Reflections on the Passing of the Peace

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” –1 Corinthians 1:3

“And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” –Philippians 4:7

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” –John 14:27

Peace is talked about many times in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation.  Practically every writer of Scripture has something to say on the subject.  Every Sunday we wish peace for one another in worship.  What is it about peace that makes it such an integral part of our worship, our faith, and our lives?

Peace is a way of seeing the world, a way in which our faith in God helps us stay calm in a turbulent world. When God is present with us and in us, when we put our trust in God, we know that we are in God’s hands and don’t need to spend our time worrying about what to do or what will happen.  We know that we belong to God, and he will take care of us.  This inner peace is ours no matter what happens in the world around us; it is a gift from God, and beyond our understanding or ability to explain.  It is something we deny ourselves too often, when we shove our faith into a box marked “only for Sundays” and try to seek fulfillment in endless busyness instead of in God.  It is something we ignore when we focus on our fears and anxieties instead of on God’s promise of love and forgiveness.

Peace is also a way of relating to others, a way of treating others with love and justice.  It happens when we act with Christ-centered hospitality and respect, when we air disagreements honestly and openly with charity and compassion instead of storing up grudges and disagreements and bitterness.  It can take hard work to practice peace in the midst of conflict, but it can also bring great rewards of growth and harmony.

When we wish each other the peace of the Lord each Sunday, as Christ wished it to us and as Paul wished it to his congregations in every letter, we’re not just mouthing pious good wishes.  We are affirming that God is truly present in us and in the congregation, that his presence brings that peace that surpasses all human understanding.  We are reminding one another that God’s peace isn’t just some abstract pie-in-the-sky proposition, but a present reality with us here, now, in this place.  And we are promising that we will reflect that peace in our lives together in Christ.

Justice and love, not -isms: how Christians should think about money

Once a week, I go to a pastor’s Bible study where we look at the texts assigned in the lectionary for the coming Sunday. (A lectionary is a yearly cycle of readings used in worship, designed to ensure that a wide variety of texts are heard each week; Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, many Methodists and Presbyterians, and others around the world use the three-year Revised Common Lectionary.)

This Sunday’s gospel text is the parable of the laborers in the vineyard, in which the kingdom of heaven is compared to a vineyard where all the laborers are paid the same amount, whether they worked all day or came late, and the laborers who worked the longest complain about the unfairness of the wage scale. Because by human logic, it is unfair—and we like unfairness when it’s in our favor, but complain and get jealous when it’s in someone else’s favor. God’s grace is incredibly unfair—no one can earn salvation, no one is good enough to be saved on their own merit. We benefit from God’s grace, and then complain when the same benefits go to those less worthy than ourselves, as if we earned them and they didn’t.

This group of pastors discussed God’s grace for a few minutes, and then started dealing with the economic implications of the parable. How does God want us to organize our money? How does capitalism compare with this parable? How does socialism compare with this parable? How would market forces be affected if we were to live according to this parable?

As I listened to them talk, I realized the questions were good questions, but shared the same underlying flaw: they assumed that God’s “economy,” God’s views of money, fit within our own systems of how we understand and deal with money. Everyone likes to assume that God agrees with them; it’s comforting, and means you don’t have to rethink your opinions. (Oh, we say we agree with God, but often what we really mean is that God agrees with us, particularly if we haven’t approached our faith and our Bible studies with an open mind and heart.) But God is greater and deeper than we can understand, and can never fit neatly within our prejudices. God is neither a capitalist, nor a socialist, nor any other –ist.

So what’s this got to do with the economy, you ask? During the history of Christianity, various groups have tried for a time to live lives perfectly fitting God’s will; the Biblical example is in Acts, where the first believers held all things in common and shared with all as each needed. But humans being sinful creatures, no such attempt has lasted long before greed, jealousy, and laziness have interfered. That’s why we have human-designed economic systems such as capitalism and socialism and others today.

The thing is, God’s primary concern isn’t money, except how justice and love are affected by it. When you think about money, ask yourself these questions: am I using my money justly? Am I using it to support systems that are just or unjust? Am I using all the resources God has given me (money included) for just causes and out of love for my fellow human beings, or am I using it selfishly, for myself alone? What can I do with what I have to further spread love and justice in the world?

Doing the Right Thing: Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 2008

Lectionary 22 / Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Year A)

Sunday, August 31

Jeremiah 15:15-21

Psalm 26:1-8
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

Preached by Vicar Anna C. Haugen

First Evangelical Lutheran Church, Greensburg, PA

Sermon podcast

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.

There is a banner that hangs over the door to the gym in Talmadge Middle School in Independence, Oregon. It’s one of many inspirational quotes and slogans that decorate the halls of that school. It says: “What is right is not always popular; what is popular is not always right.” The banner was there every day of the three years I went to school there, but few of the students ever bothered to read it, or apply it to their lives if they did. I know I read it, decided it was true, and promptly forgot about it.

Doing the right thing is hard, when it’s not the popular thing. It’s much easier, not to mention a lot more fun, to go with the flow and do what everyone else is doing. It’s safer, too—no danger of looking stupid or preachy or offending people. And let’s face it: most of the choices we have to make every day, most of the things we do, aren’t exactly life-shattering choices. Nobody lives or dies, nobody gets rich or poor, nobody’s soul is saved or lost. We may not always do things that are exactly right, but they’re not exactly wrong, either. The banner above the gym door is true, but it’s not what we want to hear.

Jeremiah lived by that truth. He’d been called by God to be a prophet, to bring God’s word to the people of Israel. It’s been said that a prophet’s job is to speak truth to power, even when that’s not what the power wants to hear. Jeremiah went one better: he spoke the truth to everyone. And no one wanted to hear it. Our first lesson today comes from one of Jeremiah’s laments. He complains that people are persecuting him because he’s speaking the words God has told him to speak. Jeremiah was attacked and accused of treason for doing what God wanted him to. But in today’s lesson, God tells him that this persecution isn’t going to last forever; in the end, God’s will will be done, and Jeremiah will be saved. More than that, eventually the people of Israel will heed Isaiah’s words and return to doing the right thing, to behaving like the people of God, and not just paying lip service to their faith while doing the easy thing, the popular thing.

It must have seemed an incredible, almost unbelievable, idea. Israel had been doing the popular thing for a long time. They’d demanded that God give them a king so they could be “like their neighbors,” and although David and Solomon and a few others had been good rulers, most had been utter disasters. Israel had focused on trade and their economy, and they’d produced an upper class that could rival the neighboring countries in wealth, but at the cost of trampling on the poor and oppressed. They’d learned to play power-politics, staking their safety and freedom on military alliances and power blocs, playing one neighboring nation off against another. Some of them had even adopted the gods of the nations around them. Most people worshipped as God had commanded, gave lip service to God’s laws, and went on with their daily lives as if it made no difference. Their minds were set on human things. God had brought them out of Egypt and freed them from slavery to be a chosen people, holy, a royal priesthood, but they behaved no differently than anybody else.

It’s no wonder they didn’t like Jeremiah; he called them on everything they were doing wrong, and told them that this time, they weren’t going to escape the consequences of their actions. It wasn’t what they wanted to hear, and it wasn’t what they wanted to believe. Most of the Israelites weren’t bad people, after all, and most of them worshipped God according to Israel’s traditions. Surely they hadn’t done anything bad enough to warrant conquest. Surely something would happen to turn the tide and restore Israel to safety and prominence. It’s true, the northern kingdom of Judah had already been conquered, and the Babylonians were right outside their gates; there was still a good chance they might be bribed, or perhaps an alliance with Egypt would provide the military might to drive the invaders from their lands.

I’m sure the people of Israel felt they had many good reasons to disregard Jeremiah’s warnings. What good would repentance and changing their way of life, their way of thinking, do against an invading army? They went about their business as usual, ignored the word of God in their midst, and hoped for the best. But in the end, all their power politics and riches couldn’t save them. They were conquered by Babylon and taken into exile. Many fled to Egypt to escape; Jeremiah wanted to stay in Israel but was forced to leave his homeland for Egypt. God’s assurances that all would be well in the end must have been even more unbelievable then than they had been when they were made.

Like the Israelites of Jeremiah’s day, Peter, too, had his mind set on human things. You may recall from last week’s Gospel that Peter has just confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God. It’s a profound insight; it’s the first time in Matthew’s gospel that anyone but the narrator has called Jesus that. You’d think that the person who is spiritually-minded enough to realize that just a few verses earlier would get what Jesus is trying to say now, but Peter is still too focused on human things. According to the beliefs of the time, the Messiah was supposed to be a political figure, a king just like his ancestor David who would drive out the Romans and their puppet-kings and restore Israel to its former glory as a nation. True, there would be some religious changes, but in support of the political restoration, not in place of it. Suffering? Death? What kind of revolutionary goes in predicting that ahead of time? What kind of revolutionary counts that as success? And even if you ignore the political aspects of the Messiah’s coming, how could suffering and death possibly be according to the will of God?

Peter’s not alone in thinking that, of course; how many people today assume that when something bad happens, it means God has abandoned us? How many people assume that if God loves you and you have the right faith, you’ll always be happy and healthy and rich? How many people assume that faith is nothing more than coming to church on Sunday, and ignoring it the rest of the week, as if God was a decoration you could take out on Sunday and store in a box the rest of the time? How many people who believe that are sitting in our pews right now?

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” We tend to think of the cross sentimentally, today. We sing hymns about it, we create beautiful artwork, we wear it as jewelry. If we think about “bearing our crosses,” we tend to think about things like arthritis, having to deal with annoying people, the kinds of problems everyone deals with all the time. That’s not what the disciples were thinking about when they heard Jesus say those words.

This is what they were thinking about: crucifixion was the ugliest, most painful, most shameful death the Roman Empire could come up with—and remember that this is a people who considered fights to the death to be a form of public entertainment. Criminals condemned to crucifixion were dragged naked through town, carrying a part of the thing that was going to kill them on their back, mocked by everyone who saw them. Then they were nailed to their cross—heavy, iron spikes driven through their hands and feet—and hung up in the air by those wounds for hours in the hot sun. They didn’t die from blood loss or pain, they died when their bodies became too weak and tired to hold their chest up to breathe anymore and they suffocated. And it took a long time, while the whole city watched and jeered. Take up your cross? What kind of insanity is that? Who would follow a Messiah who promised that as the reward?

Someone who had their mind set, not on human things, but on divine. Paul gives us a brief outline of what this mindset looks like in our second lesson: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. … Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”

Paul’s words give us a pretty picture of what life as a Christian is supposed to be like. It’s not as easy as he makes it sound of course, particularly in days like our own when hate and fear and evil seem to be everywhere, from local crime to national politics to international terrorists and wars. But oh, God, think of what life could be like if we could all genuinely live the way Paul tells us to, lives full of love and compassion and joy and harmony, a peace of mind and spirit too deep to be explained, even in times of trouble. Think of what life could be like, if we truly put our trust and our faith in Christ Jesus our Lord, the true Messiah who comes not for political or military revolution, but to save us from our sins, make us children of God, and show us how to live lives of truth and justice and grace. Think of what we could be if we put our faith in God, instead of our money and our power and our politics. If we were ruled by hope instead of fear. If we did what was right, instead of what was popular.

Living that way means that you can’t always take the easy way out. It means you can’t hide behind the excuse that everyone else is doing it. It also means that people aren’t always going to like what you have to say, or what you do. Few people in America risk death or imprisonment on account of their faith as Jeremiah did, but ridicule and discrimination, both obvious and not, are certainly possible. Focusing on divine things instead of human things doesn’t mean everything in your life will go well, or that God will reward your faith with material prosperity. But it does mean that no matter where you go, no matter what happens to you, God will be with you, to guide and protect and care for you.

Jeremiah died in exile in Egypt. We don’t know how he died; we do know that he never stopped calling the people of God to repentance and new lives of faith, and that once the worst had happened, his words turned to comfort and hope for the future. Peter was crucified in Rome, after years of working tirelessly to spread the Gospel. Yet they were never alone, for God was with them, and when they died, God was waiting to welcome them into the rooms prepared for them. May we, like them and all the saints that came before us, learn to keep our minds on God’s will, instead of our own. Amen.

Treasure in clay jars: Baptism and Communion

I talked last week about the fellowship of believers and the body of Christ. Important as it is, however, this fellowship is not the only reason for attending worship services.

God is present in many things every day, great and small. Some we may find easy to attribute to God—the beauty of forest, the grandeur of a mountain, the love of those around us. Some escape our notice—the little grace notes that lighten our day. A stranger’s smile, a break in the clouds, a chance remark that sparks an idea. All are examples of God present in our lives, in both good times and bad. It’s important to notice these things, but so often we get caught up in our busy lives and forget to pay attention, or credit them instead to our own skill and luck. God’s presence can be so intangible, so easily ignored, that we need something concrete and physical to demonstrate it, something we can see, hear, touch, smell, taste, and know God is present in it.

In the Lutheran understanding, a “sacrament” is the combination of the Word of God with a visible sign (something we can see and touch), as ordered by Christ. We recognize two sacraments, Baptism and Communion. Jesus commanded us to do both of the sacraments as signs of his presence with us. God takes every-day, ordinary things (water, oil, wine, bread) and makes them into extraordinary signs of God’s love and grace.

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20.)

In our baptisms we are initiated into the Christian life as disciples and members of the fellowship of believers. We are “sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.” This is not fire insurance for Christians; it is not a “get out of Hell free card.” Baptism is God reaching out to us and promising us that God will always be there for us, claiming and reclaiming God’s identity as Emmanuel. There’s a reason baptism is traditionally done during the worship service, and there’s a reason that the congregation makes promises of support and solidarity with the person being baptized. God’s presence sometimes manifests itself through the companionship of our fellow members of the body of Christ, so it’s important that our fellow members are there when God promises to be with us. But beyond that, the baptism of each new member, child or adult, is a reminder that God has claimed us as God’s own through our own baptisms. It’s a reminder that baptism is not a once-in-a-lifetime event, but the beginning of an ongoing life of dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ Jesus our Lord. It’s also a reminder that Christ is present with us, not in theory but in fact. God’s presence is as real and tangible as the water and the oil.

“While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and after giving thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.” (Matthew 26:26-28).

There’s been a lot of debate over these words over the centuries. Some say they’re meant to be symbolic, some have argued for arcane philosophical justifications for the turning of bread into flesh and wine into blood, some have other ideas. But the important thing is that Christ is promising to be truly present in the bread and the wine. Whatever you think it is, Christ is present in it. In this bread and wine, God’s covenant—God’s promised relationship with us—is made into a form we can feel and taste. God’s promise to forgive our sins, renew us, and make us whole is real even when we’re so overwhelmed with life that we can’t see it any other way.

This is why going to church is important. God is present in many ways every day, whether we go to church or not. But it’s only in worship with our fellow believers that we receive these two sacraments, these two physical assurances of God’s grace.

If you have any questions about this or any questions you would like interested in next week’s entry, please comment.

I don’t believe in “the church”: Faith and Fellowship

There are a lot of people today who consider themselves Christian, but never go to church. Ask them why, and you’re likely to get some variation on “I believe in God, but I don’t believe in the church.” My response is, it’s good that you don’t “believe in” the church. As Christians, we believe in the one God; “believing in” anything else in the same way would be idolatry. However, when you say “I don’t need the church,” I get concerned. The church was given by God to us as a help us in good times and bad.

While it is possible to worship God alone, God prefers us to worship together as a community. In Matthew 18:23, Jesus says specifically “For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” Jesus did not travel alone; he gathered people together throughout his ministry in mutual love and support. While he occasionally prayed alone, he never went to the Temple or otherwise worshiped God by himself.

Paul, likewise, was very concerned with the church, the “ekklesia,” the gathering of the community for worship and fellowship. For Paul, one of the most important features of Christian life was that it was communal—the fellowship/partnership/full participation of all was extremely important to him. Paul called the gathering of the faithful the body of Christ, saying that no part of the body was complete without all the other parts, and that no part of the body was more important than any of the other parts. (Romans 12:4-5, 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, etc.)

For both Jesus and Paul, the important part about the church was not the formal institutional structure. The important part was the community, the people gathered together in common cause, with mutual love and support. The community was to build each other up in love and faithfulness, to offer support and consolation in times of trouble. Anything that threatened that communion was to be dealt with, in love and forgiveness.

The church is not an institution or a building. The church is fundamentally a fellowship of people. That fellowship can nurture you spiritually when you are feeling spiritually “dry.” That fellowship can challenge you and open you up to new ways of thinking about and experiencing God in your life that you would not have found on your own, and it can comfort you with old truths of faith in a world where everything seems to be changing. That fellowship can comfort and console you in times of trouble, and it can help you learn to care for others in their own times of need. It is not a thing to be “believed in,” but it is a gift to be used and a help in our journeys as Christians.

It’s true that the church is made up of fallible, sinful human beings, and often falls short of the community to which God calls us, sometimes with tragic results. But that community of faith, imperfect as it is, is still important. You may decide you best fit in a different congregation, a different community of faith, than the one you grew up in. You may decide the worship styles of the church you grew up in don’t feed you, spiritually, as much as that of another congregation; that’s okay, too, because not everyone responds to the same way to the same worship styles. Which congregation you choose, which denomination, is ultimately not all that important; the important thing is participation in the body of Christ. The same Lord is Lord of all.

Next week I’ll talk about the importance of the sacraments in the community of faith.