened Up.’

Freedom is like having the top of your head opened up.  Christian freedom means trusting God to take care of us, trusting God’s love and care and guidance even when the world keeps telling us it’s foolish to depend on anyone besides yourself.  Christian freedom means listening to God’s call to lives of justice and mercy, and love, even when it would be safer and easier to be self-centered.  Christian freedom means letting Christ open up our hearts and minds and replace our words that enslave us to sin with God’s Word that frees us and makes us whole.  That sounds dangerous.  That sounds scary.  When you’re a slave, you don’t have any control over your life, but if something bad happens it’s not your fault.  You don’t have to think, you don’t have to take risks, and however bad things get at least they’re predictable.  Remember the newly freed people of Israel wandering in the desert and grumbling how they wanted to go back to slavery in Egypt because at least there they had food to eat?  Nobody really wants to be a slave, but at the same time—sometimes it seems safer and a whole lot easier.

People make chains for themselves all the time.  Some chains are easier to spot than others.  Addictions—to alcohol, drugs, gambling, hoarding, whatever—those can be easy to spot, at least from the outside.  People who are addicted find their lives controlled by their need.  Yet most people who are addicted try to claim, at some point, that they are fine, that they have it all under control.  They aren’t slaves to their addictions.  They can quit at any time, they say, even when it’s obvious they can’t.

Some chains are harder to spot than others, particularly when (like the people in today’s Gospel lesson) we are in denial.  We confess every Sunday at the beginning of worship that we are sinners, that we fall short of the glory of God, that we are held in chains by sin and cannot free ourselves.  But when it comes down to it, how many of us really take that seriously?  After all, it’s not like we’re Snidely Whiplash, gleefully chortling and twirling a moustache as we plot evil deeds.  Our sins are little things, we tell ourselves.  After all, saying something hurtful when we’re upset isn’t that big a deal, is it?  Paying more attention to our jobs or hobbies than to the people around us isn’t that big a deal, is it?  Watching movies and television shows that treat women like sex objects, play on racial stereotypes, or promote violence isn’t that big a deal, is it?  After all, everyone does it!

And on their own, each little sin may not look like much—but when you add them all together, they dominate every aspect of our lives.  Those sins keep us apart from one another, keep us from building right and lasting relationships with God and each other, breaking us apart, keep us isolated and turned in so that all we can see or hear are our own fears, our anxieties, our prejudices, our flaws.  We don’t want to admit that those sins keep us from listening to God’s Word, and keep us from truly living the good and abundant lives God wants for us.  We build up walls between ourselves as individuals, as communities, as a nation.  And we pretend everything is all right, that we can stop at any time, that we have it all under control, when the truth is, those sins control us, instead.  We don’t want to admit that we are slaves to sin.  We don’t want to admit that there are things we can’t do by ourselves.  Particularly not here in America, where we idolize self-reliance.  Admitting that there are things larger than us, things that we can’t control, feels like weakness.  And so we close our eyes to our brokenness, to our slavery, and pretend that we can do it all ourselves.

Sometimes that self-reliance turns into legalism.  Yes, Jesus saves us … but surely there’s something we need to do to make sure.  God gave us the commandments to help us live full and abundant lives in harmony with God and one another, guidelines for how to live a free life full of love of God and our neighbor.  And yet sometimes, we get so focused on those laws that we fulfill the letter of them while leaving no room in our hearts to love God and our neighbor.  We use those laws to justify our conflicts and our hatred of one another.  We get so focused on how we think God’s Word should be interpreted that we can’t hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to us.  We get so focused on the world around us that we can’t see the ways God is building the kingdom of God among us.  And so the commandments that God gave us as a gift become a curse, chains binding us and showing us just how far we fall short of the grace and freedom God wants for us.

Today is Reformation Sunday, when we commemorate the religious movement in 16^th Century Germany that formed the Lutheran church.  Through the Reformation, God freed people from their preconceived notions so that they could follow God’s Word.  People from across Germany, and all of Europe, started reading the Bible with open minds, and praying with open minds, and trusting God to free them from the chains that bound them.  And the church was transformed—Lutherans, other Protestants, Roman Catholics too.  By opening themselves up to God’s Word, people allowed God’s Word to change them.  Relying on God’s Word changed the way they thought and the way they lived.  Everything was affected, not just church life.  The role of women in society changed.  The way they handled poverty changed.  It wasn’t change for the sake of change, but change for the sake of living out the Gospel through love of God and love of neighbor.  It was change for the sake of the freedom that only comes from Christ.

Dorfl the golem found that it was easy to break the physical locks and chains holding people captive, but the things that really made people slaves were the words inside their heads.  For some people, those words are ‘I’m better than everyone else,’ while for others those words are ‘I’m not worth anything.’  Sometimes the words that enslave us are ‘we’ve never done it that way before,’ and sometimes the words that enslave us are ‘that’s the way we always did it—I want something new.’  Sometimes the words that enslave us are ‘what will people think?’ and sometimes the words that enslave us are ‘I don’t care about anyone else.’  There are so many words inside our head that can become prisons without our even realizing it.  And like Dorfl, we can’t free ourselves.  Someone has to open our hearts and minds and replace the words of slavery with the words of freedom.

Thank God for Jesus Christ, the living Word of God, who comes to set us free.  Christ comes to transform and reform us, to heal our relationships with him and with one another.  Christ comes to us when we are so tied up by our brokenness that we don’t even realize it and sets us free.  Christ comes and breaks open hearts and minds made hard and heavy by sin and puts words of love and hope and freedom within us.

Amen.

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

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

Did you look at your bulletin cover this morning while you were waiting for church to start?  I sometimes find the pictures they choose interesting.  Today the bulletin shows a stained glass window of an open hand, spilling out three coins.  Now, being a stained glass window, those coins don’t give any detail about what the coins Jesus was talking about actually looked like, so let me describe them to you. There was a picture of the Emperor, as the Pharisees and Herodians note.  The custom of putting political leaders on money is one of the few things that hasn’t changed in the 2,000 years since Jesus lived and taught.  And above the image—in Greek, it’s called an “icon,” the same word used for religious paintings—is a slogan, a motto, because putting mottos on our money is another thing that hasn’t changed.  On Roman coins, above the Emperor’s icon, the slogan was “Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus, Pontifex Maximus.”

That’s quite a mouthful!  But what does it mean?  Tiberius was the name of the Emperor in those days, and Caesar was his title.  His father had been Caesar Augustus, who was declared a god, which is why he’s called “divine.”  The Roman Empire was fast establishing a religious cult around worship of the Emperor and his predecessors.  Pontifex Maximus, well, that means that the Emperor was also the high priest of the Roman Empire, the person in charge of keeping order among all the orders of all the various religious orders, temples, priesthoods, and other religious groups in the empire and making sure all the gods had their proper worship.  Caesar was the supreme political ruler, the one who put and kept Herod on his throne.  He was also the son of a god and (depending on who you talked to) possibly a god himself, and the single most important person in the religious life of the Roman Empire as a whole.  And all of that showed in the coins that bore his icon.

You can see why paying taxes to Caesar—which had to be paid in Roman coins, with Caesar’s image and titles on it—was a hot-button issue.  The taxes were often cripplingly high and always unfairly distributed, at the whim of the tax collectors.  But that was just the beginning.  I’m sure you all remember the Ten Commandments.  They start off like this: “You shall have no other gods before me.  You shall not make for yourself an idol.”  And anyone with half a brain could take one look at those coins and make a good case for the coin being an idol, a physical representation of another so-called god, and therefore just having one in your pocket meant you were breaking the first commandment.  It wasn’t just a question about whether or not the taxes were fair, or whether you wanted to pay taxes to your foreign overlords.  Something much more fundamental is at stake in today’s Gospel lesson.  Is it possible to be faithful to the one true God in a world that worships so many other things as if they were god?

In some ways, the question was much more clear-cut in Jesus’ day.  You had the Roman overlords and their lackeys the Herodians, and you had the good, God-fearing Jews.  Today we live in a country in which most people have at least some allegiance to Christianity, a country which has considered itself Christian since before its birth.  The motto on our money says it: “In God we Trust.”  And yet, it’s not that simple.  Do we truly trust in God, or do we trust in our economic and political ideas?  Do we truly give to God what is his, or do we focus on giving ourselves what we want?

The Pharisees prided themselves on being faithful to God.  They studied God’s Word, and they worked out practical ways of living according to their understanding of God’s will.  They believed they were doing as God called them to do.  And yet, when God actually came among them in the person of Jesus Christ, they didn’t recognize him.  Worse than that, when their ideas of God conflicted with what God actually wanted, they set out to discredit him, to remove him.  They tried to use God’s own Word against him!  They could not imagine the possibility that God might not agree with their interpretation.  They weren’t trying to set themselves against God; they honestly believed that they were in the right and that Jesus was a danger to the right way to follow God.

I wonder what would happen if Jesus came back today.  Would we find that we sometimes think like the Pharisees without even realizing it?  Would we find that in some cases we use our faith and God’s Word to prove ourselves right rather than to seek out God’s wisdom and comfort?  I know it can be easier to go to the Bible to find something specific that I agree with rather than to read with an open mind, praying for the Holy Spirit to guide me.  And it can be easier to walk through life without thinking, to assume that because I am a Christian I already know what God wants me to do and how God wants me to think.

Those coins of Caesar’s said a lot about Caesar.  Does our money say a lot about us?  Do we really trust in God, or do we give God lip service while going about our lives?  Too often it seems like our trust is in our money, our politics, our prejudices rather than in God.  Are we faithful to God, or do we worship other things that draw us away from God?  Unlike in Jesus’ day, we can’t just look at the coins in our pockets and the statues in our sanctuaries to see where our faith lies.  As a culture we idolize politicians, entertainers, technology, riches, violence, sex, anything that promises to give us what we want.

Jesus said, “Give to the Emperor the things that are the Emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  I’m sure that a lot of his hearers wanted to hear him declare the Empire to be evil and say they didn’t have to obey it.  After all, the Empire was the power of the world that interfered with their faith and sometimes oppressed them.  Jesus didn’t do that.  Give to the Emperor the things that belong to him.  Civil government isn’t the same as the religious identity, and it doesn’t have to be.  The problem isn’t the things of the world in themselves.  The problem comes when we take the things of the world—leaders, money, anything—and put our whole trust in them, instead of in God.

That’s why Jesus didn’t stop there.  Give to God the things that are God’s.  So what belongs to God?  Everything!  God created the heavens and the earth, all that is, seen and unseen.  God created us, each and every one.  Jesus Christ heals us from the things that leave us broken in body and soul.  Jesus Christ gives us life even in death.  The Holy Spirit comes to us to comfort us, guide us, and inspire us.  Every good thing that we have and every good thing that we are, comes from God.

Giving to God the things that are God’s means opening ourselves up to God’s grace and mercy.  It means listening for God’s call instead of assuming we already know what God wants.  It means acknowledging that we are God’s. Giving to God the things that are God’s is about living as God’s people, even in the midst of a world that gives God only lip service.  The world may promise us what we want, but only God can give us what we truly need: our lives, our true and deep relationships with God and one another, and the peace beyond understanding.

Amen.