Prayer Helps Us to Keep Walking For a Better World

 So it is campaign time again.

For me, this can only mean one thing.

It is also silly season.

That time when politicians promise us that they can solve all the problems if we only elect them.

Inflation is no problem, just elected me or my party and all will be well.

Are you worried about climate change, no problem vote for me and it will be done.

And then there are the countless ads debasing the other team with name-calling.

In fact, this seems to be most of our political discourse these days, calling each other names.

 

The thing that has me upset this political season is that every politician who is running for office wants to win by piling on immigrants.

Every single one of them is trying to see who can be meaner and tougher on immigration.

They are trying to scare us into voting for them on the backs of poor migrants of color in South America.

They are casting them as the bogeymen who are coming to take over our country.

I mention this today because I try really hard to not be cynical about the world, and about people, and politicians make that really hard.

It seems that politics are not about actually helping people, but about getting elected and having power.

It seems to be bringing out the worst in us as people.

That all of our pettiness and self-interest come out when we discuss very serious issues like immigration.

We talk a lot about our Christianity but seem to leave our compassion and mercy at the door when it comes to certain issues.

 

For those that don't remember, before the pandemic twice a month people of faith gathered at the ICE building in Manchester to pray and walk for our immigrant siblings.

We pray and walk for justice, compassion, and love.

We would pray and walk that the walls of this world that separate us would come down.

I got to do that again a couple of weeks ago.

I was walking with one of the Latine advocates from Manchester.

She was sharing her story of being bullied, looked down on, and made to feel less than as a child because she was an immigrant.

It was also a story of her resilience in the face of it all.

 

I started to really care about the immigration issue in seminary about 20 years ago.

I had the pleasure of serving in a Latine congregation, during my first two years of seminary, and I saw firsthand the struggles of immigrants and the injustices they face.

And since that time it has only gotten worse and our politics meaner.

My friend who I walked with in Manchester has been fighting this fight her entire life, much longer than me.

Here we were walking, talking, praying for something new to happen.

In faith, in hope, we walked and prayed for a new day to dawn.

I wish I could vote for a pro-immigrant candidate this election but there is no one to speak up for them.

 

So all I have is prayer.

All I have is my faith in God's promise of a new day, a better day.

Jesus brought the hope of that promise into focus.

It is how Luke's Gospel starts with Mary singing about the reversal of the world.

"God has shown strength with his arm;
    he has scattered the pride in the thoughts of their hearts;
⁵² God has brought down the mighty from their thrones
    and exalted those of humble estate;
⁵³ God has filled the hungry with good things,
    and the rich God has sent away empty."

The disciples have seen this in the life and ministry of Jesus.

They are filled with expectations.

They are filled with the promise of this reversal.

What they can't see and don't know is that this will take place on the cross.

It will be Jesus' example of giving himself up to hatred and sin that will show us how to reverse the fortunes of the world.

Before our reading for today, Jesus tells his disciples that there will be difficult times ahead and that they will not see him for a long time.

He tells them that in losing their lives they will see the kingdom of God.

He tells them that the kingdom is hidden and not easily seen.

 

You could imagine that this is somewhat disheartening for the disciples.

They probably thought that Jesus with all of his power was going to ride in and kill all of the Romans and take power with them at his right and left hands.

This gets to the heart of our Gospel this morning.

"Will there be faith on earth when the son of man comes again?"

Will we still be praying to God for justice?

Will we still be giving up our lives for the sake of others?

Will we still be marching around buildings demanding compassion?

Will we still believe that God will bring justice?

Will we still believe in Mary's song?

Or will we grow so cynical that we just give up and stop trying?

 

It is not easy.

Most days I want to throw up my hands and be done with it all.

I want to stop caring, and stop walking and praying.

That is so much easier.

But then the Holy Spirit will intervene.

I will go to the march.

I will be with other faithful people who fill me with hope and faith.

 

This week a friend from camp, Joe, posted this on his Facebook page.

"My heart is heavy.

Reflecting on this journey.

I’ve made a boatload of mistakes.

I’d like to think that I’ve learned from them, but the truth is, I’m more stubborn than I’d like to be.

Not as open as I’d like to be.

Creator, help me to see my faults, help me to forgive and live in your words.

Help me to be a beacon of your love."

This prayer gave me hope this week.

It is a prayer that I pray to.

It was a Holy Spirit moment to see this, and it helped me less cynical about the world.

Maybe, if all of us could confess our shortcomings as my friend does here.

If all of us can see our own stubbornness, our own inability to see the suffering of others, our own need for God to help us love and care.

 

This is what Jesus is talking about this morning.

This is the answer to the world's silliness, meanness, injustice, and selfishness.

It is to turn to God.

To get out of our own way.

It is to get back into the streets and walk the walk.

It is to turn to community.

It is to listen closely to stories that others share about their pain and their resilience in the face of it.

And ultimately for Jesus, it is to pray.

To pray to God to give us the power to love.

Give us the courage to be like the women who pray day and night to the unjust judge.

It is to let that prayer, and those actions we do with others give us faith.

Faith in each other.

Faith in the world we live in.

And most importantly faith in God's ability to help us to love as Jesus showed us to love.

 

May you continue to pray always.

May it be prayers for justice for those living in poverty, those who are written off by politicians trying to win elections.

May it be a prayer for the promises of God's Kingdom to come to earth.

May it be a prayer that God changes your stubborn heart.

May it be a prayer that God fills you with love.

And may those prayers sustain your faith until the Son of Man comes again.

Amen

 

 

 

 

 

Jesus Sets us Free From Religious Trauma

 

Almost once a week I run into someone who has experienced religious trauma.

Someone who grew up in a religious home and was told either explicitly or implicitly that they were no good.

Lots of times this is around sexuality, but not always.

People who have religious trauma carry with them shame, internal hatred, and perfectionism.

They express to me that they grew up in a "strict" religious household.

Many of them tell me they will never return to a church.

The damage that was done to them is too great.

 

For example, I once had a conversation with a man who attended a Catholic school growing up.

His parents were divorced so the nuns often punished him for this.

On day family days they forbid his parents from attending.

While the other students were off doing things with their families he had to stay in class and copy the dictionary.

Often the nuns would tell the young boy that his family was going to hell for their sin of divorce.

 

Or the time that someone told me that their pastor once told them that if they ever played with a schoolmate who was Jewish that they would go to hell.

This was a problem for this child because his best friend was Jewish.

 

Or the time that someone told me that all they were ever told at church was that they were sinful and wrong because they had feelings for other men.

Or the time someone told me that they always believed they would go to hell because they had an abortion.

Or the time someone told me that they grew up believing that only super good people went to heaven.

They weren't allowed to watch movies, listen to music, dance, or do anything outside of going to church and reading the Bible.

Often times people express this in more subtle ways.

They say something like, "I had a really bad experience growing up in Church."

This doesn't even account for the sexual abuse some received at the hands of clergy.

All the time people are telling me that they will never come to church because of some trauma they received at church.

 

It is sad to me that this happens to people.

And as a Lutheran (I want to interject here that some of the stories I have been told also happened in Lutheran churches.) I think this happens because we bring too much law and not enough Gospel.

As Luther once wrote, "We shouldn't make Jesus into Moses".

Making Jesus about keeping laws, rather than setting us free from sin and death.

 

To me, that is what the text is about today.

It is about Jesus confronting not just leprosy, but religious trauma.

It is about how our religious beliefs get in the way of having faith in God's love and grace for us.

 

Let us start by saying that in Jesus' day people believed that any infirmity you suffered was because of sin.

Religious people believed that leprosy was a punishment for some sins.

And on top of that, you were then ostracized from the rest of the community.

You were made to live apart.

 

This is where we find Jesus this morning.

In this land between Galilee and Jerusalem.

It is no mistake in Luke's Gospel that Jesus is in this liminal space.

It was not a place that many people traveled to, or through for that matter.

Many people went the long way around to get from Galilee to Jerusalem.

Why?

Well, there were Samaritans living in that place.

We know those good religious people viewed the Samaritans as less than them.

And it is clear from Luke's telling that undesirable people, like lepers, also lived in that space.

But here is Jesus, God's only Son, traveling through the heart of it.

And not only that but along the way stopping to heal.

 

I know that we can look at healing texts, like this one, and get caught up in the miracle of healing the physical ailment of leprosy.

But the real miracle here is the healing that leads to a restored sense of faith.

The nine people that ran off to show themselves to the priest, still seem set in the religious precepts where they first experienced trauma.

While the one who returns to give thanks is giving up that life for something new.

Turning away from a system that is based in how well you perform religious tasks.

Instead turning to a system of thankfulness for the blessings of God.

To a system where all of us are free to live out our faith in the ways that seem best to us.

Because Religious trauma happens when we are trying to control people.

It happens when we use religion as a way to manipulate people into doing what we think they should.

 

What Jesus offers us is the opposite.

Jesus offers us wholeness.

Jesus offers us freedom from oppressive systems that want to dehumanize us.

Systems that use religion to control us.

Jesus is freedom from such religion.

This makes it all sadder that in Jesus' name people are traumatized by leaders who say that they represent him.

 

There are many reasons for the demise of religion in our day, but let me suggest that this might be one of the biggest.

That we have gotten it so wrong for so long that people just walked away because of things the church did to them.

 

Because what Jesus shows us over and over again is that there is no sin that God won't forgive.

All human beings have worth.

No matter who we are, where we come from, or what we have done, we matter to God.

That God is always going into the spaces that others don't want to go in order for us to know these truths.

When we find ourselves in places that are in between when we seem lost that is where Jesus shows up.

 

I believe that we are sinful.

But I believe even more in the truths that Jesus showed us.

I believe even more in God's grace and love.

I believe even more that we all have worth.

And I believe that especially those who don't think they have worth are the people that God is searching for.

 

I hope you all know today how much value you have.

You are not lost, broken, or unworthy.

You are beloved children of God.

And Jesus Christ crossed over into the worst parts of this world to show us this truth.

 

May you always know how much God sees in you?

May you know that you are saved.

May you know that you have worth.

When we know of God's love and grace for us we too like the leper who returned will have grateful hearts!

Amen

 

 

 

 

You Have All the Faith You Will Ever Need

Increase our faith.

If you think about all the things that Jesus has said up to this point, in the Gospel of Luke, about what it means to be a disciple you can understand why the disciples thought they needed more faith.

Let us take a look at all the things that Jesus has said about being a disciple up until this point.

·        Don't cause little ones (the most marginalized) to stumble

·        Rebuke fellow followers that falter.

·        Also, practice radical forgiveness to each other.

·        Put God first in all you do in life, even ahead of family.

·        Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. 

·        None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.

 

No wonder the disciples are asking for more faith.

Anyone of these things would be difficult to live out, forget about all of them.

This doesn’t even mention being a light to all people or living as salted people.

Maybe something we don't take into account enough is how hard it is to be a disciple of Jesus.

It would seem that we would need lots of faith to do this.

 

And let us be honest with one another this morning.

Most of us are not doing these things.

We are just here trying to get by.

We are just trying to bring up kids, do a good job at work, and love our friends.

And let us be honest those things are hard enough.

I can tell you that is really hard to be a parent.

I can't speak for how hard it was at other times.

But I can tell you it is incredibly hard these days.

It is hard to be a family unit.

And one of the things that makes it so hard is that everyone will tell you how to do it.

And you will see other people on social media and it looks like their lives are so easy and great.

Here is a picture of my perfect child doing the perfect thing.

We don't tell the truth about how hard things really are.

My point is this, I sometimes don't think I have enough faith to just do the basics of life.

 

I don't know if I have enough days to make it through.

And Jesus is asking us to give up our lives, to forgive radically, and to be concerned about those suffering from poverty, hatred, and marginalization.

It is a lot to ask.

And yes I am with the disciples this morning, "I need more faith".

 

And Jesus gives an unsatisfactory answer.

Jesus essentially tells the disciples, and us, that we have all the faith we will ever need.

In fact, we have way more faith than we know.

And that faith has a power that we can't really imagine.

I mean can I really move a mulberry bush with my faith?

Can I throw it into the sea with my faith?

 

Let us assume this morning that Jesus is telling us the truth.

We have all the faith we will ever need.

Let us also assume this morning that you all feel the way that I do, that we simply don't have enough because life is just too overwhelming at times.

How do we bridge this gap?

How do we see what Jesus sees?

 

I know that as I get older and as I have more experiences in life I get to be more and more cautious about what can and can't be done.

It comes from living and experience.

You come to see the limits of your own power, and of your own gifts and abilities.

You also see that other people have the same limits.

You come to see time as something that is not limitless.

And often I will be in meetings and someone will suggest a course of action.

And the first thing that comes to my mind is, "that can't be done".

We don't have the time, energy, and resources to make that happen.

Do any of you experience this?

 

This is different than how I was when I was a young pastor.

My first congregation merged with another congregation.

We came up with a list of things we were going to do as a merged congregation.

Start a preschool, an after-school program, a faith-based community organization, and a day camp.

We had to present this at a conference meeting.

One of the people from another congregation said, "man that seems like a lot of things. I don't think you can do it."

To which I replied, "We are going to do it. It is going to be great."

You know what happened we did all those things and more.

Was it just the foolishness of youth?

 

I don't think so.

I really think I had the faith in God, in our congregation, and in myself to make those things happen.

It came from a deep place of trust in God to give us the strength to do them.

God gave me confidence in people to believe we could.

 

I don't have any less faith now than I did then.

The difference is that I forget sometimes.

I lose that faith in disappointment.

I lose it in the struggles of life.

I lose it in the complications of life.

But it is always there for me to have.

 

With that faith Jesus is right we can do all sorts of spectacular things.

We can forgive.

We can be generous in our giving.

We can care about those experiencing poverty.

We can care about our marginalized neighbors.

We can put God first in our lives.

We can move mountains.

 

But maybe more important we can do all the other things we are called to do too.

We can be loving parents, caring spouses, thoughtful friends, and helpful co-workers.

With faith, we can actually make it through each day doing the things God asks us to do.

We can get through life's most difficult things.

We can grow every day into the people that God calls us to be.

 

You don't need increased faith, you just have to use the faith you already possess.

You were given it in your baptism.

It is renewed by the Holy Spirit every day.

I think our faith does three things for us.

It gives us comfort to face life's difficulties.

It is important to know God is there for you.

It gives us the courage to face life's challenges.

It is important to know that God is pushing us to love and forgive more.

It gives us assurance to overcome our fears.

We need to know that God's love is always there for us so that we can overcome our fear of failure.

And if we do fail it is ok.

 

So may you know that you have all the faith you will ever need.

May that faith give you comfort, courage, and assurance.

May that faith help you in all your life's endeavors.

May it challenge you to be more generous, more forgiving, and more loving.

May it keep you following Jesus all the days of your life.

Amen