March 2, 2025 Sermon on the Plain Luke 6:17-49

 (My role as the conference dean required me to be at the South Wedge Mission this Sunday.  I wrote this "letter" to be read in place of a sermon.)

To the brothers and sisters in Christ at St. John’s Lutheran Church of Victor,

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am thankful for the way we have been handling the difficult issues arising from our national leadership.  Tension and anger are running high across most of our nation.  I know that we hold different opinions and have different viewpoints.  It is good that we have not buried our head in the sand about these things.  Thus far we have been able to disagree in ways that feel constructive.  I pray that continues.  I will come back to that in a couple minutes.

First, I want to explain my absence today.  As you know, I am the dean of the Genesee-Finger Lakes Conference.  At the bishop’s request I am attending worship at the South Wedge Mission.  You’ll remember that we used to be a financial backer of it and included it in our prayers on Sundays.

For the last few years the mission has been working to leave mission status and be organized as a regular congregation.  That is proving to be difficult.  Many of the members of the mission have been hurt by churches in the past.  Many do not trust the church.  It is good that they have found the mission to be a place for their faith.  The problem is that when such people try to form a congregation they discover that many of the things they don’t like about the church are inescapable. 

The present status of the mission cannot continue indefinitely.  Bishop Miller has been in conversation with Rev. Matthew Nickoloff, the mission developer, for the past couple of years.  They have determined it would be best for Pastor Nickoloff to resign and work elsewhere.  Today is his last Sunday.  I have been asked to go as a show of support from the larger church.  There is a plan for the mission to become a regular congregation by the middle of this year.  While there are still issues to work out, there is no reason why that will not happen.

Now to our gospel reading.  This is called the “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke’s gospel.  It’s similar to the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s gospel.  Luke’s version is shorter, and he records it taking place on a level place rather than a mountain.  Here we have Jesus’ teaching of what living as his disciples looks like.  These are not words we like to hear though!  They upend just about everything in our lives.

Underneath all of what Jesus teaches is our need for God’s mercy.  It is easy for us to think that we can overcome evil.  Or that we can somehow become truly good by force of will.  We convince ourselves that moral living is truly possible.  All of these are misguided ideas.  The truth is that we are inescapably trapped in sin.  There is no way out.  We cannot get out by some form of superior morality.  We can’t get out by science.  We can’t get out through any sort of political or economic system.

Jesus said to take the log out of your own eye before you try to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.  The image hurts to think about!  But let’s look at a few logs in our own eyes.

Here’s one.  Many people want to live environmentally conscious lives.  That’s a good thing!  But what does that look like?  Driving an electric car?  Eating organic locally grown food?  Recycling all that you can?

According to geologist Scott Tinker we need to reduce our energy consumption by something like 94% in order to be truly environmentally sustainable.  More energy use than that puts the world on a path to irreversible disaster.  If he is even remotely close to correct, then we need to say goodbye to life as we know it:  Goodbye cars.  Goodbye computers and cell phones.  Goodbye air conditioning.  Goodbye to pretty much all medicine and medical care.

Here's a second log.  We easily believe that we can overcome any and every problem through science and engineering.  I certainly like to believe that!  But it has problems too.  We are reaching the limits of many things.  Computers are a great example.  Moore’s Law is that the speed and capability of computers will double every two years.   This ‘law’ has held true for several decades, but we’re reaching the limits.  Silicone computer chips are running up against quantum indeterminacy.  Some significant improvements are sure to come, but this is a reminder that the fabric of the universe has its limits.  It is impossible for us humans to get past them.

And a final third log.  I’ve shared this one in sermons recently.  Modern medicine pats itself on the back for the way vaccines and basic health care have caused child mortality rates across the world to plummet.  That’s great!  But… consider the African continent.  Now that many more children are growing up there isn’t enough food or water on the continent to support them.  So wars ensue which leads them to killing each other as adults.

Here's an ugly truth.  What we humans call “progress” always creates a vicious circle of destruction.  There’s no such thing as the ‘moral high ground’.  Both conservatives and liberals; both capitalists and socialists; both environmentalists and those who say, “Drill baby drill!” are all unable to escape it.

Such is the way evil wraps itself inextricably into our best intentions.  Such is the nature of sin.

I don’t write this to make us feel guilty.  I write it as a reminder to us that there’s no escape.  All sin and fall short of the glory of God.  When we see another person with whom we vehemently disagree, we still realize that we ourselves are also part of the mess and depend entirely on God’s grace.

Theologian R. Alan Culpepper notes, “Judging is the sin of those who are blind to their own faults.  It is the obsession of those who seek to make themselves better, not by lifting themselves up, but by bringing others down.  It is the mock justice of those who presume to know what others should do.  The log in our own eye hardly qualifies us to judge the faults of our brothers and sisters.”  (New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume 9, Pg. 152)

Jesus preached about building a house on sand or on rock.  The house built on rock is the house of someone who dares to dig and dig and dig – dig deep enough to build their life on the bedrock truth of the need for God and nothing else.  When we build from there we are indestructible regardless of what comes.

Jesus also preached blessings to the poor and the woes to the rich.  Let’s make sure we understand what being rich means.  Jesus does not have threshold of wealth in mind based upon the value of your house or the balance of your retirement savings.  The rich are those who have the ability to reliably provide for themselves.  They can rely on money to buy them food, shelter, clothing, and safety.  In other words, the rich are those who can fool themselves into thinking they don’t need God to meet their basic needs. 

Pretty much all of us fall into Jesus’ category of the rich.  We make decisions based upon economic security.  We vote based on which leaders will be best for the economy.  Having money gives us choice over our living environment and the appearance we present to the outside world.  It is easy for money to become the dominant force in our lives.

Once again, we find that we have no way out of this.  We cannot leave the economy without becoming homeless and thus a burden upon others.  That’s not what Jesus wants from his disciples either!

What does faithful discipleship look like for us? 

When we build from our inescapable sinfulness it should not make us feel crippled and guilty and bad.  It is a strong recognition of reality.  It is the foundation of rock that our house of faith is built upon.  Jesus teaches trust in God, which leads to a discipleship that is robust.

Here's how it works.  In the sermon Jesus talks about a tree producing good fruit or bad fruit.  The root of producing good fruit with your life is trusting God and recognizing your need for God’s grace.  That gives you three things: humility, a good work ethic, and wisdom for action.  The answers will seldom be easy.  They may not always be clear.  But if you follow them you do discover what Jesus promises: a good measure, pressed down, shaken together, overflowing will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

This is not a wealth accumulation strategy.  It is a strategy for an indestructible sense of self that God alone provides.  Nothing and no one can ever take that from you.  It is your blessing from God for all eternity.  There is no greater blessing.

As we move forward into the future, which is filled with uncertainties, we can be certain of God’s grace for us.  We will flourish as long as we depend upon it.  We will fail if we do not.  Through our own strength we can share the promises of God’s strength to others who are lost and failing.  God’s kingdom does indeed come, and it grows among us.  Amen.

February 23, 2025 Ministry with the Scared Luke 5:27-6:16

             In my professional circles I’ve heard many people say we need to, “Speak truth to power,” in response to many current actions of our federal government.  People who say this cite the Old Testament prophets and also Jesus as doing the same.  It is a rally cry to action.  As I’ve said before, I certainly have my concerns, but for the sake of a sermon and being faithful to the witness of the Bible, saying that Jesus spoke truth to power is a projection of current day dynamics onto Jesus; and turns him into an activist who agrees with you. 

I feel like I’ve said many times recently; if Jesus was really speaking truth to power he would have addressed the Romans, not the Jews.  And if he had done so he probably would have been championed by the Jewish leadership for what he was doing.  They certainly would not have called for his execution.  Interestingly, when Jesus was actually before Pontus Pilate, the Roman governor who did have power, Jesus was pretty silent.  Understanding what Jesus was actually doing is much more helpful for today.  Let’s get at that by reminding ourselves of a very big reality behind the gospel of Luke.

Any time we read from Luke’s gospel we need to keep in mind that we are reading something that was probably written around the year 80 but talking about events that happened in the 30s.  Between the 30s and the 80s, and especially in the 60s, there were a series of major Jewish revolts against the Romans.  They continued until Rome cracked down.  In the year 70 the Romans destroyed the city of Jerusalem.  That destruction included reducing the Jerusalem temple to rubble.  That temple was the center of Jewish faith. 

The Romans destroyed more than just property.  They also killed plenty of people.  The whole situation seems to have put an end to most sects within Judaism.  In the time of Jesus there appear to have been five major sects.  Four of the five show up in the Bible.  Those four are the: Sadducees, Pharisees, Herodians, and Zealots.  The fifth, the one that doesn’t show up in the Bible, is the Essenes.

I don’t know of any clear historical records as to exactly what happened, but after the destruction of the temple only one of the five still remained.  That sect was the Pharisees.  The Sadducees, Herodians, Zealots, and Essenes all disappeared from history.

The Pharisees probably survived because they were the ones who developed the idea of the synagogue.  Synagogues were centers for worship and learning.  Wherever a significant number of Pharisees lived they built a synagogue.  Most of the Jewish people Jesus interacted with in his public ministry were Pharisees.

If you were a Pharisee living after the year 70 you were weak, scared, and confused.  What had happened?  What went wrong?  Why did God allow all this to happen?  And, would your faith survive?

The crisis of the Pharisees had a precedent.  They looked to it for guidance in the current day.  600 years earlier the Babylonian Empire had also destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.  Thee Pharisees looked to that precedent for answers.  They survived that period of destruction by holding fast to their Jewish identity, which centered on keeping the religious laws of the Torah.  The Torah is what we Christians have as first five books of the Bible.  Jews believed they were given to Moses by God.  The Torah taught a Jewish person how to live in right relationship with God.  It gave directions for personal and religious life.  It taught how to make up for your sins and be forgiven.  It was the central scripture.

In the 80s (when Luke wrote his gospel) the Pharisees were clinging to this, the only hope they knew.  If they broke it they feared God would punish them even more for doing so.  Then, from the Pharisees point of view, in the midst of all of those fears and struggles to survive came a new radical upstart sect of the Nazarenes – or more and more being known as “Christians”.  This fast growing new religious sect appeared to be yet another threat to orthodox Jewish beliefs.  Christians claimed the Torah was not central to faith and was not what God really wanted.  From the point of view of the Pharisees, the Christians were teaching absurd heretical nonsense; that a man called Jesus from Nazareth was actually the Son of God and he was ignominiously executed by crucifixion.

I hope you can appreciate just how ludicrous Christian claims were to the Pharisees at the time Luke was writing.  For the Pharisees, there was no way God could have wanted what Christians claimed!

When we read Luke’s gospel we have to remember that Luke is addressing the reality of Jesus’ followers in the 80s as he’s writing about what happened with Jesus in the 30s.  I suppose you could say Luke is projecting his time onto the stories of Jesus.  So, when we read about Jesus being in conflict with the Pharisees, he is not speaking truth to power.  Jesus is speaking to scared powerless people who are clinging to the only thing they knew – staying faithful to the Torah.  Jesus has to convince them that is a misunderstanding of God’s will.

Be sure to recognize something in all of the gospels as they tell the story of Jesus.  Jesus never ever condemns the Torah as: bad, wrong, ignorant, or heretical.  In Matthew’s gospel Jesus outright praises it and recognizes its authority.  Throughout Luke’s gospel we’re reminded that Jesus himself lived like a faithful Jew, which meant he honored the Torah.

Jesus is not being a rebel.  He is not speaking truth to power.  He is not trying to start an uprising or revolt.  All of those ideas are ideas being imposed upon him by later peoples. 

Now, hear me clearly.  I’m not saying that what Jesus did in his lifetime is the correct formula for how we are to live today.  The times and situations are different.  What I am saying is not to impose our present time onto Jesus and make him into whatever it is we want him to be to accomplish our own agenda.  What we want to do is learn from Jesus in his time and then apply it to our present-day situations; whatever they may be.   Unfortunately for us this Sunday, the core teachings Jesus has for life are what we will read in worship next week.  That’s when we’ll read the “Sermon on the Plain” as it’s called in Luke’s gospel.  So you’ll have to stay tuned.  Even so, there is a very important thing in what we read for our lives today.  I’ll wrap up by looking at that.

When Jesus was eating dinner with Levi the tax collector he said, “No one tears a piece from a new garment and sews it on an old garment; otherwise the new will be torn, and the piece from the new will not match the old.  And no one puts new wine into old wineskins; otherwise the new wine will burst the skins and will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.  But new wine must be put into new wineskins.”

That sounds simple enough.  Jesus is saying out with the old and in with the new.  But that’s not where Jesus ends.  He continues, “And no one after drinking old wine desires new wine, but says, ‘The old is good.’”

What does that mean?  Apparently out with the old and in with the new is not what Jesus meant!

Thus far in Luke’s gospel he has rooted us in Jewish history and shown how important it was – central to God’s designs in fact.  Luke has taught us that Jesus in no way intends to upend living by the Torah.  Luke does not want the Pharisees to think Jesus and the new sect of Christians are a threat at all.  Rather, Luke wants them (and us) to understand that deeply rooted within the old Jewish ways is God’s will and God’s excellence.  The problem with the Pharisees is that they’d gone a bit off track.  They were clinging to the wrong things for salvation.  Any time you think following rules and regulations puts you in right relationship with God you’re risking becoming arrogant.  It happens all the time, not just to the Pharisees.

I talked about this last week, and we’ll see it at work again next week.  It’s all about recognizing our brokenness before God and realizing we need God’s grace.  That’s where the Pharisees had gone wrong.  They were trying to build a relationship with God based upon technical following of the laws.  What they missed is that the laws were based on God’s mercy for fallen and broken people.

That is why Jesus is spending time with tax collectors like Levi.  That is why Jesus is healing these unimportant and powerless people in Judea.  That is why Jesus chooses the twelve disciples that he chooses.  They were not qualified because of their skills or education.  They were qualified because they were willing to accept their need for forgiveness from God.  They wouldn’t do that perfectly.  And Luke even reminds us that Judas Iscariot will be a traitor who brings the whole thing to an end.  What qualifies them, and all of us, for God’s service is the humility of recognizing our need for God’s mercy.

As we engage each other and people on the street and people in social media platforms, regardless of how righteous or horrible you may think another person is, begin your interaction with remembering your own limitations and imperfections.  You may not win any arguments.  You may not convince anyone of anything.  And I’m not saying that you should say nothing or not engage in current events.  To the contrary.  Work and act hard.  But do it with an eye on God’s mercy for you and God’s mercy for others.  That is the thing which unites us.

February 16, 2025 Centrality of Needing Forgiveness Luke 5:12-26

             As many of you know, I am a life-long fan of the Philadelphia Eagles.  It then comes as no surprise that I was very pleased with the way the Super Bowl went.  I know many Bills fans were also pleased to see the Chiefs soundly defeated.  I confess that part of me was enjoying not only seeing the Chiefs lose, but clobbered so soundly that it was among the worst defeats the Chiefs ever suffered and that even some records were near being broken.  Revenge against arrogance is sweet.

            But then there was the half-time show.  I did not understand it and I did not like its tone.  But, as I have since learned, it was a carefully crafted condemnation of American white culture.  Samuel Jackson dressed up as Uncle Sam was a condemnation of slavery by whites of blacks.  Uncle Sam warns the black rapper that this is the biggest show on earth and therefore to play game that American whites want and not be ghetto.  The Squid games stage symbolized the rich killing the poor.  The red, white, and blue colors represented the flag and its hypocrisy.  Serena Williams appearance was a statement protecting black women after the disrespect from Drake, and reminding Drake that America is an exclusivist whitest nation but black culture is diverse and authentic.  Therefore turn the TV off, organize and unite, ultimately leading to the “game over” message that appeared in the crowd meaning game over to white people in America.

            Well, I can critically take issue with it in any number of ways.  That’s not my intention and that’s not what sermons should do.  In as much as it was a strategic artistic expression of rage, it had every First Amendment right to be expressed.  It also reminds me that much as I liked to see the arrogance of the Chiefs put in place by the Eagles, so too do many in this nation want to see what they perceive to be the arrogance of white people put into its place.

            Now, I have probably managed to offend just about everyone at this point.  That’s not my intention.  I find that race, class, gender, and sexuality dynamics in this nation have become venomous and filled with hate.  People create caricatures of the “other” (whoever the other is), over-simplify their situation, weave together tidbits of fact by flawed logic and then make broad condemnatory statements against the other – whoever that may be.  It seems like that’s the norm across the board and with each claiming to have the moral high ground for their position and arrogantly enjoying the downfall of the other.  There’s no such thing as a neutral position in these situations.  When you are wrapped up in a system suffering from such incredibly unhealthy dynamics there’s no way to not be affected yourself.

So, let’s learn a completely different approach to things from Jesus as we read in the passage from Luke.  Two things stand out.  First, we have the scene of the leprous man begging Jesus to be healed.  Notice how he asks Jesus.  He does not immediately beg for healing.  He says, “Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”  Jesus replies, “I do choose.  Be made clean.”

Notice the man’s appeal respects Jesus’ will and his sovereignty.  He does not say he deserves to be healed because he is a good person.  He does not say he deserves to be healed because he is a victim of injustice.  There is no leverage of Jesus at all.  It is simply an honest humble request.

The second thing is in the healing of the paralytic man.  His four friends lower him through the roof of the house.  That’s plenty bold!  There’s no humility or gentleness in that scene!  But notice Jesus’ first words.  “Man, your sins are forgiven you.”

I picture myself in the crowd and think, “Fine words Jesus, but what good are they?  Words are cheap.  This guy has real needs and you’re not helping.”  The religious people there take issue with Jesus claiming for himself the ability to forgive sins.  But all of this is a setup so that when Jesus does heal the man Jesus shows that he truly does have the ability to forgive sins.

While our attention is easily diverted to vividly imagining this man being lowered through the roof and then walking away healed, we should not miss that the central point here is forgiveness.  Forgiveness.  Forgiveness.  Forgiveness.

Perhaps you didn’t like the Chiefs being soundly beaten, or perhaps you were offended by the racial messages of the halftime show, but let’s not overlook that this forgiveness message is the most deeply offensive of all.  It is also the only one that can give us any hope at all.

Why is forgiveness so offensive?  It can be easy to be the person offering the forgiveness.  You can stay on the moral high ground and feel good about yourself for being kind and generous.  It can be immensely harder to accept forgiveness.  Before you can accept forgiveness you first have to admit that you did something wrong that has to be forgiven.  We humans don’t like to be wrong.  We want to be right.

When I look at race and gender and political dynamics in this country today I see a common theme.  It is rooted in the answer to an age old question.  Are people by nature good or are they bad?  Or perhaps said a little differently, are people by nature good or by nature fallen?  While we can easily skirt the issue by saying we are both, and that would have some level of accuracy, you can’t get out of this one by sitting on the fence.  Either people are by nature good and we can count on goodness to rise up in people, or people are by nature bad and cannot be counted on to do good things; especially under pressure.

I don’t care where you are in the political spectrum, or where you see yourself in issues of race and gender, or whether you are an Eagles fan or a Chiefs fan, the dominant answer I see in our culture is the wrong one.  That answer is, that people are by nature good.  Everyone wants to say that the trials and struggles of their life are not their fault but someone else’s.  If it’s someone else’s fault then I get to claim the moral high ground.  I do not have to change and I will benefit when someone else is forced to change.  I get to win and someone else looses.

Doubt me?  How would the halftime show of the Super Bowl be if it was a message that we are all sinners in need of God’s grace?  How would it be if the halftime show were a middle school chorus from some small obscure rural school district singing Amazing Grace simply and in unison?  No complex lights show and fireworks, no diss track, no arrogance, no anger, no winners and losers, no desire to take someone down.  Just the simple message that we’re all a bunch of messed up sinful losers who can’t get anything right no matter how hard we try.

USA Today reported that the average cost of a ticket for the Super Bowl this year was $6,645.  I hear that a 30 second ad was $8 million.  The truth of our sinfulness doesn’t sell tickets or make money. 

Calls for equality are a big thing in our society today.  But here’s an ugly yet undeniable truth that many people are hell bent and determined to deny.  By all measurable standards we are not equal.  Some of us are smarter than others.  Some of us are stronger than others.  Some of us are born better looking than others.  Some of us have genetics which give us robust health while others have genetics which lead to endless health problems.  Some of us have great eye-hand coordination and others of us are so klutzy that we can barely walk and talk at the same time.  We aren’t equal and life’s not fair.  Those are undeniable truths.  We are not equal, at least not in any earthly measure.

Jesus roots things in the truth – the offensiveness of being fundamentally flawed, fallen, and in need of God’s grace.  That is the only thing that makes us equal.  And that is the only path of hope.  Endless virtue signaling and seeking the moral high ground does nothing but make more problems.

We read these words from Galatians 3:28 in our second Bible reading today: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ.”  That is a very audacious statement.  It is true equality.  It is based on a common need for forgiveness.  Only by recognizing our common need for forgiveness can we ever get to equality.  And you can’t recognize your need for forgiveness as long as you run around through life thinking you are basically a good person and bad things are other people’s fault.  Perhaps there are many things that are bad that can be blamed on other people.  But that is false sight.  When we recognize that our fallenness (our tendency to not trust God but to trust in ourselves) is woven in and through ourselves every corner of our thoughts and actions can we see the truth.

That’s not about beating ourselves up all the time.  That’s not going to get us anywhere and it’s not what God wants from us.  But it does bring to our thoughts and actions: authentic humility, authentic equality, and an authentic common need.  That authentic common need of God is the community Christ builds as his kingdom on earth.

February 2, 2025 Everyday Jesus Luke 4:31-44

             Pastors are often told to keep politics out of the pulpit.  That’s pretty much impossible.  My sermons are quite often political, although I usually skirt around names and labels that trigger political responses.  Given the political changes at the federal level in the last couple weeks, and as a means of recognizing something easily overlooked in our gospel reading, let’s make some political connections.

As The Rev. Elizabeth Eaton has pointed out in her January 24^th letter, the new presidential administration has come in with a flurry of executive orders that are causing widespread concern and confusion.  I agree with her letter overall and I encourage you to read it.  (It’s found easily enough with an internet search.)  Regardless of your thoughts on the incoming administration, I think it can be safely said that in the last election a majority of people voted for congressional leaders and the presidency significantly as a reaction to what many would call a “liberal” agenda that has pushed many things in our nation for a number of years.  Maybe you liked those things.  Maybe you didn’t.  Whether you did or not is not the point.  Focusing on the ideology alone is a mistake.  Ideology does not drive people’s voting choices.  Money does.  When I say that money does that does not automatically mean greed and corruption.  Yes, there is that part.  But there is also always the reality of what average daily life costs and how hard many people have to work to afford things.  Whatever party or administration is in power usually gets booted out when people feel things are hard.

If you go back forty or fifty years you see the factory and labor economy of the United States starting to crumble.  When I consider town in which I grew up there were multiple shoe factories, a glove factory, a shirt factory, and two tool and die works all showing strain.  People were told that we were moving into an information age and service economy.  Education was the way to success.  Many laborers were promised that with re-education their lives would be better.

It didn’t happen.

            Meanwhile, highly educated people – both liberal and conservative – were largely unaffected.  They promised the laborers that they knew what was best and they should be trusted.  That didn’t work either.  And along the way something else happened.  This is something no one wants to talk about but it is true: even laborers didn’t want to do the labor anymore.

            I remember touring the Kinney Shoe factory.  In one big room was something like 400 sewing machines with 400 people bent over them cranking out shoes.  It was piecework.  That is, you got paid based on how many shoes you worked on.  More shoes equaled more money.  A good worker could be reasonably prosperous, but it was hard work.  Men and women had heavy callouses.  Carpal tunnel and arthritis would form at young ages.  Even working in a place as clean as a shoe factory wasn’t good for your health – let alone those who worked in the mines and in heavy manufacturing.  People didn’t live long past retirement age.

            People just don’t want to work that hard.  I’m not going to blame anybody for that.  When I was in middle school I started working commercially picking raspberries on a neighboring farm.  The whole operation was run by a couple of educated idealists who had moved into the area and who thought they knew what they were doing but didn’t.  It was a fiasco and more comic than anything, but it gave me a perspective I wouldn’t have had otherwise.  Farmers around here have a hard time finding labor.  If you’ve ever picked apples, grapes, or cabbage at a commercial scale; or ever milked cows in a modern milking parlor you know that it is miserable; and yet still skilled work.  Farmers say they can’t attract Americans to it despite offering close to double the New York minimum wage.  For the most part immigrants do that work.  From what I read about local farms and hear from farmers we’re desperately short in labor as it is.  Causing fear in immigrant communities with the current policies is pushing a difficult situation into the impossible.  But that’s beyond my scope today.

            If I were to return to picking raspberries, and I were to take home $20 an hour after taxes I wouldn’t do it.  I wouldn’t want to work out in the sun for eight to ten hours a day, picking countless pints of raspberries, and barely make enough to pay for… a 40-minute visit to the dentist!  It would make me resentful.  All that work – all taken away in a blink of an eye with nothing to show for it, except maybe another appointment to have a cavity filled that will cost me over a day’s labor.

             Yes, I know there are many help programs for such people.  They’re very helpful.  The point is, it is a lot of labor for not getting anywhere in life, except every day being older and having a more worn-out body.

            Among colleagues and the church circles I inhabit I hear many people who would say we should be advocates for such people.  We should speak up for their rights and make sure they’re paid a better wage.  Or they’d advocate a boycott on raspberries to teach producers a lesson in fairness.  But I ask, is that the way Jesus did things?

I hear many voices say Jesus spoke “truth to power.”  Perhaps…

maybe a little. 

But that is making Jesus into a present-day political activist.  Look at what Jesus actually did.  In our gospel we meet him in Capernaum.  It is a story with an exorcism and healing.  Those miraculous things grab our attention.  But let’s not miss what is also there that we don’t recognize.  Capernaum was Jesus’ home for most of his public ministry.  Jesus was not in Rome or a provincial capital.  He was not in Jerusalem, the religious center for worship.  Jesus was not being an advocate.  He was not going to rallies, marches, protests, or riots.  He was not meeting with political leaders.  As our gospel reading for today ends we see the people of Capernaum asking Jesus to stay.  But he tells them that he must be going.  He must spread the gospel elsewhere… in Judea.  That’s basically going from no place to no place laboring hard and preaching to people of no consequence.

            Near the end of the Harry Potter book series the character Dumbledore reflects on some of his ambitions in early adulthood.  He was brilliant, talented, and highly acclaimed even as a youth.  People expected him to go on to great things in life – be a leader in government or education.  But then tragedies in his family require him to care for his miscreant brother and unstable sister.  He has to give up being great and famous.  He becomes resentful for all his talents and abilities being so wasted.

            Remember the testing of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness that we read about two weeks ago?  The devil tempted him to do spectacular things with his powers.  It all seems insidious.  But consider:  Jesus could have used those amazing powers of his to get quite a political movement going.  He could have used his power to teach those in political power how to act.  But where do we find Jesus for most of his public ministry?  In backwaters like Capernaum among laborers. 

            There’s no record of what Jesus did most days, but given his frequent use of agricultural images, and fishing images, I’m guessing he did a lot of work with farmers and fishermen.

            Almost certainly Jesus was not an impressive person to see.  He was dressed in ordinary clothes.  Like most rural people, he was probably dirty.  He walked in the dirt.  He worked in the dirt.  There was dirt under his fingernails, dirt between his toes, and dust and dirt in his teeth.

            A miraculous healing from Jesus did not turn a person into someone prosperous.  A miraculous healing from Jesus returned a person to their ability to labor to survive.  Look at what happens when Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law.  We’re told she immediately gets up and returns to her household work of being a hostess to guests.

Summing it up, most of Jesus’ ministry was probably going to obscure places to unimportant powerless people to tell them the good news that God sees them and loves them.  It’s ordinary.  It’s unimpressive.

            We, with our comforts and conveniences, with economic safety nets and insurance policies, with social media and connections have a hard time understanding Jesus.

            When I look at the political divides and economic landscape of our society today I see everyone wanting to claim Jesus for themselves.  And I see traces of Jesus ministry in many places.  But I don’t see Jesus actually fitting into any of it.  Not liberal, not conservative; not Republican, not Democrat; not any segment of society that wants to claim either moral victory or victim status.

            There is a profound humility to Jesus.  I think he labored much harder than we usually give him credit for.

So what do we take from all of this in our charged society of today?  I don’t think you get to pull Jesus out of your pocket and use him to claim some higher morality for yourself or political rightness.  I think we need to look at ourselves in the mirror and ask if we’re really willing to be like Jesus.  Are we willing to labor that hard, do that work?  Are we willing to make financial investments in people and communities – things like buying houses in run down neighborhoods and investing in local business – rather than just putting money in the highest rate of return mutual fund we can find? 

Will we donate money to a cause and expect a gracious Thank You note, or will we get our hands dirty and be a part of the cause?  One of the great things about Family Promise is the face to face connections that are made.

In our fractured world where national level politicians seem to cater to groups who are of strategic importance to their agenda, and don’t seem to care who gets hurt in the pursuit of that agenda, we remember that we are all children of God, sinners in need of God’s grace.  Jesus shows us that when you live that way it is not sweet and nice and kind.  It is hard, dirty work often unrecognized in the world.  But it is God’s work in this time.

 

January 26, 2025 Jesus at Nazareth Luke 4:14-30

             Later in this service we’ll be baptizing Alexander.  It’s the kind of thing we love to see – a baby beginning a life of faith.  They look cute.  We’re curious if they’re going to cry or not.  And there’s the excitement of the unknown.  Babies are unpredictable after all.  You never know what will happen! 

But I suggest we also realize that in what may appear to be a quaint little ceremony, we are also making a serious statement to him about the limits of his human nature, and reminding us of our own.  It’s all quite insulting actually.

            Let’s get at it this way.  Right now everyone thinks Alexander is cute.  Prim and proper adults forget their dignified existence and make fools of themselves babbling and cooing to make him smile.  There’s something magical about a baby’s happiness.  That’s a good thing, because at a practical level babies are unparalleled messes.  At this point, cute as he is, Alexander is an unbridled tyrant.  He makes messes.  He cries.  He does not feed himself.  He requires that he be carried around everywhere.  He does not sleep or wake with any regard to the fatigue it causes those who care for him.  He does not clean up after himself.  He does not dress himself.  He does not contribute to his family’s income.  All he’s got is a smile to charm the hardest of hearts.  And he’s almost certainly learning how to use that charm!

            But of course he will grow with time.  He will learn to walk and talk.  He will become potty trained.  He will learn how to tie his shoes.  He will learn how to cooperate with others and contribute to his family.

            It’s all cumulative.  When he is being potty trained it will earn him lots of approval.  But then he will be expected to move on.  It is highly unlikely that when’s he’s a high school student his parents will say, “Good job on that algebra test!  And also good job on using the potty today!”

            We build.  We grow.  We improve.  Parents seek to raise children who are a balance of selfhood and also well-regulated community members.  We put a lot of resources into developing children into productive adults.  And I mean A LOT of resources.  If you doubt me I suggest you look at your most recent school tax bill.

            That’s okay.  We humans are immensely capable beings.  It is worth putting a tremendous amount of resources into growth and education.  And, with the exception of college students after all-night parties (which can make you wonder if they are, in fact, truly potty trained) the results of our growth and education should amaze us.  Through scientific research and engineering we have discovered many things about the universe and put them to good use.  Factory workers and skilled laborers create amazing things that make life comfortable.  It is easy for me to preach that everyone has an important part to play in improving the world.  You’ve heard me say before that the highly delicate surgery you have is not only dependent upon the skills of the surgical team, but also upon the skills of the hospital janitor who cleaned the operating room beforehand.

            Yes, we humans can grow from babies to become more and more refined to do great and amazing things.  Over time we can tell ourselves that we humans are ever progressing to a bigger and brighter future.  That’s the philosophy that drives our nation.  That goes for whatever political party you may be a part of. 

It is almost like an emotional drug for us:  Getting better and better every day in every way.  We can improve.  We can progress.  We can be increasingly aware and moral.  We can think and invent solutions through all problems. 

            That’s what Alexander will experience from the world all around him.  I said at the beginning that baptism is actually an insult to all of us, because baptism reminds us that all of what the world teaches is a lie.

            I have to choose words carefully here, because a misunderstanding can go deeply wrong.  There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve things.  And there is certainly nothing wrong with a solid morality based on things like: conscientiousness, responsibility, emotional responsiveness, and agreeableness.  Those are all good and important qualities to have!  But we make a mistake the moment we think that such things put us in a higher position than someone else.  Or perhaps I should say that we make a mistake if we think that somehow such things will buy us more divine favor than others; or that those things will give us status, license, and privilege before God.

            Let’s see this problem at work by looking at our gospel reading for today.  Jesus goes to his hometown of Nazareth.  You’ll remember that Nazareth was a sleepy little town of no importance.  It never made the news.  If it somehow disappeared few people would have noticed.  But, in Jesus the locals had found someone who would put them on the map.  We read that Jesus had been traveling through the surrounding country.  He was preaching in the synagogues.  He was popular.  He was being praised by everyone.

            Then he comes home.  I imagine the synagogue was packed the day he spoke.  Everyone wanted to hear his message.  At first he does not disappoint.  Not at all.  He opens the roll of the prophet Isaiah.  He reads two powerful passages.  The Spirit of the Lord was upon him to bring good news to the poor.  He had come to proclaim release to the captives and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.  (This year of the Lord’s favor is what I wrote about in my February newsletter article.)  All of this was great news!  Big things were going to be happening.  Life was going to improve and they were going to be the center of it.  They were the right people who had done the right things in raising Jesus.  They were good.  They were moral.  They were of a superior status before God and God was going to bless them especially.

            Jesus is aware of their expectations.  He reminds them of two stories they knew well.  There was a serious famine in the time of Elijah.  Many Israelites, God’s chosen nation, were suffering.  It did not give them privileged status before God.  God sent Elijah to help a foreign woman.  The other story was with the prophet Elisha.  Surely there were many lepers in Israel in Elisha’s time.  But God did not give them any preferred treatment.  Instead, the leper who was healed by God was a military official of a foreign nation.

            As Jesus teaches these things, the truth of “good news to the poor” becomes apparent to the hometown crowd.  The widow, the unclean, the foreigner, the immoral, the educationally unenlightened are all equally valued and embraced by God.  There is no longer any such thing as a chosen nation, a privileged status, or preferential treatment.

            The hometown crowd becomes enraged.  That message can’t possibly be right.  It is so unfair!  They decide to take Jesus to the edge of the town and kill him by throwing him off a cliff.  It is easy to mistakenly imagine this move as a mob overreacting and going out of control.  Their reaction is indeed severe.  But it is not unheard of.  In some ways it could be said they are carrying out justice.  Jesus claimed to be speaking and acting for God.  Then he taught things they found offensive.  According to the religious laws people who falsely claimed to speak for God were to be killed.  But Jesus escapes from them and goes on his way.

            Alexander will surely be shaped into a good, moral, upstanding person.  It will be process of growth and refinement over many years.  His baptism reminds him that while he will be raised according to the promises of God’s love, no amount of refinement on his part will mean he is entitled to preferential treatment by God.

            That is true, but very difficult news to hear.  As I said earlier, the message that we are capable of improving everything every day is an intoxicating one.  We think that each succeeding generation can be better, more fully enlightened, more deserving.  It is as if we think we can societally evolve into something better. 

The truth of baptism reminds us that we are inescapably caught by sin.  The confession and forgiveness we say at the beginning of the worship service is equally true of newborns as it is of highly educated adults.  The truth is that we humans go from mess to mess.  What we call “progress” isn’t possible.  Today’s solutions at their very best just cause tomorrow’s problems.  God alone can save us.

The truly good news for Alexander, and all of us, is that God does truly save us.  God does truly value us and love us.  God accompanies us through life.  God encourages us to healthy living and doing good for others.  And in this inescapable mess of life, God redeems us.

It is impossible to truly do good apart from recognizing the need for God’s grace.  The good news for Alexander from his baptism is that through God he can do good things.  He is blessed.  He can be a blessing.  And he can work along with all of us for bringing about God’s promised kingdom.

January 19, 2025 Jesus’ Baptism and Testing Luke 3:21-4:13

             It may seem odd to lump Jesus’ baptism, his genealogy, and his testing in the wilderness all into one gospel reading.  Yet they all do flow together.  We’ll discover that flow by looking at prayer.

In Luke’s gospel Jesus prays more than in any other gospel.  For Luke, prayer is mostly about opening yourself to the will of God.  Let’s keep that in mind as we look at this text.

            Jesus is baptized.  When does the Holy Spirit descend according to Luke?  He says, “…when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, (and here we get notice for the next part of the flow) “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

            That voice that comes from heaven is God.  God is saying to the praying Jesus, that he is his Son.  So, Jesus is the Son of God.  That’s not news to us.  We’ve known that since reading about the angel telling Mary she would conceive Jesus.  But here is where it gets interesting.

            The very next thing in the text is Jesus’ genealogy.  It may seem like an odd place to put it.  What does it have to do with Jesus’ baptism?  Why not do it at the beginning of the gospel the way Matthew’s gospel does?  That makes chronological sense.  And let’s note that both Matthew’s genealogy and Luke’s genealogy are suspect at best, and…, quite frankly, inaccurate.  Luke even tells us the genealogy is bogus.  He points out that it goes through Joseph, but we’ve learned earlier that Joseph was irrelevant to the conception of Jesus.) The point of the genealogies is to root Jesus into a heritage, not a DNA path.  The heritage is important.  Jesus does not just fall into the human timeline without any context. 

            The genealogy traces through irrelevant Joseph all the way back to Adam.  At the baptism the voice of God said, “You are my Son, the Beloved.”  What does the genealogy call Adam?  “Son of God.”

            We could land deep in an abyss of heresy if we interpret that the wrong way!  Yet Luke wants us to realize some connections.

            Remember I said that in Luke’s gospel Jesus prays more than in any other gospel, and that prayer is opening yourself to the will of God.  How did things go with Adam and Eve?  How did they do as being open to the will of God?  Not too well!  Adam and Eve took their destiny into their own hands.  They decided they wanted to be their own source of self-fulfillment.  God promised them wholeness of life.  That would come in relationship with God.  Adam and Eve basically decided they’d like to try something on their own terms.  The Garden of Eden had a self-help section and Adam and Eve went for it – to their loss.  Adam and Eve succumbed to temptation.  They failed.  They didn’t trust God.

            What follows the genealogy in Luke’s gospel?  The testing of Jesus by the devil in the wilderness.  Jesus is there for forty days.  That echoes similar times in the ministry of Moses and of Elijah.  Luke tells us that Jesus is led there by the Holy Spirit.

            Let’s make sure we understand what that really means.  In contemporary theology, and I think in common thought, people picture the Holy Spirit as sweet and kind and nice.  Indeed, the Spirit has those qualities.  But the Spirit can also be tough, strong, and forceful.  In fact, all of our understanding of God is that way.  God as Father can be both nurturing and tough.  Jesus as Son was both kind and challenging.  The same goes for the Spirit.

            This can put me in a tricky place as a pastor.  People will sometimes ask if what is happening to them is God trying to punish them or teach them something or reward them for something.  I can never answer with certainty.  God is God.  God is Sovereign.  God does as God chooses without any higher authority.  We cannot domesticate God into something we understand and predict.  Rather, as we are often told, we are to love and fear God.  Yes, God is loving.  But it is a mistake to picture God as a sweet and fragile little spring petunia.  The Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to fast for forty days. 

I don’t know about you, but I get hungry a couple hours after each meal.  I have gone a whole day without food several times as part of a challenge.  I was ravenous afterward!  But to go forty days without food is to have your body in a severe state of malnourishment. 

No, the Spirit is not nice.  How is this “Son of God” going to act when his bodily health is depleted by the will of God?  Will he make excuses and say, “Surely God must want me to be prosperous and healthy and do well.  God cannot want me to suffer so and for no real reason.  I’m going to get myself something to eat.”

Temptation is right there with him.  All three tests are to see if Jesus, as the Son of God, will go against God’s will – especially as God’s will appears to be unhealthy and pointless.  Will he use his powers to get himself food?  Will he use his powers to get himself earthly glory?  Will he use his powers to give himself divine protection?

Note that all of these tests are common tests for every person.  God has given you abilities.  How will you use them?  Will you use them to fulfill yourself according to what you want?  Or will you use them as God promises to give you fullness of life?

I think we’d all answer that we’d use them according to God’s promises of what will give us fullness of life.  The problem is, the voice of God is often so faint to us – if we can hear it at all.  The voice of the world with: its comforts, its health, its approval from others, its security… are all available to us always at full volume.

If you want to shake your fist at God and cry out in rage over the situation you’d be in good company.  Many people have done just the same.  It is in the absence of hearing anything from God that we often turn to ourselves and think, “Well, I don’t know what God wants.  So I’ll try to be a good person with what I have and what I know; and generally go along with the world otherwise.”

I’m not in any position to condemn that if that’s what you feel.  So let’s go back to prayer.  Prayer, according to Luke, is opening yourself to the will of God.  It is not asking for stuff for yourself or for other people.  It is constantly reconnecting to God.

Raise everything to God in prayer.  Whether you hear God’s clear reply or not, you are doing something very important.  As part of a broader life of faith, raising everything to God in prayer is mulling over everything you do in your mind in light of your faith.

I’m reading a biography of Myron Taylor.  He was born in Lyons and became president of US Steel in the run up to World War 2.  He became an international negotiator during the war.   Taylor was a man of deep Christian faith.  Even today, over seventy years after his death, every church in Lyons receives usually over $1000 a month from his estate.  In his time as president of US Steel he negotiated with everyone; from major stock holders all the way to coal miners.  He seems to have tried to do what was good and right and fair even as he knew his decisions would hurt and endanger many people.  He mentions the tension he lived in – between the will of God, the wartime threat of Germany, the Great Depression, stockholders who want dividends, and laborers risking their lives and ruining their health.  He was a ruthless businessman on one hand, yet cared about people on the other.  I won’t try to depict Taylor as either a villain or a hero.  People have varied opinions of him.  But I think he gives an example of the complexity of life. 

A life of faith is to take all of that complexity to God in prayer.  Make decisions based upon what you know from the Bible, from church, and from your experience.  Quite likely there will be no answer that feels absolutely right.  But you have acted in response to opening yourself to the will of God.

I want to end with this.  I find it fascinating that President Roosevelt asked Taylor to help with postwar reconstruction even before the US entered the war!  As a diplomat Taylor tried to influence things with a long-term view in mind.  We need to remember that in our lives we do not go from problem to problem or crisis to crisis with times of rest in between.  Life is most likely one ongoing challenge; perhaps even an ordeal.  New problems and new challenges always arise.  What were the final words of our gospel reading?  After Jesus was famished in the wilderness and tested we’re told, “When the devil had finished every test he departed from him until an opportune time.”

What?!?  If not eating for 40 days is not an opportune time to tempt someone with food I don’t know what is!  Yet this was not the opportune time for Jesus to be tested.  We know that opportune time will come at the crucifixion, when following God’s will will cost Jesus life itself.  That makes no logical sense.  But through prayer Jesus wills stay true to it.

For our own lives, we realize that we should not expect things to be easy and comfortable and stable.  That may be what we want but that does not necessarily coincide with opening yourself to the will of God.  Instead, realize that God is with you every step of the complexity and trouble.  Stay open to God’s will and you will stay on the path of God’s kingdom.