Fourth Sunday in Lent Yr A March 19 2023

Marketplace in Jerusalem

Fourth Sunday in Lent Yr A March 19 2023

1 Samuel 16:1-13, Ephesians 5:8-14, John 9:1-41, Psalm 23

 

Imagine yourself as one of the disciples, walking down the street and into the marketplace with Jesus. It’s a noisy, hot and busy place, everyone gathers, does business, sits in the shade drinking the original chai, that is tea, black and strong. Actually, that’s everyone with status and power. But the marketplace is also the place where the poor, the crippled, the blind, go to beg. 

 

Jesus sees a blind man, and stops. Rather than giving thanks for the wonder of the day, the first thing out of the mouth of the disciple who asked is, Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? And Jesus’ answer is that this man’s blindness is not due to his parents’ sin or his own sin. In fact, to Jesus, this is not about sin at all. Many people of Jesus’ time thought that a physical ailment was because of your own sin or the sin of your parent’s. But for Jesus it’s not about sin at all; it’s about something else entirely. 

 

Jesus heals this blind man. So here is a man who has just had his sight restored, truly a miracle, and all the disciples can talk about is whether this man is the man who used to sit and beg. They really can’t quite place him, even after he says who he is, even after all the years they’ve probably walked by him in the marketplace. They want to take him to his parents’ house so that his parents can identify him, and then his parents don’t seem to be overjoyed at the miracle either, they don’t want much to do with their son, to do so risks being thrown out of their synagogue. 

 

Eventually the conversation turns to who the man is who healed the blind man, and the formerly blind man says, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes.” It is an astonishing thing that they don’t know who Jesus is; and, that Jesus healed this man who they all know was blind. They just don’t believe him. 

 

I think this is a story about who is really blind; it is a story about seeing and not seeing. Jesus saw a man blind from birth. The disciples looked right through the blind man, they had seen him sitting in the same place for years, but had never really seen him. When Jesus healed the blind man, the blind man saw Jesus for who he really is, the One who is from God. The Pharisees could neither see the blind man, nor could they see that the one who healed the blind man is the One who is from God. The blind man is the one who sees, the disciples and the Pharisees are the ones who are blind.

 

What is it that we are not seeing? What is it that makes us blind? All of us are born blind in one way or another. Some of us have blindness of body: a crippling disease, cancer, diabetes, or bad bones. Some of us have blindness of heart, and that is a terrible blindness. The blind of heart can’t love another beyond a superficial level and usually can’t even love themselves. The blind of heart often live lives corroded with addictions to material things, possessions, and work, to cover up the empty hole. And worst of all is blindness of the soul, which wraps all the rest of life in gloomy darkness.

 

We have our screens in front of our faces much of the time. Our phones, our tablets, our laptops. Are we blind to the people in our lives? Do we ever say to ourselves, “I just can’t see my way through this.”

 

Or maybe we are blind to our own self-indulgence. The messages we constantly get are messages of possession and consumption. Competition for our dollars spurs services to charge millions of dollars for seconds of advertising time, advertising that forms us into people who believe that the aim of our life is to acquire more, to have bigger, better, newer.

 

Or maybe we are blind to our own pessimism. This culture of fear we live in has a tendency to take our hope away. Sometimes it is difficult to see who we really are, people who are claimed and marked by God, delight of God’s life. Perhaps we are blind to the pain of a neighbor’s sorrow, or the loneliness of a child, or the needs of a spouse. Perhaps we are blind to the other who is different, whose life seems so foreign to our own, that we just don’t understand. Sometimes we are so wrapped up in making a living, pursuing the good life, or running from our fears that we just don’t see. 

 

Jesus notices our blindness. Jesus sees. Jesus invites us to see. Jesus invites us to see with our very blind eyes, with our wounds and brokenness. Jesus uses our weaknesses as grace. Today we have this gift of seeing each other in really new ways. Seeing both need and generosity.

 

I wonder if we are being called to be healed of our own blindness, As we prepare for celebrating the life, death and resurrection of Jesus in the bread broken for us, as we celebrate that through Jesus we come to see others, all creation, and ourselves as wonderful gifts and people who belong to God. This is the Good News that shines brightly through our blindness. The Good News that we are God’s beloved, our identity rests in Jesus. Jesus has offered us a new view of life, death and resurrection. We have been called and claimed, but not because of distinctions, achievements, family lineage, or personal attractiveness, not because God sees us as any more beautiful or deserving as anyone else. God’s love is blind to such plastic categories. 

 

We have been called and claimed despite our tendency to blindness. We have been called and claimed even though we trip over those we cannot see. We have been called and claimed despite looking directly at someone, and not seeing who they are, their pain and suffering, or their joy. 

 

But, in this new view of life, we recognize that life, death and resurrection mean that we must really look at people, and that we take a new look at ourselves. It takes time to see clearly, and we must be patient in our recovery. Our vision is changed in these days. 

 

When we see with the healed eyes that Jesus gives us, we will recognize that each and every one of us is a wonderful creation of God. When we look into the eyes of our neighbor, we may see a person who is hurting and lonely just like us; and we may see a person who is blessed and joyful, just like us. When we look into the eyes of the one who we think is wrong, we may recognize a person who has come to their convictions by way of hurt and sorrow, just like us. When we look into the eyes of the one we hate, we will recognize someone who God loves, just like us. 

 

And when someone looks into your eyes, do they recognize who you truly are, a new creation, a person healed and transformed through love by God? Someone who belongs to God, and whose identity is in Jesus? Can they see your life, can they see your struggle, can they see your sadness, can they see your joy, can they see your integrity, do they recognize you, washed in the waters of baptism, clean and pure, a reflection of the creator God.

 

Do they see one whose life, right now, attests to Jesus, the light of the world? Do they see that you love Jesus? Do they see that you follow Jesus? When someone looks into your eyes, do they recognize mercy, compassion, justice, forgiveness, healing?

 

In what ways, during the rest of this Lent, can you open your eyes to Jesus? In what ways, during the rest of this Lent, may you be healed of your blindness?

 

Lord God, heal our vision, so that we may see you more clearly, right here, right now. Amen.

 

Second Sunday of Lent Yr A March 5 2023

Second Sunday of Lent Yr A March 5 2023

Genesis 12:1-4a, Romans 4:1-5, 13-17, John 3:1-17, Psalm 121

 

The theme we are exploring this Lent is discipleship, what I call following Jesus. I wonder what following Jesus really looks like? Why do we bother, every Sunday, every Wednesday, coming here, to this place to worship a God we cannot see? It would be so much easier to be out with the others, drinking good coffee at our favorite coffee place, reading our newspaper, eating a wonderful confection for breakfast. Or sleeping in late on a Sunday morning, what’s that like? Or reading a good book or hanging out with kids and partner after a long and grueling week. And yet we are here. I don’t think it’s because I compel you to be here, I have thought about preaching hell and damnation if you don’t come, hoping to increase our numbers, but I don’t. I can’t honestly do that because I don’t think it’s right or true. Coming here on Sunday mornings, being together, participating in good music, prayers, bread and wine, body and blood, is not about hell and damnation, it’s not even about life after death, it’s all about new life in the here and now. 

 

According to John, it’s about being born anew. It’s about belonging and identity as God’s beloveds. Belonging is to have the sense of being born again, being born anew. That is what makes us followers of Jesus, that’s what makes us disciples. So what about the eternal life that Jesus talks about with Nicodemus in our story this morning. Eternal life is not about heaven. We live in chronological time, we are conceived, we are born into the world, we grow, we age, and we die. The story we hear from the gospel of John today seems to, and all the other stories as well seem to show a time that is not chronological, or chronos. The stories in the bible speak about God’s time, they show us kairos, not chronos. The word eternal in today’s gospel doesn’t mean forever. It isn’t a uniform measurement of time like days and years marching endlessly into some unknown or even known future. That’s a category or concept that we really don’t even find in the bible. Eternal, as in whoever believes in him may have eternal life, doesn’t mean the literal passing of time, it means transcending time, or wrinkling time, or layering time. It is kairos, belonging to another realm or reign altogether. It means belonging to God’s realm. That is where heaven comes in. When Jesus talked about heaven, he was talking about our present, eternal, intense, real experiences of joy, peace, and love in this life, this side of death and in whatever is to come. Heaven for Jesus wasn’t just someday; it was and is a present reality. Jesus blurs our lines, inviting Nicodemus, and us, into the merging of heaven and earth, the future and the present, here and now, out of the dark and into the light to be born again, born anew, into this new relationship.

 

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Why do we come here each Sunday morning to sing songs of praise, to worship, to encounter God’s word, to be with each other, to be fed by God’s body and blood? Because new life in Christ demands it. Because the response to God’s amazing creation, God’s amazing love and grace is to give thanks, because the response to God’s amazing gift of life and love is to rise up in prayer and song, and to fall on our knees in awe. And because it’s not about any one of us individually, it’s about us together.

 

Some Christians have co-opted this language of being born again and have made it into a one time and exclusive deal. If you say a particular set of words you have access to some sort of life after death that means you will spend eternity in heaven, as opposed to hell. However, that really doesn’t seem to be what Jesus talks about or is concerned about. Jesus seems to be much more interested in the here and now, and the new life that is available to everyone, but especially people who are suffering, in pain, and on the margins. Jesus gave his life for this new life; Jesus walked a road of pain and suffering, for what? So that some people could have comfort in an afterlife, and so that most people who don’t have access will spend life after death in a place called hell? I don’t think so.

 

God’s amazing and abundant love is available to all, that’s what Jesus’ life, suffering, death and resurrection makes real. There is no exclusivity to it; all of scripture shows us that. That’s why I come here, Sunday after Sunday after Sunday. Not because it’s an exclusive club, but because together we give thanks for this amazing gift, because together we recognize our need for forgiveness so that we can realize fully the love that God has for us, because together we are fed and nourished so that we may feed and nourish others. We belong here, to God.

 

We are born again. In the midst of the pain and tragedy of this life, Jesus walks with us. In the midst of the pain and suffering of our lives, Jesus walks with us. Jesus doesn’t take that pain and suffering away, often we wish he would, Jesus carries the burden with us. The work that Jesus does in life and death, and resurrection, is to absorb all that pain and suffering, violence and hatred, and defeat it with the power of God’s amazing and abundant love.

 

You and I have access to that new life, to that amazing love, right here and right now. We are born again and again and again. It’s not about a one-time deal; it’s not one moment in time. It’s a process of belonging and identity that manifests in our baptism, when we are claimed and marked as Christ’s own, and it keeps happening, with cycles of acceptance and resistance, epiphany and doubt. We keep coming to church and we keep being fed and nourished because this journey is messy and unclear. We glimpse the new life that is right in front of us at one moment, and then we miss it, again we miss the mark, we lose the trail, we wander in the wilderness, and we come back to be fed and nourished and find our way again.

 

And as we are fed and nourished, we go out and feed and nourish others, we witness to God’s love and provision. And in the end, and in the beginning, and in the middle, that is what following Jesus is about, that is what this journey is about. It is about responding to the amazing love that God has for each and every one of us and for all of us, it is about the new life, the eternal life, the life of here and now, that is available to all of us. In the messiness of our lives, in the good and bad choices we make, in the pain and tragedy of human action and inaction, and in the pain and tragedy of disease, God’s amazing and abundant love is available to Abraham who lived in a land that worshiped gods who were not the One God, it is available to Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews, it is available to the Samaritan woman at the well, it is available to the man born blind, it is available to Lazarus and Martha and Mary, all outsiders, all people on the margins, and all who never said the words, I accept Jesus as my personal lord and savior. And this same amazing and abundant love is available to you, and to me and to all of us.

 

Jesus walked this journey to show us the truth of God’s love for us. We walk this journey so that we may live this truth of God’s love for all. Thanks be to God.

 

Second Sunday in Lent Yr B Feb 28 2021

 

YouTube recording

Second Sunday in Lent Yr B Feb 28 2021

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16, Romans 4:13-25, Mark 8:31-38, Psalm 22:22-30

 

Jesus says, follow me. But if you do, there will be consequences. You will lose your life. Not much of a party invitation is it? What would that look like on a save the date card. That card for me would read, Kathleen Ann Monson, on August 21^st, 1957, you are invited to lose your life. Details to follow. You see, that’s the day I was baptized. How do I even know that you ask? I have my baptismal certificate framed on my wall, my ordination certificate is there as well, but the baptismal certificate is the most important to me, to us. That is the day I lost my life, to be reborn into the life of Jesus. And it is with this identity, a follower of Jesus in the way of love, that I live my life. All the rest is the details. 

 

In this story from Mark, there are some very important questions that are part of the details, that inform the way of love. Who do you say I am? Can you turn from all that demands your attention and follow me? Can you put aside your own selfish ambition? Can you lay down your life? As we wonder about the answers to these questions, we may find that Jesus calls us to some uncomfortable places, some borders and barriers that must be broken. 

 

We begin, as we began last time in Mark, with location. Location, location, location. We need to look at the physical location of the story, and where the story is in the larger narrative, it makes a difference. So Jesus and the disciples are in Caesarea Philippi, and that is way far away from Jerusalem, about 110 miles away, and remember, anyplace they go they go on foot. Jesus and the disciples were walking all over the place and they were nowhere near home. In this place, so far from home, Jesus asks, who do you say I am. Peter declares, you are the Messiah. Peter says, you are the one for whom we have been waiting, you are the one given to us by God. 

 

This declaration of who Jesus is, is made way out in the villages, a beautiful area and a center of Pagan activity.  Caesarea Philippi is home to the Temple of Pan. This is not a judgement about good and bad, only an illustration about how the location of this declaration that Peter, the Rock, makes, about who Jesus is, becomes an important part of the story. They are way out of their territory, deep in pagan lands, in the places they are not comfortable. What does it mean to confess Jesus as the messiah in this wilderness, in foreign lands? Jesus and his followers are the aliens here. Talk about losing your life! In this setting Peter affirms Jesus’ identity, you are the one for whom we have been waiting, you are the one given to us by God. 

 

So what does this all mean for us, in our setting, in our lives? Who do we say Jesus is when we are in the wilderness, when we are in front of the temple of pan? Who do we say Jesus is when we are with those who claim a Jesus who takes power rather than the one we know, the Jesus who empowers us in the way of Love. And, how do we respond to the demand to deny ourselves and take up our cross. You see, these two claims have everything to do with each other. 

 

I’ll tell you why. Peter’s claim that Jesus is the one for whom they have been waiting, becomes our reality that Jesus is God in the flesh, Jesus is God in the midst of humanity. Jesus, the one who travels to the wilderness, Jesus, the one who feeds thousands of people in the wilderness, Jesus the one who gives sight to the blind, this is the Jesus we follow in the way of love. Not a god who demands power and glory, but Jesus, who goes to the edges of the earth to bring those who are on the margins into the community of the beloved. Not a god who demands the sacrifice of a son, but God in Jesus, who asks the sacrifice of self. 

 

That is what Jesus is asking of us here. Jesus says, put aside your selfish ambition, give up your busy is better life, give up your need to be successful, your need to be liked, your need to please, your need to be perfect, put aside all that is killing you for the sake of love. Because love changes everything. 

 

And it is so hard. It is hard because it demands that we love ourselves. It is hard because once we love ourselves, and put aside all that is killing us, our eyes and hearts are opened to our own brokenness and vulnerability, and our eyes and hearts are opened to the brokenness we see around us. It is hard because it is scary. Fear is at the root of most of our inability to love. It is hard because we also must say, like Peter says, Jesus, you are the Love of God, and we must say it in difficult places, in uncomfortable places and conversations. We too must go to the margins, and break down the barriers that keep people from the love of God. We also must speak out loud, on behalf of ourselves and those whose voices are silenced, Jesus is the Love that wins.

 

What are the wild places that you go to speak the love of God? For some of us that may be hard family conversations. For me it’s when one of the people I love says something, or posts something on facebook that supports or defends an attitude that is not loving, but judging, racist, or misogynistic; it’s a wild place that I need to enter, not to take sides or to judge, but to have conversation about why that comment or that piece they post is not loving. 

 

Just remember, in the waters of baptism you have been set free to bear God’s love into all the wild places of your life. By your baptism you have been marked with oil and retraced with ashes as Christ’s own forever. You carry the light of Christ to illuminate all of the dark and wild places. You carry the cross of love in your pocket. You are created in God’s image. You are equipped, by your baptism in the community of saints and the cloud of witnesses, with Peter and all the others, to proclaim the love that wins. Thanks be to God. 

18th Sunday after Pentecost Yr B Proper 21 Sept 27 2015

Oh my gosh, what's a preacher to do with a collection of scripture passages such as we have before us today? What are they even about? The beauty of the lectionary, the lectionary is the proscribed set of bible passages that we hear each week, the beauty of the lectionary is that we don't get to ignore the parts of the bible we don't like, we must at the very least listen to hard passages, and at our best, deal with them. Today I am somewhere in between listening to them and dealing with them.

So, I'll begin with a little about myself today. I had the amazing opportunity, along with Rick, and our adult children, to go to Norway. I grew up attending Monson family reunions, for a long time we got together every year. I heard my Monson family story. It's a story that has formed and shaped who I am today.The paternal branch on my father's side came from a farming community in the west of Norway, near a little town called Stryn, in a green valley called Nesdahl. The family lived in a small farmhouse in that valley, until the day an avalanche destroyed it. Only one of the sisters was injured,  but after that, my great grandfather Jacob, came to America and ended up in North Dakota. There he married Anna Braaton, and they began to have children. Eventually moving to the cornfields of central Minnesota. This story formed my identity. When I was 23, right out of college, I took off and traveled to Norway to meet my relatives, and see this land upon which they lived. And then recently, at our latest family reunion, we heard another part of the story. This was the story of the maternal branch of my father's side. This family, the Braaton's, Anna's family, farmed much closer to Oslo, in the beautiful Hallingdal Valley. And in the summer of 2013, we went to Norway to be in the land of our ancestors, to walk on the land that our ancestors farmed. It was a profound experience. We stood high up on the mountainside which was the farmland, it was no wonder it was subsistence farming and that many of them came to America.

The point of all this is that these stories form much of my identity. And I wonder if what we have before us is about identity, the disciples identity as followers of Jesus, our identity as followers of Jesus. 

This passage appears to be about Jesus admonishing his disciples to lighten up, to stop worrying about others who are following him (but not, apparently, to the disciples’ satisfaction) and instead focus on what matters or, perhaps even more, on avoiding those things that can cause one to stumble and stray from the narrow road.

Scholars tell us that this particular section reflects some conflicts between early Christian communities. Mark is framing this part of his narrative, in other words, to address some of the problems his folks are having with other Christians. Apparently the early Christian church wasn’t all united in their beliefs, sometimes clashed with each other, and occasionally even berated one another over differences in practice. Sound familiar? In other words, Mark was trying to help his congregation answer the question of who they are. Will they, he asks, define themselves over and against other Christians or will they discover their identity in their attempt to follow Jesus, to care for the vulnerable, and to avoid those things that are destructive to self, neighbor, and community.

Who are you? How did you come to your particular answer? Do you define yourself by your accomplishments, or your history, or particular critical experiences, or your relationships, or some combination of all of this? What is the story you tell about yourself? 

The disciples were trying to figure themselves out by not being like their neighbors. "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us." The disciples were complaining because these other people were not playing by their rules or following their lead. One of the funny things about this passage is that it follows on the heels of the passage where Jesus admonishes them because they were arguing about who would be the greatest. These disciples are as slow as we are sometimes!

So Jesus says to the disciples, and to us, you are God's beloved, and with you God is well pleased. This is our story, this is the story we must live and tell about ourselves. This is our identity. You have been claimed as God's hearts desire, you are marked as God's own forever. There is nothing you can do to rub that indelible mark off, there is nothing that you can do that would make God not love you.

And the reality in which we live and move and have our being tries so very hard to dissuade us of that truth. So much tries to convince us that we are not worthy, that we are not pretty enough, smart enough, rich enough, sexy enough, good enough. So much tries to tell us a story that we are so guilty, or bad that we are beyond the possibility of God's love. But that is not the story Jesus' life, death, suffering, death, and resurrection tells, that is not the story we tell.

The story we tell, the story of who you are, is the story that indeed Love wins on the cross. It is the story of Jesus, who could have hardened his heart with retribution and revenge, but instead whose last prayer was "Father, forgive them, they do not know what they are doing."

We do indeed identify with this story, because we too are broken, in need of being put back together. We try so hard to do this on our own, but until we fall on our knees and lay down the burden of perfection, or control, or wealth, or whatever it is that keeps the pieces of our heart from being whole, our heart will never be whole, and soft, and perfect. 

Our identity as God's children, as God's beloved is what heals us. And our identity as followers of Jesus is what gives us the courage to do what we are called to do. To feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless. Our country has been host in these last days to the leader of the Catholic church, the leader who holds before the church and our nation, four people who lived their lives courageously as followers of Jesus. Abraham Lincoln, who struggled with the right thing to do with God's people. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. whose life was given so that all God's children may be equal. Dorothy Day, who fed the hungry and housed the homeless. And Thomas Merton, who taught us about this spiritual journey and discipline. 

Who are you? How are you called? What is your identity? 

Amen.