Truth

Editor's note:

Next Sunday will be my last Sunday at Salem and therefore my last sermon posted here. I have truly enjoyed sharing these sermons with you and hope that they have been meaningful reading.
May God bless you with peace

Reformation Sunday Year A 2008.

A sermon based on Psalm 46 and John 8:31–36.

In the name of Jesus; amen.

“You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.”

But what is the truth?

Jesus says that the truth is continuing in his word and being his disciples. Jesus’ word is the message of grace and love, but it is also the message of being what God intended for us and that is to be disciples.

Discipleship is not an easy thing. Over and over again Jesus tells his disciples that they will encounter troubles for believing in and following him. Throughout time, disciples who have followed Jesus have been persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, disowned, and killed. But while discipleship comes with a cost it also makes us free.

The people who listened to Jesus that day refused to believe that they were enslaved in any way, they forgot their history of being slaves in Egypt, and they didn’t understand that sin held them captive.

The true definition of sin is separation from God. Sin keeps us from being in relationship with God. It makes us turn our backs to the one who made us, makes us believe that we don’t really need God in our lives, that we can be just fine without him.

Scripture reminds us that we all fall short, that in fact we do need God in our lives; in every moment and in every breath. We cannot live fully in this life or the next without God.

This is truth: the knowledge that we need God; God in our everyday and in our out of the ordinary. We need God in the mundane and in the miraculous.

The truth is that when we continue in Jesus’ word and do those things that God intended for us we most clearly see our need for God.

We don’t think about need as freeing. Dependence doesn’t sound liberating. But it is in our need that God is able to be in relationship with us and relationship with God frees us from the trappings of sin.

This isn’t bad news; it is good news. It is the power of grace and the outpouring of God’s love that unlocks the prisons we find ourselves in.

The truth is that God loves us, loves us with a love so great that nothing else in all of heaven, or earth, or hell is greater.

This is Reformation Sunday; it is a day that marks a great change in the Church. We gather in this place as Lutherans because a few hundred years ago a man named Martin Luther was bold enough to remind people that God’s love and grace have the final say.

I am assured of God’s love. I’ve felt it over and over again in my life. It is the thing I have held onto when nothing else can support my weight and it has lifted me up time and time again.

And God’s love is assured for you; God our refuge and strength is with you. I have felt it here, that love that knows no bounds is present in this community.

For some time now I have kept a distressing truth from you. The fact that I have not been well has been a terrible burden for me to keep from you and while my heart is filled with sorrow I can tell you that I have experienced a release by finally letting you know that I am leaving in order to find health and wholeness again.

That release has come in the outpouring of love and compassion I have felt from you. This is a gift from God and the response that disciples make. You are Jesus’ disciples in the way in which you have offered your support, not just to me, but to others as well.

I want to say, from this pulpit, that I am not leaving because I do not love you. I love you dearly, but as much as I love you know that God loves you far more and with a fierce intensity that no pastor could ever match.

This is the truth about God’s love; it frees us to love one another, it re-forms us into disciples, and it is greater than any other force known to you or me.

Live in that love, let it guide you, comfort you, and keep you.

Amen.

Reflections

Pentecost 23 Year A 2008

A sermon based on Matthew 22:15-22

In the name of Jesus; amen.

How many of you have at least one mirror in your home? How often a day do you think that you look into it?

The first house I ever remember living in as a child had a large living room and one wall was completely covered with mirrors. I remember my mother having to wash that mirror with vinegar and water and newspapers, but what I really remember is that I used to look in it all the time. The couch was right in front of it and if I was talking to someone sitting on it and I was standing my mother would have to remind me to stop looking at myself and look at the person who I was talking to.

What do you see when you look into a mirror? Whose image does it reflect?

The Pharisees and the Herodians set out to trap Jesus. They were two groups of people who made strange bedfellows. The Pharisees were the religious leaders of the people and the Temple was their realm. The Herodians were those who followed King Herod, who was mostly a Roman puppet. In the Jewish world the Pharisees were the religious leaders and the Herodians were the secular leaders. They rarely if ever agreed on anything or worked together. But on this occasion they joined forces against Jesus.

He was becoming too popular with the people and they wanted to discredit him so they came up with a plan. They would ask him a question he couldn’t possibly answer without getting into trouble, like asking a man when he had stopped beating his wife.

If he answered that it was lawful to pay the tax the people would turn against him. Now we are supposed to pay our taxes joyfully no matter what the politicians say. Our taxes pave our roads; they educate our children, and ensure that when we call 911 someone comes to help us.

But paying taxes to the Roman Emperor was different. Those taxes financed an occupation by a foreign and ruthless government. The Romans may have built roads and kept order, but they did it with cruelty and with a swift iron hand.

When Matthew wrote his gospel, late in the first century his readers would have heard this story and thought back to the disastrous rebellion in 70 AD, that had been inspired by this tax. They would also have remembered that the Romans responded to the rebellion by destroying the Temple, the city of Jerusalem, and most of the city’s inhabitants.

On the other hand, if Jesus answered that it was unlawful to pay the tax that same vicious Roman government would have been all over him like white on rice. It would have been a treasonous statement and the Romans would have had him arrested and executed quickly.

It was a no win situation for Jesus, or so they thought. A colleague of mine pointed out the other day that if you are the Son of God you probably have a pretty high IQ.

The Pharisee’s disciples and the Herodians begin by trying to butter him up. They give him a compliment, then ask him the question they are sure will be his downfall, “Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”

The first clever thing that Jesus does is ask them to show him one of the coins used to pay the tax. Standing there in the Temple one wasn’t supposed to have such coins on their person. It was why the money changers set up shop outside the Temple, to change the Roman coins, with the image of Caesar, who called himself a god, into coins that were acceptable inside the Temple.

It’s clever because it showed that he didn’t have one, but they did. The very people who were supposed to trick him into either speaking against the government or God had the coin they weren’t supposed to have in the Temple.

The second clever thing that Jesus does is answer their question by asking a question: “Whose head is this (literally whose image) and whose title?” And when they answer that it is the emperor’s head he tells them to “give therefore to the emperor those things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Matthew tells us that when they heard what he said they went away amazed. It is an amazing story, but not because Jesus is more clever than the Pharisees or the Herodians, but because of the message that he gives.

We are responsible to give to the government that which holds its image. Now we could argue what things hold the government’s image, but I think it means that we are responsible for paying our taxes and obeying traffic laws. The government has put its seal on these things; its stamp.

But if we are to give to the government that which holds the government’s image then we are also responsible for giving to God that which holds God’s image.

I would bet that before you all came here today you looked into a mirror at least once. What you saw was a reflection of you, but it was the image of God that projected that reflection.

We were made in the image of God. The hair you brushed, the wrinkles, the scars, the blemishes, the eyes, lips, and nose; all those things hold the image of God.

Look around at one another. We are supposed to see Christ in our neighbor, but they are supposed to see Christ in us because we have God’s image.

So it stands to reason that what we are to give to God, literally render to God is us. We belong to God because God has imprinted his image on us.

Render yourselves to God. Do it through prayer, and service, and thanksgiving, and sacrifice, and love for one another. And when you look into the mirror remember that you are not alone; God is with you and in you turning sin into beauty and blemishes into grace.

Amen.

A New Lease

Pentecost 21 Year A

A sermon based on Matthew 21:33-46

In the name of Jesus; amen.

People have been taking stock of what they have lately. This is a pun, perhaps a bad one, but if you have been paying attention to the news lately you know that things are not in the best shape.

I don’t understand economics. My husband pays our bills and manages our money. I know how to spend it and that’s about it. I honestly admit that I am a capitalist and that I have lived on credit just like most Americans do.

Capitalism in itself is not an evil thing, but neither is socialism or even communism. It’s all in how the system is used. We can use it well or we can use it poorly. We can use it to the advantage of ourselves and others or we can have happen what happened the other day when the stock market dropped almost 800 points.

In today’s gospel reading Jesus tells a parable about a vineyard. He tells it to the chief priests and the scribes who are angry at him because the day before he had entered the Temple in Jerusalem and turned over the money changers’ tables. The money changers were not in and of themselves evil, in fact they were considered necessary because their job was to exchange the money that the people used every day with the money that was used in the Temple to purchase animals for sacrifice.

I could preach a whole sermon on that, but it isn’t our story for the day. Our story for today is Jesus’ response to the people who were angry at him because Jesus didn’t like the system that was being used. He didn’t like that people believed that they had to buy sacrifices in order to be forgiven or made right with God.

So he tells this story about a landowner who puts his land in the hands of tenants to take care of it for him. When it’s time for the tenants to pay the rent they kill the rent collectors. They even kill his son.

Really Jesus is telling a story about God and the history of God’s people. God creates a world and puts tenants (that’s us) in it to take care of it. But the people (still us) are terrible tenants so God sends prophets and they get killed off. Then God sends more prophets who are also killed off until finally God sends his son, Jesus… and guess what happens to him.

Simply put, the world belongs to God; we are only tenants living in it. And what do tenants do? They pay rent to the one who owns their home.

This story that Jesus tells should make us a bit uncomfortable. We can be late in our payments, skip them, ignore them, feel entitled to live here for free, or decide that we don’t owe anybody anything because there is no one to owe anything to. And many times we all do just that.

When Jesus finishes his story he asks the people what they think will happen to the tenants when the owner of the vineyard comes. They have killed off his slaves and his only son and the people are certain that “he will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will produce at the harvest time.”

It makes sense. That’s what would happen in the movies. The owner would send in commandoes that would utterly destroy those murderous tenants, but Jesus doesn’t end the story like that.

Instead he randomly quotes Isaiah saying, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes.”

Today A.C.B. is going to be baptized. Today Christ Jesus will make A. his own. A. will become more than just a tenant in the eyes of God; he will become one of God’s own children; a part of the vineyard that God wants to produce fruit.

Baptism is not a free ride; God does have expectations of us to produce fruit.

We have hope that A. will do just that. We hope that A. will come to love God, worship God, trust in God, and do works that will glorify God throughout his life. But just like the rest of us who are tenants, but more than just tenants through baptism, he will probably do many things that displease God.

He will take stock of what he has and forget that it is only a loan from God because that is part of the nature of being human and he, like the rest of us, will deserve exactly what the people said the tenants deserved: a miserable death.

But Jesus doesn’t end the story that way. His parable about the vineyard owner doesn’t end with the death of the tenants, that’s the way the people ended it. Jesus ends the story by proclaiming himself the cornerstone on which salvation is based.

Jesus goes to the cross rejected and becomes the cornerstone of our faith through resurrection.

This story should make us all uncomfortable, but it should also produce hope in us. We have been given the vineyard because God loves us and baptism gives us a new lease on life because through baptism God promises to make us children of God who share in the inheritance of the vineyard.

God has given us the vineyard so that we might also enjoy the fruits that grow and so that we might also find forgiveness and renewal when our plants wither and our fruit begins to rot.

A., you are being called to live in the vineyard, to work the land and to let your light shine so that God might be glorified in the fruit that you produce. But you are also called to be loved by God, who is your Father in heaven.

May we all be blessed in our baptismal call to produce fruit worthy of the Father and may we experience the forgiveness and renewal that comes along with the work that we do.

Amen.