Sunday Sermons

First picture the Mediterranean Sea, as a large oval oriented the same way the trademark oval is that marks every Ford automobile. Now that you have the orientation correct, go to the bottom right hand side of the oval there you will find the Sinai peninsula, with Egypt to the left and at the bottom of the right hand side of that oval and up, modern day Jordan and Israel. Picture now, if you're still with me, the strip of land that borders the right hand side of that oval. Turkey, would be at the top right hand side of the oval. But directly in the middle of the oval is the portion of land now known as Syria, but then known then as the land of the Arameans. Damascus was the capital city, as it is today.

The kingdom of Aram, of which you heard in our first lesson from 2 Kings, was the land of the Arameans (which is where Abraham claimed his ancestry). These northern Palestinians, weer always at odds with the Israelites, fighting over the same piece of land for hundreds of years. The kingdoms of Aram vacillated in size and power, reaching their height of power just after the time of King David, which is generally agreed upon to be around 1000 BC. During the next 250 years, depending on who was the king, Aram, competed with northern Israel for rights to the land and water access. By the late 700's Aram was gone, having been destroyed by the Assyrian army of Tiglath pileser III.

Our first reading tells the story of Naaman, the commander of the army of Aram and his encounter with the Israelite prophet, Elisha, the northern kingdom prophet who was the successor to the great prophet, Elijah. He lived and prophesied in the middle 8 th century BC.

As the biblical story goes, Naaman, the equivalentof General Patreaus, was a man of substantial importance and rank. He also suffered from leprosy. On one of the Aramean raids into northern Israel, a young girl was taken as a spoil of war, and became the servant of Naaman and his wife.

In conversation with her mistress, the slave girl gave testimony to the fact that in Israel, a great prophet, Elisha by name, has been known to be able to cure leprosy.

Unfortunately in your reading, a good portion of what happened next was left out, so I thought you might like to hear, as Paul Harvey famously said, the rest of the story.

“So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel." He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy."

When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me." But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel." So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.

Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean." But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.

But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean'?" So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean. Then he returned to the man of God, he and all his company; he came and stood before him and said, "Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”

The reason why this story made it into the bible in the first place was because Isrealites wrote the bible and they wanted to show the Arameans, and subsequently anyone else reading the story, that THEIR God was the God to worship, that their God was the all powerful God and that their God, was so loving and gracious, that their God would even heal an Aramean, and an arrogant one to boot.

The text tells the story. And isn't it true to human nature? This Naaman, was a powerful man, we would call him in contemporary times, a master of the universe, you know the type. Well, this master of the universe, winds up with leprosy, one of the nastier, stigma attached diseases of his day. And he hears through his wife's servant girl, that there is a man in Israel who can cure him.

So he goes. But he doesn't slip quietly into the night, he doesn't grab his own horse and a few provisions for the journey and head out alone. No, the author tells us that he brought with him horses and chariots, ten talents of silver, the equivalent of 100 years of earnings for the average day laborer; 6000 shekels of gold, or around 150 pounds (which, adjusting for inflation, in today's dollars, at 1200 an ounce would be about 2 million dollars) and ten changes of clothes, just in case.

This is what he arrives at Elisha's house with, not to mention a healthy dose of ego and attitude.

But when he gets there, Elisha doesn't even come out of the house to speak with him, but through a servant, tells him to go wash in the River Jordan.

Well, you don't tell Arnold Schwarzenegger to wait by the door, you don't seat Queen Elizabeth by the bathroom door in a restaurant, calls if the Pope called to talk with you on the phone, you wouldn't leave him on hold. Just so, when the commander of the armies of Aram comes to your house, with chariots rumbling and armor shining and swords a flashin', you don't send your assistant out to tell him that if he wants to be healed to go wash up in the local tributary.

That subtle nuance wasn't lost on his highness either and he says, “What, are you kidding me? I come here to see the great prophet, he snubs me and tells me to go wash up? I didn't need to come here for that. The rivers in Egypt are far better and cleaner and clearer than this muddy stream…and he proceeds in anger to leave.

But his closest servants, the ones who take care of his personal needs and his family are bold enough to speak and they say, “Father, don't let your ego get in the way of your healing. If the prophet had come out in his finest regalia, with assistants and servants in tow, and had the trumpets blow and laid hands on you and uttered numerous incantations and then told you to go and wash in the river, would you have gone then? Would that have been fitting for a man of your stature? If so, the result would be the same. If what healing demands is that you do what the prophet commands and go and wash and be made clean, why don't you just go?

The story tells the rest. He is healed and confesses the God of Israel to be the only God of us all.

• It's a great story and what makes it a great story is that it engages us and gets us to buy into it and somewhere along the line, it dawns on us, that we have a lot more in common with those in the story than we first thought. Who among us has not had the thought that we weren't being treated the way we thought we should. Afterall,

• we paid enough for this hotel room,

• after all, this dinner is costing us a pretty penny,

• after all, this is a service based economy,

• all things considered, I am still the pastor….I am the teacher…I am the boss….the adult….the owner….the one in charge….the oldest person here….the richest person here…the smartest person here….

Sometimes, that's how we stand before God. We might not be as bold as Naaman was, but there are lots of times our arrogance gets in the way of approaching God as we should. Our founding father, Brother Martin Luther said it best when he said, that regarding the church and our position before God, “We are all mere beggars telling other beggars where to find bread.” History records that these were also the last words he spoke before dying.

Sin, as you know, is defined as anything that separates us from the love of God. Love of self, that is selfishness, not self-care is often the first on the list. It therefore has to be the first thing to go if we're going to open ourselves up to the possibilities that God lays before us,

• the possibility of truly loving another person,

• the possibility of truly accepting someone else's love,

• the possibility of forgiveness, given and received,

• the possibility of healing that grows out of forgiveness, for oneself as well as for others,

• the possibility of seeing the world and others as God sees them, as universally worthy, universally equal, and universally loved and therefore, loveable.

In order to do that, sometimes you have to leave your chariots home, your possessions aside, come down off the high horse you rode in on, and accept God's simple command go and wash that all off, thereby finding your own of humility and therein find true healing for your soul.

Amen.

The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost - October 3, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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

At first glance, the lessons for today seem disparate and unconnected. I hate when that happens.

The first lesson from Habbakuk, contains a plea, spoken to God, on behalf of his people by the temple prophet of the same name, Habbakuk. Habbakuk was active around the year 600 B.C. the time in ancient biblical history just before the downfall of Jerusalem in 587 BC. That happened at the hand of the Babylonians, the emerging empire that replaced the Assyrian Empire that wiped out northern Israel, 150 years before.

If the Assyrians were merciless in their conquest of Northern Israel, the Babylonians were brutal in the complete and utter devastation of the southern kingdom of Judah and its capital city Jerusalem. Their destruction was apocalyptic and the murders and assassinations unequalled in ancient history. And as if that weren't enough, they took hold of the entire population and subsequently deported anyone who held any position of authority or leadership, and all those who possessed wealth or property. It was an effective insurance policy against future groundswell or rebellion. Imagine if we did that today. Imagine if we relocated all those who had any common sense and any real notion about how to lead and govern. The only ones left would be incumbent politicians and Lindsay Lohan. That was the situation Habbakkuk warned against in his prophecy a scant 15 years before the invasion. He saw it coming, not necessarily because he foresaw the rise of Babylon, but because he predicted the downfall of Judah, based on their apotasy and neglect of God's word.

In complete contrast to that we read a section from St. Paul's second letter to Timothy. The section before us is a wonderful and very personal portion of the letter Paul wrote to Timothy and his family in which Paul prays for confidence and for the steadfastness of the faithful community and is a beautifully written letter, one that I believe reveals Paul's true compassion and love for those in the communities he founded.

And then we come to the gospel reading from Luke, which at first glance has nothing to do with the lessons that preceded it. The gospel comes from Luke, the 17th chapter, but virtually every scholar and researcher agrees that this section in Luke's gospel is not a cohesive section but rather a compilation of all sorts of sayings from Jesus, placed together and intended to be read as a sort of commissioning piece for apostles and for all Christian leaders and teachers. What's more, the gospel lesson was truncated and separated from the part of Luke's 17 th chapter that we know by heart, namely the prohibition about leading children away from God, “for it would be better if a milestone were hung around that person's neck and they be thrown into the sea than to lead one of these little ones to sin.”

And so, it wasn't an easy thing to try to tie them all together, but here goes.

If you reread the first lesson carefully, you will hear the prophet complaining to God, in much the same way as we might complaint to God when we witness things in our world or our lives that go awry. He writes, “O Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not listen? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save. I look around and what do I see, destruction and violence, war and famine, the just being punished and the wrongdoer let go. And those on the side of righteousness and good, are often overwhelmed by those who are not. More money is spent on prisons than schools and more money given to prisoners than students. 25% of the US population drops out of school and those incarcerated get free tuition for their law degree and have nicer gym equipment than Narden or Canisius.

What will I do, the prophet asks?

And in his despair, he decides that the best course of action is to sit and wait. I will stand at my watch post and station myself on the rampart and I will keep watch to see what HE will say and do, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.

“I put it in your hands, Lord, now it's up to you.”

And the response comes, but it's not what he expected. Where he waited for God to supply the answer, God told him he was the answer. He said, “You know the vision, write it down, take your mission statement and write it down poster size, so that even the person driving by Main Street at 40 miles on a hour can read it, recall what it is that YOU are supposed to do and after writing it down to remind yourself what a faithful person is supposed to be doing, get to it. The righteous live by their faith.

The apostles came to Jesus.

• They had seen what remarkable things he could do,

• they marveled at his ability to unwrap the holy scriptures,

• they stood in awe at his healing power,

• they stood with gaping jaws when 16 baskets of leftovers came back after they gave out only 5 loaves of bread and two fish;

• they watch a blind man regain his sight, a paralyzed man walk, a dead man come back to life;

• and they wanted in…

Increase OUR faith, they pleaded.

He answered their prayer, but not in a way they expected. He said:

‘If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.”

Faith is a qualitative thing, not a quantitative thing. In some respects it's all or nothing, either you have faith or you do not. It's like being pregnant, you can't be a little pregnant. SO you can't increase your faith. You're either faithful or you're not.

In a way, what he was saying is that you have all the faith you need. You have all the faith you need to do great things. You have all the faith you need to preach the word with power, all the faith you need to feed the hungry, all the faith you need to bring about healing, all the faith you need to do what Jesus did.

• You might not be able to produce 16 baskets of food from 5 loaves of bread, but you can share your abundance with one other person.

• You may not be able to bring someone back from the dead, but you might be able to bring life back to the person who feels like life is not worth living.

• You may not be able to make a blind person see again, but perhaps you can enable a child to see something new or approach a task in a new light. Open a child's eyes up to art or science or math or music.

• You may not be able to gather 4 thousand on a hillside to hear the good news, but you can invite a friend to church, or stand by the person at coffee hour today that's standing alone.

The problem the contemporary disciple faces is not that he or she doesn't have enough faith. The problem the contemporary Christian faces is that in order to be a person of faith, one has to buy the whole package, either you have faith or you do not, either you accept God as Creator, preserver, redeemer, Saviour, or you don't. If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, if you have that faith in God that puts you in your place as His, then you have all you need.

If you have faith, even a mustard seed sized faith, ( they didn't have microscopes back then and so a mustard seed was one of the smallest things you could still see, if you wanted to make a point today you could say if you had faith the size of a nano tube, or a single electron, or a quark, whatever that is, there's nothing you and your God cannot do, no obstacle too large to overcome,

• no pain too great to bear,

• no illness

• no fear

• no hatred

• no task beyond the ability of God and me to handle.

• And now the last part, which is perhaps the hardest to understand. Luke has Jesus say this:

Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table?' Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me, put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink?' Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do say, “We are worthless slaves, we have done only what we ought to have done?”

This is perhaps the hardest section of the pericope to hear, primarily and thankfully because we have come a considerable distance from thinking that slavery is OK. But the point is not to be lost or confused by the anachronistic elements in the parable.

The gospel writer has Jesus saying, “that there exists a relationship between the Creator and the created, between part of the creation and the rest of creation, between the disciple and God. What is it that is expected of us, what is it that we would call our duty, what is it that we ought to have done and ought to do? There is no room for self righteousness here, nor for self congratulation, the disciple, by virtue of her status as a saved, forgiven, redeemed child of God, has a duty to fulfill,

• to preach the gospel,

• to witness to the faith,

• to forgive the repentant,

• to visit the sick,

• the comfort the dying

• to praise and worship God,

• to learn God word and discern from that word, God's will for me and for creation

That's part of the deal. That's part of what it means to be God's. Either you have faith or you don't. If you do, then you have to sign on to what the faithful are expected to do. And like Habbakkuk, you called to do more than sit and watch and complain.

Not enough money for the church to fulfill its mission….give more.

Not enough staff to do the work of the gospel, volunteer.

Not enough outreach into the community, start a committee or better, grab four people, have lunch together and decide to accomplish at least one thing.

Want to be a greener church, volunteer to stick around after coffee hour once a month to wash the real cups the congregation should be using at coffee hour.

Contrary to what contemporary society believes about the Gospel and God and the mission of the Church and the need for the Church to not only feed and nurture me and remind me of the great promises God has made to me and the blessings God has bestowed upon me, but now also needs entertain me and keep my interest and serve my needs and do my bidding and be and do for me what I want it to be and do, Scripture reminds me that there is a part of the covenant and deal I have with God that I am responsible for just by being, and by being God's, that I am called to do.

Just as the master doesn't invite the slave to come and rest and have dinner, just because he worked hard all day, so the Master of us all, doesn't invite us to sit down and pray that someone else get the work done.

Instead, the master says, recall your mission statement as a Christian, which by the way was given to you at your baptism, write it down on poster board in big letters so that even the passer by will be able to read it and know that that's what your about, and then,

Get to work.

Amen.

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 26, 2010
The Rev. John A. Buerk

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The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 19, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 12, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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

Because I don't think he deserves any more attention that he has already garnered, I won't recent to you the entire list of his many offensive statements and beliefs, but suffice it to say that Terry Jones, the self proclaimed leader of the Dove World Church in Gainesville, Florida is a dangerous man.

Mr. Jones has a dubious past. He was a hotel manager for most of his adult career, living in Germany where he also gathered a modest band of followers into a small church that was known for it's anti-Semitic and anti-Islamic doctrines. He was asked to leave in 2008, which is when he arrived in Florida. There he gathered another small group of followers and built the 12,000 sq ft Dove World Church. According to reports in the Washington Post, the church, its leader and congregation were known for their anti-Islamic protests, its anti-Semitic policies, not the least of which was a series of videos put out by Jones fashioned after Mel Gibson's Braveheart movie that railed against the Jews. He campaigned against the mayor of Gainesville in the most recent election criticizing him because the mayor was gay.

His congregation lives by a rule book written by Jones that calls for the church's members to separate themselves from their families, prohibits even telephone conversations, provides lists of approved books and movies, demands celibacy for the unmarried, and strict guidelines for those who are married, and of course, complete obedience to Terry Jones. Members of his church and Mr. Terry carry concealed weapons and the gatherings of the congregation are closely guarded.

The church lost its tax exempt status recently because Mr. Jones was running an antique and used furniture business out of the church, a business that he staffed with church members, who served without pay. He is estranged from his own wife and daughter, who still reside in Germany.

He graduated from Cape Girardeau High School in 1969 where he was a classmate of Rush Limbaugh. I couldn't find any evidence of his attending seminary, or college for that matter, and no single church-wide body has stepped forward to claim him as their own.

As I write this sermon, I am still waiting to hear how he behaved throughout the day yesterday, the 9 th anniversary of the tragedy of September 11, but I did see that he travelled to New York City for the memorial service and that he was being closely guarded and watched. Thankfully, he suspended the Koran burning demonstration that sparked the whole business, though he was quick to say that should the meetings he tentatively arranged with the Imam of the Islamic center that is embroiled in the World Trade Center controversy, he would be quick to schedule it again, despite pressure from nearly everyone else.

To say that this is a delicate issue is the understatement of the year, and the repercussions from it rearing its head at this time remain to be seen. At its core, rest the principle of free speech and all that the First Amended guarantees. Freedom to assemble, to worship freely and unhindered or without harassment, the right to bear arms, the right to your own opinion. These hot button issues are complicated by the fact that we have been at war with, or are at war with predominantly Muslim nations and the radical Islamic factions that have sponsored a majority of the terrorist attacks around the world would have you believe that they speak for everyone.

Mr. Jones, as insignificant a person as he is, has marshaled his fifteen minutes of fame into a global conundrum, and regrettably, has drawn those who sit at the extremes in our own country, into the light. They don't deserve to be there, because the innocent and the under-informed, the vulnerable and impressionable ones in our society might confuse notoriety with right, and visibility with value. Mr. Jones does have the right to free speech, that's what makes this country great, but in using his right he has exposed himself as a bigot and a racist and as far from a man of God as I think you can get, and that's my opinion. That is also the reason I refuse to use the title the media has used in referring to him. He is not a pastor, and referring to him as one, insults those who are and brings shame on the profession.

If you read the nuances to the Pharisees' and the scribes' comments to Jesus in this morning's gospel reading, you will see that in a similar vein, at least in terms of human nature, certainly not with regard to person, we're talking about the same thing. Through his knowledge of the Scriptures, on account of his mastery of sacred texts, and as a result of his skillful interpretation and ability to apply these ancient words to his contemporary setting and hearers, Jesus earned the title and was referred to as “Rabbi,” the Jewish word for Teacher, but not just ordinary teacher, but great teacher, revered teacher, which is where the word Rabbi finds its roots in Hebrew.

But he didn't act like the rabbis of which the Pharisees and scribes knew. Instead of surrounding himself with other learned men, instead of spending day and night in the safety, security and comfort of the temple and the great places of the learned, instead of availing himself of the privileges that came with the title, privileges in terms of money and food and power, not to mention, position and prestige and the opportunities they present, Jesus taught openly, on the hillsides and mountainsides, in fishing villages to people who fished, who cleaned fish, who mended nets, who collected money for the Romans, or served them. So they said, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”

The religious elite of Jesus day, those whom Luke mentioned, felt as if Jesus wasn't living up to the term Rabbi. By associating with the lower echelon of society, those who had jobs that a majority of people looked down on, like tax collectors, and prostitutes, people whose jobs rendered them ritually unclean, like morticians, and grave diggers, anyone who dealt with death, or sewage or the chronically ill, they thought Jesus was bringing shame on the title of Rabbi.

So Jesus tells them a parable, actually two, one about a lost sheep and another about a single lost coin.

Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."

When we read these stories, we tend to focus on the story and on the shepherd and on the women. But as you know, parables have only one focus and in this instance, the focus is on God. God is like the shepherd who goes after the lost sheep, God is like the woman who, though she has ten coins, goes after the single one she has lost.

And we're quick to identify the lost sheep with someone else. We're quick to identify the lost coin with the tax collector and the prostitute and the quote, unquote “sinners.” We're quick to do our cataloging and our assessments, to take our first impression skills and pidgeon-hole everyone and anyone. But here's the ironic twist to the story, the lost sheep, the lost coin, is not someone else…it's you.

In the text, Jesus uses the word repent. Repentance is not so much an act as it is a state of mind. Repentance is not something you do, it's something you come to – namely the realization that you are the one God is looking for. I am the lost one, not lost in the sense of not knowing where I am, but lost in the sense that I have more in common with those I categorize, with those I catalog, with those I demonize, with those I separate myself from, with those I claim as different, than I think. I've lost my common humanity, I've lost my sense of created-ness, I've lost my sense of being connected to everyone else, perhaps not on doctrine and dogma, but certainly through ancestry, for we are all God's. And the sooner we come to our senses and find our way back to that place, the better.

The text we read from this morning, unfortunately changed the interpretation of the original language. Where we read, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous person who need no repentance.” The better reading is: “There will be more joy in heaven over the one who repents than over the 99 who think they have no need of repentance.”

We all do, for we are all that lost coin, that lost sheep. That's the bad news.

The good news is, that God is the one who keeps searching for us, no matter what.

Amen.

The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost - June 27, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - June 20, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Third Sunday after Pentecost - June 13, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Second Sunday after Pentecost - June 6, 2010
The Rev. Amy Walter Peterson

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Trinity Sunday - May 30, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Day of Pentecost - Confirmation Sunday - May 23, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Seventh Sunday of Easter - May 16, 2010
The Rev. John A. Buerk

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The Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 9, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Fifth Sunday of Easter - May 2, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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

I went to look up the names of who was responsible and couldn't find them, perhaps because they wanted to remain anonymous so that angry preachers like me wouldn't have access to them to complain.

The current three years lectionary cycle, by that I mean the three year cycle of readings that are put before us each week, is sometimes a thing of beauty while at other times, completely maddening and nonsensical. I know of spoken of this before, but it continues to amaze me how some of these readings are paired together.

You know by now, or at least you should, that the three year cycle of readings has a format; three lessons and an appointed psalm for every Sunday of the liturgical year, which begins, not with January 1, but with the first Sunday in Advent. That First Sunday in Advent is determined by the date of Christmas, so that you get four Sundays in before Christmas Day. With Christmas Day this year falling on a Saturday, that makes for an early First Sunday in Advent four weeks before, this year, Thanksgiving Weekend. We'd have a late First Sunday in Advent in 2012, except for the fact that that year is a Leap year and so we skip Christmas Eve on a Sunday night this time around, which, all things considered, is a good thing for we preachers who know if Christmas Eve falls on a Sunday night, no one comes to church in the morning.

But I digress, back to the exciting world of the three year lectionary.

Just like it makes no sense that hot dogs come in a package of ten, but buns come in a package of eight, so we have four gospels and a three year cycle. So Matthew, Mark and Luke get lots of up front time, but John gets stuffed in wherever they feel like it. Why they didn't come up with a four year cycle eludes me. But then, just like they didn't ask women about how to make a mammogram machine, so they didn't ask preachers to design the lectionary.

So you wind up with what we have, a three year lectionary cycle in a four gospel church, a 156 Sunday cycle with only 151 psalms, and a hymn book where hymn 666 is What Wondrous Love is This? You can't make this stuff up!

And so you get to year C in the three year cycle, the fifth Sunday AFTER Easter, and the text, instead of being taken from St. Luke's gospel, as we have for many of the Sundays in this year's cycle, they stick in one from St. John, only they take it from John's account of what happened back in Holy Week. As a matter of fact, the reading for today is the exact same reading as Maundy Thursday's.

Now, unless you know the lectionary by heart, or have a good memory, the only clue that this has happened, is the first line in today's gospel, “When he had gone out.” Because the rest of the text talks about Jesus, you might be fooled into thinking that the “He” in, “When he had gone out,” was Jesus, but you would be wrong. The “he” in, “When he had gone out,” was Judas and the night, was Thursday, the occasion, the Last Supper.

When he had gone out, when Judas had gone out, when Judas had left the supper to go to the Jewish authorities to tell them where Jesus would be that night so that they could capture him in the Garden of Gethsemane, THAT's the first line you read today….and it changes everything.

It changes everything, because it sets the stage for what Jesus is about to say next.

Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.' I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.

When you loved one goes off to war…

When your child heads off to college…

When your loved one heads off to surgery…

When you leave Grandma's house…

When you leave your best buddy's bedside at the hospital…

When you hang up the phone

What it is it that you want them to hear as the last words you spoke to them, to take in with them, to take off with them, to leave home with, to face surgery, to endure a lonely night, to dispatch them to heaven?

It was Thursday night, the night he was betrayed, after Judas had gone out, he turned to those he loved, he turned to those to whom he would entrust the labor of his life, he turned to the ones who best knew what he lived for, what he would soon die for, he turned to the ones who witnessed the relationship this man had had with God, and he told them the only thing that matters.

He said, no matter what you do, no matter where you go, no matter how great the day promises or delivered, no matter how lousy the prospect of the next day looms or the preceding day revealed, love one another.

When all is said and done, when the disciples closed that chapter on their lives that they lived with Jesus and drifted off back into the lives they had before Jesus, what Jesus hoped was that that their last impression the night before he died would be their first impression the day after the resurrection and that that would influence what they did that day and forever after. After he was dead and gone, what he wanted them to remember and do was love one another.

They were called by this new commandment to have as their single motivator, love. Not profit, not gain, not fame, not wealth, not prestige, not even success or a good name, but love.

“By this,” he said, “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples. If you have love for one another.”

This past week I watched a news report of a woman who was being molested on a city street, and of this good Samaritan who came to her assistance, only to be stabbed himself, who then in pursuit of the assailant, stumbles down the sidewalk after him, only to fall over bleeding and presumably to lose consciousness soon thereafter. The report then goes on to show no less than 20 people walk by him, some even lifting him up or poking him to see if he were still alive, one young person even snaps his picture before walking away, with none taking the time to stop and call 911: and the woman whom he rescued, nowhere to be found. Finally the police do arrive only to find him by this time, dead.

I would like to think that we could do better. I would like to think, that as a species, there was hope for us. In recent months, with the global response to the disasters that occurred in Haiti and Chile, in China and Iceland, I felt pretty good about the human experiment. When I watched this single sad report, I was ashamed for all of us.

It illustrated for me the consequences of living lives where love is not allowed to hold sway, when for some reason or another, we let something stop us from loving one another.

The words with which we began today's conversation weigh heavily, “When he had gone out,” Jesus reminded those who remained, about the need to put love first. For whatever reason, if only for a moment, Judas allowed something else to take a higher priority and to tragic end, for both. Jesus wanted to remind us, that nothing else was more important, and so he told us so.

Amen.

The Fourth Sunday of Easter - April 25, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Third Sunday of Easter - April 18, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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The Second Sunday of Easter - Youth Sunday - April 11, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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Festival Service of Holy Communion - Easter Sunday - April 4, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Click here for the Audio of the Children's Sermon
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Passion of Our Lord - Palm Sunday - March 28, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Fifth Sunday in Lent - March 21, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Fourth Sunday in Lent - March 14, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Click here for the Gospel and Sermon

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

Of the thousands of books that Debby and I own, my favorite by far, is the dictionary. And my favorite of all dictionaries, is the unabridged Oxford Dictionary of the English language. It comes in 26 volumes, but some years ago I was fortunate enough to find and buy a two volume set that contains all the information of the 26 volume set, but in very, very, very small print, so small in fact, that it is virtually illegible without a magnifying glass.

That said, I turned to the dictionary, once again, to look up the word prodigal. The gospel we have before us this morning is one of the most beloved and most well known of all of Jesus parables and therefore one of the most difficult to unwrap because everyone has formed their own opinion about what it means, and that includes me.

And so to look for something new, or something different or some kind of “aha” was my goal for this sermon.

So I went to the dictionary, not because I didn't know what prodigal meant, but because I was certain it meant more than I knew. And I was right.

Of course, I found the words I was looking for and the words I expected to be there: wasteful, squandering, reckless, wanton, profligate, immoderate, improvident, intemperate. These words adequately and accurately describe the son in our story who asks his father for the portion of what would eventually become his inheritance and leaves home.

In my other reading for this sermon, one of those who commented on this text reminded his readers that the action of the younger brother in asking for his inheritance before his father died, did what NO ONE in his day and age would have ever done. For in asking for his share of his father's property, not only would he be putting his own family's wellbeing at risk, but those of the entire village who depended upon the employment and the generosity of the landowner, whose profligate son, just sold his portion to someone who presumably, would not have cared for the land or the tenants who worked it. In our day, it would be as if the largest landowner in beautiful downtown East Aurora, or quaint Orchard Park, gave a third of his property to his son who in turn, promptly sold it to Walmart so that they could build a super Super Wally where the town square once stood. So, in many ways, the son was not the only prodigal one in this story, so too the father, who recklessly gave his sons their inheritance before its time. Note also, that the other brother, the one who later complains, was also given his inheritance early, which changed my opinion of that lad as well.

So Luke tells us that that is what happened. But now out on his own, the younger son blows through his money like a drunken sailor on shore leave and finds himself an indentured servant in a far country, hungry, tired, and angered at himself. The text tells us, “But when he came to himself,” which implies some sort of spiritual awakening, but in reality, I think it was his stomach that spoke to him the loudest, because the text reads, “How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger!'

I don't like this kid at all, which is why I can't even give him the benefit of the doubt when the text tells us that he has to “practice” the speech he's going to give to his father, “Father I have sinned against heaven and before you I am no longer worthy to be treated as your son, treat me as one of your hired hands (who still have food to eat and to spare…I think he's only thinking of his stomach, like I said I don't like this kid much.)

So he heads off toward home, and as soon as he comes within eyesight of home, his father spots him, and here is where the true purpose of the parable comes forth, “But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion and ran to him, and puts his arms around him,” and as the King James Version so lovingly portrays, “falls on his neck, kissing him.”

There's the difference between the father in this story and me. I think if my errant child, who just blew a third of my estate on questionable good and services, came crawling home, I suspect there'd be a whole lot more staring and talking and a whole lot less running and hugging.

Which is where the other half of the definition comes into play. I told you before, not only can the son be called prodigal, but so also the father. The son is reckless, profligate, squandering, excessive wanton, and so is the father, especially when he agrees to give his estate away, but here is where the other definition of prodigal comes into play. The OED also defines prodigal with these words: extravagant, lavish, bountiful, unstinting, unsparing. The story talks about the reckless son, but in the end it is a story about an extravagant Father, whose love knows no bounds. His is a lavish, bountiful, unsparing love, that he lavishes on BOTH his children.

I said before I didn't like the young boy, but in a way, I like the elder boy even less. You'll recall, he accepted his inheritance early too, and never said a word. At least he stayed home to help, but his words to his Father are just as disrespectful if not worse, because they reveal how he truly feels, “Listen,” I can just imagine starting off a conversation to my father like that, “Listen here, Daddy O.” it wouldn't have gone well. “Listen,” he says, “I have been your slave all these years, and not once have you thanked me any gesture whatsoever, I didn't expect the fatted calf, but it would have been nice if when my friends came around, you threw me a bone from time to time. But yet when this son of yours comes crawling back with his tail between his legs, you treat him like the best things since sliced bread.”

Talk about your unresolved anger. But here again, the story isn't about the two boys, it's about the Father. And once again, we're given a glimpse of what it means to be prodigal in the good sense. The Father speaks, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life, he was lost, and now is found.”

Like I said, I don't like either boy, and that's the point. The occasion for the parable was because the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling about the fact that Jesus seemed to attract the wrong company, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” It's not right, that an upstanding citizen, no less a learned rabbi, wastes his time and energy on the likes of those.

So Jesus tells the parable.

He tells the parable to illustrate something about God and tells the story in such a way that you can't stand either boy, and yet the Father loves them. And the reason you can't stand either boy, is because there's a little of each in all of us. Our disrespect may not have been so blatant, our selfishness not so obvious, our proclivity to care for ourselves first without consideration for others not as pronounced, but it was there, still is sometimes.

The Pharisees and the scribes were near sighted too. And so the Father has to run to make a point, has to correct the language so that this “son of yours” becomes once again, “your brother,” and puts the best robe on our shoulders, the family signet ring on our hand, opens the vintage Champaign he's been keeping for just such an occasion and allows his most cherished one to be killed so that we might have life and have it abundantly.

That's the kind of Father we have.

Amen.

The Third Sunday in Lent - March 7, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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

When you step into a text like the one we have before us this morning taken from Luke's gospel, you have to be careful about drawing any conclusions about what the author's intent was if you don't look at the text as it appears in its complete context, namely, where does it sit within the whole narrative and what came before it and what follows it.

We see what happens when you don't do this, most clearly and to ill effect, in the political arena of our day. How many times have we been fed a snippet of some opponent's speech from 10 years ago that illustrates how he is out of touch with the contemporary situation. How many political commercials have we been subjected to in election years that take out of context an opponent's words and twist them, or better spin them, so that they appear to say one thing when in fact they may have meant something else entirely?

So it is with the text we have before this morning from St. Luke's gospel. It starts off with an obscure, and some believe, a-historical reference to the accusation that Pontius Pilate, then Roman governor of Judea, in his disdain for those he ruled in Galilee, often had them killed and their blood comingled with the blood of the sacrifices they brought to temple. To make the offense graphically clear, it would be as if Governor Patterson gave the order to have one of you killed out in the parking lot before worship and then take some of the blood spilled in the incident and have it mixed in with the communion wine.

The second example Jesus refers to is the collapse of the tower by the pool of Siloam. The pool of Siloam was a major water source for the people of Jerusalem. Accordingly, it had to be protected from any outside invasion or potential contamination, as invaders knew that if they poisoned or captured a city's water source, they could easily win any militaristic engagement. So the water source at Siloam was fortified not only with a high wall, by also a high tower, some say 30-40 cubits above the height of the city wall upon which it was constructed. This would put the height of tower some 75 to 100 feet above ground level. Well, according to archaeological evidence, the tower at Siloam was poorly constructed and during its construction, collapsed during the time of Jesus, killing 18 workers. Studies show that the concrete came from New Jersey.

Anyway, after giving these two examples, he adds a parable:

A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?' He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.”

What on earth is all this about?

Well, it's like I said, you have to go back to Luke and see what prompted the story.

If you go back, even 10 verses, you'd see that Jesus was attempting to bring about the awareness that catastrophe was at the doorstep and that the current, and I mean by that, current first century Jewish attitudes toward Rome, would not result in a good ending. If you go back 10 verses, to chapter 12 vs 54, Luke has Jesus saying this, “ When you see a cloud rising in the west, you say at once, ‘A shower is coming' and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat,' and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and sky; but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

Jesus message was not political but it had political implications. Jesus was calling for the Jewish nation to reexamine what it meant to be God's chosen, especially in light of the Roman occupation. Jesus saw the mounting resistance to his movement, the strained relations between Jew and Gentile, the frequent and violent outbreaks of patriotic frenzy, and the growing severity with which these outbreaks were being suppressed and just as in the days of Isaiah, whose warning you read in our first lesson, as the Assyrian threat to Israel mandated a call to repentance, so now the Roman threat to Israel calls for an immediate “turning around” and “change of heart,” if in fact the community was to survive.

If nothing changes, if the way you do business with the world remains the same, if the answer to how you are supposed to live rests

• in focusing your attention on how to stick to the Romans,

• in bickering with me over the finer points of Jewish law,

• in proclaiming yourself the chosen and the privileged

instead of focusing on the issues

• of justice and equality

• on peaceable and productive living

• of charity and generosity

• on acts of mercy and kindness

then you can expect the same ending as those you thought “got what they deserved.”

If nothing changes, if the way we do business with the world remains the same, if what we spend most of our time and energy on:

• Are what celebrity lifestyles are comprised of

• How much more we can pay our professional athletes

• What new pill we can take for yet another disorder be it restless legs, insomnia, fibromyalgia, or simply to keep the hospital gurney from following us around on the golf course

• Or how many more devices we can invent to keep us distracted and to keep us from getting bored, or God forbid from doing something productive like reading, or studying or volunteering or spending time with our families

If, as a nation, we spend more money

• on war than education,

• on rebuilding infrastructure in countries we've had a hand in destroying than on our own bridges and highways, hospitals and schools,

• if we pay more attention to sticking it to the other political party than crafting responsible and sustainable legislation,

• if those we elect to positions of responsibility have time enough to have affairs in South America, keep mistresses while on the campaign trail, have their full time paid aides scalping playoff tickets

• if we continue to allow lobbyists to overrule voters

• if those in our prisons have access to better health care than our veterans, larger libraries than our inner city kids, and better access to the legal system and representation than hard working and legal immigrants

If you expect your children to grow up spiritually sound and ethically motivated, to be generous and kind, concerned for others and be morally grounded and yet don't bring them church or expose them to the tenets of the faith, the literature of the ages, or the persons of history who have shaped it.

If you value the next generation, and allow your government to pay for heated seats in football stadiums owned by millionaires, give incentives to private corporations to build and live tax free in your cities, but yet can't seem to find enough money to keep the public parks open, the beaches clean, the water flowing, the nursing homes solvent and one or two more processing lanes open at the Peace Bridge.

If you come to the fig tree year after year, season after season, expecting it to bear fruit and yet do nothing to bring it about, well, the time will come when it no longer makes sense for it to remain in the garden taking up space.

Jesus has a point.

Amen.

The Second Sunday in Lent - February 28, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Click here for the Gospel and Sermon

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

Our first Thursday evening “Late Night Catechism” was a grand success. Despite the weather, a good number of us gathered for our traditional soup and bread dinner and were treated with four entrees that easily rivaled the finest any restaurant could offer. After dinner we joined our fine choir for a service of evening prayer in the choir chancel, and then adjourned to the Fellowship Room for the first of five in the series we're calling “Late Night Catechism.” There were about forty catechumens that night as we explored that portion of the catechism that deals with the Ten Commandments.

We started off with a commandment puzzle, which I am pleased to report everyone completed and in the proper order with all the commandments spelled out as scripture would have them, and then went on to talk about each of the commandments separately.

I began by reminding those gathered that the commandments were the foundation upon which the Old Testament was built. No doubt you will recall what prompted their issuance: the Hebrew nation, having been freed from slavery under the Egyptian regime and led out into the wilderness by Moses after escaping from the pursuing Egyptian army, which was subsequently destroyed chasing the Israelites into the Red Sea, found itself is disarray and questioning not only its leadership in Moses and Aaron, but in God Himself. Taking all the jewelry they brought with them, some of which they stole from their masters before they left, decided to melt the gold down and cast it into a statue of a local fertility god, in hopes that this god would do a better job of caring for them in the desert than Moses' God did.

Moses, tired of hearing their complaining, tired of hearing them say how good they had it back in Egypt (apparently their memory was short lived)and worried about this idolatry, goes up on the mountain to ask God what to do.

God is quick to remind Moses to remind the people whose short term memory seemed to be a bit impaired, that He had just rescued them from their oppressors and that He had kept His promises, and that now it was time for them to keep theirs.

And so after a time, Moses comes down the mountain with the tablets and reads them to the people.

At first glance they seem to be a list of do's and don'ts, but they are much more than that. The Ten Commandments are the basis of the covenant that God makes with the Israelites. A covenant, as you know is a contract, a deal, an agreement between two parties; some might even say a testament. The Ten Commandments are the cornerstone of the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, the old deal God made with His people. And like modern day covenants, each party in the agreement agrees to certain things.

Last Thursday, I ask those gathered to think on other covenantal agreements to which they were obligated. We spoke of the covenant we are obligated to as citizens, as husband and wife, as lifelong partner. We spoke of the covenant we make with New York when we get our driver's license, of those with our credit card issuer, our mortgage lender, our employer, our landlord, our neighbors and so on. I then returned to the commandments and asked them if the commandments we read and know by heart speak of our do's and don'ts, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, thou shall honor your father and mother, you shall remember the Sabbath Day and so on, but where in the commandments does it state what God promises to do, where is the landlord's portion, where is the creation's lender's obligations.

Which is when one particularly bright student said, “It's right there in the beginning, where it says, I am the Lord you God.” Precisely. We have our end of the bargain, and God's end of the bargain, is to be God. And what is it that a God does? Well, to put it simply, everything else: God creates, God nurtures, God sustains, God redeems. To put it even more succinctly, if in this agreement one of the parties causes the sun to rise and set, the earth to spin on its axis, the stars to remain in their courses, the forces of nature act in order, that certainly wouldn't be me or you, and even though sometimes we act like we are, we know we are not.

I am the Lord your God, states in the briefest and most concise way possible, that it is God who is God and who does what God does, and as a result, or better as a consequence, is justified when God demands what the commandments require. And as I said that night, if you had to weigh who had the more demanding job, once again, it certainly wouldn't be us.

So the commandments are a covenant, in its purest sense, a deal made between two parties, an agreement, a testament.

I tell you all this, first in hopes that you might be persuaded to come to the next Thursday night event but also, to explain our first reading this morning from Genesis.

What's going on there is the same thing, only this time, the covenant is not between God and the people Israel, but God and Abram, and it is a covenant made not only with promises, but also one that is graphically illustrated. God asks Abram to be faithful and be a leader for His people. Abram agrees but turns to God and says that there will be no people to lead if he has no descendants. God promises that his descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens. Abram politely replies he hasn't seen any stars lately. God renews his promise and to seal the deal, tells Abram to go out and collect a young calf, a goat, a ram and some birds. When he does, he proceeds to cut them in half and set them on either side of an imaginary aisle. Shooing the birds of prey away from the fresh road kill, Abram sits and waits for a sign. It comes in the middle of the night when we are told a smoking fire pot and flaming torch pass between the pieces. In many Old Testament stories the presence of God is indicated by smoke and fire. In the Exodus story which we all know so well, what protected the Israelites from the pursuing Egyptians was a pillar by fire at night and a pillar of smoke by day.

In this story, the presence of God symbolized in the smoke and fire, passes through the bisecting animals. What we do now read, but which is typical in this kind of covenantal ceremony, and documented in much literature of this period, are the words that accompanied such a ceremony. As the animals were cut in two, the two parties would pass through the carnage and say to each other as they agreed to the tenets of the agreement, “If either of us breaks this agreement, may what happened to these poor creatures happen to us.” And so, emerging from the gauntlet, the deal was sealed, or “Cut”. You've no doubt heard the phrase “to cut a deal.” Well, it has nothing to do with cards and everything to do with this ceremony, the covenant was cut, as the sacrifice was made and the animals bisected, and the parties walked through, the deal was also cut, the covenant sealed, the agreement secured. And so, our Genesis author reports, “When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the river Euphrates,”

And they've been fighting to keep it for four thousand years.

There are multiple covenants recorded in Scripture. This is the Abrahamic covenant. There is the Noahcic, made with Noah and sealed with the rainbow, the Adamic, and with Adam, the Mosaic made with Moses, the Davidic, made with David, and the one the Old Testament refers to as the “future covenant,” which of course we refer to as the New Testament, the new Covenant, the covenant made between God and the new Adam, Jesus. This new covenant is the one we know, the one that tells us, again, of God's great love for us, made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, and sealed, with his death on the cross on the one side of the aisle and his resurrection on the other. Someday, we too, will walk between them and secure our eternity.

Amen.

The First Sunday in Lent - February 21, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

Click here for the Gospel and Sermon

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Ash Wednesday - February 17, 2010
The Rev. Charles D. Bang

Click here for the Audio of the Sermon

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

If you have read the newsletter or the church bulletin lately, you must know that this Lent, beginning today and continuing each Thursday in Lent, that the theme for this season is built around what we are calling, “Words of Faith.” In our pre-lenten publications, we told you which words we were going to unwrap but did not intentionally tell you what those words meant. In the news release we told you that the words of faith we chose were:

• Dikaisune

• Shuwb

• Logos

• Agape

• Koinonia

and though not listed, today's words,

• Kairos

• and Chronos.

Seven of these words are Greek in origin, one Hebrew. Each week, one of your pastors (and we added Pastor Kattermann, a member of Holy Trinity and partner with us in our ministry at Parkside each week, we will unwrap our chosen word and, hopefully, do an artful job of linking it to this holy season. I leave it to my faithful colleagues to do that down the line and so for today, I will simply tell you what these words translate into”

• Dikaisune is righteousness

• Shuwb is Hebrew for, “to turn back”

• Logos is Greek for, “The Word”

• Agape - a particular kind of love

• Koinonia – fellowship or community

The words I have chosen to start off this season are two, kairos and chronos , both Greek words that have something to do with time, but while they have that in common, they couldn't be more different.

Chronos , from which we derive our words, chronological, chronometer, chronic, anachronism and chronicle, finds it origin in Greek mythology. In pre-Socratic philosophy, Chronos was the personification of time.

We use the word in reference to time as well, but it is used in reference to a certain KIND of time, chronological time. In chronological time, I am 56 ½ years old, well to be truthful in chronological time I am technically in the second half of my 57 th year, because 0-1 counts, ask any parent of a newborn if that first year counts. So we talk about chronological time, linear time, time from then ‘til now, from now ‘til then. This is the time that marches on, this is the time that marks our days, this is the time between sunrises, the time represented by the dash between the two dates on a tombstone. It is specific, it can be measured. Some get paid by the hour, when you bring your car into the dealer, it's $90 per hour and so you ask, “How long will it take?” When your young child, who cannot tell time asks how long until Christmas or until her birthday, you say, “four more sleeps.”

Chronological time is where we live most of our lives. It is the master we serve. From the time we could tell time, until time no longer matters to us, it rules us. When Peter Fonda threw his watch in the gutter and headed out on his motorcycle, those of us who have been slaves to the same master secretly said, “Someday, I'm gonna do that!”

The word, kairos , has to do with time as well, but it is a different kind of time. When little Johnny says to his Mom, “Mom, Mom, Mommy, Mom, mama, can we go now and she says, “In a minute,” she's not talking chronologically. When Jesus says to the lawyer who answers his question, “what is the greatest commandment in the law and he quotes the Shema, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might,” and tells him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God,” he wasn't speaking spatially. When hanging on the cross Jesus speaks to the thief saying, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise,” he wasn't speaking about that afternoon.

We are trapped in chromos and can't see our way out. Like the crazy house of mirrors that keeps bringing us back to the same door that leads back into the same room, we are bound by our addition to time as chronos , as a straight line, as the day after tomorrow, as yesterday, as in now.

Kairos is a different kind of time. Kairos is time in the sense of the right time, the time to do something. Kairos is time in the sense of

• it's time I grew up

• it's time we got engaged

• it's time we got married

• it's time for us to have children

• it's time own our own home

• it's time we got rid of our college furniture

Kairotic time is time in the sense of when Mom says, “In a minute.” What she means is, when I've done what I have to do and when I have my day planned out so I don't forget something important, when the time is right for us to leave, we'll leave.

It's all that, and then some. Kairotic time is not our time, but God's time. And we have trouble with that.

Take Lent for instance, we say it's forty days, a tithe of the year, a time for repentance and prayer, fasting and works of love, and the first thing we do is count the days and say, “Hey, wait a minute, from now to Easter is not forty days, it's 46. It's not a tithe, a tithe would be 36.5 days. We say it's the same amount of time Jesus spent in the wilderness without food and drink and we say, “no one could last that long.”

We hear that it mimics the number of years Moses and the Israelites wandered in the wilderness, and then we read the story and we learn that Moses never makes it into the Promised Land but instead dies on Mt. Nebo and we say, after all that time, it's not fair that he didn't make it, after all, he spent all that time.

We live in the box that time has fashioned for us, that chronos has crafted out of the cycle of our days.

And so we come to Lent, again.

Each year, I try, in my sermons and my writings, to give you a perspective on Lent that you might not have had before. I've told you to stop giving things up and instead, take something worthwhile on. I've told you that Jesus doesn't care if you eat chocolate or not, or that losing the weight we all should lose anyway is not a Lenten discipline and that fish or meat make no difference whatsoever, except of course to the cow or the salmon.

So for this year, I would like to invite you to see Lent as an opportunity for you to enter God's time, for a time. Each day, somewhere in the day, maybe the first thing, perhaps the last, but sometime during the day, stop living chronologically and live kairotically , enter into the place where God is and where there are no set boundaries within which you have to conform. That time could be a time of prayer, or silence. It could be a moment of appreciation and wonder, it could be an extra moment given to a friend or a child or a parent, a moment given without thought of how long it needs to be. And don't confuse this moment with the often touted moment for yourself. This moment is not for yourself, it's for God. It's not the quiet cup of coffee, consumed behind the closed door where you can't hear the children, it's not the evening at the movies or the drive to the waterfront, or the good time had with friends over endless breadsticks and a bottomless tourine of soup. It's not a moment for yourself, but a moment for God, a kairos moment, when you set everything else aside and look for God to fill you, or better, complete you, because without that, we are merely slaves to the to do list of life. In the moments you allow God to become one with you again, there is your redemption, your justification, your sanctification, your resurrection, your new life, your eternal self.

Amen.

Transfiguration Sunday - February 14, 2010
The Rev. John A. Buerk

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LOVE AND BIBLICAL RELEVENCE

Sometimes it isn't easy to get inspired when it's time to preach a sermon. Sometimes the lessons don't make much sense - or they do - but I have difficulty figuring out how to talk about them. And there are times when a topical sermon is appropriate, but nothing interesting or provocative is happening.

But today presents the opposite problem – there are too many things one can preach about. For instance, the first lesson from Isaiah is wonderful. It's about Moses meeting God on the mountain and receiving the two tablets on which the Ten Commandments are written. When he appears to the people, his face is glowing with such brilliance that the people are forced to look away.

Interestingly, early translators of the phrase “glowing countenance” mistakenly translated it as Moses “having horns” – the text is easily confused. Freud, unfortunately, only knew the mistranslation and consequently developed some interesting – if ill founded – theories about Moses and Judaism. The jacket on Freud's book about Moses actually depicts Moses with horns because the cover is a photo of Michelangelo's statue of Moses, which also mistakenly has horns.

And then there is the Gospel lesson that tells the story of the Transfiguration. It's a strange story, and it apparently was a way for the author to connect Jesus with Moses.

And when it comes to current events, we have many questions about the disaster in Haiti and how one interprets natural catastrophes.

But we aren't done yet – today is special because today is Valentine's Day – a day on which we celebrate love. And - in one way or the other - we all do. If you are young you do so in anticipation of it. If you are mature, it is a work in progress. And if you are older, there are all of those great memories. There is something for everyone.

Of course, when you are really young you have a perspective on love and marriage that can be a bit distorted. Here are some quotes from children. Eric, who was six was of the opinion that; Marriage is when you get to keep the girl and don't have to give her back to her parents.

Kelly, who was nine had a thought about how you knew whom to marry – she said: You flip a nickel and heads means you stay with him and tails means you try the next one.

Nine-year-old Carolyn was a bit more analytical: My mother says to look for a man who is kind … that's what I'll do … I'll find somebody who is kinda tall, and kinda handsome.

At what age a person marries is important to some children. Carol, who was, 8, suggests , Eighty-four! Because at that age you don't have to work anymore and you can spend your time with each other.

But, on the other extreme there was Bert who said: Once I'm done with kindergarten I'm going to find me a wife!

Some kids are concerned with how couples get together. Martin suggested that: A couple first goes out together; they tell each other lies and usually that gets them interested enough to go out a second time.

Eight-year-old Craig said: Many daters just eat pork chops and French fries and talk about love.

Some children had suggestions about how to go about getting married. Kristen suggested that: You should just ask the people who read COSMOPOLITAN.

Anita said: It's better for girls to be single but not boys; boys need somebody to clean up after them.

But, eight year old Will just got fed up – he said: It gives me a headache to think about that stuff – I'm just a kid – I don't need that kind of trouble!

Well, that's what kids think about marriage – what about grown-ups and marriage? Valentine's day not-with-standing, love is only part of the picture when it comes to marriage – compatibility is also critical.

A friend of mine told me about going to his doctor just before he was getting married. The doctor said he wanted to point out something very important for a successful marriage. He said a marriage consists of 10% sex and 90% compatibility. He said you can get away with 80% compatibility – even 70%, or 60% compatibility. But, you need all of the 10%!

The bottom line is that marriage needs to be based on friendship. And friendship often depends on common ground. When I was in college – 55 years ago – my sociology professor said that 80% of the couples who got married in the United States lived within 10 blocks of each other.

Half of the kids in my church youth group married within the congregation.

I don't know what those statistics would be today, but I do know that most of the couples I've married in recent years didn't meet each other until they were in their 20's and many even in their 30's.

When a couple grew up within 10 blocks of each other they had a lot in common. They had the same religion, same socio-economic background, same ethnicity – they had extended families with common favorite foods – from pork and sauerkraut, to blintzes, to pigs in the blanket spaghetti and meatballs.

But if you watch television ads today you might think that when couples meet, the kind of beer they drink is their common bond.

Now all this makes for difficulty in marriage. And to add to these issues we have the different ways in which men and women deal with problems like depression.

Elayne Boosler said, When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country.

And there is also the phenomenon of an unprecedented number of women in the work force. It was reported a few weeks ago that for the first time in this country there are more employed women than men. There are more women than men in law school these days and almost an equal number of men and women are in our seminaries. And this makes for a struggle when a married professional couple has children. Gloria Steinmen observed, I have yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career.

So here we are with a diverse and volatile cultural milieu in which young people come together from divergent backgrounds and expect that that their common love of Molson's Golden, or LaBatt's lite will be their bond in marriage. It won't work!

And, believe it or not, the Bible speaks to this situation. The biblical stories about “Adam and Eve”, and “Jesus' temptations”, and “Jesus' redemptive work” are about as relevant as you can get to our human condition. Cultural changes not-with-standing.

One little boy noted that the reason Adam and Eve weren't embarrassed about being naked when they were in the Garden was because they didn't have mirrors. But, we do – and we know what we look like – and most of us know that we don't belong in the Garden of Eden.

And remember the story about Jesus being tempted by the devil at the beginning of his ministry? Jesus had been fasting for forty days and he was hungry. The devil tells him to use his authority to turn the stones into bread. He tells Jesus to jump off a high building and have the angels come and save him so that he can show off his power. The devil takes him to a high mountain and says that if Jesus worships him he can have all of creation as his kingdom.

Temptations that confront us all – from a free lunch – to power over others – to using religion for our own self interest and satisfaction.

Our human condition is not something that the Bible ignores. And neither does our religious tradition. That is why our marriage liturgy reads:

The Lord our God, in his goodness, created us male and female and by the gift of marriage founded human community in a joy that begins now and is brought to perfection in the life to come.

Because of sin, our age-old rebellion, the gladness of marriage can be overcast and the gift of the family can become a burden. But, because God, who established marriage, continues to bless it with his abundant and ever-present support, we can be sustained in our weariness and have our joy restored.

And remember the blessing that follows:

The Lord God, who created our first parents and established them in marriage, establish and sustain you, that you may find delight in each other and grow in holy love until life's end.

Amen.

The Fifth Sunday of Epiphany - February 7, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Fourth Sunday of Epiphany - Janurary 31, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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

In the United States, census data suggests that 70% of the US population are nominal Christians. Of this 70%, 40% claim to attend church at least once per year outside of Christmas, Easter, a wedding or a funeral. Statistics show that less than 25% of that 40% attend worship on a weekly basis. Now, this is neither a financial update sermon nor a stewardship sermon, but those same statistics show that of those who attend church regularly, only 3% tithe.

These statistics are born out in our own congregation. On our statistical report we claim a little over a thousand members. Our average weekly attendance is about 25% of that. Of our 200 giving units, less than 5 are tithers.

Last week, we were talking in our after church meeting about the viability of this congregation and the need for new members and where are they going to come from and all that. After church, I had a chance to talk with President Bauchle and I shared with him two interesting statistics. First, we average about ten visitors per Sunday. Now some of them are true visitors, friends of members, people in town for a weekend or a wedding or accompanying someone to Roswell or one of our other fine hospitals. But some are looking for a church to call home. I suspect there may even be a few folks here today, because they hope to find a new church home. I said to Paul, if we averaged 10 visitors per week and half of them were “church shopping” to use a crass word, and we could show them that this was a loving, caring, exciting church family to be a part of, our membership would double every four years.

The other interesting statistic I shared with Paul, was that if everyone who claims to be a member of this church came on the same Sunday, they wouldn't fit, unless we held three services of worship here in our main sanctuary.

So, I concluded that what we need to do to insure our viability was twofold:

• Be better at welcoming and showing hospitality to our new friends and genuinely welcome them to and include them in our ministry and….

• Do a better job of being a church family and invite those who are already members to become more active in the life of the congregation.

And beyond that, once they're here, they need to have something to do. Mission both precedes and follows evangelism, because there's no sense joining a church that doesn't do anything and so we need look no further, once again, than to the first words Jesus speaks aloud in the Gospel of Matthew, words I eluded to last week. The first words he speaks are taken from the book of Isaiah and lays out the mission, not only for his life but for the life of the church as a whole:

18"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
To proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free.

How you do that and what actions these words motivate, are up to you and are of infinite possibility, but if you're looking for a mission statement, you won't find a better one than this.

Jumping for a moment from church mission to church statistics, I read an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal this past week about the growth of home churches. Of the 30% who claim to believe in God but who don't go to a traditional church each week, the article stated that the home church movement was approaching 6%. Now, we don't really know what that number means….it could mean that that 6% are actually holding worship, with prayer and song and teaching components, but it could include those who claim to hold church at home when in reality, they're just saying “grace” before meals. But the movement is interesting nonetheless.

Critics of the institutional church say that increasing numbers of people are reverting back to the smaller models that characterized the early church, citing a growing dissatisfaction with the larger Church and the issues that typically face larger institutions, among them the cost of maintaining the institution, its facilities, its administration, its bureaucracy, training costs for leaders, health and pension plans and so on. I not here this morning to debate the pros and cons of the institutional church as much as I want to focus on why people are turning to different alternatives, some of which may be good, like home churches and an emphasis on keeping a Christian home and focusing on morality and ethics. But parts of the movement away from the traditional church and traditional forms of spirituality are not so good, perhaps even dangerous.

I've noted an alarming increase in the general population's attraction to the para-normal, to psychic fairs, tarot, vampires, were wolves. Television programming and large screen cinema seem to focus a lot lately on the interaction being the living and the dead. And you have to ask yourself, “Why?”

I think part of the answer lies in the first statistic I gave you, as people wander away from the historical and traditional sources of wisdom that attempted to answer some of these questions in a way that respected both intelligence, reality and science, the vacuum left by this trend gave room for all sorts of a-traditional and a-historical venues, not to mention a proliferation of attention on celebrity lifestyles and preferences, Dr. Phil, Oprah, and the like.

You know what they say, if parents won't talk to their children about drugs and sex, somebody else will and the information they get from those sources may not be exactly the information you want your child to have. So also, with issues of spirituality, morality, ethics, life, death and God.

Human beings are hard wired to be questioning creatures. Even a quick reading of Genesis and how our first ancestors dealt with ambiguity will attest to that fact. And more than questions of which tree should we eat from or not, are the larger questions of “who we are,” and “what is our purpose in life?”

And these questions are only answered if we look at the larger picture, at the whole of creation and at our relationships with one another, and with God. I cannot answer the question, “Who am I?” apart from the question, “Who am I in relationship to you?” And I will not be satisfied with any answer I receive if it doesn't also address the question, “Who am I in relationship to the one who created me?” I cannot accept the proposal that I am an accident of chemical combination, Descartes solved that equation for me, and I cannot believe that creation and therefore, I, have no purpose or goal. I am more than the DNA that makes me up and I can affect change and therefore history.

How do I know then, if what I do with the freedom that my life affords me, is for good and for God?

Well, believe it or not, the answer to that question is the simplest of all, and St. Paul can be credited with giving it to us. In his most famous passage from his first letter to the people of Corinth, who, by the way, were having all kinds of trouble sorting out for themselves how to treat one another and which philosophy and lifestyle to accept, says this,”

I f I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

4 Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5 or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7 It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8 Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9 For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10 but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13 And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.

If you're looking for a mission statement, remember this:

18"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
To proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free.

And if you want to be certain that your motivation comes from God, let whatever you do, be borne first, and last, of love.

Amen.

The Third Sunday of Epiphany - January 24, 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Second Sunday of Epiphany - January 17, 2010
The Rev. John A. Buerk

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GETTING AND GIVING

I once had a conversation with a young, bright Presbyterian minister on the subject of stewardship. I told him that my congregation wanted me to preach a stewardship sermon. The kind of a sermon that I don't really like to preach.

He said that he had to come up with a stewardship sermon as well but he was going to point out to his congregation that he really wasn't especially worried about what they contributed to the church. But as a pastor he was really more worried about they were going to do with the rest of their money – the other ninety per cent or more. He said he knew what was going to happen to the money they gave to the church, but it was the rest of the money people earned that reflected their values.

I realized that he was right. Somehow, what we consider valuable in our lives is not only a reflection of the value place on our soul, but it also reflects what we consider to be of spiritual significance in life. I think that is why poor people, statistically and proportionately, tend to be far more generous with what they have than those who are wealthy.

On Thursday a doctor who was working in Haiti for a non-profit group when the earthquake struck wrote a letter to the New York Times saying how destitute the country was, but that the people still had a generosity and kindliness about them. He said he had just gone to the home of an old woman who needed medical care. When he was leaving she insisted on giving him two grapefruits as a gift – it was all that she could give him.

Values are relative. Some of you will remember that wonderful poem by Shel Silverstein from his children's book, Where the Sidewalk Ends.

My dad gave me a one-dollar bill
‘cause I'm his smartest son,
and I swapped it for two shiny quarters
‘cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters
and traded them to Lou for three dimes.
I guess he didn't know that three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates
and just ‘cause he can't see
he gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
and four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coons
down at the seed-feed store,
and the fool gave me five pennies for them,
and five is more than four!

And then I went and showed my dad,
and he got red in the cheeks
and closed his eyes and shook his head –
too proud of me to speak!

The father knew the value of a dollar, but the boy valued what he had in hand, and he knew that five was more than one. Now of course, we all know that for one dollar you can get one hundred pennies – so many that they won't all fit in one little hand. But, in the end, the father is exasperated, but the little boy is content.

In First Timothy we read:

There is great gain in godliness with constraint; for we brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we cannot take anything out of this world. Those who desire to be rich fall into the temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evil. (6:6.7.9.10)

Please note – the text does not say that money is the root of all evil – but as we know it is the love of money that is the root of an awful lot of evil.

Of late we have seen this in the news all too often. Investors taking advantage of those who trust them - they take their savings, and then they take off with them.

We have seen telemarketers literally robbing people of their money.

We see television evangelists living lives of luxury – living in mansions – while people living on a pittance send in their few dollars every week.

Or people supporting the likes of Pat Robertson who claimed that the earthquake in Haiti was because a long time ago Haitian slaves made a bargain with the devil if he could rid them of the French.

And the greed, of course, is on both sides. Those who take, and those who think that they can make 20% a year on their investments and don't ask any questions.

Although there are passages in the Bible that are hard to understand, the passage we just heard from Timothy is very straight forward. And, Timothy's first epistle ends with the words:

As for the rich in this world, charge them not to be haughty, not to set their hopes on uncertain riches, but on the God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy. They are to do good, to be rich in deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed. (6:17-19)

So, here we are with one life to live, and one life to share, and one life to bring to a close. And what does it all mean? Well, I hope that it means we have an appreciation for the good things in life.

A wise bishop once told his people, You were not created for pleasure – you were created for joy!

At the wedding in Canna, Jesus didn't turn water into table wine. He turned it into the best wine they had at the wedding! The kind you serve at the beginning of a celebration.

Now, of course, this story of Jesus turning water into wine is a metaphor – but like any good metaphor, it makes reality even more real. This first of Jesus' signs – according to John's gospel – recognized that good wine is better than bad wine. And I hope that an appreciation for life includes preferring music that is on pitch rather than being merely loud. And, I hope that it means an appreciation for that which is beautiful, and for that which is well crafted.

But life must also reach down deep into the soul to find what there is in life for which we are spiritually grateful. And if we can do that then I think we will find that caring for others, and being cared for, are of extreme value. So valuable that we would be willing to sacrifice for them.

Parents do that for their children. The righteous do that for the poor. The sensitive do that for the hungry. The people of God do that for the people of the world.

The theologian, Joseph Sittler once noted that, No place is holy, but the holy must present itself in some place! This place is not intrinsically holy, but this is the place where we come to sing our songs, and pray our prayers, and to break bread together, and to say to God, thank you God for all that has been, and for all that there is, and all that will be. (Dag Hammarskjold)

The Baptism of our Lord - January 10, 2010
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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The Second Sunday of Christmas - January 3. 2010
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The First Sunday of Christmas - December 27, 2009 - The Feast of St. John
The Rev. John A. Buerk

ST. JOHN, Et. Al.

Many of the days between Christmas Eve and New Year's Day are designated as Holy Days. December 25 is the Nativity of our Lord. December 26 is St. Stephen's Day – the first Christian Martyr. December 27 is St. John's Day. December 28 is Holy Innocents' Day. And, January 1 is The Name of Jesus Day

Bach's Christmas Oratorio is made up of the music he composed to commemorate each of these days.

This year it happens that St. John's Day, December 27, falls on a Sunday, which it does every seven years or so – depending on leap years. The fact that it is also my birthday and that my name is John, is purely coincidental. My mother was pretty serious about her faith, but I think she knew from the beginning that I would not be up to having the name of a saint.

The problem with the feast of St. John is that we don't quite know who the John was who got credit for all those wonderful books in the New Testament. There is reference in the gospel to a disciple named John whom Jesus loved. According to tradition, it was this John who wrote the Gospel of John, and it was he who wrote the three Epistles of John.

But there is much speculation as to how accurate these attributions are. The Book of Revelation was written by John the Elder, whom no scholar considers to be the disciple John. And if he or she does, they are no scholar.

In case you are wondering how the name of John got attached to these writings, you have to know that in antiquity you had the reverse of what happens today. Today we have scandals relating to reporters, columnists and authors using other people's material and calling it their own – they plagiarize. In those old days it was different. In those days if you wanted something you wrote circulated, you claimed that it was written by someone important. And you put his name down as the author.

That still works to a certain degree. Somebody carried out a bit of embarrassing research in which he had a well-know writer submit items for publication under a false name. When he used this pseudonym, all of his material was rejected. He then resubmitted the material using his own name, and it was readily accepted.

Well, the scholarly way of handling the issue of authorship is to say that there was probably a Johanine school – or a group of men closely connected to John who wrote the material. This gives an aura of validity to the authorship – even if it does beg the question.

And we also have to remember that the reason the gospels of Matthew, Mark and John have been revered is because it was assumed that they were written by the disciples of Jesus. Luke, however, admits that what he had written about Jesus was the result of what he had heard and read. In the first few verses of Luke's gospel he wrote:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and minister of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you . (Luke 1:1-3)

And at the end of his gospel John wrote:

…there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world could not contain the books that would be written. (21:25)

Which, of course, raises the question about the validity of other writings that tell about Jesus but which are not part of the kosher Bible. There were stories about Jesus that circulated for centuries, and there are also the writings that surfaced in Egypt not many ears ago.

So how do we know which of these writings concerning Jesus are valid? Well, it would seem that some are and some are not. Some are so fanciful that they are obviously not true. Stories about Jesus as a little boy playing with some other children and making birds out of clay and telling them to fly away – and they come alive and fly away. Medieval lore about Jesus got to be pretty bazaar. In one song from that period, Jesus gets annoyed with some children when they tease him, so he causes them all to fall into well where they drown.

On the other hand, some very provocative material from the first century has surfaced in Egypt which scholars find useful and informative.

So, the question is, “Do we know all there is to know about what Jesus said and did?” And the answer is obviously, “NO”.

But there is a second question, “Is what we do know, enough?” Do we need more writings from the past to fill in the gaps and to help explain things that are confusing? Well, I always liked what Mark Twain said about the good book – he said, “It isn't the parts of the Bible that I don't understand that trouble me; it's the parts that I do understand.”

The gospel stories may not be consistent in telling us about Jesus' last words from the cross. But the gospels are very consistent in telling us to be concerned for the poor, and the homeless, and the hungry, and for those who have none to care for them.

The gospel message is consistent when it tells us to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with God.

The story of Jesus in the Bible is well summed up by words from John's First Epistle:

Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God; for God is love…Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another . No man has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides is us and his love is perfected in us. (4:7,8,11,12)

The Eve of Christmas - December 24, 2009
The Rev. Charles D. Bang

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The Fourth Sunday in Advent - December 20, 2009
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The Third Sunday in Advent - December 13, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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The Second Sunday in Advent - December 6, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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The First Sunday in Advent - November 29, 2009
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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The First Sunday in Advent - November 29, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang
Sermon, Parkside Lutheran Church

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

I am the younger of the two sons born to Gertrud and Hans Bang. My older brother, Raimond, R_A_I_M_O_N_D, lives near Poughkeepsie, NY with his wife Linda and their 9 remaining children, 3 having already flown the nest and 10 other foster children have moved on in their lives.

I have said it on many occasions and I say it again this morning, my brother is a saint. I say this, not because of the many things he has accomplished in his life, not because of the many children whose lives he and Linda have snatched from the abyss of neglect and abuse and circumstance, not because he assumed the role of head of household after my father left and our grandfather died. I say this because he had to endure ME as his younger brother. Let me give you but one example.

We were still fairly young and living at home. It was Christmas. For some reason that Christmas, all we wanted were clock radios. I guess we were getting older and wanted to a) assume some responsibility for getting ourselves up in the morning and not relying on our grandmother to come in, rub our backs for fifteen minutes until we slowly came around to consciousness. (Why we wanted to abandon that practice remains a mystery now that I would give my eye teeth to wake up that nicely each morning.) But we were teenagers and you know how teenagers are. And B) were at that age when we wanted to listen to our own kind of music and not necessarily or always want Mom wanted to have on the radio. So we asked for clock radios. I remember the patience with which my Mom took us around to the electronics stores to see which models had what we wanted and feel within her price range.

We also SWORE we would not get the same one. But after much searching and much negotiation, we did, finally, settle on the model we wanted. When Christmas came around and we opened our “big” present, lo and behold, my brother and I discovered that we had, in fact, picked out the same radio.

They were made by GE, perhaps the last model made in the United States. There were AM AND FM radios, and though not stereo, they had a red stereo indicator light that lit up if the station was one of the lucky few to broadcast in stereo…yes I am that old.

The other thing the clock radios had, were those little clear plastic knobs, that had the one indicator protrusion on one side with which you set your clock radio to off, on or alarm. It also had the new technology of snooze, which was another little plastic knob that actually was a little click timer that gave you another 5 minutes before the alarm or radio came on again. They also had a phone jack for headphones, if we wanted to listen covertly after we were supposed to be asleep. The headphone jack, sadly, did not accept stereo headphones, but only the one old fashioned type single ear jack like the old hearing aid kind.

We loved our radios and because we got the same one, neither of us could “one-Up” the other with the great choice that we made. Instead, we took pride in the fact that great minds thought alike…

Anyway…suffice it to say, that we knew how the other's radio worked. Which brings me to why my brother is a saint. All through his life, he has had to endure his younger brother playing tricks on him, booby-trapping doors, short sheeting his bed, hiding his stuff. Well, this new radio provided me perfect the medium with which to continue my lifelong pursuit of driving my brother crazy.

What I would do, was, before he went to bed, sneak into his room, and crank the volume up on the radio knob to the ear splitting cosmically loud setting. This would accomplish one of two things: if he happened to listen the radio before he went to bed, or if he changed the station and wanted to tune it in clearly, when he did that, the volume would shake him up. Or, if the gods were on my side, he would simply click the little setting knob to alarm and not listen to the radio at all, knowing that the last time he listened to it, it was both tuned to the station he liked and set at an appropriate level to wake him up gently.

I would then go to sleep, confident in the knowledge that I had done my part to uphold the unwritten law of the brotherhood of younger brother's of America, which was, to drive your sibling out of his mind.

In the morning, I would try to set MY alarm, so as to be awake when HIS alarm went off and to be prepared for the punishment I so justly deserved.

Why do I tell you this. Well, I'm sure you can imagine that, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, well I won't be fooled again…after the first incident, I never really ever slept soundly again either. Each morning after the first assault, you would be sound asleep, and you would hear the clock radio click on, and if you were watching, you'd see the little plastic knob move over to on….Then there would be that short pause, that nanosecond between the click of the machine and the sound you either loved or feared. Would it be the gentle sounds of your favorite radio station, coming on to slowly rouse you from slumber, OR WOULD IT BE THE APOCALYPTIC, EAR SHATTERING, I HATE MY BROTHER volume you so justly deserved.

Which would it be?

The reason why I've taken so much time to describe this scenario to you, is because that nanosecond is where we are, every time we get to the first Sunday in Advent. Advent, as the beginning of the liturgical year, serves two functions. It sets the stage for the telling of the whole story of the life of Christ, from the visit of the angel to Elizabeth, then to Mary, to the preaching of John as the forerunner to Christ, to the census in Bethlehem, the journey of Mary and Joseph, to the no room in the Inn, the angels in the heavens, the shepherds in the field and all that. It also sets the stage for the eventual return of this Christ, when he returns in glory to inaugurate God's rule on earth, to change the city of man into the city of God, to overcome evil and sin and death, to restore the relationship we had with God, to the glory it had when it all started, so very long ago.

All the readings, in every year, focus on this theme, for us to both remember and prepare. Well, we've got the remember part down pretty well, even though Black Friday gets more up front time than Good Friday. But if you watch how much effort goes into the remembrance part, I think it's a pretty safe bet that MOST of the world knows that Christmas is coming.

On the other hand, the prepare for his coming again part, is not so well hatched. We don't think about that part all too much. What if this Advent was the Advent when Christ came to us again. What would he find? Would he find the faithfully with their lamps lighted and their reservoirs full? Will we be found to be paying attention to that which God deems is most important, or would he find a frenziedness dedicated to something much different?

So, here we are, the first Sunday in Advent, and we're sound asleep. The click of the radio has just happened, and we are in that never-never land, that instant in time between the click and the music. What music will we hear and at what volume will it come on? Will this Advent be like all the other Advents we've experienced or will this one be different? Will we merely sing the Christmas carols and talk of love and peace or will we actually do something to bring it about? Will the promise of Christ rest and remain in the manger relegated to the past and to our memories, or will the promise that God will once again rule in our hearts and change the way we do business with one another? Which will it be? Which will it be?

Click….

Amen.

The Day of Thanksgiving - November 26, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Christ the King Sunday - November 22, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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Twenty-Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - November 15, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

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Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost - November 8, 2009
The Rev. Eric O. Olsen

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All Saints Sunday - November 1, 2009
The Necrology
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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The Feast of the Reformation - October, 25. 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

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Click here for the 28 Articles of the Augsburg Confession

Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost - October 18, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost - October 11, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

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Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost - October 4, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 27, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

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Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 20, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 13, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 6, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost - August 30, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Twelveth Sunday after Pentecost - August 23, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost - August 16, 2009
The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost - August 9, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Ninth Sunday after Pentecost - August 2, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

Eighth Sunday after Pentecost - July 26, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

Seventh Sunday after Pentecost - July 19, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost - July 12, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Fifth Sunday after Pentecost - July 5, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

Fourth Sunday after Pentecost - June 28, 2009
The Rev. John A. Buerk

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

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

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

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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

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

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

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

Easter Day - April 12, 2009
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Roger Griffiths, Youth Ministry

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The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

Palm Sunday - April 5, 2009
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The Rev. Eric Olaf Olsen

Fifth Sunday in Lent - March 29, 2009
The Rev. Dr. Charles D. Bang

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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