Sermon: The wind blows where and how it chooses (Mar. 12, 2017)

Lent 2A

March 12, 2017

John 3:1-17

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

            This past Wednesday at noon, a small group of us met to talk about the 10 commandments, while the wind was just starting to pick up outside. I commented that I like storms like this, just as long as I can stay inside where it is safe. Famous last words! The storm was just beginning. Shortly thereafter, the power went out at St. Martin. I drove to Bethlehem, where I came across a recently downed power line, strewn across Plank Rd. The power went out at Bethlehem shortly after I arrived. I drove home, clinging to my steering wheel, and encountered powerless stoplights, and debris everywhere. A huge tree in my neighborhood had toppled. We later learned, of course, that winds had reached 81 MPH, causing hundreds of trees and poles to fall, 12-foot waves on Lake Ontario, widespread power outages, and even a freight train to derail. Schools closed and a state of emergency was declared.

Local home

            “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it but do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” This week’s windstorm certainly made me hear these enigmatic words from Jesus differently! How naïve I was to say I like storms like this as long as I am where it is safe, then only hours later drive through what looked like a war zone. Looking later at pictures of trees with roots in the air, a train off its tracks, and crushed houses, I couldn’t help but think that while the breath of God can bring comfort, safety and delight to those who live in the darkness of night, it can also wreak plenty of havoc.

            “So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Is this how the Spirit moves also in us, then? Not only in our physical world, moving with the power to topple trees and rip apart roofs – but also in our hearts, moving with the power to topple old ways of being and rip apart wrongly-held ideas?

            I like thinking of the Holy Spirit as Comforter and Protector, and she certainly is that when that is what is needed. But we mustn’t overlook what Jesus tells Nicodemus at their nighttime meeting: that the Spirit blows where and how it chooses, without our knowing what exactly is going on.

            Jesus offers this strange observation right after explaining to Nicodemus the need to be born again, or born from above, or born of water and the Spirit. So, it follows that these two concepts must be related. Very strictly speaking, when we hear “born of water and the Spirit,” we think of what? Baptism! Well, unless you’re Nicodemus, in which case you think it means crawling back into your mother’s womb. But most if not all of us, 2000 years later, assume he means baptism. And in fact there is a “born again” segment of Christianity that takes that interpretation very seriously, believing that until you have had an experience in which you deeply and profoundly experience Christ and are then baptized, you are not a true Christian.

Lutherans, on the other hand, more frequently (though not exclusively) baptize babies and children. We do this because we believe that faith is a gift graciously given at baptism that we then spend the rest of our lives living and growing into. We do not see baptism as something that needs to be done again – once you are baptized, you are baptized for life.

So how, then, do we understand Jesus’ statement that we are to be born again?

I have, on occasion, been asked if I am “born again.” The best Lutheran answer to this question is, “Yes, I’m born again and again and again, new each day!” That’s what Luther explains in the Small Catechism: he says that each day, the sinful person inside us is drowned in the waters of baptism, “and on the other hand that daily a new person is to come forth and rise up to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” Every day, he says, we should remember our baptism and the gifts it brings. Every day, we are reborn. Every day we are born into new life.

Or we might say, every day, we are born of the Spirit, which also means that we are daily invited to discern where and how the Spirit might be calling us into the new life Jesus promises – and take a good hard look at how that Holy Wind is shaking up our world, the way we see it, and the way we are to be in it.

It’s such a nice, faithful thing to say: “Where is the Spirit calling you?” Until you look around Rochester after an epic wind storm and see what sort of damage a strong wind can really do in your life. Because I think sometimes the Holy Spirit does do a bit of damage in her effort to show us the way, tearing down the ways we view our world that may be narrow-minded, or self-serving, or that look down on some people, or that simply neglect the people who most need help. Sometimes the Holy Wind whips through our hearts and our lives, and when we wake up in the morning we look around and suddenly see the world differently. Sometimes that little bit of damage, which may be devastating in the moment, was actually just what we needed to refocus our attention.

Whatever mysterious ways the Spirit works, our job is to listen, to watch, and to respond. That is the work of an effort currently underway in the larger church to engage in transformational ministry. Transformational ministry helps us learn to listen – to God, to each other, and to the needs of the world – and, having heard what each is telling us, to discern how God might be motivating us to respond. Back in December, there was a workshop with some exercises to help individuals and congregations engage in this special kind of listening and responding – there will be another one in May that I hope you will consider attending! We had a group of folks from each church attend, and they came back energized and interested. We met last week to discuss how we might start that important listening process, and we had this idea: to use the image of a tree growing and sprouting leaves to help people express where the Spirit’s wind is blowing in their lives. Lent is the perfect time to do this, because the word “Lent” actually means “spring” – the time of new growth and new life. And transformational ministry is also focused on bringing new growth and new life to a congregation.

So here’s how the tree will work: we have a tree set up, branches bare just like the trees we see out our window. Then you can pick up two different colors of leaves – light and dark green. On the light ones, we want you to write ways that you are already serving your community outside of this congregation. This will show how you are already participating in bringing life to this world, where your heart already lies, where you are already devoted. For the darker green leaves, you are invited to think about what issues you are really passionate about, whether or not you are already involved in them. Maybe you have discerned the Spirit moving through your heart and making you more aware of the challenges facing refugees, or perhaps your concern is the low graduation rate in city schools. Maybe it is people with disabilities, or veterans, or mental illness. In the wake of a rise in anti-Semitism, including recent desecration of a Jewish cemetery and a bomb threat to the Jewish Community Center here in Rochester, maybe your concern is suddenly in interfaith relations. That’s the thing about the Spirit’s blowing, you see – we don’t know where it comes from or where it goes, and we don’t know what new concerns or passions it might bring up, depending on what is going on in the world around us.

Take some time if you need it, to discern what concerns the Spirit is revealing to you in this time and place, as she blows through your heart, knocking things over and showing things anew. The tree will be up throughout Lent, this time we look forward to and anticipate celebrating how God gave his only Son so that all who believed in him would not perish but have eternal life. In the season of Easter, as we dwell in thanksgiving in the new life we have in Christ, we will look at some of the ways the Spirit has moved in you, and consider together how that same Spirit is moving us to be the Church for the community and the world right now.

The Spirit blows as it choses, and we don’t know where or how, but still, let us listen, so that we would know what God is telling us today. Let us listen, so that even damage done might be opportunity for a new perspective. Let us listen, so that we might be transformed.

Let us pray… Holy and unpredictable God, you blow through our lives in ways we wouldn’t have chosen, but which are, indeed, holy. Give us courage to listen to your urgings, to take what you have given us and turn it into an opportunity to share your love with the world your Son came to save. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

18 months of Grace

March 6, 2017

Dear Big Girl Grace,

As of yesterday, you are… 18 months old! Your dad and I decided that once you turn 18 months, you are really no longer a baby, but a big toddler. You’re a big girl, my Grace!

The bigger you get, the more wonderful. It is so exciting to watch you learn new words, new

ways to play, new skills. You are more and more like a little person, who loves and engages and responds.

At 18 months old, you are a very good big sister – as we knew you would be! The first time you met your brother Isaac, you looked at him curiously, then walked right over and gave him a kiss on the cheek. It is one of our favorite moments ever! Since then, you have continued always to be ready to give Isaac a kiss or a friendly pat. You like to help burp him, and look very satisfied with yourself when you do. You rock his cradle for him, and cover him with a blanket. Sometimes, if a bottle or pacifier is around, you try to feed him or give him a binky to calm him down. You are a very good, very helpful big sister, and we are so eager to see how your relationship with your little brother will grow and change and deepen as you get older.

Grace meets Isaac

You are a very busy little girl. You are always on the move, either walking or running around the house, or rearranging your toys, or pulling all the books off the shelf in order to find the one you want, or reading one of those books aloud. You love going for walks with me, and can even walk the .3 miles to daycare all on your own (you’ve even done the round

 trip with no trouble!). You have several toys that are your favorites, including Pinky (your bear), your Dolly, Bebe, Monkey, your toy food, and then of course an assortment of toys that are not really toys, like the recycling bin and the laundry basket and diaper covers (clean or dirty, it matters not). Especially since Isaac entered the picture, you have become very mothering to your various “babies,” feeding them and patting them and putting them to bed (often in Isaac’s car seat or cradle). It warms my heart beyond description when you hold you doll and sway and sing to her, just like I have done for you so many times and like you see me do with Isaac. It tells me that these moments are as important to you as they are to me. I’m so glad!

Trying to catch a picture
of an 18mo girl on the move!

You love to sing, which delights your dad and me so much. Lately your favorite songs are the ABCs/Twinkle Twinkle (you can sing this whole tune by yourself!), If You’re Happy and You Know It (such a big grin on your face when you get to clap and stomp!), and Old McDonald (you jump in on the E-I-E-I-O part at the right place and on the right pitch!). You also sing a variety of your own compositions, always quite earnestly, with a very serious look on your face. You take your music-making seriously. Of course you also have an assortment of hand percussion and a little recorder that you like to play as well. Just tonight, you and I had a little jam session on a tin-turned-drum right before bed. You are definitely going to be a musician of some sort!

Mama's shoes are shiny!

You are a very smart little girl. You seem to understand most of what we say, and respond well to commands. Today you had a runny nose and you took the tissue out of the box, touched it to your nose, and when I asked you to throw it away you said, “Yeah,” and walked it through the living room, into the kitchen, and opened the garbage (that is taller than you are) and put it in. Smart girl! You can say a few words very clearly, and several more we have figured out, including: yeah, uh-oh, Dada, bottle, baby, down (which also means up), shoes, cheese, banana (“nana”), hot, hat, ball, door, thank you (“dee-doo” or sometimes, “do-dee”), dog, and you can whine like Klaus (and do, any time you hear a dog bark). And “Ba-ba” seems to be a general, “I want that.” You do pretty well with that limited vocabulary!

You love to wear your coat and sometimes ask for it inside, and you also love your hat. (“Hat? Hat??” Then you lean over for us to put it on.) But your very favorite thing is your shoes. We let you choose your shoes each day, and sometimes after they are on, you bring us a second pair to put on, too. You desperately want to put them on yourself, and regularly practice this skill, both on yourself and on your doll. You have recently discovered our shoes, which are much easier to get on. This week, you found one of your dad’s “slides,” walked around in it, then went over to his shoes, searched for the match, found it, and put that on as well. You were so pleased with

yourself! We were pretty pleased with you, too.

Of course, you are a toddler, and so you have your share of melt downs, as you try to figure out emotions and how to express them with your limited language skills. We are doing our best to help you with this. But all in all, we can’t complain. You are a great eater, an amazing sleeper (so is Isaac – you are now sharing your room with him!), and you are charming and delightful almost all of the time. Strangers regularly tell us how charming you are. Just today the nurse told you that you had made her day. We think you are pretty darn special, my sweet Grace!

                                                                                       Much love, my sweet,

                                                                                                Mama

Sermon: Temptation and the first commandment

Lent 1A – Temptation and the first commandment

March 5, 2017

Genesis 2:15-17, 3:1-7

Matthew 4:1-11

            I recently took an online quiz to see what kind of millennial I am. (I’m an “engaged idealist,” if you wondered…) One of the questions showed a picture of a very cool looking guy in front of a hot car, and asked if I thought what car you drive is a way to project to the world what kind of person you are. I scoffed and quickly marked no. The quiz gave me a chance to explain my answer, and as I did, I discovered that my quick, judgey answer wasn’t exactly true. While I’d like to think I choose my vehicles not for the image they project, but rather, for their environmental friendliness and how well it suits my lifestyle and needs, I also recognize that that is a sort of image I want to project: I want to be “the kind of person who would drive a Prius.” That is, I want people to see what I drive, and be able to discern my values based on that impression. I now drive a Subaru Outback, and I like that it says, “I’ve got a family whose safety I care about, and an interest in loading up the car and going places!” (even though I don’t like that also says, “And I only get half as many miles to a gallon as someone in Prius…”).

The point is this: we sometimes do wrap our identity up in the things we own, the clothes we wear, the job we have, or the activities we participate in.

Now that, in itself, is not a bad thing. I recently visited my best friend in Cleveland and met one of her local friends. They became friends originally because they discovered that not only do they have kids of similar age, they also both have a strangely deep passion for guinea pigs. In fact, her friend had a picture of her guinea pig tattooed on her chest! I remember my friend told me about that tattoo, and said, “I knew we would be great friends!” That’s how we make friends, right? We find people with similar interests and values. That is not a bad thing.

When it becomes a bad thing is when we are tempted, first, to find our primary identity there, and second, when we are tempted to make those interests, people, items, even values into our primary source of comfort, providence, and refuge – that is, when we make them into a sort of god, or idol.

Let’s look at that second temptation first, the one about finding comfort and refuge in our people, interests, and things. I think this is exactly what is at play in two of our scripture readings today. First, we have this famous story about Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve are happy in the garden. It is just them, and God, and God’s beautiful creation. Until the serpent comes along and convinces them that they are unsatisfied, that they need more in life, that indeed it is possible for them to have so much more that they would actually be like God. And here we have the first temptation: the temptation to make our own gods, even, to make ourselves and our opinions and our desires into our god, placing it higher in importance than other people and ideas, even, maybe, higher than God.

I suppose that’s why God made the first commandment a counter to this, original sin: I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me. Like so many of the commandments, I think at first that I’m fine on this one – I am a Christian, and I don’t worship any other god. But then you start exploring what constitutes as a “god,” and things get a little more complicated. Luther describes this in his Large Catechism: “A ‘god,’” he says, “is the term for that to which we are to look for all good and in which we are to find refuge in all need. Therefore, to have a god is nothing else than to trust and believe in that one with your whole heart… Anything on which your heart relies and depends, I say, that is really your God.”

Suddenly, with this broader definition of god, we are in trouble. For we look all kinds of places to find those things – comfort, goodness, trust. I mean, I think God is certainly in the mix for all of us, but not the only source. We depend on world leaders to promise us safety and security, we lean on our spouse for comfort, we look to children to bring meaning to life, we rely on our possessions and our jobs to provide identity and projection of that identity to the world. Can God work through all of those things? Sure, of course. But also sometimes God does not work through those things, and we still look to them as if they can provide us with what only God can provide.

            “Anything on which your heart relies and depends,” Luther says, “that is really your God.” And this is what Jesus shows us today in our Gospel lesson, totally countering what we see from Adam and Eve and in our own lives. Jesus has just fasted for forty days and nights and is, Matthew tells us, famished. In his weakened state, the devil thinks he will surely be easy to persuade, and so he gives it a try, playing to all of Jesus’ weakest points and greatest needs. First, he

goes for the low-hanging fruit: Jesus’ hunger, the most pressing, physical need that Jesus has in that moment. Then he takes aim at Jesus’ ego, inviting him to show off a little. Finally he goes for that oh-so-familiar human taste for power. Any one of us would gladly have given in (perhaps, we have given in, in our own ways, at some point in our lives!), but not Jesus. In each case, Jesus points not to himself and his abilities, not to his high moral and ethical standards, not to anyone or anything around him – no, he points again and again to God.  “Anything on which your heart relies and depends,” Luther says, “that is really your God.” And Jesus shows us this in spades, as he again and again turns and clings to the power of God.

            “I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods before me.” The first commandment. And it is first for a reason: because all the rest of the commandments show us what it looks like when God is, in fact, that on which your heart relies and depends, over all else. In other words, all the rest of the commandments are an expression of having a core identity based not on external things, but on the fact that you are a child of God. How tempting, and how initially easy, it is to base our identity on the things of this world – possessions, jobs, friends, where you live, what you drive, the size of your bank account, your affinity for animals or the outdoors, even family. But all of these things, in the end, are passing. They are ephemeral. They are not, finally, who you are.

            Someone told me this week that her company had been hacked, and all the W-2s of the employees had been stolen. She said, with sadness, “So, my identity was stolen.” But then smiled slightly and added, “But, my identity in Christ was untouched.”

            And that’s really it, isn’t it? Who you are is not defined by the world, and it cannot be stolen or changed by the world – no matter what temptations you might face, or even, what temptations you might give into. Who you are is defined by whose you are: you are a baptized and beloved child of God. That is not ephemeral. It doesn’t come and go with the times or the stock market or whoever occupies the Oval Office or what car or outfit or gadget is hip right now. It cannot be stolen by hackers, or by bullies, or by cheating partners or misbehaving kids, or by devastating illness. Our God, and God’s promise to us that we are beloved children, stands – no matter what.

            Let us pray… God, you are our one and only God. Help us look to you for all good; when we are in need, help us to find refuge in you; help us to trust and believe in you with our whole hearts, to rely and depend on you whatever temptations may come our way. And may we always know that our identity is and always will be that we are yours. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Ash Wednesday Sermon: Gunk and honesty

Ash Wednesday (BLC)

March 1, 2017

Psalm 51, Joel Joel 2:1-2, 12-17

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

            If you have ever taken care of a baby, you know that one of the tricky things no one ever tells you about is how to clean in all of their adorable little baby rolls. You know, the ones that result from all that baby fat, especially on their chubby little thighs and around their neck. Isaac is a pretty lean baby everywhere except his ample cheeks, but the one baby roll he definitely has is right under his chin. He also happens to be a pretty messy eater, dripping milk all down his chin. The result, I realized one day, was that milk gets trapped in that roll of fat, and because it is such a tender area, and he is so resistant to raising his chin (unless sister Grace is doing something interesting behind him!), it is really difficult to get it clean.

            Turns out, this isn’t just an Isaac problem. I found a whole baby forum topic addressing this issue! Milk and dirt get stuck in baby rolls, and it causes irritation, and eventually, I suppose disease. The problem is that you can’t even see it happening because it is hidden behind all of that adorable baby fat, until one day, the baby does raise his chin and you see the damage that has been done by that little bit of grime hidden in tender skin.

            I know, you must be wondering: why would I begin my sermon with such a gross description of baby hygiene? The short, snarky answer is this: because today we talk about sin, and sin is gross.

            It’s gross, that is, until it can be cleaned away.

            And that, really, is what Ash Wednesday, and the ensuing season of Lent, are all about. It’s about noticing the sin in our lives, the way those little sins (or maybe big sins) get stuck deep in the tenderness of our hearts where we cannot see them and may even forget about them, and over time they start to irritate our souls. The longer they remain, the more irritation they cause. Eventually, if never tended to, they cause disease. The only way to find healing from the grimy sin that gets stuck in the hidden places of our hearts is to wipe it clean.

            And this is what brings us here today. Today we begin a 40-day Lenten journey, a journey on which we take intentional time for self-reflection, trying to find those hidden places where grime has built up and has started to cause irritation in our hearts, where that irritation has even affected our external lives: our relationships, our faith, our way of seeing and being in the world. Tonight, and

throughout this season of Lent, we each ask God to “wash me through and through… cleanse me from my sin… create in me a clean heart and renew a right spirit within me.”

            Such an action, such a journey, requires a tremendous amount of honesty, doesn’t it? Honesty with yourself, honesty with God, and eventually, perhaps, honesty with another person. I read a beautiful reflection this week by someone who converted to Christianity after attending an Ash Wednesday service. She was, going in, pretty skeptical of Christians and Christianity, assuming it was a religion full of bigotry and science-deniers. But, she went, and she reflected, “I realized something: this was a place where people told the truth. The liturgy made them do it. They told the truth about themselves – that they were mortal, that they were sinners, that they were scared. I had been a lot of places in my twenty-some years of life. I had never been anywhere quite as truthful as that Ash Wednesday liturgy.”

            But, further on in the reflection, she also observed that, while the liturgy makes us tell the truth, we aren’t so good at it on our own. And that really resonated with me, too. Perhaps that is why I love the liturgy so much – it forces me to tell the truth, and gives me words to articulate what I need to acknowledge. It forces me to recognize that, try as I might to be the person God wants me to be, I still fall short. I still need to return to the Lord our God, and repeatedly confess my sins: things done and things left undone.

            Martin Luther knew this. You might say, he was obsessed with his own sin. In fact, it was his obsession with his sin that led him, finally, to recognize the incredible gift of grace, to make the revelations about grace and forgiveness that led to the Reformation 500 years ago. Still, even with the knowledge of grace, or perhaps because of it, confession remained deeply important to him. He even came close to calling it the third sacrament. That’s why he included it in his Small Catechism that we will be studying during Lent. Luther suggests that the best way to go about reflecting on and confessing our sins is to use the 10 Commandments. His explanations of this staple of a faithful life are so helpful, because they not only say what we should not do, but what we should instead – and I personally find it is not so much the “things done” that gets me as it is the “things left undone.”

            It is, I will tell you, a very convicting way of looking into those hidden, gunk-filled parts of our lives. It would be useful to choose a different commandment each day as your tool for reflection, even, as a tool to hold you accountable to be as truthful outside of the liturgy as we are within it.

            Because truth is another thing that seems hard to come by these days, isn’t it? We live in a “post-truth” era, they say, in which no one knows what news to believe, what facts are real, who can be trusted and who cannot. I found it terribly ironic that it was in this time in America that we also witnessed the biggest blunder ever to hit the Oscars: at the biggest moment of the night, when the winner of best picture was announced, they said the wrong movie! Can we not

Jordan Horowitz tells the truth

even believe the Oscars anymore?? Yet out of the confusion, La La Land producer Jordan Horowitz, who had just given an acceptance speech for an award he didn’t win, spoke a refreshing word of truth, announcing to the crowd who the true winner was, and inviting his colleagues from Moonlight onstage. A Washington Post article on the blunder said, “What [Horowitz] did wasn’t exactly revolutionary. He told the truth even though it was difficult and awkward and embarrassing, because he had just stood in front of the world and thanked his friends and family for an award that wasn’t his.” The article goes on to observe, “When the truth is inconvenient, a lot of people spin it or bend it to their will.”

            Aren’t we also guilty of this in our own confession of sins? Perhaps we search in those hidden spots and find something, but then think, “No, that wasn’t a sin, because she deserved it,” or, “I was just saying what needed to be said,” or, “I know Jesus said that, but surely he didn’t mean it literally,” or, “I thought maybe I should do something to help, but it didn’t seem safe, so I took care of myself, and ignored the problem.” So many excuses, so many ways to bend the truth so we don’t feel so bad about ourselves, so many ways to spin our sins into something that looks noble and good. And yet, Jordan Horowitz stood up on that stage and said, “Moonlight is the winner, not us!” This is incredibly embarrassing, and no, the mistake wasn’t his fault, but rather than spinning it to save face, or leaving it for someone else to deal with, or trying to stay up on the pedestal just a moment longer, he willingly told the truth. And especially in a world in which the truth no longer seems as important as making ourselves and those who agree with us look good, his truth-telling was remarkable.

            On this Ash Wednesday, brothers and sisters, and throughout Lent, let us strive to be truthful: to acknowledge the ways we have actively hurt others, as well as the ways we neglected to help; to recognize the ways we have put our own safety and concerns above those of our neighbor in need; to name the ways we lament that this world is not as God would have it, but then don’t do anything about it; to confess that we have not always been the servants Christ freed us to be when he died on a cross and rose again to save us from the bondage of sin.

            For when we honestly confess, when we finally lift our chins toward God in prayer, God can wipe clean that gunk that was hidden deep inside, that irritates our tender hearts and causes disease in our lives. We know that God can and does do this – he sent us his Son Jesus Christ to teach us, to heal us, and finally, to die for us and rise again to prove that with God, sin and death don’t have the final word.

            As we continue together through this season of Lent, let’s not keep our heads bent down, looking at our belly buttons, but rather, let us continually raise our chins in prayer, and ask God to clean away that gunk, so that, as we live in the forthcoming promise of Easter joy, we might also be prepared to love and serve God in newness of life.

            In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.