Check this out!

This sermon was delivered to the people of the Lutheran Church of the Nativity on January 5, 2014. The text for the sermon was John 1:35-51

“They said to him, ‘Rabbi, (which translated means teacher where are you staying?’ Jesus said to them, ‘Come and see.’” - John 1:38b-39a

My friend Sarah and I love to share music with one another.  At least once every couple of days I’ll text her or get a text from her with a song to look up online as soon as possible.  Sometimes these songs are silly, because we know they’ll make the other person smile, like when I texted her “Safe and Sound” by Capital Cities a couple of months ago.  Or maybe it’ll be a deep song, like “A Drop in the Ocean” by Ron Pope, because we’ve been thinking about each other.  Just a couple days ago, Sarah texted me “Farewell December” by Matt Nathanson for me to look up.  I know that I look forward to sending these texts, because I love sharing whatever earworm has been stuck in my head for a few hours.  But really, I think I look forward to sending these texts because it’s a way for me to share one of my passions with a close friend.  

It makes me think about some of my other passions, good food, good movies, good books, good beer, and how frequently I share them with the people I’m close to, whether they want to hear about it or not.  What are your passions?  What are those things that you love to share with the people in your life?  How long was it since you shared one of those things with someone?

If you’re like me, I’d guess it hasn’t been too long since you’ve shared your love for something on whoever’s closest.  We love inviting people to participate in something that we are passionate about.  We’ve loved it since show and tell when we were in elementary school and now that we’re older we love sharing with whoever, whenever.  We can’t resist talking to our co-workers, family, friends, strangers in line at the grocery store about whatever book we’ve just read, whatever movie we’ve just watched, where we had dinner last night, what particular craft has our attention, or which political ideology we align with.  We even share online, using with the heading, “Check this out!”

And that’s exactly what happens in this text this morning.  Philip has been waiting for the Messiah.  And he figures the best place to wait for the Lamb of God is with a prophet, John the Baptist.  And sure enough, Jesus walks by and John proclaims that “here is the Lamb of God.”  So Philip goes to Jesus to find out more.  It only takes Philip the better part of an afternoon to realize that he has, in fact, found the Messiah that he’s been waiting for.  His life project, his passion, has appeared right in front of him, and he runs back home to tell his friend Nathanael about it.

He goes to Nathanael, saying “I’ve found him!  I’ve found the Messiah!” And Nathanael, understandably says back to him, “Really?  I don’t believe you.”

Nathanael reveals the greatest flaw in our strategy to invite people to share about our passions.  We don’t actually want to pick up other people’s hobbies.  We don’t want to have to invest time and energy into something that we don’t really care about.  We’d much rather just talk and talk and talk about whatever we’re really excited about.  We don’t want to have our everyday lives disrupted with something new.

As much as I love swapping songs with my friend Sarah, I must confess that I’m not always as good about listening to her recommendation as she is to seeking mine.  I know that her song for the day is going to be wonderful and awesome and prophetic for a given moment, but I always seem to find an excuse for why I can’t listen to it when she invites me to.

Like Monday, when she texted me about “Farewell December.”  It was completely appropriate for the end of the month, and the beginning of the new year.  But I was playing video games, and so I texted back that I’d check it out later.  It was closer to 3 or 4 the next afternoon before I finally listened to that song, though.  Everytime she’d text me, I’d think…Oh, yeah, I need to listen to that song.  But then I’d have to go into a meeting.  Or I’d have to finish up whatever I was working on.  Or I’d have to take my dog for a walk.  Or I’d have to cook lunch.  Or whatever.  I managed to keep her good taste in music from disrupting my daily life.  

Like all of us, I kept refusing an invitation into something new and awesome by making excuses.  We avoid accepting an invitation when we know that it means our lives are going to be disrupted, even if it’s momentarily.  Even Nathanael makes an excuse when Philip invites him to come see where God is working.

We especially avoid accepting God’s invitations to experience something new, because God’s invitations are the most disrupting.  When we accept God’s invitation to come and see, we learn where God is staying, or to be more faithful to the Greek, where God is abiding.  As we will see through the next few months, where God is abiding is in us, with us, and through us.  God abides with us from the moment we have been baptised like Cleo/Davis were not that long ago.  

And there is nothing more disruptive than having God abide with us all the time.  You see, God has a way of pulling us out of the routines of our day-to-day life and inviting us to come experience God’s work in our lives and the lives around us.  We become invited to participate in God’s work in our neighbors, and very seldom are our neighbors our friends.

When God abides with us, we suffer when we watch the injustice of those whom we would like nothing more than to ignore.  God cries out to us, pleading for us to go to the homeless person and help them get treatment for whatever physical or mental illness is keeping them on the streets.  God cries out, begging for us to go to the person who lashes out in the workplace, to help them cope with whatever’s been going on at home.  God cries out when entire peoples are persecuted because of the color of their skin or because of their religion.  God cries out to us when people are reduced to objects, used by those in power.  God cries out to us time and time again, asking, begging, pleading for us to allow our lives to be disrupted so we can experience another place that God abides.  

But instead, we tend to make excuses.  We say, “It’s not my fault, I don’t have to fix it.” Or “I’ve got to go to work now, I’ll get to it later.” Or “There are hundreds of people nearby, why can’t one of them fix it?”  Or my personal favorite, “I’ve got my own problems to deal with, and no one is helping me with them.”  We keep saying our excuses over and over again, and eventually we believe them.  We let the sin that ruins our relationships with each other and with God drown out God’s shouts to “check this out!”  And we let the fear of having our lives disrupted get in the way of actually experiencing for ourselves where God is abiding in us, and those around us.

And we should be afraid.  God’s disruptions mean experiencing something new.  God’s disruptions mean dying to sin.  God’s disruptions mean being raised to new life on the cross.  But, even though it’s scary, it’s worth it.  It’s worth it to recognize where God abides in our neighbors, in the strangers, in that person we can’t stand.  When we start to pay attention to where God abides in those people, our lives become transformed.  It becomes exciting.  It becomes a passion that we can’t wait to share with the people around us.  And it becomes easier to see that God has been abiding within our hearts the entire time as well.  Amen.  

New Years and New Lives

I'm not a huge fan of New Year's resolutions.

Never have been.  Probably never will be.

I can't stand the mentality that comes from "failing" to meet your resolutions, which inevitably happens.  There's about two months where we're all really good.  We eat better, we laugh more, we go to the gym, we save well, we cook more, we spend more time with family, we volunteer, we stick to our resolution.

Then something happens.

There's a crisis.  Or not.  For whatever reason, we decide that it's ok to go out to dinner, just this once.  Or maybe, I don't have to go to the gym today cause I'm not feeling well.  Or whatever.  Our "just this once" or "not today" soon becomes the new habit.  One day turns into two, turns into months.  Then we wake up one morning and realize it's Christmas and we haven't made progress on our resolution since April.

And so, after "failing" for another year, we decide we're just going to put it off, because New Year's is just around the corner.  We can take care of it then.

Instead, we just create this cycle where we improve ourselves for a few months, and then backslide into our old habits.  Instead of actually growing and changing, we create a self-perpetuating and self-affirming cycle that helps us stay the same.

The New Year's resolution problem, for me, is that once we slip up, that's it for the whole year.  I think, "Man, I didn't go to the gym yesterday, so I don't have to go today, maybe I'll go tomorrow."  Or "Well, I already ruined the not eating out thing, so why not grab dinner with some friends tonight too?"  There's no grace.  There's no second chance for keeping the resolution.  When you fail, you fail.  So you better just start again next year.

Yet, the good news that is proclaimed time and time again in churches (and probably synagogues and mosques and temples, etc) is a message of grace upon grace.  That we believe in and are transformed by a living God of second chances and redemption.  That, no matter how badly we mess up, God is still there reaching out to us, pulling us up, and setting us on the road again, telling us, "Ok, you can be better this time."  And then we might make another step forward, and we fall again.

And because it's easier, we take our New Year's resolution mentality.  "Well, I sinned again.  Guess I'll just wait til God shows up at the end to fix me and make me perfect.  Which means I can do what I want til then."  We ignore the fact that every single time we fall, God is there to pick us back up.

Every single time.

Martin Luther wrote in the Small Catechism that "every day we die to sin and are raised to new life in Christ through our baptisms."

Every day we die to sin.
Every day we are raised to new life.
Every day, God reaches to pick us up, set us back on the road, and encourages us to be better.

Perhaps, it's not just every day, but every minute, every second, every time we mess up, or make a mistake or sin.  Every time we fall, God is right there to reach down to us and pick us up.  Always providing a second chance.  Always providing grace upon grace.

However, it's not cheap grace.  Nor is it easy to receive.  For us to fully appreciate and understand just how frequently God reaches down to us, we must be honest with ourselves.  And that's hard.

We have to be honest with the fact that we made a mistake.  We have to confess the fact we fell short.  We have to be able to look around us, and see that we have, in fact, fallen.  We have to be able to admit that we need help picking ourselves back up.

That's a mentality that's pretty foreign to the Western culture we live in.  We are proud.  We want to do for ourselves.

Do we need help?  Absolutely.
Will we admit it?  Never.

Despite our stubbornness and pride, God still reaches down to us.  God still offers to pick us up and help us.  We just have to be willing to swallow that pride and let God help us.  We have to be willing to die to the sin that keeps us down, so that God can raise us up.

We have to die to sin, not every lifetime.
Not every year.
Not every day.
But every moment.
And every moment we can be raised to a newness of life.   We can be raised to restored relationships with God and with one another.  We can experience second chances.  We can know grace.  We can know peace and wholeness.

So, if I had to have a New Year's resolution, and I might, it would be to allow myself to experience grace.  To be honest with my own shortcomings and allow God to raise me up through them.  To admit that I need help and let God help me, especially through those around me.  To allow myself to die to sin and be raised to new life. To let each setback be another opportunity to be a leap forward instead of an opportunity to continue to go backwards.

So maybe it's not really a New Year's resolution, but a New Life resolution.  Or maybe, a New Day resolution or New Moment resolution.  It's not a measurable goal; it's a journey.

And it's a journey that I'm not walking on alone.

What's the Word?

This sermon was delivered to the people of the Lutheran Church of the Nativity on December 22, 2013.  The text for this sermon is John 1:1-18.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.

- John 1:1

It seems a little strange to go back to the beginning, now that we are about halfway through our faith journey.  We’ve seen creation, we seen the faith of the Patriarchs, we’ve seen guidance in the wilderness, we’ve seen kings and temples, and seen grief in the time of exile.  And now, as we get ready to see the Messiah, we take a slight detour.  We go “back to the beginning.”

Now while this seems a little disjointed, it shouldn’t surprise us. I think that we love the beginnings of stories best, especially when we’re little.  We love the rhythm of the “once upon a time” or “in a land far away” or “a long long time ago in a galaxy far far away.”  This familiar rhythm helps us get immersed in the story, and this text from John isn’t any different.  It opens like the familiar story from Genesis, “In the beginning…” But then John immediately shakes things up.

John doesn’t follow that next part that we know so well, the “...when God created the heavens and the earth…” instead he says “In the beginning was the Word.”  Right off the bat, John hints that his story isn’t going to be the familiar one that his audience grew up with, instead this story is new.  This story has a different ending.  

In the Genesis story, creation ends with exile from the Garden and being cut off from a relationship with God. That story ends with so much of what we see when we turn on the tv or read the newspaper.  It’s a story that ends with tragedy, disasters, violence, and hate.  It’s a story that requires competition to be successful.  It’s a story that says the lion eats the lamb.  It’s a story that has oppression and darkness.  It’s a story that we have found ourselves in time after time, even as we long for the “happily ever after” ending of the stories from our childhood.  

John’s story is different from the Genesis story though.  John’s story ends with the coming of the light, but not being overwhelmed by the darkness.  John’s story ends with the Word breaking through the darkness of the world that does not know him and still brings light and life to all the world.  John’s story ends with grace upon grace, which reveals God for all people.  John’s story gives us our “happily ever after.”

Our “happily ever after” comes when we hear that the Word is Jesus Christ.  That Jesus is the Word of God, and brought us grace upon grace.  That even though there was darkness, the light of Christ could not be overcome. The light of Christ will fill everyone and shine through everyone, out into the world.  Yep, that sounds like “happily ever after” to me.

Except, we look out into the world, and it still looks like the end to the Genesis story.  We see lives plagued by addiction, loneliness, mental illness, brokenness, violence; lives plagued by darkness.  We look into our world and it seems that “the world does not know him.”  We feel like the light of Christ has been overcome by the darkness.  And so, to find hope in the story we currently see, we push this text from John into the future.  We read it and hope that when Jesus returns, then all of these things will happen.  That’s part of why we celebrate Advent after all, we prepare ourselves for the time when we will get to see things work out “happily ever after.”

Yet, why not prepare the way for Christ’s return now, in our own lives and in our own hearts?  Why not let Christ’s light shine in the darkness through us?  Why do we focus on the Bible as the Word of God, when the Word of God was really flesh and blood?  Why do we shy away from pouring out grace upon grace, so that we can make God’s presence known?  Why do we “testify” or “witness” to the light, when we have become a source of the light through our baptisms?

One of my favorite authors, Peter Rollins, tells a parable about a woman who lives as this light, and as a faithful witness to the Word of God.

There was a once a young and gifted woman who set herself the almost impossible task of setting up a printing press so that she could translate and distribute the Word of God to the people.  Yet such a job would require a great deal of money, and so, almost as soon as she had conceived the idea, she sold the few items that she possessed and went to live on the streets, begging for the money that she needed.

Raising the necessary funds took many years, for while there were a few who gave generously, most only gave a little, if anything at all.  But gradually the money began to accumulate.

However, shortly before the plans for the printing press could be set in motion, a dreadful flood devastated a nearby town, destroying many people’s homes and livelihoods.  Without hesitation the woman used all the money she had gathered to feed the hungry and rebuild lost homes.

Once the town began to recover, the woman silently went back to the streets in order to start all over again, collecting the money needed to translate the Word of God.

Many more years passed, with many cold winters that caused great suffering to the woman.  Then, shortly before the target amount was reached, disaster struck again.  This time a deadly plague descended like a cloud over the city, stealing the lives of thousands.

By now the woman herself was tired and ill, yet without thought she spent the money she had collected on medicines and care for the sick and orphaned.

Then, once the shadow of the plague was lifted, she again went onto the streets, driven by her desire to translate the Word of God.  

Finally, shortly before her death, this faithful woman gathered the money needed for the printing press and completed the project she had set herself many years before.

After she passed away, it is rumoured by some that this godly woman had actually spent her time making three translations of the Word, the first two being the most splendid of all.

I love that line, the first two being the most splendid of them all.  This nameless woman was incredibly faithful and had the light of Christ shine through her into the darkness of the tragedies she found herself surrounded by.  And the darkness could not overcome the light shining through her.  Despite her witness, I cannot help but wonder if this woman also missed the point.  Was she so focused on the literary Word of God, like so many of us, that she couldn’t see that her actions were in fact, the best possible way to translate the living Word of God shining through her?

Did she see her actions, that were filled with grace upon grace, made God known more clearly than any book could ever do?  And even ifher head might not have ever understood it, her heart was transformed by the light.  This light that brings life, and grace, and truth.  The Word is flesh and lives among us.  That “in the beginning” of this woman’s story, the Word was there, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and this woman came into being through the Word.  And God was made known through her.

And so, as John reminds us, this isn’t our Genesis story.  Rather it’s a story that happens at the beginning of time, when all things were made.  It’s a story that happens when Jesus first comes into the world.  It’s a story that happens when our lives are joined to Christ in our baptisms.  It’s a story about how things will be when Jesus comes again.  But mostly it’s a story about “grace upon grace” breaking into this world, shining in the darkness, and illuminating our lives and the lives around us, so that God might be revealed.  And in our own translations of the Word, we can demonstrate exactly how things end.  We can show people what it means to live “happily ever after” now.  Amen.