Reaching the Unreasonable (Reflections on Easter 3, Year C 2022)

 

“…suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.” (Acts 9:3) 

If you ever wondered where the phrase “He saw the light” came from, I suspect it’s referencing the conversion of Saint Paul described in our First Lesson for Easter 3, Year C in the RCL (Acts 3:1-20). It actually takes more than a light from heaven to get this hard-assed guy to change his mind. After all, Paul—or Saul as he called himself then—was actually “breathing threats and murder.” Can you imagine him inhaling and exhaling his disgust and contempt for followers of Jesus? Hatred was his oxygen. It’s what kept his heart and lungs going. This dude was so into his identity as a Pharisee that he was willing to turn to violence rather than have his religious views challenged. 

Sound familiar? Did you ever hear of anyone who so identifies with their philosophical tribe that they’re ready to—oh, I don’t know, say—storm the U.S. Capital rather than accept that reality contradicts their opinion? If there’s anything I’ve learned in a quarter century in the ministry, it’s that these types don’t want to change. You just can’t make a rational argument to an irrational mind. 

Saul was a Pharisee, a legalistic, holier-than-thou-even-thought-about-being, ultra-pious Jew who just couldn’t stand the idea that God’s love and forgiveness were possible for people who thought differently from himself. He was a walking, talking monument to intolerance who would gleefully watch as an opponent was murdered by a shower of rocks just for not thinking exactly the way he thought. Ever know anyone like him? If you do, you’ll agree it might take an act of God to change their mind. 

Truth be told, I know that when I was growing up my folks had a certain obdurate streak. My mom, for instance, was a dyed-in-the-wool-while-it-was-still-on-the-sheep Missouri Synod Lutheran. She was convinced the LCMS had a lock on the gospel, and other Christians—even other types of Lutherans—ran the risk of serious error. 

I was a second-year confirmation student when our LCMS congregation got a new pastor. This pastor, the late Rev. John Meether, was part of the splinter group that had broken off from the nominal LCMS when a controversy on biblical interpretation and scholarship arose around the Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Pastor Meether had the audacity to change our liturgy by the insertion of up-tempo canticles. My mom found this tantamount to heresy. My dad was willing to overlook the change in worship style, but, having been raised a Primitive Methodist, he was aghast when, in Bible study, Pastor Meether suggested that some of the wackier miracles in the Bible might not have actually happened. Dad was taught every word in scripture was divinely inspired and literally true, and he was really uncomfortable with any new interpretation. 

My parents managed, as I recall, to choke down their discomfort, but others in the congregation weren’t so forbearing. Some, unwilling to have their comfort assaulted, called for the pastor to be fired while others rallied to his aid. The internal bickering eventually drove our family from the congregation and landed us—to my mother’s disquiet—into the arms of an LCA congregation where the warmth of the welcome overcame any issues my parents may have had about interpretation or worship style. 

The Griffiths clan may have had a positive experience coming out of this, but the LCMS saw years of controversy, the disruption of a seminary, the firing of two district presidents, and hundreds of congregations withdrawing from the denomination. Our own ELCA suffered similar wounds when a vote of the 2009 Churchwide Assembly declared LGBTQ+ individuals in committed relationships eligible to serve as Ministers of Word and Sacrament. This decision was welcome to most, but an abomination to a few who just couldn’t wrap their brains around the concept of grace and acceptance of all of God’s people. 

Like Saul, we are sometimes willing to fight to the death to preserve our world view. We hate change, and we fear challenges to our self-identity. Yet God keeps challenging that identity all the time. And God is able to make changes in us—even if it takes time. 

I don’t think the blinding light or even the voice of Jesus changed Saul. What strikes me most about the story of his conversion is the love shown by Ananias, a man who himself is rather reluctant to take a new view of things. God softens Ananias’ heart to the point where he can look at his persecutor and address him as “Brother.” I think this is what really brought Saul around. Arguments of logic and reasoned debates—even miraculous acts of God—aren’t as effective as love. 

My parents mellowed a little in their old age. Perhaps not as much as their son would’ve liked, but still, I could sense a softening of some of their harsher judgments and preconceptions. They were, after all, baptized people. In our scripture lesson baptism is the natural next step in Saul’s conversion. If you read his epistles, you’ll figure out he was still a hardass even after he was baptized. He just became a hardass for Christ. It wasn’t the act of baptism that changed him, it was the fact of being baptized that must’ve opened him up to the idea that every day is an opportunity to put away the old and be born anew. 

It just takes a little time and a bit of love.

Sharing the Wounds (Reflections on Ester 2, Year C 2022)

 

"St. Thomas" by Ruebens, (Flemish 17th Cent.)

“Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25) 

Some of the old-time folks at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia may recall my esteemed colleague, the Rev. Stephen Weisser. Pastor Steve is a pretty cool guy who served briefly as interim pastor a few years before I came on the scene. As saints and heroes go, I have to give Steve his props because he soldiered on for years as a servant of the Lord in spite of being a hemophiliac. I can’t wrap my brain around what it must be like to live in Steve’s body. Any sudden bump or scrape could start a potentially mortal bleed. It really has to suck to be so stinking fragile and to find yourself constantly at the doctor’s office or the hospital or forever having an arm or elbow or some other joint in a bandage. 

Steve has always been pretty accepting of his condition, and he even found it to be kind of a blessing when he took up the post of chaplain at Paul’s Run, one of the retirement living homes supported by and through the ELCA. If Steve suffered from aching bones, needed to take a boatload of meds every day, and lived with a constant fear of falling, he was no different from the residents of the facility he served. I’ve heard it said that old age is God’s way of making us not sorry to go in the end, and I rather believe it. The senior citizens at Paul’s Run know what it feels like to feel crappy 90% of always. In Steve Weisser they had a chaplain who—although much younger—knew exactly how they felt. When they saw Steve with his arm in a sling or using a walker for support, they knew he got it. 

In the very famous gospel passage assigned for Easter 2, Year C (John 20:19-31) we meet that troublesome disciple who just isn’t going to put trust in Jesus until he can see some wounds. Thomas, like everyone else who loved the rabbi from Nazareth, got his emotional guts kicked out when they hung Jesus on the cross. So when his buddies tell him they’ve seen Jesus alive again, he’s not going to risk the disappointment that this is all just wishful thinking. Can you blame the guy? 

What does Thomas want? He wants to see the wounds. 

Don’t we all? 

It’s pretty hard living in this world, and the older we get the harder it gets. We all have wounds both physical and emotional. Some of them have been caused by the Church itself, so it’s natural that folks don’t want to give too much weight to the things church people say. 

Years ago I was called on to officiate a funeral of a family friend who had died suddenly. I sat with her husband of almost thirty years as we planned the memorial service. I could see the distracted look in his eyes and sensed that, even though he was sitting right in front of me, he wasn’t really there. I’d had losses in my life, but nothing as dramatic as what this guy was going through. Still, trying to be a good pastor, I gave it my best shot and remarked to him that grief seems to put people in a bubble. You can look out and see what’s going on, but you’re not part of it anymore. The rest of the world seems silly and unimportant, and there’s an invisible wall separating you from everyone else. 

He said to me—rather vehemently as I recall—“They say they understand. But they don’t.” 

No. They don’t. I didn’t then, and maybe I still don’t. Unless someone else has the same wounds, they don’t understand. We have this need to see someone’s wounds, to hear them talk about their experience however painful it might be. If they can’t or won’t, we don’t want to put our trust in them. 

The word Thomas speaks for “believe” in this gospel passage is pisteuso. Grammatically in the Greek it means “I will believe” (future tense) and is negated by being preceded by ou me which means “not at all.[i]” The root word in Greek is pisteuo, which means “believe,” but carries a deeper connotation. It doesn’t mean simply to assent that something is true. It means to believe in something, to put trust in something, to have a confident, active relationship. 

When we believe in this way, we have a sense of security. Alcoholics go to AA meetings to listen to the narratives of others who have been down the same road, others whom they can trust, whose wounds they can see and identify with. Combat veterans, especially those with PTSD, find healing in the company of others who bear the same kind of physical and psychic scars they do. The wounds create trust and faith. 

It seems a crying shame to me that we are so often hung up on hiding our wounds that we can’t be healers ourselves. We let our embarrassment separate us from others, forgetting that the wounds can make us whole. 

There are lots of reasons why I love being a Christian, but one of the chief reasons is that we have a prophet and Savior who has gone hungry, been tempted, felt betrayal and abandonment, known rejection, and suffered physical pain, indignity, and incapacity. His wounds are our wounds, and by these wounds we are healed. 

God’s peace, my wounded brothers and sisters.

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[i] The phrase looks like this in the original language: ou mh pisteusw. You don’t need to know that, I just like to write in Greek.

Life is Waiting (Reflections on the Reurrection of Our Lord, 2022)

 

“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” (Luke 24:5b) 

It was a sunny Sunday late afternoon in July of 1995 and I was doing my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education or Cruel Perverted Experience depending on how you regarded this part of Lutheran seminary training) at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. I liked doing the 24-hour-long Sunday shift as there was nobody waiting at home for me in those days and the Sunday chaplain got to lead chapel services. This was particularly pleasant Sunday for Philly in July. It wasn’t too hot—the sort of ideal afternoon for an elderly gentleman from West Philly to go out for a stroll. 

One such fellow did. He collapsed during his walk, was brought to the hospital, and pronounced dead shortly thereafter. A heart attack? Who knows? As on-call chaplain I was assigned the task of notifying his wife that she must come to the hospital immediately. This was pretty tricky as non-medical personnel are forbidden to disclose medical conditions, and being dead is considered a medical condition. About a quarter of an hour later, the wife arrived and was given the sad news by the attending physician. One of the nurses and I stayed with her as she viewed her husband’s body. I was, in a way, superfluous at that moment as the kind RN really gave an enormous amount of comfort to this poor, shocked woman. I think I might’ve explained some procedural steps to her and offered a prayer of comfort before a caring neighbor drove her home. 

Since I’d been in the hospital since 8:00 AM that morning and would have to stay until noon the following day, I figured this was time for a break. It was now about 6:45 PM. I left the floor intending to stretch out on the bed in the Trauma Chaplain’s office and watch 60 Minutes. As I headed for the elevator, an elderly gentleman, the same age and bearing a remarkable resemblance to the man who had just passed, approached me. “Excuse me, Sir,” he said. “Could you tell me where the Maternity Ward is?” I directed him to the elevator and told him which floor. He flashed me an enormous grin and said, “I’m going to see my grandchild!” 

A death. A new life. That’s the Easter news. Just when we think it’s all over, God shows up with a miracle of joy. 

In Luke’s account of the resurrection story (Luke 24:1-12) some women are summoned to do the ritual thing when their loved one dies. I can only imagine their distress at having to wait 24 hours to perform this loving service because they were delayed by Mosaic Law forbidding work on the Sabbath. I’ll bet they, like everyone else, felt the sense of numbness, the confusion, and exhausted inertia that comes after a loved one has died—especially one who dies unexpectedly. It might’ve been just everything they could do to carry their emotionally drained selves up to the tombs and do the “women’s work” of anointing the dead. 

And then they find the tomb empty and are perplexed. Two men in dazzling clothes appear out of nowhere, and the women are terrified. 

Perplexed and terrified. Doesn’t that describe us about now? We look around us and see—even on Easter Sunday—empty pews. The Old Guard is getting even older and rapidly vanishing and the New Guard isn’t showing up. COVID seems to have struck us a death blow, shrinking our in-person worship attendance. And not just at Faith Lutheran. Churches all over America are watching in confusion and fear, just holding our collective breath and praying this isn’t the end of something we cherish so much. 

A recent article in Living Lutheran magazine was titled “They May Not Come Back.” Last week a bunch of pastors from our synod got together for an online meeting to discuss the issues this article presented. The author, Dwight Zschiele, opined that America’s Age of Association—the time when people regularly sought to be included and participate as a community—has come to an end. We are now in the Age of Authenticity in which people focus on discovering and expressing their true selves. Those in this new age of self-awareness have little time for organizational culture and little interest in participating in service organizations or churches. 

I think Zschiele might be right. I suspect the mid-sized neighborhood church—the type most of us grew up in—is rapidly disappearing, being replaced either by the anonymity of the mega-church or by the mini-church sheltered in storefronts, borrowed spaces, and people’s homes. 

One of my colleagues asked the key question: How do we minister to people grieving the loss of something they knew and loved so much? Pastor Wende Bleam responded by reminding us that we are the Easter People. Yes, like the women at the tomb we are confused and frightened. We may even feel fatigued and overwhelmed, but we still serve the God who brings life from death and joy from sorrow. The question is, do we believe this or just consider it an idle tale? 

We can’t be looking for the living among the dead. God didn’t resuscitate a corpse on that Easter morning. God raised Jesus to be a new presence—one that lives in everlasting glory. One that never leaves us. Can we believe that God will raise a new kind of church out of the old? Maybe the “Living Room” church is the way of the future? Maybe our Lutheran presence will be in cyberspace? Maybe in the future we’ll be setting up shop in school cafeterias or community centers? Yes, we’ll miss the way things used to be, but we may reach a whole new generation that never knew those “churchy” things. 

The women were perplexed and terrified, but Peter found the nerve to take that little step of faith, to go and check things out for himself. And he was amazed. That’s our Easter hope—to be amazed by the way our living Lord will take situations which seem to be dire and transform them into something which will blow our minds, something we never before considered and never dreamed possible. 

We gather on Easter always in the spirit of anticipation, having seen the power of what God has done in the past, and we say in hope Alleluia! Praise the Lord! 

May the joy and hope of Easter fill your heart, my friend. 

When Death is Waiting (Reflections on Maundy Thursday, 2022)

 

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. (John 13:1-2) 

I saw my sister Maryanne’s name come up on the caller ID on my cell phone. “Hey, Honey, what’s up?” I said. She shot right to the point: “Do you have any interest in seeing me while I’m still alive?” she asked. 

Maryanne’s cervical cancer had been diagnosed too late. It had metastasized to her brain, and by the time the doctors knew she had cancer, her illness was considerably advanced. Married and with a teenaged son, she had fought the illness ferociously, but there was only so much that could be done. By the time she asked me that very blunt question, it was obvious the disease would win and her time would be short. I had not seen my sister in the flesh for many years, so I flew to Tacoma for a last visit. We laughed, caught each other up on our lives, and shared a meal just as we might’ve done under other circumstances; nevertheless, it was the long silent moments of eye contact and the fierce hug as we parted that said what we didn’t want to put into words. Indeed, they said that for which words were inadequate. 

The first time I attended a Lutheran/Roman Catholic Dialogue our topic was ministry to the dying. The pastors and priests in my discussion group all agreed that we very rarely minister to the dying because our culture tells us to avoid the reality of mortality. We keep hoping for recovery, and by the time we realize death is imminent, the patient has subsided into a coma. It’s an exceptional thing to be present with someone who knows his or her death is approaching. If you knew you would die soon, how would you react? What would you most want to do? What would you choose to be your legacy? 

In the gospel appointed for Maundy Thursday, we have this extraordinary tale of Jesus’ last meal with his disciples—a group of men whom he has embraced as family. They have chosen to do the will of God, and so they are as closely yoked to Jesus as if they had been born of the same parents.[i] During this last holiday meal together, Jesus, the teacher and master, takes the role of the slave and servant and performs this menial but loving and intimate act of service. He has—to Peter’s great shock—destroyed the hierarchy of leader and follower, teacher and disciple. After all, when death is near, what do these silly designations matter? 

This Passover feast will be the last time Jesus’ friends and spiritual brothers ever have the chance to eat with him, speak with him, or embrace him. The Jesus they will see tomorrow will be beyond their reach, and the Jesus they meet on Sunday will be beyond their imagining. I have to wonder if they had any sense of foreboding about what was to come. 

But Jesus knows. He uses this tender act of humility and love to underscore two great commandments[ii] for those he is soon to leave. The first is that we forget our petty differences and distinctions and love each other in the caring and selfless way Jesus has demonstrated. The second is that we do this—share this Passover meal—in remembrance of him. 

The Maundy Thursday liturgy has traditionally included three important things: the meal, the washing of the feet, and the stripping of the altar—an act which is intended to symbolize the disgrace, indignity, pain, and loss our Lord suffered on this night. For several years at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia we’ve used this occasion to introduce young people to the Sacrament of the Altar. I, as their teacher and pastor, have washed the children’s feet as a demonstration that, in God’s eyes, the teacher is not greater than the student and the pastor is no more holy or beloved by God than is the third grader making their First Communion. But on this particular Maundy Thursday I would ask that we give focus to the rest of the story of this night, the part which plays out after the meal and the foot washing. 

Death is waiting, and not merely death but the betrayal of Judas, the denial of Peter, the fear which paralyzed other disciples, the anguish of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane, the injustice of his trial, and the cruelty to which he will be subjected. As the ornaments are removed from our chancel and the furnishings are covered in black, we are to remember that we live in a world just as cruel and brutal as the one in which Jesus lived, and yet we are still called to love this world as he did. After we leave in silence following this sacred mass, we may well go home, turn on our TVs or our computers, and learn of some new atrocity which has occurred in the war in Ukraine or on the streets of Philadelphia. Death will be waiting for us. 

How should we live? How can we love? How do we honor the Savior who shared this painful world with us?

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[i] See Mark 3:35 and Matthew 12:50

[ii] The word Maundy comes from Latin mandatum, which means command.

A Different Kind of Triumph (Reflections on Palm Sunday, Year C 2022)

 

“…the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen…” (Luke 19:37) 

I have to give a shout-out to Professor Emerson Powery, a professor of Bible Studies at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania for doing a study on the Palm Sunday gospel (Luke 19:28-40) for the Working Preacher[i] website. I’m a pretty old fashioned guy, and I just don’t like the liturgical change that turned the Sunday before Easter from Palm Sunday to Sunday of the Passion. I suspect this was an attempt to pander to lazy Christians who just don’t want to go to church on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, so they get to hear the whole Passion narrative on Palm Sunday. Okay, call me a crank, but if you’re going to celebrate Holy Week, do it right, gosh darn it! Come and reenact the story by having Holy Communion on Thursday and hearing of our Lord’s death on Friday. If you do, Easter will mean so much more to you. I’m just saying. 

Anyway, I have to thank Dr. Powery for doing a study for us Palm Sunday guys and for pointing out some rather weird details that precede this story in chapter 19 of Luke’s gospel. Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem has actually been coming since chapter 10, and he’s made it pretty clear to everyone except his twelve thick-skulled disciples what’s about to happen. Chapter 19 opens with the story of Zacchaeus, a little runt of a tax collector who is both vertically and ethically challenged. He climbs a tree so he can see Jesus pass, and Jesus calls out to him and invites himself to Zacchaeus’ home for dinner. Without issuing any words of condemnation, he forgives the little guy for ripping off the tax-payers. Zacchaeus promises to restore what he’s stolen, make liberal restitution, and not do this again. It’s a pretty cool story and so far, so good. But then Jesus tells this parable of the talents. 

You know this one. It’s the story of the man who goes away on business, leaves three of his slaves in charge of his money, and gets mad when one of them fails to invest the cash and make him a profit. But unlike the way the story is told in Matthew’s gospel, the Luke version brackets the story of the servants with the story of the ruler’s business trip. It seems this guy is some royal dude who is about to inherit power over some distant territory. The people of this territory aren’t exactly thrilled to have him as their new ruler, and they send a delegation to tell him so. After he returns home and deals with his slaves, he orders all the dissidents from his new kingdom to be brought to him so he can watch them being slaughtered. 

This story comes right before Jesus enters Jerusalem and it begs the question: just what the heck does it mean? Best I can do is say the story Jesus tells contrasts the way the rulers of this world operate and the way Jesus operates. Jesus’ entry into the capital, when you think about it, isn’t that spectacular. This is no grand procession such as they’d have following a victory over an enemy in battle. Jesus isn’t mounted on a stately war horse. In fact, he probably looks a little silly riding on a colt. There are no banners or trumpets, just a bunch of people who believe in him throwing their ragged coats in the road as a kind of poor man’s red carpet. Jesus doesn’t make a grand speech. In fact, he actually starts to cry (v. 41), which, we might agree, looks pretty wimpy. 

But: the reason he’s emotional is because he knows what a show of force is going to do to this town. He predicts that acts of violence—even violence against a cruel oppressor—are going to lead to destruction (vv.42-44). 

Then he dries his eyes and proceeds into the temple, where, outraged by the con game the ruling elite is playing on the citizens, he calls them out as a bunch of robbers[ii]. They’re basically engaged in the same kind of thievery Zacchaeus was, but they don’t seem to be inclined to repent, and they really get on the wrong side of Jesus’ temper. The shrimpy tax collector receives grace, but the entire corrupt system is condemned. Jesus forcefully ejects the sellers from the temple which, you must admit, was a pretty gutsy thing to do. Luke follows this story up by reminding us that the chief priests and their pals were on the lookout for ways to kill Jesus. 

Unlike the ruler in his parable, Jesus isn’t going to watch his opponents being slaughtered. His opponents are going to slaughter him—and he knows it. The absolute rulers of this word, be they Caesar or Vladimir Putin, think they can get away with anything. Anything, that is, except telling the truth. The weak carpenter/rabbi on the little colt can call them out on their crimes. It is ironic that true courage can only come from the powerless. 

Jesus’ triumphal entry doesn’t seem to be much of a triumph in the way the world sees triumph. Jesus enters in humility, but humility is an acknowledgement of truth, and truth gives us courage. The powerful think they have nothing to fear, and so they are basically cowards. Those who acknowledge their weakness, their sin, their brokenness, and their need for grace will receive grace and the peace that comes with it.

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[i] This is where I steal my best sermon ideas.

[ii] The basic scam was to exchange Roman coins (which had graven images on them) for temple coins. The exchange rate did not favor the purchaser. Also, animals were sold for ritual sacrifice—at a considerable mark-up above the market price. The priests were in collusion with the Roman authorities.