Family Gets Messy (Reflections on Pentecost 10, Year C 2025)

 

“Do you think I’ve come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” (Luke 12:51)

It seems every time I open my laptop and look at the news there’s some gossipy story about Britain’s Royal Family. I have to confess, I suck that stuff down like a toddler with a juice cup. There’s something in me that just loves the castles and the scarlet uniforms and the Church of England and all that classy stuff. But I also think it must suck being part of a clan whose family business is representing the whole nation—especially when you can’t seem to get your act together and every family spat and squabble gets splashed across the world press for nitwits like me to read. I mean, I really hope the King and Harry make up and the two princely brothers can shake hands someday. But it also makes me think just how messy families are. If these pampered, palace-dwelling stiffs can’t manage to get along, there shouldn’t be any shame for the rest of us when we’re not on speaking terms with someone who swims in our gene pool.

In the Gospel lesson for Pentecost 10, Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary (Luke 12:49-56) Jesus warns us that he’s going to create some division within families. He wasn’t kidding. It’s very possible in the world of this text to be kicked out of your family if you decided you wanted to follow this rabbi from Nazareth or any of his disciples. You could even get kicked out of your community. Later, Christians who waffled and denied Jesus in order to save their jobs or their lives in the face of official Roman persecution risked not being allowed back into the church (even though the church was supposed to be teaching love and forgiveness!).

Jesus didn’t come with the purpose of screwing up family relations, but that has often been the result. Obedience to the way of Christ is always going to get under someone’s skin and, sinful, broken children that we are, relations are going to get strained.

Of course, there are good reasons for family discord, and not-so-good reasons. If you happen to be a hereditary monarch and titular head of your nation’s official church, you might take it amiss if your little brother has been hanging out with a notorious pedophile and human trafficker. After all, such behavior reflects rather poorly on both the church and the state. Most of us, however, won’t find ourselves in that sort of situation, so it’s best we examine the motives which lead us to slamming doors, blocking numbers, or banning others from our social media.

I would guess the most likely reason for a righteous exile from family life will have something to do with substance abuse. There may be times when someone’s drinking or drugging means you have to revoke their welcome for the sake of the peace of the rest of the family. Life in Christ means we’re called to forgive sin but not ignore it. I imagine it’s an incredibly painful thing to tell your child or your sibling or your parent that their addiction has cost them their place in the family and they will have to earn their way back.

Obedience to Christ calls us to be witnesses to righteousness and speak truth when we’re confronted with falsehoods. Nobody wants to cause trouble, but if hate speech and ignorance aren’t challenged, they won’t go away on their own. In the First Lesson (Jeremiah 23:23-29) the prophet calls out false prophets who claimed they’d had mystical dreams promising Judah safety and prosperity. Jeremiah knew these guys were liars and suck-ups who were telling the king what he wanted to hear. Jeremiah felt it his responsibility to preach the word of God. This didn’t work out too well for him. He was ostracized, ridiculed, and died in obscurity. But he did what he was called to do.

Not all of us are going to be Jeremiah, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Martin Luther King. Nevertheless, when your cousin Dave starts using the “N word,” or starts bashing LGBTQ+ people, or starts telling you the Rapture is coming as soon as Israel conquers all of Jerusalem, you need to set him straight. And, to borrow a quote attributed to Elie Weisel, we must never allow anyone to be humiliated in our presence.

Families are messy. So is standing up for the Gospel, but obedience to Christ carries responsibilities. Sometimes it means bringing a little fire to your world.

Be good to your family this week and keep on being a witness.

Waiting for the Burglar? (Reflections on Pentecost 9, Year C)

 

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

I will always remember the sound of my brother-in-law Bruce’s voice on the afternoon of February 17, 1989. I had just taught my last period at Stephen M. Wright Junior High in Los Angeles. I was summoned to the school office for a phone call. Bruce phoned the school (there being no cell phones in those pre-historic days) to tell me that my sister had just given birth to their first child, a little girl. The new daddy’s voice pulsated with excitement and love for his new infant daughter. “There’s a new little girl in the world,” he said. “She’s beautiful!”

A year later, when he informed me my sis was pregnant again, he didn’t sound quite so excited. In fact, he had the look of a hedge fund manager whose office was just raided by the FBI. “I don’t know,” he said. “Two babies..? I don’t know how we’ll manage.”

 They managed just fine. But that’s the thing about babies. Like a lot of things in this world, they tend to come around when you’re not expecting them or haven’t planned for them. But God provides. You just have to have a little faith.

I’m not saying there isn’t plenty to worry about these days. In the First Lesson from the RCL for Pentecost 9, Year C (Genesis 15:1-6) Abram is worrying that God won’t ever come through on his promise. He and his missus Sarai have been planning for and expecting a baby, but one just isn’t forthcoming. Abe’s getting discouraged, and his big fear is he will never achieve the desire of his heart—a son and heir. God reassures the old boy that he’ll get what he wants. It’s just not going to be right away. So Abe says, “Okay,” and the Lord reckons it to him as righteousness.

If you’re ever wondering what righteousness looks like, there it is. It’s faith. Not mere assent to a doctrine, but the living belief that it’s the Father’s good pleasure to give us what we need (although not always what we want!). Our baptism is a reminder of God’s grace and goodness. It’s the reminder that we matter to God so we can operate out of faith and not out of fear.

After all, there are really only two ways to live: by faith or by fear. Some may suggest there’s a third way—manly self-reliance. I’m not so sure that’s going to work when your company downsizes you or you or your family member gets a life-changing diagnosis. You’ll be looking to rely on something more than yourself. No. It’s pretty much faith or fear. And we have to decide how we’re going to live and how we want our children to live. Remember, there’s nothing scarier to a kid than fear in an adult.

In our Gospel lesson for Pentecost 9, Year C (Luke 12:32-40) Jesus’ admonition to live fearlessly comes with a pretty scary suggestion. Who wants to sell everything they have and give the money to the poor? Shouldn’t you be saving a little something in case of a stock market collapse or a hurricane or the zombie apocalypse? I think what the Lord is really challenging us to do here is get outside of ourselves. Fear is the result of self-preoccupation. Martin Luther always described sin as the soul curved in on itself. Jesus is urging us to pull our heads out and be part of the world around us. His suggestion about selling our possessions and giving to the poor is a recipe for faithful living. When we transfer some of the blessings God gave us to others—be it through donation of our cash or the donation of our time as volunteers—we’re making two statements of faith. First, we’re saying that we’re going to get along just fine on what’s left over. If we give ten bucks to the March of Dimes, we won’t be ten bucks short at the end of the pay period. We made a choice to trust in God for our own preservation. Second, we’ve said through our gift or volunteering that what we’ve done will matter. We believe someone’s life is going to be just that much better because we’ve reallocated some of our own blessings for the benefit of others.

Another part of this Gospel lesson is a parable Jesus teaches about servants (that could be us) staying alert for the return of their master (that could be Jesus). There are two ways I think you could look at this. You could go the “end-of-the-world-is-coming-soon” rout and start interpreting every story you hear on the news as a harbinger of the Apocalypse, the Second Coming, the End Times, or whatever. Don’t even get me started on that jawn. That’s a sure-fire way to live in fear. It’s also an exercise in heresy since all the nitwits who’ve claimed to have deciphered eschatological Biblical prophecy have really just pulled their interpretations out of their lower GI tract (metaphorically speaking, of course).

The other way to look at this is the Matthew 25 rout where Jesus tells us, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”[i] What I mean is we should always be on the lookout for meeting Jesus. He could be present in a neighbor, a family member, someone in need, a panhandler on the street, or an immigrant behind the counter at Dunkin Donuts. Any chance encounter might be an opportunity to draw closer to God by drawing closer to the ones around us.

Finally, the last part of this Gospel lesson is a weird kind of warning. Yes, if the homeowner knew what hour the thief was coming, he’d have met the guy at the window with a loaded Smith & Wesson. The problem is, we don’t know when stuff is going to happen. Like the arrival of a baby, life-changing moments occur, and we can’t always control them. So, it’s not about what happens, but about how we react. You can live in fear and sit at home all night with your Smith & Wesson on your lap just in case a burglar should try to break in, or you can go out among fellow human beings, risk loving them, and find your purpose.

Fear? Faith? Which one is it going to be?

---

[i] Matthew 25:40.

Gaza

 This post is purely the opinion of your Old Religious Guy and does not necessarily reflect the policies of the ELCA or the author’s congregation.

I haven’t written much about Gaza because I haven’t really known what to write. The October 7^th attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists was a barbaric atrocity. Answering this act of unspeakably depraved violence has put Israel and the rest of the world into one of the most challenging moral dilemmas: What sin is worse? Do you allow evil doers to go unpunished? If so, you only encourage more acts of evil. Do you risk punishing the innocent when you attack the guilty? If so, you commit an act of injustice, and risk creating a new generation of terrorists by pouring gasoline on the flames of hatred and distrust.

What does the Bible say? “If any harm follows, then you shall give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burn for burn, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.” (Exodus 21: 23-25) This was not just a word about justice, but an exhortation against taking excessive revenge. Life for a life is understandable. But so far, the Israeli Defense Force has taken over fifty Palestinian lives for each Israeli life lost on that terrible day. Many of these lives have been non-combatant women and children. We can only look upon the devastation in Gaza—the deaths, the pulverized infrastructure, the wrecked hospitals and schools, the mass displacement, the disease, the lack of sanitation and medical aid, and now the very real risk of mass starvation for two million human beings—and shake our uncomprehending heads in horror.

What has this conflict to do with the United States, and why does the US government support Israel’s unrelenting punishment of the people of Gaza? It is clearly understandable that President Biden, after the monstrous brutality of the October 7^th attack, wished to come to the aid of America’s friend. Friends support each other in times of trouble; nevertheless, friends should also hold each other to account for their own good. Do friends allow friends to drop bombs on children? Do friends provide the weapons which will kill the innocent? Do friends hide their eyes from children dying of malnutrition?

As a Christian clergyman I want to draw attention to a religious aspect of this conflict. There is a serious issue here for many American Christians, and it is an issue of heresy. Many American non-denominational Evangelicals have embraced what has come to be called Christian Zionism. Allow me to say at the outset that I would never deny the historically persecuted and marginalized Jewish people the right to their own homeland or the right to live in peace. Nevertheless, there is a belief which has gained traction in America over the last fifty years which yokes the creation of the State of Israel with supposed prophecies of the End Times and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. This belief has created a pro-Israel fanaticism among some Evangelicals.

Without getting too deep into the theological weeds, Christian Zionism has its origins in a discredited 19^th century doctrine called Dispensationalism. A British clergyman named John Nelson Darby, apparently distressed by the cognitive dissonance of miracle stories in the Bible, decided that God must have delt with humanity in different ways over different periods of history. He called these periods “dispensations.” Darby’s later adherents have become obsessed with the “Final Dispensation” and have made a cottage industry out of predicting Christ’s Second Coming and the cataclysmic end of the world—an event they’ve linked to the reemergence of Israel as a nation. Should Jewish Israelis retake East Jerusalem and replace the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount with a Jewish temple, this will be a hoped-for sign of the End Times approaching—or so Dispensationalists believe.

The Christian Zionist/Dispensationalists’ doctrine flies in the face of the Gospel (see Mark 13:32 for example). It is an eschatology cobbled together from disparate fragments of scripture. As Biblical scholarship it is laughable. As a doctrine of pastoral care and compassion it is worse than useless. As a political position it violates the separation of Church and State and encourages America’s blessing on whatever oppression the Israeli government wishes to inflict on her Palestinian neighbors.

The Roman Catholic Church does not preach Dispensationalism. This means that one out of every two Christians on the face of the earth does not hold this doctrine. The eastern Orthodox Christians do not preach Dispensationalism either, raising the percentage of non-dispensationalist Christians to at least 75% worldwide. When we consider Anglicans and Lutherans and almost all mainline Protestant denominations also reject Darby’s doctrine, we find the percentage of those who preach and teach Dispensationalism and its pro-Israel corollary is very small indeed. And yet, American Evangelicals have fallen in love with this doctrine. They also love Donald Trump.

It is my opinion that Trump, whose Sabbath observances seem to be limited to the golf course, still craves the adulation of this vocal and politically active religious minority and is perfectly willing to pander to them. The result? US foreign policy has become the prison wife of Benjamin Netanyahu. Any criticism of the Israeli government is instantly interpreted as antisemitism. The destruction of Gaza, the displacement of two million human beings, the deaths of fifty-nine thousand people, and the lack of food, drinking water, medicine, and other necessities is the end product of our government’s support of this fervent heresy.

American Christians need to be educated on solid Biblical interpretation. It is only logical to believe the myriad authors of the Christian Bible wrote to their own communities in their own time, just as all other writers do. We can only conclude that much of their original intent and meaning has been lost to antiquity. It is, however, absurd to take Hebrew scriptures referencing events in the seventh or sixth centuries BC, mash them up with extremely cryptic Greek scriptures from the end of the first century of the common era, and pretend there is some prophetic connection to modern day events. Such interpretation is disrespectful to the scriptures themselves.

Let us remember as American Christians that there are still some forty-five thousand Palestinian Christians living in the occupied West Bank and Gaza. They are Coptic, Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, and other denominations all living with the daily reality of Israeli occupation. Our duty as Christians is to love our neighbors regardless of their faith or nationality, and to seek justice and dignity for all people. Let us continue to pray for peace and do what we can to combat and correct the heretical beliefs which are making the US complicit in the misery of so many.

Hanging with Rich Folks (Reflections on Pentecost 8, Year C 2025)

 

And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kids of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” (Luke 12:15)

I’ll bet we’ve all heard stories—some of you may have lived them—of families which have fallen apart when a beloved patriarch or matriarch died and the survivors started to pull knives on one another over the family inheritance. There’s nothing like a little financial dispute to bring out the latent hatred only family members can feel for one another, is there? I guess this is the situation of the man who accosts Jesus in our Gospel lesson for Pentecost 8, Year C (Luke 12: 13-21).

I consider myself fortunate in that I never had to deal with any of that stuff with my clan even though both of my parents died intestate—probably relying on the age-old belief that should you not make any preparations for your demise you never have to die. Martin Luther would scold them for this, believing as he did:

“…since death marks a farewell from this world and all its activities, it is necessary that a man regulate his temporal good properly or as he wishes to have them ordered, lest after his death there be occasion for squabbles, quarrels, or other misunderstanding among his surviving friends. This pertains to the physical or external departure from this world and to the surrender of our possessions.”[i]

I often wonder if the cutthroat bickering over inheritance is really about the money. Maybe there’s something else going on here, you think? What does inheritance represent? The amount of love the deceased had for each of the bereaved? A rivalry?  Appreciation for time spent or services rendered? I think somewhere in all these emotional bloodbaths over estates is a brittle desire to have an ego validated. Let’s not forget, too, that someone has died. Perhaps the very loss of a loved one is so overwhelming and uncontrollable that someone just has to try and turn it into something that can be controlled. They’ll focus on funeral arrangements and inheritance, and they’ll find a villain—someone to blame—because they can’t just blame the real enemy, death itself.

Jesus is pretty clear with his message to the whining would-be heir: Suck it up and get over yourself. Money isn’t important. It’s not what life’s about. You’ve got to be rich toward God.

This, of course, begs the question: How are we rich towards God? There are a lot of riches which the Holy Spirit gives us. Love, for example. Love in all of its forms—friendship, romantic love, fellowship, and the enjoyment of God’s world and every little silly thing in it. We love the stars at night, the waves on the beach, the smiles of happy children, and our dog’s wagging tail. We can be rich in all kinds of interconnectedness. After all, who cares how expensive your casket is if no one comes to your funeral?

We can also be rich in purpose. Jesus was. Our Lord wandered around without two nickels to rub together most of his adult life, but he knew why he was here. He came to preach and to heal and to teach and to die on the cross and to rise again so we wouldn’t be afraid of death. He came to be a connection between us and the God we will never understand on this side of eternity. As he was here for us, we are called to be here for others. Whenever we embrace the idea that what we do is in some way a ministry, that we are part of the Priesthood of All Believers, we can rejoice that our life matters and has meaning and value.

We can also be rich in gratitude. What do we say in the preface to the mass every Sunday?

It is indeed right, our duty and our joy, that we should at all times and in all places give thanks and praise to you, almighty and merciful God, through our Savior Jesus Christ...[ii]

Jesus gave thanks when he had 5,000 mouths to feed and not enough food. He said a blessing over what he had. He gave thanks that he was able to teach his disciples.[iii] He gave thanks on the night in which he was betrayed, which, I think we can agree, does not always look like an occasion suited to gratitude given how the evening turned out. Yet the ability to find joy in the moment is a form of spiritual wealth.

Speaking of joy, we can also be rich in laughter. If God made creatures like us, you have to believe God has a sense of humor. "God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong."[iv] When we know Christ has already won the victory, we don’t have to be afraid. If we’re not afraid, we can be free to ridicule the stupid things which seem to threaten us. Gallows humor is still humor. Luther always said that when the Devil bothers us, we should turn our backs on him and fart.[v]

Bernie Sanders has been going around the country lately making speeches and holding rallies and saying that America has an addiction to greed. If greed is, as the Bern suggests, an addiction—and addiction is an illness—we should recognize its etiology. I suggest the addiction to material wealth stems from a poverty of the things of God.

My little congregation in Northeast Philadelphia is a vault of riches. We have the Gospel and the sacraments of the Church to remind us daily of God’s love. We don’t have a lot of cash. In fact, I often tell people this place is held together with Scotch tape and chewing gum. Nevertheless, we have faith, we have hope, and we have each other. We have music, adorable little kids, a few wacky young adults, and funky senior citizens. We have the love of Christ. It is a blessing for me each Sunday morning to be in the company of such wealthy individuals.

May God’s riches be yours this week. Thanks for stopping by!

---

[i] “A Sermon on Preparing to Die” quoted in Lull, Timothy (editor) Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings (Minneapolis, Fortress Press 1989)

[ii] Evangelical Lutheran Worship (Minneapolis, Augsburg Fortress 2006)

[iii] This is a rather snarky prayer of thanks found in Matthew 11:25.

[iv] 1 Corinthians 1:27

[v] This is from Table Talk. At least that’s what the internet tells me. I don’t know which translation or publisher.

Frustrating Prayers (Reflection on Pentecost 7, Year C 2025)

 

“So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. (Luke 11:9)

Yup. All you have to do is ask. But here’s where the Bible gives us grief: What happens when you ask and you don’t, receive, seek and don’t find, knock and the person on the other side of the door tells you to get lost? The Gospel lesson for Pentecost 7, Year C (Luke 11: 1-13) is potentially a faith-annihilating scripture for anyone who has been praying their butt off when God doesn’t seem to be listening.

The lesson starts with the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray. After all, John the Baptist taught his disciples. Now, you’d think the act of prayer wouldn’t require an instruction manual, but I guess in the world of this text folks were so used to formal prayers led by priests or rabbis that they were afraid they’d mess it up if they just tried to do it on their own. Jesus gives them some pretty good advice about what to pray for. Unfortunately, if you think about it too hard, even these simple supplications don’t look like anything God’s in a big hurry to grant.

Check it out: We’re told to ask God to make his name holy to us, but we’re seldom open to observing or remembering the sacred. We ask God to send God’s kingdom—God’s rule of righteousness, peace, and love—but we’re still living in a kingdom of our own making (which pretty much sucks!). We ask for our daily bread, but folks are still going hungry. We ask to have our sins[i] forgiven just as we forgive those indebted to us[ii]. We might be in real trouble with this one. Finally, we ask not to be put to the test when we live in a world of violence, inflation, climate change, sickness, political polarization, and a bunch of dumbasses who get on our last nerves. If God answers prayer, shouldn’t we get a break from all of this?

The clever fellows who cooked up the Revised Common Lectionary decided to stick this lesson Jesus gives us about praying for stuff we don’t seem to be getting with a continuation of last week’s story from Genesis (Genesis 18:20-32). Here Abraham is bargaining with God like a gringo tourist dickering with a Tijuana street vendor. God’s told Abraham he’s going to Sodom to open a giant can of holy wrath on the godless miscreants who live there—who, by the way, really deserve to get their asses kicked. This is an issue for Abraham since his nephew Lot and Lot’s family are residents of Sodom. He doesn’t want God to wipe out family members, so he enters into this negotiation—careful to be respectful and not piss God off—in order to save Lot. Abrahm essentially slaps God with one of the most challenging of all moral conundrums: which is the bigger sin—letting the guilty get away with their evil or punishing the innocent?

(We know which choice the Israeli government is making today. They’d happily drop bombs and kill 99 innocent Gazan civilians if it meant killing one Hamas terrorist. I think the Bible suggests just the opposite. But I digress.)

Spoiler alert: Abraham’s prayer for mercy goes unanswered. God can’t seem to find ten righteous people in all of Sodom, so he lets Lot and family escape and then nukes the whole town.[iii] I think Abraham showed himself to be a pretty good guy here, praying for mercy for people who didn’t deserve it. Nevertheless, this was an unanswered prayer. Perhaps the effect the prayer had on the people of Sodom was less important in God’s eyes than the effect it had on Abraham for praying it. Maybe the crucial thing was the very act of prayer, the attempt to connect with God and the compassion needed to reach out for others. Perhaps this is what God really wanted. This makes me wonder if, perhaps, God really did answer Abraham’s prayer, just not in the way Abraham expected it.

All of this gets me thinking about my own prayer life. Yeah, I do all the liturgical prayers on Sunday, and I pray at church council meetings and when I make pastoral care calls. Still, I find I might be neglecting my own personal prayer time. When I do pray, it’s usually because I need to ask God for a personal favor or I need to make intercession for somebody. Sometimes I ask for guidance, wisdom, and advice which doesn’t look like it’s forthcoming. I don’t often stop and thank God for being God or ask that I might be open to seeing the holy around me.

There’s this one intercessory prayer I shoot up almost every day on my drive to work. I drive past the Sacred Heart Cemetery in Mt. Holly, New Jersey where, some years ago, I laid to rest two sisters who were brutally murdered. When I spoke with their parents before their funeral and felt the overwhelming, crushing nature of their grief, I knew there was absolutely nothing I would ever say that would ease their pain or take away the torment of their loss. I pray for those two bereaved people every time I pass that cemetery. I pray God will grant them peace—a peace I know they may never feel. Yet I pray for it anyway. I keep wondering if these prayers of mine are changing me even if they’re not changing circumstances.

The only thing Jesus tells us the Father will give is the Holy Spirit, and maybe that’s what we really need after all. The world will not change unless we change. So, we keep on praying and asking in faith believing—in the immortal words of Mick Jagger—you can’t always get what you want, but if you try some time, you might find you get what you need.

Want to feel the Holy Spirit? Keep praying.

I will send up a few prayers for YOU, Dear Reader, and I hope you come and visit me again.

 

---

[i] The Greek here is hamartias emon which means our “missing the mark” or “falling short.” It doesn’t necessarily mean our willful disobedience to God’s law. It means our nature of being total screw-ups.

[ii] The Greek here is panti opheilanti hemin. It is translated literally in the New Revised Standard Version as “everyone indebted to us.” This means those who owe us money are to have their debts forgiven just as we are to forgive those who may have wronged us. Trough ask, don’t you think?

[iii] See Genesis 19: 24. Actually, things didn’t work out that well for Lot and Company either. His wife was turned to a pillar of salt. As for the rest of the story (Genesis 19:30-37) you really don’t want to know. Trust me.

Lessons in Hospitality (Reflections on Pentecost 6, Year C 2025)

 

“Let me bring a little bread, that you may refresh yourselves—since you have come to your servant.” (Genesis 18:5)

In our first weeks as new students at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia[i] my classmates and I were instructed to expose ourselves to different styles of worship. Our field ed supervisor encouraged us to consider the wild possibility that there are other Christians out there besides Lutherans, and that, by visiting churches of other denominations, we might actually learn a little something about how to be the Church. Subsequently, a bunch of us found our way down Germantown Avenue to the New Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

As you can imagine, when a bunch of white folks wander into an AME church, no matter how large the congregation might be (and New Bethel was a very big congregation), the regulars know right away that you’re strangers. A very polite usher escorted us to our seats and then informed the senior pastor of our presence. The pastor greeted us from the pulpit. When he found out we were seminarians, he was delighted. When he found out we were from the Lutheran seminary, the seminary which had welcomed African American clergy of different denominations to study part-time through evening classes, he invited us to stay after service for a chicken dinner—an offer we couldn’t refuse. It’s pretty nice to feel welcomed and included.

Hospitality and welcome are the themes which run through the lessons in the Revised Common Lectionary for Pentecost 6, Year C this year. In the Gospel (Luke 10:38-42) Jesus is paying a little house call on the sisters Martha and Mary. Both ladies welcome him and his disciples, but Martha heads to the kitchen to prepare something for Jesus and his buddies to eat, while Mary keeps Jesus and the other guys company. Both are good hostesses, even if Martha gets a bit bent out of shape because she’s doing the work while Mary sits around. Jesus gently scolds Martha for picking on her sis. After all, haven’t we all been to a dinner party where the hostess was so busy preparing for her guests that she’s had no time to enjoy their company? That kind of defeats the purpose of having guests, don’t you think?

What really sticks out to me when I read these lessons now is the First Lesson from Genesis 18: 1-10. This is one of those weird stories from the Hebrew scriptures which, because we’re separated from the text by centuries, language, and culture, tends to leave us asking, “What the freak does that mean?” Who are these three mysterious dudes who greet Abraham at the oaks of Mamre? Why does Abe make such a fuss over them? Are they angels? The Holy Trinity? God and some personal assistants? How does he recognize them?

The Bible doesn’t always give us the answers, but I think the questions are secondary to the point. Whether these three guys were God or angels or whatever, Abraham goes all-out to welcome them. He promised little, but he provided much more. (Well, actually, he had Sarah and his servant provide. They were the “Marthas” in this story while Abraham was the “Mary”—keeping his guests company.) This was only the right and decent thing to do. In a wild and inhospitable environment, it’s a good idea to welcome strangers because you never know if someday you’re going to need help yourself.

This story is contrasted with the less-than-gracious welcome the angels get when they visit Sodom down the road in chapter 19. Abraham’s nephew Lot lives there. He isn’t a bad host, but the rest of the gang in town aren’t particularly friendly. This is one of the stories from the Bible we don’t teach in Sunday school as it’s pretty PG-13. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds with the nasty details but suffice it to say God isn’t happy with the shameful attitude the Sodom folks have towards the newcomers or the way they dis Lot because he is a foreigner himself.

This story form Genesis speaks to me today because of the current anti-immigrant “round ‘em up and ship ‘em out” attitude towards immigrants in the United States. I read this week the statement by the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Miami, Thomas Wenski concerning the detention facility Homeland Security has constructed in the Florida Everglades known as Alligator Alcatraz. This is a facility designed with the purpose of detaining up to 5,000 individuals whose only crime may be that they entered this country illegally. The structures are overcrowded tents which provide little protection from the intense heat and mosquitoes and no protection at all from flooding rains or hurricanes. The facility opened on the third of this month and there have already been complaints about insufficient food, limited access to water, and restrictions against visiting clergy.

Archbishop Wenski noted on the archdiocese’s website:

"We have a detention center in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by snakes, alligators, mosquitoes, and more. It is an inhumane situation…It is insulting that those who should know better are mocking the misery of their brothers and sisters. We are all brothers and sisters, and no one should ridicule the suffering of other people. Even the name 'Alligator Alcatraz' is a cruel mockery of the pain those people endure."[ii]

I can’t say I have the answer to America’s immigration problem, but I know indiscriminately arresting and incarcerating any or all undocumented individuals—especially in dangerous or unhealthy detention centers—is not the answer. I applaud Archbishop Wenski for speaking out on behalf of the Christian faith. Americans may not treat every undocumented person with the effusive hospitality with which Abraham greeted the strangers at the oaks of Mamre, but neither should we treat fellow human beings in the way the men of Sodom treated Lot’s visitors. We are called to be like Abraham and see the divinity in all people.

Jesus said. “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me.” [iii] Martha shared what she had when thirteen hungry guests showed up at her door. Mary gave them her loving attention. Abraham recognized in the wanderers the very presence of the Lord God. I won’t suggest that every American who reads these words of mine should rush out and protest an ICE raid, but I do believe that, just like Sodom, the United States will be punished in some way should these current policies continue. To dehumanize others cannot possibly be to our benefit.

As Christians wea re called to be aware. We are called to hold others to account. And we are called to love our neighbor as ourselves when, like the Samaritan[iv], we show them mercy.

 

---

[i] It’s now the Philadelphia Campus of the United Lutheran Seminary.

[ii] See https://www.miamiarch.org/CatholicDiocese.php?op=Article_archdiocese-of-miami-the-broken-immigration-system-is-hurting-people

[iii] Matthew 25:35.

[iv] Luke 10:25-37

Rejoice or Mourn? Both! (Reflections on Pentecost 4, Year C and Independence Day 2025)

 Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn for her. (Isaiah 66:10)

I always love the Fourth of July. For me, fireworks never get old. They’re kind of like chocolate chip cookies. No matter how often I experience them, they always make me smile. And, like everybody else, I like a good celebration. As a kid, the Fourth was a time to eat hotdogs and gather with the neighborhood kids after dark when Mr. Gallagher, our neighbor, set off an impressive and highly illegal pyrotechnic display in the street in front of his house. Today I look at the Fourth a bit differently.

Like the writer of Third Isaiah above, I rejoice for my country even as I mourn for her. I feel deeply for America on her birthday. I guess I rejoice we’ve made this experiment in democratic government work for 249 years. I rejoice that we’ve always had the ability to course correct. Those brave 18^th century gentlemen who fought our war of Revolution won independence but, when all the dust settled, found a new nation deeply in debt with farms and towns ruined and a diverse population which knew what form of government it didn’t want but wasn’t quite sure about the form it did want. Nevertheless, they rolled up their ragged sleeves and created a nation. Our ancestors formed an egalitarian government, established civil rights, abolished slavery (at a pretty high and bloody cost), built cities and infrastructure, created social safety nets, defeated fascism in Europe, and generously exported the produce of our God-given prosperity to people around the world.

And, of course, we’ve made a boatload of mistakes along the way. Some of them rather recently in my view.

I mourn when I consider wars we’ve engaged in which could and should have been avoided. I mourn for our veterans and pray they receive the care they deserve. I grieve to think of the vast and growing income inequality in our nation. I shake my uncomprehending head at the persistence of gun violence. I fret over our broken immigration system and our current epidemic of xenophobia. I sigh helplessly for those affected by climate disasters and I worry how we can continue to rebuild when floods, hurricanes, tornados and wildfires seem so relentless and so many in government seem so unconcerned about the causes of these tragedies.

But I really want to find reasons to celebrate. I feel like those to whom Third Isaiah wrote. Those Judean exiles—hostages really—whom the Persians allowed to return to their ancestral land. They must’ve felt like throwing a party when the captivity they’d known all their lives ended and they could migrate back to the place their parents told them was the homeland God himself had prepared for them. But when they got there, they saw there wasn’t too much to rejoice about. Everything was in ruins, and nothing was what they had been told to expect.

And yet, God was still God. “You shall see,” the prophet told them, “and your heart shall rejoice; your bodies shall flourish like the grass; and it shall be known that the hand of the Lord is with his servants…”

The hand of the Lord is with his servants. Perhaps they were reminded that God had called God’s people to be servants. Perhaps they remembered the word of the Lord to their ancestor Abraham:

I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.[i]

Perhaps, in their great disappointment they remembered God’s faithfulness and began to celebrate anew. They were people with a purpose. They might’ve been knocked down, but they could rebuild, reorganize, and reimagine themselves. All they needed was faith in God and belief that they would be blessed so they could be a blessing to all the families of the earth.

When Jesus sent out his seventy-member advance team (our Gospel lesson in the RCL: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20), he sent them out on faith. They didn’t have a bankroll or a credit card. He knew—and they knew too—that the world was a dangerous place. They were sent out like lambs in the midst of wolves. Nevertheless, they went forward believing that God was with them. They went ahead trusting in both God’s providence and their mission as servants. They were commissioned by Jesus to bring tidings of peace to the poor and healing to the sick. They did what was asked of them, and they returned with joy.

As we observe this 249^th anniversary of America’s independence, how shall we go forward? I’d like to suggest a slight reimagining of the American Dream. So far, that dream has been to own a home and be financially better off than the previous generation. Maybe we need to think a little more like servants. Maybe we should dream that everyone in America has a roof over their heads, and those roofs will be secure from the ravages of a (currently) ungovernable nature. Everyone will have enough to eat. Everyone will be safe on the streets where they live. All the sick and elderly will have the care they need and deserve, and our nation will continue to work for peace and prosperity for all the families of the earth.

Perhaps our national prayer should be the words of that lovely song:

America, America! May God thy gold refine; Til all success be nobleness and every gain divine.

We may feel like sheep among wolves, but God is still on the throne, our nation and our democracy still exist, and our command from Christ to serve is still in force. There is still reason to celebrate.

I hope you enjoy the hot dogs and fireworks. Don’t lose hope. Please come see me again!

 

---

[i] Genesis 12:2-3

God Loves Weirdos (Reflections on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul 2025)

 

He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:17)

Have you ever heard of the Ecumenical Catholic Church? Probably not. It only has somewhere between 2,000 – 3,000 members across the globe. It’s just like the Roman Catholic Church in doctrine and liturgy, but it’s open to communing divorced folks and welcoming same-gender couples. Pretty cool, huh? This tiny but worldwide denomination got its start in California back in 1987 when an eccentric PhD named Mark Shirilau decided that gay people and divorced people might like to go to church without being made to feel like they deserved to roast on a spit in purgatory for just being who they are.

Mark was a friend of mine. We went to the same Lutheran church in Long Beach, and I think I can attest without fear of contradiction that Mark was weird. He was off the wall crazy brilliant, but spoke with a shrill, high-pitched voice and was obsessed (or so it seemed) with historic Christian ritual. He would fume that such classical liturgics were disappointingly lacking in our little suburban congregation, so he fled to the greater grandeur of the Episcopal Church, and, not satisfied there, founded his very own denomination.

I could cite many examples of Mark’s peculiarities (such as his tendency to date correspondence by the festival of the Catholic saint’s feast appointed for that day or his copious use of Latin) but one incident seems to sum him up best. While I rode shotgun for Mark as he sponsored our church youth group on a road trip to a Lutheran Youth gathering in New Orleans, I heard him singing behind the wheel as we rode through the night. Not pop songs or even hymns. He was chanting the canticles from the service of Holy Communion. You know: “In peace let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy.” Who does that? Obviously, the guy who started his own denomination in his house and grew it to a three-thousand-member church with congregations in the United States, Italy, Latin America, and Kenya. A guy who, like Saint Paul, financed his ministry through his own secular work and never took a dime in pay for his ministry[i].

Another oddball I’ve admired but never met is Nadia Bolz-Weber, the ELCA’s first ordained Pastor of Public Proclamation. Nadia, with several published books and frequent media appearances to her credit, is something of a celeb in ecclesiastic circles. She no longer pastors the alternative congregation House for All Sinners and Saints she founded in an Episcopal church’s parish hall in Denver, but preaches in women’s prisons, guest preaches around the country and the globe, and is currently holding a series of events called Red State Revivals, song and preaching events in historically conservative districts. The purpose of these gatherings is, as she states on her webpage:

I want to be revived from despair and from self-righteousness. I want us to remind each other of what’s most important and least popular right now. Namely: humility, curiosity, mercy and hope – the things Jesus of Nazareth yammered on about and that were as difficult to embrace then as they are now[ii].

Nadia’s the last person you might imagine as a Lutheran pastor. She was raised in a conservative, fundamentalist household. She wandered away from the faith of her childhood at a pretty early age, started getting tattoos at age 17, worked as a stand-up comedian, and is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict with a tendency toward depression. She found herself tugged back to the faith when she met Matt Weber, at the time an ELCA seminarian. When Nadia was asked to preach a barroom eulogy for a fellow comic who’d committed suicide, she realized that the mourners who gathered were her kind of people—and a potential congregation. House For All was founded as a haven for those who love God but might not love the church—LGBTQ+ folk, recovering addicts, the depressed, and anyone who feels outside of society.

God loves weird people. And God knows how to use them.

This Sunday (June 29, 2025) is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, two of the weirder misfits from any religion. Peter is just a working slob. He’s impulsive. He’s sometime frightened. He’s felt himself deeply unworthy of being a follower of Jesus. At times he was stubbornly conservative and block-headed in his thinking. According to Peter, Messiahs aren’t supposed to get crucified, rabbis aren’t supposed to lower themselves to wash their students’ feet, and non-Jews are to be avoided if you can help it. It’s safe to say Peter never understood his buddy Jesus while Jesus was with him. But then Peter got slammed by the Holy Spirit. The peasant fisherman started shooting his mouth off again, but this time proclaiming the grace and love of God through Jesus Christ.

Paul is also a wacky choice for sainthood. This guy hated the Jesus people. He hated them so much he wanted to see them get their skulls crushed by rocks at a public stoning rather than hear a doctrine he didn’t agree with. But God knew this uber pious Hebrew so full of hate and violence could be used to proclaim love and reconciliation. I don’t think it was Paul’s blinding that brought him around. I think it was the love and forgiveness shown him by the Christians who loved him even when he hated them. Paul found the power to preach to the ones who would’ve been outcasts, to Gentiles. He found the poetry to write the great love poem of 1 Corinthians 13. He stayed cranky and sometime irascible through much of his ministry, but he found the compassion to be all things to all people for the sake of the Gospel.

Both Peter and Paul would give their lives for Christ. I certainly won’t ask you, dear Reader, to die for the faith, but I will remind you that the word “martyr” literally translates as “witness.” God loves you in your weirdness, in your brokenness, in your occasional anger and depression, and in your fear. God may be using you right now and you don’t even know it. So embrace that love and acceptance God is splashing all over you, you weirdo. Look for the way of Jesus in the funky folks God has put in your life and BE Jesus for them.

Feed those sheep. And come and see me again.

---

[i] Sadly, Mark passed Away in January of 2014 while in Italy. I used to tease him about living in the church of the 14^th Century, but I have come to believe he was ahead of his time. A gay man, he championed same-gender marriage back in the 1980’s and, as an engineer, worked on developing sustainable, eco-friendly energy.

[ii] Check out Nadia’s website at https://nadiabolzweber.com/

Demons of Revenge (Reflections on Pentecost 2, Year C 2025)

 

Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. (Luke 8:30)

This is pretty creepy. At least I always get the creeps just a little when I read the story of the Gerasene demoniac, the Gospel reading for Pentecost 2, Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary (Luke 8: 26-39). Here’s a crazy guy with superhuman strength running around naked in a graveyard. The Bible tells us he’s possessed by a whole legion of demons, and in the world of the New Testament a demon[i] was always evil. Folks believed demons could take control of human bodies and cause mental illness or disease. They might even take control of nature and cause natural disasters. I know I’d be afraid of running into a guy full of evil spirits. Wouldn’t you? He’s like something out of a horror movie. Yikes!

I confess when I was a kid I rather enjoyed old horror movies. I even taught a film appreciation class once and discussed the evolution of the genre. I noted how the old gothic horror flicks started to disappear after World War II. Dracula and the wolfman just couldn’t compete with the real, demonic horror of bloody combat, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb. The real world had become much scarier than anything Hollywood could put on film—and it still is.

The demons still possess us. Just look at what’s happening in Israel and Gaza (and now a potential war with Iran). The evil savagery of the October 7^th attack and destruction and loss of fifty thousand lives in Gaza, with the potential every day of more dead through famine and disease should fill all conscientious people with terror. We are seeing the real demons of addiction running unchained. The obsessive desire for revenge is just as addictive as alcohol or cocaine.

As we watch these horrors, it’s certainly tempting to fall victim to our own demons of despair and complacency. These are demons which really could use an exorcism. Nothing could be further from the mind of Christ than the absence of hope. The Gospel story is really about the ability to change, to banish the desire for evil, and to come to the feet of Jesus in our right minds.

I think a significant detail of this Bible story is that this tormented creature dwells in the tombs—a detail Luke emphasizes. The possessed Gerasene is in love with the dead and dwells with the morbid pain of loss. It’s like someone who has been wronged or who has survived a trauma but hasn’t really survived it because the fact of past victimhood still defines that person’s life. I had a friend in seminary who talked endlessly about AA and her alcohol recovery. She may not have been drinking, but the demon of her past addiction was as much a part of her current identity as her nights in the bars had been.

I pray for the day when the living memory of the Holocaust and the Nakba will give way to the reality of the current situation in the Holy Land. Could it be possible that young leaders will emerge who will say, “Let’s get beyond avenging past injustices. We are living with occupation and oppression and responding with terrorism. Terrorism only brings about retaliation and more oppression, and that only brings about more acts of terrorism. Enough! Let’s get out of the tombs and end the horror movie.”

There’s a legion of demons out there. There’s addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, you name it. But there’s also an addiction to revenge and the desire to control or to be right. The demons in the Gospel story beg Jesus not to send them into the abyss. They would rather enter the swine and send themselves into the abyss—an arrogant desire for control which is just as self-destructive.

What demons keep us in the land of the dead? Holding grudges? Holding on to outmoded ideas? Never admitting that we could be wrong or that someone else might have a valid point of view? Victimization or self-righteousness can become our identity. We can’t accept that our country or our political party or our religious denomination might be off track. When we get caught in these places there’s never any room for Jesus. Have you ever tried to share your faith with someone who is bathing in their own sense of indignation?

But Jesus is the only way out. Jesus leads with love, and love takes away the fear. When the fear is gone, there’s room for hope. The beauty of this Gospel story is, with the demons gone, the man is restored to his community. Sometimes we have to let some pigs die in order to be reconciled with the world.

 

[i] In case you’re interested (and why wouldn’t you be?) the Greek for this is daimaon. It once referred to any number of spirit beings who could be good or bad, but by the intertestamental period it was almost ubiquitously understood that a demon was Satan’s little helper.

Remembering the Innocent (Reflections on Christmas 1, Year A)

“Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’” (Matthew 2:13)

After all the joy and festivity of Christmas, the Revised Common Lectionary leads us out of the calendar year with this disturbing story of jealousy, oppression, and mass murder (Matthew 2:13-23). I’m not sure I really blame the folks who decide to sleep in on Christmas 1. This story, known as The Massacre of the Innocents, is really a buzz kill, isn’t it? After “Peace on earth, good will to men,” we end the year getting reminded that this world we live in is still a pretty sick place.

Now, should it make you feel any better, I could tell you that the story of King Herod murdering all these little boys under age 2 in order to wipe out Jesus as his competition is believed by many historians to be apocryphal. Of course, it’s not that hard to believe that a ruler might use his governmental power to destroy a rival, is it? And we know historically that Herod the Great had no trouble murdering members of his own family in order to secure his throne. It’s not very hard to believe that he’d want Jesus dead, too.

The Gospel isn’t going to let us off easy with just a message of Joy to the World. Christmas 1 reminds us that suffering still abounds, and innocent children are still victims. This past year alone 100 children have been victims of gun violence in the city of Philadelphia. Between 2009 and 2018 there have been over 180 shootings in K-12 schools in the United States, resulting in 356 youngsters killed or wounded, and countless others scarred by the experience. Over 400,000 children are in foster care in this country. At this moment there are still over 700 children separated from their parents and detained at the US border. 35 million children are living in the world as refugees from violence, war, persecution, and starvation.

Our Gospel lesson should remind us of these suffering innocents because the Most Innocent, was, according to this story, a refugee from violence and oppression himself.

It’s kind of hard to know how to preach on a passage like this, so I’ll defer to the great Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who penned this poem (which later became a Christmas carol) during the bleak days of the Civil War:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I hung my head:

"There is no peace on earth," I said

"For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth good-will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Then ringing, singing on its way

The world revolved from night to day--

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Our Gospel lesson tells us two things: the world is sick, but God is still active in healing it. God desires wellness in our land, in our world, and in ourselves. It’s appropriate that we at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia observe a healing liturgy on this last Sunday of the year. As the sands ebb out on 2019, we can come before God with all that troubles us and all that troubles God. We can pray for deliverance, but we can also recount how we, like the Holy Family, have been delivered and rescued. We can take that deliverance as a source of strength as we go forward to do our part—however small that may seem—for the healing of the world.

The poet said, “God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.” Take heart. Have hope. Go on.

May God give you courage and peace in the New Year.