Sermon: Christian American Freedom (June 29, 2014)

Pentecost 3A

Romans 6:12-23

            I got a call this week from the Barna Research Group. Barna is a group that does research on the Church and her ministry, following trends in various areas of ministry and how it intersects with culture. This was a call asking if I, as a clergy person, would participate in a survey about religious liberty in America. The questions ranged from what I see as my role as a clergy person regarding

religious freedom, to how I see various hot button issues as affecting religious liberty, to where I think my congregation stands on those issues, to how all this affects my preaching… It was quite comprehensive. Of course it is difficult to participate in a survey like this, because you have to offer yes or no answers to questions about a topic that is so very gray. The very first question was, “Would you say we are living in a post-Christian world?” Unwilling to answer yes or no, I started asking questions. “Well what do you mean by post-Christian? Do you mean post-Christiandom? Because in that case, yes. But if you’re asking if I still think that Christian values, or at least what people call Christian values, shape our government and the behaviors of our citizens, well then that’s a different question.” He paused, and simply repeated the question as before. And that’s sort of how the whole survey went!

            Maybe the reason I struggled so much with the black-and-white-ness of the survey is that “freedom” means so many different things to me, and maybe, to all of us. I think the survey was coming from the direction of the religious freedom articulated in the First Amendment of our Constitution – an oft-cited but also frequently misunderstood and even misused ideal. Generally in America, we value our freedom pretty deeply – especially at this time of year, as we prepare to celebrate those freedoms on Independence Day this Friday. For Americans, freedom comes to be something meaning, “We can do what we want, say what we want, believe what we want, and we don’t need to be obedient to anyone or anything we don’t want to.” And we prickle at anything that threatens what we perceive as our freedom.

            Of course, this can have disastrous consequences when we let it go to our heads. Think of the very public political figures who have been brought down by their power and perceived ability to do whatever they want and get away with it, whether that is sexual misconduct, or lying, or causing any number of other scandals. While this is extreme, I think all of us are susceptible to letting our perceived freedom go to our heads, especially when it causes us to focus primarily on ourselves, and not on the needs of others.

            So then there is Christian freedom, and that is something altogether different. It’s what Paul talks about in our second lesson today – though I know that may not have been entirely clear. Paul’s letter to the Romans, while important and wonderful, is not really light, easy summer reading! So let’s break it down. Paul writes, “Do not let sin have dominion over your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions…” In other words, don’t just do whatever you want, whenever and however you want, just because that is what you want. Don’t be slaves to your various passions. Because, he goes on, “You have been set free from sin, having instead become slaves of righteousness.”

But wait – I thought we were talking about Christian freedom here? What is this “slaves of righteousness” business? How can you be free but still be a slave to anything? Ah, you see there’s the rub. Paul’s point is that we are never entirely free; we are always slaves to something. Don’t believe me? How many of you feel naked if you don’t have your cell phone within reach? How many of you feel “off” all day if you don’t practice some version of your morning routine? How many of you love a certain food so much that you cannot curb the craving? How many of you care a little more about money than you probably really ought to?

You see, it’s not a matter of whether you will follow a certain master, but rather, which master you will follow. And Paul urges, when we are deciding which master to be a slave to, choose to be a slave to righteousness. Goodness. Service. Love.

As Michael and I near our one year anniversary, I have been reading a lot of essays and articles about “how to make your marriage last.” It’s never too early, I figure! One included the wonderful piece of advice to always outdo each other in showing kindness. That’s actually pretty similar to what Paul says at the end of his letter to the Romans (which, incidentally, was the passage read at our wedding). He says: “Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.” It’s a good rule to live by, a competition I can get on board with (who can be the most genuinely kind, more of the time?) – but it is, still, a rule, a mantra to which we need be obedient. It is one we can choose to follow, but it is, no matter how you spin it, something to which to be obedient.

So there is freedom here. There is the freedom to choose righteousness and loving service over

things that would cause destruction – either of ourselves or of the people and the world around us. What we need, then, is the power to choose, with that freedom, obedience to righteousness, rather than obedience to our earthly whims and desires. The source of this power, of course, is the promise inherent in the resurrection – that our sins were nailed to that cross and were buried and forgiven and no longer hold us captive thanks to the work of God through Jesus Christ.

But that’s a lot of church talk that doesn’t always make sense to us on a day-to-day basis. So we have these other ways that this power is apparent to us.

First of all, there is our baptism. We will have the chance to witness this wonderful event in a moment: it is the moment when God reaches down to bless a child, claim her as His own, and forgive her all her sins not because of what she has done or achieved, but because of who God is, and what God has done. The Holy Spirit will come into her and stay there, and she will be sealed with the cross of Christ and the promise of forgiveness forever. So when it comes time to make a decision to obey righteousness or to obey sinful desires, we can remember, “Hey, I’m baptized! God thinks I’m good enough to love and claim as His own, so I’m going to do what I can to live into that identity and that hope.”

Second, we have the Christian community. When Cecelia is baptized today, a part of the rite is that I will ask the congregation if they will pray for her and uphold her in her Christian life. That is a promise we make not only to the newly baptized, but to every member of the Christian community – indeed to every neighbor in need of love. Within the Christian community, we do that through prayer, through hearing and digesting the Word of God, through practicing the sacraments together, and through every act of service, whether that is as grand as building someone a house, or as small as giving someone a glass of water.

And finally, we have prayer in the Holy Spirit. A couple weeks ago we celebrated Pentecost, the day the Holy Spirit came down like a rush of violent wind and rested on the church. Through that Holy Spirit, we pray: for ourselves, for each other, through difficult decisions, through challenges and joys, through all things in our lives as individuals and together. In the Holy Spirit, we are given the freedom to pray, and that is what we do.

The freedom to choose obedience to righteousness is still not always easy, brothers and sisters in Christ. The power of the many other things that would demand our allegiance and attention can certainly get the better of us. But thanks be to God that we do have one another, and the promise of a God who is Emmanuel, God with us, in every decision that we make.

            Let us prayer… Boundless God, you have given us a most wonderful gift in our freedom from sin and death, and our freedom for the service of others. Be with us in the many decisions we face every day, that we would always choose what is right. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Overcoming the fear of conflict (June 22, 2014, Pentecost 2A)

Pentecost 2A

June 22, 2014

Matthew 10:24-39

            Did anyone watch the US beat Ghana this week in the World Cup? Watching soccer at this level always amazes me – to see the players throw caution to the wind as they do anything and

US Player Clint Dempsey gets kicked in the
face, resulting in a broken nose.

everything to get to that ball. This is the first soccer match I have watched in a while, but as you may know, I have played soccer most of my life. When I was playing as a teenager, I was, like all teenagers, invincible, and would use similar recklessness in my efforts to get the ball, which was of course the only thing that mattered. Now, twice as old, I get nervous just thinking about it! I still like to play, but now I’m much more likely to duck when the ball comes flying at my head than I am to throw myself in its path. Where my teenage self thrived on the excitement of the game, my 30-year-old self is more prone to feel the flip side of that emotion: fear.

            Did you know that excitement and fear are physiologically identical? Breathing, heart rate, chemical response – that’s all the same whether you are excited or scared. The difference is the mental response to it. Excitement makes us bolder and more confident, and fear makes us nervous, tending toward flight instead of fight.

            I’m talking about fear and excitement today because there is a lot of that in our Gospel reading this morning (and our other readings, for that matter!). Jesus is about to send his disciples out on a mission to heal, cast out demons, and proclaim the good news. I can imagine the disciples are excited about that! To be given such power, and to use it to proclaim good news to the world – wow! But their excitement quickly turns to fear as Jesus tells them what it’s going to be like out there: they will be like sheep in the midst of wolves. Not everyone will receive what they say. People, even their own families, will get nasty, and violent. They will tear them down mentally, emotionally, even physically.

            To embark on such a journey as this requires immense trust and deep courage. Or said another way, it requires faith. I think we are often inclined to think that the opposite of faith is doubt. Not so, in Matthew’s Gospel. For Matthew, the opposite of faith is not doubt, but fear. Now don’t get me wrong, doubt can be a difficult thing, too. It tends to creep in when you really could use some conviction, and makes you feel ungrounded and uncertain. But in my experience, it is not so much the doubt that causes pain, as it is that doubt often leads to fear. If you doubt your spouse’s fidelity, you begin to fear you will be left alone. If you doubt your ability to do something well, you fear you will fail, and you fear judgment. If you doubt you deserve something, you fear you will lose it. And then those fears can begin to take over, and that is when faith begins to suffer.

            One of our greatest and most pervasive fears is a fear of conflict. We often try to avoid it, because past conflict has hurt us too many times in too many ways. So we either avoid it entirely, letting it fester until it finally explodes one day, either all over someone we love, or on some undeserving stranger… or we project it, directing all of our aggression about the issue toward something completely unrelated… or we confront it, but in unhealthy ways, insisting on our own rightness to the point of being unable to truly hear anyone else’s perspective. By and large, people aren’t very good at dealing with conflict, whether in the family, in the work place, or even in the church. It’s no wonder we fear it.

            Unfortunately, this is a fear that really keeps us from living, growing, witnessing, and hoping as much as we could. We keep our hopes and dreams in check because pursuing them may upset someone, and that might lead to conflict, which might lead to more upset, so it’s easier not to even try. Hence our witness becomes muted, and our dreams put aside, lest they cause too many problems. And we are unable to fully be the people that God created us to be.

            It’s no wonder, then, that Jesus decides to address and confront this fear head on. He does this first of all by naming it: he tells the disciples that in the mission he is sending them on, they will face persecution, rejection, even violence. Even though it is God’s work, and the good news of the gospel, they will face conflict. Sometimes naming our fears is the first step in moving past them, because naming them takes away some of their power, and knowing to expect them allows us to prepare ourselves for them. Jesus does this for the disciples in our reading today, preparing them for the various conflicts they might encounter – with strangers, friends, and family members alike.

            Naming is important, but even more important is the word of hope and comfort that Jesus offers them in the midst of it: “Have no fear,” he says. Jesus has lived through what he is asking them to face – the persecution, the rejection, even the violence eventually – and so he speaks from experience. “Have no fear,” he assures them. “Instead, have faith, because God is going to win in the end. Even the hairs on your head are counted. If God knows you and cares for you enough to know that, then you have no reason to fear!”

            Instead, he is saying, have courage and trust. And root that courage in the promise of God – the promise that God knows our most intimate selves, and things about us that even we don’t know, and also the promise that while others may try to hurt you physically, no one can take away from the power of God’s promise to know you deeply and love you truly, no matter what.

            If we could remember this promise, how might we view the conflict or the possibility of conflict differently? One way, I think, is we might move away from viewing all conflict as something inherently

bad, to viewing it as something that could change us for the better. I posted a quote on our Facebook page this week (maybe you saw it) from Christian writer Max Lucado: “The circumstances we ask God to change are often the circumstances God is using to change us.” We are so eager for things to be just so, just as we would like them to be, and for God to take away all conflict, that we often fail to see how God might be using a conflict to turn us into stronger, more faithful people, more equipped to witness to God’s love and serve those in need. This can be hard to hear, because it sounds a lot like, “God makes conflict happen for our own good.” That is not what I’m saying. What I am saying is this: that if God can use something as terrible as the cross to bring about our redemption, then maybe, just maybe, God can work through all hardships to bring about life.

            So have no fear. Know that conflict happens, and it can be scary, and it can be painful inside and out, but that conflict is not the end. The end – and the beginning and all the way through – is God’s promise that no amount of human conflict can ever be stronger than the love and power of our Lord Jesus Christ to overcome fear and death. May we approach all our conflicts and fears assured of that promise.

            Let us pray… Gracious and loving God, we face so much conflict in life, and it is often so painful. Help us to face it with confidence instead of fear, trusting ever in your promises. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

"Come follow follow follow follow follow me..."

(The title is a reference to this round I used to sing as a kid, in case you didn't catch that.)

As you may remember, after all this breast cancer business was over, I asked if I would still be followed for all the Hodgkin's treatment side effects. Seemed to make sense, since the Hodgkin's treatments are what likely caused the breast cancer. So I went to Dr. Constine, who specializes in long term survivors of childhood radiation treatments. Ding!

Okay, now that you are caught up, last week I had all the scans he ordered. Basically, he wanted to check out all the areas that were in the field of radiation, and then continue to check them at regular intervals. So the scans he ordered included: chest X-ray, neck ultrasound, and stress echo.

The first two were straightforward. The X-ray was just like dozens of other chest X-rays I have gotten in my life, and the ultrasound was like the many breast ultrasounds I have had, except this was (duh) of my neck. (By the way, neither breasts nor necks are nearly as interesting to watch on a screen as hearts or, I suspect, babies.)

The stress echo, on the other hand, gave me a wee glimpse into the complexity of life-after-breast cancer, at least as far as following me medically. If you are unfamiliar with this procedure, here is how it goes: you have an echocardiogram of your heart at rest, which includes many cords hooked up around the chest, and a gooey wand, and then you can watch your heart pump on the screen. That part is cool. Then they put you on a treadmill and you start off walking at a slight incline, then after three minutes the incline and speed increase, then again after three more minutes, then again... you get the idea. You do this until your heart has reached what you think is maximum capacity, pounding as hard as it can. Then you jump off the treadmill and back onto the echo table and they take more pictures, now of your heart working as hard as it can. You only have about a minute to do this, especially if you are in decent shape and your heart rate quickly drops after exercise stops.

Not the most fun test, especially if you're like me and you're very competitive and never want to admit that yes, this is as hard as my heart can work. (Instead, it was a race with the clock, an insistence that I can make it just one more level... Silly Johanna.) But it is pretty straightforward at least.

Or, it is if you don't have implants, and haven't had lymph nodes removed. The first problem was the implants. They cast a shadow on the heart, and the silicone is not easy to see through. He tried every angle to get a good view, but not always with good luck. No problem - they have a dye they can inject that lights everything up and makes it easier to see. It needs to go in via an IV. I can't have IVs in my left arm because I had lymph nodes removed on that side. So it went into the right arm. But then, they also have to take my blood pressure at various intervals during this process, and I also can't have my blood pressure taken on my left side because of the lymph nodes, and the right side already had an IV in it. Oy. I'm not sure what they finally decided to do - it was some different sort of cuff - but they got it working well enough to get the gist of it, I guess. Then when it came time to run, I had thoughtfully worn a sports bra, because the plastic surgeon's office had insisted I must avoid bouncing and always wear a sports bra when exercising with the newbie boobies... but it didn't occur to me that a sports bra would get in the way of the echo. Yeesh!

So there I ran, sports bra pulled down around my waist, hospital gown taped shut, cables hanging off of me, and at the height of all this, when I feel like I'm gonna keel over, the nurse trying to inject this special dye into my arm (which was the arm on the wall side, of course) as I huff and puff and sprint up a 16% incline. Needless to say, it was not my favorite 10 minutes of the day.

But the good news is that my blood pressure is enviable, and my heart rate dropped back to normal after only a couple minutes, which means I'm in great shape! They don't get such healthy people in the cardio unit very often, so they were very pleased to see this. At least I have this going for me.

Now if I could just get back to using my strong heart on the soccer field!

Sermon: We come from a God who... (Trinity Sunday, June 15, 2015)

Trinity Sunday

June 15, 2014

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

            A couple weeks ago I was in downtown Rochester with a friend, and we wandered into a deli

Boss Sauce is a sweet and spicy sauce that is
made in Rochester by American
Specialty Manufacturing, Inc.
(RocWiki)

for dinner. We ordered sandwiches, and there was a sheet to fill out that had all the different items we could have on the sandwich. One of the offerings was something called “boss sauce.” Does anyone know what that is? Well, we two people who are relatively new to Rochester didn’t, so we asked, “What is boss sauce?” The guy looked at us askance and said, “You’re not from around here, are you?” Well, I guess that much was clear!

            Where you’re from can play a big role in how you relate to the world. That’s why it is one of the first questions people ask when they meet someone for the first time. What’s your name, what do you do, are you from Rochester? And sure, all those things do play a role in who you are: I am and always will be, to some extent, a Northern California girl, raised in a small, gold rush town in the foothills in a pastor’s family. The fact that I am a pastor also says a lot about who I am, as people’s careers of choice often do.

            But what if we thought bigger when we consider who we are and where we’re from? Today texts, especially the one from Genesis, urge us to think about where we are from in a different way. This creation account from Genesis 1 is so rich and beautiful, but I think often skimmed over because we think we know it so well. Or because it brings up baggage, or because the scientist in you readily dismisses it. Or any number of other reasons. But here is my challenge for you today: read this account not as a factual history, but as poetry, or a hymn, or a doxology, which praises God, and the many aspects of God that are worthy of praise. Read it as prose with a truth that is deeper than the words, a reflection on who God is, and who we are because we come from that God.

            That’s the other challenge for today. Instead of thinking, “I’m from Rochester,” or, “I’m from Webster,” or, “I’m from America,” let’s focus on a larger truth: that we are from God. Today on the church calendar is also Holy Trinity Sunday, a day when we reflect on the mysterious and wonderful nature of God, and by extension, who we are as people of that God. So let’s do it – let’s think together about some of what we know about God, and so what it means for us to say, as Genesis makes clear, “We come from God.”

            We come from a God who sees and reflects. Each time God creates something, you’ll notice, God stops to consider the creation, and sees it, and decides each time that it is good. Despite the ordered nature of this account of creation, in fact God is not utilitarian about it. Rather, God relishes in what is made, whether it is a sweeping blue sky, or a child’s laughter, or trees producing fruit and seed, or the way the sunshine sparkles through the leaves of those trees. God is an artist who is a keen observer, perceptive, and patient. We come from a God who observes, attends, perceives, and takes delight in what God has created. Do we take the time to observe and delight in what is around us?

            We come from a God who made things good. Before there was evil and sin, there was goodness and blessing. Just look how often God looks upon creation and deems it “good” or even, “very good.” It’s a very world-affirming account of creation! And yet, all that goodness and blessing – it is so easy to forget in midst of all the greed, violence, back-biting, and devastation we see all around us. But what would happen if we viewed the world as if it really functioned according to its “very good” default settings? What if we viewed people through this lens, even when they said hurtful things? What if we always strived to see the goodness in people and things, rather than get stuck on everything that is wrong? “God saw everything he had made,” after all, “and it was very good.” Could we live into our goodly heritage?

Creation by Igor Paley

            We come from a God who makes new things. It is easy to see this in the creation account, in which God makes new things every day. But what about now? Does God still create new things? Do we still believe God is an innovator, a creator? Looking around, it is hard not to see destruction – rain forests disappearing, landfills increasing, solar caps melting, fires, floods… The world that God made is breaking down, and when we think of creators and innovators, we think of people like Steve Jobs and other human innovators. But is it true that humans are the innovators nowadays, not God? We come from a God who makes new things – so do we still believe in a vibrant and active God, or one who has become stagnant?  

I believe God does still make new things – each day creation is changing, and so are you, and so am I. As Frederick Buechner writes, “Using the same old materials of earth, air, fire, and water, every twenty-four hours God creates something new out of them. If you think you’re seeing the same show all over again seven times a week, you’re crazy. Every morning you wake up to something that in all eternity never was before and never will be again. And the you that wakes up was never the same before and will never be the same again either.” We come from a God who makes new things, which makes us, too, an ever-changing and every-growing part of creation.

            We come from the likeness of God. These words in Genesis 1 always take my breath away – that we might in any way be in the likeness of God! It is at once grace-filled and frightening to imagine. How does that affect my life, the way I interact with others, the way others see me, to think that in all that I say and do, there is some sort of imprint of God? Debie Thomas says it well: “Whether I acknowledge it or not, I reflect something of God’s joy, God’s intentions, God’s love, and God’s beauty just by the virtue of existing on the earth. I am [God’s], and so [God] is mine.” Let it be so!

Rest Work (after Millet) by Vincent Van Gogh

We come from a God who rests. This is a hard one to hear for first-world work-a-holics. Who has time to rest? There is too much to do, work to be done, a house to be cleaned, dinner to be made, the kids need a ride to lacrosse practice and piano lessons, even church has so many demands! We are busy people. This can even turn into a point of pride, can’t it? To be busy is to be important and involved. To be busy is to embrace life and live it to its fullest! But to look at this account of creation, to see that even God took a day of rest… what makes us think we don’t need one? More than that, notice that while all of creation is repeatedly called good, this 7^th day, the Sabbath day, is the only day that is called holy. Sacred. We come from a God who calls rest holy, and we would do well to take that seriously!

            Finally, at least for today: We come from a God who delights in community. We see this in the creation story, with God’s making not just one human, but both man and woman, to be partners and till the earth together. But we also see this in God’s very nature. As I mentioned, today we celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday, and reflect on the mysterious triune nature of God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God’s very nature, you see, is a communion of three persons, dancing together and igniting the world. How appropriate, then, that God’s church would also be a community – a community who, like that first man and woman, are brought together to work together, to till and care for the earth, who

Trinity by Andrei Rublev

become the image of God, reflecting that image to the world. God delights in such community, and that makes us, too, a people who become better when we’re a part of a community.

            These reflections merely scratch the surface of a God who is so beyond our comprehension that no amount of talking or thinking about it will ever bring understanding – and that is a good thing, because if God could be comprehended by our human minds, then God wouldn’t be much of a God! But there are things that we can understand about God: the inclination to see and reflect; the insistence that creation is, at its heart, good; the innovator and creator of continual newness; the embrace of humanity as made in a godly image; the insistence that rest is a holy thing; and the delight in community. These lovely attributes are a part of us, as well. May we, even as we fall short of understanding God, always remember where we come from, and strive to live into that godly heritage.

            Let us pray…. Mysterious God, we desire to know you, because who you are and what you do is indeed our heritage, and what makes us who we are. Help us to know you, and to know what you want from us, your people. In the name of the Triune God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

*** Note: This sermon draws heavily from this lovely reflection by Debie Thomas: http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20140609JJ.shtml