Good morning! It's been a whirlwind of a week at Zion - complete with a funeral, home visits, sermon preparation, a Twins game, a Barbary Coast Dixieland Band concert & pie social, and preaching for Sunday worship. My parents and littlest brother came for a visit this weekend - they just left for home - and it was great to spend time with them - they came to Sunday church, then we went and ate in Detroit Lakes, found a flea market, and cooked dinner and hung around the parsonage. Now it's back to the office today, Monday morning. I'm enjoying the rhythms of weekly life here at the church, and am finding myself remembering more names day by day - there's lots of them!
At Zion we preach using the Narrative Lectionary, which is a new way of operating that I've gotten accustomed to - it's not the Revised Common Lectionary, which is generally in more wide-spread use across the Church. The Narrative Lectionary preaches through the Bible chronologically from September to May, starting with Creation in Genesis and ending in Revelation. During the summer months, the Narrative Lectionary devotes itself to mini-series - short 3-4-5 week series on a particular epistle, Psalm, or Creed. This sermon I preached was the second sermon in our series on the book of Hebrews.
Here's the text of the day and my sermon manuscript! I was inspired by my grandmother Shirley's life, and told bits of her story here.
Hebrews 2:10-18 - "It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, saying,
“I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.”
And again,
“I will put my trust in him.”
And again,
“Here am I and the children whom God has given me.”
Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. For it is clear that he did not come to help angels, but the descendants of Abraham. Therefore he had to become like his brothers and sisters in every respect, so that he might be a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make a sacrifice of atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested."
"The Way in Between - Suffering, Hope, & the Cross"
Friends,
grace to you and peace from God our Creator and God’s Son Jesus the Christ.
Amen.
Good
morning, brother and sisters. I want to tell you a story about my grandmother.
My mom’s mom. She’s 83 years old, has gray-white hair, and loves to
cross-stitch and is really good at it, too. She makes patterns and designs for
her grandchildren’s weddings, and made each of us Christmas stockings when we
were younger. She’s fiercely independent but loves each moment she gets to
spend with her daughters – my mom, 3 aunts, and her son. She’s the true
definition of a “salt of the earth” soul, who raised her children on the
homesteaded farm north of Cannon Falls and loved to cuss when the cows got out
when my grandpa was away flying and she had young children in tow. My
grandmother worked as a secretary for the Cannon Falls Schools and lost her
mother, father, and only sibling by the time she was in her thirties. My
grandfather was a pilot for Northwest Airlines and was dedicated to his career,
leaving her alone on the farm with the children at times. She stayed married
largely for my mother, aunts, and uncle’s sake, and they have, in recent years,
divorced. Suffering is a part of this story, as is in many family’s backgrounds
and histories, but thanks be to God that it is not the last chapter. It has
indeed been blessing upon blessing to watch and be in relationship with my
grandmother since then – she has an apartment that she loves – no more lawn
mowing or cow chasing, she bounces between Lutheran and Baptist churches
depending on the week, and we as family have circled around her in support,
love, and encouragement. Our dwelling with and for each other has deepened –
we’ve never been closer – and for the sadness that was endured it’s so easy now
to see that my grandmother is a living expression and testament to Christ’s
work in us as children and beloved of God – she is, and always has been, graceful,
kind, and lives each day in the light of Christ’s love for her.
I’ll be honest – when I
found out that I was preaching on this text, and after I had read through it a
time or two, I got pretty dang excited. There’s much to say here about good news
and God’s promises and hope in the midst of brokenness. The author of this text
continually points to the pioneer, or perfection, of our faith as Jesus Christ.
Jesus is both here the beginning and the end of our calling to faith –
beginning at our baptism and ending when we are reconciled to God at our
deaths. However, just because we live in faith doesn’t mean everything is
always going to be peachy. We know this all too well. The way in between – this
life we live each and every day – isn’t promised to be easy. There will be
difficulties. We will be indeed be afflicted. We see it in our everyday – in
the death of a loved one, in the loss of relationships, in health and medical
concerns, in financial worries, and in many other ways in which brokenness and
sin persists in our society and culture, sometimes at our own hands,
intentionally or unintentionally – racism, classism, sexism, and the list goes
on. Some days, most days, it seems overwhelming, what we are faced with, and I
often find myself wondering, “Where is the good news?”
Part of the good news is that we are, by far, not the
first people to experience the everyday “stuff” that life brings. Today, in our
second sermon in our series on the book of Hebrews, the author, likely a pastor
to a specific congregation, is writing to his people about their own crisis as
a community of faith. The church here in Hebrews was suffering from a faith
crisis. They had expected Jesus to return soon, and now it had been a number of
years, with no Jesus in sight. What did this mean for the faith? People in that
congregation weren’t sure what to believe in any more – was the story, the
person of Christ, who they had heard taught and healed and fed all these people
– to be believed in, or trusted? In the meantime, while professing their faith,
the church was being persecuted by Romans – people were being actively sought
out, killed and martyred for what they believed. These times were not easy – I
imagine facing the prospect of death is downright terrifying. So there were
those things, alongside the day by day. No small order for people to face,
right?
There is
relief, though, in this – for both the faithful Hebrews congregation and for us
at Zion Lutheran – that in our brokenness we are brought into communion with
the One who is indeed perfect – Jesus Christ. The pioneer language that I
referenced above is important here – Jesus has experienced suffering, and has
been consistently with humanity with all of our “stuff” since the very
beginning. In Jesus, we are welcomed into the communion of the saints who have
joined the church triumphant while we are still here on earth. We are molded
into the community of the faithful who have experienced the same earthly blood,
sweat, and tears moments as Christ did on the cross – different sufferings, but
same ultimate ending and intention. As Christ died for our salvation, so we are
made closer and closer into God’s image.
I must be clear about something. I don’t mean this to
intend that the more suffering we undergo the more God favors us. Suffering
should not be something that we think about as testing us, or as something we
seek out to win a greater reward – as there are some Christian denominations
who do believe that. I don’t think that that is how God operates or what God
intends in the way God works. Verse 18, which I think is the ultimate point of
this text, reads something beautiful, referencing Christ – “Because he himself
was tested by what he suffered, he is able to help those who are being tested.”
In our earthly suffering, in whatever form that takes, we are helped and indeed
cherished by Christ who died for our sake, who brings us into communion with
the faithful in all ages, times, and spaces. We live with Christ as our High
Priest – a role that would have been familiar to the faithful congregation in
the early church, as someone who made sacrifices on the behalf of God’s people.
So too, Jesus sacrificed himself for the sake of the whole world. It is in that
sacrifice made that we are named free – to live freely in this world as
children of God, to live freely into our callings to tend to the sick in mind,
body, and spirit, to visit the prisoner, to feed the hungry, and to work for
justice in a world riddled with injustice in so many forms.
It is good to know that in the midst of suffering we are
proclaimed and loved as children of God. It is good to know that we can trust in
Christ as he fulfilled his promise and that we can live in community – this congregation
and in the world – as we work for the sake of the Gospel, this gift we have
been entrusted to that is sometimes hard to understand, totally free, and with
our hands, can turn the world upside down and with any amount of grace make
things right.
Friends, we have been
called in to an unfathomable, exciting mystery of faith. We have been given
each other – our church community – and our friends and family to be in
relationship with, and we strive to see God’s kingdom brought near even in the
midst of the troubles this world brings – both personally and societally. It is
then that we remember the work of the cross, and remember the sacrifice of
God’s only Son Jesus the Christ, who is our helper, our advocate, and the
pioneer and finisher of our faith. It is then, knowing this, that joy meets
suffering, reconciliation covers brokenness, peace conquers fear, and faith
comes alive. It is then that we can say, thanks be to God. Amen.
God's Joy,
Dean
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