2021

Testimony, Resurrection, Grace – Lection 04/11/2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Acts 4: 32-35

          Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.

Sermon Text

            The early church, in its fledgling days in Jerusalem, thrived through God’s gifts to them. With the testimony of Christ’s resurrection on their lips, they were prepared to go forward and tell all people about the miraculous things that had happened in the Holy City. A story of a ministry cut short by greed and power. A ministry God renewed through the resurrection. Salvation born out of death and reignited into radiant life.

            As the Church gathered together, they saw – for maybe the first time – the disparity which had become the norm in Judea. Those with land, opportunity, and influence not only survived but thrived. Meanwhile, those without suffered grievously – unable to have consistent shelter, food or clothing. The life of the average Judean was one of poverty and struggle. Though they toiled they had nothing to show for it.

            There is much debate regarding the particulars of first century Judean economics, but the clues we do have point to a relatively depressed system of fiefdoms. Land was leased to farmers, the farmers would work that land and pay with a large percentage of their crop yield. The principle means of commerce were in crops that were not meant to be consumed in their raw form but processed and sold for economic gain. Grains, grapes, large scale fishing ventures – cash crops and exports built for an empire. There were seldom farms meant to support families anymore, only farms meant to feed the grindstone of society.

            This volatile system of food production was easily upset. If the rainy season was late in coming or the dry season failed to have a sustainable dewpoint, then crops would fail. The bill for the land would come and the meager produce would go to pay for its use rather than to feed its workers. When there was no contingency to protect the people producing the food or to ensure they received a wage regardless of their output, survival became a matter of chance.

            Jesus, in describing the Kingdom of Heaven, pointed to this system and proposed an alternative to this disastrous and predatory system. In a parable, Jesus described workers being called to work at various times throughout the day. (Matt. 20: 1-16) The workers at the end of the day received the salary which they were offered, no qualifications being placed upon how much they produced or when they signed on. While the parable is primarily an illustration of how salvation is offered to all people, at all times, it cannot be denied that this story was meant to point to the actual exploitative processes of his day.

            To make up for the economic and resource-based disruption of their era – Roman and Judean society established several ways to provide for the needy. In Judea, people could give money over to the Temple as, “Korban,” to ensure that it was used to care for the poor. (Mark 9:7-13) Likewise, Almsgiving was not uncommon in either society. Roman nobility would sometimes build public gardens to grow fruit and other produce in. These were used both earnestly to help the poor and cynically to appease crowds who opposed Roman rule.

            The final method of securing people’s livelihood was in the private societies of Roman provenance. For a small fee, the participant was assured they would receive food and drink – usually a loaf of bread and a few liters of wine – every day. The fees of every member were collected, aggregated, and then used to ensure all people had at least the bare minimum to survive each day.

            When Christian communities began to form, they were often mistaken for this last kind of society. The idea manifested that a group that came together to eat and pray regularly must do so through the asking for and receiving of dues. It would not be uncommon for such a group to meet – it would not trip anyone’s radars to see such a thing come to pass.

            However, within a few days of being established, the first meeting places in Jerusalem began to see a surge in membership. People poured into the meeting houses and gathered to hear sermons from the apostles. The Spirit of God was on the move, the people were seeing the fruit of their ministry become ripe before their eyes. The light of Christ, now offered to all people, was shining brightly in their midst.

            What was it that allowed for this flourishing? How was it that the apostles were able to show Christ so clearly and receive people into community so directly? The three things which are ascribed to the apostles are their testimony, which is about the resurrection, and which was defined by the grace that rested upon them. These three things – testimony, resurrection, and grace – carry much of our Christian life upon themselves.

            The apostles gave their testimony, better translated as witness, with, “great power.” The word for power here does not just mean strength but potential for motion. The apostles preached like they expected God to do something with what they were preaching. When we testify about God, that is, tell others what God has done in our life, we ought to do so with the trust that God will use our Testimony. We should be unafraid because Christ, “will not let [the Word] return empty.” (Isaiah 55:11, para.)

            We testify God’s work in our life with the ultimate goal of pointing to Christ and Christ’s resurrection. The singular event which we celebrated last week is the axis around which all things turn. We live the life we live now because Christ died and rose again. All gatherings of the faithful depend upon us being able to draw from Christ’s resurrection. We never meet for purely earthly meeting, but for the business of God in this world.

            We do this with God’s grace, God’s favor, upon us. As Methodists we believe grace is that power which allows us to be transformed by God’s love. Grace leads us to God, justifies us before God, and sanctifies us into the image of God. Because we have received God’s grace, we become vessels of the same. We do not merely take grace and lock it away within us, but show it to one another, to the world. We act in transformative mercy as we were given it ourselves. The work of God sets the path for our work in the Church.

            These three empowering gifts of God did not spring from nowhere. God’s gifts are rendered through the Holy Spirit to the gathered community of God. This community is so close that it was said to be of, “one heart,” sharing all their desires and of, “one soul,” a word here meaning, “their whole being.” The church in Acts 4 saw all members as being equal, but more than equal they saw every individual as part of one singular “body.” The hunger of one sibling was the hunger of all.

            An idea we miss in our English translations is how the beginning and end of our scripture are linked. The testimony of the resurrection and the grace of God is given to the community because they were willing to care for one another. Γαρ (Gar,) the linking word between the two ideas is usually used to convey causality. The church grew and succeeded because it had no needy people in it, because those with means took care of those without any. All who owned land sold it to help those who had no food. When was the last time we ever thought of selling someone to help someone else?

            The first church in Jerusalem flourished because God blessed their work. God blessed their work because they saw one another as part of the same being. “To care for you is to care for myself.” We too must love one another fully and completely. Where one of us lacks, may another provide. Moreover, let us cast our eyes to our neighbors – of our church and of our homes and of our state and of our nation– and actively seek their welfare. For, if we are to have the powerful testimony of God’s resurrected Christ bring grace into our lives, we must first love one another. Community, not marketing or personality, is the true source of revival. God bless the work and anoint us in love. – Amen.

Fearless and Active – Easter Sunday 2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 28:1-10

After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay.

Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.”

Sermon Text

             If you attended our Sunrise Service, then this scripture is likely hauntingly familiar to you. Matthew, using Mark’s Gospel as a template, adds additional details to Mark’s account. The women arrive as the tomb is opened, they receive their message from the angel that Christ is risen, but before their fear can silence them, Jesus appears and reassures them that they really are to go and proclaim what has happened at the tomb. He truly has been brought out of death and into life, from shame into glory. Matthew and mark carry the same event on similar but markedly different words. They provide two different views on what Christ’s resurrection mean.

            This morning we looked at the amazement and fear that the resurrection sets in our heart. Flabbergasted that Jesus told the truth, that death really could be swallowed up by life, we silently praised the wonder of our risen God. Yet, Matthew looks beyond the moment that fixes our choice to believe toward what our belief can do. We are not just passive recipients of a static salvation, but active participants in a relationship with our God and savior.

            The first Easter morn was begun when a group of women went to give their beloved friend and teacher a proper burial. The haste of is burial meant no time could be given to embalm him. Taking up the costly spices and oils needed for the process, they came to the tomb, ready to say one last goodbye. Yet, as they arrived an earthquake shook the ground, and a flash of lightning filled the air. An angel had arrived, scaring off the tomb guards and ripping away the seal of the tomb.

            The women do not have time to respond to what they have seen before the angel cries out to them, “Do not be afraid!” As if anyone could be calm when a bolt of lightening talks to them after an earthquake. The angel tells them that Christ has risen and that they must go to the other disciples and tell them the news – that they are to go to Galilee and receive their Commission.

            The women rush off, filled with equal parts fear and joy. “Jesus is really back! He was telling the truth! Every bit of it was real!” They were caught up in the thrill of it all and ready to do as they were called to do. Peter, John, Thomas, and all the others would be ecstatic to know the good news. The journey of the disciples wasn’t over, the Gospel hadn’t been silenced – the work of the Church had just begun.

            If we look at our own life, we can see moments where we felt the same rush of energy and mission. When something clicks within us and God seems close to us like never before. When the clouds break, and the light of Heaven shines down on us. When we find ourselves uncertain of what is to come but thrilled at the possibilities. In these moments, the Kingdom seems within our grasp, the resurrected life overwhelms our doubts, all is right in the world.

            Easter is a celebration of life and of what God has in store for all of creation. As Christ suffered and died once for all, we are all able to experience a foretaste of Heaven and see that it is good. The free gift of faith and salvation is offered to us all. We are raised up with Christ into glory and given, not only a new lease on life, but an entirely new life. Like the sun which rises each day, the night of our own despair comes to an end in Christ’s resurrection.

            Yet, what if our zeal blinds us? What if our work consumes us rather than rebuilds us? What peril can our mission hold for us? The answer is that we may, in pursuit of serving God, forget that our own goal is the presence of God within us. When we look for life, we must look to its source and not simply be caught up in providing it to others ourselves.

            Our scripture gives a powerful image of this ability we have to lose our goal while keeping our work. The women are running from the newly opened tomb without looking back. They want the others to hear what God has done. Yet, in running off to do so, they have forgotten something important. If they saw the stone roll away, then that means that Jesus is probably still nearby. If they had waited only a moment longer, they may have seen him emerge immediately.

            How tragic it would have been if this were the case. The women, overjoyed at their mission, somehow would have missed out on seeing God. Certainly, it happens to us sometimes. We want to be the shining light in people’s lives, tow rite all we can or give all we can or testify all we can. Yet, somewhere along the way, work supplants Christ as the object of our life. We no longer labor for the sake of the Kingdom, but to check another box on the to-do list. We succumb to the idol of business, we become busy-bodies.

            Praise God that we are not left to our own devices. Our scripture tells us that Jesus catches up to the women. Using the same words, he used to describe the crowd greeting Jesus, John tells us that Jesus meets the women. Jesus offers and abrupt, “Hello!” The blessing of that, “Hello,” cannot be taken lightly. In the midst of their fervor, in the excitement of the life that had been offered to them, the first evangelists were running off as quickly as they could. Ironically, in doing so, they had left Jesus in the dust. Yet, Jesus ran after them, to be with them and to recenter their goal on knowledge of him, to reconnect the work they did with the love he gave.

            Faith, mission, all the essential substances of our life, are found in pursuit of and enjoyment of God. As we go through life, we must constantly return to Christ as the center of our life. When we look to do the work of which we are called to, it can become all we are concerned with. We remove the core of the Gospel and transform it into vague well wishing. We remove the goal of our mission and reduce it to recruitment to our social club. God alone fulfills the life we receive through faith. We cannot, having been called by God, take back the reins of our life. We must start and end all our work, our hope, our life itself, with God.

            Today we celebrate Easter, the day that God made good on the promises of new life. The seal of our future resurrection was found in Christ’s own resurrection. We are sent out today with the reassuring voice of angels telling us, “Do not be afraid!” We have the certainty of Christ who goes before us into the world. With our mission clearly stated, to proclaim Christ’s resurrection and to serve one another as siblings in one holy family, we cannot go wrong. We do al things with God as our eternal goal, and as the sustaining presence on which we depend.

            Let us go forward, active and unafraid, rushing off in haste but not in a hurry. The work ahead is not easy, but God is leading us into the Kingdom. The struggle is well worth it. Rejoice! Christ is Risen today! – Amen.

Be Not Afraid – Palm Sunday 2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

The following was preached on the Sunday my churches resumed meeting (under CDC guidelines,) after a hiatus.

John 12:12-16

The next day the great crowd that had come to the festival heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem. So they took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him, shouting,

“Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord—  the King of Israel!”

Jesus found a young donkey and sat on it; as it is written:

“Do not be afraid, daughter of Zion. Look, your king is coming, sitting on a donkey’s colt!”

His disciples did not understand these things at first; but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered that these things had been written of him and had been done to him.

Sermon Text

            Welcome home! We enter these four walls, we sit under the steeple that has nurtured us. Welcome home to the Assembly that we call our own, and the people who we call our family. Enter in and find that not much has changed here from the Winter. The months away have not diminished the importance we have invested into our home, into this Church.

            Yet, we are not the same – not even from the last time we sat in these pews. The relentless pace of the world continues and we along with it are transformed into new iterations of our self. We are closing out Lent and entering into Easter. Thirty-four days, excluding Sundays, have passed by with what was hopefully some intentionality on our part. Did we commit more to study scripture? To go beyond our usual boundaries and to actively seek ways to do good? Perhaps, even without an attempt, we have grown over the past few months.

            The newness of Spring, and with it, of Easter, reminds us that our life is a procession of Seasons. One of trouble leads into one of peace and one of deconstruction into one of reconstruction. We as a people and as individuals are caught up in some part of this cycle as we gather together today. As a whole we see the light of renewed ways of being – the gloom of the Pandemic not yet gone, but receding. As individuals, perhaps things are not so simple – perhaps the world is opening up just as we want nothing more than to recede into ourselves.

            No matter where we stand, we find our Scripture beckoning us. We see Christ coming our way, and we are invited like that crowd was long ago to join in greeting him. The rumored arrival of our Savior drives our hearts wild. We have a chance to cheer his coming, but that chance in itself is a choice. We are at the gates of Jerusalem; we see Christ at a distance riding on a Colt. We must now determine if we can muster the strength to shout, “Hosanna!” or if we will hide ourselves away.

            The scripture we have read today tells us very little about the crowd that gathered to see Jesus. We know that the crowd was large and that they were excited, and other than that John leaves us to imagine any other details. While Matthew’s account of the triumphal entry separates out the people in the city from the crowd, John makes no such attempt. The emphasis is placed instead upon the universal work of God and is not as interested in details of “who,” and “what,” in quite the same way that Matthew is. God’s love for all creation means that we are to see in this crowd of people, not just the historic crowd that was there on that particular day, but all the faithful who have ever come to worship Jesus.

            The salvation which Christ offers is for all time, for all people. There has never been a perfect time to be a Christian because all time and all people are valuable to God. No matter when we first came to worship God, we are blessed, no matter what era of the Church we inhabit, the Divine Love is unchanging. While we often idealize the past – whether it be the early church, the Great Awakenings, the rise of radio and video televangelists, or even our modern epoch – God is loving to all people and offers no advantage to any time that is not known to another. Every generation has unique problems, unique opportunities, but the same God.

            We today are at a special junction in history. The waning of a pandemic, the recalibration of our lives to a more mindful way of living, our renewed sense of the blessing of technology and the necessity of proximity. All these and more are moments we face and that will define those coming of age now as well as those who are just becoming cognizant of life as a whole. Beyond these clear revelations, there are a million, million more we will only notice upon reflection, by casting our gaze backward in time. We stand at a threshold of something new, just as a thousand generations have done before us. God approaches us still. God is coming to save just as Christ entered Jerusalem long ago.

            The people gathered outside Jerusalem that day were similarly at a threshold of history. The Roman Empire had fully established its terrible reign over Judea. Yet, their tyranny brought roads that opened up untold possibilities of travel and trade. Several failed revolutions had led to a sectarian Judaism and a splintered political landscape. The Herodian dynasty, short-lived as it was, was in a lurch. The present tetrarchy has still not settled after the death of its founding member, Herod the Great. Nothing was fixed, all things were in flux – the people gathered to find the one source of security they possibly had, God and God’s Messiah.

            These two worlds – ours and Christ’s – scattered by two millennia, are united by the Palm fronds we hold in our hands today. The worship that we bring is echoed in the voices of all who have ever gathered to remember this moment. From the apostles who wrote of it by lamplight to the attendants of the Mass for centuries to follow. It is sung of by Reformers and the Reformed. The praise is led by revivalists in the eighteenth century and by believers the whole world round throughout history. It spans the gulf of all time and space. Wherever people have taken up branches and sung of Christ’s arrival into Jerusalem, there has been a unified presence before the Spiritual Jerusalem – God’s dwelling place.

            Among us here today are people from various generation – perhaps some are like me, a millennial, a bit younger and we might call them Gen Z. We have boomers and Gen Xers, all gathered together to worship. We bring our memories, we bring our troubles and our praise and we lie them all at the feet of Jesus. Like the crowd long ago, we make a way for Jesus to enter in and be among us. We all have something to offer, to teach and to learn. We are all a microcosm of what today means throughout all of time.

            Our age is full of trouble, just like any other would be. There are things we all have faced this year that our past selves would have never dreamed of. More than this, I would wager we have individually faced things we wish we would have never had to. Loved ones gone, relationships splintered, faith shattered, maybe even unspeakably more than even these. What we must not fail to do, especially in our present season, is give space for us to grapple with all our struggles in light of Christ’s presence with us. We must work together to overcome it.

            This week, our services will follow Christ to the cross. Online Thursday we will see our feet be washed by our Servant King. Friday we will rend our hearts as the great mystery play out before us and the cross and death seem to overtake life. This week I would invite us all to reflect on the goodness of God toward us, and the darkness of the troubles we face which we are saved from. Salvation is coming, but while we await resurrection, we must look upon the fullness of despair.

            Yet, whether we gather with today’s troubles heavy on our hearts or the troubles of the past, we hold our palm fronds high. We do this, not in denial of what life holds for us, but in acclaim of what God does for us. We celebrate, along with all the faithful people across space and time, the goodness of our Lord. Aware of our fear, unsure of what is to come, we hear the prophet cry, “Be not afraid! Behold! Your King is coming.” So, take time today and give God praise, push aside fear and doubt even for just a moment and behold our salvation.

            Christ the King has come to save us. The young and the old, the rich and the poor. Christ the King enters our temple today. Be not afraid, God is surely with us. – Amen.

The New Covenant – Lectionary 03/21/2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Jeremiah 31:31-34

          The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Sermon Text

             Our scripture for today proclaims a message of hope that is largely unparalleled among the prophets. This text is often put alongside its neighboring chapters and lifted up as a kernel of consolation in the midst of Jeremiah’s otherwise quite grim prophesies. God speaks of the love that God holds for the people and of a commitment to bring them out of exile and to restore the relationship between God and God’s people. A relationship broken by generations of personal and corporate sin – a covenant broken by our inability to do justly.

            This promise comes during one of the darkest moments of the Babylonian rule of Judah. The city of Jerusalem and the kingdom as a whole, had managed to avoid complete destruction by Babylon up to this point. This was because the current King, Zedekiah, was initially willing to submit to the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar. However, against Jeremiah’s instructions, Zedekiah tried to reject Nebuchadnezzar shortly into his reign. The result of this decision was the destruction of Jerusalem in a terrible final siege.

            Jeremiah’s prophecy of God’s salvation comes during the siege or else immediately before it. Despite its hopeful message, anyone with eyes to see knew the danger of the siege could not be denied. Death was coming to Judah and there was little that could minimize the destruction that was to come. Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, never pretended that the future was going to be easy to bear in any way. Instead of giving the people over to their grief totally or cutting the tension through false platitudes, Jeremiah holds up a hope separate to this impending disaster, a hope for generations of people to come.

            This week we conclude Lent proper, that is to say that next week is the start of Holy Week. With this transition we see our focus shift away from the self-reflection which defined Lent to the adoration of Christ and his work on the cross. On the horizon, more clearly than ever before, we begin to see the shape of our salvation. Now, just two weeks away from Easter, we anticipate the joy of our salvation fervently. The shame of the cross and the miracle of the resurrection fill our view – something new is at work in the world, if only we have eyes to see it and ears to hear it.

            The ability to see ahead of us – to fear and also to hope – is a uniquely human trait. Only we are capable of thinking ahead and of putting our perceptions into concrete terms. Sometimes our heart rejoices at the thought of future bliss and other times we seize up, locking ourselves up in dread of all the wretchedness that may come to be. Both inclinations can be harmful or good, largely dependent on how we make use of them in the here and now and what we have based upon them otherwise. Concern that leads us to prepare and hope that gives us strength are a boon. Dread that leads us to be paralyzed or reactive and sanguinity that makes us forget reality are a curse.

            For this reason, scripture balances two realities – our need to remain in the present and to trust God for the future. We cannot save ourselves through fretting over what is to come but can tackle the troubles of life as they come. We cannot be sure exactly what God will bring about in the days ahead, but we can trust that God’s goodness will see us through no matter what we face. The balance of now and then, that is one of the hardest and yet most essential elements of our faith.

            There will come a time, Jeremiah says, when there will be no more fear of doubt, nor a need for uncertain hope. The Hebrew of verse 31 opens powerfully – “Look! The coming days when I will cut a new covenant with you.” The days are treated as an approaching reality – not as objects to look at, but as an active and moving reality. The days are coming. Look at them come! And in those days, all will do what is right, all will know me, all will contain my instruction and read it from their hearts.

            God was bringing the people a perfect existence. Once more they would be called God’s people, and God would be called their God. This offer was not for kings, nobles, or the wealthy alone – but for all people – the strong and the weak, the needy and the powerful. This Utopia which God promised was not meant to replace the hardships ahead, but to transcend them. Beyond the distant horizon sat their dream. Not the idle dreams of humanity, but the concrete promise of God.

            Now we sit, twenty-five hundred years beyond Jeremiah and find that dream is still set before us. We are not yet in a God run Utopia. We still teach one another the way we ought to live and the knowledge of God. Though the Spirit dwells within us, God’s teachings are still being etched onto our heart. We do not contain all of God’s righteousness. Does time dull Jeremiah’s dream? Certainly not. The presence of God is sure. The restoration of God’s people, that final Utopic Covenant, began the day Jeremiah promised it and will be fully fulfilled when the Lord brings final victory over sin and death. It is this future hope which we depend upon.

            While we face nothing as dire as a Babylonian siege or the exile of the Judahites into Babylon, we are well aware of the troubles we face. Sickness, broken heartedness, the tedium of our off-kilter world. We are people of twisted hearts and shortsighted aspirations. In our concern for our fallen world we find ourselves clinging to fear or false hope – both of which we find pleasing. Perhaps we formulate complex conspiracies in our heart to explain our fear and give it form, or else use it to justify our vices. Or, in false hope perhaps we trust that our problems will go away through brute force of will or else through the intervention of powerful people.  

            Biblical hope and Biblical caution are rooted in a realism about the world. Trouble is coming, so we should be prepared, but it cannot consume our life. To quote the popular aphorism, “If the world should end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree today.” We are to build resilience, not amass comforts or concerns. In the same way, we do not anticipate immediate deliverance from the majority of troubles we face. Instead of hoping trouble away, we should find hope in a God who gives us strength to face the troubles ahead of us. We can weather the storm, for the God of Heaven is greater than it is, and is Lord over it.

            More than this, as we prepare to gather once more in our sanctuaries and to celebrate Holy Week, we should see Christ’s acts two thousand years ago as an example of what our hope is. The suffering of Good Friday cannot be erased, but Easter is sure to follow it. As adopted inheritors of God’s goodness through Christ, we await Jeremiah’s dream to be fulfilled. We see in Christ a sign of what that dream looks like lived out, perfection on earth. Hope wrapped up in sorrows. Prepare yourself this week for our celebration of Holy Week. Hope lies on the horizon, but trouble does too. Praise God who will guide us through one toward the other. – Amen.

The Burning Serpent – Lectionary 03/14/2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Numbers 21:4-9

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom; but the people became impatient on the way. The people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.” Then the Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died. The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole; and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live.

Sermon Text

            We have seen today’s scripture before during our Sunday services. I confess as a preacher that it is one of my favorite passages to preach on. It contains multitudes and in Jesus’s use of it in John 3 it takes on still greater depth. This strange story of snakes in the wilderness, and the bronze serpent which was made to save the people from them, carries a gravitas all its own. Here in the fourth Sunday of Lent, so close now to Easter, we return to the mysterious occurrence which took place on the edge of Edom.

The story opens with the people leaving Mount Hor. There they had buried their head priest, Aaron brother of Moses. The community, fresh off of their period of mourning for one of their core leaders, is naturally upset. They have been wandering for some time now, but they could take courage in the fact that, just over the horizon, was the land of Canaan. Their very own, Promised Land.

Yet, when they are lead forward, they suddenly find their path trending toward the Red Sea. In their previous wandering, they had gone directly from the shore of the Red Sea, north through the Wilderness of Zin, and came near to Canaan. They had then turned south once more to arrive at Mount Hor, something that to them would have likely seemed like a brief detour. The plan, however, was to enter Canaan across the Jordan, and to do so by traveling around the land of Edom first.

This detour would eventually result in the people traveling to the point on the Red Sea that they had previously departed from. The people had been traveling for years at this point, and while we cannot be sure of the exact timeframe that this detour had resulted in, we know the distance it set them back. The people who were once within spitting distance of Canaan, now had to backtrack what was essentially the last two hundred miles of their exodus.

The people, in their frustration, now begin to turn against Moses and against God. While we read their complaints as though they were simply that, complaints voiced to one another, we should see them in their full context. To say that a sentiment like this was spoken of by, “the people,” is to suggest it was shared by the thousands upon thousands of Israelites who were following Moses in this journey. Previously such a large group of dissidents had encouraged acts of rebellion. This unified stance against Moses and God as heads of this journey were more than simple complaints, they were a threat of insurrection.

The people no longer saw God or Moses as beneficent. In fact, they again tried to accuse them of outright malice. “Why have you brought us out here to die!?” They had claimed something similar to this before. This accusative question brings to mind the other that was once paired with it, “Were there no graves in Egypt!?” The people saw God as a trickster, promising freedom but only giving them a slow death in the wilderness. Even the Manna which had rained from Heaven, God’s daily provision to them, was given as evidence. “We detest this miserable food.” Miserable here meaning deficient. They were not content with their fill of Manna, they wanted more.

God looks upon the people, and their rejection. God looks upon the prospective rebellion they are forming and resolves to punish the people. The people are sent, “הַנְּחָשִׁים הַשְּׂרָפִים”, (ha nechashim ha seraphim,) “the serpents of fiery being.” What this means exactly is unclear, although many translate it to mean the snakes were merely poisonous. Strangely, the word used to describe these snakes, “seraphim,” is also used to describe God’s angel attendants. No mater what they were, or how we describe them, what is clear is that the people could not face these serpents alone. The people came to Moses and begged him for relief.

Sin and repentance, two polar aspects within our life, often spring up from similar causes. They often spring up as a result of us responding to pain. When we feel that we have no control over our life or that our needs are not met, we begin to seek comfort anyway that we can. Sometimes we seek out to fix the problems that we face and sometimes we seek to chase after a momentary sense of relief. Acknowledging our pain, acting against evil we see or experience, even complaints are not sinful responses to trouble. However, when our intent moves away from a restorative purpose to a destructive or selfish one, then we begin to err.

Within our scripture, the people did not sin in voicing their concerns about food or water. They were wrong in that they did not bring these complaints before God or Moses, nor did they seek to understand the situation they found themselves in vis a vis their detour around Edom. Communication had broken down between the people and God, and with that communication breakdown came a breaking in trust. Trust, once eroded, is a very difficult thing to rebuild. The hardship of the Wilderness had worn the people down, down to the roots of their being. Now, they found that the journey had not built in them anything new. Sinai had not instilled them the skills they needed to be holy, they had not internalized the teachings God had given.

It was only when the serpents came that they people saw their mistakes. As dull as Manna was, it was nourishing rather than fatal. As long as the road to Canaan had been, it led to life, whereas the serpents only brought death. In the shadowy light of suffering, the stark contrast between a life with God’s provisions and a life without God’s provision became clear. The people saw that they needed to repent, to turn away from their present course toward destruction. They looked to Moses and cried out, “We have sinned!” and Moses in return interceded to God on their behalf.

I’ll be the first to say that I do not know much about God’s wrath. In my experience, good and bad happen to the wicked and righteous with the same regularity. There is seldom an apparent rhyme or reason to it. I do not think that most of our suffering is initiated by God, and quite honestly, we here on earth cause more than enough for ourselves and one another without outside help. We are seldom visited in this life by seraphim, but we often find ourselves visited by bad luck.

What hardships shows us, regardless of its source, is what hides beneath the image of ourselves we project outward. When we are in distress, whether that be sorrow or anger or fear, we will do things we would not do if we had all our decorum about us. Yet, beyond the impulsive act of someone caught off guard, is the habitual action of someone once the shock of trouble has left them. If I, because of any number of circumstances, am short with someone, there is hope for me if I realize my sin and make amends. However, if I continue to do harm to others in the midst of troubles, then it is not the trouble that made me err, it was something deep within myself that must be either worked out and healed, or rooted out and done away with.

In the latter case, we may not see the way trouble has exposed our habitual tendencies until something else bad comes of them. When our grief has exposed a hardness of heart we were previously covering, and that hardheartedness alienates us from those around us. Only when we first begin to see people leaving our sides do we understand that we have let one evil birth many more. This second bout of pain, born from the first, is what can inspire us to repentance. For the Israelites, tedium and desire led them to distrust God and Moses – pain eroded relationship rather than strengthened it. It then took the introduction of another source of pain, the serpents, to wake them up to just what they had let take over their lives.

We are blessed by the example of the Israelites before us, not because we are so much wiser or better than them, but because we can learn from this incident. When we are caught off guard by suffering, we can choose whether we will let it consume us or if we will find our way through it together. We have the gift of one another and of God to help us in this difficult calling. We can see the ways that our difficult life tempts us to all manner of evil, and then by leaning upon one another escape the snares which we might prepare for ourselves. Heartbreak need not destroy us, not if we have each other.

More than this, whereas the Israelites had Moses to lead them and a bronze serpent to heal them, we find our leader and our cure in a single person. Jesus, through his life of suffering and suffering death on the cross, knows the pain we face. Taking on the image of sinful humanity, Christ broke sin’s hold on us, and opened the door for us to truly know what it is to be Godly – to be pure in heart and in Spirit. We look to Christ, and we are healed. We follow after Christ and we are made whole. God’s grace at Mount Hor continues on even till today.

Let us then not compound our suffering. When we sin, let us repent of our evil quickly. When we are in pain, let us look to God and one another rather than lashing out or covering up our wounded heart. Whatever comes our way, we must love one another, support one another, trust one another. This is a high calling, not only for those of us who share our pain, but those who help one another through it. A helper cannot be a judge at the same time, nor can they seek gain through the help they offer. We must be selfless in our love for one another, in all things.

Life is hard, let us not pretend otherwise. Still more, God is good, let us not forget. Now let us take the love of God as our example. Where pain is found, may love abound even more, and may the merciful God of Israel rain blessings upon us. Let us find that same blessing, most abundantly, in our service to one another, that none may fall to sin because of the pain of this world. – Amen.

Count them on your Hands – Lectionary 03/07/2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Exodus 20:1-17

Then God spoke all these words:

I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me.

You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents, to the third and the fourth generation of those who reject me, but showing steadfast love to the thousandth generation of those who love me and keep my commandments.

You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work—you, your son or your daughter, your male or female slave, your livestock, or the alien resident in your towns. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but rested the seventh day; therefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and consecrated it.

Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.

You shall not murder.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Sermon Text

            We continue through Lent by coming to the ultimate expression of God’s teachings. We look back in time to behold Sinai, the mountain of God, in its glorified splendor. Our nose smells the smoke that surrounded the mountain as God rests upon it. Our eyes are full of the radiance of God’s light. Now we close our mouths and listen carefully to the words which God speaks to us, the instructions that are given for us.

            Sinai is not the first time that God appeared to people, nor was it the last, but on Sinai God literally set in stone the Covenant that was to stand between humanity and God. The expectations which the Covenant places upon the people of God and upon the Godhead itself are numerous. While we as Gentile members of God’s covenant family are not held to all commandments found in the Torah, they still provide a window into God’s plan for humanity. More than this, there is much of the Torah which does still apply to us, those matters beyond ritual purity which guide our conduct toward one another.

            The Ten Commandments, properly called, “The Ten Words,” are not the sum of God’s instruction, but they serve as the general guidelines by which we understand God’s desires for the world. We can guide so much of our life against whether or not it aligns with the ten core teachings of God that were given at Sinai. Traditionally, the review of our conduct based upon God’s teachings is called an, “Examination of Conscience.” Today, using the Ten Commandments as a guide, we will model what this kind of examination looks like and think about how we can be more aware of the ways that we develop into the kind of Christians we are called to be. We must be willing to look at the standards which God lays before us and evaluate how well we are living up to them.

            The first word of God which is given at Sinai is one that we usually leave out of the list of commandments. Yet, in the Hebrew tradition the first word that God gives us at Sinai is God’s self-identification as a deliverer. God begins the decalogue with the memory of the people’s exodus from Egypt. When we begin to reflect on our lives, we must do so by rooting ourselves in the goodness of God. We examine the choices we make and the things we do because God has been good to us, and that goodness sets the stage for how to make our way back to God in repentance.

            The second word of God is that we should not put any other God in place of the God who saved us, nor make an idol of any kind. While this is a command we may easily write off as irrelevant to our lives, deciding that we are not tempted to worship things other than God, we cannot be casual or brush off this command. We as humans are constantly seeking to replace God with something or someone else. The idols we build are seldom made of stone or wood, but of ideals and desires. While there are many criterion, we may use to examine our life against this teaching, I propose a simple one. The idols we build for ourselves are those things that we are willing to disobey God for. If something moves us to violate a commandment over, then it has become an idol to us. When we examine our life, we must root out all idols within it.

            If we define idols as those things for which we are willing to sin, then we can also understand God’s fourth teaching. We usually understand, “taking the Lord’s name in vain,” to mean using “God,” or, “Christ,” as a swear word. While it is admirable for us to respect God enough to not invoke any holy name in anger, taking the Lord’s name in vain is a deeper issue than this. A person’s name in the ancient world was tied to their reputation. Taking God’s name in vain includes blaming God for our bad behavior. Are we ever difficult, cruel, vindictive, or in any way wretched for reasons we decide are in service to God? We must be willing to accept our service to God as a reality we aspire to and not an excuse for our own feelings or desires.

            Our next commandment is one we are all guilty of abandoning. We all push the Sabbath aside. The complete cessation of rest is something required not only of all people, but of creation. We excuse our unwillingness to rest in a million different ways, but ultimately it betrays some important aspects of our life. We set up productivity as an idol. Sometimes even work in a church can take on an idolatrous place in our heart when we are so obsessed with “doing” that we lose track of God’s part in our work and God’s command for us to rest from that work. We must rest, and we must not make excuses.

            The fifth commandment is to honor our father and mother, and perhaps has the most complexity of any of these ten teachings. We are not all of us blessed with parents who have acted in a way that motivates us to honor them, nor are some of us able to enjoy the presence of our parents who have gone before us into glory. Our honoring of our parents should not be taken lightly, but the obstacles to it should not be neglected either. This, more than any other teaching of the decalogue, is often personal in its scope and requires careful reflection on our part.

            We all feel good when we come to the command not to kill, but it is part of three commands we commit consistently whether we mean to or not. Murder takes place in the heart before it takes place in our life. Hate, the progenitor of murder, rests in our heart. Do not write off the rage or aggression you feel when someone drops a person’s name, there is the root of murder in this. Adultery likewise is committed long before someone stands ready to open a motel door but begins in our hearts and minds first. To live out these commandments we must not only look to our actions, maybe not even our intentions, but examine even our inclinations.

            Theft, while not a matter of cognition, is a deceptive sin. We steal not only by taking but withholding. Who have we failed to give their due? What pleasures do we cling to while our neighbors freeze and starve? At what point does withholding help become theft? At what point does theft become murder?

            False witness, our penultimate teaching, is more valuable a teaching than ever before. To bear false witness is to speak against someone falsely to their detriment. This happens in gossip and court rooms, on social media and in newsletters. In an era defined by commercialized truth, where you can find any number of people who will support you and villainize your, “opponents,” we must seek what is true in life. Look beyond the headline and beyond that first text or sentence a person sends or says. Seek truth and seek life.

            Finally, we must ask where we have turned from our own blessings to look upon the blessings of others. Where do we scorn people for having things that we would like to have for ourselves? Avarice can motivate all manner of evils in our life, but it in itself is a sufficient evil to reject.

            What we have done here is a surface level examination of conscience. We are given the teaching of God to keep before us at all times. We went through all ten teachings of the decalogue today, but each has a depth to them that can never be fully plumbed. We must be willing to hold onto them, one by one, and ask ourselves whether we live up to the standard they establish for us.

            We cannot fail to examine our own motivations and actions, especially during this season of repentance we currently observe. The teachings of God are not far from us, and they hold a freedom we have not yet known within themselves. Hold out your hands at the end of a long day, count the commands of God on your hands and ask how you have succeeded and failed to keep each one. Start with the goodness of God and end with a prayer asking God’s continued instruction in your life. Repent and trust God to lead you onward to perfection. – Amen.

Ashamed of Suffering – Lectionary 02/28/2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Mark 8:31-38

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “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, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Sermon Text

            Shame has many meanings. A person can feel shame when they’ve done something wrong or a person may be shamed for breaking social conventions. However, shame as a system was much more concrete in the time of Jesus. A person had a sliding scale of two attributes – honor and shame. A complex series of cultural norms overshadowed any conversation a person had. One was expected to speak to people dependent upon their relative honor.

            A person who was poor would have less honor than the rich, an older person more than a younger, men more than women, and so on and so forth. Different categories overlapped so as to add or diminish one another, but the result was a strictly stratified society that punished those who pushed against conventions. To an Honor-Shame society, everything and everyone had a place and to push against that was to be exceptionally disgraceful.

            Jesus, naturally, walks an interesting line in his interactions with those around him. He actively participated in the honor-shame culture around him no other way of interacting with people would have been intelligible to those around him. Yet, Jesus consistently pushed the envelope on who he was supposed to speak to and how. He opposed the honor of community leaders like the Pharisees and Sadducees and gave it to the poor and the hungry instead. Jesus rejected the false piety of his countrymen in exchange for legitimate faith – Judean or otherwise. Jesus spoke to women regardless of their connection men. Jesus was fully immersed in the culture of his day, yet as the eternal son of God he saw beyond it and acted against it when necessary.

            Today’s scripture captures a moment of Jesus simultaneously living into and against the norms of his society. Jesus speaks of his coming suffering at the hands of prominent figures – scribes, high priests, elder – and says that after suffering abuse from them he will be killed. Jesus is telling all who have gathered around him, likely most of the nearby population of Caesarea-Philippi who have seen him perform a miracle, that at the end of his long road of ministry he will be killed as a criminal. Even though he finishes this prediction with his resurrection, the crowd would have been struck most by Jesus’s insistence he was to die in dishonor. What kind of Messiah would do such a thing?

            Peter reads the room and pulls Jesus aside. Though Peter had just declared Jesus as the Messiah prior to this episode, he was aware of the fact that Jesus was stepping into dangerous territory. The people wanted a champion to destroy Rome and a Holy One to restore the Temple. Yet Jesus was putting forward an image of a king who was to be killed by a committee decision. That was not going to fly. Peter chastised Jesus for breaking the mold, for deflating the expectations of the people. What we cannot lose is that even though Peter seems to be pulling Jesus aside privately to discuss this matter, he does so in front of a crowd of people. Peter has issued an honor-challenge to Jesus, and Jesus responds accordingly.

            Jesus reverses Peter’s challenge and commands him to take his place behind Jesus. Peter, who would go on to be a key leader in the Church, was not yet ready to lead and was certainly not in a place to chastise Jesus. Culturally, Jesus would be justified to leave this conflict here and be satisfied with restoring his honor publicly. However, Jesus had bigger fish to fry than keeping up appearances. Jesus looks at the crowd, who is perhaps now clutching pearls at the thought that Peter would say out loud what they were privately thinking. He looked to them and said that his fate, to die on a cross, was to be their fate if they truly wished to follow him.

            It must have been shocking to have heard Jesus’s words. When Jesus is saying that to follow him is to take up one’s own cross, Jesus is telling the crowd that they must be prepared to die. They were being told their lives were to be on the line Not only that, but the image of a cross specifically meant that they would not face dignified deaths, but the most humiliating death imaginable.

            Jews, like early Christians, had a complex relationship with martyrdom – here meaning dying for the faith. In Jewish culture martyrs were usually killed because they refused to bend to the Gentile ways around them. Famously the apocryphal books of second and fourth Maccabees describe the deaths of seven brothers who refused to accept Greek customs of food and worship. Despite elevating stories like this, people were discouraged from seeking martyrdom – in other words from dying unnecessarily. Even in early Christianity, St. Clement describes those who, “rushed on death,” but, “banish themselves without being martyrs, even though they are punished publicly.”[1] People, in other words, who sought fame through their martyrdom rather than truly dying for a cause.

            Jesus, in highlighting the cross as a means of death, was highlighting that those who wished to follow him were not doing so for an immediate escape from all their troubles. More than this, those who were interested in glory should not sign up at all. The glory Jesus was offering was for the World to Come, for the resurrected reality of Christ’s kingdom. However, to come to that glory one must take up their cross and live a life based upon sacrifice, dishonor, shame, and ultimately death. Only through sacrifice could they save their life. The vainglorious had no place in this World to Come and those who were rejected and dishonored in this life would be the ones to truly know honor in the next.

            We often equate worldly success with blessing, but to do so is to work directly against Jesus’s teachings throughout the Gospels. A person who is rich is not automatically a holy person. A person with power is not automatically in that position because their righteousness qualified them for it. More often than not, power and money corrupt the soul rather than crown a righteous person. What Jesus puts forward throughout the Gospel, but especially in this passage, is that all definitions we hold onto of honor and success are nothing in light of God’s actions in this world. Peter’s fear that Jesus was disgracing his message by tying it to persecution was refuted with a revelation – the life of a Christian is not supposed to be one where we glorify ourselves, but one where we glorify God in all that we do.

            How do we apply this to our life outside of the context in which Jesus was speaking? We do not live in an honor-shame society, we do not actively face persecution in the United States, and many of us – socially, economically, materially – are comfortable if not well off. We are people who have been given a great many resources, a great many opportunities to succeed as the world deems success, and indeed we are people who often push the more uncomfortable elements of our faith to the side. To take our scripture at its words and respond to it accordingly, we must not do as Peter did, pushing the uncomfortable out of the way to make way for a more palatable faith, we must embrace the hard teachings which our faith holds for us.

            The reality of our human existence is that it is full of painful things. We suffer disease, loneliness, sorrow, age, anger, and an innumerable number of other things which contribute to the broad umbrella of what we call “suffering.” Suffering is not, as some might suggest, a good thing in itself. No one wants to suffer and the elimination of suffering in the World to Come shows us that it is not something we are meant to experience. No, suffering is a temporary companion but a very real and powerful one. Though we spend so much of our life seeking to escape it, Jesus asks us to not be afraid of it when it comes our way and instead to follow Christ’s own example in how to face suffering.

            Jesus, firstly, invites us to consider the fact that sacrifice is the primary means by which we follow him in our life. We must take up our cross – willingly dying to this life and if necessary, literally dying in this life – and go down the path of our Christian observance. This mentality means that we acknowledge the hardship that comes our way, not minimizing it or baptizing it as good, but seeing it as a temporary obstacle in our way. We embrace opportunities to help people that may be inconvenient. We sacrifice our pet pleasures for the good of other people.

            We must accept that sometimes doing what is right will seem gauche to those around us. When we help the unhoused people may accuse us of attracting more of them to us.
When we point out injustices in the world people may say we are being divisive. When we seek to treat, rather than punish, to promote harm reduction rather than punitive action for those suffering from addiction, people may say we promote addiction. Indeed, if we give freely to the poor, we may find people accusing us of rewarding bad life choices. The truth is, no good work has ever been taken on that was not unpopular to the wider culture around it.

            Peter rejected Jesus’s sacrificial ministry. The “holier than thou,” souls of his day opposed his eating with sinners. Those in power and with money opposed his helping the poor. From the moment Jesus stepped out of the Desert of Temptation and onto the path of ministry people opposed his work in the world. We must be willing to do unpopular work as well. We must be unashamed of the Gospel which has called us to unabashed love of our neighbor as ourselves. We must give and work and love and make tough choices and even harder sacrifices for the good of those around us. We must take up our cross and carry it all the way to our grave.

            For, if we are ashamed of suffering. If we are ashamed to address those who hurt around us or to accept that Jesus calls us into solidarity with them, then Jesus is clear he will feign ignorance of us like we did of him. Do not let comfort keep you from eternal bliss, do not let the inconvenience of righteousness keep you from a holy life. Repent, and believe the Gospel, take up your cross and follow Christ. – Amen.

[1] Clement. Stromata IV.4

The First Covenant – Lectionary 02/21/2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Genesis 8:20 – 9:17

[When the flood had end…] Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelled the pleasing odor, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done.

As long as the earth endures,  seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.”

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. The fear and dread of you shall rest on every animal of the earth, and on every bird of the air, on everything that creeps on the ground, and on all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered. Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you; and just as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. Only, you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood. For your own lifeblood I will surely require a reckoning: from every animal I will require it and from human beings, each one for the blood of another, I will require a reckoning for human life.

Whoever sheds the blood of a human, by a human shall that person’s blood be shed; for in his own image God made humankind.

And you, be fruitful and multiply, abound on the earth and multiply in it.”

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of a flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.” God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.

When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.” God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth.”

Sermon Text

            Our first Lenten sermon looks to the first few moments after the Great Flood. In preceding chapters, Genesis describes a world that has gone far afield of what God would have had it become. Though little is given in terms of specifics, it seems that Cain’s sin of murder has become the norm. Tales of great heroes were spread over the land, but greatness and goodness are not always tied to one another. God moved against God’s own creation, wiping clean the slate that would be used to create a new world – one hopefully free from the previous evil of this post-Edenic hellscape.

            God spared only Noah and his family among all the people of the world. We are told that Noah stood out as a righteous person, blameless in all ways a human may be. As a model of virtue and righteousness God sought to rebuild the earth with Noah as the foundation. Humanity had the chance to start over strong. Led by righteousness there was hope for the future to be completely unlike the past. Perhaps in this new world, death would not be the chief legacy of humanity, perhaps there would come a time where peace could reign over the land. God set the stage for a complete renewal of creation, but as we know we seem to have fumbled that chance.

            We live in our modern world, far removed from Noah and further removed from Eden than we could ever imagine. We know that humanity did not overcome their evil and that we still sit heavily in a world that is corrupted by our wrongdoing. Murder is still close at hand, and privation of one another’s needs make it so few, if any, of us have completely clean hands in regard to the lives of our siblings. Sin, deep within the heart of humanity, cannot be simply removed with time or disasters, no amount of flooding or catastrophe. No, something deeper and stronger is necessary to purify the human heart, something closer to God. Stronger than death there exists the love of God, and close to that love is the transformational potential that comes when we look to God to make our broken world right.

            We are told that God knew that all the earth’s problems would not be fixed magically following the flood. We hear this in God’s words at the end of chapter 8, “the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth.” God is aware that there are some things about humans that cannot be punished into oblivion. The Flood may have been a cosmic reset of some kind, but it did not rewrite this tendency of humanity. Noah, for all his goodness, was still fallible and his children along with him. If God truly desired only a world without evil, humanity would need to be erased entirely. Yet, God does not desire wonton destruction, but rejuvenation. God does not seek wrath but mercy.

            In a decision that would shock anyone in God’s position, God seeks to reclaim humanity through the long and difficult work of Covenanting with them. This decision is described by several Old Testament scholars as, “[God’s] unconditional commitment to stay with the world.”[1] Covenant, that ancient system of legal and relational agreements we hear about in scripture, has suffered for centuries under the burden of improper teaching. Many have reduced it to a legal contract between parties – one party agrees to be a patron to the other and both set up conditions for what should happen if they fail to meet those expectation. Yet, covenant was so much more than this. Covenants were agreements between two parties to take one another seriously, to never part from one another, to do all they could to promote the mutual good of one another.

            The Covenant we read about today is especially striking. It begins with the sacrifice which Noah offers to God. The smell of the sacrifice is described as reaching Heaven, and God breathes it in with the same nostrils which scattered the Flood waters and that would later separate the Red Sea. God looks upon the Earth, cleared now of water and ready for a new era to begin and sets up a new relationship between God and God’s creation.

            Though Covenant is implied in God’s relationship to Adam and Eve, this is the first instance in scripture where a Covenant is cut. God is the sole participant in setting the parameters of the arrangement, but we should make note of how gracious the terms are. God only forbids two things, the act of murder which had defined the previous era of human existence and the eating of blood in any form. To this day, observant Jews must ensure meat has been drained of its blood completely before it can be certified as Kosher for this reason. Yet, beyond these conditions, little is asked of humanity in this Covenant.

            God lavishes upon humanity so much more than this. Beyond a commitment to stay involved with humanity, God takes the rainbow and uses it to paint a powerful picture. The “bow,” of God, a visible sign of a weapon of war, is pointed at the Heavens. God is saying, in essence, “If I violate any aspect of this covenant, then this bow will shoot me down.” An immortal God threatening bodily harm against their own divinity is a complex thing to think about, but the truth remains. God is saying that God is putting down all weapons of war against humanity, something new is happening, a commitment to transform rather than destroy the evils of this world.

            This would not be an easy task to set out on, as God would soon see. Noah took the open land that was before him and planted a vineyard, drinking himself into a stupor in short order. His son, Ham, then shamed his father in some way. The text is not clear outside of the fact that it involved revealing his drunk father to his brothers. Noah was enraged when he awoke and learned of what had happened, cursing Ham’s firstborn, Canaan, and setting up a long line of conflict between his descendants.

            Yet, the vision which we are given at the close of Noah’s life is not meant to be one of division and shame. Within a few scant verses the conflict of Canaan and his relatives is overshadowed by an immense and powerful reality. The Table of Nations, as it is called, takes up all of chapter 10. Within that single page, the claim is made that all people – no matter where they are – are inheritors of God’s covenant with Noah. All humanity is blessed, all people receive the goodness which God has given to the world, all contain the spark of hope for a new and better creation than the one which preceded the Flood.

            The rest of Genesis comes round to tell a more particular story of God’s work through Abraham and his covenant and his lineage. Those two aspects of faith are closely tied to one another – the particular and the general. We cannot deny either aspect if we are truly to look at God’s goodness in this world. To all flesh is given the hope that Noah found long ago on a mountain top, and all live under the sky which God hung the rainbow upon. All humanity benefits from the goodness of God, whether they know it or not.

            Yet, transformation takes a more active participation in the grace offered us. As we inherited Noah’s covenant with God, so we inherited the deep festering sickness of our sin. We on our own have no hope of truly excising it – though we may for a time suppress it or even weaken it, it will always have roots dug deep within us. God offered us the means to truly separate ourselves from our wickedness, in yet another Covenant that was cut on Calvary’s hill. Where Christ died and the whole earth shook, where Heaven covered itself in sackcloth to mourn, and where all wickedness finally lost claim upon our hearts.

            We who are baptized into the Church are washed with a flood unlike the one Noah knew, a flood of grace and mercy that wipes away the evil within us. We are washed clean, and the Spirit is sent to dwell within us. We become holy, we become vessels of God’s mercy in the world – a living sacrifice offered within the living temple which is our body. We who are called to faith in Christ must take hold of God’s grace and not be satisfied merely to be saved from destruction, but to be saved completely from the sin which cannot be punished away within us.

            Among the many truths found within Noah’s sacrifice on the mountain and God’s covenant, there is the powerful truth that God is good beyond what we can imagine. As we said early on in our discussion today, greatness and goodness are not identical. God could have shown greatness in destroying the world, strength in pressing humanity into submission through still greater acts of violence and dread. Yet, God chose table fellowship and covenanting over destruction. Yet, God ended the Flood and birthed a new world for humanity to inhabit in the process.

            We who are called to repentance by this Lenten season must live into the grace we are given, not through sin that makes it necessary but through the righteousness that it allows us to partake in. We must love all people, Christian or not, American or not, West Virginian or not, with great fervor and intensity, for they are our siblings through Noah and co-heirs to his covenant. We must go further than abstention from actions that harm one another and actively promote one another’s wellbeing, putting others before ourselves in a mutual love which God invests in our hearts. We must be transformed, for only through a God initiated transformation can sin truly be stamped out of our heart.

            Commit yourself this day, to look up to Heaven and give thanks for the grace of God. Let us look upon the grace which the Heavens attest to – shown in the rainbow and the eucharist, in water and the spirit – and see it as a gift of another chance, of a life born again in the flood of God’s goodness. Repentance is a result, not of fear of God’s wrath, but a true acceptance of God’s abundant grace. Accept the grace which Heaven calls you toward this day. – Amen

[1] Bruce C. Birch et al. “The Created Order and the Re-Creation of a Broken Order.” In A Theological Introduction to the Old Testament. (Nashville, Tennessee: Abingdon. 2005) 58

Put Off Pretentions – Ash Wednesday 2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Matthew 6: 1-21

“Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.

“So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

“Pray then in this way:

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one.

For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Sermon Text

            Lent begins today. For the next forty days (forty-six counting Sundays,) we should take time to intentionally think about our life. The things that we do, that we do not, and that we should do. The things that we do, we should weigh against the teachings of Christ and determine if they are worth continuing to do. The things we do not must also be examined, where are we sitting still where we should be moving – what aspects of faith are we neglecting in living out our Christian calling? Whatever we are neglecting we must take hold of, living truly into our calling.

            In our scripture, Christ puts forward several key aspects of our life as Christians. Piety, almsgiving, prayer, forgiveness, fasting, and an aversion to accumulating earthly treasures. We must understand each of these essentials fully, as they provide us helpful categories for how we might think about our actions over the course of Lent.

            Piety, firstly, is the ability for a person to live a life in line with God’s vision for their life. While we often use the term derisively, referring to “pious,” people almost exclusively as those who are “holier than thou,” the true mark of a pious person is in humility. The word Jesus uses in this passage is literally translated, “righteousness,” all right behavior and virtue of a person lived out must be done fully with God in mind, not our own glorification. Righteousness, like all virtue, is a muscle we must exercise. Piety is the method by which we train ourselves to become righteous. It is achieved through study of scripture, through acts of mercy, through all goodness which we seek to do in this life.

            Jesus leads us through the key aspects of righteousness one at a time – firstly in almsgiving. Almsgiving, often referred to charity, is the giving of resources to those who do not have them. It can be in money, it can be in opportunity, but it is not something which can be abstract. Charity, from the Latin caritas, is how we live out our sacrificial love for one another. It is one person giving something to another person with no strings attached, it is a gift in the purest sense. We must live out this selfless love, it is not optional. We should spend Lent considering how we can better support the people around us – in money, in time, and in sacrificing our comfort for their livelihood.

            Jesus quickly follows this up with prayer. Prayer is the root of all our Christian life. Without it we drift away from our source, the floodgates of grace which are given through knowing God personally and truly. Prayer can happen alone, it can happen in groups, but it must not stop happening in our life. While every moment of our mind cannot form the words we normally associate with prayer, we must train ourselves to have our thoughts in conversation with God. While intentional time should be given for prayer alone, we must also find ourselves sharing our thoughts with God throughout the day. The conversation of prayer is not formal, it is simply God standing with us and us standing with God, it happens in closets and prayer rooms, but also on buses and in the midst of a busy work day.

            We must never forget that our food and our livelihood is from God. We must not forget that all goodness comes from God. We must during this Lententide devote ourselves more fully to prayer. We must also, as Jesus teaches us, see prayer as a recognition of God’s goodness to us despite our sin. It must inspire us to forgive those in our life that we have neglected to forgive. To bridge gaps which we have previously believed unpassable. God who forgave us asks us to forgive others, and to embark on the difficult road of reconciliation with those we have grown distant from. Sometimes restoration to what once was will be impossible, but we must forgive our debtors – both those who have hurt us and those who literally owe us money or any other kind of wealth – as God has forgiven us.

            Finally, there is the matter of fasting. We in the modern Church are afraid of this practice more than we should be. For those who must eat during the day for their health, fasting is an impossibility, and it is often not wise for those who struggle with eating disorders to fast either. However, for those who have neither mental nor physical reasons not to fast, the practice is given as a expectation of the Christian. Fasting, as it was practiced in the ancient world, was the cessation of eating for a period of time, usually from one sunset to another. I invite us to consider together taking up the practice of fasting during Lent. I plan to abstain from food from Monday at Sunset to Tuesday at Sunset, and from Wednesday from Sunset to Thursday at Sunset. Join me if you feel so called.

            Most important for us to consider in Lent, and indeed in all of our Christian life, is that we engage in these practices only so that we can grow closer to God and more in line with God’s call upon our life. We do not fast, or pray, or study scripture so that we can look better or more holy or more in love with God than anyone else. These are transformative practices that we must keep close to our chest, sharing them only as needed and when doing so would be edifying to those around us. We must put away our desire for supremacy of all kinds, and any pretension that we are already as we ought to be.

            This Lent let us give up the idea that we must have it all together. Let us be honest about our fallenness and our failings. Reach out to God, for God cares for you. Lean upon the love of Christ, for Christ will deliver you. Listen to the call of the Spirit, for it is the call that will bring us all home. We have a holy life to live into this Lent, as we do at all times, but over the next seven weeks or so, let us commit ourselves together to not hold onto anything harmful any longer. May we find ourselves transformed into the image of Christ in a way we never have been before, let us seek after the word of God and find life, and life abundant. – Amen.

The God of this World – Lectionary 02/14/2021

/ John Langenstein / Leave a comment

Exodus 34: 29-35

Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two tablets of the covenant in his hand, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face was shining, and they were afraid to come near him. But Moses called to them; and Aaron and all the leaders of the congregation returned to him, and Moses spoke with them.

Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil on his face; but whenever Moses went in before the Lord to speak with him, he would take the veil off, until he came out; and when he came out, and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, the Israelites would see the face of Moses, that the skin of his face was shining; and Moses would put the veil on his face again, until he went in to speak with him.

Mark 9:2-9                                                     

            Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

2 Corinthians 4:3-6

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Sermon Text

            We gather today as a Church to celebrate the Transfiguration, but we also gather culturally to celebrate Saint Valentine’s Day. The two days are both testaments to God’s love for us in distinct and unique ways. Though we now associate Valentine’s day with the secular giving of gifts to our beaux or else with Hallmark cards and candlelit dinners, the day truly originates in a memorial to a faithful priest who lived and died for the good of the Gospel. As we explore scripture today, we will do so with the life of St. Valentine beside us, an example of faith lived to the fullest.

            We begin with our Gospel. Here we are told of a few disciples being brought to a mountain to see Jesus in his full glory – unfiltered divinity and yet full humanity. Climbing the mountain, they see Christ for the God that Christ is, a radiant point in the darkness of the world. Glory unlike any other, the perfection of God in human form. Like Moses before them, the Disciples see the glory of God and wish to dwell with it forever. They ask to build tabernacles to Christ and for the two prophets that have joined him. A cloud overshadows them, the voice of God rings out, the Glory seems to fade, and Jesus is once more – in appearance – fully flesh.

            Paul, in our Epistle, looks to another radiant appearance of God – this one being Mount Sinai and Moses visitation with God. Paul puts forward that Moses felt God’s glory, reflected in his own face, was a source of authority. Moses, says Paul, wore a veil after visiting with God, not to protect the people from God’s glory, but to hide that it faded overtime from his face. In this view, Moses was not concerned for the sensibilities of the people but held a selfish desire to retain the authority that God’s reflected glory gave him. In truth, it is likely both conscientiousness and personal pride played a part in Moses’s veil. Moses wanted to protect the people and maintain the illusion he was always tightly connected to God’s reflected glory.

            Paul takes hold of Moses’s veil and utilizes it in a new way, seeing the image of Moses covering his face as a powerful vision of how easily we as Christians can hide God from the world. The veil here is any distraction that we create in order to make people unable to see God’s presence. While Paul speaks of those in the Church who have lost sight of God, “those who are perishing,” Paul also looks beyond this to the natural conclusion of the Church hiding God away. That is, that the world will not be able to see God, trading a relationship with true Divinity for what he calls, “The God of this World.”

            Paul here is invoking the image of the Great Adversary, Satan. However, Paul is sure not to mention Satan by name, allowing for us the reader to not quickly push our concerns to one place and forget about them. If we think to our everyday life, our everyday problems, we love to have a single person to blame or a single cause to track down and take care of. In the same way, to simply say, “Satan,” was to blame for the veil being put over the eyes of Christians would risk us believing we are immune from the effects of this particular evil. Satan, the God of this World, works through our natural and good impulses and twists them toward evil. To understand the ways we are tricked into serving, “The God of this World,” we must look inwardly not outward.

            In Corinth, we find that sometime after the conflict surrounding meat and idols, a new source of friction in the Church. This conflict was rooted, as so many are, over who had authority to teach and lead in the Church. A group had arrived in Corinth, dubbed by Paul to be “Super Apostles.” Lest we think Paul is complementing them, Paul uses a made-up word to describe them as, “Super,” highlighting the sarcasm implicit in the name itself. This group arrived with letters of recommendation from prominent figures in the Church and proclaimed all manner of teachings based on that authority. These teachings caused the Corinthians to send Paul a letter that broke his heart, and 2 Corinthians consists of the two letters he sent in response to them.

            Paul’s opponents did not sin because they disagreed with Paul is some matters of how the Church should run. Anywhere that Paul went he usually rubbed a few people the wrong way, but more often than not the misunderstanding and quibbles between apostles were settled without too much trouble. The sin of the Super Apostles was in their self-aggrandization. They took on every title and accolade they could to seem holy, but they did so only to make themselves feel bigger and better than those around them, not in service to the Gospel. Throughout 2 Corinthians, Paul highlights his own qualifications, not in terms of the things he did to look impressive, but in his suffering service to God. Our scripture holds his most striking statement, that an unveiled love of God is a life of slavery, not a life of mastery.

            The God of this World is not often manifested in a cloved hoofed demon, but in the actions of you and of me. It is the greatest idol that hides behind all others, the great idol of Ego, of self above all else. The Super Apostles places their prominence in community above community itself, even above the Gospel. Moses places his authority over reflecting God’s glory. We ourselves choose to put anything and everything above God’s call upon our life. We seek simple answers that do not challenge us, we seek bold displays to show our skill, we neglect mercy and love in exchange for flashy and hollow piety.

            Our Gospel shows us the key to our life, the key to reflecting rather than obscuring Christ. As God exclaimed from within the cloud of transfiguration – we must obey Christ. Christ who calls us to sacrificial love, to humble lives, to giving and not taking. Christ asks us to be good and to work for others, even when it gets hard. We preach and unfettered Gospel of Grace and do so without asking what is in it for us. We must serve God with all our Heart and follow Christ wherever that path takes us. The reward of God’s glory and of Heaven’s light is given to those who seek neither glory nor prestige in this life, but seek in all things to do good.

            Which brings us to Saint Valentine. Valentinus, a priest in the third or fourth century, was alive during a period of Christian persecution. Christians were considered atheists by Rome and were seen as dangerous because they refused to worship the emperor or any of the God’s that were believed to maintain Rome. Taken into prison, Valentinus amazed the jailors through his faith and converted the magistrate overseeing his case to Christianity. Valentinus even grew close to the emperor, becoming a guest to him on multiple occasions. Eventually, however, the emperor grew tired of their mutual attempts at conversion and ordered Valentinus to be executed. As he left to kneel before the headsmen, legend says he left a note thanking the jailor’s daughter for the kindness she showed him in prison. The letter was signed, “Ex Valentini,” in English, “from your Valentine.”

            Lost in our Romantic overtures is the story of a faith that was stronger than death. Valentinus preached to rulers and oppressors and loved all he met. Valentinus always showed the unfiltered glory of God by living as a slave to the Gospel. He sought no fame, no glory, not even a stay of execution – but only cared in life to meet God and to see Christ proclaimed in the world. Let us live out such a life ourselves.

            We do not live in persecuted Church, but many in this world do, pray for their fortitude. We face little danger as Christians in the United States, so we lack excuse to live out our life fully. Our greatest risk is to our ego, that we might give up what we want or turn down ambition when it calls to us. We must tear down the idol to ourselves we have built within, because if we do that, the God of this World will have no foothold within us. For though we love ourselves and care for ourselves as God’s good creation, we must not worship and laud ourselves as Gods in our own right. Christ shines out among the faithful, let that light shine on without obstruction in all that we do. – Amen.