Grace Upon Grace

This sermon was preached at Grace Lutheran Church (River Forest, IL) on March 1, the 2nd Sunday in Lent. You can watch the livestream recording and follow along in the bulletin. The image is a study for Nicodemus Visiting Jesus, by Henry Ossawa Tanner (1899, public domain).

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

1. The boys had a half-day of school on Thursday, so we decided to treat ourselves. We got some drive-thru fast food and then made our way to the car wash. Do not accuse of us not knowing how to have a good time! But a strange thing happened to us in the car wash. The conveyor belt kept moving our car forward, just as it should. The car in front us, however, had come to a complete stop. I don’t know if the car wash failed in some way or if the driver had his foot on the brake. I just know that the car wash started ramming our car into the car in front of us. The boys and I were sitting there helplessly through three very low-speed collisions. We couldn’t go back. We couldn’t go forward. And while this only lasted handful of seconds, the seconds were incredibly long. What if we were stuck there forever, endlessly running into the car in front of us? Lifting up our eyes not to the hills, but to the long blue cloths going back and forth across our windshield, we wondered from where our help would come. It certainly wasn’t going to come from us; there was nothing we could do. Driving away when our great ordeal was over, I thought, “Huh. I bet that’s how Nicodemus felt when he was talking with Jesus.”
2. Nicodemus, this Pharisee and teacher, gets as far as he can get on his own. He comes to Jesus by night, intrigued by this new teacher, Jesus, but also no doubt confident in his own understanding. But the longer the conversation lasts, the more Nicodemus ends up trapped in a confusing darkness. Jesus throws him off from the get-go, telling him that he won’t be able to see God at work without being born anothen. In our translation today, that’s “born from above.” In others, it’s “born again.” It could also be “born anew.” Jesus likely has all three meanings in mind: If you want to see the reign of God, you must be born again, from above, in a new way. In the dark of night, Nicodemus imagines an even darker place. Must I, he muses, enter into my mother’s womb? If it sounds funny, that’s because it is. Imagine how his mother would feel about that! Nicodemus needs a new birth that he does not understand. He knows he can’t go back, but where is the way forward? He’s gotten himself as far as he can with nothing to show for it.
3. We humans have a knack for this. Whatever our intentions, we seem to end up stuck in the same spots over and over again, unable to go back, unable to find a way forward. So, we try the same things over and over again. Like war. I woke yesterday to a flurry of notifications on my phone, each telling me the same thing: We are at war with Iran. My heart sank. Not because I had any love for the Ayatollah or his regime, built on terror and the abuse of human rights. My heart sank because war is always lamentable. Because lives will be lost on all sides. Because it is unclear what we’re even trying to accomplish. I could go on. But the point is that here we are again, humans on all sides committed to the cycles of warfare and violence and death when what God desires is life. How long, O Lord? From where is our help to come? Perhaps God will work through us. Yesterday, Bishop Dr. Imad Haddad of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land issued a statement, including these words: “Now is the time for the global body of Christ to embody its vocation as peacemaker, seeking not the quiet of managed conflict, but the costly, just peace that transforms hearts, structures, and the life of our region.” Yes. Now is the time to work for life.
4. Having seen humanity go off the rails time and time again in the first eleven chapters, God decides to make a fresh start, to call a people who will be the means of blessing all families of the earth. All families. God comes to Abram calling him to journey to a new land, hundreds of miles away, to which he and Sarai have never been. What sense does that make? They don’t even have a child, so “great nation” seems a bit of a stretch. It’s farcical but they go. Why? Because the call makes sense? No. Because they trust the One who calls. It is the very definition of a leap of faith. Either they go or they don’t, and going makes all the difference. Abram and Sarai are living in Haran at this point in time. According to one pastor’s commentary, the name Haran means “crossroads.” And that’s exactly what it was for our forebears in faith. They could have ignored the call, trusting in their own plans for their lives, choosing a different path. Instead, they went, trusting in God’s plan for this whole world and its people.
5. Two thousand years later. Nicodemus is at a crossroads. While Jesus’ words don’t make sense according to the ways of the world, Nicodemus is invited to put his faith in Jesus. Jesus is walking his own road, and it is heading straight to the cross. He will be lifted up for all to see, looking for all the world forgotten and shamed. And yet it is here in what seems to be the darkest moment that new life and light burst forth. The Spirit, blowing where it will, calls us to look upon Jesus and gives us eyes of faith to believe, to trust, that this Jesus is the salvation of the world. That in him, even though we will yet die, we will not perish but will receive eternal life. Here is the birth from above of which Jesus speaks – not a second birth from the womb but a new birth from the tomb. We worship the God who has conquered death, and that makes us people of life. For all families and nations of the earth, we are called to the ways of life and peace.
6. I’m not sure why Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. Perhaps he was ashamed of his curiosity, or worried about what the other Pharisees would say. Perhaps it’s just good story telling; he was, after all, in the dark. I was reminded this week while reading The Christian Century of Barbara Brown Taylor’s Learning to Walk in the Dark. While we tend to fear the dark or use it for furtive purposes, Taylor reminds us that “new life starts in the dark. Whether it is a seed in the ground, a baby in the womb, or Jesus in the tomb, it starts in the dark.” Our faith begins in at the crossroads in the darkness. We can’t go back; neither can we see a way forward. From where will our help come? In the darkness, a voice speaks: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” Jesus makes the way; Jesus is the way. This is the free gift of grace. Life. For all the world. Life. For you. Life. Forever. Amen.

And now may that 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 February 22, the First Sunday in Lent. You can view the livestream recording and follow along in the bulletin. The image is Christ in the Wilderness by Ivan Kramskoi (1872, public domain).

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

1. The man had already decided upon his Lenten discipline. He would resist temptation by giving up sweets for the season. But he thought that maybe he should get a head start on it and give up his traditional Fat Tuesday paczki. He couldn’t come to a decision. Prayer and discernment had not led to clarity. So, he decided to leave it in God’s hands. “God,” he said, as he got into to the car, “if it is your will that I forgo my paczki this year, let there not be any parking spaces in front of the bakery. But if a spot appears, I will take it as a sign of your blessing that I can have my paczki without regret.” So it was with great joy that the man saw a parking spot opening up in front of the bakery as he pulled up. He’d only had to drive around the block nine times! Temptation, friends, is everywhere. Perhaps you were tempted to stay home this morning to watch the end of the men’s hockey gold medal game. But we are here, entering together into the season of Lent. This First Sunday always brings out to the same place. We are far from the bakeries and sweet things of this world, hearing instead of Jesus’ forty day fast in the wilderness, culminating with the arrival of the tempter.
2. The devil comes to Jesus not with offers of decadent food or despicable vice. The devil offers up what seem on the surface to be things to which Jesus just might want to say yes. Simple bread from stones? Not only is Jesus famished; think how he could feed the hungry multitudes with this trick. Divine protection? Never mind this being Jesus’ prerogative, is not safety and security something we all long for? And the kingdoms of the world? Well, I think it’s safe to say that things might run a little better around here if Jesus were running the show. So, what gives? Well, a few simple answers. First, the world’s problem isn’t that there isn’t enough bread. What we have is a distribution problem, a sinful state in which some hoard while others hunger. Second, throw yourself off the pinnacle of the temple to prove God will catch you? Not only does this sound a bit like asking for a parking space, but Jesus came into the world to become vulnerable, to risk hurt and pain. And third, the kingdoms of this world are already under God’s domain; it is our task to govern them well. Plus, any time you start putting Christ’s name on the government, things have a tendency to go sideways quick. Christian nationalism, anyone?
3. But there is something more going on here, too. Jesus goes toe-to-toe with the devil to undo the sin we have introduced into the world. While this work will not culminate until Calvary, it is begun in the wilderness. We hear today of the first temptation in the garden, when humanity first gave in to the tempter’s voice. The story of the garden is our story. It tells the truth of the lie we each believe – that we know better than God. That we want to be in control of our own lives. And, once so twisted, that we want to control others. The eating of the fruit is not the breaking of an arbitrary rule; it is idolatry of the self. Our disobedience leads to the sundering of our proper relationships – between ourselves and others, ourselves and creation, ourselves and God. Were we to read a bit further in Genesis, we’d see how they all turn on each other, blaming one another for their sin and its result. Too often, Eve has been blamed in order to perpetuate misogyny and patriarchy. In Romans, Paul blames Adam. The simple fact of the matter is that we are each to blame. But Jesus comes not to point the finger; he comes to offer a free gift. Jesus, through his righteous resistance to the tempter, restores us to righteousness. Doing what we could not, we are forgiven. We are now free.
4. Jesus says no to the devil because Jesus will not repeat our mistake. He will not put himself under Satan’s authority. Neither will he presume to be his own authority. Jesus puts his faith in God alone, trusting that God’s ways are best. By Jesus’ victory, in the desert and upon the cross, we discover the beautiful truth that our lives are guided and graced by God. No, we are not the masters of fate and destiny. We were never meant to be. Thank God! Let God be God; we’ve made a mess of things in our attempts. We are each invited to consider what to do with the free gift of new life in Christ. In Giving to God, Mark Allan Powell’s book that we are using for our current study, we read that we are called “to find the life that God wants us to have, in confidence that this will be the best life we could possibly have.” Powell is not spouting prosperity gospel, the popular nonsense that Jesus died so that you could live in a McMansion and drive a sports car. No, what Powell is after here is the notion that our lives belong to God, and nothing could be better than living into the grace of that truth, living every aspect of our lives through this lens. Which, by the way, has very little to do with acquisitiveness and a great deal to do with generosity in the name of the God who has given everything to us. This life might even begin to look like making good on our vocation so that we don’t need what the tempter offers. We can be the ones who feed the hungry. We can be the ones who offer protection to the vulnerable in our midst. We can order our public life so that justice and peace, not division and hate, are the watchwords of the day.
5. We begin Lent not with a long list of things we should do, as if that will make up for the ways we have fallen short. Today, we gather with praise around the One whose life has restored us to life, the One in whose dying and rising we are forgiven and free. Free to be the people God created us to be, bound by sin and shame no more. In the midst of the fast, we feast. We do not live by bread alone but by the Word of God. Today, we are given both – bread that in this sacrament of grace becomes God’s Word for you, Jesus Christ himself. The journey of these forty days shows us the journey to the great Easter that will one day come. The way will not always be easy. There are trials and temptations aplenty. But you belong to God, and in Christ you are free. May the free gift of life be at work in you as a sign of God’s goodness and love in this world. Amen.

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

This sermon was preached on Ash Wednesday at Grace Lutheran Church (River Forest, IL). You can watch the livestream recording and follow along in the bulletin. The sermon begins at 41.58. The picture is of the chancel at Grace, taken by me.

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

1. I’ve encountered many kinds of sports parents over the years. Perhaps you have, too. There are those who always arrived decked out in team clothing and those who bring enough snacks to feed an army. There are those who remain cheerful and encouraging no matter how the team is doing and those who prefer chatting with other parents to watching the game itself. There are always those who give the refs a hard time. But the parents who stand out the most are the ones whose reason for being there seems to be to yell at their own kid. The unrelentingly demanding parents who, for one reason or another, can’t seem to remember that they’re watching children playing a game. A game that is supposed to be fun. Some years ago at a baseball tournament, I saw this play out every time a child on the other team came up to bat. “Elbow up! Stop pulling your head! Eye on the ball! Follow through! Stop chasing!” These were all, no doubt, salient points of advice. Given quietly and caringly during practice, they might have helped the child improve. But yelled from the bleachers, between every pitch in every at bat? Not so much. At one point, the player, all of nine or ten years old, stepped of the box, turned to the stands with tears running down his face, and yelled, “Dad, you’re not helping me!” And then, if I remember correctly, the poor kid struck out. I’m sure he wanted nothing more than to succeed, if only to get his dad off his back. But the weight of it all was just too much. How does one deal with such an assault of demand and criticism?
2. What sort of voice are we hearing today? What words come at us on this Ash Wednesday? From scripture and liturgy, the assault comes on. You are sinners and transgressors. You are mortal, you are dust. It is a day of darkness and gloom. To dust you shall return. Beware of practicing your piety like that. No, do it like this. How will you ever earn your Father’s favor in that way? You are dust. It is enough, perhaps, to make us throw our hands up in despair. If we are helpless and hopeless, what’s the point? Have we any hope of getting better?
3. If we start with the reality of our mortality and the weight of our sin and try to work our way to God, where will that ever get us? If the voice that we think of as God’s voice is always yelling demands, where do we end up? We might, I suppose, come to a place where a disappointed God loves us anyway, but I’m not sure that’s the gospel, or at least not much of a gospel. This is not to say that we port round the problems of sin and death and pretend they’re not that big a deal. By no means. Instead, we face them head on. On this Ash Wednesday, as we begin the fast of Lent, we hear of a God who doesn’t yell at us from the sidelines or wait for us at the finish. We hear of a God, hear from a God, who joins us in the midst of it all. The One who brings the very treasures of heaven down to us on this earth. We hear of Jesus, this One who enters into our sin and our suffering, into the very dustiness of our death, to do all that is needful for us. Our repentance is not a desperate plea to placate an angry parent but the faithful response of those who know that Christ is with us in all things. It is faith in the promise of forgiveness enables our confession of sin. It is trust in the promise of resurrection allows us to look death in the face. The truth of what God in Christ does for us lets us see the truth of our lives and that world around us, and to see it all not with despair but with hope. The hope we have in Christ, not in ourselves, compels us to live for those around us, seeking false hope not in demonstrating our own worthiness but sharing true hope with those around us, all worthy in the eyes of God.
4. Not long ago, a book of correspondence between Miroslav Volf and Christian Wiman was published. The theologian and the poet, friends and colleagues at Yale Divinity School, carry on a conversation about faith and spiritual searching. But the conversation is not one that happens in some sort of pious, intellectual vacuum; it occurs in the stuff of real life, including Wiman’s cancer. At the close of one message, Volf writes, “It seems strange writing this email while you are receiving a bone marrow transplant and putting final touches on it while not knowing how the surgery went. But our love for God and God’s love for us has everything to do with both our strength and our utter fragility.” Friends, on this day we name our fragility. We are dust and to dust we shall return. But God loves us in our fragility. Joins us in our brokenness. Dies that we might live. Pours out the treasures of heaven that we might know them even now. Breathes new life into our frames and gives us new hearts once more. We do not mar our faces with ashes today to show others how pious we are. We are marked with cruciform ash so that we might find one another, fellow travelers, never alone. Yes, journeying from dust to dust, but not only that. Dust is no longer the last word, and so the first word is always one of hope.
5. People of God, as Lent begins, we tell the truth. We can’t do it on our own. We are sinners in need of forgiveness. Sufferers in need of restoration. Mortals in need of resurrection. We tell the truth but we can bear it, for we hear also the truth of the gospel. As St. Paul tells us, in spite of all we endure, now is the day of our salvation. Return to the Lord your God and discover that you never managed to get that far away. Jesus doesn’t stay on the sidelines. As we make our way to Easter and to the coming dawn of a new creation, Jesus journeys with you. Sin and suffering and the dust of death linger but they will not last. But Jesus, the Word of God, endures forever. And in him, you will, too. Amen.

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