A Sermon on the Reformation, All Saints, and All Souls

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

One of the particularities of life together at the Belfry that I enjoy especially is our good fortune to gather for worship on Wednesdays. Yesterday was Reformation Day (officially) and today is All Saints Day (officially) and tomorrow is All Souls Day (officially) and our friends who worship on Sundays had to rearrange those two or three to fit on either last Sunday or this coming Sunday or some combination therein, or maybe even skip one. But we, dear Belfry Lutherpalians extraordinaire, we get to co-celebrate all of it, today.

We get to see the beautiful overlap and influence of these days on each other. We get to sit right in the thick of the paradoxes of life and death, old and new, past and future, saint and sinner, orthodoxy and heresy, retention and reformation. What luck!

I bet someone has mentioned this to you in the past several months, but: this year is the 500th Anniversary of Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation. It’s finally here! I’m not going to rattle off that information all the time, anymore. And that’s great. What’s even greater is that we are now officially, as of today, in the second 500 years of reformation. Think of the possibilities!

In the past 500 years, people have made sweeping changes in the Church that bears Luther’s name—we know that we are saved by God’s grace and not by our own works; the Bible has been translated into every language on the planet, and probably Klingon, because, nerds; people other than cisgender heterosexual white men serve as clergy (though of course we’re still working on the enforcement of that); celibacy is no longer considered the highest Christian calling (though of course we’re still working out our sexual ethics); we pray and confess directly to God, without the requirement of a priest; our liturgies are in the language of our hearts (though sometimes full of fancy church words).

And that is just the beginning! What will we do with our next 500 years, dear ones!? Where will we go? What will we do? Who will we be? Ugh, that’s so thrilling.

It’s important to me that we think about it this way—looking forward to our next 500 years—because our last 500 years have not been all sunshine and rainbows. The Church as an institution has been responsible for centuries of oppression, and has held back progress in the public sphere in a number of ways. We do not get to give ourselves a pat on the back without also acknowledging our faults. We are, after all, simultaneously saints and sinners.

Our gospel story for today underscores this. Jesus says, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:31-32). And the people listening to him are confused because they think they already are free. I can just see their confused faces. “Uh, we are not enslaved,” they reply, ish. And they’re right. They are not enslaved in the way that they think Jesus must mean.

But they are not free of their own sin. They are not free of the temptations of the world to hold power over one another, to control every little thing that happens, to be sure that they do not end up losing everything they have. They are not free of the systems in which they participate as members of their society. They are not free of the little voice in the back of their heads that says, “you deserve to be at the top of the food chain forever.” They are not free of the history of their people, for better and for worse. They are not as free as they believe.

When we hear this, in the United States of America in 2017, we may feel much like these friends of Jesus. “Uh, we are not enslaved.” We are not. And. We may not be entirely free, either. We are not, by our own power, free of the sin that so easily entangles us. We are not, by our own power, free of all the things we have done and the things we have left undone. We can, if we’re not careful, let this very fact trap us further. Or, as Jesus tells us and Martin Luther reminds us, the truth will make us free. The truth is that we are saved by grace through faith.

Yes, there will be real, human consequences for our actions. We will get in trouble. We will have to apologize to one another. We will have to practice humility. But in the midst of all this mess we are making, we are still beloved of God. You, precious creation, are known and claimed by the one who created you.

There is nothing that renders that untrue. Nothing you do—or fail to do—separates you from the love of God in Jesus the Christ. 500 years of Reformation hasn’t changed that, nor will 500 more.

For as far back as anyone can remember, the truth has set us free. As far ahead as anyone can dream, the truth will set us free. Which brings us to the saints. As they lived, they were beloved of God. Tonight, we are bittersweetly remembering them.

This practice, on days like today, alerts us that we have entered into a thin place. “There are places where the veil between worlds becomes thin. It’s not that God is somehow more present in [these] places, as if God could be more there than elsewhere; rather, something in [these] places and times invites us to be more present to the God who is always with us.”[1]

Look at the beautiful ofrenda Leo set up for us back there, and look at the things that remind us of the saints who have gone before us. We get to look at those faces and recognize each other in them. My family is over there, and you can probably see my face in my grandma’s face.

As I look at all the photos gathered there, I wonder about the stories that you hold close to your heart about the people in them. And the objects you brought to remember them with, I wonder why you brought those things, and what they mean to you and meant to your loved ones.

These moments, here together in remembrance, these are so holy. This is the communion of saints. The generations that precede us show us what it means to be humans, to be members of our families, to be people of faith, perhaps.

We carry our histories in our hearts; we wear them on our bodies; we hear them in our songs and in our laughter and in our tears; we eat them when we cook our family recipes; we embody them when we maintain our family traditions. These people, smiling up at us from the table—or radiating from within our memories—they raised us in faith, shaped us in doubt and discovery. As we live into our present realities, we go about the lives they dreamed we’d lead. The examples set for us by generations of our families are combined together with the generations of all the saints, back to those who walked with Jesus, those who were descended of Abraham.

Jesus told his friends, ages ago, to continue in his word. To keep telling the stories about the truths they knew. To keep gathering for meals, and to remember him when they did. As we gather at these tables today, we are bringing our whole histories and our entire futures together in one beautiful, thin place. We look back, we look around, we look forward. God is with us, and the saints are with us, in each and every place.

Thanks be to God!

Get Up—A Sermon Decidedly Not About Sheep

 Acts 9:36-43

Revelation 7:9-17

John 10:22-30

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always.

We didn’t read the psalm assigned for today, Psalm 23, the Lord is My Shepherd, so you may not have been clued in that this set of texts qualifies as this year’s “Good Shepherd Sunday” lectionary. [You may have noticed that we sang Savior, Like a Shepherd Lead Us at the beginning, yeah?]

There are a handful of stories that Jesus tells about sheep, and so we have this week every year where we read one or two and then all preachers have to somehow figure out a way to tell people that they are or are not sheep, and that this is good news! Aside from the fact that I definitely befriended a sheep at the petting zoo on Picnic Day, I don’t really know a whole lot about them, and I don’t imagine that you do, either. [Unless, of course, sheep were under your care in FFA, Kenton.]

The interesting thing about this sheepy text is that it is paired with one of the most interesting and underrated stories in the whole New Testament. [Were you listening carefully during the reading from Acts?]

The story goes that in Judea, there was a coastal town called Joppa, and in Joppa there was a disciple whose name was Tabitha. She was devoted to good works and to acts of charity. She became ill and died. Peter was nearby, in Lydda, so they sent for him right away. All the widows stood beside him, weeping and showing tunics and other clothing that Tabitha had made while she was with them.

This would be a lovely story of one of the first followers of Jesus, even if it ended here. Tabitha was devoted to good works and to acts of charity. Her fellow widows and dearest friends were devastated at her death. They celebrated her life among them by sharing with Peter the tangible proof of all that that she had given to them when she was alive. This is all that we know for certain about Tabitha. This is, to my knowledge, the only story about her. We know, from its few verses, that she was well-loved and a devoted disciple. Tabitha sounds to me like a classic church lady.

How many of you can think of someone from your home parish, or the parish you attend here in Davis, or the parish you work at, that you think resembles Tabitha? A sweet, kind woman who knits or sews or whatever the textile project of choice is in your congregation, and everyone loves her. And she’s like maybe 1000 years old. Okay, so picture her playing the role of Tabitha. When she dies, people will come to talk about the ways that she made their life better, and show off the quilt she made them when they went away to college. She’s a really nice lady.

But Tabitha’s story is not in our scripture because she was a really nice lady. Her story is in our scripture because Peter was called out to Joppa to resurrect her.

In this season of Easter, we have recently heard a pretty big resurrection story. And we often hear of another, the raising of Lazarus, which is important, too. But here, tucked away into the 9th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles is the quick, quiet story of that time Peter raised Tabitha from the dead.

Did you know this story before today? Did you know there was a woman so devoted to the Christian life that St. Peter himself drew upon the power of God to bring her back to life?

Maybe our dearest Catholic brothers and sisters in the room are more familiar with her, as she is sometimes referred to as Saint Tabitha; the very unthorough google search I did of her was inconclusive as to whether or not she is, in fact, a saint. My main man Martin Luther, though, would certainly call her one. One of the most memorable things Marty left to us was the notion that each one of us is simultaneously saint and sinner.

I think that’s so helpful for us, living in a world of black and white, good and bad, right and wrong, Republican and Democrat. It is possible—it is necessary!—that we understand ourselves to be more than just one thing.

We can be all the things that we feel we are, all the time. We can be happy about something while being sad about something else. We can be excited about the future and worried about it at the same time. We can be grateful for the relationships that we have, and long for the ones that we don’t. We can be pretty confident right now, and have some doubts tomorrow. We can be kind in one minute, and snap at someone the next. None of these things make us only a good or only a bad person.

Like Sirius Black once said to Harry Potter, “the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us.” He goes on to say that it only matters which we act on. That’s true, except we act on the light and the dark inside us, all the time. There’s no switch to flip. And that’s okay!

That’s sort of how grace works. We are beloved children of God, no matter what. Because we know that we are beloved, we are more able to act on the goodness we know to be somewhere in there. But we’re not completely sin-free, and we never will be. God knows that. God’s love is beyond that. Because Jesus lived, died, and lived again, we know that God has power over all the things that our world can throw at us.

There’s an awesomely bad hymn that I grew up singing called Every Morning is Easter Morning. Do you know it? I like it because it sounds like Jesus was resurrected to star in a Broadway musical. Hear me out:

Every morning is Easter morning, from now on!

Every day’s resurrection day—the past is over and gone!

Goodbye guilt, goodbye fear—good riddance!

Hello Lord, hello sun!

I am one of the Easter people; my new life has begun!

It helps if you pretend to tap dance while you sing it. Okay, so, this song is like as cheesy as it is possible to be, right? Welcome to church music in the 1970s, I guess. Cheesiness notwithstanding, the lyrics of this song are right on. Every new day,  you are alive. Every new day, you are free. Every new day, you are so beloved by God, that the Holy Spirit is at work in you—as she was in Peter and in Tabitha—to show the world that they, too, can be alive and well. As the Easter people, you are literally shining examples of the love of God through Jesus. The powers of this world—fear, oppression, death—do not have the final say. God has the power to breathe new life into all of us. 

Our world has a habit of knocking people down. But like Peter said to Tabitha, God says to you, so simply, “get up.”

Because Jesus is risen, and Tabitha is risen, you, too, are risen. Thanks be to God!

Good Question -- John 18:1-19:42

Grace and peace from God our Creator, hope in our Redeemer Jesus the Christ, and the promised gifts of the Holy Spirit are with you, always. Amen.

I ask a lot of questions. My hospital chaplaincy supervisor wrote in my final evaluation that I was “naturally curious”—he was the recipient of a lot of my questions. I ask questions of my self, my friends, my pastors, my professors, my family, my government, my God. My main man Martin Luther asked a lot of questions, too. One of his most-asked was “What does this mean?” A lot of the time, he was asking as a rhetorical device and had an excellent answer. Sometimes, though, it’s a mystery. I think I excel at this aspect of being Lutheran.

The gospel narrative we enacted for Good Friday is full of questions—including some big ones.

“Whom are you looking for?”
“Are you the King of the Jews?”
“Are you not one of his disciples?”
“What is truth?”
“Shall I crucify your king?”

Good Friday seems to have a lot more questions than it has answers.

And preaching on Good Friday is always an extra challenge—every other occasion is preaching the “good news” and Good Friday, in and of itself, is not good news. We first entered into this Lenten season of death on Ash Wednesday, when we remembered that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We know that everything that lives also dies. Death and the return to dust ends every life.[1] Even the life of Jesus.

But the good news is that Good Friday is not in and of itself! Good Friday is part of the whole story of God. Without Good Friday, there would be no tomb, so there would be no empty tomb!

Good Friday raises a lot of questions about who we are and how we live out the good news. Today, “we are invited to accompany Jesus very closely in this, his long-awaited hour, and to pray for the grace to be able to understand these events”—and ask these questions. They “invite us to become their witnesses in our own lives.”[2]

One of my favorite questions for Good Friday is “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?” It’s an old spiritual, do you know it?

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?Were you there when they crucified my Lord?Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

This haunting piece of music and history invites us to the foot of the cross. It asks us this question to which of course our literally true answer is no, I was not there. But what evil has been done right in front of my face that I have watched, trembling? What evil do I confess has been done in front of my face and I have turned away?

Dr. Shawn Copeland is a black Catholic theologian, and she says, “On this Good Friday, let us kneel before the broken, crucified body of Jesus. Let us kneel before the disappeared and murdered bodies of thousands of peasants, workers, vowed religious sisters and brothers, ministers and priests in Latin America;the raped and abused bodies of young boys and girls and women who have survived sexual assault by clergy and church workers; the torn bodies of prostitutes forced to trade themselves for survival; the rejected bodies of gays and lesbians; the swollen bodies of children dying in hunger; the scarred and bruised bodies of women, men and children suffering with AIDS; the despised bodies of red and brown and black and yellow women and men. To kneel before these bodies is a first step in grasping our collusion in their suffering and death; it is a first step in grasping the gratuitous love of the crucified Jesus. Let us kneel in love and thanksgiving for the wondrous love of God.”[3]

There is so much beauty that happens in our world that we thank God for, but there is so much violence that we cannot thank God for. There is so much that goes on in our world that we need to look at, need to really see, really engage, not ignore, not pass by, and most importantly ask big questions about.

The message of Good Friday is not that God endorses violence. It is not that God needed the blood of Jesus spilled in order to be powerful. We did that. Humans did that. Humans spill the blood of other humans in order to feel powerful. The message of Good Friday is not to continue to live and die in this way.

Interfaith Youth Core published a blog post about how “Good Friday…makes plain how much we have bought into the myth of redemptive violence, and how wrong we are to do so.”[4] When Peter cuts off the ear of the high priest’s slave, Jesus says “no more of this” so we must also say “no more of this” to violence and evil in our communities.[5] As Christians, we are “here to testify that redemptive violence does not bring peace, but more violence, and that Easter shows us that another way of doing things is possible.”

The message of Good Friday is not “Crucify him!” but rather “Woman, this is your son” and “here is your mother.” These words of Jesus remind us that, even in the midst of his own torture and death, Jesus was connecting his family and friends to one another, reminding them of their inextricable link—life together in the family of God.

What death and violence can we renounce today and instead remember that each broken body we encounter is the body of Christ?

On this somber and holy Friday, “May the Lord bless you with holy anger, with discomfort with easy answers, and with the foolishness to dream of another way of being.”[6]

Amen.

---

[1] McEvenue, Sean. “Violence and Evil in the Bible” in International Bible Commentary, 298.

[2] Okure, Teresa. “John” in International Bible Commentary, 1494.

[3] Copeland, Shawn. “A Reflection for Good Friday” Pax Christi USA, 2014. http://paxchristiusa.org/2014/04/18/holy-week-2014-reflection-for-good-friday/

[4] Suckstorff, Hana. “Is Good Friday a Misnomer?” Interfaith Youth Core, 2012. http://www.ifyc.org/content/good-friday-misnomer

[5] Hunter, Rhashell. “Good Friday” in Preaching God’s Transformative Justice, 190.

[6] Suckstorff.