"It Begins and Ends With a Tree"

“It Begins and Ends With a Tree”
Matthew 3:1-12
Pastor Todd Buegler
December 4 & 5, 2010
Lord of Life

Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God who is the gift of grace! Amen.

The Christmas tree went up in the Buegler household on Friday, and the decorations went up yesterday. Advent is a season full of rituals and traditions, and one of the most universal of these traditions is the Christmas tree. Every family probably has their own tradition for getting their tree. Some of the more adventurous of you tromp through the woods and cut your own…this year, I saw in the news, for the first time we had the option of ordering a fresh-cut Christmas tree online…hmmm…tempting. In our family, in a scene straight out of a Courier and Ives portrait, we bundle up, and venture out together as a family, and together we wander the aisles of the local Home Depot, where we find out tree or our dreams, and have some high school kid bundle it and toss it on top of our mini-van. Ok, so maybe it lacks something in the “romance” department, but it gets the job done.

The tradition of the Christmas tree comes from Germany, and goes back over 1300 years.

But the tradition of the Christmas tree as we know it…brought inside and decorated, is really only about 500 years old. The trees at the time were called “The Christbaum”, or the “Christ Tree.” Who is credited with first decorating the tree for Christmas? You might be surprised to learn that it was Martin Luther, founder of the reformation and namesake of the Lutheran church. Legend has it that late one night in 1535 as he was walking through the woods, he looked at the trees in the forest, he noticed behind them a beautiful backdrop of stars twinkling through the branches. He cut down an evergreen tree, brought it into his home and decorated it by attaching burning candles to the branches for his children to show them how the stars twinkle through the night.

He said that the twinkling lights on the tree reminded him of the star that hung in the sky on the night of our Savior’s birth. And Luther said that he loved the evergreen as this symbol because while other trees were round in their shape, the evergreen tree is triangular; it points up. It points to God It reminds us that Christmas is about the Christ child. He also loved that the tree was always green…it reminded him of eternal life. For Luther, the Christmas tree told the story of the birth of Jesus. And Luther, who spent his whole life working to move our faith into the home…into the daily life of the family, was literally the one who brought the Christmas tree from outside, into the home.

I love the tradition of the Christmas tree. Not just because of its beauty when it’s decorated and lit…or the evergreen smell that fills our home…or the way it drives our cat completely crazy…I love the tree for the stories that our Christmas tree tells. You see, Lori, who is brilliant at this kind of stuff, began a family tradition for us years ago. Every time we travel someplace as a family, we buy a Christmas ornament from that place. So when we gather to decorate the tree every year, and as we hang the ornaments, we remember our experiences together as a family. Let me show you a few:

Lori isn’t exactly what I would describe as a “Camper.” At all. Years ago, I finally talked her into a short trip into the Boundary Waters. This is the ornament we bought in Grand Marais on our way home to celebrate her survival. Before the trip, Lori told me that she wasn’t actually worried about what might happen to her on the trip…rather, she was worried about my safety. That’s really kind, isn’t it? “Yes,” she said, “because if you get eaten by a bear, what’s going to happen to me?”

Here is an ornament we got when we took a trip to Washington DC. While there, we had the opportunity to go on a congressional tour of the White House at Christmas time with Senators, representatives and their guests. Also on our tour? Senator Strom Thurmond. Decorated for Christmas, the White House was beautiful. This is the official White House ornament from 1999.

Here are two ornaments our boys got from grandparents to commemorate and remember their baptisms. When we hang them up, we talk about the days our boys were baptized. What happened…who came to see it…the promises that God made to each of them…

This one we bought when our family went to Disneyworld last year. We had so much fun…it’s our happy place.

And my Mom gave my brothers and I each one of these ornaments, the Christmas after my Dad died, 12 years ago. It has his name, his date of birth and his date of death engraved on it. Every year when I put it up, I remember my Dad; and I remember the Christmases my family had growing up.

And there are more ornaments…more stories…more memories…Christmas is a season full of stories and symbols…and in our family, these ornaments and the tree on which they hang becomes a symbol. They tell a story…they tell of family, of friends, of how God has blessed us with people and time together…and of God’s extreme goodness.

The Christmas tree reminds me that as Christians, we have a story to tell. And ultimately, the story doesn’t revolve around wrapped presents…or ornaments…or evergreens… There were no evergreen trees at the manger the night Jesus was born. But just the same, the tree is a symbol for us. The Christmas tree, the Christbaum, has come to symbolize that Jesus comes as gift. The gift of Jesus is the most important gift we receive on Christmas. This is the gift that the prophet Isaiah wrote of when he said:
“‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.”
And the gifts placed under the tree are given freely to each other as a symbol of the gift of Christ that God gives to each one of us. The most important story that the Christbaum can tell is the story of the “Jesus gift” for you.

That gift is one of hope. That gift is one of grace and love in human form. That gift is one of eternal life.

In the New Testament, one of the Greek words for cross, is the word “Xulon”. “Xulon” is a word that can be translated into English both as “cross,” and as “tree.” And in the New Testament, Jesus’ crucifixion is often referred to as taking place on a “tree.” Acts 5:30 says that “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus whom you murdered by hanging on a tree.” And in 1 Peter 2:24, it says “Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness – by whose stripes you were healed.” It was on a tree, stripped of branches, cut, and re-shaped that Jesus was crucified and died.

You see, we can never fully understand the importance of the birth of Jesus until we understand the significance of the death of Jesus. And his story, the story of Jesus…it begins and it ends with a tree.

We remember and celebrate the birth of Christ with a tree…a decorated Christmas tree. But really, the original Christbaum, the real Christ Tree, is the Cross, and it could be found 2000 years ago, on a hill called Golgotha.

Let’s think for a moment about the story of Jesus. Jesus was born on that night in the manger, with a distinct purpose. His call was to live, to teach, to be an example, to heal, to bring hope, and then ultimately, to go to the cross and to die on our behalf, taking on our punishment. And Jesus’ call is for you and I to take this journey with him. For us, the journey begin here…in Advent. We begin gathered around a Christmas tree…we travel together through the story of the Gospels…through the Christmas season, through Epiphany, through Lent and then Holy Week, where on Good Friday, we gather around another tree. We gather at the foot of the cross.

Why does Jesus take this journey? He does this out of love…a love so strong that we can’t begin to comprehend it. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…” On the tree, Jesus died for all of our sins.

Christmas trees are beautiful things. They are a part of our Christmas ritual. They are a tradition. Rituals and traditions are good things. They remind us of the symbols and stories from our past.

This year, when you gather around your tree, look at it not just as decoration…or as nostalgia. Look at it as Martin Luther looked at it:
• Look at the lights, and be reminded of the star of Bethlehem, guiding the travelers on the way to find Jesus.
• Look at the triangular shape of the tree, and see that it points to God.
• Look at the evergreen color. Be reminded of the resurrection, and the promise of eternal life for you.

Look at the Christmas tree as the place we gather to begin our journey with Jesus, from the Christmas tree to the cross; from his birth to his crucifixion. Remember that the cross…that tree…it was not the end of the story. Remember that through his resurrection, Jesus defeated death. And that Jesus calls us on that journey as well. Because of Jesus’ resurrection, we can have confidence that death is defeated for us too.

And remember that all of this…the celebration of God’s grace and love through Jesus…it all begins…and it all ends…with a tree.

Amen.

"Mission"

“Mission”
Luke 12:49-56
August 14-16, 2010
Todd Buegler
Lord of Life

Grace and Peace to you, from God our Creator, and from Jesus Christ, the Word of God who guides our way.

Maria is an amazing young woman who was a part of our sr. high AWOL mission trip team to Montrose, Colorado that was on the road in June. The team traveled there to work with Habitat for Humanity for a week, working on building homes for several families in need in that community. Maria has a physical disability that makes mobility something of a challenge for her. Maria walks, but both her speed and endurance are limited. Sometimes she uses a wheelchair. Sometimes she hops onto the back of one of her friends and hitches a ride to her destination.

After our week of working in Montrose, our team drove to the town of Ouray, Colorado for 3 days and 2 nights of camping. Ouray is a town in a box canyon, surrounded on all sides by mountains. The national park campground sits halfway up one of the mountains, overlooking the town, facing west. When the sun sinks behind the mountains at night and the lights of the town come up below, it is breathtaking.

Of course, our team was pretty committed to hiking while we were in Ouray. There was a trailhead just a couple of hundred yards from our campsite. The trail only ran 1.7 miles to the destination, a beautiful waterfall. Our group said “1.7 miles? What’s the big deal about that?” Well, we discovered that 1.7 miles is not a big deal, unless the trail is steep, narrow and full of switchbacks, twists and turns. Then, it’s a big deal. Before the group started out I pulled Maria aside and said “If you want to hang out here at the campsite, you’re welcome to do that…or if you want to go until the trail becomes steep, and then walk back, I’d be glad to come back with you. What would you like to do?” Maria thought about it and said “let’s just see how it goes.”

It was a beautiful thing to behold. After we had filled water bottles and applied sunscreen, Megan walked over to Maria and turned her back to her. Maria hopped up and the group took off. Maria’s physical limitations were never an issue. It was never spoken about, discussed, or even questioned. When Megan got tired, Maria hopped onto Jenna’s back. Then Amy’s back. Then Frank the Tank. From one person to the next. The trail turned very steep…very narrow… winding…difficult. That “short little” 1.7 mile hike up to the falls took 2 ½ hours. Maria kept asking people “is this ok? Is it too much work? I could get down and wait here for you to come back down.” Finally, Josh looked at Maria and said “Look, do you want to go to the top or not?” “Well yeah, but not at the expense of everyone else’s energy.” “We’re all going to the top”, said Josh. The group never doubted or wondered that they were all going to make it. It was non-negotiable. This, was a group on a mission.

I learned something really important that day: The antidote to challenge is mission. When we face something difficult…a challenge…a problem…the solution is to focus on the mission you are trying to accomplish.

I was reminded of Maria’s story when I read Gospel lesson for today. This is a really difficult piece of scripture. At first glance, there seems to be a direct contradiction between the Jesus we know best…in all honesty, the Jesus that we like to know…the gentle Jesus with the children sitting on his lap, or the Jesus who reaches out and heals with a touch, and the Jesus in this text. Today Jesus sounds feisty. He asks: “do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you: division…families will be divided, father against son…mother against daughter…” I can only imagine the reaction of the disciples: “Wow Jesus, I’m so glad we had this little talk. Thanks for the emotional lift.”

But we have to be careful in how we read this scripture. Jesus is not saying that he comes with the intent to bring pain; rather, he is making an important observation here: For the disciple who follows Jesus, life is not going to be easy. The journey can be difficult…even rugged. And if we think for one moment that because we are people of faith, life will be somehow easier, that God will solve all of our problems, well…we probably need to adjust our expectations a bit.

As a matter of fact, isn’t it often the case that our faith can make our life more difficult? Our Christian faith can create conflict. In our families, faith can sometimes become a point of division instead of a point of unity. In my family, there is an unwritten rule at holiday gatherings: No discussing politics or religion (unless I really want to get under my brother’s skin).

I have met with couples before their wedding where they grew up in different faith traditions. For some, this has caused great heartache in the family. Parents might feel that their son or daughter marrying someone of a different faith is akin to turning their back on their own family and its values. It can lead to painful conflict.

What about when the behaviors of an employer come into direct conflict with the faith and morals of an employee? I have a friend on the east coast who worked for one of the banks involved in issuing sub-prime loans, and who then needed a bailout last year. She struggled mightily with the ethics of the corporate decisions because of her faith.

Our faith can create conflict: in our relationships…in our hearts.
There are many who want to believe that if we are faithful, we will be rewarded. There is a whole religious school of thought that operates that way. It is most often referred to as the “Prosperity Gospel.” Proponents of this point of view argue that when someone enters into a relationship with God, God will reward them. If faithful, they will be rewarded with an abundance of whatever they could hope for. Money…comfort…possessions…

But clearly, the prosperity Gospel is a false Gospel. Jesus does not promise comfort, wealth or reward. In our Gospel, Jesus is saying, “no, because of our faith, the journey may be more challenging, not less.” Following Jesus brings conflict…it brings ethical dilemmas. Jesus calls us to be uncomfortable with our moral compromises, to be wrenched by our neighbor’s need and to show compassion for the helpless. Jesus comes to disturb the comfortable and to comfort those who are disturbed. The Gospel can bring disruption to our way of life.

So…thanks for coming! Have a good day! Amen.

No. I’m just kidding. If that were the end of the story, well in all honesty, there wouldn’t be a lot of reason to go on. The challenge would seem just way too difficult; we would look at our life’s journey…steep and rocky, and we would say “no thanks. I’ll stay here, in camp.”

But Jesus is not calling us to safety. He isn’t asking us to stay in camp. Jesus is asking us to step out, to take risks, to take on the challenges, and to do so by staying focused on our mission. What is this mission? Jesus is quite clear in scripture. It is to love God with all your heart, all your soul and all of your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself. This is the first and greatest commandment on which Jesus asks us to focus.

I have to admit, I sometimes struggle with focus. I can be easily distracted. Sometimes I feel like the dogs in the movie “Up”. Remember the Disney/Pixar animated story? Everytime the dogs come close to fulfilling their mission one of them will point and shout “squirrel!” and they completely lose track. “Squirrel” can feel something like a spiritual theme for me: I, like many of us, can become distracted; distracted by the difficulty of the journey…distracted by the things we observe along the way…distracted by those we disagree with…distracted by the things that divide us instead of the faith that unites us.

In our Gospel today, Jesus reminds us: the antidote to challenge is mission.
Jesus is calling his disciples to be fully committed to and focused on His mission. Jesus calls us to step out fully in faith…Jesus didn’t say to love God with just a part of your heart, soul and mind; Jesus said to love with all of your heart, soul and mind. He does this because the stakes are too high: There are too many hungry…too many homeless…too many suffering…too many that need the Word of hope.

And so we step out onto the path and we follow. We remember that Jesus followed the same path. The road on which Jesus walked was difficult, full of its own twists and turns. And that road, it led to the cross. But Jesus had a mission…a clear purpose. Jesus’ mission: it is you. Jesus walked that path because his mission is to fulfill the promises that each of you receive: Eternal life…forgiveness of sins…a relationship… a community… Jesus’ mission is to bring those things to you. That is why he took that journey.

God’s grace does not depend on your willingness to step into the challenges, the difficulty and sometimes the pain that can be the Christian journey. God’s grace comes to us no matter what. But Jesus calls us onto that journey because He knows that this is how we grow…this is how we serve. Growth and service are rarely comfortable. But we step onto that difficult path because Jesus asks us to…and because we are grateful for God’s grace.

And Jesus promises that we are not alone in the journey. He promises to be with us. God gives us the Word to guide us…it is a lamp to our feet, and a community to encourage us. God promises that when necessary we can even climb onto his back and be carried.

Our journey…it can be a challenge, and we don’t even know where it will take us. But Jesus calls us to let go of our fear…of our need to control…and to trust. And the good news for each of you is that Jesus is faithful, and walks with you each and every step. The antidote to our fear and anxiety…to the challenge of the journey…it is focusing on God’s mission to the world.

Amen.

Stake Your Reputation

“Stake Your Reputation”
John 20:19-31
Todd Buegler
April 10-11, 2010
Lord of Life

Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God who is the gift of grace! Amen.

Reputations are important. We all know that. And everyone wants to have a good reputation. Most want to be known as “nice”, “kind” or generous. Sometimes there are people who want to be known as “tough” or “rugged.” People go to great lengths to protect their reputation. Entire industries have popped up, whose sole purpose is to create and protect the reputations of their clients, corporate or individual. Reputations are important...and they are fragile. Sometimes reputations are deserved…sometimes they are not.

Take the story of Bill Buckner. Bill Buckner played a 22 year career with the Los Angeles Dodgers. He had over 2,700 hits and a career batting average of .289. He won a National League batting title. Yet he will always be remembered for one terrible moment in the 1986 World Series.

At that time Buckner was playing for the Boston Red Sox, the Sox took a 3-2 game lead against the New York Mets. The sixth game went into extra innings, where the Sox scored two runs in the top of the tenth. Twice in the bottom of the tenth the Sox were one strike away from winning the series. On a 3-2 pitch, Mookie Wilson hit an easy little grounder up the first base line towards Bill Buckner. All Buckner would have to do is to scoop up the ball, step on first, and the inning, the game and the World Series would be over. But Buckner didn't get his glove low enough. The ball rolled through his legs, and the Met runner on second scored. So the Mets tied the series 3-3, and went on to win in the seventh game.

From that fateful moment on, the name "Bill Buckner" has been forever tied to the word "Error." To this day, people still talk about "pulling a Buckner." It's synonymous with making a really bad, obvious mistake. Is this reputation deserved? In light of everything else that Buckner accomplished in his career, probably not. But there it is. That’s his reputation…defined by one brief moment in one game.

And so thinking about reputations, we turn to Doubting Thomas, a man with a reputation. A "doubting Thomas" is somebody who lags behind in matters of faith. A "doubting Thomas" needs more proof. A "doubting Thomas" has a hard time trusting. This is the reputation. Is it real? Is it deserved? Well, I’m not so sure.

We don’t actually know much about Thomas. We do know this: When Jesus decided to return to Jerusalem, the disciples were sure it would be certain death for all of them. They didn’t want to do it. But it was Thomas who said “Then let us go so that we may die with him.” It was a courageous statement…yet we don’t remember him for that. We also forget that Thomas makes one of the most profound confessions of faith found in scripture. After Jesus appears to him, Thomas looks Jesus in the eye and exclaims “My Lord and my God.” My Lord and my God. No where else in scripture are any of the disciples so clear and direct in identifying who Jesus is.

I think Thomas got a bad rap. I mean, how'd you like it if your name went down in history attached to "doubting"? And I’m not completely sure that the title of “Doubting” is even that accurate. There is a difference between having “doubt” and having “questions.” Did Thomas doubt? Or was Thomas just being honest about his questions?

It had been 3 long days from the crucifixion to the resurrection. All of the disciples were in despair. In the back of their mind they had to be wondering “Was it all a hoax? Had the previous 3 years been just a waste?" And then Jesus appears to the disciples. But Thomas wasn’t there. He didn’t see Jesus appear. He didn’t hear Jesus’ voice. Thomas was still wondering if it was all real.

When Jesus did appear again, Thomas was honest about his questions. And while that honesty has bought him something of a negative reputation, Jesus didn’t’ criticize him for it. Jesus didn’t blame Thomas for asking to see his hands, and he never condemned him for his questions. I think that Jesus understood that once Thomas worked through his questions, he would be one of his strongest disciples.

You see, faith is not the absence of doubt. Faith is living with questions…living with doubt, and overcoming it. I think we can learn from Thomas’ example: Having questions…having doubts is not necessarily a bad thing. I have had my questions and doubts.
• I was in Biloxi, Mississippi 10 days after Hurricane Katrina hit. I saw the destruction. And I asked God: “Really? How could you let this happen?”
• Every year I have gone to Westhaven Children’s Home in Jamaica and have worked with the orphaned children. And while they get the best care possible there, it’s just not enough. And I have asked God “How can this be?”
• I have stood by the bedside as a family watched the life fade from the body of a child. “Really God? How can this be in your plan?” I have questions.

We all have questions. To deny this would not be honest. And the lesson I take away from the story of Thomas’ interaction with Jesus is that questions are ok. Questions are good. Asking questions and wondering is how we grow in our faith.

I knew a man in California who was a pastor of a pretty non-traditional church. Most of the people who attended did not grow up in the church, and weren’t bound by traditions or expectations. So one day when he was preaching, right in the middle of the sermon, a young woman raised her hand. He wasn’t quite sure what to do, so he pretended he didn’t see it. But then she started waving her hand around and he couldn’t ignore it any longer. So he paused his sermon. “Yes, Marcia?” “Pastor Mike, you kind of lost me here. I’m not really sure what you’re talking about.” Mike didn’t really know what to do with this interruption…he quickly thought about laughing it off…or of side-stepping it and getting back to the sermon. Then he realized that she was right. “I was talking in circles…I really wasn’t making any sense”, he thought. He had lost her. And then he noticed others around her were nodding. So he sat down on the step and explained what he meant. And she asked some follow up questions…and then others did too. And Pastor Mike realized “If this woman hadn’t questioned…If she had just walked out the door, my message would have completely missed her.” Now, it’s common practice there for people to interrupt…to ask questions…to wonder. It’s not a bad practice. Perhaps we should think about starting it here. (I’ll tell you what…we’ll start next week…when Pastor Peter is preaching.)

5th Graders, today is a really important day for you. Today is the day that you will receive the gift and the sacrament of Holy Communion for the first time. In just a few minutes you will come forward and will participate in God’s gift of grace for you. A question I get asked a lot is “Why do we wait until 5th grade to get to take communion?” It’s a great question. Partially, we wait until 5th grade because it’s when you get to that age that you develop an “understanding” of communion. But I have to be honest with you, I am 44 years old, I am a pastor, and I don’t fully understand the mystery that surrounds communion. If you had to fully understand it before you could receive it…none of us would qualify.

God gives this gift to us not because we understand it, but because we need it. We need this grace. We need this gift of love. We need this forgiveness. And a big part of the reason that we choose to wait until 5th grade before you receive it is because we think 5th graders are ready to ask and to wrestle with the big, hard questions, and to wonder.

We want you to continue to ask “what is this all about? How does this work? How can eating a little wafer of unleavened bread and receiving a little bit of wine equate to forgiveness for all of our sins?”

The healthiest faiths are those where people wrestle with the questions. And asking questions is good. It is honest. 5th graders: ask your questions. Talk about it with your parents at the dinner table. Wonder about why we do what we do. Ask God the difficult, challenging questions of life. It’s ok. God can handle it. Read the scriptures to search for the answers. Listen for God’s voice when you talk to your friends, your parents, or your grandparents. Talk to me, or any of the pastors. Your asking questions will help all of us to grow in our own faith. Don’t be afraid of honest questions and healthy wonder. Thomas wasn’t, and that was ok with Jesus. You and I need to be more like Thomas, not by doubting more, but by being more honest with God and with each other.

Last week I was back in Jamaica at Westhaven with one of our mission teams. One of the tasks we were given was the delivery of food packed at Feed My Starving Children. We unloaded and delivered an entire semi-trailer load…over 270,000 meals to orphanages all over the island. And we fed this food to the children at Westhaven. I watched as my wife, Lori, who had never been there before, sat and spoon fed the meal to Calvin, a young man whose body was bent and twisted and he couldn’t feed himself. It was a slow process. But as she fed him, she spoke to him…she told him stories...she held his hand. And there was a light in his eye and a smile. And I watched Lori, and saw the same light in her eye. I could see from both of their faces that they both knew that this food…this gift…this was all about love.

I’ll be honest…I don’t completely understand it…I don’t understand how God works in those moments. I have questions. I wonder. But I don’t doubt. God was present there. It was almost a sacramental moment. Jesus was in the midst of that relationship. Jesus’ love was in that food. I don’t doubt it.

In just a few moments, we will all come forward to receive this gift; the bread and the wine; and I’ll be honest. I don’t completely understand it. I have questions. I wonder. But I don’t doubt. I don’t doubt that God is present here. This is the sacramental moment. God’s real presence is in the bread…God’s real presence is in this wine.

Reputations are important. We know that. What can we understand about Jesus’ reputation from the gift of the sacraments? Here's what we know: Jesus longs to be in relationship with each of you. Jesus’ love and presence is in this bread and this wine. For each of you, Jesus went to the cross. His reputation of love and grace, it is well-deserved.

The question that we have to all ask our selves is “what is my reputation?” “What do I stand for?” Am I a follower of Jesus? Do I try to live as Jesus lived? Do I receive, and then share these gifts that God first gives us?

5th graders (and everyone else): Ask…wonder, but do not doubt. The Jesus who opened his nail-scarred hands to Thomas to answer his questions, opens those same hands to you, and gives you this great gift: the bread and the wine...the body and the blood. He does this because His love is a gift freely given; and his love for each one of you is without question.

You can stake your reputation on it.
Amen.

"Signs of Deliverance"

“Signs of Deliverance”
Exodus 12:21-30
Todd Buegler
February 27 & 28, 2010
Lord of Life

Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God who is God’s sign of love and grace! Amen.

Generations of preachers have been trained by Dr. Donald McLeod at Princeton Seminary. He was known as a rigorous and yet thoughtful teacher. Among the points Dr. Macleod would make during the semester was the importance of the sermon title. "Think of your church’s sign…the one that sits in front of the church where you can post the sermon title,” he would teach. “Every sermon has to have a compelling title, one that could go on your church sign and would engage the spiritually curious, and would draw people in to the building.”

And each time one of his students would step to the pulpit to give a practice sermon, they would be required to begin by telling what the sermon title would be that would go on the church's sign for that week.

Dr. McLeod would tell of Mrs. O'Leary who would hop on the Fifth Avenue bus on Sunday morning in Manhattan and pass the great churches along that thoroughfare. As the bus would approach each church, she would read the sign in front with the sermon title and decided, on the basis of what she read, whether to get off the bus and attend that church. Dr. Macleod's constant refrain was, "Pick a sermon title that will make Mrs. O'Leary get off the bus."
Mindful of that instruction, one of his aspiring preachers mounted the pulpit one morning for his first student sermon. As instructed, before beginning his message, he announced: "The title of my sermon that will go on our church sign is...'There's a Bomb on the Bus.'"

Signs are powerful things. They direct us…they guide us…we pay attention to signs. Advertisers know this. In 2008, over 7.99 billion dollars were spent in the United States just on outdoor advertising. That kind of money doesn’t get spent if advertisers don’t believe that it’s going to work.

Signs are powerful things. Years ago, when Lord of Life was in its first building, on the corner of Bass Lake Road and West Fish Lake Road, the county decided to complete Vicksburg all the way north to Bass Lake Road. To do this, they had to realign West Fish Lake Road, and this created some confusion for how people would access our building. So the city provided us with this very helpful sign that would direct people into our parking lot. (When we moved from that location to this building 9 years ago, Pastor Peter stole it.) Of course, just a few feet past this directional sign at our old building, the city had also posted this sign as well. We weren’t quite sure what that meant.

Today we think about signs, as we continue our journey together through the Book of Exodus. Today we'll look at the powerful story of what it took for the Jewish people to be released from their captivity. Actually, the word “captivity” does not begin to do justice to what the Israelites experienced. Captivity sounds like prison. It can be interpreted as being held…as being watched… And as unpleasant as that sounds, it does not begin to adequately describe what the Jews endured. They endured slavery and they endured torture. They were the cheapest of cheap labor. If an Egyptian guard were to see them standing in the field, and if they didn’t think they were working hard enough, or fast enough, they would just be killed on the spot and replaced with another. To the Egyptians of the time, these people carried absolutely no value. The Jewish people; they were living in hell.

We pick up the story where we left off last week, when Moses and his brother Aaron go to Pharaoh to demand the release of the Jewish people. Look with me in Exodus 5:1. You can find this on page 51 of the pew Bibles. ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel,‘Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.’”

Now this is a very striking exchange. Moses and Aaron are nobody. They have no standing, and yet, they’re very confident, very bold. They don’t waste time flattering the Pharaoh, which anybody approaching Pharaoh to make a request would always do. They don’t even ask permission. Just, “Thus sayeth the Lord, ‘Let my people go.’”

Pharaoh? Well, he's not very excited about this idea. Look in verse 2, where he says “‘Who is the Lord, that I should heed him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.’”
This was incredibly discouraging to Moses, Aaron and the rest of the Jewish people. Hope seemed to evaporate for them. They are so discouraged that they won’t even look up to God. Discouragement is like that. It will crush the human spirit – just crush it. Some of you, I know, have experienced this. Some of you are here today just to hear this Word. You feel beaten down and discouraged. Maybe it’s your spiritual life, maybe it’s around a marriage, perhaps it’s your job. But you need to hear the same Word that the Jewish people heard. You need to hear this:

God is saying to you, “I am still at work. I will rescue, I will redeem. The timing might not be what you’d hope for, but I am still at work. So keep looking for me, and keep trusting, and keep waiting, and keep obeying. And don’t you give in.” That was God’s Word for the Jewish people, and it’s His Word to each of us as well.

Well, now the battle begins, and God initiates a series of mighty acts--the ten plagues on Pharaoh and the country of Egypt. Each of these plagues is a sign; it is a sign to Pharaoh and to the Egyptians. The signs say “Pay attention, and let my people go.” The first sign is the Nile River turned to blood. Think about this for a moment. This would have deep meaning to the Israelites. The Nile had been filled with the blood of their infants. And now it turns to blood for all of the Egyptians to see. This sign is a warning.

The second sign is very different. Look with me halfway through Exodus 8:1, “God says, ‘Let my people go so they can worship me. If you refuse to let them go, I will plague your whole country with frogs. The Nile River shall swarm with frogs. They will come up into your palace, into your bedchamber and your bed, into the houses of your officials and your people, and into your ovens and kneading bowls. The frogs will go up on you and your people and all your officials.’”

The writer wants to make sure we enjoy this picture: “Pharaoh, there will be frogs in your house, frogs in the bedroom, frogs in the bed.” This is getting seriously disruptive to Pharaoh. It’s very difficult to get a good night of sleep or enjoy the royal harem when the bed is full of frogs. Moses says, “They’re going to go into the kitchen. You’re going to have frogs in the microwave, frogs in the mixing bowls, frogs in the pizza, frogs on your cereal, frogs in the garage getting crunched under the wheels of the royal chariots.”

Now, in verse 7, how do Pharaoh’s magicians react? They say "oh yeah Moses? What's the big deal? We'll show you!" And so they raise their staffs and they make…more frogs? Yeah, like they needed ore frogs. Finally, Pharaoh says in verse 8, “Fine, pray to the Lord to take the frogs away. I’ll give in.”

Moses asks “when?” Pharaoh’s answer? “Tomorrow.” No. Not so much. Again, Pharaoh backs out.

And the signs continue: The gnats…the flies…the diseased livestock…the boils…thunder and hail…locusts (like those we have on our sign...this third panel for this week)…then darkness…sign after sign after sign…and Pharaoh continues to either ignore them, or he’ll agree to release the Jews, but as soon as the plague stops, he changes his mind again.

Over and over, Pharaoh misses or ignores the clear signs that God gives. The Bible describes his heart as being “hardened.” He won’t listen. He won’t admit that clearly, he’s not in charge. Finally the most devastating plague of all takes place. It is the sign of all signs. God lays down the trump card. In chapter 12, verse 29, God sends the angel of death. And every Egyptian firstborn son will die. Just a quick poll: How many of us here are first born men or boys? All of us...gone...

But God protects his people: The Israelites are instructed to sacrifice a lamb to God and to paint the blood of this lamb onto the doorposts. This would be a sign. And when the Angel of death came, and saw that sign, he would pass over that home and leave them alone; but not the Egyptians. They didn’t know the sign.

Can you imagine being in the home of one of the Israelites on that night. It’s the most awful night of death and judgment you have ever known, unbelievable devastation. This judgment for all of the oppression and slavery and genocide catches up with the whole Egyptian people. And you wonder as you sit in your home, “Is it really true? Will we really be spared?” And you can hardly breathe.

But it happens just as God said. God passes over all the homes where the blood of the sacrificial lamb is painted over the door frames. And in a little picture of what is to come, redemption comes to all who are covered by the blood of the lamb. And finally the sun comes up and everybody in your little house is still alive.

This was the Passover. And much like Easter is the central faith event for Christians, the Passover is the central faith event for the Jewish people. The Jews to this day celebrate the Passover.

And so we fast-forward about 1500 years, to the time of Jesus. Every year, groups of family and friends would gather to celebrate the anniversary of the Passover. There is a carefully prescribed, scripted ritual for how they remember this event. It is lengthy, and every Jewish person, after doing this every year, all of their lives, would know this ritual by heart. Certain prayers would happen in a certain order, following certain stages or courses of the meal. And there would always be an open seat and place setting left for the Prophet Elijah, in case he were to return that night.

Turn with me to Luke 22, beginning at verse 14. It is found on page 960 of the pew Bibles. Jesus and his disciples have gathered in an upper room to celebrate this important, ritual meal, and all is going according to order when suddenly right in the middle, Jesus changes the script. It had to be startling to the disciples. In verse 19 he takes the bread, and he says “This is my body, given for you”…and in verse 20 he says “this is my blood, poured out for you…” This is it. This is the moment, where everything changes for us as Christians. Prior to this, the blood of the lamb was a sign of the Passover. It was a sign that brought deliverance. No longer. Now, it is Jesus’ blood that brings deliverance. Jesus is the lamb who is sacrificed. He is telling his disciples that it is his blood that is shed; and the bread and the wine are a sign of our redemption; a sign of God’s love and faithfulness, for all of us.

Because of Jesus, we each receive this sign of the passover. When we are baptized…when we begin our journey of faith, we receive the sign of the cross on our foreheads…we say that we are marked with the cross of Christ and sealed with the Holy Spirit forever. On Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent we were marked in that same spot with the ashes in the sign of a cross…it is a sign of our sin, and of our mortality. But on Easter, because of Jesus’ resurrection, we are washed clean of that mark of sin and we are made whole again. The cross, and all it stands for, is our sign of the Passover. It is our sign of deliverance. For Christians, the Passover is not a historical event. The Passover is always present tense. Every day we sin. But every day, by the grace of God, the cross of Christ and the blood of our lamb, the punishment of death and separation from God passes over you. The sign is clear: Because of Jesus, you are passed over.

Signs are powerful. The direct…they teach…they guide. God knows this. And God gives you signs of His love. These signs grab our attention, and they point us in the way of truth and of love. They point us to the grace of God, which is always there for us to grasp. They point us towards forgiveness. They point us to new life.

Look for the signs. Follow the signs. And live.
Amen.

"Brilliance"

“Brilliance”
John 1:1-18
Todd Buegler
January 2 & 3, 2010
Lord of Life

Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God who is the Word made flesh! Amen.

There was once a great theologian. He was a well-respected professor at a prestigious seminary on the east coast. He was well-loved by his students. But he was a man who simply could not express the truth of God in simple English. He did not mean to come across as stuffy and obscure, but he couldn't help it. He had spent his entire career immersed in his books, and teaching in the classroom.

This deeply intellectual theology professor had a student...from Africa. This African student came to the United States to get a Masters degree at an American seminary. While here, he came to develop a great respect and friendship with the professor.

Later, when the young man returned home to Africa as a pastor, he found himself in a bind. The professor wanted to come visit him. This pastor knew what would happen when the theology professor came. His congregation would want to hear this great theologian preach. Even worse, the theology professor would want to preach. It would be a nightmare in this young pastor's mind.

However, there was no way for the young man to avoid graciously hosting the professor. The professor came to Africa and while there he preached at the young man's church. The Sunday he preached, the professor took to the pulpit and his former student stood nearby to translate the sermon into his native Swahili. The professor began like this: "There are two great epistemological theories in the world today," he began ponderously. The young African pastor paused just a beat, smiled just a little and translated with these words, "Let me tell you about my friend, Jesus." And so the sermon went. The professor expounded his views on epistemology in deep and ponderous language and the African pastor told the congregation about his friend Jesus.

The task of taking a difficult, heady, theologically meaty concept, and translating it to its basic, simple truths, is what our Gospel today from the Book of John is all about. John was primarily an evangelist…his goal was to convert non-believers. And so he wrote his Gospel with the intent of answering questions that non-believers had about Jesus. The fundamental question John was answering in our Gospel was one that is still asked 2000 years later: Who was Jesus?

The first chapter of John is as beautifully written a chapter of scripture as you might find. And in it, John is taking the common Jewish understanding of God…distant and remote…and turning it on its head.

John begins by drawing the parallels: Remember that the first words of the Bible are "In the beginning..." John begins his gospel in the same way: "In the beginning."

In Genesis 1, God literally speaks the world into existence. God says: "Let there be light” and there was light. “Let there be land, and water…let there be animals…let there be people…” It is through a simple Word of God that all of creation comes into being. God merely speaks, and things begin to happen.

John is telling us of the power of God’s Word. Everything that exists came about because God merely spoke the Word.

We need to think about words for a moment: In our everyday world, we know that words are powerful. Wilfred Peterson once put it this way: "Soft words sung in a lullaby will put a baby to sleep. Excited words will stir a mob to violence. Eloquent words will send armies marching into the face of death. Encouraging words will fan to flame the genius of a Rembrandt or a Lincoln. Powerful words will mold the public mind as a sculptor molds his clay. Words, spoken or written, are a dynamic force..."

I remember when Nathan, our oldest, was born. He was an hour or two old when I called my Mom on her cell phone. She was standing in the checkout line at a Home Depot. I spoke these words: "Mom, it's a boy, and his name is Nathan." My mother burst into tears...right there in line. Nathan was the first grandchild. The other shoppers standing around my sobbing Mother?...well...let’s just say that it was awkward.

Think of the power of words and phrases you might have experienced and the emotional reaction they triggered. Words and phrases like:
• "Graduated with honors"
• Like: "I'm sorry"...”
• Or: “We regret to inform you…”
• "the results are negative"
• "I love you."

When we hear those phrases, it creates within us an emotional reaction that often moves us to some kind of action. There is power in words.

John knows this. And John is less interested in what words were spoken at creation, and more interested in who said them. John is telling us that in the beginning, Jesus was the Word of God. We most often use the phrase "the word of God" to talk about the scriptures. And that's correct. But as Lutherans, we believe that the Word of God comes to us most importantly in the person of Jesus Christ. It is to Jesus that the scriptures point.

John is pointing clearly to the Jesus who is fully the Word of God, and who is fully human. How can this be? How can Jesus be these both God and man? John is taking what for us is an “either/or”, and is turning it into a “both/and.” Human, over time, have tried toget our mind wrapped around this, by doing one of two things:

• We either have said "I don't understand, how it's possible, so it must not be true." We deny Jesus as the Word.
• Or we chosen to understand Jesus as sort of being a human with special, spiritual powers. We think of him as a kind of a spiritual super-hero who can walk on water...heal...raise the dead and do other miracles.

To look at Jesus this way is like looking at the iceberg and assuming that the part sticking out of the water is the whole thing. John is reminding us that there is much more beyond what we can see. When John describes Jesus as "The Word made flesh", it is a reminder that the part of Jesus we see is still only a fraction of the Word.

Before there was any creation...before there was matter...before there was light and life, there was Word. The word "Word" comes from the greek word "Logos." From Logos we get the word "logic" as in "thought", or "brilliance." The translation then could be "In the beginning was the brilliance of God, and this brilliance was with God, and was God." John is saying that before something was created, there had to be a mastermind behind it; and from this logic, this thought, this brilliance, all light and life was created.

So, we return to the original question John was trying to answer: who is Jesus? Jesus is a man. He is fully human. He is capable of tears; of pain; of blood and of death. And at the same time, Jesus is fully God’s Word. He is the brilliance of God. He is all-powerful and eternal. Jesus has been present since the beginning. Jesus is the idea, and the plan. Jesus is the process by which the world is redeemed.

Why does any of this matter? Why is so important that John would dedicate the opening to his Gospel to it? Ultimately, John reminds us today that this master intelligence responsible for the creation of the universe, this Word of God, did not stay up in the safety of heaven. God did not remain living, far away from the evil and suffering of earth; God came down to earth to experience...to teach...to show...to suffer...for you and me. This matters because the brilliance of God became the infant Jesus. And Jesus came, John says, to bring light to the dark places in our lives; to bring grace…forgiveness…healing and love. Just as God spoke Words of creation, through Jesus, God speaks salvation to all of His people. Jesus says in John 3…”whoever believes in me shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.” And later, in John 11, Jesus says “I am the resurrection and the life…he who believes in me will live…” Jesus speaks these things, to each of us. There is power in Jesus’ words.

In 1991, Mark Wellan, a paraplegic, paralyzed from the waist down, climbed Half Dome Mountain in Yosemite National Park. It took two weeks of grueling, dangerous tedious work for Wellan to inch his way up that mountain and into the history books. How in the world did a paraplegic man accomplish such a stunning physical feat? He had a friend. He had met and befriended Mark Corbett, Yosemite's most experienced rock climber. The two of them cooked up a scheme to make the climb together. Corbett went before Wellan, placing their pitons and finding the best crevices for climbing. He would climb up and scout the best path for Wellan to take, then climb back down the mountain. Wellan said that his friend would whisper words of instruction and encouragement into his ear. “I made the climb”, said Wellan, “because of my friend, Mark. At the times when it was darkest, and the task felt the most impossible and I felt the most depressed and ready to give up, Mark would help me. When I was ready to quit, my friend Mark carried me…sometimes literally.”

It is the same, with your friend, Jesus. The same Jesus Christ who was with God at the beginning of creation; who is the Word, the brilliance, the thought, the idea of God in human form; who went onto a cross on your behalf, came to make God accessible to you. Christ, the Word, is the one who goes ahead of you into death and resurrection…who shows you the way to live…who journeys alongside you and who whispers encouragement in your ear. When times are darkest and life is the most difficult, Jesus is there, like a light; and his light defeats the darkness. Jesus translated God's love into human flesh. When you have seen Christ, the Word of God, you have seen God. And every day we can look back and say “I am making the climb…I living my life…because of my friend, because of God’s brilliance; because of Jesus.”

Amen.

"The Truth About Cats and Dogs"

“The Truth About Cats and Dogs”
John 18:33-37
Todd Buegler
November 21 & 22, 2009
Lord of Life


Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God and King of creation! Amen.

There are two kinds of people in the world. There are dog people, and there are cat people. Ok...just checking...how many people here would define themselves as dog people? What about cat people?

I think that we can draw an entire theological framework around cats and dogs. You see, a dog theology would say say: "You feed me. You pet me. You shelter me. You love me. You must be God!" On the flip side, a cat theology goes like this: "You feed me. You pet me. You shelter me. You love me. I must be God."

So one way of looking at our own sense of identity is to ask ourselves the question theologically, "am I a dog, or am I a cat?"

And really, if we took the question back even one step further, the question we have to ask ourselves is really: "who's in charge?"

Today is Christ the King Sunday. It is the day in the church year that we celebrate the Lordship of Jesus. We recognize and celebrate Jesus as the King of all Creation. We acknowledge Jesus as Lord of our lives. What I have found is that while this is a pretty easy thing for us to talk about, it can be a difficult thing for us to live. In other words, while we talk the talk of the dog theology, oftentimes we live more like a cat.

We are experts at compartmentalizing our lives. We say "God, we totally give you Kingship over this part of my life. But this part over here...I want to maintain control of." We are good at giving God dominion over our Sundays...but we want to maintain control of our Mondays-Fridays." Perhaps it's work life...maybe it's our family life...or it might be a relationship that we are in...or maybe school life...whatever it is, there are parts of our lives that we tend to hold back from God.

But Christ the King Sunday is a day that reminds us that if Christ is King, he is King of all, with nothing held back. In our culture, we are not used to this. We value our independence. We value our ability to make our own decisions. We tend to rebel against anything that limits us. We don't want to be dependent on anyone or anything. If so, then we think we are perceived as weak.

And we're not used to the idea of a King. In our American culture, that's not language we're used to. That's dog language, it gives authority over to someone else. We want to feel more like cats. We want to be independent...we want to be in charge.

But the truth Jesus teaches us is a simple two-fold truth: First, we are not in charge; we are subject to a King. And second: our King is good. In our Gospel text, after Jesus was arrested, Pontius Pilate asked him "Are you the King of the Jews?" Jesus gives a startling answer: My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would fight for me. But my Kingdom is not here." Pilate, probably a little confused by this answer asks again "So you are a king." Jesus answers "you say that I am...for this I was born and came into the world...to testify to the truth. Those who belong to the truth listen to my voice."

To be honest, this is not an easy text. Jesus isn’t giving a clear, simple answer. But in this text, I believe that Jesus is defining his Kingdom, and his reign. He is saying that he is a different kind of King. He is not interested in the political things of this world. He is coming to bring a different kind of a monarchy. He is coming not to rule with armies...he has no interest in rebelling against the Romans. He is coming to bring truth. While most Kings had a reign over a geographic region, Jesus' reign was over a spiritual region. He is the King of all of who hear his voice, and believe in this truth. Pilate cannot begin to understand what Jesus is talking about.

Kings get mixed reviews throughout history. Certainly there have been many, many good and gracious kings. Likewise, there have been some Kings who were self-serving, or tyrants.

I actually met a King once. While a student, I was a sound tech at Gustavus Adolphus College, and we hosted the King of Sweden on campus. I was the guy who, under the close watch of the Swedish Secret Service, got to clip the King's lapel mic onto his coat. (I bet you didn't even know the King of Sweden had a secret service.) But King Carl Gustav the 16th of Sweden? He was a nice guy. I clipped on his microphone and he said "Thank you."

The role of a King is not just to rule over people. It’s not supposed to be about power. A King is supposed to be someone who “stewards”, or “tends to” the people; who takes care of them and makes sure their needs are met:

In 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Denmark. Like so many other European nations, this small Scandinavian country was very quickly conquered. But the spirit of the Danish people and their king proved unquenchable. Even after the Nazis had taken control of the nation, King Christian the 10th boldly led his people, the Danes, in a quiet but courageous resistance movement.

On one occasion, the King noticed a Nazi flag flying over a public building in Copenhagen. He went to the German kommandant and asked that the flag be removed. "The flag flies", the kommandant replied. "Request denied." "I demand that it come down," said the king. "If you do not have it removed, a Danish soldier will go, will climb the flagpole and remove it." "Then he will be shot", said the kommandant. "I don't think so," said King Christian, "for I shall be that soldier." The flag was removed.

Later, the order came that all Jews were to identify themselves by wearing armbands with the yellow star of David. King Christian said that one Danish person was exactly the same as the next. So the King, who was a Christian, donned the first star of David. The next day in Copenhagen, almost the entire population wore armbands showing the star of David. The King, and his people, saved over 90% of their Jewish population.

King Christian the 10th was a different sort of a King. He may have been born into his position; but ultimately, his people developed a great love and allegiance to him, because of his great love and allegiance to them. Their loyalty to him had no boundary. They would have followed him anywhere. Why? Because the love he had for his people had no boundaries. Christian the 10th was a different sort of King. He stood in the gap between his people, and evil; literally between life and death. He was a King who was a servant. He was a King worthy of being followed.

As Christians, we understand this. We know what it is to follow a different sort of King. Our King didn't climb a flagpole. Instead, our King climbed onto a cross, to give his life for his people. And no matter what kind of boundaries we create...no matter how we try to maintain lordship over our own lives, Jesus reminds us: "no, I am King; over not just a portion of your lives...over all of your lives."

And our King provides all we have, and all we need. Every aspect of our lives: the physical, emotional, relational, social, financial. Everything. This is a good reminder for us during this time of year when our church is thinking and talking about stewardship. Everything we have belongs to God. When we take credit for all the things we have, for our salary, for being able to provide for our families, we are denying the Kingship of Christ, who gives all things to us.

You should have received a stewardship pledge packet this last week. The Stewardship season is when we “steward”, or “tend to” the needs of the church. This year, like every year, Lori and I have been talking about what our pledge to the church is going to be. Over the years, we have developed a strategy: We look at our income...we look at our bills. And then we apply two criteria to our decision on what we are going to pledge: First, every year, our pledge will grow; every year we want to give away a little more of our income. Second, our giving must be a sacrifice. We have to give enough that it makes us a little uncomfortable. I know, based on the uncertainty of the economy, based on what we read in the papers, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Why would someone want to ensure sacrifice? Why would someone seek discomfort?

For us, uncomfortable giving, sacrificial giving, has become a spiritual discipline. It is all about trust. It is about trusting the Lord and King of our lives. We can't hold back and let Jesus be the King of all the parts of our lives except the financial. Jesus calls us to trust. Every year when we've given sacrificially, our King has shown his faithfulness and his trustworthiness. We have never been let down. We have always received more than enough to meet our needs. We haven't always been able to do everything we want...it's forced us to re-think our priorities, but usually, shortly after I stop pouting, I realize that rethinking my priorities is probably a good thing. We have learned to be leaner in our spending, to reduce debt and to refocus spending on our time and our resources together as a family.

It hasn't always been comfortable, but as we have learned to trust more and more, we have grown in our relationship with the God and King who provides. We are more thankful for what God gives us. It reminds us that Thanksgiving is not intended to be just a holiday...it is intended to be a lifestyle.

We have a different kind of a King. He is not distant. He is not aloof. He comes to us and seeks us out. He is approachable. He gives without question and he loves without condition. He cares deeply about each of one of us, without condition.

Yes, we all slip into a cat theology, where we are all the center of our own universe. That is a part of the human condition we call sin. We love to be in charge...we love to be in control...it is all too often all about me.

With all due respect to cat lovers out there, God calls us into a theology of a dog. We can say with faithfulness and confidence "You feed me. You care for me. You shelter me. You love me. You must be God! You are our King!"

The God of grace gives you all that you need...cares for you...gives you shelter in the storms of your life...loves you unconditionally and stands in the gap between life and death, for you. Our King asks that, with confidence, you trust in him.

Amen.

"Hinges"

“Hinges”
Matthew 22:34-46
Todd Buegler
October 24 & 25, 2009
Lord of Life


Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who fulfills the promise! Amen.

Let me be the first today to say “congratulations” to all of you on this chance to affirm your baptismal vows. For most of you, baptism happened somewhere around 15 or 16 years ago, when your parents made promises for you. Today, it is your turn. And we are all very, very proud of you!

What we’ve been a part of here is about God’s work in your lives. We’d never want to reduce it all to cold, hard statistics. But, sometimes I get a little curious, so I’ve done some math and want to share with you all some statistics about your confirmation experience. There are a total of 164 of you being confirmed this weekend. You were a part of 23 different small groups that met on Wednesday nights and on retreats for a total of 88 hours of time together. Add up all that time your class gave to small groups in your faith journey and it comes out to 13,710 people hours. Together, you have all given (and this is a conservative estimate), 6,842 hours of service to people in need, and to the church. One of you did a total of 109 service hours…in one year. You have turned in a total of 4,864 worship notes. (actually, the number was 4,861, but as soon as the 3 of you still turning in the last ones on this sermon do so, it will be 4,864.) Finally, and perhaps most impressively, over three years, your class personally ate 1,122 large Domino’s pizzas. Congratulations!

And so after this 3-year journey, today we arrive at this milestone. Alongside your baptism, receiving your 3rd grade Bibles, your first communion, today is an important day, a marker in your faith. And on behalf of the church, I want to say thank you to your parents, for their bringing you to this point, for fulfilling the vows that they made at your baptism.

And I want to thank all of you for being a part of this so far; for what you’ve given…for how you’ve grown in your faith.

In the past couple of weeks, I’ve gotten to meet with, and talk with, a bunch of you in preparation for this weekend. And I’ve come to understand that even today, there is not total clarity about what this weekend is all about. Does your affirming your baptismal vows mean you’re ‘done’? No. This is not a graduation. We’re never done growing in our faith. Does it mean you’re supposed to have all of the answers? No chance. None of us have the all of the answers…as a matter of fact, the older we get, and the more answers we discover, the more questions we find.

So if today isn’t about ‘being done,' and it isn’t about ‘answers,’ what is it about?
Today is about “hinges.” Yes, I said “hinges.” Hinges, as in door-hinges...like these ones right here.

We don’t think about hinges very often…or maybe even ever. But we use them all the time. Every time you walk through a door, you are using hinges, you just don't think about it. Hinges might just be the piece of hardware that we take the most for granted. The thing that I think is kind of interesting about a hinge is that you never use one by itself. Do you know what you call a door with only one hinge? Broken. A door is useless unless it has two hinges, one on the top and the other on the bottom of the door. Without two hinges, a door just doesn’t work…it isn’t useful…it doesn’t do what it was supposed to do. For any door to work correctly it uses two hinges.

Check it out when you get home. Every door, every cupboard, every cabinet. Two hinges. Some doors will even have three. But the point is, there needs to be at least two for the door to work.

It is with this image of two hinges to make a door work that we approach the Gospel for our affirmation of baptism service today. Jesus is once again in conversation and confrontation with the Pharisees. If there was ever a group of people who approached life and religion differently than Jesus, it was the Pharisees. They were a rule-oriented bunch of people. For them, the very essence of religion was to obey the rules and regulations of scripture...the law. Their goal was to obey all of the commandments of the Old Testament.

Let’s return to statistics for just a moment…do you have any idea how many commandments there are in the Old Testament? How many rules there are? There are 613 commandments in the Old Testament. And what do you think: Are there more positive, or more negative commandments? Negative, as in “thou shall not…” versus positive, which would be “thou shall…” How many think negative? How many think positive. If you guessed “thou shall not…” you win. (your prize? Come to church next week and Pastor Peter will buy you a free donut.) There are 365 negative commandents in the Old Testament and there are 248 positive commandments. The very essence of religion during Jesus’ day was to know and obey these 613 rules; and if you messed them up, the religious leaders might throw rocks at your head. If you think confirmation might have been tough here, or that we have a lot of requirements, you’re just lucky you didn’t live 2000 years ago.

So one day, one of the Pharisees came to Jesus and asked him a question in order to trap him. “Jesus, of all of the 613 rules and regulations of the Old Testament, which one is the most important?” One of these 613 rules was that no rule was important than any other…depending on how Jesus answered, they could arrest him. But Jesus didn’t bite. His reply was to go back and quote Dueteronomy 6:4: “You shall love your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your soul.” And even though the Pharisee only asked for one, Jesus gave him two. He said “and the second one is like it…” and Jesus reached back into the book of Leviticus, chapter 18…”and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments HINGE all the law and the prophets. On these two commandments HINGE all the scriptures as the Jews knew them.

Jesus was saying that all of the 613 laws, and all the words of the prophets are like a door. And these two commandments, which if you’ll remember from your 9th grade year we call “The Jesus Ethic”, each of them is like one of these hinges.
What use are all of these 613 rules and laws? Jesus is saying “without these 2 commandments, not much.” Like a door with out hinges, rules and laws without love of God and each other don’t work, and are not much good to anyone.

During the past three years of being involved in C3, you have studied the scriptures. We spent a whole year walking through the Old and the New Testaments. And then in the other years, we had a scripture lesson attached to every week, as we looked at Lutheran belief and doctrine, at the teachings of Martin Luther, we discussed decision making and ethics, worship, the Lord’s Prayer, the 10 Commandents and the Apostle’s creed. We heard speakers at Sunday Night Festivals share their faith stories. On retreats you looked at who was Jesus…at discipleship, and just a month ago on our 'day away', at what faith and belief are.

This large body of stuff that we've learned about together is like the door. And Jesus teaches us that our two hinges are still: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul, and your neighbor as yourself.” Everything that we've learned together is hinged on these two commandments.

There are those who would want to do away with the door altogether and claim that they just need the two hinges: “You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind and soul and your neighbor as yourself.” They would argue that everything else is optional. The essence of all religion, they would say, is just boiled down to the two hinges, and that is all they need. Unfortunately, for these folks when life becomes difficult, when their faith is challenged, they won’t have the great stories of the faith, the knowledge and the understanding to stand on, to support them.

Others, all they really want is a door full of Biblical knowledge. They know a lot about the Bible and the church, they know the rules, but they really don’t love God with everything they have, nor do they really love their hurting neighbors. They are more interested in religion than they are in faith. They may know what Jesus did (past tense), but they forget what Jesus does (present tense.) They are more interested in the knowledge and in the law, than they are in loving God and loving each other. They don’t grasp the importance of the hinges.

No...to walk through a door, to enter into our faith, it is all about having both the door and the hinges, the knowledge and the love, the law, and the gospel. And Jesus invites each of us to enter into this faith.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the last two weeks looking at the faith statements you wrote on our Day Away at Gustavus. Thank you for great work on these. I wanted to share a few of these…they were amazing. I’m just going to come down here, and I think I’ll pick a few of you at random to read yours…no…I’m just kidding. But I did ask a few of you to share yours.


Sat: 1:30 – David Gale
Sat. 3:30 – Brady Jacobs
Sun. 1:30 – Summer Getty; Melanie Kraemer
Sun. 3:30 – Austin Kurtti; Alisha Stieg

Thank you! That is wonderful. Do you hear both the hinges in these words? Do you hear love of God? Do you hear love of neighbor? And the door is there. There is knowledge, and understanding, and it all hinges on this great love that comes from God.

10th graders: In your baptism, at the font, you were given this great gift of faith. Your parents now for 15 or 16 years have nurtured that gift. You have been given the knowledge and the understanding. And because of God’s indescribable love of you, you can hang all of these gifts on the two hinges; loving God with your whole heart, mind and soul, and loving

Ultimately, the affirmation of your baptism today is not about a ceremony...not about a robe...not about the 'stuff' that we studied together. It is about an invitation and a gift. It is God who invites you to walk through the door...to enter into a profound relationship. God does not have to do this...no, God does this because he loves you. Each one of you. Deeply.

And today is your chance to affirm that invitation...to say 'yes' to the God who first says 'yes' to you, and to walk through that door, to enter into a new relationship. And every single day, we have the opportunity to say 'yes' and to enter into that relationship.

Our prayer for you this day is that you always remember the invitation that God gives to you. May you always know that the door is made up of knowledge and understanding, but that this door hangs on hinges: God's call to love Him, and to love each other. And as you daily enter into this relationship, may you remember the gifts that God gives, and the love that God feels for you.

Amen.

"When Rules Become Religion"

“When Rules Become Religion”
Mark 7:1-8; 14-15 & 21-23
Todd Buegler
August 29-31, 2009
Lord of Life


Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who washes our sins away! Amen.

A father opens the door to greet his daughter’s date. There stands a young man, cap on sideways, hair dyed black and greasy, jeans that sag practically to his knees, tattoos up and down the arms, body piercings in the face, the nose, the lip, the ears, and wearing a set of ipod earphones. “Hello”, says Dad. “You must be here to pick up Chelsea?” The young man grunts hello and walks in past Dad, giving off the unmistakable vibe of “bored.”

The father is more than a little taken back. He goes upstairs where his daughter is finishing getting ready. “I don’t think you should go out with this boy,” says Dad. “He doesn’t look like a nice person.” The daughter is shocked. “Daddy,” she says, “That’s a terrible thing to say! If he wasn’t such a nice person, why would he be doing five hundred hours of community service?”

With apologies to my tattooed and body pierced friends, let’s be honest: While often you can’t judge a book by its cover, sometimes you can!

And humans are great at judging. I think it’s a part of our human nature. Even though we know we shouldn’t, we do. And it is easiest for us to judge based on the things that we can see; on the external.

Our Gospel lesson for today is all about judgment, and about righteousness. On what basis can a person be judged, and how does a person become righteous? In our story, the Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law had come from Jerusalem. As they gathered around Jesus, before they even spoke to him, they saw something that shocked and alarmed them: they saw his disciples eating food with hands that were “unclean,” that is, unwashed. To put it into complicated theological terms, they freaked out. They rushed right over to Jesus, who was, as we know, a Jewish rabbi, and asked “Why don’t your disciples live according to the traditions and the laws?”

At this point, it would be easy to start ripping on the Pharisee’s for being narrow minded and judgmental. But I do think we need to cut them just a bit of slack. In the Jewish cultural and political system, they were the ones whose job was to preserve the religious law. And clearly in this situation, the law was being broken.

You see, Jewish law, going all the way back to the time of Moses, required that devoted Jews did not eat unless they gave their hands a ceremonial washing. These laws were common, and well known. Psalm 24:3-4a asks the question: “Who shall ascent the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place?” The answer: “Those who have clean hands and pure hearts…” Of course the Pharisee’s, who were a bit obsessed with following the law, were going to make a point of highlighting when others aren’t following the law. These people, they believed, the ones with dirty hands, they would never be able to stand in the presence of God.

So this story is not really a story about hand washing. The Pharisee’s who stormed over to Jesus were asking a really serious question. They were asking Jesus “why don’t your disciples (and by default, you) have to follow the law?”

This was an indignant, “just who do you think you are?” question. But Jesus doesn’t rise to the bait. Instead, he annoys them by ignoring their question and answering a different question…one that the Pharisee’s didn’t ask, but which is really at the heart of their concern. It was a theological question. It was a question about what Christ’s church was to become. The real question at hand was “Who is worthy to come into the presence of the Lord?”

Understanding the context in this story is everything, and we have to remember that in the time of Jesus, God was perceived as being separate from the people. God was distant. And humans were not even worthy of being in the presence of God. Even the temple, their cultural, social and spiritual center for the Jewish people reinforced this separation. It was set up as a series of concentric squares. How far you could go into the temple depended on how “righteous” you were in the eyes of the law. Anyone could be in the courtyard. In the next area, the great court, the Jewish people could come to worship. In the next area, the “inner court”, only the religious leaders could enter. Inside that was the “Holy Place”, where only the priests could enter. And beyond that was the inner chamber, called the “Most Holy Place”, where the high priest would enter only once a year, to actually be in the presence of God…after going through a complicated cleansing ritual to ‘make himself right…to make himself worthy’. The Most Holy Place was separated from the other rooms by a large, heavy curtain. For all practical purposes, the Jews believed that it was in this place, behind this curtain, where God lived…separated from God’s chosen people.

Please understand that God had originally given the law as a tool to help people live righteous lives, to become worthy to be in God’s presence. But over time, this was were flipped over and the law was used as a tool to judge who was not living righteous lives.

Jesus saw what was in the hearts and minds of the Pharisees, and he wasn’t afraid to call it like it was. In response to the Pharisee’s challenge, He quoted verses from the prophet Isaiah…verses that the Pharisee’s would be very familiar with. Only here, Jesus was aiming these verses squarely at the Pharisees. He said: “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. They worship me in vain; their teachings are merely human rules. You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the human traditions.” In other words, you are all missing the point. Whether the disciples have performed the ritual hand washing has nothing to do with whether they are or are not worthy of the presence of God, and the scriptures you use to justify your position, you use as a club to hurt others.

In the best traditions of the Pharisee’s, people have misused scripture this way throughout time. As a history student in college, I studied the growth of the Ku Klux Klan in Watonwan County, Minnesota, where my extended family has lived and farmed. In the late 18 and early 1900’s, Watonwan County was a hotbed of KKK activity. There, they focused largely on anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism. In my research, I found an old history book of the county. Printed in the book was a copy of a flyer that the KKK distributed inviting people to a rally. In big type face on the top of the flyer was a verse from the Old Testament; a verse that the Ku Klux Klan used to justify their actions.

To do this is wrong. Scripture, both law and Gospel, are gifts. To use them as a club, as a way of justifying immoral and violent actions, or of judging others as not worthy, is dangerous and wrong.

In our Gospel, Jesus was telling the Pharisee’s that they were misusing scripture. He is telling them that their rules had become their religion, and what makes someone acceptable to God, what fulfills the law, isn’t the external and the visible…it’s not about washing hands…it’s about what affects someone internally…it’s about what’s in the heart.

Several years ago, I had a conversation with a high school kid. We were on a 10th grade retreat, and we had started talking. Suddenly, in the middle of a conversation about the high school basketball team she played on she just blurted out: “I don’t really come to the youth group.” There was an awkward silence, but I could tell that she wanted to say more. So I asked “why is that?” And she said “well, it just seems like all those kids are hypocrites. They come to youth group on Monday nights, but on Friday nights after that I’ll seem them out at parties and they’re doing the same stuff as everyone else. But on Sunday at worship, or on Monday at youth group, they’re right back at church praying, like nothing happened. They’re hypocrites.”

A long silence; then I said: “Absolutely. They are. But so are you; and so am I. We’re all trying. But we all still sin. We’re trying to be better, but as often as not, we mess up…” It wasn’t the answer she expected.

One of my theological heroes, Tony Campolo, wrote about this hypocrisy. He said that “for someone to be critical of the church for being full of hypocrites is like someone who says “hey, that’s a really beautiful new hospital, too bad it’s full of all those sick people!” Sick people are why a hospital exists! Likewise, sinful people are why a church exists. The church is like a spiritual hospital for sinners. It isn’t a place for people with perfect hearts…the church is a place for sinners…it’s a place for people who, like the disciples, have dirty hands and dirty hearts, it’s a place for hypocrites who worship on Sunday, and sin on Monday.

You see, unless we understand that we are broken…that we are sinful…that we aren’t even worthy of being in the presence of God, we will never stand a chance of knowing and understanding God. And Jesus is clear in our Gospel: The sin that separates us from God is not about the external. It’s not about whether we follow the law to the letter…it’s not about the kind of music we listen to…it’s not about how we dress or who we hang out with or our body piercings or our tattoos. What separates us from God is internal. It’s about what’s within our hearts.

Jesus says that it is “from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come.” We live in a state, or a condition of sin…our Lutheran confession says that we are “captive to sin and cannot free ourselves.” From the inside out…we are stuck in sin, and Jesus knows that no amount of our scrubbing your hands…no amount of anything that we try to do…no rules…no laws…no sense of legalism is going to get us unstuck from this. And we are here in this Sanctuary, this hospital for sinners, because we know that we need help.

And Jesus gives each of you this help. He is not a distant God. Do you remember what happened when Jesus was crucified and breathed his last? All the people heard the sound…the sound of the temple curtain, that curtain that separated God from God’s people being torn in two. There was no more separation…there was no more distance. This was an important sign: Jesus is in this with you. Jesus is present. Jesus comes to you…it’s not about you coming to Jesus and making sure that your mind, hearts and hands are clean. Jesus has torn the curtain, broken the separation, and accepts you as you are and then works in your heart to change you.

Jesus wants to transform you from the inside out, not from the outside in. In Galatians 5, Paul writes “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” Whatever the condition of your heart…whatever dirt you carry…whatever guilt you feel, Jesus wants to free you from it, and to make you clean. Jesus wants to give you a new, clean heart; a heart of faith, a heart of hope, and a heart of love.

And so today we stand at the door, like the date meeting the Father for the first time. We are imperfect; we’ve all got history we’re not proud of…our hands may be dirty… we may have our tattoos, our scars, our piercings…but God looks at our hearts, which Jesus has made clean because of love, and God swings the door wide open and with joy in his voice says “You are mine, and my love and grace are for you. Welcome!”

Receive that gift. Have your heart cleaned and filled by Christ. Let go of your need to do things to qualify for God’s grace, and accept that you are welcomed not because of your attempts to follow the law, but because of the love and grace of Jesus.

Amen.

"Blue Highways"

“Blue Highways”
Ephesians 1:3-14
Todd Buegler
July 11-13, 2009
Lord of Life


Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who show us the way! Amen.

I have a theory: My theory is this: There are two kinds of people in the world. There are “Red Highway” people, and there are “Blue highway people.”

If you look on a map, the highways that are printed in red are the interstate freeways and the major highways that run across our country, from major city to major city. Red highway people are those who are generally interested in hopping on these expressways and getting to their destination as quickly as possible. Their goal is simply to get somewhere, be it on vacation…to work…to visit someone…their goal in any kind of travel or trip is simply the destination.

The blue highways on a map are those smaller highways, often just 2 lanes, that spread across our nation like a spider web, linking smaller towns. Blue highway people, those who prefer these roads, are more interested in the journey. They like to look around. They revel in the trip…and they see the journey as being at least as important as the arrival.


Now let me be clear. There’s nothing wrong with either one. It’s just about being a bit of a different personality type. Ok…a little poll…how many of you think that you’re probably a red highway person? How many of you have a higher quality personality and are blue highway people? I’m kidding…

You see, I am mostly a blue highway person, kind of in the tradition of Clark Griswald, of the movie “Vacation.” You know the type: “Look honey! The world’s biggest ball of twine! Should we stop?” When our family goes to the north shore, even though we might spend some time on the interstate, it’s a blue highway trip. We stop in Duluth for lunch…we wander around canal park. We then drift up highway 61. We might stop here or there at an interesting looking shop…or to grab ice cream. We might wander around split rock lighthouse…we’ll stop and climb around on the rocks on the Lake Superior shore. We’re not in a hurry. The point isn’t necessarily the destination, though we like that too…but it’s being together on the journey.

Our epistle lesson today is clearly a blue highway lesson. Please join me in taking a look at the scripture text from Ephesians 1. In your pew Bibles, it can be found on page _____.

In the time when the Apostle Paul lived, the main form of communication was the writing of letters. Greek letters, like this one from Paul to the Christians living in Ephesus, always began with a greeting, found here in verses 1 & 2. That was usually followed by a brief thanksgiving, or a brief wish for the health and well-being of the recipients. This was usually just a couple of verses.

In Paul's letter to the Ephesians, this brief declaration…well, it’s not so brief. If this were given as a grace before supper, you would guarantee that everyone’s dinner was cold long before you got to eat. It is a meandering, wandering blue highway kind of blessing. It travels through all the dramatic, scenic theological points of interest that are on the way to praising God for enabling early Christians to be God's own people.

In verses 3-9, Paul’s lengthy thanksgiving tells the Christian story and gives thanks for what God has done. What is God’s intent in doing these things? In verse 10 Paul writes that God has done these things to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In verse 11, Paul writes of our role in the plan. He writes that for these things to happen, we should live in accordance with God’s will, to put our hope first in Christ, and to praise God’s glory

In short, Paul is saying “God does have a plan for life here on earth…for unity, for peace and for life abundant. This plan…it is glorious...it is amazing…and you are it.” We, with the help of the Holy Spirit, are God’s plan for the bringing of God’s Kingdom to earth.

So then…what does God’s Kingdom look like?


The town of Witts Spring, Arkansas has a population of 100. The 1997 graduating class of Witts Springs High School has 41 students. Witts Spring High School isn’t exactly an athletic powerhouse. But they do field teams, and they manage to produce athletes that take team play to a new level.

“In a basketball game with rival Leslie High School, The Witts Springs Panthers trailed by over 30 points with just two minutes to go. The fans began to chant, ‘Put in Scotty. Scot‑TEE! Scot‑TEE! Scot‑TEE!’ Coach Nash, obliged and inserted senior guard Scotty Harmon. Harmon has cerebral palsy.

In the newspaper account of the game from the Arkansas Gazette, columnist Larry Pillow writes that “Scotty Harmon received a pass, alone and unguarded on the perimeter, and flung the ball toward the hoop. He missed. His teammates scrambled for the rebound and instead of taking another shot, passed back to Scotty and gave him a second chance. He missed again, which started another fight for the ball.

Coach Nash said “‘The kids know when Scotty’s in there, their game is over. They’re doing it for him now; the atmosphere changes. If they’re worn out, they’ll break their necks to get that rebound. Our kids will go above everybody to get the ball to Scotty.’

“On his fourth try, Harmon sunk a three pointer. Fans on both sides of the gym erupted in cheers. A few moments later, the buzzer sounded. The scoreboard said Leslie 89, Witts Springs 58”

This game was over long before the buzzer. Every person in the gym knew this to be true. But the fans, Coach Nash, and the members of the team had decided that even though the end was pre-determined, they were going to pay attention to how they got to that end. They could have folded up. They could have gotten sulkey. They could have gotten chippy. They didn’t. They treated those last few moments of the game as a gift. And they chose to give that gift to Scotty. This is a blue highway decision. And this is what the Kingdom of God looks like.

In our Christian faith, we know the outcome. The end result was determined over 2000 years ago through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. On Easter morning, the buzzer sounded and the angels erupted in cheers and ‘Alleluias”. Death was defeated and we were given new life. Game over. The victory is ours.

What then we do with our lives then is a gift…pure gift. And we get to choose how we will use this gift. But it is so easily forget…it is so easy for us to lose track of God’s will for us.

Many of you are aware that our youngest son, Samuel, who is 6, was hospitalized a few weeks ago. To be honest, it was pretty scary. He developed a strep group-A infection that settled into his wrist joint. There was concern about the infection going into his bone, or into his blood stream. But 5 days, 18 doctors, 2 hospitals, 1 surgery, 1 procedure and a whole lot of antibiotics later, Sam was on the road to recovery. We cannot, by the way, even find words to express our gratitude to all of you for your prayers and support. We’re now halfway through the 6-weeks of ‘at home’ IV antibiotics for Sam, and he’s doing much better.

I learned a lot in the past month. I learned about antibiotics…bacteria… hospitals…insurance…surgery…anesthesia…

But I also learned a lot about my life and my faith. I learned what it was like to be totally dependent on people who I didn’t even know. I learned what amazing people doctors, nurses and others in the health care field can be. I learned about trust. I learned that I, like many of us, sometimes find myself cruising the red highway and that I miss things…I would take them for granted. I learned again about the preciousness of life, and the preciousness of the life and faith journey that we are all on.

I learned that sometimes I need to stop. To breathe deeply. To think. To pray. God has clearly been working in our family in the last month, through the medical professionals, through family, through all of you. I was reminded that I can see the different ways God works, if I just look.

I learned that I am dependent on God’s Holy Spirit. The same Spirit that Paul writes about In verse 14. Here, he writes that the Holy Spirit is God’s pledge guaranteeing our inheritance. In New Testament Greek, the word used there for “pledge” is arrabon, which means deposit or down payment. Paul is saying that God’s Holy Spirit is the first installment of God's kingdom that we're invited to experience every day of our lives. It is just a taste of what is to come.

God cares so much about our day-to-day, nine-to-five, overtime/overdrawn, understaffed/overworked existence that God found a way to redecorate and revitalize our realities with the presence of the Holy Spirit. There's no work we do, no task we accomplish, no agenda we plow through, that can't be transformed by God's kingdom which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is able to make your everyday life into a life that expresses the wonder and glory of of God's love and grace.

But even though God’s gift of the Holy Spirit is always given…even though it’s always present, how we respond to that is still our choice. Just as we have to intentionally choose to turn off onto a blue highway instead of staying on the red expressway, we must train ourselves to live our lives in the now…to be people who pay attention to the Holy Spirit’s work on the journey.

How do we do this?

Do you remember what they teach children about crossing streets on bikes? 4 things that I think can help us on our spiritual travels: Stop. Look. Listen and then Go.

Stop. We need to stop the frantic rush and fury of our lives and be still to know the presence of God.

Look. If we want to experience God's presence in the unexpected places of our lives, we have to train our eyes to look, to see the evidence of God's presence in our lives and in the world around us.

Listen. Listen for the voice of God. Spend time in the Scriptures. Listen to the words of Jesus. Give attention to the witness of the way the Spirit of Christ is at work in other people's lives. Having done those three, we can:

Go. Go into life with a new awareness and a new confidence that the God who is with us will fulfill his good purpose in our lives.

Stopping, looking and listening before going allows us to pay attention to the journey. It is a way of taking our fast-paced, red-highway lives and of transforming them into blue highway journeys that tend to what the Holy Spirit is up to.

Occasionally, life is going to be a rush…sometimes it just has to be that way. But please don’t mistake that for a lifestyle. Life isn’t supposed to be a footrace to the end…it is a journey that pays attention to the Kingdom of God, and the work of the Holy Spirit, here and now.

Take the exit ramp. Pull onto the blue highway. Stop, look, listen and then go.
Live and experience the journey that is our faith. God’s Holy Spirit is a gift…an amazing gift…and it is for you.

Amen.

"Friend Request"

“Friend Request”
John 15:9-17
Todd Buegler
May 16-17, 2009
Lord of Life

Grace and peace to you from God our Creator, and from Jesus, the Son of God, who calls us friend! Amen.

I have 887 friends. 887. I know this number, because Facebook tells me so. Every time I log on to Facebook, the popular social networking site, it gives me a running count of the number of friends I have. It shows me who would like to be my friend, it suggest people who I might like to be friends with, and then tells me what all these different people are up to. 887 and climbing.

Now, I tell you that I have 887 friends on Facebook, not because I want to show off how cool I must be…which is clearly not the case…or that I’d want to compare my number of friends with anyone else…say for example Pastor Peter, who on his Facebook page, has a whopping total of 8 friends. No, I’m talking about my 887 Facebook friends because the whole Facebook and social networking phenomenon is, I think, kind of a strange thing. I’m not sure that a person can actually have 887 friends, and the fact that Facebook says that I do forces me think about what it means to be a friend.

Many on my list of 887 really are friends of mine. But others might better be qualified as acquaintances…and some are friends of friends…and some…well I’m not even sure how I’d qualify them. It might be more accurate to say that on Facebook there are 887 people to whom I am connected. But what is really interesting to me is how the Facebook phenomenon, and social networking in general, is changing our language and our understanding of what it is to be a friend, and how we communicate.

An example: On Friday morning I was sitting in Caribou, working on this sermon; I changed my Facebook status to say what I was doing: “At Caribou…sermon writing.” Within 15 minutes I had 3-4 other pastors, Facebook calls them “friends” of mine from all over the country respond that they were doing the same thing…and we traded ideas back and forth. Were these people really friends of mine? Probably not. I don’t know them well enough to call them up just to see how they’re doing. But it did provide me with a form of networking and support that was helpful. It was a good ‘connection.’ So does that make them a “friend?” Not by my old definition. But in the fast-paced, information driven, wireless world in which we live, maybe they are. Maybe it’s my definition of what is a friend that needs to change. Maybe I need to be challenged to rethink, and create a new category for this kind of relationship.

The reason I bring this up is because our Gospel text for today presents a similar kind of a challenge to the disciples. And the cause of this challenge is none other than Jesus himself. Please turn with me to John 15:9-17. This small piece of scripture is stuck in the middle of a much longer set of teachings by Jesus to his disciples that many scholars have called the “Farewell Discourse.” In the Gospel of John, this discourse is Jesus’ last Word to his followers before he is arrested.

In this teaching, Jesus, as he is prone to do, completely turns upside down the disciples understanding of their relationship with him. Understand first that the Jewish culture was very hierarchical. Jesus was a rabbi. Socially, that put him at the top of the food chain. Disciples followed their rabbis around like puppy dogs. Rabbi’s would never be friends with their disciples.

But in this “Farewell Discourse”, Jesus is using new language and a new understanding for the relationship between God and God’s people: Jesus starts off in verse 9 by saying that the disciples should “abide in my live.” A curious phrase. Abide in love? That means literally, to dwell or to live in God’s love, as one would dwell in a house. This is not a normal rabbi – disciple relationship. Those relationships were built on learning and discipline. And the relationship between God and God’s people had always been defined by God’s law, and how well the people followed it. Here, Jesus is tossing that out, in favor of something completely new. It is love in which they should abide, not just the law.

But that’s just the beginning. Look at verse 12, where Jesus commands his followers to “Love each other as I have loved you.” Again, the fact that he was telling them that they had a relationship built on love would have been shocking. And to use that love as a template for how they should love each other was to change the way they understood their relationships to be. And then in verse 13, Jesus who knows what his short-term future holds, sets up what is coming: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” Jesus knows that later that night, he will be betrayed and arrested, and his life will be laid down for his friends. He is helping his disciples understand that what is going to happen because of his great love for them.

Friends. Jesus calls them friends. I can visualize their reaction when they hear this: “What did he say?” “Did he say “friends”. “Did he call us his friends?” That would be a totally foreign way of thinking for the disciples.

In this text, Jesus created new language…new vocabulary and new rules for describing the relationships between the disciples and their Lord. And he goes on. In verse 16 he says “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.” They knew that against all conventional wisdom, Jesus had chosen them, a group of jr. high drop outs, to be disciples. But here, Jesus gives them the reason why: So that they could go and bear fruit…fruit that will last. Jesus is telling them that their purpose is not just to follow him, but then to go and create more disciples; to bear fruit. And 2000 years later, here we sit, a product of that effort.

Jesus changes everything. When Jesus came, everything about life, faith and our relationship with God shifted. And in this short piece of scripture, Jesus is describing that shift. The disciples knew that Jesus was rabbi. They had come to believe that Jesus was God. But now they were being told that Jesus was friend. This was unimaginable before that day.

And Jesus wasn’t saying that his friendship was going to make things easy, or was going to solve all their problems; far from it. Life remained difficult for the disciples. But, friendship with Jesus meant something to cling to in the midst of that difficulty. It gave them hope, purpose and mission.

I don’t have very many close friends. I have lots of acquaintances…lots of colleagues…lots of people I know. But only a few close friends. What marks the difference? Close friends are those I have grown up with…went to school with…lived with…they are those who call me up…who I get together with a few times a year for dinner, they are those who ask me the deep questions, who challenge me, and I them. Friends are those who know my heart, and I know theirs. Friends are people I love. I spent Friday night with two of these people, Peter and Chris, both college friends. It was a great night. There was way too much Asian food, there was laughter, there was good, deep, rich conversation about our hopes, our joys and our disappointments. We talked about our kids and our spouses. We talked about what it’s like to have parents who have health issues, and what that means. We talked about some kind of scary health problems that one of their son’s is having. There was nothing we could do to fix it. We just listened. And then after all of this, we went to see Star Trek. (It doesn’t get any better than that!) This is friendship.

What does this tell me about what Jesus means when he says “I call you friend?” It tells me that Jesus is seeking a level of intimacy different than the disciples had experienced, and different than I might expect. Jesus is not talking about being either a distant master or just a “Facebook Friend”, a connection. So what does it look like when the God of the universe want to be friends with us? I think it is less about what we do, and more about recognizing how God feels about us, and just being in…dwelling in…abiding in that relationship.

Brennan Manning is one of my favorite theologians and authors. There is one curious thing about him though: when Manning mails a letter or a postcard, his return address only has six words: He handwrites "I am the one Jesus loves." That’s what it says in small print in the upper left corner: “I am the one Jesus loves.” I heard him speak a few years ago, and at a Q&A session someone asked Manning why he used this for his return address. Manning started talking about John, the author of our Gospel. He was often referred to as “the one Jesus loved.” Manning said, "If John were to be asked, 'What is your primary identity in life?' he would not reply, 'I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels.’ Rather, John would answer: 'I am the one Jesus loves.'"

So what would it mean, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as "the one Jesus loves"? How would my life change if I truly grasped the Bible's astounding words about God's love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?

There is the story of an Irish priest who, on a walking tour of a rural parish, saw an old peasant kneeling by the side of the road, praying. Impressed, the priest says to the man, "You must be very close to God." The peasant looks up from his prayers, thinks a moment, and then smiles, "Yes, he's very fond of me."

I don’t know what your relationship with God is like. Maybe you feel distant from God. Many do. For some, God might feel like a stranger. Perhaps your relationship with God feels broken. I understand these things; I have felt them too. We live in a broken world and our relationship with God is often the first thing to fracture. But the Jesus who shifted his relationship with his disciples from “master” to “friend” does the same to each of us. Hear the words of John 15 as if they were being spoken directly to each one of you…one on one, face to face, eye to eye: Jesus says to you “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friend. And you are my friend. I no longer call you a servant…You are no longer distant…I call you my friend. You didn’t choose me. I chose you.

I have 887 people that I am connected to via Facebook. I have a handful of really good friends in whom I can confide. I have a family I love very much. But I have only one Savior who could say those things to me. He is someone who could be a distant master…but instead, because of how much he loves me, he calls me a friend.

You too have this Savior. He is your friend. Know that you are the one he loves very much…enough to die for you. He brings life. Believe in this love…feel his presence…so that someday, if someone asks you of your faith, you can answer with confidence: “Yes. This Jesus: he’s my friend. And he’s very, very fond of me.”

Amen.