Thanksgiving Eve - November 23, 2011

O Lord our God, through all this year,
In Winter's chill and darkness drear,
In Springtime's rain and windy blow,
In Summer's heat as crops did grow,
In Autumn when the harvest came,
You are our God.  You stay the same.

The Winter wind, it froze our faces;
     Icy roads made our hearts race.
     Soil laid dormant under snow
     And darkened days drug on so slow.

     Yet you cheered us every morn.
     On Christmas day your son was born.
     With joyful alleluia greeting,
     In this season our God meeting.

Springtime wind, the constant blowing,
     Muddy fields and then seeds sowing,
     Rivers rising, then the flood,
     Newborn cattle chewing cud.

     In this life and chaos swelling,
     You, our Lord, were always dwelling.
     Raised victorious Easter morn,
     Thus your children are reborn.

Summer heat and dry conditions
     Aphids on destructive missions,
     Straight line winds that bent the crop,
     Cloudless skies without a drop,

     Yet through these you brought us through.
     Lacking rain, the corn still grew.
     Ever faithful you were there
     In pardoned sins and answered prayer.

Autumn came with combines churning
     Wayward sparks and fires burning.
     Yet we brought the harvest in
     And put it safely in the bin.

     Likewise, God, you gather us,
     Though we can be ornery cusses.
     So hallelujah, praises sing!
     Lift thanksgiving to our king!

O Lord our God, through all this year
You've been our hope and strength and cheer.
Your mercies given new each morn,
Baptismal pardon for newborns,
Assurance for our loved ones dying,
Comfort for us in our crying,
Lord your goodness has abounded.
Let Thanksgiving praise be sounded!

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This sermon is based on events in our countryside this year.  All except for the newborn cattle chewing cud.  Apparently they drink milk.  ;-)

Christ the King Sunday - November 20, 2011

It’s really easy to listen to our gospel reading today and hear Jesus teaching about who gets into heaven and who doesn’t.  The scene is this: all the nations are gathered before the king for judgment.  He divides them into two groups: sheep and goats.  He speaks to the sheep and tells them that they have done well.  They gave him food and drink when he needed it; they welcomed him and clothed him.  They took care of him when he was sick and visited him in prison.  In short, they showed mercy and love to one who was in need of it.  These sheep express surprise because they were not aware that they had done any such thing.  The king replies, “When you did this for the least of these, you did it for me.”

And then the king addresses the goats.  He calls them to task for doing none of these acts of mercy.  They didn’t help him at all when he needed it.  When they express surprise at this he tells them, “Just as you did not do it to the least of these, you did not do it for me.”  And they are sent away for punishment.

It is easy to hear the parable and come to this conclusion: “Those who do good deeds and are merciful towards the disadvantaged get in to heaven, those who are stingy and mean are kept out.”  It’s really easy to hear that.  Then, if we hear it that way, we might start thinking, “Are we sheep or are we goats?  How can we make sure to be in the right group?”  This is an unfortunate and, I believe false, interpretation of the gospel lesson.  Apart from being wrong, it can distract us from what the scripture is really trying to communicate to us.  So that is what I’d like to talk about today.  Just what does this parable mean?  And how does it apply to us?

First of all, and I can’t stress this enough, it is important to know the context.  Who is Jesus talking to?  Is he talking to a huge crowd?  Is he talking to foreigners who don’t believe in the God of Israel?  Is he talking to the Pharisees? 

No, he’s talking to his disciples.  Jesus is talking to the ones whom he has already chosen.  We can learn from this that the point of the parable is not to tell them what they need to do to get into heaven.  That horse is already out of the barn.  And if you don’t believe me you only have to look at the scripture itself to see that this is true.  In the parable, the first words out of the king’s mouth are this, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”  The sheep aren’t entering in because of their deeds of mercy.  It is the opposite.  In some way, their deeds of mercy are the result of their having been chosen.  So this parable is aimed at those who are already presumed to be the sheep. 

So if he isn’t telling the parable in order to get them to make the right spiritual decision, why does he tell it?  What’s the point?  Again, this is where paying attention to context makes a huge difference.  I was trying to get a handle on the parable early this past week and so I backed up in Matthew all the way to chapter 21.  And I read the almost four chapters that come before our gospel lesson.  And lo and behold, things started to come into focus.

In chapter 21, Jesus enters into Jerusalem.  The crowds love him; they wave branches and cheer.  Jesus gets into the city, goes to the temple, and overturns the tables of the moneychangers.  In short, he causes a ruckus.  Then he leaves town for the day and spends the night in Bethany, which is a nearby village.  The next day, Jesus comes back.  And where does he go?  He goes to the temple.  While at the temple, and in front of his disciples, Jesus has a series of conversations with the priests, scribes, Pharisees and other religious leaders of the people. 

Jesus and these leaders play a cat and mouse game.  They try to trick him into saying something that will get him into trouble.  He attacks their authority and shows them up in front of the people.

And then finally, after a chapter and a half of this high stakes, back and forth, verbal combat, Jesus turns to the crowds, which includes his disciples, and starts to talk to them about the religious leaders.  In the presence of everyone, he starts to pronounce a series of woes.  Here is one example, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!  For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth  So you also on the outside look righteous to others, but inside you are full of hypocrisy.”  He mercilessly condemns them for saying one thing and doing another.  He condemns them for caring more about all their rules and laws than they care for actual flesh and blood people.  Again, Jesus is doing this with his disciples close by, soaking up every word.

After he finishes his series of accusations, Jesus and his disciples start to leave the temple.  They bring up another subject.  He takes the opportunity to talk to them about the future.  He tells them parables about being prepared for this future, about staying ready.  And then finally, we arrive at our parable for today. 

This is what I believe to be happening here.  Jesus is preparing his disciples for the future, for the time after his death and resurrection.  In the confrontation at the temple, Jesus bluntly condemned the religious leaders for being hypocrites and for not caring about the people.  He is preparing his disciples to be a different kind of religious leader.

So with this parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus is saying, “Dearest disciples, do not be like them!  Do NOT be like them!  Those scribes and Pharisees, those old goats, they get all tangled in their rules and their rituals and this and that; and they forget all about loving people.  Do not be like them.  Instead of helping people and leading them, those old goats just burden them and make their lives miserable.  Do not be like them. 

No, because you are my chosen ones, you must be different.  You must be ones who help people.  You must go out of your way to serve those who are the lowliest.  You must feed the hungry one and give her water to drink.  You must help the sick and visit the prisoners.  That is your job.  As religious leaders, that is your job.  You must be leaders who serve. 

So then, this parable is not about how to get salvation.  It is about how to act because we have already been given salvation.  We are not to be like the scribes and Pharisees who burden people and hurt them.  We are not to get so caught up in our own lives that we fail to serve the one who is in need.  No, we are not to be like that because Jesus has chosen us to be his sheep.  He has chosen us to be the ones who help people.  To give them water, to visit them in the hospital and in jail, to clothe them.  In short, he has chosen us to show mercy and love to those who need it so desperately.  And so we must take this responsibility very seriously.  Not so that we will be chosen, but because we have been chosen.  Amen

22nd Sunday after Pentecost - November 13, 2011

We begin with a quotation:

“Even now I cannot understand the measure of a life, but I can tell you this. I know that when he died, his eyes were closed and his heart was open. And I'm pretty sure he was happy with his final resting place, because he was buried on the mountain. And that was against the law.” 

This past year, Faith and I saw a movie called The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman as Carter and Jack Nicholson as Edward.  The two men are both terminally ill with cancer.  Edward is a wealthy man and an atheist, and he determines that he is going to fit as much as he can into his remaining weeks.  And so he makes a bucket list, things to do before he kicks the bucket.  He invites Carter along, as the two had become friends while sharing a hospital room.  And so the two men start doing things like skydiving, racing classic cars around a racetrack, visiting the Pyramids and so on.  As their travels continue, it becomes more and more clear that Edward is vainly trying to give his life meaning with all of these fabulous activities.  Deep down, however, he is hurting because he has failed at what matters most to him: he has a broken relationship with his daughter.  Without setting this relationship right, the arrival of death will be bitter indeed.  But maybe, with enough courage and wisdom, Edward can set the relationship right so that he won’t have to die all alone.  And then maybe death won’t be so bad.  This is the message that the movie conveys.

The Bucket List is a very interesting movie because it looks at how we deal with the inevitable arrival of death.  The conclusion of the movie, which is captured by the quotation with which I began, suggests that one can win some kind of victory over death by the manner of living one’s life and also by the circumstances of one’s death.  Thus, according to the film, Edward wins a victory over death because he has reconciled with his daughter and so he doesn’t have to die alone. Take that, Death!  Edward also wins a victory over death by being buried on top of the mountain.  Death is the ultimate law, but Edward is able to break that law, just a little bit, by being buried where he was.  For it was illegal to be buried on the mountain.  Ha!  Take that, Death. 

This kind of thinking is very common.  We try to win small victories over death in all manner of ways.  By great athletic performances, for example.  Breaking an important record might be described like this, “Adrian Peterson has achieved football immortality.”  “People will always remember what happened here today.”  It isn’t uncommon to hear these kinds of things.  We want to be remembered, even after our death.  To be remembered is to win some small victory over that death.

We also try to win small victories over death by giving assurances to those who have died, “You will live forever in our memories.  We will never forget.”  In other words, we are denying to death a complete victory by treasuring memories. 

We try to win small victories over death by appreciating every moment of our lives, “Make every moment count” we say.  “Live like there is no tomorrow.”  Because maybe by living intensely and passionately in the present, we can make our life so big and so overflowing, that death will be unable to swallow it all up.

I am talking this morning about these things this morning, because humanity has struggled with them for a very long time.  In our Psalm for today, Psalm 90, we find the great prophet Moses struggling with these things.

He writes, “You turn us back to dust, and say, ‘Turn back, you mortals.’  For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past, or like a watch in the night.  You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers.”

Life is like the grass which sprouts in the morning, but by evening it has been burned up by the sun and is dead.  Life is short.  Before we know it, life is drawing to a close and death draws near.  Nothing can be done to hold it back. 

Why is this so?  Moses knows.  Death, that terrible enemy of life, arrives as the result of sin.  Or to be more direct, death is the punishment for sin.  Moses writes, “For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed.  You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins right in front of your face.”  Moses knows that God sees everything.  He sees it all.  He sees every shameful nook and cranny.  No sin escapes his knowledge. 

Moses knows this very well because he was the one who brought the Law down from the mountain.  He was the one who met God there and he brought down the Ten Commandments on two stone tablets.  He brought the Law to the people and told them to live by it.  And yet he knows full well that they cannot.  He knows that he cannot.  And he sees death approaching.  As they wander in the wilderness for those forty years, all of the people who left Egypt are dying.  All of them are dying and are replaced by new generations who will enter the promised land.  And he sees death coming for himself.  And he wonders what is to be done.  Is there some small victory that can be won over this dreaded enemy?

Moses, like us, seeks somehow to soften what he knows what must happen.  This is what he says, “Teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom.”  “Lord, I know that we must die.  I know that this is the punishment for sin, but help us at least to make the most of the days that we have.  Teach us to take advantage of that time at least.  And let not the time be used for that which does not matter, but for something more important, for the pursuit of wisdom.”  You can see here that Moses thinks much like we think.  He knows that death is the end and seeks to gain some small victory over it.  “Lord, give us this small victory over death.  We know that it is coming.  We know that we will die because of our sin.  But give us this little victory to console us.”

I tell you this morning that this is what life is like under the Law.  We seek to wriggle away from inevitable death.  We try to win small victories.  We try to convince ourselves that death really isn’t that bad.  This is life under the Law.  When Edward was buried on the top of that mountain, he was not winning a victory over death or the Law; he was succumbing to them.  His life had been reduced to ash and was no more.  When we say that we will never forget, we may have good intentions, but we tell ourselves a lie.  We lie because our minds grow frail and though we would like to remember, so often we cannot.  And in any event, death will wipe away any such memories.  This is life under the Law.

In Psalm 90, there is no gospel.  There is no good news.  There is no promise.  There is no Jesus Christ.  There is no hope.  Death swallows everything because God has decreed that sin must be punished.

In just two weeks, the season of Advent will begin.  Advent, the time when we wait.  The time when we hope for a future.  Advent, the time when we ask God to send us a savior to rescue us from this law of sin and death.  Advent, the time when we yearn for the Word that is good news, the Word who gives forgiveness.  And so we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

All Saints Sunday - November 6, 2011

What is All Saints Day all about?  That’s the question I’ve been pondering for the last couple of days.  I’ve never really thought much about it, truth be told.  To me, All Saints Day is the Sunday when we honor those who have died in the faith, particularly during the past year.  We put their names in the bulletin.  Perhaps we read them out loud.  Maybe we light a candle for them.  We sing particular hymns.  More or less it is this, we take a moment to remember our dead.  That’s what All Saints Day has always been to me.

What is less clear to me is what this has to do with saints.  What are saints, exactly?  What I’ve always understood is that saints are one of two things.  The first possibility is this: saints are living people who are closer to perfect than most of us are.  So and so is a saint because she volunteers so much of her time.  Or this other fellow is a saint because he isn’t subject to the same sinful urges that the rest of us are.  He just always seems to do the right thing.  This understanding of saints thinks of them as a cut above the normal person, like Mother Theresa.

The other understanding of saint that I have is this:  A saint is a Christian who has died.  Most of us living folks aren’t very saintly.  There’s all kinds of evidence against us in our words and deeds.  We do things we shouldn’t and we don’t help out as much as we should.  We get angry and have mean thoughts.  And so on and so forth.  There’s all this evidence that we’re not saints.  But, and I’m just trying to put my finger on what it is that I’ve thought through the years, when we die and go to heaven, then things change.  All of that sinful stuff just drops off; it falls away and we’re left with just the good.  In any event, the dead no longer sin.  And so it seems like death makes Christians into saints.  That’s the second basic understanding that I’ve always had.

Now I want to make clear, especially for those who are taking sermon notes, that I’m not saying any of what I’ve said so far is true.  It’s just the way I’ve thought about things.  And maybe some of you have thought about it this way too.

So it seems to me that All Saints Day has more to do with this second understanding.  On this day, All Saints Sunday, we are honoring our dead.  We are remembering Christian brothers and sisters who have died.  They weren’t exactly saints when they were with us, but now that they have died we can think of them as saints because they have been transformed.  So All Saints Day is about honoring the dead, whom we can now call saints because they are no longer part of the nitty gritty business down here, where people just aren’t that holy.  This is more or less the way that I have understood the matter.

Upon some further thinking, though, I think that I may have gotten it wrong.  Well, not all of it.  For instance, I think that it is absolutely right that we should honor our dead and I think that it is absolutely right that we should think well of them.  But the major part of it I have gotten wrong.  Connecting sainthood to death, for instance.  This is wrong, because the Bible doesn’t talk like that at all.  I looked up the word “saints” in my Bible concordance and I started looking at each verse that used the word.  And what I found was very interesting.  Over and over and over again, the word “saints” refers to members of the church, followers of Jesus.  All of these people are very clearly living people, not dead ones.  The saints are members of the church who are alive and well, here on earth. 

The other point that is clear is that the people being called “saints” are not being called that because they are the cream of the crop, the very best.  The Apostle Paul talks about visiting the saints in one town or helping the saints in another.  Clearly he isn’t talking about going to some town, to which he’s never been, and visiting only the holiest people.  He wouldn’t have the foggiest idea who they were!  He’s just talking about visiting the people who follow Jesus, the Church. 

So when you put these two points together, what you’ve got is this: “saints” just refers to living folks who are followers of Jesus.  It doesn’t refer to dead Christians in particular, nor does it refer to people who are some kind of spiritual elite.  In other words, it refers to people like you and like me.

“That’s all well and good, Pastor, that’s very nice.  But what does that have to do with anything?  It’s not as if I’m going to go around telling people I’m a saint.  What’s the point?”  You are right to ask that question.  All by itself, this is pretty meaningless knowledge.  It does us no good.  And do you know why?  Because we think it’s just a label.  We think it’s just a fancy word that has been dumbed down so that it doesn’t mean anything at all.  Sure, we’re called saints, but no matter what you call us, it doesn’t change the fact that we’re still the same old sinners.  What meaning does a first place ribbon have if everybody is given one?  If everybody got a Lombardi trophy after the football season, it wouldn’t mean much.  And so it is with the word “saint.”  If everybody’s a saint, then nobody’s a saint.  The word doesn’t mean anything anymore.  That’s what I’m tempted to think.

But that's not right.  In fact it's all wrong.  And maybe this is a simple point to make, but I want to make it because it is the gospel after all.

It isn't what we do that makes us right with God.  It isn't what we do that makes us righteous.  It isn't what we do that makes us saints.  If we look at ourselves and say, "Not saints," we're being very foolish indeed.  If we do that we have fallen into the trap of playing God.  At the risk of stating the obvious, that’s not our job.

Being God is God’s job.  He's the one who makes us right.  He’s the one who forgives our sins.  He's the one who makes us saints.  Our lesson from Revelation says this, "Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb."  He's the one who does it.  And if we can’t see it, that’s because we are the ones who are blind.  If you don’t look around you this morning and see a crowd of saints, it’s not because it isn’t true.  It’s because you’re trusting your own stinking eyes and not the Word of God.  It is God’s word which is true.  It is his word which is real.  

And so today, we honor the saints whom God has made this past year in baptism.  We honor the saints who have been affirmed in the faith just this past week.  And we honor the saints who have died.  They are all of them saints, along with us, for God has declared and made it so.  And thus it is so.  Thanks be to God alone.  Amen.

Confirmation Sunday - October 30, 2011

Tyler, Ellie, Andrew and Lane.  Today I want to talk to you about what Confirmation isn’t.  And then I’ll say just a bit about what it is.   

First, Confirmation isn’t something that is a good deed or something that makes you holy.  Being confirmed today does not mean that you have pleased God any more than you did yesterday or four years ago.  Getting confirmed isn’t going to change anything about you.  It isn’t making you into a better Christian.  It isn’t adding points to your score or any of that kind of business. 

Second, Confirmation isn’t the end of something.  For many, confirmation is understood as the finish line, as the goal.  After Confirmation, many think, “Now I can take some time off.  I’ve fulfilled my duty.  I’ve done what I had to do.”  Hogwash.  When you prepare the field in the spring, and plant the seed, and spray during the summer, and then when you harvest in October, is farming over?  Of course it isn’t.  You keep working.  And soon enough, there will be manure trucks on the road in the springtime and seeds will be going in again.  Farming does not end just because there comes a moment to reflect on the season just past.  Confirmation isn’t the end. 

On the other hand, Confirmation isn’t the beginning either.  Sometimes we can think of Confirmation as a rite of passage.  And all of a sudden, so the story goes, you are starting something new.  I’m afraid I don’t really agree with this.  Your life of faith isn’t beginning with confirmation.  Faith was given to you long before this day.  Later, I will pronounce a blessing over you, asking that the Holy Spirit be stirred up in you.  Is this a new gift?  No.  The Holy Spirit was given to you long before this day.  Confirmation isn’t the beginning of something new.

So what is it?  If it isn’t something that is changing you, if it isn’t a good deed, if it isn’t the end of something, nor the beginning either.......  What is Confirmation and what is happening today?

The three years of confirmation exist for this reason.  They are to teach you the basics of the faith.  Confirmation exists so that you will learn the nuts and bolts of the church teaching.  You were required to come on Wednesday night for three years to learn these things.  You were required to take sermon notes in order to learn these things. 

Now in the past months, I have often been talking about Law and Gospel, and how important it is to distinguish between the two.  And today is a good day to do it again.  Your three years of Confirmation have been about the Law.  You were required to do certain things.  You were fulfilling a duty.  You were doing the action.  And this is good and right.  God certainly calls on us to study his Word.  He definitely calls on us to come to church to hear his Word spoken.  Without question he calls on us to serve others in and outside of the church.  These are all examples of what the Law has required of you.

These are also examples of what the Law will continue to require of you.  The Law does not cease making demands of you because you are confirmed.  In fact, it demands all the more.  You have learned, but you have not learned enough.  You have served, but you have not served enough.  In a scripture lesson next month, we will hear God say, “Well done, good and faithful servant.  You have been faithful in little.  I will put you in charge of much.”  And so I tell you, you have been faithful in a little.  And so God will demand all the more from you.  This service will only end when you die.  It is the work of a lifetime,...... an entire lifetime. 

Now, I have been speaking of your duty and what is required of you.  I have said that Confirmation has been the Law makings demands of you.  This is true.  But it isn’t the whole story.  Aside from the Law, we must hear God’s gospel.  The gospel is different from the Law.  It doesn’t have anything to do with what you have done.  It has only to do with what God has done.  So let us hear the gospel. 

I said that Confirmation was not a beginning.  In fact, your beginning was your baptism.  For it was on that day that God gave you a promise.  These were the words that the Pastor spoke that day, “God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we give you thanks for freeing your sons and daughters from the power of sin and for raising them up to a new life through this holy sacrament.”  This is what we call the gospel, the forgiveness of sins and the promise of eternal life.  This is the good news that was delivered to you as you lay helpless in your mother’s and father’s arms.  It was on that day that you were changed.  It was on that day that God made you a new creation and gave you a new beginning.

So what is happening today?  Well, I suppose it’s a bit like harvest time.  You are taking a moment to look back on this season just past.  You are taking a moment to remember how God has blessed you so far.  And you are looking to the future, confident in his blessing and resolved to work hard through many seasons to come. “Yes,” you are saying, “I have heard the promises that God has declared to me.  I have heard that he has forgiven my sin.  I have heard that he has promised me eternal life.  Because he has done these things, therefore I renounce sin.  I renounce the devil.  I renounce all in the world that rebels against God.  He has chosen me and so I am his.”  This is what you are saying today.  Amen.  

19th Sunday after Pentecost - October 23, 2011

I saw something kind of funny on the computer recently.  It was a picture of an elderly woman with a caption above and below.  Above her head the caption read, “Let’s eat grandma.”  Not a very nice sentiment.  Underneath the picture, however, the words read, “Let’s eat, grandma.”  The same words meant something very, very different!  The only difference between the two sentences was a little old comma.  The whole picture carried the explanation, “Punctuation saves lives!”

When reading the Bible, similar things can happen to us if we aren’t careful.  That is why I have been teaching the idea of Law and Gospel.  Just to review: The Law is what we are supposed to do; the Law is accusation; the Law is perfect and unforgiving.  The Law is a good thing, but it isn’t a life-giving kind of thing.  The Gospel, on the other hand, is God’s word of promise to us.  The gospel is his choosing us.  It is his mercy towards us.  It does give us life.  Now, if we confuse the two, bad things can happen.  For example, we might embrace the Law as God’s promise to us and his mercy towards us.  That would be like hugging a cactus.  A cactus is a fine plant, very beautiful and all that, but it isn’t made for hugging.  The Law isn’t made to give us life.  That’s not it’s job.  So we need to recognize the difference between the two, then we can know how Bible passages apply to us. 

Today’s Old Testament lesson gives us a good opportunity to listen for these things.  I’m going to read it again, along with the verses that got cut out.  Listen hard for the Law.  And also listen for the gospel.

[read Leviticus 19:1-18]

It isn’t too hard to hear the Law in there, is it?  It starts right at the beginning and it goes the whole we through.  The whole passage is a list of commandments, rules.  When I listen to this passage I hear God telling his people what his expectations are.  “This is the way you are supposed to be!  “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”  “You shall revere your mother and father; you shall keep my Sabbaths; you shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not defraud; you shall not render an unjust judgment; you shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge.”  The list goes on and on.  Rule after rule after rule.  Command after command. 

What is all of this?  This is the Law.  God has very high expectations of us.  Following all these commands, obeying all of these rules, they are what we must do.  These are the kinds of things that make us moral.  They are important.

Alright.  Now to switch gears.  I asked you to listen for the gospel too, for the promises of God, for his mercy.  Did you hear the gospel in what I read?  I think the gospel is harder for us to hear in this passage.  I think it is harder for us to hear in general.  Whether we are good at following them or not, rules make sense to us.  But God choosing us and making promises to us, that doesn’t make as much sense.

So here’s the promise.  “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.”  Do you hear that?  “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” 

There are two promises there, actually.  The first one is this, “I am your Lord.  I am your God.”  In this day and age, in our society where there are so many different religious options: Catholic, Methodist, Bible Church, Islam, Buddhism, Atheism, etc......, in our day and age we can think that it is we who choose God.  “God, I have decided to follow you.”  But no, here God is saying something that is just the opposite.  He says, “I am the Lord your God. I choose you!”  This is certainly the gospel.

The second promise is this: “You shall be holy.”  What does holy mean?  To be holy means to be set apart.  To be holy means to not be common, but to be chosen for something special.  God is declaring something about you, promising something to you.  You are going to be holy.  What is he choosing you to do?  What is he setting you apart for?  He is setting you apart for two reasons. 

The first reason is to bring himself glory.  God sets you apart and works in you so that others can see what God can do.  It brings God pleasure to see his handiwork. 

The second reason God sets you apart is so that he can work in you for the sake of the world.  God chooses to help people through other people.  When we follow God’s commands with hearts full of faith, we serve our neighbors and help them.  God has chosen us to do that.  Jesus talks about us being salt for the earth.  That means God wants us to make life better tasting for other people.  And Jesus talks about us being light.  That means that God wants us to make life brighter for other people.  God has chosen us, set us apart, for this work.  So to be holy means God working in us to bring himself glory and it means helping our neighbor.

Now I do want to address a question, a question which relates to that picture of grandma that I talked about at the beginning of the sermon.  How do we know that we can say it like this [You shall be holy because I the Lord your God am holy] and not just like this [You shall be holy because I the Lord your God am holy]?  How do we know that this is actually a gospel promise and not just us changing the way we are saying the words?  We know this because God trains our ears to hear it.  This is exactly what we are promised over and over again in scripture!  I took a minute or two and looked for some examples of where God promises this.  Here are three examples.

This is what Peter says, “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people.”

This is what Paul says, “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God......”

This is what Jesus says, “You will be my witnesses......”

Over and over again in scripture, God makes this promise to us; he promises that we are his chosen.  This is what the gospel is. 

But it can be strange to hear the gospel in the midst of all of those commandments.  And that is why we need to train our ears to hear the difference between the Law and the Gospel.  We need to hear the Law so that we will know what to do.  For we certainly must do what is right, what God teaches us to do.  But even more importantly, we must listen for those words of Gospel.  Perk up your ears to hear the promises of God which are for you.  “You shall be holy.  Because I the Lord your God am holy.” God chooses to make you holy, to set you apart, to be his people.  And that is good news.  Amen.

18th Sunday after Pentecost - October 16, 2011

Many, many years ago, God’s people were second class citizens in a place called Babylon.  They had been brought there as slaves by evil King Nebuchadnezzar who had taken over their country, burned their homes, looted their temple and destroyed their way of life.  There was a time when God’s people lived in Babylon against their will and were desperately unhappy.  Psalm 137 describes it like this, "By the rivers of Babylon, we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion."  God’s people wept because they did not know if they would ever return home.  They did not know if they would ever worship God again in his temple.  They did not know if they would ever again be free.  Surely they called out to God, praying for freedom, praying to have their own country and their own king, praying for a future.  But two generations passed and they were still far from home.  This dark time was known as the Babylonian Captivity. 

But there was a word.  There was a word from the prophet Isaiah.  It was a word addressed to a man named Cyrus.  Now you might ask, “who in the world is Cyrus?”  History tells us that Cyrus was the king of a people named the Persians who lived to the east of Babylon.  History tells us that the Persians came up against Babylon , took the city by force and destroyed the Babylonian Empire.  History tells us that for centuries the Persians were a very powerful empire. They are perhaps best known to us as the mighty army who attacked the Greece of Socrates, who battled the Spartans at Thermopylae and were defeated, in part thanks to the sacrifice of 300 foot soldiers, a story that is told in a film from a few years back called “300.”  What we know about these Persians from history would lead us to believe that they were bad news, bad news for God’s people.  History would seem to say that Cyrus was much like Nebuchadnezzar, just another brutal king of just another brutal empire. 

But let us return to the word from Isaiah, for in it, God says something unexpected, something contrary to all that we might expect.  God reveals that he has chosen Cyrus, anointed him and blessed him to do something special.  King Cyrus, it seems, is going to serve God's people by liberating them from their captivity.  In this word from Isaiah, God is revealing that the slavery imposed by evil King Nebuchadnezzar will be undone by King Cyrus.  It is actually for the sake of God's people, that God will bless Cyrus, open doors for him, make his path level.  It is for the sake of God’s people that Cyrus will be made mighty. 

Now for the people who were captive in Babylon, this wasn’t entirely good news.  Certainly it was great that they would soon be free to return home.  But it wasn’t exactly what they had been hoping for.  They had lost their freedom at the hands of a brutal foreign king.  And now they were to regain their freedom from the hands of a brutal foreign king.  Their weakness and inability to control their own world, these things weren’t changing.  Their dearest desire was to regain the days of their own powerful kingdom, when David and Solomon had been mighty kings, kings anointed by God.  But God was not giving them that.  God was not giving them what they wanted.  Instead, he was anointing a foreign king who would be strong and powerful, while they would remain weak and dependent. 

I guess you could say that God answered their prayers.  But God didn’t answer their prayers in quite the way that they had hoped.  And we might find that this touches a nerve in us.  God answered their prayers.  But God didn’t answer their prayers in quite the way that they had hoped.  Here is the basic fact of the matter, God does not always act like we would like him to act.  He does things differently than we would do them.  God is beyond our control.

And that is what this passage from Isaiah is really all about.  There is good news here.  God is answering their prayers.  God is appointing a king so that they might go home.  But God isn’t answering prayer on their terms.  God is just a little wild.  He has plans that they can’t quite understand.  God is unapologetically doing what he wants to do, and the result seems like it is good and bad at the same time.

God is saying words to Cyrus, but it seems like it is really his own people that he is addressing:  “I am the Lord, and there is no other; besides me there is no god.  I arm you, though you do not know me, so that you may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord and there is no other.  I form light and create darkness; I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things.”  “Look here,” God is saying, “You are going home soon.  I am responsible for this.  These things aren’t accidents or coincidences.” 

So what are they to make of this?  Their fate is beyond their control, but it isn’t random.  The events that swirl around them aren’t meaningless chaos.  It isn’t a matter of “Que sera, sera.  Whatever will be, will be.”  No, God is claiming responsibility for all of it.

These are God’s words to us too.  God is saying, “I make the good and I make the bad.”  God is claiming responsibility for all of it.  And that means that we don’t control our lives as much as we’d like to think.  We don’t control God.  Good and bad will arrive.  God will work in ways that confuse us and even hurt us.  And I don’t have to tell you that.  You know it perfectly well.  I was riding in the combine this week, talking with one of you, and what was the topic of conversation?  How little we can control.  The market goes up and it goes down.  The rain falls or it doesn’t.  The tornado rips up our field or it passes us by.  You all know this better than I do.  And God says, “I make weal and create woe.  I make the good and the bad.”  God is telling trying to tell us something here.  Life isn’t random; it has purpose.  We’re not the pawns of fate; we are in the hands of the living God.

Now this can make for an awfully uncomfortable life.  When we can’t control what happens, when we don’t know what is around the next corner, when we don’t know how God is going to work, that can be tough.  But as it has pointed out to me, it can also be very reassuring.  I don’t know exactly what is going to happen.  I can’t control it.  All I can do is trust.  All I can do is trust.

I want to make one more connection.  Those ancient Jews who were captives in Babylon, they wanted God to give them back their own king, their own anointed one.  But God anointed another, he anointed Cyrus.  He chose Cyrus to give them back their freedom.  But this was really only a temporary thing, a half-measure.  For God had decided to give them another anointed one altogether.  You see, “anointed one” means Messiah; it means Christ.  Those ancient Jews wanted a king.  Well, God gave them a king of sorts, a foreign king and he let them go back to their home.  But then God did something completely different.  He did something much different than we would have done, something that we couldn’t have seen coming.  He did something absolutely out of our control.  He sent his son to be our anointed one, our Messiah, our Christ.  We couldn’t control that.  It has just burst into our lives.  And all we can do is trust.  All we can do is trust.