Note: much of this sermon was preached from notes which won’t make much sense out of context. Sorry.

speaking about someone re lutherans (for / against)

reformation sunday (#sms)

Because I’m Lutheran, I see it as a matter of truth

Gospel: truth sounds good…not the most comfortable thing

““If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.”” (John 8.31–32 NRSV)

“They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone. What do you mean by saying, ‘You will be made free’?”” (John 8.33 NRSV)

very funny, right? but this text is here for a reason…what blind spots do we have now?

Phyllis Tickle’s 500 yr rummage sale (Jesus, Fall of Rome, Great Schism East/West, Reformation…

• church was center of culture; denominational identities
• my friends, 500 years are up; what truth will set us free?

Romans

• difficult truth that sets us free
• leading up to ch. 3: first ‘heathens’, then ‘hypocrites’ (read: us); all of us…Paul trapped us

“Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.” (Romans 3.19–20 NRSV)

• but truth brings freedom; this is where true transformation happens; at this rock bottom that we’ve all reached together: because of Jesus’ righteousness; we are made righteous

“For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” … (Romans 3.22–24 NRSV)

This is the truth that sets us free: the truth that we, on our own, have failed, and will always fail to live up to who we should be…that we need God, and knowing this truth lifts our eyes to faith in this Jesus person who promised us that we are not our failures, but instead, we are who God says we are.

This is the faith that motivated Luther to reform the church. This is the faith that drove him to preach 7000 sermons, on average, four a week.

Luther:

This kind of trust in and knowledge of God’s grace makes a person joyful, confident, and happy with regard to God and all creatures. This is what the Holy Spirit does by faith. Through faith, a person will do good to everyone without coercion, willingly and happily; he will serve everyone, suffer everything for the love and praise of God, who has shown him such grace.

All by knowing the truth that it is God’s Grace that saves us.

If you read about the Reformation in history books, it is often the church practices that come to the forefront: the selling of indulgences, praying to saints, not allowing priests to marry…but for Luther, all that took a back seat to the preaching of the Gospel…the Good News about God’s grace.

That’s the real legacy of the Reformation that we’re left with. 500 years later we live in a day and an age in which so many people have been led to believe that Christianity is primarily about condemnation. It has become the exception, rather than the norm, for regular folks to have a liberating experience of the Gospel through their church.

The Reformation today, I believe, has less to do with our specific church practices, contemporary vs. traditional, denominational vs. non-denominational; and has a lot more to do with cutting through the layers and layers of hypocrisy, judgmental words, and whatever else is binding us and preventing each of us from sharing a word of life with our neighbors. Sharing a glimpse of faith that Martin Luther says makes us joyful, confident, and happy. Sharing a story of one of those moments that we find ourselves joyfully serving a neighbor — not because we are trying to be a good person — but because God is working thru us.

The heart of what Martin Luther was so passionate about wasn’t being against something…it was about the truth that sets us free to live a life of love joyfully, confidently serving our neighbors. This is a Reformation that our world needs…let this truth soak into your words, your life this week: you have been set free.

1 Peter 4:6—11, Matthew 25:31, 34—40

In the flow of love that we’ve been talking about over the past few weeks — as we’ve considered how stewardship is really how love works in our lives — we’ve moved through the down direction of God’s…dominion…God’s first love for all of us, to the in direction of God’s loving investment in each of us, the sowing of seeds that bear fruit in our lives. And we’ve come to the final movement, the third act in God’s love story for the world: the flow of love out through us to our neighbors, for the sake of the world.

Martin Luther, the pastor that had a whole lot to say on this subject about 500 years ago, has basically already summed up the idea of stewarding God’s love down, in, and out, in the wittiest and most concise way possible when he said:

“God doesn’t need your good works; your neighbors do.”

Or take the Gospel of Matthew, Ch. 25:

““When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25.31, 34–40 NRSV)

10,000 sermons could be preached on this and how it seems to be suggesting that interacting with our neighbors, and especially our neighbors who would count as ‘the least of these’ means actually interacting with God. I think this is one of the most powerful parables that Jesus told. But ‘powerful’ can be scary. There is a whole other half of this parable which we didn’t hear today.

It’s about those folks on the other side — that ones that neglect or reject ‘the least of these.’ It’s about those folks that are speaking with the king and are surprised to find out that by not taking care of others who seemed unimportant, they had failed to care for their king, and so were themselves rejected.

On the one hand, it can be liberating to find out that we are that close to God without knowing. On the other hand, it can be terrifying to find out that we are that close to God without knowing.

One response, when considering this parable, when considering that our actions towards others are actually actions toward God, is to ask the age old question, the question that Martin Luther was well aware of:

Have we done enough?

If God is keeping score, how are we doing? Have we feed the hungry enough? Have we welcomed enough strangers? Have we clothed the naked enough? Can we do enough? Should we even try? When God can be as close as the person next to me, it’s easy to worry, can I ever give enough? But remember:

“God doesn’t need your good works; your neighbors do.”

Down, in, and out. We cannot love God the way we ought, but it doesn’t work that way anyways. Love flows down from God. There is nothing we can do or not do to earn God’s love. There is not a single good work or act of love, justice, or mercy that will improve our standing in God’s sight. God just loves us. Seriously, we don’t have to do anything. But, as an old Lutheran professor used to say, we have a different question to ask. Our question isn’t ‘have I done enough?’ Our question is:

“What am I going to do now that I don’t have to do anything at all?”

Do you see the difference? Because God’s love just always flows down, we have been totally freed from having to step up, to earn, to win back anything at all. We have total freedom to be loved without doing anything. So what will you do now that you don’t have to do anything? Well, all this love that God keeps sending down is too good not to share. So God turns us inside out, to share what we have with others.

• You know; Core Value of ‘Community Outreach’

This Gospel of Matthew, however, reminds us that outreach happens the moment we walk out these doors. In fact, as you walk out, you may notice those banners around the door out. And if you know the Gospel lesson we heard today, they’ll be even more familiar.

Maybe we could see them every week as a reminder of how close we are to the neighbors God has given us, and the love that is just waiting to be turned out for the sake of the world.

• This past week, one of our members invited me to Vincent House, where she is involved…
• Cliff and Eden… (or it might be something more subtle)
  • Down, In, Out
  • not once did they consider
  • Lord, when was it that we saw you need?

The best, most important work that we do may not feel like work at all. It might feel like sharing a meal with someone. It might feel like stopping by and laughing and visiting with someone who can’t get out much. It might feel like greeting a stranger and making a new friend. It might feel like teaching someone younger than you how to cook or how to hang a shelf. It might feel like teaching someone older than you how to write an email.

And the lower our ambitions are, the closer we are to Jesus who said, “just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

God does not need our offering today. God does not need our plans for financial giving. Our neighbors do. As we bring forward our tithes and offerings, our plans and estimates for giving, we ask that God would bless them and use them to reach out — through us.

And as we walk out the door, let’s use the freedom we have to propel us outward. Let’s get creative about what we might do, now that we don’t have to do anything. Now that we know God’s love comes down, finds a home within us, and moves us out.

For all the ways that modern North American Christians are different from the people of the New Testament…for all the cultural, political, economic, and intellectual differences between them and us…every once in a while, Jesus speaks about something that cuts right through time and speaks directly to a modern issue.

In the Gospel that we’ve just heard, Jesus touches on something that is both ancient and modern. Jesus connects money with anxiety. Jesus invites us not to be worried, not to be anxious about our life, our possessions, our treasures. To invest in God’s Kingdom, rather than our own little kingdoms.

Jesus says do not worry…do not fear little flock. I get the sense that Jesus is pained by the unnecessary suffering that he sees his disciples going through. Consider the lilies, he says, they don’t worry themselves sick, yet they are full of glory just as God made them.

Easy for Jesus to say, you might be thinking. He didn’t have a mortgage to pay. Or car insurance. Or an orthodontist, therapist, accountant, and life coach, either, for that matter. Not to mention that Jesus did not have the single biggest financial liability you could ever take on: children.

You might be (rightly) wondering if considering the lilies can help us out at all with our modern financial worries. Especially when it’s so uncomfortable to talk about money in church. Believe me, I know that I’m swimming into an emotional minefield, just by talking about money from the pulpit. We have guilt: we haven’t given enough; we haven’t saved enough; we haven’t spent enough! We fear for our safety: will we have enough to pay bills, to retire, to afford health care?

And to top it off, we often treat money and finances as such a private issue that our worries can end up being hidden from our friends and family. We even try to keep our finances private from God. I’ve heard people try to make the case that our faith is spiritual, so it shouldn’t really matter what we do with our money and possessions, it should only matter what is in our hearts.

Jesus takes a very different approach.

Jesus talks about possessions and money early and often in his ministry. He talks about money more than almost any other subject. So much for just being ‘spiritual,’ right? But if it matters to us, it matters to God, and God knows money matters. We consider it when making important decisions. We assign value to things we care about with money. The receipts in our wallets say a lot about what we value.

Maybe the most powerful thing that Jesus says about money comes right at the end of the Gospel that we read today.

“For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Luke 12.34 NRSV)

Depending on how you hear this, I think it can either set you free from financial anxiety or confirm your deepest fears about it.

Traditionally, I’ve heard it that second way. I think about how little I’m actually able to give, and all the things that I still worry about, (will there be enough?) I think about the fact that I can’t seem to make that leap to ‘sell all my possessions,’ as Jesus advises his disciples to do. And since ‘where your treasures are is where your heart will be,’ I saw all of this as confirmation that my heart just wasn’t in the right place. And if my heart wasn’t in it, then I guess I wouldn’t be able to give as I ought, and that my heart would never really be in it.

But this is almost exactly opposite of what the Gospel says. Listen closely to the words of Jesus: “where your heart is, there your heart will be. Where your treasures are now, there your heart will be in the future. It’s not that our giving the right way follows from getting our heart right, it’s that growing our heart and love for God follows from giving and investing our treasures in the Kingdom. Regardless of how you feel now, whether you feel generous or stingy or guilty or afraid, God can change your heart starting with the treasure that you already have.

This is a startling claim: if you want your heart to be in the right place with regard to money and possessions — if you want to let go of the anxiety that permeates our relationship with money…God has a path for you to do that: give it away.

Now, I’m not going to tell you what some preachers have said, which is that if you share your money with the church, that you’ll guarantee a return on your financial investment. That your bank accounts will grow if you make a ‘down payment’ with your church. In my experience, it does not work that way. Religious institutions from Biblical Times to modern day Prosperity Preachers have manipulated people to give to the church based on our inner anxiety and greed to make more money.

Please, do not give money out of a sense of guilt. Do not give money out of a sense of fear. And please, do not give as a scheme to get rich quick. You will likely be disappointed.

So why should you give to the congregation? Well, I think it really comes down to two reasons: sacrifice and support.

We give as a sacrifice. We give sacrificially. Because we have been called to give. We give in order to be faithful. We give as a spiritual practice. This is that change of heart that is possible, Jesus says, when we share our treasure with the Kingdom of God. This is giving that is pure sacrifice, it doesn’t promise financial return on your invest, but it does promise to change your heart. Even if you don’t give financially to your congregation, please give to something outside of yourself. It will change you.

Many of you do already give to your congregation, and that kind of giving is support. It’s the idea that if you are a part of this community of faith, then I assume that you care about its mission, that you want to see it continue, and maybe even grow, and for that to happen it needs financial support. In order to employ staff and keep our campus safe and inviting and to reach more and more people with the good news that has already reached us, it’s reasonable that each of us would financially support the congregation to the extent that we can.

As we have been given different financial gifts, we are able to give different financial gifts. Throughout the Bible, God’s people are consistently called to share in proportion to what they have received.

If I make $1000 this week and want to give a tithe, or 10%, my $100 offering might be significantly more or significantly less than your tithe. The dollar amount does not make me a better or worse Christian than the next person — and to be honest, even the percentage I give does not make God love me more or less than you. But it makes sense that the amount we share is relative to our income.

And this is where each of us can consider how we might grow in the percentage that we give. I know it’s not easy at first. When Leslie and I first discussed giving back 10% of what we make off the top, it was an awkward conversation. It forced us to talk about savings and spending and budgeting. Stretching to that number forced us to be generous in a way that didn’t come naturally. But we don’t regret it.

In fact, I think about all the folks that I’ve gotten to know at the end of their lives. And, as a pastor, I have had the privilege of sharing time with a lot of people considering their life’s legacy. I have never spoken with someone who regretted giving too much at the end of their life. I have never yet heard someone say, ‘boy, I wish I hadn’t been so generous.’

Next week in worship, we will dedicate Estimate of Giving Cards. You may have received one in the mail, or if not, we have cards that you can pick up. I hope you’ll take some time in the next week to prayerfully consider how your household might grow in giving as sacrifice and as support.

Investing your treasure, your time, money, and possessions, in the Kingdom of God does not guarantee that you’ll become rich, but it does promise to change your heart. Practicing the spiritual gift of generosity opens each of us up to the flow of love that God has planned for us. Love that always comes down, no matter what we give or do not give. But when we allow that love to flow through us, we can be a part of something we could never do on our own.

Through this flow of love, God sets us free from fear so that like the lilies in the field, we can be exactly who we are meant to be, clothed in glory, and without fear. Amen.

Exod 16.11—19, Psalm 8, Romans 12:1—8, Matthew 13:1—9

Can you see yourself as good soil?

I guess I should should back up a bit.

Last week I began talking about this word, “stewardship,” and how despite the way it typically gets used in church settings, that it’s really about love. And that stewardship is only about love — and the way that love works in the real world. Because love is not just an abstract idea that floats around in heaven, but love has a flow of real world consequences in our lives. And that it always moves in the same direction: Down, In, and Out.¹ Down from God — into our hearts, our lives, our households — and then out into the world for the sake of our neighbors.

Last week, I really wanted us to remember that it begins with God…that everything there is belongs to God…that love comes down.

Today, I want to talk about how love moves in. And the way that I think about it is like it gets planted.

Jesus told (and then explained) a parable. It goes like this:

• farmer sows seeds
• some seeds land right on the path, birds eat ‘em up
• some seeds land on rocky ground, spring up, whither fast, no depth
• some seeds land among thorns, are overwhelmed
• some seeds land on good soil; they grow way beyond how they started

…God sows love in our hearts. God invests in our lives…

If your life was the parable, which parts would you remember? Which parts would you talk about? If you’re like most Americans, and especially if you were raised Lutheran, you’re not likely to talk a lot about the wealth of the fruit that grew in the good soil. We really like to emphasize the rocky soil, and the thorns:

A pastor² tells the story of a couple who agreed to meet to talk about giving to a church campaign — but they warned the pastor that they were not wealthy. When he met with them in their farmhouse they reported that their assets came to a few hundred thousand dollars. As they spoke about their wise use of resources with the pastor, they kept remembering other assets that had, “…a small piece of land here, an investment in a grain elevator there, a loan due to them…” over there. The pastor kept writing all of these things down in his notebook. The totals passed $700k, then $800k, then $900k, until suddenly the wife slammed her book shut and walked away from the table. When she had cooled down, she explained, “I don’t like this at all. If we keep on like this, the next thing you know is that we’re going to be millionaires! And, we’re not that kind of people!”

We sometimes find ourselves in a strange relationship with the gifts that we have received. While most of us aspire to be comfortable in our material wealth, and maybe even aspire to be rich, very few of us want to be called “rich.” I can’t tell you how many stories I’ve heard that start with “…we didn’t have a lot of money when we were growing up…”

I get that rags to riches is part of the American dream, and that we like to remember how we’ve overcome hardships all throughout our lives — and of course, we have! I do not doubt your hardships — they’re real. But at a certain point, we also have to recognize how incredibly rich our soil is.

This is why I love this parable to talk about stewarding God’s love. First of all, it’s a reminder that our gifts are planted in us by God. The seeds in the parable start with God. Good chooses them. We don’t really choose the gifts that we’re given, do we? God plants them in us. But here’s what else I know about the parable:

The rocks, the thorns, the good soil…that’s our life — each of us. It’s not that you are the rocks, and someone else is the thorns growing in your way. It’s that each of us struggles with rocky soil. Each of us struggles with thorns overwhelming us. And each of us is also good soil.

Look, you are a particular kind of person — in fact — there is no one else like you. And you could take that to mean that you aren’t the kind of person that God invests in…that God certainly would want to plant important seeds in much holier ground. But what is certainly true is that God has made you who you are for a very particular reason. And God has planted in you seeds that are meant to bear fruit.

Do you know the gifts that have been planted in you?

Despite all the rocky ground in yourself that you deal with…and despite the weeds and thorns that grow up around you and frustrate you…

Can you see yourself as good soil?

Can you see that God has planted gifts in you for a reason?

---

Just like seeds sown in the ground…we may have no clue about what fruit God is hoping we’ll produce…until it grows. And without fail, the good things that God will do with us, the love that God grows within us, always comes as a surprise. You are never too young nor too old for this surprise.

If you’ve ever had this experience of finding surprising gifts growing inside of you, I hope you share your story from time to time. At the very least, you’ll make someone laugh…and maybe you’ll even inspire them.

I can tell you that my journey through campus ministry to seminary and eventually into this pulpit has been one surprise after another for a shy kid who was once studying to be a forest ranger. (True story.) (Maybe that’s why I like the Parable of the Good Soil so much…)

If, on the other hand, you’re in a season of your life in which you are staring at the soil, unsure, and waiting to see what might grow next, I hope you’ll share that part of your journey, too.

In a couple weeks, I’m going to focus on the Out — how the love that God has planted in us moves out into the world for the sake of our neighbor. And as we really catch this as individuals and as a congregation we are going to be surprised by how much of God’s gifts are directed out, towards the neighbors we encounter in our daily lives. But in the meantime, if you want to explore what God might have planted within you, I invite you to get involved with something new in our church community.

And if you need some ideas…I’ve got some:

• ushers, communion assistants, lectors, greeters
• property work
• youth / AAA adult
• digital disciple
• driver

… and some kind of training for each…fill out the blue card…I would love to have a conversation with you about what God might be doing in your life next.

But whether you are using your gifts in one of these areas or somewhere completely different, here’s the thing about God’s gifts: they’re God’s. They come down to us from God. They find a home in us, because God has planted them there. And in each of us, there is good soil. There is a surprising way for God to use us, to do something with us, despite the rocky ground and the thorns around us. A surprising way for us to grow, to bear fruit, and to share more love than we ever thought possible.

Deut. 10:10—22, Psalm 24, Gal. 3:23—29, Mark 12:28—34

I want you to think about something that you love. Something that makes you feel blessed — maybe it’s your family, or friends, or where you live, or double dark chocolate ice cream. Something that you love so much you might be inspired to have a bumper sticker or flag with that thing on it. Something that you might post about on Facebook, or something that you might join a club for to cherish with others.

Now…did anyone think of stewardship? No? Nobody has a stewardship bumper sticker on their car? … No, of course not. Stewardship isn’t really something that one loves.

Actually, stewardship is about how one loves.

Stewardship is how love works. This is not how we normally talk about stewardship, I know. But I think that stewardship is always and only about love.

This is big stuff. A scribe came to Jesus in the Gospel we heard today to ask Jesus about some Big Stuff. He asked Jesus about which commandment was first. In other words…what’s the most important thing? Maybe today the question would sound more like, ‘Jesus … what’s the meaning of life?’

And Jesus responds with a very biblical, but also very relevant answer: he says, the Lord is one, Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

The scribe asks about a commandment, and Jesus gives an answer that’s all about love. And this love has an order to it. Sort of like how our world has gravity, love has a kind of gravity and it moves just as Jesus answered. It begins with God. It fills us and our whole life with a purpose. And then it flows out of us to our neighbors. Love moves down, in, and out.

Down, In, and Out:¹ I believe that stewardship is the path that love takes down from God, into our lives, and out to our neighbors. If it helps you remember, you could think of it the way that you might make the sign of the cross: down, in, out.

Today, I want us to focus on the ‘down’ part of how love works.

There is one central point of knowledge that we have from scriptures, from tradition, from experience: God’s love comes down to us. We live by God’s grace alone. God chooses us. Or, in stewardship language, everything first belongs to God. The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.

This is where the word steward comes from, and why it’s still the best word we have. Now, I know that the word ‘stewardship’ has come to mean something very particular to church folks. Let’s be honest, when you hear ‘stewardship’ don’t you think the once-a-year project that the church takes on in order to get people to give money? That’s an OK way to describe a committee, maybe, but it’s a pretty limiting way to talk about love.

If there was another word I could use to talk about what stewardship really means, and what love looks like in real life — believe me — I would use it. But stewardship is the word that best describes the whole way that God works in the world, in the church, and in our lives.

Because a ‘steward’ is someone who is entrusted with gifts from an owner. The steward does not own the gifts…the gifts belong to someone else. But the steward manages the gifts, the skills, the property, the money — whatever it is — for a particular purpose. This describes us pretty well.

Sure, in terms of our social system, you can own things. Obviously in our community, some things belong to you, some things belong to me. And that works pretty well. (The last thing I want is to go home and find out that one of you has been using my toothbrush, right?) But in terms of the Kingdom of God, nothing belongs to you or me. It all belongs to God. We are stewards — not owners.

If you have a place to live — whether you rent or have held the deed for forty years — it belongs to God…
If you have children…they do not belong to you. They are entrusted to your care.

We are stewards — not owners. Now, this is the kind of stuff that makes sense sitting on pews, but then gets harder to see when we get up and walk away.

We can all be like a toddler who is given a box of crayons to share with his siblings and immediately grasps it and says, “MINE!” We may know in our heads that everything that we have belongs to God, but most of the time our hearts tell us to cling to the things that we’ve ‘earned,’ the things that we ‘deserve fair and square,’ and the things we are ‘entitled to.’

You see, it seems great that our things actually belong to God — until we’re called to share them. To divide them up. Or heaven forbid: to give them away.

Hmm. This is hard stuff. This is why nobody is driving around with Stewardship bumper stickers. It took us so long to build this stuff up, it makes us scared or angry to think about giving it away.

But don’t forget the flow. God’s love comes down. Before we had anything, God had us, and loved us. Before we even had the ability to ‘earn’ something, God first loved us.

God is the source of our life — and that’s just the kind of Good News you’ll need when you discover that you aren’t. When you discover your box of crayons has melted and there is nothing you can do to make another one. God’s love flows down.

All of your heart, all of your soul, all of your mind, and all of your strength is all a gift from God. Each of us is a steward of tremendous gifts of heart, soul, mind, and strength. These gifts of love are not ours to own … but they are ours to use:

All this love has come down to you for a reason. God has blessed you in a particular way, that’s why we look IN… to see how each of us has been formed and made for God’s love.

And looking IN we see that everything that we have was entrusted to us to share. The flow always moves OUT, it never ends with us. God’s love is always flowing.

For the very same reason that we can’t lay personal claim to our gifts and possessions, we can be free from worrying about them: God’s love comes down to us. In the end, all of our hope lies not on the possessions we can acquire, or the skills we can develop, or even the people we can keep on our side. Ultimately our hope lies solely in the promise that we belong to a loving God.

And what we have to share is exactly what we have received from God: our heart, our soul, our mind, our strength — all of us.

Who do you say that I am? What do we as a congregation have to say about what it means to follow Jesus?

It must not be a trivial question, because Peter, who speaks up and gives an A+ disciple answer: ‘you are the Messiah,’ is quickly rebuked and called the devil by Jesus when he misunderstands what it means. Jesus is passionate about what it means to be a disciple that follows Jesus.

And the trouble is that it’s hard: Peter makes the same mistake that many before and after him have made. It’s the human mistake: Peter believes that being a follower of Jesus means glory. That it means his own way. His own desires. His own intentions.

And Peter’s intention is for Jesus to stick around for a while. For Jesus to be respected. Established. For Jesus to be held in honor. These don’t seem to be particularly evil desires. They sound like good intentions to me. But not to Jesus. Jesus sees thru every desire and finds that at the root of even Peter’s good intentions a faith based on Peter. Jesus says if you want life, you have to let go of Peter, you have to let go of being the center of your own world. You have to give yourself away in order to find life.

This is hard. It’s one thing to believe you have to give up vices, and malice, and evil desires in order to find life. But it’s even harder to give up our good intentions. It’s harder to give up our grasp on life when we believe that we are right. That we’re good, and that we’ve earned it.

But as always, there is a promise that goes along with the trouble that Jesus stirs up, and the promise is this: that when we deny ourselves…when we give up on believing our good intentions will save us…when we place Jesus at the center of ourselves…we find overflowing and abundant life. We find life that we could never hope to achieve on our own. We find life beyond even our own best intentions. Following Jesus, we can find more life than we ever could on our own. And we need each other to do it.

So, as a congregation, who do we say that Jesus is? How do we follow Jesus? How do we put aside our own intentions and put Jesus at the center of our life together? How do we pick up and lift high the cross — not just in worship, but with our whole lives?

A note to newcomers: today’s message will be a little different. It’s going to focus a lot on our congregational life. Even if you aren’t a part of this congregation, though, it will be a peek into the process…a look at how we’re all struggling together with how we best follow Jesus: with wholeness, with integrity, with authenticity. I’ll be asking questions that I don’t know the answers to.

But we’re going to use the answers as part of a continuing process here called “Following the Shepherd’s Call.” I’m going to be asking for some responses today that will help shape the crafting of the mission, vision, and values of who we are.

Definition of core values

One of the ways that we can talk about following Jesus as a congregation is to investigate what is most central to who we are — what our identity is as a congregation. Sometimes this is called naming ‘core values.’ Core values are those things that make us who we are. They don’t change much over time, they don’t change from one pastor to the next, they can’t be tried on like a new outfits. They make up the church’s DNA.

In this terminology, core values are different from a mission statement. A church’s mission might change every few years as the world around it changes. But the values that form the mission — they stay the same.

If the mission is what we’re doing, then Core Values are how we do it. How we behave. Here’s a Core Values example from outside the church world: the Disney Theme Parks.¹

1. Safety
2. Courtesy
3. Show
4. Efficiency

Those aren’t the only important things in the world, they’re not even the only important things to Disney. But those four values define how every ‘cast member’ of Disney works together to do what only Disney can do. It’s what makes them who they are.

We at Good Shepherd are not Disney…far from it. But we have Core Values that guide our actions and our behaviors that make us a unique congregation in the Church of Christ.

Now here’s the challenge: just like Peter, we are constantly tempted to confuse our own personal values with the church’s. Probably the most common downfall of any congregation is when individual personalities start to steer the ship.

But please don’t hear that to mean that individuality and personal contributions aren’t important. God made us all different for a reason. It’s not so that we can each have it all our way, but that our unique gifts can fit together to serve a new way.

Get the difference? Let’s just say that I really really love modern New Orleans brass band music (just hypothetically.) My personal opinion might be that a church should do a modern New Orleans brass band style worship service every Sunday. That would be having it my way. But if I commit to listening for what God is leading our congregation to do, I have to admit that the brass band service would probably be more appealing to me than anyone else. But — that passion that I have is important, because it helps me understand that certain expressions of music, for example, can fill people with joy, and so maybe I discern that God is leading us to share music that connects with people’s souls.

Questions to get at core values

For each question, I’m not asking about your personal opinion on what we should do — although your unique, personal, and individual insight should be used — but use it to answer the question, ‘what do you sense God is leading us to do?’

Write number on top! —- Input from everyone!

1. If we had to start over, what would we keep? (Anything except being ‘friendly’ and ‘welcoming’)
2. What about us should we nurture for positive change?
3. What value are we missing that we should add?

Distribute final feedback form.

Thank you! I appreciate your willingness to do this holy disciple work of stepping out of your desires, your own intentions, and centering Jesus in our life together. Not only are you helping build the church and the kingdom of God, but you will find life in letting go of your own intentions, your own have-it-your-ways.

Each of you is unique (your close family and friends might have less kind ways of describing you), and that’s good, but you will find out truly what your uniqueness is for … in Christ and the way of the cross.

It takes all of us, but together, having let go of ‘mine,’ we find ‘ours.’ We find something greater than we could ever accomplish on our own.

This is not the final step in determining our Core Values. The Mission Planning team will use today’s feedback as part of a number of ways of listening to God’s mission around here. We’ll share what these cards say, and then there will be time for more feedback.

But in the meantime, let’s pray:

Gracious God, we thank you for the uniqueness and giftedness of each and every person here, and we thank you for the uniqueness of us together as the church. Help us to hear your call to use those gifts for the sake of the world that you so loved that your Son lived with us, died with us, and brought us to abundant life in you. In his name we pray, Amen.

“Confession, Repentance and Commitment to End Racism Sunday”

We have just heard two stories from Mark. One of them is — well, you can’t say it’s ordinary…it’s a miracle story, after all — but, it’s a typical Jesus-type of story. A man who is deaf is brought to Jesus. Jesus says and does some things that accompany miracle stories, and then the man can hear and speak, good as new. I understand why this story is in the Good News of Jesus according to Mark: Jesus has the power to heal.

But the other story…this one is harder for me to understand why it’s in the Gospel. There must have been plenty of other stories. Each Gospel account has some unique stories about Jesus healing and doing other amazing things. I think it’s safe to say that there are more stories than we have…even the Bible has to be edited, right? The Gospel writers chose, to a certain degree, which stories to pass along, and which ones wouldn’t make the cut.

So when it comes to the story of Jesus and the Syrophoenician woman…why didn’t Mark take this story out? It makes Jesus look bad.

Now, the word Syrophoenician doesn’t mean a whole lot to you and me, but to the first people to hear this Gospel, that one word would have told them exactly what they needed to know about this situation…”oh, she was one of those people.” She was not Jewish, she was not part of the children of Israel, she was…something else.

Jesus is approached very humbly by this woman who is not even asking for herself, but begging Jesus to heal her child. And Jesus actually says, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Jesus is speaking through the worldview of his society … it’s a society that said if you weren’t part of the in-group, you could be treated as less than human. In this case, it was a matter or religion and ethnicity. The Syrophoenician woman was on the other side of the dividing line. In the reading from James, it was rich vs. poor. But, the same kind of thing…

In Jesus’ analogy, the people of Israel are the children which means the Syrophoenician woman would be the dog. Or maybe you could argue Jesus was calling the woman’s daughter a dog (as if that makes it any better.) Now, if you’re feeling guilty because part of your brain just thought a swear word in church…you’re actually pretty close: Jesus just insulted this woman.

Why did Mark leave this in the Bible?

And then the woman challenges Jesus right back, using his metaphor against him and saying, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” In other words, she’s telling him about his own faith, teaching some theology to Jesus, and proclaiming to him that God loves her kind of folk, too, on her side of the dividing line. And Jesus agrees and heals her daughter which means admitting that what he had said earlier was wrong.

Jesus said something that was wrong — and they left it in the Bible.

Now, if that really hurts your faith in Jesus, it could be that Jesus knew all along, but said what he said for our benefit — but the point is, he said it.

Jesus was willing to be publicly wrong about something and then to learn from it.

Whether or not Jesus actually needed to learn something by admitting he was wrong, the truth is that we do, and Jesus shows us that no one is above being wrong and learning from their mistakes.

That’s important because you don’t see a lot of that these days. When a celebrity or public figure starts saying something on social media, whether that’s Facebook or Twitter or something else, and they say something that other people find offensive, one of the first things they usually do is delete the record of what they said. Maybe sometimes this is the right thing to do, but you know what happens? We don’t get the benefit of seeing our heroes being wrong and dealing with it. And learning from it.

We are entering a political season in which the mistakes of candidates from 20 to 30 years ago will be used against them. If you’re trying to get elected for something, you can’t hardly admit to ever being wrong about anything. Maybe you were misinformed, maybe your thinking was ‘evolving’, but you were never wrong.

Since I’m not running for public office this year, let me be the first to say that I have been wrong. And I hope to learn from my mistakes. I have been on the wrong side of issues like the one that divided Christians in the letter from James into rich and poor. Issues like the one that divided Jews from Gentiles in Jesus’ life.

In the United States our most basic dividing line is caused by racism.

I have been wrong in underestimating racism, and I have learned in the past year.

Last year I would have said, yes, of course there are racists — they are the bad apples, but overall our society has mostly freed itself from racism.

Last year, I would have said that people of color who rioted were hurting their cause by overreacting.

I was wrong. I have been challenged by hearing more and more media accounts of violence and discrimination against African Americans in our country, and most importantly, hearing the personal accounts of people of color telling me that racism effects their lives every single day.

A couple weeks ago, the Presiding Bishop of our denomination sat down with Bill Horne, an African American Lutheran, for a public discussion about race. Bill happens to be a Floridian, and in fact, he’s the city manager of Clearwater. Bill, who is well known, highly regarded, and widely respected, spoke about still experiencing, in 2015, the shadow of racism wherever he goes. Any time he takes off his city manager shirt, people treat him differently. And not in a good way.

I thought that racism happened out there. I was wrong. It happens in our community. We are part of it. We have to admit where we’ve been wrong.

But we also have a savior that shows us that Grace is more powerful than any dividing line. God is bigger even than our biggest mistakes. And we have a savior that leads us to hear the challenging words of the poor, of immigrants, of people of color, and to be willing to be changed by them.

There is enough Grace for us to be wrong. In fact, we won’t fully know Grace until we can admit we have been wrong. We have shown favoritism to some and not others. We have been complacent in fixing a society that is fueled by violence against people of color.

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We believe in the God of this Bible, a sacred text that isn’t afraid to talk about mistakes, and that means that we’ll have our own stories of divisions, of challenges, of being wrong, and learning from mistakes.

But it’s also a text filled with stories of healing, grace, and God’s power breaking through every division that we set up. And even when we fail, God has the power to heal the divisions in our world, too.

Jesus has a habit of turning things inside out. Getting involved with Jesus should come with a warning label because, with him, everything gets reversed, turned over, and flipped around.

Jesus reminds me of one of the those teachers, maybe you’ve had one, that forces you to question the assumptions that you hold onto. Jesus seems to challenge every aspect of the ancient middle eastern society he lived in — and nothing is sacred. Not even the way that religion, faith in the God of Israel, is practiced.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is doing just that — he’s challenging his own religious traditions and he’s doing it with the toughest audience he could have found: the Pharisees, the religious insiders. The Pharisees spent all their time reading scripture and then interpreting its meaning for how to live. In general, this is a really good thing, right? After all, the bible doesn’t talk about everything. The bible, for example, is totally silent about cell phones, automobile safety, and genetic engineering. So people of faith interpret how to live out lives faithfully with those things. That was the Pharisees’ job, then. They interpreted how to live life faithfully.

They put a lot of time and effort into this work and Jesus shows up and turns it all inside out.

I have to admit that I can relate to the Pharisees here. After all, I’m a church nerd like they are. The certificate in my office claims that I’m some kind of religious expert — kind of like the Pharisees.

And I, also, would expect Jesus, as the Son of God, the heir to the thrown, the Incarnate Word to be a religious insider. I mean, wouldn’t you? Who who claim to be a more important insider than Jesus himself?

And since I’m a church nerd, I really want Jesus to be a church nerd, too.

But Jesus does not act like a religious insider. Jesus moves about from place to place with little regard for all the expertly crafted rules and traditions of his religion. For example, we just heard Jesus get in trouble because his disciples fail to follow the purity codes related to washing hands before eating. Besides the fact that washing your hands is just common sense, I’m sure the Pharisees had 101 intelligent and sensible reasons for requiring the purity restrictions that they did. And if Jesus really was a Jewish holy man, well, he should know and follow all these beautiful, pure traditions.

But Jesus does not follow them. And neither do his disciples. And here’s why: this religious tradition, like all religious traditions, was in desperate need of being turned inside out.

The Pharisee’s traditions and interpretations were totally focused inward. They were all about defining insiders and outsiders. Who is pure and holy, and who is not. And the thing that probably riled up Jesus more than anything was that the purity laws of his day were enforced so strictly that they made it basically impossible for poor folks to participate in worshiping God. Unless you led a privileged life, it was hard to avoid the so-called contaminants, and to eat the right foods, and to maintain ritual purity. The Pharisees worked so hard to define insiders that they pushed a whole lot of folk out.

It’s not just the Pharisees that do this.

Even from the very beginning, God is mindful of the outsiders. On the one hand, the new laws and traditions that God gave to the people of Israel made them unique insiders to God’s love. They were God’s people. On the other hand, God immediately called them to care for those around them. Even in today’s reading from Deuteronomy, when the law is first being laid down, God gives instruction to the insiders, but is also concerned for the outsiders. It’s because the temptation to push people out has always been with us.

… And continues to be with us. Lots of surveys and data suggest that a great deal of people avoid church because they’ve been pushed out. They see the way church folk treat other church folk, let alone how they might treat someone who’s been missing from church for a while.

Remember, I’m a church nerd, so it’s hard for me to say this, but we too often use words that only make sense to church folk (if they make sense at all) and then we refuse to explain them.

LCGS is an ELCA congregation formed by the merger of the ALC, LCA, and other acronyms. We host a chapter of WELCA, we support LDR, LWR, LOMF, and LIRS, and our denomination is a member of LWF.

Now, if you know all those acronyms you get a prize. (Hint: L is for Lutheran and they all have an ‘L.’) But to the average person in our community, that sentence just sounds like alphabet soup.

I hope you hear this: if you’ve been a member of this congregation for a while, it probably feels very warm and inviting. That’s because you are an insider here. That is not a bad thing, but … a newcomer may not necessarily feel that way. And it’s very hard to see that from the inside. Like every congregation, we are in desperate need of being turned inside out.

In our second reading today, from James, we hear: “Be doers of the word, not hearers of the word.” Hearing is about what comes in, but doing is about what goes out.

If James were writing today, he might say: don’t be faith consumers, be faith practitioners. A lot of people like to fancy themselves religious insiders, says James, but if you really want to be faithful, care for widows and orphans — which is a biblical code word for ‘outsiders.’ In other words, turn inside out.

Eww, but we don’t really like ‘outsiders.’ Or, we like them, as long as they stay outside. It’s not that we hate them, it just seems to be human nature that in order to be an insider, you have to make someone else an outsider.

And this is where Jesus changes everything. This is where Jesus turns everything inside out. Jesus, the ultimate insider, God’s own Son, moves in the opposite direction. Jesus chooses to become an outsider: falling out of favor with the religious experts, falling out of favor with the political authorities, and eventually being carried outside the city walls and crucified as an outsider.

Jesus loves us by becoming an outsider for us. Jesus is God turned inside out.

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Listen, our religion summed up in one word is Love: love of God and love of neighbor. It is always and only about love. And love is never about getting, it’s always about giving.

Just listen to Jesus say that “it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.” (Mark 7.21–22 NRSV)

The thing these evils all have in common is that they are all about wanting, craving, desiring, taking. They’re all about getting things and what we do in order to get them. When our lives are focused on getting we find all kinds of evil in ourselves.

Love works in the other direction. It gives, it sacrifices, it makes space, it sends insiders out to bring outsiders in.

And the one thing that we need the most, God’s love — God’s favor, God’s blessing on each of us as a whole person, a beloved child of God, no matter what has happened to us, what has gone into us, or what has come out of us — God’s love is no longer something we have to get or achieve.

God’s love is already ours. God’s love is already inside of each of us.

And Jesus calls us to turn inside out.

We’ve spent the last month in the Gospel and the messages talking about Jesus. Well, I guess we talk about Jesus every week, but this is the final of five weeks in which we’ve been exploring the specific question ‘who is Jesus?’ with the help of this sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. Jesus, for his part, answers the question by describing himself as the Bread of Life. When many of his followers heard Jesus say this, they said, “This teaching is difficult; who can accept it?”

It’s hard to imagine what it was like to follow Jesus before there was such a thing as Christians and the established church. It’s easy to forget how challenging the message of Jesus was. For one thing, what do you think of when Jesus says “Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them” …?

You probably hear those words, flesh and blood, and think, oh! communion. Eat the bread, drink the wine — no cannibalism required. The first followers of Jesus to hear these words, however, wouldn’t know anything about Communion. It must have sounded strange, actually: offensive.

In fact, a lot of things that we assume or take for granted about Jesus only came about after his death and resurrection and the formation of the church. Now, in many ways, this is a good thing: we have the benefit of 2,000 years of scholars, really smart people, really brave people, and often really normal people who have helped us to understand Jesus. Maybe you, somewhere along the line, read a book, heard a sermon, or had a conversation with a friend that opened your eyes to the presence of Jesus in your life.

But there’s a downside to this 2,000 year old baggage that comes with Christianity: not everything that people have said and believed about Jesus is true. Misconceptions range from ridiculous to ubiquitous. For example, there’s the quote, “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.” Which, by the way, is attributed to several politicians, but probably wasn’t actually said by them. But then there are things about Jesus that we North American Christians almost can’t get away from because they seem almost built in to our religion and one is our belief that Jesus was a very sweet gentleman that looked like we do, and sounded like we do, and said things that were nice and mostly common sense.

We don’t often picture Jesus as offensive and saying shocking things that drive away even his followers. Or, preaching a sermon, as he does in the Gospel of Luke, that makes the congregation so mad that they chase Jesus out of the synagogue and try to — really — throw him off a cliff. Maybe we think about the artistic depictions of Jesus driving out the money changers, but we rationalize: that must have just been an ‘angry day’ for Jesus.

Here in today’s Gospel reading, though, Jesus isn’t just ‘having a moment.’ Jesus is teaching in the synagogue, and his words offend — actually ‘scandalize’ is the word — the listeners. Just like God asked the people of Israel to trust the miracle of Manna — food, bread that God provided in the desert — Jesus calls on the people to trust that he has the words of eternal life.

Jesus calls us to trust that God has sent him as a gift and if you’re wondering why the followers were upset: this is what is so offensive.

When God was caring for the people of Israel as they wandered through the desert, God promised to provide enough for them by raining down this Manna, bread from heaven. This is one of my favorite stories from the book of Exodus in the Old Testament. They had to go out and collect the manna day by day (except for the Sabbath) in order to be fed.

Sounds like a great deal, except, they did exactly what you or I would be tempted to do in the same situation. They began to think…this is really great that God is providing for us for today…but what if it doesn’t come tomorrow? Maybe, I’d better start stockpiling this stuff so I’ll always have enough (and maybe I can even sell the stuff to my neighbors for a little cash.) They found out, though, that it didn’t work that way. And when the Manna spoiled the Israelites were confronted with their own lack of faith — lack of trust — that God will provide each day.

This is the ultimate scandal, the most offensive thing you can tell me as a human: that I am not in charge. That I cannot save myself. That I have to put my trust in something other than me.

And because this is the message that Jesus was entrusted with to share with the world, he wasn’t called ‘nice’ by the people he shared it with. More like: offensive.

Now, saying that Jesus was offensive and scandalous is not about trying to make Jesus seem edgy or cool. Jesus is not trying to be offensive in the Gospel stories because he wants a bad-boy image. Jesus delivers a message that is challenging and downright revolutionary because we face things in our lives that require more than a Jesus who is just nice.

If you have faced the loss of a loved one, or the insult of injustice…if you have deep questions about why things happen the way that they do: I have a feeling that nice Jesus isn’t going to cut it for you.

The message and life of Jesus is not something to make us feel better, it’s a direct challenge to anything and everything in life that does not lead to trust in God. Jesus is indeed offensive to anything in our lives that we would turn into an idol, or anything that would claim to save us.

Jesus challenges the trust we put in ourselves to be our own gods, to white-knuckle our own way through the ups and downs of life.

And Jesus challenges the systems around us that steer us away from trusting God and loving our neighbor. Things like our deep cultural biases…economic forces that treat people like slaves…prejudices and fears that drive us to stockpile our own things instead of sharing them with our neighbors.

These are the things that the apostle Paul writes about in the sixth chapter of Ephesians that we heard read today:

“For our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 6.12 NRSV)

Our enemies are not the people on ‘the other side.’ They are all around us; they are within us.

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After Jesus finishes his scandalous teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum, many of his followers turn back, turn away, stop following. And Jesus, not so gently, I think, turns to his twelve disciples and asks: What about you? Do you also wish to go away?

And for all their faults and fumbles — this is what makes the twelve disciples true followers of Jesus. Not that they were perfect. Not that they were particularly intelligent or morally pure. It’s not that they could do it themselves, it’s that they knew they couldn’t.

Notice that when Jesus asks them if they want to go away, that they don’t actually answer the question. Because, yes, they probably do. In the face of this challenge, we all wish we could turn away.

But the twelve disciples don’t turn away.

Maybe Jesus has already convinced them of what was most important. Maybe they had already experienced for themselves this hard truth:

That everything in life that isn’t God’s love either already has or eventually will let you down.

What makes the twelve disciples…disciples is that they recognize they have nowhere else to turn to.

We don’t need a nice God. We need one that will remain when everything else fades away.

And so we confess just as Peter does: “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

Christians say that Jesus is the Son of God, and our savior and Lord. And sometimes we treat that ‘our’ word to mean that Jesus is our savior and that he belongs to us. But Jesus does not belong to us, it’s the reverse. And Jesus is always pulling us ahead and challenging our understanding. If you have more answers about Jesus than you have questions, you probably haven’t yet begun to understand who Jesus really is.

By reading through the sixth chapter of John, we have been refreshing our questions and answers about Jesus. Over the last two weeks and through about 30 verses of scripture or so, we’ve heard that:

• Jesus is known in abundance, not scarcity…faith, not fear
• Jesus is the Bread of Life, the Word of God, the I AM
• Jesus is God-with-us, somehow human and divine

That’s what we’ve heard today, that somehow Jesus himself, in his flesh and humanness, is this ‘forever bread’ that connects us with God, that gives life to the world in a way that other things can’t.

Jesus is talking about two things that don’t normally go together. Eating, food, bread, earthly stuff — and the forever stuff of God, whom we normally think of us ‘up there,’ beyond earth.

Jesus, in claiming to be the Bread of Life, connects eternal life with life in this world, right now.

So here’s a question, actually, it’s right there in the text: how can a human person, born of a woman named Mary (who has almost zero status even among humans) claim things that only God can do. The crowd asks about Jesus…don’t we know his father and mother? What gives him the ability to talk about ‘forever’ and everlasting life?

Or, to connect the same question to something that we continue to practice as Christians…how can the presence of an infinite God actually be contained in something so small and insignificant as a wafer of bread? Did you ever wonder that during Communion?

Or, to connect the question at a personal level…how can the presence of an infinite God actually be found in something as insignificant … as me?

For all the talk about eternal life, what I see are limits. We humans hit the limits. Constantly.

The limit is our life. No matter what we do, we cannot exceed that limit. Maybe if we’re clean-living and healthy we can extend the limit a little bit. A few years. Even that is not guaranteed.

And we know it. We dread it. We buy age-defying cream for our faces and keep our minds busy and generally avoid too much thinking about the fact that our limit is always approaching. But we know it’s there and we end up stressing over a lot of things and making some bad decisions because we know it’s there. Underneath the armor that we wear, the power and privilege that we wrap ourselves in, we are all fragile inside. Our life is precious and we are vulnerable.

We may only ever think about it during funerals, but it’s always true: there is nothing that we can do we change the fact that we each have a limit. We are finite.

The way we use religion hits some limits, too. And so much of what we call religion is directed from the ground up. It’s aimed at overcoming the limits we pretend we don’t have. A lot of what passes as Christianity is something like: ‘getting our act cleaned up’ and elevating our morals to some new height where maybe we can be closer to God.

Maybe you’ve tried religion in that direction, trying to get up to God. It usually doesn’t end well. It has never worked for me.

God works in the opposite way. Jesus said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven,” and that is the way that God works.

Jesus is God-with-us, God-down-to-us. Downward is always the direction in which God works. God breaks down our limits from the other side.

God does this thing which you’d think would be the least expected thing for an infinite and almighty God to do which is to give up power, give up privilege, give up infinitude and become vulnerable and fragile like we are.

God committed to coming down to us, and living with us, and within our limits, within our struggles as humans. And this is why for ages, Christians have made seemingly outrageous claims like Jesus is God’s Son, but also God. That Jesus Christ was not like half human and half God, but was fully (100%) human, and also fully (100%) God. If you’re a math person, that equation will make you angry.

But even math has a limit. God does not.

What it means for us is that despite the math, despite the odds, Jesus is God’s Good News for those of us who have hit the limit anywhere in life. Those of us who have felt despair over the evil in the world, the evil around us, the limits of medicine to heal us. Jesus is God’s answer to the odds. Jesus is God’s answer to the limits of life that we face.

Jesus is God’s commitment to standing and suffering with us as we hit the limits of this world. Jesus is God’s commitment to us in our frailty and vulnerability. And Jesus is God’s commitment to each of us as a beloved, limited person of God.

If you suffer because of what you believe, Jesus suffers with you. If you suffer because of your age or health condition, Jesus suffers with you. If you suffer because of the color of your skin, Jesus suffers with you. If you suffer because of your gender, or the gender of the person you love, Jesus suffers with you.

By joining in our suffering, Jesus joins us in the redemption that God is working in this world that wherever the limits of our understanding, love, and life are reached … God breaks through, comes down to us, and fills our limited selves with a love that is limitless. With a love that knows no bounds.

We follow Jesus in the same way that God came to us by giving up power, giving up privilege, becoming vulnerable and fragile for our sisters and brothers. That’s the direction by which Jesus came to us and that’s that direction in which Jesus sends us.

When we give, spend, and live for others, we join Jesus who also gave, spent, and lived his life with us and for us. In joining us, in dying with us, Jesus destroyed death, and brought God into our world, into our lives — even our fragile, limited lives. Jesus shares with us one thing that has no limit: God’s love.

For God, who is limitless, to walk beside us in our frailty and weakness — it makes no sense. For the person named Jesus and called God’s Son to also be God walking with us — it makes no sense.

But then again, Love doesn’t ever make sense, does it?

Each of us is already loved, not because we have made our way closer to heaven, but because God has come down to us in Jesus who gave us God’s own limitless self in the middle of our limited lives.

In whatever ways that life has limited you, Jesus has broken through those barriers to share with you one thing that has no limit: God’s love.