It's A Wonderful Life

A beautiful fall leaf from our front yard, on top
of others that had been charred by fire in May.
Hope amidst the darkness.

I’ve always loved the movie It’s A Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart plays George Bailey, the good-hearted man who has dreams of leaving his little town and making a name for himself somewhere out in the big world. Time and again his dreams are put on hold as he looks out for others, watches out for his family and eventually takes over his father’s business not because he wanted to, but because he was needed. Through a series of unfortunate events, life just piles up on him and eventually he finds himself saying “it would be better if I had never been born!” Clarence, the angel, then gives him a chance to find out what life would have been like for everyone else had George never been born, and he discovers that so many decisions he had made in his lifetime, so many small favors, so many ways that he had helped others, had ended up having a gigantic impact. He may have felt like a failure, but God had been using him and his life in profound ways. His life mattered, and he himself mattered to more people than he realized on a much deeper level than he ever could have fathomed.

On May 29, 2014, my family suffered a terrible loss as a fire started in our garage. By the time the fire department arrived, flames engulfed the entire garage and had begun to spread into the main dwelling area. My wife Karin and I could only watch helplessly as smoke billowed from the house. When it was finally put out, the heat had melted the vinyl siding off the side of our next door neighbor’s house, it had obliterated our garage including the minivan that had been parked inside, it had basically melted our kitchen, and the heat and soot had destroyed the vast majority of our belongings. It only took three crates to hold everything the restoration company classified as “salvageable.”

Karin and I had purchased that house when we got married, and were the first owners to live in it. We had brought two children home from the hospital to that house. We had laughed and cried, we had suffered tremendous loss and had shared incredible joy, we had grown from young kids barely out of college to adult parents with careers and responsibilities. That house, and the mementos of our lives we had collected there over the years, had been the setting for many, many memories. And in such an incredibly short time, so much of that was gone.

Now, I’m not one who believes “everything happens for a reason.” I am a lifelong Christian, and a current seminary student, but I don’t think God acts in that way. From what I have learned and experienced over the years, God isn't in the business of causing suffering. I don’t think God causes our pain just so that something good can result later on. I do, however, believe and trust with everything that I am that God is in the business of taking suffering and transforming it. God takes our pain and creates joy. God takes darkness and creates light. In the cross, we see God take on death itself, and in the empty tomb God creates the promise of new life. In what our family experienced that day in May, God took destruction and created hope. Just as a burning bush spoke to Moses and assured him that God would be by his side and lead him, just as a pillar of fire led Israel out of slavery and into the freedom of the promised land, so too did God work through what we experienced, creating new possibilities. We discovered (or re-discovered, or perhaps finally claimed for ourselves) a number of truths that make It’s a Wonderful Life such a beautiful movie for me.

First of all, we discovered the profound truth that when the things we rely on and put our trust in other than God are stripped away, be they our possessions, our money, our self-reliance, or a multitude of other things, we discover what really matters. We discover that our faith, which is so easily professed when things are going our way, really and truly is our rock when the storms come. We discover that as long as we have each other and as long as we have God’s love, the rest of it really is superfluous. It doesn't mean that things are easy—goodness knows I don’t want to romanticize our situation and make it sound as though what we've experienced has been sunshine and rainbows. It certainly hasn't. But in the midst of adversity, when everything else we tend to rely on as a false idol is stripped away, that's when we most fully experience God’s presence in our lives.

As a theologian of the cross, I firmly believe that God dwells in the dark places. When we look for God, we shouldn't be looking to the high and the mighty and the powerful and the successful…we should be looking to the burnt out remains of a house with a husband and wife clinging to each other, trying to shield two frightened children, wondering how they’re going to get by and just live day to day while the insurance companies and the powers that be drag their feet. That’s where God’s presence is most profoundly felt and experienced.

Second, we discovered the same truth that the angel Clarence left in a note for George at the end of It’s a Wonderful Life. He wrote, “No man is a failure who has friends.” Now, we knew that we had friends. We knew that people cared about us and our kids, and there have always been a ton of people we've felt the same way about. What we didn't realize, however, was the extreme depth nor the extreme breadth of those friendships. In the movie, George gets into financial trouble trying to help out the savings and loan he’s responsible for. When the town gets wind of it, without even being asked they give whatever they can to help him out. All it takes is the word “George is in trouble,” and the town begins trying to find ways to meet his family’s needs. That is precisely what we experienced as well after our fire.

Our family, our friends, our coworkers, our church community, an online Husker football forum, friends from long ago who we had almost completely lost touch with, even our son’s orthodontist’s office…there were SO many people who came from everywhere, giving what they could simply because they heard we needed help. Whether it was monetary or material donations, or babysitting or conversation or prayer or notes of encouragement or “let’s go out for dinner and drinks so we can do something that feels normal, and I’ll pick up the tab this time,” we were surrounded by so much support and love, it was almost overwhelming at times. A group of neighbors coordinated giving drives and a huge fundraiser at our church. A family offered us their home for 6 months as they left for a professorial sabbatical elsewhere. There have just been so many incredible responses, overwhelming in the best possible way—that humbling feeling of being enveloped in life-changing, transformative love. What we've experienced in a very tangible way has been the body of Christ we read about so often in the New Testament. It has been a very real taste of what the Reign of God that Jesus refers to so often in his parables actually looks and feels like. We are living a parable, and it’s a beautiful thing.

The biggest lesson, the biggest truth that I have been thankful for throughout this entire experience is the same realization that George Bailey came to: our lives have far more significance than we will ever fully know. Early in the movie, George’s younger brother Harry falls through the ice on a pond where they were sledding, and George saves him by pulling him out. Later, Harry becomes a World War II hero when he saves a number of other men. The angel Clarence points out to George when he’s experiencing what the world would have been like without him that because of his absence, not only would Harry die, but so would all the people on the transport that Harry had saved in the war. That’s only one example of the far-reaching effects of George’s life.

Since our house fire, Karin and I have both been told stories of how our lives have impacted others—so many times, these stories have been things that we had no idea about. I had a member of the online Husker sports forum I frequent tell me that because of my words and encouragement, they found their way back to church and rediscovered their faith. I had no idea of any of that until this person told me. Others have told us stories of how our family has impacted their lives, and how they’re more than happy to help us because we have been such a help to them or to others—most of what we've been told, we would have had no idea about otherwise.

The lesson here for all of us is a huge one. Don't discount your impact. The scripture reference about the body having many members and everyone having a part to play is so amazingly true—you DO make a difference, often in ways you will never realize or see the fruits of. No matter who you are or what you do or what you have done or what’s been done to you, God has created you in God’s image as a beloved child, and God has created you for relationship and community. In our individualistic Western society, where rugged independence is held up as the greater good, it is easy to lose sight of that. For those of us professing the Christian faith in a triune God, a God who is both three and yet still one, what that means is we were created in the image of a God whose primary identity is community which overflows beyond itself and into love for all of creation. That’s our primary God-created identity as well: many, yet one, united through the Holy Spirit in a community of love that can’t help but overflow to the rest of the world.

As I wrote before, I’m a seminarian. I think theologically. But if theology cannot be applied practically, then what use is it, other than a fun little academic exercise? My goodness, what an experience my family has had through all of the hard times these last months, through all of the wondering and fear and sadness. We really have experienced God’s presence. We've experienced God through the faces of those around us and we've experienced God through the stripping away of everything else we've tried to put our faith in. We've experienced God through very real adversity, adversity where we are still facing a number of huge question marks even today. Yet in it we all have found reassurance of a God who walks alongside us, reassurance of that same God’s presence through so many who surround us with their love and prayer, reassurance that our lives do make an impact and a difference, that God does work through us, and reassurance that no matter what, we trust in a God who has the final word, who in the cross and the empty tomb has already won the ultimate victory on our behalf.

For all of those things, how could we not be thankful? Thanks be to God.

LH

Sermon for May 12, 2013: "This Can Happen Anywhere. Not Everything Is Lost."

This Can Happen Anywhere. Not Everything Is Lost.

John 17:20-26

May 11-12, 2013

Naomi Shihab Nye is a poet who was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother. A few years ago, she wrote a poem entitled, Gate A-4:

Wandering around the Albuquerque Airport Terminal, after learning my flight had been delayed for four hours, I heard an announcement: "If anyone in the vicinity of Gate A-4 understands any Arabic, please come to the gate immediately."

Well--one pauses these days. Gate A-4 was my own gate. I went there.

An older woman in full traditional Palestinian embroidered dress, just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly. "Help," said the flight service person. "Talk to her. What is her problem? We told her the flight was going to be late and she did this."

I stooped to put my arm around the woman and spoke to her haltingly. "Shu-dow-a, Shu-bid-uck Habibti? Stani schway, Min fadlick, Shu-bit- se-wee?" The minute she heard any words she knew, however poorly used, she stopped crying. She thought the flight had been cancelled entirely. She needed to be in El Paso for major medical treatment the next day. I said, "No, we're fine, you'll get there, just later, who is picking you up? Let's call him."

We called her son and I spoke with him in English. I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and would ride next to her--Southwest. She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it. Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and found out of course they had ten shared friends. Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian poets I know and let them chat with her? This all took up about two hours.

She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life, patting my knee, answering questions. She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies--little powdered sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts--out of her bag--and was offering them to all the women at the gate. To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the mom from California, the lovely woman from Laredo--we were all covered with the same powdered sugar. And smiling. There is no better cookie.

And then the airline broke out free beverages from huge coolers and two little girls from our flight ran around serving us all apple juice and they were covered with powdered sugar, too. And I noticed my new best friend-- by now we were holding hands--had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing, with green furry leaves. Such an old country tradi- tion. Always carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This is the world I want to live in. The shared world. Not a single person in that gate--once the crying of confusion stopped--seemed apprehensive about any other person. They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women, too.

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.[1]

This can still happen anywhere. Not everything is lost. In the midst of a difficult situation, a group of strangers brought together by the winds of chance somehow found unity in their shared humanity. They never stopped being who they were. The Palestinian woman was still a Palestinian woman, the kids were still Mexican American and African American, the Argentinian woman and the folks from Laredo and California, they all remained very much who they were to begin with. But in a series of acts of hospitality, while they remained individually who they were, they also together became something else: a community. From the airline representative’s call over the intercom, to the narrator’s choice to respond to the call, to the narrator’s compassion, to the woman’s sharing of the cookies, to the children’s distribution of beverages, to the laughter, to the smiles, there were many separate small acts of hospitality and service that together helped bind these travelers together.

I cannot think of a better picture of what it means to live out our unity in Christ.

Listen again to Jesus’ words in today’s gospel reading. He’s in the middle of what’s known in the Gospel According to John as the high priestly prayer, which he prays right before he leaves his disciples for the last time before his arrest and crucifixion. Jesus prays, “”I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, ²¹that they may all be one. 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. ²²The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one,²³I 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.”

First of all, notice something very important in this prayer. Jesus here is praying not only for his disciples, but he is also praying for you. Jesus prayed for you. Let that sink in for a moment. Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, said a prayer for you. He said that he was asking on behalf not only of these—his disciples—but also on behalf of those who will believe in him through the disciples’ word. My friends, that’s you and me.

Now listen closely. What was it that Jesus prayed about on behalf of you and me? What was it that he was asking? That they might all be one. In verse 22 he goes a little further—that we might be one as Jesus and God the Father are one.

Okay, now this is getting interesting. Jesus wants the same unity in us that exists in the very nature of God. Let THAT sink in for a moment. So what does that look like?

Holy Trinity Sunday is still a couple of weeks away, and I hope I’m not stealing any of Pastor Tobi’s thunder ahead of time, but this is big. Really big, and important to help us see how amazing this gospel text is. We worship a God who has been revealed in three persons. We call those persons the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Three distinct persons, but not three Gods. There is only one God. God’s very nature is unity, but it is a unity that is found within diversity. One God, but a God in relationship with Godself.

Now look at us, children of God, created in God’s image. Different nationalities, different cultures, different ages, different histories, different stories in our present, different ways of seeing the world, different political and social views. All this rich, beautiful diversity, but still one. Still one body of Christ. United by our need for God’s grace, united by the hope we have found in the cross and the empty tomb.

We are like a tapestry…one that is woven of billions of individual threads. But it is those threads…which never cease being what they are individually…that together create this incredible, rich picture of the kingdom of God. That’s what the poem I read was about. That’s what Jesus prayed for.

The Holy Spirit weaves our lives together by using acts of hospitality and service that are born out of love. We see this with Jesus in the events of his life directly surrounding our Gospel reading. He washed his disciples’ feet. He broke bread, poured wine, told them, “this is my body, this is my blood, given and shed FOR YOU.” And then he went to the cross. Hospitality and service born out of love for humankind.

And that’s where we find our unity. It’s when we follow the way of the cross, when we live lives of hospitality and service born out of love, when we experience glimpses of the kingdom of God through the bread and the wine, through loving God and loving our neighbor, when we in all our diversity are one as God is one. And the purpose?

That the world may know. That the world may know the glory of God the Father. That the world may know that God sent Jesus not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. When we as the church choose unity—not uniformity, but the unity, the community that is created through acts of hospitality and service born out of love, that is the greatest single witness we can have about not only who we are, but whose we are.

In the closing words of the poem, this can happen anywhere. Not everything is lost.

Matt Schur

Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church

Lincoln, NE

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[1] Naomi Shihab Nye, "Gate A-4" from Honeybee. Copyright © 2008 by Naomi Shihab Nye. 

Sermon from 3-10-2013: Coming to Us In the Storm

Ein Gev kibbutz on the shore of the Sea of Galilee at about

2:30 AM on Jan. 16, 2013

Coming to Us in the Storm

John 6:16-24

March 9-10, 2013

Many of you know that I had the opportunity in January to spend two weeks in Israel and the West Bank with a group from Luther Seminary. While we were there, we spent 3 nights in a kibbutz on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, which is really just a big lake—about 13 miles long and 8 miles wide. We were able to take a boat ride across the lake one morning, and it was just incredible. The sun was out, there was just a hint of a breeze, and the water was peaceful as we crossed from where we had been staying to the town of Migdal, which in the Bible was called Magdala and was the home of Mary Magdalene. You simply could not ask for better weather that day.

That night, however, my roommate woke me up at about 2:30 in the morning. “Matt,” he said. “It’s a windstorm. On the Sea of Galilee.”

We’re seminarians. We get excited about stuff like that.

And sure enough, I could hear the wind beating against the little cabin we were staying in. I grabbed my camera and walked outside, into some of the fiercest wind I’ve ever been in. There was no rain, but the Sea of Galilee is surrounded by these high ridges, and sometimes when the conditions are just right the wind will sweep over them with a fury and down into the valley where the lake is. The branches on the palm trees were blowing straight sideways, and you could see the water on the lake was incredibly choppy. I took a few pictures and went back to bed. In the morning when I got up at 6, it was still going. After getting ready for the day, I had some extra time before I had to join the rest of the group for breakfast, so I walked down to the lakeshore and took this video:

Talk about bringing Scripture to life.

Today’s gospel lesson takes place immediately after what we read about last week, the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus had performed this incredible sign, and the people were so amazed that John 6:15 says they were ready to take him and make him king by force. Jesus had gotten away and gone to the mountain because that’s not what he was about. That’s not what he was there to do. He was a king, but not the kind of king the crowd wanted him to be. And so eventually, when evening comes and the crowds had all gone away, we come to the beginning of today’s reading where the disciples decide it’s time to go. What’s interesting here is that Jesus still isn’t with them. They’re on their own—but they’re pretty much on their home turf. They know this part of Galilee really well, they know the lake, and they’re not far from Capernaum, which was Peter, Andrew, James, and John’s hometown.

The second half of Verse 17, where the author tells us that “it was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them,”  at first looks almost like a throwaway line, a description to help us envision the setting. But there are a couple of very important details in there that the author gives us, details that aren’t just descriptions of the scene, but theological claims. The first is that it was now dark. The theme of light vs. dark is huge in the gospel according to John. If you turn back and look at the first chapter of John, Jesus is described as the light of the world. In John 1:5 we have that beautifully powerful verse: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” The Holden Evening Prayer service on Wednesdays during Lent begin by quoting that verse as we sing, “Jesus Christ, you are the light of the world, the light no darkness can overcome.” Jesus as the light shining in the darkness continues all throughout John, and so what we have in verse 17 of today’s reading takes on additional meaning. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. In this gospel account, darkness always represents bad things—death, or ignorance, or fear, or separation. So it’s dark, and why is that important? Because Jesus had not yet come to them.

And then a windstorm comes up.

Not when they’re safely on shore like I was in January, but when they’re in their boat, 3 or 4 miles out on the lake. And as I experienced, there’s no telling how long a storm like that might last. It’s not as though you can just hunker down and tell yourself, “well, this will probably be over in just a few minutes.” So there they are, trapped in a boat in the middle of a lake with the wind blowing and the waves growing and with the darkness surrounding them. And they cannot see Jesus anywhere.

Does any of that sound vaguely familiar to you? Does any of that sound like a time in your own life? Have you ever been trapped, with things swirling all around you, feeling out of control, with darkness surrounding you, with the waves getting higher and higher and you just want to cry out, “Where are you, Jesus? Where are you, God? Where are you, Holy Spirit? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Maybe there are circumstances in your life that are completely beyond your control, and you’re just being carried along on the choppy waves not knowing where the shoreline is in the darkness. Maybe you’ve done something or said something…sinned in thought, word, and deed by what you have done and by what you have left undone. And now you’re in so far, in so deep over your head that you just don’t know if you’ll ever make it safely to shore again.

My friends, the good news of the gospel is that in the darkness of our storms, Christ stops at nothing to come to us.

In John, there is no calming of the storm, which is honestly something I appreciate, because if you remember what Pastor Tobi has been saying, what we refer to as miracles in the other gospels, John refers to as signs. And a sign is something with a purpose, something that points to a greater truth. The sign here in John isn’t that Jesus calms our storms, and I’m so glad that’s not the lesson I’m supposed to take away from it. Because sometimes there is no calming of the storms in our lives, is there?  Sometimes there is no easy fix, no savior standing up in the boat and commanding all the circumstances of our lives, “Peace, be still!” In those times, we don’t have to worry that we’re doing faith wrong, we don’t have to wonder if Jesus has just decided that we need to flounder, we don’t have to believe that because Jesus hasn’t fixed it all that we’ve somehow not measured up to God’s standard or that God simply doesn’t care.

The sign we’re given in John is that Jesus comes to us. Jesus comes alongside us. In the darkness of our storms, Christ stops at nothing to come to us. Even in the middle of the raging wind, even though it involves what should be impossible—walking on water—Jesus will not leave us alone. Jesus is present beside us, and like the disciples, we can be assured that even in the midst of the storm, he will accompany us through it all and to the shore.

And it’s not up to us to come to him. The disciples don’t have to row to where Jesus is. They don’t have to figure out how to get to where he is standing—Jesus comes to them. Jesus walks across the raging water to come to where they are. And Jesus comes to you, too. In the storm of your sin, in the wind and the waves of your life whatever they may be, Jesus comes to you. It’s not up to you to make it happen. You have been called by name through the waters of baptism. Jesus comes to you and for you in the bread and in the wine of Holy Communion. Jesus promises to be beside you all the way to the shore. That is the promise of the cross. That is the promise of the empty tomb.

We are never promised that there will be no storms in our lives. In fact, as those who Jesus has called to take up our cross and follow him, we know that those storms are part of what it means to live as a broken, sinful people in an imperfect world. But because we are people of the cross, we know as well that the brokenness, the storms, are exactly where we expect to find God…or to be more precise, where we expect God to find us.

In verse 20, our translation has Jesus saying, “It is I, do not be afraid.” In the original Greek, it is simply ego eimi,  I AM. “I AM. Do not be afraid.” I AM is the name God calls himself when speaking to Moses in the burning bush all the way back in Exodus. “Tell Pharaoh I AM is the one who sent you.”

We’ve already talked about one distinctive feature of John—the importance of light and dark. Another distinctive feature of John is that Jesus makes these I AM statements 23 different times, using the Greek ego eimi. This isn’t just a simple word choice. It’s  a powerful claim. John is reminding us in no uncertain terms that Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus Christ, Word made flesh, light of the world, is one with the all-powerful I AM who led Israel out of slavery in Egypt and into the freedom of the promised land. The same all-powerful I AM will go on to defeat death on the cross, leading us all out of our own slavery to sin and into the freedom of God’s promised kingdom—and not only heaven, but also the kingdom that comes on earth as it is in heaven when we are free to live not just for ourselves but for our neighbor.

In the darkness of our storms, Christ stops at nothing to come to us. Not wind, not water, not even the cross nor even death itself stops Jesus from coming alongside us and telling us, “You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with my cross forever. This is my body, given for you. This is my blood, shed for you. Now go. Go love one another, as I have loved you. By this all will know that you are my disciples.”

Amen.

Matt Schur

Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church

Lincoln, NE

Facebook--A brave new world for ministry

I remember back in 2004, I was a lay minister at the ELCA's campus ministry at the University of Nebraska. Each summer, the ELCA campus ministers all gather for a conference--while I was there, one of the speakers told us how important it was for us to make sure that whichever university we worked with gave us a university email address, something that ended with a .edu. The reason, he said, was because there was this new website called "Facebook" that had started out with some California colleges, and college kids were signing up and using it to tell their friends what they were doing and to meet new people. It had just recently gone national, but in order to register, you had to have an address that ended with the .edu suffix. He said the thing had grown like wildfire and he wouldn't be surprised if soon it wasn't the primary way college kids kept in touch. 

It's less than 9 years later now. You no longer need a university email to register. Facebook is used by people of all ages, companies, non-profits, churches...in fact, if Facebook were a country, it would be the third most populous country in the world. Most of my extended family live in different parts of the country than I do, and Facebook has become our primary means of keeping in contact. Even my 85 year-old grandmother (Hi Grammy!) has a Facebook account, and loves to see pictures, videos, and stories of her grandkids and great-grandkids' daily lives.

Facebook has changed the way we do relationships. 

The church, as the body of Christ, has always been about relationships. If we've seen such a fundamental addition in our personal and business lives about how we connect, then it only makes sense that it would have an effect on our faith communities as well. How do we as a church live into this brave new world of digital connectedness? 

First of all, we need to be a part of it. We have this amazing tool at our fingertips (literally!) that allows us to create groups, allows us to instantly be in touch with a huge variety of people, allows us to quickly and easily make available pictures and ideas, and not only allows us to put these things out there for consumption, but encourages feedback and communication. It allows us to have a significant presence in the daily lives of our parishioners if we so desire. If church leaders have personal Facebook profiles and post about their daily lives, it also helps break down those invisible walls that many people have, assuming that pastors or other church people aren't "real people" like everyone else.  

Second, we need to model how to use social media well, responsibly, and spiritually. There is so much crap out there that gets passed around on Facebook and other platforms. What previously had been relegated to chain emails (or chain snail-mail) can now be instantly linked, viewed, commented on, and passed along even more efficiently. That said, there's a lot of good stuff out there too. We need to be wise in what we post and how we post it, modeling how to integrate our faith in with our lives.

Third, while social media is no replacement for in-person contact, we need to remember the power of social media to help us stay connected in times when we ordinarily wouldn't be. A very powerful example is when a congregation's high school seniors leave for college. In the past, we'd have to wait for breaks to see them again and catch up, perhaps sending a letter or a care package once in a while. Now, all it takes is a "like" on a picture they posted, and they know that someone from church is thinking about them...or jotting a quick note on their wall. Or sending a private message if they posted about breaking up with their girlfriend or bombing a test just to check in and show support. 

I have a real-life example of this sort of thing. Back in 2010, the young man who had been my congregation's seminary intern the previous year was killed in the earthquake in Haiti. Ben Larson was one of those people who was beloved by pretty much everyone who met him. At the time he was with our congregation, I was the youth director, and he and I had become good friends. We had worked together closely in a number of areas, one of which was the Confirmation program. When the earthquake happened, I was at Luther Seminary for my January on-campus intensive courses, and even in the midst of my own grief I felt horrible guilt that I wasn't back home to be there for the congregation's youth who had looked up to him so much. So I took to Facebook. I posted a message in our youth group page inviting anyone who needed to talk things through to do so, and did the same on my personal wall. I'm getting teary-eyed right now as I remember this, because thanks to Facebook I was able to have conversations with some of my church kids, and even more importantly, they were able to minister to each other. One such exchange was so powerful, in fact, that I cut and pasted it into a Word document and saved it to my computer just to keep for future reference. I'm going to post it here...all the names have been changed (except mine and Ben's). I didn't fix any of the misspellings or grammatical mistakes, either...this is the way the conversation transpired with me and 3 high school freshmen:

Jane
I don't see why this had to happen. Ben was such a great person, why did he deserve this?

Yesterday at 9:03pm ·

Jane

It's not freaking fair.

Yesterday at 9:05pm

Matt

Jane...you're right. It's not fair. It sucks, and there's no getting around that. Ben didn't deserve this. At times like this, all we can do is cling to God's promises, trusting that God loves us and is mourning alongside us, and remembering Romans 8: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." That's the kind of love that Ben lived his life knowing, and spent his life showing to those around him.

Yesterday at 9:50pm

Mary

Jane, he's touched so many lives, and still is. I know he's touched mine. While I was crying in English randomly when Ms. Smith had to bring up Haiti I texted Tom and we were talking and I told him how I can't help but be angry with God. And Tom said at one of the confirmation meetings Ben said when you are at your low points in life that's when you get closer to God. I know am, and times like these are our true test of faith.

Yesterday at 10:29pm

Matt

Mary, you're so right. God doesn't give us those low points in life, but God does work through those low points, helping us remember that he's with us through it all...good and bad. And so often, it's those low points where we lean on God the most and draw closer to him.

Yesterday at 10:36pm ·

Tom

We are all going to miss him so much. And this tragedy will bring us closer to God, and be a major point in our faith stories.

12 hours ago

Matt

I'm so proud of all of you guys right now...it's important to ask these hard questions, and it's important to support one another through the pain and anger and sorrow and grief that we're all feeling. That's part of "living among God's faithful people." You are living that out.

12 hours ago ·

Mary

Thanks so much, Matt. I really do feel like we are all supporting one another and it's really great to know who's all behind us. I sometimes forget were not alone in this world. And Tom, your completely right.

11 hours ago

Mary

And Jane, sorry for flippin out at lunch today. Apparently, you and I grieve differently and I just didn't know how to handle it. I was angry when I found out then sad the next day, and I just didn't want to talk about it. Sorry.

11 hours ago

Jane

Its totally cool Mary. We all have our own way of grieveing. Mine is talking about it and just letting it go. And your right tom, this would be a big part in our faithstories. but i just didn't want to say it when i was 14. I wanted it to be when I was older and i could handle it a lot better. Matt, I just don't see why this all has to happen. He waas working for him the whole time, and he made him die while he was in the middle of serving him. It's not fair.

4 hours ago

Matt

Jane...I completely share your anger at the unfairness of all of this. But I don't think God made him die. I think God is right beside us, grieving the loss of one of his greatest servants on earth, but reminding us at the same time that he's already overcome the power of death. It's times like this where all that stuff we talk about in Confirmation actually make a difference in the real world...it's not just church talk. These horrible, awful things that we see happening, our pain at losing our friend, our knowing that there may be as many as a half million other stories in Haiti just like this one...THIS is when the cross makes a difference. THIS is when the promise of resurrection, and Jesus' promise that he will ALWAYS be with us in Matthew 28 all make a difference. It doesn't take the pain away, it doesn't make things any more fair, but it gives us hope when life seems to be at its darkest.

3 hours ago

Jane

I have always thought it was church talk. Your right. Now is the time to do all that. It's just really hard for me to deal with something like this.

3 hours ago

Matt

Jane, I don't want to give the impression that I'm calmly sitting here hugging the cross nicely with a warm fuzzy feeling. Like you (and so many others) I'm dazed, bewildered, angry, and heartbroken...and I am clutching so fiercely and tightly to the cross and God's promises because there's honestly nothing else I can hold on to in the face of all of this.

I'm glad you're able to be so open about how you feel, because I'm sure there are plenty of others who feel the same way and haven't been able to (or haven't felt like they should) put words to it.

3 hours ago 

"A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise."

My son is 9 now...this is a story from when he was 4, and is something I remember every year on Ash Wednesday:

For the previous two or three days, Kiddo had been looking forward to Ash Wednesday. He couldn't stop talking about going to church and having the pastor put the ashes on his forehead. He told his friends at daycare, he told his friends at preschool, and he couldn't stop telling Mommy and Daddy how excited he was about the ashes.

Our church has two Ash Wednesday services--one at 5 PM, and the other at 7. We had planned on going to the 7:00 service as a family, and I was scheduled to assist with the imposition of ashes at that service. That afternoon, though, I got a call from Sweetie--she was 8 months pregnant and had been fighting a pretty good cold--saying that she just didn't think that she'd be able to make it through a worship service.

I couldn't just take Kiddo to the 7 PM service myself, since I was going to be up front, and we knew that Kiddo would have none of sitting with someone else. And we also knew that if he didn't go to church, he'd be crushed. Sooooooo...I left work early, picked him up from daycare, and took him to the 5 PM service.

On our way, he asked, "Daddy, why will we put ashes on our forehead tonight?"

Hm.

Well, we had talked about death before...the subject had first come up when we were talking about Easter some time ago...and he understood the concept that only Jesus had come back to life, but once we were dead, we would live in heaven with God, but wouldn't be alive again on earth. And, more importantly, he was fine with that understanding. So, rather than using the more generic answer of "to help us remember how much God loves us," I decided to expand it a little bit.

"It's to help us remember that even though someday we'll die, that God loves us..."

Kiddo finished my sentence for me. "...and we'll be in heaven with God. And Jesus." (I decided to hold off on dealing with his 4 year-old tritheism...all in good time.) =)

He seemed satisfied with it all. And so we got to church, and the service began. There was a responsive chanting of Psalm 51, followed by a time of confession, and then came the imposition of ashes. We were about 2/3 of the way through the psalm when suddenly, Kiddo grabbed my leg and looked up at me. His lip was trembling.

And then he began to cry. The heartrending, plaintive, authentic cry of a child in anguish.

I sat down, took him on my lap, held him close, and whispered, "what's wrong? Is the music too sad?"

Looking at me with a scared, sad, expression in his eyes, he whispered back, "I don't want the ashes on my forehead."

I was dumbstruck. This had been the highlight of his week! I asked him, "why not?"

He looked me in the eyes.

"Daddy, I don't want to die."

I almost burst into tears right then and there. Somehow in our conversation, he had internalized that having the ashes put on his forehead would make him die.

I immediately felt like the worst dad in the world. Ever. I had made my son think that he was going to die. And worst of all, that I would let him.

I held him tightly, and rocked him, and whispered assurances that this was just something to help us remember how much God loves us, and that it was not going to make us die.

As Psalm 51 came to a close and the rest of the congregation intoned "the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise," I wiped the tears from Kiddo's eyes, and he smiled.

"Okay, Daddy. I want to remember. I want to go get the ashes now."

Later that evening, when I told the story to our pastor as we got ready for the 7:00 service, he turned to me and said, "You know, those tears meant your son gets it. In his way, he gets the meaning of Ash Wednesday better than the majority of the other people in the pews."

He was right.

June 27, 2010 sermon: Freed From Fear, Freed For Service

Freed From Fear—Freed For Service

Galatians 2:11-21

June 27, 2010

If I were to make a top 10 list of the greatest works of Western literature,  Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo, would be somewhere on that list.  It’s an amazing story of sin and redemption, of love and hope and pain and loss, and ultimately of law and grace.  The main character in the story, Jean Valjean, spends 19 years of hard labor in prison for stealing a loaf of bread so he could eat.  Prison hardens him, gives him an edge, makes him distrustful of everyone around him.  His attitude becomes one of “hurt the other person before they have a chance to hurt you.”  At the end of his 19 years, he is paroled, but is forced to carry a yellow ticket everywhere with him and show it to anyone he comes into contact with, so they know he’s a parolee.  For Jean Valjean, being freed only becomes a new kind of imprisonment, and makes him even more cynical and bitter.  Four days after being let out, he arrives, cold, hungry, and broke, at the house of a bishop.  Nobody will house him or feed him or give him work.  He’s desperate.  And angry.  Here’s the scene from the 1998 movie…you may recognize Liam Neeson as Jean Valjean:

   

“Don’t forget.  Don’t ever forget.  You’ve promised to become a new man.  Jean Valjean my brother, you no longer belong to evil.  With this silver, I have bought your soul.  I have ransomed you from fear and hatred.  And now I give you back to God.” 

God’s grace transforms our fear into lives of loving service.

What the bishop did for Jean Valjean was an act of costly grace.  The bishop sacrificed his pride, his silver, and his sense of justice.  But in taking that act, he did something that Jean Valjean never could have done for himself.  Not only did the bishop ransom him from fear and hatred, he ransomed him for a purpose.  He said “And now I give you back to God.”  An act of complete and utter selflessness broke Jean Valjean’s bondage to living for himself…it gave him the freedom, and the mission, to live his life for the sake of others
.

My friends, what we witnessed in that scene was the power of cross-shaped grace in transforming our lives.  It is that same power that Paul concerns himself with in our passage from Galatians.  We’ve heard over the past few weeks about the identity struggle that the early church had.  The church saw itself as a sect of Judaism, so they had that heritage and those laws to look to, to help shape their identity as a people.  However, they were also attracting a large number of non-Jews to the faith, especially as it began to spread into areas that were not primarily Jewish.  The question became, how do we handle these folks who didn’t grow up with these laws, customs, and heritage?

There was nothing wrong with Jewish Christians continuing to observe the Jewish purity rites…clean and unclean foods and the like.  In the first section of our Galatians passage, Paul is pointing out what he sees as blatant hypocrisy on the part of Peter.  He had begun to eat with Gentile Christians—non-Jews—and by extension had been lax on the Jewish food laws.  But then, when some Jewish Christians came to Antioch where he was, he stopped eating with the Gentiles.  The implication was that in not following Jewish law, these Gentile Christians were second-class citizens. 

And that’s what got Paul’s blood boiling.  In verse 14, he recounts a showdown he had with Peter, telling him, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?”

Touché.

Then he gets into the meat of his argument, telling Peter, “We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners.”  One of my seminary professors says, “there are two kinds of people—those who divide everything into two groups, and those who don’t.”  Paul is one who does that…in his eyes, one is either a Jew or a Gentile.  He’s saying that even those who have been Jews from birth, those who have been given the gift of the law, are unable to be saved by that law.  So why then is Peter using the law to divide the community?  Observance of the law does nothing for a person’s eternal life, whether that person is Jew or Gentile.

Why?  Because God’s grace transforms our fear into lives of loving service.

You and I, we hear this passage and immediately our thoughts turn to our individual salvation.  Martin Luther interpreted it in that sort of context, and we, as 21^st Century Americans, we whose very identity is defined partially by our rugged individualism—of course we’re going to think in those terms as well.  There’s nothing wrong with that, and we’ll get there eventually.  But that wasn’t Paul’s primary concern.

His main concern was with community.  His concern was that the Jewish Christians were using the law to exclude other Christians, instead of standing unified under the cross as the sinners that we are.  He reminds Peter, and us today, that our identity as humankind isn’t that we fulfill the law, but rather the opposite, that there is nothing any of us can do to live up to the law’s demands.  God’s law wasn’t given to divide.  God’s law was given to draw us all to the power of the cross.  Paul is pointing out that every time we draw lines that seek to divide or exclude, we are always going to find God on the other side of the line.  “If justification comes through the law,” Paul writes, “then Christ died for nothing.”

The silent question the bishop was asking Jean Valjean, the silent question Paul is asking the Galatians, and the silent question our Scripture passage asks of us today are all the same question: are you going to live lives of fear, or are you going to live lives of grace?

While it’s an important question to ask ourselves individually, it’s an even more important question to ask ourselves corporately, as those who are called to be Christ’s body on earth.  The world looks at the church and it sees a body that builds walls.  It sees a body that divides.  It sees a body that lives out of fear more than out of grace.  Sometimes these conclusions are unfair, but quite often we as the church—the whole, universal, worldwide church—have given the world good reason to come to those conclusions. 

However, God’s grace transforms our fear into lives of loving service.

Now this doesn’t mean that we’ve been given free license to do whatever we want, to live however we want to live.  The bishop didn’t tell Jean Valjean “with this act of grace you’re free to do whatever you want to do.”  Paul even says “But if, in our effort to be justified in Christ, we ourselves have been found to be sinners, is Christ then a servant of sin?  Certainly not!”  What it does mean is that we’re living by a different set of motivations.  We don’t serve others to build up points to try to get to heaven or win God’s favor.  In fact, the cross is what has freed us from all of those old insecurities, all of those doubts, all of those fears that we just don’t measure up, that God can’t possibly find us acceptable, that there’s no way that we can earn a spot in heaven.  You know what?  There is no way, no way at all, that we can earn ourselves a spot in heaven.  Nothing to worry about.  We can’t do it.  But the cross, the empty tomb, God’s promise to us through Christ, that is what’s done the job for us.  The word that Paul uses over and over in this passage, the one translated “justified,” is the greek word dikaios.  It is a courtroom word, and has the sense not of actually being innocent, but of being declared and treated as though we were innocent.  Through the cross, God sees our guilt but still acquits us.  It’s not a whitewashing of sin, it’s God grabbing us by the collar like the bishop did to Jean Valjean, looking us right in the eye, and telling us, “Don’t forget.  Don’t ever forget.  You’ve promised to become a new person.  My brother…my sister…you no longer belong to evil.  With this cross, I have bought your soul.  I have ransomed you from fear and hatred.”

God’s grace transforms our fear into lives of loving service.

So we are free.  Free to break down the walls that fear has built.  Free to live in community with those we agree with, as well as those with whom we disagree.  Free to live not for ourselves but given the mission to live in loving service to others.  Free to recognize that God’s law doesn’t divide one person from another, but rather unifies all of us as one gigantic category of people—redeemed sinners at the foot of the cross.     

Amen.

Matt Schur

Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church

Lincoln, NE   

December 29-30 2012 sermon--What Child Is This?

What Child Is This?

Christmas 1C, December 29-30, 2012

Luke 2:41-52

On Monday and Tuesday, we celebrated the birth of Jesus. We looked on with awe and wonder at the story of Mary and Joseph, of angels, and shepherds, and an animal feed trough turned into a makeshift crib for a little baby boy. We sang “Silent Night” and “Away in a Manger,” chuckling to ourselves as our own children and grandchildren sang the line, “the cattle are lowing, the poor baby WAKES!”

Babies are cute. They’re fun to play with. They’re cuddly and loving, and it’s a wonderful thing to think of Jesus as a helpless, cute, cuddly newborn infant.

But today is less than a week after all of that, and all of a sudden, here’s Jesus as a 12 year-old kid. No longer the cooing little baby, he’s now only a year away from his bar mitzvah. If he was a member of Our Saviour’s, he’d be acolyting and taking sermon notes and going to confirmation classes. This was a kid on the verge of puberty, whose parents were taking him along for a fairly long trip—from Nazareth to Jerusalem, which would be a distance of about 60 miles. Think about walking from the Haymarket in Lincoln to the Old Market in Omaha…only there was no Interstate 80 connecting the two. It was a dusty and potentially dangerous trek which could take up to 4 days, so Mary, Joseph and Jesus most likely didn’t travel alone. They would have been with a large group of family and friends, all of whom would have been making the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover.  This trip was also a personally and religiously significant one—to be in Jerusalem, at the temple, to celebrate Passover was a big deal, and in v. 41 the author tells us that it was a trip that Mary and Joseph made every year.

So when it’s all finished, they leave to go back home with the rest of their group. At the end of the first day, Mary and Joseph make a horrible discovery. Their child, Jesus, isn’t with the rest of the group. As a parent myself, I can’t even imagine the terror, fear, and guilt that they must have felt. And so they turned around and went back to Jerusalem. The author tells us that they searched for three days, finally coming to the temple where they saw him surrounded by the teachers of the law. He was listening to them and asking them questions, and we’re told that the teachers were amazed at his understanding and his answers.

His mom didn’t care about any of that, though. Her fear and terror and guilt had vanished, and had been replaced by anger. “Why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been searching for you with great anxiety.” The Greek here is much more strong than our English translation suggests—the word used here is used two other times by the author of Luke, and in both cases it’s not just anxiousness—it’s the pain and grief and agony you experience when you know you’re never going to see someone you love again.

And Jesus’ response to her is a reminder that Jesus wasn’t their little baby boy anymore.  “Mom,” he says, “Didn’t you know? Didn’t you know I’d be in my Father’s house? Didn’t you know I’d be about my Father’s business? You’ve taught me the Scriptures. You’ve raised me in your faith, the faith of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the faith of the Exodus and the Passover, and you’re surprised to find me here? You’re surprised to find me with the teachers of the law? You’re surprised to find me learning and  understanding, questioning and teaching, engaged in this living faith in which you’ve so diligently brought me up?”

This isn’t the cute, cuddly baby in Bethlehem talking. Jesus throws the adults in his life for a loop. His parents didn’t know where to find him. The teachers of the law were astounded at his interactions with them. The question for all of them, and the question for us today, is, “What child is this?”

What child is this?

Does this baby remain in the manger? Does this child remain at the feet of the teachers? No, and no. In fact, the next time Jesus pays a visit to the temple, those who are there are equally astounded at what he has to say, but this time it’s not with the cute bemusement with which one pats a precocious child on the head and thinks “Wow, you are something else.” The next time Jesus is at the temple, his questions and his understanding don’t get him compliments, they get him crucified. When the baby leaves the manger, when the child grows up, when we can no longer hold Jesus at arm’s length, when Jesus has the audacity to turn our world upside down by challenging what we thought we knew about God and about faith and about life, our human response then and our human response now is he same—it is the cross.

We love Christmas. But Jesus can’t stay in the manger. The fact that God would take on human flesh and would be born as a helpless baby is miraculous—it is itself a sign of God’s wonderful love for humankind and of God’s willingness to do whatever it takes to break into our world and into our lives. But for Jesus to do what Jesus has come to do, he can’t stay a baby. He must grow up. And when he grows up and begins to think and feel and act and teach and command and live and love on his own, for himself, by his own volition, his parents aren’t sure what to do with it. The religious experts, amazed as they are, probably aren’t sure what to do with it. And we, when we’re honest with ourselves, aren’t sure what to do with this Jesus either. It’s easier to sing “sleep in heavenly peace” than to wrestle with “love your enemies.” It’s easier to sing “away in a manger” than to try to understand “blessed are you when you are poor or hungry or hated or excluded or the one who makes peace.” It’s easier to think of angels and shepherds than to try to live out the command to “take up your cross and follow.” We’d rather look at the bright star in the sky over Bethlehem than watch an innocent man lifted on a cross at Golgotha and listen to him say, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 

What child is this?

Babies are safe. Babies are cute. But the Jesus who was born for us, the Jesus who lived for us, the Jesus who died and was raised so that we too might live, the Jesus who is alive and among us even today, did not come to be cute. He did not come to be safe. He came to change our lives. He came to change the world. Like Mary and Joseph, even though we know better sometimes we’re surprised when Jesus tells us, “Didn’t you know I’d be in my Father’s house? Didn’t you know I’d be about my Father’s business?” We’re surprised when we come to church and we hear a word of law or a word of grace or a word of comfort or a word of affliction and it’s exactly what we needed to hear. We’re surprised when we confess our sins and are blown away by a wave of gratitude in the words of forgiveness. We’re surprised when we pray and are heard. We’re surprised when those around us become the body of Christ, become hands, feet, ears, mouth, and eyes for those around them. Like the teachers of the law in the temple, we’re surprised when Jesus answers our questions with love and holy wisdom beyond our understanding. We’re surprised when Jesus takes what we thought we knew about God and scripture and turns it all on its head. We’re surprised when we’re called out beyond ourselves to live and love for the sake of the other.

This is the Jesus who’s active in the world today. This is the Jesus who’s active in our lives today. This is the Jesus who is here today, the Jesus who has swept us all up in this restless, raging love of God. This, this, is Christ the King.

What child is this?

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.