The Challenge of Love

Luke 6:27-38

[Jesus said:] “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…” --Luke 6:27

Jesus commands us to love.  To love God with all our hearts, minds, soul and strength.  To love one another as Jesus loves us.  To love our neighbors as ourselves.  In 1 Corinthians, Paul teaches us that love is patient and kind. The Gospel of John declares that the heart of the Gospel is God’s love for the world embodied in Jesus.  We talk about “love” in the church all the time.  But, do we really know what we are getting into to when commit ourselves to loving in the Way of Jesus?

Jesus’ way of loving is not sentimental, sweet romanticism.  It can be hard work.  The challenge of this way of loving is illustrated in boldface in this week’s lesson.  Here, Jesus tells us to love our enemies!  Worse, he goes on to give specific and difficult examples of what that way of loving might look like.  His list is cringe worthy.  In a divisive age where demonizing our enemies (or even those who just disagree with us) seems more the norm, Jesus words can seem impossible, or worse, destructive.  It seems like Jesus is suggesting we just let people get way with hurtful and unjust behaviors.  It seems like Jesus is telling us just to look the other way.

But, if that is the case, it seems that Jesus himself didn’t always follow his own advice.  He regularly challenges the scribes and the Pharisees and their treatment of others.  Paul’s description of love says that love “does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.”  Through the prophets, the God of steadfast love condemns those who oppress the poor and the powerless.  

I think that Jesus’ way of engaging his enemies charts a path between hating those opposed to us and ignoring the abuse and hurt and suffering of the world. Jesus’ command to love our enemies calls us to the tough work of mercy, healing and reconciliation which led Jesus to the cross.  The kind of love Jesus teaches and embodies calls us to confront the brokenness in the world and also the brokenness in ourselves, not with violence (because violence begets violence) but with compassion.  The love of Jesus calls us to seek and build upon common ground where it can be found, (because judgement leads to judgment), with humility. The love of Jesus calls us to give of ourselves (because the measure we give is the measure we get back), even when that self-giving feels risky and challenging.  

The love of Jesus took him to the cross, but the power of that love also defeated death.  As followers of Jesus Christ, we draw our strength and hope from the promise of the Resurrection as we face the reality of abuse, pain and suffering in our world, work for reconciliation in a broken world and do the hard work of loving… even our enemies.  

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thank-you for reading.  Pray that God would help you to love your enemies and those who see the world differently than you do.

The Promise of Life

Luke 6:17-26

…for power came out from[Jesus] and healed all of them.  –Luke 6:19

American mainstream culture is a death defying culture.

I say “defying” rather than “denying” because we seem to do everything we can to stop it from coming. Death is seen as an affront to life, as an enemy to be beaten, as something we delude ourselves into thinking we can overcome.  We are always trying to find ways to fend off death.  Eat right.  Exercise.  Get more sleep. Take this pill or that supplement.  Meditate. Buy this product.  Adopt this lifestyle.  And on and on.  The ads promise us eternal life: “Reduce your chances of death by 100%!”  Now, don’t get me wrong.  I watch my diet, exercise (though probably not enough), meditate and do other things to stay healthy.  But defy death?  I doubt it. One day, I will die and so will you. 

The reality of our mortality causes Paul to write, 

“For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.”  (1 Corinthians 15:12-50)

Christianity does not defy death, it posits that death does not have the last word.  That, in Christ, the promise of life follows the reality of death.  Easter follows Good Friday.  This is amazingly good news for a culture that spends millions trying to defy the inevitable.

In this week’s text, the crowds are pressing in on Jesus, hoping to tap into his healing power. They understand both their urgent need for healing and his ability to meet that need.  And, Luke tells us, Jesus healed them all.

Luke follows this scene with his form of the beatitudes.  In Luke’s version, unlikely candidates receive blessing while those who the world would call blessed receive woes.  For Luke, Jesus is the one who turns the world upside down. 

Our culture, while very different from First Century Galilee, bears some similarities.  Like that ancient time, we often covet riches, fullness, laughter and people speaking well of us.  And we often benevolently pity those who are poor, or hungry, or mourning. So, why then would Jesus say those who are suffering and struggling are blessed, while those who are well-off are not? Perhaps, it is because those who suffer and struggle in life know their need for God, while those who have the world’s blessings delude themselves into thinking they can take care of themselves. I can just see a small group of rich folks, having just come from a good lunch, surrounded by their adoring friends, looking down on the melee on the plain, shaking their heads at those trying to touch Jesus and saying dismissively, “how sad.”  When, in fact, they are just as mortal as every single member of the multitude.  

When we think we can “fix” the problem  of death by ourselves, we too can miss our need for Jesus’ healing touch, and miss out on the abundant life he offers.  On those days when I get caught up in my own death defying delusions, I am grateful that, like the crowds that day in Galilee, Jesus’ powerful life is enough to heal us all.  

Peace,

Bishop Mike  

Thank-you for reading.  I pray that those who are in any need will experience God’s healing presence and power in their lives.

When the Lord Calls

Luke 5:1-11

When they had brought their boats to shore, they left everything and followed him.  –Luke 5:11

I was sitting alone in the Northwestern Chapel of what was then Luther-Northwestern Seminary in St. Paul, MN.  I was just past nineteen years old.  As I sat there in that quiet place, my thoughts were anything but quiet.  I was wrestling with my future.  I was wrestling with a call to be a pastor.  I was wrestling with God. And then, all of a sudden, I just knew.  I knew what God wanted me to do with my life.  I wish I could say that I got up from that moment and never looked back.  But, I can’t.  I continued to wrestle with that call through college, seminary and well into the first church I served.  I still wrestle with my call sometimes!  But, most of the time, I am pretty sure I am where God called me to be.

I have always been fascinated by the call stories in scripture.  They always seem so clear.  So decisive.  So absolute. But when you look closer, there is plenty of wrestling too.  I think that’s true in this week’s Gospel lesson.  As I read this story, three things jump out at me.  First, Simon’s willingness to let Jesus use his boat. (Did Jesus really give him a choice?)  Second, his willingness to trust Jesus and cast down his nets. (What did this carpenter know about fishing anyway?) And finally, his willingness to drop everything and follow. (But, why would Jesus even want such an unworthy fellow?)

In most of the call stories I’ve heard, all three elements are usually there in the mix.  At some point, we need to let the Lord use who we are and what we have to offer.  We need to trust Jesus, even if he seems to be asking us to do the illogical.  We need to trust his promises, even if they are sometimes hard to believe.  Finally, we need to be willing to go where the Lord leads.  

How that happens is going to be different for each one of us.  Calls come in all shapes and sizes.  Not everyone is called to be a pastor or deacon. Some are called to be chemists, or bus drivers, or farmers who steward God’s earth, factory workers, psychologists or painters who make houses bright or canvases come alive.  Some are called to be mothers and fathers, grandparents, uncles and aunts.  We are called to be sons and daughters, neighbors and friends.  As Paul says, there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit. The point is not what we are called to.  Instead, answering a call is about using our boats, trusting that the Lord will show us where to fish, and being willing to go wherever the Lord leads – whether that’s to some distant shore, or to go deep right where we are.

If you had asked me at nineteen where I wanted to go in my life, I would not have listed any of the places God has taken me.  But, it has been an amazing ride!  I have found blessing and challenges, and wonder and wrestling every place I’ve been.  But, through it all, I can say with confidence, “God has been steadfast, and faithful and good.”  

Peace,

Bishop Mike.

Thank-you for reading.  My prayer is that God will use you wherever you are called.   

Love in a Broken World

1 Corinthians 13

…And the greatest of these is love.  –1 Corinthians 13:13

Last night, thanks to the wonder of DVR technology, I watched last weekend’s “live” performance of RENT, a“rock opera” set against the backdrop of the AIDS epidemic in New York City in the early 1990s.  I had tears in my eyes through most of it. The 2005 movie based on the stage play has long been a favorite, though I haven’t watched it in a while.  The music is powerful and the story itself is a deep dive into the human condition. All the characters in RENT have “baggage.”  There is pain, struggle and brokenness in these peoples’ lives.  The characters are profoundly human. The story looks at the realities of injustice, greed, privilege, yearning, dreaming, desire, addiction, disease, relationships, and death.  But, the thing that always makes my eyes water up is the way the power of love helps the characters in the play transcend the harsh realities of their lives.  It doesn’t take away those realities. It doesn’t cure them in some wishy-washy sentimentalized way.  It doesn’t make “everything better.” But, it does carry them in the midst of the pain, struggle and brokenness of their lives, at, at times, helps them rise above it.

The beginning of RENT, not coincidentally, is also set against the backdrop of Christmas Eve -- the birthday of the one who came into the world to embody God’s love for the whole world.  Yes, even for bohemians struggling with pain and brokenness in New York City. Yes, even for those of us caught up in the realities of injustice, greed, privilege, yearning, dreaming, desire, addiction, disease, relationships and death.  Yes, even for the likes of you and me.  Jesus’ way of love isn’t sentimental either.  Jesus’ love carries him into the harsh realities of human life. During his ministry he confronts disease, and injustices, and death.  Ultimately, Jesus’ love carries him to a cross, through death and into new life.  

I am sure that Paul was thinking of Jesus when he told the conflicted, divided and struggling Corinthian church that 

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)

Like the Corinthians, the church today can fall far short of loving in the way of the Lord we follow and strive to emulate.  Like the people in RENT we sometimes give in to the pain, struggle and brokenness in our lives.  We can and do hurt one another.  (And that is an understatement!) But the love lifted up by Paul, Jesus’ way of love, still has the power to help us persevere and even transcend our own brokenness.  It still has the power to transform us, and bring life from death.  

If you are looking for a way of life that gives life, Paul’s description of love is a good place to start. 

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading. This week, I pray for all those who live lives of desperation, and for the church to be the loving community – for ALL people -- God intends for us to be.  

A Case of Invisibility

Luke 4:16-30

And Jesus said,“Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown.”  --Luke 4:24

The past few days, I have been suffering from a case of invisibility.  It’s happened to me before.  Just the other day, a delivery truck seemed to think the lane I was in was empty.  At least, that’s what it seemed like when he tried to put his truck in the same space I was occupying.  Fortunately, I was able to swerve to miss him.  It happened again yesterday, except, this time, it was a old, already dented mini-van.  Then, I stopped by a restaurant for breakfast and, though they weren’t busy and servers were milling around, no one came over to seat me.  Several seemed to look right at me!  Or, should I say, through me. Invisible.  I finally managed to catch the eye of a guy in the very back of the restaurant, who found someone to get me a seat.

Sometimes, I think we all get a little oblivious to the things going on around us. The truck driver may have been thinking about getting home a little early.  The driver of the van may have been rushing to pick up kids from school.  The servers, tired from a busy morning rush, might have relaxed their vigilance in the slower pace of mid-morning.  

When Jesus visited his hometown of Nazareth, the people saw Joseph’s son who had built a reputation as a healer and teacher.  But, they couldn’t see any deeper than that.  They seemed completely oblivious to the fact that he was more than just Joseph’s boy.  Distracted by their familiarity with Jesus, his identity as God’s Son and his true power were invisible to them.  Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Jesus “didn’t do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.” (13:58) In Luke, Jesus snubs their desire for miracles and reminds them that the purview of God’s interest is broader than the hometown crowd. It didn’t end well.

Life can distract us too. We miss important things like the car in the next lane, or the presence of the Son of God in our midst.  Familiarity might breed contempt, but it also can breed a certain kind of obliviousness. It’s hard to see the prophet – a messenger from  God -- in the hometown kid.  Our vision of God’s life changing, expectation challenging, prophetic presence and power can get blurred by the familiarity of church life.  Sometimes those on the outside of our communities of faith – like a Sidonian widow (1 Kings 17:8-16) or a Syrian general (2 Kings 5:1-19) or a Millennial young adult who doesn’t go to church or a person from a different culture or the poor, or the captives or the blind or the oppressed – can see God’s activity in the world clearer than those of us who hang out in churches and synagogues.

We should do more to listen to them.  Not try to run them off a cliff.  

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading. Pray that God might open our hearts and our minds, our eyes and our ears, so we can see God present and working in the world around us.  

Empty Jars

John 2:1-11

“They have no wine.”  --John 2:3

Six empty jars. 120-180 gallons of air.  Disaster in the wind.

“They have no wine.” Mary said to her son, her face pleading for him to do something to save the wedding banquet and the honor of the host.

I feel like there are a lot of empty jars these days.  Disasters in the wind.  The government shut-down continues, and talks are going nowhere.  Families are trying to figure out how to live without paychecks and the impact is being felt in many sectors of our common life. Churches continue to decline and can no longer sustain ministry, and yet are unwilling to even consider change. It’s depressing and frustrating. A few weeks ago, I was at a conference where we were discussing climate change and the bleak predictions for life in a much less stable ecosystem.  There are still things we can do, if we had the will, to mitigate the damage…  but not the damage has already been done. And that’s just three of the empty jars I see in the world around me.  I have always been a “jar half-full” optimist, but it seems like every day that perspective gets harder to maintain.

Like Mary, my prayers these days often plead, “Lord, we have no wine!” 

And then I remember the promise of the Prophet Isaiah,

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples

a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines,

of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

And he will destroy on this mountain

the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

the sheet that is spread over all nations;

he will swallow up death forever.

Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,

and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,

for the Lord has spoken.   (25:6-8).

It was a promise spoken at a particularly difficult, empty jar period in the life of God’s people.

And I remember another mount called Golgotha, where Jesus died at the hands of human brokenness, and violence.  A bleak moment that scattered all of Jesus disciples except a few of the women, and seemed to crush all the hopes Jesus engendered in people. An empty jar moment if there ever was one!

But then, there was the empty tomb, that became the symbol of the fullness of life.  An empty tomb that proved that God’s life is stronger than death, and that God’s love is more powerful than hate, and that there is nothing in all of creation -- in heaven or on earth -- that can separate us from that love.

Proof that God does not abandon God’s people.  Ever. Proof that nothing in heaven or on earth can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus; that empty jars can be filled with water turned to wine.

As I look at the world around me, I admit, I don’t know how God’s going to do that, but I am confident that God can and will.  I can’t always see it happening but, I get glimpses now and again in the little acts of kindness, small miracles of compassion and quiet words of undeserved forgiveness and mercy I witness and observe.  And that’s enough to fill up my empty jars with the good stuff.  That’s enough to me keep working to proclaim and live out the Good News of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection in my life. I don’t know where the future is going, but the vision of the Risen Christ is enough to make me certain that, wherever we are going, God will go there with us…  just as God always has.  

Peace,

Bishop Mike

Thanks for reading.  Just keep praying…  and loving in the Way of Jesus…  and working for justice and peace in Jesus’ name.  

A Holy Fire

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

“He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”  –Luke 3:16

The campfire crackled in the center of the rusted steel ring that marked the boundaries of the fire pit. The red and blue flames danced on the crisscrossed oak logs, a collection of deep orange embers growing below the clumsy wood pyramid.  My family sat in lawn chairs circling the fire occasionally sliding left or right to avoid the smoke as it shifted in the faint breeze. The smoke always seemed to like me best.  Quiet conversations passed between the adults as the children poked at the burning logs with branches and watched leaves curl up in the flames.  Our dog lay curled up at the edge of the warmth.  

I have always loved camping and have many fond memories of summer nights spent with my family and friends around the campfire. The fire bound us together somehow.  Connected us.  Touched at some primal memory of our ancestors gathered around the flames to tell the stories that gave their people meaning, and hope and purpose. 

But fire has another side, doesn’t it?  The pictures of whole towns destroyed in the California wildfires this past fall were gut-wrenching.  I vividly remember the smoldering remains of our church in Wayne, NE on the day after lightning burned it to the ground.  Fire destroys. It is no respecter of people or property.  Its flames can bring destruction and death as easily as they can bring warmth and light. 

Baptism destroys the old life of sin and death, and raises us up to new life.  Baptism binds us to one another as siblings in Christ. Baptism purifies us, separating wheat from chaff.  Baptism connects us to the old, old stories of God’s steadfast love and mercy, and to the death and resurrection of Christ.  It is a fire poured out with the water, the Holy Spirit of God that washes us and burns us and blesses us on our journey from life to death to life. Baptism is a campfire and a forest fire and a lightning strike in a bowl or a bath.  

But, to ask a good Lutheran question, “what does this mean?”

It means every day is a new day.  Baptism, you see, is not just a once-in-a-lifetime event.  Baptism describes a relationship between us and our God, a relationship bound by the Holy Spirit and fire, and established and sealed by Christ.  Every morning the chaff is burned away, we are washed in the promise of Christ’s forgiveness, mercy and compassion, and set free to be forgiving, merciful and compassionate as we move through the day.    

There is a candle on my prayer table that I light every morning as I settle onto my cushion to listen for the still small voice of God.  A little light in the darkness.  A bit of warmth in the cold.  A reminder of the Holy Spirit who will walk with me through the day, sustains me when I struggle, and sometimes burns me too.  A reminder of the community of faith I was baptized into through Christ.  An imperfect community that carries the perfect love of God for me, and for all the world.

Peace,

Bishop Mike

I pray that all those effected by disasters of every kind might know the warmth of the Holy Spirit, the presence of our compassionate Messiah and the power of our loving God.   Thanks for reading.