Think And Let Think

Genesis 12.1-3 & Malachi 3.1-2 The Good News of the Gospel for each and every single one of us, is that God meets us in the midst of our sins, not our successes. God meets us where we are, not where we ought to be. Israel’s story, both the person and the people, reminds us that God comes to us in our weariness and our woundedness. God delights in keeping up the covenant even when we fail to do our part. Ultimately we are as helpless as Israel, hobbling around with our hips out of joint. We can run away as far as we can for as long as we can, but one day God will catch up with us. God will grab hold of us. And God will tell us who we are...

Genesis 1.1-5 Imagine, one day, you receive a strange delivery. A trunk. It’s heavy and you can feel and hear all manner of objects inside tossing about as you drag it inside. You open it and discover a great cacophony of items. Inventories. Diaries. Poems. Creative writing assignments. Blueprints. Photographs. Letters. Various genealogical records. Drawings. And on top of it all is a note from your great-great grandfather. All it says is, “This is who I am.” The Bible is like that treasure trove of a trunk, given to us by God, in order that we might know more about the One in whom we live and move and have our being.

Luke 2.1-14 Christmas is not just about remembering an event in the distant past. Christmas is the celebration of a miracle in our midst. Christmas isn’t just where we come from, Christmas is who we are, here and now. Yes, it is finished, as Jesus says from the cross. Easter is the exclamation point on a sentence that begins long before the Incarnation of Christmas. But our knowledge of this power, our knowledge of salvation, our faith in the grace made flesh is Jesus in a miracle that has meaning for us in this very moment. As Martin Luther preacher in many of his own Christmas sermons, “The nativity of our Lord happens again and again everywhere the Gospel strikes at the heart of a person.” In other words, despite what the Grinch might realize by the end of his story, Christmas is actually about the presents, or at least the present of this present moment.

Titus 2.11 For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.

Luke 1.67-80 The scriptures, the sermons, the songs, they are all about getting us to catch a hint of God’s more, a glimpse of the light that shines in the darkness. Dr. Seuss got it right - Maybe Christmas, the Grinch thought, doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas… perhaps… means a little bit more.

Luke 1.46-55 The incarnation is not God’s last minute hail Mary (pun intended) to fix the world. It is, was, and always will be God’s decision to dwell with us. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. God was always going to dwell with us because God always dwells with us and God will always dwell with us. And yet, Mary's song threatens those in the positions and places of power because it calls into question their power. Long before the cross stands on the horizon, Mary’s song reminds those with ears to hear that her Son’s kingdom is not of this world. Things are getting flipped upside down. Which sounds like Good News when you’re on the bottom, but bad news when you’re on the top...

Luke 1.26-38 The One born to Mary comes to embody a peaceful way of being that transcends all of what we think or know because Jesus takes us from where we are to where we can be. Mary, in receiving the visit of Gabriel and the promise he holds, goes from nobody to somebody, blessed, fortunate, given a job to do in the story of salvation. Even in her ordinariness, her youth, her singleness, perhaps her embarrassment and consternation, she is called by God anyway, singled out to bear the savior of the world into the world. This is why Mary is often referred to as the first disciple. She is the first to be called by God to take part in the good news-ing of the world. And she is the first, when called by God in this way, to say, "Let thy will be done." Notably, she prays that prayer long before her Son does. Mary has faith. Perhaps therein lies the Good News for all of us today. We don’t need the perfect holy resume, we don’t have to come from the right family, or have the right job, or the right income.

Luke 1.5-20 The season of Advent gives us permission to rest in the silliness of salvation, in the wild and wondrous ways God chooses the strangest people and the strangest means to bring about the Good News for a world filled with bad news. God will arrive in the manger, and God will come again, whether we deserve it or not. In fact, God did and will do this because we don’t deserve it - We need it. God’s got the gift, the only thing we need is the hope.

Ephesians 1.15-23 With the world moving on from the turkey to the trimming and the trappings of Christmas, today the church pauses the frenetic pace of the season and asks the question, “Who’s in charge here?”

Revelation 21.1-5 We do what we do now in anticipation of what will come; we live according to God’s future - the new heaven and the new earth. Which means that whatever heaven is, whatever the resurrection of the body is, it will be like this life, only different...

Matthew 18.21-35 The title for this sermon is "Preaching What We Practice." Which is, of course, a flipping of practicing what we preach. For, it seems as though we imagine that’s the purpose of the church - We exist to tell people like you how you’re supposed to be living. If that’s true, if that’s the point of the church, then I should end this sermon by telling you to go out into the world and forgive those who have wronged you. Which, is not a bad idea, but it’s just not the Gospel. The Gospel is not the story of what we’re supposed to do. The Gospel is the story of what God has already done...

Luke 14.15-23 There is a strange and beautiful value in looking out at the beloved community we call church and seeing the ragtag reality behind it. In the same way, there is something downright wonderful about seeing a bunch of sinners, and observing the communion of saints within and behind them. We have a word for this. A strange word. A word not often said aloud but absolutely definitive when it comes to the church - Koinonia...

The Holy Spirit is always full of surprises, full of creativity, full of force. The Spirit goes wherever she wants, unsought, maybe even unwanted, intent on making all things new. You see, that’s what Pentecost is all about. A whole new creation. Just as the Spirit hovered over the waters in Genesis bringing forth order out of chaos, the Spirit blows through the upper room upending their orderliness for something exciting and something new. It has always been the nature of the Spirit to shake up the church, particularly when the church becomes too self-satisfied and content with the status quo...

Philippians 2.5-11 Stanley Hauerwas is known for his anger. He is angry, like Jesus in the Temple, because he finds himself surrounded by Christians for whom Jesus no longer makes any difference, Christians who move and live in the world regardless of whether Jesus rose from the dead. He, that is Hauerwas, notes that his anger stems mostly from the great number of pastors who fail to challenge their churches to trust that without God, nothing is possible. In other words, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, if Jesus is not at the center of every single thing we do as a church, then we are wasting our time.

Genesis 1.1-5 I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. There’s a reason we affirm the Creed week after week. It tells the story that gives meaning to all of our stories. For, we worship the Almighty God for whom nothing is impossible. The maker of all things, even us. And chaos, even the empty void, is no match for the One in whom we live and move and have our being. As the old hymn says: Summer and winter, and spring time and harvest, sun, moon and starts in their courses above, join with all nature in manifold witness to Thy great faithfulness, mercy, and love.

Exodus 17.1-7 We are saved not by our excellent decision making, nor by our decisive dogmatics, nor by our presumptive power. We are saved not by our degrees, or our progeny, or our bank accounts. Only God can do what we cannot. The Good News of the Gospel is that when our abilities fail us, our knowledge, minds, patience, health, career, family, sanity, there is always a source of water in the dry and parched land of our lives. In other words, when we have the fortitude to admit that all sorts of goodness has come our way even though we’re not really that good, when we can admit that we’re sinners saved by the amazing grace of God, then things start to change...

The opposite of faith isn’t doubt, it’s control. The story of the manna is also the story of learning how to be out of control. Which might be why faith is such a challenge. For, from the time we are little children, we are fed a different story - that we have to be in control, that we have to be masters of our own destiny, that we have to make a way where there is no way. In short, we think we have to be God. But God is God, and we are not. God is the one who saves us, because we cannot save ourselves. Left to our own devices we can’t see beyond what we had in Egypt. We fall prey to the myth of empire and the foolishness of our own control. But here, in the wilderness, God says to the Israelites and to all of us, "You can let go. Open up your clenched fists of self-righteousness. Stretch out your hands and receive the gift. I have what you need, and what you need is far more important than what you want..."

Exodus 14.19-31 The salvation made possible by the Good News means being saved from something, and for something. Just as the Israelites were saved from Egypt, they were also saved for a new kind of radical living witness to the power of God. Just like we have been saved from the powers of sin and death, we have also been saved for a new kind of living that calls into question the powers and principalities in this life...

The great and wondrous news from scripture is that death is not the end. Which means that whatever mess we make in this life, it is no match for the only One who can do anything about it. Just as God delivered God’s people out of their bondage to slavery in Egypt through the sacrifice of the Passover Lamb, so too God delivers us out of our bondage to death through the sacrifice of Jesus, our Passover Lamb. Perhaps that’s why its important to remember what the word Exodus means. Exodus is not a journey or a vacation. Exodus literally means, “the way out.” Therefore, whatever we can say about Passover, of it’s many strange and bewildering requirements and details, we can say this: on that night, God’s people were saved by the blood. They were given a way out. And so are we...

God calls all of us like God calls Moses. God has plans and desires and hopes for all of us, all of you. Some big, some small, but vital all. And here’s the Good News - you don’t have to be carrying saints to be part of God’s mission in the world. You don’t have to have all the right scriptures memorized, or pray the perfect prayers, or read all the important theology. If you need anything, it’s just a little imagination, a delight in wonder, and the capacity to be surprised by what God is up to, and what God might be up to with you. So kick off your shoes. Open your eyes and open your ears. The burning bush is calling for you...