Salem Sermon Archive
Fourth Sunday of Easter - April 24-25, 2010
John 10:22-30
It was my first Good Shepherd Sunday as a pastor and I stood before the people at St. Paul, Nachusa and confessed that I didn’t know much about sheep. I still don’t, of course, but one of our farmers out there insisted that he at least give me a tour. So on Tuesday morning I pulled up to John and Helen’s ramshackle farmhouse and John invited me to ride along in his pickup truck and off we went to see the sheep. It wasn’t far, really, just a little ways back on their farm… but I guess it was easier to get there by truck than by foot. As we started to climb down out of the truck, John told me to watch my step. I did. And as we approached the barn we found ourselves walking through a whole flock of lambs. Jumping and leaping up --- not on me --- but all over their shepherd who was leading the way. As John spoke to them, one by one, his voice was more tender than I think I’d ever heard it before.
Lots of times when I see pictures of the Good Shepherd, those pictures are beautiful, to be sure, but they don’t look a whole lot like what I saw that spring afternoon. In the paintings I’ve seen, the sheep gathered around Jesus always look so peaceful. The one he’s cradling in his arms or on his shoulders is so still it looks almost sedated. And we never picture Jesus watching his step to be sure he doesn’t step in something he’d rather not. No indeed, as much as I love those old depictions, I’m afraid they don’t exactly reflect the full reality of sheep and shepherds and they certainly don’t really get at what’s before us in our Gospel lesson today. For here is the scene before us now. If you look back a few sentences, you’ll notice that Jesus has been doing some teaching about who he is as the good shepherd. And those who are demanding his attention now? Either they don’t get it or they don’t want to get it. It isn’t too much of a stretch for us to realize that, in fact, they’re trying to set him up. In fact, if you look just a few sentences later in this account, we hear that their immediate reaction to his words is to pick up some rocks with which to stone him.
It’s a confrontation, to be sure. One in which Jesus is deeply aware that there are a whole lot of things which threaten to pull the sheep away from the shepherd. And he is staring down his adversaries with the sure and certain promise that they won’t win. That nothing and no one was going to snatch the ones God loves out of God’s loving hands. For God makes a claim on us on the day we are baptized. We may wander from it, far from God’s intent, in fact, but the fact is that God will do all God can to keep us close. Many things will claw at us, creep up behind us, threatening to remove us from the place of protection and care that our faith always offers. Things like despair, sadness, or grief. Things like greed, envy, bitterness, or deceit. You name it, the world is full of things that are contrary to what God intends. But the promise is that the shepherd is stronger, still. God is stronger, still.
So let me offer an image of how I have known this to be true this week. We gathered in this place Monday morning for the funeral of one who was an active member of this congregation for many years. I am sad to say, that I did not know her when many of you did, for in my time as pastor here she has resided at Pine Acres, a nursing home in DeKalb. Even on my first visit there three years ago, I realized that Dorothy’s ability to communicate with me was limited. So much of what I came to know of her in terms of the details, I learned from others. I heard about her years of teaching. Her raising six children. Her leadership in this place. What I saw was someone now confined to a wheel chair, depending on others to care for her. But what I also saw was a sparkle in her eyes even as she struggled to voice words. And here is what I saw on the last day of her life. Even though it seemed that much of who she was and had been had been snatched away by illness and age, she was still clearly God’s own. Still living her faith in ways that profoundly impacted those around her. For here is how it was.
The call came to me that the time was close and so I went. We prayed, sharing together in that service we call the Commendation of the Dying. And then we sat and stood and watched and waited. And all through that long afternoon, people came. Maintenance workers and kitchen staff and nurses and lpns and cnas. They came and they came one at a time usually --- waiting out in the hallway so as to not overwhelm the family gathered there. They came and leaned low over Dorothy, cradling her face in their hands and whispering their care for her into her ear. And then they walked away, their faces streaked with tears. Who knows what it was: her spirit, her kindness, her patience. Clearly, something in her that made her who she was as God’s Own Beloved was still evident even when it seemed so much had been taken away. And people saw it, experienced it, and were shaped by it most profoundly. Even when we thought it was mostly all snatched away, it was not. For Jesus was still living in her. Clearly she was bearing witness to that truth in whatever ways she could until her last day here.
A few days later we gathered in this place and commended her into God’s hands. Those powerful hands which never let her go in the first place. As we arrived up here at the front, her six children gathered around her casket and draped the pall over it. Salem’s pall is a large ivory colored cloth with a gold cross on it. It is used for all funerals in this place. It is a symbol of baptism. It physically does what God has always done in life and in death. It covers us with God’s love and protection. It was a powerful moment as her six children did for their mother what she and their dad did for them on the day of their baptisms. Entrusting her into God’s care one last time. Trusting that as it was true in life, it is also true in death. That God would who never let her go, would still and always NEVER let her go.
No indeed, these striking words are not to depict only lovely spring days with lambs behaving well at Jesus’ feet. These are stubborn, powerful words of God’s promised protection. That protection that won’t let us be snatched away no matter what is thrown in our path. No matter what sneaks up on us. Not debilitating disease. Not grief. Not heartbreak. Not disappointment. Not death. Nothing. Trust this for it is so. As we put our faith there, it truth will make its way clear in ways we can’t always yet imagine. For we are God’s own. And nothing and no one will snatch us out of the hand of the one who loves us so. Amen.
Third Sunday of Easter - April 18, 2010
John 21:1-19
Today is the 3rd Sunday of Easter. It is a lovely spring day. And it is the 18th of April. In the home where I grew up, this day never passed without my dad reciting a poem he had memorized as a boy in school. Perhaps you had to learn it, too, although I have to say I did not. Although the beginning stays with me, I’ve heard it so many times. It starts like this:
“LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five;
Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.”
It was true every year on this day for as long as he lived. While we were still at home, he’d try to stump us, asking us if we remembered the day, and then he’d peal into verse. Once we’d moved away, he’d make it a point to pick up the phone to call and ask, “Do you know what day this is?” More often than not, I wouldn’t remember, but now it can’t roll around without my recalling it.
So I looked ahead to this Sunday and or course the day rang out for me. And actually, it’s a pretty good image for us to carry this morning as we approach the story in John’s Gospel before us now. While he may be remembered for nothing else, Paul Revere is remembered for the mission he carried out. The one that had him galloping through the streets and the byways and the country roads with the shout that the British were coming! The way the story has been passed on, he had no doubt that this must be done and he was the one to bear the news so the people would be prepared. So that the militia might be at the ready. That’s not a bad image for us to carry as we hear about another life-saving mission today. The one that Jesus gives to Peter. And just like that famous poem reminds us, the first witnesses are long gone. And perhaps it is also the same that the gifts live on through those who came after. Through you and through me.
But here’s what else I’ve learned about the 18th of April so long ago. Paul Revere was not the only one to ride with that message of warning that night. There were other riders bearing the same urgent news. It’s just that the people listened to him. He’d spent a life time making connections through his silver business and his political work. People knew him. They trusted him. They believed him. And so they took action. And the world as you and I know it has never been the same.
Missionaries like Paul Revere and like Peter in our Gospel lesson today? They are believed partly because of the authenticity of the journey they’ve been on. I mean, could there be any better bearer of the good news of Christ’s love and forgiveness than Peter? Peter who promised to follow Jesus to the death and then within mere hours stood in the courtyard outside where Jesus was being tried and tortured; Peter who denied not just once but three times ever having made the man’s acquaintance. Peter who ran to the tomb that first Easter and saw the stone rolled back and the linen cloths piled up, no longer needed. Peter who stood before Jesus in our Gospel today and endured Jesus’ pointed and vitally important questioning. “Simon, Son of John, do you love me?” Simon, Son of John, do you love me?” “Simon, Son of John, do you love me?” Three times Jesus asked. Once for each time that Peter stood and in shame and fear denied any relationship at all with Jesus, much less one of love and devotion. But here’s what also jumped out for me in this passage. Jesus does not call him Peter here --- that name he later gave him, replacing the name he’d been called by up to that point. Jesus calls him by the name he was born with: implicitly giving him the chance to go back to his life before he ever met Jesus. Letting him off the hook, if that’s what he so chooses. Only Peter does not. And in his boldly claiming his love for Jesus again, he realizes that he has been forgiven. And he’s given a mission to tend the very sheep of God. And don’t you think he’s all the better at it, all the truer in it, all the more deeply trusted by those he’s called to tend because he knows his own failings, down to his bones he knows them. He owns those failings and the rock he stands on from here on out is only that of the pure love and grace of God.
And so it is with you and me. We have been to the empty tomb. We have seen the folded graveclothes. We have stood in the loving presence of Jesus and known his unbounding forgiveness for our greatest sins. That’s what makes us also believable then then when sharing this amazing news. That’s what makes us missionaries: We have been to the cross. We have known the power of the resurrection. We have experienced the life-chaning forgiveness of god’s love. It’s part of us. It’s in us. And it’s our story to tell, too.
Amen.
Easter Day - April 4, 2010
Luke 24:1-12
Like all Easter stories, at first this one won’t sound like an Easter story. There are no obvious trumpets. No lilies. No loud sounding Alleliuas. But like all Easter stories, there is usually death before there is resurrection. And resurrection comes in this one, too.
It had to have been the very worst day of their lives. The earthquake struck in Haiti that afternoon and these young people from one of our Lutheran seminaries were right in the middle of it. If you were here a few months back you may have heard me speak of the terrible loss of a gifted young man who was soon to graduate from seminary and become a pastor of the church. Ben and his wife and his cousin were in Haiti doing missionary work for the month of January. They were all together on the second floor of a boys’ home when the earth shook beneath them and the building came down around them. Renee, Ben’s wife, and Jonathon, his cousin, were able to escape. Ben, however, was buried in the rubble. The two survivors reported later that they went back to search for Ben, going to the place where they had crawled out from under the massive stones. As they stood in that spot and called his name, they heard him singing from beneath the rubble that had entombed him. Renee told him then that the two of them were safe, that he was much loved, and to just keep singing. Only soon he stopped --- and all the world heard that Ben’s final witness in this life was his voice singing a song of faith.
It had to have been the worst night of their lives. They had to have been in shock, terrified, grief stricken. Not unlike the disciples who fled from the cross on the dark Friday that Jesus died. Much like those women who hung back to see where Jesus was buried. Like them, all Renee and Jonathon knew to do was to seek safety. But unlike those first witnesses to Jesus’ death, with no home to go to, as sunlight started to fade, instead they found an open field: where they hoped to escape harm as the aftershocks continued. It was from the crowd of arriving people also filling that field that a woman approached them where they were huddled together. Their grief, their terror, was shared by everyone in that space that night, but no doubt, they stood out, for the color of their skin paled in comparison to most of the other survivors. The story goes that this elderly Haitian woman picked them out of the crowd, came up to them, wrapped a large shirt around them and cradled them in her arms. And then she sang to them all through that terrifying night. She sang to them all night long.
It had to have been the worst night of their lives. You and I, we’ve had those nights as well. Perhaps like with those first disciples; with those women who made their way to the cemetery that first Easter, maybe today our faces also are streaked with the tears of grief. Like them, maybe we also travel to this Easter day uncertain of what we will find. Perhaps we even find ourselves afraid: terrified of a thousand things or one thing so big we can hardly find words for it. We may have just come from the cemetery, having buried a best friend, a beloved spouse, a precious child. We may have walked in here this morning having long forgotten the song that brings Easter alive again, drowned out as it has been by the clanging sounds of cynicism, sadness, anger, or despair that seek to overtake our lives in the world. And yet, today, we come. For with all the world we are yearning to hear another song. Indeed, we can simply go no longer without the sounds of timpani and brass calling us to a song of life again. We can wait no more to hear the sound of one lone woman singing through the night.
And so like an old woman with nothing else to give in an open field with buildings falling all around, we, too, wrap our arms around one another and raise our voices in song and we listen to hear the voices of others joining ours. And, oh, how those voices in our ears lift our hearts and raise us up in confidence that night will pass. Filling us with the promise that in spite of all the evidence of destruction piling up around us, still death has not won! No indeed, cynicism and anger, grief and despair, suffering and death do not, will not have the last word.
We join our voices with those the world over who may have no earthly reason to sing, but still they sing, for their hope is fixed on something else. It is that witness, that shout, that song alone that turns our worst nights into mornings full of hope again. And that’s what makes this a story of Easter. For Jesus lives. We know this is so for he lives even now in our voices singing this song of hope. For Alleluia! Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!
Amen.
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