240630 Sermon on God working contrary to expectations (Pentecost 6) June 30, 2024

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Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

A person might feel jealous hearing our Gospel reading today. There was a lot of healing. Jesus was told about Jairus’s little girl who was extremely sick. While he was on his way to heal her, a woman who had a flow of blood was healed. By the time that Jesus got to the house the little girl had died, and Jesus raised her from the dead. Jesus showed his great powers of healing. Some of you might like some healing for yourself, or for someone you know and love. Why can’t Jesus heal some more?

In my sermon last week I spoke of fighting or wrestling with God. Our reason is skeptical of there being any benefit for ourselves from engaging in this. How could we ever win? God is much stronger than us. And in a way our reason is correct. In the examples of the fighters and the wrestlers with God that I spoke about with you last week, the people didn’t come out of the contest stronger. They came out weaker. But, as Paul says, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” The bones that God has broken rejoice. These fighters were humbled, but they believed that God would exalt them. They came into the fight with an idea of what they would like God to do for them, they came out the other end with God having done something that was different from what they expected, but also something that was more.

What I’ve just described is what some people have called “the theology of the cross.” The cross that is being referred to is Jesus’s cross as well as our cross as Christians that Jesus talks about when he says, “If you want to be my disciple, then take up your cross and follow me.” The term “theology of the cross” is a way to summarize the strange way that God works.

Think of how God worked when the Father sent his Son to be the Christ. You might expect God to have sent him with great power and glory. Jesus is God after all. But you know what God does. He causes Jesus to be born in a stable. Away in a manger, no crib for a bed. Those are humbler circumstandes than you were born into. Even if you were born in a house, that’s nothing compared to Jesus’s birth. And the humility continued. He gave and gave.

Finally the Father had his Son nailed to the cross. To all outward appearances, from the perspective of reason, it was no longer possible to believe in this man was God’s Christ. It looked like it was impossible that he could be or remain king. He just became weaker and weaker until he died.

We, of course, know that God was accomplishing the most glorious and beautiful things through the bloody, gory cross. We know that God made peace between himself and sinners. Although God humbled Jesus to the point of death, even death on the cross, God has raised him from the dead. God has highly exalted Jesus so that his name is above every name. At the name of Jesus every knee will bow in heaven, and on earth, and those under the earth. Jesus Christ is Lord!

But who’d have thought it while seeing him gasping and crying out from the cross? Nobody! Not even his disciples could continue to believe in him. They thought it was all over and done with. Thomas, one of the twelve, wouldn’t even take his fellow disciples’ word for it. He was never going to believe in Jesus again unless he saw the marks and felt the wounds. So it goes. Such is the power of reason. Reason rises up against what God says and does, declaring him to be unacceptable.

Reason can strike out at the cross—the very core of our faith. To my mind there is no more direct way to disagree with Christianity than to say that what God did to Jesus was wrong. Perhaps you’ve heard this referred to as “divine child abuse.” It can have a ring of truth to it. Why did God do it like that? Why didn’t God just snap his fingers and make everything all better? Maybe you’ve wondered that before. If we were God we wouldn’t use that nasty cross.

So it is that reason and faith go their separate ways. Reason says that the cross is crude, ugly, unnecessary. Faith accepts and loves the cross because faith trusts in the God who put Jesus on that cross. Faith waits for the salvation that God has promised even if that salvation may tarry for a time.

Now let’s go back to the thought with which I began. I mentioned how some of you might be jealous upon hearing how Jesus did all this healing. You or someone you love needs healing. Our reason can be the enemy to our faith here. Our reason might ask, “Why doesn’t Jesus heal right here, right now, in the way that I want him to?” What’s his problem? Why doesn’t he do what I want?

To be a human being means that we have our reason. It is not strange that our reason should act this way. What makes a Christian a Christian, however, is believing that Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord with all his forgiveness. Jesus Christ is Lord with all his resurrected power and glory. Jesus Christ is Lord with his cross, with his testing, with his waiting, with his wrestling, with his humbling, with his exalting. Jesus is who Jesus is. We can’t pull him apart and take those things that we like best about him and dump the rest in the garbage.

Maybe one of the things that you don’t really like about Jesus is that he hasn’t healed you, or that he hasn’t healed someone that you love. If you could, you’d dump that part of him into the garbage. Well, my advice is that if you feel that way, then you should say that to him! We talked about this last week as well. Your prayers don’t need to be polite. God already knows how you feel, so you might as well be honest about it. More prayers are better, not less. Tell him what you want. God will hear your prayer.

However—and this is a big however—he might not answer your prayers the way you want or expect. He might not answer your prayers the way that you would want to require of him. “If I’m going to pray to you, then you better do what I want.”

This is true even in the cases of healing that we heard about in our Gospel reading. I doubt very much that that woman with the flow of blood prayed that she would suffer from her condition for twelve years, that she would spend all her money on doctors, that she would be the victim of medical malpractice. When she touched the hem of Jesus’s robe, that was when the time was right.

I doubt that the father and mother of that sick little girl prayed that they wouldn’t get their request to Jesus on time, that Jesus wouldn’t get there in time, and that their little girl would die. They didn’t pray that their little girl would lose all the color in her cheeks so that mother and father would cry rivers of tears. I’m sure they prayed, “O God! Save our daughter!” And he did—just not in the way that they were expecting.

Nevertheless, at the end of all of this, despite their tears and sorrows, I am sure that all of these people whom Jesus blessed were better off than if they had been healed in the way that they were expecting. God does better to us that we would ever do for ourselves. But to believe that requires faith. Our reason might have all kinds of things to say to the contrary.

We can easily apply this to ourselves and our desires. All of us have things we want from God. We should make our requests known to him, firmly believing that he will answer our prayers. If, for no other reason, we should be confident because we know that God has given us Jesus. Jesus is God’s most precious treasure. If God has given us Jesus, then he has to give us every good thing.

But here’s the thing: We don’t know how he will do it. We don’t know if it will take twelve years. We don’t know if we will lose all our money. We don’t know if we or that person you love will have to die first before the healing will take place. But it will take place. And it will be glorious. You will be better off on the other end than if God would do everything exactly the way you want him to do. But to believe that takes faith. May God grant you such faith! Amen.

Jesus said, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.”

240623 Sermon on lamenting to God (Pentecost 5) June 23, 2024

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“When I am weak, then I am strong.”

“Don’t you care that we are dying?” That’s what the disciples said. The wind was too strong. The waves were too high. Some of them were probably trying to use anything they could find to bail out the boat. They were fighting for their lives. What was Jesus doing? Sleeping. Didn’t he care?

Our Old Testament reading is from the book of Job. Job had been a very good man. He loved his family. He prayed for his kids every day. Then his life became miserable. His property was destroyed. His children were killed. He lost his health. Most of the book of Job is made up of conversations between Job and his friends. They discussed how God could do this to poor Job. Didn’t God care?

In both of these situations you can tell that there were some pretty raw emotions. When the disciples said, “Don’t you care that we are dying?” they were yelling so as to be heard above the wind and the waves. Job, also, in his discussions, said stuff like, “Why did you do this to me God?” and “I wish I had never been born.” They were fighting with God.

Fighting with God doesn’t seem like it should be a good idea, but this is one of many instances having to do with our relationship with God when we should not be led by our reason. We should let our reason take the lead with many things in life, but not with our relationship with God. Our reason has a surprising amount to say about the topic of God. We naturally have ideas about how things should be, how God should be, what he should do. Our reason says that God should act in such a way where we don’t ever have to fight with him. If we are fighting with him, then things must be really bad, our reason says.

The Scriptures speak differently. The greatest figures in the Bible struggle mightily with God. Think of Abraham. God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son, his only son, Isaac, whom he loved. What a fight Abraham must have had!

Think of Abraham’s grandson, Jacob. One night Jacob was at the lowest point in his life. He was pretty sure that at least half of his family was going to be annihilated the next day by his brother Esau and his men. Then, in the middle of the night, a strange man shows up out of nowhere so that Jacob had to fight for his life. This was God. And God played kind of dirty—he popped Jacob’s hip out of joint so that he walked with a limp the rest of his life. Jacob, though—that wonderful man—wouldn’t let God go until God blessed him. And God did bless him. God gave him his new name of “Israel,” which means “wrestler with God.” The people of God in the Old Testament came to be called by this name, Israel, which means “wrestler with God.”

There are almost countless other examples I could give you. Wrestling—fighting—with God is not forbidden. In fact, it seem to be how we grow. But it’s hard. It’s deeply unpleasant. We don’t want God to act in such a way where we have to wrestle with him. We want what those disciples undoubtedly wanted. We want smooth sailing forever. Each day should be better than the one before. But then suddenly, out of nowhere, a great windstorm arises and you are in a fight for your life.

What are you going to say about that when that happens? Is it just bad luck? Has the wheel of fortune landed on bankrupt? Does God exist? Would a good and omnipotent God do such awful things? These are the kinds of thoughts that our reason comes up with in order to avoid fighting with God. We want a nice life, and if God isn’t going to help us have a nice life, then be done with him.

But this is the worst thing that we can do. Even with human relationships, the lowest point is not when there is fighting and wrestling. The lowest point is when the person despises the other, won’t have anything to do with them. There’s no fighting. There’s no heart-to-heart. The best to be hoped for is polite chit-chat.

There is a way to have a kind of spiritual chit-chat with God, too. The politeness reveals something terrible—a huge distance between the person and God. God never commands us to be polite with him, nor do the examples from the Scriptures bear that out. The disciples were not polite with Jesus. They screamed at him: “Don’t you care that we are dying!” And Job too: “I wish that I had never been born. I wish I had died while I was still in my mother’s womb.” Those are ugly thoughts. They are accusatory too. “It’s your fault, God!” “Why did you do this?”

The many examples of the greatest figures in the Bible give us permission to open our hearts to God and let him have it. This is called lamentation. We have a book of the Bible that’s called Lamentations. We have psalms of lament. King David, the greatest of the psalmists, composed the saddest songs. He said stuff like, “God, why won’t you answer me?” and “Why have you forsaken me?” and “Turn away from your fierce anger and be merciful to me!”

One of the benefits of using the Psalms is that they teach us a much larger vocabulary for our prayers and praises. Our vocabulary is very often limited because our reason tells us we need to be polite. I could imagine that God might get sick of all this politeness, just like we get sick of the cold politeness we receive. God wants our heart. The greatest commandment is that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and that we should love our neighbor as ourselves. We need to open ourselves up to him. Tell him what you really think. And that might mean that you will wrestle with him and fight with him.

And what can we expect to happen when we wrestle with God? Our reason is very interested in this question. We want what’s best for us, and so will this wrestling and fighting business make us better off? The answer is that we will be better off, but not the way we would expect. We expect that we will become stronger, but what the examples from the Scriptures reveal is that we will become weaker.

Jacob, for the rest of his days, walked with a limp. Job finished up his conversation with God by saying, “Therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Consider the words that Jesus spoke in our Gospel reading. He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” Maybe before this ordeal they thought that they were doing pretty well, that they had a strong faith. After wrestling with God they discover that they had no faith at all.

Why should a person enter into a contest with God if it is only going to reveal one’s own weakness, helplessness, faithlessness, and so on? A person should do that because of this wonderful saying from St. Paul with which we began. He said, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” Paul knew that when he was weak then he was strong because God had said to him, “Don’t worry about your failings. My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

It’s God’s power that we want and need, not our own power. When I feel good or strong or righteous or whatever, that doesn’t mean that I really am those things. A windstorm could show up out of nowhere, and prove that to me. When I am weak, however, when I’m not relying upon myself, when I’m placing all my trust and hope in Jesus, then I am strong—even infinitely so, because Jesus is infinitely strong.

We see this play out in a wonderful way in our Gospel reading today. The disciples’ wrestling match with God—the disciple’s wrestling match with God’s wind and God’s waves—revealed that they were not as strong as they thought they were. Their terror during the ordeal revealed that their faith wasn’t as resilient as they thought it was.

But what does any of that matter? We don’t save ourselves by our own strength, nor do we save ourselves by our estimation of our own faith. Jesus saves! And through this experience the disciples were turned away from themselves and became completely captivated with Jesus. They tinkle with fear and say, “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?” That is the spot to be in.

I know that for some of you terrible windstorms have come upon you. Out of nowhere the smooth sailing is over. Learn from the Scriptures what to do. The Bible teaches us a different way, as we have talked about today. Open your heart to the God who has wounded you. That takes a lot of courage! Don’t let him go until he gives you a blessing, and you will be blessed. As David says in Psalm 51, “The bones that God has broken will rejoice.”

“Cast all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you.” Amen.

240602 Sermon on why the Pharisees wanted to destroy Jesus (Pentecost 2) June 2, 2024

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“The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against Jesus, how to destroy him.”

Perhaps you’ve noticed before that there are some people who like laws and rules, and there are others who don’t. Those who like laws and rules usually also like organization. They like to have their things in their proper places. They like to be on-time. Those are nice things that can be said about them. There are also negative things that can generally be said about them. They can be unimaginative and boring. They can be judgmental and rude. Those who don’t like laws and rules as much can be somewhat the opposite. They are often more flexible. They can be more fun. But they might not be as good at organization or getting tasks done.

Between the two, I think those people are more highly valued who like laws and rules. They often make better employees. They do as they’re told. And if the meaning of life is to have a job or to make money, then these folks are better. They’re more productive.

Among many of the Jews at Jesus’s time the purpose of life was to follow the laws of Moses. That can be hard for us to imagine in our money-soaked culture, but so it was. There were Jews whose stated ambition was to follow God’s Law carefully and zealously. That doesn’t sound like it should ever be a bad thing, but as we heard in our Gospel reading, these people became Jesus’s enemies. They hated him and wanted to destroy him. Why? Because he didn’t follow their rules.

The rules that were especially at issue in our reading had to do with the third commandment: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” God commanded the Israelites not to work on the seventh day of the week. The Jews were extremely careful about keeping this commandment. They came up with well-organized lists of things that ought not be done because such things would be “work.” No work was to be done on the Sabbath.

You heard in our reading how the disciples were walking through the grainfields on the Sabbath. What were they doing? Work—according to the Pharisees. They were plucking heads of grain, rubbing off the chaff, and popping them into their mouths. They were harvesting and threshing.

And you might think that this is no big deal. It was just a few kernels. But you’d be wrong. Anyone who knows anything about rules knows that if you let them take an inch they’ll take a mile. These disciples were just harvesting a few kernels, but what if somebody else started to take handfuls? What’s to stop someone from getting out the sickle? Before you know it, the whole field has been harvested on the Sabbath! No! Nip it in the bud. Not even a single kernel is to be harvested on the Sabbath.

Then, in the second half of the reading, Jesus came into a synagogue on the Sabbath. There was a man whose hand was withered. They wondered whether Jesus might do the work of healing on the Sabbath. Lo and behold, he did! Just as they suspected. Jesus was a Sabbath-breaker.

We might understandably be critical of these Pharisees and immediately come to Jesus’s defense, but I think we can learn some important things if we look at the situation from their perspective. They were fully convinced that they were right. They were doing what they’d always been doing, and what they’d always been doing was to be extremely serious about the Sabbath. They liked to get things just right. They had read many books about it. They’d built up a vast knowledge of what was allowable, what was forbidden, and what might be in the middle. According to this vast knowledge they knew that Jesus was dead wrong.

This left them in a predicament—although it wasn’t really a predicament. Either they could forsake all their learning and all their practices and follow Jesus, or they could reject Jesus. It wasn’t a hard decision. Who was this Jesus anyway? Somebody from the sticks. Everybody knows that nothing good ever comes from Nazareth.

So the Pharisees were not troubled by their decision, but in point of fact they had made a terrible mistake. They believed that the world needed them and their organization. The world needed their books with all of their wisdom. They were wrong. The simplest Christian knows what the world needs. The world needs Jesus. Truth and goodness will only come through faith in him.

Jesus tried to help the Pharisees. He tried to show them that he was the Messiah, the Christ, the King. Jesus mentioned King David. King David and his disciples ate the showbread from the tabernacle that was supposed to be eaten only by the priests. The Jews had been waiting for someone like David, and here he was! Jesus and his disciples could take the liberty of plucking heads of grain just as David had taken liberty with the showbread.

Admittedly, that demonstration is a little subtle, but the other things Jesus said and did were not subtle at all. They were very direct. Jesus flat out said that he is the Son of Man—a messianic title. “The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath,” he said, referring to himself. And Jesus showed his power by healing the man’s withered hand. He produced a miracle to validate what he had been saying.  

But the Pharisees were blind. They weren’t literally blind, but what they should have seen they didn’t see. They should have seen that Jesus is the Christ, but they saw an enemy instead. They didn’t see a miracle; they saw a Sabbath-breaker. It’s like they were bewitched. Here Jesus was with all his grace and power, but all they care about are their stupid little rules. Their stupid little rules have never saved anyone, nor will they save anyone. There is only one Savior—Jesus of Nazareth. Everything else can and must be cast aside for this pearl of great price. There is no organization, no institution, no proud history that can stand in the way of the One whom God has sent. They were wrong.

Let’s now consider how this might apply to us. We can learn important things from these Pharisees who rejected Jesus. Imagine if Jesus would have taken a different tack with the Pharisees. Imagine if he come up to them and spoken their language, so to speak. What if he would have talked about how they, as the most fastidious Jews, were the real Jews. The other Jews were Jews-in-name-only. Those ignorant people didn’t even know what Rabbi Hillel had said about this or that... If Jesus would have talked with them like that, then Jesus would have been part of their club. They would have loved him as one of their own.

So it is with us. Imagine if Jesus were to sidle up to us and say, “I’ve been paying attention, and guess what? You’re the best. Yep. I love everything that you’ve been doing. Those other people—they just don’t get it. But you? You know what’s what. Keep up the good work!”

I think we might respond: “Well thanks Jesus! I always did think you were a pretty swell guy. I like how you think.”

Ridiculous! Jesus is God, not us. Jesus leads, Jesus teaches, and we follow; not the other way around. If we were to reverse this order it would be blindness and stupidity. If we were to reverse this order, then we would only agree with Jesus insofar as he already agrees with us. That is exactly what was going on with the Pharisees. They had no problem with Jesus except when he disagreed with them. When Jesus did disagree with them, they didn’t repent and change their minds. They went stubbornly ahead with their own thoughts and actions because they believed that they were right.

In our sad and decaying times the one thing that everybody has in common is that everybody believes they are right. The people on the right are completely convinced that they are right. The people on the left are completely convinced that they are right. The people in the middle are completely convinced that they are right. Everybody is completely right.

That isn’t surprising if you will think about yours. Nurturing the belief that we are so right and others are so wrong feels so good! We like that feeling. The Pharisees liked that feeling. It felt good to harrumph that Jesus was nothing but a lousy Sabbath-breaker. They enjoyed labeling Jesus as an evildoer. They enjoyed their hardness of heart.

Nobody has to force us into being blind and stupid, especially when it comes to the belief that we are right. We do that quite naturally. What is so unnatural that it requires a miracle of the Holy Spirit is for us to turn away from ourselves and the celebration of our own rightness, and to glorify, not ourselves, but the Son of God instead. That can be quite painful. These Pharisees would have needed to toss aside all those commentaries that they loved so much. They would have had to toss aside what made them most proud about themselves.

What beloved parts of your identity that you pride yourself upon need to be tossed aside?

Paul said that he regarded the best parts of himself to be a loss—the best parts of himself were garbage. These were not shameful things. They were things that others would admire, but Paul says they are garbage. Why? Why was Paul so hard on himself? Because knowing Jesus reveals that all that other stuff is garbage. Perhaps the things that we love best about ourselves are the exact things that we should most deeply repent. We aren’t prone to worship ourselves for the things we don’t like about ourselves. We are prone to worship the stuff we like. That makes us blind.

Open your eyes. The celebration of yourself will end badly. Glorify Jesus instead.

Jesus Christ is Lord! Amen.