Erin Seigmiller
It’s quite the collection of texts this morning! I struggled with this for EVER, and I’m still not sure if my theme really works. But we’ll just use our imaginations and a shoehorn to get them all to fit! Ultimately, my theme, “Seriously, God’s in charge” is quite nicely laid out in our psalm.
In my favorite translation of the bible, The Message, the 5th psalm 1 - 8 runs like this:
Listen, God! Please, pay attention!
Can you make sense of these ramblings,
my groans and cries?
King-God, I need your help.
Every morning you’ll hear me at it again.
Every morning I lay out the pieces of my life
on your altar and watch for fire to descend.
You don’t socialize with Wicked,
or invite Evil over as your houseguest.
Hot-Air-Boaster collapses in front of you;
you shake your head over Mischief-Maker
God destroys Lie-Speaker;
Blood-Thirsty and Truth-Bender disgust you.
And here I am, your invited guest --
it’s incredible!
I enter your house; here I am;
prostrate in your inner sanctum,
Waiting for directions
to get me safely through enemy lines.
You can’t see it, but Wicked, Hot-Air-Boaster, Mischief-Maker and Truth-Bender are all capitalized. They are like named characters in the drama that is our lives.
But God once again shows us who is in charge, who has real, and ultimate authority. The psalm also lets us know where we are, and gives us some good advice. We are invited guests, unlike Wicked. An invited guest who is received into the “inner sanctum” and we’ve been promised a foolproof (thank
goodness!) plan to navigate the “enemy lines” of our lives. The second stanza holds the advice (which is echoed in many other passages), leave the pieces of your life on God’s altar, and keep watch.
So, God is in charge. And has the ultimate authority. And is in command of all things. Right. Clearly this is the case in our first old testament lesson about Ahab, Jezebel and Naboth. Ahab wants what he can not have. What I didn’t understand at first about this was this - at the time, in Jewish tradition a
person couldn’t just sell their land, it was held by them in trust almost, for their family’s sake. For future generations. So, selling it, or trading it was out of the question. Naboth wasn’t just being fussy, he was on the right side of the law on this one. Ahab, couldn’t have it, until Jezebel fixes it all up for
him. God is not impressed, sends Elijah to chat with him. and set him straight on the consequences of his actions. Bam - where the dogs licked up Naboth’s blood, they’ll be doing the same with yours. Ouch! What the lesson doesn’t tell
us is that Ahab goes on to be penitent, and God is merciful to Ahab. Jezebel, not so much. Anyway, once again, God is clearly in charge in this passage.
In the second lesson Paul does go on a bit (as he is wont!) but the gist of this passage - I think, anyway - is that God set this whole thing up, and we need to have faith that God knows the business of being God. So, having said that, and
knowing that Jesus has paid up front for our tickets, there isn’t anything we can do to drive this relationship. Once again, God has the key. We just need to trust Jesus to get the job done, because clearly we are unable to get it together, Law or no law, our efforts are not the key “because no one will be justified by the works of the law.” At the time, Paul and the early christians in Galatia and elsewhere, were dealing
with the influx of non jews into the christian fold, and they were just trying to work things out. The last line in the passage, “for if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.” reassures us that we shouldn’t feel bad that we can’t save ourselves, the jews had The Law, and if they weren't saved by that, then nothing but Jesus will!
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there is more interesting stuff here, but no time to work it in - so lets talk about this sometime over coffee!
Speaking of Jesus ... Our gospel from Luke is a vivid story that uses a situation with Simon the Pharisee, where Jesus is preaching to him through the genuine gratitude shown by the woman in our story. She has been forgiven much, and is
moved to such depths of gratitude that she washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and dries them with her hair. She anoints his feet with healing, and I’m assuming wonderful smelling ointment. It’s messy. As living often is. And Simon, sits
back and judges her to be sinful, and he wonders why Jesus lets her even come close to Him, let alone touch him, and contaminate him. Jesus feels that Simon clearly doesn’t get it. Simon needs a story of his own. He learns. How often have we played the role of Simon, judging others? The unnamed woman isn’t there to seek something from Jesus, she was there to give Him something, her Gratitude. She was in touch with it, and she willingly, overwhelmingly, shared it with Jesus.
Again, echoing our second reading, that rule-following, or subscribing to a certain theology will not be saving us, but Jesus will. We are saved by Grace alone. Once again, God’s in charge. Now, the first three verses of the next chapter have been tacked on to this challenging story, and I had a hard time figuring out why it was there. I listened to the podcast on the workingpreacher that suggested that a whole sermon could be made of these three verses. One that
explored that women were everywhere in Jesus’ story - from Mary, his mother, to Mary Magdalene, Joanna and Susanna to the “many others”, Jesus was followed by, supported, cared for and financed by women. It wasn’t as one of the podcast commentators said, Jesus just going around doing his thing with these 12 guys. There was a movement, and Jesus had more than just a few young men convinced!
One of the commentators suggested that if we were going to be familiar with the names of the apostles, we should be familiar with the names of the women that figured large in Jesus’ life and ministry! I quite agree.
If there has to be conclusion to this sermon it is to remind us all once again of our psalm this morning. Lay it all out for God, trust that you’ve been given the right invitation into the best house ever, and have faith that God has a plan
for you through the “enemy lines” of your life!
amen.
 John 8:31-36 Reformation Sunday
In talking to people inside and outside of the Church, I have come to the conclusion that there are two basic spiritual needs people have, and they are sometimes in conflict. We all have a basic need for security, and we all have a basic need for freedom.
Now, there are churches which offer people mostly security. They tend to be rigid in their beliefs, and offer a complete life-and-belief system which you have to buy as a complete package. You are not supposed to try to think things out for yourself, just accept everything they teach, do everything they say, and you will be saved. Many people find this very comforting. They don't have to work it out themselves, just accept it. You know a church is mostly offering security when their main evangelical emphasis appeals to fear: “Where are you going to spend eternity? In heaven or in hell?”And very often these churches are growing and thriving when other churches are in decline. A lot of people crave security and are willing to trade their freedom for it.
However, not everybody has an overriding desire for security. Many people find the rigidity and rule-following nature of these churches is oppressive and confining. That's one of the reasons many people don't go to church, in fact. The church of their childhood was oppressive, and they don't want to go there. Or they hear and read of churches like this – which tend to be more vocal in the media – and are horrified at the thought of getting into their clutches.
These people have a stronger yearning for freedom. They want to work things out for themselves, they don't want an institution telling them what to believe. They want to be able to do whatever they want, without worrying about whether it is against somebody's rules or not.
The trouble is, without God, there is no lasting freedom. Anybody active in AA or NA or any 12 step program will tell you that you have to put your trust in a higher power, or you will never be free of your addiction. And we are all addicted to sin. There is always something that trips you up, no matter what your standards or principles are. There are always instincts that get the best of us, selfishness that destroys relationships, fear and anger that interfere with our enjoyment of life. And so we don't have the freedom that we crave, after all.
I really think that God was puzzled by us humans. God created us for good, to be God's children and friends, and we turned aside and did all sorts of evil and violent things. God called Abraham to make a new kind of humanity, and still people went violently wrong, and his descendants ended up as slaves in Egypt. God freed them and gave them explicit instructions through the Law of Moses – and for the most part it failed to bring them closer to God. God sent prophets to point out where the people were going wrong – and that didn't work either. Finally God had to come down here Godself to tell us – and when God became human, then God understood. We are slaves to sin. We can't help it. No matter how hard we try, we are going to screw it up somehow.
I think it was at that point that God realized that we are the way we are because that's the way God made us. We are deeply flawed because that's the way we were born. So Jesus proclaimed that we were forgiven, but honestly, we found that hard to believe. That's the tragedy of humanity – we know what we should be like, but we cannot attain to it. So Jesus went to the cross, declared forgiveness even as they were killing him, took all the blame for all our sins on himself, so that we could finally really believe that God wasn't mad at us anymore – that God accepted the blame, that it was okay that we were not perfect. And it's at that point, when we become aware that we don't have to live in fear of death and God's judgement, that God loves us and wants us to be God's dear children – that's when we are freed. The Son has made us free, and we are free indeed.
And in finding this freedom, the freedom from guilt and shame, the freedom from fear and anger, the freedom to live life in love and acceptance and joy, we also find true security. Because no one is more secure than the one who knows that they live in God's love, which is stronger than death.
“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be moved,
and though the mountains shake in the depths of the sea...”
“The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our stronghold.”
Therefore we will not fear, though our congregation seems to be dissolving and disintegrating. Therefore we will not fear, though we don't have enough money to pay the pastor any more. Therefore we will not fear, though a host of personal troubles assails us. The Lord of hosts is with us! The God of Jacob is our stronghold!
And because God discovered that we really can't help screwing up all the time, God said, “What they need is a piece of me inside them!” So God sent us the Holy Spirit to be inside us, changing us from the inside out. So we don't have to try and try to live up to what God wants – God is making it happen as we live and pray and help one another out. We don't have to go by what someone else says. “No longer shall they teach one another, saying, Know the Lord!” But we all know within ourselves that God is with us, freeing us, leading us, loving us.
Our neighbours need to know this. Many of our neighbours are still living lives of desperation, still slaves to sin, living in fear. We are a part of God's solution. As God became human to rescue us, we can reach out to others with that same rescue. We can say, “Your freedom is here. Your security is here. Yes, you can have it all. It is found in Jesus.” Thanks be to God! Amen.
 Mark 10:17-31
What an idiotic thing for James and John to ask! Especially after the passage that is just before this one, which reads,
“ They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, "See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again."”
And then, “James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?" And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."
They just don't get it, do they? Or maybe in horror they just glossed over all the mocking, spitting, flogging and killing, and just focused on the rising again. Maybe they thought they could just stand back and watch all the bad stuff, and get into the good stuff later. Obviously the glory part is what they wanted.
And are we all that much different? We want the glory and resurrection, certainly! And yes, they will be ours. But the way to all that glory is not so pleasant. We don't get to just sit back and watch.
Following Jesus means following Jesus, including going to the cross. And although nobody is threatening to execute us, what we are called to do can still be pretty painful. “Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.”
Now being a servant is often not very much fun. It means putting what you want to do aside, and doing what someone else wants you to do. People do this all the time, of course. Nowadays we call it having a job. And the reason “thank God it's Friday” is such a popular saying is because it is the time when you can stop doing what someone else wants, and do your own thing. And this is good, we all need a Sabbath, a day off.
Nothing wrong with that.
But Jesus wants James and John, and all of us, to pay more attention to our job as disciples. It is to be a servant of all. It is to do things that other people want done for them. We often like to do things for people, but it is usually the things that we think they should like. How many times have you had someone do something for you, and it was exactly the wrong thing? The person didn't really know what you wanted, and took a guess, and guessed wrong. My mother always used to give me money to buy Christmas gifts for my children from her, because she said she had no idea what they would want or like. Wise woman!
The thing is, being a servant means knowing what the person you are serving wants and needs. A waiter in a restaurant who gets the customers' orders all mixed up is not going to get very many tips. So the key to being a good servant is to pay close attention to what the other person really needs.
Jesus knew what we needed. It was not another King to lord it over us the way kings usually do. We needed to be shown that power-tripping is not the way to happiness. We needed to be shown that violence does not solve problems. We needed to be shown that peace lies in being forgiven and in forgiving others. We needed to be shown that God loves us so much that God would even die for us.
So Jesus went to the cross, willingly, to teach us all that. He came not to be served but to serve. And he still serves us, still teaches us, still calls us to be reconciled to God. And he still calls us to carry out his work of serving the world.
And of course the key to doing this successfully, is to pay close attention to what the world needs. We can't just assume that our neighbours need to come to church on Sundays. We have to find out from them, what their actual needs are. That means we have to talk to them. We have to be curious about their problems and their concerns. We have to learn to think about what God may have to offer them in the difficult paths of their lives. And then we have to learn how to offer God's help, in very real terms.
This may mean offering to pray for them or their loved ones – many people really appreciate this. Or it may mean offering some more concrete help. Even bothering to find out what's going on in their lives might in itself be a help, as they discover that someone really cares about them.
And this is the big payoff. As we get to know our neighbours better, we develop a relationship with them. And relationships of love enrich our lives in so many ways. What seemed a burden in the beginning can turn into a joy.
Our congregation has made some efforts in the last while to find out just what it is that the people around us want and need. We have been asking them just what their spiritual needs are and how we can help. We are not here to organize the kind of worship service that we like, just because we like it. We are here to serve our neighbours. And then God will have the glory. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Mark 3:20 – 35
I was watching the TV show Downton Abbey the other day with Lucy. It takes place in pre-World War 1 England. It seems quaint to us to see a society where everybody had his or her own station, and knew just what society expected of them, whether they were a housemaid or a duke. And when one of the housemaids dared to buy herself a typewriter because she wanted a career as a typist, consternation arose all around! She was not following the script, the plan for her life that society had decreed!
We feel our society is not so rigid, and indeed it is not. Yet there are still scripts that are given to us by society, by our families and our employers. And woe betide us if we fail to follow the script, if we write our own scripts, or follow a different script! Many families have been thrown into confusion when a daughter becomes pregnant without being married, or if a son declares that he is gay. They are not following the script. People become distressed and anxious, and even angry, when the approved script is not followed.
In our Gospel today, Jesus is not following the script. Different people had different expectations of him, and he wasn't following any of their scripts. He wasn't raising an army to become the kind of military king some people wanted. He certainly wasn't being a good Jewish boy and marrying a nice girl and settling down and building up his carpentry shop. He wasn't supporting his widowed mother the way the eldest son was supposed to. He wasn't following the right script.
And so his family comes to take him home, to put an end to the craziness, to get him back on track again. And the Jewish authorities speak against him, warning people that he can't be the Messiah, because he is not following the right Messiah script.
Whenever we deviate from the script other people think we should be following, strong negative feelings are thrown at us. I'm sure you have experienced this in your own life. Either other people criticized you harshly for your behaviour, or you have criticized others for their behaviour. Because we all do it. It's one way that society tries to make people conform to what is considered normal behaviour.
And sometimes it's good, maybe most of the time it's good. We frown on bullying. When someone is verbally or physically abusive, we bring the full force of law down on them. When someone is wasting their money on addictions or gambling , familes resort to interventions, to bring them to their senses and impress upon them the damage they are doing, not only to themselves, but to the ones they love. This is what Jesus' family thought they were doing.
But sometimes, the script needs changing. Sometimes the way it's always been done is not the right way for this time and this place and this person. Sometimes God has a different script.
In our first lesson we see a clear distinction between God's script and the people's script. God wants Israel to be a different kind of nation, a nation that does not depend on the leadership of a king, but the leadership of God. But the people want to follow the script that all the other nations are following; they want a king. And so they get a king.
And in our Gospel, Jesus is writing a different script, too. It is a script where God has power over the forces of evil. It is a script where people who do the will of God are bound together in a family that is even stronger than a family bound by blood. It is a script which in the end will result in his death. And in his resurrection.
We all have a choice as to what script we will follow. Will we follow the script our families and society have given us? Or will we follow God's script? They are not always the same. And especially when God changes the script on us, there is hell to pay. We will face a great deal of doubt and opposition. Tempers will flare and harsh words will be said. There may even be ruptures in family relations. Sometimes it may seem that it is just not worth it.
God is changing the script in the world right now. For 500 years the Lutheran church has followed a certain script, a certain way of being the church in the world. This is what we grew up in, this is what we are used to and what we want. But it's not working any more. God has changed the script. God is pushing us to become a different kind of church.
Now this leads to a lot of confusion, doubt, anger and dissension. Even last Sunday we witnessed this. And what makes it worse is that it is hard to agree on what the script should be, even if we agree that the old script is not working any more.
It is easy to look at the story of Jesus and his family and see so clearly that Jesus was right and Jesus was following God's script. And it is easy to look back at Samuel and his contemporaries and see that it might have gone a lot better for them if they had paid attention to Samuel and played it according to God's script. I'm sure a hundred years from now people will look back at our struggles and clearly see that what we have done is right, or that we really missed the boat. I wonder which!
But whatever happens, we have to remember that the script we are to follow, is the same script that Jesus followed. We follow the script of reaching out to the hurting and lost. We follow the script of giving of ourselves in the face of criticism and scorn. When we were baptized, we were baptized into Jesus' death so that we would also participate in his resurrection. As Paul puts it, “We know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and will bring us with you into his presence. Yes, everything is for your sake, so that grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. So we do not lose heart.” Now that is a very important point, because it is all too easy to lose heart when we are faced with confusion and doubt.
Paul goes on: “Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.” You could also say that of our congregation. Our outer nature is surely wasting away: our finances are faltering, our average attendance is slipping; but our inner nature does not depend on these external signs. The life of this congregation is still strong, the love we have for each other sustains us, and the hope for the future which God is giving us is carrying us along.
God has a future planned for us; a future with hope. God is guiding us to discover how we can move into that future. Between us, we and God are writing a new script for Our Saviour's Lutheran Church, a script that is loving and welcoming and challenging and inspiring. Thanks be to God! Amen.
Just when you think you know how the world works, God goes and turns it all upside down.
We all have an instinct for self-preservation. That instinct leads to fear. We fear many things, but above all we fear dying. And our instinct is fight or flight. If we can't run away from what we fear, we become angry. And our fear of violence turns violent. Violence erupts from insecurity, from anxiety, from fear. And then it turns and becomes evil. People start to enjoy the power that they get from putting the fear onto someone else with violence. And so the cycle continues, violence begetting violence.
We are told that God hates violence. Right near the beginning of the world, there was violence on the earth, and God decided to wipe the earth clean of violence with a flood. Didn't work very well, did it?
How could God stop this never ending cycle of violence? This endless round of fear and self-protection and lashing out, this grasping for power over others to ensure one's own safety, this blood lust and cruelty?
God met it head on, in person. God in Jesus gave himself over to the darkness.
God’s love is so strong that Jesus is willing to submit to violence in order that his followers might see once and for all that violence is not the answer. For in the face of violence Jesus refuses to employ violence but instead insists that God forgives us. We remember today Christ’s willingness to sacrifice himself so that no more blood would be spilt and no more bodies destroyed for the sake of sin.
Jesus confronted the fear and evil that constrains us from being the loving creatures that we were created to be. And this gives us courage to also confront the demons that lurk within. It gives us hope that we do not have to be captive to fear, captive to violence, captive to sin. We are confident of Christ’s promise that God is gracious and violence will not win.
Dog eat dog is the way of the world, the way of our instincts. But Jesus' kingdom is not of this world. Jesus transcends instinct and shows us a better way. Jesus empties himself, and becomes obedient to death, even death on the cross. Jesus shows us the way of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Because when we are faced with fear, when anger grabs hold of us, when our sufferings seem too much for us, when despair overtakes us – Jesus has been there. Jesus knows what we are going through – even to death. And there we find that love is stronger than death. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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