Year: 2019

Luke 2:1-20    

Christmas Eve

 

Are you ready for Christmas?  Amazon and FedX have been doing their best to help!  You can have this year’s hottest Christmas gifts delivered to your door within 24 hours. (Those of you who haven’t gotten presents yet – see what gas stations are open.) This year, the best-selling presents for children include a Baby Shark Song Puppet with Tempo Control, a “Frozen 2” Elsa doll, and the gaming system Nintendo Switch Lite.

I remember when my children so desperately wanted Cabbage Patch Dolls.  They were sold out everywhere, and I struggled with every ounce of my being to find a good connection. I ended up owing a co-worker my life.  As a single mother, I was so excited to be able to give them the one gift they wanted more than anything. I even woke up early on Christmas morning, even before they did.  Once the box was unwrapped, they simply tossed them to the side.  By Christmas morning, Cabbage Patch dolls were no longer on their wish list.

What to get the ones closest to our hearts is often a struggle.  It must be perfect for them because it will show how much we love them.  The opposite is just as true; we believe that if they are disappointed in our gift, maybe they will be disappointed in us.  All our Christmas gifts have one thing in common. Giving gifts is our way of expressing that we value someone, and our relationship with them. Whether the recipient is a teacher, your hairdresser, or your child, we struggle with the search, taking delight in the giving, and agonizing over little things.   No matter how perfect we try to make our gifts, our parties, our dinners, our cookies, we wonder if they will ever express what we would like them to. Will they be enough? Could we have done more? It’s exhausting!

Here we are, taking a break from the craziness—both ours and the world’s! Tonight, into the world’s imperfection, God’s perfect gift is born.  Tonight we hear the borning cry of Jesus.  With Mary, we ask, How can this be?  God’s answered, not in words, but in living, breathing flesh.

On this night, a young girl and her husband, both with unanswered questions, could not find an even moderately comfortable and clean place to stay.  In a small town, far away from the center of power, an innkeeper took pity on this very pregnant girl and offered them all that he had left, a place to sleep among donkeys and cows and sheep and all that went with it –their animal noises and earthy smells.  It would be anything but a quiet night.  Straw and hay making their beds anything but comfortable. The birth of our hope takes place in a barn.  I don’t know the life that Mary had hoped for, but most likely it did not look or smell like this.  (When concerns about your Christmas popup, remember Mary, Joseph and Jesus’ first Christmas!)

God’s angels first announced Jesus’ birth to shepherds, who were not much cleaner or smelled much better than the animals that surrounded Jesus.  The glory of the Lord shone around them, we are told.  Then the angels said, Do not be afraid!  This is always the first thing that the angels say. The shepherds went to Bethlehem as the angel had instructed them.  There, among the sheep and cows, they found the baby Jesus, wrapped up in a blanket, and lying in a feed trough.

We long for Jesus, our Savior, to be born, envisioning still nights with bright stars and angels singing who sound just like our choirs! It’s as if we dream of being transported up to the heavens with God.  There’s no traffic jams, or people shouting, or pecan pies that come out of the oven too hard.  But these are the  very things God dreamed of when he sent his son to us.  Jesus was born in a barn, not in a castle, he was among goats and shepherds, not presidents or kings.  There were no satin sheets on a memory foam mattress.

While we come here to find Jesus, God sends him to us where we are. God comes for us and to us, as a baby in and among ordinary human settings. Heaven and earth are joined together this night, and the heavenly hosts respond with joy, singing, Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favors.  Our response is a human one. God’s glory resounds in our singing, and the light of God’s presence is the flames of our candles.

In the search for the perfect gift, and the in the middle of the chaos of our lives, it is so easy to forget how much we are loved. God loves us just as we are. It’s exactly into our worries and struggles, our noisiness and forgetfulness, into our fleshy mess that our inexplicable hope is born for us.  We come tonight to find the sacred and holy, and discover that in the birth of Jesus, God makes us holy, too.  Perfect love–this is God’s perfect gift.

 

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

Isaiah 35:1-10, Matthew 11:2-11    

Third Sunday of Advent

John leapt in his mother’s womb when he heard Jesus’ mother’s voice.  He called people to a life of repentance.  John the Baptizer is the one who announced Jesus’ coming from the vastness of the wilderness. John was a truth-teller.  He told the king a truth he did not want to face. John condemned King Herod’s divorce from his wife to marry Herodias, his brother’s wife.  John confronted King Herod about his illicit marriage. John, confined and captive, now had questions.  He needed to know.  From his jail cell, he sent word to Jesus asking, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”  In his voice is the loud crash of hope, and the breaking of his heart.  John would never make it out of prison.  The next we hear is that John was beheaded to satisfy Herodias’ desire for revenge.

In the season of waiting for the Messiah to be born, and for Christ to come again, John’s story interrupts our singing and our joy.  Who among the powers that be chose this story for our Advent season of hope?  At first glance, it seems a poor choice.  But my recent honest conversations with people convinces me otherwise.  This season is a time when old wounds seem overwhelming, and loneliness intensifies.  The disparity between the life we hope for and the life we have plunges us into darkness.  John’s story reflects the harshness and injustice  of life.

John the Baptizer was confined by the bars of his jail cell.  Some of us are just as bound by those things that have torn us apart.  Our wounds remain, and our bodies remember trauma. We carry it around with us. Our woundedness manifests itself in thousands of ways.  John the Baptizer’s response to his trauma was to tell its truth and express his disappointment and doubt.  In addition to speaking the truth, trauma researchers also emphasize the importance of tending to our wounds, and assert that there is healing power in giving “witness to suffering.”[1]

Often the church intensifies suffering by explicitly or implicitly saying the injured must have done something to deserve God’s wrath. Feelings of shame and guilt compound the problem.  Social and systemic injustice keeps some populations vulnerable.

The United States has the largest rate of incarceration in the world.  Over half a million people in the United States are homeless.  About 11% of the adult homeless population are veterans, and 45% of them are African American or Hispanic. Women military veterans are more than twice as likely as non-female vets to commit suicide.  1 in every 6 women, and 1 in every 33 men have been the victim of an attempted or completed rape.  Kids who are bullied have increased incidents of illness and problems in school.  Jesus, are you the one to come, or should we wait for another?

Illness, divorce, abuse, unemployment all leave wounds. It was seven years and one day ago, December 14, 2012, the children and adults heard loud crashing over the intercom at Sandy Hook Elementary School. 20 children ages 6 and 7, along with 6 adults had been murdered. The lives of the ones who survived, and on everyone in the community, changed forever.  Some cuts are deep than others, but we cannot get through this life without being wounded.  Jesus, are you the one to come, or should we wait for another?

John had gone from certainty to doubt.  Jesus answered John’s messengers, Go and tell John what you hear and see, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.  Jesus might have said, John, I know that as the Messiah, I am not doing those things that you expected me to do.  But look around for signs of God in the world.

The reality of who Jesus is comes to light in the lives of those who are wounded. When our expectations of what are lives should be are shattered, when we confess that we are part of a broken world, it is then that God invites us into the truth of who God is.  God invites us to be honest about our woundedness, and to honor our despair and our doubt.

Whether we recognize it or not, Christ bears our wounds. Jesus takes on our grief, our injuries, and our hurts.  Through his life, death and resurrection, we are set free.  No longer are we in bondage to that which would kill us.  After his death, Jesus rose from the dead still bearing the wounds in his hands, and the wound in his side.  He made no attempt to hide them, but instead showed them to his disciples.  In his wounded hands, Jesus holds ours.  He takes on our sin, our suffering, our disappointment and our doubts, and holds them. This is our redemption.  Christ holds it all. Jesus Christ is our salvation.

God’s promise to us is that the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.  God’s promise to us is that when Christ comes again, there will be no more tears.

In the name of the one who was, and who is, and will come again, amen.

 

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Rambo, Shelly. “Theology after Trauma.”  The Christian Century, November 20, 2019: 22-27 print

 

Matthew 3:1-12    

Second Sunday of Advent

 

We are busy this time of year! Has your credit card melted yet? Buying presents,  then wrapping them, making our plans to travel, or getting ready to host house guests, parties and baking butter cookies and cookies with chocolate and nuts—there is a lot we try to accomplish before December 25!  What’s on your to-do list? What things do you push yourself to get finished before Christmas?  We do all this hoping for a picture-perfect Christmas. What would make this a memorable Christmas for you?

Interrupting our own ideas and visions of celebrating the birth of Jesus is John the Baptizer.  We know that Christmas is near when we hear “You brood of vipers!” come out of his mouth.  While sugar plum fairies dance in our heads, along comes this very strange man dressed camel’s hair and setting new trends in diets.  We cannot get to sweet baby Jesus without listening to John first.

Chances are that our preparations, our Christmas to-do list has a different focus than John’s.  John’s list begins with repentance, which literally translates “turn around.”   Turning around means that we see things differently.  It’s a reorientation.  “Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” John commands.  Is this on your to-do list?  John reminds us that we cannot get a pass because we are children of Abraham.  We cannot avoid God’s judgment because of our birth certificate, or because we come to church.

There is one more powerful than I coming after me, John warns, …his winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.  The consequences of our sin are dire, a matter of life and death.

Lutherans don’t speak much of God’s judgment and its consequences.  Our Lutheran Confessions say more about justification, being set right with God, than they do about judgement. Exactly what God’s judgement will look like is not clear, but make no mistake,  we have been judged.  We are guilty.  We are sinners.  God loves us enough to expect something of us.  We are responsible for what we do.  John the Baptizer sounds the alarm.

God expects us to work to bring about justice, and to have respect for both ourselves and for our neighbor.  Move from works of the flesh, anger, greed, jealousy to works of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control [Galatians 5:22].  It comes from loving God.  One theologian explains, It is the nature of faith to do good works just as it is of the nature of love to love and care to care, of the parent to pick up and comfort that hurt child.  To say that is not naïve; it is the expression of confidence and hope.[1]

What we do matters.  I have a story.

            One December afternoon…a group of parents stood in the lobby of a nursery school waiting to claim their children after the last pre-Christmas class session. As the youngsters ran from their lockers, each one carried in his hands the “surprise,” the brightly wrapped package on which he had been working diligently for weeks.  One small boy, trying to run, put on his coat, and wave to his parents, all at the same time, slipped and fell.  The “surprise” flew from his grasp, landed on the floor and broke with an obvious ceramic crash.

            The child…began to cry inconsolably.  His father, trying to minimize the incident and comfort the boy, patted his head and murmured, “Now that’s all right son.  It doesn’t matter.  It really doesn’t matter at all.”

            But the child’s mother, somewhat wiser in such situations, swept the boy into her arms and said, “Oh, but it does matter.  It matters a great deal.” And she wept with her son.[2]

“Repent,” John tells us. God through Christ weeps with us as we confront our sins.  We are awaiting the birth of the one God sent to sit with us as we weep, as we confront our sense of privilege and entitlement, as we face head on systemic injustice in which we participate, as we bring to the forefront the harm we cause by justifying ourselves.  God has judged us guilty.  Through the water and the Word of baptism, God forgives us our sin.

One theologian elaborates:

In repenting, therefore, we ask the God who has turned towards us, buried us in baptism and raised us to new life, to continue his work of putting us to death.  Repentance is an “I can’t experience.  To repent is to volunteer for death.  Repentance asks that the “death of self” which God began to work in us in baptism continue to this day.  The repentant person comes before God saying, “I can’t do it myself, God.  Kill me and give me new life.  You buried me in baptism.  Bury me again today.  Raise me to a new life.”  That is the language of repentance.  Repentance is a daily experience that renews our baptism.[3]

“Repent.  Prepare the way of the Lord.” says John.  “Get ready for something new because the One who will change everything is coming.”  When Christ comes again, the wolf will live with the lamb, calves and lions, cows and bears, blacks and whites, Christians and Jews, the poor and the rich, cat people and dog people, all feasting together—these are God’s hopes and promises to come.

In the name of Christ, who was, who is, and who will come again.

 

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Forde, Gerhard O.  Justification by Faith:  A Matter of Life and Death.  Mifflintown, PA:  Sigler Press, 1990.  56.

[2] Quoted in Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4.  Bartlett, David and Taylor, Barbara Brown, eds.  Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010.  46.

[3] Reverend Doctor Richard Jensen, as quoted by Brian P. Stoffregen http://www.crossmarks.com/brian/matt3x1.htm

Sleeping at Night

Matthew 24:36-44    First Sunday of Advent

It is tradition in many homes on Thanksgiving Day for each person around the dinner table to name the blessings for which they are most grateful. What did you give thanks for this past Thanksgiving Day?  Perhaps this Thanksgiving Day interrupted your Christmas shopping; Black Friday sales are now taking place every day for weeks.  Our culture says this is the Christmas season, but in the church, it is Advent.  Our society paints this as a joyful time of year. Our church readings are ominous.

Society’s portrayal of our lives is askew.  While we may be looking forward to parties and dinners and gift-giving, our lives are more complicated than that. How have you been sleeping lately? Chances are that if we are awake when we should be sleeping it is because we are distracted by the many things we have to do.  Sometimes it is out of grief and longing for someone we love who has died.  Worry certainly tops the list, –worry about our health or the fragility of a loved one.

Many things rob us of restorative rest–money, loneliness, children, Aunt Karin making the gravy for Christmas dinner. In case we need more reasons to be sleep disturbed, Matthew gives us more. Leading up to our reading, he tells of nation against nation, torture, and a darkening sun.  For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so, too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.  Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.  TheLeft Behind book series stems from this passage.

It reminds me of a story that I cannot resist telling. On a trip to a preaching conference, my friend and I were driving through rural Georgia.  Looking for a place for lunch, we stumbled upon Cousin Cooter’s Country Cooking.  Our waitress was very friendly, and inquired about where we were headed. We told her about the conference and engaged in chit chat.  As we stood up to leave, the waitress smiled, put her hands up in the air and said, “See you at the Rapture!”  She obviously thought she would be one of the ones taken!

Today is the first Sunday in Advent, a time when we anticipate Jesus’ birth, and look to the day when Christ will come again.  Contrary to our image of Jesus as a baby in the manger, who will grow up to heal the sick and feed the hungry, we hear of Christ as a robber.  When Christ comes again, it will be like a thief who breaks into our house, an intruder who has no regard for boundaries, and will invade our personal space.  What will this thief take from us? Maybe we need a thief to come and take from us all those things to which we cling so tightly, those things that prevent us from being open to God’s presence and desires for us.

The two people in the field, and two grinding meal were doing what they always did.  The day had begun as it always did, a cup of coffee while they read the paper, and then off to work.  But then the unexpected happens.  Half are taken, and half are left.  The waitress at Cousin Cooter’s envisioned that those who are worthy are taken, and those God judges to be unfaithful are left.  Using the story of the Great Flood, Matthew reverses that image.  Noah wasn’t taken, he was left.  In the time of forty days and nights of rain, it was Noah and his family, those who were faithful, who remained on earth.  Just as Noah was before the flood, so now are we, here among those who are faithful and those who are not.

We are in the now, but not-yet time of the coming of the Kingdom of God.  While we are waiting, we are not to simply rest in God’s grace.  Even as we pray for our Father to give us our daily bread, we pray for God’s kingdom to come.  God invites us to participate in its coming.  We are not called to predict when that will be, we are called to be prepared for it.

In the face of uncertainties, how do we prepare?  How do we get ready in the face of those fears that creep through our brain, keeping us awake at night?  What will the medical test results be?  Will I have enough money?  What happens to children separated from their parents? Will the world have clean water for the next generations?

We prepare by entrusting ourselves to God, by surrendering our fear, and opening our hearts. We need to admit that, if Jesus can come as a thief, we need to open our eyes a bit more.  We remember that Jesus said when we feed the hungry and visit those in prison, we are doing it to him.  It can be hard work to see Jesus, especially in dark places, with eyes closed.  To see the Christ who is and who will come again, remember the Christ you have already encountered.

Recently, I read a story that has stuck with me:

During the bombing raids of World War II, thousands of children were orphaned and left to starve.  The fortunate ones were rescued and placed in refugee camps where they received food and good care.  But many of these children who had lost so much could not sleep at night.  They feared waking up to find themselves once again homeless and without food.  Nothing seemed to reassure them.  Finally, someone hit upon the idea of giving each child a piece of bread to hold at bedtime.  Holding their bread, these children could finally sleep in peace.  All through the night the bread reminded them, “Yesterday I ate, and today I ate and I will eat again tomorrow.[1]

Christ has died.  Christ is Risen.  Christ will come again.

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1] Linn, Dennis, Linn Sheila Fabricant, Linn, Matthew.  Sleeping with Bread:  Holding What Gives You Life.  Mahwah, NJ, Paulist Press, 1994.

Luke 20:27-38 Lectionary 31

There is nothing simple about this story.  The relationship between Jesus and the Sadducees, marriage, Jewish law, and resurrection, –all of these are complicated, and all of them are integral to our gospel reading this morning.

The Sadducees were priests who had power and influence. They kept company with others who had power and could enhance theirs.  They benefitted from the current system.  It was in their self-interest to maintain the status quo.

Jesus, on the other hand, challenged and disrupted those systems that kept people oppressed, and preyed on the vulnerable.  The last shall be first, he said.  Take care of the poor and vulnerable because they are valuable children of God.  Just as you do it to the least of these, you do it to me. Be kind to those who cannot improve your status.  Jesus was a threat because he was bucking the status quo, and changing the system.  Those with no voice and no power, and some others, were listening to Jesus.

Some of the frightened religious leaders decided to ask Jesus a trick question.  As defenders of the law of Moses, they decided to draw on that as a basis to trap Jesus.  Using Deuteronomy, they asked a question about the laws of marriage, which held that when a husband who had no son died, his eldest brother was legally obligated to marry the wife. This brother would be called to father a child.  The child would be considered the son of his deceased brother.[1]  This marital arrangement, called a Levirate marriage, was to ensure the continuation of a family.

Some of the Sadducees posed this question to Jesus.  Suppose a man dies, and has no son, and his brother marries his wife, and they have no son.  Then that brother dies, and so on, and so on, until seven brothers have married the same woman.  When they are raised from the dead, whose wife is she?

Marriage vows today say we are together until death parts us, but many of us envision being reunited with our loved ones after death.  There was a woman who was dying, and grew weaker every day.  In the midst of her illness, her husband died suddenly from a heart attack.  With help, the woman was able to pull herself together for his funeral service.  Sitting at the visitation, person after person approached her.  One after another offered condolences, along with the hope that she and her husband would be reunited in heaven.  After hearing “You will be together again,” for the ninth time, the widow’s chest began to rise and fall, heaving with deep sobs.  With tears were streaming down her cheeks, she cried, “I am never going to get away from him, am I?” Not everyone wants their earthly life to continue just as it was after death. [2]

Know that the Sadducees did not believe in life after death, but they knew Jesus did.  Jesus could not violate Torah, but he also preached that God will do a new thing. Jesus taught that God’s power for life breaks the bounds by which we manage and control our lives.  These Sadducees didn’t want a new thing.  They were perfectly content with being in control.

Jesus wasn’t going to play their game because it diminished God. Jesus’ response was bigger and more threatening than the questioners could imagine.  God destroys all the ways we categorize and measure life on our own terms.

In a world bent on death, God wills life for us.  How ironic it is that we have trouble turning over our lives to God when our own truths, and our own reasoning lead us to cherish the very things that are killing us.  We are in bondage to sin. The power of the resurrection breaks those chains. What feels like the shattering of our lives is God opening up new possibilities for new ways to live.  What the Sadducees viewed as a threat was an invitation.

God works to bring life from death, and to make all things new. Resurrection is about God’s love for us. Now God is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him, they all of them are alive. God’s promise is that we are now and forever in his loving hands.

There are short videos that I show to children who are preparing for their first Holy Communion.  In one video, the young man learning what to do at the Lord’s table is taught to put one hand out, palm up, and then his other hand, palm up, slightly overlapping.  His hands are open, and empty.  Doing this in an exaggerated manner, he says the word “receive.”  The young man practices over and over again, preparing to receive Jesus with open hands.   Receive.  Receive.

In their attempt to trap Jesus, the Sadducees closed themselves off from the new life God brings.  They limited themselves to what they thought they knew instead of being open to the Holy Spirit.  It felt safer to them than relinquishing control that they did not really have in the first place.  When their hands held on so tightly to their knowledge, their misguided truth, their status and their pride, they could not open their hands to receive the only life that matters, the one that God gives.

What is it that you hold so tightly?  Open your hands, and receive life.

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1] See Deuteronomy 25:5-6.

[2] This story was told by Barbara Brown Taylor.

 

Romans 3:19-28  John 8:31-36

October 27, 2019  Reformation Sunday

 

You will know the truth, Jesus says.  Was truth as muddy and confusing then as it is now?  Postmodernism rejects universal truths.  We question everything, and for good reason. Facts seem to change.  Pluto was a full- fledged planet.  Now demoted to a dwarf planet. I had learned that there were three states of matter, solid, liquid and gas.  Then plasma was discovered, and now there are four.  Eggs were good for you, then they weren’t, now they are. Don’t even get me started on the dinosaur brontosaurus.  Even the fact-checking web site Snopes contains misinformation.  But that may not be true.  What is truth?

If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free.  Just prior to this encounter, while speaking of his impending death, Jesus declared, “The one who sent me is true, and I declare to the world what I have heard from him.” Jesus invites us into the truth that does not change with new discoveries, the truth revealed in Christ Jesus, God’s truth of salvation, grace, forgiveness, reconciliation, life and freedom.  The people listening to Jesus were offended, and cried out, “What are you talking about? We are descendants of Abraham, and we have never been slaves to anyone!” They had forgotten the little matter of Egypt and Pharaoh.  They dismissed their present subjugation to Rome. Their truth, it seems, differed from reality.

Martin Luther pointed to the truth that we deceive ourselves, and that we let the world deceive us. (The media is taking advantage of this.) We deceive ourselves thinking that we can do everything on our own, that power is important, and that money will make us happy. Can we say out loud in front of other people that our life is not perfect?  Can we admit that we need friends and family, and God? As long as we seek to secure our own future, or even our present, instead of trusting God, we live our lives in pretense.  That which drives us to seek our own salvation also chains us to sin.  We cannot set ourselves free from that bondage. To acknowledge the truth that we are in sin, and we cannot save ourselves, gives us freedom in the one who gives us salvation, not because we deserve it, but simply through grace.  Our life comes through Jesus Christ.

To live any other way than being our authentic selves is exhausting!  Did you know that the most popular social media platforms increase negative feeling in users?  Looking on FaceBook at everyone’s idyllic life causes us to feel that our life isn’t as good as everyone else’s.  So we hide the parts of our lives and ourselves that we think are inferior to others.  Portraying a perfect life, or pretending we ourselves are perfect, will not redeem us.  Being wealthy, or educated, beautiful or popular does not change God’s love for us.  In the words of St. Paul, we have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

This is true, not only for us, but for the church.  Martin Luther pointed to what he saw as errors in the theology and practices of the Catholic Church, but he and Lutherans have been mistaken, too.  Not just mistaken; we have sinned grievously.  Lutherans have since apologized for our denomination’s wrongs.  The ELCA issued a formal apology for Luther’s writings against the Jews.  After 500 years of bloody persecution, Lutherans repented for their persecution of Anabaptists, which includes Mennonites.  Most recently, the ELCA issued a declaration of apology, writing:

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) apologizes to people of African descent for its historical complicity in slavery and its enduring legacy of racism in the United States and globally. We lament the white church’s failure to work for the abolition of slavery and the perpetuation of racism in this church. We confess, repent and repudiate the times when this church has been silent in the face of racial injustice. [1]

Despite this apology, Lutherans remain the whitest mainline denomination in America.  We are sinners, individually and corporately. That we are saved by faith through grace alone is at the heart of our Lutheran doctrine, and the Reformation reminds us that our faith is about God’s relationship with us.

Jesus is God’s truth made flesh.  Knowing the truth means knowing Jesus.   We are free from having to justify ourselves, and free for a relationship with God and each other.  Luther said that anything that is not God’s son will not make us free.  How ironic that the freedom that gives us life is one of dependence. Isn’t that just like God to turn our truth upside-down?  This day, and every day, may the truth we encounter, and the truth we believe, be God.

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1] https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Slavery_Apology_Explanation.pdf

Luke 17:5-10

17^th Sunday after Pentecost  ~  Lectionary 27

 “Moderation is for monks,” my husband says.  “More is better!” is his motto.  This explains the shrubs in my yard are burnt by fertilizer.  Do we ever have enough?  Do we think in terms of and focus more on scarcity than we do abundance?  Do we wrestle with deficits instead recognizing gifts?  How often do we feel inadequate?  Couldn’t we benefit from more?  Perhaps we could profit from a better ability to speak in public, greater engagement with other people, more knowledge, or greater faith.

Today we hear the disciples cry “Increase our faith! If only we had more! Everything would be wonderful if just had more faith.” Maybe we need to back up to right before this morning’s reading begins. Jesus had told them that they would stumble.  He said that if they caused one new to the faith to trip up, they’d be better off with a boulder tied around their neck and thrown into the sea to sink to the bottom and drown.  He told them they needed to forgive the repentant as many times as they said they were sorry.  In response, they gave their honest gut-reaction to Jesus’ frightening statements.  They cried, “Increase our faith!”

How many times have we said that?  Like the father of an ill little boy in the Gospel of Mark, I have cried out, “Lord, I believe!  Help my unbelief!” [Mark 9:24].  I boldly say you have, too.  Increase our faith!

Where does faith come from?  Martin Luther, in his explanation of the third article of the Apostle’s Creed states:

I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, made me holy and kept me in the true faith, just as he calls, gathers, enlightens, and makes holy the whole Christian church on earth and keeps it with Jesus Christ in the one common, true faith.[1]

Faith is a gift.  We think having more faith is a desirable and beneficial thing, but Jesus’ response to them is harsh!  He says that a speck of faith would move a mulberry tree into the sea.  He tells the disciples to think of themselves as worthless slaves.  Jesus can be so difficult!  We know that he is exaggerating to drive his point home, but what is really wrong with wanting more faith?

Thinking about that, what do we mean by “having faith?”  When is it that we don’t feel I have enough of it? Is it when something happens that we perceive is negatively impacting our life?  If our faith is strong enough, we will get that job, or  won’t get sick. We will be happier, and successful.   Fill in the blank. Is this faith? Is our concept of faith about our ability to manipulate God, or self-centered magic?

But maybe our longing for more faith has more to do with feeling like a pseudo-Christian because we have doubts.  We are confused, or can’t articulate our faith.  Maybe we can’t conceive of a virgin birth, “Increase our faith,” we cry.  Maybe what we want is for discipleship, and the life of faith to be easy.

“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed,” Jesus replied to the disciples, and to us.  What he is saying is, “If you had faith, and you do!”  This Greek conditional clause translates that way.  Jesus wasn’t ranking the disciples according to their faith.  They had seen Jesus heal Jairus’ daughter, heard him pronounce forgiveness in God’ name to the woman weeping at his feet, and cleanse a leper.  They heard his teaching to love enemies, and pronounce blessing to these who are poor. Their experience of Jesus sparked their belief in him, and their trust. They believed he had the power to increase their faith.  They recognized their inability to believe on their own.

God’s call to and hope for us is use the faith that we have, no matter how much or how little, to do those things that God calls us to do.  To do them, not to receive honor or reward, but as a response to our love for God.   We are called to pass along God’s grace and love that flows so deep through the dark depths of our lives, and do so because we cannot imagine life without it.  More faith isn’t better faith.

“Faith is the ‘assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,’ says the Letter to the Hebrews (1:11),” Frederick Buechner reminds us. “Faith is laughter at the promise of a child called Laughter. Faith is better understood as a verb than as a noun, as a process than as a possession.”[2]

We already have what we need, more than enough as a matter of fact, to do faith.  It’s a gift from our God of abundance.

~Pastor Cheryl Ann Griffin

[1] Wengert, Timothy, translator.  By Heart: Conversations with Luther’s Small Catechism.  Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2017. 92.

[2] Buechner, Frederick.  Beyond Words:  Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith.  New York:  HarperCollins Publishers.  2004.  109.