Least, Last, Lost

The biblical story of God with us, as of last Sunday, has brought us to a place of invitation.

Our recent Scripture lessons have brimmed and teemed with simple, straightforward, yet gracious offers from Jesus to “follow me.” Accepting the Lord’s invitation to discipleship with humility and gratitude holds the potential to change each of our lives and every part of our world – if, and only if, you and I are willing to let our everyday living be shaped by the Cross of Christ.

By one of the great mysteries of our faith, we are one with Christ in his death on the Cross – just as we are in lockstep him as he rises from a stone-cold tomb. Thus, the Cross re-makes and re-fashions us into new creations, dead to beliefs and behaviors of who we were, alive in the fullness of peace and grace that just is the Christ of who we are – if, and only if, the Cross and the empty grave of Easter morning provide the blueprints and gameplans that shape the words and actions of our daily being.

The catalyst that sparks such dazzling resurrection is honest repentance – turning your life in a completely new, radically changed, more holy direction that allows you to see the world and its inhabitants in a wholly different light. “Kingdom Vision,” I and others call it: Eyes that recognize the time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has come near.

Turn that way. Toward the Kingdom. Everybody. While there is still time, Jesus fresh on the heels of his baptism pleaded last Sunday in the Gospel of Mark.

Turn away from worldly ways of madness, ignorance, cruelty, idolatry, shallowness, and blindness. Turn toward the Kingdom ways of tolerance, compassion, sanity, reconciliation, empathy, forgiveness, restoration, hope, and justice – all those heavenly impulses and desires that dwell within you, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit who dwells richly and abides strongly in the hearts of you, me, and all God’s people in Christ.

Pray for the Kingdom. Watch for its signs. Live as one of its signs – as though it is here already, because there are moments when it almost is.

You’d think that everybody would be absolutely giddy with excitement over such incredibly Good News.

And many people are thrilled and delighted.

But the good folk of Jesus’s hometown cannot be counted among that joyful chorus.

In this morning’s Scripture lesson, Jesus at the synagogue of Nazareth proclaims to his family, former neighbors, ages-ago high-school buddies, and one-time co-workers that he – the humble son of Joseph the carpenter – is – of all people! – the fulfilment of God’s plans to save the world from its sinful and broken self. And the eager crowd likely expects that Jesus, the hometown-boy-made-good, will start God’s work of rescue and redemption with the people who’ve watched him grow up and known him the longest. After all, charity starts at home, right?

As it turns out, not so much. The glad tidings quickly turn sour when Jesus announces that God sends him to earth to seek and save, first and foremost, not the ones who think they have an “in” with Jesus but rather the last, the least, and the lost. And the crowd goes wild, not in celebration but in anger.

Yet, thanks be to God, the dramatic moment ends with a scene of hopeful assurance that nothing, absolutely nothing – not even a vicious, riled-up mob of murderous scorn and hatred – will stand in the way of God’s purposes in Christ Jesus.

With Kingdom Vision, listen for the Word of the Lord midchapter in Luke 4.

Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’”

And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.”

When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. (Luke 4:14-30)

If you had to choose the words that best capture and explain who you are and why you’re here, what would those words be?

Think, for a moment, about the particular words that most clearly define and communicate the true essence of yourself, your life, your commitments, and your faith.

Can you picture yourself standing before the community and declaring, as Jesus did, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind; to let the oppressed go free; to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Imagine standing up in the middle of the Wellness Center, or the S&D Café, or the high school cafeteria, or the weekly auction at Sweeney’s, or the kids’ Saturday morning soccer game, and proclaiming that the day is surely coming when every person in Waukon will be cured of his or her illness!

The day is surely coming when every unemployed person in Allamakee County will find meaningful, fulfilling, family-sustaining work.

The day is surely coming when all the addicts in Iowa will be freed from their addictions, and all the meth labs in this country will be shut down.

The day is surely coming when every broken relationship will be repaired, restored and reconnected.

The day is surely coming when every broken-down hovel will get an “extreme makeover” such that every such remodeled home in every renovated neighborhood will shine and gleam like some swanky, multi-million-dollar retirement home perched high on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River.

Those are pretty bold proclamations – the kind of wild talk that surely creates a buzz on Main Street, and the predictable storm of public ridicule and gossip is probably why you don’t hear too many of us making such wild-eyed proclamations these days.

But I’m going to climb out on a limb here and say that each and every one of us ought to be able to stand up and speak with full confidence and all assurance the exact same words of Isaiah that Jesus does:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

By no means are you proclaiming how great you are, but rather you are proclaiming how great God is! – along with a proclamation that every blessed one of us is blessedly one with Jesus! Your baptism proclaims that you are one with Christ not just in his death and resurrection but also in his work and ministry. The same Holy Spirit who came upon Jesus in the anointing of his baptism is the same Holy Spirit who comes upon you and me in our baptisms.

By that same Spirit in Christ, God begins the work of repairing and fixing everything in the world that is broken and shattered. And in Christ, by the power of the Spirit, that work of reconciliation has been handed over to us, along with all those diverse gifts and talents given to the various parts of the body of Christ by the Holy Spirit to serve God’s purposes.

Sure, there are plenty of reasons to doubt what Jesus proclaims, plenty of reasons to keep each of us from proclaiming that message to our friends and neighbors. Fear of ridicule is an ever-present danger to the Gospel’s spread. And there’s still plenty of bad news – plenty of poverty and captivity; plenty of blindness and illness; plenty of oppression, and segregation, and separation; plenty of anger, fear, and distrust, and oftentimes precious little that makes it feel like we really are the recipients of even a smidgen of the Lord’s favor.

We still see and suffer from a sin-sick litany of evil’s cruel handiwork:

Way too much love of money, way too much scandal and corruption, way too much hunger for power.

Way too much brutal war, way too much vicious persecution, way too much slaughter and genocide.

Way too much bloody murder, and senseless violence, and extreme terrorism both foreign and domestic.

However you want to measure it, way too much brokenness to easily believe that the Kingdom has come in Christ Jesus.

Way too many people are feeling way too much pain from illness, and sickness, and cancer, and death, and divorce, and separation, and addition to easily believe that the world is, even now, being ruled by the One who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

But in announcing the arrival of God’s Kingdom and new rule of the Lord, Jesus doesn’t say that all the pain and heartache of the world will end in a flash.

What Jesus says is that the poor, the lame, the blind, the imprisoned and the sick are all seen and known by God. Really and truly: The lowest of the low in body, mind and spirit – the ones so marginalized, pushed off to the side, and overlooked by much of the world as to barely register a blip on our human radars – those are the folks who are seen, known, and loved by God the Father Almighty.

And, as co-creators with the Lord, you and I need to be noticing those folks, too, and to be bringing them the Lord’s message of healing and hope, and to be receiving from them that same message of restoration, reconciliation, resurrection: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, too, and I have come bearing the good news that God’s healing and freeing favor is upon you. Really! Right here, right now!”

The agony of living in the already-here-but-not-yet-completely-finished world of God’s Kingdom is that the Kingdom is just that – a work in progress. One of the most-startling of all divine revelations is that, with the coming of Jesus Christ, God launches a quiet, evolutionary Kingdom where things are slowly changing, rather than a loud, over-the-top Kingdom where everything gets fixed in the blink of an eye.

But we nevertheless get to be a part of that Kingdom and part of the Lord’s renewal of all things, even as the forces of sin and evil in the world around us seem to be doing everything they can to knock the stuffing out of our hopes for that Kingdom and kicking the tar out of our assurance that the kingdom is really here.

Whenever we celebrate communion, as we did a few Sundays ago on the Feast of Pentecost, I hold up a whole loaf of bread as a reminder of the whole, perfect presence of the Lord among his people.

But then that loaf is shattered, broken, and torn, and the crumbs fall onto the table. It is a reminder that our perfect wholeness, that peace that we yearn and long for, is not behind us but up ahead and yet to come. Wholeness is coming, and the broken loaf reminds us that it is coming through what Jesus has already done. His brokenness is what one day will put our lives back together – whole and complete, relationships and all.

A preaching colleague tells the story of a time when he was asked to preach at what was billed as a special “family worship service.” The idea was to hold the service not in the sanctuary but in the fellowship hall, where families would gather around tables, and in the center would be the ingredients for making a loaf of bread.

The plan was to have the families make bread together and then, while the sweet aroma of baking bread filled the hall, the pastor would preach. When the bread was finished, it would be brought out and used for a celebration of communion. 

It was a great idea, at least on paper anyway. But its execution didn’t go so well.

Within minutes, the fellowship hall was a hazy cloud of flour dust. Soggy balls of dough clung to the walls as children hurled bits of the sticky mixture at each other. Husbands and wives began sniping at one another, and already-tense nerves began to fray and eventually snap.

Then the ovens didn’t work right, and it took forever to bake the bread. Children whimpered; babies screamed, and nasty glances were cast upon noisy families who were on the verge of coming apart at the seams.

But finally, and mercifully, came the end of the service. The script called for the visiting preacher to pronounce the blessing. Too tired and irritable to ad-lib anything, the preacher just said the usual blessing straight out, holding limp, flour-caked hands to the air and saying, “The peace of God be with you.”

And immediately, from the back of the trashed fellowship hall, a young child’s voice piped up: “It already is!”

For many of us, it is what it is: We come to worship each week from the dusty, sticky, frayed-nerve mess that just is our life in a fallen Creation.

The Kingdom of God is here, yes, but we know full well that there’s a lot that remains broken, incomplete, and wounded – either in our own lives or in the lives of those around us.

Yet, we’re able to get ourselves out of bed in the morning and get through each difficult day, because we hold onto God’s Kingdom vision that, as I suggested to you last Sunday, allows us to see the world differently, with the eyes of heaven. And we cling to Christ, the peace that God in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit gives to us – peace not in the sense of the absence of hardship or conflict, but peace in the sense that God will see us through hardship and conflict.

Really! Right here, right now! Peace that comes from assurance that God is making all things new, even if that divine newness isn’t happening fast enough for our tastes. Peace that comes from confidence and belief in Jesus, because the Lord God anointed Jesus and sent him to us to announce the time of the Lord’s favor – the peace of God that already is.

If you’re still struggling to choose the words that best capture and explain who you are and why you’re here, let me suggest these: “I am a child of God, and because of that, the peace of God that already is is upon me. The Spirit of the Lord who always was is upon me. And God by the Spirit anoints me to bring good news to you, my friends and my neighbors.

And the Good News is this: God will see you through whatever is it that’s got you down: Captivity, blindness, oppression – whatever it is, the Lord will see you through. Evil isn’t going to win, because the time of the Lord’s favor is here. God sends me to you to tell you that heaven sees you, knows you, and loves you, and to remind you that the Lord’s peace upon you will see you through your captivity and oppression.

For those who follow Jesus Christ, that ought to be the essence of yourself, your life, your commitments, and your faith – simply and graciously because “it already is.” The peace of God already is, and it already is upon you.

And in the ongoing story of God with us, the invitation from Jesus still stands: “Follow me,” in grace and peace. Follow me to the people and places hungry and thirsty for that same Kingdom nourishment.

Ancient words, ever true. Thanks be to God. Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, June 19, 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by R. Alan Culpepper, Scott Hoezee, and L.T. Johnson inform the message.

Seeing with Kingdom Eyes

The Lord’s persuasive invitations to discipleship are the common threads woven into our Scripture lessons over the past couple Sundays.

Those gracious, open invitations to be counted among Jesus’s followers immediately compel a tax collector named Matthew to quit his lucrative job raking in big bucks for his Roman bosses and to join the community of faith, and they enthusiastically spur Peter to declare Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the Savior, the Son of the Living God.

Then Jesus throws down this challenge: “If any want to become my followers, you must deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.”

That image of cross-bearing has come to picture the burdens and challenges we carry in life. But if you leave it at that, you miss something quite profound – which is this: The Cross, and our willingness to let our everyday life be shaped by that Cross, is what makes all the difference in the world – quite literally and figuratively.

The Gospel way of the Cross demands self-sacrifice, suffering-but-eager servanthood, gracious-and-courageous loving of friend, neighbor, and stranger – attributes, qualities, and behaviors that really do hold the power and ability to make a difference and change the world. The secret sauce that enables such fertile seeds to bear so sweet a fruit is the power of the Cross to re-make and re-fashion us into new creations, dead to beliefs and behaviors of who we were, alive in the fullness of peace and grace that just is the Christ.

The sparking catalyst for such dazzling resurrection is honest repentance. And you’ve likely over the years listened attentively as pastors like me explain that honest repentance means turning your life in a different, more life-affirming direction. And yes, that’s a potent ingredient in the recipe of repentance.

Yet, after studying this morning’s lesson alone and in Wednesday Bible study, I’m now thinking that my pulpit colleagues and I have been selling you short. The additional blessing of repentance finds itself in eyes that see the world in a different light – “Kingdom Vision,” let’s call it: Eyes that recognize the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.

Listen, now, with Kingdom Vision, for the Word of the Lord in these opening scenes of the Gospel of Mark, as the story of God with us continues.

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:1-15)

Some years ago, I traveled to the Presbyterian seminary in Princeton, New Jersey, to attend a continuing education conference.

But what I truly learned during that study leave — the meatiest cuts of truth and understanding – came not in the classroom but on the streets of nearby New York City.

And those new understandings came because, well, I played hooky from the conference. Its line-up of speakers and program of events sounded really great when I registered, but when I got there, not so much. Early on, I realized this conference wasn’t for me.

So, the next morning, rather than head down to campus, I headed over to the Princeton Junction train station and boarded a New Jersey Transit morning commuter train bound for New York City, which laid about 90 minutes up the line. As some of you know, I’m a fan of all things railroad, so it was thrill enough just being on a commuter train bound for Penn Station in the bowels of Manhattan.

The morning weather was perfect as the train pulled away from Princeton Junction station: Warm but not hot, the sky cloudless and blue, brilliant sunshine glittering off passing Amtrak passenger trains also polishing the shiny rails of the busy Northeast Corridor. Approaching Newark and its busy airport, a huge white cargo plane on its final approach to the runaway paralleled our track as it slid down from the sky, commanding attention by sheer virtue of its grandeur as a marvel of physics, engineering, and human pluck.

Gazing out the window upon such beauty, surrounded by women and men dressed for success in crisp white shirts and Italian leather shoes, I then understood that was I part and parcel of something far-more grand – an intuition confirmed after climbing from the cavernous depths of Penn Station and onto 34th Street, snarling and seething as usual with vehicles and pedestrians, but at the same time also feeling somewhat UNusual.

What felt unusual, oddly enough, was the traffic – human and mechanical.

The traffic was gorgeous, beautiful, mesmerizing – THAT’S what wasn’t business as usual on that splendid June morning! Traffic was a beauty to see, to hear, to smell – even to feel, thumps and vibrations bubbling up through bustling ribbons of sidewalk bracketing the asphalt and concrete of the hard-working streets. To be part of all that traffic was to feel dazzlingly alive, and savoring the whole experience was breathtaking beyond the ability of the pen.

Step, after step, after step – block, upon block, upon block, 34th Street earned its reputation as the place of miracles: Rattling, and honking, and chattering with life. Dotted with people, adorned in vast color of clothes, a marvelously hued hodgepodge of faces. Bright, yellow taxis darting in and out of traffic; shops and boutiques bustling with shoppers; restaurants and delis flavoring the air; the skirt-lifting whoosh of subways running below.

The warm, late-spring day made everybody a celebrity: Blacks, Whites, Hispanics, Asians; perhaps differently gendered, or differently abled; tall and short; muscular and skinny; friend and foe – every last one of them a celebrity in his, her, or their own ways. Their presence of communal movement making even the litter, and clamor, and turmoil of it all a kind of marvelous phenomenon unto itself.

Construction all around clanged and banged, encircling like an arena of assembly, as I made my way up Seventh Avenue toward Times Square. A pile of building materials provided a hard-but-practical urban hammock for a wino, a bum, stretched out on his back in the sun like an alpine meadow splayed out before him and he was made of money.

In manicured courtyards and soaring atriums of large office buildings, workers had left the fluorescent confines of their work cubicles to enjoy lunch on benches, shaded by trees and sprinkled with flowing fountains.

Some in the migratory crowd of hungry midday diners were dressed to kill. Other sported jeans and sneakers – the young and the old, more than a few sporting tattoos – some in places that don’t seem all that tattoo-able, or pierce-able, daylight flooding down in torrents upon them all. And upon the green plants and tender saplings growing in stature as filters of air and providers of peace.

On a corner of the Garment District, a large, white-make-up’ed, red-noze’d man in a clown costume authoritatively stretched as long as a noodle a thin, tubular yellow balloon he’d pulled from an oversized pocket of his clown plants. He nonchalantly filled the balloon with the exhalation of his lungs, then deftly twisted it, squeakily, into a dove of peace, which he handed to the bug-eyed youngster and his equally mesmerized parents who’d hopped off their tour bus to take in his big-city sight.

In some ways, the sensuous experiences of my day of delinquency from Princeton seminary were like a dream.

And, at the same time, in other ways, as if I had just awakened from a dream.

Never before had a city, to me anyway, felt so real, so genuine, so teaming with life, so expressive of hope and different possibility.

That afternoon, much to my delight, as I walked the west edge of Central Park, near the Dakota Apartments that former Beatle John Lennon once called home, a striking, middle-aged woman of color approached me going the other way on the narrow, residential sidewalk. As she passed, she spoke: “Jesus loves you.”

Really, that’s what she said: “Jesus loves you,” just like that – in the same everyday voice with which you’d say “good morning,” or “have a nice day,” or “tell your folks I says hi.”

So caught off guard was I, that it wasn’t until after she disappeared into the crowd, when I finally wrapped my overwhelmed head around what she had said, and I wondered if I could possibly ever find her again, to thank her. If ever I could pick out in the crowd her handsome face, and could catch up with her, then I’d surely say “yes.” Yes! If I believe anything worth believing in this broken and fearful world, I believe precisely that: Jesus loves me. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves the whole doomed, damned lot of us.”

For the rest of my daylong adventure in the City, the streets I plied were paved with gold and trimmed with silver. Nothing was different. Yet everything was different. The city and its environs were changed, transformed, transfigured. I was changed, transformed, transfigured – as much as the Jesus-loves-you lady had been changed, transformed, transfigured.

It was a new Big Apple coming down out of heaven adorned, as the book of Revelation would affirm, like a bride prepared for her husband.

Other equally ancient words of revelation quickened my pace and lifted by spirits: “The dwelling of God is with men, women, and children. The Lord will dwell with them, and they shall be his people. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more. There’ll be no more mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things will have passed away.”

At least that’s what I saw, and what I felt, if only for a moment.

If only for a moment, it was not the world as it sadly and sinfully is that I saw, but instead the world as it might be – as something deep within that the world and its temporary inhabitants want it to be, and are preparing it to be, the way in darkness a seed prepares for growth, or the way in a kitchen cabinet a wrinkled, old potato sprouts a tender, new shoot, or the way in bread that leaven causes flour and water to rise.

Buried beneath the surface of all the dirt, and noise, and crime, and poverty, and pollution, of that terrifying and intimidating big city, I glimpsed something of the treasure that waits to make it a holy city – a city where all humans – all humans – dwell in love and peace, with each other and with God, and where the only tears that flow are tears of joy and reunion.

“The Kingdom of God has come near,” Jesus announces in Mark’s Gospel. And for a little while, on that sunny, crystal-blue-skied day, it was so.

A fellow Presbyterian pastor and theologian, Frederick Buechner, enjoyed an experience similar to mine. And here’s how he makes sense of it all:

All over the world, you can hear it stirring, if you stop to listen. Good things are happening in, through, and because of all sorts of people. No, they speak not with a single voice, these varied people. None has yet to emerge as their leader. They rather are divided into many groups, pulling in many different directions – sometimes, unfortunately, in polar opposite directions.

Some are pressing for an end to war. Some are pressing for women’s rights, or reproductive rights; some for civil rights, or gay rights, or simply human rights. Some are concerned primarily with world hunger, or local hunger, or with the way we are little by little, bit by bit, decision by decision, destroying our oceans and rain forests, wielding the same devasting force of indifference and denial that poisons the air we breathe and the water we drink.

Lots of different people are saying lots of different things, and the bat-craziness in some of those myriad voices is off-putting, maybe even offensive or frightening, surely a lot of it faithless, and potentially lethal. Talking points over which to argue suffer no supply-chain shortages.

But at their best – when you and I are at our best, we arise by profound impulses with descriptors like sanity, tolerance, compassion, reconciliation, empathy, forgiveness, restoration, hope, and justice. Those fiery impulses of heaven have, thanks to the Holy Spirit, always been part of the human heart – sometimes more on display than others, but they seem to be welling up into the world with new power and might in our age, now even as the forces of darkness are welling up with seemingly new power and always-deadly might in our age now, too.

That’s the bright side, the glad and hopeful side, of what Jesus means when he declares “the time is fulfilled.” Jesus announces that the time is both right and ripe.

Humanly speaking, if we have any chance to survive, it’ll be men and women acting out of those deep impulses from the Kingdom of God who’ll save the day. By no means will they themselves bring about the Kingdom of God. God and God alone brings about the Kingdom of God. Not even the most noble and selfless of human impulses will ever fully establish the Kingdom of God.

But there is something we can do and must do, Jesus says, and that is repent – not feeling sorry about or for yourself, or wallowing in self-loathing, and unhealthy habits, and destructive behaviors, but repent as in turning around your life a full 180 degrees, turning your life on a thin dime in such Christ-like directions as to undergo a complete change of mind, heart, soul, and direction that lets you see life with wholly different eyes – Kingdom Eyes.

To individuals, to cities and towns, to nations and their leaders, the voice of Jesus is hoarse from repetition: Turn away from madness, ignorance, cruelty, idolatry, shallowness, and blindness. Turn toward tolerance, compassion, sanity, reconciliation, empathy, forgiveness, restoration, hope, and justice – all those heavenly impulses and desires that dwell within you, by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, who dwells richly and abides strongly in the hearts of God’s people in Christ.

We cannot make the Kingdom of God happen, but we can be kinder to each other.

We can be kinder to ourselves. We can drive back the darkness a little. We can make green places within ourselves and among ourselves where the Lord can make his Kingdom happen: In changed and transfigured communities. In those people of every color, class, and condition, picnicking together with their noon sandwiches..

In the clown and the child. In sunlight that makes a superstar of everybody in those teeming streets, rushing trains, and descending jumbo jets.

In the bum napping like a millionaire atop piled bags of construction cement, beautiful traffic surging all around, the way beautiful things still do surge, in those holy places that lie deep within us all.

Turn that way. Everybody. While there is still time, Jesus says. Pray for the Kingdom. Watch for its signs. Live as one of its signs – though it is here already, because there are moments when it almost is.

And thus ancient words continue lifting our plea: Come, Lord Jesus.

Amen, and come, Lord Jesus!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, June 12, 2022, as part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” It is adapted from a sermon by Frederick Buechner and informed by scholarship and commentary by Pheme Perkins.

Cross Training

We typically sing the rousing lyrics on a Sunday in Lent: “In the cross of Christ I glory, towering o’er the wrecks of time.”

The idea of the cross towering over various “wrecks” across the ages became all-the-more poignant in the harrowing days of anger and grief after 9/11. That twisted, iron-girder cross rising from the rubble of Ground Zero came to serve as a grim icon of that horrific time and place.

That’s what crosses do, right? They mark or memorialize terrible, awful, very bad, often-fatal events. Fields of crosses sprawl across Arlington National Cemetery and the vast World War II graveyards of France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany. They even pop up along roadsides to mark the spots where horrific crashes claim lives.

We customarily place crosses at locations of traumatic death, but we usually don’t erect crosses in places of life and liveliness, or hustle and bustle, or anywhere else associated the everyday business of our comings and goings.

In Lower Manhattan, before September 11th, no crosses rose from the World Trade Center Plaza. And with good reason! Seeing a cross sprouting smackdab in the middle of this country’s greatest symbol of economic power would be absurd – and probably more than just a little sacrilegious.

After all, a cross has little or nothing to do with stock deals, bond trading, corporate takeovers, and all the other high-octane business that big wheelers and dealers once conducted in the Twin Towers.

In a special edition published after the terrorist attacks, the editor of Time magazine declared, “If you want to humble a nation, you attack its cathedrals.” The Twin Towers were cathedrals of commerce unto themselves and thus had no need of crosses. With rooftop antennae scraping the sky, the Twin Towers stood tall as is, as grand basilicas of power and wealth, sturdy citadels with no need of adjustment or change.

Yet, in this morning’s Scripture lesson, as he always does, Jesus turns our notions on a dime. He presents the cross as something to which we must cling every day — not merely as an admission ticket through the pearly gates but also as our one sure hope of syncing up our living, moving, and being with his.

As we resume the biblical story of God with us, listen and watch for the always-surprising and sometimes-disturbing Word of the Lord midchapter in Matthew 16.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”

But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?

“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:13-28)

Christians are familiar – perhaps too familiar – with the idea of “taking up a cross” and following Jesus.

You and I talk of bearing crosses whenever hardship befalls us, and that’s not entirely off base. But the Lord’s command to “take up a cross” is actually quite revolutionary and counter-cultural, cutting across the grain of expectation for which the cross stands.

For some, the cross these days conveniently morphs into a political statement, flaring into public consciousness and controversy whenever someone wants to plant a cross in the town square, outside the courthouse, or within a public-school classroom.

Which begs a hard question of faith: Do we in the Church understand the daily reality of the cross in our own lives, or do we tend to “reserve” the cross for special occasions, political fights, quiet cemeteries, and sanctuary accoutrement? Far too often, it feels like the latter, the shiny bling of cross necklaces and other adornments overshadowing the true-but-demanding, life-altering, attitude-adjusting power of the cross.

Lithuania’s “Hill of Crosses”

In the tiny European country of Lithuania stands “The Hill of Crosses.”

It took shape in the 1800s when the neighboring Russian czar was murdering scores of Lithuanians. As each family member, friend, or neighbor fell to the czar’s murderous whims, the survivors memorialized the victim with a cross. With the czar on a relentless, bloody rampage, crosses soon blanketed the hallowed ground of the hill. The Russians hated the somber display, so they tore down the crosses.

Refusing to be intimidated, the townsfolk kept adding and adding more and more crosses to honor their dead, and today there are thousands upon thousands of crosses. And what started off as a memorial of hopeless death eventually became a defiant symbol of new possibility.

Bold hope and new possibility arising from the cross – that’s the bottom line of our Scripture lesson, though the disciples don’t see it that way, and maybe some of us don’t either.

On the heels of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Lord tells the disciples to keep the exciting news of the Messiah’s arrival to themselves. But what Jesus doesn’t want to keep secret are the implications that becoming one of his followers demand. And the main thing about becoming a disciple involves an emblem of suffering, shame, and death – the cross. That’s why Jesus talks about those grim topics, Matthew’s Gospel says, “from that time on.”

But, of course, that doesn’t sit well with the politically minded disciples, starting with the one who had just made that spot-on confession of Jesus as Lord – and whom Jesus has just blessed mightily for having done so – namely, the apostle Peter himself.

Peter still holds the all-time world record for the fastest, most abrupt change in spiritual status.

Within the span of only a few minutes, Peter goes from a triumphant “Rocky Balboa the Blessed” to a cursed “Satan Incarnate the Scandal.” The change-of-status happens when Peter, later the interpreter of the Holy Spirit’s unexpected arrival at Pentecost, takes it upon himself to give Jesus a little lesson in theology. With an arm draped around Jesus’s shoulder, Peter quietly but sternly scolds Jesus. “God forbid that this should ever happen to you, Lord!” And in response, Jesus labels Peter a devil.

But Jesus doesn’t leave it there. He goes on to label Peter a scandal, which in their day refers to a rock over which a person stumbles. Peter is still being depicted in terms of rocks, but now he’s somehow morphed from cornerstone to trip-hazard!

Then, just to be sure, to emphasize the difference between being a useful building block and a dangerous stumbling block, Jesus launches into his famous words about cross-bearing – then to Peter and now to us.

The cross, and our willingness to let our everyday life be shaped by that cross, is what makes all the difference in the world – literally and figuratively.

And that difference is this: The one thing that even hell itself cannot extinguish is not something powerful in the ways in which the world reckons and measures such things. No, the powerful force that evil cannot destroy is, in reality, something weak: The power of the cross, the ultimate symbol of weakness and vulnerability, yet still the source of new possibility – if we let the cross work that miracle.

The Gospel way of the cross demands self-sacrifice, suffering-but-eager servanthood, gracious-and-courageous loving of friend, neighbor, and stranger – attributes, qualities, and behaviors that really do hold the power and ability to make a difference and change the world.

Pushing back on those desires of heaven are the devil and his minions. Their attacks are relentless but futile, because they’ll never-ever win over a soul that’s been truly transformed by the cross or capture a heart that finds its strong hope and blazing energy in the example of weakness and vulnerability that just is Jesus on the cross.

Jesus warns that just viewing life the way he views it – from the cross – will itself lead to a degree of suffering.

If the cross, and faithfulness to Jesus who died on that cross, is going to shape our everyday lives, then conflict with the attitudes and beliefs in the prevailing culture should be expected. There might be certain job promotions we shouldn’t get or take as Christians, certain business opportunities we should decline, certain things we won’t go along with, say, or do, certain politicians who don’t deserve our support, certain actions and activities that ought to take priority over others.

A person can gain the whole world, Jesus sternly cautions, but still lose his or her soul. And if, in the end, when Christ returns in glory, a person does discover, much to their horror and chagrin, that his or her soul has been forfeited, then not all the riches of this earth will be enough to buy back that soul.

Some things come to us only as gifts of grace. 

Life with God is just such a gift, and it was purchased for us by Jesus on a cross, and it is sustained by wonder of resurrection. Every day and in every place, that cross towers over us, and we shouldn’t want it any other way.

For by some miracle of heaven that defies human understanding but is nevertheless confirmed in our baptism, you and I were nailed to that cross with Jesus. And three days later, you and I walked together with Christ from the empty tomb, raised to living a life that’s supposed to be far different from the one we left behind.

To cling to the old rugged cross – to see glory in a cross that towers over the wreckage of your time – means leaving behind the ways and means of the world and hitching your spiritual wagon to the abundant love, never-ending grace, and peace beyond understanding that’s made known to us in Christ Jesus.

In the heart of God and in the eyes of Jesus, you and I are spiritual works in progress, easily awed by and lured into cathedrals of commerce, and grand basilicas of power and wealth, and sturdy citadels of the status quo.

But Jesus calls us to take up a cross that adjusts our attitude and changes our priorities. And so we sing:

Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me;
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.
Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me.
Spirit of the living God, fall afresh on me.

Thanks be to God, we glory in the cross that towers over the wrecks of our lives and our world. For in the cross, there is glory and joy that through all time abide.

Ancient words – heartwarming, mind-altering, and ever true – changing me and changing you. Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Pentecost Sunday, June 5, 2022. It is part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by M. Eugene Boring and Scott Hoezee inform the message.

Pastoral Meditation: Glory Revealed

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message at the funeral for Darlene Janice “Dar” Klein on Thursday, June 2, 2022.

Among Dar’s personal effects was a hand-written letter that she penned several years ago.

Dar’s family shared it with me while we were making funeral arrangements, and since it provides such an intimate and heartfelt witness to faith and belief, I now share the letter with you. Here’s what Dar wrote:

Dear God, thank you for everything! It’s December 19, 2019, and I can’t thank you enough for my children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. They are all different, and that’s what I love. Thank you for memories of Alma, and Mom, and Daddy. They’re all good. Thank you for Mert. He’s so good and understanding. Thank you for Gary, my ex. I’m so glad he’s a part of my life. God, you are perfect – I couldn’t live a day without you. That is why my [daily devotional] book “Jesus Calling” means so much to me. I love it, love it, love it. Last year, I was in the nursing home – you were with me all the way. Then, I had breast cancer, and you were with me all the way. I just wanted to write this letter to you to thank you for everything. You make me happy. Thank you, Dar.

The devotional book that Dar so cherished, “Jesus Calling,” fuels my own daily walk of faith, and I “love it, love it, love it,” too.

What makes this little book so powerful is that its author, Sarah Young, writes in the first-person voice of Jesus. So, when you read each day’s devotion, it’s as if Jesus himself is speaking softly and tenderly to you. Through the words of Ms. Young, here’s what Jesus had to say in the devotional reading for Thursday, May 26 – the day that Dar died.

“In a world of unrelenting changes, I am the One who never changes. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Find in Me that stability for which you have yearned. I created a beautifully ordered world: one that reflected My perfection. Now, however, the world is under the bondage of sin and evil. Every person on the planet faces gaping jaws of uncertainty. The only antidote to this poisonous threat is drawing closer to Me. In My Presence you can face uncertainty with perfect Peace.”

For Dar, the prospect of death loosed a crashing wave of uncertainty.

Yes, Dar accepted death’s certainty, and she knew hers would come sooner rather than later. And she was OK with that, certain that the place to which she was headed would bring healing and wholeness, joy and happiness, reunion and celebration, even if she really didn’t want to have to say goodbye to any of us.

But uncertainty lay in the process of dying, in the unknown journey of stepping from this world into the next. When cancer is the evil that attacks the body, the mind knows the journey won’t be easy. And the prospect of a prolonged, painful death is horrifying, sufficiently intimidating as to weaken even the strongest of knees and quiver even the stiffest of upper lips.

Yet, Dar faced the end of her earthly life with courage and dignity. She was ready to go, even if none of us was ready to let her go, and Dar stepped off this earth and into heaven with a kind of grace that arises only from deep faith in the “One who never changes.” That’s probably one of the reasons why Dar wanted us to share Psalm 23 together here in our time of grief and sadness:

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul and leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me. Your rod and your staff – they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the LORD my whole life long.

Dar basked in the same glow of hope and assurance that filled the writer of Psalm 23.

And the word that describes what both Dar and the psalmist experienced is “glory” – the raw power of God made real; the vivid, dazzling intensity of the Lord; the white-hot holiness of the divine that stuns and amazes beyond description.

Glory is big. Glory is bright. Glory is bodacious – a loud, multisensory blockbuster of an extravaganza that you surely can’t miss if you’re anywhere near glory’s orbit when it bursts forth.

Then, along comes Jesus, who in the Gospel of John rewrites the definition of “glory” in a surprising way and seemingly unlikely place.

Continue listening for God’s Word to you this day as we travel to Cana and join the wedding party where Jesus turns water into wine.

On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. (John 2:1-11)

When he quietly transforms water into wine, Jesus does far more than simply fix an embarrassing open-bar shortfall and help a family save face before their guests.

This, somehow, according to John’s Gospel, is the first revelation of no less than Jesus’s glory – so sufficiently revealed that it rouses Jesus’s followers to put all their trust in him.

Really? Glory in wine? Glory in providing another round or two, or three, or four, to folks who’ve already had a few too many? Where’s the “glory” in possibly making the next morning’s hangover even more brutal?

Well, as it turns out, glory is right there, in the quiet man who initially hesitates but eventually intervenes. Surprisingly, Jesus flies under the radar when he does what he does. Nothing suggests that anyone in the larger crowd of wedding guests ever knows what really happened. Only Mary and the disciples – and the servants who’ve done Jesus’s bidding – realize what’s up.

Even so, those stone jars now filled with delicious Bordeaux nevertheless are revelations of glory – glory poured so generously that faith and belief intoxicate the hearts and souls of the disciples!

Somehow, they discern Jesus to be God’s long-promised Savior, the One who would bring abundance where there once had been only scarcity.

Somehow, they ferret out an echo of all those soaring Old Testament prophecies about how, when God’s kingdom fully comes, all the good things we need will flow freely in never-ending abundance.

When needs are met – even needs as commonplace as the one in Cana that day, somehow joy follows, and that inebriating joy distills from the glory of God.

One of the great fathers of the Church once said that “the glory of God is a human being fully alive.”

Without question, God desires us to flourish, enjoy, and delight in God’s Creation, even as God does at the dawn of time. Dar’s days of living life to the fullest surely reflect that truth. If you look at the many pictures of Dar displayed in the Fellowship Hall, you’ll notice that there isn’t a one in which she isn’t smiling.

But God’s heart breaks over the spectacle of poverty – when people abiding in God’s abundant Creation experience shortage and scarcity that are physical, emotional, relational, or spiritual. 

Granted, running out of wine for wedding guests who already may well have had their fair share to drink might not seem like the kind of dire want or desperate need that breaks God’s heart. And perhaps it didn’t.

But John’s Gospel is surely confident that Jesus is the real deal who brings this Good News: Wherever God’s Messiah shows up – invited or not, abundance always follows. Jesus, after all, doesn’t make a mere case of wine but hundreds of gallons. He doesn’t make a cheap, watery wine but a rare vintage better than most had ever tasted.

This entire story smacks of being “over the top” in so very many ways.

There is an extravagance here, almost a hint of luxury, that seems to burst the narrow confines of the moment. It’s as though someone asks for a bottle of water, and Jesus provides the whole of the Mississippi River! It’s as though someone asks for $20 to buy a child a toy, and Jesus opens the doors to an entire toy warehouse!

Thus the disciples see glory – the glory of God in providing more than is requested, more than can be imagined. It’s the glory of God giving access – if only for just a little while – to the abundant fullness with which God endows Creation in the beginning. Indeed, we must revise our definition of “glory” because of what that wedding party in Cana reveals.

And maybe, just maybe, such a revisioning of glory means that we’ll see divine glory a whole lot more often in our lives – like when those who weep and mourn find their endless tears dried and their broken hearts mended by the Gospel comfort of resurrection to come. When we see these and so many other miraculous things happening in our families and in our communities, then we are seeing the glory of God, as the Holy Spirit continues to guide us back to places of abundance created with each of us in heaven’s mind.

In her daily living, Dar saw plenty of Jesus’s glory, too, which likely explains why her letter to God overflows with thanksgiving and why she faced death with integrity borne of faith and bravery sustained by assurance.

What Dar apparently understood is this:

Stunning moments like the goings-on at Cana remind that we are claimed by and serve a God whose effusive overflow of providential gifts knows no measure or bounds. Spectacular events like Cana’s remind that the Lord is also often quite content to simply watch as his people soak up the goodness brimming in his creative work.

Accordingly, we offer our thanks to God for the wonderfully creative and colorful gift of Dar’s life among us and, as Dar proclaims in her letter, for being with us all the way. In a world of unrelenting changes, God is the One – the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End whose gracious love and generous provision never change.

Life without Dar surely won’t be the same. But that doesn’t mean life won’t still bring moments of laughter and dancing, grace and peace, joy and glory.

For that is the Word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee, C.S. Lewis, St. Augustine, St. Irenaeus, and Sarah Young inform the message.

Collateral Beauty: A Pastoral Meditation for Memorial Day

It is a weekend for remembering.

And for those of us whom God has claimed in Christ Jesus, the most important thing for us to remember is that there’s life even in death – “collateral beauty,” the odd-sounding term I’ve shared with you before.

Believing in collateral beauty is to hold fast to the notion that even something as tragic as death and loss can reveal moments of deep meaning and surprising beauty – unintended or “collateral” beauty that’s set in motion by God’s grace in spite of sin, failure, and doubt.

Doubt was plentiful, a few years ago, when wildlife managers decided to reintroduce into Yellowstone National Park something that most everyone else saw as instruments of death. Gray wolves – killing machines in the very real sense of the term – had for 70 years been absent from Yellowstone, wiped out through overhunting and illegal poaching. And the wildlife managers wanted to bring them back.

Even though their intentional return would bring certain death as the wolves feasted to their heart’s content on native elk, wildlife managers knew something of what we Christians have known since the first Easter: Death leads to life.

And in the case of the gray wolves in Yellowstone, the death they certainly did bring led to the very re-creation of God’s good earth. There would be collateral beauty in the certain death that the gray wolf would inflict.

Goodness coming from tragedy, life arising from death, collateral beauty transforming the world’s ugliness – none of it is easy to see.

And creating the right conditions for collateral beauty to appear often involves taking some spiritual risk.

The willingness to take spiritual risk is what Christ begins through the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit of God in Jesus Christ burns off and blows out the dense fog that clouds the grace-filled wonder of collateral beauty that’s all around.

A dramatic transfer of power to the Spirit of God in Christ has taken place, and that power shift holds the source for a new life lit up by the Lord’s collateral beauty. The Spirit invades our hearts and mind to disrupt and dislodge our ways of sensing God present with us andat work in our world.

The apostle Paul lays it all out in terms of “adoption.”

In our adoption as children of God, assured in our baptism, we no longer live in the flesh – we no longer live by ways and means of the world or see things the way that the world sees them. We instead live, move, breathe and have our very being in the Spirit.

I’m reading to you from Romans 8.

You are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness.

If the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, the One who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through the Spirit who dwells in you. So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors – not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh – for if you live according to the flesh, you will die.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. In fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God. For Creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the One who subjected it – in hope that Creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:9-17)

May it be so.

May this be the Memorial Day when the Spirit lifts the veil of flags and bunting, anthems and pledges, to reveal some collateral beauty.

As that tear forms in the corner of your eye when you bend down to place those spring flowers on the grave of someone you loved – those family members and friends who died in war or simply in the trenches of everyday life, may the Holy Spirit reveal the collateral beauty this reality:

The grave you stand over is only temporary.

By the Spirit, may you see God’s promise of resurrection and hear the Lord’s promise to return – the day when the grave over which you now grieve and all the graves around it will open, and dead bodies will rise – freed from bondage to decay and reunited with souls and spirits that have rested gently in the arms of the Lord just waiting for the day of resurrection to dawn.

In life and in death we belong to God – one with Jesus in his death, one with Christ in his resurrection, all thanks to the gift of God’s Holy Spirit.

Please remember that assurance, on this long weekend of remembering.

Amen, and amen!   

Here’s What Mercy Means

Since the first of the year, we’ve been making a high-flying trip over the Old Testament of the Bible.

The overarching story of God with us that we’ve heard thus far boils down to this: The God of all Creation has no patience for chaos and disorder, sin and brokenness – behaviors and situations that stand in the way of the Lord’s hopes of redeeming the world and drawing a people together unto himself. And those who run afoul of God and God’s desires risk severe punishment.

God sends a long line of prophets to tell the people to straighten up and fly right, but the message of the prophets fails to take hold in any meaningful, long-lasting way. As a result, the people flock to God when they’re in trouble, but when times are good, God fades into the background of daily living, ignored and darn-near forgotten.

Yet, despite our wandering eyes and rebellious hearts, God remains gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, ever longing to write heaven’s promises upon our hearts – so much so that, in light of the failure of the prophets, God comes to earth in the humanity of Jesus to deliver firsthand a heavenly call to repentance and an absolute assurance of forgiveness for those who become Christ’s disciples and follow his examples of word and deed.

Thus, this morning, we turn the page from the Old Testament to the New – from the First Testament to the Second – and a Gospel lesson on how to become one of Christ’s disciples. And it begins with a simple, two-word invitation from none other than Jesus himself: “Follow me.”

Listen and watch for the word of the Lord, as the story of God with us continues in chapter nine of Matthew’s Gospel during the early days of Christ’s earthly ministry.

As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he got up and followed him.

And as he sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”

But when he heard this, Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Matthew 9:9-13)

Why on earth does Matthew get up?

What stirs the reviled tax collector to rise from his desk and follow Jesus?

After all, at least as far as the text is concerned, Matthew doesn’t know Jesus from Adam!

Does Jesus know Matthew? Well, it’s hard to say.

Our only clue is that the story seems to take place in Jesus’s hometown. So maybe, as a boy growing up, Jesus daily sees Matthew sitting there in his tax office, surrounded by bags and bags of coins collected from disgruntled taxpayers. Yet, while Jesus might know Matthew by face and reputation, the two men don’t appear to be acquainted before now.

But even if Matthew is a total stranger, Jesus well knows how his friends and neighbors feel about tax collectors. In the eyes of the locals, tax collectors are greedy, pocket-lining collaborators in league with a corrupt government and charged with squeezing taxes from their own Jewish people on behalf of the dreaded Romans who loom large and in charge over biblical lands.

So, when he calls Matthew, Jesus knows that doing so confirms what his critics and naysayers already suspect: Jesus chooses the “wrong” people. Jesus had no standards. He’ll hang around with just about anyone! Already in hot water for daring to forgive sins, Jesus now finds a close friend in someone whose daily work is widely regarded as sinful.

Why Matthew gets up remains shrouded in mystery – just as with Peter, James, and John, who leave behind their fishing boats and nets when Jesus strolls along their stretch of shoreline. And none of the former fishermen ever looks back. Therefore, there must be something so captivating about Jesus’s presence that people respond to him in ways even they cannot explain.

Matthew’s reasons surely are personal, and perhaps he holds his cards close to his vest and never tells anybody why he did what he did in accepting a simple, two-word invitation to “follow me.”

Then suddenly, the scene shifts from Matthew’s now-empty tax office to a meal in someone’s house.

Whose house?

Maybe it was Matthew’s.

He’d be about the only one likely to invite his fellow tax collectors over for dinner. Who else would invite them? Given their miserable reputations, tax collectors aren’t exactly A-list dinner guests, and it’s hard to imagine they’d be eagerly welcome to break bread in too many places!

Nevertheless, an important takeaway lies among the unanswered questions and deep mysteries of it all: Being called by Jesus to “follow me” always ends up being a communal affair.

The call of Jesus is intimately linked to community – a radically different sense of community that raises more than a few eyebrows among those with vested interests in maintaining the long-established and well-maintained pecking order of society.

Since Jesus breaks the norms for hanging out in polite company, let’s shake up the guest list even more.

Jesus spends much of his time eating and drinking with sinners, so let’s put together a guest list for a “sinners table” of people whose occupations or mere existence mark them among the American caste of the untouchables.

Invited to our dinner in the party room of, say, the Waukon City Club or Fiesta Villarta, might be a child abuser, a garbage collector, a young black man with AIDS, a Hispanic chicken-plucker, a teen-age crack addict, a gay or transgendered middle-schooler, and an unmarried woman on welfare with five children by three different fathers.

Did we miss anyone? Anyone else who’s considered “unclean” because they do something dirty for a living or behave in ways that polite company deems immoral? Well, we probably should add a few government officials from both sides of the political aisle to round out this motley collection of rogues that we’ve invited out to dinner.

As to the peanut gallery of nearby restaurant critics who always focus on insignificant details and sneer at Jesus’s choice of dinner guests, let’s, in our casting of this story, let the local ministerial association meeting at this very same restaurant assume that role. Or a women’s group going out to lunch after a morning meeting, or a church choir going out for pie and coffee after rehearsal.

Whatever group you choose, the point is that they’re “in” and the rest of the world is “out.”

They’re all clean and well dressed; reasonably attractive with straight, white teeth and clean fingernails, and when the server brings their food, they hold hands and pray. They’re all perfectly nice people – well respected in their community, but they hardly can eat their food or enjoy their drinks but for staring at the eccentric crowd of strangers, outcasts, and ne’re-do-wells sitting at the far table.

Without trying, the group we’ve gathered at our table clearly draws attention. The chicken-plucker is still wearing her white hairnet from work, and the garbage collector smells like spoiled meat. The addict cannot seem to find his mouth with the spoon. But none of them is a deal-breaker – except for Jesus, who’s sitting there enjoying himself as if nothing’s wrong and everything’s fine.

The real head-turner would be the unusual sight of the two tables getting together – if the people from the ministerial association or the businessmen’s Bible study saunter over to Jesus and ask, “Hey, do you mind if we move our tables next to yours, so we can get to know one another better?”

For even if we can stop staring, even if we smile politely from afar with the passive-aggressive “Midwest nice” that oftentimes defines our social behaviors and interactions, it’s just not the same as eating at the same table. And Jesus wants everybody at the table. But some don’t want to sit with Jesus as long as “sinners” are with him.

Yet, our lesson isn’t just an all-are-welcome, kum-ba-ya kind of story.

It’s not the same as Jesus’s parables about going out onto the highways and byways and peering into the community’s nooks and crannies to get people to come to a banquet. Jesus seems to change the subject when he realizes the pious, religious types are complaining about his dinner partners. “Those who are well have no need for physicians, but those who are sick,” Jesus counters back.

But then Jesus switches from defense to offensive: “Go and learn what this means,” Jesus continues. “I desire mercy not sacrifice.”

Jesus is quoting the Old Testament prophet Hosea, and their messages are identical: Showing mercy and compassion, without hesitation, to those whom Jesus will later describe as “the least of these” is far-more important than meaningless sacrifice or empty ritual. If you don’t show mercy and compassion, then all the religious rites and Sunday church services in the world won’t bring you any closer to God.

Jesus concludes by saying, “For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.”

I suppose we could interpret Jesus’s words to mean: “Then go out and sin to your heart’s content! The more you sin, the more Jesus will want you at his table!”

But that’s not quite right either. To unpack this one, we need to flip back a few Gospel chapters to Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount.

That sermon begins with blessing, and among Jesus’s blessings are these words: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled,” followed by “Blessed are the merciful for, they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5:6-7)

Mercy and righteousness are side by side – righteous meaning right, right relationship with God; mercy and compassion hanging on right relationship with neighbors and strangers. This right relatedness is crucially important for Jesus. Indeed, he says, “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”

But wait, we just heard Jesus say that he’s “come not to call the righteous but sinners.” Does Jesus fully support righteousness as a concept but want nothing to do with righteous people? No, not really.

Back there in the blessings of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus blesses those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. They will be filled, that is, they will eat at his table. They’re hungering for right relationship, and they full-well know that they haven’t arrived. And they further their frank self-assessment in admitting their own need, their deep hunger, their desperate longing.

That more than likely is what the Holy Spirit taps into when she stirs Matthew from his tax table. He’s hungry for relationship with God and thirsty for water in the parched places of his soul. When Jesus calls him, Matthew feels the hand of blessing on his head and the Holy Spirit of God in Christ on his heart.

It was personal, yes, that call and that sense of blessing, but it certainly was not private.

Soon Matthew’s house fills with other lost, malnourished souls hungering and thirsting for God. In their heart of hearts, they know the meaning of mercy, because at long last, they finally have been welcomed into an accepting community.

Right relationship with the Lord and with his people looks like a giant wheel with many spokes. Think in terms of a wheel on a bicycle or an old, wooden farm wagon – a big, round hub at the center and spokes moving out toward the rim.

Jesus is at the center of the wheel, and you, I, and everyone else are on the rim, each of us finding our place at the end of a spoke. The Lord longs to draw us in and hold us close. The spokes that are wide apart at the rim almost touch as we move toward the center. Which means that there’s no way to be drawn to Jesus at the center without moving closer to one another.

Doing that is never easy, and it may be that the tax collectors and other greasy sinners will have to be the ones to make the first move, because the “good people” sitting at the supposedly best table have no clue about how and where to begin. I don’t know which table you’re at, and I’m never exactly sure where I’m seated.

Either way, inviting people to share in the blessing of community pretty much sums up what it means to go learn the meaning of mercy, the importance of compassion, and the foolishness of ritual.

And that invitation from Jesus, that invitation into community, is, I think, why Matthew gets up. And the same invitation to create and nurture community surely must be the result of our getting up and following Jesus, too.

Ancient words, ever true, changing me and changing you! Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, May 22, 2022. It is part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by M. Eugene Boring, Barbara K. Lundblad, and Barbara Brown Taylor inform the message.

Subject to Change

Conquered by an invading army and carried off into exile, God’s people find themselves living hundreds of miles from home in the confusing loneliness and hopelessness of a strange land – among the Babylonians and their ruthless ruler, King Nebuchadnezzar.

That’s where the story of God with us left off in last Sunday’s Scripture lesson.

And amid the misery of God’s people, the voice crying out with a buoyant message of new possibility belongs to the Old Testament prophet Daniel, whose dreams of better days ahead foretell the Lord’s destruction of the beastly Babylonians and heaven’s restoration of the faithful’s fortunes.

Daniel’s dreams of eventual freedom at long last become reality, and God’s people return to their cherished city of Jerusalem. But even though they’re once again standing on the holy ground of their ancestors, God’s people still wonder if the God of justice really is still on their side and working unto good. So many times have the Jews asked the question “Where is God’s justice?” that the Lord wearies of their forlorn wondering.

In their defense, God’s people repeat the question ad nauseum, because it really does seem like God still favors the wicked while the righteous still suffer. And that perception produces a prolonged period of religious malaise.

A little historical background helps explain why Israel feels so down in the dumps and is in such a deep, dark funk.

Though they return from exile, rebuild the destroyed Jerusalem Temple, and experience a kind of religious revival, Israel has not returned to her former national glory as the prophets of old had long promised.

No longer trusting God’s justice and doubting God’s covenant love, the after-exile Jews begin to lose hope – and their faith, and its regular practice. Their worship degenerates into dull, listless, mind-numbing litanies of rote routine, and they no longer take seriously God’s Law: Tithing is ignored; Sabbath holiness is broken routinely; aliens are unwelcome, and widows and orphans are ignored; intermarriage with pagans is common, and the priests are corrupt. Worst of all, the Lord had not returned to his Temple with the kind of power and majesty that exalts his Kingdom in the sight of other nations.

In a nutshell, because of their anemic, lackluster faith, the Lord no longer is front and center in the lives of his people, who don’t even make the feeblest of attempts to try and make God No. 1 in their hearts and minds. And because of that fickle choice, God sadly fades more than a bit into the background of daily living – much to the Lord’s chagrin.

Into all that brokenness steps the prophet Malachi, whose voice provides our Scripture lesson this morning.

Malachi brings God back into focus by, among other things, reminding God’s people of our sin and the crushing weight it bears upon our lives and our world. To the nagging question of “Where is the God of justice,” Malachi responds with an answer more bracing than expected. It is an answer that stunned then as much or more as it stuns now.

Like much of the Old Testament’s overarching message, Malachi offers a word of encouragement: the Lord still loves his people and still plans to send them a Savior. But in the meantime, Malachi warns God’s people that they’d better straighten up their lives and shape up their spirituality. Because if they don’t, the Lord’s bottom line boils down to this: “Remember how bad it was when the Babylonians came and hauled you off kicking and screaming into exile? If you don’t straighten up and fly right, well then you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!”

As heaven asks of all its prophets, God charges Malachi with the seemingly impossible task of getting people’s attention with a message that no one really wants to hear. Malachi is called to return God to the center of people’s lives. If, with the Spirit’s help, people can achieve that kind of God-consciousness in their daily lives, then the Lord will shine down upon them like a sun of righteousness with healing in his wings. If the people realize once again that following God’s Law is not restrictive but liberating, then they’ll discover a kind of freedom and joy like none they’ve ever known.

Listen, then, for that stunning word of hope and assurance – along with a life-changing call to repentance and change – in Malachi chapter 3.

See, I am sending my messenger to prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple. The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight – indeed, he is coming, says the LORD of hosts.

But who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears? For he is like a refiner’s fire and like fullers’ soap; he will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, and he will purify the descendants of Levi and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the LORD in righteousness. Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the LORD as in the days of old and as in former years.

Then I will draw near to you for judgment; I will be swift to bear witness against the sorcerers, against the adulterers, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages, the widow and the orphan, against those who thrust aside the alien, and do not fear me, says the LORD of hosts.

For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished. Ever since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you, says the LORD of hosts. But you say, “How shall we return?” (Malachi 3:1-7)

Jarvis Masters entered California’s notorious San Quentin prison in 1981 as an angry teenager guilty of numerous counts of armed robbery. But then, with help from a friend on the outside, a radically different set of ideas, values, and beliefs came his way.

Over time, Jarvis Masters found his faith.

Jarvis Masters

Mr. Masters has been in San Quentin for 41 years, most of that time on death row for an in-prison crime that many believe he didn’t commit. In the years since his faith-based metamorphosis, Mr. Masters now routinely defuses potential violence, lends a trustworthy ear to those around him, and applies the balm of verbal comfort upon the wounded souls and spirits of his friends and neighbors – prison guards and fellow inmates alike!

But, as with others falsely accused, wrongly convicted, and sadly languishing in U.S. prisons, our legal system shows little interest in the strong case for Mr. Masters’s innocence and still sees him as the gruff, young black man it locked up all those many years ago. Jailers and the prison system they uphold seem more than willing and quite eager to throw away the key when shackled people like Mr. Masters shuffle through their doors. And the prison industry is poorly equipped to recognize when personal transformations have taken place – unless it’s in a parole hearing, and people on death row like Mr. Masters don’t get parole hearings.

In 2016, when Mr. Masters’s case came up for review by the California Supreme Court, the justices refused to take seriously the evidence for his exoneration and paid even less notice of the person whom he’d become. Instead, their written decision brought up numerous allegations of things he had done as a child in California’s foster care and juvenile justice systems. The judges apparently assumed that his behavior of old strengthened the case for the guilty verdict in his stunningly shoddy trial – and that his just desserts should come at the hands of an executioner.

But, in addition to the delinquency he’d exhibited as a juvenile, Mr. Masters also had, by the time he was 6, suffered chronic hunger, extreme neglect, and ruthless violence. He’d seen his mother almost beaten to death. After his first good foster-care placement, he entered a series of homes and institutions where foster parents and authorities subjected him to intense physical and psychological violence.

Early on, he seems to have been a product of those circumstances, but Mr. Masters built back better.

These days, he’s a miracle of cheerfulness through the discipline of faith, a person who’s found some kind of interior tranquility and hope in a life locked up among the most violent of Californians. His gang tattoos have faded, as has the young man he used to be. But the system seems uninterested in whom he has become.

In a recent New York Times essay, opinion writer Rebecca Solnit argues that we as a society seem ill-equipped to recognize transformations, just as we lack formal processes – other than monetary settlements – for those who have harmed others to make reparations as part of their repentance or transformation.

Ms. Solnit is right: Most of us have changed with the times, often in increments too slow or too small to recognize, until people or events bring us face-to-face with something we once did, believed, or accepted but now no longer do.

But society’s belief in the fixity rather than the fluidity of human nature, and in guilt without redemption, shows up everywhere – not just in the formal legal system that decides questions of guilt and innocence but also in the social sphere, where, as Ms. Solnit points out, we routinely and mercilessly render verdicts overly ripe with both unexamined assumption about human nature and prejudice for and against particular kinds of people and acts.

Are you who you used to be?

Specifically, are you the person who made that mistake? Committed that harm years or decades ago? Held that view now regarded as reprehensible, or ignorant, or on the wrong side of history?

Many of us who came of age in the last century have, over time, changed our worldviews around race, gender, sexuality, and other important questions of our times. Still, we often speak and treat one another as though each of us is the sum of all our past beliefs and actions – nothing added, nothing subtracted, nothing changed.

Among liberals, prison abolitionists and advocates lobby for readmitting back into society those who’ve committed crimes. But that generosity is not always extended to people who’ve said something that may have been considered acceptable at one time but no longer is. Think in terms of anyone who years ago posted candid photos on social media from the smokey, drunken haze of a college frat party and now lives to regret it.

Among conservatives, falling short of grace is thus to fall forever, too. When New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan gave a homily last year about Dorothy Day, the social justice advocate and convert who founded the Catholic Worker Movement, his eminence saw fit to declare from the pulpit, “She’d be the first to admit her promiscuity.” Which seems to deem Ms. Day’s choices in her early life as a condemning drag on any consideration of her selfless heroism later in life.

Perhaps some of the problem is our passion for categorical thinking – or rather for categories as alternatives to thinking.

As Ms. Solnit points out in her Times essay, some people evolve and change as dramatically as caterpillars turning into butterflies, while still others might as well be carved from granite, clinging white-knuckled tight in adulthood to less-than-faithful beliefs and values instilled by warped nurturing of childhood. Some people get better, some worse, some stay the same. Some shift as a result of societal changes, some for individual reasons and through individual effort. Recognizing this means having to think about each case and realizing that sometimes we possess insufficient facts to render fair judgment. And who of us really wants to think that hard, right?!

Jewish culture has clear processes for redemption and repair, in stark contrast to the mainstream of our society. Christianity pays more attention to forgiveness from victims, and our traditions of penance and confession tend to focus on making things right with God rather than righting the wrongs we’ve inflicted upon others.

There are some new models, restorative justice chief among them, as Ms. Solnit highlights. But for any of them to work, we first have to believe in the possibility of redemption and transformation – and to embrace the uncertainty it brings: People can change! Some have; some insincerely profess to having changed; and some won’t, or can’t, or relapse. Asserting that someone has not changed may be as untrue, but perhaps it feels more like certainty. And the miserly among us certainly revel in hoarding selfish measures of the increasingly rare commodity of trust.

All these cases highlight our need for inquiry and flexibility.

Surely the first criterion for whether something is forgivable is whether it’s over: The person has stopped whatever harmful thing he or she was doing, renounced the principles that led to that harm, made reparations or amends, and become a different person.

The second is whether there’s enough hard data to decide the thorny question of forgiveness and who sits in the place of decision over that forgiveness. The idea that it’s all up to the people directly harmed seems all well and good on its face but leads to the erasing of the line that separates justice and revenge.

Furthermore, as Ms. Solnit notes, those who are unharmed also must decide how to respond to those who have done wrong and inflicted harm: Whether to hire them, or vote for them, or befriend them, or live as neighbors near them. Or to read their books, or watch their movies, or listen to their music – or even just believe them and believe IN them!

But beyond the individual cases comes a hunger and thirst for something broader: Recognition that people change and that most of us have and will again. And that much of that is because, in this transformative era, we are all being carried along on a river of personal and spiritual change that flows from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

“I am the LORD, and I do not change,” the voice of the prophet Malachi affirms in God’s sted. “That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed.”

Malachi offers the final words of the Old Testament, and he paves the way for the arrival of Christ in the New Testament with an Old Testament message of life-changing hope and assurance: God is gracious and wants to shine down life on us. But sin is serious, and we cannot wish it away with the wave of a hand. You and I are going to need some help in getting done the job of cleaning up our acts, refining our minds, and purifying our hearts.

All of a sudden, the centuries of waiting that separate the Old and New testaments evaporate into a seamless, streamlined story of salvation, which is at the beating heart of the long and fractured story of God with us and our transformation into disciples of Jesus Christ. And those long stretches of time are important, because they are full of God’s grace, and God’s grace is what initiates change.

“How shall we return to the fold of God and the grace of heaven?” the people wonder loudly.

Malachi answers their dire-but-honest question with this: Grace abounds, with the blazing purification of a refiner’s fire. And bathed in the heated passion of God, all of us are subject to change, and we are living in a grace period.

Jarvis Masters found his faith and became a changed man. May you and I rediscover our faith and, with the powerful winds of the Holy Spirit filling our sails, find our minds renewed, our courses changed, and the exile of our long, national nightmare finally ended.

Ancient words, ever true, changing me and changing you. Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, May 15, 2022. It is part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Scott Hoezee, Stan Mast, Danya Ruttenberg, Eileen M. Schuller, and Rebecca Solnit inform the message.

A Mother’s Day Prayer for All Women

Mother’s Day isn’t a celebration for everyone, and for many people, Mother’s Day can be a particularly painful time of year. That can be true for those who are grieving the loss of loved ones, are estranged from family members, or facing fertility issues, among other circumstances. And the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day can be especially fraught with reminders urging people to shop and celebrate. So in worship this morning, Mother’s Day 2022, we offered this prayer for all women.

On this day of celebrating your love, Holy God in Christ Jesus, we lift to you the women in our lives – those who have given us life, those who have loved us, those who have blessed us, and those who have taught us.

May your blessing pour out upon the women who gave us birth and those beautiful, strong women who have been mothers to us along our journey.

We praise you, O Lord, for your gift of motherly love – both gentle and fierce, both strong and humble, both kind and true.

Where we have been so blessed, we give our grateful praise, for you have provided loving hands that have worked so hard to raise us, cared enough to correct us, and blessed us in ways we cannot fully know as children.

We call forth your compassion upon every mother who has knowingly or unknowingly caused pain and suffering. And so, we lift to you our mothers, so imperfect but also so wounded by the world.

Pour out your healing mercy upon our mothers this day, no matter what they have done or left undone.

We ask this because we believe in your healing, and we believe in your love, and we believe that you love every mother, good or bad, every woman, full of grace or filled with regrets.

Where we have failed because we did not know better, help us to forgive ourselves. Where we have seen your face in any woman who has been to us a guiding force, we give thanks. For where they have loved, they have kept your word.

We lift to you the broken heart of every mother who has watched her child die of hunger, every mother who had been a victim of abuse, every woman who stands in protest against a world that massacres her children and renames them “collateral damage,” every woman whose dreams of motherhood went unfulfilled.

We lift to you the prayer of every mother who has ever loved and lost, along with the prayer of every woman who feels like she has no one to love.

We pray in the name of Jesus, our brother, to the Great God who is Father and Mother of us all. Amen.

The Kingdom Within

Like many communities, a friendly welcome sign stood beside the highway at the edge of the town where I grew up. The sign clearly intended to warm the cockles of its residents’ hearts and offer hospitality to visitors.

But according to my high school buddy Steven, the sign also served a less obvious but-to-him- more-important purpose: It marked the outer limits of jurisdiction for our small town’s police officers.

Steven – who in our teenage years always seemed more worldly than I, at all times apparently privy to the inside scoop on these sorts of things – claimed that being north of the sign meant you were within the city limits. And once there, you’d best keep your eye on your speedometer, because the cops could, and would – and did – nab you for going 26 in a 25.

But south of the sign, all bets were off. It was wide-open territory, and the traffic cops couldn’t touch you. So, every time we left town with Steven at the wheel, he’d excitedly punch the gas just as we were passing the sign. Putting the pedal to the metal took his little canary-yellow Mazda well past the speed limit while the lyrics to Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild” blared from speakers powered by Steven’s eight-track tape player.

Whenever we returned to town from whatever grand adventure we were on, of course barreling toward the city limits at lightning speed, just before re-entering what he believed to be the local police department’s jurisdiction, Steven would tap the brakes and bring his careening little yellow Mazda back down to earth and under speed limit.

I now doubt that Steven had his legal facts straight about where the Kimberly Police Department could and couldn’t enforce its authority. But his understanding of jurisdiction is helpful in understanding our Scripture lesson this morning from the Old Testament prophet Daniel.

Thinking in terms of jurisdiction is helpful, because most people in Daniel’s world – about 500 years before Christ – held tight to a “theology of jurisdiction.”

Folks tended to believe in the existence of many gods, and each of these gods operated within a fairly limited jurisdiction. One god ruled the hills; another ruled the valleys. One god ruled the sun; another ruled the rain. The God of Israel certainly ruled the holy city of Jerusalem, but other gods ruled in far-off kingdoms like Babylon.

And the Kingdom of Babylon is precisely where Daniel finds himself, living in the squalor and misery of exile with his friends, family, and countrymen – all conquered and subjugated by the brutal Babylonian army. By all appearances – which are really, really sad and depressing, the God of Israel is not the one calling the shots in Babylon. Instead, it is the wicked Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar and his gods who seem to be running the show.

Yet, Daniel and his comrades refuse to settle for accepting things the way they appear to be. Despite their sorry state of affairs, they vigorously persist in believing in a hidden-yet-hopeful reality that is truer than what first meets the eye.

They insist that, even in Babylon, the God of Israel who freed their ancestors from slavery in Egypt is still the God and they are still God’s people, which makes them servants of a far-different, far-more powerful and gracious monarch than the jackbooted despot who rules Babylon with an iron fist.

In this installment of the long and fractured story of God with us, Daniel experiences a vision that pulls back the curtain on new possibilities empowered by the reign of God.

Daniel envisions the future fall of worldly empires, their soulless leaders, and their corrupt politicians. In particular, what Daniel imagines as future reality is the passing away of the tyrannical king who’s persecuting Daniel and the other exiles. Portrayed as a monstrous, mutated beast, the old kingdom will topple, just as the kingdoms before it had done.

And to fill the void, God will establish a new and eternal kingdom that will never ever pass away!

In the surprising climax of Daniel’s vision, God hands over the keys to that new kingdom not only to a Holy One who is like a human being (yes, that’ll be Jesus) but also to the people whose loyalties lie with the Ancient of Days who is the Most High. (Yes, that’ll be you and me.)

War and violence, destruction and exploitation, oppression and domination, characterize other kingdoms. But the final, eternal kingdom of Daniel’s dream will orient its permanent citizens toward grace and peace, mercy and justice, forgiveness and love – all flowing swiftly and strongly from the very throne of God. In this kingdom, the jurisdiction of God will spread far and wide – not just to the edge of town by the sign but to the very edges of the vast universe.

Revel in that Good News as you listen for the Word of the Lord midchapter in Daniel 7.

As I watched, thrones were set in place, and an Ancient One took his throne, his clothing was white as snow, and the hair of his head like pure wool.

His throne was fiery flames, and its wheels were burning fire. A stream of fire issued and flowed out from his presence. A thousand thousands served him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him. The court sat in judgment, and the books were opened.

I watched then because of the noise of the arrogant words that the horn was speaking. And as I watched, the beast was put to death, and its body destroyed and given over to be burned with fire. As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away, but their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.

As I watched in the night visions, I saw one like a human being coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient One and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed. (Daniel 7:9-14)

When times are bad – really bad, like coming apart at the seams, flying off the rails, going to hell in a hand basket bad, everyone seemingly at each other’s throat – like the times we’re living in now, the public conversation inevitably turns toward talk of the apocalyptic “end times.”

Fatalistic talk about the end of all things usually scares the bejeebers out of folks – and not without good reason. The return to our world of Jesus Christ in the flesh will trigger unprecedented happenings both jaw-dropping and breathtaking: Tombs will open, and the sea will give up its dead, and bodies long a-mouldering in the grave will breathe and move again.

The freshly resurrected along with the living who belong to God will be transported to a different place of being in which all things are new, tears and pain are no more, nothing but perfect peace and love fill the air. The broken and fearful world we now know will be no more, and the full weight of divine judgment will fall hard upon evildoers large and small from across the ages.

In all that lie not the plot for a zombie apocalypse movie, but rather in all that buzz the hope and assurance of new life that Daniel’s vision anticipates and that Jesus’s Easter resurrection inaugurates. Daniel’s dream come to life in Christ’s sacrifice provides hope to the long-suffering exiles and captives and assurance to the pale and downtrodden that evil will not win out. The Lord is always victorious over his enemies – including but not limited to the Babylonians back in the day and the Russian army of Ukraine’s today, but that victory – and the Kingdom of God that such heavenly triumph inaugurates – will come in stages. 

You and I know not the timing of it all. And the older I get, the more comfortable I become just letting the whole divine enterprise remain mostly shrouded in mystery. You and I do know a few kingdom deets, which start with the apparent reality that the first coming of Jesus to earth was the first stage. Jesus brought the Kingdom of God near to us, but the fullness of that Kingdom obviously is yet to come. In the meantime, God calls us to offer to friend, neighbor, and stranger glimpses of the Kingdom in its fullness through the words of our mouth, the work of our hands, and the movement of our feet.

We aren’t told to form a militia.

We aren’t ordered to take up the weapons and kill who and what we perceive as evil incarnate.

We are called to follow our King and Savior in all that he tells us to do and be: Militants who fight against all those people and powers who oppose God and God’s desires for the world – and for ourselves, as we seek to exterminate the last vestiges of sin in our hearts and minds.

The Lord calls us to fight back according to his gameplan – by loving and serving others, such that our actions reveal foretastes of what we know in our hearts to be true of the fully built Kingdom – a place of utter grace and peace, absolute mercy and justice, complete reconciliation, and abiding, unconditional love.

Whenever and wherever, in humility, we put the needs of others above our own, you and I are pronouncing in no uncertain terms that the Kingdom of God has come near and there’s more where that came from.

Steve Hartmann of CBS News recently offered this glimpse of what the Kingdom of God is like.

No matter what life lays before us, no matter the challenge, or fear, or frustration, thanks be to God the end of the story is written in Christ’s blood.

Which means that Jesus holds us close and fight in his love arms now and for all eternity.

We win!

Until then, as long as we live on this earth and before Jesus, our King, we must fight evil by sharing and living the Gospel, following Jesus in faith and obedience, and doing the loving work of Christ on a daily basis in joy and humility – perhaps, like major leaguer Brett Phillips, being the MVP – the most valuable presence – in the lost-and-alone lives of people near and far overwhelmed by war and violence, illness and disease, fear and loathing.

For the Kingdom of God is within us, by the power of God’s Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus, and there’s no road sign along our walk of faith that limits the jurisdiction of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords when he and he alone rules our hearts and minds and dwells in our bodies, souls, and spirits.

So, like Daniel and company, we have no need of flailing our arms in the air in despair and settling for the twisted, out-of-whack way things are. Instead, we push the pedal of faith to metal of compassion, patiently enduring through this life and looking to God through Christ alone for our hope and assurance that the Lord, in heaven’s good time, will do everything necessary to deliver us wholly into the fullness of the Kingdom of God.

Jesus has defeated death, and the rest of evil’s filthy handiwork will one day pass away, too!

Ancient words, ever true, changing me, and changing you. Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, May 8, 2022. It is part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Peter A. Butler Jr., Steve Hartman, Anathea Portier-Young, Joel Schreurs, and Daniel L. Smith-Christopher inform the message.

Faithful, No Matter What

It’s the kind of question that causes a pastor to break out in a cold sweat, and the query always begins with a simple word: “Why.”

An innocent child is killed; a beloved teacher dies; a freak accident claims the life of dear friend, and with quivering lips and lumped throat, a hapless survivor asks “why.”

Why did this tragedy happen?

Why didn’t God answer “yes” when I prayed for healing?

Why didn’t God step in and stop the heartbreak from happening?

When tragedy or catastrophe is the cause for the funeral, I’d dearly love to stand tall in the pulpit and explain all the whys and wherefores of it all so as to make total sense out of sheer nonsense for those whose lives have been shattered and whose dreams have been broken.

But in all honesty, I’m as clueless as everyone else when it comes to offering the kind of understanding that creates crystal clarity.

Sure, I can stammer through words that provide some measure of comfort – an overall reassurance of God’s good care in the wake of tragedy, a timely reminder that evil still runs roughshod through God’s fallen creation, a frank acknowledgement that the smudge of sin messes up our freewill, an honest declaration that God doesn’t micromanage every jot and tittle of life in a broken and fearful world so as to head off every bad thing that could possibly ever happen.

But despite the truth of all that, whatever comfort that arises from even the best theology that I or any other pastor can muster does precious little to soothe the raw wounds of grief that fester for precise detail and well-defined explanation. And the anguished question of “why” still hangs heavy and awkward like the proverbial elephant in the room:

“Pastor, I know that God doesn’t stop every bad thing from happening, but why couldn’t God have saved my child from getting killed by that drunken driver?”

It’s no sin to ask “why,” and there’s nothing wrong with venting your anger and frustration at God in the face of your suffering.Even Jesus himself cries out an anguished “why” from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

And generations before the bloody gore of Good Friday, there was the Old Testament prophet Job, who in our lesson this morning is in a world of hurt and who in later chapters quite literally will lose everything despite doing his faithful best to do the right thing.

As pus drains from the painful boils that cover his body, Job sits atop a heap of ashes – probably wondering why such suffering has befallen him and inescapably listening to his wife urge him to throw in the towel of faith and belief in God.

No, these are not comfortable words to read or hear nor is the scene comforting to imagine. Indeed, the mental picture weighs on the heart and sickens the stomach. With that warning, gird your loins but open your hearts as you listen for the Word of the Lord to you this day – one of the many disturbing-yet-holy scenes in the long-and-often-confusing story of God with us.

There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the LORD. The LORD said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”

The LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.”

Then Satan answered the LORD, “Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”

The LORD said to Satan, “Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.”

So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.

Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips. (Job 1:1, 2:1-10

God surely hears prayers of sadness and lament that in one way or another scream and shout the confusion and perplexity wrapped up in our simple and honest asking of “why.”

But God’s replies definitely feel less than forthcoming, surely more than unsatisfying, and obviously shrouded in the most perplexing of unsolved mysteries.

Later in this heartbreaking story, Job’s friends will try and make sense of it all by assuring Job that “everything happens for a reason” and that, in Job’s case, the reason for all his suffering is his sin. One way or another, his friends mistakenly surmise, Job has done something really, really bad in the eyes of the Lord, and his sorry state of affairs is the result of his sin.

Our lesson shoots down that explanation, early on declaring Job “blameless and upright,” one who honors God, an exemplary disciple who turns aways from evil.

The disturbing discovery of this morning’s lesson reveals that it’s actually not God at all who is so directly afflicting Job but rather some shadowy figure called “Satan” who does evil’s dirty work by the permission of God in a high-stakes roll of the dice between the forces of good and evil about which Job knows not thing one.

Possessing that piece of insider knowledge, which you and I do, gives us an advantage over Job, who is naïve and clueless. That’s what some suggest, anyway. But I’m not so sure knowing this actually helps us all that much! To my mind, the idea that our lives could become mere chess pieces in a cosmic game between God and the evil forces who oppose God trends toward the chilling side of the spectrum.

So, let’s hope that the distressing story of Job is less a reflection about how things regularly go in heavenly realms and more a scenario that maybe has happened only once in divine history.

Because it would have been one thing had Job lost his fortune on the stock market, or watched as his house burned down, or had to deal with the heartbreak of psoriasis or itchy, dry, watering eyes.

But to lose all 10 of his children, to watch his animals die and employees slaughtered – well, that certainly ratchets up the confusion by dropping us down into a very deep, dark and scary dungeon of doubt.

Whatever you make of the cause behind the disasters that befall Job – whoever you assign responsibility for birthing Job’s Dumpster-fire of a life, you cannot deny or forget that things very much like the scenario sketched here really do happen on this planet – all the time!

Parents do lose children – sometimes all of them at once.

Disaster and disease come to people who are the most lovely and precious of folks you’d ever hope to meet.

Such chaos is pretty indiscriminate, too. Derechos, tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, and earthquakes generally don’t just flatten the houses of mafia types and drug kingpins while leaving untouched churches, synagogues, mosques, and other sanctuaries of the faithful.

Pandemic flu outbreaks like COVID-19 don’t only target the really greasy people who work for a given company while leaving untouched the kind and gentle souls on the payroll.

Disaster and disease befall all without prejudice and strike everywhere without mercy.

And, of course, countries like Russia and leaders like Vladimir Putin all too often invade countries like Ukraine and attack innocents like the Ukrainians just going about the routines of daily life and not looking for any trouble.

So, even if you shear Job of its more-than-a-little-troubling backdrop in the realms of heaven, at the end of the day what you have here is still one very basic scenario that seems endemic to the human condition: The asking of the question “Why?” At one time or another, everybody asks that question!

But, whereas the nonreligious have nowhere to lodge the query, religious people find themselves in the unenviable position of knowing exactly to whom they should pose the question and air their grievances, but then discovering, for that very reason, that the asking of the question pinches and pains a whole lot more than you thought it would.

As Job knew in his heart of hearts, it is actually possible to make suffering worse if you are convinced that, at the center of the universe, there supposedly stands a God with your best interests at heart.

A God purported to be just and good.

A God who created the entire universe. but presumably not merely for the purpose of watching Creation writhe in agony at the end of their various ropes.

As another writes, it’s not that there is no explanation, it’s just that we maybe cannot bear it. It’s not that there’s no rhyme or reason to life, it’s just that we need to trust the God who is ultimately in charge of all life to do the right thing and to bring matters to their proper conclusion in God’s good time.

Of course, you and I now know a little more about God’s surprisingly good and gracious timing. God’s vastly more surprising move is to show us a baby in a manger and then a lowly carpenter’s son.

We’d love nothing more than to see the armies of God marching from the horizon to slay the evils of sin and death, but instead, we see a humble servant agonizing on a cross while his executioners mock and belittle.

If, in Job, you think it’s strangely unhelpful for God to allow evil to attack otherwise faithful Job, then it is vastly more breathtaking to read the Gospels and see God dealing with death by dying himself!

More often than not, the ways of God seem like utter nonsense – ill-timed, almost-comical affronts to common sense and conventional wisdom.

Yet, surprisingly creative, out-of-the-box responses to the chaos of our lives seem to be God’s preferred way to take care of divine business.

No, we don’t know all the answers to all the questions that make for endless nights of fitful sleep, but we do know that the Creator God, has now become the Redeemer God through the surprise that is the risen Christ Jesus.

Considering all the wonders this God has already fashioned in Creation and Redemption, surely this God can and will work a few more wonders someday, and those wonders will be the satisfying of our every question, the drying of every tear from every eye, the creation of a new heaven and earth where the questions of “why” will be things of the past.

That’s what makes God’s grace-filled creativity at once so beautiful and so confounding.

Grace that does a new thing comes when we least expect it and in ways that always surprise and amaze. Our response to God’s graceful innovation comes down to a choice – whether we will live in hope, strength and confidence by that grace or whether we’ll turn our backs on grace and instead muddle along by our own hapless wits.

The choice has life-changing consequences – whether we will live by the kind of grace that always lifts up the fallen spirit or live by the ways of the world that always let down.

It is, as the opening scene from the movie “The Tree of Life” suggests, a choice of following the way of nature or the way of grace:

“I will be true to you, whatever comes.”

That, in a nutshell, is the faithful response to grace, the ultimate answer to our questions of “why.”

We can either let the chaos of our lives suck us into a life of isolating bitterness, or we can let grace be the tie that binds us  true to God and one another, even as God is truly forever bound to us … whatever comes.”

Whatever comes, however confusing, we receive the good at the hand of God – mercy and forgiveness, grace and peace, hope and assurance. And wrapped snuggly in those warm blankets of God’s love for you and me, we also receive the bad – not fretting whether God is the cause but most definitely recognizing and celebrating that God is our Savior.

In that truth, let no one sin with his or her lips.

For death has been swallowed up in victory, and our questions pose not “why” but tease Satan with a slap to the face:

O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?

We dare taunt with such boldness, because brokenness is fleeting, and resurrection is eternal! For that is the way of grace,and no one who follows the way of grace ever comes to a bad end.

Ancient words, ever true. Amen, and amen!

Pastor Grant M. VanderVelden shared this message on Sunday, May 1, 2022. It is part of his current sermon series, “Becoming Disciples: The Story of God with Us.” Scholarship, commentary, and reflection by Doug Bratt, Scott Hoezee, Stan Mast, and Carol A. Newsom inform the message.