| July 25, 2010 | "Chasing Real Rabbits" |
| July 18, 2010 | "Flipping the Tent Flap Open" |
| July 11, 2010 | "Are You All In?" |
| July 4, 2010 | "God Shed His Grace on Thee" |
| June 27, 2010 | "Jesus, You Must Be Kidding" |
| June 20, 2010 | "A Most Modern Story" |
| June 13, 2010 | "The Family Tree" |
| June 6, 2010 | "Do You Believe in Miracles?" |
| May 30, 2010 | "The Immensity of God" |
| May 23, 2010 | "S.D.G." |
| May 22, 2010 | "Remarks delivered at California Equality on Harvey Milk Day" |
| May 16, 2010 | "Jail House Rock" |
| May 9, 2010 | "Choosing Our Words Well" |
| May 2, 2010 | "No More Gated Communities" |
| April 25, 2010 | "Now, Was That So Hard?" |
| April 18, 2010 | "Do You Want to Get Away?" |
| April 11, 2010 | "Free to Doubt" |
| April 4, 2010 | "A Most Monstrous Story!" |
| April 3, 2010 | "That We May Be Exalted" |
| April 2, 2010 | "Twenty Degrees Darker than Total Darkness" |
| April 1, 2010 | "Let the Triduum Begin" |
| March 28, 2010 | "Did You Say, Crucify Him?" |
| March 21, 2010 | "Blessed Extravagance" |
| March 14, 2010 | "So Who is The Prodigal?" |
| March 7, 2010 | "A Free Lunch for All" |
| February 28, 2010 | "A Hen" |
| February 21, 2010 | "Save Us from the Time of Trial" |
| February 17, 2010 | "Keeping A Holy Lent" |
| February 14, 2010 | "Remember to Say Your Prayers" |
| February 7, 2010 | "In Search of Excellence?" |
| January 31, 2010 | "Words Chosen Well and with Love" |
| January 24, 2010 | "The Nine Word Sermon" |
| January 17, 2010 | "The Water Blushed" |
| January 10, 2010 | "Epiphany Glasses" |
| January 3, 2010 | "Opting for a Different Road" |
| older sermons |
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 25, 2010
Nineth Sunday after Pentecost
Genesis 18: 20-32
"Chasing Real Rabbits"
One of the disciples asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray.” You have likely asked this question a time or two in your life. We all want to know how to pray. Prayer is what makes us human.
It is interesting how Jesus teaches the disciples to pray. He offers no intricate techniques; he assigns no books to read. Jesus simply gives the disciples a prayer and says, “Pray like this.”
Parents who teach their children how to ride bicycles use a similar method. They do not discuss the finer points of propulsion or the subtleties of balance. They simply push their children along until they are on their own. We all learned to ride bikes by, well, by riding bikes.
Prayer seems similar to learning to ride a bike, and yet we sense that there must be more to the craft of praying than simply praying. Perhaps you learned to pray using the “ACTS method” (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication). Maybe you learned that prayer is not so much talking to God but listening to God talk to you. How many of you have read books with the hopes of learning the perfect prayer technique? Sometimes, the biggest problem in our prayer life is that we know an awfully lot about prayer and yet we hardly ever pray.
Most of us learned to pray the old fashioned way, by praying. If we were fortunate enough to grow up in a family that prayed at meals and bedtime, we prayed “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest” and “Now I lay me down to sleep” over and over again. There may be a better way to come to God but those of us hitting the autumn years of life, after all the Sunday School classes and books and sermons on prayer, we still do it just like when we were kids: we fold our hands, bow our heads, close our eyes, and pray those simple prayers our moms and dads taught us before we could barely walk.
Jesus said, “Pray like this,” and then said, “Our Father in heaven…” What a treasure to pray the prayer that crossed Jesus’ lips. No fancy techniques, merely a prayer.
When I was in college, I visited the home of a fraternity brother during Thanksgiving break. The home was a spectacular mansion. The “living room” had a gorgeous Oriental rug, an invaluable oil painting of an English hunt scene above the stone fireplace, and a breathtaking view onto the family’s own private lake. When I entered the living room, I thought this the perfect place for family get-togethers. I quickly learned that this stunning room was not the “living room.” This room was where people like me drooled over the family’s collection of the finer things of life but “living” in that room was strictly prohibited.
Our prayer life can easily resemble that room: showy but impractical. Our prayer life needs to be more than showy; it needs to be so livable that it bears the spills and stains and abuse of our daily lives. One example of such a livable prayer life is Abraham’s in this morning’s first reading. As Abraham pleads for the salvation of Sodom, he keeps lowering the standards: if there are only fifty righteous will you spare the village? he asks God. When God assents to this request, Abraham tries again: how about forty-five? Abraham never gives up and gets God down to sparing the village if there are ten righteous people. We usually think of this Bible reading as one of those terribly judgmental ones in the Bible; in fact, that is how it has been used quite a bit of late! And yet, far from calling for judgment and condemnation, Abraham badgers God for all he is worth to spare the people of Sodom. This is prayer that is lived in.
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he counseled, “Ask, knock, and seek.” Action verbs, powerful verbs. Now, this is down and dirty praying. This isn’t highfalutin praying that sounds dazzling and yet is only an inch deep and a mile wide; this is prayer that hits the ground running and hard!
Anne Lamott lists her best prayers. They are “Thank you, Thank you, Thank you” and “Help me, Help me, Help me.” Why not? These are down and dirty prayers. They are prayers that say exactly what’s on the pray-ers mind--no more, no less.
Lamott writes that her prayers became so pretentious and stilted that they were virtually worthless against the challenges of life. “[She] felt like a veteran greyhound at the race track who finally figures out that she’s been chasing mechanical bunnies: all that energy, and it’s not even a real rabbit” (Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies, pg. 266). Her prayers had to change.
In a few moments we will have our congregational meeting. We will look at our current financial picture through the first six months of 2010 and examine a possible long range plan to deal with our deficit. We need pray-ers and prayers that chase the real rabbit and not mechanical bunnies! I hope you have been praying to God for your congregation. I hope you have you been asking God to make you a more generous giver than you already are. That’s what it means to chase the real rabbit. Let your prayers get down and dirty. Ask, knock, and seek God to provide for the life of this church and its incredible ministry.
(I commend you for being a congregation with one of the highest per capita giving levels in the entire Pacifica Synod. I thank you for your generosity as we do ministry on this littler corner of God’s creation. Apparently, you have been praying hard.)
Annie Dillard writes these astonishing words about the church’s oft feeble prayer life: “On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does not one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.”
Folks, forget about those fancy, dancey prayers that are as innocuous as a toothless puppy. Demand, bang, and hound God for what you need most; insist, hammer, and badger God for the needs of those you love; command, pound, and harass God for First Lutheran Church’s life. Perhaps you will discover that those down and dirty prayers are the best kind because they are teeming with TNT and they chase real rabbits.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost
July 18, 2010
Genesis 18: 1-10a
"Flipping the Tent Flap Open"
Listen again to the first verses of today’s reading from Genesis: “The Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance of his tent in the heat of the day. He looked up and saw three men standing near him.”
Who were those three men? There are a variety of answers that have been offered down through history. Some say those three men had something to do with God; perhaps one was God. Others suggest that they were angels, and, as angels are wont to do, they were delivering a message from God. The fifteenth century Russian monk Andrei Rublev paints the three men as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in his stunning icon.
Who do you think those three men were?
What if the three men who appeared to Abraham and Sarah were exactly who the Bible says they were, THREE MEN? What if Abraham went running into the heat of the day not to get a cup of water for God but just for three men? What if Sarah baked bread in the blazing heat not for angels but just for three men?
We can certainly understand Abraham and Sarah’s hoopla of flipping the flap of their tent open if those three were heavenly royalty but we are befuddled by their gracious hospitality if the visitors were simply human beings.
On Friday mornings here at First Lutheran, I often catch myself making believe that some of our guests who come through our food line are newspaper reporters doing undercover reporting or representatives from our national church evaluating our ministry or someone from a wealthy foundation with lots of money to give away. I like to think that we flip the flap of our tent open and treat all who come by here with dignity and love.
Such a surprise visitor showed up at the church I served in Ardmore, Pennsylvania. Right after I concluded my sermon and as we were singing “Beautiful Savior,” a bearded man caught my attention. He looked strikingly similar to our former presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, H. George Anderson, except for one minor detail: he had a beard and as far as I knew, Bishop Anderson’s face was as clean shaven as a baby’s pumpkin. I kept looking out of the side of my eye. Bishop Anderson had served as our congregation’s intern years ago; I knew he was teaching a course at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. He certainly would have called before coming. I decided not to introduce him at the announcements for fear of embarrassing the unsuspecting person who might not be Bishop Anderson. As soon as worship was over, I ran to the door to greet this mystery visitor but I missed him. I finally got downstairs for coffee hour and saw the bearded man mixing with the good people of Saint Paul’s. Lo and behold, it was Bishop Anderson. I was delighted that our congregation had flipped the tent flap open and welcomed him with great aplomb even though no one had a clue that he was our former presiding bishop. How nice that all visitors were treated with dignity and grace.
We should treat every person as if they are royalty because, of course, they are. Every person is one of God’s children. What more credentials does anyone need? One of my favorite Bible passages comes from the thirteenth chapter of Hebrew: “Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”
This morning, we will sing “One Bread, One Body.” It was the theme of our congregation’s float at yesterday’s San Diego Pride Parade (it is outside in the parking this morning lot for all to see). A large contingent from First Lutheran marched in that parade, attempting to flip the First Lutheran tent flap open a little wider and to entertain angels. Many Christians, including many Lutherans, have said some horrible things about gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual people. I recently heard a group of Lutherans claim that people in the GLBT community are going to spend eternity in hell. I would like to think our participation in the parade was our attempt to extend a welcome to the GLBT community just as Abraham and Sarah welcomed those three men at Mamre. How amazing it was to hear the crowd say “thank you” over and over again and to hear the applause as we marched behind our beautiful float and invited people to come to church.
One of the thrills in many of our lives has been having a tent flap flipped open for us when we felt unwelcome in any church. We may have had a rocky time in our life and felt undeserving of God’s grace; we dared not set foot in a church for fear that it would come tumbling down if we entered. But we mustered the courage and one day entered a church and someone introduced themselves to us and called us by name. We suddenly felt different, worthwhile, loved. Someone flipped the tent flap open and it has made all the difference.
Groucho Marx once quipped, “I would never join any club that would have someone like me as a member.” I have a hunch that many of us might have felt like that when it came to churches. What kind of church would accept me? Well, this church, First Lutheran, struggles to accept all people in the name of Jesus Christ.
Just for the fun of it, we are going to “Share the Peace” right now. This might be painful for some of you: you are shy and prefer staying inside your own little tent. But look around now and find someone you don’t know—visitors, you are in luck, you don‘t know anyone! If you have been a member here for a while and are embarrassed that you might introduce yourself to someone who has been here forever, fear not, this is finally your chance. This is the point in worship when we have the opportunity to entertain angels without knowing it. Go now and engage in a little old-fashioned flipping the flap open. See if you can find an angel. You might just discover the Lord who has come by here for water and bread.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 11, 2010
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 10: 25-37
"Are You All In?"
Jesus meets a religion scholar on his way to die in Jerusalem. The two engage in a bit of intellectual jousting. They ask each other questions and they provide each other answers. Then Jesus abruptly interrupts the banter. He tells a scandalous story of a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan. Jesus’ story has a striking resemblance to those we love about rabbis, priests, and Protestant ministers walking into Irish pubs. As Jesus tells the story, the listeners lean forward, expecting Jesus to tell a story of a priest, a Levite, and a pious Jew. Surprisingly, Jesus upsets the apple cart and replaces the pious Jew with one of the most detested enemies of the Jewish people, a Samaritan. It is the Samaritan, the hated one, in Jesus’ story who tends to the needs of the beaten and half-dead man in the ditch. Who ever would have imagined it?
After telling the surprising story, Jesus asks the religion scholar the $64,000 question: “Who was the neighbor?” The religion scholar answers correctly, “The one who treated him kindly.” Jesus says, “Go and do the same.”
Suddenly what is at stake is not the correct answer to a speculative question. Now what is at stake is far more serious, whether the religion scholar will go be a neighbor or not.
Most of us are pretty good at debating with one another. We love to speculate about who will end up in heaven and who in hell, what the proper biblical interpretation of a particular passage is, and, of course, how the church should proceed in 2010. We are quite good at critiquing the actions of others and preserving our own purity. We are often not so good at risking our purity for the sake of our neighbors.
Jesus seems to say that we cannot follow him by constantly speculating about right and wrong and by maintaining our purity. We finally must act. The southern preacher Fred Craddock writes: “The goal of theological conversation is not to outwit another…Having right answers does not mean one knows God…Jesus did not say to the lawyer, “Great answer! You are my best pupil.” Rather, Jesus said, “Go and do” (Fred Craddock, Luke, Interpretation, John Knox Press, Louisville, 1990, pg. 150).
It is so hard to go and do. We prefer verbal jousting. Our family lived for many years in a rough and tumble inner-city neighborhood of Washington, D.C. We had our car stolen, our row house and car windows shot out, drugs repeatedly hidden in our front yard, and a 7 p.m. curfew instituted because a sniper had indiscriminately killed three of our neighbors. In the midst of all this, I had lunch at a synod assembly with a pastor who lived and worked in a posh Baltimore suburb. He spent the entire lunch trying to catch me in inconsistencies in my ministry and to prove that his ministry had more legitimacy than mine. He grilled me on a host of issues. The one I remember most was his asking whether our sons went to public schools—which they didn’t. He told me that if we really cared about the city, Dagmar and I would send our boys, Caspar and Sebastian, to inner-city public schools not private schools. Perhaps he was right but I told him that we refused to shine our “liberal credentials” on the backs of our children; when our boys were old enough, they could decide where to go to school; until then, Dagmar and I were in charge. I then asked him where his children went to school. He said, “My wife and I have no children.”
You have probably noticed that people who have nothing to lose are often the ones with the finest answers and who love to play the lofty game of who is right and who is wrong. Those in the heart of the battle have very little time for such diversion and simply must act and pray to God that what they do will be close to living the truth. They must trust that God will be merciful as they attempt to be the best neighbors they can be.
The Samaritan acts. He ignores the ritual restrictions of treating the wounds of the injured man; he takes him to an inn and pays the innkeeper for his rest and healing. The Samaritan doesn’t worry about his religious purity or his long term liability: he comes upon an injured man and immediately seeks how to tend to his wounds.
Sometimes, we religious people spend far too much time maintaining our purity as if doing so will get us a “get into heaven free card.” In Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, there comes a point when Huck must decide whether to turn in his friend and escaped slave Jim to his rightful owner. Huck knows that it is against the law to harbor an escaped slave. He mulls this over and writes a letter to Jim’s owner, Miss Watson, telling her where she can find Jim. He then considers their friendship and the time they have spent together. He looks at his note and says: “It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself: All right, then, I’ll go to hell—and tore it up.’” (Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1989, pg. 95).
Huck is the Good Samaritan. He cares for his neighbor instead of trying to maintain his purity even if it means going straight to hell. Now, that is a good neighbor!
I have discovered that if we really want to live lives of significance, we will inevitably make tons of mistakes along the way. Someone will always be glad to judge our inconsistencies and mistakes--of which there will be many. I find this to be true here at First Lutheran almost daily. When we side with the poor instead of rich developers, someone criticizes us for speaking up; when we side with the gay and lesbian community instead of fire and brimstone Christians, someone pounds passages in their Bibles; when we care for the homeless and underserved instead of keeping our hands clean, others criticize us for creating a nuisance. We get dirty when we care for the beaten up on the side of the road. In fact, a friend of mine once said that if you want to care for the underdog, the first thing you sacrifice is your integrity.
Duke Divinity School theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes of his life: “The life into which I am drawn is a life without safeguards. I do not know how to hedge my bets. In the parlance of poker, ‘I am all in.’ (Stanley Hauerwas, Hannah’s Child, Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, 2010, pg. 234). The Good Samaritan is all in, too. Jesus asks us, “Are you all in?” He doesn’t tell us to be careful; he doesn’t condemn us for making mistakes. Instead, he says, “Go and do the same.” Love your neighbor--that is enough.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
July 4, 2010
Romans 13: 1-10; Mark 12: 13-17
"God Shed His Grace on Thee"
You are in the midst of a rarity. I can count on one hand the times during my ministry when I have changed the appointed lessons and the liturgy for the day—I have never done that here at First Lutheran until today, Independence Day.
These changes make me very nervous. Many special interest groups ask us to change the Sunday lessons and liturgy to observe their special days. World Hunger Sunday, AIDS Sunday, Lutheran Camps Sunday, Campus Ministry Sunday, Seminary Sunday--these are but a few of the requests. Father Aidan Kavanaugh, my seminary worship professor, warned us of such requests. “If you open worship to every group that comes your way,” he warned, “eventually you will end up observing ‘Goiter Sunday.’”
With warnings of “Goiter Sunday” dancing in my head, I have been my own worst critic as I have contemplated today’s Independence Day worship service. I have struggled all week picking appropriate hymns for us to sing and fitting prayers for us to pray. I have sought the counsel of a number of you. I have wondered whether you agree with me that some patriotic hymns are left best for the seventh inning stretch at a Padre’s game instead of Sunday worship at First Lutheran Church.
Let me warn you conservatives that as this sermon continues, you may get the sudden, uncontrollable urge to flog me. You deem the United States of America as God’s precious gift, a sort of handmaid of the Lord, called to execute justice against all manner of evil and to protect the precious liberties that are ours, including worshiping here this morning. You do not experience an iota of conflict in singing patriotic hymns with gusto and lifting up our nation in prayer.
You liberals, as you listen to my sermon, may get a hankering to cast me to the netherworld of outer darkness for even daring to lift up the United States in worship. You note that there are people here from places like Uganda and Brazil, Japan and Canada, Germany and Mexico; “How can they sing O Beautiful for Spacious Skies?” you ask. You warn that nationalism is the peskiest of idols as we risk rendering our highest allegiance to nation rather than God.
In spite of all this, I invite you this morning, conservative and liberal alike, to pray for our nation. If you are not a citizen of the United States, I invite you to pray for your own country. Saint Paul writes: “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except form God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God.”
Yes, in spite of what you may have heard on talk radio lately, Christians are called to pray for their leaders…oh yes, and to pay taxes too. Martin Luther, in his explanation of the Fourth Commandment (“Honor your father and your mother”) writes, “We are to fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but respect, obey, love, and serve them.” In a nation torn by fierce partisan loyalties and offensive rhetoric, we do well to pray regularly for those who lead us, most especially those for whom we did not vote and whose policies challenge us to the very core. We pray today for President Obama, Governor Schwarzenegger, Mayor Sanders, and all who lead us.
Nevertheless—and you just knew there was going to be a “nevertheless”—what we do here today must be done with caution. The First Commandments reminds us: “I am the Lord your God. You shall have not other gods.” This commandment was taken so seriously by early Christians that they refused to place even a pinch of incense at the emperor’s statue, knowing full well that such a refusal likely meant a martyr’s death. These martyrs heeded the words of Jesus: proper worship can only be rendered unto God and never to Caesar no matter what the nation.
As we pray, we understand, of course, that every nation is always in need of correction. The Reverend William Sloane Coffin wrote: “How do you love America? Don’t say, ‘My country, right or wrong.’ That’s like saying, ‘My grandmother, drunk or sober’; it doesn’t get you anywhere. Don’t just salute the flag, and don’t burn it either. Wash it. Make it clean.”
If citizens and nations are to remain great, they must always be open to correction in order to be made clean. On Friday, on the Capitol steps of the great state of West Virginia, President Barack Obama said of Senator Robert C. Byrd, this nation’s longest-serving member of Congress: “He possessed that quintessential American quality. That is a capacity to change, a capacity to learn, a capacity to listen, to be made perfect.” Who would have imagined that this former Ku Klux Klan member would be eulogized by an African American president? Yes, true greatness comes not with inflexibility and arrogance but with the courage to change and the humility to be corrected. Such a spirit ensures that something greater can always be achieved.
It was such humility to be corrected, such courage to be changed that enabled this nation to adopt the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; this amendment ended slavery on December 6, 1985. This nation, as you know, believed at its inception that all men are created equal. And yet, as we know, African Americans were not free in this land. In order to achieve the noble vision of the founding fathers, citizens and leaders alike had to be willing to be corrected so that something greater than what our founding fathers envisioned could become reality. Are we as a nation still capable of changing and correcting so that even more people might taste the glorious freedoms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Let us pray for courage and humility.
Thirty-four years ago today, July 4, 1976, was the Bicentennial of our nation. I was living in Brooklyn at the time and doing clinical training at the Lutheran Medical Center. It was a splendid day as tall ships sailed up New York Harbor and fireworks lit the evening sky. I started that day off by worshiping at the venerable Riverside Church in New York City. I will never forget the preacher that morning inviting the congregation to sing “O Beautiful for Spacious Skies” at the conclusion of his sermon. I thought the invitation odd, it made me uncomfortable: I feared we might end up worshiping the United States instead of God. And yet, as the packed church began to sing, chills danced on my spine and tears welled up in my eyes. I saw people worshiping that day who most assuredly had opposing views of what their nation should be (remember: 1976 followed quick on the heals of the Viet Nam War which divided this nation beyond belief) and yet I also saw a people united, giving thanks to God for a nation that “hold these truths to be self evident....that all men are created equal.... and that they are endowed by their Creator .... with certain inalienable rights ....and among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
We will do the exact same thing this morning and sing “Oh Beautiful for Spacious Skies.” As we sing, let us reflect on the words on the base of the Statue of Liberty:
Let us pray that this vision may never be forgotten or sacrificed for a lesser vision. Let us cherish this vision affixed to the entrance of our beautiful land. May this nation continue to welcome the tired, the poor, the huddled masses, the homeless and tempest-tost. Gathered in prayer this day, let us beseech God to shine His grace on thee.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 27, 2010
Luke 9: 51-62
"Jesus, You Must Be Kidding"
The reading we just heard from Saint Luke’s gospel troubles me. And trouble may be too weak a word. If I had my druthers, I might delete today’s reading from Holy Scripture. There is a harsh demand that is almost too much to bear.
Let me refresh your memory. Jesus says, “Follow me.” The first person responds, “I will follow you wherever you go”—a faithful and pious answer to be sure. Jesus responds, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” A snotty reply, don’t you think?
The next person is willing to follow, too, with one minor qualification: “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus snaps, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Tell the truth now: if someone would forbid you from burying your father or mother, what would you think of them?
The third person is ready to follow with an ever so slight addendum to the contract, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” A perfectly reasonable request to my ears. Jesus answers, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”
We might listen to this morning’s gospel reading with a smile and without fidgeting, but honestly, how many of us take it seriously when the rubber hits the road?
I have tried to take Jesus’ demands seriously during my ministry. I celebrated thirty-three years of ordained ministry on Friday. They have been wonderful years and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. I think you know that the past five years here at First Lutheran have been beyond belief for me, a gift from heaven! And yet, as I look back over the years, I have some regrets. There have been failures on my part, failures due to a lack of nerve, failures caused by immaturity and arrogance, failures from taking myself far too seriously in the grand scheme of things, failures in delivering hopelessly boring sermons, failures in pastoral care when words were chosen carelessly and not particularly well. You know all these shortcomings by now.
After all these years, however, if I were to mention my biggest failure, it is that I have spent far too little time with Dagmar and with our boys Caspar and Sebastian as they were growing up. There were countless times when I was not at our boys’ baseball games or school events due to church commitments. There were times when I stayed at the church all hours of the night when I should have been home with Dagmar. I would like to think I did this because I wanted to be a faithful pastor--I was taught that the best pastors work the longest hours! In truth, though, I might have worked too hard for fear that people might think less of me—call it insecurity. So many times, sadly, I have been the one who didn’t go bury my family’s dead and say, farewell. I have tried to take Jesus’ invitation, “Follow me,” seriously, and in so doing, my family has paid an enormous price. I am not the least bit proud of that for, in the end, I know I have failed time and again. Perhaps that’s why I would leave today’s gospel reading out of Holy Scripture. If there are disappointments in my ministry, they have come in my attempts to meet the harsh demands of Jesus.
It seems, at least in my case, when I hear today’s reading, I hear only part of it. I hear Jesus’ harsh demands to follow him but forget almost entirely the other part. Do you remember the other part? Let me read it one more time: “When the days drew near for [Jesus] to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem.” The journey has begun; Jesus is on his way to die whether we follow him or he goes alone.
Thank heavens Jesus tells us where the journey will lead. If we hadn’t been forewarned, we might complain that we were given a rotten deal. Jesus makes going with him so demanding that we often say, “Jesus, I can’t go. I must go bury my father first.” Jesus understands.
If the truth be told, there is something quite wonderful about this reading. Most of us would not think twice about saying goodbye to those we love before leaving them and following Jesus; and we would always attend their funerals before hitting the road with Jesus. In spite of this, Jesus never says to us, “Forget it then, I’m not going to Jerusalem.” Jesus goes on his way on our behalf with or without us.
You love Jesus, I know you do. And yet, how many of you are willing to take Jesus’ harsh demands seriously? Are you willing to sell all you have and give it to the poor? A harsh demand. I know for most of you here this morning giving even 10% of your income to the work of Jesus is asking a lot in this economy. Or that business about loving your enemies, how many of you struggle with that one? A harsh demand. Jesus couldn’t have meant loving the Taliban or Osama bin Laden, could he? You want to follow Jesus, but there are limits: you aren’t religious fanatics in some crazy cult.
Jesus seems to know how you and I will react to his harsh demands for discipleship. We make all sorts of compromises and fail to measure up to his demands time and time again. In spite of our cowardice and lukewarm discipleship, his love for us never wavers. Never, not even this morning. Perhaps this morning’s reading has much more to do with Jesus and much less to do with us.
So, “Will you come and follow me,” Jesus asks. My hunch is that every one of us will try. And yet, at some point, we will waver and reply, “That’s far enough.” Then, all we can do is stand in awe as Jesus says, “That’s okay. I understand.” We will watch in adoration as Jesus trudges to Jerusalem, alone, to die for us.
Let us never forget today’s reading. NEVER!
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost
June 20, 2010
Luke 8: 26-39
A Most Modern Story
The reading we just heard feels cobwebby to our modern ears. All the talk about demons, unclean spirits, chains and shackles, and swine jumping off cliffs--it as eerie as an old haunted house. We talk so much differently today when we speak of homeless people, the mentally ill, and the addicted.
Listen one more time, though, for a detection of the modern: “As Jesus stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him…and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” Rarely does a day go by here at First Lutheran without someone talking wildly to themselves, to others, or even to Jesus.
Note, too, how the gospel says that the demon possessed man “had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs.” Walk outside this building after worship and you will see a similar sight with people camped out right across the street and, of course, people are knocking at our doors all the time in need of cloths.
Is the reading really antiquated? My hunch is that there isn’t a single person here this morning who hasn’t struggled with depression, alcohol, or drugs or known someone who has. We don’t have to leave this room to discover the demons. We understand that man who lived so long ago in the country of the Gerasenses better than we care to admit.
One of the top five books on my “desert island list” is William Styron’s Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness. Styron writes of how we moderns have smoothed over the rough edges when speaking of mental illness. He notes that we “banish the harsh old-fashioned words: madhouse, asylum, insanity, melancholia, lunatic, madness. But never let it be doubted that depression, in its extreme form, is madness” (pg. 46). Styron knows from personal experience: the demons hounded and chased him and it was madness!
If you have struggled with alcohol or drugs, you know the demons, too. The first step of Alcoholics Anonymous’ twelve steps is, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.”
Remarkably, the Bible says that when Jesus freed the man of his demons, the villagers were “seized with great fear.” Why was that? Wouldn’t his freedom be cause for rejoicing? Such peculiar behavior would never occur in our sophisticated age…or would it?
Statistics indicate that between 20 to 25% of homeless people in the United States suffer from some form of severe mental illness, 38% are dependent on alcohol, and 26% on drugs. You would think that we would want to free these suffering people from the demons. And yet, we seem paralyzed by fear. Or, like those people who lost their swine jumping over the cliff, are we fearful of the costs? Programs that provide services to battle the demons are dreadfully under-funded in our city, county, and nation. Ask Jim Lovell, the director of TACO, how hard it is to get people into programs treating mental illness and alcohol and drug addiction. We are as seized by fear as they were way back when.
A number of us from First Lutheran attended a San Diego City Council meeting a few months ago. At that meeting, a program called “Housing First” was discussed. This program seeks to provide housing for chronic homeless people and has been remarkably successful in large cities, including the Times Square area of New York City. There, homeless people were given access to housing and only one chronic homeless person remained on the streets. Studies indicate that it is astronomically cheaper to house homeless people than to place them in jails, prisons, shelters, psychiatric, and other hospitals. Why are we seized by fear?
My dear brothers and sisters, Jesus calls you and me to tell others not to be afraid. Jesus calls us here at Third and Ash to cast out demons in his name.
And it is not just the homeless community to whom we are called to cast out demons. William Styron notes that what pulled him through his severe depression was family and friends. They were the people who called out to him, “Chin Up.” He notes that “if the encouragement [others provide] is dogged enough---and the support equally committed and passionate—the endangered one can nearly always be saved” (pg. 76). We are called, in Jesus’ name, to provide similar encouragement to those we love in the throes of depression and, almost always, the demons will eventually flee.
Speaking of demons, the second step of Alcoholics Anonymous is, “We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” Eight twelve step groups gather at First Lutheran during the week to struggle against a host of demons. Quite a few of you credit these groups with literally saving your lives. A number of you came here to worship by way of these groups—these groups are one of our best evangelism programs. I often describe First Lutheran to visitors and friends as a kind of Alcoholics Anonymous at worship--I say that positively and with a smile.
When we baptize people here at First Lutheran, we face the West where the sun sets and where ancients thought they might be seeing the setting sun for the final time as the world came to an end. At baptisms here, we hold up our hands to fend off the deadly assaults of the demons as we “renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God.” Another part of that ancient ritual of renouncing Satan that I would love to incorporate here is spitting in Satan’s face. And then, in the baptismal rite, we face East, with hands extended, as we welcome Christ, the Rising Son, into our lives. We urge one another out of the tombs that haunt us and to turn our lives over to God.
The story of the Gerasene madman is more modern than we care to admit. He is here this morning, crying out for freedom from the shackles and chains that hold us captive. He is here because he is you and I.
We gather here together and we cry out to Jesus to send out the demons from ourselves and from those we dearly love. And, yes, we spit in Satan’s face just to add an exclamation point. Sounds modern to me!
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
The Third Sunday after Pentecost
June 13, 2010
2 Samuel 11: 26-12: 10, 115
The Family Tree
Manipulative, sly, brutal, adulterous, deceitful, conniving, murderous…Would you choose a leader with such traits? Much to our surprise, God did. His name was David and his life was, at least in part, a quagmire of sleaze.
We just heard the riveting story of David and Bathsheba. David spotted gorgeous Bathsheba sunning herself one beautiful summer afternoon. David had nothing better to do than look at bathing beauties from his palace balcony; at the same time, his troops were engaged in ferocious battle and losing their lives.
David met up with Bathsheba--he was the king after all--slept with her, and she became pregnant. Stuck in a most precarious predicament, David sent Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, to the front line of battle with hopes Uriah would be killed. David was not disappointed. Uriah was tragically killed and David and Bathsheba had the baby. This baby died soon afterwards, the Bible says, because of his parents’ sin. As you might be aware, David and Bathsheba had another son eventually known as King Solomon.
A sordid story we know all too well as it seems repeated over and over again by national leaders down through history.
For some reason, despite his faults and frailties, we teach our children to revere King David. We tell them how he killed the giant Goliath with a simple sling, how he wrote our beloved Psalms in the Bible, how he became the king of God’s people Israel.
While we love the hero David, if he is to be at all helpful to our children as they grow older, we need to tell them his whole story. We need to tell of his peaks and valleys, his successes and failures, and yes, of his need for forgiveness and God’s showering him with redemption.
We tend to tell only part of the truth when speaking of the heroes we adore. While we villainize our opponents and attack them for the tiniest blunders, we airbrush our heroes, making them appear as perfect as perfect can be. If you don’t believe me, look at the political landscape of this nation in these days, particularly the politicians you like and those you detest. How do you tell their stories? Almost always, our heroes are painted in bright colors and we give them lots of slack; those we don’t care for are painted in dismal colors and we simply shout, “Throw the bums out!” If we are the least bit honest about those who lead us, whether Republican and Democrat, we will admit that they are much more complicated than we ever make them out to be.
What is remarkable about the story of David and Bathsheba is that it appears in the Bible at all. Writers of history—usually the victors, by the way—tidy up their heroes and nations and write only of the enemies’ atrocities and treachery. We teach our children of the despicable bombings of London and Pearl Harbor in World War II but conveniently forget to tell them of the fire-bombing of Dresden and the devastating atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Amazingly, in most cases, the Bible tells the whole truth about our biblical heroes, the atrocities as well as the achievements. It is quite frankly why some people have such a problem with the Bible--it is often so darn honest!
When you get home today, turn in your Bible to the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. There you will discover the family tree of Jesus Christ. It begins this way, “A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David…” Who would think to begin the story of Jesus with David? When you examine Jesus’ family tree, you will note, “David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife.” The sleaze is there. On and on the genealogy goes until it arrives at “Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” Who would ever imagine that Jesus came from a family with such a sordid past?
And yet, if we tell the truth about King David, we are treated to a feast of grace. Amidst David’s sickening infidelity and murderous appetites comes Jesus Christ. What we see in all of this is God’s ability to work with imperfect people, whether David and Bathsheba or you and me. As Martin Luther once said, “God can carve the rotten wood and ride the lame horse.”
Almost every biblical hero with the exception of Jesus seems filled with ambiguity: there is astonishing greatness and there is sickening brokenness; there is towering success and there is heartbreaking failure. If we teach and learn the biblical stories correctly, we will learn that our heroes possess a deep humanity that, when imbued with God’s grace, can be used for mind-boggling purposes.
David and Bathsheba’s story, of course, is our story. Their fall from grace is our fall. Telling only of David and Bathsheba’s revolting failure is never enough. As we discussed in last Sunday’s 10-10 on Luther’s explanations of the Ten Commandments, the church’s full task is never simply to judge one another for our sins—that is the easy part. While it is essential to confess the truth about our failures, God calls us to so much more. Just as God redeemed David to become the great, great…grandfather of Jesus, God redeems us for greater purposes too. God lifts us up when we are down and our lives become part of the graceful story of God’s delicious redemption.
David and Bathsheba…who would have ever thought that these broken people would become the great, great, great…grandparents of Jesus? Maybe there is hope for us after all. Maybe our story, too, can surprise us and we can become part of God’s wonderful plan for all humanity.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Second Sunday after Pentecost
June 6, 2010
1 Kings 17: 17-24; Galatians 1: 11-24; Luke 7: 11-17
"Do You Believe in Miracles?"
You may remember the 1980 Winter Olympics. The overwhelming favorite to win the gold metal in ice-hockey was the Soviet Union. The U.S. team was made up of a rag-tag bunch of college players and amateurs. The Soviet skaters consisted of the pro-like mighty Red Army team. The U.S. beat the highly favored Soviets and sportscaster Al Michaels famously remarked with eleven seconds remaining, “Do you believe in miracles?”
In preparation for this sermon, I have searched high and low for what Lutherans believe about miracles; I have found precious little. What little I did find is that miracles are like little lightening flashes that point us to the far greater lightening flash of Christ’s resurrection. Other than that, nothing. I do not remember ever studying about miracles in seminary nor do I remember ever being asked what I thought about them when I was examined to become a Lutheran pastor.
I am frankly a bit embarrassed to talk about miracles this morning. Why? Because I am not sure what I believe about them. I have never had the least desire to join a church where a slick-haired evangelist makes a crippled woman throw down her crutches and walk. I have never wanted to travel to Oklahoma to see the face of Jesus in a Baskin Robbins ice cream cone. On the other hand, I have been reading of late about miracle working icons in monasteries at Mount Athos on a peninsula off the coast of Greece that are reported to have curative powers for all manner of illnesses. I frankly am intrigued by the idea of miracle working icons, but, as yet, I have not booked a flight to Greece.
So, do you believe in miracles?
Each of today’s readings contains a miracle. Elijah stretches himself over the body of the son of the widow of Zarapheth and that young man comes back to life. In the gospel reading from Luke, another widow, the widow of Nain, is on her way to the graveyard to bury her son when Jesus and his entourage pass the funeral procession. Jesus sees the weeping woman, has compassion on her, and brings her son back to life. Even in Galatians, a miracle is tucked in as the apostle Paul tells of violently persecuting the church and seeking to destroy it. He never gives one thought to changing his murderous ways and yet is converted by the sheer grace of God and becomes the greatest evangelist the church has ever known.
I think you would agree that each of these events is a miracle. Two young men are brought back from the dead and one man is saved from delivering loads of Christians to the dead.
No one expects or even thinks to ask for a miracle to occur in any of these readings. Because of severe grief, the widows cannot comprehend the possibility of their sons coming back from the dead. And for Paul, because of unbridled arrogance, he wouldn’t want a miracle if he could have one; he is pleased as punch as he does his best to annihilate the Christian Church from the face of the earth. In all three stories, God acts when there is not a trace of hope in sight and not even an inkling to ask for a miracle.
Have you ever thrown up your hands in defeat and said, “There is no hope.” I would imagine every one of us, at one time or another, has wept tears of resignation, moaning, “Things will never change.”
In this book, Broken, William Moyers, the son of PBS journalist Bill Moyers, writes of such resignation in his life. He tells of an intervention team coming for him in a rundown crack house in inner-city Atlanta, trying to rescue him from the sure death of addiction. Listen:
“My father was sitting in the front passenger seat. Turning to look at me, he saw a thirty-five-year-old crack addict who hadn’t shaved,
showered, or eaten in four days.
A man who walked out on his wife and two young children and ditched his promising career at CNN. A broken shell of a man, a pale
shadow of the human being he had raised to
be honest, loving, responsible. His firstborn son.
“Silence.
“‘You‘re angry,” I said. I didn’t know what else to say.
“‘That’s hardly the word for it.’ His voice was harsh and cold, like the rain outside.
“More silence.
“‘There’s nothing more I can do,’ he said. ‘I’m finished.’
“All these years later, he tells me that’s where the conversation ended. But whether I imagine it or not, I heard him
say something else.
‘I hate you.’
“And I remember looking in his eyes and speaking my deepest truth.
“‘I hate me, too.’” (William Cope Moyers, Broken, Viking Press, 2006, pg. 3,4)
Perhaps you have been there, too: you hated yourself or someone else and you considered hope all but dead.
Or maybe on a global scale, you look at Muslims, Christians, and Jews in the Middle East and say this mess can never be resolved so bombs away. Or you look at the horrendous pictures of oil-logged pelicans suffocating to death in the Gulf and you believe that our modern world can never gain sobriety from its oil binging appetites.
There is certainly something in each of our lives that causes us to throw up our hands in despair and cry, “What’s the use? Nothing short of a miracle can change things and I don’t believe in miracles.”
Whenever we feel there is no hope, we are navigating uncharted territory. When we are out of control, it is a good idea to stop the car, get out of the driver’s seat, and leave the driving to God. According to the Bible, God takes us places in our lives that we simply cannot go ourselves. It is precisely at these times when there seems so little hope where there actually is the possibility of new birth being given. Suddenly we stop trying to control things with our useless tricks and worn out schemes and, for the first time perhaps ever, we turn our lives over to God.
When we find ourselves saying things like, “There is no hope” and “They will never change” and “I am a hopeless mess,” we may be at a potentially wonderful time. We should be quiet and calm and entrust our broken dreams and dead end lives to God. We may be on the verge of a miracle.
If you ask me, “Do you understand how dead people are brought back to life?” I will tell you, “No.” If you ask me, “Do you believe in miracles?” the best I can say is, “I would like to.” But, if you ask me, “Do you believe God can make miracles happen?” I will tell you, “That’s why God is God and I am simply Wilk Miller. I have faith that God can do things I can’t.” I imagine you feel about the same way.
Let us pray…Dear God, we pray, make us bold to commend our bodies and souls and all that is ours into your hands and bring about miracles in our lives, in the lives of those we love, and into our groaning world. After all, God, that’s why we are here this morning: we have come to leave the driving to you. So, here God, take our lives and make a miracle happen. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Holy Trinity Sunday
May 30, 2010
"The Immensity of God"
In the name of the Father, and of the Son (+), and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Today is the only day in the church year when the church celebrates a doctrine. Today is Holy Trinity Sunday. We lift up God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Lest you think the name of God unimportant, let me remind you: 1. First Lutheran Church’s constitution begins this way: “This congregation confesses the Triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit;” 2. Every one of you, when joining this church, said, “I believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”; 3. If you say, “I never said that,” well, then, someone said it for you--“I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
When it comes to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we sense that we are in tricky territory. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein cautioned, “What we cannot speak about, we must not speak about.” You might like his suggestion. If I stopped my sermon right now, you would remember it for a lifetime. But we are invited to something more challenging; we are invited on this day to grapple with the immensity of God if for no other reason than to realize that God is always greater than anything we can think or say.
There are two dangers when considering Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One is thinking that we can explain the mystery of God by our own wisdom and cleverness. The other danger, equally hazardous, is checking our brains in with the ushers as we enter worship and saying, “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe.”
Let us give the Trinity a fair shot this morning, realizing that our shot will unavoidably fall far short of the glory of God. Let us start with what Martin Luther writes in his Small Catechism: “I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him.” Theologian Timothy Wengert says it another way: “When it comes to God, we cannot get there from here; God must come to us.” (Timothy Wengert, Martin Luther’s Catechism, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2009, pg. 60).
These words should come as very good news to us. We can be so self-conscious when it comes to talking about God. We feel almost unchristian if we are unable too give some fancy-dancy expression to what we believe about God. We sense that we should be like Christians who have all the answers up their sleeves whenever a difficult question is asked of them about God.
I was involved in a meeting this week and was flabbergasted by the certainty most of the people had when talking about God. They seemed to know exactly what God’s thoughts are on a host of complex matters. They even knew who would end up in heaven and who in hell whether God wanted their opinion or not. I left the meeting with a sour taste of self-righteousness, judgmentalism, and arrogance. I spent the entire meeting wishing that these people were less certain about God. I wanted to say, “Folks, your God is way too small!”
I wish that every time we talked about God, especially with those who differ from us, we would begin with Luther’s humble reminder, “I believe that by my own reason or strength I cannot come to believe…”
I had college friend who taught me more about God than any theology course I have ever taken. Paul was one of the most caring people I have ever met. He dropped out of college our junior year, sold all his belongings, including his 650cc Yamaha motorcycle, gave away the money to the poor, and went to serve the needy in India. I will never forget him coming to my dorm room one night, closing the door, and weeping. I also will not forget his words: “I admire your belief so much, Wilk. I wish I could believe in God but I simply am unable to do so.” I left the conversation not feeling judgmental of Paul’s unbelief or arrogant because of mine but rather humbled and grateful to God that I was given the gift of belief. It was a nonbeliever who reminded me of what an astonishing gift God has given me.
We dare not let our beliefs cause us to be critical of others as so often happens. In the Holy Trinity, there is no hatred between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And there can be no hatred among God’s people. One old monk has even said, “If you hate another person, you do not comprehend God.” Herbert McCabe sums up the Holy Trinity this way: “The whole of faith is the belief that God loves us; I mean there isn’t anything else. Anything else that we say we believe is just a way of saying God loves us.”
If we understand the love of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we also understand that we are called to love one another. In the ancient church, when people were about to be baptized, in addition to being asked whether they believed in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, just as you were asked, they were also asked, “Have you honored the widows? Have you visited the sick? Have you done every kind of good work?’ Caring for others was an essential part of believing in God.
In a few moments we will commission Kathy Burns as a Simon’s Walk volunteer. Kathy joins a group of people who have committed themselves to the truth of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. They share God’s love with those dying on the streets of San Diego. Rarely, do we think of the works we do for others as our confession of faith. But according to the ancient church, what we do for others is perhaps our best testament of what we believe about God. Saint Francis said: “"Preach the Gospel at all times. Use words if necessary."
One word often used in an attempt to describe the relationship between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a Greek word that basically means “to dance.” If you look at this morning’s bulletin cover, you see the dance of the Holy Trinity in Rublev’s famous icon. As you gaze upon this holy icon, you sense the love these three feel for one another. There is no attempt to outdo the other. They are one at the table. And note another thing: there is actually room at the table for you and me. That, thank God, is the nature of Trinity. Trinity invites us to the dance even though we cannot possibly grasp the splendor of those who will join our hands in the dance. How can we ever explain such love? I suppose the best way to explain God’s love is simply to blush…and to join the dance of Trinity.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Feast of Pentecost
May 23, 2010
Genesis 11: 1-9; Acts 2: 1-21
"S.D.G."
What Bible stories did you learn as a youngster? The Tower of Babel is likely one of the first you learned. If you weren’t scared off by the story, you tried to create your own Babel Towers--at least I did. I used Lincoln Logs; our boys used Lego blocks. I tried to build those little notched brown logs as high as I could without them crashing to disaster. When they got what, to my mind, was very high, I called my parents to adore my creation: “Look how high I have built my logs,” I proudly announced. “They are going to touch the ceiling!”
Babel or not, every child should be blessed with such dreams of grandeur. What little boy doesn’t get on the playground and drive to the basket, take a shot, and scream gloriously, “Kobe Bryant for two.” And what girl doesn’t dress up in a flowing bed sheet, make a crown of aluminum foil and a wand from a paper towel roll, and proclaim to all the world, “I am the Queen.” Pity the child who is told, “You won’t ever amount to anything.”
In today’s first reading, we hear of such a dream gone awry. It is the dream of Babel. It is a dream of human beings who think they can build a tower that will touch the heavens and allow them to rule the world. They believe that they can make a name for themselves that will rival God’s.
It is a dream of trying to rival God that creates trouble. It is a dream of people who have forgotten who they are. It is a dream of people who have forgotten whose they are. It is a dream God must shatter.
The stories told in the first eleven chapters of Genesis are stories that we all understand. They are stories of men and women who have become too big for their britches. Come to think of it, they are stories about you and me.
Now, don’t get me wrong. The Tower of Babel is not a call to mediocrity. God calls us to excellence, even to build soaring skyscrapers and majestic bridges. What God does not do, however, is call us to works of arrogance that cause us to forget to give God the glory.
When Dagmar and I go on a road trip, I am in charge of choosing the music. I pick Bob Dylan, Emmylou Harris for myself and a little Johnny Cash and Buena Vista Social Club for Dagmar; I always take Bach’s B Minor Mass. I adore Bach’s Gloria and Sanctus. Whenever the Sanctus (Holy, Holy, Holy) comes on, I turn up the volume and try to sing bass for all I am worth. Chills run up and down my spine; tears come to my eyes. Bach’s music, while astonishing, always points beyond the composer—Bach made sure of that. At the end of all Bach’s religious works are the initials S.D.G., the Latin words, Soli Deo Gloria, to the glory of God alone. Bach’s music must make God smile and whenever I hear that music, I smile, too, and start praying to God.
How wretched are we when we forget those three little letters, S.D.G., Soli Deo Gloria, to the glory of God alone.
Jesus’ disciples repeatedly forgot Soli Deo Gloria. They were often caught wondering which one of them was the greatest; it seemed their favorite pastime. Even though the Son of God was their traveling companion, they strutted like peacocks and made believe they were the greatest.
Their arrogance finally came crashing down on their heads during the days leading to Jesus’ crucifixion. The disciples lost whatever courage they ever had. They stopped strutting their stuff; they only cowered. Who can forget the pathetic scene when Peter denied knowing Jesus? Peter, the one who thought he was the greatest, lost his nerve when a teenage girl asked him if he knew Jesus. Cowards all and they knew it.
And then the most astonishing thing happened. Jesus rose from the dead and began to make the disciples’ dreams rise from the ashes. Just before he ascended into heaven, Jesus told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until they were clothed with power on high.
The waiting wasn’t easy. The disciples were scared and disillusioned. And then 50 days after the Passover and Jesus’ death, when Jew’s from around the world gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate the grain harvest and the giving of the law to Moses at Sinai, a violent wind began to blow like a fierce Santa Ana wind and tongues of fire fell from heaven upon the disciples. The disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and they began to speak in other languages that everyone understood as if they had been studying Berlitz.
Suddenly, rather than arrogance or cowardice being front and center, the power of God made those disciples ten times the men they ever imagined they could be. Peter the coward was preaching before thousands of people. His sermon that Pentecost—just about this time in the morning—was so amazing that 3,000 were baptized--a record that has put all future preachers to shame.
Pentecost changed these cowards and made God’s glory shine forth. Just as Jesus told them, the disciples started doing the unthinkable and performing works even greater than Jesus. Who would have imagined it? Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “When they opened their mouths to speak, they sounded like Jesus. When they laid their hands upon the sick, it was as if Jesus himself had touched them. In short order, they were doing things they had never seen anyone but him do, and there was no explanation for it, except that they had dared to inhale on the day of Pentecost.” (Barbara Brown Taylor, Home by Another Way, pg. 144)
For every age, there is a twofold danger for God’s people: one danger is being afraid to stand up for God’s way because we are afraid what others might say; the other danger is becoming so arrogant that, rather than pointing to God, we point to ourselves. Cowardice and arrogance have the same end result: they leave God out of the picture. Pentecost is about God clothing people with power, making them courageous and humble spokespeople for God’s ways in this suffering world of ours.
The story is told of Heinrich Heine and his friend as they stood before the Cathedral of Amiens in France. Heine’s friend asked him, “Why people can’t build cathedrals like this anymore?” Heine replied, “It’s easy. In those days people had convictions, we moderns have opinions and it takes more than an opinion to build a gothic cathedral.”
Each one of us faces countless opportunities, almost daily, to create more than opinions. Pentecost calls us to be people of courage and, when the opportunity arises, to speak out for the poor and suffering and oppressed in the name of God even when it is not popular and even when we shake at the knees. Pentecost calls us to take a stand for someone other than ourselves. Pentecost calls us to be clothed with the power of the Holy Spirit and to strive for excellence in the areas of life where we work and play and live. Pentecost calls us to S.D.G., to soli deo gloria, to give the glory to God alone. Pentecost makes us ten times the people we ever imagined we could be. And for that alone, we say, “Happy Birthday, church!”
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Saturday, May 22, 2010
Remarks delivered at California Equality on Harvey Milk Day
My name is Wilbert Miller. I am the pastor of First Lutheran Church at 3rd and Ash, downtown; I also represent California Faith for Equality. I have been a Lutheran pastor for thirty-three years. I just celebrated my thirty-third wedding anniversary two days ago. And, yes, I am straight and my wife and I have two wonderful sons.
So you are wondering, “Why is he here?” I am here because I believe that you and I are created in God’s image. I am here because I believe that God loves each of us, female and male, Jew and Greek, slave and free, and, of course, gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender and straight. I am here because I believe the words of the old children’s Sunday school song, “We are all precious in God’s sight.”
I am here because I have witnessed your pain in the GLBT community for my entire ministry. You have endured preachers’ rants since you were children; some of you steer clear of churches altogether because you cannot bear the rage any longer. I am here to say, there is a more excellent way; that way is God’s way of love.
I am here because of two dear friends whose marriage I performed two years ago, Mike and Ron, two men who have been together as long as my wife and I, two men who, until two years ago, never had the opportunity to stand at God’s altar and say, “I do,” two men who have expressed their love for each other in the face of catastrophic illness, yes, “in sickness and in health.”
My national church body, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, made the courageous decision last summer to stand against hatred; it now seeks ways to enable those in same-gender monogamous relationships to make lifelong commitments.
I must confess: when it comes to marriage, I am an unabashed conservative. GLBT or straight--if you want to have your partnership blessed or get married at First Lutheran Church, you must commit yourselves to one another “until death do us part.” This is a call to fidelity, commitment, and love, not a call to promiscuity.
Why in the world do you want to be involved in this? You do know the statistics, don’t you? 50% of marriages end in divorce. I trust that you are here because you want to commit yourselves to the one you love for a lifetime, for all that life brings.
This nation and our faith communities need you. This afternoon, you will tell others of your dream. You will meet people who voted against your right to marry. What you do takes courage. What you do, my dear friends, is American! Abraham Lincoln once said, “I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice.” And, my, oh my, how this nation needs mercy.
As you tell your story and of your wish to marry, let mercy prevail. You honor Harvey Milk’s memory on what would have been his 80th birthday. Harvey Milk would be proud of your courage. And yes, I believe God is proud of you, too.
My dear friends, most importantly, I am here because of you. You witness to me, as so many of your brothers and sisters have through the years, that, in the biblical writer’s words, “No waters can quench your love and neither can floods drown it.”
Let us never forget: history finally honors those whose deepest values are built, not on hatred and judgment, but on love and mercy. Gandhi, Jesus, King, and Milk—we remember these giants because they spilled their blood in the belief that love will finally triumph over hatred.
There will come a day when others will thank you, as we thank Harvey Milk this weekend, for making it possible to stand before God and the state and say, “I will love you for better or worse, for richer for poorer, until death do us part.”
May God bless you this afternoon in your courageous work of love.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Seventh Sunday of Easter
May 16, 2010
Acts 16: 16-34
"Jail House Rock"
Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
We have been screaming “Christ Is Risen indeed! Alleluia!” for forty-three days now. You have either enjoyed this routine or else you have been humoring me along the way and your vocal cords are shot. Whatever your feelings, I thank you for playing along. It has been quite an Easter.
In a few weeks, we will hit the long stretch called “Ordinary Time” or “Sundays after Pentecost.” “Ordinary Time” is the liturgical equivalent of driving through the San Joaquin Valley. We will put away the white celebration paraments and snuff out the Paschal Candle. We will resume confessing our sins at the beginning of worship (perhaps you have noticed that we have omitted the confession during Easter; one traditions proclaims that it is impossible to sin at Easter--while a quaint and naïve thought, it is lovely quite the same, don’t you think?). My dear friends, we will be back on the road to normalcy in just a few short weeks.
If you are at all like me, you appreciate a little normalcy in your life. Shouting “Christ Is Risen Indeed!” just to humor the pastor gets old. There is only so much celebrating a person can do. Like a good car that cannot go eighty miles an hour forever and survive for the long haul, neither can we pull out all the Easter stops and let ‘er rip for too long. Eventually, we need to catch our breath.
And yet, we have needed these Easter days, too. They have reminded us that God will always be victorious no matter how great the odds. We have stuck out our tongues at death and taunted, “Nanny, nanny, boo, boo!” We have stood toe-to-toe with the devil at the baptismal pool, splashing water in his ugly face and daring him to mess with our God. For 43 days and counting, we have sung our favorite word, “Alleluia!”
Such victory dances are nothing new. In today’s first reading, we hear of Paul and Silas who were thrown into jail for ordering an evil spirit to come out of a young girl. She was a fortuneteller working for the ancient Home Psychic Network. When Paul and Silas cast out the evil spirit from her, her pimps, as pimps are wont to do, were furious--how dare Paul and Silas interrupt the cash flow this poor girl was bringing in? Paul and Silas were dragged before the magistrate, stripped, beaten with rods, and thrown into jail.
You have got to believe that Paul and Silas were crestfallen as the stockades slammed shut and metal ripped into their ankles and wrists. Funny thing, though: no sooner were Paul and Silas tossed into the clinker than they started singing hymns to God. They sang up such a storm that an earthquake occurred and their chains fell off and a get out of jail free card feel into their hands straight from heaven.
Peculiarly, instead of running for freedom, Paul and Silas stayed in their cell. They didn’t want their poor jailer to kill himself for failing to do his job and keep his prisoners locked up. Paul and Silas just sat on the bench and sang a holy version of Jail House Rock which began, “My God is stronger than your God.”
That’s what weeks and weeks of singing “Alleluia” will do for us. Singing Easter songs goes so deep into our bones that we are equipped to walk through the darkest nights and face the fiercest enemies. When evil comes our way, rather than running scared, we will sing away, “Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!”
As you know, one of my heroes is William Sloane Coffin. He was the chaplain when I was in divinity school. He was locked up in jail, along with other anti-war protestors, for trespassing at the U.S. Capitol. One of the young protestors who was in jail with him was quaking in his boots. James Carroll was the son of a U.S. Navy Admiral. He tells of suddenly hearing a voice from another cell singing, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” from Handel’s Messiah. He writes: “Coffin sang as if he were alone on the earth, and the old words rose through the dark as if Isaiah himself had returned to speak for you to God--to speak for God to you. Others in the cell block soon joined their voices to Coffin’s--‘The people who have walked in darkness have seen a great light’….He knew the words and he knew the music…You suddenly felt awash in an unexpected gratitude, for you realized that those words expressed your deepest faith, and that sung as they were, those words had an absolute integrity that far transcended your fearful hesitance.” (James Carroll in the foreword to Credo, William Sloane Coffin, 2004, Westminster John Knox Press, pg. x, 2004).
Oh, to hear such words. Oh, to sing such music. For seven weeks we have practiced such words and rehearsed such music. Over and over again we have sung, “Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!” We are ready now to go out into the world with resurrection music.
When I served Augustana Church in Washington, D.C., I began a tradition of taking the parish choir with me when visiting the dying. I will not forget gathering around the bed of a saint of the congregation and surrogate father to many. As we joined hands and wept, as was that parish’s tradition, we sang “Children of the Heavenly Father” in English and Swedish. Our singing dared death to do its dirty business. We knew, like you know, that God would get the final punch and with that punch, death would be knocked senseless and those we loved would live triumphantly forever.
The biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann notes that when we sing hymns, we are not only praising God, but we are also shaking our fist at evil. When we sing, ‘Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,’ we are also saying, “Down with the gods from whom no blessings flow.” (Leanne Van Dyk, Editor, A More Profound Alleluia, “The Opening of Worship,” John D. Witvliet, Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, 2005, pg. 12)
We do that here. People who visit here note that we are a singing congregation. We sing every verse of every hymn. I overheard a visitor a few weeks ago sigh disgustedly to his wife at the end of a hymn, “All six verses!” Yes, we love to sing together. We know we will need such songs because of the kind of ministry we dare to do. We praise God and defy the enemy to tread on 3rd and Ash and we do it all in one breath. We know that we cannot remain in this sanctuary for too long. Ministry on the city streets is calling us. The kind of ministry we do requires “alleluias” to be at our beckon call. Day-by-day, we stand toe-to-toe with some evil in our world and day-by-day we confidently proclaim that God will prevail.
Martin Luther said that those who believe that God conquered death cannot be quiet about it. He writes, “They must gladly and willingly sing and speak about it so that others also may come and hear it.” (Luther’s Works: Liturgy and Hymn, Vol. 53, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1965, pg. 333). That’s exactly what we have done during these days of Easter and that’s what we will do as the ordinary days come upon us.
And so, Easter now draws to a close--at least Easter in which I force you to shout, “Christ Is Risen Indeed! Alleluia!” When those tough times come in our lives, as they certainly will, when tears and sadness prevail, we will go deep to the well one more time and proclaim that our God can beat any measly god out there, and, oh yes, we will proclaim, too, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen!”
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Sixth Sunday of Easter/Mother's Day
May 9, 2010
John 14: 23-29
"Choosing Our Words Well"
Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
It is so hard to say goodbye to those we love. When I was in elementary school, my mother and I played a game of sorts. I always came home for lunch. When we finished eating and it was time for me to return to Woodsdale School, I would give my mom a kiss, say “goodbye,” run around the house, come right back where I had started from, and say “goodbye” again. There were days we would do this four and five times before I finally headed off across the National Road. It is so hard to say “goodbye.” Even at a young age, I sensed that one day my mother and I would have to say our final goodbye.
In today’s reading Gospel reading, we hear Jesus say his final goodbye to his disciples. The way Jesus said goodbye was similar to how I used to say goodbye to my mother. Jesus’ goodbye on the final night was a long, drawn out affair. 20% of the entire Gospel of John is devoted to Jesus’ final night with his disciples, to his saying goodbye well. Jesus washed their feet, celebrated a final meal with them, entrusted them with his peace, and told them not to be afraid. Jesus simply could not stop the conversation. He hoped his words would give the disciples courage in the days ahead.
Our ministry together imitates Jesus’ final goodbye. Ministry, if it is anything, is treating every word we speak to another person as if it is the last one we will ever utter. Of course, there will come a time when one of those words will be our final word. Whether that word is spoken to our mother or father, our children, our spouse, our dearest friend, or people we have just met, every word we speak has the possibility of being our last. Don’t we hope that our last word to those we love will be a good word?
Our worship teaches us how to choose good words carefully. We Christians believe that words matter. That is the reason our worship has words that have been used for centuries: these words have stood the test of times; these words work.
Words brought creation into being, words turned water into wine, words made the lame walk, words brought the dead back to life. Words spoken here are no different. We begin our worship in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. These few words draw us into God’s embrace of love. Over and over again this morning, we will say to one another, “The Lord be with you.” It is as if we are saying, “Don’t forget that God loves you…Don’t forget.” Half way through our worship, we will stop everything and share God’s peace with one another: “The peace of the Lord be with you always.” We will go all over this room, making certain that we speak a good word to almost everyone.
It might surprise you that this “passing of the peace” has often been the most controversial change in worship for congregations that have never experienced it. When we share the peace with one another, it is no longer just me and Jesus. Things become more intimate and they also become a bit more threatening. Suddenly, worship involves those around us, those we might not particularly like, those with whom we hold grudges. Suddenly our love for God is determined by how we love our greatest enemy. If we do not love one another, we certainly do not love God.
One old Orthodox monk was asked, “Do you accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?” He said, “Why of course not. I like to share Jesus with my friends.” That is what the peace is. It is sharing Christ’s love with one another, friend and foe alike. One theologian has said that the passing of the peace is “a sign of victory in the face of all that assaults the human community” (Timothy Radcliffe, Why Go to Church? pg. 174).
Just being here this morning is an indication of your eagerness to speak God’s language of love. You could have stayed home this morning, watched worship on television. But you have sensed that being at worship is living as Jesus lived on his final night. Gathering here is your opportunity to assure one another of your love and Christ’s love.
I have often heard people argue that bringing young children to worship is a waste of time; they say that children don’t understand what is being said or done. I beg to differ. It is here that children learn that God loves them. One of the women I fondly remember on this Mother’s Day is my Grandma Miller. Since my parents sang in the choir, I always sat with Grandma during worship. I often fell asleep in her lap and yet how wonderful to fall asleep in the lap of one who loved me and whom I loved. I honestly cannot remember a word that Reverend Myers, my childhood pastor, ever preached but I will never forget how he concluded all his sermons—some of you remember, too: “And now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Just being there in Grandma’s lap assured me of God’s love and that assurance has remained with me for a lifetime.
Some people find Mother’s Day a difficult day. They have not experienced their mothers as loving. One of the sad truths is that abusers of children were often abused themselves. They never learned the language of love. We are told that children have determined how the world will treat them by the time that they are six weeks old. If this is true, then every word a mother speaks to her little girl matters, every hug she gives her little boy speaks volumes about love.
Do you do your best to make certain that every word matters when you talk with others? One pastor tells this story that “when he was a kid, his parents had always invited neighbors to Sunday dinner, and that they’d all sit around the table holding hands as they said grace. One of the loneliest guests, he said, had been an elderly widow, and one Sunday, after the prayer, she simply asked, ‘Can we hold hands a little longer?’” (Sara Miles, Jesus Freak, page. 103)
So many people want us to hold their hands a little longer.
On this Mother’s Day, we give thanks to God for those women who have held our hands and who have chosen their words carefully. We give thanks for those women who continue to choose their words well when they speak to us. Let us pray that we will all be moved by these women’s example. By the grace of the Risen Savior, may we, too, choose our words wisely and speak them lovingly to one another. We never know which word will be our last. Whatever that word ends up being, may God grant that it will be a beautiful one that will let a dear person in our life know that Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Fifth Sunday of Easter
May 2, 2010
Acts 11: 1-18
"No More Gated Communities"
Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
Gated communities are as old as the hills. There is something about human nature that longs for gatherings of like-minded people. In our first reading this morning, we hear of such a gated community. It is the first Christian community made up entirely of Jewish people. Never forget that the first Christians were Jews who went to synagogue services first and then, if they liked, went to a meal at someone’s home where they remembered the night in which Jesus was betrayed and took bread.
Peter, a good Jew, had an astonishing vision which turned his gated community upside down. He saw four-footed unclean animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds as if coming down from heaven. There was a voice that said to him, not once but three times, “Get up, Peter; kill and eat.” Peter was horrified. How dare he, a good Jew, eat something so unclean?
God’s chosen people had a deep longing to remain pure and holy, to remain in a gated community if you will. There were 613 commandments in the Bible that instructed Jewish people how to maintain that purity. As far as I can tell, for most “Bible believing” people today, about only one of these 613 laws makes us squirm or sit up and pay attention. It is the law on homosexuality. The rest are quaint and precious and strike us like passing an Amish buggy on a country road. We simply do not take them seriously any longer.
Imagine Peter’s horror when he heard the heavenly voice telling him to eat unclean lizards and pork chops. This was unthinkable for a good Jew. What is astonishing is that Peter even gave this vision serious consideration. And so did the Bible: the Book of Acts mentions Peter’s experience not only in Acts 11 but also in Chapter 10—Luke was either asleep at the wheel or the early church deemed this experience incredibly important to its life together. Just as astonishing, suddenly, the vision was no longer about geckos and Alaskan king crabs; it was about baptizing an uncircumcised Gentile by the name of Cornelius and welcoming him into the emerging church’s life together.
Are you squirming yet? You are Gentiles! The Bible warned Peter about people like you. His brothers and sisters in the faith warned Peter about you, too. The problem centered on that one little detail, circumcision. Our problems in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America today pale in comparison to the biblical debates around welcoming uncircumcised people into the family of God. Peter’s vision commanded him to disregard over one thousand years of biblical tradition in order to open the doors for those on the outside who longed to be present with the Risen Christ on the inside. As so often happens when the fur is flying, a special convention was called in Jerusalem; God’s people fought like cats and dogs; and Peter was called upon to defend his case.
In whatever age, people long for gated communities, places where we can dress alike in pastels, eat lobster bisque, golf on membership only courses, talk in our special tribal lingo, and worship just like grandma and grandpa did.
In my hometown of Wheeling, West Virginia, high up on a hill above Chapline Street, stands--I assume it still stands--a majestic old building with the words “Lincoln School” elegantly formed in a concrete wall along the front of the school. Lincoln was where the African American students of Wheeling went to school from 1866 until desegregation came about in 1954. So many years of exclusion, so many. And who among us gave it much thought?
On and on it went in my hometown and I imagine in yours, too. They were, for many who were on the inside, the “good old days,” days when gates were slammed shut in outsiders’ faces and insiders felt pretty good about themselves.
I was part of such a gated community. When I was in second grade in Miss Johnson’s class, we had opening exercises every morning before reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some of you remember those opening exercise in the days when, as some claim, God was still in the classroom. We said the Pledge of Allegiance, sang “My Country Tis’ of Thee,” and prayed The Lord’s Prayer. Harmless enough, it would seem. And yet the sight of two of my seven year old Jewish classmates, Terry Sterling and Barbara Wiseman, still haunts me fifty-two years later. As twenty-eight of their little classmates prayed The Lord’s Prayer, Terry and Barbara remained seated, silent, and ostracized. We slammed the gate in their faces. I have always wondered what kind of “good old days God” would allow such brutality to two innocent children.
The recent immigration law passed in Arizona might cause us to ask whether we are still slamming the gate shut, whether we are hankering again for the gated communities of the good old days. I imagine some of you, maybe many of you, think this decision to tighten things up is a wise and courageous one on the part of Arizonan political leadership. You have heard the horrifying stories about brutal slayings carried out by drug cartels; you worry about increased health costs caused by undocumented people in this country. But, I wonder, if far deeper than wanting to protect this nation, is a pathological longing for gated communities and, in this case, for a gated nation. Never mind that people from Mexico do the bulk of our agricultural work in this state; never mind that you never go to a hotel without seeing a Mexican woman cleaning your room; never mind that it is almost always Mexican men you see chopping down weeds on steep banks. Building a gated nation from sea to shining sea scares me to death.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a respected group which tracks hate crimes in our country, counted 932 active hate groups in the United States in 2009. 60 of these groups are in California alone; only Texas has more, only four more. All hate groups have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. These groups include Skinheads, White Nationalists, Neo-Nazis. These groups long for gated communities and will do about anything in their power to maintain such a vision. These groups reek of exclusion and nastiness.
I have been reading a pesky little book called Jesus Freak. The author, Sara Miles, is in charge of the food distribution program at Saint Gregory Episcopal Church in San Francisco (look it up on the web, it is an intriguing place). Her pastor Paul Fromberg says, “The surest sign of Jesus’ presence in the Eucharist is when there’s somebody completely inappropriate at the altar” (Sara Miles, Jesus Freak, pg. xv). Said another way, Jesus’ presence is most realized when the doors are open and the gates are obliterated and all are welcome at God’s table.
I hope that is the vision we strive for here at First Lutheran. By the grace of the Risen Christ, may this be a place where somebody completely inappropriate feels right at home. That’s precisely what God had in mind when calling Peter with lizards and oysters. The Resurrection God urged Peter to fight hard so that Gentiles like you and I might gather here this morning and proclaim together, Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 25, 2010
Acts 9: 36-43
"Now, Was That So Hard?"
I received an email a few days ago from an old college fraternity brother. Call him Dave-O. He was one of my roommates at Phi Kappa Psi. I can’t remember when I last corresponded with him, maybe thirty-six years ago.
Dave was the picture of health and vitality. He was a strapping athlete who played on our college lacrosse team. We did things we shouldn’t have done back then, in part, I suppose, because, at twenty, we were certain we would never die.
It’s 40 years later now. Dave is my age, fifty-nine. He has Parkinson’s disease. When I received the news, I thought, not Dave my fun-loving fraternity brother.
I am getting to the age my mother warned me about. She told me there would come a day when the arrival of my college alumni magazine would bring a certain dread. She warned that I would go to the obituary section first. She was right. I turn to the obituaries before going to the accomplishments and accolades; I go there more often now because that’s where I find my friends.
Dagmar told me on Thursday evening that I was very quiet, that I wasn’t saying much. I had not noticed but I am sure she was right. I suppose, somehow, my mind reeked of illness and death. People my age aren’t supposed to get Parkinson’s. Or are they?
When the lives of those we love reek of frailty, more than ever, we are called to be resurrection people. We are called to enter rooms of dread and do exactly what Peter did over the dead body of Tabitha, boldly announce, “Tabitha, get up.”
Walking into these dread rooms is never easy. Who are we to announce life when frightening ills terrorize those we love? Most of us are not doctors. Maybe we should be quiet, stand clear, let nature take its course. Should we really expect miracles--that seems awfully strange, don’t you think?
I would like to share with you my old roommate’s thoughts on how one might enter a room wreaking of weakness and proclaim resurrection life. Listen…
In the months since my Parkinson’s diagnosis, I’ve bumped into too many old friends who are quick to apologize because they didn’t call me after hearing about my new challenge.
“I should have called but I didn’t know what to say,” is an all too common refrain.
The phrase “I didn’t know what to say” should be stricken from everyone’s vocabulary. You’ve known me for 5,10,15,20 years, you’re a smart person, you have a myriad of communication options, you must sense that I am, if not suffering physically, certainly experiencing some emotional pain, and you “Don’t know what to say?!”
Think how selfish those words sound. It might make you uncomfortable to make that call to a person facing the biggest challenge in their life. Does avoiding a little awkwardness take precedent over showing that you care? Do you want that on your tombstone?
So the next time you think, “I should call, but, golly gee, I don’t know what to say,” get a mirror and have a talk with the person staring back at you. And think about your first thought. When you get to, “I should have called, but”… STOP. Your initial instinct is right on. Of course you should call! And know this: if you call and babble, stammer, and generally butcher everything your English teachers ever taught you, I’ll only remember that you called. If you call, and say something totally stupid, I’ll only remember that you called. If you call and find it hard to go on, I’ll only remember that you called. At a time when I am just plain scared of my own mortality and feeling things I’ve never felt before, I don’t care what you say or how you say it.
A Wizard of Oz reference seems in order… have a heart, use your brain, and muster up some courage.
I recognize that no one has the ability to say the exact right thing at the exact right time to a friend in a tough spot. But remember: a friend in a tough spot is a friend first and foremost, not a grammarian. He values your friendship, not your use of syntax.
Role play with me: You: “Hey, I don’t know what to say.” Me: “You don’t have to say anything, the fact that you called speaks volumes.” There, was that so hard.
Walking into rooms filled with sickness is scary; words often fail us there. I imagine that is why so many of us avoid such places. We do not have the right words. Peter walked into such a room, Tabitha’s room. She was dead. What could he say that would make a difference? He said the unthinkable, “Tabitha, get up.” Were these the right words? He must have wondered, too. He said them because he had heard Jesus say something similar when Lazarus had died. So Peter said, “Get up, Tabitha.” After all, hadn’t Jesus told Peter, “Follow me” and didn’t “Follow me” mean that he should utter the unspeakable when everyone else was silent?
Easter is one story after another of God doing the unthinkable, announcing life in the face of death. The God who calls us to follow him stood before chaos and darkness and said, “Let there be light.” This God stood in slave camps and said to powerful and violent rulers, “Let my people go.” This God stood in a valley of rotting, rattling bones and said, “Let these bones live.” This God stood at an empty tomb and said, “My dear Son, Jesus, rise up.”
Now it is our turn. Jesus invites us to give it a try, to go to places stinking of death and boldly to announce life.
You come to me and ask about one of our members, “How is Hank? I haven’t seen him in a while. I miss him.” You care, I know you do. But why not call him yourself? The richness of Lutheran theology suggests that you can do that; we are all priests; we don’t have to wait for Pastor Miller before we care. It is scary, of course it is, but, as my friend says, “You don’t have to say anything. The fact that you call speaks volumes.”
I once asked a wise bishop whether I should visit a church member who was facing a particularly thorny situation: “Do you think I can visit him without calling first? Would I be butting in if I weren’t invited and simply barged in?” I will forget his Bishop Jansen’s words: “Wilk,” he said, “when you bear the resurrection, you never have to ask for permission.”
We are the bearers of resurrection life. Like Peter, we are the ones who must go to places of heartache and brokenness and say, “In the name of the Risen Savior, get up.” As my friend reminds us, throw grammar out the window. Go to your friends and say, “Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!” Now, was that so hard!?!
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Third Sunday of Easter
April 18, 2010
John 21: 1-19
"Do You Want to Get Away?"
My favorite commercials of late are those of Southwest Airline. Having recently tried to stuff all our earthly belongings into two small carry-ons when we went to the Vancouver Olympics, I love the Southwest luggage guys out on the tarmac, bare-chested, claiming that you can check your luggage for free with Southwest. But the Southwest commercials I particularly love are the ones that present an embarrassing situation and then ask, “Do you want to get away?” There is the one where the guy asks a lovely woman to dance, whips up dancing frenzy, and then crashes into the DJ’s stand. The question: “Do you want to get away?”
Most of the resurrection appearances in the Bible are of the “do you want to get away?” variety. The disciples dropped everything to follow Jesus, including jobs and families. You have got to believe that some people thought they were nuts for giving up what security they had in order to follow an itinerant preacher whose only credentials were being a carpenter from Nazareth and being baptized by a raving lunatic in a muddy river. Imagine what fools they must have felt like when Jesus ended up nailed on the cross. This was the perfect time to ask the disciples, “Do you want to get away?”
Of course, we know they did want to get away. They hid in upper rooms with locked doors for fear that the authorities would come after them next. In today’s Gospel reading, Peter invited a few of the disciples to go fishing. At least for guys, when things are really bad, for some reason beyond my comprehension, they like to go fishing. Who knows whether the disciples figured this was the perfect way to forget about all that had recently happened to Jesus or if they were simply going back to what they knew best now that their dreams had been shattered and Jesus was gone? For whatever reason, they went fishing and caught nothing.
I would imagine that almost every person here this morning laughs at the Southwest Airline commercials. We laugh because we get them. We have had those moments, like the disciples, when we wanted to get away in the worst sort of way.
What do you do when you want to get away? Dagmar and I spent a few days camping this past week at William Heise County Park near Julian. We had the camp to ourselves and I almost completely forgot about church council meetings and balanced budgets as wild turkeys yakked away and woodpeckers pecked and we stared mindlessly into the camp fire under star-lit nights. Yesterday, we went to Santa Anita Race Track for 75th Anniversary Hat Day. I told Dagmar there was a moment when I forgot about all the cares of the world--including our income tax return--as my only concern was staring at the Daily Racing Form and deciding whether or not to pick Believe in Hope to win in the sixth race.
I imagine that every one of you has something in your life that enables you to forget, if but for a moment, the cares of the world.
Religious people, when they want to get away, go to church on Sunday morning. Others love to go to go on retreats at exotic secluded settings or monasteries to forget about the cares of the world for a while.
What is fascinating about today’s reading is that Jesus appeared to the disciples, not in those “want to get away places” but in the daily affairs of life of changing diapers, interacting with irascible office mates, and cooking another “Hamburger Helper” meal. Jesus appeared to Peter and his pals as they resumed the rough and tumble family fishing trade and had a barbecue on the beach. Note well: he appeared, not in a synagogue or on the Sabbath day or in some esoteric religious ritual, but in the humdrum of life on a perfectly ordinary day. He appeared as the disciples baited hooks and dug into a breakfast of fried fish and toast.
I suppose we tend to think that if the Risen Christ is going to show up in our lives, he is going to show up in “religious places” like at church on Sunday or in heaven when we die—and he certain does. And yet, I find Christians obsess about seeing Jesus when they die and spend so much time thinking about heaven that they almost forget about looking for him in the daily routines of life in the here and now. Isn’t it just as important to see Jesus now as it is in heaven, in the ordinary as well as the so-called sacred?
We so desperately want to get away to those holy places with holy things and holy people—and that is fine; and yet, we often miss Jesus when he appears to us in the routines of life. Imagine what our breakfasts would be like if we expected Jesus to show up around oat meal and orange juice. I know, at least in our family, from time to time, after we have prayed, “Come Lord Jesus,” and passed the eggs and bacon, we ask, “Have we prayed yet?” This sadly shows that not in a million years do we really expect Jesus to show up and be our guest, taking a seat for toast and jam.
I wonder if that is why so few families and friends ever gather around meals anymore. Maybe our slap-dash meals are indicative of the fact that we cannot imagine Jesus showing up to join us. The statistics are staggering of how few families eat the evening meal together let alone breakfast. And, if families do eat together, television is running and rarely is everyone present. One must at least ask whether Jesus would waste his time showing up while we watch reality television and catch the latest on the Tiger Wood saga.
I invite you all this week to be exceedingly attentive and look for the Risen Christ to join you at an ordinary meal with family and friends. Expect Christ to show up at your job--after all, that’s where he appeared to Peter and the boys--and treat every colleague as if she or he just might be the Risen Christ.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Second Sunday of Easter
April 11, 2010
Acts 5: 27-32; John 20: 19-31
"Free to Doubt"
You have noticed, I’m sure, that religion is getting a bad name these days and, sadly, in many cases, it is well deserved. Whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, religion demonstrates an inflexibility and judgmentalism that sickens kind-hearted people. Bombing buildings, occupying land forcibly, forming militia groups that create chaos and destruction--religious extremists are alive and well in our world.
One wonders where this rigidity and nastiness got its start. Such mean-spiritedness is certainly not condoned by Jesus. In the Gospel of John, we hear of Thomas who was not present with the other disciples when the Risen Jesus appeared to them that first Easter evening. Jesus could easily have judged him. Thomas was not there the night the Risen Savior appeared to the other disciples. He said he could not believe what the other disciples told him about the Risen Christ “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” You can hear strict Christians making harsh judgments: “What kind of follower of Jesus was Thomas?”
When Jesus came to Thomas a week after his appearance to the other disciples, he is anything but mean-spirited. He said, “Peace with you.” There is no criticism of Thomas’ desire to see the marks of Jesus’ crucifixion, no lambasting of his doubts. Jesus invites Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.” Rather than judgment, Jesus demonstrated enormous patience and compassion toward Thomas.
And then in our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we hear of Peter and the other apostles preaching up a storm in Jerusalem after the resurrection. These are the same guys who only recently had been sickening cowards and turned their backs on their friend, Jesus, in his time of need. But there Peter and his pals are preaching to beat the band. The religious authorities had to issue a cease and desist order and throw them into jail from time-to-time just to shut them up.
Who knows for sure why the Risen Savior showed such compassion toward Peter, just as he did to Thomas. Instead of judging Peter, Jesus empowered Peter with the greatest gift of all, the gift of the Holy Spirit. Instead of throwing him out of the fold, Jesus brought Peter deeper into the center of life and made him one of the most courageous people the church has ever known.
Jesus offered Peter and Thomas, a coward and a doubter, a second chance and amazing grace to boot.
If Jesus was so understanding of Peter‘s cowardliness and Thomas’ doubts, why is the church often so inflexible and unwilling to work gracefully with people’s doubts and struggles?
This morning, we receive fourteen new members into our community of faith, including Daniel Danger Diepholz who is to be baptized. Along with them, we will all be asked whether we believe in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? This is a big question. My guess is that many of us, dare I say all of us, will have our doubts about this question from time-to-time.
Frederick Buechner says that “Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith.” He is so right and yet why are we are so afraid to express our doubts in the church? How many times have you said, “I am sorry for asking such a stupid questions” or “I know a Christian should never ask a question like this.” Why do we see doubt as such a sinful thing?
I hope that First Lutheran is always a community that makes space for people to ask questions and express doubts to one another. I pray that, by the Spirit, we might be as graceful and compassionate toward one another as the Risen Savior was toward Peter and Thomas.
Now, not for a minute am I suggesting that we be wishy-washy about our faith. I am definitely not saying, “It doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe.” If that were the case, pity poor Jesus who died on the cross: what would his death have been worth if it doesn’t matter what we believe? Enough of that gimpy-kneed hogwash! And I am certainly not counseling parents and grandparents to let your children believe whatever they want and to decide for themselves whether they go to church on Sunday morning. Mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, stand up for Jesus and stand up for your children! Make them go to church! If your child decides she wants to use drugs, are you going to let her be free to do whatever she wants? Pity the thought! For God’s sake, likewise, teach your children to love Jesus Christ. Give them life not death.
Standing up for our faith, however, is a far cry from refusing to let one another express doubts and questions about our faith.
One of the books I was required to read before entering Wittenberg University as a freshmen was Paul Tillich’s Dynamics of Faith. Tillich was one of the theological giants of the twentieth century. In his book, he writes: “Many Christians…feel anxiety, guilt, and despair about what they call ‘loss of faith.’ But serious doubt is confirmation of faith” (Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith, pg. 22). I have always been grateful that my college made me read Tillich’s book before coming to college and taught me that doubts would make my faith stronger. The faculty knew that college religion courses would shake the foundations of our Sunday School faith just like last Sunday’s earthquake. They knew that if we were allowed to doubt and question, it was likely that we would mature in our faith and that our Christianity would become richer and deeper.
Which brings us to this morning. The fourteen people who join our congregation are joining a community that believes strongly in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We confess our faith every Sunday morning in the words of the Apostles’ Creed or the Nicene Creed. And yet, as central as our confession is to all that we are and do here, let us pray that if cowardly Peter or doubting Thomas showed up here this morning, the first words we would utter are, “Peace be with you” and not “How dare you!”
May we grow strong together in faith. May we trust one another enough to express our doubts and ask our questions. May we be a community that loves one another into the answers that will finally help us proclaim, Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
The Resurrection of Our Lord, Easter Morning
April 4, 2010
Luke 24: 1-12
"A Most Monstrous Story!"
Alleluia! Christ Is Risen!
I spent the better part of this week staring into space. We preachers rarely get an opportunity to dazzle the crowds and so, when the opportunity arises like this morning, we get all shaky-kneed and blathery. I don’t think that explains my space-staring, however. My problem, as far as my expert self analysis reveals, is that I have found it a daunting task to make heads or tails of that Easter morning, two thousand years ago.
As you know, there are four accounts of Jesus rising from the dead (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Each has a different spin on what transpired and it is enough to drive one daffy. Matthew has two women going to the tomb; Mark has three; John only one; and this morning’s gospel from Luke has, as far as I can tell, about four (Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, Joanna, and the so called “other women”).
There are other questions, as well: was it still dark or had the sun come up when the women arrived at the tomb; was it an angel, a young man in white, or two men in dazzling apparel who greeted them? And, doggonit, had the stone already been rolled away when the women arrived or did the angel wait for them before the grand finale boulder-rolling occurred? To cap off the confusion, according to Saint Luke, when Peter received the women’s news of the empty tomb, he went to see for himself and “walked away puzzled, shaking his head” (Eugene Peterson, The Message).
Are you shaking your head as to what happened that first Easter morning? If you are puzzled, take heart. Even scholars struggle to make sense of it all. Richard Lischer, Lutheran pastor and Duke Divinity School professor, notes: “The event suffers from certain verification problems.” I’ll say it does! Frederick Buechner, author and preacher extraordinaire, writes of the resurrection accounts: “The Gospels are far from clear as to just what happened” (Frederick Buechner, Whistling in the Dark, pg. 45). Freddie, you’ve got that right!
Maybe puzzlement is par for the course. The old African-American Spiritual asks, “Were you there when God raised him from the tomb?” I hope that is not a trick question. According to the Bible, no one was there. And, by the way, I doubt any of you were either!
And so, how to make sense of the empty tomb? Poets always seem to say these things so much better. I love John Updike’s counsel in his poem, Seven Stanzas at Easter:
The four gospel writers did not make things “less monstrous.” They did not tell the story of Jesus rising from the dead with the same words or in some tame and domesticated manner. They unleashed the power of the resurrection story.
Whenever we stand at empty tombs, we end up tongue-tied. Staring into dark caves, we need a story unlike the shabby ones we usually tell if left to our own feeble devices. You have noticed this, I’m sure. You have been at the graveyard when the last clod of dirt hits the casket and everyone returns to their automobiles. What to say to the widow? Kay Redfield Jamison tells of standing at her husband’s grave, “I could not think of anything to say…at least nothing that was true. We mourners stood in silence” (Kay Redfield Jamison, Nothing Was the Same, pg 44).
Novelist Jim Harrison writes of a woman who confronts the pain of her old friend’s prostate cancer. She wonders “whether anyone had a religion to deal with this” (Jim Harrison, The Farmer’s Daughter, pg. 32).
The reason we make such a fuss this morning is because we proclaim that we have such a religion. Our religion has a dazzling story that will shake the foundations of the universe and be music to people’s ears who have lost the capacity to sing. Yes indeed, we have a “monstrous” story to tell.
You are at the tomb right now as sure as those women were there that first Easter morning. You have come here and found the tomb empty. You are being asked, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? Jesus is not here, but has risen?” How are you going to tell this story?
When you leave here, people will ask why you are so dressed up—and I must say you all have washed up real nice, especially for southern Californians. What they might really want to ask you is, “Tell me a story that won’t make me fear the dark any longer.” They will not ask you whether you understand the resurrection--really, who cares? The issue is far more serious! They will wonder: “Do you believe that God has the power to bring Jesus back from the dead?” Well, do you?
You need to believe that Christ rose from the dead if you are going to go where the world needs you most, where the lilies are wilting, the music is played on out-of-tune pianos if at all, and the crowds are long gone. The only person to tell the story will be you. Your knees will knock, of course they will, because, if you get the story right, you will unleash the power to make someone’s life better. You will take your Easter story to the intensive care unit where a friend is hanging on for dear life; it will be up to you sing “Alleluia! Christ is risen” to the only accompaniment there, beep, beep, beep. Your son is gay and has wondered for far too long whether life is worth living any longer. It will be up to you to tell him of those crazy Lutherans who are willing to sing alleluia with him just the way he is. Your sweet neighbor, God bless her soul, will invite you for tea and the moment she answers the door, she will fall into your arms, babbling that her husband has left her for the woman of his dreams. You will pause, flabbergasted; and then, miraculously, you will tell her how beautiful she is and that the Risen Savior is walking hand-in-hand with her into the sunset.
This is precisely why all four stories of Jesus’ resurrection are a tad different and sometimes drive us to distraction. Each account of the Risen Savior was tailor made for people who desperately needed to hear of God’s power nuanced in a way that touched their lives. That, by the way, is exactly what our ministry, your ministry, is about: it is our searching how best to touch suffering people’s lives with the joy of the resurrection in a way that they will cherish and never forget.
We are all little children who need to hear one more story that will promise us that we don’t need to be afraid of the dark anymore. We gather this morning because we believe that story is told here. The Easter story stretches the capacity of our language, especially this preacher’s; the story sometimes is almost impossible to grasp. But that is ok; in fact, that is wonderful. You see, God’s story trumps all our stories. God’s story has five aces up his sleeve when it comes to facing death: God will use every one of those aces and God always will win. Easter does to us what your bulletins do on the last page: Easter turns us upside down! We take this spectacular story to the dying world, not because we are better or holier and certainly not because we have all the answers. We simply are the people who believe that Jesus has risen from the dead and we are willing to shout our fool heads off, proclaiming to any and all who will listen, Alleluia. Christ is risen!
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Easter Vigil
April 3, 2010
"That We May Be Exalted"
My wife, Dagmar, took an amazing picture of an old Orthodox Church when she visited Russia a few years ago. You must look twice to realize you are looking at a church. There is an Olympic size swimming pool where the majestic sanctuary used to be. A Ten meter diving platform rises to the ceiling where a mosaic of Christ the All-Powerful once loomed over worshipers.
Where did all the Christians go who worshipped there? Were they still telling the stories of God’s love under the communist regime? I read of one small community of believers that carried on and gathered in a dilapidated garage behind a ramshackle house. Cheap laminated icons hung on the walls; dusty plastic flowers in old vodka bottles lined the altar. Incense rose to a corrugated roof where Christ looked down from a ripped and faded, cardboard mosaic. This community continued to tell the stories of God’s love, for better or worse.
So it seems we never get the luxury of choosing the time when we will tell God’s stories. There will be occasions when the church is the biggest show in town. Other times, only a handful of faithful souls will persevere as the rest of the world goes its merry way.
In his little book, A Dresser of Sycamore Trees, Garrett Keizer writes of his church in rural Vermont. The tiny place can barely afford a pastor; in fact, he has not completed seminary. He decides that their congregation will observe the Great Vigil of Easter. This is the first time this has been attempted. Two people are with him as the service begins. He writes: “The candle sputters in the half darkness, like a voice too embarrassed or overwhelmed to proclaim the news: ‘Christ is risen.’ But it catches fire, and there we are three people and a flickering light--in an old church on a Saturday evening in spring, with the noise of the cars and their winter-rusted mufflers outside.” He notes: “The Lord is with us, or we are pathetic fools. I like it that way. I believe God likes it that way. My worry is always that others will be discouraged rather than exalted.”
Things are not altogether different here tonight. We, just a few in the grand scope of things, gather in Vigil, to tell the stories of God’s mighty acts down through history. I trust that we will be exalted and not discouraged.
Shouldn’t there be more people? Maybe from time to time, it is good practice that just a few tell of God’s wonder. Times will come when the telling of God’s story will rely on just one or two of us. You have been there, in a hospital room, just you and your daughter. Who to shout, “Christ Is Risen!” You have been there, at home, alone, depressed, tipsy, waiting, and someone knocked and told you of God’s love.
Maybe on nights like this it is important that a faithful remnant carries on. Tomorrow morning, our churches will be jammed wall-to-wall. It will be glorious. And yet, times like tonight ensure that tomorrows will come in all their glory. And so, let us now tell the stories of God’s astonishing love to one another. Let us carry on.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Good Friday
April 2, 2010
John 18:1-19:42
"Twenty Degrees Darker than Total Darkness"
The light has died. You have no bulletin, no words to read. You are at a loss for words. It is dark, very dark.
Two weeks ago, a group of us from First Lutheran went to the Timken Museum in Balboa Park to see an exhibit of Rembrandt prints. One of the prints we saw was “The Entombment.” From a distance, the print looked like a canvas filled entirely with black ink. Closer examination revealed a few figures in the tomb where Christ was buried, but it was hard to make out anything distinguishable.
The director of the Timken said of this print, “It doesn’t get any darker.” It was dark indeed.
And, of course, on this Good Friday evening, it doesn’t get any darker either.
We sit in darkness and we are at a loss for words. How could this happen to Jesus? Any words are inadequate. Perhaps that’s a good reason not to have a bulletin— words in the face of Jesus’ death just do not seem to work.
There is a cave in Kentucky called Mammoth. It is said that if you enter this cave, you experience 100% darkness. In fact, I read somewhere that this cave is twenty degrees darker than total darkness.
It is rare that we experience total darkness. The city lights blend into the evening sky. The stars do their dance of light. Total darkness—that is rare.
Perhaps this night is even more than twenty degrees darker than total darkness. Jesus died on this night. We know the ending of the story, of course, but can you grasp Jesus’ love for us? He died not knowing what was ahead for him. The words, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” are words uttered in darkness.
In a matter of hours we will celebrate light, but for now, let us sit in darkness. Let us be astonished at how much Christ loves us, enough to go where it doesn’t get any darker. Enough to love us to the end.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Maundy Thursday
April 1, 2010
1 Corinthians 11: 23-26; John 13: 1-17, 31b-35
"Let the Triduum Begin"
We have just begun Triduum, which, in Latin means, “the space of three days.” Tonight, tomorrow, and Saturday evening, we will experience one worship service stretching over three days. We will experience, in a grace-filled way, the betrayal, passion, death and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. You will notice, as we near the close of this evening’s worship, there will be no benediction; that’s because this service resumes tomorrow where we left off this evening.
Lent-2010 is drawing to a close. We have joined together as brothers and sisters in Christ in our common struggle against sin, death, and the devil—all that keeps us from loving God and each other. I have been moved by the stories you have shared of your Lenten discipline. One of you inspired me to enhance my own Lenten journey. You told me of your daily reflections on the Psalms and your gratitude to God who has dramatically changed your life for the better.
We have been reminded again and again of our baptisms. In visits to the Timken Art Museum, at Holden Evening Prayer, in Wednesday evening classes, at yoga, on “art hikes” through our city, in trips to the desert, in Sunday morning presentations on the liturgy—all these occasions have drawn us closer to Jesus. It has been a marvelous Lent, don’t you think?
In a few moments we will wash one another’s feet. In this ritual, which some traditions deem sacramental, we will love one another as Christ has commanded us. We will take this love, actually Christ’s love, from here to the streets, as we clothe the homeless with coats, socks, and underwear that lined our aisle on Palm Sunday. We will take that love to countless places that only you know.
We will participate most intimately in Christ’s love, however, as we eat the bread and share the cup. In his recent novel, South of Broad, Pat Conroy writes of the Eucharist, “I felt the touch of God on my tongue, His taste on my palate” (pg. 21). Tonight, we will taste God on our palate. This banquet will call to mind the one we will share with all the faithful we have ever loved and with the Holy Trinity in the fullest way imaginable on that great rejoicing day when all things are made well forever and ever.
The church has often wondered what exactly happens to the bread and wine on this holy table. Entire denominations have been formed and split apart over what happens to the bread and wine when the words, “Our Lord Jesus Christ on the night in which he was betrayed…,” are spoken. I love what Kathleen Norris writes of Holy Communion: “The point of the Eucharist, after all, is not only to change the bread and wine into Christ, but to change me as well” (Kathleen Norris, Acedia and Me, pg. 208).
Tonight and in the nights to follow, Christ will move among us and change us in profound and moving ways.
May God bless you during this three day journey and may you be transformed by the love of Christ.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Palm Sunday/Passion Sunday
March 28, 2010
Luke 22: 14- 23: 47
"Did You Say, Crucify Him?"
Quite a few of my pastoral colleagues will not be preaching in their churches this morning. They believe that this morning’s worship service is filled with drama enough without their trying to add to it. Their sense is that words from the pulpit will only dilute this already emotionally packed morning.
We have cried out, “Hosanna to the Son of David;” we have waved our palm branches for all to see; we have moved past the coats in the aisle just like those spread before Jesus as he entered Jerusalem; we have sung the stirring “All Glory Laud and Honor.” We are now in the midst of the passion story and soon Jesus will be crucified and draw his final breath. My preacher friends rightly note, “More words will likely only clutter this day.”
I have chosen to say a few words, however, because of a few other words the crowd screamed so long ago, “Crucify, crucify him!” These words haunt me. If I had been there, would I have joined the frenzied shouting, “Crucify, crucify him!” I wonder. That is why I am preaching.
At the conclusion of this morning’s liturgy, you will be invited to take the small slip of paper stapled to your bulletin; on it, you will write “something in your life for which you feel Christ has given up his life.” You will then come forward and bang that slip of paper, with a hammer and nail, into the cross of Christ.
Jared and I struggled how exactly to write this invitation in this morning’s bulletin. Should we invite you to write something you do in your life that crucifies Jesus? That sounds unusually harsh, don’t you think? We opted for a nicer, kinder invitation, but I have wondered all week whether we chose the correct words: don’t you and I crucify Christ every day of our lives?
Of course, we are uncomfortable speaking so bluntly, dare I say, so truthfully. Crucify Christ? How barbaric! We would never do such a dastardly thing…Or would we?
I wonder if we soft peddle the words, “Crucify, crucify him,” because, deep down, we don’t believe we are worth dying for. We airbrush our sins, veneer over our imperfections. We make believe that we would never shout, “Crucify, crucify him!”
Richard Lischer, a Lutheran who teaches preaching at Duke Divinity School, says that there is no story in all Greco-Roman literature comparable to the ones written about Peter. The gospel writers tell of Peter’s cowardly encounter with the servant girl in the high priest’s courtyard. In that story, as you know, Peter denies having ever known Jesus. Peter will lead the early church immediately following Jesus’ death and resurrection, and yet the gospels, our most holy books, consistently portray Peter in a tawdry manner that it is deeply embarrassing (Richard Lischer, The End of Words, pg. 115). If Peter, our leader, was not airbrushed or veneered, why do we think we should be any different?
As this week unfolds, each of us will be reminded of our own cowardice and sickened by our unfaithfulness, our complicity in Jesus’ death. And yet, much more importantly, we will be struck by how much Jesus loves us in spite of ourselves.
As we hear the nails pounded into the cross, we will likely wish we loved Jesus more. If we discover anything in this morning’s service, it will be that, in spite of our own soaring highs and disgusting lows, Jesus continues to love us all the way to Calvary. Perhaps that is the surprise of it all: how Jesus loves us so.
I apologize if these words seem an interruption. But please, please, as the nails are driven, be astonished by Jesus’ love for you.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 21, 2010
John 12: 1-8
"Blessed Extravagance"
I prepare my sermons by first prayerfully reading the appointed biblical texts well in advance of Sunday morning, sometimes reading them three and four times over. I take notes on what stands out to me and what I don’t understand. I try to get a sense of the smells, sounds, tastes, feels and sights that might accompany the readings. I then like to see what biblical scholars have to say about the texts. I also love to read sermons by great preachers to see how their minds play with the chosen texts.
Today, I confess, I skipped a lot of this process. I did read our reading from John a month ago. But, the minute I read it, a thought stuck in my mind that has refused to go away. I am not sure that thought has anything to do with today’s text. You will have to judge that. You may even say, “How in the world did he ever get that crazy idea?”
The story is about Jesus going to dinner at the home of Lazarus, Mary, and Martha. You can imagine the joy in the house when Jesus comes visiting—a very short time ago, Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead.
As you just heard, Mary does the unthinkable. She takes a pound of costly perfume made of nard, probably worth about a year’s wages, anoints Jesus’ feet with it, and then lovingly caresses and dries his feet with her hair. We listeners know that in a week after Mary anoints Jesus’ feet, he will be dead. This is Mary’s final opportunity to adore the man she so deeply loves.
The disciple Judas is also present at the meal. The moment he sees Mary’s extravagant behavior, he goes ballistic: how dare she be so wasteful when there are poor people in the world waiting for just a bite to heat—imagine how many people this costly perfume could feed!
Judas is far from extravagant. Judas is the responsible one; you might even call him the ethical one. He is so concerned with the poor that he cannot enjoy a moment of Mary’s extravagance.
Judas took himself far too seriously. He really should have played more. In Judas’ mind, every second mattered and, as we know, finally, nothing mattered at all for Judas. He became so bitter and judgmental that he finally turned his back on his best friend, Jesus, and worse yet, he turned his back on himself.
If you care for your aging mother, your addicted daughter, your depressed brother, your unemployed friend, your brothers and sisters who live on the city streets, your nerves will eventually begin to fray; you will become exhausted and edgy. People like Judas will try to convince you that taking time to delight in the things you enjoy is somehow wrong when important matters press in on you.
The Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote: “There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence which is activism and over-work. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of innate violence. To allow oneself…to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism…destroys our own inner capacity for peace.”
What I have found doing ministry in our nation’s cities, especially with the poor, is that we who exercise compassion day after day can easily lose our sense of joy; we can be become plagued with compassion fatigue. One of my colleagues once castigated me because our church kept our lawn and garden looking nice. His church’s lawn was a weed patch filled with litter and broken glass. He said to me, “We have too much ministry to do with the poor and disenfranchised to be concerned about how our grounds and building look.” Why couldn’t he have just a little fun?
When Jesus shows gratitude for Mary’s generosity, I sense him giving us all permission to celebrate life, to have fun. Jesus tells us to loosen up and to be passionate once-in-a-while about things that bring us joy.
I gave a Bible study on this text this past Tuesday at a luncheon of the pastors of the San Diego Organizing Project. The SDOP pastors care about issues of justice, especially issues affecting the poor. If a protest happens on our city streets or an action occurs at a council member’s office, you can expect to find SDOP pastors. I asked each pastor to tell what he or she is passionate about. I told them I didn’t want to hear a single word about their churches or about their commitments to the poor and issues of justice. I invited them to share the things that bring them joy.
One pastor said that he has visited every major league baseball stadium in America; another said he gets absolutely lost when he surfs; a few said they are golfing fanatics even though their scores do not indicate it; others shared their love for gardening, one saying he checked on his tomatoes when coming home for work before he checked on his kids; one naughty pastor spoke of his pleasure at watching the ponies run at Del Mar…I wonder who that was?
As these committed pastors shared their passions, smiles came to their faces. Suddenly I knew them like I had never known them before.
We all need to do things that bring us joy. There will inevitably come a time for all of us when we will be called to stand with Jesus at the foot of cross. When this occurs, our souls will be sorely tested. When we stand up for the underdogs, people will inevitably criticize us as Judas criticized Mary. If we are going to care about this world as Christ wishes us to do, we are entitled to a little extravagance.
So I ask you: what do you love doing? What makes you forget the challenges of life, but for a moment, and lose yourself in the joy of it all? Some of you love to read; others love hiking in the desert; some delight in cooking and finding a new recipe; others cannot wait for the newest movie; a few of you yell your heads silly when San Diego State makes the NCAA tournament. What do you love to do? Jesus insists that you do it!
People who care for others need a time to sing, a time to pray, a time to laugh, a time to play. We need to sit at Jesus feet, to eat a meal with him, and to take great delight in doing so. Like Mary, you are here this morning to be lost in your love for Jesus and to adore the Lamb of God who takes away your sins and the sins of the world. Savor these moments. Please enjoy.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Fourth Sunday in Lent
March 14, 2010
Luke 15: 1-3, 11-32
"So Who is The Prodigal?"
I imagine that many of us here this morning would say that being a Christian is about leading a good life, being a good person. We call people good Christians when they attend church regularly, give a portion of their earnings to the work of God, try to follow the Ten Commandments, and care for the poor.
I remember hearing Pastor Franklin Fry of Summit, New Jersey, describe Christians very differently. He said the greatest mistake we make in our Sunday Schools is teaching our children that Christians are good little girls and boys. He insisted that we teach our children differently, that we tell them that Christians are sinners and that God does everything possible to bring them back home.
We just heard the parable known as “The Prodigal Son.” The younger of the two sons asks his father to give him his inheritance. This is a heartbreaking request. Inheritances are given when parents die not while they are alive. The younger son is saying to his father, “You are as good as dead in my eyes. Now show me the money.”
We know this parable better than any other one with the exception perhaps of the Good Samaritan. The younger son goes off and squanders every cent his father has given him in riotous living. Things are so bad that the son is happy simply to eat with the pigs. Finally, the son has a change of heart. As we listen to the parable, we are uncertain whether the son’s change of heart comes because he feels so terrible about what a rotten life he has lived and how he has treated his father or because he longs for three square meals and a warm bed. Either way, the younger son decides to head home.
As the shattered and filthy son nears the family estate, the parable’s focus suddenly shifts to the father. The moment the father catches sight of his son, he takes off running as fast as his feet will carry him.
At this point, we might consider renaming the parable “The Prodigal Father.” My Webster’s defines “prodigal” as “one who spends or gives lavishly and foolishly.”
The parable of the father and his two sons is prefaced by these words: “Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” The Pharisees and the scribes are infuriated that Jesus spends his time foolishly and lavishly with the riff-raff and not with the good people. They always thought there was some considerable dividend for those who are faithful to God. Now it seems their goodness doesn’t matter at all; in fact, Jesus appears to have a special place in his heart for miserable sinners.
Well, you know how it goes. The father is so excited that his lost son has been found that he orders the fatted calf barbecued, the best robe brought from moth balls, the finest ring retrieved from the jewelry box, and he proclaims, “Let the celebration begin.” This is prodigal behavior, lavish and foolish.
Remember, there is that one other son. He has stayed home and carried on the family business. He has worked hard and never taken a day off. He is the good boy. Robert Farrar Capon calls him, “Mr. Respectability.” When the older son sees what his father is doing for his good for nothing younger brother, “He gasps: Music! Dancing! Levity! Expense! And on a working day, yet!...He is not happy: Why this frivolity?…He rants: The fatted calf! Doesn’t the old fool know I’ve been saving that for next week’s sales promotion when we show our new line of turnips? How am I supposed to run a business when he blows the entertainment budget on that loser of a son….Someone has to exercise a little responsibility around here!” (Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment, Eerdmans Publishing, Grand Rapids, 1989, pg. 298).
How many of you sympathize with the older son? Whether we admit it or not, we church people are usually the ones who try our best to get things right. We want to be good boys and good girls so we will go to heaven. We were taught that the bad boys and bad girls will roast in the fires of hell for eternity. After all, there must be some advantage for those who are good and responsible.
We holy sorts are taken aback by this prodigal father…Grace often does that to good people: it angers us because we were taught by many a preacher and Sunday school teacher that God rewards good people and punishes bad ones.
It might strike you as strange that in this morning’s parable not a word is spoken about confessing sins and having them forgiven. We do hear the son rehearsing his confessional lines before he meets up with his father, perhaps thinking how best to break the ice in a very uncomfortable situation. We also hear him start some confessional words but the father doesn’t wait for all these words to come out of his son’s mouth. The father is too excited to wait for this; he is thrilled to have his son back home: the one he thought dead is alive, the one lost is now found. There is no time for confessing. Let the celebration begin!
Like most parents, the prodigal father’s greatest desire is to have his entire family back together for the celebration. The father will leave the harsh words and severe judgments for another day if at all. For now, he wants joy to fill the house where, until now, there has only been grief.
The prodigal father fondly remembers his son when he was a tiny little tyke dressed in Alice in Wonderland pajamas. He remembers tucking him under the covers and reading Goodnight Moon and the Velveteen Rabbit and searching together for Waldo. The father feared those days were done forever until he saw his bedraggled child limping up the dusty road home.
Yes, you and I have come home this morning. Our heavenly Father has dreamed of this moment when we might be together again. What delight there is in heaven.
Maybe, when this day is over and we put on our favorite pajamas, the ones with the funny feet in them, our heavenly Father will tuck us in once again and tell us a wonderful bedtime story, the one we love to hear, you know, the story about the Father who sent his beloved son out into the world to bring us back home safely and was killed while searching for us. That story, as I think you know, has a very happy ending, but for now, it is good enough that we are here, good boys and good girls, bad boys and bad girls, too.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Third Sunday in Lent
March 7, 2010
Isaiah 55: 1-9
"A Free Lunch for All"
We all know there is no such thing as a free lunch. Whenever we hear of such a thing, we immediately look for the fine print. We have received the personally addressed, gold-embossed invitation for two nights and three days in beautiful La Quinta, all expenses paid and $150 bonus money to enjoy the fine cuisine and the soul-refreshing spa. We have been tempted but we know better. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Not only is there no free lunch, the thought of such a thing makes our blood boil. The health care debate and immigration reform have many going ballistic: they fear a free lunch might be served.
I suppose a person has to be hungry to appreciate Isaiah’s poetic imagination. A person has to be grabbing at straws to believe these biblical dreams of free food and wine. The people of God were just such a people. It was about 550 years before Jesus lived. They had been locked up in the jaws of the enemy, Babylon, long enough. They were hungry. A few remembered their beloved Jerusalem but barely; most had forgotten the Promised Land altogether. Those who remembered had hung up their harps in the willow branches long ago; they no longer whistled the Psalms of David they had once loved so much. Babylon was a miserable place for God’s people to be, it was filled with broken dreams and abandoned hopes.
Only a fool dared offer these people hope—or at least a person with astonishing imagination, a person like the prophet Isaiah. Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann writes: “The practice of poetic imagination is the most subversive, redemptive act that a leader of a faith community can undertake in the midst of exiles” (Walter Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination, Pg. 96). That has always been the case. Prophets urge people to hold their heads up high and hope when the weight of the day makes them sag to the ground. The great Jewish rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who knew a thing or two about tough times, said of Isaiah’s words: “No words have ever gone further in offering comfort when the sick world cries” (Abraham Joshua Heschel, The Prophets, Vol. 1, pg. 145).
How many of you feel like you are in exile this morning? You are a college graduate, you are an expert in your trade, you have always been willing to work hard and do just about anything. You can find no work. You cannot pay down your credit cards or meet your mortgage payments. You have cut back about as far as you can. You know that your struggles are miniscule to the rest of the world’s but it hurts deeply.
These are times that test people’s souls. These are times that, sadly, can bring the worst out in people and make them as nasty as rattlesnakes in the noon sun. During such tough times, there are people who will prey on our worst fears. False prophets are always the ones who make people feel worse when they already feel. They ratchet up the emotions and create chaos.
In tough economic times, nations are often at their ugliest. Ethnic outsiders, the poor, the religiously different—they better watch out because they can quickly become scapegoats for the nation’s deep problems. When times are tough, people like Isaiah, the imaginative ones, are few and far between. Listen to the harangues of talk radio if you don’t believe me. When times are tough, false prophets point fingers and make the crowds hysterical with half-truths and flat out lies. The echoes of, “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” grow louder and louder. If you need proof of this, study the rise of Adolph Hitler. The ugliness started following World War I when people were down on their luck. Who to blame, why of course, Jews and gypsies and gays. Sadly, as often is the case in such desperate times, prophetic imagination was left to a mad man.
True prophets have always exercised their craft when scapegoating and negativity have been at a peak. They have dared to offer a poetic vision of hope, an alternative vision, in the face of hysteria.
Entire communities, as well as individuals, are called to be prophets in tough times. I think of you as prophets in these days. It wasn’t too long ago that an earthquake rocked the poverty-stricken nation of Haiti. You have contributed $1,300 to help these suffering people. And then, out of the blue, at the beginning of Lent, you heard that the Church Council is challenging members to contribute to the Lutheran Malaria Initiative; every $10 offered will provide a mosquito net for countries where more than one million people die every year from this preventable scourge. You have offered $1,435 so far to the Lutheran Malaria Initiative. You could moan and groan, “Hey, First Lutheran is struggling to provide for needy people right here. We already give 10% of our offerings to our Pacifica Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.” And yet today, again, you are invited to give to the ELCA Disaster Relief Fund to help those digging out from the earthquake disaster in Chile. Your offerings are prophetic poetry. You are keeping alive the proud tradition of Isaiah: “You that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
Communities of prophetic imagination always feel blessed. Such communities believe that God will provide even in the toughest of times. Such communities of astonishing generosity discover that God never lets them down. Such people discover amazing riches beyond belief.
We must never forget that we, too, are on the receiving end of wine without money and without price. At our Council retreat yesterday, there was talk of some Lutheran congregations dropping the name “Lutheran” from their title. It seems this word “Lutheran” is off-putting to some. I hope we never do such a thing. If Martin Luther stood for anything, it was the belief that we don’t deserve a single thing from God and yet are given everything, including a free lunch. The last words Luther wrote before he died were, “We are all beggars: this is true.” In fact, it has been said that evangelism is nothing more than one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.
We are called to be a free lunch community, nothing more and nothing less. We are called to tell rich and poor, black and white, gay and straight, homeless and housed, that we are all beggars. We are called to announce from floor to rafter, right here, Sunday after Sunday, that a free lunch of bread and wine is served in this place for all and at no cost.
What is a Lutheran? Aren’t they the ones who believe that there is such a thing as a free lunch?
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Second Sunday in Lent
February 28, 2010
Genesis 15: 1-12, 17-18; Luke 13: 31-35
"A Hen"
I have attended two planning retreats the past two Saturdays and will attend another on Saturday. It is customary to have ice-breakers at these gatherings. These provide an opportunity to get to know one another better. If you are so fortunate not to have ever been involved in an ice-breaker, let me fill you in. Each participant is asked, “If you were an animal, what would you be?” Well, what animal would you be--a mountain goat, a thoroughbred race horse, a Brahma bull, a porpoise, a hummingbird?
Now, let’s change the game just a bit. If someone told you that a fox was coming after you, what animal would you be then?
In today’s gospel, the Pharisees come to Jesus and tell him precisely that, Herod is coming after him. Herod, of course, is the fox. Jesus instructs the Pharisees to tell Herod that he has work to do: he must cast out demons and perform cures. And then Jesus chooses his animal in the face of the fox’s deadly advances: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” Of all the animals to choose to guard against the ferocious assault of the fox, Jesus chooses to be a hen.
At yesterday’s TACO retreat, each of the forty participants was asked to choose a photograph from ones that Pastor Bill Radatz had taken and spread out on the lounge floor. A copy of the picture I chose is in your bulletin. As I looked at this tiny, vulnerable bird, all I could think of was Jesus choosing to be a hen as he weeps over Jerusalem. Jesus will eventually spread his fragile wings over Jerusalem and us, and he will protect us from all that will do us harm. You know that Herod, the fox, is going to rip Jesus apart. You know, too, that the only remains will be a mess of blood and feathers.
We are now less than two weeks into Lent, about ten days. We are already looking to Jerusalem. We begin to think of Jesus being nailed to the cross like a hen whose wings are brutally nailed to the barnyard fence.
Why does Jesus choose to be a hen? Why not an eagle or a wolf or a hippopotamus or even an aardvark?
Look at that poor, powerless bird in your bulletin. You know she will defend her tiny ones to the bitter end. She will puff herself up for all she’s worth and shed what little blood she has, trying her best to protect her little ones as the fox shreds her to bits.
Jesus spreads his wings over us this morning, too, right here in San Diego, as he did over the people of Jerusalem so long ago. Jesus loves this city just as he loved Jerusalem. Barbara Brown Taylor writes: “According to the Bible, there are three chief places where God reveals God’s self to us: on mountaintops, in the wilderness, and in the city. The air is thin in the first; there are wild beasts in the second; but the city may be the hardest place of all to recognize the presence and activity of God.”
It is sometimes hard to recognize God’s presence in this place. Sometimes God feels like a pathetic hen. Whenever I think of First Lutheran, I think of a community that has been called to model its life after a hen in the midst of foxes for 121 years. Those who have called this place home over the years have refused to leave this nesting place even when the fox has scared us out of our wits. We have remained here because we trust that God loves our city, San Diego, and has a special fondness for this little corner, Third and Ash. We have spread our wings wide as our babies have been baptized here, as our husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, have been buried here, as we have taught our children how much the mother hen loves them.
A number of my pastoral predecessors here at First Lutheran have told me that it is a miracle that this church has remained here over the years. They have told me there were times they were certain that this church would end up a mess of feathers and blood. Foxes have come after us, threatening us, scaring us half to death. We and our ancestors have tried our best to protect the helpless little birdies entrusted to our care. We have puffed up our bodies. We have stayed in the city for good. Sometimes we have ended up bleeding and frightened, but, thankfully, we have been sustained by our mother hen who feeds us with the tasty worms of Gospel comfort.
Our family tree extends way back beyond this place; it reaches back 4,000 years to Abraham and Sarah who trusted that God would bless them children and a land even when they were nearing 100 years old. They were people of hope who believed that God would keep God’s promises and do the impossible even when all that they saw was hopelessness and barrenness.
When I was training to be a pastor, it was fashionable for inner-city congregations in seemingly godforsaken places like Brooklyn and Philadelphia to say things like, “God loves Saint John the Evangelist” and “God loves Southwark.” These words appeared on signs and newsletters, in prayers and conversation. The children knew that God loved those housing projects. These places were filled with crime and poverty and violent death. The churches could not afford to fix leaky roofs or heat their sanctuaries. Nevertheless, pastors and their families and the people of those parishes dared to hope that Jesus loved them and wept over them enough to spread his wings over them and protect them from the mischievousness of the fox. There was such vibrancy and joy in those desperate places. By God’s grace, we were hopeful and audacious enough to believe that God loved those hell holes enough to make them like heaven.
We who gather here this morning are a people who believe that God loves this city, San Diego, and this little birdie place called First Lutheran Church. It is odd that you and I have chosen to nest here. It is odd that we offer our very best in the heart of this city, trusting that Jesus will spread his downy wings over us and those we love and protect us forever.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
First Sunday in Lent
February 21, 2010
Luke 4: 1-13
"Save Us from the Time of Trial"
Every Sunday morning and most other days for a lifetime, we have prayed to our heavenly Father, “Lead us not into temptation.” We will do the same thing in a few moments. This translation is unfortunate even though we love it. The King James Version of such things is majestic and yet the newer version of the Lord’s Prayer is immeasurably better: “Save us from the time of trial.” Hear this: God does not tempt us. As we heard in this morning’s Gospel, the tempting is left to Satan. God comes to save us from Satan’s tempting work.
How many of you were glued to the television or listened to your radio on Friday morning at 8:00 a.m.? Tiger Wood’s press conference rivaled the Vancouver Winter Olympics for top billing. Until a few months ago, Tiger was the most popular sports star in the world. And then suddenly chaos ruled and the bottom fell out of his life as allegations of multiple affairs began to come to light.
I do not believe for a moment that Tiger Woods woke up one morning and decided, “I’m think I would like to be a sex addict.” I would bet that the thought of such seamy actions was sickening to him. And yet, as Tiger admitted on Friday, money and fame brought seductions he could not resist. Said another way, Satan tempted Tiger.
I know it is not terribly popular to talk about Satan or the devil or Lucifer these days. We are a more civilized crowd and far less superstitious. And yet there must be an evil force at work in this world that causes us do things we otherwise could never imagine doing. Have you ever said, “I have no idea what got into me.” Maybe Satan is what got into you.
Satan tried to weave his clever spell on Jesus. Satan came knocking when Jesus was weak. Jesus had been in the wilderness for forty days and was starving from an extended fast.
You will notice in the Bible that Satan tries to weave his magical spell when people are down in the dumps. Whenever you hear forty in the Bible, know that people are tired and scared and weak. Moses was on the mountain for forty days; Noah rocked in that leaky and stinky ark for forty days and forty nights; Elijah ran from wicked Jezebel, scared out of his wits, for forty days; God’s people wandered in the wilderness and were sick of the food, not for forty days but for forty long years.
Whether forty days or forty years, fear and weakness rub us raw. We are easy prey for Satan’s crafty schemes.
Satan thought he had Jesus in the perfect pickle. He had offered him access to power, influence, and the ability to make a difference in the world. All Jesus had to do was bow ever so slightly in Satan’s direction and he could rule the world and change it…Not a bad deal, really. Who wouldn’t consider such a tradeoff? And really, with just a slight bow, who would ever notice anyway? Southern preacher Fred Craddock writes: “Give the tempter his due: the timing is perfect. Jesus has not preached a sermon, cast out a demon, or healed a sick person. He is alone and hungry in the desert, posed at the edge of his ministry. What will be its nature and shape?”
Satan said to Jesus, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here.” These are almost the identical words that the criminal on the cross said to Jesus: “Aren’t you the Christ? Save yourself and us!” Think of Jesus’ choice. He could have walked this earth far longer than his mere thirty-three years and done amazing ministry if he had only bowed slightly in Satan’s direction. We want to shout at Jesus: “Make some concessions. Don’t be so stubborn. Stick around and make things better for us all. Do it, Jesus!”
Think about forty years in your own life if you have reached that plateau. Forty years or so puts us at about midlife. This is the time when many dreams come crashing down. We wonder what life is about. We are tired and confused. The kids are ready to leave the house or have. The job is a dead end. Satan comes knocking. How many men opt for woman half their age--“she has changed my life and understands me perfectly and it all feels so good.” How many have fallen in love with a beautiful blue bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin just to numb the pain of another depressing night? How many get grumpy and blame everyone but themselves for the decisions they have made? People make rotten choices during these cruel years of wandering and uncertainty.
My favorite definition of “addiction” is this: “Addiction is anything we use to fill the empty place inside us that belongs to God alone.” Many of us search for just about anything that will fill that gaping hole. Satan works his magic, as if on cue, when we are afraid and vulnerable, grabbing at straws.
When Satan came courting Jesus, Jesus dug deep into his treasure chest and pulled out Holy Scripture. Notice how Jesus responded to the tempting proposals of Satan. Jesus had learned these Torah verses from Deuteronomy as a kid; they were entrusted to memory. Listen: “One does not live by bread alone;” “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him;” “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Some of us are being tempted mightily this very moment. We have a hole in our souls as deep and as wide as the Grand Canyon. Satan knows this. He is coming as he came to Tiger. He will offer to change our lives for just a small price. Remember, however, no matter how small the price, it always involves selling our souls.
Today, the First Sunday in Lent, God invites us to take a journey of forty days and forty nights. In this journey God calls us back to the sources. God invites us to taste the gifts of heaven right here this morning. God invites us to pray and talk “lovey-dovey” with God. God urges us to read our Bibles whose stories can be summed up in two words, “Fear not!” as Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us.
During these forty days and forty nights, God says to us, “Come to me all who are weary and I will fill that empty place in your soul with rest.”
Oh dear God, please save us from the time of trial and deliver us from the evil one. Amen.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Ash Wednesday
February 17, 2010
Matthew 6: 1-6, 16-21
"Keeping A Holy Lent"
You have probably been struck by the Ash Wednesday contradiction already. We just heard Jesus say, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them…” In a few moments, we will seem blatantly to disregard Jesus’ words. We will engage in the most public act of piety of the entire church year. We will receive a smudge of ashes on our foreheads for all the world to see.
This seeming contradiction bears some attention. Lent is tricky business. Throughout the Lenten journey, we will talk a lot about our piety. We are currently having an entire series of Sunday morning classes about our Lenten piety. These classes could easily be called, “What are you doing for Lent?”
During these initial days of Lent, we will probably ask ourselves and one another a series of Lenten questions. What are you giving up for Lent or taking up for Lent? Have you determined whether you will pray more regularly during these forty days? Will you be reading through all 150 Psalms or maybe the entire book of Luke? Will you fast, skipping a meal or two during the week? Will you give the money you have saved from your fasting to the Lutheran church’s malaria initiative? Do you plan on attending church more regularly, even on Wednesday evenings? My hunch is that most of us will try to keep a holy Lent by adopting some Lenten discipline.
If we try to keep a holy Lent, as time goes on, we might find that we are feeling pretty good about ourselves. We might even think we are pretty religious people. If we end up feeling this way, we will likely realize just how tricky Lent can be.
Jesus also said, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal.” Jesus warned us not to prance around telling everyone how pious we are, how prayerful we are, what generous givers we are. If that’s what we end up doing this Lent, frankly, our Lenten observance has been a pathetic failure.
In preparation for the Wednesday Lenten class I will be teaching, I have been reading a book on the ancient prayer called the Jesus Prayer (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner”). The author warns against any piety that makes us feel superior to others. Said another way, there is a temptation in Lent to do the right thing for the wrong reason. If we stop to congratulate ourselves on what a successful Lent we are keeping, it is highly likely that we have not chosen the correct Lenten discipline or, at the very least, we are not doing it properly. The correct Lenten discipline always points us beyond ourselves to God who is at the center of our lives. The correct Lenten disciplines remind us that without God nothing is possible and that with God all things are possible.
Frankly, even a failure in our Lenten journey can, at times, be more beneficial than a success. Our failures will demonstrate that we are not the magnificent spiritual athletes we thought we were. Our failure will remind us just how much we need God in order to be faithful and holy people.
That is why we begin our Lenten journey with the haunting words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.” These words point us to our mortality. They remind us that one day our bodies will fail us. These words, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” point us beyond ourselves to God.
Ashes are the first exercise of Lent. They are a public display of our mortality. They are our proclamation to the world that we have tried to be faithful and have failed. We are dust and to dust we shall return. The final exercise of our life will be when someone announces over our remains, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” These final words are eerily similar to today’s Ash Wednesday words, “Remember that you are dust.” Whether on Ash Wednesday or at the grave, we are reminded that we must trust in God and not in ourselves if we are to have any hope at all.
Our Lenten journey is meant to point us to the real truth, the real victory. Our Lenten journey is an invitation to each of us to place our treasure and hope in Jesus Christ.
May you have a very blessed Lent and in the disciplines you choose, may you discover how much God loves you, even when you fail to keep your end of the bargain.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
Transfiguration of Our Lord
February 14, 2010
Luke 9: 28-36
"Remember to Say Your Prayers"
We have all had a day when our life was turned upside down, a day when our bellies feel like carved cantaloupes. I had such a day my first year of seminary. I was taking a course on the Danish philosopher/theologian Soren Kierkegaard. I had written a paper on Kierkegaard’s book, Works of Love. I waited nervously to get my paper back. The professor, Paul Holmer, had a reputation as a very tough grader. I still have that paper in my files. I pulled it out on Thursday afternoon, blew off the dust, and stared once again at the B-. As I do from time-to-time, I then turned to Mr. Holmer’s remarks to see how they affect me thirty-six years later. If you promise not to tell anybody, I will read them to you:
Those remarks convinced me that I was the dumbest person at Yale Divinity School. Those words hurt to this day.
You have had such a day when you cannot get home fast enough. All you want to do is slam the door shut behind you, run to your bed, and weep and weep.
Peter, James, and John must have felt similarly after Jesus told them that “[he] must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” They had thought things were going to turn out differently, better actually. They wondered how it was possible for the Christ of God to be killed. Jesus then added the haunting words: “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake, he will save it.”
Jesus’ painful words reverberated in the disciples’ ears for eight agonizing days. Finally, on the eighth day, Jesus invited Peter, James, and John to go up a mountain. If you have ever licked your wounds, you sense what a glorious treat it must have been for the disciples to go to a place far apart where they could forget about all that was gnawing at their insides.
We sense that going to some mountaintop can change us forever. People pay fortunes to risk their lives climbing Mount Everest with hopes of changing their lives. Others spend their vacations in sweat lodges and have lost their lives doing so. Some go to Zen Buddhist monasteries, searching for that esoteric thrill that is missing in their ordinary Lutheran congregation. Many people in our day yearn to get away from it all.
And yet, surprisingly, if today’s report of the disciples and Jesus on the mountain is any indication, life changing experiences inevitably come in the regular routines of our lives.
I have always loved Transfiguration Day. I know the story well as do you. Peter, James and John went up the mountain with Jesus and suddenly, before their eyes, Jesus’ clothes turned dazzling white; he stood there talking to the giants of the faith, Moses and Elijah. And then God boomed from heaven: “This is my Son, my Chosen. Listen to him!”
As I prepared this sermon and reread the Transfiguration account, I was surprised that I have missed one important detail over the years. The razzle-dazzle is easy to see, the sheer magnificence; it is, after all, what we long for. What completely escaped me was the reason the disciples went up the mountain in the first place: they went up with Jesus to pray. To pray! They did something as ordinary as praying, as saying, “Now I lay me down to sleep” and “Come Lord Jesus, be our guest.” The praying on that mountaintop was so ordinary, so taken for granted, that Peter, James, and John grew sleepy from the boredom. Who expects something extraordinary to occur when we just say our prayers?
I remember hearing a bishop tell of the advice his father, also a bishop, gave him the day of his ordination. He entrusted his son with this wisdom: never cross your arms when talking with another person; look at them face-to-face; never cross your legs during worship—my favorite; always be the last to leave the church and the last to leave the cemetery; and—this one surprised me—always say your prayers.
You would think saying one’s prayers common sense for a person about to be ordained but maybe not. The bishop’s father knew from experience how intoxicating and hectic ministry can be—baptizing beautiful babies, preaching to massive throngs in stately cathedrals, marching for peace and justice with famous people. The old bishop knew that his son would be easily tempted to forget to say his prayers when seemingly more important and exciting things beckoned him.
Each of you is no different. Do you say your prayers? Do you have an assigned time in the rush of life that is simply for you and God, yes, when you say your prayers? You might not rate your prayers at the top of the list when you think of mountaintop experiences. Prayers? you say. Isn’t there more to being a Christian than prayers? And yet this is the stuff that keeps you going when you are down in the dumps, facing the challenges of life, longing for a good word to help you make it through the day as one of God’s graceful people.
In a particularly challenging time in my ministry, I called my dear friend, Father Joseph, an Orthodox monk, and asked him for spiritual advice. I suppose what I hoped for was some miraculous tidbit that would dazzle me, maybe a great book that would change my life, some profound wisdom from a wizened old church father that would bolster me. Instead Father Joseph asked me, “Wilk, do you pray?” His question hit me like a ton of bricks. I was looking for something more esoteric and he asked, “Do you pray?”
Maybe you are looking for a mountaintop experience, one that will lift you up when you are knocked down. And yet, maybe you, too, are looking in all the wrong places. Perhaps your mountaintop experience can be found in the bishop’s advice to his son, “Remember to say your prayers.”
I have been preparing for my Lenten class on “Desert Spirituality.” I have been amazed by the prayer habits of some of the heroes of our faith. Over and over again, I have read of faithful leaders who begin their days with two and three hours of prayer. It was Martin Luther who said, “I’ve got so much to do that I’d never get it all done if I didn’t pray at least three hours a day.” If a giant like Luther needed to pray, why not us?
The great saints of the church tell us that it is a simple journey, day-by-day, that will make all the difference. The journey takes us to our bedroom, our living room couch, or our special corner with a candle and a picture of Jesus; there, we say our prayers. There, in an ordinary place, our lives are changed. So, by all means, climb a simple mountain and say your prayers.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
February 7, 2010
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
Isaiah 6: 1-8; Luke 5: 1-11
"In Search of Excellence?"
If any day is about excellence, today is it. The Super Bowl has arrived and the best teams are ready to play. In addition to the game are the wonderful commercials from our nation’s finest companies. Today is about the very best.
In the face of Super Hoopla, how would you feel if someone said to you, “You are really ordinary.” You would likely feel sad, even angry. No one wants to be viewed as ordinary. We want to be seen as exceptional and important.
Our parents convinced us early on that we were far from ordinary. Remember how they bragged: “She is so brilliant. She was reading Good Night Moon at 18 months.” Or, “Athletic? Are you kidding me? He could play linebacker for the Indianapolis Colts right now and he is only eight.”
When Jesus set out to pick his disciples, he must have been looking for extraordinary. Jesus had twelve shots and each one counted just like those teams that draft twelve of the very best on defense and twelve on offense. Jesus better get the twelve best disciples possible if he wanted to be competitive.
I looked at the newspaper’s “Help Wanted” ads to see what qualities top companies are seeking in today’s tough job market to see whether I might get a clue as to what Jesus was looking for. Fortune 500 companies are looking for bright, personable, sound judgment, discrete, initiative, ability to follow through flawlessly on every project. One advertisement noted in bold type: Winners Only Apply. You get the point: if the firm is to prosper, Ordinary Need Not Apply.
As Jesus stood at seaside and looked out over the people who gathered to listen to him, he was sensing who best to choose as disciple number one. This first draft pick would set the standard. Jesus could easily have overlooked Simon Peter. Peter was way off to the side, mending nets, and not even paying attention to Jesus. He was the unsightly one with snuff juice drippings in his beard and the sweat stained ball cap. The odds of Peter getting chosen as numero uno were slim to none.
For some reason, though, Peter caught Jesus’ attention. Jesus went to him and asked him to do only one thing in his job interview: “Put out in the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” This was not a challenging request for a guy who had fished all his life. Strangely, Peter found the request a daunting one: “We have fished all night and we have caught nothing.” If Peter wanted the job, you would think he would have told Jesus a success story like the time he and his crew set the Sea of Galilee record for the most fish caught in a night. Accentuate the positive, Peter! Instead, Peter said, “We have tried and failed.” Why didn’t Jesus say, “Thanks so much, Peter. Don’t call me. I’ll call you.”
Even though Peter deemed the fishing conditions rotten, he obeyed Jesus’ order. And wouldn’t you know it, Peter and his crew caught so many fish that their nets began to break. Jesus hired Peter on the spot.
One gets the impression that Jesus chose disciples by closing his eyes, spinning around in a circle three times, pointing haphazardly, and saying, “I’ll take you.” His choice of disciples indicates that Jesus was not very good at selecting the cream of the crop. In Peter’s three years with Jesus, he had as many failures as successes, his work was marked more by cowardice than courageousness; at times he drove Jesus to distraction. Peter was ordinary at best.
When you think of Peter, do you ever think of yourself? When you are asked to help out at church, do you dread that someone might ask you to pray with no advanced warning? Do you avoid attending adult Bible study because you don’t know anything about the Bible and fear looking the fool?
When I was in seminary, my classmates and I thought we were top-notch religious property. After all, as kids, we were the acolytes who got every candle lit and chosen to read on Christmas Eve to a packed house. I took Introduction to the Old Testament in my first semester of divinity school. During the second week of classes, Mr. McBride asked us to turn to Obadiah. The class trembled as if an earthquake had struck. We knew that Obadiah was in the Bible but where was another question. We figured it was somewhere in the Old Testament because we were in the introductory Old Testament class. We casually flipped through our Bibles, hoping that Obadiah would magically appear and we would look like biblical scholars, but this miracle didn’t transpire. Some of us put our Bibles under our desks and secretively searched for Obadiah’s page number in the table of contents, something, by the way, that my sixth grade Bible school teacher forbid us to do. These, my dear friends, were the future pastoral leaders of your church…terribly ordinary, a lot like Peter.
I am currently reading a book about the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. He is regarded as the most brilliant leader of the church in England in the last thousand years and is considered a highly spiritual man. He is anything but ordinary. Even so, Archbishop Williams has his detractors as all religious leaders do. One complaint is that he exercises poor judgment when it comes to who should be admitted into the ordained ministry. His critics say he is too soft. He possesses a “reckless generosity,” they say, a “holy naiveté.” What that means is that he is willing to let ordinary men and women into the ordained ministry, people who are recovering alcoholics, people who may are not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, people who have shady pasts.
In explaining people’s complaints regarding their archbishop, the author of Rowan’s Rules notes that we prefer heroes to saints, extraordinary to ordinary. He writes: “We all feel it’s our job in our generation to make the story come out right…for if the hero failed, all would be lost. By contrast, a saint can fail in a way that the hero can’t, because the failure of a saint reveals the forgiveness and the new possibilities made in God, and the saint is just a small character in a story that’s always fundamentally about God” (Rupert Shortt, Rowan’s Rule, Hodder and Stoughton Ltd., London, 2008, pg. 72).
Jesus chose small characters not heroes. He chose people with glaring flaws, people whose only gift was to demonstrate God’s amazing forbearance and forgiveness. No one would confuse the twelve bumbling disciples with heroes. The twelve failed over and over again and every time they did, God’s amazing grace seemed to glow more brightly.
Jesus calls you and me to be his disciples, too. If you question that God is calling you, good for you. Disciples worth their salt never feel worthy; they always wonder whether they have the right stuff to work for Jesus. The Bible is full of such questioners. Isaiah was such a questioner. When God came calling on him, Isaiah said that he was a man of unclean lips. He certainly wasn’t up to the task of proclaiming God’s word to the world even though his later words would prove to be some of the most soaring and inspiring in all of literature, secular or religious. Over and over again, God’s chosen ones feel terribly ordinary. It is all part of the process.
There will come a time when Jesus will come calling you and ask you to do a special task in his kingdom. Your initial inclination will be, “Me? Who are you kidding? I could never do that.” If this is your first answer, you are on solid footing and almost certainly the right person for the job. You are exactly who Jesus needs. Maybe when you feel just plain, ol’ ordinary, you have the precise quality that Jesus is looking for. You will make certain that none of the glory shines on you and all the glory is given to God whether you intend to or not.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 31, 2010
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
Jeremiah 1: 4-10; 1 Corinthians 13: 1-13; Luke 4: 21-30
"Words Chosen Well and with Love"
I will let you in on one of my prejudices. When someone says, “I am a prophet,” my skin crawls. People who make such claims invariably tell a half truth. “Self-proclaimed prophets” typically view themselves as the community’s chief critics, the ones who can say whatever they want with no willingness to accept the consequences. They often lack the most essential ingredient of the prophetic nature: they do not love those who must listen to them.
Most of you know that one of my heroes is the late William Sloane Coffin. He was the chaplain of Yale University in the 1960’s and 70’s. Coffin preached on Sunday mornings to a packed chapel. Protestants, Catholics, Jews, atheists, hippies, even Brooks Brothers buttoned downs came to hear him. Coffin challenged worshipers like no one I have ever heard. He preached tough words and yet soaring poetic ones on such issues as peace and justice, nuclear weapons, racism, and gay rights. This morning’s “Quote for the Day” is William Sloane Coffin’s advice actually offered to him by a college freshman following one of his sermons: “When you say something that is both true and painful, say it softly. Say it in other words to heal and not to hurt. Say it in love.”
Real prophets find it excruciatingly painful to speak tough words as well they should. Take Jeremiah for instance. Like so many prophets, Jeremiah resisted God’s call. “I am only a boy,” he said. Jeremiah knew what lay ahead: God was going to ask him to deliver hard-hitting words to the people he loved, words that had the power “to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” Jeremiah had grown up with these people and worshiped with them every Sabbath day. How dare he tell his family and friends that their nation of Judah was going to be overthrown and they were going to be deported to Babylon?
In our mobile age, people who speak too harshly or carelessly simply change churches or move from the community where they have offended almost everybody. As they leave, they inevitably fire one parting salvo on those they have verbally abused. Jeremiah was different: he was locked into his community for the long haul. Each word he spoke had to be chosen with precision; every word mattered. There was no place for Jeremiah to run, no place to hide.
We bear a similar word to that of Jeremiah. Please do not teach your children the fraudulent nursery rhyme, “Stick and stones can break my bones but words can never hurt me.” You know better than that; you know how painful words can be. Poorly chosen words keep us awake long into the night; careless words throw communities into frenzied confusion; reckless words even lead some to take their own lives.
Every word matters. Think of the time you visited the doctor with that pain in your chest. The doctor said, “We will see how this turns out in a week.” Innocent words for the doctor to say and yet those words rocked your world. Remember how you fretted over what she meant by the word “this;” and what did she mean by “in a week?” And, “We will see how this turns out”--should we call her back now and ask what she was thinking? Reckless words wreak havoc; carefully chosen words are better than a dozen roses.
We Christians adore words. The simple and yet perfect words, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” made us Christians. With those baptismal words, each of us was called to write and speak similar words.
Here is author Annie Dillard’s counsel to those who craft words: “Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality” (Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, pg. 68)?
Martin Luther also offers advice on choosing words in his explanation of the Eighth Commandment (“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor”): “We should fear and love God, and so we should not tell lies about our neighbor, nor betray, slander, or defame him or her, but should apologize for him, speak well of him, and interpret charitably all that he or she does.” I love the words, “interpret charitably all that he or she does.”
My Old Testament professor in seminary, Brevard Childs, said that that no matter how devastating an Old Testament prophet’s words may sound, grace lurks nearby. He demanded that we search for the prophet’s grace in every prophet, whether Amos or Hosea or Isaiah or even Jonah. Mr. Childs told us that there would come a day in our ministries when finding the right word of hope and grace might save a person’s life.
Saint Paul said that love is the greatest gift, yes, even greater than prophecy. Paul cherished the supreme art of choosing words filled with love. Our calling as Christians is to search painstakingly for those words that will build communities of love.
Our beloved First Lutheran has faced a challenging year, good and exciting, but challenging. We have tackled human sexuality with the rest of our Evangelical Lutheran Church in America; we have struggled with finances, giving generously but still facing a deficit; we have been part of the health care debate, praying that all God’s children might experience healing. These struggles are not unique to First Lutheran. Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times detailed the financial crisis confronting Robert Schuler’s once seemingly invincible Crystal Cathedral just up Interstate 5 as it tries to unload considerable assets to make ends meet. We Christians are not exempt from the world’s struggles nor should we be. Our unique calling, however, is to find a good word for these tough times, a word that will cause bitter foes to forgive one another, a word that will bring people with fierce ideological differences together around the Table of the Lord, a word that will make people dance and sing.
The most deserving person of the title, prophet, of course, is Jesus. Jesus gave no easy speeches, not his first one at Nazareth or his last on Calvary. Every word he uttered was done so with the cross in sight. Every one of his words would be listened to by future generations and searched for meaning. Even at the end as the nails were hammered, Jesus told a condemned criminal, “You will be with me in paradise.” Every word was spoken as if it were his last because, finally, one word was his last.
I pray that future generations will look on us and say that we were prophets. Why? Because we were a people who chose words well and with those words, we loved one another in the toughest of times.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 24, 2010
Third Sunday after Epiphany
Luke 4: 14-21
"The Nine Word Sermon"
People always look forward to their hometown boy coming home from seminary to give his first sermon. They remember him in diapers; they taught him in Sunday School and put up with his teenage shenanigans; they remember their astonishment— disbelief is more like it—when they first heard, “Wilbert and Susan Miller’s boy wants to be a pastor.” They won’t forget the first sermon: short on substance, long on pretension and, yes, very, very long.
We just heard Jesus’ inaugural sermon in his hometown synagogue. Before Jesus read the passage from Isaiah, the scroll containing God’s word was paraded up and down the aisles. An old woman with arthritic fingers lovingly reached out to touch the scroll as if it were a honey comb; a young father held up his little tyke who slapped the scroll and giggled. You did a similar thing this morning as the Gospel was paraded into your midst and you sang joyfully, hallelujah forevermore.
When the procession was finished, Jesus unrolled the scroll to the appointed reading in Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
When Jesus finished reading from the scroll, he sat down to preach as was the custom for rabbis. The crowd fidgeted. There was clearing of throats, crossing of legs. A man in the last pew checked his watch, hoping the sermon would be mercifully short and he would be home in time for the Jets - Colts game.
And then Jesus’ sermon. Hear it in its entirety: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The shortest sermon ever delivered in Nazareth. Nine words total. No one moved. Was it a new fangled homiletic gimmick Jesus learned in seminary? Had his nerves gotten the better of him? One Type-A curmudgeon grunted to his business associate, “We must not be paying him by the word.”
Everyone in the synagogue that morning had heard this passage from Isaiah before. They knew it was about the Jubilee Year. They had learned of the Jubilee Year from wizened old elders with flowing white beards who instructed them: every fifty years, the land was to lie fallow, to rest and regain nutrients; creditors were to cancel old debts that had become impossible burdens and made some people wonder whether life was worth living any longer; servants were to be set free after years of bone crushing labor and receiving wages that never came close to paying for room and food.
Jesus realized that this vision of Jubilee, while beautiful, was impossible for the people to imagine ever happening. And so, as good preachers do, Jesus read Isaiah, gave his nine word sermon, and fell silent, absolutely silent. He let the words ooze into every pore of their bodies.
The minute worship ended, the chatter at coffee hour was deafening. The mayor of Nazareth said to the congregational treasurer: “That young man will learn. This business of caring for the poor sounds hunky-dory now when he has no responsibilities or family, but wait till he is the chief rabbi and has to pay the synagogue’s heating bill and send benevolence payments to Jerusalem. He’ll quit this idiotic sniveling about redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor.” A few poorly dressed people way back in the corner, almost out of sight, said, “This business of Jubilee sounds too good to be true; it hasn’t happened yet and it ain’t never goin’ to happen here.”
It has been two thousand years, and Jesus’ sermon, all nine words, still rings in our ears: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
“In your hearing.” These are Jesus’ words not ours; maybe that’s why they seem too good to be true. If we resist the temptation to shrink them down to our own paltry understanding, these words might even cause us to imagine a world that only God can create.
In her book, Holy the Firm, Annie Dillard writes of a nondescript, white framed church she occasionally attends. She is often the only person under sixty and feels as if she is on “an archaeological tour of Soviet Russia.” She writes of the Congregationalist pastor who wears a white shirt: “The man knows God. Once, in the middle of the long pastoral prayer of intercession for the whole world—for the gift of wisdom to its leaders, for hope and mercy to the grieving and pained, succor to the oppressed, and God’s grace to all—in the middle of this he stopped, and burst out, ‘Lord, we bring you these same petitions every week.’ After a shocked pause, he continued reading the prayer. Because of this,” writes Dillard, “I like him very much” (Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, Pg. 58).
We pretty much say the same thing week after week, too, about healing the blind, setting the prisoners free, and giving good news to the poor. We do it in our readings and prayers and sermons, over and over again. Do we really expect these things to happen? Do we even have the heart to attempt to accomplish these things? Funny thing, by the grace of God, we don’t give up believing that with Jesus all these things are possible. And so we continue telling our children and grandchildren of this glorious Jubilee vision, when this mixed up world will be set straight, the flat broke will have their bank accounts filled, there will be better jobs than at McDonalds, and the land will sing for joy for not being raped year after year. As long as we keep talking and praying about Jubilee and trusting Jesus’ promise, we can trust that these things will occur.
And so, like in the olden days, yet again, we have paraded the Bible around this congregation, we have read of Jubilee in Isaiah, we have sung hallelujah forevermore, and we have heard Jesus’ entire sermon, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 17, 2010
Second Sunday after Epiphany
John 2: 1-11
"The Water Blushed"
Lots can go wrong at weddings and something usually does. The groom passes out and falls into my hands just as I announce the couple husband and wife; the bride kneels down with her new husband for a blessing and can’t get back up; the best man’s rented tuxedo is three inches too long in the legs; the bride-to-be slugs her “man of a lifetime” right before the rehearsal and comes to me with mascara running, wondering what she should do. This has all happened to me at weddings; you have your stories, too.
Jesus attended such a wedding with his mother, Mary. The wedding had gone on for three days, as they always did back then, and all was going as planned until the wine ran out. The poor bride’s father was horrified. His business associates had flown over from Miami Beach; the groom’s family was mesmerized by the bride’s father’s wealth and panache. Now, no wine!
We love this wedding story because it is our story. How many times has the wine run out in our life? How many times have we looked to God and, like a television evangelist, prayed for a miracle?
We never know what surprises will occur. It is why we are a community of prayer. And yet, truth be told, we are not particularly good waiting on miracles. We leave such stuff to hucksters screaming “praise the Lord” and “hallelujah.” For us, we traffic in reality.
Our lives are typically pretty ordinary and not especially made for the miraculous. Our bulletin calls today the Second Sunday after Epiphany. Another name for today is the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. The Second Sunday after Epiphany has pizzazz, but increasingly, I am attracted to the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time. “Ordinary time” tells the truth about our lives, our ups and downs, our richer for poorer, our sickness and health. It is in ordinary time that we see Jesus doing astonishing things like changing water into wine. It is in ordinary time that we need Jesus.
We have been praying for a miracle around our 2010 budget, at least, I hope you have. While we were praying, lo and behold, I received a letter Christmas week from a dear friend in Philadelphia with a surprise check for $3,000 to support TACO’s work--water to wine! Do you want a miracle, First Lutheran? I came into the office a few days after Christmas and $5,000 was on my desk from an out-of-town couple that worships here and loves this place--water into wine!
Do you believe that God produces miracles? Think of the church in which you grew up. If your church was like mine, it was not particularly glitzy or stunning. In fact, today, many of those churches are probably struggling for their very lives. And yet it was there that I, and probably you, first beheld God, hearing the stories of Jesus’ love told by ordinary insurance salesmen, plain housewives, lonely bank-tellers, friendly realtors, and lovely school teachers. That ordinary church and those ordinary people changed our lives. A miracle--water into wine.
That has been First Lutherans’ story, too, as far as I can tell. Never rich by worldly standards, with no huge endowment, First Lutheran Church has nevertheless created abundant ministry over the years worthy of six jars of very good wine. Never moving beyond these few square blocks, even when downtown was “to be steered clear of,” First Lutheran Church has been the heart of Christ in the heart of this city in the ups and downs, yes, in the ordinary times.
And what about your life? In today’s second reading from 1 Corinthians, Saint Paul says: “Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are a variety of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” God promises that in each of us there is a miraculous gift of the Spirit to be discovered amidst our ordinariness. Do you know what your gift is? Do miracles occur through you?
Yes, we ordinary ones are invited to expect marvelous things to happen in our lives. The recent unspeakable earthquake in Haiti makes the running out of wine at Cana look likes child’s play. How will God transform this mess? We might be surprised. Our Evangelical Lutheran Church in American, beset by an earthquake of sorts in our own ranks as churches leave and we fear where the next dollar will come from, has pledged $250,000 from its International Disaster Response and has authorized an additional $500,000 as congregations like ours respond. The extra offering you put in an envelope this morning coupled with the offerings of thousands of ordinary people in our beloved ELCA will provide a miracle in Haiti. Water into wine!
Nine years ago, Dagmar and I worshipped in London on this Second Sunday of Ordinary Time. I insisted on one thing and that was that we not attend historic and stately Westminster Abbey or regal and renowned St. Paul’s Cathedral. I wanted to go to an ordinary parish church. We chose Holy Trinity Church-Sloane Square. It was there that I gasped as I beheld a miracle. The priest quoted the seventeenth century English poet, John Dryden, in his sermon. The miracle came as I heard God’s word uttered in a beautiful new way. Listen to Dryden’s words for a miracle: “The modest water, awed by power divine, beheld its God and blushed into wine.” I will never forget those words. When the water looked at Jesus, it blushed and was miraculously transformed to wine.
In a few moments we will be given the exquisite opportunity of watching wine blush and become the blood of Jesus. Ordinary words and ordinary wine anticipating divine exuberance as, somehow, it all becomes the very cup of salvation, the blood of Christ.
In this ordinary place with us ordinary people, it is almost unimaginable that such an astonishing thing will happen. You might say, a miracle!
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 10, 2010
The Baptism of Our Lord
Luke 3: 15-17, 21-22
"Epiphany Glasses"
We religious sorts are not much surprised anymore when we read about Jesus’ amazing exploits in the Bible. His miracles and healings are par for the course, old news really, and we do not blink an eye. And yet, today we should be surprised, actually horrified, as Jesus dips his toes into the Jordan River to be baptized.
The early church was not only horrified, it was deeply embarrassed by Jesus’ baptism. If Jesus was without sin, why did he get in line with murderers and drug dealers, wife beaters and money launderers, for a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins? If Jesus was God’s only Son, the early Christians expected him to socialize with a more dignified clientele, the white glove set, those who had the civility to know which knife of the four to use at elegant dinners.
Two thousand years have passed now since Jesus jumped into the Jordan. The embarrassment has all but worn off. Even so, you may be wondering what early Christians felt like when Jesus jumped into the Jordan.
To assist you getting in touch with the early church’s feelings on this matter of Jesus’ baptism, I call your attention to the Philadelphia Eagles. While none of you are mourning their devastating loss to the Cowboys last evening, you are undoubtedly aware that at the beginning of this football season, Coach Andy Reid added Michael Vick to the Eagle’s roster. This move sent shock waves through our nation as did Jesus’ baptism through God’s people so long ago. Michael Vick spent eighteen months in prison for his involvement in the brutal and hideous sport of dog fighting. He was the owner of the Bad Newz Kennels. When his pit bulls were too ripped up to fight any longer, Vick and his gang electrocuted, hung, and drowned the helpless dogs.
Vick’s horrendous acts to “man’s best friend” repulse me. I love animals and have wept every I have had to put one of our beloved cats or dogs to sleep. Part of me wonders how Coach Andy Reid could dare let Michael Vick back onto a football field.
The Austrian poet Ranier Maria Rilke might shine some light on Coach Reid’s action. Rilke said, “Everything terrible is something that needs our love.” Michael Vick certainly needed love and Andy Reid knew it. How did Reid sense this? His own sons, Britt and Garrett, are drug addicts who have been in and out of jail for a host of narcotic offenses. When he brought Michael Vick onto the Eagle’s football team, Coach Reid said, “I know about second chances.” He understands from personal experience that “Everything terrible is something that needs our love.”
Whenever forgiveness occurs, someone is bound to be horrified. Each of us probably has a sin or two we feel is never deserving of a second chance—too hideous to be forgiven. Second chances often upset us, especially when they are offered to others and do not involve our family or friends.
Today we see an epiphany. An epiphany is seeing God come to earth as the pure and spotless one, Jesus Christ, and, in today’s case, seeing Jesus, the unclean one, becoming unclean for our sake at the River Jordan. From the moment God comes to earth, we see God offering second chances to a host of miscreants--pimps, prostitutes, tax collectors and people just like you and me.
We need special 3-D glasses like those being given out at the blockbuster movie, “Avatar,” if we are to make sense of God giving us all second chances. We need “Epiphany Glasses.” “Epiphany Glasses” make it possible for us see God at work in this crazy, mixed up world of ours, giving second chances over and over again, even when we do not think we are deserving of special treatment. Anne Lamott, author of Traveling Mercies, writes of second chances: “I never said I am a good Christian. I just know that Jesus adores me and is only as far away as his name. I say, ‘Hi, Lord,’ and he says, ‘Hello, Darling.’ He loves me so much he keeps a photo of me in his wallet. If I were the only person on earth, he still would have died for me.” Lamott sees her life through “Epiphany Glasses.”
At our baptisms, God took a photo of each of us and placed it in the huge heavenly wallet. Just like those Christmas letters you just received in which proud parents and grandparents brag unendingly about their rambunctious kids as if they are angels, God does the same thing with us and pulls out our baptismal pictures for all to see, saying, “Let me tell you about my wonderful children.”
My hunch is that a lot of people, including many of us, need “Epiphany Glasses” to understand the company we keep here at First Lutheran Church. Rarely a week goes by when someone doesn’t call or email me: “Reverend, we respect your ministry and what you do, but do all the rough and tumble people have to hang out around your place?” Maybe they are right, I think; maybe we should clean up our act and improve the company we keep. “Epiphany Glasses” are essential to any ministry that dares to open its doors to the astonishing company that Jesus always calls us to keep and “Epiphany Glasses” help us resist the temptation to “move on up” to better company.
Let us not forget: when Jesus stepped out of the Jordan and began to towel off, a voice came from heaven and said, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you, I am well pleased.” With these words, the church was given permission to hang out with the riff-raff, to offer and be offered second chances galore.
In these days, we are well aware of the church’s folly and fragility, its need for second chances. We know what is happening in our own Evangelical Lutheran Church in America: we are fighting like cats and dogs among ourselves; the issue really is about the company we keep. Some people long for purity, for everyone to think alike, to be “good" as they define “good.” We find ours church slogging along like an old truck trying to get to the other side of a snake infested swamp. The amazing thing is, God is always on the other side, as he was at the Jordan, urging us out of the deep and treacherous waters and saying, “With you, I am well pleased.”
Seeing our world through “Epiphany Glasses” will thrill us to no end as we live among the riff-raff. We will be thrilled, if for no other reason, that when Jesus stepped into the Jordan, he offered each one of us a second chance.
The Rev. Wilbert S. Miller
First Lutheran Church, San Diego
January 3, 2010
Epiphany of Our Lord (transferred)
Matthew 2: 1-12
"Opting for a Different Road"
My favorite figures in our family’s Christmas crèche were the kings and their camels. As I have grown older, I have come to understand that those kings might not have been kings at all; they might simply have been Wise Men, Magi, star-gazers, or astrologers. I have learned, too, according to the Bible, that they did not have the majestic names of Baltazaar, Melchior, and Gaspar--one, by the way, after whom we named our youngest son. And, worst of all, I have been informed that there might not have been three. Thank heavens we do know, though, that they brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh to the Christ Child.
Amidst all this confusion, there is one thing that has stuck with me throughout my life: these three or two or four men dared to stand up to King Herod. This daring has filled my imagination.
There were a few other wise people in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth besides the mysterious ones from the East. They were the chief priests and scribes, Herod’s court theologians. They told Herod what he wanted to hear, including that there might be a king in Bethlehem. They had come to this conclusion through diligent biblical study. Interestingly, even though they were in my line of work and could easily be my heroes, I have forgotten who they were. Their “no runs, no hits, no errors” manner left little for my imagination growing up; their lack of courage has not inspired me over the long haul. There is a particular ailment that we clergy are prone to suffer just like Herod’s puppet theologians: our imaginations begin to rot when our greatest desire is pleasing others, especially those in power. We become little more than yes men and yes women who leave you bored and struggling for some meaningful vision.
While I have forgotten almost entirely about the chief priests and scribes, I have remained intrigued by the Wise Men. This is true for others, too. The wonderful mythology that has been created around them is in no small part due to their considerable courage. Funny the attraction: they were not seminary trained; they were not insiders; they were not of the right religious persuasion; instead, they were weirdoes attracted to Tarot cards, homeopathic medicine, and star-gazing.
Herod had one request of these weirdoes: “When you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.”
They did find the child by means of a star that shone over the unlikeliest town of little Bethlehem. When the Wise Men entered the stable, what to their wondering eyes should appear, but a little baby in a manger. Only weirdoes would, as the Bible states, be “overwhelmed with joy” by such a pathetic sight. Only the off beat would fall down on their knees, pay homage, and present the swaddled one with exquisite gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
Here is what has astonished me about these mysterious men. After they worshipped this new born king, the Bible says this of them: “And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road.” I love that: “They left for their own country by another road.”
As a youngster, I am not sure I sensed their daring. Only with years have I come to realize the risk the Wise Men took. Only with years have I asked poet T. S. Eliot’s question, whether they were led all that way “for birth or death.”
Children love the fairy tale quality of this story as these mysterious men stand up to the wicked old king. What they don’t realize until later in life is the courage required of anyone who refuses to cozy up to the powerful and the necessary sacrifices that likely will follow.
As we grow older, we are tempted to become less like the Wise Men and more like the chief priests and scribes. We learn to couch our loss of nerve in lofty religious language. After all, didn’t Jesus say, “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar and to God the things that are God’s.” And Saint Paul, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities.” We mask our refusal to go home a different way in biblical language. And yet, deep down, we are sickened by what we have become: we have not ended up the Wise Men and Women we would like, daring to risk for the sake of the Gospel; rather, too often, we have become cowardly ones slithering along in lockstep to the powerful and the sure bet.
Don’t we long to be like the Wise Men, filled with fervor, boldness, and imagination? We remember Robert Frost’s poem because it urges us to such a heroic vision: “I shall be telling this with a sigh/ Somewhere ages and ages hence;/ Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.”
Whenever I think of the churches and ministries that have touched my life over the years, they are without exception the ones that have “left for their country by another road.” They are made up of people not too different from you and me. They are the ones who refused to take their churches and leave the city for the suburban green pastures. They stayed put in the city, barely able to see a star in the sky but, the one they did see led them to the Christ Child’s glory. This glory flowed strangely among the riff-raff, in the ones often more sinner than saint. These heroes of the faith are the ones who chose the rutty road home and that choice made all the difference in their lives and that choice touched the lives of many more like you and me. These people who discovered the Christ Child almost always did so on a prayer to God and rarely more than a nickel in the bank. These people risked for the sake of the Gospel.
A New Year stands before us now. This year will likely be like many others in this congregation’s history. I sense it will be filled with challenge. I sense that their will come a moment or two of uncertainty when we will be forced to decide which road will take us home. Will we take the way that has less risk and fewer thrills or will we take the challenging way that, while at times frightening and uncertain, will prove far more breathtaking? I pray that, by God’s grace, we will chose courageously like the Wise Men, that we will act with boldness and imagination, and perhaps sometime down the line, there will be those who will look back at what we did and be grateful for the choices we made.
There is a prayer that I particularly love from the church’s Evening Prayer service. Please bow your heads and join me in that prayer: “Lord God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”