Prepare for the wedding feast!

I wonder how many of you would have turned down an invitation to go to the Royal wedding of William and Kate’s.
If you would have been invited what would you have worn?
I bet that many of you would have bought a new outfit for the occasion.
I know in my house when we go to a wedding I have to spend some time going through the different options of what my wife might wear.
Usually it takes at least two days of thinking about what to wear before she settles on a dress.
This is all to say that when we go to weddings even the most mundane of weddings we take time to think about what we are going to wear.
And if we ever went to a royal wedding we would think about even more.
How much more should we think about showing up at banquet prepared by God?
That is the question that is posed to us this morning in our Gospel.

When we first read the Gospel parable this morning we might be perplexed at how the guest who shows up without the correct attire is treated by the king.
It seems a bit harsh.
No one else wanted to go this wedding so he should get some points for showing up right?
Why does the king treat him so badly?
Well, because showing up is only the start.
When we have faith in God we grow in a relationship with God.
We begin, sometimes unconsciously, to bend our lives towards God’s will.
We begin to think more seriously about who we are and what we are doing in relation to God.
Just like if we went to the royal wedding we would give lots of thought to our dress and manner.

This parable is not about good people versus bad people.
Notice that both good and bad people are invited to the wedding feast.
It is about being prepared to live a life of faith.

Today we get to be witnesses to the Baptism of Allison Mamos.
And today is the start of her relationship with God.
For it is in the waters of our Baptism that God claims us as his beloved children.
It is in these waters that we are freed from death and sin.
It is here this morning that Allison will receive the greatest spiritual gifts her parents could give her.
Baptism is not about who is good or bad.
In fact, it assumes that we are all a complicated mix of good and bad.
That we are born in the image of God, and with a rebellious spirit of sin.
Baptism also does not remove these things from us.
The question becomes what are we going to do with this gift?

What are we going to do with the invitation that God has given us to the banquet table?
This morning I want all of you to think about what are you going to do with that gift?
What will Allison do with the gift?

I remember as a kid receiving a new stereo as a present from my parents.
It was a great gift.
It had these really big speakers, a turn table, tape deck, and even a place to plug in one of those new CD players that had just come out.
The gift was free.
I didn’t really deserve the gift.
As a son as was at best mediocre.
I didn’t always get good grades, I didn’t always come in on time for curfew, I didn’t always do what was expected of me, or even what I was taught was right.
However, my parents gave me this stereo anyway.
The only question was how I would treat it, and what I would do with it.
I treated it with great care.
I honored it and treasured it.
I really liked that stereo.
I used it all the time.
The same is true of our faith in God.
It is a gift.
We have done nothing to earn it.
In fact, at times we really try to mess it up.
Yet, God invites us anyway.
What will we do with it?
How will we dress for the banquet feast?

Today Paul gives us some ideas.
“Rejoice in the Lord always!”
I hope that all of you take time in your day, in your life to rejoice in what God has done for you.
Sometimes we can get caught up in all the things we don’t have, instead of looking at all the ways God has blessed our lives.
Even in the worse of circumstances I bet there are ways that God is blessing your life.
Paul even though he was in prison rejoiced in what the Lord had done for him.
I hope today for Allison that she knows how much God loves her, and how much God has done for her so that in all the times of her life both good and bad she can learn to rejoice in the Lord.

“Let your gentleness be known to everyone.”
Living a life in Christ means learning everyday how to love and forgive more.
It means learning to be less judgmental of others, and showing mercy and grace to all those we encounter.
In Baptism we take on the righteousness of Christ and learn how to live more fully into it.
I hope for Allison she learns to be gentle to herself and others.
Always willing to forgive others as she knows that she is forgiven.

“Do not worry about anything”
What a blessing to not have to worry.
We are told in Psalm 23 of God’s care and concern for us.
We are reminded of this again and again.
And yet so much of our time is spent worrying about things that will never happen or things that we can’t control.
To live a life of faith is to put all of our life into God’s hands.
I hope today for Allison that she learns to put her life into God’s hands so that she will not worry about anything.

“But in everything by prayer and supplication make your requests be known to God.”
Prayer is our constant communication with God.
It allows us to complain, to unload our burdens, to ask for our needs and the needs of our loved ones.
Prayer is what helps to settle our often disjointed soul.
Prayer is what helps us stay connected to God and his love for us.
In prayers we hand over the burdens of our lives to God and in doing that find a peace.
I hope today that Allison finds the peace that is beyond understanding.

These things are not meant to be rules.
They are meant to be a blessing.
In this life that is so complicated and often out of our control it feels good to be able to rely on God.
The Gospel from this morning can be seen as a harsh judgment.
Surely no one wants to be cast into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
But let me suggest that when we fail to hear the gracious invitation to the wedding banquet, when we fail to keep our relationship with God going, then we are already in the outer darkness.
Our lives are not as rich, are not as peaceful, and are not as whole as they can be with God at the wedding banquet.
Jesus sometimes uses harsh language to describe what it means to be away from God not because he wants us to be in the outer darkness, but because that is the truth.

I hope for all of you today that you count your blessings.
That you give thanks to God that God invited you to be part of the wedding feast.
I pray that we may spend no time in the outer darkness.
Because we have taken time to prepare ourselves for the joy of the wedding banquet.
Amen

There Is a Big Bright Beautiful Tomorrw

This last week I was on vacation with my family in Disney World.
My favorite ride in all of Disney World is a ride called, “The Carousel of Progress”.
For those who have never had the extreme pleasure of going on the Carousel of Progress let me explain a little about the ride.
It was originally designed by Walt Disney as an attraction at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York City.
You sit in a theater and watch a number of scenes as an American family move from the turn of the 20th century until the present day.
The theater moves in a circle as the father of the family explains all the technical advances of the 20th century.
For example, in the opening sequence the father of the American family explains that they can get from California to New York in Seven days by train.
He goes on to explain that two brothers are working on a flying contraption that “will never work”.
I love this ride because it reminds us of where we have been, of all of the progress that we have made in a short time of human history.
But I love it most because it reminds us that the future is wide open.
That all things are possible, and that we as human beings have a great capacity to think, invent, and create.
The chorus to the song on the ride goes, “There is a great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of every day.”

When I read the Gospel for this morning I instantly thought of this ride.
Because one of the questions we always have to wrestle with is why didn’t the religious leaders of Jesus day recognize who he was?
Why didn’t they know he was the Messiah?
Why did they conspire with political authorities to have him killed?

Last week we heard them question Jesus authority, and Jesus told them a parable.
They didn’t understand that parable so Jesus tries again with the parable of the vineyard.
In this parable the stewards of the vineyard come to believe that the landowner is done with the vineyard, and that now they own it.
So when servants show up to ask for the fruits of the vineyard the steward left in charge doesn’t want to hear it.
Here is part of the problem of the religious authorities.
They stopped believing that God was talking to them.
They believed that God had chosen them, and have made certain promises to them.
That God would deliver the kingdom to them.
They came to believe that the vineyard was theirs instead of God’s.
They got stuck in what had always been and forgot that God is always working on the future.
Because of this they did not believe that God was still at work in Jesus.

I believe this sometimes our problem too.
We have become complacent with the idea that Jesus Christ is our savior.
We have become complacent with the idea that the Church is the gathering of God’s people.
Because of this we forget that God is always speaking to us.
God is always demanding that we are producing fruit.
To be the people of God, to be the Church, it is not enough to merely believe that God is with us.
We have to act like we believe it.

If we live in the grace in mercy of God then we will act like it by extending that grace to others.
Do we believe in the big bright beautiful tomorrow of God?
If we did we would not believe that everything is done or that are best days are behind us.

One of the great things about the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that it points us not to what happened, but what will happen.
It shows us that God is never done, but always working.
We should always be in on the lookout for what God is up to next.
I once heard a comedian talking about people’s obsession with television.
He said, “You gotta understand my generation saw Lee Harvey Oswald get shot on national television. We were glued to the screen for the next forty years wondering what would happen next.”
The same is true for our lives in Christ we should be clued to the screen wondering what will God do next?
What ways will God call me, our congregation, and the Church to bear good fruit?
What needs to be gathered and harvested for the good of others?
What is it this day that God is calling me to give so others may flourish?

I really believe that we are living in an extraordinary time in Christian history.
It is time when anything and everything is possible.
All of the old doctrines are being questioned.
Lines of denomination and even religions are being crossed.
Barriers to people often left out are being crumpled to the ground.
Consider that in our day the supposed third world has the largest growing population of Christians in the world, while Christianity in America and Europe are fading away.
I could for see the day when Africa sends missionaries to the United States to try and convert us heathens.
Consider that in our day young people are saying no to discrimination, hatred, and prejudice based on gender, race, sexual orientation, or anything else.
Consider that more and more people are pushing the boundaries of the Church beyond four stained glass walls and into bars, coffee shops, homes, and wherever people are meeting.
Consider that information and ideas flow between people at a pace that is sometimes dizzying but always interesting.
All of these things are making for some pretty exciting times in Christianity.
They are making for opportunities to reach out and be a blessing to the world.
Are we ready to follow God into his bright big beautiful tomorrow?

It is also scary times for some people.
Ways of thinking that have sustained people in difficult times in the past are being questioned.
Ways of making ourselves feel safe are being torn away.
But I believe it is simply God speaking to us in new ways.
God helping us see the progress that tomorrow brings.
God helping us see what happens when we labor in the vineyard, not because we own it and expect to get paid, but because we know it belongs to God and expects everyone to share in the bounty.

I suppose some of you could take my sermon this morning and just think that I have gone drunk with the magic of Disney.
But my sermon comes from my faith in God who does not leave us alone.
It comes from a Biblical faith that God has promised us a bright big beautiful tomorrow and given us the gift of being stewards in the vineyard.
What a gift to have this wonderful vineyard that God planted, put a fence around, dug a wine press in, and built a watchtower.
What a privilege to serve God in God’s vineyard.
And God knows that we need reminding from time to time that it is not our vineyard, but God’s.
We need reminding that we don’t tend this vineyard for our own purposes, but for the world to see.

In our Isaiah reading this morning the prophet reminds the Israel that God made them a people not for their own good but so they might be a blessing to other nations.
That is why we have a church.
Not to hold the relics of the past, but to remake a big, bright, beautiful tomorrow in the image of God.
That is why God sent Jesus to us.
Not so we could brag that we are favored by God, but so that we might spread God’s love, joy, and peace to the world.

The religious leaders of Jesus day might have known the past.
They might have known tradition, but they forgot God’s future.
They forgot that the vineyard was planted not for them to horde, but for them to give away to the world.
Because of that they shut their hearts to hearing the message Jesus brought.

May we always have our hearts open to Jesus message as we see God’s great big beautiful tomorrow shining at the end of everyday!
Amen

"Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good."

“Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”
I think we can remember a time when someone harmed us.
When someone intentionally or unintentionally did us wrong.
Today is a good day to think about how we feel when others do harm to us.
Ten years ago on a crisp, beautiful September morning, 12 terrorist hell bent on destruction and death, filled with hate, flew plains into the world trade center, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
In all they killed over 3,000 people.
They inflicted intentional pain upon thousands more.
Family members, co-workers, friends, churches all were affected that day.
Not to mention our country and our sense of whom we were in the world.
President Bush was right to talk about what happened in the starkest language possible.
Calling what the terrorist did as evil.

But ten years from the day as we think back, as we remember what it all means to us and our country, can we say that what the terrorist intended for evil, God intended for good?
What can we say about ourselves as a people, our country, and our lives?

There are some bad things that happened because of 9/11.
Our government allowed people to be tortured to obtain information, we started two wars one of which was unnecessary, and we became more distrustful of our Muslim neighbors.
We can’t say that everything is good.
But we can also say that lots of good happened after 9/11.
That day and the weeks following we had an incredible sense of unity.
We came together as a country.
We came to see that all of us are of one humanity people died from 90 different countries.
We started to question the wisdom of religious extremism.
We started new interfaith dialogues in an attempt to understand.
People started new groups such as the Women Transcending Boundaries which is a group of woman who gather for service and understanding to stop discrimination.
There are other things that have happened since that day.
Others ways that people grew in understanding and love.
Like Cecelia Kuath who this year went on a cross country bike trip to honor her father, and other who died on September 11th, and raise money for World Bicycle Relief.
Or Marie Rose Abad whose husband built 50 new homes in the Philippines to honor his wife.
"It's like a new life sprang from the death of Marie Rose and so many others." said villager Nancy Waminal.
There are so many good things I couldn’t possibly tell all the stories in one sermon.

When Joseph says to his brothers that what they intended for evil God intended for good he was not saying that everything was going to be great forever more.
He was seeing in the story of his life, and the life of his family a larger narrative at work.
I wonder if we too are able to step back from intended evil to see something greater at work.
Are we able to forgive people and move on because even though they harmed us we can still see God at work?


I am wondering in our lives if we are able to see as clearly as Joseph did.
Are we able to forgive and move on with our lives seeing even in the things that harm us God’s work?
I want to be clear.
I am not suggesting that God intentionally had fanatical terrorist kill thousands of people so we could learn a lesson about our humanity.
The people who committed that act did it intentionally of their own free will.
They choose that path for themselves.
I am suggesting that as people of faith we be able to step back and see greater forces at work then evil.
See God at work in all things.
See the good that grows out of even the worse things that happen to us in our lives.

Let us also be clear that the forgiveness and wonderful words that Joseph speaks to his brothers only come after a long time.
This is the end of Joseph’s life and his forgiveness and his reconciliation has been many years in the making.
For us too forgiveness is never an easy solution.
It takes years to work out our pain and hurt.
It takes years to overcome something like 9/11 and for some the affects still linger, and for them it might take even more years.
But forgiveness is a way forward.
As one of the family members who lost someone on 9/11 said, “Deep down I have to forgive and move on. I am just not ready.”
The time to be ready will come.

This is the view of faith that we see all things through the lens of a God who wants good for us and our lives.
It is why Sunday school is so important
Sunday school helps children to know God and know him intimately.
And when evil happens they can deal with it.

Sasha Vaccoroo was in kindergarden when he saw the planes hit the towers.
He said of that day, “Before, I thought the world was perfect and everyone was nice,” he said. “It’s when I stopped believing in God.”
I hope that our children learn that the world is not perfect, and it is not always nice.
I hope that they learn there are parts of the human heart that do evil.
But that we as people of faith don’t have to be afraid of it.
We can see through evil intention of people to the greater intention of God.
I hope that in Sunday school our kids learn how to forgive.
I don’t think that our kids need Sunday school to become better people, you as parents teach them that every day.
But in Sunday school we learn about God’s love and forgiveness, because forgiveness is often the healing balm of our lives.
Without it we cannot move forward.

And we all need to forgive someone for something or maybe multiple things.
This is why Jesus tells us to forgive not just seven times, but seventy times because it will take lots of forgiveness to get us through life.
Our parents maybe didn’t love us enough, or maybe they loved us too much.
Our siblings didn’t treat us right and tried to undermine us.
Our boss is a jerk.
Maybe we were picked on as a kid.
Whatever the pain is that we carry around the only way forward is through forgiveness.
That of course takes time; it is not an easy answer but a faithful answer.

I think it would help us a lot in our lives if we are able to step back and see the greater intention.
If we could let go of what others do to hold us back to see God working to bring us to where we need to be.

I think if we could have that perspective about 9/11 we could see God at work even amongst the evil.
said about 9/11 “Human history is full of tragedy, and within these tragedies there is room for growth. There is no growth in human beings without struggle. I’m convinced of that.”
Joseph grew through his life struggles.
He grew from a self righteous brat to a man of forgiveness and humility.
He was able to grow to the point where he could even see God at work in what his brothers did to him.
He grew to the point where he could forgive them.
I am hoping we too are able to grow to the point where we see God at work even in the sin that happens to us.
I am hoping that we are always able to forgive, not just seven time, but seventy-seven times.
Amen

Disillusion

If we are honest we have all done it on more than one occasion.
We have all talked about someone behind their backs or made discouraging remarks about another person when they were not in the room.
I hear it all the time in conversations, “I can’t believe she did that. I would never do that.”
We all have been guilty of spreading rumors or talking out of turn.
I know that whenever I do it I almost immediately feel wrong about it.
And most of the time it comes back to get me.
Not only in our personal relationships but throughout the history of Christendom this has been a problem.
How many times after a council meeting do people go out in the parking lot and begin to talk about other people, or the pastor?
It is the amazing thing about Jesus that nothing is too small for him to care about.
Jesus even cares about how we talk about other people when they are not around.
This morning Jesus gives what I have always considered to be practical advice on how we should interact with each other.
"If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.”
How many problems could we avoid in life if we simply take Jesus advice?

I know in the church we could save ourselves a lot of drama if we stopped making assumptions about people’s motives and simply talked about our differences.
So in part our Gospel for this morning is simply about good advice in dealing with conflict among people church.
I would suggest it is good advice in general and not just in the church.
Most of the time the things that others do to make us angry or upset are not done out of spite or because the other person is bad they happen as a misunderstanding or what one person considers wrong would never occur to another person.

For example, I had a friend in seminary.
She told me about this person she was dating.
Since none of us ever met this person or knew about him I made a bad joke about how he probably lived in Canada. (Wink, wink)
When it was time for our senior year I noticed that she stopped coming over our house for dinner.
I also noticed that some of my other friends had stopped coming around.
I was told by one of my classmates it was because I made that joke that she didn’t want to hang out with me anymore.
I was shocked!
If you know me you know I make jokes.
I mean nothing by them they are just meant to be funny.
This one was not funny.
I think it was sad that this person simply didn’t confront me with her feelings.
I could have apologized.
We could have saved a lot of drama.

Anyway, you get the point.
Jesus advice on handling of our internal problems is a good one.
If you have a problem with someone talk to them about it!

But I am not sure that our Gospel for this morning is merely about good advice Jesus gives when handling our personal disagreements.
I think it is about the imperfection of the church.
Jesus has no disillusionment about the church.
Jesus knows that someone in the church will sin against someone else at some point.
Jesus also knows that it will be our first reaction when someone sins against us to go and talk about it behind their backs with someone else.
Jesus presupposes sin in the church.
I wonder if we are as truthful about what happens here as Jesus.

There is a joke about a man who is rescued after many years on a desert island.

As he stands on the deck of the rescuing vessel, the captain says to him, "I thought you were stranded alone. How come I can see three huts on the beach?"

"Well," replies the castaway, "that one there is my house and
that one there is where I go to church."

"And the third one?" asks the skipper.

"Oh, that's the church used go to."
Many people have left a church because they did not like the way someone did something.
Many people have been disillusioned because the Church did not live up to its or their high ideals.
I have met so many people who don’t go to church because they say that the church is filled with hypocrites.
To which I always reply, “Well of course it is there are people in the Church.”

But this morning we see the truth about human relationships.
They are very complex.
They take time, work, and most of all forgiveness.
Jesus has to come up with a very long system for dealing with these disagreements.
First confront the person, if that doesn’t work bring another person, if that doesn’t work bring more people.
What is even more amazing about what Jesus says this morning is that despite all this Jesus would still be in found where his followers gather.
“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.”

Jesus is among two or three even though he knows it will not be perfect.
Jesus knows that were two or three are gathered there will be a problem.
The Church is not meant to be a place where perfect people come together to make themselves feel superior to the rest of the world.
It is meant to be a place where imperfect people come to worship a perfect God.
There is no such thing as a perfect church only a perfect God.
It is meant to be a place where we struggle with living in a community of people that we don’t always agree with.
I would say that gathering in Church helps us do away with our disillusionment of perfection or high ideals.
The church shatters our false notion that somehow somewhere there is a perfect community out there with perfect people.
The good news is that Jesus is among us and still despite this empowers us to love others.
To loose and bind chains.
How much better is it for us to be able to let go of resentment?
How much better for us to seek reconciliation with each other?
As Joseph Campbell once said, “We sacrifice in a relationship not for the other person but for the relationship”
This morning what we are confronted with in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans is this question about our lives.
How will we live with the limited amount of time we all have left?
St. Paul tells the church in Rome, “You know what time it is, how it is now the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers.”
Paul like many people believed that the end of time was coming soon.
He believed that when Jesus told his followers he was going to return, Jesus meant sooner rather than later.
And because of this Paul often pleaded with people to act like their time on earth was short.
We have become less and less enthralled with this idea, because as time has moved on we see that Jesus has not returned sooner rather than later.
In fact, we often take tomorrow for granted; we simply believe that whatever we leave today we can always do tomorrow.
But if we live like there is no tomorrow we can see that there is simply not enough time to be resentful, petty, or angry.
If we live like there is no tomorrow we live in love.

Relationships mean so much to us in our community because they are the back bone of what we are about.
In a society that teaches us we can have everything our own way it is good that we still have places where we don’t always get our own way and we still have to compromise and learn to live with people of different opinions and world views.


That is why we gather here every week.
It is why we attempt to go out and invite others in.
We do it because we believe that Jesus Christ is present in this place.
We believe in forgiveness of sins.

To me this is good news.
It means that we owe each other nothing except to love one another.
Loving means forgiving each other, and living amongst our own fragilities and complexities.
Jesus was not disillusioned about whom we are or what the church is.
May we learn to disillusion ourselves so that we are open to accepting the forgiveness and presence of Jesus Christ and live our short time on this earth in love.
Amen

Faith That Grows!

The last two weeks I have been at Camp Calumet Lutheran.
Last week I was on vacation, but the week before that I had the honor of being the chaplain.
It is something that always rejuvenates me.
I get to be around young men and women who are idealistic.http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
More than this I get to see them giving of themselves all the time for the greater good.
I overheard two counselors talking about how little money they make, how much they have to work, and yet how they get so much more out of it than they put into it.
This year I loved it for another reason.
I got to see the way that the staff struggled with faith.
I am not talking about believing in God.
All of the staff believes in God.
But what do they believe about God.
That is not such an easy answer.
And for young men and women from 16 to 25 it is even more difficult.
They are all forming those answers.

This morning we see Peter struggling with his own faith.
Not his faith in Jesus as the Messiah, but in what that means that Jesus was the Messiah.
Just last week he was the hero.
When Jesus asked, “who do you say that I am?”
Peter gave the right answer that Jesus was the Messiah.
Today we see that even when we give the right answer we might not fully understand.

One of the things I love about the disciples is that I always find them relatable.
We can all understand Peter.
We all have struggled to understand God.
None of us gets it completely.
Peter thinks Jesus is going to set up a great new kingdom, and there at his right hand will be Peter.
“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”
But Peter goes from being the rock to being a stumbling block.
He goes from the gates of Hades not prevailing against him to being Satan.
This is quite the turn of events.

But I can understand Peter.
Jesus plan does not sound like a very good one.
Instead of establishing a great kingdom and rescuing the people of God from the Romans Jesus is going to die on a cross and rise again.
That does not sound very grand.
It does not sound very Godly.

Here is the problem for most of us we have no problem with the grand plan.
It is the when it is dirty and messy that we can’t come to terms with it.

I noticed the same is true at camp.
When we are in the outdoor chapel dancing and singing praises to God it all seems great.
When we are trying to deal with a problem camper, or another staff member who does not agree with me then it gets messy.
When the skit we planned does not go well we get disappointed.
When we are trying to help the kids understand how the Bible verse for that day relates to the theme of the day and we don’t understand.
But the message of the cross is that God is in it all.
God is in our disbelief as much as in our certitude.
God is in the calm but also admits the chaos.
God is right there in the mix.
I am sure that all of the people who worked at Calumet this summer grew in ways they never knew possible.
I am sure that their faith was strengthened through all the questions and the uncertainty.

During my vacation week my sister’s father in law who is a Lutheran pastor in Pennsylvania was telling me that he never knew the gifts he had until camp Calumet.
That it was there that God called him into the ministry through other peoples and through the chaos of his own life.
God was at work in his life even though he didn’t understand it fully at the time.

We can understand why Peter is confused because we are often confused.
We want God to do something big.
We want God to cure diseases, part the waters, create peace in the Middle East, and stop hurricanes.
Jesus death changes our notion of how God is at work in our lives and in the world.
God is at work in the questioning and searching of a twenty two year old trying to find work and their place in the world.
God is at work in the relief workers who come to lend a hand to their neighbors.
God is at work in the family member keeping vigil while their loved one dies.
God is at work in the chaos of life.

One of the other reasons I like being at camp is because it makes you see that the world is not so bad.
Often in the church our conversations revolve around how horrible things are now.
How the kids are out of control.
How we don’t teach and respect authority.
How kids only care about their video games.
How things used to be better is some by gone era.
I suppose there is some truth in those complaints.
But we always must remember that God is always at work.
In all things God is moving.
Being around young people that do care about the world about others changes your perspective.
It makes you more hopeful.

You see that even through the death of things that once we cherished there is God building up.
Perhaps we all need to lose those notions of the way things should be.
Peter learned that God was always up to something that went well beyond his comprehension.
If we forget this then we loose perspective.
We end up pulling Jesus over to the side and saying, “You know Jesus this might be what you want but it does not fit my notion of how God works so let’s not do it your way.”
We have expectations of what it means to follow Jesus that are often crushed by the reality of what it actually is to follow Jesus.

I know that many times people will get involved in volunteering or doing ministry.
Then they get disappointed because no one said thank you, or the situation of the person they were trying to help never changed.
We have to learn that it is through us being there that life changes.

Jesus changed our perspective on God because he was here with us.
Jesus went through every conceivable pain of human life, even death on a cross to show us that God was at work in all things.
Even the chaos, the loss, the hard times, the disappointing times God is always up to something.
I saw it at Camp Calumet.
I see it in our life together as a community trying to pick up our crosses as we follow Jesus.

I see it as we help our Bhutan refugee family, as we serve at the friendly kitchen, as we gather items for the poor, as we reach out to new people, as we care for one another.
I see it as we struggle together to grow in faith.
To learn more about how God is at work in the world and our lives.
I see it as we struggle sometimes to love each other, and loose our lives so that we might really find them.

Martin Luther once said, “Behold, from faith thus flows forth love and joy in the Lord, and from love a joyful, willing, and free mind that serves one’s neighbor willingly and takes no account of gratitude or ingratitude, of praise or blame, of gain or loss.”
The perspective of a deep faith is that what comes out is not victory but service.
This is the faith that Peter is struggling to understand, it is the faith that we are struggling to understand.
But when we do we become little Christ daily picking up our crosses and follow Jesus in love and joy.
Amen

Stay In The Boat!

There is a little half truth parents sometimes tell their children.
“You can be anything you want to be if you only work hard enough.”
It is a nice thought.
We say it because we want our children to be self confident and we want them to work hard.
But it is not entirely true.
I mean I would love to be the starting power forward for the Boston Celtics.
It is not going to happen.
I could practice every minute of every day for years and still not be a basketball player in the NBA.
I am not tall enough.
OK, then my second dream is to be Rock star in a Rock-n-Roll band.
Not going to happen.
If you know me you know I have no musical talent whatsoever.
And contrary to popular belief you actually do have to have some musical talent to play in a Rock band.
I could spend every minute of every day and practice the guitar for the next 10 years and still not be a good musician.
Instead, I am what I believe God made me to be a pastor.
Perhaps instead of telling our kids that they can be whatever they want we should be telling them that they should be what God made them to be.

This morning’s Gospel is often part of the problem.
We have all heard the sermon about Peter getting out of the boat and falling to walk on water.
And if only he had kept his eyes on Jesus he could have done it.
If only Peter had more faith he would have been able to walk on water.
So if we have faith we should be willing to take risks and walk on water.
If only we have faith we can do whatever we want.

It is certainly one interpretation of the text.
The problem is that it not entirely true.
Faith does not give us superhuman abilities.
I have always preferred the interpretation that Peter’s problem is that he gets out of the boat at all.
Peter’s proper place is in the boat!
In the story you will notice that Jesus comes walking on the water towards the disciples who are on a boat.
They see something on the water and become afraid.
“They were terrified saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cried in fear.”
Jesus tells them not to be afraid.
And then Peter challenges Jesus.
“If it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”
Eventually he falls into the water and Jesus puts him back in the boat and says to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”
It is not that Peter doubted he could walk on the water, but he doubted that it was Jesus walking on the water.
He needed proof.
He asked to come out of the boat.
Peter should have known it was Jesus as soon as he said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
There is another way to interpret this text and that is that Peter should have stayed in the boat because he should have believed in Jesus words not to be afraid.
Peter’s proper place was in the boat not walking on the water.
After all he is not Jesus.

Today Nathan Marshall will be baptized.
He will be drowned in these waters and raised to new life with Christ.
And the message I want to give to his parents, family, friends, and the congregation is that we should be helping him for the rest of his life to recognize Jesus.
So that when he is feeling alone, afraid, off course, lost, terrified, he will need to know the one who calms the winds.
It is Jesus who he will need to worship as the one who helps us through this world and our lives.

Nathan Marshall cannot be anything he wants to be.
That is not God’s promise to him today.
What God has promised is that he has given Nathan gifts to become something very specific.
And in Nathan’s Journey to figure out what God made him to be then God will be there the whole time.

I think that we get disappointed with our lives because they sometimes don’t seem so glamorous.
There are lots mundane things we have to do.
And sometimes they seem boring.
Then we see rich and famous people with these exciting lives and we wish that was us.
And we feel let down because we couldn’t become anything we wanted to be.
Instead we are at home on a Friday night doing laundry, and putting kids to bed.
I think one of the spiritual problems we face is that just doing the little things doesn’t seem to matter as much.
Being a good father, husband, machine maker isn’t enough anymore.
Everybody wants to save the world.
And in the end it is not our job to save the world that is God’s job.
We have to figure out what it is God has called us to do.
What we were meant to do.
I wish we would do more soul searching about what God wants us to do.

I wish Peter would have thought a little more about his testing of Jesus.
Peter’s place is in the boat with the other disciples.
It is not to be Jesus.
Yeah it is not as exciting or exotic.
Jesus gets to walk on water, we just get to row.

On Friday I was at Soulfest with the youth group at Gunstock Mountain.
For those who don’t know Soulfest is a large Christian music festival.
The main stage is set up right by one of the ski slopes, so you sit on the mountain in a folding chair and watch the concert.
I was sitting on this mountain watching one of my favorite bands, Jars of Clay, perform and it started to rain.
At first it was just a drizzle.
The lead singer in the band said to the crowd, “Sing this song of praise to God and we will move this rain right out of here.”
The words were still coming out of his mouth and you know what it did.
It started to pour down rain.
It would be nice to think with our prayers, or our faith that we can stop the rain.
The truth is that is not our job.
We are not the creator of the universe.

It is not our job to walk on water.
It is our job to be drowned in water.
To let Jesus Christ be our new life.
That is what is happening to Nathan today.
He is receiving a great gift.
It is not the gift of becoming a super hero.
Baptism gives us no super human strength, the ability to fly, to become invisible, or even to walk on water.
It gives us assurance.
“Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

And Nathan like all of us will have some times in his life when he will be terrified, uncertain.
Like the day he graduates from high school and the speaker will say that they can do anything, but Nathan is not sure what he wants to do.
Or after college when the speaker will again give a speech about remaking the world, and Nathan can’t find a job doing the thing he really wants to do.
Or the time he breaks up with a woman even though he wants her to be the one.
Or when he is older and laying in a hospital bed about to die.
There will be those times when he questions himself and the world.

I hope in those times he knows to get back in the boat.
For Matthew a boat was the symbol of the church.
It is here when we gather that we come to this place for comfort, for acceptance, for love.
It is here we come to hear Jesus tell us, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
Don’t misunderstand me we have to go back out into the world.
The next part of Matthew’s Gospel is about Jesus and the disciples going into strange and scary gentile country.
But today the message is about how we find here together in this boat a message that helps us every day.

Get back in the boat.
You are not meant to walk on water, calm storms, stop the rain, or be whatever you want.
You are meant to be a beloved child of God, who is here to love your family, and work for your neighbor.
So when things are too much, when life seems boring or terrifying remember that Jesus is walking towards you with peace, ready to calm the winds.
Most important remember to stay in the boat!
Amen

A Fortaste Of The Feast To Come!

It is something that we do all the time every day in fact.
We sit and eat.
Some time we take it for granted.
We eat without really thinking about it.
We think that we are eating to satisfy our hunger.
But eating is so much more than merely taking in calories for survival.
Eating is filled with meaning.
Jesus knew this.
It is why we can never separate Jesus out from his eating habits.
Any moral or ethical debate about what it means to live a Christian life has to start and end with something that we do every day.
It has to start at our dining room tables.

Jesus knew that food was more than food.
That eating with people sent a message about who he was, and who God is.
It is why the Gospels are filled with stories about Jesus eating with tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes, and other undesirable people.
For in eating with them Jesus was making a point.

In today’s Gospel story we see that feeding 5,000 men was about more than merely offering hungry people food.
Sometimes with this story we get caught up in things that don’t matter.
We want to know if this is a historical story or not.
Interpreters have argued about it for years.
This morning I don’t want to talk about that I want us to see what the meaning is of this meal that Jesus shares with the crowd that day.

The key to the story for me is this one line, “when he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them.”
Jesus feeds the crowd out of compassion.
Out of love Jesus takes time to be with them, cure the sick, and ultimately feed them.

To feed someone is to love them.
I learned this lesson for the first time when we got our cats.
It was before we had children.
And it was my job to feed them.
I would come home from a long day at work and I was tired.
I just wanted to sit on the couch watch the baseball game.
But these cats would come and meow at me or nudge at me until I got up and fed them.
I would say to the cats, “You know I love you because I am going to get up and feed you right now.”

Of course, it came into even more focus when I became a parent.
I would see my wife get up at all hours of the night to feed the baby.
Even though she needed sleep or was hungry herself she gave of herself because of the great love she had for our kids.
And now most of what I do is try to provide food for them.
In that simply act of putting food on a table we show our love and concern for someone else.

Eating has meaning when we cross cultures.
I have been blessed in my life to serve at two congregations that were ethnic specific ministry.
One was an African American church; the other was a Latino church.
In both places the food was different then what I grew up with.
But in both places I grew closer to the people when I would share their food.
I ate pig’s feet, collard greens, rice, and a whole bunch of things in order to show that I cared.
And they fed me in order to show that they loved me and cared about me.
In both cases the populations that I served were not overwhelming rich, but they had rich food which they gladly shared with me every chance they got.
When I was in New York I went and met with the Imam from the local Mosque.
When I got there he offered me tea and food.
I turned him down.
He then said that it was part of their custom to offer strangers food.
I then agreed to the food even though I was not hungry, because I realized that he was showing me compassion by offering me this food.
Sharing food with others bonds us together.
I am thankful for those experiences where I got to cross cultures and bond with others over food.

Even more then this think of the times when you shared meals with people.
They are usually around very significant events.
When you are married, when you are celebrating a graduation, when it is your birthday, to celebrate your anniversary, when someone dies are all times when we share a meal around significant life events.
Last week on my vacation we attended a wedding and we saw what all meals should look like.
A wedding banquet is filled with love and joy.
I would hope that all our tables would look like this every night.
Last night I was at my sister’s 40th birthday party.
You know what my wife and I did for the party.
We cooked my sister’s favorite food.
So that she might know how much we love and care for her.
Eating has great meaning to us.
It is why we do it at such important moments in our life.
It can help us celebrate, it can help us mourn, it can help us feel joy and ease sorrow.

My dad really liked to sit and enjoy a good meal.
One of the things that we shared was a love of cherry stone claims.
If it was on the menu we would order it and share it.
My dad always would insist that I have the last one.
I am sure he wanted it for himself.
But he would always say, “Jon, eat the last one!”
I would try and protest, but in the end I would get the last one.
It wasn’t just that either, almost always if there was something to eat and we both liked it he would insist that I eat the last part.
At the time I didn’t pay too much attention to it.
But looking back it was one of the ways that he showed how much he loved me.
It was a little moment but it carried lots and lots of meaning.
The feeding of the 5,000 is the same way.
Jesus here does something that is somewhat mundane.
He gives people food, but whatever happened on that day it was so meaningful that all four Gospels write about it.
It was one of the ways that Jesus showed us God’s compassion.
Here are these people and they need food, and God cares about them so God feeds them.
As if God is saying, “Here you take the last bite, it is for you”.

And Jesus invites his disciples to participate in this great act of compassion.
“You give them something to eat.”
In other words it is God who provides the meal, but the disciples who distribute and who collect the leftovers.
Jesus invites us to participate in this act too.
Jesus invites us to have a table that looks like his ministry.
Jesus invites us to have a table of people that are lost, down, and broken that is filled with compassion and love.
A table that looks like a wedding feast filled with joy!
Tables were people are always willing to give up the last bite in order to show love to someone else.

Jesus fed 5,000 people.
That is the story.
But the meaning is so much more.
It is about God’s compassion and love for us and all people, and an invitation to us to have that same compassion and love that Jesus has so that all the meals that we share might be a foretaste of the feast to come.
Amen