Monday, March 21, 2016

Journeying to the Cross - a collection of sermons for Zion Lutheran Church

Greetings, friends -

I hope this post finds you well. I apologize that it's been almost a month since I've last put something in this space - Lent has taken up a lot of time and energy, Hebrew class is in full swing, and we've had a funeral as well. Life is always "full" in the parish! :)

I preached several times this past week - Wednesday night at our last midweek Lenten prayer and song service, Saturday morning at a beloved parishioner's funeral, and this Palm Sunday morning. For kicks and giggles, I'll post all three manuscripts!

Wednesday Night, Zion's Prayer Around the Cross: 

           When I was little, I remember some long summer days at my great-grandma’s lake home just west of Cannon Falls. She was in her eighties at the time, and would watch my mother and my brothers and I from the bay window in her living room. After a long day of swimming and cooling off from summer’s heat, we’d always go up to the house and my mom would visit with her grandmother. We had family gatherings there on the lake, until one year we didn’t – when she started getting ill and later left her home, moving in with one of her daughters. She died at the age of ninety-six, and all of us great-grandchildren sang at her funeral. I remember the days afterward – my mother’s tears, attempting to provide some sort of comfort, while knowing at the same time grief needed to take it’s own time. I realize, that in my short twenty-six year existence so far on this earth, that I have been extraordinarily fortunate. In my childhood years, I only lost two close family members that I can remember – both of my great-grandmothers – and, since then, my life has been relatively untouched by death, something that some families and members of our congregation know all too well. That being said, I’ve nonetheless experienced the price of having loved – grief and pain itself at the loss of a loved dear one. Having experienced suffering and death, it has taught me the importance of relying upon the promises of God’s grace and love.
            We’ve spent the past five weeks wandering and journeying together through Lent – a walk that ultimately arrives at the foot of Christ’s cross on Good Friday in anticipation of the Easter resurrection celebration. In our contemplation, remembrance, and prayers the past five weeks, we have given thanks for all that God does among us – while at the same time remembering the very reality of Christ’s sacrifice for our sakes. I hope this has done your soul well – as it has mine – to have time intentionally set aside to ponder God’s work in the midst of life and all that it entails – all of the joy, all of the grief, all of the exuberance, all of the suffering – and to know that even when we face times of death physically and otherwise, God is working for new life.
            This new life, however, can’t happen without death. We can’t celebrate Easter before sitting in the somber reality of Good Friday where we hear Jesus proclaim “It is finished”, and “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” – words of finality and finitude spoken against a world that had rejected Christ and his teachings to overthrow ecclesial and political understandings. On Good Friday until early Easter morning, we will experience what it is like to not have Christ in our midst – where he lays in a tomb, and when most people thought they had taken care of the root of the problem. Not so, however, as we know that God has other plans.

            That is what makes Easter so important – that in the face of death, we know that death ultimately doesn’t win. Rather, God shows us that God has the final word, the final say, on bringing about new life and resurrection. Because of God’s promises in our lives, on our own Good Fridays we get to look forward to our own Easters, living always as people of the cross and resurrection. On Easter, we see Christ risen and for each and every one of us, proclaiming our salvation for the sake of God’s reign brought about here and now. Take these words this night, my brothers and sisters – when we walk through our own journeys of suffering and death, know that you are not alone – that God is absolutely with you in your grieving and mourning and questions and shouting. Even though we face our Good Fridays, we always can look forward with expectant hope to the promises of the resurrection, given to you and given to me. Friends, we’ve been given a lot to contemplate over this season of Lent – may you continue this day and always to ponder God’s work anew, bringing resurrection out of death in God’s love for God’s creation. Thanks be to God. Amen.  

Saturday Morning, Funeral:

           Today we gather to celebrate the life of a truly amazing woman, a beloved child of God, Deloris Soland. Her life’s story is one of hard work, dedication, and faithfulness in everything she did. She adored her family, always making time to have coffee, watch her grandchildren, go fishing with them, play bocce ball or croquet, a round of cards, and always made a point to attend family reunions. Deloris was a woman of deep faith, and a longstanding member here at Zion Lutheran Church – confirmed here in 1944, and married at the parsonage of the church in 1948. Growing up she cut wood with her dad. She worked at the Pelican Rapids turkey plant for 16 years, and then also at a resort cleaning cabins and fixing up boats. She was a baker of bread, canned produce, and loved to garden. I believe her motto was something along the lines of “the dishes can wait” – Deloris would always rather be outside than be inside doing housework – she fished and hunted deer well into her 60s. She baked over 300 angel food cakes during the course of her life, for family birthdays and gatherings, oftentimes making two because if one didn’t turn out, she had to perfect it – that was just the kind of woman she was – always wanting the best for those around her.
            In sharing stories and in visiting with Deloris, it was made readily apparent that in living what most would consider an ordinary life, she turned it into something extraordinary. Everything she did was out of love for others, and I firmly believe that she embodied the love of God to all she met and cared for and cherished. Now, after 87 years of hard work, of giving love to others and seeing that love reciprocated and multiplied, her sojourn on this earth is completed. Deloris has fought the good fight and ran her race with perseverance and is now rejoicing in the love of God and the fulfillment of God’s promises to her.
            It is appropriate that the Soland family chose today to hold Deloris’ funeral – because tomorrow we begin Holy Week, a week-long journey as we follow Jesus to the cross on Good Friday and then ultimately to Easter, a day of celebrating resurrection and new life and the stomping of death underfoot, when Christ conquered the world for our very salvation. This is exactly what Deloris is living into in this very moment. It’s not excusing the fact, however, that there is grief. There are holy tears today in this sanctuary and there will be in the days, weeks, and months ahead as we mourn the acute loss of this amazing mother, grandmother, child of God. There are tears, but these tears are grief, which is the price of having loved deeply and truly and authentically – and what a treasure it is to have experienced such love. Deloris loved well, and I know that she was loved in return by all those she encountered.
            “Death has been swallowed up in victory – where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” – we hear these words from 1st Corinthians and we are reminded that even as we mourn, we know that death is not the end. In Christ, God has conquered the world so that all will experience new life and God’s saving grace. One day, when the world is reconciled unto God, all will be as it should be. Deloris is living into that new life as we speak – free of pain, free of sickness, free of all of the things in this life that weighed upon her. Deloris has traded mortality for immortality, a perishable body for an imperishable one. She has been made whole, and is celebrating in Christ’s love for her. I firmly believe she heard the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant”, because that is what Deloris was – a loving and faithful servant to others in the ways she lived her life.
            Friends, today we give thanks and celebrate Deloris’ life, a life fully and richly lived. But we also mourn – and know that God is with us in that. As we mourn, so also does God grieve. In our times of sorrow, God is with us to meet us where we are, because the God who encounters us is one of extravagant love for each of us called and claimed and marked with the Spirit forever. Go this day knowing that the promises of God are ours forever, from now until we see Deloris again. As Deloris would say, “So be it.” Thanks be to God. Amen.

Sunday Morning, Palm Sunday: 

            But wait just a second. I thought just a few moments ago we gave thanks to God with a triumphal procession with palms as Jesus comes into Jerusalem – I thought he had been lauded and that shouts of hosanna had rang out in a city that was expecting him. In this scene in Jerusalem Jesus is greeted as the Davidic king, the fulfillment of God’s promises brought into hand. The arrival into Jerusalem is triumphant, jubilant, and joyful. Jesus comes into town, cleanses the temple, and continues to teach his disciples, followers, and crowds around him for the next week. Jesus started off in Jerusalem so well. And then it comes to this, what we just finished reading – his crucifixion. What is going on? In the span of a week, Jesus is welcomed and then killed. Rejoiced over and then buried in a tomb.
            Throughout the week, chief priests, leaders and officials have been looking for a way to stop Jesus, a role given to Judas Iscariot who betrays his teacher with a kiss in the garden. Finally, the time has come, and the Son of Man is delivered to be betrayed into the hands of sinners. Our passion narrative for today recounts the events after that moment of betrayal – Jesus mocked by soldiers in word and in dress, his crucifixion at nine o’clock in the morning, his death at three o’clock that afternoon as he cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”, and then his burial in the tomb by Joseph of Arimathea. The scene closes with Mary Magdalene and Mary mother of Joses finding out where the body is laid.
            This day we celebrate Palm Sunday, which in its totality is sort of a mixed bag, so to speak – we begin with a joyful triumphal entry and end with a burial. We experience all of the emotions present in these stories, in this last week of Christ’s earthly existence – and we see the fulfillment of Christ’s mission and work among us come into hand at his death when the curtain is torn in two and the barrier between man and God is removed. We are reminded that in the midst of suffering and death there come new life and renewal.
            How much of life is like that, though? A mixed bag, with hardships and good times, with joy and sorrow? I think it’s worth asking as we walk this last week, this Holy Week, with Christ from the entry into Jerusalem unto his death at the cross – how do our very lives mirror this movement from joy and elation to sorrow and grief? Where, in those experiences and moments and emotions, do we place our hope and trust? We see in Palm Sunday a God who is about to bring something to completion – the ministry of Christ – in order to make a world changing revolution happen – the possibility and realization of salvation won for each and every one of us – and that in our own lives, as we encounter the ups and downs of our own Holy Weeks, we can place our trust and faith in God’s promises that are never ending. The entry into Jerusalem on the colt was just the beginning. The cross, in all of its finality, was truly only the beginning. What we celebrate on Palm Sunday is an entry into new life – new life in Christ that was made complete in his death.
            My friends, as we enter into Holy Week, I invite you to continue your process of reflection, contemplation, and discernment. To what is God calling you in your time and your space? Where do you notice Christ in your midst – working in you, in loved ones, in your neighbors? How, as we move towards Good Friday and prepare to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, might we continually find ways to live into our lives as Easter people together? Sisters and brothers, celebrating the triumphal entry with palms is really the invitation to a much greater call – to praise God for the work of God’s Son among us, and to live in his service. Let us sing hosanna in the highest. Amen.

I hope this Holy Week finds you well, friends. 
From Pelican Rapids - 
Dean