This sermon was preached by Rachel Dachenbach, Grand View elementary education and music major, in chapel on November 29, 2011. It is based on Mark 13-24-37.
“Please wait to be seated.”
“If you have been waiting for more than fifteen minutes, please check in with the receptionist.”“Loading…40%...this may take a few minutes. Please wait.”
Either our world is full of very patient people, or we are so far from patient that we need to be reminded to sit quietly, open a magazine, and wait for our name to be called. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.
I personally fall into that second category. Since July, I’ve been waiting (somewhat nervously, I must confess) for my chance to speak here today. The cast of Twelfth Night is anxiously awaiting their upcoming production. Football fans are eagerly waiting for playoffs and the Super Bowl, expectant mothers prepare for the birth of their children, and all of us here are on the edge of our seats as we try to survive “dead week” and finals to arrive at our much needed Christmas break. We do so while tapping our foot or folding our arms, with sighs or throat clears as though to say, “Is it my turn yet?”
Today’s gospel talks about waiting: waiting for the Lord. “Beware, keep alert, for you do not know when the time will come.” “But in these days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.”
Woah. When I first heard these verses, they hit me like a ton of bricks. “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light.” God is not dropping in like your sister-in-law from out of town, for an afternoon cup of coffee, but rather, he is coming like the family in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. For those of you who have not seen it, there is a part where all the grandparents of the family come to the door just before Christmas. The doorbell rings ominously, and as the door opens, in swarms a host of relatives, stories, and suitcases. God is coming. He’s brought his luggage, and he’ll be here to stay. We are waiting for all of these things to take place, but what we are waiting for is more than just relatives at Christmas. We are waiting for something that we can’t exactly feel, can’t exactly picture, and can’t really anticipate the power of the events that are to take place.
“But about that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the son, but only the Father.” These words, as often as I’ve heard them, have often been met with somber gazes and looks of deep thought across many different groups of people and church congregations. It’s scary. Why? Because of the unknown. Because God isn’t a guest we have often, and when he comes, we can welcome him as best as we can, but we still wonder whether or not he will feel at home, want to stay, or even accept the hospitality mere humans can offer.
This passage used to be very frightening for me, and I feel that it is God’s will that I speak on it today. I worried that I wouldn’t be ready, that I would be found unworthy, or that I wouldn’t be accepted by the one whom I had called Lord for so long. But God led me through his word, and through him I have been taken from gloom into promise. Let me show you how.
“So, also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.” What can this mean for us? Jesus is referring to trials and tribulations that come with the end times. Yes, but instead of fear that makes us say, “Oh man, God is coming and I’ve been found unprepared,” he is nearby, “at the very gates,” saying, “Hold on, Rachel. Hold on Keyla. Hold on, Dr. Jones. I’m right here beside you.”
The Lord says, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” These verses blew me out of the water. Even through all the junk life hands us, even through any sort of doubt and confusion, God gives us his promise that even if the very sky begins to fall as it one day will, his word says that he will pick up the pieces and put it all back together, no matter how shattered and broken it has become. God does this for us, too. When we are at rock bottom in the muck and the mire, God places his hand fast around us, and pulls us through every terrible thing all the way back up to cloud nine. People recover from illness. People grieve and eventually make it through the loss of a loved one. People rebound from crimes that have been committed against them and learn to forgive, and all this is God’s promise that “His words will not pass away.”
Advent is upon us. It is a time of waiting for the Lord, waiting for the Christ child to come, but it is also a time for us to remember that while we are waiting, God is right there. So, let us wait. And wait. And wait some more. But let us not wait in fear, but rather in the promise that the Lord will come to us in the meantime. God is coming in glory. Heaven and earth will pass away, but God’s promise never will die. His promise to hold us fast in the storms that come with our wait can give us hope in times of fear, and joy in times of sorrow.
Martin Luther, in his Small Catechism, addresses the second petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “your kingdom come,” and says this: “God’s kingdom comes when our heavenly Father gives us His Holy Spirit, so that by his grace we believe in his holy Word, and live a godly life on earth now and in heaven forever.”
So let us pray for God’s kingdom to come, and while we wait upon the Lord, let us be strengthened in Word and in love for one another, and in this meal that God has sent for us that we are about to share. May we all find God in our lives here and now, while we wait. Amen.
Thursday, December 1, 2011
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
A Sermon on the Parable of the Talents in Five Sentences
This sermon by Pastor Ken Jones was preached for the commissioning service for Grand View University's first ten Peer Ministers on November 15, 2011. It is based on the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25.
- The world of Jesus’ parable is an upside-down one, where people who are responsible and safe get condemned and cast out, left to weep and gnash their teeth.
- But extravagant, foolish risk-taking behavior is praised to the point that the master responds by giving even more to take a chance on.
- The safe investors can’t risk a thing, because they can only see a God who is stingy and legalistic, but the foolish risk-takers can step out in faith, because they’ve come to trust God as patient, long-suffering and abounding in love.
- Our ten Peer Ministers today are being set apart, in no small measure because they’re people whose God is so big that they can risk serving others, including you.
- And in the end, it’s the guy who tells our parable, Jesus Christ, who gives them, and you, a God big enough and loving enough that you can risk it all. Amen.
The Bridegroom Is Coming
Jason Barnes preached this sermon (based on Matthew 25:1-13, The Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids} in the Grand View University chapel service on November 8, 2011. Jason is a religion major from Norwalk, Iowa.
We are almost to the end of the church year if you didn’t know that. This is the time of the year where we remember how Christ will come back. Today’s reading shows us what that will be like.
What you should know about a first-century wedding is that it was a very big deal. Weddings today were nothing like the weddings back then. The wedding would actually take about a whole week partying. The bridesmaids were probably very eager to get to that party and probably left during daylight to get there. The people at the party would probably look at the 5 bridesmaids with so much oil and think there were very dumb to bring that much. But to the other 5’s surprise the groom took his time and the 5 who weren’t ready ran out of oil by the time it was time to go in. So since they weren’t ready the bridegroom disowned them. Even though they were a trusted part of the family.
There was one time during a winter storm where I ran out of gas along East 14th. I knew I was low. It was in my old and pretty much broken down car where the heat barely worked and with so much traffic around me where I was to the point of looking in my rear view mirror to wait for someone to hit me. I was in a bad spot to be honest. Also besides the fact that it was 9 o’clock at night and very dark. I just trusted I could get to my destination and back with enough. I was wrong though. I ran out and kept from destination. Just like the 10 bridesmaids. I was basically told the whole “I don’t know you” and it hurt. I felt stupid, helpless, and hurt. My dad drove 45 min. through the winter storm from Norwalk to come give me some gas and even pay for the full tank when I got to the gas station. He basically came to save me. I was also late to Dr. Mattes class that night which knowing my luck that night, eventually got cancelled anyway. You see I was lucky my dad loved me enough to come and get me. The bridesmaids, not so lucky.
Isn’t that a scary feeling though? The bridegroom coming up to you and saying that they do not know you? It seems like you are being judged or condemned. You feel as if you are the lowest of the low. There is more than judgment though. There is something hidden in this parable. Jesus IS your bridegroom. But what kind of bridegroom is he? He is the type of bridegroom that does know you. He is the one that will take the people that do not belong. He is there make you feel welcome and wanted. To make you see that all you need is faith in Him to be a part of something spectacular.
It is the faith that gets you into the party. The faith comes from the word of God. It is an external promise for you: He is coming. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but he is coming. There is a campfire song I learned at the Bible camp I attended: “Jesus is coming back some day, Could be tomorrow could be today. Jesus is coming back I know for the Bible tells me so. So praise the Lord. Alleluia! Amen! Praise the Lord. Jesus is coming back again.”
Just keep watch for you do not know the day or the hour. I learned in my New Testament class last year that people used to quit their jobs and sit on their roofs waiting for Christ to come. I’m not telling you to be that extreme. But just be ready because Jesus is coming.
What is that going to be like when he does come back? There is a song I learned when I was at bible camp that was called “We Will Dance” and the lyrics share just what it will be like when the bridegroom comes.
Sing a song of celebration.
Lift up a shout of praise for the Bridegroom will come.
The glorious one.
And we will look on His face.
We’ll go to a much better place.
Dance with all your might.
Lift up your hand and clap for joy
For the time’s drawing near when he will appear.
We will stand by his side,
A strong, pure, spotless bride.
We will dance on streets that are golden.
The glorious bride and the great Son of Man.
For every tongue and tribe and nation
Will join in the song of the lamb.
Amen
We are almost to the end of the church year if you didn’t know that. This is the time of the year where we remember how Christ will come back. Today’s reading shows us what that will be like.
What you should know about a first-century wedding is that it was a very big deal. Weddings today were nothing like the weddings back then. The wedding would actually take about a whole week partying. The bridesmaids were probably very eager to get to that party and probably left during daylight to get there. The people at the party would probably look at the 5 bridesmaids with so much oil and think there were very dumb to bring that much. But to the other 5’s surprise the groom took his time and the 5 who weren’t ready ran out of oil by the time it was time to go in. So since they weren’t ready the bridegroom disowned them. Even though they were a trusted part of the family.
There was one time during a winter storm where I ran out of gas along East 14th. I knew I was low. It was in my old and pretty much broken down car where the heat barely worked and with so much traffic around me where I was to the point of looking in my rear view mirror to wait for someone to hit me. I was in a bad spot to be honest. Also besides the fact that it was 9 o’clock at night and very dark. I just trusted I could get to my destination and back with enough. I was wrong though. I ran out and kept from destination. Just like the 10 bridesmaids. I was basically told the whole “I don’t know you” and it hurt. I felt stupid, helpless, and hurt. My dad drove 45 min. through the winter storm from Norwalk to come give me some gas and even pay for the full tank when I got to the gas station. He basically came to save me. I was also late to Dr. Mattes class that night which knowing my luck that night, eventually got cancelled anyway. You see I was lucky my dad loved me enough to come and get me. The bridesmaids, not so lucky.
Isn’t that a scary feeling though? The bridegroom coming up to you and saying that they do not know you? It seems like you are being judged or condemned. You feel as if you are the lowest of the low. There is more than judgment though. There is something hidden in this parable. Jesus IS your bridegroom. But what kind of bridegroom is he? He is the type of bridegroom that does know you. He is the one that will take the people that do not belong. He is there make you feel welcome and wanted. To make you see that all you need is faith in Him to be a part of something spectacular.
It is the faith that gets you into the party. The faith comes from the word of God. It is an external promise for you: He is coming. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow, but he is coming. There is a campfire song I learned at the Bible camp I attended: “Jesus is coming back some day, Could be tomorrow could be today. Jesus is coming back I know for the Bible tells me so. So praise the Lord. Alleluia! Amen! Praise the Lord. Jesus is coming back again.”
Just keep watch for you do not know the day or the hour. I learned in my New Testament class last year that people used to quit their jobs and sit on their roofs waiting for Christ to come. I’m not telling you to be that extreme. But just be ready because Jesus is coming.
What is that going to be like when he does come back? There is a song I learned when I was at bible camp that was called “We Will Dance” and the lyrics share just what it will be like when the bridegroom comes.
Sing a song of celebration.
Lift up a shout of praise for the Bridegroom will come.
The glorious one.
And we will look on His face.
We’ll go to a much better place.
Dance with all your might.
Lift up your hand and clap for joy
For the time’s drawing near when he will appear.
We will stand by his side,
A strong, pure, spotless bride.
We will dance on streets that are golden.
The glorious bride and the great Son of Man.
For every tongue and tribe and nation
Will join in the song of the lamb.
Amen
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Keyla Spahr's chapel sermon
This sermon was preached in chapel services at Grand View University on October 18, 2011, by senior Theatre and Music major Keyla Spahr.
Hi there, if you hadn’t looked down at your bulletin because you were so transfixed by the beautiful song you just heard, I am Keyla Spahr, a senior here at Grand View, double majoring in Theatre Arts and Music. When Dr. Jones asked me this summer to give a sermon in the fall, I was terrified. I was terrified when I read the bulletin last week saying I was preaching today. I was terrified yesterday. In theatre, I am someone else, I can perform the most extreme things, while in here, I’m just Keyla. You see me, not the role I have been taught to play. So I stand before you vulnerable, hoping God speaks to you through my words here today. So here it goes.
The scripture you just heard from Psalm 96 is one I relate to on a very deep level. In May of my sophomore year here, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to travel to Italy and Greece for a May term study abroad trip. While in Greece, our group traveled to many places, like the Acropolis, Naufpleon, the original capitol of Greece, and my favorite of the entire trip, and one of my favorite things I have seen in my lifetime so far, Theatre Epidaurus. This is the most intact theatre in the entire ancient world. I had the exciting chance to be able to perform a monologue and a song in this theatre. The second I stood on the stone piece center stage, I sang my first note, the entire place quieted, and I felt the note hit me. Like punch me right in the face. The acoustics were the best I have ever experienced. I kept singing, as tears rolled down my face, teachers and peers on the trip watching me on my right all the way up at the top of the stone seats, not knowing what was happening to me. On my left were people from a different tour group who barely spoke English. I felt each person breathing with me, seeing what I was seeing, feeling the warm Grecian wind on my back as I sang stronger and stronger. As I reached my final note I held onto it, trying so hard to not forget the moment that I had just had with God. Luckily, when I let go, the memory was still there.
Have you ever had one of those moments, where in everything, God breaks down any wall you could have possibly put up between yourself and Him? He brought me from a world I had always known into a world I had never experienced outside of a textbook. God was in the ancient world of Greece and of the Scriptures just as he is in our present and our future.
Music and Christ has always been that thing I can turn to when the world turns it’s back on me. Truthfully, it’s Christ alone that can heal me in my most awful times when even the songs seem to have no words. Christ has never abandoned. Just as Joseph and Moses were carried in their times of need, God has carried me, given me this wonderful gift to make music and to share music with others. God has brought us into a world that is much different than music and theatre in Ancient Greece performing four hour long tragedies, but a world where we Sing Unto the Lord a New Song.
Sure, I have a lot of decisions ahead of me, grad school, jobs… I have no idea what my new song will be, but I do know that Christ will find a way to let me know I am doing the right thing. Whether it be tears streaming down my face as I sing in front of 25 people from Grand View that didn’t even know my name before the trip and 50 people who don’t even have a clue what words I’m even saying, or some small little sign that will keep me guided, Music and Christ will never fail to keep me going.
I am going to read you the translation of the piece Kantorei sang, Cantate Domino.
O Sing to the Lord a new song,
sing and give praise to his name,
for he has done marvelous deeds.
Sing and exult and praise Him
with harp and the sound of psalms,
for he has done marvelous deeds.
Sound familiar?
So I ask you, what are your old songs, your times that you have experienced God so powerfully that it felt as if He hit you like a ton of bricks? Perhaps, for you guys, it was Junction City, Oregon. I know I felt something more with us that night. Where are the places that Christ sings when you have no words? What are your new songs God is leading you to? The times that haven’t happened yet? Where can you seek God so in turn he may seek you and teach you your new song? I pray that you may hear the songs of the past and hear your own song that Christ is teaching you. Amen.
Hi there, if you hadn’t looked down at your bulletin because you were so transfixed by the beautiful song you just heard, I am Keyla Spahr, a senior here at Grand View, double majoring in Theatre Arts and Music. When Dr. Jones asked me this summer to give a sermon in the fall, I was terrified. I was terrified when I read the bulletin last week saying I was preaching today. I was terrified yesterday. In theatre, I am someone else, I can perform the most extreme things, while in here, I’m just Keyla. You see me, not the role I have been taught to play. So I stand before you vulnerable, hoping God speaks to you through my words here today. So here it goes.
The scripture you just heard from Psalm 96 is one I relate to on a very deep level. In May of my sophomore year here, I was fortunate enough to get the opportunity to travel to Italy and Greece for a May term study abroad trip. While in Greece, our group traveled to many places, like the Acropolis, Naufpleon, the original capitol of Greece, and my favorite of the entire trip, and one of my favorite things I have seen in my lifetime so far, Theatre Epidaurus. This is the most intact theatre in the entire ancient world. I had the exciting chance to be able to perform a monologue and a song in this theatre. The second I stood on the stone piece center stage, I sang my first note, the entire place quieted, and I felt the note hit me. Like punch me right in the face. The acoustics were the best I have ever experienced. I kept singing, as tears rolled down my face, teachers and peers on the trip watching me on my right all the way up at the top of the stone seats, not knowing what was happening to me. On my left were people from a different tour group who barely spoke English. I felt each person breathing with me, seeing what I was seeing, feeling the warm Grecian wind on my back as I sang stronger and stronger. As I reached my final note I held onto it, trying so hard to not forget the moment that I had just had with God. Luckily, when I let go, the memory was still there.
Have you ever had one of those moments, where in everything, God breaks down any wall you could have possibly put up between yourself and Him? He brought me from a world I had always known into a world I had never experienced outside of a textbook. God was in the ancient world of Greece and of the Scriptures just as he is in our present and our future.
Music and Christ has always been that thing I can turn to when the world turns it’s back on me. Truthfully, it’s Christ alone that can heal me in my most awful times when even the songs seem to have no words. Christ has never abandoned. Just as Joseph and Moses were carried in their times of need, God has carried me, given me this wonderful gift to make music and to share music with others. God has brought us into a world that is much different than music and theatre in Ancient Greece performing four hour long tragedies, but a world where we Sing Unto the Lord a New Song.
Sure, I have a lot of decisions ahead of me, grad school, jobs… I have no idea what my new song will be, but I do know that Christ will find a way to let me know I am doing the right thing. Whether it be tears streaming down my face as I sing in front of 25 people from Grand View that didn’t even know my name before the trip and 50 people who don’t even have a clue what words I’m even saying, or some small little sign that will keep me guided, Music and Christ will never fail to keep me going.
I am going to read you the translation of the piece Kantorei sang, Cantate Domino.
O Sing to the Lord a new song,
sing and give praise to his name,
for he has done marvelous deeds.
Sing and exult and praise Him
with harp and the sound of psalms,
for he has done marvelous deeds.
Sound familiar?
So I ask you, what are your old songs, your times that you have experienced God so powerfully that it felt as if He hit you like a ton of bricks? Perhaps, for you guys, it was Junction City, Oregon. I know I felt something more with us that night. Where are the places that Christ sings when you have no words? What are your new songs God is leading you to? The times that haven’t happened yet? Where can you seek God so in turn he may seek you and teach you your new song? I pray that you may hear the songs of the past and hear your own song that Christ is teaching you. Amen.
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Confidence in the Garbage Collector
This sermon was preached by Pastor Paul Owens at Grand View University's weekly chapel service on October 4, 2011. It is based on Philippians 3:4b-14. Pastor Owens serves in ministry with the members of St. Paul Lutheran Church in New Braunfels, Texas (http://www.splchurch.org).
Prayer: Gracious and almighty father, thank you for Christ, the one worthy of our confidence, and for Paul’s witness to him. Repent each of us from confidence in the garbage heap of our will…it gets really stinky after all. Please grant unto us faith in Christ – in his death and resurrection – so that we may leave behind our garbage and press on to take hold of that for which he has taken hold of us; in Jesus’ name I ask this. Amen.
Each night when I go to my knees and pray with my family for our two sons off at college, I ask the Lord to give them and their friends humility and confidence for their calling. What is confidence? Perhaps not what you think. Literally, the word means “with faith.” So…where do you put your faith?...Who is the trustworthy one…?
Saul, later and better known as Paul, tells us he has more reason than anyone to put confidence in himself, in his will. “If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more.” Then he proceeds to lay out a most impressive resume:
Prayer: Gracious and almighty father, thank you for Christ, the one worthy of our confidence, and for Paul’s witness to him. Repent each of us from confidence in the garbage heap of our will…it gets really stinky after all. Please grant unto us faith in Christ – in his death and resurrection – so that we may leave behind our garbage and press on to take hold of that for which he has taken hold of us; in Jesus’ name I ask this. Amen.
Each night when I go to my knees and pray with my family for our two sons off at college, I ask the Lord to give them and their friends humility and confidence for their calling. What is confidence? Perhaps not what you think. Literally, the word means “with faith.” So…where do you put your faith?...Who is the trustworthy one…?
Saul, later and better known as Paul, tells us he has more reason than anyone to put confidence in himself, in his will. “If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more.” Then he proceeds to lay out a most impressive resume:
- Clean cut boy, circumcised on the 8th day, the RIGHT day, the politically correct day according to Jewish law.
- And not just an Israelite, one of the chosen, but from the best family among the tribes of Israel: the Benjamins. Joseph’s little brother, his father’s right-hand man.
- Best confirmation student…Top of his class in Hebrew school and in law school…on the dean’s list every semester.
- Zealous, type “A” leader...kept all 10 commandments and then some.
- As far as rightness, goodness gained according to the law, he was in a word: faultless.
Yep, all the reason in the world to put confidence in himself. But Saul, later and better known as Paul, has been down that road…he’s climbed that ladder…Yertle the Turtle he has made it to the top…and been knocked off by none other than Jesus himself. So he confesses: “whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider all my accomplishments, my righteousness as garbage.”
Here’s what garbage looks like: The gracious maintenance/housekeeping crew agreed to help me preach to you this morning: have a familiar Grand View worker bring out a familiar garbage sack…in volume. What’s in here???)
Paul, the faultless one, the one who has more reason than anyone to put confidence, to put faith in himself, confesses that any and all righteousness of his own, that his own self-improvement projects and spiritual practices, are all garbage. Perhaps you are familiar with one of Al Franken’s old character on Saturday Night Live, “Stuart Smalley” and his “Daily Affirmations”…Stuart would look at the man in the mirror and say: “because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”
Paul is not saying that! In fact, this is the best, smartest teacher and keeper of law, confessing: “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord... I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”
So what does Jesus do about this?...to free Paul and you and me from the pride that gets us to carry around so much garbage…so much of ourselves and our goodness? Well, he goes and gets himself crucified. Where? Golgotha… Golgotha was the garbage heap outside of the city…today we call them landfills…but then there was no covering up the garbage. There, heaped up high is all of Paul’s righteousness, all of mine, all of yours. All of your attempts to say and to prove “I’m a good person, dog gone it, and isn’t that what matters”…all your efforts to defend your own righteousness… to be a “Home Depot Christian” who says “I can do it, God can help.”…the whole smelly mess is there.
And Jesus, the Garbage Collector, comes along and takes it all…not into his truck, but into himself. When the garbage gets picked up at our house, it never gets touched. The truck comes along with a mechanical arm, in a flash picks up the whole bin, dumps it into the hopper, replaces the empty bin…and drives away. Not so sanitary and safe for Christ. In fact, to dispose of your righteousness, your pride, Jesus has to put his hands all over it, all over you. He rolls up his sleeves and takes you, all your garbage into himself, becomes it, and dies from it…goes to death with it in his body. And then after three days, he rises from death, walks out of the landfill of human righteousness…and gives you HIS righteousness…a free gift.
His righteousness is not a “Christian to do list”…that would only throw you back on the garbage heap of your works. His righteousness is a right relationship with the Lord in he takes hold of you in the sweetest way, the way only the true lover can…and sets you free from proud self…free to cling to him and follow him…and to tell others about him with your lips and your life.
Here’s what garbage looks like: The gracious maintenance/housekeeping crew agreed to help me preach to you this morning: have a familiar Grand View worker bring out a familiar garbage sack…in volume. What’s in here???)
Paul, the faultless one, the one who has more reason than anyone to put confidence, to put faith in himself, confesses that any and all righteousness of his own, that his own self-improvement projects and spiritual practices, are all garbage. Perhaps you are familiar with one of Al Franken’s old character on Saturday Night Live, “Stuart Smalley” and his “Daily Affirmations”…Stuart would look at the man in the mirror and say: “because I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”
Paul is not saying that! In fact, this is the best, smartest teacher and keeper of law, confessing: “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord... I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.”
So what does Jesus do about this?...to free Paul and you and me from the pride that gets us to carry around so much garbage…so much of ourselves and our goodness? Well, he goes and gets himself crucified. Where? Golgotha… Golgotha was the garbage heap outside of the city…today we call them landfills…but then there was no covering up the garbage. There, heaped up high is all of Paul’s righteousness, all of mine, all of yours. All of your attempts to say and to prove “I’m a good person, dog gone it, and isn’t that what matters”…all your efforts to defend your own righteousness… to be a “Home Depot Christian” who says “I can do it, God can help.”…the whole smelly mess is there.
And Jesus, the Garbage Collector, comes along and takes it all…not into his truck, but into himself. When the garbage gets picked up at our house, it never gets touched. The truck comes along with a mechanical arm, in a flash picks up the whole bin, dumps it into the hopper, replaces the empty bin…and drives away. Not so sanitary and safe for Christ. In fact, to dispose of your righteousness, your pride, Jesus has to put his hands all over it, all over you. He rolls up his sleeves and takes you, all your garbage into himself, becomes it, and dies from it…goes to death with it in his body. And then after three days, he rises from death, walks out of the landfill of human righteousness…and gives you HIS righteousness…a free gift.
His righteousness is not a “Christian to do list”…that would only throw you back on the garbage heap of your works. His righteousness is a right relationship with the Lord in he takes hold of you in the sweetest way, the way only the true lover can…and sets you free from proud self…free to cling to him and follow him…and to tell others about him with your lips and your life.
Let me be clear, this is not a condemnation of doing good works. A lifetime of good works is exactly what Christ has taken hold of you for. Paul speaks here to free you from carry around your good works and putting confidence in them and therefore in yourself. Carrying around a bag full of yourself slows you down from following Jesus…and it’s pretty hard to have my hands free to help my neighbor when I’m holding on to the garbage of my righteousness.
Our confidence is not in our flesh, not in that garbage. Our confidence is “in Christ Jesus, who though he was in his very nature God, he did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And…he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! …so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Confidence…I pray for it for my children…and for you…not faith in myself nor yourself. Our faith, our confidence is in Jesus Christ alone…’cause when it is, then we can forget what lies behind and press on “in our calling…to know Christ and be like him in his suffering.” Amen.
Our confidence is not in our flesh, not in that garbage. Our confidence is “in Christ Jesus, who though he was in his very nature God, he did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And…he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! …so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Confidence…I pray for it for my children…and for you…not faith in myself nor yourself. Our faith, our confidence is in Jesus Christ alone…’cause when it is, then we can forget what lies behind and press on “in our calling…to know Christ and be like him in his suffering.” Amen.
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Prostitutes, Plagiarizers and the Pious:Who's in with God?
This Grand View chapel sermon was preached by Pastor Ken Sundet Jones on Sept. 27, 2011, and is based on Matthew 21:28-32.
I hate dodgeball. I suck at throwing. Nobody wants me on their team. I’m picked last. And I live in terror that the rest of life will operate on the same principles.
And it does. There is no such thing as free lunch. You do need to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. You do get what you pay for. You do get ahead by being the best. Cleanliness is next to godliness. God does help those who help themselves (which, by the way, is not in the Bible). If you want something, you do just plain have to put in the effort. No pain. No gain. Get busy, buster.
In fact, that’s the impression that a lot of folks have about the church. Jesus really wants spiritual super-athletes. This is a place for really good people. Really. Good.
Except, if the church belongs to Jesus (and it’s the body of Christ, so it does), then we ought to hear what Jesus says about how things are supposed to function around here.
In today’s reading, he goes to town on the religious leaders who want to define the boundaries of God’s kingdom. They’re into people who toe the line, who straighten up and fly right, who are the heroes of their own stories. They can’t imagine that God might have a crush on prostitutes or that crooks and cheats might get to ride shotgun in the divine vehicle.
But in the parable, Jesus holds up the reprobate and the morally questionable is people who are actually in with God. And he rubs the religious leaders’ noses in it. They think it’s all about what you do that marks you as in. But Jesus is clear: It’s about what he does and whether you trust him to get it done.
So how do you get the same faith that gets prostitutes and tax collectors into the kingdom of God? Well, that’s the thing that Jesus is doing – back then and right here today. He comes to you with a promise. He says, “From now on, your future, your judgment and your eternal reward are in my hands. Run away from all that bookkeeping and judgment. I have a place for you. Cop a squat in my mercy seat.”
And to show how true he is to that promise, he goes and dies for you. That’s what the Lord’s Supper is about. You’re just the kind of person Jesus comes for: someone who can’t pull your life together, someone whose head is a little off, someone who a lot of times doesn’t want to trust him. And he gives himself up for that – not for religious super-athletes, super-prayers, or super-duper party-poopers who never want to have any fun.
No. He gives you a meal that’s free and for you. Today you get to swallow a chunk of forgiveness and drink swig of mercy. And you can walk away saying, “I’m as good as in already. That’s a better deal than I’ve ever gotten from the world. I’m coming back for more. So bring it on, Jesus. You had me at hello.”
So the invitation is open. Come and dine you reprobates, you sinners, you pious plagiarizers. Come and get what you have coming to you: Jesus himself, who will never turn his back on you. Amen.
I hate dodgeball. I suck at throwing. Nobody wants me on their team. I’m picked last. And I live in terror that the rest of life will operate on the same principles.
And it does. There is no such thing as free lunch. You do need to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. You do get what you pay for. You do get ahead by being the best. Cleanliness is next to godliness. God does help those who help themselves (which, by the way, is not in the Bible). If you want something, you do just plain have to put in the effort. No pain. No gain. Get busy, buster.
In fact, that’s the impression that a lot of folks have about the church. Jesus really wants spiritual super-athletes. This is a place for really good people. Really. Good.
Except, if the church belongs to Jesus (and it’s the body of Christ, so it does), then we ought to hear what Jesus says about how things are supposed to function around here.
In today’s reading, he goes to town on the religious leaders who want to define the boundaries of God’s kingdom. They’re into people who toe the line, who straighten up and fly right, who are the heroes of their own stories. They can’t imagine that God might have a crush on prostitutes or that crooks and cheats might get to ride shotgun in the divine vehicle.
But in the parable, Jesus holds up the reprobate and the morally questionable is people who are actually in with God. And he rubs the religious leaders’ noses in it. They think it’s all about what you do that marks you as in. But Jesus is clear: It’s about what he does and whether you trust him to get it done.
So how do you get the same faith that gets prostitutes and tax collectors into the kingdom of God? Well, that’s the thing that Jesus is doing – back then and right here today. He comes to you with a promise. He says, “From now on, your future, your judgment and your eternal reward are in my hands. Run away from all that bookkeeping and judgment. I have a place for you. Cop a squat in my mercy seat.”
And to show how true he is to that promise, he goes and dies for you. That’s what the Lord’s Supper is about. You’re just the kind of person Jesus comes for: someone who can’t pull your life together, someone whose head is a little off, someone who a lot of times doesn’t want to trust him. And he gives himself up for that – not for religious super-athletes, super-prayers, or super-duper party-poopers who never want to have any fun.
No. He gives you a meal that’s free and for you. Today you get to swallow a chunk of forgiveness and drink swig of mercy. And you can walk away saying, “I’m as good as in already. That’s a better deal than I’ve ever gotten from the world. I’m coming back for more. So bring it on, Jesus. You had me at hello.”
So the invitation is open. Come and dine you reprobates, you sinners, you pious plagiarizers. Come and get what you have coming to you: Jesus himself, who will never turn his back on you. Amen.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Angie Larson on forgiveness and Matthew 18
This sermon was preached by Angie Larson, interim campus minister, at Grand View University's chapel service on Tuesday, September 6, 2011.
Matthew 18: 15-20
Matthew 18: 15-20
This week at Chapel we’re going to talk about forgiveness. The way I see it there are three types of forgiveness that affect us daily. 1. Forgiveness between the self and another. 2. Forgiveness of ourselves. And 3. Forgiveness between God and us.
The first is what our Gospel text talks to us about today. Jesus tells us if we have an issue with another person, go talk directly with that person. As a mom, I often end up forcing my kids to do this with each other. Ok, now go say you’re sorry. Then they give a canned answer, ‘sorry’ says one, ‘sorry’ says the other then they go off and play. Or maybe head to another room to beat each other up so I don’t see it. Either way, their argument over a toy or who won a game or whatever is over and neither of them thinks of it again.
It’s not so easy when we get a bit older. People tick us off, they wound us, they break down our self esteem, they break our hearts, they can sometimes make us angrier than we thought of ourselves as capable of being. Sometimes the wound goes deeper and we begin to think of ourselves as unlovable or somehow damaged goods. I’ve had people in my life who have left me hurt, broken, crying, and depressed. I felt ashamed that I allowed myself to be vulnerable and to care so deeply. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’m fairly certain I have left others in the same state.
Jesus asks us to reconcile with those people. I’m not sure about you, but that can be tough stuff, maybe even seem impossible. It’s not like we’re kids anymore and can say a quick sorry and forget about it. These wounds are too deep. My perspective on life has changed. We now doubt ourselves and humanity.
Regardless, Jesus encourages us to try. To try and reconcile. If it doesn’t work, he says ‘take backup’ or in other words, bring someone who can help you communicate. It feels good to be forgiven when you know you’ve really messed up. It feels good to say, I apologize and take accountability for my actions. Sometimes if we listen and try to be honest, we can realize that we’re both humans trying to get along in this world and maybe it’s best that we do it separately.
You may be saying, Angie, but you don’t know how deep these wounds go. And you’re right, I don’t. Maybe sitting down and reconciling with the person is not possible, a good idea, or safe. What happens to forgiveness then? I want to encourage you to think about forgiveness here in a different way. Sometimes we get an idea that when we forgive someone we are saying that whatever you did to me was ok. Some things are just not ok. I think you can generate a list of things in your head. Abuse, apathy, words that tear down, destructive behavior, and on and on. These things are not ok, and God agrees that these are not ok either.
How are we to forgive these things? Or with people who we aren’t able to have a reconciliation conversation with? Here, forgiveness is not about what they have done, but it is about how you choose to live. It’s saying to the situation and the person, “I am going to let God handle this hurt so I can continue through my life as a healthy and whole person. I am going to rise above this pain by letting it go, Not because what happened is permissible or ok, but because I don’t want to live with this hurt any longer.” In my life this has sometimes been a daily decision. I have had to wake up and say, “today I don’t want to live with this hurt, instead I’m going to forgive it and let God deal with it and the person who hurt me.” It’s not reason or cause to stay in situations where you are continually being hurt, because If you are I want to encourage you to get help or get out. But it’s letting go of the burden of living with the pain and trusting God to handle it.
The second type of forgiveness is one I have spent a great deal of time on. It’s self-forgiveness. When I was in college I was active in University Ministry and other campus leadership positions. However, my sophomore year, I got pregnant. I decided to keep my son, but as a result I was asked to leave my leadership positions, because I was not a good ‘role model’ and I should ‘feel guilty’ because I was a sinner. (Now, for the record, this was not at Grand View and I don’t think the same response would come from Grand View.) I was so full of guilt and shame that I spent much of my time in my room crying. One night my grandma called and said to me,” Angie sometimes God gives us the gift of tears.” And she reminded me that, “There was nothing I could do that could separate me from the love of God.” Nothing? Really? I was a pregnant teenager. My parents felt ashamed of me, my friends didn’t know how to help me, my boyfriend was going through his own stuff, I felt alone. My grandma said, “Angie, be proud of this baby, because once he’s here everyone’s gonna forget all this ridiculousness. Forgive yourself and you might as well feel proud now.” This message of love from my grandma led me to walk down a path of forgiving myself. I was human, it happened. Having sex before marriage was a mistake, but God doesn’t make mistake children. Chase has been a wonderful gift to me that I do not regret.
Forgiving myself always seems harder than forgiving other people. I forget why Jesus came and I seek to be a savior to myself. I think If I’m good enough I can atone for the bad things I have done. Or If I prove that I am worth it to other people then maybe I’ll be able to feel better about the times I know I have fallen short of what God wants for me.
But God knows that I’m going to fall short. Which leads us to the third type of forgiveness. Forgiveness between God and me. God gives us the law which shows us the places in which we fall short of his desires for us. He is a just God. We’re all sinners. However, we cannot save ourselves. Therefore, he sent Jesus to save us. Here was Jesus, the son of God and the only perfect person. Jesus substituted himself for us to carry the burden of our sins on himself. He suffered our punishment for us so that we are blameless before God. We don’t have to worry about our salvation, instead we can go about free to try and live lives that matter on this earth. We are given the chance to say ‘thank you’ to God by seeking to help others and to live out his commandments. It’s our response to the forgiveness that we receive. We can respond in a number of ways.
- By forgiving ourselves
- By forgiving others
- By seeking justice
- By living lives of integrity
- By risking vulnerability
- By loving kindness
- By advocating for others
And more and more. We do these, not because we have to to be ‘good Christians’ but because God gives us the freedom to be able to. We are free from our sins that keep us trapped either resenting ourselves or resenting other people. We can offer forgiveness, knowing that God has it covered. Then we can live lives of freedom in Christ.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Chapel August 30: A New Community
This sermon, based on Romans 12:19-21, was preached in weekly chapel at Grand View University on August 30, 2011, by Pastor Ken Jones.
In the reading from Romans today, Paul gives us a pretty great list of ways to behave if you’re going to live around other people. It’s good to be diligent, to be honorable toward others, to be patient when bad stuff happens. Who doesn’t want to be around someone who’s humble, peaceable and hospitable?
For my money, this passage is a pretty good description of what we want the ministry at Grand View to be about. When you attend events, engage in a Bible study and show up at chapel, this is what you ought to expect: People who are authentic, loving and welcoming. A Word that is preached honestly and without hubris. And work done well and with diligence. You ought to expect an intermission from the incessant demands of the world around you. You ought to expect to be able to settle into warmth and welcome. You ought to expect us to recognize all the places you’re already being judged in your life and, in return, to call you into God’s grace and mercy.
All the signs we put together for our Walk to Worship today are designed to give you a clue about what you can expect. For wherever the small, faithful Body of Christ gathers, you’re going to get hypocrites trying to get it right. You’re going to get guys with ripped abs and fellows like me. You’re going to get people willing to give of themselves to you. You’re going to encounter folks whom God has pulled kicking and screaming into a relationship. You’re going to meet up with fellow sinners who’ve fallen and can’t get up, people who need a safety net, people who know the outrageous love of the one who’s caught them.
Here’s the catch, though. What Paul hoped for in the group of believers in Rome and what we hope for in ministry at Grand View isn’t going to happen the way we hope it will. It won’t happen because of some decision or commitment on our part. That’s because every one of us involved is broken. Each of us knows sin. Each of us spends our days focused on ourselves. We do persecute. We do curse. We’re haughty and think we know it all. We keep score. We give up. We see to our own needs first. Our decisions are forgotten and our commitments fall to the wayside. That’s what sin does in us. It mis-shapes us and turns us in on ourselves.
But it’s also not the end of the story. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, is the end of the story – the limit and the goal. God has come to us in Christ Jesus, God’s Son. And Christ has seen fit to take you on, to take me one, to grab hold of all of us, and bring us into his community, his gathering, his body. Sometimes it happens with us going kicking and screaming. Sometimes we can’t help ourselves, because he not only the best option for us, he’s the only option and hope – an irresistible hottie of divine and eternal love. Sometimes we just wake up and find ourselves right there at Christ’s mercy seat because our friends have carried us in.
And once Jesus has you, he’s going to make something of you. Paul’s list of behaviors isn’t just a set of suggestions. It’s a description of what people begin to look like when they see their own helplessness and experience the fullness of God’s love in Christ Jesus. People who are honest about their own brokenness start changing when they’re flooded with what Christ comes to give. The proud become humble. Mean girls in your hallway become kind and open. Jocks who are tools begin to lift their weight for others. People who see themselves as sorry nothings begin to regard themselves as valuable children of God. And all those burdens and tasks of life start to look like callings and vocations – divine magnets pulling you away from yourself and into lives of meaning and service.
So here’s my promise to you this semester: I’m going to mess up. Angie Larson is going to take a swing and a miss. The Ministry Team is going go bonkers with all their responsibilities. And you? You’re heading down the same path with us. But this will always be a place and a time where the hoped-for community of Christ and the grace, mercy and steadfast love of God will show up. It will be an intermission – a time in between, a grace space, God showing up, maybe just when you need him most. Amen.
In the reading from Romans today, Paul gives us a pretty great list of ways to behave if you’re going to live around other people. It’s good to be diligent, to be honorable toward others, to be patient when bad stuff happens. Who doesn’t want to be around someone who’s humble, peaceable and hospitable?
For my money, this passage is a pretty good description of what we want the ministry at Grand View to be about. When you attend events, engage in a Bible study and show up at chapel, this is what you ought to expect: People who are authentic, loving and welcoming. A Word that is preached honestly and without hubris. And work done well and with diligence. You ought to expect an intermission from the incessant demands of the world around you. You ought to expect to be able to settle into warmth and welcome. You ought to expect us to recognize all the places you’re already being judged in your life and, in return, to call you into God’s grace and mercy.
All the signs we put together for our Walk to Worship today are designed to give you a clue about what you can expect. For wherever the small, faithful Body of Christ gathers, you’re going to get hypocrites trying to get it right. You’re going to get guys with ripped abs and fellows like me. You’re going to get people willing to give of themselves to you. You’re going to encounter folks whom God has pulled kicking and screaming into a relationship. You’re going to meet up with fellow sinners who’ve fallen and can’t get up, people who need a safety net, people who know the outrageous love of the one who’s caught them.
Here’s the catch, though. What Paul hoped for in the group of believers in Rome and what we hope for in ministry at Grand View isn’t going to happen the way we hope it will. It won’t happen because of some decision or commitment on our part. That’s because every one of us involved is broken. Each of us knows sin. Each of us spends our days focused on ourselves. We do persecute. We do curse. We’re haughty and think we know it all. We keep score. We give up. We see to our own needs first. Our decisions are forgotten and our commitments fall to the wayside. That’s what sin does in us. It mis-shapes us and turns us in on ourselves.
But it’s also not the end of the story. Jesus Christ, crucified and risen from the dead, is the end of the story – the limit and the goal. God has come to us in Christ Jesus, God’s Son. And Christ has seen fit to take you on, to take me one, to grab hold of all of us, and bring us into his community, his gathering, his body. Sometimes it happens with us going kicking and screaming. Sometimes we can’t help ourselves, because he not only the best option for us, he’s the only option and hope – an irresistible hottie of divine and eternal love. Sometimes we just wake up and find ourselves right there at Christ’s mercy seat because our friends have carried us in.
And once Jesus has you, he’s going to make something of you. Paul’s list of behaviors isn’t just a set of suggestions. It’s a description of what people begin to look like when they see their own helplessness and experience the fullness of God’s love in Christ Jesus. People who are honest about their own brokenness start changing when they’re flooded with what Christ comes to give. The proud become humble. Mean girls in your hallway become kind and open. Jocks who are tools begin to lift their weight for others. People who see themselves as sorry nothings begin to regard themselves as valuable children of God. And all those burdens and tasks of life start to look like callings and vocations – divine magnets pulling you away from yourself and into lives of meaning and service.
So here’s my promise to you this semester: I’m going to mess up. Angie Larson is going to take a swing and a miss. The Ministry Team is going go bonkers with all their responsibilities. And you? You’re heading down the same path with us. But this will always be a place and a time where the hoped-for community of Christ and the grace, mercy and steadfast love of God will show up. It will be an intermission – a time in between, a grace space, God showing up, maybe just when you need him most. Amen.
Welcome Worship: The Red Thread
This is a sermon by Pastor Ken Jones. It was preached at the Welcome Worship during New Student Days on Sunday, August 28, 2011.
In the beginning, when your college years were still a formless void, the Spirit of God was moving over the face of all that who-knows-what, and God said, “Let there be you.” And there was you. And God saw what he had made. And, behold, God saw that you were good.
It’s good you’re here. It’s good that you are about to experience four years of cafeteria food, roommate ups and downs, and relationship ups and downs. It’s good that you’re going to come up against professors who assign far too much reading, blank pages on your laptop screen and an even scarier blank mind that doesn’t have a clue what to type. It’s good that you’re going work hard to perform your best for the sake of your Viking teammates and that you’re going to turn out to support your teams. It’s good that you’ll get busy in clubs and orgs. It’s good that, as President Henning said on Friday, that you might just meet your future spouse. And it’s good that you’re going to experience four years of growing pains as you leave behind what was and get ready for even wilder unknowns in the full, rich independence and responsibility of life after college.
Right now you stand on the brink. Everything’s new – even if you’ve been on campus a little longer because of team practices. I suspect that you feel a little apprehensive over all that’s new, but that you’re also feeling pretty confident. After all, you made it through to this point. You did graduate from high school. You survived a summer of waiting and getting ready for this move. And that’s all good, too.
In the midst of all of this, and your past and future, too, God has made a promise to you. As God says to the prophet Jeremiah, I will be your God. You see, God has made a promise to you that you won’t have to cobble together your own life and that you won’t have to create your own future. God is the alpha and the omega. Those are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, so God has decided to be the beginning and ending of everything – including you.
That’s the kind of God we have. That’s a God who isn’t going to sit around on his divine backside playing divine Xbox Connect up in heaven. You have a God who is intrusive and pushy, a God who has decided to make himself known in your life. God is like a mother coyote roaming the prairies of my native South Dakota, howling after her young, searching after you, making sure you’re secure and safe. And just like in the beginning when God said “Let there be light,” and there was light, what God determines to do happens.
God has stitched himself into everything that exists, including your life, like a red thread in a piece of white linen. His promise to be your God runs through the genetic hook-up that created you. The red thread of God’s promise runs through your every breath. Its stitches hold together relationships and molecules. This red thread of promise pulls together people in communities like this one, so that in every space and every time God is there saying, “Mine” and “Good.”
But this business of being God is a tricky thing. Being God means having your human creatures know you and trust you. But they don’t. They can’t see you or hear you. And worse, they often don’t want to. They get caught up in their own existence. They begin to think they’re the masters of their own futures. Instead of looking to you or enjoying and serving in the world around them, they turn in on themselves and cover over the red thread by focusing on their wants, their hopes, their needs. I’d think it would be enough to make you want to quit your godding business and take a vacation to Tahiti.
So God takes that in hand, every bit as much as God did in creating everything. God doesn’t leave you alone, because God does want you to know him. So God speaks to us human creatures throughout history by using people to speak and write that wide variety of things that got collected in the Bible. The red thread emerges in before our eyes and in our ears. What’s more, God doesn’t leave you wondering if he’s actually there. God takes on flesh and bone in the person of Jesus – and he takes on the worst that we human beings can dole out when we execute him. The red thread hangs on the cross. And God doesn’t leave us to our cruelty and rejection, so Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, is raised from the dead. The red thread thrives and weaves itself both in life and beyond the grave. And God sends physical things into your life – things like Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and preachers – so the red thread of God’s divine promise to you can be something you know is actually for you.
I kind of like having a God who is so full of care and is impatient to make himself known. But it’s mighty easy to like that God at this point in my semester – when all the grading I’m going to have to do is still a hypothetical thing in the future, when my school loans are being paid off, when my wife looks kindly on me, when my students write nice things about me on their course evaluations, when I have a chili pepper on RateMyProfessors.com because I’m a hottie. But how am I going to trust God, know God and see the red thread when the bottom drops out and disaster hits, when change becomes my tormentor, and when my future is dim at best.
Six years ago, my wife Mary and I bought our first house. We’d lived in church parsonages or student housing our whole married life. On August 17th that year, my son Sam and I were at our old apartment in West Des Moines with the movers to haul the big furniture to our new house on North Walnut Creek Drive. My cell phone rang, and it was my nephew Nick. I was happy to hear from him, but a little annoyed too, because he was interrupting the moving and packing. But what he said hit me like a 2x4 to the temple: “Uncle Kenny, I just found my mom in her bed, and she’s dead.” With those words, the illusion of my control and my happy future was wiped out. Sam crawled into the back of his bedroom closet and sobbed. I had to call Mary to tell her that her sister had died. I had to call her parents to tell them their little girl Randi was completely lost to them.
And then there was the house and the move. Two guys and a truck waiting. Another Budget rental truck full of stuff standing in our driveway. A decade and a half of boxed life waiting to be unpacked. No beds set up. Who knew where the dishes were, let alone the toilet brush or dryer sheets? And the red thread? All we could see was the shredded fabric of our lives.
I would be so glad if I could tell you that’s the only time in my life when I felt that way. But we’ve had miscarriages and major illnesses. We’ve lost other loved ones. My parents got divorced when I was in college, and I had a semester where I had a 0.8 grade point average. Change keeps coming. Losses pile up. Disaster is unloosed. Red thread? No thread.
But every single time that I couldn’t be the hero of my own story, God has shown up. God has inserted himself, sewn his gracious being into my story, so I could finally see. God set himself as a strong red lifeline I could cling to. When my sister-in-law died so suddenly and tragically, God showed up. Our pastor was at our house even before Mary could get home from work. A passel of folks from church and from school here pulled up and started unpacking boxes. By the end of the afternoon, beds were up and made. Dishes were in the kitchen cupboards. Books were on the shelves. And Grand View’s academic dean had installed a tie rack in my bedroom closet and hung my beloved bow ties.
Yes, death didn’t go away. But the promise God gave to Jeremiah thousands of years ago hung true. God had stitched a red circle of loving people around us. And when we were alone in our house, the three of us, God did one thing more. God used the mouth of an 8th grade kid to say, “Mom and Dad, we need to pray.” And he let loose with words of such light and hope and faith, it was red thread tumbling forth from God himself.
So here you are: all ready to start a year of college life at Grand View University on the east side of Des Moines. It’s good. But I promise you, as Bob Marley says in “I Shot the Sheriff,” “One day the bottom a-go drop out.” Where will the red thread be for you? Where will you find God acting for you? How can you know then of Christ’s love for you? I pray that you have that red stitching around already in the people who’ve seen you to this place. But God gives you a place where, no matter what is going on in your life, you can count on seeing red. No, I don’t mean the Viking Brigade. No, God is present and accounted for here. The reason we have a University Ministry, is so you have a place to go where you can be sure to get God’s promise. God shows up here, so you can feel welcome. God speaks here, so you can have guidance in living and mercy when you fail. God gives you someone like Angie Larson over there, so you have an actual person who’ll wrap you up in God’s love.
It’s good to have a God who begins it all and who wraps it all up. It’s good to have a God who isn’t afraid of you at your worst. It’s good to have a God, who threads and winds and stitches and sews his own eternal good will into your life, into your breath, into your future, into your now, right now. Amen.
In the beginning, when your college years were still a formless void, the Spirit of God was moving over the face of all that who-knows-what, and God said, “Let there be you.” And there was you. And God saw what he had made. And, behold, God saw that you were good.
It’s good you’re here. It’s good that you are about to experience four years of cafeteria food, roommate ups and downs, and relationship ups and downs. It’s good that you’re going to come up against professors who assign far too much reading, blank pages on your laptop screen and an even scarier blank mind that doesn’t have a clue what to type. It’s good that you’re going work hard to perform your best for the sake of your Viking teammates and that you’re going to turn out to support your teams. It’s good that you’ll get busy in clubs and orgs. It’s good that, as President Henning said on Friday, that you might just meet your future spouse. And it’s good that you’re going to experience four years of growing pains as you leave behind what was and get ready for even wilder unknowns in the full, rich independence and responsibility of life after college.
Right now you stand on the brink. Everything’s new – even if you’ve been on campus a little longer because of team practices. I suspect that you feel a little apprehensive over all that’s new, but that you’re also feeling pretty confident. After all, you made it through to this point. You did graduate from high school. You survived a summer of waiting and getting ready for this move. And that’s all good, too.
In the midst of all of this, and your past and future, too, God has made a promise to you. As God says to the prophet Jeremiah, I will be your God. You see, God has made a promise to you that you won’t have to cobble together your own life and that you won’t have to create your own future. God is the alpha and the omega. Those are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, so God has decided to be the beginning and ending of everything – including you.
That’s the kind of God we have. That’s a God who isn’t going to sit around on his divine backside playing divine Xbox Connect up in heaven. You have a God who is intrusive and pushy, a God who has decided to make himself known in your life. God is like a mother coyote roaming the prairies of my native South Dakota, howling after her young, searching after you, making sure you’re secure and safe. And just like in the beginning when God said “Let there be light,” and there was light, what God determines to do happens.
God has stitched himself into everything that exists, including your life, like a red thread in a piece of white linen. His promise to be your God runs through the genetic hook-up that created you. The red thread of God’s promise runs through your every breath. Its stitches hold together relationships and molecules. This red thread of promise pulls together people in communities like this one, so that in every space and every time God is there saying, “Mine” and “Good.”
But this business of being God is a tricky thing. Being God means having your human creatures know you and trust you. But they don’t. They can’t see you or hear you. And worse, they often don’t want to. They get caught up in their own existence. They begin to think they’re the masters of their own futures. Instead of looking to you or enjoying and serving in the world around them, they turn in on themselves and cover over the red thread by focusing on their wants, their hopes, their needs. I’d think it would be enough to make you want to quit your godding business and take a vacation to Tahiti.
So God takes that in hand, every bit as much as God did in creating everything. God doesn’t leave you alone, because God does want you to know him. So God speaks to us human creatures throughout history by using people to speak and write that wide variety of things that got collected in the Bible. The red thread emerges in before our eyes and in our ears. What’s more, God doesn’t leave you wondering if he’s actually there. God takes on flesh and bone in the person of Jesus – and he takes on the worst that we human beings can dole out when we execute him. The red thread hangs on the cross. And God doesn’t leave us to our cruelty and rejection, so Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, is raised from the dead. The red thread thrives and weaves itself both in life and beyond the grave. And God sends physical things into your life – things like Baptism and the Lord’s Supper and preachers – so the red thread of God’s divine promise to you can be something you know is actually for you.
I kind of like having a God who is so full of care and is impatient to make himself known. But it’s mighty easy to like that God at this point in my semester – when all the grading I’m going to have to do is still a hypothetical thing in the future, when my school loans are being paid off, when my wife looks kindly on me, when my students write nice things about me on their course evaluations, when I have a chili pepper on RateMyProfessors.com because I’m a hottie. But how am I going to trust God, know God and see the red thread when the bottom drops out and disaster hits, when change becomes my tormentor, and when my future is dim at best.
Six years ago, my wife Mary and I bought our first house. We’d lived in church parsonages or student housing our whole married life. On August 17th that year, my son Sam and I were at our old apartment in West Des Moines with the movers to haul the big furniture to our new house on North Walnut Creek Drive. My cell phone rang, and it was my nephew Nick. I was happy to hear from him, but a little annoyed too, because he was interrupting the moving and packing. But what he said hit me like a 2x4 to the temple: “Uncle Kenny, I just found my mom in her bed, and she’s dead.” With those words, the illusion of my control and my happy future was wiped out. Sam crawled into the back of his bedroom closet and sobbed. I had to call Mary to tell her that her sister had died. I had to call her parents to tell them their little girl Randi was completely lost to them.
And then there was the house and the move. Two guys and a truck waiting. Another Budget rental truck full of stuff standing in our driveway. A decade and a half of boxed life waiting to be unpacked. No beds set up. Who knew where the dishes were, let alone the toilet brush or dryer sheets? And the red thread? All we could see was the shredded fabric of our lives.
I would be so glad if I could tell you that’s the only time in my life when I felt that way. But we’ve had miscarriages and major illnesses. We’ve lost other loved ones. My parents got divorced when I was in college, and I had a semester where I had a 0.8 grade point average. Change keeps coming. Losses pile up. Disaster is unloosed. Red thread? No thread.
But every single time that I couldn’t be the hero of my own story, God has shown up. God has inserted himself, sewn his gracious being into my story, so I could finally see. God set himself as a strong red lifeline I could cling to. When my sister-in-law died so suddenly and tragically, God showed up. Our pastor was at our house even before Mary could get home from work. A passel of folks from church and from school here pulled up and started unpacking boxes. By the end of the afternoon, beds were up and made. Dishes were in the kitchen cupboards. Books were on the shelves. And Grand View’s academic dean had installed a tie rack in my bedroom closet and hung my beloved bow ties.
Yes, death didn’t go away. But the promise God gave to Jeremiah thousands of years ago hung true. God had stitched a red circle of loving people around us. And when we were alone in our house, the three of us, God did one thing more. God used the mouth of an 8th grade kid to say, “Mom and Dad, we need to pray.” And he let loose with words of such light and hope and faith, it was red thread tumbling forth from God himself.
So here you are: all ready to start a year of college life at Grand View University on the east side of Des Moines. It’s good. But I promise you, as Bob Marley says in “I Shot the Sheriff,” “One day the bottom a-go drop out.” Where will the red thread be for you? Where will you find God acting for you? How can you know then of Christ’s love for you? I pray that you have that red stitching around already in the people who’ve seen you to this place. But God gives you a place where, no matter what is going on in your life, you can count on seeing red. No, I don’t mean the Viking Brigade. No, God is present and accounted for here. The reason we have a University Ministry, is so you have a place to go where you can be sure to get God’s promise. God shows up here, so you can feel welcome. God speaks here, so you can have guidance in living and mercy when you fail. God gives you someone like Angie Larson over there, so you have an actual person who’ll wrap you up in God’s love.
It’s good to have a God who begins it all and who wraps it all up. It’s good to have a God who isn’t afraid of you at your worst. It’s good to have a God, who threads and winds and stitches and sews his own eternal good will into your life, into your breath, into your future, into your now, right now. Amen.
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