It's A CAN!!

Sunday, January 11, 2009
Baptism of Our Lord

Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Readings:
Genesis 1:1-5
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

Audio sermon file:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/9B933839-BA3F-E06B-AE17-7011027F9C23.mp3

In the beginning was Genesis, the story of creation. God is The Big Cheese who’s still creating the universe. His creation is not measurable in human terms. Much as this creation finds a microcosm in the development of a single child, from a formless void, shape; from chaos, order. Last Reformation Pastor Mohn said something very similar byextolling “all the possibility” held in the Confirmands’ lives about to unfold, the excitement of all they can and will become, the shaping of themselves by God as he continues his Creation odyssey.

Pastor Johnson took us back to when he was 7 years old, taken in by the Pastor at All Saints Lutheran at 152 DeSoto on the east side of Detroit. He was invited “to get baptized”.

“What I didn’t realize behind my itchy tie on a hot summer day was that my life would never be the same.”

It was the moment you signed your Eternal Life Insurance policy with Purgatory Indemnity, Inc. In Baptism, you are offered more than salvation from purgatory. It’s not about what you’re asved ffrom as much as what you’re born into … you are anointed into a community of believers, a family like no other. Pastor Johnson was taught conformation by a Paul Johnson, and confirmed by a Pastor P.T. “Cal” Johnson … all in the family, so to speak. At this particular crossroads in his life, his family found themselves homeless, yet taken in by a Church. Oh, and college? The debt paid down by a scholarship from the Lutheran Church of America. These are the things a family does … provides shelter and money for education, to shape a life wherein Creation marches on.

Baptism isn’t about “ should so I won’t go to Hell or Purgatory”. We’re not baptized into the Church of the Shield of Eternal Damnation, the Church of the Limited, but the limitless; not the stain of original sin, but the Church of Daily Forgiveness. It’s about God not being able to stand not being close to me, as a parent not being able to stand not being close to their children, those in whose creation they played a part. As Mark in verse 10 says, God will “tear apart the heavens” to get to us. Upon 6 days of creating God looks it all over & says “This is good”. This, the work of His very hands, even, he will tear apart … the order out of chaos, the shape out of void, he will tear apart to “get to us”

In our human families, as parents, we can be a very positive influence on our kids’ growing up. We can also be too easy on one kid, too hard on number 2, too absent for number 3. Baptism is God’s reminder that He can continually shape you, form you, grant you infinite access to His grace. God won’t be too easy, too hard or too absent. There is, through God’s infinite grace, always 2nd, 3rd and 100th chances … infinite possibility that we can be different, better tomorrow. Baptism means life can never be the same again.

Your Baptism is not “a Should”, it’s “a Can”!!

Our failings do not define who we are, who we might yet become.

I am not the sum of my mistakes.

Baptism wipes the slate clean each and every morning. You’re baptized into The Church of 2nd Chances, a community that cares if you’re in the hospital, that believes in the power of possibility, that believes the future holds “a better way” … and for that possibility, that future he will tear apart the very heavens and proclaim “This is My Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

K-Mart Saves Christmas

Sunday, January 4, 2009
First Sunday After Christmas
Sermon: Pastor Kendra Mohn


Jeremiah 31:7-14
Ephesians 1:3-14
John 1:1-18

Audio sermon link:

http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/742/FD4BFF81-E8F6-127D-B6A8-F9E9DD36A36F.mp3

It’s ten days after Christmas and the lights are starting to come down. More and more houses are shedding their nighttime signs of the season. Down and deflated are the pump-em-up Santa Clauses and even the lit up Nativity crèches. And, as witnessed in Pastor Mohn’s neighborhood, Santa on his Harley. Off the air are the “K-Mart Saves Christmas” commercials extolling the discount giant’s contribution to an otherwise deflated shopping talley. Commercial Christmas, having started immediately upon the heels of Halloween, is over. My wife said to me yesterday, “Don’t laugh … the swim suits are out already”.

Yes, commercial Christmas is gone, but in The Church, Christmas still persists. In fact, the twelve days of Christmas starts on Christmas Day and continues until the Epiphany. In the Church, we have as ense that Christmas needs to go on, needs to continue. Christmas is much bigger, much longer than we can cram into one day.

Christmas isn’t a day … it’s a season.

It’s a season to celebrate the light that has come into the world in the baby Jesus.

Pastor Mohn mentioned that while she’s amazed God sent His only Son to be born among humans, she’s even more amazed that He stayed!! His own did not accept him. But God is persistent. He didn’t come to stay for a day. He came to stay.

Parents of newborn children know the feeling. You prepare for 9 months for the miracle to arrive. Then you bring them home and the next morning, they’re still there! And the next, and the next, and all the next days. Your life is NEVER the same again.

So when the Santa on a Harley is deflated, where will the light of the real Christmas be? The Good News is … YOU’RE the light. WE’RE the light … for one another. In the apparent & real loneliness that often accompanies the dismantling of the lights of commercial Christmas, in the anti-climax of the hullabaloo of the shopping season, we are, all of us, sent out in to the darkness of the Monday morning world awaiting us again. We are sent into that darkness to BE His light for one another.
God sent Jesus, then the disciples, now us … to be lights for one another.

I was reminded of this watching and listening to my youngest child pray throughout Advent, but most especially AFTER Christmas. Often the dinner prayer started:

“For Barack Obama’s grandma and Pastor Mohn’s grandma … (who both passed away in November). For Santa who was bitten, that he’s OK (yes, NPR reported that a cat in New Jersey bit the Jolly Ol’ Elf only weeks before his fateful ride through the skies was to occur). And for the kids missing … that they find them.”

Even after Santa had been good to him, after the presents and the anti-climax, there was still Santa’s recovery, grandmothers’ souls, and missing children’s safety to ponder before a meal and at day’s end. My son’s voice in that moment is a light for me. I am obliged to Pay It Forward and contribute to the cost of the joint ride … to show concern, volunteer time and talent and treasure, to be there to bear a cross of those with more to carry than myself. Often a kind word and a smile will even suffice.

My son brought back memories of the children’s chorus in the Catholic Church where I grew up singing …

This little light o’ mine
I’m gonna let it shine.
Let it shine, Let it shine, Let it shine …

The Good News?

K-Mart doesn’t need to save Christmas … because God sent Christmas to save us!

Mary Did you Know?

Sunday, December 14, 2008
Third Sunday of Advent
Service of Lessons and Carols


Isaiah 40:3-5
Isaiah 11:1-5,10Isaiah 42:6-9
Isaiah 9:1-3
Ephesians 2:11-18
Isaiah 7:13-15
Luke 3:1-6



This week we celebrated the Service of Lessons & Carols. While I was really moved by all the music, there’s a piece that gives me goose bumps, Mary Did You Know.

Mary Did You Know
That your baby boy
Has come to make things new
The child you deliver will soon deliver you

Mary Did You Know
That your baby boy
Would walk where angels trod
And when you kiss that little baby
You have kissed the face of God

Mary Did You Know
That that sleeping child you’re holding is the Great I Am

It begs the question. If we are asking Mary if SHE knew, do we?

Audio music link:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1oHJR2g7Tw

God Logic 101

Sunday, December 7, 2008
Second Sunday of Advent
Preacher: Pastor Gary Johnson

Psalm 85:1-2, 8-13
2 Peter 3:8-15a
Mark 1:1-8

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/D847594C-6D00-3C64-4AB8-942879958631.mp3

God’s plan is hard to understand and often difficult to accept. Instead of the flood or the fire, He comes in mercy. Mountains will be leveled, but there will most assuredly be peace after the storm, rough made smooth, crooked made straight.

The world is a cynical place. It invites us and rewards us for dividing up rather than communing. One thing’s for sure:

There’s always someone who doesn’t fit in.

God’s time frame is not ours, clear, but not so simple. To God 1 day is as 1000 of our years. In his book, The Science of God, Gerald Schroeder offers this tantalizing realization from the world of physics. In Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, time scales ar different at high speeds approaching the speed of light, a speed very close to that of the expanding universe at and near the moment of the Big Bang. If you enter the numbers into the equation scaling time, 16 billion of our years (the time since the Big Bang or roughly the age of the universe as we perceive and understand it) is equal to roughly 6 days … the six days of creation?

Wouldn’t it just be fascinating if the relations Einstein imagined were the language of God written in the stars. Someone had to be “just crazy enough to see it”. God is patient with us and wants to wait until as many of as possible get on the right course before He comes again to finally clean things up and make things right.

He is patient because …

He wants everyone on The Ascension Train

… and He’ll wait for everyone, 6 days or 16 billion years, if you will.

God logic doesn’t make sense to us. We’re not about waiting. We’re about justice, and swift, if you don’t mind. I recall a preacher who admonished once:

If what you’re after is justice and not mercy, you’d better not make any mistakes!

Remember, Pastor Johnson reminds us, you find Jesus in the very worst parts of your life. John the Baptist was a weird character yelling out in the wilderness. But sometimes it takes a character to get our attention. And sometime it takes a month to step aside from the anger, the clamoring for retribution, from the vengeance vs. forgiveness. We are not baptized into vengeance, but into mercy.

Out there today it’s very hard in ways that 2 generations have never known. But around the corner, God is waiting patiently to show He is abundant, hopeful, merciful, forgiving.

What’s coming? What’s coming is an abundant, merciful, forgiving baby. The baby of 2nd, 3rd, and 100th chances. The baby comes for broken relationships, fractured families, the ones who don’t fit in. Prepare yourself for that gift, a gift it’s almost impossible to understand.

The Now and the Not Yet

Sunday, November 30, 2008
First Sunday of Advent
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Isaiah 64:1-9

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Mark 13:24-37

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/292/B5C06DA8-8C18-70D6-DD4C-D6D98144EE72.mp3

“I love 2nd chances!” … and so starts the lesson. Don’t we all. In kid’s court, we called it “a do-over”. The color of the season of Advent is blue … for preparation. But like all good things, we don’t quite want to cut to the chase. Like a great meal, you want to savor it, take a deep breath before starting in. Christmas and Advent have a necessary element of waiting that is not passive. It perhaps should not be a waiting for someone to deliver the goods. But rather a “time before”, of preparation for a happening of extreme circumstance.

In the book Changing for Good, the so-called “spiral model of change” is presented: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, and action. In studies, people who reach the preparation stage are 3 times more likely to change their behavior than those who merely contemplate it. Advent is a time to go beyond contemplation to preparation. This preparation is active and takes time.

It takes time to appreciate His coming. Our sense is not one of fear, but rather one of awareness. Much like a baby’s birth, we know what’s coming, we know it’s good beyond measure, and we do need to prepare for what’s about to happen. Pastor Mohn shared that:

Advent is the season of the Now and the Not Yet.

Although the Kingdom of God has arrived in the person of Jesus, all is still not right with the world, not yet. Advent is the reminder of the work we’ve yet to do to get ready for His 2nd coming. Much as with the birth of a child, we all go about the 9 months of preparation differently. We clean, we paint, we hang a quilt from on grandmother, a rocking chair from another. We create a space. Our community creates the space together … to let this child know how special they are, that they’d been anticipated. The time in between now and Christmas is critical and Holy.

The temptation is to be closed off from our family, but this limits the power of the Good News. Advent is a blessing, a time to be aware of the expanded view, to contemplate “the now” and act and prepare while in “the not yet”.

Laughing at a Funeral

Sunday, November 16, 2008
Preacher: Pastor Kendra Mohn

Psalm 41:1-3 1
Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

Audio sermon link: http://fileresource.sitepro.com/filemanager/74/filecollections/422/DC940E23-065E-3374-11FC-EE42DC8D2359.mp3

Today’s lesson seems to be speaking about a harsh master, and inequality in his doling out. As we’ve seen more often lately, we have to ask “Where’s the Good News here?”. We are called to take the time and acquire the eyes to see that good news.

Where’s the good news in the hoarding of the single talent. Well, Pastor Mohn puts part of the picture we often don’t see in perspective when she sheds light on the meaning of the word “talent”.

In our Savior's lifetime, a talent was a significant amount of money. A talent was equal to 60 minaes, and a mina was equal to 100 dinarii (pence). A worker might earn one dinarius a day.

So a talent was something on the order of 6000 days pay or 16 years salary! Five talents held the worth of an entire life! Well, this changes one’s perspective … or it can. Pastor Mohn evoked that sense when she challenged us all to view the text from a different angle. If the Master was harsh, was he not also extravagant in what he offered, provided? The Master’s instinct is to give extravagantly, abundantly! And what is expected in return is accountability. We are given each a unique gift. It is our job to discover it and use it as best we can to further The Plan. So let’s not “start with harsh”. God BEGINS with abundant giving. God gives us all LIFE.

Now on to the response. So now that we know the value of a single talent, we know the guy with even the one talent has got a lot to lose! “A lot” renders apprehension, fear, and a feeling of undeservedness. It’s fear that leads the last slave to hide and hoard his keep. Is the Master really harsh? Or is it in our heads “the fear talking”?

The other two slaves “see the opportunity”. They “see it a different way”. Pastor Mohn confesses that “she gets the third guy”. She gets his fear. We can all relate. But we also need to consider why the other two rise above it … why they were not afraid.

Pastor Mohn recently lost her grandmother and attended the funeral in Iowa. As mourners lined up to view the body, Annika, all of 7 months, was wiggling, smiling, and laughing. The scene caused others to break a smile. It was that image: laughing at a funeral that spoke a message. That …

Christians do foolish things, risky things. They take a chance!

They laugh at a funeral.

We all can acknowledge an economic crisis of proportions we have only read about, yet reach in deep and continue to give. We’ve been asked by the Master to dig deep, and to laugh at a funeral. Being asked to give is an invitation from God … to be held accountable for one’s having received in abundance, in extravagance. The request: that we help others smile at a funeral, see the world a different way.

We never deny the crisis or catharsis or The Cross, but we are tasked to live knowing that after, there is always a rainbow, a promise, a deliverance, a life everlasting.

And, if we learn the lesson of the talents, we, too, must “pay it forward” … so the giving never ends.

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 …