20/20 Vision

When I was in my thirties I was having trouble concentrating when I was reading. I finally visited my eye doctor and asked him about it. He said that I did have a little correction and that maybe we should try a prescription for reading glasses. So, I did. Then something peculiar happened. When Susan and I were on the freeway we both missed our exit because I could not read the signs! I went back to my eye doctor and apparently my brain realized that it did not need to work so hard anymore. I went from needing reading glasses to trifocals in three weeks time. I no longer had 20/20 vision. I was no longer that 20 year old I thought I was.

We change. Times change. Culture changes. Change, as has always been true, is a constant. Yet, in some areas of our lives change is hard to accept.

As your Visioning Team nears the end of its work one of the main themes is that of change. What we once could count on as church culture is no longer true. We are not that Norwegian congregation of 1886. We are no longer that congregation of exponential growth of 1962. We are no longer the congregation struggling out of conflict of 2009. We are a congregation that is different, a congregation that has changed.

With change comes opportunities that we never dreamed about. Like glasses that help us see the signs, our visioning document will help us discern what we might be called to become in this time and place. On June 2, we invite you to join us as we present our completed work. We are excited to share with you what we believe is God's preferred and promised future for us.

I am thankful for my prescription glasses. They help me to see what people write to me and to see the signs that give me direction. Without them I would be struggling to even navigate my way around my house much less the outside world. I hope our vision statement will be the right kind of prescription for our congregation to help us engage the world around us.

2019 Easter Sermon

Christ is Risen!

Grace and peace to you, my siblings in faith, from God the renewer of life, Jesus the first of the living and the Holy Spirit the breath of re-creation. Amen.

My dear friends, we are here together in this place to bear witness to the Resurrection of our Lord, Jesus of Nazareth. We have come to tell the story again of how our God beat back sin, death and the devil all in order to reconcile the entire world to God-self. What an amazing place to be as a people of God, to shout alleluia, alleluia, alleluia to the heavens in thanksgiving.

Christ is Risen!

He certainly has.

In Matthew’s telling of this story we are reminded just how utterly disastrous this day must have been for the disciples and the other followers of this Jesus. This past week we witnessed how Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem with shouts of Hosanna! Those shouts quickly turned to cries of Crucify! Crucify! Crucify! Jesus was betrayed by a dear friend. Then arrested and tried for a dubious crime. Then sentenced to die. There on the cross, the hope of the world suffered and did indeed die, for all to see. This so-called messiah was mocked and spat upon. He was derided and kicked. Who is the savior of the world now?

Max Lucado reminds us that, “The greatest pain of the cross was the pain of sin. Jesus didn’t deserve to feel the shame, but he felt it. He didn’t deserve the humiliation, but he experienced it. He had never sinned, yet was treated like a sinner. He became sin. All the guilt, remorse, and embarrassment– Jesus understands it…”

And there he hung abandoned.

Before we get to the two Mary’s and what they were up to, I think it is a

good time to reflect on who abandoned Jesus. Where are the men in this story? Those disciples with all their male bravado declaring, “I wouldn’t betray you! I wouldn’t abandon you!” Where are they? Apparently, all that chest thumping and bluster was nothing. They ran away at first sign of trouble. And Peter, the Rock who so daringly said “I will not deny you, dear Jesus!” Did so not once, not twice, but three times. All that male boasting led to him to mutter in shame, “I am not one of them.”

And so, it was that Mary Magdalene and that other Mary went to see the tomb. They expected to see, as theologian Thomas Long describes it, the grave of Jesus, a monument to the sadness they felt in the soul, a confirmation of the cruel truth that the world finally beats mercy and righteousness to death.[i] These women gathered up true courage, courage that allows you to see your emptiness and hopelessness up close. To confront loss. For in that confrontation, you find healing. Not running away from it or denying it.

But, somewhere along the way they travel from one world and entered another, as Long puts it.[ii] They crossed a thin place. They went from the old world and entered the new. A place where death has no hold on the world. They left the old way where hope is in constant danger of being overwhelmed. Where peace has little chance. Where truth is an arbitrary thing and the Pontius Pilates of the world only honor themselves. They left the place where Jesus was as dead as a doornail on Friday and entered a world where the tomb is laid open and empty. We have never been the same.

We encounter another set of men. These holding weapons of war and clothed in armor and helmets. Men who know how to kill and who know the ways of fear and intimidation. These are, as Matthew elegantly puts it, scared to death!

Where the angel of Lord says do not be afraid, the Marys believe it and become curious. The men, well once again, have failed to grasp the situation. In this the women become the witnesses to the world. They are all that is left to hear the word of truth. To bear, like children in the womb, the Good News out into the world. To birth if you will, the word of God as that first Mary did at the beginning of this story.

Their shout to the world is, Christ is Risen!

But does the world believe it? These two Marys leave this holy ground to

move back out into an uncertain world. To bring this Good News to the very men who abandoned their friend. Would they be willing to hear this news? Would they be willing to accept these, as another gospel writer put it, idle tales? Would we?

This our move as well. We came here crossing a threshold, leaving the world out there of Mueller Reports, Climate change, 200 dead in Sri Lanka and black churches burning to be transfigured ourselves by the news that indeed this Christ of ours, this Jesus, this Messiah is risen. That there is hope that our God will bring resurrection to our lives.

But we too must move back into the world that doubts resurrection, that doubts that this faith of ours can change the world. Do we dare speak the words, Christ is Risen, in our work places, our schools, our homes? Or are we struck numb by the enormity of it?

This is the Good News for you this day. Jesus forgave the disciples. Jesus forgave Peter. Jesus forgave the criminals who hung on their own crosses. Jesus forgave them all for they did not know what they had done. Jesus forgives us.

This forgiveness, offered freely by Christ, comes with no strings attached. We are loved so much that God gave us God’s only Son. Not to condemn us, but to free us.

My family of faith, I rejoice with you that our God has broken free from the bonds of sin, death, and the devil so that we are no longer ruled by them. We indeed are set free to love one another, as Jesus loved us. And to dare speak like Mary Magdalene and that other Mary …

Christ is Risen!

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[i] Long, Thomas “Matthew” – Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. Pg. 322.

[ii] Ibid.