LOSING MY RELIGION

Sermon preached on the occasion of my retirement from First English Lutheran Church, Faribault, Minnesota; and from full-time ministry.


I went to four years of college and four years of seminary, and then I came to University Lutheran Church of Hope in Minneapolis, and Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Anchorage, and now, for 24 years, to First English Lutheran Church, to learn how to become a pastor.

As with all good education, what I learned most – at Augustana College and the University of Minnesota and Luther Seminary – was how to learn. So my life among you has been a sort of graduate school. You were my teachers (and you paid me!). If I throw into the mix thirty-six years of the siren song of good books new and old, a collection of tremendously smart and supportive and challenging colleagues (within and beyond these walls), and a good dose of life experience, I am happy to report that I have been and continue to be a life-long learner.

Of course the chief textbook in this great life class is the Bible, the chief teacher, the Holy Spirit. The lesson goes on. As Luther said about baptism we can say about our faith: We have enough to study and learn all our lives long. (And my view of heaven is that God will answer all our questions, solve all those perplexities, and then he’ll say, “Now, how about this one…?” And we’ll be off again – questing, learning!)

I add to this philosophy of life-long learning two other philosophies, learned from colleagues, that I have found to be true: The one is from my friend in Anchorage, Pastor JoAnn Post, who once said, as we gathered with others at a preachers’ text study, “I can’t preach on this text until I figure out how it changes me!” (Now, there is a reason for study and pondering and praying and talking with you and with colleagues: “How does this text change me!”) The other is similar, from another colleague: “Every time you open that book, expect to find something new.” Oh, and I do, and I pray you do, too.

Let me talk about a pastor’s adventures in finding something new, again and again.

I remember a time – just a few years ago – that the new thing I found – that dawned on me – when the assigned gospel was Jesus’ charge to remove the log from my own eye before the speck in my brother’s – was that this log-removing is a life-long project!

I have to confess that, as a good religious boy, I had sort of loosely assumed that somehow I could make quick work of getting this log out my eye and then I could turn and work on you. But then, I thought, “When, exactly – would that be? When, exactly, can I say, ‘OK, log gone; now I get to judge you!’” When indeed? Log-removing is a lifetime task. “Judge not lest ye be judged” is another way that someone – Oh, yes, Jesus – put it.

And that’s another thing, another thing that I have learned, another way in which I have been changed. The more I get to know Jesus, the less religious I am. The more I get to know the Bible, the less religious I am. The more my faith is deepened, the less religious I am. This is not as heretical as it sounds; for the truth that came to me – that has been there from the beginning – is that the Bible is not a book of religion, but of life. In fact, in a way, the Bible is a very anti-religious book -- Old Testament and New.  (If you know someone who says, “I don’t go in for this religion stuff,” you might say, “Have I got a book for you!”) What does God say through the prophet Amos? “I take no delight in your solemn assemblies, take away from me the noise of your songs; let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” So much for religion.

And Jesus: “You are sitting in church and there you remember that your brother has something against you? What are you doing sitting in church? Go – be reconciled to your brother!” So much for religion. Jesus’ harshest words were for the most religious people of his day: “You talk about my teachings with your mouth, you honor me with your lips, but you don't do the things I say to do. In vain you worship me, teaching human commandments as the doctrine of God.” So much for religion.

The word religion has an honorable meaning and background, but it is one of the most misunderstood and misused in our vocabulary. Rather than a set of rules, as Pastor Mike reminded us last week, reading in James: “Here is true religion – to take care of the widows and orphans.” James is echoing Jesus in today’s gospel: “Good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, let the oppressed go free…,” and Amos – true religion is “let justice roll down….”

And justice means that I am called to a life bigger than myself, I’ve been freed from a fearful, selfish concern for my own life, freed in Christ. Justice, righteousness (the rightness of things) means I am called to look out for the life of the widow, the orphan, the poor, the oppressed. As someone said at election time, the question, “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” is not a Christian question. (It's just selfishness.) The Christian question is, “Is my neighbor better off…? Are the poor better off?” Let justice roll down.

So if it’s not about religion – in fact if the Bible is an anti-religious book, and faith is something other than “religion” – then what is it about? Life. There is no intricate word play needed here; Jesus says it quite directly: “I have come that you may have life – life in all its abundance.” How dare we turn the richness of this faith into religious rules – especially rules that we can direct at other people? It is the wholeness of life itself that Jesus invites us – and all – into.

It is religious rules that drove the nails into the cross, but the tables are turned, for, as Paul says, the law itself is nailed to the cross with Christ. It is religious rules that drove the nails – the gift of resurrection is the gift of life. And, in Paul’s striking image, we see the law book fluttering in the breeze, nailed to the cross. No intricate wordplay, no twisted interpretation needed. Paul says quite directly, “Christ is the end of the law.”

Martin Luther had a liberating, life-changing experience when – lost in his own despair and sinfulness – he read, in Romans, that we are forgiven and saved as a free gift of God’s grace, and not by rules of repentance. My life and my revelation is not as dramatic as Luther’s, but I felt something similar when I read, in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Letters and Papers from Prison,” that “Jesus didn’t come to make us religious – he came to give us life!” But it wasn’t new with Bonhoeffer – it’s what Jesus had told us all along.

One part of a “religious” life is a kind of base selfishness: I want to keep these rules so that I, personally, can live forever. But if God’s grace is enough, if my salvation is a free gift, then what becomes of a life of rule-keeping? Well, for one thing, as Mike said last week, “I can’t do it -- I cannot do it!” For another, I am called not to religion, but to life – life that is given away freely for the sake of my Lord Jesus Christ and for the sake of others, in which I discover all that life can be. And more than that, in baptism I am born into the life of Christ. How I live is not a matter of rules, but identity. I’m a child of God! I’m a son of the king! Living this life is who I am!

As another of my mentors, Big Jeff Rohr of blessed memory, once said (in another post-graduate moment that taught me something new), “I trust God to his promises of the life to come, but living the Christian life is reward enough.”

Paul says that “Faith, Hope, and love abide,” and the greatest of these is love. I don’t see religion in that list.

And so, this is not a religious assembly. It is the “body of Christ.” It is an assembly of faith, hope, and love, where “nothing in my hand I bring simply to thy cross I cling.” Where we open-handedly and open-heartedly receive life – life in all its abundance – in the name of Jesus Christ, through whose Spirit we learn something new – are changed – every day.

SOME ROUGH LINES AT CHRISTMAS, II

Rough lines, indeed. For the last few years I've challenged myself to write a Christmas sermon in verse (or is that doggerel?). I offer this as my blog Christmas Card, with thanks for your reading. God bless us every one!

Love came down at Christmas... ~Christina Rossetti

What saves Christmas for us from being just

sentiment is that crude barn, and the dust,

and those shepherds – why shepherds? There are no

princes or holy men in Luke’s tale, so

although we have beautified the small scene

and placed our nativity under the green

boughs of our lovely, well-shaped Christmas tree,

the gospel each season calls us to see

a baby, new-born, in a chilly old shed,

away in a manger – no crib for his bed.

Homeless, with rags his first baby clothes;

bleak midwinter, indeed! and nobody knows

where they are. Of course, in history’s view

they’re nowhere. That is to say, lost in the new

geopolitical empire of Rome --

refugees, wandering, looking for home.

Nobody knows – and who cares where they are?

Who wants to find them? Who’d look very far

for this young mother, this father, this son?

Like most homeless folks they are out there alone.

Nobody knows, that is, except the creator of

the universe. This family, held in love

by one another, is held, too in the heart

of God. Though lost in the night – he knows where they are.

But tonight that’s reversed, and God is the one

who in the arms of his mother is held as a son;

who sleeps in a strawbox, with animals round;

the high king of heaven thus here is found

among us: the word became flesh. Please know

that God so loved the world, and this love will show

most deeply if God in the heaven stoops down

to the lowest repute he can own.

It’s not how I’d do it – or you? It would be

more impressive if the whole world would see

a flash of great power, an army of might.

Not an impoverished family in cover of night.

But God, in the end, is not power or might;

he’ll not use the weapons of terror or fright.

In the end, God is love, and that’s all he will be:

A cosmos of love in this baby we see.

In that barn, on that night, in that backwater place,

Love came down at Christmas to show us the face

of God in the strange but familiar guise

of... one of us – in a small baby’s eyes.

And the news is not shouted from a castle’s high gable,

but shepherds are sent from pasture to stable.

Shepherds! And when this poor baby is grown

it’s still to the poorest he’ll make himself known.

The wrong kind of people, society will

think it’s an outrage, but Jesus will still

love and forgive both the low and the high;

he’ll forgive from the cross where they take him to die.

And Mary, who pondered by a small wooden manger,

will ponder again as she sees the sad danger

that her son has grown into, she’ll weep at the loss

of this wonderful boy on a crude wooden cross.

And we’ve beautified that, too -- made crosses of gold.

It’s as though we don’t quite get the story we’re told:

That the creator of everything came down to die,

to take our death upon him, the king standing by --

the King, who thinks that his troubles are gone

with the rabble that followed this rebellious one.

But rebellion does not even begin to describe

what will be unleashed when the stone’s set aside

from a rocky carved tomb on the side of a hill,

and we see that it wasn’t a man they would kill,

but they tried to kill love, and it wouldn’t stay down;

love arose, the same love that early was shown

on that night when the star broke the darkness so deep,

in that place where, exhausted, a young mother did sleep.

Where the wrong kind of people gave birth to a boy

who was God the creator. And all the world’s joy!

EMMANUEL: THE FIRST HEART TO BREAK

Note: I determined early on that this web journal would not be a depository for my sermons, so this is a first. This is slightly revised from a sermon I preached last Sunday, December 16, in response to the tragedy in Connecticut. The Philippians passage was one of the regularly assigned lectionary texts for the day.

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. ~Paul, to the Philippians, 4:4-7 

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The Gospel of John, speaking of Jesus, says, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overpower it." This light is not a supernova or a sunburst, but the tiniest pin-point of light in a sea of darkness. The darkness cannot put it out. That's not to say it isn't trying awfully hard. ~adapted from Douglas John Hall, "Lighten Our Darkness."

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Earlier this week I began to prepare a sermon based on this part of Paul’s letter to the Philippians from our lectionary for today -- a letter he wrote from prison: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!” Double rejoicing! And then the tragic events of Friday in Connecticut happened, and my hand moved to toss the sermon – and Paul’s text – into the recycling bin. But I hesitated, and thought, and… we’ll come back to that letter in a moment, but first I want to take a detour, a detour through the path of suffering and sorrow that is found in our scriptures and winds through the heart of our faith.

In a few days we will celebrate Christmas – perhaps a more subdued celebration this year, as we see Mary and Joseph huddle protectively around a little one born into darkness, doubt, and danger. And a few days after that, our calendar will commemorate a day that the church for centuries has called, “The Slaughter of the Innocents.”  A day and title that has a sadly recent familiar sound to it. It is a remembrance of the time when a threatened King Herod arranged for the killing of all boy babies under a certain age. The gospel writer Matthew, quoting Jeremiah, says,

A voice was heard in Ramah
Wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
She refused to be consoled
Because they are no more.

“She refused to be consoled because they are no more.” The scriptures simply do not whitewash or deny the pain of life. Rather they give voice to it. Scripture is not a dispenser of easy answers, it is place of questions – our questions-- a treasury of words, and the Word, to express the expressionless. In fact, so-called “holy scripture” is not holy because of some religious decree or because it’s so beautiful, but because – down through the centuries – it rings true to the human experience. It turns out that life is, in fact, a walk through the valley of the shadow of death.

Where have we gotten the idea that our faith teaches “every day in every way things are getting better and better,” or, “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.”?

C.S. Lewis writes that “In every age there have been civilized people, and in every age they have been surrounded by barbarism.” And theologian Douglas John Hall asserts that “the Bible writers will give up on the glory of God before they’ll deny the reality of human suffering.” The central sign of our faith is that in the cross God is with us in our suffering. The cross, from which Jesus, echoing the despair of the unconsoled Rachel, cries, “My God, my God! Why have you abandoned me?” Do you not suppose that there are parents in Connecticut this very morning, who may not even know they are quoting scripture, who are crying out with that same lament? “God, why have you abandoned me?”

Jesus’ questions are our questions; the answer that faith offers does not deny death but takes it on and takes it in and defeats it with love. But there’s no getting around that cross.

Perhaps it is we preachers, or the way we build our Sunday School lessons, that have caused many to adopt the notion that if we simply have enough faith (or enough “religion”) we will prosper and all will go well for us; suffering will be averted. Jesus promises – promises – the opposite: “In this world you will have trouble.” It’s a promise. Paul makes a similar case: “We are afflicted in every way.” Get used to it. We are afflicted in every way, “but not crushed.” And Jesus adds, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart! I have overcome the world.” I would not be in this pulpit this morning if I did not believe both parts of that promise. How does Jesus overcome the world? The cross. The cross on which Jesus is with us in our suffering. From which he laments and forgives. On which he dies. The executioner’s cross – not a valentine heart – is the real sign of love.

When the late William Sloan Coffin lost a young son to another kind of tragedy (death by drowning in an alcohol-related auto accident) he was appalled at the number of his fellow preachers who observed that this must have been God’s will. To which Coffin replied, “I think it was God’s will that my son would have had one or two fewer beers that night!” And he went on to say, “We have to get it out of our heads that God goes around with his hands on the steering wheels of cars or his finger on the triggers of guns. When the waters closed over the top of my son’s car, the first of our hearts to break was God’s.”

God is with us. It’s what “Emmanuel” means. With us. In our suffering. In our despair.

Here is Psalm 88. (In the church service we read it together.) There is something distinctive about it:

O LORD, God of my salvation,
when, at night, I cry out in your presence,
let my prayer come before you;
incline your ear to my cry.
For my soul is full of troubles,
and my life draws near to Sheol.
I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;
I am like those who have no help,
like those forsaken among the dead,
like the slain that lie in the grave,
like those whom you remember no more,
for they are cut off from your hand.
You have put me in the depths of the Pit,
in the regions dark and deep.
Your wrath lies heavy upon me,
and you overwhelm me with all your waves.
You have caused my companions to shun me;
you have made me a thing of horror to them.
I am shut in so that I cannot escape;
my eye grows dim through sorrow.
Every day I call on you, O LORD;
I spread out my hands to you.
Do you work wonders for the dead?
Do the shades rise up to praise you?
Is your steadfast love declared in the grave,
or your faithfulness in Abaddon?
Are your wonders known in the darkness,
or your saving help in the land of forgetfulness?
But I, O LORD, cry out to you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
O LORD, why do you cast me off?
Why do you hide your face from me?
Wretched and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am desperate.
Your wrath has swept over me;
your dread assaults destroy me.
They surround me like a flood all day long;
from all sides they close in on me.
You have caused friend and neighbor to shun me;
my companions are in darkness.

What sets this Psalm apart from the other one hundred and forty-nine is this: It is the only psalm that begins in despair and ends in despair and, in the middle – more despair. What the heck is this doing in the Bible?! A number of years ago a friend, another pastor, told me of a time in which he was lost in depression and sorrow – almost paralyzed. He said that he was leafing idly through the Bible, and his eyes landed on this psalm. “There is where my healing began!” he told me. “Here was someone who knew what I was feeling.”

Does this psalm also, perhaps, speak for some in Connecticut? From despair to despair to despair? We pray for the beginning of a deep healing that matches a deep sorrow.

And so we come back to Paul, sitting in that prison cell in Rome, writing to his beloved congregation in Philippi: “Rejoice in the Lord….” What restrained my hand from tossing his letter into the recycling bin is that picture – that thought: That Paul – who also sat in darkness and danger in the prison cell that would lead to his murder by a madman; the same threatened, mad emperor who had killed his friend Peter – could write, “Rejoice in  the Lord….” In the Lord.

Rejoice in the Lord – who is with us in our suffering. Who walks with us into a darkness so deep that we cannot see the light. Who leads us to green pastures. Still waters. Peace.