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!

The Kingdom of God is like Turpin Christmas Eve—A Sermon on Hospitality

I preached this sermon to the good people of Lutheran Church of the Incarnation, as part of continued drop-in sabbatical coverage for their pastor.

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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.

Last week, I was in my Southern California hometown of Encinitas with my fiancé and our families, doing some wedding planning and celebrating, including a bridal shower hosted by my aunts. There were seven of us staying at my parents’ house—my mom and dad, me, Jonathan, Jonathan’s mom and dad, and Jonathan’s brother. My dad kept laughing as we filled up the dishwasher, again, that there was a lot more action in the kitchen with 7 eaters instead of their usual 2. It was a fun week, packed with appointments but also with plenty of scheduled time to sit in the backyard and look at the ocean. We ate a lot of homemade guacamole. My mom knows how to host.

My mom and her mom (and by extension my aunts)  are who taught me about hospitality. Christmas, Thanksgiving, birthdays, graduations, weddings, births, deaths, every occasion has been honored and celebrated in their homes, with our entire extended family gathered in from all over the place.

When we say “all are welcome” we’re not kidding—everybody is welcome any time, any place, whether we were expecting you or not. We’ll pull up a chair, no worries. We were already cooking way more food than remotely necessary, so there’s plenty to spare. We are like this, because we would never want someone to arrive and feel like they weren’t important. We work behind the scenes to ensure that there’s always plenty, and all contingencies have been accounted for.

We all pitch in to make this possible—on Christmas Eve, for example, Aunt Jackie makes the mashed potatoes, Uncle Greg keeps tabs on the meat, I bring the pies, Uncle Mark plays Santa, my dad pours the wine, my teen cousins fill the water glasses, my Aunt Cathy blesses the meal, the young adult cousins wrangle the babies, my brother leads the carol-singing...

Sure, we could function without one of these, but we’d be out of sorts. Since we’ve all put the evening together, we all revel in the chaos of all the kiddos running wild during the gift exchange, and the reminiscences of our 92-year-old traditions. Every Christmas Eve, I think, “the kingdom of God is like this.”

I think that for a few reasons, not the least of which is that I would love to spend eternity with my all my favorite people. But I especially think that the kingdom of God is like Turpin Family Christmas Eve because everyone has a place in it. Everyone who is there is loved and cherished, and their contribution to the success of the evening—whether that’s preparing food, or exchanging gifts, or bouncing a baby cousin while his mom scarfs down her spanakopita, or washing the dishes at the end!—no matter how small, is significant. 

Our gratitude on Christmas Eve is intertwined, as we all worked and played together to celebrate. The house at which it’s hosted is certainly a key part of the equation, but it would be an empty house if we weren’t there together. Those who cooked the meal are highly valued, but they’d be wasting their time if there was no one there to eat it. And those who make their way through the kitchen at the exact right moment to hand Aunt Suzanne the potholder she needs are the unsung heroes of the feast.

I don’t know if this sounds like Christmas Eve at your house—but I pray that it is at least a familiar scene. I don’t know what role you play in the foreground or background of your community life, but since you’re here today, I know you at least have one. In our gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus is speaking right to this. It’s so short and sweet, I’m just going to read it out to you again.

It is written: "Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet's reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward” (Matthew 10:40-42).

When we show hospitality to our siblings in Christ, we show hospitality to Christ himself. These few words call to mind some more famous words from the Gospel According to Matthew. The righteous ask Jesus, “‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’” and Jesus answered, “‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (Matthew 25:37-40).

When we show hospitality to our siblings in Christ, we show hospitality to Christ himself. Here at LCI, you may have a hospitality committee, or something of that nature. Some good folks who make sure that visitors are welcome—especially visiting pastors—and when there’s an event of some kind, they’re making it happen. Perhaps you are part of this committee, or perhaps several different groups of folks share these responsibilities.  

Whatever you are doing, here, to bring about the kingdom of God, it is part of the mission and you are important. If you are pouring the coffee after the service, you are important. If you are registering kids for day camp, you are important. If you are formatting the name tags, you are important. If you are vacuuming the fellowship hall, you are important. If you are updating the website, you are important. If you are folding the bulletins, you are important. If you are tuning the piano, you are important. All of the good work that happens “behind the scenes” in the church is important.

It can feel sometimes like the heavy lifting is done by the pastors, or the bishops, or the people on the synod staff. While all those are doing good and necessary work, “the reward is not simply for the preachers and prophets among us but also for those whose calling is simply to pour the drinks and play the host.” [1] Every piece of the puzzle is critical.

And it doesn’t stop here at church! I saw someone online this week call this the gospel of “five welcomes and five whoevers.” What five welcomes can we offer? To which five whoevers? There are some types of welcome and some types of whoevers that we’re much more comfortable with than others. This plays out on every scale—from visitors at church to immigrants to the United States.

All of us have opportunities to show hospitality to our loved ones and to strangers every day as we go about our lives. We can chose to be open to engaging new kinds of people in new kinds of ways, or we can be closed off. We can choose to share of what we have, or we can hoard it. We can engage our broader communities—the city of Davis, the university, the state of California—to stand for more welcome, more often, for more whoevers.

It is not necessary to do this in big and flashy ways. Our work of hospitality need not be so consequential that it makes the front page of the newspaper every week in order to advance the work of God’s kingdom. “The divine mission is as much about the unnamed people who provide a thirsty servant a cold drink of water as the familiar names that dot the pages of church histories." [1] 

You are important. Your work is meaningful. Everyone around you is important, and the work of everyone around you is meaningful. We are all in this together, working to bring about the reign of God. Each and every contribution is valuable. Each and every person is valuable. This value is not earned or meted out in such a way that anyone is ever exchanging their value for the value of another. Your belovedness comes to you direct from the source, from God your creator. Your life in this community—at LCI, and in your family, and in the work you do or the school you’re in or the retirement you enjoy—is yours because you are God’s.

Truly, I tell you. Amen.

I've been really conscious about making memories, lately. Stepping outside a moment, briefly, and capturing those feelings and people and places. I'm not sure why.

This weekend, J and I flew south to see our families for a bit—most importantly, to celebrate his grandmother's 90th birthday! At her birthday party, there were four generations, reaching from her to the two-year-old red-headed rascal. (There seems to be at least one red-headed in each generation, actually.)

There was an excellent scene in the afternoon where her beautiful birthday cake was paraded out, we sang, and she blew out the candles. Then, aforementioned red-headed rascal stuck his adorable little hand into the frosting—then offered it to GG for a taste, which she laughingly obliged. What a sweet, sweet moment. It's one of those little things that I think I'll remember about this family, always.

It's small things like this—along with Sunday morning cups of coffee and snuggles with pups and late-night politics discussions and third glasses of wine—that I catalog so carefully, and recall so joyfully when we're months and miles apart.