Sermon for March 17-18: Grace, Works, and Poopy Treats

(My seminary classmates and those who have read this blog in the past may recognize the "nightlight" story...this was the first time my congregation had heard it, though...)

Grace, Works, and Poopy Treats

Ephesians2:1-10

March 17-18, 2012

Kiddo and Pumpkin (names changed for the internet) are a little older now, but in reflecting on the passage from Ephesians, I found myself thinking back to when each of them was two years old. 

Which makes sense, because this passage says a lot about grace.  And there’s not a lot of grace involved when you live with a 2 year old. 

These are all sentences Sweetie (name changed for the internet) and I actually found ourselves saying word for word at some point:  “IF you eat your supper, THEN you can have pudding.”  “IF you put away your toys, THEN you can watch Dora the Explorer.”  “IF you go poopy on the potty, THEN you can have a poopy treat.” You know those little Smarties candies? Perfect incentive to get kids to go potty when and where they’re supposed to. AND…unlike M&M’s, they’re also transportable in a purse or pocket without melting, even in the middle of the summer. If you get nothing else out of today’s sermon, you at least now have my one parenting tip.

At any rate, life with a 2 year old is a lot of IF/THEN…because it has to be.  IF you’re good enough, THEN you get rewarded.  2 year olds understand works righteousness very well.

On the other hand, moments of grace do come.  Ever since the kids have been able to sleep through the night, it has been my job when they do wake up at night to go to their room and comfort them.  In the interest of full disclosure…the reason I’m the one who gets up has more to do with common sense than  chivalry or anything like that—I am just 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. 

Not long after Kiddo had turned two, he had started 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 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 Kiddo.” 

“That’s right, only Kiddo has 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 lay 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 doesn’t Kiddo have to be scared?”

His answer?  “Because Daddy comes.”

The “Theology of the Nightlight” isn’t what mattered to him.  What mattered was that in the middle of the night, daddy comes.  Daddy doesn’t come because Kiddo ate his dinner or because he put away his toys or because he went poopy in the potty—Daddy just comes.  When Kiddo is so terrified that all he can do is cry out, he knows that Daddy comes.  That is faith. 

The theology behind justification isn’t what matters to us.  What matters is that in the middle of the darkness of our sin, our heavenly daddy comes.  He came to us in the manger at Bethlehem, he came to us on the cross at Calvary and in the empty tomb, and he comes to us today.  God doesn’t come to us because of anything we’ve done, God just comes.  When we’re so terrified, when we’re so lost, when we’re so dead in our sin that all we can do is cry out, we know God comes.  That is faith. Faith isn’t understanding and agreeing to a set of propositions. Faith is simply trust.

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”   

The good news of the gospel is that you are not alone. The good news of the gospel is that it’s not up to you to get it all right, it’s not up to you to make yourself acceptable to God, it’s not even up to you to believe the right things to complete some magical formula to get God to save you. The good news of the gospel is that God has already saved you…if we were to translate the Greek literally in Ephesians 2:8 it would say, “by grace you have been and continue to be saved.”  This is something that has already happened for you, but it’s also something that is continuing in your present reality and will extend into your future. And it’s not because of anything you’ve done. Good OR bad.

In Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of the Bible called The Message, he describes the word “grace” as “surprise love gift.” Grace is a surprise—it’s not anything we expect. The way of the world teaches us that we ought to get what’s coming to us (good OR bad), or that we reap what we sow (good OR bad). God’s grace works backwards from what the world teaches us. Grace is a surprise to us because we DON’T get what’s coming to us, what we deserve. Instead of condemnation, we receive forgiveness.  Instead of death, we receive new life.

Grace is love—our Gospel reading today includes what is probably the most well-known verse out of the entire Bible: “for God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” God’s grace is love. It is love in action.

And grace is a gift. As we’ve heard in Ephesians, it’s not something we earn. It’s not the result of what we do. It’s a free gift from God.

We have been saved…by grace…through faith. And it’s not because of anything we’ve done. BUT…if that’s where we stop, we’ve missed the whole point.

Listen closely, because this is the main point not only of the sermon, but of our entire existence. We’re not saved BY good works, but we were created FOR good works.

In Richard Stearns’ book The Hole In Our Gospel, he writes about what he calls “The Great Omission.” His point was that we’ve taken God’s message of grace and love and have made it far too much about ourselves. About who we are as individuals. It’s too much of “me and God.” Now don’t get me wrong. That’s important. Faith is relationship, it’s trust, it is about me and God…but that’s not the finish line. That’s not where it ends. That's actually where it begins. It's just the starting point. The final end point of my faith is not me. It’s about being able to serve my neighbor. It’s about doing good works. It’s about saving me from my slavery to myself, to needing for it to be all about me, in order that I may turn my focus outward.

And that has been the Great Omission too often in the church. We’ve created this false divide, saying that the gospel is either about my own personal salvation, or it’s about bringing about the kingdom of God through acts of social justice. The reality, according to Ephesians, is that what we’re dealing with is a both/and situation, not an either/or. Verses 8 and 9 are often quoted, and for good reason, but look for a moment at verse 10. “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.” 

This is how we were created to live. This is who we are.

How many of you have ever been on a mission trip or work trip?

How many of you have ever volunteered for a helping group or organization?

How many of you have ever helped someone who needed it?

When you did those things, how did it make you feel?

I realize that the purpose of our lives isn’t to feel good, but I would argue that the reason helping others is so fulfilling, so deeply enriching to our lives, is because when we do it, we are most fully living out who God created us to be. Seriously—there’s no feeling in the world like being able to walk away knowing that in some way, even if it’s a small way, you’ve made a difference in the life of someone else. As Lutherans, especially, it’s easy to fall into the trap of being so afraid of thinking that we’re justified by good works that we forget to actually do any.

My friends, you have been saved! You have been freed from having to live up to any standard, any measuring stick. This is a gift! The gift is FOR you, but it doesn’t end WITH you…you have been set free as a surprise love gift to live into who you were created to be, to live a life of good works.

And that’s better than a poopy treat any day.

Matt Schur

Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE 

Lenten midweek sermon from 3-14-12: "We're One, but we're not the same..."

“We’re One, but we’re not the same…”

God’s Call to Unity

March 14, 2012

John 17:17-23

What does unity mean? What does it mean to be united? Does it mean complete agreement? Does it mean complete uniformity? Does it mean two people, two entities, two groups, losing their separate identities and becoming one new thing?  Does it mean that we look the same, think the same, act the same, and believe the same?

During our Wednesday Lenten services, we’re exploring the theme, “Listen, God is Calling!” Each week we’re exploring a different aspect of that call, through the lens of Scripture and in conversation with a pop song from the last 40 years. Last week we looked at God’s call to reconciliation through the lens of Mike and the Mechanics’ The Living Years. Today, we listen for God’s call to unity.

“We’re one, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other,” is how the song One by the group U2 closes. We’re one, but we’re not the same.  That sounds nice and all, but how does that square with the Biblical concept of what it means to be united?  What does it have to do with God’s call to unity?

There are a number of different Scripture passages that deal with this question.  You may be familiar with 1 Cor. 12, which compares the church as the body of Christ to the parts of a real human body…we’re all one body, made up of different parts, all of which need each other. Ephesians 4 reads, in part, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit-just as you were called to one hope when you were called-  one Lord, one faith, one baptism;  one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” (vv.3-6)   Philippians 2:2 encourages us to have “the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.”  We could have heard any of those passages and gotten a good picture of what God’s idea of unity is.

The Scripture passage we heard, however, takes a little different direction than the others, and in doing so, is able to dive even deeper into God’s call to unity. First of all, we see that it is indeed a calling, that it is something Jesus specifically prays for on our behalf. He first makes it clear that while he’s praying for the disciples, he’s also praying for us. For you and me and all of us who have followed or will ever follow him. He says in verse 20, “I ask not only on behalf of these [the disciples], but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word…” That’s all of us.  That’s the church throughout time across the world. And what is it he asks? He prays to God in verse 21 that “they may all be one.”

Jesus wants his followers to be one. Jesus prays for unity on our behalf. So then, the question becomes, what does this unity look like? Go back to the questions we asked right at the beginning. Is Jesus asking us to look the same, think the same, believe the same, act the same?

I don’t think so. And the reason for that is that Jesus himself goes on to explain what a picture of this sort of unity would look like. The second part of verse 21 reads, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”  He continues in verses 22 and 23, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Jesus wants our relationships with each other to look like God’s own Trinitarian relationship.

Think about that. We worship one God. In our creeds, in our teaching, in our hymns, we have taken great pains to explain that although the God we worship is found in three persons—Father, Son and Holy Spirit, or Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier—we do not worship three Gods. We worship one. We worship a God whose nature we claim to be diversity in unity.

Turn with me to page 54 in the Lutheran Book of Worship. There you’ll find the Athanasian Creed, one of the three major creeds of the Christian church. We say the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed quite a bit…not too often that we recite this one together. Confirmation students—be thankful we’re not memorizing this!  But as you look through it, you’ll notice that it’s all about the Holy Trinity. It’s all about what it means to say that God is three persons but one God. It’s all about what it means to understand complete and perfect unity in the midst of diversity.

We are united not through losing our identity, but like the unity of God, through a bond of self-giving love.

Or, as Bono sings in the song One, “We’re one, but we’re not the same. We get to carry each other.”

So what does this say about our own unity? First, unity does not mean giving up one’s individuality, one’s personhood. When I was a teenager, there was a show on TV called Star Trek: The Next Generation. On the show, there was an entity called The Borg. The Borg was a collective made up of countless individuals, but each of those individuals had given up their identity, had given up their individual thought and desire and saw themselves only as part of the whole. The Borg’s mantra was “Prepare to assimilate. Resistance is futile.”

There are those who see Christianity as a version of The Borg. Prepare to assimilate—resistance is futile. Check your brains, your thoughts, your individual needs and fears and desires and experiences—just check them at the door. There is only one right way to think, only one right way to believe, only one right way to live, and we who are already part of The Borg Church will tell you what that is.  In order to be a good Christian you must think a certain way politically. You must believe a certain way about certain social issues. You must understand these sets of doctrines in this certain way. You must worship in this way.

No. That’s not who we are. That’s not the way we’re called to be. We don’t find our unity in traditions or customs, we don’t find it in what we say or how we look or any of that surface, outside stuff. We find unity in self-giving love for each other that can’t help but overflow into the world. There are Christian groups who believe different things than us about God, or worship in a different style. Our call to unity doesn’t mean giving up those unique ways in which we experience God’s presence and activity in our lives. It does mean finding with others what one my seminary professors calls “a fusion of horizions.” We see things one way, others see things in a different way—are there places where our separate visions intersect? Is it possible for different denominations to work together to eradicate world hunger? You bet it is…and not only is it possible, it is our calling. Up in Minot North Dakota where a number of folks from our congregation will be traveling, it was different church bodies who got together and built Hope Village, where anyone who wants to come and help with the flood cleanup can stay while they serve. We have ecumenical partners with The Feast and Bridges to Hope. Our helpers and friends at The Table are an extremely diverse group.

And why is this important? Because our unity, finding that fusion of horizions, finding that singular purpose through self-giving love even while maintaining our identity, is our witness to the world. It is, as Jesus says in verse 23, “so that the world may know you have sent me.” Our unity is to mirror God’s unity so that through our unity, through our purpose, through our self-giving love, we point to God without even saying a word. We may not agree on some things, we may not agree on many things, but how can we love? How can we serve? How can we be in relationship in other ways? Those are the questions we’re called to ask.

Our song outlines two ways in which we can respond to differences, two ways in which the church historically has responded. Either in fear, or in working toward unity in diversity. Earlier in the song, he sings:

Did I ask too much?
More than a lot.
You gave me nothing,
Now it's all I got
We're one
But we're not the same
See we
Hurt each other
Then we do it again
You say
Love is a temple
Love a higher law
Love is a temple
Love is a higher law
You ask me to enter
But then you make me crawl
And I can't keep holding on
To what you got
When all you've got is hurt

We can respond to our differences in hurtful ways.  Throughout history and still today, the church has been guilty of doing that both within itself and with the world in general. There are many whose experience with the church has been “You ask me to enter, but then you make me crawl, and I can’t keep holding on to what you got when all you’ve got is hurt.” When we don’t allow for questions, for differences, when we try to force a false unity that is really conformity, we hurt. We destroy.

But the end of the song echoes Jesus’ prayer in John 17. It is our call. A call to find our unity in living, giving, serving and loving. To find our unity as forgiven and loved Children of God at the foot of the cross.

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters, brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other
One...

May we be one as God is one.


Amen.

Matt Schur

Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church

Lincoln, NE

Sermon from 10-1-2011: "We're on a mission...from God!"

We’re On a Mission…From God!

Matthew 21:33-46

October 1-2, 2011

Who has seen the classic movie, The Blues Brothers? Jake and Elwood Blues travel around, wearing cool black suits and hats and sunglasses, trying to find all the members of their old blues band in an attempt to raise money to save a Catholic orphanage. Remember their classic tagline? “We’re on a mission…from God.”

We’re on a mission…from God. There’s some good theology to be found in there. God is on a mission, a mission of healing, reconciliation, and redemption. It’s a mission that began with the creation of the world, when God declared all of creation good. It’s a mission that continued through Eden, and through the flood. It continued through God’s covenant with Abraham that through him and his descendants, all the world would be blessed. It continued through Egypt, the wilderness, and the Promised Land. It continued through the prophets, the judges and kings, through a manger and stable, teachings, healings, a cross and an empty tomb. After Christ’s time on earth, it’s a mission that the church became a part of, and still today we’re called to participate in God’s restoration of all things. We’re called to be a part of making all things new, of being a blessing for all the world.

The ten-dollar Latin theological term for this is Missio Dei. Missio is mission, and Dei is God. But notice how it’s phrased. Missio Dei. The mission of God. God’s mission. The mission does not belong to the church. We do not direct the mission, we don’t decide who it’s for, where it goes, or even how it’s lived. Mission belongs to God, and God invites us to be a part of it. But here’s the kicker. God’s mission doesn’t need the church. The church needs God’s mission.

Today’s Gospel reading is a stark reminder of that reality. This is a passage that has been very unfortunately used throughout the years to justify anti-Semitism, and on the surface we can see how easy it would be for someone to get there. Jesus tells a story about a landowner whose tenants keep beating up the slaves he sends to collect the produce. Finally, he decides to send his son, thinking “surely they’ll leave my son alone.” But the tenants kill the son, hoping somehow to get the son’s inheritance. I’m honestly not sure how they thought THAT would happen. In the context of when Jesus tells the story, it’s obvious that the Pharisees he’s telling the story to are supposed to be the tenants, and Jesus himself is the son of the landowner, God. But let’s look at this story through a different set of lenses for a moment, because I think it absolutely has something to say to the church today.

Look with me for a moment at verse 43: “Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.” If we put ourselves in the place of the Pharisees, what does this say to us about our participation in God’s mission on earth? God’s mission doesn’t need the church, the church needs God’s mission. And if we as the church choose not to participate with God in God’s mission of healing, restoration, forgiveness, and redemption for all creation, God will find others who will.

As we stand here not far into the 21st century, we look around us in the United States and in the Western Hemisphere in general, and we see a church in decline. Membership in mainline denominations have been falling across the board. Budgets are being cut, programs are disappearing, and many are asking themselves what happened to the church that for so long was the center of American society.

Different people have offered different answers to that question, but I think today’s gospel lesson gives us a pretty good answer. Jesus was speaking to people who looked back to the promises given to them through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They leaned on those promises, promises that they were a chosen people, that they had a blessing of land, that the world would be blessed through them. Their faith life was inseparable from their public and private lives—the synagogue and temple were not just prominent parts of their society, but were the center of their society.

The danger of this, of remembering one is chosen, of living in a society where the church (or synagogue) holds a central place, is that it becomes easy to rest on one’s laurels. Like a highly ranked football team who reads in the papers about how good they are, the danger becomes that they decide to just show up and forget there’s a game to be played. The church becomes fat and lazy, and develops a sense of entitlement. Instead of being a part of God’s promise to bless the world, we expect the world to bless us, and get upset and huffy when the world doesn’t do that.

But the reality is that God’s mission doesn’t need the church, the church needs God’s mission.

The church is no longer the center of American society. I don’t have to quote the statistics for us to recognize that that is the case. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. The race that Paul speaks of in his letter to the Philippians, the prize of the heavenly call in Christ Jesus isn’t one that moves toward the comfortable center of society. The heavenly call is one that calls us out, rouses us from our comfort zones, compels us to go to the edges, to the need, to the darkness and the brokenness and the sin and grime and muck of the world. Our faith is a faith of the edges, our mission is a call to the edge. When Christianity becomes cultural, it becomes domesticated. It becomes tamed, safe. Power and influence tend to do that to anyone. Rather than following the call to mission for the sake of the call to mission, we ask ourselves how our decisions will affect our ability to hold on to the power and influence we have. On the other hand, when Christianity is counter-cultural, it is free to become that prophetic voice, that prophetic presence, the voice speaking uncomfortable truths and being present with the marginalized of society, or in other words, living its life much like Jesus lived his.

So what does Jesus mean when he says the Kingdom of God will be taken away? First, it’s important to say right up front that we’re not talking about salvation here. Our salvation is not based on what we do or how we live, it is a free gift that comes to us by and through faith. Jesus isn’t talking about heaven, and neither is Paul when he writes about the “heavenly call.” This isn’t a call TO heaven, a call that says there’ll be pie in the sky in the sweet by and by and so I don’t have to worry about this world or the people or things in it. This is a call that comes to us FROM heaven, from God. For Jesus, the Kingdom of God is in the here and now. It’s what we experience and what we live in when we love our enemies, pray for those who persecute us, feed the hungry, heal the sick, and care for the poor. It’s a kingdom that was ushered in through the cross and the empty tomb, a kingdom that will not be fully realized until the end of time, but a kingdom that we catch glimpses of and live in when we follow God’s call to us to participate in God’s mission.

God’s mission doesn’t need the church, the church needs God’s mission.

The Bible speaks of the church as the Body of Christ. If the church really is the body of Christ, the hands, head, eyes, ears, and feet of Christ, then when we decide not to follow the heavenly call, when we decide not to participate in the Missio Dei, when we decide that being comfortable and holding on to power and influence are more important than being a blessing to the world, then we are not being the church. And we’re not living in the Kingdom of God, that kingdom of costly service and self-emptying love.

My friends, we ARE on a mission…from God! The mission is not our own, it is not of our choosing or direction, but it is one that we have been called to participate in. We must always be asking ourselves, are we going about God’s business of blessing the world, or are we waiting for the world to bless us? In our baptism service, we say that baptism is both a promise and a call—on the one hand, we can rest securely, assured of our promise of salvation. But on the other hand, at the same time we’re called out beyond ourselves. Jesus tells the church to take up its cross and follow him, and there’s nothing about the cross to suggest that the way of following Christ is easy or popular. Where are we, as individuals, as a congregation, as Lutherans, and as the whole worldwide Christian church, following God’s call to mission? Where have our desire for comfort, influence or power clouded our call? As a church whose very heritage comes from the process of reformation, may we always be asking ourselves those questions, always looking for those ways in which God is looking to reform us, to literally RE-form, reshape, form us again into something new, for the sake of God’s mission.

Amen.

Matt Schur
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE

Sermon from November 26-27, 2011: It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Advent 1B—Mark 13:24-37

November 26-27, 2011

Here we are in the first week of the season of Advent, the beginning of the church year…who knows what the word “advent” literally means?  Advent comes from a Latin word, adventus, which means “coming.”  Christ is coming.  We look forward to Christmas as we await the coming of Christ into the world. 

But there’s a deeper meaning there as well.  You may be wondering why, if we’re supposed to be looking ahead toward a baby’s birth, we’ve been given this Gospel reading that talks about things like suffering and the Son of Man coming on the clouds and the passing away of heaven and earth.   This is apocalyptic stuff—it sounds scary, literally earth-shattering.  What in the world does this have to do with getting ready for babies and Bethlehem and farm animals and kids dressed up in bathrobes singing “The First Noel?”  Well, that Latin word, Adventus, is also the Latin translation of a Greek word, parousia.  Parousia is the ten-dollar word theologians use to describe the coming of Christ at the end of time.  So here, during advent, we are called to wait, to prepare, to get ready not only for Christmas, not only for the coming of Christ in humility as a baby, but also to prepare for the coming of Christ in glory as king. 

 There’s an almost 25 year-old song by REM called “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine),”  which has been one of my  7 year-old son's favorite songs to sing along to ever since he was about 3.  There’s not much to the song itself—the verses are just a bunch of stream-of-consciousness images all sort of strung together, and the chorus consists of the lead singer singing “It’s the end of the world as we know it, it’s the end of the world as we know it, it’s the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.”  But boy is it catchy.  And there’s a message there for us as well, a message that speaks to advent and to what we hear in our Gospel reading.

The coming of Christ means the end of the world as we know it.

I’m not talking just about the end of time, though it certainly does include that.  And I’m also not just talking about the original Christmas story either, though that certainly was the case as well.  I’m talking about now.  Today.  In your life.  In my life.  In our collective lives and callings and mission together as the church in the world.  Jesus Christ comes to us, and when he does, it means the end of the world as we know it.  It means making all things new.  And when things are made new, that means the end of what was old. 

Consider baptism.  As Christians, we describe our baptism as the washing away of the old Adam and the old Eve, and the beginning of a new life.  Paul describes baptism as death—dying to ourselves and being raised with Christ.  We’re different.  We’re no longer on our own, but are children of God, brought into God’s family.  Our baptism doesn’t mean the end of the world…we still are called to live in the world, but it means the end of the world as we know it.  We live in the world but are not of the world.  We become participants in God’s mission of healing and reconciliation in the world.

Our gospel reading today is another good example.  It comes near the end of Mark’s gospel, right before the events of the last supper and Jesus’ arrest.  It’s a shame that people like Harold Camping, with his doomsday predictions (which were wrong not once, but twice this year, by the way) and the writers of the still-popular Left Behind series of books, have taken passages like this one and twisted them to fit their vision of a violent last days scenario.  Our reading begins in the middle of a speech by Jesus to his disciples.  We hear him say, “In those days, after that suffering…”  If you’re like me, you may have asked, hold on, in what days?  After what suffering?  Take a look with me at the first half of Mark 13. Jesus and his disciples are by the Temple, which for Jews of the time not only was the center of worship, but was actually where God resided, in the very middle, a room called The Holy of Holies, where a curtain shielded the priest who entered once a year from the pure holiness of God. The disciples have what one of my favorite professors, Karoline Lewis, calls a “Little Red Riding Hood” moment: “Teacher! What big stones and what big buildings the temple has!”  And from there, Jesus begins teaching about how the temple will be desecrated and destroyed, which historians know actually ended up happening at the hands of the Romans in 70 A.D. 

One of the major questions the writer of Mark tackles throughout the entire gospel account is the question of “Where is God?”  For the Jews of Jesus’ day, the answer was easy.  God was in the Holy of Holies in the temple in Jerusalem.  But what about after the destruction of the temple?  Where was God then?  Mark tells us that when Jesus was baptized, the heavens were “torn open,” and when Jesus died on the cross, the curtain in the temple, the one that protected the priest from God, was “torn in two.”  Our reading from Isaiah today begins with asking God, “O that you would tear open the heavens and come down.”  Mark proclaims that’s exactly what God did.  In baptism and on the cross, God tore open the heavens and came down.  In Christ, God became incarnate, took on human flesh, and came to us and for us.  We experience that today in our own baptism, through the bread and wine of Holy Communion, through God’s call to us as individuals and God’s mission for us as the church.  The coming of Christ means the end of the world as we know it.

And that’s what Jesus is telling us in our gospel reading.  There’s an insight into this text that I wish I could claim as my own, but I owe to professor and theologian David Lose.  He points out that Jesus gives four specific examples when he’s saying we don’t know when the master will come.  It could be in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn.  And the writer of Mark, interestingly enough, divides the story of Jesus’ death into four sections:

 1) Last Supper, beginning, "When it was evening, he came with the twelve..." (14:17).

2) Jesus' prayer and betrayal: "And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy" (14:40). Why so tired? Because it was the middle of the night.

3) Jesus' trial and Peter's denial: "But he began to curse, and he swore an oath, 'I do not know this man you are talking about.' At that moment the cock crowed for the second time" (14:71-72a).

4) Trial before Pilate: "As soon as it was morning, the chief priests held a consultation with the elders and scribes and the whole council. They bound Jesus, led him away, and handed him over to Pilate" (15:1).[1]

Very interesting, as one way to read Jesus’ warning is to hear him declaring that his return -- when the heavens shake and the sun is darkened -- is precisely the moment when he is nailed to the cross and we see God's love poured out for us and all the world.  The coming of Christ means the end of the world as we know it.

As for the actual end of the world?  Jesus’ message was quite clear, especially as many Jews assumed that the destruction of the temple just had to be a sign of it.  About that day or hour nobody knows, so quit trying to read the signs, quit trying to tell the future, quit trying to trap God into a corner and dictate the way things must be.  It’s all a waste of time and energy.  Yet he says in verses 35 and 37 to keep awake.  If it’s not for trying to read the signs of the end, what is it for?  Like servants who aren’t sure when the master’s coming home, or to put it in terms I can understand, like a husband with a honey-do list who’s not sure exactly when his wife will be home from running errands, we are called to an active waiting.  Advent isn’t about sitting around letting the world go to hell in a handbasket because Jesus is eventually going to come and rescue us from all of this anyway.  In the end, it’s about stewardship.

The coming of Christ means the end of the world as we know it.  Gone are our claims that our time is our own, that our possessions are our own, that our money, our families, our work, our energy, our very lives are our own.  That’s what the world would try to tell us.  That’s the way of the old Adam and the old Eve.  The new world, our new lives ushered in through the cross, make every day an advent.  Every day we hear the call to love our neighbor, to serve those in need, to use the gifts we have been given and entrusted with for the hungry the naked, the thirsty, those in prison—all of the least of these that we heard about in last week’s gospel.  Every day the heavens are ripped open and Christ turns our lives upside-down with the restless, unstoppable love of God.  How do we respond?  Do we respond in fear, hoard what we have been given and turn in on ourselves?  Or do we respond in trust, use what we have been given for those around us and turn outward, just as Christ on the cross looks outward and gives of himself for the sake of all?

The coming of Christ means the end of the world as we know it.

And I feel fine.

Matt Schur

Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church

Lincoln, NE

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[1] Lose, David.  If the World Were to End, 2011. http://www.workingpreacher.org/dear_wp.aspx?article_id=529

Sermon from 1-1-12: What Child Is This?

What Child Is This?

Luke 2:22-40

“What child is this, who laid to rest on Mary’s lap is sleeping? Whom angels greet with anthems sweet while shepherds’ watch are keeping?”

What child IS this?  The babe, the son of Mary, the one born in Bethlehem to a young, unmarried couple  far from home in a dark, smelly stable that was usually home to smelly animals? 

“This, this is Christ the King, whom shepherds guard and angels sing. Haste, haste to bring him laud, the babe the son of Mary.”

We have the audacity to claim that this is the way a king was born.  We have the nerve to insist that this was not only A king, but it was in fact THE king, the messiah, not just A son of God but THE very Son of God, the Word made flesh, the same Word and God who was present at the beginning of creation, the very same who will be present at the end of all things.  We have said it so often, we have heard it so often, that I think it sometimes loses its impact on us.  THIS is the method by which we claim God chose to break into our dark world and to establish God’s kingdom.  In the form of a small, frail infant born to unimportant parents from an unimportant part of an unimportant country occupied by the most important empire of its time.
It makes no sense. It’s so backwards.  It’s so inefficient.  It’s so NOT the way I would have done things.

And maybe that’s the point.

If the Kingdom of God is a kingdom lived out in faith, then its king is a king who needs to be seen through the eyes of faith. 

Scripture tells us that not long after Jesus was born, Mary and Joseph brought him to the temple “to present him to the Lord²³(as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”),²⁴and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”  This was a young couple with a new baby doing what God required of all young Jewish parents.  Remember, this was the same young couple who BEFORE Jesus’ birth had angels coming to them to tell them that this child was going to be something different, something special, someone born of the Holy Spirit.  If anyone could have claimed some sort of special dispensation for this presentation at the Temple, it would have been Mary and Joseph.  But there they were, fulfilling for their child the law that had come FROM their child.  And then in walks Simeon. He sees Mary and Joseph, and their little baby.

And then we discover that Simeon had those eyes.  The eyes of faith, the eyes of expectation, the vision of hope and promise and fulfillment and restoration.  He sees something special in Jesus.  He sees the fulfillment of the promise that God had made to him, that he would not see death before he saw the Messiah.  He sees the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed one, in the face of this little child with the young, nervous, decidedly unimportant parents.  And he grabs the baby and holds him, saying, ““Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word;³⁰for my eyes have seen your salvation,³¹which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,³²a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

He can die in peace.  Through the eyes of faith, he has seen the messiah.

And it’s not done there.  There was a prophet named Anna at the Temple as well.  When Simeon made his proclamation, she joined in, telling about the child to “all those who were looking for the redemption of Israel.”  She had the eyes of faith and began speaking to others who had those same eyes, who were looking, waiting for God to act.

When we see the world through the eyes of faith, when we like Simeon and Anna find the messiah in an everyday baby born to everyday parents, we see God’s kingdom in ways and in places that the world does not expect. 

We see the face of Jesus not hidden away in a church sanctuary, but in the face of the homeless man on the street. We see Jesus in our brothers and sisters who are suffering because of war, who face uncertainty or hunger or poverty.  We see Jesus in the face of our enemies.  We see the kingdom of God in the hidden shadows, tucked away in the places we might otherwise consider unimportant.

The eyes of faith transform how we see the world, allowing us to see it the same way God sees it. 

There’s an old legend that says Simeon would take EVERY baby that came to the Temple for the purification rites and bless it…that Jesus was just one in a series of many babies that Simeon blessed in the way we read about today.  It is what it is, an old legend with no basis for the claim, but there’s a part of me that really likes thinking about it that way.  Would it make what he said about Jesus any less special?  No—Jesus was who he was, no matter what Simeon said about him or anyone else, it would have been true no matter what.  But if Simeon blessed EVERY child, if he saw EVERY child through the eyes of faith,  as a blessing and a light for the world, what would that mean for us? What would that mean for how we see the kingdom of God, what would that mean for how we see those around us, what would that mean for how we see the least and the lost and the suffering and the sick?

The eyes of faith transform how we see the world, allowing us to see it the same way God sees it. 

When I’ve gone with our youth on mission trips, every evening when we’re looking back on the day, I’ve always asked them one question: “Where did you see God today?”  Let me tell you, the youth in this congregation have the gift of the eyes of faith.  Like Simeon, they have seen the face of the Messiah in faces many would not expect—the man with AIDS at Project Hope in san Francisco, the unpredictable girl with fetal alcohol syndrome in Pine Ridge, the street musician in New Orleans.  They’ve seen the face of the Messiah in each other’s faces as together they’ve done what they could to help those in need. They’ve seen the face of the Messiah in your faces as you’ve supported them and prayed for them and taught them and have been living, walking examples of the Kingdom of God in your own lives.

The eyes of faith look at a baby in Bethlehem as see the face of God.  The eyes of faith look at water and promise and see cleansing of sin and adoption into the Kingdom of God. The eyes of faith look at bread and wine and see body and blood, broken and shed for you.  The eyes of faith look at a man on a cross, dying a criminal’s death, and they see the Son of God bringing new life and hope and salvation.  The eyes of faith look at an empty tomb and see the fullness of God defeating the powers of sin and death. 

The eyes of faith look at Christmas…and see the shadows of Easter.

“Nails, spear shall pierce him through, the cross be borne, for me, for you. Hail, hail the Word made flesh, the Babe, the son of Mary.”


Matt Schur
Our Saviour's Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE

March 7, 2012 Lenten Midweek sermon: God's Call to Reconciliation and "The Living Years"

God’s Call to Reconciliation and “The Living Years”

March 7, 2012 -- 2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Lyrics to Mike and the Mechanics' "The Living Years"

That’s quite a song, isn’t it? Mike Rutherford of Mike and the Mechanics wrote The Living Years about his relationship with his father after his father died. It’s a powerful song of regret, a warning of chances not taken to come to terms with those you love, with some incredibly powerful imagery. It speaks to families, but it also can speak to friends, groups, churches, or even nations.

It is a song that cries out to us of the importance of reconciliation.

During our Wednesday Lenten services, we’re exploring the theme, “Listen, God is Calling!” Each week we’re exploring a different aspect of that call, through the lens of Scripture and in conversation with a pop song from the last 40 years. Last week we looked at God’s call to repentance through the lens of Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror. Today, we listen for God’s call to reconciliation.

Reconciliation is a major theme in both of Paul’s letters to the church in Corinth. Paul’s relationship with the church there is best characterized as complicated. From reading both the books of first and second Corinthians, it sounds as though there was a great deal of conflict both within the church, and between the church and Paul. As a result, much of what Paul had to say to them dealt with the ways in which followers of Christ were to treat each other. In fact, the famous “love chapter,” 1 Cor. 13, which we hear so often at weddings…you know it, “love is patient, love is kind…” and so on…and it ends with the beautiful phrase, “and now these three remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is love.” It wasn’t written about marriage. It wasn’t written to be a frilly, nice saying. It was written in response to a church that was having bitter disagreements, a church that was sacrificing relationship on the altar of being right. Paul was telling them to knock it off. Faith in God without love for neighbor becomes self-centered and exclusive. Hope in Christ without love for neighbor loses its grounding in the real life of the here and now. Faith and hope without love results in brokenness.

In The Living Years, we hear the same sort of message. “You say you just don’t see it. He says it’s perfect sense. You just can’t get agreement in this present tense, we all talk a different language talking in defense.” Disagreements happen. People are not going to see eye to eye all the time, because we’ve been created as different people. We have different understandings, and different experiences that we bring to each situation. Sometimes, in the present tense, we’re not going to get agreement. But how do we react when that happens? As the song says, if we react defensively, if we put our guard up, if we decide that we’re going to regard differences of opinion as personal attacks or decide to go on the attack ourselves, it’s as though we begin to speak a completely different language from the other person. We talk past them, or AT them, instead of with them. They become an object, something outside of ourselves to hammer on or to protect ourselves from, rather than a fellow child of God, created like us in God’s image, with worth and value, from whom we may learn, with whom we are part of the body of Christ, and with whom we are called into relationship.

We don’t have to go too far to see examples of this. Yesterday was Super Tuesday in the presidential primary race. Every election cycle, we complain that candidates do too much attacking each other and too little discussing of the important issues, but there we are eating it all up and feeding into it. Look at the many issues regarding sexuality and the church. In response to the 2009 vote regarding the sexuality social statement, the ordaining of GLBTQ clergy, and the blessing of same sex unions, this congregation is to be commended I think in choosing to form a relationship task force, whose purpose is to engage each other and engage the issues not in attack mode, not in defense mode, but with honesty, grace, and compassion. In other places, I have seen far too many examples of objectifying and demonizing the other side, no matter what that side may be. I’ve seen the cutting off of communication, and the cutting out of relationship, rather than healthy, vigorous debate which seeks in love to understand. As a nation, our level of discourse tends to shoot straight to the lowest common denominator. As our song today says, “So we open up a quarrel between the present and the past, we only sacrifice the future, it’s the bitterness that lasts. So don’t give in to fortunes we sometimes see as fate, we may have a new perspective on a different date. And if you don’t give up and don’t give in you may just be okay.” When we allow ourselves to be dragged there, when we allow the tone of our inevitable disagreements to sink to the objectification and demonization we all too often see, we do sacrifice the future. It IS the bitterness that lasts. And in the church we sacrifice our mission, we sacrifice our call, we sacrifice the love and the relationships and in the end we sacrifice the very body of Christ on a cross of our own making. We sacrifice who we are, Christ for the world, on a cross made not of wood but of anger and bitterness, or a cross of silence, or a cross of exclusion.

And so Paul’s message that we hear today in 2 Cor. 5 is the message of reconciliation. It is a message of healing wounds, it is a message of restoring relationships. And it begins with verse 16. “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view.” Reconciliation begins with choosing to see our neighbor through the eyes of Christ. To Jesus, you are not a project. To Jesus, you are not an object. You are a person who was created in God’s image. You have worth. You have value. You have dignity. And so does your neighbor. So does your enemy. So does that person you’ve been arguing with. So do intolerant people. So do people who stand for nothing. So do liberals, so do conservatives, so do muslims, pagans, Catholics, atheists, Tea Partiers, Occupiers, people who are gay, people who are straight, legal immigrants who don’t speak English, illegal immigrants who do speak English, people of every color, people of every background, people of every political persuasion, you name the category or the label or the name and THAT PERSON was created in God’s image, and we no longer regard them from simply a human point of view, no longer simply as someone with whom we disagree, no longer simply as a category or as a designation, but as a PERSON through the eyes of the loving and grace-filled God who gave himself for ALL of us.

Martin Luther talked about this in the Small Catechism. I spent some time last month with our 6th grade Confirmation students discussing this. The 8th commandment reads, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” In the original context, it basically meant that we were not to lie in court about someone else. But, as was the case with most of his explanations of the 10 commandments, Martin Luther wasn’t satisfied with saying “well, as long as you don’t do what it says on the surface, you’re doing God’s will.” He saw God’s will for us not as the absence of a negative, but as the presence of a positive. He wrote, “What does this mean? We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbor, betray him, slander him, or hurt his reputation, but defend him, speak well of him, and explain everything in the kindest possible way." What would Washington DC look like with this understanding? Or the unicameral? Or churchwide or synod assembly? How would this transform our congregations, our families, if we took this seriously? How could we transform the world?

God didn’t wait for us to get it right. God didn’t wait for us to see it God’s way. Reconciliation with humankind was SO important to God that God didn’t wait for us to come to God—God came TO US. God came FOR US. Jesus was born, lived, died, and rose FOR YOU. And for all of those other people too. God took the first step. God took the initiative. THAT’S reconciliation—not waiting for the other person to finally come around and see it your way. It’s also not devaluing your own position. Did Jesus’ death on the cross mean that God’s okay with sin? Of course not. God just made the decision that God’s relationship with humankind was SO important that nothing, not even the power of sin and death, was going to get in the way of that relationship.

So then, Paul says, God entrusts US with that same ministry of reconciliation. It becomes OUR job. God has reconciled Godself to us, and we then are called to be reconciled to one another. That doesn’t mean remaining silent, nor does it mean that disagreements aren’t going to happen. “Say it loud, say it clear,” the song tells us. But then it reminds us, “you can listen as well as you hear. It’s too late when we die to admit we don’t see eye to eye.” We are, as Paul tells us, ambassadors for Christ. What is the message the church is sending the world about the kind of God that we worship? What is the message that we are sending about the call to love God and love our neighbor? Are we building walls, or breaking them down? Are we sowing seeds of division, or acting as ambassadors of God’s love for the world and God’s reconciliation with the world? Where is God calling you, calling me, calling us, to the ministry of reconciliation?

Matt Schur
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE
March 7, 2012

2-29-12 Lenten midweek sermon: Man (and Woman) In the Mirror: God's Call to Repentance

Man (and Woman) in the Mirror: God’s Call to Repentance

James 1:22-27

Lyrics to Michael Jackson's Man In The Mirror

Our Wednesday evening focus for the next number of weeks will be on God’s call to us in our Lenten journey, and in our life journey. God is calling! God calls through water and word, God calls through bread and wine, God calls through the voices around us, God even calls through the everyday stuff of life. As part of that everyday stuff, each week we will be looking at a different song—nothing that is explicitly Christian, but songs that you very well could have heard on the radio at some point in the last 40 years or so, and songs that speak very clearly to us different aspects of God’s call. In the coming weeks, we will be considering our experiences of God’s call to reconciliation, God’s call to unity, God’s call to justice, and God’s call to reformation. Tonight, though, God’s call to us is the call of repentance.

Repentance is a term we hear thrown around quite a bit. Maybe we think of people holding up signs in the city or at sporting events: “Repent, for the end is near!” Often, many of us think of repentance as being sorry for something. The Biblical meaning is actually different. The Greek word in the New Testament that’s translated as “repentance” is metanoia, which literally means “to change your mind.” That’s where we come to the song that today is serving as the lens through which we see God’s call to repentance for us: Michael Jackson’s Man in the Mirror. It’s a phenomenal exploration of both the meaning of repentance and God’s purpose for repentance. In fact, there’s a sentence that he repeats over and over each time through the chorus, almost like a mantra: “If you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make a change.”

What is it that’s changing? Another way to think about repentance is as a turning—we turn away from something, and if we’re doing that, it means we are turning toward something else. So what is it that we’re turning from, and what are we turning toward?

The easy answer we’re presented with so often is that we’re turning away from our sins. We turn away from those things that we do or that we left undone that we know are wrong, and turn toward new, better ways of living our lives. We try to stop lying, or stealing, or cheating, or whatever those things are that we all know about ourselves—and we resolve to do better. In the end, though, doesn’t that end up feeling like some sort of self-help list, or like our New Years resolutions that even though for the last 20 years we’ve forgotten what they even were by February, THIS year was going to be different and THIS time we really meant business and here we are almost at March and what was it I was going to do again?

What makes that ultimately so unsatisfying is that we’re dealing with surface-level stuff. We’re dealing with sins, with a lower-case s, stuff that we think we can control, things that we convince ourselves that if we just try hard enough, we’ll be able to do better.

Real repentance means tackling not only our sins, not only those actions or inactions where we know we should have done something differently. It means going way beyond that. It means taking a long, hard, honest look at ourselves and recognizing that we are bound, we are held captive, by the power of sin. Those things we call sins are not the real problem—rather, they are the symptoms of the real problem—Sin with a capital S.

Sin is another term we hear thrown around quite a bit, and I think often in unhelpful ways. Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber wrote about this a couple of weeks ago in her thoughts on Ash Wednesday. There’s one side of the church that would rather not have us talk about sin at all. That side of the conversation tends to equate talking about our sinfulness with having low self-esteem. “Why can’t the church be more positive? Why can’t we just discuss our identity as beloved, created children of God? Why do you have to make us feel bad about ourselves?” The other end of the spectrum equates sin with immorality. That’s where we get back to those immoral acts…so if we just avoid those bad things and make the decision to live a good life, we can be a good Christian.

The problem with both sides is that they boil sin down into something that’s in our hands. Something that we can control. And the cold hard truth, the reality of our situation, of our lives, is that I cannot free myself from my bondage to myself. (1) For Luther, that was the very definition of sin—my being curved in on myself. Michael Jackson even talked about it in our song today. Near the beginning, he sings, “I’ve been a victim of a selfish kind of love.” That self-love, that conviction that if I’m not the center of the universe I at least should be, is the most basic, the most fundamental breaking of the first commandment, and we all do it. The first commandment says “You shall have no other gods before me.” We put our trust, our hope, our sense of importance and preservation and priority in ourselves. We make false gods of ourselves. And when we look at ourselves in the mirror, when we allow ourselves to really see who we are, when we are at our most honest and vulnerable, we know it’s the truth.

God’s call to repentance is not a call to us to just pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and straighten up and fly right. It is God’s doing, out of sheer grace, as a sheer gift. It is not us turning ourselves around, but it is God taking hold of us and forcing our gaze outward. Repentance that comes from God turns us away from ourselves, and turns us toward our neighbor. And in turning toward our neighbor, we’re turning toward God. We do not have the power to overcome our self-interest, but it is God who changes us. And it is that kind of repentance, that kind of change, the change that comes from God by the power of the Holy Spirit, that is truly transformative.

That’s how the writer of the book of James can talk about being a doer of the word, and not merely a hearer. The purpose of repentance is not for our own self-improvement, the purpose is not to get us right with God or climb up some ladder to heaven. We’re already right with God. That happened on the cross. That happened in the empty tomb. God has already said I love you so much that I am willing to take on the powers of sin and death and all that hold you in their grip.

The purpose of repentance, the purpose of this transformation, the purpose of God’s orienting our gaze outward is precisely because that’s who we were created to be. We were created to live in relationship. We were created to give of ourselves for the good of the other. When that happens, that’s when we’re living in the promise of God’s kingdom, that’s when we’re experiencing that foretaste of the feast to come.

And so we do not just look in the mirror and forget who we are, as the writer of James says. But we are called by God to repentance by what that writer names as the law of liberty. Quite simply, through Christ, we no longer have to worry about needing to live for ourselves. We have been freed to live by a new law—the law of grace, the law of love…doing the gospel, living the gospel, not just hearing it and forgetting. Religion that is pure and undefiled, the writer of James reminds us, doesn’t involve locking yourself away so that you won’t be tainted by the world. It doesn’t mean retreating from the messiness of life. That’s just another way of being curved in on ourselves. Pure, undefiled religion means getting your hands dirty. It means acting on behalf of the vulnerable, of the outcast. It means remaining unstained by the world because you’re right smack dab in the middle of the world as a part of the world.

Your repentance is not ultimately achieved by you, it’s achieved by God. And your repentance is not ultimately about you, it’s about your neighbor.

So yes, it does start with us. It starts with the man, with the woman, with the boy or the girl we see in the mirror. That person we see is a person transformed by God, called by God. You are called out of your bondage to yourself, and into the freedom of being who you were created to be, in community and in relationship with others, living and loving not for yourself, but for the sake of your neighbor. And that can be risky stuff. It can mean giving up comfort for the sake of service. It means asking how our decisions affect the well-being of others, rather than how they just affect us. Repentance affects our personal security. It affects our financial decisions. It affects how we choose to spend our time and energy. Real change through the power of the Holy Spirit means we’re no longer the ones in control. But it also means living into the exciting, abundant, life-giving life that God wants for us.

And when individuals are gripped by this outwardly-turned power of God, that affects groups. That affects the church. What does this call to repentance look like for Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church, for this community of faith? In what ways are we experiencing metanoia, the changing of our minds and of our ways by God? Where is our orientation, the way we see and interact with the world, being redirected outward?

Maybe the doomsday signs are right in a way: Repent, for the end is near! With the repentance, with the turning, with the change that comes as a gift from God, the end IS near…the end of our self-centeredness. The end of our having to have it all together. The end of it having to be about us. And the beginning of new life in the Kingdom of God.

Matt Schur

Our Saviour's Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE

(1) http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2012/02/why-i-love-ash-wednesday-and-lent-part-1-sin/

Jan. 28-29, 2012 sermon: The Kingdom of God and the Will to Undo

The Kingdom of God and the Will to Undo
Jan. 28-29, 2012: Mark 1:21-28
Today’s gospel reading is a story about demon possession. The very term, I imagine, for most of us conjures up images of B-grade horror movies, or at least of Linda Blair with her head spinning around. Demon possession? Really? Haven’t we gotten past that kind of thing in the 21st century, with all of our insights into psychology and medicine and such? What in the world does this story have to do with sophisticated people living in the 21st century? We don’t deal with things like demons today.

Or do we?

Turn with me in your green Lutheran Book of Worship to the Brief Order for Confession and Forgiveness, found on page 56. Together, let’s read the large bolded section. When we do, even if you’ve been a lifelong Lutheran as I have and have recited these words more often than you can count, pay attention to what it is we are all saying here. We read together: “We confess that we are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves. We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. For the sake of your son, Jesus Christ, have mercy on us. Forgive us, renew us, and lead us, so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways, to the glory of your holy name. Amen.”

We are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves. The Apostle Paul puts it this way in Romans 7:15-19: “15I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.16Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.17But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.18For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.19For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

My friends, we are possessed. We are possessed by the power of sin. When I say sin, I’m not just talking about individual actions, individual wrong decisions that we make. I’m talking about sin with a capital s, the condition of sin. The will to undo. When the Bible talks about demonic powers, that’s right at the core of what it means. Demonic power, the condition of sin, this force that grips us and holds us tightly and from which we are unable to free ourselves, is quite simply the will to undo. The first chapter of Genesis, where the universe is void and formless, and with a word God speaks creation into being: with that we are painted a picture of a God who brings order out of chaos. We are painted a picture of a God who creates, who brings about life and can call it good. Sin, on the other hand, is the opposite of the Genesis creation story. Instead of light out of darkness, it seeks to bring darkness out of light, chaos out of order. It is the will to undo.

And we’re all caught in it. We’re caught in the desire, and we’re caught in the effects. We are in bondage, a very real bondage, a bondage no less dramatic than that of the man Jesus met in the gospel reading.

A little bit of context here. We’re still right at the beginning of the Gospel according to Mark. Mark doesn’t have a nativity story—no mangers or shepherds here. He begins with Jesus’ baptism. Right afterwards, Jesus proclaims “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” Right after that, he calls his disciples. And immediately after that they go to the synagogue in Capernaum on the Sabbath, where today’s story happens. Mark writes with a sense of urgency—time almost seems sped up, as he uses the word “immediately” all the time. Even so, this healing happens almost immediately after Jesus’ ministry begins. In fact, in Mark’s gospel, this is Jesus’ first miracle.

Any first carries special significance, special weight. That, and the fact that this comes right on the heels of Jesus’ preaching that the kingdom of God has come near, gives this event important meaning. Jesus is demonstrating, Jesus is living out, what the kingdom of God looks like. This is SO important for us today. Jesus didn’t proclaim that the kingdom of God was still coming, he didn’t say to wait until the end of time or until we were dead and in heaven, he said it had come.

Jesus preached the kingdom, then he lived the kingdom, because Jesus is the kingdom.

And he came to this man, the one gripped by forces beyond his control, the one in bondage to a demonic will to undo, this force that had torn him apart until he was unrecognizable, almost inhuman. This man was untouchable. He was shunned. He was outcast. Do you notice where all this happens, though? Jesus is still teaching in the synagogue. It’s the Sabbath, and he’s there in the synagogue, when suddenly this man cries out. He never should have been there. He was unclean. He was ritually impure.

But this is the interesting part. While everyone else is amazed and astounded at Jesus’ authority, it is the possessed man who calls Jesus who he really is: “the holy one of God.” In Mark’s gospel, this is the only time Jesus is referred to by a person as being of God, until after he has died on the cross and the Roman centurion says “Surely this man was the Son of God.” And really, in today’s story, it’s not the man himself who’s doing the speaking—it’s the demons. This power, the will to undo, sees the embodiment of the kingdom of God standing right in front of it. And just as in Genesis when God brought order out of the chaos with a word of creation, here in Mark the Word made flesh brings order out of the chaos of this man’s life with an order of silence and an order to come out.

You want to know what the kingdom of God looks like? It’s nothing like people in robes with haloes and harps floating around on the clouds. The kingdom of God looks like a man ravaged by forces that had been tearing him to shreds. It looks like that man standing up right in the middle of church and crying out. And it looks like Jesus speaking a word of authority, a word of healing, and bringing wholeness back to that man’s life. Bringing him back into community, back into wellness, re-establishing relationships and support and life.

The kingdom of God looks like a people who confess that they are in bondage to sin and cannot free themselves. Did you hear that? You cannot free yourself. Any attempt to free yourself, any attempt to make yourself right with God, any attempt to build a bridge from your brokenness to heaven, it’s going to fail. It’s not going to happen. You can’t do it. I can’t do it.

Take a moment. Silently or aloud, name your demons. What are those destructive forces in your life from which you are powerless to free yourself?

You want to hear the good news? What we can’t do for ourselves, God has already done for us. Notice I didn’t say God CAN do. What we can’t do for ourselves, God has ALREADY done for us.

On the cross, Jesus entered our brokenness. Jesus entered our sin. Jesus confronted those demonic powers, the forces of evil, the will to undo, and through his death he cried loudly, “Be silent!” And when he came out of the tomb on Easter morning, it was the ultimate statement crying out, “Come out of him! Come out of her! You have no more power here!”

We still live in a world marked by sin. We still struggle with pain and the effects of our brokenness and the brokenness of others. But at the same time we live in a world where the Kingdom of God has already come. Christ is here. In the bread and the wine, Christ is here. In the brokenness and suffering of our neighbor, Christ is here. And in our own brokenness, right at the very center of our sin, right at the very core of the evil, the will to undo, to which we are bound, Christ is right there.

We cannot free ourselves. Christ has freed us. Christ has freed us not for our own sake, but so we may be free to live for others. And this is not just as individuals but especially as the church. Our primary purpose is not to keep this institution alive, our primary purpose is not simply to grow, our primary purpose is not even simply to teach and comfort and care for each other. We may do all of these things, but when self-care becomes the primary purpose of the church, it ceases to be the church. For us to live into our identity as followers of Christ means we are called to go and follow Jesus to those places where the cross already is—directly into the pain and sin and grime and muck of our world. God has called Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church to look beyond itself, following Christ into the messiness of life, into the demons of our world. Where there is demonizing of people, we are called to bless. Where there is the sowing of hatred, we are called to promote love. Where walls are built to separate, we are called to break them down. Where there is the seeking to tear apart in fear, we are called to be agents of reconciliation and hope.

Matt Schur
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE