My sermon from 11/22 - "A Different Kind of King"

So if a day late is a dollar short, then a week late is...about 7 bucks? Ah well. Last Sunday was Christ the King Sunday for those church families who follow the lectionary year...it was also the week after my church's high school youth trip to the Sounds Like Love music festival in the Twin Cities.

Here's the message I gave at church, followed by the video of the kids at Sounds Like Love singing "Go Light Your World".


A Different Kind of King
Last week, I had the privilege of accompanying 20 of our high school youth and 2 other adult sponsors to the 27th annual Sounds Like Love festival in the Twin Cities. Sounds Like Love is, in a nutshell, an annual gathering of about 400 high school students who sing and learn choreography for 7 Christian choral songs, and then put on two concerts. Really, on the surface, that’s it. Pretty simple. But I’d be selling the work of the Holy Spirit short if I left it there. Because so many kids arrive expecting that surface stuff, but along the way something surprising happens. The Spirit shows up. The Holy Spirit, who as we profess in the Small Catechism calls, enlightens, and sanctifies us, makes an appearance, transforming the weekend from just a fun time of singing into a call into relationship, a call into mission, a call into participation in the act of opening hearts and lives to the goodness of the gospel. For all of you youth who went, know that in the midst of geckos and “whoop whoop whoop whoop,” in the middle of trying to dig your flashlight out of your pocket while still trying to sing AND do the choreography with one hand, in the middle of the games, the silliness, the hard work…through ALL of it, YOU were missionaries in the truest and best sense of the word. How was that? You were living out God’s love in the world. Alton, our bus driver for the past 3 years, poked his head in during the final concert and afterwards, on the bus told me that to see all those kids up there singing about faith was one of the most powerful things he’s experienced in a long time. I can guarantee you, he wasn’t the only person God touched through this event last week.

The theme for the weekend was based on Micah 6:8: “For he has told you, o mortal, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” The Bible study time, the speakers, the conversations, all revolved around that theme—the theme of what it means to live God’s love in the world.

So, other than the fact that today is the Sunday after Sounds Like Love, what does all of this have to do with worship today? Today is Christ the King Sunday, the day that we focus on the Lordship and reign of Christ over all the universe. And what does this kingdom look like? In today’s reading from John, Jesus tells Pontius Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world.

We in the church have been guilty of two mistakes when reading Jesus’ words here. The first is that we’ve tended to hear that Jesus’ kingdom is not IN this world, that his kingdom is heaven, and that therefore all we can do is struggle the best we can in this life and look forward to pie in the sky in the sweet by and by, someday off in the future. We say things like “my real home is not on this earth.” I refuse to believe that life is just something that God gave us to get through until we get to heaven. Doing nothing but waiting for some distant kingdom off in the future, away from earth cheapens God’s gift of life, it cheapens God’s gift of the world we live in, it makes our relationships with each other completely meaningless, reduces God to a bouncer at some heavenly nightclub, keeping out the riffraff, and reduces our relationship with God to some ticket we have to punch just to get in. God’s kingdom may not be OF the world, but God’s kingdom is certainly FOR the world. Again…God’s kingdom may not be OF the world, but God’s kingdom is certainly FOR the world.

Before I get more into that, the other mistake we’ve been guilty of is trying to make Christ’s kingdom one that is OF the world. We’ve tried to make the church look just like those kingdoms that Christ was saying he was unlike. Christianity has been used to kill, to oppress, to exclude, to wield power over.

Is that the kind of King we worship today?

Is that the Kingdom of God?

To answer my own rhetorical question, no.

We worship a king whose instructions to his followers were to “do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly.”

We worship a king who showed power through weakness, who emptied himself, who came to heal, to reconcile, to give of himself for the good of the world.

We worship a king who found his power in love.

We worship a king whose kingdom is not OF the world…after all, what are the kingdoms OF the world about? They’re about power. Finding power, wielding power, keeping that power by any means. Jesus was talking to Pilate, a representative of the Roman Empire, and empire so skilled in war that it had conquered most of the known world, keeping its citizens in line with brute force. Crosses were incredibly inefficient killing machines—sometimes it would take a full day for someone to die, usually through asphyxiation—but they WERE incredibly efficient at keeping the peace. Line a few roads with crosses, criminals hanging from them, and people got the picture. Pax Romana was peace through force.

Jesus promises us a different kind of peace. This is a peace that comes through healing, through reconciliation, not through conquest and fear. “I do not give to you as the world does,” Jesus tells us. Christ the King does not rule as the kings of the world rule. This is a different kind of peace, in a different kind of kingdom, because we worship a different kind of king. A king who is seen most clearly through the eyes of justice, kindness, and humility. And a king who is heard most clearly through sounds…like love.

A kingdom that is FOR the world…for the benefit of the world. Not for its own benefit, not placing conditions on the world, but a kingdom that exists purely for the benefit of others.

Later in the service, the youth will be singing a song called “Go Light Your World.” We are called to shine the light of the king who rules through love into the dark places of the world. “Carry your candle, run to the darkness, seek out the hopeless, confused and torn,” the song tells us. “Carry your candle for all to see it…take your candle and go light your world.”

The first chapter of John calls Jesus the Light of the World. Our king, the one who died for us, the one who rose and defeated the power of sin and death for us, the one who is making all things new, has called us partners and friends in his mission of light-giving.

We can rejoice today, because we know the end of the story. God has given us a glimpse, a foretaste of the feast to come, one that we participate in every Sunday when we gather for communion. We read of the vision of the risen and victorious Christ, of God making his home among God’s people, of all tears being wiped from our eyes. But even more, we rejoice because we know that very same king walks beside us, showing us the opportunities to be the answer to the prayer “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

How are YOU called to shine the light of Christ? How are YOU called, outside of this sanctuary, to be the church wherever you are, whether that’s at work, school, at the football game, with your family? Christ IS king! And that’s not something that restricts us, that’s something that frees us! Because Christ is king, we are free to live not worrying about ourselves, but for the good of others, just as the one we worship lived and gave himself for our sake. What might that look like in our life, in my life?

Can you imagine what the church will look like when together, we all ask ourselves that question?

More importantly, can you imagine what the world will look like when the whole church asks itself that question?

The kingdom of God, with Christ the King!

Amen.

The Economy of God - Sermon, Pentecost 4B

(btw...An alternate title for this post could have been "Has It Really Been Over Two Months Since I Last Posted Anything? I'm Quite The Sucky Blogger!")

Based on 2 Corinthians 8:7-15:

The Economy of God
June 28, 2009
Pentecost 4B

I spent this last week with our congregation’s soon-to-be eighth graders at Confirmation camp. It was a HOT week, but an incredible opportunity to reflect, learn together, and grow closer together as the body of Christ in a 317 acre outdoor sanctuary. Each morning, we had 2 ½ hours of Confirmation instruction time, then each afternoon and evening they had the chance to do so many of the traditional camp activities—boating, swimming, hiking, cookouts, that sort of thing. Waterfights were especially popular last week. Anyway, during our Confirmation time, we’d spend the first hour and a half discussing the five promises they will be affirming when they are confirmed (feel free to quiz them if you see them!), and the last hour or so of our time together was spent doing co-op activities. Co-op is a series of challenges that forces kids to think outside the box and work together as a team in order to accomplish something, and is a wonderful illustration of what it means to be the body of Christ on earth.

One of our co-op activities was called “Insanity.” The kids were divided into three teams, and three hula hoops were set on the ground forming a large triangle maybe 30 feet wide. In the middle of the triangle was placed a crate full of tennis balls. The object was to get all the tennis balls into one hula hoop, but there was a catch. You could only carry one ball at a time, and other teams were allowed to steal balls out of your hoop and bring them to theirs. The game started, and true to the name, insanity ensued. Kids were running back and forth, taking balls from the crate, taking balls from other hoops, yelling when balls were being taken from their hoop, over and over and over running back and forth like crazed chickens. The counselor let this go on for about ten minutes, as the campers ran themselves ragged trying to get the most balls in their hoop.

I have never seen a better picture of the way the world works. The economy of the world.

Those tennis balls…maybe they represent money. Or maybe they represent food. Power. Sex. Jobs. Security. Acceptance. Those things that we as individuals spend our lives clawing and scratching and running like crazed chickens trying to get, and spend the time that we’re not doing that trying to protect what we’ve gotten or worried that it’s going to be taken from us.

Remember the name of the game? It’s Insanity. And insanity is an apt description both of what happens at first in the game, and how the world teaches us we should live our lives.

So after about 10 minutes of watching this insanity, Scott, the counselor, told the kids to stop and return to their corners. He asked them if what they were trying was working. The answer of course was no. One team bragged that they had the most tennis balls so far, but they were reminded that the object was to get ALL the tennis balls into one hoop, and according to the rules of the game, they had failed just as much as the other two teams. Scott told them to think about the object of the game and try to figure out how they could accomplish it, because there WAS a way.

It took a while, but eventually, the campers discovered that if they put all the balls in one pile, then picked up all three hula hoops and placed them around the balls, not only could you win the game, but EVERYBODY could win the game.

The world teaches us the economy of insanity. What these campers discovered last week was the economy of God. The economy that teaches that we all have something to give for the good of others, that when we quit worrying about holding on to what’s mine, to what I’ve rightfully earned, to what’s coming to me…when I die to myself I gain the greatest treasure of all—living as the body of Christ. That’s cross-centered. That’s living as Christ did.

In our second lesson today, Paul was teaching the church in Corinth a little something about the economy of God. This church had begun a collection for the church in Jerusalem, which was quite poor. It seems things had started okay, but after some time had gone by they had quit supporting them. The Corinthians as a church body were pretty well-off financially, but they had gone lax in their support of another part of God’s body that was struggling financially.

In the world’s economy, you need to run for more tennis balls, while others try to take yours. In God’s economy, Paul reminds the Corinthians (and us) that we have the example of Christ, as he says in verse 9, “that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

Let me stop here for a moment. While Paul’s appeal certainly was about money, beginning here he turns this into MUCH more than just a plea for dollars. God’s economy may include how we approach money, but in stark contrast to the world’s economy, it’s certainly not all about money. In fact, money is just a small part of God’s economy as presented here by Paul. In a way, it would be easier if it were only about money. But as Paul said in Philippians, Christ did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.

In God’s economy, Christ emptied his entire being so that through him we might become, not financially rich, but holistically rich. Authentically rich. Rich in spirit, with those riches that moth and rust do not destroy. Luther had a term for God’s economy—he called it the “happy exchange.” Lutheran pastor and theologian Lisa Dahill explains it this way: "In this exchange, Luther said, Jesus on the cross takes on our poverty, receiving our uncleanness, bearing in his own body our need and our sin, and in exchange he pours out all his holiest, most precious divine gifts to us: his power flowing forth, his heart poured out, his love and mercy, his body and blood, his breath and Spirit and life. He becomes poor to make us rich; and we the impoverished, the weak, the unclean, the unworthy, the desperate – we receive all that is his and are beloved, washed, fed, cherished, and showered with riches. Even our most wretched sinfulness can’t separate us from him. He bears our sins in his own body; we are united with him and held in him in a love that doesn’t defile him but transforms us completely, making exiles and outcasts into daughters and sons."

And so we are called as well to participate in God’s economy along with the Corinthians in verses 13 and 14 of our second lesson. Paul says, “I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance.” In our own happy exchange, we have been blessed with gifts that others need. And others have been blessed with gifts that we need. And we as the church, we as the body of Christ, are called upon for the good of the world to empty ourselves, to become servants for each other, to use those gifts that we have been blessed with for others, all the while being blessed by others with those gifts that they have but we need.

We see a glimpse of that at work in our downtown ministry at The Table. That’s the whole philosophy behind what we do—bring what you have, give what you can, minister to others, and be ministered to through food and relationships. It’s really a very simple thing, but theologically it’s very profound. Some folks come able to share more than their fair share of money, but maybe they’re in need of something else. Some come with no money at all, but are able to bring gifts of listening, caring, love. Some come completely empty and leave filled…filled with food, and filled with the idea that there ARE people out there who want to know them as a person and who genuinely care about them through conversation.

God’s economy.

Shane Claiborne, in his book “The Irresistible Revolution,” described a conversation he had with a friend. He had asked his friend “if you could ask God one question, what would it be.” The friend hesitated. Shane could tell that he wanted to say something, but was unsure about it, so he pressed him. “Well,” the friend said, “I’d really like to ask God why there’s so much pain and hunger and suffering in the world…but I’m afraid God would turn around and ask me the same question.”

God’s economy asks why, in a world where there’s enough food for everyone, one in six of his children, over a billion people, go to bed hungry every night, according to a recent study by the World Health Organization.

God’s economy asks why one country with 6% of the world’s population uses 40% of the world’s resources.

God’s economy asks why millions of people die every year from completely preventable or easily curable diseases.

God’s economy asks why cheap clothes or coffee are more important than justice for those who work in unbearable conditions for little to no pay.

God’s economy asks why celebrity deaths are more important than those everyday people who are lonely, or struggling, or hurting.

God’s economy asks some hard questions, especially for those of us who in the eyes of the world are affluent.

We could debate all day on what the government’s role ought to be in the redistribution of resources. But there’s no question whatsoever as to what the church’s role ought to be. “As it is written,” Paul writes in verse 15, “The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little.”

Again, this isn’t just about money. It isn’t just about material resources. Although it includes both of those things, we’re talking about so much more than that. It’s our whole selves. It’s a complete attitude of servanthood.

Back to camp. The camp’s theme this summer is “Love to serve.” Each day focuses on a different aspect: freed to serve, created to serve, saved to serve, called to serve, and sent to serve. God’s economy calls us to see our relationship to the world as one of service, always looking for those gifts we may have been given that the world needs. Is it money? Is it time? Is it our talents? Is it love? Compassion? Skills? What part do you have to play in the economy of God?

You do have gifts. You have been uniquely gifted by God. You have something that the world needs.

And we, together, as the body of Christ, working together in lives of service, sharing the good news of God in Christ through word and deed, are called to reject the insanity of the world and the way it values people and material goods as things to be grasped, not given. Let’s stop running around like crazed chickens and instead allow God to transform us into saved servants, participants in God’s economy of healing, wholeness, and life.

The economy of the world says your value is based on what you can accumulate. The economy of God says your value is found in being a child of God.

The economy of the world says you are an owner, and need to hold on to what you have earned for yourself. The economy of God says you are a steward, and the gifts you have been given are for the sake of others.

The economy of the world says self-sacrificial giving for the sake of the world is insanity. The economy of God calls it the way of the cross.

The economy of the world says you need to get what’s coming to you. The economy of God says you get precisely what you don’t deserve and could never earn: love, forgiveness, salvation, and eternal life.

Thanks be to God!

Amen.

LH

Sermon For 2/22/09 Transfiguration Sunday: Love's True Form

Mark 9:2-9 (NRSV):

2Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 8Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
9As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.


Ever since Kiddo has been able (in theory at least) to sleep through the night, it has been my job when either of the kids do wake up at night to go to their room and comfort them. The reason for this is more utilitarian than it is chivalrous—I am a much lighter sleeper than Sweetie. When one of the kids makes noise, I’m going to wake up either way, so it makes more sense for only one person to wake up than both of us. So we’ve got the baby monitor on my side of the bed, and I keep it at a level where it will wake me up but usually not Sweetie.

The spring after Kiddo turned two, he had been waking up with night terrors. It was completely normal for his age, but when you are woken up at 3 in the morning by the most inhuman and inconsolable screaming, it can be a bit disconcerting, to say the least. When it first started, we got him a nightlight, and made a really big deal about how he has a “special light” in his room so he can see that there’s nothing to be afraid of. After that, when the night terrors came, I’d go into his room, sit down next to his bed, rub his back and help settle him down. Then we’d talk about his special light and how he doesn’t have to be scared. I’d ask him, “Does mommy have a special light?”

“No.”

“Does daddy have a special light?”

“No, only me.”

“That’s right, only you have a special light. So you don’t have to be scared.” (Don’t ask me why that made sense, but for some reason it was a big comfort to his 2 year old mind.)

Then, usually, he’d be comforted enough to lie back down and go to sleep.

After he had had the nightlight for a couple of weeks, I was pretty proud of how well our discussions about the nightlight were working in helping him go back to sleep. So one night, I decided to take the discussion one step further. We went through our usual litany, and then I asked him another question, to see how well he understood what we were talking about: “so why don't you have to be scared?”

His answer surprised me.

“Because Daddy comes.”

The "theology" or even the light behind the nightlight meant nothing to him. What mattered was that in the middle of the night, Daddy comes. To his two year-old mind, Daddy doesn’t come because he ate his dinner or because he put away his toys or because he went poopy in the potty—Daddy just comes. When he is so terrified that all he can do is cry out, he knows that Daddy comes.

That, I think, is a good introduction to our Transfiguration gospel lesson.

What stands out when we read today’s gospel? It’s the light. The blinding light, Jesus’ robes shining white as snow, the glory and splendor of the King of the World suddenly walking around with Moses, bringer of the law, and Elijah, the great prophet…the one for whom a place is always saved at Passover, the one whose reappearance is said to mean that the Messiah can’t be far behind. And the voice of God, reminding Peter James and John of who Jesus is—“this is my son, the beloved,” –and following with a command, “listen to him!”

Powerful stuff. Powerful story.

But my friends in Christ, if that’s where our focus is, I think we end up missing the point.

If we take this literal mountaintop experience and leave it merely as an example of Christ’s power and glory, then all we’ve done is the same thing poor Peter did. “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here;” he said. “Let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” By the way, did you catch the author of Mark’s little editorial comment after that? It’s almost as though he felt he ought to apologize for Peter. Verse 6 reads, “He did not know what to say, for they were terrified.” It’s like he was saying, “yeah, Peter’s idea was dumb, but let’s not be too hard on the guy. He was terrified, and just didn’t know what to say!”

At any rate, if all we see this experience as is a demonstration of divine power and glory, then we’re essentially making these nice little dwelling-places, these little boxes for the story to fit in. Jesus’ transfiguration did not happen merely to allow these three disciples to say “wow! What an amazing trick! That was great! Surely, you MUST be the Son of God.” Just like the miracles Jesus performed weren’t simply divine parlor tricks so that those around him would say “wow! What an amazing trick! Surely you MUST be the Son of God.” N.T. Wright said in his book “Simply Christian” that God doesn’t send the Holy Spirit to give Christians the spiritual equivalent of a day at Disneyland. I’d argue that The Transfiguration event falls much into the same category. There’s more to it than just an amazing light show.

There are three ideas around Jesus’ transfiguration that I want to look at today.

1. Jesus’ transfiguration reminds us that God has come to us.
2. Jesus’ transfiguration was a “foretaste of the feast to come.”
3. Jesus’ transfiguration calls us to participate in building for the Kingdom of God.

First, Jesus’ transfiguration reminds us that God has come to us. Think back to the story of Kiddo and the nightlight. There were two very important things that needed to happen for Tyler to be comforted. First, someone had to come to him. It would have done him no good whatsoever if I had heard him crying over the monitor, turned the volume down, then rolled over and gone back to sleep. He needed me THERE. With him. Second, not just anyone could have done the trick. If some stranger had walked into his room and tried to tell him everything was going to be okay, chances are it would have just made things worse. He needed his mommy or daddy. It needed to be us. We’re the ones he looked to for protection, for guidance, for help and comfort.

So what does that have to do with the Transfiguration? It reminds us that this Jesus person isn’t just some guy off the street who could do amazing things. This was God. This was God in human form, come down to us. Peter, James and John were given a glimpse of Jesus’ divinity. Yes, he was their Rabbi. Yes, he was the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. But as the voice from the heavens reminded them, this was also the very Son of God, the messiah, the one sent to reconcile all of creation. As a favorite hymn of mine goes, God isn’t in some heaven, light years away. God came to us in the person of Jesus, and God comes to us today. The same God who created the universe, who created the earth and stars and all creatures and everything that ever was or is or will be—that same God came to earth.

The light of the Transfiguration, while dazzling, wasn’t the point of the event. Just as Kiddo wasn’t comforted by the nightlight, but rather by the presence of one of his parents, so too the light of the Transfiguration points to Jesus as our Emmanuel—our “God With Us.” The one who has come to us in the darkness of our sin, our pain, and our brokenness, and who has begun the process of making all things new through his death and resurrection.

I’m reminded of the final scene from the movie Shrek. In case you haven’t seen the movie, Shrek is the story of an ogre, a big, green, fat, belching, crude creature, who rescues the Princess Fiona, who looks a lot like Cameron Diaz animated digitally and given red hair. Princess Fiona is under a curse; “By day one thing, by night another, until true love’s kiss restores love’s true form.” Every night, she becomes an ogre, every bit as green and fat as Shrek. Every day, she becomes Cameron Diaz with red hair again, and the cycle will repeat until she finally experiences true love and takes love’s true form. At the end of the movie, Shrek finally sees Fiona’s ogre persona (she had been hiding it from him) for the first time. But he loves her and kisses her anyway. Watch what happens in the clip.

(NOTE: Here I showed the Shrek "transfiguration" scene at the end of the movie--I tried to find it on Youtube to post here, but didn't see anything online. Sorry!) =)

The makers of the movie do a skillful job of guiding our expectations. After all the light and glory, we expect to see the Cameron Diaz lookalike there. But what is love’s true form? The princess wants to be like the one she loves. She takes on HIS form.

Philippians 2:5-8 reads, “5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 6who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, 7but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, 8he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.” Christ emptied himself, was born as a human, and came not to be served, but to serve. Love’s true form shows its face by giving for the good of others, and God demonstrated love’s true form to us by coming TO us through Jesus.

Jesus comes to you.

And Jesus comes FOR you.

Which brings me to my second thought, that Jesus’ transfiguration was a foretaste of the feast to come. Do those words sound familiar? They’re part of the communion liturgy. When we participate in Holy Communion, we proclaim that we are receiving a foretaste of the feast to come. So what does that mean? We believe that Jesus is truly present in, with, and under the bread and the wine. The bread and the wine don’t change form…they remain what they are, but when we eat and drink, we experience in a very real way the presence of Christ in our lives. Holy Communion becomes, in the words of N.T. Wright, an intersection of heaven and earth. It’s a place and a time where a little piece of the Kingdom of God breaks into our everyday world, and it transforms us. It changes us. It transfigures us. Christ comes TO us, right where we are, and right AS we are.

And so we see the transfiguration of Jesus, as an intersection of heaven and earth. We receive, in the very human form of Jesus, a glimpse of the glory of the divine. And if the point wasn’t made strongly enough, God tells us “this is my son, the beloved.” There is to be no doubt as to whom Jesus is. And perhaps, for those of us who proclaim our belief in “the resurrection of the body” in the Apostles Creed, we see something of what that might look like. As Christ comes to us through the bread and wine and transfigures us through his presence, giving us a glimpse of the glory that awaits us in an eternity spent with the God who loves us, so too the disciples are given that same sort of glimpse on the mountain.

My third thought is that Jesus’ transfiguration calls us to participate in building for the Kingdom of God. And this is where the real meat for our daily lives is. We’ve seen that God comes to us, that God gives us this intersection of heaven and earth, but what difference does that make? What does it look like when God comes, when heaven and earth intersect?

The answers to that come directly before, and directly after, our gospel lesson. Mark 8:34 reads, “34He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” I think it’s no accident that Jesus goes from “take up your cross” to the Transfiguration in the very next few verses. Remember--the transfiguration is a reminder that God has come to us through Jesus, and is a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. So what does it look like when God comes to us, what does the kingdom of God look like?

It’s cross-shaped.

It looks like self-giving love for the sake of the world.

It looks like what happens immediately when Jesus goes back down the mountain. He re-enters the brokenness of humanity. He’s immediately met by the sick and demon-possessed, and he goes right back to the work of building for the kingdom of God. He goes about the work of healing, of making whole, of restoring relationships, of taking away division, and brokenness, pain and suffering.

In other words, he goes about doing the work of the church. He gives of himself for the good of creation.

And later, on a very real cross, he doesn’t give OF himself. He gives himself.

Through the Transfiguration, we too are called to that same work. We’re called to be peacemakers, to feed the poor, clothe the naked, visit those in prison, heal the sick. N.T. Wright puts it this way in his book Surprised By Hope: "The resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Spirit mean that we are called to bring real and effective signs of God's renewed creation to birth even in the midst of the present age." God’s at work making all things new, work that began at the cross and in the empty Easter tomb, and our call is to be a part of that.

We like to speak of mountaintop experiences, of those times in our lives that are life-changing, the highest of the high points. But be careful—mountaintop experiences change you. Are you sure you want to go up the mountain with Jesus? Your transfiguration doesn’t end when you come back down. It’s not easy having your life changed. Often, it means you feel a need to live differently than you did before. It means you see things in a different light than you did before. It may mean sensing a call from God that takes you out of a place of comfort and security, and leads you to places you never dreamed you’d go. It means that like Jesus, you become willing to enter the pain and brokenness of creation, bringing with you the promise of life and hope and restoration. That kind of change in our lives can be difficult, and scary.

But it’s oh so exciting. And it’s the very definition of what it means to live in grace. During confirmation a couple of weeks ago, Pastoral Intern Ben made a point that’s stuck with me. He said, “we’re not saved BY service, but we’re saved FOR service.” We’re not saved BY what we do when we go back down the mountain, but Christ comes to us in all his power and glory to enable, empower, and inspire us to serve others.

We spend today on the mountaintop. But like Jesus, James, John, and Peter, we can’t stay there. In fact, on Wednesday, our church calendar does exactly what Jesus does, leaves the mountain, and descends to the valley of Ash Wednesday and Lent, where we begin the journey toward the cross, the journey through our own sin and brokenness, the journey that Christ made for us and that he calls each of us to make for the sake of the world. “Take up your cross and follow.” Give of yourselves. Bring hope to the hopeless, healing to the suffering, food to the hungry, and the promise of new life to a world gripped by the fear of death.

That, my friends, is kingdom-building in its most basic and Biblical sense.

So, for the sake of our Confirmation students trying to do sermon notes, let’s summarize:

1. Jesus’ transfiguration reminds us that God has come to us.
2. Jesus’ transfiguration was a “foretaste of the feast to come.”
3. Jesus’ transfiguration calls us to participate in building for the Kingdom of God.

May you experience, through the power and the glory of the transfiguration, your own transfiguration. May you experience in a very real way Christ’s coming to you, and for you. May you participate in this foretaste of the feast to come. And may you hear and heed the call to participate in building for the Kingdom of God.

"My peace I give to you..."

For a number of reasons that I won't bother you with, I was having a tough day yesterday. Then, at work, I was going through a box of stuff that I had brought with me when I left the Lutheran Student Center, and discovered a manuscript from a sermon I preached back in May of 2004. At first, I just scanned it, refamiliarizing myself with the general idea. After a few moments, I began reading in earnest, and midway through decided to go back to the beginning and devour the whole thing.

It was as if God was comforting me with my own words.

Advent is supposed to be a time of hopeful anticipation for the coming of the Christ Child. More often than not, however, it ends up being not much more than the frantic preparations for Christmas...not so much the Christmas of Mary and Joseph and Jesus, but the Christmas of gatherings and gifts and decorations. I have to continually remind myself to keep things in perspective, to allow the gatherings and gifts and decorations to serve Christmas, and not the other way around.

That's not what was bothering me yesterday. But whether it's busy-ness, or illness, or work, or family demands, or loneliness, or death, or a multitude of other things, the pressure for our days to "be merry and bright" during this season can be overwhelming, and can easily spiral folks in the other direction.

Anyway, the sermon I found has to do with peace. And hope. There's two main texts that I covered: Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 and John 14:23-29. The Revelation passage speaks of the New Jerusalem (if I remember correctly, this actually used to be an Advent text before the lectionary was revised), and in the passage from John, Jesus speaks of sending the Advocate, the Spirit.

May God grant you peace and hope as you anticipate the coming of Christ. Christ in the manger, Christ at the end of time, and Christ in your daily life. Amen.

Here's the sermon text:

It’s been a tough week. Monday night, within a span of about 3 hours, my son, then myself, then my wife all came down with a pretty violent case of the flu. I’ll spare you the details, but with all 3 of us down at the same time, and with no one truly “well” to be able to take care of the others, it was pretty miserable. Thursday afternoon, Pastor Larry Meyer at the Lutheran Student Center found out that the cancer he fought a year and a half ago has come back, and is growing in a lymph node near the original occurrence. He’ll be meeting with his doctors this week to see exactly what he’s up against and what his chances for recovery may be. Halfway around the world, an American civilian was ruthlessly beheaded in retaliation for the sickening dehumanization of Iraqi prisoners at the hands of some of our own soldiers. Gunfire and missiles continue to fly between Israeli and Palestinian forces all over Israel—the roadmap to peace seemingly on an interminable detour. Stocks are falling, prices are rising…

Where is the good news?

Where is God?

We see images every day of the “Old Jerusalem.” Quite literally, the city of Jerusalem, torn apart by centuries of war, of distrust, of terror…we see so many scenes of the aftermath of violence, we see so many images of crying parents over lost children, of so many crying orphans lamenting the loss of their parents. After a while, all the stories blend together, lose their edge—oh, it’s another killing. Oh, it’s another bombing. It’s just another tragedy in Jerusalem…we lose track of it all.

Look with me at John’s vision of the “New Jerusalem” from Revelation: “And in the spirit he carried me away to a great, high mountain and showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. 22I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. 25Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27But nothing unclean will enter it, nor anyone who practices abomination or falsehood, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2through the middle of the street of the city. On either side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month; and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations. 3Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; 4they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5And there will be no more night; they need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”

Wow…last week we saw how God makes all things new through Christ. It’s a message of hope in the here and now, a message that calls to us through the pain and brokenness of our lives, and a message that is continued in today’s texts. How powerful, how incredible, how absolutely amazing is the image of the new Jerusalem! To see the city that these days is one of the biggest symbols of humankind’s brokenness and separation, lifted up in this way…the nations walk by its light, kings and people bring into it the glory and honor of the nations, the river of the water of life flows through it, the tree of life grows in the middle of the city…the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations!

I’m going to come back to this image of the New Jerusalem, but first we need to look at the Gospel lesson. Without the words of the Gospel, the New Jerusalem is nothing than a pipedream, a beautiful image of something that doesn’t exist, or at least doesn’t exist yet, something to look forward to in some distant time or place, some future otherworldly heaven that has no effect on us in the here and now except to give us hope for what lies ahead. If that’s all it is, then it does us no good…it’s like having your head banged over and over and over against a brick wall and being told “don’t worry, someday the banging will stop, and you’ll be out of your pain and there will be no more brick wall.”

This week, in our Gospel lesson, Jesus reminds us that we don’t need to only look ahead to some future paradise. We have the promise of the Holy Spirit, described in the NRSV translation as our advocate…it’s also been translated as helper, counselor, comforter…it is the spirit of the living Christ! Through the Spirit, Christ is with us, Christ is in us, Christ advocates on our behalf, he helps us, he counsels us, he comforts us!

In a world of bad news, Jesus tells us “PEACE I leave with you; MY PEACE I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” As Christians, it’s easy to find ourselves falling into the trap of waiting for that beautiful day someday when all pain will cease and all will be right. If that’s all life is, waiting for some magic end out there, then why deal with everything that happens between point a and point b?

If we do that as Christians, we miss the incredible gift God has given us in the Holy Spirit. We feel uncomfortable sometimes as Lutherans talking about the Holy Spirit, but it is the Spirit that is with us today—it is the Spirit who gives us peace.

There are those out there who will say that God blesses them because of their belief in Christ. They will say that they put their faith in God, and suddenly life gets easier. There are less questions, less bumps in the road, things just go well. Jesus never promised us that. He doesn’t promise us that in today’s gospel either. Peace is not the absence of pain. Peace is not sailing smoothly through life. The peace of God which surpasses all understanding, the peace that Jesus gives to us, is not a promise that we will not have to deal with illness, or the uncertain future of a loved one. It doesn’t mean that we will stop being touched by evil and sadness and hurt, whether it’s headlines from far away or events that directly affect us right where we are.

Peace through the spirit is the trust and assurance that even though pain and suffering do occur, we know who is ultimately in control and who has the final say. The world offers us many things—the world offers us a version of peace, the world offers us security, the world offers us happiness. But the world lets us down. The world doesn’t always keep its promises. We have the Holy Spirit who is with us, teaching us, reminding us of all Jesus has told us. When bad things happen we have a God who suffers with us and who is always there to comfort us, and who has already defeated the powers of sin and death on our behalf. We have a God who keeps his promises!

Earlier, I asked, where is the good news? It’s right here.

Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. These are words coming from the very one who in a matter of hours will be arrested, beaten, and crucified. And they are spoken not just to the disciples 2000 years ago, they are spoken to us today. What’s going on in your life? What pain, what uncertainty, what trial, what is it that you are facing today? You have a loving God who created you! You have a loving God who gave himself willingly for you! You have a loving God who even today is with you to comfort and guide you, and who works through you to comfort and guide others!

This is the peace of the New Jerusalem, this is the assurance of life and love that Jesus has given us. The New Jerusalem does not have to be some future paradise we need to wait and hope for, the New Jerusalem IS a picture of the peace of Christ! The kingdom of God has already broken into our world—in the death and resurrection of Jesus, and we have been freed! And every time we taste the bread of the Lords table, and every time we drink from the cup, and when we hear the words “this is my body, given for you; this is my blood, shed for you,” the old Jerusalem dies once more in us, and God gives us his peace, builds in us the New Jerusalem.

“Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” Through pain, through fear, through darkness, through sin, through whatever it is we face, Christ has given us his peace, has built in us the New Jerusalem, has left with us the helper, the counselor, the advocate, the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

T.A.(P)D.