Gloria Dei Lutheran, Chatham, NJ

ELCA World Hunger – tactics for giving aid to people in crisis
Relief – the band-aid; the immediate needs
Development – wells, clinics, schools, training programs
Advocacy – with their governments, with our government and corporations
Education – to prevent further crises, educate about issues
 

Most important thing is presence – can’t help if don’t know about problem
Next most important is knowing the people & their situation – unwise aid can do harm or create a cycle of dependency, but wisdom paired with generosity can create a cycle of hope
 

Important for us to partner with agencies who contribute to this mission of changing & saving lives – especially powerful when with agency like ELCA World hunger, of which 92 cents per $ go to those in need, while partnering with LWF and the highly respected LWR – if working with calendar or using little boxes, these are the recipients. 
 

Important for us to serve – prayer for week:
Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and let these gifts to us be blessed.
Guide us along the servant’s way, and lead us to your dawning day.
 

We pray that God will guide us to be good stewards, good servants, generous and wise people in Christ’s name
 

But we also pray that God will lead us to that dawning day of salvation.  Guess how God does that:
Relief Development          Advocacy      Education
We help those who struggle to help themselves – to give them a chance at life.  God does the very same for us, who cannot help ourselves and have no one else to turn to.
 

            Relief – band-aids for our souls.  Chronic or crisis – balm in the word, in community, in hope
Development – wells water villages; for us, God’s word teaches and guides us and helps us know what questions to ask about what really matters
Advocacy – name of HS is Advocate.  When feel judged, hopeless, invisible or fatally flawed, the Spirit open our eyes to new solutions, new peace, a new way of being.  Reminds us that we are valued as children of God.
Education – once our eyes are opened to God’s grace, we will want to know how best to live, to prevent the troubles that would take us off of our foundation.  We’ll return to the word, so that next time we need relief, we’ll know better where to look for those immediate needs like comfort and nourishment and hope.
            Most importantly, God is present with us and knows us – knows that which gives us joy and that which causes us sorrow, fear, or want.  We see God leading us to that dawning day, and we see it most clearly through Jesus Christ.
Come, Lord Jesus…  Christ has indeed taken up the cross, that we may live.  We continue to implore Jesus to enter into the journey of our lives, whether we are serving others or receiving that which we need. 

When you sit down to eat a meal, do you say something like, “God is great, God is good?” Or do you say something more like that other classic American table grace, Bart Simpson’s, when you prayed, “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.”  Now, hopefully there’s an obvious answer to that one, but the bigger question is “how do we act the rest of the time?”  Which one better fits the way we actually approach day?
There’s a reason that the Bart Simpson prayer is funny (made it into a comedy show) – there’s some real truth to that being the way we experience life much of the time. We have to work hard to put food on the table, to keep pace in our careers, to provide the best for our families.  I think everybody is in search of the good life, but there are different ways of understanding what the good life is and how to go about getting it.  There’s the “God is great” approach and the “we paid for this stuff ourselves” approach, and our scripture readings today illustrate each.
In the parable Jesus tells in our Gospel reading today, the tenants take a Bart Simpson approach.  That is, they felt that the way to have a good life is to grab hold of as much as you can for yourself.  Never mind all the work that the landowner had done to prepare a place for them that had everything they needed to be successful and thrive.  Forget about reciprocal relationships or gratitude for the landowner having done the planting and building for them so that all they had to do was harvest the grapes and make the wine.  The tenants saw an opportunity to get rich easily and it didn’t matter who got hurt in the process.  After all, if your approach is “we paid for this stuff ourselves” then it naturally follows that the more you do to get more riches the better your life will be.
I think it’s pretty obvious, though, that Jesus is telling us that this approach doesn’t work.  It doesn’t lead to a truly good life, but rather overcome by a greed that stamps out relationships and ultimately ends in misery.  I think that it is interesting, and instructive, the readings that this Gospel story is paired with.
We start with the ten commandments.  There are different ways to divide up this scripture into commandments, but in the Lutheran and Roman Catholic traditions we say that the first commandment is “I am the Lord your God.  You shall have no other gods before me or make for yourself an idol.”  There is a reason that all of that is grouped together (well, several reasons).  One of them is that taken together it is God’s most basic statement of what you need to live the good life.  The good life starts with letting God be our God and not letting anything else become more important.  When our life is focused on God first and foremost, it changes the way we see everything else.  What a difference it makes to make our starting assumption about life be that God is great and God is good.
If the tenants had done that, they might have been able to see that “wow, we’re in a great place.  The landowner trusts us to watch over this land.  He has given us everything we need – an already planted vineyard, a wine press, a watchtower.  We can live well here.”  But other things do get in the way of putting God first and foremost.  In the Large Catechism, Martin Luther tells us that anything that we consider to be more important than God is an idol for us, and that one of the chief idols we have is money.  We are consistently lured into making wealth more important than God.  That’s what happened to the tenants, and it’s the assumption behind the Bart Simpson approach to life.
Yet we do have some examples of a different way of approaching life.   Listen to Paul in our second reading telling the Philippians that “whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. ⁸More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Paul is reminding us that when we start in gratitude, start with “God is great,” then it changes our outlook.  Things that once seemed important suddenly aren’t any more.  Suddenly, instead of needing to take what we can get, we can live as a response to what we have been given.  What a huge difference that is.  If we start with the assumption that we have nothing and need to collect whatever we can to attain the good life, well that puts a lot of pressure on us and makes it hard to look beyond ourselves to see the others who are around.
But, if with Paul (and Francis) we can say that in putting our trust in God we have all that we need for living the good life, then we can weather any storm and still keep our eyes open to what is outside of ourselves.  And there are storms.  Financially, we are in the midst of a dozy right now.  As we move ahead in these uncertain times, there are some very real reasons for anxiety and some very real economic consequences.  I don’t want to dismiss that.
At the same time, though, I want to suggest that it makes a real difference which attitude we take.  If we go with Bart Simpson, then we might really do have a lot to worry about.  But if we start by remembering that God is great and God is good, it changes the playing field.  It might not lessen the dangers, but it allows us to realize the bigger picture.  That God is still and always right there with us, providing us with blessing upon blessing, and our life is but a response to those blessings, our calling to be a reply to God and the world that God is our God and is good, all the time.
 It takes us back to that mission statement yet again, that we start with recognizing our relationships, and from there open our hands to receive God’s blessing, and then in response we can extend our hands.  Imagine how different that parable would have been if the tenants had started there, started with “God is great, God is good.”   May we be bold enough to pray that prayer not just before a meal, but in all of our life.
-Amen.

[[[[fill tub with water, put in middle]]]]]
So, who’s first?
(after all, Jesus commanded Peter to walk on the water.  Who has a strong enough faith that you’d be willing to come up here and try it?)
Don’t blame you – fact is, I have more faith that water and Italian leather don’t mix than I do that God will suspend me on the water if I just believe strongly enough. 
I suppose we could freeze it, so that we could all walk on it – that’d give new meaning to the phrase “frozen chosen.” 
This faith business is tricky stuff – what exactly does it mean to have faith and live by it?
I’ve had several people say to me recently, “Pastor, I don’t have the faith that I want.”
My first reaction to the question is, “Hey, join the club.”
The fact is, none of us have the kind of faith that we want.
I know I don’t, and I know that I’ve got lots of company.  Just look at the disciples in today’s Gospel story.  When Jesus walks towards them on the water, they huddle together and cry out in fear.  When Jesus says, “Take heart, it is I,” Peter, the bravest and most faith filled, is willing to risk himself and go out onto the waves in response to Jesus’ command, but he can’t keep it up.  When it comes down to it, the doubts and questions in his mind were stronger than his faith.  Fear overcame his faith.  In the end, even he – with Jesus right there – had only a little faith. 
When it comes down to it, there are plenty of reasons to doubt.  Peter stepped out onto that water, and while he was focused on Jesus it all seemed safe, but once he started to notice the wind and the waves and all the things out there that could get to him, well suddenly it was a whole lot harder to just think of Jesus.  We all have that wind and those waves blowing through our lives, things that remind us how small our faith is.
I’ve heard it said that if you don’t have the faith you want, the best thing to do is to act like you are full of faith.  If you start acting it, pretty soon you will find that your faith starts to grow, and it becomes a bigger and bigger part of you.  Somehow we’ve gotten this notion that belief is the first step to a life of faith, that once you understand and assent to all of the doctrines and dogmas of the church, then you will be full of faith.  But that’s not the way it’s always been.  In the early church, a prospective new member had to spend 3 years living like a Christian before they would be told anything about what it is that Christians believe.  Most people don’t think their way into belief, they act their way in.  Faith for most people follows action, not vice versa.
The problem with that, though, is that I’m not sure that most of us really know what it means to live like a Christian.  Oh, we have a general sense about being a respectable person who is loving and treats people fairly, but I’m talking more specific than that.  What sorts of things do Christians regularly that sets their life apart from others – what kind of thing took people 3 years to learn in the early church?  Does it mean being willing to come up and step in this water to see if you sink?  Or is that just a foolish way of testing whether you can believe hard enough to make God forget about the laws of physics?  Maybe that’s an overstatement, but honestly, I struggle constantly with the question of whether the life I lead reflects the faith I want to have, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
To help better understand what it looks like to live Christian, over the next few months we’ll be talking about what are called “marks of discipleship.”  These marks are things that characterize what a Christian does.  It’s not a list of rules, but rather a list of things that someone who takes being a disciple of Jesus seriously will naturally want to do regularly, if not daily.  There are a couple of different versions of this list, but basically there are 6 major marks of a disciple:  worship, prayer, giving, serving, reading the Bible, and fellowship.  Let me repeat those:  worship, prayer, giving, serving, reading the Bible, and fellowship.   I’ll talk more in later weeks about each of those marks – it will be part of everything from confirmation classes to council devotions this fall – but for now I simply want to suggest that if your faith is not what you would like it to be, ask yourself, “How often to I pray?  How often do I worship?  How often do I give?  When do I serve others?  How often do I read the Bible?  How much time do I spend with people who share my faith?”  Then, if you want your faith to grow, ask yourself how you can increase any of those.  It will make a difference in the strength of your faith. 
A life full of faith does all of these regularly – all of the time.  That sounds like a tall task – living out these six marks of discipleship.  And it is – none of us are up to it, as our faith is so small and not prepared to withstand the big storms.  And yet, growing in discipleship is growing in the desire to live out the marks -  worship, prayer, giving, serving, reading the Bible, and fellowship.
Historically, there’s been a great deal of debate over this story of Peter and Jesus walking on the water.  Did it physically happen, or is it just a parable told by the church to talk about the importance of faith.  But I would question whether such a debate is all that worthwhile.  Whether Jesus actually did it or not, I think that what Jesus would want us to get out of the story is this: with just a little faith, we can do some really amazing things.
 Look at what Peter did with just a little faith – he walked on water, only for a little ways, but he did it, and then he, with his little bit of faith, became the rock of the church.  That’s some amazing stuff for just a little faith.  But also, that he could do all of that because, even though his faith was small and fell short, Jesus was right there, reaching out his hand to pick him up and save him.  It is Jesus’ reach that pulls us through, beyond our little faith.
And so, we can remember that our little bit of faith can do amazing things.  We might not be living out all the marks of discipleship all the time, but we are here today.   We’ve come to worship – that’s one of the marks, and it takes a little faith.  And so we do have some faith, and we can trust that in that, Jesus will reach his hands out to us, to pick us up and save us.  And so, OK, nobody came forward to try to walk on water, but I bet that someone will come forward in faith to receive Christ in communion, that this community will live into that statement of faith, and through it will be touched by God.  Our faith may be small, but Jesus’ grasp is long, and it reaches out to embrace us and our little faith.

Have you ever wrestled with God – had one of those times in your life when you just don’t understand what God is doing, and can’t possibly believe that God is being fair and just?  Times that make no sense, when it just feels like the bottom has dropped out for you and you’re left wondering what is going on?  We have a lot of wrestling with God in our scripture readings today. Jacob is doing it in a very literal way, but also in the more metaphorical sense as he searches for the direction of his life. Paul is working through some of the deep and painful contradictions of faith as he understands is, and we’ll be hearing more about his struggle over the next few weeks, as it takes him three chapters of Romans to work through his thoughts.

But today I want to focus on the Gospel, on Jesus and the feeding of the 5000.  This story is familiar, because it is told over and over again in the Gospels, with many different variations.  It’s in each of the Gospels, and in Matthew we get it twice – here in chapter 14 it’s the feeding of the 5000, and then in chapter 15 there is a feeding of 3000.  That’s lots of bread Jesus is making. Of course, we remember the story of the boy who brings his loaves and fish to share, but that is in the Gospel of John’s version of the story. And so we’ve heard this story many times before. In the version we have today, we start with Jesus going out to a deserted place, but a great crowd comes and finds him – about 5000 men, and who knows how many women and children; it could’ve been 10,000 people for all we know.

In all of the times that I’ve read this telling of the story, though, I don’t think that I’ve ever asked the question why they were all there.  Why do so many people suddenly come and seek out Jesus?  After all, Jesus had been coming to them – going from town to town, teaching people there, usually in small groups.  We had the sermon on the mount already, but otherwise Jesus mostly works on a much smaller scale.  Why did the people suddenly come from all of the towns, en masse, to gather around him? And why in such a deserted place?

If we look at what’s going on in Matthew at this point in its telling, we’ll see that John the Baptist has just been executed.  Remember that Jesus was baptized by John.  Jesus was, for a time, one of John’s disciples, before receiving his call to go about his own ministry.  Jesus believed in what John stood for, and I think that he understood himself and John to be working together to bring a special message from God to the people.  I don’t think that he expected John to be executed.  And so I think Jesus went off to the deserted place so that he could wrestle with God over what was going on.  We see in the Gospels several times that show that Jesus didn’t fully understand what God was up to all the time, but he was fully open and trusting to God’s calling in the world.  I think we have here Jesus struggling with what God was doing in the events that were unfolding.  He was grieving and his sense of how things were supposed to work had been rocked, and he was left wondering what was going on.  But he worked through his own wrestlings, and returned to shore.

But he was greeted with this mass of people who were doing there own wrestling.  All of them had believed, too, that God was doing something special through John.  That had put great hope in him, as well as in Jesus.  But now suddenly that was gone.  Have you ever had one of those times when something you put great hope in is crushed?  You don’t know what to do, where to turn, how to express your grief at the loss – because it is a deep loss.

And so they came together, to share in that sense of loss, and they came to Jesus, their other beacon of hope.  They probably had no idea what to hope for, what they needed even.  It wasn’t planned, it was just a gut reaction – the bottom had fallen out and their world was spinning, and so in desperation they turned to Jesus.  And suddenly Jesus knew what God was calling him to next.  He had compassion for this crowd, these hurting and grieving people.  He spent time with the masses, healing the sick, assuaging their grief and their fears, bringing them together in a time of troubles.

When we are in tough times, times of great anguish and heartbreak, there is healing in supportive community.  That’s why we have funeral rituals, to create a supportive community to share the burden of care with.  And that’s what Jesus did for this crowd first.  He made it into a community that supported one another in shared grief.  Part of being that kind of community is being tuned in to the needs of others.  And so once Jesus created a community of caring, suddenly the disciples realized that the people needed food and there was none.  They were almost there, almost getting it.  But they wanted to send everyone home to get food, but Jesus realized that they still needed each other, needed something more.  And so he told the disciples that no, he wasn’t going to send the people away.  He asked them to take care of feeding the people.  Only after they had tried and returned to him did Jesus take action himself. 

But he made sure that there was food, and abundant food.  Jesus knew that this step was crucial – that having an abundant meal with everyone having their fill, was an essential step for this crowd.  It’s the same reason that we always have a meal at the end of a funeral today. We eat together after a funeral as a reminder that no death has the final word.  Life continues, and so we eat as nourishment to continue on in the cycle of life.  We eat together for support, and we have an abundant meal to remember the abundance of life.  It is a statement of faith in life, and in the faithfulness of God who continues to provide and sustain life beyond any death.  And that is the kind of meal that the crowd needed that day – to be reminded of the joy and hope that God brings, even in the midst of grief and loss; to be reminded of the support of one another, and of the faithfulness of God, even when all of their hopes had been turned upside down, and they were left reeling and uncertain.  Jesus feed the thousands of people there as a reminder of what the kingdom of God is all about – hope beyond hope, abundance when all seems scarce, and life that moves beyond the powers of death.  This was the healing that they all needed in such an uncertain time, to know one another’s support and faith.  I daresay that this was even healing for Jesus in the midst of his grief.

And it continues to be our role today, as a people of faith led by Jesus. Jesus continues to provide us today with that hope beyond hope, that abundance in the midst of scarcity, with life that moves beyond the powers of death, and with the bread of life that we share as a community.  Blessed be that bread, blessed be the Lord of Life who gives it.  Blessed be God, with whom we may at times wrestle, but also in whom we place our trust.

-         Amen.

I know that not too many of you are science fiction fans, but bear with me for a moment this morning. Because I actually had the chance to read a novel for pleasure recently – it had been a while – and I was reminded that some of the best theology being written today can be found in the pages of science fiction novels.  I had a book called Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.  The basic premise is that there is a parallel world to our – not some different dimension or anything, but right around us, in our cities.  It is a world filled with the people who have been lost and forgotten about by our world, the people who fall through the cracks. And they have their own society that scrapes by in the forgotten places of our world, unnoticed by the rest of us – unnoticed, not invisible.  Anyone from the regular world can see these forgotten people moving among us from time to time, but nobody ever notices.  Or if they do, and really pay attention, they find that they have suddenly become part of this forgotten world.

As the title of the book tells us, the story is about a society of people who are everywhere and nowhere, nobodies and yet somebody.  From there it throws in some generous portion of magic and adventure, but I think there’s a lot that we can gain from thinking about the more basic elements of the book. In our Gospel reading today, Jesus sends out the twelve to go to the lost sheep of Israel and proclaim the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near.  Who are these lost sheep?  Is Jesus really just talking about everyone?  It could be taken that way.  But there are some other clues in the text, too.  Consider for a moment the kinds of activities Jesus tells the Twelve that they will be doing: curing the sick, raising the dead, cleansing the lepers, casting out demons.  Or again, at the beginning of our reading, why is it that Jesus has compassion on the crowds in the first place?  Because they are harassed and helpless.

It seems to me that Jesus is talking about the kinds of people who our world has forgotten – the sick, the crazy, the disgusting, the unloved because they are hard to love, the ones who have fallen through the cracks.  These are the sheep that Jesus sends his disciples to; they are the people who are everywhere and are yet unseen and unnoticed, nobodies, neverwhere.  And yet Jesus tells the disciples to go and proclaim to these people the good news that the kingdom of heaven has come near.

The kingdom of heaven, that place that is not a place, that place where everybody is somebody, that the unlovable are loved, and the unwantable are claimed – this non-geographical kingdom of grace in which the neverwhere people can find a home, it has come to them, so that even though they are nobodies they can in fact be somebody.  They may have been unnoticed, but now in the kingdom of heaven they are seen.  What incredibly good news for them!  They are brought from nowhere and given a home in this kingdom that comes to them!

And yet noticing the unnoticeable, seeing the forgotten – this comes with a risk for the disciples. Just as in the novel, noticing the forgotten and unwelcome can make them into the forgotten or unwelcome. Listen to all of those warnings that Jesus gives the disciples about the resistance they will meet.  Houses will refuse to acknowledge you, people will withhold their welcome and ignore your words.  You, the ones searching for lost sheep, will be like sheep in the midst of wolves, ready to be devoured and then forgotten just like the rest.

Telling the neverwhere people that the kingdom of God has come to them means noticing the unnoticed people, and that can mean becoming an unnoticed person too.  Of being thought of as weird or crazy or undesirable. And yet this neverwhere is exactly where Jesus is, too. As we see at the beginning of our reading today, what Jesus does on earth is go to the neverwhere people, healing, casting out demons, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom of God.  He does the same thing that he calls the disciples to, and he becomes one of the forgotten nobodies for it, left abandoned and alone on the cross.  And so even if they do get sucked into the nowhere world because they have noticed and reached out to the lost sheep, even so the disciples, following Jesus’ commands, are never separated from him, but instead are drawn into the kingdom of God.

What a challenging call this is for us, Jesus’ disciples today.  To risk noticing the unnoticeable, to reach out to the lost sheep at the risk of becoming among the lost ourselves. And yet we are called to be bold in doing just that, trusting in the promise that Jesus is waiting for us right there, in the neverwhere world – promising us that the kingdom of God has come near, that they place of grace where we are accepted and loved is at hand, if we only allow ourselves to be immersed in it.

We throw the word holy around at the church a lot, don’t we?  Holy Communion, holy scriptures or holy bible, holy matrimony, holy spirit, holy lives  And yet, outside of church, it’s not a word that generally comes up in conversation, is it? At least not unless it’s followed by “cow” or “mackerel” or …. “macaroni”  It’s one of those church-speak words, those Godly sounding words that we throw around while we are gathered here because they are important Christian sorts of things, but they don’t really seem to connect to the world outside of these walls.  Words like “atone, incarnate, sin, creed, salutary”
At bible study on Wednesday we really grappled with the idea of holiness – what do we mean when we say it, and is it something that ever leaves the walls of the church building?  We ended up looking at a Bible dictionary, and basically it said that there are two ways of thinking about what is holy – what I would call overwhelming holiness and ordinary holiness.
Overwhelming holiness is the idea that something is holy when it is set apart from this world to be closer to the heavenly realm.  That is, there is the ordinary profane world where we go about our businesses over here, and over there is God and the heavenly realm; and we set some things within our world aside – or God does – so as to be closer to the heavenly over here.  This is where you get the idea of a holy mountain or shrine set aside for spiritual quests and pilgrimages, or of the holy person who spends all day in meditation and is removed from the goings-on of the world.
This sense of holiness can be powerful for us – when we are in the presence of the holy we are overwhelmed by it because it marks some things as special and can help us to see the world in more dimensions than just typical existence.  It is an overwhelming sense of holiness.
But that’s not the only way we can understand the holy.  The other way to think about it is to understand holiness in terms not of separateness but of connection.  Something is holy because it is connected to God – God is holy and therefore anything connected to God is holy. 
Here, it’s important to remember that God is the God who created all things and so overflows into all things and seeps into the very being of the world, sustaining it day to day.  Because God created all, God is present in all – and so God is found in the ordinary things of life, regular things like bread and wine, and water, but also in people and places – not just ones set aside and designated as holy, but in all things.  This is a holiness of the ordinary, of God’s extraordinary presence with us in all that we are and all that we do – not just times designated as holy.
Both approaches – overwhelming holiness and ordinary holiness-  are common in Christian history, even in our particular Lutheran tradition; both have their place, but also their problems. In overwhelming holiness, we have a sense of wonder in the face of a strange and different God, and a place for special religious experiences.  But if God is over there in those special holy moments and places, well, what about the rest of our lives?  Does God just let us do our own thing over here, completely separate from the divine?  Is God not the ruler of all?  I have trouble with a God who only shows up in special places and for special people.
And so ordinary holiness says, “no no” God is everywhere, always with us – every moment is sacred, every thing we do is consecrated to God.  There is a powerful spirituality that our every moment and every thing – birds, trees, people, grass – all are holy.  That sounds wonderfully moving, but what about evil?  If everything is holy, how does evil get into our world – because not everything is always happy and wonderful.
And so we have these two ideas of holiness – the overwhelming and the ordinary – and it makes a difference to how we live out our faith, because we are called to live holy lives – to be saints (which in Greek is more literally translated “holy ones”).  Sinners too, yes, but also to be God’s saints, God’s holy ones.  So, does that mean to be separate from the world, or to find God in the ordinary?

Gospel: Matthew 6:24-34

Today’s Gospel reading is one of those just packed with so many rich and familiar saying of Jesus.  Consider the lilies, look at the birds of the air; do not worry about your life, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
These are comforting words, aren’t they?  An idyllic picture, an appealing call to calm in a fast-paced world that never seems to give up.  Don’t get so hung up on your calendars, your schedules, your plans, all that it feels like you have to do, Jesus sings out to us – be present in the moment at hand, deal with the issues at hand and see the blessings in the day.  Let go of all those stresses and anxieties – know that God will take care of you and be with you, just as God is with the plants and birds, who don’t carry PDA with them.
Jesus gives us an important reminder to us that we are not the center of the universe, a reminder to let go of the weights that hold us down so that we can feel the joy of living in the presence of a God who loves us and wants the best for us.  It is essential to our ongoing strength and health – physical health and spiritual health – that we take that time of letting the weight of our plans and self-importance fall and that we might simply rest in God’s grace.  Indeed, much traditional Christian spiritual practice – forms of centering prayer like lectio divina, for example  - is about learning to let go and being in the moment and trusting God with our lives.
And yet, given all of the things that need to be done, everything filling up our calendars, all the plans for the future that we need to make – saving for college, saving for retirement, making sure we will be taken care of -  it makes what Jesus is saying hardly seem practical.  Maybe it worked for people back in those simple times, but it doesn’t really work here and now.  After all, we live in a world of deadlines and expectations, rising food costs, uncertain economic futures.  It seems rather naïve to simply say that we should drop our anxieties, forget all of our scheduling, and simply trust in God.
It is exactly here, though, that we encounter the true radical nature of Jesus’ words. Remember that he is talking to a group of mostly day laborers, people who didn’t know when they got up in the morning whether they would find work that day, and if they didn’t work they wouldn’t have money to buy food to eat.  Talk about high stakes! And these are the people that Jesus is telling to not worry about the future.  Jesus is asking a huge amount of trust from the people. What an incredible leap of faith Jesus is asking for! Can you imagine having the sort of faith that Jesus asks for here?
It’s part of our nature to seek security, to seek stability.  Not having it gives us a sense of anxiety. Anxiety is this nonspecific uneasiness.  You can’t point to anything in particular that’s wrong, it’s more a general sense that you’re not in control of things – and human nature is that we want to be in control. Jesus’ call here is truly radical – that people who are getting along pretty well because they work hard focus not on their work but on trusting God.  Remember, though, Jesus’ point is not that birds don’t work – after all, they do build nests and migrate with the seasons.  His point is that they do this in addition to trusting in God’s goodness.
That’s what Jesus is after – an attitude shift.  He is not telling his audience to stop working and feeding themselves, but that they put their trust in God, not in the work they do. It makes a huge difference – when our lives are focused first on God, we can let go of our need to be in control. We our life is focused on God, there is no need for anxiety – we’re not in control, but that’s OK because God is more trustworthy than we are.
I have to admit, though, that this is easier said than done. Like I said, we like stability and control.  It’s hard to let go of knowing what the future may bring.  We always seem to snap back to trusting our own plans for the future. There have been a few times in my life when I’ve put my full trust in God to see what happens, and it has always been a faith-growing experience, and yet it never lasts long. Wendolyn and I got married right before our first semester of seminary.  We had enough money saved for one semester, and just went into the year praying that we would find a way to make it through four years.  Well, right at the beginning of the second semester – as the money was running low – I tripped horribly and mangled my arm; it needed surgery and about 4 days in the hospital.  Along with the physical pain, the total bill was $10,000, of which seminarian insurance covered half. 
That’s exactly the kind of thing we deeply dread – how do you deal with that?  And then a week later, a letter from my home synod came in the mail from my home synod, saying that there had been a budget surplus that they decided to share with each of the seminarians from the synod – it came out to $4,875, check included.  I could go on with those sorts of stories.  Examples that if we put God first in our lives, other things will follow.  I bet you could share some, too.  And yet, to be honest, I like having a house, health insurance, and steady income.  It makes me feel more secure than trusting in God does.
The grace is that God is still there, trustworthy as ever, whether we trust God or not.  The sort of faith Jesus is talking about is for our own benefit – to save us from anxiety over things that have no power over. And yet it is more than just a self-interested sort of faith, too.  In those moments when we do really trust in what God is doing, it makes a difference in the kinds of things that we do. It frees us from being cautious in what we do, frees us to be risky for the sake of Christ, to do things that don’t otherwise make sense. We can risk going out on a limb with our lives, because we trust that God is there for us and that God wants to use us. Deciding whether or not to reach out to another person in love and care, whether to take on a new way of ministering to others – living in the radical trust that Jesus is talking about makes these decision not about the bottom line but about a life of faith.
I think this is what Paul is getting at in our 1 Corinthians readings, when he talks about being stewards of the mystery of god.   So often we equate stewardship with finances, and there is a connection; but being a steward is bigger than that. It is about caring for something entrusted to us. And what Jesus tells us is that we have been entrusted with something powerful and mysterious – God’s infinite love and care. We have been given it in abundance, so much so that we can trust our lives with it.
The question, then, is how do we adequately respond to this gift, be found trustworthy, as Paul says? I would suggest that our response is to be faith and love, faith in the goodness and everlastingness of this promise of God, and the freedom to love others because we have been given such grace. My prayer is that we might all find the courage to live out this radical faith – the faith of the lilies and the birds, that God is there in our uncertainty.
 

Too often, I think, we underestimate what God does in our life.  We get caught up in what God has saved us from, that we forget about what God saves us for.  God does not simply save us from something, God saves us for something.  Our readings today speak with incredible consistency about this.
So often we get so caught up in being saved from our sins, that we forget to talk about what we are saved for.  God has a bigger plan for us than simply bringing us to heaven when we die – that limits what God does way too much.
Certainly forgiveness of sins is central to our faith, it’s the foundational step to everything else, but that it is what we are saved from, not what we are saved for!  We need to go further, to remember –We are saved for a life in Christ, a life lived as God’s people in the world, in response to the great thing God has done for us.
In our Gospel reading, we have John the Baptist meeting Jesus for the first time, and exclaiming, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” 
John’s got that Jesus brings the forgiveness of sins to the world – he’s got what we are saved from. 
But here he doesn’t seem to move to the next step, to what we are saved for.  Notice that the next day, John says the same thing about Jesus he did the day before.  This time, he tells two of his own disciples, and next thing you know, they’re following Jesus instead.  They are ready for the next step, ready to see the possibilities of a new world that Jesus brings.  And they are excited about it – look how Andrew can’t contain himself and runs off to bring along his brother, Simon.  It is this excitement about what is possible that truly changed the world – we’re talking here about Andrew’s infectious joy that spread to Peter, the rock on which the church was built.  The whole church owes its vitality to the step of these men into the possible, of them being saved for something!  Andrew shared the light of Christ with Peter, and the sparks of that light caught fire, making real what God made possible.  [repeat – making REAL what God made Possible]
That is Jesus’ calling to us, too – it is why our sins are forgiven – so that we are free to live the life that God makes possible.  We are saved to share the light of Christ.
It may seem a daunting task – who are we compared to people like Andrew and Peter?  Yet Paul tells us in our second reading that we do not lack in any spiritual gift for the work to which we are called.  God gives us all we need for what we were saved for. 
In a famous passage from her book A Return to Love,  Marianne Williamson beautifully makes this point.  She writes,
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.  It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously
give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
It is in baptism we are given that power, that calling to be lights for the world, to proclaim that the impossible is possible.  In our baptism, God claims us, promises us the forgiveness of sin, and calls us to be light for the world, agents of bringing the hope of what God makes possible to the impossible places of our lives and of our world.
Still, look around the world and so many things seem impossible – so impossible that we can’t even imagine things being different.  I don’t feel all that powerful.
Today in the adult forum, we will look at the ELCA’s social statement on Race, Ethnicity, and Culture.  It lays out the ways that racism is still felt in this country, and its social and economic ramifications.  We live in a state that is among the wealthiest in the country and yet has some of the poorest and most dangerous cities in the U.S.  And yet, while none of us want anyone to live in poverty, what can the few of us gathered here do to change the complex, long-term dynamics that have created the realities that we have today?  It seems impossible.
This past Wednesday, the Green Group gathered to talk about the recycling programs of the local communities and what we as a congregation do.  Yet there are so many factors contributing to global warming, deforestation, and species loss – what difference does a few people drinking tea and discussing plastic bins make?  The problems seem impossible.
On Monday, our congregational council finished the arduous process of preparing the budget for next week’s annual meeting. (you can pick up the results in the narthex).  As you will hear more about at the meeting next week, none of us were happy about the result – we continue to have a significant budget deficit that is a cause for a real concern.  It’s not something we can easily erase.  A break-even year seems impossible.
These are impossible situations.  I can’t fathom any way around them.  And yet, we as the church, we as the gathered people of God here at Gloria Dei, are taking on these impossible situations.  All of those examples are things that have happened in this community of faith just this week.  We go on in faith because God has called us for something – and that something is to change the world, to be light for those around us, to shine with the light of Christ.  To find faithful and creative ways to make actual what God makes possible.
This is the good news of Jesus - that God makes the impossible possible.  God takes situations that seem impossible and makes them possible.  And God invites us to participate! In our baptismal faith, we here take part in making real what God makes possible.
What God saves us for is to take part in making the possible actual, to let the power of God work through us to do amazing things, things that we are sure can’t happen.
This is no guarantee that everything is automatically going to work out fine.  It takes a dedicated faithful response on our part.  But it does mean that God has already done the hardest work – making the impossible possible, saving us from our sin.  And God calls on us to help with what we are saved for.  That is our light, our power, given to us by God through our baptism.
Look, if God can do the most impossible thing of bringing life out of death, imagine what God can do with us while we are alive.  If God says that death is not an insurmountable obstacle, then who are we to say that these other things are unattainable, unfeasible, impossible?
Does that mean I have an answer to poverty, global warming, church finances, and the myriad other worries that we face as individuals and as a community?  No, I don’t.  But I do have faith in the God who makes things possible, and who invites us to take part in making the possible a reality.
I turn to our first reading, to Isaiah 49:6.  It is written there, ““It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
God is telling the people of Israel, through Isaiah, that it’s too easy to simply take care of yourself.  Remember that this is written to people in exile, people who have no hope of ever seeing their homeland again – and God tells them that simply hoping to get their country back is not enough.  God says that hoping for the impossible is setting your sights too low!  They will be saved from their exile – God can make that impossible thing possible.  But it’s not enough.  That’s simply what they are saved from.  What they are saved for is to tell the world about the God who makes things possible, to be a light to others in the darkness of despair. 
It is the same for us.  We are saved in order to be a light for others, to let the light of Christ shine through us to proclaim the possibility of a world transformed into something new, a place where the impossible is possible, and we are saved to help make the impossible real.  It is for this reason that we are saved from our sins - that we may be saved for being light for the world.  We are called through baptism in order to be sent in mission, proclaiming the God who works through us to make the impossible a reality. 
Thanks be to God who saves us from our sin for the sake of the world.
Amen.

n    I’ve been thinking this week about the nativity set.
n    … how all of the characters seem so trusting…  Mary, Joseph, magi, shepherds (even the sheep, being left alone on the hillside). 
o      None of them ask God a thing.  They hear, and they do.  They trust, and they follow.  It’s a beautiful, simple thing.
n    But our Gospel reading today is from 30 years later – and here we have John the Baptist asking a direct question of Jesus — Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? 
o      Jesus had waited to start his ministry, and Jesus had out-waited John’s trust.
o      Asking is no easy thing when you’re supposed to be trusting
§       Asking humbled John (his question had to go through faithful followers)
§       And it challenged Jesus…
§       Asking, “are you the One, or not?” showed John’s doubts.
n    Jesus doesn’t give a direct answer – he never does. 
o      But he affirms the question that John is asking
o      And he affirms John as a great man.
n    John doubts and questions, and Jesus loves him and stands up for him. 
o      That’s good news, because doubting is not easy
§       It’s humbling
§       It makes it feel like there is a distance between Jesus and us – if only we had more faith, we wouldn’t be doubting. 
n    Interesting phrase, “If only”
n    Think of John the Baptist, and how he would finish that “if only” thought
o      If only… I knew that Jesus really is the Messiah, the one we’ve been waiting for.  What comfort that would be, if only I knew.
o      If only… I weren’t in prison.  I could follow Jesus – I could see the lame walk and the dead raised.  If only I could get out of here.
o      If only… the people would listen.  How the world would be changed.  If only they would do what we have called them to do.
n    “If only…”
o      If only, WE could be so holy as John, and so focused as Mary and Joseph
o      For us, our “if only’s” aren’t usually so holy or devoted.  My “if only’s” from this week:
§       If only we could fix the lawn mower/leaf mulcher and have a dry day.
§       If only our 2-year-old showed some interest in being potty trained
§       If only we had time here at church to really sit down and talk together – to think and plan and dream, and to just relax together
§       If only I knew what to get Eric for Christmas.  It’s December 16 and I’ve missed the deadlines for cheap shipping. 
§       I’m sure you could add your own “if only’s”
n    If only…  I.  We.  Dante.  You. 
n    Who is being left out there?  Who did I not even think to include, until another pastor pointed it out to me?
n    God.
n    If only God… [changing the subject of the sentence from what I expect from myself and other people … to what I would expect or ask of God]
o      Hard to match that up with our “if only’s”?
o      For John, it was hard.  “If only God would raise up a prophet to help the people hear” – well, God did that.  “If only God would get me out of prison” – well, John knew that serving God would mean deep sacrifice.
o      It was hard for John, in all of his holy fervor, to place God in his “if only’s”, …how much harder for us!
§       If only God would fix our mulcher.
§       If only God would pick out Christmas presents for Eric.
§       If only God would take care of the business side of Church life, so we could spend our time in the fellowship and support and sharing our words and stories of faith.
n    It makes me doubt God a little bit.  If God doesn’t fit into my “if only’s” – my hopes and fears and longings and struggles and sufferings – if God ain’t there, then where is God?  If God is powerful, what exactly is God supposed to be doing? 
o      Which is what John was asking Jesus. 
§       Is my faith in the right place?
§       Is the one I’m following really the One?
n    So my “if only’s” led to some doubts and some questions – as they did for John.
n    But as this week went on, as I practiced following the words “if only” with the name “God,” I’ve really felt a change.
o       Because I’ve given myself permission to lay out all of those wishes and longings and desires, and it’s helped me to see what is stressing me, what matters, where I need to own up and get to work and where I need to let things go. 
o      AND.  I’ve realized that there are deeper longings that I rarely voice.  When I think, “If only I/we/they”, and I change that statement to add God in (“If only God would give me the patience…”), then I see those deeper needs in my life.  For the fruits of the Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, self-control.  Those come through prayer and practice.  Those come from “If only’s” that lean on God AND “if only’s” that include me.  So suddenly, things depend on God and me being in relationship.
o      And I realize those longings that are voiced during this season – If only God would stir up God’s power and come.  If only God would redeem this whole world, re-create it, and make it new – today.  If only Jesus would reign in glory and peace.
n    Now, how did “If only I could fix the lawn mower” become “If only Jesus would reign”? 
o      Don’t know.
o      But it has something to do with looking for God.  With letting God into our daily affairs – the things that matter to us, on every level. 
§       It has to do with God giving us permission to question God, and doubt God’s power and activity and even love. 
§       It has to do with God understanding our longings – from those daily tasks to figuring out how to live our lives (what really matters).
o      And it takes life from being all about me and what I can manage – and moves it to include God as the prime mover, the one really in charge.  Giving God the power and realizing how God empowers and strengthens me to take part in God’s good plans – for my family and for all creation. 
n    The two things I’d like you to remember from today:
o      John the Baptist questioned Jesus. The most faithful followers, in for the long haul, will find a time when they must go to God with their doubts.  God wants you to ask those big questions like “Who is God, anyway” and little questions like “how can God help me keep my temper this afternoon.” 
§       Question and doubt and listen.  Those are all acts of faith.
o       And as you find the phrase “if only” floating through your mind, look for how God is involved, not only in that moment but how God hears your deepest longings. 

§       Even if it feels silly to look for God in “if only this traffic would move” –
o       Before we can notice God in our lives we need to recognize that God might actually be there!

And this is the good news of Advent, even as it is a season of waiting and wondering what God is up to:  God – Emmanuel — is with us, in all of our journeys and stresses and longings. 
          This pre-Christmas week, I wish you the fruits of the Spirit – patience, kindness, self-control.  But moreover, I pray that God will show you that you are loved, and that you might be strengthened as you see God’s presence through the living of these days.