Sermon: Approaching God with a spirit of curiosity (May 30, 2021)

View full service HERE. Sermon begins around 32 min. 

Trinity Sunday
May 30, 2021
John 3:1-17 

INTRODUCTION

         I asked my retired pastor dad what his favorite way is to preach on Holy Trinity Sunday, and his answer was, “Go on vacation and find a sub to do it.” It is not an easy Sunday to preach, especially for people who like to understand things, because well, the Trinity is impossible to understand! So, as you listen to the readings today, I urge you NOT to try to understand them. All of the readings will mention some or multiple persons of the Trinity, so notice that but don’t try to understand. Instead, listen with a spirit of curiosity. In fact, as you listen, instead of seeking answers, try to come up with at least one question you have about each text. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’ve been thinking these past couple of months, as we start to emerge from some of the restrictions Covid brought upon us, about St. Paul’s future. We’ve had a whole lot of change the past five years – a complete staff turnover and a pandemic, to name a couple! And looking ahead, we are just about to pay off a $1.3 million mortgage for a building project that allowed us to open our hearts and our space to some new ministries and outreach. So… what will be our next big thing? Whenever there is so much change in an organization, whether good or bad, it warrants taking the time to take a step back, taking a bird’s eye view, and asking, “Who are we now? What are our values? What is our story, our unique St. Paul’s story, and what is the best version of ourselves? And finally, how do we sense God is calling us into being that best version of ourselves?”

         After weeks of reading, praying, talking and listening, we have begun a process of answering some of these questions. Last weekend, I met with 7 members of St. Paul’s – a representative sample of the congregation – to talk about our individual values, experiences, important people and events, and then to find some common themes. Because, there is something about St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Pittsford that has drawn each of us here, as opposed to any number of other churches in the area. What is that specific something that makes us unique?

         Our findings so far likely won’t surprise you. We discerned that people of St. Paul’s are generous and eager to serve others. We are accepting of people, however they self-identify, and wherever they may be on their journey of faith. Many of us have been seekers at some point in our life story; many in fact still are – we all come to faith with questions, not unlike Nicodemus in today’s Gospel reading! We all are searching for a place to find safety and peace, to be filled up, in a world that often demands so much of us; to be centered, grounded, and strengthened for the week ahead. And perhaps most of all, we long to make meaningful, authentic connections with one another and with God.

Does any of that resonate with you, and your own story of faith and life?

         But here’s something else we noticed, that may also resonate with you: that while we do all long for those connections, we don’t always have a very easy time talking about it, at least not in faith terms. Several people last weekend struggled somewhat to talk about their lives in the context of the biblical story, for example, or to discern specifically how God was acting through the mundane moments of our lives as well as the significant ones. Though we long to find that life-giving connection with both God and community, the community connection is much easier to come by, being concrete and, although messy, at least clearly accessible to us. But discovering God’s action in our daily lives is much more elusive.

         To be clear: if this describes you, there is no shame to be had in this. I suspect this is the case for many mainline Christians today. Lutherans especially have a long-valued tradition of being very good thinkers and educators. Our faith is often largely in our head, and consequently I fear Lutherans by and large have done a poor job of equipping people to notice and articulate how they encounter God with their hearts. Not all Lutherans – some people do this with ease, and in a way that is authentic and accessible, and these folks are a gift to us, and a model, but many of us struggle to articulate that heart connection. I also wonder if being a mainline Christian in Pittsford, a community filled with highly educated, professionally successful, high powered and high achieving people, makes this even more of a challenge.

         Which brings me to Nicodemus, and the Holy Trinity. Nicodemus was a highly educated, black and white thinker who was adept at experiencing life through the concrete, not so much the spiritual. As a Pharisees he was a keeper of the law – it was his job to know scripture and know what was right and what was wrong, and according to the Pharisees, Jesus was doing things wrong. Yet something about Jesus is cracking Nicodemus’s certainty. So, in the cover of night, he goes to talk to Jesus, to ask him some of his questions. And his encounter with Jesus begins to soften his need to know things. Instead, he is pulled into conversation, into relationship, with Jesus, into relationship with the living God.

Nicodemus’ experience can enlighten us as to how to approach our own engagement with the Trinity. The Trinity, by definition, cannot be explained or understood. We can sure try, but finally we cannot approach the Triune God with our heads. Christians have been trying to to explain it for 2000 years; after all that, what we are ultimately left with is that the Trinity is not something to be understood. It is a mystery.

And, my friends, that is a good thing. If we could understand God, what kind of God is that? As soon as God can be grasped and explained by our feeble human minds, God has ceased being the ultimate, omniscient, omnipotent being we know God to be. The assumption that everything can be explained and understood necessarily limits the essence and power of our God.

So if God is a vast, ineffable, paradoxical mystery… then what are we supposed to do with that? This, too, can be answered in part by looking at Nicodemus’s story. Nicodemus leads with his head, something we are familiar with. But notice, he goes in with a statement, but then, he doesn’t stop asking questions. I heard a great quote this week about how when you think you are right, when you think you already know the answer, you stop taking in new information. So what if we cultivated a willingness to let down the armor of knowledge, the assumed certainty about how things are, and instead asked questions with a spirit of curiosity? Curiosity then becomes a sort of spiritual practice, a way of remaining open to possibility, and, essentially for our faith, open to transformation.

When we approach the Trinity not with a desire to know and understand, but rather, with this spirit of curiosity, then we allow ourselves to be invited – invited by our living, dynamic and ineffable God, into worship and praise. In a moment we will sing (meditate on) a hymn called “Come, Join the Dance of Trinity.” I love this image, of the Trinity as a sort of circle dance into which we are invited. As the hymn says, “the Three, in love and hope, made room within their dance” – made room for us, to see ourselves as a part of God’s story, and God as a part of our story, of Father, Son and Holy Spirit and all of creation moving and breathing and loving together.

And that invitation, received and accepted with curiosity instead of knowledge, is where we can experience that deeper connection that we crave. It’s when we stop trying to figure God out, to understand, and instead just open ourselves up to the relationship, to listen, to ask questions, to pray alone and with one another, or simply to sit and breathe deeply of the Spirit – not knowing where it comes from or where it goes, but hearing its sound, nonetheless.

This sort of vulnerable, heart openness to God does not come easy for those accustomed to approaching God head-first, like Nicodemus, and if I’m honest, like myself! We can almost feel Nicodemus’ discomfort with it in this short passage as he struggles to find understanding. I feel that same discomfort and frustration at times! I hope and pray that over the next months and years, St. Paul’s might find some ways to support people in this effort, to normalize not-knowing and question-asking, to approach God not just with heads but also with hearts, and I hope you will take advantage of it. After over a year marked by an experience of disconnection, the time has never been better to invest our energy into finding a sense of connection once again to God and to one another.

As we try and fail in this effort, we can also find comfort in knowing that the invitation to join the dance of the Trinity is never revoked. God has every desire to be in relationship with us, and has gone so far as to become like us to achieve it. And God does this not to judge or condemn our failed efforts, but so that we might all be saved and transformed through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Let us pray… Holy Trinity, we long to understand you, to grasp you with our heads. Help us instead to experience you with our hearts, to accept your invitation into worship, praise and transformation, to join your joyous dance, that we would find you in our story, and ourselves in yours. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Sighing prayers on Pentecost (May 23, 2021)

 View the full service here. Sermon begins at 38:00. 

Day of Pentecost

May 23, 2021

Romans 8:22-27

 

INTRODUCTION

         Pentecost is one of my favorite days of the church year. I just love hearing about all the different facets of the Holy Spirit. As usual today, we will hear the story of Pentecost from Acts, when the Spirit came rushing among Jesus’ followers. Remember where this story is situated in the narrative – we are now 50 days after the resurrection, and 10 days after the Ascension. Jesus’ parting words to the disciples before ascending into heaven were instructions to go to Jerusalem where they would receive power (Holy Spirit!) and be his witnesses. The story of Pentecost is when that promise comes about. It is often called the birthday of the Church, the day the promised Spirit came to equip and accompany Jesus-followers in spreading the good news to the ends of the earth.

         But we’ll also hear about several other ways we experience the Holy Spirit – not just as a rushing, disrupting, empowering, igniting wind, but also as advocate, comforter, pray-er, creator. As you listen to the readings, see how many different ways you can catch the Spirit moving among us, and consider when in your life you have experienced those different expressions of the Spirit. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

         I recently started seeing a new spiritual director. A spiritual director is what you might imagine – someone with whom I can talk through some of my personal spiritual musings and struggles without the purpose of making it into a sermon, who will ask me the right questions to help me delve deeper into my spiritual understanding and my relationship with God. It’s an invaluable gift for someone who spends a lot of time working to help others deepen their spirituality, to focus with intention on my own! One thing this new spiritual director does with me that my previous one didn’t, is she begins each session by lighting a candle, offering a short invocation, and then having us sit together in silent prayer.

         Now, I know this will shock you, but… I’m pretty good at talking. I’m an external processor. In fact, when I was 13, I had a sweatshirt that said, “I’m talking and I can’t shut up!” and I wore it with pride. Unfortunately, this trait extends also to my prayer life. That is, in my conversations with God I tend to do a lot more talking than listening. So, you can imagine, 5 minutes of silence was… not easy for me. I was open to it – and in fact I have been trying to include more contemplative prayer into my life for quite a while. But that five minutes was mostly… a lot of monkey brain. You know the kind – where you’re thinking about your to-do list, and remembering something you want to mention later, and imagining what you’ll make for dinner. By the time it was done, I felt no closer to God, nor was I more in tune with my heart. Later in our session I admitted, “I’m going to need some help with that. I’m not so good at listening in silence.”

         With all that in mind, I turned my attention to preparing for Pentecost. There are many things I love about Pentecost. I love the drama of the violent, rushing wind and tongues of fire, the confusion, the spontaneous preaching, the dreams and visions and the calling into the future of this newly formed Church. And that’s just in the Acts story! I also love the Holy Spirit as Advocate, as named in John, as the one who speaks up on our half, and the one who guides us into the way of truth. I love the creating Spirit of the Psalm. I love the Spirit at baptism, descending and claiming us as God’s own beloved. It’s all such good stuff!

         Well, I tried for this sermon to get excited about that dramatic stuff, I did – because today is exciting! Today we are welcoming more people into in-person worship, and (at the 11am service) having communion for the first time in the sanctuary in over a year. Furthermore, schools are opening, masks are coming off, life as we knew it is starting to return. Hope and newness are all around us, to be sure.

But what I am drawn to this year is not any of that exciting, dramatic stuff. I’m drawn instead to Romans, and one of my favorite lines in all of scripture: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.” This spoke to me because, even in the midst of all of the excitement, I, and I think many of us, find ourselves exhausted. In one of the New York Times’ most-read articles this spring, this feeling is identified as “languishing.” It’s not depression, but it’s also not flourishing. It’s just… languishing. Aimless, joyless, stagnant, and empty. Many of our wells have run dry. We’ve got nothin’ left to give.

         And this brings me to that image in Romans: of a Spirit who sees us in our weakness, in our languishing, and intercedes with sighs too deep for words; who enters our aimlessness and walks alongside us; who enters our dry wells and fills them up; who searches our hearts and offers the prayers on our behalf that we cannot muster ourselves, entering into our deep sighing, and carrying those prayers to a God who, in infinite wisdom, knows exactly what we need.

         This past week I had a session with my spiritual director. At first, she actually forgot to do the guided meditation at the beginning (that’s what we settled on – I can’t do full silence yet, but I can do several guided and focused moments of silence in a row). She asked me at the beginning of our time how I was doing, and my mind was a blank (a symptom of languishing, perhaps!). But then she remembered, lit a candle, and together we listened for the Spirit, interceding in our sighs and breaths. By the end of that time, that same Spirit had stirred in my heart several things I suddenly needed to talk about with my spiritual director. We had a fruitful conversation in which the Spirit continued to intercede, offering that telltale truth and wisdom.

         So today, I wanted to give you the same opportunity, a space to be still, breathe deeply, and let the Spirit intercede for you in your weakness or languishing, or even in your joy, a chance to listen and let the Spirit guide you into the way of truth. Since some of you may be new to this practice, as I am, we’ll ease into it. I’ve asked Jonathan to play some music to support your prayerful sighing, and I will offer some spoken guidance throughout. I encourage you to use this time not to talk to God, but to listen, to let the Spirit intercede and talk to and for you.

I know, this might be vulnerable, uncomfortable, or weird for you. I totally get that. But trust in the Spirit, the Comforter and Advocate, who will take good care of you. Get into a comfortable position, put your feet on the floor, make your back straight but not rigid, and close your eyes. And breathe deeply…

         Toward the One who is our life and our sustenance, the giver of wisdom and the hearer of our prayers… start music

         As you breathe deeply, notice your feet on the ground, the way they connect to the earth. Feel how steady the ground is. Feel that security…

Notice any tension or rigidity in your body – in your shoulders, back, jaw – and on your next sigh, send the healing breath to that tension and release it…

         As you sigh, feel the wind going in and out of your lungs. As you inhale, let it fill you from head to toe, bringing life… As you exhale, send your prayers with the Holy One, to the ears of God.

         The holy breath enters your heart, searching. What is found there?

         The sacred wind enters your mind, bringing peace and truth. Listen to what the Spirit is saying…

         As we offer these sighs, Holy Spirit, intercede for us. You know what we need. Lovingly carry our prayers to God….

         We sigh these prayers in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Sermon: Jesus' protective prayer (May 16, 2021)

 Full service can be viewed HERE.

Easter 7B

May 16, 2021

John 15:9-17

 

INTRODUCTION

         Today is the seventh and last Sunday in Easter, and always on the Thursday preceding this, we celebrate Ascension Day. Because it falls on a Thursday, we don’t often hear the story in Sunday worship, and we won’t today, but it is an important story – that’s why we confess it each week in the creed – so I’m going to tell you. Jesus’ ascension happened 40 days after the resurrection. For 40 days he reminded them about what he taught and spoke about the kingdom of God. On that 40^th day, he tells them to go to Jerusalem, because “not many days from now” they would be baptized by the Holy Spirit and fire, as John the Baptist had mentioned before. (That does happen, by the way, 10 days later, on Pentecost, which is what we celebrate next week.) He says that when the Spirit comes, they will receive power, and will be his witnesses “to the ends of the earth.” As he says this, Jesus is lifted up and a cloud takes him, and the disciples are left to figure out what the heck all of that meant!

         That’s where today’s reading from Acts will pick up. Their first order of business is to find a replacement for Judas, so that they can get to the business of being witnesses with their full force of 12. The Gospel will also mention Judas, as “the one destined to be lost so that that the scripture might be fulfilled.” So we kind of get a sense of the division and the good and evil at play in the world, even from the very beginning of Christianity.

         But the real point of the Gospel is not division, but unity. This text takes us back to Maundy Thursday again, as Jesus prays for his friends. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the disciples fall asleep when Jesus prays on Maundy Thursday, but here they – and so also we – get to overhear his prayer, and his primary prayer for us is a prayer of unity: “that they would be one.” The conflict and division we still live with makes it hard to imagine that… making this prayer all the more important. As you listen to it, truly hear it as Jesus’ prayer for you, and for us, in all of the various conflicted and divided relationships we experience in this world. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Moyers, Mike. Be Thou My Vision, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=57145 [retrieved May 16, 2021]. Original source: Mike Moyers, https://www.mikemoyersfineart.com/.

Grace to you and peace from our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

         One of my favorite things to do with people as a pastor, especially after we’ve had a meaningful and self-disclosing conversation, is to pray with them. It’s strange to say this, now almost 10 years into my ministry, because this most basic and essential task of ministry used to terrify me. I was not good at doing anything off the cuff, least of all praying, when I felt that my words should all be beautiful and well-crafted, lest I somehow mess it up. I could recite all manner of memorized prayers, or read pre-written ones, but I too often got in my own way to talk freely and openly with God in front of other people.

         Now, I realize God simply doesn’t care about prayers being “right” so much as God cares about them being genuinely offered. I’ve learned how to step aside and let the Spirit take over, and when we can do that, the prayer space becomes a truly holy place. It’s a space where right words don’t matter, so much as the connection we are experiencing, with each other and with God.

         In today’s Gospel reading, we get the chance to eavesdrop on such a moment between Jesus and his disciples, in which he prays for them in their presence. It’s this beautiful opportunity to hear how Jesus himself talks to his Father, and careful reflection can show us a thing or two about how we, too, might pray.

Now, I realize: this is not an easy passage to take in or digest, because Jesus seems to bounce around to a lot of different themes. It’s kind of a word soup – honestly, it’s sort of like my own prayers in that way! Reading it, it’s a bit hard to follow. But buried in his metaphysical reflections about his ministry and his relationship with the Father, he asks God for a few specific things – and he also does NOT ask for a few things – and here is where we can learn something about our own ways of praying.        

First, let’s look at what he does not ask for. “I am not asking you,” he says, “to take them out of the world.” In other words, Jesus does not pray that the struggles of the world will be made easy, or that we would somehow be immune to pain and suffering. Jesus acknowledges that the world is a tough place, saying, “the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world.” We strive to live godly lives, see, and were indeed called to such a life in our baptism, but the world makes this very hard to do. It presents us with unkindness, injustice, depression, loneliness, infidelity, oppression, dishonesty, illness, loss… We are no strangers to how difficult it is to live in this world. Every day we are faced with situations that make it hard to be the godly creatures we are created to be. Yet Jesus does not pray for God to take us out of this world. Facing these things – with the love of God and the power of the Holy Spirit – is a part of being a citizen of the earth, just as it was a part of Jesus’ life, when he lived on earth.

What Jesus does pray for, however, is protection. Not necessarily protection of the body, but protection of the Spirit of God that is in them, the truth that is in them. Protect them from the evil one, he prays, from that evil spirit that would draw them away from God’s love. Protect them so that they may be one, he says, so that they may find that same love, God’s love, in one another.

That’s the next interesting thing to notice about Jesus’ prayer for us: his reason for praying for our protection. “So that they may be one,” he says. How often our struggles tear us apart! We’ve all experienced it – maybe one huge catastrophe broke apart your family, or maybe it was too many little things that all built up and finally caused you to blow up at your best friend, shattering a life-long friendship. Or you received the diagnosis that you dreaded, and instead of turning toward God and toward your friends and family, you turned away from everyone, turned in on yourself, and tried to face your trials alone. It’s true, pain does have the potential to divide us. But it also has the potential to bring us together – and that is Jesus’ prayer for us. “Protect them so that they may be one,” he prays. Protect that Spirit that binds them together, so that they will know to whom they can turn in times of suffering and hatred. So that the church might not be torn apart in times of trial and fear, but instead be built up and strengthened.

Several years ago, I read a book called, Here If You Need Me. It is a memoir of Kate Braestrup, a woman who, in grieving her husband’s untimely death, goes to seminary and becomes a chaplain to the search-and-rescue workers of the State of Maine Warden Service. Her ministry is almost always to people suffering some tragedy – the parents of children who have wandered into the woods and disappeared, people whose loved one has fallen through the ice, those left behind after someone has gone into the woods to take their own life. In one chapter, she reflects on prayer. Her first act following her ordination was to pray for the game wardens and other police officers present. Chaplain Kate’s first inclination was to pray for their protection, though upon further reflection realized that if personal safety were a top priority of a police officer, than perhaps he or she should have chosen a different profession. Instead, she prays this lovely prayer: “May you be granted capable and amusing comrades, observant witnesses, and gentle homecomings. May you be granted respite from what you must know of human evil, and refuge from what you must know of human pain. May God defend the goodness of your hearts. May God defend the sweetness of your souls.”

I don’t think that is so unlike what Jesus prayed for his disciples that night, and what he still prays for us today. He prays for the protection of our hearts, of our souls. Chaplain Kate said she didn’t pray for protection for the police officers – but I think that’s exactly what she did. She prayed for the sort of protection that Jesus asks for us. We will see suffering, Jesus says in his prayer. We will experience suffering ourselves. We will see and experience pain. But in this, he goes on, protect their hearts. Keep them steadfast. Help them continue to live in God’s truth. “Holy Father,” he prays, “protect them… so that they may be one, as we are one.”

It’s not just about us, as individuals, you see. It’s about all of us. Protect them so that they may be one – one church, one people of God, one unified body of love. Protect them from division. Make them one. Protect them from destruction of each other and themselves. Make them one. Protect them from the evils that will make their way into their lives and try to draw them away from God. Make them one.

Jesus prayed this for his disciples on the night before his death, on what we now call Maundy Thursday. But that prayer continues. In the very next verse after our reading today ends, Jesus says that he prays this not only for those present that night, but for all who would come to believe through their words – that’s all of us! Jesus prays this prayer of protection and unity for all of us, and for all who are yet to come. And so, siblings in Christ, may this also be our prayer for each other: that we will find protection from all that separates us from God, that we will dwell in God’s word and God’s truth, and that we will all be one in Christ.

Let us pray… Holy Father, protect these, your children, so that they may be one. Guard them so that not one of them is lost. I’m not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one, from all that would pull them away from you. Come now, O Prince of Peace, make us one body. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Sermon: Loving our families (May 9, 2021)

 Full service HERE.

Easter 6B

May 9, 2021

John 15:9-17

 

INTRODUCTION

         As we near the end of the Easter season and move toward the season of Pentecost, we start to see a shift, as we begin thinking about what comes after this Easter joy. We’ll hear about the Holy Spirit today, and the role of that Spirit in equipping us to be followers of the risen Christ. And we’ll hear a whole lot today about love.

         Today’s Gospel reading directly follows what we heard last week. So to set the scene: we are back at Maundy Thursday, with Jesus and the disciples as he bids his friends farewell. He has washed their feet and given them “a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you,” which he will reiterate in today’s reading. And immediately before this chunk we’ll hear, Jesus has called himself the true vine, imploring these friends to abide in him as he abides in them. Today we will go deeper into that image – last week Jesus said that we will bear fruit when we abide in him, and today he will talk about what that fruit is. (Spoiler: it is love!)

         Jesus will use the word “friend” today. As you listen, think about what is needed to have such a close relationship with someone, and how love in those close relationships is expressed. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from our Risen Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

         Love, love, love. That’s what it’s all about. For God loves us we love each other: father, mother, sister, brother. Everybody sing and shout! ‘Cuz that’s what it’s all about. It’s about love, love love. It’s about love, love, love.

         Yup, that is what it’s all about, for Christians. For everyone, I hope, but especially for Christians, love is the beginning, middle and end of our faith.

         But I was thinking this week, Christians spend a lot of time talking about love of neighbor, love of the stranger, even love of people who might be difficult to love, who are “other” from us or disagree with us. And that’s all really important. But I have heard few sermons, and preached even fewer, about love of our those who are closest to us. Maybe it’s because we just assume those are the easy people to love – of course we love our families, right? Well, actually, that’s a ridiculous assumption to make. Just look at the divorce rate, which was already high and is only climbing higher after a year of people being cooped up together without their usual outlets and under increased stress. Look at the number of resources and professionals who deal with family conflict – solving it in the moment, or healing from it after, or dealing with the practical consequences. And even aside from the more extreme cases, who among us is never frustrated by their family members at times? In fact, it would seem we need to offer more, not less, faith-driven guidance for managing these closest, most intimate relationships in our lives!

         In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus calls the disciples his friends. For Jesus, this is about as intimate a relationship as it gets, aside from his relationship with his Father. He didn’t have a spouse or kids, so his friends were his family. So what can we glean from Jesus’ words here about how to love those who are our most intimate relationships – spouse, parent, child, or friend?

         Reading this snippet of Jesus’ farewell discourse, there are a few phrases that stick out to me: “abide in my love,” “your joy may be complete,” and of course, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” I’m going to start with that last one. Often, our love for our families can feel like “laying our lives down” for them, right? Parents who quit their jobs to be a stay-at-home parent, or who would throw themselves in front of any potential harm to their child. Adults who take their aging parents into their home to care for them, or take on managing all their affairs as their parents’ abilities decrease.

But what about the more mundane ways, the daily ways, we give up our lives for one another? I have been thinking about this lately in terms of the Five Love Languages.[1] Perhaps you are familiar with this concept, but in case you aren’t, here is the gist: there are at least five different ways that people give and receive love, and each of us gravitates toward one or maybe two. That is, we truly feel loved when we receive love in one of these five ways: quality time together, words of affirmation or encouragement, receiving gifts, physical touch, or acts of service. Now just as I can tell you all day long that I love you in Swahili, but it won’t mean anything to you unless you speak Swahili, so it is with love languages: even if you know I’m saying I love you, you won’t truly receive that love unless I give it to you in the language by which you best receive it. When we receive love in our language, our love tank fills up, and we are energized to love others. We are drawn closer together. When we don’t, our love tank runs empty, and it becomes very difficult to love anyone else. In fact, we may even become resentful that our own efforts to love are not received by our important people, and we find we don’t even want to try to love them anymore. What’s the point? It doesn’t work anyway! Everyone is on edge or ignores one another, the space between grows wider, and eventually, people seek to have their love needs filled elsewhere, whether from another person, or from a substance, or from more time at work… you get the idea.

So, what does this have to do with laying down our lives for one another? Well say, for example, that you and your spouse have different love languages – chances are good that you do. Maybe one person’s love language is something that is in fact very difficult or unnatural for the other person – like, a wife needs quality time, but her spouse works 70 hours a week at an important job, and comes home too exhausted to give any attention to anyone. The spouse buys the wife many gifts to make up for the lack of time together, but that is not how the wife receives love, and in fact it only frustrates her further because more things makes for more for more work for her. She needs quality time to know she is loved. In order truly to love the wife, the spouse needs to lay down the part of their life that prevents quality time from happening – perhaps getting a different job, or prioritizing time differently, maybe even in a way that doesn’t seem natural, in order to make sure that the wife is, indeed, receiving the love being offered. Conversely, the wife, who has been keeping house as her way of loving her spouse, may need to consider getting her spouse a gift instead (which is clearly the spouse’s preferred way of loving), even though she doesn’t want any more stuff around the house, because that is what will make her spouse feel loved – and who knows, it may even incentivize the spouse to prioritize that quality time! When our love tanks are full, we are compelled to love another, even in ways that are difficult.

The example I used was a couple, but this can easily be extended to any of our close relationships: we cannot only love one another in the ways that seem natural to us. We must be willing to lay down our own ways, our own egos, our own expectations, in order to love one another in the ways that will truly make our closest people experience our love, selflessly offered. This is Jesus’ commandment, that we lay down our lives and love one another.

This can be a joyful process – as Jesus says, we abide in love in order that “[our] joy may be complete.” The effort itself of loving those closest to us can soften our hearts, melt away the resentment, and help us to feel joy once again in what had become monotonous and discouraging. Real love, given and received, does make joy complete. But it can also be terribly difficult. It is sometimes a choice each day to love one another, to continually lay down our lives and our egos and our expectations, to choose to love our spouse, parent, or child, even though it is difficult for you to love in the way they need to be loved.

But I got news for you: you, my friends, are also difficult to love, and yet God has finds a way to love you. No matter what your love language is, God has got you covered:

Words of affirmation: God tells us repeatedly through scripture that we are beloved, that we were created good, that we are enough. You are worthy of love.

Physical touch: at our baptism, water was trickled on our brow and a cross traced on our forehead. Christ’s own body and blood are given to us and for us. God gave us these sacraments so that we might receive God’s physical touch.

Receiving gifts: God has given us grace upon grace! As Luther writes, “God has given me and still preserves my body and soul: eyes, ears, and all limbs and senses; reason and all mental faculties.” Every day is laden with gifts.

Quality time: at Christmas comes the gift of Emmanuel, “God-with-us,” all the time. When Jesus left the earth, the Holy Spirit came, to continue being God’s presence with us. God has prioritized being with us, in every breath.

And finally, acts of service: Of course, Jesus has done the ultimate act of service, literally laying down his life for us so that we would have life and have it abundantly. Jesus lives and dies and lives again in order to serve us.

You see, God has loved us in all the ways we need love. When we “abide in God’s love,” as Jesus says, our tanks are full – full enough to risk putting our own selves aside for the sake of loving those close to us, without expectations. Jesus’ love is not so much our role-model (for we cannot love as perfectly as he does), but rather, our source and strength to selflessly love in the way that is needed, even if it is hard for us. In this way, we live not for love, but from love. We abide in love, we drink our fill of Christ, finding our strength there, and then spill over to love and bless the world. This pattern is our beginning and our end.

         On this day when we think especially about those close family relationships, I pray that we will drink deeply of that source, so that we might love those closest to us with the best of what Christ’s own life-giving love has to offer, and so that we would, through our relationships experience Christ’s love concretely. May we abide in that love, never doubting it, and always, continuously, being filled by it.

         Let us pray… God, our Friend, you have given us family and friends with whom we can share the abundant, joyful, and life-giving love you shower upon us. Thank for the ways we can experience your love, as givers and receivers, in these important relationships. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

---

[1] I have since learned that many of our LGBTQ siblings have not seen themselves reflected in the 5 Love Languages. If this is the case also for you, or if you want a more expansive and LGBTQ-friendly resource, I suggest looking into Speaking from the Heart: 18 Languages for Modern Love.

Sermon: Staying connected to our source of life (May 2, 2021)

 Full service can be viewed HERE. Today was the first day with actual people there (who were not helping lead), including our four choir section leaders. What joy!

Easter 5B

May 2, 2021 (first day of post-Covid in-person worship)

John 15:1-8

 

INTRODUCTION

         Today’s readings are like, a medley of our greatest hits. First, we get the wonderful story of the Ethiopian eunuch – in which a man who is as culturally and sexually other as he can possibly be is reading and trying to understand scripture, and Philip takes the opportunity to help him understand. The man is so moved that when he sees water, he excitedly suggests he could be baptized. Tradition says that he went on to evangelize Ethiopia. Great story.

Psalm 22 we know better from hearing it during Holy Week – it begins with Jesus’ cry from the cross. But lament Psalms always end with praise, and that praise part is what we will hear today.

Nearly every line of our reading from 1^st John could be embroidered on a pillow. Both this letter by John and John’s Gospel were likely written by the same person or people, and both were written for a particular community of believers, mostly former Jews who had been expelled from the synagogue for their belief in Jesus as the Messiah. This community was feeling a real sense of being cut off from their former religious community, even as they were trying to live into this new, Christian community, one based on the abiding love that God has for us and we for one another.

         With that in mind, the image of a vine that Jesus uses in the Gospel reading takes on yet more meaning: that although they felt cut off like branches from a tree, they would never truly be cut off as long as they were still attached to Jesus the vine. And keep in mind, these words are offered to the disciples on the night Jesus was betrayed, as a part of his farewell discourse – when they are no doubt feeling fearful about losing him and feeling even more distant and cut off! This strikes me a pretty relevant image for us, today. So as you listen, hear these words from all these texts as ones spoken to whatever ache, longing, or fear you have this day. Let’s listen.

[READ]

Grace to you and peace from our Risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

         In my exploration of today’s Gospel passage, I learned something interesting about vines: a vine’s fruitfulness today is a reflection not only of this past year’s conditions, but of the trauma that the vine may have endured also in previous years. A trauma for a vine could be, well, all that you would expect: an abundance or lack of sun, nutrition, or water. It could also be a time of over-fruitfulness, bearing more than it could really handle and thus depleting its resources. All of this is reflected in future fruitfulness (or not) of the vine. In order to thrive, a vine needs time to heal from its past trauma.

         Hm, sounds like some other organisms I know! Our human experiences and circumstances over the course of our lives have formed the way we engage and respond to the world. And in fact, that even goes beyond our own experience. There is research that shows that even trauma from a couple generations past can be passed down epigenetically – that is, the DNA itself doesn’t change with trauma, but the material around the gene is affected. These epigenetic markers can then be passed down and affect things like stress reactivity, metabolic processes (so, weight gain), and connections between cognition and emotion. For example, there is evidence that descendants of Holocaust survivors experience patterns of stress hormones based on their ancestors’ experiences rather than their own circumstances.

Turns out we are very much like vines in this way! We are not just dropped into this week, immune from the effects of what happened to us or our loved ones last week, last year, or even last century. Like, vines, we also need time to heal from trauma we have experienced. And friends, I know this is no surprise to you, but we have all been through, and are still going through, a trauma: the sudden loss last March of things important to us, a near constant state of fear, anxiety and unknowing, loneliness and despair… and consequently a dramatic increase in mental health concerns (something I’m especially aware of this week, as May is Mental Health Awareness Month!).

We ignore this fact at our own peril. Though we are starting to come out on the other side of this, cautiously re-opening church sanctuaries, hosting small indoor gatherings with vaccinated friends, sending kids back to school in person – the trauma of the past year will not suddenly disappear because more and more people are vaccinated. Just like a vine whose fruitfulness in any given year is based on the trauma of previous years, we will be working through this experience for many years to come. We will be working on it as individuals, as local and global communities, and as a church. The drought of personal contact, the over-fruitfulness of parents trying to juggle homeschool and a full-time job working at home, the hunger for meaningful connection, the clouds and sunlessness of grief… all of that will affect our future fruitfulness. Some things will need to be pruned in order to bring health and thriving. Some things will need some particular TLC. And all of us will need to have immense grace for one another and for this process as we seek collective and individual healing.

         I know, this sermon so far is kind of a downer, especially for such an exciting day as our first time worshiping with people in the building since last March! I know we just want to get to the good part again, but I think it’s important to name that overcoming trauma is kind of exhausting – there were times this year that I was just holding on by my fingernails, hoping to make it to the end, and now, when we’re ready to put it behind us, I’m saying, “Just wait, don’t break out the balloons and confetti yet – we have barely even begun healing from this!” Again, kind of a downer.

But actually, today’s Gospel speaks the perfect word of grace to us in this moment. First, Jesus says, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower.” If there is anyone who can bring healing to this vine that is Christ’s body, it is our loving Father. We are in good hands, my friends! But then, it gets even better. Jesus says, “Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.”

         Do you hear what he is saying there? First of all, that we are not in this alone. We are not solely responsible for our own healing from this trauma. Do we have to do some personal work? Yes. Trauma cannot be overcome without taking a look at our hearts, finding and facing the pain, and growing from it. But we do not have to do that in isolation. We do it with Christ, abiding in Christ. In John’s Gospel, that word, abide is extremely important. To abide is what it means to have faith. It is being in a close relationship with Jesus, resting and finding your home in him, and letting him have a home also in you. What a beautiful message for us, as we prepare to overcome the trauma of this trial.

         Second, there is great hope in this passage. Jesus does not say, “You can’t bear fruit.” No, he says that the branch can bear fruit when it abides with the vine. In other words, when we stay connected to Christ, the true vine, we will receive the nourishment we need. It’s so easy, isn’t it, when we are struggling, just to turn in on ourselves, to cut ourselves off from sources that previously brought us life because in our grief, it is easier to find an escape – through having another drink, or buying a new outfit, or escaping physically or emotionally from our commitments and responsibilities. Such behavior may offer quick relief, but not lasting life. That can only come from staying connected to the vine. Flowers wither and fade, never to return when they are disconnected from the vine, but when we remain connected to the Source of Life, we are able to let flowers and fruit come and go each year, and still thrive. We can endure the vine-grower’s necessary pruning, the removal of those things that cramp our ability to thrive, and come out healthier for it.

         And that is, finally, what happens here: as traumatic and difficult as our past may have been (both our collective experience in this past year, and the many different traumas we are all dealing with personally), with Christ there is always new life possible. When we abide in him, and he in us, we will still have to deal with the trauma of the past, but, connected to the true vine, we can be assured that we will not wither. We will once again find life.

         Let us pray… Christ our true vine, we carry with us the marks of trauma. Let us not be cut off from you, our source of life, so that we may heal and once again bear the fruit that glorifies the Father. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.