I Believe (a sermon on Ezekiel 36:22-32 & The Apostles' Creed)

This is a sermon preached on Ezekiel 36:22-32 and The Apostles' Creed during our Lenten worship service on Wednesday, March 15, 2017 at Faith Lutheran Church. 

This reading from Ezekiel is an interesting one to pair with the theme of the Apostles’ Creed. The passage contains a back-and-forth with the themes “it’s not for your sake, but for my holy name” and calling out our idolatry, but God also promises to cleanse us from it, and to bring us into a life of abundance, even though it is unmerited by our own sake.  

I don’t think we need to go too far down the road of idolatry to know we are all guilty of it. Whether it is something outside of God that we turn to for life or if we ourselves begin to behave in a self-righteous manner and think that we are responsible for what God does or that we have a better plan than the Holy One. We all have something that we put before God at various times.

Throughout scripture and especially in this reading from Ezekiel, it is said that God acts because of who God is, not because of who we are or what we do.  We are merely God’s people and the Apostles’ Creed is a gift that helps us understand our God.

This first article or part of the creed tells about God, the father, in creation.

I believe in God the father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

This revelation of God brings forth truth as God is the only source of life and all things in it. Not only did God create the cosmos but also knows the number of hairs on our heads. We have a loving Creator who knows us entirely.

God also provides us with all that need plus some.

God creates us because it is who God is.

The second article of the creed tells about God, the Son, revealed in Jesus who is our redeemer.

We confess who Jesus is, highlighting key aspects of his life like the incarnation of the divine and the human dwelling fully in one, his death and resurrection, and his role as the coming judge.

The creed notably leaves out details of Jesus’ life and ministry. We do not hear of the calls to be fishers of men, the many healings that took place, or the reinterpretation of God’s law through the sermon on the mount and other sayings of Jesus.

The focus in the Apostles’ Creed is that Jesus is the Son of God who came to redeem us from the powers of sin, death, and the devil.

We are no longer lost and condemned but have been freed through Christ.

This redemption means that while sin, death, and the devil will still be present in the world and affect our lives, we do not belong to them, we belong to God and this redemption claims us that the worst thing that happens, is not the last thing and as it says in Romans, I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God redeems us because it is who God is.

The third article of the creed tells about God, the Holy Spirit, who reveals that God makes us holy.

This part of the creed is the one that always gets me the most. It is the loaded article as it kind of seems to throw in everything else important that Christians believe that has not already been named – but really that is all the work of the Spirit. It reveals to me in the most raw and beautiful of ways we encounter God all the time, mostly without realizing it.

We confess that we believe in the Holy Spirit, who continues to mingle in our lives, nudging us, nagging us, enlivening us, empowering us to participate in the holy work that God is already doing.

We confession that we believe in one holy catholic church. This is little “c” catholic meaning one holy universal church, not referring to the Roman Catholic Church, although they are included in it.         

This part may seem hard to believe since we don’t always get along with other Christians, and not even other Lutherans sometimes. But we believe that this is God’s church, not our church.

We believe in the communion of saints. This bond connects us not only as the community that gathers together, but with all the saints. The ones at other churches. The ones who have died and gone before us. It is a beautifully shared community in Christ that I cannot even imagine in its fullness.

We believe in the forgiveness of sins, that God truly care about us so much that Jesus died for us. This sacrificial love empowers us not only be forgiven, but to forgive one another.

We believe in the resurrection of the body and the live everlasting. This eternal gift of freedom and life is unending and unmerited.

Luther begins his explanation of this article of the creed by saying, “I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord”

Faith is a gift of the Spirit, not a will of man.

God makes us holy, invites us again and again to participate in what God is up to in the world and encounter grace, truth, and love.

God makes us holy because it is who God is.

Who God is a mysterious and unmerited gift.

Live in the mysterious and unmerited gift of being created

Live in the mysterious and unmerited gift of being redeemed

Live in the mysterious and unmerited gift of being made holy

God does not do this because of you or me or anything any of us could do.

God does this because it is who God is.

I will conclude this homily as Luther ended his explanation of the first article of the Apostles’ Creed, “For all of this I owe it to God to thank and praise, serve and obey God. This is most certainly true.”

Persist to God's Kingdom (a sermon on Matt 5:38-48)

Preached on Matthew 5:38-48 (NRSV).

This summer I will be turning 30. This milestone event is not one that comes with much grief but has given me the opportunity to reflect on these last nearly 30 years. In this reflection, I have realized something, something that has been a bit disappointing. As I measure up these last nearly 30 years, I have realized that I thought my life would be perfect by now, you know, just like Jesus tells us to be at the end of our gospel reading.

In many ways, my life can seem perfect. I have a loving marriage, 2 happy healthy children, a job that I love, a community to belong to and experience God’s presence in. I guess the part of perfection that is missing is that I thought, after spending most of my life preparing to be something, now that I am many of those things, I’m shocked at the amount of growth still left to do.

I thought I had arrived, only to learn this is not a final destination, only a part of a greater journey.

It’s quite disappointing to realize that you won’t figure out everything by age 30, but anyone with greater wisdom, life experience, or maybe just common sense probably could have told me this. But it brings me back to our text. “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect”

As Christians, I think sometimes we can think as our faith milestones as markers that we have arrived or reached our spiritual destination, at least in this lifetime. Whether baptism, confirmation, or a mountain top experience, sometimes our faith can feel a bit like my perceptions of turning 30. We believe in Jesus, we have arrived. But yet it’s really just another starting point and no where close to a final stop.

As we hear this call to be perfect, it may feel like Jesus is setting an unattainable goal in front of us. Especially as Lutherans, with our beautiful theology of sinner and saint… well to just be perfect doesn’t really fit that description. Or our emphasis on God’s unending grace. If we were perfect, would we need it?

To answer these questions and understand what Jesus could be talking about, we must dig into the text a bit deeper. When looking at the Greek word that translates to perfect, a better word choice would have been something along the lines of completion or an intended goal. This more accurate translation changes the way we hear Jesus’ command from a flawless lifestyle to one that is continually working toward something.

That something is also not an ambiguous goal.

This call to persistence comes in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is presenting what the Kingdom of God is all about - its ethics, its practices, and its make up. He shares what it means to be blessed by lifting up the ones who had been put aside, the hurting, the hungry, the oppressed, those striving for peace and being persecuted in Christ’s name. Calls us to be salt and light, shares wisdom and new interpretations of God’s law concerning some of the very basic characteristics of being in relationships and truth-telling, and then into today’s text.

Jesus again reinterprets God’s law. “You have heard it said” “but I say to you” each time calling us to go beyond a retaliation and 'get even' model of justice, and instead calls us to something more, to turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give up your cloak also.

These calls to go beyond are not just out there comments Jesus says to illustrate how far we need to go, these would have been real examples to the people whom Jesus was gathered with to show just how far God’s love calls us to resist evil.

Not only to not fight back, but to give more to those who take from you.

To pray for those who persecute you.

Because anyone can love the people who love them, even the tax collectors.

But Jesus calls us to a countercultural behavior and lifestyle this is persisting to live a life transformed by God’s love and grace.

This is what it means to be about the Kingdom of God.

This also comes as an address to a whole community and even uses the plural form of “you” so a little more like “all y’all” are to work toward the goal of living out God’s kingdom.

We persist in this kingdom work together.

We persist on a journey to continue to strive to life lives transformed by God’s love, not to earn God’s love or grace, Jesus took care of that for us, but we are to be communities transformed by God’s love and grace in such a way that

in the face of hate we persist to love

in the face of brokenness, we persist to reconciliation

the face of fear, we persist to hope

These are kingdom values, God’s intended goals for communities of disciples to persist to and we do it because God so perfectly and persistently strives for this kingdom for our sake.

Amen.

Relationship, Not Right (a sermon on Micah 6:1-8)

My sermon on Micah 6:1-8 (NRSV) preached at Faith Lutheran Church on Sunday, January 29, 2017. 

For at least the last 3 months, the verse from Micah has been eating at me,

particularly the part that says “what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

It is said so simply that it seems pretty clear. But yet it eats at me still. It eats at me because, for the last 2 years I have seen our country tear apart again and again.

I am only 29 years old. My personal and collective history is brief compared to many. I don’t know how the current division of our communities holds up to previous times of great tension. But I can tell you, I don’t like this.

And I know you don’t like this either.

I also know many of you would probably gladly hear me and Pastor Josh say we will not bring up anything about the party line division of our country or anything else that skirts to close to a political edge.

But we will not stop talking about this because God calls us to love each other, all of the each others out there, whether similar or different to ourselves. And we need to build more bridges across this division instead of building up walls.

But I also just as much say, I don’t care who you voted for. I don’t care what bumper sticker you have on your car or who you feel is the greater evil out of our November decision.

Further living in those divides only digs our trenches deeper and is not anything we are called to. Which brings me back to the verse that has been gnawing at my nerve endings.

Do justice.

Love kindness.

Walk humbly with your God.

The more I think about these requirements God gives us, the more I realize there is a tension in the relationship of the three, but they are all required, need some unpacking.

Do justice: when I think about doing justice, I get a few images in my head.

I think of courtrooms where “justice is served” as a guilty person is given a punishment.

I think of the civil rights movement, the marches, sit ins, and peaceful protests that stood up to power and said no, this is not right and we will not accept it any longer and instead shared a dream of a just reality.

I think of the pledge of allegiance that says “with liberty and justice for all”

Doing justice can sometimes come as a relieving vindication and other times come as an holy anger so great it burns.

But if we leave out justice and just love kindness and walk humbly, we end up with neighbors who are suffering, powers that are raging, and a crushed world which is being ignored for the sake of smiling at a stranger and not getting too arrogant.

These are good things to do, but you can be kind and humble to a neighbor, and still ignore their oppression, and thus become an accomplice to it.  

Loving kindness and walking humbly without doing justice may look like worshiping our Lord who was a refugee just after his birth, but remaining silent when refugees are refused welcome and safety in our land.

Love Kindness: you may have also heard this as love mercy, either way, we are called to love in this way.

I believe this follows the requirement of doing justice because that burning hot anger I described, well it can sometimes cause us to do justice out of hate, to do justice out of vengeance, to do justice out of fear.

But here God gives us a guideline. Love kindness. Loving kindness does not just mean that we love those who are nice to us, this requirement is to love as we have been loved. Which God does with kindness and mercy.

So what happens if we leave out kindness and mercy, but only seek justice and walking humbly with God. Without kindness and mercy, we are never able to reconcile our differences. Without kindness and mercy, forgiveness is not genuine.

Then we Walk Humbly: this is the hardest one for me. I can easily go around striving for justice and be nice but have a proud heart that I am right and others are wrong.

I can do justice and love kindness but do it in a way that is not honoring my neighbor, that puts myself above them, or writes them off entirely.

That is not doing justice, loving kindness and walking humbly, that’s acting out prouder than I ought. It does not honor or love God or my neighbor.

It is self serving and self righteous.

But to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly - we must see our neighbor.

We must see our neighbor with different opinions and care about them and love them. And not just in a superficial way but to actually care more about being in relationship with each other than be right.

And that’s a big pill to swallow and it’s prescribed for both sides of any division or disagreements.

Before these three requirements were named in the Micah texted, the author questioned, with what shall I come before the Lord?

Asking about burnt offerings, rivers of oil, and other sacrificial items to make one right with God. But that’s not it. Being made right is not what it’s about, it is the key dimensions of how we live with our neighbors because of what God has done for us. And how we live with all our neighbors of the world, all of God’s children.

It’s about being in relationship, not being right.

This is not an easy thing to do, but thankfully we have a God that must know we learn well from modeled behavior.

God continually seeks to be in relationship with us, no matter what wrongs we have done.

God continually longs to be in relationship with us, no matter what wrongs we have done.

God puts relationship with us above being right. If God didn’t, grace would not be a thing, and we would all be in a lot trouble.

God sent Jesus to be in relationship with us, to walk with us, to show God’s love in real ways. Ways that fed the thousands when they were hungry. Ways that healed the broken. Ways that wept when one was gone. Ways that said “you who is without sin, cast the first stone” this cares about relationship rather than being right.

Jesus was doing justice, loving kindness, even walking humbly while being God.

God enters our brokenness and rather than tells us how wrong or messed up we are, God loves us, stays with us, heals us, calls us God’s own, and says “you belong”.

And then God even died on a cross for us, to forgive us for our sins, our wrongdoings, the things we have done, and the things we have left undone. God freed us from the worry about making ourselves right with God, which we are not capable of, to be forgiven, beloved children, who can focus on being in a relationship with God and with our neighbors.

If God can do this for us, why do we struggle so much to do this with each other?

It doesn’t mean that there won't still be conflict and divide.

We are still called to work for justice and in a world of injustice that doesn’t always come easy.

We are still called to love kindness and in a world where hate and fear run wild.

We are still called to walk humbly in a world where power and prestige are the measures of worth.

We are still to do what is right, we just need to do it without the focus of being right.

In some ways it seems simple and in others it’s beyond complex.

God does not lead us to an easy road to walk.

It would be much easier to just give a sacrifice than being called to the higher road of loving our neighbor and actively being in a just, kind, and humble relationship with them and with God.

But thank God that this short list of heavy requirements all end with God. God does not leave us.

In the face of injustice and inequality - do justice, God is with you.

In the face of hate and fear - love kindness, God is with you.

In the face of power and pride - walk humbly, God is with you.