 by David Sund, Lay Preacher
All mighty and all loving God, we thank you for the gift of the scriptures. Thank you for the image in today’s Psalm, of the sparrow that finds a home by you altar. Thank you for the Gospel story of the boy Jesus, at home with you in your sanctuary; confident in his identity as your child. In these next moments, by your Spirit, inspire in us a new, deeper longing to be at home in your presence. May our hearts be ever restless until they rest in you. Amen. Today’s Gospel begins with a crisis. There’s a missing child and there are panicking parents. Stories like this can go in all sorts of directions. On the one hand we have the ridiculous: We’re just coming out of the Christmas season so it’s safe to say that if you didn’t watch it this year, you’ve seen or at least heard of the 1990 John Hugh’s film Home Alone! It was the first in a whole franchise of films that feature children who find themselves alone, facing challenges that are comedic rather than horrific. At the other end of the spectrum are truly tragic stories that end up on the national news, with young faces on milk cartons and franticly shared posts on social media. I can only imagine that a lost or missing child is a parent’s worst nightmare! I’m not a parent, but I do remember my days as an elementary school teacher. At the end of my first year on the job, the headmistress had put me in charge of an all-school field trip to Plymouth Plantation. There were some pretty rambunctious boys in the second grade, and I remember being stressed for days that there would be shenanigans (and there were). I dreaded the possibility that someone would go missing (which didn’t happen). I was stressed out about being the one responsible if anything went seriously wrong. But I also remember being a lost child. I was a few days shy of turning five years old. The site of the mini-crisis is currently a brick-strewn empty lot in Turners Falls, down by the canal. For a few years the old factory and warehouse complex was part of a chain of discount stores called Railroad Salvage. But when I was a boy, that building was a retail space called Rockdale’s. My parents had taken us over there to buy tinsel garland and bring my brother and me to see the store Santa Claus. I was plopped onto the ‘old’ gents lap first, and quickly hopped off after an interrogation regarding my good behavior or lack thereof. My brother was next in line. He was a toddler who showed signs of being an even more unwilling participant. While the focus was on that drama, I was distracted by the adjacent toy department. It didn’t take long for me to wander off and get turned around. I think I only retain the memory because at the time, I quickly became anxious. The space seemed cavernous and ominous. In my childish desperation it seemed like forever before my parents recovered me and bundled two cranky children and a big bag of tinsel garland out of Rockdale’s and into our old, white Ford Falcon station wagon. But back to today’s Gospel text: There is nothing ridiculous about it. There is nothing particularly hideous. We discover, by the end of this morning’s story, that Jesus is neither lost, nor alone. Even as a boy in an unfamiliar context, Jesus is more thoroughly in charge than Macaulay Culkin, even serenely confident and self-assured. The narrative’s context is a celebration of Passover. Early in Luke’s gospel, there are repeated, subtle reminders that Mary and Joseph were devout, observant Jews. Their piety sets up at least two previous narratives. On is focused on Jesus’ circumcision, exactly as the law of Moses require. Next, Mary’s and Joseph’s devotion is the motivation behind the story of Jesus’ presentation in the Temple. They were only there that day so that Mary could offer the sacrifices for her post-delivery purification rites. Their obedience blessed two seniors who had waited their whole lives for a glimpse of the Messiah. Of course there were those years of hiding in Egypt, to protect the child from Herod’s murderous intent. But they finally returned to their faith-grounded lives in their home village of Nazareth. Once again they could slide comfortably back into deeply ingrained traditions of religious observance. Luke’s matter-of-fact recounting of the Passover pilgrimage implies that it was appropriate for them to celebrate God’s great redemptive work. For this particular Passover, they had gone with the flow, and rightly so, south to Jerusalem. But when we pick up the narrative thread it’s just as everyone is packing up their holiday memories and heading home. The benediction has been said and now it’s time to ‘get back to normal.’ Early spring in the Middle East is a lovely time of year and the weather would have made for pleasant traveling. The little family blended into the Nazareth Caravan. It felt comfortable to be making the trek alongside nephews and nieces, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, mothers and fathers, cousins, neighbors and friends. Whole villages would travel together. There was safety in numbers, and traveling companions allowed for helpful cooperation and encouraged a festive atmosphere. Because the sexes traveled separately in these caravans it would be easy for each parent to assume that an out-of-sight child was with the other parent. But once the caravan was a day’s walk from the capital, individual families separated to set up camp for the night and suddenly the perspective changes. One of the children is missing! “Oh bother,” thinks one of the relatives, “how could Mary and Joseph lose track of their son!” I imagine the red-faced couple staring at each other with that accusatory ‘parent face’ that telegraphs “Don’t look at me! I’m not the guilty one! I assumed he was with you!” Were Mary and Joseph just too used to having Jesus around? He was the good kid, no nanny harness was required, he never broke the rules, was never careless with the emotions of others, never selfish or mean-spirited or untrustworthy. So it would have been easy for the couple to slip into that dangerous place I refer to as the ‘land of assumptions.’ The problem is that a whole world can come crashing down on you if you build that world on assuming too much. On that first day out from Jerusalem I can imagine bout parents thinking, “Obviously, it’s only common sense that Jesus would stick with our home town crowd! We’ve been making this pilgrimage for years and Jesus has never pulled a stunt like this! How in the name of all that’s good and holy could Jesus throw a curve ball like this into our routine?” But no matter what the couple thought, the story tells us, in verse 48, precisely how they felt: mistreated, and poorly used! All their assumptions had resulted in a whole lot of trauma and inconvenience. And maybe, there was even a bit of anger now that a perfectly good vacation had gone pear-shaped! When it comes to our daily lives with Jesus, do we make assumptions and set agendas? Do we settle into routines and cycles of cherished traditions and live in expectations of common sense? Just like Mary and Joseph, do we willingly ease into spiritual assumptions that Jesus is right where we put him last, saw him last, met him last? Surely Jesus can be found where we left him last Sunday, or in our last devotional reading or last prayer time? The danger of assuming that God is predictable and passively cooperative will end up with us being as anxious and over-wrought as the young couple who were forced to make an about face, walk against the tide of the departing worshipers, and start retracing their steps in search of their last shred of certainty! It’s almost an axiom that when we operate under the assumption that any day will go a certain way, God won’t sit, beg, or roll over on command. I blush to admit that as an obsessive-compulsive control freak, I’m prone to set agendas for life, the universe and everything. I plow ahead, assuming that Jesus is back there with the baggage, bringing up the rear, and maybe tidying up my messes like the clowns in parades that clean up after the elephants and Clydesdales. Today’s Gospel is a loving reminder, and gentle reprimand that Jesus is anything but bound by our routines and assumptions. He can always be counted on to challenge my short-sight expectations and selfish demands. Not because he’s a cosmic kill-joy, but because he always has our best interests at heart and loves us too much to allow us to plunge off the edge of the cliffs of cluelessness, assumptions and errant expectations. If only I could wrap my head around this truth, maybe I could avoid lots of frustrations and anxieties. If I would only join Jesus in the temple, instead of tramping around in my mental market place, I could relax into the image taken from today’s Psalm. I love that picture of God’s sacred space with infinite room available to every sparrow, yearning for a place to nest. In today’s text, Jesus’ choice to remain in Jerusalem and engage in Temple dialogue wasn’t intentionally hurtful to Mary and Joseph. Luke assures us at the end of the narrative that Jesus’ choices were always praiseworthy, even as a yet-to-be-bar-mitzvahed boy. At only twelve years old, Jesus was a year and a day away from the Jewish rite of manhood where he would choose into the label of “son of the covenant.” But he was self-aware enough to own this great, overarching compulsion to remain in God’s presence and embrace God’s purpose for his life even if it meant disappointing the humans in his life. When the missed son is discovered by his parents we’re given a glimpse of an astonishingly beautiful picture: The child Jesus isn’t painted as a shy, curious observer. Instead, we see a voracious learner, totally engaged in spiritual exploration through interactive questioning. The scene suggests an enthusiasm and passion for theological debate and clarification. Jesus’ questions and answers are described as amazing the religious experts who dialogued with him. His parents are astonished too, but they’ve brought their own anxious energy onto the stage. The boy insists that their anguish isn’t reasonable. Jesus’ first recorded words are the questions, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Luke’s little story of a family vacation gone wrong gives us a great source of direction for a new year. First, it reminds us to never assume we’re in the company of Jesus when in fact we may very well have left him out of our equations and assumptions altogether! Looking at Mary, Joseph and Jesus, in this story, I think we’re presented with some clear contrasts that prompt this morning’s final questions. Where have we gone about our routines, made our assumptions, cherished our traditions and as a result, relegated Jesus to a place with the baggage, and assigned him a minor role in the drama while we assume starring roles? Next, have we bothered to look for Jesus with the same passionate investment of parents seeking a missing child? And lastly, do we make it our prayer that, like Jesus in the Temple, we become enthusiastic, voracious learners with the intent of sensing God’s presence, and embracing God’s good purpose for our lives?  By David Sund, Lay Preacher
All-mighty and all-loving God, open our eyes to see your hands at work in your Word and in the world around us. Deliver us from the presumption of coming to you for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal. By your gracious Spirit make us one body in Christ, that we may worthily serve the world in his name. -- As I prepared this sermon I realized that while the settings and frequency very, I’ve been blathering away at lecterns like this for forty years now! Once I’m standing in spots like this, manuscript in hand, it’s usually ‘all systems go.’ I don’t know about my fellow lay-preachers, but I usually get most of my kvetching and panicking done ahead of time. Two weeks ago, I woke at three in the morning, pulse elevated, a bit sweaty: nightmare accomplished! In said nightmare, I was standing in the parlor of another of Greenfield’s old churches, without jacket or tie, or manuscript, Bible or leaflet. I was supposed to be preaching from today’s text but instead, I was refereeing a fierce squabble between senior citizen siblings who were complete strangers to me. Yes, I’m weird!!! And yes, human weirdness is the point of my opening paragraphs. Why do I do this nightmare inducing thing? What is this spooky thing we call a “Calling,” or vocation to preach? Or, why do I work all day in other people’s gardens, only to come home and do it some more? Why do I play board games when I’m rubbish at it? Why do I watch BBC news every evening when it inevitably leads to disappointment, hand-wringing frustration, and desperate prayer? Why do I anything? Simple answer? Again…I’m weird. But maybe we all are? I only say all this because the same can be said for the characters in today’s text from the Hebrew Scriptures. Few of the characters we read about in the II Kings story are two dimensional or easily pigeon-holed. They are all at least a little weird…that is to say they’re all multifaceted, complicated humans. I want to spend our next few minutes exploring these personalities. The first Bible stories I recall from childhood are those surrounding the amazing careers of Elijah, and his successor, Elisha, who shows up in today’s first text. As a child, I was star-struck by the prophets’ almost super-hero status. Today’s account marks just one of twenty miracles that shape Elisha’s narrative in the book of Second Kings. Moses is the only prophet associated with more miracles than Elisha. There are so many similarities to the miracles of the Gospels that many theologians refer to Elisha as a type or foreshadowing of Christ. After an edgy start, Elisha’s ministry was redemptive and constructive. It was without prejudice regarding status, gender, or ethnicity. Most of the time, he’s about feeding the hungry, rescuing the impoverished, protecting the vulnerable, healing the sick, gifting life, even resurrection life. He dispenses God’s transformational mercy and grace. There was lots of big drama, often in public forums. For Elisha, God is always ENOUGH. It would be easy to focus on Elisha today, to the point of eclipsing everyone else in the story! But there are other characters to consider. There’s Gehazi; the servant of Elisha. Gehazi plays a significant role in many of the Elisha stories, including today’s, but today his role is edited out by the lectionary. Here’s someone who’s had a front row seat to Elisha’s miraculous life, and even participated in it. But by the time we get to today’s text, greed and deceit have bitter consequences. For him, there’s no such thing as ENOUGH! His selfish choices make him a cautionary tale. Our narrator includes two kings. And while we can deduce their names from surrounding biblical texts, the narrator chooses not to include those names in this account. The royals are given little fanfare. The only sovereign worthy of the narrator’s attention is God. The kings of Damascus and Samaria only play bit parts to move the narrative forward. The King of Aram is all about expanding his territory. He’s a pragmatic bully who makes assumptions about Israel based on his own culture’s blurring of political and religious roles. His neighbors can safely bet that he is plotting against them, always picking fights he is sure he can win. The King of Israel, is a selfish, unprincipled creature who reduces life to a political and economic chessboard. He assumes he’s the most important piece on the board: he suspects everyone is a competitor and he is the inevitable target. He loves to play the petulant victim whenever he appears in II Kings. Of all the characters in today’s text, it’s interesting that the two kings are the most two-dimensional figures! They are short-term tyrants. And now for some other characters who have walk-on roles. In a movie depicting this miracle story, they would appear far down in the final credits. We are introduced to the general’s wife who functions as a means of connecting the dots between her anonymous slave girl’s gospel and her husband’s desperate need. The last anonymous walk-on happens when we get a brief glimpse of the servant who knows how to speak truth to power and survive the encounter. He’s careful to address the general with the confusing, familial title of “Father.” He addresses the general the same way Elisha used to address his mentor, Elijah, back in chapter two. Neither the servant nor Elisha were literal sons. “Father” was used as an expression of honor and respect. It indicated a close, long-standing relationship between apprentice and teacher, between a trusted retainer and a lord. The servant subtly recognizes the general as bold and brave, capable of accomplishing brave feats. He minimizes offended pride. The servant finesses his boss down from the ledge. He carefully maneuvers the general away from sabotaging his chance for a healing miracle merely because the general is all huffy over receiving second hand directions to take a bath in a dirty river, rather than being directly ministered to by the great prophet, or begged to take on an heroic quest. Next, I direct your attention to the complicated General Naaman. He’s truly a weird mix of personality traits. Naaman is a proud oppressor, a social climber valued for his military ruthlessness but also stigmatized by an incurable disease that can’t be disguised. He’s blinded by prejudice and enriched by exploitation. He is also a beloved head of household where we would expect him to be only loathed and feared. He can be convinced even in mid-tirade. He is deeply grateful and extravagantly generous once he experiences grace. Naaman is willing to embrace faith in this new deity who comes to his rescue, and vows almost exclusive devotion, in spite of coming from a background of polytheism that had almost no conception of divine/human intimacy and focused on use of sympathetic magic to manipulate capricious local deities. Before wrapping up the collection of character studies, I want to redirect your attention to the nameless female child who gets the whole ball rolling in this miracle story. She was born into an ancient patriarchal world where women and children were powerless chattel. She has been abducted, enslaved, trafficked. Here was a child, ripped from family and culture: a stranger trying to survive in a city of foreign strangers. It is no exaggeration to describe her as a victim in an horrific, dehumanizing system rife with all sorts of abuse. While I still cherish my childhood admiration for Elijah and Elisha; these days I’m feeling like the unsung miracle in II Kings, chapter five is this amazing girl. Without her agency, there is no good news, there is no healing miracle, there is no change of heart. Considering her circumstances, the little girl’s short sentence is weird indeed! (If by weird we mean unexpected, uncanny, out of the ordinary, or not aligning with expected behaviors or social norms.) Surely, the expected thing would be a victimized child, silenced by trauma or choosing quiet vindictiveness. Instead there is an expressed desire for her enemy’s wholeness. Her short sentence of Evangelism, or Good News was linguistically, simple, but so amazing! There was a bold confidence in a God who was real, a God who cared, a God who was capable, and a God who was ACCESSIBLE, thanks to Elisha’s famous ministry. I get someone like the prophet Jonah. Later on, he’ll appear on the scene, only reluctantly obeying God, preaching hope to the Assyrian capital of Nineveh. He may have been a spiritual “professional,” but he was also an adult who was acutely aware of current events and knew just how brutal, bloodthirsty and ruthless the Assyrians were. God insisted that he offer them a message of mercy. But Jonah’s commission comes subsequent to surviving the Assyrians ’annihilating blitzkrieg of his homeland. Is it any wonder he bought a one way boat ticket in the opposite direction? He WANTED to see the Assyrians go down for their atrocities. Ironically, rabbis inform us that Jonah’s name translates as “dove.” Picture the creature that brings the tiny olive sprig of hope to flood-weary Noah. But for Jonah, God’s grace toward Nineveh was a consummate disappointment! He wanted the Ninevehites to respond to his hell-fire and brimstone sermon with despair rather than hope. Again, for me, Jonah’s history only elevates the character of the enslaved child, the truly peaceable dove of II Kings 5. My challenge to each of us is that we examine ourselves in the light of the circumstances and example of the anonymous little girl. Do we see ourselves as powerless? Maybe we even imagine ourselves as victims in an out-of-control world? Do any of us have sure-fired plans to end bloodshed in Ukraine or any of the other global hotspots? Do any of us have the resources to feed the starving souls in Gaza or East Africa? Do any of us have the capacity to convince superpowers to reallocate and share resources, halt plagues, or restore ecosystems? After a single news cycle I’m tempted to curl up into a cocoon of disappointment, despair, doubt. I’m quick to abdicate ANY responsibility and cower behind a plea of helplessness. But the weird girl of our miracle story is a wonderful reminder that my rationalizations behind my moral impotence…are LIES. Let me repeat that: my rationalizations…behind my moral impotence are LIES. If a nameless child, who lived almost 3,000 years ago, can be remembered as a bold agent of change and transformation, then WE are without excuse! If we really believe that The Holy Spirit is alive and well in us, we are NOT powerless victims! We are enriched by grace! We are united in resurrection life! We are emboldened by divine direction! We can face our most dire circumstances with faithful, consistent prayer; bold, simple words; and loving acts. Just like that anonymous child we can be tiny agents of big, hopeful, transformational MIRACLES! And isn’t that wonderfully weird? By David Sund, Lay Preacher
Thanks to the Lenten emphasis of the lectionary, we have another opportunity to think about repentance. But today’s Gospel passage doesn’t start with a call to repentance, it starts with talk of disastrous days. It’s almost as if someone had ripped tear-stained, above-the-fold headlines from the Jerusalem Gazette Recorder and tucked them into a fanny pack before heading out with the crowds that were always swarming around Jesus. Given our current national and global circumstances, the first verse weighs heavily. Like me, do you feel buried alive beneath mountains of distressing headlines; confused, frustrated, stalemated? Do we value Jesus’ opinion enough to bring those headlines to him? If he offers a peculiar perspective on our disastrous days, will we allow that perspective to fix our blurred focus? In Luke’s Gospel, there is a recurring phrase, “[Jesus] set his face to go to Jerusalem” (Lk 9:51, 13:33 17:11). When it came to his perspective on life direction, Jesus was definitely laser-focused. His clear-eyed intent would become confusing and frightening for His followers. But he was un-deterred. While crowds shuffled up clouds of dust from Galilee to Jerusalem, the incessant words of Jesus’ sceptics, critics and detractors were a like a buzzing cloud of flies, unable to harm (much to their chagrin) but annoyingly persistent. All along the way they hoped to discredit, tarnish or ideally derail this Messiah-in-the-making. Their attacks were crafted around hypothetical scenarios and loaded questions. But in Luke, 13 the conversation turned to real-life current events. Someone pulled the crumpled headlines from the fanny pack and recited them to Jesus. Were his enemies delighted with this gift of current events? When faced with brutal or tragic deaths of real-life people, how would Jesus react? There was a backstory for the first disastrous headline. The Roman governor Pilate, like every good Roman, made a religious sacrifice to the Emperor—every Roman acknowledged the Emperors as demigods. But adding injury to insult, as a part of that burnt sacrifice, Pilate slaughtered protesting Galilean Jews, and placed their remains on the sacrificial pyre. Horrific? Unquestionably so! Then, practically in the same breath, someone shares news that a tower in Siloam has fallen, crushing eighteen people. Tragic? Unquestionably so! The interest of the crowd is piqued: In the back of everyone’s mind was a universal question; a question that had echoed throughout the Hebrew scriptures, throughout the recorded musings of Greek philosophers, and reverberates still; a question that will probably outlive all of us! It was a one word question: “Why?” We humans have a subconscious, calculus that quickly muddles circumstances with consequences. Like Job’s uncompassionate friends, there is the assumption that God has his thumb on the divine scales, intent on meting out retribution. If the victims in the gruesome news were “good people” surely God would have protected them from Roman swords and toppling towers. I’m pretty sure that none of us here would verbalize anything like this. None of us wants to admit indulging in the blame game. But deep down in our all-too-human nature there is that judgmental eight year old child that wants to draw black-Sharpy-marker-lines of clear connection. The blame game is a default setting. While we might not blame the victims we ache to blame someone. That’s one of the ways we try to make sense out of senseless tragedies. Doubt this impulse? Haven’t we all had one of those days, where we’re running late, only to discover a flat tire on top of it all? Or we’re baking for a special event and the leavening agent has failed? Or the kids have been dressed for a special occasion and the family pet conspires with the youngest to create a filthy mess? Or more seriously, there is a heart-wrenching divorce or an ominous diagnosis, or even the death of a loved one….Aren’t the first words out of our mouths often, “WHY me? “ It’s an angry reflex, and self-centered, but the blame game still! Truth be told, often there is someone or something to blame: a cruel dictator, a greedy corporation willing to cut corners, a vindictive former friend, an embittered family member, a lapse of self-discipline or an impersonal but potent weather front sweeping across a continent… Someone or something really can be blamed for igniting disasters big and small. But Jesus is quick to quench the fatalistic assumption that bad things only happen to bad people. In our Gospel narrative Jesus refuses to play the blame game. He anticipates it and deflates it. He quenches the toxic impulse to blame the victims. “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you.” “Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you.” The victims from the disaster headlines did not die because they were especially sinful. These victims of tragedy died because life is fragile and unpredictable. That fragility and unpredictability of human life is the basis of Jesus’ peculiar perspective on our disastrous days. Almost as if we skipped a paragraph in the story, Jesus changes the narrative. There’s no “why” given. His peculiar perspective kicks in. Jesus begs us to see our frailty and mortality as OPPORTUNITY. Again, I’m convinced that Jesus wants us to see our frailty and mortality as OPPORTUNITY. He doesn’t want us cowering in fear over our unpredictable futures. He doesn’t want us hiding behind the blame game in an attempt to deflect accountability and responsibility. Instead he encourages us to own our weaknesses and failures and then take a path to healing and wholeness. Jesus says, we all make mistakes and lose sight of God’s will for our lives, in short, we are all sinners. If we will acknowledge that, if we will embrace his call to repentance we will find an exit from the crisis mind-set and a way through disaster. What does it mean to repent? Most of our dictionaries would answer something like this: “to feel or express sincere regret or remorse about one’s wrongdoing.” Mea culpa, mea culpa. But that is merely an Apology! Sincere repentance should have a component of regret over past sins. But, like the word “conversion,” Scripture uses the word “repent” in the potent, figurative sense of “turning around,” and “changing direction.” I don’t know about you, but especially in crisis, I want to reinforce my narrative, batten down my hatches and dig in my heels. Jesus’ peculiar perspective of repentance feels threatening. With God’s help, and an honest assessment of our own lives, we can make fertile choices that will have fresh consequences. Repentance means that we pro-actively steer clear of fruitless, self-destructive choices and seize every opportunity to walk in God’s grace. The value of repentance is built into our Anglican tradition when week after week, there is time for confession. Confession of course simply means “telling the truth.” And what is the focus of our weekly, corporate truth-telling? We recognize our impoverishment to FIX everything that is wrong with this world, AND admit our complicity in that wrongness. Confession is the first step in a repentant direction. Jesus says there’s too much at stake for us to waste time assigning culpability. This is especially important if, when we’re pointing out a problem with some one or some system, we refuse to examine where we might be the wrong ones too! The great prophetic voices of the Hebrew Scriptures set a precedent: In prayers of confession on the behalf of their besieged or exiled nation, even the most praise-worthy prophets included themselves in their pleas for mercy: Forgive US, deliver US, heal US… In our Gospel reading, those judgmental voices in the crowd willfully ignored this precedent. “Hey Jesus, look at THEM! What about THEM? Of course the unspoken comparison is, ‘since we’re still alive and well, we must be O.K. Those corporate confessions don’t really apply to us; we’re just joining in for the benefit of the real losers…the real offenders. Ignoring our need for confession and repentance will always have sad consequences. Did you notice how Jesus words about repentance are full of urgency? That’s probably because existence is precarious. God is infinitely patient, but our finite lives mean that time is running out to participate in the productive life of faithful, fruitful community. Especially in disastrous days; justice, kindness, compassion, making amends, and generosity are urgent business. This sort of repentance can’t be just a when-convenient side-gig or merely a rare spontaneous, emotive reflex. Repentance cannot be seen as a once-and-done transaction. Repentance might be an annual Lenten theme, but to be real it must be ongoing; a daily life-style. Repentance isn’t so much about ideas or feelings. It is about Being and Doing. As a preacher friend of my likes to say, “It’s doing that makes the difference.” More specifically, in the familiar prayer of Saint Francis, repentance looks like this: “Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.” I was recently introduced to a popular, charismatic chorus with this refrain: “You rescued me out of the mess I was in…now I’m dancing on the grave I once lived in.” Jesus’ brand of repentance isn’t about shame, or blame. It isn’t vain regret over the past. It has a purpose-filled, future focus. If we will own our wrongness rather than projecting it, if we will seek reconciliation with God and others, we can learn to dance on the graves in which we used to cower. Finally, when we’re tempted to sort the world into camps of Good Guys and Bad Guys, let’s cling to the focus of repentance: Love. In a recent email message from the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, Br. Curtis Almquist put it this way: “Who is on your list of appalling people? These same people are the people Jesus associates with and welcomes indiscriminately. It seems the Jesus even loves them. He tells us to do the same. If loving them is too far of a reach, then remember that God loves them, and that the God of love is not done with them yet… nor with you and me. (Brother Give Us a Word: Enemy 3/5/25, SSJE) AMEN.  By David Sund, Lay Preacher
I love it when the lectionary brings us to Luke for Advent and Christmas. We’re given a fresh opportunity to see the seasonal stories from Mary’s point of view. It’s in Luke that we meet Elizabeth and Anna at Christmas time, and later we are introduced to Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary. This gospel and it’s companion piece, the book of Acts, present a host of 1st century women who are passionate, three dimensional characters who speak and act and participate in Jesus’ inner circle. They articulate their feelings honestly, offer insightful conversation and model admirable responses to crises. Last week we were reminded that the heavenly messenger Gabriel has delivered earth shattering news to the teenage Mary from No-wheres-ville, Galilee (A.K.A. Nazareth). God was taking the initiative: it was Messiah-time and Mary was chosen to be an un-wed teen Mom who would give birth to that Messiah. Mary, as a virgin, is first and foremost, confused! Whatever else she might be afraid of, she’s not afraid to express her confusion! Gabriel gives her a quick course in incarnational theology, and, as if to emphasize the Point that God is in the Miracle business, Gabriel tells Mary that her cousin Elizabeth, quite elderly and previously incapable of having children, is now six months pregnant. At this point Mary consents to a plan in which she has had no say, probably well aware of what the future held: disapproval, gossip, scandal, ridicule, and possibly much worse! This costly consent has inspired countless sermons. I find it amazing that there’s no hint of resentment or resistance. Wouldn’t most of us push back at someone else, unilaterally making risky plans for our lives? I have much more in common with the reluctant Noah than the humble, accommodating Mary! First century Palestine was a dangerous time and place for anyone to be traveling… Patrols of entitled Roman soldiers, Bands of desperate rebel zealots, and ruthless highwaymen were all vying for advantage and control of the rough roads and empty spaces between the Galilean and Judean hill-towns. But Mary is willing to make the trek to cousin Elizabeth’s because she must see for herself. If Gabriel is telling the truth about Elizabeth, then maybe He can be trusted with this news that is about to change the entire trajectory of her own life. If anyone will believe this virgin-birth-business it will be the cousin with her own miraculous story to tell about a truly geriatric pregnancy. As Mary crosses the threshold it doesn’t take a trained midwife to observe that Elizabeth is indeed expecting! After a trip full of questions and emotional upheaval there is a glimmer of hope! When it comes to the mile-stone moments in our lives it is easy to become the stars of our own internal scripts. Isn’t it true that usually, we’re pretty ego-centric when it comes to our amazing, or horrific, or newsworthy head-lines? But Elizabeth is prompted to take a different path. As soon as she hears Mary’s “Shalom” she shifts the attention from herself and offers center stage to Mary. Elizabeth’s personal news is a big deal but her focus isn’t on her own BIG EVENT. With a nudge from the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth discerns that this average teenage girl is carrying an extraordinary child that will transform human history. There is a 400 year prophetic parenthesis between the last words of the Prophet Malachi, and the first words exchanged between Elizabeth and Mary. Malachi, the last of the Hebrew prophets had predicted the births of these two children. 400 years later these two women tie a bow on his message. Suddenly we have a new prophetic era and it all starts with two women, sensitive to the Spirit of God, while trying to make sense of their unusual circumstances. Elizabeth’s first word is the focus for the rest of this sermon. “Blessed!” “Blessed.” In other words, Elizabeth declares Mary happy. Mary shows up at her doorstep a confused, concerned, frightened teen. But Elizabeth, 6 mo. into her own miracles affirms the goodness and grace of God to them both. To paraphrase verse 45 of our text, “You will be sincerely, deeply, truely happy AS LONG AS you choose into the belief that God not just a maker of promises but a keeper of promises. Focus on the promises, not the circumstances, Mary, focus on the promises not the circumstances. Elizabeth IS NOT saying, Mary, you should be happy, or you will be happy but you ARE happy because, just by being here you proved that You take God seriously. In Elizabeth, Mary had found someone who not only accepted her, and opened her home to her, but more importantly, someone who blessed her. And that is all that Mary really needed, all that she was seeking, whether she knew it at the time or not. She just needed to be accepted, loved, and blessed by another. If you reflect on the Creation story, the very first thing that God did after creating Adam and Eve, was to bless them. God created them and then immediately blessed them. The Lutheran priest and author James Laurence puts it this way, “You might even say that God created them in order to bless them. And you might say the same for us...God created us to bless us and to love us; to be in a relationship with us; a relatioinship that is built on love, and filled with grace and mercy. There is nothing that God wants more than to bless us. Each and every one of us were born to be blessed. But, somewhere along the way, the brokenness of this world causes us to forget that we are blessed by God. That forgetting is the root of so many of our problems. Adam and Eve forgot they were blessed and focused on what they thought they didn’t have. And don’t we do that too? By focusing on what we don’t have, we forget that we are already blessed in countless ways. We need to cling to the truth that we are blessed to be a blessing. We are loved to love. We are forgiven to forgive. This world, even the person sitting next to you right now, is just like young Mary. This world, or that person next to you, shows up on our doorstep. Alone, scared, confused, desperate for someone to simply open the door and offer a blessing. Just as Elizabeth did for Mary all those years ago. Elizabeth didn’t change the world that day. She didn’t need to. All she had to do was to open her door, and offer a blessing. God would do the rest. And as Elizabeth said to Mary, in that tender scene, so I now say to you and to myself: Blessed are you who believe this. And may God bless you as you live out your blessing on the stage of the lives of those around you.” I’d like to close with a quote from Henri Nouwen’s book, Life of the Beloved. “To bless means to say good things. We have to bless one another constantly … In our society, so full of curses, we must fill each place we enter with our blessings. We forget so quickly that we are God’s beloved children and allow the many curses of our world to darken our hearts. Therefore we have to be reminded of our beloved-ness and remind others of theirs.” Amen. |
Mission
We believe God is calling us to cultivate a community of love, joy, hope, and healing. Jesus is our model for a life of faith, compassion, hospitality, and service. We strive to be affirming and accessible, welcoming and inclusive; we seek to promote reconciliation, exercise responsible stewardship, and embrace ancient traditions for modern lives.
Office HoursTuesday 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Thursday 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Friday 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Closed holidays Our gardens and grounds are open from dawn to dusk for the community to pray, rest, be. Please help us take care of this sacred space by following the outdoor ethic & principle of “leave no trace.” |
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Worship Times10 a.m. In-Person Worship & Livestreamed
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