Mercy Mercy …

Sunday, November 2, 2008
Lay Preacher: Jon Stolz

Revelation 7:9-171

John 3:1-3

Matthew 5:1-12

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/395374B5-B143-5377-17F7-9DF65D29F93A.mp3

Today we were privileged to hear lay preacher, Jon Stolz, ponder on the meaning of The Beatitudes. Beatitude … from the Latin, beatis, for “to be blessed”, he reminded us.

I learned only today that the first several beatitudes are about “those who suffer” while the remainder are “about those who help those who suffer”. Reckoning back to a theme from Lent, we are either given a cross to bear or we are, in the absence of one of our own, tasked and challenged to help someone else take up theirs … to be modern day Simons of Cyrene.

Jon proffers that the beatitudes were Jesus’ way of identifying those that were truly blessed. Up until then, they had only The Law, but the Sermon on the Mount outlined a new set of rules, if you will.

Jon added to themes of past sermons by Pastors Johnson and Mohn … that Jesus’ “advice” is not a laundry list of things to do or accomplish to garner points; they were not a neat, little set of instructions for life. Jon offers that they were more a challenge to the status quo and “the mindset of The Law” up until Jesus arrived on the scene.

Jon also pointed to an interesting fact: that Jesus was supposedly seated on the ground when proclaiming the sermon, a common rabbinical practice of teachers. Was he speaking to the disciples alone? Was he addressing the crowd and, if so, could they hear him? Lutheran faith is predicated on knowing we can’t earn our way into eternal life. We are given salvation as a gift. God does ask us to live a life which is humble, penitent, meek and merciful.

Jon then elaborated on the beatitude “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy”


I remember well a powerful sermon I was privileged to experience in which the preacher extolled

“If what you’re after is justice, forget about mercy!”

If we “keep count” as Pastor Mohn preached so very recently, we’re missing the point. Mercy is about giving that up … for good. As Jon points out, mercy is putting aside prejudice, it’s care & concern for even the most undeserving; mercy is God, mercy is a way of living, a daily ritual …

And the world is not lacking in the need for it. The world is full of the broken-hearted, sin, hunger looking fo compassion, justice, a friendly ear. When Jon was growing up a son of a Lutheran pastor, he recalls, there were no organized food drives. When someone in need came knocking, it was at their door and one time he answered. Giving he man a lunch that included a ham sandwich, he was confronted by the man, “What!? No cheese?”. In what he admitted wasa sarcastic comeback, he said to the man, “Sorry, no cheese today”. Beggars can’t be choosers, right?

Well, years later, it appears that sarcasm doesn’t rate on the mercy thermometer. Sometimes, it seems, real hunger can mask one’s gratitude. Mercy, perhaps, means “never having to say ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ “.

Jon wrapped up with a beautiful poetic quote from Edwin Hubbel Chapin, a Universalist minister who wrote hymns, editorials, and poems in the mid-19th century. Fearing he would give in to his propensity toward an acting career, his parents dutifully saw to it to send him to seminary. Perhaps this very act formed the basis of one of his quotes:

“A true man never frets about his place in the world, but just slides into it by the gravitation of his nature, and swings there as easily as a star.”

…and, this, on mercy:

Mercy among the virtues is like the moon among the stars,
not so sparkling and vivid as many, but dispensing a calm radiance that hallows the whole. It is a bowl that rests upon the bosom of the cloud when the storm is past. It is the light that hovers above the judgement seat. The quality of mercy is not strained; it drops as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: it blesses him that gives and him that takes. Mercy is an attitude of God Himself, and Earthly power shows like God’s when mercy seasons justice.

Lest we forget we are fraught with our innate ability, in fact our nature to make mistakes, let us heed the thoughts of Edwin Chapin and Maurice Boyd to be interested “not only injustice, but in mercy” for “the very essence of justice IS mercy”.

Blessed be the merciful …

Unless First a Dream

Sunday, October 26, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Romans 3:19-28
John 8:31-36


Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/0D295D8A-677D-5D7C-41D1-5DA3A50ACA21.mp3

Pastor Mohn began her admittedly short Reformation Sunday sermon with a quote from Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat” (a Brief History of the 21st Century). In it Friedman asks

“Does your community have more dreams than memories? Or does it have more memories than dreams?”

Addressing the Confirmands and each of the rest of us somewhat uniquely, Pastor Mohn offered that whle it is important to have a sense of heritage and history and memories, if we place our dreams 2nd to them, we risk a time in the future when we will have no more memories to look back on.

Today, we commemorate that Martin Luther, by either design or accident, changed the world! We look back upon that as a wonderful memory. But Luther wasn’t in the business of memories; he was in the business of dreams.

The start of this sermon brought rife images of students at graduation. Another ritual that is both “an ending wrought with memories” as well as “a new beginning laced with apprehension and hope and dreams for what we can become”. I was reminded that when students return to campus a year or so after graduation, they actually dwell less on “go to the same old watering holes” and conjuring up memories, than they comment of “how they’d like things to work vs. how they actually work”. It is a time of awakening, reckoning with possibility vs. pragmatism. Some end up embracing “the system” and trying to work within it.

As John F. Kennedy might have meant when he said, “Some see the things as they are and say why?” Others embrace finding “the room for a better way”; what Kennedy might have been referring to when he said “I dream things that never were and say why not”. It’s perhaps no great secret that the word dreams is what Kennedy chose to inspire a nation of young people.

We see 18 young hearts before us today venture into that world. Will they see what is or what is not? Only they will discover for themselves. But Pastor Mohn was so gloriously open to possibility when she shared that today’s Confirmands are full of dreams, beautiful dreams. What will the world become? What role will they play in ‘making ti become’? Today is a moment, a snapshot that will, no doubt, become a memory. But what will you do to fulfill your dreams?

Today, admittedly, we fear the future, view it with apprehension – will I go to college, get a job? We want to minimize the apprehension, it’s human nature to do so. But we often also do that by “lowering the bar”. And when our dreams miss “the vision of God” as Pastor Mohn so aptly put it, we miss an opportunity to “dream what wasn’t and say ‘Why not?’ “. We miss an opportunity “to become” the best community we can be!

The problem may be not that our dreams are too big, but that they are too small.

In today’s Gospel text, John says “the truth will set us free”, not from a physical bondage or slavery, but from the bondage of fear and despair. The truth sets us free to dream and to hope, to believe in possibility!

I was near tears as she spoke, remembering a tiring yet magical, mystical Christmas when my daughter was only 20 days old, her lone small stocking hanging over the fireplace with a single world embroidered upon it

BELIEVE

Today the music was so aptly chosen. In one song, the words:

You never know why you’re here, until you know what you’d die for.

In the song “A Beautiful Day”, the words “one possible day”, Let’s go, let’s try, let’s hope … together. If you have no destination, but are driven by a beautiful imagination, see the world in green and blue in front of you. Touch me, teach me, take me to that other place.

Memories you look back to see; to see your dreams you must look in front of you!

Oh, and in the distance, the sweet words of Carl Sandburg …

Nothing happens … unless first a dream.

Not So Fast Cyrus …

Sunday, October 19, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Isaiah 45:1-71

Thessalonians 1:1-10

Matthew 22:15-22

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/9A7435B6-5C5D-2343-6CAB-1750CBD8E2EB.mp3

It was a classic start to another classic Pastor Gary Johnson sermon.

It was 1962. social studies class. His teacher left the room, coming back some time later in silence with the news that he had been called up by the National Guard, that the Cuban Missile Crisis was in full swing. That WW III lay in the balance. The nukes … we had ‘em, they had ‘em. This was bad news.

All of today’s texts reckon with the theme that this could be WW III. The powers that be, the politics are all coming crashing down.

So how are we going to let the world affect us?

Millions of lost jobs. 1.5 wars. Dads, moms, wives, husbands, sons, daughters sacrificed. And in the end, the question:

Who has control over our lives. Or, most telling, whom do we allow to have this control? Several weeks ago, Pastor Mohn begged the question: Where are you from? Whom do you belong to? Today, we ask it again, albeit in a slightly different context.

Who do you belong to?

Pastor Johnson recounts the story that in 1849, archaeologists found the so-called Cyrus Cylinder on which was inscribed “I am Cyrus, King of Kings, King to the Four Quarters”. He had a message. He was the head honcho, big man on campus, and (forgive me, Wisconsin) the Big Cheese. Then The Almighty shows up not too unlike Steve Martin exclaiming, “EXCUUUUUUUUSE MEEEEEEEE!”

Excuse me, Cyrus, but, hey, I formed the light out of darkness. The life from no life, yeah, that was me too dude! Read it in Isaiah today … I go, I level, I break, I cut, I give, I call, I name, I arm, I am, I am, I am!

Translation: Cyrus, you’re not so hot.

Well, not in the grand scheme o’ things perspective.

Who do you belong to? God or some fellow named Cyrus, some Cyrus “of the moment”.

Paul, in his pastoral letter to the Thessalonians, claimed he knew the Word of God “came” to them. Pastor Johnson filled us in that the translation from the Greek text was more intimately “the Word fo God ‘came inside them’ … literally inside them”. And with God truly inside you, you’re not about THIS world, you’re not about “I’ve got mine and I want more. I never got no nothing from no body, thank you! You’re not about power and domination, bu about love & forgiveness & fellowship. You’re about the weekly rummage sale the Thessalonians had where they “shared the wealth” with each other. They were the socialists of their time. They belonged to God, not to Caesar.

In the context of this year’s heated election claims, it was not a hard leap to see the Herodians and the Pharisees join forces to spread the seeds of fallacy, to become (in Pastor Johnson’s well-chosen words) “total Eddie Haskel”, liar-liar. This was like Packer fans and Viking fans getting together, to rat out some Bear fans, or so he offered. And, not unlike this year, it was about your taxes. But these taxes were not “your Daddy’s taxes”. They were not for the common good, for roads, better health care, but merely a tribute to Caesar, a visual show for the Cyrus of his day so you’d get the message about who the Big Cheese was this century.

This is not a world that disenfranchises us? We thought they were our pension plans, but they were stolen by the likes of those we’d never met, and I hope we never do. People we don’t know bet our life’s savings and lost it. But Pastor Johnson paused and said it best after the quiet.

Real disciples know it was never ours to begin with. We have no control … in the end. Who do we belong to? God or Caesar? Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.

And what is God’s? Isaiah reminds us: EVERYTHING! Everything you are or could ever become. The world has no power over Jesus. And, IF YOU SO DECIDE, the world can and will have no power over you. In the most powerful moment of the morning, Pastor Johnson asked everyone to mentally conjure up “the very worst thing you’d done in your entire life, the absolute worst thing …. Now, do you have it? I imagine it wasn’t a long grasp to find it. You’ve got it? Now imagine this: It’s COMPLETELY FORGIVEN – no strings attached.


Caesar, Cyrus … on their very best days … can’t do that.


Whom do you belong to?