Grace Upon Grace

This sermon was preached on Saturday, July 18, at the Memorial Service for The Rev. Dr. F. Dean Lueking. It was a holy privilege to stand in the pulpit occupied for so many years by Pastor Lueking, giving thanks to God for Dean’s life and ministry, and rejoicing in the promise of the resurrection won for us by Jesus Christ. It was a service filled with beautiful music and moving words, all pointing to the gospel. You can watch the livestream recording and follow along in the bulletin. Soli Deo gloria.

Beverly; Ann, Chris, Sarah, Joel; grandchildren and great-grandchildren; friends in Christ, grace be unto you and peace in the name God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. Eleven years ago, Erika and I made our first trip to River Forest. The occasion was a twenty-four-hour whirlwind in-person interview. Grace and I were in the mutual process of discerning if the Holy Spirit might be calling us together as pastor and people. Having grown up in a different neck of the Lutheran woods, I had been unfamiliar with Grace Church until the call process began. I had never heard the name Dean Lueking in my life. But on my way out the door that morning, someone put a copy of one of Pastor Lueking’s books into my hands. Settling into my seat on the plane, I cracked open The Grace of It All. I inhaled the words, page after page, and had finished the book just prior to landing. I looked over at Erika and said, “I think this guy is kind of a big deal.” It is an odd thing to begin a friendship with someone through one of their books, but there was more to come. Grace had had good luck in the past calling young guys whose initials are “DL,” and was willing to take the chance again. I’ve been blessed to be at Grace ever since. Knowing Dean, as colleague and friend and pastor, it a big part of that blessing. Dean is a big deal, and we could tell story after story about just why that is. And telling these stories is right and good. But Dean, of course, pastor and preacher that he was, would not have wanted the focus to linger on him for too long. Because Dean’s story is bigger than Dean. It’s bigger even than this place called Grace. It is the story of God’s people, caught up in the grace of our God; grace freely given through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
2. In addition to the scripture that has already been proclaimed today, passages chosen for us by Dean, he left one more. A passage on which to center this sermon, because it stood at the center of his ministry here for forty-four years. St. Paul writes to the Ephesians: “The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth building itself up in love.” And there it is. The pastor just one of many. The equipping of the saints – all of them! – as the goal. The whole body working together. And all for the sake of Jesus Christ. Pastor Lueking understood what is easy to forget. The pastor’s ministry is not about the pastor. It is about Jesus, and it is about the people, drawing them together in the rhythms of Word and sacrament, confession and forgiveness, consolation and service and mutual love. At this, Pastor Lueking excelled.
3. Today, after 98 years of life, 71 years of ordained ministry, and nearly 68 years of marriage, we gather in this sacred space to commend Dean into God’s care. Here in this place, where the gospel came to life in Dean’s words. Where hospitality means welcoming all and faithfulness means breaking out of old ways of being church and catching up to the new thing that God is doing. Where Dean helped us know that the baptismal calling to work for justice and peace meant working for all of our neighbors. For civil rights and for peace when the world screamed war. For interfaith relationships, especially those with our Jewish neighbors. For the marginalized and those in need. For our LGBTQ siblings, for whose cause – and with great love – Dean became a champion. What Dean preached at Grace began at home, born out of a love story that moved quickly from a blind first date to a marriage proposal. Dean was no fool, and he wasn’t going to let you get away, Beverly. Together, your home was a place of grace, too. A home for your children and your many foster children. Shoot, there I go, talking about Dean again! Except it’s not about Dean. It’s about who Dean helped us to be, how Dean shaped us for the life of the cruciform gospel. And all we shared together. So, gathered here today, in the wake of Dean’s death, where are we to go, and what are we say?
4. This morning, we join Cleopas and the other disciple on their long walk back to Emmaus. They had had such high hopes, believing that their friend, their rabbi, Jesus, might be the one to restore their people. But the powers that be did what the powers that be tend to do. They took this preacher of love, this proclaimer of forgiveness, this One who claimed to be God’s Son, and they crucified him. And that was that. The disciples had hoped, but they knew the score. Death is death and that is that. Or, at least, it was. But the stranger who joins them on their sad, lonely road is the resurrected victim. With their own eyes, they cannot yet perceive this new thing. But then, a meal. Bread, and a blessing. Just then, just there, are their eyes opened. Jesus, broken open for their sins, is now the One who breaks open the tomb and brings life out of death. Life, in its abundant and unending grace. We are brought to the table again today, and our eyes are opened. We gather around this table, and receive again the gifts of Jesus Christ, given and shed for you and for the forgiveness of sins. We gather around tables at lunch and experience the power of the mutual consolation of the saints. We are reminded of the grace that begins at home, with family and friends, around our own kitchen tables, where our quotidian cares and the wounds of strife and conflict can be set aside. We discover, with Cleopas and with Dean, the most amazing truth of all. When the newsman Jim Lehrer once asked Dean what he believed and taught about death, Dean gave him a five-word answer: “Death is a conquered enemy.” It is the most surprising thing of all, but it is true: Death has been swallowed up in the victory of God. Come, see, taste, and know that the Lord is good. So good, in fact, that death no longer gets the last word. In the promise of life, Dean is exactly where he has always been – in the hands of the God who created, redeemed, and loves him. And that, friends, is where you are, too. Gathered around the table, we are not so far away from the saints after all.
5. Last week, I was in Martin, Slovakia, with twenty-six other members of the Grace community. The seeds of this relationship were, of course, planted and nourished by Dean and Beverly. I spoke with the executive director, Bohdan, who was once a young man with a dream but in need of wisdom and direction. After years in which the church was not allowed to freely gather under communist rule, Bohdan and his friends were glimpsing a new vision. But how to move forward? It was Dean, wise from his years of faithful struggle and now sharing his gifts with people around the world, who helped light the way. With friendship, encouragement, and prayer, like a “second father.”. As we lamented Dean’s death, Bohdan looked at me and said, “I guess it’s our turn now.” He was drawing, in a way, on Paul’s message to the Philippians, which Dean knew so well. The message that the gospel wasn’t about them; rather, the gospel points us to Jesus. How do we go on without those who came before us? By emulating them, living out what they taught us. By doing those things that are true and honorable, just and pure, pleasing and commendable and excellent. By doing these things in joy and with love for the sake of Jesus. Christ. The very last thing Dean would have us do today is imagine that this story is winding down. I can hear his voice: “Do the next thing.” And the next thing, in one way or another, is always to point to Jesus. To proclaim forgiveness. To welcome others. To be people of grace. To announce the victory of the resurrection. I was reminded recently of the joy Dean found on the waters around Detroit Island, a place where so many relationships were nurtured. Up until a few years ago, Dean could be found not only in the boat but at the helm, steering the craft forward, calm even when the water wasn’t. We follow still in his wake, onto the next thing for Jesus’ sake, rejoicing in the boundless sea of grace.
6. It is, of course, hard to believe that this day is here. We all feel this loss acutely, but none more than you, Beverly. What a blessing it is to look out and see Dean’s and your greatest legacy: Ann and Chris, Sarah and Joel, Tim; grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A family of faith that Dean loved beyond measure. We all lean on one another today, trusting in the promise of the gospel that Pastor Lueking preached from this pulpit for forty-four years. Death is a conquered enemy. I thought today about wrapping this up with some words from the esteemed, illustrious, and not-quite real theologian, Franz Bibfeldt, but thought better of it. Instead, one more time from this pulpit, we can hear Pastor Lueking speak: “My hope,” he writes, “is to keep the conversation going, confirming the Spirit’s zeal upon each other, affirming gifts, admonishing and receiving admonition, equipping God’s people for the ministry of the baptized in the world, and finding enough time along the way to stand back with hope, joy, and wonder, marveling at the grace of it all.” Thank you, Dean, for showing us where to look for God’s grace. And thank you, Jesus, for your grace that is all in all. Death is defeated. Life abounds. Alleluia! Amen.

And now may the peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, this day and forever. Amen.

This sermon was preached on June 21, the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, at Grace Lutheran Church (River Forest, IL). You can watch the livestream recording and follow along in the bulletin. The image is Tango, one of our Bible Buddies from Vacation Bible School.

Friends in Christ, grace be unto you and peace in the name God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. As we approach the celebration of our nation’s semiquincentennial, we are forced to admit that we have never used nor heard the word “semiquincentennial” in our lives. What does one gift for a 250^th anniversary, anyway? Plutonium? As we approach this milestone, we are also forced to admit that our nation’s political discourse rarely matches the lofty levels in which it was born; it has largely descended into farce. At least our soccer team is doing well, right? If there is any meat, so to speak, in our politics, it has to do with affordability. The word has buzz because fewer and fewer people have it. More and more people are getting by with less and less, even as the opulent abundance of our society proliferates; the dream so many were promised is becoming illusory. Even right here in Oak Park and River Forest, where we value welcoming all, it is harder for those lower on the socioeconomic ladder to make a home. More and more, folks are asking, Can we afford this? Is it worth it? Is that too high a price to pay?
   
   
2. Into this world of scrimping and saving, of worry and fear, comes Jesus. He, too, has something to offer. A life of persecution and discord; of familial disunity; of cross carrying and life losing. The cost is high and Jesus seems unconcerned with affordability. He has not come to bargain. This is it; take it or leave it. If you’re not interested, if you’d rather maintain the status quo, well, that’s fine. But try as you might to hang on to your life as it is, you will inevitably lose it. Jesus’ words are full of warning; if we continue in sin, it will not be kept secret. We are not above our Master, and we are not able to hide what we do, individually or as a nation, from the God who sees everything. Jesus comes not with peace but with a sword, calling us to put him above all others. When it costs so much to follow, can we afford to pay so high a price?
   
   
3. Where then do we turn; whither is our hope? This past week, Grace left Chicagoland behind and travelled to Rainforest Falls, the setting for this year’s Vacation Bible School. There were many highlights; I enjoyed leading songs and games. My most vivid memory is of a young boy who came up to me and, apropos of nothing, pointed his finger in my face and said, “old.” Nearly 100 of us, from three-year-old children to volunteers in their eighties, spent the week together exploring the nature of God. While we weren’t parsing the Athanasian Creed or pondering the works of the Cappacodian Fathers, we did get to the heart of the matter. Each day was centered in a foundational claim about who God is. God is our creator. God knows everything. God is our safe place. God is love. God is forever. To each of these, we would make our affirmation: “Wow, God!” Of course, as our gospel reading makes clear, being known by the creator God is not yet good news. The God who counts our hairs and sees the sparrows is well aware of the many ways we have fallen short. God sees the rank inequality we have brought into this world that was meant to have enough for all. But as we affirmed for the children throughout this week of VBS, God’s nature does not begin with knowledge. It begins, and for that matter ends, with love.
   
   
4. In the light of God’s love, the question then becomes not, can we afford to pay so high a price? Rather, we ask, can we afford not to? Because here’s the thing: While following Jesus costs us our lives, it is only in following Jesus that we find the new life that really matters. The cost is fronted by Jesus, who goes to the cross on our behalf. In his dying, we meet our end. In his rising, we are raised. And we are raised not simply into more life, but into a life that is categorically different from the one we lived before. At the beginning of each funeral held in this space, we hear Paul’s words from Romans 6: “For if we have been united with him in a death life his, we will certainly be united him in a resurrection like his.” These words of promise are dripping with baptismal hope. In the face of death, we find life. Through the cross we emerge with Jesus from the empty tomb. But these are not words meant only for the end of our earthly life. They are words that shape our earthly living, because if we have been joined to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, how can we go on living in the old life of sin and death. Should we carry on as before, Paul asks? By no means! The God who created us, who knows everything, intends us for so much more. This God made us for love. We cannot afford to live any other way.
   
   
5. On this Father’s Day, Jesus’ words about familial relationships strike an interesting chord. I treasure my children; has Jesus come to set us against one another? No. Jesus comes to call me, and them, to himself first. Our relationships with one another can only by whole and holy and healed when Christ is at the center. In giving ourselves up into God’s love, we find our relationships transformed, fitting us for the purposes God intends for within our households and beyond. During VBS, at the end of each morning, I would ask the kids if they’d had any “God sightings,” if they’d seen or heard or felt God that day. One day, a young boy said, “I see God everywhere around here, because everyone here is made in God’s image.” Amen to that. When we receive one another through Jesus Christ, we see Jesus Christ in one another.
   
   
6. Today, Jesus calls us again. Calls us to take up our cross and follow him. We are mindful of our purpose statement that shapes both our worship and work: Called by Christ, we grow in grace, live with love, and go to serve. It is a call that costs us everything yet is free for everyone. The Christ who calls us is the One who died and was raised for us. You are forgiven. You are no longer bound by this world’s inequality but are free to live in service to your neighbor in need. You are dead to sin and alive in Christ. Continue in sin? By no means! We can’t afford that. But the new life in Christ is free. We lose nothing worth keeping. We gain everything worth having, for we gain Jesus himself. Take up the cross and follow, and in following find the free gift of life. Amen.

And now may the peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, this day and forever. Amen.

This sermon was preached at Grace Lutheran Church (River Forest, IL) on June 14, the Third Sunday after Pentecost. You can watch the livestream recording and follow along in the bulletin. The photo, of Greta and me, is from the Mumford & Sons rain-delayed concert at Wrigley Field on June 11. Like me, they like to quote Auden.

Friends in Christ, grace be unto you and peace in the name God the Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. I spend a lot of time in the car, visiting folks and driving my kids all over creation. I could use this time to listen to podcasts or audio books, but my preference is local radio. So it is that I hear a lot of commercials. My current favorite is for a bank. We hear from a grandma and her grandson. She is preparing to go to the bank because she’s heard banks are now using “fakey smartness” and she wants to prove that she’s real. Her grandson assures her that not only is that not what artificial intelligence is for, but that this particular bank can be depended upon to provide excellent care by actual human beings. Grandma isn’t sure that’s right; she prepares for her visit by asking her grandson to pinch her. He does so, weakly, to which she responds by giving him a hard pinch. What could be more real than the reaction elicited by a pinch? It’s a cute commercial, meant to reassure listeners that – in a world where so much seems fakey, in which so little can be depended upon – there are still people who care. And who will give you a good loan rate so you can remodel your kitchen.
2. We live in a time of such uncertainty that a recent issue of The Christian Century posed these questions on the cover: Does God exist? Do I? These questions are foundational, and of deeper importance than where to get a good rate on a home equity loan. The article itself is a lovely mediation on Thomas Aquinas’s five proofs for the existence of God as read through the author’s gender identity, and I commend it to you. But it’s the questions themselves that jump off the cover. Does God exist? Do I? What is real? What can be trusted? What in this world isn’t fake?
3. We begin today by remembering that God is not a fact to be proven, a philosophical argument to be won. God’s reality is relational. God is the One who comes to us in relationship, who comes to us in promise, who comes to us to save us. We do not come to God with proofs. God comes to us in love. When the people groaned under the weight of 400 years of suffering and slavery in Egypt, God – I AM who I AM – comes to them. Ends their time of oppression. Brings them out toward the Promised Land. On the way, they come to Mt. Sinai. God blesses them with the covenant, chooses them as God’s own. They are now and forevermore God’s treasured possession, a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. But they are not saved for themselves; they are brought forth to be a light to the nations.
4. In the fullness of time, God makes good on the promise of that covenant by creating the new covenant, expanding to the Gentiles, sealed in the blood of Jesus Christ. In his dying and rising, we are chosen by God as God’s own. In faith we cling to the grace of God, grace freely given. We do not boast. We have done nothing to deserve it. God simply chooses to come to us in our weakness, in our sin, and make us God’s own. This grace comes today to Owen, child of God forever, just as it has come to each of you. Can you believe it? How could you not?
5. Like the people of God’s first covenant, we are not saved for ourselves. Instead, we are called and we are sent. Perhaps here we have a clue that this promise is worth believing, because it is so different that world’s promises. God’s promise of life is abundant and overflowing, on both sides of the grace, but it is not an invitation to a life of ease, as made clear by this litany of negative outcomes in Matthew 10. It is not the ground floor of an IPO promising trillions to the few while the rest of the world groans. It is not a free pass out of this world but the promise that Christ is with us in this world that he still so desperately loves. It is not easy work. When we proclaim the gospel, when we serve others humbly, when we work for justice and peace, we will often be resisted. Rejected. But in this suffering, we gain endurance, and character, and the only hope that does not disappoint. In our faithfulness to the One who has called and chosen us, we become not proofs, but signs of God’s loving presence for others.
6. The life of discipleship is the life of the gospel, the good news that in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we who were dead are alive, forgiven, free. Our daily lives, shaped even by suffering and challenge, are part of that pattern. We let go of our false dreams, our need to create for ourselves, and receive from God the truest thing of all: God’s presence with us always.
7. At our most recent synod assembly, the gathering of the ELCA throughout the metro Chicago area, the preacher spoke of the many times he has heard about how the church needs to bring in more young people. And of course, the preacher agreed with that; who wouldn’t want the pews of our churches to be full again like they were years ago? Full of families who place faith at the center of their lives? Still, the preacher shared that he’s begun to bristle a bit when such talk begins. After all, he wondered aloud, “What’s wrong with us?” His point is not that we don’t want others to come and be part of the fellowship we share; his point is simply that we do not wait for others to show up before we start to act like the church. We, as we are here assembled, are enough. For Christ is here, and Christ is enough. And, by the way, that goes for all of us. If you’re the sort of person who follows the religious news, you know that this has been a time in which some Christians are doubling down on patriarchy, tightening rules to make sure that women are kept quiet in churches and out of pulpits. Well, the most loving thing I can say about that is, balderdash. Any Bible-believing Christian should know full well that the first preachers of the gospel were the women on Easter morning. Friends, you are all part of the enough-ness of God’s people gathered here today, without exception. Not half of you. All of you.
8. We are sent into a broken world, and we are broken, too. What of it? We worship Christ, broken for you, and he is enough. So go, be the church. In the word of the poet Auden, “love your crooked neighbor, with your crooked heart.” Does God exist? We can do better than that. God is here. In water and Word, bread and wine, Christ is fully present. Do you exist? We can do better than that. For the sake of Christ, crucified and risen, you aren’t just real. You are fully alive. You are alive, but you are not your own. Saved by Christ, you are sent into the world. You are a sign of the living God and God is not done yet. Can we believe it? How could we not? Amen.

And now may the peace that passes all understanding keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus, this day and forever. Amen.