Global Church Sunday
“God So Loves the World” – Vacation Bible School Celebration
July 29, 2018
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Acts 2: 1-12, John 3:16-17

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

Kids and everyone: Wasn’t it cool to hear God’s word shared in so many different languages? That was just a taste of what it was like on the Day of Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples that day, they were able to speak in all sorts of different languages.

That must have been so surprising to all those visitors in Jerusalem. They would have expected to hear Aramaic – the language most people in Jerusalem spoke – either that or Greek or Latin – the language of the powerful Romans who ruled Jerusalem. Instead, everyone gathered heard God’s Spirit speaking directly to them.

The Holy Spirit doesn’t only speak one language – the language that most people speak or the language of the powerful people. The Spirit speaks everyone’s language. The Holy Spirit doesn’t want everyone to be the same, but delights in all the languages and peoples of the earth. The Spirit even speaks in the languages of people we’ve been told to fear. As Keegan told us this morning – even in Arabic. Arabic is a beautiful language spoken by millions of peaceful people. Yet in our time, Arabic speakers are often mistaken for terrorists simply because of their language.

There are lots of voices in our world who tell us to fear whole groups of people based on their language, religion, skin color, or country. Voices that say some people and some languages are better than others; that tell us we should keep separate from people who are different, either that or try to make them like us.

The voices of fear, hatred and division are so strong in our world today. But the Spirit of God is stronger and more powerful. And as Acts says, the Spirit of God has been poured out on all flesh, on all people. The Spirit speaks still and now to all of us so that we might know God’s deeds of power – God’s work of overcoming everything that separates us from each other and from God.

The Holy Spirit often speaks now in less dramatic fashion than on that day in Jerusalem, but the Spirit still speaks. All of you Bible School kids talked about that this week with Kathryn. You walked around the church and the grounds during Bible School and Kathryn asked you to point out all the ways and places God’s Spirit of love still speaks. You said the paraments, the baptismal font, the communion rail, the hymnal, the piano, the church garden, the trees, the solar panels, the food at Fellowship Hour and so many other things.

The Spirit still speaks to us in ways we can understand to help us know God’s powerful love.

The Holy Spirit also helps us to speak of God’s love in ways that other people can understand.

Too many people have gotten the message that God uses the language of power and domination. So, God works through us to let others know that the Spirit speaks their language, that the Spirit understands them and is present with them, that the Spirit speaks to their lives and fears and hopes.

The Holy Spirit also helps us to speak God’s language of love and reconciliation, to give voice to God’s alternate reality in this world full of division and hatred. The Spirit helps us to speak of God’s dream for our world – God’s dream that all people would come together, in all our diversity, to live in love for God and love for one another.

The Spirit calls us all to dream this dream and to tell about it, to be God’s prophets. Prophets are those who tell of what God is up to in the world, who speak of God’s dream in a world of sin and brokenness.

God tells us, in the books of Joel and Acts, “I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.  

Today we are seeing that happen as the children of this congregation prophesy to us and help us to en- vision God’s dream!

The Spirit of God has been poured out upon us. We have what we need to speak God’s language, to speak words of love and reconciliation.

May we know that the Spirit is speaking to us today.

May we open ourselves to the Spirit speaking through us.

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost
July 22, 2018
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.

It must be all the work we’re doing around here – I seem to have construction on the brain. Last week’s sermon was all about plumb lines – God’s word should be our plumb line, says the prophet Amos. This week, a phrase from our Ephesians reading has captured my attention: Jesus “has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.” I keep picturing Jesus as God’s singular wrecking crew, smashing through all the hostile barriers we put up.

    That’s not how we usually imagine Jesus. We talk about Jesus the Good Shepherd, the light of the world, the bread of life, but Jesus with a sledgehammer? Not so much. Jesus as God’s wrecking crew isn’t a warm, fuzzy image, but it’s one we really need.

Our world is full of walls, fences, gates, partitions, all manner of barriers aimed at keeping something or someone in and something or someone else out.

We do need some walls. Walls in our homes protect us from the elements; fences keep livestock safely in and predators out; partitions inside buildings allow for privacy and increased functionality.

Yet walls, both literal and spiritual, can also increase the hostility in our world. All walls serve a purpose, but not all walls serve the purposes of God.

God’s purposes, according to Ephesians, are to create one new humanity thus making peace, and to build us together into a dwelling place for God.

That all feels like an awfully ambitious building project, especially these days. It makes the work we’re do- ing around here seem much more manageable. Yet, God who raised Jesus from the dead can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. God is at work to build a new heaven and new earth and a new humanity without divisions. In order for this construction project to happen, however, Jesus has to do some demolition work within each of us because we all help to build up hostility in our world. We’re all master builders when it comes to putting up walls between us and others.

It’s so easy to judge the walls others build – in Israel, on the southern border, in Berlin, between Jews and Gentiles in ancient times. Yet, when we do some honest digging within, its apparent that we build walls, too – on a smaller scale, but the results are just as divisive. We draw sharp lines between us and them – black/white, Liberal/ conservative, gay/straight, and on and on and on. We pile on the raw materials of fear and hatred and there’s no shortage of those very raw materials within us. We cement it all together with our stereotypes and prejudices and fortify it with our pride. The walls grow taller and thicker. Our sin cuts us off from one another and from God. God has commanded us to love and it grieves God when we do not.

But Jesus is at work to break the power of sin within us, to free us from the tall prisons caused by our sinfulness and hostility. On the cross, Jesus proved that nothing – not sin, not evil, not violence, not hatred, not even death – nothing can separate us from the love of God. Jesus tore down the curtain, the barrier, that would keep us away from God.

We now have a place in God’s household – a very large house with space for all tribes and nations, a dwelling place with many rooms, but no walls of hostility. We now have a place as citizens of God’s kingdom, a kingdom with wide-open borders. We are no longer aliens or strangers but citizens with the saints. We have a place to belong, a place to call home.

Most of the time, when we belong somewhere we are the insiders and others, outsiders. We belong to a family or nation and others don’t; we are part of the tribe and others aren’t.

Yet God is creating one new humanity with no distinctions between people. To accomplish this, Jesus not only tears down walls. He also preached peace to those far off and those near and draws us all into God.

As Jesus brings us together with people that we’d prefer to keep at a distance, he also keeps chipping away at our walls. When we’re in proximity with other people; when we know their names, their stories, their hopes and dreams; it is so much harder to hate them. The walls of hostility begin to crumble.

Lawyer, author and civil rights leader Bryan Stevenson talks often about the lessons he’s learned by being in close contact with people in prison. He says, in his book Just Mercy, “Proximity has taught me some basic and humbling truths, including this vital lesson: Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”

We need to be in proximity to those we fear, those we hate. This is so hard to do, but we aren’t on our own as we do it. Jesus is our peace and he is with us; we can follow where he leads into uncomfortable and even risky situations.

In God’s kingdom, we have the assurance of a home, a place to belong; but this assurance is not for our comfort. It’s so we’ll stop worrying about whether we belong and start working to make sure everyone knows that they belong to God. It’s so we’ll stop feeling the need to build walls of hostility and, instead, join in God’s work of building a whole new humanity.

In Christ, we have been given the tools we need to join this work. We’ve been given Jesus, who is both God’s wrecking crew and God’s peace. We’ve been given forgiveness, reconciliation and access to God. We’ve been drawn near to those we fear, as Jesus shows us that we are held together in the very heart of God.

We have all that we need.

Let’s take a moment for prayer.

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 15, 2018
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.

When we hear this awful story, it is so easy to see King Herod as a monster. It’s so easy to demonize him and people like him, and there are plenty of people like him in our day. Certainly, his actions and actions like his need to be addressed. John the Baptist called Herod out. We as Christians are called to address injustice and violence. Yet to do that faithfully, we also need to examine our own lives in light of John’s call to repent and follow in the ways of God’s Kingdom. We have much more in common with King Herod than we’d care to admit.

We pick up Herod’s story as he’s starting to hear about the preaching and teaching and healing of Jesus.

People are asking, “Who is this Jesus?” King Herod leaps to a strange conclusion based on his own guilt and fear. He decides that Jesus must be John the Baptist reincarnated – that John must have come back to haunt him after Herod beheaded him.

Dead or alive, John the Baptist has been troubling Herod for a while. When Herod takes his brother’s wife as his own, John does not hesitate in telling truth to power. John never hesitates in calling everyone, of every station, to repent.

Herod’s new wife, Herodias, is furious and wants John dead. Herod does have John arrested. Yet some- thing stops him from killing John – fear and confusion and the minute stirrings of the soul. We’re told, “Herod feared John, knowing that John was a righteous and holy man, and Herod protected him. When he heard John he was greatly perplexed, and yet he liked to listen to him.”

So, Herod keeps John in prison, locked away. He keeps John from interfering with his daily life, and yet, he likes to listen to him.

How often we do this same thing. We keep God’s word, God’s call to repentance, locked away where we can listen to it when we have time, when it won’t cause us any trouble. We don’t allow God’s word to really impact our lives – to be the plumb line for our lives.

A plumb line, the symbol used by the prophet Amos in our reading today, is a simple builder’s tool – a string with a weight at the end. Hold it to the top of the wall and it hangs straight down, showing you if your wall is built correctly. Amos says that God’s word and God’s ways are to be our plumb lines, to guide our lives.

Part of Herod’s problem is that he has too many plumb lines working as he ponders what to do with John the Baptist. One plumb line is John’s preaching – preaching that challenges and convicts him and could set him free. Another is his wife’s pressure to do her bidding. And then there’s public opinion – John is a popular preacher. Killing him may not be the politically savvy move, yet Herod also needs to save face after John challenges his authority. Herod’s also got to consider the will of his supporters and the will of his enemies.

No wonder Herod is perplexed – his plumb lines are getting tangled, calling him in different directions.

Herod can’t decide what to do, so he tries to get away with doing nothing. His hand is forced when the plumb lines come together and he can no longer delay. There’s a party, he drinks too much, then he makes a rash promise. His wife seizes her moment and demands the death of John and there Herod sits, again perplexed and bothered. In the end, he chooses to silence the prophetic word. He picks the wrong plumb line by which to measure his life.

We know what it is to have a whole mess of plumb lines working on us – a whole bunch of different standards. Social media tells us to measure our lives by how many likes, followers and streaks we’ve got going. We judge our own and others’ worth as people based on financial net worth. We feel pressed to do what’s politically savvy even when it goes against our core values. We’re told we have to put America first, family first, our own health first. We feel pressure to measure up at home, at work, in our families, with our weight and appearance.

This gets us all tangled up, unable to address bad behavior in our own lives and in the world, unable to live out God’s ways of justice, mercy and love.

We need God to set us free from all this. We need God to reframe how we measure ourselves and others.

God does this through the Word. So, we can’t keep God’s word locked away in a prison of our own devising bringing it out to look at and listen to at our convenience; we can’t seek to silence it. We need to really pay close attention to it as a builder looks to a plumb line.

God’s Word shows us where we are tangled up, where we are crooked, where we have gone astray – it convicts us. Yet God’s Word also sets us free from trying to measure up to so many competing, impossible standards. God’s Word assures us that we are loved beyond measure and forgiven without fail. We are children of God, beloved of God as is every person on earth. This assurance frees us and also guides us to treat all people as God’s beloved, for if we don’t we are off track. God’s Word of love, justice and mercy needs to be the measure of our lives.

It may sound naïve and narrow to think that God’s word could really function as a good and true plumb line for us in our day with all the challenges we face.

But a new movement of Christians, entitled Reclaiming Jesus, is calling the church to live as followers of Jesus before anything, guided by the plumb line of God’s word. This focus on putting Jesus’ message, God’s word, first is allowing them to call out injustice and oppression in the US the way John the Baptist did with King Herod. They have issued a statement which begins with the words:

We are living through perilous and polarizing times as a nation, with a dangerous crisis of moral and pol- itical leadership at the highest levels of our government and in our churches. We believe the soul of the nation and the integrity of faith are now at stake.

They then continue with six affirmations grounded in scripture that also lead them to reject things happening in our country today. I encourage you to check out the full statement at www.reclaimingjesus.org, but here are a few snippets:

WE BELIEVE each human being is made in God’s image and likeness (Genesis 1:26).

THEREFORE, WE REJECT the resurgence of white nationalism and racism in our nation on many fronts, including the highest levels of political leadership.

WE BELIEVE how we treat the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the stranger, the sick, and the prisoner is how we treat Christ himself. (Matthew 25: 31-46).

THEREFORE, WE REJECT the language and policies of political leaders who would debase and abandon the most vulnerable children of God. We strongly deplore the growing attacks on immigrants and refugees who are being made into cultural and political targets, and we need to remind our churches that God makes the treatment of the “strangers” among us a test of faith (Leviticus 19:33-34).

God’s Word is a good and true plumb line for us in these challenging times. It matters for you and for our world. God’s Word comes to you today to say … You are loved beyond measure and forgiven without fail.

You are God’s beloved. Go out to treat all people with God’s love, to love and serve God’s world guided by God’s word of justice and mercy.

Let’s take a few moments for silent prayer.

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
July 8, 2018
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.

I really love superhero movies. It started with Superman when I was a kid.

My favorite uncle and I had a standing date to see every single Superman movie that came out. He didn’t yet have kids and I realize now that he might have needed an excuse to go see a comic book movie, but I was always on cloud nine during those dates. Good vs. evil, a smart woman reporter and my cool Uncle Mike? I was all in.

My current favorites are Black Panther and Wonder Woman. She’s so powerful and good and there’s some great Lutheran theology at the end, really – check it out.

Superhero movies are a lot of fun. And sometimes I wish they were true. When people act like monsters and evil seems to lurk around every corner, when goodness looks to be on life support, could someone please swoop in and save the day?

If not a superhero, then how about Jesus? Could he make everything better – and quickly, please?

As he heads into his hometown in our story today, Jesus looks a lot like a superhero. He’s calmed a storm, freed a man plagued by two thousand demons, healed a woman who was hemorrhaging for 12 years and restored a little girl to life. He looks unstoppable.

Yet the people in his hometown reject Jesus. The folks who’ve known him since birth aren’t open to experiencing Jesus’ healing and power among them. Instead they snipe and critique and take offense and make catty comments about his unusual birth (saying he’s the son of Mary while pointedly leaving out any reference to a father).

Because of their disbelief, he can do no deed of power there.

I don’t understand this. It troubles me. I want Jesus to be all-powerful, all the time, to work hope and healing no matter what.

Yet, Jesus isn’t some super-charged action figure. Throughout the Gospel of Mark, he makes clear that his purpose is not to swoop in, do powerful things and make everything right. Rather, Jesus’ purpose is to announce that the Kingdom of God has come near and to empower us all to participate in that kingdom. It seems Jesus doesn’t want us to just be passive recipients of his deeds of power; he wants to make us partners in his work of enacting God’s kingdom.

God’s kingdom is not about the supernatural, though sometimes it’s portrayed that way. It is about our creator’s intentions being realized. God longs for all of creation to know well-being and peace, to live in harmony with God and all that God has made. Instead, we are driven by forces within and around us that lead us away from what God desires. The evil isn’t just lurking in a dark corner, it is within each of us.

Jesus’ work is to draw us into God’s kingdom so that we will be healed and set free, so that we will live in God’s ways and help to bring about God’s well-being for all.

Sometimes this work of Jesus looks miraculous and dramatic: the Apostle Paul hears Jesus speaking to him on the road and stops murdering Christians, the blind see, the dead are raised – stories fit for the big screen. Most often, Jesus’ work is more slow and subtle as he opens our unbelieving hearts and minds to new possibilities.

Jesus relentlessly persists in this work, even when we aren’t willing to join it. When Jesus encounters rejection in his hometown, he doesn’t plot revenge, he changes course. He focuses on training and sending his disciples. In his instructions to them, we, too, are guided about how to live as participants of God’s kingdom.

Not surprisingly, we aren’t to act as if we are heroes who stand in judgment above the world and use power to fix everyone else. Instead, we are to be vulnerable and dependent upon others. We are to enter people’s hearts and lives. We are to take nothing to protect our hearts from them; but, rather, walk with them, learn and be loved and receive from them.

When we do this, others can join in the work of God’s kingdom as they show care and welcome. When we do this, we and those who welcome us experience healing and freedom.

Last week, the youth who gathered in Houston for the ELCA National Youth Gathering heard so many stories about how healing and well-being happens when people are welcomed.

Pastor Will Starkweather stood in front of 31,000 people and said, “I was a freshman in high school when I started cutting … The pain wasn’t something I enjoyed, but it was something I could control when everything else was out of control … So whenever fear or stress or anger or sadness threatened to overwhelm me, I turned to self-harm.

“It wasn’t until I was a sophomore in college that I first sought help,” he continued. “I figured I should talk to my pastor… I shared with him the hurt and the shame and the fear that I’d been carrying for all these years. And with four words he broke me: ‘You’re going to hell.’ Four words, but they confirmed everything I’d ever been afraid of. I was broken and there was no hope of fixing me. So, I walked away from the church.”

Yet by the grace of God, after being absolutely rejected by a person who should have loved him, Will took the risk of going to a new church and sharing his story again.

He told the gathering, “I sat down with Pastor Karla and for the second time I shared this story. And I was terrified about what she was going to say when I finished. Pr. Karla listened and then she also said four words: ‘There’s grace for that.’ There’s grace for that. Those words changed my life … Having my broken- ness met by grace made recovery a possibility. And this year, on Easter morning, I celebrated 10 years safe from self-harm … We are all recovering from something, and there is grace for that.”

Time and again at the Youth Gathering, previously rejected people stood on the stage and shared how their lives were changed as their brokenness, fear and shame were met by welcome and acceptance and radical hospitality from participants in God’s kingdom.

That welcome brought hope and healing and made it possible for these people to stand in front of so many people and share their stories. And every single person was met with thunderous applause, standing ovations, the love and welcome of God embodied by our youth.

Beloved, our participation in God’s kingdom – our welcome of others, our radical acceptance – matters.

We don’t get a superhero, we don’t get superpowers. We do get Jesus. We get Jesus who welcomes us and sends us out with power: the power of vulnerability, the power of grace, the power of welcome, the power of love. These are endlessly powerful gifts. They really do change things.

As we give and receive these gifts, we live as participants in God’s kingdom. We are healed and healing flows through us to others. We don’t have to wait for a hero to fix everything. We don’t have to try to protect ourselves from the pain of the world. We are sent out to participate in the healing of creation by taking risks, extending welcome and following Jesus.

Let’s take a moment for prayer.

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost
July 1, 2018
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.

This is a noisy, crowded story that has many echoes in our world today. There’s a great crowd pressing in on Jesus. The original Greek also implies that this crowd was squeezed together with Jesus.

There are lots of loud voices – voices that deride, doubt and laugh at Jesus while he shows compassion to those who are vulnerable.

Those loud people seem to think Jesus faces an either/or situation. EITHER he hurries to save the daughter of the synagogue leader in time; OR he stops to tend to an anonymous person who has reached out for healing. They see a zero-sum game with winners and losers.

The disciples seem to think Jesus should choose Jairus, the synagogue leader, as the winner. He’s a person of wealth and influence who could probably help Jesus out. Jesus should get on his good side.

So, when Jesus stops on his way to Jairus’s house to search for some random person who’s touched his cloak, the disciples mock him saying, “You see the crowd pressing in on you; how can you say, ‘Who touched me?’”

Jesus keeps looking anyway. The woman who touched him and was healed is afraid, but she takes a risk anyway. She comes forward to tell him what she’s done to seek healing – she has broken the law. A woman in her condition should not have touched Jesus, but she risked and trusted. Jesus sees her fear and her faith. The faith, he says, has made her well, made her whole.

While he’s talking with this woman, Jairus’ friends come to say, “Your daughter’s dead – there’s no use asking Jesus for help, why bother, there’s nothing he can do now, you’ve lost.”

Jesus goes anyway and prepares to heal Jairus’s daughter even as the people gathered at the house laugh at him.

The particulars of this story may seem pretty foreign, but we certainly know what it’s like to be squeezed by so many pressing needs in our world and our personal lives. We know about loud, derisive, mocking voices – they are everywhere in our culture today.

We know how easy it is to view things as either/or choices, a zero sum game. Either we prioritize our own needs over others, or we won’t have enough – enough time, enough energy, enough money. Either we are a nation with laws, or we treat people humanely. Either we are passionate about what we believe, or we are kind. Our moral imaginations are hindered by these false choices all the time.

We also know something of the temptation to help those who are influential and powerful, while just moving right past unknown people who reach out for help.

Jesus is pressed and squeezed by all of these things. Yet Jesus acts with compassion anyway – tending the unnamed woman AND healing Jairus’ daughter.

Jesus chooses not to listen to all the jeering voices. His choice here lost in translation but it’s really significant.

When Jairus’ friends come to tell him, “Don’t bother, too late, you lost”, Jesus pays no attention to them. That’s what the Greek says at least. Most Bible translations say that Jesus overhears them but that’s not what the Greek phrase used here means – it means that Jesus pays no heed to the words they are speak- ing.

Jesus tunes out the angry, mocking voices.

He tunes into a truer voice, the voice of God – the voice that says again and again throughout scripture, “Do not fear but believe.” Jesus listens to this voice and tells Jairus and all of us to not be afraid, to trust God. Do not fear scarcity. Trust that God’s compassion and mercy is enough for you and enough that you, too, can be a compassionate presence in the world.

Do not fear losing in a zero-sum game; trust that we are all connected as children of God. What harms others, harms each of us; what heals others, heals us.

Do not be overwhelmed by all the needs, by all the false choices. Trust that the God of the cross brings new life even when everything looks hopeless.

Trust that it matters when you stop and tend those who are vulnerable. Jesus tunes into God’s voice telling him all of this so he has what he needs to be about the work of God’s kingdom – the work of justice and mercy.

We, too, are called to tune into the voice of God. We are called to be followers of Jesus and not give in to the power of fear, even when there are so many loud voices trying to profit from our fears.

Yet, so often we are afraid, overwhelmed and paralyzed. So often we struggle to trust and follow Jesus.

Thanks be to God – it isn’t up to us to get over our fear and to trust. Jesus works to help and to heal us, just as he healed the unnamed woman and Jairus’ daughter.

Jesus touches us – through scripture, through the promises of baptism, through Holy Communion, through the gathered community. Jesus tends to us, Jesus heals us, Jesus helps us so that we can live with faith, so that in the face of fear, we act anyway – like the woman who approached to tell him her story even when she was afraid.

When everyone was mocking and jeering, Jesus told Jairus, “Do not fear, but believe.” Then Jesus went to his daughter and lifted her up.

Jesus comes to us today to say to us, “Do not be afraid, trust me.” He comes to take our hands and raise us up into faith and hope. We have what we need to follow Jesus. We have what we need to do the work of God’s kingdom – the work of justice and mercy.

Let’s take a moment for prayer.