Author: Rebecca

ICCM; Christmas Eve 2019; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Instead of opening Christmas cards and letters that come in the mail, here in Mexico we make do with emails or Facebook posts.  Once again, this year I received a greeting from my cousin.  She always manages to gather her whole extended family for a spectacular photo—the blond and blue-eyed family is dressed in coordinated outfits, hair tidy, smiles perfect.  Their accompanying greeting is filled with news of their trips and awards and achievements.  One might think it was a professionally produced advertisement.    

Jesus’ birth wasn’t picture perfect.  He was born into a shaky, uncertain family. Mary and Joseph were trembling that night, I’m sure, not thumping their matching sweater clad chests in a family photo.  They were just a young mother, yet unmarried, and her soon to be husband, trying to follow their calling.  Certainly, they were baffled, needy, making do in a stable find themselves holding the sweet little Jesus boy.  I doubt it looked anything like a Christmas card picture.  We don’t see the mess of childbirth, or the smell of the animals, or the fear and joy mingled together in those pretty manger scenes.

If your family isn’t picture perfect, that’s ok.  Neither was Jesus’ family.  But, in that humble family Jesus learned to be merciful, to love, to follow God’s call.  That’s what we get to do too.  We hurt each other, and then we forgive. We live in a messy world that is not picture perfect.

People did not know who Jesus was at his birth.  He was seen as one more baby born on the run, born into poverty and anonymity. Jesus was not given a place of honor but a place of leftovers.  There were no warm towels waiting to receive him, only the warm arms of a very tired mother and father. The world treated him with contempt and disdain. Jesus practiced what he preached—a gospel of God’s great kingdom reversal where the mighty are brought low and the low are lifted up and the outcast have special reserved seating at the banquet while the insiders have to move down a seat to make room for them at the table.

This great reversal sees men and women and children—all, not some—sees all, first and foremost, as children of God and are to be treated with the kind of care and dignity that that claim demands. A young woman is called to smuggle God’s salvation into the world.  Lowly, ordinary shepherds are the first ones visited by angel choruses with the good news. I am convinced that God would not have had it any other way but to be born into a leftover place and to a left-out people, knowing full well no one else knew what God was doing in that sweet little Jesus boy.

By being born as unwelcome and unknown, God was taking the daring risk of Great Love. God was proclaiming to us all that God loves us so much that God is not content to be without us. God was determined to show us God’s constant presence and love by getting down into the grit of our lives, down into the grime of our pain, down into the messiness and beauty of being a human being, a child of God, a baby—completely weak in power, completely vulnerable to the world.

As William Sloane Coffin once preached, “To break through our defenses, [God] arrives [in Jesus] utterly defenseless. Nothing but unguarded goodness in that manger” (William Sloane Coffin, “Power Comes to Its Full Strength in Weakness,” 25 December 1977). God knew exactly what God was doing at this moment of birth into a leftover place to a left-out people, even though no one else did.

Here in this congregation one of the traditions we look forward to is Carl Williams, this time with Keith Reid in support, singing Sweet Little Jesus Boy.  That song was written by Robert McGimsey in 1934, in the depth of the Great Depression.  He had attended a midnight Christmas Eve worship service in New York City and was walking past some private nightclubs on his way home.  He witnessed drunken people singing and shouting and swearing through the doorways and the poor huddled in corners and doorways for warmth.  His biography says he wrote his thoughts that formed the basis for this song on the back of an envelope: What a strange way to celebrate the most loving, influential person that ever lived.  We seem to have missed the whole significance of his birth.

So here we are, on this night to claim hope and sing for joy.  We do so because of the way God chose to be Immanuel, God-with-Us, a baby, born into poverty and anonymity, born into a world full of violence and fear, born completely vulnerable and totally unguarded—because this is the way God has chosen to make God’s love most fully known. The God who chose to come to be with us like that is a God who will never harm us. Any God who would choose to come be with us like that can only be a God full of more love and grace and mercy than we can ever imagine.

So yes, God knew exactly what God was doing at this moment of birth, what we call incarnation. Even if they didn’t know who the baby was. Even if we still don’t completely know who this Jesus is. God knows what God is doing. And that is more than enough.

Therefore on this night hear anew what the angels sang: “Be not afraid. For I bring you good news of a great joy for all the people. To you, for you—messy, beautiful, broken you—is born this day a Savior, who is the Messiah, who is God-with-Us, who is the Lord.” Sweet little Jesus Boy. God’s Love-Made-Flesh.  Amen.

Advent 4a; Dec 22, 2019; Matthew 1; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM

Today we heard Matthew’s version of the birth of Jesus. No donkey, no stable, no angels, no shepherds—just this business about the scandal of Mary’s untimely pregnancy.  But Matthew doesn’t start there—we jumped into Matthew’s gospel at verse 18.  The first 17 verses never get read in church on a Sunday morning- in fact they’re rarely read at all.  Those first 17 verses are the genealogical account of the ancestors of Jesus.  14 generations from Abraham to David, 14 from David to the Exile, and 14 more to the birth of Jesus.  Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, etc. etc. etc. At first it seems like a neat tidy package.  But, Matthew leaves out a bunch of the people listed in Samuel and Kings and his list of names is different from Luke’s list.  Clearly, Matthew is making a point in his choice of those 42 hard to pronounce names.  The truly unusual and risqué content that drives the whole point home of starting a gospel with what seems to be a boring old list of names, is Matthew’s inclusion of 4 women plus Mary in his list—five women whose lives were cloaked in scandal, referred to by one scholar as the shady ladies.

Matthew was written in about 85 AD for a particularly Jewish oriented community of Christians. Paul didn’t include anything about the birth of Jesus, neither did Mark.  Luke’s account is the one we normally hear that includes all those Christmas pageant characters and John who wrote later still starts his account with that metaphysical poetry about the Word of God, the Light and the Darkness, and the character of time.  Matthew grounds his story in the history of the Jewish people.  He starts with Abraham, through David, through kings and the exile, all the way to Joseph—and then, after all that, he says Joseph’s role is just husband of Mary. 

Matthew frames the story in scandal, Mary pregnant too early, Joseph’s pain and his decision to “put her away quietly.” A Jewish tradition gives meaning to that phrase and reveals more about the scandalous aspect of this story.  You see, in that culture, if a woman was raped in an urban setting and could not prove she had resisted the rape she would be put to death by stoning.  If she was raped in a rural area and couldn’t prove her resistance, then she could be “put away quietly.” The idea was that in a rural area she could scream her lungs out but there might not be anyone around for miles—so in that case she could be given the benefit of the doubt. Joseph’s dream offers an alternative explanation of Mary’s situation.  Matthew’s inclusion of four other women reinforces the point.

The first shady lady is Tamar.  Her story is in Genesis 38.  She is the daughter in law of Judah, Jacob’s son.  Tamar married Judah’s oldest son but he dies childless.  So, the next son of Judah is supposed to marry his widow—the second son is Onan.  If you want scandal—read his story for yourself. It’s too long for this sermon—He gets out of marrying Tamar.  The next son, Shela, is 5 years old and not yet a suitable spouse.  So, Judah sends Tamar home to her father’s house promising the marry her to Shela when he is of age. Tamar tries to put back the broken pieces of her life, cast off, without status.

Years later, Shela is grown and Judah’s wife dies. He has business in Tamar’s town. She sets a trap for him by dressing like a prostitute and sitting at the city gate. He sees her and once again revealing his character he decides to avail himself of her services.  They make a deal as he doesn’t have the payment with him. He gives her his signet ring and a couple pieces of clothing as a promise to pay. A few days later he sends a servant with the payment, but Tamar is no longer at the gate. The townspeople deny there has ever been a prostitute who sits there.  He tries to find her but can’t. He is worried about his reputation and decides to let her keep the things to avoid becoming a laughingstock. Three months go by and he hears his daughter in law is pregnant.  He is “wrathful” as the bible puts it.  He makes moves to burn her to death.  She sends the ring and clothing with a note—by the way, the father is the owner of these items. Judah repents and takes her into his own harem.  She produces twins. One is named Perez. Matthew tells us that it is through this incestuous and deceitful relationship that Jesus’ own lineage comes. 

What? How is this part of the Christmas story? But wait, there’s more… a few generations later the lineage flows through Rahab—she’s the prostitute that harbored Joshua’s spies in the battle of Jericho.  Then comes Ruth.  Ruth is the Moabite daughter-in-law of Naomi and her husband, Elimelech, who had fled Judah with their two sons in a time of famine. Having moved to Moab the two sons marry Moabite women.  All three men die there, leaving a Jewish mother and her 2 Moabite daughters-in-law.  One daughter-in-law returns to her Moabite family.  Ruth and Naomi survive by gleaning the fields.  Naomi knows the ways of the world and sees that the owner of the fields is Boaz, a distant kinsman of her Elimelech.  According to the same law that featured in Tamar’s story, Boaz could marry Ruth and care for them.  So, Naomi hatches a plan.  Ruth dresses her best and seeks out Boaz when he is drunk at a festival.  She gets under the blanket with passed-out Boaz.  In the old movies, the scene would fade out at this point and our imaginations could fill in what happened next.  Boaz, wakes up, sees what has happened and does the honorable thing. He marries her and through the sneaky seduction it all ends well.

Matthew moves on to the next shady lady, so shady we aren’t even told her name, just that she’s the wife of Uriah.  If you know your bible stories the way Matthew’s original audience did, you know the wife of Uriah is none other than Bathsheba who King David was smitten with.  He watches her bathing and summons her to the palace. She was in no position to deny the King.  She becomes pregnant and David engineers the death of her husband Uriah so Bathsheba can be added to his harem.  Conquest, adultery and murder in the lineage of Jesus.

Skipping the 17 verses of “begats” avoids the tricky questions.  But by the time Matthew opened his gospel with this genealogy there was already debate about the legitimacy of Jesus of Nazareth.  Joseph’s initial reaction of wanting to “put her away quietly” and send her back to her father’s house reveals that scandal.  Joseph’s dream gives him an alternative explanation.  Matthew draws our attention to the way God has worked before too.

God doesn’t work through moralistic actions. In fact, God can even take an immoral act and work through it to bring good. The line that produced Jesus can and does flow through incest, prostitution, seduction, adultery, and even murder without hindering God’s ability to work through human history to bring life and light to the world. 

 So often people use the bible as a book of judgment. They want to make it a severe kind of weapon with which they can organize and control the behavior of others. But the writer of Matthew says, “NO the message of God in Christ is a message of love. It’s a message of love that says, no matter what you have done, no matter who you have been, the love of God can transform any life and bring holiness out of any human distortion.

Jesus lived out that pattern.

No matter what they did to Jesus, he loved them.

No matter what they said to him, Jesus loved them.

He was denied and Jesus loved those who denied him.

He was betrayed and Jesus loved those who betrayed him.

He was tortured and he loved those who tortured him.

He was killed and he loved those who killed him.

How else can you say with a life, there is nothing any of you can ever do, there is nothing any of you can ever be that will finally separate you from the love of God that we meet in Christ Jesus.

Christmas is not primarily about miracles. The story of Christmas is about the love of God interacting with human life to create wholeness, extravagant love, and the courage to be everything that you are capable of being. It is the power of God in Christ that enables you to live and to love and to be. That’s what the Christmas story is all about. It’s told in a dramatically human fashion.

Even in the supposedly boring 17 verses of “begats” we find the key that unlocks the truth. The bible is a remarkable book. People destroy and distort the Bible whenever they treat it as if it is a literal document about history. It’s not. It is a magnificent portrait painted by Jewish artists who describe the impact of a God filled life named Jesus of Nazareth upon human history.  We are called to live fully, we are empowered to love, we are enabled to be all that you were created to be, and that’s the message of the baby born in Bethlehem, who himself came through a very checkered ancestry.

The love of God is never distorted by the means through which it flows.  And it can never finally be distorted even by the acts of those of us who claim to be Christ’s disciples.  Bethlehem means that the love of God has entered human life. And Christmas will be real when we understand that our job is to allow God’ presence to flow through us so that the love of God might be known among all the people that God has created and that God still loves.

Gift of Hope; 12.8.19; Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM

Have you heard the story about the identical twin boys? They were alike in every way but one. One was a hope-filled optimist who only ever saw the bright side of life. The other was a dark pessimist, who only ever saw the down-side in every situation.

The parents were so worried about the extremes of optimism and pessimism in their boys they took them to the Doctor. He suggested a plan. “On their next birthday give the pessimist a shiny new bike but give the optimist only a pile of manure.”

It seemed an extreme thing to do. After all the parents had always treated heir boys equally. But in this instance, they decided to try to Doctor’s advice. So, when the twins birthday came they gave the pessimist the most expensive, top of the line racing bike a child has ever owned. When he saw the bike his first words were, “I’ll probably crash and break my leg.”  To the hopeful son they gave a carefully wrapped box of manure. He opened it, looked puzzled for a moment, then ran outside screaming, “You can’t fool me! Where there’s this much manure, there’s just gotta be a pony around here somewhere!”

How do we look forward with hope when we find ourselves looking a pile of manure?  The prophet Jeremiah wrote in what was widely seen as the darkest of times.  The Southern kingdom of Israel had already been overtaken by the Assyrian empire’s army.  The Babylonians were gaining strength and threatening to overtake the Northern kingdom of Judah.  Jeremiah often sounded like the pessimistic twin in the story—but in Chapter 29 verse 11 he sang out like the hopeful twin, “For surely I know the plans I have for you, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.”  

Hope is more than optimism.  It is connected to faith and trust.  In Hebrews chapter 11 verse 1, we read, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”  We hope because of the steadfastness of God, even when things seem as bad as they can be. 

I learned a lesson about hope the year a woman named Nancy died right before Christmas.  Her husband Antti told me about the day Nancy had been diagnosed with Leukemia.  They were distressed and still somewhat disbelieving as they drove home from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN.  He told me she turned to him and said, “Honey, we’ve got to look for the gifts in this.”  That

was her approach through the many years she lived with the disease.  She squeezed out of her diagnosis all that it had to teach her and those close to her. Nancy faced the disease through her faith and proved the truth of those words of Paul’s:

…we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

The disease itself was not a gift, but Nancy found the gifts in it. I remember sitting with them in the hospital the week before she died.  She spoke in her quiet, gentle way about the blessings that came for her, and for Antti and for their family through the suffering.  She commented that many people were all too ready to seize control and deny their pain, and thereby miss the blessings to be found by going through suffering.  She pointed my attention to the two-edged character of life, to the mystery and majesty of it — to the gift to be found in the suffering. Most of the important things in life have that double-sided reality, including the gospel.  Real truth requires that we see the whole, both sides. 

Because of her depressed immune system Nancy was not able to attend a Sunday morning worship service.  So, three weeks before she died their family gathered on a Saturday for the baptism of her latest grandchild.  The sanctuary had been decorated with freshly cut pine trees. We glimpsed the mystery of life and death as we stomped our snowy boots around the baptismal font.  Nancy stood next to me as I dipped my hand into the water and washed the top of a tiny head and said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” 

I prayed the prayer whose words are taken from our Old Testament reading for today:  “God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, we give you thanks for freeing your sons and daughters from the power of sin and for raising them up to a new life through this holy sacrament.  Pour out your Holy Spirit on this child, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord., the spirit of joy in your presence.”  And as I made the sign of the cross on his forehead, I spoke the child’s name and said the words, “child of God, you have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ, forever.” 

As we stood there, next to the altar rail, we all knew another day was coming. I was thinking ahead to the words I would soon say when we began the funeral service for Nancy–

When we were baptized in Christ Jesus, we were baptized into his death.   We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live a new life.  For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.

I was thinking about the sign of the cross I would make, not on her forehead, but on her casket, draped in the pall that symbolized the last leg on that baptismal journey, calling on those same promises of new life for Nancy and promises of comfort and hope for all of us who would remain. 

Today, on this second Sunday in Advent, we look forward in hope toward another mystery: the mystery of Christmas, the incarnation.  It is when we feel fear or grief or uncertainty that the prospect of hope is most needed. Grief and loss, fear and uncertainty, suffering and pain don’t take a break for the holidays. Christmas marks the beginning of a life that encountered suffering and hardship all along the way.  It is the beginning of a life that suffered pain and death.  Christmas is the beginning of Jesus’ walk through all of life with us, with all its stark realities.  This season gathers in all the sorrow we know and gives us a promise to hold on to. 

In every season we need the hopeful message of Christmas that God so loved the world that Jesus, God’s only son, was sent that whoever believes in him might not perish but have eternal life.  The coming of the Christ is about God being one of us, knowing loss, knowing sorrow, knowing health and failing health, knowing human weakness, knowing all of what it is to be human, even death.   The message of Christmas is that Christ came, as an infant, to live our lives, to grow with us, to serve us and love us and lead us. 

We are not promised lives of comfort and ease.  Even when it seems like we’ve opened a box of manure—there are gifts to be found.  Through steadfastness and the encouragement of the scriptures we may have hope and glorify God in all things.  Amen.

Maranatha! Peace.  Dec 1, 2019; ICCM; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson

Road trips can be fun, or they can be terrible. When my daughter was 2 and my son was 7 their father and planned a camping trip to Yellowstone National Park.  We had great expectations. We left our dog, Penny, with the grandparents and set off.  It was a long journey, really long! Our youngest was in a car seat calling out her mournful lament, “I wanna go home!  I miss Penny!”  Mile after mile all across the Dakotas she hollered her refrain, “I wanna go home! I miss Penny!” Her brother made the best of it—alternately trying to keep her occupied, or turning his back to her and playing his Gameboy. I’m sure there were a few good moments, but it wasn’t what the journey we expected.

Advent, the four weeks before Christmas, is a journey of a sort. The path is set: we start with expectations, we are encouraged to keep awake and alert so we’re ready.  We have a vision set before us of what we might encounter. We have candles to light the way. And our experience depends on our readiness to encounter new things. Some of us might feel like a backseat passenger, dragged along by someone else when all we want is the security of home and the things we know and love.  Some of us, our Gospel text suggests, don’t even know there is a journey at all.  Those travelers are just doing their thing, too busy to pay attention, too focused on the tasks at hand to notice that there is any movement happening, that the keys are being jangled, that the car is pulling out.

The first goal on the Advent journey this year is Peace.  We are given a vision of peace in the text from Isaiah. In the days to come swords will be beaten into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, the nations will stream to God’s holy mountain and no one will be taught war anymore. The psalm tells the same story—pray for peace and draw near to God’s throne.  It is a vision of our world transformed into a place of peace.  Our gospel invites us to watch and wait for the coming of the Lord. 

The story goes that an elderly woman attended a conference featuring presenters from a wide spectrum of believers.  It was a new experience for her to venture out beyond her own congregation and denomination.  She was surprised by the diversity of Christian perspectives. One of the preachers suggested that the participants might try using a greeting that had been popular in the earliest days of Christianity.  People in the first century of the church expected Jesus to return any day. They used the Greek word Maranatha, the Lord is coming.  The woman embraced the suggestion.  She decided to live expectantly—to look for the Lord’s coming and try this new greeting.  So, the next morning she positioned herself at the entry to the breakfast area and enthusiastically greeted each person saying, Marijuana, brother.  Marijuana, sister.  She was close, I guess—at least phonetically speaking.  Marijuana isn’t Maranatha is it? 

The idea that the Lord is coming is interpreted in a variety of ways within the broad spectrum of Christian faith.  Some see our gospel text and a few other passages as predicting a scenario that would unfold 7 years before the second coming of Jesus and the final judgement. They see it as an event they call the rapture when some will be taken up to heaven and spared the tribulation: horrific suffering, wars and devastation for those left behind. 

Some of you may have read one of the Left Behind novels that were first published in the 1990s.  These fictional books are filled with a violent conflict between the tribulation force made up of the left behind who have repented, committing themselves to Jesus.  With military weapons the forces of the Antichrist clash in a battle of Armageddon with Jesus who is figured as an omnipotent warrior who defeats his opponents and condemns most people to eternal suffering in hell.  All 12 of these fictional masterpieces were on the New York Times bestseller list, selling more than 60 million copies.

The idea of a rapture is a modern invention that traces its origin to John Nelson Darby, a late 19^th century British evangelist.  His Scofield Reference Bible was first published in 1909 and divides world history into multiple dispensations climaxing in the rapture and second coming of Jesus.  When we zero in on a few isolated texts and create a fictional and elaborate scheme full of violent destruction we lose sight of the vision of Peace that dominates Christian teaching throughout most of history and most of the world.  If everything might end in the next 50 years, why work for peace?  Why protect the environment? Rapture theology doesn’t match the biblical Jesus who came as the prince of peace. Maranatha doesn’t mean marijuana, and it doesn’t mean Armageddon either. 

When we embark on this Advent journey we are invited to live expectantly.  This season begins not with fear but with peace: Christmas cards read, Peace on Earth. Our carols are filled with Peace, Peace, Peace, Sleep in Heavenly peace.  Today we lit the candle of peace.  We seek the peace of Christ that passes all understanding.  We strive for the vision where swords are beaten into plowshares, spears into pruning hooks, where there is no more learning war, no more fighting, but walking in the light of the Lord! 

Advent invites us to draw close to Christ, to journey into peace, hope, joy, trust, and love.  We are invited to leave behind the excess and examine our hearts so that we can follow our Lord.  While the rest of the world is already full-swing into the Christmas season the season of Advent beckons us to travel a different path—to get ourselves ready for the peace that passes understanding.  We make a choice to journey together to the manger, to prepare our hearts to welcome Christ anew.  It’s a counter-cultural choice, this Advent journey.  We’ll resist the urge to sing Christmas carols just yet—while all the world is shopping and partying and splurging, the advent journey invites us to leave the safe and comfortable in search of something wonderful and new.

Advent is about listening for the vision of God’s intention for life, longing for something that is both here already and not yet fully realized.  God’s peace is greater than we can imagine on our own. The peace of Christ that passes all understanding is bigger than personal salvation.  Its goal is no less than the transformation of the whole word.  Far from removing us from the present concerns of this life, the season calls us to influence life here and now.  As expats we’re limited in what we can do here in Mexico to call for peacemaking in schools or governments or community priorities. In our own homelands we can take a stand on policy issues.  Here though, our options are more individual.  I love hearing about the volunteer work being done in orphanages, schools and shelters, with neighbors and organizations.  In two weeks the Salvation Army Children’s Home will be with us in worship.  That’s a peace-making opportunity. The Lord is Coming in those actions.  Maranatha.  The Lord shows us the way of peace and invites us on the journey.  Amen.

Dear friends, this is not just another Sunday, another Season, and another day. Are you ready to encounter Jesus? Are you ready for the unexpected to change your life, alter your plans, and disrupt your direction? Be still. Be aware. Be ready. God is good. Jesus is coming—again, and again, and again. Don’t miss a single opportunity of this present day.

Colossians 1: 11-20;  The Image of the Invisible God; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; 11.24.19; ICCM

On Friday night, over dinner at Angelina’s, someone asked me if I had always wanted to be a pastor.  Yes, I answered, even before I can remember apparently.  When I was a little girl our family sat in the front row where we could see what was going on, a tactic my mother employed to help my sister and me behave.  When I was ordained, Pastor Dennis Hanson told me his memories of me as a toddler.  He said he wasn’t surprised I had become a pastor and that I was the only person who ever blessed him back.  I guess it was my pattern to mirror the sign of the cross at the end of the service from my perch on my father’s lap. 

The mystical has always drawn me in.  I love the music and poetry of faith, the songs and verses and prayers that ring in my mind.  I’ve memorized many passages over time, without trying really, just by reading and studying.  The practices of prayer and meditation quiet and comfort my racing brain.  Visions of the unity of all things ground my being.  To be honest, I find it hard to imagine how others can live even one day without seeing holiness everywhere.  Oh, I’ve learned through my ministry that many people, even many church people haven’t developed a practice of prayer and study nor are they oriented to look for God’s expansive presence as I am.  I have to remind myself what a luxury I have had—what a privilege it has been to spend my working life digging deep into God’s word.

I was about 15 or so when I sought help from Pastor Dave Solberg, asking him to teach me how to pray.  He was an energetic teacher.  I learned many styles of prayer from him—simple daily practices reading the gospels contemplatively, lectio divina, centering prayer, meditation techniques including breathing prayers, mantras, praying the name of Jesus, and prayer journals.

This past week I remembered Pastor Solberg’s lessons when someone here shared with me their personal faith goal for this Mexican season:  to grow in hungering for the word.  That person quoted a part of the Book of Common Prayer written in 1662:  Blessed Lord, who hast caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning, grant that we may in such wise hear the Scriptures, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of eternal life which Thou has given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.  What a great joy it is for a pastor to hear that kind of intention!  Prayer matures into the practice of memory.  What an adventure it is to rest in God’s word.  I’m excited to watch the growth happen.

Some texts lend themselves to contemplation and recitation better than others.  Those passages lose something when we over analyze or dissect them too much. Like music, art and poetry, pieces like our lesson from Colossians today are meant to evoke, envelop, and express deep truth.

This past summer Steve and I were able to attend a Gordon Lightfoot concert.  We wound up sitting in the front row of the general seating with some of our best friends.  The highlight of the event was when the 81-year-old songwriter sang our song—Beautiful. My heart swelled. I was transported back in time to the day Steve first played the song for me, and also to our wedding day when a friend sang it for us.

That’s how love songs work—it’s not so much about the melody or the words—it’s about the meaning infused in the memories. We instinctively respond.  Their hyperbole and surplus of feeling create big sensations and speak the language of the heart.  Their words roll around in our minds on the notes of music.  They make their way into our souls.

Our reading from Colossians works that way too—it’s a love song to Christ from the early church.  It’s loaded with Christological poetry that lends itself to art and music.  All things hold together in him.  He is the image of the invisible God. In him, through him, for him all things are created, In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.  Those words live in me, they roll in my head like a melody.

When I was about 10 years old my parents acquired a wall-sized triptych, painted by the head of the art department at the Lutheran college my father worked at.  Its three panels stretch at least 8 feet wide and 6 feet high on a wall in the dining room.  Across the top are the words:  All things hold together in him.  The background is composed of the Christ, in the Byzantine format known as pantocrator, which means ruler of all creation.  He stands, crowned, robed in white, full-length and full-faced, holding the book of the gospels in his left hand and blessing with his right hand. The painting is filled with carpenters, doctors, children playing, students studying, artists painting, people of all races and ages and genders. 

We had customary places at the dinner table.  I ate all my meals looking at that depiction of our text for today.  Our text lives in me, I can see it when I close my eyes.  Listen to the words of our reading as paraphrased by the wonderful pastor poet Eugene Peterson in the translation known as the Message.

^15-18 We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen. We look at this Son and see God’s original purpose in everything created. For everything, absolutely everything, above and below, visible and invisible, rank after rank after rank of angels—everything got started in him and finds its purpose in him. He was there before any of it came into existence and holds it all together right up to this moment. And when it comes to the church, he organizes and holds it together, like a head does a body.

^18-20 He was supreme in the beginning and—leading the resurrection parade—he is supreme in the end. From beginning to end he’s there, towering far above everything, everyone. So spacious is he, so roomy, that everything of God finds its proper place in him without crowding. Not only that, but all the broken and dislocated pieces of the universe—people and things, animals and atoms—get properly fixed and fit together in vibrant harmonies, all because of his death, his blood that poured down from the cross.

That’s poetry. 

I heard an interview with Eugene Peterson this summer on the National Public Radio show called On Being.  The radio host, Krista Tippet, had recorded the interview shortly before Pastor Peterson’s death.  He told about how the scriptures open up when we read them as poetry going so far as to say that we cannot understand most of the scriptures without a poetic and imaginative approach.  He said,

Poets tell us what our eyes, blurred with too much gawking and our ears, dulled with too much chatter miss around and within us.  Poets use words to drag us into the depth of reality itself.  Poetry grabs us by the jugular.  Far from being cosmetic language, it is intestinal. 

Eugene Peterson related a memory in that interview.  One time he went to visit a lonely woman. She was doing embroidery and explained to him that her life was limp.  She said it needed something like an embroidery hoop—you know, those two part round things that you stretch fabric between and snap them together.  As you stretch and then hold the material in place it all fits together.  He provided her with a copy of the psalms and invited her to let her mind stretch like fabric around the structure of the psalms, to see what happened to the pieces of her life when she zeroed in on one or two of them.

Pastor Peterson went on in the interview to explain his own practice of praying the psalms.  First thing in the morning he centered in for an hour or so of quiet and coffee.  He had selected 7 psalms that as he said, “covered the whole waterfront.” And he memorized them.  Sundays he worked with Psalm 92, a sabbath psalm.  One weekday was focused on Psalm 68, a collection of bits and pieces that fit together moving from fury and praise to isolation.  The parts are not logically connected but with imagination they do blend and flow. Psalm 18 is rich with metaphor and served as another day’s concentration point.  After reciting and resting in the psalm for the day he said he, “shut up.”  He breathed for 15-25 minutes, emptying himself as much as he could, ridding himself of the clutter.  The psalms offer us the full range of experience.  He said, “It’s easy to be honest before God with the hallelujahs, more difficult with the hurts, and nearly impossible to be honest with God in the dark emotions of our hates.”

The poets, mystics, psalmists, and song writers invite us into the wonder, the love, and the deep relationship with the Holy.  All things hold together in him.  He is the image of the invisible God. In him, through him, for him all things are created, In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. 

Today I want to leave you with another passage that rings with the majesty and mystery of God’s immeasurable presence.  It is a poetic prayer for believers written in Ephesians chapter 3:

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father,^[a] 15 from whom every family^[b] in heaven and on earth takes its name. ¹⁶ I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, ¹⁷ and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. ¹⁸ I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

²⁰ Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, ²¹ to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

New Heavens and a New Earth; Pastor Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM; November 17, 2019; Isaiah 65: 17-25 & Luke 21: 5-19

In both of our Scripture readings today, we see the people longing for the good old days—the times before destruction.  Both the prophet Isaiah’s words and Luke’s recalling of Jesus’ words were written in the context of destruction.  Both are messages of hope and promise in troubled times.  Both messages acknowledge the difficult nature of this world, it’s structures and governments even as they proclaim God’s enduring provision. 

Carly Simon’s song, Anticipation, has been running through my mind this week as I thought about our scripture readings.

We can never know about the days to come, But we think about them anyway
And I wonder if I’m really with you now. Or just chasin’ after some finer day

Anticipation, anticipation, Is makin’ me late, Is keepin’ me waitin’

And tomorrow we might not be together, I’m no prophet and I don’t know nature’s ways
So I’ll try and see into your eyes right now, And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days

And stay right here ’cause these are the good old days

The prophet Isaiah preached a word of hope to people living in anticipation, for them to stay right there, being glad and rejoicing in what God is creating. 

For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth… be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight

Isaiah spoke to what was left of the former kingdom of Israel. Generations before, Babylon had conquered Israel and destroyed Jerusalem and its temple.  The people of Israel were marched off in captivity, having seen their land torn by war, their homes and place of worship demolished.  For over 70 year they lived as exiles, longing to return. They built up expectations.  Finally, Persian defeated Babylon.  Cyrus was the new emperor of all the known world and he allowed the people who had been born in captivity, the ones who had only heard stories of the good old days, to go “home.” 

Imagine the challenges they faced.  Where to begin!?  These people had never seen the place before. They had to start all over.  Current residents had filled up what had once been their land.  Where were those good old days?  Maybe, if we get a picture in our minds of Syria right now, it’s broken walls and ruined land, 13 million of its 22 million people displaced from their devastated land; maybe if we consider what it would be like for them two or three generations from now to return and try to rebuild; maybe if we do that, we can begin to hear Isaiah’s words with some degree of understanding. What would it be like to hear those hopeful words in that kind of a situation?  Words like this:

No more shall the sound of weeping be heard, or the cry of distress.  No more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.  They shall build houses and inhabit them, they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit, they shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.  Predators and prey will feed together. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain! The prophet was speaking their language—he described an end to all they had ever known. He painted a word picture of peace, health, stability.  I am about to create new heavens and a new earth…Be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating. 

Over the years they did rebuild, a bit.  But, their new temple wasn’t anything like the one built in the 10^th century BC by King Solomon and destroyed in 587 by the Babylonians.  The second temple was much smaller. And they didn’t have their own king again.  No, the Persian Empire gave way to the Greeks and then to the Romans.  It wasn’t until 500 years later, in 20 BC, that the Jews were finally able to update and expand the temple.  Through all that time their longing remained strong for a Messiah to restore the good old days.

Isaiah’s message pointed the people not backward, but to their own time. He wanted them to see the present and continuing activity of God’s creative work.  They longed for another time.  It’s only human to do so.  We spend so much of our lives wishing for another time. 

I used to listen to a radio show called Car Talk.  It was hosted by car mechanic brothers, Tom and Ray Magliozzi.  They called themselves Click and Clack, the Tappit brothers.  They answered car questions in their own funny style.  One day they talked about how we always want to live in another time.  They joked:

If you’re less than 10 years old, you’re so excited about aging that you think in fractions. “How old are you?” “I’m four and a half!” You’re never thirty-six and a half. You’re four and a half, going on five!

That’s the key.

You get into your teens, now they can’t hold you back. You jump to the next number, or even a few ahead.

“How old are you?” “I’m gonna be 16!” You could be 13, but hey, you’re gonna be 16!

And then the greatest day of your life… you become 21.

Even the words sound like a ceremony… YOU BECOME 21… YESSSS!!!

But then you turn 30. Oooohh, what happened there? Makes you sound like bad milk. He TURNED; we had to throw him out. There’s no fun now, you’re just a sour dumpling. What’s wrong? What’s changed?

You BECOME 21, you TURN 30, then you’re PUSHING 40.

Whoa! Put on the brakes, it’s all slipping away. Before you know it, you REACH 50… and your dreams are gone.

But wait!!! You MAKE it to 60. You didn’t think you would!

So you BECOME 21, TURN 30, PUSH 40, REACH 50 and MAKE it to 60.

You’ve built up so much speed that you HIT 70! After that it’s a day-by-day thing; you HIT Wednesday!

You get into your 80s and every day is a complete cycle; you HIT lunch; you TURN 4:30; you REACH bedtime.

And it doesn’t end there. Into the 90s, you start going backwards; “I was JUST 92.”

Then a strange thing happens. If you make it over 100, you become a little kid again. “I’m 100 and a half!”

Even though we can never know about the days to come, we think about them anyway.  We keep chasin’ after some finer day.  It’s hard to stay right here and see that these are the good old days, and these days are the only ones we really have.

Luke wrote our gospel reading today sometime after the temple that we were talking about in the Old Testament reading was destroyed yet again.  In 66 AD the Jews revolted under the Roman rule.  The Roman response was to level the temple.  Now, all that remains of that glorious structure is the Western Wall.  And the world is still fighting over the stones referenced in our gospel.

Worrying about the future is just as useless as longing for the past.  Many people see a dire prediction of awful things to come in texts like toady’s gospel reading.  But Luke’s portrayal of Jesus points us away from fretting about the things to come.  As Jesus said in another place, today has enough worries of its own. Like every other generation, we have our hands full.  Government corruption is universal, wars, natural disasters, fires and floods, disease, loss—these are constants in every time and place.  The human reaction is to long for the past or worry about the future, to throw up our hands in despair and bury our heads in the sand and hope against hope that it all turns out alright.

Both of these texts are really about good news. Isaiah acknowledges the current reality of his time and God is about to create new heavens and a new earth.  The people should be glad and rejoice forever in what God IS creating. Jesus isn’t preaching gloom and doom; Jesus is preaching reality. Jesus was not predicting some far-off day of ultimate battle; he was talking about the reality of life in Israel, which was an occupied country and had been buffeted about by war during its entire existence.

We are called to a life of endurance, patience and faith in the midst of a world that is often difficult and confusing. We are called to a faith that looks above and beyond our personal circumstances to the promise of God to hold us and keep us safe forever.

Robert Fulghum tells the story of a medieval stonecutter who was working on a Cathedral. An interested bystander saw the man working day after day carefully cutting and shaping and polishing one modest sized piece.  Finally the watcher said to the cutter “This stone must be very important.  Is it a part of the baptismal font?  Is it the base of the pulpit?  Is it the front of the altar?’

The cutter got up from his knees and wiped his hands and lead the man around the scaffolding and pointed out a very obscure corner of the building, “It goes there,” he said.  The onlooker was astounded, “Really, you’re working so hard on something nobody will see?” The stonecutter smiled and said, “God will see it.  We’re not building this cathedral for nobody; we’re building it for God.”

Both of our readings today are calls to faithful living, to endurance, to hanging in through tough times, to having faith in the God who has faith in us. It’s not about building a temple or a cathedral, but about building our life into a house for God, where Christ’s love motivates all actions, where we remember it’s about God and not about us.

And we then move into the world, carrying this ministry of building with us, building networks of connection in the world, networks that share God’s love with those who need it most, those stepped on by war, those persecuted by oppression, those rejected by society, those left wounded and bleeding outside, on the doorstep of life. 

We can never know about the days to come, But we think about them anyway, Are we just chasin’ after some finer day, living in anticipation, waitin’.  Or can we listen to God’s message and stay right here ’cause these are the good old days. 

We have a purpose—to live into the resurrection faith, and to work for the new heaven and new earth, where:

No more shall the sound of weeping be heard, or the cry of distress.  No more shall there be an infant that lives but a few days or an old person who does not live out a lifetime.  They shall build houses and inhabit them, they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit, they shall not labor in vain or bear children for calamity.  Predators and prey will feed together. They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain!  Amen.

11/10/19 Resurrection Questions Luke 20: 27-38  Job 19: 23-27a; 2 Thes 2: 1-5,13-17

Once a famous Baptist preacher was speaking to some students at a Christian college. A student asked, “Dr. Marney, would you say a word or two about the resurrection of the dead?” He replied, “I don’t discuss such things with anyone under 30. Look at you all: in the prime of life. Never have you known honest-to-God failure, heartburn, impotency, solid defeat, brick walls or mortality. You’re extremely apt and handsome—white kids who have never in all of your lives been 30 miles from home, or 20 minutes into the New Testament, or more than a mile and a half from a Baptist or Methodist church, or within a thousand miles of any issue that mattered to a kingdom that matters. So, what can you know of a world that makes sense only if Christ is raised?”

When I was ordained, I was 28 years old.  I look back on that now and wonder how the wise older saints in my first congregation put up with me.  What did I know then?  I was 28 and filled with confidence. Oh, I knew how to preach a sermon on resurrection for a funeral or for Easter. I had learned so much in seminary. But I’m afraid my questions about the resurrection were something like those of the Sadducees in our gospel, theoretical.  But it’s life that really teaches us. It is as we live and love and lose that we learn. With open hearts and listening ears we can experience the holy and the mystical.  Like Job it is through the suffering that the truth emerges.  His words ring true because they are grounded in life not theory. “I know that my redeemer lives and stands with me, on my side.”

Christian faith is drawing near to God, holding fast to our Redeemer and living in that hope.  It is not about getting our doctrine perfect. It’s not about having all the answers, saying the right prayers or having correct ideas. Doctrines tend to divide.  Controversies repeatedly split the church. In 1054 the East and West split over ideas of the trinity and remain divided to this day. In the 1600’s the Reformed tradition almost split over something as arcane as supralapsarianism vs. infralapsarianism.  Infant baptism vs. a believer’s baptism has divided us in more recent times. 

During the time of Jesus, it was no different.  There were groups of Jews with different beliefs. The Sadducees were rivals to the Pharisees.  Both groups were opposed to Jesus and his followers.  The Pharisees believed in a resurrection from the dead.  The Sadducees did not. It was the Sadducees who challenged Jesus in our gospel today.  They relied only on the first 5 books of the Torah, Genesis through Deuteronomy.  They were sticklers who were certain their way was the only correct way. Those Sadducees who didn’t believe in the resurrection had a question for Jesus about resurrection. What a trap! And their question revealed just how limited they were to the views of their own time—whose property will the woman be if there is a resurrection, they asked.

Jesus deftly points to what is beyond their limits.  Women won’t be property in the life to come.  Your sights are too small.  God is the God of the living!  It’s the same message Paul preached in Romans:  We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.  If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s! 

The Christian community in Corinth asked similar questions—what kind of body will we have?  Paul contrasts a physical body and a spiritual body.  He uses and image that speaks of both continuity and discontinuity.  This body the physical one, is like a seed and the spiritual body is like the full-grown plant.  The seed becomes the plant.  But how different the two are. 

Martin Luther was asked about the afterlife—he answered in two ways saying that the afterlife is God’s business, so he didn’t have to worry about it.  He also said that we can know as little about life after death as a baby traveling down the birth canal can know about the world the baby is about to enter. 

This summer I had a powerful experience. We had been staying for a few days in St. Louis, Mo. with Jack and Peggy Sieber.  As we were leaving, I felt lightheaded.  When we got in the car, I measured my heart rate with an app on my phone—it was 189 bpm.  Steve drove me to an urgent care facility just a mile or so away. But the facility had just opened for business. The level of training was inadequate. The nurses didn’t know how to operate the EKG machine, so they called an ambulance.  Finally, after about a half an hour, when my heart rate had been high as 210 the ambulance personnel gave me a drug that stopped my heart momentarily in order to re-set the rhythm.  It didn’t work the first time. They had the patches ready on the crash cart—it was all quite scary.

I looked over the heads of all these medical personnel and met eyes with Steve. It was the day before Mother’s Day. Our kids were expecting us. I was worried about my family. I thought, well, if I die here on the table, Jack and Peggy will help Steve cope with things—and my kids and my parents and my sister will be there for each other. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t want that to be the end—but at some point, my thoughts shifted to the realization that I’d finally have all my resurrection questions answered.  I’d soon be in the presence of God.  I felt no fear, just excitement.

The next time they gave me a double dose of the drug, I felt weightless, suspended like at the top of a rollercoaster, then felt the blood swooshing through my body. Finally, my heart rate dropped to 145 and I got my first ambulance ride where Jack’s golfing buddy, who is the head of cardiac medicine at St. Luke’s Hospital, met me, conducted a bunch of tests to determine I had not had a heart attack.  He put me on medication to get me safely home.  Two weeks later I had a cardiac ablation procedure and voila—I’m fine.  I know it was much easier for me to be the one on the table than the one standing by watching and worrying.  It was only later that I considered what would have happened if we had been on the highway in the mountainous desert between Durango and the US border.  Life is such a precious gift. God’s marvelous grace holds us through this life and beyond to something we can’t yet know or see.

Ten years ago, our daughter had her fourth open heart surgery. The other 3 operations were when she was an infant, before I was her stepmother.  I went into a real tail-spin in the months of anticipation before her valve replacement. I was afraid all the time. Not about her—my belief in the resurrection was strong. I knew all the way to my core, that God would hold her through death and beyond if she were to die. No, I was afraid for myself and for Steve. How would we possibly cope?

Even when we believe in resurrection we can be overcome by our questions, or by the power of loss, or even by anticipated loss. It was the communion of saints that comforted me in the end. I had seen the church surround those who grieve so many times, I knew that whatever happened, we would be held together by people of faith, uplifted and carried when we couldn’t step forward by ourselves. Theoretical questions about God don’t really matter. Our second lesson points us in the right direction. The church in Thessalonica was apparently worried about ideas about the second coming of Christ. Paul’s letter admonished them to draw eternal comfort and good hope instead of getting distracted with wild ideas.  Comfort for our hearts and strength comes through living in faith, through as Paul says– every good work and word. 

The Sadducees came with a manipulative challenge, seeking to debate an intellectual issue with Jesus. He gave them a long answer that set them back on their heels. Compare that to Martha who came to Jesus full of grief over her brother Lazarus’ death.  To her he said, “I am the resurrection

and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live…Do you believe this? 

Martha was ready to receive the blessing that Jesus was proclaiming.  For her it wasn’t just a hypothetical question.  Resurrection is a whole new world. Injustice—where women have no hope, no standing, no safety net unless they are married will pass away.  The age to come will be so much more than that—more than we can even ask for or comprehend.

A major league baseball pitcher was once asked what he thought about his future prospects.  He answered, “The future is like the present, only longer.”  That may be true for baseball, but God’s way in Christ is not just a continuation of the present.  It is a whole new way, beyond our present experience, only known through hope and faith in the living God. We can fiddle around with ideas and theories, we can ask theological questions and read all kinds of books. But in the end resurrection is not an abstract issue.  It is part of a life of discipleship, suffering and hope. 

Job spoke from his heart about his lived experience.  The “friends” who appear to counsel him give him answers—they simplify and explain away his circumstances, unconvincingly.  They couldn’t tolerate the complexity and mystery of his life.  But Job rejected their cut and dried answers.  His confession of faith has to do with connection with God, his trust in the Redeemer who stands with him through it all.

We all have friends like Job’s who seem to have all the answers, and if we’re honest sometimes we fall into that same trap ourselves, the trap of believing we know it all, that there is one absolute answer to life’s dilemmas.  When we are in the valley of the shadow of death, when grief overwhelms us, when we are lying on the table with the crash cart at our side what we need is not an answer, we need God’s own self—the resurrection and the life. Like Job we can say, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that I shall see God who is for me.”  

Nov 3, 2019; All are Welcome; Luke 19: 1-10; ICCM; Rebecca Ellenson

It’s crazy how we remember things we learn in song, isn’t it?  For example, I learned today’s gospel story when I was just a wee little girl, to a catchy tune complete with actions.

 “Zacchaeus was a wee little man and a wee little man was he.  He climbed up in a sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.”  But Jesus said, ‘Zacchaeus, you come down from there.  For I’m going to your house today, for I’m going to your house today’.”

 I think we saw a filmstrip in Sunday School that day.  If I close my eyes, I can see the primary colored pictures of the little man with his robe hiked up over his knees, awkwardly perched in a tree.  Perhaps it made a big impression on me because I was a wee little girl, and little for my age.

One of the things I love about the stories of Jesus is that they are accessible enough for a wee little girl to grasp, yet deep enough for that same person to keep studying for decades and still find new layers of meaning. On the surface level, this story is about Jesus who clearly sees yet another person who was labeled and scorned by others.  We get to see the wee little man’s joy at being drawn close to Jesus. And we are given an example of what wealth can do when given for the needs of others. 

There’s so much detail in this story:  Zacchaeus is a chief tax collector. He isn’t well liked by the other Jews because he works for the occupying Roman government.  The people assume Zacchaeus is corrupt.  It was common practice for tax collectors to take a surplus amount for themselves, over and above what the government required.  The scene as described is comical — wealth and power don’t stop the important man in the big and important city of Jericho from scrambling up a tree in order to see Jesus as he passes by.  The people have yet another reason to roll their eyes or dismiss Zacchaeus.  What an undignified picture he must have been, perched in a sycamore, or a black mulberry tree!  My good friend Peter has a mulberry tree in his backyard—it’s a messy tree with squishy berries that stain your clothes and fingers. 

Jesus zeroes right in on this wee little man, calling him by name (ironically, Zacchaeus means righteous or clean, even though his association with the Romans and money would have meant people would consider him unclean and suspect, not to mention covered in mulberry stains!)  Jesus tells him to get down from the tree and declares that he must stay at Zacchaeus’ house that day.  The crowd grumbles and identifies the tax collector as a sinner.  Then we learn that, to everyone’s surprise, except Jesus, this man is not what he seems to be.  No, he gives half of his income to the poor and repays 4-fold any overcollection.  Jesus addresses Zacchaeus when he says, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham.  For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” 

If we stop at the face value of this story, as we did when we learned that song as children, it is a good and memorable lesson with value.  But as I said before, there’s so much rich depth in the scriptures.  With just a little analysis and digging we discover even more truth.  Don’t you just love that!? We can study the Word all our lives.  We keep learning new things.  We can find salvation anew.  We can encounter the Christ and be led to live lives of joyful and expanding generosity.

Let me explain what I mean by that.  We often just focus on one story of the gospels at a time.  Rarely do we look at how that story fits into the whole of the writer’s narrative.  When we do, though, we see how masterful these scriptures are.  There are layers of meaning when we look for the patterns the writers used to tell the stories of Jesus.  You see, this story about Zacchaeus does not appear in any of the other gospels.  It comes at the end of a section in Luke’s gospel called the travel narrative and it fits into a progression of 10 meals that frame a key message or theme of this gospel about the Lord’s Supper.  Luke composed the gospel and the Acts of the Apostles after Mark wrote his gospel.  He chooses what stories to include and arranges them with cares. 

When Luke wrote the stories of Zacchaeus and the other meals in the gospel, it was more than 50 years since Jesus gathered with his disciples in that upper room the night before he died. Many things had changed, Pilate, Herod, the apostles and even Peter were long gone.  Jerusalem and the temple had been ruined.  But throughout the world of Paul in what is now Syria, Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus Christians gathered each Sunday to do what Jesus did on the night of his last supper.  They took bread, gave thanks, broke it and gave it to each other saying, This is my body which is given for you.  They ate supper together and then afterwards they took the cup and drank proclaiming, This is the cup of the new covenant, for the forgiveness of sins.  The blood symbolized life, connection to Christ who rose.  The bread symbolized their union in one body, offered like Jesus, for the life of the world. 

Luke’s gospel includes 10 meals, seven are part of the travel narrative.  The first is at the house of Levi, an ordinary tax collector.  And today’s meal is the 7^th meal, this time at the home of a chief tax collector, Zacchaeus.  These two stories at the homes of the tax collectors frame the other five meals in Luke’s travel narrative.  Levi, the first tax collector is called to follow Jesus right after the call of the first disciples, Peter James and John.  Jesus saw him sitting at the customs post, something like a toll booth today. He said to him, “follow me.” And just like Peter James and John, Levi left everything behind he got up and followed.  Levi then gave a great banquet for Jesus.  A large crowd of tax collectors and others were there at table with them.  The pharisees and scribes complained, just like the crowds did in our lesson for today.  There in the first meal Luke records, Jesus sets out the theme.  “Those who are healthy do not need a physician, but the sick do.  I have not come to call the righteous to repentance but sinners.” 

The second meal takes place at the house of Simon the Pharisee. Do you suppose that the pharisees who didn’t like it that Jesus dined at Levi’s house decided to plan their own dinner for Jesus, to do it right?  Well into that grand symposium style banquet comes a sinful woman who places herself at Jesus’ feet, in the position of a disciple, and wipes Jesus’ feet with her hair and bathes them with a costly ointment.  Simon the pharisee is indignant. Jesus turns to the Pharisee and tells a story about two people whose debts were forgiven, one small one large.  He then contrasts the welcome Simon and the woman offered Jesus.  Like Simon, we and all those who hear these words are drawn in.  All are welcome, especially those whose sins are great. True worship, as Isaiah foretold, comes from repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation and finally an outpouring of love.  Jesus concludes his teaching with these words: “So I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; hence, she has shown great love.  But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”

Luke’s next meal is the feeding of the multitude in Bethsaida with the meager loaves and fishes.  In this meal Jesus himself is the host.  He blesses the bread, breaks them, and gives them to his disciples who set them before the crowd.  And all eat and are satisfied and 12 baskets of leftovers are gathered up. 

The next meal is at the home of Mary and Martha where another woman sits at Jesus’ feet as a disciple.  Then Jesus reclines at the table at another Pharisee’s house where the teachers scold him for not observing all the expected rituals.  The sequence escalates at the home of a leading Pharisee where Jesus tells the story of the beggar Lazarus at the gate of the rich man. 

I’m afraid this service would be as long as a Mexican service if I fully explain how all these meals relate to this central practice of the Christian faith—holy communion.  You’ll have to read the whole gospel, for yourself, paying attention to these meals. For now, you can take my word for it that each meal turns the people’s expectations upside down.  Jesus welcomes everyone, includes everyone, and challenges each of us to do the same.  When people eat with Jesus, they are either transformed by his generosity with acts of discipleship themselves, or they resist Jesus’ extravagant grace, and by doing so exclude themselves from his welcome table. 

It’s not just in the meal stories, though, that Luke pounds this theme home.  Jesus welcomes sinners and he tells stories about the sick and the lost and the overlooked.  The stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost prodigal son end with the very same words as our gospel for today:  “The son of man has come to seek and to save that which is lost.”

There is a red thread that runs through the whole fabric of the scriptures.  There is a movement through the centuries toward wholeness, a spiral of truth through each generation, each family, each life, each person, each community of faith from exclusion to inclusion, from uptight legalism to extravagant grace and joyful response, from rigid ceremony and sacrifice to justice and peace. 

I recently came across a poster created by Bixby Knolls United Church of Christ.  I think it fits in very well with the message of our gospel.

The poster reads like this. 

THE BIBLE IS CLEAR: Moabites are bad.  They were not to be allowed to dwell among God’s people (Dt. 23).  BUT THEN comes the story of “Ruth the Moabite,” which challenges the prejudice against Moabites.

THE BIBLE IS CLEAR:  People from Uz are evil (Jer.25).  BUT THEN comes the story of Job, a man from Uz who was the “most blameless man on earth.” 

THE BIBLE IS CLEAR:  No foreigners or eunuchs allowed. (Dt. 23) BUT THEN come the story of an African eunuch welcomed into the church (Acts 8).

THE BIBLE IS CLEAR:  God’s people hated Samaritans.  BUT THEN Jesus tells a story that shows not all Samaritans were bad. 

THE STORY MAY BEGIN with prejudice, discrimination, & animosity but the Spirit moves God’s people toward openness, welcome, inclusion, acceptance, & affirmation.

We started out today with a wee little song about a wee little man, and we’ve dug deep into the structure of Luke’s gospel and even a bit into the long historic arc of scripture that bends toward repentance, forgiveness and reconciliation.  As we come to the table of our Lord, we, like all those he encountered on his journeys to Jerusalem, are invited to take and eat, to be transformed, to be found. And we are sent out from here to reach with open arms, to welcome and invite others into this grace we know. 

July 14, 2019, Siren and Lewis UMC, Pastor Rebecca Ellenson, “Do This!”

I’m happy to be the guest preacher here, today.  My husband Steve and I attend worship in Webster during the summer months.  I’m a pastor with a part time position for part of the year.  I serve a congregation in Mazatlán, Mexico each winter.  A Mexican Congregational church there opens their doors to the community of snowbirds from the US and Canada. They’ve called me to preach in English to about 150 people from a variety of denominations and locations.  It’s a terrific call for me and I feel very blessed.

When I tell people that we live in Mexico for six months each year the nearly universal response is– “Oh aren’t you afraid?”  Of course, there are dangerous places in Mexico and since Mazatlán is a city of about 700,000 people we exercise the same kind of caution we would in any urban center. One difference is that we don’t drive at night.  It’s not because there are bandits on the roads, like there were in the gospel for today.  It’s because the grazing land is open range and if you hit a farm animal you go to jail until the farmer has been paid damage.

We feel quite safe. In fact, we’ve found the Mexican people to be extremely helpful, welcoming, and generous.  We love participating in outreach and service work when we are there.  One of our favorite projects is a mobile medical/dental/and optical clinic the Mexican congregation operates each year in a very poor area of the city.  We sterilize equipment, hold lights for the dentists, or fit people with reading glasses.  But the most remarkable parts of our experiences there have to do with the generosity and sincere welcome we feel from the Mexican people. 

Mazatlán is host to one of the biggest Mardi-Gras festivals in the world, they call it Carnaval.  The week before Ash Wednesday is a blowout celebration of epic proportions. We live on the parade route.  Last year, on the Sunday before Ash Wednesday the floats were lined up along the ocean.  I had a terrible cold and should have stayed inside, but it was a nice afternoon, sunny and about 70 degrees when we left the apartment.  We wandered up the street to watch the dancers, the marchers, the bands, and the floats as they prepared.  We found a spot just off the sidewalk in front of a traveling vendor who was selling, among other things, coffee cups that featured naked ladies. 

By this time the sun was setting, the wind had picked up, and it had cooled off a bit.  It was elbow to elbow, standing room only.  As the parade started to move, I had a coughing spell.  The vendor scowled at Steve and said to me in Spanish, “You are sick, you should have a coat on!”  I was wearing capri’s and a lightweight tunic-like top.  I assured him I was fine and turned back to watch the parade.  Before long I started coughing again.  Then, the vendor removed his coat, took off his button-down canvas shirt, put his coat back on over his tee shirt layer and handed me his shirt.  “This is clean, take it.  Put it on,” he insisted with another scowl at my clearly negligent husband.  After another 5 minutes or so we decided to leave.  I tried to give him back his shirt but he smiled a gap-toothed gentle smile at me and said, “No, it’s yours.  God bless you!”  I have to say it’s the only time a stranger has given me the shirt off his back.  

A good Samaritan is a stranger who helps a person in need.  In our story the Samaritan is the one who SEES the need, DRAWS NEAR, is MOVED WITH COMPASSION, and ACTS on behalf of the other. 

We’re conditioned to be wary aren’t we, to fear the stranger, to protect ourselves.  What happens when we encounter someone stranded, injured, or in need?  One time, many summers ago, I was driving back to Duluth from my parents’ lake home with my two kids.  They were about 4 and 9 years old I suppose.  My daughter Cora was strapped into her booster seat in the backseat of our SUV.  It was dusk, about this time of year.  I’m sure it was after 9 pm and she wanted me to recline her seat.  So, I pulled over to the side of highway 210, near Motley MN.  I went around to the rear passenger side door and was kneeling on the seat, one knee on either side or her legs, awkwardly reaching over her to recline the seat. 

Suddenly, out of nowhere it seemed, a great big man dressed in a sleeveless tee shirt and gym shorts appeared in the open doorway, just an arms-length from me.  He smelled of sweat and alcohol and asked me in a slurred and smarmy voice if I needed help.  I said no, and he stepped in closer.  I was a woman alone on the roadside with my children.  I was also a red-belt level karate student at the time.  Without even thinking, I chambered my left fist to my waist, ready to defend us if I needed too.  Just then our little dog, a Brittany spaniel, stepped right over Cora between us, growling at the man.  He backed away and I pulled the door shut and locked it, crawling over the front seat and peeling out onto the highway. 

A few miles down the road, my son Peter said to me, “That was really scary mom.”  My son was also a karate student and he bravely told me that he would have side kicked the man if he had been in my place.  I said, “Well, Peter, I was kneeling so I couldn’t do that.  I thought a palm heel strike to his face would work, though.”  Later on, when we’d calmed down and I had time to think about it I considered what could have happened, what the newspaper headlines might have read: “Pastor attacks Good Samaritan by the roadside.” 

As Luke tells the story, an expert in Jewish Law asks Jesus a testing question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  I don’t think it was a “how do I get to go to heaven when I die?” question.  He wanted to know the true meaning of life, how to live fully. 

Jesus turned the question back to the questioner.  “What is written, how do you read?”  The lawyer gave the correct answer.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”  Good answer Jesus said, “Do this, and you will live.”

But the lawyer wanted more clarification.  I think the real question he was asking is “Who is Not my neighbor?  How much love are we talking about?  Where can I draw the line?  Outside my door? The people I know?  What about those other people? Other cultures, other races, other religions, other denominations, orientations, nationalities, political persuasions?  There’s a limit, right?  Remember, this man is a legal expert.  I bet he’d love to get into a philosophical discussion and talk theoretically.  But no, Jesus keeps it real.  He tells a story

A man was walking down the road from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was attacked by bandits.  They robbed, beat, stripped, and left him for dead.  Soon afterwards, a priest came by.  Seeing the wounded man, he passed by on the other side of the road.  A short while later, a Levite did likewise.  But then a Samaritan came along.  Seeing the stranded victim, he drew close, and felt deep compassion.  He bandaged the man’s wounds, annointed them with oil and wine, carried him to the nearest inn on his own animal, paid the innkeeper for the victim’s further care, and promised to return with more money as needed.

“So.  Which of the three was a neighbor to the man who was robbed?” Jesus asked.  “The one who showed him mercy,” the lawyer replied.  “Go and do likewise,” Jesus said again.  “Do this and you will live.”

Be like the Samaritan, not the Priest or the Levite, right?  It may not be easy, but at least it’s clear.  Do this.  See the one in need. Draw close.  Feel with compassion. Show mercy.  Extend kindness.  Live out your theology in hands-on care for other people.  Don’t just think love.  Do it. 

DebieThomas writes on a blog called “Journey With Jesus,” on the texts for the Sundays of the church year.  She suggests that as is so often true with Jesus and his stories, just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, a morality story about serving others, there’s more to it than the surface level.  It is more than just a “be good and generous” story. 

You see, when Jesus told this story, the hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans was ancient, entrenched, and bitter. The two groups disagreed about everything that mattered: how to honor God, how to interpret the Scriptures, and where to worship.  They practiced their faith in separate temples, read different versions of the Torah, and avoided social contact with each other whenever possible. Though we’re inclined to see the Good Samaritan as the ideal, Jesus’ choice of this particular hero was nothing less than shocking to first century ears. 

After all, he was the Other.  The enemy of the Jews.  The object of their fear, their condescension, their disgust, and their judgment.  He was the heretical outcast.  To get the point today we might ask ourselves: Who is the last person on earth you’d ever want to deem “a good guy?”  The last person you’d ask to save your life?  Whom do you secretly hope to convert, fix, impress, control, or save — but never, ever need?  A Mexican naked-lady-cup vendor?  A disheveled but strong looking man who smells of sweat and alcohol on a rural MN highway? For the modern Israeli Jewish man it might be a Good Hamas member.  Let’s say a liberal Democrat is robbed, and a Good conservative Republican saves her life.  A white supremacist is robbed, and a Good black teenager saves his life.  A transgender woman is robbed, and a Good anti-LGBTQ activist saves her life. An atheist is robbed, and a Good Christian fundamentalist saves his life.     

Every time and place has agonizing differences that divide us. Those divisions are real, not theoretical, they are not easily negotiated; each side is fully convinced that the other is wrong. What Jesus did when he deemed the Samaritan “good” was radical and risky.  No doubt it stunned his Jewish listeners. He was asking them to dream of a different kind of kingdom.  He was inviting them to consider the possibility that a person might add up to more than the sum of her political, racial, cultural, and economic identities.  He was calling them to put aside the history they knew, and the prejudices they nursed.  He was asking them to leave room for divine and world-altering surprises.         

Instead of identifying with the potential helpers on the road, what happens if we identify with the wounded, dying man on the road. When we put ourselves in the place of the broken one, grateful to anyone at all who will show us mercy — only then can we feel the unbounded compassion of the Good Samaritan. All divisions fall away on the broken road, out of necessity.  When you’re lying bloody in a ditch, what matters is not whose help you’d prefer, whose way of practicing Christianity you like best, whose politics you agree with.  What matters is whether or not anyone will stop to show you mercy before you die.

The brokenness happens in all sorts of ways.  It may be in a hospital room, or at a graveside, or after a marriage fails, or when a cherished job goes bust. After the storm, the betrayal, the war, the injury, the diagnosis—at those times it won’t be our theology that saves us.  It won’t be our cherished affiliations that matter.  All that matters will be how quickly we swallow our pride and grab hold of whatever hand sees our need, draws near, has compassion and acts on our behalf.

“Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asked.  Your neighbor is the one who scandalizes you with compassion, Jesus answered.  Your neighbor is the one who upends all the entrenched categories and shocks you with a fresh face of God.  Your neighbor is the one who mercifully steps over the ancient, bloodied line separating “us” from “them,” and teaches you the real meaning of “Good.”

What shall I do to inherit eternal life?  Do this.  Do this and you will live.

March 31, 2019; Prodigal; Rebecca Ellenson; ICCM

There was a man who had two sons…  It is “fiction,” of course. Or at least it is not “the truth” in the ways we are most accustomed to thinking of “truth,” for we are told right up front that Jesus is telling stories now.

And yet, the characters, setting and plot are so familiar to us that it IS real.  And it is TRUE in all the ways that matter. It is a universal story.  It is a story like so many other biblical of other fathers and other sons. Think, for instance, of Isaac and Esau and Jacob.  Remember all those sons of Jacob — especially Joseph — second to the youngest of that clan. And surely, don’t forget David, who was the youngest of seven or eight sons of Jesse.  Again, and again, the Biblical witness offers us stories of fathers and sons.

So when Jesus began, “There was a man who had two sons…” his listeners would have been able to identify quickly with the characters.  And they would have also remembered all those other fathers and all those other sons. They probably expected the drama to play out around the story of the younger son

• They knew the story of Jacob the younger twin and his need to flee his brother Esau’s wrath after having cheated him out of his birthright. 
• They were well acquainted with Joseph, the second to the youngest and his tendency to lord his father’s favoritism over his older brothers. 
• And David was always in their minds, both his profound gifts, and also his profound failures.

As in the parable Jesus told, eventually each of those younger sons found their way back home — either literally or figuratively. And in their returning, each was an example of the power and the grace of God.  The same is true in the story we’re looking at today.

The parable of the man with two sons is told primarily for those who identify with the older son. At the beginning of the chapter we hear the grumbling of the faithful, the Pharisees and the scribes, voicing their distress that “this fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”  This story is aimed at all of us who forget it is only because of the power of God at work in the lives of Jacob and Joseph and David, or even our own lives, that any of us may be called ‘righteous.’

I recently read a review of a book, by Jeanne Bishop, titled, Change of Heart:  Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with my Sister’s Killer.  Bishop draws on our gospel today as a tool for her process of forgiveness and reconciliation.  The author’s story is similar to that of a couple I knew quite well, who lost a child in 1991 in a horrible crime.  My friends, Don and Mary Streufert’s then 18-year-old daughter was brutally murdered by two men.  Don and Mary and their other daughter, Emily, endured an excruciating dialogue process with the two men, guided by a mediator from a restorative justice project of the University of Minnesota. They wanted to express their feelings and get answers to questions unaddressed during the trial.

The Strueferts were members of the church I served in Duluth and Don and I later worked together in an ex-offender re-entry program.  He became an expert at restorative justice and reconciliation, but he didn’t set out to forgive, initially.  But, over time he began to experience something like forgiveness.  It was something happening inside him that had nothing to do with the behavior of the two men.  He says, “seeing our common humanity is a watershed decision. I’m as human as those two men. I’ve come to see there’s a man there. There is care. One of the killers expressed remorse.”

My friends were able to move from profound brokenness to healing. Just like the author, Jeanne Bishop, their journey was rooted in and directed by their faith. In Bishop’s description about her own need for reconciliation, she drew upon the story of the prodigal son. In her first attempt to reach out to the man who murdered her sister she wrote him a letter where she says:

You and I are no different in the eyes of God. I am someone who has fallen short and hurt God’s heart; I have sinned, to use that Biblical word, just as you have. You are a child of God, created in God’s image, just as I am. God loves you every bit as much as me; nothing you have done could ever stop God from loving you. The division I have made between us — you, guilty murderer, me, innocent victims’ family member — was a false divide. I was wrong to do that.  The only thing that could possibly pay for the loss of Nancy, her husband and their baby is this nearly-impossible thing: that you would make your way home to God, the way the Prodigal Son in one of Jesus’ parables finds his way home.

The parallel she draws is not exactly the same, of course. There is no grisly murder in the story Jesus tells. There is, however, profound brokenness in the relationship the two brothers share as the older one feeds his own sense of self-righteousness which has been building for his entire life. Oh yes, his deep resentment appears to have him seeing himself as “fundamentally different from the other.” As better, somehow. As more deserving, more worthy.

The Streuferts and Jeanne Bishop only found any semblance of wholeness again AS they sought to move towards reconciliation with the ones who took so much from them.  I know this was also the case in at least some of the other stories those first listeners must have had echoing in their memories as Jesus spoke.

Think of Joseph’s brothers whose remorse was real enough that they would do all they could to protect their youngest brother Benjamin. And whose lives were not really ‘whole again’ until they were united once more with the brother they had wronged. One could certainly argue that this was doubly the case for Joseph who clearly had nursed his resentment against his older brothers all those years — and who never even made an attempt to be in touch with his aging father.  And think of Esau, who in the end, met his brother, Jacob, on his way home — and welcomed him with open arms.

Indeed, the saddest part of the story Jesus shares today is not that the younger brother had strayed, but that the older brother is allowing himself to remain bound up in his own bitter self-righteousness, in his own resentment. There is profound joy in the story when the younger son finds his way home. Only the father’s joy will not be complete until his older son finds his way home as well. Home to that place where love is the first and final arbiter of all that matters.

Home. Where we are meant to remember that God’s power is at work in all of us. All of us. And where we will only find the wholeness God intends for us when we extend that wholeness to others. Most especially, perhaps, those who have hurt us most of all.

Forgiveness is powerful.  And it is very hard. Today, March 31^st, is the hardest day of each year for me.  40 years ago on this date I was deeply hurt by another person.  Each year that has passed I’ve had a sort of trigger reaction. I have worked hard to process the experience.  In the early years I suffered from active PTSD and sought the support of counselors, pastors and support groups.  I’m proud and relieved and grateful when I say that I’ve let go of the fear, and most of the resentment and anger.  But not a year goes by that I don’t feel the residue of an assault that changed the course of my life.  This year, I’m asking myself if I really want the wholeness that comes by recognizing God’s love even for the person whose actions still affect me. 

This familiar parable is incomplete.  We do not know if the older brother ever finds his way inside to the party. If he ever finds his way ‘home.’ I imagine Jesus left the plot dangling right there so that all of us might somehow experience the invitation as well. As Esau did. As Joseph and his brothers did. As Jeanne Bishop and Don and Mary Streufert did. As I am experiencing that invitation yet again. I expect Jesus did not tell us the ending of this parable because we each need to write our own ending, even now.

Who hasn’t heard the prodigal son story a hundred times?  We think we know what it means, but it is so powerful the message in this text.  It pushes us to the limits of understanding God’s grace.  I’m sure each of you have a grudge you’re holding, a hurt you can’t let go of, a place of brokenness that runs deep.  Even our current polarization in political terms encourages us to vilify the other.  So what shall it be?

• Shall we, set aside own bitter pride and celebrate the God’s who forgiveness knows no bounds?  Shall we go inside, and join the celebration after all? 
• Will we accept this invitation to wholeness which can only be ours if we recognize God’s love even for those who have hurt us most of all?
• Or shall we continue to deny the power, the grace, the love of God for the ones we have deemed to be somehow ‘fundamentally different’ from us?
• Shall we sacrifice our own potential wholeness to prove a point which was never God’s point at all?

Indeed, how will this story end?