Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Sermon For All Saints


Christine, our church administrator, made a comment in the office the other day referring to marriage. She said, “the kids are the best part.”
There are many of us who would agree wholeheartedly and some of us who would just sigh. What she said is most certainly true, but I suppose what stage our children are in would determine our reply.
When they are first born they are cute and cuddly and though some of us wouldn’t know what to do with a newborn -- who doesn’t love a cooing baby?
However that stage doesn’t last long. Soon babies are crawling, then walking and then getting into everything. Yet it is wonderful watching them discover their environments, learn, achieve and develop their own little personalities. Then we arrive at that heart wrenching moment when we take them to their first day of school. We let them go to begin making their way in the world apart from us. Another stage done but then we move on. Certainly some of you don’t want to be reminded of what happens in those teenage years. These are the years when children start to think and behave as though parents don’t know anything, the time when they develop the ability to roll their eyes and smack their lips, slam doors and perfect that don’t bother me pout.
They get a little better in those pre-adult years, but you have to expect those phone calls from college to say that they are out of money. You guys know what I’m talking about--right?
Even when they are over twenty-one, when they are thirty or forty we are still their parents and they are still our children.
We were having a conversation in the office about children and I was talking about my son. I began describing what I love about him and what about him drives me absolutely crazy. I love that at thirty two he still calls to talk to me about everything--somethings I don’t want to hear. He asks for advice and even gets his friends to call me if he thinks I can help them. I love that he now thinks I am a pretty cool mom.
But you all can guess that wasn’t always the case. I remember a particularly rough time in our lives when the stuff of inner city life---mischief, drugs, gangs---threatened to pull my son under. We got into a heated argument when he was about fourteen and I just wanted someone to come and get him. I remember thinking that this is not who I want him to be, or the direction I want him to go. This is not what I taught him! He doesn’t resemble anyone I know or want to know. Sometimes I just wanted to strangle him and one day I found my hands around his neck. At that moment he looked at me with his big brown eyes and he started laughing. This brought me to my senses; I joined him in laughter and I thought--what am I doing? This is my child...
John addresses those who are listening as “children,” in our second lesson for All Saints Sunday. If we read the entirety of this first letter of John, we hear about God’s unconditional love for us. John was writing this letter to quell the tensions and schisms that were rampant at the end of the first century between a number of churches.
The conflict arose as the older generation was trying to pass on the faith to the younger generation. It was as though parents were attempting to teach their children -- the traditions that they held, the ways they related to God and the truth about Jesus the Christ.The whole book reads less like a letter and more like a testimony or a  passionate plea from an elder for those around to hold on to the faith, to live as those who believe.

And how hard it must have been for that second generation of Christians, they were being influenced by those big city folk and being influenced by Greek and Roman philosophies. This new generation was questioning Jesus’ humanity. They were buying into the gnostic belief that God couldn’t possibly have come in the flesh because flesh is evil.
And to top that off they believed that anything that they did, however they behaved, whatever mischief they got into or sin they committed didn’t matter because the flesh was going to be destroyed.
 And so the writer, using a conversational and loving tone like a father talking to wayward children says, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God: and that is what we are.”
 On this All Saints Sunday, we remember that we are children of God. We are children that have been named in the waters of baptism even before we knew our own name, or even before we could say or spell it. But we can be wayward and let the stuff of life, greed, dishonesty, apathy pull us under.
We can be like those second generation Christians those who don’t resemble at all their parents.
As a society we often behave as if what we know about God isn’t real or if God is real, God isn’t relative to our lives and we certainly don’t live as children of God. Living as children of God certainly isn’t the first thing that comes into our minds as we wake up in the morning is it? How often as we go through our days do we think today I will behave as a child of God?
Today I will drive along the expressway, order my lunch, treat my co-worker not only as if I am a child of God but as if she is also. I will help feed the hungry, love the unloveable and do what I can for others. We go through stages of holding God close and pushing God away, of needing God and believing we are self sufficient.
I can imagine that we human beings--we who are called saints but behave as sinners--can infuriate God, enrage God so, that God might want to once again send a flood. Or perhaps send fire to get rid of such disobedient children. Instead, God sends Jesus who gives his life on a cross, is buried in a grave
and raised on the third day, so that we might understand just how much God loves us.
So what exactly are we celebrating today? What does it mean to be a saint? Well I believe being a saint means to acknowledge, to realize, to affirm that God has called us by name, in the waters of baptism, claimed us before the creation of the world, and set us apart to do great things. Not just for our sake, but  for the sake of all the other saints God loves so much.

We are children of God and we are blessed when we are like those in the fifth chapter of Matthew--who mourn, are persecuted, poor in spirit; blessed when we are those who pray forgive us our sins....
blessed when we are those who try to get it right but can’t.....We are the most unlikely of characters and yet we are the children God loves.
My son will be 33 tomorrow and I still remember that day over 19 years ago. After we finished laughing about my hands around his neck, my son and I talked. I told him I was so angry because I was worried about him, and I wanted more for his life because I love him. He didn’t quite understand then but he has learned through good times and bad I will be there for him. And though he struggles, he lives as though he has a parent who loves him in how he parents his son. For sure I know how to exhibit the love a parent has for a child but God’s love is so much more. So much more all encompassing--unconditional.
So what about thinking about how much God loves us on this All Saints Sunday, about the promises of God: the promises of grace, forgiveness, and mercy; about the promise that God will be with us always--through good times and bad-- even to the ends of the age, the promise that the loved ones we remember today have received--the promise of eternal life. 
And how about living as though we are God's children! That’s what John was trying to say to that second generation of Christians and to all of us. He believed our identity is inseparable from how we live as God’s children. And so he wrote:
“What marvelous love the Father has extended to us! Just look at it—we're called children of God! That's who we really are. But that's also why the world doesn't recognize us or take us seriously, because it has no idea who he is or what he's up to. But friends, that's exactly who we are: children of God. And that's only the beginning. Who knows how we'll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we'll see him—and in seeing him, become like him. All of us who look forward to his Coming stay ready, with the glistening purity of Jesus' life as a model for our own.” (1John 3:1-3 The Message)

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Reformation


You should hear the conversations around my dinner table. You have a life-long Baptist, arguing the merits of justification by grace with a Lutheran who became Lutheran on the basis of this foundational doctrine. According to Luther this is the article on which the church stands or falls. Someone should have told my husband that it is a little useless arguing with someone who wants to jump up and shout everytime she hears “they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” This was so contrary to what I heard all my life about being good and working out my own salvation. I have said many times that this little idea changed my life.

Of course my Baptist husband believes in God’s grace, I wouldn’t have him otherwise....but every now and then this idea that grace has to be conditioned on something—creeps in. He thinks that simply to say we have been justified is too easy, too simple. For him there has to be more; for him justification is proceeded by right living, right behavior and right action. But who can get it right? 

For Reformation Sunday our gospel lesson comes from the eighth chapter of John. As we begin reading at the 31st verse Jesus stands speaking to "the Jews who had believed in him.” We hear Jesus once again engaging in rhetorical gymnastics with those around him. This conversation is slightly different than the conversation we heard in the 22nd chapter of Matthew’s gospel. Different in that Jesus is not speaking directly to the Pharisees and Scribes who seek to trip him up and find some fault in him, he is speaking to those who are eager to listen and learn, those who have perhaps heard of him and want to see what he is all about. They hear his statement, “You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free,” and they are offended--and so are we. How often have we heard this statement taken out of context? Did you know it is even plastered on the side of the CIA Building in Washington, DC?

But what truth? When asked this question we stick out our chest and talk about the truth that Jesus rose from the dead so that we might be free. And though modern day theologians would whole heartedly agree with the statement “the truth will make you free.” Many of them believe we skip too rapidly to this freedom, this grace, we jump right to the end of the story and forget everything that comes before.
Those listening to Jesus certainly had forgotten. “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.” Certainly they seem to have forgotten that at one time or another in their history they were slaves to the Egyptians, and lived under Assyrian, Persian rule and now as Jesus is speaking with them, they still live in oppression and in conflict with the Romans. So their conversation with Jesus is surprising. Jesus reminds them, “. . . everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” And we think that this must be one of those rhetorical devices because we have no idea why he says it that way.

Conversations about sin can be tricky. I remember a few years ago having two telling conversations about sin. The first was with a young mother who wanted her baby baptized. She had grown up in another tradition and decided that she wasn’t going to have her baby baptized in that tradition because the priest kept talking about original sin and she just knew her baby wasn’t sinful. So she asked me what we Lutherans-- what we at St. John’s ---believe because she thought we were a nice bunch of people. It was though she were interviewing me for the most important task. I told her that here at St. John’s we believe all are born into sin, and that through the waters of baptism we rise to newness of life in Christ Jesus. Yet we remain, throughout our lives -- saint and sinner at the same time. She wasn’t satisfied; she didn’t want to hear about sin and we don’t want to hear about sin either.
The second story is of Confirmation class a few years ago when we began to study the Catechism.
We were talking about the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgive us our sins” and we read the explanation “. . . for we daily sin much and indeed deserve only punishment." Some members of the class were offended at the idea that they deserved punishment for something they had not done. They didn’t appreciate being named sinner. 


"I’m not a sinner," a student told me. "I’m good, I treat people well, I help those who need help, I don’t lie, cheat or steal." And of course she didn’t. What we don’t seem to understand is that sin is more than those big things that we don’t do. Sin is also those smaller things like not forgiving our family member that hurt us, not loving our neighbors as ourselves, believing that the way we look at things and want things is the one right way and making everyone’s life miserable when we don’t get our way. Sin is gossiping and ignoring the new kid in school. Sin is “the fabric of our lives,” or as Paul tells us “We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.” That’s a fact.
Sin is also so much bigger. It evades our lives in so many ways. No, we may not kill or murder or commit adultery, yet almost everything we do makes us complicit in the sins of this fallen and broken world. Think about it....where we live, how we live, what we eat, the availability of goods and resources means that someone goes without. What we wear, the cars we drive in some way or some how harms the planet and harms someone whose health is destroyed by hard labor or lack of those things we take for granted.

This grace sets us free to love, to give, to serve as unconditionally and wholeheartedly as we are able---free to care for the poor, the lonely, the lost---free to share our abundance with those who know lack--free to not only continue in the word of God but to witness, to proclaim that good news.
Conversations with my husband about theology, and doctrine can get heated, but what we do agree on is the fact that we all sin and it is by the grace of God through the death and resurrection of  Jesus the Christ we are saved.

Just Rambling

Reflections on a Commemoration

I have very mixed emotions about the commemoration of 9/11. Some would say I am a person that likes to leave the past behind. I do however, realize that this is an occasion that has changed the world forever and has even changed me. So commemorate, ten years later, we must.

I remember very clearly where I was and what I was doing the moment I first heard of the events of the day. I was sitting in my decorated in pink (not by me) bedroom of the parsonage at St. John's Lutheran Church in the Bronx. I was reviewing the guest list of an event that was supposed to take place on September 21. I was watching, as I still do when I have time, Good Morning America. At first I thought it was a prank or some fancy camera illusion. I soon found out it was real -- happening right there as I watched.

Before the hour was up, my phone began ringing first my son, then members of the congregation. One member's very young child had gotten on a bus to go to school in downtown Manhattan; another member called to say a cousin worked, if not in the towers very close by. Still others called to ask could we, should we pray. In all our helplessness that is what we did-- pray.

That night on the concrete steps of the church that was built in the early 1800's we prayed and those who walked by joined in. A firefighter from the neighborhood walked by and said, "thank you." He told us that in this most awful tragedy the people of New York City had pulled together to help each other.

I thank God, that the tragedy of 9/11 bought out the best in people. I mourn with all those who lost loved ones. And I continue to pray, never again!

Just rambling.