Third Sunday after Pentecost - FATHERS' DAY - June 21, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

Fathers' Day is a pretty special day for most fathers. I say “most”, because we do have to make allowances for those fathers with teen-agers.

Fathers' Day began about a hundred years ago, but things did not go well at first. Newspapers ridiculed the idea of a “Fathers' Day”.

By way of contrast, “Mothers” Day” was greeted with open arms. It wasn't until the manufacturers of men's clothing realized the potential in such a day that it got financial backing.

Although I remember reading some advice from a columnist who said, “Do not ever buy your father something you see in “Gentlemen's Quarterly” for Fathers' Day”.

Maybe the resistance to Fathers' Day being added to the calendar stems from the fact that men have always had the upper hand. The three religions of the Book – Judaism. Christianity and Islam - are all patriarch-oriented faiths. They all start out with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. God is thought of as a man in these religious circles – any doubts – just look at the creation scene on the ceiling of Sistine Chapel and there he is – God - beard and all!

Although, there is one exception in the Bible to God being seen as male.

When we recall the creation stories in Genesis, usually the first story that comes to mind - the one you often hear at weddings – is the one where God creates Adam first – then all the other creatures – and finally God fashions Eve from one of Adam's ribs. It is ironic, and disturbing, that in several surveys, the majority of people in America still think that a man has one less rib than a woman. They have even found first year medical students who think so.

But, by way of contrast, in the first chapter of Genesis – in the other story of creation -Adam and Eve are created at the same time. The text reads , Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness…So God created man in his own image…male and female he created them. (1:26,27). This creation story implies that the godhead contains the essence of both the male and the female.

However, this passage from scripture is the exception. Everywhere else in the Bible, God is a male, and the religious traditions are fully vested in male dominance. Men have the wealth. Men have the wives. Men have the children. In fact, if a woman was barren she was not considered a complete woman. That is why Sara was so despondent when she got old and still didn't have a child.

But one shouldn't give up hope – remember when Sara was ninety she bore Isaac and -not only that - but the Bible says that her husband was so old that he was “as good as dead”.

Again, men controlled these religions for centuries. It is only in the past forty years that women have been ordained as Protestant and Jewish clergy. They still aren't in Orthodox Judaism and in Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity. Not to mention the severe restrictions on women in Islam. “NO WOMEN ALLOWED”, is writ big over these institutions.

Even our secular institutions are seriously male dominated – from our Supreme Court - to our Congress - to our presidency.

So with all this power why wasn't Fathers' Day a shoe-in like Mothers' Day? Well – I think that deep in our hearts we realize that our mothers really carry the day – and the night - when we were growing up. For the most part, they were the source of food – especially desserts – and stories – and getting us to everything we had to get to.

And, even though men dominated the church, a whole significant tradition grew up around Mary, Jesus' mother. Biblically, she doesn't come off too well except for the Magnificat – which for the most part is a quotation from the song of Hannah in I Samuel. Jesus dismisses Mary and his brothers when they come to see him. In the first three gospels, all the women and the disciples desert Jesus – they stand at a distance from the crucifixion because they were afraid of the mob.

But, in the Middle Ages, the church came to celebrate Mary and to lift her up in the traditions of the church. In part, this was to counter the negative role of women as a temptress – thinking that comes from Eve's role in tempting Adam to eat the apple. It could also be that Mary rose in prominence because the religions of the Bible are the only religions in the world that do not have a female component in the godhead – and so it made sense to add a feminine element.

So – the church got a woman – Mary - to break the glass ceiling of the church. And, America got sentimental about fathers. And that's o.k., because men need to loosen up a bit. When Tony Soprano started to see a psychologist, the number of men going for therapy doubled. Men need all the help they can get, but they sometimes think it isn't the “man” thing to do.

But, in our faith tradition, it's all right. It's OK to cry – and it's OK to say you need help. And it is OK to confess your sins and to say, “I'm sorry God – please forgive me.”

You know, it isn't easy to be a good father these days. There aren't too many good role models for men. Athletes covered with tattoos and plagued by arrest records don't cut the mustard. Congressmen with a roving eye and a penchant for payoffs create a negative model. Businessmen who used to be models of hard work and discipline are now models of moneymaking schemes that have left millions without pensions. Not to mention the church in Ireland and its scandals. No, it isn't easy to be a father these days because there are only a few good models out there.

Still fathers try. They try to be the best parents possible – but don't forget our fathers' fathers weren't perfect either – and it all goes back to Adam and Eve and the apple.

But, Jesus knew that fathers did their best. Remember the forgiving father of the prodigal son? Remember Jesus saying,

“ What man, if his son asks for a loaf of bread will give him a stone?” And so Jesus reminds us that our heavenly Father cares for us all.

I know that mothers do what they have to do, but fathers do what they can do.

In our faith fathers are celebrated not as patriarchs and gods – but as creatures of God with all the grandeur and weaknesses found in all created things. And it is appropriate to stop once a year and say “Thanks Dad!”

Second Sunday after Pentecost - June 14, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Amen.

Lately I have been walking a little hunched over because my back has been acting up. I attribute the pain and to an old college Rugby injury. I played Rugby because I thought it was the toughest of sports and I thought it fit my self image. When I was in Japan, however, I found a sport that was even tougher - Australian Rules football. The beauty of Australian Rules is that there are virtually no rules! It is probably a good thing that I never had the opportunity to play, or who knows what other injuries I would be nursing!

Sometimes we view the world, as being devoid of rules. We have only to turn on the news and hear the angry chants of protestors following the compromised elections in Iran. North Korea blatantly disregards international treaties and conducts another nuclear test… We witness a doctor (George Tiller) being murdered in (reformation Lutheran) Church while serving as an usher, by a person who professes to be a guardian of human life… We see teenagers in Lockport murdering their counselor, 24 year old Renee Greco for $160. We are horrified as another human being murders a fellow human being (Stephen Johns) for his vocation of guarding a memorial to victims of genocide. (The National Holocaust Memorial) And we have to ask…. Are there any rules? Or perhaps, who rules?

In the Gospel lesson we see Jesus referring to the Kingdom of God… while we usually understand the word basileia to mean kingdom and think of a far off land, like the Magic Kingdom where Mickey presides in sunny Florida, basileia can also be understood as power or rule . So the question we need to consider today is, “Who and what is under God's rule?”

In the gospel lesson we find Mark's final two examples of the basileia of God (God's reign or power). Both are concerned with growth. It is God's power that grows the seed and makes the small seed great. It reminds us ultimately that God's power is the primary power or the effective cause in creation, something that we often loose sight of. If we do well in life, we usually are quick to attribute what we have done to our hard work, our knowledge, our honed skill set, our insight, our wonderfulness ….

But would anything at all be possible without God's power? …Without the gift of life, the gift of breath, the gift of intellect, the gift of …….. You name it.

Luther once commented on primary verse the secondary cause and said that if the Vine grower (God) didn't allow the sap to flow through the vine (Christ) to a branch (us) it would wither and die.

In a day and age where many things have been ripped out of our hands…. Our illusion of security after 9/11, our economic security, during this recent recession, our health security, with pandemic diseases such as HIV and Aids and now the swine flu…. We are well poised to relate well and welcome the words of the prophet Ezekiel. As you recall, his words are spoken at a time when the people of Israel had everything ripped away. In fact, many of the people themselves were ripped away from the land and brought into exile in Babylon. The prophet reminds us that God's children are not forgotten by the Almighty. God will act and will provide the security that is desperately needed. This is an end time reference about what will happen on the “Day of the Lord”. What is this twig that is planted that becomes the mighty cedar that provides refuge for all of the nomadic animals of the air and gives them rest? It is none other than the cross of Christ. It is the place where we will also find safety and assurance on judgment day. It is the place that brings us power to live and hope to survive and even thrive today. It is where God rules with mercy! The cross redefines the correct use of power for us. God rules with ultimate power in overcoming evil with good. On the cross, Christ embraces violence and hatred with open loving arms. God even swallows up death, to free us from our fear of annihilation by insisting that Jesus rise after he took in all the broken deadly shards. In the shadow of the cross we see and experience the dawn of Easter morning.

Embracing the power of God is accepting the gracious will of God.

On July 17, 1538 Luther was suffering greatly. He was aware of the irregularity of his pulse and was consoled by the physician. He [Luther] responded, “I'm subject to the will of God. I've given myself up to him altogether. He'll take care of everything. I'm sure that he won't die because he is himself life and resurrection. Whoever lives and believes in him shall not die; though he die, yet shall he live [John 11:25]. Therefore I submit to his will.” 1

Mark's gospel does not have any resurrection appearances per se, but the faith community that gathered to recall Jesus' teaching would see the power of the resurrection being explained by Jesus in these parables.

Do you feel this power today, can you perceive it. Do you welcome it? Like Christ and Paul and all who accepted and embraced the reign of God in their lives, the more we assent to this power, the more we submit to insisting on living and breathing the Gospel of love, reconciliation, equality, forgiveness and peace the more we will be at odds with the powers of the world that lie (literally) in opposition to God. We will struggle, we will be rejected, and we will be scared and ridiculed. But we will be in good company and judgment day will be like every other day living under the shadow of the cross, in the early morning light of Easter. Our judge will call us friend and brother or sister. Our wounds will be healed, our pains vanquished, our struggles conquered, our fears relieved and our tears wiped away.

____________________________

Luther, M. (1999, c1967). Vol. 54 : Luther's works, vol. 54 : Table Talk (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther's Works (Vol. 54, Page 294). Philadelphia : Fortress Press.

With nothing to fear and with the power of God accessible to us, let us embrace God's efforts to grow us into the kind of Christian witnesses that the world so desperately needs. Let us allow our priorities to shift away from self rule to God rule. Let us live to please God instead of just pleasing ourselves. Let the plight of the suffering be our concern. Let us not hoard our talents, our treasures and time, but let us employ them to the greatest extent that we can in order to further the kingdom of God. Let us be the symbols of hope that the world needs.

The honest truth is that our church and we, as individuals, are not living up to our potential.

Michelangelo, when asked how he could make such beautiful sculpture replied that the beautiful sculptures were already there, he just removed the excess. The Danish theologian and Pastor Soren Kierkegaard, said, “The truth already lies within the student.”

The power of the spirit given to us in baptism and the calling that we receive in baptism has limitless potential.

There is so much more that we can be “in Christ”. We can help transform this neighborhood, this city, this county, this nation, this world in God's service. We can easily solve our budget crisis, we have the money to balance our church budget for ministry, but we need to take it from our pocket and offer it up for use in the kingdom. We have the brain power and the compassion to work tirelessly to comfort the lonely, be they in nursing homes, on the street or living next door. We have the courage to confront violence and teach love. We can help feed the many hungry and work to help house the homeless. We can use our political and business connections to help further more than just our agenda, we can help further God's agenda.

Mother Theresa of Calcutta, the winner of the Nobel prize for peace, was a small woman, humble before God but a brave and tenacious fighter for the Lord. She did not bow to earthly power easily. She looked with her eyes in her immediate surroundings on the slum streets and saw a need. There were children starving on the street without parents or caregivers. They were dying. She went to her superiors with a vision for an orphanage and said, “I have three pennies and a dream from God to build an orphanage.” – Resources as small as a mustard seed. Her superiors chided gently, “You can't build an orphanage with three pennies… with three pennies you can't do anything.” “I know”, she said smiling, “but with God and three pennies I can do anything.”

Let those with ears to hear, listen.

Amen.

Holy Trinity Sunday - June 7, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Click here for the Audio of this Sermon

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

We call it our namesake day, Holy Trinity Sunday. For those of you who might not know, or might not remember, the name of this church is not Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, that's merely our AKA, also known as. No the proper name of this congregation is, The English Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity. That name is a much better name as it says so much more about our congregation than our shorter name does.

Our longer name says many things. The first thing it says is that we have a long a distinguished history. It does this with the word, English. In 1879, when this congregation was founded, every Lutheran Church in Buffalo used German as their primary language of worship. Atonement, Resurrection, St. John's, Christ, all worshipped in German, following the sentiment of the day that said, English is for making money, German is for praying.

But our church ancestors said, “If this is where God has led us and this is where we call home, and English is the language, then we will earn our money AND pray in English.” So this group of like minded and progressive thinking Americans , started a small worship group and asked a small French Eugonot congregation that met in a small church on the corner of Ellicott and Tupper Streets here in the city, the current site of the City Mission, if they could hold their worship services AFTER the worship services that congregation held. They said, “Yes.”

Within a relatively short period of time, this radical group of Lutherans, soon grew to a size where they were significantly bigger than the French Protestant Church and so the small existing congregation agreed to merge with Holy Trinity and they worshipped together. Within twenty years, they outgrew not only that building, but the three other buildings they bought to house the Sunday School, the Men's Group, the Ladies Auxillary and the myriad other groups that the congregation formed. They bought an apple orchard on the outskirts of town, and in 1904 dedicated this edifice to the glory of god with somewhere in the vicinity of 2500 members. History tells that story that their decision to follow the times and think outside the box as it were, was a good decision. That's what the word, English, in our name means.

The next word, evangelical, also tells us something about who we are. Unfortunately, the word evangelical today has been hijacked by the conservative right, the Moral Majority, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and the rest. To the average person on the street, it says, “Conservative right, pro-life, anti-gay, and a host of other nuances. That's a shame, because the word does not mean those things, rather, it simply means that we are the ones who have a story to tell, namely the story of Jesus Christ, his life, death, resurrection and ascension. To be an evangelical, is to be an evangelist, where evangel, as translated from its original language, means messenger. We are messengers of the gospel. Now that gospel presumably has something to say about how we live our lives, how we deal with issues such as abortion, gay and civil rights, marriage equality, capital punishment, torture, war, conservation, and so much more. And to a certain extent, how we deal with these issues must take into account, “What Would Jesus Do,” and if we do, then we have to look at what Jesus actually did, and I think when you do that, the radical Christian Right would quickly discover that they are much more exclusive a club then Jesus would have had, or joined, or approved of.

The next word, “Lutheran,” speaks to the obvious. We are Lutheran, we follow the teachings and inclinations of our founder, Martin Luther. That says that we are the oldest group of those who trace their history back to the Protest Movement of the Reformation in the early 16 th century. We were the first to break away from the Roman tradition of that day, but on the other hand, we are also the closest to that tradition. Those in the congregation today who are former Roman Catholics, you know better than we cradle Lutherans, that that which separates us from the Roman tradition pales in comparison to what we have in common, not the least of which is our liturgy, our scripture, and our spirituality.

The history of the whole Church is our history and we celebrate it and hold fast to it, for it is a precious gift from God.

But that word “Lutheran” also tells us that we are unique in the world of religious communities. We hold fast to the principles that set us apart in the first place and which today, still present a convincing argument for how a religious fellowship should do business. We believe that God is in charge, that we are his children and servants of his kingdom. God offers us the gift of His grace, which when appropriated by faith, assure us of our salvation, which is nothing less than the guarantee that God's love will never be far from us or abandon us, even in death. As witness to that fact, we have the example of Jesus and the gospel of his life, death and resurrection.

The word Church is in our name. In our title, in our formal corporate name, in the name registered with the State of New York as a non profit 501C corporation, it is spelled with a capital “C” not a lower case “c.” If it were spelled with a lower case “c” it would mean that this a church, as in church building, as in it looks like a church, as in it has stained glass windows, an organ, pews facing one direction, a lectern or pulpit up front from which a boring lecture is offered. But ours is spelled with a capital “C” which means it is an abbreviation. The Big C Church means, the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that confesses him as Lord of our life, as Son of Man, Son of God, Saviour and Redeemer. If we added all of that, it wouldn't fit on the check. But make no mistake, that's who we are, we're not just a building that looks like a church, we are part of His Church, Big C.

And finally, of the Holy Trinity. As I said in the beginning, today is our namesake day, Holy Trinity Sunday. Originally set as an official day in the Church year by Pope John 22 nd in 1334, the day finds its origins much before that as the church is known to have celebrated the day as a feast day 300 years earlier. The Church struggled with the concept of the Trinity from its earliest days, and our Creeds, the Nicene, the Apostles, and the Athanasian Creed all speak to the concept of the Trinity. The Apostles and Nicene merely give a nod to it, while the Athanasian Creed, focuses almost entirely, if not obnoxiously redundantly on it, which it why it remains Pastor Buerk's least favorite. He lobbies so hard against it, that they took it out of the hymnal this time around, and without even looking at him this morning, I can see that he's smiling.

We are the English Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jesus Christ that celebrates God not only as Father and therefore Creator and Sustainer, but also as Son, Redeemer, Saviour, Teacher, Prophet, and as Holy Spirit, as Advocate, Counselor, Motivator, Revelation, Interpreter, and as that mysterious entity that somehow draws us to God. This, perhaps more than anything else, is what this place is all about. Everything we do, everything we say, everything we support, in its best intention, is done to draw you to God. If it doesn't, then we need to come full circle once again to the first word in our name. Those who founded this Church, wanted to make sure that nothing got in the way of bringing people closer to God. They thought, and history has shown rightly so, that by not speaking the language of the day and of the country in which they were living, that people would not be drawn to this place and to the God that we encounter herein, so if follows that we should always be on the watch to see if anything we are doing or are not doing is keeping people from being drawn to the God we lift up as all those things that we have come to know as God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

We are the English Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity, and we have just recently celebrated the 130 th anniversary of our founding. For this and so much more we say, thanks be to God, to whom be the glory now and forever. Amen.

Amen.

The Day of Pentecost - Confirmation Sunday - May 31, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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Seventh Sunday of Easter - May 24, 2009
The 50th Anniversary of the Ordination of John A. Buerk
Sermon: The Rev. John A. Buerk

FIFTY YEARS 

Fifty years is a long time to have the same job. And lots of things have changed during that half-century.

Back then things were very different. No one was walking on the moon. No one saw beyond the stars to billions of years into space. There were still prop planes flying to Europe and my first trip abroad took 16 hours on Icelandic Airlines.

The things we did from day to day were different - I grew up next to a farm – in Colonie – near Albany. I did farm chores after school and during the summer I mowed hay and brought it into the barn– sometimes with horses. When I was fourteen, I was driving a truck – or better - it was driving me!

It wasn't until I was in high school that television became available – for a select few. There was only one family in the neighborhood that had a TV and they had four kids, so we were all invited over to see Milton Burrell on Tuesday nights – it was the highlight of the week!

The mainline churches were very much alive back then. And my home congregation was a busy place. It wasn't a big congregation but it was well supported. We had a great Boy Scout Troop, and a very active youth group. In fact, half the kids in our Luther League – as our youth groups were called back then - married someone from the congregation.

And society was different in many ways as well. In a Sociology course I took at Union College in 1953, the professor noted that 80% of the people in the United States married someone who lived within ten blocks of them. This meant that those who married had a lot in common – the same ethnicity – similar economic status – same religion – an extended family and the same expectations from marriage.

And now hardly anyone marries someone with whom they grew up. And, of course, that means people often marry someone different – couples often have different ethnicity, different religious back grounds, and they often come from different economic circumstances

Again, these different expectations about marriage sometimes make things difficult and when issues come up in marriage these days there are no family members within crying distance – so to speak – and you are on your own and that makes it even more difficult.

As you can see, these changes mean that there is a lot to contend with in our current society.

There are a lot of things to contend with in religion as well. In many neighborhoods the old congregations are gone or at least they are diminished. For Lutherans in Buffalo this has meant the disappearance of three-quarters of our churches. We have only five congregations left in the city, and two of them are marginal.

One problem, or course, is the loss of population in the city, and another is the fact that people don't go to church as much as they used to. There are reasons for this. In times past you went to church because your parents did and so did your grandparents as well as your uncles and aunts and cousins. The congregation was the social hub for families. Church kitchens were busy all week long.

And the congregation's youth group was often the best place to meet girls. Twenty-five years ago, our daughter, Linda, joined our youth group at Parkside. She was - and still is - very pretty, and when she joined we tripled the number of boys who came, and as you can guess, that meant more girls came because that was where the boys were!

Again – fifty years ago many young people married someone from their congregation. But today – virtually every teenager in our youth group will go away to college or to find work. And when they go away they will be meeting interesting people who are different– like nice Catholic kids, and nice Jewish kids, and even some Southern Baptists – but not at dances or beer parties.

Societal structures are so different that many of the things that gave our society stability and focus are now kaput – they are broken. And that has effected our congregations and our communities and the values connected to them. Today, values are not so much community values as they are sensual and seductive.

The fact is that values are determined by what keeps the community going – not the other way around. If certain limits aren't set on communal behavior, the community can't survive.

You see that in the Bible – the rules were determined by the conditions needed for the community to survive. For instance, there were severe rules against stealing because things were scarce. So a person caught stealing had his hand cut off which meant he couldn't eat from the common food bowl. The rules for marriage were different back then as well. When the earth needed people, the Bible says men could have several wives and concubines. This need to populate the earth also explains the prohibition against any behavior that inhibited procreation such as homosexuality. Parents had to be respected in order for order to be kept. If you had a really bad kid he was taken to the gate and stoned.

But over the centuries as social circumstances changed, and the industrial revolution provided goods and food and services beyond anyone's imagination, the rules were relaxed. Now you can get away with a lot of stealing – it appears you can get away with stealing billions – at least you can for a long time. But stealing the small stuff doesn't cause many ripples. Most of us have had a car along the way that we prayed someone would steal.

Today we don't have too few people, we have too many people – so the norm of one wife per husband is the rule – at least one at a time – with a few exceptions in Utah, of course. Again, as circumstances change, the rules change.

There used to be a limerick that summed up past virtue pretty well.

There was a young woman named mild
who kept herself undefiled,
By thinking of Jesus and social diseases
and the fear of having a child.

For better or worse these are not things too many young women worry about these days.

Again, values seek the level of tolerance. If the consequences of actions do not seriously harm the community, you can get away with a lot.

And yet there are some things that become normative, and they are expressed well by Dag Hammerskald the former head of the United Nations in his book, MARKINGS.

You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal – play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to the truth – play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wishes to keep his garden tidy, does not sat aside a plot for weeds.
(p. 15)

Now what does all this have to do with being ordained fifty years? Well in a sense nothing, and in another sense everything. It doesn't mean much if you aren't interested in values. It means everything if you are religious, because it is the religious community that sustains our values and our perspective. It is the religious community that sustained me when I was a teenager, and it is that community of faith that sustains us when times are difficult, as Jill and I have experienced in your love and caring for us.

It is this community of faith - that Jesus established - that feeds us and nourishes us in spirit. It is this community of faith that has established the norm for our living – and it is expressed best in I John:

Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God; for God is love… No one has ever seen God. If we love one another God abides in us and his love is perfected in us… If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.
(4:7, 8, 18, 20)

Fifty years is a long time, but not long enough to do all that has to be done, and to adequately thank all those who made it all possible.

Still – “Thank you!” - with all my heart.

Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 17, 2009
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

Click on the Highlighted text for the audio of this sermon

Ha en god Syttende Mai! Or Happy 17th of May! Unless you are of Norwegian extraction, the date probably means little to you, but if your name is Eric Olaf Olsen, that is another matter. This day marks the ratification of Norway's Constitution and declaration of independence from Sweden in 1814. In the church that I grew up in, on the Sunday closest to May 17 th , the Torrisens, Larsens, Knudsens, Pedersens, Tellefsens, Lorentsens, Svensens, Hansens, Olsens, and all the other “sens”, sent their children to church wearing traditional Norwegian costumes. Following church everyone went to Bay Ridge Brooklyn for the 17 th of May Parade where members of my church marched and children rode on the church float. After the parade, all the families would usually return to The Sons of Norway lodge for food and fellowship. Most Norwegian foods require a refined pallet, such as Lutefisk, (Cod fish soaked in lye, which will turn real silver black in an instant), but the desserts are out of this world. There is no better treat than a Norwegian waffle topped with Norwegian fruit jelly. Delish!

The talk of fruit directs us to Jesus' words in the gospel. Jesus said, “You did not chose me, but I chose you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last…” When a fruit tree puts forth its fruit and it becomes ripe, you must pick it without delay. If you procrastinate the fruit will rot, insects will infest, and it will drop to the ground. Growing up, we had a pear tree in our yard. When I was around my son Luke's age, I was excited to pick the pears and we had a great harvest. As I got a little older, I had other priorities. I knew that the fruit was ripe but, didn't pick it on time, so the harvest was meager and mushy.

The speed with which we respond to a task, event, challenge or need can mean the difference between, feast and famine, prosperity and poverty, calm and crisis and life and death.

Our recent economic woes have been blamed on complicated financial derivatives and how distrust and suspicion directly affected the velocity of money, the speed in which money is spent after it is earned. This decreased velocity caused global economic panic and credit to freeze up. The huge economic stimulus package's goal and the speed in which it was proposed and implemented were designed to greatly increase the velocity of money in the economy and reverse the crisis.

In matters of faith, what is the speed that we are spending ourselves in service to God and the rest of God's children? While we do not earn grace, but receive it as a gift, how quickly have we returned or passed on the love that we were gifted by Christ? What is the speed that we comfort others in relation to the comfort that we have received by God through someone that God has sent? How fast have we extended the hope that sustains us to someone who is despairing?

Three months after the tragic crash of flight 3407, it appears that the cause of the crash was the result of insufficient airspeed which initiated a wing stall warning to the pilot who, instead of increasing the speed of the aircraft by dipping the aircraft down, pulled back on the stick, further decreasing airspeed, which resulted in a stall. Without sufficient speed, sufficient lift could not be maintained.

Today we all reaffirmed our baptism. Are we responding to our baptismal calling with a sense of urgency? Are we ministering with the right attitude at the right altitude? While piloting through time and space are we doing everything we can to listen for God's voice and instruction? Do we follow God's commandments, especially the loving of one another as Jesus has loved us? What is our reaction time? Are we putting in those training hours to be the best witness to Christ we can be?

In reading The Acts of the Apostles we also encounter speed and urgency in the early church. In our first lesson, Peter is at Cornelius' house, having been summoned there from Simon the tanner's sea side villa. The house was full of folks waiting for the words that Peter was going to bring them. You see Cornelius had a vision while fasting, whereby a man in brilliant raiment told him to summon Peter to hear what he had to say. Immediately Cornelius sent an envoy to summon Peter. By divine instance, Peter was also very hungry and praying on the tanner's roof and had a vision of a sheet with animals and creatures that Jewish purity law deemed unclean, but along with the vision was a command to get up, kill and eat. Peter said no, because he had never eaten anything unclean, but the response was basically, “What I made clean you have no right to call unclean.” This happened three times. After the vision, while he was trying to understand what had happened, suddenly there was a knock at the door, and three men sent by Cornelius called for him. The Spirit told Peter to go with the gentiles, and go he did without delay. When he arrived, he asked what they wanted. Cornelius, in the presence of his friends and family gathered, told Peter of his vision and said they were waiting to hear what Peter had to say. Peter did not tell them that he had to “ get back” to them; he didn't sit and write out his sermon, he did not use fancy language or cleaver stories- no . Without hesitation , he told it straight, and as he was still speaking, God validated the encounter by instantly sending the Holy Spirit. God blessed Peter's proclamation making it effective. God blessed Cornelius and his family and friends by giving them the Good news that they hungered for. This was all validated by the Holy Spirit which came upon the gentiles. They began to speak in dialects other than their own and were praising God and they were baptized!

Today we open our hearts to our forty-two new members! The Holy Spirit is validating the work of the Spirit through this congregation. Members and friends, both new and old, come here for the same reason that Cornelius' friends and family gathered at his house. We come to hear the word of God proclaimed through the reading of scripture, the hearing and singing of sacred songs, and through the preaching of the Gospel. The Spirit has and is validating this encounter! The Church of God on Main Street, called Holy Trinity is a place where God is feeding and nourishing now! It is a place where our fruit grows and ripens.

While the Holy Spirit brought you here, that same Spirit will also send you out from here after you eat and drink from the fruit which is Christ. You will be sent to other Cornelius' of the world. You will be their Peter. You will tell the Old, Old Story with a new sense of urgency. You may even lead some others back here and they may even join our faith family in a future class. You can do this, you can be the fruit that the world needs……….but not alone.

The Norwegian playwright and poet, Henrik Ibsen, wrote an epic tale about a harbor pilot named Terje Vigen who hailed from the southern port region of Grimstad, the same area my family is from. During the Napoleonic wars Denmark- Norway sided with France. England and Sweden set up a blockade designed to starve the Norwegians beginning in 1812. Terje Vigen was a sailor who after some time of adventure, settled down with a wife and they had a little baby girl that Terje lived for. As rations dropped critically low, Terje took matters into his own hands and decided to take a small pram and row under the cover of darkness through reef and shoal in heavily patrolled waters to get some desperately needed food. There was no time to waste; it was a matter of life and death for his family. He made it to Denmark and traded for three casks of barley and made his way back again through shoal and reef, but just as he was approaching his home shores, an English patrol boat spotted Terje and sent a pursuit craft after him. Even though Terje rowed till his fingers bled, he was captured and found himself on the deck before the 18 year old commander of the ship. Terje pleaded on behalf of his wife and daughter, but the young commander saw to it that he went directly to England to prison. After that first 17 th of May, Terje was released and returned home to find strangers in his place and two tombstones in the churchyard for his wife and child. With his spirit shackled in grief, he looked to the sea, and continued the work as a harbor pilot. One day, years later a yacht with torn sails was in danger of being wrecked on the shoals. Without haste, Terje Vigen quickly boarded the vessel. On the ship he encountered a small family, husband wife and young daughter. With an expert hand Terje quickly grabbed the rudder and took the ship safely away from danger until he saw the husband in the phosphorus light and heard his voice. Then he let go of the rudder and let the ship run aground. As the water poured in Terje ordered them in to the life boat as he lead them to what he schemed to be their demise, you see the husband he saw on the deck in the phosphorus light, was no other than the young captain that denied him mercy and sent him to jail while his family died of starvation. Just as revenge was in his grasp, when the captain was begging on his knees, Terje looked at the captain's young girl, and calm came over him. In that instance His Savior came to him with the speed of an angel, in the person of that little girl. Instantly, in the nick of time, forgiveness and love prevailed and Terje Vigen brought that family to safety… and Terje was finally free from the prison of revenge.

No matter how we try to maintain the right speed of faith, no matter how generous we desire to be with the fruit that we have been entrusted with, the reality is that we are too slow, and excuse oriented. We are professional procrastinators and we lack courage and zeal. On our own, we can not love as Christ loved us. The speed of Jesus' ministry is dizzying if you think of how much he taught, healed, forgave, fed and loved- in only three years! But like the captain's daughter through whom Christ came to save Terje Vigen, so too Christ can and will act through us. Our fruit can and will remain, because we can and will remain connected to the vine which is Christ. It is none other than the fruit of Christ's passion that we feast upon and share, but we don't dine alone, nor do we feed alone.

As a church, we are an expression of the body of Christ and are part of Christ's larger Church in the world. We need each other and Christ as our head and we are diminished and less complete when there are still children of God who do not know of the grace and love of God in Christ, children who have not tasted the sweetness of Jesus. Our joy is that we get the privilege to share such awesome news. Instead of celebrating a constitution one day a year, we celebrate forgiveness, reconciliation and love every day, hour, minute and second, but time is of the essence! Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!

Fifth Sunday of Easter - May 10, 2009 - Mothers Day
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

I know for a fact that I have told you before, but the occasion comes up every year to offer a teaching moment. That time has arrived again.

I know that you know that the readings we read every week are on a three year cycle. I know that you know that currently we are in the second year of that cycle, and that our church leaders gathered together to come up with an extremely creative name for the second year of the three year cycle and they came up with, “Year B.”

I also know that you know that there are four readings assigned to every Sunday in the church year and that if you wanted to you could open your hymnals to page 14 and find out what the lessons are for any appointed Sunday of the three year cycle.

If you have nothing to do and want to study the ebb and flow of the lessons, as you get to the Sundays after Easter, a curious thing happens. For all the Sundays following Easter, there are no readings appointed from the Old Testament. “That's odd,” I hear you thinking, and “why is that,” you ask?

Well, the answer is quite simple and straightforward. In our tradition, as in most mainline Christian denominations, the primary reading for any Sunday is the gospel reading. If possible, all the rest of the appointed readings, take their lead from the gospel. The first reading, most of the year, is taken from the Old Testament, the second from one of the epistles, or letters of Paul. If possible, the Old Testament reading is selected for how it supports or illuminates the gospel reading, or how it sheds light on the whole history of salvation and how God has acted similarly in the past.

Well, when you get to Easter, the history of salvation is what happened AFTER the resurrection and so, instead of readings from the Old Testament, we find readings from St. Luke's book of the Acts of the Apostles, which is our best history book of what happened in the early years after that first Easter morning.

This morning, we hear a selection from St. Luke's book of Acts that speaks to us of the situation in that period of time when the church was expanding exponentially. Because the needs of the church quickly outgrew the ability of the 12 original disciples to meet them, the church appointed seven elders to meet the growing need. Stephen and Philip were two Grecian men who were dispatched to meet the needs of the Greek Jews, specifically, the widows and orphans of the movement. Stephen and Philip were so effective in their ministry that they caught the attention of the Jewish opposition in Cyrene and Alexandria and eventually, Stephen was brought before the Sanhedrin, accused of blasphemy and stoned to death. The scriptural witness records a young man named Saul as being there at his stoning. Saul, you will recall, becomes the Paul we all know so well.

A great persecution of Christians followed this period and many of the faithful were force to flee Jerusalem and its environs. Philip went to Samaria, that no man's land between northern Israel and southern Judah. It is here where he receives his vision, his angelic instruction to go to Gaza. Now Gaza then is as Gaza now, a trouble spot. From earliest biblical times and continuing to this day, Gaza, that small strip of land on the southeastern border between Israel, Palestine and Egypt, from of time of Philistines to modern day headlines, has been a hot bed of controversy and violence.

Philip is told in his vision to go there. Nobody wants to go there, now or then. But Philip is faithful and Luke tells us that he got up and went. Luke goes on, “Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot and he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Sort of reminds me of the guy who went into the back of his Winnebago to have breakfast and when his wife asked him who was driving he said, “Oh, I left it on cruise.” You laugh, but did you know that he sued the company for not listing clearly in the RV's manual that cruise control requires that the driver stay in the driver's seat to pilot the vehicle. He won several million dollars AND a brand new Winnebago to replace the one that piloted itself into a ditch that morning.

Anyway…back to the story of Philip and the Ethiopian. Legend has it that Ethiopia was founded by the great grandson of Noah. Over the biblical record, it has been called many things, Ethiopia, Abyssinia, Kush and Axum. Axum, A-X-U-M or A-K-S-U-M, was a strong and powerful city and kingdom, ruling northern Africa from 400 BC up until the late 10 th century. It evolved into a Christian maritime stronghold until Islamic factions started cutting off it primary trade routes. It declined in prominence and population, leaving only its name behind, Ethiopia, which, as you know, became the official name of the nation that we know. It remains a Christian stronghold with about 63% of the population claiming orthodox roots.

The purpose of Luke including the story here is to relate to his readers, how the message of the gospel spread to Africa. It all began because Philip listened to the message that God sent to him. Now, we moderns have a hard time reconciling the enormity of Africa with the consequence of a chance encounter on a country road. But that truth of the matter is, it had to start somewhere and it had to start with someone. Back in the day, Philip's day, you couldn't simply Google Christ and start reading about the movement. No pamphlets appeared in your junk mail and Wolf Blitzer was nowhere to be found. So if the gospel was going to go anywhere, it had to be transmitted by someone who held the faith.

Believe it or not, the same is true today. No one becomes a Christian by surfing the internet. Sure, someone may come to church because they read our web page, or our ad in the Buffalo News, or heard that Jimmy Bigham was playing the mighty Wendt organ today, but they won't come again, if someone here doesn't greet them and in some way embody the gospel for them.

Think back for just a moment, about how you got here. What brought you here, who brought you here, and how was the gospel made real for you here? Some of you say you had no choice, your mother and father brought you here. Precisely…your mother and father brought you here. They were the embodiment of the gospel that made you come. You saw in them, the presence and reality of Christ and they wanted to make it real for you.

It's Mother's Day and so I think it only appropriate that I talk about my Mom. Even though my mom worked weekends and was dead tired on Sunday mornings, she saw to it that we got to Sunday school and church. I think she's been to church more in the past four years since she's lived here with us, than she was the first 80 years of her life, but she knew that faith was important and that if her sons were to grow up to be the kind of people she wanted them to be, that we had to be introduced to the gospel. She lived it in who she was as a person, that was our first introduction to the way God works, but she also knew that there was more to it than what she knew. And so she introduced us to God and to Christ.

That's all Philip did too. That's all we need to do. The power of the story and the witness to God's love contained therein will do the rest. Ultimately, God will draw all of us to Himself, but pen ultimately, it's our responsibility as His baptized children, to chase down the chariots going down the roads past where we are walking.

How can we do that you ask? Well, how about this:

If you go out for brunch today, bow your heads in prayer before you eat, first, and most importantly to thank God, for your food and for your mother, and second, that those around you will see someone who acknowledges the goodness of God. It's a subtle witness but a witness nonetheless.

Bring someone to church with you next week.

Call your children or when you see your children, and ask them if they went to church today, or if they brought their children to church today.

If they didn't, tell them how important it is.

We're going to invoke the three minute rule today. When church ends today, for the first three minutes, introduce yourself to someone you don't know. Yes, I know it's Mother's Day and you have to get home or out for brunch, but 3 minutes is all God is asking you for today. Be that presence of Christ for someone you don't know, it might, it will, make all the difference.

Come to the 9:30 coffee hour next week and meet our new members, they want to meet you.

And last, but certainly not least, thank your Mom, thank you, Mom, for being God's representative for me here on earth and in my life. Thank your wife, for being God's representative for your children; thank your children for being the kind of parents God hoped they would be for their kids.

And thank you, for being here today. Amen.

Third Sunday of Easter - May 3, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

SHEPHERDS AND COWBOYS

The shepherd is a frequent image in the Bible – from the 23 rd Psalm to Jesus being called “the good Shepherd”. And even though that image is a product of an agrarian society it still rings true for us. I often wonder why.

How many of you have ever seen a real shepherd? Fortunately, I have been in the right place at the right time to have seen one, and I should report that they don't wear long dresses and sandals– they wear blue jeans and sneakers.

Still, even though we live in an urban society – in which a shepherd is more foreign than an ox-drawn plow – the image rings true and it gives us a cozy warm feeling.

I suppose that if we did want to bring the image of Jesus up to speed, we could refer to Jesus as the good cowboy. After all, cowboys are still out there rounding up stray calves, and moving the herd in the right direction – although with the demise of cigarette advertising we don't see them posted on billboards anymore. And cowboys have to protect their herds just as the shepherds did. The shepherds carried crooks, and probably cowboys carry guns in case a mountain lion or a wolf comes along.

So we know what a cowboy looks like – we may not know what he smells like – but we have all seen enough cowboy movies to have their image in our memory bank. But, for some reason or other, the cowboy just doesn't cut the mustard as far as being a surrogate for the shepherd. Maybe Miss Kitty has something to do with it – I don't know.

However, Jesus is still seen as the good shepherd and we all know what we mean when we say that.

But when it comes to some of the popular images of Jesus, they don't seem to stay the course. Too often it isn't the human side of Jesus that gets emphasized, it's the God side. I've noted before that the church has had to deal with more heresy related to people trying to make Jesus too divine than too human.

As Robert Capon noted in his excellent little book, “Hunting the Divine Fox”:

Almost nobody can resist the temptation to jazz up the humanity of Christ. Often, people like to see Jesus in the role of Superman. Remember how Superman used to be described on the radio, faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. It's superman! Strange visitor from another planet, who came to earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter who fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice and the American way. Jesus is seen as meek and mild but with secret souped-up, more-than-human insides. He bumbles around for thirty-three years, nearly gets himself done if for good by the Kryptonite Kross, but at the last minute, struggles into the phone booth of the Empty tomb, changes into his Easter suit and, with a single bound, leaps back to the planet heaven. (P.90)

Capon then points out the human race was, is and probably always will be deeply unwilling to accept a human messiah.

We don't want to be saved in our humanity; we want to be fished out of it . We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It's not that we weren't looking for the Messiah; it's just that he wasn't what we were looking for.

Our Kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He wouldn't do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.

And you know how this worked itself out historically – Christianity just couldn't let Jesus alone – he had to become the conquering hero. Remember how the Roman Emperor, Constantine, made Christianity the state religion and then used the image of the cross to conquer the world. And then there were the Crusades – and the killing of tens of thousands in the name of Jesus. And now some people kill in the name of Allah.

But, Jesus did not come to bring a sword – he came to bring peace. And that is what makes Jesus so hard to accept. He is so out of keeping with the role of gods. There is no end to the number of gods who can do powerful things. There are gods of war, and gods of thunder and lightning. There are gods of the sea. There are fertility gods.

It's easy to find a god to defend your cause, and if you can't find one, you twist and turn your god so that he can do your bidding.

There is a passage in I Cor. Where Paul says that Jesus crucified is a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness for the Greeks. (1:23) As far as the Jews were concerned, the Messiah was not supposed to die. As far as the Greeks were concerned, a god who suffered was a contradiction in terms – gods don't suffer – they're in charge!

So here we are with this Jesus – a Jesus who doesn't fit the mold. At least he doesn't for many. And so many try to make Jesus into something else – they want him to be the great fixer. But when you do that and you meet up with problems that can't get fixed, you're in trouble.

But there is one strain of Christianity that seems to have gotten the message about Jesus better than most, and that is the African –American community.

And the “Spirituals” have captured who Jesus was in songs like, Nobody knows the trouble I've seen – nobody knows but Jesus. And, Sometime I feel like a motherless child.

Jesus was not only the Son of God; he was also the Lamb of God. And when he was on the cross, Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus cried out, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?

But Jesus wasn't forsaken– and we know that - and that is why we know that we aren't either because he knows what it's like.

Nobody knows the trouble I've seen – nobody knows but Jesus.\

Easter Day - April 12, 2009
Click Here to Listen to Sunday's Sermon

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Roger Griffiths, Youth Ministry

Click Here to Listen to the Easter Day Festival Service of Holy Communion

Click here to Read in PDF format
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Each of the four gospels has a different ending.

Matthew's gospel ends with the women going to the tomb early that first Easter morning to anoint the dead body of Jesus only to be greeted by an earthquake, which succeeded in rolling the stone away from the entrance to the tomb, and an angel, who told them that Jesus had been raised and that they should go to Galilee where Jesus would meet them.

They go and on the way, Jesus meets them and they grab hold of him and worship him. Matthew also tells of the guards who shared the story of the empty tomb with the temple authorities and how, together they decided to tell the Pilate that someone must have come and stole the body, so that he wouldn't go ballistic. Matthew also tells us that some bribe was involved in this collusion. The disciples then meet in Galilee, on the mountain, where Jesus meets them again and the gospel ends with the familiar words from Christ, And Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Luke's gospel ends with the women going to the tomb, only to be greeted by two men who tell them of Jesus' resurrection. They in turn go back to the disciples to tell them the story and Luke records, “But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.”

Luke goes on then to tell of the post resurrection appearances of Jesus: on the road to Emmaus, and afterwards, when he sat down with them to eat and then opened the Scriptures to them and blessed them, saying, “You are witnesses to these things and behold I send the promise of my Father upon you. The gospel ends with the disciples returning home with Jesus, and very eyes.

John's gospel has Mary Magdalene returning to the tomb alone, and when she sees that the stone was rolled away, she runs and finds Peter and the other disciples, who then run to the tomb to see for themselves. Excited to go back home and tell the story to everyone, the disciples leave, but Mary remains, crying. As she does, Jesus comes to her, only, at first, she mistakes him for the cemetery caretaker, until he speaks her name, Mary. John also includes the story about doubting Thomas as well as two other post resurrection accounts, one on the shore of the lake where he prepared breakfast for them and the account wherein Jesus asks Peter three times, “do you love me?” An exchange almost universally regarding as Jesus forgiving Peter for his three denials. The gospel ends with these words…”But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

This year, the second year of the three year lectionary cycle, known as year B, has the Easter reading from Mark's gospel. It ends with these words:

So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them and they nothing to anyone for they were afraid.

Over the centuries, later editions of Mark's gospel have an additional sentence or paragraph or two, but most scholars agree that these additions were merely later attempts to bring Mark's gospel into accord with the other three. Ancient manuscripts have the gospel ending where we heard it end today.

I'm inclined to believe that that WAS the original ending, because it makes sense. The story of the good news of Jesus Christ, ends with the empty tomb. In many ways, you don't need anything else. Sure, it's nice that we have stories of Thomas, being able to put his hands into Jesus wounds, yes it's kind of quaint that Jesus hosted the first coffee hour on the beach for the emerging church that was the apostolic band, which makes Lutherans closest to God because next to God's Word we hold the offering of food next in line to true godliness. But the true power behind the story is the Risen Christ, not the reappearing one. While I respect my brothers and sisters from other faith traditions, I really don't need to have Christ reappear again, whether it's in a locked room the following afternoon, the lakeshore the following morning, or in Upstate New York 1800 years later.

For the real power of Easter lies in that empty tomb which represents the reality of the promise that Jesus revealed to us when he said, “let not your hearts be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.”

The life begun in God, ends in God. The power of the resurrection and of this day, lies not in how well we present the case for the missing body of Christ, but how well the body of Christ has found what's missing in us and restored it to life again, and…and… how willing we are to do that for others.

The other telling part of this gospel account lies in the fact that the women left the tomb and said nothing to anyone. Well…..sooner or later, they must have said something to someone, else you and I wouldn't be here this morning. But their initial inaction begs the question, “After hearing the witness of the resurrection this morning, what will we do?” What will you do? After having heard the story, having peered into the empty tomb yourself, having been told that God keeps God's promises, what kind of a witness will you be? Will you share the good news of Christ, somehow? Will you witness in any way to the power of God made manifest in the victory of life over death, or will you simply pick up your lily, throw your bulletin in the recycle bin on your way out, and go home to a nice dinner of smoked ham and scalloped potatoes?

We are called to be witnesses to Jesus Christ and to the power of his resurrection. Imagine if this afternoon, soon after services are over, Irene Ayad, who lost her husband a month ago, or Ruth and Larry DeAeth who lost their daughter this past week, or Elaine Fuhlbruck who lost her 17 year old nephew, or Lyn Searles who lost her beloved Elwood two weeks ago, or June and David Hehr who lost husband and father last month, imagine if each of them received 5 or ten phone calls from those of us in church this morning telling them that while we were in church this morning we thought of Ibrahim and Pat, of Aaron and El and Cliff and how we found comfort in the promise that Easter brings, and told them that we hope they find renewed hope in that message and in our caring. Imagine if we did the same for Bud Yuhl's family, and Jim Jagow, and Elizabeth Turner, and Melissa Haller, and Charlotte Vogelsang, or anyone who has suffered the loss of one they loved this past year?

Karen Koehler still misses Bob, Joyce Hofmar still misses Don, I still miss my Dad, who's been gone 20 years and my Debby her mom gone 25 years now, you still miss your grandfather and God still makes the same promise,

•  The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea and the Lord shall reign forever and ever.

•  Lo I am with you even to the end of the age

•  You are witnesses to these things and behold I send the promise of my Father upon you.

•  And were every word and action of God that brings hope and comfort recorded, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written. For that we say thanks be to God. He is Risen. He is risen indeed.

Amen.

Palm Sunday - April 5, 2009
Click Here to Listen to Sunday's Sermon
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Fourth Sunday in Lent - March 22, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.

I don't know if I shared this with you before, but I come from a long line of Bishops, Harry Bishop my Brooklyn born, ethnically Ukrainian maternal grandfather, was a legendary figure. It is normal to have a sense of pride in one's ancestor's accomplishments and to craft a code of conduct or a family ethic based on their heroic deeds. One of my favorite tales of Harry Bishop shines for me as an example of bravery, tenacity, courage, and follow through. Grandpa Harry was afflicted, but did not despair. Although his adversary was animalistic he did not waver in his pursuit of justice, but saw his mission through to completion. I am of course referring to the time when Grandpa Harry was bitten by a stray dog. Legend has it that immediately after the menacing canine concluded his attack, Grandpa took flight after the dog. Even though the dog was no doubt faster and more agile, Harry determined and convinced, did not cease until he wrestled the beast to the ground and followed through with a disbursement of justice. The dog yelped and Harry had in his mouth a bite size portion of the dog's ear. I tell you this story, because I love you and you are my family and there are no secrets among family.

Today we hear that God sent fiery serpents to bite Israelites after they complained against God and Moses. This complaining, an outward manifestation of disobedience against God's Word, and God punishing is a repeated theme throughout the book of Numbers. In the 11 th chapter they complained about the bland manna and demanded meat. God sent them an abundance of quail on which they gorged themselves, but then, before they even had time to floss, God sent a plague and many died. In the 14 th chapter, the Israelite spies reported that the people they were to do battle with were giants. This news caused fear and they rebel against God and Moses. God wanted to destroy them all on the spot, but Moses told God that it would be bad public relations and that the neighboring people would think that Yahweh was weak if he let the people he lead out of bondage die. God then decides that all who rebelled would die in the wilderness and not reach the Promised Land. Even Moses himself is not spared from being punished for disobedience. In the 20 th chapter, God instructs Moses to take his staff and go to a rock and speak to the rock and water will flow from it for the people to drink. Moses took his staff and did not speak to it, but struck it twice with his staff and water flowed. God saw Moses' action as disobedient and therefore as a sign of unbelief. His punishment by God was that he too would be prevented from entering the Promised Land.

\While most of us may be uncomfortable with the idea that God sends calamity as punishment, it is important to understand how our ancestors in faith perceived their relationship with God. Can any of us unequivocally say that God does not act in history to reward and punish? I am not saying that God sent that dog to bite Harry or anything like that, but maybe we should not limit God's action and think we have the Divine all figured out. After all, can anyone here say that they have themselves all figured out?

The point of the story of Israel is not about God's punishment, but about God's love and deliverance. Just as the story of the people of God assembled here today is about God's love of us. (As little Teegan's baptism reminds us all)

After the people are bit by fiery serpents, and begin to die, they acknowledge and repent of their sin and ask Moses to call on God for help. God forgives them and provides a seemingly silly way out. Moses is to craft an image of this terrifying seraph- serpent upon a pole and the people are just instructed to look upon it. Simply ridiculous- how could they, by following these simple instructions reverse the hellacious effects of the venom? After all when a venomous snake bites, its poison attacks a persons neurological system while enzymes begin to digest the soft tissue starting at the bite site and migrating from there. The pain is intense, a high fever ensues, and the person's airway becomes compromised. Modern medicine makes use of anti-venoms given to the patient intravenously. The patient is usually always also intubated to ensure adequate ventilation and antibiotics are dispersed to guard against bacterial infections. Recovery is usually slow and takes days to weeks to even months. But all the people of Israel had to do was look, but looking is not always an easy thing to do is it?

I am sure many of you are feeling the burning sting of the financial market these days. Well how easy is it for you to open the statement to your pension fund or investment account and look at it??? It is frightening to look fear in the face.

While the country took a page out of Grandpa Harry's playbook in going after the AIG execs who were thrown an excessively meaty bone. We know that they are just small worms and that there is a much bigger serpent on the loose and we have all been bitten.

The toxin has been working on us even here at HT.

The Israelites met the snakes when they were being less than faithful in their living. Our church is currently having a faith crisis of its own which has been festering for some time. The proof of our illness is in our stewardship and it is not only Holy Trinity it is the whole synod (as the bishop can probably attest). We have been relying too heavily for too long on the faithful giving of our ancestors, our endowment. And while our endowment funds are not a golden calf to be worshiped, but used in ministry, the large dip our portfolio has made has exposed our poor spiritual health. Our giving has been weak, our commitment has been halfhearted and our service has been lackluster. Why? Is it because we took our eyes off the cross, or think ourselves not in need of Christ? Do we blame the flailing economy? Are the slithering fluctuations of the market more powerful than our God? Is maintaining our lifestyle more important than responding to God's grace with thanksgiving?

I am telling the truth today, because I love you and we are family and there are no secrets among family. If our giving of time, talents and treasures were truly a joyful thanksgiving for our salvation we have in Christ, would not worship, mission, ministry and fellowship opportunities would be the first things on the family and our individual calendars? Would we not constantly discern how the talents that God entrusted to us could be used to God's glory, instead of shying away from opportunities to serve? When the pay check is cashed, the first thing that we would do would be fill our envelopes for church and then pay our bills and consider how to use the rest of our income- right?

Pastor Ralph Lowe of blessed memory must of understood well the connection between faith and giving, because one of the things that he stressed to Pastor Bang was that whenever the people of God gather, never forget to take an offering.

The gospel makes clear that works and offerings are not going to get God to love us any more than God already does. God's love for us is a gift of grace. We accept this gift through faith, which is a work of the Holy Spirit. As our faith grows internally it looks for outward expressions, stewardship is such an expression. Restricting the outward expression is like taking an anti-grace concoction robbing us of abundant life. In John's Gospel, eternal life is present and available for believers to enter into now; it is not something differed till after death.

In Today's gospel lesson, we find the most famous word's of Jesus, John 3:16. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” These words were originally spoken to Nicodemus who came to Jesus by night. Nicodemus was a member of the Jewish ruling council and a Pharisee. He had official status and wealth- Jesus had neither. Jesus challenged the one who came to him under the cover of darkness to come to him in the light, to get out of the shadows and to follow him. Jesus challenges us to do the same. If we heed Jesus' words our belief is clear to see.

In speaking about the reading from Numbers, Luther commented, “Just looking at the serpent did not effect the cure; it was faith in the Word that did it. These people accepted the Word of God as a reliable promise of healing and deliverance from the poison.” It is this kind of faith, this kind of trust, that can also bring healing to our spiritual selves and our faith community today. Let us look at ourselves, our greatest adversaries in faith. Let us examine what we give and why we give; and if need be, let us take a bite out of ourselves to let some of our faith flow out.

Grace and faith flowed freely though our Lord Jesus. Our Savior and friend took a bite out of the big business of religion of his day, by exposing hypocrisy, insisting on equality, demanding justice and giving away healing grace. His biting exposure was undoubtedly less painful than the pain inflicted on all who were denied grace and comfort by the religious elite. But because Jesus could not keep his mouth shut, they found a way to silence him, the Roman way, on the cross.

When we find a way to silence Jesus' challenging voice, we reject our love for Him and distance ourselves from the beautiful relationship we have been gifted. In doing so we assume a part in Christ's crucifixion.

Yet here on the cross, God's true nature is clearly revealed. “"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17) Instead of destroying all who were responsible in the crucifixion of Jesus in every time and place, Jesus follows through with mercy greater than justice. He says, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” And instead of letting Jesus die, end of story- God raises him on the third Day. The sting of death, a sting connected to that original serpent in the garden has been overcome. God will not abandon us, even when we abandon God.

Brothers and Sisters, with this knowledge we don't have to wait till we are dead to start living like we will live forever. We will live forever, so we can start living with that in mind. With our eyes fixed on the cross of Christ, we know that God's loving mercy has been extended to us and this shapes our every reality, our living and our giving included.

God did this for us, because God loves us and God calls us family. This news is too wonderful to keep a secret from the world, each other and even from ourselves!

Amen.

Luther, M. (1999, c1957). Vol. 22 : Luther's works, vol. 22 : Sermons on the Gospel of St. John: Chapters 1-4 (J. J. Pelikan, H. C. Oswald & H. T. Lehmann, Ed.). Luther's Works (Jn 3:16). Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House.

Third Sunday in Lent – March 15, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

THE COMMANDMENTS AND ETHICS

Our first lesson this morning is a listing of the Ten Commandments. The Command-ments have been much in the news in recent years with challenges being made as to where they can be exhibited. Some people are in favor of them being exhibited wherever and whenever possible. Others claim that to exhibit them publicly is to violate the first amendment of the Constitution which forbids the establishment of any religion. Feelings run high on both sides.

There is one problem with the Ten Commandments – actually two problems. One is that with all the intense interest in their being exhibited; virtually no one can name them all.

The other problem is that people often don't know what they mean.

And there is actually another problem and that is how do you number them? In the Hebrew tradition – and since they got them first it seems as though they should carry the day – the first Commandment is, The Lord Your God is one. The second is, You shall have no other God's besides me.

However, The Western Catholic Church combined these first two Commandments and since they still had to come up with ten they split the last one. The Lutherans kept the Roman tradition, but the other Protestants and Eastern Orthodox use the Hebrew numbering.

Overall this numbering of the Commandments doesn't make too much difference unless you are making a bad joke about adultery and you make reference to the sixth commandment – and there goes the joke. It's a joke I never tell because you might have some Presbyterians listening and they wouldn't get it.

We will say a bit more about the arrangement of the Commandments later on. But now, let's look at what the Commandments mean and their implications.

The first Commandment says, You shall have no other god's before me. Now if you think about that phrasing you realize that it does not say there are no other gods. It seems to recognize that other gods exist, but they are not to be worshiped. And, you are not to make any graven images of them. The implication is that there are many forces out there that command your attention, but they really don't measure up to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

Paul Tillich suggested that God might be identified as the “ground of our being”. That always sounded good to me, but I'm not sure I understand it.

The next Commandment tells us that we are not to take God's name in vain. It is usually assumed that this means we shouldn't swear – at least we shouldn't swear using references to the deity. But, some of the best scholars admit that this Commandment is a puzzle. They concur that it was not making reference to what we mean by swearing. They suggest it meant that when you went to God to ask for something you didn't go empty-handed. You should not go to God in vain – you should bring an appropriate sacrifice.

Or it might mean that when agreeing to a contract in God's name, you couldn't break the contract without incurring the wrath of God.

It is also worth noting, however, what the function of swearing is in our culture. It means that you are calling on some force to afflict anther person. If you ask God to damn someone, you are making a pretty serious proposal.

But, lately, you hear few swear words that involve the godhead. You hear a lot of swear words related to sexuality. You can speculate that sex has risen as a phenomenon of force – even to the point of superceding religion.

But – the bottom line is, “DON'T SWEAR!”

The next Commandment is the only one that is not stated in the negative – all the others say “don't” do something. But the one about honoring your father and your mother so that you may live a long life is stated in the positive. And honoring your parents is a way of sustaining the community and the culture. And that is important. To underscore the point, just remember the great musical, FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, and the song “ TRADITION ”? And of course the reverse is also true, parents should respect their children and that means taking care of them – as President Obama has appropriately emphasized.

The rest of the Commandments have to do with our relationship to others and what has to be done to make society work. This section of the Commandments begins with , You shall not murder. And, please note, it is not, You shall not kill. The Hebrew language has a word for kill, and it has one for murder, and the commandment uses the word for murder. If you read the Old Testament you will be painfully aware that there is a lot of killing that goes on – much of it in the name of God.

You shall not commit adultery, is the next Commandment, and again, it originally did not mean what we mean by adultery. It did mean that a woman belonged to her husband and no one else. And she could not have sex with any one else.

It did not mean that a man could not be intimate with women other than his wife. Biblically, a man could have several wives and he could have concubines and there was even some slack allowed for other relationships.

This Commandment meant that a man could not be intimate with someone else's wife. If a man was caught with another man's wife both he and she were stoned. You could make a case for this being a form of abortion because a man's estate went to his son, and if a wife was unfaithful and got pregnant as a result, it might mean that the man's heir would not actually be his son.

On the other hand, if a man was caught being intimate with another man's concubine, she was beaten and he was fined. If the concubine got pregnant it was another helping hand for the household.

Women were owned by men – and their role was subservient to the male.

You shall not steal comes next. There is an interesting take on this commandment in the popular book, THE KITE RUNNER. The young boy who is the main character in the story is told by his father that there is only one sin - the sin of stealing. When you kill a man, you steal a life – you steal his wife's right to a husband, rob his children of a father. When you tell a lie, you steal someone's right to the truth. When you cheat, you steal the right to fairness. (p. 18)

And stealing is measured differently in different situations with different results. When you live in a poor society, stealing can have terrible consequences and the penalty is, consequently, severe. In the Middle East, a person caught stealing would have his hand cut off.

But, in our affluent society you can steal a car and not go to jail. And, if you are like me, you have probably had a car or two that you prayed someone would steal!

In our current financial disaster, people are outraged that so much money can be stolen – and those who steal it walk away. And this goes all the way from the four billion dollars that literally disappeared in Iraq, to CEO's getting golden parachutes.

Not bearing false witness speaks for itself – and misrepresenting mortgage obligations seems to fall into this category.

When we come to the last two Commandments according to the Roman and Lutheran version of dividing them, the ninth Commandment is, You shall not covet your neighbor's house.

The tenth Commandment is, You shall not covet your neighbor's wife, or his male or female slave, or his oxen or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Now this commandment seems to fly in the face of the advertising industry because it does. Much of our culture seems to be based on the premise of wanting what our neighbor has.

But there is an interesting twist in the ninth and tenth Commandments. The Commandments are listed in two places in the Bible – in Exodus 20 and in Deuteronomy 5. In the first listing, in Exodus – not coveting your neighbor's house comes first – in the ninth Commandment, and not coveting your neighbor's wife comes later in the tenth Commandment. In the Deuteronomy listing they switch the house and the wife so the wife comes first. Apparently the editor of Deuteronomy got a better wife.

So there you have it – the Ten Commandments. The Commandments are not necessarily what they seem to be, but they have been able to create a lot of fuss.

I would like to make two observations. One, to make such a big deal of having them carved in stone and put in front of a court building looks to me a little like making them into a graven image which the first commandment says we shouldn't do.

The other observation is that I don't think putting the Commandments on display makes people behave any differently at all – which, I assume, is their purpose

So we have the Ten Commandments, but don't forget that Jesus said there were two more. Jesus said, The greatest commandment is you should love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind, and a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And then he added, on these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matt. 22:36-40)

Second Sunday in Lent - March 8, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

By this time in Mark's gospel, many things have already happened.

You'll remember that Marks' gospel is brief, when compared to the other three. What this means is that things happen quickly in Mark's gospel. You'll remember that Mark doesn't spend any time at all talking about Jesus' birth, or the prediction of his birth. He spends no time talking about genealogy, Mary or Joseph and all the rest that we have come to know so well from the other accounts.

No, in Marks' gospel, Jesus appears on the scene while John is in the midst of baptizing people calling them to repentance and a different way of life. Jesus is baptized by John in the river and immediately thereafter is confronted by a man possessed of an evil spirit. He didn't have much time to sit back and consider his calling.

Right after that, Mark tells us of how Jesus gathered his disciples, and how, after each one is called, Jesus is tested time and again with someone needing his touch, his healing, his advice, so much so that over and over again, Jesus turns aside to pray, or takes his disciples away to a place where they can think and pray.

The early chapters of Mark have Jesus constantly barraged by people in need of healing, of demon possession, of deformity and illness. His fame spreads so quickly that Mark tells us that wherever he went, great crowds followed him. His fame spreads so far and wide that even those in the Synagogue hierarchy hear of him and one, Jairus, even calls on him to raise his daughter. The woman with the perpetual hemorrhage comes to the conclusion that even if she touches just the hem of his garment she would be healed.

This is the stuff of superstars. Even Candidate Obama didn't reach this kind of rock star status. Mark tells us in Chapter 6 that even King Herod had heard of him by this time, and Herod was fairly far removed from the wanderings of this unknown, itinerant preacher from Galilee.

By the time we get to chapter 8, Jesus had already fed the five thousand, and then four thousand on another occasion, raised someone from the dead, walked on water, healed countless misfortunates, many of them stricken since birth, and so by the time you get to this morning's readings, Jesus has pretty well established himself as something quite out of the ordinary, possessing, as Pastor Buerk has said on several occasion, “powers far beyond those of mortal men.”

In the section of the gospel that immediately precedes the section you just heard, Jesus is with his disciples and in a private moment asks them, “Who do you think I am?” And, of course, Peter, answers, “You are the Christ.” By this he meant, Jesus was the Anointed One, Jesus was the Messiah, the one appointed and sent by God to be the one to save Israel, to restore her to her former greatness, if not beyond, to be the one to break the yoke of Roman oppression, to bring God, our God, back to center stage. You are the Christ, Peter says.

If all this occurred in our day, this one for whom we have waited will be the one to not only fix the sinking economy, give us universal health care, make children respectful again, reform television so that you can watch a show without incessant sexual innuendo, for heaven's sake, even M&M commercials have sexy red candies trying to seduce the blues and greens.

A contemporary Messiah would end partisan bickering, removed pork from the stimulus package, self interest would take a back seat to the good of the Republic. Sunni and Shiite would coexist peacefully, all nuclear weapons would be banned and there would be food for all and to spare, the new Peace Bridge would become a reality, reality television would come to an end, and Buffalo would be listed among the top ten places to live in the United States.

“You are the Christ,” Peter said, “you are the one in whom all our hopes rest.” As long as I have you to follow I can leave my GPS at home and I can turn off my cell phone because no call coming in could proffer me a better alternative than the one you promise.

And then, we read this, “And he began then to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days, rise again.”

And Peter says, “God forbid,” and Peter says, “Say it ain't so.” And Peter says, “Over my dead body.”

And Jesus says, “Get behind me Satan.” Where Satan is not the evil one with the pitchfork who rules over Hell, but rather the one who is God's adversary, who throws things in your path to force you to take another route from the one you set out on, the adversary of righteousness, who, like the gods of ancient Greece, came down to meddle with humans for the sport of it.

“Get behind me, Satan,” Jesus says, “Get out of my way, don't try to dissuade me from following the path my Father in heaven has set out for me, because the road YOU think we're on, is not the road God has planned. Where you think I have come to do battle with the petty forces of everyday life, I have come for a larger reason.”

Because all things considered, when compared to the larger issues of life and death,

•  when held up against the promise of an eternal life, of the victory over death, the Roman Authorities are but a temporary nuisance,

•  the conceit and selfish agenda of the Pharisees and the scribes and the priests whose only interest is the preservation of the status quo and their own positions, a minor concern

•  the daily concerns of who owns what, of how much we have left in our portfolios, of who holds the power, of who's in control, of who calls the shots, of all the things with which we typically concern ourselves and fret over and lose sleep over, Jesus says, “What will it profit us to gain the whole world and forfeit our life?”

In yesterday's email, I received a cute little story from Chuck Rojek who had received it from Peter Angelakos who sent it to Sue Saur, and Sue Spindler and probably a dozen more of you. For those of you who aren't on Chuck's email list, the story reads like this:

A boat docked in a tiny, local seaside village. An American tourist complimented the local fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took him to catch them.

"Not very long," he answered.

"But then, why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?" asked the American.

The local explained that his small catch was sufficient to meet his needs and those of his family.

The American asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, and take a siesta with my wife. In the evenings, I go into the village to see my  friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs. I have a full life."

The American interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."

"And after that?" asked the fisherman.

"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of  trawlers. Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City,  Los Angeles, or even New York City! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."

How long would that take?" asked the fisherman.

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years," replied the American.

"And after that?"

"Afterwards? Well my friend, that's when it gets really interesting," answered the American, laughing. "When your business  gets really big, you can start buying and selling stocks and make millions!"

"Millions? Really? And after that?" asked his interested friend?

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

I've always struggled with the phrase, “For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life will keep it for eternal life,” until it dawned on me that what Jesus was talking about was the fact that we've set our sights on that which is perishable and neglected focusing on that which is lasting, and eternal.

If love is the only thing that lasts and endures beyond the grave, then it's the only thing worth pursuing on this side of it.

Let that be your Lenten lesson for this week.

Amen.

First Sunday of Lent - March 1, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The word Lent originally meant "springtime": the word comes from the Old English word for "spring," lencten, which came from lengan, "to make longer”, which refers to the lengthening of days. Spring time is a time of new growth, a time of awakening. For the next five weeks or so we have the opportunity to awaken and to grow in faith. Healthy growth requires fertile soil, light and water. How is the soil in which our hope in the gospel is planted? Does it have the right PH balance or is it too acidic?

On Ash Wednesday we remembered that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We are the soil from which growth may occur. So let us ask - What kind of soil am I? Am I hard like clay, unwilling to unclench teeth or fist? Have all the hurts that I have suffered, all the disappointments caused my heart to petrify?

Or am I too loose and easily washed away by the floods of cares and concerns, which constantly pour down on my head? Do I deny roots purchase by running from commitment? Can I let other soil (other humans) into my life to enrich my own soil's nutrients?

Through out the history of salvation, God's people have often proved to be very difficult soil. In the story of Noah, we recall that humankind had become hosts for evil weeds, which bore evil deeds. All except Noah and his family were infertile and useless by God and were destroyed. Even though we may paper our children's rooms with the images of the Ark and the animals, this is no child story. Think of what Moses and his family saw floating in the water as they sailed aimlessly for those forty days. The sheer trauma that Noah experienced was probably the reason for his self-medication with alcohol. In just a few lines later in the story Ham finds his father drunk and passed out, reports it to his other brothers Shem and Japheth who cover his nakedness without peaking. When Noah awakes hung-over, he curses Canaan , Ham's son and subsequently all of Ham's future offspring. This curse has since been used to justify years of slavery in the Middle East and even in North America !

So even Noah, who was once fertile soil, became like a dust bowl. It is not uncommon for folks that have experienced significant trauma, and going through the flood counts, to be unready for growth without some interventions and intentional cultivation. While we know that Noah lived for an additional 350 years according to the text, we do not read anything about God's continued interaction with him, but we can rest assured that God did not leave him traumatized and acidic, but carefully enriched and healed his being so that he was again a fertile bed for faith to grow. We can say this because of the knowledge that we have of God's character as seen in the rainbow and later through Jesus, God's son.

The section of the story of Noah that we have today in our Lectionary deals with an aspect of growth that is out of our control, light. Light is the first thing that God spoke into existence and it was good. As the rains came down and flooded the earth, the dark, heavy clouds blocked the sunlight. After the rains stopped, and the happy animal couples disembarked from their cruise, God spoke to Noah and his sons and makes a covenant with them, their descendants and every living creature. This covenant is similar to the covenant that God makes with Abraham, Moses and David. All of these covenants have a sign associated with it. For David it was the Messiah, Jesus, for Moses, the Ten Commandments (and a lot more), for Abraham it was circumcision, and finally for Noah it is the rainbow. Notice this covenant is not a two way, but a one-way street. There are no demands made on the recipients of God's promise. The promise is that God will never flood the earth and destroy the earth again.

There are three things that the rainbow's unique light helps us see. First of all, God makes a significant change in the way that God will relate to creature and creation. While the flood was an example of a God whose intolerance of evil leads to violence and destruction, God's new way will be one of tolerance and care in spite of the existence of that evil. This cannot be easy for our heavenly father. Assume that sin hurts God even more than it hurts us when God watches His children inflict pain on His other children. How hard must that be to watch, how painful! Last week when my youngest son Lars was in the hospital I watched the nurses and doctors hunt for and subsequently rupture eight veins in their unsuccessful attempts at starting an I.V. These were good people who in their efforts to help my son were unintentionally causing him great pain and I was sick to my stomach with a feeling of helplessness for my hurting child. I hope I will never have to watch my child suffer intentionally at the hands of another. And we know how lent ends don't we! We know of God's own son, Jesus' and the suffering and humiliation that he will endure. We know that when all abandoned Jesus on that cross, that God's gaze never drifted from His beloved son. The God of the rainbow, has hung up his battle bow and watches with tears that refract light into a myriad of colors. Have you ever squinted through a tear at the end of a purging cry? Were you able to behold things then in a new light? This is the light of the rainbow.

Secondly, In this tear twisted light we are seen by God in the best possible light as through a pair of heavenly “rainbow colored glasses”. And finally we, and all of creation, are recipients of this promise and this light. We need this special kind of light, the light of the rainbow for our faith to grow. It is a light that reminds us that our faith is not independent of others, but intimately connected to all of creation. Since pollutants in the air prevent water droplets from being suspended in the air and refracting light as to produce a rainbow, what does that mean for us as stewards of creation and caretakers of this gift?

So we have talked about the soil, and the light, what about the water?

In the epistle, Peter makes the connection between our baptism and the flood. Just as Noah and his family were saved through the waters, so were we in our baptism. Peter says that baptism is an appeal to God for a good conscious, which means it is God's power to cultivate a right relationship with God in us. It is a special watering, one that contains some spiritual fertilizer, a true miracle grow if you will excuse the pun.

In 1982, the World Council of Churches issued the ecumenical document Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry. In this document there is a paragraph on the “Participation in Christ's death and resurrection”. It says

Baptism means participating in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus went down into the river Jordan and was baptized in solidarity with sinners in order to fulfill all righteousness (Matt. 3:15). This baptism led Jesus along the way of the Suffering Servant, made manifest in his sufferings, death and resurrection (Mark 10:38–40, 45). By baptism, Christians are immersed in the liberating death of Christ where their sins are buried, where the “old Adam” is crucified with Christ, and where the power of sin is broken. Thus those baptized are no longer slaves to sin, but free. Fully identified with the death of Christ, they are buried with him and are raised here and now to a new life in the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, confident that they will also ultimately be one with him in a resurrection like his (Rom. 6:3–11; Col. 2:13,3:1; Eph. 2:5-6).

Jesus came to the waters of baptism and saw the heavens tear apart and he heard the voice of God affirm his identity. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Notice in Mark's account it is personal- not “This is my son” as to be for the crowd's benefit as we heard during the account of the transfiguration, but for Jesus' benefit. This affirms Jesus' identity and mission. For each of us as well, when we are baptized we are reminded of our status and identity as God's beloved child in who God is well pleased through Jesus.

There was an interesting story about a woman who disappeared in New York City over the summer who had a rare identity disorder of the type that the fictional literary and movie character Jason Borne suffered. The following is a direct quote from Today's New York Times.

“In New York On Aug. 28, a Thursday, a 23-year-old schoolteacher from Hamilton Heights named Hannah Emily Upp went for a jog along Riverside Drive . That jog is the last thing that Ms. Upp says she remembers before the deckhands rescued her from the waters of New York Harbor on the morning of Tuesday, Sept. 16.

Rumors and speculation abounded about what befell Ms. Upp. She disappeared the day before the start of a new school year at Thurgood Marshall Academy , a Harlem school, where she taught Spanish. She left behind her wallet, her cellphone, her ID and a host of troubling questions.

It was as if the city had simply opened wide and swallowed her whole — until she was seen on a security camera at the Midtown Apple store checking her e-mail. Then she vanished again. And then reappeared, not only at the Apple store but also at a Starbucks and several New York Sports Clubs, where news reports said she went to shower.

Was she suffering from bipolar disorder? Running away from an overly demanding job? Escaping from a city that can overwhelm even the most resilient?

Other questions lingered. Did she forage for food? Where did she sleep? Most baffling of all, how did she survive for so long without money or any identification in one of the world's busiest and most complex cities?

That she was rescued, alive and well, is in itself amazing; most such stories do not have happy endings. But the explanation for what had happened raised even more questions than Ms. Upp's disappearance had — for her more than for anybody.

After her rescue, while she was recovering from hypothermia and dehydration at Richmond University Medical Center in Staten Island , she was told that she was suffering from dissociative fugue, a rare form of amnesia that causes people to forget their identity, suddenly and without warning, and can last from a few hours to years.”

You can read the rest of Mrs. Upps' story in today's paper, but the point that I would like to make is that Baptism is the ultimate statement of identity for us. It is who we are, beloved children of God, sealed by God's Spirit, empowered for ministry. While we certainly are not suffering from dissociative fuge, do we always remember our baptism? Do we let the relationship that God established with us through those life saving waters effect our every decision and action?

Jesus is cast into the wilderness immediately following his baptism and is tempted. We live in the world and are tempted constantly and assailed relentlessly. When Jesus is out there, the angles minister to him, God does not forget or abandon him. God does not forget or abandon us either! We are God's beloved as well. It is our identity! Don't let anyone take that away form you!

Even after Jesus emerges from the wilderness, the temptations do not stop, but with determination and perseverance he engages in the ministry of bringing the Good News to others in his person. I know you are saying that “he is Jesus, we are just people.” But no we are not just anyone. We are God's beloved and we have God's power to call upon. We can count on the angles to come to us in the wilderness! We will not be abandoned even in our death!

The soil that we are is and continues to be penetrated with rays of the rainbow and watered with baptismal waters. The faith we hope to cultivate is being cultivated by Christ the ultimate gardener that Mary meets on that Easter morning outside the tomb.

During this Lent, let us not forget who we are, beloved children of God, fertile for growth in faith, able to withstand temptation and equipped for ministry, to bring the Good News to the world. And above all let us not forget who our God is, the one who shepherds us out of chaos, promises his love through tears, affirms our identity through sacrificial love and gives us a divine mission and the resources to achieve that mission.

May this spring time for the soul be a time of rich growth for you and me and all of God's beloved.

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany – February 15, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Why? Why flight 3407…. Why that night? Why in Clarence Center? Why that house? The technical reason will be revealed in the days ahead for sure, but why was it allowed to happen? Why did God allow it to happen? Where was God? Where is God? These questions may remain unspoken, but they are thought; and as people of faith we wrestle with them.

The Old Testament and Gospel lessons for today declare that God chooses to make us clean or whole. (Here I retold the stories found in both readings.) In both the cultures of The Northern Kingdom during the time of the prophet Elijah and during Jesus' ministry in first century Palestine, most people ascribed to a “theology of glory”. (And the truth be told, many still ascribe to such theology!) If you were victorious in battle, as Naaman was against the Northern Kingdom, it was widely believed that God was with you. This is why the reading begins with the acknowledgement that, “God was with Naaman…” If you were rich, God blessed you and if you were ill, that illness was due to sin. Both stories may begin with Glory theology, yet they challenge this theology and what emerges is a theology of Grace. In the case of Naaman, it is a prisoner of war, a slave girl and her faith that leads to his wholeness. It is humility that overcomes hubris, and love that conquers disease. In the Gospel, the leper is bold and challenging. He challenges the assumption held by many of his contemporaries that God choose to afflict him with the disease. His words to Jesus, acknowledge Jesus' power and Lordship and pushes Jesus to clearly state God's intentions for that power. Jesus' words, “I do Choose” are words of Grace and love. Jesus' touch of an untouchable, his willingness to become intimately involved in the suffering of humanity is that grace-filled intention made visible.

The problem is that the world contains both intentional evil and random affliction. When intentional evil is loosed we question God's tolerance and when random affliction occurs we question God's presence.

But as we will see God's love is more powerful and uniting than any intentional evil or random affliction that seeks to fracture and separate us.

Every body knew of someone, was connected to the victims in some way…

As Lutherans we instantly are moved with pity for members of Zion in Clarence Center and their pastors who worship a little more than a stone throws away from the crash site. I went to bed early on Thursday after watching the 10:00 news and missed the news of the crash, or I probably would have made my way to the site that fiery night. But when I did arrive, that morning, after first calling and checking in with all of our members that lived in Clarence, and speaking with Daniel Culross who nearly took that flight, after leaving a message for Pastor's Bigner and Melville of Zion Clarence Center to tell them I was on my way, and leaving a message with the secretary for St. Paul's Williamsville for Pastor's Wendy Buckley and Tim Madsen who were caring for the Johnston family. Kevin Johnston was on the flight. I called Pat Ulrich, our prayer chain coordination and asked her to keep Kevin's wife Kathy and their three daughters, Melissa, Amanda and Kelsey in prayer as well as all of the rescue workers and clergy. I have also since heard that a relative of one of the employees at Lord of Life in Depew was also a passenger on the plane.

My Personal connections vary. I have traveled as a passenger on that flight more than a couple of times. In fact, I believe I took that flight up to Buffalo during my discernment process leading up to my call as pastor to Holy Trinity. My father just took that flight when he came to visit during Luke's birthday at the end of October.

As I stood on the sacred ground of the crash site and breathed in the fumes of the remnants of jet fuel, I spoke with some of the first responders who acknowledged they remembered that smell from 9/11. I too remembered that smell and was glad that I was not the only one on the scene with that trigger being pulled. And so we were connected in our collective feeling of helplessness again brought on by the smell of tragedy and loss.

I also remember sitting around the conference table at Human Rights Watch located on the 34 th floor of the Empire State Bldg. as the representative for the Lutheran World Federation with Allison Des Forges. Her work on genocide, her passion to bring healing to a broken world and her down to earth demeanor, made her a person that everyone would want to know. Allison was like so many of those precious children of God on the plane….

And you will read the names and watch the stories unfold and you will find your own personal connections and you will be sad. Don't turn away. Get to know them all not as a voyeur, but as a brother or sister to them. Pray for their families and rediscover the connectedness of the humanity we share. In a disposable world note the precious gift of life and the fragility of it as well. Now is a time for grieving- this is true, but it is not grief without hope.

After making it through a myriad of roadblocks thanks to my New York State Fire Chaplain's ID that I pulled from a dusty bag in my basement, I arrived at the Clarence Center Fire Department, only 8 houses from the crash site. I entered and soon met with Pastors Randy and Steve who were glad to have some additional support. We spoke with the volunteer firefighters, EMTs, FBI, NTSB, and members of the County Medical Examiner's Office asking them how they were doing, sometimes just getting an “Ok” other times getting an “I'll tell you tomorrow” or “Can we talk later?”. What we did hear more and more was, “Thank you for being here.”

On Friday afternoon I stood for several hours at the operational command at the front line with Father Joe Baine, the chief Chaplain for Erie County, we wanted to be there when they began removing the physical remains and bringing them to the temporary morgue, to say a blessing and to offer some hope to those who had the sacred task. Father Joe was called away and I stayed and prayed until they suspended removal for the day. Ours was a ministry of presence and you the people of Holy Trinity were there with me, each and every one of you.

During a time of chaos and pain in London during WWII, Leslie Dixon Weatherhead, the Methodist pastor of The City Temple in London that was firebombed into rubble and who was known as the symbolic head of the prestigious Oxford Group wrote, The Will of God .

This “Doctor of souls” as he is referred in a recent biography of his life, understood the will of God to have three expressions, intentional will, circumstantial will and ultimate will.

God's Intentional will is that God intends good for us, who he creates in the divine image. God is not a killer and therefore when a person dies we are mistaken if we rattle off that throw away phrase- Its God's will! That is not to say that God does not take his suffering children home…. But that underscoring God's intentional will is pure goodness. God did not will down flight 3407. He did not will the pain and grief of loss to be felt by so many of His beloved children.

Circumstantial Will- Given the brokenness (or random affliction as the result of the freedom of the will according to theologian Simon Weil) and the evil in the world, God's circumstantial will shows us what God can do with and through that evil and brokenness. Like the cross, the evil intention of the cross was death and shame and God transformed it into the ultimate sign of hope. This crash and the horror of it all, the gruesome reality of children of God and their divine image being literally shattered moves us to cry and wail- if not outside, well then most certainly inside.

In the midst of this nightmare into the Clarence firehouse enters a young mother and her two grade school daughters. They come to the accountability station where all of the firefighters must report before going up to the line and after coming off, and they tell the Ladies Auxiliary representative at the desk that they made cookies for the firemen. About six heart shaped cookies were in a clear container the littlest girl place upon the table and then she said in a small voice, “I wrote on them too.” On the cookies were the words “We Love you”.

So many people in the immediate and larger community have been saying that to each other and to the families of the victims during these last few days. God is indeed allowing his will for healing and wholeness to prevail in the midst of pain and loss.

Finally, God's “ultimate will” is found in the resurrection of Jesus, which confirms that nothing can get in the way of our redemption. Those who perished and who were broken will be restored to a glorious state in Our Lord's presence. Just like Naaman who was made whole again through God's mercy and love. Just as Jesus displays God's will by stating that He chooses to make the leper clean and whole. We know that God wants to touch us with His healing touch and that he will use the whole body of Christ to make it happen. Just as a servant girl told Naaman about the prophet who could bring healing and wholeness to a seemingly hopeless situation, we, servants of our Lord Jesus, have good news to share, even in the midst of this horror- especially in the midst of this horror. There is life even after death. There is life for a community rattled and disoriented… there is life for those who are deep in the pit of profound grief, there is life for the 50 beloved children of God in God's presence. It is God's will that they live forever in his presence. It is a will underscored by the cross of Christ and the empty grave. It is a will that is full of goodness, healing, transformation and resurrection.

It is the “…Old, Old Story of Jesus and His Love…” This is the story of a God who loves beyond brokenness, beyond death, beyond hopelessness. This story of Jesus and his love we can proclaim - and yes even sing on a day such as this - Especially on a day such as this!

Amen.

(The hymn that followed was “I Love to Tell The Story”)

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany - February 15, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk - Sermon for Parkside Lutheran Church

THE PLANE AND THE PEOPLE
Parkside Lutheran Church – February 15, 2009
The Reverend John A. Buerk

The night of the plane crash I was not watching television. So I was surprised when I put the radio on the next morning and heard WBFO reporting a serious fire, but it wasn't until I took the dog out and opened the paper that I knew what had happened. I started to cry.

It wasn't because I knew who had died and recognized familiar names - although Jill pointed out that whenever we have been on that flight we have met two or three people we knew. No, people we know weren't among the dead – but the people who died were coming to my city and most were neighbors in a way – and I cried.

Saturday, I was bothered by the New York Times reporter who wrote about the crash – he said: It was perhaps not the most glamorous of destinations, or the most luxurious of flights: a turboprop plane pushing through wind and snow and fog to an ailing Rust Belt city.

I guess he was thinking that this wasn't the kind of place that people of importance would be flying to, and so as bad as the 50 deaths were, those who died could have been much more important people going to a much more important destination. The reporter could have perhaps not tried so hard to sound flippant and I suppose - in his own mind important.

I doubt that Tim Russert would have phrased the scenario the same way. I doubt that the doctors at Millard Fillmore who developed the technique for neutralizing brain aneurisms without cutting a hole in your head, or the 10,000 patients who have had the procedure done here, would think of their coming into Buffalo as coming to a “dying city”.

I doubt that Lukas Foss or Joanne Filletta considered a flight coming into Buffalo as a decidedly unglamorous destination.

I know that the musicians who have performed at Holy Trinity in the Ramsi Tick series – people like Gil Schaham, or Pincus Zuckerman, or Joshua Bell, or Emmanuel Axe didn't think that they were performing here because their careers had faded – in fact I talked to them, and they all lauded the sound of their music in Holy Trinity's venue.

I doubt that the doctor at Roswell who developed the test for prostate cancer, or Thomas Dougherty - a world class scientist – lauded by the New York Times – would like to live somewhere else - with the possible exception of this past January.

And I doubt that the crash victim who led the team of those who lost relatives in 9/11, or the woman victim from U/B who chronicled the Rwanda genocide thought that this flight was the flight to no-wheresvill.

No, this was a significant group of people who died because they were husbands and wives and parents and children and brothers and sisters and friends and lovers – and when I read what happened, I cried.

I haven't heard anyone saying that this was God's will – thank God! You do wonder, however, about the fact that this plane that was consumed in a fireball landed in a neighborhood with houses only feet away from each other, and only one house was destroyed. A house with three people in it and one ran out the door when she saw the plane coming at her, and her daughter who was in the attic slid off the roof as the house came down – and they both had only minor injuries. But the man in the house – the husband and the father died – and the wife and the daughter cried.

I have heard the word miracle mentioned in conjunction with the limited loss of property and life on the ground. And, there are people who think in terms of miracles. My own take on miracles is that there are a lot of close calls in life, and the ones that come close to taking a life but don't are the ones that are called miracles. Which is why only one house being destroyed and one person being killed in a plane crash that killed forty-nine people cries out for miracle status.

Of course, that implies that a force greater than ourselves intervened. But you can't really allow for intervention because only one person on the ground died. If you want divine intervention I suppose you could say the plane crash was destined to happen, but as is the case when civilians are killed during an air strike on a military target – the one on the ground who was killed was collateral damage. And that thought can make you cry.

The point is, every life has value, and every death should have its sorrow- maybe not its explanation, but certainly its sorrow.

So here we are in little Buffalo at the center of the world's news, and it was only some freezing rain that did it – not three feet of snow.

Another instance of death is in the news - the 38-year-old Italian woman who had been in a coma for 17 years was removed from life support. The Prime Minister of Italia calls her death murder. Remember when Terry Schivo was allowed to die after years in a vegetative state, and even the Pope tried to intervene because he said there was hope. And then the autopsy was performed, and the results showed that Terry had been dead a long time – only machines kept the air pumping in and out of her lungs. Her heart wanted to stop – but sentiment wouldn't let it.

And of course there are those who are old and tired and, sometimes, in pain and they want to go to sleep and so they stop eating as my great grandmother did when she was 98.

There are a number of things worse than death. Still when it happens we cry.

There is a wonderful Jewish story from the Talmud about the exodus. The waters have been parted and Israelites have gotten to the other shore, and as the Egyptians are crossing, the water engulfs them and they drown. God was looking down on the scene surrounded by his heavenly hosts. As the Egyptians were dying there was much cheering in heaven, but in the midst of the cheers one of the angels looked up at God and saw a tear in his eye.

When he asked God, “Why?” God said, “Remember, even the Egyptians are my children!”

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany - February 8, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang - Sermon for Parkside Lutheran Church

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. Amen.

The late Edward Kirsten Perry, former bishop of the Upstate New York Synod and former pastor here at Parkside once said that the role of the pastor could be likened to the role of the shepherd, which also was two-fold. He said the role of the shepherd was to coddle the baby lambs in his arms and kick the rams in the behind.

The prophet Isaiah was such a shepherd/prophet. The 66 chapters of the book of Isaiah covers a significant period in the history of Israel, dating from 740 B.C. well into that period of history known as the Babylonian exile, which most scholars place in the late 6 th century B.C. and corresponding to the fall of Babylon and the rise of the Persian empire under Cyrus.

In the first part of the book, Isaiah is preoccupied with warning the Israelites what fate will befall them if they abandon their faith in God and chase after other gods, namely the gods of the Egyptians and the Assyrians, who in 740 BC were gathering a campaign to conquer most of the middle east. They did and in 721 BC destroyed what we now call the entire northern kingdom of Israel, leaving only the southern kingdom of Judah and with it its capital city Jerusalem, to survive.

The second half of the book of Isaiah takes place clearly 150 years later, when the Babylonian empire, which replaced the Assyrian empire as the seat of power in the Middle East, was on the decline and the Persian Empire was on the rise. The second half of the book deals with a displaced Israel, living as it were, under house arrest, in Mesopotamia, far from home. You may have heard the term, the Babylonian captivity.

In the book that bears his name one finds examples of both of these roles of the prophet/shepherd, passages of extraordinary beauty that offer words of encouragement and hope and passages of harsh reprimand.

When as a nation, Israel was contemplating resisting the Assyrian empire and allying itself with Egypt in a last ditch attempt to save itself, Isaiah was ruthless in his attack and warning.

But when Israel was captive and living in exile, devoid of hope, the prophet writes in such a loving and caring way that it's hard to believe it comes from the same book, no less the same author. Most scholars agree therefore, that we are in fact dealing with two different authors if not two different schools of writing within the same book. Some have even gone so far as to call Chapters 1-39 First Isaiah, with chapters 40-55 comprising second Isaiah and finally, chapters 56-66 making up third Isaiah, a section that returns to the chastisement motif, this time directed toward the Jews who returned to Jerusalem after the Persians allowed them to go home from Babylon.

The section we have before us this morning as our first reading for the day comes from this second Isaiah section that attempts to offer comfort and solace and hope to the exiled community under the Babylonian oppressors. It is filled with imagery of hope and makes constant reference to the nearness of God, at a time when the Israelites felt furthest from his presence.

Remember that ever since King David unified worship in Jerusalem and Solomon built his magnificent temple, Jews saw the temple in Jerusalem as the focal point of their religion if not personal piety.

When the Babylonians destroyed the southern kingdom of Judah they leveled the magnificent temple of Solomon and so the people were not only displaced and exiled, but exiled with the knowledge that home and the temple were no longer there, and consequently, felt that God had abandoned them and they Him.

With this context in mind, hear the words of second Isaiah again; you may want to read along:

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
22 It is he who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to live in;
23 who brings princes to naught,
and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing.
24 Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown,
scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth,
when he blows upon them, and they wither,
and the tempest carries them off like stubble.

First the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, now the Persians and soon the Greeks and then the Romans

25 To whom then will you compare me,
or who is my equal? says the Holy One.
26 Lift up your eyes on high and see:
Who created these?
He who brings out their host and numbers them,
calling them all by name;
because he is great in strength,
mighty in power,
not one is missing.
Even though over the past two centuries you have been scattered like the wind to the four corners of the earth and now return home.
27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
"My way is hidden from the LORD ,
and my right is disregarded by my God"?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and strengthens the powerless.
30 Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

Haven't you had days when you feel like an exile? Haven't you had days when home and the safety and warmth and security of life seem as if they're way off in some far country? I have - and I know you have especially lately.

Well, Isaiah has words for us to hear. He comes in the midst of our despair and heartache to remind us of that which we knew, at one time, but somehow misplaced.

“Have you not known,” he says. “Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning?” The One who sits in the heavens and who created the world and the universe in which we live, who stretched it out like a curtain and spread it out like a tent for us to live in, this same One is the One who knows where you are and whose you are and in the midst of your despair when the world feels either too big for us to matter in or too little for us and it's closing in on us on all sides and there's no place to go to get away from it, reminds us that even these hard times, are temporary. Like the tyrant rulers who come and go, so this too will pass and in spite of what you have come to think, you will still be the one who I know and whom I call by name and I will rescue and restore you, because God does not faint or grow weary. He gives power to the faint and strengthens the powerless.

To such as these, Isaiah says,

“ 30 Even youths will faint and be weary,
and the young will fall exhausted;
31 but those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.”

You know, in today's gospel reading, some may find it perplexing to hear of Jesus running away and hiding from the crowds who were gathering around him to be healed. In today's gospel when the disciples come looking for him in the morning after he healed Peter's mother-in-law, yes the first Pope was married, Jesus says to them, why don't we go somewhere else, let's go to the neighboring towns because they haven't heard the message I've come to give them.

At first reading it seems odd that just as his reputation for healing and performing miracles seems to be reaching its peak, Jesus says, “Let's move on.” Well, if I could be so bold as to suggest why I think he did that. I think Jesus did this on this occasion and on many occasions as Scripture tells us, (recall how many times he heals someone and then tells the one healed or those who witnessed the healing, to say nothing to anyone.)I think Jesus did this because he knew that more important than his miracles was his message. More important than any healing he might effect, was the message he had to proclaim about God and the relationship God wants to have with us.

Jesus knew that if he healed someone, they'd be grateful and grateful for a time, until they fell ill again, or worse and there they'd be, back knocking on his door, asking for the latest elixir or the next miracle. But what he wanted to give them, and us, was something more than that, something more than vain and temporary hope. He wanted to give them, and us, that hope which would endure beyond the next illness, if not through it, beyond the next test, the next hardship, and ultimately, beyond the next death.

When I'm sick, I wish to be healed, when I hear that someone else is ill, I wish them to be cured, and I pray for healing, with all my heart. And sometimes healing comes, and sometimes it does not. What I need Jesus for, what I need God for, is not to be my miracle worker, as much as I need Him to be my hope, my ultimate hope, the hope that will sustain me through every illness, through all my life, and then, beyond the life that I know. I can live with almost anything, so can you, I can endure most any hardship, so can you, but I cannot live without hope. The hope that comes from the knowledge that no matter what befalls me, God will be there, to lift me up and keep me. It is that hope that Jesus came to give, it is that hope of which Isaiah spoke of in times of ultimate despair, and it is that hope to which I commend your faith today.

For those who wait for the LORD , they shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.”

Amen.

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany - Religion and Science Sunday - February 8, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

THE CREATION CONTROVERSY

As most of you know, this is the 200 th anniversary of Charles Darwin who was born on February 12, 1809 – the same day that Lincoln was born! This year is also the 150 th anniversary of the publishing of Darwin's infamous book, The Origin of Species . His brilliant scientific work caused quite a stir in its day, and the pot has continued to bubble up.

For instance, a school board in Texas has recently been struggling with the content of their science books and the teaching evolution. A conservative group wants to offer a religious alternative to evolution. So far level heads have prevailed. The case has broad implications because Texas uses so many textbooks that if this distortion of science and religion were used in their books the textbook publishers would have to print the same material in all books.

A few years ago, Kansas was at it again – God or science? Kansas was debating the “origin of species”. One would have thought that this was a moot topic, but not so in Kansas. The concern – as expressed by the head of the state's education department – was that children would be corrupted in science courses if they were exposed to the scientific theory of evolution.

My first reaction to this ongoing debate is amazement because I was taught the theory of evolution in high school, and I went to church, and I was confirmed, and I went to college, and I went to seminary (where one can ask really tough questions about the faith) – and I never sensed a conflict between what I had been taught in high school science classes, and what the Bible taught me about God's people.

Still, a lot of folks get really bent out of shape when the question of evolution surfaces. It is as though God's existence depended upon their disproving the theory of evolution. Perhaps the reason for this comes from the fact that people get science and religion mixed up.

The anthropologist Malinowsky wrote a book some years ago entitled, MAGIC SCIENCE AND RELIGION . He pointed out that most people think religion and magic are linked up when, in fact, religion is separate from both, and it is science and magic that are connected. His observations are based on his studies of the Trobriand Islanders. His research revealed that science was common to all civilizations, no matter how primitive they were. For instance, a culture uses science to make things work. Even the uneducated Islanders whom he studied knew enough about physics to build houses that withstood hurricanes. They could build boats to take them fishing. They knew enough about agriculture to plant and fertilize the yams that they raised for food. They even knew that a certain root thrown into ponds would stun the fish and cause them to rise to the surface. But, when they go into deep water to fish they encounter a lot of unknowns and so they use magic to create the “good luck” they need to avoid storms and to have a good catch.

Religion, on the other hand, was employed in the patterning of life. Rituals were used for life transitions such as births, puberty, marriage and death.

Now it's easy to see how people can slip from science into magic, and think that they are employing religion. For example, you look at the weather charts, test the soil for fertility, buy the best seeds and plant your crop. If you also offer a prayer for a good crop you have crossed the line between magic and religion. In effect, you want to have a good magical formula to make the crops grow.

Some religions actually have rituals related to fertility in which they do unmentionable things in the fields in spring in order to assure fertility. In America we confine our spring fertility rites to fraternity houses.

The point is, religion should not be used to explain science. Religion is what you use to explain the meaning of life. Religion is what you draw on to give substance to the creation we experience and the love that we share. Religion is not a formula to make things work. Religion is what our heads use to get beyond ourselves so we can contemplate the great mysteries of life.

When religion is used to replace science, it is a vestige of wanting to use magic to get things to come out the way we want them to. We do this when we think we have lost control of our destiny. And when that happens – as seems to have been the case in Kansas – then science and religion are both distorted.

Now, saying this does not mean that a person of faith does not believe in God as the creator. Even the Roman Catholic Church's official position is that evolution is obviously the best way of explaining how species have changed over the thousands of years that there has been life on earth. In 1996, Pope John-Paul II proclaimed that there was no essential conflict between Darwin's theory and Catholicism.

Furthermore the best minds in the scientific world have stood in amazement at the complexity and wonder of creation. You can't look at your garden in the spring or your child in your arms and not be moved to ecstasy.

Those who are upset about the teaching evolution in science classes seem to think that to do so denies biblical authority. They seem to be ignorant of the fact that there are two stories of creation in Genesis, and they even use two different names for God. In the first chapter God creates everything first and then human beings. The text reads; Let us make humankind in our image… So God created human kind in his image, in the image of God he created them, male and female he created them. (1:27)

So here we have male and female created at the same time – not Adam first and then Eve as they are in chapter two. And, they are in God's image, which makes God both male and female. And if you had any doubts about the godhead being both male and female, a new drug has been announced that claims to cure both menopause and prostate cancer! Now if that isn't enough to upset the apple cart of the biblical literalist, I don't know what is.

And speaking of apples: an older man in my congregation at Parkside once told me, You know pastor, it wasn't the apple on the tree that caused all the problems in the world – it was the “pair” on the ground.

Now, with the biblical texts in perspective, what should we do when we teach our faith traditions to our children? First, it is important that we do not confuse science and religion in the public schools! To do so helps neither, and it distorts both.

However, this does not mean that there isn't a place in the public school to teach about religion. In fact, it is not inappropriate to teach the content of the Bible and – especially these days – the Quran.

I've only been quoted in the New York Times once. It was when I presented a paper in Rochester on the decision of the Supreme Court that there should be no prayers in the public schools. In that same decision the Court made a point that is almost universally over looked. It said that it WAS appropriate to teach about religion; in fact it was important to do that because you cannot understand much of literature or history without knowledge of traditional religious texts and traditions. You can't possible understand John Milton's poetry without knowing his religious references. You cannot understand the Middle East without knowledge of the role Mohamed played in bringing the warring Arab tribes together through a faith based in part on Jewish and Christian scripture.

Another reason to teach religion is so that you can recognize its distortions. Listen to some of the TV preachers and you will see what I mean. One very popular young man, who preaches to thousands in his very big auditorium, told his congregation about a man who came to him and said he wanted to buy a very nice car, but something kept nagging at him about doing it. He talked to the pastor a few weeks later and said that he was still interested in the car, but something was keeping him from going ahead with it. A month later he came to the pastor with a big smile said that the car had just gone on sale for $6,000 dollars less and he was certain that God had been guiding him.

This distortion was put into an amusing verse 150 years ago by Henry Hoyt in which –given the current world economic situation - he seems to have been prophetic:

Should all the banks of Europe crash,
The bank of England smash,
Bring all your notes to Zion's bank,
You're sure to get your cash.

The reality is we don't know enough religion. Jonathan Swift summed it up well when he wrote: We have enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.

And of course, in the end, God is mysterious and wonderful. And if you doubt the mystery – try to explain the Trinity. And, if you doubt the wonder – look at your child.

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany - February 1, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Third Sunday after Epiphany - January 25, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

The Feast of St. John - 2nd Sunday after Epiphany - January 18, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

The Baptism of Our Lord – 3rd Sunday after Christmas - January 11, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

The Feast of the Epiphany - 2nd Sunday after Christmas - January 4, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

The First Sunday after Christmas - December 28, 2008
The Rev. John A. Buerk

Christmas Eve - December 24, 2008
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Fourth Sunday of Advent - December 21, 2008
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Third Sunday of Advent - December 14, 2008
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Second Sunday of Advent - December 7, 2008
Pastor John A. Buerk

First Sunday of Advent - November 30, 2008
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Christ the King Sunday - November 23, 2008
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

All Saints' Sunday - November 2, 2008
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

20th Sunday after Pentecost - September 28, 2008
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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