November 10, 2024 Generosity Sermon Week 2 Acts 2:41-47

             Planning today’s worship services was a lot like trying to dock a boat.  If you’ve ever docked a boat you know it isn’t exactly hard but it can take some practice.  Unlike parking a car where you have a solid object connected to the solid earth, docking a boat is trying to control a solid object that is moving on a liquid.  The current in the water affects what you’re trying to do.  The current may be variable.  Similarly there may be wind you have to compensate for, and that may be variable too.  Plus there’s the fact that the slower a boat goes the less maneuverable it is.  And add in that when you’re docking the water is probably shallow so you raise the boat propeller up, which gives you even less control!  Still though,

with a bit of practice it isn’t hard.  You just have to be ready to respond to the unknown.

I say that’s what planning this worship service was like because, while our Sunday morning worship services are usually in development about a month or two out, the exact details of the service come together the Wednesday before.  You’ll remember well that last Tuesday was the election.  Results were coming in on Wednesday.  People’s reactions were all over the place.  Some were happy and excited.  Some were angry, scared, or confused.  As the dean of our conference I was also in touch with people from other congregations and the pastors.  Then there’s also that ever present dynamic of American society where people’s feelings change, and fast.  They feel strongly one day.  They feel different the next.  Usually about the third day they’ve forgotten all about it and are on to something else.

So, on a Wednesday how do you know what it will be like on a Sunday?  Like docking a boat where you have a solid object moving on top of a liquid, the solid form of the worship service is moving on an ever changing liquid.

There’s also the stewardship drive on generosity and the Acts 2 text chosen for today.  We want to stay on track for that too.  Fortunately it all comes together fairly well.

In Acts 2 the earliest followers of Jesus sell their possessions and hold all things in common.  Many people have interpreted that to mean that Jesus and the early church promoted communism.  While that interpretation is popular, I do not think that is what is intended.  Despite the fact that Jesus talked about money more than any other topic, he never promoted communism or any economic system we would recognize today.  What we do find in Jesus’ teachings and throughout the New Testament can be summed up in four things: work hard, be generous, don’t be exploitative, and don’t be lazy.

If there is any economic system at work at all it is an ancient Jewish one.  The ancient Jews believed that all things were God’s property and they were to use them accordingly.  As best I can interpret, that’s the only economic policy promoted in the Bible. 

There is an important and powerful thing at work underlying the text in Acts where the disciples are living with common things.  It’s powerful, but subtle.

Even though I don’t think it is a fair interpretation of the Acts text, for the sake of understanding that powerful thing, let’s look at how communism always ends up working.

            Since we’ve talked about boats in water, I have here a big basin with water in it.  Water is unstable.  It will take the shape of whatever container you put it in.  If I try to pick some up with my hand it will pretty quickly trickle away.  Water will seep through every tiny hole and crack.  If I take my hand and press down upon the surface of the water, what will happen?  Will the water resist?  Not really.  It will give way to my hand.  I’ll get a bit of buoyancy since my hand is less dense than the water, but that is it.  The water is a liquid and it will swirl around.  My hand will easily press through the water until I hit the solid bottom of the bowl.

            I believe that anyone who tries to construct a communist nation, or even a small community, is facing the problem like the instability of water.  Communist ideologies rest on the idea that there is some sort of overarching virtue in people that can be counted upon to become dominant.  While indeed, there are many good things that will come to the surface, they never actually dominate.  Some people in any society will work hard.  You can count on them.  They are conscientious and dependable.  Other people are lazy and exploitative.  They’re also clever.  They’ll invent aches, pains, complications, and all sorts of excuses so they don’t have to work.  Good luck trying to stay ahead of them!  Ultimately a sizeable portion of the population will try to find ways to extract value from others without providing the same value from themselves. 

Plus, most people are very skilled liars.  Polite society relies on a lot of people lying.  Oh, these aren’t conniving evil lies, but they are lots of times you pretend to like someone you don’t like.  Or you pretend to be interested in what someone is saying even though that person is boring.  Or you compliment someone on something even though they didn’t do a very good job.  It’s all part of civil, polite society.  But of course it can be darker.

Last week I was reading an article by 20^th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr.  He wrote about the way many people who are idealists, and think humanity is improving, are kidding themselves.  He said that many people will put on the façade of niceness, or inclusivity, or equality, or political correctness, or whatever social expectations the segment of society they are in expects, but it’s not real.  They’re still driven by selfish ambitions and they’ve found that the best way to get their selfish ends met is to embrace whatever it is that is socially acceptable.  They’ll even appear selfless for selfish ends if selflessness is considered a virtue.

            Many people continue to believe that somehow with proper education, and emotional responsiveness, and safety that a virtuousness will rise up within most people.  They say that if we can empower that, then human society will be: better, kinder, and gentler.

            Not so.  These people need to read some things from St. Augustine, who over 1600 years ago was writing about the way people are always driven by their needs and desires – not about altruism or some sort of reliable inherent goodness.  Augustine was not saying that people are always bad.  But he was saying that society is driven by complex factors and you can’t expect people to know and do the right and loving thing if it’s against their own self interest.

            Common ownership of all things based on virtuousness and sense that people within themselves will just have this upwelling of selfless love within them just won’t work.

            So, what is going on with the Acts text?  Is it a myth?  Is it a lie?  No.  There is a strong uniting force holding them together.

            Let’s do a middle school science demonstration on hydraulics.  I got the idea after helping Tom Urbanic last week with the church’s snow plow truck.  We’ve been having trouble with the hydraulic system that controls the plow.

            A liquid in a bowl will always just squish around to accommodate whatever you put in it.  It’s like human society based on goodness.  But liquids don’t always just squish all over the place.  Contain them and they can do forceful things.  That is the principle behind hydraulics.

            I have here two syringes connected by a plastic tube.  In the tube is water and there are no air bubbles.  If I press down on the one syringe the water cannot compress and it cannot squish out anywhere.  The only thing it can do is travel down the tube and push the other syringe up.  Similarly, if I pull back the other syringe will be sucked back down.  I can go fast, or slow, or however I want.  The water is contained in the tube and it has to respond.  This is only cheap plastic tube and plastic syringes.  On the church’s plow truck the components are steel and reinforced hosing.  Thousands of pounds can be lifted.  If you contain liquids you can control them very well.

            There was a powerful controlling, limiting, and unifying force among the early converts to Christianity.  They weren’t joined together by having a sharing spirit.  They weren’t a happy little utopian community where virtues reign.  It wasn’t goodness that unified them.  In fact, it was the recognition of the opposite!  The powerful unifying container around them was sinfulness.  If there was any virtue at all it was a common need for repentance.  I don’t mean the type of repentance where they all feel bad about themselves before God.  I mean the sort of repentance where they know of God’s generosity towards them.  They knew that the great and powerful creator of the universe loved them and chose them to do His work.  They didn’t deserve that honor.  Their community was no great collection of virtue.  It was a collection of people united in their knowledge that they needed God.

            Trying to be good on your own or as a community will result in water squishing all over the place.  United by a common recognition that they are sinners who don’t deserve it, and if left to their own would become manipulative and exploitative, they are powerfully held together.

            Gathered here today, we are not united in political party, or immigration policy, or economic strategy, or a common view of war or virtue.  We are not united in finances, race, gender, age, or anything like that.  We are united in our common recognition that if left to ourselves we would turn away from God.  But God calls us back and holds onto us tightly.

            Would it work for us to all sell our possessions and live communally?  I doubt it.  Would virtue reign?  I doubt that even more!  But the common bond of our need for God’s grace is a powerful uniter.  It makes us a solid and effective force.  We do share common ownership of this space.  We do generously share of our earnings to support this property, which is used by many in the community, and to support our staff salaries, and to create worship services, and support missionaries and all sorts of projects and ministries which are happening all the time.  Some are local.  Some are global.  It is powerful stuff that God provides for us.  We pray that God would always unite us and make us capable of doing all that needs to be done.

November 3, 2024 Generosity Sermon Week 1 John 6:1-15

             Last Wednesday at the men’s breakfast we were talking about the election and concluded that the real motive people have for which candidate they choose is, “What’s in it for me?”

            Now that may sound pretty selfish.  It can be.  It may be most often how people choose.  But it doesn’t necessarily have to be overly greedy.  You’re going to vote according to what is best for you.  It’s hard to vote in a way that hurts you, no matter how good or moral it may be. 

            Consider this.  Let’s say you live in an average three bedroom house in Victor.  You have the standard two-bathrooms, a yard, and some landscaping.  It’s on a nice street with nice neighbors.  You’ve lived in the house for years and just got done paying off the mortgage.  It’s been a big investment and it has taken a lot of work to own it.  Then a proposal comes along to build a large complex of low-income housing nearby.  You conclude, probably with good reason, that crime will go up.  Less friendly neighbors will be moving in.  And you know full well it’s going to lower your house’s value; probably by a lot.  Now the good Christian thing to do is to welcome the new development.  It will allow people to come into a great neighborhood.  More people can come into the excellent school system in Victor.  They’ll be able to do so affordably.  But when you consider that you’ve just worked hard for years and years, and that hard earned value is going to just evaporate, you’re at best going to swallow hard before you’d vote for such a project.

            Similarly, let’s say you have a million dollars in retirement savings.  Legislation that would serious curb climate change comes along.  But it’s going to make any number of investments tank, and your retirement savings is projected to drop by $600,000.  Are you going to vote for the candidate who backs such legislation?  It’s going to be tough!

            Even kind hearted people with all the right motives feel serious pressure to vote in their best interest!

            So now let’s turn to our gospel reading.  It’s actually a perfect text to read right before election day.  Jesus feeds thousands and thousands of people.  They all get their bellies full.  It’s a free lunch!  Everyone is excited.  Remember, food takes serious effort in those days.  Without mechanized agriculture it takes almost as many calories to plant, sow, harvest, thresh, and mill a bushel of wheat as you get from that bushel of wheat.  Free food is an incredible event!  Imagine being a person in those days when most of your time and energy is spent in acquiring food.  Then someone comes along and you can just get food… no cost, no expenditure of energy!

            Look at the last verse of our gospel reading.  The crowd wants to come and take Jesus and make him king by force.  Here’s a leader you could vote for who would truly be good!  He delivers on what he promises.  None of this: he says whatever he has to say in order to get you to vote for him and then he fails to do it.  If you look at both our presidential candidates you realize that both of them have made big promises there is no way they can make good on.  In an election you have to fool the majority of voters, or convince them that your opponent is truly bad.

            The feeding of the 5000 is truly a miracle.  It’s the only miracle of Jesus that is in all four of the gospels.  Each gospel tells it a slightly different way.  John’s gospel has one unique thing.  In the other three gospels Jesus give the bread and fish to the disciples and they distribute it them to the crowds.  Let’s call it having a support staff.  But in John’s gospel Jesus distributes all the food directly from himself.  Now the timing gets impossible.  John tells us the crowd numbered about 5000 in all.  Now if Jesus spent just three seconds giving each person food, which is an impossibly short time, it would take almost five hours to feed them all.  I can’t see people being too happy having to wait 5 hours for food!  Most likely it would take a whole day and then some.  The first people would be hungry again before the last people were served.

            I can’t scientifically account for John’s time frame.  But John isn’t worried about counting time.  He’s making a theological point.  The point is that each and every person got direct and personal contact and feeding from Jesus.

            A very important part of John’s gospel is Jesus’ presence.  Jesus abides.  The hymn Abide with Me comes from John’s gospel.  John wants every person to feel Jesus’ abiding presence within them.

            Jesus hosts two meals in John’s gospel.  The first one is here – the Feeding of the 5000.  The second one you won’t be able to guess correctly unless you’re an uncommonly good scholar of John.  We might be tempted to say that the next meal Jesus hosts is the Last Supper with his disciples.  But, interestingly enough, as John tells the story of the Last Supper Jesus washes the disciples’ feet, but they never actually get around to eating.  There’s no, “This is my body,” “This is my blood” stuff in John’s account of the Last Supper.  The next meal Jesus hosts involves another miracle of abundance.  It happens after the resurrection.  It’s the scene where the disciples have decided to go fishing again.  Now we’ll remember that the disciples were told to go out and proclaim the good news to the world after the resurrection, but they weren’t exactly doing that.  They decided to go back to their old way of life, at least the old way of life for some of them – fishing.

            You know the story.  They fish all night.  They catch nothing.  Dawn breaks.  They’ve caught nothing.  Jesus is along the shore but they don’t recognize him.  He says to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?”  Nope.  They don’t.  Then he says, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat and you will find some.”  As if the fish have all been avoiding the left side of the boat all night.  We know well that this is ridiculous fishing advice!  But, these expert professional fishermen do what this guy walking along the shore suggests.  They through the net out on the other side of the boat.  And immediately the net is so full of fish they can’t haul it in.  The story goes that they’re only about 300 feet from shore so they just drag it up onto the shore.  John tells us they caught 153 fish.  That number is probably significant.  153 is roughly the number of known nations at the time.  So this is symbolically catching all the nations.

            After the great catch the disciples come up on shore and we read that Jesus took bread and gave it to them, and he did the same with the fish.  Again, this is the second meal Jesus provides.  Once again it is bread and fish.

            The point of this story of abundance is Jesus’ presence.  Jesus is abiding with them.  With Jesus’ presence they can do all things.  They can do miraculous things.  Without Jesus they can do nothing.

            We’re talking about generosity this month as part of our stewardship drive.  The abiding nature of Jesus says a lot about generosity.  If you feel Jesus’ presence in your life then it probably isn’t too hard to be generous.  You know that Jesus is with you.  Jesus promises to abide with us always; now and into eternity.

But if you don’t feel Jesus’ presence then it is hard to be generous.  We do live in a world of limited resources.  Our politicians know that well.  Getting elected is really all about promising people more of the limited resources that are available; or getting people the resources they think they deserve.  Pretty much all wars are fought over resources: getting energy, land, valuable metals, luxuries.  You name it.  Yes, when resources are scarce it is hard to feel generous.  Giving anything, anything at all, is hard.  You do it grudgingly, sparingly, or with calculation.  You have a generous spirit only when having a generous spirit is calculated to get you a return.  Jesus talks about that several time – about giving only to get in return is not truly giving.

It is indeed hard to be authentically generous if you don’t feel Jesus’ abiding presence.  If you do feel it, being generous is pretty natural.  The good news is that there are ways to feel Jesus’ presence.  They aren’t exactly easy though.  The world is always offering tempting alternatives for you to spend your limited resources on.  But commitments to prayer, worship, Bible study, and Christian community have always been solid ways to feel Jesus’ abiding presence.

Though the world has limits, tells lies, and is exploitative; goodness, generosity, faithfulness, and integrity are all yours through our Lord Jesus Christ.  He is with us always and promises to provide.

October 27, 2024 Reformation Sunday Ephesians 6:10-24

             For most of my lifetime I’ve felt that American politics were relatively civil.  Republicans and Democrats disagreed for sure, but the debates were civil.  Fact checkable truths seemed to rule the day.  And if your party or your favored candidate lost an election you knew you could just wait until the next election cycle and try again.

            With this current election it seems like both parties have raised a level of anxiety such that if the other wins the very future of the nation is in peril.  Perhaps that is true.  Perhaps that is not.  I’m not a sociological expert.  What is true is that elections have always mattered.  Quite often in the past the outcome of an election did have a major impact on government policies and the daily life of the average person.

            Even so, it feels like this election is bigger.  And when it comes to the presidency and the House and Senate, it all seems to be up in the air.  (Although I understand it is reasonably likely that both houses of congress with see a swap in which party leads them.)  It all creates a lot of tension.  That tension has been building for years, perhaps decades.

            Politics used to be something that people would have polite disagreements about.  Now you better watch what you say, and there may well be plenty of severe arguments breaking out again this year when families gather around the Thanksgiving Day table.  If you’re lucky everyone at the table will be rooting for the same football team so you can have at least something to agree on!

            American democracy and American life has felt pretty tame for many people for quite a long time.  That’s not so in the present day.  Who knows if things will calm down or if they will continue to escalate.  Perhaps the heightened anxiety of the present day helps us to understand the imagery we read in Ephesians 6 about putting on the armor of God.

            Ephesians 6 talked about putting on the whole armor of God: the belt of truth around your waist, the breastplate of righteousness, as for your shoes – whatever makes you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit – which is the word of God.

            You get the picture of a well-armed soldier who is ready for battle.  But let’s be more specific than just that.  The author of Ephesians pretty clearly has in mind a Roman infantryman.  I don’t know how much you know about the Roman army, but Rome’s infantry was for all intent and purposes unstoppable.  It was the core of their military might.

            When the Roman infantry went to battle they did not act like a hoard with swords and shields wildly attacking an enemy; and then being victorious because of luck or superior fighting training.  The Roman infantry was successful because it was highly disciplined, strategic, and systematic.

            There is debate over how the infantry actually attacked.  There are lots of theories out there.  Most of them are fanciful.  I understand the History Channel has a program describing the way the Roman infantry defeated the ancient Britians outnumbered by 50 to 1 using a sawtooth attack pattern.  Like many things on the History Channel, it is probably more fantasy than fact.  What is certainly true is that the tactics the Roman infantry used changed over time.  They were good at incorporating things they learned from their enemies.  What is consistent over the centuries is that they made good use of some form of phalanx and wedge tactics.  The phalanx is where you line up infantrymen in shoulder to shoulder and a few layers deep.  If you’re in the front you’d hold your shield in your left hand and your sword in your right.  Being shoulder to shoulder your combined shields became like a wall.  There would be slight gaps left which you would use to thrust forward with your sword.  If you were in the front there would be someone behind you ready to take your place, and pushing on you to give more force to the forward motion. 

They would commonly combine the phalanx with a wedge formation.  You wouldn’t attack enemies in a straight line but rather in a point or wedge.  You moved forward, whether at a walk or at a run keeping the formation as tight as possible.

About the only way to stop the Roman infantry was to flank them or run around behind them.  But if you did that the Romans would combine their shields to be like a tortoise shell around them.  They were tough to attack like that!

A soldier in the Roman infantry was well discipled and did not fight alone.  He was part of a coordinated but flexible group. 

Let’s make sure we include all of this when we picture the armor of God that Ephesians is describing, and the lifestyle it suggests for Christians. 

Here in America in the 21^st Century we have the false understanding that faith is something that is to be kept personal and private.  We make an artificial division between church and state; and we make a similar artificial division between a private and public life.  We see faith as something that belongs in our private lives.  We tell ourselves that keeping faith personal and private is part of being respectful to others and their beliefs. 

Ephesians would certainly accept the notion of being respectful to other people, but it does not see faith as being personal and private.

Another mistake that we Americans have developed is to think that there is a model of a godly life or of a successful life.  Many people believe the myth that an ideal life is one where you grow up in a safe and stable household.  Then you get a job or go to college.  In time you move out, get married, buy a house, and have your own family.  Part of being a family is making sure your kids are raised to be well rounded; and that includes going to church.  Along the way with raising your family you save money for retirement.  Eventually, if all goes as it should you reach retirement age.  You retire and now have time for hobbies, travel, volunteer work, and leisure – in other words, all the stuff you wished you could have done but couldn’t because of a job and family.  Ideally you’re still healthy enough to enjoy the travel and hobbies for many years.  Eventually you die, but we don’t talk about that.

Does that sound like the ideal for American life?  Perhaps I could call it the myth of the American life?

Ephesians has no capacity to understand that.  It does not see life as safe and stable.  It does not see life, and especially faith, as individual efforts.  And it certainly does not see faith as part of a well-rounded life; and something you do once a week in worship and maybe a bit of personal devotion time.

I don’t want to come across as harsh.  And I don’t want to outright condemn the faith life of many people that involves engaging in weekly worship and having personal devotions.  It’s just that’s not in the vision of Ephesians or any of the New Testament.

Go back to the idea of the armor of God and the Roman infantry.  Ephesians sees life as a battle between good and evil.  Good wins in the end, but evil is a powerful and clever foe.  The Roman infantry adjusted its tactics and created new ones over time.  Any time you’re in a war you don’t just start with one strategy and stay with it to the end.  A war begins with certain tactics.  The opponent counters.  The initiator of the war adjusts tactics to take into account unexpected things in the opponent’s response.  The opponent adjusts in turn.  On and on it goes.  Look at World War 2.  All sides were developing new weapons and new tactics as time when on.

Evil is a clever and adjusting opponent.  We need to be just as clever and able to adjust.  Life is not intended to be a peaceful laid-out plan set by society that you try to follow.  Life is a battle with evil as it morphs with each new day.  You do not battle alone, though.  Just like the Roman infantry was not a collection of individual fighters.  It was individuals joined into a coordinated force.  We weaken ourselves when we think faith is to be kept private and individual.  I’m not sure how that ever seeped into American Christianity, but it certainly isn’t biblical!  Even when Jesus sent his disciples out on missionary journeys he never sent them out alone.  They always went as teams, or at least pairs.

            You have been equipped by God for battle.  You have your body, at whatever age or shape it may be.  You have your faith.  You have a God-given sense of morality.  You have your church community.  You have: cleverness, determination, conscientiousness, creativity, emotionality, and agreeableness.  It is all held together and maintained by God’s gracious love.  As Ephesians would describe it, that gracious love is not soft and quiet and quaint.  It is forceful – a fire, an arrow, a sword.  All of them capable of effectively battling the wiles of evil.

            While we are to be loving always, let us not be fearful or timid in our lives of faith.  Through that God’s will is done and our faith is truly a blessing to our world.

 

October 20, 2024 Ephesians 5:6-20

    Ephesians 5:10 said, “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.”  What does that mean?  That’s easier said than done!  It is fine to say to a little kid to be kind and loving to people.  Share.  Don’t be selfish. …all of the basic virtues we use in our society.  But when you become an adult and shoulder adult responsibilities, life gets a lot more complicated!  How are we to find out what is pleasing to the Lord?  Too many things are gray.  We often don’t begin to have clear enough information to go on.

I’m going to lay out some depressing thoughts but hopefully they will get us to deeply understand a verse that comes up later in what we read from Ephesians today.  And I think we’ll get some solid things to go on about pleasing the Lord.

            As you may remember, I spent last week at Camp Lutherlyn in western Pennsylvania.  It was for a course I’m taking called Environment and Religion in Northern Appalachia.  Camp Lutherlyn was founded shortly after World War 2.  Since then it has grown to 642 acres.  It hosts close to a thousand campers every summer.  It has year-round programming and a full time environmentalist on staff.  During the school year local districts send their children on field trips for learning and team building.  It’s an impressive place.

            The environmental program there is what I’d call a practical environmental program.  They have high efficiency buildings.  They try to conserve resources wherever possible. Food waste and paper products from the dining hall are composted and put on the gardens; which grow some of the food that is eaten.  There is a high efficiency solar powered house built from reused lumber, straw as walls and insulation, and plastered with natural plasters and stucco.  Someone lives in it year round, but it is a display house and proof of concept; again at a practical level.

            From this description you could reach the conclusion that Lutherlyn is a quaint model proving that faith, environmental sensitivity, and kindness can lead us to a utopian society.  But not so.  And that is a big part of why the class took place there.

            Lutherlyn has an abandoned coal mine on it that leaches toxic chemicals; which requires monitoring and clean-up.  No one knows how long.  There are mines dug by the Romans that are still leaching toxins thousands of years later.  There is also an abandoned oil well on Lutherlyn.  Though the camp wants to preserve its forest land and mature the trees for carbon sequestration, financial needs usually requiring timbering off the mature trees every decade or so.

            The camp has leases for its natural gas rites.  A gas well pad is located immediately adjacent to the camp.  It has wells running several directions, including under the camp.  Now the camp’s lease was not written by any ignorant local.  It was created by an industry expert.  But the well has changed hands and the new owner violates the terms of the lease.  So, despite the Bible’s discouragement of lawsuits, the camp has had to sue the well’s current owner for breach of contract.  The well owner has more lawyers than the camp and the camp can’t afford six figure legal fees to fight them.  So they reached a settlement deal out of court; which largely undermines the originally well-written lease.

            Ironically, next year the camp is building a forty acre solar array right up against the gas well!  I’d love to see an arial photograph of that when it’s completed!

            Here’s the place the camp is in.  Despite having great numbers of summertime campers and year round programming; all of which brings in lots of money, it is not always enough to cover the enormous costs of running the camp.  Should they save their trees and fire the environmentalist?  Should they not have signed a lease for the gas rites, knowing full well that the gas under the camp could be extracted anyway by just drilling wells nearby.  So they’d get nothing?  Should they cancel all the faith and environmental education programs?  Should they cancel the school programs?  Or should they charge more for everything, which would price it out of the reach of many people?

            Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.  Quaint thought.  Hard to put into practice when you consider all the complications of the world!

            Here’s where you may feel guilt, but that is not my intent.  We humans, especially us in North America, are extracting enormous amounts of energy from the earth – far more than can be sustained for all that long; even forgetting things like climate change and environmental damage.  Our lives, our devices, our cars, our homes, our… just about everything about us, is an unsustainable mess.

            Many in our society pride themselves in being environmentally sensitive, but they don’t understand the whole picture.  They don’t consider the extraction of resources half way around the world in order to make their phones or build their cars.  They don’t take into account the decline of medicine, sanitation, communication, and the like if our extraction of resources were to stop.

            There is no good way out.  Ephesians 5:16 which we read earlier said, “…make the most of the time, because the days are evil.”  It is easy to think of evil as something obviously and destructively distinct from good.  Our politicians certainly like to paint that sort of scenario.  But that is not the case.  Evil does not come in the form of a man in a red suit with a tail and carrying a pitch fork.  And evil does not come only in the form of obvious seduction, or overt cruelty, or even a gradual slippery slope away from the good.  Evil has many forms.  Perhaps we need to include in those forms the way it can twist its way in and through goodness such that it is impossible to pull them apart.  In Romans 7:21-25 St. Paul writes, “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.  For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that swells in my members.”

            If the “good old days” ever feel simpler or better think again.  If St. Paul, writing almost 2000 years ago finds evil inextricably weaving itself into everything good.  He couldn’t escape it no matter how hard he tried.  And we can’t either.  Evil is just that tightly woven into the good.

            St. Paul continues, “Wretched man that I am!  Who will rescue me from the body of death?  Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

            There we have it.  God alone.

            When we start our worship services with a confession and forgiveness it may be tempting to look back over the week and think yourself a good person.  I certainly hope you can feel that way most weeks.  And yet, even if you think you’ve been a perfect angel, don’t deceive yourself.  Certainly try, try, try with all your might to be good.  But if you fool yourself into thinking that you have actually been perfectly good, then evil has got quite a strong hold on you.

            We do all things with a genuine sense of humility knowing that it takes the power of God, and God’s power alone, to truly separate us from evil.

            So, we’ll end where we began.  The line, “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.”  That is indeed what we do.  Our only hope of accomplishing it is through the genuine humility of knowing the inescapability of evil but that God does do it.  Notice the text does not say, “Do what is pleasing to God.”  Or, “Know what is pleasing to God.”  No, the author of Ephesians knows full well the impossibility of our situation.  “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.”  It is a goal.  It is a desire.  It is a driving force.

            Perhaps the best news is that God does have the power to overcome evil.  When you try to do what is pleasing to the Lord, and evil makes it inevitable appearance trying to undo your efforts, by your very attitude towards it you are undoing evil.

            Evil likes surety and simple answers and absolutes.  That is where it thrives.  Those are all easy answers.  What is pleasing to God is not always clear, but it is in the striving that God does conquer evil through us.

            Let me end be rereading the final line of our text: “Give thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

September 22, 2024 Ephesians 3:1-13

Here’s what I suspect will be a new word for you: anacoluthon. I think I can correctly conclude you do not use that word on a daily basis. It is, however, what our reading from Ephesians starts off with. An anacoluthon is an abrupt mid-sentence shift to a different subject without any regard for sentence structure. For example, “Do you realize how late, I haven’t mowed the lawn!” Or they may not connect, “I agree that children should - wait! Did you see that car run the red light?”

A more literal translation of the first line of Ephesians 3 is, “For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles – surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given me for you…” It’s jarring. It goes together, but not in any flowing logical sense. While the author created this anacoluthon for effect, the whole rest of the passage may feel the same way for us. It jumps and links though: former generations, mysteries, prophets, gospel, Paul’s apostleship, church, God’s wisdom, heavenly places, confidence, and not losing heart. It may well leave you mentally dizzy trying to follow it. And if you do manage to follow it all your mind is exhausted.

Let’s learn a bit more about the world of that day, and with that I think we can understand what is happening.

There were a number of religions in the first century that we call mystery religions. These were not the main civic religions, which were public and open. They were closed and secretive. Admission usually came by invitation only. There would be a secret initiation right where the new member was united to the deity. Upon joining, and only upon joining, would a new member learn of the mysteries or secrets of the religion. These secrets would usually be about how to attain eternal life. Not surprisingly, eternal life was only attainable by those who were members. Few, if any, outsiders would be thus saved.

Christianity was not a mystery religion. It was open to all and it did not claim specific mysteries that one had to use to reach eternal life. However, there were certainly many beliefs that would puzzle an outsider. For example, how could Jesus be fully human and fully divine at the same time? How can you have two natures but only one person? That’s like saying two equals one. Or the Trinity. Though the doctrine wasn’t developed for quite a while, the idea that there is one and only one God, yet three persons or expressions within that one God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, makes very little sense. That’s saying one plus one plus one equals one. Bad math. Good theology. How it works is a mystery.

Yet these Christian mysteries were not the same as the pagan mystery religions. It was commonly believed at the time that there were several layers to the heavens. Each of the several planets existed in a different layer of the heavens. In order to attain eternal life one had to pass through all the layers of the heavens. In each of the layers there were angels, spirits, forces and powers. To get through them might require the use of secret knowledge. Or they might require the passing of tests. Or, during your life you might have to perform certain rituals, offer prayers, or make sacrifices to please the rulers of the layers. By doing so you could pass through them when you die.

None of this is clear. We do not have definite knowledge of the mystery religions or their mysteries. Many of them died with them. But it seems to fit what the author of Ephesians is saying when we read, “…through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.” (3:2-10)

He goes on, “This was in accordance with the eternal purpose that he has carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have access to God in boldness and confidence through faith in him.”

So, for the author of Ephesians it is not mysteries and tests and challenges to get to eternal life. Getting to God is not through numerous layers of heavens. It is direct access to God -in boldness and confidence- through faith.

Remember back to what we read a few weeks ago in chapter 1. There we read in Vs. 20-21, “God put… power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.”

Those words aren’t just rhetorical flourish. If the Ephesians believed the heavens were multiple layers with various angels and rulers and powers, then Christ was above them all; and for all time.

So, the mysteries of Christianity, such as they are, are very simple. You don’t need secret knowledge. You don’t need knowledge at all. And you don’t need to say secret prayers or perform rituals or sacrifices or anything like that. You do not need to worry about having to undergo grueling struggles and challenges to get to eternal life after you die. All of that, whatever it might be, was taken care of once and for all for you by Jesus.

I think we often do not appreciate the sheer simplicity of our faith. It is simply a relationship with God. It is a relationship where the all-consuming ways of this world are proven to be dead ends, and instead fullness of life comes by recognizing God’s goodness for you.

Oh, the problems and messes we make of our lives by thinking we need to fit in. Oh, the way we exhaust ourselves in the need to keep up appearances. Oh, how much we worry about things that are not important at all.

It is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. We read that from Ephesians two weeks ago. And remember, the faith that is talked about there is not your own intellectual belief. It is not your mental capacity to believe doctrines or facts about Jesus. Or about living in a particular way. Perhaps it is better to say we are saved by God’s grace through Jesus’ faithfulness. It is probably not referring to our own faith. Even in verse 12 which I quoted a couple minutes ago, “…we have access to God in boldness through faith in him.” It is equally valid, and perhaps better, to translate it as, “we have access to God in boldness through the faith of Jesus.”

In other words, it is not your faithfulness that saves you. It was Jesus’ faithfulness that already saved you. So, what do you have to do to get to eternal life? There’s good news for that. You know this already. You can’t get to eternal life. It’s impossible for you. It is impossible for me. No one has that power. It is the power of Jesus that has done it for us.

Let’s let that rest for a while because those thoughts can make us spin round and round for hours. There’s another important thing to note in all of this. That’s the church.

We read today in Ephesians 3:10, “…through the church the wisdom of God in its rich variety might now be made known…” That is not the church as some supernatural holy institution. You’ll remember that the word church is a very simple word that means the assembly. The church is not intended to be a holy organization with secret rites and rituals that somehow has a mysterious supernatural connection to God. The church is, simply put, the assembly of the believers. The church’s power on earth lies completely within itself. It is the community it creates for its members. Throughout the New Testament we realize the church is not to see itself as a group that collectively calls on God for miraculous problem solving. The church is the practical collection of believers who do things together for their common good and for the good of the world around them.

Faith is not intended to be a private individual affair. Although that is what it has effectively become in many people today. Faith is a community endeavor.

The church is the assembly of believers that lives with the knowledge of what God has done. In so doing it makes known in real ways what God is like. Spreading the gospel is not supposed to be an individual thing. Spreading the gospel is not supposed to be individuals annoying their neighbors to attend a worship service, and that God will then somehow save them. Spreading the gospel is the witness of the assembly of the faithful, as it makes God’s ways known in a world that does not believe in them. The church is the community where God’s truths are alive and functional here and now. That is good news to a world that has lost sight of the real meaning of God’s goodness.

September 15, 2024 Ephesians 2:11-22

Ephesians is an intellectually dense and possibly confusing book. We’ve been reading through it section by section these last few weeks in worship. Each section has a core idea that if you can understand it the rest of it makes sense. The core idea for the section we read today is in verse 19, “So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God…”

We ae citizens and members of the household of God. Citizenship and family. These are ideas we may easily overlook but are essential to understanding the passage.

What is citizenship? What does it mean to be in a family? They give us more than we may realize. Imagine what it would be to not have citizenship or family. You’d be a living human, certainly. But what else.

Here is a painful thing to imagine but it gets at the idea. Imagine that you are a 17-year-old girl living Columbia in South America. Drug cartels in your hometown have made it impossible for your family to stay safe. Making a desperate decision, your family pulls all their resources and hires some smugglers to get you and your siblings to the United States. It’s precarious. It's not legal. But it’s a chance rather than no chance at all.

Along the way you are separated from your siblings. And, you are sexually assaulted by the smugglers and become pregnant. Somehow, someway, you actually make it across the border into the southern United States. You have no money. No contacts. No documents. And limited skill in English.

I have created a very disturbing situation to imagine. I certainly hope it is not true, but there is probably some measure of truth to it. It gets at the point. This 17-year-old is certainly a person. She is alive. But who is she? What would you do? Where would you turn? Who could you trust? You cannot exist alone. But you have no means of getting food, water, shelter, and even the most rudimentary medical care? Who would you approach? You have no outside way of confirming your identity.

Citizenship in a nation gives you an identity. In the United States you have a name. You have a birth certificate. You have a Social Security number. And you have a host of rights, privileges, and expectations that go along with it. If you are a citizen of a different nation you most likely have the same or the equivalent in documentation, rights, and responsibilities.

But take away the protection and rights that your citizenship gives you in this world and who are you? What keeps you safe? What guarantees you at least some sort of rudimentary justice and fairness? If you have no citizenship and someone commits a crime against you, where are you going to turn? Who can you turn to? You can’t turn anywhere.

Ephesians 2:19 says we are citizens with the saints. That means we are citizens in God’s kingdom. It also says that we are members of the household of God.

In the 1st Century Greek and Roman world the father was the head of the household. Being a part of a household was pretty much essential to survival, or at least to thriving. The father, or pater familias was the head of the household. He basically owned everything. He owned his wife. He owned the children. He owned the slaves, the land, the livestock and all the family possessions. If you were a woman, child, or slave you wanted to have a good pater familias. And if you did not, woe to you. You had very few rights. The pater familias even controlled who was in the family and who was out. He could reject a child if he so chose. The father is also the one who gave the children their names.

Do you remember the story of the naming of John the Baptist? John’s father, Zechariah, was unable to speak. He had been visited by an angel who prophesied the birth of John. Zechariah didn’t believe it and asked the angel for a sign as proof. So he got what he asked for. The angel said he wouldn’t be able to speak until the child was born. And so it happened. When it came time to naming the baby he couldn’t do it. So his wife Elizabeth chimed in and said his name was John. The crowd didn’t accept that. She wasn’t the father. She didn’t have naming rights. Finally they gave Zechariah something to write with and he we wrote, “His name is John.”

The pater familias sounds like a tyrant. Some certainly were. But many were not. If you were the father you bore a lot of responsibility. Your wife and children depended upon you. Your workers and slaves depended on you. You had to make good economic decisions, good farming decisions, and good family decisions. Sure, most fathers delegated many tasks, but the buck stopped with them.

So, Ephesians says we are citizens and members of the household of God. When we say, “Our Father,” in the Lord’s Prayer we are invoking this ancient family system. We are acknowledging God as our Pater Familias. God gets to choose whether we are in the family or not. God gets to determine our identity. We look to God for our protection and to provide for us.

Safe, solid, well-run households of the Roman world were the basic building blocks of society. Households built communities, which built cities and provinces, which combined to form nations and empire – which was able to create citizenship for its people. Ephesians tells us that God is our Father. We are members of the household and we are citizens of God’s kingdom.

I hope none of us ever have been in the situation of the undocumented 17-year-old that I used as an example before. I hope none of us are ever in such a situation. But it is a contrast that helps us realize how essential it is to life to be a part of a family and a citizen of a country. Take away those things and what are you? Is survival possible at all? None of us exist alone.

We all know that families can be great. But some families are horrible. Some nations are great. Some are horrible. Being a part of a family or a nation in the world today is not a guarantee of success or of a good life. Therefore our real citizenship is in God’s kingdom. That is not about Social Security numbers or documents or what our ancestry is. Ephesians tells us that all are united by the blood of Jesus. It is with that that we wrap up.

It would be great to live in a world where everyone was hard working and responsible. It would be great to live in a world where people earned what they consumed and didn’t take from others. It would be great to live in a world where there was honesty and trust. It would be great to live in a world without barriers and security checks and the need for Social Security numbers and citizenship papers. It would be great to live in a world of responsible loving fathers and mothers, and brothers and sisters, and neighbors nearby and far away. But that is not the case.

Somehow it is the nature of human society to create divisions. They decide who is in and who is out. In the day of the writer of Ephesians one of those divisions was between Jews and non-Jews. Or as they would say, Jews and Gentiles.

I’m not qualified to give an opinion on international politics and trade and immigration and all of that. Human sinfulness is woven through it all. Everyone, including the most loving and selfless among us, cannot escape the sinfulness and the complications of barriers; and effectively the need for them. But as we live with that unavoidable reality we are called to operate at a higher morality.

The cross achieved what no human ever could – reconciliation of a sinful humanity with God. If God is the King in the kingdom and the Pater Familias, is God a stern tyrant who needs to be appeased to deal with his anger? No. Is God drawing lines and to who is capable of being his citizens ad in his household? No. At least not according to Ephesians. God is a loving benefactor, offering all people a stake in salvation. By dying on the cross God breaks down a wall that separates humanity from God. We humans unwittingly and unknowingly built it. Ephesians 2:14 says it is by the blood of Christ that the divide has been broken.

If you, as a citizen of a nation ever encounter a 17-year-old girl with no identity, no safety, and no hope, I cannot give you answers as to how to treat her. The situation is too complex for easy answers. But ultimately you treat her and all people with the recognition that Christ’s blood was for them too. They are fully and freely invited into the household of God and citizens of God’s kingdom. That is who they are and who you are. That is their identity and your identity. I believe things will sort themselves out from there.

September 8, 2024 Ephesians 1:15-2:10

As you almost certainly know, the Bills play their opening game this afternoon. Football is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, culture-wide thing in our nation. Even if you don’t care about football at all, about the only thing there is more conversation about is the upcoming election.

I wonder if football will hold its prominence for years to come? I wonder what it will be like, say, 50 years from now. Will there be the same fervor? Will it be stronger? Will it be weaker? And centuries from now I wonder how anthropologists, and possibly archeologists, will describe the football of today. What will make sense? What won’t?

I sometimes wonder how they will interpret the “Bills Mafia”? I think we all know what that means. But will someone understand it decades or centuries from now? Will they think that instead of it referring to loyal fans, will think it is some sort of a regional violent organized crime ring? It is the “mafia” after all! I can see the doctoral dissertations now contemplating the connections between sports, huge expensive stadiums, politics, and organized crime!

This is an example of why things need to be kept in context. Pull the Bills Mafia out of context and you quickly end up with absurdity. And yet, ignore the excitement around football and enthusiastic football fans and you’re missing a big piece of our culture today.

When we read the Bible we need to remember that we are reading just an excerpt from a complex society a couple millennia ago. While they certainly didn’t have the Bills Mafia, there were certainly major regional cultural dynamics that were just for fun. Just like today, society was a complex mix of: politics, economics, theology, science, and geography. What appears confusing our complex to us may have been very clear then.

One thing that may be very confusing for us today is one particular line from Ephesians in our Bible readings. What does it mean when it says, “…following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient”? It sounds sinister, evil, demonic. But is that so? Is the Bills Mafia a violent organized crime ring?

It's impossible to exactly know what the power of the air is. But it is helpful to remember the scientific understanding of that day; which wasn’t as ignorant as we might think. Remember, most educated people knew things like the earth was a sphere. Mostly they lacked the sophisticated testing equipment of today.

In those days they didn’t have the Periodic Table of Elements that you probably had to use in chemistry class. They believed there were only four elements: earth, air, water, and fire.

Air was particularly complex because it could be contaminated so easily. It was chaotic. When there was a rain storm the air was also conveying water. When there was a dust storm the air was carrying earth. Thunder storms that caused tornadoes were a chaotic and dangerous jumble of earth, air, water, and fire.

Despite knowing the earth was a sphere, they lived in what they thought was a three-fold universe. Hell was literally down in the ground. Living people lived on the surface. Up and high were the sun, moon, planets, and stars. They were the heavens.

When you combine the way the air could be a chaotic mix you start to understand how they saw the air as a murky polluted region between the earth and heaven. It wasn’t necessarily bad. It just couldn’t be guaranteed to be either good or bad.

Again, we can’t be absolutely certain of this, but the ruler of the power of the air was something that was unknown, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. If you are living in a world where you have to work hard to survive, and you die because of either warfare, disease, or the breakdown of your body because of the intensity of labor needed to stay alive, you don’t want unpredictable and uncontrollable. You want stability!

There is no way to pin down the meaning of the next verse, “All of us once lived among them in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of flesh and senses, and we were by nature children of wrath, like everyone else.” Scholars debate that one a lot. What they all agree on is that is was chaos and instability.

That, then, is in contrast to what comes next: “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…”

However you understand the ruler of the power of the air, those in Christ have been elevated to the heavenly places. That does not mean that you have actually gone to heaven before you die. There is too much wrong in our world to call it heaven! But it does mean that despite living in this chaos, our ultimate place is a place of stability and surety. We live now with that surety.

If in the chaos of this life you have created for yourself a place of surety…, well…, it isn’t all that sure. It is pretty precarious. It’s the false security of wealth. And if in the chaos of this life you have not created for yourself a place of surety, then you need not worry. You are alive together with Christ and that is the ultimate place of surety. Whether you have created a life of surety for yourself here and now or not, the task before us is the same.

The perennial weakness of Lutheran theology is that inadvertently creates laziness. Lutheran theology is built on Ephesians 2:8, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”

The problem with that is that we humans tend to be opportunists. We think, “If I don’t have to work for my salvation, and if I don’t have to work to prove my worthiness to God, then I don’t have to do anything. I’ll just sit back and enjoy this life to the fullest. Then after I die I’ll get the benefits of heaven too.” It’s a win-win situation for us! It promotes laziness.

The author of Ephesians will have none of that. Almost as if he knew laziness was going to be what happens, we get the very next verse, “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

So, we may be saved by grace though faith, but we are created for good works. They are the way of life prepared by God beforehand for our way of life.

If you’re prone to laziness you’re huffing in disgust at this news. The way of life God has prepared for us is a life of work.

If there’s anything we humans don’t like it’s work. We want to do the minimal amount possible yet still get the most benefit. The idea of reducing work is the heart of innovation and efficiency. Why should I push hard to slide a heavy object when I can put it on a roller? Or why should I push on an object on a roller when I can put it on a cart with wheels. And why should I push on a cart with wheels when I can invent something that will propel the wheels for me?

The work God prepared beforehand for our way of life is not meant to undermine our inventiveness. To the contrary. God gave us brains to use them to make the work better.

The good works God has in mind is a direction of our lives that is focused outside of ourselves. Yes, we are to work to earn our keep. But we are also to work for the betterment of our community. The ruler of the powers of the air – whatever that may be – will always be creating chaos and uncertainty. We, who are solidly with Christ, work to create order and solidness in this world.

Life is not about leisure. Life is about applying your skills to the world around you. It is about developing your skills more fully for the world around you. That goes for a strapping teenage boy who is all muscle and energy, and it goes for an elderly woman in a nursing home whose frail body is failing.

Use what you have. Think, stretch your limits, grow, and use that for the world in which you live.

It is my opinion, admittedly not backed by lots of research, that the biggest reason why so many people in our world today are struggling to find themselves is because they do not have meaningful work to do. Meaningful work does not mean highly paid work, or even paid work at all. Meaningful work is a life orientation of commitment of your energy away from yourself and instead directed to the world around you.

That is the honor and the dignity and the purpose God has given you. While we certainly need to take breaks, and we need to do fun things too, work is what fulfills us.

Today is God’s Work Our Hands Sunday. We have some work projects planned. The weather is probably thwarting them. But we will do them when we can. It is our privilege to work for God.