Prophet

Pentecost 22A, 11/9/14

Amos 5:18-24

Holy Wisdom, guide our actions in life. Keep us attentive to your presence among us and help us be ready for the day of your coming. Amen.

Once upon a time, God created Adam and Eve and placed them in Paradise. All was going well, until they decided to go against God’s commands and do something that would separate them from God.    They sinned.

And they got kicked out of the Garden of Eden.

Then the population of the world grew and spread, and all seemed to be going well for a while. But then the people started doing evil things – they sinned.

And God destroyed them all, except for Noah and his family and a boatload of animals.

Several generations passed, and the Israelites eventually ended up enslaved in Egypt. God sent Moses to free the people from slavery, and he did – but once the people got their freedom, they complained about the food that God was miraculously providing for them in the desert.

         So God made them wander there, and eat that food, for 40 years.

Finally the Israelites got to the Promised Land, and in time they formed a country united under a single ruler, but after the reign of only three kings, the people sinned. They argued about how best to follow God. The kingdom split.

Eventually, the people will be conquered by neighboring kingdoms and taken away from the Promised Land and into exile.

But first: enter Amos.

Amos was a prophet sent by God to warn the people about their sin, to help prevent the calamity that God knew was coming.

Amos was just one of many prophets sent to the people of Israel over the years. Most of the books of the Old Testament that are named after a person    are named after one of these prophets. It seems that whenever the people were in danger of slipping so far into their sin that God would need to correct them, a prophet or two would show up.

When we hear the words prophet or prophecy, we tend to think of speculations about what the future will hold.

But Hebrew prophets weren’t fortune-tellers – they didn’t predict the future.

Hebrew prophets spoke out against the injustice and unfaithfulness that they witnessed in their current world situation.

God gave them a message to share, they were bold enough to share it – they were compelled to do so, regardless of how that message was received.

Prophets were known to get in to trouble with religious leaders, political leaders, and the general population… kind of like Jesus, actually, except that most of the Hebrew prophets weren’t put to death for their teachings.

So the Hebrew prophet Amos wasn’t predicting the future.

But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to look at the history of the Hebrew people and realize that they’re about due for another catastrophe.

As had happened a number of times in the past, the chosen people strayed from following the law that God had given them. They lost faith in God’s guidance. They were setting themselves up for another disaster, just like the ones that had come to put the people in their place every time throughout known history that the people had strayed from God’s law.

And Amos could see it. So – at God’s urging – Amos chose to warn the people.

Here is the gist of Amos’ message:

Your actions outside of worship matter more than your acts of worship.

If your daily actions aren’t making the world a better place, you should be afraid of what God has planned for you.

So coming to Sunday worship, praying before every meal, serving on church council, attending to the needs of your own faith community – none of these is relevant, according to Amos.

         Instead, what God wants faithful people to do is create justice in society.

Faithful people are supposed to make sure that everyone in the world is fed, regardless of the cost to themselves. Faithful people are supposed to make sure that all God’s children have access to clean water and to other health care needs.

Faithful people should make sure that everyone is treated fairly, regardless of race or nationality, and that suspected criminals get their day in court.

The list could go on and on.

Here’s another way to summarize Amos’ message today:

Would an outside observer be able to tell that you are a follower of God by the way you live your daily life?

If not, a change is in order.

If every action that you take in life is not directed by God, and if you aren’t constantly working for the kingdom of God to show up in the world, then you are not doing a good job of following God.

OK, let me clarify a bit here.

We’re not talking about salvation.

There is nothing that you can do to earn that – God has already taken care of your salvation for you.

That’s what we call grace – whether you’re deserving of it or not, God welcomes you into the community of the chosen, the saved, the people who have been faithful throughout the generations.

What we’re talking about is what we do with our lives before God welcomes us into that community of faithful people for all eternity.

One of my seminary professors says this about the readings for this week:

[God’s] judgment… affirms those people whose lives express the virtues Jesus embodies: faithfulness, perseverance, readiness, obedience, and compassion.

Matthew Skinner, oddesynetworks.org/on-scripture-the-bible

Here’s an analogy that a friend of mine shared about the importance of Christian living. I hope it can help you understand the meaning of the readings today.

         Everyone in Christian community is part of a football team.

Some of us are starters and some are benchwarmers, but each of us has been chosen by God to serve on the team.

OK. So we’re all teammates. But we have to figure out a play, we have to strategize about the upcoming game.

So we huddle. We figure out what we think is the best thing to do.

         And then we go out and do it.
We start making plays. We start scoring points. We start using our God-given talents for the good of the team.

Coming to worship is like participating in the huddle of that football team.

We can learn some good information and have some fun here.

But faithful people are not supposed to stay inside the church walls. God wants us to go out and be involved with what’s going on in the world.

No one says, at the end of the football game “Man! That was the most amazing huddle I’ve ever seen!”

It’s the plays that count.

When we’re actually acting in faith, that is when we are following God. We heed the prophets’ warnings by going out onto that field and playing a really stellar game.

So let’s listen to the message of the prophet today. While we are waiting for the day of the Lord, when we’ll begin spending eternity with generations of faithful people, until the day of the Lord comes, let’s live a life full of faithful actions.

Amen.

Blessing

All Saints' Sunday, 11/2/14
Revelation 7:9-17; Matthew 5:1-12

Salvation belongs to you, O God. Bring us to the water of life and wipe away all tears from our eyes. Amen.

Long ago a baby was born to a Hebrew woman. Though not much is known about this baby between his notorious birth and the beginning of his ministry, we know that this man spent most of his adult life in a very close relationship with God. He attracted some followers, and tried to help these other people grow in their relationship with God as well. This man spent some significant time on mountains – they seemed to be places where he could always be sure to meet God. On one particular day, this man shared a list of messages from God with the people, hoping that it would help them to follow God more faithfully.

Does this story sound familiar?

The man in question, by the way, is Moses.

Moses was one of the top prophets in Judaism, and he ended up having a huge impact on the religious people of his day. Among other things, Moses introduced the people of God to the law that would help them more faithfully follow God’s wishes for their lives.

The Gospel of Mathew was written in such a way that Jesus would remind the reader of Moses.

Jesus is the new prophet, following in line with Moses and the other prophets of the Hebrew Bible. The first followers of Jesus, who still considered themselves to be Jewish, would have been glad for the comparisons that placed Jesus right in line with other Jewish prophets. By casting Jesus as a new Moses, the Gospel of Matthew immediately carries credibility – Jesus as a teacher is immediately recognizable to the people.

This past week in Confirmation we played a game with the kids.

Each group of students came up and acted out a movie or TV show for the rest of the class. We had Hunger Games, The Walking Dead, Dora, and other shows that I can’t remember right now.

And we learned the very important lesson that if you weren’t familiar with the show being acted out, you had no hope of guessing what the charade was all about.    Some previous knowledge was required.

That’s why I’m starting a sermon about the Beatitudes by talking about Moses.

If you don’t understand the cultural reference that’s being made in this story, you’re going to miss a lot of the meaning of the things going on right in front of you.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is portrayed as a prophet in line with Moses and others in the Hebrew Bible.

You don’t need to be a biblical scholar to understand the basic comparisons.

The law that Moses taught the people is comparable to the teachings of Jesus.

Just as Moses had direct communication with God, and spoke with God’s authority, so does Jesus.

So in today’s passage, the teacher is Jesus, not Moses. Jesus doesn’t come down from the mountain with the law of God written on tablets of stone… he brings his followers onto the mountain with him and preaches them a sermon about how to grow in relationship with God.

Jesus’ sermon on the mount begins with a list of those people who are blessed.

This list is descriptive, not prescriptive.

These verses are not presented as a to-do list for the listeners – Jesus isn’t saying, “Go! Make yourself become poor in spirit     so that God will bless you!”

Instead, Jesus is describing the people whom God has already blessed.

         “See that shy, timid, meek person over there? God has blessed that person.”

The people listening to Jesus would have had a hard time believing him.

That guy? Blessed? In what universe?

Blessed was a Greek word used in literature and in Scripture to describe the gods, or humans who had died and gone to the world of the gods, or people in the upper classes of society, or those who had many possessions and an overall happy life.

(Brian Stoffregen, Gospel Notes)

From God’s perspective, Jesus tells us, blessing has nothing to do with those earthly measures of success. The ones who are blessed by God are the ones who are least valued in society.

And Jesus speaks with the authority of a prophet, so even if we don’t understand everything he’s saying, we know that it comes from God and is true.

According to one author, “Matthew’s beatitudes are not practical advice for successful living, but prophetic declarations made on the conviction of the coming-and-already-present kingdom of God.”

(Boring, Matthew, New Interpreter’s Bible, quoted in Brian Stoffregen, Gospel Notes)

So, God’s kingdom is present in those places where these words are true – in the kingdom of God, the meek will be blessed, and in fact, since they will be blessed in eternity, which has no beginning and no end, the meek are already blessed, even in our world, even when we don’t see it.

Are you following? This is kind of heady stuff.

Let’s go back to the Bible passage for a closer look.

The Beatitudes are a list of blessings – that’s where the word “beatitude” comes from, the Latin word meaning “blessed.”

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Blessed are those who mourn.

Blessed are the meek. 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

Blessed are the merciful.

Blessed are the pure in heart.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.

Blessed are all these people, because Jesus has declared it to be so, and he has the authority of God to bless whomever he chooses.

For us, today, on All Saints’ Sunday, this is good news.

By at least one of these measures, each of us can probably fit into the framework of the Beatitudes somewhere.

In a few minutes, many of us will come forward to light candles in honor of our loved ones who have died.

And today, in our grief, Jesus tells us, blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

Jesus doesn’t tell us to go out into the world and seek grief – he simply states that for those of us who are already living with it – we are blessed.

Or, maybe mourning isn’t your thing today. Maybe you’re pretty happy with your own life, actually. But you see the unrest in the world around you. Whenever there’s a school shooting or military action or gang violence or armed robbery, it pains you. And so you work to stop the violence.

         You are a peacemaker. And you are blessed. 

Jesus says so.

And by saying it, Jesus makes it so.

That blessing is God’s promise to us when we die, as well.

On All Saints’ Sunday, we remember those who have passed away, celebrating that they are all saints, even if they will never be canonized by the church.

We hear in Scripture that a great multitude that no one can count, from every tribe and nation, speaking all kinds of different languages, all of the faithful who have died, will spend eternity in heaven praising God.

This is true because God makes it so.

It’s not true because everyone who dies was so wonderful.

I mean, sure, sometimes they are. But that’s not always the case.

        

Several years ago I did a funeral for a woman who was… very difficult to get along with. She was not close to her children – in fact, they didn’t like her very much.

This woman was grumpy and judgmental all the time.

I couldn’t find anyone who had happy stories to tell about her.

Some folks from the church remembered the contributions she had made in the quilting group or by helping out in the kitchen – they respected her, but they didn’t particularly like her. Just about everyone who showed up at this funeral did so because they felt that they should – they didn’t come out of love for the woman who had died.

         It’s kind of a sad story.

But here’s why it’s important.

That woman is still a saint.

She wasn’t sweet and loving and generous and kind – she wasn't’ any of those things that we usually say about people who have recently died.

But none of that matters, because God still chose her. God still claimed this woman, and she still gets to spend eternity with the rest of that countless multitude before the throne. That makes her holy – it makes her a saint.

You remember the movie The Ten Commandments? The one from the 50s, with Charlton Heston as Moses.

Yul Brynner played Pharaoh in that movie. He had a line that got repeated several times, that has stuck with me.

When he made a command, Yul Brynner’s character would say, “So let it be written. So let it be done.”

Pharaoh’s power, however, was not the strongest in this story.

God won out in the end. God’s power is shown every time God speaks – nothing needs to be written, nothing needs to be done – once the words are spoken, a new reality is made.

“They will hunger no more, and thirst no more;

the sun will not strike them,
nor any scorching heat;

for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd,

and he will guide them to springs of the water of life,
and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

All the dead have become holy – they are saints – simply because of God’s word.

Blessed are those who mourn.

And so it is.

Wherever you find yourself in the Beatitudes, or whenever you recognize that God’s unexpected grace has show up in your life, then, you are blessed – not because you earn it, but because God says so.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Re-forming

Reformation Sunday, 10/26/14
John 8:31-36; Romans 3:19-28; Jeremiah 31:31-34

God of new covenants, help us to know you, forgive our iniquity, and remember our sin no more. Amen.

Tradition:  the handing down of statements, beliefs, legends, customs, information, etc., from generation to generation, especially by word of mouth or by practice. (www.dictionary.com)

What are some of the traditions that you observe in your life?

Really, go ahead and shout them out.

Holiday meals, praying before meals, going to church, special foods…

In addition to those, there are some more basic traditions that are part of our society, that most of us follow without even thinking about them.

Do you celebrate birthdays with candles and cake?

If you’re married, do you wear a ring on your left hand?

The last time you went dancing, did the man lead?

This is the time of the year when we start to prepare for some of our favorite holiday traditions.

But before the holiday season really begins, we have the chance to celebrate Reformation Sunday. This is an opportunity for us to reflect on all of our traditions, and why it is that we actually do them.

We'll focus for now on traditions that happen at church. 

In the church, we have lots of traditions.

Communion and Baptism.

The words of the liturgy, the order of worship.

Having worship on Sunday to begin with.

The order of the books of the Bible.

There are reasons behind each one of these traditions in the church, and there are reasons to continue observing many of them. But the church does not exist for the sake of tradition – our traditions are simply some of the ways that we’ve used throughout history to share the message of the Gospel with the world.

On Reformation Sunday, we remember what happens when we begin to revere our traditions so much that they become what defines us, rather than the Gospel.

About 500 years ago, the church was so steeped in inflexible traditions that many Christians felt oppressed by the requirements to follow all the rules.

People were taught that they had to observe   every    single    tradition    in order to earn their way into heaven. As you can imagine, people had a hard time keeping up. They did the best that they could, but they always fell short of the expectations. What would happen if a child was sick on a holy day of obligation – or if a person forgot to confess a lustful thought before receiving Communion – or if a family didn’t have enough money to pay for the proper prayers to be said for their loved one who had died?

Would God keep people out of heaven just because someone failed to follow through on their religious obligation one time?

Those questions are what started our Lutheran denomination. Martin Luther knew that he could not possibly fulfill the entire law prescribed by the Church. He tried, but he continually failed.

And finally he realized the truth of the words we heard in the second lesson today: we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. (Romans 3:28)

In other words, according to Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, we can’t earn our way into heaven by completing lots of good works and following all the traditions of the church.

Instead, God chooses to save each one of us.

As a sign of our thanksgiving for God’s grace, we choose to follow the law of God as closely as we are possibly able, asking forgiveness for the times we fail.

When he realized that salvation is completely in God’s hands, all of a sudden Martin Luther felt free from the laws and the centuries worth of traditions that had been bogging him down!

But he didn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Luther had a very strong faith, and he had felt the presence of God in his life many times. He didn’t want to stop being Christian altogether, he just wanted to reform the church of his day – to give Christians a new focus on God’s grace, instead of on the legalism of religious obligations.

So Martin Luther asked a question that continues to form our church today.

Why do we do what we do?

Where did these traditions come from, anyway?

Is it important or not for us to continue observing these practices?

If our traditions have meaning – if they show the love and grace of God to us – if they help us in our mission to share the Gospel of Christ – then by all means, keep doing them!

But if our traditions are no longer life-giving, if they are simply laws that must be followed to the point at which we feel oppressed,   then maybe we need to reassess the tradition. Maybe we need to do away with it altogether, or maybe we need to update it for our current place in life.

As Lutherans, we keep those traditions that have meaning, knowing why we do them. But we are free to leave behind those traditions that no longer have relevance to us, and that no longer remind us of God’s grace.

For example.

We read the Bible in worship, very time we gather.

Why? Does the Bible change? Of course not. That’s one of the great things about the Word of God – it remains the same.

But we change. And when our lives change, the ways that God interacts with us change also. The Bible can speak to us in new ways as we encounter new adventures in life. So each time you come to church, you hear the Word of God for you that day.

The text of the Bible remains the same, but the meaning may be different from week to week or year to year. And so we continue the tradition of reading it in worship, every time we gather. It helps us remained focused on the Gospel.

As Lutherans, we keep those traditions that have meaning, knowing why we do them.

But there are also traditions of the church that Lutherans have set aside. There are some ancient practices of the church that we choose not to observe any more.

For example.

We do not venerate relics. Relics are pieces of hair, wood, bones, fingernails – anything with a connection to a sacred person or place.

For centuries, the veneration of relics was an important piece of Christian worship. Many altars in churches were built around these tiny pieces of the saints – maybe you’ve visited one of those old churches, and seen the dedications to the saints whose remains are contained there.

We as Lutherans do not build our churches around the relics of the saints.

500 years after the Protestant Reformation, most of us find this practice to be utterly foreign, even a little strange. This is one tradition that our predecessors in faith determined to be a distraction from the Gospel, so they decided to leave the veneration of relics out as they were developing the Lutheran church of today.

Lutherans keep some traditions and let some fall by the wayside.

Our denomination began during the Reformation.

It is the most    Lutheran    thing    ever     to be constantly re-forming, to be re-evaluating our practices and why we do them.

We should never choose to do something just because that’s the way we’ve always done it. 

Traditions have meaning and they can help us grow in faith – that’s why we follow them. But if a tradition does not serve these purposes any more, it just might be time to update it for a new time and place, or to stop following it altogether.

Many of our traditions have changed over time.

For example.

When you have people over for dinner, do you eat first, or do you serve your guests first? In today’s culture, we usually think that it’s polite for the host to eat last, to make sure that the guests have enough. But in a different time and place, it was considered polite for the host to eat first, as a way to show that the food wasn’t poisoned or otherwise unsafe.

Our practices about Communion have followed the same protocol. Pastors and priests used to always serve themselves before serving the congregation, so that the people would know the food was safe. Now many pastors choose to eat last, to make sure that the congregation has enough before partaking of the meal ourselves.

        

So how do we know what traditions to continue, and which to change, and which to throw by the wayside?

500 years ago, the church frequently got in the way of people having a meaningful relationship with God.

Based on that measure, Luther spoke out against the current practices in the church – he protested, trying to reform the church at the time – so that the church would become a place where people heard about the Gospel rather than a place where people felt constantly inadequate.

When do our churches and our traditions get in the way of people having a meaningful relationship with God?

If our traditions are based on fear of punishment, like they were in the church of Luther’s time – if our traditions do not bring us closer to God, then we need to reconsider why we do them.

Martin Luther would be shocked by what I’m about to say, but hey – things have changed in the past 500 years, and unlike Luther, I don’t happen to believe that the Pope is the antichrist.

The current Pope has some good wisdom for us today. (And Luther rolls over in his grave.)

Pope Francis tell us, God is not afraid of new things.

God can handle change just fine – God has seen a lot of changes over the years, and God has gotten though each one of them unscathed.

         God is not afraid of new things.

So why should we be?

Let me share one more example of how some traditions are helpful and some need to be re-formed.

Some of us have kept a family baptismal gown from a grandmother or great-grandfather. This gown gets passed through the generations as each new baby wears it for their baptism. That is a good tradition. It connects family and church, and reminds us of God in tangible ways.

But most of us don’t keep our grandmother’s or great-grandfather’s diapers for our children to wear. Seriously. Some things are just not worth keeping. They serve their purpose for a time, and do it well – but when their purpose is over, it’s time to move on to a new practice, a new tradition.

That’s the message of Reformation Sunday. Continue in God’s word, follow the truth, and you will be made free – free from the legalistic obligations that can bog us down, free to observe those traditions that are life-giving, and free to follow God wholeheartedly.

Our Christian faith is not about earning salvation – Jesus has already taken care of that. 

Our Christian faith is about thanking God for our salvation by drawing closer in relationship to God.

Our traditions can often help us do that, but sometimes they keep us separate from one another or from God. As Lutherans, we can follow in the tradition of the founder of our faith, keeping those traditions that are life-giving, but discarding the ones that are hurtful.

Our faith, and our church, are continually re-forming.

God is continually speaking to us in ways both new and old.

Thanks be to God. 

Amen.