Sermon For Sunday, November 27. 2016 – “Wake Up!”

First Sunday of Advent
November 27, 2016
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. Amen.

Advent is a wake up call. It sounds an alarm: things are not as God intends and Jesus is coming to make things right. This wake up call always feels a little harsh especially so close to Christmas. We often think of Advent as a warm, cozy time in which we prepare for the birth of a baby; instead we’re hearing about Jesus coming like a thief in the night. We get this intense Gospel reading that seems to be trying to scare us into staying awake and alert and on guard. This alarm feels so out of step with all the cozy images of the Christmas season.

Yet Advent is a ‘both/and’ season. It is both about preparing to celebrate the birth of Jesus and preparing for Jesus to return. The word Advent means ‘coming’. Advent is the season when we look to Jesus coming as a baby and look to when Jesus will come again, at the end of time, to make all things right. In the same way, the wake up call that Advent offers is also ‘both/and’. It is both startling and inviting. It is the sharp sound of steel being beaten by a hammer, a very harsh sound, until you remember it is also the sound of swords being beaten into plowshares. The Advent wake up call is like both a shrill alarm clock on a Monday morning and the sun shining in your window waking you up to the start of a wonderful vacation.

Advent scriptures and hymns can sound a strident alarm. All is not well with the world, not at all. Wake up, get to work, prepare for Jesus to come and make things right. The author of the Gospel of Matthew, especially, uses stark metaphors to give us a sense of urgency about Jesus’ coming. He says we will be startled and shaken out of our comfort zones. Patterns, routines, and relationships will be unsettled and even uprooted. We will need to wake up to all the ways our apathy and overindulgence have lulled us to sleep and haven’t been preparing us for God’s kingdom to come among us. Advent scriptures and hymns also lovingly invite us to awaken to the good news that Jesus is coming again. A new day is dawning, we’re told. This will be a great and glorious day in which swords will be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks. Advent scriptures and hymns seek to awaken us to the promise of this new day. We’re called to look forward to God’s coming day and live in it’s light even when we can’t yet feel fully the warmth of it on our faces. We’re asked to live with hope and eager expectation of the time when Jesus will come again to make all things right.

This ‘both/and’ nature of Advent is helpful in these days as our country has had so many harsh wake up calls.We’ve had so many unsettling moments in which our cozy, comfortable, middle class lives have been disrupted by painful realities in our country. We’ve been asked to reckon with all the ways we’ve lived as if black lives don’t matter, all the ways our housing laws, zoning codes, tax structure, educational funding, and judicial system have institutionalized and perpetuated racism. We’ve been asked to acknowledge our own biases and white privilege, to recognize that though we are not to blame for the things that happened in the past. We have a responsibility to address them as Christians who are part of God’s work of making all things right.

We’ve also heard voices spewing racism, sexism, homophobia, and Islamophobia grow louder and more strident. These voices have been emboldened by campaign rhetoric and political appointments. Christians must wake up to the increasing fear and hatred of others. We must speak out against words and actions that exclude, blame, demean or vilify any group of people. This is not about partisan politics, this is about a Christian witness to God’s love and concern for all people. We are to stand against fear and hatred and live out God’s care for everyone, especially those who are marginalized. We need to do this in at home, in our families, at work, in our communities, online. We have also been awakened to the intense anger and fear of many who face economic uncertainty in an age of globalization, automation and increasing health care costs, and to the frustration and suspicion many of these people have of government and of politics as usual.

Scripture shows us that God cares about our common life – the way we live together – and God cares about the well-being of all people. As Christians we are called to join God in working toward a just and equitable society that benefits all people. These harsh wake up calls can be helpful if they lead us to join God in working to make all things right. Yet if all we have are strident calls to action, it can get a bit overwhelming. We can feel like it is all too much, and leads us to want to just hide out,warm and cozy inside our privileged lives.

We also need the sunlight of God’s coming new day to shine into our windows and make us want to get up and get going. We need signs and visions of this new day God is bringing – glorious visions that can make us arise and greet each day with hope and expectation. So, we are given promises throughout Advent: promises like we heard in Romans – the night is far gone, the day is near; promises like we heard in Isaiah – nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. And the next few weeks of promises from Isaiah just keep getting better and better – we hear about the wolf lying down with the lamb and a desert blossoming.

Jesus is coming again and the new day he is bringing is already on the horizon. It may take a long time, but God has promised and God keeps promises. God kept the promise to send Jesus, the Messiah, as a baby and God will keep these promises as well. These promises and visions help us to see that we aren’t just called to get out of bed and address problems. We’re also called to wake up, notice and be alert to everything that God is doing to bring in this new day. Everywhere we look, there are signs of God’s coming kingdom. There are people reaching out across divides to work together, communities showing love and care, nations seeking to bring an end to warfare.

In Advent, God gives us both harsh and inviting wake up calls. These help us to live with hope and expectation and anticipation, and help us to join God in working for the day when all will be made new. In Advent, we also look to Jesus coming to us in yet another way – the same way he comes to us each Sunday in bread and wine, word and gathered community. Jesus comes among us to call us to action to bring a taste of God’s coming kingdom among us.

Thanks be to God. Now let’s take a few minutes to pray for God to wake us up so that we might work, so that we might hope.

Amen.

Sermon For Sunday, November 20, 2016 – “Hope Amidst All  Things”

Christ the King Sunday
November 20, 2016
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. Amen.

Today we mark Christ the King Sunday. It’s a strange day in the church year. Many of us are uncomfortable with the concept of Christ as King. It is so removed from our lives in the modern world. It sounds so very hierarchical and patriarchal. It’s a strange day and yet it does give us a chance to reflect on Christ’s power, a helpful thing to do as the powers of the world rage and the nations are in an uproar. As we look at the world, we see so many powers that are opposed to God’s ways of justice and mercy, so many forces that lead to hatred, violence, suffering and death. On Christ the King Sunday we are given a glimpse into how Christ relates to all these forces and how Christ is working with all these powers to bring about God’s ways, God’s dream for the world.

The letter to the Colossians that we heard earlier makes the startling claim that there is actually no thing, no force, no power, no ruler that exists without Christ. In him all things in heaven and on earth were created; he is before all things; in him all things hold together; and through him God is reconciled to all things. This is both comfort and challenge: the things that seem most real, the things that often seem most opposed to God – thrones, dominions, rulers, powers – do not have ultimate power. All things are under the rule of Christ, even if they don’t know it yet. Christ is before all things, the head of all things. Christ creates, holds, and reconciles all things.

This is good news in a time when everything appears to be falling apart. It’s a word of unity in a world marked by division and despair. It’s a word that comes not to numb the pain nor to minimize the struggle, but to focus our attention on the one who is more powerful than all things. Yet if all things are under the rule of Christ, why are things such a mess? Why does it feel like everything is falling apart? Why doesn’t Christ whip all things into shape and make everything better already?

Our Gospel reading today gives us a clue. Christ Jesus does not rule like any other ruler in our world. Jesus is named King of the Jews while he is hanging on a cross between two criminals. Jesus doesn’t promise revenge to those who harm him, he offers forgiveness. Jesus doesn’t come down off his cross to prove his power.

Jesus remains on an instrument of torture and humiliation, in solidarity with all who suffer unjustly. Jesus doesn’t attack all the forces and powers that oppose God and God’s ways. He doesn’t work to whip them all into shape under him. Instead he disarms them. Jesus disarms the powers by engaging them and showing that they have no power over him. The powers cannot make Jesus hate; he persists in loving. They cannot make him violent; he persists in forgiving. They cannot make him flee in fear; he enters into everything fearful and awful, even death.

Christ Jesus enters into all the violence, fear, and even death and engages it from within bringing love from hatred, forgiveness from violence, and even life from death. If Jesus would have chosen hatred or violence, those forces would have grown stronger. If Jesus had avoided death, it would have had more power. In Jesus we see that all the powers within and around us that oppose God cannot be attacked or avoided, they must be engaged and disarmed through the power of love. That love brings resurrection, reconciliation and the new kingdom. This is long, slow, hard work; yet it is the work the church is called to do.

Jesus calls us, his body on earth, to continue to engage the powers. He calls us to persist in loving in the face of hatred, to persist in forgiving in the face of violence, to not be afraid in the face of everything fearful and awful. This work calls for a particular perspective and a particular stance. The perspective we need is to remember that Christ is before and above all things and at work to reconcile all things to God. When we see all the forces and powers that oppose God, we need to look to Christ who has ultimate power and who uses the power of love to transform all things. The stance we need is that of Jesus on the cross. We need to be in the places where it seems hatred and violence reign and bear witness to the power of love. We also need to remember that all the things within each of us that oppose God need to be engaged as well. We have died to sin, death, and evil in the waters of baptism and we have been raised to new life in Christ. Each day we need to remember that death to sin and claim the new life we have in Christ.

This new life we’ve been given is for the sake of God’s work of reconciling all things. Our life is not our own, it is not given only for us. We have been raised to new life so that God can continue the work of reconciliation through us. As we carry out this work, we are held in Christ who holds all things. In all things that we face, we are not alone, Christ is with us, engaging and disarming the powers and bringing new life. Let us now follow him into all things as he leads us.

But first, let us pray to know Christ’s presence with us in all things.

Amen.

Sermon for November 13, 2016 – “Testifying Together”

Twenty-sixth Sunday After Pentecost
November 13, 2016
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

click here to read scripture passages for the day

Testifying Together

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

In the story we just heard, Jesus tells the disciples, “do not be terrified.” That is a message we also need to hear right now after a divisive and painful week in our country, as we hear reports of harassment and hate crimes, as people protest in the streets. We need to hear the most repeated phrase in scripture, “do not be afraid, do not be terrified.” We also need to know why it is that we’re told not to be afraid.

Sometimes people say “don’t be afraid” as a way to minimize the problems we face -“it’s not so bad, it’ll be fine.” Yet sometimes there are very real reasons to be afraid. Fear alerts us to the potential of danger for us and the community. If we ignore and minimize the fear, we may also ignore important information and not take the action needed for us all to be safe and well. Right now people of color, Muslims, refugees, immigrants, women, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people have very real reasons to be afraid due to the actions of supremacists who’ve been emboldened by hateful campaign rhetoric that they feel has now been endorsed.

Other times people say “don’t be afraid” as a way to critique people from all across the political spectrum who have very real concerns about the state of our country and our world right now – as in “don’t get all worked up about it, just relax already.” Yet it’s much easier to say “don’t worry about it” from a position of safety and privilege. Both the Muslim woman suffering abuse and the unemployed factory worker have real concerns that we as a country need to hear and address. Still other times people say “don’t be afraid, God’s got this” as a way to excuse us from taking any action.

Notice, Jesus doesn’t minimize the reasons the disciples have to be afraid. In fact, he tells them things are only going to get worse before the end of the world as we know it, before the dawn of God’s new day in which all will live in peace. Jesus doesn’t say, “relax, don’t get worked up, God will fix this.” Jesus doesn’t deny or diminish the power of fear or encourage his disciples to avoid it. Fear is a powerful force that can lead to hatred and despair. We need to take it seriously and address it; Jesus encourages us to do just that. He tells his disciples to challenge the power of fear by testifying against it.

To testify means to be like witnesses in a courtroom, witnesses who make the case that God’s love and God’s mercy will prevail over fear. We make this case in the court of public opinion by how we speak and how we live. Our words and our lives provide evidence that love is stronger than all the reasons to fear.

Living as witnesses to love allows us to bring a challenge to fear, hatred and despair. We challenge fear with courage, hatred with compassion, and despair with hope. We say to the fear within and around us, “it may look like you are all powerful but we know differently and we will show it with our lives and with our words.”

This can feel like a daunting task especially when we’re tired and confused. Yet Jesus promises we will receive what we need to testify, to challenge the power of fear. We will be given words and a wisdom. We need these gifts now more than ever. In a time of so many angry words, so many fearful words, we need words born out of wisdom and prayer, not quick, reactive words. We need words that bear witness to God’s ways of love and mercy. So today we spend time in prayer and we listen for God’s Word so that we will be shaped into witnesses of God’s ways.

Jesus also promises that we will not perish, we will not be overcome by fear, we will be held safe in God. That is, we are in God’s witness protection program. Even if we are put in prison, even if we die, even when we die, we are held always in God and given new life each day, new life that fear cannot destroy.

Finally, we are also given a community that helps us to testify. All of the instruction and the assurance in this passage is given to the community. Each ‘you’ in this passage is a plural ‘you’ – “This will give you all an opportunity to testify. I will give you all words and a wisdom. You all will be betrayed. By the endurance of all of you, you all will gain your souls.” We aren’t just individual witnesses; we are part of a class action lawsuit against the power of fear. We’re in this together and we have a great cloud of witnesses with us as we make our case.

One in that great cloud of witnesses is Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a leader in the confessing church when the Nazis ruled Germany. Bonhoeffer testified against the forces of fear and hatred that were so pervasive in Germany in his time. He was a witness to God’s ways in his words and his life. Bonhoeffer’s prayer and study of God’s word ultimately led him to the awareness that he needed to challenge the power of fear by working to overthrow the Nazi regime. Bonhoeffer was imprisoned and ultimately killed by the Nazis.

While he was in prison, Bonhoeffer wrote a number of letters. One of these letters was set to music to create the hymn we will sing as our Hymn of the Day. This hymn conveys Bonhoeffer’s trust that his fear would not prevail, that he could face whatever came with confidence and hope while living as a witness to God.

May this hymn, By Gracious Powers, be our prayer; may it help us to receive words and wisdom so that, in the face of fear, we might be witnesses to God’s ways of love and mercy.

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