Sermon: SPEND LESS

         Last week we began our Advent journey toward Christmas, along with thousands of other churches, by checking and making sure we knew where we were going—toward the celebration of God come in the flesh as Jesus Christ—toward worshiping fully.

         This week, as we go along on this holy road trip, it’s time to stop and make sure we’re not over-packed.

         Yes, over-packed.

         I think of my surprise when I picked my mom up when she came back to the United States from two weeks in Tanzania and Kenya—she had a small rolling bag and a backpack

—just to repeat for two week.

The bulkiest thing she carried was her camera. She definitely didn’t over-pack.

         But she did tell me about a fellow traveler she met while in Tanzania. This woman brought three giant trunks with her, which a guide had to lug around after her

—three trunks filled with clothing and make up.

Imagine that, gussying up to watch lions and track wildebeests!

         And, during Advent, this time leading up to Christmas, we as a society over-pack as well.

         We as a society could do with Spending Less.

Let us pray

         As we get going down this Advent Road toward Christmas, it’s worth noticing the tires on our car are looking a little low to the ground—and its not because we’ve got a flat. It’s because we’ve loaded the car up with too much stuff.

         One of the most treasured pieces of Christmas is the giving of presents. In doing this we remind ourselves of the precious gift God gave to the world, his son Jesus. We also remember the presents presented to Jesus by the three wise men, as well as St. Nicolas of Myra’s gift giving to children.

         But, somewhere along the way we seem to have went a little overboard… a lot overboard actually.

         Americans spend 450 billion dollars on Christmas. That’s 10 zeros, just to be clear.

         To put that number into perspective:

         NASA says with 450 billion dollars they could send a man to Mars.

         It’s the same amount of money as the US government spent on Medicare last year.

         It’s more than twice as much as American Individuals give to charity.

         It’s four times what it would cost to bring every American above the poverty line.

         We spend like crazy at Christmas—loading up this Advent Van to the point of absurdity.

         We spend like it’s our Job… and not just any job, but a deadly Seal Team Six kind of job. It’s like we’re training to become Shopping Assassins or Consumer Hit Men.

         … and if you think that’s an exaggeration it’s worth looking at our record.

         On this last Black Friday—9 days ago, the official start of Christmas Shopping season—there was one shopping related death and 15 injuries—including two fights that involved people using tasers on one another, as well as people shooting at each other over parking spaces.

         If you look at the last 8 Black Fridays there have been 7 deaths and 90 injuries.

         All that for good deals, and in order to get loved ones the perfect gift—all this, to chase after a perfect Christmas.

         But ultimately, this quest to buy more, is sinking the ship, squishing down our car to the point at which we’re endangering our Advent Journey. This chasing after Christmas through consumption is ultimately running the wrong way

—in fact running away from that star there ahead of us in the East.

        

         But it’s not enough to say “my goodness, buying things is bad.”

There is a deeper question—a deeper yearning—going on in a society that will kill for deals and wound for parking spots.

We’re trying to honor those we love, and we’re trying to make sure we’re worth something.

         And the good news today is that our worth doesn’t come from how much we spend.        

         Advent is, in some ways, a Winter version of Lent

—in fact in some countries, churches are decked out in Blue for both Seasons.

And just as Lent challenges us to give things up in order to focus on Easter, it is appropriate to be willing to do the same for Advent—to Spend Less at a time when our culture is telling us to

spend more!/spend more! /spend more!

         Spend less in order to lighten our load on this Advent Journey.

         Two quick examples to look at:

1.         Look at John the Baptist, this fuzzy wild man wearing simple and strangely austere clothing and eating food from the earth, not bought in the market.

         This John who humbles himself before Jesus for the sake of exulting him. He points to Jesus’ greatness by making himself less.

And yet, this man, who clearly humbles himself and lives without the trappings of wealth or things, is called the greatest by Jesus.

         Greatest, not because of the things he has, but because of the one to whom he points

—to make it plain, he is not great because of the presents he gives, but because of the present to the world Jesus Christ.

2.         Look at Mark’s Christmas story…

there isn’t’ one.

         No, there are a lot of things missing in Mark’s Gospel, including at times good grammar—because that’s not his focus, that’s not where he’s headed.

In his writing of his gospel he is headed to one thing and one thing only “The Good News of God, that Jesus the Son of God has come near.” Mark jettisons a lot, to focus on that one thing—the Son of God come near in the person of Jesus Christ.

         So too, it is worth re-focusing our Advent, from presents to the presence of Jesus that we are preparing to celebrate.

         It’s worth it, because that ultimate gift, that baby in the manger, that Savior for Us, is of ultimate worth.

         In summary, on this second stop of our Advent Journey we ought to assess what’s really important, because an excessive focus on gifts can make us lose sight of that fact that this amazing gift, Jesus Christ, has been given to us, and that we are of insurmountable worth to God and to one another,

not because of our possessions or our ability to get good deals or spend on friends and family,

but because we are Beloved Children of God. A+A

A few Words from Matthew 11

Come to me, you who are weary,

Come to me, you who are heavy burdened,

Come to me, and receive rest.

Your burden is heavy—Here is a lighter load,

Your yoke is hard—Here is an easier one.

I am gentle —Find rest for your soul,

I am humble of heart—Rest in me.

Advent Week 1 Sermon:Knowing where we’re going/Worship fully

    Advent is a strange part of the church year. It’s a little like Lent—a time of preparation, reflection, maybe even repentance.

         But unlike Lent it has multiple endpoints.

Easter is the sole focus of Lent,

whereas Advent points us to Christ’s coming at Christmas AND also Christ’s coming again.

         While Lent is a one-way street,

Advent is a two way street, going both backward and forward.

         For the last two years, when I’ve talked about Advent I’ve focused on preparation and hope, and I’ve tried to locate us, and ground us, in a particular time—this in between time we live in.

         But, this Advent we’re going to try something a little different.

We’re going to focus almost exclusively on preparing for Christmas.

         We, along with 1,000’s of churches this year, and 10s of thousands of churches in the last 7 years, will be following the format of a Christian group called the Advent Conspiracy, who asks the simple question, “Can Christmas still change the world?”

         We will head down the Advent Road, toward Christmas, and along the way, we’ll stop off at 4 different stations, on four different Sundays.

We’ll do this in order to make sure:

We know where we’re going,

We ensure that we’re not over-packed,

We take time to know our fellow passengers,

And finally,

We’ll stop to help some fellow travelers broken down on the road with us.

         Or to put it into the terms of the group Advent Conspiracy We’ll:

Worship Fully

Spend Less

Give More

Love All

Prayer

         On this first stop—this Worship Fully, stop,

         We begin our journey toward Christmas, as one ought to, by assessing where we are and where we’re going.

        

         We’re in Advent, along the road, preparing for Christmas… yet there is a lot of baggage that has been hung on this holiday.

         Being that Christmas has a lot of cultural weight in our society, its gravitational pull naturally shapes the American calendar in such a way that we focus on Christmas earlier and earlier—mistletoe goes up by the time Halloween candy goes away.

         Maybe in a decade or two South Plainfield’s Labor Day parade will feature Saint Nick, a Menorah, and a Manger Scene.

         And with this expansion of Christmas, filling up large swaths of the cultural calendar, comes another type of weight

—if this one day becomes so important that it swallows whole months, imagine how perfect Christmas has to be—

otherwise you’ve failed! You’ve let months go to waste!

         Or at least that’s what it feels like

—and I know, talking to some of you and you know experiencing Christmas myself as well, there are lots of expectations you and your family have about Christmas

—a lot of perfect moments and perfect gifts that are causing you anxiety.

         Lots of obligations—dinners, Christmas Cards, time with relatives and getting everything done at work so you can have a day or two of Christmas Time.

         If former president Dwight Eisenhower were to diagnose this weighty

calendar distorting,

culture shocking,

emotional and relational sapping,

baggage of Christmas, he might even go so far as to call it a “Christmas-industrial-complex.”

         And the most off-putting aspect of all of this is,

among all this hustle and bustle,

Christmas becomes less about celebrating God’s coming for us in the form of Jesus Christ and honoring this true center of Christmas with the joyful worship of God.

         And yes, as this point the sermon could very easily turn into a harangue about how we’re taking both the Christ and the Mass out of Christmas. That we’ve missed the reason for the season.

All of those clichés.

         But you know what? that would be heaping still one more thing onto your backs, I would be loading just a little more baggage into the Christmas-Industrial-Complex—

but that’s not where we’re headed on this Advent Road, that would be a stop sign and I’m trying to show you a road-map.

         We’re headed toward celebrating God with us, worshipping Jesus for his coming among us as the Christ Child, and among a plethora of obligations that fact should be freeing!

         Look at Christmas up there, on ahead of us.

         As Isaiah writes, “Come let us go to the house of the Lord.”

         Let us go toward that manger!

         Where we’re headed, is to the celebration of Swords being beaten into Plowshares—tanks into tractors.

At this time that can make people feel unpeaceful and anxious, know this:

          There is peace up ahead—because ahead of us is the Prince of Peace.

         In this season where evening comes early—it’s often dark by the time we get home from work—know that, as Paul writes, “The Night is Far Gone, the Day is near.”

        

         Look up ahead of us—there is Jesus Christ, the one who is Light and Life for us all.

         Do you remember last week, I told you about the description of Jesus in the book of Colossians?—well if you didn’t fully hear it last week, the Gospel of John gives a very similar description this week!

         The Word of God—the Logos in the Greek—the thing that Philosophers of the time thought of as the basic building block of life,

as well as the blueprint from which all things were made,

as well as the source of that life,

is attainable! Nah, is given to you!

         Is, in fact, in front of you!

         That light,

that little light,

that single Advent flame you see there,

is pointing to it,

is counting down as we get closer to it.

         It lights our way from here—like that star the wise men saw, it is a beacon pointing us forward toward the Christ child—

It reminds us that light shines in the darkness and the darkness will not overcome it.

         Reminds us where we’re headed on this Advent Journey and frees us to Worship Fully as we go. A+A

Why do you ask that question?

            “Why do you ask that question?” Probably the most frustrating and liberating question anyone who graduated from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia will ever hear.

            During the second semester of seminary all Lutheran students go through a class called “Lutheran Confessions” taught by Rev. Dr. Timothy Wengert, or as some people call him Herr Wengert.

            In this class we learned about The Book of Concord, about the historical circumstances surrounding the Lutheran Reformation, and about our own theological assumptions. Dr. Wengert knows The Book of Concord backward and forward, as he should, he and Lutheran Church Missouri Synod’s scholar Dr. Kolb are the translators of the American edition of the work. Dr. Wengert is like a time machine when it comes to the era of the Lutheran Reformation, he makes it come so alive that you realize the questions and answers of that time were a matter of life and death, and still are today. But the gem of Dr. Wengert’s class was the hour each week when we met with him in small groups and asked him questions about what we’d learned the previous week.

            To every question his initial response was the same, “Why do you ask that question?” And he really meant it, he interrogated where you were coming from with your questions and concerns about the founding theological pieces of Lutheranism. He figures everyone coming into his class is a closet heretic, and by the time you leave his class you still might be a heretic, but you’ll at least know why.

            This self-proclaimed “Theological Doctor House”[1] shaped us profoundly. Initially, we cowered at this question, “Why do you ask that question?” But after at time we realized it was actually a very pastoral question. He was really asking, “What troubles you about the Faith and your experience of it?” It gives the Pastor a context from which to hear, really hear, the concerns of the faithful.

            Why am I bringing this up? Because Herr Wengert has retired… in fact this last Tuesday he gave his final public lecture, on Luther’s tract “Freedom of a Christian.” It was magnificent, with many interesting insights, but I’ll leave you with this one.

            The Freedom of a Christian is like retirement. Dr. Wengert is free from the day to day work of being a Confessions Professor, and therefore able to serve the wider Church by working on new projects he’s put off because of what he had to do and serve his new grandbaby by being a joyful grandfather. Or at he pithily put it, the ELCA’s slogan should be, “God’s Work, Our Hands, So We Don’t Get Bored.”

            “He doesn’t really mean that does he?” You ask.

            “But don’t we have to do something?” You inquire.

            “How can retirement be the whole of a Spiritual Life?” You wonder.

            “Why do you ask that question?” He responds.

---

[1] The fictional TV Doctor at Plainsboro Medical Center who often heals his patients by nearly killing them.

Sermon: Ongoing Faithfulness

        They say the vast majority of disaster relief comes in within the first 90 days of a disaster, then that flood of cash and goods, labor and care—turns into a trickle, and then nothing at all.

         Likewise, widows and others who have lost a loved one, find an outpouring of support… for about the first month. Then people begin to drift away. It’s not that they don’t care, it’s just that life is awful busy.

         Churches too, have a flow and ebb to them. Churches form their habits based on the decade they were founded in, and for about the first 100 years of a church’s life the further they get from the time when those habits were the norm, the more likely they are to be in decline.

         Finally, a slightly different and also slightly more concrete example—The House of All Saints and Sinners—a Lutheran Church in Denver that focuses on ministering to those pushed out of traditional church, Recovering addicts, gays, tattooed folk, and hipsters—In other words the kind of people who would show up to Thanksgiving dinner at the Halverson household when I was a kid.

         This Church has grown, from 4 people hanging out on a couch talking about their faith to 180 on a Sunday. But with that growth comes growing pains.

For example:

What do you do when the normal people show up?

Does installing a sound system squelch the Spirit?

How do you keep that many anti-authoritarian-types, each with different ideas about how to do church, from being at each other’s throats?

         In all four of these cases, time, instead of healing all wounds, has the potential to cause deeper wounds.

In the face of such a situation, it’s worth focusing on:

 Ongoing faithfulness.

Ongoing faithfulness.

Pray

         Today we read from one of the earliest pieces of Christian scripture—Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians.

         And what a community Paul writes to.

To a bunch of people who assumed Jesus was coming back within their lifetime.

         The Thessalonians were a community that hoped to white knuckle it until the end of the world. To just hold it together for a little longer.

 To push forward those last few days, on adrenaline alone.

They’d hoped to hold their communal life together just a little longer.

         They were a community waiting for the End of the World.

And the end didn’t come.

         Some still pressed on—other’s pressing turned into depression and inaction.

         Their waiting turned to boredom and backbiting.

         They were even weary of doing right.

        

         They desperately needed to know how to be faithful in the interim period—in the Already Not Yet reality of the Christian life.

         They needed a different model of being faithful together—one that involved a sustainable community and a sustainable faith.

         They needed to move from a faith in which one last great heroic act of holding on, was enough—one where they could save themselves through their struggle toward the End of Time, snapping at one another all the way there—

         To a faith that was servant shaped—shaped like their Savior.

One of small. Quiet. Consistent. acts, beautiful in their simplicity and inclusivity—so that even the backbiters who only wanted to watch and jeer, are won over and eventually join in.

         Or look at Luke chapter 21 which we read today. It is sometimes called the little apocalypse, because it speaks of times of trials and great calamity.

         And lest we grasp these words of Jesus and turn them into End of the World Predictions as the Thessalonians did,

it is worth point out that the troubles it describes are mirrored in The Gospel of Luke’s sequel, The Acts of the Apostles.

         For example, in Luke Jesus warns of “great earthquakes” / in Acts Paul is freed from prison by a great earthquake and allowed to witness to his jailer.

In Luke Jesus warns of dreadful portents in the sky / in Acts these portents are pointed to at Pentecost as the early Christians testify to God’s actions in every language on the earth.

It’s like Jesus is giving the disciples a road map to their suffering and faithful endurance.

         And Jesus tells them that coming through this calamity will lead to the gaining of their souls.

         Gaining their psyche, in the Greek. Their true self.

         How they endure—their ongoing faithfulness—shapes who they are—it forms them.

         Think about that for a moment—

the Disciples, who in the gospels are mainly known for their bungling, for their not getting it, cowering men who deny their Lord—

are transformed into the Apostles, who boldly preach the good news that Jesus died and rose for us, preach that message to the ends of the earth.

         They are so shaped by these times, testifying to God’s action in their lives—testifying to God’s ongoing faithfulness, even as they are shape into a faithful people.

        

         In summary, ongoing faithfulness is about a small thing, quiet simple acts, but it is also a giant thing, being formed into the Body of Christ.

         It’s the unsung background work our church, the ELCA, has always been so good at when disaster strikes, we aren’t only the first in with aid, but we’re also the last out.

         It’s being there for people who are grieving over a lost loved one, even after our impulse to help has left us—and being surprised by the person you are becoming by being there for them.

         It’s riding the ebb and flow of where a church is at, and holding together a community.

         It’s an experimental church wrestling with the dangers of growth and change, and being changed by that wrestling.

         It is God’s ongoing faithfulness to us being realized in us.

A+A

Read, Reflect, Pray: A Lutheran Prayer Book, update

       The Kindle edition of Read, Reflect, Pray is selling like hot cakes. It is currently ranked number 28 in the Electronic Prayer Books Section. In fact, I’m beating the Book of Common Prayer, which is currently ranked at number 30.

       But there is a problem. Read, Reflect, Pray doesn’t lend itself to the Kindle Format. Specifically, there aren’t pages in the Kindle Edition in the same way as a physical copy.

       If you’ve bought a Kindle copy you should bookmark each of the daily sections in both the prayer half as well as the meditation half. Then it will function just as well as a physical of Read, Reflect, Pray.

       So, bookmark Locations 77, 101, 159, 225, 306, 387, 515, 583, 682, 779, 936, 1027, 1113, and 1173.

       Hope that helps loyal readers!

So... I wrote this Prayer Book

            Being a Scandinavian American I’m not big on self-promotion… in fact I have a tendency to see it as a little icky. But here it goes.

            As you may remember a couple years back I wrote a book entitled “An Uncomfortable Bit of Rope and Other Essays on the Binding of Isaac.” It is my M.Phil. thesis about retellings of Genesis 22 by Josephus, Philo, Pseudo-Philo, and Jubilees, along with a pseudo-Freudian reading of the story, a discussion about how Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac relates to religious violence, and a science fiction play that re-interprets Genesis 22.

            Well, I’ve done it again. After three years of wrestling with prayer—especially finding resources to deepen my prayer life—Hurricane Sandy hit. I was without power and my gas tank was empty. Well, when I wasn’t out wandering the neighborhood checking on parishioners, I started to compile prayer resources I’d used, to think through how to fit them all into one book, and to think through how that book would be organized and useful.

            And out of that exercise, and about a year later, a year filled with using and sharing that resource, comes Read, Reflect, Pray: A Lutheran Prayer Book.

            It is a cross between Doberstein’s A Minister’s Prayer Book and Lathrop’s Holy etc’s along with some nods to the Black Church and Forde.

            The basic idea behind this book is that the things we do in worship ought to be done throughout our lives.

            Or as I wrote in the blurb for the prayer book, “Imagine becoming a group of people who focus their lives on being community, fostering forgiveness, reflecting on their vocations in light of God’s love for us declared in our Baptism, rooting themselves in God’s Word, cultivating a thankful heart, sharing Christ’s grace at table, and being people sent into the world to be salt and light. That’s the shape of our communal worship, our collective practice of being who we are, the body of Christ. And that’s the shape of this prayer book as well.”

            So check out Read, Reflect, Pray. It is available in soft-cover and on Kindle.

Peace,

Your Friendly Neighborhood Blogger Chris

All Saints Sunday Sermon "On the Blessing and Woes of Jesus and the Kingdoms of Daniel"

           On my right, I see folk my mom met in Kenya who are building their small, living room sized house,

brick by brick,

section by section,

for years on end, decades on end,

finally completing their house around the same time as they retire, because only the rich and well connected can receive building loans in that country.

Blessed are you.

            On my right, I see the 10 year old look-out-kid back in North West Baltimore, who risked police arrest and gang violence,

because that corner’s drug dealers gave him a chicken-box a day to take home for dinner, so that he wouldn’t go hungry that night.

Blessed are you.

            On my right, I see the 40 plus names of all those people connected to St. Stephen who died since last All Saint’s Sunday, and I see all those who mourn so profoundly.

Blessed are you.

            On my right, I see kidnapped Bishops in Syria, Burnt Churches and Christians in Pakistan and Nigeria.

Blessed are you.

            On my left, I see well off folk, with easy access to liquidity and an ability to use their wealth to create more wealth.

Woe to you.

            On my left, I see a people well fed, healthy, unworried about where their next meal will come from.

Woe to you.

            On my left, I see those entertained, enjoying being included, valued, and loved.

Woe to you.

            On my left, I see super-star preachers, mega-church attendees, successful religious entrepreneurs and the kind of people invited to pray at prayer breakfasts.

Woe to you.

            And, I wonder,

What is in the space in between these two?

What makes hated Martyrs and mourning widows blessed?

What makes healthy, happy, well fed folk the target of woes?

         In the deep place between those two sides of things—the twin hills of woe and blessing, is a kingdom in that valley.

The Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God.

Prayer

         In today’s reading from the book of Daniel, we read of Daniel’s disturbing dream—of beasts and beastly kingdoms, and of one like a human being and a holy, humane, kingdom.

         And the thrust of this dream is that God’s kingdom transcends these other kingdoms,

these beastly kingdoms.

         It transcends them both morally and existentially—

the Kingdom of God is Humane, while the Beastly Kingdoms are monstrous.

The Kingdom of God is eternal, while the Beastly Kingdoms won’t last always.

         This reality of the Kingdom of God, its moral and existential superiority over and against any and all kingdoms of this world, shapes Jesus’ blessings and woes.

         Jesus says woe

 to the rich, filled, laughing, and respected

because they are doing well in a system that is not the Kingdom of God… if you do well in a monstrous system you yourself become monstrous… you yourself have been morally compromised somehow—

we all have.

         We have in a million different ways, become adjusted to injustices

small and large.

We don’t notice the little ones our culture is built off of,

the variety of vulnerable people sacrificed in every social structure.

         Yes, woe to we who have been co-opted by our respective cultures and become unconscious of the ways we fall short of the Kingdom of God.

         And for that matter, woe to us, for the fall will be great.

         The more we trust in those things which make us rich, filled, joyful, and respected, the worse it will be when those limited thing fall away.

         Think quite simply of the events of a year ago—when Hurricane Sandy stuck us and hobbled us.

         We rely so heavily on systems of transportation and electricity, that when it was pulled out from under us, we fell quickly—

relying on gas in our tanks, heat and light in our homes

failed us.

         But imagine how unchanged everything was for those in our society without homes, or cars, or electricity. Their fall was small. The fall of those who rely on these things, was great.

        

         Now, please understand I’m not condemning all structures equally or suggesting we need to opt out of society—

In fact there are few greater dangers than people of good will turning their back on the world in which they live.

         No, I’m simply saying it’s worth reflecting on how our ways of life miss the mark of the Kingdom of God.

         Similarly to his woes, Jesus’ blessings find their foundation in his proclamation of the Kingdom of God.

         This reflection on—

this compare-and-contracts with—

the Kingdom of God and the Kingdoms of this World.

Faithful reflections on the morality of the societies we live in—

these blessings and woes, cause us to ask the question:

“What kind of Kingdom begins with the blessing of those who are vulnerable?”

         Let me repeat that, “What kind of Kingdom begins with the blessing of those who are vulnerable?”

         This question opens up a window from which we can glimpse the Kingdom of God.

         It points us to a foundation of the Faithful Rule of The Righteous One.

         The Kingdom of God, this trans-historical kingdom—

this kingdom within time, but also beyond time—

continually breaks in, in every age—

within every kingdom that claims to be totalizing,

claims to be the complete package,

claims confidence and control,

claims our trust and reliance.

         It breaks in and reminds us that the King of the Kingdom of God is

One like a human being—

One like the Son of Man.

         One who proclaims good news to the poor,

fills the hungry with good things,

wipes away every tear,

and rewards the faithful with the faithfulness of the Ancient One.

         It is such good news to the poor, hungry, weeping, persecuted.

         The times when the Kingdom of God comes clearly near, are such a blessing to the vulnerable.

         On my left I hear woes.

         Woes which point to our moral compromises and insist that we become freshly aware of, and maladjusted to, the injustices around us.

         Woes warning of the inevitable fall that happens when we hitch our wagon to a horse heading off a high hill.

         On my right, I hear blessings.

         Blessings that point to another kingdom—one that doesn’t begin by sacrificing the vulnerable, but instead begins by blessing them.

         Blessings that erupt from time to time, blessings from the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, Jesus Christ.

         Between these blessings and woes, we find the Kingdom of God.

Amen and Alleluia.