Good Friday Sermon Thoughts

From John 12: “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit."

Frank Thomas wrote about congregations and change. The title of the book is “Spiritual Maturity”. Sounds like an unattainable goal! Actually he wrote about the Christian life of individuals and how that relates to congregational life. One insight of his was that the only thing that really brings about change in a person, is pain. Real pain.

Think about it. Pain comes in many forms. There is the physical pain that comes with an illness, or a treatment for an illness (just think of how difficult it is to go through chemotherapy, or walking again after a knee replacement). Pain tells the body to stop what it’s doing, and to do something else!

In a sense it goes back to that word of wisdom about how children learn what the word “hot” means. The stove-top is hot. Curious children will learn as soon as their fingers brush across those coils, what the word hot means. From that point on, that word has a very different and deeper meaning. In fact, it changes reality for the kid, this time for the better.

There is the pain of the death of someone you love. Many people talk about a pain they can feel in their chest when they grieve someone’s death. And now, with that pain, there is a very different outlook not only on life, but on the way those who remain even see themselves. Pain involves the loss of something, whether it’s health, happiness, or even a certain way of interpreting the world.

My grandma hoarded buttons. You see, she quilted. And when she cut apart old clothing for blankets she would toss the buttons into a deep cookie tin. That’s something I’m sure I teased her about when I was too young to know better. But she had managed to live through the emotional pain of the Great Depression, doing her part providing for a family of six, and that experience changed her. Gave her new habits that she never grew away from. Grandma saved every little item, thinking about how to use it someday for something else.

Christians could so easily be accused of being part of a feel-good religion. And there’s a lot to feel good about. When you get involved with a congregation like St. Paul I hope you make some friends. I hope that when you come on Sundays, you get to catch up on what’s been going on in each other’s lives throughout the week. That feels good.

I hope that when you’re sick, or when you’re alone in your home, or when you have a new baby, there are offers from your congregation, offers to help out, to baby-sit, to simply have a conversation in order to ward off loneliness, keep isolation at bay, to bring meals to you until you are healed. All that feels good.

And our Bibles are the source of incredibly rich and wise words for how to live in this world. There’s a lot of good advice in the Bible, we can even call it moral teaching, and we would have a more peaceful and happy community if more of us would take those teachings seriously, rely on one another and be willing to be relied upon.

All of those things are great marks of the Christian life, of the body of Christ, of the living, active Spirit of God who is deeply and lovingly involved with the smallest details of our lives. Jesus comes to us every day saying “I forgive you,” and “the life I’m giving you is better than the life you have to manage on your own,” and “I’m bringing about a new creation, and you’re involved with that.”

But on this night, the New Creation is so far away. The Gospel reading finished with these four little words, “they laid Jesus there.”

They laid his body in a freshly dug hole in the ground. They placed him in a garden, they planted him like a single grain of wheat. He had died before the two others who were crucified that day. His legs didn’t have to be broken by the soldiers. He had already given up his spirit.

The only teaching he’s doing now is that his life has been poured out entirely, painfully. No words of wisdom about how to hold our temper, how to love one another, how to parent our children, or even how to forgive someone or seek forgiveness. The one who last night had bent down and washed feet is now a lifeless body. Soon tonight we’ll have the words of a hymn, “love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be”.

Jesus died about 2,000 years ago, on a hill about 7,000 miles away. He spoke a language other than English. His skin was darker than most of ours. It feels far away and long ago, because it is.

But the good news is that he died for you. This was the worst day of his life, but the best day of yours. Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit. The pain of the cross is on your behalf! This single act of love is how God loves the world, how God loves you. His pain puts you and me on a different direction in life. Through all of this, God is saying to us today, “all that you were, all that you are, I am covering over with love, forgiveness and new life, because of my Son, the Word made flesh.”

Naked Chancel

After the Maundy Thursday service, we worked together to strip the altar and clear away everything removable from the chancel.

As we were leaving, Fern said, "It looks so forlorn."

Exactly. It looks like we're packing up the church and getting ready to hit the trail. Like the Israelites of long ago, who were commanded to eat lamb with a walking stick in one hand.

"Travelin' Shoes", Maundy Thursday 2009 (Exodus 12, John 13)

“You shall eat (the lamb) with your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and you shall eat it hurriedly, you shall gobble it. It is the passover of the Lord.”

Who says God’s timing is slower than ours? That we wish God would get on with it already, that God would accomplish that which is promised, or even that for which we pray? Is watching God work really like watching grass grow, or watching paint dry? Is God so slow to act that we wonder if God maybe isn’t so concerned with this world and most especially with us? We hear that God is slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, but what about when it comes to giving us a blessing? What about when it comes to giving us direction in life? Or healing our sickness?

What we hear tonight in Exodus is something very different from that. We hear that God is going to act swiftly, and that the terrible last plague is going to come like an evening breeze, out of no-where, and that it is going to be silent. Unless you make a certain mark on your front door, people of Israel, the oldest child in your family will die.

Get ready, people of God! Roast the lamb that I command you to get. Roast it will all its innards still there. And eat it all in the same night. If there’s anything left over, throw it away in the morning. This is a meal eaten in haste. It’s a meal that’s meant to be inhaled, (like the way I eat breakfast most mornings) not savored. In fact, says God, I want you to eat one-handed, with your other hand holding your walking stick.

So when God is ready to make a move, and this a very dramatic and invasive move, God wants the people to be ready to get outta Dodge whenever God says, Go.
There’s an old Gospel song called Travelin’ Shoes.

Death came knockin’ on that sinner’s door... Said old sinner are you ready to go? He said no no no no no no no because I ain’t got on my travelin’ shoes, ain’t paid my dues.

God is saying today to the Israelites, gird up your loins, in other words, bend down, grab past you ankles to the back hem of your robes, and bunch it all up so you can run! Run at a sprint if you have to! Run and get out of that place of slavery. Don’t you mind how it looks, your mission is to not be here anymore, but to be in a new place, in a place that I will show you, says God.

Could they have had unfinished business? Could there have been more packing to do? Could it be they wanted to take more time putting on those travelin’ shoes? But there was going to be no extra time to get things packed in an orderly way. No time to tie up loose ends. God was going to open the door of that jail cell, and he was about to do it sooner than later.

Sometimes it’s better to have a whole lot of change all at once than to have a little change, a little at a time. God was about to create a new nation of people. God was about to define a particular family of earth with a promise, with God’s own Word, with God’s direct involvement. God was getting his hands dirty with the particular story of a particular people, in a particular place in time.

Those travelin’ shoes had to last, because God was going to lead them up and down, hither and yon, on a serpentine path to a new land. And those travelin’ shoes that the people wear are not the reward for faithful living, for pious praying, for righteous singing. They are a sign that God has begun pulling, pushing and walking alongside them, creating a new people by doing so.

That Gospel song tries with all its might to get the Christian and even the non-Christian ready for meeting their own end. It’s a “if you die tonight where are you headed” kind of song. It’s a “come to Jesus” song that really makes the singer and the hearer want to check their own spiritual health, to ask themselves the deep question of whether they have the right shoes for that final hike up the mountain to see their Lord.

Oh yes, this is something I wonder about. Did I think about Jesus enough today? Do I thank him enough for what he’s done for me? Am I courageous enough to speak about my Lord in the home and in my neighbor’s yard? Do I have a strong enough, a deep enough, a solid enough foundation of faith so that I will last on that last day and be welcomed into the arms of my Savior? If I ever prayed the sinner’s prayer I don’t remember. Since I can’t remember, then I guess I better pray it again and see if it sticks this time. See if I can time-stamp my rebirth as a child of God.

Or is there more that I can do? Maybe spending a few more minutes in prayer, maybe reading a bit more out of my Bible?

This conscience of mine can run as fast as an Israelite through the Red Sea. Do I have my travelin’ shoes on? Do you?

But now, when we come to Jesus, that is to say the words of Jesus and the story of his last night in this world, he is not on a stump somewhere, or in a pulpit, or on a soapbox preaching to us and stirring us up to be fervent in faith. Tonight, he’s not girding up his loins, but he’s instead taking off his outer robe and putting on a towel, nearly naked.

And he’s bending down to us. He’s removing our socks and shoes. He’s taking the water and pouring it over our feet. In fact, he’s taking off our travelin’ shoes because he is the end of our journey. Jesus is the end of our journey. Even before it really got started, Jesus is anointing us with simple water, anointing us with his love for us. Anointing us as sinners, christening us as dirty-footed people, and it is he who brings us back to him. While we sit.

Parker Palmer is a writer and teacher who was for a time in the bottom-most territory of a severe depression. He wanted to end his own life but couldn’t find the energy to do it. He had already been quite successful. And so people would show up and try to pull him out of his funk. Here’s how he put it.

People would say 'You're so successful, and you've written so well.' And that would leave me feeling more depressed, because I would feel, 'I've just defrauded another person who, if they really knew what a schmuck I was, would cast me into the darkness where I already am.'

There was this one friend who came to me, after asking permission to do so, every afternoon about four o'clock, sat me down in a chair in the living room, took off my shoes and socks and massaged my feet. He hardly ever said anything. He was a Quaker elder. And yet out of his intuitive sense, from time to time would say a very brief word like, 'I can feel your struggle today,' or farther down the road, 'I feel that you're a little stronger at this moment, and I'm glad for that.'

But beyond that, he wouldn’t say hardly anything. He would give no advice. He would simply report from time to time what he was sort of intuiting about my condition. Somehow he found the one place in my body, namely the soles of my feet, where I could experience some sort of connection to another human being. And the act of massaging just, you know, in a way that I really don't have words for, kept me connected with the human race.

But in this act, where Jesus comes to his own followers, those whom he loved to the end (as John puts ), we are much more than connected with the human race. The human race just goes in circles, heading for the grave. As Christ removes our travelin’ shoes and serves us, we are connected with our creator, who has decided that no amount of dirt, no sin, no depression, no illness, no abuse is so dirty as to stick to our feet forever, for Jesus is the one who in his own body makes all things new, who in his own death declares to you, “you have arrived, and you are holy.”

Sin Insulator

North Carolina today has the distinction of being the location for the latest newsworthy and horrific sin. Some self-consumed, morally numb man ushered himself into a nursing home, a freaking nursing home, and opened fire. He probably had to shuffle his firearm into his left hand and then push the button at the door before entering. Allegedly the connection he had to that place was that he was involved with a woman of course, and that she worked there. Speaking today on NBC, a woman paid tribute to her father who was among those killed. Her dad had spent 30 years crafting a single violin. Just one. I used to hate how the violin's sound cut through the air. Now I'm haunted by it, and I love it.

In other news, this time from Massachusetts, a man interrupted his sister's 5th birthday by stabbing her to death. He also killed his 17-year old sister. The 9-year old sister called 911 and the shooter was killed by the cops. He was 22.

I remember someone talking about a trip they took to the Holy Land. This was many years ago but I think the image still applies. She told me that while the tour group was busing around those communities she saw some difficult images. The one comfort was that she could pretend the window of the bus was a TV screen. She found comfort in that.

Which to me begs the question as I watch the pixels that represent what I type: Can video (the TV, the computer...) insulate us from the sin of the world? Not only that, can it also insulate me from my own sin? Not the reality of it certainly, for sin is sin at the moment of its conception; it is now registered in the mind of almighty God. Cross reference Martin Luther's thinking about when Eve sinned in the biblical story. It wasn't when those perfect pearly whites broke the skin of that fabled apple that Eve sinned, it was when she responded to the Enemy, that sly serpent, with a teeny tiny drop of doubt inside her mind, doubt that God's Word, God's promise was somehow not true. I'm sure Jesus was thinking about this when he proclaimed that we are to have a childlike faith, which is to say that the Word creates what it says, and like children, we human creatures are to receive it with joy and above all certainty. When Eve began the family tradition of doubt, she did not fall FROM something, she reached upward into what Brueggemann calls "the prerogatives of God".

How often do you hear the survivors say, or their neighbors, that they wouldn't in their wildest dreams think that this could happen to them, to their community, to their family? Ah! It's because you've been hooked by the soap opera, the narrative, which pretends to be a narrative and not the real thing, because the psychosocial network of our communities are at the same time repulsed by and desperately infatuated by sin and the details of its carnage.

"Come to me," says a teacher from the north country, Jesus of Nazareth, "and I will give you rest."

A gift for you, from your local funeral chapel

At death, my fingernails will stop growing. However, knowing me, they will probably need to be clipped just after I die, while my body is being prepared for viewing. I never stopped to think that funeral chapels will need to have a supply of fingernail clippers.

In this case, not only do they have a supply, they also use them as a kind of advertising tool. How smart. And perhaps thoughtful.

St. Paul said once, "To live is Christ, to die is gain." You know, for the time being I'm okay with Christ. The gain can be a future reality. In the meantime, I'm thanking God that my fingernails, in fact, continue to grow.

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Blessing of Ministries

Here's a litany I worked up last year, changed this year (will probably change again next year!) as we ask God's blessing on our leadership. Which includes the Church Council and the leadership from other ministries. Use it if you'd like, change it for your own situation, and/or comment.

Blessing of Ministries

L: God our Creator, you have taught us that through Jesus your work is finished, and that we are already reconciled to you.
A: But we know there is unfinished business
L: There are seeds to be sown
A: And we know that the plants of ministry grow and bear fruit because of your Spirit
L: Whether we teach children here, pay bills, or hand out food to people in need,
A: Whether we are making decisions on Church Council, or caring for this building and grounds,
L: We are planting seeds. We are taking a small part in your great mission to gather the whole world to yourself.
A: But we can’t do all that you require or ask of us
L: We are limited people with limited money, limited skill, and often with limited time and limited desire.
A: Yet we know that somehow…
L: …And in some way
A: You are able to work with our limits, because your Word never returns empty.
L: Your grace is sufficient for us
A: Your power is made perfect in our weakness
L: Your love and promises hold us securely and guide us each day.
A: Bless our leaders today. Help us to support and care for them, interpreting their actions and decisions in the kindest way.
L: Let us all, in our various ministries, and in the strength of your Spirit, proclaim your grace and love to every person whom our ministries touch.
A: Amen.

Second Wind

At the church I serve there are a handful of new faces. What an encouragement that people are giving St. Paul a try, that they are seeking God's Word and Christian community at our house!

What I've been wondering for awhile, is whether the worship service that I design is inaccessible to many people, especially those who are trying us out for the first time. This isn't a very "Lutheran" part of the country. Are there questions that people want to ask, but they think they can't, or that they shouldn't? What about having dialog about the ways in which we worship, the things we do and the history behind them?

My main thing is that I'm a person of words. I work so hard at the particular words I say, so much that I'm stuck with the need to say ONLY those words and so there is not a great deal of flexibility and freedom in my leadership and in my presence.

I'm thinking about starting a Facebook group that has to do with innovations within the context of worship. Sure there are lots of different kinds of congregations, many variables, but there is a common challenge/opportunity/struggle to open God's Word and not put up obstacles. Any interest out there?