"God has brought laughter for me" - a sermon for the community of Zion Lutheran Church

Good afternoon, friends! 

I hope this post finds you well. Things have been in full swing in Pelican Rapids lately - attending a theological conference with the Northwest Minnesota Synod the past few days, and enjoying the cooler fall weather that has been in our area. Spike and I have been hanging out and having a good time! This past Sunday I preached on Genesis 18:1-15 and 21:1-7, the narrative of God's promise made to Sarah and Abraham, the promise of a son named laughter; Isaac. Here's the text! 

Sisters and brothers, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and God’s Son Jesus the Christ. Amen.

             Today I’d like to tell you the tale of five wayward kids who found their way to the mountains of Washington State, to a little mining town called Holden Village. Each on our respective journeys through life, all of us came to this place as we were in transition – having just graduated college, still in college, or stopping and working in town for a while to figure out what was coming next – to take some time to breathe. This village had no radio, no TV, and a very limited internet for staff, but abounded with prayer, Holden hugs, and scoops of ice cream so big that one scoop was more than enough.

            A large thread woven through Holden’s existence was hilarity and humor. Laughter was a big part of living life together on long term staff, as the five of us were. Sally, Andrew, Ruth, Colleen and I, all from different towns, states, life experiences, and hopes, were cut from the same cloth in that we enjoyed making cookie dough and subsequently eating it while drinking wine and playing cards.  We would joke that I used too much vanilla in my cookie dough and Andrew would be the vanilla police, a rule enforced by Colleen. The Village held a “First Day of School” day, where staff would get together and prevent the school bus from going up the hill to pick up students. The kitchen staff dressed up like 1950’s lunch ladies. The installment of our associate pastor included a dance routine to “Here’s What God Said: Ordain a Lady”, a parody of “Here’s My Number, So Call Me Maybe”, among many other Village events. The five of us friends, throughout our year there, found our own ways to engage in Village life in ways that were hilarious, life-giving, and healing in so many ways.

            This text today talks a lot about laughter. God comes to Sarah and Abraham in the form of three men, sent to tell the couple again of God’s promises – the promise of a son born to Sarah in their old age. This could easily be read as the Old Testament version of Jesus’ birth stories found in the Gospels. The men appear to Abraham, who serves them with great hospitality, giving them water, letting them rest, serving them bread and a choice calf, but they aren’t really interested in speaking with him, it appears – they want to know where Sarah is.

            Sarah, while in the tent, overhears the conversation – the promise of a son born to her and her husband. She knows she is old and past childbearing age, and laughs to herself – “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” Her laughter, I’m betting, is because she finds the idea uncannily funny at best, and she’s deeply disappointed at worst. After all, this is not the first time that a son has been promised. God has told her this again, and again, and again, and it’s never come to fruition. God responds in a way that seems to set things straight – “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? At the set time I will return to you, in due season, and Sarah shall have a son.” Again, the promise has been made. Now, Sarah and Abraham are left waiting, wondering, and hoping against hope that God might follow through. Sarah had been barren her whole life long. This indeed would be a miracle.

            In Genesis 21, the promise is fulfilled as God had told them. Isaac, whose very name means laughter, is born and Sarah rejoices – “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” The idea of Sarah bearing a son – which seemed impossible to her – was made real. Sarah, at ninety years of age, was used by God as examples of God’s working through everyday people to bring about fulfillment of promises. God works through human obstacles in order to show grace, blessing, and compassion upon creation. The birth of Isaac puts into motion the larger sense of God’s design for the world. The birth of Isaac assumes that he is forerunner of a new covenant community, of a community that is rooted in God’s promises of peace and justice, rooted in promises of a Messiah to come. Through Sarah’s laughter, through Sarah’s distrust, through seemingly being “too old” by the world’s standards, God worked a miracle that will indeed set creation down the road that ultimately leads to Christ himself. It goes to show that whatever we think God can do, whatever we as humans think the limits of God are, that God will always, always, one-up us and surprise us in ways that make known God’s kingdom on earth. Throughout the Bible, He has a pretty good track record of doing exactly that.

            Sort of like how at Holden, laughter was used to express happiness, but there were also times when it was appropriate to laugh through tears, to question, or to doubt. Holden held space for that. It’s human nature. Sarah questioned and laughed at what God said, and I know I do too. I would place a bet that most of us in this room have. That’s where it gets exciting, though, my friends – because in the midst of our very doubt, in the moments when we think we’re not good enough to be used by God, in the moments when we wonder if any of this stuff matters, and when we’re just about to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, then that is precisely when God shows up and turns the world upside down. God gave Sarah and Abraham their son Isaac. God gave us Jesus Christ in the flesh who died for our sakes. God gives us now each other, our neighbors, and those who each of us has the hardest time loving to live life with – to live out the gift of faith, to live out the Gospel’s call to reconciliation, justice, and abiding love.

            That’s the scary part. We can doubt ourselves and our abilities, we can doubt God’s promises, but God still trusts us. Despite our brokenness, despite the sin that permeates this world, God still calls us out of our comfort zone, out of our routine ways of being and then shows us how to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. Just as God made promises to Sarah and Abraham, so God makes promises to us – of faith, of resurrection, of new life – as we live our day to day lives. In our ordinariness, in our doubt, we are used to bring the kingdom of God into our world. That, my friends, is nothing short of miraculous. And we get to live it. Thanks be to God. Amen. 

"Cows and Resurrection Life" - a sermon for the community of Zion Lutheran Church

Good evening, friends - 

I hope you're well! It's been awhile since I've written - I've been busy at the church with home visits, leading devotionals, sermon writing, and office work - but I also found a few days to sneak back to Cannon Falls - how good it was to see dear friends, family, and reconnect for a bit. I adopted a dog while I was down that way, too - I brought Spike, a 5 year old Golden Retriever, back with me to Pelican Rapids. I figure I put on 700 miles plus between Pelican Rapids, Cannon Falls, Iowa, and back. It was a quick and dirty trip, going everywhere and seeing everyone, but it was a blast! 

This morning I preached the last sermon in our series on the book of Hebrews. Next Sunday is a big Sunday at Zion - we begin the Narrative Lectionary year, beginning with Creation, it's Rally Sunday (the kids are singing songs and we have a blessing of the backpacks), and Sunday School kicks off, along with our 1st Sunday of the month community potluck. 

Here's my sermon text from this morning. Words about faith, resurrection life, and finding Christ in all of this. 

Brothers and sisters, grace to you and peace from God our Creator and God’s Son Jesus the Christ. Amen.

I remember it well. I had just come home from a high school band trip to Chicago and my mom was sitting on the couch in our farmhouse living room. It was dark and beginning to rain outside and I knew something was up. Soon she told me, “Dad decided, we decided, that the cows are going to go. We’re going to sell them. We told your brothers, and grandparents.” When she started to cry I started to cry, and we sat in that moment together for a long while. Later on, I asked why – why our lives were shifting under our feet, why what had long been considered as a possibility “far out there” had finally come to be a very real reality, why this had to happen. What would be changed? Everything, we thought – dad would no longer be at home with us kids, he would have to find a job somewhere else, us boys wouldn’t be able to help with the feeding and milking and sending the cows to pasture each night as the sun set, among other concerns this change brought. My mother, ever so wise, was quick to remind us that there was good news in this, too. Whatever came next, we would have a more livable income. Dad would be free to come to more of our events at school and in the community. They wouldn’t have to worry as much about putting equipment back together on a quick weld and a prayer that it holds together. They’d maybe be able to take a step back and breathe.

We went to Marcell, Minnesota, where my grandparents have a lake home, the day after the cows left the farm. We didn’t want to come home that time – that was the longest family vacation I feel like we ever took together. When we got back, school was soon around the corner, and my father would be walking into a new job in a turkey factory in Cannon Falls. When we got home, there was no more mooing or bellering from the cows. The pasture stood still, untrodden, only the grasses waving about. It was oddly, eerily, silent. When 7 o’clock came that night, for the first time in dad’s 23 years of milking we didn’t go out and gather the cows. Dad started his new job the same day we began school. That morning, we all walked out the door, anxious already to see him at the end of the day and ask how his day had gone. Classes began for us kids, in high school and elementary school, and we found ourselves very soon wrapped in a new reality.

This is our last sermon on our series of the book of Hebrews. Next week we transition back to the beginning of it all – starting on Creation. In the book of Hebrews, we know that the congregation is faltering – in their faith and life circumstances. The words at the beginning of chapter 11 are an explanation of what faith looks like, and what it calls us to believe – “by faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.” The author goes on to share the story of our ancestors in faith, of Abel, Enoch, Noah, and Abraham – of how by their faith, they were received as righteous in God’s sight. In using ancestral lineage and story, the author is showing that faith was lived out for many, many years by people who trusted in God even when they couldn’t see God – why should the Hebrews way of operating be any different? In building an ark long before there was any sign of rain, Noah and his family was protected from the flood. By picking up and moving to a foreign land in complete trust of what God had told him, Abraham looked forward to the fulfillment of God’s promise – Sarah giving birth to a son named Isaac. In continuing to live out their faith and profess belief in Christ, the Hebrews congregation is indeed stranger and foreigner to the Roman people, who aren’t afraid to execute and martyr Christians. Professing their faith is difficult, and comes with sometimes the threat of death, but the promises of God will always withstand.

It’s easy to look at the texts and think, well, of course, these people were Bible superstars – they were chosen by God to be a part of this divine drama, of this story of salvation played out in history. Of course, these people of faith were model examples. I know even personally it’s hard for me to follow – it’s hard at times to have faith in God’s promises when I want to see things happening immediately. It’s hard to have faith in the face of violence, destruction, and injustice. It’s hard to have faith in times of uncertainty. When I look around at what’s going on in our world, it becomes hard at times to notice Jesus, or the Spirit, or God in the day to day. At times, their movements in the world in and among us as people of God can seem to be barely audible whispers. It would be so much easier if God spoke to us in loud, clear ways that told exactly what to do in the midst of confusion, despair, or loss. I imagine the Hebrews congregation felt the same way – so much so that they wanted to revert back to how things had always been done – sacrifices, etc. They had a hard time imagining that Jesus might ever be up to something when they couldn’t see him in the flesh. I find myself there, too, some days – how much easier it would be to do things on my own, without prayer, without listening to the true call of God.

But, my friends – I can tell you today that we do have Jesus. We have the promises of God in Christ that faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. We are uplifted in our faith by our own clouds of witnesses – think of the people in your life who love, support, and care for you throughout your seasons in life – and it is easier then to live out our faith because of their encouragement. It is because the love that we show each other is indeed love that is of God. It is all because of Jesus, brothers and sisters – the pioneer and finisher of our faith – that we can be thankful for this gift, freely given by his death on the cross. By Christ’s death, death itself was silenced and faith was given freely to us, even when we struggle to believe. Even when we wonder what is going on in the world, or we wonder where our own lives are headed – it is then out of those moments that Jesus intersects our very own realities and shows us the world as it will be when the kingdom of God is made real here and now. Think of when we see good stories on the news – of a child found safely, when people donate for a refugee’s child’s education, and so on – those stories illustrate what faith embodies – compassion and care and justice for the neighbor. The new reign of God will be that plus more one hundred times over. Even though we cannot see Christ in our midst, there is still evidence, bountifully so, of faith being lived out in the midst of so many things that worry and concern us. Faith shows us, my brothers and sisters, that the resurrection life will always, always, have the final say. God indeed does have the final word.

My family eventually lived into what resurrection life looks like for them. My dad was digging a grave in the rain for our church when he got off his last shift at work, he told us later that “It was pouring and I was soaked but I was the happiest man in the world. I was free.” He used his cloud of witnesses – family and friends who gathered around him and gave him encouragement and time to talk as he decided to open up his own tree service. From word of mouth, he began building up a list of customers and soon was self-sustaining. Now, 8 years have passed and he employs two of my younger brothers and has a host of other equipment and doesn’t have to worry about living paycheck to paycheck as was our reality for so many years prior. He’s able to do a lot more with us as a family and above all he’s happy.

We here at Zion are knitted into a story of faith and a story of salvation that is thousands of years old. We hear stories of Abraham and Abel and Noah who followed God believing in God’s promises. I don’t think we need to go build an ark or offer our sons, but I think it’s important that we listen to what God is calling us to in our faith – no matter how small our actions might seem – we are all called to be a part of the bringing about of God’s kingdom here and now. We can begin by living in the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things unseen, for there, my friends, we find resurrection life, the risen Christ, and the living God who set this mystery into motion. Let’s go – we have work to do. Thanks be to God. Amen.

God's deep peace this night, friends - 

Dean