The sermon preached on 10th February 2019, being the Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, Lectionary Year C, by the Rev’d Elizabeth Senft, Lutheran Pastoral Associate.

Epiphany V 2019

10 February 2019

Isaiah 6:1-8, 9-13

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Luke 5:1-11

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  AMEN.

All of today’s lessons have something to do with call. That’s something that is in our hearts today as we hear the news about Tom and Thomas as they are called to new places.  The calls in our lessons are grandiose calls for grandiose people, at least in hindsight.  They are all or nothing calls to commitment.  But let’s look at them with foresight instead.

These lessons don’t say much about the message or the process.  They are centered around the individual who receives a call from God to share a message.  The message that these individuals are called to share isn’t even fleshed out.  And at the point of the call, the call itself may be grandiose, as is the hindsight view of the people being called, but at the time of the call these are not remarkable people.

So, you have very dramatic calls to action and to share a message from God, but the how, what and to whom is left undescribed.  And that has led to a good deal of trouble over the centuries. There is no zeal like religious zeal and nothing can inflame it better than a perceived call from God.  We have a history that includes Crusades, pogroms, the wipe outs of indigenous peoples, enslavement of those to whom the message is brought, murder if it is not properly accepted. We have a Christian history that has been exclusionary and for many still is. And it isn’t just history. We’ve been hearing plenty akin to this in our present news of the day. If you aren’t my kind of Christian, you aren’t Christian at all. Or worse, if you aren’t Christian or my kind of Christian, you aren’t human at all. How does that fit with Jesus’s “first law” that tells us to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves? And how does all of that fit with the answer to the question, “who is my neighbor?” when the answer is the Samaritan – the worst enemy of the believing Jew in Jesus’s time.

We must assume that it doesn’t fit and isn’t intended to fit. We must assume that isn’t the answer.

In our story from Isaiah, the prophet is called in a rather dramatic way, being anointed with a coal upon his lips and then says, “Send me!”

In our passage from Luke, we have the “great catch of fish” story. Jesus is beginning his ministry. He’d been baptized. He spent forty days in the wilderness praying and preparing, and now he has come to preach and teach. But he hasn’t started in the court of the king or the temple with the high priest. He’s begun his ministry among the common folk—fishermen, farmers, women, and children. This lesson makes for some interesting theater, too. Imagine how a bunch of professional fishermen felt when Jesus, a carpenter by trade, told them to put their nets out again for a catch. Can’t we hear the impatience in Peter’s voice: “We’ve worked all night and caught nothing. But if you say so…” Imagine the eyerolls, even the snickers.  But of course, they bring in a boatload, and they are amazed.

But the boatload of fish isn’t the point of the story. It really doesn’t matter how Jesus managed that miracle. The same goes for the vision of Isaiah: it really doesn’t matter how the Lord’s hem filled the temple or the prophet got his lips singed and didn’t die. The point of both passages is that God expects each of us to take a part in building the kingdom of God.

By our baptism we are anointed as Isaiah was—as Jesus was—and as Peter was in today’s passage. Both these readings can be a real inspiration to us and to all people who are called to make a difference where they are. But they can be weaponized also, as we have just reminded ourselves about the part of our story that excludes people based on our definition of what God wants, rather than God’s.

I am a part of a family of pastor developers, mission field pastors, whatever the term of the decade is. One thing that we who are pastors have all done, my father, my sister, my brothers-in law, myself, with the exception of my nephew who hasn’t yet been ordained that long, is start a church from scratch.  And my late husband Mark’s family has similar traditions.  His grandfather started churches in Chicago, his father in India, and even Mark was commissioned a missionary for his medical work in India.

Talk about the call, but not knowing what the who, what and how are going to be.  You arrive at the predestined location, you get the mechanics of moving in completed, and then what?  There is no worship, no building, no congregation, no programs, and it is quite likely that not all of your neighboring clergy will be entirely supportive of your presence in their midst.  You are the new competition.  Even if you aren’t, really. Then comes the moment you awaken in the middle of the night and realize that job you have been prepared to do, gone to seminary for, you can’t do until you gather the people. Talk about a course correction. Yikes!

At least in recent decades, the church has tried to place people who start new congregations in situations that will not be completely alien, either to the pastor, or to the intended congregation.  But that isn’t always possible.  What one does need is healthy doses of empathy and accompaniment – or the ability to walk in someone else’s shoes.  You also definitely need the ability to get up, dust yourself off, and start over again.  And again.  And again.  And with a little more empathy and accompanying each time.

What we have learned is that most often means accepting people as they are. We must remind ourselves that if God is omnipotent and all of humanity is God’s creation, then God already has this figured out somehow. 

There are many that don’t have this as a part of their view of fishing for people. Rob Bell, once a very successful conservative evangelical pastor, tells a story. His church, Mars Hill, just outside of Detroit, had sponsored an art exhibition about the search for peace in a broken world.  There was a picture of Mohandas Gandhi with a quote.  Someone had put a post-it on the picture with the words, “Reality check: he’s in hell.”

For Rob Bell, this was a shock and a wakeup call. He puts it like this in his book “Love Wins:”

“Gandhi’s in hell? He is? We have confirmation of this? Someone knows this? Without a doubt?

And that somebody decided to take on the responsibility of letting the rest of us know?”

These remarks strike me. I had a seminary professor who looked one of my more zealous classmates in the eye when he questioned what constituted bringing people to Christ, and what constituted salvation.  He said, “My dear young man, we do have a doctrine about the existence of hell.  We do not have a doctrine about its population.  Do not presume to do what Jesus, the apostles, and the church fathers have not.”

At least for Lutherans and Episcopalians and some others of us, the idea of fishing for people is about building relationships.  It is also not about stealing sheep – to mix animal metaphors.  If someone is already in a community of faith, then that person is not the person for whom you are fishing.  You are looking for the people who need neighbors of love, a supportive community, a place to flourish and find their gifts.  You are looking for people who want to use their gifts to build the kingdom of God in one place and extend it further out, not by making threats of damnation, but with the expansive message that we are all a part of God’s creation and we ought to act like it, protecting each part of that creation, human and otherwise, as if God made it.

And what you learn very quickly, is that it takes all kinds. As St. John’s looks at its future, and just as Jesus looked at his community of fisher folk, trades people, women, children, and spoke to all of them, those of us who work to build the kingdom of God in a local community, realize very quickly that we need all kinds. Each person comes from a different place and is called to bring the message of God’s love in his or her own way.  And it is the mixture of all kinds of people that stirs the waters to create the stories that bind us to evermore fish for people.  AMEN.

Sermon preached on 27th January 2019, the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C,by the Rev’d Lyn G. Brakeman, priest associate.

Lectionary: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; Psalm 19; i Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

Sermon preached on 30th December 2018, the First Sunday after Christmas Day, by the Rev’d Richard J. Simeone, priest associate.

Readings: Isaiah 61:10—62:3; Psalm 147; Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7; John 1:1-18

Sermon preached on 23rd December 2018, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, by the Rev’d Lyn G. Brakeman, Priest Associate.

Readings: Micah 5:2-5a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-55

Sermon preached on 9th December 2018, the Second Sunday of Advent, by the Rev’d Elizabeth C. Senft, Lutheran Pastoral Associate.

Malachi 3.1-4

Luke 1.68-79

Philippians 1.3-11

Luke 3.1-6

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.

First of all, I want to say that all of our thoughts and prayers are with Tom, and of course Thomas.  I am grateful that things weren’t much worse, but there is a long healing and recovery, not all of which will be easy.  Giving them some space and time to recuperate and pitching in to keep things humming here is something that is already happening in a very loving way!

A messenger arrives to prepare the way:  How many times in each life has a messenger prepared the way for something?  For those of us that remember the days before drugstore tests, the doctor would tell you that you were pregnant.   Later in life, another doctor describes the rigors of upcoming chemotherapy or the usual path of a disease that will end one’s life. A parent declares in graphic detail what will happen to a teenage child if he or she is found with drugs or alcohol.

In the second year of the presidency of Donald Trump, when Benjamin Netanyahu is the Prime Minister of Israel and Mahmoud Abbas is the President of Palestine and Michael Curry is the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church and Alan Gates is the bishop of the Diocese of Massachusetts, someone is waiting quietly in the wilderness, a messenger who will ask you what you will do, who will maybe ask you to change, and then ask you to work to re-make your corner of the world so that it is ripe to become God’s kingdom. Luke’s words for today set us in a particular time and a particular place. The reader and listener find themselves with John in the wilderness. And, John is proclaiming that the particular world in which Luke has just placed us is about to change. To be ready for that world to change, people must themselves change.

We are in a particular time and place.  Our time is uncertain and in that, we share some space with our brothers and sisters in the time of John the Baptist.  Who is the messenger God sends to us?  And what is the message?

Malachi, like Luke, is set in a particular time and place. The time is after the end of the Babylonian exile. The people are home and apparently have already had time to fall into questionable ways. Malachi announces a time of cleansing, of refining.  It isn’t entirely reassuring.

Some of us as Americans can identify with this.  Many of us don’t feel safe.  The world is changing and some are not adjusting well to the change.  For those people, there is fear.  Others of us have hope that change will bring out the best in us.

Malachi’s announcement thus rings true and it is also Luke’s announcement. Only in Luke, Malachi’s language of refining and purifying which almost sounds like a threat, is entirely absent. Instead, John the messenger announces a new way to change a heart and be ready for the security of a home with God.

He also calls for the natural world to be changed. God initially created the world. And, now, that creation is going to take on an entirely different appearance. Malachi the messenger tells of changes to come, changes in the individual as well as changes in the society.

Who is our messenger?  

Let’s listen to Teresa of Avila, a very strange and mystic saint:

God’s messengers come through the conversations of good people, or from sermons, or through the reading of good books; and there are many other ways . . . in which God calls. Or they come through sicknesses and trials, or by means of truths which God teaches us at times when we are engaged in prayer; however feeble such prayers may be, God values them highly.

(The Interior Castle)

Messages like this one move us forward into a new time and a new place with very simple means. And that’s where the lessons of Advent can address us: what messages has God been sending to us lately? How have we been challenged to grow? Who has brought us hope?

Elaine Pagels, a theologian and scholar, recently wrote a book entitled “Why Religion?”  I saw a review in the NYT a few days after its publication in late October and ordered the book.  It is not a book justifying religion or faith as the title might suggest, rather it is a book about intense personal loss. Her first child died of a fatal condition at age six.  Her husband died just over a year later, falling off a mountain during a hike. This is a book about the messengers and messages that come in the days after those losses.  Both likely and unlikely, these messages and messengers come in the moments of hope, devastating grief, loss of faith, and everything in between that may accompany the death of a loved one.  Some of the messages and their tellers are unexplainable but still move her.  Others are quite clear and straight forward.

Having suffered my own deep loss in recent months, I found the book to be strangely comforting, not an adjective I would have willingly applied to much of anything Elaine Pagels has written previously.  But to hear her tell her story of doubt, despair, grief, putting one foot numbly in front of the other until finally some emotional spark is stirred, gave me a kinship with her telling.  It is the surprising messages and messengers that mostly unknowingly lead her along the way to a new existence in which she can mother again, contribute to the happiness of her fellow human beings through service and gift, and once again professionally to creatively evaluate the nuances of interpretations of the lives and words of Jesus and his followers.

I needed that message and that messenger.  I needed to hear that some of the things that I have felt were messages from my own dear Mark are not crazy imaginations, but have a purpose. The comforting and funny banana tree that arrived a couple of weeks after his death that it turned out he had sent, the seal that poked his head up out of the water when Mark’s ashes were cast to the deep.  And there are other things:  a twinge of jealousy and frustration that told me that I was actually feeling something again, something of which I am not proud, but feelings that were unattached to my grief.  I needed to hear that I might feel enough of anything once again to become a spark in this place, in this community, in this world.  There’s a long way to go and there will be more messengers and messages, but now I know that I might hear them.

We need messengers and messages to confront us and to push us to new places of growth. John the Baptist was the messenger and message melded into a single word. Harsh word, for sure, but a word from God that could lead to repentance, forgiveness, straightened paths, leveled mountains, and filled in valleys.       

We need to believe the God who said, “See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way . . .” God continues to send us messengers for our good, for our best, for our future and present, even though we don’t recognize them sometimes. We need to believe the good news that God still speaks a personal word to each of us, one that pieces through the cacophony of global concerns right to our inner heart’s ear.

This year, like every year, Christmas comes. And, in Christmas, we celebrate the reality that Jesus really does come. Jesus is coming soon. And, there is work to do.

Have we heard the messenger?  Is the world safe for the coming of Jesus? Have the paths been made straight?  A woman is just over eight months pregnant, and she is readying herself for a journey over hills and through valleys. We still have time, a little bit of time before the world changes.

That’s Advent – hearing and receiving the Message and Messenger that God continues to send in many and various ways to prepare the way of the Lord.  AMEN.