Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
September 1, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Everything I ever needed to know, I learned at the dinner table: Always start by saying thanks to God – good advice for meals and daily life. Say please a lot, too. Wait ‘til everyone has their food before you eat – ponder that as a life lesson. Don’t take more than you need. Remember the people who pick the strawberries on your table. Share the work – the cook doesn’t do the dishes.

It gets boring if you only talk about the weather, so talk about what really matters.

As a kid I learned lots about politics and religion at the table. Apparently, my family didn’t know you weren’t supposed to talk about those things. Instead, at family meals we learned how to have civil conversations about tough topics. We learned it was important to make a clear argument grounded in facts and crucial to keep an open mind. We learned to ask good questions, to listen more than we spoke.

I’m so grateful for all the manners and life lessons I’ve learned at the dinner table and now try to pass on to my own kids.

Yet I didn’t just learn etiquette and pearls of wisdom. I’ve been shaped as a person by time around the family table – formed by the community, laughter, compassion and wisdom that happens there.

My parents lectured plenty, but they also worked to live out the advice they gave us at the dinner table. My dad showed us that family is a priority by trying to be home in time for supper even as a busy lawyer. My mom welcomed all sorts of interesting characters to our dinner table and so, modeled what it is to be inclusive. Their actions, much more than their words, are what made dinners so formative.

Meals have been formative for the followers of Jesus since Jesus walked the earth 2000 year ago. Then and now, Jesus has used meals to both teach and shape us. So, whether our childhood or cur- rent dinner tables feel life-giving, conflicted or lonely, we all share in a large table fellowship of love and forgiveness.

The Gospels record a number of instances of Jesus teaching during meals. And it’d be easy to think that he’s just imparting wisdom as he teaches. That’s especially true with our reading for today. We often hear this passage as some good advice about how to be humble and not get embarrassed by choosing too lofty a seat, as well as some wise words and the importance of inclusion.

Yet there’s so much more happening here. Jesus doesn’t just lecture and advise. He also lives out everything that he teaches at meals.

So, in our Gospel passage today, when Jesus describes someone choosing the lower place who’s then lifted up, and when he says, “Those who humble themselves will be exalted”, he’s describing the path of his own life.

Jesus chose to leave his high place of honor as part of God’s very self in order to take on human form and experience all our lowliness and humiliations.

As the letter to the Philippians puts it, Jesus was in the very form of God yet did not consider equality with God something to be grasped. Instead, he humbled himself and took on human form, even undergoing death. Jesus willingly took a lower place to come and join us where we are – to experience all the suffering and struggle we go through.

Then God raised him up, exalted him, and gave him a place of honor at God’s right hand. Jesus was raised not for his own glory but to lift up all of humanity – to draw us all into the rich, abundant life God intends for us to know.

Jesus has shared our sufferings and so now we share in his resurrected new life. Jesus embodies his wisdom about humility and exultation, for our sake.

Similarly, when Jesus tells us to invite those who seem unworthy, those who have no way to reciprocate and nothing to offer, he is talking about what he does. Jesus calls us all to his table although we can never be worthy of the invitation, although we can do nothing to repay his generous welcome of us.

Jesus doesn’t just dispense advice at the dinner table, which is good news for us – because his life lessons are pretty demanding and hard to follow.

Thankfully, by his actions, Jesus shapes us into people who can live out the wisdom he gives us. By entering our struggle and raising us up, Jesus makes it possible for us to live with humility, to let go of posturing, pride and vainglory. When we know we are honored and valued by God we don’t have to try to attain status on our own.

In the same way, being welcomed by Jesus to his table is what makes it possible for us to open our tables to others, to include everyone at the feast. Jesus embodies the essential wisdom he shares. He lives it out for our sake.

Jesus gathers us at his table where we are taught and blessed, shaped and formed. Here we are given everything we need. As Jesus lives out the wisdom, compassion and generosity of God for us, for you, here we are made into God’s people.

So, come and eat. And notice, when it’s time for the meal we’ll start, as Jesus did, by saying, thanks. Everything you need is given and lived here for you.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
August 25, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Imagine what it’s like for the woman in our Gospel reading today. For the first time in 18 years she can stand up straight, move freely, raise her head to the sun. Imagine how her perspective changes as well. For 18 years, her eyes have been cast down at the ground. Once she’s raised up, her gaze is lifted up as well. She can take in the whole horizon. She can look a loved one in the eye. The whole world is now in her line of sight. She can see so many reasons to give thanks and praise to God.

Yet, just as she’s being lifted up and her vision expanded, a synagogue leader’s eyes are narrowing in anger and judgment. When the leader sees this woman healed on the Sabbath, he becomes indignant. We’re told “he kept saying to the crowd” that she is wrong to seek healing on the Sabbath.

Rather than rejoicing that she is lifted up, he criticizes her telling her she should have waited to seek healing. Just as she stands tall for the first time in 18 years, he seeks to take her back down a notch.

This angers Jesus. Jesus rebukes the leader and those he’s stirred up. He turns their argument a- bout the Sabbath on its head, and we’re told “all his opponents were put to shame.” Jesus lifts the woman up and tears his opponents down.

This has all the makings of a blockbuster movie – a little guy lifted up by a powerful hero, the bad guys who interfere, the happy ending when the good guys prevail. It sounds like an inspiring story from the Olympics – a humble person wins the attention of a heroic coach, overcomes great odds, and her opponents are put to shame. It’s tempting to read the news of our day into this story. A woman is being oppressed and Jesus stands with her against all of them. It sounds like a story with clear good guys and bad guys.

We’re often tempted to use stories like this to view ourselves as the winners and our opponents as the losers – to think we are on the side of helping people and our opponents are angry hypocrites who should be convicted by Jesus, who should be ashamed of themselves.

Yet this story is not about who is good and who is bad. It’s about how Jesus raises up and tears down to set us all free.

Jesus’ ministry is all about lifting up the lowly and humbling the proud. Even before Jesus was born, his mother Mary sang in her Magnificat that this is what Jesus would do. Yet, this raising up and bringing down is not to make winners and losers, to reward and punish. Jesus lifts up and humbles in order to free us all from everything that binds us, everything that prevents us from seeing clearly.

The leader of the synagogue needs freeing and healing as much as the woman who is bent over. It’s important to be clear: His problem is not that he was trying to keep the law. Christians have often used this story to say, “Jews are too legalistic. They got it wrong and now we’ve got it right.”  That isn’t what is going on here.

The problem isn’t that this man wanted to protect the Sabbath. Jesus knows that the Sabbath day of rest is a wonderful gift that should be honored and protected. Sabbath allows all of creation to rest, to experience freedom from the demands of work. So, protecting the Sabbath isn’t the issue and it isn’t actually what the guy is doing here.

The problem is this synagogue leader is unable to see clearly. Like the woman, his vision is narrowed by his condition. He can’t see the person in front of him as a “daughter of Abraham”, a sister in faith. He can’t see that she desperately needs the rest and freedom that Sabbath offers. He’s so bound by judgment and righteous indignation that he can’t recognize a reason to rejoice when Jesus sets the woman free. He needs to be taken down a notch so that his gaze can be turned to his neighbors around him. He needs the obstacles in his way torn down. He needs to be healed just as much as the woman does. For him, healing requires being brought down. For the woman, it requires being lifted up. At times each of us needs to be raised up; at times each of us needs to be humbled.

In a world that trains us to judge good and bad and to look for winners and losers, we all need healing. We all need our perspective changed so that we will see one another not as good or bad but as beloved children of God. We need the obstacles to our sight named and identified so that we all can be set free.

This is what God does for us in worship. In worship we are convicted and forgiven. We are hum- bled and lifted up. Then God sends us out into the world into difficult conversations, into situations that will make us uncomfortable, into opportunities to develop mutual relationships with others. God is at work in all of this to heal us, to heal the whole creation.

Who do you struggle to see as beloved of God?
Where does indignation work to blind and constrict you?
In what ways do you need to be lifted up today?

God is here today to free you, to free us all.

Let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost
August 18, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Ckick here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

What really matters to you? What are your priorities? Cleaning is never a top priority for me and certainly not now. I think there may be dog hair on the ceiling of my house currently. Does it really matter that I’m not completely up on the news of the day? No. What matters is caring for people who are hurting and struggling in my daily life and in the larger world.

Yet still there are dishes and emails and bills; still there are so many competing demands in our life. And often our priorities come into conflict with the commitments other people have. Some people need a clean house to function during a crisis; some people need to garden. I need to exercise. Some of us focus on the care of immigrants above all else, some prioritize those with disabilities, others the environment. It can make for trouble if we get all energized about something that people around us don’t find as important. Things can get tense and even ugly.

I think that’s what Jesus is talking about in our Gospel reading today – what happens when priorities conflict.

Jesus says some very strange things in this passage. When he asks, “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth?” I want to say, “Well yes, I kind of thought that was part of the deal.”

It’s even more surprising to hear Jesus sound stressed out about his work, to hear him lament, “What stress I am under until it is completed!” It seems inappropriate to ask if he’s tried a breath prayer to help with that.

Jesus’ words here are troubling and they’re frankly out of synch with my priorities for a day when we have a baptism. Couldn’t we have a more uplifting and warm passage on this joyous day when Theo is baptized? Do we really have to hear about families being torn apart, about Jesus bringing a refining fire that will cause division on earth? I was tempted to change the Gospel reading for today or just preach on Hebrews. Except, I think that kind of thing is precisely what’s making Jesus mad here – the ways we prioritize comfort and ease over God’s way of justice and well-being for all.

We need to pay attention to what Jesus is saying.

I don’t really think that Jesus’ words here mean he is pro-division, pro-conflict and anti-family. This is the guy who taught us to love our enemies and do good even to those who hate us. It’s the guy who’s concerned enough about family that when he’s dying on the cross (in the midst of that baptism he refers to in today’s passage – that is, dying a really stressful death), he makes sure that his disciple John will care for his mother.

So, what’s happening here? I think Jesus is being realistic about what his ministry will mean for him and for his followers. He knows that challenging people’s priorities will cause a lot of tension, and he knows we do need our priorities challenged.

Jesus challenges all the ways people in his day, and still today, approach life and religion. We focus so much on ourselves – thinking if only we can do the right things and earn the right rewards, however we define them, then we’ll be OK, then we’ll have a life of ease. We get wrapped up in all that we’re doing, how it’s working out for us, how we measure up. This way of being keeps us constantly wondering if we’re doing enough, if we have enough, if we are enough. It keeps us judging what other people do, side-eyeing them to see if they have more and what they think of us.

Jesus challenges all of that by telling us you belong to God, you are loved and forgiven, you are more than enough and beloved of God – now get over yourself already. Life is just not all about you. It’s not about putting our ease, our families, tribe and nation first. What matters is what God is doing through Christ Jesus to tear down the separations between us and bring in God’s justice and mercy. What matters is God’s coming kingdom where there will be the conditions that make for true peace and well-being and not just the absence of conflict. Jesus calls us to prioritize God’s ways and to participate in what God is doing.

Jesus calls us to turn our focus away from ourselves – our family, tribe and nation – in order to prioritize those who are foreign, forsaken and forgotten.

Jesus calls us to love our enemies, to serve others without concern for reward, to trust God above all else, to spend time in prayer, scripture, worship and service. These priorities will put us out of synch with others – maybe even with our families, certainly with tribe and nation. This may lead to stress, conflict and tension in our lives.

Yet we are not alone as we live in this way. As Hebrews promises, we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who have suffered greatly and yet know the deep joy of participating in what God is up to in the world. We are accompanied by Jesus who underwent deep stress out of love for this world. He insisted on loving all people, especially those who were foreign, forsaken and forgotten. He refused to stop agitating for God’s justice and peace.

That all led to his death at the hands of the privileged and powerful who wanted a false peace and ease. Yet even his death could not stop what God is up to in Jesus. God raised him from the dead showing that God’s life and love, God’s kingdom ways will prevail.

We, like Theo, are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus – into a life of hope that is just not about us; it is about participating in what God is up to in the world. It may not be a life of ease, but it is a life of great joy. And we get to share in it together.

Let’s take a moment of silent prayer.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
August 11, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Based on Luke 12: 22-34

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

Jesus says, “I tell you, do not worry.” That’s pretty much been my life goal for the last four and a half weeks as my son Nathan recovers from traumatic injuries.

You know, as I do, how hard it is not to worry when you get that awful call, when you’re waiting for the surgery to be over, when the future feels uncertain.

There’s also so much that is worrisome in the larger society. I remember my colleague at Luther College, David Vasquez, commenting on increased levels of anxiety among college students. He said, “We often view their anxiety as abnormal when really, they’re having a normal response to the very abnormal state of affairs around them.” In these times, “do not worry” can feel like a pretty tall order.

And yet I know that if I can let go of worry, I can be so much more present for Nathan, for my whole family, for all of you, and more helpful in the healing process. When I let go of worry, I can experience God’s constant presence more deeply and help others to experience it as well. The same is true in the larger world. If we get stuck in anxiety about gun violence, immigration, climate change and other issues, it’s much harder for us to work for hopeful change. Letting go of anxiety is important for healing.

So, I’ve spent a lot of time in the last month doing things that help me deal with worry – things I do regularly but have prioritized a lot this month.

I do a silent breath prayer in the morning.
I make sure to get out in God’s creation every day.
There’s a prayer mantra I repeat as I walk.
I do yoga; I swim.

I especially love to swim outside at the Decorah pool in the mornings. There’s something so uplifting about being in the water outside as the sun rises and bursts through the morning fog.

I’ve also been using a number of resources from the Mayo Clinic Patient Education Services and the Calm Meditation app.

These and so many other tools are gifts of God to help with the worry and fear that are such a part of our daily lives.

I’ve been struck that the teaching and tools about letting go of anxiety all emphasize three key things:

First, it’s important for us to be out in nature.

Second, it helps to get out of our heads with all their anxious thoughts; we need to be in our bodies mov- ing, making music, singing and releasing the tension that builds up.

Third, it is important to connect with the breath. Paying attention to the natural rhythm of our breath as well as taking deep breaths can really help us let go of anxiety.

I was reflecting and praying about those three things as I was swimming at the Decorah pool this past Wednesday and suddenly it dawned on me that we experience these three things in relation to our triune God. God, our creator, savior and sustainer, gives us the very gifts we need to help with anxiety.

God our creator calls us out into the natural world full of abundance, power and beauty – out where creation itself can help to soothe our anxiety, uplift and cleanse us. We are called to consider the birds, consider the lilies so that we might see how much God cares for us and all that God has made. God our creator also works through doctors, researchers and medications that can give our besieged brains help with debilitating anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses. Many of us need medication in order to get out of bed and get moving, singing and praying. So, thanks be to God our creator for the science of psychiatry.

Yet, God didn’t just create us and then leave us be. Our triune God also came to be present with us in the body in the person of Jesus. Jesus came to tend and heal and feed our bodies, to help us know that our fragile, broken bodies are forgiven and loved – precious to God. Jesus still comes to us today in his body and blood to feed our bodies in tangible ways.

And even though the person of Jesus is no longer walking around among us, still we are never alone. Our triune God is present to us in the Holy Spirit, which is the very breath of God. As we breathe, our spirits are connected to this Spirit breath of God. The book of Romans tells us that the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. When all we can do is sigh, the Spirit is praying within us.

God doesn’t just tell us, “Do not worry, do not be afraid, all right, good luck with that.” No, God comes to be in relationship with us. And in relationship with this triune God, we are given help with worry and anxiety through the gifts of creation, our bodies and the breath.

Our triune God also calls us out of the isolation and separation caused by anxiety and into abundant, life giving community with all God’s people. We are called out of our heads with their anxious thoughts and into the work of service and love, healing and care.

God promises to be a very present help in trouble and says, “I will be with you always.” God is present with us in all the moments of our days – in the hopeful times and in the stressful times – working for healing. We can’t always see it, we don’t always experience it, we still live in hurting and broken bodies and a hurting and broken world. Yet, we are not alone. God is at work.

Beloved, today God is here for you. God is present in this abundant, beautiful creation with all its many gifts. God is present in Christ’s body and blood and in all our broken, beloved bodies that make up the body of Christ on earth. This body of Christ is sent out to love and tend every body on earth, all people.

God is also present as we breathe together – inhaling deeply of God’s love, exhaling together with songs and prayers of lament and hope.

Today, consider the lilies, receive nourishment for your body, breathe deeply in community. Do not be afraid.

Let’s take time for silent prayer, breathing in God’s presence, letting go of anxiety.

The Immigration Support March and Vigil organized and co-hosted by Good Shepherd and First Lutheran was held Wednesday, August 7, 2019.  A full report of the event was recorded by Decorah News in two separate articles.

The first article is linked here.

The second article can be read at this link.

Photos were taken by Decorah News staff.