The Reformation and Acceptance

Wow.  It’s going to be 500 years.  To be honest it’s hard to know what to say.  Like the anniversaries of so many momentous events, whether they be of the birth of a nation, the calamity and tragedy of an attack, or the commemoration of the actions of a lone priest and Bible professor in Wittenberg, Germany, it is difficult, indeed, I daresay impossible, to sum up in one 15 minute speech all the change, all the emotion, all the personal meaning that would be found in four small nails on the doors of that rather unassuming little church half a millennium ago.  I mean, what do we say?  How do we even begin?  Do we quote important speeches, do we go into history and catechisms and confessions?  I don’t believe I could do all of that justice in a semester let alone in just one sermon. 

But as a Protestant, as a long standing fan of Mr. Martin Luther, and as someone who  simply tries to embody the best of what the Reformation stands for, I believe all of the Reformers, be they Lutheran, Calvinist, Anabaptist or otherwise, would simply say, “Don’t”.  They would say, “We did not fight for the Reformation … we did not fight for denominations, for seminaries, or 16^th century theology - we fought for the gospel.  We weren’t seeking something new; new traditions, new ways of doing things; rather we sought the return of something very old – something that existed from the very beginning.  We wanted the Word unburdened and that is all.” 

As such, ladies and gentlemen, I do not believe I have it within me to describe to you all that the Reformation means.   I can only take to heart its one true lesson: Preach the gospel … and do so by means of a Pixar movie.  Ok, I admit it.  I made that last part up.    

“Pixar?”, you may ask.  What do the Reformation, our gospel lesson, and Pixar have to do with one another?  Well, in this case quite a bit.  Amongst many of Pixar’s films, there is one in particular that has stuck with me over the years.  It is a film called, “The Incredibles”.  Now, if you are not familiar with this title, “The Incredibles” details the story of Robert and Helen Parr, Mr. and Mrs. Incredible.  They are not just normal every day people.  They are superheroes, but they are forced to live like normal every day people.  In a society that no longer values the miraculous, in a world that no longer wonders at the impossible, Robert and Helen Parr must hide their incredible gifts  - even if it means they can no longer help others in the process.  Indeed, instead of stopping robberies and saving innocents from disaster, Robert now works in the insurance industry of all places, and his boss is Robert’s opposite in every conceivable way.  Robert, of course, has his problems, but overall he is a compassionate, selfless, and loving human being - a big man with a big heart who is forced to exist in a world that’s suffocating him with its smallness.  Gilbert Huph, however, is Robert’s supervisor.  In contrast to Robert’s big-ness, Gilbert Huph is a reprehensible little rat of a man.  He is greedy, underhanded; He is the kind of man that only does the right thing when the law requires him to, and he make’s Bob’s life absolutely miserable. 

Gilbert Huph, you see, is a Zaccheus character.  That is who Zaccheus is in the text.  Zaccheus is not some misunderstood short-fellow with a heart of gold.  In the first century he is a short, ridiculous little money monger, a chief tax collector who got wealthy selling out his own countrymen - the very people he was supposed to help.  He is cold, He is uncaring, … and he has all the power.  No, in our gospel lesson, Zaccheus is not the hero.  

But this doesn’t sound like the Zaccheus we know at all does it?  Zaccheus isn’t supposed to be this way.  He’s the example we love to set for ourselves.  “Be like, Zaccheus!” we’ve been told.  Zaccheus did everything he could to meet Jesus. Be bold and let nothing stop you in your quest to meet the Christ.  This has largely been the message of American Protestantism.    It’s a good message.  As one of your pastors, yes, I implore you to not let anything hinder you from meeting Christ.  I guarantee you, you will not be the same because of it.  But while I would agree that this message is good, as a believer in the Reformation and what it stands for, I must be honest.  The message is good, but it is not accurate.  Indeed, I would not only call it inaccurate but a dangerous diversion from what Luke is trying to say.  It is not the first time the Church has done such a thing.  The Church over time co-opts many of these stories and coerces them to mean something that they don’t, something much nicer and easier to swallow.  It is like the myth concerning Jesus’ statement about camels and the “Eye of a Needle”.  As the myth goes, the Needle’s Eye was supposedly a very narrow gate into Jerusalem, quite the squeeze for a merchant to bring his camels through.  Jesus didn’t really mean that it was easier for literal camel to go through the literal eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven.  That couldn’t possibly be the case because I myself want to be rich.  So rather than taking Jesus seriously, rather than coming to terms with the fact material wealth often has spiritual consequences very few of us are born to handle, we believe something easy, something convenient, and something entirely made up.  In the same way we have taken this Zaccheus story and made it more palatable to our own tastes.  

No, Zaccheus in the ancient world is hardly someone to aspire to.  As a tax collector, indeed as the chief tax collector he would be largely uncaring of the poor.  The poor would have been how he made his money, for the poor would be least able to fight him.  Likewise, Zaccheus does not offer to pay back those he robbed fourfold to show that his conscience is somehow clean but rather because he really did rob people.  That Jesus lumps him in with the lost in need of saving shows Zaccheus is not misunderstood by his fellow Jews.   Zaccheus is not the example, ladies and gentlemen, he’s the challenge.  Like Mr. Huph from the Incredibles, Zaccheus is the person who has literally been robbing and cheating others his entire career, becoming very wealthy and powerful off of their suffering.  In the first century, make no mistake, people went hungry and may have even died because of people like him.  He is the villain, and like Mr. Gilbert Huph, he is the embodiment of everything that is wrong with the system.  He is not the man looking to finally show people what a good person he is, Zaccheus is the black sheep of the Hebrew family.  He’s the guy who takes advantage of people, never gives back, and then because of this one act wants to be forgiven for a lifetime of misdeeds … and Jesus gives it to him.  Do you get it?

Living in 21st century America we often forget that these Bible stories are preserved for us, not written to us.  There’s a difference.  Luke, you see, didn’t know one drop of English, and neither could Matthew  Mark or John have told you remotely what an American even was, let alone where to find one.  Our Scriptures speak to us, that is part of their miracle, but we can’t confuse that with the fact that these stories weren’t told to us.  They were told to audiences with vastly different cultures and vastly different worldviews.  Luke was written to a first century Roman audience and to a first century Roman audience Zaccheus is literally the most ridiculous character they could possible imagine, and Luke just reported that they have to be in fellowship with him.  Jesus was accepting him into the fold, it’s a done deal.  To a Roman Gentile they would say to have the same faith as a Jew was crazy enough, but now they not only have to be in fellowship with the Jews but specifically this Jew.  They have to worship with Gilbert Huph, this little rat running a protection racket in Hill-Billy Judea because NOW he wants to be accepted, NOW he suddenly wants to be part of the community?  And Jesus says, “Yeah, Gilbert Huph, too.”

Ecclesia Semper Reformanda, my friends, Ecclesia Semper Reformanda.  The Church must always be reformed.  Reformation is not something “they” out there do.  It is not done by strangers, it is done by “us” and this lesson lies at its very core.  The heart of all reform asks this basic question of human compassion, “Who are we excluding?”  I won’t lie to you, ladies and gentlemen, Christianity reforms itself about every 500 years, and as a Church we are showing every sign of it.  Mistrust in the Church’s institutions, irrelevance of theology, belief, and worship in the surrounding culture - all of that was there in Luther’s time as it was several times before and is again now.  And I will warn you, how believers look in every era is very different.  Just as Roman Catholics believed the end was coming with Protestantism, just as Christians before Nicaea were deeply disturbed about Roman involvement both during and after Nicaea, in each era of the church there is this question, “How can THIS PERSON be in the same worship service … as me?”  And so, I would not be taking my duties as your pastor seriously if I didn’t warn you that the people that come through those doors in the coming decades may not be who we imagine, indeed they might not even be to our liking. 

And so, this 500^th anniversary of the Reformation, as a Protestant myself who believes in the unburdened Word, I have to ask you, who is your Zaccheus?  Who is the literally most ridiculous person you could imagine sitting in the pew next to you?  I mean, I could go on up here, hitting every point the televangelists cover, but the fact is I love you too much to do that.  We could go on about the need to forgive people with criminal records or other “sinners”, in whatever easy way we wish to define that term, but truth be told I don’t think that’s our problem as Middle Class Protestants.  So, I’ll ask again, who is your Zaccheus?  Is he Saudi Arabian?  An Iraqi?  Is he flamboyantly gay?  Maybe she wears spiked leather and black lipstick, maybe she swears a lot and is disrespectful, maybe she is really a he. 

Every congregation says it is welcoming, and every congregation believes themselves when they say that Christ died for all, but no congregation really ask themselves this question.  Ladies and gentlemen, we can’t be an accepting church unless we’ve identified who our Zaccheus are.  The fact is we can say we are a loving and welcoming church until we are blue in the face, but unless we challenge ourselves and really take a hard look at what we believe a believer looks like, if we don’t work to undo our preconceived notions we will shoot ourselves in the foot every single time.

But here is the good news.  We don’t have to be ready for whomever God throws at us, be it within these four walls or out there in the world.   We don’t have to have plans for every single contingency, nor do we have to spend hour upon hour trying to be prepared.  God does not require us to be ready, for that is impossible, we just have to be willing. 

Amen and Amen.   

The Last Barrier

What is the point of Pentecost?  What is the use of this day we call the birthday of the church?  Are we celebrating the coming of the Holy Spirit into our midst, the dawning of a new age of humankind, or are we merely re-enacting a story, a play that is no longer relevant, whose only characters have become long devoid of any meaning?  Are the secularists right?  Are we merely the perpetuators of myths, peddlers of superstition and an age-old decrepit sort of order?  Are we what they say we are? Are we the pitiful inhibitors of progress they claim; con-artists so pathetic that we have actually bought into our own con, sellers of the invisible to a people too scared and too uneducated not to buy?  Is today a myth?  Is the only difference between Pentecost and Pandora, of the Holy Spirit and Heracles, that people have evolved out of the one and not the other?       

A tale of whispy fire and the miraculous speaking of other languages, of blessings bestowed by breath, and Advocate that only exists for those who believe he does?  If someone asks us as Christians, when we speak of Pentecost, which one do we speak of?  Is it the one in John or is it the one in Acts?  Two separate accounts of the coming of the Holy Spirit, two very different stories of the coming of the third person of the Trinity, how can both be true? Who in their right mind would ever believe such tales? 

If we are honest we would admit these are all very good questions, and as strange as it sounds I wish more Christians would ask them.  I won’t lie to you, ladies and gentlemen, I have studied the history of the Church, and I see something of a disconnect between the followers of Jesus now and the followers then.  The followers then spoke boldly and with power.  They spoke against the social injustices of their time, sought reform, and went to their deaths gladly.  They took babies off of garbage heaps and found them homes, we trick scared mothers into fake Crisis Pregnancy Centers.  They fought for the treatment of criminals, removing cruel punishments; we take away their right to vote and have governors go on record to say they do not mourn for a second that they have executed an innocent man.  They brought a message into the wilderness of the world, taking a vibrant gospel to a people who did not speak their tongue or even remotely knew their ways.  We won’t even go across the street to get to know our neighbors.

And so I looked at these things, I looked at the church then and the church now and I asked myself, “What happened?”  How did things get to be this way?  What happened that turned a group of people so empowered into a people so lifeless?  Ladies and gentlemen, most people forget I did not go to  seminary first and then to law school.  I was not some naïve schoolboy loyal to the Christian story because my family would disdain me if I didn’t. I didn’t go to seminary first and then law school, I went to seminary as a fully trained attorney.  I knew garbage when I heard it, and if you think you’ve got it tough try being a theology professor under cross-examination by one of your students.  Ladies and gentlemen, I know evidence, I know reason, I know how to reconstruct an event that happened in the past, and I know how arguments are made.  These stories are NOT garbage.  They are NOT myth.  Just because someone gives an account of the fantastic does not mean it is fantasy.

I don’t say these things because I believe blindly in the stories handed down to me, I was a questioning believer.  I took nothing at face value.  I read, I studied, I learned.  When I read these pages I put them to the fire because as a believer in God I knew that was what He wanted me to do.  He wanted me to see if these words were true, He wanted me to taste and see that He was good.  He did that because He wanted me to have a relationship with Him not a human religion.  I was not supposed to believe human institutions but doubt Him.  So I tested the Scriptures, I attacked them as vehemently as any lawyer would, because as a man of conscience THAT’S MY JOB.  I cannot take this message into the world if in fact I am not convinced of its truth.  I am not going to spread lies that get people hurt, and I am not going to risk a single ounce of my time and resources over something I am not 100% positive that it actually happened, and neither should you.  And what was the end result of all that testing, you may ask?  Well, I’m here aren’t I?

Ladies and gentlemen, our so-called scholars do a-lot to detract against our Bible.  They’ll go to all sorts of lengths to say our Bible is not what it says it is.  They say Moses did not write its first five books, but they won’t tell you how many ancient Egyptian Words are in those Hebrew books.  They won’t tell you that the author of those books not only clearly spoke Hebrew and Egyptian, was clearly very literate, knew the landscape of ancient Egypt very well, so well in fact that modern archeology has had to catch up to him, was extremely familiar with Pharaoh’s court and was well versed in ancient military tactics.  Clearly not the markings of a prince of Egypt.  What is more, they fail to answer the question what would be the point of even writing such books.  They say the Exodus is a myth, that the Israelites were merely an uneducated band of loosely aligned raiders roaming through Palestine.  What they fail to explain is why then these books even be written.  If I came down to you today and said America wasn’t actually a series of colonies that fought for its independence but that we were all slaves of the Canadians thousands of years ago forced to build their monuments but freed by a God you’d never heard of before, you might think it was interesting but you wouldn’t believe it.  If you wouldn’t believe it, why would they?  I’ve been around lawyers, my friends, and the first rule is if you are going to lie you have to make it believable.  What is the point of telling your audience a story of how you were rescued from slavery miraculously unless your audience already knew it was true?  Who else would ever receive such an idea?

And that’s just our Old Testament!  Imagine what they do to the New?  Jesus never existed and his divinity was manufactured in the 4^th century at the council of Nicaea.  Well first of all, which is it?  Conspirators generally don’t manufacture divine status to people who never existed.  Second of all, these are all extremely interesting conclusions to make of works that by all accounts were penned in the first century.  Ladies and gentlemen, Nero caught Christians and used them to light his palace grounds. After Nero comes Domitian.  Since just taking us up and killing us wouldn’t suffice anymore he denounces us as atheists and kills us then.  After Domitian came Trajan, and despite all this persecution in less than a century a governor in northern Turkey complains about how these Christians are turning up everywhere: the city, the countryside, everywhere.  He captures our women, tortures them, and discovers we don’t do anything terrible but that we worship Jesus as Divine and the see the emperor as human.  After Trajan came Marcus Aurelius, who after learning that killing us outright wasn’t working decided to just torture us to the point of death or imprison us and let us die of exposure.  And they weren’t just attacking the laity anymore, the targets became ever more nuanced.  They went after our bishops, our scholars, our learned men and women.  Their great minds like Celsus, unable to argue effectively against Christianity, unable to denounce Jesus’ miracles as false, unable to decry the empty tomb, their greatest mind could only say Jesus was a fatherless criminal who healed the sick, drove out spirits, and raised people from the dead by witchcraft.  I guess if you can’t win a debate through argument, the only thing left is to kill the debaters.  And so all this and worse continued until Constantine and the Edict of Toleration occurred over half a century before any Church Council.  Ladies and gentlemen, does this happen for people that don’t exist?  In a world where you literally had a different religion for every foot of ground you could walk on, do you pick the one that gets you tortured and killed if you weren’t radically convinced of its truth?  It’s pointed out that people die for their religion all the time, except no they don’t.  The terrorists that attacked the world trade center on 9/11 didn’t die for Mohammed, I’d argue greatly they didn’t even know Mohammed.  They didn’t die for their religion, they died for their politics.  They died to effect political change, these Christians didn’t die for politics they endured politics until it killed them.  Christianity is the only social movement in history that defeated a superpower by losing.  Do people do that for a lie?

The fact is, the 9/11 terrorists didn’t know Mohammed, but our gospel writers knew Jesus, and in the end they didn’t call him Prophet or Rabbi, they called him God.  And while so-called scholars, what they really are media pundits with enough money to buy their Doctorate, they dismiss the gospels out of hand and they do so too readily.  Each gospel is argument, a challenge to the most basic precepts their audience has.  Mark addresses persecuted Christians afraid to talk about Jesus and he ends his gospel with a conundrum, with Jesus’ tomb empty and women too afraid to speak about what they’ve seen.  Matthew’s gospel is a message to fellow Palestinian Jews about how Pagans acted more righteously than they, Luke’s gospel is written literally to a hostile witness, he is writing his gospel and acts so that Theophilus will believe what he has been told.  Theophilus is not a believer yet, and the fact is you don’t spend years upon years researching and writing books in the ancient world to convince someone of an easily disprovable lie.  And then there is John.  John’s gospel is literally an insult to his audience’s intelligence.  It is back handed slap that says that an itinerate uneducated homeless rabbi from hillbilly Judea knows better than all of Greek education and philosophy combined.  It enrages, it taunts, no it demands you investigate what they have to say and see for yourself whether or not it’s true.  Ladies and gentlemen, as a man with his law degree you don’t make these plays unless you know you can win.  These arguments grab the audience by the ear and MAKE them look at the Jesus story, they insist you do not take them at face value and order you to spend every ounce of your energy trying to refute them so that when you fail you’ll finally get it.  After every argument is spent, after every dart you’ve thrown at them bounces off, only then does doubt evaporate.  Only then does the fantastic reality of a God who loves you, who loves you enough to become human and die for you, only then does it sink in that it’s real.  All of it. 

The problem with the Church today, my friends, is not that our stories are false, the problem is we let people make us too afraid to question whether they are false.  We let fear overcome us, fear of how people will treat us if we question, fear of what the answers to those questions might be.  That fear crippled us, made us unwilling and unsure.  It made us falter in our dedication to the point where we had to be guilted into even doing a half measure.  It made us think one hour a week was enough, but that one hour a week for many turned into one every two, then one a month, then just Christmas and Easter.  We traded a transformed people and a transformed worth for a few magic words and a belief in fire insurance.  As your pastor I will remind you it doesn’t work that way.  The man who buried his talent in fact does not get rewarded for doing so. 

Ladies and gentlemen, last year I pointed out that you were innocent.  You remain so.  After everything that happened, after everything that this congregation went through it chose to remain faithful to its character as it always has done, but a year ago I said Innocence would not be enough.  Our foe is too wily and too cunning for innocence alone, and I challenged you to be wise as well as innocent, and you have been.  You’ve been unorthodox, you’ve broken boundaries, taken calculated risks, and today we’ve beaten the odds.  We are still here are we are more fruitful for Christ than we ever have been.  This year, however, this Pentecost it is time to be something more.  You have been innocent, you have been wise, but now I challenge you to be Empowered.  Accept the Holy Spirit into your lives and follow His direction.  Strap on his sword and put on the full armor of God.  What is Pentecost ladies and gentlemen?  Pentecost is God’s sucker punch.  After Yeshua’s victory in the resurrection the forces of evil, hate, and human misery were left in disarray; too distracted, too dizzy, too focused on keeping away from Christ in the boxing ring to notice that God gave us the gloves.  The time to strike is now, the time bring comfort for the grieving, relief to the wounded of body and spirit, the time call out the unjust for all the hurt they cause IS NOW.  The Greedy, the power-mad, the hate-mongers, and the pilferers of human suffering are out there and they have no idea the Holy Hell they’ve called down on themselves.  Let’s get out there and do it.   

     

July 5th Sermon: Let Us Not Be Distracted (Mark 6:1-13)

Good Morning and Welcome to Eastside Community Lutheran on this sixth Sunday of the Pentecost Season.  Our gospel lesson for today is one that puzzles a lot of people, so to begin today I thought I’d share one of my favorite puzzles.  It goes like this: Mary’s mother had five daughters.  The first was named Nala, the second Nele, the third Nili, and the fourth Nolo.  What was the fifth daughter’s name?  Any takers?  How about if I reword the puzzle this way:  Mary’s Mother had five daughters.  Mary’s first sister was Nala, Mary’s second Nele, Mary’s third Nili, and Mary’s last sister Nolo.  Who has to be the fifth daughter?  Mary!  If Mary’s mother had five daughters, one of them has to be Mary then, doesn’t it?  I love that puzzle because it relies on distraction, it gets your mind to wander elsewhere and not realize that the puzzle already gave you the answer you were looking for. 

Our gospel story is a lot like that.  When we read this text we often get drawn away on its tangents.  Why does the text say Jesus was powerless because of their unbelief?  Is Jesus like TinkerBelle from Neverland, do we have to clap and believe in him for him to exist?  Why are the disciples sent out without food, money or an extra tunic?  What is the point of that?  I could answer all these questions, and I will, but the fact is they are like the four daughter’s names in my puzzle, just distracting and not the real point. 

Let’s read our gospel story again, but this time let’s fill it in with some context and see if it doesn’t make more sense.   

          “After healing Jairus’ daughter, He left that place and came to his hometown of Nazereth with his disciples.   On the Sabbath, as was custom, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, "Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the fatherless son of Mary (in the ancient world, to name you the child of your mother and not your father was an accusation that you were born of adultery, everyone knew Jesus was not Joseph’s son).  Isn’t he the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?  And they took offense at him.

            Then Jesus said to them, "if the Prophet Jeremiah teaches us anything, it is that Prophets are not without honor - except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house." By saying this, he reminded them that Jeremiah was a prophet before the fall of Jerusalem; that Jerusalem was Jeremiah’s hometown and his family rejected him.  Jesus warned them of the dangers of not listening to the bearers of God’s Word. 

            Because the Pharisees were already accusing him of casting out demons by the Prince of demons, doing deeds of power there would only have earned him more enemies and so he could not perform them.  He kept his miracles small in number and, laying his hands only on a few sick people and curing them.  Jesus was absolutely amazed at their unbelief.

Undaunted, he went about among the other villages to teach.  He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits.  He ordered them to go as messengers with such urgent news that they took nothing for their journey except a staff and sandals; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts, not even two tunics.  He ordered them to look as people with such incredibly wonderful and necessary news that they looked like they barely could get dressed before heading out the door.   

He said to them, "When you enter a house, stay there until you leave that place. Honor those who show you hospitality.  If any place will not welcome you, however, and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them." 

So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent for the Kingdom of God was coming. They cast out many demons publicly, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.”

A bit easier to understand this time?  It is rather strange and ironic, I think, that the pieces in here that distracted us in fact kept us from seeing the plain answer, which was namely that Jesus didn’t get distracted.  His priority was the Kingdom and he did not let things like his relationship with his hometown distract him from what was really important…making sure news of God’s Kingdom of Peace, Justice, and Healing reached the ears of those who had been waiting for it.  This plain truth now revealed and our hearts focused on that reality, what things might we learn from our gospel lesson? 

First, we can say with confidence that the story points out that only fools talk themselves out of a Blessing.  Rather than gratefully accept the teachings they admitted were wise and the miracles of healing that they proclaimed openly to be true they chose instead to be jealous and foolish.  Why is this fatherless goat able to do these things? Why should I pay attention to one who left my community instead of staying with his family business and helping us?  Rather than see the bigger picture of what God wanted to do in their lives they got distracted by their social prejudices, receiving a dire warning of judgment instead of the blessings God wanted so desperately to give.  Divine Blessing can come from anyone and anywhere.  If we would deny God’s blessings in our lives because they originated from an Arab, a homeless woman, or a person transitioning from a man to a woman, we will have failed to learn this lesson.  Let us resolve not to be like that.

Second, we should realize there is a flip side to the previous lesson: You cannot help someone who doesn’t want to be helped.  Jesus, the lion of Judah, who bounces all over creation, going from mountain tops to cities to villages to countrysides, to hometown synagogues, and back again  casting out demons, healing the sick, and proclaiming the Kingdom of God … at the end of the day even he decided it is best to let fools be alone with their foolishness.   Jesus doesn’t try to spend time arguing with them, he doesn’t try to convince them to see his side, and he certainly doesn’t apologize to them that they took offense.  Rather he remains undistracted.  The long awaited kingdom of God was coming; he helped whom he could but then moved on, teaching his own disciples to do the same.  If we spend time trying to win over friends and family who simply will not listen, who find it more advantageous to be against you rather than to be for you, it is simply time and energy wasted.  Let us resolve instead to remember that old adage to never argue with a fool: they would only drag us down and then beat us with experience.

Finally, there is lesson to not let the people who refuse your help keep you from the people who need your help.   Again, Jesus didn’t see his hometown as a black hole for his time and energy.  Rather than be distracted and focus his ministry there, he left his hometown and commissioned his disciples to do the work of the Kingdom, too.  His focus was on the people ready to hear the gospel, and to that end he not only met their needs himself but specifically trained others to do the same.  He warns his disciples that like his hometown not every place will welcome them, but there are many places that will and gladly so.  He tells them to make the places that desire God’s presence among them a priority, and for the others to wipe the dust of their feet against them and be done.  Let us resolve then to never obsess over our difficulties but keep our eyes always on the opportunities that God is providing.

These lessons are not only important lessons generally.  They are important to learn for us as individuals, but they are especially important for us in this particular community of faith.   Eastside Community Lutheran has some incredible opportunities for ministry in the coming years.  Everyone talks about how bad the denominations are doing, but no one ever talks about how bad.  From a certain denomination’s own statistics, 55% of their own congregations do not bring in enough funds to keep their individual church doors open, and similar situations are being reported across the board.  Between Hwy 61 and White Bear Ave, Larpenteur and Minnehaha, Eastside Community Lutheran is one of only four high-style Protestant churches.  As the denominations continue to do poorly and unfortunately close up shop, our radius of influence is only going to get bigger and bigger.  I am not joking when I say that in the next ten years Eastside could be looking at not only multiple Sunday Services, a flourishing Sunday School, and its own successful side ministries, but on top of that when the financially stable churches can no longer hold up everyone else we will see other churches following our lead and going independent.  The opportunities for a fiscally responsible, denominationally independent church that still values tradition, that is not afraid of having multiple voices in its pulpit, and is so dedicated to Christ’s gospel of love and forgiveness that it bears its wounds and scars proudly - that church has legs.  That church has street cred.   That church has incredible ministry opportunities. 

But if we are going to do that, if we are going embrace the future that God wants for Eastside Community Lutheran we as a community need to learn these lessons and learn these lessons well.  As we grow and are successful, there will be those in our hometown that will say, “Hey isn’t that Eastside Community Church?  Don’t we know who they are?”  We cannot be distracted by them.  There will be those that smugly refuse the help we offer, we mustn’t waste time on them.  Like Jesus, we mustn’t try to form community bonds with people that don’t want them formed, and most especially we must never apologize for the good that we’ve done or the gospel we’ve followed.  To do so would be to sabotage the very kingdom Christ died to establish, let us have none of it.  Let us instead focus on the kingdom and train up others to go out and announce God’s grace to the multitudes willing to listen.  Rather than be distracted by earthly things let us, as our Lord Jesus said, seek first the Kingdom and let all other things follow from there.  Amen and Amen.