It Could Have Been Us

Sermon, by Pastor Joel

25th Sunday after Pentecost

Remembrance Day

November 10, 2024

1 Kings 17:8-16

Psalm 146

Hebrews 9:24-28

Mark 12:38-44

The context of this sermon is

100% written by a human

Imagine for a moment, that it happened here. The mood in the country has been growing darker. People are beginning to say that Christians – that Lutherans -- are to blame for what is wrong in society, that we aren’t true Canadians, that we shouldn’t even be citizens. On the streets, we check over our shoulders to see who is around us. We have heard our neighbors talking about “those Christians” and casting glances in our direction. When we pass, they look at the ground. We gather for worship, but we are nervous. We wonder if we should leave our children at home. We wonder whether we should leave our country, but everything we own is here - our aging parents are here. And where would we go?

And then one night, all the whispers and hate become rage. On the streets outside we see people we thought were decent throwing stones through the windows of a neighbor’s home and laughing while they do it. We hear that in the market, certain store windows are being smashed, their contents destroyed. When we come the next day, the windows of our church have been shattered, the door has been smashed in, the altar desecrated, burned to the ground. Some of us are missing, arrested we hear, but only for the crime of faith.

Just imagine.

This happened, of course, – on this day, 86 years ago in Germany. We know it as Kristallnacht – Crystal Night -- named for all the shattered glass an angry mob of ordinary citizens left on the street after targeting their Jewish neighbors. It seems so long ago now, and the longer our distance from it grows, the more it feels like an event from another time. That wasn’t us. It couldn’t be us. It would never happen here.

And yet of course it is. Of course it can. Of course it does.

As the gospel reminds us, beware: beware that you do not pay too much heed or give too much power to peacocks preening in your midst, lording it over others, devouring those less fortunate. But Jesus is also saying this to us: Beware that we ourselves are not such peacocks, preening and lording, and devouring. For as history shows – as Crystal Night shows – too much power in the wrong hands, too much power in our own hands – leads to shattered glass and broken lives. We must be our own checks and balances – the widow, generous to a fault, giving perspective, and teaching empathy to the power-hungry peacocks.

We choose, on this day, to tell our own versions of history, and of war. We might remember that after Kristallnacht, many Germans were horrified and sought to help their Jewish friends and neighbors. We may remember that while Hitler liked to quote Luther, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran, became a brave and influential Christian voice of reason and resistance in the darkest hour. We may remember the terrible loss and devastation in the trenches, and we may also remember the courage and sacrifice of those who signed up to defend freedom in those same trenches. We may remember the hate and bigotry and rage that devoured us; and we may remember the times when people gave like the widow, everything that they owned.

Remembering is our burden. Truly understanding the cost of war and the roots of aggression is our responsibility. And practicing the kindness, grace and mercy that saved the day is our duty.

So, let’s not hide from the truth. This is us. This could be us. It does happen here. When we don’t take the time to hear out someone else’s view – to understand their experience – this is us. When we don’t get informed – figure out what is fact and what is lie – this could be us. When someone who is working, or shopping, or entering their house is targeted because of their race, when people spout hate online, it is happening here.

What we understand now, so clearly, is that no one wakes up one day and just decides to smash windows. As with all societies where people have turned on one another, it took time to happen – the careful planting of certain myths, the worst kinds of fictions. A population that wasn’t happy with their lot in life. Leaders who used their power not to create but to devour. It happened gradually, building like an argument that begins politely and grows in volume until everyone is shouting and no one is listening. And then one day, you do wake up. And you don’t recognize the world. But you see now that it was headed this way all along.

War is the result of not one thing, but many conditions– an assassination, the right economic circumstances or interest, an evil, charismatic leader, a failure of information. And yet, ultimately, it comes down to human beings not settling differences as we should. Not listening. Not trying to learn. Not hearing one another other out. Not being empathetic. Not balancing the self-serving desires of the scribe in all of us, with the other centeredness of the sacrificing widow who gives everything. Not checking the taker against the giver.

But that is the burden of remembrance. The responsibility of those remembering. The duty of those who live in the society that was gifted to us – not by our own ingenuity, but by great sacrifice. We sit here in this church and sing freely and loudly because of the people who listened to the Christ-centered voice and actions of Bonhoeffer, because of the young men and women who were called to serve, because of the givers who stood firm before the takers.

True remembrance is not simply retelling the past. It requires understanding how the past defines the present and shapes the future. So, imagine for a moment that it happened here. In this place. To those we love. And then think: have we done our very best, in all we say, and do, to make sure that it never will happen again? Amen.

God Grieves With Us.

Sermon, by Pastor Joel

All Saints Sunday

November 3, 2024

Isaiah 25:6-9

Psalm 24

Revelation 21:1-6a

John 11:32-44

The context of this sermon is

100% written by a human

If you go online, you will find a lot of people talking about the will of God. They use it to explain away negative events – “Hurricane Milton was the will of God.” They use the will of God to justify their own intolerance. My prejudice or intolerance, they argue, is the will of God, as if they know. Or they acquiesce to evil in the world: “What can be done?” they say. “What happens next is the will of God.”

Ah, the will of God. How many times as a minister have I heard that phrase used to explain all kinds of events. Someone gets better from an illness, and they are told, it’s the will of God, as if they have a pipeline to God, and their neighbor who didn’t recover did not. Or they wait for rescue – from debt, or storm, or other calamity – because it’s all up to God’s will.

In a new show on Netflix, the main character, who is a rabbi, told a version of an old nugget in one of his sermons: about the guy on the roof, with the flood waters rising, who ignored his neighbor, the rescue boat, and the helicopter, and, upon arriving at the Pearly Gates demanded to know why God hadn’t saved him. “I sent you help three times,” God says.” “What more did you want?

Surely, we all see quickly, where that “will-of-God” argument falls down. We become complacent, witless, even blind to the gospel at work in our midst. What happens when the cure doesn’t come? What happens when the flood waters rise? What happens when lousy things happen despite our best prayers that they won’t? Is this also God’s will? Have we somehow let God down?

Let’s not kid ourselves. Lousy things, terrible things happen, and they are not by God’s design; they are not intended to build character. They are just lousy, terrible things. These events - illness, tragedy, misfortune - leave their mark: they destroy families; they leave people carrying deep, deep grief. You know I am no stranger to this in my own family, with the death of my brother. The accident that took his life was not God’s will. But I believe God willingly walked with my family through that valley and onto level ground again. God grieved with us; God wept with us. Our faith in God carried us.

This is all to lead into the famous story we hear today in the gospel: the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Jesus arrives to find his friend dead and placed in a tomb. His sister Mary is despondent: If only you had been here,” she tells Jesus, “Lazarus would have been okay. “

There is a version of that age-old question in Mary’s voice: If God cared enough, would our problems be solved? If God felt me worthy enough, all would be well. It’s hard not to ask that question: don’t we sit here each Sunday, hoping for a better life? Put it in this time, and it is easy to think that maybe we deserve it a little more than the next person.

But how quickly does that go astray? Once we think of God, not as guide, not as a source of strength and comfort, but as a puppet-master, we lose our free will; why should we do anything at all? Why should we strive to makes things better? Once we assume God intervenes, we begin to notice who gets God’s grace and who doesn’t, and suddenly we are ranking people. Maybe you’re thinking, “But that’s an old school understanding of God.” But it’s not that old, and it creeps into our conversations more than we think.

How does Jesus react to Lazarus’s death? The gospel suggests he is deeply shaken by this news. He grieves with Mary. Just as God grieves with us, when misfortune comes our way. And then what happens? Well, we can’t know for sure. We might call it a miracle, we might call it healing. Jesus does not lie in place, praying. He goes to the tomb of Lazarus, as the gospel depicts it, and has the stone pulled away. And then he calls Lazarus out. And Lazarus is unbound. Jesus credits the act to God; “Thank you for listening to me,” he says. But we know that it was not God alone: Jesus was there as well. Just as we are there. Just as we are part of our own stories.

To be our own stories, we must have faith, in God and in ourselves. Faith in our ability to handle life’s crappy times. Faith to know that we are not abandoned by God during them. From that faith comes strength and healing and connection. I have been witness to many families who have found that will - not of God, but from God - to carry them through great trials.

There is another point to all of this, perhaps the most important one for us to remember this day: we are the hands of God. We are the doers who make God’s will happen. We are not subject to God’s will; we are given new life because of it. God walks with us; but we make the journey on our own two feet. We send the neighbor and the rescue boat and helicopter to those in need, and God gives us the strength and resolve to do so.

Lousy things happen for no reason at all. God does not promise to spare us from the difficult parts of life. Just as God’s will is not the reason behind them. Putting our faith in a better way, our belief in a brighter path, the lessons of the gospel that teach resolve, patience, trust, forgiveness, and resurrection, are part of the divine package that makes miracles happen.

The gospel spares us from a sorrowful fate: to be alone. We are never alone. Sometimes that divine presence comes from those around us, and sometimes we feel the company of God - just as did Mary, who sat that day, grieving her brother’s death with Jesus. And always, when we empower ourselves, when we are guided by the gospel, God walks with us.

A deep and profound belief can be found on this All Saints’ Sunday as we remember the loss of a loved one. If we truly believe that we are never alone, then there is nothing that can keep us from experiencing the resurrection and being made free and whole and alive. Find the will - not of God, but from God - to roll away the stone and unbind yourself and others. Amen.

Freedom. We all want it. For everyone.

Sermon, by Pastor Joel

Reformation Sunday

October 27, 2024

Jeremiah 31:31-34

Psalm 46

Romans 3:19-28

John 8:31-36

The context of this sermon is

100% written by a human

Today is Reformation Sunday. And the message is freedom. God has designed us to want to be free and to live free. Spiritually free, so that we are no longer afraid of death and a vengeful God. Emotionally free, so that we are no longer road blocked by our childish ways and personal hang-ups. Economically free, so that we are no longer worried about our own portfolios and the state of the markets. Politically free, so that no political or cultural system is treating us like slaves,

Freedom. We all want it. For everyone.

Martin Luther did not have it. Martin Luther did not know the smell of freedom. The taste of freedom. The feel of freedom. Martin Luther was not a free man. In spite of the fact that he would become the leader of Protestantism with close to one billion members. In spite of the fact that Luther would become the bridge between the old way of thinking in the Middle Ages to the new ways of thinking in the Reformation and the Renaissance. In spite of the fact that recent history would determine that Luther was the third most influential person of the second thousand years of Western history. In spite of all of these grandiose claims about Luther: as a young man, he was not free.

Martin Luther was a slave to his childhood, a slave to the thought patterns of the Middle Ages, and a slave to the religious practices of the ruling Church at that time. Luther was a slave to his childhood when his father beat him so severely with a rod that his backside would bleed. It was common for Germanic fathers to do to their children at that time in history. Fathers would beat their children severely for any infraction, disobedience, or mistake.

Luther thought that God, his heavenly father, was like his earthly father. And like that earthly father, God would punish him severely for any infraction, disobedience, or mistake. His faith was fearful.

Luther was also a slave to the thought patterns of the Middle Ages which ruled the world for a thousand years. Luther thought that the world was flat, that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the trees and woods were filled with goblins, witches, and trolls.

And Luther was a slave to his mother church. Luther was instructed to say his prayer beads, bow to statues of the saints, and make pilgrimages to Rome in order to earn forgiveness and salvation. He was meant to believe in indulgences, and that buying them from the religious authorities would save loved ones from the fires of hell. He was told to celebrate that the money from these indulgences, from people who could ill-afford to pay them, was being used to build a monument to his fearsome God, the St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

Because of all of this -- his parents, the thought patterns of the Middle Ages, the religious practices of the time, his relationship to God -- Luther was not a free person.

Then, his transformation - his personal reformation - began. A seed had probably been growing in him for a while, waiting for the right conditions to germinate, but it truly started when he was a professor of the New Testament in a small German village called Wittenberg. Studying in a tower there, he became engrossed in the Bible, poring over it day and night. It was in his in-depth reading of the New Testament that this seed, this desire to be free, began to grow. Away from indoctrination of the larger church, his reading of the New Testament began to open his eyes.

Luther discovered that God was not punitive like his earthly father, but merciful and kind. He discovered that God was more powerful than the demons and devils that surrounded him and lived within him. He discovered that God’s love and mercy for him was entirely free, that he didn’t need to earn or buy God’s forgiveness.

As Luther saturated himself in the Word, he began to shed his chains, one by one. Luther became free to be the kind of human being that God wanted him to be, the kind that could bring freedom to others of his time.

What is freedom, anyway? Is it defined by action: the freedom to do our own thing, eat out at a restaurant, vote for the leader of our choice? Is it a sense of self, that we are unencumbered by our own thoughts, and able to make our choices? Is it a moral belief, that any righteous society must be free? Is it all of these things?

If Freedom means that we are to become the kind of human beings that God wants us to be, how do we get there? Well, if we are to follow the path of Luther, we must begin with the Bible. Sola Scriptura, Luther said. Scripture alone. I personally don’t buy that. We see that playing out in the United States, where women are now dying because a fundamentalist approach to scripture, and religious intransigence is denying them freedom of choice between them and their doctors. If we rely only on scripture, do we exist in the world, or have we buried ourselves so deeply in the Bible that we believe we are right and Godlike ourselves, with the power over others?

Instead, I am a proponent of Prima Scriptura, or Scripture first. Scripture informs the world, but also exists within it.

Let us look first at John 8:31, which has four parts: “If you continue in my word…you will truly be my disciples…the truth will make you free … and you will be free indeed.”

Part I: “If you continue in my Word.” At the heart of being a follower of Jesus is to continue to live in the Bible. That is where Martin Luther began to find his freedom: in his immersion in the Bible. Now I know most of you don’t spend your days thumbing through scripture. Some of you may even believe that it’s my job to do it for you. In some ways that is true. But ultimately, I cannot make you live free. Each of us must do that on our own. We don’t have the luxury of locking ourselves up in a castle for months on end to do it as Luther did, but we can sign up for a daily passage online, we can sign up for Bible study, we can read a verse before we eat or sleep or download a biblical podcast while we walk or drive to work. There are many ways to continue in God’s word. As Christians, we are supposed to be in the regular habit of daily eating and consuming the Word of God into our inner spiritual fiber.

Then, Part 2 of our reading from John says: “You are truly my disciples.” Jesus says that to be disciples, we continue to live in God’s word. The word, “disciple,” means pupil. We are pupils of Jesus. In confirmation, we discuss what a good pupil or student is. We talk about the three Ls of a good student: “listen, learn, and live out.” A good student listens carefully to the teacher. We all know when we listen carefully such as at a visit to the doctor’s office to hear about our prostate, our lungs, our breasts, our heart, the beat of an infant’s heart. Sometimes, when we visit a doctor’s office, we bring “another set of ears” with us (our partner or friend) so we can hear even more clearly.

It’s the same thing with the Word of God. We listen, learn, and live out what we know to be consistently true for Jesus. And we spend our entire lives going through this thought-action process. We do it as individuals and in community. And every time we do it right, we get a little closer to who it is that God wants us to become.

“You will know the truth,” says Part 3 of our reading from John. When we immerse ourselves in the Word, we will know the truth about many crucial values in life. We will know the truth about death, that we are not to fear it, that death is not the last word. We will know the truth about forgiveness, that the forgiveness of Christ is as essential as bread and water, sunshine and rain, for life in its fullness to exist. We will know the truth about suffering, that suffering can build character and community. We will know the truth about a loving God and our neighbor, and that our neighbor is all life on this planet. We will know the truth about wisdom - wisdom for loving our partner, wisdom for loving children, wisdom for daily life. We will know the truth about Christ, that Christ is the Heart and Mind and Spirit of God, God in human form.

And finally John says, “The truth will make you free.” When we know Christ, we will know what it means to be free…even when we are politically enslaved, even when we are broken and markets crash, even when we are hung up on our own selfishness, even when we are afraid of God and dying. Even when we are fully human and bound by wrongdoing, we will find freedom in faith.

This morning, we want to be free. We want to taste the flavors of freedom, smell the aromas of freedom, touch the feelings of freedom. Because we are made in God’s image, we want to be free. And because our relationship to God is defined by Grace, we can be.

Happy Reformation Sunday! Amen.