Think And Let Think

Some things never change. God has always used fools to shame the wise, has worked to lift up the lowly and knock down the mighty, and demonstrated strength through weakness. And, oddly enough, even though Jesus refuses the temptations of the tempter in the wilderness, by the end of the gospel he will, in fact, do the things the devil suggests. Instead of turning a boulder into a biscuit in the wilderness, Jesus will feed the 5,000 with little more than a bag of wonder bread and a handful of fish sticks. Instead of pulling off a Houdini-esque magic trick that would make even the crowds in Vegas jump to their feet, Jesus dies and then refuses to stay dead. Instead of getting caught up in all the internal machinations of Middle Eastern politics, Jesus reigns from the hard wood of the cross and then ascends to rule over the living and the dead at the right hand of the God the Father Almighty as King of kings and Lord of lords. Jesus doesn’t change from the beginning of the Gospel to the end, he merely makes

Lent is, as Stanley Hauerwas notes, a dangerous time for Christians. With talk of ashes and repentance, renewal and sin, we can soon turn the Good News of the Gospel into the bad news of God’s dangling us over the fire pit of damnation. And, despite the fact that there are, indeed, scriptures that describe God’s wrath (particularly toward those who are responsible for injustice), the strange new world of the Bible as a whole paints a rather different picture. From the beginning of the Old Testament to the end of the New, we encounter and are encountered by the God who simply refuses to give up on us, who goes to lengths beyond our comprehension to remain with us, and who is willing to die on our account because it means our salvation. In other words, God has no damns to give because God is love.

'Seeing is believing,' we say. Implicit in this kind of affirmation is the presumption that if we were given enough information, enough data, enough instruction then our faith meters would be full to the brim. Except, when it comes to the disciples, they had already seen it all and it wasn’t enough. Which means that with Jesus, it’s the opposite: Believing is seeing. And, if should we worry that we don’t have enough belief to believe, Jesus says we only need faith the size of a mustard seed and, better yet, the disciples are proof positive that Jesus never stops showing the Gospel even to those who barely believe. Because faith, even faith as fractured as a glitched icon, faith as fearful as the disciples cowering on the ground, faith as fleeting as the breeze is all we need to have a whole new way of seeing...

I will confess that I did not know how to end this sermon. All week I worried about how to wrap it all up and I fear the art and text may leave us with more questions than answers. But then I remembered a line from the theologian Chris Green. Basically, he says to preachers, if you don’t what to say, then tell the church what the text makes you want to pray - for them, for yourself, for your family and friends, for the world, for the church. I pray that all shall be saved. Maybe that’s naive or beyond the scope of the Gospel, but it is my prayer. I pray for God to move among us so that we treat all people of having sacred worth, not matter what they’ve done or left undone. I pray that God won’t give up on us, even if we give up on God. I pray that God’s power really is such that every broken thing will be mended, every tear will be wiped away, and that heaven will be crowded.

Whenever we plant seeds and harvest the fruit, whenever we break bread and share stories with our friends, whenever we are surprised by the impossible possibility of God, we practice resurrection. Maybe the Mad Farmer of Wendell Berry’s poem is just that, a person committed to the earth who has grown bewildered by the wildness of it all. Or maybe the Mad Farmer is the divine gardener who insists on sowing seeds of grace all over the place. Go with your love to the fields. Lie in the shade. Rest you head In their lap. Swear allegiance To what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and politicos Can predict the motions of your mind, Lose it. Leave it as a sign To mark the false trail, the way You didn’t go. Be like the fox Who makes more tracks than necessary, Some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.

There’s a deep pleasure in the gospel that we don’t talk about very much, and it’s the pleasure of being surrounded by others in such a safe, fun, and inviting way that we can learn to laugh. Laugh at the world, laugh at ourselves. There’s such a relief in being able to say, like Abraham and Sarah, “Oh what a fool I’ve been! I was so sure I knew how this was all going to shake out. I shaped my whole life around a bunch of assumptions and look where I wound up!” When was the last time you laughed? Like belly laughed? Like laughed so hard it hurt? Maybe you were watching a show or a comedy special and it gave you the giggles, but some of the best laughter we ever share, we share with and because of other people. Karl Barth once noted that laughter is the closest thing to the grace of God. Because when we laugh, we are sitting at that table with the Trinity. When we laugh we laugh at the wild absurdity of it all. That we exist in this world, that we have friends to share it with, that we have light and love an

For some reason the Holy Spirit is pleased to let these words stand as they are before us in the beginning of all things and the beginning of the Bible. Perhaps its because the Spirit, like any good artist, knows that color and shape and shadow and light and images reveal the truth. Importantly, the Word of God is both audible and visual. Artists, therefore, preach for the eye; for artists the medium is the message. Artists help us see the Word.

whenever we gather at this table, in this room, on a day like today, we’re certainly here in this time and place with these people, but we’re also in that room with Jesus long long ago. And we, no matter what we’ve done or left undone, no matter what happens when we leave from the table, the bread is broken and the cup is shared for us and with us. Art, as they say, imitates life. The church has been many things and will continue to be and do many things. But ultimately, the church is where the Gospel is made visible. By coming to the table, by receiving bread and up, we become the latest painting of The Last Supper.

Chances are you’ve felt interrupted a time or two this Christmas season; you had a plan and then you watched it fall apart. And chances are your life is not what you thought it would be. Various interruptions interrupted the path you prepared. And yet, God works through interruption. God shows up, usually when we least expect it, like a knock at the door, like the crying out of a little baby, like receiving good news when we’ve heard nothing but bad news. And tonight God interrupts your life and my life once again with the promise of the Gospel: A new day is breaking. Light shines in the darkness. Death is defeated. No matter what you do or leave undone, no matter how many plans come to fruition or fall apart, God refuses to being anything other than God with you.

What happens when the preacher preaches an unwritten sermon?

Whenever we come to the table for communion, we share this short and ancient creed: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. We live in the in between, right smack dab in the middle of the already but not yet. The dawn from on high has come upon us, and it will come upon us. Whatever our personal darkness may be, whatever it is we are sifting through and trying to navigate, whatever keeps us awake at night and makes us nervous for tomorrow, it will be redeemed. The desert will bloom, light will shine in the darkness, the dead will be raised. It might not be today or even tomorrow, but one day God will make all things new. Hear God’s promise at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel: “By the tender mercy of the Lord, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to whose who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” Or, as Auburn Sandstrom said, “In the deepest, blackest, night of despair and anxiety, it only takes a pinhole of light and all

Lent and Advent are the most challenging seasons of the Christian calendar because during them we receive the most difficult, demanding, bad news ever to be called good - The Cross. Twice a year our worlds are rocked, our tables are turned, demons are put to wrought, and dead dreams are brought back to life. Jesus is the reason for this season, and frankly for every season. And lest we domesticate the Lord to mere flannel graphs and perfectly manicured manger scenes, we can’t forget Lent during Advent, the shadow of the cross lingers over the manger. For, the baby born king we worship here and now grows in spirit and wisdom enough to call the powers and principalities to task. J the B might hit us with some harsh words here in December, but they can’t hold a flame to what J the C says and does. Jesus will not relent to the world. In fact, Jesus overcomes the world. The promise of Advent is that no matter what stumps us in life, no matter how many dead ends we encounter, God is going to make a way where th

Let there be no mistake, we, all of us, stand on the threshold of God’s kingdom. We never really know from moment to moment when an opportunity will come our way. It’s a mystery, but that’s where the real power lays. The Lord is always out in front of us. God’s futures approaches us, God’s future in which we will all be made new. We wait with hope by lighting whatever little lights we can, for no light is too small in this ever darkening world.

“Jesus always comes to us in the brokenness of our health, in the shipwreck of our family lives, in the loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our sins. Jesus saves us in our disasters, not from them.” - Robert Farrar Capon

I’ve joked before, though its not really a joke, about how despite the beauty of the wedding liturgy, it would be far more appropriate if the couple made this public affirmation together: “We are both broken. We have been idiots and we will be idiots again. We are both difficult to live with. We sulk and get angry and hold grudges. We both blame other people for our own mistakes, we’re not very good at compromise, and we are definitely not as nice as we think we are. And yet, we are here together hoping against hope to fight against the loneliness our failings tend to create.” Marriage isn’t easy, but it might become easier if we realize that our partners are fallible creatures just like us. Jesus says “Marriage isn’t heaven nor will there be marriage in heaven.” Not because marriage isn’t a good thing, but simply because the goodness of heaven transcends the goodness of everything we can know in our earthly lives.

A saint is simply someone whose life manages to be a crack through which God’s grace peaks through.

God uses music to help us enter the mysteries of life, death, and life after death. We sing our faith. The words and melodies of our music transcend space and time; they tunes us in to God’s frequencies in the world. Music gives us the space to experience what we believe and how we pray when we don’t know how to put those things into words - music gives us the opportunity to feel whatever it is we are feeling without feeling like we’re not allowed to feel what we feel. When Robert Jenson said the End is music, he went on to add how that particular music does not end, and so is always our beginning. One day we, with all of creation, will be transfigured into God’s music. That’s the promise of the story of the Gospel.

Baptism is the gift of God’s living water that never runs dry. And it’s not just a sign of God’s love. It’s a sign of God’s love for the ungodly. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus knows every little thing about us, the good and the not so good. Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves and Jesus still goes to the cross for us anyway. The living water seals us in the Spirit and nothing can ever take it away for, as Paul reminds us, there is nothing that can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thanks be to God.

It’s by grace, and only by grace that Jacob makes it to the well and to the banks of the Jabbok river. It’s by grace, and only by grace, that the conniving, heel-grabbing, con-artist extraordinaire receives the name that names the nation: Israel. It’s by grace, and only by grace, that this flawed and fantastic figure fathers the twelve tribes of Israel and is the many-times great-grandfather of Jesus. The church is like a well - it is the nexus where everything happens. We gather, like Jacob, in order to come to grips with what we’ve done and left undone. We are given the promise, like Jacob, that there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any more, and there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any less. The church also gives us the space, imagination, and wonder to wrestle with the Word. One of the surest signs of the Spirit at work is contention. There’s a reason Jacob is given the name Israel. Lastly, as Stanley Hauerwas notes, whatever the church is, it is at least the discovery of friends we

From his very first sermon Jesus identifies the work of the Lord with rescue, release, and relief. And the rest of the New Testament is ripe with such stories! Jesus delivers people from their captivity to demons, illness, loneliness, death, and isolation. The Holy Spirit delivers the disciples from captivity to preconceived notions and literal prisons. And, as we say in the liturgy, God delivers us from from slavery to sin and death and makes with us a new covenant by water and the Spirit. Yes, Jesus is a teacher and a healer and a preacher, but above all Jesus is a savior. Jesus saves...