A Transformed Life Together Flows from God’s Mercy

 

          There is a shift in Paul’s letter to the Romans that occurs here, in chapter 12 that we just read.
Some people describe it as a move from the Theological to the Ethical,
some go so far as to say today’s reading begins a commentary on Jesus’ sermon on the Mount
—this begins a section describing how those blessings are now found wherever Christians gather…

          Paul starts off this section by telling us that:

A Transformed Life Together Flows from God’s Mercy

Prayer

 

A Transformed Life Together Flows from God’s Mercy

A Transformed Life

          “Presenting your bodies as a living sacrifice is a reasonable act of worship.”

          Reasonable.
Some translators try to soften this,
putting the emphasis on the rightness of the worship…
but sometimes…
often even…
Paul says jarring things!

          The Greek word Paul is using is about reason
—A Living Sacrifice is logical…
and it is not…
A living sacrifice is illogical
—the point of sacrifice is the destruction of a thing,
killing of the victim,
to fulfill an obligation,
or cause something to happen.

          There is an If/Then logic to sacrifice
—if I burn some grain,
then I’ve discharged my duty.
If I slaughter an animal,
then the Heavens will look with favor upon me,
we even do that in society today;
if I demonize the scapegoat to the point of destruction,
then we don’t have to look our problems in the face…
at least for a while.

          A living sacrifice is illogical
—or rather there is a different sort of logic to such a sacrifice
—a foolish sort of logic to the eyes of the world…
but to we who find our very lives to be in Christ…
surely, we can be holy fools,
compellingly strange to the eyes of the world.
If Christ is both Crucified and Lord—and he is
—then the logic of the forces that crucified him,
the logic of piety and the logic of power
—they don’t amount to a hill of beans.

          Because the logic of the resurrection is a sort of reversal of sacrifice
—an obligation already fulfilled brings life—new life!
An act done in advance creates… it is a new creation!

Therefore, reasonable worship is transformation!
Reasonable worship is discerning what God is up to and how you can be involved! Reasonable worship is participation in a new creation, it is new life!

 

A Transformed Life Together Flows from God’s Mercy

Together

Reasonable worship isn’t a solo endeavor. Paul’s letters, and ancient letters in general, aren’t written to individuals, but communities
—most of those times Paul writes, “You” it’s actually plural:
“Y’all, or You’se guys, or in certain parts of Pennsylvania, Yins.”

Discernment—ought to be done in community.
I think of my wife’s tradition
—the Society of Friends (Quakers)
—they create “clearness committees”
when someone thinks God is calling them to certain tasks…
such discernment is a group effort!

So too us Lutherans, with our “mutual conversation and consolation of brothers”
yes, when our conscience hurts or is in pain, we can turn to wise siblings of the faith to move us from death to life
—external voices are often the ones who can rightfully see the gifts God has given us to meet the greatest needs of our time…

God’s callings upon our life are not only, or even primarily, internal,
but also external…
not just a vaguely warm feeling in our hearts (after all that might be the venison curry and coffee talking), but someone saying, “you know what you’d be good at!”

An external voice can make all the difference…
I think about my own calling to the ministry of Word and Sacrament…
I was struggling, wrestling, with the strange idea that God might be calling me to be a Pastor…
and I turned to my pastor, Pastor Sarah.

I did so incredulous and embarrassed by my own sense of call
—my plan at the time was to do AmeriCorps and become a teacher,
and her response was a holy, “Well duh! What other teenager organized a weekly theological discussion group at a local fast-food joint?”

          Yes, we can name one another’s gifts and be transformed together,
-some gifted with cheerfulness are called to acts of compassion,
-others graced with a teacher’s spirit teach,
and so on…
See how the great variety of vocations we’ve been given collectively as a church, add up to something more!
Joined to Christ in Baptism,
discovering the gifts God has already given us…
we, though many, are one body in Christ.

 

A Transformed Life Together Flows from God’s Mercy

Flows from God’s Mercy

          All faithful acts proceed from God’s mercy!
It is mercy first, last, and always!
None of this our doing
—all of it flowing from God’s myriad of good acts for all those He loves!
Creation, Redemption, Holy Sustenance
—saved from and saved for
—saved from captivity, saved for a free faithful life in Jesus Christ.

          Lest we start to get ideas of us making the world right on our own,
without the Spirit’s calling
—we need to turn back to the first 11 chapters of Romans.
In a sense, this section of Romans is, the “So What” of God’s grace
—the Therefore
of chapter 1-11s Because.

          Because God acts first,
because God is generous,
because Jesus is Lord,
because the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words…
therefore together we are living, in starts and stops surely, living this transformed life.

          Because of God’s triumphant victory over the Devil and all his empty promises,
therefore we can be confident that Jesus Christ is trustworthy!
Because Death could not hold Christ and we are jointed to his resurrected life,
therefore we live life anew.
Because we are saved from Sin by God’s radical ongoing forgiveness,
therefore we can be a forgiving people.

A Transformed Life Together Flows from God’s Mercy.      

Dear friends, may these words be more than the hinge between sections of an ancient letter,
may they be written by God in us.
Amen.

Sermon: The Mythopoetics of Peter & Elijah

            I don’t know if you’ve heard, but Hollywood is ecstatic,
for the first time since Covid, people are REALLY going back to the movies…
and not just any movie…
Christopher Nolan’s adaption of Homer’s Odyssey
—a tale nearly 3,000 years old…

            And people want more! They’re turning back to the Original Ancient Greek Poem;
there is even something of a pop-culture fight over which English translation of the Odyssey is the best…
Classists and English Teachers
are being thrust into Tik-Tock battles and culture wars…

In this moment, the culture has a taste for the mythopoetic
—a concept popularized by J.R.R. Tolkien author of Lord of the Rings…
Mythopoetics
—art that expresses a heightened reality, tells primordial stories, speaks to order and meaning…
we’re hungry for it…

 

And today, both Elijah and Peter are found in a similar place to King Odysseus
—caught in mythopoetic storms and Theophanic assaults…

faced with a reality so much bigger than themselves,
they are transformed,
so they can be who they need to be
in their life made new.

Prayer

 

            At first blush, Peter meeting Jesus in the storm can seem, merely, like choppy water and superstition.
But Matthew wants us to hear ancient biblical echoes (that in turn echo even earlier stories) in his Gospel.
The boat Peter is on is being battered—tormented
—by Sea—by chaos itself, primeval chaos
—Tohu vaBohu in Genesis
—Formless & Void,
Disordered & Uncreated…
that which defies Creation and Creator.

And not only that, “It’s a ghost!”
A Phantom, a Shade stalking the space between death & life
—a thing that goes bump in the night and raise the hairs on the back of your neck
—this is intense!

Death and Chaos meet Peter, at least that’s his initial experience of it.

To this Jesus responds, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”
“It is I”, a phrase harkening back to the Hebrew Bible
—I AM
—the name God offers Moses from the burning bush.

“In so far as you are I AM, command me to step onto Chaotic Waters” Peter asks of Jesus, stepping out into the mythopoetic storm.

 

Likewise, Elijah,
having defeated the Prophets of Ba’al and escaped with his life,
hears a voice of God, and lists off his extreme zeal:
-he alone is faithful Israel,
-upholding their end of the covenant,
-still worshipping after everyone else has left the building,
-and is the last prophet.

In essence he’s saying: “O’ Lord! I’m holding the whole of your people on my back.”

And he is sent to see God as God passes by.

There is dreadful wind, just like in Genesis
—“God’s wind swept over the waters.”

Then there is earthquake
—just like in Psalm 29, where God makes things quake so much that the mountain ranges of Lebanon and Sirion skip
like shaky knob kneed infant animals.

            Finally, there is fire
—like Moses’ bush or like the fire that fell and defeated the Prophets of Ba’al…

            These intense images of God showing up
—Theophanies—profoundly frightening encounters with a God who is
truly other, strangely holy… awesome and awful.

            But God is in none of those things
—God meets him in sheer silence, A Still Small Voice. Thin Quiet.

            (Pause)

 

            This silence subverts expectations
—God is strange in a different way than we thought…
God in a small silent moment…
a clarifying silence where there is nothing
—Rock Bottom perhaps
—a time where hope is all you got.

 

            Probably the most famous scene in the Odyssey is the one with the cyclopes.
Poly-phemus, the cyclopes, askes Odysseus his name,
and he replies, “Odyss”—No One.
And after their confrontation the Cyclopes shouts, “No one has blinded me,”
and his brethren do not come to his aid…
because “Odyss” blinded him…

So too God’s name: “I AM.”
In the ancient world, names had a power to them, like magic,
know the name, know the person or thing
—know the name, it owes you something,
the deity is within your grasp…

But the one who is and was and is to come
—the one who exists and is existence…
that’s a GOD—not an idol…

 

-Elijah overselling his righteousness
only to find that God is there in the lonely silence…
-Peter… afraid and courageous, doubtful and called…
there on the water with nothing holding him up except a little buoyancy and trust in the one who walks upon chaotic waters and catches those afraid of death—Jesus, savior of those who doubt…

 

Both are changed
changed to return to everyday life,
but it is no longer ordinary.

Out of the silence, Elijah goes back home,
where 7,000 faithful people await his return
—New allies, new kings, new prophets—out of nothing,
that clarifying silence opens up trust and hope and a way forward.

Grasped and pulled up out of the water,
Peter’s little faith
—a starter kit faith
—a beginner’s faith
—is enough—like a mustard seed it grows.
“Save me!” is enough of a cry of faith!
His little faith culminates in a big confession,
“Truly you are the Son of God.”

 

In both The Odyssey and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings
—these Mythopoetic works
—there is the end that is beyond the end
—The Hobbits go home and scourge the Shire,
Odysseus’ journey isn’t done when he arrives home, he still needs to reclaim his family and his life.
They return, but changed, and that change
—after encountering deeper reality, disorder and order on a cosmic scale
—transforms their return into a homecoming
—a reintegration,
a meaningful ending,
grounded and grateful.

 

So too, I pray,
when God draws us into the mystery of faith
may Christ refresh us and comfort us,
may we understand our day to day as extraordinary,
the very territory of God.
May we be transformed to be who we need to be in a life made new.
Amen.

How’d those Bipartisan Policies work out?

               A while back I wrote a few policy prescriptions for the Republicans, the Democrats, and offered a few things that might receive bipartisan consensus. How are they turning out?

·       The 21^st Century ROAD to Housing Bill passed, despite the president choosing not the sign it.

·       The Armory of Democracy direction I suggested is a mixed bag, the Lindsey O Graham Sanctioning Russia Act is in place, but we also seem to be burning through our stockpile of anti-missile weapons at a staggering rate.

·       Affordability seems to be a buzzword for Democrats and a “hoax” for Republicans.

·       We’re still grappling with Artificial Intelligence legislatively; the Pope and other religious groups are doing a lot of thoughtful work in that area.

·       Primaries may be doing the heavy lifting on the “Thrown the Bums Out Anti-corruption” end of things. The President made $2,200,000,000 off his presidency this year.

Tasting the Feast

                 The Danish short story and movie Babette’s Feast…

is a story replete with themes and undercurrents that I have neither the cultural or historical knowledge to unpack…
but at base, it is a story of generosity and transformation.

It is the story of a quarrelsome pietist sect of Lutherans in the Juttlands,
a barren deserted strip of land
—who are transformed when a French cook, Babette, who has been living with them as a servant for 14 years, performs an act of profound generosity
—she spends a fortune, all she has, to cook the community a proper French meal,
the most sumptuous of feasts.

                Transformed too, Babette,
receiving from this community refuge and stability as her country is engulfed by chaos, revolutions and counter revolutions.

                Both Babette and the Pietist Community taste what it means that, “Mercy and truth have met together.”
Feast and community come together as something magical, holy, simply put, good.

               

The film makes me wonder about the sorts of feasts we partake in,
the meals we meet in life,
the sorts of communities we are formed by.  
I wonder about the feasts we have tasted.

 

Let us pray

 

                There are certainly feasts of Death and Dissatisfaction.
Before Jesus feeds the 5,000+, Herod holds his own banquet.
A tense meal, of that I’m sure.
Everyone walks on eggshells—even Herod…

Brittle bristling Herod, criticized by Jesus’ cousin John,
has thrown him in jail, and then,
at this party, to prove that he’s still in control, not some prophet,

Herod gets pushed into saving face by John losing his head…
holding onto power, even if it means beheading a prophet of God.

Not satisfied with doing the deed, Herod shows off, he brings the Baptist’s head to the buffet; the Prophet’s head is placed among the Hors d’oeuvres.

Yes, a grewsome feast, the sort of meal that runs counter to all those parables Jesus preaches about the Kingdom of God and its gentle fruitfulness.

 

And we’ve tasted such feasts, have we not?

I know there have been times when I’ve pour myself into blackholes,
all for nothing,
or for some sideways reason I could barely fathom even at the time…

Times when it almost seems like we want to reverse the proclamation of Isaiah so that it reads:
“Pay heavy price for frustration, spend like a drunken sailor to hollow out your stomach with hunger. Starve for evil and be disappointed in poor emptiness.”

Yes, there is always a tendency to try and shoehorn this world into “If/Then” paradigms
—If I do X, then you’ll do Y…
it’s simpler, easier to control…
at least until you get entangled in the inevitable tit-for-tat failures
that comes with the mindset of gnawing scarcity
and favors placed like traps.

 

                A bitter taste, all that…
but friends, there is also a “because/therefore” paradigm,
“Because I am a prophet of the God who offers water to the thirsty, food to the hungry, therefore eat what is good, delight in rich mercy.”
A faith founded on God acting first, last, and always.

                There is another feast
—Jesus, upon hearing of his cousin’s death, goes to a deserted place,
perhaps not unlike the Juttlands where Babette’s Feast took place.
He is fleeing, and he is mourning.
He goes there to be alone (at least that’s my Introvert reading of Jesus’ actions)
and is met with 5,000 men
—and probably four times that many people, when you count women and children—20,000,
each in their own deserted places,
their own sufferings and their own sicknesses…

                And Jesus Christ is moved in his flesh
—literally in his guts.

Isn’t that the ministry of God incarnate
—his whole life and ministry is God being moved in the flesh,
a God with guts!

The place where Jesus takes his sorrow, is transformed…
he transforms mourning into compassion.

Christ, moved in the flesh—offers that which is needed—the needful things of humanity
—healing sickness, hunger ending fish and bread.
Provision, a feast, even in awful times!

“We should send them away, right?”

“No, trust that God is a because/therefore God—give them something to eat!”

 

Hear me well, abundant, compassionate, grace filled feasts are not only possible, but the will of God!
Jesus does not flee in his mourning, but, like Moses or Elijah,
provides a meal, like Manna in the desert.

In that deserted, and then filled place,
Jesus prompts the Disciples to be good stewards
—coaxing a generosity that has an astonishing multiplying effect
—We have nothing…
yet somehow we have everything.
God is glorified when his bounty is received!

 

                The Kingdom of God, if you didn’t get it with his many stories
—Parables of:
-Sowers and wheat,
-mustard seeds and great hauls of fish,
-both buried treasure & pearls found in deserted fields
—is now described not with words, but with deeds.

The Kingdom is one man’s heavy heart, becoming healing for the many.

The Kingdom is Christ’s mourning, turning into recovery for the crowd.

The Kingdom is disciples claiming they have nothing, and Jesus showing them what they have.

The Kingdom is 5 loaves and 2 fishes, blessed, broken, shared with 20,000,
and so much abundance that there are leftovers!

 

                Blessed, broken, shared
—pointing to what is to come
—a feast of remembrance and renewal
—the making of an agreement between God and a people,
creating a community.
Remembering Passover,
re-membering, putting together again, a people
—a last meal that created a lasting community,
one that we belong to even today!

 

                A feast that points to the Eschatological Banquet
—the Great Feast at God’s Table at the Culmination of All Things;
where cups overflow and we dwell forever.
A feast we eat in anticipation of, every Sunday, when we gather and say, “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

 

                There is a taste of it…
like Babette’s feast, when mercy and truth kiss, it is holy and good.

Friends, profound generosity and gathering community, blessed by God,
they become a transformative meal,
a Feast like no other.

Amen.

A Hearty Masculinity Timeline

               I’ve been in a bit of a blissful daze since Hearty Masculinity was published (thank you to my readers for indulging me with too many posts focused on the book), and some of that has to do with my slowing down for a moment to look back at what I did. I went from intending to write a book for men to holding a physical copy in a 13-month period. That said, there were definitely some foreshadowing moments before deciding to write the book that shaped what eventually went into Hearty Masculinity.

 

2009—Seminary Pastoral Care

              One of the Pastoral Care lectures in Seminary was on ministering to women and ministering to men. The section on men felt lacking, it boiled down to “watch out for men who are repressed and traumatized like in the movie The Deer Hunter.” bell hooks makes this point amazingly in her book The Will to Change. Having ministered for about 15 years now, I can say this isn’t a wrong assessment by any means, but it isn’t everything.

2011—Waiting for 1^st call

I had an excellent summer living in the attic of two dear friends in Baltimore while I stayed on the East Coast and waited for my First Call to ministry. One of the things I did that summer was read Susan Faludi’s “Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man” which made a case that Masculinity was on a trajectory away from community and towards posture and ornamentation.

2018—The Shape of Leadership

              I got to be in one of the first years of The Shape of Leadership program that was open to both men and women (previously it was a program exclusively for Clergywomen). When we got to the section on gender dynamics in leadership it was lumpy and lopsided, it felt very similar to that session in Pastoral Care a decade previous—it was about men not for men.

The portion on men was tentative, it yearned for a better style of male pastoral leadership, but the closest it got to something concrete for a man in pastoral leadership could be summed up as something like “Be Like Wendell Berry” which is good advice, but not universally applicable. I mentioned to a couple of different people (including Mary Kay Duchene who generously wrote a blurb for Hearty Masculinity) during that session that someone needs to write something healthy and good about masculinity. I thought a little bit about what that might look like.

2018-2019—A Weird Conversation about Consent in a Bar

              A young man struck up a conversation with me in a bar, and it turned to gender dynamics and roles. At various points in the conversation he repeated, “Women who go to bars can’t be raped, because they don’t have enough of a self to decide what they want.” At the time I wasn’t able to get him to tell me where he got this idea.

June 2024—Read Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules

              I eventually read Peterson, and Rule Number 9 is where the guy in bar got the dangerous idea that women in bars have no self.

In some ways you can thank Peterson for my book; he helped clarify for me what men were getting out of the Manosphere: Self-care, goal setting, delayed gratification, making friends, the art of conversation, and how to listen. These good things just happened to come with many spoons fully of grievance, self-aggrandizement, and prejudice. He was a good entry and vantagepoint for me to take in and interpret Red Pill World.

May 2025—I decided that I would like to write something that would help young men.

              The best thing about discerning that God wasn’t calling me to put my name in to be Bishop of New Jersey, was that I don’t have to be Bishop of New Jersey (and even better, someone who is rocking it IS Bishop); the second best thing was that, in addition to the negative word of the Spirit, I also got a positive prompting—write a book for men.

So, I put together a reading and re-reading list as grist for the mill. Eventually I splayed out about 50 tools that I felt would be helpful for menfolk, tried to lump them into groups of 10 to end up with a 5 chapter book, and started writing. Quickly I realized my heart condition was the frame for the book, somewhere along the way I came up with a clear divide between the first half of the book and the second, and things shifted enough that a sixth chapter made sense.

October 2025—I finished a first draft of Hearty Masculinity

I proceeded to revise. I started querying literary agents and publishers, and 17 rejection slips later, I had a publisher. From there I walked through Wipf & Stock’s publishing process: hunting down and distinguishing between every use of an m-dash and an n-dash in the manuscript (I still have nightmares), making sure every citation was fair use, capturing rogue Cambridge Commas and replacing them with commas from the Other Place (I jest, Oxford is a fine school, I’m sure), and generally doing the detail oriented stuff that doesn’t come naturally to me.

June 2026—Hearty Masculinity published

Four Titles for a Parable

            The other day I went to the door to get a package from the UPS guy, and he asked, “Are those Pawpaws?”

I proceeded to describe how I’d hoped they would bear fruit,
but, as of yet, they had not…
and immediately I noticed that
—somewhere between the last rain and the heatwave
—two of the three trees had borne fruit!

            And Jesus, faced with rejection and opposition of all sorts
—responds with a story about bearing fruit
—a story for the crowds and an explanation for his disciples.
A parable describing the great mystery of the Kingdom
—the reign of God…
Jesus tells the story in a way that we can come at God’s work sideways,
so that we can be
surprised, and challenged, and inspired by it!

            And, like all good stories,
how it is told, even the title
—sheds light on different aspects of what God is up to…
so today, I’ll be offering you four different titles, that will draw us into Jesus’ story in 4 different ways.

The parable of…
Four Soils,
Resplendent Seeds,
Sowing as we were sown,
and the Parable of the Extravagant Sower.

Let us pray.

 

            If this is a Parable of Four Soils, then it is about us,
us humans on the receiving end of the Good News.

            Sometimes we’re like the Religious Leaders of Jesus’ day
—the announcement of God’s acts in Jesus are snatched away.

            Sometimes we’re like The Crowds that regularly listen to Jesus
—fickle, fleeing at the first sign of trouble,
weighed down by worldly cares and greed
and going along to get along.

            Sometimes, however, we’re like the Disciples and other followers of Jesus,
we experience Jesus
—we catch his vision,
even if only partially,
even if our faith is o’ so weak
—we understand
—stand under, trust
—what God is doing, and wow! It bears so much fruit!

            Yes, we understand threats to the Gospel persist,
many fall away,
only a remanent remain
—and yet, God continues to act!

 

            If this is a Parable of Resplendent Seeds,
then we’re focused on the Gospel.

We’re focused on those seeds
—the announcement of God’s reign…
every time: the sick are saved, the imprisoned liberated, the meek and miserable ministered to, when preaching is genuinely good news
—that’s what God’s Rule is like!
And it packs a wallop!
Freedom, salve, salvation.

Yes, it may land on shallow soil or thorny ground, or a stony path—but that’s okay
—it also finds good soil, that’s the only thing that matters!
To quote Biblical Scholar Mark Allan Powell, “God takes opposition and apostasy into account, only a remnant is needed to constitute the Kingdom of God.”

            Pay no heed to all the times the gospel is wasted
—rejoice in the bountiful harvest,
trust that Isaiah’s words are true,
God’s Word “never returns empty.”

 

If, however, we title Jesus’ story The Parable of Sowing as we were Sown
then we’re describing evangelism.

            These seeds are sown by Christ,
which are then sown by the Disciples and the Earliest Church,
and sown again and again up to this present moment
—our sharing of Good News in deed and in word.

            When we evangelize it is darn important that we witness to Jesus, and witness like Jesus
—that is the mission and calling of the Church.
Mind your business!
The reproduction of what has been sown
—the effects of Jesus’ mission of compassion,
produces compassionate mission… or to quote Emil Brunner:
“The Church exists by mission, just as a fire exists by burning.”

            We must not be held captive by a scarcity mentality,
worried about wasting Good News,
seed landing where only the birds will benefit…
Not every seed needs to bear fruit, but every seed needs to be sown!
We can get so very choosy about where the seed lands,
or attempting to prepare the soil, that we forget to plant.

            Not every seed needs to bear fruit.
Try again! It isn’t futile!
Keep on keeping on!
Thow it against the wall and see what sticks!
There is much goodness is telling folk about Jesus, trying things, proclaiming in a plethora of ways!

 

            Finally, if this is The Parable of the Extravagant Sower
then it is about Jesus!

About the sort of savior we serve, the kind of friend we have in Jesus.
This parable is like the one in Luke’s Gospel about the Prodigal Son
—the Father who throws a party even after his son squanders half his belongings in a faraway land.

The Extravagant Sower is wasteful with his goodness
—absurdly un-strategic in his sewing—a 3/4^ths failure rate. Because! Because! The Method is the Message
—the All of it,
that the seed goes out to every type of soil
—it is an embodiment of God’s mercy!

            The explosive goodness of God goes to all…
as a side benefit it sometimes bears fruit,
that then sets off secondary chain reactions of Gospel,
that in turn keep that goodness flowing in endless fruitfulness…
but, at least in this telling of the parable, the sewing in all soil would be enough…
enough that God acts in ways that are mysteriously generous, intentionally over the top
—“My cup overflows” sort of gifts, feasts, a field of plenty,
enough and more than enough, from the Generous Sower.

 

            Sudden surprising fruitfulness,
like the fruit of the Parsonage Pawpaws popping up out of nowhere.
Images that overcome tough times with hope
—different ways to:
-dig into the Soil that is we humans,
-consider the seed that is the Good News announced and experienced,
-sowing itself akin to evangelism,
-that Sower—Lord Jesus,
O’ Sower of our souls.

Amen.

Sermon: This Generation

                 This Generation,

it was like a child intentionally singing out of tune,
out of tune with what God was doing
—giving the wrong answer to the question: “When are we?”
They could not meet the moment or discern the Spirit.

                This Generation,
it seeks to crush Christ with questions, pick apart his nature…
but more than that, they never intended to give Jesus a fair shake,
they were unconvinced from the beginning
—it wasn’t just that what God was doing didn’t click for them
—it was that they didn’t want it to click…
They might claim they want an ascetic prophet like John…
they might claim they want Wisdom in the Flesh,
calling everyone to the Proverbial Meal of plenty…
but instead they slander John, saying he has a demon
and Jesus—a lush and a glutton—for associating with the dregs of society!
They are starting with NO.

                Have you ever done that?
—entered a conversation with the singular goal of denying the other person?
Have you ever had one of those conversations where the other person
—just by body language alone
—had it out for you?

This Generation was already convinced of a system of heavy burdens
to score points,
domination by right answer,
Religious Teaching and Laws, as mainly used to bolster authority
—God’s blessing as privilege and a place at the top of the heap.

Oh my—This Generation.

Let us pray.

 

                This Generation
—certainly not confined to the late 20s and early 30s,
or confined to the regions where Jesus’ sandals once stepped.

                If Jesus came 250 years ago, crossing the Atlantic,
to witness the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
he would have met just such a Generation.
If Jesus came today
—yes, here too, now too.

 

This reality is great grist for writers and thinkers:
-Russian Novelist Dostoyevsky famously wrote a chapter in “The Brothers Karamazov” “The Grand Inquisitor”
about Jesus showing up during the Spanish Inquisition.
-Similarly (and curiously written in the same year) Charles Monroe Sheldon preached his famed "In His Steps" sermon series
about Jesus showing up in Kansas and collapsing at the altar of a congregation,
and causing everyone to ask the question, "What would Jesus do?"
-In a milder form, Father Joseph Francis Girzone’s “Joshua” series
told similar stories about Jesus showing up in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.

 

Jesus will always be met with unbelief, with an obstinate no!
After all, we humans are always caught, as Paul starkly describes in Romans 7
—captured in self-forged chains formed from self-soothing behaviors,
caught in wretched repose between
the Idea and the Deed, Desire and ability,
crying out:
“I do not do the good I want,
but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

I don’t know if you remember seeing it,
but the comedian Jimmy Kimmel once pranked his aunt Chippy,
by tricking her into a self-driving car.

The driver seat belts her in, and then steps away from the car, and it starts going.
As you might imagine, she freaks out,
there is a moment where you can tell she’s not sure if this is the end for her
—she didn’t know what she was getting into,
she didn’t know what she chose to do,
she was stuck going where she didn’t want to go!

So too all of us, stuck… freaked out,
exclaiming like the Apostle Paul: Stuck! “Wretch that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?”

 

Stuck, save revelation given by the Son of God.

Stuck… every generation…
save for this beautiful welcome…
every generation also hears these generous words of Jesus,
“All you weary and heavy burdened—I give you rest.
My yoke—my teaching—it is gentle and humble,
restful to your soul!  My burden light, my yoke easy!”

To quote Lutheran cartoonist Daniel Erlander,
Christians are “a pointless people.”
This way of Jesus is not about keeping score,
but residing in the given goodness of it all!
Instead of right answer—right-wised, justified, by God.
Religion not about privileges or placeholding,
but for wisdom, so that the weary might find rest,
the put upon of This Generation embraced by gentleness.

His yoke
—yes a way to talk about Rabbinic teaching—and also, think of the metaphor!
—yokes aren’t hefted alone! “Christ beside you.”
Jesus dragging us along,
a burden that is not a burden,
a restful yoke… what a thing!
Thanks be to God!

Accusations that John is a Demon and Jesus walks beside the dregs of society become something else!
—those very people who are blessed by the beatitudes:
those starved of justice and humiliated,
the miserable and hopeless
—they are carried by Christ!

 

To put some traditional language on it all:
The Messiah’s honor is there imputed!
Jesus receives all the scorn of the status quo of every generation,
and in exchange gives all good things to the heavy burdened
—we sinners, we captured ones:

-the simple seekers in need of a gentle savior like Joshua,
-the left out and intentionally lost mourned for, with the lament, “What would Jesus do?”,
-those imprisoned by walls and by cruel controlling men—like Dostoyevsky’s Savior,
-the huddling masses yearning to be free & those denied their unalienable Rights
—like America’s founders wrote about 250 years ago, and our highest ideals still ring out…

 

                Every generation squalid and squandering, O Sinner!
stone hearted and mean with their “No” to Christ… come home!
To every generation he reveals himself, here among us—come home!
—with us, carrying us!
in common meal & community, Word & Water… come home!
Revealed to every generation
—to every generation rest and rescue.
You who are weary, come home!

Amen.

Hearty Masculinity, the Basics

 The Cover:

 

The Summary:

Hearty Masculinity: Of Body and Spirit is a gentle and kind book for men from Chris Halverson's perspective as a mainline clergyman with a congenital heart condition. Hearty Masculinity's first half, the "Body" section, focuses on practical secular concerns. The first chapter looks at time management as a way to know oneself. The second chapter is about noticing and regulating one's emotions. The third chapter focuses on relating to other people by practicing relational masculinity instead of one that is performative. The second half, the "Spirit" section, is about soul care. The fourth chapter makes the case that the liturgy is a pattern for a good life. The fifth chapter reconstructs masculinity using Paul's paradigm of "power in weakness." The final chapter consists of ten brief devotionals for men.

The Blurbs:

"It's about time! Here is a readable volume that addresses men in a down-to-earth, Christian way, shedding all the myths that especially burden male Americans. It also frees men from a hyper-spirituality that often denigrates the bodily, earthly side of existence. At the same time, Halverson expresses his own deep faith and gospel-centered experience as pastor, all designed to bring us back to earth and into God's merciful presence."
--Timothy J. Wengert, Professor Emeritus, United Lutheran Seminary

"In Hearty Masculinity Halverson calmly silences the posturing and bravado to give us a way to develop that inner strength and integrity that are the hallmarks of true men of substance. Read slowly; root deeply; and grow strong."
--James Krombholz, Pastor, St Paul's Lutheran Church

"This book is a must read for all adults who care what happens to the male-identifying people in our society. Chris's experience and passion shine through as he tackles this critical topic."
--Mary Kay DuChene, author of A Path to Belonging: Overcoming Clergy Loneliness

Where to Buy It:

Wipf & Stock

Amazon

Book Shop

The Book is Out!

 

Hi dear readers.

My book, Hearty Masculinity: Of Body and Spirit, is out! It can be purchased at Wipf & Stock, and shortly, wherever you buy books on the internet.

Genesis 22 Poem: Here I am

 

The weight of things so far
—Abraham getting in his own way
—Sara sold to Pharoah,
Hagar and Ishamel cast out…
Covenants with various local rulers punctuated with piercing violence
the threats to God’s promise continually so great
—that everything that is not promise is stripped away
—anything that is of Abraham’s own volition
—eviscerated… evicted… vaporized.
Only grace, only God’s act on his behalf—on our behalf—remains.

 

HERE I AM

Your son (which one),
your only son (I had two sons),
the one you love (I love them both),
Isaac!

There is a scarcity in that
—the only piece of the promise left
—your loved one
—up in smoke, slaughtered like Barbeque.

The promise gone…
have I chase after just another god,
one of those petty hungry creatures
—leading you on, thinning you out,
wanting, needing,
a greedy little god,
gobbling up a wink and nod promise.

 

HERE I AM

He silently, professionally, goes to work.
A flurry of motion. Rise, saddle, take, cut, set out, go the distance.

Dissociative,
separated from the horror by action
—doing so he doesn’t have to be a being
—a human being…
a human being to the flame!

 

HERE I AM

They leave Isaac’s peers behind, on that Hill—Moriah.

Going up alone, it is ominous.

No one to help him, no one to stop him.

 

HERE I AM

Here I am, my son.

Where is the Lamb?

He will provide… my son

He will provide a Lamb?

This is a crux:
is faith an anesthetic,
or is there something there?
Is Abraham’s promise to Isaac an echo of The Promise?

 

HERE I AM

The angel calls Abraham’s name twice, before he responds. Here I am.

So focused, was he.

Focused on this horrific act… focused again on doing, not being…

But his name calls him back.

“Here I am,” he replies
to the frantic angel,
intervening,
“Don’t!”
Your awe and devotion—it is complete.
Please do not complete the sacrifice.

 

HERE I AM

Instead use that awe and devotion to see!

“Lift up your eyes”

Like Hagar before you,
see what is already provided for you!

Your words to Isaac weren’t just words
—they were real, were Promise.

Providence is not a whisper of sweet nothings.
God provides for you!

 

HERE I AM

Behold the Lamb!

Open your eyes to see the sacred!

There is a substitute for sacrifice!

Keep your eyes peeled,

be awake,

you will see,

see the fullness of God’s promise.

On the mount of the Lord, it shall be provided.

Sermon: The Salvation of the Side Character

                I love the stories in Genesis. They’re:
campfire tales,
family lore,
the sort of stories that get:
passed down, picked up, sliced and diced and told in different ways, depending on the situation.
They are stories with:
rugged edges, dangling endings,
stories replete with repetition and swollen with word play.

                Think of it:
Adam comes from the Adamah
—Earthing from the Earth.
Out of Ish, comes Ishah
—Wo-Man out of Man.
Jacob Jabeks at the Jabok
—Jacob wrestles at Wreslin’ River.

                And so too this tale of Hagar and Ishmael—Cast out, anguished, intervention, wilderness—this cycle repeated twice…
all of it a repetition of chapter 16, where Hagar tries to escape with young Ishmael…
and all, in a curious inversion—a telling of the Exodus story
—God hears as he will hear,
God gathers and tests his people in the wilderness as Moses’ generation will as well.
First born children threatened,
slaves finding freedom
—Egyptians first, the Hebrews next in Exodus…
these stories!

                Today’s story is a sort of understory, a B-plot
—instead of main characters,
we get to consider the Salvation of the Side Character.

Let us pray.

 

                The thrust of Genesis is a series of threats to the Promises God makes to Abraham:
-God promises land, he immediately leaves the land.
-God promises children, Sara is nearly married off to two different rulers,
promises are met with laughter,
getting desperate descendants are sought by other means…
Hagar and Ishmael themselves become threats to the promise
—and yet, these side characters, these folks who could be taken as plot points
—they are people!
Humans that God cares for too!
Even the Side Characters are saved!

               

                The story begins with a party celebrating that Isaac has lived through the dangers of infancy
—he’ll be Abraham’s heir, not Ishmael.

                And then we run into one of those play on words that I talked about
—Ishmael Tzacks Itzack
—he Isaacs Isaac
—he mocks him…
or abuses him…
or perhaps even “plays Isaac”
—pretends to be the chosen heir.
And this will not stand
—Sarah insists that her husband throw her step-son and his mother out…

                And this evil thing,
this thing of anguish, is done.
Abraham sees that is it evil (another word play—rah and ra’).
And God lets it happen!

                And Poor Hagar and Ishamel are kicked out
—cast off,
send to wander in the wilderness
—not but some water and bread to their name.

                A party meant to celebrate
that an infant will not be cast off
—left to die in the desert,
instead leads to the eldest
and his mother
cast out to die.

 

 

                Jealousy, cruelty, choosing not to see evil, or see the humanity in someone that you have power over.
Being abused, thrown away, angry that God doesn’t act
—some things never change.

 

                Dehydrated,
Hagar casts her kid into the bushes,
at least she won’t see this evil thing,
the mocking sight of her child’s last breath.
But like the Hebrew Slaves in Egypt
—Hagar cries out at this awful thing that can not stand,
and her weeping moves God,
the wailing of the dehydrated Ishmael is heard,
and God intervenes.
“Do not be afraid!”
Pick up the boy, see,
in the midst of the evil of the moment, see!
See there is water to drink
—this child of yours,
forced to grow up to quickly—he’ll keep growing,
just as God will make a great nation of our the main characters
—God’s love is boundless
—the Side Characters too
—you too, have a future,
you too deserve the dignity of a nation.
Mercy for all!

                Out of this desert, find drink, grow;
be formed and re-formed by the wilderness.
Be well!

 

                Desperation, turning away at the unimaginable,
an unveiling of hope, a future on the other side.
God hearing the pleadings of the desperate,
God making a way out of no way.
These too are true today
—just as much as our beloved ancient campfire stories.

 

                Have you ever felt like your life is the B plot?
That you exited stage left,
and the play is going on without you?

                Have you been the inconvenient other?
The disinherited…
have you ever felt abandoned?

                Have you ever wondered why the world looks away from some evil done,
or why some children are forced to grow up much too quickly?

 

                Hagar’s story. Ishmael’s story.
It’s your story, it’s a promise.
Mocking will be transformed into laughter.
God does see the evil and abuse,
understands our anguish and pain
—and will not leave us as outcasts,
but instead hears us and rushes
and joins us and draws us to himself,
transforming the wilderness into oasis.
We too have a future,
we too, we most of all,
have a reason to hope!
Even the Side Characters are saved! Amen.