Red

When my wife and I were moving into our first parsonage we asked for permission to paint it.

The congregation agreed.

However, the council president pulled us aside and said, “Just don’t paint any rooms red”.

He didn’t know that we were planning to paint the dining room red.

He agreed to let us do what we want but warned us we would regret it.

I am not sure what he had against the color red, but it seems that red may not be a favorite color of many.

The color red is often associated with danger, passion, and anger.

But it is also associated with courage, love, and joy.

It sends mixed messages.

Red is the liturgical color for Pentecost.

Today we celebrate the church receiving the Holy Spirit and sent out into the world.

It is appropriate that it is the color red because the Holy Spirit too has mixed messages for us and our lives.

Sure the Holy Spirit leads us into truth, and reminds us of God’s love.

But it also has a dash of danger to it.

To go out into a hostile world, to be God’s people is a dangerous idea.

Who knows what can happen?

This week at our Wednesday night worship we were discussing the Holy Spirit.

And one person said they were reluctant to talk to others about when they experience the Holy Spirit.

She said, “I think to myself should I tell others about it? Should I make a fool of myself?”

The Holy Spirit often times brings us out into uncharted territory and makes other think we are weird or out of sorts.

This morning in the story we hear from Acts that the first Pentecost brought confusion.

That some of the people who witnessed what was happening thought that the apostles had lost their minds.

Or that they were drunk.

In fact, they were not drunk.

They were seeing and experiencing the Holy Spirit.

They understood the teaching of the God’s intentions for all humanity.

They were dreaming dreams of something great and better for all people.

They were seeing what Jesus meant when he told them that he was sending an advocate to remind them of what the kingdom of God is about.

But it is dangerous.

It is like playing with fire.

And we know what fire can do.

It can give us light, warmth, protection, community, and cook our food.

It can also burn us and destroy us.

Fire like the color red has two sides.

How do we know if we are on the right side?

How do we know the difference between seeing the Spirit and simply being crazy?

It is important that we remember that the Spirit is not about random events.

The Spirit is about tying our lives to Jesus Christ.

The Spirit reminds us of all that Jesus told us.

So in order to be in the Spirit it has to be about what Jesus told us.

If you know me you know that I have a hard time hiding my displeasure.

Mostly because when I am upset my face turns different shades of red.

This week was not a great week for me.

Not because something bad happened to me.

It was bad of my own making.

You ever have a time like that when things are not going well and it is your fault?

I had two times this week when I wish I would have held my tongue a little bit.

Two times when I wished I had expressed myself differently, I wish I had been more thoughtful, more eloquent.

In both cases I let my anger out.

In both cases my faces was bright red.

Once at the Bishop of our synod, and once at the principle of the school my kids go to.

I was at the dangerous side of red.

The side of burning fire, of anger.

I have no one to blame but myself.

And that makes it worse.

We all have two sides to us too.

We all have the side of red that burns hot.

Maybe that is why the council president warned us against red for our dining room?

Because it reminded him of danger, and anger it was too aggressive for him.

It reminded him of the side of ourselves that we don’t want to know about.

The side we don’t want to talk about.

This morning I lay bare to all of you my sins.

I confess to you my anger, my lack of control, my quick temper that flared before I heard all the facts.

But at times like these I take solace in Jesus words that we hear from the Gospel of John this morning.

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.”

“Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

There is the other side to our faith journey.

We enter the fire to be refined.

We receive the Holy Spirit to be molded by God.

To receive the words that Jesus gives us in times when we have made a mess of life, which in our sin and imperfection there is God’s healing powers of love and joy.

We are reminded that the sun rises each day.

We are reminded that blood flows through us so we can make amends.

Today the color of the day is red.

It is a color loaded with double meanings.

It has meanings of on the one hand danger, anger, of being burned, and courage, love, and joy on the other.

In renaissance paintings Jesus is often painted with red.

Renaissance painters used red to draw people’s attention to the most important part of a painting.

And when they painted Jesus he was at the center of attention.

In our own lives Jesus should be at the center.

It should be what draws our attention.

This week I spent time wallowing in my own imperfections.

I spent time replaying what I had done over and over.

I lost sleep about it.

I thought about the red that had burned me.

But I came here to this place to seek God’s guidance and forgiveness.

I experienced also the other side of red.

I experienced the Holy Spirit and the fire that burnt away our sins, so that we might learn from them and grow from them.

I heard through the Holy Spirit the words of Jesus, “Peace I leave you.”

The other side of red was here too the side of love and joy, the side of light, warmth, protection, the side of God that forgives us, and loves us through those bad weeks of our own making.

That is the work of the Holy Spirit.

It is to teach us and remind us of the words of Jesus.

So that we might remember that we are forgiven and sent back out into the world to try again.

The person was right on Wednesday night it all sounds a little foolish.

That is the danger of living in the Spirit to believe that God can love and care for even someone like me.

I wish you all to know the peace that Jesus brings.

The peace that heals our sins helps us through the bad weeks.

A peace that is foolish.

It is a peace that seems to be contradictory because like the color red itself it has more than one side.

A peace that acknowledges our sin and the same time a peace that burns it away with the Holy Spirit.

Amen

Identity

This week I read some letters written to pastors that were from women who were not mothers.

They were about some of the pain that they have experienced on Mother’s day in Church.

You know the church will sometimes, in order to celebrate Mother’s day, hand out a flower to all the mothers, or asks all the mothers to rise so we can give them a round of applause.

Of course there is nothing wrong with celebrating mother’s day, or mothers.

I am grateful today for my mother.

But you can see the problem.

We can lift up motherhood as the most important expression of what it means to be a woman and in doing we leave out a lot of women.

We leave out women who choose for one reason or another not to have kids.

We leave out women who for one reason or another can’t have kids.

This is to say nothing of the pain that we might inflict on people that don’t have a good relationship with their mother.

So we wouldn’t want to exclude women or divide them up into categories.

Instead we want to be the place where we all come together to celebrate our life in Christ.

Some of you know that yesterday I ran a half Marathon.

And I could not have done it without my wife, Vicki.

She was my coach.

She was the one who gave me encouragement when I needed it, and she told me to suck it up and just do it when I needed it.

Are not these the attributes that go into a great mother?

Motherhood is about encouraging us to be our best, to do our best?

And that is not something that is only about being a female or being a mother.

All of us should be this for each other.

We should be coaching one another to be better than we think we are.

And as long as you do that for someday in life, I feel like you are being a mother.

I know it is an unconventional way to think about it.

But I know that I am a better parent because I watch my wife coach our kids into being better than they think they are.

If you can do that then you are mother.

This week I was also thinking a lot about identity.

What is that makes us who we are?

There are lots of ways we identify ourselves.

These are all part of trying to define ourselves and the world around us.

Just for example, I am a white, middle aged, pastor, husband, father of two, of Swedish and German decent, Lutheran, New Englander, Red Sox, Patriot, and Celtic fan.

All those things are how I identify myself to others.

They are things that make me who I am.

There is nothing wrong with identifying ourselves.

There is nothing wrong with finding our tribe and where we belong.

The thing is that we live an ever increasing multi-diverse world.

We live in a world that is blurring the lines more and more about what it means to be who we are.

And I am going to assume for many of us this is unsettling.

In the good old days (And I of course mean the 1980’s), it appears to have been easier.

We identified with a group of people and we tended to stay within the boundaries of that group.

For example, Lutherans hung out with other Lutherans.

My mom would tell me stories about when she was a kid and her Roman Catholic school friends would not go into her house because my grandfather was a Lutheran minister.

Or when I was in Long Island the old timers would tell you that people of color would never have crossed over the Belt parkway into Valley Stream.

In the old days there were defined roles for men and women.

Men went to work, came home, put up their feet as their wife handed them a drink.

Men wore the pants, and women wore dresses.

We had our places.

We had our fixed identity.

Part of this for me came up on Monday night as a sat in the synagogue listening to the stories of a man whose wife was a holocaust survivor.

In many ways the story that he told was not mine.

I am not Jewish, I never have been, and I don’t know what it is like to be a Jew.

I don’t know what it is like to be called a “Christ killer”, or to have my mother killed in a gas chamber.
But I was there, and I could feel the story.

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t me.

It was just like I could feel the pain of the women who wrote the letters about feeling excluded on Mother’s day.

Can we hear someone else’s story?

Can we feel someone else’s pain even if we don’t identify with their group?

There is something easier about knowing our place.

Some days I wish that my wife and I didn’t have to negotiate as much as we do.

Maybe it was easier for my grandparents.

My Grandfather went to work, came home.

My grandmother washed the clothes, cleaned the house, took care of the kids, and cooked the meals.

All of that has been up for debate and negotiation in our house.

Maybe it would just be easier if we all knew our roles and stayed there.

I am convinced the anger that is out there in our country is about the blurring of these lines of identity.

People are feeling like they have lost their place.

Or maybe even worse they don’t know where the lines are anymore.

If you find yourself in agreeing with me I want to offer a way to think differently about your identity.

I believe that our Gospel for today can help.

Our Gospel reading for this morning is Jesus saying goodbye to his disciples.

He is at the last supper and is trying to give them words of comfort and inspiration.

Like a mother he is trying to coach them up to be better than they think they are.

And he prays to God that they might be one.

What does it mean for us to be one.

If I line all of you up and brought up any subject I guarantee we would not be one.

I guarantee there would be as many opinions as there are people in this room.

Even if it was something that we thought we all agreed on.

If I asked everyone to tell me what they thought the importance of communion was I am sure I would get a large spectrum of opinions.

Those opinions would be based on your identity.

They would be based on your age, what you were taught as a kid, what you believe is important about communion.

Not even our theology makes us one.

Because you might indentify as a Lutheran, but what that means to you is different for all of us.

If not that than what would make us one?

What makes us one is Jesus.

Jesus tells us that he is in us, and we are in him.

Jesus brings us together.

And the love that Jesus has for us is what holds everything together.

Jesus hopes that we have the same love for each other that he has for us.

Meaning that what makes us one is the love of Jesus.

It is not agreement on any one thing or subject.

It is not age, gender, race, sexual identity.

For me it is this simple.

God loves us is what makes us one.

For me, and I hope for you, this is the only identity that really matters.

However else we might see ourselves.

Whatever else we call ourselves, it is only the love of God given in Jesus Christ that really matters.

When we see someone else, we don’t have to identify them by labels.

All we have to do is see them as a child of God and listen with an open heart to their story.

That is the identity that you and I are given.

That is the identity that matters most.

All the other ones fall under that identity.

What this means is that whatever else someone is.

Whatever line they may have crossed they too are children of God.

We believe God loves them the same that God loves us.

And if we are to answer Jesus prayer then in love we need to see them as one with us.

If we are to be mother’s to the world then we have to coach them up, encourage them, and yes challenge them to be the best version of themselves.

In our baptism we are reminded that we are children of God.

And our baptismal call is to remind others that they too are God’s children.

That is our true identity and the only one that really matters.

Amen

Words To Live By

This past week our family went to Disney for a vacation.

I have been to Disney a bunch of times in my life.

This time I noticed something that I hadn’t noticed before.

As you walked around the various Disney parks there were different areas blocked off because they were under construction.

That part I had noticed before, Disney is always changing things, or making things better.

What I noticed this time is that on the wall of all those places under construction were quotes from Walt Disney.

Things like, “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”

“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”

Or “It's kind of fun to do the impossible.”

All of these quotes caught my eye for some reason.

I was drawn to them.

I began to think of why they had taken the time to put up these signs of Walt Disney quotes all over the parks.

I suspect that it is so that the people building the new attractions or fixing the old ones will remember why they doing it.

It is for people like me who are visiting the parks and will see why they are making changes.

I would like to think that Disney wants to remind people of the principles that drive their mission.

And the way to do that is to go back to the source.

To go back to the words of the man who started it all.

It got me thinking about our congregation and what drives us.

What makes our church run or go?

What makes us choose to do the things we do?

And the reason for us being here together, and the reason we have a church is because we are followers of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is our founder.

And it is Jesus’ words that drive our mission.

So this morning, you might have noticed, I have posted on hot pink paper the words of Jesus Christ.

I hope you might take some time before leaving here this morning to look at some of those words.

I hope you might take time to think about how those words drive our mission together.

How these words shape our life as a congregation and your life as an individual.

These words of Jesus are why we are here today.

They are what we are working towards, because the Church, this church, Concordia Lutheran Church, is always under construction.

It is always imperfect, in need of improvement.

It is always growing into what God wants it to be, needs it to be.

That is true of us as a congregation, and it is also true of us as individuals within this congregation.

We all need some work.

But Jesus didn’t say these things to shame us, but rather to so that we might be encouraged and inspired to live them out as individuals and a community.

And that is what our Gospel from St. John is talking about this morning.

“Those who love me will keep my word.”

To love Jesus is to know what words he spoke.

It is to take those words as our inspiration so that we might live them out in the world.

Jesus left behind these words because he knew that we as a people were an incomplete project.

Jesus knew that we would need the Holy Spirit to guide us in to becoming who we were meant to be.

So if we want to know what it means to be a Christian, to be a person who proclaims Jesus Christ as Lord and savior.

It means to know his words, and to follow them.

I know for me the following is often the hard part.

I seem I know the words, but I have trouble sometimes in doing them.

I know what I am supposed to do, but fail to be everything Jesus asks me to be.

I don’t always love my enemy.

I don’t always love my neighbor as myself.

I don’t always act humbly and serve others.

I struggle with it at times.

But I take solace in the words that Jesus speaks this morning.

I take solace that I am not alone in this construction project that is Jonathan Hopkins, and Concordia Lutheran Church.

First of all I have all of you.

We are on this journey together.

We are trying to figure out how best to live into Jesus’ words together.

And when I fall I count on all of you to help get me back on track.

I count on you all to forgive me, so I might try again.

And all of you need to count on each other for that same kind of support, and encouragement.

That is what a Christian community can do for each other.

Second, I have the Holy Spirit that I feel is always working on me.

The Holy Spirit is calling me again and again to live a more real and fulfilling life.

Not a life of superficial outward appearances.

But a real life filled with all of its contradictions, all of its messiness, and hard choices.

The Holy Spirit is there as a guide for me as I find my way back to the words that I have posted on the walls of the Church this morning.

Because here is the thing about the signs I saw in Disney many people probably didn’t even notice them.

They were just upset that there was no Pocahontas show this year, or that there was construction on the monorail.

That is how it is with the words of Jesus sometimes too.

We don’t see them, or forget them, or are annoyed that they are in our way stopping us from doing what we want to do.

But there were probably other people who were also there who had seen those words of Walt Disney everyday as they went to work.

And maybe they didn’t inspire them, because they were sick of seeing those same words.

Or maybe they just have “more important things” to do then think about some words.

That is how we can be too.

We can take Jesus words for granted because we have heard them so much.

We just brush them aside as we go to work, or get things done.

We don’t think that these words are the bases for our daily work, these words of Jesus are how we are supposed to go about doing our work.

They form the bases of a better life and better work.

You can’t be a good boss without loving and caring for the people who work for you.

You can’t be a good spouse without being a servant to them.

You can’t be a good parent without thinking about how your love will grow in your kids.

These words of Jesus they are meant to inspire us to live out our mission in all those areas of our lives.

And I am aware that we fail at those things often, but that is why we go back to the words.

They remind us of what is really important.

Far from the everyday battles we fight, they remind us of the real mission we are on.

The mission to spread the love we have received in Jesus Christ.

We are on the mission to make this world a better place, a more compassionate place.

A Godlier place, a place filled with God’s love shown to us in Jesus Christ.

Our Church is given that task by Jesus Christ, and we are not perfect in it, but we are called again and again by Jesus’ words.

Our church is a construction zone filled with all of us who are under construction.

We are one our way figuring out life as we move along.

It is helpful along the way to be reminded of the words of our founder.

To be reminded of the words of the person who put the church together so that we might know our mission, so that we might have direction, so that we might be inspired to live under, in, and through these words of Jesus Christ.

Amen